I'm so excited about the new look of the south wall in my dining room!
Below is the "before shot". When we moved in, I didn't know what color to paint the walls so I stuck with off-white. Then that wall and corner became the "catch-all" area. Add another bookshelf when the first gets too full, hang the timeline in that empty spot. . . Here's a close up of the embarrassing corner where the little ones could play games on the old computer (because the old games don't work on the newer computer and I'm too cheap to buy new games when the old ones work fine!). This corner caught the "stuff" I would figure out a home for "someday". It was really bad! The disorganization was making me crazy and I really wanted a built in bookshelf like the one at the studio of my children's piano teacher. A few weeks ago I decided to paint the dining room and Alan and Destry decided it was the weekend to build the bookshelf. Here is my belated update of the project. I had lots of "help" painting the dining room a fun red. I pictured it brick red, and even though it isn't exactly the color I had in mind, I am tickled with it. One section of the new bookcase to let me see how it's going to look----ooooh, so exciting!! Alan and Destry assembled it in the garage in three separate pieces, then brought them in and built them into one piece and attached it to the wall. I painted it a really pale green, which sounded great in my head, then I got scared it wouldn't look so great. Fortunately, I am really happy with how it turned out. They left me a big space for a desk for another work station for playing computer games or for the older kids to type essays and reports. It was really fun to go through my books, remove an embarrassing number from their storage boxes, and put them all on their "proper" shelves!! I love, love, love it!!!! Next I'm hoping my hubby will build a shelf to go below the bay window and hold preschool materials on the east side of the room. . . :)
Tyrell is a touch over eight months old now, and he's been sick these last couple days with RSV and an ear infection. When this little guy is sick, he is really sick! High fever, dull eyes, no smile, lots of sleep, no eating. . .he was finally feeling better today, but that "feeling better" translated to less sleep and more crying, even in mama's arms! Poor little guy. I decided to look through pictures and do a post of happier times--like the fun he has playing with Daddy. . . or big brother Destry. Not every eight-month-old gets piano lessons! I just love this picture of Destry, my oldest son, and Tyrell, my youngest. Tyrell is now officially on the move. He speeds around the house doing the army crawl and nothing is safe from his speedy fingers. He makes all sorts of consonant sounds and fun sounds like the "raspberry" and clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He also loves to stand up and pulls himself up over and over again. His favorite things is for mama to lay on the floor and he pulls himself up, sits down, pulls himself up again. . .and is even starting to cruise along my body! I have a bad feeling he's going to be my earliest walker. . . The funnest trick this month has been riding this little tractor (with a little help from big brother Easton). Tyrell loves this new game and as Easton picks up speed, he squeals his own little version of "wheeeeee!" I especially love the way his little feet cling to the edge of the tractor for balance. I'm sure looking forward to seeing this joy and health radiate from him again soon!
Our March assignment for reading the classics was All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. I was looking forward to reading this book because it is billed as "a modern-day Western full of horses and gunplay and romance" and I grew up reading (and enjoying) Louis L'Amour with my dad.
The book is about a young man who leaves his Texas ranch to live the "romantic" life of a cowboy in Mexico with his buddy. He is a laconic (I just had to use this word because it's a fun word and it's fitting) cowboy-type who is exceptionally good with horses and gets hired on a Mexican ranch. He falls in love with the rancher's daughter, rancher doesn't approve, yadda, yadda, he ends up in a Mexican prison. . .
I am so sorry to say I simply did not like this book. I *made* myself finish it (the rest of the girls were reading it, you know!), but it just did nothing for me. Give me a Louis L'Amour book over this any day!
Firstly, I had a hard time with the crazy writing style. Here is an example of two "sentences" (loosely defined) which were back to back:
"Standing by himself across the little gravel path near the fence." (Yep, that's it! Hang on for the next one. . .) "When the wind was in the north you could hear them, the horses and the breath of the horses and the horses' hooves that were shod in rawhide and the rattle of lances and the constant drag of the travois poles in the sand like the passing of some enormous serpent and the young boys naked on wild horses jaunty as circus riders and hazing wild horses before them and the dogs trotting with their tongues aloll and footslaves following half naked and sorely burdened and above all the low chant of their traveling song which the riders sang as they rode, nation and ghost of nation passing in a soft chorale across that mineral waste to darkness bearing lost to all history and all remembrance like a grail the sum of their secular and transitory and violent lives."
Now, in the author's defense, a Boston Globe reviewer said his "elegiac rhythm captures the badlands of Texas and northern Mexico with a passion most writers either couldn't muster or wouldn't dare." According to the dictionary, 'elegiac' refers to "expressing sorrow for something now past" (as in the cowboy age) or "two dactylic hexameter lines the second of which lacks the arsis in the third and sixth feet". A-hem. Apparently it's a poetic or literary device. I still don't like it. It got slightly easier to read as the book progressed and I started to get the rhythm of it, but it's still disconcerting when you come across something like this:
Still in country they knew. Crossing the old Mark Fury ranch in the night where they'd dismounted at the crossfences for John Grady to pull the staples with a catspaw and stand on the wires while Rawlins led the horses through and then raise the wires back and beat the staples into the posts and put the catspaw back in his saddlebag and mount up to ride on (30).
