oh, in that case...

(photo taken a couple weeks ago)

This morning - 

          Zoralee: I want pop.

          Me: No, we only have pop for a special treat.

          Zoralee: I want pop for a special treat.

"God gave this balloon to me."

*   *   *   *   *

This morning, we started receiving some winter apparel I've been buying on ebay, in anticipation of heading to Montana in March. 

          Me: Oh, Zoralee, these are your snow boots!

          Zoralee: I want to go snowin' in my snow boots!

a small point of clarification about X-Box vs homesteading

It occurred to me that it was a bit rude to say Jason may as well be making a homestead during his off hours than playing X-Box. Jason himself rarely plays X-Box. I simply used that as a generic, veg-out type of activity that humans sometimes engage in. 

And I thank ye.

addendum to last post

Furthermore about the hippie subculture:

I laid in bed last night, realizing that I had forgotten to state my main point, which was actually Jason's main annoyance about this sub-counter-culture we sometimes find ourselves in (thereby highlighting the slippery slope of trying to convey someone else's thoughts, however pertinent to your own). The main point is not annoyance at people dressing or thinking like each other; such is unavoidable. The main point is smugness, despite the stated and assumed values of openness, naturalness, wholeness, and so on. Smugness is what is so troublesome.

The Quarry Market experience in San Antonio was the main prompting for this discussion between us, because at the Market, all of a sudden, after 7 months, we were plopped down into a group of people like whom we look, smell, and eat. Kinda made us go, "whoa." I hadn't given a thought to the people, or specifically to my interactions with them, because I was so enthralled to be walking through a Whole Foods store with a HUGE aisle of bulk food, samples of cheese and chocolate and tea around every bend, the smells of coffee and castille soap transporting us out of the southern Texas we have known so far. But Jason noticed the general air of aloofness among our fellow shoppers, people keeping to themselves, not offering many friendly smiles or gestures. We felt this same way in Flagstaff several years back, like outsiders, except among a few people we actually got to know. And that's the rub, right? Getting to know people.

  

There's a big difference between analyzing trends within groups - a perfectly warranted endeavor, in my opinion - and tossing everybody you meet into categories. Human-tossing can be a fun and easy past time, but it discounts people's stories and complexities. A big word for me lately, apart from all this, has been "connection." What's life if we're not connected to the people around us, finding common ground, trying to understand each other? It takes effort and creativity, empathy and patience. That doesn't mean we agree with everything everybody does, but it does mean approaching relationships with more humility. Very little positive change occurs apart from connection with each other.

Lastly, I have to personally watch this smugness thing. I'm learning to be alarmed if my first thought about another person or group is, "I'm not like that." Even in the most extreme cases, couldn't we be nearly anybody, if the circumstances were just so? We'd like to think there's no way we could be talked into pushing the neighbor lady into a gas chamber. But hey, if it's 1938 Germany, and it's either her or your kids, what are you gonna do? The neighbor lady was far too nosy anyway, right? There's such a fine line between having strong ideas and convictions, and thinking those make me more worthwhile than the next guy.

thoughts and thinkings (and not about you know who, either - Zoralee! She's so cute.)

So, hey! First, a few words this evening about my love. Jason, that is, not Z. Most importantly, this week Jason was awarded his Science bachelor's degree! Yayyyyyy for Jason!!! He had actually completed his classes long ago, but, through a combination of falling through the Biology department's cracks and his own dilly-dallying / finding work to support our family, the degree was just now awarded. Some day he may even use that degree; you never know.

Other odds and ends... Jason is now finished with a month of working nights. Hot dog. There were a couple random days thrown in too for various trainings, just to keep his circadian rhythm at its most distressed. I am so glad we'll get to see him anymore at normal hours and in good spirits. He has been working on a new skill: tossing little limes into the air and whacking at them with a knife, hoping to perfectly slice them. Then he squeezes them onto key lime pie. Tonight I received in the mail from my mom a book I have been wanting to own: The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. Jason said, "Does it have lots of good pictures?"

We had birthdays this week. I'm a year older than he, but for three days each year we're the same age. I am so happy to be spending my life with him. So, so, so happy! Oh sure - it's work, it's effort, it's putting up and shutting up and standing up and trying to resolve things and letting some things stay unresolved. It's ridiculous conversations in which he swears I have been singing one of my favorite childhood songs with a syncopated rhythm since he met me, but now that he hears it on the CD I bought Zoralee, the rhythm isn't actually syncopated. Truth is, I haven't been singing it syncopated; he heard what he wanted to, and his brain filled in the gaps incorrectly. It happens. Anyway, forget about that. Jason is an amazing human being. I am truly honored to be figuring it all out with him.
 
This year we all spent two Same Age Days in San Antonio with Barb, Jason's mom. She had come to visit for nine days, and those were her last two here. We had a heck of a lot of fun, despite the weather being unexpectedly near freezing. We went to the zoo, but learned that the animals were inactive, all cozied up in their houses, so we didn't go in. Zoralee was sleeping when we arrived, so I stayed in the car with her while Jason and Barb got a head start on the Japanese Gardens next door. When Z awoke and looked out the window, she said, "Oh, shoot! I see the zoo!" How sad it was to tell her we weren't going inside! But at the Japanese Gardens there were fish, ducks, and beautiful plants and walkways. And a waterfall. We also ditched our plan to walk on the San Antonio River Walk, which was probably fine since the annual draining of it ended the day before. Lovely timing all around, eh? But we made do. We visited the Alamo. We ate at a great Thai restaurant. We found ourselves sitting in a hotel lobby with 50 strangers, all of us sloppy-haired and in our pajamas, due to a middle of the night fire alarm. And we hit a jackpot shopping center: The Quarry Market. It was a taste of the northwest, and I was brought nearly to tears by the experience. It deserves its own blog post. We made some hearty memories with Barb, or Nana.

