Transitions

Time to refresh.

If any long-time readers happen upon this post, they will notice a major change to this blog. Aside from the fact that I'm posting for the first time in over two years. My furry Flartopian muse is different.

I started this blog in the early years of Rosie's reign, a decade ago. She was the furry chow/lab mix I called mine, and served as a constant thread through eight years of writing. Politics, farmers' markets, annoying tv commercials, vacations, housecleaning, you name it; there was probably a Rosie reference in there somewhere.

But life moves on, and change visits all of us. Rosie lived to a respectable 13 years of age, and kept a close guard on my every move until the last. In August of 2017, we had to say a sudden and tearful goodbye to the second Dog of My Heart.

Fortunately, enough time has passed that I can immediately follow that up with the news of our next four-legged loved one. Maddie came to us also from the Humane Society of Charlotte in April of 2018. For weeks and months, I suspected I'd rushed into things, let Miss Chef talk me into the wrong dog, made a regrettable mistake. But four months later, I'm starting to have those heart-squeezing moments when I look at her sad hound expression, or give a belly laugh at her leg-sprawling antics. She's no Rosie, but she's finding her own way into my heart.

Of course, other changes have come in the intervening years since I last put finger to keyboard for this blog. For four years, I've kept up a part-time freelance writing presence here in the Charlotte food world, and made many friends, apparently garnered a fair amount of respect, and had some memorable experiences. I've worked through various part-time jobs with very small food-related businesses, finally landing a poorly-paid but full-time position in retail management (still food-related, though).

And now even bigger changes have been forced upon me. Miss Chef's job is going away, and sadly the other opportunities for culinary instructors here in Charlotte have disintegrated. So she cast her net wide, and came up with a position in a small, very rural community college in western North Carolina.

As I write this, she is sitting in a hotel room in Murphy, feeling ridiculously unprepared for her first day of classes. The job offer and starting date happened within two weeks, and the school seems less ready for her to start than she was. On top of struggling to find the tools and information she needs to start her new job, she's also trying to find temporary quarters for herself, and, if possible, more permanent ones for both of us plus our small menagerie.

So here we hang in the balance, me going about my daily routine while trying to rev up the job-hunt machine; she swimming through a sea of bureaucracy to find her way to the classroom. These are dark, frustrating days, but we have to assume that we will emerge into a much brighter future. Transitions are seldom clean and easy. I hope that the dirtier this one proves, the lovelier will be the other side of it.

I've Done Some Things

So much for my online journal. Six months gone and I have no idea what I've been up to.

Just kidding! I've been working. Two or three jobs, depending on how you look at it. One used to be a job, but they ran out of money and it seems too important to let it fall apart, so now it's a volunteer position.

Plus freelance writing. Which is what I blame for sucking away my creative juices that used to charge this page. At the moment I am between deadlines, short of inspiration to pitch any stories. Finally the informal writing itch has re-emerged.

It was a quiet, tight winter, but spring always seems to breed hope. I keep saying I'm working harder than ever and earning less than ever, but I'm surrounded by intelligent, like-minded people, so it mostly seems worth it. In case I actually have an audience left that's curious about what I've been up to, a brief synopsis:

Job 1 has changed--it used to be as a Spice Merchant (yes, really) at Savory Spice Shop. The pay was low, my feet hurt a lot, but oh, was it interesting. Over 400 individual herbs and spices, plus another 170 proprietary blends to learn and guide customers through.

My bosses were kind of friends before I started, and I enjoyed getting to know them and my coworkers better. I left on excellent terms, and still stop in occasionally just to say hello.

Which is easy, since my new Job 1 is just across the parking lot. It's a local grocery store inside a farmers' market/co-op, called Queen City Pantry. Follow us on Facebook; those posts are mostly mine! I'm pretty much on my own in that job, splitting time with another employee, and between the two of us and the owner, we run the store. I already knew the owner, plus many of the vendors whose products we sell.

One of the best parts of the new job is that I negotiated Mondays off, which means I get a real weekend! It's a day later than most people's, but still, two days off in a row every week feels like luxury now.

Job 2 is more interesting--I am one of three part-time employees trying to keep a one-man bakery afloat. My titles include, Delivery Driver, Farmers Market Seller, Social Media & Marketing Specialist, and Disapproving School Marm. The stories I could tell...but the one-man baker is one of those intelligent, like-minded people I enjoy spending time with, and the bread is killer. If he ever gets his act together, we'll corner the Charlotte market for real, fresh bread.

