Shall we resume blogging? How about in APA format? I have been missing, but currently, I am working two jobs and going to school.

I have been a cardiac nurse for 6 years now. It is surprising that I have stayed in the same place for this long. There was a short-lived experience of working in the ED on a temporary bid that never transpired to become a permanent one. At high school graduation, I was supposed to become a fashion designer and come to our class reunion in a Lamborghini. Or, per our class prophecy that a choice few members of our class wrote, I would be seen on stage with a huge crowd, as a punk rocker with multi-colored hair, along with Lori Schmoe, former boarding school roomie. Alas, Lori has been dead a few years. Her seizure disorder, and quite probably a pending divorce finally took her life and left two daughters. We were perhaps the most reserved of our classmates. I carried a Bible in 7th and 8th grade in public school and tried to convert nearly everyone I spoke with. At the boarding school, I not-so-discreetly left tracts about the school, but by my senior year, my peers had worked on me enough to have tried my hand on getting drunk on rum and Coke with then roomie Trisha. We succeeded in virtual alcohol poisoning and being babysat back to sobriety to two of our saintly schoolmates, Alys and Imi. My wonderful high school peers will never let me forget either the tract-pushing nor the statement, "One more time," which apparently meant that I needed to puke in every toilet I passed on the way back to my room. I have no recollection of asking repeatedly, "One more time." There were some punk rockers in our class. Lori and I were not part of them. We listened to ABBA and John Denver, and John Michael Talbot. I was going on to Ohio State to major in clothing design, and had won several 4-H awards for my sewing by the time I graduated from high school. Indeed, I helped the Home Ec department and OSU Extension service put on the fashion review the summer after my Freshman college year.

Who would ever have thought I would have become a cardiac nurse? But that is what many divorcees are doing these days. It is the window of opportunity that has been opened for those who don't want to be on welfare with children the rest of their lives. Our elderly population is growing, and they desperately need our care. The medical establishment is trying hard to use the latest research to provide the best care they possibly can. They often shoot themselves in the foot, but I believe that most people genuinely try, despite themselves. My father and grandfather were Masons, and believed in public service, and community building. Down deep, somewhere, I do too. I should have been in the shower 10 minutes ago, getting ready for work. This is the life I lead now. Frozen dinners, ordering out, working too much and recuperating from work. Oh, and attempting to do my school work in between. My grades have been pretty good so far. It is "the life."

The Need for Quiet Time

Reasons for not posting: working 40 plus hours per week, returning to school for a BSN, living on a farm, homeschooling a 5 y/o, getting a 20 y/o through college, and health issues. The latter category has included breaking my big toe in the middle of training for a 5K trail run, blood sugars creeping up and a little anemia. I have yet to see a doctor because I have been very disillusioned with the ability of my physician to help solve my problems the way I would like to. So these problems have been worsening over the past year. I like her as a person, but it is nigh impossible to find a physician who isn't on the bandwagon with the current philosophies of health care, most which I am not in agreement with. It is amazing how much a small dent in your energy levels can make an obsessive-compulsive (aka o/c), over-achiever feel as if the world has ended! It hasn't. It isn't depression causing it, as they would have me believe in their brief 1-hour-every-six-months assessments of my conditions. It is my bull-headed need to have so many irons in the fire, and my tendency to have to have my mind working on 100 things all at once, all the time, and the habitual, frequent but passing resulting discouragement with myself.

Now lets focus on returning to school. I graduated with an ADN in 1997, and have been working as a registered nurse from that August on to the current hour. After 14 years of direct patient care, I decided that I might be qualified to teach it, or maybe I just want to do something else. Like forensic nursing. But an underlying fascination with immunity (did I mention I was a little o/c - I think I did), illustrated by the raw milk debates involving infectious disease and HUS; AIDS; vaccines vs pitocin and their relationships to autism; and auto-immune diseases such as diabetes and lupus; also put me in mind to study cellular biology. However, attempts at brushing up on chemistry made me realize that 22 years was a little to long to go without a chemistry class, without using it. So I settled for going for the BSN, with hopes of continuing on to an MSN in either nursing education or nursing forensics. I've been using my nursing skills. In fact I've become somewhat adept at cardiac nursing and Advanced Cardiac Life Support, when someone decides to try to die.

My first term was difficult, but went well. I immersed myself in pathophysiology, and did well enough in nursing informatics and nursing transitions to receive an "A," for all three. This term is a little more bumpy. Behavioral health statistics is not my forte. The difficulty does not lie in that I can't do them as much as in the fact that the last time I took statistics, I received a D+ because I was going through some difficult life transitions. So every time I read about the standard deviation from the mean, I have a flashback about sitting on a picnic table covered with bird poop, under a tree on Ohio State University's campus, pregnant and trying to study, and wishing I'd never gotten married; or looking at my exam in front of me in a classroom and not knowing what to make of the Greek letters before me, feeling thankful for multiple choice questions. The D+ was an entity of choosing one of the middle two answers, or the answer that seemed the least ludicrous by and large. It is sad that a person can pass a class that complex in that manner, but it happened. Unfortunately the college I am currently in requires a C or better for transferring credits, as well as for degree completion, so I am repeating this course.

But now I have the added motivation of knowing I can acquire an "A" in pathophysiology when most other nursing students can't. I also would like to be able to decipher the nitty-gritty of reports of studies, and maybe even someday conduct a few of my own. An understanding of Statistics is required for this. I may even be liking the subject. At times I find myself considering taking another class in it, and dreaming of working for the World Health Organization. Now, that is an amusing thought. The other class I'm taking this term is Sociology of the Family. There is nothing like having to write lots of short papers, but not being required to use APA format like I was last term for my nursing papers. I've also been involved in social justice issues for a long enough period of time that the terminology on the tests is surprisingly familiar. There are a few studies that have taught me something I didn't know. I do feel that some of these classes, such as the Sociology class, are somewhat unnecessary after being a nurse for 14 years, and I feel like I'm simply paying the college for a degree, and jumping through a few hoops to get it. In the scholarly discussion forums, I sometimes feel like I'm helping the instructor educate some of the students who clearly did not read the same text book I did.

The one thing the Sociology of the Family class is doing for me however, is bringing up issues I already know about, closer to my current consciousness. We are on the chapters about social class structures and how they affect the family. Meanwhile it comes out that Bill Gates has invested in Monsanto's GMO seed production, that the President of the U.S. has appointed a former Monsanto executive to head the FDA; Harvard Law School is having a debate on raw milk, and Occupy Wall Street is just waning as a movement, in the wake of several states attempting to pass laws against collective bargaining. Both the Ohio Nurses Association and the American Nurses Association have come out in support of collective bargaining. It is funny, but nobody else in my class but me seems to know about the whole GMO thing, and I seem to be the only person connecting these issues with wealth in our country. This disturbs me.

I'm not a great blog-writer. I don't take time to incorporate nice links into my text and put pictures at the top. But if you google any of these topics, you are quite likely to come up with the articles I'm referring to. It is easier than looking for scholarly studies on CINAHL. At some point, I do hope to write in a more user-friendly fashion, and more often than one post every 3-6 months. That will come with time.

