Who do you tattle tale on?

Why, the cat!

Seems so obvious now.

Having been raised by a conventional farmer in a conventional farming community and rather organic minded mother, I have very blurry view of food production. The way I see it farming is excessively hard work for very little gain and therefore something I don’t really want to do for a lifetime. [I do realize this view does bring to mind the question, "And your husband has worked for a church, and still is a youth minister?" Yes I appreciate the irony.]

So in my little garden, I was going to not use any “chemicals”. Really because I know the pesticides tend to be very overused in residential applications. That was until the thistles started coming back. Thistles are “pokey” plants which means they stick/sting you. Some types including the type in my garden are considered “noxious” weeds in some places.  They also unfortunately grow from rhizomes (or related plant structure) and aren’t eradicated by simply pulling them up. Well pulling them works if you keep at it but I am impatient, so I went with the Monsanto solution. I used Roundup on the little buggers, which makes my garden non-organic.  Only on the thistles, not the weeds I can pull up and eliminate because again like I said, pesticides are frequently overused in residential settings and it is better management practice to simply pull the darn grass up. So I guess what I am doing is better termed Integrated Pest Management.

As I thought about what had happened today on the way home from work (said incident occurred at work), I realized it embodied two of the most important things I can teach my child.

• Telling the truth especially when you think the truth will get you in trouble
• Accepting the blame for your share of the harm that was done even when others were also participating and may have been the instigators

I realized that these are the very reasons that my heart seems to sink whenever I am confronted with this difficult discipline times. These are huge concepts that many adults don’t seem to grasp and that are hard to live out all the time.

Equally interesting to me, telling the truth and accepting blame are those things that separate people into those who contribute to society and their world and those who take from and ultimately cost society something. Lying and blaming others are common behaviors of people who cost society money, security, and time. An addict is a classic example. If you don’t have the privilege of knowing an addict (not talking about people in recovery here), trust me when I say they lie with nearly every breath and it is always someone else’s fault.

Parenting would be so much easier if children came with the innate knowledge of truth telling instead of the instinctive desire to get out of potential trouble by saying “I didn’t do it” or “I forgot” or whatever.

Getting out of the car (also three letters) to go for lunch at the Coffee Traders

Daughter pointing to sign: Mom, I know those letters.

Me: You do? What are they?

Daughter: B…A…R  What does that spell, Mom?

Me: It is spells “bar”

Daughter: Oh

Later that evening

Daughter gives paper to her dad: Look what can I spell, Daddy?

Dad: B-A-R

What do you say to this? We suggested other uses for the word bar like candy bar. But as my boss said, BAR in large easy to read lettering is a very common sign in Montana.

We left the small girl with friends and headed to the big city, Spokane, for a show featuring Glen Phillips (once of Toad the Wet Spocket fame), Sean and Sara Watkins (of Nickle Creek), Grant-Lee Phillips (once of Grant-Lee Buffalo fame & Gilmore Girl fame), and Luke Bulla (who doesn’t have a site, but is an amazing fiddler player). It was absolutely fabulous and sorry to say if you didn’t see these people somewhere on the West Coast in the past few weeks, you missed it altogether.

We had meals at resturants that didn’t involve me coaching someone to actually eat the food I was paying for, we wandered through a real mall and I found out that the sight of an actual children’s shoe department greatly excites me. Those who live in more rural areas will know what I mean when I say that it is ridiculously difficult to find shoes for your kids if you don’t want to shop in discount stores and your child has an equally ridiculous small and skinny foot for her age.

On the way home, I had a weird scratchy spot on neck/head. Then I was itchy all night, then in the morning, well let’s say it wasn’t pretty. After enduring children’s church and buying Benadryl,  I itched my way through Sunday and into Monday when I went to the doctor.

The diagnosis was an acute case of hives, cause medically unknown. But we do know the truth, it had to be that I had real fun for the first time in a long time.