more bits

 It's been another week went by and I'm not even sure where it went.  Did some things this week - gardening, shopping, going to work and the feed store, of course.  About to make some classic banana bread that is sort of between what I make for 'well I'll eat it anyway' banana flan stuff and madeleines with banana in them.

 I made 'mac and cheese' last night with gruyere and mini penne pasta.  Esme said it wasn't that different - just pasta and cheese, right?  And I reminded her that one has to make a bechamel sauce first  with butter, flour and some of the pasta sauce, then add the cheese into it.  Mark says if I can make it with white cheddar and American cheese he'll try it.  

I made a pot of lentil soup first thing  this morning.  It was cold, and my stomach hurt from eating a fast food ice cream yesterday - while finishing up our postal route and things were very early etc.  I told Esme that I had to think 'what did I eat that WAS NOT food, yesterday, and then .. oh yes, that'  So I was up at three am even on my day off, but took a bath and drank more coffee, did the dishes and the laundry - and then my stomach felt better after a bit, enough to cook lentil soup, and then get ready to go for shopping in town.

Frozen grated carrots and ginger from a few months ago, frozen onions, 1 cup or so of lentils, some herbs de provence, some black pepper and salt, and some beet greens - all cooked down and then ran through the blender.  I needed that.  There is enough for a few more lunches, too.

 Now to go throw my floor rugs in the dryer and make that banana bread, before I decide not to as dinner will be coming up - but I've already had the butter and eggs waiting on the counter bringing up to room temperature.  I had poked the butter a half hour ago and it was not ready yet.

Chopped up a bunch of yellow summer squash and red bell peppers and onions (all from the store), harvested a few more strawberries and sorrel leaves, checked on other things.  Have been studying French and Czech lately on duolingo, with some Greek and Lithuanian (and Czech and French) vocabulary on baba dum. 

 The banana bread recipe says :

 2 cups mashed banana (ha, you'll get what I've got, which is two small mashed banana)

1 full stick of butter, softened at room temperature

2 large eggs, brought to room temperature

1/2 cup granulated white sugar

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

2 cups flour (that seems a bit excessive, we'll see)

1 tsp of baking powder

1/2 tsp of baking soda

1/2 tsp salt 

2 tsp of vanilla (yea, no, we do one teaspoon, this is strong stuff)

 and it gives no baking time or temperature, so I'll wing it at 375 and watch it for when it turns brown, stick a fork in it and see if it comes out clean 

 

 

 

I've also been playing Mineclonia Minetest, with the Wine Mod and the plant based foods and x farming, 'get comfortable' furniture mod and a few other things - some of the mods clash - Esme says the barrels from the Wine Mod (which also makes cider, beer, rum, coffee liquer etc.) look so out of place.  I like the way the barrels on end make something like cabinets or armoires when stuck on top of the tables.  The get comfortable thing clashes with how I make roofs on my buildings, so I have had to learn a new way to get around it by putting dirt blocks and then placing the stairs on top of the blocks and breaking them back out from underneath.  This has monsters on, and hunger, and the snow biome nearly killed me last night because I fell through the powder snow and didn't know how to get back out with it all falling on me and doing damage -- dig down, and then reach rock, so you can stand on something, and then find a way to get out one direction or the other, always standing on rock and never on snow. Scary though.. like having a whole ceiling of sand and gravel fall on you in original Minecraft.

 One of the other things that has happened is the nearby pillager crew has come out with their bannerman to stare at me.  I put up a two high fence around my area between their huge watchtower and me, and also lined the other side of it with sweetberry bushes, which they will take damage from them.  We'll see if that works. 

 

  

Japanese food

 

met up with an old friend to have Japanese food - got this as a fortune cookie 'Education is the movement from darkness to light'.  Some to that.  Somewhere between being able to 'do the things anyway' as my father told me (which I shared with her) and being able to see myself in multiple points in time as if looking at myself from the outside - I have been able to at least get somewhere, publishing a few of my books, studying languages, juggling things in general to get things done, if only incrementally.  This blog is probably one of the things that helps me focus in the big picture - but mostly it is just a holding space for thoughts that run too fast otherwise, and don't really need to be jotted down but I do it anyway to keep them from bouncing in my head.

Now home, and time to decompress.   Social anxiety still does get me, but it usually hits me before and after - in the moment, people say they can't tell (although I can).

 French and Chinese today, touch of Spanish on the phone, we'll see what else later.  I feel good I remembered to get juice on the way out of the restaurant - which is why I parked over by the supermarket *ha* it's these things you do because you've met yourself sort of thing... even though others don't get the why, if it works.. it works.

