Late night Ozark shenanigans and my brush with the law ...

There’s a phenomenon in our family we like to call “The Ramsey Curse”, which isn’t really a curse at all, but just the good Lord keepin’ us on the straight and narrow (or something). I blame the fact that Jim and I are both firstborns from large families, and everyone knows that if something goes down, or gets messed up, or not done…the firstborn carries the most responsibility (fellow firstborns, am I right?). How this looks on a practical level is that Jim and I can’t really break the rules, or fudge the law, or go into any gray areas (Jim is much better at coloring in the lines, I on the other hand, never seem to quite be as good as I intend).

Last night I was supposed to pick up some curly hair products and stuff from a friend. Clearly earth shatteringly important. But I’ve been trapped in a jail of fevers, aches, and congestion for what feels like an eternity at this point (really only 4 days), and even though Jim tried to stop me from going and told me he would go pick it up, I had been fantasizing about how wonderful the double seat warmer would feel on my aching bones and so I practically snatched the keys from his hand and made my escape. Thank goodness my internal firstborn alarm bells went off, because I had forgotten my wallet, and my first thought was I don’t need it, I’m just going a few minutes down the road. But the "Ramsey Curse” notification dinged in my brain, and I went back, got my wallet like a good dutiful law-abiding citizen, and settled in to enjoy some relaxing alone time with just me and the heat blasting at 89 degrees and the seat warmers on full blast. A sweet luxury when you live in a small house with four boys who are all also recovering from being sick.

Got the stuff, and made my way back at a nice comfortable speed of 10 miles below the speed limit (it’s hard to drive fast when you don’t feel good). So there I was, traveling up my deserted country road in the middle of the Ozarks, where you know…the crime is so high, the most annoying things that can happen are hitting a deer or running over a skunk, when suddenly a car whipped out behind me, and started tailgating me. I was so startled I swerved, tried to speed up, then decided his redneck, punkass self could just wait, and slowed back down (I thought it was just some young speedy kid!)

That’s when the lights went on and I realized I was being pulled over.

That’s also when I realized that this brave, road warrior law enforcement officer was going to get the rare treat of seeing an unshowered middle-aged mom in sweats, fuzzy pink bathrobe, frizzy bun, and purple slippers with a wracking cough, and a bright red nose. Let’s just say that when he got to my window, he took a full step back. In his defense, he was very young and very kind. He offered to drive me home, or call Jim (I assured him I thought I felt well enough to navigate the remaining harrowing five minutes home). He made sure to ask if I had my heater turned up and to keep my window rolled up so “I wouldn’t catch a chill”, while he ran my driver’s license. He parted with the wise wise instructions of, “Just let your husband go pick up the stuff next time, you look terrible, shouldn’t you be in bed?”.

Look mister, moms don’t really get to be “in bed” when they’re sick, I still am trying to cook and clean, homeschool, and kiss booboos over here. This IS my version of being in bed. Although fair enough, I did have a husband able and willing whom I completely sacrificed on the altar of wanting some heated seat therapy. Lesson learned.

Also, so glad I went back for my wallet. I’m telling you, the curse is real.

Stop And Smell The Skunk Cabbage Vol. 5

It’s trying to be Spring around here. My indoor greenhouse is sprouting all kinds of things, a bullfrog belches every now and then, the wood pile is getting lower and the Amish lady down the road has opened her commercial greenhouses for business, which leads me to some local things:

1. Sue’s Greenhouse is open! Now all my money will disappear because I have to pass her house on my way to…almost everything. The tricky thing is if you buy from her too early, you risk killing all your plants trying to keep them alive until you can plant them in the ground, but if you buy from her too late, then all the good stuff is gone.

2. After all the hoopla about the train derailment in Ohio, we went ahead and invested in an air quality monitor, just to have on hand if anything ever happened here we could get some hard data and compare it to a baseline. This bad boy was the result of my and Jim’s combined research and a phone conversation with one of my civil engineer siblings. We almost never research the same thing, and the first judgment our joint purchase has weighed in on is that the baseboard heater in our room is throwing off more toxins than our wood-burning stove. Oh, Joy.

