Am I really that stubborn?

For those of you who know me really well, I can already hear a resounding, collective “YES!”, and you don’t even know what I’m referring to yet. 

This afternoon I finally caved and used an MP3 player during my run.  What the hell had I been waiting for, and why didn’t any of you beat me over the head with one of these fabulous little magical devices and force me to use one sooner?

I’ve always been a purist when it comes to running - minimum gear, and absolutely no music.  I enjoy the cadence of my shoes hitting the pavement, the rhythm of my breath, and the rich, ambient sounds of my environment.  But holy holy, was I in for a surprise today!  Amazing how a little Smiths, Belly, R.E.M., and Smashing Pumpkins could make me run twice as hard and twice as far as I’d planned on when I set foot outside this afternoon.

Of course, now I’m obsessed with my playlist.  Anyone wanna take bets on how long before I break down and buy an ipod?

Just call me Babs

When we lived in Chicago, we participated in a CSA, and it really opened my eyes to how much variety there is in locally grown produce at almost any time of the year. Belonging to a CSA had a lot of benefits, but I really longed to grow my own food. I tried container gardening, but my cats always ate anything that grew. People teased me about having a black thumb, but I swore one day I’d prove them wrong. “Oh, if only we had our own yard, I would plant more gardens than you could shake a stick at…” I’d muse to myself. I loved getting that CSA box of veggies every week, and going to the farmers’ market, but for a crunchy foodie like myself, the idea of growing all my own produce and herbs, and having total control over what and how much…it made me absolutely giddy with the possibilities.

Well, now we’re sitting on 15 acres, and I’ve been gardening my butt off. I just planted my autumn garden with all of my favorite leafy greens, rutabaga, brussels sprouts, eggplant - and will be planting a second garden next month specifically for greens that I don’t want to harvest until after a freeze. Have you ever tasted kale that’s been harvested after a freeze? So, so good! We’ll be having colcanon and kale soup that day. I’m also working on my own recipe for homemade Veggie Booty…

I also started transforming a long-neglected bed into my herb garden, setting out two different varieties of rosemary, and two of sage as well. There is mint growing wild all over the property, so I wasn’t surprised to see quite a bit of it in this dilapidated bed. However, once I started weeding and pruning, I also found a huge rosemary bush, two lavender bushes, and thyme!

I have seed catalogs on the way, and I should have my cold frame built before autumn’s end. I will spend the winter months meticulously planning additional gardens, figuring out planting schedules, digging out the best recipes for canning and freezing.

All of this may seem like a little much, but we take our gardens very seriously. From a foodie standpoint, we can grow exactly what we want, preserve it with the herbs of our choice, and have it at our fingertips. Mario and I both love cooking, and are pretty damned good at it, too. From an aesthetic standpoint, we can design them to be pleasing as well as functional. Butterfly gardens for Nina, a succulent rock garden by one of our driveways, a meditation garden at the edge of the woods. From a crunchy standpoint, though, we can do so much more. We will be reducing our impact on the environment, have control over what seeds we put into the ground (only heirloom and organic), and saving money, just to name a few.

A couple of weeks ago I picked up a copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. If you haven’t heard of this book, here it is in a nutshell: Barbara and her family decided that, for one year, they would only eat food that they grew themselves or could find locally. Her book is a fount of information, integrating chapters on the environment, planting schedules, advice and recipes, raising and butchering animals, and the new locavore movement, to name a few.

I’ve heard some criticism that this book is unrealistic, or preachy, or that the average person doesn’t have the time or garden space to follow in the Kingsolver family’s footsteps. Bah! If nothing else, this book conveys the message that every little bit counts. Container gardening, buying from local growers, eating seasonal produce as opposed to something that was flown halfway around the world - baby steps are better than nothing. Reading this book reaffirmed my commitment to growing our own food and made me even more excited about what we are undertaking. And I have to admit, I was darned proud that we were already headed in the right direction before I ever read Barbara’s book.

Of course, we also have a Plan B. If our gardens don’t work out, we just happen to live across the road from the biggest organic farmer in the region.

