Happy Halloween!

Roasted pumpkin seeds, pumpkin bread, lots of candy, and of course the annual Jack-O'-Lantern family:

Must be Halloween :)

Hope everyone had a great night - have a blessed and holy All Saints Day tomorrow!

Five reasons why raising sheep is bootcamp for parenthood:

When I was pregnant with LW, I used the phrase, "oh, it's just like with the sheep" so many times that my husband joked my daughter might come out as a lamb.   Though he wasn't serious, I meant what I was saying, because I really felt (and feel) that raising animals throughout my childhood and adult years helped prep me for what was ahead.  As it turns out, as I reflect back on the last year and a half of adjusting to being a parent, I can confidently say that I was right.  So here's my top five reasons why raising animals (sheep, in particular) is great for any kid who thinks they might have a vocation to marriage and family.

5)  A crash course in the birds and the bees:

 I continue to be dumbfounded at the number of people out there who don't seem to associate reproduction with.. well.. reproduction!  You see, I grew up with a very mammalian view of sex.  Long before the rushing hormonal surges of adolescence, I already knew what happened when a ram jumped a fence to get in with a ewe (or a stallion escaped and got in with a mare, or our female cat escaped into the night when in heat... these sort of incidents unfortunately happened regularly).  I knew that the phrase "I don't think anything happened," most often resulted in a lamb or two, five months down the line.  Actually, I don't think anyone ever even had "the talk" with me; it wasn't necessary.  I knew where babies came from: baby horses, baby cats, baby dogs, baby sheep, and as a result, though I didn't think about it a whole lot, baby humans as well.  Most importantly, raising a variety of mammals instilled in me an almost visceral understanding of just how easily pregnancy can happen: the only surprise for me has been to realize exactly how difficult it can be for humans to get pregnant as compared to the rest of the animal kingdom.  Having all of this safely in mind before the aforementioned hormonal surges definitely helped me to understand that sex and babies were intrinsically connected, and that I shouldn't engage in one until I was ready for the other.

4)  Bottle lambs: infinitely more realistic than Baby Alive, Flour Babies, or Egg Babies:

My family has often joked that the best way to prevent teenage pregnancy is to give every teenage boy and girl a bottle lamb of their very own to take care of.  A few nights of getting up every two hours with a bottle goes a long way towards fostering an accurate idea of what babies are really like.  Since one or more of these bottle babies appeared at least every couple of years growing up, I got a lot of experience in this department (kids who grew up in families with regularly appearing new babies doubtless could identify).  Bottle lambs are also a great advertisement for breastfeeding, because it immediately becomes clear how much easier it is to be the momma sheep, with milk always at the ready, than to be the surrogate mom, having to mix milk-replacer and sterilize bottles.  Also, to put a more positive spin on the experience, it's pretty easy to bond with a bottle lamb; you get to experience the transformative power of nurturing emotion, without the lifelong commitment.

3)  Patience, patience, patience, with a bit of sneakiness thrown in:

There's nothing like spending years dealing with some of the most dense creatures on earth (there is a really good reason why God describes the stubbornness of Israel with the metaphor of sheep) to work on your patience.  While I'll freely admit that kids (and husbands, and family, and coworkers, and even random people ahead of you in line) force you to exercise the virtue at a whole new level), sheep can really help you to learn how to be patient with someone much stupider, or more stubborn, than you.  They're also a good case study in how best to bribe, lure, and herd someone in the direction that you want.  And, in the tangentially related practical realm of performing disagreeable procedures (tooth brushing, nail clipping, and bathing) gently, firmly, and most importantly quickly, I'm grateful every day that I had a chance to practice on a sheep, before I had to do them for a baby.

2)  Getting past the "yuck" factor:

This is actually a biggie.  Parenthood is messy.  There's just no way around it.  There are all sorts of bodily fluids and secretions, flying food, nothing stays where it is put, not to even mention the messy emotions involved.  I won't say that raising animals is exactly the same; I've never yet seen a sheep capable of quite the sort of whirlwind destruction that my one year old is currently practicing, but by and large, I have to say that sheep pack a bigger punch in the "yuck" department than babies do.  No offense to any of you who have ever had to deal with a diaper incident of epic proportions, but I guarantee I've dealt with worse from the sheep.  I can think of quite a lot of ways in which this is so, but the phrase "fly strike" takes the cake.  If you don't know what it is, consider yourself fortunate.  If you want to know, Google it, but not if you have a weak stomach.  Once a person can handle that sort of "yuck" without batting an eye, parenthood feels like a step in an easier direction.  Plus, with all the random animal injuries I've had to doctor or assist doctoring over the years, I'm able to keep a much cooler head when my daughter gets banged up. 

