Month: January 2016

In Dorothy's world, every mama nurses her baby. "She need to nurse neenee with her mom." #normalizebreastfeeding #eventhefrogs
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I’m documenting everything I eat or drink for a week. It’s every bit as interesting as it sounds. If you want to see, link is below. Sometimes the comments are pretty good.

No Google+ account needed to view.

https://plus.google.com/collection/kSZZc

Quine loves Letter Factory.
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Dr. Albert Ko from Yale University has been collaborating with the study in Bahia. He says that while the cases of microcephaly are getting all the attention, the Zika virus could be having a wider range of effects on the development of a fetus.

“We are seeing cases in the hospital of children who have normal size heads but are having neurological lesions and eye lesions,” he says. “And we are extremely concerned … this might suggest that [the microcephaly cases] are just the tip of the iceberg.”

This is so awful. It reminds me of the thalidomide defects that affected a small birth cohort. At least, I hope it remains a small birth cohort.

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/01/29/464811052/doctors-see-profound-abnormalities-in-zika-linked-microcephaly-cases

Small sister, large brothers. #whereismycinnamonroll?
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“When we’re looking at things that are uniquely human, we can’t look to big brains or bipedalism because our extinct relatives had those. But they didn’t have chins. That makes this immediately relevant to everyone.” Indeed, except in rare cases involving birth defects, everyone has chins. Sure, some people have less pronounced ones than others, perhaps because their lower jaws are small or they have more flesh around the area. But if you peeled back that flesh and exposed their jawbones—and maybe don’t do that—you’d still see a chin.

Also interesting: TIL the word spandrel, an incidental byproduct of evolution.

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/01/were-the-only-animals-with-chins-and-no-one-knows-why/431625/

Remember when you would order stuff and it would take days or weeks to arrive? Well, I have forgotten because I am so used to Amazon Prime. I bought some wool for a cardigan for Gloria, who pointed out that she has never had her own sweater, just handmedowns from her siblings. Poor little sixth child.

So I ordered some Patons Classic Wool, in colorway “Eight Year Olds Love This One,” I mean, “Commotion,” seen below:

and they said it should get here in… ten days. TEN DAYS? But I want to knit it now! Aaugh! It will be here in a week. Poor little me.

I’ve decided to collect all of my most-common reader questions related to milk cows and home dairying in one big ol’ post. Hopefully this will answer any questions you might have on the topic, and prepare you for a dairy animal of your own in the near future.

I periodically think, “We should get a cow.” Then I go and research it and decide, “Nah. Maybe next year.”

http://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2014/03/family-milk-cow.html

Mother, oh mother, come shake out your cloth!
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing and butter the bread,
Sew on a button and make up a bed.
Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking!

Oh, I’ve grown as shiftless as Little Boy Blue
(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby, loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due
(Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).
The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue?
(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo.)

Oh, cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
But children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust, go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby. Babies don’t keep.

http://www.lullaby-link.com/song-for-a-fifth-child.html

It always seemed like a bit of a racket to me.

http://fusion.net/story/252916/should-i-get-my-wisdom-teeth-removed-no/

Quine skeptically regards this so called "food." State of the house is currently 2 down, 8 up! So definitely looking good around here. Abby is the only one working through sickness, everyone else is on the downside (Quine) or, fingers crossed, well. Faith rallied late evening and is weak but functioning, and Clementine was sick once last night around 4 but nothing since. I think it was just a touchy stomach.
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We keep meatless Fridays year round chez Glee, but since Lent is coming up we have some seasonal fish sandwich offerings to look forward to at various fast food emporia. Here’s a review of quite a few of them. Wendy’s takes the top spot, with Sonic the sleeper hit.

http://www.focus.org/blog/posts/fast-food-fish-sandwich-review.html

The back of Quine's leg. She has this rash all over but the other kids don't.
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Draped with the wan children. Sean took Faith to the doctor because she is the sickest.
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She's on the move!
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"What's happening to my brain, Mom?" This is the first time Bede has noticed the fever effect. I hope that science finds a way to help autists like Bede access their fever brains without sickness. #fevereffect #autism #thinkdifferent
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Dinner was chicken broth and saltines. Is everyone bored with the sick reports yet?
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It continues.
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Dorothy and Gloria got sick overnight, and Gilbert relapsed, bringing the total of ill Glees to five. Bede is much sicker than I thought he would be. Poor kid. Here's Dorothy in a pile on the sofa.
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Weak but happy, at least.
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Ida recalled another of her older sons’ pastimes, when the three were between the ages of 10 and 15: “The great indoor amusement … was writing story books, these they covered & kept in a box, till they really had quite a library.”

