Tilling

I've been terribly sick for a week or so with a particularly nasty bug that's been making the rounds. The only update I could give you for the last week would have been how much sleep I got and how many times Oliver pulled Abby's hair. Now I have a day off, it's beautiful out, and I want to do some tilling! Research first.

My research suggests either using the tiller to scrape the grass and remove it, or skip tilling all together and instead rent that chipper and get our branches turned into wood chips to cover the garden, as well as throwing all that cardboard on there, compost, and whatever else we have around to add to the garden. Use the simplest answer, right?

For some Sunday-morning gardening, here is a full length film about the wonders of wood-chip gardening following nature's example: http://www.backtoedenfilm.com/

Changes

Thursday, I spent my first day with The Kids, who are great, and saw 9 deer in one spot by their house!

Friday, I had my last day with Island Home Nursing and Tim called in to the kennel cleaning job to let them know I was feeling ill and he thought I should get some sleep, only to find out I wasn't scheduled anyways!

Saturday (after sleeping in) I headed over for a late night with The Kids so The Parents could go out on a date before The Mom leaves for two months. Let this be a PSA that the best thing you can do for your kids when they are very small is continue to date your co-parent so your mental health and your relationship is strong for your family. Set a weekly date and have a regular sitter and two backups!

Tilly really likes the snow. It's fun to eat and chase and everything else.

Sunday there was snow! We woke up to over an inch and I was reminded what a gift snow is, reimbursing the light that is missing by reflecting what there is double and brightening up the world. Due to the weather, our friends stayed home from Congregation and Tim and I made a quick departure afterwards to head for Oak Harbor and the Kachink Kachink for some long and tedious work. I left Tim to do his thing and took Tilly on an exploration of Oak Harbor (fairly disappointing dog park), then I spent some time at an aspiring weaver and alpaca farmer's house helping her dress her loom. She's in the business of bartering with acupuncture and I'm in the business of making friends on the island.

Raccoon?

We've also been watching the Olympics which have been great and a lot of fun. With Joe visiting, we've been having a lot of great dinners together upstairs. Oh, and this morning I made us a giant flower pot, or goat climbing structure, or perhaps auxiliary chicken house. As I started towards town for some errands, the car made a little noise and either turned off or I immediately turned it off. Either way, I coasted to the side of the road and was barely in cell service to call Tim who had just started towards Oak Harbor to work. In a minute, he was back to the car and pulling a long piece of rubber that used to be the timing belt out of our engine. A minute after that, Tim was watching for traffic as I coasted the car back down the street and down our driveway. What perfect timing and location for the car to quit! So glad I didn't have two car seats and a dead phone, miles from home when the car quit. It is now really time to pull the engine on the OMC and see if theirs any hope of changing the belt and bringing her back to life, or if we should start looking for cheap parts to convert her to electric. Tim's a little heartbroken at the loss we were hoping to put off or avoid.

Bunneh bunneh bunneh!

Ariel: Work - completed
Tim: Work - lots of driving including two trips to Bellingham with boat parts
Ariel: Errands - two packages sent to Alaska
Tim: Errands - awesome amounts of frozen foods brought home to fill the now-plugged-in chest freezer
Ariel: Social outing - took Tilly to the beach, then went over to see our lovely new friends, Cassidy and Travis and helped mate the meat rabbits.
Grandpa: Social outing - attended a senior lunch where faces are starting to get familiar, or at least his face is getting recognized.

February = spring?

 Well, Tilly and her very brave new friends at Greenbank Farm seem to think it's looking a lot like spring! Even though my hands are freezing after every walk if I forget my hand muffs.

The little plants in our extra-special-farm-room are getting bigger every day! When the baby chickens come in ONE MONTH I will move the plants out and the birds in.

Speaking of animals I'm going to eat, the question of hunting rabbits has finally concluded. We made some new friends OUR AGE today and they are so cool! We are very excited. The young man at UU Congregation said he had a wife, but before today we had yet to see the proof. After being sick for a few weeks, she made it! And we finally got to meet her. Tim invited our new friends over to hang out and watch The Big Game with us. Oh, right, on the meat note, they just got a pair of meat rabbits to breed and I look forward to helping out with the fur and meat production and processing. The young man is working on making a bow and arrows and a spear for alternative deer hunting too. They came over with their baby and dog and spent some time on the beach with me and Tim and Tilly, with Joe and Grandpa watching from the landing on the stairs. We had a lovely time, played deceptively tricky board games, and then I had to whisk myself away. I've been meaning to help an acupuncturist and alpaca farmer up by Penn Cove learn to use her loom for months now and the stars finally aligned. We had a good time working together and made it about a quarter of the way through the dressing process, to be continued next week. I left her to the tedious threading after she got the idea and buzzed back home to see if my guests were still around. I made it just in time to see the one touch down by the Broncos of the entire game (sad, sad game for any fans they may have had in the house) and was delighted to see my new friend finished all but the last piece of that terribly tricky lion puzzle! Hooray! And Grandpa is relieved as well. He says the next person to bring a puzzle into the house is getting their drivers licence revoked by him until it's done and gone.

Things that delight me:

1. We have a puppy! She is asleep on the floor and is learning to be good at getting her toys out and entertaining herself. She is getting good at cuddling. She loves hanging out with Grandpa and he seems to like her too. She makes us all feel even more like a full family.

