belle in bloom

twitterpated

I have fallen in love with the animals I work with. I'm completely twitterpated. How could I not be? They are such funny, loveable, huggable cuddlebabies. I love their personalities.

I want to bring Katie the Pekin Duck to live with me forever. She loves being petted, sitting in laps, and being hand-fed. What's not to love?

I also want to bring home Rosie the Donkey, the kindest creature that God has ever placed on this planet. I love her.

And now I've fallen in love with the newest additions: two ridiculously cute baby Holland Lop bunnies. Floppy eared bunnies are cute by definition alone, but these girls get bonus points for having silly cowlicks and the softest fur I've ever felt. I think I might take them home after camp is over. (please don't tell Mark yet....)

Taking a sick day (in other news, I have a job)

I've been so bad about keeping this blog. Ugh. Sorry. I'll try to do better.

The past few weeks have been crazy-busy because I HAVE A JOB! (Wooo!) But yeah, it's been pretty crazy-busy. On the plus side, this job is perfect for me. In fact, it's a little too perfect. (My dad would probably place this in his ongoing collection of "evidence" that the Matrix really does exist. I wish I were kidding.) Alas, today I am sick––my doc has forbidden me to be around kids until my throat culture is definitely negative for strep, which could take a few days. :-(

So about the job: I'm working at a summer day camp as the head of their 'farm' program. I get to make up the entire curriculum and do pretty much whatever I want to do, since the program is brand-new. The camp is insanely expensive––about $8,000 per kid for seven weeks, Monday through Friday, 9-ish to 4:15-ish. That's just nuts. But it works out well for me, not because I have an insanely high salary (I most certainly do not), but because whatever supplies or equipment or whatever that I need, I can just buy it. I even asked if I had a budget for the program, and the answer was essentially no. If only schools could work like this....  But I digress. Anyway, so far the job has been pretty awesome––I get to hang out with farm animals, I get to teach, I get to be outside, and I get paid for it. :-)

Honestly, I really wish I could be at camp right now. That's how much fun I'm having––I actually wish I could be at work! While I'm home, though, I'm trying to get some work done. The camp wants to add rabbits, chickens, and possibly a couple of barn cats to their menagerie (which currently consists of four ponies, a donkey, two ducks, a peacock, two peahens, six goats, two alpacas, a lamb, and a Jersey calf), so I've been reading books about rabbits and chickens and trying to figure out the logistics of adding them to the mix (how to construct shelter, where to put shelter, what they need to eat, how many to get, which breed(s) to get, etc.). Doing all this research makes me REALLY want my own farm.

Someday, someday....

Words we don't use?

This article fascinated me. In my personal opinion, the headline should more appropriately read "Words we [the English language police] don't [want anyone to] say [or use]."

Needless to say, I will use take this opportunity to opine about a plethora of the submissions. (And just for fun, any words/phrases from the list that I purposefully use will be in red.)

First of all, this entry particularly amused me: "Verbing nouns, in general. As Calvin once said to Hobbes, 'It weirds the language.'"

Two things:

• 1) The submitter 'verbed a noun' by using a noun (verb) as a verb; and
• 2) The submitter uses an example of an adjective (weird), not a noun, being used as a verb.

I'd bet that the submitter realizes the irony of his/her submission, but if not, that would be even funnier.

You know it's fun when it's a BUIA post

"WTF is BUIA?" you may be asking yourself. But yourself is not a good person to ask because she doesn't know. (Honestly––if I can be blunt––when you ask yourself a question, yourself almost never knows the answer, because if she knew the answer, then you'd know it in the first place. So really, there's nothing to be gained by asking yourself a question, especially if the question is rhetorical. Just my two cents.)

Don't worry if you don't know what it means.

I have a declaration to make: (is the teleprompter ready?) *clears throat indelicately*

"I'm the only person who knows what BUIA is because I made it up just now. But I'll tell you soon. Actually, now. Look below this line. "

Blogging    Under    (the)    Influence    (of)     Ambien

(It's starting to settle in so I need to make this fast)

All I have is a minor observation to share.

There is something majorly funky going on with my right side. TMJ flare-up in right jaw, carpal tunnel flare-up in right wrist, and as I noticed tonight, my right shoulder is considerably lower than my left shoulder when I'm standing up 'straight'. I feel like I should go audition for a V-8 commercial. Oh wait, they don't do those "hadn't had a V-8" ads anymore.

Anyway....

The Ambien power is strong in this one . . . we haven't much time, children . . . . hurry hurry . . . .

So I've reached a point where I know I need to go seek out some help––namely, a masseuse and a chiropractor. Possibly an acupuncturist, too. And I need to do it ASAP. So Mark tells me to just google some places around us....easy, right?

It turns out that typing "putnam county ny massage" into Google turns up some, uh, questionable businesses. (You know.) (Don't make me literally spell it out for you.)

So the moral of the story is: don't do what I did.

When you need a massage, type in "massage therapist" or "therapeutic massage" or "licensed massage therapist". Not just "massage." Tying only "massage" in there can get you an onslaught of a completely different kind of massage, especially if you happen to be close to a big city...say, New York City. Yeah.

Ambien is telling me it is time to go to bed now. I must obey.

Goodnight, all.