3. On a happier note, I finally found earrings that I can wear for most of the day without my ears getting super red and inflamed. It was getting so bad that even increasingly more expensive earrings with titanium and pure gold were bothering me too. A friend mentioned super cheap earrings actually worked better for her and wha-la, she was correct. Turns out the super cheap jewelry is a often a zinc alloy which doesn’t bother my ears at all! I was feeling left out from the current earring trend that has kicked out my beloved necklaces of the 20-teens.

4. Shoes for my kids are a real problem. I totally understand why parents of yore made their kids go barefoot the second they were able to. Between the Ozark land beneath the shoes, and my boys’ feet on top, the poor shoes have no chance. Muck boots? destroyed. Cowboy boots? Destroyed. Crocs? Destroyed. Tennis shoes? …Ha! They might as well be disposable. At the moment I’m trying a new system where we continue to run around in the tattered ones for playing outside, and reserve one nice pair for church and other things that require not looking like a hooligan. Walmart used to be the only place that sold kids shoes around me, but now Ace Hardware in Mountain Grove sells kids shoes that are the same or cheaper than Walmart prices. So if you’re local… go there after you’re done at Sue’s Greenhouse.

5. Non-resident library cards. I didn’t know this was a thing until recently. I’ve been sweating bullets dreading when my San Diego library card would stop working because the Missouri library system is not super well supplied. It felt like the sword of Damocles. A Reddit search revealed to this old millennial you can now apply and pay for non-resident library cards. I just got the Fairfax Virginia one which came highly recommended (they aren’t quite as good as the San Diego County system, but comparable and sometimes the waits aren’t as long). I may start collecting library cards now as a new hobby.

The problem with contacts, real books and Science Fair

Thunder is the best thing to listen to while you’re reading in bed. In fact, the ever changing weather of the Ozarks may be worth the entire move right there. As someone with an undiagnosed channel flipping brain, who hates tedium, going from snow to sun to rain in under a week is pretty much the best dopamine drip ever.

Maybe it’s because I can hear it instead of see it….something I’m not taking for granted these days. In all of my happy homesteadingness, where I buy 50lb bags of flour, plant tomatoes and contentedly count eggs, I failed to remember that one can’t grow contacts or glasses. I thought I was pretty high up on the “prepper” scale, but I totally didn’t even think about how fragile the supply chain issues are when it comes to vision. My last set of contacts disappeared into thin air. One minute I was putting one in my eyeball, and the next second it was “poof” gone. No amount of my blind searching could locate it, nor could Jim find it… even Charlie who I swear can see bacteria on his food with his naked eye, was unable to find my missing contact, so off to order new contacts I went. A week went by, then two…then three… I finally called and that’s when I found out they had some kind of factory problem and they aren’t making my odd-ball prescription anymore. Not only do I have fairly terrible eyesight, but my astigmatism is at weird angles and so my contacts are rare. Nobody keeps a supply of them in stock. And nobody wants to hear the dreaded words “supply chain” in regards to their ability to see. I mean I can’t drive, I can’t cook, and I can hardly walk from point A to point B without my contacts or glasses. Thankfully they finally did come in after months of my glasses flying off my face every time I whipped my head around (I don’t own the highest quality glasses). And now I have added contacts and glasses to my list of things to keep backups of. They don’t make these things easy to get either, it basically takes a PhD to navigate the insurance hurdles, claims and computer malfunctions. It took a full hour of frustration at the vision counter before I finally figured out that there were multiple Jim Ramseys in the system and that no, I was not married to the one born in 1954. I died laughing and the nice Walmart lady assured me she would not have judged me for being married to an almost 70 year old.

A friend from the gym had pity on my lackluster run of books lately and loaned me a juicy vampire novel. What she didn’t realize is I haven’t read a tangible paper book in ages. It’s not that I’m incapable of reading bonafied smashed pieces of pulp with ink on them, but it’s so much more convenient to read e-books that I rarely do anything else. I’m not one of those detail oriented sensory people who notice or appreciate the smell of the pages, or the feel of it in my hands. In fact, once I get sucked in, I could be reading blood inscribed on a stone wall and I probably wouldn’t notice. But I’m going to try to do better about reading real books for two reasons. One, I don’t want to lose the ability to read real books. I felt like I was all thumbs trying to balance it while I was curled up in bed. Two, I don’t want the kids to think I’m just on my phone all the time, I want them to see that I’m doing valuable worthwhile things like reading vampire novels.

