Here's To Not Catching Our Hair On Fire


Here's to Not Catching Our Hair on Fire: An Absent-Minded Tale of Life with Giftedness and Attention Deficit - Oh Look! A Chicken!

From the title (I have caught my hair on fire! And I've been distracted by a chicken too!) I thought this would be a fun read.

It was not. I'm really not sure why I finished it. I would not spend that much time listening to a person in real life who could not go 6 sentences without a string of swear words. It's even less endearing in a book. Her stories of abuse, being drugged, drinking too much, flitting from job to job, and drug use were just not funny. Her life wasn't funny. Her book isn't funny. The author thinks her life is a riot.

This book is like sitting down with a person you vaguely know, only to get their entire torrid life story, all with the attitude that none of what happens to them is in their control. Life just happens, and all the scatterbrained inability to keep a job is from a medical diagnosis, NOT from the weed they smoke. Or all the times they get drunk. Getting arrested is great fun, an adventure! (Yes, she really says this - in great detail. She also thought getting drugged was a laugh fest too, since nothing bad happened while she was drugged.)

Her inability to make a list is just how her brain works, nothing can be done about it.. and yet the same person can write an entire book.

There were parts of this book I could honestly relate to. Many of the symptoms of her ADHD, or "how her brain works", were achingly familiar to me. But those tidbits were hidden in so much junk and disaster (not funny disaster - more like "grow up already" disaster) that I found myself trying to distance myself even from the parts I could relate to. It's her life, her story, and she has a right to tell it.. I just really wish I had not wasted my time reading it.

The Dirty Life


"In my experience, tranquil and simple are two things farming is not.  Nor is it lucrative, stable, safe, or easy. Sometimes the work is enough to make you weep.  But most days I wake up grateful that I found it - tripped over it, really - and that I'm married to someone who feels the same way."


The Dirty Life

This book had been on my to read list for awhile, but when Walden Effect chose it as the book club selection, I finally bought it and read it.

There is a lot about this book that makes me nuts.  The decision to put 18,000  (their entire savings) into a farm they didn't even own, nor have any guarantee they would be able to use beyond the first year, baffled me.   The constant surge of people giving them things, loaning them things, and in general helping them was so unreal, I couldn't imagine it.  We've always known our local farmers to be generous, but the amount of help they received was just mind boggling.  I was puzzled by all the friends that came to visit - where did they stay, in a house with no furniture?  I was also inspired by that too - we have so much drop in company around here, I should put them to work when they drop in... 

Then there were parts of the book that I just related to so much.  A few of my favorite quotes:


"A farm is a manipulative creature.  There is no such thing as finished.  Work comes in a stream and has no end.  There are only the things that must be done now and the things that can be done later.  The threat the farm has got on you, the one that keeps you running from can until can't is this: do it now, or some living thing will wilt or suffer or die.  It's blackmail really."


"Farmers toil.  Nature laughs.  Farmers weep. there's your history of agriculture in a nutshell."


"It's never the way you think it will be, Mark used to tell me.  Not as perfect as you hope or as scary as you fear."



"A man we know bought up a big piece of good land nearby, a second home, and once, at dinner, I heard him say, 'In my retirement I want to be a simple farmer.  I want..  tranquility.'  What you really want is a garden, I thought to myself.  A very, very small one."


It's a great book.  Parts of it drove me nuts, it was just so irrational!  (and yet they made it work!)  Parts of it made me cry, having experienced dead calves, and the death of my horse, too.  Parts of it made me laugh.  All of it made me feel lazy, I do not work anywhere near that hard on our farm, and I have to wonder what I could do if I worked just 1/4 as hard around here.


I was disappointed to see that I cannot loan this book out through Amazon.  :-(  I don't like paying full price for ebooks and then not being able to share them when I am done.

Hawk w/ his dinner

As I drove into our lane last week, we startled this hawk, who was carrying off his dinner:



Bartering For Adeline



So we get home from our morning run, and Dh's brother in law comes up the lane on the 4 wheeler.  "Some foreign guy dropped a calf off while you were gone."

LOL!  Welcome to my life.  Not a calf, a goat.

About a year ago some of you may remember that our greek friend stopped by, and in broken english, informed me "your husband teach me to drive tractor.  I bring you good goat."  Sure enough, he brought us a great goat - Horton, our current billy.

This year the same man was buying a lot of hay from us.  He bought it to resell, and the man he was selling to was not always prompt in paying him, which stressed him out, because that made it difficult for him to pay us.  I told him to stop bringing me cash, and to just bring me goats instead.

So today, he delivered payment for some hay.  I've been wanting another LaMancha, the only one I have is very, very old.  I know she doesn't have many years left.  I also have a thing for spots.  Dan cringes anytime there is a spotted goat at an auction, because he knows I will want it.  So a spotted LaMancha (crossed with Nubian) ?  Oh yes, the perfect goat!

Unfortunately she still needs a bottle, but I am bottle feeding two calves right now anyway, so what is one more bottle?  :-)  She's super friendly!


Farm work Monday - Castrating, Worming, CD&T

Getting ready
Dan read recently that if you castrate either on day 1, or 3 months, it is less stressful for the steers.  This one is about 3 and a half months, and he does not seem stressed at all.

CD&T for the 3 month old goats
Daisy, supervising

Puzzle Junkie Challenge

PUZZLE JUNKIE CHALLENGE



To Qualify - 

1 Found Puzzle Caches in at least three (3) States and list the three states in your find log.
2. Have found at least 50 Mystery caches and post/publish that cache list(a minimum of 50) on this challenge page.
Pennsylvania 
Some of our favorites in PA are:
The Legend of the 7 Gi's - I think this was our first ever night cache.  http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GCWNV4_the-legend-of-the-seven-g-i-s
This one was our first experience with geoart, or waypoint art - http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC16DCJ_picture-this-waypoint-art
This Geo Addiction Series was one of my favorite series of caches of all time - I'm sorry to see it is archived.  http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC12B39_geo-addiction-1-fairyland-u-s-a
Our kids were homeschooled, so caches like this one using the fibonacci code became school work - http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC11P6M_maths-missing-minutes
Maryland
We've found 2 mystery caches in Maryland  - Our favorite to solve being the Einstein Logic Puzzle (although this was not our favorite to find!) http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GCM91A_hey-youre-as-smart-as-einstein
West Virginia
We have 4 Mystery Cache finds in West Virginia.  Our favorite was http://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC4ZTVD_geo-art-night?guid=518b5af1-6d84-4159-9ac1-efdef21a77bd
  New York
We found 4 Mystery Caches in New York State while there for the Alleghany Geobash