Busy Hands Homestead

     Our chicken pot pie is ready, adorned with flower shaped biscuits (Ivory's doing), and smelling positively delicious. After waiting a solid 45 minutes for my husband to walk through the front door, I allow the kids and myself to dig in.         Every night for the last week, I have been slipping off my wedding band, sneaking out of the house, backing the car out of the driveway and driving over the Scott street bridge to get down and dirty with some clay.      I took my first ceramics class the same semester I met the pony tailed, bike pedal pushing, often bare foot young man who is now my wool plaid shirt and big boot wearing, might be confused for a red-neck husband. I lived and breathed ceramics for years. Loading and unloading kilns, spending late nights at the studio, falling asleep in folding chairs conveniently set up next to the belly of the warm gas kilns, earning myself the status of Ceramics...

     Our household has been pulsing from chaos to mess, chaos to mess, chaos to mess. For the last week we (with the wonderful help of friends) have been shuttling everything we own, including our two dogs, seven chickens and massive piles of wood, across our neighborhood with Sylvan and Ivory in tow. Figuring out where to sleep, where to wash laundry and how to cook dinner on top of the mess. The washer and dryer are finally hooked up, and while many small piles remain everywhere, I am beginning to see our new house become a home.      All through this process I keep thinking of someone I love very much, who is day after day taking care of someone she loves very much, as he is fading away, and wishing I didn't live thousands of miles away. I have no words to offer. I know nothing of death and dying except that it is inevitable, and I often wonder what exactly we talked about in that Death and Dying class I took in college. Why is it o...

     We are four days into the new year, and I finally made that puppy chow I have been saying I was going to make for a few months.  Every time I walked into the pantry to retrieve the ingredients either my chex or chocolate chips had disappeared.  Even today, when I pulled the chocolate chip bag from the shelf, it was almost empty and I had already put the butter and peanut butter in a pot on the stove.      Lately, I have been flailing, struggling to find my way through the chaos that surrounds me, but today I was determined not to get swept away.      I poured the remaining chocolate chips into the saucepan, and added a square of baking chocolate.  It was in its nondescript white wrapper.  I paused momentarily, and then tossed it in.  I didn't care if it was bitter or semi-sweet, it was all I had, and it had to be good enough.      After few handfuls of powdered sugar dusted, c...