happy 10, my love

summer 1996

summer 1999
summer 2009

You want to love with me,

Love with me then.

I only ask that you still be my friend...

So I will love you, and love you I do.

It’s not complete yet, but you know we’re not through

And the days go their ways in blessings,

Moments of truth,

We truly dare not waste our youth.

- from a Keith Green song we sang at our wedding

the critter news (and why I'm blogging about it)

There's a lot happening in the world. Obviously. Bombings there, shootings here, children being sold into slavery. There's a lot happening in our little world. Middle-aged friends dying of cancer. Young people dying in farming accidents. People being charged with crimes.

A blog is such a strange thing. Do you sit down and write whatever comes to mind, stream-of-consciousness style? Do you document the highlights or the lowlights of your own life? Do you make it a collection of stories and youtube videos you run across? Do you consider your audience, your family members who know you well but live far off and yet the next door neighbors who see you every day (and thus already know about you having the flu) but who might be surprised or alarmed at your thoughts on some controversial issue? How honest should you be? I know there aren't universal answers to these questions. I simply say all of that as an introduction to this post about animals.

Posts about animals might seem silly. But they're what's going on in a world that is as real to me as anything else and as enduring as the seemingly brainless and saddening activity of humans. I don't watch the news, because there isn't a darn thing I can do about 99.9% of it, and it just stresses me out. Which is the point, from what I gather at those times I do catch it incidentally. We watched the weather channel upstairs last night because of a huge storm system that's supposedly on its way here, and we couldn't believe the hype and nonsense. We decided they must practice at Weather School by setting a potato on the table and trying to talk about it in super hyper, dangerous-sounding language for ten minutes.

So there. That's my rambling justification for talking about animals while reporters in other countries are being imprisoned for trying to track down the truth about injustices.

Thank you.

The animals are taking over - the wild ones, the land, and the domestic ones, our time. You know about the grasshoppers, the bain of our existence. Mom just read an article in the paper today about this being a huge year for hoppers because of the spring weather. In a bizarre example of the John Muir sentiment that by tugging at any one thing you find it attached to the rest of the universe, baby birds are reportedly gorging themselves on the hoppers to the point of being unable to fly.

grasshoppers in the yard

A black and red snake has been hanging out in the rock pile beside the house all summer. Maybe she ate the toad, because I haven't seen him around anymore. For family groups, there's a set of three skunks that alert us to their presence by spraying nearby every couple days, several does with fawns, including a set of spotted twins, and several gaggles of wild turkeys with various sized babies. A mama black bear and three cubs (!) passed through and spent a couple of days visiting the pond. There are bears all around us in the hills, but it's unusual for down here in the valley. Here's a very far off photo of the bears. You can see the mama at the back, and three tiny black dots ahead of her.

My Pops has been deep-cleaning the barn and is finding tools, drill bits, and other shiny things stuffed into the darndest corners. The squirrels and rats do this. The other day he pulled a blanket from a top shelf, and down came a wad of apple-flavored horse treats, stuffed away for winter by rodents. He just had something like eight tons of hay delivered, getting set for winter.

It's been a round of bad luck with the horses and injuries over the last few weeks. Four have gotten leg gouges in a pasture we've been summering them in. There must be a pile of twisted metal or barbed wire somewhere on that property, but the guys haven't been able to find it. Harley, one of the horses Jason broke last summer, came down with an intestinal ailment a couple weeks ago, and it appeared for a couple days that he might not recover. He has though.

The chickens are well.

The dogs are well.

The tree by the garden is abuzz with bees.

checking Harley's heart rate and intestinal gurglings

wrapping Marley's leg injury, the worst one of all

frogs

my 8 month old Z girl

Eight months. Two thirds of a year. One less month than I was pregnant.

Zoralee is definitely living up to her nickname of Pickle. Like Jason says, sometimes she's a sweet pickle, and sometimes she's a sour one. She is busy. And curious. And sometimes sociable to the point of ridiculousness. She cops an attitude, which she can be distracted from with a little ingenuity, but every day you've got to change up your game. She grunts and hollers and slaps the table for food tidbits. She shakes absolutely everything she picks up to see what it does.

My absolute favorite thing these days is the Quick Chin Down move. When she's really happy about something, she quickly puts her head down EXACTLY like a Chinese nod. I say she has some Wong in her. Wong was a Chinese man who married my great-great-grandmother later in life, so he would be Zoralee's step-great-great-great-grandfather. Somehow that nod, it made it through the deep and wide pool of genes.

She knows which things are off limits, and so far, a strong "No" suffices, especially if she gets moved to another spot in the room. If she really wants to play with something questionable, she'll go toward it, then turn to see if we're looking at her. For the most part, we try to keep those things out of her reach. But you just can't do that with everything. If there are 3 billion and 37 okay things to touch in a room and one tiny poisonous speck frittered away in a corner, she'll find the speck.

