Back to Life

Thanksgiving went well. My brother and my mom joined us for dinner. I think we hit around 80% local for the food. My mom brought the pumpkin pie made with a can o' Libby's, despite the fact that I had cooked, mashed pumpkin frozen in the basement.
No Cool Whip, hurray! I forgot we needed corn, because mashed potatoes without corn just isn't as good, so I bought a bag of frozen sweet kernels from Trader Joe's.

It was delicious. Afterward we went for a lovely, cooold half hour walk in the night. That was great. I hate sitting around all stuffed and pained from too much food. S and I had fun looking into folk's lit up houses and laughing about how much Ikea stuff our fair neighbors have too. We know Ikea so well we can identify just about every item from that store.

Friday our new computer came (a week early)~ which was great. The monitor is 19" and it just seems too darn big. Like I have one of those page magnifiers that old people use to read the newspaper. I've reverted to looking at my fingers when I type because the screen makes my eyes all buggy.

The weekend was fairly low key. I bought a new pair of Dansko's because I busted a hole (can you believe that?!) in the top of my right shoe, also Dansko. I always feel terribly guilty whenever I spend more than $10 on myself, but I've said it's my Christmas present (not that G and I ever really get each other presents). He just spent $200 on winter running gear because he's been freezing his butt off since the cold weather has arrived. So there are our new presents. Merry Christmas.

I have been on call to attend a birth with a friend midwife. The client was having baby #3 and had both her first and second kids in the hospital at 42+ weeks. She had this baby at 42 weeks, 5 days. I missed the birth by 5 minutes (she lives over an hour away), but my midwife friend was there and caught the baby. You would not believe the amount of thick, cheesy vernix floating in the pool water! Amazing! That woman would've never made it to 42 weeks in a hospital around here. They would've induced a week and a half ago, and at what cost for her baby? And for her own body?
At any rate, we cleaned up, got everyone stable and fed and I was home by 6:30am. The moon was so huge and full and there was snow up where we were at. It was so nice to be the only one on the highway with a huge moon reflecting the bright snow. Just another reason why I love this job. These beautiful opportunities to drive on an empty road in the middle of the night and take in everything around you and the new life you've just seen unfold and begin a new journey. Something so small, yet so big at the same time.

A brief overview of the last few days

I TITLED THIS PAGE BEFORE I WROTE IT. IT'S NOT BRIEF AT ALL. BUT READ IT ANYWAY. And please don't be offended...

Our laptop, our only computer fried like an egg on summer blacktop Thursday. A computer friend came over and confirmed it. We're not sure if we'll be able to extract a load of valuable information on there that had not been backed up yet (tho a lot of it has). We'll have to wait and see until I get a new computer. That's a terrible feeling. But oh well. I'm not even gonna jinx myself by moaning about it anymore. Money money blah blah blah.
I'm still healthy today.

Speaking of health, little E has been having a few seizures the last few days. We doubled his meds a couple of weeks ago. The increase coincided with daylight saving's time. Since both of these things happened, he's been really tired. His preschool teacher expressed concern about his new apathy. He's usually so upbeat and helpful and loves to finish his projects in time to do the next thing.
Not sure if it's a meds thing or just the fact that once 8pm rolls around it has been dark for 3 hours already and we all feel like it's really 1am. It also seems on the days that he has seizures, he's just totally wiped out.
He seems to be having more of them in his sleep too. Maybe that adds to his fatigue. Our poor baby. Prayers please. He's such a sweet kid. I get overwhelmed by the thought that he might not grow out of this. G talked about homeschooling him if he doesn't "get better".

Today we visited a friend out in the country. She has a lovely old house with lots of great climbing trees, chickens, barn cats, etc. The kids played outside all day. They ran around like mad; played in leaf piles, chased kitties, pretended there were dragons in the trees and just had a ton of fun.
We left after staying four hours. Little E was alseep in the car in 10 minutes. He's still asleep now, 5 hours later. He'll probably wake up at 6am, and that's okay.

