My Head Hurts

The story is there. It’s on the screen, but instead of revising and rewriting, I am doing a lot of staring. Like a ton of staring and reading and re-reading the same paragraph. I know that is happens. I know that it is common and part of the process, but I had time today to really get some work carved out and I barely did enough for it to be detectable. Really from an outsider they would not be able to tell that anything had been done.

I sat for hours, I paced for a few, I did jumping jacks and housework, and went over the story in my head. Nothing, not a bit of progress. Even writing this I feel the words are being forced out of me, which I hate. Art is not meant to be a daunting task, but today that’s exactly what it is. So, for now, I quit. Going to watch a movie with the boys and attempt to start over again tomorrow. Well, maybe later tonight after everyone is in bed, I will attempt it again, probably not though. I will more than likely take a bath and veg out watching some re-runs.

I don’t even want to read right now, which is insane, but it is a constant reminder of the work that I need to do, and then I find my mind wandering. I have to re-read the sentence and loose the story line and just give up. My head hurts. Tomorrow has to be more productive, maybe a chance of scenery is in order.

 

Peace Love Dreams

 

New Goal

Everyone is still pretty down and out with feeling like warmed over poo. (Sorry for the visual) I was up again most of the night taking care of littles and the husband who is also sick now. I do not want to even possibly share these germs with any of our students so I took the rest of the week off.

Since everyone is taking at easy and not doing much of anything so as to completely recoup and repair their bodies, I decided my focus needs to be on this book. Well, my focus after their needs are tended to of course. I have challenged myself to have the next phase of the writing and editing done by 8PM on Sunday night. It is a huge feat but I am sure with some dedication I will make it happen.

I NEED it to happen.

This story has been sitting inside of my head and soul for too long and it needs to not only see the light of day and breath air on it’s own, it needs to be read by others. Hopefully they will like it, if not, it still needs to be read. I need it to be read for good, bad or otherwise. So, I will save my fingers and wrists and leave you with just a short post today so that I can dive back in.

If you want to join in on the exciting fun that will be happening over the next few days please follow me on Instagram @irelandwildrose I will be starting another giveaway today for my BIRTHDAY!!!

 

 

Peace Love Dreams

Not Fun

Well today is ramping up to be a hurdle filled one. We have had four of those in the row, and that’s not taking into account some of the events that took place last week. Yet, most of last weeks events were outside of our control and only influenced us because we are emotional vested in the situations. Always a hard place to be, nothing you can do, but you sure feel it!

So the direct ‘crap’ that hit started with me Saturday evening. We were watching Pearl Harbor with the boys and I felt like I had been punched in the stomach and about thirty seconds later I was running for the bathroom to vomit. It continued throughout the night and finally around dawn I called my mother to come and take me to the ER. I didn’t want to wake Justin as he had been up most of the night helping me, as I was a mess and made a few messes. Nor did I want the boys to have to wake up and go sit in the waiting room of the ER.

At first they thought it was food poisoning and I had eaten something Friday that I thought was the culprit as it tasted ‘off’. The ER doctor took me off of work for Monday and said not to leave the bed for at least a day so I could recoup. I was very dehydrated and three bags of fluids later I was finally feeling okay but not myself. I got home and crashed hard. I can’t tell you much of what happened on Sunday as I slept all day and all night long. Monday, even though it was against doctors orders I  had a couple of places that I needed to be, but I took it easy and paced myself. Good thing too.

Monday night hit and middle man and little big man started with the vomiting and diarrhea that continued all night and into the next day. Middle man seemed to recover very quickly but he followed my guidance and slept as much as he could. Little Big man didn’t listen very well and is still sleeping today trying to shake off the last of this virus.

Bear’s started last night but the vomiting lasted for a shorter duration but the diarrhea lasted into the night and the morning and eventually I became concerned with dehydration and brought him in.

Big Man got home from work and began his adventures in the bathroom. Yes, it has gone through all of us now. I’m feeling slightly tired, but it is a combination of being sick and not sleeping from being up taking care of the family, otherwise I feel as though I am well on the mend. So lots of movies and quiet activities again today, which I hope will equate to a ton of writing time for mom! I can hope.

