Mentor Me

Have you ever had a mentor? What was the greatest lesson you learned from him or her?

Without the confidence I received from publishing in BrooWaha, discussions on BlogCatalog, and my own personal editor, Isabel Anders, I would probably still be writing nothing more than mummy drivel. In fact I would certainly not be writing a book and I might even have stopped writing a blog.
11 months ago, when I closeted myself in a room to sit down and write, I froze. I considered writing to be a solitary craft but looking at a blank screen or talking into thin air was a sterile exercise in futility for me. I could not translate the same creative energy that I experienced telling a story verbally to the keyboard. My intuitive, imaginative side stayed buried and my logical intellect wrote boring drivel.

Then I started to blog and people started to comment on my writing. They liked my stories. I was shocked. These new online friends helped me gain confidence which it turn helped my writing. The most influential mentor was and still is Isabel. Early on I read that bloggers are supportive and unselfishly helpful, rejoicing in each others success and offering free guidance . Well, I discovered that this statement is true. She encourages, interacts, and gives advice as well as sending me every article she can on writing and publishers.

Isabel Anders@IsabelAnders
Book author at Isabel Anders' Uncommon Mother-Daughter Wisdom:http://isabelanders.wordpress.com/ http://tinyurl.com/bpypy6l and Miss Marple: Christian Sleuth http://tinyurl.com/cjgf2gt
Tennessee · http://www.IsabelAnders.com

I have only been writing a year but with Isabel's encouragement, guidance and knowledge of the publishing world I just submitted my first proposal to a publishing company. Huffington Post also just published and article in the Religion Section. After editing my first shaky attempts at a proposal she read my third attempt and commented:

This is wonderful! Very well presented, and a fine sampling of your work. They may want to use some of this material for article(s) too. YOU are worthy and so are these wonderful stories. But with publishers, it all depends on their need for a certain category of book at the time.

Try not to take any decision too personally. This is so hard. It's like trying to hit the bull's eye of an invisible target the first time. I've had many rejections over the years. Every acceptance is pure grace

A good friend at BlogCatalog wrote the following comment about mentors after reading this post.

helenafortissima I've had mentors and have served as a mentor myself. I think most people seek mentorship at some point in life, especially during the educational process or entry into a new field. It takes confidence in oneself--and courage--to ask for help. Mentoring isn't about conforming or micro-managing, it's about catalyzing one's own abilities and insights and honing them into a unique set of skills and knowledge. It's about sharing. For me, those have proven to be meaningful and valuable relationships that have encouraged both personal and professional growth and innovation.

The following is just the beginning of my proposal which I attempted to write 3 months ago. The task was simply overwhelming I needed a mentor.

