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...I told you I was thinking about joining facebook?
Ack! Did I just say something? No, no, must have been someone else... ;-)
I like being fashionably late to the party, I guess. Talk me into it. Or out of it. Or down from the ledge....
So, I was standing down by the pond this morning watching the Canada Goose family that stopped by when A opens the door and calls to me:
A - "Mama!!!!"
Me - "What?"
A - "Where's my bagels?"
Me - confused because she knows where we keep the bagels, "In the freezer!"
A - more emphatically, "Where's my bagels?"
Me - thinking she was looking for a different kind down in the basement freezer, "Which kind?"
A - "Both of them!"
Now totally confused, I head up to the house. When I asked her what the heck she was talking about, she said, "I burned my bagels."
Ooooohhhhh, it all makes sense now.
The above exchange was from my perspective. For her it went like this:
A - "I burned my bagels!"
Me - "In the freezer!"
A - "I burned my bagels!!"
Me - "Which one?"
A - "Both of them!"
I'm not sure which one of us was more confused.
This picture tells so many stories:
1. A cut her hair the other day. Actually, I did the cutting, but she requested it. The reason? The Gulf oil spill. What? Go here to see what the heck I am talking about. E also contributed a slight trimmings worth. Oh, and I will be chopping my locks off soon, too.
2. I sewed the skirts and headbands that the girls are modeling in the shot above. A is all about the skirts lately. She was happy to finally get to wear something made out of that lovely paisley we got, oh, forever ago. E had to get in on the action, too. That fabric was bought even more forever ago, like when I was just out of college.
3. The dirt they are standing on had just been delivered. It will go to many projects, first of which is to grade the ground in our patio area, now that the stones are moved to make a walkway from driveway to house (picture soon). Then it will fill more raised beds in the garden. Yes, I got impatient waiting for time to sift rocks out of our very rocky soil and for compost to be ready to amend the beds with. I might have to get more. It is very lovely dirt that is fun to stick your feet in and climb up on. And it will save me time.
4. Where are my babies? Who replaced them with long legged beauties who are waaaay too old to have come from my womb? Am I really old enough to have kids that big? Don't answer that.
5. I love that tree. When the afternoon sun comes streaming through it, as it does above, my heart about bursts with the beauty of it all and I have to pinch myself to see if I really do live here and get to look at that tree every day if I want to. Then the mosquitoes start biting and I wake up.
The end.
I'm taking a very short break, one day, because my husband is home and I don't have time for blogging, other than to say that I don't have time. ;-b
See ya!
Now that the ground is covered with snow and will probably stay that way for the next month and a half, it is time to focus inward. No, not metaphorically-although that is a nice thing to do this time of year-but inside the house! I have spent so much time and energy around here focused outside, on the gardens and the chickens and the woods. The house got lots of attention last winter, what with all the painting I did before I ran out of steam and the earth warmed up enough to work, and it is time to finish up those projects and work on new ones.
The biggest deal around here has been the new heating system and the weatherizing of the house to go along with it. You just can't spend that kind of money and not be sure that heat is staying in the house! We have plans for more work in that area, but not till next fall, when we get some more insulation in the attic. C is feeling sucked dry financially right now, so we are giving his savings account a chance to recover before laying out anymore major cash on insulation.
So, other than some cosmetic taping of seams on the insulation in the basement, the big thing left to do, related to the heating system, is to rip up the carpet in the dining room. What fun! My house is going to be an absolute wreck for a month. I have half the room emptied, and it is already a mess. I still have to take the books off the shelves-what? you don't have a library's worth of books in your dining room, too?-, pack them in boxes, move the shelves out, pull back the carpet, remove the tacking strips and staples for the pad, patch and sand the sub floor, paint it and seal it, and then put all the furniture back! Whew! I'm tired just thinking about it and my back is slowly backing away shaking it's head with a look of horror on it's face.