 

Peace Love Dreams

“Take a quiet walk with Mother Nature. It will nurture your mind, body and soul.” – Anthony Douglas Williams – Inside the Divine Pattern

A Story to Come

I’m really excited to be sharing a new project, well really the project has been in the works for a while, but it is new as in it is almost ready to be shared with the world. It has not been an easy task by any means. The biggest hurdle was the beginning, not of the writing itself, but literally just beginning.

I’ve written things in the past and had the hopes they would do well. Maybe reach a small number of people and make some spare change to pay for a night out for our entire family at an upscale restaurant and a movie. If it didn’t do well, it really was a, “no harm no foul” situation. Yes, it would have taken up my time, but I would have learned things along the way and that would have made it worthwhile. This one is so much more than that, it is a piece of me and an open window into my family.

An account of a summer adventure that I took with my three boys. My struggles, fears, anxiety, joy, self discovery and exhaustion all wrapped up in a nice binding. No, really there is so much more to it than that, but at times the emotionality of the journey or writing makes it seem like that is all that their is. To put oneself out there for the world to see and criticize and hopefully for some love is terrifying and daunting.

What I do know at this point is that I can’t wait for my story to inspire just one person. Just one that wishes to get their kids outside more, one that wants to take a hike, one that decides to follow their own path, it will make all this crazy fear and anxiety about it worthwhile.

 

Peace Love Dreams

Dark

I hated being outside in the dark. Hated it!

When our coon hound would ask to go out at night I would make her go on her lead, she’s a runner, so that I wouldn’t have to stand in my own back yard and wait for her to go. It terrified me to just stand there and wait. I couldn’t see into the darkness beyond the trees that bordered out backyard, there was too much unknown.

To be honest I could never really understand why I had this fear. I fear other ‘evil’ humans a thousand times over any animals that may frequent our area. We have occasional black bear, coyote, and yes even cougars, and although I am understanding of their raw power and deadliness, I do not regularly worry about it. I have always taken safety measures so that was not the cause.

So I tried to rationalize that it was was scary because it was uncontrollable, I am not able to master the darkness as a human because I was not made to see well in darkly lit places. I was wrong and it was not until I took a 5 week trip with my family that I finally found the answer.

I loved being in the dark outside.

Okay, you are surely thinking, “Wth? This lady doesn’t have a clue and now loves what she is scared of? How does that work?”

Let me tell you…

I yearn to be outside, previously it was just during daylight hours, but I had this weird pull to be out in nature, almost like a desire to run wild. My goals in life all have some major thread woven into them from nature itself. I would even dream about sitting in a clearing during the darkest of night hours and viewing the stars, more clear and vivid, seemingly closer than I ever thought possible.
It was not that I was actually afraid of being outside in the dark it was that on some level I knew I would love it and that, as crazy as it sounds, is what I was scared of. That thought goes against the status quo. That would mean I wouldn’t need some of the basic items that I did in fact think of as needs. It turns my whole perspective upside down. This revelation was not easy to come by but in the next few weeks I will explain how I found my way back to nature.

Peace Love Dreams

Apple Roses

This evening the boys and I made apple roses. It was a very simply recipe and process that anyone slightly familiar with the kitchen can reproduce.

Finished Product

You can find the recipe we used here, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/556405728939829025/?fb_ref=447193575407581615%3A5b6b68817976ead29409e61

We did change the recipe we were working off a bit. Here were our mods.

We used peach jam, as that’s what we had on hand, it’s homemade. I considered using our homemade applesauce but decided to use the jam due to the sugar content.
We did not use as much as they did in the video, a lot less actually, maybe two teaspoons worth on each rose.

We used citric acid in the water instead of lemon juice, as we didn’t have any lemons…(weird I know and boys tried to get a grocery trip out of the deal to go and purchase some!)

We do not use a microwave for food so we heated two cups of water in a large pan and when it was hot, but not yet boiling, placed our sliced apples and citrified water in. Set the timer for 2 minutes and then drained in a colander. You want the apples soft but not cooked otherwise they will be too soft to manipulate and just mush.

Instead of a powdered sugar coating at the end, we VERY lightly sprinkled some cane sugar on the tops of the petals before placing in the oven.

Lastly, ours did not take as long as is suggested in the video. I removed them at 25 minutes and I feel like the pastry was cooked, yet still soft in the center, and the apples were not over done, but just starting to crisp on the tops.

Please let us know if you make this recipe and how it turns out. Share your photos!
Is there a recipe you would like the boys and I to try out for you? Let us know!