Proposal Information: 1.  my contact information

2. BIOGRAPHY
As a tiny English Major,with dreams of becoming a professor, I had never dreamed that God would call me to raise 9 children on a hobby farm. A combination of grace, cups of tea and a sense of humour enabled me to embrace chaos and tragedy. My little ones taught me what is really important in life and where to discover fulfilment and joy.
Qualifications
"Melanie Juneau—motherofnine9—knows that a woman's ground of creativity lies as close as her child's heart. In her delightful stories and memories of mothering nine children, she shows how a Christian mother bathed in love brings all the power and light embodied in her faith to that most important sphere of hope, the family."
—Isabel Anders, author of Blessings and Prayers for Married Couples and Miss Marple: Christian Sleuth.
Publications
167 articles published BrooWaha Your Citizen NewspaperSeptember 22, 2012
Articles published in family life, humour, spirituality, and health. 43,550 page views, on Feb.17/2013
Interviews(Link)BC Staff BlogsDecember 4, 2012
1.An Artistic Military Man Says, "Welcome to My World,"
2.Blogging Opens The Door To Writing
3. Passionate About Learning: From Bonsai Trees to Quantum Physics,
4. A Brainless Nod? Hardly!
Foundationlife Articles(Link)Foundation LifeFebruary 8, 2013
YOU had 9 Kids??
A God Led Life
The Joy of a Large family
A Challenge to Catholic, Pro-Life Men and Women
Horton the Who is Pro-life
Become a Baby Whisperer
3 Facts Our Catholic Kids Need to Know
Finally, A Pro-Life Doctor,
Remembering Life in the Womb,
Enigma to my Obstetrician,
The Call, Transformation,
The Wisdom of Mothers
Protecting Life in a Neonatal Unit,
Choosing Life
Why Did You Have So Many Kids?, Nurturing Your Baby Before Birth(Link)Prolifeblogs.comNovember 21, 2012
59 posts since September 2012(Link)WordcastersFeb. 11, 2013
ranked #6, one of 17 featured writers
Melanie Jean Juneau(Link)DiggMay 19, 2012
54 submissions promoted to the front page in Lifestyles on Digg
till Aug, 2012 when Digg was re-vamped
Mom Blog Society(Link)July 15, 2012
one of 34 featured writers till July 2012
now is re-organized
A page overview of my on-line presence can be found at http://www.twylah.com/mjmjuneau showing articles from broowaha, themotherofnine.wordpress.com, melaniejeanjuneau.wordpress.com,motherofnine9.blogspot.com
motherofnine9- twylah.com/mjmjuneau/
I am a mother who raised nine children on a hobby farm. The stories I write are humourous, thoughtful and thought provoking .

about me

People look at me, their eyebrows shoot up, their mouths drop open and they sputter,
”YOU had 9 children??
This is because I am 5’ 1” and weigh 104 lbs. I was pregnant or nursing for 17 years without a break. I have been pregnant 10 times and I am healthy and happy and I have my BBB back. (That would be my Before Babies Body).

My husband and I raised 9 children on a hobby farm and discovered fulfilment and joy. When the words The Joy Of Mothering on a Hobby Farm popped into my head as a subtitle for my short stories it was like an epiphany for me because those few words verbalized my experience living with little people. The very existence of a joyful mother of nine children seems to confound people.

My writing is humourous and heart warming/ thoughtful and thought-provoking with a strong current of spirituality running through it.
Part of my call and my witness is to write the truth about children, family, marriage and the sacredness of life, especially a life lived in God
THE JOY MOTHERING
THIS IS YOUR CALL
THIS IS YOUR VOCATION
THIS IS YOUR WITNESS TO THE WORLD

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Melanie Jean Juneau

A.   

 go to http://about.me/mjmjuneau

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A Pierced Heart is a Precursor to Real Love

I could blame romance novels, movies and reality t.v. shows for distorting reality and corrupting us but they simply portray a basic human weakness.

Ah, waiting secretly for your knight in shining armour to whisk you off your feet so you can live happily ever after? Or for a wonderful woman to lift off your depression and sense of aimlessness? 

Although we laugh at such ridiculous fantasies as the stuff of naive, lovesick teenagers, we all must face the deep temptation within ourselves to ask our partner to fulfil all of our needs.Most of us are not conscious of this tendency which propels us to seek out our soul mate, someone to complete us and make us whole.

The stark truth is that nothing outside of ourselves will ever fill that hollow place within us, not money, not cars nor beautiful homes nor relaxing vacations. Nothing outside of ourselves can complete us. Depending on someone else to complete or make you happy just doesn't work. 

When someone puts unrealistic demands on us, even if we love them and desperately want to fill their emptiness, we will always fail. A natural instinct of survival is to pull back. If we force ourselves to comply, we become suffering victims, scapegoats, resentful and bitter.You cannot save anybody who passively expects you to fulfil the role of saviour. Period. The most loving thing is an AA kind of response to addictive behaviour and let them fall down. Then, there is hope that they will face themselves, take themselves on and begin that inner journey.

