Our new and improved – and very expensive – library will be opening on Monday. Finally! The whole New Library Thing makes me mad, but I’m determined to get my money’s worth out of them. And since so many people who are being taxed for it don’t even use it, I’ll try to get somebody else’s money’s worth, too.

But the library isn’t really about books or learning anymore. I don’t know that ours even has a set of encyclopedias. Instead, it is a place for the community to “gather” for things like video games and Magic tournaments. Oh, and they’ve got all those computers with free Internet access. New acquisitions for the new building include lots of V-Tech readers, a toy lending library, and more DVDs. As far as books go, they do buy whatever we ask for, but books are just not a priority for most people anymore. They think they can find out whatever they need to know on the Internet, and completely overlook the life-altering impact of a good novel.

The public library, I fear, is fast morphing into an Internet cafe.

Such is life. The old gets pushed aside by the new and all we have left is a few reminiscences shared around the dinner table. If we even bothered to sit down to dinner in the first place.

Coming Soon:

The Collective Memory of the Family
Minnesota Tater Tot Hot Dish: A Recipe
Chicken Scratch: A Book List

See, for three years now, I’ve been fighting to take my place in this world, out of the shadow of a military life.  In the process of finding my own two feet and of working out a marriage, I have become something quite a bit different from what I was before.  Still, I haven’t so much changed as I’ve become more me, but I’ve wondered if you’d still love me for what I am.  I’ve pondered this and wondered what role this blog can play for me now.

And I almost walked away.

But one of the curious things about this new-and-improved me is that, with the exception of David, I don’t really mind anymore if people don’t like me.  Lots of people do like me – genuinely love me, even – that the few haters are of no consequence to me.  I don’t care how many blog readers I have, either, or whether I get any comments on my posts.  What I do care about is the pleasure my children and husband take in reading our stories here.  And I miss the anchor of words on a page to slow down the headlong rush of days.

So I’ll be back later to tell you all about yesterday’s chicken slaughter, okay?  No pictures, though.  We were all elbow deep in chicken guts.

Through it all, I kept going, cooking the meals and washing the laundry and sweeping the floor and running the errands…

Because that’s what we do, right? We keep on going until we’re really and truly laid low.

Except that last night, I realized I am so caught up in my to-do list that I am missing out on a gift from God: the gift of slowing down and sipping tea from under a blanket in front of the fire, children snuggled around me, maybe watching a movie…maybe taking a nap. I’ve been given divine permission to take a break but I’ve been a slave to my own self-imposed schedule.

I still feel pretty lousy today, and it’s no wonder, really. But today, instead of pushing through anyway, I’m going to give thanks – and take a nap.

73. Resupply of Lemon Blossom Tea, delivered to the garage by the UPS man yesterday
74. A gray Mexican wool blanket I’ve been keeping warm under for 25 years
75. Pillows and movies and children that make for perfect afternoon nap times
76. Not losing my voice…though that would have been funny!

Because nine nights ago, I started dreaming again.  If these were just ordinary, run-of-the-mill dreams, I’d have continued to believe that I’d been dreaming all along and just not recalling them, but I’m dreaming very obviously about things that have happened over the course of the last two dreamless years.  I think, for some reason, my mind shut down the dreaming function and has now restored it, and everything that has weighed on me during this time is now processing through.  A dream backlog, if you will.

At any rate, it turns out that dreaming is not strictly necessary.  According to this site, children under ten don’t dream very much at all, and it sometimes happens that adults don’t dream, too.  It doesn’t seem to have a negative effect on their mental state.  Personally, though, I can tell you that during the past two years, I have also had memory issues which have gotten progressively worse.  I’m at a point now where I write everything down, but I have to rely on the hope that somebody else will read my note and remind me of it when the time is right, because I’ll probably forget I wrote it down, too.  Fortunately, children are adaptable, and mine find my weaknesses amusing.  Hopefully, as I work through the dream backlog, I’ll get my memory function back, too.

That’ll be really handy.

Yesterday, Davey might have gone a little over the top, though. I found him sitting at the kitchen table with an index card, a bottle of crazy glue, a can of spray shellac, and…

A BLACK WIDOW SPIDER!!!

She’s the largest black widow I’ve ever seen and was found living contentedly beside the school room door in an old tire. I’m not terribly pleased at having such a specimen in my collection, but it was sweet of him to think of me, wasn’t it?

