If you live anywhere between Lincoln, Nebraska and San Antonio, Texas and would be interested in organizing a brunch/soup/chocolate/braiding/game night/whatever-sounds-good-to-you party, send me an email (dhanleyATtiggyshouseDOTcom) and we’ll see if we can work out a schedule and visit with as many people as we can.

What is involved?

1. Decide what you wouldl like to do (brunch, soup, chocolate, braiding, games or whatever).
2. Invite your friends over for a time of fellowship.
3. Ask them to bring a dish and a suggested donation. (My mom did $10 at the one she did and it was quite successful, but you know what would be most appropriate in your circle of friends!)
4. We’ll come over and enjoy the time of fellowship together and hopefully raise a little money for Tiggy’s House at the same time!

Don’t feel like you have to raise hundreds of dollars to make it worth stopping at your house. We’re making the trip anyway and we really would like to meet some of the wonderful people who have been so incredibly supportive to us over the last year. Anything we are able to raise in addition to that is just like icing on the cake!

We can just chat if you like, or we have a bit of a piece put together on grief to help people know a little what it is like and how they can help friends and acquintances going through difficult times. Of course we’ll talk a little about Tiggy’s House. And if there is anything else we might be competent to talk about, just ask!

If you would like to host a braiding party, let me know. I would love to bring my marudai and enough Kumihimo disks for everyone. I would have to charge $10 per person for that rather than leaving it strictly to donation, but everyone will be able to make a bracelet to take home with them and keep their Kumihimo disk to make as many as they would like at home. I would also love to give a lesson to your homeschool group! (I would also need an approximate count as soon as possible to be sure I can order enough in.)

If you have any questions or would like to start trying to work out a time and a date for us to stop by, drop me a note here in the comments, on Facebook or via my email: dhanleyATtiggyshouseDOTcom (replace the letters in all caps for the appropriate punctuation.)

And if you live in another part of the country and this sounds like something you’d like to do, let us know! Of course, you don’t need us, but if you would like us to visit, we may plan one of these again sometime and head a different direction.

All money raised will be donated to Tiny Hands International toward the construction of Tiggy’s House, a children’s Home in Nepal to fight poverty and sex-trafficking.

Thank you so much!

For awhile, I even looked into how difficult it would be to manage a flock of chickens so that I could slaughter the meat that we needed the week that we needed it. “Fresh, never frozen” was my new goal and on five acres, it seemed doable. Maybe not for everything all year, but enough that it could really matter.

Everyone else, it seemed, was moving toward freezer meals while I tried to plan a garden on paper that would produce what we needed in amounts that we could use as we needed it throughout the growing season. I was more interested in how to convert our porch into a heated greenhouse for winter freshness than in a nicer freezer.

Then, well, then my son died and we lived on lasagna for a month. And frozen pizzas have become a regular staple. Last night I went to Dollar General and fed them an assortment of boxed snack foods for a sort of dinner because time had gotten away from me and I had to feed them something before taking them to AWANAs (they did actually eat something of nutritional value when we got home, at least!).

But reading Lunch Wars by Amy Kalafa has somewhat renewed my interest in the original purpose for my garden. As in, more than a place to vent my frustrations. And I think it can grow more than weeds. Really. I do. As a homeschooler, I don’t think that much about what is on the menu in our local school’s cafeteria. But the food politics and money issues that affect their food service programs affect all of us.

We as Americans increasingly want convenience over flavor, so we buy breakfast at the drive thru and dinner in a box so that we have time for other things. And the food industry has answered with a plethora of convenience foods full of preservatives to extend shelf life and additives to make you think it tastes like something.

I’m not against a frozen pizza now and again. Nor the much maligned cupcake. I think there is a community value associated with that whole birthday treat tradition that outweighs the sugar rush on a Friday afternoon and a few cookies purchased at the occasional bake sale fundraiser aren’t going to set a child up for a lifetime of poor nutritional choices.

