Throwing a dinner party

I will absolutely sing to you
if you come to dinner.

I love having dinner parties.  I love hosting, making food for loved ones, having pseudo-structured-but-basically-hang-out-time, and inviting people I care about into my home. 

My favorite dinner party, which I have been doing for years and years now, is Passover.  I didn’t grow up with Passover, but when my dad married my step-mom, we started doing it.  It is now my favorite holiday.  There’s a big yummy dinner, there are songs and games, it’s interactive, god tells you to get drunk, and the basis of the holiday is the fight for freedom and against injustice.  It is everything I want in a holiday. 

I am step-Jewish, so it’s a little fast and loose at my house in terms of what we eat and when we actually have the Seder.  The hagguddah itself is basically a mix of things I found in other ones that I liked—I mean it’s mostly all there but if you’re super into the rules of it, this is not the Passover for you.  Also, and I don’t know if you knew this Reader, but I’m a pretty casual person.  That doesn’t mean it’s not a fancy dinner with tablecloths and flowers and all that, but the things I care about in these situations, by other people’s standards, may seem not to have the most rhyme or reason.

For example:

I know I am supposed to be the host but this is turning into a fully interactive experience with all guests being called on to support the whole.  See, I have a lot of trouble not inviting everyone to Passover.  I mean, surely there’s room, we’ll work it out, it’s fine.  I start with the assumption that 

How many people can fit in la guagua?  At least one more!
This is also true of my living room.

everyone is going to cancel anyway, and then sometimes (this time) they don’t, or do but then un-cancel, or unexpectedly have guests in town and can they come too?, and now I am having a BYO dishes and forks party.  There is a serious potential space issue happening in my house this weekend. 

  “Andy” can’t be here because he has a conference, and this is very sad but also then he doesn’t have to hyperventilate when I put all the living room furniture in the dining room and every table in the house plus 2 or 3 folding tables that friends are bringing (BYO-table and chairs too…) in the living room because it’s the only space large enough that we can all sit in.  So our fancy dinner party is going to be in the living room on folding chairs, patio furniture, and card tables…but we will totally have tablecloths. 

Homegrown carrot pictured here,
with Monster for scale.

I have these visions of crafting food out of base ingredients—like you can just make sour cream and that goes in kugel and how cool is that!   Why use the bullion cube when you can make homemade chicken stock for matzo ball soup? I grew carrots and spring onions in the garden; I am focusing on recipes that use the same.  

But also boxed wine.  I mean, lots of people are coming and you’re all supposed to have 4 glasses each, and lord knows we’re going to blow right by that little divine recommendation.  TJ’s makes a perfectly acceptable wine.  In a box.  That I will be serving.  Next to my home-grown hand crafted side dishes, served with mismatched spoons on mismatched plates but we will have fresh flowers on those tables that I made my guests bring!

Pick your battles is I guess what I am saying (loudly, and often, directly to my guests, who have so far chosen “the battle over not bringing five soup bowls is not worth the battle over suggesting paper plates,” which I have an almost pathological aversion to because: this is supposed to be a fancy dinner).

Additionally, because I make bad choices, I want to make a brisket.  Not the regular traditional Jewish brisket, which is probably traditional because once everyone sits down to seder, there’s like an hour and a half of Passover stuff before you actually eat.  So food that can be in the oven until you get to it is really ideal for this holiday.  

But I don't wanna.  I want to make a bbq smoked brisket.  People who know how to smoke things, especially a brisket, insert your sardonic laughter here.  I *don’t* know how to smoke things.  

Ima do it, though.

We have a grill, a simple dinky little not-proving-anyone’s-suburban-manhood grill, and rumor has it that can be used.  By “rumor” I mean “the internet”, which has informed me that smoking a brisket is some next level ish, a right of passage for any real man, will make common mortals into wizards and sages, and so on and so on.  So…yeah, def try that for the first time before 20 people come to your house and you’re hosting a massive, interactive event.  Perfect!

I'm the one at the top.  Obviously.                                                

At the end of the day, with the mismatched tables, tablecloths, plates, wine glasses (BYO that too), flowers stolen from the abandoned area next to the Dollar Tree or plucked out of the front yard to spruce up the place, and ample boxed wine, I get to do my favorite holiday event with a lot of wonderful people.  It’ll all be fine.  If we end up ordering pizza it’ll just be all the more memorable.  

