Sudden Loss

This week our community was stunned by the sudden and tragic loss of a young boy, Caleb Kors. Caleb's parents are friends, and I have been deeply affected by this staggering loss. He was a special boy, talented and charismatic and posessed of extraordinary potential.

I left work early when I heard the news. I really needed to see and hold Conan. I didn't tell him anything (I didn't know what to say, frankly, and I didn't want to burst into tears in front of him) but he sensed my sadness. He said I needed some quiet time, and he took me by the hand and led me into the bedroom, where he made me lie down and then carefully tucked me in. He got a book and sat by me and "read" it to me. Then he lay down next to me so we could cuddle. It was exactly what I needed. I am continually astonished at his sensitive and loving nature.

The outpouring of support for the family has been amazing; I am really proud of Bellingham right now. There is a memorial on Monday and many, many organizations collecting donations, putting together benefits, and generally demonstrating our community's love and support in every possible way.  It is beautiful, and also profoundly sad.

Most of all though, this tragedy has reminded me to make sure I make every day count, because we REALLY don't know how much time we'll have with the ones we love.

Life, Death & the Holidays

Sorry the blog has been dark for a while, it's been a busy and emotional month.

On the 11th of December, Conan's "Great Marjorie" passed away at the age of 92. It wasn't a surprise, exactly: we knew her health was declining and she had started hospice care. But we all thought there was more time. I suppose that's a common phenomena, that the end comes more quickly than we expect. The picture above was taken just a few days prior to her passing; Conan was excited to show Great Marjorie his new balance bike, which was an early birthday gift. They had a great relationship, for which I am really grateful. Conan saw her nearly every Wednesday, and they shared a love of reading, a fascination with cats, and neither of them ever missed a chance for desert.

In addition to Marjorie's death, we also had to put down one of our cats. To most people, Marcellus was a big mean scary cat, but he had his loveable side too. He came to us as a few years back for a temporary stay while Cynthia (who had raised him from a kitten) finished graduate school. He had a serious weight problem and an eating disorder, but it quickly became clear that living with us really improved his health. We got an automatic catfood dispensor which helped prevent him from overeating, and he got a lot more excercise wandering our property than he had gotten as an indoor cat. He dropped from 24 lbs to 18 lbs, and really seemed to enjoy life with us.

Cary really bonded with Marcellus, and when Cynthia graduated and returned to Olympia we officially adopted Marcellus. This past year, however, his quality of life begin to deteriorate. He appeared to be in pain when he walked, and he was grouchier and meaner than usual. Conan was afraid of him. He took his last trip to the vet the day after Christmas, and is now buried in the yard near a spectaularly thorny shrub called a Poncirus Trifolata. It seemed a fitting marker for him.

Marjorie's memorial service was this past Saturday. Conan doesn't understand memorial services any more than he understands death. He misses both Marcellus and his Great Grandma, and has told me more than once that he wants them back. I told him that the memorial was "a party where everyone remembers Great Marjorie" and he asked me if she would be there. I had no answer for him. He still looks for Great Marjorie in her bedroom when we visit his grandparents house.

The memorial was held at the SGI Buddhist Activity Center in Bellingham. Marjorie wasn't a Buddhist (she told the hospice spiritual councillor that music was her religion) but Dave and Anita are active SGI Buddhists. The service was simple and lovely. There were many special rememberances of Marojorie, some chanting, and a ceremonial offering of incence for her spirit. Afterwards, Conan was very interested in a framed picture of Marjorie as a young woman, which was sitting in a place of honor on a small table next to a vase holding three yellow tulips. Worried that he would spill the flowers, I picked up the vase and held it for him, thinking he wanted to smell them. Instead, he gently kissed each blossom. It was a sweet and special moment, a perfect goodbye.