My justification is we’re on winter break this week, and my Challenge A class knocked it out of the park with Science Fair on Monday so I deserve a well earned break. I have a long list of house projects I planned to accomplish, but that will have to wait until I finish the chapter…or the next one.

Stop And Smell The Skunk Cabbage Vol. 4

We got our safety corridor of beautiful roads and weather for the trip back. Now we are home… cleaning and adjusting and packing all the things ready to dive back into a busy school week. Here are all the things:

1. Charlie has to write a (short) fiction novel for a school anthology and rediscovered this book. Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine. I highly recommend it to all writing teenagers (or parents too). It’s a good, quick little read.

2. There’s a store in Ohio called Gabes that is like everything everyone wished Ross or TJ Maxx actually was. They have name-brand stuff like Anthropologie, JCrew, and Loft for super cheap. You just have to make sure to hold it up to the light and check for tears or other…malfunctions. I picked up a pair of wide-legged, high-waisted jeans like these. Jim loves them, but Charlie is less flattering. I feel kinda like I’m wearing a homeschool denim skirt.

3. Couldn’t do road trips without Adventures In Odyssey. Although sometimes Jim and I listen to them in horror.

4. I’m sick and tired of buying cheap seed trays that fall apart in one season so I invested in some of these highly recommended ones from BootStrap Farmer. My indoor greenhouse setup is almost ready. Spring is coming.

5. For those who are looking for a more secure phone situation (and have an android). Jim has been nerding out about Graphene OS. It’s an operating system that’s private, secure, and open source (at least those are the key points I’ve picked up).

6. Instagram has my number. It has started hitting me with Mushroom Growing kits from North Spore. I have sixty acres of woods full of mushrooms, but no…now I want to grow my own. Lion’s Mane has thus far eluded me, and so this kit looks super tempting to me.

And with that, I’m off to pack up ping pong balls, molding clay, and dry erase markers. Tomorrow at CC should be a blast.

Life, Death and all the Jims

A meme somewhere recently reminded everyone that to keep the brain sharp and the body from aging, one needs to stay flexible. I like to think that I’m a fairly easygoing and adaptable person, but Monday morning took the cake. I rolled out of bed at o’dark thirty to work out and get ready for CC, and in the course of a few hours, everything went one-eighty on me. School was canceled due to an impending ice storm, and the next thing I knew we were on I-44 on the road to Ohio because Jim’s grandfather wasn’t doing well.

We made it in time to pay our respects and say our goodbyes (and hopefully be a little helpful). He passed away peacefully last night, and as I sat next to his bed and told him what the gas prices were (always his first question), and what his great-grandsons were up to, I couldn’t help but tear up even though he’d run his race faithfully and was ready to go home. He was the original. The OG James Ramsey. Because of him, I’m married to a James Ramsey and gave birth to a James Ramsey. I’m literally surrounded by them.

Yesterday was also the 20-year anniversary of the day Jim proposed to me. So yesterday marked the day I said yes to James The Third, and said goodbye to James The First. Sad and cool at the same time. On the drive up here we were telling the kids the story of how dad proposed and it’s funny how the story changes over the years. Now, of course, it was hilarious that I was so cranky that day. It’s even more hilarious that my family and his were all hiding and expecting Jim to propose when he surprised me, but he didn’t, he whisked me away and then proposed while driving the convertible down highway one. I should have realized then that he does not perform for attention and is absolutely impossible to shame or cajole into anything. Ha. Thankfully I love that about him (ninety-nine percent of the time).

