It's a miserable Sunday evening, and I'm hoping like heck work gets cancelled tomorrow, because I really need to spend tomorrow killing Quentin. I headed out early this morning as always on a Sunday, with the intention of cutting time short becuase of the storm coming in. It began to hit hard while I was in town, as those of you who read regularly found out last weekend. My windshield wipers were toast, so I also had to get those taken care of. Quentin was going to head down to Harrison and do them for me, because they were bad enough that they really weren't helping, and I was worried I'd have problems getting to the auto parts store to get new ones and have them put them on.
I got down the mountain road okay, slipped a tiny bit just once. Quentin, in a 2000-pound heavier van, with a couple of hundred pounds of wood in the back over the rear axle for traction, managed to BURY the thing in the ditch not even 500 feet from the house to where it's going to have to be towed out, or we're going to be running the car three times a day back and forth to the plant. Beats me how he did it, but looking at his tracks, he didn't stay in everybody else's tire tracks going down, but went what he calls "ditch jumping" to show off. This is the third time he's gotten stuck in that same spot due to being a showoff and thinking he can do all kinds of stuff in the van that he really can't.
I called some tow companies, but of course, being in the boonies, either they don't service our area (yeah, twenty to twenty-five miles from their base and we're too far for them to come do anything, that makes all kinds of sense, too). The one who said he could make it in about two hours wanted $350!!! for the call "because of the weather." I'm sorry, but what would be a $70-$80 tow call at MOST for this does not justify four to five times normal just because there's two inches of snow on the ground and he has to go a MILE off pavement. Especially since he'd already said he was heading north into the mess to go to Branson, and the first thing out of his mouth was,"Do you have full-coverage insurance?" That speaks very highly to me of insurance fraud and price-gouging. So it's likely either we have to use the car only until such time as somehow the van can be pulled out of the ditch and back on the road, or I kill Quentin.
On top of that, because the mountain road's in poor shape right now, that means also not only losing sleep to do the drive me to work, him come back, get himself to work, me get home and rest a bit before going back to get him and coming home ... but also means adding in the time to WALK up and down the darn road to do so! That's about 45 minutes one way for either of us, added onto the whole thing. So there's not a lot going to get done for a few days to whenever the darn van is out of the ditch. And to think he got it stuck AFTER I told him to go slow and follow the tire tracks and be careful. Yeah, I'm mad. I'm so angry that I want to clobber him. It wouldn't help, but geez, I'm wondering just how much daylight gets between his ears right now.
He says it was too hard to stay on the road in the van and follow the tire tracks. Guess what? I managed to WALK up it, in the tire tracks, and not slip where he went off the road, or anywhere. In SNEAKERS. With not a lot of tread on them. I don't know what to do anymore. I can't take this kind of crap any longer from his end of things. There's so much going on that's not going right with us, and the only things going right are both of us working and right now, in the condition things are in, I'm seeing that evaporate again.
Okay, rant over for tonight, because I need to have a good cry now. More later on how this week goes, because while I'm not about to give up on homesteading, with the way things have gone with Quentin getting stuck through showing off (and I won't do that kind of thing even in good weather - I'm too dependent on my car to get me back and forth to work and shopping!), along with him having three and a half weeks to go right now on probation (and no points because he used them up from not "feeling" like he wanted to go in - guess what, there's a lot of days I don't feel like going to work and I do it anyhow, because that's what adults do!), along with another major relationship issue between us that has caused a great deal of strain on our marriage (my dear friend Tina in Australia knows what I'm talking about), I'm about ready to call it quits with him. I just can't take the strain. I need to play one of my computer games, read some email and respond to some, make dinner (had my shower already, gosh that bathroom's awful cold right now with this weather!), and hope to heck work is called off for tomorrow.
Not that I expect it will be - last time we got wind chills near -20F and had six inches of snow on the ground and they still had us working. Sometimes, I wonder where the plant manager's head is in weather like this, as do the rest of my teammates at the plant. (Last time, we spent a lot of time generally smack-talking about the manager for her sheer idiocy in making us come to work in that kind of weather. Wonder what her excuse for us coming in will be THIS time?) Anyhow, I need to relax somehow, because this is driving me up a wall. I'll be so glad when it warms up in the next few weeks and I can get outside regularly again. Won't you?