I had started a crochet toy this morning, and should take that a bit further.  There's laundry.  Esme was sitting with the sick chicken when I got back from town just now, going to try to give her some egg yolk in an eye dropper and see if that helps her any

 

body and one leg - then I put it up and did other things

me(brain)-->kick studio <--laundry crunch

 So the long work weekend is over - and it looks like I have today off.  It is dim and humid from the rains the past few days, so I am still feeling a little quiet and wondering how much effort I want to put into things that need effort put into them.  And if I should play a little hooky from sweeping and laundry and etc for a few hours and work at my studio table, which would be very much more enticing if there was adequate light.  I've been playing with Hungarian again the past few days, remembering what I had nearly forgotten before it ran out of my brain - same thing I did with Finnish a week or so ago.  And I've done some French today to counterbalance it.  I worked on a bag yesterday while we watched the Hunt for Red October. 

After the small route yesterday, in the rainstorm, I was SO tired - enough to go to sleep, but I had gotten the pork loin on the way home anyway, and rounded everyone up to go out in the afternoon (since the rain had stopped, and that also makes me tired), and go get our major grocery list (still forgot a few things).  I was standing in front of the aluminum foil with Esme, trying really hard to do the 'bouncing ball map thing' with the entire list so I knew where we were going and how fast etc.. which I usually do in the back of my head -and I couldn't even focus on which aluminum foil we had at home compared to the assortment in front of us - and for a moment, couldn't even realize if Reynold's Wrap was aluminum foil or saran wrap.  Esme saw that and she knew I was very very tired, if I couldn't do that, and also didn't know ten steps ahead of myself where we were going next (I knew maybe the next two).  I was honest with her about that, so she knew why I wasn't doing my usual thing.  Mark was off on the other side of the store (he drove, luckily) getting other things.  

That kind of tired feels like being drunk, knowing that my brain isn't working to the potential I'm used to - I said it was a lot like this Princess Bride quote to both of them in the store, as we walked out- and then I had to make the meme.

But, I snapped up enough to get all the items that were on the list and a few that weren't (but missed two or three non-urgent things, because I didn't want to go across the store, and the other we weren't entirely out yet).  And we got home, made dinner and I didn't even crash hard until at least nine.  And then the dogs got me up and down half the night - so I'm halfway to brain power this morning and starting on my second pot of coffee at 10:30 am.

I'd like to push myself over to that studio table to work on a large sheet of paper with all my pencils, but I know that will take a few hours -

hours that could be used folding laundry, making a bed, washing counters and sweeping floors, and just general pickup from having been on at the post office for five days - and then there is just general buildup of stuff overall that happens with my ADHD and I don't find it bothersome until I actually get time maybe to do something about it (and even then, bah)

I think about the ink I was so excited to get four months ago, and have used twice?  That almost does it.  I think about yarn that looks like yarn the computer keeps advertising to me and I say 'if I just dug that out, maybe I could do something nice with it'.. and again, I counterbalance that potential use of time with the laundry, and cost-sink-analysis of how much benefit I'll truly get out of it as future me scowling at present-me wasting time doing-things as much as wasting time staring-thinking-things.  I think about time and space and that feels like lighting up a giant light bulb, I think about lots of things, chemistry, geometry, baking, the garden - and still the biggest factor is the dimness and the outside weather.

since it was wet outside, and she didn't want to miss dinner when it was eventually served yesterday, Lyffan slept in the table space just behind my computer monitor for a while yesterday.  I caught a couple of pictures of her, although it was entirely voluntary- she let me know she could have gotten up and left during that 'snappy eye thing' but she didn't - and please let her know when the tuna was ready.  *can opener did that, and Esme still had to poke her a bit to make sure she understood yes, now, come downstairs!*

Esme also made up a great batch of our Dragon Spice porkchop spice from Mark's metric recipe.  I have trouble sometimes without the scale he has doing it by hand.  I ordered some maple sugar chili spice the other day and will be interested to see what that is like when it comes.  I like to look at what the spice combinations are and keep some on hand to add to rice and stirfry stuff - but only for things Esme and I eat.  Mark keeps his mixtures for things specific, like meatloaf and porkchop spice, and they're good - but I like to try some different things. 

*stare into coffee cup a bit more*  if it wasn't so dank, I'd think more about baking

it's going to be one of those days, and the pinball method is probably the best thing for it.  do three things here, do three things there, continue moving until you're tired, try not to sit too long before getting up and pinballing a few more things - look at progress - decide the next three things etc etc...  the look at progress thing is just as important as the small break to drink coffee etc.. and to say 'that needed to be done, and now it's done' helps to do the next three things

11:30 I decided, after folding and sorting and starting another load of laundry, and putting away all the eggs from last night that had been set out to dry - that I needed to make a little french toast and then see what I wanted to work on next after that.  I've turned on some extra lights up here, picked up a few things, and planning some more steps.

