September air

I am sitting by my open window enjoying the September air which is rich with rotting leaves and the last deep breaths of the trees before they go back to sleep. The horses are picking through the garden's leavings, having chewed the grass down to a millimeter's length throughout the whole yard. They have fairly strict boundaries and are finally passing beyond them to the slough-y outskirts in the woods around the cleared space. I guess the grass there, cured by now into hay, is not as tasty as the freshly mown stuff (even if it was only mown by them all summer). Our water table is as high as it has ever been, thanks to 6" of rain in the last two weeks. We have a huge new puddle right in front of the barn which is causing difficulties with our planned project of pouring cement in the last third of the barn this fall. The truck will likely sink. We will have to lay down plywood. Even so, once it freezes we will be contending with a skating rink right in our major traffic area. Not good.

This summer was too full, and I am re-evaluating my entire life on the basis of the realities of my energy. Which is apparently finite. I figure that I am in general spending 60% of my energy on my kids. You would think this would go down once school begins, but this September all three got sick and Levi got very sick right away. Plus there were eye appts. for all three with Seth needing two follow-up appts. just to get much needed contacts. Finally he can play sports without his glasses going flying three times per game. Plus helping out with the Parent Advisory Council, field trips, and the annual Walkathon. Not to mention Crutwell's fall supper and bringing in our garden . . . September has been if anything, MORE busy than July and August. And they were full.

So, given that the kids will likely continue to require a significant majority of my time and thought and attention, and that my job also is very labour intensive and emotionally taxing, that does not really leave any time for Dan much less myself. It would be nice to cut back on everything, but financial realities make that highly unrealistic and many other parents have assured me that family life does not get simpler as children mature. Sigh. I would love to read a book that tells women how to do it all and still be serene and calm and reasonably fit. In the meantime, I am really enjoying the fall brilliance today after a week of dark cloudy rainy skies. The trees are the exact shade of yellow-orange that goes best with the fall-crisp blue of the sky. We still have green on the ground thanks to all the rain. So despite the fact that I am doing laundry, dishes, supervising kids' cleaning rooms and practicing piano, hosting two of Levi's friends, and trying to figure out which of the rest of the garden to even try to bring in, I am still enjoying breathing in the day.

Last weekend I was able to work with Jetta two days in a row! Before the rain re-started. That was very nice because I have gone right back to the beginning with her and am working on respect on the ground. She remains too emotionally scattered for my comfort when I am riding her and I have finally realized that she is wired completely differently from Chess. She may eventually come to respect me after I ride her hard for 50 miles but in the meantime I may also get my neck broken with her sudden bolting behaviour. So we are working on attention and sustained attention and her thinking, rather than reacting. I never really had to work to get or keep Chess' attention; she is too focused on avoiding extra work to not pay attention. However Jetta is very unfocused and I think it is just needing to realize that she must discipline herself for longer than 30 seconds. I am not great at setting clear boundaries (obviously) but this is very good for me. If I am clear with her, she is actually great to be around. So it was a very encouraging weekend. I hope to have another starting today, and maybe even extend the time to the next week . . . however I can't really get my hopes up!

Anyway, the boys have come in and it's time to feed everyone again!

I am not a duck

Sorting and untangling others' feelings

by colour, by texture, by sound

can be somewhat satisfying

But they don't stop

and frustration begins to set in with the unending task

bringing a sense of order to this mat of chaos

all snarled up around me

and if I turn my back the knots return

like they're on purpose

I look around and wonder if the colours of the earth

are the thoughts of God

and if so, how He somehow can take a disorderly tangle

the composting layers of a slough for example

and make it beautiful, without any sense of numeracy

no sequencing

no thinning

no culling

no alphabetical order

each duck a poem of happy

amphibious possibility

I think that the colours around me

seen and felt

are all spread out from the thoughts of God

so I suppose ordering them is silly

I should rather swim under, over, fly through them

and notice the reflections skating on the surface of the pond

as an upside down postcard from the sky

Still, my brow is furrowed lots of times

I am not a duck.

fishing poem

I am so tired I can hardly think so I suppose that is as good a time as any to share random thoughts online. On the other hand, this sort of almost dreaming state at 4 in the afternoon is when poetry tends to float nearest the surface so I'll give it a try and see what happens . . .