Maybe it's just me. Then too his use (or lack thereof) of punctuation drove me crazy. He didn't use quotation marks at all. That is not very friendly to the reader. Add to that his frequent use of Spanish. . .
No, I'm not kidding. I would guess 10% of the book is written in Spanish! (I might be exaggerating a little bit, but it's a LOT!). My Spanish is more than 20 years old. Admittedly, it was fun when I knew what it said, and many times I knew enough of the words that I could figure out those I didn't know by context, but sometimes I had to actually get off the couch to google translate my book!! That's a lot of work to put into reading, which is supposed to be FUN!
The writing style might have been worthwhile if the characterization had been outstanding or the plot had been riveting, or. . .something. But alas, nothing redeemed this book.
I pulled a few little nuggets out of this book which made me think or would be interesting to discuss with someone.
His mother basically abandoned him in order to act in "the city." I found the following sentences interesting and wondered how our children would view the things which take our time from them. Surely only something important would take us from our children. . .
He watched the play with great intensity. He'd the notion that there would be something in the story itself. . .but there was not. There was nothing in it at all. When the lights came up there was applause and his mother came forward several times and all the cast assembled across the stage and held hands and bowed and then the curtain closed for good and the audience arose and made their way up the aisles. (21)
Interesting aphorisms:
Ever dumb thing I ever done in my life there was a decision I made before that got me into it. It was never the dumb thing. It was always some choice I'd made before it (79)
A goodlookin' horse is like a goodlookin' woman, he said. They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done (89).
scared money can't win and a worried man can't love (247).
This made me chuckle as my husband wore hogrings in his cowboy boots back in high school. Not. even. kidding.
The sole of his right boot had come loose and he'd fastened it back with hogrings stapled through the welt (118).
A sad lesson learned by the lady love in reference to her father when he found out about their love affair:
I didn't know that he would stop loving me. I didn't know he could. Now I know (252).
A thought-provoking observation of life in a Mexican prison
Underpinning all of it like the fiscal standard in commercial societies lay a bedrock of depravity and violence where in an egalitarian absolute every man was judged by a single standard and that was his readiness to kill (182).
Interesting commentaries on life from the cynical elderly aunt of the lady love
I'd of thought maybe the disappointments in your own life might of made you more sympathetic to other people. You would have thought wrongly. I guess so. It is not my experience that life's difficulties make people more charitable. I guess it depends on the people (229).
For me the world has always been more of a puppet show. But when one looks behind the curtain and traces the strings upward he finds they terminate in the hands of yet other puppets, themselves with their own strings which trace upward in turn, and so on (231).
Those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength and that they must make their way back into the common enterprise of man for without they do so it cannot go forward and they themselves will wither in bitterness (235).
If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to the hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. . .courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily (235).
In history there are no control groups. There is no one to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us. What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a think that even God--who knows all that can be known--seems powerless to change (239).
In January I will be seventy-three years old. I have known a great many people in that time and few of them led lives that were satisfactory to them. . .I only know that if she does not come to value what is true above what is useful it will make little difference whether she lives at all. And by true I do not mean what is righteous but merely what is so (240).
Our April read is Brave New World by Aldous Huxley which I've never read! I'm a few chapters in and really enjoying it. Anyone want to read along??? :)
We had lots of fun experiences while our friends (Frank and Verona are the parents, Francine (18) and Brandon (16) the children) from Orlando were visiting. They wanted to experience life on a Missouri farm, which includes both work and play. We enjoyed both as well as the opportunity to trade information and experiences.
One of the funnest things the boys enjoyed was riding the dirt bike. Destry showed Brandon how to ride it, and he rode it every chance he got! The girls (and even dad!) rode too, but Brandon logged the most time on it!I think driving in general was fun for the teens. In addition to the dirt bike, they enjoyed driving the tractor and the pickup with a manual transmission.Each day began, of course, with chores which included feeding the bottle lambs and milking our cow, Ruby. This was a new experience for the whole family. Most of the time they milked with the milker, but the last day everyone tried milking by hand. Francine was quite proud of herself earlier in the week to have touched the udder, let alone to harvest milk by hand! Frank and Verona both grew up in Jamaica, so it was a treat to have Verona cook a Jamaican meal, Brown Stew Chicken over rice, for our family. Her son Brandon also made "wash" for us several times, which my kids thoroughly enjoyed. It's a lot like lemonade, although very sweet and made using brown sugar. In return, we shared with them the experiences of making butter and cheese and making and eating homemade ice cream and apple dumplings. We also had lots of fun doing silly things like arm wrestling (Destry was a little afraid he would lose to Francine, who lifts weights competitively, but his years of farm work have rewarded him with strength), playing instruments, and playing games. They introduced us to the fun game of Bible Scattergories and I introduced Verona to The Kite Runner(which she devoured, even though she didn't like the main character--hey, that's a sign of good writing when the characterization is so rich you simply stay mad at a character! smile). We introduced them to the outstanding series "Into the West" in the evenings and they introduced us to comedian Brian Reagan.
