salad in a container

Last work-related post, I PROMISE. I haven't had time to set foot on the farm, trying to get my routine down pat. Hopefully some farm pictures next week.

I haven't figured out when to fit in exercise (yet—that is next week's task) but since I have to pack my lunch because the office is in the middle of nowhere, I do have a new opportunity to eat more healthily than I usually do for lunch. (Read: handful of chips or crackers.)

I start with a chinese food quart container, and begin to layer.

This one started with the bits of chicken left over from our rotisserie chicken last night. I live with four guys. There's not usually a ton of meat remaining.

Let me apologize right now for the crappy photography. It was 6 am and I was using my iphone but I think it will work to give you an idea.

Add salad dressing. This is also a great way to use up those last bits of dressing in a bottle, because slightly runny dressing works well. A bit of water, shake up the bottle, and you're in business.

Now start adding whatever toppings you want!

This one had: sliced up grapes.

Sunflower seeds.

Croutons.

Last ingredient is the lettuce, right on top of everything, all the way to the top.

Finished salad, from the side. (It would look prettier in a mason jar, which is how I first saw it, but given my track record with taking breakable things into the office, I decided to stick with the safety plastic instead.)

When you are ready to eat, just turn it upside down and shake, making sure the lid is on nice and tight first, of course!!

Terzo's accusatory comment, when he saw me making it: "Did you get this idea from the internet?"

My child knows me well. But it does make for a great lunch.

polar vortex

As much as yesterday morning was so much tra la la all the way, this morning was brutal.

I blame this danged polar vortex. Holy crap, was it cold.

As a result: a delayed opening for Terzo's school, after I had to leave. Forgotten gloves, BIG MISTAKE. Traffic jam in town caused by high school delayed opening. Coffee dumped down my front by too cold fingers while driving 65 mph. A car alarm: low tire pressure. Even colder hands trying to figure out which tire was leaking.

(None, of course. It was just so blasted cold that the air had contracted. The tire place up the road told me I was the umpteenth person to stop in that day with the same problem.)

And then the culmination: destruction of a favorite gift, taken in for paper clip management and to add a bit of sheepy comfort to my new desk. I set down the bag containing it a bit too hard, and ice-cold pottery plus hard tile floor proved a disastrous combination.

Heart = broken.

I can't bring myself to throw it away, though it is unrepairable.

It sits on my desk containing paperclips and its own broken pieces.

Then I came home to this sad photo: my husband couldn't find Dusty when he came in the kitchen for lunch. Odd, as Dusty is usually right there to greet him. He found him concentrating all his attention out the front window.

Another heartbreaker!

Apparently the boys aren't the only ones who miss me. Poor pup, he is spending a lot of time by himself. He has been spoiled rotten by more or less constant human presence since his puppy days.

Now I can settle down somewhere in the middle of the working groove, knowing that some days will be just fine and some days not so much, but at the end, someone will always be waiting for me to come home again.

“It's hard being left behind. (...) It's hard to be the one who stays.” 

― Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife

leaving

Today was the big day: I put on clothes were not jeans purchased at the thrift store and headed out the door looking like a grown-up.

In full confession:

the skirt (Ann Taylor 100% wool) was purchased at the thrift store.

It was an unexpectedly wonderful morning, as friend after friend messaged me to wish me good luck. I know that I am blessed with thoughtful friends but this morning really drove it home in the most delightful manner. Note to self: try to develop a habit of similar thoughtfulness. Right now, I fail miserably, but even more luckily for me, my friends seem to forgive me.

It seems like a nice quiet office. The view outside my window is fantastic, nothing but woods as far as the eye can see. I spent most of the day trying to figure out if there was a way to put up a bird feeder back there, but it is all the way on the back of the building and as far as I can tell there is no path.

Not a great picture, because I was trying to be surreptitious.

I will have to wait a bit before I spring all of my weirdness on them. As it stands, they are unaware of the existence of the farm. Guess that surprise will have to wait until lambing season.

For once in their lives, I wasn't home when my boys arrived from school. (My husband's office is in our house, so they weren't entirely alone, but it was a change of pace.) When I finally did arrive, all three of my children practically met me at the door to inquire about my day. Usually the best I get is a grumbled hello as they brush past on the way to the solitude of their bedrooms. My middle child even apologized for forgetting to wish me luck this morning. Curiouser and curiouser...

I was happy to be back home. I even put out placemats for dinner. I haven't done that I don't know how long. It was as if, by leaving, I could somehow appreciate the coming home again, and have new appreciation for making it special.

“Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home 

and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.” 

― Donald Miller, Through Painted Deserts: Light, God and Beauty on the Open Road

baby, it's cold outside

Holy crow! Minus 3 at 6 am this morning, which is not a temperature regularly seen in these parts. Primo had chore duty, and he bundled up in his Carhartt overalls, jacket, hood, handknit balaclava, ski goggles and gloves. There was not an inch of skin showing. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture. He said it made it just bearable that way.