I will leave you with this image. One partner is at the bottom of a well, sitting passively. The other partner is leaning down the well as far as they can, dangling a rope in front of their beloved. Only problem is that this particular loved one has Vaseline on their hands.I find that deep spiritual union where  a couple becomes one, only happens when the two people who love each other are equal, relaxed, open, trusting and allow love to flow in and out through their special bond.

For me clingy means the one partner is insecure, anxious, does not trust and has not discovered their inner union with God. They are incomplete. They must be healed on their own with God but they want their partner to save them, to be a substitute for God. This is not love. This is co-dependant, selfish and it kills  true love.

True love grows after two hearts, pierced with cupid's arrow, love their partner freely, by choice.

They are People

Look back once the baby has grown and discover the seeds of the man within his tiny soul

They are all people:
in utero
newborn
infant
baby
toddler

People
Albeit little people
Still they are people

With Dignity

Not an it

Not simply an appendix to

mother's body
Not owned by the mother
Not reflections of mum's ego

Not characters

to fulfil unfulfilled dreams
and ambitions.

Children

Toddlers

Babies

unique

definite personalities and characters

Look back once they have grown
and discover the seeds of the man within the toddler

a mystery and a delight
to discover each individual personality
encourage
watch
as they grow in a
unique way

Souls cherished
by God Himself.

Big M, Little m/ All about M

 Memories of mum moments / M, M, M.

“Big B, Little b
What begins with B? 
Barber, baby, bubbles and a bumble bee
B,B,B”

The rhythm and rhyme are specifically designed to catch the smallest child’s attention, with the power to linger in parent’s and children’s brains for decades. These books form and influence our children far beyond their childhood years because the themes help form the foundation of their world view.The following quotations From Dr. Seuss hardly need an introduction. Any one who is or has been a parent will recognize most of them.This selection focuses on phrases that urge people to look at life with joyful expectation. 

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.”

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…”

“Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.”

Dr. Seuss’s beliefs have not only influenced generations of children by also parents such as myself. People, do you realize that I have read Dr.Seuss for a solid 22 years and now have begun again after a mere ten-year break!!! Such constant exposure to idiotic, brilliant  irritating poetry means that I can recite many of his books to this day. A very alarming mental condition!

Seuss understood that education should be subtle because little people learn best when they are relaxed, happy and amused. As Seuss so eloquently explains,

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”

Seuss embraced the life of the imagination and detested the type of staid adults who dismissed the whimsical as a waste of time.       

“Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.”

In the early years, I tried too hard to teach my kids. Religious parents can be especially earnest as they bring their kids up in the faith. Often we turned to heavy-handed, pedantic prose that is preachy. I call this PPP literature. It turned my kids off.  So I looked around and I discovered the Christian message of hope, joy, love. truth in the most unexpected places. St Therese said it best,

                     “Everything is Grace”

When we open our eyes, moments of grace  are everywhere, even in the big, bad secular society. Catholic teaching is not only found in Catholic literature  but in the most unexpected places. Horton Hears a Who!, by Dr. Seuss is a moment of pure grace, inspired by the Holy Spirit and infused with JOY.

“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

Horton is definitely a pro-life elephant.

The Power of Love

A loved child can change the world
covenanthousefaithcommunity.wordpress.com

If my children could  remember only three things to take with them into their adult life , what would I want them to be?  Tony Berkman at BlogCatalog asked me this question.

1.Trust that I love you and believe in you. Let that love be your foundation and your springboard into life.

2. God loves you,  just as you are. Relax in that Love, let it sink in , heal you, strengthen you and release you into freedom and joy. Don't try to save yourself and everybody else on your own . Notice that I called God Lord. Let God be God and don't steal His job.

3. Reach out and allow love to flow through you to your partner, children, neighbours and in doing so discover your unique vocation, your work in the world.

A child rooted in love becomes a secure, warm, giving adult who attracts as much light as he reflects. He can live in relative peace with himself and others. With his basic emotional needs fulfilled,  he is free to love and serve other people and to develop intellectually as well as creatively.

