Janet's Blog

I bought groceries at Fresh Foods yesterday and, as I was placing the one-gallon jug of 1% milk in the backseat, I had a sudden flashback, from nearly forty years ago. I remembered putting a newly-purchased half-gallon bottle of milk on the floor behind the driver's seat in my little red Mazda. And I recalled that feeling of horrified realization when the glass milk bottle tipped over suddenly as I turned a corner, spilling all of the milk on the floor of my new car. I remember how hard Bill and I worked to clean up that spilled milk. Our efforts must have been successful, since I don't think we ever had to deal with a sour milk smell, even though we continued to drive that un-airconditioned car for several more years. As I mulled over the spilled milk incident, I thought back to the years on the farm, when I was just a little girl, when Mom and Dad milked 15 cows by hand, twice a day, every day. Then Mom put the whole milk through the separator on our enclosed back porch...

Today, as I drove through the pass at Scotts Bluff National Monument, 45 mph through the national park zone, I felt a little thrill as I realized that the grass at the foot of the bluffs was beginning to turn green. Little whisps of billowy fog were resting in the hollows, adding a touch of mystery to the terrain. I could, and probably should, feel a sense of awe every day, as I have opportunity to recognize the ever-changing beauty of the Wildcat Hills and Scotts Bluff. I can just see the top of the Monument from my back yard, above the roofs of the neighborhood houses, but I only have to walk one short block to be able to see it clearly, standing at attention at the west end of U Street, or silhouetted against a majestic sunset at the end of the day. I took this photo of Scotts Bluff, a few years ago, not far from my house. When the weather is foggy or snowy, the Monument becomes invisible until the weather clears, and I breathe a sigh of relief; it's still there, of cour...

I have a theory about food. I've given it plenty of thought, and I've come to the conclusion that the foods we enjoy most are those that have, at some time in our lives, been forbidden or, simply, unavailable. My parents were born during the Great Depression, and grew up during World War II. Food was relatively scarce in the Dust Bowl, where the unreliable rains hardly ever watered the parched ground, and the topsoil blew away into the darkening sky. People in middle America ate whatever meager crops they could grow, and hunted for squirrels and rabbits and deer, and any other animals that might provide a little meat for their families. Jobs were hard to come by, and times were bleak in our country. Then, just as the drought was ending, World War II erupted in Europe and Asia, and young American men, who couldn't find jobs at home, enlisted in the armed forces and joined the war effort abroad. Before too long, there weren't enough men to fill the crucial jobs, so yo...

It's been an adventure, that's for sure. I never expected that I would ever home-school any of our children, but it has become necessary because Levi hasn't been doing very well in a traditional classroom setting. Due to his various mental health diagnoses, he interrupts the teacher and other students, blurts out inappropriate comments, makes banging noises with his pencil or foot, has trouble sitting in his chair for more than a few minutes, and is often unable to focus on the work he needs to do, because he is so easily distracted by normal classroom noise. That means that he has trouble starting, let alone completing, any written work in class. When he was bringing everything home as homework, there just weren't enough hours left in the day for him to finish such an overwhelming amount of homework. And besides, his medications had mostly worn off by late afternoon, so he wasn't able to concentrate any better at home than at school. Since any change is hard for...