Mostly though, Zoralee's eyes roam the earth, searching for something to climb. She learned the knee-up technique a couple of days ago. Jason and I had put our mattress on the floor to form more of a family bed with her mat. We got into her bed and played with toys so that she'd feel happy about the new arrangement. Evidently it worked, because she kept climbing in and out of her bed up onto ours, using the hereto unknown knee-up skill, squealing, and then dive-bombing off of our mattress toward the floor. She had all the confidence in the world but not all the sense. She also stood up with her hands at her side for a solid second or second and a half, twice. Both times, she freaked out with glee, probably because we were. Today she climbed up onto the bottom step of the staircase. YIKES. I am feverishly sewing the cloth part of a boundary thingy that Jason fashioned from PVC pipe. As it is, we are all the time laying chairs across doorways or open spaces, and that's getting old.

I hear the sentiment from fellow new moms that there is a definite pattern in babydom of routines and preferences lasting two or three weeks. Then they're suddenly onto something new. I totally concur. Right now, I've been getting a huge kick out of Zoralee's interest in tasks. If I open one of her dresser drawers, she'll stand there and take every last garment out. She may even crawl away for a bit but then return to finish the job.

It reminds me of some things I learned when I subbed at the Montessori school in Anchorage last year. I'd put all that on the brain's back burner, but when I saw Z at the dresser drawer, I got really excited to find a book or two on Montessori principles and incorporate them into her play. One thing I remember is that it was a big deal to not interrupt babies and children working on little tasks, especially with unrelated things like, "Hey, you want a Cheerio?" but also even to say "good job," or "Oooh! What are you drawing? It's so pretty!" because it disrupts their flow and trains them to look for external praises rather than working within their own motivation. If they show us voluntarily what they're up to, it's cool. Really interesting.

Well, that'll be enough for now. One tired mama is signing out. Maybe Z will start a new habit tomorrow of sleeping in until 9 or 10 a.m. Ohhhh gosh. I crack myself up.

we all been there, man

correction about Skydive Lost Prarie

I mistakenly said the Skydive deal ended this coming Monday, on Canada Day. No, no, no. Canada Day was July 1st. This one is called Civic Holiday and is similar to the U.S.'s Labor Day.

No one seemed to notice, despite my extensive Canadian readership. Nevertheless, I do apologize to you all, Melissa.

Skydive Lost Prarie

Saturday we went to the 42nd Annual Skydive Lost Prarie Boogie. 'Twas Mom, Grandma and Grandpa, Luke and Heather, and us'ns. It's an event my mom's family has traditionally gone to, and I have great childhood memories of it. It's a pretty simple affair. We watch people stretch out and fold up their chutes, walk to the practice tents and decide how they'll execute their jumps, and load into a plane. They take off on a tiny runway just in front of us, and while they're flying around for 20 minutes, we eat snacks. When we hear the plane high high above us, we search for it, and when it is found, explain its location to each other by the cloud landmarks. You can barely see it spit out a couple dozen black dots, which join hands to form stars and circles and then break apart. The dots become miniature people as they get closer and their forms are suddenly surprised by a colorful rectangle following them. They float to earth at various speeds and land, one after the other, all around. This happens on the half hour or so all day long for 10 days.

One of my most vivid memories from years back is of being mooned by a whole plane load of people as they taxied the runway for take off. It's a rather wild bunch.


This time we went on the very first day of the Boogie, so it was a lot quieter. Things should really be picking up about now, ending on Canada Day. It's a big draw for Canadians; they always start the festival exactly 10 days ahead of Canada Day. We only got mooned once, by a guy riding by in a Jeep, and flashed by two ladies riding in a convertible. When one lady saw Zoralee, she felt embarassed and quick pulled up her top. We got a kick out of that, because of all the people at the Boogie to appreciate a good set of titties for the most basic of human reasons, Z would be it.

walking to the plane as a group, in cool outfits, as though they're in a

movie about walking to the plane as a group, in cool outfits...to save the world

practicing the mid-air join up

Here're Luke and Heather observing the jumpers with binoculars as they get rides back to camp.

(Is this as riotously funny to any of you as it was to us?

I guess it helps you to know that this was the closest we got to the jumpers that day;

they had to land up the road, because the field in front of us was still being hayed.

This was our way of saying, "Oh, there you guys are.")

two of my mom's pics . . .

God Among the Shakers

I mentioned the book, God Among The Shakers, by Suzanne Skees, in an entry a couple months ago and have since been hesitant to write about it. I was afeared people would want an actual book report, which would mean me thoroughly reviewing it and covering the most important points, not just the ones that struck me. As soon as I recognized that ridiculous notion (because.....which imaginary people would want that? and plus, this is my blog. I ain't getting paid, yo.), I jumped in. I finally returned the book to the library this week so figured I should write a little ditty about it.

This book is a good read if you like knowing about random little religious groups, especially ones furthered by women with major sexual hangups (to where they wind up banning sex altogether) but who nevertheless like a good shaking (and luckily discover they can do that as a worship dance/activity). Pacifists. Communal livers. Equal opportunists. Hard workers. Pray-ers.

That description would probably get an eye-rolling by the Shakers themselves, and since they do have internet access, I pray they don't come across this and feel saddened. But then, how much time would they have to google "what everybody else thinks about us Shakers?" So, I'll leave it as written, because that's the impression I got after reading the book. Their history is quite provocative.

