The Farmington Garden Tour...

Wow. This was inspiring! I wish I could have taken pictures of the kitchens...there were so many wonderful ideas! One kitchen had glass-fronted cabinets in front of the windows! How cool is that? Another, older, home had taken an old fireplace/brick oven and turned it into a desk area! There was a house with a dishwasher/sink nook tucked away, and the stove was facing out, towards the garden... I just have to find a wonderful stove now, so I can redo my house, make the bathroom back into a pantry (more of a 'butler's pantry', with a big sink in there for plants, etc)

And the gardens! I did get some ideas for what I want to do with mine... particularly from one house... and those I was able to take pictures of! Now I just need to upload them.....

I did end up getting drenched, and having to squish home and change...

Food, Health, and the environment...

As those of you who are friends with me on Facebook know, or who know me in Real Life, know that what we have done to our food supply is an increasing concern with me. I read a lot of blogs, and there is a lot of information on either side. There are 'studies' funded by the corporations and big agribusiness, and there are legitimate studies. Then the people in our government who are supposed to help keep us safe are also seemingly on the boards of some of these companies...can we say conflict of interest?

I read yesterday of a case where two dairy farms went out of business because of what they were putting on the soil, , and then this morning of .

It worries me. We have the technology for safe food, and for safe raw milk. But we get neither, because we have gone to big agribusiness... And there isn't a good control when things get so large. We end up with too much poop, too many bacteria, stronger bacteria, mold, and icky stuff. With pesticides and growth hormones on everything. And we have pills in the water, fumes in the air, and chemicals in our water. People become scared to eat salads or have lettuce on their sandwiches, so we get fatter, because the only things that are safe to eat are cooked to death. And it becomes a vicious cycle, because our bodies are less and less able to cope with bugs... and you can't eat this, you can't eat that... and the more crap we eat, the more crap we poop, the more junk gets into our environment...

And you know, this is why I buy from the farmer's market. This is why I buy raw milk in the summer from the farmer. Because at least this way I know where it comes from. I know its not coming from a huge conglomerate, that it hasn't been trucked around in the hot sun in a metal tank... I know its been picked fresh, and that if the eggs have a little poop on them, it can be washed off... but they haven't been sitting around for ages. They are fresh. And the poop at least is going back into the soil in a nurturing way, environmentally.... the way its supposed to. The raw milk folks run out of milk. Because the cows and sheep only produce a certain amount, and its not being artificially extended.

But we have the technology, the ability, to have safe food. I don't believe all the hype about raw milk, but I do think that it does lose nutrients being trucked around, or coming from unhealthy animals... and you can taste the difference.

The things I have to do!

(And all I want is to go lie on a beach somewhere, drinking a daiquiri)...

They are mostly house things... but some health things too. And I want to get a real job, but I want something creative, stimulating, and fun. I want something that will engage me. I just don't see the job I have leading to anything... and I feel that I've wasted five years.

1) estimates! (Why won't people do estimates any more?)
2)painting, painting, painting...
3)I need a laundry sink.
4)I also need a big freezer
5)and yard work
6) and I need to start dealing with the endometriosis again. I should probably have surgery for it, there's just no-one to give me TLC while I recover, and I'm not looking forward to trying to find a surgeon.
7) and once the endo is dealt with, then finding a sperm bank or sperm donor. At which time, my life will become even more busy. wheee.
8)I forgot adding in the ceramics studio for the basement.

And, because all of this becomes overwhelming to think about, I end up curled on the couch reading, or playing silly, pointless games on the computer. C'est la vie, eh?

I know I sound like a snob sometimes, I'm sorry, Doug.

I was keeping my mouth shut for a reason, about the ground chicken, yesterday. I used to love ground chicken... then I started reading about our food industry and slaughter in this country. I don't know how many hundreds of chickens are in that one pack of ground chicken, but I know that they had horrible lives, and ghastly deaths. I know I sound like a snob about food. But I grew up on food that was more like we ate in this country once upon a time. Local, fresh, sustainably raised, without a lot of chemicals. I was talking to my mom, and she said they used to freeze stuff in summer to eat in winter. They didn't really have fresh stuff in winter. And then there are articles that say eating organic is healthier. There is a Presidential Panel on Cancer that says just that:


I know organic food costs more. Which is why I shop at the Farmers Market in the summer. That way I can get lovely organic food for less. I know my spinach and strawberries have not been sprayed with toxic run-off from feedlots. Of course I can't eat all organic all the time, although I wish I could. But I just can't eat ground chicken that's been ground hundreds of miles away, from hundreds of chickens, who have lived miserable lives.

I don't eat commercial ground meat most of the time (I do get a burger out, once in a while, which I know I shouldn't even do that). There have been so many cases of people getting sick from meat.. it does scare me eating any feedlot beef. There are things one can do, and things one can't. And for me, trying to eat organic, trying not to eat feedlot meats, its what I do.