In between, I do some writing. I've written about bees, about bananas at the farmers' market, about sous chefs, about farmers, about big-dollar dining events.

I helped my parents mark 50 years of marriage.

And just now, I've realized I really need to get my photos in some kind of order. My old computer recently crashed, I've started using cloud storage, only to find my phone had been uploading photos for a while. Now I have photos stored in 3 different places, unlabeled, in no particular order.

 But now I have to go to a pig pickin' with a bunch of chefs and other culinary glitterati at a local brewery. Because I want to. And maybe because I'm getting hungry. Hopefully I'll be back here soon to share some stories, but if not, it's probably because I'm sharing some other stories for money. Which isn't a bad thing.

Pet Peeve

A friend’s recent post on Facebook dredged up a pet peeve of mine.  It’s still rankling around in my brain, so I thought I’d put it down here.  Not my usual subject matter, but when I started this blog six years ago, this was its original purpose.  (If you’d rather read about another amazing dinner event, click here to read the latest post on my food blog.)

Here’s the video that triggered my disbelief.  You can watch it or not; it’s a bland little instruction manual about folding fitted sheets.  It’s the very first line that caught my attention: “One of the biggest challenges you're going to face in your life is folding fitted sheets.”

Really?  I mean, yes, many people do spend their lives mystified by this modern convenience, but if it qualifies as a major event in your life history, you’re pretty darn sheltered!

This strikes a nerve with me because it resembles the kind of statements you hear on tv commercials all the dang time.  I think I’m particularly sensitive to them because, at an earlier stage in my life, I spent a surprising amount of time watching tv with no sound. 

It was mostly at the gym, where I preferred to listen to music while tracking miles on an elliptical machine stationed in front of a battery of suspended screens.  I might switch to a program that interested me, but was too preoccupied to bother channel-surfing, so got to watch plenty of commercials without their accompanying dramatic music or cheery narration.  Often, I had to imagine what intriguing product might follow shots of dimly-lit rippling sheets, or the fascinating conversation two people could be having to lead one of them to suddenly flourish a tube of medicated cream.

Once this separation of narration and image occurred to me, it was permanent.  So now, even with sound and picture running together, I still pay more attention than most to the smoothly delivered lines drilling into our nation’s subconscious day after day. Do any of these sound familiar?

“Now your pores can be practically invisible.”  Since when has it become shameful for women to display the fact that their skin is a living, breathing organ?  Are visible pores a sign of bad breeding or hygiene?  Do women who replace their skin with plastic become better sex partners?  Are wide pores on the TSA’s list of suspicious signs of terrorist involvement?  I must have missed a memo somewhere.

“Keep tiny hands germ-free and healthy.”  No.  Just, no.  Study after study has shown that children exposed to the horrifying messes of pets and—*gasp!*—the outdoors develop stronger immune systems and fewer allergies.  Yet the makers of disinfecting products continue to meet success with the message that keeping a white-tiled, sterile home is the only way a loving mother would raise her children.  (In spite of all the progress we’ve made, how many Lysol commercials feature Dad wiping down an otherwise spotless counter with a self-satisfied smile?)

“…the luxury and dependability you deserve.”  Really?  Do you know me?  Have you seen the dirty dishes on my counter, the projects on my desk I’ve been putting off, or the unanswered emails required difficult decisions?  It’s not like I’ve led the federal government to a new cost-cutting way of saving lives or feeding the homeless.  I’m not Ghandi, Warren Buffet or even Mary Poppins.  If my personal achievements aren’t relevant, it must be true that you believe anyone able to sit up and pay attention to a tv commercial is worthy of wearing a Rolex or driving a Bentley. So then, why don’t you just give me the damn thing, if I deserve it so much?

Go ahead, next time a commercial pops onto your tv, listen carefully to the assumptions it’s asking you to make.  With practice, you too might separate from the party line, and suddenly find that your list of “needs” gets cut dramatically.  As a bonus, you might even find some entertainment in these ridiculous sirens to our consumerist culture. 

Although I have to admit, my amusement is tempered with frustration when I realize how thoroughly brainwashed most of my fellow citizens continue to be.

Because I Want To

How do people keep up with blogging?  Not only writing, but responding to comments.  Some of my favorite bloggers post every day, and are always interesting, often pithy and generally likeable.