Goodnight moon

and the red ballon,

and the little toy house and the _(ADJECTIVE)  mouse

and goodnight chairs and going up stairs

and the cow jumping over the moon

with a grandmother whispering "hush, hush."

Goodnight to me, goodnight to you,

goodnight to the animals inside the zoo!

                                                                        (mmrrrreeeooow)

(Goodnight to you too, Pepperpotamus Boo!)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z z

My new career path

I've decided that I want to be a pioneer woman when I grow up. I guess nowadays "homesteader" is the proper term. Whatever. That's what I want to be.

Ever since I was in kindergarten, my dream has been to someday have my own little farm with lots of animals. That's still my plan. I already have my menagerie all planned out: chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, a pair of miniature donkeys, a few horses, maybe a few miniature horses, a Jersey cow, some goats, a llama and/or an alpaca, one or two honeybee hives, a golden retriever, and a few barn cats (spayed/neutered, of course). And look how reasonable I am––I'm willing to throw in a St. Bernard for Mark. Am I not merciful?

C'mon . . . with these kinds of critters running around, who wouldn't want to come visit me?

(adorable baby animal pics after the jump)

Thoughts on a lovely spring afternoon

My house sits at the back of an old estate. Woods border three sides of the house, and the front yard is a meadow. In the summer, my yard feels like a private nature sanctuary. The first autumn we lived here, I was astonished to discover, once all the leaves had fallen, that there are other houses nearby; they were completely hidden from sight when the woods were thick and green.

I'm sitting outside on my porch swing, taking a bit of a breather from gardening. I've got lots of yard work on today's to-do list, but it's lunchtime, after all, and a girl's gotta eat. Yet I can't focus on my sandwich. It's too nice of a day to waste it inside, but outside, I find nothing but delightful distractions from such a mundane chore like eating.

Mudroom + fluorescent shop lights + cheap plastic shelves = greenhouse!

For April Fools' Day, I got the gift that keeps on giving: a cold. Started off on Friday with a sore throat and runny nose, and by Saturday morning, it had evolved into a hacking cough and stuffy nose.

Yesterday I spent most of the day racked out on the couch, dozing off whenever I wasn't coughing up a veritable rainbow of gunk. Fun fact: Apparently, I make pitiful little moaning noises when I'm sick. I was not aware of this until Mark told me to knock it off. (He needs to work on his bedside manner.)

But today, when I woke up and discovered the sun was shining and it wasn't absolutely frigid outside, I somehow gathered the motivation to get dirt under my fingernails. I spent much of the day reorganizing the mudroom, transforming it from a barely-insulated catch-all closet to a barely-insulated greenhouse/catch-all closet with fluorescent strip lights and a space heater.

(pics of my makeshift greenhouse after the jump)

My Happiness Project: Cinderella edition

Without really meaning to do it, I've kinda re-launched my Happiness Project. (Which is totally cool, by the way. I didn't get very far with it last time, so I welcome the opportunity to try again.)

For those of you who don't know, my Happiness Project was (is) inspired by a book titled The Happiness Project, written by Gretchen Rubin. In it, she chronicles a year she spent trying to become happier. It's not as trite as it sounds, trust me. Essentially, the book details her efforts to better her already-pretty-good life. She set goals for each month to improve her quality of life in a particular area. (For instance, the focus of March was 'work'; for June it was 'friendship'; for November, 'attitude'.)

For some reason, I really connected to this book. I had been following her occasional posts about her Happiness Project on The Huffington Post, and when her book first came out, I bought it in hardback. Then I bought the audiobook. Then the Kindle version. I couldn't get enough of it. Not surprisingly, it made me want to do my own Happiness Project––which I started, but then, predictably . . . . yeah.

Despite having not thought about it in quite a while, my return to my Happiness Project happened earlier this week.

It's spring, dammit.

(I fell off the blog wagon for awhile, but I'm back. Someday, I will make this writing-a-blog thing stick!)

 

Here's the April Fools Day prank I awoke to this morning:

(view of the back yard from the picture window in the living room/dining room)

 

(view from our front door)

 

Ha ha ha. Very funny, Mother Nature.

Now go take Winter home and pick up Spring on your way back.

Thanks.

I wish I could think of a catchy title for this post, but it's just my favorite links of the week

Gee, now that my mom has been talking up my blog to her Facebook buddies, I'm acutely feeling the pressure to produce. Not just produce, though––Produce. Good. Stuff.

Eek.

I got 34 page views in the past day or so––certainly a new record for my humble blog––and the number of people who "like" my blog on Facebook has doubled in size from five to ten! (Okay, I guess it's technically nine, since 'liking' my own blog probably doesn't count.)

Well, to those of you who have come back for more, I'll try my best to keep you entertained. (And for those of you just joining the pah-tay, I'll try to keep you entertained, too.)

This morning, I was having a (very) minor anxiety attack about What To Write About For Today. (See, I told ya––PRESSURE!) Thankfully, my brain has infinite abilities to make me look like I'm Doing Something Productive when I'm actually being a total slacker. (I must get that from my dad.)

(I'm kidding, Dad.) 

And now I'm violating one of the sacred English Teacher Commandments of Writing: do not write about what you are going to write about. *sigh*

Anyway, my brilliant idea for today's post: a compliation of a whole bunch of links.