4pm :  I've done some Japanese, and finished the laundry stuff, and Mark had roasted one of the ends of the pork loin since this morning so we all had sandwiches

7 pm : I did something at the studio table, and it wasn't half bad.. but I played a lot of my game, as well  I also went out and filled the chicken's nest boxes with fresh chips and poked around the garden, then cut up a bunch of cherry tomatoes, a few peppers and some of the lime basil and put it in a freezer container to make some food with in the next few days - the cherry tomatoes had just been in a bowl in the fridge building up but it was high time I did something more with them

drawing

 

 

There is another 'off' day to compare to, but I crashed very early because it was just a very hard week here...  working on Welsh and French this morning, will check out that picture game again with the Lithuanian -  planning to tune into a Youtube channel later - looks like I'm not getting called in.  This weekend will be a lot of running around at work because it is a holiday for some which means extra running for us.  The multilingual Youtube I watched yesterday was Lombard (a language in northern Italy, near Milan), French, Spanish and Romanian all trying to translate things each other was saying in a guessing game - it was very interesting!

 

 

Sweetie and Minerva are sisters, and they both want to sleep on the couch

 

pretty leaves on the way back from the mailbox

 onigiri rice balls made yesterday

Minerva wanted to eat them.. all the other dogs were interested in Mark's potato chips.  He pointed out to me as I was forming them in my hands out of the rice pan that Minerva was pointed at me, and all the other dogs were pointed at him.

RECIPE :

Brown rice, washed and cooked with a touch of rice wine vinegar in the water.

let cool just a little bit, then mix in sugar, more rice wine vinegar, and salt

let cool a little bit more

take large spoonfuls of rice and press them together with wet palms spread with salt back and forth until they form balls (rice is still kind of hot, some people use plastic molds for this), set down in container and place Nori or other seaweed strip on top, cover in white sesame seeds, place in refrigerator for eating later with wasabi and soy sauce and possibly red curry paste.

Columbus Day Non Parade

We have a dog named Columbus...but we couldn't get Esme to walk him on parade.  Spud came to town with us, instead.  We had given Esme the day off of school, as the local district also had it as a day off.  She had a nice sleepover with Grandma, and spent a lot of time playing games on the new tablet that is sort of  pre-birthday, part clearance-deal and Mark's way that we can all use one if we need to now and she won't be hogging the only one for the entire day. 

We watched Nanny McPhee Returns, and the Secret of Moonacre, from Grandma's Netflix.  They were both quite good.  Esme enjoyed the first one quite a bit.  I've been reading more : Sarah Prineas' Magic Thief series, and more Septimus Heap, and a few others thrown in there.  Tomorrow is school, again.  Since Esme got to go to the roller rink on Saturday, I reminded her that she can't just fall off into bad attitude now that she doesn't have a special thing planned for the end of the week - or we will doublethink next time she asks for a special outing etc.  She was slipping into one tonight while I was reading with her - after she begged for me to read because I had spent an hour or more playing a Farm game that Mark downloaded to the tablet and she had already tried and not thought very interesting. It was a bit of jealousy...she didn't like the tables turned when I am playing a game that she doesn't like (Stray cat simulator and Goat simulator on her part) for a long time. 

We are almost done with Hiccup, though, book one.
I work all this week.  It might be a long one.

A few days off

Esme and I made Chicken Marinara last night - simple, but a good learning recipe.

She quite enjoyed it, and with Mark's tomato sauce already made up, it was very good.

Then we watched Mr. Peabody and Sherman, which she loved so much that we are watching it again today.

We had a day out to town today - to the library and the playplace - as it was too hot for the park.  Esme played with a lot of kids.  I bought a few magazines and a book for her.  She chose a bird book to check out with her card.  On the way home we saw a mother deer and her VERY new fawn cross the road - it was so very small!

I'm not sure what we'll do later - we have been working on a new Minecraft world that centers around a blacktop freeway.  We've put in a bank, a few houses, a swimming 'pool', a store and a pizza restaurant.  We are centering around horses as 'cars' and setting up the 'parking lots' off the highway just like they are in a real town, except each having a fence post to tie up a horse at.

I've started a new sketchbook...drew something halfway decent in it after Esme went to bed last night.  I am halfway through reading Emily Climbs (the middle book of Lucy Maude Montgomery's Emily Starr trilogy) on the Kindle, and am thinking of how (or which) to tackle my thoughts on chemistry and math.  If I could break out some time at night on my computer I could listen to some more Khan Academy where I left off last...or gather up my books and jot some relevant things in my sketchbook, which has worked very well for me in the past.

