Pics

Life keeps happening. Despite the goals we have yet to realize, I have found that I'm very very happy right now because I see so many good things happening...and I am so grateful!


Here's what's been going on with my family in the past couple of months or so. I'm so happy for my daughter, who's featured in some of these pics. She's rounded the corner from childhood to young adulthood, and yes, the years DO fly by too quickly. Highlights from her life:

Graduation...it was a packed house. Glad it didn't rain :)

Her graduation cruise, compliments of her dad. These are some of the souvenirs she tried to fit into her luggage for the flight back...heehee..

And then there's nursing school. She entered the adult program right after high school graduation. That called for new scrubs and some new textbooks perfect for later use as industrial strength doorstops.

After seven months of a series of interviews and testing, I entered training as a 911 calltaker.

My husband J changed jobs and is much happier where he is right now. I don't have a picture of either of us, but just know we're the nondescript couple looking pretty tired but quite happy.

Want to know some of the things I love about J?

He still holds my hand, he prays for me throughout the day, sketches house plans on paper napkins at odd moments of inspiration, tells me I'm beautiful, and shares the same side of the booth in restaurants....even when we're the only ones eating. He makes the word Together mean, for me, contentment.

And the land trade...
J is steadily sending out inquiry letters to people with vacant properties in the hopes one might be interested in trading us acreage for one or more of his residential properties, namely the waterfront ones. The good news is that just yesterday, we went to visit an interested investor and had a really enjoyable morning with his wife and him looking at his different parcels and seeing the area. The acreage that was offered to us is one we're unsure will serve our purposes best and has some advantages and some disadvantages. The investor is a shrewd haggler, and J won't go for broke. So we're still in the talking stages, and the negotiating ones. It's just encouraging that we've come to a point where some movement is happening in the possibilities :)




Ah, feels good to update. :)



More to come, hopefully, either tonight or tomorrow, my last day off before getting back on the wheel.

BBL...

Testing....testing

Tests come, tests go. I've had my share of tests at the In Town Job, and happily they've all been passed so far.

I'm hoping at this very moment to pass a personal test of Basic Blog Construction by seeing if I can, with grace and ease, FINALLY learn to include smack in my blog text words that link elsewhere...which everyone else out there seems to be doing without any problems. You know.. the highlighted little places in the text that you click on and it boings you to blissful elsewheres of further reading.

And so.....drumrolllll.....here goes The Very First Sentence I've Typed With Most Basic Linkage Included. Can I make it work?

Sample Sentence:

Robbyn, preoccupied with thoughts of what sort of
goat might help clear the brush on a property she hopes to one day own if her
husband makes a successful real estate swap, remembered one of the books that
Started All of This...the one nearly shouting to her from the bookstore
shelf all those years ago, demanding to be bought, read, and admired in a way
fatefully provoking an escalating tumult of ideas now fueling her urge to
leave it all behind and live in a snug lean-to in the woods.

Ah, now to publish and test this.


Be right back....



(Now I'm back)

Hmmm, well YAY, I finally got some text to link! Boo that it turned out underlined rather than highlighted...wonder if that is normal or just happened because I included it in a quote paragraph thingy?

And yes, I know this entire post is fraught with horridly-constructed run-on sentences. That trend may not subside till I've fully typed out all my pent-up blog withdrawal. Sort of like every time I try to read Charles Dickens and get more preoccupied seeing exactly how many pages I have to turn before actually finding punctuation such as a Period.

Or in typing sentences beginning with the words And, Sort Of, or Or, and containing no subject with which to make a predicate agree, simply because I want to.

And now to fix one problem and ignore the other. Off to try to figure out the link dilemma.

Computer Reunion

Wow, I'm actually sitting at my own computer doing something non-work-related. This past two or three months have been a blur.

I'm kind of proud that I've lasted in the job training up to this point...it's certainly pushed me to some unfamiliar discomfort zones, and the outcome is still yet to be determined....but having lasted this long, I do look back, thank God profusely, and enjoy knowing that I've stuck it out.

I've been battling brochitis or some flu thingy for the past three weeks, trying the herbs and the over-the-counter remedies till frustration at last drove me to beg my doctor for antibiotics.

