I often wonder about the romantic history behind "xkcd"

It's always a bit on-target. I guess that it makes me laugh now is a good thing?


http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/together.png




http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/well.png

OK, that deviation from work just cost me ten minutes from lunch. :)

Making the homestead a home

Now that less-freezing weather has arrived, I dedicate myself to improving something on the house, yard, and farm each day. My hope is that I may have some time for relaxation when full summer rolls around. I'd love to have the house entirely painted by the end of June, for example. I also look forward to removing all of the "catch-alls" of junk. One of those "catch-alls" was a half-removed raised bed in the side yard.

Bear was an able assistant as I dug up the remaining dirt, pulled out flagstones from the garden wall in front of the house, and built myself a little patio and firepit. This removed the temptation of purchasing a commercial firepit and is a far better fit with the look of the house...and my wallet.






I'll let the grass creep in around the edges, but keep the design in the middle clear of weeds. The millstone was here when I moved in. The bricks I found by wandering around the farm with a sharp eye for cast-aside things. So there are a few more things that I was tripping over that now have a purpose.



There was a flowerbox kicking around on the porch--part of a gift from one of Mark's students one Christmas. It now also has a purpose in life.

A walk in the garden this morning, coffee cup in hand, revealed seedlings that pushed forth after yesterday's soaking rain. Today the sun is supposed to break free. Soon I'll be eating out of the garden!



Spring is good.

The sunshine cometh, and with it, a serious case of the sleepies

Is it only Wednesday? I keep hoping it's Thursday and that tomorrow is Friday. Alas, it's not to be. I am trudging along in a sort of fog. Three emails, wash dishes, pet a kitty. An email, fold some laundry, brew some tea. Two emails, check the cat food bowl on the porch...there's a dent in it. The orange cat has apparently visited and eaten his fill.

Two more emails...and Owlie is creeping up on a pen and plans to kill the wicked thing with one strike of his paw. But I goosed his butt and he levitated in alarm instead. Kitten cruelty...it's such fun.

More tea please.

Wood is stacked; compost tumbler is tumbling...

Ugh. I am tired.

Today it was sunny, and warmer, so after a long day at work (during which I made myself a heavy lunch of rice and veggies so I wouldn't be hungry for dinner, and wrestled with a temperamental computer) I dragged myself outdoors, stacked the very last of the wood (finally), put together the compost tumbler that has been sitting out in the bushes for two years, dumped the compost in it, took out the recycling, hauled cat litter out of the truck, dumped and refilled the house cat-boxes, planted the pansies in the window boxes on the barn, tucked in the kitties in the cat facility...and put some tea on while I answer more email for work.

Tuckered, tuckered, tuckered...

Now it's time to take Bear out to his run in the cat facility, with his low-cal food. He is SUCH a tub! He would eat every moment of the day if he could.

Living in the valley

It was a very chilly but very sunny drive home from a really great dinner with family in Greene (and yes, there is a family connection with the name of the village). I stopped by to visit Stephanie, Zuzu, and Jasper today in Endicott, so decided to take Rt 17C home instead of the highway, and then took the valley road to my house. Halsey Valley is around 15 miles long, winding north/south, and the prettiest place you can imagine. There are pockets of wealth and pockets of poverty--a snapshot of America from end to end. The creek that wanders through it makes me long for a plastic kayak or poke boat to explore.

Someday.

Post Note: Oh, good lord, Google Street View actually found its way down Halsey Valley Road last fall. At least they didn't do my side road. How creepy.

No more NY whining

In lower-central NY, we like to whine about our weather. But there is actually something good to be said for weather that is reasonably predictable and falls within a standard pattern. Around November, snow falls and stays, and somewhere around the end of April you can be (fairly) certain snow is over (but you shouldn't rule it out). If you are adventurous, you can try gardening in April and May, but if you don't want to deal with stress, you wait until June. You keep extra water on hand in case there is an ice storm in winter or a bad thunderstorm in summer, but these usually go unused. We get an occasional tornado, but usually our weather experts argue for weeks over whether it was a "real" tornado.

They don't argue over whether tornados are "real" in Arkansas. They know they are.

Since working in animal-shelter support, I've become very weather-aware, nationally, post-Katrina. And I've come to the conclusion that lower-central NYS is a pretty darned safe place to live. Yeah, ok, getting struck by lightning is no fun. But it's manageable, and it hit only my house. It didn't take out a bunch of neighbors. In my area, as long as you have snow tires, a snow shovel, some house fans for summer, and a good sense of humor, you are pretty much OK.

We do have some pretty nasty floods (and those occasional tornados) in my area. But -- on an individual basis -- it is possible to mitigate that by choosing a house out of the flood zone, and tucked in the one of the valleys where tornados seem less likely to strike.