Journaling

Keeping some sort of journal is helpful. My mother taught us that, but she also taught it to her school students, and to children in her care at Christian Education Camp of our Yearly Meeting of Friends. For a child, it is helpful in creating writing skills. Journals help families determine what happened when events take bad turns. We worry about privacy and confidentiality in a world where people have ill motivations. But reading old journals takes a person back through their trials and helps them be reminded how they arrived at where they currently are. A journal can be written many ways with any focus. I am not good at writing down daily events. Sometimes I'd like to capture everything people say to me in a day, or everything that happened. But recording everything is impossible.

What made me think about journaling was returning to Phillip Gulley's fiction books about the town called Harmony. I have recommended them to a friend who is going through a difficult situation with a pastor.

http://www.harmonyseries.com/

What made me connect this to journaling was that even though we can write much from memory, there is nothing like having a detailed written account of events that affect our lives. We struggle through the trials in our lives, but when they are resolved, we move on to the next and virtually forget about the entire event and struggle until someone else's struggle reminds us of it. Some of these events need to be written down for all of us to remember. I think the struggle for immigrant rights is one of those topics where those involved in the struggle need to keep accounts and write a book about it in the end.

As much time as I spend on Facebook, and as much as I write here, it doesn't touch most of what happens in one of my days. Patients at work have life-changing traumas. Family members go through terrible events. I go places and do things that would seem inappropriate to write about. Maybe a better word would be insignificant. There are discussions and events that I simply can't put in black and white. I think about them. They affect me.

Today I have 3 big events. I am going to the Farmers Market in hopes of getting more peaches; hoping the chefs publicized as planning to be there (Yay!) won't buy EVERYTHING. But I can go to another farmer's place if I need to for peaches. I am going to go to a Stampin' Up party that my husband's niece is putting on for a fundraiser for their church's youth program. And then I am going to take my older daughter back for her second year in college, a 3 1/2 hour drive one way. That will be probably a 9-10 hour event.

My husband, meanwhile, will be building a small shelter for my sheep and putting up an electric fence for them with a new solar charger I bought a few days ago. I feel like I should be helping him.

This blog is decidedly rambling. It is an online journal. It isn't focused on one political project or one specific topic. There are threads of topics that are important to me. When people around me express interest in learning something about what I'm doing, I sometimes think I should make it a public process here and do a photo story. As the weather cools and my broken toe time draws to an end, my focus' are cleaning up this old farm house, setting up our small sheep herd at our new residence, homeschooling a 5-year-old and returning to work in a hospital during an economy when many people are losing jobs that support their livelihoods. I fast every Tuesday for those who are imprisoned for trying to make better lives for themselves. The locusts are still around but seem to be fading, and one of my old teachers noticed publicly on Facebook that her hummingbirds were beginning to migrate.

I was going to blog about breaking my toe 3 weeks ago. Maybe I will tomorrow. There is too much to do today!

The Big Farm Move

The moving of farms was actually pretty little by farm-moving standards. But it was big to us. It was huge to me. Life-changing. We moved 2 miles. We moved from 68 acres to 200+ acres. The responsibilities turned from primarily mine to not primarily mine. The decision-making also turned from primarily mine to not primarily mine. I knew this would be both good and bad and in-between. And it has been.

Last November, around Thanksgiving, my oldest brother's big Mennonite family came up from Virginia, and my youngest brother and his wife came from Iowa. We sat around the table and discussed the future of the farm, and the future of my middle brother. In this conversation were my mother, my oldest and youngest brother, me and all of our spouses. The family farm was falling apart, and I had been wanting out of it increasingly and with more panic as time went by. Boards were falling off the barn. Outbuildings needed painted. Siding and eves needed fixed on the house. My husband had been running back and forth for 6 years between two farms trying to patch things together. I had reached a point of telling my mother, "Sell it, I'm moving."

Where to, some might wonder? Why, to the old, falling apart brick house over at my husband's family's farm. The problem is, 2 people, one of them working full-time in a high-stress job, cannot fix up 2 dilapidated farms.

Embedded in my memory were comments my oldest brother had made to me years before. He was the farmer in the family. My father had wanted him to have the farm, but he and my father could never see eye-to-eye. My father was a control freak. There was always some catch; something held over your head for everything you were given. My oldest and youngest brothers had long moved on, leaving all the "catches" behind, and taking control of their own lives. But Larry had always WANTED the farm. He had wanted it without conditions. My father could never, in all of their dickering, let go of his conditions. My father however, at this notable Thanksgiving dinner, had been gone for nearly 2 years. My mother was not interested in the farm management at all, whatsoever. My youngest brother was not interested in receiving any financial benefit from selling it. It was okay with my oldest brother if my middle brother stayed in his trailer there so long as there was no trouble. I was banking on all of this.

It was a good hunch. My oldest brother, his wife and 7 children, ages 14 up, the oldest son already running his own carpentry business, went home to mull on it. Within the next 2-3 months, all the plans were made. I had begun cleaning out the attic before I had their word. I "knew it in my bones," that this move was going to happen.

No amount of preparation is enough to move out of a family farm. My oldest brother is a hoarder in some regard, but he is also a purger. As his sister, I knew just what kind of purger he was. I knew that whatever I didn't clean out, I'd never see again, most likely, as it would be lost, burned or dumped. It took a few bottles of wine, but I went through every single box that had been thrown into the attic in the midst of every "clean this place up!" frenzy or family accounting argument since 1976 - junk with old love letters, dusted up trumpet music, long lost Muskojuans from the 1950's, class picture books from every school throughout Ohio my parents had ever taught in, paired in boxes with broken glasses, long outdated camera flashes and mouse droppings. I cried, I laughed, I read, I groaned, and I drunkenly commented as I sorted things into boxes for my mother, myself and each of my siblings. My husband took out box after box of discarded papers and trash to be burned. We did not need to keep old inservices, curriculum evaluations and lessons plan from every school they had taught in. Despite everyone saying they had no interest in what was in the attic, they each went through their boxes like it was the best kind of candy store. I even found things to give some of my neighbors from their ancestors.

The move was in March. My deep freezer and my fleeces are still in their garage. It is mid August. We moved my sheep over last week.

There are more than 200 acres here. There is a herd of Hereford beef cows, and there are 3 horses. Now there are 11 sheep. I have a garden again. It is very weedy and didn't grow much, but it is hopeful.

I have taught my 7 nieces and nephews how to make cheese, how to spin, how to shear sheep, and today I will be teaching them how to skirt and pack fleeces for the woolgrowers coop. I'm kind of new to that myself. They dress plain, and will most likely be able to profit more from such things by the mere appearance of looking like "Amish." They have made a gardening paradise out of the garden I dumped manure on for years. They've fixed the barn. My brother, a finishing carpenter, is building a wood shop that is as big as his house. I want to be jealous of all of it, but it is a little difficult to be in my relief.

It was a good move.

How Can I Keep From Singing?

Yesterday was the 4th Tuesday I have gone on a bread and water (and coffee) fast. My friend, Robin, started the fast and matching Facebook group, "Starving For Justice! Human Rights for Immigrants in the USA!" https://www.facebook.com/groups/Starving4Justice/ with some acquaintances of hers.

