• Tag Archives Jen
  • OK. Here’s The Guy To Blame.

    Summer                            Waxing Grandchildren Moon

    Ruth and Gabe have napped, like Grandpop and Granma.  This means they have considerably more energy.  Gabe covered a complete circuit of the patio to front door run, moving as fast as his stubby little legs and slightly forward leaning motor could take him.  I was in hot pursuit.  By hot I mean dew point that is absurd from a Minnesota perspective.  Gabe did not seem deterred.

    Ruth and Grandma, in other news, had feathered boas and performed various short versions of 1920’s flapper era music.  The show moved upstairs only a moment ago.

    Jon has the trailer attached to his car.  It will travel to Colorado and not return except under unusual circumstances.  He needs it for his remodeling and his fledgling custom ski business.  It’s absence frees up space in the third garage bay.  I know, I can’t believe we have three garage bays either.  If you come to our house from the west, it looks like we are pets of three internal combustion driven machines who have the big home.

    Due to a spotlight event tomorrow and an America’s public tour immediately after, I’ve had to study while the grandkids are here.  This morning I read the material on the butterfly maiden kachina and this afternoon I read about Tlingit culture and house screens.  The Hopi faith tradition fascinated me as I learned more about it.  They have a tradition of peaceful living, living that consciously seeks a balance with the natural world and all living things.  The Tlingits have a similar perspective.

    In listening to a set of lectures titled Religions of the Axial Age, I’ve learned that it may have been Zoroaster who pushed Western culture away from a natural, earth centered faith and toward a pantheon, adherence and propitiation of which had a direct correlation to eternal life.  Which was, at least according to this guy, also a Zoroastrian notion.  By developing the notion of a messiah, an end-times judge, and, along with it, the idea of an apocalypse, Zoroaster stuck us with the linear understanding of time.

    (a tower of silence where zoroastrians exposed their dead to vultures and decay)

    Give me the kachinas who come back from their home in the San Francisco Peaks for a six month period beginning around the winter solstice ready to help out.  Makes much more sense to me.


  • Families

    Summer                                              Waxing Grandchildren Moon

     

    Gabe and Ruth have broad palates.  Tonight Ruth ate sushi, tempura shrimp and a whole dish full of tempura vegetables as did Gabe.  They also wolfed down tempura ice-cream.  Afterward, Ruth wanted to put on a play in an ampitheatre located behind the Osaka Restaurant.  We waited awhile for her to decide on a performance, but the show, in this case, did not go on.  Maybe tomorrow in her playhouse.

    Families are magical and mysterious, the vessels proven to travel through time intact.  We create them often with little realization of the long tail such action has, but consider the genetic chain linking you to the generation before you and the one before that and the one that crossed the ocean and the one that came out of Africa and the one that links you to mitochondrial Eve.

    They find us at our most intimate, most troublesome, most winsome, most ugly.  The family collects bad acts and good, favors and betrayals, puts them in the alembic of an extended web of relationships and distills out the future.  Miracles are never more than this.

    Our own family, gathered in part here right now, is no different, not special or unique, but no less special or unique than any other.  Ruth laughs, Jon wonders, Jen ponders, Gabe opens and closes, Grandma hugs and Grandpop writes.  The things we do, the people we are.


  • Fiery Hoops of Passage

    Summer                                        Waxing Grandchildren Moon

    Ruth and Gabe move and do, absorbing, trying, reaching, running, searching, asking.  They are both information and experience Brawny Towels.  Nothing passes them by.

    Their emotions are quick to surface and quick to flee.

    Jon and Jen face this firestorm of energy and demand constantly, at home and at work.  It’s enough to make a sane person tired and a neurotic neuroticer.  But, it is also the stuff of very stuff of which life is made; the fiery hoop through which we all had to pass on our way to and through elementary school.

    The cycle of family life, children, then grandchildren keeps  all ages in touch with the heroes journey on which we have all trod and on which those we love are now engaged.

    Here’s to Gabe and Ruth, two pilgrims now progressing on the path.  See the Machado poem in the upper left of this website.


  • Uh-oh

    Summer                                        New (Grandchildren) Moon

    It’s 10 am.  Do you know where your grandkids are?  I do, they’re upstairs.