Despite (or perhaps because of) our losses we had a wonderful Christmas celebrated with both sides of the family, and a fun New Year's holiday with many great friends. We really have a lot to be grateful for in this life, no matter how short it may be. :)

Responsible Excitement

I ran in to an old friend a couple of weeks ago, and he asked me "So, done anything exciting lately?" So help me, the first thing that came to mind was that I'd just gotten the brakes done on my car. Woooo yeah! I told him so, and he offered up that the most exciting thing he'd done lately had been his taxes. We had a good laugh about how our definitions of "exciting" have changed since college. Sometimes I'm a little bothered by how boring and domestic my life is these days, but mostly I really enjoy it. And lately I've been on a real tear, taking care of responsibilities big and small, right and left, and thoroughly enjoying it, even if they do stretch the definition of exciting a bit. Here's a partial list of the exciting things I've recently done:

- gotten the heating system and hot water heater serviced
- gotten a fire extinguisher (we didn't have one in the house, yikes!)
- opened a bank account for Conan
- reconfigured & updated our car insurance
- gotten a load of bark & drainrock delivered
- rented the pottery studio to a new crew of potters
- cleaned out Conan's closet & taken a bunch of stuff to consignment
- scheduled long-overdue maintenence on the overhead shop doors
- septic tank is getting pumped today (rock on!)

I do still need to get my taxes done, and about a million other things around the house, but it feels great to get these things taken care of. Now that Conan's bigger, more independant, and (most importantly) not breastfeeding, I suddenly have much more energy and time to catch up on all the exciting tasks required to keep life rolling along. It feels good. :)

Parenting Skillz

Some of the things I can do that I couldn't before:

I can sing "Old MacDonald Had A Farm" for more than 30 minutes without repeating any animals or noises. While driving.

I can fill a 5 gallon water jug and wrestle it into & out of the shopping cart at the coop with Conan strapped to my chest, without dropping it, squishing Conan, or breaking my back.

I can eat ANYTHING with one hand. Or, to put it another way, anything that can't be eaten with one hand just isn't on the menu.

I can tell when Conan is sleeping without looking to see if his eyes are closed. Even when I'm not holding him.

I can tell the difference between pooping and farting by sound alone, from across the room.

I can spot a dropped baby sock or shoe in tall grass at 50 paces.

I can open and close the bedroom doors silently. Which isn't easy, we have very clicky doorknobs.

I can sit and have a conversation while simultaneously corralling, bouncing, and entertaining a very squirelly baby who is really, really determined to pull my hair.

I can rock a rocking chair like nobody's business.

I can tell you exactly what time he's woken up at every night for the last week, how long he was up for and how much he ate each time. Ditto pooping. I will TRY not to tell you all this, but sometimes I just can't help myself.

I can sleep fully clothed, sitting up, pretty much anywhere, anytime.

I can calm Conan when he's crying, I can feed him when he's hungry, and I can put him to sleep when he's tired. Best of all, I can make him smile and laugh, and watch him grow.

It's not the Swine Flu*

But there's sickness at our house. It's been a pretty miserable couple of weeks, with one after the other of us getting sick, including Conan. He had his first ever fever, cough, and runny nose last week, and he didn't like it very much. We had a couple very bad nights. It's scary enough to have a sick baby without Swine Flu hysteria sweeping the nation, but luckily he got over it pretty quickly. Hurrah for breastmilk and the transference of antibodies! He does still have a lingering cough, but he seems to feel good and not be bothered by it too much. Us adults have fared much worse, probably because we are also trying to work, keep house, and care for baby between coughing fits. I am so sick and tired of being sick and tired.

*Seriously, it's not. We got tested - it's a virus, not an influenza virus but one that causes "influenza-like symptoms" which are just plain awesome.

Jam & Jelly Step by Step

I make a lot of jams & jellies in the summer, and you often see the results pictured here on the blog. I've realized recently that a lot of folks a) don't know what the difference is between "jam" and "jelly", and b) think making either is a mysterious and complicated process. So at the risk of destroying my image as some kind of domesitic canning goddess, I thought I'd show you all the process this time, instead of just the results. Here goes!

The Mapes' are traveling, so we picked their delicious green grapes. Anyone lucky enough to have access to home-grown grapes, they make the most delicious jelly. Any kind or color of grape will do.

