fourteen months, going on fourteen years

a fancy old hat at Aunt Leah's birthday tea luncheonUnc Luke's shoes

Grandpa Gene's redneck teeth

gaming with the big boys Valentine's surprise from G&G - a little tea set

girl time

Mama Joanna, baby Cecelia, Chloe, Zoralee, and Zoey

Notice the traveling green bowl in that series.

It is so great for Zoralee to hang with Zoey and Chloe and begin to see that other children are interested in the same toy she is, at the same time. Zoey and Chloe swap toys continually and think nothing of it. When they try that trick on Zoralee, she looks at them in disbelief and wails. She's glad for an open cup policy though - everybody drinks from whatever sippy is around.

ohhh, books, stressors, earthquakes, measles, and the Olympics

Boy, do I ever wish I could whip blogs out as fast as they come to mind. I have about 40 things to say, and 40 pictures to display. I've been reading a couple of books about using Montessori methods in the home with small children (there are so many awesome principles that just make sense to me, you know?) and I want to tell you how neat they are! Just started this book by Po Bronson called Why Do I Love These People? about families. It makes you fall in love with your family all over again, faults, freckles, and all. And then there's a book called Reimagining Church by Frank Viola that I bet a lot of you would dig if you have questions about the established institutional church and wonder where's the genuineness and where's the community in all of it. But I didn't start this entry to really write about any of that. This is a fly over entry about major themes.

In self-revelatory news, I have lately felt like my insides are full of spaghetti with battery acid on top. I see myself as living quite a fortunate and simple life, so it irritates me to feel that way. When I think about it though, there are a couple of hearty stressors looming about, between extended family pain and anguish, a good friend who's on her death bed, being away from Jason, contemplating how to deal with our blasted worldly possessions (I sometimes fantasize about a house fire taking everything out in one lump sum, leaving exactly enough time for me to grab our photo albums and paraphernalia), and planning for how to live in three different states over the next year and a half. It's all a matter of knowing which things to take on and which things to let loose of, isn't it?

It came to me the other day how I could've drawn "earthquake" in Pictionary at Nikki's birthday party a month ago. A terrible word to pick in light of Haiti, but a word picked nonetheless. I could've drawn it like a world, and when somebody eventually said "earth" I would've nodded yes, yes yes! and then made little lines at the edges, to indicate shaking. At the time, I was stuck on more of a local scene, like making the trees shake and a room shake. That wouldn't have worked. Truth is, I didn't have to draw it, because when I looked closer at the card, "earthquake" was in the wrong category. But still, what a dilemma.

Looks like Zoralee's wrapping up a nice case of the measles. I'd like to post a bunch of pictures of her and tell you things about her! Each day she grows into a more and more beautiful little Pickle. We've been getting outside for her to walk around. She loves going from ice patch to mud hole and back again and is very distressed when she realizes it's time to go inside.

I told my brother, Luke, that we've been "enjoying watching the Olympics." He said that sounds like a brochure for something, which is true. But we have been. We watch the events every day. I have to be honest that I cheer for the Americans. I always wish for the Canadians to come in a close second, and if the USA isn't in the competition anymore, I always root for Canada. And then, sadly, I pretty well don't care what happens to everybody else, but I'd be glad for them to get very pretty green ribbons of participation. It irks me how well those North Koreans have been speed skating in their dark blue suits. They hang around at the back of the pack, and then when there are a few laps to go, they zoom to the front like blue raspberry Popsicles. Frustrating!

I am realizing about blogging these days that I can't seem to write anything that I really care about. I much prefer to use this as a family journal of sorts, showing Zoralee and the chickens and photographs and telling a random thought. But I like reading your meaningful discussions, including everyone's comments, and joining in! That's where I really get jazzed.

