We went with Dad!!!!!!
(Bet Anna Anne Abby)
I came home one day to find this note on my computer screen in my "new post" box.
This is how Lanny's children leave her notes. They write on the blank screen that I leave up in hopes of words that go with my constant flow of inspiration.
Showing posts with label Daughters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daughters. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Monday, December 14, 2009
Living Among The Window Ledge People
So I've said a few time before and promised an explanation of not having rules especially in departments where some expect us to have rules.
Our daughters, all four, have never dated and won't. Two are now married. Some folks then wonder what our "rules" look like, how it is we "do" that. How do we keep them from dating, what our definition of dating is, when they will get to make that choice for themselves and what the consequences for rule breaking in our house looks like.
They seem to have at least a brain strain or more like a brain fracture when we say we don't have a no-dating rule. "Then they can date if they want to?"
"No."
"So then you have dating rules."
"No."
Eyes glaze over and they shake their head and wonder if we are just being obstinate or silly or knowing us slightly, both.
We see it like this.
We don't have rules about walking on the window ledge when you are in a building five stories up and better.
But we seem to live in a society that once you are above the fifth floor, the only accepted way of getting from room 502 to 534 say, is to climb out on the ledge and walk hopefully to the corresponding window and then climb back in.
We stand in room 502 knowing that we need to get to 534 and listen to insane people talk about how easy and sort of fun it is to go by way of the ledge. They seem to think we are nuts for thinking it absurd to go about in this manner. They have always gotten from room to room that way, they are fine. Only a few folks fall to their death, and some survive to come up and climb right back out on that ledge.
Sorry, but we think you are crazy. You have perfectly good hallways. Why would you want to risk the fall, the chance that you might not be at the right window, so many other pit falls of taking the window ledge instead of the hallway.
But because we live in a society that refuses to take the hallway from room to room, we seem to have a no-window-ledge rule. Because what do you say when someone starts climbing out on the ledge and looks back at you and says, "Are you coming?"
"No, what are you, nuts? We don't use the ledge."
"Oh, you have a window ledge rule don't you?"
"Well I didn't before today, didn't know I needed one."
That is how we feel about dating. We don't really need a no-dating rule because quite frankly it is as ridiculous as getting from room to room via a window ledge. It doesn't assure you that you will actually get to the room you are seeking and on top of that it is plum dangerous and unnecessary to boot. It is just that nearly everyone in our society climbs out the window and goes along the window ledge.
We firmly believe and it has been proven that God will bring along your spouse when and where you need them. It will be evident, not necessarily just to the couple involved, but to their immediate community. It will be confirmed and known to those who need to know.
If God cares about the hairs on my head, the job I hold, the house I live in, the vacation I take, why would he not care about the second most important relationship, topped only by my relationship to Him? And care enough to bring the person that I need, and needs me, into my life at the appropriate time?
I do not need to entertain myself until then, get to know the opposite sex, and play around with falling off the ledge. This is baggage that gets in the way of the eventual relationship He will bring to me, and is the makings of footholds in my life that allows Satan to climb all over me.
And that is just the stuff that is bad for me personally. Dating also allows for me to defraud others. The people I date, when they think I care more about them than I do, they are defrauded. I can't possible be honest with how little I do care or they would break it off and I would not be able to gain the personal pleasure that I get from having someone to do things with. Having to do things alone or with your brother or your mom or dad, is a pitiful drag and down right embarrassing why would I be honest and make myself have to get through day to day life in that embarassing uncomfortable manner?
I also defraud their family and mine. They become close to me and my family to them, only to loose when we say it didn't work out. They are left with an unusable Christmas gift in the closet when we timely break up in November so that we don't have to do that uncomfortable Christmas, but we aren't really that into one another, thing. They are left with emotions that have no place to go now, or they continue to get together with my ex because for some reason they seem to like them better than me and they waited so long for a brother or a sister and now it looks like they will have to wait even longer and won't that be weird when I finally do get hitched what will they do with my old ex that they still like?
Not to mention the constant danger of slipping off the ledge and plummeting to the death of our purity. Physically and emotionally as well. And it is not enough just to "avoid" actually falling. We believe that to constantly tell yourself you cannot do a certain something, but enjoying getting up to certain edges only to exasperatingly back off before it is too late, is as dangerous to future intimacy as actually doing what you are not supposed to until you have committed yourself before your God and community.
So no, we don't have rules against dating any more than we have rules of walking on the fifth story window ledge.
More later. As always. Please pelt us with comments and questions, it spurs us on.
Our daughters, all four, have never dated and won't. Two are now married. Some folks then wonder what our "rules" look like, how it is we "do" that. How do we keep them from dating, what our definition of dating is, when they will get to make that choice for themselves and what the consequences for rule breaking in our house looks like.
They seem to have at least a brain strain or more like a brain fracture when we say we don't have a no-dating rule. "Then they can date if they want to?"
"No."
"So then you have dating rules."
"No."
Eyes glaze over and they shake their head and wonder if we are just being obstinate or silly or knowing us slightly, both.
We see it like this.
We don't have rules about walking on the window ledge when you are in a building five stories up and better.
But we seem to live in a society that once you are above the fifth floor, the only accepted way of getting from room 502 to 534 say, is to climb out on the ledge and walk hopefully to the corresponding window and then climb back in.
We stand in room 502 knowing that we need to get to 534 and listen to insane people talk about how easy and sort of fun it is to go by way of the ledge. They seem to think we are nuts for thinking it absurd to go about in this manner. They have always gotten from room to room that way, they are fine. Only a few folks fall to their death, and some survive to come up and climb right back out on that ledge.
Sorry, but we think you are crazy. You have perfectly good hallways. Why would you want to risk the fall, the chance that you might not be at the right window, so many other pit falls of taking the window ledge instead of the hallway.
But because we live in a society that refuses to take the hallway from room to room, we seem to have a no-window-ledge rule. Because what do you say when someone starts climbing out on the ledge and looks back at you and says, "Are you coming?"
"No, what are you, nuts? We don't use the ledge."
"Oh, you have a window ledge rule don't you?"
"Well I didn't before today, didn't know I needed one."
That is how we feel about dating. We don't really need a no-dating rule because quite frankly it is as ridiculous as getting from room to room via a window ledge. It doesn't assure you that you will actually get to the room you are seeking and on top of that it is plum dangerous and unnecessary to boot. It is just that nearly everyone in our society climbs out the window and goes along the window ledge.
We firmly believe and it has been proven that God will bring along your spouse when and where you need them. It will be evident, not necessarily just to the couple involved, but to their immediate community. It will be confirmed and known to those who need to know.
If God cares about the hairs on my head, the job I hold, the house I live in, the vacation I take, why would he not care about the second most important relationship, topped only by my relationship to Him? And care enough to bring the person that I need, and needs me, into my life at the appropriate time?
I do not need to entertain myself until then, get to know the opposite sex, and play around with falling off the ledge. This is baggage that gets in the way of the eventual relationship He will bring to me, and is the makings of footholds in my life that allows Satan to climb all over me.
And that is just the stuff that is bad for me personally. Dating also allows for me to defraud others. The people I date, when they think I care more about them than I do, they are defrauded. I can't possible be honest with how little I do care or they would break it off and I would not be able to gain the personal pleasure that I get from having someone to do things with. Having to do things alone or with your brother or your mom or dad, is a pitiful drag and down right embarrassing why would I be honest and make myself have to get through day to day life in that embarassing uncomfortable manner?
I also defraud their family and mine. They become close to me and my family to them, only to loose when we say it didn't work out. They are left with an unusable Christmas gift in the closet when we timely break up in November so that we don't have to do that uncomfortable Christmas, but we aren't really that into one another, thing. They are left with emotions that have no place to go now, or they continue to get together with my ex because for some reason they seem to like them better than me and they waited so long for a brother or a sister and now it looks like they will have to wait even longer and won't that be weird when I finally do get hitched what will they do with my old ex that they still like?
Not to mention the constant danger of slipping off the ledge and plummeting to the death of our purity. Physically and emotionally as well. And it is not enough just to "avoid" actually falling. We believe that to constantly tell yourself you cannot do a certain something, but enjoying getting up to certain edges only to exasperatingly back off before it is too late, is as dangerous to future intimacy as actually doing what you are not supposed to until you have committed yourself before your God and community.
So no, we don't have rules against dating any more than we have rules of walking on the fifth story window ledge.
More later. As always. Please pelt us with comments and questions, it spurs us on.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
A Little More...
Ready for another freak fest? If A Final Lesson In Faith was just whetting your appetites for knowing exactly how weird we all are, the Vicks and the Bowermans, and all that the bond includes, then I sure as heck have more where that comes from. I think these are turning out to be the story build up for what this blog was really all about: Dirt and Lanny's personal journey with God, 'Building a Future of Purity for Generations'.
What Happened on the Way to a Book of Sorts
Instead I got all caught up in telling you more of the Farming and Funny Stories aspect of our lives with a few of God's lessons for Dirt and I, mostly me (you know those slow students), thrown in. Then I had a great idea to have an extra blog to put my long stuff on. Yeah, I know, you are wondering how long the long stuff is if what is written here isn't long stuff. But its for long, consistent stuff. Mostly I had abandoned it when spring rolled around and I was having difficulty getting my work done. And some people who were encouraging my writing were now wonder where their dinner was and who was going to move the tractor out of the middle of the field cause a thought had struck the person using it.
