I am not a runner. I am not a runner. I am not a runner. I am not a runner. I must remind myself of this detail because I do things like sign up to "do" the Miner’s Mile, because it seems like the good community thing to do. And then the crazy people around me start running. And being a creature with a following nature (no comments, please), I start running. Big mistake. HUGE. I am not a runner. My niece came to my rescue though. She’s 6. She picked lucky me to "do" the Miner’s Mile with. So she started out (as did ALL the idiotsrunners people who signed up to "do" this event) at a full out sprint. I am not a runner. My niece made it part way through the park when her "ribs started hurting." Of course, being the sympathetic and responsible care-giver that I am, I slowed down. . . w a y down to help her ribs feel better. Much better. All the way better. For a long part of the walk. We’d signed up for the 5k, which, as I understand, is around 3.5 miles. I can do 3.5 miles on any given weekend with a low sweat-break factor. In 92 degree weather, the sweat-factor changes significantly. My niece kept the way slow pace (I ended up trying to bribe her to pick up her pace) for a long time – like 2 miles. Then after the water station I struggled to keep up again. Because she kept seeing people she needed to beat. How did I get so lucky? I’m just a steady plodder. Not a speed-marathon-sprinter / snail pace crawler / speed-demon-possessed ambitious competitor.
The Miner’s Mile is an annual Labor-day event that is a fund-raiser for our local little town sponsored by the community hospital. Great to see the town people out. Good to put our little town on the map for a healthy endeavor. Something to strive for. I will plan ahead of time to participate in this event next year. The kids and I will start training early. And have the right shoes. The right attitude would probably be a benifit as well. And my niece will be a year older, so she’ll be more mature and balanced in her approach to doing the mile. The 3.5 miles.
Here’s to short posts. It’s not like I don’t have a bunch to say, I just don’t have the time (this week) to say it. I’ll explain another time. Taking some much needed relax time, I was visiting some of my favorite blogs. Madge inspired (and educated) me about "Wordles". This crazy process analyzes a blog to find the most used words, and then compiles them in an art form. I had to further educate myself (with the help of Google) with regard to taking a screen shot. I’ve always wondered how people did that. Now I know how.
Here’s my wordle.
You can get your own Wordlehere. If you don’t have a blog, you can enter your own random writing and it will create something for you. Very cool. I find it rather interesting that "things" features so prominently. What is up with that? And Laundry? It’s lying all around my house, and there it lies in my wordle too. Obviously "computer" is a high-scorer. Have I blogged about that? It’s been a significant issue this week, but I have not had time to blog about it.
Anyway, that was a fun little venture. Thanks Madge.
Another wonderful escape this evening was inspired by Suzanne. I made her delicious Raspberry Clafouti. Man – is that ever good. It might have been even better had the berries been picked from a farm patch on a lazy, cool evening. But they weren’t. I picked them while on a mad dash through Sams on one of my trips to the big city this week. I’m glad I did though. The Clafouti is delicious (how does one pronounce "clafouti"? – if I write it often enough maybe it will show up on my wordle, along with the word "wordle")
Have a wonderful weekend. A long one at that. We have some new friends coming to town (they’re moving here – brave souls). So we’ll have a fun house-full for lunch tomorrow, along with the customary post-lunch hikewalkstroll outing.
Wow – this is so cool. I’ve seen things posted on people’s side-bars, but never questioned how they got there, or paid attention in any way beyond a casual observation. Today I was awarded one of these little deals – and it blows me away. My "dear" friend Louise awarded me with this:
That’s like a hug. Which means even more to me, because Louise doesn’t really hug. Well, we do – but only because it’s the "done thing." I probably push her to hug because it’s good for her Louise is good for me because she is logical, and grounded, and practical. All of that caught up in a Princess’s world (she has her own Prince Charming who does everything for her including ironing, shopping, taking notes, and making reservations). Louise is the one who pushed me over the edge and into the blogging world. Well, her and Amy. Amy had been working on me for over a year already. And Amy doesn’t hug either. Unless it’s required or expected. So I’m going to pass this hug on to her and give her the award that was so generously given to me. Check out Amy’s cool blog -she is amazingly creative, and has great stamping tutorials. If you’re not inspired to stamp with her work in front of you then . . . um. . . you don’t deserve to stamp. Now Amy, can you please put this cool award in my side-bar? On the opposite side from the links. Is that possible? Duh. Of course it is – you just have to do it, so I don’t hurt myself.