But imagine if we had more of a commitment to the foods we are eating every day. If lunches looked more like a fresh tossed salad of locally grown veggies coupled with chicken marinara prepared that morning and finished with a selection of seasonal fruit. Still in its skin waiting to be selected from a basket. If we lingered at the dinner table for an hour enjoying each other’s company along with what was prepared. If we enjoyed our food rather than just consumed it.

That isn’t really what Lunch Wars is about. It is about taking charge of your school’s lunch program and gives a number of practical steps you can take to improve the menu that is being offered to your childdren every day. For a homeschooler, that part is easy. Just make better lunches and include your children in its preparation. But if you are interested in food and its politics, it gives a very good introduction to many of the issues involved in a very readable format and is well-written enough that you may find yourself reading the chapters on how exactly to go about raising money and changing school menus even if you don’t plan to ever do it.

But I also can’t help but think that the real place that the change needs to take place is in our homes. On our tables. With our families. If we as a culture make more of a commitment to fresh and local, food safety legislation will be introduced to try to make the selling at the local farmer’s market too big of a financial burden to mess with, but if we demand it, eventually the market will follow along behind.

And that is healthier for all of us.

“This was a paid review for BlogHer Book Club but the opinions expressed are my own.”

Except for one thing.

I still do not know what to read aloud.

Last year, my readers selected an entry for me, In which I beat of a coyote with a box of Rice Chex. It was a good choice. It was my very first public reading and my audience laughed in all the right places. That was an incredible boost to my confidence as a writer and quelled some of my fears of some day going out in the “real” world to market a book.

But this year, I am again stuck. And I am again asking for your input. I have ten minutes to share a sample of my writing which consists mostly of this blog.

Which entry would you recommend?

I can do this.

I actually have already a few times. The first several times, I know the person on the other end of the line couldn’t decipher anything through my sobs. Fortunately, they were all gracious enough to express their condolences without asking me to go through it all again.

It was a horrible, horrible accident and I’m still stuck replaying all the decisions I could have made differently that might have left my energetic little boy here in my arms, dispersing my dishes about the house, sneaking fruit out of the refrigerator and eating the tips off markers any chance he got. And it is only beginning to sink in how much worse it could have been.

Friday was such a windy day. 45 mile an hour gusts. We had an extension on our chimney with a draft inducing cap on top and the wind caught it and took it down with a crash. I was so glad I don’t let the children play outside on windy days. See, we have some loose tin on one of the barns and I’m terrified the wind will bring it down.

John went up but there wasn’t much he could do other than make sure that the chimney wasn’t damaged to the point of being unusable. It was bitterly cold. Windchill that night was expected to reach minus 25. The men from the volunteer fire department who were first to arrive would leave the basement door open, causing all our pipes to freeze and break. It wasn’t a night we could go without heat.

But that caused some challenges. The stove didn’t have enough draft so the smoke started coming into the house. Flames shot out the front and scared me to death. I had the older children help me clear the area of anything flammable. I swept the hearth to make sure there weren’t any pellets or bark near the stove to catch fire and was so thankful John had been called to a job in Lincoln. I could stay up most of the night until he got home in order to babysit the stove. I got the fire extinguisher out and re-read the directions to make sure I knew how to use it.

It was bedtime, but the children were rather excited about the whole thing. I also didn’t want them breathing all the smoke. They asked for a family movie night. At first I said no, but then I thought they could get out their sleeping bags, watch a movie and hopefully fall asleep without any bedtime struggle since I really didn’t want to leave the stove.

Plus I figured if the house did catch fire, that put them all in one place. Since the first time I set the smoke detector off in the middle of the night without so much as a flinch from the children, I’ve been terrified about how on earth I would rescue six children on my own.

I finally got the smoke cleared and the stove heated up enough that the heat of the air started the drafting in the right direction. I checked on the children and they were all sitting, enjoying their show. I decided to go ahead and put the baby to bed and see how the stove was doing before maybe joining them for awhile.

