Challenge #38: Stand Your Ground

This post has a lot to do with a big change coming my way that I promise I will blog about in the very near future.  I decided to make it the topic of a challenge because, from speaking with others on the subject, it seems that quite a few of us regularly find ourselves doing things for people that we shouldn't have to, or allowing those people to make us feel bad about not doing things if we actually said, apologetically, that no we could not.

Stand your ground.  It is a concept that is not always easy for me, because I am, by nature, a peace maker.  I try to avoid confrontation as much as possible.  But sometimes, in some areas, I have to clench my teeth and stand up for what I think needs to be done.  Because otherwise I am overworked,overburdened, overscheduled, and overstressed.  Which is no way to live life.

How about you?   Is there something that you've been dealing with that you'd rather not?  That, honestly, isn't really your problem?  NMC NMM is a very popular acronym these days: Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys.  Meaning, this isn't mine to deal with, so I'm not going to own it or bother myself with it.

I hate to be cliche, so I personally avoid that widely used phrase.  I also hate it when people dodge personal responsibility and I think more than a few people spouting NMC NMM on a daily basis are using it to get out of things they should be doing,  should be owning up to.

But, in the past year, I find myself more and more looking at things people try to hand off to me and muttering under my breath "NMP" before attempting to hand it back to the person shoving it off on me. NMP being my own acronym for the words Not My Problem.

Co-worker can't find his car keys and will have to walk 2 miles to work? NMP.  It is not wrong of me to say "sorry, no" when my boss tells me I 'have' to go pick up said co-worker and deliver them to work on time (and possibly drive them home again at the end of their shift, which is not the same as my own shift).  It's not my problem that the co-worker might have to walk to work.  It is the problem of the co-worker, and of the boss who desires the co-worker to be there on time.

Sister-in-law who lives 30 miles away wants my daughter to stay at her home for four days and take care of sister-in-law's dogs while sister-in-law is out of town because she doesn't trust her own 17 year old son to properly take care of them, and my daughter declines because she has school and work to be at those four days (10 & 15 miles from home in the opposite direction of the 30 miles away that sister-in-law lives)?  NMP.  It is not wrong for me to tell sister-in-law that no, I will not 'make' my daughter come stay at sister-in-law's house (with the son that is one year OLDER than my daughter!!) to ensure sister-in-law's dogs are well cared for.  Dog care and the behavior of the 17 year old boy is the problem of the sister-in-law, not me.  Nor is it the problem of my daughter who, apparently even though she is a year younger than her cousin, is more reliable and responsible.

It has not been easy to get myself into the frame of mind to evaluate something and declare it NMP.  But now that I've learned to do so, standing my ground has become easier.

Try it.  Next time you feel yourself being pressured into tending to something you are in no logical way responsible for, tell yourself NMP.  Or NMC NMM if you prefer.  Then say no and stand your ground.

Yarn Along 11: Slowly, slowly

It's a cool and cloudy Wednesday here.  A quick sprinkle followed by a break in the clouds created a beautiful rainbow in the west shortly after I finished feeding horses earlier this morning.  A western rainbow is not too often seen here; usually our rainbows happen later in the day when the sun is to the west all ready.  So, despite my unexpected shower at roughly 40 degrees, I did enjoy the rainbow the rising sun made.

Now I'm back indoors and ready to join Ginny for the weekly Yarn Along.

2nd sock of DS2's Athos socks for Christmas has only gotten as far as finishing the cuff.  A whole 12 rows since last week's yarn along.

I managed to finish Chart A on the oaklet shawl, and have gotten about halfway through Chart B (the lace border).  It is so wide now that I can't stretch it very far without it falling off the needles.  I'm hoping to finish it in the next few days and get it blocked so I can have a picture of it full width to show off for next week's yarn along.

As far as reading goes, it's been slow going on my book this week also.   I've only gotten 120 pages in, and it's due back to the library tomorrow.  Unfortunately there are something like 20 holds on the book, so I can't renew it.  :0(  I'll just have to return it unfinished and then immediately put in a request for it so that hopefully my turn will come around again in a month or so and I can read the rest before I forget the storyline.

Full-Time Grandma

I have to confess, this having DS1 and his family move in with us has been harder than I thought it would be.  Not in a terrible way; that's not it at all.  Just that things I thought would be natural aren't necessarily so (parental instincts and style on the part of the middle generation in this house, mostly), and, of course, the whole Grandma 24/7 thing has kind of thrown me for a loop.

