The Council of Raccoon

Bird feeders and garbage had  been ravaged in our backyard.   We decided at least a month ago to trap the coon and  end our misery.   My two youngest boys dutifully set our live animal trap in the back garden, which obviously had visitors in the past.   The next morning, one of the largest coons I've seen around these parts greeted me with a cold stare.   The coon was defeated in posture and probably didn't appreciate my glee upon discovery.  

I asked the boys to reset the trap and see if there were anymore.   Um, were there more?   We kept this routine up for weeks.   My status on Facebook was daily about the latest finding.   We only caught one opossum over this time period.   The boys began to look at me with weariness when I asked them to set the trap at night.   Their reaction of triumph left them after the fourth or fifth coon.  

After weeks went by with a raccoon discovered each morning, I decided to give the boys  a break as we were busy settling back into our fall routine.   I was hoping we had gotten the lot of them but yesterday morning I found birdseed and watermelon leavings from the trash all over the place.   The boys regained their enthusiasm and went to the task of resetting the trap.   Sure enough, a cold stare greeted me when I walked out on the patio.

The morning greetings have seemed endless.   When will it stop?   I personally believe that raccoon across the Indiana territory had called a raccoon council in our woods.   There was probably votes on whether or not the humans would notice them and if there were trees and places to raise their young over the summer of 2017.   Topics of the council would include sending subliminal messages to city and state councils to outlaw the disposal of coons in town as they are so cute and rascally, who could be annoyed by them?    There might be discussion about how to get the word out to others of scheduled picnics by humans so that they could come and search out their garbage bags.   Which parks were the best picks for leavings?  

Discrimination against raccoon is out of control in this country.  This was probably the key note speaker's topic.   There are most likely areas where farmers, country and city dwellers are not deceived by cute little children's books and works of art for country decor.   (Seriously, if your yard was overrun with coons you might object).   The coons certainly stayed up late and ate loads of overripe berries on the night of the key note speaker.   Drunk coons for days!   We've heard them screeching at night.   It could be the topic of the evening was  getting heated or .....something.......

I'm sure there are raccoon in a woods near you making plans to travel to the next Council of Raccoon in our backyard.   It will be great.  

Hoping for a sale on birdseed soon......

Children free to play

I am going to use my old drafts as writing prompts.   Children free to play......    a person is a child once.   I see their time flying away.   What a delight  to see a child at play and reveling in it.   I have had  children addicted to the sandbox and they simply do not want to leave it.   The youngest in my family is getting older all the time of course and his older siblings are getting older, so there is less time spent playing.   I want to facilitate their playing as much as possible by throwing all of us outside and spending time together.  
"Free" to play was implying that children have less time to play as their lives are scheduled up such there is little time to just have nothing they have to go and do.  My year is as busy as ever and looking at the schedule I do want to guard their time to be able not be under pressure to produce and cough up anything for given activities.   Being free to be bored is awesome.

 Purposely taking off from school today, life around the house just seemed more peaceful.   Right now the kids are outside playing frisbee together.   Phew.   Kids playing outdoors afforded mom some quiet time too before the time of electronics.   I'm not against electronics, but I am against them forgetting how to play and imagine.   We are a family of addictions or obsessions so I do want to guard what time they have left as children to just be children and take that along with them into adult life.  

Clarification and reiterating that my choices with my kids are the privilege of parents for their own family.   I am not judging anyone their choices but stating what I have observed in my own family.   I want my children to have a childhood full of hands on playing.   I had it and have hilarious memories from all that my friends and I played together and wonder why my parents and theirs were okay with some of our shenanigans.   Wow.  I hear hilarious stories from my older children of the stunts they pulled together and then I can revel in the fact that my darlings did some pretty crazy stuff and we can all laugh about it now.  

Day off

I wonder if I can remember to take every Wednesday off and have it be 'the day off"?   Our Monday and Tuesday have me on my toes from Monday when I wake up til Tuesday around eleven.   If I give the whole family permission to take the next day off, I think that will remove quite a bit of stress for everyone.    I've been trying to figure out the schedule so we don't all lose our minds.  

Taking today off from tasks and homework has been over the moon wonderful.   We slept til we wanted to, I had a doctor's appointment and a few errands to run and the rest of the time has been everyone chilling out and waiting for Evening Prayer time.

