Rosemary for Remembrance

For all of us touched by Pregnancy and Infant Loss. You are not alone. We are not alone.

Pickles!

In a positive frenzy of fermentation today!

 

Mable's Pickles

Per quart jar:

1 pound pickling cucumbers - choose smaller ones

2 cloves garlic - no brown bits!

1 tsp alum

1 heaping T rock salt (cheapo ice cream salt is fine as long as it's clean)

1-2 good-sized heads of dill

Apple cider vinegar (ACV)

Water

Wash and trim cukes.

Place garlic, alum, salt, and dill in jars, then pack cukes in tightly, keeping them below the neck as much as possible.  Pour ACV in jars to just under half-full, then top off with cold water to just covering the cukes.

Close the jars. Invert them a couple of times a day til the salt is dissolved. Let cure at least a month.

Mead Experiment, part 1

At Zoie's request, I'm blogging this.

I just started a mead experiment using this method: "a sterilized, recycled glass jar (preferably restaurant-sized), one part honey, four parts water, a sprinkle of yeast, some raisins, a bit of lemon peel, and whatever the herb garden has too much of can be quite interesting. Stir several times a day until it starts bubbling, then ignore (except to taste every now and then)."

 I used a 1/2 gallon Mason jar, 1 part honey, 4 parts water, 1 cinnamon stick, 4 cloves, 2 coins ginger, a chunk of lemon peel, and a scant 1/8 tsp bread yeast.

I suppose now I will have to continue to post updates!

P.S. I don't like the new Blogger behind-the-scenes format.

ETA: A friend pointed me to this very similar recipe.

Wordless Wednesday: Cream of Wheat

Letter to My Littles: Winter 2012

My darlings: I had a rough winter, and so I was unable to write you a letter in January. I still love you though, and you have both grown tremendously.

To my Infanta: you chatter and sing all day long, and dance whenever there is the slightest hint of music to do it to. Your thick, wavy hair (so like mine) curls to your waist, and looks amazing even if you haven't let me comb it in a week (or more). Have I mentioned your strong will recently? You continue to thrive at school, and when challenged, can read off any letters you see. You're also spontaneously doing simple addition and subtraction; not sums on a worksheet, but real-world math, noticing how many buses we pass on the way to school, or how many pieces of sandwich are left.

To Elessar: you are a toddler now, in everything but actually toddling. You'll get to the walking when you're ready, even though I'm starting to get a little anxious about it. You're so busy exploring and playing and learning to climb that you just haven't bothered with walking yet - although when you do finally let go, I know you'll be thrilled and wonder why you didn't do it sooner. You recognize photos of yourself - "Ewwy-a!" - and know how to make the touch screen on my phone go. In short, you are everything a mother could want in her 14 month old baby.

To my spirit babies: two more joined your number this winter, a major reason I didn't post a month ago. I kind of imagine you all watching us like the brothers' ghosts in Stardust, sitting in a group and sending love. I think of you often, and miss you always.

Letter to My Littles: December 2011/Year-End Wrap-Up

Ah, my darlings, where to begin? This has been a very full year, as you both changed and grown almost beyond recognition. It has been a very difficult year for me, as I have had to stretch and grow and grasp for my new balance as a mother of two. I would not undo either of you, but maybe I could choose one or two other things differently.. but if I did, I wouldn't be who I am now.



Me and my girls, 12/17/10

My Infanta: This month saw you perform in not one, but two Christmas concerts! I cried as I watched you march in with your preschool class, singing so proudly and.. enthusiastically. Your teacher tells me she loves having you in my class, and on the days you're more sweetheart than stinker, I understand why.



The Infanta, 12/30/11

Elessar: What can I say, you have lived all but the first two weeks of your life so far in this year. You're still too busy with other developments to have bothered with walking yet (tonight you were learning to say "button"!); besides, crawling does you just fine! You constantly astound me with the contrast between your caution and your bold curiosity; I've been seeing this play out recently, as we go places you don't know, and you intently observe your surroundings before striking out to fearlessly explore them. You love to play with toys as much as your sister was uninterested in them, and adore the basket I keep by my feet for you to unpack.



Elessar, 12/21/2011

I look forward to the coming year, and hope I'm up to the challenges it will bring!

I love you both.

Letter to my Littles, November 2011

To the Infanta: my darling girl, you are so very three and a half years old. At times you are sweet and loving, and the joy of my heart; at others you are as challenging and contrary as any teenager. You now regularly request tv episodes on Netflix by number as well as by content; this fills me with pride as well as chagrin.

Elessar: you are fast closing in on your first birthday, and I am staggered at how the time has flown. You adore popcorn, have several semi-words, and are right on track to walk at about the time your sister did. In fact, as regards walking, you have come to the point of coming to my knees, standing up with their support, turning, seizing my fingers for support, and taking off into the world, trusting that I will follow. With so much going on, small wonder that you're not sleeping well, and that while you love your Daddy greatly, it's me you want most for comfort.

Writing

I was just chatting with a friend about the need to write. She's the sort of person for whom writing is a much-needed creative outlet. She a good one, too; she writes thoughtful, lyrical blog posts, and often has me giggling at her tweets.

Me? Sometimes I need to write; sometimes I have something to say that needs to be said *just* right, in that polished way you can only get by writing and rewriting. Here's the thing tho: depression stops me.
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When I was in college, I found that I had good ideas for papers, and good theses, but my execution sucked. I could actually feel the mental fog that blocked the way between my ideas and their manifestation. Nearly a decade later, on medication and pursuing lighter topics, I still have the fog. It's lighter now, and I can often make out the path between A and N, but..... I have allowed inertia to prevail, and I turn my creative energy to outlets like knitting.

Depression still affects my knitting, any glance at my mess of half-finished projects will reveal that, but it doesn't matter as much. These projects will wait patiently for me to return to them. This is not to say that writing won't, but when it comes to blogging, I feel the pressure of all the posts I haven't written, all the (probably imagined) reader expectations I haven't fulfilled, and it stops me dead. So I knit, and sometimes sew, and mostly don't blog.