End of the year and the meaning of life!

So it's actually snowing softly and looking a bit more wintry than early-Novemberish, although it's still unseasonably warm here at about -2.  Last day of 2011 and I just got up from a nap (so as to prepare myself for the vigorous festivities planned later - mostly our traditional moonlit skate on the slough) and so I am feeling mellow and philosophical and a little less irritated with the happy noises my kids make when they are home (and it's now day 11 - but who's counting?).

Dan and I are working hard on a whole new paradigm for living.  That's obviously a huge statement but it's really true.  There's so much of the philosophy that I absorbed as I grew up that I don't agree with now, based on reading 1.)  the Old Testament, and 2.) the New Testament and 3.) living life.  It's kind of interesting to break down one's beliefs and assumptions and let oneself question absolutely everything.  It's a good exercise, but not for the fainthearted and honestly, it requires a good deal of energy.

At this point, the farthest I think we've gotten (I know that's terrible grammar, but it's how I talk, so you'll have to adjust), is the first chapter or so of Genesis.  See, I grew up understanding that this world and this life was vastly inferior to heaven.  Also that one should aspire to more and more "spirituality" which could loosely be described as hearing God talk to one (preferably in an audible voice or something equally dramatic), spending lots of time in contemplation and prayer, and going out and doing radical acts of faith that involved as little common sense and rational thought as possible, while simultaneously having the purpose of advancing the kingdom of God on earth.  This was a broad topic, but did not really include working for a living 9-5.

Dan grew up with a less melodramatic presentation, but with roughly the same ideals.  His parents are amazing in their acts of giving and service to others, in hospitality, looking after others with practical needs, and so on.  The tension comes in trying to integrate this type of lifestyle with the daily grind and the very mundane and yet ongoing needs of one's family, not to mention the responsibilities of jobs and professions and communities.  You can tell I've been chewing on this issue if you've read any of this blog at all.

I used to try to manage this tension by just doing it all, at a breakneck speed so as to fit everything in.  Also if you've read this blog, you will note that this has not worked well for me or my mental and physical health.  And as I read both Old and New Testaments, I am constantly struck with the lack of urgency in anyone's movements.  When people did stuff, even truly great stuff, they seemed able to move at a deliberate pace.  In fact, you can see that if they tried to move too fast or do too much, God would intervene to actually slow everything down.  As an OT I would call that adding resistance so as to increase a person's ability to register feedback as one is doing a task - kind of sabotaging their speed so as to facilitate a slower, but more accurate quality of movement.

So let's assume that God does not need over the top acts of heroism done with one's full powers augmented by adrenalin.  What does he want?  What would be a good way of living so as to make one's life "count?"  Well, the evangelical viewpoint is that advancing the kingdom of God requires presenting the gospel to the entire world as soon as possible and persuading as many people as possible to join the winning team, as it were.  Unless you are of the Mennonite Central Committee viewpoint which tends to focus more on social justice than conversion and is thus suspiciously regarded by many evangelical Christians.

This viewpoint is really really addicting for several reasons.  First of all, it assumes that members are truly "on the winning team."  The rest of the world is not and that tends to appeal to the part of human nature that wants to feel that one is better than anyone else.  No matter what you say to discount that attitude, trust me, it is everywhere in evangelical communities.

Second, it provides a cosmic scope of battle with good vs. evil and unimaginably high stakes.  If you like drama at all, and are partial to epic storylines, this one is unbeatable.  Furthermore, we are assured by prophecy experts that it will all work out in our favour (to put it mildly).  Also, any opposition to our efforts, or any adversity at all, can immediately be assigned to a sinister, dark enemy.  Persecution makes us grow and all that.  Suddenly, not only does every coincidence and event have meaning, but the meaning has supernatural overtones that makes the Twilight storyline look tame.

Third, value is added to acts that, honestly, anyone can do.  What would by most cultures simply be regarded as minimum decent behaviour, in this subculture can be elevated to "friendship evangelism," "outreach ministry," "random acts of kindness," (in the interest of attracting converts, of course), and so on.  So fine, that's not so bad.  However, this becomes truly bizarre when it becomes organized and structured into youth group activities that now are sandwiched into what would otherwise be regarded as just another pleasurable activity for upper middle-class people (such as a trip to Jamaica in winter, or a week of skiing, or a week spent learning extreme skateboarding moves, or a sports camp, and on and on . . .) and so the whole thing now qualifies as a charitable act where the group actually fundraises on the basis of this minimum decent behaviour.

(Now, don't get me wrong.  I am aware that there are many missions activities and youth organizations that put kids in actually quite rigorous service itineraries.  But let's please be aware that many completely secular organizations do the same thing.  The issue I have is that there is the assumption that if evangelical youth go anywhere (inner-cities, Mexico, overseas, wherever) they are qualified and justified in providing what is considered to be significant help to those poor people, just because they are willing to go.  And let me tell you, I think a lot of times they are willing to go in large part because of the sandwich of perks (ooh! travel!).  And so lots of people donate considerable sums of money as if this is significant help to poor people.  Let's call it what it is!  It's a trip by middle class kids to see the other side.  It's a sightseeing tour of how the other half lives.  It's extremely expensive exposure.  These kids do not necessarily have any skills that the people they came to "help" don't have.  Probably they don't have half the skills those people have.  The inherent arrogance of this kind of thinking is what is so attractive to young people and so offensive to me now.  Painting a building is helpful in Africa.  But really, did we have to fly 18 teenagers halfway around the world to paint a building?  Could not that money have been spent both buying a great deal of paint and then employing some people who live there to paint the building?)

The actual fact of it is, the needs of this planet are complex.  They require people who are willing to roll up their shirt sleeves, take the time to learn the intricacies of culture, history, language, political topography, and who will also bring a specific and needed skill set to the table.  Teenagers do not have these skill sets and so they should not be considered the frontline of workers in any place with significant needs.  They are indeed very wonderful helpers and certainly their worldview will be unbelievably changed by such exposure, but it is incredibly egocentric to think that their presence in a devastated community (other than their own, where they may have some insight), is anything but another mouth to feed coupled with a variable amount of potential manual labour.

Okay, so that's a pretty long rant for one issue, but the evangelical worldview does tend to target youth with the seductive message that they are needed NOW and that they can ask other people to finance them to go anywhere with no knowledge and less skills.  I'll stop now.

All of this stuff is simmering in my head as I consider my own motivation for everything I've ever done.  Because I was one of those young people.  I thought I was inherently better than anyone else just because of my inner knowledge of the winning team and my willingness to go anywhere in the world (with other people's money) to bring my oh so needed person to solve all those problems the people there obviously were not able to solve.  Even though they knew their own history, language, and culture.  And I didn't yet.  Aaaagh!  It just makes me cringe.  Now, I realize that I don't quite have enough of a grasp of my own spouse's thought patterns to really communicate effectively with him on many topics without frequent eye-rolling, breaks to breathe deeply, and mutual forgiveness.  If I can't do that with someone I love, and who loves me, it stands to reason I probably would have challenges with cross-cultural communication on any issue beyond what to bring to a potluck.

So to return to a new paradigm.  I don't think that God empowered and ennobled me to save the world. What is my purpose?  What is the meaning of life?  (Besides of course the number 42 - which is the age I am, so maybe I'm good for now:).

Back to the beginning of Genesis. God makes the Universe and the world and the animals and plants and all that, stands back, evaluates it all, and says it's "good."  This is a point to keep in mind.  The physical world is good.  Probably the spiritual world is, too, but I don't get that physical is inferior to anything.  Quite the opposite, or God would have stopped with the angels and been content with that.  They're spiritual after all.

Then he makes humans.  This is what he says about that.  "Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." " (Gen. 1:26)

So his original idea is that humans are the rulers (or physical caretakers, as I think the ancient civilizations regarded rulers in that light more than even political rulers).  Later on, after the second and more detailed account of making man, the author of Genesis writes this: "The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." (2:15).  But Adam is lonely and he needs help.  He's given names to every single creature on earth and none of them are remotely suitable for a life companion.  Not even the dogs and horses!  So God made woman.  To help Adam what?  Make converts?  I don't think so.  To work a garden and look after a lot of animals.

My point is this.  If the original kingdom of God on earth was to be fully realized, we would likely be caretakers of the physical planet such that we looked after the plants and animals and used them responsibly for food but also "knew their names."  Adam's first task was to identify and classify animals and then look after them.  He was a scientist.  He was to understand and manage the physical world that God made and keep it "very good" (1:31).

It stands to reason that we are not as humans meant to try to escape the physical world.  We are not entitled to disregard the physical needs of the planet and its inhabitants.  We are being spiritual when we are being physical, in that we are doing what we were made to do by the God who gave us the "need to know" creation information in the Bible.

