Imbolc and a Happy Marriage

 I am a Unitarian Universalist.  My family has been attending a UU church for almost two years; we love it, are highly involved, and our kids love it.  It has added a boat-load of love and community to our family life that I don't know what I would do without.  My journey to this particular church in this particular religion has been a long and meandering one, as is the case with most people's spiritual journey. Briefly, I was raised without a formal religion, with Catholic tendencies on one side, and New Age-y tendencies from my mother, during my teen years I dabbled in Wicca (isn't that one of the required courses to get your "I Was A Teenage Girl In America" degree?).  I distanced myself from that when I started throwing out all the evidence that I was a fool-hardy teen. It was a pretty indiscriminate purging and a lot of babies went out with the bathwater.  I shopped around for a religion I could pass on to my children and after many visits to many churches and temples I decided on Catholicism.  I was baptized into the religion of my father's family when I was 19 years old.  That stuck for a while, but when I did finally have kids, I found I was reluctant to pass on many of the ideas about this religion to my children.  I realized that I would more than likely find myself saying that I don't believe this or that more than I would want to.  The easiest to put my finger on begin my stance on gays and gay marriage (I'm for 'em) and my belief in the right to choose (I'm for it).  But there were deeper spiritual beliefs that are harder to tackle in a few sentences, like my stance on hell and Divine punishment (I don't buy it), and  there being only one true form of God (I don't buy that either).  So I stopped going, worried about the kid's, and fretted about my own need for a spiritual home.  Finally, after a score of 100% Unitarian Universalist on the Belief-o-Matic (a higher score than even our minister!), we decided to check out the church with the full parking lot, who's bell we can hear ring in our kitchen, it's so close.  It was love at first sermon and now we're all hooked.  What is especially nice is that my husband and I, who have slightly different spiritual views, can both find comfort and insight in the same place, and should our children hold dear something that we don't, they too are free to express their beliefs in this church. 

So there you have the background.  Now, I really love ritual.  I love the idea of doing something over and over again, especially something that has been done over and over again since the dawn of the ages.  It makes me all misty and swoony.  To tell the truth, that was one of the things  I loved the most about the Catholic Church, prompting my husband to ask me:  "You know that everything you love about the Catholic Church is Pagan, right?"  "Of course I do! Haven't you seen my degree in Teenage Girl?"  I love ritual, but I wasn't raised with it, so it's sort of tricky for me keep up with, but I'm working on it.  We say a blessing at meal time, and go to church every Sunday, where there are plenty of rituals throughout the year. I would love to start a daily mom-and-kid's prayer time but that's getting into Future Me's territory.  Instead of going crazy, my friend and I have decided to bring into our families' circle all of the Pagan Holidays.  These celebrations of the earth and of faith and renewal are super spectacular, with lots of symbolism, ancestral knowledge, and baking.  I think they are a really tangible way for the kids to relate to the Divine.  They see the earth changing, we talk about faith, there's a little bit of wonderment thrown in there..Viola! You have a sacred ritual.

We decided to start with Imbolc, the first celebration of spring.  At this point in the winter the pregnant ewe's would start to lactate signaling the up-coming birth of baby lambs, spring, and warmth.  Because winter can be long, cold and serious, and because there were no grocery stores way back in the day, it would have been a scary time, filled with hunger and sickness, and even death.  Believing that spring will come, when it isn't readily apparent (East-coaster can appreciate that this winter) is a real act of faith.  Now, of course, we know that spring is coming, it doesn't rely on gifts or offerings to a deity to make it come.  As far as I know there is no actual Goddess-bride waiting for a Sun-God husband to come to her, but it's nice to take advantage of this time to clebrate something ancient and to infuse or modern-day hopes and faith in the things to come with the spring.

My friend and I ordered about a million pagan books from the library and searched over for kids' activities and stories about Imbolc.  We picked and chose the rituals that resonated best with us and ones we thought the girls would like.  We started the day out with a ritual cleansing (cleaning the house).  We baked a gluten-free honey cake, a traditional Imbolc treat.

