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.

Babies, Babies, Babies!

One of the reasons I didn’t want to homestead is I thought it would be lonely…or at least too lonely and quiet for this ambivert. I should have known better, I don’t think we’ve had a quiet week since we got here. In February the Tallmans came to pick up Karsten and got stuck here in the ice age apocalypse for almost two weeks. I’ve told friends, it was a bit like reenacting a Game Of Thrones version of Noah’s Ark. 6 kids, 2 cats, 1 puppy, and 4 adults in a tiny house taking turns keeping the wood burning stove going around the clock so the pipes wouldn’t freeze and burst. On the plus side, no one was cold, rather it was like living in a Native American sweat house. Most of the kids wore shorts and no shirt. You couldn’t go outside though, even to play much because it was so bitterly cold and we didn’t have the gear to last more than a few minutes without danger of frostbite. In the middle of it all, my pre-ordered box of 25 baby chicks arrived. I don’t know what I was thinking. My research online had said it was perfectly ok to start chicks indoors in February here, but clearly they hadn’t accounted for half the country being taken out by a record breaking storm. Our little “Noah’s Ark” thus grew by 26 extra mouths to feed…albeit tiny cute little chick beak mouths. The only problem was, the ones that survived the U.S. post office promptly all tried to die on my watch (thank you to the unnamed person who put them in a heated truck for me, that helped give me a leg up). We quickly turned the wood burning stove area into a chick NICU, keeping them warm and force feeding them drops of diluted ACV, whipped yolk and molasses. We lost a handful, but thankfully most of them survived. Keeping the cat and the puppy from viewing them as squeaky, tasty snacks was a little more challenging. Looking back, I don’t know how we survived that week, but not only did we have fun, we ate like kings since we had to get creative with the pantry and food stores.

It’s not gotten any calmer since then. My parents arrived to help build our barn, we’ve got some friends parking their RV here while they look for property, and Jim’s dad will be here in a few hours to also help with the barn raising fun. I’m not sure where he’s going to sleep, but he’s of Finnish blood so I’m sure he’ll find a hollow log or bear cave to sleep somewhere (only partly kidding).

We’ve also added some more farm babies to the mix. Another friend hatched some ducklings for us, and a friend of a friend gave us a Great Pyrenees puppy. We apparently do things backwards around here, because usually the livestock begets the need for a Livestock Guardian Dog, but in our case, the LGD necessitated the need for livestock. So now we have 2 sheep and hopefully some incoming lambs.

We’re all in love with Thorbin (our GP puppy) and there’s a large contingency of us who want to bring him in the house and treat him like a royal puffball princess. However, he is happier outside doing his job and we’re grateful at how awesome he’s acclimating to the sheep. We had been told that GP dogs are notorious for being escape artists, but we didn’t realize just how true that is. They were bred that way on purpose because in the old world, they’d be with a shepherd, off in the hills, constantly scouting around and looking for high ground from which to protect the flock. In this modern world of fences and neighbors, that’s somewhat frowned upon so keeping them contained is like going up against a chess master of ancient origins. We thought we had check mated Thorbin only to hear him yelling at us in the middle of the night that he’d gotten stuck again….and then again. Jim and I finally gave up sleeping and worked through the middle of the night, reinforcing the fence and making it safe for the baby furball in training. I didn’t have boots that could handle mud and large amounts of water (I know…I know), but it’s been fine because I am largely impervious to cold and prefer to scamper around barefoot. But spending the night in the freezing drizzle with numb toes and fingers as I twisted wire fencing together went past my idea of a good time. Although Jim and I did get some good laughs in and came up with our own rendition of “What a Wonderful Night”, I kept accidentally stepping in giant mushy piles of dog poop that squeezed up between my toes. Nope to the nope. I now have rubber boots.

All in all I feel like we’re learning a lot and accomplishing a lot. I’m sure we have a lot of ups and down in front of us. I feel like I’m living that Castle Leoch scene in Outlander, where Mrs. Fitzgibbons is dashing around cleaning and cooking and patching everyone up.

