Rhythms

For the majority of my life thus far I have been a formal student - that is, enrolled in some type of formal academic program.  I lived and breathed and slept and sweated and cried academia.  My life had a rhythm that was dictated from outside of itself - the rhythm of the school year. It ebbed and flowed like the tide, cresting at midterms and finals, and entering a trough during the hot summer months, only to start up again in the fall. There were smaller troughs throughout the year when we had short breaks for Christmas, Easter, March, Thanksgiving and other such occasions.  Th rhythm was as predictable as it was familiar.   Busy times and less busy times.  Stressful times and less stressful times.

I'm still a student, though at a much slower pace, but primarily I am a mother.  My life has a different rhythm now, although it is still dictated outside of itself - this time by a squirmy little Bean rather than a calendar.  Our days settle into a rhythm of eating, sleeping, toileting, playing...however the rhythm is not nearly as predictable or familiar as the academic rhythm was.  If the academic rhythm was a steady march the rhythm of being a mom is a swing dance inspired by a group who is making up the music as they go along.

Along with the daily rhythm of being a mom comes the rhythm of living on the farm.  This rhythm not only goes from day to day but also cycles through the year.  While we don't plant seed (except for a few small container gardens) and will not (likely) be harvesting any hay this year, the rhythm of farm life is still dictated by the weather and cycles through the year, with only minor variations from year to year.  Spring brings the Alpaca Ontario show, followed by shearing, birthing, breeding, fencing and all manner of other summer activities - with swim team thrown in there for good measure.  The fall brings the Rockton Fair and the Alpaca Ontario sponsored fall show (this year it will be the all new Cavalcade of Champions), followed by Christmas craft shows.  The rhythm of farm life could be compared to a square dance - dances between couples (the day to day rhythm) taking place within the larger dance of the square (the yearly rhythm).

Dancing to the rhythm allows us to find order in our lives.  The rhythm give us all something in common, a common link, a common beat.  However, no matter the dance there is a something that all dances have in common: the need for rest.

When I got sick in 2008 I learned that my dance, my own personal rhythm would require more rests than the average dance.  My rhythm was slower.  There were are times when I forget that my rhythm is slower, that my dance requires great rests, and I pay dearly for those times.  It would be an untruth to say that I have completely embraced this slower pace of life - there are still times it frustrates me to no end that I have to slow down.  But it has taught me to savor the slow times.  It has taught me that without the rests, the dance becomes a dance marathon where you dance feverishly until you drop and a rest becomes forced.  Forced rests are not nearly enjoyable as rests that you choose - take it from someone who has been forced to rest many times.

You can't stop the dance altogether and you can't completely change the rhythm - especially when it is a rhythm from without - but you can choose to sit out part of the dance.  You can choose to take a pause, sit a spell, rest, and then join back into the dance.  I think that all dances would be better, and all dancers would do better, if our rhythms had more breaks, more rests, built in.  Life is not a dance marathon (unless dance marathons are your thing), but a dance party.  Take time to sip some punch, eat some chips, and catch up with friends.

The beat goes on!

Some rhythms are just plain special in and of themselves....

Update July - September

Catchy title, right?  I know... I do what I can. So I haven't actually posted anything but five-minute Friday posts since July (!) so there is a lot of ground to cover!  So a summary will have to suffice.
July: Everyone in the big house was gone for Canadian Jamboree (big Scout to-do out West) and David and I ran the farm.  We dealt with a pneumonia outbreak among the crias and lived to tell about it!  Though the learning curve was steep for both of us.

This was one of our sick crias - he's healthy and rambunctious now!

August: David and I built a changing table for Bean. We also celebrated our first wedding anniversary and David left to return to school in Iowa for the year.

The unpainted finished change table

Celebrating our anniversary at the Lego store

Waving good-bye at the train station as David left to go back to school

September: Mom and I went to an alpaca seminar in Ohio and learned how to assist alpacas in difficult births.  Later in the month we went to a wedding in Iowa and got to visit David and other friends!

Alpaca course - learning to deliver difficult crias

Wedding in Iowa

David-Monkey waking up David-Human 

Sad good-byes (notice the growing belly!)

Visiting Summer

Visiting Chelsea Bell

Paying a surprise visit to Kathy

Visiting with Talia

And that's all for this post.  Hopefully I'll get October's update up soon...No promises though.   Facebook, of course, has more pictures!

A day in the life...

