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| We are digging sweet potatoes today. I'm a lot slower alone than with a second, but right now there is a tractor that needs fixing so I'm going to work alone again.
We are still eating tomatoes, green pepper and chard fresh from the garden and the spinach seed I threw into the flower bed is sprouting. I felt a bit like Jack's mother (from the beanstalk story) because I pretty much just threw the seed out there. I didn't want them in my vegetable garden because it needs to be worked. I didn't really want them in the flower bed because it needs to have a LOT of help in the soil enrichment department. But I do want spinach, so I threw it out there and watered it.
This morning someone came over from Platinum. That is what she said. She wanted to know when she could come and talk to me and my husband about cancer, heart disease, and something else. Would morning or afternoon work better?
I was just on my way in from choring and a bit flustered at being caught at my worst in the categories of wardrobe, hair, AND makeup. Then she wanted to shake hands and I did. I reached out my hand freshly removed from the chore glove and put it right into hers, all the time wondering if she had thought about what she might be touching if she held out her hand to a woman who had obviously been out choring. So I wasn't thinking too clearly.
I asked what she wanted. She repeated that she was from Platinum and wanted to talk about cancer, heart disease and something else. (She didn't say 'something else' but I can't remember what she said.) I asked how long it would take. She said only 20 minutes. So I did the unthinkable. I told her she could come.
Chuck was not excited. He couldn't understand how I managed not to tell her we were not interested. So I told him that it would be fine with me if he conveyed that very message when she showed up at the door. But when she was ten minutes late he had a better idea. He said, "Let's go out to the pond and talk and leave a note in the door that we aren't interested." Coward. But I was game so we did.
Got to go did more potatoes
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| We lit the fireplace for the first time tonight. The house takes a long time to warm up so after an hour and a half I'm just now starting to think that maybe I'll take my sweater off tomorrow. There is that nice smell of a hot stove starting to spread through the room.
It's not desperately cold out yet, really. We haven't had frost yet. But we had north winds most of the day and we won't have any temps over 70 until Thursday, if then. The house just gets a little bit cooler every day. The last two days I've worn my long johns and two long sleeve shirts and socks AND shoes. I don't know when the last time was that I wore shoes all day on a day I stayed home.
We drove to Larned yesterday and the prairie grasses are now at their most beautiful. There is still green undergrowth, thanks to the absence of a hard freeze. The taller grasses are so many shades of gold, tan, red, maroon, brown, brick.... They are punctuated with seed heads of various shapes and hues. Fuzzy foxtails wave near tall spikes of milkweed with their tear drop hulls and cottony seeds. Old sunflowers' naked seed heads seem exposed and shrivelled on their barren stalks.
Trees are starting to change, but still have most of their leaves. They are great too, but this year it is the grasses I notice the most.
We loaded out hogs today. One of the men who was going to help was sick, so I called the school and told them I had to pick up Tim at 2:30 for an appointment. We had an appointment with a semi-truck and livestock trailer at 3:00. He came out at 2:30 and asked me, "Appointment for what?" "Appointment for cash!" I answered. "We need you to help load hogs."
He was only getting out of seminar, which is a fancy way to say study hall.
Loading hogs brought up a controversy. Farmers are a thrifty bunch. Prices aren't always great so they have to stretch their dollars where they can. When sending livestock to market, someone has to pay the trucker. The more animals stuffed on the truck, the cheaper the hauling cost per animal.
The dilemma is this: there are laws about how much weight can be in the trailer of a semi. If the semi is found to be too heavy, the driver of the truck is held responsible. Seems simple enough. The driver can just say 'no'.
But many drivers are willing to take heavy loads, so the drivers who won't take heavy loads don't get hired.
If a driver has an accident, his truck will be weighed. No matter what the cause of the accident, if the truck is overweight, the driver is in serious trouble.
If a truck is overweight it is harder to handle, harder to stop quickly. But a lot of trucks are overweight because a very full truck saves money for the farmer and for the consumer.
Now, you would guess that Christian farmers would bite the bullet and pay more for shipping in order to reward the truckers who have the moral strength to do the right thing even when it hurts. But you would guess wrong---or maybe right. Can you call yourself a Christian and make a buck off someone else's risk? A lot of people do, not only in farming. I was sad, though, when I realized what goes on in our area where most of the farmers are active in their churches.
To their credit, maybe they aren't aware. Maybe the man who makes the connections between the farmers and the truckers doesn't let the farmers know that he is asking the truckers to overload their trucks. Maybe all they know is that this man gets their livestock to market for a good shipping price. I don't know whether they understand how the price gets so good or not. I do know that this man is also active in his church. And I know that he probably has his own worries about competition and whether scruples will also work him out of a job.