And here it is Monday night. I am so glad for me thinking to call the mechanic who works for the guy we are getting the van from. Randy is a great guy, and he was able to come out and help dig the van out of the ditch where Quentin buried it, so Quentin could change the tire he flattened in his enthusiasm to kill himself and/or the van, and he only charged $60. What a blessing in that respect. Looking at the mess when we got down to the van the first time today (three round trips from house to van and back for me today, my legs are killing me and it's 1030 PM), Quentin got of extremely lucky. Another six inches forward and the flattened right front tire would have gone into a culvert and he would have tipped and wrecked. At which point I would have killed him, figuratively speaking, and gone from there.
The whole thing meant I had to take ANOTHER day off work to help get the van out, but at least Quentin got to work okay. I spent a lot of time last night crying so hard from the stress and everything. Those of you who homestead already know what I'm talking about. For those who don't, who are considering a move to the country and homesteading, trust me, there are going to be a LOT of days like this. It ain't all roses and happiness and gee what fun. (Thus why I left the rant from Sunday's doings in here, so you can get the idea of what I mean by days like this - Sunday is a prime example!) There are a lot of days when it's just a miserable freaking slog to get through the day, and at the end of it, you just have to fall apart and bawl because you're so stressed out that it's the only thing your body can figure out to do.
Depression is a miserable thing to deal with, but it hits every homesteader a lot more often than we'd like, or would like to admit. Often, it's just a situation where you sigh and pick up and carry on. Maybe it's a flat tire when you least expect it, or dinner burned, or the cows got out, or the deer didn't materialize in front of your rifle to go to freezer camp, or wildlife ate your garden just when it's starting to grow good. And then there are days like yesterday, when it's all you can do not to kill your spouse even when they so richly deserve it at the time, and about all your brain can do is whirl around and focus on the negatives. A good cry and some sleep often help, but it isn't easy to get through days like yesterday and then carry on.
But if you're going to homestead, you have to learn to deal with this stuff. You have to be, as my friend Tina put it to me recently, resilient. You have got to be able to bend like the willow in a storm. You might lose a few branches, but you'll survive. In life's storms like these of late, the worst thing you can do is to be like an oak tree, and not give in to the wind and let it get to you. My granddad (rest his soul, six or seven years gone, I've lost track), who was a preacher and master chef, used to say something I take to heart. Of course, days like yesterday don't help me to remember it, but when I calm down, I remember it and it calms me further. What he used to say was "Don't worry about things. Nine times out of ten, if you don't worry about it, whatever it is will go away and bother someone else. The tenth time, you can't do anything about it anyhow, so why waste the energy?"
That was me last night and much of today. Worry, worry, worry. There were so many unknowns in the situation that all my brain could do was focus on the worry. Stuff happens when you homestead. Shoot, it happens constantly. It isn't always good. There's a lot of bad, too, but it about balance out even. If you can't tough it out, you aren't going to make it, you're going to give up in a few years, and you're going to go back to the city because "country living is too hard." If you don't learn that ahead of time, you are in for a lot of heartache, my friend.
And this next week is not going to be easy. The plant manager doesn't care about our safety getting to and from work, just while we're AT work, I swear. We're expecting up to three inches of snow on Tuesday, the 4th, and you can bet that work won't be cancelled for it. It's not supposed to get above freezing (another blasted polar vortex, ugh) until NEXT Tuesday, if we're lucky. This winter can kiss my red-blooded Yankee hieney. I'm tired of it. I'll be glad when it's over. I'll be glad to see things getting green again, even if it does mean tick season and weed whacking the grass around the trailer again.
I'd rather deal with that than this mess. I think, honestly, we in the Ozarks got rather spoiled the last few years. In the nearly five years I've been down here, there's been ONE bad winter, and that was just a couple of snowstorms over a two week period. Bad enough that the plant shut down for a couple days each time, because we got a LOT of snow both shots. The last bad winter like this at all was just before I moved here, when this area got ice so bad that a lot of folks lost power for ten days solid.