I want to write more so will see if this is the last post for a few years or if I can manage to get back to it.  I've had many a blog post rolling around in my head but none get down in writing.  

Three flown, six to go.

My two eldest boys have flown the coup.  I am delighted for them.  I can't say I'm sad and I know it wil be quieter but envisualizing them independent and away from their noisy family is also time to cherish for them.  I am one to love my kids deeply and probably too deeply.  I enjoy talking with them and having their adult companionship.   What more could I ever want for them but to successfully be independent.  I can also unload extra stuff on them!!!!!   Whee!!!!!   Less furniture!!!!!   Stuff be gone.  Ha ha.

Transitions

Life has been bouncing around.  I'm not necessarily suited for change but everyone experiences it.  I used to hear of people's struggle with change and wasn't able to feel it.  For the longest time stamina and goals moved me through life.   Now I see it everywhere and pretend to understand it.

I'm not very talented at bearing with change is what I've discovered.  Change has been pounding away at me.  It seems relentless.  I'm not good at it.  I keep moving forward.  The phone rings and someone is very ill and needs help in the family.  I want to love those people and feel it all too much. The phone keeps ringing.   I hate the phone.  Stop it.

Then stepping through healing or death.  The eyes of people tell so much.  Pray with me Karin.  Listen to me.  I will and I count it a privilege to listen to the dying.  I rejoice their confession of faith. If lucid, they share memories which I won't have anyone to speak to anymore about them.  He favorite great aunt, their stories, their impact.

The young and healthy have eyes and stories and relationships we hold in common.  I need to press forward for their sake to maintain and develop those wonderful relationships.   I have a weakness of feeling things and have talk myself into activities of relationship.   I want to know my children and family truly.

The journey marches forth.  I hope I can do this thing.  I hate the phone.

Leave them alone to play

I used to pride myself on my kids ability to make believe and play with just about nothing but the great outdoors or indoors.  Kids don't need very much to be happy and content.  Mostly they don't need to be in contact with adults constantly to be content.

Our family does have the luxury of living in the middle of ten acres of over half woods and some meadow.  Ever since our oldest was a small child, I can remember putting a sand box outside the living room window and our toddler basically lived in that sandbox while I  read a book and saw her head bobbing around.  She didn't care where I was as she was in her little world of imagination.  She would play for hours and then......I would read to her and she would take her nap....and then start the cycle all over again.

We have nine children total, which isn't necessarily relative to to the topic, but all of them have basically disappeared to their play land for most of their free time.  As small children they were loaded with free time.  Countless people have commented to me at one time or another the kids ability to just be content by themselves without my involvement.

Last week, my second to last child, took me on a delightful romp through our woods.   She showed me all her favorite haunts which frankly I wasn't aware existed.   My seeming neglect or lack of supervision, produced forts which were in their third or fourth stage of redesign by her and her sibs.   Her older sibs had also built and rebuilt forts in the woods.   She described the walking bridge they had created at the bottom of slippery hill and then showed me the remains of a foundation I didn't even know existed after twenty four years of living here!  This bridge had also undergone renovations as some logs rot you know.

I loved how she reminisced about her years in the woods.  It was a world to me that perhaps I can be sorry I wasn't as aware of but on the other hand it is their world.  When I dismiss the kids from their home educated world they frankly stop school in my world and then enter their own school of play.

Another area she described as one of her favorites for all the mushrooms they find there.  She is seven mind you, and the mushroom world is one of her favorites!   Where is MY mushroom world!?   I need a mushroom world!   This world will last her young life.  It can extend through the knowledge gained in observation into her adult life. She experiences things most people will never ever have a chance to experience, mainly because she was given the chance to play and explore on her own and with her sibs.

Lately the collaborative playing has been as Minute Men fighting the British all over the yard.  The book we read together is now live action in the yard without my meddling.  I pondered meddling when the Minute Men started bickering together but I thought better of it and left them to their own devices.

For all the panicking I've done through my parenting years as to whether I am teaching them everything I 'should' I really needn't worry too much about it.  My kids are thriving, know how to work hard, and have so many childhood tales of their adventures.  When they are released from my clutches of reading, math, etc., they disappear into their world for hours and hours.  I am happy for them. My fifteen year old still swings on the swing set and loves it.

So.....I encourage parents to encourage free play time outside as you can.  I know some people don't have that luxury due to apartment living, city living, so go camping!  Get out of sterile plugged in lives and get the kids outside to play with what is there.