At first her request of me to join made me feel hesitant. Did I really want to FAST for this cause? I roomed with Robin my sophomore year in high school for a semester, at the boarding school we went to. So we knew each other pretty well. She used to complain about my keeping the light on to read the Bible every night. I talked her into breaking most of her record collection because Rock and Roll was evil. Somehow by the time we got back in touch years later, she had forgiven me for that. In a change of life circumstances in the nearly 30 years we had not communicated, she became the pious one of the two of us. She is a P.A. working at a veterans hospital. She has no children, so diverts her energies into her dogs, and into helping the homeless. I didn't really want to read all those links to articles that she posted on Facebook, but I felt drawn to them. Prisons making profits for housing illegal aliens, and lobbying to pass immigrant laws to up their census? Was it real? Link after link, organization after organization, I read accounts of illegal immigrants being tortured and abused, and used for profit right here in our country for nothing more than crossing our borders. Most of them have no criminal record. They have no rights to legal council. If and when they get out, they tell of horrendous stories of people dying in these prisons.

One day around the time of Robin's request, another cause I have subscribed to news on, "Free the Hikers," for the 2 guys who found themselves imprisoned in Iran, was posting stories of an upcoming hearing that they were afraid would be canceled yet again. There were fasts and vigils; none of which I had ever taken part in. This time I wanted to fast with them. Were they not in a prison in a foreign country like all the immigrants here?

I have a list of favorite songs. One I like to sing often is "How Can I Keep From Singing?" It is about imprisonment, but it speaks to anyone who has felt persecuted for their beliefs. I played the guitar and sang this song among many others to my children as they were growing up. It has been cited most of my life as a traditional Quaker hymn, but a Wikipedia post credits it to Robert Wadsworth Lowry, an American Baptist minister, first published in 1869.

Today I am enjoying food more than I think I have enjoyed it for a very long time. I have a cup or two of coffee on my fasting days because I can't seem to give it up the rest of the week enough to not have a headache on the fasting day. The first week the headache was severe. I have tried different kinds of bread. I would like to someday do a complete fast, but I currently have too many responsibilities to suffer through the dizziness and shakiness that causes me. Though I permit myself a couple of cups of coffee, I do not permit myself lemon in my water. I did put a little vinegar in my water the first week when the thought of any more bread and water made me nauseated, and the vinegar helped a little. My mother had done a week long vinegar water fast when I was a preteen.

Following my first week of fasting, the hikers finally had their hearing after it being put off several times over 2 years. I felt like this was the right thing to do. I have posted about it on Facebook. Few coworkers or friends have commented about it to me. It doesn't feel like a great big showy thing to do. But it is a sacrifice. It takes commitment and concern. I believe it makes people think twice about their strong opposing opinions, that I would give up conventional food for one day per week for people I don't even know. However, it is my country that is torturing them, and I pay the taxes that support this. Fasting is a powerful witness, even if it is a very quiet, mindful, suffering one.

It is also a spiritual journey of a kind I have never been on.

Living on the Family Farm

There is something comforting about living in a house where your uncles, grandfather, father and brothers built the kitchen cupboards from scratch out of pine. We haven't always lived here though. My grandfather was the youngest of 9 children. He was born in this house he told me; just as my mother was born in the last house I lived in. He grew up here. But he had moved on, as had everyone else who grew up here, save two single uncles whom I never knew. Earl and Charlie faithfully kept the Jersey dairy until their health failed and they died. My grandfather had established himself elsewhere when he inherited the place. Many times, I heard stories about the boxes of overalls in the attic - that Earl and Charlie wore the same ones, never washing them, until they were unusable, and then stored them in the attic. And about the smell of tobacco spittoons. Grandmother tried to clean up the house, but they rented it for years. The farm grew over in multiflora rose bushes, a briary weed.

Until age 11, I grew up in a transient way. My parents were teachers, trying to advance their careers by moving from district to district throughout Ohio every few years. The summer I completed 5th grade, they decided to settle themselves on the family farm, however, and we moved here. We bought a Jersey calf, and my father set about attempting to restore the farm of his childhood. I spent Saturdays in the orchard crawling under rose bushes with a chain and wrapping it around the woody, thorny base so my father could uproot plant after plant with his tractor. I went to school in the fall after a summer on the farm with scratched, wirey, skinny arms from haymaking. My disco-happy 70's preteen classmates thought I was "poor." Until I had a slumber party in the hay loft, atop my pride and joy - the loose hay pile I'd helped put there. And then I was cool.

I didn't stay here. Like all kids who grow up on a farm, I wanted to get far away from the work; the yelling; the "oppression." I went to a state university and played too much. I got married, had children and divorced. Alas, my parents aged, and no longer wanted to stay. But they didn't want to sell it either. So I moved here to "keep" it for a few years. And I'm still here. After being out in the world - out where people tend to move every year or three and follow jobs around the country; where new houses are built; where food comes mostly from the grocery store, there is something comforting about being here. It feels like the responsible thing to do to keep such a place; like something sacred.

A Quaker Sort of Lent

Difficulty is created in avoiding the holidays. I've tried it. Years ago, I took on a somewhat sarcastic approach to Lent, but it was also a very spiritual one. After the dissolution of my first marraige and in the midst of intense counseling to regain my self-worth, I decided to give up meat for Lent.

The idea of doing this was centered around the exploitation of women. It all fit together in my complex mind. Where does exploitation stop? If men can justify the way they treat women, does that have something to do with our justifying eating meat, or even plants? It was a particularly spiritual time for me. It was sarcastic because I don't, and have never prior, cognitively observed Lent in any meaningful way. Lent was a convenient 6 weeks at an opportune time for me to delve more deeply and to concentrate on mulling over this new-found focus. Most Christians would understand without too much questioning, if I told them I had given up meat for Lent; even fish. Except Fran Taber, and other Quakers - they of course raised an eyebrow.

I came out of this time renewed. I slowly worked with my parents to take on the management of my father's family homestead so they could move to a retirement home, and embarked upon a somewhat idealistic and inexperienced path of attempting to raise at least some of my own food, including milk, eggs and meat.

After this entire spiritual process, the subject of raising my own meat comes up occasionally among coworkers in particular, in conversation. They most often seek to end the conversation with the statement, "Well, I couldn't eat something I raised." In the years preceding these inevitable conversations, I have learned to take note of who brings in carry-out or fast food from where, to prepare myself for this ultimate statement. And I never let them off the hook. While I understand the apathy of the American public, I will not accept, in my attempt to be true to my own convictions, a statement from a person who eats at McDonalds, that they couldn't eat an animal they had raised. If they must hold me accountable to ease their apathetic conscience, they too also must be held accountable.

In following years, I chose to give up New Years Resolutions, and to give up nontraditional things for Lent. Two years in a row, I gave up elevators. I work on the 7th floor of a hospital 4 days per week, so this was a significant sacrifice. I've NEVER given up chocolate, and don't think I ever will.

This year, I began Lent early. I devoted myself to an 18 week training program for a half marathon. Ash Wednesday came and left after I had begun, and so will Easter. I saw the ash on my husband's forehead when he came home from his Presbyterian church. There was a woman walking through the hospital with ash on her head. It reminded me of the year one of my coworkers took some dirt off her tire before coming in from the parking ramps and did her deed in her rearview mirror. I might not go quite that far.

My occupation these past 3 years has centered around taking care of people having cardiac events. My trips through the Burger King drive through have lessened. My apathy in worrying about what I eat has become uncomfortable. I still eat meat, but I make different choices about what meat I eat.

