Tag Archives: life

Happy Birthday to Me…Turning 32

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Yep, today is my birthday.

Again.

Would it kill me to admit that I’m now officially 32?  Probably not.  But I don’t think I will anyway, so…Happy 26th Birthday, Jamie!

I was going to post a picture of myself (clearly not something I do often if you’ve been around here much), but I took 4 with my camera phone and they all made me look old and tired and I decided that I wouldn’t torture myself like that right now.

After 21, birthdays seems to be all about reflecting. Surprisingly enough, so is the New Year holiday–which is right around the corner, of course.  So if I’m not careful, I could spend every holiday season endlessly reviewing the past or daydreaming about the future. (Quite frankly, I don’t believe either is very healthy after more than the first couple minutes. But I tend to be a bit of a introspective wallower regardless of birthdays or seasons, so that’s probably just a self-defense mechanism kicking in.)

Have you seen Lonesome Dove?  (Ok, if you haven’t go rent it, RIGHT NOW!)  At the end there’s this little bit where a reporter is asking Captain Call about being called a “man of vision” and Captain Call has a flashback over all the events throughout the movie.  I guess that’s how I feel on my birthday…there’s this rolling movie of all the little snapshot moments of my life.

The beauty is not in any one of them, but in the continuous flow…moment to moment to moment…none independent of the other but each shaping and creating the next…so connected by tiny details that you can see how the music from your childhood echoed to the naming of your children…how the colors along your walk to school now paint your living room…how your pet rabbit lead you to an entire farm…

Waaaaay back...

September 1996.

December 2001.

Fall 2004.

Fall 2005.

Fall 2007.

January 2008.

October 2008.

May 2009.

October 2009.

Spring 2010.

December 2010.

…How God has blessed every breath…

Yes, it makes “quite a vision.”

Food and Farming Friday 6/11/2010

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Welcome to Food and Farming Friday, where I give you lots of minute details about food production from our own little backyard perspective and then offer TRIVIA, just to keep you coming back.

Last week’s question was What Local Crop is Being Harvested Right Now?  The answer is WHEAT. Random.org picked Beckie Conroy as last week’s winner.  Watch your mailbox, Beckie!

This week I managed to get some pictures of a combine working a nearby field.   Remember our neighbor’s amber waves of grain last weekend?

A neighbor's amber waves of grain, June 2010.

Now they look like this…

Winter wheat field, harvested June 2010.

Wheat is harvested with a combine (or combine harvester).

The combine head (or header) on the front (left) cuts the grain and pulls it into the combine. Farmers change the head based on the type of crop being harvested.

The combine head (or header) in the front cuts the wheat and sucks it inside where it threshes it (separates the seed heads from the stalks) and spits the waste (chaff) out the back, just above the ground.  The seeds are stored inside the combine chamber.

The waste, or chaff, comes out the back of the combine just above the ground. It is not coming out of the boom chute at the top.

When the combine’s chamber is full a tractor pulls a trailer alongside that boom chute at the top of the combine and it spits the seeds into the trailer.

The combine can dump seed into the trailer and keep harvesting without stopping.

Then the tractor pulls the trailer to a different section of the field and uses the trailer’s boom (not shown) to spit the wheat into a big tractor-trailer box while the combine keeps going.  When the tractor-trailer is full, it heads off to the grain elevator.  Using a second man to go back and forth with the tractor and trailer means the combine can keep harvesting without stopping to dump the seed load.  If you don’t have a second man, the combine would drive straight to the tractor-trailer box and dump the seed there itself.

After the first 5 minutes there's dust everywhere in this process!

Just for the record, I am very, very, very allergic to wheat dust.

I didn’t know that until I started dating Mr. Fix-It.  There’s just not a lot of crop harvesting going on around the City of Falls Church where I grew up, so I never knew.  Thankfully our house is just up the road from that wheat field about a 1/2 mile, so I snapped a couple quick shots and raced home to dose up on Benadryl before it got out of control.  If it gets out of control, I start sneezing nonstop (like, can’t even breath between sneezes, nonstop), my eyes swell shut, and I break out in hives…it’s just ugly, folks.  U-G-L-Y.