I think we will succeed at our 100 Mile Local Thanskgiving dinner. The biggie was finding fresh cranberries at the food co-op. They came from a bog in Michigan! Had no idea there were any in the state. I even checked on localharvest.org and kept coming up with cranberries from Maine. All the other ingredients have come from within 100 miles though. With the exception of the Cool Whip my mother bought. I explained to her I ordered whipping cream from the dairy this week but she said: "But the Cool Whip was buy 1 get 2 free. And the kids like it. I prefer real whipped cream myself. You can have the other 2 tubs of Cool Whip. I'll never be able to eat it."
This is where I would roll my eyes and smack my forehead if I were to show how bratty I really am. I would whine: Moooo-om, you DON'T get it!
I HATE Cool Whip. I always have. It's not real, it doesn't taste real. It's freaky like Jello with slices of fruit in it. Even before I learned that one could whip up their own whipped cream with a mixer and some whipping cream, I would buy a can of Reddi-Whip (and fight over the "whippet" of the empty can with whatever cheap-thrills friends was with me, killing too many precious brain cells).

But I'm a nice girl. I'll take the extra Cool Whip and let the kids eat it because I believe in moderation. Moderation of the good and the bad. And even though I wish my kids could and would eat fabulous, whole foods at all times, I don't want them to hate me for shoving my values down their throats and having friends and family poo-poo them because their mother is a wacko-health freak, which in turn would make them resent me and make them grow into unhealthy, overweight, TV addicts who only eat food from drive-thrus.

I keep having this recurring theme in my life where I come upon something that I think is really interesting and consumes me in a big way and then I find out that a close friend has grown up with that particular thing shoved down their throat as a child. They're so done with what I'm just getting into. And that makes me fear for my own children.

So moderation, my dears, moderation.

So reading stuff about eating local has gotten me into more of the same, only a little deeper. Yesterday at the library we ran in for a few movies for G and I. We got a really well done documentary about Charles Bukowski. It was really sweet and real, and took me back 15 years. S came in and watched the last 20 minutes or so with us. Moderation. And nothing obscene, really.
At any rate, at the library I found an old Reader's Digest book called Back to Basics. It's all about traditional American homesteading. Very cool. Written in the late 1970s, it's totally survivalist, back to the land stuff covering everything from beekeeping (something I've wanted to do for years)and gardening to making mocassins and stupid racoon hats.
The first entry is how to build a sturdy and monstrously huge wooden barn like the Amish would make. The photographs look like Creedence Clearwater Revival called Three Dog Night and asked if they wanted to smoke a bowl and raise a barn.
There are also some sassy ladies with Dorothy Hamill haircuts, short cut-offs and knee-high tube socks churning butter.
Besides be dated (and aren't we all?), the book is awesome. When I have a computer of my own someday (I've got my mom's laptop for the night), I will order a copy of my own from half.com.
It's a keeper.

Tonight, I typed "homesteading" in the search engine. Many, many homesteading information sites are very Christian. Are there no homesteaders of other faiths? And what is all this keeping onself in a bubble stuff? It really makes me uncomfortable. I want to do my share of being a peacemaker by trying to meet, understand and enjoy as many human beings as I can during my lifetime.
I identify as Christian, but I'm okay with my child going to a school with kids with other faith systems and values (that's what I LIKE about the school). I work, and still hold a fairly traditional role in my house. I do pretty much all the cooking, cleaning, gardening, yard work, basement cleaning, child-related stuff, etc. And then I go out for beer with my friends, without my husband. And now I want to be the Urban Homesteader. The not-so-great but always trying Christian who doesn't need to tell everyone that to identify myself. I want to do some work to supply our family with the food we need, or at least a lot of it.

Our Fair City no longer allows poultry within the city limits since the avian flu outbreaks a couple years ago, but I'm about to see if they've got anything in the books about pygmy dairy goats. I want to hack down 3 of many, many maple trees (that reproduce like Gremlins every spring) and grow a couple fruit producing trees. I want to keep bees in my garden.

