Well, for those of you who haven't seen my many facebook posts today, it is my seventh anniversary! It was seven years ago today that I married the love of my life. It was seven years ago that we said our vows to each other. It was seven years ago that I wore my wedding dress, and haven't worn it since. It was seven years since I had a cupcake smashed into my face getting frosting up my nose and it was my new husband's aunt who did it and then I was forever to have the nickname "Mrs Cupcake".
But that's another story.....
This anniversary my husband and I decided to have a little dayventure. We love to have dayventures. My husband loves to explore. And I like to look at new scenery and see new things. So I guess that makes us perfect for having dayventures together.
So what is a dayventure? Well, as you probably all guessed, it's a day adventure. We usually pick a place we've never been before, try to find a center point to aim for (like a specific town) and just drive towards it. On the way if we see a neat place to stop for lunch we do, if we see an interesting event happening we join in, if we end up at our ending point and it's closed because we didn't do our research, oh well! It's all about the journey and what we'll find.
Today our beginning point was in Tewksbury, mainly because of my husband's work. But, once we were free of that, we made our end point Manchester, NH for two very important reasons. One, it was close by, only 45 minutes away. And two, there was a highly recommended BBQ place up that way that we just had to try out. Now I could have chosen any form of dining experience today that I wanted. My husband promised me that I could pick the restaurant, no matter what the cost. So I could really have gone to the nines on this one. Here's a snippet of the conversation that ensued.
My husband: "So I'll be right back. Why don't you pick out a place for us to eat and tell me where we have to go. Your choice, whatever you want!"
*short time later*
My husband: "So what did you pick."
Me: "How about this BBQ place!"
My husband: *look of disbelief* "I love you!"
Yep, I'd pass up fine dining for a good BBQ brisket any day! But we also had a grand ol time looking for used book stores, our other weakness besides good food, and in gaming stores where we treated ourselves to an expansion for Dominion. Because yes we are geeks and we are certainly proud of it. And when we become homesteaders we will be homesteading geeks that run about barefoot like hobbits. Ok, so that's only me. But my husband will still be a geek.
On our journey home from our dayventure I came to realize how much my life has changed in seven years. How much both of our lives have changed in seven years. Between different jobs and moving and law school and building up my husband's law practice. It's going to be amazing how much more will change in the next seven years. Hopefully in the next seventy years.
I'm just happy to have such a wonderful man to be my companion thrue life. And hoping to have many more anniversary's and dayventures with him!
Happy Anniversary Hon! I Love You!
Monday, September 16, 2013
Friday, September 13, 2013
Not So Silent Night
I love this time of year. When the summer heat and humidity (except for the past three days) has gone away, and you can turn off your air conditioner and allow the cool night time breezes of early fall to move through the house.
And with the turning off of that air conditioner, you can finally hear the nice sounds of peepers, and leaves rustling, and rain drops (if it's raining), and the motorcycles across the bay (if you live across the bay from a biker bar like I do).
But, when the restless motorcycles finally quiet down, and the cops don't have to chase them any more, you can lay back in bed and just listen to the not-so-silent nighttime noises that were masked by the wonderfully cool, but deafeningly loud, air conditioner a few days ago. Or in my case, yesterday. And those soothing sounds bring a peace like no other. Till the motorcyclists need to ride again.
Oh, and did I mention the high pitched, loud tones of the fire brigade alarm? Can't forget about that!
Ahhhh, lovely nighttime sounds!
And with the turning off of that air conditioner, you can finally hear the nice sounds of peepers, and leaves rustling, and rain drops (if it's raining), and the motorcycles across the bay (if you live across the bay from a biker bar like I do).
But, when the restless motorcycles finally quiet down, and the cops don't have to chase them any more, you can lay back in bed and just listen to the not-so-silent nighttime noises that were masked by the wonderfully cool, but deafeningly loud, air conditioner a few days ago. Or in my case, yesterday. And those soothing sounds bring a peace like no other. Till the motorcyclists need to ride again.
Oh, and did I mention the high pitched, loud tones of the fire brigade alarm? Can't forget about that!
Ahhhh, lovely nighttime sounds!
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Ode de Farm Girl
One of the things I love about my job is that I get to be a farm girl.
Yep, that's right. I get to muck stalls, and carry hay bales, and milk a cow, and brush down animals, and chase chickens, and look for turkeys, and be chased by geese..... you know, farm girl stuff.