1)  The business of being born in a barn:

While I definitely mean every single one of the proceeding reasons, this is the one that I feel was by far the most important to me (aside, perhaps, from the "yuck" preparation, which incidentally has its own place in the labor and delivery room).  I can't explain adequately, or strongly enough, how well having delivered quite literally generations of lambs prepared me for giving birth to my own daughter.  I think the line that actually elicited the whole "you're not giving birth to a sheep" response from my husband was when I said that I was pretty sure I could deliver my own baby if I needed to.  You see, from a very young age (I think at least 8 or 9, if not before), I was designated as the one with the "smallest hands," the one who would do the actual work of delivering stuck lambs, sorting out tangled twins, in short, being the obstetrician for our sheep.  Even once my hands were no longer the smallest, I was deemed the most experienced, and so continued being the delivery girl.  Not only did this acquaint me quite well with most of the scientific facts surroundings pregnancy, labor, delivery, colostrum, etc, and with the labor process, with what is normal and what isn't, with the fluids and smells (sorry if this makes anyone squeamish, but it's true - mammalian birth comes with fluids and smells), but it also gave me a strong belief in the ability of the female body to do what comes naturally.  I learned that the best birth, by far, is the untampered with birth; that females do best when allowed to labor undisturbed.  I learned to approach birth with the perspective of a midwife; most importantly, I learned not to be afraid of birth.

 Now, I'll admit, it was hard to keep that perspective when I was pregnant.  What perhaps helped the most was stumbling upon the film The Business of Being Born, which reaffirmed everything that I'd instinctively absorbed growing up, all the timeless truths that were being crowded out of my head by the perspective of a society that sees labor as something wrong with a woman, something that must be managed closely and carefully, and medicated away if possible.  The film jolted me back to all my experiences delivering lambs; of easing slippery, wet babies from their laboring mamas in the quiet of a barn (usually at night, and usually in the middle of the winter; as a side note, this also gave me a great appreciation for what Mary must have gone through in Bethlehem).   Consequently, I wasn't really afraid when I went into labor; I was able to trust my instincts in a way that I don't would have been possible if trusting the progression of labor hadn't become essentially instinctual for me.  I wasn't afraid when my water broke in the middle of the night; the fluid, the scent, the adrenaline kick of "this is it!" brought me back to so many nights of jumping out of bed and then sitting quietly on an overturned grain feeder, and watching a ewe quietly labor from the dim light of a heat lamp.  I knew how the ewes seemed to turn inwards as the contractions deepened, grunting quietly against the pain; I knew that the mammalian body is made to give birth; I knew that they were able to do it, and that I could, too.

 So there you have it.   I'm not necessarily advocating raising sheep (it pretty much can be a huge pain).  But I would wholeheartedly advocate giving your children the chance to interact with other mammals in some way; if possible, at the very least, give your daughters the chance to see other mammals birth and mother their young.  In a world where we as a human race have lost much that we once knew when it comes to our mammalian (i.e. those who bear live young and produce milk with which to feed those young) nature, you'll be giving them a great foundation if and when they have children of their own.

Mountains and Plateaus

Yesterday, as I pulled into our local grocery store, it hit me: motherhood is just like driving standard.

OK, before you dismiss this thought as out of left field, or at best a weird over-generalization, let me explain myself.  I alternate between driving our two cars - one of which is standard, the other is automatic; in the beginning, I made the decision between cars based on whether there were any hills between me and my destination, but now it's whichever car my husband has left home, or which I can get out of the driveway quicker. 

Yesterday, I was in the automatic.  I pulled into the parking lot, and in a reflex move that many veteran standard transmission drivers can relate to, I found myself pushing in a non-existent clutch with my left foot as I hit the brake to stop.  Then, as I entered the store, another reflex had me pulling out a car with a seat to put my daughter in - only to realize that I'd left her at home with her dad.  That's when I realized the strange similarity between these two seemingly disparate pieces of my life.

