Monday, December 30, 2013

The children are singing "Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat" and working to perfect a surprise for K and I in the kitchen. It seems to involve squeezing lemons and setting the table. I can't wait.

My week to stay home with the kids during Christmas break. Day One: every plan I made was derailed, and so the three of us spent the morning getting produce and the afternoon unpacking it.

They were champions. When we got home, I sat them down and told them so. Pride welled up in their eyes and they immediately set out to impress me more: unpack and put away the groceries, pick up the house, sweep the kitchen floor, and now, this.

Annaliese turns six on Monday. Caspian is four and a half. I am intensely proud of them both.

Just heard Annaliese tell Caspian, "Let's get Mama and Daddy." Report will ensue later.

Friday, November 22, 2013

It's pouring down rain and I am voluntarily driving to the big town north of here, though two of Boatie's windows will not roll up suddenly and mysteriously, which means I will have to drive the store van (and GET the store van).

There I shall drop off old clothes, meet with a bookstore lady about spring promotion etc, and pick up some produce.

Then I have an early lunch date at the store, even though I'm not working today (working a double tomorrow for an employee headed out of town) because Dixie's dishing up local turnip greens and I have never had them for real before.

The sickness that's been chasing me finally caught me and wrestled me to the ground. Went to a different doctor, got shot up with all the stuff I try not to take, and now feel human again. Big, big, big difference.

K's new project is amazing. He's made an enormous amount of progress in a single week, and it's fun watching him be excited to hit the door running. That being said, the balance is swinging again-- for instance, kids, Thanksgiving break, we both have to work, what gives? Guess we'll find out next week.

Next week, in fact, is going to be nuts. Monday, I have to pick up 20 local turkeys from an hour away and get them into our walk-in, while having both children and simultaneously getting interviewed by O magazine. (Uh huh). Tuesday, in between working like usual, I also have to appear in court (I WAS SERVED, Y'ALL, TO serve as a witness in a custody case of a former employee) and pick up Christmas trees. Wednesday is the day before Thanksgiving, meaning folks are going to be picking UP all those turkeys and also pies, cakes, and casseroles, the store closes early, and my mother and sister arrive (huzzah!).

I think Thursday is going to feel really, really good. Friday should be alright too. The store will be kind of half-way open: most people will be out of town, doing the black Friday thing, so we're going to restock, remake, and get decorated for Christmas. Set the trees up, bust out the gingerbread kits and extra goodies I've been squirreling away... I love Christmas at the store, with the smell of evergreen in the air.

So. How are the children?

The children.

The children are sometimes really wonderful and sometimes really awful. Caspian needs to take more naps but no one is at home to let him. Annaliese is ROCKING school but often has the world's worst, most adolescent tone in her voice, which we are working on, working on, working on. I've noticed they are happy to go to bed around 7 on these long dark nights and we are happy to let them.

These chilluns... it's a whole new ballgame these days.

Annaliese has this look a lot: grumpy, hiding a smile, sulky, pouty. Her daddy usually swoops her up and tickles her out of it.

Caspian is into Spiderman, as I think we all know now. His favorite chore at the store is carrying out empty boxes.

We're having a very lean Christmas this year: no storebought presents. Luckily for them, they are the only grandchildren on both sides and have three auntie/uncle sets who spoil them rotten... from us, they're getting built-in bookcases and boring stuff like that :) Annaliese's room is basically boxes set around the perimeter filled with junk that she is inordinately attached to (she's got the hoarder gene!) and she'll actually love it. When I asked them what they wanted for Christmas this year, they both looked up at me with their shining brown eyes and rosebud little mouths and I swear they lisped, "Whatevah Santa brings us, Mama."

Devious beasts!

Alright, time to vault out of pajamas and into the rain....

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Chicken Spaghetti



Caspian's at the store more lately. Sometimes, in the middle of the lunch rush, that means he's lounging in the front window, watching Spiderman on Netflix. Sometimes he's playing with other kids, going on trips to the bank and the Post office, making the ladies coffee (he knows how they take it, and sometimes, they tip him), occasionally actually helping me.

Annaliese does not care for her little brother's intrusion on what was before her space.

But she's never at the store lately, being a full-time student and whatnot.

It's been a tough week. I am sick, still sick. Kids are fractious. Weather is unpredictable. K. started a big project and it's night 2 of him coming home around 6, which, spoiled me, I am not accustomed to.