Ann Lee, a.k.a. Mother Ann, while not the inventor of the faith, is who moved it forward by leaps and bounds (literally, across the Atlantic) when she lead a small group from England to the United States in 1774. For one thing, she was sick and tired of patriarchy, specifically when it came to our views of God. She believed we do a great dis-service to God and ourselves by only recognizing his masculine side. Shakers thus refer to God as our Father-Mother, and this is a foundational cornerstone of their faith. Men and women are equals in the community. In fact, the original band held that Ann Lee was essentially Jesus' other half, or the female embodiment of God where Jesus was the male one. Modern Shakers don't make that much of a distinction between Lee and the rest of humanity. They see her as far less uniquely divine than they once did. In Skees' words, "Today's Shakers appear moderate next to the fervid whirling and stern rules of yesterday's believers." However, the three C's that were vital in the beginning - celibacy, confession, and community - appear to still be such important cornerstones that to abandon any of them would call to question whether the Shaker faith was still the Shaker faith.

God Among The Shakers alternates between telling the Shaker history and Skees' own experiences living in the last Shaker community, in New Gloucester, Maine, for about three weeks. She works daily alongside the members at Sabbathday Lake, feeding baby lambs or sweeping floors, learning their stories of joining the group. There are only 8 of them at that point. Their website is http://www.shaker.lib.me.us/ and if you click on "About," it gives a good run down of their history highlights and basic theological tenets. Unlike some separatist groups, the Shakers do not shy away from technology. Evidently they invented the electric washing machine!

Early in the book, Skees is preparing her own little family (husband and two oldest children) for her temporary time away from them to live among the Shakers as part of her own spiritual quest. She says this, and it has stuck with me.

"Eventually I hoped that my children would find mothering far beyond myself:

in the pat of an understanding teacher, the extra good-bye kiss in the morning

from daddy, the giggly shoulder ride on a strong and careful uncle, the offer of

a consoling toy from a young friend. I hoped my sons would find nurturing from

many sources, and that ultimately they would learn to find it within."

For a while there, I thought it was so silly that the main idea I returned to from this book had less to do with the Shakers and more to do with me as a new mother relating to the author's experience of preparing her children for life without her. But really, this has everything to do with Shaker foundations. I wonder whether fewer people would have hang-ups seeing God as nurturing and loving if they didn't so closely equate Him with their own earthly fathers. What if we could really understand God as our Mother too, and a Mother who wants her children to live well, at that?

Unity is a major theme in Shakerdom. Whatever is done in the community is done for the benefit of all. If someone can't participate, they don't do it. Skees wonders why Shaker worship isn't as shaky as it used to be. It is much more subdued, meditative. The worshippers are neither prone to bodily shakes and whirlings as they once were nor to communication with spirits and paranormal visions. The answer, she found, was unity. Those practices aren't currently done because they would cause divisions and discomfort among the members.

Outsiders today join the Shakers for meals or short visits and maintain abiding friendships with the Shakers. From this book's account, they are a very welcoming bunch. And, you know, whenever I sat down to read about them, I felt calmer. People who have chosen a full time monastic or semi-monastic lifestyle and who are very intentional about simplicity and feeding the spirit man despite a mainstream culture that screams out for individuality, upward mobility, busy-ness, and material progress know that not everybody is going to join them. But they feel that their presence and steadfastness shed a little light, give a little hope. And I certainly reaped the benefits of their labors, albeit from the opposite side of the nation and via a non-Shaker's report. Imagine spending some real time at Sabbathday Lake! Wow. Zoralee could really use some work on stillness and meditation. And okay, I could too.

more on Zor

Most predictable behavior: Zoralee twists herself around to get onto her belly and whines incessantly during every single dingle diaper change. She hates the changes so. She also twists herself onto her belly when we're nursing side-by-side lying down, maintaining her latch-on during the twist. I'd like to be on a glass table and see a photograph from below of that.

Most beloved activity: She pulls herself to a stand against every imaginable household object. Crawls mostly for getting someplace to stand. She even stands coming out of a dead sleep when she most needs to stay sleeping - stands up against something, all wobbly and fussy.

Newest trick: Does hand-offs from one object to another while standing. The funniest one I've seen was while she stood at the coffee table, she turned the top half of her body 180 degrees to grab the couch behind her. When she had it solidly, she turned the bottom half of her body so that she was fully facing the couch.

Most common injury: head bonks, due to newest trick.

Newest attitude development: She now recognizes that when something off limits is taken from her, it is ME doing the taking, rather than the desired object just floating out of her life. She, in turn, gives me nasty faces.

tough guy pose

But she's a woman of peace deep inside.

Favorite person: Grandma Rena. She has started bursting into tears when Grandma walks away. Here, she is having her hair gelled and measured by Grandma.

The crackers Aunt Rae Rae and Uncle Cam brought back from Germany for Zor have sat in the cupboard awaiting her. Now their time of consumption has come.

good times with Papa

the tug rope he hung up for entertainment

"Ain't nobody here but us chickens." (an old-timey song lyric that often comes to mind)