You see, we bought a standard transmission car right after our daughter was born last year.  If you're like me and didn't learn to drive standard back when you were learning to drive, you'll know that to learn later on is basically tantamount to learning to drive all over again.  All of the easy familiarity you take for granted in say, driving across town, up a hill, and through a few stop signs, suddenly disappears, and everything requires this ridiculous focus, concentration, and energy.  It feels like you'll never be able to master shifting while doing or thinking about anything else; it feels like you'll never be able to really drive again. 

For me, motherhood - bringing a tiny newborn baby home from the hospital - felt exactly the same way.  Everything I'd ever taken for granted in my adult life, such as showering, going to bed, waking up, dressing, eating - all the fundamental basics, as well as a whole lot of tangentials, suddenly became painfully difficult, even occasionally impossible, to accomplish.  I wasn't sure how I'd ever be able to focus on anything else except this all-consuming thing called being a Mom; I wasn't sure if I'd ever feel like I was really living again, and not just checking off the check boxes of what LW needed done for her each day.

And yet, as steep as the learning curve in both areas has been, I feel like in some ways I'm finally seeing how it's possible.  My automatic reactions in the parking lot and store yesterday prove it:  driving a standard has become second nature, and in like manner, so has being a Mom.  I know that whenever we have our next baby, he or she will create a whole new learning experience, and things will be chaotic for a while.  But thank heavens, I never have to bring my first baby home from the hospital again.  The next time around, I'll already know that a time of stability will eventually arrive: that we'll reach the plateau in between mountains, and will eventually learn to re-balance this crazy thing called life.  We're always moving onwards and upwards, and God never gives us too much time in these plateaus, so I'm always so thankful for the gift of realizing when I'm in one: to take time to rest in the feeling that I've at least temporarily mastered most of the tasks required of me on a day to day basis.

What about you all?  What metaphors have you found apt for the transitions and challenges in your lives?  Are you in a plateau, or fighting your way up a mountain?

Chocolate saves the day!

Our lunchtime today had all the makings of a disaster:

1) Friday is the end of the week in our house as far as groceries go, and our fridge was looking rather barren.  

2) LW's food preferences have been growing fewer and more unachievable by the day, and all that I could seem to come up with was an English muffin with cashew butter, a rather overripe plum that she herself had dug out of the fruit basket (and thus that I felt relatively certain she might actually eat), and a pile of shredded mozzarella cheese (Jim and I had somehow managed to finish in four days all the string cheese that I bought "just for her").

3)  The plum went flying after three bites.

4)  The English muffin never even touched her mouth.

5)  If you ever have the brilliant idea to substitute shredded cheese for bite size, don't bother.  After about 3 seconds of patting myself on the back for the neat sensory experience I'd given her, I started kicking myself instead as handfuls of the stuff started flying.  Note to self: shredded cheese isn't particularly easy to get out of a kitchen rug.

Keep in mind that during this saga, I had yet to have any food myself.  We had leftover ziti from the night before, but I'd also made a rather disappointing pumpkin soup yesterday, and had dutifully packed away the leftovers despite having not enjoyed it all that much the first time.  When I saw the recipe at Faith and Family, I thought I'd struck gold; this time of year finds me practically turning orange from all the sweet potato, squash, and pumpkin that I eat, and I'd been looking for a recipe for a sweet pumpkin soup since having some at a restaurant last year.  Last week I'd tried to replicate it using pumpkin pie filling, but the result was inedible; this recipe was much better, but still just seemed to be missing something.  Perhaps if I'd made it with something richer than 1% milk it would have been really good, but as it was, it was just sort of "bleh".

Still, being food, and food I'd specifically bought ingredients for, I didn't feel like I could throw it away, unexcited as I was to eat it again for lunch.  Suddenly, in a dash of inspiration, I threw a handful of chocolate chips in before I heated it up.  The result?  Wow!  Yum!  So good that I'll likely make it again.

Even LW voted it tasty, no small feat since she started crying after the taste she had yesterday.

Something tells me that this won't be the last time I find myself singing the praises of chocolate chips...  