So, there it is. There a few things are.

word of the day: splitter (and variations thereof)

Yesterday morning started off early at 9 a.m. (what are people thinking?!) with a tv/phone/internet technician coming over to install some equipment. All he needed us to do was find a cord splitter buried in one of the walls of our house. Rrrright. My dad had wired the house himself when we built nearly two decades ago, and sorry kid, but that particular neuron channel in the brain must've split off from the other house-building memories and become grown over with more useful data - like, well, anything. Nevertheless, we searched low and high, moved boxes and beds, and Dad undid any wall plates that were not electric. Never did find the splitter, so the guy drilled a new hole in the house. Just a giant drill, all the way from the inside to the out, within 20 seconds. Snaps you right out of the sense of security and castle-ness you have about your home, know what I mean?
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Then the folks, Zoralee and I went to check out a Winnebago at an auction, just for kicks and giggles. Turned out to not be ideal for our extended family, with some of the work it'd need, but it's hard to keep this bunch of people from viewing, googling, carfacts.com-ing, bluebooking, NADA-ing, talking and dreaming about vehicles in general, but especially road trip vehicles. We want to know what options you've got for pottying on the go, cooking on the go, sleeping on the go, making good gas mileage, listening to music or books on cd, and storing all our stuff. If we can look like the Clampetts while we're doing it, bonus.

Zoralee and I then split off and headed to town, where I split from Zoralee, leaving her with Aunt Heather for fun and games while I visited my friend in an extended care place. K requested to have her nails cut, which I was thrilled to do; I figured cutting nails on anybody less wiggly than Zoralee would be easy. But my lands, I've never seen more heartier nails on a human being! However she's getting her calcium, it's working. She'd offered to soak her nails first, but knowing nothing about nail care, I just started in with what she provided me - toenail clippers. Bits of keratin flew all over the room like shrapnel. An innocent nurse got "nailed" in the eye. That's not true, but yuckity yuck anyway. It was good, clean fun. If I didn't take itsy bitsy bites at a time, K ended up with splitters down the nail. Ouchers!!, plus they would no doubt snag on clothing later. We got the splitters filed down to a reasonable smoothness with a file K had won at Bingo.

Then it was back to Luke and Heather's, where Luke and I worked on several split tracks for one of his songs. That was really great, and it got me jazzed up to record some of my songs, as well as sew, and organize, and finish photo projects, and make astounding meals, and, and, and. It's funny how breaking out of your routine to do something creative makes you feel like Superwoman for about an hour. Superwoman with glasses, of course. And speaking of glasses and splitting, I went the whole day without a splitting headache - good because I'm wearing old glasses whilst my current ones are in for repair.

And now I close with the only pics of the day, Z and Heather in the studio listening to Luke lay down a vocal track. By the way, Zoralee now calls Uncle Luke, "Unk." It is presch and a half.

classic listening faces. . .expressing creative ideas

bye bye, love

at the train station in the early morning last week,

letting loose of J for awhile(he's carrying a duffel bag, just turning toward the train door)

zoralee - teeth, hollers, and all

zoralee's month back in montana

- getting reacquainted with the chickens -

just after this photo, Z broke into a high squeal of fear;

enclosed spaces aren't very good for reintroductions

but she loves the eggs!

a cool speckled one

This red rocking chair belonged to my Grandpa Gene when he was a baby.

Z is the fourth generation to play with it. How special is that?!

Zoralee LOVES Grandma Rena. She's saying "Gah-ma" with ever-increasing clarity,

and she'll nearly always choose her over me (HER OWN MOTHER). It's a bit ridiculous.

Here, despite Grandma's protests, Z knows she's got milk-making goods somewhere in there.

Zoralee is a phone talker. Boy, howdy. A phone yeller is more like it, just like Grandpa Larry. Some imaginary conversation partner somewhere in the cosmos is getting an earful. Z talks on whatever cell or cordless phones she runs across, as well as remote controls and calculators. Perfectly reasonable. Smallish, plastic squares with buttons. But she also talks on toys, balls, dishes. Recently she held a pair of pants to her ear and said "Ah-lah," her hello. Is she imaginative or confused? How can I blame her for not knowing which household items are embedded with electronics when she found her birthday card from Nana the other day and opened it up to hear Nana's voice? It's one of those recordable cards. I tell you what - kids these days are going to grow up thinking absolutely anything is possible, anything is believable. Let's hope they put that no boundaries mindset to good use solving world puzzlers like poverty, disease, and convincing people to drive in the right lane unless they're passing. I mean it.