Happy Spring everyone!!

 

Things that live in my house

"Andy"

I live with my boyf, let’s call him “Andy.”  

When we decided to move in together there was a bit of situation in that he is a human person who comes with cat allergies, and I am a human person that comes with cats, an obsessive devotion to the same, and presumably a cat-loving brain parasite that, I assume, should go on this list because all evidence suggests she lives here too.  Modern medicine can work miracles, it turns out, so the situation is resolved.  It was resolved thus: I am perfectly content surrounded by so many heartbeats I love, and he only sneezes and eye-bleeds sometimes, and takes a 24 hour pill 2x a day, and they’ve only 

Look at these precious monsters!!

destroyed some of his carpet.  So it’s all good!  Also his dog lives here, who is sweet and earnest and doesn’t understand why his whole life got turned upside down and he has to suffer through demeaning nose swats and he’s not supposed to chase anything smaller than him, but he’s trying real hard to be a Good Boy.   The cats are fine; they don’t care; they’re cats. 

This is probably real.  Source: the internet.

I also brought a love of hobbies with me, and recently those have involved bringing other things to life in the house.  Not heartbeats, but alive none the less. 

This started with kombucha.  Do you remember, Reader, that my farm-mates

Yum!!

 made kombucha, and it totally blew my mind?  I didn’t drink much of it but hey, seems fun!  If you know anything about making kombucha, you know that it requires a kombucha mother to turn boring old sweet tea into fizzy yum juice.  ("Andy": But I like sweet tea...) Theoretically these mothers can spontaneously occur—I mean, they must, right? Or how did this whole process start?—but you have to create a whole mood.  An ambiance.  An environment in which tiny random baby bacterriettes and yeastlings are more likely to stumble together into the loving arms of the luxurious pre-kombucha tea mix you have created, set up shop, and grow into a weird Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast that makes old tea delicious.  It’s like putting up a bat box—right box, right height, right season, then you just hope they find it. 

Except, again, the boyf lives here too and since we ostensibly share our spaces I thought setting up a enticing bacterial lounge club-slash-uterus might push the envelope a little so being a good live-in-girlfriend, I looked up other options.  They go like this:

• Buy one
• Get one from someone who has one
• Nope, we’re back to growing your own, but with a kombucha starter!

I’m too stubborn to do the first one and lack the hook up on the second one, so I went with the third.  I found some raw unfiltered kombucha and let it sit in its happy jar uterus, and fed it and loved it and sang it lullabies, and now there’s a slimy mama living under the sink in the upstairs bathroom where she’s nice and warm and “Andy” doesn’t have to look at her.

Behold the douchey-est t shirt.

Not that “Andy” doesn’t have plenty else to look at, because now I am also the proud mother of lactofermenting pickles, a kefir culture, a yogurt culture, sauerkraut, and (almost) a vinegar mother!

All of those lovely items have their own bacterial yeasty colonies, that are living and growing and making food into other, tangier food.  The difference, I have learned, between lactofermented pickles 

Fun fact:
Yeast looks like tiny kiwi fruits!

and the vinegar brined pickles of my previous life is that these suckers get yummy because they are 

(spoiler alert) fermenting.  That means there’s this whole process of life happening, where tiny bacterial locusts are swarming over all the veggies and eating the natural sugars or whatever and I don’t really understand the whole thing but it’s supposed to be healthier and also, dude, it’s alive.  In a jar, on my kitchen counter, just living its chill, smelly, pre-digestive life.  Pre-digestive both in the sense that this process pre-digests part of the food for you so you’re kiiiiiind of eating bacterial vomit, and also in the sense that this is the part of their lives before I eat them alive and digest them myself—making this their pre-digestive life.  Growing things in your kitchen is awesome.

I am most excited about the vinegar because YOU CAN JUST MAKE THAT and it blows my mind.  A couple of relevant points on this:  You can also just buy it and it cost about $0.99 a gallon and then you just take it home and use it.  Making it costs whatever apples cost, and takes like 2 months.  Plus it smells a little vomity right now.  Maybe I’m doing something wrong.  Point is, totally worth it.  When it gets going it gets a mother in it too, but it’s not the same as a kombucha mother—apparently they’re cousins or something.  Idk, google it.  I don’t have a mother yet but, Reader, you’ll be the first to know.