After rinsing the grapes, pull the berries off the stems and drop them into a big pot. Sort out any brown or damaged ones as you go. It's OK to leave the small stems on each grape, just get the big woody stems out. Add a little water, cover and put the pot on medium heat.

In about 20 minutes the grapes should be cooked. You want them to burst and let their juice out. A little mashing with a potato masher might help too. Turn off the heat, uncover, and let them cool somewhat, you don't want to get a steam burn at the next step.

Once the grape mash has cooled, you'll need to rig up a juice strainer. I use a clean pillowcase (I have two which are designated for jam), a length of foam-covered wire which is sold for tying up garden plants, a big bowl, and the knob of a cupboard. You can also use cheesecloth in a colander, a store-bought "jelly bag", or whatever works for you. It just needs to be something the juice can get out of while keeping the solid bits - skin, stems, seeds - contained. And then you let it sit and do it's work, until all the juice is drained out.
Incidentally, THIS is what makes Jelly different from Jam. Jelly is made from the strained juice of the fruit, whereas Jam is made from the unstrained pulp, including seeds. The choice of which to make depends on two main factors: how hard is it to prep the fruit for Jam (removing all those little grape stems would have been a real tedious process), and would the Jam be too seedy or have other textural problems if the fruit wasn't strained. If there's no issue with texture or prepping the whole fruit for jam, usually jam is what gets made. It's a slightly easier process, because you don't have to wait for the juice to drain. In fact, while I wait for the juice on a batch of jelly, I often put up a batch of jam...

These are Organic Dapple Dandy Pluots from Goosetail Farms, and they are amazingly delicous. (One of the perks of working for an organic produce company!) Pluots are a cross between apricots and plums, and when they are this ripe they are very soft and juicy. To prep them for jam, I halved, pitted, and peeled them. One quart of fruit is all you need, usually, for a batch of jam.

The fruit goes into a large saucepan and is heated to just boiling. I did a little mashing to break up the pulp. Once the fruit reaches boiling, add the pectin and sweetener (I used honey) according to the directions on the pectin package. My favorite pectin is Pomona's, but the co-op is out of stock and says they wont have more until January! So I'm trying out Ball's sugar-optional pectin.
Once the pectin & sweetener are added, bring the jam back to a boil for a minute or two to cook it, then remove it from the heat. Let it cool for a couple minutes while you get the rest of the stuff you'll need ready - clean, hot jars (I just run them throught the dishwasher right before using, or you can soak them in hot water in the sink), a small bowl & spoon, funnel, ladel, tongs, jar-lifter, lids & rings.

