Trips, guests and more guests!

Just at the tail end of a busy window of an out of town trip and a house full of guests! The wind down! Managed to get down to Victoria for a visit with my folks and a trip to the museum.

We had such a nice time down there. The boys coped pretty well and we really were digging the museum this time around. Especially me! The fiber arts displays, tools and handicraft specimens ( the most incredible beadwork, basketry, and embroidery) definitely caught my attention much more now than they every have in my dozens of trips to that museum on school trips and such as a child! The boys were right into it as well, since they have been really digging primitive arts and tool making lately. It was especially awesome when it was quiet... almost magical in there. Then the school tours started and the boys were irritated and stiff and had thier ears covered. School kids are noisy! Sadly it can be tricky for them to recover once they are overloaded like that.

When we came home things were all out of whack. The littlest one has been bedwetting and verbally stimmy and angry ( the likes I haven't seen since we cut out dairy a year ago) and the oldest is crawling around all over the floor, flappy and stimmy and really just completely out of it( looking at me with that completely blank but very unhappy stare). For the first few days I just assumed it was just a recovery from the trip, then I started worrying that they were regressing for some reason. ( I had just pulled the autism and sensory processing books off the shelf last week to donate to the local elementary school. A little premature and overly optimistic maybe?) My tummy has been awful all week, itchy skin and just not right, but I hadn't put it all together until yesterday. I all of the sudden had the vision of a box of kellogs corn flake crumbs on the counter when my folks made hommade chicken strips. My dad is gluten/ casein/ soy free, but isn't careful AT ALL when it comes to the condiments and hidden gluten sources. I had already saved the meal a pile of times from questionable seasonings and such .( I research every single product we use and contact the company if unsure. we also never use anything if there is ever a question, or just make our own versions that are safe). Anyhow, despite all of my neurotic checking and rechecking, I somehow gapped on that one! It used to be that it took about two weeks to recover from being glutened, so we will have to see. It has been one week and a little bit and the kiddos are still looking pretty affected. It was actually a blessing though because the boys have been talking about gluten and dairy lately and thinking that they have been missing it. They are clear in thier minds that they DO NOT like feeling like this though. Since it has been a long time since we were contaminated they have been unable to make that connection. Better so have a small slip up than to sneak a bite of something really gluteny or cheesy when they are at class or something!

And another month flies by!

I don't know how this keeps happening! Another month has flown by... a very gray, rainy, dreary month! About the last time I wrote we found signs of a mouse in the house. It never got into our food, or garbage or anything, but we found little signs. Like holes eaten in my sweaters!!! I thought that it was some sort of moth problem with the fleeces or something, so I was carefully sorting through everything. No moths, but I did find mouse poop. The horror! We have lived in this 120 year old house for 7 years and have never had mice before... it makes me crazy. What made me extra crazy was when searching and cleaning ( and not finding more than a dozen little turds) we opened the furnace vents and found the main pathway. Mouse crap in the forced air furnace. We turned off the heat completely until the landlords agree to clean the vents. Thank goodness it has been a mild winter so far. So I was completely neurotically panicked... we have been under the weather for most of the winter, and the boys are asthmatic. So after the cleaning, bleaching, plugging every teeny crack with steel wool, and neurotic waking up to every little sound I heard( i am embarrassed to admit the part where i sprinkled baby powder over every single surface to see if i could see where it was coming from.... that was fun to clean up!).... I came down with the most awful flu. Like freaky fever, chills like i have never experienced, toilet hugging passed out on the bathroom floor for three days, heart racing and sweating, barely conscious for a week kind of weird flu. ( of course the family should be banned from google , because they were convinced I had hantavirus! I think the doctors were even a little freaked out about it) It never progressed to the lung collapse and total system failure part though!... it took a couple of weeks to get better. Good news though. the mouse is gone. I think that it may have only been one. None of the traps ever got any, and there has been no sign of it at all. We bent back one little metal piece on one of the vent grates and I think that it was just out of place enough before that it could JUST squeeze through.

Got a little bit of knitting in. A friend had a brand new baby, so I pulled out that skein of my first ever hand spun. The one I did on the spindle... the cause of this slippery slope obsession with all things fiber! I used the free pattern for the manly Pebble Vest on Ravelry, but thought it was girly enough. I knew that i wouldn't have quite enough for the entire vest from the original skein, so I spun some of that nice cheviot mushroomy brown fleece. It is really nice and soft spun up. I had bought it from a farmer who washed it already. She wasn't a spinner though , so it isn't washed quite as thoroughly as the stuff that I do myself. I still have 3/4 of the fleece left, so I may rewash it all when the weather gets nicer. So here is the finished vest. I don't think the pics quite do it justice... it needs a nice squishy new baby inside of it!



