Some weeks I find it easy to do the weekly meal plan, and some weeks, such as this one, there doesn't seem to be anything I want to eat.  While I was weeding a flower garden on Sunday, I came across quite a few wild onions. (Yes, they were indeed wild onions and not death camas, and I have the 45 minutes of Googling to prove it.) So I washed off the mud and stuck them in the refrigerator. As I was not coming up with any meals, I thought about the wild onions and put something vague about wild onions and eggs on the menu. Over the next couple of days, this went from a vague idea to an ac ..read more

"This was Dr. Ham's [Dr. Jacob Ham, psychologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in NYC] whole theory: that because of its repetitive nature, complex trauma is fundamentally relational trauma. In other words, this is trauma caused by bad relationships with other people -- people who were supposed to be caring and trustworthy and instead were hurtful. That meant future relationships with anybody would be harder for people with complex trauma because they were wired to believe that other people could not be trusted. The only way you could heal from relational trauma, he figured, was through practicing t ..read more

It's so nice when adult children do something that gives me a ready made blog post. Last night in our family group chat, W. and MC shared that they had added two kittens to their home. Cute, aren't they? I have to admit I am kind of a sucker for little orange stripy kittens.  Of course, when G. and L. discovered there were kittens to be played with, they had to go over, so J. took them over as part of some errands he was running.  ..read more

Spring is officially here and it's lovely. I greatly appreciate being able to go outside and not have to put on a coat... or five. We are finishing up our school work for the year. I've gone through to figure out what we have left and have put the appropriate library books on hold.  There are flowers everywhere. This little crab apple tree has never bloomed to this extent before.  G. has pretty much perfected making focaccia and we are all most appreciative. With our co-op ending this past Tuesday, we are all feeling relaxed and as though we have a lot more free time. May is a ..read more

Recently I've been listening to a class on cultural literacy as I clean the barn. It's been interesting, but I wasn't expecting to be be blindsided by it. I like to think of myself as somewhat culturally literate. I read widely, I've had friends who come from myriad different places (though this was significantly easier in Evanston), and I have done some travelling which requires longer stays in a place and not just a few days.  This morning totally knocked me on my heels. The discussion was about cultures with collectivist outlooks verses cultures with individualistic outlooks. (The US ..read more

I noticed this evening as I was flailing around trying to think of something to write that as of yesterday, I have written 4400 posts on this blog. That seems crazy. If I made a guess at average word length being 500 words for each post (which is probably low) that comes to having written at least 2,200,000 words.  So I'm just going to rest on my laurels a bit tonight and also lower my average word count by stopping right there. Even I can see the benefit of being brief every now and then.  ..read more

H.'s artwork that was displayed tonight at our co-op's closing program.  ..read more

I have started, at long last, to weave the sample for the possible fabric I want to make. Here's what I have so far. In some ways it is close to how I was envisioning it would look, in other ways not so much. I have a bad feeling that I have made the sett too big. The sett is how many ends of thread per inch there are. Too big and you end up with more weft than warp and it can be too loose. Too small and you can end up with a stiff fabric. This is definitely falling on the too loose side. This was done with singles of handwoven. It was my first choice because I would get the most yards out ..read more

  Heard in the car this morning on our way to church: L.: "I think it is very unfair to blob fish when they say they're the called ugliest fish in the world. Because they look like normal fish under the right pressure. It's just when we bring them up here that they look bad because they're not in the right environment. It is an unfair representation of them."  I'll add that no one in the car at this point was discussing blob fish... or the ocean... or even water. Randomness stated with a very large vocabulary is a significant part of my life.  ..read more

We sat down to dinner at 8:30 which was late even by our standards. Usually we get dinner on the table anywhere between 7:00 and 8:00. The reason dinner was so late is that I perpetually underestimate exactly how long it takes to make stuffed spinach pizza. The whole 'change the pony's hoof poultice' routine played a part in it as well, because I underestimate how long that takes as well. But people are willing to wait patiently for stuffed spinach pizza.  For the non-Chicagoans among my readers, thus is a type of pizza particular to Chicago. It's not deep dish because it has two cr ..read more