No They Didn't....

....make it by the jammed up vehicles, if you were wondering. They got stuck too, and every vehicle on camp, including ours, was pressed into service as a shuttle. They shuttled kids all through the night. I am tired and bleary this morning from looking out my window into the wee hours, watching and hearing them go to and fro. But I am quite certain I am nowhere near as tired as all our guys who were out there all night, and are out there again this morning. I don't even consider the teens. They would have been up half the night anyhow!

Oh the joys of winter camping on the mountain!

Wintery Vignettes from Camp

Tonight camp is all abustle and aflutter, because it's the last big retreat of the winter season. In order to mark this Leap Year retreat with something a little special, we all noticed a minor snow storm on the radar when we checked the weather this morning. Nothing huge, just a half a foot of powdery, blowy snow, to slick up the tubing run and give our 340 campers something to do outdoors.

Several hours ago the big Coke delivery truck came to drop off flats and flats of soda, to fill the machines for hundreds of thirsty campers. On their way out of camp, just past our house which sits at the far back border of camp property, they rolled down the dirt road, down a steep hill which immediately swoops upward again before meeting the paved road. Somewhere between going down and going up, they got stuck. For hours and hours I have listened to heavy equipment rumble past my little house, as camp maintenance workers tried to drag them out of the gully in time for the departing school group to leave on their yellow school buses. Oh, did I neglect to mention that we had a small group of fifty here for the last two days, and on the heels of their departure, this large group of youth were incoming?

At some point, the Coke truck's very own tow truck came to drag them out, and the yellow school bus was given the green light to try and make it by, heading for home a bit later than expected. Within the last hour, I heard youthful voices passing my house in the dark, as the passengers of the school bus, now apparently stranded in the gully as well, trooped back up the road toward camp. I hear rumors that the Coke truck is jammed for the night, and possibly the bus as well. The school group will get to enjoy another night of our hospitality...possibly bunking in the gym for lack of any other space. Hubby will be cooking breakfast for an extra fifty in the morning. Meanwhile, buses loaded with the anticipated 340 are fast approaching the blocked up gully, and we are wondering if they will make it past the stranded vehicles. If not, they will have to shuttle and escort all those teens, and backpacks, and sleeping bags a very long way over snowy hill and dale.

Dearest husband is in the shower, getting ready to hit the hay. Tonight the chaos does not belong to him, but he knows that tomorrow it will. Cooking 1200 meals in a day is enough to spank anyone, as he says.

Quote of the Day

"Why don't they have Garanimals for men? I need little animals on the tags to help me match my clothes. I'd buy 'em."

--Husband for over twenty years, father of seven, one smart man

Dirt

My dear friend BJ asked the other night, if there really was such a thing as poo free sunny days. No Beej....probably not. I like what Mo used to say.

"All your life you try and get rid of the dirt, and when you die they bury you under six feet of it!"

Gross, gross, gross

Alright, I have to say it. My house is disgusting. It's the end of February, and we're alternately under ice, or snow, or mud. The beautiful 235 acres of camp that we live on, just isn't cooperating. Instead we find ourselves cooped up in way too few square feet, trying not to eat one another alive. It is cabin fever at its best. My house is pooey. Is that even a word? I am just dealing with too much poo.

Every day we go out a couple of times a day, and collect the frozen goat buckets. We drag them indoors and thaw them in a bathtub or sink, and refill them with warm water. What do they leave behind? Goat poo...which also comes in on Baby Boy's boots. Along with copious amounts of hay and dirt. Darcy the old lady goat wears a lovely purple coat, which gets ripe with poo. When we get a couple of warm days, I peel the thing off her, soak it in a bucket of soapy water, rinse well, and hang on the clothes line to destink a bit. Only then can I wash it in the washer, without filling the house with the smell of poo.

Then there's the dog. Technically she keeps all her poo outside, and for that I am grateful. She does however, hate the cold and snow. In order to avoid having to trek far out into it, she does her pooing on the walk or driveway. In really bad weather she has been known to poo directly on the deck outside the door. Fortunately she is small, and so is her poo, so it freezes into hard little piles very quickly.