 While that was baking we took a big stack of strips of red, orange, and yellow, construction paper and wrote, colored and decorated them with our hopes and intentions for the spring.  These have everything from sentences like, "A healthy family," to "getting better at gardening," to a drawing of a baby giraffe (don't ask, somehow I was just being asked to draw baby animals on them for the girl's to color.)

By the time we were done talking about what the holiday means and what we want and hope for the future, the cake was done.  At this point the kids were a bit stir-crazy from being inside most of the day and it being...well..the middle of the winter.  I foolishly tried to get them to calm down so we could make the orange icing for the cake (not traditional, I'd guess).  When they didn't calm down and got more incredibly out of control, I, in my infinite wisdom and sacred-ness threw my arms wide and yelled, "OK, I'M GOING TO START HITTING PEOPLE!" To which my friend responded with her more infinite wisdom and sacred-ness, "Why don't I take you girls in the other room and we can read a story.  When we're done I think everyone will be ready to make the icing."  She didn't give me a dirty look or anything, that's just how wise and sacred-ness she is. 

We made the icing and had some cake, which was great.  After that they played, we made dinner and when the husbands got home we ate.  Now, that story thing definitely made the icing making possible, but it didn't really get the kids into a better head space.  They were still kids in the middle of a stormy New England winter, cooped up and feverish of the Cabin variety.  They were sort of driving everyone crazy.  No matter, carry on with your sacred, bad-self says we!

When Dinner was over, I turned to my husband and asked, "We're going to do the ritual now, will you take pictures?"  He said yes (eventually).  We told the girls that in some parts of the world on this day girls would dress up like the Goddess Brigid in her wedding clothes and go around from house to house, she would be invited in and there would be treats.  We put on some little veils I had made for them and sent them outside.  Once outside, they knocked on the door, we invited them in and read a poem.  Then we offered them a small piece of honey cake, lit the candles and set the cake on our little make-shift alter.  Then we wished, silently, on some seeds, placed them as offering to the Goddess with the cake, and took some photos.

 The plan at this point was to stand in the candle-light in silent contemplation of the things to come.  Remember, the space was sacred, filled to bursting with sacred-ness.  My husband, however, took is directive to take pictures very seriously and hadn't quite gotten the photo he was looking for.

 

 His pleading with the girls to look contemplatively at the candles in their cute little veils got more and more demanding.  "Keep the veil on, JUST keep it on for one more minute. Turn around, HUNTER turn around. Stand still. Stand still so I can take the damn picture. JUST stand still.." This went on for a little bit with me interjecting helpful things like, "Honey, it's not important.  They're done.  don't worry about the picture. You're missing the point."  Which together sounded something like this:

"Just keep the veil they're just kids stand still I'm trying it's not worth Hunter honey turn around you're missing the point here Just. Keep. The. Veil. On. can you listen to me for a minute? Hunter!! Oh just give me that Damn camera!"
This last one was me, of course, said as I wrestled the camera strap from around my husband's neck.  After which he stormed up stairs and I stormed into the kitchen crying and yelling something like, "You ruined Imbolc, this is just like the time we flew that kite!!"  My friend met me in the kitchen giving me compassionate looks over the slices of honey cake while I sobbed.  My husband had almost immediately come back down stairs, he was clearly retaining more of his sense than I was.
"Do you want me to take over the cake so you can go give hugs?" says my friend in gentle offering.
"No," I sobbed, "I want to do this."
It was immediately clear that I was incapable of serving up the cake so I opted the making it up job.  I went to my husband who was sitting on the couch being not-as-mad-looking-as-he-felt and said in my most calm and conciliatory voice, "You know you ruined Imbolc, right?"
Despite this somewhat inflammatory attempt at reconciliation, my beloved husband heard me, and we talked it out.  I think I said something along the lines of (through tears), "We should be having honey cake right now, but it's all ruined...ruined...whaaahahaaahaa..."
"We still can, honey, it's over. I'm sorry."