Here's the thing.  Physical tasks are inherently frustrating.  They are constrained by an unbelievable amount of laws and consequences - time being one of the worst.  However, if we did not think of physical tasks as a waste of time in terms of eternal significance, I think we would all be able to enjoy our lives a bit more.  So cleaning up (which is an endless task), feeding and soothing and co-regulating kids, walking the dog, looking at a tree and enjoying its patterns and structure, learning math, balancing a checkbook, folding laundry, becoming a master at one's profession, and looking into someone's eyes and trying to understand their point of view (which I think is encompassed in "naming" because I've read Madeleine L'Engle), are all directly living in the kingdom of God.  Those tasks are not taking us away from the point of life.  They are the point.  Doing them well is the most human and spiritual task any of us can aspire to.  Doing them poorly is part of what warps this world and tears at the fabric of reality (see, I still like an epic storyline).

So, while I started out this paradigm shift feeling frustrated that my life was so filled with mundane tasks that I couldn't get around to doing anything of value, I am finally moving to the viewpoint that the extent to which I devote my full heart and mind and soul to doing the physical and mental tasks (including those requiring a scientific enquiry) in front of me to my fullest potential, that is the extent to which I am somehow living as a citizen of the kingdom of God on earth.  Which is weird but a whole lot more achievable than where I was coming from.  I can slow down!  I can afford to take the time to learn to do something well.  I can go to work and go to courses and learn about interesting facets of psychology and human development and anything else that is interesting to me and all of that is exactly why God made me.  Not to mention being a kindred spirit to my husband and sheltering and nurturing my children.  Anything else is a sideline.

I know that a lot of you reading this who did not grow up with the hmm, what shall I call it, brainwashing? that I grew up with will be scratching your heads and saying, "duh."  However, a lot of you can totally follow me.  I know it.  And I bet you anything you have dealt with the same tensions.  And I have no idea how you've resolved them, but so far this seems like a good place for me to start a New Year.

Happy New Year!

okay, I'm back

Whew.  This summer felt like the scene in the Lion King where they're racing through the gorge with a wild herd of wildebeasts (sp???) right behind.  No slowing down allowed or the world would END!!  More specifically, everyone would get hungry and grouchy and there would be nothing left in the frig and  then I would be catching up for the next week.  Not that that didn't occasionally happen but I must say, I ran a tight course and now . . . now school has started and so have piano lessons and school sports and, well, the kids are still hungry.  Good grief.  We eat a LOT.

Anyway, I have been missing blogging and journaling and sitting still and even thinking.  I have been missing the reflective part of my brain which is off somewhere sulking because it gets no attention these days.  At the bottom of the approximately 7 lists I'm working through at any given moment.  I am going to give it some chocolate and tell it to wait a little while and all of a sudden it will be winter here and there will be nothing to do but reflect in front of the fire because our world will become blue and dark and frozen.  Right now, there is the garden to bring in.

Speaking of which, this has been the most absolutely fantastic year for gardening ever.  We have: corn (amazing!!!! that never works for me!), squash (about 50 ranged around our kitchen - all types), onions (hanging to dry all around the dog's pen for all the world like we're warding off vampires), tomatoes (still unharvested but having completely destroyed the tomato wires and taken over a huge clump of space like they're considering world domination), potatoes (half under the house but disappointing - mostly drowned in the bottom lower corner), parsnips, carrots, beets, swiss chard, spinach, lettuce (all still in the garden), peas (kind of missed them), beans (40 cups in the freezer), cucumbers (6 quart jars pickled), raspberries (jammed, mmm), and 8 pathetic little green pepper plants that never got around to doing more than looking like green leaves.  We are eating garden feasts whenever possible.

In other news, the goats turned out to not be pregnant.  This was disappointing.  They don't appear to mind.  Maverick has no idea that he is a goose and as long V's of his kind trail over every morning and evening he happily pecks at our grass and follows us around and even pants in the heat because he can't remember how to walk around the garden (let along fly over it) to get to a handy slough.  We work on chasing him into flight but as he doesn't like to fly higher than our heads or faster than the kids can bike, he isn't going very far.

I've been working with Jetta a little more in the last two weeks and we're progressing to exercises in the saddle, which I must say is a wonderful feeling.  It's also wonderful to have her respect on the ground.  She's totally stopped the chewing, pushing, shoving and generally disrespectful behaviour that had me watching my back.  Not to mention that I can clean her hooves with her picking them up for me politely.  It's a lovely change.

Tomorrow I was supposed to go for a ride with my riding buddy again for the 18 - 20 kms between our houses.  However it's supposed to be 36 above and I have to say I wimped out.  It does not at all feel like a crisp September day out there.  It's sweltering.  Maybe in the next few weeks.  Not that I'm complaining!  I want to store up all the heat I can.  However, it does make me tired.  And not feeling like wearing jeans and being far from sources of water.

I have so many stories to tell of this summer!  It's hard to know where to start in describing such a wonderfully crammed two months.  I was a sergeant major with the kids and that worked great at keeping all of us sane and fed and the house more or less presentable.  They all cooked lots and cleaned  lots and in return I took them all out for blizzards lots.  And myself slightly less often :)  I have in the last 5 months (well, since March 1) lost 17 pounds and I'm pretty darn proud of myself.  So the occasional blizzard was a real treat.  But take my advice and NEVER look on DQ's "nutrition information" site.  It will do nothing but discourage you.  My favourite blizzard is the Turtle Pecan Cluster, but with coffee flavour instead of the caramel.  That is a perfect blizzard.  Yumm.  I'm getting hungry again.

I just read "The Book of Negroes" by Lawrence Hill.  Amazing.  Such an amazing immersion into such a completely different existence than my own.  There are so many tragic and heroic stories in the world.  I was telling the kids about Terry Fox and just welled up.  Courage is so inspiring.  I wish I had more.  It feels like all I can do to get through each day and just keep everyone emotionally on an even keel.  I got a flyer in the mail by Steve Bell, who I really admire, about fasting for change in response to the East African crisis.  I can't even begin to figure out how to fit that into my head although I would love to, theoretically.  That would require energy I don't have right now.  We are also sponsoring a little girl through World Vision and I really want to sit down as a family and write to her.  Waiting for that moment when we're all together and no one is breaking down.  Normal life is all I can do to stay on top of, and that's really not inspiring.

Okay, this is what you call a blog post without much reflection - more random rambling.  I figured out how to read stats on who reads this and found out there are page views from Brazil and Latvia and Singapore!!  That is so cool!  So I can ramble here and people from all around the world actually read it!  I feel so important!  It's all about me.  So much for inspiring!  I guess I'm going to have to work on the reflective and unselfish parts of my brain in the next while.  But not just now.  Way too tired.  I'll tell some stories in the next post.  Nice to see you all again.  You know what I mean.

Family

Has it already been a month since I last wrote anything down here? Wow. That went fast. However, looking at the last picture of Maverick there I can see very little resemblance to the dapper adolescent goose we now have as part of the family. Today he figured out how to hop out of our inflatable pool to join us on the deck and this is one more step to independence. Unfortunately he still requires protection from some of the more aggressive animals on the yard - namely Jetta. She sizes him up if he gets too close and then begins a very freaky acceleration as if to stamp out a cobra. She could do it too. So we have to scoop him up, all protesting and get him out of her sights. He in turn cannot stop heading straight for her. I think those four black legs just really trigger a following instinct in him as it was our walking legs that seemed to imprint on him. Storm has pretty much decided he is not a snack but another animal to be allowed (regretfully) to live with us. I don't really think the cats would take him on but you never know. They are just killing machines.

So it is coming up on my 42nd birthday. That is distinctly middle aged. I actually never ever thought that I would live this long. When I was a kid I was very romantically inspired by tales of missionaries and pioneers of social justice and wanted to open an orphanage in some dangerous hot country - preferably Saudi Arabia (yes, that was so realistic!). I wanted to help kids by providing health care and nurturing and so on that would otherwise not be there. I also wanted a tastefully decorated adobe hut. I did not want to live anywhere where I would have to eat bugs. I figured my lifestyle would probably not allow me to marry as most guys I knew did not seem to want to deprive themselves appreciably unless it meant they would be able to buy a car soon. So I thought I would be single and probably work myself to death by around age 40. If I didn't die, I thought it would be appropriate to have someone at that point throw me a huge non-wedding where I would get to wear a great dress and everyone would give me presents. This would only be fair seeing as just getting oneself married didn't seem to me to merit any special attention from the world, but reaching 40 should. The absolute last thing I ever expected was to reach this age in Canada. I never for a second expected that I would remain in such a privileged, over-indulgent, spoiled society for my actual life's work. To do so seemed actually completely redundant. It was clear that no matter what type of health care I trained in (which was what I had narrowed my interests down to), I would not be very needed here, whereas it was also clear to me that vast areas of the world desperately needed trained professionals in any sort of useful field (useful as opposed to useless, like, hmm, say, an advertising exec).

