“….without fathom.”

April 4, 2013April 4, 2013 / abby hummel / 7 Comments

It goes without saying that our chicks started off pretty cute. Then they got little tail-feathers and that was still cute, but it went downhill from there. As they grew, they got a little bit brattier and much, much stinkier. Apparently this is typical of adolescent chickens as well as humans. We also sent two of the Barred Rocks (Black-and-White) to a new home, since we only wanted four and were pleasantly surprised that all six survived their first few weeks in the box.

In recent days, they moved out of their box in the laundry room and currently reside in a stylish navy blue coop in our backyard. They won’t be laying eggs until August, so we’ve entered a less-than-exciting phase of chicken tending.

I have always been very opposed to the idea of “Furbabies,” where people consider their animals as important as kids and call themselves “Mommy” and “Daddy” to the pets. However, we don’t have any children or even regular pets running around, and the chicks are definitely getting an extra dose of our doting while we teach them to do things their moms would have taught them on a farm. The solution has been to narrowly escape the “furbaby” category by claiming a special title for ourselves as caregivers. The idea came from Megamind, one of our favorite movies. (If you haven’t seen it, don’t judge the whole movie based on this one-minute clip. The full-length feature is quite a hoot!)

Last night, after he successfully impelled the chickens to use their ramp independently, Aaron gave a perfect impersonation of this scene, saying, “I am the Chicken’s Space Dad and my chicken-training abilities are unfathomable…. they can’t be fathomed… they are without fathom.” Since I’m less involved with their activities, I get to be the “Space Step Mom.” What can I say? I’ve had some work done recently.

Spring Break Sardines

March 26, 2013March 26, 2013 / abby hummel / 5 Comments

I’ve mentioned before that our bathroom has some… issues. Some of the difficulties include loose tiles and poorly organized plumbing. As part of 2013’s rallying cry of MAKING THINGS HAPPEN at home, we were tentatively planning to address these things before they would become full-blown problems. Unfortunately, these problems popped up too soon and intersected with my Spring Break in a way that meant I didn’t get to do any of the things I planned (and boy, did I have plans), and it meant that my bathroom looked like this…

…right before hosting a bunch of family members for the second half of Spring Break. Luckily, we have the sort of family that is not scared by frugality and DIY projects, so they felt sharing a half-demolished bathroom between eight adults and one toddler was not problematic in any way. Or at least they were gracious enough to hide any disdain they may have felt. And since I’d just written a post declaring homemaking is about the gospel, not about socially constructed ideas of hospitality or decorating, I didn’t have any room to complain about this being embarrassing.

The first round of company was cousins from Wisconsin. They arrived in time for dinner and we shared a snack of fresh cheese curds and hot tea while we waited for the Michigan crowd to arrive in the wee hours of the morning.

When the Michigan relatives finally made it in town, we discovered a little someone (our 18-month-old niece M) thought this extended car trip provided a great chance to stay up as late as she wanted. Much to Aaron’s delight, she was very excited about the deer head on our mantel and made up some hand motion to express her devotion. She holds the great honor of being the only person Aaron allows to pet the deer. She also felt 2:00 a.m. was a great time to check out his fish tank. The word for fish in her toddler language is “Bo-bo-bo-bo-bo-bo.”
Now in a toddler’s mind, after a late night there is nothing better than rising with the sun for a few rounds of the classic game “Take the stuffed animals out of the basket and line them upon the furniture” with Aunt Abby. It was nice to get a little morning time alone — we plotted some great excursions for future summers of Aunt camp. We spent the rest of the weekend crammed into our tiny house like sardines, which resulted in lots of opportunities for the time-honored tradition of Aaron wrestling with his younger brother Jack.

Top: Emma, Jack, Aaron, Caroline.
Bottom: Bruce, Jack, Caroline, Aaron.

Roasting a Peep in the fireplace.

Maria sharing her books and toys with Aunt Kallie

This visit was full of eating, lounging, laughing, talking, shooting/shopping, watching favorite YouTube movies, warming up by the fire, offering awkward marriage advice to the engaged couple, and not much sleeping. This was such a great way to end to an otherwise disappointing Spring Break week, and we miss everyone. It will make for lots of driving, but having THREE sibling weddings this summer will give us plenty of time to spend with these folks in the coming months, too. I’m looking forward to it already!

