Have I mentioned that I hate being sick?

It borders on the ludicrous. 

• I have broken an ankle, hobbled on it for two days because I had too many appointments, then finally driven myself to a clinic for an x-ray. 
  
• I have caught a cold, which turned into bronchitis, which escalated into a full-blown upper respiratory bacterial infection, and finally, fussily driven myself to the only urgent care place open on a Sunday morning and in our network to get two mega-shots of antibiotics.
• I have ignored the early signs of shingles to the point where the rash spread into one eye and put  me on the verge of vision loss.

So I'm stubborn. The older I get, the less I'm willing to accept pains, creaks, injuries, etc. because I have TOO MUCH TO DO. I don't have TIME to be sick, hurt, out of action. So I will it away. I tackle physically demanding chores and walk those ten-mile hikes with my Eagle-bound Scout.  I lift tables and gigantic boxes full of who-knows-what and turn over mattresses and reorganize storage. And if something hurts, I just take a Motrin and keep on moving.

Most times, willpower works. Sometimes it doesn't. Right now, it isn't going so well.

On the other hands, if one of my kids sniffles, I'm at the pediatrician's office in no time flat, checking for strep, etc. With a kid living with Crohn's and the other under my vigilant eye for signs of its sister autoimmune afflection, rheumatoid arthritis, I don't underplay a thing.

Gotta love self-denial. So far so good! Or not.

No strings attached.

As I drove by Dunwoody Nature Center this afternoon (I left work early to take AG for a strep test), I saw one of our volunteers using his own leaf blower to clear the entry. This same volunteer has painted, installed a new light fixture, built much-needed shelves, and re-organized special event storage. 

I am so grateful to the volunteers who come singly, in families, and in groups to Dunwoody Park. Their motivations are quite diverse: some do it because their companies are committed to volunteer service. Many do it for the love of the outdoors and a desire to preserve this little oasis in our urbanized community. Schools bring children for hands-on environmental education. A few teens and adults come to us for community service hours required by schools and institutions. They mulch trails, pull out overachiever invasive plants, organize special events like our silent auction and wine-tasting parties, wash comforters and towels, pick up trash,  tend to the bees, and make the park a magical place for our visitors.

When I explained to the kids my political philosophy during the cacophany of rhetoric they can't tune out, one example I gave was volunteering. If someone is hungry and I give them a meal, should I then have the authority to tell them how to eat, when to eat, and what to eat? If I take care of the trails in a public park should I also have the authority to say who can walk those trails and when? I shouldn't. No one should. But that's one of the debates going on in our country - those who want the government to take care of everything and those who want people to take care of each other because it's the right thing to do.

If someone is hungry and can't afford food to eat, I want to do more than just give them a meal.  I want to feed them AND help them learn how to get the next meal - and leave it up to them what they choose to eat. If someone is homeless, I want to do more than shelter them.  I want to give them a safe place to sleep AND the tools they need to take care of themselves - as well as the freedom to live where and how they wish. Independence and self-reliance are the truest freedoms we have. 

Dunwoody Park is the beneficiary of hundreds of people who each year decide they should take care of it and preserve it for the future.  Then they step back and let the community enjoy the fruits of their labors, with no strings attached.

Thank you.

The pleasures of a free weekend

Most weekends are filled with must-do's in the Knitternall house. Homework, school projects, Quiz Bowl, church activities and retreats, freelance copywriting assignments, and never-ending chores make the time fly too quickly for respite. 

This weekend has been an unexpected exception. Such wealth of free time. So many options for fun!

Saturday I transplanted four shrubs, divided hostas, cut back some overachiever hollies and hydrangeas, turned the growing compost pile, and planted two dwarf gardenias. Today, after church, I'll focus on seaming 60+ squares for a huge prayer blanket. I have two DVD's ready to go and plan to enjoy myself completely.

  I've also been busy with Christmas knitting:  Rolled brim hats, Urchin berets, Maine Morning Mitts and a few felted handbags will fill the stockings of teachers and friends. 

Funny how I'm just as busy as usual, but because the work is my choice, it's so much more pleasurable.

 Now it's time for church. A beautiful day, the satisfaction of completed labors, and time with my family: bliss.

Food memories

I didn't get to spend a lot of time with my grandparents, but that time was certainly powerful. They lived a Southern farm life in the outskirts of Durham, keeping with them the patterns of childhood and adapting them to the city life they had to take on during the Depression. There was a large garden, much bigger than their little bungalow, to the side of the house on a sun-baked hill. My grandmother found local sources for molasses, fatback, lard, and other staples. They hunted wild game for food and, for a long time they had chickens, until a grocery store finally opened a mile down the road.

I was fascinated by their lifestyle. I, a child of the Air Force move-every-two-years life, couldn't imagine living in one place for years on end, let alone near the extended family that had settled in the Bethesda area of Durham. They were by no means the salt of the earth, however: it turns out the family  made more bad choices than good ones, with my grandmother deftly ignoring or denying the shenanigans of her progeny.