Well I'm back in the saddle, again, I think this time I know where the stirrups are located so that I can confidently take off. This and the post I wrote on Monday will go there, the Stories_From_Dirt_&_Lanny blog along with my feeble attempts at some rather lame non-fiction (they get to stay there and maybe I'll add more) and it will begin my long awaited start on my book, well long awaited by about four people in my life that is. Maybe you'll enjoy it, maybe you won't, it will quickly take a strong turn that quite a few folks don't have the time for.
Building a Future of Purity For Generations to Come was originally a "class" Dirt and I put together for a few people who often asked us how we got to where we got. There were just a couple of folks who wondered how we managed to have sweet, non-mouthy, non-hussified, hard working girls, that didn't date and didn't hang out, but still managed to get married. We would always answer with, "it isn't us, it is God, we just try to listen and do."
People wanted to know what we had been listening to, what rules we had come up with. That was the hard part. There weren't very many "rules", hardly one really. Mostly it was understanding what the end result of direct parenting really is and what God means for us to be doing with our lives and our gifts. And really, it is more than how we got to where we got 'cause we're still gettin'. And it may appear to some folks that the title and what the main theme of most of Dirt's and my yapping is all about sexual purity. But purity is about way more that what the bathing suit covers. Way more. And our purity in God continues to develop, hopefully not degrade, the further we run the path with Him.
But as far as rules for it, so you can just follow a set of check off-able rules, it doesn't really work like that. It's kinda like a blob, hard to hold onto from the outside, but if you could just crawl into "it" you would be surrounded by it all the time.
Where to Start
It is hard to really pin down when this journey started for Dirt and I. We could start at our own marriage, but then when we came together we were bringing two stories together that really weren't even identifiable at that time and we really didn't know at that time what we were doing and how much our very lives were setting up.
So we'll just go with Anne's birth to the Bowerman family and the bonding and increased family building that scenario all began for us and we'll work backward and forward from there and see how it goes.
A Helpful Tool
This is a telling of a people's history and how God moves in their lives, and it is told from one of the more random, seemingly disjointed people in the group. You know full well Dear Reader that you almost need a road map once I get started talking. Okay, yes, you need a road map. That's a great idea. But you'll have to draw it out yourself as we go along. So get out a big sheet of paper and write "God" in the center.
Actually lets make sure we are all on the same paper, write, "Triune God." As you write it you could hum the hymn lines "God in three persons, blessed Trinity." I did just now, so maybe you can too.
Now, anywhere you want to, you can write Dirt and Lanny or if you want to be all formal like, you could put Phil and LeeAnn Vick. Then after you read A Final Lesson In Faith you can put down Mike and Rebecca Bowerman. None of our entries will be in chronological order, if they were you might not need this road map. So don't put them in a nice straight line vertically or horizontally. Come on you left-brained engineer students, you can do it, just close your eyes and stab at the paper, now open your eyes and just start writing.
You can draw a line from the center, God, to Dirt and Lanny. And you can draw a line from the center, God, to Mike and Rebecca.
Now that you read A Final Lesson In Faith you can draw a line between Dirt and Lanny, and Mike and Rebecca. You could even illustrate this line. Lets see... you could draw a horse, or a cider press, or a microphone, a hospital, an ultrasound, well heck you know what your capable of drawing and you read the story, no skipping stories, they are all important, so you know what you can draw there for now. I might say, don't fill in the whole line because there might be more things you want to draw there.
Now lets see what do I want to tell you next.....
Oh yeah. Lets have a little humor and some launching points for concepts. Lets talk dating.
Dating
Not, I repeat, not one of my favorite subjects. It's true, I have major issues with dating, and all of them will unfold soon enough, but one of the foundations to having problems with it was that in high school I sort of wasn't allowed to get my own dates just in case one of my brother's friends might be short a date and they would need me to fill in. He was a senior and I was a sophomore and he ran my life. Oh, by the way this is actually the one brother that doesn't have huge issues with me now, it pays to have at least one other black sheep with you in a relationship circle.
I don't know how dating went for Dirt, he was at a high school out in the booneys well not as booney as he could have been, but definitely in a different school district and different sports league, no reasons for our paths to cross at the time and besides he would have been my brothers age and in order to date him they would have had to be friends. So I really have no idea how dating went for Dirt. Beings that he was the oldest I'm thinking no one told him who he had to go out with on Friday night no matter what plans he had made Wednesday afternoon.
I know very little dating incidences of his, and I'm betting you won't get much out of him either Dear Reader if you asked directly. He has one or two stories he repeats. So I'll tell you the one he tells most.
Dirt had a restored 1954 Ford Victoria that he drove around. And he had a girlfriend with long blond hair (who didn't in 1974 in America?). He was driving down I-5 one afternoon when he glanced over to his "girl" as she was finishing up brushing her hair, (probably for the fiftieth time in the hour) and caught her pulling the hair out of her brush and tucking it under the seat.
I'll just let you absorb that scene a moment.
Dirt's brain lit on fire. (It doesn't do that very often) and he immediately pulled over to the side of the road and demanded she get out, remove the hair ball and dispose of it properly. We don't need to mention her name, she doesn't belong on our road map. This is just one of two of the only dating stories heard from Dirt. Not much to go on.
I'm thinking that this isn't the incident that made him go all crazy, mad scientist crazy, when he noticed his first little girl getting a little older, not so little girlish any more, starting to look like the little girls he found himself hanging around for no apparent reason. I'm thinking his crazy was based on thoughts that look a lot more like my dating stories, the ones where someone in the car needs to be taken to the hospital for door handle and window crank extractions and it wasn't the boy. I'm just thinking that maybe just maybe he had scenes like that in his head when he started to go crazy. He hasn't shared any. But I'm thinkin'.
Dirt, the Mad Inventor
I'm thinking that that is what he was reflecting on as his first baby girl was rolling through the years of eleven, twelve, thirteen... He could see a trend and he wasn't liking it. He knew what was down the road and like he always said to me when I thought adult guy friends for me were harmless, "I (Phillip Vick) know how guys' minds work!"
He began to invent all sorts of surveillance and protective devices for his daughter. Polishing up a rifle on the porch swing was not enough for him. Sure he thought that whole, "so you want to date my daughter" contract was funny and so right, but he knew no piece of stupid paper was going to protect his daughter. That was his job. Only he thought he had to do his job and insist that she date. "Normal people date, I want my daughter to be normal, therefore she must date".
Not right away mind you. Dating could and should be held off for as long as possible, most likely sixteen, 'cuz after all what was the sense in dating if you couldn't go in a car. Yeah, you'd miss those fun door knob extraction moments, that's worth waiting for.
So he began to invent, well in his mind anyway, nothing went into actual prototype development. Mind you this was early nineties, no GPS, cell phones were barely on the scene, PCs were slooooooooow. But yet Dirt figured he could put a device on the guy's car and go inside and watch the little red dot on the map and see when it stopped and if it was a preapproved stopping spot and if it wasn't he would run out to the helicopter pad and take off, I would stay in radio contact and let him know what was going on.
Realizing of course that there would be some delay in his arrival at the scene he knew he needed some back up technology. That is when he began to actually hope for the need for expensive orthodonture work. He would supply the orthodontist with his very special braces. These braces would have sensors that could detect external pressure. On receiving that impulse, a magnetic pulse would be activated slamming shut the top and bottom braces and locking them in a closed position. He was also working on some sort of clothing connection.
But before he could work up the clothing concept and get it all off to the workshop for prototype development a friend of ours handed me a book one day.
A Book and Author Come to Us From a Friend
I sat there at her house reading it and almost finished it on the scene. If I'm interested I can usually eat a book in one sitting and this one was relatively small and I was very very interested in it. The title was, I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
Now I grant you, it was written by a youth for youth, not necessarily for parents. It was a young man's perspective on why dating is essentially stupid, unnecessary and potentially very harmful.
His, Joshua Harris', thoughts on the subject blew the doors off of my brain. Most of what he said struck very familiar cords and the new thoughts were pretty fascinating.
I handed the book to my then approaching thirteen year old daughter. She too nearly read it in one sitting. And when she was done she said, "the rhinoceros that was in the middle of my road is gone. I will not be dating."
Holy Cow Patties that was way too easy.
But we, Dirt and I didn't question it, Dirt was just happy to put away the graph paper, resin mold, and electrical conduit. I was just glad.
And we rested, got on with the other parts of life, continued to talk openly about what we thought marriage was all about, in God's eyes, and how a young person might prepare for it. But mostly we were free to focus on sewing, sheep raising, gardening, chicken management and stitching up ducks torn up by dogs. God was good. We often thanked him for sending a book like Josh Harris' into our world just in time for the sake of our daughters.
Sometimes late at night I would lie awake crying to myself, wishing I had had that book. My life would have been so different. So much black and stormy, soul crushing stuff could have been avoided.
But then I started thinking, and I think some thoughts were stirring in Dirt's mind too. What if a teen (hate that word) couldn't get passed the rejection of the concept by their peers? What if they weren't brave enough to risk doing something different even though convention (just since the beginning of this century any way) was proving not to be such a hot way to start life? What if they were willing to risk a baggage car load of baggage that they would carry into their marriage just so they wouldn't look weird? Every day having to chalk it up to growing up?
