Around the Farmhouse
plus some very unattractive thoughts on birth
This post will be a snapshot of life here on my suburban farm, of things going through my head, of random thoughts. Why not a well thought out composed post? Because I have one batch of tomato sauce waiting to be canned, over 10 quarts of tomatillo salsa to process, a shower to take, and fruit to go picking at a friends house. That is snapshot one: trying to keep up with food processing. I love this time of year. I love the urgent push to preserve the harvests coming in fast and loud.
It really beats having to push a human out of one's vagina. Snapshot two: I have never lived in a town with so many babies, children, and pregnant women. Yamhill County should be renamed "fertile Valley". The sad thing is that for everyone having 3 or 4 children I actually know two couples who would make incredible parents, would like to have their turn, and all this high wattage fertility isn't giving them a single baby. May everyone else slow down and give my friends thier fertility for a while?
This leads me to a thought I frequently have (quietly in my head) when I see pregnant women about to pop (which happens to be all the time): "Dude! You are going to have to squeeze that human being out and your vagina is going to be so messed up!!!" Yeah, I know, not pretty, not a cuddly thought...but there it is. I see ripe pregnant ladies and I can't help but think about the condition their hoo-has are going to be in very shortly. Stretched, shredded, sore, ripped, cut, blown out...
Which, by the way, leads me to another thought I've had floating around in my brain about pregnancy: birth is not a miracle. A miracle implies that something inexplicable and unexplainable has occured. Last time I checked, birth is easily explained by the whole sperm/egg dynamic. They get together, cells divide, they keep dividing and- VOILA! You push that sucker out of your body and have to take care of it for at least 18 years.
Most of these thoughts come to me while I'm in the grocery store. Humans are weird. I watch us all and speculate and get philosophical in the isles. When I was pregnant I wondered if other women (ones who'd already given birth) were looking at me and thinking about the devastation that was going to occur to my nether regions. I felt like one big walking advertisment for SEX and I really didn't feel all dewy and beautiful. I felt like I had "Sexual Person" emblazoned across my forehead. 
Snapshot three: Canning tomatoes has been kicking my butt. I'm working three days a week now and suddenly my time is at a premium so everything stands still while I core and peel tomatoes. Then there are the hours the tomatoes take to cook down. I will have only 9 quarts of tomato sauce to show for all my work. The tomatoes are worth it though. A mid winter pizza made from home canned tomato sauce is really incredible!Last night we made another batch of tomatillo salsa. After I processed over 10 quarts of tomatillos and 2 quarts of jalapenos, Philip took over and did the rest. I am going to process them this morning. I will report on how many pints I processed later on (I should get at least 20). Later this morning I go to pick apples and pears at a friend's house.
Snapshot four: finally time to clean out the chickens' run and hen house. Time for fresh hay. They've been getting lots of treats lately. We got a mealy watermelon and they got it all! Hens don't care about mealy. They've gotten lots of cucumbers, and parsley, and tomato scraps. In return we've been getting eggs from them every day. They take very few breaks.
Snapshot four: shaving your eyebrows* and drawing a thin penciled line where they used to be is not attractive. I don't know why so many women in my town favor this look. I used to do something quite similar when I was a teen- I would shave off my brows and draw them back on in dramatically shaped thick dark black. At least they weren't pencil thin. If I hadn't been wearing freaky outfits and green hair to go with the style I would have looked much weirder. Like, if I did that now, the kind of people willing to be my friends would be a whole different crowd.
Snapshot four: shaving your eyebrows* and drawing a thin penciled line where they used to be is not attractive. I don't know why so many women in my town favor this look. I used to do something quite similar when I was a teen- I would shave off my brows and draw them back on in dramatically shaped thick dark black. At least they weren't pencil thin. If I hadn't been wearing freaky outfits and green hair to go with the style I would have looked much weirder. Like, if I did that now, the kind of people willing to be my friends would be a whole different crowd.
Snapshot five: I'm totally excited about fall being just about here. We're having a weird spell of warm weather. This will satisfy the heat-seaking natives. I will survive it by standing over steaming pots of food, like I always do. The nights are getting colder which I love!
Snapshot six: I love cow's cheese and I don't care how many people are allergic to it, it doesn't make me allergic to it too. Lactose intolerance is very real for some people and I respect that, but often lactose intolerance becomes a religion and it annoys me. I eat more cheese than I should, it's undeniable, but it doesn't mean that all my physical and mental problems can be attributed to evil cow's milk. I once went without all dairy for a month and I have to report that all these miraculous great health benefits that others report were not experienced by me. In fact, I didn't feel at all different or lose any weight. All I experienced was a higher degree of grumpiness around meal time.
*Trying to locate an illustration for this bit caused me great pain and considerable recoiling. I loathe clowns. I really do. Not the people underneath the make-up, no offense meant here, but clowns are the least funny characters on the planet. I really really find them grotesque and pathological. I don't understand the drive people have to become clowns.
Snapshot six: I love cow's cheese and I don't care how many people are allergic to it, it doesn't make me allergic to it too. Lactose intolerance is very real for some people and I respect that, but often lactose intolerance becomes a religion and it annoys me. I eat more cheese than I should, it's undeniable, but it doesn't mean that all my physical and mental problems can be attributed to evil cow's milk. I once went without all dairy for a month and I have to report that all these miraculous great health benefits that others report were not experienced by me. In fact, I didn't feel at all different or lose any weight. All I experienced was a higher degree of grumpiness around meal time.
*Trying to locate an illustration for this bit caused me great pain and considerable recoiling. I loathe clowns. I really do. Not the people underneath the make-up, no offense meant here, but clowns are the least funny characters on the planet. I really really find them grotesque and pathological. I don't understand the drive people have to become clowns.