Is that a Southern word? Maybe one I learned from Jeff Foxworthy? I don’t know, and I’m too lazy to use the hot corners on Prince Farming’s computer to look it up.
When someone comes to me with discontent in their lives, where they’re feeling out of balance and on the edge, my Life Coach brain kicks in. One of the first questions that pops into my head is "What are you tolerating in your life?" Ponder that for a while. Your life/existence is framed by several different environments. If your environments aren’t supporting your values, you will feel discontent or downright unhappy.
I’ve been feeling fairly edgy for the past little bit. So I stopped myself this weekend to find out what I’m tolerating. This list might not be complete. But it’s a start. And what I’ve learned is that even changing small things around me that get under my skin improves how I feel. If my environment is a supportive one, then it frees me up to deal with deeper issues. Sometimes we’re not even aware of the things that annoy us – because we’ve allowed them for so long. Or tolerated them to the point that they’re just part of our existence. Stop. Think. Write. And clear away those things.
Here’s my list:
Squeaky basement door
Ill-fitting clothes
Dirty car
Unfolded laundry
Unfulfilling relationships
Landscaping (lack of)
Pile of mail
Ancient items on to-do list
Disorganized dresser drawers
Footprints on the floor
Limp-along computer
Poorly-defined systems
Shoes on the floor
Dirty mirrors
Loss of relationships/friends
Inconsistent practices
Some of these things can be handled in less than a day. I can WD-40 the basement door so I don’t have to hear it squeak. I need to take an afternoon and clear out my closet of all the clothes that just don’t fit well. I can wash my car (it doesn’t stay clean because of a long, dusty drive-way – so I might have to change that expectation). I can kick in my parental authority to get the laundry taken care of. Some things, like unfulfilling relationships, are a bit more tricky. People who are total energy drainers are people who need nurturing. So I have to find a balance between my Christian honor of nurturing them and my energy reserves. Establishing and honoring boundaries for myself can help here, but it might not solve the issue. Then I have to recognize that dealing with unfulfilling people might be part of a service project that I commit to. But only on a part time basis (for sanity’s sake). I can use a 10-minute time slot to deal with the mail. Same with dresser drawers. Footprints on the floor are a regular occurrence because of our lack of landscaping. I might have to tolerate that a bit longer until we can save enough money to do landscaping. Poorly defined systems means that I have to work harder than I should every time I do a routine thing because I rely on my memory to do stuff that I should write down. So I have to keep doing the research to enable me to do the same chore (advertising for my other job is what immediately pops into my mind – I should have a standard list of people I contact every time we advertise an event, so I can establish relationships with people and not have to explain who/what we are every time I make contact . . . this is a no-brainer that just hasn’t happened yet). Shoes on the floor – time for my parental authority to kick in again. Dirty mirrors – ditto. Loss of relationships/friends? That’s a harder one. Because all I have control over is my own self. I don’t get to choose for other people. So the friends I’ve had along the way who are no longer part of my life – I have to let them go. Sad. But true. Inconsistent practices – same as Poorly-defined processes. I lack the follow-through. But it’s just a matter of self-discipline. The point where the pain of not having something done smoothly is higher than the pain of doing things against a deadline is where that change will take place.
So there are several items on my list that would take next to NO time to cross off the list. And anything crossed off will be an improvement on my current existence. A step in the right direction.
