We Love It, Don't We?

It's 7am. Do You Know Where Your Horses Are?

2010-01-04T09:22:00.006-05:00

The phone was ringing all morning with the school's recorded message of "We are on a 2 hour delay" due to the snow and frigid temperatures, so when I did my nekkid dash from the shower to the kitchen to answer it once more, I figured it was just a repeat.

But it was my neighbor across the street telling me she was pretty sure my horses were in her back yard.

All I could think was How in the hecks did they get across the 45 mph state route so full of tractor trailers there are signs posted about their obnoxious jake braking.

Truly, the stretch of road in front of our property is dicey on a clear and sunny day, let alone in the dark and snow.

Then I thought, No way. Mark left the gate unlocked? He neeeever leaves the gate unlocked and Sam (and to a lesser degree, yours truly) is the usual culprit and there is a big stink about it. Understandably a big stink when you're talking about animals getting smashed on the road or causing dangerous traffic accidents.
So all that's going through my mind as I wake the sleeping grizzly in my bed and try to find clothes to throw on and a hat to cover my wet head. Ah, the 15 degree weather is refreshing right out of the shower!

Run to the barn for halters and head across the street for my little runaways.

I think they were very, very glad to see us and came right to us. They must've had quite a scary adventure and seemed lost. Mommy, you found us!

When we put them back in the pasture we found that the gate had not been left open. Phew!
But somehow Admiral had either run through the gate or slid into the gate, because the gate hook was torn from the post and the gate was dented with horse hair stuck in it. I couldn't find a scratch on either horse and they seemed none the worse for wear thankfully. It's kind of a mystery what happened though. Weird.

I'm very glad it was a happy ending. Horses alive and well. No ten car pile up in front of the house. None of the cows had the ambition to sneak out. Sam was not in terrible trouble, though he was unpleasantly roused from his 2 hour delay sleeping in after a late night skiing with The Older Boys. (Kind of a milestone event overshadowed by the escape; Sam took a trip sans parents to the mountains to ski with fellows in their 15's and one almost 20 year old. Pretty rad for a guy not quite 13 I thought.)
How's your Monday so far?

No Man's Land

2009-12-30T10:31:00.003-05:00

Mah Boys are supposed to be returning from their mountain camping trip today. Thank goodness. I have been single parenting since Sunday morning and I don't really like it. Because it's hard.

I knew that already. It's one of those things I see other folks doing and I wonder how in the hecks they do it. Something I had a small taste of in the past and hope I never have to do again.

So anywho there's that and the added chores I have to do. In the dark. In the cold. After being at work all day.

And of course, as soon as the guys left town it did this:

That's 6 inches or so of snow. And it was 18 degrees yesterday morning and 12 degrees this morning.

When Mark asked me yesterday if it was OK for them to stay one more day because Sam was having such a fun time, it took all my power to not play my Girl Card and whine for them to come home as originally planned. In spite of my unenthusiasm, I really was happy they were having a good time, so I grinned and bore it.

My routine has been:

6am Wake up and lie in bed for half an hour pep talking myself into going outside.

6:30am Out of bed, put on the same stinky jeans I've been using for chores since Sunday and go directly outside to feed the furnace. So it's dark, snow is getting in my shoes and gloves, I'm hunting for logs I can actually heft, hot coals threatening to fall out on me. It's super dramatic.

6:45am Run to the shower because I hate the smell of wood smoke all over me.

7:30am Start the process of nagging the girls to get up so I can take them to Mawsi's house. Thank goodness for Mawsi...

Then time starts to blur. We're looking for shoes, we're forgetting things, arguing about who sits where in the car, complaining about how cold it is, etc. And then somehow I end up at work.

4pm Mawsi drops the girls off at the office so they can come home with me. They climb the walls in boredom for the next hour.

5pm rolls around and we head home.

Back into my stinky jeans, Mark's muck boots because I can't find mine (I think they took them to the mountains by mistake?,) and coat hood tied tight around my head because it's booger-freezing weather out there. It's a very sexy look, also.

To the barn, feed the cats.

To the van, which is parked a city block away and uphill both ways, where the steer feed is temporarily stored. Two full 5 gallon buckets of feed carried down to the troughs with a bit to spare for the chickens.

Back to the barn for the horse feed. Haul it down to the other gate where they are nickering impatiently and Nikki is wringing her neck at my slowness.

At this point the yard looks like a Family Circus cartoon of Billy's dash-dash-dash through the neighborhood, my footprints in the snow telling the tale of of where I've been.

It's damn cold and dark by the time I close the barn up again and head to the furnace for its second feeding of the day. Temperatures in the teens means I'm not about to skimp on feeding the furnace. By that time, I'm over the coldness because I'm coming in the home stretch. Sort of.

From then on it's all about the coon dog 'til she goes to bed at 9pm. I take her out, beg her to pee, she won't. We come back in, she paces in front of the door, I take her out, beg her to pee, she won't. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I'd leave her tied out for a while but it's just so dang cold I can't do it. Why won't she pee?! 9 o'clock can't come too soon after 3 plus hours of dog potty training paranoia. So far we've had no accidents, but I'm pretty sure the dog thinks I'm a loon putting her out every 15 frickin minutes.

And it makes preparing dinner a little hectic. Including Jill's dinner which requires me to mix her fish oil supplement with peanut butter to pour over her food. The dog gravy Mark bought her just wasn't quite cutting it. Ya.

Speaking of dinner, I've nearly accomplished my goal of personally consuming all the turning fruits & vegetables in the refrigerator. Two nights of squash & jalapeno stir fry. Just as good reheated the second day?

I did try to talk the girls into going to the little restaurant up the road last night, but Lily wasn't having it. She'd rather make me scrape together a sad dinner of tater tots and venison burger for her to complain about and refuse to eat.

But there's light at the end of the tunnel I think. Jill peed without me begging this morning. Lily did eventually fall asleep after coming downstairs at 10 o'clock to tell me about all the nightmares she was having. Thanks for that, Lily, because you halfway had me creeped out. Sheesh.

And the boys might be home in time today to relieve me of my stinky jeans duties. That wouldn't hurt my feelings one bit.

There's A Stranger In My House

2009-12-28T15:41:00.002-05:00

Several things have come to light in the last 3 months or so that have fairly rocked my world. They all have to do with my husband not being the man I thought he was.

First, there was a lovely lunch Mark and I shared at a hidden gem of a restaurant. Yummy soup and a big basket of homemade potato chips between us, we sat nestled in a pretty little wooden booth. I was quietly, sneakily I thought, picking all the folded potato chips out of the basket because they are my favorite (because they are superior to flat potato chips) and leaving Mark the flat ones. It was an intimate atmosphere and I decided to share my innermost secret love of the folded potato chips and how I was picking them all out of the basket. Self-sabotaging, I know, but I was all lovey-dovey and sharing. Plus I was expecting to hear that he prefers the flat crisps, which would just reaffirm what a perfect couple we make because we each eat what the other doesn't prefer.
Anyhow, what I learned was that he too believed that he was sneaking out all the good folded chips and leaving me the flat chip dross. How rude! Talk about a bombshell.

Then, there was Thanksgiving over at my Dad's house. The house used to belong to my Dad's Dad who recorded our measurements on the wooden trim of the doorway betwixt the kitchen and dining room. There you will find measurements not only of all the grand kids, but parents, cousins, step-relatives, neighbors and dogs.
After some good food and cocktails we decided to update some measurements. We learned that Sam is now taller than me, but I was happy to discover that I was not lying when I've completed questionnaires with my height as 5'6", 'cause I'm 5'6 1/4"! Woo!
The disturbing thing I learned is that my supposedly 6 foot tall husband of more than 7 years/been knowin' for like 10 years, has really been 5'11" this whole time! We've been living a lie, and I told him as much.

Next there was our hardcore IKEA shopping adventure. I had 3-D sketches, lists, and measurements. I dragged him all over the store, while I touched, tried, and inspected all sorts of things. I was still puzzling through how the whole thing would work, if the whole thing would work, so I was questioning the salespeople, questioning myself, and questioning Mark, who just. wanted. to be. done. with the whole thing. But Mark was patient and did his best to pay attention to things that mattered not to him.
As we sat in the warehouse waiting for our things to be brought out, I posed some sort of question or scenario to him, to which he immediately nodded enthusiastically. Too soon he nodded enthusiastically, because in the very same breath I totally changed my mind and said, no no no, that won't work, and I caught his head full of glazed-over eyes mechanically start shaking no, no, no. I said You're totally not listening to a word I say, are you? And he was caught. I think he even surprised himself a little at how instinctual the nodding and headshaking agreement was. So what I thought was this great team effort was nothing more than some sort of evolutionary husband self preservation mechanism. I'll give him a pass on that one, because I'm actually a little impressed.