I retreated upstairs to stop all my blubbering and get back in the mood for the Pagan festival.   When I was ready to come downstairs, where do you think I found my husband?  That's right.  In front of our make-shift alter telling those girls to stay still.  He got his shot.  He got it while I said, jokingly, "I will forever tell the story of the price of this picture!" Haha.  (But seriously, I will).

We had cake, and put our favorite articles of clothing in a basket to be placed outside for the Goddess to bless as she makes her way 'round the earth turning the wheel toward spring.  The girls went to bed and the adults followed shortly. 

I will tell the story of that picture, however.  I will humbly tell the story of two people who, in a moment, lost sight of what they were trying to accomplish and what the other was needing.  This story happens in a marriage all the time.  My husband and I are learning that happiness doesn't come from lack of conflict, but from the way it's resolved.  This particular issue had to be brought up again, when we weren't attempting to have a reflective ritual.  We talked it out with love and understanding.  I had to sift through a little bit of feelings related to my own childhood, where there were many a holiday punctuated with shouting and acts of semi-violence.  The Imbolc stunt we pulled wasn't quite the same thing.  This was a (fairly humerus) argument between two individuals who love each other and want to not fight.  My children, during this brief episode, where seemingly unfazed.  They don't seem to feel frightened when my husband's Sicilian nature collide with my German side.  They don't seem to worry about our union when I forget myself and chuck a spatula across the room.  Don't get me wrong, these are pretty embarrassing losses of control over here.  I'm not saying this behavior is ideal, but I think it might be more "normal' than I had originally thought.  More normal and a lot less traumatizing than I would have thought.  We can't really avoid conflict.  We're both strong people with lots to do and we forget ourselves, and sometimes each other.  We do make sure that we don't hide our resolutions either.  Our kids hear us talk it out; we say "I'm sorry" loud and clear, and we mean it.  A happy marriage looks different than I thought it would.  In my made-up fantasy of a happy marriage I didn't think people would be yelling things like, "You ruined Imbolc."  I guess I didn't think people would be yelling at all.  I guess I didn't think there would be people in this marriage. 

Life is filled with all sorts of lessons like this.  Grown-ups make mistakes.  Parents don't have all the answers.  Your own kids sometimes seem like you they want to kill you.  And marriages are made of people, who make mistakes and sometimes yell, and then say sorry, I love you, I will try to handle that differently next time.  Despite it being a bit different than what I had imagined, I'll take it, with all its complications, yelling, forgetting and spatula-chucking.  Really, for two people who don't have a lot of foundational experience with happy marriages, we're learning as we go and doing alright.  

The Last Of My Carrots

Since we have started our little semi-homesteading adventure carrots have been a bitter-sweet vegetable to serve for any meal.  Mostly because they are super small, I mean really small.  This past year we grew a bunch for ourselves and the years before that we were collecting all the leftover, unwanted, Charlie Brown Christmas Tree-type carrots.  These things are an incredible pain in the butt to wash and cut (peeling will often leave you without a carrot at all, so that's out).  But it's food, and it's food that is grown by us organically, so it's a labor of love, I guess.

This past year we grew some Jaune du Doubs and some Danvers we had ordered from Fedco.  At first we just broadcast the seeds so we could thin them out.  I found that to be really unruly.  It seemed that if you pulled them out too soon it left the others all freaked out, and if you waited too long the leaves got tangled in one another and you pull out more than you intended.  My husband said we should be using scissors like they do in the Square Foot Gardener.  That sort of makes me feel like a lunatic, and however comfortable that feeling is to me, I do try to keep it at a daily minimum of 2-3 hours a day.  So, for the fall run I compromised, I sowed the seeds in neat rows two inches apart and figured, at the very least, when I thinned them by snipping off the tops between my fingernails it would be a little easier to manage.  That was half true, the other half of that truth is that I got distracted and didn't thin them, really.  I also didn't dig them up until the ground accidentally froze around them (pesky, sneaky frost) and I found myself fully dressed in my nicer clothes and new clogs jamming a pointed shovel into the frozen earth pulling up icy chunks of earth with embedded crystallized-looking yellow carrots within. This would have been a great picture, by the way, but I was too busy beating myself up for being a lazy, forgetful wanna-be homesteader with no clue what she was doing to think to ask someone to come over and take a photo.  **Update: I got over it.  It's all part of learing the rhythmn and balancing act.  And the carrots were fine also. 