The kefir is new, I just got the seeds (I had to give in and order these because if I created the environment in which rotting milk becomes alive I would have to move out and I really do love “Andy”).  I don’t even know if I like Kefir, but I do know I’m about to start drinking a cup every day and I’m pretty jazzed. 

Other life in our house includes the seedlings under the grow light in the guest room/room where I hide things from  the boyf and the cats. Those are pretty contained, though, and they’ll go outside once this weather decides to quit being moody.  Also in the

One day Claire will write a memoir
about her many brushes with death
 and none of us will be heroes.

 guest room is a plant that I don’t know what she is.  She was apparently part of a Valentine’s bouquet that a friend of mine got, and when all the flowers were done and she went to throw them out, she noticed that this dramatic, vine-y thing had rooted in the water.  Far be it from her (or me) to murder something trying so hard to live—it’s in a vase in a window now, and growing leaves, and for all I know it’s invasive and poisonous but her name is Claire and I hope she lives forever.  However, if you are reading Claire, it would be helpful if you’d sprout enough for me to identify you so that I know where to put you to give you your best shot.  Reader, I am definitely the hero of this story.  

Life around-but-not-in our house includes the asshole dogs next door, the moths that swarm the back door and I occasionally feed to our cats, and the family of lizards who live under the door jamb to the patio.  They are hilarious, mostly because I swear they are chill AF as they sun themselves just outside the glass, casually shooting the bird at the cats and dog.  

(I am rooting for you, lizard friends, but the cats are rooting for you taking a left instead of a right in your door-jamb-house and them showing you a thing or two about the circle of life.)

It’s a full house over here.

I give nery one f*ck.

Transition to City Life

Well.

It's been mmmmmmmmm a long time since I did any blogging, and I don't live on a farm anymore (though Forever Farm will always live in my heart).  But I've been thinking about this blog thing for a while recently, and while my life isn't that exciting and my surroundings aren't as beautiful anymore, sure, why not, let's write some more.  I do things, some might call them ridiculous, potentially interesting things.  Besides, I think my readership is like 3 people (hey, sis!).  So with the boldness of obscurity, I'm back in the game.

I google-imaged "obscurity" and this is what came up and we are definitely using it.
I apologize, whoever actually owns this image, and also I think you are amazing. 

I EAT OPPRESSION.
I POOP FREEDOM.

The farm taught me a bunch of important lessons, like how to shave a pig, and that some people call mason jars "ball" jars (is this a Yankee thing? Or what?), and that bald eagles are sea birds but they will totally eat a chicken.  The most important thing the farm taught me, though, is that you can put things in your days that, at the end of the day, can make you happy of yourself and your choices and the time you spent on your trip around the sun. 

Also, sure, the true meaning of friendship.

The true meaning of friendship!

You're welcome.

FOR EXAMPLE, Reader, when making plans for your day or week, you can totally just create a scavenger hunt for your roommates that involves some next level clue hiding and puzzle solving.  Or you can decide today is the day you are making homemade magnets to shamelessly give to all your friends and loved ones because while you want to make them, no one actually wants to have 15 low-quality, weirdly-decorated, as-though-done-by-an-infant magnets, so let someone else cherish that mess (or throw it out, or whatever-- point is, you can still make them).  

Or create a complicated target course involving drawings of angry farm animals and overripe musk melons swinging from the trees.  This one is a little harder when not on 40 private acres surrounded by national forest, sure, but you get the idea!  Seize the day!  Do the thing! Go to bed a little proud of yourself!

Tiny Potato is also proud of you,

Having realized my agency, I'll still be the first to admit that sometimes, the exact thing I want to do is watch trash on my phone or scroll forever on facebook.  That's a choice too, and a perfectly acceptable one-- the point isn't that we should all be off doing marvelous things all the time (are you kidding me?  This is real life, people), it's that I realized you do get to choose, and started asking myself, well, what do I want to do?  

How I woke up this morning.

Sometimes (last night) that choice is watching my goal bedtime, and then my actual bedtime, and then my are-you-kidding-me-you're-too-old-for-this bedtime just sliiiiiiide by because I am mad at a book I don’t even like that much and I don’t want to surrender yet.  That moment of, "I really should blah blah blah" withering before the "NOPE I HAVE DECIDED AND WE ARE DOING THIS NOW DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO" of realizing you are the one steering the boat, and you’ll be tired but survive, and that is a trade off you get to make if you want to. 

