That's it.

The news is so overwhelming I'm not looking anymore.

The bull has gone walkabout and I haven't seen him... Though he might be hiding amongst one of the neighbour's herds. 

There are ripe raspberries everywhere out back. Gooseberries too. 

Cherries are in the dehydrator. 

I knit for hours today. 

Now I'm reading a book. 

Some days, this is what coping looks like. 

Peace. 

Chores

So today I realized that I was quite annoyed at my family.

When The Reluctant Farmer is home he is - justifiably - on his time off. He works away for two weeks at a stretch, and when he is home he does a lot to help out. But his two kids are also here, and the work load far more than doubles. The kids just hang out with their dad and play… Which is a good thing (and something I feel jealous about because I didn’t get to do that when my kid was small for assorted reasons, most of them out of my control).

But.

At 12 and almost 14 they are way big enough to be doing more.

But.

I’m not policing chores and asking for help every day and paying attention to who did what and so on… I’ll still be the guy tracking all of what needs doing and that’s exhausting.

But.

I clearly need more help and the Small People need the experience of contributing to the household as well.

So. 

When things aren't working you need to look at process and infrastructure - something needs adjustment.

I made a list of chores I am willing to hand off. I rated them with points, more points for bigger jobs. I told my husband that he gets to set the target each kid needs to meet, and I made magnets for each job with the chore title and points (on puzzle pieces my friend had given me - perfect!).

You do a job, you put the magnet in your square.

You can volunteer for any job that has a magnet available - I made enough to spread out the jobs and vary the amount of effort required. Since the kids are here two weeks at a time (with a couple of days back at mom’s in the middle during the school year) the target will be set for the two week stretch. Being an idiot can result in an increase. Doing extra will probably be worth something but haven’t worked out the details yet.

I’m hopeful.

I figured that rather than fuming silently it was better to just attempt a solution - I knew my husband agreed in principle that the kids needed to be doing more, but we hadn’t had any real process that worked.

Maybe this will.

It's a good ache.

I ache all over. 

But the fountain looks nice and there are rocks by the retaining wall and I pulled out a bunch of dead grass and the clematis vines are all growing and I put the water cube by my downspout (though it still needs a connector) and the firewood is all restacked so I can move the pallets and level that area and there's butter made from the cream that was turning and holy crap I need more sedatives in my life.

What to do when the first big snow comes

Start planning the garden. :)

Snow

Decisions

I ran errands this morning. Well, into the afternoon. 

I picked up the Organic Box, met someone who has taken away my old rotary lawnmower, visited some friends at the craft market, checked out a little shop, picked up parcels. 

I was thinking about starting work on the planter barrel I want to use next year...

But I suspect it would be wiser to sit down and knit quietly for a bit. 

With tea. 

And a cookie. 

Knitting in the quiet

... of a frosty morning. 

Today’s Accomplishments

- Got up at 5:30 AM to take The Reluctant Farmer to the airport so he could go to work. Drove home without falling asleep.

- Went back to bed and had a great rest.

- Figured out how to calculate payroll deductions, and remit to CRA. Sorted paperwork for the new business. (The Reluctant Farmer’s job required him to set up his own company, and I’m the paper and pixel wrangler for the adventure.)

- Checked the spam filter software and tweaked a few things. (I hate spam. Do people really think these emails work? … even scarier thought … they must work at least some of the time … yikes.)

- Had coffee and a biscotti.

 

Not sure what’s up next, I have a bit more paperwork to sort and tidy then I suspect it’ll be time to sit and do a bit of knitting.

I can hear Sasha’s bell as she munches grass in the pasture. It’s an absolutely gorgeous fall day here at Apple Jack Creek and I’m enjoying having the windows open!

Winding down.

I’ve had to make some difficult choices over the last little while.

The truth of the matter is that my health is not improving – I’m stable, now, which is a beautiful thing, don’t get me wrong. I sleep like a normal person, mostly … except that I need to sleep for 10-12 hours out of every 24, so that kind of takes a bite out of the schedule. I can do most of what needs to be done … if I scale down the ‘must do’ jobs. This is why the sheep had to go, keeping up with them and their fencing needs was just too much. Sasha and Miss May are much less work – they stay behind a single strand of electric wire (even when it’s not plugged in … shhh, don’t tell them it’s not on) and need very little from me besides a filled water trough, some alfalfa and some hay in the winter. The chickens are … well, they are just chickens. Chickens are great. There is a gap in their fence so they are ‘free ranging’ again – they seem to put themselves to bed every night, and we’ve not lost any to predators (knock wood) so we’ve been letting them enjoy the grasshoppers.