So here I am, smack in the very centre of Canada, having successfully reached past 40, and living a fairly non-heroic life that involves eating enough, sleeping enough, having access to excellent health care, and the use of a dishwasher. This is not at all what I expected.

On the other hand, I did train in health care, and I have spent the last decade working in a field where there is an acute shortage of professionals (especially in Saskatchewan!!) even though this is Canada. The parents I have met have not usually expressed that their children's needs are adequately met in the current system - no, quite often they are desperate for help. I have felt often stretched far past my own limits emotionally, mentally and physically. This was exactly as I expected so I didn't ever really respond the way that a normal self-preservation instinct would suggest I should. It felt right to be stretched. The needs of the planet are so insurmountable, should we not all stretch to our utmost? What else can a sane person do, faced with the scale of suffering that exists?

But that isn't really a sustainable way to live, and somehow, having married and borne three children, burning out totally is not such an appropriate response to anything. So here I am, on a year long "retreat," rethinking and re-evaluating my entire basic assumptions about everything I have ever done or tried to do. So many of my motivations have been set by my 10 year old brain, responding to stories that tore my heart at the time. Subconsciously they have directed almost every decision I have ever made and here I am, looking back at my 10 year old self with a 42 year old perspective and having compassion for her and admiration for her and yet realizing that a 10 year old just does not have enough information to pour her ideals in concrete quite yet.

I have really been thinking a lot about the concept of family. It is so simple and so overlooked and yet such an elegant and thoroughly workable solution to healing a community, a society, a nation, a world. And I know that we continue to broaden our definition of family from the 1970's nuclear picture of 4. However, there is a lot to be said for the balance of male and female authority figures. There is even more to be said for the very distinct types of care that males and females can provide each other when faced with the super-demanding tasks of parenting. There is much to be said for children of both sexes growing up with almost constant access to a role model, a mentor, even an alter-ego example of ways not to live, of the same gender as themselves.

Our culture has glorified sexual fulfillment to an almost unbelievable extent. It seems to me that the value of doing whatever one wants to do (as long as no one gets hurt and everyone is consenting of course) is lovely in fantasy novels but really very impractical in the real world. Sex is amazing and a great gift as well as necessary for all sorts of mundane reasons. However, just like eating, it can be blown out of proportion in terms of trying to fill voids that it was never meant to fill. So saying that "family" just means any combination of people who are happy together is nice but not necessarily the whole picture. "Family" has a lot of work to do. If we were to actually consider families the building blocks of a healthy world, then there are a lot of roles that families should be supported in doing that we currently do not seem to pay much if any attention to (such as teaching children to cook, providing a level of protection from disturbing images that are everywhere in our media, and teaching cross-gender communication, which is probably impossible for anyone to really master :).

This is all still pretty nebulous in my head. It's hard to sort out the unhealthy stereotypes of paternalistic and sexist models of family from the thoroughly selfish and self-absorbed models that also exist and seem to be somewhat glorified today. However, I am currently very interested and somewhat shocked by how much I am relying on my husband to make up the difference in resources needed to care for our children. This is not just financial, but emotional, physical, and mental. He knows things I don't; he can do things I can't, and he is able to "put me back together" just in time for tackling another day. I didn't expect to ever need another human being so much and it feels very wrong. It makes me feel vulnerable and like I am letting my gender down somehow. Like I should be able to do it all, all the time, just in case he abandons me.

In fact, abandonment is wrong and the results would be catastrophic to us all, as they should be. The fact that it happens so often is a huge symptom that our culture is not in any better shape than the poorest newly minted democracy in Africa. Because I can't do it all, and pressuring myself to be able to is monumentally unfair. Neither can he do many of the things that are easy for me, and our children benefit from watching us and experiencing an interplay of dependence that is not shaming or devaluing. We need each other and families could be living, breathing, messy greenhouses that grow kids up to know how to depend on others and be dependable. But it's so hard!!!

In this "retreat" from work I am concentrating my considerable energy and intensity on just three children. Mine. This seems selfish and inefficient to my 10 year old self, but the more my 42 year old self reflects on this, the more sane a solution this seems to many many problems that seem to multiply with human development. My three children will each affect one classroom a year. I know just how much one child can affect an entire classroom. Not to mention a teacher. They will grow and have a network of friends and friends' families that they enjoy and do things with and also affect as friends do in those formative adolescent years. They may marry. They may train in careers that broaden their world and sphere of influence even more. What if, doing all that, they were not destructive people but constructive people (not perfect, of course, but in general)? How incalculable would our (their parents) influence be if we were able to provide the security, the education, and the mentoring that would set them on that path?

Further to that, what if our society did not try to directly "fix" kids but focused on supporting parents to have the energy and resources to do what they really want to do anyway? I know I'm starting to sound unbearably conservative here so let me hasten to say that universal access to daycare seems to me to be a support to parents that would be just great - not a threat to stay at home moms. Moms (as I know intimately) sometimes need to work for their own mental health, and I am convinced they are better moms as a result. But they should be able to go to work with peace of mind about their children's care, and a two parent home with outside supports does make this infinitely more possible.

Simplistic and naive. Yes. But then, is life really working out well for families at the moment? I don't know about you, but for me the external pressure to have, to do, to achieve, and to do it all while looking fabulous and being completely self-sufficient while in an intimate relationship but not too intimate and loving one's kids but not being tied down by them - well, that pressure is ridiculous. I don't want to flip that to pressure to be a perfect little cardboard family. That's even worse. The 50's were not really very good to most people. But the fact remains that the concept of a family as the essential and most valuable cell of a living breathing society is actually looking pretty good to me right now. It's achievable, at least if we could imagine it in an achievable, sane way. I guess that's the trick. We can take any concept and put it on the cover of a magazine and make it instantly unattainable and there you go. Just like weight loss, it doesn't end up actually happening.

Okay, that was a nice retreat from my actual roles here in my actual family. Now I need to figure out lunch, do laundry, balance the checkbook and weed the garden. And clean off the deck from the storm last week and find a place for four large rubbermaid containers of hand me down clothes that will someday fit my kids. . . and so on.

From two to one

Tragedy! Goose escaped. Apparently without much difficulty, either. On Monday there was a break in the near constant rain and thunderstorms and we (well, I) thought it would be nice for the little geese to try out the big world from the safety of our "chicken yacht." This is simply a nice big cage constructed of chicken wire with two detachable wheels for pulling it around the yard. In summer the chickens, after their daily office job of laying eggs for us, get to go out in it and peck at bugs and wallow in dirt and eat grass and otherwise be happy but also safe chickens. The enclosure is roofed with the wire about 18" off the ground. It has a corner enclosed with a tarp in case of rain or hot sun, and is generally ideal for flightless birds that need sun.

So we set the yacht up in a nice puddly part of the yard. Some grass, some sand, some water - you know, goose heaven. It was a nice sunny day, about noon. I made a little straw "nest" in the corner under the tarp, put in a generous container of chicken feed, and stuck the little protesting guys in.

Storm of course found this operation very interesting. She prowled around with ears pricked and a very intent expression. However, she was completely unable to get at the goslings who appeared to be quite happy exploring a 100 square foot area rather than the 5 square foot area they are generally stuck in (the woodbox). So I watched them happily for a while. I like watching happy animals. Then I went in to get lunch and watch news so as to see pictures of the disastrous flooding in our province (which I can relate to).

20 minutes later I sauntered out to check and sure enough, there is only one pert little head, wandering around and disconsolately peeping. Of Goose there was absolutely no sign. My panic was slow in building because I simply couldn't believe there was any way for her to get out. However, after circling with Storm as an interested companion I carefully checked her jaws for blood. Nope. Then I saw Maverick hurl himself at the chicken wire and get partway through. His chest was too big, but this was probably how Goose had managed her Houdini act. Aaagh! We have two supremely predatory cats, plus Storm. I started to circle the tall grass in the area. Nothing. Then, with a sinking heart I started to look in all the usual spots the various animals bring their "meals" to worry over. Nothing in the tack room of our barn. Nothing in Storm's various shady haunts. No signs of digging. Jeepers, I was only in the house 20 minutes! How far could a 5 oz little downy package with oversize feet go?!