Here's to some ease and laughter heading our way shortly.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

I have 27 minutes to get everybody dressed (and awoken) and out the door but apparently, I'm going to write a blog instead.

Went to the doctor yesterday. Bronchitis/early pneumonia. Not like me.

-----------------

We have been in this house for a year now and when I look around, I am so very grateful that a year has passed. I am sitting at my desk in our sunroom, able to see the sun rising over the barn through the French doors, pictures on the wall and the floors clean and softly gleaming. Nothing like living in actual, un-fixable, disarray for months to make you relish order. At one point the kitchen was in one place and the stove in another. Piles of boards and sawdust separated them.

Alright. 25 minutes. Must go.

Monday, November 11, 2013

It is NWA%$CSS or something like that month. Write a novel in a month, or blog once a day for a month.

It may be the 11th but I think I shall get in on this action.... I miss blogging.

---------------

That being said, it's 6:45 in the morning and my baby girl just hollered for me to help her come get dressed.

The answer is YES. A sleepy Annaliese is a stinky-breathed, wild-haired wondrous thing that sometimes hugs.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Small Victories

Made sausage-kale-white bean stew for lunch. Gave the kids small bowls with cheese on top. Annaliese was trying to negotiate the amount she had to eat; I said, I don't want to hear one word about your food until your bowl is empty, and then you get a reward.

Silence.

Then, Mama look.

I look. she's holding up an empty bowl.

Great job, I say.

She grins. Then says, but I don't want to eat it ever again in my whole life. I hated it.


Friday, September 20, 2013

WRITTEN A FEW DAYS AGO

Summer is ending and the nights are cool. Tomatoes are gone. Apples are in. Pumpkins are here, though we still have mounds of bright green okra, late squash, muscadines. Pecans and chestnuts aren't here yet but butternut squashes are.

Tomorrow is my eight year anniversary.

We were children when we got married and we're probably still children. Maybe. Though we do take care of a whole lot, from bottle-fed calves to employees to children to buildings galore.

But. We were both very young. I especially was young.  I'd made very few decisions in my life at that point, let alone such a big one, but I'd been taught to think well. To idenitfy the proof was in the pudding. 

I am coming to think that the two main ingredients to a happy life are 1. luck-- there are circumstances a lot harder than others and 2. partner lottey. I won the lottery. K is not the perfect man I believed him to be when we married but he is absolutely irrevocably perfect for me. I make him laugh. He makes me happy. He's a good father, a superb husband, and under neat all the layers of responsability we have diligently applied one by one, my best friend and partner in crime.

Plus he has a wicked tan and strong muscles these days. I chose wisely :)

We have a babysitter booked and a twenty-five-year-old station wagon with a tank full of diesel. It all feels wide open. 

My boys, going fishing:


Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Posing

First, I would like to state that my daughter instructed  me to strike this pose. 

I don't know where she learned this pose: we do not have cable, and I kind of doubt the endless streaming of Backyardigans and Dinosaur Train have taught her this.

I guess at school?

Anyhow, when we got home from church, she grabbed my phone and told me how to stand. 



We went to the pool and I wanted to snap her picture. This is how she stood. I might be in trouble.


But then again, this girl is pure joy. She wants to be older, just like I did at her age. she has always wanted to do more and be more and that has been part of her personality since the day she was born, when she opened her eyes and lifted her head moments into the world.


Love this girl. 

Sunday, August 18, 2013

It was kind of a nutty week.

It started well enough: lovely Sunday, normal Monday and Tuesday, relaxing Wednesday, and then it went mad fast. K took all the doors off the house. my high school best friend dropped in for a visit (haven't seen her for....8 years?). I woke up Friday morning, went to work, and in the middle of a trailer full of watermelons being delivered, realized I was supposed to be in Jackson-- 2+ hours away-- for an award. (Made it for lunch. And the award.)

Saturday was work-- busy work-- and then the afternoon birthday party of a good friend in Oxford. I called K on my way home and said, "I'm done." He concurred. We managed to not fight from the depths of our exhaustion and woke up today feeling ourselves again.

Today was really nice. I made everybody crepes with fried apples for breakfast. We walked to church. Went to the country club for lunch, everyone cleaned their plates, and then we spent half the afternoon swimming. Came home and kerfluffled around until the evening, when we all ended up outside, kids hauling branches from the cut-down (diseased) maple tree, me cleaning porches, K weedwhacking.

