It's impossible to schedule things at this time of year; every time you do, something else moves to the same time, especially if there is baseball or rain involved. Tonight we were to have two (different) baseball games, we had one very tired 4-yr old, rain, and a school show the middle two were just dying to attend. Our plan had been to do the whole family at the park for baseball as usual. Based on the fatigue and the rain, we flexed multiple times and did strange contortions and got the two to baseball (where they watched it rain for an hour and a half plus until the games were canceled), the one stayed home w/papa bear, and the other got farmed out to the show thanks to another family - and then after the game was declared "not happening" we farmed out another and I came home to get the tired one to bed "on time." We also saw a rainbow, and our free night tomorrow night is now full of baseball... it never fails.
Gardens don't like dry weather, 90 degree days back to back when you're dry and a tiny little seedling, clay soil which pools when it rains (and pours), hurricane force winds (with or without rain), and cucumber beetles. The 90s killed my home-grown cucumber seedlings. The wind blew off my row covers the day before we left town so I had to redo them - more flexibility required - I was supposed to be packing, or so I thought. The cucumber beetles are taking care of the replacement cukes, and also attacking the cantaloupe, watermelon, and squashes. So I sprayed them (and the lawn at home) with parasites last night (beneficial nematodes to be precise). Wonder what will happen next? :-) Hopefully they'll kill the nasty creatures and let my plants alone and allow our lawn and garden to grow. But I'm sure something else will come up. Go nematodes!
Margin - leaving it - is a concept I struggle with, but this kind of nutty "scheduling" requires it, and somehow God is giving us room to manoeuvre. We did make it out of town, on time, even after two unplanned hours working in the garden, and we do (technically did) have tomorrow evening free so we can do the baseball make-up game from tonight, and everyone did get to go to the show who wanted to, without sacrificing the team and that sort of thing. My feet were soaked, but we were all cheerful (the rainbow helped). And there are only four more school days until summer vacation. It always seems impossible but yet here we are, another year down (more or less) and we're actually enjoying the baseball life. Oh yes, and the garden is finally in as of 3;15pm yesterday (it took weeks!). We celebrated with creemees - see, we even found time for that! Lord you are good to us!
So tomorrow I'm off to catch frogs (don't ask), probably finally box up the winter stuff, and we'll enjoy baseball in the sun vs. the rain.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Help! Around the House 9 (part three)
PG (Parental Guidance) Dejunking
"Here are a few pointers just to get you going. When it comes to the actual pruning or thinning, just remember that regardless of a person's age, there is some honor of ownership, and as soon as children are old enough to speak, they should have something to say as to exactly what has to go. Forty years later, there are kids who still haven't forgiven their parents for those "toss time" invasions on their stuff, after finding their old doll or train set in the garbage. What might look like clutter to you might be very precious to your child. For the sake of future relationships (and a great chance to teach the concept of decluttering to our kids), dejunking should be a team effort, with you coaching and your kids calling the shots. A few sneaky confiscation raids might have merit, but if you choose what they lose, they also lose the experience of dealing with their own problems. If not now, when and where do they learn?"
"Here are a few pointers just to get you going. When it comes to the actual pruning or thinning, just remember that regardless of a person's age, there is some honor of ownership, and as soon as children are old enough to speak, they should have something to say as to exactly what has to go. Forty years later, there are kids who still haven't forgiven their parents for those "toss time" invasions on their stuff, after finding their old doll or train set in the garbage. What might look like clutter to you might be very precious to your child. For the sake of future relationships (and a great chance to teach the concept of decluttering to our kids), dejunking should be a team effort, with you coaching and your kids calling the shots. A few sneaky confiscation raids might have merit, but if you choose what they lose, they also lose the experience of dealing with their own problems. If not now, when and where do they learn?"
Monday, June 7, 2010
Help! Around the House 9 (part two)
"You are the one who gave your kids most of this stuff, or encouraged them to collect it. You are also the parent, so you have the legal and moral right to reduce it too! Most of us would agree on the following:
1. Kids actually need very little to be happy.
2. Big clutterfests aren't necessary for every event in their lives. (For instance, they don't need a major birthday party every year.)