Anyway I spent at least an hour scouring the very buggy and marshy undergrowth that used to be our kids' play area. If I passed her, she was very effective in hiding as I have seen no sign of the little girl. I had to leave a note for the kids as I had to leave before they got home to be at a School Community Council meeting. Poor kids were not too pleased with me when I returned at supper time. Neither was Maverick, whom I had obviously returned to his safe woodbox and who was still looking around for his sister.

So, sadness in the circle of life. I hope she makes it but that night and the next day we had about 30 hours of torrential downpouring. Although it wasn't cold out, the down on these little guys doesn't seem to hold any warmth once wet. They tend to shiver after being in the bathtub about 15 minutes. Ideally, their mom would be herding them into the nest and probably sitting on top of them so they can get dry and warm. It's so sad!

We now have a dilemma regarding Maverick. I didn't have any problem with the two of them in captivity. They had each other to comfort and be "geese" with. We were not trying to make pets of them - merely keep them safe and warm and fed until the weather and their strength would allow us to release them, hopefully to an adoptive goose family. So this morning the kids and I took Maverick out (having locked up all the predators we own) to the nearest slough where we know a goose family lives. We put him in the shallow water in the deep grass and bade goodbye. Then we went in to breakfast.

So the kids left for the bus, subdued, and I went to check on Maverick. Okay, he was right where we left him, disconsolately nibbling on grass, pretty wet, starting to shiver, and basically with a big sign around his neck saying "tasty snack for no effort." No other waterfowl in sight at all. I couldn't do it.

Back he went to the woodbox. I think the kids will be ecstatic when they get home. I myself now feel like I've made a commitment to a wild thing that I am woefully underqualified to carry out. However, I think that him being lonely and bereft here is infinitely better than him being lonely, bereft, cold, wet, and very quickly dead. So our inadequacy is probably one step up from just euthanizing him.

All this on the day of Seth's grad! Which is exciting - at least as exciting as a Grade 8 grad gets. So lots of mixed feelings. Yesterday I spent the whole day being an OT mom. I made a daily schedule for summer, then made a ton of visuals with draws for housekeeping jobs, a point system to motivate my "helpers" and workout logs to solidify the family aspect of things that I like to do. I feel much better about summer holidays now. I was starting to get worried about the inevitable constant conflict between need for housework to get done (cooking, cooking, dishes, and more cooking, with small breaks to replace toilet paper, etc.), my desire to do stuff like horses and gardening with the kids, my real need for breaks from noise and activity to regroup, and the knowledge that if I spend the summer reacting to the kids' needs, we'll never remember to plan the fun stuff, have friends over, go camping, etc. So now I've sufficiently structured my life to adapt to my considerable sensory processing needs. Hooray.

The kids were initially dismayed to come home and see a schedule which included housekeeping tasks, but after I read it over with them they felt better. There are generous dollops of free time each day, along with the all important coffee breaks. We'll be fine. Regimented, but fine. And a happy mom makes a happy home. So there.

Dan and I have also taken the plunge and purchased a track skidsteer to begin priorizing this business in earnest. If all goes well, he will be gone for lots of the summer working, and I am okay with this in theory. I am just going to have to rely on my oft-preached strategies to a very great extent to actually enjoy the time with my family, which I really mean to do. We'll see how many times I post here, though!

Animals we love

"Goose" and "Maverick"

a dead dog - no, wait, that's just Storm not living up to her name

the horses were being incredibly playful and the goats were fascinated . . .

Oreo and Gingersnap hanging out in their cool clubhouse (the ash pit under the bread oven!)

Nip and Tuck

Okay, here are the animals that we now are responsible for taking care of:

• 3 horses
• 2 goats
• 1 dog
• 2 cats
• 18 chickens
• 1 uromastyx (some kind of desert reptile)
• 2 comet goldfish
• 1 Betta fish
• 2 orphaned Canada Geese goslings

This is getting to be a lot. It's a lot of classes of animals and a lot of personalities. However, this is definitely something we have always wanted to do and so the various animal chores are generally done with a remarkable lack of complaint on anyone's part. It is so much fun to observe various kinds of "normal" behaviour. For instance, goats always look like they are moving in stop motion photography. They have this habit of freezing into utter stillness, then exploding into an ecstasy of jerky but strangely coordinated motion, then freezing again to check out if they are missing anything fun. They always remind me of four year old children - constantly alert to the possibility of snacks or outings to really great playgrounds. The little goslings are still in our house and they have this incredibly melodic little whistling peep that seems to descend about a five note scale when they are content. I've never heard it before but it is really relaxing to write to. They are starting to smell, though, so I think the days in our woodbox are numbered.

Our cats are brother and sister. I actually got the girl, Nightfall, spayed. We have had lots of kittens in the Attic here and my original plan of letting nature take its course in terms of natural selection by coyote, was really not working. I couldn't believe how safe our yard was! Anyway, Cougar is not neutered and therefore is likely responsible for lots of overpopulation but I'm afraid I'm irresponsible enough to think that that is someone else's problem. I cannot quite get over spending the $140 for a female barn cat. Only about a month after which she was so badly shaken by a neighbour's dog that I thought she was a goner and all I could think of was all that money down the drain. Hard and cold, but I gotta say we've been through quite a few cats and the affection has worn down in my soul for them. They do not leave the barn as clean as they found it.

Anyway, what is funny about the cats is that they are constantly coming and going on extended hunting trips and every single time they come and go our dog, Storm, gets all excited about their travels and tries to run them down to kill them. Except she knows, and they know, that that is not at all allowed. So she tears across the lawn after them, and they hiss and arch and/or climb up the nearest fence pole and/or lie flat and when she reaches them you can see her going "Darn! I can't kill you and I would so like to!" So she noses them just to make sure they didn't morph into a wolverine or something allowable to kill. And then everyone continues on. This has been going on for about 4 years and I don't think anyone has softened in their various roles. It's so funny because it seems so pointless. I don't know why they don't claw her nose off, but they don't seem to get all that upset.

The horses are horses to the core. They are all about the grass. We let them out for about 4 hours a day most days now to graze down our lawn. We have never even owned a lawnmower. I think what is funny about them is when you see them lying down on the grass like enormous dogs, grazing. Like standing would be too much work. I guess it's just like us flopped all over a couch eating chips and watching TV. You just don't think of horses as being that lazy.

Well, it's raining again now. We have a week of thunderstorms planned (thanks to the weather network) and today certainly delivered. I was able to watch an absolutely enormous thunderstorm boil up slowly and majestically starting over the burnt forest and eventually turning the sky completely black before the impressive sound effects began followed by a pretty unnecessary rain (as far as our sloughs are concerned).I was talking to my sister in law in Texas at the time and it was really amazingly hard to believe she couldn't see what was happening. But no, where she was it was sunny and hot. Which I guess it is a lot down there. Anyway, when the storm finally sailed away the air was so clean and fresh, and now the next one appears to be whipping itself up.

I feel at the moment that I have completed enough adventures for a while and that sitting and watching thunderstorms brew up is about my speed, so I'm not upset about the forecast. I did want to ride between my friend's place and mine on Friday again, but as every single muscle seems to scream in protest when I get up in the morning, a rain check might be okay for that, too. Being over 40 is so exactly as billed. I remember learning in some therapy class about the aging process and physiology and how absolutely every system in our body just starts this inevitable deterioration somewhere between 35 and the age I am currently at. I gotta say, I'm feeling it. I can still do lots of things and I'm in probably better shape than I've been in in a while, but it costs me so much more! I'm constantly aware of plantar fascitis, vulnerable knees (both medial and lateral collateral ligaments), both rotator cuffs in entirety but biceps tendons in particular, and now this darn SI thing (which thankfully appears to be resolving itself). Not to mention memory loss and slower reflexes and a greatly honed tendency to store fat at the slightest opportunity. Falling off a horse at 25 it was not the same experience as it is now. Oh well. The one advantage is all the wisdom gained, right? Ha, ha.

This blog post is not about anything in particular - I just felt like avoiding putting away the supper dishes. However, the kids are getting ready for bed and I should probably re-enter their lives before they complete that process, so I guess I'll leave my random musings at that.

"just another ordinary miracle today . . ."

Well, we made it and we kicked butt

us, after


WE GOT 14 CHASE POINTS!!