We talked yesterday about how to decide when to take a risk, when to step out even though it might hurt you. I keep wondering if we can move ourselves to the point where we can simplify the discussion. Can we ask ourselves what is right? What is just? What is merciful? Can we do those things and quit worrying about what will happen?
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| Tim had a true 'teenage boy' evening today.
He wanted to go shopping for clothes. He needs jean shorts. The only jean shorts in our fair city are size 40 or bigger, because no one wants to buy jean shorts in October so no one stocks them. But Tim wears shorts in all kinds of weather, asserting his independence in a way that doesn't hurt me at all.
While we are shopping we buy two bags of dog food (the biggest ones) because they are on sale.
Then he goes to the Ultimate Frisbee game while I go for a fast walk. He is waiting for me on the driver's side of the car when I return, but he drives like a gentleman.
When we got home he decided that one trip from the car to the house was plenty so he hefted both bags of dog food at once.
Then he made some lemon water because he was so thirsty. I got supper on the table.
"Mom, there's a problem with the sugar."
I went to the pantry to find the sugar canister set carefully on the floor with the lid off and sugar scattered around it.
"What happened?"
"There was a big clump in the bag of sugar."
"OK. Here's the broom to clean it up."
"Can you give me something to break up the clumps?"
"Yeah."
I gave him my steel. It is a long, narrow, blunt-tipped file for sharpening knife blades and I thought he could use it to break up the clumps. I went back to setting the table.
"Mom. There's another problem with the sugar."
I went back to the pantry. Tim is holding the sugar bag with several small holes the size of the tip of the steel.. He held it carefully sideways so that the sugar stopped sifting out while I got a plastic bucket to pour the sugar into. Then he finished sweeping the floor.
We sat down to chili. When he dipped out his thirds (I did the first and second helpings for him) the soup splashed out on the front of the newspaper beside him. It just wasn't his night, I guess.
Before he went to bed he was feeding the dogs and told me that he had spilled the dog food. By this time I was expecting 40 pounds of dog food on the floor, but we were fortunate. When he gave George his food he spilled it beside George's bowl.
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| Tonight was our one free evening this week. Actually it wasn't free. It was stolen. We were supposed to be helping cook a dinner for church.
We have an anniversary tomorrow and we wanted to do something. We'd talked about doing something for several days but never planned anything. After 5:00 this evening we talked a little bit. Tim had an ultimate game he was going to bike to. We decided to bike to a restaurant and have dinner, then bike home with Tim after the game. But there were chores, finding new batteries for the headlights, showers, packing up sweatshirts for the trip home in cooler air, and other things. We left home and when we reached town we realized that Tim would be done playing long before we would be done eating.
Time to change plans. We decided to see the end of the game and take Tim with us to eat.
Then change again. What about fast food since it was so late.
I was disappointed. A fast food anniversary date? I said fast food would be OK but I'd like to quit calling it an anniversary date. I'd like an anniversary date to be planned more than a day in advance so I could look forward to it.
Chuck immediately agreed. Smart man.
So it was a good evening. No wind. Pleasant temperature. Biking while the sun set. Watching Tim throw himself into a game of Ultimate Frisbee. Enjoying the biggest sancho Taco Tico makes and not feeling guilty because I'm riding 12 miles today. Slipping into a sweatshirt for the trip home and soaking in the cool quietness and the stars as we ride home together.
After we got home we watched some of our taped episodes of 'The War' by Ken Burns while I cut Tim's hair. Then I got absorbed in "Kite Runner" until way too late. And now I'm writing about nothing when I should be sleeping.
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| For the first time since I can remember there are still chiggers after the Walnut Valley Bluegrass Festival. I know because I've stopped taking precautions and there are six bites where the elastic hem of my bike shorts hits my leg. There are a few others as well, but I won't talk about them.
It is already time to cut milo, which seems impossible to me.
But my birthday is over, so I guess time is passing. It was a good one again, but I rarely have a bad birthday. We left for the festival on my birthday and shared cake with family and friends there. There were hugs and cards, a serenade from Beppe Gambetta and a cd of his Italian music, a gift certificate for my favorite restaurant, a handmade journal, 3 months of netflix, 8 hours of music I miss, and blueberry jam (well, that was really for Chuck but he is sharing it with me  )
I gave myself day with a friend at a that was full of things to think about. I find myself waking up and pondering more early in the mornings.
In some strange quirk of coincidence we spoke with all three of our adopted sons today. The one who hates us still does. The one who has learned to love us says it openly now. And the one who is a puzzle is still a puzzle. I keep thinking that I will see some meaning in hearing especially from the two who live away both on the same day we had such intense times with the one who is near. Haven't found it yet. Maybe it is just to remind me that this intensity is temporary. It might last years, but probably not a lifetime.
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