However, most recently, I learned something so sad, so shocking, that I'm not sure what to do with the information. We were chit-chatting ourselves to sleep one night, all cozy and content in our bed, when somehow we came upon the subject of smells. Smells we prefer, smells we hate, you know. It's a conversation we've had countless times before for whatever reason. Naturally I say that one of my favorite smells my whole life through has been the smell of a horse. Everybody can appreciate horse smell. It is unmistakeable, the fresh grassy, horsey smell. It is aromatherapy for me to go sniff the horses, and I do not have a problem with smelling like one myself after a nice long ride. I mean, not to go out to dinner or anything, but still, I like it.
But Mark, after growing up around horses his whole life, humoring me with my horses, tells me that on a scale of 1 to 10, with pigs be a mega-stinky 10, and baby, I can vouch for that, he would places horses at least as an 8. What? And he said that when he tells me that I smell like a horse, no matter how gently he says it, it is most certainly not a compliment and he thinks I stink. It's a sad state of affairs indeed.

I'm trying to look on the bright side though. I figure things shouldn't get dull when we have so many enthralling unknowns to discover about one another. And he's already told me about the biggest tree he's ever known, so what more could there be to tell?

I IKEAed the hell out of that room.

2009-12-27T22:22:00.008-05:00

Whoop whoop. Merry Christmas and all that jazz.

Go 'head and laugh. Isn't this just so tender vittles? The family business. Awwwww. (Not sure why I look scared-ish. Look at all those fiveheads!)Oh, but hey, we went to see Avatar opening day. Loved it! The effects, that is. Fun time with the fam.
But before that, I decided it would be a good idea to rip my entire house apart right before the holidays. I thought Let's paint. Let's tear up carpet. Let's put a new kitchen counter top in and swap bedrooms around. We can pile garbage and debris 4 feet high on the porch in front of the door. Let us grossly underestimate the amount of time everything will take and make our house barely liveable for a few days. Yes, now is a good time to do these things.

I'm kind of exagerating (who me,) but not much. And as always, I don't have true before and after shots to illustrate the makeover-ness of it all. So picture the entire room that sickly flesh color shown inside the closets. The closets we left unpainted because we were at the end of our painting rope.

Also picture the most dastardly, wickedly ugly striped! (in shades of crap) carpet and you're halfway to imagining the Before. This was my bedroom (well, Mark's, too,) but now it's Sam's. He selected the wall color. It's very soothing.

This is the girls room pre-carpet. Aggie picked out the wall colors. I was a little scared about the colors, but I like them ok now. This room had pinky pink walls and a turquoise piece of carpet which didn't fit the room. It was super nice of the previous owner to leave it behind for us. I just covered that square hole they cut in the carpet with an equally ugly area rug. Way pretty! The girls even helped paint a little, which is a test of patience after spending all day prepping the room, let me tell you.

Not sure if you can read this: but Mark, ever the role model, painted "Aggie Stinks" on our newspaper window blinds.

"So-in-so Stinks" is like our own family grafitti. I don't get involved too often, but it's not uncommon to find this sentiment scrawled on homework, the newspaper, or a scrap of paper towel left for the allegedly stinky person to find. But Aggie fixed it to say "Dad(ie) Stinks." And there it will stay until JCPenney's sweat shop (kidding!) sees fit to ship my Roman blinds.

So this is basically an after shot. I didn't stage this so well, what with the busted handles on the shabby dresser (I'm gettin' to it!) and the not quite made bed.

Sam's room didn't photograph so well either. Plus I didn't include his sweet TV/PS3/Wii setup hidden in the closet. He has revealed his inner neatnik also. He had this room whipped into shape in no time. The bed is YoYo approved as you can see. (Pile of laundry wasn't supposed to be in the photo.)

And this represents 10 lbs of $#!t in a 5lb bag.In moving our bedroom down to Sam's former room we lost about half the area and nearly all closet space. We also increased the size of our bed thereby taking up even more room.

Why do it then? Well, because this room sits right on the porch giving easy access by window to the bedroom. Usually all the kids camped out in this room. I should probably be embarassed to admit that I've let the girls sleep on the floor in Sam's room for years, but it's been going on for so long that I've grown numb to it. Eh, so sue me, right? Point being that I was way upstairs at night and all my chilluns was down in that room where someone could break right in an' snatch them.

So I've been puzzling these many years how we could create storage and a livable space in an approximately 9 foot by 9 foot room.

Enter IKEA, land of "affordable" (cheap? flimsy? nah!) furniture. We've never really invested in any good furniture to date figuring on heavy use and abuse with 3 children and a somewhat occasionally careless (no offense Darling!) man in the house.

So for our purposes IKEA works wonders. It's functional (if you're selective,) versatile, and you aren't totally heartbroken if it breaks because it didn't cost a fortune. My only beef with IKEA is that they (purposely, I swear) don't tell you everything you'll need for some projects just to force you back into that store where ohmygoshhowcuteisthatthingIdidn'tseetheotherdaywhenIwasjusthere jumps up at you and you buy something else.

Not to mention it's a good half hour away. Totally incovenient when you've unloaded a van load of boxes of unassembled furniture, had a remodelling-fueled meltdown with your husband and then sat in a teary heap on the floor after opening the very first box to find that they gave you the wrong damn colored cabinet.

But anyway, the final result is swell. I love having a small but efficient bedroom. It forced us to get rid of even more excess stuff, something I've been working on for the past year or so. Mark also bought a big honkin' tv to put on the wall. Probably horrible fung shui but awesome for watching movies in bed.

Also made a decision on the kitchen countertop. It's white with teensy black stippling (word?) dots? that give it a grey appearance. It looks like the silestone sample I was coveting but it is good old formica. I did splurge on the integrated sink though. Love it! Loved it even more when they finally delivered the damn backsplashes on Christmas Eve. Retrofitted to preserve our crazy tile backsplash. Very important.

Not the Taj Mahal, but pretty good for a formerly almost condemned 100 plus year old house!

So all this stuff meant we kept putting off getting a Christmas tree. There simply wasn't any place to put it because the living room was our stuff receptacle. We kept saying Tomorrow we'll get the tree, tomorrow but then tomorrow was Christmas and we had no more time. So thankfully we had Lily's beautiful fiber optic tree from the dollar store. Perfecto!

See that Santa's hat up there? On it is a peel of the clementine Lily left for Santa. No milk and cookies this year. Her only regret was that she forgot to leave something for the reindeer. I told her I'm sure they had plenty from all the other houses, no worries.
I think it was still a good Christmas.I even surprised Sam with his gifts. Mah Boy needs a hair cut!Mawsi is thrilled with our Christmas gift to them.Christmas breakfast brimming with pork and biscuits.

That's Fluffy Fluff Fluffbug sleeping in the crook of Lily's arm. Cat is weird!

Laughing at Lily's mechanical cockroach toy.

And now here I sit as the satellite guy installs a cable for our new tv (lot's of tv's in this post huh.) Mark, Sam, & Pops are in the mountains for the Men's Christmas Trip. Aggie's at a friend's, Lily's at her grandma's and I'm here babysitting a coondog.

Miss Jill is learning to be a house dog but she needs attended to like a toddler. It's very tiresome because I'm so out of practice! Crate training, potty training, don't leave me when I'm eating, I'm bored, Can I play with the cat?, can I eat the cat?, pet me, where's Mark?, where's the other dog?(camping with Mark,) wipe my feet when I come in from outside, whoops I peed on the porch....

I want to sit in the rocking chair, crap, I'm stuck in the rocking chair, help me off the rocking chair...Thank goodness for stuffable kong thingies. I swear to you, she just sat down beside me and farted 3 times. Fartingest dog I ever met. Husband, you owe me!!! And it snowed last night. Don't you hate when you have to go scrape your windshield and brush all the snow off your cow?

This is the view from my new bedroom. And we love it, don't we, yes, we do!