Good thing I like cooking and patching…I could do without the cleaning.

BHO is tu is Buachiaill thar an treuid
Iomain fein shin do chleidh ’s do chaimir,
Seun sinn fo do bhrot riomhach reidh;
A Sgeith dhidinn, dion ri ’r mairionn.

{As Thou art the Shepherd over the flock
Tend Thou us to the cot and the fold,
Sain us beneath Thine own glorious mantle;
Thou Shield of protection, guard us for ever,}

The Samson Toddler

My childhood brain nearly imploded once when I overheard a learned adult hypothesize Samson was actually a scrawny guy. Blasphemy! Didn't they see the super accurate pictures on my Sunday School coloring page? But in a way, it kinda makes sense. Would everyone have been amazed by his strength if he looked like the Hulk with muscles rippling out like four Dwayne Johnson's stacked two high and two wide? Or would they have been more shocked if he had the typical dad-bod yet could swing a lion around like a small cat and go on a mass murdering spree with nothing but a donkey jaw?  

That sums up how I feel about my two year old right now.  He's a bit tiny for his age, although he does actually grow occasionally because I noticed recently his belly was starting to stick out of his 9-12 month shirts (which is unacceptable because we don't allow immodest crop tops in this household, so I promptly took it off and let him go shirtless). But despite having three other boys whose antics were very similar, I can't seem to help but marvel at the sheer insanity that is me trying to keep up with my youngest. But since we wrote down his older siblings' stories it would be remiss not to also chronicle his shenanigans: In a way, he's both easier and more difficult than Jamie was. Easier because I already survived one child who never sleeps and climbs everything, so I can sit this one out from the lofty towers of complacency. But it's harder because I don't have the time, energy or desire to train this last one or work as hard as I did with the first one. It really is true the youngest is more spoiled. I thought maybe it was just my jaded perspective as a firstborn, but unless everyone else is doing a much better job with their caboose child (don't answer that), I'm thinking this can safely move from theory to fact.  

When Jamie climbed out of his crib, Jim and I waited in the dark below his crib, rose up and went all Walking Dead whenever he attempted to climb out.  That didn't work so well with William because a) it kept his brothers awake more than it served as a compelling reason to stay in his crib  and b) like all strict parenting books tell you, you CAN train a child to be obedient, but while he did eventually learn to go to bed at bedtime, that didn't stop him from getting up in the middle of the night and raiding the pantry and fridge like a raccoon. c) no amount of training kept him from getting up for the day at 4:30/5:00 am.  

So we bought a sleep tent for the tidy sum of $100 (which I blogged about before) but was guaranteed to give exhausted parents a safe place to put their child during sleeping hours.  Within a week he broke the front panel out...just pushed his finger through the rip proof nylon until he got enough of an indentation to get a good grip, rip it open and emerge victorious in the baby game of Survivor.  We fixed that which earned us a whole month of sleep before he figured out how to wiggle the zipper down enough to make quick work of the rest (if he was smart, he would have figured that out first).  We used a carabiner after that to lock the zipper shut and that got us all the way to last night when Jim and I had just settled on the couch for a relaxing evening of Sherlock, bourbon and sewing projects when we heard a suspicious amount of bumping and activity going on in the back bedroom.  Jim went to go check and discovered our small son razing havoc like a small Tasmanian devil ping-ponging around the room.  

We assumed he'd just busted the carabiner lock (which had happened before), but no...he had ripped the entire tent off its base.  I assume, judging by the five star reviews, that this is not a common occurrence for other owners of this tent. And he seriously looks too small to do anything remotely that powerful, which is why I'm henceforth dubbing him my Samson toddler.  He may not talk very well, and he may not be super well behaved, but just to be on the safe side, I'm going to lock up the donkey jawbones.  

It's a good thing children look so angelic when they're sleeping? 

3 Things That Happened When We Put The TV In The Garage

Warning: You are entering a moderation-free zone.  Cultish rocks ahead. 