“You are a housewife.”

March 18, 2013March 18, 2013 / abby hummel / 8 Comments

A few years ago, I used a precious vacation day from a job that I hated and braved 9 hours of driving in winter weather to visit my friend E, who was temporarily staying in someone else’s home. Due to some extenuating circumstances and another person’s irresponsibility, she had been abandoned and misplaced, and because that situation was out of our control, we went to work doing what we could: making the best of her makeshift location. Seizing the day (and night, until 3:00 am), we sewed curtains, upholstered the seat of an old dining room chair for her desk, coordinated her files, and sent more than half her clothes to a thrift store so she could survive with minimal closet space. I look back on that weekend as some of the most purpose-filled times of my life. One of my dearest friends experienced unfairness and betrayal on a level I could barely fathom, and I got to coach her into making that little room a bit more of a refuge from the very real hardships I couldn’t take away.

As the weekend came to a close, I dreaded the thought of returning. Starting that Monday, some personnel changes meant my job would go from very difficult to I-don’t-know-how-I’m-going-to-make-it-difficult. So with that impending doom in mind, it was most crazy to me when one of E’s friends asked me how I liked being a housewife. Seriously? I am gone 10 hours a day, plus every other Saturday, to work at mind-numbing tasks in an office devoid of any kindness whatsoever. I mumbled something about how I was far from a homemaker, and this woman exclaimed, “Abby, you live somewhere and are married. That’s all you need. You are a housewife! Everyone is a homemaker; some people just juggle a little more than others. What is domestic is primary and everything else supports that.” It was the encouragement I needed to actually get in the car and come back instead of hiding away with E forever, which I definitely thought about doing on multiple occasions.

Now that I’m basically thrilled to death with my job(s), it’s easy to lose sight of how homemaking fits into life. But those piano lessons and co-op classes exist for a dual purpose: to enrich the lives of students and support my home. I know that when I focus more on the home-supporting, which does happen with some students, I become a crummy teacher. And sometimes I focus on student-enriching to the detriment of my own home, when I bend rules on lesson times or handle stressful parental interactions during my off-hours. So with that in mind, I am thankful for this “Spring Break” and the chance to devote some extra time to this housewife endeavor, which is going to be an ongoing project for my whole life independent of any income-earning or child rearing that might also be part of my vocation.

Don’t think for a moment that this housewife business is really about decorating or crafts, or home ownership or marriage or even being a woman. Plenty of great people don’t or can’t fit into those roles. And homemaking is not something that happens as a “lesser” career, or in subordination to a job. Instead, I think making a home is about cultivating your surroundings to act as a mini-church. It is in the home that we fellowship and eat, our sins are laid bare, we forgive and reconcile, we live out our daily acts of worship, and in the best cases it is where we are most comfortable being the people God created us to be. For Christians, this is exactly how we can begin with the end in mind. And so gospel-centered homemaking is, as C.S. Lewis says, casting a shadow of the Christian’s future heavenly home:

“I think I can understand that feeling about a housewife’s work being like that of Sisyphus (who was the stone rolling gentleman). But it is surely in reality the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, miners, cars, government etc exist for except that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes? As Dr. Johnson said, “To be happy at home is the end of all human endeavor”. (1st to be happy to prepare for being happy in our own real home hereafter: 2nd in the meantime to be happy in our houses.) We wage war in order to have peace, we work in order to have leisure, we produce food in order to eat it. So your job is the one for which all others exist…” (pg 447-Letter of CS Lewis 1988 ed.)

kitchen reminders

March 15, 2013 / abby hummel / 5 Comments

As my “Spring Break” kicks off (no classes! no piano lessons! no Bible study!), I’m faced with a pretty daunting list of things to accomplish around the house. Taxes, business paperwork and billing, dry-cleaning, kitchen trimmings and a full “Spring Cleaning” check list mean that my break is just a change in the type of work I’m doing, not a break from work. I’m looking forward to accomplishing some projects that have been bugging me for a while, but right now I’m especially grateful for these words of wisdom scattering the kitchen. I think sometimes I leave these things out because I know that my future self will need the reminder.