I walked out into the pasture to evaluate the amount of grass left. Most of it is brown and dormant, but there were two green and growing spots down in the hollows. It’s mostly grass, with one area being weedier than the other, but it looks like we’ve got a couple more weeks of forage out there. We only have two cows out on (I’m guessing) five acres. Still, as I walked back up to the barn to finish up my milking chores, I prayed my daily prayer for rain. I closed the back gate to the barn to keep the cows out, gathered up my milk pails, and walked back to the house, praying some more under the clear, blue, sweltering sky.

Hours later, I was awakened by a kaboom! Thunderstorm! I jumped out of bed, pulled on some shorts, and dashed out the door to open the gate so the cows could get under cover. I have dashed out into many a storm for the benefit of my animals, but the lightening was coming too close and too fast and I did not feel comfortable covering the distance between house and barn and then laying hands on a metal gate. So I waited. In the brilliant flashes of light, I could see my cows waiting it out alongside the fence near the trees. It was forty five minutes before the lightening slowed enough that I felt it was reasonably safe to make the journey. I felt badly for making my poor girls stand out in that weather, but it was wonderful to finally have weather to stand out in.

When I finally climbed back into bed, I laughed, and I prayed again, “Thank you, Lord, for the rain, but I’m going to complain now. I always complain. We could have done with a little less lightening.”

We’ll take the lightening, though, if that’s what it takes to get the rain, so keep it coming. I’ll try to remember to leave the barn open at night from now on.

Three hours later we were driving out of town toward the bank. We passed the Knights of Columbus hall, the Knights of Columbus that David is a member of and of whose activities I am somewhat acquainted with. There is a sign out front. I read it. “Fish Fart )/20″ I looked at it thoughtfully as we drove past. What could they be trying to tell me? Is it the name of some other local group renting the hall? A band performing in an upcoming concert? Some slogan which would be uplifting if only I could figure out what it means? As we drove by, I looked back, perplexed, hoping to glean some bit of meaning. The other side read, “Fish Fry 8/20″. Of course it did. Because they’re having a fish fry next week. Not a fish fart.

Apparently, sleep deprivation results in a loss of reasoning skills.

Fortunately, Davey mentioned the Knights this afternoon before dinner, and because I can only remember things if somebody else brings them up first (not a terribly helpful trait) I was able to tell my fishy tale, and he was able to call the Grand Knight, who was able to call someone who is actually in the area, who will go fix the sign and spare the Knights any embarrassment when a large crowd of people arrive on )/20 expecting to hear that awesome band, Fish Fart.

And sometime around 7 o’clock this evening, we were finally able to catch the two white rabbits who, because they are not really wild, are actually looking almost good enough to eat.

And bedtime is just an hour away, and wake up is at six instead of four thirty.

So it’s all good.

Ellie-The-Cow, who used to be Dixie, has mastitis. We gave her antibiotics on Friday and I’m trying to give her an extra afternoon milking, but it’s not improving. It’s not getting any worse, I don’t think, but it’s not getting better. A friend told me that if mastitis doesn’t respond to antibiotics, it’s probably caused by a staph infection. She also said the antibiotics kill off all the bacteria, good and bad, and she’d do well to start taking probiotics. I’m also feeding her garlic, which is supposed to have antibiotic properties. (Do you know how challenging it is to convince a cow to eat garlic?!) I have a number for a fellow who treats his own cows as much as possible. Sounds like he’ll be a great resource for us. I’ll give him a call tomorrow and see what he says. I think I’ll place another call to the vet, too. Ellie has been nothing but worry for me, but she’s such a sweet cow, gentle and affectionate, I’m not liking the looks of my options for her.

Our other chickens, our Jersey Giants, are doing really well. This week, they were deemed Big Enough To Make The Cat Think Twice and set loose in their pasture with the baby cows. Mostly, they hop through the fence and eat the grass and bugs on our side, but they’ll get too big for that soon enough. In the meantime, they are funny, friendly birds and we don’t mind their wanderings.

Somebody around here is looking forward to winter, when the cows get milked after breakfast and before dinner and the chickens are in bed early. Somebody is tired of running, running, running from 6:30 in the morning to 8:30 at night. She even seriously considered ordering pizza delivery the other night, that’s how desperate she’s feeling. But we won’t name names. Suffice it to say that when the mercury drops into the single digits, she won’t be complaining. It’s a small price to pay for an hour or two of leisure.