There's More to the Path
Those thoughts got Dirt and I thinking and searching for some answers from God. And sure enough He was faithful to bring us some more information. More information came in concrete form from the same friend who handed me the first book, my dear friend Terry. And some stuff was coming out in Dirt's and my thoughts that were stirred by Scripture and biblical principles.
But that will be another day's story. I guess today's story isn't all that freaky for some folks but not everything that goes into the pot roast pan looks like meat.
Have a great day Dear Reader!
What Happened on the Way to a Book of Sorts
Instead I got all caught up in telling you more of the Farming and Funny Stories aspect of our lives with a few of God's lessons for Dirt and I, mostly me (you know those slow students), thrown in. Then I had a great idea to have an extra blog to put my long stuff on. Yeah, I know, you are wondering how long the long stuff is if what is written here isn't long stuff. But its for long, consistent stuff. Mostly I had abandoned it when spring rolled around and I was having difficulty getting my work done. And some people who were encouraging my writing were now wonder where their dinner was and who was going to move the tractor out of the middle of the field cause a thought had struck the person using it.
Well I'm back in the saddle, again, I think this time I know where the stirrups are located so that I can confidently take off. This and the post I wrote on Monday will go there, the Stories_From_Dirt_&_Lanny blog along with my feeble attempts at some rather lame non-fiction (they get to stay there and maybe I'll add more) and it will begin my long awaited start on my book, well long awaited by about four people in my life that is. Maybe you'll enjoy it, maybe you won't, it will quickly take a strong turn that quite a few folks don't have the time for.
Building a Future of Purity For Generations to Come was originally a "class" Dirt and I put together for a few people who often asked us how we got to where we got. There were just a couple of folks who wondered how we managed to have sweet, non-mouthy, non-hussified, hard working girls, that didn't date and didn't hang out, but still managed to get married. We would always answer with, "it isn't us, it is God, we just try to listen and do."
People wanted to know what we had been listening to, what rules we had come up with. That was the hard part. There weren't very many "rules", hardly one really. Mostly it was understanding what the end result of direct parenting really is and what God means for us to be doing with our lives and our gifts. And really, it is more than how we got to where we got 'cause we're still gettin'. And it may appear to some folks that the title and what the main theme of most of Dirt's and my yapping is all about sexual purity. But purity is about way more that what the bathing suit covers. Way more. And our purity in God continues to develop, hopefully not degrade, the further we run the path with Him.
But as far as rules for it, so you can just follow a set of check off-able rules, it doesn't really work like that. It's kinda like a blob, hard to hold onto from the outside, but if you could just crawl into "it" you would be surrounded by it all the time.
Where to Start
It is hard to really pin down when this journey started for Dirt and I. We could start at our own marriage, but then when we came together we were bringing two stories together that really weren't even identifiable at that time and we really didn't know at that time what we were doing and how much our very lives were setting up.
So we'll just go with Anne's birth to the Bowerman family and the bonding and increased family building that scenario all began for us and we'll work backward and forward from there and see how it goes.
A Helpful Tool
This is a telling of a people's history and how God moves in their lives, and it is told from one of the more random, seemingly disjointed people in the group. You know full well Dear Reader that you almost need a road map once I get started talking. Okay, yes, you need a road map. That's a great idea. But you'll have to draw it out yourself as we go along. So get out a big sheet of paper and write "God" in the center.
Actually lets make sure we are all on the same paper, write, "Triune God." As you write it you could hum the hymn lines "God in three persons, blessed Trinity." I did just now, so maybe you can too.
Now, anywhere you want to, you can write Dirt and Lanny or if you want to be all formal like, you could put Phil and LeeAnn Vick. Then after you read A Final Lesson In Faith you can put down Mike and Rebecca Bowerman. None of our entries will be in chronological order, if they were you might not need this road map. So don't put them in a nice straight line vertically or horizontally. Come on you left-brained engineer students, you can do it, just close your eyes and stab at the paper, now open your eyes and just start writing.
You can draw a line from the center, God, to Dirt and Lanny. And you can draw a line from the center, God, to Mike and Rebecca.
Now that you read A Final Lesson In Faith you can draw a line between Dirt and Lanny, and Mike and Rebecca. You could even illustrate this line. Lets see... you could draw a horse, or a cider press, or a microphone, a hospital, an ultrasound, well heck you know what your capable of drawing and you read the story, no skipping stories, they are all important, so you know what you can draw there for now. I might say, don't fill in the whole line because there might be more things you want to draw there.
Now lets see what do I want to tell you next.....
Oh yeah. Lets have a little humor and some launching points for concepts. Lets talk dating.
Dating
Not, I repeat, not one of my favorite subjects. It's true, I have major issues with dating, and all of them will unfold soon enough, but one of the foundations to having problems with it was that in high school I sort of wasn't allowed to get my own dates just in case one of my brother's friends might be short a date and they would need me to fill in. He was a senior and I was a sophomore and he ran my life. Oh, by the way this is actually the one brother that doesn't have huge issues with me now, it pays to have at least one other black sheep with you in a relationship circle.
I don't know how dating went for Dirt, he was at a high school out in the booneys well not as booney as he could have been, but definitely in a different school district and different sports league, no reasons for our paths to cross at the time and besides he would have been my brothers age and in order to date him they would have had to be friends. So I really have no idea how dating went for Dirt. Beings that he was the oldest I'm thinking no one told him who he had to go out with on Friday night no matter what plans he had made Wednesday afternoon.
I know very little dating incidences of his, and I'm betting you won't get much out of him either Dear Reader if you asked directly. He has one or two stories he repeats. So I'll tell you the one he tells most.
Dirt had a restored 1954 Ford Victoria that he drove around. And he had a girlfriend with long blond hair (who didn't in 1974 in America?). He was driving down I-5 one afternoon when he glanced over to his "girl" as she was finishing up brushing her hair, (probably for the fiftieth time in the hour) and caught her pulling the hair out of her brush and tucking it under the seat.
I'll just let you absorb that scene a moment.
Dirt's brain lit on fire. (It doesn't do that very often) and he immediately pulled over to the side of the road and demanded she get out, remove the hair ball and dispose of it properly. We don't need to mention her name, she doesn't belong on our road map. This is just one of two of the only dating stories heard from Dirt. Not much to go on.
I'm thinking that this isn't the incident that made him go all crazy, mad scientist crazy, when he noticed his first little girl getting a little older, not so little girlish any more, starting to look like the little girls he found himself hanging around for no apparent reason. I'm thinking his crazy was based on thoughts that look a lot more like my dating stories, the ones where someone in the car needs to be taken to the hospital for door handle and window crank extractions and it wasn't the boy. I'm just thinking that maybe just maybe he had scenes like that in his head when he started to go crazy. He hasn't shared any. But I'm thinkin'.
Dirt, the Mad Inventor
I'm thinking that that is what he was reflecting on as his first baby girl was rolling through the years of eleven, twelve, thirteen... He could see a trend and he wasn't liking it. He knew what was down the road and like he always said to me when I thought adult guy friends for me were harmless, "I (Phillip Vick) know how guys' minds work!"
He began to invent all sorts of surveillance and protective devices for his daughter. Polishing up a rifle on the porch swing was not enough for him. Sure he thought that whole, "so you want to date my daughter" contract was funny and so right, but he knew no piece of stupid paper was going to protect his daughter. That was his job. Only he thought he had to do his job and insist that she date. "Normal people date, I want my daughter to be normal, therefore she must date".
Not right away mind you. Dating could and should be held off for as long as possible, most likely sixteen, 'cuz after all what was the sense in dating if you couldn't go in a car. Yeah, you'd miss those fun door knob extraction moments, that's worth waiting for.
So he began to invent, well in his mind anyway, nothing went into actual prototype development. Mind you this was early nineties, no GPS, cell phones were barely on the scene, PCs were slooooooooow. But yet Dirt figured he could put a device on the guy's car and go inside and watch the little red dot on the map and see when it stopped and if it was a preapproved stopping spot and if it wasn't he would run out to the helicopter pad and take off, I would stay in radio contact and let him know what was going on.
Realizing of course that there would be some delay in his arrival at the scene he knew he needed some back up technology. That is when he began to actually hope for the need for expensive orthodonture work. He would supply the orthodontist with his very special braces. These braces would have sensors that could detect external pressure. On receiving that impulse, a magnetic pulse would be activated slamming shut the top and bottom braces and locking them in a closed position. He was also working on some sort of clothing connection.
But before he could work up the clothing concept and get it all off to the workshop for prototype development a friend of ours handed me a book one day.
A Book and Author Come to Us From a Friend
I sat there at her house reading it and almost finished it on the scene. If I'm interested I can usually eat a book in one sitting and this one was relatively small and I was very very interested in it. The title was, I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
Now I grant you, it was written by a youth for youth, not necessarily for parents. It was a young man's perspective on why dating is essentially stupid, unnecessary and potentially very harmful.
His, Joshua Harris', thoughts on the subject blew the doors off of my brain. Most of what he said struck very familiar cords and the new thoughts were pretty fascinating.
I handed the book to my then approaching thirteen year old daughter. She too nearly read it in one sitting. And when she was done she said, "the rhinoceros that was in the middle of my road is gone. I will not be dating."