Praise to the Lord! Who doth prosper they work and defend thee;
Surely His goodness and mercy here daily attend thee.
Ponder anew what the Almighty can do,
If with His love He befriend thee.
— Praise to The Lord, words by Joachim Neander, 1863.

We delight in the law of your word
We delight in the Son who was perfect from birth
We delight in the day He’s returning to earth, Hallelujah!
— We Delight, by Joshua Moore.

do they have large talons?

March 5, 2013 / abby hummel / 4 Comments

“Do the chickens have large talons?”
“Do they have what?”
“Large talons.”
“I don’t understand a word you just said.”
— Napoleon Dynamite (Paramount Pictures, 2004)

This is not going to become an organic-chicken-raising urban-farming blog, but here are a few more updates for our chicks’ devoted fans.

1) The fuzz is on the way out. This Rhode Island Red is Golda. She is displaying her fancy wings and (let’s be honest here) the cutest tail feathers of all time.

2) I can’t tell the Barred Rock chicks apart and we might give some of them away, so two names rotate between all four. This little lady might be Winifred or Simone. She is displaying her talons.

3) You can get another peek at all six in this video – they are still reasonably adorable and like to peck their beaks on the side of their box.

a box of chicks

March 2, 2013 / abby hummel / 8 Comments

After trying to convince me his little project was for our future children, Aaron finally confessed that his “play house” wasn’t for kids, it was for chickens. And he told me if I ever put a child in this coop, whether it was ours or someone else’s, he would probably call Child Protective Services, but that our future chickens would really like it. Since Aaron had a great experience raising hens when he was a kid and we both harbor secret urban homesteading fantasies, we’ve been talking about chickens every spring for four years. They have always been in the long-term plan, and whenever one of us works on anything in our shed Aaron talks about transforming it into a coop. He realized chickens were legal in our city and when he discovered the massive supply of DIY-coop-building plans from other hippy-ish blogs, there was no turning back. We just happened to go to a farm supply store this weekend and… now the rest is history: We have six little chickens in our laundry room. (This is the year of MAKING IT HAPPEN, after all.)

I do want to say that I didn’t have animals growing up (except a hamster named Pecan, may she rest in peace), so this is pretty new to me. I have firmly indicated that I am not interested in raising any cloven-hoofed animals, but I could probably be convinced to get a horse if resources allowed and we had kids who would manage the riding and caring. I’m pretty sure no one is reading this for my treatise on hobby farming – you just want pictures of the chicks. I will happily oblige.

1) Chicks at the store. We couldn’t leave them there: 2) Transporting them home in a box:
3) Aaron carefully observing them. He is such an animal-lover that I can’t believe we haven’t had anything serious until now:
4) The chicks enjoying their temporary box home in the laundry room:
…But, wait! There’s more! I TOOK VIDEOS. Indulge yourself as you see fit.

Aren’t they cute!? I’ve heard they might even stay this way for a few days.

Vander Port preparations!

February 24, 2013 / abby hummel / 11 Comments

“I don’t think you should get your hopes up for this wedding dress trip, Mrs. Hummel, because I have two sisters just like you and I’ve gone shopping with them both before. I don’t think there is anything fun about it. You’re probably going to be really disappointed.” – a nine-year-old boy in my piano studio.

My first Sabbath of Lent started off with a sudden burst of tears. While I scrambled eggs before church, Aaron showed me a meteorologist’s report indicating a big snowstorm for the end of the week, and said I should prepare myself to make a hard decision about my weekend plans: driving (solo) to Michigan for a special day of wedding dress shopping for my sister Bethany, who is getting married in July. I knew Midwestern road trips in February were never a sure thing when I put this on my calendar, but facing the reality of a predicted blizzard in an area not known for decent road conditions was entirely disheartening.