Here’s someone else’s picture of the next step in the process–it was time for me to roll the windows up and get the heck out of there…

Creative Commons, www.flickr.com.

But on to the  Trivia!

Everyone knows John Deere.  But not everything in the farming world is green and yellow.  It’s a 3-part question today.  You can answer each one individually by submitting an individual comment for each part if you want to answer.  I’ll let each comment count individually when we pick a winner so answering all 3 will giving you up to 3 chances to win.

Food and Farming Trivia for 6/11/2010…

Name one brand of red tractors, one brand of blue tractors, and one brand, besides Deere, that makes green tractors.

P.S….Hints tomorrow morning!

The 5 Love Languages

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After reading this article on Yahoo! about terrible Mother’s Day gifts, I thought this would be a great time to post about the 5 Love Languages–in case you need to run back to the store before Sunday!

The 5 Love Languages is a book by Dr. Gary Chapman  which I highly, highly recommend.  However, if you really, really, really aren’t a reader (and I know some of you, my dear friends and readers, who aren’t…Mr. Fix-it included)  the website is pretty cool too.

His website sums it up like this…

After many years of counseling, Dr. Chapman noticed a pattern: everyone he had ever counseled had a “love language,” a primary way of expressing and interpreting love. He also discovered that, for whatever reason, people are usually drawn to those who speak a different love language than their own.

The five languages are:

Words of Affirmation--Actions don’t always speak louder than words. If this is your love language, unsolicited compliments mean the world to you. Hearing the words, “I love you,” are important—hearing the reasons behind that love sends your spirits skyward. Insults can leave you shattered and are not easily forgotten.

Quality Time–In the vernacular of Quality Time, nothing says, “I love you,” like full, undivided attention. Being there for this type of person is critical, but really being there—with the TV off, fork and knife down, and all chores and tasks on standby—makes your significant other feel truly special and loved. Distractions, postponed dates, or the failure to listen can be especially hurtful.

Receiving Gifts–Don’t mistake this love language for materialism; the receiver of gifts thrives on the love, thoughtfulness, and effort behind the gift. If you speak this language, the perfect gift or gesture shows that you are known, you are cared for, and you are prized above whatever was sacrificed to bring the gift to you. A missed birthday, anniversary, or a hasty, thoughtless gift would be disastrous—so would the absence of everyday gestures.

Acts of Service–Can vacuuming the floors really be an expression of love? Absolutely! Anything you do to ease the burden of responsibilities weighing on an “Acts of Service” person will speak volumes. The words he or she most want to hear: “Let me do that for you.” Laziness, broken commitments, and making more work for them tell speakers of this language their feelings don’t matter.

Physical Touch–This language isn’t all about the bedroom. A person whose primary language is Physical Touch is, not surprisingly, very touchy. Hugs, pats on the back, holding hands, and thoughtful touches on the arm, shoulder, or face—they can all be ways to show excitement, concern, care, and love. Physical presence and accessibility are crucial, while neglect or abuse can be unforgivable and destructive.

The website even includes a quiz you can take to determine what your love language is.

The 5 Love Languages by Gary Chapman

As imperfect humans, we tend to express love in our own primary language (because we understand it) and get hurt if it’s not received the way we expect.  But no matter how nice or how loving you try to be to someone, if you’re not speaking their love language then it’s not going to have as much meaning to them.  You need to speak their language to express love to them.

It’s an eye-opener.  After reading the book, I realized a lot of things about my relationships.  I connect well with Rachel, my crafting buddy, partly because we both “speak” in Gift Receiving.  That’s probably partly why I like crafting so much to begin with (since I’m certainly not finding release for my soul-consuming artistic passions because I’m not artistic at all).  There’s something about giving away your heart-blood in a homemade, handmade gift that speaks to my soul–that’s not surprising if you know my primary love languages are Gift Receiving and Acts of Service.  However, my gift giving efforts with Mr. Fix-it often fell flat because his primary language is  Words of Affirmation.  He didn’t see buying double chocolate, mint oreo cookies as a love offering.  He saw it as grocery shopping. 