Better Than A Bratz Doll

2009-12-08T09:38:00.000-05:00

'Tis The Season

2009-11-30T12:22:00.003-05:00

Not that Season. Deer Season!

Time to locate that one special, strategically placed tree. The one with the most prehistorically giant poison ivy vine growing up it. It's itchy branches reaching out like an umbrella of poison berries over your head. Time to enjoy the irony of your little plastic safety glasses as you climb the tree with no safety harness. (The thing Mark's sitting in is the thing with which he is climbing btw. It is in two parts and he inches each one up and settles his weight onto it hoping it holds. Sorry if that is elementary to anyone reading.)

Time for me to lose my hunting license at 6am on the first day of hunting season so I can't carry a rifle into the woods. I can however don my gayest orange apparel, go out in the pouring rain, climb a jumbo steep hill, shimmy under the electric fence in the mud, and sit in the cold, cold rain with Mah Boy for his first ever first day of deer season.

And it was great! And way luckier than usual on a boy's (or girl's) first hunt ever. It was a very good shot though.

So I'm proud and happy. And Sam was, too, I think. And he immediately went into the house and cooked up some pumpkin chocolate chip muffins & hot tea.

Muffins.

And Hot Tea.

Deer Hunting, Muffins, and Hot Tea.

So there you have it, Sports Fans. I guess that's how we do it here in Hickory.

The Circus Is Coming To My Hometown!

2009-11-19T09:35:00.002-05:00

First I'm going to admit that I did a google search for "animals that look like Sarah Palin."

Yep, I'm one of those people. But come on, that would've been funny a little. Plus I really like to enter weird searches into Google because I like to think about who might get to see what I searched for and hopefully they get a kick out of it. I'm thoughtful like that.

So, oh, and the only thing I found was a puppy dressed up like Sarah and it wasn't that funny. But I'll tell you what is funny, or at least interesting: TotallyLooksLike.com
Also not the reason for this post....

We're a stop on the Sarah Palin book tour! We are. Here in relative nowhere. At our Sam's Club.

Who decides these venues?

So what do you think? Should we go? I have a morbid curiousity, but is it enough to motivate me to head in to that kind of ...of...well, you know what I'm saying.
My hometown has a Stephen King vibe to it without the freak show coming to town, so the possibilities are endless.

But if I do go, and you catch me going rogue, please whap me with a rolled up newspaper and rub my nose it.

Does Your Face Hurt? 'Cause It's Killing Me.

2009-11-11T11:14:00.002-05:00

No one has ever accused me of having flawless skin.
My relationship with pimples started in the fourth grade when my Mom tried to thwart the eruptions on my forehead by pinning my hair up tight with a barrette..... thereby showcasing all my pimples.

I remember so many battles waged against those wretched pustules. Over the counter stuff, prescription stuff, homemade stuff. Recommendations to put my own pee on my face. Picking, popping, and then panicking: Why the hell did I just butcher myself like that?!

It was either my 6th or 7th grade school picture and I was already having a bad hair day.( Ya, who wasn't having a bad hair day during the big AquaNet boom.) Add to that the dime-sized crater on my chin that refused to heal before picture day and you have a quintessential puberty moment. And captured on film with a baby blue and paint-splattered background! Not even my popped up collar could distract you from all that ugly goin' on. Thanks hormones!

So I eventually upgraded from the Noxzema's and the OxyClean's or whatever it is you can buy in the drugstores to lovely salon skin care products. I even managed to get a few facials like a real girl! Very nice. Who doesn't enjoy a well done facial?
I got all kinds of education on what not to do, what was causing the problems (maybe,) and so on.
But there was no big Before and After like you see on the infomercials. Just the skin in between the acne was in better condition.

And I'm not going to tell you that I ever found the answer. I found the products that I love to use. Found the routine that seems to cause the least troubles. And I just keep telling myself that this oily skin that's causing me zits now will keep me from getting wrinkles as quickly later.

But what I wanted to tell you about was my discovery of foundation primer! By Jove, it actually does something!

When I wash my face it has always shined like a new penny. Not in a youthful, dewy kind of way, but in a plastic-y, not so attractive way. Plus there's the uneven skin tones and that big hairy wart on the side of my nose. Kidding! But the primer really helps with that shininess and the unevenness.

Also, I don't like much makeup. I'm not skilled at it, have some vague goal in my head of the natural French standard of beauty (which I may have created in my own imagination,) plus I can't even get away with a little loose powder without Mark asking me why I have on so much makeup. He doesn't like it either. He insists on telling me I'm beautiful when I'm at my most undone. Darn that man!

But when I decided to give the primer a try I was super stoked to find that it really minimizes the shine without looking too matte. Plus my skin, which is very stuck up about moisturizers--it will only let me get away with a super light, spray on toner-type moisturizer--seems to enjoy it, too. It stays less shiny but more moist and fluffy without feeling congested.

And that's what I'm all about: not pissing off my face.

Oh, and it was not an expensive primer either. Bought it at Target, the brand that Kate Moss receives gobs of money to endorse. I was a little freaked out by its orangey color, but it goes on invisible.

So there you have it, Peeps. Beauty advise from the Pig Whispering Rat Smasher.
You're welcome!

I Killed A Rat With A Shovel And Other Weekend Doings

2009-11-09T11:08:00.004-05:00

But first let me start with the post about the weekend before this one.

So Romantical

We handed temporary custody of our kids over to Mark’s grandparents last Tuesday night. That was in order for us to leave at around 4:30 Wednesday morning for my day and a half of out of town business doings. Mark came along for the ride, partly because he’s semi-free after the seasonal closing of the market, partly because we had a babysitter and a really nice hotel room at corporate rates. Don’t get excited though, my time was spent either in one intense class or meeting or other, or sleeping because the mental stress was exhausting. Stupid brain. Where’s the off button on that thing? Mark lounged about on the big plushy bed and ate chicken wings from room service.
Class ended at around noon on Thursday and I was giddy with freedom. Giddy, I tell you. I’d asked for Friday off, so I was going to live the good life for the next 3 ½ days.
Lunch with my husband at a restaurant we’d never been to, on a weekday: Now that’s livin’ the good life.
Taking the long way home and coming across a family owned apple cider press where we stopped to chat with the owners, bought homemade cider and apple butter, and got some really great ideas & connections for the farm market: Score. Check out this little dude.He's the grandson of the owners. There were 3 generations there working. He was adorable.
Friday, Saturday, still no kids at home. We called at least once a day to see if they want to come home or if the grandparents are weary. We just aren’t quite sure how to feel with them out of the house.
So what were we going to do with ourselves? We could go any number of beautiful places. Just get in the car and drive. Stay wherever we wanted. Mountain resorts. Bed and Breakfasteses. We had packed extra stuff just to be prepared. Wanted to make the most of the opportunity.
Thursday night and what do we decide to do? Well, on a fair and clear moonlit night such as it was, of course we went raccoon hunting. And we parked in the wrong spot and Mark fell down umpteen times. Blamed it on “barbed wire,” our quote of the night. We freaked ourselves out listening to weird noises from the woods: owls, coyotes, gas well equipment. And we talked and laughed and seriously, you are missing out if you don’t take walks in the woods at night when the moon is full.
Friday, what joyous slackitude. Putzing around, cleaning house together, and the obligatory horseback ride to pacify me. Then, that night, the highlight of the whole long weekend, more raccoon hunting. But it wasn’t the hunting that was all that incredible, it was how overwhelmingly beautiful it was. I’ll never be able to describe it and no picture could capture it, but I will tell you that the moon was huge and nearly full. We parked along the empty country road that leads from our house to Mas’ & Pops’ house, stepped over the guardrail and into a strange land.
We crossed the grass-covered breastworks of a flood control damn in that singular bright blue light of the moon. Everything was illuminated in the otherworldly glow; I imagined a sister planet to our own where this was their daylight.
It had been very warm during the day and remnants of the warm daytime breezes alternated with cool evening breezes. Cool, warm, cool, warm. I wondered if I was imagining it, but Mark felt it, too.
We rarely needed our flashlights, even in the thick of the woods. I swore oaths to myself that I should never again fail to go walk in the woods and fields when the moon was clear and bright. That I should drag our kids out to soak in it as well. I tried to absorb as much of that beauty into my brain as I could, store it away. I wanted to remember those breezes.
And it only got prettier. We came out of the woods at the top of the large hill to find perfectly groomed paths cut for pheasant and rabbit hunting. A road in the wilderness! A thing of beauty when you’ve just blazed through 6 foot tall thorn bushes. So we strolled in the moonlight. We let the dog hunt and run. We followed the path as it led us through the woods and down to the creek.
Eventually we called last hunt when Mark had to drag Jill out of a hole in the ground, and we walked down the middle of the road in the middle of the night to the van, another simple pleasure. No cars, no houses, just the country road, wide open spaces, and the moon.
We did some other stuff on our remaining days, went out to breakfast and dinner, bought some shoes, slept in, but nothing was so restorative as our time outdoors. Thank goodness we decided to stay home for our romantic long weekend. All the fancy hotels and mountain resorts ain’t got nothin’ on our home sweet home.

