Happy happy birthday Maxine!!

Its Maxine’s first birthday today! My little girl is getting so big; it’s hard to imagine our family without her. I tell her often that I’m very glad she didn’t die when Kim ran her over with his truck. I’ll probably never deal with another broken leg again though. Too much can go wrong during recovery and Maxine still favors the leg some after six months. But she’s a special dog and a special case so I’m beyond glad that she’s still with us.

Busy farm day today. I missed the ferrier last week and Dad missed him last month, so he managed to fit us in today. I puttered around the farm this morning waiting, fixed nest boxes for the chickens (the older hens are now laying, five eggs so far, so cool!), got peas, tomatoes, kohlrabi, and the first summer squash out of the garden, and stapled Gram’s screens for her. I got home around noon and started shelling peas and fixing beet relish to can. I’ve got three quart jars of beet relish now and three quarts of pickled beets. They’ll be tasty in February, I keep telling myself that. By five I managed to get a workout in, then down to the farm to feed the chicks feed and veggie scraps, walk fence, check Gram, then home to do peas and now I’m sitting down with a beer and chilling at a quarter to eight.

I haven’t made any pages today or yesterday really, but I’ve been doing character sketches for the second Taylor book and it’s really yielded some interesting stuff. Like I had no idea one of the characters was over 1,000 years old and his mother was fay and kicked out of faerie. He’s a man who honor means everything to, but who has been forced to live without it, doing things that are far from honorable. I’m interested to find out how that works out for him, now that he has free will again. Almost all my characters are damaged in some way, but being around Taylor, my heroine, gives them a chance to heal. Which is surprising since she tends to destroy things around her. I like seeing how the characters interact on the page and exploring the group dynamics and how different characters react differently to the circumstances.

Anyway, busy day today, busy day tomorrow. Life on the farm goes on. Just gotta figure out what to make Dad for dinner. Knowing him, he’ll do just fine with a kohlrabi sandwich.

Anger Rant: Please excuse me, or is that screw you? Emotions are such a pain.

Anger. Rage. Fury. Wrath. And, strangely enough, passion. Synonyms for anger, that most pure emotion that allows you to feel at once both warm and cold, lustful and selfish. It’s a pure emotion and when caught in it, the whole world makes sense. It’s simple. I’m mad therefore I am. I was an angry teenager. I won’t go into why because the memories are… well, they suck, but they led to some quality rage in my day. I don’t get made much anymore and sometimes I wonder why. The simplicity of pure fury is intoxicating. It’s easy to be mad, much harder to focus through it and deal with other people. Women aren’t supposed to be angry. It’s an ugly emotion when you’re on the receiving end of it and women are supposed to be beautiful and serene, at least that’s the stereotype I’ve always gotten. But as I get older, I’ve realized that giving in to that pure anger is essential. Animals get angry. They give in to it, bite the thing that angered them, and get on with the day. It’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to give yourself over to it and roll around in it like a heeler dog in shit. It’s healthy. If we can give ourselves over to happiness, to worry, to the break-neck pace of American life, why do we feel so incapable of experiencing anger to its fullest? I’m not qualified to go into all the reasons why. But I do know that once in awhile, anger is essential. It needs to be experienced and let go for other emotions, better or worse ones, to come in. Maybe by learning how to handle our anger, we can learn how to handle other emotions better too, let them wash over and away, indulge in them, but not live in them. I love my anger, but I don’t want to live there. I love being in love, but it’s hardly practical for the everyday. I want my lust and passion, but I also want serenity and hope. Emotions are a cornucopia of life experiences. They should be managed, yes, but not ignored or repressed, but felt, enjoyed, dealt with, and put away for another time. After all, there’s no rule that says when, where, and how one can experience emotion. That is one freedom of choice we all have.

Life Lessons from a Chicken

It’s a lovely day in Michigan today. Warm, low humidity. Beautiful. I dug potatoes this morning and left them to cure. Yesterday Dana and I repotted the herbs on the hot tub and made happy plants. I dried herbs for essential oil and tea and put up some beet greens. Very farm wifey lately. And writerly too, I got 3,500 words together this morning. Yey. Made the cows happy too with a round bale to supplement their sparse pasture. I didn’t get down to fix the top wire on the back fence, but it’s not critical so it can wait until later on today. I’ve had more energy lately which has been great. Seems like I’ve been tired for months. I went off vitamins and started meditating some and boom, I’m back to energetic and motivated. Weird. But so not complaining.

They’ve been harvesting wheat up and down the road this week, baling wheat straw. Second cutting is short, I checked the field last night. But it’s thick and beautiful looking. Too bad we didn’t get all the rain the weather forecasters predicted over the last few weeks, the grass it’d be taller.

The chickens are very into kitchen scraps lately. One grabs something choice and runs away with it, then another chicken chases him and takes it away. Yesterday one chick announced that he had something and ran off with it, a group of chickens chased him down and took it away. Then he did it again and got his snack taken away again. The chickens who just sit on the pile and eat are the smart ones. But they get so worried that someone else has something better. I guess it’s a life lesson, don’t crow about what you have or it’ll get taken away, and don’t hoard the pile or you sit and get fat and get eaten first.

Gone batty (son of a beet!)

Long weekend. Nice. I spent most of it brooding on the book. Gotta do that once in awhile or the writing seems to go the wrong direction and I’m a helluva lot longer making things right. But it’s right as I can make it on this pass and the search for a buyer continues.

