Saying Goodbye, Being Homeless, Starting New Things and Doing Old Things

We were doing good until we went to zero feet above sea level to say goodbye to that old thing called the Pacific Ocean. We met some friends at the brewery/restaurant that was home to me this summer (not because I took up a Homer Simpson lifestyle, but because I got a good old fashioned job as a server/flinger of brews…but that’s another blog entry for another time). Charlie and I, who have managed to keep calm for weeks now, found ourselves unable to keep a stiff upper lip when faced with the vastness that is the largest ocean on Earth (and a place where my boy cub family has spent thousands of hours over the last 15 years). It wasn’t a sad goodbye per say, nor a regretful one… but more of an understanding one, like getting a nod of blessing from an old king.

We’re now in the stage of moving where we are nomads who belong nowhere, depending instead on the charity of friends and family to house us. We’ve officially turned over the keys and driven out of our San Diego neighborhood for the last time, but escrow hasn’t closed yet on our house in Missouri. Apparently half the country has decided to play musical chairs and change living abodes, but the purchase of our little plot of wilderness plods steadily onward.

One thing that has helped me keep my sanity is writing. Even though I’ve been sadly negligent here on this blog, I’ve been steadily chipping away at writing a homeschooling curriculum for kids with learning challenges. I thought the hardest part was going to be actually writing the curriculum, but since that has been burning in my fingertips for years, the hardest part has actually been trying to figure out how to build a website and get a tax ID. I have a whole new respect for youtube stars, instagram influencers and the like. I guess if it were easy, more people would be doing it successfully.

It’s November 1st today, which is one of my favorite days of the year. Not because I love the fall season (I am summer’s child), but because it’s the first day of Nanowrimo. I wasn’t going to do Nanowrimo this year due to how crazy and upheaved life is, but I’ve done it for so many years my brain refuses to stop mulling over a new story, so I’m going to attempt it anyway. This may be my year as a nano rebel however, as my wordcount goal is not going to be in the neighborhood of a full length 50k+ word novel.

Some years I share my story, and some years I don’t ( depending on how much therapizing is going on…ahem), but this year my plan is to put it here on my blog as I finish each chapter (for those who don’t mind reading rough drafts). I’m plotting out a sci-fi/fantasy type short story that’s heavy on the romance and light on the “science” with plenty of airships, and magic to make research a non-necessity. Right now it’s sort of a Scarlet Pimpernel meets Ocean’s Eleven in my head, but we’ll see how it actually comes out.

This is the last picture we took, seconds before pulling out of our driveway for the last time and one thing is for certain… this year’s Nanowrimo and my erstwhile homeschooling course/website will probably be accomplished on the road or squeezed between boxes (which is where I am currently writing this).

(Onward?) Onward!

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Surviving the flood and the great chicken escapade

I’ve wanted chickens for a long time, but didn’t see any way to make it happen.

But necessity is the mother of invention, and there’s nothing like four growing boys and a limit on eggs at the grocery store (if there are any on the shelves at all) to force one to throw their shoe over the fence and figure it out. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who was thinking in this direction, because baby chicks were sold out everywhere I called. Mail order chicks from reputable places were back ordered until May and I didn’t think the chicken dream was going to happen until a friend found a mail order place that had some.

I am not one for fancy chicken breeds, I’ve tried to be the chicken whisperer in the past, but I don’t do well trying to keep up with Silkies or Polish breeds. I’ve played wet nurse, vet and undertaker to more “fancy” chickens over the years than I care to recollect, so I just wanted plain hardy Rhode Island Reds. …During this coronapocalypse I might as well have wished for the moon. 

We learned the hard way that California doesn’t allow mail order chickens in the state, and  it looked like all was lost. While I was trying to figure out a way to smuggle them across the Arizona border, my network of chicken spies alerted me that the local ranch & feed store received a new shipment of 200 New Hampshire chicks...first come first serve. I jumped in the car faster than you could say “but where will we put them” and high tailed it down there and came home like a rain boot wearing, spring version of Santa Claus, shouting “Merry Easter everyone, I’ve got presents!” and dumping out a cardboard box full of cheeping yellow fluff.  Thankfully we’ve got a giant snake terrarium (empty!) that’s been appropriated and turned into a chick brooder...which is kind of funny in a circle of life kinda way. 

The kids couldn’t be more thrilled, and it’s like having our own YouTube channel running 24/7.  Being quarantined with chicks, children and a worm farm while it rains for 40 days and 40 nights has got me feeling like a modern day Noah. Do you think he grew microgreens? Surely they didn’t live off of dried goods the whole time? Maybe he had a green house somewhere in the ark.

I was listening to a gardening podcast that talked about how seeds learn from the climate and soil they’re put in and then pass on that information genetically to their offspring. So if you have heirloom seeds that don’t do well the first year, gather the seeds and try again anyway because they probably “learned” to deal with whatever curveball you’re throwing at it. I feel like my plants this year though are getting a false sense of reality. I keep telling them not to expect rain like this next year and not to tell their children or grandchildren about it because it doesn’t happen very often. 

And yes, I am now talking to my plants. I haven’t quite succumbed to playing classical music for them yet or laying hands on them, so clearly I have retained some of my sanity. ...maybe. 

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Amusing Links, plus the weirdest and stupidest thing I did today

Usually Mondays around here are busy and stressful, but since we’re in Neverland or Wonderland or maybe Stranger Thing’s Upside Down world, I tried to infuse some stress back into it by filling the house with the fresh scent of rotten meat and Chinese fringeberries.

