Raise the Main! Set the Jib!

Every year, the girls grow more helpful on the boat. Here, they are working together to raise the jib sail. They are very cooperative about the safety rules, which require life jackets anytime they are in the cockpit and tethered harnesses whenever the sails are up or the water is choppy. But "Swabbie 1" and "Swabbie 2" don't mind.
They love to set the sails and get going, especially if it means heeling or participating in our new family chant.

"Prepare to come about!," one calls.

The rest answer, "Ready about!"

For now, these tacking instructions just let the girls know when to hang on to their crayons down below and give us a good reason to holler, but on a larger or more complicated boat, proper and efficient communication is essential.

Forecast: Blogging Flurries

My silence on this blog does not reflect a lack of notable events in my life. Surprisingly, it does not even reflect a lack of writing. I have just been writing for other venues, so I will now be flooding you with posts cut-and-pasted from other places on my hard drive and augmented with pictures. Here's the first, some pictures from a sailing trip earlier this year and the log from the first day.




July 5, 2007
We arrived in Olympia after a busy morning of packing and a drive up to Washington in the beautiful weather.
While Bryan put up the mast, Hannah and Meira sat in the shade and looked at books. Bryan's mast system has been revised several times over the last few years and he is now able to safely raise or lower the mast without assistance in just 15 minutes.
We loaded the boat, inflated the dinghy, and were ready to go. However, the tide was too low to allow us to launch, so we used the time to relax with cold drinks and locate some ice.
We finally launched without any more trouble about 6:15 PM. After navigating the channel out of Swantown Marina (in the East bay of Budd Inlet) we came upon a large sailboat race-probably more than 20 boats-and had to sail on the outside of the channel markers to stay out of the way.
We had planned to stay in Filucy Bay or Tolmie State Park that night, but due to the late start and our low fuel supply, we decided to stay in Boston Harbor. The guest moorage was full for the night, so we anchored out near the mooring field west of the marina. By now, we were all ready for homemade clam chowder; we ate a whole pot!
The next morning, as we sat at anchor, some kayakers paddled by. Hannah called out, "How are you?" and before they could answer, Meira yelled, "Good!"
We stopped by the fuel dock as we left and walked to the marina for a few minutes to stretch our legs. The girls were fascinated by the "fried egg" jellyfish and the marina employees filleting fish near the marina store.

Pour l'oeuvre du Vêtement du blessé

I played the piano for church this morning. I always enjoy rehearsing with the band, all the little musical humor we share and the good work that goes into preparing to lead in worship on Sunday. I wish everyone in the church could experience a service this way. If only each one could come having thought ahead about the topic, ready to sing the songs and participate in the space and the silence (or if not, be given 3 services to get ready).

Often when the group I play with (yes, we mean it when we say we play together) is scheduled, I get the joy of choosing a few songs for the prelude. Sometimes the group learns something to do together, but my new music book hasn't arrived yet and I was out of fresh ideas for the band. So I poked around in my piano bench and found this piece of music I didn't even know I owned. It is by Claude Debussy and is called Pour l'oeuvre du Vêtement du blessé. It looked simple and sounded lovely so I decided to use it for church. Last night, I finally thought I should look up the title and all the musical terms (Usually musical directions are in Italian, but Debussy wrote all of his terms and titles in French) so I found babelfish and started plugging in words.

Then the literal translation of the title popped up on my screen.

For the work of the clothing of wounds

For a moment, I was breathless. I don't know what I had expected, but it wasn't this. After a bit more research (which required turning my piece of music over and reading the previously-ignored blurb on the back), I discovered that Debussy wrote Pour l'oeuvre du Vêtement du blessé in 1915 to raise money for a charity devoted to clothing the wounded from the war. But the image of a piece of music written for the work of the dressing of wounds remained. I pulled out my medley of Deep River with There is a Balm in Gilead and played my own little musical joke. Then our pastor spoke about forgiveness as the antidote to bitterness and gave plenty of time for people to check their spirits for old wounds and to ask God for healing. And we waited for the dressing of the wounds.

I was apprehensive going into this service. Sometimes plans for worship fall into place in a way that is delightful to be a part of, but this service felt like hard work from the beginning. Still, I have done this thing often enough to know that God can (and does) work no matter what I feel, even when doing what he asks seems more like work than play, so I wasn't too worried (well, I was worried I would miss the transition in that third song, but that kind of worry just keeps me awake through 3 services). Still, I smiled at this serendipity, what my friend Jo called "a wink from God."

I pray that this morning was a time for the dressing of wounds; when people found the courage to allow God to open up old hurts, soothe, and bind them up again. And I am grateful to be a part of this work.