2. I have a job! I have three jobs! Two that are ending and one that is starting. One that is starting that I am excited to do for reasons other than money. One that involves caring for adorable sweet cuddly children, playing outside in the sun, and remembering my mums tales of counting sprinkles for equality.

3. There is food growing in and around our house! My seeds in the Extra-Special-Farm-Room (that still needs a real name) are growing! Little specs of green are visible through the dark dirt. Also, I think Tilly bit off the little green leaves that were starting to show from the potatoes but I have confidence the potato will recover.

4. Tim is working again! And makes more money than me! And probably always will! Tim makes more in a day than I make in a week, which frees me up from doing things just for money and instead because they are fulfilling and hopefully also pay something. It frees me up to use some of my time for money-saving ventures like making and growing rather than strictly earning for which I am very grateful. Tim and his dad are back to working on the Kachink-Kachink getting it for-sale ready and sound like they've made awesome progress in just their first day. Tim says his had is at about 80-90% and all day working he hardly noticed any problems with it.

5. Our house is the family hostel! Over dinner of cod chowder prepared by Joe, we reflected on how nice it is to run the family hostel where all the people we know and love sometimes stop by for a few days and help out around the place and visit while staying in their increasingly familiar room. Joe is here for a while, then in March we look forward to seeing Alice again and in April Mum plans to come down, as well as any other friends in the near future. I think I heard Grandpa continuing to make plans for his friends to visit in the future.

Healing

Yesterday Tim headed to Seattle for his very last physical therapy appointment!!! The physical therapist looked over his hand and decided it was healing nicely and good to go. One more doctors appointment in a few weeks and life will be back to normal after 3 months (currently at 2 1/2) of recovery. The last physical therapy appointment was also the first I've missed, but tag teaming with Tilly worked pretty well - Tim was heading for the ferry right around when I got home from work, so after a quick shower on my part and nap on Tilly's part we were out the door for some errands and the beach. A woman was kind enough to point out the largest jelly fish I have ever seen before Tilly was close enough to find it. Meanwhile, Tim headed out from his doctors appointment in Seattle to meet up with our recently transplanted friend, Zac. It sounds like they had a pretty good time, but I was glad to get my husband back this morning.

Two-foot plus sea creature with dog food heart for rough scale

Speaking of this morning, it started off so badly! I woke up after a full 8 hours of sleep for once and was cleaning up the house before heading out for work. Tilly was hanging out with me while I washed dishes and ran the laundry. I then discovered a terrible design flaw in our kitchen - as I was removing dishes, I bent down to get a plate and stood up, smacking my head firmly on the corner of the cupboard door. Tilly thought she'd come play doctor while I sat on the floor feeling sorry for myself - not helpful! Well, when the pain subsided, it was time to head to work! Wednesday is my busiest day with back to back jobs from 8am to 5pm and a very tight turn around between the two. After all my cleaning efforts, I rushed to get to work before I was too late and managed to make it by 8:07. I flipped on the lights and started putting dog bowls down when Geri, the other employee, walked it. Evidently today wasn't my day after all! Delighted, I hoped back in my truck and headed home for a cookie baking marathon and some errands around the island before my next job.

Over the weekend

Friday I went to my first Whidbey spinning group! Finally, after months of meaning to go, I was free Friday afternoon and motivated to load my spinning wheel into the car and go out. I sort of tried to look up where the meeting was, but didn't find it very easily on the World Wide Web, so I set off in the car with a vague notion that the spinning group was either meeting at a library or senior center. I stopped by a retirement home, where they told me the "senior center" was down the road a ways, so I headed there next only to find musicians all set up for a concert and a very confused receptionist. With senior centers out of the way, I headed back to Freeland to try out the library. The very quiet library with a meeting in the conference room didn't look promising. The librarian informed me there was no spinning at any library she knew of on the island at 11am on a Friday, but opened up her link to the World Wide Web and quickly found the answer I sought; the meeting was in the "library" of the senior living center in town! I managed to arrive right on time back to the first place I went where they showed me to a group of ladies and wheels streaming in and setting up. A kindergarten-sized boy came by and recognized our spinning wheels as something to do with wool and quickly hopped up on my chair and started running my wheel. Amazingly, my yarn was just as thin and consistent with him working the pedals and helping with the draw as I'd been doing on my own. Maybe I'll spin with him again next week.

Over the weekend, Tim helped me set up some seed trays on the counter of my "sheep room" (the funny little windowless room between the house and the shop - I still haven't settled on a proper name for it) with a light to help them get started. I went through my whole seed collection, sorted them by type, and made up a list. I'm ready to start planting now! Though it's January, it's been about on par with many days in a Juneau summer and in 6 weeks or so when the plants are ready to go out side, I'm sure it will be sunny and warm. Our neighbor said we could use her fenced yard to start a garden and our friend Fritz has a roto-tiller we can borrow to get things started. So far, though the seed trays are filled with dirt and laid out under the light, the only thing I've planted is an old potato that was beginning to sprout. Hopefully soon I'll get planting.

We've been taking Tilly on some good outings the last few days; playing hard at the dog park, going on a long run through the woods we me, another dog, and her owner, and today Tim took Tilly on an adventure hike through the woods around our house. When I got home, we jumped in the car to run to the grocery store and when we came out from shopping, Tilly had jumped over the back of the seats and eaten the remaining pound or two of Yummy Chummy dog treats that were in the car. Oh my goodness! So far she has been amazingly not sick and I'm hoping that will keep up. The suggested serving size on the bag said 10 pieces... I'm pretty sure she's set for a month.