It's things like that and this winter that cause me to want so much to be off-grid. With solar and wind power for electricity, and reducing what we do use (well, I can reduce, getting Quentin to is a whole nother kettle of fish ... he likes his electronics too much, so it's going to take some work yet to teach him to shut of power strips to avoid phantom usage and the like) to a minimum, and a wood stove for heat and some of the cooking, with propane eventually for backup heat as well as hot water and most cooking, things would be really comfy and cozy and who cares if the power goes out at that point.
I guess what I'm trying to say with all of the Monday blathering is that homesteading is fun but it's really not for everybody. Read up a lot ahead of time. Learn all that you can, and start small. Don't go jumping in with both feet and hoping you can keep out of the undertow, because you're going to go down and go down hard if you try that. Baby steps are important. Remember that there are going to be a lot of days that are frustrating and disappointing and hard and miserable and just plain awfully stressful. If you can't take the hard knocks, don't even try to homestead. It's great when it's all going well, but if a setback is going to totally throw you for a loop that you can't pull yourself out of, quit while you're ahead.
Yeah, the last couple of days have been pretty rough, overall. But there's good in them, too. Life will get back on an even keel, homesteading plans will start going ahead again, and this will pass. The weather will warm up soon and, with two incomes now, a number of weekend-type projects can be dealt with over the week in small bits. Though honestly, the whole having to walk up and down the mountain to the vehicles thing is going to get old again really, really fast. Especially since it means I have to melt snow for water again to refill jugs, which I don't mind so much because it's better than hauling an eight-pound jug of water a mile uphill, but it does make me determined to get that darned wellhead going this year one way or another, even if I have to haul the bailer bucket out overhand!
Tuesday wasn't too bad. The walk down was chilly, and there was a bit of wintry mix coming down, which made a lovely hissing sound through the trees as I walked. Everything was so pretty with the snow, and work was pretty good overall. I got started melting snow for water to fill the jugs, and did quite a bit of knitting. I got the sweater for Jamie's baby shower done barring the buttons, so it's just that, run in ends and do the booties. I also worked up a quick and dirty pattern for a cowl I want to make from the yarn left over from the baby stuff, because I don't like scarves much (they tend to fall away from where I want them to stay). Cowls, on the other hand, stay on my neck and face where I put them, and if I need a bit more head warmth, I can always pull it up over my head as well.
Wednesday was about the same as Tuesday, other than bitter freaking cold. How do people stand this kind of cold every day for months on end? I know how to deal with it. I grew up in it and lived in it for forty years, but I guess my blood has thinned in the five years (as of next month) that I've been in the Ozarks, because this is crazy, ridiculous weather for me to deal with. I do not like it the least little bit. I want it to go away and stay there, this polar vortex we're having another of. The first one was bad enough and it was only a couple of days. This one's hanging around for about a WEEK. Yeah, it's supposed to be the middle of NEXT week before it gets above freezing again here. I don't want to wait that long, and I'm getting tired already of walking up and down the road. Laundry and groceries this weekend are going to be a real treat. In the meantime, can someone please turn off the outside air conditioning and crank up the heater? Pretty please and thank you with sprinkles on top?
Oh my good gravy. Thursday can take a hike. The rest of winter can take a hike. There's a good reason. All the way down the road, in the frigid cold, all I could think about was how nice it would be to get to the car, start it up and crank up the heat so I could thaw out on the way to work. That got shot as soon as I turned the knob. No air coming out whatsoever. Not a peep. Zero, zilch, nada, nothing, the big Goose Egg. I was already frozen, and the car wasn't very warm, and so I froze all the way to work, and worked in a frozen department, then got to get into a cold car and drive home to the cow pasture, so I could walk up the cold road.
There was still good to come of that so that it wasn't a horrible day overall. Work went okay, and Quentin stopped on the way to work and got a lightly quilted reversible twin blanket (which he griped about getting, he really hates stopping anywhere but the gas station for a huge soda on the way to work) so that I could use it to cover the windshield while the car's parked. I'll have to grab one of the big, fluffy towels to cover my legs while I'm driving. By putting the wipers on before turning the car off, and cutting the ignition while they are upwards on the window, I can use them to help hold the blanket on the windshield. It's also big enough that I can shut the ends in the doors, and it has one side black, so if I put that side out, it will help absorb some heat. Overall, it's a way to help keep the snow and ice off the windshield till the weather turns.