But no huge wildfires like Texas and California. No wide-swath tornados. Hurricanes just bring us some heavy rain.

It's time I stopped whining about snow flurries in April, and appreciate the fact I'm a central-NYS lifer.

Life is chilly, but life is good

I could do without the 30F days, grey skies, and snow flurries, but nonetheless, spring is creeping in. I still have plenty of wood left, so the house is toasty, and the cats have not yet rebelled.



Cricket for some reason has been extra affectionate, to the point of asking to be lugged around the house (no big effort at 6lbs) and even sleeping with me. I'm not sure what's up with that.



Today was meat day...the day to go over to Matt's house and join the locals in picking up his locally-raised pork, straight from the butcher. Sausage, bacon, pork chops, hams, pork roasts, ribs...a year's worth of meat for around $190. The point of this is for the pork to be the only meat I eat, once a week, and then avoid restaurant and supermarket meat of unknown origin, and unknown animal care. I backslide periodically, so I guess it's time to renew my local eating vows.

To that end, I want to see vacuum-packed garden veggies filling my freezer at the conclusion of this summer as well. Last week when I was warm I cleaned out one raised bed in the garden above the house,and started veggies I'll eat as soon as they grow: lettuce, spinach, peas, etc. Then I'll start veggies I can freeze for at least the fall and first part of the winter. And then I'll start the flower gardens and community veggie garden below by the barn.

I put labels on the tiles Douglas made nine years ago, to use as garden markers.



The windows from the barn aren't big enough to cover the entire bed. I also need to bring the sides up higher; there's wood enough to do that.

I'm getting there.



It would help if it would warm up a bit. I hope to fire up the tiller this weekend.

I had some sausage left from last year, so I made sausage, potato, and veggie soup today, which served well for both lunch and dinner, along with nan bread and tomato-Gorgonzola spread. In the soup, I used three potatoes and two parsnips instead of all potatoes. I also added extra water and pulled out about two cups of broth to use for stock for the next batch of soup, before I added the milk. And I used the wand blender to puree part of the soup so it was heartier.

It's time to do more cooking out of the freezer and garden, instead of out of boxes.

Finally sorting photos after two decades

One of those things on the "always intend to do" list is/was "put photographs in albums." I'm cleaning out the upstairs so that I can rent it, and that is where boxes of photos, and my old college albums, reside. So I got three matching albums (hopefully I won't need more)and sat down with a pot of coffee to sort through them this morning.



I'm glad I didn't try to do this earlier. Things are going OK so far, but I finally did switch, just now, from coffee to wine as I deal with photos "pre-breakup"--travels, conferences, home fix-ups etc. that we did together. I have a small pile of "probably should not throw out now; will see if I want to throw out later" but there are a lot of "throw-out now" photos...primarily doubles of rescued cats over the years. Wedding photos, well, I'll keep a few of the nicest of those, especially of friends, and that's about it. I'll put those in the pile of "decide on later" and wrap them up well for storage.

It is amazing how much stuff we accumulate throughout our lives. I really thought I had whittled myself down to the bare essentials, but now that I'm thinking of renting and have to entirely clean out the upstairs, I've discovered more stuff I just plain need to get rid of. Incredible.

Post Note: Yup, I'm glad I waited. I find I am smiling and laughing more than cursing. It's not even bittersweet. You know, the last 25 years of my life (from college until now) were incredibly good. I am sorry that my husband was ultimately unhappy at the end. I am sorry that he didn't say something earlier so that we could have worked on it. I'm sorry I was not astute enough to see that what I took for patience was in fact unhappiness, and I'm sorry that I took for granted that he would be there until I sorted out the myriad commitments I was dealing with those last three years (job, sick father, cats, etc.) I hope I've learned something so that I am a better partner should there be a next time around with someone else.

I'm going to go ahead and put the wedding photos in the album rather than packing them away. It's really OK. I'm surprised.

It's too late to turn back the clock, but looking through these photos, there's not a lot I can regret. There was a lot of fun in the 18 years of our acquaintance, and even more accomplishments. And quite a crowd of friends.

April Fools!

Don't forget, as you post off to work, that today is that day when your friends and coworkers will tell you something astounding, you'll fall for it hook, line, and sinker, only to realize you've been had.

I tried to think of a gag I could play via blog, and I'm afraid my imagination fell short. Everything I could think of might have resulted in people sending me money...(if I posted a photo of scads of kittens dropped at my door, etc.) so I figured I'd just post this link to the 5 greatest pranks April Fool's pranks.

And just to prove even people who work from home get to enjoy April Fools Day despite the lack of physical coworkers, I got this from Cafe Press this morning: