*Image taken from GPS at the location of our driveway (aka Unnamed Road)
You are officially off the beaten path when ...
You know that you officially live "In The Middle Of Nowhere" when even your GPS believes that your location is a cry for help.
Weekly Read | House Hunting for Dummies
Does there exist a blog, website, or even random street corner where people can meet to poke merciless fun at the people featured on HGTV’s House Hunters? If not, there should be. They’d get a million visits per day.Read full text of this week's Life Out Loud at F&D
This is a Puppy Moment
An oldie but goodie that still holds true - you've got to squint to read the faint grey text in order to really get this one (it prints much darker, sorry).
Weekly Read | Life's Too Short To Sort Socks
Matching up socks, I’m fairly sure, is a task they make you do repeatedly in hell....Click for Full Text of Weekly Column at F&D
Dear Blogger, you're cheesing me off ...
So you spend 10,000 hours (give or take) working out the perfect blog design. (You'll hate it next month but TODAY, it's awesome).
You pick out a new fancy Advanced Template font. You love it. It's casual yet sassy (we put a lot of EMOTION into our fonts).
You are blogging happily away, all is right with your "fun" font life. Then, one day, without warning, you realize that when your page loads for anyone ELSE they don't see cute font, they see basic, Times New Roman font. They also see a hot mess because it's not lining up properly, it breaks where it shouldn't. It's AWFUL.
You wonder how LONG it's looked like that for everyone else? People who came in fresh have been seeing you not at your best but seeing you with the blog equivalent of a trailing piece of toilet paper on your shoe.
Apparently, if you are a fresh visitor to a Blogger site using the Advanced Template Designer choices like the new fancy fonts, sizes, etc. - you need to let the page load and then hit REFRESH once to see what the page should ACTUALLY look like?
Um, yeah, because THAT'S going to happen.
Blogger, I love ya, but sometimes you really do get what you (don't) pay for.
You pick out a new fancy Advanced Template font. You love it. It's casual yet sassy (we put a lot of EMOTION into our fonts).
You are blogging happily away, all is right with your "fun" font life. Then, one day, without warning, you realize that when your page loads for anyone ELSE they don't see cute font, they see basic, Times New Roman font. They also see a hot mess because it's not lining up properly, it breaks where it shouldn't. It's AWFUL.
You wonder how LONG it's looked like that for everyone else? People who came in fresh have been seeing you not at your best but seeing you with the blog equivalent of a trailing piece of toilet paper on your shoe.Niiiiicccee.
Apparently, if you are a fresh visitor to a Blogger site using the Advanced Template Designer choices like the new fancy fonts, sizes, etc. - you need to let the page load and then hit REFRESH once to see what the page should ACTUALLY look like?
Um, yeah, because THAT'S going to happen.
Blogger, I love ya, but sometimes you really do get what you (don't) pay for.
Goat Delivery RFD
For the record I am not some goat obsessed blogger. This will not become the All About Goats extravaganza, I swear to this. Not because goats aren’t precious, of course, but because what I know about goats you could stuff in an olive. The sum total of my vast goat knowledge would be this:
[sound of crickets …]
Nothing. Got that. Nada. Zip. Nothing. So if you know goats feel free to share. Often. We feed, we love, we provide housing and water. We repeat as necessary. Every once in a while we gush “Ohmygosh PRECIOUS!” in their general direction which is crucial for goat maintenance, surely.
Without further ado we have the addition of our two new goats – Billy and Penny. Billy and Penny come to us courtesy of Sean and Julie Magill. They were Gertie’s old pen pals before she came to live with us last year so this is a reunion of sorts.
Billy checks us out upon arrival. They look shifty, Floor It!
There’s one in every crowd. Billy remains unimpressed and makes a break for it. I’m sure the exit is right around this wooden MOUNTAIN. Crackers.”
Finally in the pasture Penny faces her own physical limitations. Little help here? Apparently they are rehoming us with mountain people?
Gertie and Billy greet each other. Penny appears to be saying Don’t hog her, my turn, MY TURN
Penny is happy to see her. And also a bit of a show-off. This is my best trick. LOVE ME!
A head butt hello is big with goats. I’m glad people don’t greet each other this way. I’m pretty friendly. I’d have a concussion.
Welcome Penny. We don’t know what this tongue thing means but apparently it’s her thing.
Finally, our own Billy Goat Gruff. He seems unimpressed. With everything. I picture him as a kind of Lou Grant/Archie Bunker kind of personality. All charm that one.
[sound of crickets …]
Nothing. Got that. Nada. Zip. Nothing. So if you know goats feel free to share. Often. We feed, we love, we provide housing and water. We repeat as necessary. Every once in a while we gush “Ohmygosh PRECIOUS!” in their general direction which is crucial for goat maintenance, surely.
Without further ado we have the addition of our two new goats – Billy and Penny. Billy and Penny come to us courtesy of Sean and Julie Magill. They were Gertie’s old pen pals before she came to live with us last year so this is a reunion of sorts.
Billy checks us out upon arrival. They look shifty, Floor It!
There’s one in every crowd. Billy remains unimpressed and makes a break for it. I’m sure the exit is right around this wooden MOUNTAIN. Crackers.”
Finally in the pasture Penny faces her own physical limitations. Little help here? Apparently they are rehoming us with mountain people?