As he was falling asleep, Tiggy and Ellie came up and started wrestling and jumping around on my bed. I played for a minute, let Tiggy shower the baby with his sweet little kisses but that is an amazingly difficult way to get a baby to sleep.

“Why don’t you go back downstairs and watch the movie with Koko?”

I will regret those words for the rest of my life. Over and over in my mind I keep him. Let him stay up. Let him bounce on the bed. Let the baby be awake until Tiggy bounced himself out of energy and fell asleep.

He was such a good little boy. He obeyed immediately.

I laid the baby down.

The phone rang. It was John. I had called him about the stove but it was under control now.

I heard a crash, dropped the phone and ran to the basement.

“Tiggy!”

I heard my daughter scream.

She and my son were standing there, doing their best to hold up a dresser.

A heavy dresser.

A sturdy dresser.

Nothing like what you’ll ever find at WalMart or Nebraska Furniture Mart.

I loved that dresser because it was sturdy. Hardwood, and the drawers were even made of wood, not that balsa-like material in our other drawers.

I hate that dresser. And the television we set on it because it was the most sturdy piece of furniture we own.

When the dresser started to tip, my twelve year old went for it. She was scratched by her puppy who was frantically trying to get out of the way. She was hit by a television. Still, she went toward the dresser and tried to catch it.

My three year old was hit. She has a dresser-knob shaped circle on her ankle and some bruising on her leg. She didn’t so much as shed a tear. I wouldn’t find out anyone but Mattias had been hurt until we were at the hospital and I came out to tell them how Tiggy was doing and try to calm them down a little.

And the dresser my husband had pushed and shook and stood on when we bought it to make sure it could take some climbing landed on my little Tiggy, cracking his head against the concrete floor. I don’t remember getting from the stairs to him. I only remember kneeling over him, the weight of the dresser on my back and screaming.

“Call 911!”

I shouted and my daughter was already running with the phone. I didn’t make a lot of sense, I don’t think. I said my address over and over as clearly as I could, but the lady on the other end wanted to know what happened. I remember screaming about my baby and blood and just screaming before taking a deep breath and repeating my address. She reassured me an ambulance was on the way. She had my address. But when help arrived, all they understood was that there had been an accident and a baby was involved.

I was panicking. I thought blood was coming from his eyes, nose and ear. I didn’t think there was any way he would live long enough for the ambulance to get there. I called my husband and told him he had to come home. Tiggy was dying. I was so incredibly thankful he had been called to a job in Lincoln. He stepped off the train, told his train crew  he needed to go and got in the car. About an hour later, he was at the hospital. Normally, it would have taken several hours to get off the train in some outlying area, wait for a bus and so forth.

When the paramedics did finally arrive and I listened to them describe the injuries, I realized all the blood was coming from a cut above his nose.

For a moment, I could breathe. For a moment, I thought maybe he would make it.

One of the men from the volunteer fire department drove me and all the children to the hospital. The same man who dug out our whole road when our mini van fell in the ditch. The same man who advised me about the dangers of winter, the need for an alternate heat source and the need for food and water stores. The same man who put our little grass fire out. And the same man who re-graded our road after the fire.

We got to the hospital and Mattias was still alive. He was responding to pain. He had a bite reflex.

I thought maybe. Maybe there was a chance. But he was so little and that dresser was so heavy. I wanted to be in the room with him. Holding him. Talking to him. But I didn’t want to be in the way. I didn’t want to distract anyone if I screamed. I didn’t want to take nurses away if I collapsed. I knew this might be the last I saw him alive and I had to fight all my maternal drive to be with him to give him the best possible medical attention he could get.

They wanted him at the Children’s Hospital in Omaha but Life Flight wasn’t flying. The sheriff was checking to see if the roads were open. They were. They began preparing him for transport. I told my parents Omaha and they left their home in Kansas. Omaha called and said he needed to be at a trauma center. Lincoln would be best. I figured my parents would figure it out. My husband arrived.

