as creed once wisely said - what's this liiiiiiife fooooorrrr

The rain mixes with the ice in the clouds and pats the roof of my house as my little warrior dog curls up beside me on my freshly made bed. The smell of the swamp and little puppy groans are quickly permitted with one look into her completely exhausted eyes. Today at the beckoning and astonishment of my command, she valiantly attacked a groundhog, which was comparable to her diminishable size. But with teeth and claws out, she circled and barked as I egged her on, only engaging with confusion on occasion with which her opponent would retaliate with wicked bites to her face and neck.

She is exhausted tonight. I dressed her wounds and her confidence after the big fight where both partied walked away with minor injuries, despite Pepper's ingenious plan to throw the vermin in the creek to help her fight. I was proud of her as she jumped through the briars in a fruitless pursuit. A few rounds of fetch and the fight was almost out of her system.

Now I'm sitting here with itunes on random, jarring me from johnny cash to immortal technique to joanna newsome to ween. I just had a whirlwind cleaning night, the kind that I'm glad the later part of the day drove me inside with rain and wind and put a broom in one hand and a beer in another. It's so satisfying to see the piles of clothes either in baskets destined for the laundry or packed away in drawers or on hangers.
I had so much more planned for this week. And with a day and a half off, you would think that I would have gotten them done. Still no high mill park seed swap sign, garden fence is not yet up... but my house is somewhat clean, the lambs have a new house, some carrots, onion, and lettuce got in the ground, and i got to see my brother for spring break. My songwriting is atrophying as it usually does this time of year, not for lack of material but for being so far down on my list.

I'm starting to have this feeling that as more time passes, the less I'm willing to confess to knowing. I had a tough time coming up with gardening classes because I used to be confident that I knew something that someone else would want to know. Perhaps it's a shift from informing customers at lake cable to becoming a viticulture student who knows little about fence building or cattle husbandry or even what the season will bring from the vines I spend so much time with. I guess I have to admit that I don't want to go back. I learned everything I could in the time I had there and I don't want to sell people viburnums for the rest of my life, or even for the next 4 years.
I think eventually I do want to go back to school. The question, as always, is what for?

the state of the world and a hole in my dog

So I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning after a healthy night of getting sick, but not from drinking and I'm catching up on all the reading I've missed out on. Not long books, but rather my preferred literature - farm magazines. Now is often both a very good and very frustrating time to be reading about all the things that people in warmer climates can still do (still doesn't make me want to move to texas though) and winter issues are usually about more of the state of the world and the farming community. Of course this one I'm working through is incredibly democratic and most of the articles are about petitioning Obama. There's evils around. Obama promised to eradicate them. He promised!!!
I'm not sure if I believe that he's listening to me, the half-farmer half-consumer in shit-town Ohio with no savings and little influence on my surroundings, I mean with millions of Americans loosing their houses and their jobs, why would GMO crop reform be top on the list? With farming subsidies so out of whack, with factory chicken plants just eeking by on only 24% e.coli sent to market... why take the time now to reform it? Is public outcry still high or are they more worried about putting food on the table than colony collapse disorder?

I will try not to post another fatalistic, depressing blog. Perhaps it's not keeping food down that's making me be a little loopy or I just discovered a hole in the side of my faithful companion and don't have the money to take her to the vet but I'm having trouble seeing the silver lining come Jan 20th.

i'm not a cat person, i swear.

It's that weird limbo in between christmas and the other holiday of sheer expectation that i usually try to avoid... new years eve.
I usually try to avoid the resolutions and the countdown. I never feel any different from one second to the other. I just end up with champagne up my nose and that sinking feeling that I have no idea where to go from here.

I'm officially laid off. Me and about 9 percent of ohio. So I guess I'm in good company. But then again, at the same time, I'm out there with my fellow ohioans standing in line to all apply to the new strip mall tool emporium that will probably end up filing for bankruptcy because even their employees can't afford to buy anything there.

And usually I'm not a cat person, but this black and white cat has found me and I like her. I can't tell is she's staring at me to comfort me or to lull me back to sleep. Either way, getting out of bed is getting harder every day.

cold wake up

So I moved my computer over to my house and if I sit just right on the corner of my bed, I can catch the interweb from the neighbors on the hill. And we're tearing up the upstairs to put it back together only make it a little bit warmer as previously, using air as insulation wasn't really very insulating. (I always thought the bitter draft was just the windows, but nope, turns out it was actually the entire ceiling / walls.)
I'm waking up nice a slowly with a mattress heater and one nostril filled entirely with snot. Last night Jason took me on a shopping date. I got some slippers for me, boots for my sister, and sparkles for the deer skulls we're adorning our christmas tree this year with. And then I laughed as Jason filled out an incredibly long job application for borders... but then thought about it and started filling one out myself.

Well, my bladder is full from the cold and morning writing is terrible compared to at night, so I think I'm going to just start my day.

voicemails meant to be deleted

Tonight, after a long bath and an even longer self assessment session, I listened to all my skipped voicemails.-student loans -lawrence twp police calling about a goat they found to see if it's mine - my mother - the band is at my house and they don't know where i am - bill collectors again - some lady asking if i have any turkeys - an unintentioned call (ass dial) from jason - my mother again - and a job rejection.