Sometimes sunlight drenches me

as when a small child casts a line awkwardly, breaking the air and writing a brief

note on the pond, fading to an invisible message

and the ducks soar after reading it, feeling threatened

by the small fists, so intent,

so earnest, so drenched with light that

you can almost see right through their souls

Bumping past the large holes in the road

not fixed yet and growing deeper with every rainfall

but packed smooth by all the 4x4's that determinedly make their way to the planned summer

I am transporting children with half-formed memories who

may remember this perfect morning as a note the dragonfly makes

background to the robins and blackbirds

interrupted by furious ducks

a blurry sensation of mud and reeds and tangled lines

that tightening of the shoulders to control the cast

that never goes where you were looking

but is hope each time

"I'm feeling lucky" says my son

almost soaked by the sunlight

so full of truth that he is lucky

but the fish, being in the water, do not see this clearly enough

and unfortunately ignore his lucky casts.

A father walks with his son hand in hand, the scent of togetherness smudging their

separate outlines and

glueing their memories together - mud and sun and ducks and that plane

drowning out the dragonfly buzz and smudging the invisible ink

on the water

Such vivid colours in the sunlight that

swirls and sanctifies

the tiny souls

the half-set minds of our

little children

and my own mind softens briefly and I feel smudged

into a watercolour with them

That was this morning - fishing with another family and their little autistic son as well as my own two youngest kids. It was really magical and one of those moments I wish I could just capture and keep in an album.

Now I really need to do paperwork - billing and charting and stuff like that but I really don't feel like it at all. Sometimes being an adult is just not what it is cracked up to be!

Nope, that's not mine, sorry to say.

June is such a crazy month for people with school age kids. However, Dan and I have been having fun too. We had our own field trips. For Dan's birthday I arranged that we could actually spend a night in S'toon sans kids (thanks Mom and Dad!) and take in the annual Harley test ride. So that was fun. This video was of Dan taking off on the last of 5 half hour rides on 5 different Harleys. I wish we could just buy one but I think Harleys are reserved for retirees or the independently wealthy. I went on two rides with him, one of which was comfortable. The other one was on a sportster and had no backrest so I was hanging on for dear life and didn't enjoy the acceleration as much as I would have if I couldn't vividly imagine myself being left behind on the highway.

Two weekends later it was my turn and I got to experience a City Chase in Calgary with Dan's little sister Juanita, who is into that sort of thing. She was more prepared than I was but boy, it was fun! I am hoping that this becomes a yearly tradition for us. It was kind of like what I try to set up for the kids I treat - sort of a combination scavenger hunt, obstacle course, orienteering challenge, and code-breaking treasure hunt. Not to mention running miles and miles in order to have the privilege of doing feats of strength and agility (not so much in my case) in order to get "Chase Points."

So, in the six hours we were racing, we did the following:

1. used a lacrosse thingy to throw and catch a ball three times. Harder than it looks.

2. climbed a climbing wall about 30 feet and rappelled down. Too sweaty and time-challenged to get as scared as this deserved - we had run about 3 miles to find this one which other chasers kept saying was "just over there!" Ha!

3. completed a batch of weird gymnastic/bootcamp sort of tasks such as flipping a tractor tire, vaulting over a bench 5 times, doing leaping somersaults, and some sort of scaffold climb.

4. filled a bucket to about 3" with a "holey pole" - a PVC pipe with lots of holes drilled in. Very refreshing.

5. got hooked around our waist to a rope that was tangled in a playground web maze monkey bar thing and had to follow the rope from one corner to the other and then have our partner follow it back. Nice way to meet new people as several teams were doing this simultaneously.

6. frisbee golf - 3 "holes" or trees in this case. I suck at frisbee. The volunteer was bored of leading and did this with us which was fun as he even did the penalty burpees for all the throws above par we did (only 8!)

7. yoga poses in front of Lulu lemon. Pretty easy and at this point nothing is embarrassing anymore.

