Tag Archives: family

May 13 2013

More adventures with opossums, or, this is how marriage works

This morning started out like any other morning. I was half awake, in my pajamas, outside feeding the rabbits and chickens. And then my husband shouted from the garage door “There’s an opossum in the cat food!”

It was suddenly not an ordinary day, and I was very awake.

Turns out a very young opossum had gotten into our garage and into the cat food bag. The cat and dog food bags are stored in an aluminum trash can with a tight fitting lid, but it must not have been put on correctly last night. It happens; I’m just glad hubby looked into the bag before reaching in.

opossum in bag of cat food

Small opossum at the bottom of a bag of cat food

The ‘possum wasn’t going anywhere, so hubby went inside to put on something more substantial than pajamas. I got the pitchfork and decided to make sure THIS opossum never graduated to eating my chicken’s eggs – but hubby had other ideas.

“Do you really have to kill it?” he asked. “It’s little.”

“It will grow up and get the chicken eggs if I don’t” I replied.

“The other opossum never came back, did it?”

“Well, no.”

“I’m sure this one is scared enough and it’ll stay away too.”

I’m thinking “seriously? We own a farm and you want to let a predator live – on purpose?” But he really doesn’t ask for things very often, and I can’t even remember the last time he made a request concerning how I run the farm.

“I could carry the bag outside and tip it on its side, and the opossum will run away.”

“Fine.” I agreed. Fine. I’ll let a predator live at the request of my hubby. He doesn’t have a problem with butchering animals for food, so I know that’s not what’s going on here. If something about this situation is striking him as important to handle in a certain way, then my relationship with him is more important than preventing chicken eggs from disappearing. I think it’s odd, but I will respect it.

The only change I requested was saying: “Just dump the cat food out, too. The opossum pooped in the bag, so I’m not feeding it to my cats. It’s likely to have parasites.”

He agreed easily, with a smile, and carried the bag outside.

So I hope you enjoy these photos of a very young, and very free oppossum running away into the bushes. My hubby likes them, too. I’m still laughing inside about the whole situation, and happy to know that this kind of giving is what makes a marriage.

carrying the bag of food - containing the opossum - outside

Carrying the bag of food – containing the opossum – outside

The opossum, very startled at being dumped out of the bag

The opossum, very startled at being dumped out of the bag. He’s about 6 inches long, plus another 6 inches of tail.

the opossum!

The opossum!

Opossum leaving

Opossum: “Am I really free to leave?”

Opossum: "I'm freeeeeeeee!"

Opossum: “I’m freeeeeeeee!”

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Apr 15 2013

Defining success

I found this image the other day, and was struck by how true it is.

define success

Success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.  So in addition to having to decide if you have accomplished your aim or purpose – you have to know exactly what that aim or purpose is!

In my old rectangular life, I was a business analyst. We did all the paperwork, tables, lists, and graphs that would show what was needed in order to accomplish our client’s goals. Then we tracked what was done, compared it to what should have been done, and ultimately decided whether what we had done was good enough to present to the client. And of course in order to even START any of that we had to understand, in detail, to the n-th degree, what it was that our customer was actually trying to accomplish.

Defining what they wanted done often took WAY more time than the client expected. For instance, a client might want to sell more widgets. (It’s always widgets, isn’t it?) That sounds great! So how many do you sell now? They often didn’t know. Too many would be in production, or ready to ship but not sold, or out on consignment, or purchased on credit, or something else not cut and dried. And that makes it complicated to even try to figure out how many they sell now. But you have to know what TODAY is like, and have a way to MEASURE today, before you can begin to figure out how to make it better.

And once the client figured out how many widgets they are selling currently, we’d ask how many more they wanted to sell. They often didn’t know. So we’d say – is selling one more per month enough? Of course the answer is NO. If they’re paying for experts to help them sell more, they want to sell significantly more. But they don’t know what that means to them. Some have a nice, round number in their head, like 20% more. OK – can your manufacturing facilities handle producing 20% more? Do you have enough space? Do you have enough employees? Do you have enough raw materials?

Just the path to figure out what someone wants to accomplish is harder than it seems. Even when that “someone” is you.