Baltasar Gracian , a Spanish Jesuit scholar who lived from 1601 till 1658 said:

"Give me the child until he is
seven and I care not who has him thereafter."
or
"Give me the child till the age of seven
and I will show you the man."

A child grounded in his parents' love, who knows  that the Lord loves him,  is strong and resilient Most of us spend years dealing with love, trust, fear, guilt issues. Imagine a whole generation of young people healed and set free to serve the world in  and through Love? It would be heaven on earth. It would be the beginning of a revolution that would change the face of the earth.

Don’t bully yourself

Children are free to allow themselves to be loved and to love

Don’t bully yourself

with harsh comments

of how you look,

your past,

or your fears,

because if you are hard on

yourself,

you will be hard on

others…

find the voice of Love

inside you,

listen to it,

own it,

let Eternal Love

sink in,

transform you.

Then love

will flow out

from your every pore

People who are simply standing

beside you

will feel His Love.

“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”

St Therese said it best

“Everything is Grace”

When we open our eyes, moments of grace  are everywhere, even in secular society.  Catholic teaching is not only found in Catholic literature  but in the most unexpected places. Horton Hears a Who!, by Dr. Seuss is a moment of pure grace, inspired by the Holy Spirit and infused with JOY . In fact I would call  Dr. Seuss a  Pro-Life Author.

“A person’s a person, no matter how small.”
― Dr. Seuss, Horton Hears a Who!

Horton teaches  even toddlers the value of a hidden, unseen life just like life in the womb,  imaginatively. The catchy,  funny rhythms and rhymes will captivate your little people and soon they will be chanting phrases and embedding truth into their minds

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My Heart is Not in Stuff

Remember yesterday, when your home was on fire and you got to save five items? That means you left a lot of stuff behind. What are the things you wish you could have taken, but had to leave behind?

I did not write yesterdays post because the only objects that I would run into a burning house for are photos of family, my computer, an overnight bag with toiletries and a few changes of clothes , a bible crocheting to help any tension and nerves. That's it.

As for regrets, I really do not think that my heart is in things. Since I was a little girl, I have felt content with what I have materially.  Even now when my nine kids ask me what I want for Christmas, I pause for a moment with a blank mind. I have to search to come up with a list.

Rather a strange state to be in because this is not the result of spiritual striving, fasting, prayer, it is just how I am. Living with little people has only strengthened an innate tendency to enjoy the little things, to be grateful to be alive and in communion with the Spirit.

Little kids have been my teachers and taught me that the key to happiness and joy is thankfulness and appreciation for the beauty that surrounds us and especially that is just above our heads.

There is much to be grateful for if we will simply stop for a moment and really see the details which surround us every day.

Children delight in the plethora of tiny details all around them. They are born with a sense of wonder and the ability to enjoy little things.
Children love to peer closely at tiny objects. Perhaps it is because they are closer to the ground but they stop at every flower and bug, especially a bug on a flower. As they look, touch, smell, even lick each wonderful new discovery, all their attention is riveted on that one thing. At first it was difficult to slow down during our walks and let the toddlers set the pace but it was a wonderful instruction in relaxing and becoming fully present to the moment.
At first I was only capable of enjoying whatever captured my children's notice but now I realize that they were experiencing so much more than I initially thought. In their silent, non-verbal attention to nature, they were in deep communion with God Himself as He is present in His creation. Adults struggle for years to merely glimpse the intimacy that little children have naturally with God. They do not need to strive or work for this state of contemplation because they are without guile, prior opinions or expectations; they are open and look with trust, ready to absorb the love, joy and peace that envelopes them. Children are grateful for everything.
To live in a constant state of gratitude and thankfulness. Even if I were to live in the midst of a concrete jungle, I could at least stop for a moment, look up and give thanks. I simply need to remind myself to glance upwards, above my little busy world and enjoy the sky. The sky alone is an extravagant present that continually fills me with the joy if I remember to take a break from my "important" business.