This Weekend's Fun

Unseasonably (and Un-Western Pennsylvania-y) warm and sunny weather all weekend. We even had the windows open. There were big plans to insulate the attic which were promptly postponed for a less beautiful weekend.

There was porch sitting. Pleasant BSing with Aggie's friend H's parents. We watched from the porch as our girls ran to and fro, playing with the barn kittens, climbing fence gates, and talking quietly amongst themselves as the travelled about attached at the hip. It does my heart good to see kids playing outside. Love it.

H is Aggie's beloved friend and she was finally, finally able to come over and stay the night. Good times.

We headed in to town for some Mexican food. (Pretty sure I didn't cook the entire weekend!) There's something fun about having an extra child every so often. As long as they're a good sport, and H definitely is one of those. Especially when she was excited to go coon hunting after supper.

We unbelievably found enough working flashlights for everyone, loaded up into the car and headed out to another lovely hunting spot. Everyone had fun. They had foot races in the dark. The night was starry and pleasant. We laughed and had ridiculous conversations. I think H is eager to go again. In fact, after talking to H's dad, Mark said it sounded like her whole family wanted to come! Fun!

Sunday we had a date with my grandmother to take a driving tour of her old stomping grounds. She spent much of her childhood in the county south of ours, out in the country, moving from one farmhouse or log cabin to the next.

We stopped at a general store that claims to be "The Oldest Active General Store In Southwestern Pennsylvania."

We stopped at a diner for lunch. I had an egg salad sandwich and a homemade apple dumpling. :)

And I learned lots of new things about my grandmother. Mark and I also agreed, between spending this Sunday with her and when we stopped over at her house just to chat during our child free weekend it only reconfirmed, she is one good looking woman. Even without makeup, she's still a knockout. You go, Nan! Let's hope I've got those fountain of youth genes.

The kids were well-behaved in spite of being dragged along on a Sunday drive. They snacked on sunflower seeds we bought at the general store, spitting the shells out the car window. They weasled a Webkinz a piece out of Mark when we'd stopped at Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Nan and I laughed when he came stumbling back from the register, receipt in hand. He said, "They told me they were $3 dollars!" Meaning the girls, but he just misunderstood when Lily said she only needed $3 on top of the $11 in her purse. Poor guy!

But it was a very lovely time and we still got home in time for the kids to take a hike and for me to play with the horses. I saddled Admiral up and took a spin the yard. He's been a little ornery for lack of being ridden and a little bit of work did him (and me!) good. Of course I let him take a break to get a drink from the pond and blow bubbles and splash with his front legs, pawing like a dog. I love those horses! Nikki I lunged a little bit. She does not enjoy it especially, but it was good interaction. Even though she did rear up on her hind legs like Hi Ho Silver once or twice. She and I are too alike sometimes...I love those horses!

I'm going to tell you about the rat in a second, but 2 things at work that we've been enjoying lately:

My new nephew, Crosby:

He is my brother's furkid, and he comes to work everyday to see his Aunties.He is a way better insurance mascot than a gecko.

And courtesy of one of our customers, the latest catch phrase: "Do you want to see something creepy?"

It was the Monday after Halloween and she stopped in to make a payment. She asked me the above question and I balked at her digging around in her purse. She produced a photograph for my inspection that I've tried to recreate for you here:

Her picture also had a flowery sofa in the background.

So I'm looking at this photo which is quite obviously a picture of someone's out of focus hair and living room, listening to her as she pointed out pictures of a ghost face and ghost dog. Even being generous I could not muster up enough imagination to see what the hell she was talking about. So I nodded and agreed and just waited for it to be over. Good news is, we can now at random say to one other with great enthusiasm "Hey....(wait til you get the other person's attention)...'you wanna see somethin' creepy?"

And, in conclusion, I killed a rat with a shovel. It was a first for me. Killing something other than during hunting. I've never done it in all the chicken, pig, and beef harvesting we've done. Never put something down because it was ill or irreparably injured. Nothing.

But as I walked into the barn to put my saddle away I came upon one of the kittens in a face off with a rat very close to it in size. The rat was squeaking at the kitten, and the kitten was just staring with an expression something along the lines of "Ew."

I said to the kitten "Git it," but I couldn't blame the kitten for running away. I was trying to think quickly. We'd put rat bait out very recently after rats had burrowed under the barn wall, dislodging the water hydrant, and I figured this rat had to be half-poisoned to be out in the daylight like it was.

I didn't want to kill it, but I knew that I should. I considered that it would likely be dying soon anyway, but said to myself 'what if it doesn't die. what if it recovers or is just a very bold rat.' And I still had trouble. I even thought about fetching Mark from the house to do it for me but I thought it might run off. So I reminded myself that they leave disease-causing urine all over everything including the feed our animals eat, so I picked up a shovel, poked at it a few times-it squeaked and viciously attacked the shovel, and then...wham, wham, wham, wham.

Imagine my disappointment when I told Mark of my accomplishment and he didn't even ask me to tell him the story!

The Things We Do For Love

2009-11-03T09:18:00.005-05:00

The curtain opens on a dark and chilly evening with a harried mother scurrying through the big box store, her 5th store of the evening, in search of Halloween stuff for her children. She had mere hours before she left town on a business trip, hadn't packed a stitch of clothing, and scrambled at her only chance to do her motherly Halloween duties. Party snacks! Costumes!
Her mission, should she choose to accept it: For Aggie, something scary. For Lily, a witch costume with broom. Again. For Sam, nada. Zip. Which his mother couldn't understand because pre-teen Trick-Or-Treating was a highlight of her younger years, but whatev, as the kids say.

Behold her texts to her awaiting children*:
*I'm not sure if this is the same for everyone, but "j" in our family is our text code for any sort of "affirmative."

Me: u want costume? nanny said she’ll bring stuff for u to dress as a doctor. let me know.
Sam: naaaa no thanks
Me: ah ya party pooper!
Sam: aww come on!
Me: pooper!
Sam: unpooper!
Me: makes it look like theres a fat disgusting monster w arms and legs on you shoulders

Me: eh?
Sam: aggie said ya she wants to know if shes going to get a costume
Me: well i could get a cape. Or I could get a different mask which makes a complete zombie or werewolf?
Me: or a skull mask and cape?
Sam: aggie wants pics of the full zombie and werewolf if possible
Me: theyre kind of lame. But ok. R u sure you don’t want one? after i send pics tell her to hurry and pick cuz I need to get home.
Me: not too bad i guess
(unfortunately I don't have the werewolf costume picture.)

Sam:no thanks again. j
Sam:aggie wants the fat ugly monster on the shoulders
Me: for sure? cape or not? or jusr some pplain black cothes would prob be better
Sam: aggie says she wants the cape
Me: grrrrr. Ok :)
Sam: aggie wants to know if she can get both
Me: GRRRRRrrrrrr. i’ll try
Sam:aggie says GRRRrrrr
Me: j

Arms overflowing, the mother heads to her 3rd incompetent checker in an attempt to escape the big box Halloween hell, uncharacteristically snags a little bag of the Cheetos that turn you mouth blue when you eat them (a gross treat for the children that just made her costume shop via text for half an hour,) and returned home triumphant!
And scene.

When This Mountain Mama Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy

2009-10-27T10:25:00.004-04:00

I don't do much preaching on this blog. I'm just no good at it. But that doesn't mean stuff doesn't get me riled. Especially since I have this crazylady attachment to our Appalachian Mountains. (I mean, two of my favorite words are Appalachian and Appaloosa, so you know I'm serious.)