Tonight's Specials

The girls have a hand-me-down easel/chalkboard that lives outside most of the summer. Last year, I started writing the evening's menu on it before Bryan got home. It was fun to make dinner sound as fancy as I could. Most evenings, it didn't require much gussying up since we were exploring so many new vegetables. This spring, we have cheerfully renewed the habit. It makes family dinner just that much more special and (I hope) is a welcoming tradition for my hard-working husband. One night this week (when we had friends over), it said...

Tonight's Specials
Garlic Scape Pesto with Pitas
Potato Kale Soup
Homemade Ten-Grain Bread
Strawberry Shortcake

Tonight, (if I had written on it) it would have read...

Gnocchi with Swiss Chard, Spring Onions and Garlic Scapes
Fresh-baked Challah

Last night it just said...

Movie and Ice Cream

If you had to choose, which special would you order?

News and comments

(I must have been inspired by our visit to the news station. Or maybe not...this is all good news.)

Lead Story:
Bryan's been working late a lot recently, but he is finally home tonight and we are all having ice cream and watching one of my favorite kids' movies. School is officially out for the summer and our calendar is filling up with camping and sailing plans.

News Item 2:
Last Saturday, we had an open house out at Oakhill Organics, our vegetable farm. Despite the cold and rainy weather, we had a wonderful time, meeting other CSA members and playing with the new farm kittens.

Related News Item:
Speaking of kittens, a few weeks ago, we found three of them underneath one of the layers out at Kookoolan Farms, nestled in among the eggs. They didn't even have their eyes open yet and, with no Mama Cat in sight, we all had fun joking about looking for furry eggshells. We have seen them a couple of times since and they are so cute and growing so big. But I sure would have liked a camera that first day.

Awkward Segue to News Item 4 (and tease for next week's show):
Our church has been taking a fresh look at our worship practices recently, so I have been doing some of the same. I have some thoughts brewing, but I don't think they're fully steeped yet. I'm hoping to do some writing about it over the next few weeks so stay tuned.

In-Depth/Human-Interest News Item (with director's commentary):
I'm working to find a summer vacation routine for the girls and myself. This summer feels different than the past few for multiple reasons. Even two years ago, our routine was not much different during the summer as our schooling was quite a bit more relaxed than this year's. Last summer at this time, we were still trying to catch up from all my mom's knee surgeries when my brother fell on Mt. Hood. In fact, Sunday will be one year since the accident and we hope to have a much more normal (read "hospital-free") Father's Day.

I only spent a week or so helping with his hands-on care, but the stress of the whole experience took its toll and I spent much of the summer trying to recover my joie de vivre. I remember telling a friend that I was surprised to notice that my reflection in the mirror was hardly ever smiling. When my brother and I were younger, he would always say about a movie star or model, "She would be so pretty if she would just SMILE." I must have internalized the idea because I hardly ever look at myself the mirror without smiling, no matter what I look like that day (I also smile or nod back at the actors in a movie, though, so maybe I'm just strange). But that wasn't true for me last summer. It took a very patient husband, quite a few supportive friends (who cleaned my house, thwarted a impulse haircut, and listened) , and a couple of months of God's soothing grace to feel like myself again.

So this summer, with the girls old enough to create appropriately lazy occupations all on their own, and my joy and energy (if not my laundry room) intact, I am trying to take advantage of the relatively unstructured time. I hope to use some of it for music (I've been practicing more often and more diligently and am planning a brunch-and-music event with a cellist friend), writing (hopefully not just here on the blog), and house cleaning (well, you know what they say about 2 out of 3). But the new schedule is taking a bit of adjustment and will change week to week depending on our other plans. I just didn't expect the summer to feel so different from the school year, since the girls are home all the time anyway. What a nice surprise!

Quick Sign-Off:
So that's my latest news along with a few comments. How about leaving a comment of your own?

Now that it's sunny...

...I remembered to take a picture of the roof. A few weeks ago, Bryan and Meira disappeared to the garage for a couple of hours, made a trip or two to the hardware store and, by evening, had constructed this lovely roof.

Some enjoyable features:
It slides on rustic runners to keep the wood away from sparks or flame.
There is a storage shelf for the oven tools and marshmallow sticks.
It is so cute!

Saturday, we had our vegetable farmers over for dinner to help plan an open house on their farm. OK, OK, It was mostly an excuse to see Katie and Casey and fire the oven. When the increasingly excellent pizza was consumed, Katie suggested s'mores. We didn't have all the ingredients on hand, but after a quick pantry scrounge, discovered some marshmallows - and that's really what we were after anyway. The even heat of the oven roasted the most delicious, most perfectly browned marshmallows I have ever eaten. And I can't wait for a free weekend to finally try bread. I'll keep you posted...

