Teaching ... myself

I cannot help but be proud of my kiddos.  Gawd, I love them.  We had a lot of snow days but only used this last one to get in our once-a-year ski trip in.  Esme seems to really love it and perhaps it will be something we will do together.  She might shred.  Either way, it is always just rather wonderful to have this yearly yardstick to have time throw its fish right in my face and to show me that no matter how hard I squeeze, I can't hold onto my children's childhoods.

Its a small thing, but a long time coming. Tonight I finally made a loaf of bread.  I have made lots of bread in the past, but this one was special.  I learned to keep a sourdough starter and take care of it, the starter came from the wonderful woman that we bought our cow from, I found a way to fit the process into my life and not vice versa, and I baked it in a wood cook stove using heat from a cherry tree that I knew.  It was extra sour and made with white flour, but it was still just right.  I even washed it down with a cold glass of milk from our new cow, Sissy. What an amazing life.  A few years ago on this very day, I knew true despair and hopelessness.  I still remember how the snow was a beautiful new armageddon laying over the world.  I still bear scars from that time, but they don't bleed anymore.  At the time I wondered if I would ever live again and now I wonder if I ever did before. I just turned 43 years old the other day and my youngest turned 7.  W