Ode to an Orchard Playground

A place from your past or childhood, one that you’re fond of, is destroyed. Write it a memorial.

i stand on hot concrete

staring at a large edifice of

glass like steel and

steel like glass.

yet I do not see this

man-made

monstrosity.

reflected in the mirror like steel

i see a cluster of

wild apple trees,

stunted

gnarled

through the eyes of children

it is a magical orchard

created just for them

lying in the tall grass,

shaded by succulent fruit

a Garden of Eden

perfect backdrop for

imaginary games and

apple banquets

fit for a princess

www.twylah.com/mjmjuneau

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God Leads

Outwardly, my life is diametrically opposed  to anything I could have imagined as a teenager. Yet this strange life I find myself living has brought me more fulfilment and joy than I ever could have imagined.
At sixteen, I was still an avid reader, who loved school.   As  expected, I completed an Honours Degree in English Literature. By 23, my life was still on track. I considered continuing my studies as a graduate student because I still loved everything about academia.  The relaxed but challenging experience of reading Chaucer and Old English in the original vernacular with only one other student in a professor's office was invigorating. This teacher was delighted to find two students interested in his life's work

I loved my life and didn't for see any changes. I had grown up with one sister, ballet lessons and a library filled with great fiction. I enjoyed gardening, painting and drawing, eating a vegetarian diet, reading spiritual literature and growing in my faith ; I was content.
Suddenly, my life as I knew it, changed dramatically.
I met Michael, who was just passing through Regina, Saskatchewan from Ottawa, Ontario to Prince George, British Columbia and from that very first, it felt like the prairie wind had swooped down and scattered all my work and plans. Michael described our first meeting in much kinder terms;   he saw fireworks when he first laid eyes on me.
I was not ready for this dramatic change in my life but it was clear to me that this was my call. So I baffled my fellow students, profs, advisors, friends and family by saying yes to the unexpected. I did not know anything about my newly chosen lifestyle or even where we would live. I did realize that I was completely ignorant and lacked even the most basic skills required to survive.
I became pregnant before our first wedding anniversary. Instantly, I began to panic because I knew, that once again, I was utterly unprepared. I had never even held a newborn! So I prepared in the only way I knew how and I read every book I could find on pregnancy, birth and baby care.
However all this studying did little to equip me to mother a fragile, completely dependent newborn. For example, as I held my baby in a small bathtub for his first bath, I was very nervous. Guess what? I had a book propped open with one elbow awkwardly holding it open to the right page, while my baby was in the baby bathtub on the table. The book was my security blanket. In fact reading at any odd moment I could grab a few seconds , strong cups of tea plus the mercy of God  and a wicked sense of humour have been my strength.
In the ensuing years, 18 spent pregnant and/or nursing babies,  I discovered fulfilment. My call, vocation and witness became the joy of mothering children. Perhaps I could have started  writing seven years ago when everyone was in school full-time but realistically there was simply too much physical work involved in running a household for eleven people and helping with the farm animals and our large vegetable garden.
Now I  have come around full circle because I  have started writing again. Just as I imagined at 16.  It just took 40 years of living a strange life before this avid reader and crazy oral story-teller was ready to start writing.

A comment

I had to smile through the whole thing, Melanie. I believe that God had plans for you from even before you met the love of your life. Your story, how you became a wife and then a mother, is so beautiful. I don't think I could tire reading it. :)

Maybe that is the beauty and mystery of life...that we do have a destiny to fulfill and often are not aware of it till it happens...

Daily Prompt: Ready, Set Go / Little People

Set a timerSet a timer for ten minutes. Open a new post. Start the timer, and start writing. When the timer goes off, publish. Time to loosen up and have some fun, fun with words HOW ABOUT A 70'S SORT OF STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS WITH A PINCH OF E.E.CUMMINGS? Now I AM DATING MYSELF BECAUSE HE WAS THE UNORTHODOX POET OF CHOICE IN HIGH SCHOOL IN THE 70'S. Yes THE 70'S!!! children simply little people people not dolls Not reflections of our own egos not characters to fulfil our unfulfilled dreams and ambition . children. toddlers even babies unique, definite personalities and characters look back once they have grown and discover the seeds of the man within the toddler a mystery and a delight to discover each individual personality encourage watch to grow in a unique manner

Family Tree

How many faces do you see?