3. The less there is to scatter, the less gets scattered. How many kids have you met, in this thing-loaded society of ours, who have been ruined for life by not having enough luxuries like fancy toys and video games? We all know scores who are spoiled and ungrateful because they have too much.
4. Kids are better than us at keeping memories without a whole shelf of mementos.
Another interesting twist here is that in the process of helping the kids declutter, we adults get a new view of and are more likely to do something about our own clutter, so everyone wins in this situation."
1. Kids actually need very little to be happy.
2. Big clutterfests aren't necessary for every event in their lives. (For instance, they don't need a major birthday party every year.)
3. The less there is to scatter, the less gets scattered. How many kids have you met, in this thing-loaded society of ours, who have been ruined for life by not having enough luxuries like fancy toys and video games? We all know scores who are spoiled and ungrateful because they have too much.
4. Kids are better than us at keeping memories without a whole shelf of mementos.
Another interesting twist here is that in the process of helping the kids declutter, we adults get a new view of and are more likely to do something about our own clutter, so everyone wins in this situation."
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Help! Around the House 9 (part one)
Re: Clutter
"The Children Are an Easy Cure; You're Not
We, the adults are the root of the problem here. Until children are about nine or ten years old, they don't really have much control over the amount of clutter they have. Just about everything they have comes from us.... We determine what and how much there is and where it stays!
In my dejunking seminar presentations, as I'm heaping on the guilt about all of the junk in the average home, I make the statement, 'and your children have 75 percent more toys than they need.' That always gets an instant affirmative head nodding from the crowd.... until I say, 'Yes, folks, and you know why? You gave them all that!'
In the spirit of 'Be good and I will bring you home/buy you some junk,' millions of parents each day heap on little Brandon and Brittany some of the most worthless stuff imaginable.... We give kids things to compensate, regulate, and sedate them.... Even a fast-food trip has now become a fast way to getting more junk!
The kids are at a real disadvantage when it comes to dejunking their rooms. The only example they have is ours. They've watched us getting stuff and stacking it on the shelf and under the bed, and when the drawers and containers (and garage and storage shed) are full, they've gone with us to get more drawers and containers! We've even reprimanded them for using perfectly good junk storage boxes to make pirate ships and hideouts!"
(stay tuned for part two)
"The Children Are an Easy Cure; You're Not
We, the adults are the root of the problem here. Until children are about nine or ten years old, they don't really have much control over the amount of clutter they have. Just about everything they have comes from us.... We determine what and how much there is and where it stays!
In my dejunking seminar presentations, as I'm heaping on the guilt about all of the junk in the average home, I make the statement, 'and your children have 75 percent more toys than they need.' That always gets an instant affirmative head nodding from the crowd.... until I say, 'Yes, folks, and you know why? You gave them all that!'
In the spirit of 'Be good and I will bring you home/buy you some junk,' millions of parents each day heap on little Brandon and Brittany some of the most worthless stuff imaginable.... We give kids things to compensate, regulate, and sedate them.... Even a fast-food trip has now become a fast way to getting more junk!
The kids are at a real disadvantage when it comes to dejunking their rooms. The only example they have is ours. They've watched us getting stuff and stacking it on the shelf and under the bed, and when the drawers and containers (and garage and storage shed) are full, they've gone with us to get more drawers and containers! We've even reprimanded them for using perfectly good junk storage boxes to make pirate ships and hideouts!"
(stay tuned for part two)
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Help! Around the House 8
"We warn out children about matches, the pool or nearby river, germs, strangers, crossing the street, drugs, pornography, but never about the harm, the danger, of the stuff that teaches us greed, warps our personality, insulates our sensitivities, and steals our time and money."
Friday, June 4, 2010
Help! Around the House 7
"Remember the Multiplication Factor
The bad news is that it might not be easy to get the rest of the household swung over to sweeping up after themselves or other housework. However, when you do get even just one little habit ingrained, it is never for just one time. Take sock turning, for example. If you can get everyone to turn their socks right side out before dropping them in the hamper, extended out to the rest of a child's or husband's life, that means 10,000 times you don't have to do it - a nice yield for a single effort up front. Once the old 'Scrape your dish and take it to the sink' habit is in place, it isn't just in place for that meal, on that day - instead, it is good for 1,000 meals a year, and forty, fifty, or 60,000 in a lifetime."