Back to work tomorrow, and tooth exam on Monday.

tiny bits

Today was a day off.. Esme and I started watching Talespin together - and I think she likes it.  I prototyped a new toy pattern I drew at work the other day.  It was good progress - Esme says it doesn't need any changes at all. I think it does have a few places I can tweak it but for a quick sketch all the pieces came together remarkably well. It rained on us while we were out grocery shopping.  Esme and I played Minecraft for several hours, expanding our shared world that has so much in it already.  We had hair braiding lessons (for Daddy and Esme both) and Esme is coming along very good with her practicing of flossing.  Mark has been working on his robotic kits some more.  I did not get more work done on Esme's dress - it is still halfway sewn.

I wanted to note that Esme is writing books again on little pieces of paper - she wrote a few for the little prototype toy to read.  She hasn't done much of that all year -although she had done a lot in Kindergarten, and right up through the first few weeks of first grade before the situation turned for the worst (which led to our homeschooling).  I am happy to see her at this again.   The last few days her sentences in the journal have been short but she has done them without (much) despair, and then carried the journal to me to do my part.  She made a little pin the tail on the dinosaur game today that was very cute and functional - and used her How to Draw Dinosaurs book to make the picture 'look right'.  Her brain has definitely 'put on another layer' in the last month at least..she is making some great observations and asking good questions here and there...  Another note - I've had to get her up in the middle of the night every night lately...but it is the only thing that works.  When she has growth spurts it seems this is always the case.

We described her characters for her mystery book a bit - I asked her to think of them as real people and answer questions, and wrote it down for her to read tomorrow.  She says the characters are 'like in my dreams' so I will try to coax her to frame out some stories to work on as content over the next year.

Friday

Esme had the day off from 'official' homeschool today - but that doesn't stop the creativity.

She got Daddy to help her with the cutting and made a house out of her dryer box (which had previously been folded as an 'L' shape with shop counters taped to the back of it, and had also been a horse stable in the same condition.  Now she has a little rug I made her last year in there with her toy dog Gingia.  When I got home from work she was tying the door on through small holes she had made in both items and using broken hair ties to tie the knots.

 

This is a habitat for her plastic swan toy (which she has had for years, and used to carry around with her as a toddler) - It is a beautiful garden and a pond, and a nesting place.

I have a few little projects I know I want to make for her Easter basket... just have to get the time to sit down and work on them when she isn't looking....

Esme's drawing tonight of Rubles the rat in her new cage (not yet built) with an exercise wheel, toys and food.  I was impressed by the feet :)  they really do look like that.

We watched My Neighbor Totoro, and she really liked it.

I had to make this one black and white because she had folded it as a secret note.

She really liked catbus ;)

snow bits

It snowed, sleet and ice.  I stayed home from work - and we gave Esme a snow day.  She was awake at 6:30 and I kept her in the house as much as I could until 9 am.. when she just kept popping out the door every five minutes to make sure I knew it wasn't cold outside.  Bundled her up.  She played.  The dogs played.  They all ran around the yard like giant hopping rabbits chasing her about.  Minerva and Sweetie were rolling each other around in it like puppies.  She threw 'glitter' snowballs, because it wouldn't hold together at all.  She tried to use the sled and had forgotten how to use it - momentarily.. then she was at the top of the hill paddling like a pleiosaur down the driveway.  I just couldn't bring myself to go out there - so cold!  Mark went out for a few minutes, and came back in freezing after a short trip down the hill.

Esme finally came in, and I made her black tea and milk and sugar, with a hot chicken patty for breakfast.  She ate.  She went back outside... I played Civilzation V and she played some with me...bopping around me until the afternoon.  We played the Earth map and talked about the geography compared to the map...even though it wasn't a school day.  The falling ice and freezing rain finally stopped somewhere in there.  Mark made us a lunch of hot buttered rolls, and then we went out and fed the chickens and gave them feed in their house and hot water in their bowl.  They were walking around hopping from foot to foot.. but were very glad to drink from the little bit of water while it was available.  I had to use some of the hot water to open the gate latch, as it was frozen solid from the sleet and freezing rain.  Then I finally said it was time for me to sled with her.  We took two trips and then I retreated back inside, too... playing more CIV and talking her into taking a warm bath since Daddy had just left the hot water from his.  She really needed one...and it has been so cold we didn't press it last night (Wet hair at night, etc.) 

Some dinner, some playing campfire in her room with spooky ghost stories and etc...She had torn up a cardboard paper towel tube and was pretending it was logs for a fire.  She had a big wheel K'nex on each of two K'nex sticks and was 'roasting marshmallows'.  She had a story for me about a vampire potato that gave zombie-like instructions to its victims and made roots grow out of their heads.  She told Mark the story, too...  I told her the real story about the man whose car smelled bad for days and then one day he had a dead snake come out from under his seat when he moved it forward getting something out of the seat.  She said EW...

Now she is playing more games after having built a robot with K'nex.  She is trying to solve where the batteries are in goat simulator and where to put them.  I think she just got it.