Best thing I got out of Forever Farm.  Agency, and the realization that for all the things you cannot choose about life, there are things you can.  And making those choices makes me, at least, a little happier about my day and myself.  I mean I dropped everything and moved to a farm, so…I guess this is the lesson I was there to learn?

To me, you are perfect.....

We did do fun things, and then I came back, and then I got a regular job, and then life, with its sometimes abrupt and very hard hitting ups and downs, happened.  It’s easy in the rough and tumble wear and tear of every day life to decide that even deciding what you want to do takes too much effort, so can we just put Archer on.

The lesson is still there, though, and in the last year I’ve had the bandwidth to incorporate it a little more in my days.  I got some fabulous tiny monster friends.  We had a Goblin Ball.  I joined a gym (gigglesnort).  I make some weird stuff in my house.  I watched the first 5 seasons of Supernatural.  I do things, Reader, big things.

So here we are!  That’s where we fade back in on this adventure…let’s see where it goes.

I'm back!  Or still here!  Or whatever!

Geeking out as a fear response.

If I were bit by a radioactive spider on my farm, and turned into a me-version of Spider-Man, it would go like this:

In the absence of my need for
real glasses, I could totes rock
 fake hipster glasses like the Beebs.

I would get to personally live that cool scene where I suddenly realize I don’t need to wear contacts anymore.  This would be the BOMB.  I just picture me putting the contacts in, realizing everything got blurry, taking them out, and then strutting outside to look at actual leaves on trees, and identify people from more than 20 feet away, NOT run into things, and generally do things that I, in my non-super-powered life, could never do.

I would also never worry about how heavy eggplant is ever again.  Reader, eggplant is HEAVY.  You fill a basket up and then you look at how far it has to go to reach the cart, and you realize filling a basket up was the dumbest thing you ever did.  This would no longer be an issue.  

If I could do this I would.

Not only does Spider-Man have super strength, but he’s also way flexible—so none of that lower back pain that results in all kinds of made up yoga contortions while picking peppers.  Never again!

In fact, the whole nature of the harvest would be dramatically changed.  Instead of going out and picking everything, I could just shoot it with my way-cool wrist webbing.  A quick jerk, and then all veggies would come to me where I would be reclining comfortably at the end of the row.

My Spidey-Sense tells me that these cows

are a bunch of jerks, hanging out in the

chicken pen, feasting on chicken feed.

Again.

Or maybe on top of the pole barn.  As a Me-Spider-Man, I would have the uncanny ability to climb and stick to all kinds of surfaces.  From my perch on top of the pole barn, I could also watch out for escapee cows and sheep.  

That is, ALL cows and sheep. 

I see it looking more
 like this.

For that matter, through industrious use of super strong webbing, I could just create fences that they can’t get out of.  Other non-super-hero farmers have come up with their own solutions to this problem, but we scoff at those systems on my farm.  Spidey-webbing it is.

Collecting eggs would also be quick and easy in the same way as the veggie harvest—though it would undermine the bonds of trust I am trying to develop with the hens.   I would have to use a gentle touch.  Reader, you know me.  Gentle?  With the comic book equivalent of a power tool?  Hm.

The mosquitoes would never be a bother again, as I would have a sweet costume including mask and gloves that would be totally mosquito proof.  Even if I took a day off from my rocking secret identity, I would have all that hyped up metabolism and imperviousness to drugs, toxins, and venom that would make their bites a total nonissue.

C'mon, Bro, I'll make you dinner.

I am a humanitarian by nature, though, so for the benefit of my fellow farm hands I’d probably just call my buddy the Batman and have him and his peeps come eat all the bloody demon spawn.

There’s probably a really developed seedy underground in my sleepy town that I could eradicate in my free time, too.

All this was going through my head today in the sweet potato fields when we ran into the Black Widows.  Who live there.  Where we were.  For hours.  Digging up their homes and basically doing things that, if I were an arachnid, I might have strong opinions on.

I am totally going to be a super hero.

Animal Farm

Ohhhhh my gosh, so we have started taking care of the animals....