It’s me time

I’ve been tagged by The Virtual Voyeur, which means I get to tell you seven obscure facts about myself. Then I tag seven other people to do the same in their blogs, and the cycle continues - sort of like one of those recipe chain letters, but hopefully a lot more interesting!

1. I have been wearing the same perfume, Coco Chanel, since high school.
2. I have this phobia about seeing a horse break its leg, and I can’t ever bring myself to watch a horse run around. Not in movies, not on a race track, not in the field as I cruise by on one of my runs.
3. I won second place in a legs contest when I was a freshman at university.
4. I collect words. I keep little blue index cards stashed around the house so that whenever I’m reading, I always have a place to record them. As my cards fill up I save and review them periodically, like flash cards.
5. I am very particular about how I read magazines. I always read The New Yorker, cooking magazines, and news magazines from back to front. Anything that I consider fluff, I read front to back.
6. In the winter of 2004 I had a trip planned to France. My primary reason for going was that I wanted to stalk casually meet David Sedaris. You know, just bump into him at the market or something, maybe swap OCD anecdotes - I wouldn’t even ask for an autograph, I swear.  Also, one of the reasons I was so bummed to leave Chicago was that it meant no more possible Sedaris sightings when he is in town for a book tour.
7. I am going to an ashram in 2012 to celebrate my 40th birthday.

Okay, so now it is my turn to dole out the tags. You’re it!

Bitty Bird

Samantha

Bridget

Johnny’s Brother

AFRo

Ashley

Kate

A few pics of what Nina has been up to

Country life is certainly agreeing with Nina. We’ve always thought of her as a bit high energy, well behaved but with a barely contained restlessness that you could see dancing in her eyes. Here in the great wide open she is tireless - but content - burning energy with such a fervor that it almost feels as if she’s making up for lost time. She is happiest when running laps around the gardens in her bare feet, usually trying to stomp some poor insect out of existence.

Watching butterflies in one of the rear gardens:

One thing she has not been doing is using her potty. She has her, um, morning constitutional first thing most mornings, but I’ll be damned if we can get her on that chair in time. No matter how fast we get that thing out, she always manages to beat us to the punch. When left alone with said pot, she will sit on it good and proper - but if she knows we’re watching, the only things going in that little white receptacle are her feet. Oh, how she laughs! I’m so glad that potty training cracks her up.

Sitting in her potty, rather than on it (note the bemused look on her face) - because peeing on the floor is so much more fun:

Slowly but surely, Nina has trained me to let her run around in little else but a diaper. My deteriorating standards could be attributed to the heat, but more likely it’s the fact that before I can even get the last snap snapped on her diaper, she flips and flops like a fish out of water. Whatever the reason, these days if she’s wearing sunscreen and a tank top along with her diaper, I’m happy.

Country baby chic at its finest, a hamburger shirt and pink clogs. Thank goodness for the pink and white gingham diaper, it certainly pulls the whole look together:

In between temper tantrums and growth spurts, Nina has moments of calm. She might be conserving energy for her next tantrum, but I like to think she’s learning to pace herself.

A very rare moment of stillness - probably because she was tethered down in her car seat:

The Big Read

I borrowed this from mommycrisp, who borrowed it from someone else.

According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on this list. How many have you read?

The instructions:
Look at the list and:
Blue font=you have read.
Green font=you intend to read.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. 1984 - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchel
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92.The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Okay, so I’ve read 48 of these novels, and have another 10 or so to go until I’ve exhausted the ones I’m actually interested in reading. I still can’t believe I read that piece of crap The DaVinci Code, but other than that most of these were decent reads. But can someone please explain to me why The Corrections isn’t on this list?! Actually, don’t - it will only infuriate me. Grrrr!!

Coming up for air.

I am loving my new rural existence and will get to that in a moment.  But there is one essential thing missing - INTERNET ACCESS.  We have none, and I am going crazy!  We have pretty sucky options, the best one probably being dial up.  I’m at the library right now, better than nothing but not exactly helping me find a zen moment as the Saturday morning patrons run amok.  But anyway, on to the good things about country living.

