Krafty Kitten

I want to change the world
Instead I sleep
I want to believe in more than you and me
But all that I know is I’m breathing
All I can do is keep breathing
– Ingrid Michaelson, Keep Breathing

On weekend mornings, Big Guy and I get up, make a pot of flavored coffee and relax in the family room drinking coffee from a pair of mugs that my aunt brought us from Ireland.  We make it a point to use those mugs for this particular weekend routine and refer to them as our weekend mugs.  Our flavored coffee weekend routine has been an ongoing tradition for a while.  We always managed to scrounge up a dollar for a sampler of flavored coffee.  It was a routine we held on to even through the tough times.

There is comfort in routine.  It’s a steady knowledge of what happens next, a rare thing in today’s world.  Most of the time, the only guarenteed step is our next breath.  There’s a lot of changes coming in my family and most of them are going to be difficult to handle.  Trying to keep a handle on everything, remain calm, and not fall into the easy path of giving in to the stress takes a lot out of you.  What do you do then?

Breathe.  Breathe in and breathe out.

It won’t make the pain go away, it won’t make the situation any easier, but it enables you to focus on the next step… And then the one after that and the one after that.  Everything happens for a reason, good and bad.  All we can do in the meantime is focus on being the best person we can be and breathe.

We’re quite inundated with flowers here on the Urban homestead.  My bean plants and tomatoes are flowering, as are my herbs.  I have pale pink blooms on the oregano, my purple sage flowers are fading out, but the lemon balm has a bunch of tiny white blooms and even the basil was attempting to blossom.  I had to pinch the blooms off the basil to keep it alive and I clipped some of the oregano blooms because they were just so very pretty.  They are currently sitting in a vase on my kitchen window sill.

We went and saw my in-laws today to help with a potential computer issue.  Big Guy and I are a pretty good team when it comes to dealing with computer problems.  He knows how to handle hardware difficulties, I know how to work around software issues.  We ate dinner there and chatted while we got the computer adjusted and then came home.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by the scent of the oregano blooms.  They don’t smell like oregano, but instead have a very light, floral fragrance.  The bees like them too, considering they are bouncing from plant to plant drinking them in.  Another plant that’s drawn surprising visitors are my petunias.  They’ve brought some little hummingbirds to our yard who flit from blossom to blossom and then zip off.

Some of the wildflower seeds we planted earlier have also sprouted and started to bloom and seem to contain petunia and marigold seeds.  It was rather amusing when we discovered that because we planted marigolds and petunias in the same spot last year and were shocked when we found more marigolds and petunias there this year!

It’s been a pleasant and productive weekend and promises to continue to be a productive and peaceful week.  It started out on Friday evening, when I was able to march in the college graduation ceremony as a professor, complete with proper academic robes and an academic hood indicating my graduation from Saint Mary’s College.  It was a great experience, for me and for my mom, who keeps telling me that her tuition money is finally paying off.

I got to march in with the professors, even though people kept thinking I was a student.  Flattering but no.  Seriously though, for the most part, I am younger than my students.  Teaching gives me a chance to pass on my love for language to my students hopefully.

This past month I was complemented in both the classes I taught when one from the composition class said my class has caused him to pay more attention to emails and one of my World Lit students felt like his eyes had been opened to one important part of literature.  He also told one of the other professors that he really enjoyed my class.  Go me!  It helps when the students are actually responding to you and that was really the best part about this past month. It seems in smaller classes, the apathy is less spread throughout the students and they are more easily infected with excitement.

I also finished all my pink granny squares (or ‘grandma squares’ as Little Guy says) and have one left for my blue squares.  These are going to be sold at the Harvest Market on July 18th.  After blue, I am probably going to crochet some white ones and go on from there.  .  I’m starting to zip through them reletively quickly too.  And, since this week I don’t have to teach, I can focus mainly on churning out some of these projects.  I’ll finish up the granny squares and hopefully get started on some of the sewing projects.

I realize that my life as an at-home mom/freelance writer/crafty urban homesteader/English teacher is probably not what my mom expected when she sent me to college, but I can also say I would not be able to be all those things without my college experience.  Plus, I am really happy that I’m not a secretary any more.

There are some who believe that my defection from the Catholic faith means I dislike Christianity and all its accoutrements.  On the contrary, I hold Christianity and all religions in the highest regard.  Finding the spiritual path that is best for you should not involve the tearing down of other beliefs, but should enable you to find an inner peace that allows you to come to an acceptance of other beliefs.