Annaliese dressed herself for church. She ended up in a purple dress with a pink boa-like scarf her Grandmama knit her as a shawl. A purse, a necklace, and anklets above her sequined gold ballet flats. Girl had style. In the pew, she settled in, opened her purse, and removed her child's Bible. During the hymns, as K and I stood and sang, she and her brother stood and looked into her open Bible, held exactly as we held ours. It was pretty cute. During the children's time at the altar, Caspian, intrepid as ever, was the only child brave enough to step on a stool and check out the view from the pulpit. He had a lot of old ladies pat the top of his head for that.


The 125 pints of watermelon lemonade that had to be shipped to New York City. That was a week's ago crazy project.


 Waiting for the bus on Annaliese's first day of school. We followed in our car and walked her in-- for the first 4 days. She seems happy as a clam and it's been a very smooth start.



Pretty nuts that my baby goes to school now though.

Next year for this little man:


The pool continues to have been a GOOD idea for our family. We go often.

 But always in style.


Caspian has been helping me at the store lately. Not a lot, but it's a start. He bags green beans, prices items on the scale, and carries surprisingly heavy boxes for a little dude like a pro. Here he's taking a well-earned break. Fifteen minutes every four hours.



We hit up Main Street for an art show. It was a big night.


When I went to work early the following morning, the whole house was still asleep, and this wee little kindergartner had appeared in my bed in the wee hours. 



This week's starting out with a bang: a fairly prominent magazine editor is making the rounds of our small town tomorrow and coming to OUR house, which I am putting out of my mind. But at least the doors are back on.

Monday, August 05, 2013

Business notes

I have had a plethora of people in the last week tell me everything from I look like an adolescent Swiss milkmaid to I am doing a great job.

It's been odd, and weird, and really awesome.

Something has shifted in the last few months, and for the first time in my adult life, people are treating me like I am a success.

I am exactly the same person I always have been, but whatever.

I have also watched people start their own business ventures around me, and I can see that they think I've made it, and they're failing, and all I really want to say is-- we're pretty much in the same place. I'm just a few years ahead. People who have never run their own small businesses before, young or old, have no idea what it takes. It's like parenting. Simply indescribable to anyone who hasn't done it before.

And frankly, just like parenting, some people win and some people lose.

Also, just like parenting, it's not always clear at all times who is winning and who is losing, because there are a thousand moments in a day and the key is to win at the majority, the important ones, because you're going to lose a few. You can't bat a thousand in a row, to expand the metaphor.

It is not clear to me that we have won. It is clear that lately, more often than not, we have been winning.

It's fun.

Wednesday, July 31, 2013



Chloe's Mama is doing a favor for me today and so Chloe is spending the day at our house. She and Annaliese are double trouble, BFFs, all those things. Caspian is only occasionally the third wheel.

That being said, I don't see nap time in the near future so I am taking my own quiet chilled rest while they play some complicated game involving sand, water, and dogs. Outside, thankfully.


The house has many, many finishing touches yet to come but what's really beyond nice is that it is at this point, less than a year after we moved into an aesthetic hellhole covered in asbestos shingles, a house. Our house. The structure is done, it's just the wee things that will pull it all together left, and we're only 9 months in. I think in another 2 years, time enough for the landscaping we plan to do this fall to soften a  bit, it's going to be fabulous. I am really proud of us. We thought this house with its bizzarre floor plan might be a tear-down and instead, for relatively very little money, we've made it the house we've always wanted. It will be never be the American Gothic farmhouse I longed for, but the cedar siding will gray and I can see it being a very whimsical and romantic place in a few years.




Single parenting continues. We've had some fun times-- a lazy cool morning at the farmers' market (kids above), a pool party, family snuggle time, and fortunately for me, the girl I hired to nanny during the day has been a roaring success-- but we need K to come home. I need K to come home. Life is on pause until he does.

In the mean time, there's always the pool.

Caspian at Natalie's wedding took a bunch of pictures. He's got a true eye:



Isn't that hilarious? love that boy. And my uncle Mike too :).



I was surprised this year by how much fun it was to be at the cabin with my family. One room, a loft, K and I sleep on the screen-in porch, no real activity beyond tadpole hunting and a tree swing, but next year we're going to spend a solid week there as a four-some. It's a really lovely place. I was thinking about how the property taxes are kind of expensive, but then on the other hand, what else would I do with that money? I want my children to remember long days at the cabin their parents built with their own two hands, the freezing water, the bathtub you build a fire underneath. Rainy days playing charades and pictionary. The feeling of being completely away.

