God -- or perhaps just the NY Times is taunting me

Shockingly I didn't win the lottery last night (not even the $2 minimum prize), but no one won the jackpot at all, so now it's up to 325 million.

Today, the New York Times ran this article I mean really, clearly, I am already having a hard time coming to terms with giving up my mill, now they're just rubbing my nose in it!!

Grinding to a Halt

So my friend called and asked how much the minimum bid would be for my mill. The auctioneer said "well what do you think it will go for?" And she said "A substantial amount, I am sure." At which point he became defensive and said he expected the opening bid to be $500,000 and for it to go for $1.2million at least. So that pretty much stomped my dream to death.

I really, really would like to buy the place and preserve it. I would like to run it as a b&b/tiny dairy farm and rent out the wheat/milling part. I even bought a lottery ticket tonight (yes, I know that I would be better off saving the dollar and letting all those dollars add up and then buying my mill 9,000 years from now). I don't even want to hear what my friend Robert, who has figured out at what salary it is no longer a cost effective use of time to pick up a quarter, to hear I bought a lottery ticket, but there it is out there for the whole world to know.

Since buying my mill is as unlikely to happen as my winning the lottery tonight, and, since I haven't lost my entire readership already despite a long hiatus and inane posts, lets think about what I would spend my $252,000,000 on.

First, I would pay off both my, and my boy's bicentennial fund pledges to the church (yes, we've gotten a little behind on that), then I would pay off any remaining credit card debt we had, I would buy my mill and my sister this house: http://www.trulia.com/property/1068642092-1504-Airport-Heights-Dr-Anchorage-AK-99508 Then I would build my boy's parents a dining room and work shop and pay to move my stuff out of my parents house (so my mother will have space for even more furniture :)), We'd send my parents on a cruise to Australia and my boy and I would plan the most amazing circus themed wedding any of our closest 400 friends have ever attended! I could go on, but It's dinner time.

What would you do with the $252 mil if you won?

There's One Really. . .

So I know a long time ago I wrote on this blog about a loft I wanted my boy to buy, and then I wrote later on about a house I wanted to pay to move, I just didn't have any vacant land, well this time I am even more serious than those other times and my boy (and everyone else thinks I am even more ridiculous). Last weekend while we were waiting for the two hours in the mechanic's shop in the 90 degree weather (subtly different than the two hours we'd spent prior to that waiting for the car to be finished while at the wildlife park), I saw an ad and I fell in love again. Here's the link, you can go look at it: http://www.auctionzip.com/Listings/683520.html I'll wait.

Ever since we went to the White Mountains this summer, I've been longing for a compound for family and friends to come visit. Like a bed and breakfast only more laid back. I really, really want it and I think that we'd be good hosts for something like that, we're very hospitable, we like cooking, my boy likes building crap and growing veggies.

This place fulfills both that longing and the one I've had lately to be closer to family (ok, so it's much closer to my boy's family and probably not significantly closer to my family, but driving wise it is, we're 7 hours closer to Alaska -- maybe).

Also, this farm has been in the same family since the 1700. I think that's amazing, the road this mill is on? It was named after the mill. I want to be a part of the history of this mill. I want to preserve it. I want to make sure that it is kept as one piece, not parceled off for other commercial ventures.

See, don't you want to help the cause too? Don't you want to have a place to get away from the hustle and bustle of life? That's this place. Let's get it!! Need more reasons? Let me know, I can do a follow up post, I just wanted to get this out in the 15 min I had between our exciting NJ/NY weekend adventure :).

The best laid plans of mice and men

We were gone all weekend, still no signs of the mouse, no droppings and no food ripped open. I was starting to think that perhaps he had moved out. then out of the corner of my eye, tonight, I saw a little blur running down the hall. It was on the way into my boy's room. My boy rushed over to try and catch it, but he was too late, he saw the mouse disappear under his dresser. So now we've moved traps to be strategically placed under the dresser and in the hall and we hope that that does something. I'm not too sorry to be gone again this weekend!

. . . How Laid Back Is He?