And so it is with self-sufficiency. Or homesteading. Or farming. Or whatever it is you call what you are doing that makes reading this blog interesting to you.

What is it you want to accomplish? I wanted to spend less money, use and eat healthier things, and be less dependent on mass consumer products. But have I accomplished that? I certainly hope so! But I have no facts or figures to back that up – yet.

The path to success isn’t linear. My rabbits did well for a while, then didn’t. I feel I have learned all I can from rabbits, and will be dissolving my rabbitry. Is learning all I can a success? Or is choosing to stop a failure? That depends on how I define my goal, doesn’t it? I started a large garden last year with high hopes, but then ended up in the Philippines with my husband instead. My garden died, except for the swiss chard and brussels sprouts. I love swiss chard and brussels sprouts, and got them with no work whatsoever, so is that a success? Or because all the other veggies died, is that a failure? Or maybe my family is my largest goal and so spending 5 weeks with my hubby instead of being separated from him was the largest success possible? This year’s garden is going to be huge, and I might literally run out of room before I run out of seedlings to transplant – again, is that a success because of the size or a failure because I may have overbought?

It all depends on your goals. And an acceptance that the path to ultimate success in anything – farming, self-sufficiency, and even family – is not a linear progression. Ups and downs are to be expected. Shooting off the graph into 3D land can happen at a moment’s notice. Your path won’t look like anyone else’s. It will be unique to you, your current state, your goals, and your road to getting there – and will depend completely on how you personally define each of them.

Jan 21 2013

Whatever you did for one of the least of these …

Hubby and I have entered the world of foster care. We will be working with at-risk infants. That will be the ones born with drugs in their systems, or ones who aren’t gaining weight appropriately, or have feeding tubes, or need apnea monitors, or have broken bones, or are living with other similar issues.

We have not chosen an easy road, but rather one offered to us by God.

We are currently in training/licensing classes. We’ve taken three of the required eight, so far. Each is three hours long, so nine hours of training completed so far.  After those classes we go on to have classes in CPR, First Aid, Child Restraints in Vehicles (car seats), and special training for the medical issues we’ll experience once children are in our home.  With those things being extra classes after the training ones, you may be asking “what are in the training classes?”

From our training manual:
Voices of Youth video – actual people who were in foster care as children, talking about how many foster homes they had, why they moved so much, and what stuck out in their minds about certain caregivers.
The legal process - from the first phone call from someone reporting an abused or neglected child, through the child entering foster care, the court hearings that happens while the child is recovering in the foster home, through the child either returning home or being adopted. It’s a process which can take several months to several years.
Explaining that all foster parents are mandated reporters – what that means, what we report, and a reminder of what happens when we do.
Explanations of what tends to bring children into foster care.
Information about addictions and family systems that lead to children being removed.
How a child learns to communicate their needs, and what happens to that child if his/her needs are not met, and the larger impact if a child never forms a healthy attachment to a caregiver.
The impacts on a child’s development when he/she is placed into foster care. A reminder that the child’s first day in care is likely the worst day of that child’s life. (We expect it to be the best day, but from a child’s viewpoint it usually is not.)
Ways we as caregivers can minimize those traumas and help children develop attachment.
Types of development – physical, cognitive, emotional, social. How a child can be a different “age” in each area.
Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder, and the ways it impacts a child’s development.

And that’s just what we covered in the first three classes!

The classes are pretty intense. Lots of videos, lots of explanations being given by people personally impacted by what we’re studying.

A video of an adorable girl whose biological mother drank alcohol to excess during her pregnancy – resulting in this seven year old girl being unable to hear the instruction “touch the red circle and the blue square” and follow it correctly. She was cheerful, she wanted to follow the instructions, but she could not hold them in her mind long enough to do them.

Photos of typical bruise and burn patterns we may see in the children when they arrive in our homes. I couldn’t watch all of that one.

This is not going to be an easy road. My heart already hurts for these children, and I find myself reading books and internet postings to be sure that I know a multitude of ways to help the chlidren we’ll have with us, for as long as they stay with us.

I’m excited about this opportunity. I’m nervous about this opportunity. I’m definitely praying about this opportunity. And we’d appreciate your prayers as well. I’ll keep you posted!