Now, some tired babies want to lay on the couch and watch a movie. More later.

Friday, July 26, 2013

It is four o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday and i feel a little bit like I've been run over by a truck. So apparently do my babies-- we got home and I put them to bed because that's all they could cope with and out like lights they went.

Vacation can kick your ass.

We landed on Wednesday, got home around 8, started the workday at 7:20am Thursday. Thank Heaven I had the sense to schedule myself a breather tomorrow because I know we couldn't make it to Sunday without some unstructured time.

Annaliese starts full-time, state-mandated school in less than two weeks. I *might* be freaking out. Just a little.

I am quickly speeding through the transition from harried mother of infants and toddlers to the veteran who tells those harried, very-much-annoyed parents to "savor every moment, it only lasts a little while"! The other day I found myself telling the parents of a difficult sleeper that well, Annaliese didn't reliably sleep through the night until she was around three, but you know, it's just a few years of feeling like you're about to lose your s$%& on a daily basis. No biggie. Between that and having to get to work so early that most days sleeping past dawn feels like a lie-in, I'm quickly becoming a super fun person.

Happy though. I love everything I am doing and don't want to change a thing.

Let's talk about my kids at this moment in time:

Amazing. Hilarious. Troopers. Getting pretty good at yes ma'ams and no sirs. They were so heart-achingly beautiful at K's sister's wedding, where they were much-feted flowergirl and ring-bearer.

A whole day of traveling: 2 2hour car rides, 2 2hour flights-- with not one tear, whine, or fight.

Caspian, vegetable and berry picker extraordinaire. Annaliese, ancient-memoried Annaliese, determined must-practice-swimming little girl who danced the night away up in Vermont and ducked behind someone else every time she saw me because she was afraid I'd make her go home. Until she was ready to go home. When she found me and sat on my lap and let me snuggle her like the baby she is, always, to me.

Love these chillens.

K., who seems to get sexier with every passing month, is still up in VT on his annual dad-cation, where he attempts to relax and does a lot of weedwhacking, so I am solo-parenting the last 2 weeks of summer. I can't wait for him to get home but I am trying not to focus on it. It's been a busy spring and summer, and I feel like ok, I've rested, we've played, now he's resting, then he can come home and we can together rock the frick outta this fall. Can't wait.
'
Chillun pictures:





Thursday, May 02, 2013

April 2013

This morning, I didn't have to go to work. First morning in a week. So I was downstairs with my children as they ate breakfast (like every morning) but today we had an extra half-hour. We pulled up my blog and looked at pictures of them as babies.

Remember Baby Annaliese? I barely do. I remember, but wow. I have to reach back through time and it seems like such a very long time ago.

And then there's Caspian: my crusty fat pimply little baby sure has gotten handsome in the last 3+ years.

Since we moved here in 2007, amazing things have happened. We've moved house three times now. We have two children, one of whom starts full-time school in the fall. I have a job now. (The store turned 3 yesterday :) ). K. doesn't have a job now (although he works all the damn time).

I find it immensely comforting to look back. Because sometimes I get a little overwhelmed with all that's to come, but on the other hand, look at everything that's happened. Amazing things. Unbelievable things. And K and I get to hold hands and go to sleep together through all of it.

So, to wind up this trip down nostalgia lane, I need to keep this blog going. Because so much is constantly happening that it's hard to remember it all. I want to look at these pages in 10 years and remember what it felt like in spring of 2013.

We had our cookbook photoshoot.

Dad and Eliza visited and it was really, really nice.

K. and I went to art gallery openings, music, and the Chamber of Commerce banquet.

The store made money.

The a/c of the tenants broke. A lot. There was a bad storm. The van caught on fire.

No one quit.

I cooked more breakfast last Saturday morning than we've ever done before.

The kids ran wild all over this farm. I came home last week to both of them nekkid, covered in jam, with Annaliese's right nipple colored green.

A chicken died.

The banty started laying.

I planted my tomatoes too early.

The runner beans budded out.

I rarely travel anymore. I rarely eat anywhere besides home or the store. I rarely shop. I see the same people often and travel the same route daily. It's a small life, in a small town, but it seems bigger than I ever dreamed life could be.



