What I Noticed in the Toy Kitchen Ad

I was flipping through a Costco catalog recently and came across the toy kitchen ad above.  It struck me as odd, and I spent some time studying it to see if I could figure out why it gave me that impression.  I decided the main thing that puzzled me is that the children seem so detached from any involvement with the kitchen.  The girl especially seems to simply be passing by.  She steadies herself by holding the countertop.  She is equipped with a cell phone.  Perhaps she is going to order a pizza and re-heat it in the microwave? The boy appears to be holding on to the back of the refrigerator with his right hand while he half-heartedly reaches for the handle of the refrigerator.   Both children may need to hold on to something because, if you notice their feet, they each have one foot turned on its side.  It's not a stance that lends itself to taking action.   It seems really odd to me that both children have their feet placed this way.

An alternative explanation of the detachment from activity is that the photographer needed the children out of the way to be able to showcase the kitchen.  However, this could have been overcome by showing the girl putting something in the sink and showing the boy in the act of filling a glass from the water dispenser in the refrigerator door--or many other options.

I decided to look at vintage ads for toy kitchens to see what I could learn by comparison.  I chose to study the one below.

Of course the pink appliances are noticeably different from the first picture and imply that the kitchen is the girl's/woman's domain, but the main thing I notice that is different from the modern ad is that each unit is open, implying active participation.  I can't tell if the girl's hand is actually touching the refrigerator handle, but the door is open, and she is holding something in her other hand--maybe a plate--definitely something to do with kitchen play.  She is clearly happily involved in her pretend world.   And look at her feet.  Both are flat on the floor.  I notice that she doesn't lean on anything.  After looking at her and seeing how upright she is, I recalled how good posture used to be emphasized to children.  I even remember being instructed in proper sitting posture in first grade in 1966, which included both feet being firmly planted on the ground.

With this insight, I went back and looked again at the children above with their turned feet.   I think the modern girl looks more confident than the modern boy.  She gets the more upscale outfit and shoes; he gets the sneakers and jeans.  The oversized untucked shirt gives him a soft look overall.  

Looking back at the pink kitchen, I notice the emphasis of time.  See the big clock above the stove?  This girl is going to get meals cooked on time.  She is productive.  I don't get that impression from the modern children.  

Maybe "hanging out" is the new play.

The Husband as Gardener

Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Brueghel, Jan the Elder

With the acceptance of divorce by Christians, the idea of the husband as gardener has slipped from our imaginations.  This God-given role is a beautiful one, indeed.  It is explained brilliantly in True Men As We Need Them by Rev. Bernard O'Rielly.  I've read the following passages too many times to count, and they always inspire me.

The idea is first introduced in Chapter II, "Creation Of A Home, The First Work":

Adam had been created outside of this Garden of Delights, in some less favored portion of the vast domain reserved for his descendants.  He thus was enabled, when transferred by his Divine Benefactor to the earthly paradise, to judge by comparison of the immense superiority of his new abode to all that his eyes had beheld hitherto.  This brief experience prepared him to improve by his own husbandry even the teeming soil of paradise, and to guard with unwearied watchfulness the untold wealth,--intrusted to him not only in all the produce of this fairy spot, but in his own soul and its destinies, in the companion soon given to him in Eve, in their united innocence and bliss, and in the welfare of their offspring.

Thus, in the Home bestowed on him who first on earth bore the name of father and discharged its duties, we find that there was imposed a double law, regarding solely home-happiness and well-being,--the law of labor and of vigilance.

This law is still the blessed necessity which ennobles the life of man, and creates within his earthly home all that it can possess of bliss and nobleness:  Every true man has to work to create his home, when he has it not; to preserve and increase its stores, where he receives it by inheritance, and he has to watch over its honor, its happiness, its security, with a most loving care.

Then, in Chapter IV, "Paradise As Realized In The Home Of The True Man," I will share three most edifying paragraphs under the subtitle, "How a True Man should Choose his Companion, and Cultivate her Heart."  May that phrase, "cultivate her heart," be the mantra of all young husbands!

We must not, however, anticipate on what has to be treated fully in its proper place.  Suffice it to say at present, that even when parents have solely consulted the Divine Will and the best interests of their son in choosing for him or in directing his choice,--or even when he has been given a woman endowed with all the natural and supernatural graces that make her a treasure beyond price,--much, very much remains for the young husband to do if he would call forth all the wealth of his treasure, and apply it to the best uses.  (emphasis mine)

A rich womanly nature demands to be known, to be appreciated, to be developed by the deep love, the ingenious tenderness, the unfailing devotion, the delicate and respectful attentions, --ever growing in assiduity with each successive year,--of her young husband.