Have to think about if we're going in tomorrow...the roads won't be any better, and there might be more weather on the way.  If I'm home tomorrow and can work up the ambition.. maybe make this: Corn muffins with peanutbutter or a recipe out of one of the magazines I have for lemon cornbread sugar cookies.

Quote from Esme today:  While I was playing CIV she leans on my shoulder and sticks her hand out palm-up to me and says 'Do we really need this war, Mom?  I mean, really need it?  Can't you just stop this and go home?'  The moments.  She played it quite a bit on her own later, including battles... but just can't help writing that one down for her for later.

Sunday

We had originally planned with a friend to go out to a park but they had something else to do last minute, so we made our own plans.  We bought some groceries and the sequel to Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs today, and Esme and Columbus were watching it as seen above.  We also finally found a world map - and hung it up in the hallway where Esme can see it easily.  I've seen her steal glances at it on the way down the stairs...She may learn some of it by osmosis, perhaps.  She chose a Minecraft poster for her room and pored over it for fifteen minutes recognizing what was happening in the many scenes and if it was purely funny or a real possibility in the game.  She is growing up some - gone from having an animal alphabet poster on her door to a video game ;)

//laundry now and a few little bits.  Esme wants to try to feed Minecraft cake to pigs, as seen in her poster.

I've got to remember to look for 1987 NGs at the library this next time we go.  There is a map of walruses in one of them that we didn't have.

---

bits of note:  I've made a few observations lately.  Esme is much more 'grown-up' about some things than she was even last October (when we began homeschooling).  It's not across the board, but it is noticeable and it has been creeping up on me lately that I needed to try to put some of them to words.  

She has finally started to take more direction for herself, and be vocal about future ideas although she doesn't always follow through.  She was in quite a bad mood when our friend cancelled on us - and I thought she was doing very well with it, but she blew up a bit later when something else didn't go as planned, and it lingered for a while with her unhappiness on things - but we told her to shape up and she teetered a bit and came back to acceptable behavior.  But, in her favor she did not throw any 'tantrums' .. just was unpleasant and snippy...that is a good change from a year or so ago, or at least a more sophisticated one.  I haven't been kidding when I say things like we've had a teenager in training since she was three...

Her language ability has taken another step up the ladder - which is a big thing because she HASN'T been in speech therapy or around many children her age, which were supposedly the best things for her (therapy and 'audio bombardment').  She listens more to conversations that don't directly involve her and remembers more of it for later -- a skill she was lacking on.  And she has started to understand and pick up some more of the little bits of language that are odd or colorful..  She is starting to sound more like a teenager in the words she uses, although she still makes tense, gender and question/declarative mistakes often.  'Do you want to know what kind is it?'  'There's Mom, Columbus, you can tell because he is much taller than I am.' 

However, spelling and writing are her least favorite things.  But, I've seen her spelling improve when she doesn't know she's being watched (names in Minecraft, signs, notes she writes for herself)..and she is more willing to attempt to spell things phonetically than she was before.  She throws some huge words around now that she doesn't always know what they mean - but they're there.. and she is gaining ability with them (magnificent and superstitious and pteranadon, today...)  And her sense of humor is getting better.  She is less 'lost' when it comes to sarcasm, jokes etc.. 

Last bit, her names and pretends are becoming some bit more interesting and using info from many places..her creative streak is coming into it's own.   And she still does things that are very much like a seven year old little girl.   She had a sweet little 'dress shop' made out of a book holder box, some dresses I had made for other dolls and her chosen favorite animal dolls to put the dresses on.  Her rubber "Leaferella" frog was given a dress and getting some very special treatment (even a baby bottle).  Her own fashion sense is coming along nicely - pairing her clothes and such in a less haphazard way - that is worthy of note, too...even if it isn't something she sees in either of us, it is a step to growing up. 

She made an awesome 'Flint Lockwood' type computer out of the bottom of her book box, drawing a screen and keys on it.  She then put on her white 'lab coat' and told me her new pretend sister Sam Sparks was coming for a visit and they were going to do science!  She said she can look up pretend things all day long on her new computer and real things on the computer upstairs with Daddy.

//Notes
Homeschool articles:
Why do some schools feel like prisons?   // Yes, if you had read our Homeschool Decision, this was half of our complaint about the local school district.  School should not be like prison.  School should have talking and playing somewhere in the day for six year olds - not constant lockdown and punishment for whatever the teacher decides is being punished today. ie: stand in your square, don't drop your pencil, etc etc..  They then tried to tell us those are the skills that she will need in her job someday.  I think you're doing it wrong, especially at six.
De-Schooling Me // Great article, especially about halfway through I started seeing the reasons we are homeschooling.



