You're KILLING me here!!

You're killing me here! Or, as Job would say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him."

We get so close to finding a job. There'll be an interview, paperwork, right up to the signing of the contract, then...

pfffft. Gone. Someone else gets hired, the job gets axed, or the entire company is put on a hiring freeze. It happened again this week.

It's been a tense month. Our severance pay ran out three months ago, and it's been challenging (but satisfying) getting by on freelance pay. But we have several "exceptional" bills that come due at the first of the year: property tax, auto registration, home warranty, to name only 3 of 6. Plus all our family birthdays fall between January and June. We had one child who totally outgrew her underthings and needed new right away. Another tore a hole in the seat of her last pair of jeans. These aren't wants, they are needs. I had just enough in my "business" checking account to cover both, but that money is now gone. Hubby has expressed a desire for me to not continue my business, because the pay is so low (I average about $1 an hour) but I gotta say, $1 an hour is better than $0 an hour.

We have freelance work lined up that will provide living expenses through March 15 now. So, I'm not going to think about this again until March 15. I hope.

We are almost over this round of colds. I'm still low energy, Kate's nose is still red and raw, and Christy's cough isn't gone yet, but we're all on the upswing.

Blair has gone to Atlanta for an Irish Step Dance competition. She's staying with a friend for a couple weeks. We've put her on notice that when she comes back, it's time to get a job. We've been laying low, giving her a year after high school and not pushing her to get a job, but I think it's backfired. She's become disinclined to do even the simplest of chores, surly with her siblings and disrespectful to her dad and I. She does manage to bounce between the phone and computer during her waking hours, where she chats endlessly with her friends. She talks about taking the SAT and getting into college, but doesn't do even the simplest preparatory tasks toward that goal: it's all talk. Perhaps homeschoolers don't need the year off as much as institutionally educated children do.

We are gearing up for our annual Oscar party. The kids have nominated their food choices and are putting together a play. If I can figure out how to do it, I'll get the play posted on YouTube.

And finally, my politcally-motivated rant. There is something for us, personally, in the stimulus package! Apparently, the government is going to step in and help us with our COBRA payments. This is wonderful news, since we really can't afford them. It's awful news because had we known, we'd have covered the kids who, right now, are uninsured. I don't mind being uninsured, I'm pretty low risk. Hubby can not go without insurance because of his medical issues and prescriptions. But the kids being uninsured is very uncomfortable for me. Even so, I hate the idea of the stimulus package. I'm afraid I'm landing squarely with Ron Paul on this issue. I don't like the idea of us spoiled baby boomers pushing our bad economy off 20 years at which point it will collapse, perhaps finally, on our children and grandchildren.

Cold Comfort Lunch

We're still fighting this cough thing. Now Blair says her upper teeth hurt when she bites down—a sinus infection? So, I dug out my nutritional materia medica and tossed together this lunch yesterday:

Cold Comfort Lunch
Chop 2 garlic cloves, set aside. Cook a pound of orzo in a quart of boiling vegetable broth for 5 minutes, remove from the heat and let it absorb the moisture while it cools. While that's all going on, chop a small onion, six shiitake mushrooms and eight green beans into tiny bites. Steam those with the garlic for 5 minutes, drain. Toss the veggies in a large bowl. Drain the orzo and add that to the bowl. In the pan you steamed the veggies over medium heat, toss 1/4 cup of pine nuts until toasty and light brown, but don't let them sit or they'll burn. Add those to the bowl. Strip the leaves from eight or nine stalks of fresh thyme, grate 2 carrots and add the thyme leaves and carrots to the bowl. In a separate small bowl, stir together 2 tablespoons of balsamic vinegar, 2 tablespoons of fresh lemon juice, 2 tablespoons of vegetable broth and 1/4 cup raisins. Add that in and toss all together. Serve with a little parmesan on top.

Garlic and onion are prized for their immune-boosting and infection-killing abilities. Shiitake mushrooms have antiviral properties. Thyme is a miracle worker when it comes to calming coughs (we have a bowl of boiling water with thyme for the kids to "tent" their heads when they start coughing.) The fresh lemon juice is a great source of vitamin C, and raisins are alkaline. Orzo is filling, and the small pieces of veggies are easy to chew and nutritious, making this meal a real "comfort food" for when colds strike.

At snack time, I didn't want the kids eating a bunch of immune-suppressing sugar, but they wanted something sweet. I also wanted a big nutritional "BANG" for those who are not feeling well enough to eat a lot. So of course, I turned to sweet potatoes! Ah, all that orangy goodness. You just can almost feel the beta carotene working its wonders on you. Of course, they taste great, or they wouldn't get eaten!