I'm not planning on winning the half marathon; not even close. The goal for me is to make it to the end of 13 miles with an average pace of faster than 18 miles per 15 minutes, so I don't get pushed onto the sidewalk. I'm 6 weeks in, and have just met that pace last week. I'd also like to be able to say I ran in a half marathon; maybe even a whole marathon someday. The choice didn't have anything to do with Lent. It had more to do with the fact that 4 of my girl cousins have already done this, and I felt left out and wanted to join them this year. And it had to do with my weight and my health. As people at work talk about the health improvements they are making for Lent, I have been feeling rather Quakerly in beginning in January and ending in May - if I do end it. I've come to like running. I'm doing a mega-Lent, at thrice the time period.

Responsible Only For My Own Actions

Many people surrounding me seem to think I am responsible for them.

My neighbor seems to think I have begun a feud with him, since we stood firm in disallowing 4-wheelers on our property. That rule has been widely known since 4-wheelers were invented. His son showed up one day unloading a 4-wheeler, and did not ask, but told my husband he was driving it across our property. My husband told him that he was not going to do that. This neighbor, his son, his wife and his mother-in-law, now seem to think they need to hold me responsible for their own actions in retaliation for this longstanding rule, and the ill feelings they now have towards me. They also are purposefully making my entire family less comfortable by disallowing us to park during winter weather at the end of our lane on what they perceive as their property, but according to the most recent 2 surveys I obtained from the county engineer's office, belongs to another neighbor who has given us explicit permission that we can park there. When the lane leading to our house was paved, my father and grandfather asked them to pave a small section at the top of our lane specifically for the purpose of parking at during the winter for those who lived at the bottom. I don't think this neighbor knows about that. I've been told that I "started this." Whatever "this" is.

My 18 y/o daughter has worked hard and made many accomplishments, but she has begun to make choices I don't agree with. I like to reward my children. I like to give them more than what I had. The privileges I have given her, that happen to cost me much money are not as easy to maintain as they used to be. Her child support is gone. The government feels that at the magical age of 18, or at the end of state-mandated education, that noncustodial parents should no longer be held responsible for financial support. Since we homeschool and her child support is her father's SSD necessitated by a course of events that would take another post to describe, her child support ended last month when she turned 18. I would continue with these privileges at a greater expense to myself without too much complaint, but for the choices being made that will be detrimental to there being an end in sight for my slave labor. Since it appears that nobody is accountable but me for her actions, I've decided to relieve some of my accounting issues until she makes some better choices.

My 18 y/o daughter is not happy. One of her friends joined a Facebook group entitled something like, "Parents are just grown-up kids with money." She herself joined a Facebook group with a bunch of teenage hedging answers that went something like, "Silent treatment: Yeah mom, okay mom, um, yeah, okay, BYE." So I must assume I'm on the receiving end of "silent treatment." And that my daughter may soon be telling me goodbye. I may be misreading that.

I planned and worked very hard to be able to have what I have. It wasn't given to me. When someone has no concept of what that took, to be able to provide them with what I have, I can give them the benefit of the doubt for young ignorance. However, when they begin to act like they are entitled to what I give them, and hold me responsible for their ill feelings that I will not give my blessing on certain things, I begin to feel taken advantage of.

Money doesn't just fall out of the sky. I'd say it doesn't grow on trees, if I didn't recall hearing that too many times myself. I was looking for some group on Facebook to join that was equally derogatory towards teenagers, and found VAST ill-willed cache of just more nasty teenager groups. The majority said stuff like, "Parents think they understand teenagers but they don't." Oh yeah? I'm laughing out loud. Parents have been teenagers. When teenagers try their hand at parenting, I'll be more inclined to consider the idea that I don't understand.

The best I could find was, "Support Group for Parents of Hormonal Teens." I came a fingertap's length from joining, but I stopped myself. I love my daughter, and I really don't want to insult her, although it is tempting. As with my neighbor, I'm going to stick to my guns. My actions are not vindictive; they are based on stewardship and concern for what is best in the long haul. If someone else is inconvenienced, I am sorry, but it was not to intentionally hurt or insult them - it is for the protection of what is good and right. Ethically I cannot condone certain paths that I have seen time after time change lives for the worse for so many people. I do understand, all too well. My resolve might not be so strong if I didn't have to tighten my belt so hard. But I just cannot carry myself and all that baggage across the deep river. If she wants to make choices that are going to cost me more money, she is going to have to shoulder the bill.

What others do about my choices is on their own conscience, and the consequences of those actions is on them, NOT me. I am entirely willing to give and to provide; to love and to support, but my back is only so strong. When it begins to ache from the weight, I am not taking on more.

Lazy?

I have been completely lazy this holiday season. I haven't cut any wood. I haven't even brought wood in. I haven't fed any animals. I didn't salt the drive so we could get out. And yet the wood got cut and split, brought in, a fire was kept going, and the driveway was salted.

Wait a minute though. I worked on Christmas Day, a 12-hour shift. There were only 3 of us nurses, and 7 patients. The person being charge nurse left early for a family emergency, and so I ended up being the charge nurse on the cardiac floor I work on for 4 hours while carrying a very light patient load. Then I worked the next 2 days, 12-hour shifts also. In the midst of this, I came up with gifts for Christmas Eve, even though I didn't shop for them. (We can be creative here). I motivated my family to get washed and dressed and to the church service on time, and went to my in-law's annual Christmas Eve late dinner and party. I took 3 vegan dishes so my vegan college son would have nutritious food to eat. I guess that means I spent most of the day cooking on Christmas Eve. Beans - garbanzo beans for hummus, black beans for Texas caviar, and Anasazi beans for stew and homemade veggie burgers. I got 3 hours of sleep that night, before working 12 hours Christmas Day.

I took care of two patients who were positive for acute MI's, and started both on heparin drips, and one on an Integrillin drip. I got heart cath orders ready for the doctors. I made the assignments for the night shift nurses coming on, and figured out staffing with the house supervisor, and called and gave two very happy nurses time off. We still had a lot of time to chit-chat.

The night before my 3rd 12-hour shift, our 3-year-old daughter awoke at 3am, and needed to pee. She has gone 2 weeks being night trained. I knew my husband was as tired as I was - feeding, bringing in wood, getting his broken-down pick-up fixed, helping his brother with cattle - so I got up and helped her to the bathroom. And then I couldn't go back to sleep. I ran on caffeine that day at work.

3 days in a row, or should I say 3 nights in a row, the most sleep I got on any of those given nights was maybe 4 hours. I awoke with a headache on Monday morning.

Monday, my brother came to visit from Iowa. He is vegetarian. After 3 days of work, most of the vegan food I had made on Christmas Eve was exhausted, and my mother was out running around and didn't know what to cook for dinner. So between tending my neglected Facebook farms (Farm Town and Farmville), I made some new Anasazi bean soup in a big pot and some fresh cranberry sauce. Some hunters came by and asked if they could hunt rabbits. They had family in town and wanted to spend the day out together. We heard a burst of gunshots once, and figured they were all shooting at the same rabbit. They left us a rabbit, just before we drove 20 miles with our newly cooked vegetarian food to my mother's, where we had a very nice and long overdue visit with my youngest brother and his family.

Yesterday, (Tuesday), I spent the entire day on the computer building my virtual farms. I guess I did spend a couple of hours playing school with Eilidh. I did manage to entice my teenagers out of their rooms to play elementary Bingo with lower-case letters, feigning excitement with each letter called out, a game of Flinch, and a game of Go Fish. That was all a 3-year-old could tolerate in one sitting. By Go Fish, the game board was being repeatedly disorganized with resultant giggles, and it ended before it was finished. The 17 and 20 year-olds had more fun than they thought they would though.

