A Running Collection

1. William is asleep right now. He isn't fussing. 2. Dr. Bronner's SAL SUDS. Smells so nice. Cleans and is free of everything (Thanks Maria!) 3. Wine.  (I'm smiling really big on this one) 4. George's hard work. 5. Amelia's heart for art and projects and imagination and love for gardening. 6. George Wilder's excitement at gymanastics class 7. The invitation to bring Amelia to ride horses from one of George's students. 8. This website http://tinkerlab.com. (My dearest Emily passed it along -- minds already rolling with ideas( 9. Amazon. This means I don't have to leave my house for a. a new glass for our French press that I broke three days ago. b. stuff to make soap from the great soap recipe on tinkerlab.com. 10. My sweet friend Clare and her great ideas that we immediately incorporated into our school day. And all are a great hit.

Saturday Morning. Grape Harvest Festival just down the road. Started with a 5K. Tip toe out the door. Meet with a handful of runners. Giddy, silly, sloppy. On your mark, get set, go! Through the vineyards we run along side heavy vines ready to harvest. The wind blows. I lift my feet and fly and breathe and love the fresh air. In no time flat, I rush back through the front door. Reload car. Loud and noisy and excited. Mama and William drop off oldest two and Daddy for harvesting adventures and we head back home for a nap. An hour later we are back again. We join the others to pick golf ball size muscadines, take rides through the vineyards. Find the petting zoo, enjoy wine tasting. And there is the jumping thing, soaking wet slip and slide, marching bands, juicy dripping grapes, grape stomping, grape throwing, hula hooping. Booths with food and gardening ideas and composting plans and tasting this and that. Collections for bag. Breeze blows. The...

It is Monday night. The night I must remember. It is important. The trash truck will come early and I better be ready. It is pitch black out and a bit wet. Take the last bag from the past week and trudge to the end of the drive. Fling back massive lid, sling trash bag, whack it in. Fling shut massive lid, roll to the edge of the road. Face the right direction. And like magic -- tomorrow by 7:30 a.m. all the trash from the last week will miraculously disappear from life never to be seen or smelled again. Brilliant! How grand. If it were so grand. That trash has to go somewhere. It has to keep stinking and being trash. It has to slowly attempt to decompose somewhere in this world. It is a law. The law of conservation of mass. Well, trash isn't doing much conserving. It is always rolling around in my mind. This whole trash controversy. It is quite nice to have an efficient way to deal with trash. It keeps things clean and neat and takes away germs and rotting things that I don't...

It is a jungle out there. The rain and the green and the millipedes and the snakes and the rodents and the growing grass and growing trees and spanish moss. The rain is wonderful and it cools us. It fell in big flops and flips and drips yesterday. We were inside all day. Our skin was wiggly. Our legs and fingers jumped around. Buckets and bowls and puddles and pans filled with water. Finally it wasn't pouring rain or lightening and thundering. We were having such fun inside. Amelia and George Wilder had an epic adventure going. Their two biggest stuffed animals have saddles and ride on the water as they go from room to room with crisis and visits to relatives and medical needs. William wants to help empty the dishwasher over and over. He doesn't need anything to play with but the silverware basket void of all sharp utensils. We abandon dishwasher and stuff animal and head out. William strapped to back. I'd noticed lots of mushroom and fungal ...

The phone rang last Sunday. “Hi I’m Amy. I need a running partner, I heard you run, do you want to run with me?” Sweet music to my ears. Tuesday morning at 6 a.m. – out the door and 5 fast miles with Amy. Fast Amy. Can’t talk on the hills with Amy. Now I want to run a marathon again with Amy. Chat and talk and smile and laugh. Smiling from ear to ear all the way home. Shower and make coffee. No one awake yet. Bliss. Bliss – I’ve discovered this week, will not and can not be determined by the circumstances of life. Children will decide to do things their own way. Children will chew with their mouth open and say they don’t like the potato soup you made for dinner and then beg for their sticky lollipop they got at a birthday a month ago that is orange and where is it and nothing else matters until the orange lollipop is unwrapped and in hand. How do I hold on to the joy of running with a friend in the thick of this? Teething boy. Learning how to climb boy. Wanting to eat...

So the journey begins. There is a form that goes to the superintendent that says we are taking responsibility for educating Amelia. It is eerie to think that I have to report this to someone. Suddenly, the responsibility for educating our children has more weight and measurement. She is, after all, the six year old that has 13 chickens and a sheep and an herb garden and a feather collection with thousands of feathers and a bird book that she knows by heart. Hundreds of birds for memory. She can build and draw and cook and think and speak so clearly and problem solve, especially if it has anything to do with chickens. Today -- the rain came unexpectedly. Chicken feed was left out and got wet. She took grocery bags out and salvaged all the dry feed. Filled grocery bags full, tied them shut and put them away. She recently decided to name the chickens. We've only ever had three chickens with names. I had Tess and Lady Bird and then Amelia named her speckled sussex "Mary Poppins...

We've traveled to Georgia and back. It was quite the experience to return to home and home not be home. It gave us perspective. Georgia air. Georgia roads. Georgia people are the things that have made it home for us and those things are still there still being air and roads and people and we are not. Those lives go and grow and change. We can come back to them and visit, but interacting, living life with them is over and that is hard. It is the community that made it ours. It did help us to see that Florida is already offering us community and a home with our chickens and our home and neighbors and friends .  And while we were in Georgia we played perfect with Jack and Esme and Clare and Josh. We dug in sand, made owls with toilet paper rolls, ate great food, laughed, climbed high into the trees, took walks, talked, talked some more. It was glorious. Then family reunion. Such fun for the children and I know that grandmother and granddaddy were filled up big. And we were as well ...

When I was a girl, we borrowed a television and moved around the little rabbit ears with aluminum foil enough to keep the static at a minimum. I watched Mary Lou Retton win a gold, on a blurry black and white screen the size of a large cereal box. We didn't have a television but we did during the Olympics. I don't know where it came from, but I'm glad my parents knew every child should watch the Olympics. I still don't own a T.V. I can't sit still enough to watch anything and I really don't like the noise of it. I've thought I'd like to watch the Olympics, but haven't thought to make a big deal about it. We are at the farm. There is a television. The Olympics are in full swing. I'm glued. Can't stop watching. Amelia and George Wilder are peeled. Four hours of it last night. Four today. Equestrian events -- There is a horse here. Shady. Shady is now an Olympic event. Amelia spent over an hour just riding and riding. Sincronized Swimming....