Friday, April 05, 2013

Yearning

I am all-fired up because I think I may have a solution for the grand meat shortage of 2012/2013 and I CAN'T WAIT until it's in the store. I am so BORED with all our current offerings and everything feels stale and same-y and unexciting and I want the farmers to be bringing me battered white buckets of still-wet squash and figs and shining bowls of blueberries and tomatoes and some hippie trying to sell me basil that smells up the store and sunflowers shedding golden pollen onto the cafe tables and WHERE IS EVERYTHING GAH THIS IS TAKING FOREVER.

Sorry but that's how loud it is in my head.

Dixie is going to change the store menu too but we have to wait until the blankety-blank frigging book photoshoot is over and that's FOREVER AWAY and I want all the spring/summer sexy in-store now.

It's been two months since anything changed, after all.

On the plus side, I turned in my revisions yesterday which means that the world again seems like a bright and open place. Even though I have to cook this weekend. Which isn't my favorite, at all. I had to learn and now Cora and I take turns. Most beautiful weekend of the spring and I'll be in a windowless kitchen flipping eggs. On the up side, without the book sucking my energy away like some horrendous tumor, I feel sprightly enough to commit to going out to a barn to listen to a legendary bluesman with the fam tonight and we're attending a rodeo tomorrow.

The kids are entertaining and strange and a trifle pent-up as there has been so much cold rain this week. We all are ready to go a hundred miles an hour, I think.

Look at him go:


Saw me down by the chicken house and came arunning. My baby boy. He seems to grow three inches every night these days.

So! Pork chops, bacon, grassfed beef patties, ribeyes, chicken sausage with feta and spinach, organic chicken nuggets... keep your fingers crossed!


Friday, March 29, 2013

Twas the Week Before Easter

I have been a bit tired and snappy lately. I have a head cold. I could use more than one day off at a time. I'd like to lie in bed for a couple of hours in perfect silence and then go for a walk without intense negotations.

That being said, it has been a wonderful week full of ALL KINDS of awesomeness.

Today, I stopped to take a pic of this: gotta love a golf cart with a license plate. Belongs to the King and Queen of our town, who were in for coffee at the store. 


I woke up extra early last week and took my first trip to the Amish farmers to check on the spring crop. It made me intensely happy.


Me and my girl hung out on m day off and she made us toast. Then we sat on the porch in spring sunshine and ate toast and pulled up our jeans to feel the sun on our legs and looked out past the barn while the dogs lay on the grass. I love her.


And this one: Oh, he breaks my heart in all good ways. I checked in with his teacher at school the other day about how he was oing and he received rave reviews. Smart as a whip and sweet as pie.Not to mention kind of stunningly handsome, no? 


K. would be stunningly handsome if he'd climb out of his stupid brown turtleneck that I hate. We went on a date last weekend and ate french fries and went to the movies and it was super fun.

All is well. We rented our house for a year-- the old one-- which is a good thing. Nice to feel like we're bringing interesting people to town. April promises to be very hectic, with a visit from my family, a four-day photoshoot for the book, and the commencement of produce season. We're going on a long weekend to Biloxi in mid-May as a family, and I can't wait.

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Yesterday

A LOT of supremely frustrating things happened yesterday. Shoes. Dog. Car. Deli slicer. Combinations there of.

But since it seems like I might perish if i hold my breath for a day free of frustrations, I am going to blog instead about the good things that happened.

First, I have made peace with the fact that Annaliese prefers to wear pink + dresses + smatterings of extra-girl as her daily wear and thus we are having fun getting her dressed in the mornings.

How cute is she, right? Couple that with her fondness for helping me check customers out and take sandwich orders and she is heart-breakingly adorable.



 We went stomping around the pastures yesterday, looking at the new spring grass popping up because K has cleared so much land with his bush hog, checking on the new trees we planted, and it. was. fun.

The daffodils the kids and I planted are UP and beautiful! Plus the first tulip bloomed. This is the one little flower bed that is actually ready for me to mess around with and i am cramming it full. Every spring I resolve to plant more bulbs. They are wildly satisfying.


Mississippi spring...

Monday, March 18, 2013

March

Typing this in the new kitchen. It is not FINISHED but it is so FAR removed from what it was that it feels wonderful. Fully functional, folks... dishes on shelves, pantry, fridge, hot water, the whole shebang.

Not surprisingly, we are all eating better, feeling more connected and less harried, and much happier. Imagine how it will be when there's more than 1 hideous wall-papered bathroom!

Nice times with these 'uns lately.


 Stunningly beautiful cabbages at the feed store, no?


Family walk, Annaliese-style. They picked flower-weeds and played floral delivery: leaving handfuls on neighbors' porches.

