Just Me

A few days ago, an old friend made a comment about me during our high school days,  and it has got me to thinking that now I am  not quite the girl that friend once knew.  A year or two ago, a former professor of mine and I had an online discussion about the importance of occasionally re-inventing one's self.  Some people probably think that is what I have been doing lately, what with the move to the farm and job change and all.  However, I don't really feel that way.  Instead of reinvention, I feel like I might have just found the niche I have been looking for.

I grew up half country kid, half town kid.  We lived at the edge of a small town, close enough to the pool to ride there on my bike.  Close enough to school to walk and not ride the bus.  On the other hand, I once had a spell of having to milk a goat every morning, and I remember keeping bottle calves in the field behind our house.  My dad was the ag teacher.  My mom grew up on a farm and always had a garden and canned and sewed.  We spent holidays and summers at my grandparents' farm.  In high school, I was always in ag.  I was also the academic sort of kid who actually thought trig was fun.  I wasn't the fashionable, homecoming queen girl or the cute, spunky cheerleader.  I was the girl in the school greenhouse or the girl with the library book.  Looking back, I probably seemed stuck up or stand off-ish to others, but I  really just didn't know what to say to anyone.   In college, I shed the country girl image, but kept the academic image . . . and probably the stuck up image, though I didn't realize until later.   In retrospect, I don't think I ever quite felt comfortable in any of these roles.  They just weren't quite entirely me even though they were parts of me.  Later, I became an English teacher.  Then, I became a wife and, eventually, a mother.  Those were important additions to the parts that make up me, but  I spent a lot of time worrying about the sort of student, teacher, wife, or mom that I should be instead of . . . well, just being.  

He won't be getting this shirt back

 I feel pretty good about where I find myself now.  I don't care much anymore that my sewing is awful or that I am not good with small children.  I don't even care that I don't like Nathaniel Hawthorne (there probably isn't a rule that English teachers who shun Hawthorne are burned at the stake).  It is okay if I am not Betty Crocker or Ree Drummond or any of those amazing homemakers out there.  I am certainly not my mother.  Instead, I am who I am.  I am best when I get to workout.  I just really don't like brown rice and whole grain pasta, even if they are supposed to be healthy.  I don't even like arugula.  Instead, I would gladly eat cool whip straight from the container.  I have learned that I don't really like to wear make up, so I mostly don't.  I love to cook but am terrible at getting an entire meal to all finish cooking at the same time.  I love to dig and muck about in the garden. I think I am young and not old yet.   I haven't owned cowboy boots since I was 18 and probably won't ever again, but I love Jack's old Navy shirt and a pair of old deck shoes for my summer garden uniform and plaid school girl skirts and riding boots for  winter attire.  

I used to worry a lot about not being the sort of wife Jack needed or the sort of mom that Bell needed.  I worried about not being the right sort of teacher.   I don't worry so much anymore.  Everyone seems okay with the me they got.  I think Jack's willingness to let me figure out who I am might be one of the best gifts he has given me.   He never expects me to fit some image.  Some days, he gets a baker.  Some days a filthy gardener.  Some days it is the girl saying, "listen to this" and then reading him a passage from a book.  Today, the wife he got was one who will feed him leftovers because I want to finish a desk I am working on.  All those parts work pretty well together.  They feel right.

The Case of the Dog Who Dug Holes

The hole was deep and wide, gaping open under the dead apricot tree in the hilltop orchard. It seemed impossibly big to just show up over one night's time, this red gash in the sand. Was it some sort of sinkhole or had some animal's burrow caved in? "The dogs must have been after something," Jack said as he inspected the two foot deep and nearly three foot long hole. "I rather wished they hadn't done it on the path to the clothes line," I replied.

The next day another hole appeared, a few feet away and under edge of the clothesline, just waiting for me to fall in as I unsuspectingly hung up the wash. This hole was Y shaped with the arms of the Y being deep and narrow and the stick being shallow and wide. Huxley, our springer spaniel, has been a digger before, but usually only when burying a toy he had snuck out out of the house or in hot pursuit of a mole or gopher. Those holes were mere divets compared to these man traps. Perhaps these holes were just so deep because the ground was so soft and loose here compared to the hard clay in our old yard.