    Ruth has brought her sombre et sol disposition with her.  When sol, her blond hair dances and her smile, often mischievous, lights up the room.  When sombre, she turns her face away or covers it up with her ever present bunny and pretends no one else is there.  When she first wakes up, like her grandpop, it’s all sombre.  Later, the sun breaks out and she starts to play.

    Gabe opens cabinets and investigates those things stored just for him, that is, at his level.  One minute he’s playing sword-handler by juggling food processor blades–yikes–the next he’s taking the microwave popcorn out one bag at a time.  One bag at a time, that is, until he tumbles to the fact that he can get them all out by turning it upside down.  As he often says, Uh-oh.

    Gabe, as you may know, has hemophilia.  That means, among many other things, that Jon and Jen have to give him infusions of clotting factor three times a week through a port in his upper left chest.  It’s an elaborate protocol.  First the one who  will do the infusing has to sterilize their hands, then put on sterile gloves and prepare the infusions.  They come pre-measured but they still have to be drawn into a hypodermic plunger.

    After that’s done one of them, in this case Jen, holds him and the other, Jon, takes a small needle with a butterfly attachment and inserts it into the port.  Hopefully.  Jen said she went several weeks without missing the port, then a long stretch missing it the first time.  Gabe anticipates the poke and is unhappy, fidgety, but not out of control.

    Once the stick is in Jon first flushed the port with saline, the switched to the factor (clotting factor), pushed that out with another saline injection and follows, ironically with a fourth and last infusion of heparin, a blood thinner.  Counter intuitive, at least to me.  But, not if you understand.

    You’ve just put clotting factor in the port.  It will clot any blood in or around the port, creating a possible source of a clot breaking off and entering the bloodstream.  Not good.  So, the heparin resolves that problem.

    As I said at the beginning of this journey, Gabe couldn’t have gotten a better set of parents.  It’s not a drama, it’s not a why me, it’s a we need to do this so let’s get on with it.  That attitude will transfer to Gabe who will have to manage all this in the future.


  • Grandkids

    Summer                                  New (Grandchildren) Moon

    Jon and Jen, Ruth and Gabe rolled in around 6 pm.  Kate fed them all, I cleaned up and Jon and Jen organized their family.  Vega and Rigel, of course, helped.

    Ruth went out to her playhouse, looked up at me and said, “I want more toys.”

    Gabe is in what I call the unguided missile stage of human development.  His motor is always on and he hits one thing, bounces off and heads off somewhere else, opening this, closing that, grabbing a pair of scissors, carrying his pin-wheel.  Busy, busy, busy.

    It’s a pleasure to have them here.  They’re here until Thursday.


  • Mighty Possum Warriors

    Summer                                         New Moon  (Grandchild’s Moon)

    From this point forward (if I remember) I’m going to start naming the moons in ways that make sense to our life here at Artemis Hives and the Seven Oaks.  The Grandchild’s Moon is in honor of a yearly visit that takes place most often in this moon’s ambit since Jon and Jen return to work as teachers in early August.

    The mighty possum warriors finally gave up and came inside to the cool, flopped down on the couch and promptly went to sleep.  A hard day hunting the wily critter had done them in.  I’m 99% sure that the possum only has shattered nerves.  All that barking.  Right out on the patio.

    Jen called today and they leave Chicago tomorrow and plan to be here Sunday night.  They are going to come up on the Minnesota side of the Mississippi, stopping in Winona at the National Eagle Center.


  • Hooray for the Red, White and Blue

    Summer                                            Waning Strawberry Moon

    Hooray for the red, white and blue.  That is, the blueberries, the raspberries and the white clover among which I picked them this morning.  Worked outside for an hour and a half, moving an outdoor table back to its original place on the brick patio outside our garden doors, a plastic table into the honey house for some  more space.  Can’t set the smoker on it though.

    (Georgia O’Keefe, 1931)

    This all has two purposes, getting the house nicer and in better shape for our own use as the summer begins to take up residence and for our guests in July:  Jon, Jen, Gabe and Ruth and the Woolly Mammoths.  I also moved some potted plants around and am mulling painting a post I stuck in concrete a few years ago.  Painting it some bright, contrasty color that will make the green pop.