And I love every part of it. I know that many people would go running the other way as fast as they can at the thought of having to shovel cow and horse poop every morning. Or having to take an hour of your day to find chickens and turkeys to put them away. Or having to carry hay bales through ice and snow while your feet become numb and the animals impatient. But I have done all of those things, and I still love it. I find it rewarding. Though it can be tough at times, you can see the product of your work. A clean barn for your animals. All of your poultry safe from predators. Everyone fed and content. And nothing beats working outside, even if the weather is bad.
But all of this farm work has had one unforeseen consequence.
The SMELL!
Now, I guess if everyone is doing farm work with you, then we will all smell the same. Then it won't matter too much. But when you're doing this work all day and then come home to your husband, who is a lawyer and hasn't been near a horse stall all day, well lets just say the smell of the barnyard is very apparent.
Now my husband is very supportive and loves that I'm doing work that I love. But when I come home from work, with my dirty jeans and mucky boots and hair all over the place, he comes to the door with a big smile on his face, hugs me while holding his breath, and then points to the bathroom so I can take a shower. This also made me aware that other people who don't work on a farm might also be repelled of the strong odor of muck, donkey, cow and horse. So the other day, when I had a chiropractic appointment after work, I made sure to take a shower and change my clothes so that I wasn't scorned by the rest of society. Or at least they could talk to me while not holding their breath. And I think my chiropractor appreciated it. But it did lead to a discussion about having a line of farm perfumes. Something that people could put on to make it seem like they are farmers when they've gotten out of their 9-5 desk jobs. Or people who are already farmers and want to emphasize their farmy smells.
So, I've thought about it long and hard and here is my line of Farm Girl Perfumes!
Ode De Muck: The quintessential Farm Girl scent. The farm begins and ends with muck. Whether it's fresh and smelly right from the horse's behind, or broken down into beautiful soil to put in your garden to grow many good veggies. And nothing says summer like the smell of fresh manure in the air.
Essence of Horse (or Cow, or Sheep, or Chickens): Really it's going to be several different perfumes, though we can have one that is a combination called Farm Menagerie. But nothing reflects better the meaning of being a farm girl better than having the heavy odor of horse or cow in your hair. Musks will be available like Ram Odor and Essense of Buck for men. Really REALLY potent. Everyone will notice that, and every farm girl will know what animal you've been around.
Making Hay While the Sun Doth Shine: Now this one actually sounds nice. If you've ever been in the middle of a hay field on a hot summer's day, raking hay and sweating all over, the smell of that grass drying is almost like an aphrodisiac. It's intoxicating. Unless you get hay fever. Then you won't be smelling much of anything out there.
Wet Wool: For those days when you have been in some really bad, wet weather and your clothing has gotten so damp it will take years for it to properly dry out. But really you only have two hours. So your house, or at least near the stove where everything is drying out, starts to smell like a wet dog has come to stay. And I know Pilgrims can also attest to this smell, with their damp wool clothing.
And there probably are more of them that I haven't thought of yet, but there is also the possibility for a whole line of Farm Girl beauty products.
Smokey Essence: A shampoo that allows your hair to smell like smoke, all the time! And you don't have to worry about making a smokey fire in your house to get the same effect.
Gardener's Nails: Nail polish that looks like dirt, so that you can have that "I've got dirt under my nails constantly because I'm digging around in it all the time" look for your nails.
Hay Hair Ties: You don't have to go for a roll in the hay to get hay all stuck in your hair. You can use these hair ties to have that "You know where I've been...." look. But who wouldn't want to roll in the hay.
I think I've got something here. I'll let you all know when the line is up and running.
Yep, that's right. I get to muck stalls, and carry hay bales, and milk a cow, and brush down animals, and chase chickens, and look for turkeys, and be chased by geese..... you know, farm girl stuff.
And I love every part of it. I know that many people would go running the other way as fast as they can at the thought of having to shovel cow and horse poop every morning. Or having to take an hour of your day to find chickens and turkeys to put them away. Or having to carry hay bales through ice and snow while your feet become numb and the animals impatient. But I have done all of those things, and I still love it. I find it rewarding. Though it can be tough at times, you can see the product of your work. A clean barn for your animals. All of your poultry safe from predators. Everyone fed and content. And nothing beats working outside, even if the weather is bad.
But all of this farm work has had one unforeseen consequence.
The SMELL!
Now, I guess if everyone is doing farm work with you, then we will all smell the same. Then it won't matter too much. But when you're doing this work all day and then come home to your husband, who is a lawyer and hasn't been near a horse stall all day, well lets just say the smell of the barnyard is very apparent.
