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 oth...

All the classics at the Christmas Eve service tonight.  I'm Lutheran again.  I find a lot of comfort in the liturgy now that I have no guilt disregarding what others say about the eternal.  The playlist was nice and as it should be in a rock church by the creek: Hark the Herald Angels Sing Angels We Have Heard On High Little Town of Bethlehem O Come All Ye Faithful Silent Night Joy to the World We sang Silent Night with candles lit.  By the time we got to Joy to the World, I had dripped wax in the hymnal. Christmas was a muddy mess here this year.  The river is as high as I have ever seen, springs have erupted under the main road and have made their way across our drive to our yard.  I diverted them before they got to a rabbit den we have with babies in it.   (time passes and today becomes yesterday) Well, I crashed before I could finish.  I was going to wax nostaligic and invoke some reflection for auld lang syne,...

A day to remember.  Though all days are even when they are not. Today I tackled a few jobs that I put off for a year and a half because I … well, I don’t exactly know except I thought they would be big projects and so I didn’t want to face them.  One was the burn pile… the burn pile that contained trees from the first burn pile a couple of years ago when we bulldozed the buildings here … trees that didn’t burn the first time.  The other project was cutting up the I-beams from the mobile home we demolished.  That metal has been an eyesore for so long and now its all done.  We made a huge inroad away from “junkyard” and toward “pasture”.  It took all day and I am pretty exhausted, but the splinter in my brain has been removed and the relief is pretty sweet. As an added bonus, I sat in the dark with two of my kids at two different times and we just talked.  Esme and I got to talk about 6 year old stuff and I got to be present and hold her in the ...

Ah, Halloween has come and gone again.  We went to our little community center for the first time for the Halloween party.  Adia and Zoe both won 1st prize in their age groups... granted, Zoe was all alone and Adia only had 2 competitors:)  We met new folks in the area and that was really encouraging.  Overall, very nice.  Halloween night we went down to Glade and the town square was hoppin'.  Maw Maw took them around town square while Ash and I went to the brewery and had a beer with the usual crowd.  Tim's nephew fired up the smoker and put some amazing meat out on the bar.  It was pretty sweet to be sipping on local beer and nibbling on amazing BBQ in Glade while tons of folks trick-or-treated outside.  Once we got back, I took the two young ones out again in the dark to go down our old road. We talked to the neighbors and bounced from house to house.  At the end of the road we went up and over the sledding hill and down the pasture t...

An Alzheimer's brain makes one wonder About what and who we really are What I mean is that I consider myself still me If I lose a finger  Or a leg Or a my sight But if I could I would not consider myself me If my brain dissolved to the point where  I forgot me or forgot you. So am I just adaptive? Am I just something my mind has made up? Is the me I know just a figment of my imagination? A deadly weapon for a naked primate? Would tragedies exist  If no one remembered how to wail and mourn? That being said, it makes me wonder  What am I? Do I really exist? Am I just emotions masquerading as basic need? Can a human act on something other than emotion? Is any decision besides when to piss Or shit Or what to pull out of the fridge At 2am Is any decision besides these  Anything but emotion? A frontal lobe concoction? Do I exist? Do y...

What stirs me from the dark tonight? Some phantom, perhaps Or a hunger gnawing on my spine My eyes long for rest As I stare into the hearth-fire of my ancestors My mind registers only the rythmic flickering But it's my ears that listen... For It It that will be there when the flame dies It that will be there when eyes close It that no longer leaves claw marks on this sterile ground Yet still hunts at night Demanding my ears to listen to the unnatural silence Waiting, waiting yet no longer caring  for that one  twig  to  snap