Today, I feel as though I've been lazy. There are no excuses for the things I haven't done.

Wish I Had A Camera

...when Eilidh, the 3 y/o kept closing the door, but Peanut, the new kitten, got in each time before she got it shut. She'd pick up the kitten, put it back out, and try to close the door again, only to have the kitten run in again before she got it shut. The kitten was happy to let a 3 y/o pick it up like a wet noodle and carry it out and run back in, over and over and over

...when the goats and sheep snuck around the other side of the house from me quickly, and entered the neighbor's yard, only to find their dogs were out

...when the 3 y/o made sparkly crowns out of the trim for the Grange booth at the county fair, as we were setting it up, and put one on the head of every woman there, and they walked around working with their crowns on as if nothing were odd

...when a patient at work laid with their body half out of bed sideways and refused to be moved because they said they were comfortable, then proceeded to fall asleep and snore before our very eyes, and they weren't faking it because they were in alcohol withdrawl and really DID fall asleep like that

...when the goat dug up the potato in the garden and ate it

...when the lamb chased one of the roosters around the pasture for some time, kicking its hind feet up with glee and popping in the air like popcorn every so often, and having a blast

...when the 3 y/o mimics the 17 y/o in every small way because she wants to be like her, and the 17 y/o isn't even noticing. For example, at the resteraunt table, 17 y/o picks up her fork and pokes her food in deep thought. 3 y/o watches her intently, then looks for her fork, picks it up and begins poking her food exactly the same way, whilst 17 y/o is still deep in thought. 17 y/o pushes back her hat. 3 y/o sees her, and pushes back her own hat. This goes on until the 17 y/o looks up, sees the 3 y/o mimicking her and the 17 y/o begins doing things like putting a spoon on her nose.

A Little Depression

It's been a rough month. Son #1 moved back to Phoenix in June, and I finally got his room cleaned. Son #2 returned from Kenya, stayed a little over a week, messed that room up entirely, then went for his senior year in college, begging to please let him stay in college an extra year after this year. He did post-secondary option and entered halfway through his sophomore year, so this, his 3rd year, he is well within the means to graduate. 4 days before the college return-trip to North Carolina, my mother informed me she would be getting remarried that Sunday, as in the day after my son was due in college 400 miles away, and if I got back in time, could I stand up for her?

Before the marraige date was set, the announcement alone caused enough inner uneasiness to motivate me to clean out the basement during my vacation. I have not cleaned out the basement since I moved here 6 years ago and my ex-boyfriend filled it with things from my previous home. I found that he even stacked newspapers up against one entire wall, and the rodents had made nests in them. So motivation for that required a lot of uneasiness. The wedding announcement came in the midst of the basement cleaning - the horrendous basement cleaning. I spent the entire next day doing geneology. 12 to 14 hours. The wedding was beautiful though. Fred's neice and I talked arrangements over the cell phone before and during our trip to NC and back. And my brother made 3 trips to the dump for me.

And then, I crashed. For several days I was glued to this computer. And, my pants are looser. In fact, some of them are downright baggy. I haven't gotten on the scale. I know I lost 10 whole pounds getting my son ready to go to Kenya. I gained a few back in the 2 months he was gone, but I'm pretty certain I'm losing again.

I have been immobilized more days in the past month more profoundly than I have been in the past 5 years. I've been downright depressed. For the past 5 years, I've been trying to lose weight - TRYING. I lose a little, and it comes back plus some. In the past couple of months, I have not tried at all. I think I'm down maybe 15 lbs.

Why? Well, for one, as rocky a relationship as we had, I miss my father. I had always thought that living on the farm would be easier without his interferance. But it seems very empty and lonely now. Just plain empty. Two, I've sort of lost my mother. I'm used to sharing her with an enormous number of emotionally and intellectually needy people, but I'm sort of emotionally alone myself right now where having a mother is concerned. She's very distracted, and it doesn't help her at all right now that I miss my father. Three, my children are leaving. I'm helping the third one apply to colleges, and I have to say, I'm just not into it. Four, the goats keep eating my garden. They're even digging up potato's now. I saw it with my own two eyes. And I can't get myself motivated to put up a fence around the garden. Five, after a week of basement cleaning, the house is out of my control. And six, I work full-time, and I have no money. Son #2 deserves it more than any child would, but I am not going to pay $750/month tuition for him to go to school for another year when this one is over, on top of paying for my daughter. I'm just not. I like my job. I like having it. It may be the main thing keeping me sane right now, because I have to focus, and I can forget everything else for 12 hours at a time. Plus, some of my coworkers have a lot worse things going on at home than me. But I just have started to feel selfish about the money I earn doing it.

So since I am still basically functioning, I'm suffering just a little depression.

Captina Friends Cemetery

Standing on the northwest corner of the cemetery, the north being closest to the creek. The creek is down over the hill to the left. This is looking back east, towards Ohio SR 26.

On August 14, 2009, I set out to go Cemetery Hopping. I prepared in the weeks prior by entering several years of geneology correspondance into Family Tree Maker, and printing out geneology reports, going to the Belmont County Engineers website to find out who surrounding property owners were for private cemeteries, discussing places I was going and people I was looking for on geneology forums and on the phone, and by printing out maps and finding general whereabouts on a Belmont County, OH map. I had 3 cemeteries planned, but visited 5 total. Since it was prime haymaking day for my dear husband, Bruce, I took our 3 y/o, Eilidh with me. I fully expected her to self destruct early on, but instead, she had A BLAST. She even posed for me to introduce one long researched and long awaited CAPTINA FRIENDS CEMETERY, found very close to the corner of Captina Highway/SR 149 and SR 26, not very far south of Barnesville, OH. It is known in military records as the OLD BROWN CEMETERY or locally in more modern times by the family who most recently lived on the property known to the locals as the BENSON CEMETERY.

The entrance sits within sight of SR 149, with public access technically from SR 26 along the small power lines. However, I found a trailer sitting right on SR 26 with a "For Sale by Owner" sign in front. It appeared to be a hunting retreat for someone. Indeed, when I called the number on the sign, the owner lived in Akron. He said it included 74 acres, and he was asking $130,000. I wasn't in the market, but seeing as how I knew several people very interested in this cemetery, and seeing that it was an old Quaker site, it seemed a wonderful place for a Friends retreat, or for some Friend to own, just for its spiritual connection with a Meeting of the past.

There is a connection most people don't understand about many Quakers who still practice after the silence way of worship. They are sometimes spiritually bonded with the past, and the places in which that past took place. Captina Friends Meeting quit holding worship in 1836. My interest in it originally arose when my Methodist paternal grandmother left handwritten notes that one of her great aunts was married to a Smith in Captina Friends Meeting. My mother (other side of the family completely) is a Quaker, and I know of many, many Quaker Smiths through growing up being involved in Friends circles. One of my childhood playmates came from a line of them. Captina Friends Meeting records have been lost, to my understanding. Losing records is an unusual occurrence for Friends. They take notes, keep journals and pass down to their descendants notes on nearly everything.

The records may be found someday, but who knows where? They could be stored away in someone's attic, or in a back corner of an archive at a college like Swarthmore near Philadelphia, PA, or Guilford in North Carolina. I've known a few Quaker scholars on forums who frequent such places and find such suprises. Or they may be ruined and gone.