Holy Cow Patties that was way too easy.
But we, Dirt and I didn't question it, Dirt was just happy to put away the graph paper, resin mold, and electrical conduit. I was just glad.
And we rested, got on with the other parts of life, continued to talk openly about what we thought marriage was all about, in God's eyes, and how a young person might prepare for it. But mostly we were free to focus on sewing, sheep raising, gardening, chicken management and stitching up ducks torn up by dogs. God was good. We often thanked him for sending a book like Josh Harris' into our world just in time for the sake of our daughters.
Sometimes late at night I would lie awake crying to myself, wishing I had had that book. My life would have been so different. So much black and stormy, soul crushing stuff could have been avoided.
But then I started thinking, and I think some thoughts were stirring in Dirt's mind too. What if a teen (hate that word) couldn't get passed the rejection of the concept by their peers? What if they weren't brave enough to risk doing something different even though convention (just since the beginning of this century any way) was proving not to be such a hot way to start life? What if they were willing to risk a baggage car load of baggage that they would carry into their marriage just so they wouldn't look weird? Every day having to chalk it up to growing up?
There's More to the Path
Those thoughts got Dirt and I thinking and searching for some answers from God. And sure enough He was faithful to bring us some more information. More information came in concrete form from the same friend who handed me the first book, my dear friend Terry. And some stuff was coming out in Dirt's and my thoughts that were stirred by Scripture and biblical principles.
But that will be another day's story. I guess today's story isn't all that freaky for some folks but not everything that goes into the pot roast pan looks like meat.
Have a great day Dear Reader!
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
A Final Lesson In Faith
It's story time. Only this story is absolutely and completely true, no fake letters, no fictional characters.
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It is a story that is at once my final lesson in faith and a story about grafting on to a tree. I know, its weird 'cuz the pictures that go with this story are our haying pictures from this summer. We didn't have enough from our farm so we needed to get hay from the Schactlers this year, (extra horses, but a dad's gotta do, what a dad's gotta do).
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Haying is hot, dry, dusty, scratchy, heavy work. It is never ever done when it is rainy, and good hay that last until next April, or May in the case of this year, has to be accompanied by sure warm weather, not cool damp weather. There you have it in a nutshell what haying season is all about. So now you can look at the pictures for the other story they tell. Tree grafting. But the back story of tree grafting is my final exam in faith.
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Nearly eleven years ago, eleven year ago this October, I invited the youth group my husband and I were getting involved in out to the Farm for some cider pressing and fall fun. The only youth in site were my own kids. The interim leader, a nice hard working fellow, and a young married gal who worked with the girls had also come out to help with the youth, that didn't show up.
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I was disappointed but that was how it was supposed to be. We stood around for a while staring at the driveway, wondering what other activity had pulled the kids away that said they would be there, oh don't get me sidetracked, you know what I mean, we'll just leave it at that shall we.
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After we were certain that no more youth were coming, the fellow stood and talked a little longer to Dirt but then left because he had his own family to tend to if nothing was pressing him out here. But the young gal was easily swayed to stay and go for a horse back ride. I was all of a sudden extremely happy that not one youth had showed up. My girls were busy pressing apples with Dad and now I was going to get an afternoon to spend with this intriguing younger woman.
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She was the singer on the worship team at the church we attended. The Sundays that we pulled into the parking lot and heard the worship team practicing and warming up and I heard her voice, I knew it was going to be a good day. Her husband was a big guy and she was just a little thing. Her age was hard to pin down, I'm bad at remembering such things so even if she had told me a zillion times I would not have remembered. They kinda looked like they could be fresh out of college or darn near our age, just no kids.
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Well in actuality I was turning forty and she was fast approaching thirty. I get confused on ages. Addition and subtraction of years is like square footage in buildings, my mind draws a blank and then heads in the wrong direction. Convention would have put us in different friendship groups for several reasons. I'm ever so glad I also have a hard time with convention too. 'Cause I wanted to get to know her. I wanted her for a friend. I wanted to crawl inside her life and her in mine.
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We saddled up the horses and rode off for most of the day. We weren't to far into our ride when she began to tell me about her troubles with having children, her and her husband had already been pregnant many times but none of the pregnancies went very far. My heart broke. Funny the things you can assume when you just look at the outside of a situation.
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She began to tell why it was particularly hard for her right now. Her new sister in law was setting out to become pregnant or was already, I couldn't hold on to the story my head was already reeling at that point. All I was feeling was bizarre sense of joy because I knew we were going to be fast friends and extreme sadness for her all at once. I hardly remember where all we rode. There were parts of her telling and parts of the landscape that for me are inseparable but the whole of it is gone. I'm not so sure they registered at all that day.
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For a few days I stewed over my new friends plight. Then one night I began to pray and I couldn't stop. I began in my bed like I always do, thinking I would pray myself to sleep as normal. But I felt the Holy Spirit asking more of me. I was covering a lot of territory in my prayers, way more than I ever did before. I kept coming around to her and her husband. Praying several approaches.
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I wonder what the sleep cam pointed at my bed would have shown that night. On the bed flat. On my knees like the children in pictures, hands folded elbows on the bed. On the floor, face buried in discarded clothes and lint, not caring a wit. Praying hard. Praying for many things. Surely I must be done.
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Back up on the bed, lying flat, just a few more prayers to lull me to sleep. A couple of hours and a half dozen prayer positions later I have covered every topic imaginable, they bubble from my heart, flow out of my brain and drip from my lips to God's ear.
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Then I pray that God give me strength to allow my children to do what he needs them to do. Not what I want them to do. Oh that was hard. I had a lot to prove with my children. Mostly I had years of proving things to my family my mom and my siblings, but now my mom was gone, nothing to prove to her any longer, I got the feeling that nothing would prove that I was a grown up to my siblings, so what the heck. I knew that my children were ultimately God's not mine. I knew that, was I ready to pray that?
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Totally. No more me. Tell me God what you want and I will do my best to raise them so that they are the tool you will use. Over and over for each girl, all four. Lord what do you need them to be? I prayed in general and I prayed specifically. I prayed to know how to help my girls overcome some character hurdles, you know the ones, same sort of trait, a little this direction and it's a tool for destruction, a little this direction and it is a tool for righteous living.
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"Lord God take them and use them. They are yours not mine." I heard footsteps just then in the hallway. Heavy, uncertain from where, I don't remember, but familiar footsteps. Dirt was sleeping in bed next to me, I was staring out our door into the hall. The commanding hard heavy footsteps ended at my door.
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"He'll take them now you know. You know they'll die now don't you. They always do when you say stuff like that."
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"Absolutely not!" I yell. "I know who you are! You are a fraud! Go away from here!" The footsteps retreat but now they are weak and sad.
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I listen for a few minutes. I don't hear anything but I can't help myself. I throw back the afghan I had over my shoulders and dash up the stairs to the girls and begin touching them making sure that they are peaceful. I stay for a few hours to pray at their bedsides. As the light from the window begins to move from grey to a glow, I retreat down stairs.
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"Where you been," is the muffled question that comes from under the covers as I lift mine and crawl in. Exhausted but rested all at the same time.
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The next day I don't see any miraculous changes in my girls. In fact, are things actually worse? Walking through the beginning of that week, excited and looking, no answers. Now it is Wednesday and I am still excited. I get to see my new friend the one I prayed for a few days ago on that weird night. I wonder how she is.
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When I get to the hall where we hold our youth group she grabs me by the arm. She says she has to go back to her house to get some stuff she forgot for tonight. Okay. I leave Dirt and the girls to continue to set up. In the car she spills it faster than I can.
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She is pregnant!
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Everything is going to be okay. Everything I prayed for is what I was suppose to pray for. Everything is going to work out. She was already pregnant the night I prayed, obviously, but everything I prayed for is going to be okay.
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I'm so stinking excited I don't even remember what I told her or if I even did. Cloud nine. So when she starts getting sick, I'm smiling. Oh I can commiserate with her, I was sick from the moment I conceived to the moment their shoulders came out. I was no stranger to morning, afternoon and evening sickness. But I was happy.
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Then the bad news came, my friend miscarried. I'm really confused. I go to pray. I don't understand. I try not to be selfish but I hurt as if it were me. I can't stand it. Now I am just crying and I hear my Lord say to me, "pray for the pregnancy to go well."
What? What are you saying Lord? Didn't you hear? Don't you know? There is no more pregnancy.
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But the Lord's voice insists. "Pray for the pregnancy."
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Now I am confused. Am I not hearing well? Am I misunderstanding? Is it okay for a woman to get pregnant right away? My nurses training kicks in, I don't think so, the body needs a rest.
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"Pray for the pregnancy."
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I do, I find words that work. I pray for the pregnancy.
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I keep hearing the voice, "Pray for the pregnancy." Every day it hounds me. I am. I am praying. Poor Rebecca. She looks awful. She is still sick. Says that this has happened every time she miscarries until she goes and gets the remaining tissue cleaned out. Oh my poor friend, my heart aches, I cannot take it. I cannot think, I can hardly drive or take care of my own children. I feel so drained. Its the holidays and I don't care.
I keep hearing His voice. "Pray for the pregnancy."
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I come into my bedroom, The bed that betrayed me. I thought everything was going to be okay. How much longer, how many more times, this is killing me, what about her! I can't take it. I fall on my knees at the end of the bed. Back to the door. Not where I usually pray but I don't care. I am spent.