Why do all that and what does it have to do with radiant heating systems? Well, carpet acts as an insulator and if the R-value of your floor+pad+carpet is higher than the R-value of the insulation you have below the heat, the heat won't travel up into your floors and the room you are trying to heat. So, up must come the carpet. Who puts carpet in dining rooms anyway? Almost as bad as in a bathroom! We are only going to paint the floor as a temporary measure until I find the perfect oak flooring to match the rest of the house. I want it to be reclaimed and finished the same way, with linseed oil, not polyurethane, so finding it might take a while. Hence the paint plan.
Also, on my winter house list is to finish all the basement projects, which include sealing the floor with a waterproofing product (any recommendations or experience there?), painting over the sealer in certain areas like the studio, finish painting the walls, install shelves for the pantry goods and holiday decorations, organize the workshop tools and all the art/sewing supplies in the studio, move the (full!) freezer and design the root cellar.
Then, upstairs, I need to finish painting all the trim in the house, paint both bathrooms, make/buy and install window treatments on all the windows, design an actual style for my living room, instead of the hodge podge I have now, hang pictures, organize and accessorize the girls room, organize and rearrange the office, including file or dump a million random pieces of paper. A few more houseplants would be nice, too.
Not to mention the luge run in the yard that must be perfected, assuming we get enough snow to do so! Oh, and somewhere in there we need to finish building the igloo we started New Year's Eve. And if it is not too much to ask, can I have time to knit a few things, mostly just projects that need to be finished? You think I can get it all done before the spring comes and the dirt starts calling my name?
Who said winter was a time for rest?
I'm baaaack! Did ya miss me?
Hey, am I the only one in the world who knows that 2010 is not the start of a new decade but the last year of the old one? I'm tired of hearing that we are entering a new decade. No, no... no. We will be finishing a decade at the end of 2010. Think I am wrong? Try this: the world begins, that first year is called year one. Year two, year three......year eight, year nine go by and how many years have past? Nine years. How many years in a decade? Ten. We do not end this current decade until December 31st, 2010.
Am I really the only one who cares about such technicalities? *Sigh* No one cared when I complained that 2000 was not the beginning of a new millennium, either. It's hard being a Virgo sometimes....
So, if this is the END of a decade, you still have a whole year left to finish whatever lofty goals you laid out for yourself for this decade. Bonus! Me? I don't do resolutions, never mind ten year plans. Life is too short, my friends. Living in the moment around here, thank you very much. Forget that end of a year, or decade or millennium, start of a new one stuff. Celebrating the Now is much more fun!
I'm feeling better (ish), I got some of the goodies made (alas, not the chocolate covered pretzels, sorry N&J), we had a lovely Christmas Eve and Christmas morning (with a new Wii from the inlaws, yea Nana and Papaw!), and we have still have presents and dinner with my family to look forward to tonight(one brother gets in tomorrow, but at least he is here!), and the turkey will be dinner tomorrow (better late than never!), but I had to stop and take a moment to tell you all something...
Merry Christmas!!!!!!
Hope you all have a great day...
with or without the pretzels. ;-)
I'm such a good mama to my chickens. Too good. So, last night after dinner I noticed that it was getting really cold outside. The thermometer read 7 degrees F. This is the coldest it has been so far this year. And it was not even the overnight low!
I started to worry about the chickens. I had been meaning to look up winter care for them to be sure I remembered all that that they needed in the coldest time of the year, from when I read all about it this spring. But I decided I did not need to do that, I needed to get out there and do something for my babies! I got the heat lamp we got for when they were chicks and my only really long extension cord, which was not rated for outdoor use. But, hey, desperate times call for desperate measures, right? And I headed out there to give my girls some heat. Got it all set up, moved the thermometer to the chicken house to be able to keep tabs on it and headed back inside, content that I was doing the best for my little egg layers.
Back inside, I saw that my thermometer was not reading anything but 7 degrees. Hmmmm, shouldn't it have come up a bit, I thought to myself? I looked out towards the chicken house, expecting to see a red glow from the heat lamp coming from the doorway. Nothing. Boots back on and out I went. The light was out. Oh, no, maybe it was too cold for the extension cord, which by now was frozen and brittle. I unhooked the lamp and brought it into the garage to see if it would work plugged directly into the socket. No go. So, I took it inside to investigate further. When I plugged it in in the kitchen it sputtered and blew out! Damm! Now what?