Once the jam has cooled a little, you'll see a frothy foam form on the surface. Use the spoon to skim this off and put it into the little bowl. It seems fussy, but this stuff will not go away, it will form a wierd-looking layer with a strange texture in your jam jars which will detract from enjoying the jam later. It's pretty easy to skim off at this point, so just do it.
Once the jam is skimmed, use the funnel & the ladel to fill each jar to within 1/4 inch of the top, about halfway up the threads.
I use all different shapes and sizes of jars. It doesn't matter if all your jars are the same size & brand or if you have a mis-match like these. They're still beautiful when they are all filled with jam! After they are filled, wipe the rims of the jars clean with a clean cloth moistened with hot water.
I boil the lids in a small saucepan and then keep them in the hot water until ready to use. The tongs are for getting them out of the water without burning your fingers. Once the lids are on, screw on the rings. Note that the lids must be new out of the box, but the rings can be reused over and over.
The final step is to process the jars in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. That's 10 minutes counting from when the water comes to a full boil. Once the 10 minutes is up, turn off the heat and leave the jars in the hot water for 5 minutes before removing them to cool on a towel. As the jars cool, the seals will set and go "ping"! Don't mess with the jars while they are cooling, or you might mess up the seal. I usually wait overnight before labeling the jars or checking the set of the jam for this reason. Then you can remove the bands and check the seals (the center of the lid should go down and the lid should be stuck on really tight) before you put the jars away for storage. Any jars that didn't seal (rarely happens) just need to go straight into the fridge and get used up, treat them like any other jar you just opened.
By the time you've finished processing the Jam, the jelly juice should be pretty well drained from the pillow case, it should no longer be actively dripping. I've alwasy been told not to squeeze the bag (supposedly it makes the jelly cloudy) but it's pretty hard to resist. You can also pour a little hot water over the bag to flush the last little bit of juice out. In any case, once you are satisfied that you have all the juice you are going to get, take down the bag (set it aside to clean later) and measure the juice. 1 quart is generally a batch. With these grapes I got just a smidge under 2 quarts of juice, so I added just enough water to bring it up to a full two quarts in order to make a double batch of jelly.
Bring the juice to a boil in a big pot. I always find that jelly foams up more than jam does, so make sure there's a lot of extra room in your pot - when jelly boils over onto the stovetop it makes an unholy sticky mess. Once you've got a boil going, add your pectin and sweetener, according to the directions. If you're making a double batch, remember to double the pectin (it sucks when you forget, trust me).
See what I mean about foaming up? Compare the rivet in the pot between this picture and the last one. Pectin directions usually say something like "cook until the jelly reaches a rolling boil which cannot be stirred down" - well, that's what this is. Turn off the heat and get ready to fill your jars!
Filling the jars is the same for Jelly as for Jam, although skimming off the foam is even more important with jelly. In fact, you may find that you need to skim the foam a second time after the jars have been filled.
Wipe the rims, apply the lids & bands, and the jars are ready to process in the boiling water bath. The timing and procedure is the same for Jelly as for Jam, in both the water bath and for cooling and setting the seal afterwards.
One more note - the only specialized canning tool you need (well, besides the jars & lids) is the jar lifter. This handy little gizmo (pictured above) makes it possible to securely raise and lower jars into and out of hot water without burning your hands. I think it cost about $4. Every other peice of equipment I use is just regular kitchen stuff that you probably already have. Anybody can make Jam or Jelly! All you need is fruit, pectin, and a little time in the kitchen. Give it a try... who knows, maybe next time I see you we'll be able to swap a few jars. :)

New Entertainment Center

As part of the preparation for the baby, we decided to move the TV into the living room. (The TV room will become the baby's room.) But since we'd both hate to just have the TV staring at us all the time, we decided we should get an entertainment cabinet with doors that would cover the TV when it was not in use. So a couple weeks ago I started hunting for such a thing on Bellingham's Craigslist. At first I was pretty disappointed with the selection, almost everything available was that really generic oak-with-brass-trim style, which I really don't like. I also didn't want anything with glass doors - the whole point is to HIDE what's inside, right? But after just a short time looking I found one that I really liked. We are now the owners of this well made, sturdy, walnut entertainment center: It was made by Morewood & Yager which is a small southwestern furniture manufacturer in Tucson, AZ. Actually, from their website it looks like the store is in Tucson; they make their furniture in Mexico, but it's their own factory and very nicely crafted. It's a pretty impressive peice of furniture, and it's in sweet condition. We paid $250 for it, which was a little more than I had intended to spend on an entertainment cupboard, but considering the regular price for the same unit on the manufacturer's site is over $2000 I think we got a great deal.

As you can see from the picture it's pretty large, it fits on this wall but just barely. I'm giving it a little time in this spot to see if I get used to it there, but I'm thinking it may need to go in the corner where the turtle's tank is now. Which of course would then mean moving the tank, couch, the table, and so on... whew. Eventually we'll get it all settled and then move the TV, etc. into its new home. Once that is done I can start turning the upstairs room into a nursery - I can't wait!

Hammock Time

Today is as nice a spring day as I could have hoped for. I worked in the garden and puttered around the yard all morning in the sunshine. About noon I was ready for a rest, but it seemed way too nice out to go inside... so I decided to put up our hammocks. It actually didn't take too long to find what I needed (hammocks, ropes, carabiners, ladder) and hang a pair of them from the pergola.
Ahhhh. A hammock's eye view.
I took a nice afternoon nap in the sunshine, listening to the birds tweeting and the neighbors lawnmowing. The pergola happens to be absolutely ideal for hammock support. I'm so glad we built it, and soooo glad I decided to put the effort into getting the hammocks out today!

