Yesterday

Yesterday was not so good of a day. Okay fine it was a bad day. This started with a dreary gray day, again. I cannot tell you how displeased I am with winter! It was freezing cold, -15 deg, blowing white out snow, wonderful icy cold clear air. So cold it hurt to breathe. The good kind of cold. Now its in the 40s and believe me, all that snow melted on basically flat ground has turned into a wetland of MUD. So that's not so good. Walking out to the goat yard in that can lose your boots and you better turn around fast when one is sucked off of your foot because you may not find it again.

My goat girls were in a horrible mood, they have broken the feeder I worked so hard to make. They tore down their mineral feeder. They were headbutting each other roughly and not only does Arizona seem incapable of getting pregnant, she is now interested in her counterparts in the doe barn which doesn't please the other does. I fed and watered everyone, only to turn around and find that because I left the hose in the bucket when I disconnected it from the spigot, it siphoned back off leaving a greater puddle around the spigot and an empty water bucket.

The dog jumped on me multiple times and I had Rudy's horn where I would prefer it never be near again while I cleaned the bucks water bucket. The chickens, well okay fine so they were great. And loving. If a chicken can be loving and on a day like this one, any creature that doesn't cause me angst is loving.

One good thing was school, the kids did great with this so I mollified myself by listening to them quote Brown Penny by William Butler Yeats, which they both do eloquently. Then they did art which was impressive as usual and then Tad did some mouth noises for me, and reminded me that they are an example of onomatopoeia. Which was once again mollifying that he knows what this word means. He can make noises that sound truly like what he is mocking, laser swords, different types of weapons, animal sounds, oh and this one, the pulling out of a knife from a sheath, stabbing someone and the sound of their death! Yes I know but he is a boy and this is normal. That he can do it such rapid succession that it truly sounds like 2 people fighting and one with the upper hand is amazing. I have never heard anyone who can make sounds like he can.

So then was dinner. I suddenly decided I was getting sick, changed my mind later when I realized how much time that was going to take but before I changed my mind I thought to make early dinner. 2 pizza dough batches later (these did not get thrown roughly into the yard in anger... no no that would be inmature), I gave up and went to bed. Bread wont rise in my house. It used to when we first moved in, now I get more rocks from my oven than my yard. Frank came home, made me get out of bed, I made more pizza crusts which turned out fine, we wont mention what he said the missing ingredient was, and then I ruined the pizza further by making the sauce too thin thus soggy crust. I went back to bed. Frank came in and made me get up again by BRINGING the pizza in to me to show me that he broiled it and this made it good. Enough to eat, we wont call it good. Yes, the leftovers are in the yard.

Just to address any worries about my yard being littered with recipes gone wrong, we live in the country people. Something ALWAYS eats what I throw out in anger/rage whatever. If you want to composte around here, you must do it in a closed barrel composter because everything gets eaten. We have a bucket inside for food that wasnt eaten or scraps, and these are given either to the dog, the chicken or the old garden plot. Our plumbing suffers if we use the garbage disposal system.

All that said, I am actually a good cook. Self taught mostly, but a good cook. I grew up on basically what we could grow plus grains bought in bulk. We harvested fruits and vegetables and canned/froze and other than that we ate grains, potatoes, nuts and a few cooking basics like brown sugar, salt, margarine. We made our own soy milk and ate no meat or animal products such as eggs. So my cooking growing up included bread and, well, vegetables. Thats about it. When I got married, I could make oatmeal, burritos and spaghetti the way my husband wanted them so he bought some cookbooks and together we tackled the kitchen. He is patient about this, and I like washing dishes so year by year we are better and better and now have quite a list of specialties that we excell at. However, sometimes I have a bad run! This wk, has been bad for cooking. Heres to hoping for a better day today!