After going back out to gather up the extension cord, veeeery carefully so as not to crack the frozen plastic, and shut the garage door, I came back in defeated. Well, I better do that research now. Maybe they will be ok, or maybe there is something else I can do. Got online and did a search. Turns out Rhode Island Reds are extremely cold hardy (I knew that!) and as long as you make sure they have fresh unfrozen water and a draft free spot to roost, they should be ok in the coldest of weather. Phew! I was doing everything right! My babies would be ok!
And when I got up early this morning to bring them unfrozen, liquid water and a cup of scratch grains, they were fine. Just as I knew they would be. ;-)
Another quick note to say I'm too busy to post. I have a ton of cooking and baking to do for A's birthday party, shopping for that same party, and clean up for, you guessed it, that party. This year she decided to mix friends and family, so we are having a dinner with all the family and some friends and their families, too. Should be great fun! Oh yeah, and I have to find time to finish the handmade gift she requested. Of course, I can't tell you what it is, since she is likely to read my blog, so you will have to wait to see it just like the birthday girl. BTW, my baby will be turning 11. Not every day your young lass turns eleven. I told her last year she could enter the double digits, but that was it, no more growing. And what did she do? Grew an inch or so and now she expects to be able to claim eleven! Sheeeesh. Guess those bricks on her head did no good. No good at all.
Let's see how many special events we can squeeze into one day, shall we? Not to toot my own horn (yeah right!), but I am 38 today, I have been married for 13 years, and blogging for four. Yay! Toot. Toot. They were small ,short, inoffensive toots, ok? ;-)
I am blogging this a day early-but you won't see it until the 1st-since I am spending the day at an amusement park with a girlfriend and our girls. If we get home early enough, my family will be coming over to have icecream cake and sing to me. C left yesterday morning to go back to work, but we will see him in San Diego next week at the Good Vibrations conference. We did a little celebrating the 13 years together this past weekend, and will do more when we all return back to NY mid-month. I'm taking him out to dinner at a charity Farm Dinner, with local food and wine served by a local chef, at a local farm. Localiciousness! And I hear he has something up his sleeve as well.
I see much more blogging happening when the weather cools down and I get this speech behind me. I really do want to share more of my process, really. Truly. Honestly. I mean it. Stop laughing. ;-b
Meet Henri, my rooster.
Henri -I like the French spelling of the name, it suits him better- is beautiful, loud, bossy, sweet on his girls (of which I suspect he thinks I am one), proud, sneaky, and all together male. He is fun to watch and at the same time you don't want to take your eyes off of him for fear he will try one of his tricks. These tricks involve dropped wings and tight circling around your feet, and as that seems to be a roosters' prelude to mating, it is all together disturbing. Considering the fact that I am ten times his size and a different species. I'm just saying.
Henri also likes to find tasty morsels for his girls and loudly proclaim his find with turkey-like gobbling. The hens come running to see what he has found. He does this to me as well, but I noticed that he has not actually ever found anything good to eat, he is just trying to get my attention. So that I will come closer. So that he can do his dance for me. In hopes that I will be his chicky love. Um, no thanks, Henri. I can tell the difference between a worm and a piece of string. I am on to your tricks, buddy.
Seriously, I was getting concerned about his behavior since the chickens are 19 weeks old now and close to full sexual maturity. I do not want a terror of a rooster. I would like to let them free range a bit as they so obviously enjoy it and it gives them so many more chances to eat the bugs and plants that make the eggs more nutritious for us. But if I have a bad boy rooster, I can't let them out.
So, I went online and searched for more info on what to do. I found a site that advocated picking him up to show him that I am in control, that I am the alpha rooster. And to act more like a rooster myself. I have done the acting like a rooster thing a bit and it has kept him in line, a bit. I am planning to do the picking up thing soon, as well. The funny thing is that until I went online, I was not afraid of him and had recently picked him up to put him back in the tractor. I had thought his attentions towards me were cute.