I love my Appalachians and all their mountain kin, and naturally I am not cool with chopping their heads off and turning them into toxic waste dumps. Not here, not there, not anywhere.

Grist said it best: "Mountains Look Best With Their Tops On"

From iLoveMountains.org 's Flickr photostream (graphs, too.):
Before Mountaintop Removal Mining (Kentucky)---After---And so then you do the math---Versus Wind Farms which would be perfect! for those un-beheaded mountaintops----(I also love wind turbines!)And that's not even taking into account the jobs that would be created (more) and the environmental impact (duh) and the people who live there not being poisoned (reason enough by itself.) So, you know, you don't have to be a rocket surgeon to see what's what here.

Save Coal River Mountain from Mountaintop Removal Mining

So, if you're feelin' it, you can follow the widget over yonder to join in my resounding "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

Country Fried Weekend

2009-10-26T20:24:00.004-04:00

Bee on my windshield. Kitten in a hole in the barn. 'Coon hunters. Raccoon hunters, if you please. All about a Saturday night!

' Coon Dog in a cargo van. Treeing Walker Coonhound. Code name: Jill. Very expensive GPS tracking collar.

Treed. 2 raccoons in a gigantic tree.

She is craazy for the raccoons.

Eh. I thought this would turn out better. All eyes in the top of the tree.Um. The brutal part. I spared you the worst. But she earned it.

Coon dog as lap dog? She's a first in our family. Sunday, fun day. Wood choppers. Log splitters.

Now that's what I call a family photo.
I also call this a family photo. Log splitter serving as camera tripod.

I didn't have to ask Mark twice to pose with his chainsaw.

I'm Doing Great. Why Do You Ask?

2009-10-21T09:51:00.005-04:00

See? Doin' great!: Been a little harried and stressed the past week and a half. So what else is new. But seriously, we were way short-handed at work and I was pretty wacked out.

Which made me forget to post about our super fun bike ride/jog on the Montour Trail. Sam and I jogged while the girls rode their bikes. More specifically, Aggie rode my bike after she hosed a quarter inch of barn dust and cobwebs off of it, and Lily rode her goonie farm bike. It's like Mark's farm truck: raggedy and outdated, but it gets the job done.

I didn't have the bike rack because I loaned it to my sister and I was desperate to go play outside after being trapped in the cellar all afternoon pre-cleaning for the Fall honey extraction, so, don't tell, but I loaded up the kids and the bikes into the back of the cargo van and headed for the trail. I did make them wear helmets. So I was halfway parenting at least.

I didn't take the camera because the sun, she was setting, and I just left it behind. I could've taken pictures of deer, bunnies, Fall foliage, and a wonderfully surprising section of the trail where there were no houses, just rolling hills of grass. Lily claims she saw a skunk, but I'll never know if that was true.

We logged close to 6 miles by the time we made it back to the van with our cheeks cold and rosy. Lily informed me that it was the first time "in her entire life" that she'd taken a real bike ride like that. Meaning that she rode a bike instead of the pull behind bike trailer we hauled her in back in the good 'ole days. I think they were all proud of how far they went.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Mark and a friend (because I bailed on Mark and took the kids on a bike ride instead of helping) extracted honey using Mark's fancy new honey extracting equipment. I must say, it is quite an upgrade from our tried and true but very used and/or homemade stuff. Really makes the whole process much faster and less messy.

Photography courtesy of Lily.

This is the new uncapping tank. The wax caps are removed with the hot blade uncapper thingy and fall into a rough strainer in the tank. Any honey that drips to the bottom of the tank can be collected later. The old one was secondhand, homemade, and had no legs, among other things. This is way High Class for us. (Note the High Class furnace, crumbly stone foundation walls and water softener tank in the background. Fancy facilities! Might explain why there is so much pre-cleaning to do.)

You can't really see it that well but in the background there Mark is loading the new extractor. It holds 20 frames, pulls the honey from both sides of the frame at once versus flipping the frames halfway through, and required bolting to the basement floor. Just where ever. Throw some bolts into the floor. No big deal.

There's no photo of the new hot water-jacketed bottling tank, but trust me, it is a beloved item, too.

We got 3 new cows. They are real beauties and one sounds like a bugling bull Elk when she moos.The pigs are delightful. Sometimes I forget how lovely they are.Fall is somewhat noncommittal this year, if you ask me. But it's getting here I guess.We did some crafting. Puppet making, even.

My sister and I had a cheap little blue rabbit puppet named Presley when we were kids. He barely even looked like a rabbit and I'm pretty sure when you turned him inside out, (why you would do that to him, I don't know.) the material used to give some firmness to the inside of his mouth so you could make him talk was part of a Little Debbie Snack Cake box.

So for whatever reason, it was a favorite toy of ours growing up and as we got older we took to hiding it in each others bed or luggage or what have you. Moving away from home? Look out for Presley. Headed off to college? Beware The Monkeys Arm: the arm of a white plush monkey toy we once had. (And the fake turd, which I believe one of my mother's coworkers might have gifted to her? Mom? Do you remember where the fake turd came from ?)

But eventually all the original hiding items were lost & we had to make new (sorry turd, they broke the mold. Only memories remain.) and I constructed a new Presley. Not as good as the original but still functional. So my Presley was inspiration to Aggie and she decided to construct her own rabbit puppet. We already had ears from a half-assed Halloween costume I made when she was a toddler. She wore her black faux fur Winter jacket, I made fun fur ears which I pinned to her hood, and gave her a black eyeliner nose and whiskers. Viola! Puppy! Or bunny! Or mutant humanpuppy creature!

So we had the ears. A scrap of fun fur. And no sewing machine. (I know! For shame! What kind of pioneer woman am I?) Here's what we've got so far:

I am especially pleased with the double button eyes we went with. Aggie is doing most of the work herself. Fun times!

And lastly, living and working in a semi-rural/rural area, it is not unusual for your clients to walk into your office with this:

And also not unusual for someone like me to get excited about it, fuss over it, take a photo of you with it, and overlook the dead deer smell on it. Because we love it..........don't we?

