Vegetable Plants, Pizza Plants

Family on Friday!!!

I highly recommend growing something edible as a family project.  It can be a full on garden, or a few pots planted with faves, or a small window box with a few herbs.

In a world of instant gratification and being three or four steps removed from the production of food, it's important for young and old to have at least one reminder of where what we eat comes from.  The more the whole family gets involved, the better.  Assign specific tasks or break out shifts if time is an issue.

Even a single plant can overproduce, allowing for lessons in saving from abundance, sharing with others, trade, or even basic commerce.  Replant seeds from the parent plant to witness the full life cycle.  See how many different recipes you can make from your harvest before you get tired of it and decide it's time to rotate the crops.

You can grow anywhere from a high-rise apartment to a large ranch.  The point is to match the plant to the space you have available.  And take be sure the whole family can benefit.  (Don't just grow coffee trees.)  A quick bit of research and a brief family planning meeting will help you decide what and how much you grow.

Keep in mind that not everyone has a green thumb.  If someone endangers the yield and retraining isn't working, "promote" that person to a position that will cause less damage - like management.

That New Page Smell

Writers' Wednesday!!!

No matter what writers write or what tools they use, they all start from a singular point - a blank page.

A blank page has a lot in common with pristine new snow, an immaculate new car, or even a fresh-from-the-box cell phone.  Many people don't want to disturb it's perceived innocence by altering its state in any way.  Until you violate that space, you're not a writer.  You're a... uh... modern art admirer.  Or something like that.  But, definitely not a writer, which was my point.

Here are a few tips to get you going using that space for its intended purpose:

1. Tromp through it, carve it up, and leave your mark.  Don't write on it.  Draw.  Completely free form.  Use your non-dominant hand and scribble like a snowboarder or snowmobile driver that doesn't care where they're going.  Just fill up the page.  Eventually, you will start writing words.  The process will invoke clarity of intent and you won't even know where it came from by looking at your mess of a doodle.
   
2. Spill, stain, or stink it up.  I think we all have the same thing in mind when we get a new car.  "I'll never eat or drink in it.  I won't track any dirt in.  I'll keep it clean as long as I own it."  The irony there is we never truly own it until we've trashed it.  The reality there is we never really own it until the lending institution writes the title over to our name.  The point here is to slap words down in any order that comes to mind.  Play a one-person game of word association if you have to.  Just fill that puppy up with a big ol' block of words.  Chances are, they'll start to make sense to you and you'll be writing.
   
3. Drop it.  You know that feeling you get the first time you drop your mobile phone/handset?  The frantic putting back together of battery and case.  The close inspection of every square millimeter of surface area whilst it boots back up.  The sinking feeling of failure over the scratch that took you ten minutes to find.  Now...  Do you know that feeling you get the thirty-seventh time you dropped it?  That's the feeling you want when you write.  To get there, write "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" until you either get to work or grab an ax.

Blank pages aren't a writer's enemy.  They're our canvas.  It's up to you decide if you want to go for photorealism or a single brush stroke.  (Or it might be up to whoever hired you, but that's another discussion for another day.)

Feeding the Bib

Turns out the bug was more than ready for her first bites of rice cereal.  She acted like we had been holding out on her.  I guess, in a way, we were.

I imagine a lot of parents stare unblinkingly at their baby's first bites of "solid food" (what's so solid about some rice flour dissolved in breast milk?) wanting to see some expression of delight, wonderment, confusion, or even disgust.  It's a big first step.  Our camera was rolling.  We planned the event at grandma's.  Typical.

This is what we got:

• The bug watched the spoon come closer and casually took it in her mouth.
• She smacked her tongue a little bit (probably searching desperately for flavor).
• She immediately grabbed at the bowl with a look like "what's in this stuff?" and tipped the whole thing over, including the brand new, no-flip suction cup that, as promised, remained attached to the bowl.
• She took a couple more oh-hum spoonfuls from what was left in the bowl and humored us with chewing motions (a mere formality at this stage).
• Granted, those of us over the age of five months were preoccupied with taking care of the spill.  Still, we weren't feeding her that slowly.  Regardless, after only a few bites of her gruel, the bug found it necessary to take matters into her own hands.  By "matters" I mean spoon.  And by "hands" I mean a two-fisted death grip from which not even photons could escape.

In time, we got the spoon back.  After having had a total of three such feedings thus far, she still isn't feeding herself in spite of her prowess with infant cutlery.

She accepts that she needs to wait on our ability to extract an empty spoon from her mouth, refill it at the proper receptacle, and competently transfer the spoon level, so as not to spill its contents, to her waiting mouth where spilling the contents is an unavoidable (and, as it were, necessary) eventuality.  She accepts this so totally in fact that her latest feeding pose involves leaning with arms extended to the sides, as much as the nylon straps will allow, toward the person holding the spoon and having eyes and mouth held as wide as manageable.

I'd say we're having a first feeding win.

In a related side-note, teething has begun in earnest.  No white tips poking through yet, but they can't be far away.  Stay tuned...

What We Have Here is a Failure...

Family on Friday!!!

As everyone over the age of Sesame Street can tell you, communication is the cornerstone of any relationship.  This blog has already touched upon communication during the Table Time series, but table time is more than communication and communication goes beyond table time.

Familial relationships can suffer the most during a communication breakdown.  Walls are naturally and appropriately built between generations.  Spouses fall prey to the fallacy that they already know everything there is to know about one another.  Siblings come to a point where they don't want everything to be known about them.  Now that's all well and good, but... everything in moderation.

Habitual non-communication can lead to misunderstandings can lead to distrust can lead to injury can lead to a family not being a family.  The longer you allow the bad communication to take over, the harder it will be to get back on track.  If you're coming up with ideas of what you can do better rather than what other family members need to do, you're off to a good start.

Children that see their parents communicating effectively are more likely to communicate willingly.  Would you open up to a boss that has a reputation for getting too upset, responding harshly, or talking when they should be listening?  I mean if you didn't have to.

If you'll permit me to generalize on gender types:  Women need to stop with the attitude that they shouldn't have to verbalize and that the other person should just know.  Men need to stop thinking that asking for help or discussing emotions emasculates them in some way.

The more we can all recognize that other people are separate beings with separate lives, bridged through relationships created by communication, and that we are all people experiencing ninety-five percent (my own completely arbitrary figure pulled out of thin air with no statistical backing) identical circumstances, then the easier it will be to throw gender types out the window and just be ourselves.

Opening up the pathways of communication will rectify a wide range of ills.  Try it.  All you have to lose are those misconceptions your family may have of you.