Zero Tolerance

First there's an issue with borrowing your husbands balaclava. The black anarchist face mask makes the whole frozen, below zero air problem burn the nostrils a little less. Unfortunately, it's worn in the wee hours of the morning, before personal hygiene has been attended to. A fix for this hot-box of hell might be to breath only through the nose. However, then you get the morning smells of some one else, a man, and everything he's ever eaten in the full stench that this baklava has accumulated over the past months. I should be thankful he's ever out there, in his bulky michelin ninja suit on mornings he doesn't have to be at work early. But instead, I'm complaining about the smell of his loaned warm things.

The next problem is with wet things and frozen metal. Never touch the barn or stall doors with wet hands. You wash off the cow's teet and then you grab the milk bucket and then you can't put the bucket down. You shake it. You scrape it. And eventually, it flies off into cow crap. But no worries the crap is frozen solid, albeit only five minutes old. This makes mucking out the stalls a piece of cow-cake, almost. You can just pick the patties up and toss them into the wheel barrow. No shovel required. They also aren't as wet and soupy not only because they are frozen, but also because the cows are wasting away with dehydration, despite your best efforts. It is hard to slurp a three foot by two foot ice cube down. And the hose is frozen. So I'm trekking buckets of water from the well to the barn, over and over. The cold well water which so thoroughly quenched thirst and shivered me timbers this summer, now steams as it rushes from the spigot and clouds up as it pours on to the ice trough. When you finally get to milking, it freezes to the sides of the pail before it even hits the bottom. Don't worry, once it gets in to the house it slides down and gets pourable.

But the milking works up a fine sweat, as does some hefty mucking. It's great exercise, and fills the lungs with a burning cold which is supposed to make me pound my chest and want to live forever, but instead makes me pound my chest and think I'm dying.

At least the radio still works. It's not tuned to news or anything, but contains a special CD. I read a study on milk cows. And they give a gallon more a day if listening to Mozart vs. not listening to anything vs. rock music vs. Rush Bimbo (which is scientifically shown to plummet milk production as well as IQ's). Not that I could use a gallon more a day, I'm drowning in the stuff as it is. But it does seem to make things come out easier. I found Mozart to be a little too exciting, actually, so the first song we hear is "Sonata for Two Pianos, Andante" by Brahms. The first few notes sound just like "Baby's First Christmas" by Connie Frances. Then comes Vaughn Williams with "Greensleeves," the tune for "What Child is This?" That's when she's almost going dry, but then the rushing main melody floods in and she lets down anew. It's so Christmassy!

Yes, a dark cold barn, the stiff and tough shit, the hormonal chickens fighting in their coop, the water frozen solid: your worst bucolic nightmare. But with Brahms and Vaughn Williams the stars twinkle more brilliantly in the icy sky, the hay smells manger-y and warm and my 700 pound wild cow seems almost cuddly.

Modern life had me down. No reason to experience nature's ways and whiles. No reason to not cocoon myself into a constant, safe temperature. I wanted reality, cold and hot, mild and wild, windy and calm, spring and summer and fall and winter, all of it to dance with me, to touch my swirled finger tips and lead my feet to the music of this sphere. I wanted life on earth: full, unrestrained, unchained, intimate, relevant.

I walk across the frozen grass. It sparkles in the sudden motion light, a trail of stars in the dirt, and Paul Simon sings in my mind, "She's got diamonds on the soles of her feet..." I'm a rich girl. I'm a mortgage-broke and frozen girl, but I'm a rich girl too. I don't try to hide it. Diamonds on the souls of my feet.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

First, I need to gush about my daughter who's again decided that her name really sucks and is going by one of her middle ones, Juniper. So, Juniper rediscovered last Christmas's knitting kit (which I stashed away, away, away thinking "My god people, WE don't knit. Not in this house. Keep your bundles of tangle-ready yarn to yourself." While we perhaps LOOK like a knitting family, I can't (personally) imagine anything worse. If I'm going to lounge for a second, I'm going to be reading and if I'm supposed to be listening to something, like a lecture or you talking, it better be so interesting that I don't have extra attention left over for knitting any kind of itchy, semi-warm, bulky crap (that I frequently love in spite of it all), and if what you're saying isn't that interesting, I'm going to walk away or turn you off (if your some sort of recorded visual with that sort of switching device) because I've got dishes to wash!