The kids were especially excited to see it snow as they had never seen snow before. When we awakened one morning to snow on the ground, they were so excited they ran out in their pajamas to get some and throw it at one another (and their dad!).We were a little disappointed to have such a cool week in March for their visit, but I guess it was worth all their shivering since they got to experience the snow.I think their least favorite job on the farm was scooping manure. They're right, it's a tough and smelly job, but it's part of it! The barns need cleaned out after sheltering animals, and the corn field needs manure to produce a better crop.I told them the manure scooping was good for them and would build their muscles so maybe they could beat Destry next time they arm wrestled! :) (Destry is a strong and wiry kid--he scoops a lot of poop!)The redeeming aspect of scooping manure was driving the tractor in order to spread the fertilizer on the field.Precious relationships were formed through their stay. I'm a little frustrated with myself that I didn't do a better job getting pictures of them, but Briana and Francine found a lot in common, not the least of which were their comfortable silences and servant's hearts.Destry and Brandon enjoyed talking and goofing off together as well, and I told Verona I was going to check her suitcase before she left to make sure she hadn't snuck Tyrell in there! :)And I saved the best part of the trip, at least in Brandon and Francine's view, for last! They discovered a real affinity for sharpshooting.After working for a few hours, they would head out to the pasture with bottles, jars, and cans and learn how to shoot guns. They loved this target practice and did very well with it.We were all especially impressed when Brandon hit the lid of a nail polish bottle. It was a very full week and gave them a good taste of the rural life.
We have had a full week even as we took a break from school and Alan took vacation! Our friends, Frank and Verona, with their children Francine and Brandon, have spent the last week with us. They live in Florida and were curious to experience life on a Missouri farm. While the weather wasn't the greatest for their visit, we still had lots of fun (both working and playing). I think the highlight of the week was our annual sheep shearing adventure. The sheep were gathered into the barn the night before. Here you can get the idea of Alan's "fancy" methodology to funnel the sheep where we wanted them to go. Frank had fun playing shepherd with a shepherd's crook at one point, and carrying lambs on his shoulders! Alan and Frank had lots of good conversations and Alan found him to be a very curious and willing worker. This is an extra picture "for free" of one of the cute little observers!
While the sheep are gathered, they get their hooves trimmed and a shot of wormer to prevent parasites.But the main event is the shearing, for which we hire Ivan. He is amazing to watch. You can tell he's been doing this for years and years. He handles the sheep so well and is able to quickly and cleanly shear the sheep of their excess wool. I think it's an art to watch him work. Here is a video of him shearing one sheep. He has sheared sheep competitively and regaled us with stories about what is considered a good time, how they judge the handling and the final look of the sheep.
I am always amazed at how much wool can be harvested from one sheep. Below is pictured the wool from just one sheep as the boys prepared to push it down into the bag. The sheep look so much smaller after the wool is removed.Destry exerts muscle power to change the full bag of wool for an empty one. Unfortunately, wool isn't a great money maker--each year we just hope to get enough to pay for the shearing costs. One of these days maybe I'll experiment with spinning. . .The sheep before. . .and after.I'll post again later with other highlights from our week!
I'm so excited about the new look of the south wall in my dining room!
Here's a close up of the embarrassing corner where the little ones could play games on the old computer (because the old games don't work on the newer computer and I'm too cheap to buy new games when the old ones work fine!). This corner caught the "stuff" I would figure out a home for "someday". It was really bad! The disorganization was making me crazy and I really wanted a built in bookshelf like the one at the studio of my children's piano teacher.
A few weeks ago I decided to paint the dining room and Alan and Destry decided it was the weekend to build the bookshelf. Here is my belated update of the project.
I had lots of "help" painting the dining room a fun red. I pictured it brick red, and even though it isn't exactly the color I had in mind, I am tickled with it.
One section of the new bookcase to let me see how it's going to look----ooooh, so exciting!!
Alan and Destry assembled it in the garage in three separate pieces, then brought them in and built them into one piece and attached it to the wall. I painted it a really pale green, which sounded great in my head, then I got scared it wouldn't look so great. Fortunately, I am really happy with how it turned out.
They left me a big space for a desk for another work station for playing computer games or for the older kids to type essays and reports.
It was really fun to go through my books, remove an embarrassing number from their storage boxes, and put them all on their "proper" shelves!! I love, love, love it!!!! 
Next I'm hoping my hubby will build a shelf to go below the bay window and hold preschool materials on the east side of the room. . . :)