And the kids were happy

With the help of my doctor, I had a revelation this week about how to reduce my stress and the rest of the family's stress.  I have grown to highly dislike Monday's.  Monday evenings are fine with either church or band rehearsal and being able to walk away from a day loaded with stress but the day itself usually makes me want to rip patches of hair out.  So......he mentioned an idea in this random conversation, of structuring Monday's to only include the easiest things which do not require tedious one on one work.  Eureka!  I thought about that and we are only going to read books aloud and practice our instruments and......that's it.  If a kid wants to play a little 'catch up' from years of my caring for elders then they can but......not with me unless I'm up to it.

  Our weekends are usually full of activities both for the kids, and then husband I try to spend some time on projects or visiting family and friends.   No one seems to look forward to the reality of Mondays.  I'm emotionally tapped out and overwhelmed.  I still have a few kids not reading as well as I would like and then writing ability needs attention with others.  We whittle away at this each day and it consumes our lives.  I'm determined to quietly be done around two each day and being ok with whatever we accomplished.  We need time to breathe and not be on school work duty all the time.

This afternoon I was with one of my kids at the dentist and two moms were discussing how exhausted their kids were with homework til eleven or twelve at night!   Yikes.  When was childhood robbed by all this schoolwork?   I don't want all this stress all day for my kids.   On Thursday we finished around two for everyone and everyone went outside and used the swing set and hammock and romped in the woods.  I heard my 15 year old exclaim that she hadn't swung on the swing set for forever.  Sigh.  Sounds like we have been oppressed.  Really.  I don't want to take their childhood away from them by obsessing over the amount of work they've gotten done.  I'm now switching gears to a regular routine with some things like practicing, math, reading instruction and then accepting whichever kids get some work done with me the rest of the day.    This is predictably happier.  I will know I'm done mid-afternoon and they will experience some freedom each day.   Phew.  I hope I can make this a lasting plan.

Hubbard Chicken

This is a friend's recipe for dressed up chicken which the whole family enjoys and guests might be impressed as well.

Simple

Buy or cut up chicken into parts and skin them, counting enough pieces for each family member plus a few extras for the teenagers.

Lay in your favorite tribal cookware pan.  I use my stoneware bar pan usually.

In a food processor mix several slice of stale bread, a few tablespoons dried oregano, one onion quartered, surge for a few seconds till in a consistent crumbly blend.

Sprinkle mix overtop of chicken and bake at 375 degrees for around an hour depending on the meatiness of the chicken.  Nothing spells disaster like undercooked chicken right?   I tend to cook it till I see the bone showing......definitely done.  Bread crumb mix keeps skinless meat moist and yummy.

Creole stuff

How to cook with your family.......you beckon to your children and divide the ingredients between them for quick results.

M....start the rice cooker
MP.....cut up two green peppers....please
B......two small onions chopped and six stalks of celery
C.....chop up turkey kielbasa....all three packages

Put all that in a large pot also known as tribal cookware thanks to an old friend.

Cook that all for a bit then add two large cans of tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes
Three to four cans drained red beans
Stir

Add table spoon paprika
Cayenne pepper to taste
Two teaspoons thyme
Table spoon oregano
Three or four bay leaves

Simmer for as long as you have......with enough time to eat it before the next thing in life.
Serve over rice or mix in rice.

This is basically how cooking rolls in our house.

Sophisticated Tuna salad

So.........canned tuna is inexpensive.  I chose a tuna salad at a restaurant not too long ago and this was the basic gist of it.  I should add before I record the idea, that not all meals you serve your family have to leave them n a food coma.   That said....here it is.

Five cans of tuna or there abouts for your large family ( or pot luck....?)
Six to eight hard boiled eggs
Mayo or whatever you use in place of mayo
Six or more stalks of celery
Spices you like in tuna salad

Mix all of that. I put in enough mayo to make it consistently moist.

Two pounds lettuce of choice

Extras.....one can cashews
One or two large cans of mandarin oranges ( any fruit....grape, apples chopped, cuties separated, pineapple chunks......)

Serve on individual plates.   Arrange lettuce on plate, plop enough tuna salad in the middle of lettuce.   Sprinkle fruit and nuts around.  My kids mixed lettuce and tuna on their plates.  Tuna salad can be stretched with more celery or eggs which are both inexpensive.

That's it!