Regardless of my best intentions to shield her from such craftiness, she pulled it out on Saturday and proceeded to knit herself a hot pink hat on Sunday. This morning, she says, "Mom, can I take my knitting (another hat) on the bus?" "WHAT!??"
"Well So-n-so and So-n-so and So-n-so and So-n-so knit on the bus!"
"What? There's some sort of elementary school Bus 41 Knitting club? Fine take the knitting and be sure to loose the needle somewhere you can't find it!"

We've definitely plopped in to our perfect school district. In addition to knitting as the school hobby, every girl also owns a horse. Traditionally they each, personally, own a wild draft horse stallion, who rears and has silky black hair, and the little girls are the only one's who can control them. Not only does Juniper need to bring her knitting on the bus, she also needs at least one wild stallion, of the tall, beautiful and impossibly strong variety. This ain't no city school district.

But honestly, that knitting kind of looks like FUN! It's this simple little plastic ring with knobs on it. And it looks, if not interesting at least fun and, dare I say, relaxing? I might try it... some day. My new friend, Yoko, is learning how to knit this week too. She's trying to drag me along with her! "We'll have so MUCH FUN!" She insists. But she's on a mission to knit 6 hats to send back to Japan before Christmas. I'm just casually observing with a small seedling of interest. There's that whole learning stage, where everything you do sucks. I don't tolerate that stage well. And anyway, I've just learned to milk, and make yogurt and cheese and truffles (three batches in a week! One experimental!) and gather eggs (very tricky). Isn't that enough for a while?

We plunked down a five spot for a permit and trekked it up to the Mountains, near Usk, and chopped down ourselves a fine fine tree! We only went about 25 feet into the National Forest because there was snow and ice and cliffs on the ground and we didn't want to go too far in that dangerous "survivor Man!" direction. And Juniper cut down a tree for herself too!

Coyote treats the trees as temporary storage for his Christmas toys on strings. Santa in a race car and Bob the builder with a Christmas tree zoom around the house, converse with each other and everything else and then eventually make it back to their home branches. All the ornaments get a chance to play for a while before going back to bed. Isn't that nice.

I can see, via the USPS, that it's time for Christmas donations. Juniper once crammed all of her cash in an envelope and sent it off to her hero: Jane Goodall. And now we get invitations to do it again, and again, and again. Coyote got the mail today, noted the picture on Jane's envelope and queried, "Mom, why is that monkey in jail?"
To go in to the particulars of animal testing or not?
"Well, the monkey, he got drunk. He sat on the elephants trunk. The elephant sneezed and called the police and that was the end of the monk, the monk." He felt unsatisfied with the answer, but I wasn't. So, I did go in to animal testing which was a series of Why?'s that I cannot adequately answer anyway.

And we also had a big fabulous party, with real live people, not E-people (although I love you, whoever you are). It was my usual style of hosting which means that I didn't really calculate the number of party goers until an hour before. And I counted 18. We don't own enough service for 18 anythings, much less people who want to eat off plates, wipe mouths with napkins, drink from something other than a spigot and eat with utensils. I've prided myself on maintaining only one dishwasher load of dishes, which can never equal 18. I impressed my guests with my casual-chic poverty-heirloom collection of aging, random paper plates and birthday party left-over utensils. I had upped the numbers with some garage sale finds this summer and it wasn't so bad.