Spring Is Here, Again

One fun thing about blogging is how easy it is to look back and see what was going on a year ago. Last March I blogged about the singing of our resident frogs, visits to our chimney from our neighborhood Northern Flicker, spectacular spring sunsets, torrential spring rains, pussywillows and other signs of spring. Now we're going into our second spring, and the frogs are singing again, the flicker is back banging on the chimney, the rain is still falling, the pussywillows are out, and when the clouds happen to clear away the sunsets are amazing. I really enjoy this feeling of getting to know the seasonal cycles of our little place, recognizing the patterns of nature, having a bit of history to fall back on.

Not everything is the same as it was last year though. Looking back at the blog also gives a clear sense of how much we've accomplished in the last year. The biggest change is that we now have a lawn, rather than this muddy mess surrounding our house:

We no longer have to use a pallet bridge to cross the mud from the driveway to the house.

Nor do we have gigantic slag piles to burn.

We have a long way to go, still... but it's good to take a minute and appreciate how much we've already accomplished. It's easy to get discouraged about our huge to-do list, but having looked back at the last year's progress makes me feel confident we'll get it all done, eventually. We'll get started just as soon as it stops raining.
:)

Things I'd Change

The house is wonderful, don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. But a common question I get is "So, what would you have done differently?" And I must admit, after living here for nearly a year, I've noticed a few things that aren't quite as wonderful as they could be, such as:

#1 - The door to the sunporch opens directly into the inside-corner pillar supporting the porch roof. There's plenty of room to open the door, but it does rather spoil the view out the window in the door, and it makes it a bit tight if you are carying something large through the doorway. There's no structural reason the door couldn't have been located 3 feet or so further to the right, putting it squarely between the two support pillars... we just didn't notice until it was done.

#2 - We shouldn't have run the radiant heat into the pantry, it gets really warm in that little room when the door is closed. It doesn't really need to be heated, but when we were laying the floor we just didn't think about leaving any spaces unheated. It's not really a problem for dried goods or canned foods, but I've stopped keeping garlic, onions, potatoes, apples, squash and the like in there because they tend to go bad. (On the other hand, the sun porch being unheated makes it a great storage area for that sort of thing. In the future when we have bumper crops of fruits and vegetables out of our garden & orchard, this space is going to be filled to the brim with harvest bounty.)

#3 - The upstairs bathroom door opens right next to the sink/vanity, making the space tight and awkward, right where you want to stand to use the sink or look in the mirror. It's cramped enough that the right-hand drawer on the vanity won't open if the door isn't closed completely: There's also the wierdness of having the closet door open right behind the main door. I should just close the door to the bathroom before opening the closet door, which but I seem to be incapable of remembering to do that. I'm forever banging the closet door into the bathroom door. Both of these issues would have been solved by using a pocket door for the bathroom door. Unfortunately, it's too late to change that. I don't even know if its possible to retrofit a pocket door into an existing, load-bearing wall, but if it is I bet its a real hassel.

#4 - No overhang on the kitchen countertops. They are faced flush with the cabinet fronts. It looks really nice, and I'm not even bothered that it makes clean up slightly more difficult because you can't catch the crumbs in your hand as easily when you wipe off the countertop. No, the real problem is that whenever a liquid spills and runs over the edge, it somehow suctions itself into the crevase between facing and the cupboard or drawer. Sometimes I don't notice the spill right away, only to later find a little puddle in the silverware drawer, or a half-dried sticky dribble down the inside of a cupboard door. What makes this worst of all, though, is that my little brother accurately predicted that this would happen. When he first visited the house, shortly before we moved it, he took one look at the countertops and said exactly that would happen. Of course I argued with him at the time, declaring it preposterous to think that having flush-fronted countertops would make any difference at all. It pains me greatly to admit, Jon, but you were right. I hope you'll be up for helping us redo the countertops - with an overhang this time - in a few years!