Dec 4 2012

Disappointed in Babies R Us

When hubby and I were in Seattle this past week, we went to a Babies R Us. With a number of baby showers coming up, and our application to become foster parents still pending, it seemed like a good thing to do (since they don’t have this store down where we live).

I expected to find a plethora of things I’d been hearing about, some new things, and to have an awesome time. But after we left, I realized that the feeling I had was, in fact, disappointment. And it surprised me.

If you believe the advertisements, Babies R Us is “the” baby superstore. It is supposed to have everything a family needs for a young child. But it definitely did not have what THIS family needs for a young child.

Sure, I could buy blankets. Acrylic ones with fire retardant and created with chemicals so that even the packaging warns “wash before using”.
I could buy clothing – if I were OK with ones that are “Made in China”. Didn’t we Americans learn anything when we found out they were painting children’s toys with lead paint? Apparantly not, since we still buy things from them that we immediately give to children who put everything in their mouths.
I could buy baby formula. But isn’t breast supposed to be best? Then why does this baby superstore have exactly two short aisles as high as my shoulder selling items needed for breast feeding, while it has two long aisles taller than my head full of formula? (And that doesn’t even count the aisles of bottles, because they can be used with both formula and breast milk so I counted them toward neither.)
Then there are diapers – they sell exactly two brands of cloth diapers, and on the shelves were two packs of one, and one pack of the other. Yet disposable diapers were stacked upwards of six deep in every brand and size. And no diaper covers for the cloth, either, which is a very necessary piece of cloth diapering!

We went to the toy department – and found exactly one type of doll that came in both a “white” and a “black” design. *Sigh* As half of an interracial couple, variety in doll skin colors is going to be important to any child in this house. I appreciate that so many children’s dolls come in colors like red and blue, but when skin tones are available, I really REALLY wish the tones reflected real life. Even Crayola has removed their “flesh” color name, because they have realized that flesh comes in many colors. Why can’t doll manufacturers do the same? And since a few of them do, why can’t Babies R Us stock more of those?

And I probably ought not to get started about the whole “baby container” industry. Really, do parents today really look for any available way to put thier child into something and walk away from him/her? Infant car seats that you can carry around without ever touching your child. Baby chairs with interactive trays so you don’t have to interact with baby yourself. Talking toys to teach your child their colors and shapes. Bumbo seats so you don’t have to hold your child while feeding him/her. You could feasibly have whole DAYS with your child where you never touched them other than to move them from container to container, starting with breakfast and ending with bed. (And changing a diaper, of course, which you don’t even have to check anymore thanks to “color change wetness indicators”).

Sure, all this stuff probably makes parenting much more convenient. But is that really what parenting is supposed to be? Convenient? Done with minimum muss and fuss? What happened to people who actually enjoyed touching their child? Ones who pay enough attention to notice when their child wets or soils their diaper? Ones who hold their child while they eat? Ones who give their baby a wooden spoon and a pot to bang on while they cook, so the child can “help”? Why do we feel the need to fill their lives with plastic replicas of real life items, while putting the baby anywhere other than against our skin?

Please understand – I KNOW some of these things were invented because of the needs of special needs children and their parents. If you NEED one or more of these things, I am not condemning you. Invite me to your baby shower and I’ll even buy one for you. But to use multiple things to limit your interaction with (and touching of) your healthy baby is really starting to grate on me.

If God ever grants me a biological child, I fully intend to baby wear, cloth diaper, breast feed, rear face in carseats until at least age 2, touch my child at every opportunity, clothe him/her in fibers from suppliers I trust, and provide a generous number of toys that feature people of every race and that are not plastic. And his/her colors and shapes will be taught by me, not by something that runs on batteries.

I am surrounded by parents who do many of these things. I would have plenty of support for any of them. I think cloth diapering is the only out of the norm (for here) thing I’d choose to do.

And I guess I just figured out why there isn’t a Babies R Us where I live. It would go out of business. People here – including me – are different. And we like it that way.

 

Aug 20 2012

Things I took for granted in the USA

This is meant to be an amusing post about things that I personally have dealt with while living in the Philippines.