It was supposed to be a small, intimate gathering of the few friends we've made since moving here six months ago. Instead it was a drunken rager of staggering proportions. Hostess extraordinaire, I failed to finish preparing dessert before they arrived. After dinner, tipsy and silly, I finished dipping the truffles while they watched and seemed fascinated and certainly enjoyed the final products, once they dried. Luckily no one here (anywhere?!)knows about my blog so I can make up whatever fabulous crap ("they seemed fascinated") I want to about them and no one is the wiser... that's the beauty of having a no-name blog, FYI. And then the MEN CLEANED THE KITCHEN and the women went to the Lord of the Flies basement to whip the kids into cleaning too. By the time everyone left, the house was yet again spotless: wink, wink.

It was a milestone of moving and life. A house big enough. And friends/acquaintances enough. And here we are, making our nest and laying our eggs in Spokane, of all the crazy, random places.

My photo loading abilities have vanished, either through my own fault or the computer's or some thing out there in computer land. Will post photos when I figure this out again, again, again.

Presenting: the five debutants

Last night, beneath that brilliant full moon, deep in the barn, behind the hay, far from the nesting box I purchased (then filled with straw and dropped an oh-so-suggestive golf ball into) eggs have been discovered. Perfect, small eggs. 1-2-3. Not the gelatinous orbs I was warned they would initially grunt out. But thick shelled and brown.

We'd hoped. We'd dreamed, but still we wondered. The girls aren't even 6 months old yet. And winter is when egg production usually drops off. Apparently the issue is food: they need to be awake long enough to eat enough to have enough calories left over to pop out an egglet. We put a light on a timer in their hutch and at least one of them has responded.

We are perfectly giddy over our debutant, whoever she may be! Chicken Bat Mitzvah!

Of course, the eggs weren't where they're supposed to be, which raises eyebrows. The girls spend most of their day under the back porch and I'm wondering if I should belly crawl down there to check out the scene. But that sounds like some grody combination of Halloween and Easter, hunting rotten eggs with spiders.

I was going to tell you how we have these fabulously egalitarian chickens. No pecking order has been observed. Everyone eats. Priscilla, the white one who flaps across the lawn like a plastic bag, is a bit of a loner who likes to be pet. Otherwise, they're all kind of the same. But now that puberty has set in... Well, we all know what happens next. This morning there were fights! Massive chicken brawls in the barn! Like some crazy illegal boxing match. I couldn't believe it. They even did that cocky head strut thing, circled around each other, eying their opponents, bobbing around looking for openings and weaknesses. Crazy girls. I almost ran and got the Principal! No way was I going to break that up myself: too entertaining and I'm too chicken... or not enough chicken, to jump into the middle.

Chickens are easy pets, mostly. You should really get some. They are hilarious. They follow Blue out to the bus stop in the morning. They follow their silver scrap bucket everywhere. I'll take it out to the barn and they'll run behind me, their thin little legs whirling while their humongous thighs causing quite the waddle. I'll dump the bucket in their trough, and then they will follow that shiny metal bucket of promise all the way back to the house, never even noticing the treats of whey and soggy toast crusts in the trough.

Chicken food is perfectly formulated for chickens. Every little pellet contains every nutrient a chicken needs in perfect proportion. And my harem hates it. They'll pick at it once they're locked in the hutch for the night. And they'll peruse the first handful in the morning. But they're easily bored with it and would much prefer the kitchen scraps or to run about rummaging for grubs in the cow shit, for seeds in the dead garden, for insects anywhere, for ANYTHING BUT their food. And when you think about it, how would you like to eat the same thing every day, every bite the same flavor. No matter how perfectly, scientifically suited to your dietary needs, I think we'd all go crazy.

And that is the story about my crazy quintuplets, may they survive their adolescence and figure out where to put their eggs.

The OJ issue

First it was Orange Juice.

A road trip, two moms, three kids, and a stop at a gas station. The kids were thirsty. I grabbed an OJ. And her daughter puked it all up in the back seat. "Don't you know people shouldn't drink orange juice!" Her mom howled at me. Um... no I didn't. My people drink OJ without much of a hitch, so it never occurred to me that OJ would be the ONE thing in a roadside convenience store that would be bad for children. Apparently Skoll would have been preferable. Despite the fact the her people don't do OJ, we continued on as friends.

