Sunday, November 29, 2009

One Local Turkey

We managed to get a local turkey from a nearby farm. The kids got to pet some big fluffy rabbits, feed some goats, and chase some poultry. Our turkey was (formerly) a Royal Palm, which I'd never encountered before. They're really beautiful birds.

We also had some potatoes from our garden. We were going to have sweet potatoes from our garden* as well, but the yield wasn't really enough to work with. I also used some carrots from our garden**. We forgot all about our home-canned cranberry sauce.

* By "from our garden" I mean "from our fill dirt pile where I stuck them when I couldn't find a better place."

** By "from our garden" I mean "from a giant plastic flower pot filled with sand, peat, and compost." I never, ever have luck with carrots in the ground. Probably because they're slow to germinate and I'm slow to weed. And I've always lived where there's heavy clay soil. But this year I decided on a whim to try the flower pot, and I'm really excited about the results. I did virtually no weeding or watering, and I got some baby carrots, but quite a few the length of my hand and as big around as a quarter.***

*** You know, you've got a smutty mind.

I'm thinking next year I'll plant carrots in 5 gallon buckets. I've heard that if you're storing carrots in a root cellar, you should keep them in sand. So after a frost or two (Eliot Coleman is right, they're sweeter if you don't harvest until after a frost), I can just pick up my buckets, move them to a sheltered area, and pull them as needed all winter. If any are left the next spring, I can just take them back outside and let them go to seed in their second year.

I'm really way to excited about this whole carrot thing.

Meanwhile, I've got other priorities to attend to, so I may not be posting much here for the next couple weeks.

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Saturday, November 21, 2009

So...

Let's see: Tomorrow morning at 8:30am, the painter arrives to take care of the soot marks on our awkward vaulted ceiling. We've got 11:30-1 blocked off for a house showing, and 1:30-3:00 blocked off for an open house. Monday to Wednesday, I'm working solo as most of our support staff will be taking the week off for Thanksgiving. Thursday through Sunday my mom's in town and staying with us. (Haven't seen her in a year and half, so that'll be nice.) That following Monday, it's back to work for a day, and possibly lunch with an old friend (who I haven't seen in 10 years!) The day after that, we start 10 straight days of service dog training, and back to work on Friday the 11th.

And so, in the blink of an eye, it'll be the middle of next month.

After that I can't recall. Hmmm.... late December, late December...

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Saturday, November 14, 2009

Breaking service dog news

Amelia's service dog is Bobo!


We'll all get to meet him on December 1st.





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Sunday, November 01, 2009

It's All Too Much, and other assorted chaos

A few quick items from Chez Green, Blue, Brown:

- Four out of five household members surveyed feel like dog doo. Fevers all around! Yay!

- Speaking of dog doo... 30 days until Amelia gets her service dog. We are officially getting excited at this point. We should find out who her dog will be in just a few short weeks, so stay tuned.

- Ten years of marriage. Lori says that means only 40 more to go until she can dump me.

- If you're ever getting ready to move and/or declutter, I recommend the book, It's All Too Much, by Peter Walsh. It's a literary classic, on par with the great works of - no wait. What I meant to say is it's got some very helpful ideas about how to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. And how to keep from getting right back into the same trap.

I can't really pull off a full book review because a fair bit of it wasn't relevant to me, but there are some recurring themes that I found helpful while cleaning out the basement, the garage, the barn, the closets, the cabinets, etc.

What's the point of keeping something for sentimental reasons if it's just going to sit in a box in the attic? Give it an honored place in your life, or get rid of it. The memories don't go away. And make sure you're making good memories TODAY too.

What good is a hobby if it's really just an ever-expanding blob of accessories, materials, and tools that's grown to the point of being discouraging rather than enjoyable? Give your hobby a finite amount of space, organize it, and forget about "someday" projects. If you fill the allotted space, then you can't bring in anything new without getting rid of something first.

If you're keeping something just because you spent "good" money on it, get rid of it. Instead of letting it gather dust, let somebody else get the good out of it. That money's never coming back anyway. It's long gone.

Stuff costs money. Stuff takes space, which also costs money. And a lot of stuff loses a good bit of value the moment you buy it. So if you're not actively using it or enjoying it, it's a triple-whammy financially. Throw in the psychological weight of just having it sit there, inert and unloved. (Then if you want to expand on the book's ideas, throw in the embodied energy, the resources consumed, the pollutants, etc...)

It's not what you own that determines your happiness. It's what you do with your time.

- I thought I had a couple more items for this post, but I've lost them now. I need to declutter my brain I guess....

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