At this point we’ve been together so long, I’ve actually been with him a larger percentage of my life than I’ve been without him. We truly were kids… in love and married when most people thought we were too young. At this point we’ve become so intertwined I sometimes can’t tell where I’m becoming more like him, or he’s becoming more like me. I had this thought as we battled through icy roads and windshields that were freezing so fast that not even the heated defrost on full blast could keep the glass clear. Was this his crazy idea? Or mine? We both love road trips…our kids love road trips…everyone loves road trips, except I do sometimes wish they didn’t feel quite so dangerous sometimes. For the most part, we had good weather and safe roads, but there are always those moments when you’re boxed in by 18-wheelers going 10 mph faster than you and it’s snowing hard and you just sort of grip the wheel and pray those truckers know what they’re doing. At least when you’re flying you have no idea what’s going on in the cockpit.

Ohio and family time have been great, I’ll have to pry my kids away from their cousins when we get everything wrapped up here and head home. If I could just book a storm-free corridor from here to the Ozarks that would be great.

Stop And Smell The Skunk Cabbage Vol. 3

I’ve hit that stage of the week where I want to throw my cartography textbook and lesson plans out the window and trade my teenagers for babies (don’t worry, no living things were harmed in the making of this blog entry). I’ve always felt like Prince Rilian in The Silver Chair, when he tells the kids and Puddleglum that he’s about to act like a crazy person and not to listen to him. Then when he is the crazy person he’s all “No! This is the real me!”. That’s pretty much my fear about PMS. What if the way I see the world when I’m anxious and depressed is actually the real Prince Rilian, and the “normal” me is actually the green mist talking…anyway, I digress.

Things I found interesting this week:

1. I’ve been juicing this beet juice concoction because I’ve been feeling run down and whenever I am craving beets I know it’s time to tap into my Scandinavian genes. Except I skip the apple which is only for wimps who need something tasty in there. But if you like toilet cleaner, this is the drink for you. You can practically feel it burning through your veins.

2. This dechoking device. I don’t know who needs to hear this (don’t make fun of my ignorance), but I didn’t know these things actually work. I see them all the time on IG and FB ads, but I just assumed it was a low-level scam. But turns out they’re really a thing. They were in my trauma first aid class and apparently they’ve revolutionized the death-by-choking statistics in a positive way. I grew up in the “pray-the-Heimlich-maneuver-works” era, so I didn’t know.

3. We’ve burned through the good batch of wood and are now on the newer, greener wood, and not only does it hiss and snap and snarl at you when you try to light it, but it also likes to smoke out the house. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful…but also researching house plants that clean the air. Here are 20 that allegedly do the trick. The only problem is, I kill house plants faster than my 17 yr old can down a pizza, so these things need to have a strong desire to live.

4. Jim is looking into Fusion 360 which is this 3D modeling software. Robbie is super into 3D printers right now (and so is Jim). To my understanding, Fusion 360 is like Adobe Photoshop, but the 3D printing version. According to my tabs, it’s easy to learn and good for beginners. I’m almost afraid. If you see any strange things coming out of my house, I am not responsible.

5. These are my favorite cheese-making cultures. So far I’ve made a gouda, a sharp orange cheddar, a stirred white, farmhouse cheddar, and a variety of hard Italian cheeses. Some of them have turned out better than others, but my pickiest children are a fan, so I’m counting it as a win. They’re not difficult, just time-consuming…and you need a good audiobook in your ear.

That’s it for this week. I might need to take up wool spinning, or hide-tanning next, it’s that damp freezing cold weather outside that is somehow way worse than legitimately cold temperatures.

The Three Homeschooling Tools I Can't Live Without (That make me feel like Monica Gellar)

I’m a pretty minimalistic homeschooling mom. I don’t have a well-organized school room or color-coordinated art bins. (although I would not be opposed to winning a homeschooling makeover… if that ever became a Home Edit type show). My one weakness is curriculum. I may be a bit of a curriculum junkie. But minus all the books, these are the things I splurge on and couldn’t live without.

Very bare bones laser printer: …preferably older than dirt. The important part is, don’t get a printer that has any bells and whistles. Under no circumstances get a color printer. It is far cheaper to get a teacher’s discount card and print in color at one’s local printing place than it is to delicately coax along and feed a color printer. It’s like owning an exotic pet. I’m sure there are efficient color printers out there, but I have not had the privilege of owning one. You want a printer that has so few buttons and pieces/parts that your toddler can jam a hot wheel car in it, while your baby spits up on it, and it still happily churns out school stuff like the Little Engine That Could. You also want something that takes cheap toner that lasts long enough for your high schooler to do things like print off sixty pages of news articles for debate (without having to replace the cartridge more often than said teenager takes out the garbage).