Honestly, I didn't expect to be a full-time grandparent.  By which I mean that I expected DS1 and K2 to parent their children the vast majority of the time, including keeping them out from underfoot (and quelling tantrums) during the times when DH and I needed or wanted to be about our daily business.

Instead, there seems to be a lot (so far) of letting K3 do whatever until DH or I object, and then taking her forcibly away from the scene because, of course, she would rather be shadowing Grandma or Grandpa than being bored by (or ignored by) Mommy and Daddy.  It has gotten a little better than it was three weeks ago, but still not to the point we (DH and I) would prefer.

But then again, how can I complain about my little blonde sweetheart wanting my company every waking minute (and resisting naps because they take up minutes that would otherwise be waking) when there are so many grandparents who never get to see their grandchildren at all?


DH and I have had few conversations about this, and we've decided that rather than bluntly tell DS1 and K2 "Keep her out from under our feet; we've got work to do!" we shall adapt, when possible, to let her assist us.  Because, after all, that is what we really want her parents to do: let her assist them rather than just tell her "no" to this and "no" to that when all she truly wants is their attention and to help with the things they are doing.  When you get right down to it, toddlers just want to emulate the grown-ups they love.


So, when DH went out to stack a bunch of wood he had split, and K3 wanted to help, he let her.

picking up little pieces

helping Grandpa stack firewood

And when it's my night to wash dishes, if K3 wants to wash too, I do the glassware and breakables, and leave the plastics for her.

washing dishes like Grandma

When I'm cutting fabric for a quilting project, I let K3 have the scrap pieces that are too small or the wrong shape for me to use.  Then she sits and arranges them like I do with the pieces I kept for my quilt blocks.

arranging fabric pieces 

 Then, there are times when a Grandma's just gotta say "it's not the end of the world if she temporarily makes a mess."  Like when her baby brother is sleeping and we just mostly need her to be quietly occupied.

playing quietly while little brother Toad takes a nap

We all still have some adjusting to do; we're not done yet.  Being a full-time Grandma is something I will have to grow into, and while I'm doing that, I have to keep in mind that her mommy and daddy are taking notes from my behavior.  I'm not just being an example for K3, I'm also being an example for DS1 and K2.

The Beauty in Adversity

This morning was both frosty, and foggy.  I was surprised by the fog because it had been such a cold, clear night.  And because the thermometer on the back deck (which is extremely accurate before sunrise and from mid-afternoon on) read only 28 degrees at seven a.m.

The fog was created by the warmer, moister, air at ground level contacting the much colder air that came down from the atmosphere in the darkest, coldest hours of the predawn.  (Yes, the temperature does actually drop a little just before dawn.  Any deer hunter who has ever paid attention to how cold they get in the half-hour or so before sunrise can attest to that.)  And that fog was freezing on every cold surface it contacted:  shingles on the roof, siding on the barn, windshields on vehicles, blades of grass, fences, and even the stalks and pods of the soybeans in the field adjacent to the horse farm.

Most people would grumble about going outside in the dark earliness before the sun rises.  Most people would grumble about the poor visibility created by the fog.  Most people would grumble about the cold air, about the thick frost that had to be scraped from windshields before leaving for work.

Honestly, I wasn't thrilled about having to leave for work.  I would much rather walk out to my own barn to feed my horses.  They were supposed to come home this summer.  We were supposed to erect fences and build stall walls so that I could keep them here instead of work off their board another winter at the horse farm.  Not only hasn't that happened, it's not going to:  bringing them home before winter, that is. A long story for another post, let's just suffice it to say that I was not happy this morning to be leaving for work in the dark, in the cold, in the fog, and having to quickly attempt to remove heavy frost from my windshield so that I could get to that work, which I didn't want to go to, on time.

But. . . I soon lost my unhappiness in the beauty of the morning.  I mean, if I hadn't been where I was, at the time I was, because of the circumstances I was in, I would have totally missed all of this:

heading out to the back fields to check on horses

soybeans in the fog

frost rimed soybeans

soybean field as the rising sun shines through the fog

a truly beautiful start to the day

And isn't that the way it usually goes:  if we didn't have to be places we didn't think we wanted to be we would miss out on some of the best experiences there are to be had in life.