Like Grains Of Litter Through The Litter Scoop, So Are The Cats Of Our Lives

2009-10-15T10:00:00.007-04:00

We were reminiscing about our cats the other day. Memories brought on by the recent loss of my beloved Helen.
It was normal to not see Helen for a day or two at a time. Then you'd find her curled up asleep in between straw bales in the barn, in a cardboard box in the greenhouse, or on a pile of feed sacks in the farm truck. But when the 2 days stretched out into more than a week, my heart sank.
I asked every other day "Has anyone seen Helen?" and no one had.
Mark was oddly quiet and I finally figured he knew something. He said he'd been afraid to tell me, planned to maybe never tell me, but he found Helen on the road days ago. He said there was a bird's body right beside hers, so maybe she died doing something she enjoyed: hunting.
I'm still bummed about it.
Helen. I selected her from the other cats at the pound because she was talkative. That was my main criterion going in. But at the same time there was another ridiculously handsome grey cat who caught my eye. He had the head of a cougar and a very stand-offish personality, solid grey coloring and a linebacker body. I called Mark from the pound to tell him about the cats and he said to bring them both home.
So Helen and Roger (not their pound names, those were something pedestrian like Patches and Fluffy or something) came home with me in their cardboard crates, caterwauling the whole car ride. But not before Roger had seriously maimed the volunteer at the shelter.
She had put the cats in a temporary cage while we did paperwork and when she went to retrieve him he went berserk and attached himself to the top of her head with all four sets of claws. There was blood. All the while I'm saying to myself only I would take this beast home. And pay to do it!
But all was well once they settled in, Helen was crazy affectionate, meowing at every word you said to her, spastic in her appreciation of being held, and impossible to stop from licking you head to toe. Helen was a big licker she was. Roger was the notoriously stinky pooper and known for sneaking into the automobile of anyone who came to the house. Unbeknownst to the driver. He took many a car ride accidentally.
If Helen wasn't sleeping on Sam's head, she was sleeping in his dresser drawer. Well, before she moved outdoors, that is. And I know indoor cats live longer than outdoor cats, etc. etc., but once she learned to hunt and play outside she hated coming in the house. Plus she was the one who pooped and peed behind the hot water tank. And her itchy skin cleared up once she moved outdoors. So who am I to argue with that?
You could go outside and call her, not in a normal voice of course, but in a shrill baby-talking voice, and she'd come running. I called her "Helen," "Helen the Melon,""Hulun the Mulun,""Helen the Skeleton,""Skeletor,""Skully." I am sick that I can't do that routine anymore.
I miss Helen.
I miss Roger, too. Once I actually saw him get hit by a car, rolled under that car, and then jump out from under the car, still very much alive. I couldn't immediately find him after that and I went inside the house very upset. An old Asian woman who had been shopping at the market came over to comfort me by saying "Cat hard to kill." As in, Don't worry, he'll be fine. And I think that wondering exactly why she knew that was what made me feel a little better. True story.
But sadly, after serving as mascot (and stowaway) for the market for a couple years, Roger was found as well and Mark tried not to cry as he picked him up from the road.
I also miss our little orange tabby Hank. aka "Hanky," "Hanky Tooooo!" He was born on the farm, son of Mama Cat, long time matriarch (after her predecessor One Eye,) the cat formerly known as Fritz. I think we decided to convert him from barn kitten to house kitten after Roger's passing. Plus he was extremely affectionate and always kept his cute kitten meow which he greeted me with every morning.
One of my most favorite photos is of a 6 or 7 year old Sam sitting at the kitchen table, Hank in his lap staring attentively at the book Sam was ready to him. But, even though he was strictly indoors, Hank was an escape artist. It was nothing to find that he'd jumped out of a second story window, and eventually he too met with the same fate as Helen and Roger.
Our last surviving "pet" cat (versus "barn" cat) is YoYo. aka Yoko, Mocho Coco, MoMo, Big CoCo, Yokudekimashita.
He's been enjoying a lot more indoor time lately. Whether he likes it or not. Mostly I think he likes it. He's soft spoken, drools when he's happy, and is like 2 and a half feet long when he stretches out fully for you to rub his belly. He's also been known to enjoy a Sunday drive with the family, and for some reason was really drawn to the coffee beans I was grinding this morning? His previous owner had him declawed so I think the cold bothers his front feet, but he is a successful hunter and cock of the walk amongst all our cats, in spite of his lack of claws.So. Cats, cats, cats. Our life is full of cats. First thing Lily does every day after school is head to the barn to play with the kittens. They have names, but I haven't learned them yet. This is a picture from the archives. Not even sure who these guys are? Well, I know that the black & white one would have automatically been named Baby Coco. That is a given.

I can't remember his name either. He's gone, too.

Whoops. Not a cat.

The most recent Baby CoCo. With the extra toes.

And I've only just scratched the surface of my supply of cat photos. But this post was a little bit much already. Forgive me if I've told you these stories before. Shared these photos before.

We love our cats, don't we?

And Now Back To Our Regularly Scheduled Program

2009-10-03T20:38:00.006-04:00

When last we saw our cheeky heroine she was ~~sipping Grey Goose and cranberry juice from a beer glass through a bendy straw~~ debating the virtues and vices of a cell phone for her first born.

Well, you all know I totally got him one, facts and figures be damned.

Just kidding. There was a small amount of figuring.

But I'll be honest, as soon as we cracked that baby open we must've texted each other a dozen times. And it's fun. The kid has a great sense of humor, and I'm just going to relish him even wanting to text me at all. You should've seen the look his dad and I shared when he received a text from a girl the other night. It was ... a moment.

Sunday was Pittsburgh's Great Race--and we went! Sam and I. And we ran and we finished and we got an Eat N' Park smiley face cookie at the end.

The Milk Man encouraged Sam & I to enter. He insisted that it was a lot of fun and mostly down hill. He said he pushed his baby in a stroller the entire 10K last year. I was skeptical, but he's a jovial chap and the peer pressure was strong. Meanwhile, the race is 10K and I normally only trot about 3 miles at any one time.

It was one of the funnest things I've done in a long time. It rained the whole time. Sam beat me. But I only walked when I took a drink at the water stations. The water stations where the water tasted strongly of bleach. I thought Gee, "city water" sure tastes bad and then I learned at the water tent after the race that it's because they were dipping it out of garbage cans. True story.

If you want to feel superior, please feel free to check out my race results on the Great Race website. It kind of took the wind out of my sails when I saw them the next day. Ah, who cares! It was fun.

When we got home that afternoon, Mark and I took the opportunity afforded by Sam having a cell phone to leave him and his sister unattended at home while we went mushroom hunting.

Yes, my legs hurt like hell from running, but I'm super tough like that.

I also got semi-lost/separated from Mark in the woods. It was like he instantly vanished. So I called out to him. Nothing. Then I thought He's messing with me. He's hiding. Gonna pop out and scare me. So I was determined not to react. I just stood where I was picking burrs out of my clothes. Then my imagination started poking out here and there. Someone snatched him. There gonna get me next. He fell of a ledge somewhere. He's unconscious. I have a lot of life insurance on myself. He lured me out here in the middle of nowhere... And then I heard him yell for me. And ask me what the hell I was doing.

Doesn't this tree look like a ghoul? Edvard Munch-y? Not Georgia O'Keefe-y...

We found 2 types of edible. Chicken mushroom. And what we were really looking for: Sheepshead. And now a series of comical pictures of me on the mushroom hunt.

Not too bad. Nice getup, though. Fanny pack! I wore it in the Great Race. The Milk Man said Weren't those outlawed back in the Eighties? And for a second I thought he was serious.

Mark says to me Have I ever shown you the biggest tree I've ever known? I felt like we were dating again.

And so, on some back road in the middle of nowhere so don't ask me to ever take you there because I'll never find it again, I met the biggest tree Mark has ever been personally acquainted with. If I had been feeling a little more limber I would've crawled inside the tree because it was big enough inside to do so.
The pictures don't do it justice. The base of the tree is probably 30 + feet across. Pretty neat.

Here are the best photos: Wasn't even tryin' to look so awesome, I just did.
I also let Lily dress herself for school pictures:
The picture doesn't show the fine detail of her cheap matching necklace and bracelet or those high heeled pink sandals. She was stylin'. I guess I could've tried to make her look proper, but what the heck is the fun in that? This is 2nd Grader Lily. Only available for a limited time! So act now!
Back to work now! Not really. But tomorrow. We drove halfway across the state Wednesday to fetch Mark's new girlfriend: The Meadow Creek something something 3000 Bar-B-Que super duper smoker thingy. It's a giant smoker griller trailer.
And now we're selling pulled pork sandwiches along side the road. It's much more work than it sounds. And I don't care if I eat any more pork for a while.
We love it, don't we?

Say It Five Times Fast: "Fetal Cat Tattoo!"

2009-10-02T13:17:00.003-04:00

Because I like to share stuff with you.

It's a tattoo. A Fetal Cat Tatto.

Now That's Italian! No, wait, it's totally not.

2009-10-01T13:12:00.006-04:00

This blog isn't really big on snark, though I appreciate well done snark and may partake in real life. I'll be back to my regularly scheduled whatever-it-is-I-do-here shortly, but for now, can you just please enjoy this with me? Thanks!

Overheard on the Facebook recently....

Expectant Mother (known for sloppy, over-sharing status updates) :
ok people.....give me some possible girl names for the baby plz :)
Yep, gonna ask my Facebook friends what to name my offspring.

Friend: Shalaiah
Aren't you missing a few more Shalalalalalalalala's in there somewhere?

Another Friend: I kinda made one up, well I put 2 names together that I really like if I would decide to have another, but have since thought about it and realized it's too much like my youngest daughter's middle name...McKenadie (or just Kenadie I love both)
No, you did not make up a name. You randomly combined "Mc" and some consonants and vowels. And what are those 2 favorite names that you supposedly combined?

Male Friend: How about mythological like "Athena"? Or perhaps something like "Shyla"? "Ramona" maybe?
How about "Irony?"

Yet Another Friend: I like the Athena one. That's pretty. Also thought of Dakota, Caren, and sophia.
Sigh.

Bestest Answering Friend: My girls are Sierra Dawn and Sadie Jo. But I also like Savannah, Kenzi. I have a friend who names there girls Avenna, Myrella and Daylore. I believe those are italian names. I also like Abigail.
Thank you, mother of Sierra Dawn and Sadie Jo, for making my day. And those all sound like Herpes treatments.

Toot My Own Horn

2009-09-24T11:43:00.002-04:00

Not really my horn, but Sam's. Mah Boy.