Almost everyone I know heard my tale of woe during the week, and many faithfully prayed this trip would work out for me. With three sibling weddings coming up this summer, extra time to visit and prepare for the big day(s) are a luxury, so it is likely this dress shopping trip would be my only time to celebrate with Beth before her nuptials. This was it! The trip HAD to happen! And then my prayers were mercifully answered with a very light snowstorm so I could travel safely. This probably came at the expense of children all over my county who hoped and prayed for a snow day from school. I hurried through the local library and grabbed some random audio CDs off the shelf to keep me company on the road.

I listened to Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua during my drive. I cried when she spoke of her sister’s cancer diagnosis, and it made me so glad I was going to spend this weekend with my own sisters. After I arrived and recovered from the car time, my mom and all three of us girls spent a long Saturday shopping for a wedding gown. We watched Beth start off nervous and quiet, (probably overwhelmed by thousands of yards of lace, satin, taffeta, ruffles, ruching, sparkles, and appliques) transforming through the day into a confident, comfortable, well-spoken Bride – with the perfect dress to match! I wiped a few tears when she first wore it. Grandma had to stay home nursing an injured knee cap, so we took secret forbidden iPhone pictures for her.

After all this hoopla, we ended our Saturday with a party celebrating the engagement with both sides of the new family. Now that she’s engaged to Isaac, Beth is marrying into a family of our old home-school friends. (Aaron and I even went to college with the oldest brother and his wife.) During the past ten years of friendship we’ve all known we would somehow become related, since “they have boys and we have girls,” and we have called ourselves “The Vander Ports,” a combination of our last names, for years during our movie nights and beach parties. For a while it wasn’t clear where the romantic connection would eventually happen to bring brother-sister friendships into an official capacity, but Beth and Isaac are finally making good friends into a big extended family. We made plans for the wedding and swapped stories, laughing until we cried on more than one occasion.

The Vander Ports (minus Caleb) — best wedding party ever!

Then I cried a bit when I had to leave on Sunday morning. We chose to move forward with Aaron’s PhD knowing that this career was not ever going to bring us back to the same towns (or state, probably) as our families, but it’s really draining that the current distance requires such sacrifices to get back and forth. During that long trip back, I listened to A Mighty Heart by Mariane Pearl, and I sniffled along with her tale of love and sacrifice, losing her husband Danny at the hands of Islamic terrorists in Pakistan. My story isn’t the same as hers, but she hit me hard; I was very ready to be home and celebrate that my husband was alive. When I arrived, I found Aaron working on a project in the garage. He says it is an A-frame playhouse for our future kids. I think it looks suspiciously like a chicken coop, which he recently mentioned was legal in our neighborhood.

Oh, my!

(It seems like there was altogether WAY too much crying over such a great weekend, no?)

learning forgiveness

February 19, 2013February 20, 2013 / abby hummel / 5 Comments

Hardship brings with it an unwelcome guest that stays much longer than the original suffering: a new and unfamiliar set of personal-connection tools. Life difficulties are hard not just because of the initial situation, but also because moving through dark suffering changes relationships and the way you interact with people, whether you like it or not. I was just marveling at how grief is not a one-time experience but an ongoing spiritual journey while managing an internal battle with myself, processing a bunch of recent conversations that were really hard and hurtful for me. They were challenging not because there was anything wrong with the others involved, but because I have suffered and then because of this I am different. Healthy, encouraging, refreshing relational connections for me happen under a very different set of rules than they might for someone else.

[Image credit HERE]

I live in the real world, and I am blessed with people all around me, so I connect with many others for work, fun, church, ministry, and community projects. Sometimes this blessing is a challenge to my heart – all this connecting means that, by default, I have to do a lot of forgiving. And it’s forgiving for things I can’t ask an apology over, wiping clean my heart’s slate of these very real offenses that will never be recognized as such by anyone else. I’m in the middle of a huge chunk of this right now. It feels like I have been doing this for a long time, and it is easy to grow quite weary.

But natural weariness isn’t the defining factor here; I’m a Christian, which means the gospel is always relevant to my life and there is supernatural strength accomplishing what I cannot. I read the Psalms and know God’s mercy is over all that He has made. So I have to remind myself these moments of salty-wound-rubbing and salty-tear-spilling are all covered by that mercy, preaching to my own heart that this is part of why the Lord has compassion on us, why he suffered and saved. His clemency is entirely superior over any of these perceived wrongs, and I need it extended to me even more than to any of this stuff going on around me. His mercy is over me, and them, and those flippant words, and the abundance of flippant words I’ve carelessly spilled, and my sadness, and all this every-day experience of the Fall.