During the small bits of time I had with my grandmother, she taught me a lifetime of skills: how to make perfect buttermilk biscuits and pecan pie,  sew basic hems and repair tears and replace missing buttons, crochet, harvest beans and peas, and more. She filled a need I didn't understand to work with my hands and tend to home.

This morning the tweens are sleeping off the aftereffects of too much candy and long jogs from one street to the next. The teen is powersleeping his exhaustion away (nightly homework lasting until midnight takes a toll). Halloween started with a block party hosted by the Neels and ended with a quiet ramble down the street with AG and her friend. 

I decided it was a good morning for biscuits. So I took out my grandmother's wood bread bowl, mixed the ingredients, and the house is now filled with a luscious, buttermilky scent that fills me with contentment.

Wonderful.

Buttermilk Biscuits

6 cups self-rising flour 

1/2 to 3/4 cups shortening 

1 1/2 cups buttermilk

Mix and knead until dough is slightly sticky. Powder hands with flour and shape dough into 2" diameter biscuits. (My grandmother never used a biscuit cutter - her biscuits were always rolled and flattened by hand.) 

Bake at 425 degrees for about 15-18 minutes. Check carefully - don't over-bake. The ideal color is a light golden brown.

Serve with butter, molasses, bacon, eggs, cheese - a buffet of yummy fillings.

Halloween in Dunwoody

If you aren't heading home from work by 3, you'll need two hours to navigate the gridlock.

If you haven't bought at least 100 pieces of candy, you'll run out in the first hour.

If you need to traverse Mt. Vernon Road between Abernathy/Ashford-Dunwoody and Happy Hollow/Winter's Chapel Road . . . good luck. 

If your tween has a sleepover guest tonight, it's going to be a loooooonnnnngggg time  until bedtime.

If your teen has decided he's too old for trick-or-treating, he may regret his now too-cool and too-old status when little sis comes home with a bulging sack.

If you pay attention, you'll realize that you're saying "say 'thank you'" to your child and "thank you" for your child a kazillion times tonight.

If your child wants the maximum candy payload per street ratio, just about any neighborhood in Dunwoody will scratch that itch. So chances are, your child can range within a half-hour radius of your house and amass all the sweet goodness essential to the holiday.

Happy Halloween!

 

AP World History Has Taken Over Our Lives

I have a  pragmatic appreciation of the correlation between effort and achievement. Increasingly complex and demanding homework through the high school years, then through college has always made perfect sense.  Advanced learning, whether academic, work-related, or craft, has always begun with a sense of climbing up a mountain, culminating in exhilaration at the summit.

Until my son took AP World History.

This isn't just his class. It's our entire family's commitment. Because poor A is chained to his homework load seven days a week, up to 4 hours a day. We can't travel on weekends. We can't enjoy a spontaneous diversion during the week.  There can be no must-see television or movies. We don't dare linger at church, and Youth Group is hit-or-miss, depending on how productive he's been during the afternoon. Scouts? Maybe he can join the Troop for the business portion of the meeting, but forget the fun stuff.  

There are charts to complete, vast sums of pages to read and outline, study guides to review, and unit tests to prepare for long in advance. This year-long course, once daily, is now every-other-day, shared with World Literature. So the students have half the time in class and double the homework to make up for it. Of course, there are also four other classes in his block to cover: World Literature, Algebra II, Latin II, and Nutrition. So that homework has to get squeezed in there somehow.

Bedtime is usually midnight and he has to be up again by 6:15 to get ready for the next school day.  

For A, knowing that AP World History is modeled after college classes is somewhat off-putting. "Mom, I don't think I can do college. This is just ONE class." 

It's hard to know the answers he needs and keep my lips zipped. I'll hear him muttering about Confucious and his motivation or Byzantine migration routes and have to will him to find the right answer. Eventually he does, but it's painfully slow.

Sigh.  Just eight months until the AP World History exam.

Sustainable brainstorming

The amazing duo of Pattie (Sustainable Dunwoody blog maven) and Tracy (she of the chickens and triplets and urban homestead lifestyle) came to Dunwoody Nature Center to discuss Sustainability opportunities here in our newborn city. We're very excited - certainly Sustainability fits in with our mission of preserving and protecting Dunwoody Park and providing environmental education to the community. I loved brainstorming with them and Claire, our fearless leader, was very receptive to their ideas. Time will tell, but I hope to be a part of this engaging concept for Dunwoody.

It's a slippery slope to focus on the big picture/philosophical mode rather than the here-and-now reality of living pragmatically.  I appreciate the long-term benefits of growing our own food and reducing our dependency on imports and their tangential cost in terms of fossil fuels and quality, but I need to know HOW and WHAT to plant right now. I value the reduce-recycle-reuse concept but I need better recycling options than the paltry blue box DeKalb County offers (hello - Gwinnett County has gone to the mega-bin recycling/garbage cans with robo trucks picking each up every week).  I want to walk to more places, but I must have more time to do it in the midst of work, school, and social commitments. 

A Sustainable Dunwoody is a delightful and essential concept for our community. Let's make it a reality!