The bad news is that it might not be easy to get the rest of the household swung over to sweeping up after themselves or other housework. However, when you do get even just one little habit ingrained, it is never for just one time. Take sock turning, for example. If you can get everyone to turn their socks right side out before dropping them in the hamper, extended out to the rest of a child's or husband's life, that means 10,000 times you don't have to do it - a nice yield for a single effort up front. Once the old 'Scrape your dish and take it to the sink' habit is in place, it isn't just in place for that meal, on that day - instead, it is good for 1,000 meals a year, and forty, fifty, or 60,000 in a lifetime."
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Where there's smoke...
... there's fire. We came home late Sunday (ok, early Monday) from a great trip to NJ for my 20th reunion. When we woke up, we smelled smoke. Papa Bear figured it was a neighbor doing something (we have Bosnians on one side of us who actually have a smokehouse in their backyard and who we have known to cook an entire goat on a spit too - wonderful smells but definitely not in our normative experience).
Well, it persisted and at one point (probably to water plants) I stuck my head out the door and saw the haze and noted the pervasiveness of the smell. It was definitely NOT the neighbors and seemed to be from some big fire somewhere. I immediately purposed to find out the source since it was likely 'big news'. Though it took me a bit (lots of distractions when it's 10am and no one has eaten breakfast yet), it turns out that there are 50+ wildfires burning in Quebec, many not under control as yet, and the winds have brought us the smoke. It all started b/c of the wild lightning storms on the 25th. It was a narrow band of pretty strong stuff; I remember the radar and the rain here. The storm was pretty bad in the next town over - lightning struck a tree outside Colchester Rescue directly and the impact sent a guy INDOORS flying and to the hospital w/bumps and bruises. He's ok but wow! Nevermind the blown and burning transformers etc too. While we got rained on heavily with wild winds, and I had to redo my gardens rowcovers almost completely the next day, we were spared the worst of it.
It's now raining and we're hoping the smoke has gone between the rains and the winds shifting again, but it was a very interesting day. I think the smoke and its effect on our air quality affected us as much as our lack of sleep from traveling. Hopefully this soaking rain we're getting won't be accompanied by lightning and it helps the firefighters get everything under control.
This picture was taken on Monday 5/31/10 from the top of Mount Mansfield looking toward Camels Hump by Tim Wilmot and appeared in Tuesday's newspaper. It shows smoke from the forest fires in Quebec; we live deep down in that smoke filled valley.
Well, it persisted and at one point (probably to water plants) I stuck my head out the door and saw the haze and noted the pervasiveness of the smell. It was definitely NOT the neighbors and seemed to be from some big fire somewhere. I immediately purposed to find out the source since it was likely 'big news'. Though it took me a bit (lots of distractions when it's 10am and no one has eaten breakfast yet), it turns out that there are 50+ wildfires burning in Quebec, many not under control as yet, and the winds have brought us the smoke. It all started b/c of the wild lightning storms on the 25th. It was a narrow band of pretty strong stuff; I remember the radar and the rain here. The storm was pretty bad in the next town over - lightning struck a tree outside Colchester Rescue directly and the impact sent a guy INDOORS flying and to the hospital w/bumps and bruises. He's ok but wow! Nevermind the blown and burning transformers etc too. While we got rained on heavily with wild winds, and I had to redo my gardens rowcovers almost completely the next day, we were spared the worst of it.
It's now raining and we're hoping the smoke has gone between the rains and the winds shifting again, but it was a very interesting day. I think the smoke and its effect on our air quality affected us as much as our lack of sleep from traveling. Hopefully this soaking rain we're getting won't be accompanied by lightning and it helps the firefighters get everything under control.
This picture was taken on Monday 5/31/10 from the top of Mount Mansfield looking toward Camels Hump by Tim Wilmot and appeared in Tuesday's newspaper. It shows smoke from the forest fires in Quebec; we live deep down in that smoke filled valley.
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