It’s Cold, but It’s Just Not Cold Enough

Alrighty, New Englanders…you seriously need to stop posting about your snow and your bitter cold and your “wintry mixes.” I’m as envious as C thinks I’m totally insane for being envious.

It’s because I’m not the one who did all the shoveling, he says.

And it’s true.

Often lately I’ve been thinking of our house in VT. It stands empty until a friend moves into it a few weeks from now. I find myself sighing a deep sigh and wondering how long I’ve been staring into space, thinking about our garden two summers past just overflowing with giant amish pumpkins. I rarely think of the struggles…it’s easy to let those go and see only the goodness in my memories, especially now that we find ourselves in limbo once again.

I miss living where the goat milk flows…hot cocoa heals all. I have to wait until next Wednesday for a fresh goat milk delivery and then I can enjoy said cocoa and the pain of pining for snowy evenings spinning by the woodstove will be dulled some. I hope.

The rhythm of the wheel calls to me…I haven’t been good about stocking up the Shop with yarn…I plan to change that over this coming week. There are other things, though…

I did bring the Boy and I to Park Day, btw. And it was nice…a bit overwhelming, but when we got over our shy feelings, we made some new friends. Hope to make it again next week, but we may be hiking about the gold country. In a very bundled-up sort of way.

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Reeling and Recovering…

…from the Holiday weekend, but not for the usual reasons.

I didn’t gain 10% of my body weight from over-indulgence, but rather lost 10% of it from a raging flu that had me lost in the fog of a high fever for several days and nights.

It began Thanksgiving day, as we headed down on the Greyhound bus…The Boy had a fever. It made for excellent traveling…he slept almost the entire way, snuggled up against me under a blanket. I almost read an entire book while doing my best to ignore the standard-model Belligerent Drunk who made our trip quite memorable. So glad he was passed out for most of her disgusting antics which included feeling herself up while asking the driver to search her (for cigarettes…she smoked in the bathroom) and give her a “thrill.” Yuck.

ANYWAY, we made it home for the holiday and after the first night, it was five days before I was up and moving again. Our intention was to borrow the truck and make it back up to the farm within a couple of days. Illness held us all back (C got the Plague, too, but managed to clear up a day or two before I did) a few days longer than intended, which was just long enough for our friend to decide that he’d rather not have any help at all on the farm anymore. I’m sorry…WHAT? It wasn’t exactly personal, but there was a goodly amount of hurt feelings and confusion over the whole matter. I’m not inclined to get into details, but the main thing is that we had to get up there as soon as we felt we could physically manage, get a moving truck AGAIN and haul our life back down to the Bay Area. Which we manged to do in a three-day period.

Oh, how I am ever-so-glad we hadn’t been able to afford our dome right away. How I am glad we hadn’t wasted a great deal of effort and time in building a platform and plumbing, etc. to set up our life there, only to be subject to the changing whims of someone else and have to tear it all down. Yes, we are back at Square One, but it could have been a lot worse had the Epiphany resulting in the desire to scale down the farm operations occurred a few months down the line instead of now, when we had only moving expenses invested. Although, it would have been nice if the Epiphany had occurred before we had incurred any moving expenses at all.

But, we are here. With family. The Boy has decorated the holiday tree and lit candles. We have packed and unpacked twice this month and are breathing a sigh of relief at the thought of a few weeks of downtime before we discover the next step. I have some ideas, but more on that later.

Here is a last glimpse at the farm:

He busied himself while I packed up our room…

We miss the goats and the ducks, but hopefully we will not be without goats and ducks in our life for too long.

Until then, I am spinning and felting and filling the Shop for the Holidays in between periods of re-organizing and divesting ourselves of things we’ve been able to live without. There will definitely be some giveaways on this here blog. Crafty supplies and what-not. Stay tuned.

Clicky above to go to the Shop.

So, it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, but I am contemplating once again trying a Park Day meet-up that we went to earlier in the summer. The reason I didn’t get into it the first time around was that there just weren’t any kids in the same age group…my sweet Boy misses his friends in Vermont, and since we’ve been back in California, he hasn’t had much opportunity for socializing with peers. Last time we tried the Park Day we were told that attendance picks up quite a bit when the school-year starts. I think it’s time to give it another go.

Hope you all had a Healthy Holiday!