Then it's get a new blower motor for the thing, so that Quentin can replace it. I need to find the Chilton's or Hayes manual for the car, so he has step by step instructions to replace the thing. He thinks he needs to take off the whole dash to get at the blower motor, but I think he can get at it from the engine compartment, or by removing the drivers seat and working on the thing from the underside of the dash, rather than pulling the whole thing out to replace the blower motor. But you can bet it was a heck of a surprise to not get that blast of hot air when I turned the knob for the heater.
Oh, blast. I just realized, I forgot to take photos of the baby set I did for Jamie. Ok, remember the sweater I did for Eric and Bobbi for little Elizabeth for Christmas? That sweater. Only in Caron's Simply Soft, colourway "Ocean." I was going to do camo, but everybody was saying they were going to bring camo, because it's a boy, and Jamie mentioned that he already has a ton of camo stuff (diaper bag, onsies, sheets), and I thought, that's a bit too much camo if I stuff something in there, too. Then I thought about baby blue, but once again, I figured the other thing everybody is going to do is baby boy blue and baby neutrals (white, yellow, green and purple). That left me having to choose a different color that would be "boy" but still come out cute. "Ocean" is a deeper blue than you'd normally pick for a baby boy, but it comes off as a very masculine color without being overwhelming. So that's what color it ended up as.
Friday continued cold but at least it was a bit warmer. Still some wind chill, but the temps were overall about ten degrees warmer than they have been, so that was nice. NOT nice being cold and driving to work again, but oh well. I called the local Chevy dealer to find out how they get at the blower motor and the mechanic said if Quentin was to do it, that's fine, especially since the car is well out of warranty, but to invest in the Hayes manual for the Aveo, as they don't make a Chilton's for it. That way, he'd have step by step directions for the job. Good as Quentin can be at fixing things, directions make it a lot easier to deal with the bigger jobs like this will be.
Water jugs are refilled completely. Snowmelt isn't always the greatest water in the world, unless you get several inches of it, because you have to deal with a bit of dirt clouding it up, and of course, you have to pick out the bits of grass and leaves once it's melted before you pour it off into the jugs, but at least it's potable water for drinking and cooking and sponge baths to get hair and the pits and bits clean, so you don't smell all manky at work. The bedroom is the warmest room in the house, so you can bet that much of the time, I am sitting here with DVDs and keeping myself occupied with needlework and seed catalogs.
Yeah, still going through those. I've got a huge want list building up, then once I get through all my catalogs, I can sort by type and variety and price, put my buy list together, and go from there. I keep the want list together even after the buy list is done, in case I go to buy something and it's sold out (rare, but it does happen). That way, I can go to the want list and see if someone else has it and still fill out my wants. Now if I can just get the blasted wellhead developed enough this spring that I can get water out of it. I don't care if I have to haul it out hand over hand instead of having some kind of windlass, it's still water I don't have to go get, and will make a garden easier to start. Then the biggest issue will be keeping the wildlife around here from eating it. I think some soap hung in the trees will help as well as planting a LOT of marigolds. For some reason, wildlife doesn't like the smell of marigolds, and leaves things alone. Personally, I think marigolds are pretty little things, and they're one of my favorite annuals.
The cowl is coming along nicely, not quite half done tonight, so hopefully I can get it finished over the weekend. The pattern's pretty simple, and I think I will have to write it up as one of my for sale patterns for $1 when I'm done with it and can model it while Quentin tries to take a good picture of me wearing it. It's that, or I put it on a hanger, hang that on the wall and take a photo that way. It wouldn't look as nice, but it would make for a clear shot. Quentin just isn't that great with a camera, lol. I'm not perfect, but I've had a lot more experience with them, and so I know how to deal with parallax in the old cameras, which thankfully, is not an issue with a digital camera.