Mark called me at work to tell me that the science teacher had called this morning. That had me worried a bit.
But Mark said that she simply wanted to tell us what a great student Sam is, that he's her best student (Mark's paraphrasing) and she really enjoys having him in her class. That he even helps his classmates in class. I reminded Mark that Sam's Civics teacher said the same things.

Night before last, Sam was at the sink doing dishes (I know, right?) while I sat at the computer looking up animal phyla and calling out the facts and characteristics to him. I was just as engrossed in it as he was, all nostalgic over my favorite phyla and names from biology: Platyhelminthes (so fun to say!) and Echinodermata and such.

We were especially interested in the Cnidaria because the name comes from the Greek word "Cnidos" which means stinging nettle. And we have lots of experiences with stinging nettles, so it was helpful to our remembering that they are all armed with stinging cells called nematocysts. E.g. jellyfishes, fire coral, and the like.

Mark walked into the kitchen to find us excitedly babbling on about flatworms and liver flukes. Good times.

The big debate lately has been whether to get Sam a cell phone or not. Keeping in mind that Sam was halfway nicknamed the Amishman last year for his lack of gadgetry, we are not known for having or providing the latest in technology.
Ya, there's a Wii (from grandma) and some Flip Cameras (from Santa) , but they're all extraneous non-necessities. Aggie wants an iPod, but she knows you don't just get an iPod for no reason just because you want one. You put it on your very selective Christmas list and put out hints for the 6 months prior to the holidays, and then you probably get it.

So a cellphone was not even a consideration until this year. And a very reluctant one at that. The problem arose with Cross Country, a lovable but scatter-brained Cross Country coach, and an unpredictable calendar of events on the school website. Sam would say things like "We might have a meet tomorrow, but I won't know until I get there." Huh? And "I don't know where we'll be or when we'll be back."

And there was also the fact that I had to repeatedly email and call to even find out what the hecks was going on in the beginning of the season. Here, turns out practice had started for a week or two and no word from the coach. I'm fairly convinced we never would have heard anything had I not made a pest of myself. But I digress.

Cellphone. Big major 3 week study of all the available options. I need to know where Mah Boy is. Not at all times, but pretty close. And I need it to not cost lots and lots of dollars. But it probably will and I've broken the seal on the Cell Phones For My Kids.
So I'm feeling a little defeated, a little like a sellout, and a little excited to text back and forth with Mah Boy.

Cooper's Lake Cross Country Invitational

2009-09-19T11:30:00.000-04:00

This is Sam's first year of Cross Country. I'm pretty proud and excited about it. I ran in high school, too, but I think Sam actually has a chance of being good at it. Plus it's something he and I both like, so that's nice.
Action shot! Uphill right away.
Aggie was cheering him on. Lily was criticizing him for not being first.
He was somewhere around 304? in a race of 415? I believe he's improved his time in every meet.

Have a good weekend!

For Becky. With A Twist.

2009-09-17T21:14:00.005-04:00

After neglecting my bloggy duty to post photos of my booty ( it's a jingle!) I'm trying to make up for it here. And I don't mean my caboose, my rump, or the junk in my trunk. (Honest, it's just pouring out of me!) I mean what I snagged during my recent transformative shopping trip.
So I had this fun idea to post photos of myself in different outfits, some of them from the shopping trip and some of them from scratch, and then everyone could guess which was which.
What actually happened was 3 consecutive nights of Open House from 7pm to 9pm. I forgot to get photos of the first part of the week, balled up the dirty clothes, and haven't washed those yet. I realized that what I actually bought on that shopping trip was 3 cardigans, 2 black and 1 fuschia, 2 blouses, and a necklace. Not exactly a new wardrobe. OK, I also bought a bra (trusty Playtex nude,) some pantyhose (grossssss! and I didn't wear them. Gross. Just couldn't bring myself to do it. Wore black tights instead,) a little black dress (to be worn with the pantyhose but it didn't happen,) and a cheap pair of black comfortable heels. Still not a new wardrobe.
But! Fact of the matter is, I still looked way more put together and presentable with those little additions than I would have without.
I learned from this that I am hopelessly not a shopper. But I also was inspired to take another look at the clothes I already had. Try to juice them up a bit, you know. Give them another chance. (Because who has high fashion expectations of an insurance agent?)
So the point of the photos, since I didn't get the guessing game together, is to show you my cheap stuff. It gets me by really well. Walmart top $11, handmedown skirt from my sister, shoes on clearance for like $15 (give or take, I got both pair on clearance plus one pair was also 50% off. Score.)
My working theory on shoes is, while I totally follow the belief that you shouldn't wear cheap shoes, I feel that as long as they don't look cheap when they're new you can wear them until they start looking crappy. Which is obviously going to happen a lot sooner with cheap shoes, but you still got by spending less money even if you have to replace them sooner.

Shirt by Target. Meh. My Daisy Fuentes trousers. Eh. The other pair of cheap shoes. Weh. And! My $15 Banana Republic necklace which I'm wearing with nearly everything because it reminds me of the beaded chains that hold eyeglasses, like my grade school librarian wore, and therefore I feel smarter and bookish. Super professional. So is my mussed up hair. I actually sneaked in a jog, took a quick sponge off and then put these clothes back on to go to Open House. So a little extra "dewiness." Is that a word? Dewy-ness? Dew-iness? Sweaty.
Which reminds me- I was totally stressing prior to that trip to Home Office that my naturally curly hair was not professional. (I'm serious, google it. I'm not the only one thinking it.) It looks icky in these photos, but anyone else have an opinion on curly hair and professional? I ended up deciding "Too bad. I'll do the best I can with it." And of course I was the bell of the ball. ;)
Since we're talking clothes and shoes. Mark's grandfather so generously gave these to Sam. Because what almost 13 year old young man doesn't long to wear his great grandfathers pleather loafers?
This isn't about the outfit, it's about the booboo. Right leg. Check it out.This (and some road rash on my shoulder. actually "tree rash" would be more accurate.) is what you get when you're practicing swinging up from the ground onto the horse's bare back (and I'm getting pretty good at it BTW, from the ground!) and it takes off (brideless of course because you're just out pissin' around in the field) and unstoppable through the trees. Yes, I'm sort of proud of it. And I was just about healed up from two separate bouts of nettle stings and welts, too. Don't worry, it wasn't as dramatic as it sounds. And! I didn't fall off or have to bail. So, it's all good. The Great Pumpkin made his delivery today! Pretty pumpkins.
Freaky pumpkins. And the best part about the pumpkin delivery, The Pumpkin Bin Village that the kids construct on the porch from the empty pumpkin bins. These will be modified, decorated, YoYo the cat approved, and possibly camped out in. Good times.
But first you have to do your "work" as noted here in Lily's notebook.

All along I could've been learning about scheduling and priority management from Lily. Who knew.

I Drank The Kool-Aid. And Then I Went Camping.

2009-09-14T21:12:00.006-04:00

So I went to my "Priority Management" seminar and it was good. An intense 2 1/2 days and I'm thoroughly brainwashed.
But first I went shopping, and that was fun. Kind of. Until then my work wardrobe consisted of some carefully (ha.) selected Target clearance items, hand-me-downs from my younger sister, and a pair of Daisy Fuentes black slacks from Kohls. Ya, chew on that for a while.
Didn't really enjoy the wardrobe. It was all about function and getting by. I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway. Forgive me.
So I knew I had to step it up for my trip to the Home Office to rub elbows with all the bigwigs and gurus. I was going to have to overcome my dislike for shopping, my aversion to the sweaty dressing room misery of trying & trying & trying to find something that doesn't look lame or cheap or ill-fitting, my miserly ways of immediately judging a garment as "not worth that much money, I can get the same thing at Target for much less."
And I wasn't trying some massive overhaul. I was just headed to the Banana Republic outlet store.
Long story short, it was all Pretty Woman, with me walking in to the store bewildered and helpless, and the sales person helpful and complimentary. Wait, that's not Pretty Woman, they were mean to her...But the gal did seem to have a lot of fun picking out clothes for me to try and then oohing and aahing as I tried them on for her.
I'm still stinging from the amount of money I spent, but I did look very presentable for the seminar.
And though the days were intense, arriving at 7:30am and class til 6pm, I enjoyed the challenge, learned some really helpful stuff, and got to mingle with some really great folks.
And then I went from Miss Fancy Business Pants to...