This weekend we visited my boy's family in rural PA. Among other things, we took our car in to have the water pump replaced (there's a whole story about what a waste that was, or if you're not a pessimist, on what good preventative care we took of our car -- again, that's if you're not a pessimist who was stuck in a car with no ac for 7+ hours in 94 degree weather because you'd already wasted the short overlap of time you and the mechanic had in the same place having the waterpump fixed instead of the ac).

Anyway, while we were waiting for the car to be fixed, also in 90 degree weather, we were stuck in rural Pennsylvania with nothing to do. We walked around the block about three times stopping and looking at a grave yard, twice before we wandered down another road and into a wild animal park. That's right, 15 minutes from where my boy's family lives are lions, and tigers and bears (for real, I'm not just chanting like Dorothy), not to mention alligators, zebras, giant koi, capabara's and many more random, very wild animals.

When I say "not to mention," in the sentence previous, I am serious. I have visited my boy's family numerous times in the two and a half plus years we've been dating and NO ONE. Not one single person (he has a big family), thought to mention that they had a wild animal park a mere 15 minute drive away. I swear to you there have been conversations that have started with me saying "so, what is there to do around here?" with no real response. [edit, my boy claims he's told me numerous times about the wildlife park. . .]

People have always said that my boy is laid back, and I found most of his family to be just as chill (all very good considering I'm kinda high strung), but I am starting to think it's not really a family trait so much as an environmental thing. If you look at the Lake Tobias Wildlife Park website, you will see this: "Any food you bring to feed the animals must be approved by Park Management before you feed it to our animals." Notice that they don't say no outside food is allowed. Nope, they just assume you'll be dragging your ratty (or perhaps zebra-y) food in with you and they're okay with that. Whatever you want. Also, the alligators are allowed to come right up to the fence. I have never been closer to an alligator in my life. My boy pointed out that there was a double fence. I would like the point out that the "double fence" wasn't more than a fingers width apart. I swear if you really wanted to you could get your fingers chewed off. I think the mentality is meh, if that's what you want, that's what you want. Seriously, the most laid back wildlife park I have ever been to.

Final review, well worth the $4.00 to get in, probably worth the $5.00 for the safari ride, but we didn't go on it and we still enjoyed ourselves. If you find yourself stuck in rural PA, with random food just itching to give it to a wild beast now you know , the secret's out!

I Have a HORRIBLE Confession to Make (and many of you already know)

I am a horrible, horrible thank you note writer. I love getting thank you notes from other people. I know that it's proper etiquette, and I usually have good intentions.

Case in point, I planned on having beautiful thank you notes made for all of your incredibly generous support for my participation in The Walk for Hunger. Due to all of you I raised over $1500 for the walk for hunger. I contacted a friend of mine and we had a plan worked out. Then I found cute polka dot cards with my initial on them, so I decided to go with those. I wrote a number of the Thank you cards and they were sealed and ready to be sent out. This was about two months ago. People, I can't find them.

Even worse? I found a thank you card for a birthday present under the couch when I was in the process of writing my thank you cards for The Walk for Hunger. It had been stepped on and shoved under the couch and so I thought it better at that point (you know three months after my birthday but still reasonably close to the walk) to include a belated thank you and explanation in my thank you card to R&C for their support and their lovely gift of red buckets. Sigh. That one was lost too.

Don't even get me started on how my boy and I got a package of cards from Project Bread that would be perfect for writing thank you notes on. I can't figure out where I filed them.

Does it surprise you that I can't find a mouse that's actively hiding from me?

What a failure!

But for those of you who supported me (and the many hungry in MA). I do want you to know that I really appreciated it. Your love and support does far more than you can imagine! The food we're able to provide weekly to people who are on fixed incomes or who are homeless or working at the poverty line does more than just feed a physical need. It also shows a concern for people who are usually marginalized. In each of the programs my boy and I are involved in, we're proud of the work that goes into what we serve, whether it be creative muffin recipes, high quality ingredients, or thoughtful menus. We think that the people eating the food feel the hospitality and the love that goes into the meal (maybe that's why we wanted Carla to win the last Top Chef so badly -- we're right there with her on understanding the love that goes into food prep).