Stars of the small screen

Yesterday, the girls and I went on a tour of KOIN 6 thanks to my friend, Liz (her husband, Brad was in the climbing accident with my brother, so we bonded in the hospital; this was more fun). She even took us into the studio during the noon news and we got to see what goes into making the show happen (thankfully, we couldn't hear the audio on the gory stories).

The girls had never seen a green screen and after the news, the weather guy and control room guy conspired to wow them with it's secrets (we had fun with a green cape and disembodied heads). Then there was the obligatory photo shoot as evening anchors and a couple of crazy interviews.

"Why, Meira, did your family decide to build an oven in your backyard when you already had one in the house?"

"Well, my mama burned herself on that one..."

Thanks, Liz for this very memorable experience. We'll be reenacting it all summer, I'm sure.

Vegetable update

Our refrigerator is overflowing! And our farmers say that this will be one of the smallest shares of the season. We have radishes, kale, collard greens, beets, a huge head of lettuce, a big bag of spinach, spring onions, and we would have had kohlrabi too but Meira ate it before we could get it to the car. So tonight for dinner I cooked up some of the collard greens along with the discarded kohlrabi greens and we ate them with dill-rye bread. Mmmm.

Any suggestions for dinner tomorrow? Volunteers to join us?

Vegetable days are here again

It's Vegetable Eve here in Yamhill County. Our evening prayers tonight were filled with thanks that tomorrow is the first vegetable pick up for our community supported agriculture program. (OK, so Meira also prayed that she would learn to make a better kind of sock, but there's just no telling with that girl). Perhaps tomorrow I'll let you know what was in our basket...and the yummy things we made with them.

We fired the oven!

(A note from the editor...
The work on this oven was done over several weeks, but the posting over several hours. Post dates and times do not reflect true chronology, but were broken up into several posts to clarify the steps we took in the actual process.

Anyone interested in seeing the creation in rewind should start here. Everybody else, scroll down a few posts and start there.)

Luke and Kate, two of our favorite people (we have many), flew in from Sitka for a visit on Saturday, April 14. We had been hoping to finish the oven in time to christen it with them, and we did!

We took advantage of the beautiful weather, cut a door, scooped out the sand, and lit a fire. To be more exact, Bryan, Luke and the girls did these things. I made lunch and took a nap, awakening to the sight of flames licking at the newly framed doorway and steam rising from the drying clay.

Bryan spent most of the day rushing between the oven in the back (stoking, poking) and the garage around front (cutting more scrap wood for firewood, making necessary tools and a beautiful door) and ended up smelling like a campfire.

While the pizza dough rose, Kate and I went to the store and returned with resources for excellent earth-oven pizza. It was almost 9 PM before the first ones were coming out of the oven, but they were superb!

Shaping the void

Rain and rehearsal kept us away from the oven this morning, but by 1:00 or so it had cleared off enough to work. The girls jumped in to build the sand dome while I made a Wilco run for a tarp and more sand.

Then we rolled up our sleeves and our pants legs and danced in the dirt. (did the Trinity dance like this when mixing Adam’s clay?), kneading, squidging, slopping, shaping…not your typical dance moves.

The division of labor sorted itself out, me on the tarp, mixing and picking out rocks; Bryan carefully packing clay around the crumbling sand dome; and the girls shifting between the two of us with occasional detours past the swing set and the water bucket.

I kept hoping the dome would take shape more quickly as we neared the top, but we seemed to slow at about the same rate as it grew. The day ended with cheers, pictures, and foot-washing all around, followed by take-and-bake pizza. (If we couldn’t use the new oven yet, at least we could have pizza!)

Now we wait to discover how long it takes mud to dry…in Oregon…in April.

A firm foundation

Over the last few evenings, Bryan has done quite a bit of work on the base for the oven. We decided to insulate with 4 inches of lava rock underneath the bricks.

A layer of mud follows to prevent sand from sifting down, then said sand (4 more inches) and finally red brick set into the sand.



We had a bit of trouble finding the brick. Many places we looked carried red-dyed concrete, but your basic clay brick was a bit tricky to find, and locating firebrick had us completely stumped.

Given the intermittent use we hope to get out of this oven, we think the red brick should work just fine. It looks great…and we can’t wait to cover it up!

Flocks of chicks and bricks and rocks come

I've been meaning to write about these things for a week or so now, and, although they are completely unrelated, wanted to lump them together in one post just for the fun of the Dr. Seuss reference.

"These things" are...

On a recent visit to Kookoolan Farms (one of our favorite sources for milk, eggs, chicken, laughter, and friendship) we helped clean the chicken brooder and were invited to return later in the week to help transfer a shipment of baby chicks into their new home.
We picked them up, all 200 of them, at the Yamhill post office, much to the relief of the postal employee who had just about had it with the shockingly noisy fluffballs.


Then we drove them to the farm ("peep, peep, peep" all the way home) and put them into the brooder. All together now...Awwww.