Zoralee still refers to her bed as Nana's bed, since that's where Barb stayed. Turns out that Barb is Z's best fast dance partner; they really get down together, wild head shakes and everything. Jason is Zoralee's best slow dance partner. Oh how this child loves to dance. Okay, I broke the ice and may as well say a few words about Z. I am trying with renewed effort to get rid of her cradle cap (dry scalp) from babyhood, so this week we've had a series of oil-and-brush-the-head sessions. She likes to follow up with getting out my supposed cradle cap. Today she brushed my hair for 10 minutes. It was dreamy. It's impossible to get all the oil out of her hair with one shampooing, and senseless to try too hard since I am re-oiling it the next bath, but boy does Z look like a grease-ball in the meantime. Welp, here's one more Z quote from out of the blue a few days ago, and then I'm on to something else. We don't know where she got this, but she stated it clearly several times, so we weren't mishearing her.
          
            Z: Papa, Mama has a condition.

*   *   *   *   *

Switch of gears!

We've been dreaming again about our own little homestead. This time, though, it may be a necessity as much as anything. There is limited housing available - practically nothing to rent - in the North Dakota town we're heading to, so it's either purchase something we really don't care for, or make our own place. Problem: Jason has a full time job, and we want to have a livable place within a few months. On the other hand, Z and I will probably be in Montana for the spring, birthing a new family member and whatnot, so Jason'll have some evening and weekend time to kill anyway. Why not set up a homestead, I say! Sure beats playing X-Box.


Dream mode is so danged fun, right? There have been a few projects / trips in our married life that have consumed us for weeks or years, and this is one of them: our own  place - functional, intentional, as off the grid as possible, a whole wall of the living room actually a rock-climbing wall, living in tune with our surroundings. So the dilemma is, how much effort do we put into a place in North Dakota, where we'll likely only live for a few years? We're thinking of this particular place as a prototype. Iron out all the kinks, learn from our mistakes. Jason has specifically gotten really interested in permaculture, which, according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, is "an agricultural system or method that seeks to integrate human activity with natural surroundings so as to create highly efficient self-sustaining ecosystems." Sounds pretty brainy, if you ask me. So I let Jason worry about the whys and hows, and I jump in when there's a clear cut chore to do, or if something needs poked fun at. But check out this website: www.saveourskills.com.

When we dive into the back-to-the-land subculture that seems to be primarily populated by hippie types, we find ourselves a little annoyed. Well, Jason more than me, but I can understand it. I think it's because he and I seem to have been placed in that category ourselves by some who know us. I am laughing now, because if I were to list off some of the reasons for that stereotype, it would appear obvious that we ARE hippies after all. But we differ from them, as a whole, on lots of issues and in lots of ways. We flip between NPR and Fox News, to get an earful from both sides. We have good hippie friends whom we love and good Walmart-shopping friends whom we love. That's just the way of it. My point is, any group who is apparently counter-culture just for the sake of being counter-culture starts to look foolish when they all own the same clothing and use the same jargon and believe the same things. It can be said of any group, of course. It just doesn't feel right to be stuck in one category - almost any category! However, it's a fact of life that unless you invent a totally new clothing style or way of speaking, you're going to look like some group of people. Anyway, we've been thinking and dreaming and reading about self-sufficiency (and small community-sufficiency, making your own stuff, home-schooling, quality of life over quantity of possessions, etc.) for 7 or 8 years now, and I have found it interesting the wide range of people with whom we have these commonalities - from those on the far political left to those on the far political right, and lots of ages.


I am not necessarily going to develop these ideas further on this post, or go back and organize them. I choose tonight instead to continue with stream-of-consciousness blogging.


Speaking of dreams, isn't the word "daymare" ingenious? It really captures the mental life of an imaginative worry-wart. A daymare is like a nightmare, but you're awake. So tonight when I was putting Zoralee to sleep, I had a ridiculous daymare that I would be tucking in our new baby and somehow a string from my shirt would get wrapped around one of its toes. When I stood up from the bed, I would turn very quickly to leave the room, not realizing the baby was still attached to me. The string would break, naturally, as soon as the baby's full weight was on it, sending him to the floor. I was able to dismiss that daymare, reasoning there's no way a string could wrap around the toe enough times. UNLESS! Unless I do that circle snake-dancer thing that I like to do in front of babies to get them to sleep! Oh no.  

Anyway, if you read this far, why not answer this question in the comment area? Let's see...the question is: would you rather pee every time you sneeze or poop every time someone says your name (from one of the Would You Rather websites)? Shoot. This isn't even a quandry, right? Who would pick pooping? I know from personal, current experience that peeing when you sneeze is nothing. But pooping when someone says your name? That's ridiculous. Okay, don't let my thoughts color your answer.