There were only about 6 legible stones in Captina Friends Cemetery. They were all but one military stones, which in a Friends Cemetery is not unusual, but their legibility in contrast to other grave markers was, indeed. At that point in history, prior to 1836, Friends did not use gravestones as we know them today, if they used markers at all. It was considered worldly. I remember hearing stories of graveyard trustees removing gravestones. I have to deduce that either the family or the military has thus placed these stones. One person who gave me directions to the cemetery was a veteran.

The stones were:

Wallace Reeves, COL 186th Ohio Inf

Milton Reeves, COL 129th Ohio Inf

S Hoopes 186th Ohio Inf

Mary Ellen (was all I could read)

J.R. & L. Catton, Died (illegible) 1819 possibly

Simeon Breech, Shot and Killed in a gunfight, birth, 23 Aug, 1782, death 30 May 1849

Abraham Gray, PVT, 3 Regt, Ulster County Militia, Rev. War, 1754, 1846 (newest stone)

I did about 10 hours of looking-up today. Samuel Hoopes was mustered for the Civil War at age 22 on 2/21/1865, and was killed 3/23/1865 in Louisville, KY.

Simeon Breech was in a gunfight as law enforcement between two people, as the story goes, and neither one survived.

Abraham Gray was born to Louis M. and Loretta Marie Ann Gray in NY; married Sheryl Marie (uk last name) and had children John, Peter 18 Jun 1787 Ulster County, Benjamin 1788 and Samuel 1791.

I could not find any information on the Catton, nor the two Reeves.

George Wetzel, Lewis Wetzel's father, was buried at the head of Captina Island which sits in the Ohio River near the mouth in April 1782 after being hit in the chest with a bullet during a hunting trip with his two sons. "That Dark and Bloody River," Allan W. Eckert.

The Battle of Captina, according to Martin Baker, took place in 1794, a full account which can be found at the website of a nearby bed&breakfast:

http://strattonhouse.com/index.php?section=history&content=31135103

Sometime after 1794 to 1836 spanned the possible existance of Captina Friends Meeting. That was about 40 years. Walking through this graveyard on a sunny, comfortable August day in 2009 gave me a spiritual feeling, a bond with my ancestors and relatives who may or may not have been buried there. You can't tell where the meetinghouse might have once stood. But ginseng grew at the base of one of the illegible gravestones, in defiance of its once massive harvest. It is a beautiful place. I hope that whomever the owner sells it to will appreciate its significance in the history of this area of Ohio.

East Finley Friends Cemetery, est. 1700

I've been depressed for 2 weeks. It is a milestone to make that statement because I tend to deny, even to myself, that I'm not coping well. The action was somewhat premeditated, somewhat whimsical. On my way home from work two days ago, I took the Claysville exit and decided to look for an old cemetery.

I had tried 2 0r 3 years ago without success. Since then I lost the directions. For a week, I've been looking for the directions. I finally resorted to calling an old coworker whose number I still had. When I first began working in Washington County in 2004, I was taken aback at how many people came into the hospital talking about "up by Quaker Hill," or "out by that old Quaker cemetery," or referred to a Quaker place of some sort. I was at a loss to find any Quakers, of which I am one. What happened to all of them? I had only dabbled a little into geneology at that time, but enough to know they had once populated that part of the state fairly thickly. Now there were virtually none.

Jimmy Carter's book, "The Hornets Nest," made me realize that Washington may have been a major crossroads from the South, once-upon-a-time. And then there was the day I decided to look straight back my maternal line. I ran directly into Agnes Childrey, the reknowned ancestor among Quakers who was kidnapped by Indians from a Quaker settlement in Georgia, raised by them, and then rescued by the man who would become her husband, and also my ancestor. It occurred to me that the Indians who kidnapped her were most likely the Creeks, from whom Bartram learned his New World botany.

Someone on a geneology group I belonged to asked a question, and I opened up my copy of Bill Taber's book, "The Eye of Faith," lovingly given to me by my parents when it was published, to find the answer. Bill's daughter is one of my best friends. There, in the back cover, was a map of meetings in western PA in the 1800's. The map had been there all along.

In 2004, this somewhat annoying coworker kept mixing me up with Mennonites. She and her friends went to Amish Country, and it made her think of me. I lent her "The Peaceable Kingdom," by Jan de Hartog, hoping to help her understand a little better. She never read it. But she came to work one day, telling me about this really old Quaker graveyard in East Findlay, which I came to discover was south of Claysville. Her husband had a friend who worked in the township garage, and knew where it was. She gave me directions. Some people came to care for it every year, but she didn't know who they were. They would cut trees and clean it up a little.

Two weeks ago now, my mother announced she was getting married again. I was already struggling with emotions about something else. I was truly happy for her. But what I didn't expect was to miss my father so much. I realized on about the 3rd day while searching frantically for these 2-years-lost graveyard directions that I was compensating for my grief by looking for my ancestors. I'd been stacking up papers and documents people had sent to me selflessly for just as long. One day I spent over 8 hours putting all that information into Family Tree Maker. I had lots of more important things to do, but could not draw myself away from geneology.

I gave up looking, finally, and called Linda. After yelling questions to her husband in the other room, she deduced that you followed East Finley Road until it ended and forked 3 ways, and you turned left. Then there was some road you went down with berry in the name - she thought maybe Strawberry. She said she'd ask her husband's friend for directions again. We chatted some more about our employer, coworkers, patients, pregnancies and breastfeeding, and said goodbye.

My depression was about 2 weeks ripe. On a whim after work on Tuesday, on my way home, I got off at the Claysville exit. No, I didn't have any directions other than what she told me over the phone. It was not entirely an intelligent thing to do. There was 1/4 tank of gas in my car. My cell phone had been shut off for nonpayment due to a $450 bill that takes too much explanation, but the point is, I couldn't call my husband to tell him I'd be late. I went on anyway. I turned right at the Sacred Heart Church in Washington - the one across the road from the Methodist Church, on old Route 40 as you're entering Claysville, PA. The road markers along the way said I was on East Finley Road. It wasn't quite dusk yet - around 7:30 in early August. It had rained earlier in the day and was a little moist and misty, but the air was clear. I cracked my windows a little and turned down the air, and put in a CD with Celtic music.

I drove, thinking I should turn off to the left somewhere. I had two years earlier, I thought. Did this road really dead end into 3 forks? It was too well-kept. I looked across the voluminous foothills of farms, thinking about the Quakers moving through and settling there, and wondering, "What place would they have liked to live and farm?" I asked my ancestors and God to guide me, and whispered a few prayers under my breath. It was a beautiful, soft, cool, humid evening after a long day at work. I took each curve slowly, in order to peer out and imagine what it may have looked like 100 or more years sooner. The stop sign came after about 3 1/2 miles, and I turned left. The marker said Pleasant Grove Road. I slowed down and read the markers as I passed each dirt road - Block House Road, Buckeye Road. Someone in an SUV was behind me. I came upon a parking area for a public hunting ground and pulled off. No Strawberry Roads yet.

