It Gets Better

Today: running hot water in the sink! We received our brand new Takagai TK-JR tankless waterheater today, and just after the pancake breakfast, Charley and Phillip installed it. Hot water in the sink! We all washed our hands in celebration. A couple more trips to the hardwear store later, we will also have the washer hooked up and the vent installed. We are waiting on a kit to transform the dryer from a natural gas to LP-run dryer. Our local propane service charges $65 for the kit, but Charley found it for $12 on the internet, so we're waiting on one more shipment.

I baked some cupcakes in the oven today, and cooked lunch. The oven runs hot, and the burners are burning with some yellow/orange flame. We're quite sure that the flame should be all blue, so we have a few small kinks to work out, but for the most part we're up and running with a mostly-finished kitchen. Possibly tomorrow the cabinets will be installed, but that's a big job and may take more than one day.

The pancake breakfast was a hoot. We met a few people, and made sure to visit our friend Pricilla at the general store. She had to work during the breakfast, which was across the street from the store. She had the wood burning stove going in the chilly morning, so it was nice to hang out with her for a bit before ducking in for sausage and bacon and hot cakes. A couple of the masons made an attempt to recruit Charley for the Masons - even gave him a tour of their temple. I think he told them that he's all ready to join once they get the bonfire and the goat sacrifice and the dancing girls ready. They laughed nervously and assured him their organization was not pagan or atheist. I guess that means Charley won't be flipping pancakes next year!!! Besides that minor social gaffe, everyone was quite delightful and we always enjoy meeting the people in our small and scattered community. We shopped the garage sale, and made out with a collapsable clothes drying rack and a pizza pan.

I'm serving as the Team Leader of the Box Office Crew at the Old Settlers Music Festival in a couple of weeks, so I've been spending some time on the computer reading and readying documents for our volunteer training meeting tomorrow. I still need three volunteers - locals? anyone interested? It's a good ole time.

The guys have been working hard all day, and we're going to sit back with a big homey steak dinner tonight. Maybe tomorrow we can all take the day off and catch a movie. The baby has been hiccuping and dancing on my bladder more and more, which is a very distracting sensation. Happy weekend to you!

Can it get any better?

Today: Diaper service decision triumph, new Raconteurs album downloaded, and LP in tank and stove in kitchen fully functional! Plus it is Friday. Tomorrow morning we get to enjoy the Lytton Springs Pancake Breakfast at the local Masonic Lodge. The breakfast benefits a fund for scholarships for Lytton Springs Seniors, and will be a great place to meet more local friends. Our friend Phillip may come by this weekend as well, and we will continue work on our kitchen. What a great day!

I Go Out Walkin'

I had a very eventful walk tonight. I saw many wildflowers out and about in Lytton Springs, even a new flower I hadn't seen before and now must identify. There are bluebonnets blooming, but not along the stretch of road that I was walking. All of the blue that I saw was in the form of Bud Light cans. Somebody who drives home on 1854 each night LOVES a Bud Light for the drive home, and seeds the roadsides with their empties. Otherwise it was the usual suspects - vervain, broom, paintbrush, crow poison, dewberries, evening primrose. And a few I didn't expect - wild honey suckle and a small purple bell flower I have yet to identify. I even ran into an old friend- Scoop, the stray kitty who visited the farm late last year. She's filthy dirty, has ditched the undignified collar, and looked a bit thinner than before. But she was crazy for the love, as usual. She stayed in the field across the street where I found her. It was a beautiful evening, cool and gently breezy.I was careful to avoid ant mounds, but it was easy because most of the roadsides had been recently mowed. There were no loose country dogs to scare the bejesus out of me - only fenced barkers. Even a turkey! I stopped several times to admire the huge oak trees growing twisted and massive along my path. I saw a cardinal, and stopped to listen to it twitter. There were solemn cows and horses with their necks bent, intent on the freshly sprouting green food at their feet. I walked home as the sun set on the prairie.

Bon Voyage

Well, after a long hiatus of doing exactly who knows what, besides updating my blog, I have just a few notes. I saw my first patch of bluebonnets on Thursday, February 28th. I saw several more on Friday and Saturday. "That is too early for Bluebonnets!!" as my friend Vico said. We have had a mild end of winter, but little rain, albeit some lately. I do think that my interest in blogging reflects the observable life - greenery, flora, and critters - around the house and out here in the country. It has been fairly brown and quiet for quite some time now, with only a few crow poison flowers and some sow thistle here and there. The first thing I noticed, earlier in the month of Feb, were the proliferation of wild geranium leaves, but no blooms yet. Ah, and I did find some creeping charlie - a favorite weed from childhood that was always being eradicated from the strawberry patch and the yard, more persistent even then dandilions, it seemed to me. And the name cracks me up now, since my husband shares it, but he is not creepy or creeping in anyway.
I am headed off on a week long caribbean cruise tomorrow, and I am all kinds of excited about it, as you might imagine. We stop in Jamaica, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel. It all sounds very exotic and luxurious, something I can use a dose of. We're calling it our Babymoon, which is what you take when you never really took a honeymoon, and you are now having a baby. We are due at the end of July. You may have also noticed the floating baby at the top of the page, it mirrors the development of the peanut inside me. My tummy is sticking out and I have all of the glamourous symptoms of pregnancy at some point in recent history. I always knew that babies took over your life, but who knew that they did it at 9 weeks gestation? I do, now.
So we're off on one adventure after another, and it will all unfold over the spring and summer, along with the buzz of life out here on the farm. Don't expect to hear from me for a while, I'll be sipping (ironically called) Virgin Daquiries and lounging on white sugar sand beaches and dipping my toes in aqua clear waters.