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"Pray for the pregnancy."
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I'm done I don't have anymore words. I'm tapped. I don't know what in the world to say. All that is coming out now are moans. Pathetic helpless moans. Deep from my gut. Wounded, dying animal sounds. My arms are limp but there all that holds me up, upper body sprawled on the bed, lower body crumpled on the floor. I can't do any better than this? I can't lift my head, put my hands together in a proper prayer position. I don't think I'll be able to move again. What if someone comes to the front door? They'll see me. I don't care.
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I don't care if anyone even my girls see me. I can't move. I can't talk I can't form a thought. Moans just keep spilling out. I am farther and farther from myself, my dignity. I have none anymore. I don't care. The pain is too great. It has me pinned to the bed and floor. Nothing matters but the pain. My heart is a wreck but from somewhere it just continues to cry out with these unlady like moans. No birth moans sound like these, no death sounded like this, no pain I every heard in the hospital ever sounded like this. Yet it is coming from me and I don't care, I just yield to it.
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It stops.
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I remain on the floor and the bed. Sleeping but awake. I feel a nudge and I rise. I am not tired or exhausted. Am I sure? Nope, I feel fine.
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I go about my days. I hear His voice ask for prayer for the pregnancy and I attend to it. No more questions, no more made up words that fit my world and sort of cover the request. I just open up my heart and let the non-words pour out. Where ever I may be. Grabbing something out of a cupboard. Tending to a child's needs. Vacuuming a floor. Ignoring the crumbs under the chair. It all becomes so much easier, no struggle.
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When I'm not praying I have a zillion questions, but no one to ask. I don't know her people. She is drained and so is her big husband. He looks so small lately. She looks so sick and pale. And tired. And he looks so small. But I continue to pray the words that don't make sense, the words that ask that the pregnancy goes well, I continue to not ask questions and just pray.
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I look around at church and I don't see her any where. He isn't there either. We church in a school, there are rooms everywhere that we use. I look everywhere. Dirt has gone home, we do stuff for the church and now we have two services, with the farm stuff we can't both be there the whole time, so we drive separate cars and he has already left, the sound equipment has all been put away. But there are still various children's church people putting away their things.
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I'm ripping open door after door trying to find a particular woman, she would know, sister of the pastor, kind of in charge of a lot, interum youth leader's wife, she'll be the one that knows. I find her. She is squating picking the days work up off the floor. I blurt out my question, "Where's Rebecca, is she okay?" before she even has a chance to turn around.
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When she turns around there is a smile there that I know only means great stuff. And sure enough what spills from her mouth is phenonminal news.
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She, Rebecca, my dear little friend, had gone in finally to have a DNC to clean out the remaining tissue. The doctor as always first took and ultrasound to check on what was still in there. And there was a baby.
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This hay bucking baby to be exact (this is where the pictures actually do sorta go with the story). She was in there, making her momma sick but she was growing, determined to put her mark on the world.
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The gal I had found that had the news for me continued to talk, something about a twin, that was what was miscarried, I sort of heard. But then I was in my car with my girls driving home. I think. I do remember passing the RV repair place right about the time I became aware of the pain in my chest. Like it was going to burst with joy.
I miraculously made it home. Dirt was there, sitting on the end of the bed facing the door. Like he had been waiting for me. Right in that spot.
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My excited words began to tumble out as I grabbed his shirt and pulled my face in close to his. I was saying I couldn't believe it and he wouldn't either. I told him all I knew but the most I knew was that she indeed was still pregnant.
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He looked up at me and said, "What did you expect, are you really surprised?" Oh he was Phil Dirt alright, that would come out of Dirt's mouth. But it wasn't just him in there telling me that. It wasn't mean. It wasn't a "I told you so." said in a critical spirit meant to put me down. It was a check. It was a, "people have told you you have a gift. You have a gift of faith, now buck up and use it."
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Okay, step off of cloud forty-six and back down to a normal cloud nine. No biggy just normal kingdom stuff. Things look bad from a world perspective and it really isn't and He proves it over and over and over through us.
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That is just the begining of the odyssy that has built this family, these two families, that keep making more families between them but in reality are just becoming one giant confusing family.
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This is Anna and Abbey, Anna is the designated driver for haying season. She loves to drive her daddy's truck. Abbey was the next little miracle baby to come to Mike and Rebecca, in much the same way Anne did. Anne did have a little more drama just before she was born. Rebecca ended up in the hospital on bed rest at twenty-three weeks with a tear in the amniotic sack. I of course stopped by the autoparts store and picked up a bottle of Stop-a-Leak for her. Just the thing a good friend does.
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Yeah, the doctors saved the day and helped Anne be born eventually on Father's day but we all knew the girl had an appointment. Rebecca and I continued to bond and continue our bonding still. Still learning how to carry someone so dear right in your hip pocket even though oft times you're quite poked in the behind with the friendship. Sometimes it is a gentle nudge and sometimes it is a rather unexpected stab, ones that could send most friends down the highway.
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"Ow. Oh it's you," we say. And then we rub our bruised hiney and listen closer to the words that we know are meant for our wellbeing.
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It isn't just Rebecca and I, it is Mike and Dirt It's even Pop and Patty MorMor, and Eric and Steph with Kai and Aksel, it is even Mike and Michelle when they can handle the confusion.
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I have other friends that I would die for, whose children are constantly on my prayer list, who I am pained for, whose trouble I grieve. But this is different. Anne and Abbey are as good as mine, as my very own.
Sisters from different mothers.
Okay, so it isn't the rhyming phase the "brother" one is, but these ain't no boys. These are two of Dirt's and my six girls.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
I Did It!
In spite of the bicyclist riding four to six abreast on a county road; in spite of heading into the sun with commuters on my rear; in spite of some knucklehead peaking out from behind me on a double double yellow even though I was up to speed, I made it down to our favorite chicken seller (Oh My, Oh My ). No, I really do mean our favorite chicken seller.
After last Wednesday's fiasco with dreadlock boy, Oh The Plans They Are A Changing, we tried again the next day with a different Craig's List ad. This fellow was a Chicken Hunter's dream, a former APA judge, former Poultry Person of the Year at the Junior Poultry Expo (a few years ago). Ex APA Judge had lots of many beautiful, well cared for chickens, so all the girls, EBet, Anna Colleen and the Chicken Hunter's A. Grace and Anne Pants picked up some darling bantams to use for fitting and showing at the Jr. Poultry Expo.
But surely we did not go all the way down to the Orting Valley to pick up more chickens in the horse trailer with Holly (Anna's horse) inside. No, we did not.
As it turned out Former APA Judge not only has the prettiest birds we've seen, but he raises Quarter horses and has a beautiful stallion. Who happens to be a Palamino! Last week he and Anna talked about breeding and how she was looking for just that sort of fella to breed Holly to. Well Anna explained that she had less than half of his fee and Former Judge cut it down to what seemed more than fair.
Yesterday Anna determined that Holly was coming back into estrus and called F. J. With Stallion with the sad news that she did not have even enough at the moment for his gracious decreased fee.
He said, "Bring her on down."
Well, now Anna is without a horsey to ride this week but she is walking four feet off the ground anyway. She will be (hopefully) a horse grandma this time next year.
I am walking at least two feet off the ground because I drove that rig as if I had not taken a thirty, almost thirty year break from independent manuvering and driving my daddy's big trucks.
But just in case Dirt (are you reading today Dear?) thinks this means he can take a break from changing my oil, rotating my tires and driving the trailer. Think again. There are a zillion-kabillion reasons I am married to you Dirt and those are three of the top twenty.
See you soon Dear Reader, thanks for having confidence in me. I gotta go water those demanding Brugs before they start whining and knocking on my door.
After last Wednesday's fiasco with dreadlock boy, Oh The Plans They Are A Changing, we tried again the next day with a different Craig's List ad. This fellow was a Chicken Hunter's dream, a former APA judge, former Poultry Person of the Year at the Junior Poultry Expo (a few years ago). Ex APA Judge had lots of many beautiful, well cared for chickens, so all the girls, EBet, Anna Colleen and the Chicken Hunter's A. Grace and Anne Pants picked up some darling bantams to use for fitting and showing at the Jr. Poultry Expo.
But surely we did not go all the way down to the Orting Valley to pick up more chickens in the horse trailer with Holly (Anna's horse) inside. No, we did not.
As it turned out Former APA Judge not only has the prettiest birds we've seen, but he raises Quarter horses and has a beautiful stallion. Who happens to be a Palamino! Last week he and Anna talked about breeding and how she was looking for just that sort of fella to breed Holly to. Well Anna explained that she had less than half of his fee and Former Judge cut it down to what seemed more than fair.
Yesterday Anna determined that Holly was coming back into estrus and called F. J. With Stallion with the sad news that she did not have even enough at the moment for his gracious decreased fee.
He said, "Bring her on down."
Well, now Anna is without a horsey to ride this week but she is walking four feet off the ground anyway. She will be (hopefully) a horse grandma this time next year.
I am walking at least two feet off the ground because I drove that rig as if I had not taken a thirty, almost thirty year break from independent manuvering and driving my daddy's big trucks.