In 2013, Pamela Russell was at an auction house in southern New Hampshire when, she writes, she “stumbled across a flimsy, old shoebox filled with tiny, carefully constructed, handwritten books.”

Just amazing! This reminds me so much of what my children do.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2015/05/nelson_archive_at_amherst_a_one_of_a_kind_trove_reveals_what_rural_19th.html

Now my baby is sick. I hope she gets well as quickly as Gilbert. Bede is also stricken, though at 200+ pounds considerably less worry-inducing than his brother or the infant Quine. Thank goodness she is breastfeeding.
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Mead is a fermented honey and water mixture, some call it honey wine, and it is quite possibly the first fermented drink that humans purposefully made.  Luckily for us, it’s quite easy to make!  I’m going to show you how to make a gallon of mead, blueberry orange mead to be exact.  Here’s what you will need to get started.

http://www.growforagecookferment.com/how-to-make-a-gallon-of-mead/

mfw @megascops.asio posts things in tiny fonts that old people such as me cannot read #squints
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Quine looks at the world.
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This is incredible. What fine young men.

http://www.npr.org/2016/01/25/463567685/today-we-are-his-family-teen-volunteers-mourn-those-who-died-alone

We started this before Christmas and stopped for a bit but today, back to it!

The rhythms of his voice, which had been rising and falling in an increasingly formal pattern, changed subtly into a kind of chanted battle cry; a call, Will thought suddenly, with a chill tightening his skin, to things beyond the great hall and beyond the time of the calling. “For the Dark, the Dark is rising. The Walker is abroad, the Rider is riding; they have woken, the Dark is rising. And the last of the Circle is come to claim his own, and the circles must now all be joined. The white horse must go to the Hunter, and the river take the valley; there must be fire on the mountain, fire under the stone, fire over the sea. Fire to burn away the Dark, for the Dark, the Dark is rising!”

A re-read of a beloved friend for me and the first thrilling taste for the middles. One of my favorite books of all time and the current read-aloud. They are rapt.

The Dark is Rising at Amazon.

Hamlin said Ludivine has a penchant for solo strolls through downtown or the woods nearby—to the point where everyone in Elkmont knows who she is—so the guidance counselor at Elkmont High School wasn’t surprised her pup had left her pen again. 

The fact that she ran 13.1 miles did take her aback, however. “She’s laid back and friendly, so I can’t believe she ran the whole half marathon because she’s actually really lazy,” said Hamlin, who added that she isn’t a runner herself.  

Tim Horvath, 49, ran most of the race with the pup. 

“I saw her for the first time in the parking lot before the race,” said Horvath, a resident of Huntsville, Alabama. “She came bouncing up, and I petted her on the head. I saw her collar, so I just figured she was somebody’s dog. Elkmont is a small town where everyone knows everybody, so it didn’t strike me as unusual.” 

NB: “Race bandits” are runners who don’t register, but run anyway.

http://www.runnersworld.com/running-with-dogs/hound-bandits-half-marathon-in-alabama

Some art from Trixie. A sheep counting humans, two dapper cats, and a snake.
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But when Kondo describes discarding her screwdriver because it conveyed insufficient joy and then breaking a favorite ruler when she enlisted it to remove a screw, you have to wonder if so many readers should be following the lead of an organizational expert with so little common sense. A force more compulsive than joy is at work here.

I think KonMari is noteworthy for its categorical vs geographic methods to declutter. I like the “spark joy” idea, even though Sean mocks it. But there’s something off-kilter about the whole thing too.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2016/01/marie_kondo_s_life_changing_magic_and_death.html