For more pooing pleasure we have the cats. Four of them, all living exclusively in this little house, and doing an excellent job keeping their poo inside their litter boxes. But not necessarily covering it up. That would not allow for the stench to be distributed quickly enough. On a regular basis one of my children can be heard shouting, "Titus laid an egg!" Immediately following is the pounding of feet as we all scramble to dispose of the "egg" and deodorize the vicinity.

And finally there is the human poo. I won't go into great detail, but simply say that a stomach virus has afflicted us these past several days. The washer and dryer are working overtime, and I go about in long yellow gloves, soaking things, scrubbing things, spraying things. It's not pretty.

And so I say again, my house is disgusting. I just cannot seem to keep up with the volume of contamination and smell which has invaded. If only it was warm and sunny, I could open things up and air it out. I could hang loads of laundry out, to be sanitized by the sun and wind. I could send fractious children out to play. But alas, we are still in the deep freeze. Will poo free sunny days ever return?

Pretty Things

Continued from here, here, here, here , here, and here.

A long time ago, our younger girls came to live with us just before Christmas. One of the first things they asked to do in order to amuse themselves, was to "make Christmas decorations". This basically consisted of chopping through reams of paper at whirlwind speed, scribbling sayings like "Mary Crismas to Mom" and shoving them at me every few minutes, waiting expectantly for gushing praise and thanks. The table and floor were littered with refuse, and the countless creations that adorned my refrigerator were hard to discern from the garbage on the floor.

I have to confess that my innermost self shriveled in distaste, so alien was this behavior to me. I have long loved creating pretty things, and this wanton destruction of perfectly good art supplies offended my sensibilities. For years my medium has been fabric, and even as a child I loved the feel and color of beautiful fabric. As I grew to adulthood, I honed my sewing skills, and came to love EXPENSIVE fabric. Even now, my tastes run far ahead of my wallet, and I have to content myself with scouring the bargain tables for exquisite scraps.

Recently I inherited several large boxes and bundles that came from my grandmother's home. They were her sewing supplies, and the family felt that I should have them since I am the only granddaughter who sews. I discover that I come by it naturally, as Grandma's boxes held beautiful pieces of excellent fabric, with little notes attached, detailing what she had paid for each. Clearly she scoured the bargain tables too, looking only for the choice morsels. More evidence that the apple does not fall far from the tree became obvious when I found a hand written note in one box. It was written on a little scrap of card, and reads:

"Put back the spools in the color class it belongs with."

Who the note was intended for I will never know. Perhaps it was a reminder to herself, or an unnamed intruder to her sewing basket? My husband and I had a good laugh over it, because he teases me about my color coded thread bins.

This month I spent some time doing something I haven't done much of lately. In fact I suspect that my neglect of this pursuit has been partly to blame for my leaky self. But when you begin with an IMPORTANT TASK, you often put frivolous activities aside, telling yourself that these things no longer matter. You pour yourself into your work, and forget about making pretty things. This is not good for you, or me. It is in this way that we drain off much of our vitality, calling it unimportant. Making pretty things improves the quality of my life. It makes me happy, and when Mama's happy...well, you know. Besides, you never know when someone is watching.

On this particular day I spent extra time, selecting fabric, deciding how to configure the colors and textures. I took great care cutting the pieces, sewing straight seams. The result was exactly how I'd imagined it. Close by, Sweet 'Tatie was making Valentines. She came to me with a huge stack of colored paper in her arms. "What color should I use?" "Whatever you think is pretty Tater." Carefully she chose pink and yellow. I was a few feet away, pinning my creation. I could hear her humming as she clipped and colored. After some time had gone by, she hopped up to show me her masterpiece. It was a giant yellow heart on a pink field. In it were cut little windows that opened outward. Behind each window was carefully printed in marker, words like "love", "joy", and "peace". I nodded my approval over her thoughtful presentation. I told her that her teacher would love it. She looked past me to my sewing, and gushed, "Ooooh Mommy, that's pretty!"

My dear friend BJ commented to me recently that they can learn that their lives have value, that life can be made of quality materials, and that it will hold up under duress. A quiet afternoon, working in close proximity, making something pretty confirms that. Cracks can be mended, and lives can be refilled with something good.

