Happy Thanksgiving, poor little neglected blog!  I’m sorry you didn’t get to eat delicious smoked turkey and all the other tasty things that we (my in-laws and I) made today.  Not that blogs really eat much in the way of normal food, or anything…

My in-laws are farmers.  Or rather, my father in law is a farmer, and my mother in law runs their house and does all the bookkeeping for his business.  His job is muddier, but both are pretty important in their day to day life.   Thanksgiving here is a really special kind of thing, since their lives are very dependent on factors outside their control (sometimes as variable as whether the guy at the produce shed feels like being a jerk today.  Or whether it will rain here in the Rio Grande Valley).

One of the coolest things I’ve gotten to do this trip, aside from pouring over my mother in laws embroidery sewing machine and assorted fun project magazines, has been a trip out to the farm itself (their home is some distance away, since the land that he farms is her family’s historically).  I got to see fenugreek, italian parsley, curly parsley, cilantro, dill, and tomatoes.  South Texas’ climate allows for there to be produce in the ground all year long - and winter is one of the best times for greens.  Some of the tomatoes have just turned as well.

So I’m returning back home on Saturday with an armful of fresh cut dill, another armful of fresh Italian parsley, and approximately 10 lbs of tomatoes that were ripe enough to nearly fall off the vines when we picked them today.  The dill I will most likely dry (at least what we don’t eat by early next week), the parsley I’ll hopefully use up.  I’m not sure yet what to do with the tomatoes, other than slice them open and eat them with a little salt, because they really are that good.  Maybe I’ll bust out some old quart mason jars and can them for tasty noms this winter.

All in all though, a very good sort of day, busy for the right reasons, and not at all busy this evening.  I hope all of you had a similarly good turkey day (er… so long as you’re not turkeys - there are no turkeys on the internet right?) and a good weekend as well.

Tomorrow is the beginning of … well … crazy.  Fall is my favorite time of year, and this coming month is the ending of that and the beginning of winter, at least in places that are not full of palm trees.  There are some aspects of the coming season that I do truly love - and some that make me want to do my own dental surgery with rusty pliers.

But that’s a post for another day, so for now, enjoy lots of turkey leftovers, and don’t bug Uncle Ernie too badly for snoring at the football game.

Why is it that I feel horrendously guilty needing some personal space after spending two entire days surrounded by a myriad of inlaws, all of whom know my husband, want to refer to the fact that they knew him when he was six (or taught him sunday school, or etc. etc.), and none of whom I’ve ever met before?

(Ok, so I met some of them once - but it was at our wedding, and I take absolutely no guilt for not remembering them.  Hell, I didn’t remember what the freaking CAKE looked like, and that I picked out myself.)

Also - I’m exercising my right to shut the f*ck up and stay out of it a lot.  I think I’m doing a pretty good job at that, at least.

Alright - so I’ve neglected you, little blog that isn’t about video games and doesn’t require me to have massive professionalism to keep going.

I apologize.

Today a lot of people are talking about things like Hope and Change, drinking their victory (or drowning their sorrows).  Rather than talk about that - since it’s a long discussion and I have too much else on my plate right now, I’d like to mention a little bit of hope that I saw today, on a very very local level.

Many of you know that Hurricane Ike did serious damage to my town.  Our Dairy Queen was, at one point, completely submerged.  When the hurricane rolled out, leaving the water still to recede, there were three fishing boats floating in the drive thru, and people kayaking to Target.  My apartment didn’t get power back until over 3 weeks after the storm.

It’s now been just shy of two months.  There are still people living in tents.  Blu-Roofs abound.  Busted boats are still everywhere.  But today I saw a sign that I think shows the tenacity of a lot of the people here that have run their little businesses and fishing boats and will continue to do so.

On a local family-run restaurant, they have a new sign.  It’s said “Open Sometime” for a week or two.  Today it says “Opening Soon: 90% finished with renovations”.

And that makes me smile.

So, since I’ve not been to the Gym yet, and I’m grumpy, allergic, and hungry, I decided to try being positive.

• there is enough money to pay the bills/rent (even if I don’t like writing the checks)
• there are stamps to mail them
• the Kingdom chronicler emailed me with a reminder that I need to mail him last month’s issue ( very politely, AND on the same day I was planning to mail this months… and had forgotten about last month’s) - meaning that I will be all up to date for Red Tape
• it smells like fresh cut grass outside.
• there is a snoozing kitty, upside down on my desk.  And he has toe-hawks.
• I have yarn to knit and fiber to spin

I do feel rather better now, actually.  (:  I think I’ll go have breakfast.

You suck.