But just in case Dirt (are you reading today Dear?) thinks this means he can take a break from changing my oil, rotating my tires and driving the trailer. Think again. There are a zillion-kabillion reasons I am married to you Dirt and those are three of the top twenty.
See you soon Dear Reader, thanks for having confidence in me. I gotta go water those demanding Brugs before they start whining and knocking on my door.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
The Bluest, I Tell Ya
Scroll and read while listening, it'll kill two birds.
Perry's got it right
But I'm not so sure about my weather gadget on my computer. Because this is what it showed when I came in on Friday morning at about ten-thirty after Bet and I could no longer stand the heat in the Highway Garden. So I went back out to see if perhaps we were in a dream and the computer had it right.
I stepped out the Cook's Porch door and looked to the east, mmmm no clouds there.
I looked to the north east, no clouds there either. So certainly there could be no drizzle.
North and a little west, down our driveway, no clouds there. The trees are in the way of a clear northwesterly look ...
but west out over the barn and pasture sort of towards Roy and there aren't any signs of clouds at all let alone drizzling clouds.
Over the roof of our room and to the southeast, and still no clouds, not even any on their way.
Not even if they were coming straight out of the south and right over the top of the house. No clouds, no drizzle. I think the sprinkler must be on at the weather station.
Here's some more blue. Blue that makes my heart sing. The blue of my curly headed baby's eyes, my baby that turned eighteen at the beginning of this month!
Before her little sister came along we called Bet Baby instead of Elisabet. No one pronounced her name right any way (well most don't) and Baby was way easier.
Man, eighteen years go by fast!
That morning, Friday, EBet was out working Ivan like she promised herself. (Go visit to hear her tell of her Ivan woes.) Well at least someone in this family can keep promises. She must be her father's daughter, blue eyes, red curly hair, sweet tempered, promise keeping, yep clearly I was just the hatching box!
Did you know why she kind of goes by EBet, among her many other names? When she signs her name the E and the B form a butterfly! She is also known as Bettie Spaghetti, Spaghetti-O's, and once in a blue moon, Freddy the Freeloader.
She is very sweet and works very hard for the Farm. She makes me think of Beatrix Potter, an updated version, when she is out tending her little duck flocks. You should ask her why she thinks the Dutchhookbill have been misnamed! But she can be a little Annie Oakley when she is dealing with Ivan or Martin the Warrior.
A girl of many hats but one character, true.
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Time Zone Adjustments
I've been suffering jet lag. I've moved to a time zone four hours earlier. Man is that a hard adjustment. I'd illustrate it with a picture but it's a face even a two year old off-spring can't love. (That is, if I had one at the moment).
Oh, I haven't left the Farm on highway seven o'two. Nor boarded a jet. Let's not panic, or get excited.
I've just switched to my summer hours. I love summer hours, the birds are loud, the fog is on the pond, food tastes better, and the phone usually doesn't ring, but getting here is getting a little harder with each passing year.
I used to be (and this was just six or so years back) the camp counselor that stayed awake for four days straight, slept for a day and then stayed awake for four more. When I superintended barns at the fair or managed the little community fair I could easily manage on about two or three hours of sleep for ten or so days. Not no more I fear.
I was trying to creep into my new hours but when it clearly wasn't working (there was always something more to watch while I worked on the lap top, wee hour programing is so interesting) and in fact was going the opposite way, kinda like a diet, I decided to take drastic measures.
So last Sunday I went to bed at nine, awoke at five and made Dirt breakfast before he left for work at six. Yes, usually for most of the year I don't send my husband to work with a wifely made breakfast. Try not to chastise me Dear Reader, he always says that he actually likes it when he is the only one up, comes from having only one bathroom in the house.
Man, I have gotten more done in the first three hours of work (six to nine) this week than I was getting done in a whole day, not to mention the rest of the day, another reason I love summer hours.
On top of all of that, even though I just recently decried schedules and such on Kannani's blog, I felt compelled, commanded, to do up a schedule of work. Krimanitly this is starting to sound like I might become a grown up soon.
My usual modus operandi with schedules is to make up a terrific schedule, work it for a few days even a couple of weeks, only to have an unexpected, unscheduled happening come along, throw me for a curve and cause me to completely derail from the Schedule ride.
But I've already survived a derailment attempt. My very first day held an unscheduled event and I got right back on and stayed on for the rest of the week in spite of a couple more little unscheduled events.
Dear Reader do you know what I found out when I did up the schedule? I happen to notice that there really isn't enough hours in the day.
But I have actually been so busy that I am starting to feel that I'm not as far behind in life as I felt I was when I did up my to do list and schedule, so I am going to revamp my schedule and actually give myself some reading and writing time,oh the frivolity of it all!
I allow myself to get derailed a lot, from more than just schedules and to do lists. Blogging, as was defined to me at the beginning of my blogging life last May, is making a web log, or a log on the web. I took log as to mean a journal of sorts. This was an intriguing thing to me as I have always been drawn to journalling, as evidenced by the multitude of journals in my storage bench upstairs in my perch.
Those journals are used, well most for about three to five pages some with a dozen more and a few with just a starting date. Like I said, I am drawn to journalling, not necessarily am I a journal-er. The only times I have ever journalled "successfully" was when it was an assignment for school. (uh, that's been about twenty-five years ago).
So the fact that I have kept at this blogging thing for a year now is quite frankly amazing.
But I must admit I came across a fear this week when I couldn't seem to find the will to carve out some blogging (journalling) time in the couple of "free time" spaces in my schedule. And my usual blogging time, just prior to going to bed, found me in a blur and fog. I feared I was derailed.
But my fingers have ached and my brain has nearly exploded due to the lack of writing.
So I will no longer depend on "free time" spaces and instead block out some time to purpose to write, but again there lies a catch. I think of myself as a random fire-er in creativity. I believe that I must feel inspired. However I am beginning to think that may actually be a lie to cover up my pure selfish laziness.
Well Dear Reader I am sorry that there were no pictures this morning but I didn't think that my little story about my personal jet lag wouldn't really take that long or turn into a confession about my short-comings as a grown-up, and there really aren't pictures to go with all that.
I am off to a wholesale nursery that has a retail sale once a year. (Hopefully I will soon change my retail status for things like nursery or food prep supplies.) My oldest three are going with me and Anna is staying with my grandboys to go with Dirt to do some shearing. Oh... I see a tussle over the one camera about to brew. Gotta go plan my strategy, have a great and productive day Dear Reader.
Oh, I haven't left the Farm on highway seven o'two. Nor boarded a jet. Let's not panic, or get excited.
I've just switched to my summer hours. I love summer hours, the birds are loud, the fog is on the pond, food tastes better, and the phone usually doesn't ring, but getting here is getting a little harder with each passing year.
I used to be (and this was just six or so years back) the camp counselor that stayed awake for four days straight, slept for a day and then stayed awake for four more. When I superintended barns at the fair or managed the little community fair I could easily manage on about two or three hours of sleep for ten or so days. Not no more I fear.
I was trying to creep into my new hours but when it clearly wasn't working (there was always something more to watch while I worked on the lap top, wee hour programing is so interesting) and in fact was going the opposite way, kinda like a diet, I decided to take drastic measures.
So last Sunday I went to bed at nine, awoke at five and made Dirt breakfast before he left for work at six. Yes, usually for most of the year I don't send my husband to work with a wifely made breakfast. Try not to chastise me Dear Reader, he always says that he actually likes it when he is the only one up, comes from having only one bathroom in the house.
Man, I have gotten more done in the first three hours of work (six to nine) this week than I was getting done in a whole day, not to mention the rest of the day, another reason I love summer hours.
On top of all of that, even though I just recently decried schedules and such on Kannani's blog, I felt compelled, commanded, to do up a schedule of work. Krimanitly this is starting to sound like I might become a grown up soon.
My usual modus operandi with schedules is to make up a terrific schedule, work it for a few days even a couple of weeks, only to have an unexpected, unscheduled happening come along, throw me for a curve and cause me to completely derail from the Schedule ride.
But I've already survived a derailment attempt. My very first day held an unscheduled event and I got right back on and stayed on for the rest of the week in spite of a couple more little unscheduled events.
Dear Reader do you know what I found out when I did up the schedule? I happen to notice that there really isn't enough hours in the day.
But I have actually been so busy that I am starting to feel that I'm not as far behind in life as I felt I was when I did up my to do list and schedule, so I am going to revamp my schedule and actually give myself some reading and writing time,oh the frivolity of it all!
I allow myself to get derailed a lot, from more than just schedules and to do lists. Blogging, as was defined to me at the beginning of my blogging life last May, is making a web log, or a log on the web. I took log as to mean a journal of sorts. This was an intriguing thing to me as I have always been drawn to journalling, as evidenced by the multitude of journals in my storage bench upstairs in my perch.
Those journals are used, well most for about three to five pages some with a dozen more and a few with just a starting date. Like I said, I am drawn to journalling, not necessarily am I a journal-er. The only times I have ever journalled "successfully" was when it was an assignment for school. (uh, that's been about twenty-five years ago).
So the fact that I have kept at this blogging thing for a year now is quite frankly amazing.
But I must admit I came across a fear this week when I couldn't seem to find the will to carve out some blogging (journalling) time in the couple of "free time" spaces in my schedule. And my usual blogging time, just prior to going to bed, found me in a blur and fog. I feared I was derailed.