You have chosen, from out the varied wealth of the garden and the forest, the loveliest and rarest flower that attracted your eye; will you have it brighten and perfume your home to the utmost?  Then study its nature, its habits, what soil it likes best, what companions suit it (for plants and flowers also have their preferences), what degree of moisture, of heat, of shade, or of sunshine.  Gardeners will tell you that wild flowers from the meadow, the woods, or the mountains, will seem to change their nature under care of an intelligent and loving hand, and in a few seasons become so beautiful that they seem to have been transformed by culture.  Not that only; but the flowers most beautiful by nature are so much improved by the art of the gardener, that their charms are not only increased tenfold, but varied continually so as to create ever new surprise and delight.  And who does not know that the horticulturist's skill can enhance to a wonderful extent the qualities of the most delicious fruits of our fields or our gardens?

Fr. O'Rielly sums up the importance of "cultivating her heart" magnificently under the subtitle, "This is 'to Dress and to Keep' the Home-Garden":

To you, O man of the world, your home-garden, your paradise,--the source of your purest and dearest felicity on this side of the grave, is the mind and heart and soul of your wife, your companion, the mother of your children.  Her soul, her life, is given you "to dress and to keep;" and on your appreciating her nature and her worth, on your knowing how to call forth by your love, your care, your devotion to her service, by the sunlight of your examples much more even than by your mere love and tenderness,--must depend whether or not you shall have a home-garden, a paradise,--or a hell upon earth.

Is that not incredibly empowering for the young husband?  With loving care he cultivates the rose upon the trellis to burst into bloom and perfume his garden.  It is a labor of love, worthy of his best efforts.  How dramatically we could prune back the number of divorces if we taught young men to be cultivators of their wives' hearts!  This is why I encourage you, dear reader, to share this post.  We all desperately need this instruction on the lost art of husbanding a wife, as we each have opportunities to support Catholic marriages.  Sharing the information is an easy way to help restore the Church.  May God bless you in your efforts.

 

The Big-Little, Scary-Wonderful, St. Patrick's Day Surprise

With Holy Week and all, I kind of lost track of time, but somewhere in the last two weeks I told you about getting our furniture moved back in the house from the garage, where we had been keeping it while flood repairs were being done on our house.  When we put it there, we thought it would be for a month.  It's been, um, let me see...almost five months.

Anyway, so we got the furniture put back in by a wonderful crew of guys from Three Men, only they sent four men, which was great.  That was the evening we went to see the Mary Poppins musical.  I guess it was the next night, St. Patrick's Day, that I was walking down the hallway and heard Emma squeal in her bedroom and a drawer slam shut.

I rushed into her room and found her kneeling on the floor in front of her dresser.  I asked her what happened.

"There's a baby possum in my drawer," she explained, grinning.

I did not feel any urge to join her in grinning.

"Oh, no." I said.

She slowly pulled open the drawer.

Amongst the clothes in the left rear corner, there was a ball of fur.  At first I didn't think it was real.  It reminded me of this cat toy we have.  But then I saw its nose and eyes, and my heart sank.

"He's soooo cute!  Can I keep him, Mama?" Emma implored.

"NO."

I hurried out and retrieved a cat carrier, and Emma scooped up the possum baby and cuddled him until I prompted her to cage him.  She popped him inside. I latched the door with enormous relief.

"That was too easy," I thought to myself.  "Have you checked the other drawers, Emma?"

"Yes," she replied.  "I'll look again, though."

I fought the urge to succumb to deep despair when her search revealed two more baby possums.  These two were not docile like their sibling.  They scurried away.

One of them tried to squeeze itself under the back of the dresser, which afforded Emma the opportunity to gently poke its belly and giggle.

After a few minutes of attempting to catch them inside the dresser, one of them made a run for it, charging toward the opposite wall.

"Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!" I screamed.

The renegade possum sought shelter under Emma's bed.  After much maneuvering, we managed to chase it into Emma's closet, where she nabbed the varmint with the help of a towel.

Possum number three was flat out perturbed with us by the time Emma got a hold of him.  He grinned his horrifying grin while Emma cooed over him.

"May I keep him, Mama?"

"NO."

At last the three possums were caged, and I took the cat carrier to the back yard, placed it next to a big oak tree, and opened the door.

Returning to Emma's room, I found Emma emptying drawers.  There were possum poops in there.

Gross.

She had hoped to spend the night in her room for the first time since we had moved to Grandma's.  She decided tonight was not the night to do it, especially since we had begun to wonder...

"Where is Mama Possum?"

Emma left for Grandma's.  When I went to crawl into bed, I noticed something on the floor next to my nightstand.  Could it be...

Yes, it could.

It was a possum poop.

"Waaaaaa!" I cried, giving in to a few tears.

Poking around this large open box of stuff I still needed to unpack, I found one more poop.  I feared there were possums lurking inside that box.  I gingerly lifted a pair of my husband's folded jeans.  A third possum poop rolled out and plopped on the carpet.

I jumped on my bed.

I spent a harrowing night in fear of waking to find a possum crawling across my face or dangling by the curtains over my head.

No such thing happened, though.  I didn't hear any strange noises, nor see any more poops.  I guess Emma's three baby possums had ventured to my room at some point looking for their mama.

For the sake of my sanity, I refuse to consider any other possumbilities.