For this reason, I find people like the Phelps family who make up the “Westboro Baptist Church ” to be, not only disturbing, but also dangerous.  Finding a spiritual peace, something comforting to your soul, should not cause such a deep and vile hatred of and anger towards your fellow man.  A spiritual path should bring joy and openness, not a closed-minded bigotry.

For my part, I find religions, all of them, to be interesting from a literary and sociological standpoint.  The Koran plays an important part in arabic literature, such as The Thousand and One Nights.  Because of the spread of the Holy Roman Empire, Christianity has impacted the social structure and culture of a wide spread of the world.  As I have said before, most religions contain the same basic concept we try to teach our children: whatever you do, don’t hurt other people.  The only difference is in the way it is phrased and the fact that most religions have a karmic backlash for those who break that rule.

I cannot understand the religions that condemn you for not believing as they do.  If there is a ‘God’, an all powerful, all seeing, all knowing being, would he not prefer us to follow the basic ideals of faith rather than the strict interpretation?  And who are we, as limited beings, to presume we know his mind?  All earthly religions are based on a human interpretation of ‘god’ which means, like humanity, all religions are intrinsically flawed.  I find that comforting to a certain degree, because it means, as with most things, if we can find a way to overcome our differences, we can finally see the whole picture.

The heat and humidity of summer seems omnipresent now.  I have the AC set in the house at night to prevent my waking up panting and sweating.  I can handle it during the day, while I’m awake.  When I sleep, though, I need the cool air.  And, because we have air conditioning, we’re hosting the neighbors overnight because we have AC and  Neighbor Girl is worried about her young ones overheating.

I finished my second and third pink granny squares and am working on the fourth and final pink square.  I’ve tried to make them all different, or contain the same pattern but slightly different.  For example, I have the first ping and fuzzy granny square and then another wone crocheted in the same pattern, but with different types of yarn.  So, once this last pink one is done I will work on blue, black, and white.  It’s not like I don’t have enough yarn.

Tomorrow is the final day of classes for the month and then I have a week off.  The first full week of July, it’s back in the saddle though.  I have another Comp class to plan for.  No rest for the weary indeed.  Especially since the week I start class is the last week of Big Guy’s employment.  I would really like a chance to NOT have to worry for once.  On the bright side, once his employment ends, it will give us a chance to look at where we’re landing.  And we have a lot fewer people to worry about.  It goes to show that everything DOES happen for a reason.

I finished my first Granny Square yesterday and I’m working on another one.  I’m probably going to do sets in different colors and sell them for a dollar a piece at the Harvet Market. I used fuzzy yarn for one and bordered a pattern with it.  It was interesting to say the least because it was hard to see through the fuzz.  So, after I bordered the square with the fuzz, I followed up by adding another couple rows of yarn.

We’ve stepped up attempts at potty training, complete with “underpants” that have trucks on them.  We give him animal crackers for going pee on the potty and once he poops, he gets a Hot Wheels car.  I plopped him down on the chair this morning and he went…  Unfortunately for us, Little Guy has inheirited some of the more difficult aspects of our personalities.  He’s stubborn and is going to do what he wants to do, which, right now, does NOT include potty training.

I watched the “big announcement” episode of Jon and Kate plus 8.  Unsurprisingly, they’ve decided to seperate and have filed for divorce.  It’s sad to see because so much could have gone differently had the communication been present.  And watching this episode, it isn’t just one person’s fault.  Kate is still pushing and determined to do things her way.  Jon doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want to talk to her, doesn’t want to listen to what she’s saying.

My heart breaks for the kids in all this because both parents are claiming they want what’s best for the kids while making it painfully clear that they aren’t willing to do what it really takes.  Maybe I am jaded from my experiences with “blended families”, but I would imagine the “peaceful” existance Kate is touting for the cameras is only going to last as far as it takes Jon to want to be in his kids’ lives.

Mom and I are getting ready to hit the Harvest Market at Woodlawn Nature Center and I’m going to be selling hairbands, granny squares, rice socks, pillows, lovies, and fresh herbs from my garden.  I have a lot of work to do and not a lot of time.  Mom will hopefully have eggs to sell, if her chickens start laying again.

This weekend we bought colorful dry erase markers for my dry erase calendar so now I have it color coded and organized according to events.  Big Guy’s last day is 3 weeks away.  My class ends this week.  We desperately need to figure out where we’re going from here.  Big Guy wants me to focus on getting more classes and less on getting an office job.  He wants to figure out a way to keep things as normal as possible.

I have to admit, that is a relief for me.  The idea of going back to an office job makes me feel ill.  I’ll do it if I have to, and I will try to smile and be cheerful, but the poem by Dunbar, “We wear the mask”, comes to mind.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

But, for now, I will work on the things I need to get done in the next month, what I need to crochet, what I need to sew, what I need to sell.  We will figure other things out as we go along.