A friend of mine was admiring the long, thick carrots of another woman, and shared with her my carrot lamentations.  She said that it took her quite a while to get a good carrot and her trick is to glue the seeds with a flour and water mixture one inch apart on a strip of toilet paper and plant that! Genius! I am now really looking forward to trying the carrot adventure again.  This lady is a genius of many many talents, and you can check her out here and here, AND here by the way.

To see what became of those last precious carrots go here.

Parenting: Sometimes I'm Just No Good At This

I don't read a lot of blogs.  A friend once accused me of being something of a technology-phobe, and I blurted out that "I can't read the computer!"  It's true, I have an astigmatism and it's tricky and a little annoying to read on the computer screen.  (Now that I have glasses, so that makes it a little easier.) I also don't have a lot of time to sit and read anything.  Shortly after this surprising observation I and went in search for some blogs I could read (I'll show her who's a techno-phobe!).  I found the whole culture kind of scary and intimidating.  You have to find these "bloggers" in the Internets and then "catch up" with them so you can get to know them a little.  It's quite an investment, you have to start at the beginning so you can get a sense of where the person started from and where they're going.  But I found a few that I started reading regularly.  So regularly, in fact, that I started talking about these people to my husband like they are my close friends.

"You know what Hannah said?  She said that she just uses a  meat grinder to process her zucchini and then she freezes it like that."

"Who's Hannah?"

"She's my friend on the internet."

"Does she know who you are?"

"No."

"Oh."

What I have found in the internet is a community of women who are very similar to me.  They homeschool, garden, can, craft, take pictures, and want to do their best at loving their kids.  They just seem a lot better at that last part than I am.  Admittedly just about all of these mothers have stated somewhere on their blog that they are intentionally leaving out aspects of their lives that they don't want to focus on.  There are raised voices, tears and impatient moments, but these are not the moments to be reveled in and are left by the wayside.

I admire this so much, and gain a lot of focus and gratitude in my days with this philosophy in mind.  Whatever your mind is on is the reality, you know?  Your focus is your life and all that.  However, in most of my days, these less than ideal displays of impatience or frustration  are so dominant that to leave them out would be pretty much like lying. 

I have a hard time with parenting (what seems like to me) most of the time.  I have not-so-proud-moments more frequently than I would like to admit.  I worry a fair amount about messing the kids up or missing my chance to give them the mother I thought I would be giving them.

You see, I've thought about "Jannelle the Mother" for a long time.  Way before I was ever in a position to have kids I imagined the little dears, but more than them I imagined me.  I imagined the things I would do with them, the way I would listen to them, the patience I would have, the hugs I would offer, the appreciation and interest I would take in them. 

I fixated on this future dream mostly to heal the part of me that didn't get the things I felt I needed in my own relationship with my mom.  We had a rough time when I was younger.  We didn't talk for a long time after I left home.  In the end, things were so bad that I had forgotten a lot of the good things, pushed them out of my mind like they were the painful memories.  The good times were so jarring and incongruous that I couldn't have them co-exist with the hurtful memories of my childhood.  I needed a clear definition--either it was good, or it was bad.  It couldn't be both.  So I chose all bad.  I got angry, I got sad, I got older, and then I got pregnant.  When I was pregnant the tiny, careful relationship that had been forming with my mom sort of exploded.  She seriously called me almost every day.  All of a sudden she was so there, and I found myself withdrawing.  It was freaking me out!  So with long letters, some miss-communication and a few phone calls, I explained that I was still carrying around some hurts and that it would take me some time to warm to this new way.  All of this resulted in me remembering that it wasn't all bad, that my young mother absolutely did the best that she knew how.  It left me with a new choice.  And I chose the future instead of the past.  She is a great grandmother and our sometimes cautious relationship becomes less so with every passing visit and conversation. 