All else is good....R is still plugging along at her nursing schooling, and J is still on assignment at a job he's enjoying. There have, however, been some VERY interesting developments...

and now I shall break them down into a few smaller and more manageable blog entries instead of trying to fit them alllll here right now... otherwise I'll get halfway through, decide a cup of hot tea and a warm blanket are my more favored companions than my keyboard, and get lost in an impromtu nap, now that I have a couple days off.

Ah, see...and now the phone rings....ha!

Shall return...(with tea!)

The smallest of updates

The 911 job has its moments, and my learning curve is still a Gordian knot. I have a wonderful training officer, so that makes the hard days better. The vote's still out on whether I'll be there in a couple months, but if I'm not, it won't be for a lack of trying.

The rains have been regular, which makes me long to be digging in the dirt again, but that has been shelved while I am cycling through varying shifts at work....days for a few weeks, nights a few weeks, etc. So I snip and add to the old three ring binder that houses my various ideas, clippings, and such for our one-day-homestead. Homesteading is a heart inclination. I'm finding myself preferring to choose a few things to do well rather than to run around chasing too many other things right now. Right now it's all about getting the debt retired, and my husband's continued efforts to trade one of his residential vacant lots for rural acreage.

We've had another encouraging lead in that area, so J is pulling the plat maps and records to talk further with one man who's shown an interest. He has five acres he'd consider trading. We'll see if anything in what J sends him to look over piques his interest. I'm quite curious about what the acreage looks like and how it's situated, though I do know the general area. But I'll wait till we know if there's a real interest in doing a trade or not before getting excited about anything...and in the meantime I'll be studying for my next test.

J is now working fewer days with longer shifts, and this seems to suit him because in the alternate days he can rest when he needs and also pursue the many chores and projects that need finishing...which he really, in fact, loves to do :) In years past, he built a house owner-builder, which is to say he did the actual building of it himself and with the help of a few things contracted out. It took him a while to build. I'm not sure how long, because that was before our history together began. When he left high school way back in the day, and returned from serving (and surviving) military service (ah, the draft), in whatever he did, he always set aside a little bit of whatever money he made to renovate run-down houses, and eventually to build a house at a time on the side. He's never been rich, but in my opinion, he's a smart fellow, and I'm fascinated that he over the years has always had something like this going on in addition to his regular job...simply because he loves it. He dreamed in those years of doing what we want to do now, but he did not have a partner with the same vision at that time, so he was content building houses, little by little, one by one.

Long story, and as always, I'm short on time...and sleep...today. I have a laundry list of things I need to do HERE, on the BLOG...such as the overdue blogroll (days have turned into weeks!)...but I wanted to acknowledge that my world and my life would be colored entirely differently were it not for the steady and willing partnership of my husband. What an amazing gift of the Almighty to my life...whether we ever "get anywhere" or not...whatever we build, I'm so glad it's with him. I'm hoping that will make each step, even this step of waiting and preparation, something to be appreciated.

J is working on piecing together a house plan in readiness for that day we're hoping will be sooner than later. At any rate, we're enjoying the collaboration. Not that we have many spare moments for leisure conversations about it, but it's always rattling around in our heads, and we catch our time together on the fly...and have fun discussing it again and again as we collect ideas. He wants to utilize passive solar, as he did in one of the houses he built and lived in in the past. He's the sort of guy who can build and fix things, and we're poring over the scientific fact sheets on this and that related to keeping a house IN FLORIDA as cool as possible, as efficiently as possible. He likes utilizing traditional methods AND keeping an eye on newer innovations. My bent is far more traditional and spartan, but I also like bounty and beauty. I'm not sure how he'll marry some of my requests to his requirements for a house design...we definately each have our own ideas in that department. He has so much fun with the planning, though, that there is no rush, and whatever it becomes, it'll be unique and personalized, probably over the course of time. Neither of us wants to rush when we finally get to that point.

He wants passive solar, with any innovation that brings the $$ down as low as possible. I want function and a good flow to the design. I have some personal preferences that fall into no particular category, but are just on the wish list. For me these include:

1. Kitchen with at least one exterior window with a decent view, a window sill deep enough to set things like potted plants on, and designed so that the interior of the kitchen (the work area) does not have to be a main thoroughfare to any other place such as a garage, laundry room, or other high traffic area. I dont mind the traffic flow going beside the work area, around it, near it...but right through the middle, ARGGGHH :)

2. Seemingly contradictory to the above, I do want the kitchen to be THE main room, or A main room of the house where people can gather and munch or work together on meals. I love visible and serviceable pot racks that arent just decorative, and some sort of work area that is open to the dining and living areas, no matter how large or small those are.