Love,
Anna

Last weekend (the 11th of July-ish) I took a short jaunty vacation up to Seattle to meet up with some friends.  I had a fantastic time, got almost no sleep (night owl friends plus 2 hour time difference meant going to bed when my body thought it was 5am… and still waking up when my body thought it was 9am), and managed to pick up a real humdinger of a cold in the airport on the way up.

I also had some of the most colorful airplane experiences on those flights.

Flying from Houston to Seattle on Southwest is a direct flight with one stop in either Phoenix or Denver where you don’t get off the plane but where about half the plane exchanges with new people for the second leg of the trip.  This makes the trip a great deal longer, but also a good bit cheaper.

For the first leg (Houston to Phoenix) I was sitting next to a sleeping rocker dude with some seriously awesome dreadlocks and an older man who reminded me pleasantly of my dad (in a non-creepy way).  However, that meant I was sitting in the dreaded middle seat, and even though I accomplished a great deal of knitting, the lack of armrest/legroom/place to put my head and snooze got to me.

So I tempted fate and swapped seats, moving up a few rows and snagging a nice aisle seat during the exchange of people who didn’t really want to go to Seattle on that particular trip.

My tempting of fate did, in fact, bite me in the arse.  The people that ended up sitting in the window and middle seats seemed quite pleasant as they got on the plane(though one of them was screaming in his iPhone as he asked me if he could sit by the window).  This illusion was broken after both of them had consumed two drinks without having any food.  I was then subjected to said screaming man’s pictures of his (admittedly awesome) house, yard, greenhouse, motorcycle, campsites, touring pictures, and any other pictures he’d taken.

One more drink into each of them resulted in his going off on a rant about how men weren’t real men anymore, and what was wrong with women in the world (serious barefoot and pregnant vibe at this point) and the woman between us cracking obscene comments (”you can’t teach a d*1do to mow the lawn”) and smacking me on the shoulder in an attempt to get some sort of agreement out of me.  She was, I think, too drunk to notice that I was tired, had been in airports/planes for nearly 8 hours, am relatively shy, and would really have liked to just get back to my book, thanks.

THAT flight couldn’t end fast enough.

Oh - that was the flight where the people in the row behind me proceeded to make all sorts of awful and disgusting bodily noises as they dealt with whatever version of the plague that they happened to pass on to me.

By Sunday the combination of talking to people (GASP!), lack of sleep, and IMPENDING DOOM of chest cold had me squeaking.

The flight home was entirely uneventful (the two screaming, incredibly sunburned infants that were making our lives in the staging area miserable both passed out within 5 minutes of boarding the plane) though didn’t help much with my being sick, and I spent most of last week holed up with cups of lemon and honey tea and bowls of chicken soup.

I’m finally feeling better now though (yay) and am back to walking the walk again.  And, you know, talking like an adult woman instead of a 12 year old boy.

1. Remove vacuum from closet
2. Remove cat1 from closet
3. Remove cat2 from vacuum cord
4. Plug vacuum in
5. Vacuum computer room
6. Remove cat2 from drapes
7. Vacuum hallway
8. Watch as cat1 and cat2 flee the great green dragon
9. Vacuum living room
10. Remove cat1 from vacuum cord
11. Vacuum dining room
12. Watch as cat1 and cat2 flee to safety of bedroom
13. Vacuum hallway
14. Vacuum bedroom
15. Remove cat1 from sink, cat2 from closet
16. Vacuum closet
17. Remove cat1 from drapes
18. Wind vacuum cord, hoping cat1 and cat2 don’t notice the snaking plug on the floor
19. Open closet
20. Remove cat2 from closet
21. Replace vacuum
22. Get beer.

One of the things I miss, living where I do, is a sense of community.  My “community” right now consists of my husband and our two cats, and the container garden on the porch (which really doesn’t offer much in the way of interaction).

Blogging has helped that feeling of isolation a lot - particularly the wonderful people that I’ve gotten to know through my other, warcraft related blog.  But, as I’m sure any of you who play video games know, there’s more to me than just video games, and so I’ve been looking for ways to find that kind of support in other parts of my life.

SCA, obviously, helps a lot.  Getting to hang out with people who are also crazy and interested in stuff you like is really fun, and I’ve made some amazing friends.  But that happens (at best) once a week - since those friends live somewhat of a distance away.  The rest of the time, finding motivation for the myriad of hobbies/projects I have going can be tough.  I’ve never really gotten particularly involved in Ravelry, because the forum structure is SO big, and moves at breakneck speeds sometimes (and crawls along like molasses at others).

Recently, however, folks such as TJ got me looking at Plurk (especially since Twitter had a bunch of downtime - and is still struggling with serious overload).  And, oddly enough… there are knitters on plurk.  And spinners, and crafters, and soap-makers, and weird twitchy cleaners and people that are strangely willing to converse with me on the finer points of making dill and cheddar beer bread. (and why, like every other thing I make in my demonic oven, it didn’t rise).