The household maintenance … well, I’ve never been a spectacular housekeeper but I’ve really dropped that particular ball. I’m working on it, but I’m *always* working on it, and I seem to keep getting behind. We are considering a housekeeper. Mathilda the Braava floor mopper is a big help, and the ride on mower is a big help, and the dishwasher is absolutely essential but … well, there’s still more to be done and only so much energy to go around.

I had to quit my job last month. The company was incredibly understanding of my health issues and willing to be flexible, but even with all those benefits, it still just took too much out of me. Always wondering when the next thing might go wrong and require me to rush into town and deal with it, making sure every class had what they needed, keeping up with the paperwork and the to do lists … it was just more than my poor taxed brain and body could do. They needed more than I could provide, and so I handed off to another employee and that was that. I miss it, but it was absolutely the right choice. The same way I feel about the sheep, really.

I’ve been doing a lot of painting lately – the whole art journaling thing has captured my attention and seems to be very good for me. I take my pictures in to therapy with me, and we talk about what they might be showing … it’s an interesting angle on things, but mostly, it’s just … enjoyable.

Very much an ‘in the moment’ kind of thing. I painted for a few hours today, though everything felt darker than I wanted it to be no matter what I tried, so I washed up and will see how it all looks another day.

After painting today I lay on my bed to read for a bit … and woke up about an hour later. I’ve worked on some paperwork tonight, from the comfort of the comfy chair, and I’m thinking it’s about time to head off to bed. Again.

But that’s okay. This is what my life looks like right now, and the less I struggle against that reality, the more energy I have to enjoy the moments I’m given.

Not all spoons are created equal

This blog post is brilliant. I had to share. 

http://musingsofanaspie.com/2014/10/15/conserving-spoons/

It can help to think about how spoons are getting used up. For example, spoons are disability region-specific.

We have social spoons and language spoons and physical activity spoons and all sorts of other spoons. 

...

Depending on our disability and how life is going at the moment, each of our spoon drawers is stocked a little differently. In general, however, most people are going to have more spoons in some areas and less in others.This is why someone who doesn’t have the spoons to go to a movie with their family might have the energy to stay home and build an intricate scale model of Narnia out of popsicle sticks.

There's more. Read. Ponder. 

Build Your Own Scrap Book

Today’s adventure was reworking some old hardcover books into multi purpose journal and scrap books.

The Reluctant Farmer and I have some travel plans for the fall (more on that later), and I wanted a travel journal that could contain things like ticket stubs and postcards and notes about what we saw and did, something more creative and personalized than a photo book created after the fact … I wanted something that would help me to be mindful *during* the trip, not focused just on “getting a good picture” but on having a good time and enjoying the moments as they come, then taking some time in the evenings to digest and document the adventure.

So I pondered the ideal travel journal.

I decided it needed to be expandable along the spine, because when you start pasting in bits of paper and ephemera, it gets thicker than just plain paper. It needs some pockets for little bits and bobs that you don’t want to glue down, but want to keep with everything else. It needs a good sturdy cover, as it’ll be hauled about. It needs to call to me, to feel like my words and additions to the page are essential to it’s purpose.

I looked at a lot of neat images on Google: try searching for “art journal” or “upcycled book journal”, lots of clever ideas are out there. Then I decided to just get out my materials and see what happened.

I have a big box of assorted papers downstairs, lots of different coloured pages, fancy printer paper, card stock, all kinds of things. I found some old children’s books that have been outgrown at this house and were in fairly sad shape. I dug up some white glue, a paintbrush, some adhesive dot things (which are amazingly cool!), some ribbon, some beads, and some brown paper bags.

Then I got to playing.

I removed the pages from the books, then used white glue and assorted bits of paper to decoupage over the covers, which were quite sorry looking.

As those dried, I folded paper: with a bit of experimentation I found that I could create little ‘booklets’ that would fit inside the book covers, and with a hole punch and ribbon, I could thread them together to make a sort of codex. I intentionally used a variety of paper sizes, weights, and styles so that the book encourages “non-linear composition” … you might make a sort of title page on the little narrow piece, or attach something to the larger portion at the back of a section. Every few pages there’s an envelope glued to the page, to hold assorted little things.

The whole assembly was then put together: one book had the spine removed, so I created a sort of spine from reinforced card stock and covered the entire thing with clear packing tape to both reinforce and protect the paper design. The other book had the spine still, though it needed some Gorilla Tape to reinforce it: I poked holes through the spine and threaded the ribbons through them, using beads to secure the knots on the outside of the book.

 

I’ve started practicing with the brightly coloured one – I began by writing about the yard redesign I’ve been working on so much this summer. What an enjoyable way to write about things! You don’t feel like you have to tell a story in any particular order, you can just write things down as they come to you, in whatever direction you feel like writing!

I think I’m really going to enjoy this. What a fun project!

More Yard Updates: trees!