Cooking is a great way to practice practical math, and gain valuable life skills for years to come.

How to Plan and Extended Adventure with Children

This summer I took our three boys on an incredible adventure. 5 weeks and the NCT. It was life changing, and I will get to writing about it at some point, but first this!

Many have asked me how I go about planning our some of our adventures. So, I am going to be sharing my process and the little bit of knowledge I have gained from the adventures already had. Follow our family on Facebook @ https://www.facebook.com/AFamilyOutOfTheOrdinary for some of our smaller, yet just as important daily adventures.

Stay tuned for trip planning and don’t forget to sign up for alerts so that you don’t miss our latest posts.

Peace Love Dreams

Ashamed

Tuesday, 10-21-14, an alert went out from the Michigan State Police asking for help in locating a 15-year-old girl from our county. The area of focus was 25-35 minutes from us, so definitely close enough where we would be keeping our eyes open for her if we ventured anywhere. We ended up staying home so I continued to check the news stations periodically for updates, finally one came in the form of a press conference.

With missing teens, there is always that hope that there was a misunderstanding and that they are at a friend’s house and will be grounded for a month when they return home safe. Those hopes were crushed when it was announced that she had died. I didn’t at first hear a cause so of course my mind wandered to all sorts of possibilities. It wasn’t soon after that our local news station posted on their website and Facebook pages, that the teen had taken her own life. Why?? She was being bullied.

Okay so I have been attempting to write this post for two days now and I still cannot manage to finish it. I type and delete, type and delete. There is so very much to say on the topic of bullying and yet when I try, I get so angry that it come out in jumbles and all over the place. I’m angry at the adults, ashamed, WE ARE FAILING! We must do better, we are the example.

I needed to get something up about this, and this is all I’ve got right now. There will be more, I hope very soon, I hope sleep will allow me to find the words needed to express the importance and gravity of the situations our children are facing everyday in the schools. It’s not pretty and it downright sucks

I will do better. Will you?

RIP Young girl

http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/

1-800-273-TALK    24 hours a day if you need to talk, no matter the reason, they are there. Just reach out, it will get better if you get through it to the other side. It’s just the getting through that is hard so very hard, deep, dark and painful, but you can, YES YOU CAN GET THROUGH. Please call and if you are not in need, please share this information with everyone you love, it saves lives.

 

Peace Love Dreams

 

Writing Problems

One seemingly common problem I have heard lately in many of the homeschooling groups I follow is, “my child hates to write.”  I think there are a variety of possible reasons for this. They don’t like the content they are required to write about, they aren’t sure on how to organize their thoughts, or it could simply be that writing with a pencil and paper can take a VERY LONG time, time they would rather spend doing something else.

Luckily I have writers so general writing tasks go fairly smoothly. I would like to make it even more simple for our oldest two and will be implementing the computer starting this week for their writing tasks. It will be preparation for November and National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Each of the boys will be working on a book for the month. They set a monthly goal and work towards it, all while gaining some basic computer skills.

This is a great way to get littles interested in writing! Well, literature in general. I’ve always believed that if you can’t find something you like to read, then you should just write something yourself! That’s also a good line to use on the kiddos when they can’t seem to find a book or genre they enjoy, you may just encourage a future best seller to write his or her first book! The site also offers many guides, advice, how tos, inspiration, and general help for writing, making it a well rounded site.

You can find all the information, including some of the prizes, yes there are prizes, by visiting http://www.nanowrimo.com. You can also become my writing buddy on the main site, just search for Irelandwildrose. The boys will have their call names soon and I will update when that happens. Hope to be able to read many new novels from this year’s NaNoWriMo in 2015, and I would love for one of them to be yours or your child’s!

Peace Love Dreams

RE-blogged from FUNdamentallyweird, my joint blog.

A Dual

Hello all! I know it has been such a long time! I tried my hand at a dual blog but alas it didn’t work out. I will be transferring my posts from that blog to this one over the course of a month or less. I have to say that I did learn a bunch about posting and content and look forward to bringing that new knowledge here.

In addition you will be able to see all of my blog posts here from now on. Some will still be dually posted on my other blogs as some people want only want to read one of the topics that I write about and those blogs are very topic focused. I hope that you will enjoy the new look and feel of this site.

PEACE LOVE DREAMS