Reminiscenses, Rabbits, and Rickshaw essays

I always mentally refer to them as 'the Tornado kids."
Thats because whatever room they've been in, it looks like a tornado went through there.
The last time I walked into a room they had subjected to their energy, we found soda spilled on the table and the floor, its carton woefully crunched in the middle of the table; cereal that I had bought for the morning scattered everywhere with the wrappers tossed about, bread crumbs sprinkled around, and various clothes articles dropped here and there. And that was just the kitchen.
Ramona and I took turns snarling while we cleaned up the carnage and tried to figure out what we were going to eat, because our plans for dinner had been scarfed down amidst the sprinkling and spilling and scattering.
However, the three Caba kids did have redeeming qualities. When I saw them next and almost boxed their ears, they all pulled the Compassion Poster Child look and Smiles International grins and cooed their apologies along with offering the small peace offering tokens, promising to be good children. I think there might have even been some flowers involved.
None of them were biologically related yet they all somehow ended up with similar eyes and their voices sounded the same. It was funny because none of them were even from the same ethnicity let alone family. But they all referred to Corina as 'Mami" and all were slightly afraid of the oldest, Ramona (one of my best friends in Romania) and all were high energy, loud, bossy, funny, and had a talent for causing chaos wherever they went but were so sincerely charming and remorseful when caught.
One time when I was there, Sarah was quite put out that I was only staying for a few days. The last time she had seen me I had stayed six months. Corina and Ramona were dissapointed but understood that Mission trips have to be scheduled around the Mission, not the trip, and there weren't any kids at the orphanage or really anything that I could help with other than drinking coffee with Corina and talking and laughing. (Sometimes just reminding people in Ministry that there are level-headed people who don't hate you or aren't out to kill you or swindle you can be very ministering)
Anyway Sarah kept interuppting to ask why I was only staying a few days. My Romanian grammer is awful and my vocabulary comes and goes and often is confused with Hungarian that I also speak when in Transylvania. But the Caba kids were always very patient and, for the most part, pursued understanding with me and didn't manipulate the language barrier to their own ends.
I tried to explain that I was going to college in the fall and needed to go home after working with the Gypsy church plants so I could spend a little more time with my family and make money. The big take away for Sarah was that I needed money. So she scampered off, emptied her piggy bank, and returned with two fistfulls of coinage.
"Is this enough?" She asked, her brown eyes doe-like and pitiful.
Corina explained that I needed DOLLARS, not Romanian coins, and that certainly wasn't enough, please stop interrupting. Sarah sighed and left Corina and I to finish our conversation.
Today I got on Yahoo chat and saw Corina's ID online. I haven't talked with her for a while and hoped it was her online, but it turned out to be her youngest, David.
He wanted me to go Skiing with them after Christmas.
Now skiing in Transylvania sounds like something I would L-O-V-E to do, however not something financially possible at this point in life.
David REALLY really wanted me to come. He even offered to dip into his savings for a new bike and help pay for the ticket.
I thanked him for the generous offer, however the bike fund amounted to about a twentieth of the ticket cost, or simply the fees the airlines charge for checked baggage these days.
He was VERY dissapointed I couldn't use his bike money.
I've been really missing Romania the last few months. The magenta landscapes, the friendly villagers, the curious traditions and mindsets, the beautiful language, the good food, the quaint coffee shops and stores, my friends scattered throughout the countryside.
The trouble has been the last year my family and I have been put through the wringer on several leves. I'm sensing the season of pain is coming to a close, and its left us sort of gasping for a breath. I'm just tired. A couple of people have asked me where I want to go and what I want to do and my answer has been mentally, "Move successfully from survival mode to thrive mode!!!"
Its just been a long season of rearranging priorities and mindsets and worldviews and misunderstandings and clearing up arguments and realizing stuff about myself and trying to repent and mature and apologize and make up and justify or figure out etc.
It would be so nice to go back to the village; the place where Time moves in a circle instead of a line and certain things don't change no matter what. Where I can just wander and observe.
My grades have been slipping the last two semesters and a couple of people have told me I need to slow down. The trouble is my scholarship ends at the end of spring 2012, so I've been trying to decide between continuing the pattern of blasting through or taking it a little more slowly, adding another year, and doing things WELL. Both options have about the same amount of pro's and con's. Its been bugging me for a couple of months now, and there's no clear answer in sight.
All that to say, I'd really like to pack my family up and escape to the land of the Tornado Kids.