And through those wonderful, crafty people, I ran into a link that Miss Violet (of Lime and Violet) was working on starting - a plurk community based on Mary Jane Butters’ Farmgirl Sisterhood.  And while, quite honestly, I don’t really care much for joining the official sisterhood (I did my girl scout thing; I don’t need or want merit badges, or someone to tell me that I’ve progressed enough to earn a (whatever) level in Underwater Basket Weaving), the idea of a community of people who were interested in similar things that I’m interested in - cooking, sewing, crafts, sustainable living, gardening, spinning - really piqued my interests.

That, and it’s a lot easier to stay motivated on the long slog through a stockinette sweater back when you’ve got other people who are a) asking about it and b) encouraging (as they’re also slogging through their own projects).

So here’s to friends, old fashioned goodness, baking bread, growing herbs (and veggies), sewing, knitting, and maybe even wearing an apron.  (gasp!)

I do live in Texas, after all… (but no, I don’t have big blonde hair)

I need a do-over of this morning.

My blog post at Too Many Annas was like pulling teeth.  I had to write a stack of bills.  The cats decided to chew on one of the corners of the quilt my best friend made us as a wedding present.  The blueberries I put on my cereal were rotten, and the mango I went to eat afterwards was both rotten AND unripe.

Maybe I’ll go make mint lemonade.

And pray I dont’ burn myself.

So I was asked by One Pretentious Bastard for a Memory Playlist. This is (by far) not an exhaustive list, but it’s a start. Not all these songs are memories just of my parents, but all of them are songs that have very strong emotional memories attached to them. If I’ve put the title in Italics, it’s an album.

And yes, my tastes in music are… uh… varied. If anyone wants to know the story behind any of these, let me know and I’ll happily regale you!

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve always loved music. Just about any music really, though I’ve spent the most time studying American music and Medieval/Early music.

Needless to say, my iTunes playlists are pretty diverse. And every now and then I have music that shows up that takes me very vividly back to another memory. It always amazes me how strongly I’ve tied moments in my life to the music that was playing (or that I was playing). Obviously many of these are pieces of music that resonate with me strongly… but I’ve come to think that sometimes the reason that they resonate so strongly is because of the memories associated with them.

I credit my love of music to my parents, both of whom love music and love to sing, though neither is formally trained. I think it’s to their credit that two people that loved music successfully raised two children that have made music a lifestyle. My brother and I both carried our musical careers into college, and though he is an engineer and I would be a historian, we both have strong connections to music - to the point that jazz is probably one of our “common languages”.

Listening back to my childhood, I rarely remember a time that there wasn’t some kind of music playing, whether it was the radio, the record player, a cassette deck, or the CD player - so I guess it’s not that surprising that most of my family memories involve some kind of music.

Today? My random iTunes Playlist turned up “Jessica”, by The Allman Brothers Band - a song I can’t listen to without smiling - a song that, just by sitting and listening with my eyes closed, makes me 4 years old again, helping my dad build a rabbit hutch in the basement.

I cant listen to The Beatles “Blackbird” or “Rocky Racoon” without tearing up a little, because those were my lullabies. I can’t hear or play Sousa marches without helping my mom make lemonade and some rediculously sweet berry dessert on the 4th of July. I can’t decorate for the holidays without hearing the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas, and my dad’s (horrible) punny re-dos of some of the songs.

I can’t hear Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” or “Scarborough Fair” without having my mom help me with a high school project that referenced the songs, and listening to her stories about learning the guitar so she could play them.

I can’t hear “Hell” by The Squirrel Nut Zippers without belting the lyrics out in the car with my dad and brother, attempting to salsa dance when none of us knew how, and all of us were “too old” for such ridiculous things.

I remember my first piano lessons, being told to practice my clarinet outside because it was too loud in the house, listening to my parents sing while they did housework - one with lyrics, and one singing the background music, getting driven to school at 5am for orchestra rehearsals, helping my brother learn to play the clarinet after his years with saxophone, seeing my parents in the crowd as I stood on stage with a choir for the first time.

Right now my parents are away on their 30th anniversary trip (I’m horribly jealous, and hope that someday I get to go on as awesome a 30th anniversary trip as they’re having), and I’ve been thinking about them a lot. They’re a huge part of my life - as I suppose parents usually are - and I love and miss them a great deal. I live 5 hours drive away right now, and traveling is hard - even for a teacher who has the summer off.

But I hope someday, if I ever have kids, I can have the kind of relationship with my kids that I have now with my parents - and that maybe, just maybe, those kids might sit and remember mom standing in the kitchen, washing dishes and belting out some stupid song at the top of her lungs.