When Women Don Pants, Men Don Dresses and Other Lessons Carved in Granite

Nature abhors a vacuum, right?

This is my explanation for the growing problem of gender confusion.  I am frequently struck, when confronted by cross-dressing men, at how eagerly they embrace the most beautiful elements of women's traditional attire--the ruffles and laces, etc., that truly set apart a woman's clothing from a man's.  These poor, confused fellows seem to know better than most women of today how much these details help a woman represent her charm and delicacy, her dependence, which a man finds such a delightful counterpoint to his leadership role and helps inspire him to love her as Christ loves the Church.

So my dear lady readers, if you desire to establish the Social Reign of Christ the King in the the Masonic Land of  Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, forego voting at the polls and instead wear beautiful dresses.  You will be surprised at the marvelous impact you will have as you do your part to restore the order established by God.

+++++++

Just the other day I was tugging two trash cans to the road down my long driveway, when one of the roofers who was working on our house rushed to my assistance and valiantly bore my burdens away.  I had had absolutely no interaction with this man previously.  I simply wore a soft gray skirt and soft rose-colored top with flower embroidery.  That did all my communicating for me.

Of course, in some cases, the dress alone is not enough.  For instance, last week, when my new countertops were installed, I, wearing a dress and apron, expressed concern that the new granite countertop that was supposed to be deep enough to use as a bar, was significantly less so than I had discussed with the contractor.  This caused such a flurry of concerned exchanges among the workers, who so desperately wanted to please me, that within minutes the granite man, Mario, brought me his phone with the contractor on the other end.  Fortuitously, the contractor and I had had an occasion the day before to resolve another countertop issue agreeably by my willingness to accept his expert recommendation over my previously decided upon course.

The way it played out was that he had serious reservations about my choice but told me he would do what I wanted.

"You're the boss," he stated, matter-of-factly.

I immediately assured him that I did not want to "be the boss", which somewhat took him aback.

And since he and the granite man both agreed that my plan for dealing with this issue would be unattractive and less usable, I told them that I would happily defer to them, as they were experts and had far more experience in this situation than I.

This news proved quite hard for the contractor to believe; he kept trying to win me over and explain again why I would be unhappy doing it my way.

"You do not have to keep explaining," I assured him.  "I accept your recommendation.  I trust you and Mario to make the best decision, and I leave it to you and him to work out the details."

Pure shock registered on the poor man's face, as well as on the face of the other workers who had stopped what they were doing to pay attention to this discussion.  The shock soon turned to pleasure, however, and I have reaped the benefits ever since.  More on that later.

And, he was right.  The countertop does indeed look better the way he recommended doing it.

Men long to be respected/trusted.  Women who learn this and act accordingly will find that it smoothes the way in many a thorny situation, and many pleasant things may come their way that otherwise would not.

So, when I talked with the contractor about the bar not being the right size, I could hear the grief in his voice that I was not happy.  He explained to me why it could not be done the way that we had originally discussed, and while I understood immediately the limitations he described, I could not help wailing,

"But I'm so disappointed!" as indeed, I truly was.  I had waited twelve years to address this issue, and now it would not be.

This outburst of emotion on my part apparently completely unglued him, because the next words out of his mouth, uttered with deep distress, were,

"But honey..."  

He rushed on from there, repeating his lengthy explanation of why the original plan wouldn't work and no doubt trying to cover his awkward slip.  I knew immediately that he did not intend to call me "honey".  I suspected that he had, unaware, reverted to how he dealt with his wife.  It had slipped out in the face of being confronted with The Feminine.  He finished his long apology with, "I don't want you to be disappointed!"

Poor man!  There was absolutely nothing he could do to fix it, but it grieved his manhood not to be able to make me happy.  And this is a man who is at least 15 years my junior.  This was not about trying to please me because I was an attractive young woman.  No, the woman he was struggling to please was a past-middle-age mom with graying hair, numerous wrinkles, and excess baggage in the caboose.  Haha!

This is not to say that I don't take a firm stand when necessary.  The very next day, using the authority of my husband because he was not here, I pointed out problems with some plumbing projects.  This critique was magnanimously handled by the contractor, and I can't help but believe that it would have been different if I had not gained his respect in the prior conflicts.

Now, I know that not all men will respond as well as the ones with whom I have had experience.  But in general, I believe they will, because that is the way God made them.

So, dear lady friends, I encourage you to take joy in your womanhood.   You do not need to "wear the pants" to get things accomplished, and in fact, it is better if you don't.

Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.  (Matt., 6:33)

I Know What I'm Doin'

One of the best things about taking care of my parents is getting to hear bits about their lives that I would probably have missed otherwise.

Like tonight, out of the blue, my mom told me that her Grandma Thomley cooked fantastic meals on her wood stove and that she always had sweet potatoes baking in there.  She also said that Grandma Thomley picked cotton up until the year before she died at 92 or 93 and that she was a "go-getter."