Note: The best medicine - humor and laughter - is the best teaching method with this girl.  She shuts down when something goes wrong, or she is wrong - perfectionism streak...trying to teach her to try again, laugh it off (if possible) and learn from mistakes.  If something is funny or really really cool - she wants to learn about it and doesn't mind doing things related with it, as long as they really seem related to it.  Bribery doesn't work too well...at least not for hurrying along - she is very in the moment when she is working on something.  

We've been talking about 'the fourth dimension' though, and thinking back in all of the time you saw something (photographic memory, making it an asset) and thinking with your brain what the future can be - because we make the future, and how to make it happen.  She was skeptical about the idea when I brought it up a week or so ago (while looking for something at the supermarket that had moved) and now she is quoting it back to me and pointing out areas the skill is useful and how to use it.  //Mom would fist-pump the air at this one if it continues to progress!  My photog.mem has really become an asset in my work because I took the time to train it...it can still be annoying at times, too - but it really helps as well when I can quickly access orders and product locations in my 'mental file' instead of the computer one that takes more time.

Park, sugar cookies, and a return home for George

We all went out to town this morning, to print pictures for Aunt Dot, go to the park, and then return home.  Esme and I were planning to make some cookies, as Mom really needs the practice before her birthday rolls around again.  Then we were surprised by an elderly man we had given George, (above), to last month.  He had brought him back saying he had too much energy and his wife said it was her or the dog, she couldn't keep up.  Oh my :(  But, of most of the puppies we had - George was an easygoing soul and he proved that by settling right in with all of the other dogs within just a few minutes.  They rolled him on the floor, told him to calm down, not be a puppy etc etc... and then Esme came in and everyone said 'Oh, and she likes you, too.'  So he went downstairs with Esme for a good while.  Mark gave him a bath, and he is shivering on a towel at her feet while they watch TV.  And he is so happy to be 'home'.. which is sad, because we will probably rehome him in the coming weeks, if we can.  We already have several males - and although everyone seems to get along, not sure how that would work out.

It is very true that Catahoula puppies are energetic, active - and they need a 'job' or some sort of fit for them in the world, or they will just find themselves one.  George had apparently taken to - according to the man - guarding the family garbage can from the garbage collector - and the man's wife was afraid he would be hit by the truck and die.  Our dogs do similar things - one of them watches the chicken house, one of them decides he has to be with Esme wherever she goes on the property etc etc..it is just part of owning Catahoulas.

I have a meeting with Esme's teacher on Tuesday.

Garden, farm visit and wool roving for yarn spinning

 The floral area of the garden, along with squash and radishes and some beans out there behind the marigolds.  Right at the corner of the 'L' there is a giant carrot plant from last year - it is about to blossom and go to seed.

 I will have to think about which beans we have planted this year... quite a few.
Ireland Creek Annies, -- bush
Kenearly Yellow Eye, -- bush
Blue Black Shackamaxon, -- pole
Rattlesnake, -- pole
Florida speckled Lima beans, -- pole
Christmas lima beans -- pole (but I'm not sure they made it)
Jackson Wonder Lima beans, -- bush
Whipporwill cowpeas, -- semi-vining
black eyed peas -- semi-vining
Purple hulled quick pick peas, -- bush
Cherokee black wax, -- bush
Pencil pod black wax, -- bush
Taylor Dwarf Horticultural, -- bush
Provider, -- bush
a pinto bean that was unidentified in a container, -- pole
a white seeded climber that confused me last year by not knowing where it came from, -- pole
Hyacinth ornamental (climbing)
Bosnian beans.-- pole

I tried a Goldrush (bush) wax bean twice and it failed both times.  I have a Hopi purple string bean (pole) and the Tennessee Greasy bean variant (pole) I have yet to plant.  I'm not sure - do I count the french green lentils as beans?  *ha*

The corn is growing quite tall, the provider beans and the tomatoes we planted from seed are both starting to flower.  The sweet peas (not shown) are really producing a little each day, now.  If we can just keep the grass from taking over we will have plenty of food, soon.  The chickens really like the weeds thrown to them, as well.

The other adventure of the day - besides the hours I spent out here, was going to Dry Hollow Farm, which is not very far away from us and we found on Etsy.  We bought some Jacob's sheep wool roving which I am trying my hand at making into yarn, and got to see the wonderful animals she takes care of.  Her gardens were inspiring, too -- although I have no idea how I could ever upkeep that much space!  That is why I 'microgarden' in comparison - a small space but everything packed as densely as possible.  But, it would be nice to learn how to do the terracing and make even more use of space.

I took the wool to a mock-up spindle when I got home and started an attempt at a twisted single ply.. it was a lovely long staple, so it wasn't hard to get something that appeared to act like yarn... I am thinking if I ply it together with a second ply or with some lace yarn I have not used it will become something I can knit with and make something beautiful.