A few days later when I went to water the little bit of garden, the cucumbers had been torn up and the culprit was still there, digging away gleefully. It was not Huxley. I had caught Clemintine in the act, filthy, sand flying around her. Poor Clem, this was the second strike against this stray that had been dumped at my in-law's house right before we moved. Now that we were here, she seemed to spend most of her time at our house. I couldn't stand to feed Huxley and her watch, hungrily sitting there, so I had been feeding her too while we tried to find a home for her. She tended to jump on Rubilee and Bell so she needed a home besides ours. She was obedient to me - perhaps the teacher voice works on dogs too.

Over the next few weeks, Clem settled into being the better dog on the place. She did not dig any more holes in the actual yard. She loved games of fetch at the lake. She settled down. We discussed her fate. She seemed too good of a dog to take on a one way trip to the woods, but no adopters had appeared and she was a voracious eater. Economically, I just couldn't keep her. Besides, she seemed to encourage the worst in Huxley and he didn't seem to get enough attention if we had to divide our time between two dogs. To top it off, she has been attracting some unsavory boyfriends, the sort that aren't nice to my cat or my child. A solution had to be found.

This week Clem must have gotten bored. She seemed to be the instigator in all manner of bad behavior like bringing trash up in the yard that wasn't ours. A towel was torn off the clothesline. And then one night when Huxley was innocently inside, she ate a water shoe that had been drying on the porch. She began jumping again, being so rowdy at meal time that I could barely get the food dishes on the ground.


Clemintine, the digging dog, has now been taken to the shop. Harold has a shop in town and sometimes finds homes for the strays that get dumped out here. Perhaps the local animal control will nab her. I do not know and I feel bad about it. I really do. On the other hand, she is not my dog. Maybe, some great family will take her and have time to play so much fetch that she does not have the energy to dig holes or eat their shoes. For now, Huxley will not have anyone to blame if more holes show up during the night.

Domestic Bliss

I hear the phrase "domestic bliss" bandied about, often sarcastically, yet I am almost certain that when I think of domestic bliss it is not what others think of. This question of happy domesticity has been on the edge of my thinking for almost a week now and it began while I was hanging clothes out to dry on the line. A domestic is what maids and cleaning staff have been called, but I am sure we don't think of theirs as happy jobs, so just why do we use the phrase "domestic bliss" to begin with? Why isn't it "spousal bliss," since that is where so many many people seem to think bliss is found? I know that there is more to the meaning of domestic than this, but this is the one bouncing around in my head this week. I am not too concerned with foreign vs. domestic political policy at the moment.


On this particular day, I had stepped into a hole that mysteriously showed up under my clothes line, but I hadn't dumped out the basket so I set to my task. More on that hole later. Isabella was puttering around in the yard being unusually self entertaining. Also unusually, there was only our own dog in the yard. All in all, pretty tame and mundane. It occurred to me that I was quite content and wondered at what point in life I had found contentment in things like this. There was a time when I hated hanging out clothes (and I still despise folding them). I recall an era of whining over picking green beans and doing Algebra to not have to help do something so ordinary as cook supper. Somewhere along the way, though, these bothers became not so bothersome.



It occurred to me later in the week, as I was blanching some peaches I had been given, that I was not not just content: I was in the midst of domestic bliss. I have since then torn up my couch and sort of put it back together again, put up more peaches, cooked many meals, and hung out many more baskets of clothes. I can't say that I was very blissful during the couch endeavor, but I am still quite thankful for the state in which I find myself. I remember when we got married almost ten years ago that I couldn't imagine being a stay home wife. Whatever would I do all day? We were neat and really, how many times would I have to mop the floor a day to not be bored? I enjoyed cooking and house things, but hadn't yet found my groove. Now, I know about drying, canning, making jam, baking bread, and have rediscovered all manner of garden stuff. I would love it if I suddenly could farm full time and do home stuff. Who knew I would want to be my mom?


I rather think domestic bliss has nothing to with romance, though the cook in this house doesn't mind being interrupted for a smooch. It has more to do with finding contentment and even joy in the everyday parts of life at home. It is the delight in unexpected bits of the day like that loaf of peach bread coming out of the pan unbroken. More importantly, it is the satisfaction in the expected bits like making a bed with fresh sheets just off the line, the ripe tomato eaten whilst still in the garden patch, in curling up with a small child for the reading of a bedtime story even when I am too tired. It is even just taking pride in hard work well done like cleaning the bathroom and knowing that one more chore is checked off the list. Do not mistake me. I think it would be hard to take pleasure in such things in an environment of discord and hate. I am not saying that anyone may be happy if they would just chose to. There is a tad bit more to it than that, but for me and my house, domestic bliss seems to abound and now that I am thinking about, it has been around for a long time. I just didn't think to look for it.