Now my husband is very supportive and loves that I'm doing work that I love. But when I come home from work, with my dirty jeans and mucky boots and hair all over the place, he comes to the door with a big smile on his face, hugs me while holding his breath, and then points to the bathroom so I can take a shower. This also made me aware that other people who don't work on a farm might also be repelled of the strong odor of muck, donkey, cow and horse. So the other day, when I had a chiropractic appointment after work, I made sure to take a shower and change my clothes so that I wasn't scorned by the rest of society. Or at least they could talk to me while not holding their breath. And I think my chiropractor appreciated it. But it did lead to a discussion about having a line of farm perfumes. Something that people could put on to make it seem like they are farmers when they've gotten out of their 9-5 desk jobs. Or people who are already farmers and want to emphasize their farmy smells.
So, I've thought about it long and hard and here is my line of Farm Girl Perfumes!
Ode De Muck: The quintessential Farm Girl scent. The farm begins and ends with muck. Whether it's fresh and smelly right from the horse's behind, or broken down into beautiful soil to put in your garden to grow many good veggies. And nothing says summer like the smell of fresh manure in the air.
Essence of Horse (or Cow, or Sheep, or Chickens): Really it's going to be several different perfumes, though we can have one that is a combination called Farm Menagerie. But nothing reflects better the meaning of being a farm girl better than having the heavy odor of horse or cow in your hair. Musks will be available like Ram Odor and Essense of Buck for men. Really REALLY potent. Everyone will notice that, and every farm girl will know what animal you've been around.
Making Hay While the Sun Doth Shine: Now this one actually sounds nice. If you've ever been in the middle of a hay field on a hot summer's day, raking hay and sweating all over, the smell of that grass drying is almost like an aphrodisiac. It's intoxicating. Unless you get hay fever. Then you won't be smelling much of anything out there.
Wet Wool: For those days when you have been in some really bad, wet weather and your clothing has gotten so damp it will take years for it to properly dry out. But really you only have two hours. So your house, or at least near the stove where everything is drying out, starts to smell like a wet dog has come to stay. And I know Pilgrims can also attest to this smell, with their damp wool clothing.
And there probably are more of them that I haven't thought of yet, but there is also the possibility for a whole line of Farm Girl beauty products.
Smokey Essence: A shampoo that allows your hair to smell like smoke, all the time! And you don't have to worry about making a smokey fire in your house to get the same effect.
Gardener's Nails: Nail polish that looks like dirt, so that you can have that "I've got dirt under my nails constantly because I'm digging around in it all the time" look for your nails.
Hay Hair Ties: You don't have to go for a roll in the hay to get hay all stuck in your hair. You can use these hair ties to have that "You know where I've been...." look. But who wouldn't want to roll in the hay.
I think I've got something here. I'll let you all know when the line is up and running.
Friday, September 6, 2013
Hearth Cooking and Homeschooling
Two things that don't seem to go together, but yesterday, for me, it did.
I'm very lucky that I have a job that allows me to do all of the activities I love to do. Like gardening, and hearth cooking, and chasing around chickens, and being chased around by turkeys. All fun activities! And what makes it even better is that I can teach it to others. That makes it extra fun as well as extra special.
So yesterday, all afternoon, I taught a group of nine home school students, ages eight to thirteen, how to cook a five course hearth cooked meal. Say that three times fast. And believe me it was just as much a learning experience for me as it was for these kids.
I showed them how to cook hard-boiled eggs without a timer. They showed me how exciting cracking an eggshell of a hard-boiled egg is. I showed them how to make biscuits from scratch and cook them in a dutch bake oven. They washed dishes faster than I've seen any group of kids. I let them make the johny cakes, and they came out excellent. I sent them on a turkey wrangling expedition in the middle of johny cake making, and though it took 5 of them 45 minutes to hunt them down, they still got all the turkeys in and finished working in the garden.
But most of all they got to experience a pretty tasty meal, if I don't mind saying so myself, and I got to witness a group of children who had a better work ethic, more common sense, and a great ability for solving problems than most adults I know of. Through my work I've come to interact with lots of children. And by lots I mean LOTS of children. Thousands of them. And many of them were nice and curious. But these children impressed me to know end with their intelligence, their politeness, and their desire to always have something productive to do.
I'm not going into a rant whether homeschooling or public school is better for a child's upbringing. I think each has it's place and I'm still deciding what I wish to do with my future children. But I have to say, with this recent interaction with these very industrious, inquisitive and polite home schooled children, I think homeschooling has got a few more points over public schooling right now.
I'm very lucky that I have a job that allows me to do all of the activities I love to do. Like gardening, and hearth cooking, and chasing around chickens, and being chased around by turkeys. All fun activities! And what makes it even better is that I can teach it to others. That makes it extra fun as well as extra special.