Today I’m going to:
take care of my computer (at the genius bar)
work on an ancient to-do list item (start painting the rental house – will finish tomorrow)
get the kids to take care of the laundry & shoes
And to reward myself (other than having fewer things on my list) I’m going to have dinner with my wonderful friend (who is still in my life).
Let me know about your list – or, more importantly, the elimination of your list. Life should not be "tolerable". We have been promised an "Abundant Life"
I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows). John 10 : 10
Today I’m posting from Prince Farming’s computer. Why? Because 2 years ago, when I went to buy my computer, I asked for an Apple. But instead I got a lemon. I’m not kidding. We have been a Mac family for a long time now. I wasn’t an easy convert, but when our desk-top PC started showing incurable signs of age and wearing, Prince Farming (before he was a farmer) came home with an Apple (maybe a G3 tower). I can’t say I was jumping up and down – except for the fact that we had a new computer. So I learned the things that aren’t so intuitive about a Mac (dragging a disk to the trash to eject it. . . . why would you want to trash a totally good disk?).
Now, several years later, I’m on my 2nd Laptop - a Lemon one. When the Apple started dying (it wasn’t a terrible thing- probably misuse. The place where the electric thingy plugged in got a bent thingy so connection wasn’t being made. . . since that apparatus was part of the motherboard, it cost more to fix than to replace). So I got this new computer. Two years ago, I think. And it just didn’t really work well. Being super busy and not great on follow-through, I just limped along with it until something happened. I can’t remember what that something is, because I have a knack for not remembering details. All I know is that it had to spend a weekend at the Apple store where they replaced the hard drive. The whole thing. For free (well, under warranty). And now, I went from watching an Olympic segment one evening in bed, to an insomniac moment during the night – where all I got was a black screen. Then it improved. I got a blinking question mark inside a file-folder icon. So I found a bootable disk. When it booted up, I decided to just reload Leopard – the operating system (in the heat of the moment), but luckily that wasn’t an option. See – the destination drive never showed up – it couldn’t recognize ANY drive. I found my way to a "Disk Repair" option, which I immediately clicked on. And I got a lot of red writing (some kind of error messages that might well have said "your computer is fried" "We’re laughing at you for even trying this option" "What do you think we are, miracle workers?" "You have a snowball’s hope in hell" "There are not enough seconds in the year for this to be fixed"). I had to wait for the Pacific Coast people to wake up and show up to work. When I called them, they walked me through the same steps I’d stumbled through during the night. To no avail. They let me make an appointment with the Genius Bar. Isn’t that a great name? Except they’re not such geniuses as to be able to get the info off my non-backed-up hard drive. I’d have to commit some sort of crime in order for that to happen. CSI could get to my info. But not the Genius Bar geeks. Which you should be in mourning about with me. I realized that my biggest uh-oh in not being backed up are the pictures I’ve been saving to share on my blog. Everything else I can recreate or retrieve someplace else – since I WAS backed up at the time of my HD replacement.
So you’re wondering about the picture at the top of this post. I had to scroll through Prince Farming’s iPhoto Library. This is a shot he stopped for along the road to our house. Obviously in this area you see a lot of road kill. And litter. Someone just got creative with their findings. Hope you enjoy. Tomorrow I’ll go for my Genius Bar appointment. I’m bracing myself for yet another Hard Drive. But in the mean time I’m preparing my lawyer-type speech to begnagpleaddemand negotiate a whole new computer. An APPLE one.
One of the things I remember from my childhood is chickens. We had them (bantams) in at least 2 places where we lived. They were easy pets, and could be left on their own with occasional throwing out of a handful of food. We didn’t have them for eggs – just as lawn decorations, I think. So when we got the farm, I was certain I wanted chickens. But Prince Farming is a light sleeper, and he didn’t want a rooster. That was the one thing I did want – I mean, how quaint is it to be woken up in the morning by the crowing of a rooster. But that was not meant to be. Until recently. A nearby farmer had a rooster. He thought the rooster was lonely, so he brought over a hen. The hen laid eggs. The eggs hatched. Then all of a sudden he had a family of chickens, and he didn’t want them around his horses. One day I came home, and Prince Farming and our son were in the barn fixing up a place for this little family.