This may not seem like much to you but it really was a HUGE achievement to us! It was such a great day. Completely unlike last year weather-wise. Last year we were battling heat but this year the night before there was a terrific thunderstorm which was funny because we drove all day Friday through beautiful prairie weather. The clouds were situated directly over Calgary so that they beganas we hit the city limits. We stayed with one of Dan's aunts who was such a super hostess and probably was responsible for ourterrific performance based on the excellent nutrition she provided the night before and the day of. Not to mention scrumptiously comfortable accommodations. Thankyou!

us, before

So in the morning, as predicted (and I had clicked every button I could on the weather network hoping to find some kind of dissenting opinion), it was raining hard and fairly cool. Oh well, we were prepared with good rain jackets and a laminated map. Juanita is now an expert chaser. She had little sticky arrows and a system of numbered blank stickers for my home "command central" to fill in as they decoded the clues for us back home in Crutwell. We got our T-shirts, avoided the cheesy warmup routine and impatiently waited for the first directions so we could run a long way to even get our clue sheets.

Yep, it was a long way. My right hip was bothering me all week because I somehow screwed up my SI joint last weekend (probably lunging Jetta who was trying to gallop away with me while I was trying to make clear to her the meaning of a circle - and how to stay calm while going fast - which I'm not upset at her for because it is hard for both of us). So anyway, we ran off and I was thinking this might be a long day. However, as long as I dropped to the ground at every possible line-up and did the stretches Dan gave me, I stayed more or less mobile and actually the pain sort of numbed as the day went on :) I always believe that's a good thing. So we got our clue sheets.

beginner enthusiasm

Then our first task was to actually locate the Staples that I had painstakingly mapped out beforehand so we could fax the clues to my kids who were waiting at home. I was so thrilled when it appeared in front of us right where it was supposed to be! Juanita is really good with directions while driving, but not on foot. I am exactly the reverse. I hate driving and navigating at the same time however on foot I can usually keep my bearings. Anyway, once we got there I felt like the rest of the day could unfold however it would - I was no longer stressed. We faxed the clues and made lots of copies thinking that ours would probably get soaked. We were right. I stretched on the floor at Staples. Who cares.

Then we were off with a huge advantage because a) we didn't have to decode the clues ourselves and b) Juanita is a veteran and so had knownto buy the Calgary Sun that morning where a bonus clue was hidden near the back. So we already had a destination while the kids got to work. This was the fun part. We had to get to Banff Trail Community Centre on public transit (free for all chasers all day) and on foot and meanwhile as clues got solved the kids would call me on my cell and Juanita would write the locations down on the map and then add little sticky arrows so we could figure out clusters. Yes, we are keeners.

The first chase point at the above named Centre was an unfortunate way to start the day however. They made us play a sort of ping-pong against another team. We tried to get the ball in a cup of unidentified fluid, whereupon they had to drink the fluid. Same for us. The first team to hit all 6 cups could leave and the other team had to drink the remainders. Motivating. So I drank the first cup and it tasted just like warm KoolAid. We had clarified that there was no pee in the cups but the other ones sure looked like it. When I finally had to drink a yellowish fluid I nearly died. It tasted like malt vinegar. There was at least half a cup of it, too. So Juanita had to drink the second oneof the same taste and she nearly threw up. No sympathy from the volunteers and then the water fountain was not working!!!

oh boy.

So it turned out that the yellow stuff was just tobasco sauce in water. Pretty strong too. We tasted that for at least the next 3 hours. I don't ever want to taste tobasco sauce again. Thank goodness I had brought gum along.

Anyway, we headed off and after that it seemed like everything went right for us. We were in a section of town where few other chasers were and so there were no line-ups and the chase points were fun. Here's a rundown of what we had to do:

1. disgusting liquids

2. I had honey smeared all over my legs, then had to jump in a kiddie pool of feathers and locate two marbles of the same colour. This went well because it was pouring and I had picked up a free hand towel at registration so it was easy to clean off in the puddles of McMahon Stadium where we were.

I discover a hidden talent for matching marbles while tarred and feathered

3. Slider stadium (ball team) had pictures of coloured baseballs taped to the seats of the stadium. We had to find the 5 purple ones and add up the numbers on them and bring them back to the start. It was really downpouring for this so it was hard to write down numbers.

(We then had an unfortunate incident with hopping a fence and one of us splitting one of our pants in a completely compromising way. Thank goodness it was raining because we had a jacket that could be draped across so as to maintain a minimum level of decency for the next chase point - en route to a shopping mall!!!)

4. Beach Volleyball - due to the aforementioned incident our mobility was somewhat compromised and so our play was probably not up to par. We just had to get 3 points but unfortunately we let through 3 other teams before we succeeded.

5. Tackle football - helmets and pads and shoulder rolls and tackling and throwing and so on. But this was one of the two chase point locations where our donation chase point (6) could be recognized and credited to us so this was fantastic.

reminds me of growing up with three brothers.

(Quick stop at a handy mall to buy one of us a new outfit. Pizza to go. Rain tapering off. Taste of tobasco sauce lessened by the pizza. New energy in our steps.)

7. Curling rink. Oh man this was embarrassing. Not that anyone was really watching but the volunteer but I suck at curling. So I ended up having to throw a Scottie stuffed animal from like ten feet away and all I had to do was hit the big red circle and I missed that! The volunteer told Juanita she really could mock me now.

see the cute little Scottie toy? I can't believe I just missed that shot.

8. Rogers Video Blackberry scavenger hunt. I'm ashamed to say that we scared small children. We were supposed to get 4 people inside the store to jump while we took a picture and we asked two men and they flatly refused. So then we asked these two little girls who looked frightened and edged away and then we found their mom after being suitably appalled at ourselves. Mom and girls and I jumped for the camera and all was well.

the ice cream tumor was so worth it.

9. Oh, this was great. Peter's Drive-In. Juanita was blindfolded and had to feed me ice cream by putting the end of the spoon in her mouth and scooping it up. That was the best ice-cream I have ever tasted. When I had finished gulping it down as fast as possible we begged and they let Juanita have a bowl as well. Good thing. We were now close to 2 pm and we already had 9 chase points and we were set to go hard for the last two hours.

Juanita doing her thing.

10. This was also great. We got to the Calgary Boys and Girls club and found to our surprise that it was a climbing wall! Hooray! So this time I got to be blindfolded and had to climb to the top while Juanita gave directions. Actually, I think I would prefer to do all climbs blindfolded. I had to stop and remember to breathe frequently. It was extremely scary but not near as much as if I could have looked down. I just kept telling myself that I was only two feet off the ground. When I could whip off my blindfold at the top I nearly fainted but then I rappelled down and it was all good. I just had to stop shaking.

(We were signed up as Enduro-chasers - meaning that we were going for as many as possible rather than as fast as possible, so now we tried to plan a route back to the finish line that would get us a few more points.)

11. A hula hoop challenge in a park that was kind of fun although it is interesting to see that some people can actually do this without cheating at all. Not us, apparently.

12. The German clue! This was great because my family decoded it by emailing the clue to our German neighbours. So handy. Anyway, it was just a fun challenge with balloons - including wandering around picking up objects with a balloon wedged between our heads. Very tricky.

13. Almost back - we're now in the downtown area again and we made it to the HiFi Club which turned out to be our funnest one. This was some sort of Ninja club and they had us do a whole range of Ninja stuff with penalties being leg raises, pushups, etc. At the end we had to successfully remember a Japanese symbol from a range of options and when we did we had saved a whole village with our excellent Ninja skills!! It was so much fun.

14. It's twenty minutes to go to the cut-off and we had about 10 blocks to run but we ducked into a bar two blocks away that seemed to be a chase point. Nobody there but a waiter - no, wait - there was a station tucked away in the table area. We had to quickly cut out pictures of 6 old albums and arrange them in the order of their release - Joshua Tree, Eurythmics, Hotel California, Slippery When Wet, etc. We had NO idea. So we called Jeremy - Juanita's husband, and even though he was in the midst of buying a quad and distracted he could do this off the top of his head. I can't believe it. But he saved the day!

Now all we had to do was race to the finish line. We were both incredibly tired and sore. The pizza was a long time ago now. We started off and these two little energizer bunny chasers were ahead of us consulting a Blackberry. They confidently told us to follow them. Which we did without thought which was a mistake. After running for about 5 blocks they were way ahead of us and all of a sudden they're coming back! No! Sure enough. We should have trusted our instincts! They were totally wrong and we now were actually farther from the finish line then we were at the last chase point. So, so much for walking quickly. We ran hard and then ran more, and then were nearly there and ran more. And friendly pedestrians gave us encouragement and told us we had 6 minutes left. And we ran more. And there it was!

So, we made it with 4 minutes to spare. Wow. And were very sore. And were very grateful to our aunt because she was okay with us coming back and showering at her place even though she had company (who looked extremely clean and not sweaty and had absolutely no honey, feathers or tobasco sauce sticking to their shoes). And then we sank gratefully into our seats in the car and drove back to Hepburn and then I slept hard and came home yesterday morning and thus endeth my second Calgary City Chase adventure.