    Only 83 this morning but the dew point’s already at 67.  Glad the bee work got done yesterday.  On the bees.  The president of the Beekeeper’s Association lives in Champlin (near us, sort of ) and has offered to come over himself after the fourth.  I’ll be glad to have his experience looking in on my colonies.

    While I picked mustard greens this morning, I noticed a bee making a nectar run on a clover blossom near my hand. “Keep up the good work.  Glad to see you out here and hard at work,” I told him, rather her.  She jumped at the sound of my voice.  One of those workers best left to her own initiative.

    Haven’t heard yet from Kate but the plan is for her to come home today at some point.


  • Gotta Hive Those Bees

    Spring                                               Waxing Flower Moon

    Kate’s off for Denver, excited as a small girl at Christmas.  Seeing her grandkids makes this lady levitate.  Even her dinged up right hip seems a bit better this morning, partly from anticipation and partly from the steroid injection she had on jen-kate-ruth-gabe300Tuesday.   (Pic:  Leadville, Co Halloween 2009)

    It will be a busy time for me while she’s away.  I have two tours later this morning.  Then it’s over to Mother Garden to pick up a few things I need for this year’s garden:  bush bean seeds, leek transplants, coriander, dill, cosmos, marigolds.

    Back at home I’ll have to have a long nap to make up for getting up this morning at 5:45.  After that I have to buy more sugar and a spray bottle for the new bees, put foundations on the frames for their hive box and level up a spot for their hive.  Later, after 4:30 pm, I’ll drive out to Stillwater and pick them up, bring them home and hive them.

    Hiving a new package involves spreading the 2 pound package of worker bees over the floor of the hive box, then gently releasing the queen, replacing the four frames withdrawn, carefully (to avoid killing the queen which is bad) and putting a bit of pollen patty and a feeder on top.  That’s where the sugar comes in.  The spray bottle is for the trip home and the time lapse between then and when I get them in the hive.  It helps them stay nourished and calm.

    On Saturday I have to figure out why Rigel and Vega dug a large plastic pipe out of the ground, what, if any, function it serves, repair it, cover it over, this time with a board or something that will resist further digging and hope they don’t go all round the yard  digging up irrigation pipes.  I think they dig when they hear the sound of the water running through the pipes.  Oh, boy! Oh, boy!  Something’s there.  Something’s there.  Gotta get it.  Right now.

    With that work done I have to get back to amending the soil in the raised beds and planting seed.  If I have time, I’ll get in some weeding, too.


  • One last hug, Granpop!

    Winter                               Waxing Cold Moon

    Ruthie ran down the drive and said, “One last hug, Granpop!”  We had come back from an evening at the childhood sensation, Chuck E. Cheese.  I hugged Jon and Jen, kissed Gabe, under a crescent moon and took for the Marriot for one last night in Colorado.

    Chuck E. Cheese, for those uninitiated, is a bunch of booths spread out among many games of chance and skill.  All the games take one token, available with purchase of the meal.  The food is unremarkable, but the music is loud, the place safe–it has rules against gang colors, signs, weapons (which made me wonder)–and there’s a video camera where your kid can go and perform, broadcast on in-house closed circuit TV’s.  Ruth performed.

    It’s been a good six days here.  Family requires time and this is probably minimal but it was important, for me and for them.


  • Young Family

    Winter                       Waxing Cold Moon

    Next to last day in Denver.  Last night Jon and Jen and I went to Fogo de Chao, a Brazilian steakhouse.

    They have two young kids, Gabe and Ruth.  Gabe got his hemophilia diagnosis not long after his birth a year and 8 months ago, so they have had to cope with it; never more so than in the middle of this year when he began experiencing spontaneous bleeds.  This meant a port and every other day infusions of clotting factor, given by Jon and Jen at home.  In addition, Jon’s shoulder, crushed in a skiing injury a few years ago, got worse and required shoulder replacement surgery.

    This is a pretty high stress level for a young family and they have handled it with real grace.  Tensions, of course.  But they have remained positive and forward looking, not giving in to despair or hopelessness.

    They have also raised Ruth into an exceptional three-year old, bright and funny and wise.  Gabe’s a happy boy and really beginning to move around now after a slow start.

    They needed some adult time and we got it.  I told them how much I respected the way they had handled all they’ve had in their lives this past year.  Worth every penny.