In this area there are wild dogs and other predators (racoons etc.) that make a chicken’s life slightly vulnerable. So we were quite skeptical about their longevity. Wild critters can get inside a chicken coop very easily. Based on the time we had and the resources immediately available, Prince Farming rigged a really nice little coop. Except not nice enough.
The next day the family was down by a few chicks. So it continued (despite renewed effort for their safety) until it was just one rooster and one chick. One day we went down to the barn to take some food and we heard the rooster, but couldn’t find him. Finally we looked up – and there he was in the rafter of the barn.
We also heard a chick (still really little – unable to fly) but couldn’t find the little guy ANYwhere. It was the craziest thing. Our daughter climbed up on some hay to look around – and she found the chick. It was sitting on the rooster’s back up on the rafters.
How totally cool is that? The only way for it to have gotten there would have been for it to climb on the rooster’s back before the rooster flew up. Because there was no hay anywhere close by where they could have done it in small steps. I just totally marvel at nature sometimes. I know hens are nurturing and will guard their chicks to the death, but this rooster took on the care of that chick and did it well. BTW – Our daughter took all these pictures – budding photographer that she is.
Anyway – the rooster does crow. People who take walks along the road have heard him. We don’t hear him from the house because the barn is down the hill and a small distance from here. That works for Prince Charming. But now he’s caught the chicken bug. The rooster is all that’s left, and he wants more. He brought home a catalog of all sorts of critters and the stuff one needs to keep them safe. So I’m sure there will be more chickens in our future. And they might even move up the hill to be closer to us – who knows? But these chickens will be our local egg delivery as well as pets – Prince Farming LOVES farm fresh eggs – brown ones with bright yellow yolks. Now THAT’S nutrition!
Can I just say that this took me by surprise? But it’s a wonderful thing. Check out todays date:
2008 2008
This doesn’t happen very often. Why have I not noticed it before? Or maybe I did – and I just don’t remember. There’s that little memory issue again. If you need the background on this post – check out this post.
Anyway – just wanted you to enjoy the moment. Of course. . . nevermind. I won’t talk about the clock this time.
To make this a bit more interesting to the non-number watchers, I thought I’d add a picture of one of the Gredemeer barns. This would be a great barn party place, if it weren’t full of hay. And chickens. Actually, just a rooster. More about that another time.
If you want to watch a side-splittingly funny movie, watch The Gods Must Be Crazy. It has to go down as one of my all-time favorite movies. Not quite as funny, but worth a watch is The Gods Must Be Crazy II. It is this 2nd movie that is the illustration of today’s entry.
It’s been a long time since I’ve actually watched this movie, and I have really bad short termlong term memory. So these details are recorded with creative license – all to just help make my point. I’ve been dealing with people this week. And have you MET people? Man – I’m telling you – sometimes I think that there must be something drastically wrong with me because I just get frustrated to NO END with people.
In The Gods Must Be Crazy II this dude is shipwrecked plane-wrecked in the middle of nowhere and has to hike out with whatever he has (not much). Along the way he encounters this Honey Badger who is persistent, tenacious, and unrelenting in persuit of – whatever. I think maybe the badger had a thing for the guy’s boot. The guy finally lets the badger attach itself to the boot and drags him along – just so he can keep moving. I can’t remember the resolution of the badger issue.