Laminator: This is the thing that makes me feel like Monica Gellar the most and honestly, it’s a bit of an obsession. I don’t know why I feel the need to laminate all the things, but it’s somehow very soothing and satisfying. Chore charts, pie graphs, blank pieces of notebook/graph paper, pretty autumn leaves…a few dog hairs. Nothing is safe. Jim is even worse than me. I think he’s laminated everything that resides in my wallet or the glove box. And flashcards! Between all of my Challenge students I think I’ve probably laminated thousands of flashcards at this point. They die frequent deaths at the bottom of backpacks and minivans but I don’t care. May they rest in peace. My secret weapon is to laminate memory work and give it to my children in the bath or shower or swimming pool. Their sensory needs are met, their frontal lobe is activated, and they sit still for a change. Everyone is a winner.

Good pencils (i.e. Ticonderoga and Prismacolor): Nothing is more frustrating than those cheap pencils kids get in goody bags at the dentist or church harvest festival. They won’t sharpen, won’t stay sharpened, and break super easily. Ticonderoga is the only brand I buy because it actually saves me money in the long run. They last longer and hold their sharpness, which if you have a kid with sensory preferences, will also save your sanity and theirs. I usually pick them up in bulk on Amazon (teacher prime day) and then dole them out selfishly like our family runs on the “Pencil Standard” instead of the “Gold Standard”. The same goes for Prismacolor colored pencils. It’s just not worth it to have Crayola in the house (and heaven forbid…Rose Art). Prismacolors are expensive, but I’ve had some of mine since I was a teenager, so I feel like they’re a good investment. You can pick them up with a coupon at Hobby Lobby or they go on sale fairly frequently on Amazon. (Note: Sensory sensitive kids also seem to love erasable pins, but beware that the ink does eventually disappear on the brands we’ve used which might be awkward if the state wanted to see their past homeschooling work.)

Honorable Mention- Sculpey clay: …the oven bake kind. I buy it in the biggest box I can find and it costs a small fortune, but it is worth more than a truckload of Kumon workbooks. It ends up being used for everything: imaginative play (for kids who like to keep their creations), spelling, backup costumes, math manipulatives, art and history projects, Christmas decorations, electronic detox and so much more. It’s like play dough, but actually useful.

Now that I’ve started, I can think of more things, but since three is a magic number and I already stretched it to four, I’ll stop here before I find myself on Amazon restocking my supplies.

Snow Storms, Power Outages and Barbarian Breakfasts

We got our first practice run at living “off grid”, and by “off grid” I mean we had a generator, which earned us back our starlink and electricity, so we weren’t exactly roughing it. It snowed eight inches of the wettest, poofiest snow that can possibly fall out of the sky and still be called snow. It looked gorgeous, but the trees and powerlines weren’t fans. A branch took out the southeast corner of Jamie’s fence, but otherwise, we escaped unscathed. The powerline down the road didn’t fare so well. We spent most of the day without electricity which was kind of glorious except for the part where I didn’t get most of my to-do list done, but oh well. Who cares if we have judges or certificates for the Science Fair? On the flip side, we did get to help a neighbor with her generator, so hopefully she was impressed by the fact that we’re God-fearing folk and not the evil liberals some of our neighbors think we are…ahem. All good things must come to an end though, and now the power is on, life is “un-paused”, and my to-do list is twice as long. Jim and I now have a list of things to fix and tweak so next time we find ourselves in a power outage our generator should be able to dance, do the kids’ homework, and cook dinner as well as provide electricity.

After years of complaining that I hate breakfast, am nauseated by food too early in the morning, and definitely can’t be expected to eat the same thing every day as some people do… I finally found a breakfast I can stomach: Venison. My blood test results say I’m super anemic, so I’ve been trying to up my iron-rich foods, but never in my wildest dreams did I think venison would be the one food I can eat day after day after day for breakfast (even at 6:30 am). I think I’m on a three-week streak at the moment (although I should probably slow down if we’re going to ration the meat to last longer). I cook a big batch of it up at the beginning of the week and then heat it up in some broth every day for breakfast. If I’m feeling really fancy, I poach an egg or toss some potatoes in the soup.