//Other beans not planted this year but we have for consideration :
Mayflower beans (pole)
Marvel of Venice (pole) ? is this the white seeded one I couldn't identify?
Polestar runner beans (red flowered)
Country Gentleman beans - can't find any info on this one, so I should grow it out to find more
 Beurre de Rocquencourt (wax, bush)
Tiger Eye 
Jeminez (pole)
Coco Bianco (there are bush and pole varieties, mine are not marked)
Dapple grey (bush?)
Good Mother Stallard (pole), did poorly last year
Snowcap (bush)
Soldier (bush)
White Half Runner
Kentucky Wonder Pole beans
'pink' beans (supposed to be semi-vining)
Appaloosa (bush)
Painted Pony (bush)
Dixie butterpea lima beans (bush)
Hutterite (bush) - I only have a few seeds left of this, they did not do well here
McCaslan (pole)
several labelled 'Borlotto' bush types?
Lina Sisco's birds egg beans (bush)
Calypso red and black varieties (bush)
Nightfall red and black varieties (bush)
Colorado river (which look just like Mayflower) (pole?)
Trout beans
Mississippi silver cowpeas
Cream lady cowpeas (grew last year - so very small.. pretty, but not sure will grow out again)

---and more.. of course... I have become quite the collector thanks to the benefactor seed swap from a few years ago, and am always on the lookout for others even though I can't grow them all every year.

bits

 I continued the busy streak today - both with the cleaning, and the other projects.  I started to put a border around this knit bathrug that was never large enough... and it is turning out okay for never having crocheted around a square before.  I'll put a few more rounds of blue on it when Esme is in the bath later, and it will be ready.

I cleaned some more - and then did some plumbing (which will lead to more) cleaning out p-traps in the pedestal sinks.  I discovered they really need to have the drains inside the sinks replaced soon - and that is on our list.  There is a drawer slide in the kitchen drawers that can be repaired, too.  I did the cleaning in the hallway I had set out to do - have a tiny bit more there later after Esme is home.  I am actually going to recruit her for the vanity sink p-trap, and see if she helps.

I also got tired of not finding a pencil among my knitting needles - and all of the short items that get lost in the tall ones etc etc..  So I took two jars which I had originally cleaned off of the vanity cabinet and painted them with some gloss paint which says 'for use on glass only for decorative purposes'  check.  This makes some nice use out of something we already had - and makes them look a lot cleaner than they did before.

Also need to make more dishcloths in the next month or so - have yarn set aside.  I'm using them all over the place.  The empty coffee cans have also become buckets while cleaning... our recycling bin for containers is paying off ;)

Tried sushi for the first time today - 'california roll' with avocado, cucumber and crab.  The pickled ginger 'gari' and wasabi made it extremely good.  This is a new restaurant for our town and has been here nearly a year?  I will probably be back some other time.

bits in pink and green

A day off today, and sweet sunlight is spilling in and the world has warmed up a little for the first time in a few weeks.  I'm working up the yarn Esme had chosen yesterday for her pillow, and have a stack of old 25 cent magazines from the library sale to snip pictures out of and arrange into my journal/scrapbook of ideas.  I've cleaned out quite a bit off my desk again and it is nearly all workspace and very little clutter.  Tomorrow it's back to work for a full week and it is the busy season.  Esme is watching old Justice League and Super Friends cartoons so our brains will be fairly dizzy (as the adults in the room) but Mark will counter that with his thick meat spaghetti sauce that is filling the house with it's tomato and basil smell.  I find it nice that when I snip something out of the magazine lately it is pretty plants, branch patterns, fabric designs, hexagons and zigzags... might get into some paint later today and play with color combinations in the little octopus book I made the other day.

I dreamed of a candy from my childhood the other day - although they are not excellent - my grandparents always had them and I felt a bit of nostalgia to find out what they were as only the color and shape and an idea they had peanuts was left in the snippet of memory..

These are French Burnt Peanuts, a small burnt orange globular candy with small nubbles all over it as a sugar coating around each peanut..  Mark found some for me at a store after I finally tracked it down.  The key thing about them is not exactly the taste, but patience, which my grandparents had quite a bit of, (they taught me to sew), and was probably the reason they were always 'around'... a few beside a cup of coffee will last an hour, as crunching into them is not good for teeth! Heh.

Esme came and asked me what I was doing as I was copying an entry in my journal from a damaged page to a new page.  I told her 'copying', and she said no, copying is like I am drawing a pony and you are drawing a pony and that is copying me.  I said no, close, but not.  Copying can be drawing a picture from a picture you did before, or writing something you did before, not just 'copying' what a person is doing etc...  As I explained that she peered into the water in the bathub that was waiting for her to start her bath and said Oh, the water is copying the window.  Close! *ha*  So we talked about reflection (which she does know) and the reflection copies the light, so she was almost right about that sentence.  And then she said - Oh, words.  Yes, I said, there are a lot of words. 

book bits

Mark caught this picture of me using Esme's crayons and markers to make her another book.