So yesterday, all afternoon, I taught a group of nine home school students, ages eight to thirteen, how to cook a five course hearth cooked meal. Say that three times fast. And believe me it was just as much a learning experience for me as it was for these kids.
I showed them how to cook hard-boiled eggs without a timer. They showed me how exciting cracking an eggshell of a hard-boiled egg is. I showed them how to make biscuits from scratch and cook them in a dutch bake oven. They washed dishes faster than I've seen any group of kids. I let them make the johny cakes, and they came out excellent. I sent them on a turkey wrangling expedition in the middle of johny cake making, and though it took 5 of them 45 minutes to hunt them down, they still got all the turkeys in and finished working in the garden.
But most of all they got to experience a pretty tasty meal, if I don't mind saying so myself, and I got to witness a group of children who had a better work ethic, more common sense, and a great ability for solving problems than most adults I know of. Through my work I've come to interact with lots of children. And by lots I mean LOTS of children. Thousands of them. And many of them were nice and curious. But these children impressed me to know end with their intelligence, their politeness, and their desire to always have something productive to do.
I'm not going into a rant whether homeschooling or public school is better for a child's upbringing. I think each has it's place and I'm still deciding what I wish to do with my future children. But I have to say, with this recent interaction with these very industrious, inquisitive and polite home schooled children, I think homeschooling has got a few more points over public schooling right now.
Monday, September 2, 2013
Where Is Walden?
Hi! Welcome to my new blog!
Having been blogging for several years, and more recently blogging about my challenges in, The Pursuit of Happiness, I'm finding it refreshing starting a new blog for my primary passion, the simple life.
Now, the funny thing is that the work I've been doing for the last six years has immersed me in historical time periods close to 400 years ago. And the comment "Oh, it was so simple back then!" would make me cringe. SIMPLE?!?! These poor people had so little in the way of conveniences it wasn't even funny. Something that takes us five minutes would take them hours! And they didn't have coffee to wake them up in the morning! AHHHHHH!!!!
But, every once in a while, I would agree with this comment. Those times when all was quiet and you just sat listening to the birds. When you just stopped because you felt the wind change. When you watched the rain rather than TV, because it wasn't even around. When you feel the warm earth in between your fingers after a spring thaw, or a summer's rain on a hot day, or watch geese flying in for the evening on a crisp fall's eve, or catching snowflakes on a cold winter snap. That is what I think those people meant.
And that's what I'm going in search for right here. And you, dear readers, are invited to come along for the ride.
I'm hoping to record all the ups and downs that comes with searching for, as I have come to phrase it, "My Walden". Now it's been years since I've read Henry David Thoreau's book "Walden", I believe it was my junior year of high school. So it's been many years then. But in thinking about what I wanted to achieve in this venture, and particularly the name of this blog, I came across this quote.
“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”
It was from Thoreau's famous work Walden. And it seemed to just touch my heart. It encompassed what I wanted to achieve. To find my own concept of simplicity in my everyday life.
To find my own Walden.
Having been blogging for several years, and more recently blogging about my challenges in, The Pursuit of Happiness, I'm finding it refreshing starting a new blog for my primary passion, the simple life.
Now, the funny thing is that the work I've been doing for the last six years has immersed me in historical time periods close to 400 years ago. And the comment "Oh, it was so simple back then!" would make me cringe. SIMPLE?!?! These poor people had so little in the way of conveniences it wasn't even funny. Something that takes us five minutes would take them hours! And they didn't have coffee to wake them up in the morning! AHHHHHH!!!!
But, every once in a while, I would agree with this comment. Those times when all was quiet and you just sat listening to the birds. When you just stopped because you felt the wind change. When you watched the rain rather than TV, because it wasn't even around. When you feel the warm earth in between your fingers after a spring thaw, or a summer's rain on a hot day, or watch geese flying in for the evening on a crisp fall's eve, or catching snowflakes on a cold winter snap. That is what I think those people meant.
And that's what I'm going in search for right here. And you, dear readers, are invited to come along for the ride.
I'm hoping to record all the ups and downs that comes with searching for, as I have come to phrase it, "My Walden". Now it's been years since I've read Henry David Thoreau's book "Walden", I believe it was my junior year of high school. So it's been many years then. But in thinking about what I wanted to achieve in this venture, and particularly the name of this blog, I came across this quote.
“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”
It was from Thoreau's famous work Walden. And it seemed to just touch my heart. It encompassed what I wanted to achieve. To find my own concept of simplicity in my everyday life.
To find my own Walden.
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