Barring that, I'd like my exhaustion towards books to go away so I could get focused on reading for my J-term (the Theology has been a painful blend of infatuation and apathy for me the last week). Or at least finish Elisabeth Elliot's biography on Amy Carmichael - which I've been working on since summer. So far my response to books has been to blithely ignore it and watch DVD episodes of "NCIS" with mom three-at-a-time. ;-)

Anyhoo. It was fun chatting in Romanian with David. Now I need to go find my brother so he can show me which trees on the property need 'wrapped'. Not with Christmas paper, with this guaze-type-stuff designed to keep away rabbits and deer.

Apologies to those who have wanted me to post more regularly on here. However, my attitude towards the written word in general has been one of classic burn-out. The 25-page paper I had to write the last week of school kinda took it out of me for a while. :-)
Will try to do better, however the computer is in high demand as my 16-year-old brother is also trying to finish chemistry homework, and the 10 year old has had multiple research papers to write on Vikings, Copper, and Rickshaws. He's writing 1-page essays and I am highly envious. I have mostly upper-level classes next semester; I'm looking forward to all of them, but I'm also expecting plenty of papers due for them all. And they won't be little piddle-ee-dink one pagers either.

~Princess Ouch~

Mullberries

Someone in the history of our property's settlement planted three mulberry bushes behind the duck shed, and every year the bushes take turns in producing gorgeous, juicy berries.
This year Dad discovered three more HUGE bushes in the ditch up the hill, and so on Saturday I took Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum berry picking.
Or rather, I took them to go berry munching while I picked.
We started with the bush that is growing wild in the field on our property before heading towards the planted one. Between bushes Tweedle Dee used the excuse "Gotta go bathroom" and fled to Mom and Dad where she reported that I was "Slaving them" and begged for parental intervention.
However, my parents live to see their children's character built and jobs done, so they threw her back outside to help me and Tweedle Dum finish picking.
We got at least two gallons worth of berries (I know you measure them in bushels but I don't know how many bushels we got and I know how many gallons we got so there) and now we have to figure out what we are going to do with them.
Tweedle Dee voted for Mom to make juice, but we need to buy canning lids for that. And that means long hours in the kitchen boiling stuff down and getting hot and sticky. Yay.
KB said she hated me when I walked in with the big tub full of berries with TD and TD marching proudly in front of me. :-) I guess she figured all I was good for on my visits is creating more work for her to do. That's what big sisters are for, right?
TD and TD and I drove to the bushes on the hill as we had to take a detour around the once-again-flooded river, and on our way back we discovered ANOTHER mulberry bush.
"Hey guys, look! Another one! Should we stop?"
"NO!" they screamed in terror. We had been outside for at least three hours and for the last half of it they had both routinely been informing me that the "clock inside my tummy says its lunchtime."
So fun times on the farm. I couldn't find my camera so no pictures of our deeply-purple stained hands and scratched arms :-(
In other news, trying to finish the Coopertive Program assignment for school and figure out the job situation before heading back to school in August. Oh joy. Being an adult is not always all it is cracked up to be.
Anyhoo. Made Romanian coffee today and dipped some of our home-grown zuchinni in eggs and garlic-salted-flour and fried them up. YUMMY. I wish eating healthy wasn't so dang expensive most of the time. And to be perfectly honest, I far prefer the taste of my own cooking to any gourmet cafeteria at any school. But the powers that be decree otherwise, and so off to the meal-plan-paying office I go first thing when I get on campus. Pooh. But other than that I am looking forward to buying interesting theologically-based books and studying them and learning different missions techniques and writing papers and cramming for tests and ridiculous hours with friends sharing some kind of chocolate something or fried something and swapping different types of tea with girls of various majors and theological viewpoints. Although it has been good to be home and live in a HOUSE and home again for a while.

