Drum Roll Please.......

Boy, that Mathias family sure knows how to roll with the punches. Give 'em lemons and they make orange juice, they can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, they've aced the school of hard knocks, they're like a Timex - they take a lickin' and keep on........

Sigh.

Do you ever get the feeling that the universe is stuck in a rut and needs a swift kick to bump it into the next track? In our life, we seem able to get our feet under us and build slowly and carefully just to the point of relaxing when kchk, kchk, kchk.... we're hip-checked back to the starting gate. It's never been more horrible than we can accept. Just a flag moving the ball back to the first down line.

Lying flat on my back recovering from injuries that were miraculously minor for the circumstances, I caught myself whining. A lot. And yet, I was alive enough to whine. To lie in bed in a solid little house in the middle of fertile fields with laughter coming from the next room as my family called Rock Paper Scissors for what music to play next. This is our Life, with a capital L. It's all I've ever wanted - to be happy and healthy with my family, together. After all, there really was no crisis, we simply had to rebuild. Again.

Sigh.

Each time the whining voice entered my head, so did the booming guilt voice. I was alive - by the grace of God, I was alive. What business did I have whining about anything - I who had so very much?

I finally snapped back at both the whining and the guilt: It wasn't about what I had - not about my stuff, my money, not even my health or the love of my family. It was about perspective.

You see, I really do believe that I am here for a purpose, that my choices matter, that things do happen for a reason. So, when we get knocked back to retrace the same steps over and over again, what is the point? What am I missing? What do I still need to learn about living in the moment, facing each day with a clear conscience and a positive attitude? We know how to start over, to be grateful and aware. We know how to re-assess, regroup, and create from scratch. We've proven not only that we can make-do but that we actually excel at it.

Wait. We ARE good at it.

Really good.

Just what am I still trying to prove? And to whom? Maybe it isn't the universe that is stuck in a rut after all.

More and more, frustration and fear color the observations from my friends, acquaintances, strangers in the check-out line, newscasters, and publishers. What if they lose everything? How can they possibly go forward if everything they've built up, counted on, worked for, is gone? We can help with that. Even more poignant are the voices of the We Generation on whose shoulders the future will fall - they struggle to even get a foot on the first rung of the status quo ladder. How can they find their unique niche in a saturated job market, put down roots in foreclosure neighborhoods? How can they build their own lasting Dream from the scraps of a system that has no use for them except as consumers? We can help with that.

Our framework for this weekly tutorial on a life lived differently is a short chapter from The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander. I've installed a permanent link to the text in the "Journey" button on the lefthand column and will be referring to it regularly. Just click the "Journey" button to read now and anytime. While I have long adored the book and this passage in particular, I only recently heard the persistent melody under and over the whining, guilting, snapping voices in my head naming it an exceptional synopsis of living on the abundant edge.

The world is changing - to what I certainly cannot tell. But all the ingredients for health and happiness are still at our fingertips. Becoming adept in your ability to see the resources and in your skill to implement a resilient life takes experience, good humor, and confidence. We can help with that.

The Thirteenth Piglet

Henrietta, the sow at our neighboring farm, graced us with twelve baby pig-igs in the middle of the night on October 27th. Or so we thought...

Dad, Rae, and I traipsed across the pasture that next morning ready to see the babies and 'Oooh' and 'Awww' over them all. When we got there, all the little ones were curled up with their mama, either sleeping in a piggy pile or maniacally trying to find a spot to nurse. Rae had the camera so she snapped a bunch of pictures and Dad grabbed a heat lamp to warm the nest.

All of a sudden from where I'm standing on the edges, we hear little baby pig noises. I look down and right by my foot is a piglet! He was five feet away from Henrietta and had probably been there for quite a while, unable to find his way back to his brothers and sisters. He was freezing cold. Dad picked him up and tucked him in his coat.

Dad had to go milk so the babe was handed over to me, and I put him in my coat and sat down by the heater. But that wasn't getting him warm fast enough. So, in true Zoe form, I put him under my shirt, up against my belly. He was absolutely freezing, and I was not very optimistic about him coming through. Sometimes life is like that.