Our 'Mama wrote it' library is getting bigger.. and Esme's reading skills are getting quite good.  She read a lot of words while we were out today, and a never-seen-before very short book that we got in the mail 'This is Biscuit' without any help at all.  It is part of a phonics set for her.  More impressive, she read the words to the book I wrote in her notebook and got most of them - 'The Dinosaur and the Flashlight' contains many more words I didn't think she had a good grasp on yet, and 'look-alike' words, which she has trouble with.  ie: 'ever', 'every', 'anybody', 'another', 'other', etc... 

She told my boss today that she got to read 'The Rat and the Rhinoceros' to her class one day... I'm not sure if she really did.  But if she does get to read them, I will send them.  

We had a BIG day out on the town today, lots to process... and she made plans for what to make for a birthday gift for her friend next weekend.  I made it tonight and put it away.  I think it turned out really cute and I'll probably take pictures and post but I don't want to spoil the surprise for the other girl's family by posting anywhere else.

Will have to take pictures and post the 'Rat' books, too.. the Dinosaur story is also roundabout way about 'Ratty'...  eventually we'll have a set big enough to do something more with.  I read a book called 'The Animal Family' by Randall Jarrell while at the library and checked out 'The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate', which is a Newberry Award winner.  I think, when she is ready for it, it will be an excellent read for a developing scientist's mind :)

cinnamon rolls and other day off stuff

Thought about this last night before I went to bed ... I used this recipe: Joy the Baker's Cinnamon Biscuit Rolls and it was very easy.  I didn't have buttermilk, so I used whole milk.. we'll see how that goes.  I tend to not do well when I don't have everything in the recipe (duh) but ... I've made very similar biscuits to this recipe before and it was always whole milk.

I have some chestnut hair dye (I've done that before - but it was at least two years ago) that is wash-out 29 shampoos.. and I'm going to do that later today.  I didn't have the courage for mahogany purple.  Mark doesn't see the point of dyeing hair at all... 

I've been making some progress with my Minecraft world (which was restarted a few weeks ago from scratch) and had a very awesome comic book dream with time travel in it last night... drawing up storyboards and text for it at my desk.  Esme is bopping to Bubble Guppies and keeps wanting me to find some game called 'dishes dish'... which I can't - so she is somewhat upset with that.

Also found out that her K starts July 8th, not the 10th.  I might have to be dropped off at work very early that day so Mark can take her in at the right time.

Weaving a primitive rag rug

Very primitive.. but it will get use for the few hours that was put into the making of it.  I thought I could string up the wooden frame that was rescued from some packaging for a tight woven item I would hate to put on the floor whenever it was finally done - or do this with some old flannel shirts and be done in a few hours.  The product is thick and warm - not great to look at... but a good learning experiment.  All of the cotton flannel was cut 'spiral' so the back of each shirt and each sleeve etc etc.. became one long strip each.  That also made a 'ruffled' look to the outcome as the spiral made interesting fluffy areas here and there. I added a little crochet yarn to the edges and a few strings along the middle and it became much more compacted and sturdy.  I told Mark it almost looks like a saddle - he said Esme wouldn't get very far trying to ride the dogs so a rug is a better use for it :)

 

on the loom

36 by 18 inches
after tying up the ends and running a few lines of crochet through it.

These are three flannel shirts and a little bit of extra strip cloth left over from clothing projects recently. Scraps are as scraps are, but with some care to color choices this kind of project could look very neat and decorative.  This one being '80s country' colors are not really what I would decorate with - but for practicality it is much more use than the fabric might have gotten otherwise - it was coming apart at seams and probably not a good investment for a patchwork as it might come apart more after all of that work.
  I have that happening to one part of our bed quilt and it is awful - I want to fix it, but I hate to just slap a patch on it... also hate to take it apart and redo that area... *sigh* I honestly had a nightmare the other night about that part of my quilt coming apart... odd how that goes.

Now I will get back to the other project (not pictured), which is a knit cotton netting material... It is on my circular needle strung about five foot wide, and I have about six inches of length on it.  I was knitting on that last night while Esme was in the bath and at my lunch hour at work.  Mr. Harold at work said I was 'going to town on it' - but the open network means it goes twice as fast and is half as heavy as the afghan I knit last.  That afghan is the purple and green and blue one shown in the pictures - and it is getting a lot of use.

Esme and Daddy clowning around by the loom while it was hung up - give Daddy a hug :)  Sweet.

 

Here's looking at you, kid...

She had to try to look through the loom at me here.