It’s divine. Robbie tells me it’s my Viking roots coming out.

Startled Bulls and Active Shooter Training

I’m sure I’ll look back at this journal entry some day and laugh at my naivete, there’s so much one doesn’t realize they don’t understand about country living until they come face to face with the details. For instance, bulls and fences. Most of the Ozarks have their cows behind four or five levels of barbed wire. This seems to work well… or at least well enough. But those five strands start to look rather delicate and fragile when you’re a few feet away from a very large bull who’s pawing the ground and lowering its head. We’ve worked a little with cows, helped friends out here and there, and butchered a cow, but that is about the extent of our bovine knowledge. We were out walking when we must have startled a herd. The she-cows all went charging out of the woods in hysterics and the bull came towards us like we were the Death Star and he was Luke Skywalker in an X-wing. We kept walking calmly and talking…doing that whole thing you do with children where you give them space, but don’t take the side eye off them. And that was it…he snorted and stomped and lowered his head, followed us for a ways and then walked off. He left assured of his manly protectiveness, and Jim and I spent the next thirty minutes discussing how we would have handled that if he really had charged the fence.

There were no trees, with fences and pasture stretched out on both sides of the road and in every direction. Jim thinks I should have shimmied under the barbed wire fence on the other side and found a tree to climb while he did his best impression of a rodeo clown. I think we should have climbed the closest gate because at least that is stronger than 5-wire. Both of us agreed we wouldn’t have run in a straight line.

I had “Active Shooter Training “ and “Trauma First Aid” today and I couldn’t help but think fate may have gotten the two incidences mixed up. Surely it would have been better to do the trauma medical training first and then had the meeting with the mad bull, but no. Honestly though, a lot of the active shooter advice seems like it would work on a bull too. I kind of enjoyed the whole class. Statistics and data and clarity are so much more helpful to my brain. Also, I’m kind of thinking everyone who lives on a farm should probably take a trauma first aid class.

I’ve already got tourniquets and clotting powder in my Amazon cart, and I (allegedly) know how to pack a mean wound now. Lord have mercy, may I never need to use the knowledge for anything.

Stop And Smell The Skunk Cabbage Vol. 2

It’s the weekend again, which means it’s time for another roundup of truly unrelated links that caught my attention this week.

1. Ever since the new year, I’ve been working on strengthening my pelvic floor and fixing my posture. It’s like opening Pandora’s box, but I just learned about “Postural Restoration” tonight. It’s crazy, people have fixed even weird things like recessed jaws, and walking with duck feet. The hashtag #posturalrevolution on IG is a goldmine of information.

2. These Yogurt Pancakes are a huge hit in our house. We’ve been on a yogurt-making kick lately and these pancakes pack an extra protein punch which is nice when there are four hungry boys in the house. They have a similar nutritional profile to something like Kodiak cakes, but without all the processed ingredients. (they work great with GF flour too)

3. If anyone is in the market for an encrypted, portable repeater they can use to set up their own radio signal in case of…I don’t know…a zombie apocalypse, this one is available. Or you can just read through all of the technical specs, work on making your own and try to get your wife as excited about it as you are. (cough cough)

4. You can read Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education for free on archive.org! I have wanted this book for years…I’ve only managed to read snippets of other people’s copies here and there. It’s one of those books that’s usually way out of my price range because it’s out of print.

5. With Jim being from Ohio, we have a lot of buckeye fans in this house (both the football team kind and the peanut butter/chocolate “cookie” kind…not the actual nut…ahem). As previously mentioned, I love all things Half Baked Harvest, and she has a legitimately healthy-looking version of buckeye brownies that look amazing and may actually put some fat on Charlie’s bones.

6. Electronics and video games remain banned here for the time being, but I think I might graciously….generously allow them to play Code Wars. It’s a way to learn coding by doing challenges.