3. I'd like transom windows above the interior doors, ones that can open and close in a way that's vented towards the ceiling, to allow for airflow through the whole house.

4. I'd like at least 9 foot ceilings, but not much higher than that unless in a particular area like a living room, where there might be a loft with a half wall or balcony. Even in a very small house.

5. I like windows that are positioned whre you have good airflow through the WHOLE house, or at least crucial areas.

6. I'd like at least one bedroom to be on a second storey, with windows that can be opened at night for good airflow when the weather permits. The reason I really want this is because I really dont feel safe leaving ground floor windows open while sleeping at night because I dont know anywhere in Florida we could live that that could be reliably safe. But an upper floor bedroom could get some excellent breezes, especially with the aid of a ceiling fan. And boy is it hot here most of the year...

7. I'd like it to look aesthetically nice...not like a space capsule, bad science experiment, or strangely out-of-place in a natural setting.

8. Openess to the living room/eating area/kitchen with a good flow.

9. Some good storage and room to customize extra storage in later years.

10. EFFICIENT. Enjoyable.


That's about it....and oh yeah...


11. A mini guest cottage attached to the house with a dogtrot.....for visitors!! :)




Ah well, frankly I'd be happy with a big cardboard box and a sterno can to cook over just now if it were someplace that's OURS :)




I need to sign off here quickly. I read all the wonderful blog postings out there, and cheer for the gardens that are cranking out their bounty, and all the wonderful endeavors that are underway and being documented....I'm always so inspired. I'm happy for the Eating Local folks who're showing me it CAN be done...and so well! I'm following the legislation updates and the livestock tales. I feel very behind in all I'm doing, but I dont have time to wallow in self-recrimination. I actually LOVE the 911 job when I feel I'm doing well at it (those moments come and go just now)...on every call, people are being helped, and I've had some calls I'm proud to have kept a steady head through. It's knowing that many of the calls are truly life-or-death that makes me the most nervous during the learning process. And it really makes me not take for granted seeing my family each night safe and sound at home...life is fragile and precious and each day now IS truly a reminder.

Hope to be checking back in soon. If J comes up with some sketches, I 'll see if I have the computer skills to try showing them :)


Hope all are well, content, and prosperous ...hug your loved ones "good" :)

This job

the 911 one...is whipping my tail.

I'm having to step aside from my subjective self and take a long, hard look at this situation objectively.

I don't like to fail, and that's pretty much the bottom line.

I've hit a wall in my training, and that wall will either give way, or I will. It's week seven, my fourth on the floor "live" on the phones, and I'm simply not making the grade, though I've survived up to this point. Either my learning curve will get a better pulse, or it will flatline.

In order to have made this opportunity possible, we've now taken on a used car and its subsequent expenses, since it's an hour away and no other "real jobs" have materialized closer. I'm feeling incredible pressure, mostly from my own expectations, but also due to the fact my "radio ear" is not very practiced, and I'm making so many mistakes.

Is it somehow a disadvantage that it's usually come easy to me academically and creatively to excel at things? I've multitasked, problem-solved, and been a facilitator for years now in so many areas, but those areas have never been organized into anything consistently income-producing. Now that something is actually NOT easy and is NOT being excelled at, I'm struggling with a lot of exasperation with myself, and disappointment, frustration, and determination.

At what point determination bows to performance has yet to be...well...determined.


My body's still not adjusted to the changing hours, shifts, and scheduling. I've not been here to the blog till just today, even after my recent resolution to just come here for 30 minutes and catch up with the long overdue blogroll, and etc.

Well, this is the short version. The clock shows my countdown to the next endurance run, and I still have meal, laundry, ironing and sleep to go before I get up and do it all again.

I'm really praying for some guidance in all this, and direction. And courage if I DO, in the end, come up on the short end of the stick as far as being able to do this job well. Courage not to see THAT failure as a personal failure.

If that's possible...