The Big Picture

This post was first published at OurAdopt.

Over the last couple of days I've been keeping my eye on a conversation going on in bloggyland, and it has actually compelled me to jump into the fray a few times. I find myself wanting to jump to the defense of the person writing the blog, even though:

1. I don't agree with her positions entirely, all of the time.
2. I am quite sure she is capable of defending herself without my two cents worth.

Basically it boils down to a blog expressing frustration with the trials of parenting an attachment disordered child, especially during times of parental illness. The discussion has taken a few twists and turns,with folks squaring up, choosing sides, and throwing nice people under the bus. And all while said people are feeling unwell. Good grief! There are other parents in the same trenches sending comments making comforting noises, plus at least one parent who employs a different parenting technique sending cloying offers of "help" if only you would be open to trying something new. And fanning the flames, are a couple of folk who make no reference to how they are related to the adoption community, much less their experience in parenting attachment disordered children, offering advice and criticism based on the prevailing logic of armchair experts. You know, the sort of folk who tell you what worked with their strong willed child, or recall how they felt as children, when dealing with deep childhood trauma, which usually amounts to some bullying in the schoolyard.

So through all of the discussion, as polite accusations are hurled, and a person's character is being assaulted, I consider how easy it is to read one or two blogs and crash the party. If a person is willing to do the research, and read through a huge archive of very helpful posts, one would realize the criticism is unfair. It reminds me of a game we play out on the challenge course. We have all these laminated pages, and we hand one out to each person who is participating, telling them not to let anyone else look at it. We ask each person if they know what the picture is. Some of them reveal that they suspect what it might be...others have no idea. We then instruct them, without showing their picture, to describe what they think they are seeing, and see if they can put together something that makes sense. Over time, they are able to arrange themselves so that all of the segments of a bigger picture fit together. Then they do the big reveal and see if they are correct. They almost always are, because over time, through careful discussion, even the most confusing component can be understood and added to the whole.

Then we debrief, and this is really a great one because pretty much everyone "gets it". They talk about the big picture. They tell you about the frustration and confusion of only looking at one small part. They confess being wrong in their initial impressions. They tell you about the need for clear communication in order to achieve understanding. They sheepishly admit that rushing to conclusions or getting snappy did NOT help.

The discussion on this blog reminds me of this exercise. And it makes me sad because few are working toward seeing the big picture. For the most part you have three types of commenters. The first group is the choir and they want to be preached to. The second group follows a different method, expert, or ghuru, and they want to convert you. When you are feeling down or discouraged, this is the perfect time to offer to point out a "better way". The third seems to have no stake, yet they jump into the discussion. This would be like someone with no picture card trying to participate in the activity. Wouldn't it mostly just confuse and irritate the folks who do have pictures?

My inclination, as I said before, is to jump into the fray and defend the blogger, not because I agree with everything they teach, but because they are doing this tremendously hard thing and being transparent while they are doing it. This takes courage, and it gives me courage to do the same. Truthfully, I hate it when people try and spoon feed me the answers. I once got a letter from an acquaintance who had adopted older children, and heard that we were doing so as well. This long missive contained lots of authoritative "information" about the methods I must use to reach my children...and my spirit cringed. According to this particular expert, I would have to cease being who I am and reinvent myself totally to meet my child's need. You know what I say to that? My kids can smell fakey, fakey a mile away. They like this real, yet imperfect Mama better than any perfect one following a blueprint to success. And they like being my children more, and my project less.

Why are we so afraid to bring our picture cards to the table, and talk respectfully to one another, until we can see the big picture? Why must we line up on one side or the other? Why must someone else be totally wrong for me to be right? Why is it so hard to believe the lessons we strive to teach our children? That I am a competent and intelligent individual. That I can research the options, weigh the evidence for myself, and come up with a plan that works for me and my loved ones. That I am free to admit when something is not working and adjust my plan. That some things need more time, and though I find myself battered and tired, I can choose not to give up the fight. That I am frequently wrong, and need humility to live with it. That I am frequently right, and need even more humility to live with it.