Anyway, I miss blogging more regularly.  I promise you, as I type this sentence, I have no idea what this post is about, but I feel like doing this, so I’m doing it.

I just glanced out the back window and heard a neighbor’s lawn mower and realized I’m supposed to be mowing this evening.  It seems like I can’t keep all my balls in the air, regardless of how many fewer I have than most people.  For once, I’m feeling good about having my writing deadlines under control.  My first big print article came out today, and I submitted my second one on deadline.  Last week I got a surprise payment for earlier writing; not enough to pay the mortgage, but enough to keep me afloat for the last couple weeks of the month, even with my car registration due.

I’m keeping busy at writing, but I’ve been in denial about the fact that I have yet to pitch anything to a larger publication than what I know here in Charlotte.  I need to do that.  I also need to mow the lawn, water the garden, fold the laundry and brush the dog.  Guess which one of those tasks will get done last?

I donated this to Friendship Trays yesterday.

I believe that will be the last cucumber of the season, but it’s now the peppers’ turn to shine.  I also finally picked that first big Mortgage Lifter tomato I’ve been watching for at least six weeks.

The earbuds are for scale.  I used them to listen to the interviews I recorded for the story I submitted today.  Do I look like a real writer?  Notice the Slow Foods coaster I regularly set my Coke bottles on.  I read a quote somewhere today that said something like “Soandso is an actor in the sense that he has appeared in films.”  I wondered humorously if I should define myself as a writer that way.  Just for now.  Until I send pitches to those other magazines…

I should also move my photos from Dropbox to my computer, and then back that up.  Yeah, add that to the list.

This also happened today:

It’s the little things.

Update: I did go out and mow, until I ran out of gas.  Then I started trimming…until I ran out of filament.  I was also running out of light, so the backyard is 7/8ths mowed and the front yard is 7/8ths trimmed.  At least they’re balanced.

Southern Snow

Last year around this time, Miss Chef and I were with her family in Michigan, struggling through and playing in deep inches of soft, thick snow.

This year, we are at home, where we got considerably less.

This snow“storm” was scheduled to arrive Tuesday afternoon, and the city began salting the roads on Monday.  Our sister office in Columbia, SC started getting sleet around 11:00 am Tuesday and were dismissed at 1:30; my office let us out at 2:00, to make sure everyone could make it home before the snow started falling.  We do have several people who live in rural parts of neighboring South Carolina, where an inch of snow/ice makes narrow gravel driveways nearly impassible.

In Charlotte, however, there was nothing yet falling, and I had a speedy drive home.  I changed, brought in some firewood and waited for the fun to begin.  By 4:30, I posted this picture to Facebook, with the caption, “That’s it; we’re officially snowed in.”

 

Rosie loves cold and snow, and she was very excited about the weather.  This was McKenna’s first snowfall, and while she found the falling flakes and Rosie’s antics rather interesting…

…she later determined that being outside in the stuff was not much fun.  (I brought her out on the leash, and once she was on the snow-covered ground, she eventually sat down with her tail wrapped around herself, waiting to go back inside.) 

Miss Chef and I got to spend our evening together on the couch, watching tv, enjoying the benefits of a wood fireplace, and eating snickerdoodles (like I said earlier, freeze some rolled cookie dough for a no-effort treat at any time).  We kept checking on the snow, as it changed from hard, dry dust to soft white flakes and back again.  Most of it accumulated after dusk, so I waited until this morning to go outside with my little ruler and see how we did.

 

That’s about 3/4 of an inch, less than the one to two inches that were predicted.

Now, we had been hearing for days about this dangerous snowfall, and there were lots of jokes on the internet about ridiculous southerners who can’t handle a fraction of the weather that other parts of the country take as standard winter conditions.  I, too, used to laugh at my coworkers’ freaking out about an inch of snow—Charlotte does have snow-removal equipment, and is smart enough to get teams out before snow falls (unlike some other, more northerly places I’ve lived in…but that’s another story).

However, the fact that southern snow generally falls when the temperature teeters back and forth across the freezing point can make it more dangerous than what I grew up with in northeastern Ohio.  It wasn’t until the first early-morning drive into work several years ago that I learned that snowfall around the freezing point makes a heck of a lot more ice than snow at ten degrees.

That’s our street this morning, covered in a thin layer of the dreaded “black ice.”  Frankly, I don’t think it matters what color you name it…but even our driveway and sidewalk, which had no traffic, developed a thin sheet of the stuff, from snow thawing on warmish concrete before re-freezing.  And everywhere we stepped last night, the pressure of our weight made more of it.  Some of us made more than others, going in and out to eat snow instead of peeing like they were supposed to.

