blogthing

You Are the Thumb

You're unique and flexible. And you defy any category. Mentally strong and agile, you do things your own way. And you do them well. You are a natural leader... but also truly a loner. You inspire many but connect with few. You get along well with: The Middle Finger Stay away from: The Pinky

What Finger Are You?

And we're back to cute pictures of Lil'Bug

Finally, right? I'm sick of writing about homeschool socialization, teaching philosophy (wait, did I post that one?), and the like so I am sure the distant relatives who only visit to see new cute pictures of the dear daughter are sick of trying to filter through my boring rants to find said pics. So here are the pictures of how we spent Sunday morning (at Living History Farms):

The first one she is helping scrape buffalo hide, then the second one is when the interpreter tells her that she's helping to make leather and her shoes are made of leather.

Later she has a talk with the lamb. She is worried about a fox she saw so she's telling the lamb not to worry, "Foxes eat other people's chickens, they don't have their own and they are hungry." They don't eat lambs? I didn't have the heart to tell her.

Then the farmer at the 1850's house let Lil'Bug help cook lunch. She got the water from the well jug and placed the potatoes in the prepared pot.

The picture I wish I got? Lil'Bug also helped round up a chicken that had twine tangled around its feet. She did a very good job helping, a natural at chicken herding. :)

Friday Freewrite: Make a wish!

"Today’s a day for wishes. Write about a wish you dearly hope will come true in your life."

This was a tough exercise. It was easy to talk about history or thunderstorms and the like, but wishes are something else entirely. I grew up making wishes. Nothing happened. Then I learned something else: plans based on wishes fail. So I make goals and plan for the goal. Sometimes my goals seem unrealistic, but that just means I have to work harder to attain them.

Learning is like this. I wanted to learn about architecture, reading online and in books was not getting me the education I felt I needed so I went to Graduate school and worked with professors, professionals, and others to learn the technologies of the trade. It's an industry that changes quickly so I have to keep up with my reading to stay current in the field. Right now, I am a stay-at-home-mom (or work at home, with online classes) and I don't really get to use my education in architecture. I'm not even really sure I will re-enter the field professionally. That doesn't matter to me. I love learning about it and helping others, discussing technologies, and educating those who are steadfast and old fashioned about the trade about new things they may not have considered. I can talk for days on end about old houses.

Now wait, this does relate to the freewrite! My wish is that my daughter will someday get to be as passionate about something as I am about old houses. That she will find joy in a subject and find work in the field that makes her happy to get up in the morning and go to work, that she has so much fun that it won't be work for her and that she will never be bored. I can read for hours about the history of indoor plumbing (ie African aqueducts that pre-date the Roman ones) and retain the information because I genuinely find it interesting. I wish that she finds that too.

I can't really make that a goal that I can plan for, but I can facilitate her learning in a way that doesn't make her hate education. I can watch for things that interest her and put opportunities in front of her for her to choose. Right now she is watching a DVD on zoo management. She picked it out at the library and she was thrilled when we got home that I said she could watch it right away. I hate seeing her glued to the TV, but she is enthralled. We visted a vet's office today and she asked them when she would be old enough to help with giving animals shots. They told her at "seven years old" she can help hold and comfort the animals. They told her she has to weigh as much as the animal to be able to help. She told me she wants to be an animal doctor when she is seven. Cute. She's been looking through out Hobby Farm magazines too. Who knows? Maybe next year she'll want to be a firetruck, but right now she wants to know about animals so that's what we are using to teach her. A is for alligator.

Laundry Fun! We're Totally Nuts Here.

Here's the deal. My dearest husband has this terrible, painful skin thing and medicines are not working for him. The ones that do a little bit are icky AND expensive, but they treat a symptom not the root cause. He's always complaining about things smelling too strong or itching, especially clothes. I thought we should change bath soaps. We did, Amy at the Foil Hat rocks some serious Pure Castile. That helped a little. So what about laundry soap? Some of the moms on our discussion board were sharing recipes for such soap, but even those have borax, or fels naphtha, or washing soda- all of which he reacts to.

Then I found soap nuts.

When I stumbled upon the Sapindus tree and its fruit/berries I was intrigued. I had been frustrated that all "soap" must use lye, but here was a plant that produces an agent that much of the world uses for laundry. Hmmmm. I cannot grow it in a zone 4/5. Surely someone has packaged it and is marketing it to hippies. If they don't, I will and I will get to roll in piles of "green" money.

Maggie's Pure Land got there before me AND I could order from them through amazon.com. That said, I was a little ashamed to use it, afraid that this would deeply root me as one of them, especially when it arrived and had a floating yoga hippie on the box and a free pair of love nut earrings. OMG. And then, what if its all a scam, after all the patchouli most hippies wear deadens their senses and they don't bathe anyway, so how would they know if their clothes were actually getting clean??!!?!?!?

Then my daughter itched at me. So in went the soap nuts and in went the clothes. They came out clean. Since there are no harsh detergents, they say there is no need to use fabric softener. They smelled like.....like....nothing. Like cotton. And DH itches less, claims that his shirts are so soft they tickle. So I washed sheets. The sheets dried in 20 minutes instead of an hour and each load had barely anything in the lint basket. It was seriously like I'd entered the laundry room of the Twilight Zone. Tonight I did the ultimate test, really stinky, slimy dishtowels that had sat in a bucket for two days. Clean? Oh my yes. I didn't even have to run them a second time or with bleach. When the soap nuts are used up, you compost them. I am sooooo totally the laundry queen! Now...... if only I could grow them myself!

The only downside I see is that my clothes are not super lamb soft like I was used to. I will continue on the quest to fix this, but DH and Lil'Bug don't seem to care. Also, I feel good about letting Lil'Bug help (she is such an adorable helper!), even handle the soap nuts. Check out the photos on the left for all the action packed sudsy goodness. (You have to click on the wash load picture to see most of the sudsing.)

We didn't do this to be "green", we did it to stop itching.