I transplanted a bunch of little pine trees from the back where they were clustered too close together to grow up well anyway (I found a couple of clusters of little evergreens when I was out for a walk with my neighbour today) … so I thinned them out and brought them up to make a wind break by the west edge of the yard.

Raspberry bushes and a gooseberry bush, also wild, from the back.

Couple more trees, by the fountain & wildflower-bed-to-be. :)

Pacuter Stuff

When The Boy was small, ‘computer’ came out as ‘pacuter’. I can’t believe he is so big, yet things like this are still so clear in my memory!

Today was a day to do a bunch of stuff on da pacuter. I created a new website for Apple Jack Creek – removing the references to selling meat (we are only raising enough for ourselves now, though if things go well I may raise household milk cows!), updating the section on my books to encompass all the new works, adding links to my Ravelry page where my patterns are available, all those details. Our web hosting provider (DreamHost) has a one-click install for a product called Concrete5 which turned out to be a super easy way to build a website – no fussing with FTP and uploads or anything, it’s open source (thus free), mostly visual design tools but includes ready access to HTML for detailed work (adding PayPal buttons and such) … just fabulous. Dunno why it took me so long to realize that was there!

So, that took most of today. The catalyst for the change was the arrival of the latest book … which will be in the next post.

Warm!!!

I discovered a queen sized heated mattress pad on Kijiji and picked it up yesterday.

Oh my. 

Sleeping with the temperature in the bed exactly where I want it....

Priceless. 

I feel so rested!!

Found things

Optimism

Catching up

Been pretty quiet around the blog lately, but not because I don’t feel like writing – I’ve just been really quite busy!

My parents came to visit, and we had a fantastic time. We went to Fort Edmonton, where some of our family heirlooms have been donated – ate brunch in the dining room at the Selkirk Hotel, next to the buffet and hutch that were in the room for most of the holiday meals of my life, and saw the painting my great grandmother did hanging right behind the front desk at the hotel … that’s incredible! It’s so awesome to have it there where everyone can see and enjoy it.

We also did a day run out to Jasper, and went on the new Glacier Skywalk – wow, what a view!

Family selfie:

And Dad and I conquered the glacier:

Had supper at the Jasper Park Lodge on our way back … oh my, it was fantastic! And we had this for dessert!

It was just awesome to hang out with my parents. Mom even came to the felting workshop I did, and mended the Boy’s quilt with a fantastic Apple Jack Creek themed applique!

That was all really awesome.

Then The Reluctant Farmer and the Small People and I went to visit my in-laws, which was also fantastic. They are such lovely people and they live right on the lake, so there is always fishing! They are selling the lake cabin (too much to manage now), so this was probably our “last trip to the lake”.

Then more work to catch up on, then apples!

Which became juice (and some more that’s fermenting into cider):

And then more work, and then trying hard to get rested up because having done that much, my chemistry is all dialed up to eleven. Oi.

So, I have some audio books, some printed books, some knitting, and … I changed my hair colour.

I love the henna red, I truly do, but it is simply more than I can maintain now. My real hair colour used to be very blonde, then gradually darkened to a sort of dull ash blonde, with plenty of silver strands in it. I like the silver – it’s like the sparkle in Frazzlebatts! – but the contrast between my own colour and the bright red was just too much. Having had henna in my hair for what, ten years or so, it was deeply, thoroughly embedded, especially in the tips. Getting it out was a bit of a challenge, but thanks to information found on the web and some careful experimentation, I was able to lighten and counteract most of the remaining red, and then just brightened everything else. Now as my hair grows, I can easily lighten the roots a little if I want to (it’s just peroxide, which is very easy to apply and does a fine job on my hair - since I don’t use heat or other products on it the rest of the time, it doesn’t do too much damage … nothing I can’t counteract with the usual oil, aloe, and flax treatments I use normally, anyway). As the silver gets more pronounced, it’ll just all … become sparkly. And in the meantime I won’t look like I just stopped taking care of myself!

That’s the hope, anyway.

It’s a bit startling to see myself blonde again … my hair hasn’t been this colour since I was quite a lot younger than I am now!

So there you are, you’re now caught up on the happenings at Apple Jack Creek. Time for me to go grab a glass of apple peach juice from the fridge and some lunch!

ETA: I really was blonde as a child. Even lighter than this, actually:

Apples.

Goodnight. :)

Kitchen Day

It snowed here day before yesterday. Like, three cm on the ground snowed. Snowed more yesterday. It's almost all melted now, but it's still chilly. 

So I decided today is a good day to do kitchen stuff. I baked apple spice cake, chocolate banana bread, lasagne, cannelloni, and a pot of beef soup that I will be delivering to a friend. 