But my fingers have ached and my brain has nearly exploded due to the lack of writing.
So I will no longer depend on "free time" spaces and instead block out some time to purpose to write, but again there lies a catch. I think of myself as a random fire-er in creativity. I believe that I must feel inspired. However I am beginning to think that may actually be a lie to cover up my pure selfish laziness.
Well Dear Reader I am sorry that there were no pictures this morning but I didn't think that my little story about my personal jet lag wouldn't really take that long or turn into a confession about my short-comings as a grown-up, and there really aren't pictures to go with all that.
I am off to a wholesale nursery that has a retail sale once a year. (Hopefully I will soon change my retail status for things like nursery or food prep supplies.) My oldest three are going with me and Anna is staying with my grandboys to go with Dirt to do some shearing. Oh... I see a tussle over the one camera about to brew. Gotta go plan my strategy, have a great and productive day Dear Reader.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
My Daughters Crack Me Up
The other day our youngest Vick Chick, Anna Banana, Peanut Butter, maker of phenomenal pies, bread, dinners and more, all from scratch, was going to make the dinner of her daddy's fond desire, grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. She does the best grilled cheese of anyone I know, it is an art form. That night the sandwiches were wonderful as usual, the tater tots baked to perfection. But the soup? It was a bit strong tasting.
"Anna," I say to her, "What did you do to the soup?"
"I don't know! It's awful isn't it? I even added a little cream to it, and it is still awful."
"What kind of soup did your daddy bring home?" I inquire, knowing that she has on occasion used the store bought tomato soup out of those cool hermetically sealed boxes, but the can she was unfamiliar with.
"It was that nasty canned stuff. I had to use three cans" She says.
"Did you add a whole can of milk for every can of soup?"
"No." She replied indignantly, "It didn't say to."
Knowing that this is also my incredibly impatient child, at times over the top impatient, I asked to see said can because in her favor it may not have been the can I thought it was.
It was.
Give the girl a sack of flour and a couple of apples and she turns out a beautiful pie or with a little yeast a nice crusty loaf of bread, give her a bag of peas and some quick instructions while you work in the garden and she has a lovely hearty soup waiting for when you're done, but she has no time for a stupid can of tomato soup.
Then there is Bettispaghettie, Betti-kins
Betti-kins aka Elisabeth (not pronounced like Elizabeth) is my oldest at home girl.
Sometimes her humor surprises the heck outta me because she is so dog gone quiet most of the time. But her father is rubbing off on her more and more and she is beginning to make up songs about whatever she sees or is doing at the moment.
The other day while she was suggesting to her little (nearly taller than her) sister that the dogs needed tending she came up with this song and it soon became the anthem for the weekend. It is sung with a little western twisted tune (where'd she come up being such a western music person I'm not totally sure but in my need to place blame I might look in a hedgerow somewhere).
Give the dogs food and water,
It will change your life.
Never let your mother or your daughter,
hate your wife.
Now I don't care who you are, but that is downright funny to hear being sung by a gaggle of girls in the back seat of a big fat Ford 350 diesel dually going to the feed store to buy some hay and chicks.
But then if you think about it no truer words were sung. It isn't good for a man to allow his mom or his daughter to have ill feelings towards the woman he is married to.
I think we forget what that word married means. In cooking you can put a stew together hastily and bring it up to a hot and steamy temperature with some quick heat but you will be able to taste the full flavor of the individual ingredients if eaten separately. However, if you take the time to marry the flavors then you could never again completely separate out the different components as if they were separate foods on a plate. They are married, now one, inseparable. The meat essence has oozed from the bits and melded into the softened carrot chunks and the carrot fragrance has infected the potato, nothing can be separated from the other, not completely.
With stew it takes time, but through the miracle that God has created in human marriage it only takes a moment, a moment of a vow, an acknowledgement and the two are one, never again completely separable.
It doesn't take years of dating, a lengthy engagement or a big wedding, it only takes what the community accepts as an understanding of marriage and it is done, forever. One shot. You are married for the length of your life. You cannot get the other out of your skin, children or no children. They, the children, are not how you become one. God proclaims the married as one, not two living together until the children come; they are in fact one, one right now and one forever.
If the mother hates her child's spouse, she hates her very own child, for now the two, her child and another, are one flesh and always will be. The idea of a mother hating her child isn't healthy; for a mother to hate her child's spouse is to hate her child and that is crippling to a mother.
So the husband in Bet's song can't allow that to happen not just because he loves his wife but because he loves his mother and if his mother hates his wife, she hates him and if she hates him she does damage to that thing inside her that is a mother. She would be denying what she was created for, motherness.
When Jesus takes the thou shalt not murder thing to a whole other level with His Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5) he showed how our ill thoughts and words towards another is right in there with murder. Solomon, the wisest man, knew that a mother could never murder her own child without causing herself chaos and degradation. Connect the two.
Somewhat similarly, a daughter cannot be allowed to hate her mother for it will do her damage and her father cannot let that happen for it is the father's job to keep his daughter from harming herself. To hate her mother would do just that, harm the daughter. She came from this woman, she cannot stand in the kitchen with her hands on her hips, level her face to her mother's and scream her hatred for her without causing untold damage to herself. She hates her mother? She may as well hate herself. And as we know from Jesus' lesson to hate is to murder. Self-hatred is suicide. Self-hatred by the way is not the same as self-denial or self-control or selflessness, not in the least.
Need some more dots to connect? Commandment five says, honor your father and mother. In Ephesians it is pointed out as the first commandment with a promise. The promise is for a good and long life; “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”
The promise is not just a cookie that God gives for being good but a natural consequence in God's magnificent creation. And we know that a certain amount of time isn't really that same amount of time in God's perspective. Even in our own minds time can change; a good time, a happy and joy filled time is as productive, worthwhile and seemingly long even if it is shorter in actuality than a miserable retched time where regrets and disappointments live at the end.
If you hate yourself by hating whom you came from, who's DNA you have making your hair curly or your eyes green, then you are not going to live a good long life; it will be short and miserable even if you live to ninety-six.
So it may very well have been a silly spur of the moment Bettikins song but it is very, very true.
"Anna," I say to her, "What did you do to the soup?"
"I don't know! It's awful isn't it? I even added a little cream to it, and it is still awful."
"What kind of soup did your daddy bring home?" I inquire, knowing that she has on occasion used the store bought tomato soup out of those cool hermetically sealed boxes, but the can she was unfamiliar with.
"It was that nasty canned stuff. I had to use three cans" She says.
"Did you add a whole can of milk for every can of soup?"
"No." She replied indignantly, "It didn't say to."
Knowing that this is also my incredibly impatient child, at times over the top impatient, I asked to see said can because in her favor it may not have been the can I thought it was.
It was.
Give the girl a sack of flour and a couple of apples and she turns out a beautiful pie or with a little yeast a nice crusty loaf of bread, give her a bag of peas and some quick instructions while you work in the garden and she has a lovely hearty soup waiting for when you're done, but she has no time for a stupid can of tomato soup.
Then there is Bettispaghettie, Betti-kins
Betti-kins aka Elisabeth (not pronounced like Elizabeth) is my oldest at home girl.
Sometimes her humor surprises the heck outta me because she is so dog gone quiet most of the time. But her father is rubbing off on her more and more and she is beginning to make up songs about whatever she sees or is doing at the moment.
The other day while she was suggesting to her little (nearly taller than her) sister that the dogs needed tending she came up with this song and it soon became the anthem for the weekend. It is sung with a little western twisted tune (where'd she come up being such a western music person I'm not totally sure but in my need to place blame I might look in a hedgerow somewhere).
Give the dogs food and water,
It will change your life.
Never let your mother or your daughter,
hate your wife.
Now I don't care who you are, but that is downright funny to hear being sung by a gaggle of girls in the back seat of a big fat Ford 350 diesel dually going to the feed store to buy some hay and chicks.
But then if you think about it no truer words were sung. It isn't good for a man to allow his mom or his daughter to have ill feelings towards the woman he is married to.
I think we forget what that word married means. In cooking you can put a stew together hastily and bring it up to a hot and steamy temperature with some quick heat but you will be able to taste the full flavor of the individual ingredients if eaten separately. However, if you take the time to marry the flavors then you could never again completely separate out the different components as if they were separate foods on a plate. They are married, now one, inseparable. The meat essence has oozed from the bits and melded into the softened carrot chunks and the carrot fragrance has infected the potato, nothing can be separated from the other, not completely.
With stew it takes time, but through the miracle that God has created in human marriage it only takes a moment, a moment of a vow, an acknowledgement and the two are one, never again completely separable.
It doesn't take years of dating, a lengthy engagement or a big wedding, it only takes what the community accepts as an understanding of marriage and it is done, forever. One shot. You are married for the length of your life. You cannot get the other out of your skin, children or no children. They, the children, are not how you become one. God proclaims the married as one, not two living together until the children come; they are in fact one, one right now and one forever.
If the mother hates her child's spouse, she hates her very own child, for now the two, her child and another, are one flesh and always will be. The idea of a mother hating her child isn't healthy; for a mother to hate her child's spouse is to hate her child and that is crippling to a mother.
So the husband in Bet's song can't allow that to happen not just because he loves his wife but because he loves his mother and if his mother hates his wife, she hates him and if she hates him she does damage to that thing inside her that is a mother. She would be denying what she was created for, motherness.