Camp Middle of Nowhere With No Shower For 2 1/2 Days. Except this year I cheated a little and took a quick sponge-off in the Winnebago shower.
We were deep in the Susquehannock State Forest area of Potter County Pennsylvania. This is my 3rd year for the trip.
The first year, Mark, who had been there several times before, suggested we go along on the annual Labor Day weekend camping trip. Up to the Wagner's Cabin. Stop me if I've told you this already...So I'm picturing a little cabin in the woods, with all the amenities, like something you'd rent from a campground. Charming, you know?
What I found when we arrived at 2 o'clock in the morning after travelling eons on a remote and precarious gravel road, was a sturdy looking shed of a building and a matching outhouse.
There I was in the middle of nothing, damn cold September mountain air, a bladder full of Sheetz coffee from an endlessly long trip, and I am confronted with the outhouse. What the hell?
I was in a panicky shock. Mark was suddenly faced with his decision to omit this very important information in his description of the camp. He said he knew I wouldn't have come if he'd told me about it. Well, Ya.
But. Yet another long story short, once I relaxed, it was a total blast. Not in an exciting amusement park kind of way, but in a free to enjoy the sweet camaraderie that comes from sharing an outhouse and preparing meals together. The joy of watching the kids and dogs run free. Catching salamanders and frogs: Building their temporary home:
There used to be a little plastic baby pool for this purpose, but it went missing.

And then turning them all loose on the last day.

Playing in the yard all day and all night. Aggie can touch her feet to her head. I learned that on this camping trip:Big kids playing with little kids:They had the most intense game of Release on Sunday night. (It's like Jail Break, I guess?) It went on until after midnight, 9 kids from age 7 up to about age 19, and they all played with the same enthusiasm. Even the dogs got in on it a little. (Sorry no pics, too dark. And I was busy sitting by the camp fire eating s'mores and doing nothing.)

Earlier that day Sam took me on a hiking adventure. Now he's been to camp more often than I have because the men all go on their Men Trip the day after Christmas, so he was more familiar with the trails. I was trusting him to go the right way.

What I didn't know was how much Sam likes to blaze his own trails. Up cliffs.(I was fairly terrified.) And across streams. (Sometimes we even used a bridge.)(We both peed in the woods somewhere around here.) And through monstrous nettle patches.This wasn't the nettle patch. It was up on the never ending mountainside Sam climbed leaving me behind on the trail yelling 'Sam, Sam, Why won't you answer me?!' and then finally climbing up after him only to find myself surrounded by stinging nettles. Then I heard him yell that the path he was looking for wasn't up at the top and that we'd have to go back. Through the nettles.

And then I said 'I want to go back to camp!' Wahh!

And then we had steaks on the grill with the wild mushrooms Mark found, oyster mushrooms and this Lion's Mane, my new favorite:
Super Fun Camping Extravaganza: Home again, home again, to my farm peeps:

Pigs acting like pigs:

And RoboKitten. What are his prime directives? Drink milk, hop around all nimbly bimbly from tree to tree, and fight crime.

You weren't expecting that ending were you?

My Homework Assignment

2009-08-28T15:13:00.003-04:00

I'm headed to a 2 1/2 day "customized consulting services, training, and personal performance coaching for sales, service, and underwriting professionals in the insurance industry" seminar next week.

Prior to attending, we were assigned a book to read, a questionnaire to complete, and an essay to write. The essay was My Life...In 500 Words Or Less. But for Pete's Sake, if you're only going to give me 500 words, you might as well only give me 50! 500 and I'm just getting started.

So anyway, I wrote the essay once, probably going over my word limit, and lying awake for awhile unsatisfied with my summary. Too dry. Too negative. Sure I've had some less than picture-perfect times in my life. Times I can be embarrassed about and ashamed of. And sure I can spin those times to show how they have naturally contributed to my personality and maturity, made me stronger, humbler, yada yada. But it isn't so much what has happened to me as who has happened. And so I wrote this instead and I was much happier:

My Life…In 500 Words or Less. Take 2

There are the events of my life story, and then there are the people of my life story. My childhood included my 2 young parents, a younger brother & sister, both sets of grandparents and many aunts, uncles, and cousins. All were nearby enough for big family gatherings and attendance at school programs, softball games and track meets. I was surrounded by a big group of loving and encouraging people.
My grandmothers were both positive influences in my life. One was the traditional sweet older grandmother, fantastic cook, gentle, and patient. The other was the younger, creative, and beautiful grandmother, who let us paint and sew and swim to our hearts content. I have an immense admiration for their faithfulness, strength, loving kindness, and down to earth spirituality. I credit their prayers for so much of the grace in my life.
My mom gave me a love for reading and quiet solitude. My dad pushed me to be a better softball player, throwing catch over the house from front yard to back. They shuttled me to practices and games and attended band concerts. When teenage angst and the accompanying bad decisions ruled my life, they patiently waited as I struggled through and they welcomed me with open arms as I returned the prodigal daughter. They are loving grandparents to my children and supportive in-laws to my husband.
My grandfather encouraged me that I had a beautiful smile and that “I could do anything if I put my mind to it.” He taught me to play pool and how to plant a garden. He taught me that tomatoes, avocados, and Hershey bars are some of the best stuff on earth. He pushed me to learn as much as I could and make the most of my mind. When I was about 10 years old, he raced me in a foot race on the beach and didn’t let me win. He told me wonderful stories of his childhood adventures and encouraged me to be adventurous, too. Just try!
My brother and sister were my main playmates at home where the small semi-rural neighborhood was scarce of other children. We played barefoot all summer. We had fun times when we were younger, but I’ve enjoyed our adult years together even more. Now I can better appreciate them for the great people they are and for the crazy sense of humor we all share.
My children and husband are the biggest part of my life and I feel like I’ve hit the lottery when I think of how incredible they all are. My husband is my best friend and my partner. He is the entrepreneurial spirit and I am tactical support. Being parents is our biggest responsibility and our biggest joy. We only need to share a knowing look to understand what the other is thinking. From large to small, they have all made me a better person: more giving, more patient, more appreciative and more humble. And I still have so much to learn!

The End.

So again, the 500 words weren't near enough, but I think I may continue the essay in the same vein adding all the folks I couldn't pack into those couple paragraphs. Give it a try yourself. I think you might like it.

Vote For Pedro! Bedillion's Farm Market!

2009-08-26T14:56:00.000-04:00

Post 101! And I Have To Get Something Off My Chest.

2009-08-21T15:09:00.002-04:00

I passed 100 posts! Do I get something for that? An iron-on patch or something?

But on a serious note.

I just don't think Brad Pitt is all that good looking. There. I said it.

Have a good weekend!

Oh, Brother.

2009-08-20T16:17:00.006-04:00

Remember brother Greg (again)? Weeelllll, he's been livin' in a trailer down by the river. I think pretty happily except for setting himself a little on fire that one time. Those two times.

Unfortunately, last week he had a severe pancreatitis attack after his post-colonoscopy three Junior Whopper lunch binge. 'Doctor said I could eat whatever I want! Well, I think the Whoppers were just the tipping point in his Dagwood Sandwich Garbage Can Diet. Dude weighs in at a precious 300 pounds.

Poor Greg. He's been in the hospital ever since. Poor Mark when he saw not only how sick his brother was but how characteristically dirty he was. Oh, yes. Greg was a vision in his grimy white t shirt with the sleeves ripped off and his bare feet sporting toe nails that Sasquatch wouldn't dare be seen in public with. So big brother took it upon himself to give Greg aka "Cecil" a little TLC.

First stop before the hospital was the dollar store. Tools were needed. Scrubbing, trimming, and grinding tools. Exaggerating! A little. But I knew I wasn't donated my personal nail kit to the cause, so new stuff had to be got. I dropped Mark off to play beauty shop while Sam and I headed to the store for some fresh t shirts and shorts for Uncle Cecil. We also got him a deck of cards and an electronic slot machine game. Yay!

When we got back with the goodies Greg was shining like a new penny and scowling like an old wet hen. (ya, they scowl alright.) Mark said he used the garbage can to soak Greg's feet. That man of mine! Ingenious.

I have to say, Mark's one hell of a pedicurist. And a good brother, too. Hopefully, Greg appreciates his fancy garbage can spa treatment. You can't get that just anywhere, you know.