Our other excitement this week came in the form of rocks, bricks and sand (thank you, Craig's List) for the foundation of our earth oven. I'd been mulling the idea of an earth oven for several months now, but since I couldn't supply much more than the dough for the project, didn't pursue it any further than reading a book on the subject, always a good idea anyway. This week, during a brief evening escape to the back porch, Bryan and I talked over where, if we built an oven, we would put one. As soon as we pictured it nestled between the raised bed and the fence, just 2 steps from the back porch (of course, everything in our tiny back yard is just steps from the back porch), the project became inevitable.

Still, it surprised me, when the next evening, Bryan showed up with a pile of rocks for the retaining wall/foundation, and the next brought buckets of sand for the interior mold. He dug out the clay soil to save for the oven (finally it will be good for something!) and built the rock wall.

I went online to request that book from my library again.

Keeping body and soul together

I burned my hand this winter. Not a particularly painful burn, but a nasty-looking and prominent one on the back of my right hand. In the days that followed, many friends noticed and asked about it. One friend immediately broke off a piece of her aloe plant and covered my hand with its healing salve. Another friend covered my hand with hers and prayed for healing. I felt anointed with blessing both times.

This week, the memories of those occasions, though weeks apart, converged into a picture of what my network of friends do for me. Through hugs and small touches, good meals and conversations, gifts of food and thoughtfulness; they nourish me, soul and body.

I've grown accustomed to her face

After our lovely and relaxing weekend, which included the first bonfire of the season, the first (and second and third) s'mores of the season, and a lazy afternoon out at Casey and Katie's place
(well, lazy for the girls and me...Bryan helped drywall the workroom below their new house) we have had quite the exciting morning. (pause for drum roll)

Hannah lost her first tooth today!

She first noticed a loose tooth during "corn season" last summer and had begun to wonder if it would ever fall out. But her patience was rewarded this morning and she is happily calling everyone she can think of to share her good news. Between the gap in her mouth and the fact that she is back to wearing her glasses (thanks to a sharp-eyed sister who located the long-lost lens), I am going to have to get reacquainted with my little girl; she looks so different!

Bread in the Mourning

Yesterday, at a friend's house, I glanced idly through one of her Persian cookbooks. The pictures were tantalizing and I quickly worked my way to the dessert section. The number of the recipes with associations to grieving traditions surprised and intrigued me. Some dishes were to be made repeatedly, (on the 4th, 7th, and 40th days after the death of a loved one, for example) and many were to be shared with the grieving family and also with the poor.

Since Grandma died, over 2 weeks ago, I have worked out some of my grief in the kitchen. The first week, I baked potato bread and pugliese for our family. (I figured, if the army goes out of their way to bring fresh bread to the front lines for its morale-boosting benefits, it was probably a good idea for us as well.) Since then, I have made (and shared) whole wheat sandwich bread, ginger scones, plain scones, oatmeal molasses bread, a cinnamon coffeecake and several batches of cookies (including the one we ate for dinner last night. OK...yes...and breakfast this morning). I don't know if this amount of baking is unusual for me; I don't keep a baking diary. But it has taken on new meaning as I consider its place in my grieving process.

A year ago Christmas, I gave Grandma and Grandpa 12 months of bread. I wanted to visit them more often and bake more regularly and this gave me the impetus to do both. It was a good plan with satisfying results all around as we usually stayed long enough to share good bread and great stories. So this year would have been our second year of bread-induced visiting and I was really looking forward to it. I will still take bread to Grandpa, of course, and in many ways, the time with him is even more precious now, but it may be more a grieving tradition than a Christmas gift. We will break bread together and mark the passing of time since her death and honor the courage it has taken for Grandpa to make it through another month without his wife of (almost) 65 years.

Today I...

...cleaned up cat puke, thrice
...broke a plate
...burned my hand (a pretty hefty burn and I am playing for worship at a women's group tomorrow)
...found out that my sister is in jail for a DUI
...got an update on my grandma-in-law who is in the hospital
...spilled a cup of soured milk on my lunch, across the counter and down into the dishtowel drawer
...got an update on my brother who ODed over the weekend (my younger siblings joined my family as older children and brought a lot of difficult baggage they are still sorting through)
but I also...
...went for a walk in the snow with my daughters (laughing all the way)
...snuggled with the aforementioned cat (not her fault someone left a bowl of bean soup within her reach)
...received a conciliatory hug from my eldest
...spent time at the library with my children's librarian buddies
...baked cookies
...caught snow on my tongue
...gave away a frozen meal to someone who needed it more than I
...watched my daughters dance to jazz music
...found the matching lid for my leftovers container on the first try
...sent evites for my 30th birthday party
...made honey-mustard-curry chicken
...treasured (once again) my luminous life