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EVERYONE’S EYES ARE OPEN!

   family and new daughter-in -law

                                       

The Great Canadian Novel

Credit: shutterstock
I dream of illustrating an imaginative allegorical novel.

If you could choose to be a master (or mistress) of any skill in the world, which skill would you pick?

Obviously I would love to write like a pro, not simply short articles like I write now but thick volumes of books that would be called literature. Why? For the simple reason that I love reading allegories. I love loosing myself in an imaginative world created by authors like C.S. Lewis, J.R. R. Tolkien or Rowling. Coleridge called this magical reading experience "the suspension of disbelief".

I suppose I am not ready to write such a masterpiece but I have tasted what it is like to connect to the powerful creative force that flows through all of us. Creativity is addictive. Nothing surpasses the thrill of sitting in front of a blank page or screen with an equally blank mind only to have a small incident, phrase or prompt trigger an imaginative spark deep with me.

Daily prompts have pushed me to open deeper artistic doors. Intuition, creativity and the Spirit bring everything together and words pour out of my subconscious. I simply start writing naturally, almost without effort. The words flow as fast as I can type. I do not think; I just type. As Ray Bradbury says,

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You simply must do things.

"I do not plan my fiction any more than I normally plan woodland walks; I follow the path that seems most promising at any given point, not some itinerary decided before entry.”~John Fowles

"Writing became such a process of discovery that I couldn't wait to get to work in the morning: I wanted to know what I was going to say. ~Sharon O’Brien”

At the moment when I look within to find The Great Canadian Novel, I look at a blank wall. Yet it was only 9-10 months ago that I was just as clueless when I sat down to write a short story or an article. Who knows what I will discover, which door will open. It is exciting.

Hey I will report back next year, same place, same day, on January 22, 2014 and I will keep tabs on you as well.

Coming Around Full Circle

When you were 16, what did you think your life would look like? Does it look like that? Is that a good thing?

Outwardly, my life is diametrically opposed  to anything I could have imagined as a teenager. Yet this strange life I find myself living has brought me more fulfilment and joy than I ever could have imagined.
At sixteen, I was still an avid reader, who loved school.   As  expected, I completed an Honours Degree in English Literature. By 23, my life was still on track. I considered continuing my studies as a graduate student because I still loved everything about academia.  The relaxed but challenging experience of reading Chaucer and Old English in the original vernacular with only one other student in a professor's office was invigorating. This teacher was delighted to find two students interested in his life's work

I loved my life and didn't for see any changes. I had grown up with one sister, ballet lessons and a library filled with great fiction. I enjoyed gardening, painting and drawing, eating a vegetarian diet, reading spiritual literature and growing in my faith ; I was content.
Suddenly, my life as I knew it, changed dramatically.
I met Michael, who was just passing through Regina, Saskatchewan from Ottawa, Ontario to Prince George, British Columbia and from that very first, it felt like the prairie wind had swooped down and scattered all my work and plans. Michael described our first meeting in much kinder terms;   he saw fireworks when he first laid eyes on me.
I was not ready for this dramatic change in my life but it was clear to me that this was my call. So I baffled my fellow students, profs, advisors, friends and family by saying yes to the unexpected. I did not know anything about my newly chosen lifestyle or even where we would live. I did realize that I was completely ignorant and lacked even the most basic skills required to survive.
I became pregnant before our first wedding anniversary. Instantly, I began to panic because I knew, that once again, I was utterly unprepared. I had never even held a newborn! So I prepared in the only way I knew how and I read every book I could find on pregnancy, birth and baby care.
However all this studying did little to equip me to mother a fragile, completely dependent newborn. For example, as I held my baby in a small bathtub for his first bath, I was very nervous. Guess what? I had a book propped open with one elbow awkwardly holding it open to the right page, while my baby was in the baby bathtub on the table. The book was my security blanket. In fact reading at any odd moment I could grab a few seconds , strong cups of tea plus the mercy of God  and a wicked sense of humour have been my strength.
In the ensuing years, 18 spent pregnant and/or nursing babies,  I discovered fulfilment. My call, vocation and witness became the joy of mothering children. Perhaps I could have started  writing seven years ago when everyone was in school full-time but realistically there was simply too much physical work involved in running a household for eleven people and helping with the farm animals and our large vegetable garden.
Now I  have come around full circle because I  have started writing again. Just as I imagined at 16.  It just took 40 years of living a strange life before this avid reader and crazy oral story-teller was ready to start writing.