There’s this person who is trying to accomplish something noble and good. But there are several factors that need to be addressed prior to his purpose being accomplished. No one is trying to stand in his way. It just is a time-consuming process that needs to be gone through. Well, like the badger, he is NOT giving up. And he’s trying to speed up the process. I have tried to explain the process and the purpose of the process very patiently on multiple occassions. Each time he gets a different part of the message, then calls the various people involved in that part of the process to try to circumnavigate or expedite the things that need to occur. Which is all very brave and valiant and all. But it’s not going to change what has to happen. And so then these people call me trying to figure out why the system is being usurped. Which it is NOT. But I’m SICK TO DEATH of explaining it. I want to cover my eyes and ears and scream for 3 days. When my kids venture on this same path (not the screaming one – the coercive one), it doesn’t turn out well. They know better. My friendly warning for them to BACK OFF is to say "Your older sister used to try this" (implying that the older sister isn’t alive anymore because she made poor choices). I’d like to use that line on this guy – but I’d have to explain it, and that would just kill the entire illustration.
A person has to wonder why these things happen. Is it something I attract into my life? What am I supposed to learn from this so it doesn’t happen again. EVER. Or maybe, it’s because The Gods Must Be Crazy. I am their entertainment. Hmmm.
This was NOT the post I had planned. I actually had some nice pictures to share YESTERDAY but spent an entire age on the phone. Explaining. Again. and Again. And today I have to go to the big city for my cute car’s routine check-up/service. Maybe I can chill out in a book store somewhere and read a book about living far away, off the grid. Ahhh. I’ll set my blackberry to silent. Or off. Or I’ll just leave it at home. Oops.
This has been a detail long in coming – - so I can refer to my life in the terms I generally use. We live on a farm that borders the family farm. Prince Farming’s parents, sister, and one brother all live within sight (almost – depending on how many leaves are on the trees) of our farm. Because I have a high value around independence/autonomy, I wanted to be able to differentiate between here and there; between theirs and ours. So we created this name "Gredemeer". It is made up of the first 2 or 3 letters of each of our first names. We were just lucky that it worked. Some other families end up with names like "Ranch Joke" (for Randy, Charlotte, Jonathan and Kevin) which actually is fairly appropriate from my perspective because we’ve shared many great times and belly laughs together. During the building process (of our home), someone suggested we have a stone tablet set in with the bricks with our name. So we did. It makes me happy. I’d love to hear what title your family names create. Let me know in a comment.
Now I can move on to the "Critters" part. It’s hard to know where to start. . . so my sharing of the cows right now doesn’t make them the most important – just probably the shortest entry because I notice that my blog entries are veritible epistles, and I don’t want to take you away from your life (or other blog reading) for an inordinate amount of time. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about cows in another post. There have been several frustrating days that involve cows, but I’m certain they pale in comparison to the days I’ll use as "blog fodder" in the future.
Right now the cows are young. We got them near the beginning of the summer as yearlings (around 500 lbs). I only know these details because I over-heard a discussion about the cows. Once when I was picking up salt licks from the co-op, the lady behind the counter asked me what kind of cows we had. Because I’m such an expert on the topic, I told her we have black ones that go "moooo." She decided that she wasn’t in my same league to continue the discussion. Here are some pictures (the bottom two are from my kitchen window) of our cute little herd.
One day I hope to have a donkey wandering in the field with the cows. Local farmers tell me that donkeys are very good about keeping wild dogs away from the cows, which seems like a necessity to me. Prince Farming assures me that his dad has never needed the services of a donkey. But I think donkeys are cute. And necessary on a farm. I’ll just wait and see – maybe that will be my Christmas present. I wonder if a donkey would be in the same class as coal?
Louise is good for me because she is logical, and grounded, and practical. All of that caught up in a Princess’s world (she has her own Prince Charming who does everything for her including ironing, shopping, taking notes, and making reservations). Louise is the one who pushed me over the edge and into the blogging world. Well, her and Amy. Amy had been working on me for over a year already. And Amy doesn’t hug either. Unless it’s required or expected. So I’m going to pass this hug on to her and give her the award that was so generously given to me. Check out Amy’s 
