What a crazy freaking week!

I am sure hoping that October brings us some more quiet downtime for relaxation and reflection. Despite being away from the city and in a healing place things have been rather topsy turvy lately. Riki and I joke that we have had more company and drama than we did living in the middle of the city when we couldn't pay people to come hang out with us, lol. I guess that's a good thing, right? I have really had to learn to create boundaries. This is hard for me because I like to take this sort of go with the flow zen approach to life but it doesn't always work out. I am finding out that people will run you over and take advantage if you allow them to. Although I am trying to be a compassionate person I don't suppose that Buddha was suggesting that we allow ourselves to be manipulated in this way. I'm still figuring out how to handle this sort of thing without causing suffering to others and myself. It is quite the balancing act I'm afraid, but nevertheless a lesson that I suppose has been well overdue. A part of me thinks that we are so used to not really having friends that we don't know how that relationship is supposed to work. Pretty sad, huh? I guess we just never fit in with too many people in Florida. What made us the wacky flaming liberals in Florida has actually turned out to make us pretty normal and sometimes, gasp, more conservative in these parts.

So we have spent the last week canning 100lbs of tomatoes. This was sort of a last minute decision so I wasn't all that prepared to can. Granted, this is something I have wanted to do for YEARS but had plenty of excuses not to, especially not having a garden surplus of my own to can. I had a monstrosity of a book for it but in hindsight I see that it had too much information and was rather daunting. This time around all I needed was some youtube videos and some online recipes to get going. It is very time and energy consuming, I will say that. Considering that the bed of our rv was filled with flats of tomatoes, half of which were going to our cagefree family friends as well,  we had to work quickly to avoid spoiled tomatoes. Unfortunately for Riki this was also the week of the wool festival. So while I spent all of Wednesday in a dyeing workshop he was canning. I think we have less than two flats left that we are finishing off tomorrow. We have made pasta sauce, stewed tomatoes (the easiest and quickest), and salsa. It is comforting to know that we will have delicious heirloom organic tomatoes in the dead of winter.

Ah, the wool festival....this is super exciting for me. Coming from Florida I have never been to such an event before. I signed up for dyeing and spinning workshops well in advance. The park was packed today. I've never seen so many varieties of fiber arts in my life.....candy colored rovings, handspun artisan yarns, looms, spinning wheels, sculptures, even organic cooked lamb vendors. Riki was quickly bored and said that he didn't see the big deal because every booth was just more yarn, lol. Obviously he just doesn't get it, right? Ellery had a great time and for a mere $5 bought himself a beginner spindle kit. I sure hope I learn something from this workshop tomorrow so I can teach this kid how to spin because I've had a heck of a time learning with a spindle myself. He absolutely hates knitting at this point so I'm told but he wants to spin and dye yarn that he can give to me. What else can a mother ask for, right?

Homeschooling has taken a backseat this past week. Michaelmas went by completely uncelebrated. Canning before tomatoes went rotten was more important. I know we all see these wonderful homeschooling blogs but sometimes I think it is nice to show that things don't always go as planned. I have no lovely pictures of baking dragon bread or singing songs. It just didn't happen this year. Sometimes that is the way it goes. We all had to recover (including colds) from a weekend of late nights and unsolicited drama.

As we go into the next week of October I hope to get back on track with some lovely pumpkin chalkboard drawings, making Halloween decorations, and looking forward to these weather changes I've heard so much about but have yet to see yet. Right now it's still just plain hot.