Good Morning!

The Jeep just pulled away with Barry and Master K, off for an interesting day (or two interesting days, one each). Barry took the day off to hang out with Medlink, the helicopter ambulance company that serves our area, and hopefully do some ride-alongs. One has mixed feelings about these things: One wants something interesting to happen, but then one doesn't really want anything too interesting to happen to someone's loved one.

Master K is off to spend the day doing yard work for one of the widows in our church. She lives in an amazing house built into the side of a bluff. (And so far it hasn't fallen off in any of the floods.) He decided he wanted to go on a mission trip next year, but didn't know how he would raise the money, and we also wanted to think of a way to help our friend with her yard, so we have hired him to work at her place in return for credit toward his mission trip costs. A win-win-win situation.

Happy Friday, everyone.

Storming now

Huge windstorm with horizontal rain. Very interesting.

Guess what happens when you leave a Ho-Chunk basket out by the garden because you were weeding and forgot to finish the job?

Koi Portraits

Here are pictures of our koi, being bribed with treats to come get their pictures taken. (The baby is not here. I haven't even seen him since the original sighting.)

Lil Miss A wants you to know that her fingers were dirty only because I called her away from weeding the garden to feed the fish.

Woo-hoo! Groceries!

Barry did the grocerying after work yesterday and came home with loads and loads of stuff we needed. Miss B had just defrosted the nearly empty deep freeze just yesterday morning, so all this lovely food is ARRANGED NEATLY in the freezer and fridges. And it's like a treasure hunt. I was at Lil Miss A's softball game when he got home and unloaded things, so I don't know exactly what he bought, and keep finding things that I know weren't on my list. Stuff that looked delicious to him after a long day at work, before supper. Ummm...

Anyway.

I'm really trying to rethink the grocery thing. With us living 35 miles from town, and with gas so pricey, I'm trying a three-pronged approach to cutting back on the shopping trips:

1. Buy local when possible.
2. Get it delivered when possible.
3. Make one giant, efficient shopping trip only when we absolutely must.

We have the City Meat Market here in town, where we are going to try to buy our beef from now on. We drive to Lansing (12 miles south) about 40 times a week for Miss B's work and for school activities, so we try to get our gasoline, milk, eggs and bananas at the Kwik Star there. I'm trying to use Amazon more to have stuff delivered, like toilet paper and kitty litter. And we have the garden. I wish we could still be in our CSA, but it became unaffordable for us when they had to cut back on delivery points because of gas prices and we would have had to drive to pick up the stuff.

As for the One Giant Efficient Shopping Trip (GEST), I am doing about one of those every 4-6 weeks, with Barry doing the others after work. He's very good at grocery shopping, actually, and when he throws something extra in the cart, like he did last night (a gorgeous filet of wild-caught Alaskan salmon), I don't have to feel guilty for overspending, because I wasn't the one who made the decision - I can just enjoy it. Our favorite place to do the GEST is Woodman's in Onalaska, because they are employee-owned and surviving despite being kitty-corner to the Giant Super Dee Duper Wal-Mart, and they have about 6 brands of any given item - the three major label brands, the designer label brand, and two generics. Also they have large ethnic food sections. And they mark down their produce like crazy when it's been on display for awhile. Plus they hardly ever even ask for my ID when I write them a check. Good people.

We have to go into town for orthodontist, eye doctor and pediatrician appointments, and when I can stack a couple of those on one day, that makes a good day for a GEST. Plus the pediatrician and eye doctor are both in the same building, which is in the same neighborhood as Woodman's AND just down the road from the Coulee Region Humane Society, to which it's always fun to squeeze in a visit.

What I Like Best about Cheese Curds

The way they make your teeth squeak.

Baby koi!!

Sorry, no picture - just news. :o) We have a baby koi in our big pond, just maybe an inch and a quarter long. So adorable! The bigger koi (still not very large) are now so tame that they will take flakes from our hands. I was feeding them and playing with them this morning, and just before leaving the pond I did a quick fish-count. There were the usual 8 I expected. Then I saw movement in the lilies in the middle of the pond - and it was a weensy little koi, white with colorful splotches! Our koi are breeding!

This is very exciting, if you have koi. Otherwise you're probably wondering what the big deal is. The big deal is, it's a new pond, with new fish, and they are already comfortable enough to be having babies.

A video to cheer you up.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

This video just makes me smile. Don't know why, exactly. I hope it does the same for you.

Old pets are the best.

Puppies and kittens are adorable, of course - baby anythings are adorable - but I really love old pets the most.

Here's Gary the Guinea Pig. Gary (she's a girl, by the way) is a sweet old lady-pig of unknown age. I think we have had her for 5 years now. Maybe only 4. But I think 5. And before that, she was owned by a pet shop where she was kept in the back and allowed to have litter after litter of baby piggies over and over again. I don't like to think about what probably happened to her babies. The store catered to reptile owners. Anyway, when Barry bought her to use in a photo shoot, I feel like he rescued her. She was thin and in poor coat, and her nails were so overgrown that her feet are permanently turned sideways.

After the photo shoot, she lived at Barry's office for a couple of weeks, but all the comings and goings were too much for her, so he brought her home. She is the sweetest thing, very gentle and affectionate. She is getting really elderly and is spending more and more time just napping; I keep thinking one of these days we'll get up and find that she has died in her sleep. But so far, no. She "wheeks" for food, for water, and most of all, for love and attention. She enjoys the cats and tries to wash and groom them. She purrs with petting and with unusual sounds. She's just a dear old thing. She's no longer playful, but she has a dignity that I really appreciate.



Here is Bo, standing guard. He never likes the cats to get too close to Gary, and they were lurking around nearby, so he stood very close to her and growled at them when they came too close. He is very suspicious of their motives.