Now, I am a teensy bit intimidated by his behavior, and turned off by the idea that I have to keep him in line in the pecking order for all his life. I was hoping we could be friends.
Now, I see that my giving him special treats as I dug in the garden was only reinforcing his idea that I was a big, strange looking hen that was obviously sweet on him.
I hurts a bit to have to knock him down off his highhorse, as proud as he is. I mean, he is still my baby that I raised from a day old chick.
Not that I would hesitate to take him out if he ever hurt one of the kids, mind you. Ok, I would feel bad, but the coq au vin a la Henri would be lovely. C'est la vie, non?
Even though I have posted like three times in the last three days, there will not be a return to regular blogging around here as I know you have all hoped. Nope, but I have a good excuse. We leave today for hotter, muggier, sandier, beachier places. Flying down to Florida to spend the week at the beach with C's family. I'll try not to have too much fun while you all wait patiently for my return, on our nation's birthday celebration. That would not be fair, after all. If I do, accidentally, inadvertently, mistakenly, have a great time, I'll console you with great pictures and fun stories when I get back. Yes, I left you last year and promised pictures and stories when I got back and I never got them to you. I'm terribly sorry and I did not want to have to admit this, but it was not because I had no fun. Oh no, much fun was had, I am ashamed to admit. It was really rather shameless, except for the shame, of course. Anyhoo, see you next week and try not to cry too hard when there are no posts tomorrow and the next day and the next day... Chin up! I shall return.
Oh! Chicken update: nobody got past my super duper reinforcements last night! Yahooo! Let's hope my brother does not have to find any less than four chickens in the tractor while I am gone. That would be a real shame.
And NOW. I am so impatient. Why does it take so long for trees to grow up? Can't vegetable gardens just spring up in a few weeks and feed you? Do I reeeeeallly have to wait 20 weeks to get an egg out of these chickens? I mean, really? Where is the magic wand that will decide for me the best heating system to put in and then make it happen, *poof*? Point me to the group of great local friends the girls and I can rely on! I'm waiting....
When we started moving in to the house, my mantra was, "we have all the time in the world, take your time". And it is true. I can take my time building up the life that I create in my mind. There is no major driving force that is making me get anything done at any particular time. The problem is I can't be patient about it. I want it now.
Well, the good thing about all this, is that I live in a place where I don't have the urgency I felt in VA and NV to live more sustainably. I am living in a community where I have access to local sustainably grown food, and the people here are already thinking about all the issues that concern me. I mean, I can take my time with getting the garden set up because I joined a great CSA for this summer. The pressure is off to feed us from our own land, this year anyway. Hey, maybe that is the problem! Maybe I need the pressure to get me going. Oh well, not such a terrible problem to have, huh?
Off to the farmers market....
Meet Stella:
She is a black French Angora rabbit, eight weeks old.
This is how happy we are that she is finally here:
Even the kitty is happy-she thinks she has been given a big snack to catch, if she can only figure out how to get in that cage. This is Stella's home:
Did I mention how happy someone is?
A is soooo excited to have her bunny. And I am so proud of her for all the research and prep she has done to get ready, and for how nonchalantly she handed over the cash to pay for both the bunny and all her set up. I wanted her to have full ownership of this venture, and if she gets it to the money making stage with the fiber and/or with breeding, she gets to own all the profits. Or she gets to learn about how hard it is to make a profit. Either way, it will be a great life learning experience. And in the meantime, we get to pet a soft sweet little bunny and enjoy her no matter what the profits!! Oh, and did I mention the poop? She makes quite a lot of it. It will make my garden very happy. Yay for poop!My husband is the devil. Ok, he's not really, but when we go out to a store, he makes me buy things, even if I am just planning to window shop or do research on something I am planning to buy. So, the other day we went to the local Agway store because I wanted to look at pet food options and see if they had cages for rabbits and check in on the baby chicken situation. And I walked out of there with a brand new chainsaw, and an order placed for 6 baby Rhode Island Red chickens, due in April 7th! Ack! I am really going to be a chicken herder, or poultry farmer, or whatever you call someone with chickens! See, I was planning to get chickens this year, really, I was. I just had not finished doing my research on it, and had not designed a coop or tractor for them, and I had not looked into how I was going to feed them or learned all the stuff there is to learn about raising chickens, and, and, and.... My dear sweet husband saw the books and magazines about chickens laying around, and heard me talk about where to put the coop and whether to eat our layers or raise broilers, and he assumed that I wanted to actually own real, live, clucking, pooping, egg laying Chickens. I mean, really. Where did he ever get an idea like that?