"She cooked until she died," Mom said.  This gave me pause.  I wondered if I would even want to cook until I died.  Already at age 55, some days I am pretty tired of cooking.

Then Mom remembered that she and Dad stopped to visit Grandma Thomley early in their marriage, and she was cooking cornbread and talking with them.  My dad said, "You better pay attention to that cornbread," and Grandma Thomley said, "I know what I'm doin'," not snarky, just as a statement of fact, according to my mom.  She was in her 80s at the time.

Previously the only thing my mom told me about Grandma Thomley was that she lived in a dogtrot cabin and that when she spied my mama and her twin sister coming down the road to her house, she would start in making chocolate tarts for them, and they were the best chocolate tarts ever.  As background my mom had told me that the extended family always did their hog killing at the Thomley grandparents' home and that when my grandmother experimented with the new-fangled margarine that came out during the Great Depression, the kind you had to add artificial coloring to, my mother would resolutley walk to her grandparents' house to get real butter, because the margarine was nasty.  Some things never change!

A Harley Whiz or a Helpmeet?

On New Year's Day, Emma and I made a trip to Kansas with Dear Husband.  Well, actually we followed him in the car.  He rode his Harley.

About an hour and a half into the trip, he suddenly pulled over into a car wash parking lot.  I whipped in there behind him and waited to discover the cause of this unexpected pit stop.  This waiting for him to tell me things when he is ready is something I have learned over the years.  Early in our marriage I would have instantly asked him what was going on.  This strategy did not work out well, because generally he was concentrating on the problem and how he was going to fix it and did not want the distraction of me asking questions.  It just added to his frustration.  So I have learned to wait, and when he is ready, he always comes to tell me, and everything goes much more smoothly, as I have not added stress to an already tense situation by asking questions he does not yet have the answer to.

I watched as he knelt down and began working on the bike.  This certainly did not look good.  After about ten minutes he walked over to us, described the problem, and explained that we would have to leave the bike there while we traveled back home to get the trailer.  He found a protected place to leave the bike at the Dairy Queen next door, which was closed for the holiday.

So we took off for home with Herb at the wheel.  I decided to use the key words he had used to describe the problem to me, along with the year and model of his bike, to do a Google search on my phone.  I ended up on a Harley forum and began scanning through a rather daunting list of diagnoses and fixes, most of them not doable in our situation.  However, I came across this one that was extremely simple, and I thought I would mention it to Herb and see if he thought it could apply to his problem.  He did, so we made a quick u-turn and soon arrived back at the desolate Dairy Queen.

In ten minutes, Herb gave a big thumbs up to me and Emma, and we resumed our road trip.  Later Herb told Emma that her mama is a "Harley Whiz".  That made me a little nervous, because I prefer to keep our roles clear.  He is definitely the mechanical genius in general and the Harley Whiz in particular.   So I told him that I am no Harley Whiz, that I just applied my research skills that I use regularly for taking care of my family to the situation at hand and lucked out!  He assured me that he was just teasing.

And we all lived happily ever after.

Decluttering and Divorce

One of my sisters recommended a book to me called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.  I downloaded the audiobook edition and started listening this afternoon.

"In this book, I have summed up how to put your space in order in a way that will change your life forever," states the author in the introduction.  That sounded good.  I imagined my totally decluttered home and how peace-promoting it would be.

Then she recounted praise for the book--wonderful letters from her private-course clients--who said things like, "After your course, I quit my job and did something I had dreamed of doing ever since I was a child."

"Awesomeness!" I thought to myself.  Maybe I should pause right here, grab some garbage bags and start tossing.

Before I could act on the thought, she read the next letter:

"Your course taught me to see what I really need and what I don't.  So I got a divorce.  Now I feel much happier."

Wait.  What?

This woman threw out her husband along with her old makeup samples and Jane Fonda workout videos?  And this is a good thing?  To be used as promotion for the "Konmari" technique?

Maybe I'll just keep my clutter.

The Young Man's Guide to Building a House

"This is a book about building a house. Plato and Homer and even the Bible may seem too high-minded for that. But I don’t think you can build a house that will stand for long without them. And without a house I don’t see how you could possibly survive in the years ahead. And so this is how I imagine the high and the low meet: what is true, good, and beautiful and what is useful for survival mutually reinforce each other in a well-built house. It is because Aristotle and the Apostle Paul tell us the truth that they are useful. And if MacIntyre is correct and night is falling on the Western World, then our shelters should be filled with light, good and beautiful, like a homely house at the end of the day with windows all aglow." C. R. Wiley, The Young Man's Guide to Building a House: Notes to the Reader

C. R. Wiley, a Presbyterian minister, but more importantly a father who is looking for ways to prepare his children for the future, is writing a book for young men on how to build their own house.  Writing it in installments, it will appear on The Imaginative Conservative in rough draft form before being sent to a publisher.  Wiley expects the book to run 16-24 chapters.

