On Not so Quiet Please:

Mountain Man has been in the house a lot lately. Mostly on his back on the floor napping. This has led to a lot of quiet around here.

When he is outside working I have music or the TV/DVD going, more for company than entertainment.

I grew up in pandemonium. Oldest of six kids, all within ten years, no twins. In the upstairs apartment were two more kids. The neighbors to the left had five kids, and to the right nine. Behind us was the family that had seven, and across the street were two families with three kids.

And our little cluster was not the only one in the neighborhood. There were the houses on the other sides of the ones adjacent to our house.
There were more kids in our yard than blades of grass most years I was growing up.

Though I only had two children of my own, we had foster children and neighborhood kids a plenty at our house most all the time.

Than I met and married Mountain Man. I moved out of the city and into the country. My daughter was still living with me/us. She had friends around. But that was many years ago.

I’ve found I don’t like too much quiet. I crave the noise of people around after a time when I’m by myself.

When we work we often have music or the radio on a talk show and we chit chat. But with his napping it has been far too quiet for me for far too many hours of the day.

It’s just not natural. I need a little noise.

On Body Parts:

Mountain Man is almost standing upright again. Thank you to all who sent him well wishes. His back is doing much better.

We are still canning veggies, but not with the same rigor. I steal a few minutes here and there to do some contact juggling practice. Gotta’ keep those fingers nimble. No knitting.

I’ve been over opinionated again and have gotten myself in trouble. You’d think by this time in my life I would have learned. But ‘Open mouth, insert foot.’ is available to all age groups.

Right about now in our canning I want to be off on vacation. It doesn’t help, that as a kid, August was vacation time. So in my head it still is.

I am a day tripper, not a go off and get lost-er. I like small excursions to interesting places. I’m craving a cool air conditioned museum about now. Art. But not modern. I’m not in the mood for modern at the moment.

Not that there is anything wrong with modern. I like it well enough, I’m just not in the mood right now.

I want to vacation inside, I think because I’m a bit sun burnt on my nose and ear tips.

So I’m going to put on some classical music and troll the museums of my mind, while we cut up yet more green beans. With my toes in a plastic bin of cool water.

What better way to spend a hot August day.

On Back to Back:

Well, I’m not doing as much canning today.

Bet you can’t guess why?

So, I’ll tell you. Mountain Man the Invincible put his back out yesterday. When he can get up he is all hunched over, but most of the time he is on his back with cold packs and heat alternately.

And of course I’m doing all there is to do around here. So this is short and sweet. It may be a few days before I get back to you here.

Please, not a few more days of all this work by myself.

Okay, I’m done venting. Back to work.

On Being Choosy:

Busy, busy! So much to do, so little time.

The plants in the garden seem to want to give us all their goodness at the same time. Or close to it.

It is a lifestyle choice made long ago and we still love it, even when we are so tired we fall in bed late at night, for days in a row.

Gotta’ get the food put up or go hungry come winter/spring of the following year. Some people work and pay for what they eat, We work to make the food for our table for ourselves. The hard way. Our choice.

There are days when I’m so tired and sore from the work of it, that I curse the choices I’ve made. But they are far and few. I plant a smile across my face and forge onward. I know how good it will taste to have home grown soup on a cold winter day.

I don’t know how long it will take before I can’t do this anymore? But for now I choose this. Hard work and home grown.

On Zucchini, and Green Beans, and Tomatoes, Oh My!:

Yes, we have Zucchinis by the bucket and we didn’t grow a one of them. Friends and family send them our way.

The green and wax beans, and tomatoes are taking turns going through the canning pots today. We have two canners, but are not using them both at the same time yet this year.

Hard work in the humidity. But food for the winter must be processed in the summer. Not too bad really. Better then the years we didn’t get
much at all from the garden.

There are the berries and greens and cucumbers that have been gracing our table too.

Canning Season is upon us. Glass jars tinkling, radio sing, canner hissing, chopping knives keeping the rhythm.

I’m trying to have the time for ball practice. I fear some days I won’t make it.

Thought for the day: “Large tomatoes don’t body roll as well as I had hoped.”
Extra Quote “I clean that up right away.”

On Rainy Day Chainmail:

I’ve been playing with chainmail today. Rainy and not as much time outside to practice contact juggling. I do practice over the bed, but not as much room to go all out.

I do have to make changes to my Goth clothing for practicing Contact Juggling. Long necklace chains, broaches, ruffles and lace are getting in the way just now.

Wishing I had some pretty new acrylic balls to play with and knowing I’m not at that level yet.

So, I made a whole bunch of links out of 12 gauge aluminum Floral Wire this afternoon. The same stuff I made the Ent tree costume branches out of. You wrap it around a rod and snip the links off one by one from the long curl.

Then I went and worked on circles in chainmail. I made a bunch of hot plate trivets using the colors I had on hand. Red, gold and silver. I have black, but I’m keeping it back for another project. Brown and green all gone on other projects. I don’t think I ever had blue and I‘ve never seen purple in my local craft store.

I have more multi ball practice to do this evening as I watch TV tonight. I’d do it in my sleep if I could. It still makes me giggle every time.

On ‘Being Lost’ in a Good Way:

I’ve been too pensive to write. Not in a morose way. But Happy.

Very happy in deed!

Silly happy, like a child. No time for work or things that are suppose to be being done. (Though I did do some of those things.)

Mountain Man took up standard juggling again, as I told you the other day.

I do not juggle, well not in the traditional sort of way. Once the objects leave my hands they are doomed. I have no depths perception to speak of. No, standard juggling is not for me.

I do, and have always, love orbs. I have a collection of them. Marble, plastic, glass, stone, wood.

I have now been very busy with contact juggling. Some call it Fushigi like in, I believe, Japan. (Don’t get caught in the ‘Fushigi’ product scam. But more on that another day.)

These balls rarely leave the body and if so only for the moments they float from place to place, hand to hand.

Do not believe the commercials you have seen on TV. Contact juggling is hard work and long practice to pull off the illusion. But since the movie ‘Labyrinth’ with Michael Moschen’s hand as David Bowe’s orb spinning villain. No, even before that. I have wanted to learn the art.

But I couldn’t afford the crystal balls. If I could, I wouldn’t have taken the chance of hurting one to use it in practice. But now there are a wealth of fairly inexpensive acrylic balls on the market. (In comparison to the crystal.)

Small balls start at about $10 and the larger hit $40, and we are only talking 2 to 4 inches across here. I don’t have any of these beauties yet, I‘m still practicing with silicone filled.

There are two kinds of contact juggling, multiball manipulation starts its practice with smaller balls and body rolling starts its practice with larger. A good contact juggler can do both with medium size ball/s and make it seamless.

I am now lost in a world of illusion and orb magic. And I love it here. I’m a kid again play with balls.