Anyway, because my husband is the shopping devil, I now have exactly 27 days to get my act in gear and be ready for the little peepers. 27.
Thanks, C.
p.s. Really, I am happy I am married to the devil. How else would I ever get anything I say I want to do done?
Found this out on the internets and thought I would share:
SOCIALISM You have 2 cows. You are forced by the government to give one to your neighbor.
COMMUNISM You have 2 cows. The State takes both and rations your milk.
FASCISM You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.
NAZISM You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you.
BUREAUCRATISM You have 2 cows. The State takes both because they might damage a turtle habitat. They take one away to study it's environmental impact, pay seven people to milk the other (six lean on overpriced shovels while one does the work), and then throw the milk away...
TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull. Your herd multiplies, you hire people to milk the cows, the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.
AN AMERICAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You outsource the labor of milking them to Korea, and hire Mexican truckers to transport the milk.
ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more. You sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public then buys your bull.
A JAPANESE CORPORATION You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.
A GERMAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.
A SWISS CORPORATION You have 5000 cows. None of them belong to you. You charge the owners for storing them.
A CHINESE CORPORATION You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity. You arrest the newsman who reported the real situation.
AN INDIAN CORPORATION You have two cows. You worship them.
A BRITISH CORPORATION You have two cows. Both are mad.
AN IRAQI CORPORATION Everyone thinks you have lots of cows. You tell them that you have none. No-one believes you, so they bomb the sh#t out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but at least now you are part of a Democracy...
A DEMOCRACY You have two cows, you vote for government benefits to help you take care of the cows. Your taxes continue to go up to pay for the benefits. (largely because of the Bureaucracy example above) Your country goes broke and you lose all your cows.
A REPUBLIC You have two cows. You recognize that the above mentioned capitalism is the best policy, and you protect the rights of the individual against the threat of all these other philosophies.
Hmmm...pretty obvious which one I would choose. Good thing we actually have a Republic. Now, to start acting like it!
Sometimes all you can do is laugh! In light of today's defeat of the move by congress to destroy our dollar further, let's celebrate with a little lighter take on the matter:
I wanted also to share an amazing resource I ran across today. There is a website with a slide show that addresses the major challenges of the economy, peak oil and the environment in such a clear and elegant way, I had to watch the whole thing today. The website is http://www.chrismartenson.com/and I think you should grab a cuppa and go watch it right now. Ok, if it is after midnight as you read this, as it is here as I write this, you can wait til morning. It is a couple of hours long. I really liked the way he explained all the ins and outs of our economic system and how he tied it all together with the energy and environmental issues. To warn you, the last chapter about what to do now is not yet available. That was a bit frustrating, but as none of what I saw there was really new to me, I already have a plan of action. At least there are forums to discuss amongst ourselves until that last chapter gets up.
Enjoy the video above and go watch that slideshow!
The pink didn't last long, did it? I changed the picture and there was no pink in it, so out it went.
I like this new look and I hope that it will spur me into writing more. I need an outlet lately, but have been stifling myself for some reason. There have been many things I have wanted to blog about. Does anyone else frame their life in blog posts, even coming up with titles for every event or idea begging to be blogged? OK, I am just weird. Some potential posts lately have been "I Blog, Therefore I AM", "You Can Go Home Again", and "It Ain't Easy Being Green". Quite the teaser, huh? Maybe you'll actually get to hear my thoughts that accompanied those titles. Or not; I don't want to jinx it.
So....
Enjoy the new look. Enjoy my daughter's wit and writing skill in the post below. And enjoy the miracle of three posts in one month!