 I figured with all this healing and fixating and planning that my heart's desire to be a patient, elastic mother would just, you know, happen.  Doesn't that make nice neat sense?  And it was true when I had one kid.  Hunter wasn't born until Athena was 22 months old, and for those 22 months I was the best mother in the world. Well, it sure felt easy anyway.  I had wells--no giant aquifers of patience.  I could listen to a scream forever and not respond, making sure that the screaming fits never lasted for long.  I could hold out on a tantrum longer than you would believe, so those tricks weren't tried very much either.  After I had Hunter my patience started to stretch to uncomfortable lengths.  I remember lamenting the loss of my patience to my mom friends.  I was assured it would return once I got the hang of things.  Well it's been almost three years now, is that going to happen?  To be fair, I have gotten better at it. Much of my patience has returned.  I even manage to find time with each of my kids alone which helps tremendously in actually seeing them and their person hood.  Even when they're together I can hold it together for a good long while.  I hear them screaming at each other--I've read the books, I know not to get involved--and I'm good, I know it's important for them to work it out themselves.  I focus on whatever task I'm doing while I monitor from afar what's happening in the bedroom next door.

"I WANT TO KNOCK IT DOWN!!"

"no.  No.  NO! I'm not done yet.  stop. STOP!!"

"But it's taking so looong..."

"AAAAAYYYYYYYYYYIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!!! DON'T! GET AWAY! SIT DOWN!"

(scuffling, blocks begin thrown,  the "FWUMP" of someone hitting the bed)

"High pitched screaming" (I'm not sure how to spell it)

"DON'T. KNOCK. IT. DOWN. YET!!!"

At this point I have a slight nervous twitch forming in my right eye and my upper bicep has gone spastic.  I'm gritting my teeth and telling myself things like, "If I hear that scream one more time I'm going to go completely insane and have to be institutionalized."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEE"

And now I'm charging into their room, heading straight toward the tower-in-process.  My mind has somehow laid the blame of this argument on the fact that this tower exists. Without thinking clearly (obviously) in any way at all I pull my leg back and land a kick right into the middle of the thing.

Before my foot makes contact, I know I am wrong, and can't stop myself. 

Before you use your energy to judge me, know that I probably have it covered for both of us. Just take this time to feel good about how you handled this. 

On days like this I have to console myself by pointing out that no one was physically hurt.  Which wasn't always the case in my childhood or the childhoods of my parents. I have to make pleading prayers that sound something like, "Please make them able to see my effort."

Because, really, my effort is so tremendous.  I am trying my very hardest to do something that I don't know how to do.  I'm trying to be a parent that I didn't see in action.  I am attempting to have a family that I have no model for.  And when I'm pushed to the edge of my person by repeated accidental kicks to the stomach, relentless bickering and screeching, or nagging, or whining, or pinching, I snap out of the carefully crafted person I have created and into the well-defined grooves of my core patterns.

I'm not trying to give excuses for childish or impatient behavior.  Really, I'm not.  Neither am I being overly hard on myself.  It's just that the older I get and the more I wittiness this sort of personal primitive behavior, the more I realize that my intentions are not stronger than my defenses. This news is a total bummer.  It's a bummer because it means it will more than likely take (more) time to remedy.  My imperfect person-hood will never be remedied, but I'm sure I will be able to learn how to not take my internal frustration out on my kids.  But I won't be able to do it right this instant! And this is the time that really counts!

I knew I would learn from the mistakes of my childhood and that I would find new and exciting mistakes to make.  (I am very creative, you know).  But I didn't realize I would unwittingly take up some of the same patterns of my childhood, however faded they may be at this point.  And they are faded.  They were already beginning to fade when my mother took them up in her parenting with me.  If any one out there is a child in a long line of what is now called child abuse, but used to just be discipline, maybe you have seen these tendencies lessen and fade over the generations.  Maybe you have been lucky enough to see the Herculean effort in your mother not to make the mistakes of her mother.  Maybe you've even heard her tell stories of how her mother attempted not to make the mistakes of what would have been your great-grandmother.  If you haven't been one in this line, let me just tell you, it's harder than you think not to repeat these mistakes. 