double-fisting

trying to figure out who is this clean shaven guy in a suitstory time with Crazy Uncle LukePeek-a-bowlI'm not sure how frogs end up in our bath pics - it's not planned that way.fingers

cardamom (this does not refer to IDing your ma for alkeehol)

I had an English instructor in college who talked a lot about cardamom. I mean, a lot. If you're like I was back then, not knowing what cardamom is, let me save you the google step: it's an Indian spice used in everything from curried dishes to baked goods to coffee. So anyway, this instructor was in love with cardamom. Her grandmother had used it all the time in family recipes, and she planned to write an entire cookbook featuring it. By now, maybe she already has. Any of you fellow Warner Pacific-ites remember her? I hated to print her whole name online, but at the moment I can't remember any of it anyway.
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But speaking of spice, she got engaged to another professor, a guy from out of town who wrote a human sexuality textbook, in use at Warner. It was all the scuttlebutt when he came to campus to visit after their engagement. A scandalous development for a Christian college, even a liberal arts one, because what could a single man possibly know about sex ed?!
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So for the past decade plus, cardamom has caught my eye. It appears in the darndest recipes, and I usually have some on hand, though I've just read that it's better to keep the whole seeds available to grind as needed. Not sure whether or not I'll Martha Stewart up for that one (kind of like cowboying up).
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All of that is my intro for the photo you're about to see. You can bet your bippy I bought this gum.

One Sock Z, Fastest Cowgirl in the West

(too fast to even get a good picture)

sneeze, freeze, threes, my main squeeze, & tease

SNEEZE
I saw one of our hens sneeze. It startled me just how classic a chicken sneeze looks. Its neck was stretched out, its head nearly frozen, and all the world paused for those few seconds before the release. It sneezed four or five times in a row. Sounded about like you'd expect. I wonder which critters don't sneeze. Bugs? Do bugs have noses?

FREEZE
Our big freezer in the garage quit working sometime over the last few days. We were fortunate enough to find out before everything had thawed completely. An entire 1/2 cow is in there, hundreds of dollars of meat. Ughhh. The internet says this model was last made in 1976. That could have something to do with it. Dad joked that surely we could squeeze a little more use from it, and we actually tried the old electronic trickery of unplugging the device, plugging it back in, and waiting for a day. But, nope. So we loaded all the meat into the regular refrigerator freezers, one upstairs and one down, and took a load into town for my grandparents to freeze.

THREES
Last week I dumped a load of dirty diapers into the washer and heard some unnatural thudding. I looked in to see three eggs nestled about the diapers. I instinctively blamed Jason. Why would he do something like this? What a waste of good eggs. I asked him about it, and he instinctively thought I was crazy for assuming he would put eggs in the hamper. He did remember something though - seeing three eggs on the bottom stair a few days back. Ohhh, right! I'd set them there temporarily as I came in from outside, because I'd needed hands free to take off my coat. Then I'd forgotten about them. It seriously took us that entire line of reasoning to recall that we have a mobile toddler who loves to find and move objects. It made me so excited to introduce Easter egg hunts to Zoralee. Oh man. I am getting short of breath thinking about how fun that will be! Note to self: you wouldn't have to wait until Easter.

MY MAIN SQUEEZE
Jason has been working out two times a day, strength training and cardio stuff, for the start of his upcoming job. We have another week and a half with him before he leaves for several months of training. Boooooo for that. I'm trying to pre-adjust mentally. Like, if I go to bed before Jason, I envision him just not coming in after me. Then I get a real big knot in my stomach and change the mental subject. Every moment of time together is now extra precious. I guess each season is always precious, but you don't necessarily value it as such until you see it ending. We bought a computer camera to get set up for Skype. It was cheap. I already have a grudge against it, for one because it'll be my best link to Jason for days and nights and days and nights, and for another because it feels like cheating. I see the round ball of a camera - haven't even had the inspiration to take it from its box yet - and I know how lucky we are to live in a time when we can communicate that way. But it's not fair to the people who haven't been able to do that for ages and ages. Does anybody know the name of the psychological malady whereby you constantly feel horrid for living such a privileged life? I think I've got it.

TEASE
Pics of Zoralee are next on my agenda for blogging. Ooh, I may be able to get one on now, real quick.