Been busy for the past couple of weeks trying to " get out there" a bit more. I am trying to expand the kids comfort zone a bit. They don't do crowds or outings too well, but we can't just be hermits all of the time! Eldest son is really doing so well these days out of the home, finally making friends and just happier around others and not so overwhelmed. Youngest son is improving. We tried to go to a show featuring an African children's choir. We got there too late and sadly we are too passive to handle people shoving through while we waited first in line to see if they could squeeze us in with some rearranging. Then we tried to go and watch the Olympic opening on the big screen. I was grumpy, and am not an Olympics fan at all, but thought it would be an OK way to have the kids experience community in that way. It was going all right until a woman and her teenage son sat down directly behind us and she proceeded to comment on EVERY SINGLE thing that was going on. Describing what they were wearing, what she thought about everything, reading what it said on the screen out loud. It was just so bizarre that I got the giggles until tears were streaming down my face. We left halfway through and watched it in the quiet comfort of home instead! We went to a busy ( and awesome) travelling Science World show yesterday and it was just too much for the youngest... his coping skill is to punch himself in the face and hide under tables, and generally growl at anyone who looks in his general direction. After many breaks and snacks and walks around the building to recoup, he came around a bit. Enough to get a sweet fossil of an octopus leg from the paleontology exhibit! Eldest son even volunteered to go up to take part in an experiment during the show. Something that never ever would have happened a year ago! I got to hit the thrift store in the next city over, and could hardly contain myself when I found the final desirable cast iron piece that i have been lusting over... a wicked muffin tin. For cheap cheap cheap! And to top it off, a copy of the encyclopedia of Country Living, which is pretty cool and I usually am about 40th on the wait list when I want to re read something from it! It was a good day!

In photos...

Thanks for the tip Miranda! I need to brush up on my photo skills!

What this doesn't show are the multiple batches of salsa and tortilla chips that I devoured while I knitted away furiously. I am the type who will get way too focused and forget to eat all day... so snacks are a must. I only mention this for one important reason. I froze about 30 or 40 pounds of tomatoes from the garden this year, all in serving size baggies. I always have great intentions, and they do eventually get used up when I run out of the cheater cans of tomatoes in the pantry! It is the blanching and peeling I dread! So I have been successfully plowing through the tomato supply with this great salsa recipe!!!

Slide the frozen tomatoes straight out of the bag onto a baking tray and throw on a couple of cloves of unpeeled garlic and an Jalapeno pepper .( I have been skipping the hot pepper and instead am putting in one chipotle pepper in adobe sauce. The kind in the little cans) I use a large mortar and pestle to make my salsa but I am sure that a food processer would work. I have also seen the japanese style suribachi for much cheaper than a good mortar and pestle and they work great. Even for hard spices like cumin seeds... http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/Articles/Unique-Cooking-Tools-641/suribachis.aspx Throw the whole pan into the oven under the broiler until the skin on the tomatoes blisters and turns black. If the tomatoes are the cherry type they will be finished at this point but if you are using other tomatoes flip them over and blacken the other side... the jalapeno too, because this makes it super easy to skin. While you are waiting use the mortar and pestle grind up a pinch each of cumin seeds and dried oregano. Mush the roasted and peeled jalapeno{seeded if you want} ( or chipotle) and garlic cloves into the spices until you have a smooth paste. Then I slip the skins off of the tomatoes and throw them into the mix as well ( my huge mortar and pesltle is my favourite kitchen appliance. i even leave the salsa in it to serve it up.) and mash it up until you have something that resembles salsa. I throw in a half of an onion finely diced, a handful of fresh chopped cilantro, a capful of apple cider vinegar and a pinch of good salt.

I love this salsa. Not quite a fresh salsa and not quite a cooked one... a good in between traditional tasting one! Best of all an easy and yummy way to use up those bags of tomatoes sitting at the bottom of your freezer.

Arrgg!

I really am still around! With all of the spinning I was doing I decided that it would only be practical if I taught myself to knit.( knitting meaning more than a scarf!) All I knew how to do was to knit and pearl. In the past month I made myself a lovely pair of socks and I handspun some wool and made my hubby a beautiful celtic knot type of cabled hat. I didn't go into it easily! I even had to read a pattern graph thingy
http://www.knitty.com/ISSUEwinter09/PATTknotty.php
It turned out really nice but the camera just doesnt want to show the cables properly. I am pleased with myself though... I no longer hate knitting! Good thing... as it takes hours and hours and hours of my time! The fact that it has been raining pretty much non stop over the past month helped things along as well.
I really mean to write more often... things are interesting around here and there is no shortage of things to write about. Just got distracted for a bit!

Time is flying!

Things are busy and flying by around here. Night walks and sledding in the snow, Christmas community events and all of the rest! The baby birds are full grown already and are sleeping cuddled up on the perch with thier mama... funny little things!
Things have been a tad intense around here lately. Eldest son came into the bedroom late the other night in tears. He was laying awake in bed thinking about the purpose of our existance and the " point" of it all. An eight year old in the middle of an existential crisis. Those parenting moments that you don't quite know how to handle properly, then worry and fuss over it in your mind for days later. Gah! I wouldn't be surprised if the boy developed an ulcer , all of the worrying he does.
Putting together the norfolk pine houseplant" Christmas tree" tonight I think. Pretty casual here this year. The first time in a while though that we are doing it by ourselves. I will definitely miss being with my family. Looks as though we can afford new tires for the van by the new year if we are really frugal. Then we can make our visits in January.

Oh.My.Goodness!!!

So I found a pickling crock on Craigslist today for 30 dollars. I couldn't pass it by as I have been looking for something for large batches of pickles. Sooooo.... it turns out that 15 gallons in my head... is WAYYYYY smaller than it is in real life. I am seriously shaking my head at myself right now!

For reference, it is 2 feet tall and that is a 45 pound child in there.