Later gator,

~Princess Ouch~

Full day

Woke up, had breakfast with Dad while Mom filled us in some more about how her weekend at the Homeschool conference went. Then braided Flower's hair while talking with Mom and Feche boy and KB. After herding the cats - I mean the two dogs and two little kids - the four of us went for a walk along the river for about an hour. It was a nice welcome to SD when we got to the river and the pup leapt into the water to investigate what I thought was a rock but turned out to be the front half of a week-dead deer. I pulled the dog out of the water and with difficulty pulled her along the bank to a point where she forgot the deer and leapt into the water towards another "rock." This turned out to be the BOTTOM half of the dead deer. Yummy.

The two kids climbed tree's and fought over who 'claimed' which tree first while the two dogs investigated smells, rolled around, listened to the killdeers singing across the bank and got plenty of burrs in their fur and leads.
We headed back so the kids could start schoolwork and I decided to give the older dog, Diamond, a bath, which she hates. The new pup, Ursa, on the other hand, thinks that water and baths were the best thing invented. So between the pup jumping on my feet, Diamond's feet, and her own feet, and Diamond turning her cowardly tail and trying to escape as much as possible, most of the mud and dirt from the dogs ended up on me and they still didn't end up smelling as sweet as I had originally hoped, and I am sore and slightly bruised. Dumb animals!! I went inside and chatted with Mom a little more and got some lunch between helping pick up here and there before I decided to plant a few of the seedlings that were growing out of their little containers on the porch. (The picture is of mom doing the laundry while we were chatting in the living room) The next thing I knew, there was a family wide weeding and planting fest going on. It was fun, but we all got a little sunburnt and light headed from the heat. Its been warm in the south where College is at, but I haven't been sitting in direct sunlight for hours on end at all this year, and it's just starting to get above the 40's and 50's during the daytime here. It was about 70 maybe, but we were all HOT and sweaty by the end of it. Before we knew it, it was 5 pm and we were all bushed. Flower picked some lilacs and she and I took turns pozing. She's still trying to learn that when one takes pictures, it is a good idea to hold the camera STILL while pushing the shutter button. So most of the pictures she takes are still a bit blurry. But hopefully you get the idea, and it's the thought that counts, right?

So now we are going to crash in front of X-men 1, which no one but me has seen yet. :-D And eat dinner, not sure if the two will happen symultaniously, but whatever.
So anyhoo. I took the dogs and kids for a walk, washed the dog, weeded the garden, harrassed the teenager, helped clean, and had interesting discussions. WHEW. Been a full day. Life at home. And they say homeschoolers live sheltered, boring, unsocial lives. ;-)

~PrincessOuch~

Work on a Farm

Wrote this for English class for my example paper. Hope you enjoy :-)