So doesn't this make you all want to try it?

City Chase 2011!!

Hooray! It's only three sleeps away! This has got to be one of the great summer adventures that has been made for adults. I can't wait. I've just hopefully managed to figure out the template email to some of my friends/family asking for pledges to support the City Chase cause - Right to Play. If you want to check this out you can look up righttoplay.ca. We need to raise at least $50 and we'll get the first of our Chase Points before we even start - so help us out please! Click here if you can help. Hopefully this works.

Just as an overview - we will spend exactly 6 hours trying to navigate throughout a huge amount of Calgary using either public transit or our own two (four, I guess) feet. We start with a clue sheet which my kids will be helping us with via fax and cell phone as a lot of the clues require internet access (this is after all sponsored by Blackberry!). So I'll be running while talking on the phone to them as they help us from Crutwell to decipher various codes and puzzles and sites and so on. We then figure out the fastest way there (usually Juanita wants to follow other "chasers" as opposed to any more intellectual approach). Then if we succeed in finding the place we still have to do something. I draw the line at eating bugs, although that is not out of the question. Last year I listed all the things we did - the worst being climbing the entire Calgary Tower. Ouch. The best was kayaking, though - that was refreshing.

I am quite jazzed up and have been working out like a maniac since December partly just for this event. However, I am definitely past 40 so we'll see how I survive! Juanita is much more peppy in the morning than I am. She got me through the first few hours definitely. However, after I downed a Teen burger - while running up a hill! - around noon I started to feel like a real athlete and we did pretty darn great - finishing with 11 chase points in good time.

Anyway, I'll let you all know how it goes!

Philosophy and sore knees

Wow I am tired! I generally wake up very tired and perk up by 11 or so but today I am just a dishrag. Aagh. I tried protein in the form of leftover angel food cake with whipped cream which was yummy but is still not putting me over the edge into humanity. Dan had coffee with me and told me, all concerned, that I look really terrible. So I guess this morning feeling is obvious. It's a very beautiful day and I finished planting my garden this morning which usually would make me feel very chipper (all except the potatoes -that is a huge job and traditionally I do this with the kids and there always seems to be a thunderstorm that appears by the end). I'm not chipper. I'm just exhausted. Yesterday I did in fact go with the Cindy workout (which is pretty grueling) and then I vacuumed and mopped the living room (probably equally grueling). However that really is not generally enough to knock me out this hard. So that means it is probably hormones.

Anyway, writing is always something that cheers me up so here goes. Hmm. So I am still feeling extremely philosophical these days and using my time oh so wisely in trying to puzzle out answers to questions no one to my knowledge has ever actually answered. Why do good people suffer? Why does everyone feel certain that they know God's will and it is always diametrically opposed to the next person over? Why were we made in the first place if it is a human characteristic to screw things up?

I can't seriously contemplate that there is no God. Really that is too much faith for me. If I ever had any doubts at all, my anatomy class put them to rest. The human hand is a thing of wonder. It really is. Seth would feel the same about a frog or a tree.

Anyway, I have spent my entire life feeling close and cared for by an extremely personal God who I have communicated with relatively easily (especially compared to trying to communicate with certain people!). I could list off probably several pages of fairly direct answers to prayer or events that seem to stretch the odds of coincidence very far. I have studied the evidence for the Biblical account of Jesus to some extent and find it solid enough that I don't have any problems reading the gospels as historical fact. I think that the story of redemption through the cross is so simple, elegant, counter-intuitive, and outrageous in its claims that I cannot honestly imagine anyone making that sort of story up. Certainly not dying for it, as it is not a religion that, purely practiced, is calculated to give anyone any sort of personal gain. Quite the opposite. So I believe in God, and furthermore, I believe that He has gone as far as a deity could to communicate with us on our terms by actually becoming human, dying and then returning from the grave to assure us that he is in fact God. There is no other religion that comes close to making that sort of assertion. Or that paints such a complex view of a personality that is God. You just can't please him behaviourally or with magical thinking or by going through hoops. He requires less and more. All of that fits for me with what I would expect if there was a God who had the characteristics of both love and justice - two things that generally seem diametrically opposed.

Where I run into problems is always when I look away from the story of the Bible in its unvarnished and terribly readable form, and start to listen to other people's interpretations and where they go with what they believe. Then I get a headache. A solution to this is of course to keep my eyes down and just not listen to anyone who is claiming to know how to live. But that is also stupid as there are many really good insights that other people have that I will never come up with on my own. That's why we're all so diverse and why the diversity is healthy and beautiful.

Paradox and dichotomy and conundrum. Love and justice. Choice and dignity and evil and chaos. Individual self-determination and the infinite power of God. Nature and nurture, for Pete's sake!

So here's what I know:

not very much.

Here's what I think:

I think we are complex and infinitely interesting and our choices matter and have real consequences for pleasure or pain for an almost unimaginable number of other people because we are made in the image of God and that is the way he is. I think we are constantly horrified by death and our own mortality and the law of entropy because that situation is not natural for the planet - we were thrust into a state of dying and winding down at a certain point because of a collective human choice. I think that that choice is made in many little ways by each one of us and it boils down to saying to the universe, "I am God and you are not." I think that every time we say that we contribute to the wrongness around us because it is a statement that is NOT TRUE. No matter how much we wish it was.

I think that saying to the universe, "You are God and I am not" is the single hardest thing that any human being can say. We are saying it into the void because we can't see or hear or touch or taste or smell anyone out there. Which proves there is no one out there. Except we have other senses that we know very well mean something real and to discount them is to be as idiotic as the generation that truly thought science and education would save the world and which produced the atomic bomb as a result.

I think that all of us spend most of our lives trying to find what we can dimly sense out there in order to control it. We use religion, science, psychology, frenetic housecleaning, working too much, socializing too much, addictions, causes, and saving the world in order to impose some kind of order into what is essentially too big for us. I think that when Jesus came to earth and lived a life as God and man he demonstrated a conscious choice to give up control over his life and die. Which is pretty weird. And hard to emulate on any level.

I think that I myself am a control freak of almost unimaginable proportions. Oldest child alpha female +++. I think that a God who loves me probably would, if all of the above were true, continually challenge my sense of control over my own life. In fact this is happening on a pretty regular basis. I really hate that! At the moment my boys are both injured and unable to participate in sports. And my daughter's 6th goldfish recently died. There is very little that has happened directly to me that is as painful as holding my son while he cries because he won't be able to play capture the flag on a year end school trip because his knee is inexplicably screwed up. I can't help him and I can't deal with that. It seems ridiculous to me that this event would make me question the love of God on a cosmic level, but it does. It's hard to live in a world that is truly dangerous. Not just to me but to my children.

Are we at war? Is there an unseen battle being waged on earth's surface between good and evil, or are we just existing in a mindless struggle for survival - fittest of the species and all that? I want to believe the first and throw the second away as far as I can. I have spent my entire life working to help "the least of these" - children who need help and can give almost nothing back. So any sort of worldview that discounts their essential and intrinsic value is absolutely abhorrent to me. But thinking about a Marvel comics sort of fight going on invisibly around us just makes me raise an eyebrow and go, "really . . . ?" I can't get too far into that imaginary world without losing my ability to suspend my disbelief.

And that's probably where I am on this beautiful last day of May. Stuck between two scenarios that I find equally hard to totally swallow. I guess the best I can say is that I really truly do not know very much. Less every year, in fact. Except that there is a God. And He is God. And I am not. And love exists and we humans certainly did not make it up. So that's a hopeful sign!

Magic hour

I love this time of the day in summer when the sunlight is so horizontal that all the colours looked drenched in some kind of super-yummy syrup. It also helps that my kids are in bed and Dan is off on his motorcycle enjoying all our leather gifts for his birthday and there is this lovely hush. Even the dishwasher just turned off.

This weekend I went on a terrifically lovely horseback ride with one of my great friends from her place to mine - roughly 16 kms. It was funny because I tried very hard to slow down and enjoy the journey, knowing my tendency to go faster and faster when I am on a horse as the adrenaline and endorphins make me happy and that makes me want to accelerate. Apparently I was still a little rushed from her perspective so that is something to continue to work on. Slow. Breathing. Look around. Stop even. Ha ha. We had a great time and hopefully we can do it again a few times this summer and perfect our pacing. I took Chess of course to keep me confident for the first time in even seeing if trails existed, but I really want to start riding Jetta who is a little less of a cement-mixer in terms of feel. Now that the last of the spring birthdays are past I am feeling a bit more optimistic about time with her. She has calmed down considerably even in the 12 or so hours I've put into training her on the ground. I think that she'll do great now that I have a solid program to follow that makes sense to me and obviously to her as well.

