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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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!

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.

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...

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...

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

Renovations are odd.

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.

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!!!

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.

Twas the Night Before Christmas

If I had a bottle of what my mama calls champy-champ in the house, I'd open it tonight.

Phew.

2012 has been a real humdinger and it is drawing to a close. 

I am very happy.

With what's happened and what I'm working on happening.

Now, without further ado...

Friday: we went to friends' Xmas party. I walked through the door to find Annaliese in this party dress, which she has NEVER before had occasion to wear out of the house, weeping because she broke her tiara. I pulled out my fancy gift-basket ribbon and made two blond braids and the tears magically dried.

 Caspian wanted to look special and handsome too. Which, as everything is all over the place these days, was a difficult proposition. We settled on daddy's red ski hat and Annaliese's reversable jacket turned to the brown-with-red-piping side that she never wears.

He charmed everybody. They were both very well behaved AND the only children at the party. We were there for nearly three hours and we all had fun.

Sneak shot of Annaliese's room. After removing the fake ceiling (and hundreds of staples), working on the walls (two coats of paint) and the floors (K. sanded; I did about five coats of tung oil and one of wax), the kids moved into their own rooms Saturday nights. It's a good thing. They're right across the hall from each other, with a tiny bathroom in between.

Today I went to work and Kagan baked cookies with the kids. 

When I got home, we put the cute gingerbread shapes into packages and signed them and wrapped ribbons around them and walked the mile into town and left them on friends' porches and doors and for a few who were home, handed them directly to them. We even sang Miss Dixie a carol. 

It was wonderful and we all enjoyed it but this crazy girl wasn't in a picture-taking mood.

Per our usual, we ate fondue tonight. Caspian passed out instanteously tonight and we are on the couch in front of a fire waiting on Annaliese to wind down so we can move in the big presents from the garage.

A note on present-buying: K. and I decided three years ago that every year, we would give our children something to wear, something to read, and something to play with, with a couple of smaller gifts to be from Santa in the stocking. 

We bought our children the presents we wanted to this year: a new bike with bell and training wheels, special-ordered from the hardware store on Main Street, for Annaliese; a beautiful easel that Kagan made fully stocked with Melissa and Doug art supplies from the children's bookstore on the Square; two hardcover books from the same bookstore; a hat from the local department store that's considered ritzy; a dress from the seamstress next door with an A on the chest; candy galore; a set of Melissa and Doug dolls, a doctor's kit, and a rocket that operates off of foot power for the stockings. 

I am enthused about all these presents and again, we bought what we wanted to with no consideration of price. 

The grand total? $300. 

I am very pleased with all of this and it feels sustainable in the best possible sense of the word. For us, for our kids, for our community. 

Ok. Preaching over. I dig the three-present thing though, and recommend it highly. It helps focus the field in a good way. Not my idea, but I'm glad we adopted it.

Tomorrow, we feat and open presents and hopefully, weather permitting, go on a long walk.

The day after, I bundle my cherubs into Boatie and head to Virginia. A two-day trip; we'll arrive Thursday night and wake to a Virginian Christmas with my mother and sister. We're all really excited. Staying for ten days!

K., on the other hand, is also very excited: that we will be out of his hair and he will be able to do what he will in peace and quiet.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

The Geese Are Getting Fat

Oh, so it's pictures you want????

Hah.

First, this kid:

Does she look dazzlingly enormous to anybody else? Every weekday morning except Monday, I hustle the kids into their clothes and through breakfast and into the car and down the drive and to the store and across the road and through the door and into the store so I can make coffee, set out jams, turn on cooler lights, unlock doors, etc. This takes about 15 minutes. Annaliese usually disappears to her desk behind the counter and emerges when it's time to dash to their respective schools at 7:50am with a sheet of printer paper covered in letters. This is homework. She gets a prize if she brings in homework. The other day she wrote out the alphabet, for funsies.

This is our future kitchen!!!!!

K. and I have a perfectly beautiful house 3/4 quarters of a mile from our farm. Do we think we should live in our empty beautiful house while attempting to work on things like below? No. Does this make any sense? No. Is it how we roll? Apparently.

This is our Christmas tree! Which has fallen over twice (once the cat, once the kids) and I really need to check the water level, self. 

It is NOT one of the beautiful fir trees the BTC sells because K likes to cut one down and in these here parts, they only have cedars. So we have a cedar. I love the lights.

This is my son. He is heart-breakingly sweet and very punchy and endlessly chatty. This morning he told me he loves me more than sunflowers. And then we started talking about sunflowers, and when I promised we'd plant a bunch this summer, his whole body spasmed in excitement. The reindeer bag is from today's Christmas party at his school, which he attends 8am-12pm. 

 Annaliese had her pre-school's party yesterday. She loves Miss Allison, far left, who is the Real Cindarella. Apparently. Her school runs 8am-11am and Annaliese adores it.

Sitting on the roof with my son. 

Kids and I went to my old garden (I MISS having a garden fiercely) to pick some old woody radishes for the rabbits.

I made the kids hug.

The booty-shaking, however, was all them.

The store is endlessly hectic. This week alone...

I got called in on my day off (AGAIN) because someone was sick. Someone else stole $200 from me. Same person stormed out and quit in a blaze of drama. Someone else sobbed behind the counter. Someone else started working for me. A produce cooler bit the dust. The special Christmas hams arrived, and are not what we thought they would be. I need my old weekend cook to work tomorrow, and then AFTER his shift is over, I have to fire him, because the NEW weekend cook is good to start Sunday (Merry Christmas, right??!). 

But I think I am learning to let it go more than I used to. I have fired people. People have quit. Equipment has failed. Customers have complained. The power has shut off. Employees have brought an amazingly diverse array of drama through the door as reasons not to work, to work, why they can only work x but not y. We have made mistakes. We have lost money. 

We're still here. So, I try to let it go, to go home and be with my family and stop anticipating whatever will go wrong next. 

Tonight, we're going to a Christmas party with good friends. Tomorrow, I'm finishing the kids' new rooms and I AM SO EXCITED. Sunday, we're baking cookies and K and I have a date (!!!) to go see the hobbit. Monday, I work until 3, then it's fondue and family time. Christmas, it's just us and it will be peaceful and happy and the store is closed so NO ONE CAN CALL ME. The day after Christmas, the kids and I pile in the car and drive north to see my mama and my sister and all my Virginian near and dear. 

Lots to be excited about, in other words. 

Peace and love to you and yours!