1. When is the last time you looked at the ceiling in your bathroom in the United States? Yeah, me neither. I, and most of the rest of the people in the USA, take for granted that we don’t need to. But the last time I looked at the bathroom ceiling in here in the Philippines? Just a few minutes ago, and every time before that when I walked into it. I have become quite conscious of the liklihood of something alive dropping down on my body from the ceiling, and the bathroom is where I’m usually in a most precarious and vulnerable state. And after seeing the size of the spiders here, and their propensity for hanging out upside down, I now very carefully look for them before entering. And when (that is WHEN, not IF) there is a spider on the bathroom ceiling, it needs to be shooed out the window before I make use of those facilities. I wonder how often I’ll check the ceiling when I get back to the USA before getting out of that habit?

2. I took for granted the fact that I knew what was in the food I ate. I could tell by looking, because there are certain foods that are prepared certain ways, and I am familiar with many of them. Here, I can point to a dish on a buffet and ask “what is it?” Sometimes I’ll be told the proper name in the local dialect (“pancit” is one example). Sometimes I’ll be told the main ingredient (“chicken” in the case of most pancit). Other times I’ll be told something they find interesting about the dish. (“It uses Chinese noodles” is what I hear about pancit.) Other times they think I want to know what creates the spice flavor (I can’t spell the names of the pancit spices, so I won’t even try). And sometimes I can get one person pinned down enough to hear a list of all the ingredients (“It’s called pancit, it’s a noodle dish, it has pork and chicken and sometimes fish boiled with the noodles and the spices.”) BUT the kicker here is that with the prevalence of maids who do the household cooking, and the popularity of simply buying a ready-made dish from a street vendor to serve with dinner, nobody really knows what is in that specific dish, since the cook makes whatever alterations to the standard recipie that seem best to her at the time. Which has resulted in my shellfish-allergic husband eating shrimp. Twice. I’m glad we brought plenty of Benedryl, so far that is all that has been needed.

3. And speaking of eating things that shouldn’t be – we in America take for granted that we can drink any water that is put in front of us. Sure, in some areas it might not taste good. And sure, sometimes it has contaminants that we choose to filter out. But in almost every home and restaurant in America you can fill a glass with tap water and drink it. You do not have to think ahead every day to ensure that there is enough drinking water in the house. People in the USA don’t run out of money and have to go without water until the next payday. But they do here. None of the homes we have visited had clean water piped in to them. Every single one of them has had to purchase drinking water, or drink from a community well that is known to have impure water. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. From the houses of the high-up city officials who have drinking water delivered in systems that look like an office water cooler, to the houses of the middle class where they buy water in huge square containers with spigots. To the houses of the poor who have one-liter bottles of purchased water lined up against a wall. To the houses of the completely destitute who drink from the community well – and suffer problems like parasites and typhoid as a result. (Isn’t it ironic that the class least able to pay for medical help is the class that must most often need it?) The Philippine government is aware of the problem, and is taking slow steps to rectify it. But in the meantime, always ask before drinking any water in the Philippines.

4. Back to the funny stuff. In the USA we take for granted that trees are safe. That the worst that typically happens from trees is that your car gets bird poop on it if you sit under one too long. But in the Philippines, trees have FRUIT on them! Often heavy fruit. Fruit that falls from the tree when it gets ripe. Ever had your car windshield get broken by a coconut? The roof or hood can get a pretty good dent in one from them, too. So in spite of the heat, Filipinos fortunate enough to have cars do NOT park them in the shade under trees. People don’t sit under trees much, either. The shade of a wall is much safer.

5. Mosquitoes. I really am starting to find them more than just annoying. In the USA, we take more precautions against our dogs getting heartworm from mosquitoes than we take against mosquitoes biting us. I take for granted that mosquitoes can’t really hurt me. And because of where we are in the Philippines, I took no more precautions against mosquitoes than the normal expedient of bringing mosquito repellant. After all, this island does not have malaria, and that’s all that the travel sites told me to take caution against. But then we get here, and I learned about Dengue fever. It’s mosquito-borne, but it does not show up on any travel preparation sites because there is no vaccine against it! It causes high fever, high amounts of pain, vomiting, dehydration. In a more serious case, internal bleeding. Less than one percent of cases end in death. But in a population of over 100 million people, even 1% is too high.  I think when I return to the USA, I will see future mosquito bites on my skin and take a moment to be grateful about where I live, and that I will have no symptoms from that bite other than itching.