I think this is such a marvelous idea.   We have grown so disconnected from living a real life.  My dad always admonished my sisters and me to know where our food comes from, and he grew a huge garden for many years to make sure we got his point.  Building your own house, your own shelter, that fits right in there too.  Writing the book to young men is perfect.  It is a concrete way of letting them re-claim their God-given roles as providers and helping them to form firm bonds with the home they will establish there.

I can't wait to read it and pass it on to my son.

Those Green Bean Times

I cringed when I looked at the date of my last post.  Sept. 24th!  Oh, my goodness!

September seems soooo long ago.  I remember vaguely that time as one of making a grand attempt at getting a lot of canning done.  Oh, and I had started an online canning course, which I have also, like blogging, let totally fall by the wayside.

The canning did not go well.  I blame it on my stove--my stupid, modern stove with the smooth ceramic top, which absolutely refuses to respond in a timely manner to my instructions.  This obstinance caused wild pressure swings in the canner, which in turn caused the dreaded "siphoning", a process by which some of the contents of the jars is sucked out into the canner.  I persisted anyway and canned a quantity of chili and green beans.  By some miracle, most of them sealed despite the siphoning problem.    The ones that didn't I just refrigerated.

I have an especially fond memory of getting the green beans ready to process.  I had about 15 pounds to snap.  Emma and I divided them up into our 13-quart stainless steel bowls.  It was a gorgeous fall day--cool and crisp.  We threw the windows and doors open, and as we sat on the couch with our green bean bounty, we chatted and snapped and listened to the chimes and the gentle burbling of chickens at work near the back door.  The breeze washed over us like baptismal water, renewing us.  It was an extremely satisfying interlude, one of those rare instances where you feel like everything is rightly ordered, almost like a prayer.

I wonder about those green bean times and how you go about getting more of them and less of the pressure canner ones?  How do you live your life as a prayer?  And is it possible *for me* while being a "friend" on Facebook?  Or using an iPhone?  I've been thinking a lot about that lately.  While I have been away from my cozy little blog living room, I have been camped out alongside the rushing torrent that is Facebook Falls, watching the good, the true, and the beautiful wash by, along with some raw sewage.  Blogging is certainly not ideal, but for now, I am going to spend a lot less time on Facebook and more time here.  Especially with Advent beginning in just a few days, my soul yearns for more quiet: less "likes" and more one-on-one, heart-to-heart communication.  Real friendship in Christ.  I am not expecting that I will get that by blogging, but writing here is a more contemplative activity than posting on Facebook.  I think I may grow to be a better friend here.

Tree Stuff

Nathaniel and Tucker

My dear husband took on this dead tree last weekend.  It was close to the house and shedding limbs at a frightening pace.  I stood in the air conditioning and watched him hold the chainsaw over his head to cut the tree while he balanced on a ladder.   It was really hot and humid, and I worried that he was going to get heat stroke.  

Before he ever got the chainsaw out, he had planned how he would make each cut.  Some cuts required tying the branch with a rope to pull it away from the house.  I worried a lot, as usual, but everything went according to his plan.  My nephew Tucker is staying with us until school starts later this month.  He helped Herb as needed; then when Nathaniel came home from college, he and Tucker picked up all the wood.  They work well together.  It's clear Nathaniel enjoys having a "little brother".

Sunshine wasted no time in claiming the new real estate.

Last year we didn't get any pecans because of the drought.  This year the limbs are so heavy with nuts that they are sagging under the weight.  Several have broken off.  I guess that means that we should have had them pruned last fall.  Oh, well.  Hopefully we won't be visited by any hurricanes this summer, and the rest of the branches can pretend that they are willows and bend.

I feel like this year I am getting an intimate knowledge of our trees, mostly because I have hugged so many as I tie Fiona and Ferdie to them.  I have to rotate them so that they get fresh grass. The menfolk are still putting in posts for our peripheral fence.  Maybe by the end of the month it will be finished.  It will be heavenly!

  I no longer tie Ferdie in the back yard.  We've had two too many broken PVC water pipes from his insatiable head scratching.  I tried tying him close to the back of the house one night.  I thought he couldn't cause any trouble because I made sure he couldn't reach any pipes.  When I went to bed he was asleep on the ground next  to the dogs by the back door.  They looked really cute.  I wish I had gotten a picture!  But in the morning, the memory of their cuteness faded fast as I found my potted rose bush completely unpotted with most of the leaves gone.  Not a bit of soil clung to the roots.  I think Ferdie must have grabbed it in his teeth and shaken it.  Apparently he has a consuming interest in gardening.  I soon discovered he had also pruned the top of my Satsuma tree.  Plus he peed three giant puddles on the sidewalk and pooped two times as well.  Herb reports that Ferdie can pee five minutes at a time.  I believe it after seeing the size of those puddles.  I can't keep him in the chain link fence anymore because he busted the bottom of it and now just slides out underneath within minutes of being put in there.  Luckily Fiona doesn't do that.  She just starts bellowing at the crack of dawn until I take her out.