First off and most important, Nina is loving it out here.  New nooks and crannies to explore, surfaces to climb, six cats to chase.  Did I say six cats?  Oh, yes I did.  As if traveling for two days in the trunk of my car was not enough to ask of Ichi and Luxe, when they finally made it out of the car and into their new digs, they were greeted by the four cats whom we acquired with the house.  Luxe has been in hiding pretty much this entire time, but Ichi made instant friends.  Nina has proved indespensible at herding the cats for me at feeding time; actually, she is constantly herding them, I just wait until she gets them near their cat door to the porch before I conveniently break out the food.

Six cats are a lot of maintenance, which leads to the next thing I’ve been enjoying - chores.  Not hardcore chores like cleaning out horse stalls or dragging grain to a silo, nothing like that…but the maintenance of six cats is a lot of work for someone coming from an apartment in the city.  Plus, I’ve been relocating the 4 compost systems on our property, am overhauling the multiple gardens scattered throughout as well as planting a couple of new ones for autumn produce, and will start working on the orchard in the next few months.  My upper body hasn’t looked this good since university. 

Since I’m still in salary negotiations for my new job, I’ve been home all this time and it has allowed me to renew my dedication to running.  With the exception of the three days when we had our first visitor over the 4th, I have been out running every single day.  Nina and I both thrive on the heat, so when 2:30 rolls around I suit up, she clambers into the jogger, and we are off!  I let Nina carry my Chicago marathon cow bell, and she happily greets goats, cattle, horses, and a multitude of dogs as we fly by.  The only caveat is that in order to take an afternoon nap, Nina has to be out in the stroller!  It works to our advantage, though - if she is being particularly resistant to bedtime, I just take her out for a quick run and down she goes. 

The community here is pretty awesome, too.  About twenty minutes away is Carrboro/Chapel Hill, an area that is both progressive and hippie dippie at the same time.  The predominant grocery store is actually a co-op, bigger and better than Whole Foods (and much more affordable, too!).  They put on free concerts every Sunday morning, and Nina gets more exercise and socialization out of those two hours than she used to get from her 50 hours of daycare when we lived in the city.  There are always a few families who bring enough toys for all of the kids to play with, so no one minds when Nina starts stockpiling hula hoops or throwing all of the beach balls in my direction.  And it is pretty cool to see her walk up to someone’s beach blanket, point and exclaim “baby!” or “doggie!”, and have that person be excited rather than annoyed.  Of course I’m keeping an eye on Nina (the community square isn’t that big), but being around that many like-minded people in a nuturing, child/family-friendly environment is just good for the soul.

The other thing I’ve been doing a lot of is cooking.  Lots and lots and lots of cooking, so much so that I think I will start posting recipes on here soon.  Or I could start a cooking blog…bah.  First I need to get internet access.  But I want to share these recipes, so one way or another I’ll release them into the ether.

Waxing nostalgic about the best vacation ever…

Just a few weeks ago over Memorial Day weekend, we spent five days visiting my dearest friend Amy in Des Moines. This was a significant trip for two reasons: one, because it was a homecoming of sorts for me; and two, because it was the first official goodbye that we would be making in the weeks to come. Thus, it was both exhilarating and bittersweet.

In what seems like another lifetime a million years ago, I spent a little over five years in Des Moines. The circumstances that brought me there were not the best, and so I was generally miserable and always had one foot out the door. Despite all of that, I still managed to put roots down and made the most of my time living there. Enough years had now passed that I was eager to return - not only to revisit my old stomping grounds, but to show my husband and daughter this previously ignored part of my personal history.

Our trip got off to a little bit of a rocky start. What was supposed to be a five and a half hour trip took almost nine, as we powered through construction, holiday traffic (it was the Friday before Memorial Day), and had to make frequent stops for Nina. Why on earth didn’t we just wait until Saturday morning, you ask? I have just five words for you: The Des Moines Farmers’ Market. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the best market I’ve ever been to - looking forward to it was what got me through every week when I lived there. It has consistently been rated one of the top ten best markets nationwide for as long as I can remember, and it deserves every accolade and more.