 

On really hard days, when I've screamed myself horse, carried children upside-down to their rooms for time-outs, or smacked my little one on the hand for pinching me for the 1,000th time, when I have completely lost myself in impatience and anger, I...well, I cry.  But then, maybe the next day when I figure I'll try again because motherhood is one job that you really can't quit, I remember that no one in the house is terrified.  No one is questioning whether or not I love them.  No one is getting bruised or bloody.  I imagine the tendency to loose control of my anger with the kids like poison in a glass.  With each generation's effort of love toward their children and forgiveness of the past the poison is diluted.  I had thought that I could just take up a new cup, but that now seems highly unlikely.  My mother before me, my grandmother before her, and now I am doing my very best to pour so much love and understanding into my relationship with my children that the cup will overflow and wash the poison out forever. 

(Almost) Blueberries

 I have been stalking the woods behind Target for about a month now.  By stalking I don't mean walking through them and  discovering the land; I mean watching, spying, creeping up on, etc.  I noticed last fall that the pine forest behind our local Target has an understory of blueberry bushes.  Like, the whole forest floor is blueberry bushes.  So I have been mostly patiently waiting to see if they would fruit, (they did!) and now I am waiting for them to ripen.  I have missed quite a few seasons of wild edibles since I started learning.  Many plants have a really short season, so it doesn't take much to just miss it completely.  During the winter, when you're curled up with a field guide, cross referencing that with your recipe books on wild edibles (anyone?), you start to get exited about this new thing you will try in about nine months.  You see your plant emerge in the spring, maybe flower, or start to get berries, and then someone gets sick, or you go away for a long weekend, and--poof--just like that it's over and you have to wait an entire year to try out cattail pickles. 

I will not be making this mistake with the blueberries, believe you me.  So, I have been stalking them like a jealous lover.  No, wait. Let me think of something less creepy...I have been watching them like a careful mother.  That's better.  I have been tenderly keeping an eye on them, watching their buds turn to flowers, the flowers turn to round, green fruit, watching the green fade away to a deep blue, and the blue turn dusty and delicious.  When I was there yesterday I climbed up the embankment and, huzzah!, they were ready.  I emailed my blueberry picking posse (that's right, I have a blueberry picking posse) and told them to meet me at the Target at 7am if they're ready.  It's just as well no one was, because when the little one and I got there with two buckets, some water, peanut butter sandwiches and a wagon, it turns out that only about twenty or so berries were actually ready.  And we ate them. 

It is a little early for blueberries.

Because I hadn't actually gone into the the woods yet, I could only see the berries on the edge that get a little more sun. They obviously ripen faster, and the bushes under the cover of the trees are behind about a week or so.  That's cool, I don't mind waking up at 6am on a Sunday morning. 

It wasn't a total loss, though.  We got to explore the woods, finally.  The land used to be a farm, so there is an old cart path down the middle of the area.  It ends abruptly at a fenced in water run-off for the Target.  Probably, when they built the building they had to provide for all the water that would no longer be able to seep into the ground because their parking lot was on top of it now.  There seems to be a way to go around it and presumably the path starts up again.

I couldn't explore that this time with the little one in tow. The area we were in was about 400 feet by 200 feet, but the other side of the run-off pool is much bigger.  It's really cool to be in woods that aren't a state forest, conservation land or a park.  It is someone's property and will most likely be a Panera Bread some day, but for now it's just "the woods" and that feels pretty old-timey. 

 Can you see the Target Red?  

I wish I could tell you that my little one was in glory for being in the woods, surrounded by blueberry bushes, the warm morning sun filtering through the trees.  I mean, I guess I could tell you that anyway, but it would be a lie.  The whole time she was saying things like, "I tired of walking, Mama."  Or, "We go home now?"  And even, "I tired of standing and sitting and walking, Mama." To which I replied that those are the only things she'll ever do excepting lying down, so she'd better get over it now.