Jim and I took our giant flat screen TV off the wall, wrapped it in blankets and put it in the garage in a small space between the freezer and a tall tool rack.  I'm not sure how long it's going to hang out in its new real estate, but after a week of struggling to keep it off, and then a regression back to insanity, we put it out there out of pure frustration.  

This is how my morning usually goes.  Jamie and William are up before any rooster would even dream of deciding it's daylight. I turn on something like Little Einsteins in a half dead zombie walk and then go back to bed.  By the time I get up during the normal human zone of 6:00-6:30, the TV has already staked out its claim on my day.  And wrenching it back is like wrestling a dragon.  People like to think dragons don't exist anymore, but they do.  Mine go by names of "Netflix" and "Ipads" and "Minecraft".  

The problem with dragons is that they're not traditionally easy to kill right?  If it was a simple matter of hacking up your TV in the front driveway with a machete like some sort of post-modern Braveheart then we'd all do it in a heartbeat. Self-righteous parenting books, articles (and adults over the age of 50) make it sound so simple: Just limit your kid's screen time to NONE if you're a good parent, and 30 minutes a day if you're the weaker brethren. Fine. Wonderful.  But modern monasticism isn't a tenable strategy. Maybe the next Steve Jobs will have been raised on an organic goat farm with nothing but dragonflies and dandelions to keep them entertained, but this household makes up the peasant folk for sure. 

And so we're left battling the dragons in the pig pen because moderation is a thing worth fighting for (even if it means you constantly have to repair the fences in the North field too). Although with the TV dragon currently vanquished to the garage with a blanket over its head, and the rest of the little dragons hidden away in an underwear drawer, I must say it's been kind of nice.  Here are three "stop and smell the daisies" type of things I noticed today.  

The Whining Went Away 

Sure, the kids built a parkour course in the living room, I had to bathe the two youngest ones twice, and at one point in time, my living room was covered in cardboard and Elmer's glue. But no one told me they were bored, or tired, or cold, or hot or any of the other thousand little things that I thought were real things but now I'm wondering if they weren't just hind-brain justifications for wanting to watch TV. 

They Enjoyed School 

This one surprised me. Instead of falling apart at the drop of a hat when they didn't understand something, or moaning at the sheer magnitude of work their terrible mean mother makes them do, they actually did double the school today with nary a fuss. I think it was because there was no reason to get through it fast and when you're homeschooled, learning is easily mistaken for just hanging out and having fun with mom.  Kids aren't born hating chemistry or stories.  

They Talked More 

Maybe for some people, this would be a hard negative but in this Scandinavian-esque male household, I'm always thrilled when people decide to use real words instead of grunt or punch. There are those studies that show the more extroverted and talkative the mother is, the earlier her kids will learn to talk. This study clearly did not take into account my husband's strong stoic genes which apparently canceled out all of my talkative ones since I can rack up word counts with the best of them.  Today though, I not only heard a lot of sapient conversation going on, but the smallest one was talking too!  Winning! 

In conclusion...

I don't expect it to work so well tomorrow, but I enjoyed today anyway.  I think part of the reason there was such a stark difference was because the TV was physically gone.  It's hard to bargain for something that's tangibly missing. It helps I'm not strong or big enough to get it in from the garage if I wanted. Sometimes I get so stuck in the abstract world, that I forget something simple like not just saying we're going to watch less TV, but actually moving the solid object so you match the corporeal with the abstract.

 You know, slay the real dragon... but not with a real sword.  

How To (Truly) Do Whole30 On The Cheap

Whole30 is amazing. A super easy and rewarding journey filled with absolutely delicious food that you'd be happy to eat for the rest of your life.  

Jk. 

 It's really a time consuming, difficult monster that will take over your life and kitchen (and keep it in such a state of towering dirty dishes and pots, you will contemplate burning the whole thing down and moving to a different state). And that's not even counting the cost which can be enormous if you're not expecting it. 