So ask your mom to take the on-line assessment and let you know what her love language is–that way you won’t end up on this list…Worst Mother’s Day Gifts Ever.

Fun and Games

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It’s amazing to me how much money we spend on games and toys when my kids can entertain themselves all afternoon with a piece of baling twine and a rock.

Like playing hide and seek in the tractor bucket…

One...

Two...

Three!

This kept them busy for 30 minutes before I even came over to find them!  I get distracted when they’re distracted from distracting me because I can’t help but wonder what they’re up to.  Yes, it makes it hard to get anything done.

I love this though–watch the sibling dynamics…

See the little guy looking for directions?  He’s watching the older two every second to see what he should be doing.  He copies what they do, what they say, and does what they say.

See that grin?  He loves being included.  Being one of the “big” kids.

And see the tough guy over there totally oblivious to whatever they’re doing?  He’s outgrown that stage.  He’s stopped doing everything she tells him to.  We thought we were happy about that.  Until the honey incident.

But we’ll save that for another post.

The Love-Hate Relationships of a Working Mom

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I’m a working mom.  In a perfect world I get up at 5 am, get ready for work, have a blissful 10 minutes of quiet “me-time,” and wake my precious family up to the smell of bacon and eggs at about 6 am.  My men (big and little) are out the door by 10 minutes to 7 and the Ladybug and I have another hour to get ready for school, clean up the kitchen, and do the morning chores before leaving at 8.  The whole scenario works like magic–we know, we’ve done it.

Of course, in our world this happens about once a week.  Ok, ok, maybe an average of once a week, not once every week.  Because the down side to this scenario is that the magic wears off 4-6 cups of coffee later.

Which brings me to my toaster…

Toaster 4-2010

Toaster

You didn’t see that coming, did you?

As a frantic working mom, I love my toaster.  I adore my toaster. Excluding that one brilliant day each week in Perfectville, this little kitchen workhorse and I crank out whole-grain toast, 90 calorie waffles, and everything-but-the-kitchen-sink bagels together at alarming rates.  (In case you’re impressed by that, just know that my kids like their Pop-Tarts cold).

Until this past Sunday.

While making our weekend breakfast (bump our magic scenario back an hour and skip the work/school component and voila!–back in Perfectville!) I threw my bread in, pushed the lever down and moved back to the stove.  Only to come back to…bread.  Ok.

I pushed it down again, the lever popped back up.

Down, up, down, up, down, up…

I won’t embarrass myself further by admitting how many times I actually tried this pointless exercise.  Suffice it to say that slamming the lever up and down didn’t make a different.  Slamming it down and manually holding it in place didn’t either.  And flipping it over and shaking it vigorously and then slamming it down didn’t either.

So I did what any other busy woman would do…I threw a pan of biscuit in the oven and moved on with life.

Come Monday morning I discovered that time may “heal all wounds” for people, but not for malfunctioning toasters.  “Let sleeping dogs lie” is only applicable if they’re actually sleeping.  If they’re  dead, you should probably go ahead and dispose of them instead of shoving them to the back of the counter and pretending you don’t know anything about it until someone asks.

I hate my toaster.   I loathe my toaster.  Frozen waffles never get pleasantly crisp in the microwave.  Just ask our middle son–the waffle connoisseur.  Soggy microwave waffles practically bring the poor  guy to tears.  Of course, the thought of making fresh, waffle-iron waffles every morning definitely brings me to tears.  Hello 4:45 am.

Enter Mr. Fix-it.  He only popped it down twice before getting out the screwdriver.

Ever seen your toaster’s guts before?

Toaster guts

If you have, then you probably know what I now know–toasters are so amazingly simple that when they’re broken, they’re just broken.  There’s nothing to fix.

So if you have any toaster-buying recommendations, our waffle-aholic here asks you to share them…

wyatt smile

The waffle lover

…’cause a growing boy can’t survive on cereal and soggy waffles for long.