I'm trying not to be too apocalyptic, but I'm sitting here with half of my bedroom ceiling falling in on me in what appears to be the set of a horror movie. The dog training job that I was pretty fucking excited about slipped through my hands and fell into the lap of someone "more experienced" yet again and I'm left with a dwindling paycheck and threadbare self-respect, wondering what the hell I'm supposed to do now.
And I keep playing over and over the interview in my mind, thinking of all the moments, the dogs, the mistakes, the weeks worth of post-interview daydreaming about training service dogs and taking them on educational trips and whatnot.
I guess that I've been turned down for jobs before. Hell, even the Akron Children's Hospital is too good for me to even sweep their floors. I keep rolling over and over what I would like to do vs. where I'm at now.
I realize that I have so many daydreams about the way that things could be. If I'm applying to be a bar maid, I picture opening up my own bar and what it would be like, or for this most recent service dog trainer / office manager position, I imagined expanding to have therapy bunnies and elderly companion pomeranians and saving all of the good dogs who end up in the pound on their way to the needle. (or is it just a 22?)


It all is really starting to roll around faster - goats - mom - student loans - band - mom - - - - (repeat) It's like I never have time to stop it, but I always have time for staying in it.


I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about any more. ugh..... brain frozen.

salted tongue

So I think that officially I have my first cold of this cold season. It knocked my ass back on the couch and slowed me down for bit. I've been eating cough drops like candy and going to bed at least an hour earlier than my already pretty pathetic early bedtime.

And I'm starting to come up with a surplus of time; not that I have the money or the motivation to do anything with it, but I have it now. I have that feeling like when you've been in a car so long, like hours and hours, usually when you're the passenger and the world has been moving by your car window for so long, trees and signs and everything flying by your periphery and disappearing somewhere behind you... that when you stop, you feel dizzy. Like everything is still moving, or should be moving but is now slowly sliding backwards.
I guess it's the slow dizziness of getting off a ride at the fair or spinning in circles. Nothing is moving now. It's all just suddenly stopped and my eyes are tricking my brain into things that aren't happening anymore.

It's the changing of the seasons that often leads me to think that I need to change something with myself. Like who I was in spring and summer is not who I will be this fall and winter. Right before the change, I dream of running away or of waking up somewhere else as someone else... which invariably alarms Jason, with whom I swear everything is going great, which it is. It's just that feeling that with my hours being cut, time being ample and budgets being stretched that I start suspicions of a life a bit more wasted in busying myself with things so fleeting.

I just am starting to see the worry lines etching across my face. The cold is ripping through my unfinished house with leaky windows that are looming over my head. But, like an idiot, I lived paycheck to paycheck even when the paychecks were good, and so now that they are not, I'm stretching a bit more thin.

I'm starting to apply to all those jobs that six months ago i swore I would never go back to, but now a desk and a corner that I can call my own for around 30 hours a week sounds lovely.


And I hate having so much time to sit at a computer now. I've procrastinated on billing. My desk is a mess so i don't even sit at it. My website has lapsed and is now no longer in service. I don't mind much though. There are moments where I can't wait to plan for next year, but tonight... I just feel like sinking down into a pile of blanket, doing shots of cough syrup and wishing that my piano would just fucking play itself.
My music is driving me mad as of late. My musical partners in crime are not to blame, though I might rationalize myself into thinking that my lack of persistance might somehow be their fault. It's not. It's me.
When I was little, my mother would set a bell. For a half an hour a day I was chained to the piano chair, plunking out whatever new songbook I talked my mom into buying me. Most of my time I spent checking the bell to see if a half a minute had passed or not, sometime stopping mid stanza to see how much closer that bell was to ringing. My mom got wise and added on an extra minute every time I got up. I thought it was cruelty. Now i wish I could only have that type of peristance.

I promise myself to become a better story teller.

I promise myself to not watch the bell, but just play until it rings.

I promise myself to not watch the wrinkles stretch... but rather put on some sunblock and go outside to play.

first thawing of the fingers and toes

I'm not sure when I blinked and missed it, but summer is gone now. the nights are bitterly cold blowing through my terribly insulated bedroom. the days are beautifully mild with white puffy clouds slowly rolling by. Work is terribly boring, trying to stare at the few remaining plants we have to make them pretty enough to try to sell. My hours are cut to almost nothing, which is tough because the less time I'm at work, the more money I spend with all my free time.

In good news, the house project just got catapulted into actually commencing again thanks to the impending wedding and a million people staying at my place. Ironically though, once we started working on it again, dad decided to get a new paint job on the truck so.. yeah, don't have any way of getting supplies over 8 feet.
I ran over my puppy today. Pretty weird. Just in a golf cart though and I kinda feel like it was a bit of my fault. While she's amazing and a fast learner and being such a good dog, she has this tendency to stop in front of you when you're walking, but then again, walking doesn't hurt as much as a motorized vehicle. She did the same thing with the golf cart, ran around it and then stopped in front. I yelled "no" at her, which made her look at me and in that moment, she went under the tires, all paws and fur tumbling under the weight. Lucky for me, the ground was soft with recent rain and her puppy body is pretty resiliant... and it wasn't a freaking car. So she's sleeping it off on the couch now. I can see her heart pumping through her ear that is starting to stand up. She's going to puppy school and has been a good student so far, learning the trade of hearding while occasionally getting a mouth full of wool when the trainer isn't looking.

Things have calmed down after the CSA harvest fest. I am constantly sleepy and probably getting sick. Jason has to occasionally remind me to stay calm, which I always appreciate. We're battling coon and weasels on the chicken hosue front and our flock is dwindling. Our last CSA straggler is picking up today and then all the veggies that come out of the garden from now until frost will be all ours. With night time temps dropping into the thirties by the end of the week, I'm not sure how long everything will last.