When Jesus takes the thou shalt not murder thing to a whole other level with His Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5) he showed how our ill thoughts and words towards another is right in there with murder. Solomon, the wisest man, knew that a mother could never murder her own child without causing herself chaos and degradation. Connect the two.
Somewhat similarly, a daughter cannot be allowed to hate her mother for it will do her damage and her father cannot let that happen for it is the father's job to keep his daughter from harming herself. To hate her mother would do just that, harm the daughter. She came from this woman, she cannot stand in the kitchen with her hands on her hips, level her face to her mother's and scream her hatred for her without causing untold damage to herself. She hates her mother? She may as well hate herself. And as we know from Jesus' lesson to hate is to murder. Self-hatred is suicide. Self-hatred by the way is not the same as self-denial or self-control or selflessness, not in the least.
Need some more dots to connect? Commandment five says, honor your father and mother. In Ephesians it is pointed out as the first commandment with a promise. The promise is for a good and long life; “that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.”
The promise is not just a cookie that God gives for being good but a natural consequence in God's magnificent creation. And we know that a certain amount of time isn't really that same amount of time in God's perspective. Even in our own minds time can change; a good time, a happy and joy filled time is as productive, worthwhile and seemingly long even if it is shorter in actuality than a miserable retched time where regrets and disappointments live at the end.
If you hate yourself by hating whom you came from, who's DNA you have making your hair curly or your eyes green, then you are not going to live a good long life; it will be short and miserable even if you live to ninety-six.
So it may very well have been a silly spur of the moment Bettikins song but it is very, very true.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Hang Out Spots on the Farm
Hey there Dear Reader, glad you stopped in for another chunk of the Farm Tour, you've jumped through that usual portal and dialed back a day so join us for our celebration of moms on The Farm. My world isn't just the place where I live it is the people God has blessed me with to love and cherish. So join us won't you?-
We're hanging out below Cherry Tree Hill today.
My baby grandboy, Aksel, with his Aunty Anna, my baby daughter.
Kai came with a homemade card for me, potato stamps on the front and inside I was told he loves me more than bubble gum. Would that be Bazooka Bubble Gum? 
Dirt, Eric and Mike, sitting in one of our favorite sitting place around the Farm. Like everywhere else on the Farm down by the old cherry tree has changed over the years. The guys are sitting on the site of an old corrugated fiberglass greenhouse that finally fell apart and the lawn above Eric's head was the area I vegetable gardened when we first lived here.
That would be back when Stephie, my oldest, was younger than her son, Kai, whom she shares a snake with today. Out here by The Pond it is snake heaven.
The Pond is chock full of life and third oldest daughter, Elisabet aka EBet, is going out for a cruise around in the canoe.
And she is taking Kai with her.
My baby grandboy, Aksel, with his Aunty Anna, my baby daughter.
Kai came with a homemade card for me, potato stamps on the front and inside I was told he loves me more than bubble gum. Would that be Bazooka Bubble Gum? -
Dirt, Eric and Mike, sitting in one of our favorite sitting place around the Farm. Like everywhere else on the Farm down by the old cherry tree has changed over the years. The guys are sitting on the site of an old corrugated fiberglass greenhouse that finally fell apart and the lawn above Eric's head was the area I vegetable gardened when we first lived here.
That would be back when Stephie, my oldest, was younger than her son, Kai, whom she shares a snake with today. Out here by The Pond it is snake heaven.
The Pond is chock full of life and third oldest daughter, Elisabet aka EBet, is going out for a cruise around in the canoe.
And she is taking Kai with her. She isn't living dangerously by not wearing a life jacket like Kai, but because this used to be a hay field before the beavers moved in in the sixties it isn't a very deep pond and in most places she could easily stand up.
One of the greatest purchases Dirt and I ever made was the canoe, Norrine has one just like it and we often borrow it in the summer for some canoe racing on The Pond.
Bet and Kai aren't being chased by an overgrown beaver, that is Fluffy Joe, he loves to troll along behind the canoe when someone takes it out. It does make it a little harder to sneak up on the wildlife when you are packing a bear behind you, but it seems to keep him in world class shape!
Clearly Aksel wants to stay in shape, he and Anna are entertaining each other on my newly discovered lawn art. Well the exercise ball was more artistic when both of them floated around the backyard before some girls, who were supposed to be working, decided to play soccer with one of them right into a rose bush. My house is too small for exercise equipment, even just big round sittable balls. So I tossed them onto Dirt's lovely mowed lawn. And wah lah, lawn art you can sit on. And the mower just pushes it out of the way.
Aunty Anna can't be tired because Baby Askel isn't, I think he is bargining quite well for some more fun.
It is a little early in the year for hanging out down here under the cherry tree, what looks like a clump of dry grass just behind Mike is actually The Pond fire pit but it is out in the water right now. Michelle, sitting here next to her dad, just said she felt as if her feet were below the level of the pond and actually, because of a ridge this side of the fire pit holding back the extra seasonal water, they are. 
But inspite of the excess water and my lack of weeding down here this year (I'm waiting for the fall planted bulbs to die down so I can really do some regrouping and change a few things, imagine that, me changing something I've done!) I like being down here this time of the year for a few of my favorites are planted around the old cherry tree.
Viburnum burkwoodii is named for Albert Burkwood, the co-developer of the hybrid with Geoffrey Skipwith in early 20th century England. It smells super delicious. 
Yesterday's talk on tulips was missing a little cutie, Tulipa batalinii 'Apricot Jewel' . She is one of the many fall planted bulbs that I chose to plant under the old cherry tree based on their natralizing habits. 
Aksel says that the occasional sprinkles have turned into rain drops and he is headed inside where it is warm and dry and the Mario Cart awaits his brother and Aunties. Luckily today's Farm Camp isn't too far from the back door, and we have gotten in with the chairs put away just in the nick of time.
If you can wrestle one of the controls away from those who are genetically predisposed to game addiction, have at it. Check out those dialated eye balls! She is getting the hang of it (Chelle grew up on the Farm during the total ban of all video and computer games).
Owp she is really on to the whole thing now...!!!
And she won! Hurray!
One of the greatest purchases Dirt and I ever made was the canoe, Norrine has one just like it and we often borrow it in the summer for some canoe racing on The Pond.
Bet and Kai aren't being chased by an overgrown beaver, that is Fluffy Joe, he loves to troll along behind the canoe when someone takes it out. It does make it a little harder to sneak up on the wildlife when you are packing a bear behind you, but it seems to keep him in world class shape!
Clearly Aksel wants to stay in shape, he and Anna are entertaining each other on my newly discovered lawn art. Well the exercise ball was more artistic when both of them floated around the backyard before some girls, who were supposed to be working, decided to play soccer with one of them right into a rose bush. My house is too small for exercise equipment, even just big round sittable balls. So I tossed them onto Dirt's lovely mowed lawn. And wah lah, lawn art you can sit on. And the mower just pushes it out of the way.
Aunty Anna can't be tired because Baby Askel isn't, I think he is bargining quite well for some more fun. It is a little early in the year for hanging out down here under the cherry tree, what looks like a clump of dry grass just behind Mike is actually The Pond fire pit but it is out in the water right now. Michelle, sitting here next to her dad, just said she felt as if her feet were below the level of the pond and actually, because of a ridge this side of the fire pit holding back the extra seasonal water, they are. -
But inspite of the excess water and my lack of weeding down here this year (I'm waiting for the fall planted bulbs to die down so I can really do some regrouping and change a few things, imagine that, me changing something I've done!) I like being down here this time of the year for a few of my favorites are planted around the old cherry tree.
Viburnum burkwoodii is named for Albert Burkwood, the co-developer of the hybrid with Geoffrey Skipwith in early 20th century England. It smells super delicious. Even on this rather threatening cool day I can smell it from five feet away, can you or is your nose still stuffy?
-
It is semi-evergreen so it looks rather odd with old fall colored leaves still hanging on it while it blooms. I bought it in the fall of o'four and while it was in the pot it had really brilliant fall color, but now that it has been in the ground for about three or four years it is exhibiting its semi-evergreen-ness and its fall color is rather disappointing but I am glad he is in the ground and thriving on Cherry Tree Hill.
Yesterday's talk on tulips was missing a little cutie, Tulipa batalinii 'Apricot Jewel' . She is one of the many fall planted bulbs that I chose to plant under the old cherry tree based on their natralizing habits. -
Tulipa batalinii is a species tulip and although not very showy and rather short, six inches, it will be more likely to naturalize. It won't multiply as much as the narcissus or the muscari will but at least it will multiply some and it won't burn itself out. Or at least that is how the theory goes.
Aksel says that the occasional sprinkles have turned into rain drops and he is headed inside where it is warm and dry and the Mario Cart awaits his brother and Aunties. Luckily today's Farm Camp isn't too far from the back door, and we have gotten in with the chairs put away just in the nick of time.
If you can wrestle one of the controls away from those who are genetically predisposed to game addiction, have at it. Check out those dialated eye balls! She is getting the hang of it (Chelle grew up on the Farm during the total ban of all video and computer games).
Owp she is really on to the whole thing now...!!! And she won! Hurray!-
Hope you had a great time on this week tour of Vicktory Farm and Gardens, we didn't get very far that is for sure but it was just one of those days.
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