Thank you for making it all possible!

Love,

SRH

P.S. R&C thank you for the pretty red buckets. They are a useful addition to our home!

The Bounty

So besides an issue with pest control in our house (there have been no takers on the 8 traps we've set up), yesterday was fairly exciting just for the sheer amount of fruit and veggies we were able to score from our CSA. We got: 4 ears of corn, 3 red potatoes, 1 bunch of arugula, 1 head of lettuce, 3 zucchini/summer squash, tomatoes, apples, peaches, beets, kale (a new smaller curlier version that we've already eaten some of for those of you who worry about our kale consumption), blueberries, and cucumbers. We supplemented this incredible haul with another stop at Allendale Farms where we got those cute little plums, some Rainer cherries, a couple more round zucchini and a quart of strawberries. We stopped off at our local grocery store and bought 12 more ears of corn for $1.99 (it is soo yummy and sweet and also from a MA farm).

For lunch we had a loaf of ciabbatta bread spread with pesto and covered in toasted pine nuts, zucchini slices, kale and garlic, spring onion, and heirloom tomatoes topped with mozzarella cheese. For dinner, we stuffed those uber cute round zucchini squash with sausage my boy made, corn, cheese, tomatoes, mushrooms, garlic, and, of course, zuchini. It was yummy. Best of all, we had strawberry shortcakes for dessert with the incredible strawberries we had gotten from Allendale and with whole foods shortcakes that taste just like the bisquick shortcakes I grew up on (um, perhaps whole foods will be insulted, but I thought it was perfect).

Anyway, it was a lovely day for veggies and since it was chilly, we had the oven going most of the afternoon baking and roasting various items. We should have plenty of beets for pickled beets when my boy's family comes to visit (you know, if they'll still come to visit if we have a mouse running loose and the ceiling isn't fixed. . . ).

Uninvited Guest

So in the series of weekly misfortunes, this morning we saw a mouse in our house. Perhaps you didn't hear me, THERE IS A MOUSE RUNNING AROUND OUR HOUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Personally I find that far more distasteful than the ceiling falling in, the car being in disrepair or the washer not working. A MOUSE HAS INVADED MY PRIVATE HOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You probably are thinking that I am inherently against rodents or that I am just afraid of them, but you are wrong. I think mice in the wild are darling. I had a lab rat I trained (Ratcliffe was so smart and cute that we won a prize at a rat rodeo -- if you're interested I might even be able to post a picture of the prize -- I don't know how, but I never got a picture of the rat himself). I also had two gerbils (one of which i adored and one which I was scared of -- rightfully so though, he ended up killing the adored gerbil AND then killing another gerbil and eating part of him).

So here's the problem I see with the mouse in my house. He's a complete stranger who's entered my house unasked and is running who knows where peeing all over who knows what and probably eating anything he wants that we don't have sealed up in plastic lock and seal containers. In other words, the worst possible house guest you can imagine. If a human came in your house and behaved this way, the police would come and kindly take him away for you. But no one (besides an exterminator -- and you my readers) is interested in your mouse problem (not even my boy really, he said to me, what, you live in Boston, you're telling me you've never had a mouse in Boston?!). I mean really, can you imagine the animal control call on that one?! I have a friend who was told animal control wouldn't help her when she had a bat in her house (perhaps it was the way she told them that she didn't mind the bat being in her house so much, except he kept hanging on her curtains and you know that those claws were going to put a run in the drapes -- notice, again, bad house guest etiquette). Unless the traps work soon I am not gonna be a happy camper --and don't even get me started on how I'll feel if I find something worse than a mouse on one of those glue traps!

And Then There Was Silence

I mean not really, but it has been four days :). I haven't really blogged because I never finished the pile of laundry that I started in the last blog post -- and really, who would admit that to the whole wide world?! Oh, right, me.


Last night I led Bible study for my small group. I talked to a couple people before and told them how crummy it was going to be, and, from my perspective, it was only mildly better than crummy, but through the grace of God I think people got something out of it.