Seth was off this w/e to a full-fledged bowyer course "tillering" a longbow. He came back tired and glowing with one more full day to go. I'm so proud of him and his bizarre interests. He's been making his own arrows all week and they actually work.

Levi on the other hand has come up with the interesting and misleading hobby of finding, cleaning, sterilizing and using old cast-off beer bottles. He is constantly on the lookout now and nothing will induce him to actually cash them in. Oh no. This is a collection with a purpose. Unfortunately I have now become so used to rows and rows of empty beer bottles lining horizontal surfaces outside and inside that I fail to remember to get him to clean them up when people come over. So I think our reputation for clean living and sobriety may be taking a steep down turn. Also if you happen to see my kids reading Calvin and Hobbes and sipping occasionally from a brown bottle, that's homemade lemonade they are enjoying. Really. :)

So far Heidi's hobbies continue to be normal, like trampolining with a hula hoop. And painting all our deck chairs, lamps, etc. with chalk drawings.

The garden is half planted now - hooray! I am in the enviable dilemma of trying to decide whether to priorize going bike riding, running, doing weights with Cindy (Crawford), finishing the garden, working with Jetta for a couple hours, or (wait for it) vacuuming the living room. Probably that last one is by far the most necessary but I'm thinking if there is any sun at all it will not happen. Maybe I can do ALL of them! By noon! No, just kidding. I really am learning something. I will definitely only do half of them by supper. Which will be leftovers.

Ah, the magic is fading outside. Now it's almost a sunset but not quite. Gotta go, here comes my biker husband!

The meaning of life!

This is why we live here. May. It is incredible. I have just been sitting outside soaking up heat and colour and life. And because it froze last night - no mosquitos. Even better. Went on a 12 km ride with Chess this morning and thought again, this is why we live here.

The garden is rototilled and the horses are in it trimming around the edges where I can't get. Also the goats just because they like to be where the action is. I still don't think they are pregnant but I keep hoping and checking for some sort of belly. They look incredibly svelte. Shoot.

We also have another set of chickens as our black ones have unfortunately felt it was okay to spend the winter hours pulling feathers off each other. The result is a bit obscene and certainly not appetizing in any way. They are still laying but now they are laying outside in the "chicken yacht" while the newbies, who look like large doves and seem to have similar temperaments, are inside the "chicken condo" and starting to lay tiny little white eggs. I'm thinking the black ones may not last.

This last Saturday (the long weekend) we finally tried canoeing from Crutwell to P.A. This is something we have thought about for at least 15 years and finally got organized. At the last minute we were somewhat dismayed to find out that Seth, in whose honour the trip was being made as he just turned 14, had sustained a fairly serious supraspinatus injury. For all you non-physio types, this is just one of those darn rotator cuff muscles that is really helpful but which no one really thinks about. Anyway, paddling was definitely out for him as it was in the super-acute stage where any type of stress would make it ten times worse. Paddling for 7 hours being a type of stress.

This was crushing for Seth and almost as crushing for me as he was to be my partner so Dan could go with Levi and Heidi. This would have made for somewhat even "teams" as we had two canoes. Anyway, we decided to go ahead. We already had the canoes and the day was nothing short of perfect. Neither of us was certain exactly how far this was and no one we asked could remember even how long it had taken them. We figured 3 hours - 5 at the outside.

Well, it was slightly more than that. I finally downloaded Google Earth after the fact and realized that there was in fact a pretty big bend in the river which the highway distance disguises. I'm thinking it was around 30 kms if not slightly more. That's a long way. We switched up kids pretty frequently and the little ones helped tremendously, although they mostly kept our spirits up with chatter and name-calling to each other and so on. Poor Seth was really good at making the best of it and stayed amazingly cheerful. Around the midpoint he hooked his legs into Dan's canoe so we were effectively "attached" which allowed Dan to give me a much-needed break. A few times the wind came up and even though we were going with the current I needed to row pretty hard to make any headway. However, I must say that despite being privately pretty scared that my old shoulder injuries would resurface, they did not. I was tired and that was it. I wasn't even really sore the next day although I didn't feel like doing anything. Wow. That was amazing given that a few years ago I quit my job over a shoulder tear. So all in all it was a really great day. Poor Heidi was falling asleep on her feet by 7 that night though. She worked so hard. As did Levi.

I have to say that this is the first spring in a long, long time that has felt manageable. My typical spring feelings are a mixture of excitement and crushing disappointment as I see the possibilities in the yard with the beautiful and so short-lived weather, and then have to let them sail by as I have to go back to doing way too much. This year I am enjoying so many moments and still I feel able to look after Dan and the kids with all their birthdays and play dates and track meets and doctor's appointments, and of course, all the eating everyone does. It's very nice and it leaves me wondering how anyone is actually able to do it all. This is coupled with the reality of feeling the loss of my income. It doesn't help for me not to work and yet, it really helps. Such a conundrum.

At this point I generally go off in my head into the "why are we here?" space. Also the difficulty of human suffering and how I can ever truly enjoy so much of my existence when so many others exist in poverty and fear and abuse. Not to mention families with kids with autism, etc. It is so NOT fair and I really wish life were fair. I wish I could actually help somehow without breaking down myself.

In my evangelical upbringing, I don't think I was prepared very well to be a person accepting help or needing help or even being needy, period. I was thoroughly prepared to help others. That's great until it becomes a problem to oneself or one's own family. There is obviously no point in helping others if the people who have been placed next to you suffer as a result. What a dilemma! Here I am, with my husband actively looking after me by taking up the slack and becoming a primary breadwinner, and I cannot figure out how this is okay. It is so hard to accept someone caring for ME. Not that I think it's wrong, I guess, just so unexpected. Where do I put that? Given all the urgent needs in the world, why should I be loved so effectively?

So I go back in my life and think about all the messages I absorbed as a child and young adult. I was given two streams of brainwashing, I think. One from the church and my family, the other from the secular world. However, both agreed in this point: I was capable of much, and much was therefore required of me.

I think probably my generation was one of the first to have women's lib sort of assumed. There was perhaps a bit more emphasis on how we as girls should not be afraid of maths and sciences, and also an enthusiastic pushing of non-traditional careers, but it wasn't militant. And we as girls were not worried about entering any sort of field we cared to. The downside was that the math of time and energy requirements for daily life were sort of glossed over. Of course we could do anything boys could do. That was self-evident. However, in reality, someone needs to look after the kids. And no matter how wonderful one's spouse is, he will definitely require regular maintenance to stay that way. And having other people look after kids during the day, as everyone knows by now, is not the same and does not necessarily lessen the emotional load of children and their real needs for attention, affection, and frequent cleaning.

So a picture was painted by my secular mentors that had my husband and I cheerfully sharing all the roles of homemaking and careers. Which my husband and I have certainly done in every possible combination since we were married. This is a solution but not one that is open to the vast majority of people whose jobs are not so in demand and therefore so flexible. And it fails to allow for much in the way of specialization. Somebody has to priorize their job in order to make ends meet. And it works far better for someone to be on top of what groceries are needed and who should be where when. I think that efficiencies such as these common-sense division of labour solutions have always been in play and in fact were used by the very teachers that were encouraging us to not use them. I think they encouraged us in some sort of hope that maybe because of new gender equalities in society, certain things would be possible for us that have in fact never been possible. Like doing it all.

This was exacerbated in my case by my church upbringing that encouraged me with many terms such as "no compromise," "total surrender," "giving it all," and so on. These were forcefully and emotionally preached to men and women equally and gave the impression that the world needed our full commitment and there was no time to waste. This kind of cause is nothing but appealing to anyone with any ideals whatsoever, but it does not mix well with the day in, day out, very un-cause like needs of little kids. Which are hard to get worked up about but which cause huge problems if they are not met.

So there you go. As I told my parents the other night, I think I grew up in a perfect storm of great messages which added up to a bit of a weird view of life. And now God is inexplicably allowing me time to rest and heal and reflect and just breathe. And you know what? It's a very odd sensation. But I'm thinking that it is helpful in figuring out a normal rate of living as opposed to full out all the time. And no, there is no way this is fair as I think probably every woman in the world needs this and very few get it. And I can't deal with that. But I guess I don't have to. Not being God myself.

Horse wisdom

(That's Gingersnap whispering sweet nothings to Mr. Stinky, who is thankfully off to his next batch of girlfriends)

Spring was great! Spring was wonderful. Spring is over and now it is fall. It is cold and windy and gray and cold. And the newly melted snow which is collecting in huge sloughs all over our yard (and in my garden) is now nicely rippled ice that the Canada Geese are walking on probably feeling disgusted with their rush to get here.

