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.

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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!

Yesterday K brought the kids into the college town 20 minutes away where I was sitting at a nursery, finishing up my weekly grocery deliveries (people come to a central location and pick 'em up) and left them with my so he could go eat dinner with some buddies from his office days.

Friday night! Me! The kids! In a different town!

We went to the dollar store and I gave them each five dollars and a basket so they could buy Christmas presents for folks.

The process of shopping for others as opposed to themselves was interesting to watch.

Caspian found the whole thing stressful; Annaliese found it invigorating.

Gender, much?

We then went to a sushi restaurant and ordered soup, scallops and mixed vegetables, fried rice, pan-fried dumplings, edamame, California and avocado rolls.

Oh. and SHirley Temples.

The rule was they had to try everything.

Caspian hated it all. He'd take a bite and shake his head mournfully. No, Mama, I don't like these beans anymore (even though he used to love them). In other words, he was being three. I didn't force the issue. He didn't even care for his shirley Temple.

Annaliese adored the dumplings and edamame and gave the scallops and fried rice a good whack too.

She wants to be a chef right now.

It was really fun.

We live a pretty quiet family life. Trips to the zoo or the weekly jaunt to the House of BBQ or church are adventures. The dollar store and sushi? Big damn deal.

It may be selfish of me, but I like that the kids are so excited about the out-of-the-ordinary jaunts.

They've been making their Christmas lists. We've already come a long way from last year's "Band-aids and a Spotting-scope": this year it's bikes (we got it! they are getting bikes!), toy kitchens (no.) princess dressed (she HAS those) and "something to eat" (guess who.)

Love these munchkins.

Caspian had a good time even if he didn't like anything.

Annaliese had a much better time than this picture might suggest.

Technology digression:

I do not like using the iPhone to take pictures, and yet, since i have one, I never hunt out the good camera for pictures. Which means I never take pictures. This should change, stat.

We sat down last night to a good dinner and I was looking across the table at Annaliese, who has had some sort of time-melting growth spurt lately and now seems, oh, about 18 instead of four, nearly five.

I made some comment to that effect and K said, "it's like you're here with us for the first time in awhile."

Yes.

That is true.

Very odd, because the book was relatively a minor pain in the ass, and yet something about doing it was more than the Big Deadline Dread that I remember from school. Basically, it filled me with dread and terror the entire time I was writing it, and now that I'm not, voila! Nothing externally has changed but internally, no dread and terror.

Good change.

Makes me wonder if I should ever write any more books.

In store news, we need to make more money/employees continue to be a gigantic pain in my rear/people SUCK right now, it's all sandwiches and Christmas trees and no grocery shopping, which isn't FUN for me, I like the grocery shoppers!

So basically, the same as usual. In hard facts, I am encouraged by the all-time high average sale in the store (Rose by over $2/person in November, thanks to turkeys and Christmas trees), the percentage of growth compared to last year (37%, one month to go), and the record-breaking lunch/week the store experienced last week.

Did you just fall asleep? My husband did.

In farm news, our vision is clearing. K is close to finishing the porches. I've been painting and refinishing the floors in the kids' rooms and hopefully they'll be sleeping in their new rooms Christmas Eve.

The kids play outside a lot more than they used to. Right now their favorite game is Chef: they prepare intricate and beautifully laid out meals on short pieces of board: dirt, carefully mounded; magnolia leaves; acorns; screws.

Last night we decorated our Christmas tree together.

I'm liking December.

It's December!

Sent my book into my editor this morning.

Trench Warfare

I haven't been my best lately. Not eating all that well; not sleeping deeply; not getting enough exercise; not being present enough with my family, let alone my friends. There are a lot of very legitimate reasons for that (moving-- into a house we plan to tear apart, so what's the point? the book, due in 3 weeks! endless technological and logistical store difficulties! a photographer in town to shadow my every move for five days!)

But suffice it to say K. and my friends and family and even myself have been cutting me a break lately. This is not the time to re-start my exercise regime, or make a lot of lists. This is the time to do the best I can, for now, until the book! deadline is past, until I have a spare unaccounted moment. Sometimes you gotta be in the trenches for awhile and now is that time for me.

Still. Having all these things and people that matter so very much is, on some level, exhilarating.

See ya in December.

A Very Pondering Post

Home from work and sitting on the porch letting the kids watch too much TV so I can drink some caff tea in peace.