Today, aside from being the longest day of the year, is also Father’s Day.  Which is one of the reasons why I’ve been away from my computer for a few days.  Both Friday and yesterday, I spent very little time at home.

On Friday, Mom, Little Guy and I went to her house and sat out the furious thunderstorms that ripped through the area.  He fed the “shickens” and we had a cook out with Big Guy and Dragon and my mom.  Saturday, Big Guy and I ran errands prior to our game.  He also got to open his last Father’s Day gift.  The boxed set of the original trilogy of Star Wars.

Big Guy loves Star Wars and I have been slowly getting him the movies one at a time, starting with the Prequel Trilogy. I finally bit the bullet and ordered the boxed set for him because I wanted it to be a great Father’s Day, even knowing it was going to be bittersweet.  However, he’s been playing the video game, Civilization Revolution, I got him pretty much nonstop.

Today was definitely a lazy day.  I cooked a breakfast (brunch) of bacon and eggs, and Little Guy and Big Guy played around.  Right now, Big Guy is playing his video game while Little Guy watches “Pan Da Bear” (Kung Fu Panda) in the front room.  We had Smoked Sausages for dinner and we’re just relaxing together.  Tomorrow is another day, beginning of the last week for classes and another week closer to the lay off, but for now, things are quiet and good.

Little Guy and I are working on an art project, a paper plate fish.  I got the idea for it from watching Sprout.

You take a paper plate and cut out a triangle for the mouth.  Then you glue the triangle on the opposite end to make a tail.  Let the child color it and decorate it.  Then, punch a hole through the top and attach a string to hang from the ceiling or a high up place for a swimming decoration.  Little Guy is loving the coloring part.

I’m also going to try and get the last batch of peach jam made today.  I only have a bit left to do and then I will can them and (hopefully) sell a few.  That is, if Big Guy doesn’t devour them all first in the name of “quality control”.  I’ve got one of the jars from the first batch listed on Artfire .  I think this batch may be more peach-y due to the fact that the peaches sat for a few days longer.  It also has some larger chunks in it.  Now, I hope it just sets.  That seems to be a common problem between first and second batches for me.  I don’t think I do anything differently, but my second batches never seem to set.

And, my tomatoes are finally flowering.  We’re going to have a nice crop of tomatoes when they ripen.  The pumpkins are getting larger as well, but not flowering yet.  The beans are also growing nicely, I think the past few days of rain have really made a difference.

One of the other things I need to prepare for is the Harvest Market at Woodlawn Nature Center here in Elkhart.  Mom and I have plans to sell some of our homegrown, homemade goods.  She has a ton of eggs to sell, I plan on bunching my lemon balm, oregano, and sage and selling it.  I also have hairbands, birds, and other things I can sell.  I can make small aprons for little girls, pillows and lovies, and sell some of the extraneous junk around the house, like books and knick-knacks.

It’s finally sunny.  And, of course, it is a day I have to teach.  Oh well.  I’ll do what I can.

I found two little cantaloupe sprouts from the seeds I planted directly in the garden, which is good and the potatoes need to be “hilled”.  I’m going to have to dig out some compost for that.  My tomatoes have flowers and the beans I planted in a hanging basket have taken off.  My other beans seem to have gone the way of the dinosaurs.  I think the lesson I have learned from all of this…  Seeds are probably a cheaper way to go, but around here, already established plants may be a necessity thanks to groundhogs and ants.

I was going to re-clean the pool this week, Little Guy and I emptied most of the water out of it but I was planning on letting the sun bake and evaporate the remaining water, but then it’s rained for the past 2 days.  The best laid plans of mice and men…

Yesterday, in the mail, Big Guy got a letter from his youngest daughter wishing him a Happy Father’s Day and telling him she missed him.  She had handmade a card on notebook paper and included $2.  Big Guy started crying because he does miss the kids so very much.  We wondered how she was able to get it out of the house… Now we’re trying to figure out a way to get her a thank you note without it going immediately into the trash.

Little Guy has been loving “Between the Lions ” and is now singing the theme song…  “Hey now hey wow here’s how come an’ read…  ATWEEN A YIONS!”  Between this show and Kai-lan teaching him about emotions: “I’m jealous!  I’m so ANGRY!”  Right now, thanks to “Between the Lions” we’re practicing phonics.  When we look through his picture books, I make the starting sounds A-pple, B-all, C-at, D-og and we work out what the starting letter is.  “Between the Lions” also does a bit on phonics which reinforces what we practice.  He’s figuring out the sounds slowly but surely.