I just peeled and sliced 3 large sweet potatoes in 1/8 to 1/4 inch slices and tossed them in a big bowl with a tablespoon of olive oil. Onto a pan-sprayed cookie sheet, into a 500° oven for 20 minutes, and voila! Snacktime! They were crispy on the outside and sweet and chewy on the inside. Didn't even need salt.

I wanted something for dinner that would be soothing on upset tummies, cough-suppressing and warming, but not overly filling, and this chowder fit the bill.

I call it The More (Vegetables) The Merrier Chowder

I mixed together 3 cups of vegetable stock, a large chopped onion, a tablespoon of stripped thyme leaves, a teaspoon of cumin, 2 cloves of minced garlic and got it boiling. I turned the heat down to simmer and covered it for five minutes. I stripped a cob of corn and tossed that in with a handful of frozen peas, four stalks of chopped bok choy, three stalks of chopped celery, a chopped up red bell pepper, two chopped carrots and two chopped zucchini. I let it simmer for about 15 minutes while I put the bread in the oven to warm. Now, I'm not normally a fan of white bread, but this meal just screamed out for an Italian loaf and I didn't have a whole wheat one ready. In a separate bowl, I mixed together 3 cups of milk, three tablespoons of peanut butter and a dash of Tabasco. I added that to the soup and stirred it around. It was the perfect eating temperature almost immediately. We had elderberry preserves on the bread, well, the kids did. I dunked my bread in the chowder!

Kate was still hungry after dinner and wanted something sweet, so she put together this yummmmmmmy dessert:

The Cider House Pears

Boil a cup of apple cider with a 4-inch sprig of rosemary, cover and reduce heat to simmering. Add five sliced pears and simmer five minutes. We served it with whipped cream.
Yup, that's Kate's hand!

Fourth Floor Nurse's Station

One of the distinct disadvantages to having a large family is when illness strikes.

We have two bugs going around our house right now. One is a nasty tummy bug that gets worse, then better, then worse, then...you get the idea. I've had it for 12 days, my personal cut-off time for allowing myself to get better before calling in the guns. Hubby's had it for about seven days and Blair for about two. Seeing a pattern here? Like a 5-day incubation period?

The other bug is like a cold, but not so much with the sniffles and sneezing, and big time with the cough. Rosie caught it first, today is her ninth day. She was better yesterday and I let her go outside for some fresh air and sunshine. But you can't keep a seven-year-old sitting down in fresh air and sunshine, so she was up and playing a lot. Too much. She's having quite the rebound today after not sleeping well last night for all her coughing.

Kate is in her sixth day of the coughing fits. She is pretty perky and healthy-looking during the day, but at night she keeps us all (and herself) awake with the hacking. And poor hubby's allergies have been making him crazy at night, with his head packing in after being laid down for 30 minutes or so.

Of course, they all sleep better with their heads slightly elevated, which means they all sleep in the living room. And the insomniacs make them crazy with their trips to the bathroom and kitchen until 2AM when Blair finally zonks out and starting again at 4AM when John gets up for the day!

Rosie finally gave up and crawled in bed with me this morning for a little peace and quiet. Bless her heart. She's a snuggler, though, and breathed all those lovely germs right into my face until I managed to drag myself out of bed.

In a large family, you have two sickness scenarios:

Everyone gets sick at once. That works fine if Mama stays healthy and can fetch and carry. But in 27 years mama-ing, that has only happened to me once. I find it's much more likely for Mama to get sick right along with everyone all at once. The upside to that would be everyone convalescing together, watching movies and eating soup together and no one hollering about how badly THEY need to go to the library. The downside? This Mama tends to get illnesses rather heavily, so while the children are sniffly, I come down with bronchitis and pneumonia. And do the cooking and cleaning and tending, not resting and napping, which makes the bug hold on all the longer.

Everyone gets sick, one at a time. Ah, the nickel-and-dime-you-to-death scenario. If you assume 10 days from first sniffle to last cough, times seven people in the house, you're talking a whopping two months of care-taking without a single trip to church, the movie house, or the mall. Then consider there are two "cold and flu seasons" in a year and suddenly a twelve-month year becomes one-third shorter and less efficient!

Homeschooling helps. Our public-school-attending friends are sick much more of the time than we are.

Back, five or six years ago, I took a phenomenal herbal medicine course. I learned how to make tinctures and elixirs, syrups and teas, how to grow herbs to make medicines, how to diagnose and dose, the whole nine yards. And the knowledge has served me well. I still use that information frequently. But I'm beginning to see that I need a different approach.

I am currently studying nutrition as a disease preventative. Good to know the remedies for illness, but I'd rather avoid the illness to begin with. And I'm sure it helps quite a bit, as shown by our only two small bugs a year. Oh, but I'd so like to avoid those two bugs as well.