I like to think of folks opening their doors to a small mound of wilting weeds.



Now, if only I get the monkey that is book revisions off my back...

Monday, March 04, 2013

My husband is under the floor this chair is resting on, making loud noises, installing the radiant heating.

Renovations are odd.

Tuesday, February 26, 2013

La Vida

Slow day at the store and it feels kinda good to take a moment and bullshit with the kitchen ladies, check out the celebrity gossip, look UP once in awhile.

I am so happy. Knock on wood a thousand times, but it's true. I have just about everything I ever wanted and what's exhilerating that it IS what I really want. No getting something and thinking, oh, but that's not it. What I fear are the things that can't be seen coming: accident, illness.

So it feels brave to claim my happiness, because i know it could be taken away in a millisecond, but...

I am happy.

________

The boys got a hair cut today. Caspian looks cute as pie and K. looks hot as shit.

_________

Annaliese has had a ball at the store lately. She's with me an hour or so every day, and she takes orders alongside Cora, runs out silverware, busses tables, orders her own lunch, chops bell peppers, eats lunch with whomever strikes her fancy.

In general, K. and i have been trying to incorporate the store more into our family life... less a hands-off, mama's working zone and more, sure, come by, i might be busy but we can at least smile at each other. K's been eating lunch here lately (good thing, too, as he's lost over ten pounds out of nowhere these last few months) and the kids get plugged in once in awhile so he can chat with friends and neighbors and eat in peace.

Everybody thinks my kids are the bees' knees. They are the blissful recipients of community adoration. What a neat way to grow up, right? I hope they remember it fondly.

This is a certain gentleman who sold us propane last fall and fell hard for the kids. They have no real sense of who he is beyond another adult who comes by and beams at them.




-------------------------

K tore a barn down on Sunday (not ours) and says he can build my garden beds soon. I sure hope so. I have a bunch of seeds and springtime garden fever. Mucking around in the dirt is one of the more rewarding things I do. I planted some nasturtium seeds a couple weeks ago and the fact that seedlings are up is supremely exciting. If I manage to get a show of them before the hot weather strikes, I'll pretty much feel like the smartest person in the universe.

__________________

The kitchen, radiant heating, beadboard, brick arches, french doors, and all is close to being complete. This will feel really, really good, and I can't wait to post before and after shots. I have done absolutely none of the work, so the gratification will go to K, but like whoa y'all, it's going to be beautiful and make our lives so much more pleasant than the current set-up.

_________________________

So. Life. So far, I'm digging thirty.





Thursday, February 21, 2013

FEBRUARY

I keep thinking things will slow down and I will have a chance to catch my breath. Update my blog. Call some friends. Change the sheets. 

But not so much. Between this, and that, and the other thing, it's been pretty full-tilt boogie for me for months now.

Good things to be busy with though. Love, work, family. The essential three :)

This one:



He turned 32 earlier this week and for once, I think he wasn't completely miserable on his birthday. Maybe because we all assumed he would be? Maybe because the kids and I made him superlative cookies that actually tasted good? Who knows? All I do know is that in the midst of the renovations and the kids and the store and the busy, he and I are good. The foundation of my life and what makes everything else possible. I sure did get lucky with this guy.

And then there's this girl:



Five. She is sitting right next to me right now watching Caspar the Friendly Ghost (she also likes Woody the Woodpecker) and plotting world domination, or, her current obsession, a cell phone. So she can take pictures. She walks off with mine whenever I'm not looking and so my photo album is full of blurry pictures of the cat and strange videos.


This is her best friend right now. They go to the same pre-school, lives on Main Street, came into the store for a sandwich and the two of them disappeared behind the counter to read books peacefully together. Not that they can read yet. But they think they can. 


K. has been primary parenting lately.  He's doing a good job.


I like having outside dogs. 



Caspian is great. Three, but great. 

And now my sister called. 

More catching up to do!!!



Sunday, January 20, 2013

We have weathered the trips, the week of rain, the ice, the snow, the birthday party on a day where our friends trekked through sucking mud to come into our home, such as it was at that moment in the time. We are weathering the throes of January (worst month for small businesses), tenant issues, employee issues, Caspian's cold.

But it's sunny. It's Sunday. We all have new shoes. The amazingly small water heater that will provide an endless amount of hot water and serve as our radiant heating workhorse has arrived. There are two bottles of apple cider in the refrigerator.