Gram has been having bat problems at her house. Young or sick bats find their way downstairs from the colony that lives somewhere in her attic. Gram is terrified of bats, but has gotten better at killing them in the years since Grampa passed. One was in her bed one morning and she trapped it under the covers, beating it to death with a badminton racket. Then she swept up her sheets and stuck them in the washer. Go Gram. Not bad for 86. The last two bats she hasn’t been able to find. Maybe they found their way out or back upstairs or the little dog got them and ate them. Gram spends a lot of time in blissful ignorance about what her dog eats. I spent way too much time knowing exactly what they eat and end up with images of calf spine burned in my head. Knowing which dead animal the dogs are chewing on and having a memory of the animal alive or at least being birthed is just too much information.

On a less gross note, I learned to can this weekend. Kind of. We’ll see. Gram wanted beets to can this year so we planted three rows and she used maybe a third of them, enough to make seven quarts or so, and said she was done. So I’ve got beets out my… ears. I’m not a big fan, but figured I’d pickle them and make relish and how bad could they be? The brine smelled pretty good and it was a good experience canning the first time only having to do a hot water bath to seal the lids. My dad’s ex-girlfriend blew up a canner once and I’ve been kind of leery about the whole process ever since. Of course, she’s eating the wallpaper paste, the wallpaper paste does not eat me fucking loony, so maybe I’m worrying for nothing. All together, about February, we’ll probably be really into all the food I’ve put up and will put up.

I always treated writing as a profession, never as a hobby. If you don't believe in yourself, no one else will (Laurell K. Hamilton).

Took the big red bull to the stockyards at Battle Creek today. Dad had to work Tuesday, so an extra few miles on the truck. Damn bull spun the entire way down. He loaded and unloaded fine, a perfect gentleman, but he must’ve known it was his first and only trip to town. I’d never been to the Battle Creek stockyards before. They’re nice. Dad said they burned many years ago and the rebuild is why they’re more modern than Lake Odessa or Marian. I’d like to say I’m sad and will miss the bull, but to tell the truth, bulls and finished steers are usually such assholes by the time it comes to sell them, that it’s almost a relief to see the ass end of them. I mean I’m not glad they’re going to die, but it makes it a little easier.

Wow, so anything else after that seems a little flippant. I guess I’m flippant.

We switched the chickens to a new feed today, which they seem to like. Of course, they pick shit in the manure pile so they’re not picky. I keep meaning to get pics to put up but never seem to make the time. They’re pretty fun having around though. They go to bed at 9:40 every night, but as the days get shorter, the time slowly moves up. We’re at 9:36 or :37 now. Goofy fucking chickens. Of course, that I know this and am amused by it, it doesn’t say much for me.

I sleep with my bio teacher (me)

It’s been an odd July. Hot one day, sweatshirt weather the next. Day, hell, morning vs. earlier morning. It was hotter doing morning chores than it is now in the afternoon. Oh well. It rained so the garden and herbs got a drink. It was a busy weekend, very social with Jenny and my aunt and uncle here. Gram seemed pretty tired. I didn’t get much writing done. I aim for 500 words a day, but missed most days out of the weekend, then made 3600 last night. So there, I guess. Nature of the beast. Words while they run and hay while the sun shines, I guess. We got an RFID tag in the big bull over the weekend so he’s ready to go to the stockyards tomorrow, so long as Dad and I can get our shit together and take him. Cash flow really interferes with this whole farming thing.

Today was a research day. I spent a lot of time reading about badgers. Not riveting reading, I’ll give it that, especially since I took dutifully detailed notes from my library book, but the author was so into badgers it was hard not to get a little involved. I’ve always been interested in shape-shifters and it seems like a good idea when writing about them to have a clear idea about how the animal acts. It’s an animal side, after all, not a person in a skunk suit. I’ve read about cougars and wolves before, and werewolves are fairly common choice when writing about shape-shifters. But badgers have their own illustrious history stretching back to the Pleistocene in its primitive form. Even if I never use this information, it’s still fascinating. And I didn’t even have to go to bio for it.

Are you being served?

Sorry. Obscure British television reference.

Friday
I’m watching “Taken” tonight, trying for ideas for the part of my book that has to do with trafficking. I’ve realized that the places need to move around more, that it wouldn’t be as centralized as I have it. I guess I don’t think like a trafficker because coming up with ideas and options for this new part is challenging if not downright hard. Of course the stabbing headache that comes and goes periodically isn’t helping much. Damn head is starting to piss me off.

Saturday
Well, I didn’t get the blog done last night. I went down to the farm to discover the fences in the back were all down and nothing was out. Let me repeat that, the fences all around the back of the property, so the cattle could have gone all the way to Lake Michigan if they wanted to, were down and nothing whatsoever was out. Well, one calf was, but he ducked back in after snatching a few mouthfuls of corn and followed the cows to the front pasture. After that, it was saying hi to my aunt and uncle who are up for the weekend, putting the chickens to bed, then going for a beer run and stopping at the neighbors to chat. Luckily, the euchre game ended when I got there. I suck at it, never have been able to understand what in the hell I’m supposed to do with anything related to euchre. So it’s a lazy day other than that. I need to get a roast in the oven for supper tonight and Dad and I need to fix fence, but we’re just taking it easy. It’s hard to visit the neighbors. We always get over-served.