Animals = deliciousness

Ok so: the farm has 10 acres of organic vegetable production, and we also keep pigs, chickens, and sheep.  Traditionally, the interns have only been associated with the veggie side of the farm, but in the last two weeks, we have started to handle all the livestock chores as well.  This means that every morning someone has to go feed, water, and generally check on the critters, every afternoon we collect eggs, and somewhere in there we move fencing around so that the animals are on fresh grass.

Farm Vision: Creatures!

A few notes on the basic infrastructural of the farm: The livestock were brought in at the get go because of the owner's vision of having a commercially viable small scale animal and produce farm.  Having said that, there were no fenced paddocks or irrigation systems in place for animals.  There's plenty of land, however, so with traditional visionary zeal, the farm decided to just do it and figure it out as they went.

(The fact that I live on the farm right now demonstrates that I am also susceptible to visionary zeal, and just-do-it decision making.  Nike, if you are reading, you should probably hire me.)

We drag the big water tank around on a trailer,
and put a hose into a teeny tiny water pump,
into another hose, into the smaller tank
with the chickens or pigs or whatever.
This is Dumb. 

So in place of pipes and faucets, we have water tanks that take 45 minutes to fill and 45 minutes to empty.  In place of wood-and-nail fencing, we have wires attached to rebar and hooked up to a car battery, and these funny bendy waist high nets made out of soccer netting and good intentions.  They work...ok.

Rouge chicken escapes tiny, bendy, cloth fence.
Story at 11: How Did The Fence Go Wrong?!

Then we got cows, who laugh at our pithy fencing and go where they darn well please.

Well, the cows are moving off the farm and we are actually in process of setting up real irrigation and fencing, but in the mean time, let me tell you what I have learned about farm creatures:

1. Cows are greedy bastards.
Just look at this!  Stealing all the chicken feed, upsetting the hens...Not sorry at all!  Whoever coined the phrase "placid as a cow" never worked on a farm with crappy infrastructure.

Do not assault me!

2. Pigs are the most adorable creatures ever.
When you pull up in the truck they race each other across their pens to come say hi.  They get in wrestling matches.  Like, 2 boy pigs go at it shoulder to shoulder while the next two watch and cheer them on.  And, true story, they sound just like the pigs in Angry Birds. (Side note: pigs don't seem to be into raiding other livestock pens like the dastardly cows, but they do eat eggs.  Ahh, Angry Birds, you must have a maverick research and due diligence team!)   They are also huge, and curious, and playful.  Like, if you drop something on the ground they will take it and back away like a dog begging to be chased.  One girl was refilling the water trough and a pig pulled her pants down.

So maybe playful with an edge of "sex offender," but I think it was all in good fun.

3. I am the chicken whisperer.
Thiiiiiiiiis might not be entirely true, but I was very proud of myself when I went to close the chicken roosts up tonight and coaxed all the hens out of their warm comfy nests.  We keep the roosts closed at night to deter them from pooping all over their eggs, and open them first thing in the morning to encourage laying.  They are not entirely 100% keen on this plan, but they also have brains the size of a pea, so we're not super worried.

The roosts are in movable trailers that we
 spent an hour hitching to the truck
 and dragging 15 feet this morning,
 so that the chickens don't have to live
 in their poop and get sick and die.
We're pretty much doctors.

The roosts are wacky because there are about 60 or 80 for about 250 birds, and each day certain roosts will just be empty and others will have 5-10 eggs in them.  I sort of feel like they're equivalent to public rest rooms, but the birds are pooping out eggs (which I then collect and, as often as possible, eat...so, yeah, I get that it's gross logic, Reader.  I know.).  So they're not really like public restrooms, they're like public birthing rooms.  And the chickens go for the ones with the heaviest traffic.  (Also gross- you're welcome, Reader).

BECAUSE I AM THE ROOSTER!!!

We have one rooster for all these fine ladies.  He thinks he's a big deal both because, as a rooster, that's just in his nature, and also because he has a harem bigger than a sultan.

The pecking order really exists and there are some beat up looking chickens, but I guess that's the natural order or something.  I don't think any of my anti-bullying curriculum would work.

Speaking of "pecking order," all kinds of phrases I've heard my whole life take on a whole new meaning on the farm.  Like calling someone a chicken no longer means they're a coward, but it might mean they're reeeeeally dumb.  The birds barely get out of the way of the car, and they tend to just hunker down when scared, or try and crawl in a hole, or cluck.  On the other hand, saying a group of talkative, gossipy, perhaps naggy women is like a gaggle of hens is spot on.  You gotta coax them out of the roost, gentle as can be, but then they sit around for 10 minutes telling each other, "Did you see what just happened?! She just MOVED me-- I can't believe it!  Who raised her? Did you SEE what she did?!?"