My children were taken to someone’s house.

We left for Lincoln. An hour drive in good weather. It took us a little longer. It took them 40 minutes.

But when we got there, Tiggy was still alive. Getting a CT scan. We sat in a room with a nurse offering drinks and heated blankets. John wrapped me, practically swaddled me, while she discussed their respite rooms and that we could stay there at the hospital.

The CT scan was not good. Severe fracture to the skull. Severe brain trauma. They described the surgery and the risks. They wanted to make sure I understood the risks and I wanted to yell at them for talking to me when they could be getting started.

We were led out to the hall and told what we were to see as Tiggy would be carted from the intake room to surgery. They paused with the cart so we could see and talk with him ever so briefly before continuing the dash to surgery. Something in me knew it was goodbye. But I kissed him ever so lightly on the forehead because I was terrified of hurting him.

“I love you, Tiggy! Be a good boy.”

And they took him. The last thing I heard as he went through the door was one of the nurses informing the surgeon that his blood pressure was improving.

And again I had a glimmer of hope that would flicker faintly for another hour before we knew for sure.

He had held on for five hours.

He was a fighter. Strong and sweet and full of a life that could not be easily taken. He hung on long enough for my husband to see him, so my husband and I could be together to see him for the last time.

His funeral is tomorrow and I’ll hopefully share a little slide show if anyone wants to see snapshots of his little life that was far too short. (Update: The slide show is posted.)

In the meantime, take a look around your home. Not just at bathtubs and outlets and choking hazards for we always emptied the bathtub and had the bathroom door closed; we cut his grapes and hot dogs in half so he wouldn’t choke; we did everything we could so we urge you take a long hard look at the things you never thought about before. The things you thought were sturdy and secure. The old, heirloom pieces of furniture that seem so very sturdy. I climbed that dresser once to fix a curtain. I never would have thought it would fall. I know you can’t bubble wrap the world, but right now, I’m in the mood to try.

Please, check your homes because the everyday ordinary may not be as safe as you envisioned.

And hug your little babies. I hope and pray you never know how much you can miss all their little mischiefs.

Ingredients:

• 4 cups cubed watermelon
• 12 cups water
• 1 cup sugar

Directions

• Add watermelon and four cups water to a blender and blend thoroughly. This brought my children up from the basement asking for milk shakes. You can see why we have a blender.
• Pour in a pitcher and add the rest of the water.
• Add the sugar and stir well.
• Chill in the refrigerator. This is a beverage best served cold, but without ice. The ice dilutes the flavor too much. If you must use ice, cut back on the water a little.

Now isn’t that the best, most refreshing summer drink you’ve ever tasted? It’s really good with cantaloupe, too. In fact, I think I prefer the cantaloupe aquas frescas, though I don’t actually like eating cantaloupe. Serve with a little pollo con aguacate and have yourself a Mexican street stand night!

(Pollo con aquacate with aguas frescas was the first thing I ever bought at a street stand in Mexico. I have no idea how it was made, but my made up recipe goes something like this: two chicken breasts diced and fried over medium heat. Mash and stir in one avacado in the last minute or so of cooking. Serve in tortillas with sour cream.)

And when you’re all done with that, you can preserve some of the deliciousness of late summer’s bounty with some watermelon rind jelly.

Fresh water for the geese, the ducks, the broilers, and the chicks in their respective pens. Fresh water for the chickens who are out free ranging–one dish at the entrance of the coop, one in the shade of a large tree. Fresh water for the dogs. Fresh water on a table in the garage for the cat just in case the wind blows the door shut and she happens to get trapped inside.