Tonight, as I led Ferdie out in the front yard by the light of a glowing full moon, we passed by one of our Crepe Myrtles, and I realized for the first time that it was awash with luscious deep pink blossoms.  I think the moonlight made it especially pretty.  Ferdie didn't seem to notice it.  He was too busy reacquainting himself with the bird feeder post.  It's his secret friend.  He butts his head against it and leaps in the air and butts it again.  Hopefully, it will still be standing in the morning.

Something He Can Work On

"Mom?"  Nathaniel called to me the other day.  "Do you have something called distilled white vinegar?"

"Yeeeees," I replied.  "How much do you need?  I have 3 1/2 gallons."

He took the half gallon and disappeared out the back door.  Shortly, he was back with a wide grin.  "Come see," he said.

I followed him out to his Mustang, and he showed me two different sections on the hood of his car.  One had water spots, and the other one didn't.  He was using the vinegar to take the spots out and was really pleased with the way it was working.  He said that he found the vinegar tip on the internet.

The car has been one of the best learning experiences he has had.  Something always needs his attention, and he has been forced to figure it out.  His dad has worked with him on this, trying his best to guide him without taking over and doing it himself, which is really hard for him.   Not only has Nathaniel gained great mechanical knowledge, he has learned a lot about himself and how people approach problems differently.  For instance, when his clutch went out, his dad saw the first step as going under the car and looking at the transmission to see what would need to be done to get it out.  Nathaniel wanted to look it up on the internet.  This led to another "people skills" learning experience, as neither could see at first where the other one was coming from.  To add to the stress, it was Christmas and freezing cold.  They eventually got it worked out and the huge job of changing out the clutch on that car successfully accomplished.  

Once all the pain was over, Nathaniel just swelled with confidence.  The experience was worth every moment of pain and suffering.  It was a rite of passage.

A Kitchen Pharmacy? Tell Me More!

I was at Moving on to the Past, and had just finished reading about Kathy's fabulous new chicken coop, when I spotted something in her blogroll that grabbed my attention, a post by Andrea at Frugally Sustainable called Creating a Kitchen Pharmacy.  This is right where my thoughts have been this past week, so naturally, I clicked on over.  Here's a snippet of what she said:

During these uncertain times – times of change – there are many individuals and families in search of an altogether different approach to treating minor illnesses and ailments.

For some, this is the next step in their natural-living lifestyle, for others it’s all about self-sufficiency, and concern over the rising cost of healthcare dominates the thoughts of others.

No matter what your motivation, the question remains – how can we achieve our goal?

I believe the answer to be in three parts:

1. We can add medicinal herbs and plants to our garden landscape.
2. We can learn the benefits of the plants that grow freely in our local and regional area.
3. We can create a kitchen pharmacy. 

I would have to say that for me, both of her reasons for "an altogether different approach to treating minor illnesses and ailments" apply.  I can't wait for the next article in the series!

One of the reasons why the timing of "Creating a Kitchen Pharmacy" is so perfect is that I finally got a dehydrator last week, so I'll be able to dry medicinal herbs in addition to food items.  While I have been busy experimenting with drying celery, carrots, and tomatoes, Emma has been researching, picking, and dehydrating dandelions.  I was vaguely aware of all their health benefits, but while I was processing my tomatoes, she read me an article about them that was just astonishing.  The plant seemed designed to meet so many of the common human health problems.  We should probably all be drinking a couple of cups of dandelion tea every day.  Learning about all the goodness in a simple dandelion was especially sweet because I had been worrying about Fiona getting enough minerals.  She has had really loose stools since she calved, and I read that it could be a copper deficiency.  When Emma read that dandelions are a good source of copper, I was able to relax and go with the diagnosis that a veteran cow man had suggested to me: It's most likely all the lush green grass she is eating right now, since we don't feed any her any grain.  Cows will eat what they need if it is available, and I have watched Fiona make her rounds every day to eat certain things around our place.  In addition to grass, she eats mulberry trees, clover, dollar weeds, blackberry vines, and various other plants that grow wild around here that I don't know the name of yet.  That's another thing, I just found out about Merriweather's Wild Plants of Texas this week.  He teaches classes at the Houston Arboretum on edible wild plants.  I'm hoping to be able to take one soon. 

I'm grateful to all the bloggers out there who enrich my life every day, practically and spiritually.  May God bless you all.  I will be remembering you in little prayers today as I practice dehydrating pineapples.

A Furniture Find

I have been hunting furniture for our guest bedroom for the last six months.  Or has it been a year?  Too long whatever it is.

Yesterday I dragged my sister Beverly and my brother-in-law Stephen, who are visiting from Birmingham, and Emma all to Baytown to look at a 1950s maple set.  The furniture turned out to need refinishing.  Although the price was reasonable, I figured that once I paid to have it re-done it would be way more than I wanted to spend.  The seller, bless her heart, offered to let me take a couple of the drawers to a refinisher nearby.  I agreed, and we set out.  As we pulled into the parking lot, I thought, "What a nice place!"  It was much nicer than I was expecting for a refinisher.  It turned out that this "refinisher", Town and Country Sales, offers much more, including upholstery services and a gallery of restored and new pieces.