It's a beautiful day.

I have, without a doubt, been spending entirely too much time inside lately, and so every time I am not inside my sense of smell comes alive and gets all happy.

I am wring out by the rollercoaster of the week-- per usual on Saturdays-- and so sitting on the porch is as active as I can manage. Maybe tomorrow I'l make it to the garden, or take the children on a hike, or something.

Maybe we'll go dig up little baby trees at the farm and plant them along the driveway, or wherever we want.

It's ours now.

As much as I love our bright and cheerful and airy house, I am severely tempted to move the necessities into the dark and old-lady and rather awful new house so we can begin settling there. It'll take forever. We're not even sure what we should do to fix the house, or if we should just build a new one, and so until that's clear in our heads, we'll just be puttering around, working on fields and the barn and whatever else strikes our fancy.

K's there now, lucky dog. On his tractor no doubt.

Despite the financial worries of the store (will they NEVER end???) and the lack of time to do anything besides work and child-mind, I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

When I was growing up, I worried about two things pretty incessantly:

if I could be happy. If I was fundamentally lazy.

I can be.

I am not.

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The children, ages 3 and 4:

-Annaliese slipping into our bed right after dawn. Caspian (recently) already there, pulling back the cover for her and tucking her in beside her and hugging her with his free arm.

-Annaliese, telling us that one of her friends is a cheerleader. That she wants to be a cheer leader. "I want to do everything," she says brightly. And means it.

-Caspian, starting a conversation on the produce run, strapped into his car seat in the passenger seat of the BTC van: "Do you like tigers and bears? I do."

-Caspian, during most of soccer, kicking the ball once every game and running off the field for a congratulatory hug. Not a competitive bone in his body. He did enjoy hugging his pretty coach, though.

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K., vibrating with impatience about this farm. He is like a coiled spring set loose. It's very gratifying, him taking over this ambition of mine, because i don't have enough hours in the day and I love it when he does projects I wish I could do.

I realized recently that we think of each other as such a team unit that it doesn't really matter who actually does what: it matters that it gets done. Maybe because we got married so young and basically grew up together? I don't know. But I like it. Not that we don't keep bitter score of domestic trivia-- unhelpful and unavoidable-- but in the big picture, it's us, checking off the master list of the things we think are worth doing.

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I turned 30 this year. It was my least fan-fared birthday and probably my happiest. I ate dinner with K and the kids on the porch, partook of a ridiculously wonderful applesauce 6-layer cake K made, got cards from my mom and my sister, opened a few presents.

I'm 30 now. It feels momentous, but in a good way; like when you begin something you've been anticipating, but you're ready, you're rested, you're prepared.

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Plans this weekend: eating fried chicken! With Dixie and K. Sleeping in. Working on the book. Being at the farm. Taking at least one solo walk. Cooking these fancy sausages i bought. Getting to the library on Monday. Welcoming Mom at some point for a visit.

Sounds good.

October

It is officially fall: first night heat on of the season, crisp days, red leaves, pumpkin soup at the BTC, the whole she-bang.

Today both of the kids left for the afternoon: Annaliese to a birthday party a fellow mama generously offered to take her to, and Caspian to a neighborhood park for a play-date with a sweet blondie whom he adores.

Annaliese heading off:

Playing with the boy until his date arrived:

K. and I seized the hour and went tromping through the woods at the farm. It's not quite in the bag yet: we're supposed to close next weekend, so there's still the ? in our minds if it's actually meant to be ours.

We hope so, though.

At one point, hiking up the stretch of wooded hill that comes with the meadows and the great arched oak trees and the old barn and everything else, I stopped and just breathed in. The smell of the woods in the fall. A smell I grew up with and now my kids will too.

That makes me very happy.

YaloWhat, YaloWho? YaloMe, YaloYou?

So, 2011. Didn't have a baby, start a business, renovate a building. 2012: more of the same, until now!

I have been on the fence a long time about where we live. Pretty much since we moved here. We've bought property, made friends, and started a business all with a caveat: for now. For now. For now.

Not forever.

Until now.

At least, forever for now.

Which is a big difference.

Last fall, I was done. One hundred percent ready to sell up and move North: somewhere where we wouldn't be so progressive. Somewhere we could just SHOP at a store like mine instead of trying to make one. Somewhere with cold water and snow and public schools that send kids onto national, 4-year, high-profile universities. 