Work on a Farm

Work on a farm is hard and never finished. This is an international truth. While many believe that a farm is a romantic place full of cute fluffy kittens and sweet lambs, it is in fact a virtual disaster zone. It doesn’t matter how put together, neat, organized and quaint it may look up on first inspection. The reality is that a farmer never experiences the satisfaction of saying to himself, “I’m done with this week’s work. I can finally take a break this weekend in good conscience.” No, if the poor farmer has somehow miraculously finished his goals for this week, either he knows he should tackle next week’s chores to ‘get ahead’ and actually make some profit from his lifestyle, or some kind of natural (or unnatural) disaster strikes, creating more work; either undoing whatever the farmer accomplished or rendering it obsolete.
This was the case on a dairy farm in New Mexico. Hundreds of cows serenely chewed their cud in large plots sectioned off by PVC pipes used as fences, or escaped the hot sun in aluminum, three-sided barns. They appeared as though they hadn’t a care in the world. The Hispanic employees of the dairy however were always hurrying and scurrying to and fro, either cleaning the milking equipment (a never ending chore as the cows were milked in rotation several times a day) or cleaning out stalls (which was never finished as long as living, healthy cows were around to create ‘messes’) or helping a sick cow recover from some bovine malady. There was of course the occasional collapse in fencing which required immediate attention or some dramatic episode in which a mother cow died and her calf needed extra care, all creating extra work for the employees. The owner of the dairy, a Dutchman by the name of Rinke, was a very quiet, laid back man of six feet two inches and maybe one hundred and fifteen pounds. He towered over his employees but was very invested in making sure everyone was well cared for. How the Hispanic men understood Rinke’s Texan-influenced-Dutch-drawl was beyond me, and how he understood the quick staccato Spanglish of his employees continued to be a mystery. However, they all had a system that each appreciated, and encouraged each other in their never-ending tasks.
Another example of never ending farm work was the quaint village home I visited while in Transylvania. This was a farm on a much smaller scale than the New Mexican dairy. The family only owned about three acres of land as opposed to the several hundred acres the dairy was on. The family raised most of their fruits and vegetables and all of their meat on the small plot of land they owned. It was a beautiful example of efficiency. The chickens were at times allowed to run through the gardens munching on whatever bugs were harmful to the steadily growing crops. The pigs were very content in a tiny shack near the garden and took up little room. The grandparents practically lived outside. The grandfather was constantly either shucking corn for the animal’s consumption or chopping wood for the stoves when his help wasn’t being employed by his son-in-law, who not only helped maintain the farm but had a job as a security guard in the village. During the summer months the grandmother maintained the garden and fields, always stooped over weeding and carefully maintaining the grape vines as she walked past them on her way back to the house. Her daughter was the housekeeper-chef extraordinaire, keeping the house meticulously clean despite the mud constantly being tracked into the house and rain creating cracks in the stucco walls or holes in the roof. They were a very happy foursome, all working together to keep the place smoothly running. The seasons each had their designated chores and it was a cheerful circle of life that they lived in. It was efficient, but constant, never ending work.
One final argument proving the validity of the idea that farm work is never ending and hard is my own personal experience of the last five years on a small acreage in South Dakota. When we first moved there, the place was a mess. The previous owners had decided that it was too expensive to take garbage to the local dump and had instead thought it a brilliant idea to bury their trash in shallow graves all over the place. After a hard winter with heavy snows, these mass graves of unwanted objects and deteriorating trash bags were brought to the surface. As a result, the first year of our occupancy on said farm was spent in cleaning up other people’s messes. A wonderful opportunity for training on the mission field, one might argue, however at the time it was simply thought of as a rude move by the previous owners, who made quite a lot of money when selling us their mess. After fixing up the place somewhat, we thought it would be a good experience for the kids growing up to have some livestock. So in irrational group insanity, we bought ducks, geese, chickens, goats, and sheep all within a matter of months. The result was fairly catastrophic. Garden beds which were just beginning to perk up the landscape were ravaged by the fowl, the goats decided the newly-planted fruit trees were far preferable to the weeds, and the sheep were just stupid and tried to kill themselves in every way imaginable. After finally realizing our lesson, the livestock which hadn’t somehow killed itself was all sold at auction. We then set about the task of repairing the discouraging mess that was our landscaping. While garden beds can be established, they still require constant work. Weeding, mulching, fertilizing, planting, and pruning do not stop. Harvesting one’s own food is a wonderful experience but unless one eats it all at once it must be preserved through canning, drying, freezing, etc. A satisfying experience, I say, although still time consuming and never ending.
Life on a farm can be charming, rewarding, and a fun experience. It can also be harrying, hard work, stressful, and downright awful. In either case, it requires hard work. It is not for the faint of heart. It is not for those who like to have clean nails or who believe that flip flops should be worn at all times. It is not for those who think that sheep are cute animals that will peacefully graze unattended in a large field with a delightful brook running through it. No indeed. The sheep will try to drown themselves first chance they get and probably break their legs on the banks of the brook on their gleeful way towards death. Flip flops are hazardous to health on farms as there are rusty nails everywhere and animals who like to stomp on human feet. One’s nails are cracked, chipped, broken, and full of dirt from the garden or the animal pen most days. Oh yes, work on a farm is hard and never finished, although it can be rewarding and adventurous.