8. climbed all 800 steps of the Calgary tower. Wanted to die around step 320. If we had known there really was 800 steps we probably would have. We were hoping for closer to 500.

9. some orienteering challenge in a big park that involved lots of climbing and running. And cute rabbits hopping around.

10. the best one at the end - kayaking in a large loop on the river in a two person inflatable kayak that was mostly full of water. That's why we're all wet in the picture.

11. We got one more point for raising money for the charity the race sponsored - Right to Play.

Anyway, there's no race like this in SK because I guess they tried it in Regina and there was next to no interest. I can't imagine why because this was so much fun. There were tons of chase points we just didn't find or didn't have time to find but which would have been great. Oh well, next year. Thanks again, Juanita!

The rest of my life is involved with the usual end of school year chaos. I am off to the school for most of the day tomorrow cooking for grad as my son is in Gr. 7 and that grade does the honours I guess. Work is incredibly busy and that's good. It's so much easier to plan adventures when it's not snowing or pouring rain. (It still is pouring rain a lot but at least the sun comes out in between for a while now). I managed to plant the rest of my garden last week but I have no idea how it will actually do. It's pretty late now.

As it has just finished raining for the day (I hope) I could go outside now and do something useful, or I could chart. Sigh! Probably I should chart. Oh well, summer is here.

Good kind of black

I love rototilling. I finished up yesterday, at least the first round. There is something so addicting about clean black dirt replacing gray, weedy, packed down old garden. It's like a blank slate and a new morning and fresh green grass that hasn't gotten too long yet and just smells good. All possibility and no annoying maintenance required yet. Wow, I'm like a teenage girl with a new boyfriend.

Anyway, it is really truly summer here and we are getting our third day in a row of 30 above. I love it! The only problem is that last week I walked right into a coffee table. Consequently I have this enormous bruise - it's probably the size of an apple and it's deep black with a yellow centre, right on side of my left thigh. It looks like someone hit me with a bat. At least this is a bruise I remember acquiring. Most I have no idea where they came from, but that hurt. So I can wear shorts and deal with sympathetic looks but you gotta feel for Dan every time this happens to me.

Tomorrow my oldest son turns 13. Wow again. That is something. Every time Seth has a birthday I think of Zach (hey, Wendy) and how it is his birthday too and I wonder how you all are doing but I don't call because I know this is a rough time of year for you. So just so you know I do think of you. Anyway, Seth is going to be a teenager and he really is growing up. Deep voice and laid back humour and skills! I'm so proud of him. He had to babysit some kids yesterday for his babysitting course and of course they loved him. I think he had a good time even though the three year old girl apparently dragged him around by his thumb for three hours.

I have to say because I'm trying to explain to Dan why I love rototilling - wouldn't it be great if you could rototill a relationship? You forgot to weed and some parts are getting overgrown with quackgrass and the edges are becoming blurry and the packed down parts are blending with the plants - so, take out the rototiller - spend some quality time just going around in circles with a pleasant vibratory sensation going through your arms and voila! nice clean relationship ready to start all over and soft and warm to boot. Sigh. The world should have a rototiller.

Anyway, Heidi turned 8 last month and Seth is turning 13 tomorrow and Dan is turning 42!!! next week and time is ticking on. I went out with a friend of mine yesterday who told me that I should not expect to get less tired as my kids grow up - so make sure and have fun now. Ha ha! That is so not encouraging! I feel like I have always been tired in waves and weekends but now it seems to be a more or less permanent thing. Apparently I should keep on fighting gravity and working out and doing all the stuff that comes AFTER the rototilling that is less fun because this is life. Specifically my life which I have voluntarily made labour intensive so quit whining.

Okay, I will. I'll get on with life too. I'm off now to take Levi to the dentist as quick as I can after he gets off the bus and then I'll pick up bread and come home and make supper and put the kids to bed and clean the kitchen and get ready to do it all again tomorrow.

But my garden is right now perfectly clean.