There are things I eat the ordinary, conventional ones of. Cheese. Avocadoes, watermelon, chocolate, yogurts, asparagus, bananas, oranges, dates, blueberries. Apples, grapes, and strawberries tend to have the highest pesticide residues, as well as spinach and peppers. The peppers are the only thing I tend to cave in on in the winter, because I love them.

Anyway, that's why I went silent on the ground chicken yesterday. I know I'm difficult, just think of me as Sally, from When Harry Met Sally, if that helps. 'I need a sandwich without the bread, no crumbs, no mayo, dressing on the side, fries in a little bowl to the side, and maybe some steamed broccoli, but make sure its crisp, not soggy, and not drowned in butter'.

Laughter is not always the best medicine....

*sigh*

Sometimes I wish I didn't have such a strange sense of humor. I really hurt a friend of mine inadvertently. And its killing me that I hurt him. He thinks I was laughing at him, he's in a VERY tough place right now. I wasn't laughing at him, I was laughing because otherwise I'd cry. I wish I knew what to do, I know I can't make things better for him. All I could do was listen and try to be a friend. And because I have this odd way of looking at stressful situations (I always have done this, its the only way I've survived), it made it worse. I try to see the humor in things, the absurdity of situations that are so awful it makes you want to scream. Because sometimes you can't change things, and can't make things better. But I'm sorry I laughed. It wasn't a 'its so funny laugh, haha' it was a bitter laugh, an ironic laugh. Its the laughter that stops me turning into my bitter obsessive neighbors... that keeps me working in a job that I sometimes love and sometimes despise.

I try to see the humor in every situation...that's why I sometimes call myself Miss Havisham, or an old maid... or even, sometimes, very quietly, even though its a phrase I HATE, a 'fag hag'. Because most of my good male friends are gay these days... (God forbid anyone else call me one...because I really am not. I do have straight male friends too, its just a question of my morbid sense of humor making an appearance once again)

I love to laugh.... because, otherwise, I'll cry.

And I wish I knew how to make the situation better with my friend. This is one thing I can't laugh about, hurting someone. I can't stand conflict...

Bits and Pieces. Or should that be Kibbles and Bits?

Hehe. My brain is so random, sometimes. Does anyone else remember that ad? Is it just me, or did ads used to be much more catchy? Although I have to say I loved the Verizon takeover of Big Red...THAT made me smile.

Thanks to my friend MaryAnne, I am now trying to figure out what to name my house. My house needs a name! And no, I'm not calling it Mallsview Manor, although that would be accurate.

I'm finally slapping up paint samples on the walls. I'm going to be so happy when its painted inside...

A friend asked me yesterday what I am doing for my 40th Birthday. I answered that I am in denial. Its not just a river in Egypt! Eeek, 40. I don't feel 40.

I'm going to get my legs waxed for the first time today. See? You can still have firsts, even at 39!

On a more serious note, I'm all for organics, but most people can't afford them. We need to do something to make good, healthy food available for people. Food that hasn't been genetically altered, or sprayed with toxic sludge. Conventional crops are sprayed with the raw sewage waste from animal farming... and most things now are so artificial that they stay 'fresh' forever. I have a thing of lettuce in my fridge that has been there for a month (still in its packaging) and it still looks fresh. What does that say about what we are putting in our bodies?

I need some summer work clothes. I have no clothes. Bleah. I need one more pair of jeans, some light slacks, and summer clothes. I have nothing. And I need shoes. Wheeeee.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place.

So many things are coming to a head now. The oil spill in the Gulf shows this in crystal clarity. We need oil in this country, badly, but this need, this desire, hunger, craving, insatiable appetite for oil has caused an environmental disaster. We use oil in so many, many ways. Not only to heat our homes, but to make plastics, paint, throwaway things. To make pesticides, herbicides, fungicides. To fuel big agribusiness (which is causing its own brands of environmental chaos). To run our cars, busses, trains. To light our cities, houses, towns, run our computers, gizmos and gadgets. Where does it stop? How do you stop it when there is a relentless mania for cheap? Cheap is not healthy or environmentally sane. However, there are fewer and fewer good choices these days, and even at Whole Foods you end up buying the same commercially raised, big-agribusiness foods, for more money. But back to the oil spill...

maybe, just maybe this oil spill will wake people up to the fact that we use way too much oil, that we need to be more environmental. The oil spill will kill the wetlands...and they will become fiction, like the cartoons of The Princess and the Frog, or The Rescuers. They will be gone. So will cheap shrimp (shrimp farmers are in danger too...they are their own version of environmental chaos, but still, once they go out, we will have to rely more on the wild, which causes its own enormous environmental load). I'm starting to wonder if we have now slapped Mother Earth with more than she can take. The oceans are becoming overfished as it is, with huge amounts of bycatch being discarded every day, and fewer and fewer fish.

I'm honestly scared. I honestly wonder if we are going to be losing our food sources. We need to rally now. We need to buy local as much as possible, support local farmers. We need to find sustainable options for our fish, our meats, our dairy. We need to find environmental alternatives to sucking up huge amounts of power....