And I can hear the question now - what is this "parallax?" Parallax is what, in the old film cameras, made you cut off people's heads. Remember on the old cameras, where you'd look through the viewfinder and see the dotted lines around the edges? Those dotted lines were to help you frame your shot. If it was inside the lines, it was in the shot. I don't know the exact definition of parallax, but basically, it's part of how you see things, and the edges of your peripheral vision don't always pick up everything. Same idea with the focused lenses on an old camera. They were curved, and so the curvature didn't always allow you to get everything in the frame of the shot, and thus parallax would cut people's heads off. You were sure it was in the shot when you took it, but you were using the whole viewfinder, not just the part in the lines, and voila! Headless people.
All the talk earlier this week about depression doesn't mean there aren't a lot of good days and times, too. Goodness, there's a lot of good times to be had homesteading. Hobbies, watching your garden grow and produce, eating what you grew, visits from friends and family, selling at the farmer's market if you do that (you get a lot of socialization that way), church and church stuff (I'm openly Pagan, but I do have a church of sorts I go to regularly, and that way I get to interact with other people, and do volunteer things that help the community), and my favorite, the county fair.
Now if you're lucky enough to live in smallish counties, or at least ones that are reasonably close by for things, you can hit up three or four of them easily. Here, I can hit up three in Arkansas and two in Missouri within an hour of the homestead. And while all of them offer up about the same things in the way of a fairway (and all the yummy fair food!) and exhibits and things, each of them generally allows you to enter things in the premium classes if you are within a certain distance, usually that county and neighboring counties. So for me, I can easily enter things into five county fairs, one after the other, and have fun seeing what I might win for my handiwork or cooking.
For those who don't know, a premium class at the county fair is one where you pay a small fee to enter it. The fees are pooled, and the top three entries get a small prize back as winnings, in addition to ribbons. These ribbons are highly prized by the entrants, trust me. Somewhere around here, I have a whole shoebox full of ribbons from first through tenth for my own entries. Some fairs will give ribbons out to tenth place, but prizes only to the top three ... it depends on the fair and the number of entries. You find out what classes you can enter and the rules and prizes by contacting the fair offices and having them send you, or tell you where to pick up, a copy of the "Premium book." It tells you all you need to know to enter.
For example, it will tell you when your class will be judged, and when you have to have your entry ready. Perhaps you crocheted a doily and you want to enter it. Rules may state that it must be washed and starched before entering. Some may state that you have to list on your entry card what pattern you used and where you found it. At the bigger fairs, the judges will check on this stuff, believe you me. The other fun thing about the county fair and the Premium classes, is that many the Grand Prize winners in a category all get to be sent on to the State Fair. Yeah, then you get to compete against the best in the state!
I love going to the county fair, and I got the kids hooked on them at an early age. I remember many a time taking them to the Ag Building and watching them play with the grain entries, watching the seeds cascade through their fingers back into the buckets (the farmers thought they were hysterical), or burying their faces in the big round hay bales to smell the wonderful smell. Ian once said it smells like when the grass is cut, only better, and he's quite right. I remember going to one fair with them where they had a few pregnant cows in the Ag Barn, and the local dairy farmers council had the cows there specifically so folks could possibly see a calf being born (we did, it was AWESOME, folks just stood around and were so quiet) or while it was still tiny, and chicks hatching in an incubator, and all kinds of neat things.
I think the funniest thing was Amber at the Carroll County Fair here one year when she was down staying for a bit. She wanted one of every kind of animal in the Ag Barn, and first had fixated on a Holstein calf. I asked if she realized how big that thing would get. She said, yeah, there's adults here, too. But then it got funny as all heck. She wanted one of every type of animal, but they all had to be black and white to match the cow. *facepalm* I couldn't convince her that we couldn't fit a cow, a goat, a sheep, a chicken and a rabbit into our house in the city limits of Green Forest. Thankfully, she found the fairway and wanted to ride all the rides, so that distracted her from the plan of a barnyard in the living room!
Saturday was a bit of a pain. Laundry had to be done, and some minor groceries gotten, which meant a walk down the mountain road with the toboggan, doing the shopping and laundry, and walking back UP with a full toboggan. We got lucky in Harrison, finding ice cleats at the Ace Hardware, so that helped a lot to get up the road even with it melting off some and getting a bit slippy, but hauling up a full toboggan is not easy. We could have gotten along without doing it, but Quentin was insistent.