Also sorted the jam jars on the shelves, found what I have and what I need, what I should be using up faster, and some stuff to go to the chickens. 

Now I'm sitting down while the dishwasher does round two (and there'll be a round three yet); but there are snacks in the freezer for lunches, and some easy things to defrost for dinner on days I have less energy. 

Voila. :)

Gold medal?

I am really not sure what the level above “trifecta” is but I think even if there is one, I’ve exceeded it. I am declaring this last accomplishment a Gold Medal achievement.

First, some context.

If you’ve been following along, you know that I have been bitten by the reorganize/tidy/clear out the old stuff bug lately. I reorganized the north wing living area (because I wanted my chair by the window, and then everything else shifted) and followed that up by clearing out the loft (including building a reading/spinning/knitting nook out of an Ikea bookcase).

Then I sat down and looked around the newly organized loft and all I could really see was …

… the unfinished ceiling.

We have lived here for … what, seven years? eight? Somewhere in there. And the ceiling just never got dealt with. We made an attempt with some panelling, but it was unwieldy and didn’t look good. We would have put the same stuff up as is on all the walls, but whoa, talk about a fussy job. It would take ages. And it would require a person lift of some kind. A contractor would make more sense. But there was no budget for a contractor.

And then, some money arrived unexpectedly. Let’s just say it was a much appreciated gift that gave me the freedom to actually do something about the ceiling.

So I went to the city, talked to the helpful people at All Weather Wood and came home with enough materials to experiment with cedar shingles on the ceiling. I started in the loft, where I could work without needing a ladder for some distance, and after some false starts and modifications, I decided it was worth continuing. Then I fell off the ladder. Gently, really – I fell forward, not backward, and banged my legs up on the way down, but it was enough to make me realize that this was not really a workable strategy.

Take home message: using a ladder leaning up against an inward slope is very dangerous. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME.

I phoned the nice people at DV Rentals and arranged for scaffolding. Voila: a workable strategy. More wood, proper infrastructure, lots and lots of nails for the air nailer, and we were off to the races.

(Yes, there really was a platform that went from one side of the scaffold rack to the other, but we’d relocated it temporarily when this was taken.)

When all was said and done …

No, it’s not perfectly even. I knew I’d never get it even, so I staggered the shingles on purpose. They stagger a little more than is reasonable in a few places, but oh well. There’s also one spot above the fireplace that I just could not reach safely from the scaffold: the frame wasn’t wide enough to scoot past the wood stove, and after leaning as far out as I dared, I decided that perhaps The Reluctant Farmer (who is, after all, a firefighter who runs training sessions on safe ladder usage) might be able to get up there and deal with that one tricky spot some other time. Not falling from two floors up seemed fairly important right about then. I did a lot of very slow moving while on top of that scaffold: reaching up to support myself on the ceiling as I walked, crawling from one end to the other rather than walking, lying on my back and doing Michaelangelo imitations, you name it.

I didn’t have enough stain to cover all the new boards I put up, but those can be done with a stain pad on an extension pole at a later time. There are still some pieces that need to be put up, but most of what’s left is finicky fitting that I am really quite terrible at doing, but the thing is …

I can live with this.

It feels much more comfortable.

I realized that I’d been avoiding spending time over here, avoiding organizing and cleaning it up because it just felt like a construction zone anyway. There’s one noticeable place that needs to be covered up before that sense is completely eliminated, but my goodness … to glance up and see wood instead of vapour barrier and insulation? To have the ceiling covered (with real wood and an air pocket which will add more insulation value to the roof as well)?

It ain’t perfect, not by a long shot, but I did this and it’s damned good, if you ask me.

I am bruised all over – the fall actually didn’t damage me too badly as we instituted proper first aid measures immediately, but all the pressure points of legs and shins and arms where I braced myself against scaffold pipes are turning blue. My hands ache from gripping the air nailer – it got heavy after three days of use. My shoulder muscles are sore from so much lifting over my head (even though The Boy did the vast majority of the heavy lift-and-carry-fetch-and-lug work for me, bless him).

But I am sitting at the kitchen table looking out the window … and not seeing any yellow insulation or floppy plastic, the whole house smells of cedar, and I am content.

Many thanks to the generous provider of these funds (you know who you are): you didn’t have to make the choice you did, but you did, and I am grateful.

And deep appreciation to The Boy, who hauled and carried and tolerated the noise late at night and loaded and unloaded the van and let me use his vehicle to haul materials and scaffolding and fed me and brought me water and lemonade and gave me ice packs when I fell and spotted me when I had to use the ladder again later on and delayed taking a shower until a time when I wasn’t up on the scaffold, just in case. Couldn’t have done this without your help, Boy. Thank you so much. You are a very good kid.

And now I think I might go lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling or something.

Because you know what? It’s awesome.