We also have teeny tiny baby adorable
 chickens (that one day we will batter and
 fry and they will be DELICIOUS!)

One did get a little "mother hen and her chicks" with me when I was getting her out of the roost, and tried to peck me.  It was mostly hilarious.  She went in for like, 4 or 5 solid pecks, and even grabbed my sleeve and tried to worry it like a dog, and none of it was painful or effective in the slightest.  Turns out, little lady, you're a chicken-- not exactly nature's perfect killing machine.

*I* am nature's perfect killing machine.

4. Caterpillars are gross.
Ok, caterpillars, aren't gross, but caterpillar infestations where I'm in charge of killing them all ARE gross.  You just reach out and squish them, and they POP (Gross!) and SPRAY THEIR GROSS INNARDS ALL OVER EVERYTHING.  I did a little research on insect blood and why it's green, something to do with chlorophyll, and I don't care at all, it's disgusting.  One or two, fine, but the other day I had to go into the tomato tunnel and it was like the Killing Fields.

This is what I am up against.

There are a variety of caterpillars in residence on our tomatoes, each bigger and grosser than the next, but one in particular is worth mentioning.  He was longer and thicker than any finger on my body, and had a vicious looking spike on his butt.  He looked like he was going to make a cocoon and a hawk was going to come out.  I had to wrestle him to the ground and curb stomp him and when he went POP I decided I was done for the day and was heading home.
G. R. O. S. S.

5. Sheep...?
 I don't really have anything to say about the sheep yet, except that they all stick together and when they run around and jump over things in herds it really looks like counting sheep to go to sleep.

That's all for me, I have to go wash animal off of me.  Bye, Reader!

Country Living

This...looks nothing like my farm.

Ahhh, the peaceful allure of country living.  I am in an edenic haven, nestled in a peaceful sanctuary, surrounded by a whole bunch of nothing.  Just to be clear, I mean…NOTHING.  Well, Mosquitoes.  Occasional alligators, sure.  Um…there’s a Dollar General.  That’s about it.

So, as a born and bred city girl, let me tell you a thing or two about country life:

This is exactly how I feel after about 9 pm,
 and  between 6 am and my second cup of coffee

1. Country people go to sleep at dusk because there is nothing else to do.  Ok, yes, sure, possibly also because they (by which I mean *I*) get up at 6 am to drink a ton of coffee and eat some delicious farm fresh eggs in the attempts to fortify myself for a long hot day of manual labor.  

Don’t get me wrong, it’s wonderful work, but this ain’t no office job and my soft city behind needs all the help I can get.  After a day on the farm it’s not like I’m dying to burn the midnight oil. 

Having said that, there is no midnight oil.  If midnight still exists, I wouldn’t know anything about it.  If there is oil associated with it, well, they’re fresh out at Dollar General.  Reader, don’t make fun of my Dol Gen—we’ll be getting to that in a moment and you’ll see I might take offense.

 To contend with the abundance of nothing, you come up with some pretty impressive hobbies (For additional research, please see the post: Things My Roommates Do).  Now, I always thought, based on a strong personal background in bad movies and city-held stereotypes, that country folk were up on the weekends tipping cows and maybe setting things on fire.  If this is true, I have not yet been introduced to it (more information below).  Given the complete lack of anything to do, here are my impressive new hobbies:

Q: How many sweeps does it take
to constitute a clean swept floor?
A: At least one more.

·         Cleaning:  Anyone reading this who happens to be related to me will not believe this, but it’s true.  It’s obsessive.  Everything is always covered with dirt, and everyone else here has lost heart—but I have found a string mop and a burning passion to clean.

·         Bringing about the end of Mosquitoes:  Ok, I know we’ve talked about this, but you really don’t know how bad it is—no one does, til you’re out in the midst of them and you feel a panic attack coming on and maybe you want to vomit.  It’s that bad.  Anyway, I have spent some time researching this new hobby, with very disappointing results I might add.  (Thanks, internet. Webpage 1:How to kill mosquitoes: Birds! <click on link> Webpage 2: Birds eat insects.  Lots of birds eat insects.  They eat all kinds of insects.  Yep, they sure do!  Just bunches of them.  We love birds!  Birds are great!”  Fat lot of help that does me; I don’t want general insect eaters that go for any poor shmuck with wings (including my precious dragonflies), I want trained kill birds that only thirst for things that thirst for me. None to be found.)