The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.
The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works.
The Lord upholds all who are falling, and raises up all who are bowed down.
The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his work.
My mouth will speak the praise of the Lord, and let all flesh bless his holy name forever.
-Psalm 145, esv.

Outpost Memories

February 10, 2013 / abby hummel / 2 Comments

We spent some time last night with college friends swapping stories about our days at Hillsdale College, and I felt a pang of regret that I didn’t mention something in my last post. Yes, it’s cold in our house sometimes now, but it’s nothing like the house Aaron lived in during our Senior year.

The Outpost, as everyone called this house, was a special place. I have heard it was a dignified dwelling in it’s heyday, which was supposedly just one college generation — a few years, really — before us. However, when Aaron came back from Iraq and moved in to one of the upstairs bedrooms, it was clear that the former grandeur had faded. We (six guys and the girls who visited frequently) soon began referring to this house as “The Slum,” and the landlord, unfortunately, “The Slumlord.” The occupants discovered that, among other problems like the porch collapsing, the walls were as thin as cardboard. When the weather chilled they could only afford enough heat to keep the pipes from freezing.

This was pretty problematic. One time it was SO COLD that Aaron and I both sat on his bed under the covers slurping our hot chili dinner before premarital counseling. I think his room-mate felt a little uncomfortable with that arrangement. Turnabout is fair play – one time we came in and saw him with his girlfriend huddled under a makeshift tent of a blanket over a space heater. On another occasion, a group of us watched a movie piled on a couch in our own sleeping bags.

Sorting through these photos brings back so many memories! There were nicknames for several of the house’s occupants and various special ladies, a mouse that drowned in the sink of dirty dishes, and plenty of the things you’d expect from a bunch of guys living in a house together: chore disputes, strange smells, and even some bathroom drama. Those guys did put on a special dinner that winter before a dance, which was the nicest the place looked all year.

It’s good to remember these humble beginnings, though I’m sure our memories are a little more fond than we would have suspected during the Outpost days…

(Isn’t she a beaut!?)

thermostat wars

January 22, 2013January 22, 2013 / abby hummel / 12 Comments

“In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle. David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel. And they ravaged the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah.” (2 Samuel 11:1, esv)

It is not spring right now. Far from it. But the fact that we are far from spring makes this a time when this household goes to battle over something a little less serious than King David and the Ammonites: the thermostat. Our house is just old enough to be pretty drafty, and so extreme outside temperatures (like today’s high of 6 degrees Farenheit) create a conflict in our overall vision of living frugally and comfortably. Not surprisingly, Aaron falls a little harder on one side, and I fall on the other. (This happens in the summer, too, and sometimes results in pillow fights.)

A piano mom told me the worst part of waiting for her husband to finish his PhD was eating Ramen noodles. I like to cook so we manage to eat pretty well; the heating bill is one of our most noticeable spending cuts. I discussed these biannual Hummel Thermostat Wars with some students earlier this week. “Let me guess,” one of the young men ventured, “You want to be comfortable and Mr. Hummel wants to save money?” A cousin, familiar and sympathetic with our plight, mentioned that her friend from Wisconsin hosted an online quiz to see where other people set their thermostats in the winter. “The temperatures at your house were outside the range of responses,” she grinned.

Since I do agree with the overall reasons for conservative home heating for now, when it gets really cold, I have resorted to wearing an old fleece bathrobe and an extra pair of wool socks in the evenings. In addition to my ridiculous thermalwear get-up, we drink lots of hot tea and make the most of our new electric blanket. I can usually distract myself and think cheerful thoughts even though it’s cold, but that plan falls apart when Aaron looks at me and starts laughing hysterically.

But I must ask – do you have any other suggestions for battling the chilly house? Beside the most obvious answer, since our current temperature setting is actually a compromise already. How do the thermostat wars work out in your home?

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