 

That’s our front sidewalk, after I’d swept off the light covering of snow so I could expose the ice underneath to the sun and a pinch or two of salt.  The snow itself was no problem, a beautiful dry powder that swept easily off our ice-free cars, but you can see it wanted to stick to the ice on the ground, so it could make more.

Naturally, area schools were let out early yesterday, and are closed today.  My office won’t open until noon (thus my chance to blog).  However, Miss Chef’s school continued with its 5:30 am classes this morning!  Luckily, she didn’t have any early classes today, though she did have to go in for a meeting at 9:00.  It sounded like the main roads were very clear, but Miss Chef found most of the back roads were solid ice, and even saw a car slide off the side.  Once she got to work, she found out her meeting was cancelled, but decided the drive back was too treacherous to be worth it.

But even as I write this, our street is half-melted down to wet asphalt, and by the time I leave in another hour, I expect to have no real problems getting to work.  Still, I challenge any northerner to come down and try an early-morning drive here before snorting in derision at southerners in snow.  There are some ice-driving skills you just don’t get, even in the Land of Big Snow.  Trust me.

Edit: Just as I got to the word “derision” in that last paragraph, my supervisor called to say “Don’t bother coming in today.”  So now, I don’t know…maybe there is a call for derision.  Oh, well, we can always laugh at people emptying the store shelves of bread and milk, right?

Ho Hum

I’ve been very withdrawn from all things bloggy lately.  Not only have I not been tickled by the writing muse, but I haven’t seemed to have the time to read all the interesting adventures on the blogs I follow.  In fact, one of those bloggers has just recently posted a farewell, having decided that a blog just doesn’t fit into her priorities anymore.

I get that.  I really, really do.  But I’m not ready to call it quits yet.

Still, there’s not much material rattling around in my brain these days.  Between still being obsessed with kitty play and having to really knuckle down at work, and some stultifying budget/schedule issues on the home front, I just haven’t felt very adventurous.  Even when we have broken out of the daily grind—an overdue paddle at the Whitewater Center, our annual visit to the Renaissance Festival—I haven’t even been inspired enough to pull out the camera.

I’m not too worried about it, though. I know blogs tend to go through ebbs and flows.  My muse will come back eventually.

Before I get into the boring, long-winded catch-up part of my post, here’s a dramatic evening light picture.

 

So here’s what’s been distracting me.  At work, I’ve exited the probationary period in my new position, and am still not up to speed on production.  My remote supervisors are mostly supportive, saying that my numbers are moving in the right direction, but each month I see “needs improvement,” I am quite dissatisfied.  So I am re-focusing, learning to set a new pace.  It’s rewarding, as all hard work should be, but it’s also quite jarring to be sitting in an office of people who have big gaps in their work day, who can set their own pace, and who often stop and chat for 10, 15, 30 minutes at a time.  I frequently have to cut conversations short because I can’t be away from the system too long. 

It wouldn’t be so bad if others were doing the same kind of work I am, and could carry on conversations as we work, rather than stopping everything to chat.  My saving grace is the online chat session I keep open with the other gals working remotely at other sites, ostensibly to ask questions of.  More often it serves as a vent, where I can rant that “VER made me do a SICA for 2.5 max, then it came back and gave me a max cap error for FFF!”  See?  Who else could understand that?

In spite of my seeming withdrawal, I do I feel like I’ve made some small steps toward recognition in the office.  I was tapped for our small Employee Appreciation Week committee, which organized daily fun events and activities throughout the week.  We had surprise bags of candy, a Jeopardy-style trivia game, office superlatives (best-dressed, etc).  I think the site manager noticed that I can organize and communicate better than average (really?  I was a TEACHER, for crying out loud, that’s what we DO!).  I don’t know that that will have any direct impact on my future work, but it can’t hurt to improve his opinion of me.

Here’s a Halloweeny picture of our Halloween kitty.

 

Back to work…I’ve also stepped up to become involved in a Charlotte-wide Volunteer Leadership Group for the various sites around town.  I didn’t know this, but our company, while headquartered in New York, has several other offices in town—a couple of mortgage sites, a payment-processing site, and some sort of investment-bank setup right uptown.  Our office has only about 30 people in it; the payment processing site has a couple of hundred.  The point of this volunteer group is to start organizing local company-sponsored events in support of non-profits.  We haven’t had a big enough presence to be automatically included in the kinds of things we see happening in the larger markets, but if we pool all the sites, we should be able to make a difference.  Not only am I on the leadership group, but I volunteered for the communications committee.