·         Building furniture:  I had some help with this, and it was actually quite fun—and now we have a coffee table.  And given that my thunder thighs have fallen through one porch chair already, this looks like a skill I should hone.

·         Paper Mache:  We made a piñata shaped like an eggplant!

This show is the bomb.

·         Hulu.com:  Of course we don’t have a TV in the house, because the house is filled with the types of people that move to organic farms and make their own bread.  Myself included, as it turns out.  I can confirm: we don’t own televisions.  Ahhh, but we have laptops… I used to read, and now I’m too tired.  At 32 years of age, I have finally discovered the stupid-box.

That’s all I got so far, but I’m looking into a sewing machine.  Reader, send me hobby suggestions.  Really.  Please.  Please…..

Please.

    2. The Dollar General is the best store ever.  All you people who hate on WalMart but shop at Target, or who have your favorite little corner stores in your quaint neighborhood filled with cute, unique shops, or who, I don’t know, build your own brooms or make your own shoes or something: shove off.  Dollar General wins.

First of all, it’s cheap.  You might have already known this; it’s not called Bank Roll General.

Second of all, they carry Windex, Comet, and Pine Sol.  Remember how I said I’m into cleaning?  Well, I’m also a cleaning snob—I have my brands, and nothing else will do.  Please direct any questions about that point to my mother, or, if she’s unavailable, my sister.  

Finally, there is literally nothing else for 20 miles north or 30 miles south, so if I need toilet paper or a Kit Kat or a string mop at 8:30 at night, I can roll into town, and get it done.
       

     3. Country people are different from not-country people.

Those are VHS cassettes.
In the Gas/Hardware store.
For rent.
I could not make this stuff up....

So, across the street from my beloved Dol Gen, there is a gas station.  It’s at the flashing light that represents my entire town, so you can’t miss it.  Now, this is more than just your average gas station: this one comes equipped with an entire hardware store attached, where clearly nothing has been restocked since the McCarthy Era except the Honey Buns.

However, they have a better selection of cheap beer than Dol Gen (WHAT, you say?  Oh yes—cheap beer and about 10 brands of SUPER sweet wine are available for purchase at Dollar General.  This includes Manischewitz, which sort of balances out the fact that they already have Christmas decorations for sale.) and if you are, say, building a coffee table, the hardware-gas station represents a necessary if unfulfilling stop.

I head on in there the other day and discover two things: First of all, a line.  A line? Because so many other people are also building coffee tables and cannot wait to also be disappointed in the array of finishes and sealants available?  Apparently yes.

Second of all, I got the down-up-eye-roll-look-away look from at least three different people when I walked in. Reader, I want you to imagine the look that city girls start taking their earrings out over.  I want you to picture the look that the kids where I used to work would have interpreted instantly as, “Oh, it’s about to get REAL.”  From three separate, diverse people.

This is not what I looked like.

This is also not what I looked like.

I mean, it’s not like I came straight off the farm and was covered in mud and mosquito carcasses, and it’s also not like I was rocking Prada and Red Bottoms or hollering into my phone about my GTL regime.  Just a girl in jeans and a tee shirt trying to buy some basics from one of the only two stores in a 50 mile radius.

Then the guy behind the counter called the guy in front of me by name and asked him what he was up to that night (Answer: Deer hunting) and I thought, “Ok…they are friendly, curious people…maybe they just do things differently.  They just don’t know me.” Reader, I know you love me, but I also know I take some getting used to.  New hobby: figure out how to make friends and get invited to cow tip and light things on fire.  I’ll keep you posted.

He looked like this

Outside of this store there is always an old dude playing guitar (not kidding) so I think next time I’m going to stay a while and listen and see if I can’t find a way to make conversation. One day it’s going to be me that the guy behind the counter is making small talk with, don’t you worry.  Then I’ll get to answer “What are you up to?” with, “Scrubbing the bathtub,” or “Craft Night!” or some other epic fun.  Til then, I’m off to bed: it’s getting dark.

Country Living!!!!