How many Monday's are there in a week?

It's a trick questions.
It feels like we've been in Monday since last Friday...  That sounds weird but it's the feeling I've gotten.  So how does Monday happen more than once a week?

To start with the kids have been sleeping badly.  This actually started back at the beginning of the month (I'm blaming Mercury in retrograde for this one), and we've been trying everything we can to figure out ways of making everyone comfortable.  The boys have their matrices in our room currently, since they were waking so much in the night we figured it would be better to have them close, but not in bed kicking us close.  They still aren't sleeping well, but at least we don't have to run up and down the stairs in the night and my daughter is getting better sleep without all the activity at 2am in her room.
My husband spent all day Saturday in the cities helping family move.  That night we realized that the laying hens we had planned to keep until next year would need to be processed.  They weren't laying enough for us to be able to keep feeding them over the winter.  So processing birds (several of which had become pets of a kind) was on the next weeks agenda.
All day Sunday was spent rearranging the house to fit all our newly acquired furniture (from the moving family).  That night we realized that our very old dog (who has been sick for a while now) had finally stopped eating and drinking she was lethargic, it was her time to go.
Monday we put Midnight down, and it broke all of our hearts.  She was such a sweet old dog.  We'd had her for six years (she was probably around eight when we adopted her) and she is much missed by us all.  We buried her on the hill overlooking the lake, next to her lifelong friend Mama (who died about three years ago).  That day also happened to be apple picking day.  Lordy, I haven't a clue how many we picked, but I know we have a ton.  Anyone out there need some saucing apples?  We made all the sauce we needed for a long time with the Summer apples.  My mother-in-law is working on finding people interested.
Tuesday my cycle decided to start (don't get me wrong, I'm glad for it, but I'd really thought it was going to wait a day longer) and this was the day we had decided to process the chickens.  Not going to let a little pain and suffering stand in my way when everything is already set up and ready to go.  So we said goodbye to the birds, some of which I'd become quite attached to.  It was freezing and sad to see them go.  But they were all processed before lunch and are now in the fridge waiting for me to figure out how to use my new-to-me pressure caner.  After lunch we went to visit some old friends of my husband's family who we were buying the pressure caner from and who are now our suppliers for eggs.  It was great to look around their little farm and get to chat for a while and I'm grateful for the connection with them.  It's always nice to have friends to talk sustainable living with.
Today I'm trying to figure out my caner (it seems the gasket may be worn out), and then have chicken to can.  I also have the bookmobile this afternoon (yeah Harry Potter at last!) and somewhere in there I suppose I'll have to feed my family.  It's not to hard of a day, but we still need to go out and learning new skills and processing always takes some thinking power.  The farm is strangely quiet now and my 6 year old son is out of chores for this week at least while I tried to find something else for him to do as we don't have anymore outdoor chores at the moment.

It's been a long and challenging couple of days.  I'm hoping with the end of October we'll have an end to some of the challenges and drama that seem to have taken over this month.  I'm not holding my breath, but I'll put some positive thoughts that way.

A Second Cup (Five Months Later)

By accident this evening I clicked on the Blogger icon on my browser.  I was trying to delete it.  After all when was the last time I actually used Blogger?  Cup of tea in hand (my favorite that just arrived a half hour ago, organic Genmaicha Tea.) I finished cleansing my bookmarks and suddenly looked down at the page and remembered this appealing little blog.  Well, the nice name anyways.  I had to check it out and see what I'd written before I remembered where it all started and why I had started it in the first place.  Maybe it was fate that brought us back together.

The last 5 months have been, well, for lack of a better word, amazing.  Amazing in the ups and how great life really can be.  And amazing in the downs, where you realize just what is really important to you.  To recap I'll give you bulletins (don't you just love them?):

• May & June found us busy with garden, still recuperating from whooping cough and enjoying the nice weather.  We went camping and watched a tornado pass us by (it was pretty exciting/terrifying).
• July started off with my husband having a high fever and 5 days later he was in the hospital with chest pain.  They confirmed his heart was struggling and medivaced him to a bigger hospital.  It might have been one of the most terrifying things I've experienced so far.  He was discharged the next day and recuperated quickly and is doing fine.  There was no long term damage but it was quite traumatizing for everyone.  I missed my first birth the day after this and called in my backup who, thankfully, was in town and able to attend.  All these things made me really start to re-evaluate my priorities and I decided that, at the very least, I would not be taking new clients for the rest of the year.
• August kept us busy with gardening and family get togethers.  My husband was back to work and off his medications and doing well.  The last day of the month, my daughter's birthday, one of my last two clients went into labor.  It was long, but beautiful and the first one to really make me cry.  She was amazing and worked so hard.
• September was the beginning of the harvest.  Apples and saucing (60 quarts for us and my mother in law made at least as much too) and tomatoes started.  We homeschool year-round but seem to set to it a little more earnestly in September.  I celebrated my 31st birthday with a cold.  My husband was going to take me out and do something special the day before but I was so sick I told him I had to stay home.  This broke my heart, but really it was very needed and I relaxed with the kids and watched Disney movies all day.  It's my go-to for when I need to relax and be comforted.  The day of my birthday was fun with a few gifts and lots of love from family and friends.  The whole month was exhaustively busy, but highly productive and good.

That brings us to now, the beginning of October.  I have my last birth for the year happening this month, a cousin's wedding, family visiting, my husband is helping his aunt & uncle move and the constant harvest.  We've already processed all 51 of our meat bird that we raised over the summer.  A long hard day of work but it will feed us for the next year.  I am really looking forward to the end of this month, when we have nothing scheduled.  No plans with others for a while so we can just be home and concentrate on us for a while.

Oh my... that turned into a novel.  Well, I suppose it's alright, since it's been 5 months.  I'm off to feed the masses and then get them ready for bed.  My favorite time of the day.

Late Night Inspiration

I sat thinking the other night, as I lay on the terribly uncomfortable futon mattresses (yes there are two) on my livingroom floor trying to sleep.  This had been determined as the best sleeping location for me since my six year old was in the other room coughing up a lung and I needed to be close to him.  My 4 year old was sleeping on the futons next to me, sick as well but not as bad as his brother.  My husband and daughter slept, as peacefully as they could, in their own beds.  And I lay awake.  Well, thoughtful anyways.  Trying to force myself to sleep but also trying to find a comfortable position on this bed with a cracked rib.

So I lay there thinking, about all kinds of things in my life, but then suddenly this is what I started thinking about.  I thought about the idea of this blog.  I felt sure that it would be possible to write about what was happening in my life without going to crazy, as I have done before.  Once a week sounded nice.  The title of the blog was appealing too.  Once a week I'll sit down and give myself an opportunity to recap my week while enjoying a cup of tea, some therapeutic blogging and (just maybe) there will be something of value to someone else out there in the world.  After all, I know I'm not the only sustainable living, homeschooling mom, farmers wife, birth doula in the world.  Maybe one of those other women out there would like to just know she's not alone in the world.  I know I sure love it when I realize I'm not the only one who didn't get a shower today because the kids were sick and my husband was working.  Or that I'm not alone in the fact that I don't have anything planned in my garden yet, and feel very guilty about it.  Or that lonely feeling one sometimes gets in the birthworld when you feel like you are fighting an uphill battle.  It's always nice to know that someone else out there understands.

So here's the start.  It's the beginning of the play, set in the middle of my busy life.  A cup of tea in one hand, children playing around me, my husband has just come in from moving wood chips for the gardens all day long and dinner is suddenly ready.  Times up for today's post.  But I'll come back and let you know how this next week turns out.