I led on Luke 6:37-42 I mentioned in my study that I couldn't find the study guides our group has for Luke and none of the books I have at home had much to report on that section of Luke either. I went online to steal shamelessly from random sermons, blog posts and online Bible Studies and didn't find much. It's weird since this is such an important passage. A passage that's quoted frequently and that is a fundamental part of Jesus ministry.


I could have skipped ahead and worked on another passage (we're kinda free and loose in our Bible Study on what sections we study -- last week we had a complete repeat of the section we'd studied the week prior). But I had sort of a soft spot for this Bible passage. When I was a little kid, I couldn't wrap my head around verses 41 & 42. I couldn't understand why it wasn't a completely selfless act to try and help your neighbor get the speck out of his eye when you had a painful giant log in your own eye. I mean really, doesn't it sound like one of the most giving and kind things you could do? I've since learned that in the very basic of terms it means don't criticize and pick apart someone else's problems when you've got your own (larger) sins to deal with.


I still had some issues with the passage when I was leading last night. I was trying to understand where you draw the line between accountability and judging. We are called to keep each other accountable, I mean Proverbs 27:17 is pretty clear, as iron sharpens iron so one man sharpens another. One of the women last night pointed out that just like having money isn't in and of itself evil, it's your attitude toward money that can be evil, so it is that your attitude is what distinguishes between judging and accountability. If you're pointing out faults to make yourself feel better or to bring the other person down, it's pretty likely you're "judging" if you're pointing out faults to help build the person up, it's accountability. . . Okay, sounds pretty simple when I type it out, but I never claimed to be a genius.


In reading the passage over, I also realized I had never noticed the second part of verse 38: "a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." Somehow that section sort of got overlooked in the crazy, judge not, blind leading the blind, get the plank outta here!! passage. But re-read that part again. It's really wild. I mean yeah, it means that Jesus clearly wasn't a pastry chef, but if he were a dry goods dealer he'd be the one people would line up to visit. To demonstrate, last night we measured a cup of flour properly for baking (sort of, my demonstrator sort of patted down into the cup, so I think hers should have been 2ozs lighter,) and we had our other demonstrator take a good measure of flour, pressed down, shaken together and running over. The difference was approximately 4 ounces (or 2/3rds more in our case -- if I did my math right, which I doubt). Try the experiment yourself at home. It's shocking. So our forgiveness, our giving, it's supposed to be pressed down, shaken together and running over, not the bare minimum we can muster and still slide by, but 2/3 more! -- or something like that :). Hope it gives you something to think about this coming week when someone annoys you! (I've already messed up today, but I am dusting myself off to try again).

A Kale Free Zone

So, if there were a religious ceremony like Passover (which requires taking all of the leaven out of the house), surrounding kale, we'd be all set. This was the first week since we got the csa that we haven't had kale in our house. While you might not think that's huge, I have a horrible confession, we haven't eaten a single bite of kale since our csa started. While we do manage to eat a good portion of our csa, the kale was always wilted and sad before we got to it (and yes, I know about prepping it and freezing it, my boy did an amazing job of prepping it for freezing but we didn't have space in our freezer that week and then it sat for two weeks prepped and nothing done with it).

This week, on the way home from the csa pick up, we stopped at Allendale Farms farmstand. We loved it. While we'd just picked up our veggies for the week, we still managed to spend $20 at the farmstand getting beautiful purple beans (that apparently taste just like green beans and turn green when you cook them -- the turning colors thing is a neat trick, I just wish it worked the other way for maximum impact), perfectly round zucchini, lovely tiny little plums just slightly larger than cherries and lots and lots of sweet corn. It was a lovely haul.

In other news, I started a load of laundry when I came home tonight, over an hour later (after dinner) I went down and the laundry was off but still full of water. I tried starting it again and it would work for a little bit and then stop. I am convinced there was foul play -- my boy thinks I am insane. Every time our washer has a problem, there's someone downstairs. It's always the same someone. My boy pointed out that tonight I couldn't get it to start up right away like I usually can, so probably it was a quirk with the machine, not foul play. I am not convinced, but I'll keep you posted on whether we get any laundry done tonight or not --aren't you thrilled I'm blogging again?!