my dear readers

Fine, NO ONE COMMENT. I don't care at all. I ONLY work and SLAVE my fingers to the bone navigating my mentally ill computer and the new beta blogger to give Y'ALL REGULAR UPDATES and lots of SUPER pretty pictures.

if anyone has a farm for sale or some available cookies, you can call me. Otherwise, I'm sulking.

Saturday in Mississippi

While the lack of a farm seems to be killing us slowly, all other things proceed well. This weekend, we drove out to Pontotoc, Mississippi, where 14 Amish families, mostly young with a ton of kids, migrated from Ohio. Here are some pictures. I would have loved to catch a picture of the girls sitting on a bench, all in bonnets and blue dresses with smiles on their faces, but that felt a wee bit exploitive. I'm in love with the gourds hung for birdhouses. So stark and beautiful.

However, we now have Amish questions. Like, how come they don't have power but they do have generators to power machines? How on earth do you move from Ohio with buggies, children, and livestock these days? Did they get the tin for their roof delivered or do they pick it up in a wagon?

Any answers are appreciated.

the dern townhouse

So, for those of my family member who alternately wonder what we're living in or why they can't visit us until we find our farmhouse:

A townhouse, or as I call it, the dollhouse. Please make googly eyes at my new table and the be-utiful pink roses my husband brought home the day I was flying around making Italian food for dinner guests. Also note the uber-cool horse trailer in which we hauled our possessions down south.

In other news:

I've updated the links section. Check out bluepoppy and my best friend stinkie.

anyone know an agent?

Dear sweet Lord, I hope I get a book deal. Because I love love love not working.

Writing is work. Really. I can sit down and have words flowing out of my fingertips about unimportant things, but when it comes to writing a novel, writing is more like weaving in the damn dark. Lots of threads to keep track of and only the light of a solitary star to do it by.

BUT: I love having the time for my own projects. I love getting instant satisfaction and meeting people in the community with my freelancing for the newspaper (turning my 3rd piece in today) and I love having the time and the enrgy to pursue threads of things which intrigue me (historic preservation, anyone)? And I love working on my novel, because it is MINE and I'm doing it because I want to, unlike every single thing I ever did in a cubicle.

That being said, I can't continue to do this unless it becomes a viable career-- e.g. paid. The pittance I get from the newspaper and the relatively well-paid but mind-numbingly boring proofing jobs keep my self-respect hovering above groundlevel, but in the overall context of my life, I don't want to spend all day on something and not get paid for it. So book deal, I'm a'coming.

Just have to finish the novel first.

pictures

I was on the Square yesterday interviewing the manager of Madre's for a business profile I'm writing when the sun came out. The second picture, the uber-cute orangey building with an upstairs porch, is the world's greatest bookstore.

oh, and we live here.

Why you should get off of your east coast/west coast high horses and move to mississippi:

1. everything is cheaper.

2. you won't have to see people who don't love you because everyone's afraid to visit here.

3. there are opportunities to make a real difference in whatever cause you believe in.

4. shrimp and grits, barbecue, pecan pie, sweet potato casserole, fried catfish, sweet tea.

5. $40 a month membership to the swankiest gym in town, including all super-cool classes, free lockers, and free towels.

6. everyone goes to church. even the bourbon-swilling writers attend.

7. major history all over the place-- and yuppie coffeebars have arrived!

8. because at the sixteenth annual Guy Fawkes party of a British architect and his artist wife, you meet the owner of Big Truck Theater, where the cover's $5 for 4 hours of local music and the band performs on the bed of a fifties' flat-bed truck.

9. magnificent huge old live oaks and pecan trees. I LIVE IN A PLACE WITH PECAN TREES. HOW NEAT IS THAT.

10. because you smile to yourself whenever you count (one mississippi, two mississippi).

Christmas

Being the eldest child of an alcoholic and part of a huge clan of overly opinionated people as well as marrying a very definite personality has given me a rather distrubing ability to let other people make plans for me.

In the midst of a Christmas plans debate, I finally sat down and thought about what I wanted. And hence, an email. That's how my family now feuds. Through emails.

I think all families where people haven't thrown in the towel fight. Hopefully, it doesn't get too nasty. Hopefully, when it's just your opinion involved, you learn to keep your mouth shut. But there's something about people making decisions for me and assuming I'll go along that grates me, and hence I am standing up, beating my chest, and roaring out, no more!

Part of me yearns for the day when we won't have to drive or fly anywhere for Christmas-- for when the tables turn and our loved ones come to us. But the thought of a family-free Christmas day?

Despite everything, it stinks.

cry me a river

Everyone's been complaining about the last two posts because they were short.

Well, I got four words for you. "Cry me a river."

Mhmm (headwag).

Saying those magical four words reminds me of building the cabin. After few days of my nearly continuous complaints, my sweet husband developed a response. Think of a donkey, with that loud abrasive tone? Well, in that manner, he would say BOO HOO over my whining.

It always made me smile. Although the other day I told him that he had to stop telling me to shut my face in public, because while I understand that he says it in fun because he'd never actually want me to desist from talking, other people think he's abusive.

As I say to him, I'm akin to a shark. Talk or die.

Lexington

I love small towns. And Lexington, Virginia, right up in the Blue Ridge, is a real stunner. Go there sometime. There are old-fashioned inns from the 19th century right downtown, and if you don't go on Washington and Lee University's parents' weekend, you might even get a room.

A few pictures of Eliza, my mother, the president's house that Robert E. Lee built, and Lee Chapel, where R.E.L. is interred:

because we're southern, and oh so very gothic

i have left my newly beloved mississippi.

in nashville for the night, heading to lexington va to attend my sister's parents' weekend. pictures to follow... could include my entire nuclear family for the first time in years, since dad's out of jail and aparently attending.

it's good to be me.