Somewhere easier.

So we knocked on that door. K. sent out job applications. I sent out business-selling feelers. We looked for property. 

And nothing happened.

Except: the store swung up, sharply. Dixie came to work for me. The store hit the beginnings of a stride. The weather was flawless. We got a lot of publicity, the New York Times article, the book deal. The building began to make money. Our friends became our friends rather than our acquaintances.

And K. quit his job, spent the summer in New England and driving through the West with an eye for a better life somewhere else.

In the mean time, I was driving around Mississippi in my produce van, thinking about how much I've come to love this place. How this place is making room for me, with my different last name and my every-other-week church attendance and my wonderful crazy store on Main Street. How much I love the ease of our life in our small town, and the stretch of cotton fields, and the arched pecan trees, and the feeling I have that I can work here. 

I am running into a limit of language here. But in this town, I have the feeling that must possess pioneers and missionaries: that what I do matters HERE: more than it would elsewhere.

(As pretty much everybody can see, I really love what I do. I have had a few people tell me lately that they think it's wonderful, my job, because it's so good for the town. 

Well, that's not why I do it. I do what I do because I am good at it, because it matters somehow to me, because I can see the way things could be and I can make them so if I just work hard enough.

It's not materialistic (though I fervently plan to earn a small-town living from it), but it's entirely selfish at the same time. I do it for me. Not the town, or the farmers, or the environment, or the building, or anyone besides me.)

I was thinking, all summer, that it might be too late for me to move. That my roots have sunk down and now it would hurt to move. I like it here. A lot.

But I wasn't sure about K. He wasn't even HERE all summer. What if, to follow a dream of his, we had to move elsewhere?

I was afraid.

And then, the other day, I was behind my copper counter, and my phone rang. It was K. I answered. 

He said, "the farm is on the market."

My heart rose into my throat. I knew exactly what he was talking about: 20 acres of fields and woods within walking distance to Main Street. A piece of property we'd tried to buy when we first moved here. A piece of property that had always tugged on our hearts, though we'd put it pretty firmly out of mind when we renovated our house and moved here. But lately-- like in the last six months-- we'd begun to feel that we were done with this sweet house. That it had served its purpose: to shelter a family with a toddler and an infant and serve as a practice ground for our design and lifestyle ideas.

K. told me how much the sellers was asking. It was less than we'd hoped/feared. 

(Though the listing price is ALSO more than we're paying.)

So that launched a big conversation that we'd kind of danced around for awhile, so K. could get his bearings in this new world he's in.

I said, "I don't want to buy this place unless we're staying."

And K said, "it feels like the right thing to do." And, "we're staying." 

At least, until we're not. Things can always change. But right now, we're staying, which is a lot different than planning on leaving at some point in the not-distant future.

The money part is going to be tight. It's going to be a little crazy. But here's what it looks like we have:

Our dream farm, with a less than dreamy house on it.

Our current house, which we are listing for sale as soon as our contract is finalized on the farm.

And K: handy, amazing, get-it-done K, who is not tied to a 9-5 job right now.

Seems like it was meant to be.

Happy Sunday To Me

Yesterday was one of those Saturdays that I crawled home. K. met me at the front door with some miso. Put me to bed. I slept. I woke. We went on a walk (the kids were at a park, playing with a friend).  We lay on our backs and looked at the blue sky. We came home. He went off to install a bathtub (the never-ending landlord duties, but hey, our building makes money!) and I took the kids on another walk, downtown, for a pulled pork sandwich from DeDe and boiled peanuts (which the kids now love) and snocones and impromptu dancing at the crawfish joint.  We passed a wedding reception in the old Ford dealership on Main Street and the kids oohed and awed and pressed their faces against the glass. We threw our peanut shells on the street as we walked home in the dusk and the kids chattered and waved and played games and it all felt so effortless, so utterly unlike the morning.

Funny how a day can turn around.

Anniversary, belated :)

K. takes all the pics these days and so I have no pics of us on our anniversary night. He does, and he is in a truck heading towards Columbus right now to buy a bathtub.

Long story.

I married K. when I was 22. In many ways, I was not the person I am now; we shopped at Safeway and Trader Joe's and went to the farmers' market down the street all of once, for instance. I was painfully young.

That did not stop me from making a really good decision.

Happy Seventh, Baby! 60+ to go!