That's it so far - and it's really very minor stuff. There are also a few light switches and outlets that could be in better spots, but I don't really think you can ever get that sort of thing 100% right.

Fazon Lake

Yesterday Cary and I took our new* inflatable kayak, paddles, pumps, binoculars and a picnic over to Fazon Lake and spent a lovely fall day exploring. Fazon Lake is about 1.5 miles from our house, we've walked by it but we'd never really been able to check it out before because it's in the middle of a brushy swampy area with no trails. There is a parking area and a little boat launch, between a blueberry field and a cow pasture - that's all you can see on foot at least. From the water, it's a different story:
The view across the lake from just beyond the boat launch - can't be seen from the launch itself though, because you have to paddle out through a channel in the cattails. The whole lake is like that, there isn't a shore so much as increasingly thick growths of water lillies and cattails defining the edge of the open water.
We paddled all around the edge of the lake. This poor heron thought we were chasing him, he kept landing just 100 feet or so ahead of us, and then flying off again when we got too close.

The inflatable kayak is pretty sweet, if a bit cramped for two adults (well, one normal-sized adult and one tall lanky one) and a bit tough to paddle in a straight line. I wouldn't want to have to race in it! It's not very heavy, so Cary's already making plans to hike it into the back country next summer for some alpine paddling. It's perfect for a fall afternoon paddling picnic.
We saw a few other boats with fishermen in them, aparently the lake is full of bluegill. One boy showed us his catch, he had two nice stringers of the tasty little panfish. Now we just need to get some fishing gear together and we'll be able to paddle, picnic AND catch supper the next time we have a sunny afternoon free. :)

* wedding presents!

Rope Swing

Sunday Cary, Bo & Nick (and Moira) put up our first rope swing, in a fine cascadian spring drizzle. They selected one of our larger aspen trees behind the shop for this honor. Cary harnessed up and climbed the tree like a monkey, pulling the rope up behind him.
Once he tied off the rope to a stout branch near the top, Cary climbed back down the rope limbing the aspen until he got back to the ground. Nick & Bo cleared some brush and cut away some smaller trees around the base.

Watch out below!
Unfortunatly, this is the best picture I got of the finished swing in action. Stupid rain drops on the lense! For the time being, since the ground is relatively flat around the swing tree, the best swing comes from jumping out of the crook in this smaller aspen. Eventually, a platform will probably be built for easier accessability.
While this isn't nearly as epic as the old Farm rope swing, or as crazy as Dan & Kriss', it's still exciting that we have a rope swing again. Its just one of those things that makes life better. :)

Sprouts!

The seeds I started about a week ago on the sunporch are coming up! I planted sunflowers, snapdragons, calendula & nasturtiums. The seeds for the sunflowers and the snapdragons came from my cousin Jess's garden, and the calendula & nasturtiums came from grandma Joy's garden. It sure felt good to plant them, and its even better to see them come up!

Cary's New Job

This isn't really house related, but I thought I'd post a little about it anyhow...

Cary started his new job as a groundskeeper at the Bayview Cemetary on Monday, and so far it's really going great (despite the cold & rainy weather). The first couple of days were mostly orientation, equipment maintenance, and the like, but yesterday they got out and started cleaning up the piles of windfallen branches that came down during the winter. The cemetary has a big industrial chipper, and the crew spent almost the whole day chipping branches - they filled their dump truck up twice!

Once they get past the branches, it sounds like the job will entail a LOT of mowing, trimming, edging, and otherwise caring for the grass in the cemetary, along with gravedigging and setting up headstones. Cary actually dug his first grave yesterday, just a little one for a cremation burial. For a die-hard fan of the show Six Feet Under (which he is, even if he tries to deny it) it's a pretty sweet situation. Plus, he's working outside, right next to his favorite park (whatcom falls)... and since it's a city job, it's stable, pays well and has a nice benefit package. I'm so happy for him!