Co-creation

I went for a long walk (after a shorter than usual run) tonight: one of those walks where it just feels good to be outdoors, crunching leaves underfoot, breathing in wood smoke and leaf mold and the last lawn clipping scent of summer, and just enjoying being alive.  Walking for me is generally a great way to get into a thinking sort of mood - to, as Emily of New Moon would say, bring on "the flash"(if you're not familiar, look up L.M. Montgomery).  Anyway, I found myself really pondering the idea of co-creation, and how it relates to our eventual (hopeful) destination of heaven, as well as our current vocations in the here and now.  Thought I'd share a bit of the rambling road my thoughts went down, not that they were somehow highly insightful, but rather hoping that they might inspire further thought and/or spark discussion, leading us "further up and further in" (as C.S. Lewis would say).

1)  I would love to be able to really paint, to do justice to and call attention to the beauty of God's creation around us.  But I would need another whole lifetime to cultivate that particular skill.

2)  Lewis and Tolkien both suggest heavily that a particular element of heaven will be our continued participation in further fleshing out/leafing out/decorating God's creation - that the particular way in which we are made in God's image, is that we, like him, create.

3) Therefore, perhaps in heaven, I'll have the chance to perfect my painting skills.

4)  Perhaps the great multitude around the throne singing "Holy, Holy, Holy," aren't necessarily literally singing the whole time, but are rather glorifying God with the various talents God has bestowed upon them (and ever discovering new talents He has bestowed on each).

5)  In the meantime, here in this time and space, He has given me a very particular set of roles and gifts.

6)  One of these gifts is writing, however the time hasn't necessarily come for that to be my primary focus (when or if such a time ever comes is in His control rather than mine).

7)  He has, very definitely, given me one very concrete way to participate with Him in the most glorious type of co-creation possible: that of begetting and raising new little souls to be loved and learn to love Him.  Being "just a mom," even if I never did anything else, would be, if lived rightly, all the purpose, title, and crown I could ever need.

8)  Still, I do hope to be able to find time, (in time, or in eternity), to develop the other passions He's planted in me: not for my own glory, not to point towards or share of myself, but to share more of Him.

As Tolkien says, in his poem "Mythopeia" (this is only an excerpt; the whole poem can be found in the book Tree and Leaf),

"Though now long estranged,

man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.

Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,

and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned,

...

man, sub-creator, the refracted light

through whom is splintered from a single White

to many hues, and endlessly combined

in living shapes that move from mind to mind.

Though all the crannies of the world we filled

with elves and goblins, though we dared to build

gods and their houses out of dark and light,

and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right

(used or misused). The right has not decayed.

We make still by the law in which we're made."

Anyway.  If any of this resonates with any of you in even the smallest part, I suggest reading Leaf by Niggle, by J.R.R. Tolkien.  It is (especially if you have any knowledge of Tolkien himself, and his long work on The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and the Silmarillion) a beautiful metaphorical glimpse into what heaven might be.  And also The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis.  My apologies if this all is a bit disjointed - I find myself torn between perfecting my posts (and never or rarely posting anything, due to the previously lamented extreme lack of time in which to write), or posting items even in an unanalyzed, barely proofread state just to continue communicating with the world at large :)

No time, no time!

"Time is what we want most, but what, alas! we use worst; and for which God will certainly most strictly reckon with us, when Time shall be no more." - William Penn

I have so many things I'd love to be blogging about these days, but somehow all my time from waking to sleeping (and back around again) is eaten up with all sorts of other things: big things, little things, monotonous things, exciting things, but all offline things.  It's amazing how the vocation of marriage and motherhood can and does demand all of you (and then some): all your time, all your patience, all your energy, all your attention, all your life.  I wouldn't have it any other way, but I do hope that I can also find tidbits of time, soon, where writing can find a regular niche in my days as well.

In the meantime, until I get back to telling the story of my horse, or sharing some other thought that is on my mind, I'll leave you with one of my other favorite quotes about time.  My great aunt shared this with me when I was a teenager, and it's stuck with me ever since.  Although I don't know who the original author was, and I realize that it could certainly be seen as trite or cliche if read in the wrong manner, it is still a valuable way to rightly weigh which "things" I'll allow to eat up my time, and conversely, which aren't worth the cost:

"What I do today is important; I am exchanging a day of my life for it."