I have been starting my horse program to get all three up to speed and feel in control of each very distinct horsey personality. It has been interesting so far to concentrate on putting a sustained and thought through amount of time into these animals. I am constantly discovering things about myself that are useful but humbling. For instance, I read all the wrong books as a child. The Black Stallion series comes to mind. What a load of horse patooey. These formative novels gave my willing young mind the idea that horses like to collaborate and also that they are capable of executive functioning. That means they can think. As a matter of fact, horses really don't like to think. They like to eat. And avoid work. Thus the rider is a necessary part of the equation. I am finally realizing that asking a horse to think is unfair and puts a huge strain on its trust of you as a leader because thinking is the very last thing they want to do on a sunny day. If they can't stand and doze and eat all day, they would rather be following crisp, clear instructions that are achievable and show that you are doing most of the thinking for them. This makes sense when put together with horse behaviour that I have experienced for 20 years. It sounds very obvious to horse people, probably, but if you grew up on the Black Stallion this is very shocking.

So I am telling my horses that from now on, I promise to be a good dictator. I will tell them exactly what to do and when to do it and leave decisions as to whether the oncoming semi or the fluttering garbage bag or the mattress dumped beside the train tracks not to them but to me. And if I decide that it is a non-issue, then it is a non-issue and we don't need to pay attention to it at all. This is really a huge leap for me. It goes to my entire relational style which is always wanting to collaborate and get consensus and have everyone reach the finish line at exactly the same time and could we all understand each other please. No wonder I keep burning out!

Boundaries. I gotta say, everyone in my entire life has mentioned that I may have some issues with boundaries and I have always thought, yeah, whatever. I have plenty of fences. Who needs more? But the issue is not the amount of fences, but how clear and consistent one is with them. This is finally making sense to me. Again, I am a little slow on the uptake, probably having read all the wrong people books as well. I want to think that everyone is basically decent. That a deal posted in the paper is probably less than the item is worth and so it wouldn't hurt to offer the guy a bit more for the bike rather than less. I think that if I extend some emotional courtesies than other people will unfailingly sense this and extend the same in return. It is hard to believe that other people are not always paying attention to the same nonverbal cues that I am, though.

I have, in the past, very occasionally lost my temper. This has always been when someone I thought I was excruciatingly clear with went over a line and did something unforgivably rude to me. I generally feel that such lines are painted with glowing neon paint on the sands of relational time. However, I wonder if they are. I know that sometimes people are unforgivably rude, but perhaps I should extend the benefit of the doubt somewhat farther and ask myself how clear I really am about lines in the sand. Just because I think they glow in the dark doesn't mean my horses understand them. Maybe some other people don't either. I might need to Spell It Out occasionally before completely losing it. I hasten to say that my completely losing it is not usually expressed very violently although I have been known to write a scathing email or two.

Anyway, this is all very good for character. I am trying to figure out who I am as a midlife non-crisis crisis. I have time this year and it is something to not have unbelievable time pressures to use as excuses for not being myself. Who myself is is somewhat murky and I think it is because I have been pretty foggy with the boundaries and therefore have been letting other people define me by taking whatever is left when everyone else is done with what I have to give. That's not a very good description of living life but I suspect it is true. Probably for other women too. This is after all the model of "servanthood" that I grew up with in the evangelical community. There are probably hundreds of songs that tend to glorify that sort of laziness. Because I think it is lazy if I let other people live my life for me. It's like winning the lottery and immediately giving it all away because you can't deal with all those choices.

This is not to say that the original concept of servanthood as portrayed by Jesus is bad. I don't think it is. However I think there are some essential pieces that aren't emphasized perhaps that could be. Stewardship of resources is generally more of a male concept, in my memory (Mennonites do have quite a male/female division of roles, I must say and I think this is more pervasive than we probably think). Anyway, at this point, as a woman, boundaries are good. Being clear to the point of subjective rudeness is probably kinder than not. Using my life intelligently towards goals that are not made by others is not only okay, but essential. Not giving away all my resources to the first person who asks for them each morning is also a responsible way to live. Amazing.

So when I get that far in my thinking (as I am picking up horses' hooves and cleaning them out and brushing out huge mats of winter hair), the next logical question is: what are my resources? How much do I have to work with, considering that I can consider it as "mine" and not belonging to the needy world out there? Turns out, not very much. I am also humbled to find out that I need, on average, 9 hours of sleep a night. Any less and I start to go into sleep debt, which I can do for a while but not forever. It will catch up with me. Nine hours a night!!! What a colossal waste of time! Can you believe in evolution at all when an organism is made that inefficiently? Sigh. So that's one thing to consider.

Second, I have been keeping minute detailed accounts of all our household spending for the last 4 months and my general foggy ideas as to how much we need for, say, gas or groceries or even miscellaneous birthday presents, are somewhat understated. Maybe by half. So that's why we are constantly feeling like the end of the month is farther away than it should be on a budget. Yech. Realistically, I don't think we are overspending on any particular category. Realistically, we eat a lot. So money is not in abundance and mostly spoken for the moment it arrives by any means into our bank accounts.

Thirdly, space. Huh. Well, the yard is soon going to be half-submerged and this may go up or down as the summer progresses, leaving us with fewer options for expansion of living and storage spaces (including for various animals). Furthermore, our house is exactly the right size for 5 individuals and the minute more are added it becomes what you would call cozy. No basement is not a plus when many kids are involved. Again, not at all undo-able, but a factor in terms of planning out lifestyle.

Fourth, energy. Well, we all know that I am one of those people who others think of as "energetic" because I am when I am with other people, but when I am done I tend to crash hard. So it's not truly energetic-ness so much as enjoying positive feelings and gaining short spurts of energy from being around people who make me happy. Like a sugar high, it is not real but still very pleasurable. I think in reality I am probably more of an introvert for the long haul than otherwise. I can spend a LOT of time alone without feeling any negative emotion beyond a tiny bit of guilt. However, there comes a point when I am screamingly lonely. At that point, what I am missing is not a party but a really deep and stimulating honest conversation. I think that is still more introvertish than extravert. So energy for me is hard to quantify. It is not good in the sense that I cannot predictably get lots of tasks done. I can if I'm happy or with happy people. If I'm feeling an onslaught of the terrible injustices and tragedies in the world (which I find to be everywhere and very emotionally disturbing) I begin to lose energy like a sand garden loses nutrients. This means that for very unrelated reasons I can have either productive or completely draining days. Again, evolutionarily speaking, quite an impractical way to be. If we could just fix all the suffering in the world, I think I would be better at keeping up with cleaning the bathroom.

Well, probably not.

So, as a therapist, if I was to figure out what my platform of strengths is on which to begin to work, I would actually have to dig down pretty low to find a template of a sustainable, healthy, balanced life. Low in the sense that I would not necessarily be accomplishing a lot of the "servanthood" stuff that I find so admirable in others. I would likely be able to get up, read my Bible in a foggy half awake state as I inhale coffee, make breakfast for the kids in the same half-awake and somewhat non-responsive state, work out so as to fully wake up, have a second cup of coffee after a shower, consider carefully what to do that day, plan supper, do laundry (always), clean up breakfast finally, work with the horses and use up relational energy in the process, talk with one friend in a meaningful way, complete one task that is not strictly maintenance (I'm talking a very small task, like grocery shopping or planning a birthday party), and then deal with the kids as they come home from school and practice piano and tell me the woes of their day and do their chores and make a mess all over the kitchen with snacks and lunch-making and then make and have supper and read to everyone, watch an episode of ER, and then go around unplugging appliances and putting our dog away for the night and doing one more load of laundry before bed, and there you go. The day. And Heaven forbid Dan is gone and I need to add chores and making the fire every 8 hours and being in two places at once for sports events and so on. Which is often the case and so my days feel pretty full and I really have always thought that all that stuff was what you did before morning coffee break. Ha.

Anyway, that is some of the stuff that is rumbling around in my brain as I try to do a good job of the platform of strengths that I have. I can make cream of wheat and unload the dishwasher and butter toast and listen to calm music all at once. I cannot coherently answer my children's questions about the notes I was to have signed at the same time. That requires a full pause for deep and intense thought. And so, perhaps I should concentrate on these basics a while longer before adding in a whole ton of new challenges. :) And now I should really stop procrastinating and do something - anything - before I have to go and do my one task of the day which today is to pick up our Toyota after getting its brakes done. And that's a whole other story but I didn't lead with it because it's more of a Dan story and he wants to stay out of this. Ha ha.

Cheerio!