 

 

 

I had to smile through the whole thing, Melanie. I believe that God had plans for you from even before you met the love of your life. Your story, how you became a wife and then a mother, is so beautiful. I don't think I could tire reading it. :)

Maybe that is the beauty and mystery of life...that we do have a destiny to fulfil and often are not aware of it till it happens...

 

The Happy Conundrum

Credit: pixiedusthealing.blogspot.com

A quirky house, an odd decorating theme and lots of little people all add up to a hilarious lifestyle.

It is a conundrum that few can figure out. People look at my smiling face , their eyebrows shoot up, their mouths drop open and they sputter,

Your happy but you have 9 kids !!

There are all sorts of components to my life, my soul and joyful spirit but one aspect to my happiness is one that most people have never considered. Large families are hilarious. and their homes even more so.

First picture a large, 1886, quaint house with all sorts of quirks. A window became a doorway to a hundred year old addition. It must have been some one with an odd sense of humour who cut a 4 ft 10 inch doorway to the baby room into the low wall with a slanting roof. (In the pitch dark, I banged my forehead against that door frame every night for the first month when I walked into the baby's room at 2:00 am.) Three sets of steps converge on the upstairs landing.

The bathroom, added in 1949 when a local farmer installed electricity, is so tiny that the tub is not even 4 ft. long. The shallow well dries up all the time and we must order a load of water. The toilet water pump is in the barn, surrounded by hay bales but still manages to freeze in the winter. We employ ingenious methods to thaw the pump.

The list goes on but it all adds up either to frustration or comedy and the kids and I choose comic relief.

Oh I forgot. If you plug two appliances in at the same time in the kitchen the power shuts off and I resort to sending a kid running to the cellar (and yes I do mean a cellar with huge oak beams and 2 ft, thick stone walls). There are three freezers stocked with our home raised meat and vegetables are in the cold storage. The kitchen pantry is halfway under the stairs and is a frightening place to wander into.

The decorating theme is early childhood art and it is everywhere. Too many plants add to the sense of colour and an eclectic combination of furniture is very comfortable. Generations of former owner, who were all full-time farmers, believed in 4 inch spikes for building barns as well as hanging pictures.

Into this absurd house, picture 11 people living in 5 bedrooms with bunk beds, 13 dressers and huge trunks because half the bedrooms have old-fashioned hooks on the wall but no closets. I should not have to explain further except to remark that I once lost a grade 1 reading book for 3 months in a trunk with dress-up clothes!! That is all I will say. You can surely picture the chaos as I madly fling socks about in a 3 ft high wicker basket full of unpaired socks, trying to find a pair or two before school.

This is the background to all sorts of mix-ups, and mayhem. I reacted the only way possible.. I laughed. By laughing, that house became a very, very fine house with two cats in the most comfortable chair, a dog that tripped visitors by the door, goldfish on the counter and a guinea gig squeaking for food every time the fridge opened.

Welcome to our house. We love kids, animals and plants. We will even love you but watch out, do not trip over the dog and please, edge around that blanket fort. It took an hour to make yesterday!