This is my final week of being thirty.  At the end of this week I’ll be thirty-one.  A few days ago I discovered my first real gray hair.  It is long and sparkly.  I wonder what my gray hair will be like.  I’ve seen some women with the most beautiful long and luscious gray hair.  There is a seventy-one year old woman in Yoga Journal magazine this month with the greatest head full of gray curls and two cute little braids on each side.  She is so lovely.  So far, I don’t mind getting older.  The thirties have proven to be a very different time for me as of now.  I hope it continues in the direction it is going. 🙂

The weather broke today, and we had a lovely day of sun.  It is too bad that John is so busy preparing for the next two weekends of traveling to Memphis for River Arts, and then Louisiana for the Blackpot Festival.  He’ll be missing my birthday and trick-or-treat. 😦  After this month, our dry time begins, so he has to try to earn as much as he can while there is the opportunity.  Whoo-hoo for self employment in the arts!  Really, he loves it and it allows us a unique lifestyle that is both hard and wonderful.

Today, we started a week around the theme of corn with Little Acorn Learning.  I’m excited about it.  Tomorrow we are going to be making simple corn husk dolls.  For breakfast in the morning we’ll have cornmeal pancakes and fried apples with some sausage.  I can’t wait.  I loved showing the girls, today, about shucking corn, removing the kernals and grinding meal.  I wish we had a hand grist mill.  They are so expensive though.  I saw a coffee bean grinder in the Michael Olaf catalogue Child of the World that was very inexpensive. I wonder if that would work for some flour making?  If I had my preference, most every gift the girls got would come from that catalogue.

There wasn’t much time for being outside today.  We went to the library after spending a half hour at the pharmacy and found some great corn books.  Our library is only one room, but the librarians do their best with what they have and seem to genuinely love their job.  We love the library.

I’m not sure that we’ll have more outside time tomorrow.  The gas company is working on the new road and gas lines on the property.  They have a huge dozer parked in our side yard.  I’m not sure how safe playing outside will be until they are finished.  We are going to work on winterizing the cabin.  We have a condensation and mold problem.  Bad mold problem. 😦  Tomorrow we will be covering the windows with plastic and getting a dehumidifier.  I’m not sure what else will help.  We’ll see.

So, October is going by.  It’s not the best October by far.  We’ve missed going to the Louisville Zoo for trick-or-treat for the first time since Deladis was born, there has been too much rain, and John is so busy.  Yet, it’s okay.  We make the best of things and it works out.  I watch the wonder in the girls’ eyes and try to remember to keep my heart light.  I rested this weekend at my mother’s while John was away.  Deladis got to ride a horse at a birthday party for her friend, and we got to spend my grandmother’s seventy-fifth birthday with her.  Those are great things.  My biggest lesson learned this month is to stop fighting.  Stop trying to make life into something, but experience it as it comes.  Be still.

Cease striving and know that I am God…

– Psalms 46:10