Now, here comes the reprimanded for NOT drinking OJ every morning. The previous generation is appalled at the lack of it in my fridge. APPALLED! Usually, they bring their own. Here's my perspective: Good OJ is EXPENSIVE and I'm not all that in to it. Perhaps, if your household consists of 2 self-controlled adults, $7 a week on the stuff is peanuts. But here, where children roll and rumble, $7 OJ is absurd. And the frozen stuff sucks. And we've got a gallon-a-day fresh, raw milk machine in our back yard, so I'm not sure that importing OJ from the far corners of the earth, or rather the middle part, is so crucial.

Do you OJ? You suck either way.

The same holds true for our conundrum child, Coyote. His birthday is July 13th and he's always been young...very very very young for his age. I don't think he was ready to be born until he was 6 months old.

They say to hold boys back a year, if at all possible. They're not ready for school at the crack of five years old. They need a whole other year to play and run. Girls: make 'em miserable just as early as possible, but leave the boys alone. Last year, his Montessori teacher was sure he would not be ready for Kindergarten. Our child-psychologist friend agreed.

Decided: wait a year on Kindergarten. Awkward, expensive, odd to me, a girl so young for her grade she could barely walk when others could run.

Then came teacher conferences a week or so ago. And Coyote's teacher (a former NOW president BTW who opted out and has now taught Montessori for 25 years --- wasting HER LIFE!!!! as the "Feminine Mistake" would have us believe.) Anyhoo... she says she hasn't found anything Coyote CAN'T do and she thinks this should be his Kindergarten year (they're flexible like that). First Grade next year.

Well, I had just gotten used to the idea that we'd hold him back. So this was a shock, like telling a mother her child was 18, then breaking the news that she was just four, and a year later telling her she just earned a drivers license and was accepted at the University of Paris. The wonderful teacher assured me that no matter what I decided, I would spend the rest of my life wondering if I did the right thing and blaming all Coyote's foibles and failures on my inability to navigate the basic task of parenthood. As a parent of four, she told me it is the unavoidable fate of all mothers. And then I suddenly realized: my gosh, first grade! I'll probably have to get a job!! And he's my baby. My bambino. My little Jesus in a manger who just learned how to fart on demand. So soon I'll be marching him off for 6 hours a day of blahblahbladdyblahblah. And she says to me, "It sounds like your the one with the issue here. He's ready. Now you need to be." Don't hold him back!

Conferencing with Blue's teacher, I asked what the difference was with summer birthday boys. She was clear that waiting a year would ensure a confident leader and "rushing" in would result in a follower, always a follower.

Weigh that against Coyote's teacher who noted that he really doesn't care about friendships. He's got one good friend and ignores everyone else. I don't think he cares to lead or follow. He's his own little dude. He's way deep into his own head. He's charming and polite and doesn't give a shit.

Something to think about, no? So,I took my usual course of consulting with everyone for their opinions and ideas, the better to shape my own. Oh. How that backfired. Backfired so shockingly, so forcefully, it might shut me up FOREVER.

Well. Over Thanksgiving, I met with someone else who's opinion was strongly in the Hold Him Back Camp. Start Kindergarten next year. It's ALWAYS best for the child.
And this person then said to me, "It sounds like you're the one with the issue here. He's not ready and you need to stop pushing him." Gosh, but just three years ago this same person noted how terribly I was coddling him by breastfeeding "too long."

Yes. It sounds like I'm the one with the issue here. If you don't come into this world born with a staunch opinionated sword, and a closed minded shield, you are the one with the issue. If you're considering the possibilities and you haven't made up your mind yet, it's an "ISSUE". A made-up mind, tight as a drum with hospital corners, always sounds so intelligent, so knowledgeable, so right. And those of us still considering the options appear stupid and slow. I'll admit to having issues, but slowly deliberating upon important, life altering decisions that don't need to be made for nine more months is not one of them.