I went on. Eventually, the road ended with a 2-way fork. There was a building that looked like a town hall or an old Grange building to the left of the fork, and a very clean graveyard directly across the fork with a lot of big, shiny stones and a statue of Mary prominent in the front. Not Quaker. Where did I go now? I decided to turn right, and said to myself, "You should just go back." Just past the right corner of the fork was a dirt road going steeply downhill to the right. The first letter was blackened on both sides. All I could read was "aspberry." My heart skipped a beat. I heard the stones crackle under my wheels as I turned down into a dirt road leading into the woods. I came to another dirt road. Raspberry seemed to cross it diagonally, so on I went. And then it dead ended into another fork, and this time there were no markers.

How silly of me. Dusk was advancing, but it wasn't very dark yet. I was in deep woods now, on a dirt road in remote southwestern PA. I thought, "If I turn right, this road may go back up to Pleasant Grove, and if it doesn't, I'll just turn around and go back the way I came." I drove a little ways, and I saw a chain link fence ahead with no associated buildings. It looked like a graveyard. There was a very tall tree in it, and it was surrounded with tall trees, and there was a sign. A feeling of excitement overwhelmed me. There was lots of parking room, so I pulled to the left, off the road next to the fence and read the sign. It said, "Quaker Cemetery, est. 1700." I was smiling, laughing, tickled with joy as I got out of the car. I opened the gate and went in. There was ivy everywhere. And sassafras trees and poplar trees to my chest, and nettles. And poison ivy. I don't normally get poison ivy, so that wasn't a deterrent. I squatted to look at a partially moss-covered gravestone, and couldn't read the inscription, so I ran my fingers along the letters. I don't remember what it said, just that touching the stone made me feel connected to the people who once made that their spiritual home. I looked around, trying to imagine a meetinghouse there. It could have been anyplace. It could have been where the roads were, or where the tall trees were. The woods were getting dark, and I remembered that there were bears in this part of PA. But I walked around the graveyard anyway. Some of the gravestones were sunken into the ground, and a few of the graves were too. One gravestone was sunken and right against the base of that tall tree, as if the roots had grown around the stone and pulled it down into the ground in a hug.

I thought, "If I fall into a grave, nobody will know where I am." But I kept walking around, wondering that some of the stones were very large and fancy for Quakers in the 1700's. Well, no. Quakers did not become particularly "plain" until the 1800s. Before that, some of them were quite wealthy and prominent. These were prominent farmers, coming up from the deep South, and in from the east, before the Revolutionary War, during the time of slavery and big plantations. They would have been wealthy. They would have known the Indians as friends or Friends; brothers and sisters in Christ, unlike the attitude of most settlers of that time. They were my people from a long, long time ago. Lost in the beautiful woods. They would have liked having ivy and nettles and sassafras growing on their graves.

I took in my fill of the sight, and the smell, and the sounds of the woods. Some big motor was running very far off in the distance, but I could not hear any cars or planes or people. It sounded like a big machine, like a shovel or bulldozer revving, and was very rare and intermittent. Otherwise, it was just very quiet woods. I got into my car, full of fresh air, and went back the way I came. I set the trip odometer each time I turned onto a new road, and jotted down the mileage.

My depression is gone. Ever since that moment, I have felt an indescribable feeling of happiness. I found a Friends Cemetery that is not even on Quaker maps.

Karma

Karma is the faint hope of those who have been taught to not take action on vindictive feelings. Most of my life I thought that people who counted on Karma were just misguided. It isn't that I thought they should take matters into their own hands - not that at all. I just didn't have much faith in "what comes around goes around," actually going around all by itself. Since I was well schooled in the attitude of non-getting-back, I usually sighed, moved on and resigned myself to being whooped.

But I've seen Karma come to pass enough times. I've come to believe in it, sort of. I've learned that some people really do test fate until it strikes them. One way I've seen this happen is in my employment situations. Every employer who has fired me has folded. Not that there are many, but it is true. I like to think that this is because I am a sort of litmus test person for business success. If an employer can't cope with my specific issues, they won't make it. I've never had to take any action in putting someone out of business. I also don't believe there is any Phantom of the Opera watching over me. I think the phenomena of closing businesses is a self-induced Karma of the employer.

There are also the nurses, doctors and politicians who are know-it-alls. They tend to know themselves right out of their jobs.

A few months ago, I wrote to a politician. After I sent the email, I reread it, and it sounded like a threat. I told them the same would happen to them as had happened to others in their shoes who didn't listen to me. It was a philosophical threat though. I had no intention of doing a thing to make anything bad happen to them. I was suprised afterwards that I had come to have that much faith in Karma.

The thing was, what I wrote was true, and I knew it.

Evidence

A towel that hangs in the bathroom was covered with bug debris and spider web bits. Yesterday it was clean. I wondered first if it had been dropped on the floor or dragged about the house and then hung back up. My husband and daughter wouldn't have done that. They would have thrown it in the hamper. My 3 year old is too short to hang it there. Bug debris? I looked up. There, above the toilet, was the light. It is an old-fashioned light with a glass dish that is held on by something that screws in at its base. There was a clear area, where some large bug had buzzed and scattered debris of previous bugs clean.

Two days ago I was startled by an ivory beetle buzzing around my bathroom, after I had gotten naked for the shower. I caught the beetle in a jar and identified it. It was of the ilk of the elm borer, for which purple bags hang about trees all through the midwest. The ivory beetle eats (and kills) hardwood trees. It was enormous, in comparison to the gnats, moths and mayflies that are found in my bathroom in the morning. I concluded it must be bad beetle season. I saw no beetles today, but the debris on my towel and my dislike for that ivory beetle convinced me that a bad beetle was the culprit of such an evil deed.

Evidence is a puzzle. We don't always come to the correct conclusions about what it means, but it takes us closer. We are natural borne hunters. We spent much more of our evolution looking for tracks in the woods than we did shopping for deals at grocery stores. We are hard-wired for curiosity. Perhaps that is why I find books like "Tracker" so engaging, and the nursing field and nursing theory so interesting at times.

My first nursing instructor traumatized me, but she also fascinated me. She could tell what was wrong with someone by looking at them. Painstakingly, she taught me these skills also.

It has come to amuse me when a patient - or an acquaintance - wonders how I know something about them. After 12 years of helping doctors figure it out, I've become fairly good at it. But like all clues, they don't always lead one to the correct conclusion. There are tricky situations that baffle even the smartest or most educated.

Still, a simple "head to toe assessment" done thoroughly can find a book of information about a person. Slightly jaundiced sclera and a bulging right upper abdomen are telltale signs that someone may like their beer, for instance. Trying to get an IV in someone with seemingly good veins, only to have them pop and bleed one after the other is sometimes a pretty good indicator that a person is on a steroid. Going to work is a daily puzzle. It is the craziest part of the day, those morning assessments, looking 5 people over, getting their vitals, writing it into the computer, and then sorting through the slue of doctors bombarding the nurse's station with the most pertinant finds of the day so they can order tests and treatments. It is maddening, but in a hunter-gatherer sort of way, it has come to be something like a fun board game. The object of the game is to get the person better and send them home.

The Examen

One of my favorite books of all time is called, "Sleeping With Bread, Holding What Gives You Life."

Click on the title, "The Examen" to be taken to the Google book version.

The book guides you to meditate for a short while each day on two things: what you are most grateful for, and what you are least grateful for. At points in my life when I've felt lost, or needing direction, doing this excercise for even a few days in a row has helped me immensely. When written down in journal form, the excercise can be gone back to at later dates to help regain focus.