R & R

Even though we aren't done with the house and haven't done more than mow the yard, every evening we have tried to take a little time for Isabella.  It isn't that she doesn't get attention or that we don't play with her during the day, but we have fallen into a family time routine after supper.  By then the air is cooling a bit and any major projects of the day have been finished or abandoned as hopeless.

We seem to have a lot of moments of "Ugh! This is never going to be done" like when Jack looks at the breaker box or one of the outbuildings that is still full of mouse poop.  I noticed a distinctive mouse smell when I fired up the shop vac to clean out the cars yesterday.

We seem to have a lot of moments when Jack is frustrated beyond belief at something I did, accidentally, that causes him a great deal of time and effort and perhaps  money to fix.  I am thinking of the day of moving when I got his car stuck in the mud and it took 2 days to get it out.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have days that we are beyond satisfied with the fruits of our labor.  I love looking at the plummy purples and chocolates of our bedroom.  The rich reds and espressos of the living room are satisfying.  I am tickled by the eclectic perfectness of the chocolate, red, and turquoise of the bathroom.  Isabella's room is just insanely painted, but it works. And then there is the kitchen.  All but one wall, which is having some work done around the door, is finished.  My plates are up for the first time in 6 years.  The lights are in.  It is just right.


Regardless of what the day brought, unless it is rain, we have been taking some time at the end for a bit of play time for Bell.  We get in the old jeep and drive down to the lake, and she can swim for an hour.  Sometimes the game is fetch.  In my mom's pool, her thing was to dive down and get the things I tossed in the water.  Here, it isn't so clear so I throw something and she swims for it on the surface.  Usually, I have to throw 2 somethings because Clementine, the stray dog who still hasn't found a home, loves this game too.  Some nights the fish are jumping or rolling into big fish balls out in the middle, and there might be a little fishing to begin with if Jack brought the rod for Bell, but  playing in the water usually wins.  Some nights a turtle sneaks up on Bell. Some nights the wind is just right, gently lapping the water on the shore, keeping mosquitos at bay.  Some nights, like last night, the water was so calm that it could have been a looking glass.

Whatever the night is, if you are looking for us, take a stroll down the hill to the lake, and that is where you will likely find us, one of us dabbling with water samples or walking the shoreline, one in a chair or throwing sticks, and one wet up to her eyeballs, but all of us pretty content.

Maybe I don't need perfect

I have the feeling I have portrayed this little house that we have moved to as the perfect, quaint little cottage.  If so, that is very much a misconception as yesterday proved.

Jack's grandpa built this house when Jack was little, and Homer didn't go in for frills.  This house is small and odd.  Electronic devices are where they are because that is the wall with the outlet rather than because  I wanted it there.  I know I somewhere I mentioned that Jack spent 3 days scraping old popcorn ceilings so I could have smooth pretty ceilings.  Overhead lights are small and dim and are being augmented and upgraded.  The little bathroom was a horror though Jack dear has tripled the cabinet space in there for me.     We won't mention the former renter's name lest someone be related to him and be offended, but it will suffice to say that there were some moments during the pre-move cleaning that I just sat in the floor and childishly cried.  None of these things top the frustration Jack had yesterday though.  This house has window units and apparently no one ever felt the need to run all of them, plus the hot water heater, and the stove.  Through in those ceiling fans we bought and all those lights Jack put in and it was a load. Our breakers are worn out and yesterday, wires got hot and almost melted. This was after Jack had worked on the breaker box . . . after he had drained the hot water heater to work on it . . . and worked on the sink plumbing and put in new faucets for me.  Poor man, he had a list yesterday.  The catalyst seemed to be the A/C in the living room but to let it all cool, we shut everything down and took our supper makings to the Big House (as Jack calls his mother's house) to do our evening cooking.  That was fine because Rubilee's kitchen is a joy to cook in.