Yarn Along 10: One Sock Down!

Happy Wednesday!  I really love joining Ginny for the weekly Yarn Along; it gives me extra motivation to get a blog post up even if the rest of the week is crazy and keeps me from posting.

This week, I can show off one finished Athos sock!  YAY!  Hot off the needles (in other words, not blocked yet) yesterday afternoon.  I immediately cast on for the second sock, and got the first three rows started--seems to me once I hit three rows on the double points, the sock stabilizes and stops feeling like something I am going to twist, drop stitches, or otherwise mess up.  At that point, I feel safe setting it down to come back to later.  So far (I think this is pair of socks #10?) I have not experienced second sock syndrome.  Once I get the first one off the needles, I cannot wait to get the second one completed so I can wear them (if they are mine) or gift them to their intended recipient (in this case, DS2 for Christmas).

Athos, sock one

Meanwhile, I finished reading Home Grown, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  I even copied a few lines from the book that I  found especially thought provoking, to keep for myself as motivational quotes.  Last night I started Somewhere Safe With Somebody Good by Jan Karon, and even though I only got about ten pages in before bedtime, I can tell that I am going to love the book.  I have read all of her previous Mitford novels, and despite it having been several years since the last one, I all ready feel like no time at all has passed since my last rendezvous with the Mitford characters.  Always the sign of a good book :0)

oaklet with too many stitches per row to stretch out without dropping stitches,

 Athos sock 2 just begun (on top of book)

My poor oaklet shawl has been largely ignored this week; I think I may have done all of five rows on it since last Wednesday.  No fault of the pattern, or the yarn.  I am enjoying both.  It just got set aside for most of the week because of other things going on, and my decision to spend most of my knitting time finishing sock one of DS2's Christmas socks.

How about you?  How has your knitting and reading gone in the past seven days?

Harvesting Corn

In the past week, all the corn fields around this little place here have disappeared.  Or, rather, the corn in the fields has disappeared.

First, the dairy farmers finished chopping their silage corn (that is what they say when they are harvesting silage:  "Gotta go chop the corn", so when I say "chop corn" I am always referring to corn cut with some green still in it, to be stored and fed as silage).

field across the street (my hay field in foreground) being chopped

When the farmers chop corn, they drive two tractors, side by side, through the field.  One tractor pulls the chopper, which cuts and shreds the corn stalks, including the ears.  The other pulls the silage wagon, and the chopper has an arm that extends up in the air and blows the silage down into the waiting wagon.  When one silage wagon is full, a farm worker will pull up with an empty wagon to replace it, and the chopping continues with wagons being filled, hauled off to be emptied, then empty ones returned to the field for refilling.  This goes on for hours every day, and days each week for about two weeks, until all the silage is harvested.

empty wagon being pulled up into position alongside the chopper

Then, this past weekend, our own field was harvested.  The farmer who rents it from us does not chop corn, rather he grows corn that is harvested once it is completely dried down.  That corn is taken to the elevator and sold as commodities: either for animal feed or to make corn products for human consumption.  It is harvested by a combine with a corn head on it.  The corn head has big 'teeth' that protrude in front of the combine and go between the rows of corn.  The stalks get cut off, the ears get stripped from the stalk, and inside the combine, the kernels of corn are tumbled off of the cobs.

When the combine pulls up the driveway, we say the farmer is here to "take the corn", rather than referring to it as being cut or harvested.  I don't know why; that's just the terminology used in these parts.

taking the corn

corn head more visible in this photo

When the combine is full (about two passes through our field), it is driven up alongside a waiting semi truck with an empty grain trailer (which holds approx. 900-1000 bushels) and the shelled corn is off-loaded through the chute that comes out the top of the combine.

K3 has been enthralled watching the tractors and the combine at work.  Which has made meal times somewhat disruptive lately.

eating a biscuit (and venison stew) 

while watching the combine take the corn

Challenge #37: Give Blood

Yes, you read that right.  Go give blood.  Unless, of course, you have a health condition that prevents it, or your iron level is too low (like mine was yesterday when I went to the local blood drive to donate), go give blood.  It's not hard. All you really have to do is lie there, with a needle in your arm, squeezing and releasing a rubber ball for about fifteen minutes.  And what a difference that fifteen minutes can make to the life of someone else!

To find out when and where the next blood drive closest to your place of residence will be, check out this website: Red Cross.