Three people were standing outside and greeted us warmly.  One of them was Ronnie Parrish, the owner.  I explained why we were there, and he came over to the car with me and Beverly, examined the drawers, and gave us a detailed explanation about what would be required to fix it, the virtues and sins of maple as a furniture wood, what to beware of in future shopping for maple (tiny hairline cracks where the wood is joined by glue) and how much he would charge to refinish it.  He ended by encouraging us to keep doing what we were doing--searching Craigslist and going to garage and estate sales in search of quality furniture.  The whole time he talked to us, it was as a knowledgeable friend.   Clearly, profit margin is not his primary concern.  He loves what he is doing, and he cares about people.  It was a wonderful experience.

After returning the drawers to the car, we told him we wanted to visit his store.  He welcomed us to do so, and we entered to discover an antique wonderland, all of it expertly repaired and refinished.  "I finally found furniture I like!" Emma exclaimed as we "oooohed" and "ahhhhed" our way through the building.

When I looked at the prices, I had sticker shock, not because they were so high, but because they were so reasonable. Not cheap but reasonable.  Stephen was impressed by the woodworking equipment he could see in their shop.   On the way out, Emma and I climbed up in the big chair in front of the store, and Beverly took the picture above.  We can't wait to go back.

Oh, the Possumbilities!



A used possum popper

 I thank God for possums.  If we didn't have any, I would buy some and set 'em loose on our property.

Why?

Because I can't think of another hobby for my menfolk that offers the excitement, variety, fun, and satisfaction that hunting and killing possums offers.  It's wonderfully economical too!  They can do it right here at home, and it usually takes less than 20 minutes.   When they come back inside, their chests are expanded; they are grinning happily,  and they have a definite bounce in their steps.  They regale me with the details of the hunt, opening wide the lid on their secret cache of words that they normally reserve for talk between themselves about SEC football.

Usually, it is a surprise sighting that sets the game in motion.  One night as we were driving up the driveway about 11:00, my husband spotted a possum lighting out across the hayfield.  Herb tossed a flashlight to Nathaniel, and Nathaniel didn't need to ask questions.  He leapt from the moving vehicle and pursued the varmint on foot.  Herb followed, bumping along through the tall grass, which switched the sides of the car angrily as Herb tried to zig when Nathaniel zigged and zag, when Nathaniel zagged.  I watched our headlights cut through the darkness and sweep crazily from side-to-side, briefly illuminating our next door neighbors' bedroom windows.  Two or three times.  Oops.  That was the possum that got away, but he still did the menfolk a right smart o' good.  They were PUMPED when we finally returned to the driveway and parked the car at the house.  Emma and I were just slightly overwhelmed and a wee bit nauseous, but we recovered.

Recently Herb actually sat in a rocking chair on the front porch and waited for one to show up and make his day, er, night.  It did.  And he was so happy!  He described the whole scene to me the next morning before instructing me that if I went out the front door and turned to the left, not to be scared when I saw the dead possum, perfectly rigid in its last agony.  Wasn't that sweet of my dear husband?  He is always looking out for me that way.  That particular day, if I went out the back door and turned to the right, I would see another stiff and grimacing possum.  He was left over from two nights before.  His fearsome visage caused our cats to tiptoe by him, ever on the alert lest the varmint leap up and attack.  They needn't have worried.  That possum died from what my friend Sylina calls "lead poisoning".  He warn't gonna git up ever agin.  A lot of possums meet death by lead poisoning around here, but some fall due to  cranial contact with a blunt object, like say, a crowbar.  Some play cowboys and injuns with Chief Nathaniel Compound Bow.  Others succumb because a hoe mysteriously gets caught between their head and shoulders.  And then there is the colorful "death by paintball".

So much variety to the danse macabre!

A Dreamy Day of Trying on Wedding Dresses

 Last year when Emma was taking a pattern drafting class, one of her homework assignments was to go to a bridal shop and try on wedding dresses.   Emma also had to sketch a wedding dress design.  Now this is the kind of homework a girl can love.  We had a fabulous time!

I thought my readers might enjoy these pictures.  They were taken by Kaley Palanjian, my niece.  She and her mom, my sister, Lisa, accompanied us to the bridal shops.  It was a great girl-fun day.

Moving Dirt

Nathaniel has been working on filling in ditches for his grandpa. He makes it look easy, but I recognize the expertise he has developed over the years that makes it look this way. He started climbing on and pretending to drive a John Deere lawn tractor long before he could talk. I didn't see the point of our new cordless phone until then. But when I had to take him out to the lean-to in the backyard for him to climb into the seat and pretend to drive the John Deere every day, I began to appreciate the new phone.

