Conversations

One of the lovely ladies I sometimes get to ride with has found my blog and came to the barn the other day exclaiming, “Wooowee, CG, you taught me how to butcher chickens! I just found out all that old stuff was on [the blog] and I said to my husband, come here and see CG cutting this chicken’s head off.” I asked her if she’d found the pig killing yet. She hadn’t, so as a shortcut, here and here and here’s how we lost a pig.

Someone I know less well asked me about homeschooling. We talked in general terms for awhile as she worked around to asking me what she wanted to ask me and I worked around to hearing what she was asking me. Sometimes this communication thing is tricky. Eventually she said this child in her life had just not figured out at all how to retain and recall information of any kind ever. I think, looking back on it that she meant to ask me how you can teach a child that but what she got from me was an immediate reaction response, “She doesn’t have any trouble retaining and recalling anything she’s interested in.”

She stopped. “You know, I couldn’t tell you what, if anything, she is interested in.” Wow. Isn't that just too true of too many of us? How did what the school deems important become more important than what the person himself deems important? So much so that we cannot even touch what it is we think is important? I just think this is so endemic. Even when a person has a really good sense of what her priorities are, what makes her heart sing, it is still difficult enough to navigate a track to that. No wonder people are entirely lost in their lives when they don’t even know what they themselves are interested in for themselves. Couple that with a desire to avoid meaningful work and no wonder spiritual malaise is epidemic.

Ok, so another conversation was with the farrier. I don’t get to see him very often but he is one of those truly interesting characters. He hunts with a long bow, for instance. Besides, it is probably pretty difficult to make your living shoeing horses and avoid being an interesting character. But what we were talking about was sort of survivalism, which he’s long been interested in, and he mentioned that people think he’s crazy because he stores food. I said, “Oh, really? We just put in several hundred pounds of wheat, rice, the like.” “Oh, I don’t have that much,” he said while looking at me sideways. Made me know how far out on the edge we are, and made me laugh.

Edit: Ooooh, and I almost forgot an important one, with La at a homeschoolers hanging out in the park day. A more than amply fleshed woman was there with far fewer than too few clothes on. As she passed us, La simply said, “I’m not that sexy anymore.” Yes, that is it. I’m sexy -- I’m just not that sexy. Makes me laugh.