Hubs and I were invited out last night to hear live music in a new bar serving local brew. We had a lovely time. Its still occasionally startling to me, rediscovering adult life out in the world after being home with kids, basically to exhausted and/or broke to go out at night, for so many years. But there was an unexpected layer of happiness, as well. When the band started we realized all the musicians were homeschooled and three of them had grownup together in our little community. Looking around, I suddenly realized the bar was full of homeschoolers---parents, grown kids, grown siblings, partners, a community. This is what it feels like to live in a community where folks grow up, school, work, and live together. The best part was the incidental commonness. No one planned a homeschool gathering and it wasn't a homeschool gathering. It was just folks in a bar.

It was a glimpse of normal life in a normal world where most normal people school their kids in the same place. How weird is that?

Work with the 16 pregnant heifers who are learning to walk calmly through the milking parlor is going well. Which means I'm making mistakes and learning a lot. And the heifers are making progress. Training heifers is my favorite job. I love working cattle: the subtleties, the urgent necessity for calm and quiet, accessing the spiritual space of nonverbal understanding and respect for other. If I could study for a Phd in this work, I would.