Because I like to communicate.  Naturally.

I’m kind of excited that our 3-person committee is meeting at the uptown site next week, because I’d like to see what the other offices look like and find out what they do.  It’s a great opportunity to network across “lines of business," as they’re called, because otherwise we have absolutely no contact with non-auto finance people.

So that’s work.  At home, the biggest news is that McKenna McKitty had her spay surgery two weeks ago.  Here she is last night, showing off her adorable pink shaved belly and the remains of her incision boo-boo.

She was a very good patient.  She didn’t bother her stitches, so we didn’t have to impose the Cone of Shame on her.  Convenient, yes, but I do regret a bit the missed photo opportunities that would have offered.  During her recovery she did slow down for a couple of days, but we hardly noticed, until she suddenly revved back up to speed, and we remembered how energetic she is normally.

Still, she is starting to calm down just a little as she passes the 6-month mark.  She doesn’t wake us up multiple times a night with kneading and jumping onto our nightstands, more like once a night with a single visit and her trademark trilling meow.  During the day, her play sessions are shorter and a bit less intense.  However, she does still use the living room as a parkour grounds at least once a day, running and jumping as fast as the eye can see from floor to chair, to couch, to table, to cat tree, to table, to floor, to dog, to hearth, to…  This is usually while I’m stumbling out from bedroom to living room in the dark of early morning, trying to get the dog outside to pee while keeping the cat inside, and sadly, it’s just a bit beyond my abilities to turn on the lights and grab the phone to get some video.

Another reason she may not need as much playtime is that we’ve been trying to give her time outside on the dog run.  The evening I went out to take that picture at the top of the post, I lay down on the ground to get a photo of her, and she immediately came over and started climbing on me.

 

 

Pardon the hair, it was a slob day on the weekend.

As for our other furry companion, Rosie is still Rosie.  She still doesn’t get enough walks, but she is ever-patient and calm.  A month or so ago, just when summer’s heat started to ease, I took her to the dog park, so she could happily ignore all the other dogs.

She did sniff a few butts, but once we’ve traipsed the length of the park, she’s ready to go home.  I make her walk back through again, because it must be good for her, right? 

Sadly, the energetic kitty antics are far more interesting to photograph than a slow-moving black dog in low light, so, like a second child, she’s become a bit absent in my photo gallery.  How about a brief video of her sniffing butts at the dog park?  This starts out with a shot of her blonde doppelganger, before moving on to Rosie’s limited doggie social skills.

 

So that’s about all that’s worth mentioning.  I’m hoping that this coming weekend might be enough to get me out of my creative slump.  Not only are we going to the fair—a different one this year!—but Miss Chef is involved in a new professional organization that’s putting on their first big event.  I pledge to at least take a few pictures and post something about them here—because even if you’re not interested, I should be.  After all, it’s my life, I’d better take some interest!

click the picture for more info

Update for Miss Chef

As you may have gathered from the title, this post is really for Miss Chef.  If you want to see how my garden is doing and/or what I've been cooking, please scroll down to the next post.

Thank you, and have a nice day.

Hi Honey.  Just thought you'd like to see how things are going here.  I took these pictures at 8:00 in the evening without a flash, how cool is that?  We got a good rain shower tonight just beforehand, so it made all the colors sharp and intense.

Anyway...the cherry tomato plant is now taller than I am.

It's got plenty of ripening tomatoes.  I gave a handful to the neighbors and told them to come steal more next week. I think the brandywine might have set more fruit, too.  Having the plants well-staked for once will keep most of the fruit out of dog and rabbit reach, I hope.  So far, so good.  I think Rosie hasn't figured out that the tomato plants in the new bed are the same as the ones that she's used to finding in the garden.

The raspberries are so very, very close to being ripe.  I don't know if you can tell, but I got some bird netting to cover them with.  I swear we have some in the shed, but I couldn't find it.  Anyway, we might get enough to freeze some??  I tasted one that looked ripe yesterday, and it was awfully bitter.  I didn't see any today that were near to being ready.

The rose of sharon tree started blooming.

