March 5: Isaiah Builds a Bench

For many months, I have made two loaves of bread five or six days a week. Then, like a light switch, the boys suddenly stopped wanting bread. (They stopped even before the milking began, though having a ready supply of milk did make it easier to consume less grains.) To use up the last loaf, I made French toast for dinner last night.

Phil got up feeling very sick. What could it be? His neck hurt badly. His sinuses. He felt head achey. Too much sugar, in the form of syrup, the night before? Maybe. Who could tell?

As usual, I suspected some form of chemical distress, and was getting him the homeopathic remedy I have started to give him for chemical exposure (Ars alba), when He poked out his finger and said, "That's what I need." I laughed him off&mdash:he had pointed to Kali bi, a remedy I hadn't studied, one tiny tube of pellets in my collection of 50. The cryptic, one word description said, "Sinuses," and that was what he clued into.

I checked online: good for issues with mucus membranes (like the sinus), for migraines (Phil's nemesis), rheumatic pains (his sore neck could, perhaps, qualify). So we tried it.

He didn't say he felt better, but within a few minutes he got up and was functional the rest of the day. If he didn't feel better, at least he didn't feel worse! Thank God for good vision, to see that one word and follow through.

Isaiah had wanted to build a bench to go under his bedroom window, so he could sit there and read. He thought about the design a little, and after Phil's miraculous recovery, Phil collaborated with Isaiah and they made a nice bench perfectly suited to that space.

Isaiah can be rightfully proud about his first project.

Then Phil had the thankless task of sanding his front door bench, slat by slat. Isaiah took over towards the end so Phil could milk.

And that is the end of work inside, so Phil started to clean up. He brought the tractor down (working with gravity) to move supplies away. The tractor got stuck going back in inches of mud: the snow is melting and the mud is deep and wet.