The walking down and up added two hours or so to the day's errand running, but at least we got home in one piece. Though as sloppy as the road is, and knowing that Sunday was going to be a bit above freezing like Saturday was, so more would melt off, and with my legs feeling like total rubber, I chose to take Sunday off from McQuack's. Yeah, it'd be nice to post this and catch up with everyone, but the walk is a bit hard on me, and Quentin isn't feeling so good right now, having developed a bit of a cough and sinus drainage, leaving him feeling pretty crappy. (Thus why I wanted to stay home today and give him a chance to recuperate a bit, but he chose not to.)
I will say one thing that happened Friday night into Saturday morning gave him a big scare that has changed his attitude on one thing. He's a smoker, has been for years, long before we ever got together. I don't like it, but I know nagging him isn't going to change that habit, even though he admits it's a filthy, nasty habit he wishes he'd never started, and knowing that I don't smoke myself. He's always smoked in bed, laying down, when he's half asleep. There's been a lot of times I've had to wake him up to put the stupid cancer stick out because he was about to lose his ash onto the bed, having fallen asleep while smoking.
That night, he got a big scare, and thanks to Bouncer, it wasn't very bad in damage, but very big in scare for him. He fell asleep smoking again, and I was so exhausted from all the walking and all lately that I didn't wake up when he was doing so. Ash fell off onto the bed, and burned a big hole, a bit bigger than a golf ball, in the sheet and scorched the mattress. He's lucky it didn't start a fire.
Bouncer woke him up before it could, and it has scared Quentin into deciding that his cigarettes and lighter are going to go into the bathroom linen closet (to keep the boys from thinking they are kitty toys), and he'll just keep an electronic cigarette next to the bed for nighttime nicotine fits. He figures that if he wants a "tailor-made" smoke that badly, he'll be willing to get his butt out of bed and go the ten feet to get one, which will wake him up enough to stay upright while he smokes it. It has also convinced him that maybe I've been right all this time, and maybe he is old enough and smart enough to know that he should quit before something really bad happens.
I don't think he'll ever actually quit, but the burnt hole in the sheet is a small price to pay to convince him that just maybe his luck can run out on that kind of thing, and just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean that it won't. And as far as I'm concerned, if it at least cuts down on his smoking those nasty things, so much the better for the budget and his health. He'll feel better and have more money to spend on himself if he at least cuts back, and if he slowly quits, that's even better.
Please, folks, if you smoke, or live with a smoker, convince them to quit or at least switch completely to the electronic cigarettes. With all the next tobacco taxes that many states are implementing, a pack of cheap cigarettes could end up easily costing $8 or MORE. For a SINGLE pack! If you are a pack-a-day smoker, that is $56 a WEEK! $2,912 a YEAR! Can you imagine what you could do with nearly $3,000 a year more to spend on things for your homestead? I can imagine what I could do with it, quite easily.
But beyond the financial reasons, think of your health. Think of all the horrible chemicals and cancer-causing things that are in tobacco and the processing of it that you breathe in when you smoke. Think of your looks - your face will age faster, your teeth will get weak and fall out sooner, and they will be yellow (while you still have them), as will your fingers. Your home and clothes will smell awful to those around you. It is very hard to quit. As a perpetual non-smoker who has never once had the urge to puff or light up or what have you, it's hard to live with a smoker, but I manage. As Quentin put to Amber when they first met, "It's a filthy, nasty habit I wish I'd never gotten started on." I doubt he'll ever quit, but I can hope this starts a habit of the electronic cigarette he's got more than the nasty tobacco-filled ones. (Oh yeah, and emphysema ... don't forget THAT nasty little bugger that comes from years of smoking.) All right, I'm off my soap box against smoking. This concludes your PSA for this week.
So my apologies, my friends, that I am taking a weekend off posting and email, because this weather has to break so I can drive up and down the road again. Walking it for work is hard enough, errands is worse. A non-necessity like the internet is just silly.
45 Tasty Crockpot Soup And Stew Recipes For All Families