We return to the USA fairly soon. While I will be relieved to experience things I expect again (and not be surprised by a spider or coconut dropping down on my head), I will sincerely miss many things I have experienced here in the Philippines.

May 13 2012

Homestead injuries

Have I mentioned recently that I’m still getting the hang of this homesteading thing? This weekend was the worst. I am cut and bruised and swollen all over, from multiple things. Ready for the list?

First of all is a bunch of scratches on my left arm and stomach. They are from the mother rabbit that gave birth a couple days ago. She didn’t want to nurse, so I have been taking her out of her hutch and over to her kits and encouraging her to stay there by feeding her grass and clover. Works well, except she does NOT always want to leave her hutch - and rabbits, while cute and cuddly, also have very strong back legs tipped by very strong and sharp nails… So I have a pair of 10-inch scratches on my arm, and a trio of 4-inch scratches on my stomach. But the kits are fed, and that’s what matters, right?

Next is a wrenched back, a small cut on my arm, a deep cut on my leg, and a deep bruise on the same leg. They are from a seat breaking. I was sitting in the yard, supervising the mother rabbit with her kits, when my seat broke and pitched me backwards. I had a semi-soft landing – in the manure pile. Ewwww. Manure on my neck and shirt and arm, bleeding from my leg, and hurting in my neck, shoulder, and upper back. This accident was a bad one. I’m glad my husband was there to help me up, help me get cleaned, and spritz me with antibacterial spray.

Next was a twisted ankle. I mean, really? I’m walking on the SIDEWALK and step off it to avoid a trash can, and step in a hole. Grrrr.

And lastly I go outside this evening to do the evening animal chores, and got attacked by about a hundred mosquitos. OK, maybe not a hundred, but several dozen at least. Mosquitoes don’t usually bother me, it’s been about 10 years since I even remember having a single mosquito bite. But by the time I get indoors, I have EIGHT huge mosquito bites. The size of bee stings! I hopped in the shower to rinse everything off, and dabbed a baking soda poultice on each bite. That takes the itch away, but only for as long as the baking soda stays on. If my clothing brushes it off, it goes back to itching and needs it again.

So that was my weekend. Punctuated by a phone call to wish my mom a Happy Mother’s Day, of course! She was very sympathetic about all my injuries. Mothers can be good about that, can’t they?

Tomorrow is a new day. Maybe no new injuries!

Apr 16 2012

Thinking about my ancestors

My parents have been pretty cool about this homestead/mini-farm thing. A little bit of horror from my mother asking “you DO that?” and some double-checking that we’re not on the verge of starvation out here so far away from them, they’re pretty fine with it. They enjoyed seeing a litter of rabbit kits last year, and oohed and aaahed over them.

My father grew up on a farm. He remembers going out to catch the chicken for Sunday dinner. As the first person in his family to go to college, he could have been very offended that I chose to live a farm-ish life myself, but he isn’t. He says he raised us not to live the same way he’s living, but to have the ability to choose whatever way we wanted to live. Isn’t that awesome?

I’m thinking about his family tonight because I finally checked out the 1940 Census information that the government recently released. I clicked and clicked and scrolled through nearly 50 pages, and then I found my dad’s family on it! His father, mother, and older brother. I learned things about his family and the times they lived in that I hadn’t known before. At the time of the census, they lived in town. His father was a painter. They rented their house and paid $3.50 a month for it. His mother completed the 8th grade – a whole grade higher than his father did.

Things were different back then, weren’t they?

In the same neighborhood there were women who went out every day as housemaids in private residences. There were people with occupations I had never heard of. The cursive handwriting on the forms was nice to see in the current age of typing. A little look into a different age is pretty fun.

Curious to see what things you can find? http://www.ancestry.com/1940-census is where I found the forms. You do have to create an account, but it’s free and I’ve never received spam from free accounts there before. Enjoy!