A Mighty Wind

We woke up this morning to a mighty wind. There was so much dust swirling in the field on the other side of our grove, I actually thought it might be a tornado.

It could have been.

It's happened before.

We've had such incredibly lovely weather this week, it was a little bit of a shock. It's like a dust bowl outside, which is really quite rare for us.

In other bowl news...

Miss Peaches has been asking to do some cooking with me, so last night we mixed up some cornbread.

Doesn't she look like such a big girl?

I still am bewildered as to how that happened.

She's growing her bangs out.

The mess to her right is but a minute representation of the state of our household. It looks as if a mighty wind has blown through indoors as well as out.

Mother's Day Matters

We had a lovely Mother's Day, for several reasons...

1) We ate. And then we ate again. And then we ate again. And we ate a little in between. And it was all delicious.

2) We got to spend time with just about all of our local family members. Even though we're all 'local', we really don't all gather together all that often, so when we do, it's a treat.

3) We made the big announcement. What big announcement? If you made it to the end of the kitty post from the other day, you'll know what I'm talking about. If not...

You're going to have to back and read the entire kitty post to find out.

Just kidding.

I'm pregnant!

Preggers.

P.G.

(Why do people refer to being pregnant as being 'p.g.' anyway? I never understood that. Yet I enjoy it.)

So, yes, we... or actually... Little Blue Eyes and Miss Peaches... made the announcement to everyone. Mostly Miss Peaches. She was just super good at blurting it out, which was perfectly fine with me. I realized that I really don't like to make big announcements. It's a complex issue. I think it has something to do with the specialness and magnitude of the event, and the desire to be very sincere, contrasted against the tendency of my family, and myself, to make a joke about it. It's a weird emotional juxtaposition which I'd just rather avoid.

Plus I'm not a middle child who likes to be in the spotlight. I'm a youngest child who likes to sit back and observe, and be the one who is entertained, not the entertainer.

But we don't need to delve that far into my psyche.

Let's just say I appreciate that I now have children who will do these things for me.

The funniest reaction was at my Mom's house, when Miss Peaches breezed into the room and promptly (and loudly) told my nephew's wife that I had a baby in my belly. The reaction was a mixture of silence and disbelief. I think all of my sisters were hesitant to get excited because they thought maybe Miss Peaches was just spinning a tale.

My favorite reaction was my sister Anne, whose reaction was a subdued, "Yeeessss," and a hug. This was an oddly subdued reaction for her, as she is a middle child, but then she told me that when she was at our house earlier in the week, she had suspected something was up, that I was p.g., but she didn't want to ask, because, you know, if you're not p.g., that's kind of an offensive question.

And because one of our brothers had done that to me before, when I was pregnant with Miss Peaches, but didn't actually know I was pregnant, and we had a whole awkward but funny situation.

Sorry. I feel like I'm just rambling. Am I rambling? It's that awkward juxtaposition of sincerity and humor again. It gets me all goofed up.

Anyhow, speaking of my Mom (I know I wasn't speaking of my Mom, but let's just pretend I was so that I have a convenient segue, okay?), my sisters and I decided to go in together and get her a Keurig coffee maker for Mother's Day. The one we decided to order her was in the color 'Gloss Cinnamon' -- which is basically maroon, but 'Gloss Cinnamon' sounds so much better, doesn't it? On Saturday, my sister, Anne, was doing a flea market in town, and my mom went up there and purchased a red coffee percolator from her. The next day, back at the flea market, my mom was raving about her 'new' coffee maker, in reference to the flea market percolator. Anne thought that we must have given her the Keurig already, and that was what she was all excited about, so Anne said, "Yeah! I know! They're awesome! We're in on it!" to which my mom gave her a confused look.

Later that day, when Anne got to Mom's house, Mom told her to go check out the snazzy coffee maker on the stovetop. Anne went to look, expecting to see the Keurig, but not seeing the Keurig. She asked Mom where the coffee maker was, to which Mom pointed at the percolator and said, "It's right there!"

Anne realized that they were not talking about the same thing; Mom started wondering if perhaps Anne had spent a little too much time in the sun at the flea market.

That's my mom, on the right. She's opening one of the boxes of coffee cups that came with her Keurig.

That's my brother, Tom, in the middle. He's making a grand gesture of some sort. He's good at that.

That's Tom's girlfriend on the left. She's lovely and I so enjoy visiting with her.

This is me, typing, craving a campfire cooked marshmallow, specifically in s'more form.

That last one really doesn't have anything to do with anything, other than that I was so busy addressing who everyone was and what they were doing in the moment, it just felt right.

Now that I'm pregnant I may bust out with random craving desires, so be forewarned.

Letting the Cat Out of the Bag

Due to a recent influx of mice around our farm -- probably due to the mild winter we had -- we decided that it was time to let our cats, Charlotte and Paula Deen, become 'outdoor girls'. This is not without a little bit of angst, as we do like our cats, and allowing them a life of adventure and intrigue in the great outdoors may very well put them on the fast track to an early demise, but duty calls. There are mice to be annihilated.

And anyway, shouldn't they be allowed to live their little kitty lives to the fullest?

Yet it's a real possibility that a 'full' life may also end up being a shorter life. There are many perils for an unsuspecting kitty here on the farm, mostly in the form of vehicles both here on our yard, and speeding down our gravel road. And then, there's this...