When you look back at the end of your life, which "things" were worth the exchange of one of those precious days?  And which "exchanges," if you could, would you take back, and purchase something more lasting with?

Happy Sunday everyone, and a holy day of Sabbath rest to all.

A Horse and Her Girl: Backstory

"There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man." -Winston Churchill

After posting Part One, I suddenly realized that a good deal more backstory was needed to fill in the gaps, explaining exactly how horse crazy I was (and still am), and why I am suddenly thinking about the story of my horse (which is, in essence, not just the story of that one horse, but of me and horses).  So a little bit of background, before I continue on chronologically.

As I mentioned before, "horse" was among the first handful of words that I learned; what I didn't mention was that I was crazy about them from the first introduction, playing with replicas, pretending to ride, etc.  And when I say crazy, I mean truly, head-over-heels, crazy.  Aside from a well-loved Cabbage Patch doll, the first present I can really remember receiving was a My Little Pony, and by the age of 8, my herd at grown to 40.  Later on, Breyer horses replaced the My Little Ponies, and my dad built a lovely functional stable for me.  There was no Barbie dream house; it was Brenda Breyer all the way, and my imaginary play didn't involve romance, but rather cleaning stalls, watering, feeding, and riding.

Back then, my favorite moment of the year was at the fair, when I'd get to go on the pony rides.  I still remember that it cost $5, which seemed like a lot of money, and I would absolutely savor those few minutes of walking around the circle on a bored pony with its lamentably shaved mane (oh, if only $5 could buy so much happiness now!).  Even better than the pony rides were the few times that I was allowed to sit on one of my aunt's horses; on Winakee Furka, her gentle-as-could-be stallion, or one of the yearlings who were still pony-size.  My family started raising sheep around the time I was 4, and I did get to occasionally "ride" the sheep - even jumping my ewe Rosemary over the ditch in our pasture.  Sheep don't have long necks like horses, and aside from the wool, there isn't much to hang on to; I credit those early sheep rides with laying the foundation for my future ability to stay on a horse despite some pretty wild unseating tactics.

By the time I was twelve, when I wasn't reading the Black Stallion, The Island Stallion, Misty of Chincoteague, King of the Wind, Summer Pony, or some other horse-related fiction, I could most likely be found pouring over the latest StateLine tack catalogue, or setting up jump courses for myself to run through outdoors.  I was that weird girl that you'll sometimes see from the window of your car as you zip by - that one who appears to be "cantering" around her yard, jumping a course made of buckets and sticks, perhaps with a branch of a tree in her hand as a "crop".  When I went on hikes, walks, or bike rides, I didn't do so as a human in my mind; always there was an imaginary horse involved.  I even named these various imaginary equines, with bold names like Commander, Crusader, and SunStar for the stallions, and gentler ones like Secret and Shadow for the mares ("Chestnut Brown," which my cousin came up with, was just not a good enough moniker for the grand Arabian steeds in my head).  I practiced breeds of the horse flashcards; built a model of the "visible horse"; once tried to mail "horse dust" to the aforementioned cousin... you get the picture.

Perhaps I would have imagined less, and even been less invested in the idea of myself as a future equestrian, if I'd actually been able to spend more time with horses; if my aunt had allowed a pony, or my family had been rich enough to afford riding lessons earlier and more often.  But I count myself highly fortunate, because my aunt did own and breed horses, and thus, when Eclipse was born, I was able to realize a dream that for an awful lot of horse crazy girls only ever stays a dream: that of actually owning and training my own horse.  The end of the story might be a sad one - but still, for seventeen years, I was blessed.

Aside from merely reminiscing due to the various reasons that this time of year awakens the equine passion in my blood, I found myself thinking about all of this, and wanting to post about it, because it so highly shaped who I was as a teenager, and who I am today.  At some point, I'll have to tell the story of the sheep, too, because raising sheep quite definitely has shaped my views about how the world works, at least from a biological perspective.  But horses are and always have been special to me, and as my husband and I have been thinking about purchasing a house at some point, and where that might be, along with what our needs and wants are in that area, I've found myself pondering what role I want horses to play in our future.

I tell this story to remind myself of the past; perhaps to show my own path into a territory that all those equine novels didn't really cover.  It's all well and good for the teenager to ride off into the sunset, but what happens when she grows up?  When other dreams begin to compete for time and space in her finite life?  This story is an attempt to remember that sunset, and then see through it to the middle of the next day, when the same horse-crazy girl is asking, "How can horses find a role in a homemaker's life?"