Gertie and Billy greet each other. Penny appears to be saying Don’t hog her, my turn, MY TURN
Penny is happy to see her. And also a bit of a show-off. This is my best trick. LOVE ME!
A head butt hello is big with goats. I’m glad people don’t greet each other this way. I’m pretty friendly. I’d have a concussion.
Welcome Penny. We don’t know what this tongue thing means but apparently it’s her thing.
Finally, our own Billy Goat Gruff. He seems unimpressed. With everything. I picture him as a kind of Lou Grant/Archie Bunker kind of personality. All charm that one.
Caution: Kids at Work
All rural dwellers have them. The friends, family, or mere acquaintances who imply, upon hearing where you live, that you must be stone cold stupid to live in the middle of “nowhere” with “nothing” to do.
Some people simply cannot imagine living beyond spitting distance of Target. Me, I can't imagine ever wanting to. Sure, the suburbs have their charms but where else but “nowhere” can kids engage in healthy outdoor pleasures, have their own sledding hills, livestock, creek, and climbing trees all in their own back yard?
Have I mentioned the work? Oh how I love the work. Chores. Duties. Responsibilities. I think it makes kids stronger and, dare I say it, better? I leave others to their chore charts, gold stars, and to kids who think they hung the moon because they put their own plate in the dishwasher.My kids know the real reward comes not from a sticker of a star, but from not freezing slap to death come winter, and of having your animals well fed.
Please join me for a relaxing late Sunday afternoon in the middle of Nowhere.
Our firewood is not for fireplace ambience but heat. We use it to heat a large outdoor wood burner that provides heat and hot water to our home all winter long. Because we live in a large, old, and essentially open-to-the-brisk-nor’easterly-wind house, the cost of fuel oil to heat the place would break us. Hence, the firewood. It comes not in neatly stacked cords but in a more natural, “tree” form. Some TLC needed …
This is the TLC needed. Cutting into smaller lengths and loading into the splitter. Ideally it’s a two-person operation. One to lift and load and the other to operate the splitter.
Here Jagger gives his impression of a speed bump. No one gets firmly in the way of any project quite like Jagger.
Exhausted from said “getting in the way,” he takes a break while Ace roams, ever alert for the opportunity to play fetch. This, however, does not appear to be a fetching crowd.
I remember when he was a toddler, kept safe inside with me to prevent him from being underfoot. Just look at him now. He probably regrets all the time he stood at the door stomping his little feet and insisting “me go TOO!” Now my kid can wrangle wayward livestock, barefoot, in minutes, all without putting down his sandwich.
Ace says all work and no play makes you a dull boy. Also, a disappointing one.
Time to clean the goat barn. Gertie is just a wee bit happy to see her. Hard-to-get is not Gertie’s style.
Lift that gate, tote that bale…
Here let me eat your hat. Can I get a side of gloves with that?
So there you have it - country kids on a relaxing weekend. Providing for the family. Caring for pets. (Played a little soccer, video games, and had a sleepover too!) Kids toting, hauling, chopping and caring all in the great outdoors. Why, if we had any more “nothing” to do, we’d run flat out of day.
Some people simply cannot imagine living beyond spitting distance of Target. Me, I can't imagine ever wanting to. Sure, the suburbs have their charms but where else but “nowhere” can kids engage in healthy outdoor pleasures, have their own sledding hills, livestock, creek, and climbing trees all in their own back yard?
Have I mentioned the work? Oh how I love the work. Chores. Duties. Responsibilities. I think it makes kids stronger and, dare I say it, better? I leave others to their chore charts, gold stars, and to kids who think they hung the moon because they put their own plate in the dishwasher.My kids know the real reward comes not from a sticker of a star, but from not freezing slap to death come winter, and of having your animals well fed.
Please join me for a relaxing late Sunday afternoon in the middle of Nowhere.
Our firewood is not for fireplace ambience but heat. We use it to heat a large outdoor wood burner that provides heat and hot water to our home all winter long. Because we live in a large, old, and essentially open-to-the-brisk-nor’easterly-wind house, the cost of fuel oil to heat the place would break us. Hence, the firewood. It comes not in neatly stacked cords but in a more natural, “tree” form. Some TLC needed …
This is the TLC needed. Cutting into smaller lengths and loading into the splitter. Ideally it’s a two-person operation. One to lift and load and the other to operate the splitter.
Here Jagger gives his impression of a speed bump. No one gets firmly in the way of any project quite like Jagger.
Exhausted from said “getting in the way,” he takes a break while Ace roams, ever alert for the opportunity to play fetch. This, however, does not appear to be a fetching crowd.
I remember when he was a toddler, kept safe inside with me to prevent him from being underfoot. Just look at him now. He probably regrets all the time he stood at the door stomping his little feet and insisting “me go TOO!” Now my kid can wrangle wayward livestock, barefoot, in minutes, all without putting down his sandwich.
Ace says all work and no play makes you a dull boy. Also, a disappointing one.
Time to clean the goat barn. Gertie is just a wee bit happy to see her. Hard-to-get is not Gertie’s style.
Lift that gate, tote that bale…
Here let me eat your hat. Can I get a side of gloves with that?
So there you have it - country kids on a relaxing weekend. Providing for the family. Caring for pets. (Played a little soccer, video games, and had a sleepover too!) Kids toting, hauling, chopping and caring all in the great outdoors. Why, if we had any more “nothing” to do, we’d run flat out of day.
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