Today I am most grateful for sleep and the freedom to rebound after working two 12-hour night shifts. I've not always had that freedom, nor the ability or peace to sleep. I've not always had someone understanding around to watch my children or take care of everything.

I am least grateful for my own forgetting to return a key that was lent to me at work last night. The key is an extra that opens the medication drawers in patient rooms on a particular unit. Work is a 45 minute drive in a direction I don't normally go unless I'm going there to work. It will be a 1 1/2 hour trip on my day off to return the key. If I don't return it until the next day I work, which is Tuesday, every nurse needing the extra key will be inconvenienced for 4 days. I have to take it back and spend the money on gas, or live with feeling guilty.

My gratefulness tells me that I've made life choices to put me in a position of more comfort. It is one of the more selfish gratefulnesses I've had, but it feels good to know that what I wanted at one time, something that seemed difficult to obtain, I now have. Gratefulness for me tends to center around time spent with my children, or making others feel good, or helping people, so today, what stands out is a little different. My ungratefulness tells me to pay more attention to small things so I don't end up feeling guilty.

This book was laying on the end table in the home of a person I considered a great teacher in my life. I was there for a meditation group, and picked it up while waiting for others to arrive. I liked it so much that I bought myself a copy. If I'd recommend one book to my friends and enemies alike, it would be this one.

Snow, Travel and Christmas

I have gained 40 pounds since becoming a nurse 11 years ago.

Last night we went to the local homeschool association's Christmas presentation. We weren't going to go, but one or more mothers asked my daughter to perform dances she learned with other teens for a Pride and Prejudice book study. Most, if not all the girls made their dresses or dresses were made for them. And it was the mothers who ran this show. My husband, our 2 y/o, my mother and a friend of my mother's went. My mother made the dress, and it was the fanciest of them all. Parents weren't allowed at the dinner of the book study, so this was our big and wonderful opportunity to see the kids dance in full 18th century garb.

I'm sort of the odd one out in that group. Now granted, all the homeschooling parents are a little odd, and each from the rest in their own ways. But I WORK. I have the utmost regard for women who stay home; but none of these homeschooling mothers carry such a demanding job ALSO. And I am divorced and remarried; have kept my maiden name, different from the names of my first 3 children, and both different from my husband and 4th child. And I am the primary income earner. We live on a farm. Compared to those women, I am very odd.

Lately I am tired all the time. The manager of our nursing unit told me recently that I look sad all the time. She doesn't know me very well. I'm just tired. Working full-time as a nurse on a unit where patients require some relatively intense care is draining. Driving to North Carolina 3 times in 1 1/2 months for 18 hour round trips on the few days I had off adds to the draining. Looking after in a weak sort of way, a 16 y/o's homeschooling, and helping care for a 2 y/o on top of all of this is draining even more. And topping off a weekend of bringing home 2 of my college son's friends for a week of Christmas break, with working a day shift, and ending the day with such a Christmas program, (and stopping at the store in between for a gift for the charity box at the door, and at the bank to find out why my ATM card didn't work at the gas station the day before - was a fluke I guess, cause it worked at the bank), was just, well, I went straight to bed when I got home, finally, after the program.

The 2 y/o went dressed in blue jeans, because somehow I forgot to do her laundry, and she ran out of dress clothes. (Did I mention I made pancakes and somehow got 7 teenagers up and off to Quaker Meeting the Sunday before the Monday of interest?...no I didn't mention that).

Yesterday, 3 of the 4 patients in my pod were VERY needy - feeding tubes, confusion, doting families with lots of questions,...and to watch a raised eyebrow or two at my 2 y/o's jeans just made me feel like, well, that was just too bad for them.

Several people commented that they were glad to see that I got back from NC alive. And I remembered, oh yes, there was snow. The program was cancelled last Thursday because of a terrible snow, and rescheduled for Monday. I took advantage of this and made an early start to NC, and got along south before the worst of the storm. Apparently this added to my oddity and was of central concern to many people!

Of all things for people to worry about me regarding. I think it is the chocholate. My feet hurt. I'd like some chocholate right now, in fact.

Goats in the September Garden

I have a confession to make. My goats obliterated my beautiful garden. Out of all that work, I got not one brussel sprout or kolarabi; not one green pepper. The squash bugs ate the rotting pumpkins. The ducks ate the tomatoes - I finally beat them to one that was changing color. The Jobs Tears fought for survival, but never got very tall before they were grazed again, and again.

There were some successes despite the goats. We got some tomatillos, cilantro and blessed thistle. We had a bumper crop of beets, and harvested a few carrots. We beat the goats to a few beans and some black Aztec corn. So it wasn't a total loss.

Next year, we hope to have a fence around the garden. This isn't a very good picture, but it gives the general idea. I gave up. It may be that Karma caught up with me for assuming I could go public with my garden. Things like that tend to happen to me - it is why I am sometimes afraid to succeed or brag about succeeding. Someone will find it bragging, and get me for it, somehow. This time, it was the goats!

Vermont Castings Dutchwest wood cookstove

Bruce is loading our new stove for the first time.
Eilidh (EYE lee) (age 27 months) is clapping the morning it is all finally installed. Note the flat cook-top. This stove has been in about 2 weeks now. We've fried steak and eggs on it during a 3-day power outage when Ike came through Ohio. We also have pasteurized milk on it in an enamel pan, and made homemade soap on it already. It is quite efficient. Yesterday I could feel its heat upstairs in this old farmhouse. Bruce has percolated coffee on it a few times, and found that coffee stays at a perfect warmth without continuing to percolate, sitting on an iron trivet on top. No more keeping coffee and tea warm on "simmer" on the electric stove.

Homeschooling

We have embarked on our first experience at homeschooling. It is a most interesting experience. It has taken me months to sort out what kind of homeschoolers we really are, and to learn the rules and the lingo. We are eclectic and traditional.

My 16 y/o daughter was taking advanced classes in public school and did well to the end of her sophomore year last year. This year at home we are studying what she would have been taking: World History, Literature, Chemistry and Pre-Calculus/Trigonometry. She is also studying French, taking 2 art classes from the local Oglebay Institute (oil painting and ceramics); acoustic guitar lessons, and the HS principal has permitted her to continue being active in the drama club. She is the stage manager in the fall play. She's a self starter, so homeschooling her is probably easier than it would be some other teenagers.

"Homeschooling" a 2 y/o little girl is really just play. But I have printed out lists of things she needs to accomplish by kindergarten. I've already graduated 2 boys from high school. One of them was in speech therapy from age 2 to about 8, so I have a pretty good idea of what needs done already. I have been gifted with 4 healthy children who always could probably have done better if I'd homeschooled them, provided I had known what I was doing. So my second husband and I are going to try it from the beginning with this one. Well, the oldest I may not have had success with. He is very bright, but was always a challange, and I think having someone other than his mother teaching him was a wise idea. But the others could have easily been homeschooled.

I have help. The 16 y/o and my husband have been teaching the 2 y/o number recognition. I didn't realize this until last night when she was pointing at numbers in a book and saying their proper names. Preschool skill lists also help. Like I didn't realize that cutting out little pieces of paper with scissors was something desireable. My husband disapproved teaching her how to use scissors. We will just have to keep scissors in a secure place from here on.

The public school guidance counselor is worried about my daughter, and my pulling her out of school. She doesn't know it, but she is part of the reason I did. I hope to knock her socks off with what we accomplish at home this year and next. I think my daughter will do better without her guidance.