We came home, kicked on the air in the back of the house, and the bedrooms were fine by bedtime.  I fretted during the night and got up several times to check the breaker box but all is well as long as we leave the living room off.  We will get parts and try to solve this. My brother is an electrician and we can always call him.  I may have fretted, but it wasn't the sort of impatience I usually feel about these sorts of things.  Maybe I am getting wiser and know these things happen, I am betting grace is at work.

I suppose I should be frustrated or gloomy about the prospect of a hot day, but I am not.  The lake is beautiful this morning as mist rises from it.

My coffee is good.  My shower had hot water and lots of pressure. I am surrounded by 11 colors of paint in a small house.  I can hear turkeys and a whole cacophony of song birds.  We will try to get to church for the first time since the move.  I shall choose contentment and thankfulness for my home.  I am thankful for a husband who works so hard to make this a good home for us, even though it already is. I am thankful for grace today.

Homecoming and Good Omens

I'd love to say that we are moved and unpacked and kicking back with a glass of wine under the trees.  That would be a pretty bold lie since we spent the day working on the kitchen cabinets and lighting throughout the house, and I haven't even begun to put some of the boxes away.  I can say that the inside remodel is almost done, but I don't have much to report on the outside just yet except one story from moving day that seemed to be a good omen.

We had worked like devils for the past three weeks packing and working on the house, finally making the big move on Memorial Day when my dear brothers gave up their day off to help us.  That evening, the house was full of boxes, my kid was filthy, and I was close to collapse when at the edge of dark, Jack summoned me out to the old orchard.

The house that we are living in was his grandparent's house and is across a small meadow from my in-laws.  That means that I have the eccentricities of a house built on a shoestring a long time ago, but I also have the remnants of Homer's garden and Jack's grandma's orchard.  Years ago when we were still in college, Jack used to bring me apricots from his grandmother's trees, but the orchard is all but dead now.  The trees are gone or bare except for one tree that has two green branches that were covered in tiny apricots, not much bigger than large grapes.  Some had fallen and Jack held one for each of us - tiny, but sweet.  We picked up the windfalls as the sky darkened lest the ants and birds scavenge them.

 It would take Bell and me picking a handful everyday as they ripened to even make enough for a pie for Rubilee, but it seemed like an omen of the riches to be had in this little house above the lake. What was more complete than fruit picked by us on our first night in our own yard from a tree planted by Isabella's great grandparents?  I knew then that this was homecoming for us.


I know we had a good life before.  I know we have plans for a farm life to come.  But "before" is over now,  and plans are just plans.  I just know that this life we have chosen for us, for Isabella, is going to be rich, the kind of rich that is picking apricots in the cool of the day, just at the edge of dark.

hanging in limbo a little longer

It seems we have been in limbo about moving forever now, though really it's  just a few weeks.  Funny, but once I make up my mind to something, I am antsy until it is done.  Doesn't seem to matter whether the something is cooking supper or something huge . . . like a move.

The old renter still isn't out of Jack's grandpa's house so we can't start painting or any of the thousand and one things I wanted to do before we move.  In the meantime, we have sold our house and already packed and moved a few things to my in-laws' barn.  That means we have already started the "Where is the . . ." "Oh, we already moved that." I did get to go in the house for the first time in ten years and do some measuring and decided what needed doing before we moved and what could become my summer projects. 

At the same time, the current house still has things that need tending to.  Jack mowed again; I finally gave up and did some cleaning in the laundry room and Bell's room.  I think I had been hoping we could just move and I would just clean what didn't fit in a box. I also gave in and hoed the beans and peas.  Throw in end of semester chaos at school and my moving classrooms, and we are living a circus life. 

The gardener in me is dismayed that Huxley hasn't deterred the deer.  That could be because he is asleep at the foot of my bed when the deer sneak in the yard. Once again, they have eaten the tops out of beans and peas.  I have used an anti-deer spray before, but I decided that it was too expensive for the three little rows of beans that I have.  I could buy a lot of beans for the same price.  I did pick some tonight and should have enough for supper by tomorrow.  The army worms seem to have been vanquished and the asparagus has come back to life now that it isn't under attack.  I even picked enough broccoli for supper and to share with Jack's mom.  We are on year two of huge beautiful brussels sprout plants that have nary a spout on them.  I think I need to get a book on sprouts.   The strawberries are out there, though not as plentiful as I would like.  Perhaps the highlight is eating the first ripe tomato yesterday.  

So we haven't started life on the farm just yet, but it is soon.