Blue sky

Well, today we got over the hump I've been most worried about with Jetta. I was able to ride her in our 1 acre square pasture and she figured out she had to listen to me even though she really didn't want to. Her pasture buddies were far away and she wanted to get to them and we had a bit of a rodeo and she figured it out. Hooray! Now we can go places. I've been able to ride her 4 times this week because of the fantastic weather and because I've had time. It's been so wonderful and she has progressed so far. If I can do the same for one more week we will be able to go anywhere.

It is so beautiful outside!! After this winter which was so dark and gloomy I just feel like drinking in the sunshine through a straw. It's like taking off layers of clothes you forgot you had on and stretching. Now if we can actually stay healthy we will so enjoy this summer.

I've been working on our two long haired cats - speaking of taking off layers of clothing. Poor things, their fur is so matted up it's amazing they can move at all. So I've been going out with scissors and chopping it off. They look so ugly but they actually mind the process very little, considering it must feel very weird and I do occasionally nick them by accident. I think they have figured out that the overall effect feels good. Cougar, our tom, poor thing, got into a pretty bad fight a few weeks back and is healing slowly. He also has a bad case of ear mites and so every time I come at the other two with scissors I also squirt a bunch of ear cleaner in the general direction of his head. It's helping but he's not too thrilled with that :) Ah spring!

Dan and the kids started on the chicken house in the barn today. We've been hard at work discussing dimensions and where to put the chicken "yard" and the door arrangement and what breeds we'll get. It's also very encouraging. Spring goes with new young animals. We haven't had new chicks here for so many years it will be quite thrilling for all of us. So the current plan is to use the back sixth of one side of the barn (about 10 x 6 feet) and have a people door with a chicken door cut in the bottom. Then we'll roll the "chicken hotel" up to the door. This will be a low pen that is roofed with chicken wire and on wheels so we can drag it all around the pasture and let the chickens peck at a nice salad variety of bugs and weeds.

I still cannot believe we are getting this extra month of perfect weather. It's so nice because it's just warm enough that jeans and a sweater are comfortable (which are great for riding) and yet there are no bugs yet. This morning two geese soared right over my head and backwinged down onto one of our sloughs just about a hundred yards from where I stood, with their gloriously discordant honking. And yesterday an entire flock of what were probably chickadees went swirling by all excited about mating and nests and being back (I would assume).

Happy Easter everyone! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!

Being happy!

We had such a great time at Dave and Deb's amazing corner of forest/creek/field/hill/loghouse under construction. I'm so glad we could get there for a visit, even if it was way too fast. And muddy. I'm pretty grateful for the sand we live on here - the clay is still drying off our boots and we are slowly vacuuming it up as it falls off.

This week is pretty quiet and I am celebrating the time and fantastic weather by working with Jetta so that hopefully I can be trail riding her in the next month. She is now walk/trotting with me on her back in the round pen and giving to the bit and the reins much better. I started at this point last spring right with the trail rides and quickly realized that while she didn't mind me riding her, she also didn't notice me riding her, so we have been focusing quite a bit on her noticing me - from the ground and now on her back. I don't know what I would do without John Lyons' approaches. It is so neat to see her "get it" and begin to do what I want her to without any need to terrorize her, lose my temper, or be unsafe. It just takes more time and patience. Thankfully I now have little blocks of time.

And, I am running again. Last year was almost a total write-off because of all of us being so sick all summer and I fervently hope we don't have a repeat. As long as I run 4 minutes and walk one I can go for half an hour. I am hoping to work up to about an hour straight but I'll take what I can get. My knees are not getting any younger. If I have to bike I will, and maybe I will anyway to change things up now and then but it's nice to have options.

The one thing I would like to get back to and haven't yet is writing. If I could run, ride, write, and work with kids that would be a perfect week. The cooking, cleaning and laundry would magically do themselves. And now I am looking at the muddy mess our garden is and starting to think about that expensive hobby as well . . . There's never enough hours in the day. But at least with this sunlight I feel a bit more like doing things in the hours there are. Hooray spring!!

I think, although I feel a bit guilty about it, I will continue to fill up the days this week with fun stuff. On Friday the kids are home for the ten day Easter break and I will probably be back to swimming to keep my head from going under. No mosquitos, no horseflies yet, and the ground is almost dry. What a great March.