Low mood today, but determined to see this through the rough spot...to see what's on the other side. If I do fail, I'll have stuck it out to the last possible moment. Unlike the newly-released Harry Potter book, with THIS story there's no flipping to the last chapter to see what'll happen.

And so, for now, on to another page...



More updates later :)

Ack!

At work, among all the fancy-schmancy hi tech computer thingies it takes to populate each three-screen 911 or dispatch terminal, there is something akin to an instant message that can be sent to anyone else's within the room. They're supposed to be strictly business, but since most of the operators are rooted to their chairs for hours on end of necessity, the digital message windows are used rather than trotting across the room to another station for things like clarifying the meanings of particular screens (like if you're me and you typo some necessary call detail and it appears in something closer to Klingon to the reader, who then needs to shoot you a message of "what the heck is that?") VERY important are the messages that read "I'm going to Chick-Fil-A for lunch, anyone want to place an order?" and so on. Everyone eats lunch at their stations, so only a couple escapees at a time fetch food beyond the pale of the call center.

As far as progress, I've been doing pretty well, I think. I'm on Day Four "on the floor" meaning answering REAL CALLS (Ack!!) with a trainer seated at the same terminal. Among all The Really Crucial Vital Life-Depends-On-It Info I'm being trained on and having to retain in my middleaged brain is the lesser skill of mastering the digital instant messages. A problem? Not so much. They pop up all the time with updates usually posted to everyone in the room, to keep abreast of developing events we need to be aware of, such as if there is a controlled burn in a particular area. Everyone receives a digital message to that effect so that if callers call in with concerns about fire in their area, we can respond keeping that in mind and not have duplicate calls being sent somewhere they're not needed. I have for weeks been privately amused that MOST of the messages bore the subject line bearing the word "Ack." After all, there are a lot of "Ack!" moments that happen throughout the day. Bolos (Be On Lookout For) for stolen vehicles, repos, the status of possible runaways, etc. They all usually come through under the title "Ack."

My learning curve stopped a tad short, as sometimes happens. It was not until a couple days ago that I had my Aha moment and realized that (ahem) the "Ack" in the subject line of the digital messages is not a exclamation, but rather a truncated form of the word "Acknowledged."

Mmmm hmmm.


Wheeee goes the learning curve, over the median and into oncoming traffic, ha!


Well, in THIS BLOG, the word Ack means "ACK!!" and is my benign expression of dismay for being SO behind and SO remiss in particular respects.

I'm SO short on time these days, that this blog's been less and less a record of what I'm learning about gardening and homesteading and more and more a brief rest stop between marathons beyond the walls of my home. It's all a part of the process, yes, but some things have been put on the shelf till there's time in the future to further research and delve. The blog's grown a bit dusty and more...summarizing. BUT I'm DETERMINED that there are a couple of things that WILL be updated as soon as I've finished tomorrow's 12 hour shift (and after I've gotten my beauty sleep...or any sleep at all :))

FIRSTLY, THE BLOGROLL SHALL SHALL SHALL BE UPDATED. I'm SO remiss in this respect, and there are some wonderful wonderful wonderful blogs that should be represented here on the sidebar as links...so my HUMBLE apologies to those of you who belong there, and anyone who'd like to be there whom I may not have discovered yet. I SHALL be updating it within the next few days!!!

SECONDLY, I'm very remiss in acknowledging an honor I was given in being nominated LONG AGO by a blog friend in the homestead world for the Thinking Blog award. Each time I began the reply and then tried to make a list of Thinking Blogs I love, the list grew and grew, I became worried I was leaving so many really deserving ones out, then I tried cutting it down, then I became more anxious at having to restrict myself to a particular number, and I know I'm typing a horridly run-on sentence but what the heck this is how stream of conciousness writing came into vogue, and into the Draft file went the entry for another day, but another day never came...and....well...ACK!!!