With the Big House (Littlest Brother, Middle Brother, Oldest Brother, Mom and Papa) gone out West for a huge Scout event (CJ '13, if anyone's interested), David and I are running the farm and overseeing the entire herd.  It means the structure of our day has changed remarkably and pretty much revolves around feeding some creature or another.  Here's a sample:
7:00am - wake up, weigh alpaca babies, feed mosquitoes, feed alpacas, feed mosquitoes, feed the baby alpaca whose mama isn't making enough milk, let alpacas out to pasture if it's not currently pouring rain.
8:30am - retreat from the mosquito invasion, feed the dog, feed the fish, feed Husbandy, feed Wifey, field phone calls and pass messages along.  Check in with the Big House and update them on any major happenings.
9:00/9:30am - Wifey takes her morning nap.  Husbandy either goes to the other farm to help out with chores or does whatever it is Husbandy does.
11:30am/noon - Feed Wifey.  Feed Husbandy if he wants.  Feed baby alpaca whose mama doesn't have enough milk for her.
1:30pm - Miscellaneous household chores, ranging from fencing and pasture maintenance to grocery shopping and school work and everything in between.
4:00pm - Feed Wifey, bring alpacas in from pasture, sort them back into their correct paddocks, feed the alpacas, feed the mosquitoes, feed the baby alpaca who needs a bottle
5:00-7:00pm (timing is flexible) - make and consume dinner of some sort. (ie: Feed Husbandy, and feed Wifey)
8:00pm - feed the baby alpaca, feed the mosquitoes
9:00pm - fall into bed and repeat the next day

Now if we actually had a day that followed that schedule without added adventures, it would be wonderful!  Really, the only thing that stays constant is that I'm feeding something or other all the time!

Smorgasbord Sunday...on Monday

You may (or may not) have noticed that no Smorgasbord Sunday post went up yesterday.   This is due to the fact that this past week has been absolutely ridiculous and I spent a lot of yesterday sleeping.
Last week our shed/barn collapsed from snow-load and we have spent many hours doing clean-up.  My primary job has been cooking for the volunteers that have been coming to help with the work.  In addition to dealing with that, our farm was hosting a fecal float seminar (looking at poop under microscopes to determine parasite load) this weekend.  So we had people here for that who needed food and drinks as well.  We were supposed to host the course in the shed, but that didn't happen.  Instead we hosted it in the garage.   All in all it was a busy weekend.
And we have a busy week ahead of us.  We have a number of appointments this week including a GI appointment and an allergist appointment, plus my regular physical therapy appointments.  Thankfully none of them are too terribly far away and the weather looks like it will be good this week.
Because this week deserves a dose of cute, here is a picture of a baby alpaca having his first try with barley fodder.

Smorgasbord Sunday

Smorgasbord, as defined by dictionary.com is:

1. a buffet meal of various hot and cold hors d'oeuvres, salads, casserole dishes, meats, cheeses, etc.

2. an extensive array or variety

I've decided to make Sundays a smorgasbord of stuff...pictures, writing about prayer points and plans.  Just an extensive array. :)

I get the honor of hanging out with the cute, cheeky little boy a couple times a week. I get to play with him while his mama gets some work done around the house.  In the first two photos you can see that he had blueberries with his supper and was very blue.  We fixed that at bath time. 

This last was pretty low key without any major appointments.  The only real surprise was that I threw my back out mid week and could hardly move.  A trip to the doctor for some muscle relaxants and a trip to the pharmacy for the strongest pain killers you can get without a prescription and I got fixed up.  Today I actually haven't needed my painkillers or muscle relaxants and all.  Though I'm thinking I might take some tonight just to keep it from seizing up at night again. Prayers that my back would stay limber and not seize up would be great.

This coming week we have one big appointment:  On Wednesday I head to London for an EEG (brain wave measuring thing) EEG's are fairly routine for me and this one is to monitor how my brain is doing in light of the medication switching that is happening and to follow up on Spot.  I'm thankful it's just an EEG for now and not an MRI, since I hate MRI's.  Prayers for safe travels and no snow storms would be great. (our last appointment in the city was a snow storm nightmare)  Also pray that the EEG would show good things about my brain, since I'm rather attached to it and we really don't want any more issues popping up. *EDIT* This appointment isn't until next week.  I fail at schedule keeping sometimes. The appointment is the 27th, which is not this coming Thursday.  But you can always start praying early. *END EDIT*

I got a fish tank for my birthday in January and we had 4 fish in it.  3 goldfish and 1 loach.  One of the goldfish and the loach died this week.  It was very sad.  We got a test kit and checked water quality and learned that there was too many nitrites and nitrates in the water (and just about everything else was wrong too...except pH and ammonia). So now we are working to balance everything else.  The two goldfish in the tank seem to be pretty much indestructible. 

It was super cold this morning when we got up, so we had a wonderful hoar-frost.  For my non northern climate friends, a hoar frost is what occurs when fog literally freezes on to any structure it can attach to...trees, fence posts, fence wires, etc.  When the sun shines on it, it is wonderfully bright.  When the wind blows gently it starts to fall off and it looks like it is snowing.  By mid morning it is usually gone because the sun melts it.

Frost detail on the fence wire.

Front yard tree

Sun coming up in the bush

view out towards the road with the sun just starting to play over the tree tops.