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I’m on day 3 of a migraine and I’m pretty sure Jim feels like he’s married to Professor Trelawney . Since word coming out of France and Spain is to avoid ibuprofen at all cost right now, I decided it would also be a good idea to avoid my alien powered, high octane migraine prescription as well. I call it yoga for the trigeminal-autonomic reflex pathway…. I’m trying to work with the pain, listen to my body, and not just medicate and power through at 100 mph like I normally do. It’s not going well. So far my “don’t hyperventilate and work with the migraine” plan caused me to make 4 lbs of rotten meatballs. This is not normal for me, I have poor eyesight but a highly tuned olfactory system. The fact that it took me a few hours to identify the weird smell as rotten meat cooking in my oven is something that never happens in this household. I indigently thrust a freshly cooked rancid meatball under Jim’s nose while he was trying to do his job on the front line of the current healthcare crisis, and demanded he smell it and taste it. He said it tasted fine, but he’s also known to eat moldy things and uncooked chicken, so he was no help. Thankfully I caught it before I ruined the entire batch of sauce… the sauce… as in the sauce that Jim’s late Italian grandmother taught me to make in order to be married to her grandson. The one that heals all woes and is the perfect quarantine relief food (and I almost screwed it up).

That was the stupidest thing I did, the weirdest thing I did was toss a bunch of Chinese fringe berries and dandelions into the vitamix. The kids are like Pavlov’s dog when they hear the vitamix’s jet engine ramp up in the kitchen. William looked at the gray sludge and asked dubiously what kind of smoothie it was. Robbie was the only one who cheerfully volunteered to try the fringeberry dandelion concoction, but it wasn’t for human consumption. I listened to a gardening podcast about not being irritated with pests, weeds, etc but instead work with nature instead of fighting it (noticing a trend here?). Our neighbor has a Chinese Fringe tree that dumps these olive berry looking things all over our flower bed and sidewalk. I googled it and they don’t compost very quickly, but they’re full of great nutrients, so I decided to work with nature and toss them into my vitamix and then compost bin. The dandelions were just innocent bystanders that got swept up with the tide.

My compost now smells very good. Apparently you can also pickle these berries like olives and eat them (which I’m adding to my list of possibilities if the grocery store stays empty).

I love lists of links, and in case you do too, here is my current list ( know they don’t look like links, because I can’t figure out how to format my squarespace skin, but I promise they’re all clickable)

  1. 13 edible plants you can find in urban environments.

  2. I wish our church would do something like this creative Russian Orthodox priest. Or at least keep the doors unlocked like the Catholic and Episcopalian churches.

  3. A free book on rational thinking.

  4. The most powerful fire engine in the world

  5. A book review about President Hoover that is almost better than the book itself.

  6. An ex Pickup Artist’s thoughts on how to pray.

  7. And last but not least: The aforementioned Sauce recipe that heals all woes (or at least it does for everyone in my husband’s family)

I’ll just be over here enjoying pepper tree tea with some sauteed dandelion and pickled fringeberries. My liver has never been happier even if my head is not. The only thing I have left to do is install a bidet.



Stuck at home? My top 3 favorite toys (or rather, my kids' top 3 favorite toys)

Since impending d̶o̶o̶m̶ home time may be in all of our futures, here are my top three time-passers that are a much better use of your money than Costco’s toilet paper. Whenever it rains in Southern California (which doesn’t happen a lot), Jim foregoes the motorcycle commute and takes my suburban. (Note, it’s mine even though he technically paid for it..ahem.) My only other option is taking him to work at 5am and then picking him back up in the afternoon. While I wouldn’t want to complain about stumbling into some clothes and staggering into the car like an intoxicated teddy bear who stuck their finger into an electrical outlet (I’m not a morning person), if possible I opt to stay at home and let Jim take the car.

It was a pretty happy, peaceful, chill day around here, but that was probably because rain has an almost sedative affect on native Californians. So take this list with a large grain of salt.

  1. These brain flake things. A friend brought them for William to play with and they were an instant hit. I picked up a few containers for Christmas and they’ve been the most used toy since then. Even the older kids make all kinds of weird ironman armor and laser wrist things. I don’t ask questions, I just duck when I’m told

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2. Kinetic Sand. We have lots of different kinetic sand in the house, but this one is the favorite. I don’t think it has anything to do with the sparkles (which are sadly overrated and exaggerated in the picture) but because it’s the softest. Once you start playing with it, you can’t stop. Even adults have been known to pause in front of the sensory bin and then not move until forced.

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3. The card game Rat-A-Tat-Cat. This is one of the few card games that even small children can play and it isn’t a form of slow torture for parents and older kids. Death by candy princesses and sneaky squirrels is one of the leading causes of parental demise. Also, if you have a kid who’s missing speech therapy, you can also turn this game into an impromptu session where you endlessly discuss the cool cats and nasty rats (the illustrations are hilarious). It’s won all sorts of awards, including a Mensa one, but I haven’t noticed it making my kids any smarter… granted, I haven’t checked and we may not be the best target audience. Still, anyone can play this no matter where they are on the IQ spectrum. We’re on our third deck.

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Not that I’m hoping we’ll all get quarantined by the Coronu, but at least we’re prepared

…and there are plenty of leaves in the backyard if the toilet paper runs out.