When I look at this photo, I can't help but think it should be titled 'Death Becomes Her'.

Even though Burley has accepted Charlotte and Paula Deen as part of his pack when they are inside the confines of the house together, he is very conflicted when he sees them outside. He is conflicted because his usual m.o. is to kill any cats that have the misfortune of wandering onto our farm. Even though he knows he's not supposed to kill these cats, he can't help but stalk them intensely, no doubt hoping they will take off running, or lash out and scratch him, giving him an excuse to unleash his farm dog fury.

So right now we're maintaining a delicate balance, and it hasn't been without some strategic planning. Last night, the first time we let the cats out, we made sure to only have Burley loose, and put Henry in the kennel, because they're more likely to go into 'hunt' and 'kill' mode if they feed off one another's energy. We also let the cats out in the heat of the late afternoon, when Burley was feeling quite lethargic.

It worked out pretty well...

...although we're not out of the woods yet.

I'm not entirely convinced, however, that our cats are going to do their job. They seem to be in the same mindset as the goats when it comes to their farm duties. They spent most of their time laying under the truck...

On top of the truck...

And inside the truck...

I'm thinking about hiring a seeing-eye dog to come here and give our farm animals a motivational seminar on what it means to have a purpose in life.

Burley may be a bit aggressive in his approach, but at least he sets goals and achieves them.

So, that's what's going on with our cats these days.

And, speaking of letting the cat out of the bag...

I'm pregnant.

Have a nice day!

She Works Hard for the Money

Before I get started, there's a couple things you should know...

1. Last summer, we acquired a couple of goats.

    a. This gave me mild angina.

    b. Okay technically, it didn't give me angina, but I'm positive that if anything
        was going to give me angina, this would have been it.

    c. If you want to read about why I think being a new goat owner might've possibly
        pushed me to have heart issues early in life, read about it here.

2. Goats are actually quite entertaining and funny.

3. One of the reasons I decided to buy the goats is because they are known to eat weeds. One of the wonderful things about living in Minnesota is that we usually get ample rain, and things are lush and green during the warm season. However, this also means the weeds are lush and green as well.

So, with all that said, last night we decided to tie the goats out on the lawn and let them earn their keep by chowing down on our dandelion population.

This is what happened...

1. They spent at least one third of their time bellering at one another, because even though they could see one another clearly, they were like thirty feet apart, and this was a source of great distress.

2. They spent another third of their time nibbling on the lawn, and yes, the dandelions. As I watched them crunch the dandelion stems, I thought, "Yes! Success! They're eating them!"

3. One of them got loose and, in a glorious display of goat athleticism, made an impressive sprint for about twenty yards before she was apprehended.

4. After eating about seven dandelion stems each, they were full, and one of them actually just layed down and decided to take a nap. Then we got out the brushes and groomed her lovingly because she had worked so hard.

The whole experience has caused me to draw the following conclusions...

1. It would take an entire flock of goats -- numbering in the hundreds -- to eat all the weeds on our farm.

2. I wouldn't mind living the life of one of our goats.

3. I'm convinced that goats are proof of God's sense of humor.

4. Someone around here works hard for the money. It is not our goats.

Sorry for all the lists today. It was the only way I could lay out these complex thoughts of goat ownership.

 

After Much Deliberation

After much deliberation...

After researching...

After comparing...

After contrasting...

After hemming...

After hawing...

I did it.

I made a purchase.

(no, it's not a puppy)

(or a pony)

(or a chicken)

(or a kitten)

(or a goat)

(although I can see why you might jump to that conclusion)

Meet the newest member of our family...

The Nikon D7000.

Just excuse me for a moment while I trot off and sing, "Oh sweet and happy dayyyyyyyy!"

It's just a little bit awesome.

It's so awesome, I don't even fully understand how awesome it is, because I don't know how to operate all the bells and whistles yet.

But I know enough to know that I am very pleased with it. Long story short, after spending quite a bit of time researching which Nikon I wanted to purchase (the details of which I will post in my photography section sometime this week), I came to decide upon the D7000 dSLR. Despite coming to this decision, I was really dragging my feet about it, trying to convince myself that I could be happy with my old D70. Or at least trying to convince myself that I could wait a little longer. Or trying to convince myself that I possessed some shred of will power.

I like to pretend that I'm a patient, self-controlled person sometimes.

So I just kind of put a mental 'pin' in it, and went on about my bizniss. But as days and weeks went on, I kept on realizing how much I wasn't happy with my D70 anymore. It's been good to me, and I've been pretty hard on it, and I will probably keep it forever and ever, maybe even get it tuned up so it works a little better, but after pretending to be an amateur photographer for the last few years, it just wasn't doing the job anymore.

Did I say, "Long story short..."?

Scratch that.

You're getting the long version.

SO, mental 'pin' was inserted into the whole camera purchase idea, and then one Sunday a friend at church just happened to ask me what kind of camera I used. I told her, and she said that her son, who had purchased a D7000 last year, wanted to sell his.

You could've knocked me over with a feather.

So, long story short (I really mean it this time), I ended up purchasing it from him, and yesterday I got it up and running, and have been having a heckuva time playing around with it ever since.

It's springtime and I have a snazzy new camera. The photojournalism may be stepping up a bit around here.