I feel like I'm on the edge of a personal revolution that will inspire hipster mothers who enjoy getting their hands dirty and are concerned about what their children are eating. You thought the Stitch and Bitch knitting craze was cool? Wait till we raise a very small barn for very small goats in my city-lot back yard.

What would Jesus think? Hopefully, Right on sister. Now turn up that CCR.

Infant Mortality Rate in the US

Just read a new article about our country's terrible infant mortality rates.

Crazy.

Localvore Endeavors

What have I been up to lately?
Wrapping my head around becoming a Mod Pioneer. This has nothing to do with Quadrophenia or white lipstick.

Last year at Thanksgiving my friend K and I attempted (the week OF Thanksgiving) to try to make it a 100 mile meal. Which means, that all ingredients come from within 100 miles. We did all right, and I think about 80% of our meals came from local growers. This year I'm shooting for 100%. I've got my turkey ordered early this year instead of relying on the frozen bird we sometimes get from G's work (the day before Tday).

After doing my head in with the notion of our entire infrastructure collapsing in Into The Forest, I next happened upon Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle. In this book, Barbara Kingsolver and her family move from Tuscon to Virginia (I think it's Virginia, at any rate, Appalachian). Their intent is to grow or buy everything they eat locally.
When you sit down to think about it, this means no more exotic fruit. No kiwi, pineapples, bananas, etc. A lot of things are scratched off their menu. Or at least until the time is right to grow things like strawberries on their own.

WHY do this to yourself and your family? Well conventional farming practices by mega farms are atrocious. We won't even go into factory meat conditions. Ack.
"Certified Organic" has lost a lot of credibility as the government has twisted and turned the standards for this certification and made it very expensive to obtain.

The next best thing is to support your local farmer, who chances are, grows things organically anyway, but forgos certification because it's just too much paperwork and money. You're not wasting thousands of dollars in gas to get your food shipped to you from far away places and as a result, your food is fresher and in season for you, in your cycle of the year.

The past few weeks I've been going to different farmer's markets to stock up for Thanksgiving. I've got a lot of potatoes and sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, onions, garlic,cheese, sausage,honey,delicious sweet carrots, a load of apples that I turned into many bags of frozen applesauce. I've been taking in our collards from the garden and freezing those. We have 4 brussel sprout plants still out there, still growing.
I've been making sandwich loaf bread instead of buying loaves. We eat a lot of bread here, and we all like it fresher anyway. I've got a recipe we like, that I've been tweaking with different flour, grains, etc. King Arthur Flour has a great website and has baking pans that make me drool

We've also started a home delivery service with a local dairy farm. We've been getting half and half, milk, butter, ice cream, etc delivered once a week. The prices are comparable to that from a store, but the milk is in glass, not plastic, so it tastes like milk and not like the jug it came in.
I'm always up for extremist challenges. Here goes another one. I'm figuring out a better way to garden, to pack more into our garden with better yields. I'm trying to figure out how many onions we'd eat over the winter, how much garlic, tomatoes, fresh greens in spring, broccoli, and so on.
I'm afraid we're not ready to do without coffee, tea or olive oil. Or exotic spices for that matter. I cook a lot of Indian food, but I have a lot of spices to last a long time. The other hard things to get is sugar and flour. There are mills, but I don't know where they get their grain from.

We'll see how well I do with this. Last couple of years have been a wash for the garden. Between working a couple part time jobs and doing midwifery, ooo, and let's not forget being a Mama and wife, my cooking has definitely been more fast and convenient. Good, as in Trader Joe's not-a-lot-of-crap in the ingredient list, but definitely quick.

So far, G and the kids haven't complained about the food served them. I don't think anyone has noticed much. We've got our own chickens coming out our ears, and the farmer's market veggies are so fresh and good that mealtime has been lots of yumms. Let's see how we are in January and February though. Back at Trader Joe's I'm sure.
At least until the garden starts producing something.

My Monsters

Thanks to our little monters, we have far too much candy in the house.
We have a bounty of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups~ my fave.
Here's the kick off to the junk food season.
Fortunately, this old, cold house draws me to work out in the morning to get warm.