I've had two ant-free days, after a bout of chemical warfare on Sunday.  I'm doing very well at keeping the place clean, so if there are ants when you come home, it can only be Rosie's fault.

She misses you too.  But not nearly as much as I do.

Now I have to go fold socks & underwear.

Travel safely.  ♥

Still Around

 

After that last big gap in posting, I don’t want to leave you all hanging, wondering if some other tragedy has befallen us.  It hasn’t.  Unless you count house repairs.

Our house was built in 1988, which means just about everything is due for upgrade, repair or replacement.  We’ve replaced all the kitchen appliances, the water heater (twice) and most of the windows.  Next up was the aluminum-framed sliding-glass door in the back of the house.  The screen was ripped out of one corner, thanks to Rosie, and there was condensation between the double panes.  Fortunately we have the number of a talented handyman who’s already done some other work around here.

After waiting a month for the actual door to come in, the day finally arrived last weekend.  And this is how it looks today.

 

When the handyman started to pull out the old door, he discovered that most of the wood around it was wet and distintegrating, from an overflowing gutter (lesson: clean your gutters, people).  This meant he had to take out the top layer of brick steps to get all the siding and wet wood off.  In addition, the door—which he ordered to the exact dimensions of the old one—was too small for the space.  This meant that he had to use the plastic inserts here which were destined for another window he was supposed to trim out.  So the window project has now been pushed back ‘til…who knows when.

It also means the door installation cost more than twice what we’d expected.

As I mentioned, we’ve had this fellow do some other work here before.  Just like when we do our own repairs, he always seems to run into just enough trouble to guarantee a return visit.  It’s actually good thing, since in this case he managed to prevent some really serious damage to the house…but I’m beginning to have flashbacks to this guy…

 

Fortunately, this all happened while Miss Chef was home for the weekend, so we were able to calmly talk it over, sit down and look at our finances, and take a big gulp together.  One step at a time…I still have money for groceries, and even splurged on a pizza this weekend, so I think we’ll be ok.

Miss Chef also had enough funds to prepare supplies for her return to the hinterlands of the Alabama mountains.

 

 

It’s a small town, where she can’t even find a decent amber ale.  The sacrifices she makes for family.

After she left, I stocked up on my own supplies.

I wrote an entire post about the role of tuna casserole in our relationship.  It’s my fallback recipe to feed myself when Miss Chef’s out of town.

However, the casserole only lasts so long…eventually I had to put on my Big Girl apron, and cook for real.

 

Problem is, it doesn’t last very long.  Now I need to go buy some more tuna and cream of ___________ soup!

There, now you know what’s been going on.  Oh, I went into work, too, and did the usual routine there.  But that’s not the important stuff.  The important stuff is whether I’m done with that plate yet.

 

Monday Minutiae

Sunday evening, as I lay draped on our oversized armchair, my nose buried in a book, Miss Chef commented that I hadn’t posted on my blog lately.  “I know,” I replied, “But I’m not sure what to write about.” 

This afternoon at work, as I sat drowsing at my desk, I popped into my email and noticed that Bossy Betty had dropped off this comment on my last post:

 

Being an English teacher, BB has a knack for not just asking a question, but creating a writing assignment.  I thought I’d take her up on it--indeed, what have I been doing since Thanksgiving?

Answer: stuff.  All that stuff that happens while you’re busy making other plans.

Friday after Thanksgiving, not only did we get our tree, but we got it up and decorated.  (Please excuse the quality of my photos; they’re all from my phone.)

 

Oh, but it gets more exciting!  That Sunday, I drove an hour for goat poop.  As our disastrous garden this past summer attested, it was high time I put something back into the soil, and I could think of no finer dirt food than goat manure—especially since we happen to be friends with a goat farmer.  Mom even joined me for the hour’s drive out to Waxhaw, which is a a long time to be driven around for the pleasure of seeing your daughter shovel…stuff.

But I have to tell you, these goat farmers sure are gracious about providing poop.  They had already pulled up their wheel loader with a bucket full of the composted stuff, so there was no stink to contaminate my car.  And Mr. Goat Lady himself (aka Matt) did most of the shoveling into the double-bags I’d assembled.  When they were as full as they could stand, Mrs. Goat Lady (aka Michele) offered an extra feed bag to get every last bit of goodness for the garden.  Mom enjoyed chatting with her while we shoveled, and then Michele and Matt gave us a brief tour of the facility.