When we first moved to the country, we bought a John Deere 310 B backhoe. Nathaniel became an expert at its operation when he was about 9. We also had a dump truck and a bulldozer. He learned by necessity, because Grandpa often needed him in our land clearing/stump digging projects. Something was always getting stuck, and Nathaniel was called upon to help chain things and drive either the backhoe or the dump truck. Plus he did real work. My mother-in-law recently related how she remembers being terrified when she saw him at that young age, parked at the edge of the pond we were digging, working away. She told Emma that she was too scared to look, and Emma told her that it was all right, he did it all the time. He is only now beginning to realize that he knows how to do a lot of mechanical things that other young men his age do not. His experience made him a very good problem solver.

(I took the picture from inside the house, to avoid being killed.)

Rubber, Dirt, Muscle, and a Tire Repair Kit

Last week my parent's Honda Pilot came down with the dreaded flat tire sickness. Nathaniel took off the flat, put it in the back of his truck, and he and Grandpa zipped down to the Goodyear store to have it repaired.

They arrived there to find that it was closed. Permanantly.

The only other decent tire store is six miles away. Did they go there?

No, they came back home with the flat tire.

I asked them why they didn't go to the other tire store, and they both pointed a finger at the other.

Grandpa shrugged his shoulders and said that Nathaniel just turned around and came home without saying anything.

Nathaniel said that Grandpa didn't want to go six miles without a cigarette. (Nathaniel won't let him smoke in his truck.)

Whatever the reason, I was proud that Nathaniel got his first crack at fixing a flat himself under Grandpa's experienced eye. He did an excellent job. The repair kit cost $1.99.

Driver's Education and the State

Emma completed her online driver's ed course and made a 93% on her first try on the exam. She was glad to be done with the course; she did not enjoy the experience.

We used Virtual Drive of Texas, which overall was a good program. The things that Emma groaned through were the things that she recognized as politically correct ideology, most likely required by the state. All of the programs available have to be approved by the state.

The module dealing with drugs was one of the biggest ones. It even discussed growing and selling marijuana and other drugs, sniffing paint, etc. At this point Emma went into defensive mode and started clicking the "next" button as soon as the program would allow it. She paid the drug module no more attention because, she said, "It was stupid." She even had to be subjected to a lesson on date rape. Interestingly, her "preserve my innocence, don't waste my time" tactics did not cost her test points. There were NO QUESTIONS about the drug module on the final.

She began to doubt the veracity of all the teaching when the narrator said explicitly that it was against the law for anyone under 21 to drink alcohol at any time. Emma immediately left the tutorial and checked Texas law where her understanding was confirmed: Minors may drink under the supervision of their parents.

The course presented alcohol consumption anywhere, anytime as negative. Emma knew that the point was to convince students that they should not drink and drive, but to present all alcohol consumption as negative was, in her mind, dishonest. She thought that in order to tell the truth, they should have mentioned that drinking in moderation can be pleasant, and good effects can come from it. She reminded me of the diners in the movie, Babette's Feast and how the wine allowed them to relax and begin to forgive each other for past hurts.

Then Emma had to learn about the Texas litter program, "Don't Mess With Texas". She even had to answer a quiz question about the name of the program. By this point she was leaving the tutorial frequently to watch YouTube videos of the Lennon sisters, who sang sweet harmony and wore really pretty dresses. (Emma could tell this even though the videos were most often black and white.)

When it was time to take the final exam, optional videos were made available. Emma watched them and said that they were very helpful, so helpful that they should have been made part of the main course instead of wasting her time with all the other "garbage". I suspect the state requires a minimum number of hours for a driver's ed course to be approved. The quality of those hours is apparently of no consequence.

Patterns in Weaving, Dancing, and Driving

Emma received word this week that it is time to come and choose a pattern for the District Check weaving workshop with Norman Kennedy so that the thread can be ordered. This week she also attended her first dance practice for the demo she is going to participate in for the Robert Burns Supper and Ball in Houston on January 23.

As we were driving to the dance practice she resumed the thread of a conversation we had several months ago as we wove in and out of interstate traffic. She said then that dancers make better drivers because they are trained to constantly adjust their position in relationship to the other dancers. In the renewed conversation she elaborated that she liked interstate driving and is good at it because it is very orderly. She admired the design of the infrastructure that facilitated this orderliness. I have never thought this way about driving. It interests me, though, to consider how our activities shape the way we see life.

Installing a Stereo, Building Relationships

I had a date with my firstborn yesterday morning. We attended a Michael Buble concert in Nathaniel's truck without ever leaving the garage. The roar from the propane shop heater that blasted us through the open driver's door could not drown out the beautiful sound from Nathaniel's new stereo system.

He glowed with happiness and pride.

I was happy and proud too. Herb and Nathaniel had installed the stereo together.They even had to fabricate some parts with Herb's new drill press and band saw.
It took two days. They installed the speakers on Saturday
and the stereo on Sunday.
Stereo seems an inadequate word to describe this piece of electronics. I don't even understand all the things it does, so I took some pictures of the box. Maybe the product description will mean something to you.




Here's the speaker box with pretty pictures on it.