LHitBW - Chapter 2 - Part 2

I made my own butter once. Or rather, I attempted to, and it didn't turn out very well. It was a project for an extracurricular course I took in elementary school, one entitled, "Life 200 Years Ago." In that course, we learned to sew, to bake, to air-dry fruit for storage, and yes, to churn butter.

We all used a large yogurt tub, and made a dasher from popsicle sticks. But maybe the milk I used didn't have a high enough cream content or something, because no matter how hard or long I worked at it, all I got was milk that looked like it was starting to go off.

Funny enough, that incident hasn't discouraged me, and I've been interested in trying to make my own butter again for years now. The problem is making a decent churn and dash, and buying cream for it. And knowing, too, that it'll be a very small pat of butter that I end up making, because I can't afford to spend $20 or more on enough cream to make a semi-decent amount of butter when I could just buy that butter for a much lower price.

Sometimes making things by hand end up more expensive than just buying it from the store.

But perhaps some day I'll do it anyway, just to say that I have, and that this time it actually worked.

And just for fun, I'll colour it with the juice from a grated carrot.

LHitBW - Chapter 2 - Part 1

Laura and Mary helped Ma with the work.

It's funny, but reading descriptions of Laura and Mary as tiny children making beds and doing the dishes always makes me want to jump right up and start doing housework of my own.

I admit, I'm a lousy model of a Victorian woman, at least one who wasn't upper class. I like my lazy times. I like leisure. It isn't that I can't find satisfaction in work, but I prefer, as most people do, to do work that I enjoy.

But reading about children going through their chores makes me feel just a little bit guilty. There are so many things I could be doing right now, and instead, I'm just not.

Wash on Monday
Iron on Tuesday
Mend on Wednesday
Churn on Thursday
Glean on Friday
Bake on Saturday
Rest on Sunday

Ma really had some structure to her life. More than once I've been tempted to follow her example and set specific days for specific tasks.

I couldn't use Ma's schedule, though. At least, not at the moment. I don't have an iron nor an ironing board, I don't have any clothes that need mending, I don't churn my own butter, and at the moment, the only thing to glean is snow, and I don't quite think that counts.

But I can wash, bake, and rest with the best of them! And come the growing season, I already plan to do a fair bit of gleaning, supplementing my food stores with delicious edible things that grow wild.

Maybe next week I should make my own work schedule like this, and try my best to stick to it. I'll post on my progress, of course, and let you know what changes I have to make to Ma's plan in order to better fit my life at the moment.

Though I suppose that begs the question: what did Ma do on days where she couldn't follow her work plan? In the winter, what did she do on Fridays when there was nothing to be gleaned? When the cows ran out of milk, what did she do instead of churning? If all clothes were in good repair, did she make new ones instead of mending, if she had the material?

We all know Ma as an industrious woman who kept busy. The Shaker motto, "Hands to work and hearts to God" could be Ma's personal life motto, really. Did she look on those days, though, as days of a little more rest, or did she busy herself with something else?

I wonder too, if Ma found it hard to keep up with that sort of schedule during the harvest or butchering seasons, or when other unexpected windfalls or troubles brought along unexpected new workloads. Did she feel that she had fallen behind in her daily work if she couldn't do something on the day she had planned for it? Did she try to fit it in the next day instead?

LHitBW - Chapter 1 - Part 3

Mary was bigger than Laura, and she had a rag doll named Nettie. Laura only had a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, but it was a good doll.

Nowadays, where toys are so abundant and kids often have more toys than they can keep track of, it's interesting to think that a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief could be such a good doll for a little girl. Try to give that to most kids now and they'd pitch a fit because you were giving them trash.

I still have one of my very first dolls, or at least the earliest doll I can remember. She no longer has her dress, but her soft cloth body has been hugged many times, and her eyelids opened and closed depending on whether she was lying down or standing up, and her plastic face was soft and smooth. She was called Jennifer, because she reminded me so much of my cousin of the same name.

I've been thinking that I should make myself a rag doll. I'm a little old to take it to bed every night and to play with it by day, but there's something timeless and lovely about a ragdoll. Made from old clothes, stuffed with scraps too small to use elsewhere, face sewn on, and all sort of chances to improve my sewing skills by making clothes for it.

I have a few other crafts that I need to finish first (I need to sew knitted squares together for a blanket, and I'm knitting some red wool mittens for a store sample), but once those are done, I'll look through my old clothes and choose some good material, and then start making my first handmade rag doll.

She won't be a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, but she'll be a good doll anyway.

LHitBW - Chapter 1 - Part 2

Cracklings were very good to eat, but Laura and Mary could only have a taste. They were too rich for little girls, Ma said.

I've never tried cracklings. I have no real opinion on cracklings. What has always struck me about this passage is the subtle wisdom that Ma shows that a lot of parents these days seem to have forgotten entirely.

First of all, it shows that Ma is in control of the situation, and is a figure of authority. Most children see their parents as an authority, but they also learn quickly how to manipulate them, often with kicking and screaming and tantrums. I can't say that Laura nor Mary never threw tantrums to get what they wanted, mind you, but here, at least, we see the girls as children who will mind their parents.

And we see Ma as a parent who is in control of her children.

She does give them a taste of what they want, as a treat. but she also gives them something of an explanation as to why they can't stuff themselves with that treat all day.

I wish, when I see kids screaming in stores and parents buying them candy just to shut them up, that more parents would benefit from Ma's subtly-presented example.

The second thing that strikes me about this is the wisdom of not feeding your kids rendered fat. It may sound obvious, but really, what's the obesity rate in North America these days? I'm pretty sure that all those people didn't gain weight from eating too many vegetables.