It was cold and drizzling, but that didn’t deter Amy and I. We loaded a bleary-eyed Mario and crazy hyper Nina into the car, and we were off. Even with the rain, the market was crowded. I made a bee line for the first falafel vendor I could find; my Saturday breakfast ritual satisfied, it was time to get down to business. Amy and I both love to cook, so we immediately conferred on a tentative menu for the next five days as we drifted from one stand to the next. The market absolutely hummed with activity, and Mario and Nina were enjoying themselves. We ducked into Java Joe’s, my second favorite thing that I missed from my days in Des Moines. Forget Starbucks - this place is what I silently measure all coffee shops against.

After the obligatory market and coffee house stops, we allowed the rest of the week to just unfold at it’s own pace. After all, we were really there to visit Amy and her husband, and to say goodbye. Every street walked upon, every meal shared, led to memories and laughter. We made all our favorites: quinoa tabbouleh, grilled asparagus, pasta with homemade sauce that bubbled for hours on the stove.

Nina finally had a real yard to run around in, and we set her loose.

She also finally got to spend some time with her beloved bot bots, Ben and Coco.

I don’t know how much they enjoyed the mud stew she made in their water dish, but they humored her nonetheless.

And my husband finally realized that magical, intangible hold that Des Moines has over me. I know most of it has to do with the fact that Amy lives there, but Des Moines really is a great place to live. I have no idea where we may end up if or when we ever leave North Carolina, but I know that if Des Moines is an option, this time I would be there of my own accord. We miss you, Amy!

Hiya! from Nina

Mama’s a little busy right now, so I thought I’d sneak on here and send a message. My message is - I want my own potty. Nothing fancy, I don’t need one that sings or anything goofy like that - puh-leeze, I’m not a baby anymore, I’m almost 18 months old. I’ve been taking my diapers off for weeks now, but Mama and Daddy aren’t getting the hint. Then I started flushing the toilet, but they just laugh. They think it’s “cute”. I thought I’d finally gotten through to them yesterday morning, when I started to take off a pooey diaper for the first time. Mama caught me in the act and stopped me, though, and I think she’s playing dumb. I had to resort to Plan B this morning…and that is where Mama is right now, cleaning up the evidence. She should be happy I peed on the kitchen floor and not in another room! Especially since we’re at Gramma’s house . I hope this means I’m getting a potty this weekend, or I will have to think of something else…

Later taters,

the Neenster

At least we’ve unloaded the truck!

I won’t bore you with the details of our laborious journey; just suffice it to say that we arrived tired, but in one piece. My mother and I rode in stony silence most of the way, punctuated with her attempts to bad mouth just about every relative or previous acquaintance she could think of, and my father managed to get Mario totally freaked out by the perceived ramifications of raising our daughter vegan. I won’t blab on about that here, except to say that I don’t take anything my father says about nutrition without a grain of salt these days. The dude is following some cockamamie diet based on the bible, for Christ’s sake (no pun intended), so as far as I’m concerned, his critical thinking skills have been a bit compromised.

Mario took a serious fall off the back end of the moving truck yesterday, and if he had been a mere three inches closer to the porch when he fell, I think we would be installing wheelchair ramps right now. His mother and I were the only ones with him when it happened, and I think it took about ten years off each of our lives. Thankfully, the rest of the day went well. Things between my mother and I have been getting worse by the minute, but I am trying to let it go. Watching a loved one almost snap their neck right before your eyes helps to put things into perspective.

Lots of work is being done on the house right now, but at least we’ve unloaded the truck. Our belongings have been placed in whatever room they will be permanently shelved/hung/arranged in, and the actual unpacking will probably begin this Sunday. Our first official guest arrives on the 4th of July, which should be plenty of time to turn this house into a home. I walked the property line with Mario and his brother earlier this evening, and it was 15 acres of beautiful. Most of it is wooded, and there is a small pond with blue heron, geese, and box turtles. There is also a resident fox on the property, whom I am certain to meet on one of my runs around the pond. We were able to mark out a couple of running paths that already exist, and decide on the best places to clear out a couple of new ones.  This is definitely beginning to feel like home.

update coming soon

We made it, I haven’t killed my mother, the cats survived, I still have all of my books. I will give details soon.