Unfortunately, I left my phone in the car, so the only picture I have of the whole experience is this:

Hey, that’s about 200 pounds of fertilizer!  Goat poop is dense.  (Oh, and did I mention…?  Their last name is Lamb.  Bazinga!)

Don’t worry—we did also offer some real entertainment to the folks, including dinner out at our favorite restaurant (Passion8 Bistro), and an evening at The Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Ultimate Christmas Show (abridged).  Then Monday it was back to reality, as Miss Chef and I headed back to work and my parents headed back home.

After all that excitement, I was looking forward Monday evening to a quiet, empty house after five days of company.  Just me and the dog, since Miss Chef teaches Monday nights.  However, as Rosie and I greeted each other at the door after a long day apart, I heard an odd sound in the vicinity of the guest bathroom.  “Did somebody leave the water running?” I said to Rosie.  She didn’t answer.  Which made it all that much easier to hear the carpet go squish as I walked into the small hallway.

What Rosie wasn’t telling me was that the water heater had blown a connector and was spraying water at the furnace.  The furnace didn’t seem to care, and was letting the water splatter on the walls, run down to the floor and ooze on through into the hallway.

I will not go into the details of the panicked call to Miss Chef, the two hours of running the carpet cleaner to suck the water up, the multiple visits from the plumber, the evening showers chez a good friend…nor the gulps we took as we heard the cost of repairs.

No, I’ll just tell you we have a brand-new same-as-cash financing agreement to go along with our new tankless water heater.

Here’s where the old, 40-gallon tank sat (and spewed)—on the right wall you can see the control panel for the new system.

 

And here’s the new, exterior system (with water barrel and A/C unit for size comparison):

 

The main benefit of one of these is that you’ll never run out of hot water—it’s heated on demand.  That also means it’s more efficient, as you don’t have 40 gallons of water being kept up to temperature 24/7.  Surprisingly, the energy savings is not great enough to make up the additional cost of a tankless heater.  But since our original tank installation had not been up to code, the cost of the repairs was almost half the cost of this new system.  So we bit the bullet and went tankless.  (Also, this system means almost zero chance of your water heater springing a leak and flooding out your house.  But how often does that happen, right?)

So that, my dears, is what I have been up to—that, and catching up on laundry.  But as I struggle to get my focus back onto the upcoming holidays, let me leave you with some prettier pictures, to go with my new background theme.

A couple closeups of the tree…including the lovely ornament I won from Yabu back in September…

 

 

…a poor picture, with poor lighting, of the charming wreath my mother made, complete with foliage and berries from our invasive nandina plants….

 

…and a parting shot of our lights on the outside of the house.  Miss Chef decided if we were going to put lights on the house, we were going to do it right, so we have more than we’ve ever had before.  She’s still talking about getting on the roof to add something to the center peak, but thankfully she’s a bit overscheduled for the moment and probably won’t get to it…until she reads this post and decides to prove me wrong!

Bonus: if you look closely, you can just see Rosie silhouetted on the lawn.  She’s not having any major accidents during the day (knock wood!!!), but still has some minor issues in the evening.  I guess we’re kind of maintaining at this point, though I don’t think the red-clover treats are really working.

I Should Be Back...

...but I'm not.

I'd planned to sit down yesterday and blast you all with my cheery presence.  For last Thursday was the last day of the quarter, and the rest of this year I"ll be working a single job.  All that free time laid out in front of me, with all my grading done, no lesson planning to dread do, and my bank job requiring only 40 hours a week.

As you have no doubt realized, I did not sit down yesterday and announce my re-entry into the bloggy world.  Well may you ask why, but I'm still sitting here scratching my head, wondering why I made so little of this (beautiful, sunny) weekend.  My best guess is a bit of an over-scheduling hangover.  I think I'm still stuck in that "don't wanna lesson plan, oh look Angry Birds, la la la" mode.  Soon I hope my subconscious will realize there's no work to do, other than the usual housework, so no point in procrastinating!

So this post is a bit of a placeholder.  Yes, you get the opportunity to "hear" my friendly voice, but it's not going to tell you any good stories, or even introduce any interesting photos.  Sorry.  I'm waiting for my creative well to re-fill.

In the meantime, I'm going to list out some of what I hope to accomplish as this glorious fall rolls on in.

1) Get back to the gym!  It's been so long since I've been, that I've misplaced my membership card.  But I did go Friday after work, and even tricked Miss Chef into meeting me there, mostly to ensure *I* made it.  Whoo-whee, I got a lotta catching up to do in there...