Dusty is built for it, except for the ice balls that keep forming between his toes.

I must confess I haven't ventured out myself except to view a snow fort that Secondo and Terzo built by the patient parking lot. I have a whopper of a head cold and I am nursing it well out of the arctic blasts.

Time inside means time for knitting of course, especially since I have a deadline looming for the second edition of The Unofficial Downton Abbey Knits. I came up with three proposed patterns this time and I can't decide which one I like best. Even if one (or all) is rejected, I think I will go ahead and publish it (or them) on my own, I am that enthusiastic about them. All three samples were finished, blocked, ends woven in and write-ups done today. I will be able to send out the package on Monday on my way to (gulp) work.

I also managed to finish the last of the Christmas hats, which was just waiting for the ends to be woven in, but I think I will wait for a model to show it off. I am going to put my feet up again and pick up a long-abandoned project. The question is just which one?

hercules

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I can't think of a better way to keep track of these storms, though it does still strike me as slightly ridiculous to be naming them.

Best estimate was that we got 8 inches.

The plow worked like a charm and we had the drive cleared in record time—enough time, in fact, to open up the office and see patients all afternoon. The joys of having your business in your home. At 9 am I started answering the phones and rebooking all the people who had cancelled last night.

A couple of my Christmas caps saw their cold weather debut.

My husband got his own 1898 Hat. He was the model for the original, a fact that he hopes will someday fade with the passage of time, but he still needed his own.

He wasn't as cooperative posing for shots of this hat.

Terzo needed a new balaclava. His old one was knit for him when he was about 4 years old and it was much too short in the neck at this point. I had his almost done before Christmas, but then I ran out of yarn about one inch from the top. ARGH. This was one of the hats that I put into a box and gifted with the needles still in, so the recipient could decide what he wanted to do.

He elected to have some stripes added to the neck, so I ripped it out completely last week and knit it again. He wanted Patriots colors, to drive his Giants-fan dad a little nuts.

I was still frantically working on it this morning...

But I got it done just in time for him to give it a test drive today.

snow problem

Another snow storm is upon us, which means that the males in this house are getting all excited about the chance to use the snowplow again.

The plow's first foray, during the storm at the beginning of December.

They even turned on the flashing orange light.

Hard to see, but Primo is riding shotgun and grinning like mad.

My husband moved it late yesterday afternoon, only to find that the plow wasn't working properly. Sure enough, another problem: dry rot in the only hydraulic line that hadn't been replaced by the previous owner.

This is what we have learned about snow plows so far: they require a lot of care and handling. We have also learned to be very, very grateful for mechanically-inclined friends.

Deceptive little buggers.

I was dispatched this morning to get a new hydraulic line. In case you ever find yourself in this situation and have as little knowledge as we do about hydraulic lines: it turns out that you can march into your neighborhood automotive store, give them the busted line, and they will make a new one exactly like the old one for you, while you wait. I had no idea such a thing was even possible, but it astonished the heck out of me. American retail has evolved into such a DIY enterprise that I am constantly at the mercy of my own knowledge, or lack thereof. To have someone take the problem in hand and solve it for me was vastly comforting.

Except he didn't exactly solve it. His best guess on one of the fittings was slightly off, and I had to drive back to the store so he could replace it with the correct size. But we're all good now.

Snow plow locked, loaded, and ready for action.

My husband and I both came to the same stark, shocking, sobering realization this morning: this sort of thing is very nearly at an end. I start a new job next Monday. As of that moment, my days from Monday through Thursday are at the mercy of someone else besides the gods of entropy that inhabit this farm. Problems are definitely going to loom that much larger as a result.

promises, promises

Happy New Year! It was an interesting night round about these parts. After midnight, due to some bizarre poker game bet, all nine teenage boys stripped down to their skivvies and went running down our local lane, blowing noisemakers and yelling. Thank goodness no cars passed them or we may have had to post some serious bail. They only paused when they returned to the house to find the doors locked and all the lights out thanks to my prankster husband. We let them back in—eventually.

We are just about cleaned up and cleaned out after the onslaught, and I finally had time to think about New Year's resolutions. I heard an interesting piece on the radio Monday night, an interview with someone who doesn't do resolutions. In his view, resolutions are restrictions just waiting to be broken; it's only a matter of time, and we pretty much know that when we make them.

So instead, he makes promises to himself. Promises are easier to keep than resolutions, because they are positive instead of punitive, especially if you focus on what you are getting in return. A promise is a treat. A reward. Something to look forward to rather than chafe against.

My dear friend M. texted me this morning with a proposed shared resolution: "one hour a day to eat bon bons, catch flies [presumably not for the purpose of helping someone practice baseball], scratch our [butts], or do anything for ourselves."

I agreed that it was a great sentiment, though I suspected that hour would fall between 1 and 2 a.m. Still, I am going to promise to take time each day to do something for myself, whether that is exercising or knitting or just sitting staring at the endless piles of laundry.

What is your promise?

Snow in a robin's nest.