But after five (or six?) times, you start to come up with strategies. So here is the ultimate way to do whole thirty on a budget (at least in my experience), when the desire to do whole thirty is tempered by your lack of money.  If you're trying to do the most inexpensive Whole30, this is the secret:

Don't be picky.  

For real though, in this day and age,  you can find inexpensive, cheap food for whole30 but it requires reversing the order you do things.  

i.e you type in "Whole30" on Pinterest and get hundreds of pictures of beautiful, mouth-watering dishes.  If you join any groups or follow any whole30'ers on Instagram you see platefuls and recipes for delicious foods. 

And maybe they work for those people without spending too much money, but in order to do Whole30 cheaply, you have to completely reverse your thinking. Instead of picking what you want to eat and making a grocery list, you buy 1. Meat, 2. Veggies, 3. Fat that can be procured on sale and inexpensively.  

What this might look like for a family (scale up or down accordingly) 

STEP 1

40 lbs of chicken.   $50 (business center Costco or online co-op or restaurant supply)
16 lbs Beef brisket or roast $40 (same as above)
16 lbs Pork Shoulder $16 (any store should have some cut of pork on sale for around .99/lb
4 lbs Applewood sausage $12 (Walmart) 
4lbs Bacon (as healthy as you can buy...ignore the sugar if you need to) $12
10 dozen eggs $14 (Costco or Walmart currently) 
24 cans coconut milk $25 (Costco or ethnic grocery store)
6 lbs frozen berries $20
6 heads of Romaine $3
20lb bag Carrots $5
50 lb bag sweet potatoes $14
7lbs frozen broccoli $8
5 butternut squash $5 (99 Cent store)
25lbs onions $4 (Costco) 
Coconut oil $10 (Walmart) 
Garlic-$2

Total $220 per month
$220/4people= $55
That's $55 for one person per month, not week.

Cook up massive amounts of meat at once, and steam/saute/roast veggies on Sunday night if you are able. Then every night, figure out what veggie and protein you're having the next day. Sample: Squash and sausage for breakfast, broccoli, and chicken for dinner, sweet potato and roast for dinner.  Simple, but effective.   
 

STEP 2

You can totally eat delicious, nutritious, flavorful food that gives you an adequate amount of calories for a month with the above menu. But most people have a little more money than that...even most food stamp programs will give you $50/week per person.  So fill in the edges with whatever is on sale...

tomatoes
bananas
zucchini
oranges
apples
celery
ginger  
Lemons/limes

Often give you the most bang for your buck as far as expanding the things you can cook. 
Avocados, homemade mayo, ghee, nuts, coconut aminos, fancy oils etc are things that DO NOT give you the most bang for your buck. And while they're nice, they're also expensive and unnecessary even though they're super popular in the Whole30 world.  If you really are trying to do Whole 30 on a budget, google recipes based on what ingredients you have vs just browsing, because you'll get depressed at all the super expensive food everyone else is eating.

CONCLUSION

I firmly believe anyone can afford Whole30, but you have to have a mindset of abundance.  Imagine you are a wealthy medieval lord who is collecting rents from the peasants and there was a bumper crop of sweet potatoes and onions that year.  Be amazed that you can have chicken and beef on the same day.  Eat like royalty because it's 2017, don't feel sorry for yourself that everyone else is eating something different. In the grand scheme of the world, avocados aren't more important than coconuts, and the healthy fat from the later is cheaper.  We're so sucked in by trends and doing what people around us are doing, we lose sight of the big picture which is this: There is an excess of food in the Northern Hemisphere.  Find it, procure it, and eat it with a grateful attitude.  Eat veggies and meat for breakfast (pretend some Viking ghost is looking down at you and nodding with satisfaction).  Live above the fray.  

And reap the benefits of sleeping better, having more energy, thinking more clearly and equalizing to a healthy weight.  Even if you just do it once as an experiment, I think it's a bit like shaving your head or getting a tattoo (just the less permanent version).  The whole world just looks sort of different. It shows you patterns in your body you may not have noticed before. And it builds healthy systems and habits.  