2) Paddle more!  With summer gone, both high temperatures and large crowds should be diminishing, and the foliage should be starting to turn.  Bonus: Miss Chef should be able to join me more often, and she's recently developed a real liking for the stand-up paddleboards.  Have I shown you this picture from last month?

Ok, so maybe I was wrong about the no-photos thing.

3) Go to the fair!  I've decided to make it an overnight trip for the NC State Fair this year.  My hope is to be able to see some of the livestock before they're shipped off for the weekend (they have too many to keep the whole time, so they do the judging in shifts).  But also, I'm looking forward to staying with a cousin on my mom's side--she's the artist who did the painting from my Paris rooftop photograph.

4) Go to the mountains!  We'd do this anyway; we have decided our October anniversary is the perfect time to getaway to the gorgeous mountains around Asheville, pick apples and do some hiking.  We still haven't figured out where exactly we're going, though--maybe Banner Elk, as one of Miss Chef's former restaurant colleagues is working at a nice place up there.  In the meantime, we've planned a quickie day-trip back to Skytop Orchard for apples (and donuts!)

5) Go to the Renaissance Festival!  The change of weather from summer's sultry heat to drier, brighter fall air always gives me a hankering to wander the shady acres of our local RenFest, enjoying the sights, sounds  and smells.  I'm not entirely sure when we'll be able to work this in, but we will.

6) Pay more attention to Rosie!  Yes, she's been neglected, but she's always the one to get my butt off the couch and get outside.  She deserves more of my time (and no, she didn't just take over the keyboard).

7) Read more of your blogs!  I have actually been reading (almost) all of you-all's posts, but I've been spotty about commenting.  Part of that is because I do a lot of reading on my tablet, but it's a pain to type comments on, especially because it gets cranky with some of Blogger's displays.  So a lot of my comments remain in my head, but I'd like you to know I'm still reading.

That certainly sounds like quite ambitious enough of a list, along with a couple of major holidays and the usual projects around the house.  But hopefully, with just one job going, I'll have time to share my adventures here on Flartopia.

Right after I finish this book...

The first of the series is Magyk (click for more info).

Miss Chef is Crazy

Country road on the way to Baucom’s Best Farm several weeks back.

 

I have a feeling if I go back through my archives, I’ll find at least one other blog entry with this title.  But no matter, reviewing material only helps drive the point home.

I just have to share Miss Chef’s schedule this weekend.  Part of the problem is that it’s the beginning of Queen’s Feast, Charlotte’s biannual restaurant week.  I’ve posted a summary of the experience here, if you care to review for this review (skip to after the 3rd picture).

Ok, so Miss Chef’s crazy schedule started Thursday:

Thursday:

7:30 am – 2 pm: Teach / serve at the school-run restaurant

2pm – 5 pm: wait for a delivery from a farmer who never came.  Miss out on the chance for a nap at home.

6 pm – 2-something am: Sit through the three recent Batman movies back-to-back in the company of two students and about 40 other nutcases rabid fans.  (Also, be very blessed that you did not do this in Aurora Colorado.  My blood ran cold when I heard the news this morning, even though Miss Chef lay five feet away from me, snoring her little heart out.)

Friday:

3 am – 7 am: sleep

8 am – 2 pm: Drive two hours to Asheville to pig up pork belly from Hickory Nut Gap Farm (see note above re: unreliable local farms), return to school, store, change, go to other restaurant.

2:18 pm: Call your worried spouse to assure her you did not fall asleep on the highway

2 pm – ??midnight??: Work.  50-some on the books when you walk in, more guaranteed to show up.

Saturday

??? – 6:30 am: Sleep.

7:30 am – ??noon??: Assist Chef Bonaparte with the Matthews Community Farmers Market annual Corn Roast.  (I will also be there, shucking my little heart out.  Maybe I’ll get some free corn, who knows?)

2 pm – ??midnight??: Work.  Probably even busier than Friday night

Sunday

Recover.  Homework.  Appreciate your wife not expecting a whole lot from this one day off you have together.  Understand this offer is only good during Queen’s Feast, at which point re-negotations will be scheduled.

 

And now…remember that beer?  No, we haven’t tasted it yet.  But I did come up with this:

 

I think I’ve been influenced by Jenna Woginrich at Cold Antler Farm!  But Miss Chef likes it, which is all I was looking for.  Then again…do I really want to depend on the opinion of a crazy woman??