I'm not saying that all overweight people are compulsive overeaters. I'm not saying that overweight people don't eat healthily. I'm saying that part of the root cause of obesity lies in the fact that parents can't say no and thus let their kids eat 2 burgers from McDonald's every day.

I know this because that's exactly what my parents did to me. Not every day, mind, but when we went to McDonalds, which was at least once a week when I was a child, my father would let me get 3 burgers just because I wanted them. No refusal, no talks about how unhealthy it was. Nothing.

I may not have appreciated it then, but I can bet you I'd appreciate it now had my parents not only disciplined me and said no sometimes, but had also had the wisdom to explain to me why they were saying no. Even if it was some foolish little reason that only made sense to child-logic.

I'd probably be better off for it.

(Part 3 coming soon. Got to love multi-post days!)

LHitBW - Chapter 1 - Part 1

I like that this book -- no, this entire series -- starts off with preparation. Smoking venison, salting fish, making sausage, storing vegetables in the attic. It starts off with work, with abundance, and with a feeling of preparedness.

More lives ought to start that way, I think, and continue along just the same lines.

I'm one of those people who lived the paycheque-to-paycheque life, buying too much and yet always seeming to have too little. Food would go to waste because I didn't feel like making anything, I'd buy take-out food, I'd buy things I didn't need, and then wonder why I was broke and didn't seem to be satisfied with life.

I've taken a turnaround. I do more with my life, I waste less, and I don't buy so much of what I don't need. I have my vices, as everyone does, the chief ones being books, certain video games, and craft supplies, but at least I can find use and enjoyment from those. Not like times I'd go out and buy $20 worth of junk food that would be gone in a day and would leave me feeling empty.

I've been giving a lot more thought to long-term food storange lately. I've been unemployed for the better part of six months now, and am learning ways to make the grocery budget stretch a little further, but I've been thinking long and hard about how nice it would be to have enough food stored away so that if this ever happens again, we won't need to worry about groceries at all. Aside from things like milk and wet cat food and toilet paper, the grocery budget could be put towards rent or bills, because we'll be all stocked up and prepared.

So maybe at this time next year, I'll have bags of dehydrated fruit, plenty of flour and beans and sugar and rice and oats in canisters in the cupboard. My roommate would say that things like pasta would be necessities for long-term food storage, but with water and flour, I can make fresh pasta anyway. I already have about a year worth of various kinds of tea stored away. We're looking into getting a chest freezer at some point, to make meat easier to store. Root vegetables, if they can't be dehydrated for some reason, will do well in the coold darkness of the cupboards below the countertop.

There's something to be said for an abundance of the right things.

(Thus ends part 1 of my thoughts on the first chapters. It's impressive when the very first chapter of a children's book has so many things for an adult to think about.)

Tomorrow, it all begins.

Tomorrow I start reading the series again, making notes for each chapter, ideas for skills I want to try or learn, things I've learned, my impressions and opinions, all that stuff. Tomorrow where "Living Laura" really begins.

Hope to see you there!

A very merry Christmas.

They had never even thought of such a thing as having a penny. Think of having a whole penny for your very own. Think of having a cup and a cake and a stick of candy AND a penny.

The above quote is from Little House on the Prairie. I remember reading that passage to my mother when I was younger, trying to impress upon her exactly the excitement I felt while reading that chapter, feeling the same excitement that Laura and Mary must have.

She looked at me as though I'd lost my mind. She, in her matierialist way, couldn't understand what was so important about having such piddly little presents.

I couldn't quite explain it to her. At the time, I didn't know how to explain the concept of context, or even the joy of receiving simple things. Simple things did not fit into my family's ideals of what Christmas should be about.

I remember a Christmas not long ago, where three gifts specifically come to mind. The DVD special box set of the first Lord of the Rings movie, a graphic's tablet for my computer, and a digital camera. I had asked for the first two specifically, but had never even expressed an interest in photography or having a camera.

My father asked me which of those presents I liked the best. I told him I couldn't decide between the DVD and the graphics tablet. He was genuinely surprised; he thought I'd pick the camera, because it was the most expensive of the three.

It was my turn to be surprised. I couldn't quite imagine why he thought I'd pick the expensive item I hadn't asked for or even expressed an interest in over the cheaper items I'd been wanting for over half a year at that point.

But that was the mentality of my family. The amount of money spent was equal to the amount of love shown. I could never get across to them that I would be perfectly happy with fewer and less expensive gifts if they were things I actually liked or were interested in. I spent years trying to convince them that spending $10 on a book was better for me than spending $20 on a movie. The book lasted longer, was less expensive, and probably would be reread half a million times if I really enjoyed it.

But they piled on the expensive gifts because I was an only child and they wanted to give me the best, whether I liked it or not.

I've finally reached a point in my life where my holiday celebrations are not all about me, and so I get fewer presents. And I also have much more fun. My friends can be counted on to get me things I enjoy, and they know me well enough to know that I'll be even more pleased the less money they spent on it.

This last year has been something of a trial for me. I spent a good deal of it without much money. I had stress leave from work for three months, and then spent a month or two back at my job before they closed down suddenly in September. I've barely bought anything for myself this year, and have had to find a few interesting ways to make money stretch. So getting anything at all was an extra treat, and I think I appreciated what I did get all the more.

I think, too, that if any of my friends ever read the Little House books and saw the passage I quoted above, they would know that I'd likely get the biggest kick out of opening a present to see a tin cup, a single stick of candy, a little delicious cake, and a penny. All for myself.

Expense pales in comparison to meaning.