Have fun and if you hate it, feel free to tell me so. 

RANDOM FOOTNOTES

-If you're single or can't afford to buy in bulk like this plan requires, find a few friends who will do it too and split it with you.  
-If you live in a big city, find the restaurant supply district and figure out how to get plugged in. 
-If you don't have a Costco membership, find a friend who does or see above. 
-This plan assumes you have a fully stocked spice cupboard, but if you don't... salt, garlic and fat cover a multitude of sins but I would recommend at least getting some vinegar (which thankfully is cheap). 

 

Lentils, Insanity and Dinosaur Trains

I used to hate it when my parents sat us all down for a "family pow wow".  They were epic come to Jesus talks that usually ended with us all getting up early, doing more chores and sorting out whatever major attitude problems were shaping up into WWIII.  I loathed them so much, that early in our marriage when Jim casually mentioned "let's pow wow" I broke out into a cold sweat and treated the poor man like he'd just suggested a flogging post and torture rack.  

Now I have four kids, and although the word "pow wow" is still strictly forbidden, I realized I totally do the same thing.  Negotiating with a two year old is a slippery slope where you think peeling a banana a certain way or watching a show in the morning is not a big deal, and then before you know it you're standing on your head, holding your mouth a certain way and angling the banana so it correctly lines up with the earth's magnetic field as you peel it at 5 am while you watch the same dinosaur train episode.  ...and you don't even know how it got this bad.  

Multiply that by four, throw in the end of CC and state testing and it's no wonder people commonly burn out this time of year.  

So I sat all of the kids down and told them we were having a week reset of absolutely no fun (you have to set the standard super low so something like playing math bingo feels like you're getting away with murder). We're doing nothing but learning poetry, reading books, doing math and re-learning how to play nicely with our siblings. I cleaned up our food while I was at it, because I figured you might as well bum everyone out with one swift kick in the pants.  Our diet had slipped from pizza occasionally and cold cereal as an emergency backup to such a high level of consumption that they need to come up with a new scientific classification of consumers for us: Herbivores, Carnivores, Omnivores and the Junkavores. 

It had gotten so bad even Jamie was craving healthy food.  He's become so big and responsible this year (mostly) that he can babysit for short periods and go places independently. So when he kept bugging me and bugging me for lentil soup, I finally just handed him my card and told him if he wanted it that bad he was going to have to do it himself.  

...and I was surprised he called my bluff, but he did. He walked to the grocery store and asked someone where the leeks and lentils were located, used the self checkout and was home in ten minutes total. Jim and I teased him later that the only reason someone didn't get him into trouble was because they probably had never met a potentially troublesome sixth grader shopping for lentils and leeks.  Ahem.

 I wonder sometimes if other families have to go through the monumental, boot slogging task of feeling like they have to troubleshoot every.single.area of their kids' lives. Oftentimes it seems like my kids only struggle struggle struggle, and never succeed.  Everything needs extra work and effort, nothing comes easy.  We were back to forming ABC's today like we're in Kindergarten to fix a bunch of letter reversals that have been cropping up lately. William probably needs speech therapy too, but there is a limit to how many "therapies" one can juggle in a week, and his issues are mild (in comparison).  But see? It's a constant state of triage on who needs the most help.  Of course after three kids who needed speech therapy to even start talking, I feel like at this point I should just write my own.   "Speech Bootcamp For Stubborn Toddlers: The at home guide for parents who want to hear something other than 'EEEEEEEEGHH!' all day" 

But hey, two days in and everyone is doing a lot better (food wise, school wise, and behavior wise) so maybe my parents were on to something with their "pow wows".  And honestly there are worse things than sitting home all day eating watermelon and homemade beef jerky while you build epic train tracks and read Laddie aloud.  But in defense of electronics and Netflix...  Jamie said there wasn't one thing on his common core state test that wasn't in Wild Kratz and Magic Schoolbus. So there.