I check on the garden to see if any of my vegetables struggling for a bit of space amongst the weeds need some watering to make it through the rest of the afternoon. The state is underwater with water volumes rivaling the Great Flood of 1993. Neighboring communities were evacuated. The Missouri has left its banks with flood waters covering one lane of Highway 2, five miles from where the river is supposed to stay. My husband is stuck in Creston waiting on a train that is waiting for flood waters to recede before it can pass.

Fortunately, the garden is still moist enough. It always seems strange when I need to set out a sprinkler in light of the ongoing news reports, but we live on a hill and mostly the rain only manages to increase the humidity for us.

Finally, my afternoon chores are finished and I walk up the hill toward the house, toward a nice, tall glass of refrigerator tea, toward a window fan that will provide a little relief from the heat.

Sweat is dripping from my forehead, plastering my hair to the side of my face and the back of my neck. The shirt I wear in lieu of sunscreen sticks wherever it finds skin. I lift it off my shoulders seeking just a little air. Suddenly, a breeze. . .ever so slight. . . comes down the hill to meet me and ruffle my shirt.

A breath of fresh air.

It is followed by a stronger breeze, a distinctly cooler breeze and I let it pick up my shirt and push it off my shoulders.

I bask in the coolness.

I can smell the rain on the changing wind. I can feel the temperature dropping. I close my eyes, breathe the clean, fresh air, drink in its refreshment.

And I wonder for a moment if the seemingly unbearable heat is worth it for the pleasure of just this small breeze meeting me as I walk toward the house.

After all, all that handy little appliance does is keep my culture at 85 degrees or so until I turn it off. With outside temperatures staying in the 80s and 90s, there is no need whatsoever to plug in my yogurt maker and I can now make yogurt by the gallon.

All you need is a little yogurt, a lot of milk and a pan to heat it in.

Ingredients:

8 oz yogurt (plain, unsweetened and with live, active cultures)

1 quart milk

Procedure:

1)  Heat milk to about 180 degrees Fahrenheit to thoroughly pasteurize but do not let it boil. This makes sure the only bacteria you culture is the yogurt making bacteria (lactobacillus acidophilus). I’m real exact about this. I stick my pinky in the milk and if it “bites,” it has achieved the proper temperature.

That’s because I learned to make yogurt from a Kurdish woman and I was under the impression they weren’t in the habit of using kitchen thermometers.

2)  Set milk aside to cool to somewhere between 80 and 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Again, you can double check with your pinky. If it is slightly warmer than lukewarm, it’s ready.

3)  Stir in yogurt. Or should I say lightly mix in? The more you stir, the more sour your yogurt will be. I usually add a little milk into my yogurt and stir to make it liquidy then stir that into the milk with three or four slow strokes.

4)  Cover and set aside for eight to ten hours where it will stay warm. A covered porch, a garage, or if you’re fortunate enough to not have AC like us, then you can just set it on the counter.

5)  Refrigerate when thickened and sweeten according to taste. With sugar. With honey. With homemade mulberry syrup. With your favorite jelly. Or just eat it plain. It’s that good.

Now, the ingredient proportions do not need to be exact. You just need a little yogurt to get your yogurt started, but this proportion seems to work well pretty consistently without taking too long. And you know the best part? You just need to save back some of this batch to start your next batch! No need to buy more yogurt for your next batch.

After awhile, the yogurt culture will get “tired.” Meaning that you’ll suddenly have a thin batch. Then you know it is time to buy a new container of yogurt to start your next batch. This usually happens to me when I leave the yogurt starter in the refrigerator for a few days before trying to start the next batch. The sooner you use it, the better it will be.

Your homemade yogurt may not be quite as thick as store bought, but it tastes much fresher and you have complete control over how you sweeten and flavor it. After awhile, you will notice that store bought yogurt has a sort of strange, gelatiny feel to it. That’s because a lot of yogurts are made with a thin yogurt thickened with gelatin.

Yours is 100% yogurt, 100% fresh and 100% delicious!

Read the rest over at Heart of the Matter…