THIRDLY, I'm just not here many hours a week, but I want to include this very important time in my blog. Why? Because the "interruption" of going out and working an outside job in order to pay off debts that are roadblocking our actual move to a property where we'd be allowed to have animals and agriculture IS a REAL part of homesteading...at least for us. This blog is about that JOURNEY. I feel humbled when I read about and see pics of all the bloggers I so love out there who're gardening and shepherding up a storm and are so much farther along that path, while I'm here worrying about a few tomato plants and wondering if I'm abusing my handful of eggplants by not repotting them fast enough into larger containers. I feel like I'm the petri dish and so many others are the actual research center DOING THINGS. But what we're doing right now in other respects IS PART OF THE PROCESS. And, so.....time's limited to the doing of it rather than the "fun stuff"....but oh how I'll appreciate it so much more when I finally get to get my hands on the projects dancing around in my head for THAT time period! :) I began some things a few months ago like beginning to research the Pollinator Project, etc, all of which I intended to plug in here as I went. I've not derailed, but like the seasons, I'm running to step in time with the NOW and having to anticipate the LATER. Nuff said. But I often wish I were putting something with more depth here just now. I'm not all about fluff. I have a million questions marching around and around, but the head can only handle a few things at a time, and right now I'm in the midst of exam-taking and getting my sea legs at a whole new job.

ACK!! :)

Lessee how it goes. I'm giving it the ol' college try, for sure!

I'll be updating the blogroll hopefully in the new few, and definately making the rounds visiting all of you bloggers who are blogging away about your lives...that's my recreation and inspiration just now, especially when the brain is waterlogged and can't handle thinking One More Thing Today. THANK YOU for the friends here who regularly check in, encourage, and whose blogs I SO enjoy reading while relaxing. I so appreciate your individual voices and expertise, experiences, and humor. My batteries get recharged, and there are so many of you I wish were my neighbors truly just down the road. THANK YOU for sharing YOUR journeys...I'm learning so much :)

OK...off to sleep. 12 hours of work and 2 hours of commuting in one day, and I'm one tired puppy. I drank a supersized unsweet tea on the drive home, but no matter how much caffiene is coursing through my veins, it's no match for my ability to embrace my destiny of shower and clean sheets. Ahhhhhhhhh :)

More later.


Thank you to all of you who've commented on the organic pesticide question. I'll be checking out each of your suggestions more in depth on my next off days. Thank you so much!


Alright, I'm off to the land of Nod...




Image link from site: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.cs.miami.edu/~geoff/Seminars/HowToGiveATalk/Ack.JPG&imgrefurl=http://www.cs.miami.edu/~geoff/Seminars/HowToGiveATalk/Contents.html&h=1308&w=1879&sz=478&hl=en&start=2&tbnid=P-HodbA-DTlpkM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3DACK!%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

Are Organic Pesticides Safe?

I don't have much time here, but I do have a question for the organic gardening veterans out there. In trying to Google organic solutions to my tomato plants' stink bug invasion(besides squashing 'em with my hands), I ran across some pesticides touted as organic, which I'm assuming means they're from natural sources.

However, when reading the fine print, I could not deduce whether or not they kill pollinators, such as honey bees, and I also saw a couple of notes stating that they could pollute water sources.

I also saw some discussion about "Bt," which I'm unfamiliar with. I AM familiar with genetically modified seeds...is this the same thing, and therefore to be avoided like the plague?

Pardon my ignorance. The question here is to reap the cumulative wisdom from so many of you whom I appreciate, who are far far ahead of me in practical knowledge of these things from experience.

My hesitation to just go out and buy something labeled "organic" stems from two things:

1. I'm cheap. The purpose in doing the organic tomatoes was in part to raise good food economically, without each fruit becoming the proverbial "$60 tomato."
2. I'm cynical, or well let's just say cautious, about claims made by companies promoting pesticides. Even the "safe for animals and humans" sort I saw on my cursory Googling attempt had ingredients which on other sites were tagged with cautions about exposure.

Is there a time and a way to use such, or are trap crops and diversity plantings for the encouragement of beneficial insects, etc, the best way to go?

I did note on one site specific to stink bugs that they were not usually a widespread problem BEFORE the advent of genetically altered (perhaps this is the Bt that was mentioned??) crops, specifically cotton engineered to be more boll-weevil resistant in the Deep South. According to that article, the reduction of that particular "pest" led to a different balance and opened the door in different ways to the rise of stink bug infestations for a whole spectrum of soft fruits and soy beans, now difficult to counteract.

Any thoughts from the blogosphere on these things? Thanks to Phelan for her comments about this recent development. My garden's infestation is now beyond the squashability threshold...


:)



Thanks in advance for advice!