But then Dad came in with an O'Douls bottle, the only bottle he could find that would fit the nipple we had. He filled it with hot water and gave it to me to hold against the little pig-ig. That's when things started to really turn around for the better. Dad went back out to finish milking. He came back in a bit later and we dumped the water out of the bottle and put some warm milk in. Rae had a heck of a time trying to get milk out of the nipple into the little guy's mouth.

We stayed by the heater with the baby's head peeking out from under my shirt and Rae trying to get him to eat for probably an hour. And he kept getting warmer and warmer, until finally it was my belly that was cold and the piglet that was warm. We took a break from feeding him and let him rest for a bit.





A while later he woke back up and started moving around. He started to suck on my finger, so we took him back out to Henrietta. He settled right in to try and nurse. We watched him for a bit, and he held his own against his bigger siblings.

We named him Fonzie, because as Dad said 'Fonzie's cool'. Bad humor! The little guy went from not going to make it, to enthusiastically trying to nurse and squirming around with his brothers and sisters. Sometimes life is like that.

Words to Dispel Mob Mentality

Wow! Have I found a website to touch bases with when the "real" world is just too overwhelming in its absurdity. Courtesy of a link from David Spangler at Lorian Association, I found this jewel of an article among hundreds and hundreds:

There are at least 250,000 words in the English language. But to think that English -- or any language -- could hold enough expression to convey the entirety of the human experience is naive. For example, 'Toska,' from Russian, which is a kind of dull ache of the soul. Or 'Mamihlapinatapei,' from Yagan, describing the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate something but are both reluctant to start. Here are twenty such examples where other languages have found the right word and English is either speechless -- or too verbose. from 20 Untranslatable Words from Around the World

Those Arms

I love this picture of myself.

Except my arms.

My beautiful girls and I had gone out to a lovely little pond behind our farm to take portraits for Jeff's birthday gift. The weather quickly, unexpectedly turned crabby. Thunder pounded over our heads and lightning flashed out of sync with the camera. We were just about to abandon the effort when RaeLani, camera in hand, shouted "Mom, stop right there....now...raise your arms, a bit more....Good! Got it!"

Later at home, I saw this picture and thought, "Oh, I love that picture of myself."

"Except my arms."

When I was a brash young woman, I watched my vibrant, active Grandma one day - she was so pretty. Except her arms. "Tsk, tsk," I thought, "she should do something about that."

My 45th birthday is coming up quick. I love my life. I finally love my strong, resilient, agile body. Except those arms. Sigh. I totally deserve those arms.

Happy Birthday to a Most Wonderful Friend!

Happy Birthday to You!

We live in a Zoo!

We wish we had a monkey,




'Cuz we'd send it to you!!

A Figment Cover to Share

Here's a book cover for you!

High Summer

Wow, it's been a long time since the last post. Without apology or excuses, I'll just jump right back in. It is finally Summer here in Wallowa County and finally hot, hot, hot. Jeff ran outside in a panic yesterday morning at 9:00 when the hoophouse was already up to 128 degrees inside. We have a low tech design with no fans, no automatic door openers, no levered windows. In fact, a lot of our farm operates on a pretty low-tech level. While getting started this way was less expensive and easier to replace or replicate, the everyday job of just living on our little farm is quite labor intensive.

I love it.

Sharon Astyk - Mom, Writer, and Fellow Visionary - captures my feelings for our hard working life in this blogpost: http://sharonastyk.com/2011/07/19/in-high-summer/

We live looking forward. We move on to the next season as the work we do now itself lays the groundwork for the fall, winter and spring crops that we will subsist upon. We are watching the boys grow big and strong in summer, envisioning the next year and the next as they mature. We live looking back, remembering as I pull this crop of bolted lettuce the cold, wet spring day I transplanted it. As each goat delivers, we recall the February day that I released does and bucks to their mutual delight, and always remember the summer farm childhood we all lived or dreamed of. We live in the moment, delighting in the full milk pail, the first harvest, the sweetness of berries, the warmth of the sun, the cold beer in the shade, the first time the boys use their pocketknives or climb to new heights. At high summer, more than at any other moment, past, present, future come together and simply are. The days are so long, they seem to be infinite. We know it is merely an illusion, but we revel in summer, stripped of limits, timeless and beautiful.