Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Crying into my coffee. Also: baby ducks.

The reason I'm crying into my coffee this morning?  After homeschooling my three kids their whole lives (the oldest is almost 15), my husband and I dropped them off at public school this morning for their first-ever day of school.

By no means am I an overprotective helicopter parent, but it's completely surreal to have my kids gone from me.  After raising and educating my kids being my sole purpose for one and a half decades, handing them off to teachers that I don't know feels strange, and a little bit wrong, but also right in many ways.

Because it's time.

All three of them requested to go to public school.  I wrote about it here, in case you are wondering what's up with that.

So anyway.  Here I am, back at home, with lots of plans of what I have to accomplish today.  The garlic has to be harvested, yogurt needs to be made with the goat milk, the garden has to be watered, not to mention laundry and food prep.

But the tears keep flowing, and the house and yard are entirely too quiet without any kids biking, playing and making messes.

My cure for grief is this: watching our baby ducks.  Let me show you.  Our Mama duck hatched these cuties a couple of weeks ago, and here they are.  The first few pictures are of them being only one day old.









Okay, looking at the baby ducks helped.  Now I need to go hug a baby goat.  Or my dogs, since I won't be able to hug my kids til 4pm.  

They will be on the school bus for two and a half hours each school day, leaving at 6:30 am and coming home just before 4 pm.  Can you tell I'm freaking out?  This is hard.  I won't go on and on about how strange this all is, otherwise you'll get annoyed with me.

This empty house will be our new normal from now on, and I better get used to it.  If you know me, you realize that my time will get filled up with all kinds of projects.  I will tell you about an exciting thing I'm working on soon.

In the meantime, check out this Back to Basics summit I'm part of.  It's FREE, and I'm one of the presenters.  I'll tell you more about it soon, but you should register for free now to learn all kinds of skills I know you want to learn!

Let me show you pictures of the past days.  There was an eclipse, of course, which we watched with our special eclipse glasses in our backyard.  We only had 90 percent totality, so it didn't get completely dark, but it got much colder, and the shadows on the ground very gorgeously patterned.




As always, our lives revolve around food.  We gathered Oregon grapes for making wine (I will write a tutorial for this soon), fed the chickens whey from cheese making, harvested onions and potoatoes, canned apple sauce, fig jam and dilly beans, and made amazing food straight from the garden and chicken coop.

Also, watch for my tutorial on making fig jam soon.

Now let me go pet the dogs.  I bet they miss the children, too.













9 comments:

  1. Oh Corina, I completely understand why you are feeling the way you are!! Hugs my friend, praying for the kids that they have a great year! And for you to adjust to this new normal, they will do great. Love you!! So great to run in to your family at the library the other day!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, sweetie. We put them on the bus at 6:30 this morning. Steve and I both shed tears.

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  2. You never get over missing them. But it gets easier. You'll be wondering about them every day, every minute. I wonder about my 25 year old daughter just like that. But it gets easier.

    To everything there is a season.

    And animals do help! Especially baby animals. And you've got a life so you will do alright.

    And so will they because you have done a really really good job.

    I'm not going to get all profound. I'll leave that to you! LOL.

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  3. Ughh, yep. That really does suck!
    Going through the motions after just 10 weeks. And I hate it. The solitude can be good sometimes, but even more often it feels like a paralyzing void. I always need at least a week to adjust, but 2 is more like it.
    I just hope that this emptiness will not mess up your schedules and chores! It will require a huge amount of re-adjusting for all involved. But that's the way it is supposed to be, really.
    Best of luck to you all. The kids might just hate it as much as you do after a while.....

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    Replies
    1. That's the right word: a huge amount of re-adjusting for everyone. I'm holding a big space here for everyone, including myself. It takes a lot of energy...

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    2. That brings up a good question. How do the kids like it so far?

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  4. always love reading/seeing your posts! how did the kids like school?! xx

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    Replies
    1. Thanks so much for asking! It's going okay. I'll update you in another blog post.

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