Sally Gerard

These are different times and there is so much out there that is negative. But there are also bright spots. Opportunities for some really quality family time at home. Companies offering various free things to keep kids engaged, and teachers getting creative about reaching out to their students. I saw a short video of a son visiting his elderly father, locked down in a nursing home, but sitting outside his window each day, talking to him on the phone.

Many are helping with funds for those who’ve been sent home from their jobs with no opportunity to earn a living. People are making room in their lives to help others as best they can.

Social distancing is not a problem that I face where I live, unless you count cattle. I did try to explain to the calves that they really should just stay with their mammas and leave their little playmates be. They do not listen well and cavort about with each other, or they sack out for nap times in large groups with one babysitter cow to watch over them. Kids these days!

Cows and calves have so much personality. Sometimes a little too much. In the midst of calving right now, I get first-hand knowledge of these different attitudes.

Heifer calves are much quicker to jump up and get going, cavorting around their mamas within thirty minutes, sometimes, of plopping out onto the ground for their first experience on earth. Bull calves seem to curl up and want that earth to go away, taking much more time to make their way up onto their long legs.

For example, Calf 191 (names have been changed to protect from identity theft) was up, had her first fill of mama’s milk and was off and running while her mama bawled at her and had to run to catch up. Calf 44 laid in the grass for a long while, got up and staggered around, finally getting to the right end of his mama to get his first milk and then collapsed into first milk coma for quite some time.

The cows also have various reactions when I come close to tag their newborn babes, so we humans know who belongs to whom. Most of them watch me cautiously, but don’t interfere with this quick maneuver. Some come close, putting their nose on my sleeve as if to explain that I need to be gentle, or, that if I make one wrong move, they will not be happy. I talk to them and they seem to understand that I mean no harm. Once the tagging is done, baby gets lots of licking and that low quiet moan sound that mamas make to their calves.

And so it goes until I find myself up in the bed of the pickup and not entirely sure how I got there, my husband has somehow leaped into the passenger side (he happened to be with me on this occasion) and Cow 116 has made it perfectly clear that this tagging will not be tolerated with her very special youngster. She has filed her complaint with the board, and we will hear about if we dare to get where she can run us over. We played chase around the Tundra, I got the tag attached, and then we had to wait until Calf 116 wandered far enough away from the tire that we could straighten our clothes and pretend that we were really in charge.

Elaine and Sally’s Dessert Crepe

It’s almost Ash Wednesday and time for the season of Lent. I’m always torn when Lent comes around about either giving something up or adding something positive as a new habit.

I can come up with a good size list of things I should give up:

• Obsessing over things out of my control
• Not standing up for things that should be in my control
• Unhealthy “foods” I eat too much of
• Making negative comments about others (remove the log in your own eye…)
• Staying silent and shoving emotions down
• Distractions that move me away from my goals

I have a healthy list of things I should do too, and some of them are difficult to write down because now you know too:

• Re-establish my daily writing routine
• Count more blessings
• Let more stuff slide off my back
• Breathe, observe, then proceed
• Make more crepes and fill them with goodness
• Do some little thing every single day for someone else
• Figure out what “open and honest” communication looks like

I guess it’s a good thing Lent lasts 40 days.

Pixabay.com

Did you ever have one of those tantrum moments as a child where you planted your feet, hands on hips and refused to move?

With most things, I’ll just shift over to accommodate whatever force is trying to move me. Sometimes I do it without even noticing, but other times I notice and don’t appreciate the subtle or not-so-subtle shove. In those instances, I will still move, but with a “look” that makes it clear that I’m not thrilled. Well, at least it seems clear to me.

Sometimes, before I move, there are strong words and stiffness that approaches the hands on hips, but then I move, stiffly, accepting the inevitable. I know I won’t have any real say anyway and that unwelcome invisibility shrouds me. I don’t know how to find my way out.

Refusal to move. Certain things call for that firm stand, yet I’m not good at being that grounded. The conversation is there, in my head, but cannot find the right synapse to fire.

I’ve signed papers I never should have signed, out of fear, plain and simple. Out of naivety, thinking surely I must count for more than whatever I signed away. I’ve remained silent when my faith alarm bells have reverberated through my bones telling me to speak.

How does one learn to refuse to move? Not with hands on hips, but with grace?

I have a desktop calendar where you flip the page each day. It is a kind of “fitness” calendar for mind, body and spirit. Today it says, “If you’re looking for that one person to change your life, take a look in the mirror.”

It kind of hit me upside the head and reminded me of that other saying, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Like David, I do a lot of gnashing and weeping and crying out to God. And I believe God will answer, though I may not appreciate the perspective or the answer.

But I also know that God didn’t make no dummy. I am created from the dust of stars! So are you.

I want to be like the snow sparkling in the bitter cold brightness of day, changing the world from grey to so bright it hurts to look for very long. Can I change the whole world? Probably not, but I can make a difference in my little world and hopefully for the better.

PS. The bottom of today’s calendar message said to eat raw veggies and hummus for a healthy snack…I went with dark chocolate salted caramels.

Pixabay.com

Do you ever have those times in your life where you feel invisible? Or you see yourself functioning, but you aren’t really there?

What is it that we do or that others do that make it so a human being gets the idea that they are superfluous? That it doesn’t matter how much they have contributed because for whatever reason, it doesn’t count. Someone can devote their heart and soul, mind and body to a community, a family, a friend and find themselves on the outside, wishing they could be a part of a whole.

So I ask myself, where am I doing that to another? Who am I not seeing or loving? Why am I allowing others to come between? Where am I lacking grace? Who is waiting for that one little touch to know that they are so worthy? I don’t have the answers, but when I pray, I pray for God to put those invisible ones in my path and smack me upside the head to reach out them.

I posted this and had some good results.

So, I’m an online English teacher as well as a writer. I teach language arts and English to middle and high school students and beginning comp to college students. The course work is far more rigorous than most people/students realize.

Most of my students are just back from winter break for second semester. Some of them are off and running already with a fantastic start. But the majority have not shown up yet and that is a riddle I need to solve. I find that if I can get them to at least read one of my weekly goofy emails “from the farm,” they will engage with me and get to work. But that is more difficult than you’d think. These students are at home and mostly unsupervised and they have access to video games and YouTube. Why would they choose to read a lesson in English each day?

I need new ideas in order to compete, in order to know these students and have them know me. I have to find ways to let them know that I care, that I see them, that I want them to love learning and to be able to do what they want with their lives.