 Can you see her?  She's that tiny orange speck with the mane of curly hair in the sea of blueberry bushes.  Doesn't she look like such a little nature child?  Well what you can't hear her saying is, "CAN WE GO HOME NOW, MAMA?!"

She did stop occasionally to eat a blueberry or watch an ant, but on the whole she was pretty cranky.  I think next time I will just bring the big girl and see how that goes.  We eventually made our way back to the wagon and headed out into the parking lot again. 

Looking at the parking lot and shopping center through the woods while I try to get food to eat kind of makes me feel like a little animal who's environment has been encroached upon.  I think about the fact that this property (which is for sale) will someday realize the financial dreams of its owner and become something worth while.  The blueberries, wintergreen, sassafras, and whatever animals live there, will be churned under or driven out.  After that, when it becomes something "useful" people will notice it, and forget what was there before.  Maybe it will take long enough to sell that chunk of land in this economy for my kids to have memories of trespassing on private land to gather the blueberries for their summer and, hopefully, winter enjoyment.  Maybe my kids can have the more and more forgotten experience of saying, "I remember before that was a Lowes, my mother used to take us blueberry picking there."

Zucchinni Pickles and a Lesson in Reading the Directions.

 I just erased a nice chipper paragraph I wrote before I typed in the directions.  The paragraph wondered what the pickles would taste like, and told you how sweet they were. It may have even said something about how pretty they look in the jar, or pointed out the cool vintage labels my aunt found for me.  I erased it because after typing in the directions, I realized I didn't follow them properly and will more than likely have to make them over again.  Bummer.  What I didn't do was get the air bubbles out, which, now that they have risen out, means that there isn't enough liquid to cover the pickles.  I also didn't leave the jars in the hot water for 5 minutes after I took the lid off the canner.  I threw some of the jars in the fridge, If we're lucky we'll be able to eat a few of them before they go bad.  I'm not really even sure what would happen.  I don't think you can get botulism form pickled things, please correct me if I'm wrong about this.  Either way, I'll be too wigged-out come December to actually eat them. They'll get opened and poked at, set on the door of the fridge like we're going to eat them, when people come over we'll say, "Oh yes, those are our zucchini pickles." And eventually, they'll find their way into the compost.  So, I figure they are fine now if they are refrigerated, and we'll just find it in our hearts to eat 10 pints of zucchini pickles before they "go bad" (whatever that means).  So take my lesson and really read through the directions thoroughly before you start.  In fact take another lesson and don't start a a 4-hour canning adventure at 8:30 at night.  Go to sleep if you're too tired to read the directions. 

I got this recipe from Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving.

Zany Zucchini Pickles
14 cups diagonally sliced zucchini
1/2 cup pickling or canning salt
cool water
6 cups white vinegar
4 cups granulated sugar
4 tsp mustard seeds
2 tsp celery seeds
2 tsp ground turmeric

1.  In a glass or stainless steel bowl layer zucchini slices with pickling salt. Cover with cool water and let stand for 2 hours.  Transfer to a colander in a sink and let drain.  Rinse with cool running water and drain thoroughly.

2. In a large stainless steel saucepan, combine vinegar, sugar, and spices.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve sugar.  Reduce heat and boil gently for 5 minutes, until spices have infused the liquid.  Stir in zucchini. Remove from heat, cover and let stand for 1 hour.

3. Meanwhile get your jars and canner ready.

4.  Return saucepan to medium-high heat and bring zucchini mixture to a boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat and boil gently for 5 minutes, until zucchini is heated through.

5. Pack zucchini into hot jars to within a generous 1/2 inch of top of jar.  Ladle hot liquid into jar to cover vegetables, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace, if necessary by adding hot pickling liquid.  Wipe rim.  Center lid on jar. Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip tight.

6. Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water. Bring to a boil and process for 10 minutes. Remove canner lid.  Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store. 

*Also I have added another tag: "Mistakes." We harvest as many of those around here as anything else.  Better me than you!