A Horse and Her Girl: Part One

This time of year, with the crunching leaves and crisp edge to the wind, always makes me think of horseback riding.   And this year, it's reminding me of my horse, Eclipse, in an extra way, because it was right around this time last year that we had to say goodbye.   My mom wrote about this at the time, but for me there wasn't a lot to say. Now, however, over a year has passed, enough time to want to, and be able to, tell the story of the horse that grew with me from a child of ten, to a wife with a child of my own.  However, it's a longish story, encompassing seventeen years, so even a brief telling of the tale will take a couple of parts.

Part One

Eclipse was technically an accident, the product of an escaped stallion, a late night rendezvous, a moment of unbridled equine passion.  Her mother was, at the time, my absolute favorite animal on the planet, a thoroughly patient, devoted, loving mare named after my grandmother Norma.  N.R., as she was referred to, was never formally trained, but she was still the safest horse in the pasture on whom to learn to ride.  The stallion, Praise Song, was a fiery young stud who, shortly after the rendezvous in question, picked my father up by the hood of his sweatshirt and actually shook him (my dad later liked to show us the sweatshirt with the teeth marks, evidence of a close brush with death).  Needless to say, Praise Song didn't get to stay a stallion long after that incident - he was actually gelded the very next day.

So Eclipse was a one-and-only from the moment of conception.  Then came the night of her birth.  If you search for June 15, 1992, you'll find that there was a partial lunar eclipse on that night; that night she was born, with her forehead marked with the crescent moon.

She was essentially mine from birth; my aunt, who owned all the horses, had promised each of her nieces and nephews a horse of their own choosing at their 13th birthday, which they could either sell (reaping the proceeds), or keep and train.  Horse-crazy basically from childhood ("see! see!" was my early word for horse), I of course chose the latter, and the only filly born in years from my favorite mare was an obvious choice. But, at 10 years old (and not yet weighing the sixty lbs that my elders has arbitrarily deemed the weight at which I could ride alone), there wasn't a lot I could do with her.  I halter trained her, of course, and when she escaped her pasture, I was the only one who could catch her to get her back in.  I have a shadowy memory of a young, dark filly on a sunny lawn, friendly ears pricked towards me as I confidently walked up and put a lead around her neck.  And another memory of then weaving, with my mom, a "baling twine barrier" all up and down the fence, so that she couldn't escape again.  Hours of work, a complete visual eye-sore, but effective enough that it stayed for probably a decade after we put it up.

Over the next three years, she and I both grew, and the storms of adolescence hit.  She began to exhibit a temper much like her father's; I was rather broody, melancholy, and while becoming an accomplished rider, still very green and uncertain.  Probably as with any horse trained by a young teenager, she developed some quirks right from the beginning that took years to go away: spinning into the circle on the lunge, rearing to get out of things, tossing her head at bridling.  If things had continued in that vein, I might not have had much luck ever riding her, but fate, and illicit rendezvous of her own with another escaped stallion (this is a trend on our farm.  Stallions, rams, "I don't think anything happened" and then several months later, offspring; great for reproductive education but not so great for keeping herd size down), intervened.  Over the course of a few months, her mood inexplicably mellowed, until one day, as I was brushing her, I felt something move.

Unbridled Passion, as I named the foal, was born a few months later.  Before he was born, I took great advantage of Eclipse's more mellow disposition, and the weight of the foal inside her kept her a lot slower and easy to work with (having now experienced the last trimester of pregnancy, I now realize it was awfully unfair to take advantage of her condition, but it did help).  Of course, the whole situation was far from ideal; if she'd been a human instead of a horse, she'd have been starring in the movie Juno, because age-wise she wasn't out of horse-high school yet.  The stallion in question was a cousin of hers, so the genetics weren't great, and the foal never amounted to much (he actually had to be put down after he broke his leg in a pasture accident when he was two).  But the time allowed Eclipse and I to grow much closer, and for the first time in my life I was riding on a daily basis.  Riding - to this day, there's still nothing quite like it, and back then, I was riding my equine best friend.

If there's any interest in part two, I'll continue soon.. :)