Our first real snowfall – albeit really only an inch or so – greeted us this morning, and the dogs were delighted.
Jazz ran laps.
Mandy played keep-away with her toy.
Abbey made a wide circle and took her time surveying the yard. Incredibly, she is still limping along on her three half-ass okay legs and one pretty bad leg. But she makes sure she stays away from the antics of the other two.
Fantastic day today. Morning meeting working with some creative types on promotional videos – not my area of expertise, but interesting and good energy nonetheless. Then, it was an afternoon of working on the farm. Mr T. does the heavy lifting; I get to take pictures, watch the kids collect eggs and feed the goats, and chitchat. I have to work on bylaws and business stuff and update the website yet, but still…
ZZ ran and ran and ran. Ran around the chickens, ran with the goats, ran around the horse. Ran with a new friend, ran to eat, ran to play on the trampoline. He’s plenty tuckered out now.
We had a lovely potluck dinner of fall veggie soup, quiche, breads & cheese, and applesauce, on probably one of the last nights we will be able to eat outside this year. Bundled up and clutching our mugs of soup, but outdoors all the same. I’m so thankful to be working with this group of people, thankful for the eggs we bring home still warm from the coop, thankful for the milk we’re storing to make cheese soon, thankful for the beginnings of a garden that will feed us next year. But mostly thankful for the little community we are building.
We’ve gotten together with a group of friends with the intention of creating a small, co-operative style farm. The main goal is to raise some of our own sustainable food, while spreading the costs and the burdens amongst all of us. Also, most of us live in areas that restrict livestock and bees, and on lot footprints that are too small for diverse gardens. Creating a bigger farming project allows all of us access to things like fresh eggs that we wouldn’t normally have.
Right now everything is very unofficial; we don’t have a solid framework, and although we have a name and a website, we don’t have a formal business set up. But we do have some land available for our use, and on that land we have a bunch of chickens, the outline for next year’s garden plot, a few bee hives, and two dairy goats – one of whom is producing milk.
The boy learned how to milk her today. It only took a couple of tries before he was getting full streams of milk. And Amber remained happy as could be whilst being milk – meaning that ZZ was doing good by her.
His comment? The teats were soft and squishy. Heh.
I don’t know that Abbey and Jazz ever became the best of friends. Abbey had already slowed down quite a bit by the time Jazz arrived. And, being a young Lab, Jazz has been a pretty obnoxious partner in the pack the last few years. But every once in a while, I’ll catch the two of them in a quiet moment.
Abbey is quite literally on her last leg. A few weeks ago she blew out the ACL on her hind right leg. We’ve given her a series of shots and laser therapy to try to promote some healing in that leg, but it’s a chore for her to walk and her limp is very pronounced. Essentially all of her back weight is being supported on her left leg.
Still, she continues to stubbornly limp along. It’s not enough for her to hobble to her dog bowl, she has to follow me to the garage door to make sure that I return with her food. She reminds me at 4:00 p.m. that she hasn’t eaten in several hours, and you know, what the heck about that? We have a ramp to help her down the outside deck stairs so that she can do her business, but sometimes she insists on taking the stairs back up, on her own, which I swear will kill me before it kills her.
One thing has not changed. Abbey remains the most stubborn entity I have ever witnessed.
The most likely thing to happen next is that her left leg will give out. If, or when, that happens, we will probably have to put her down. She is 12 1/2 years old. She is riddled with arthritis, but especially in her front shoulders, which would make doing any sort of hind wheelie contraption very hard. She is one of those Labs that has always showed all of the classic Lab problems: bad skin, allergies, odd bone structure, joint problems, arthritis, and now blown ACL’s. That she has made it to her current age is probably testament to her sheer stubborness. Her last day is creeping up on us; knowing this reminds me to stop what I’m doing to love on her, and also catches me in teary sobs when no one else is around.
On that dog level that none of us really understands, Jazz knows that too. More and more, she shadows Abbey when Abbey is on the move. More often, now, I see them sitting near each other. Never touching, mind you. Always at a respectable distance. But together, nonetheless.
I promised the boy some new Legos as a carrot for helping to clean out some of his old toys and organize his room the last few days. This is not an easy task for him; letting go of his possessions is hard, and he is not by nature an organized child. But cull we must, and organize too. Especially if we are to donate complete sets of toys. Heh.
Legos are one of his most favorite things. Funny enough, I have a picture of him from China playing with those big-block Lego knockoffs. He is quite good at following the initial instructions for a set, and then he promptly dismantles the thing and recreates it into a brand new something.
Before we left for the store, he assembled a battle ship with all sorts of men to wait for the arrival of the new set. He explained that they were excited to watch the building. The ship is in the background of the picture, consisting of mainly Star Wars characters. The new set is a Dragon with Ninja warriors. It should make for an interesting story.
I took these pictures a couple weeks ago, when I first planted our tomatoes. There’s been a lot of growth since then – I’ll have to make a point of getting out there with the camera again soon. Tomorrow I will be out there long enough to harvest more pea pods, as the temperature will be into the 90′s early on. My blood is still much too thick to tolerate that kind of heat for too long.
We have two raised plots. Not a ton of room, but then again, we don’t have an enormous yard.
Strawberry blossoms are such a happy sight.
Cherokee Purple tomato plant.
Epazote plant, nestled into my toad habitat. We have one resident toad that we know about, although he usually makes himself pretty scarce. He either hides out in the pots, or underneath a stone in the other plot.
ZZ recreating while I garden…
…and Jazz chillin’ in the shade.
…I could not stop staring at this picture:
3 years ago today, we received ZZ’s adoption file. 2 pictures, pages of very accurate descriptions, miniscule insights into his history. 3 years, and a lifetime ago.
Lately, he seems to have gotten so big. You know how growth creeps up on you with your own kids, whereas with other kids that you see infrequently, the changes are vast and stunning? But all of a sudden, ZZ seems shockingly tall. Shockingly gangly when held by his dad. There’s been a big growth spurt in the last month, and the pants that were too long a couple of months ago are now too short. Still, this spurt seems bigger than the others.
Where has my wee little guy gone?
Years past, we would have a big birthday party for my step-daughter around this time of year. I remember always being exasperated that the dogs would be in the midst of their spring sheds. Dog hair would be all over the place 8 minutes after I finished sweeping. Both of the dogs are Labs, and they shed a ton of hair in the spring and fall.
For the past few weeks, I’ve been wondering when they would start – but have been very happy that they haven’t; keeping the house clean is much easier without all that dog hair. By now I’ve usually swept up great piles of hair every day for days upon days. But then yesterday it dawned on me the reason they might not have started yet.
This is just this morning, as it snows outside.
Aside from a couple of days where it hit 70, and one rogue 85 degree day, it’s been pretty cold this whole year. Clearly, snow is still not out of the question. Maybe they know it’s not–weather-wise– time to shed yet?
Ack. So much for having a spring this year.
Fresh on the heals of coming back from China, we took a short trip to Washington DC. Mr. T had a trade show in town; the trip gave us the chance to check out the city and catch up with some friends that live in the area.
The first day, Mr. T attended to business and ZZ and I went off to explore. Since ZZ is all about spies right now, we stopped for a photo-op in front of the Spy Museum:
Note that he is checking out his spy watch.
Next we walked over to the White House. We had a tour of the White House scheduled for the next morning, but since cameras are not allowed, I wanted to get a few pictures in before the tour:
Magnolias blooming in the White House lawn.
Mr. Grumpy McGrumpypants on the other side of the White House. Actually, he wasn’t too grumpy – just tired of having his picture taken.
That night we found a fancy-shmancy dim sum chain restaurant out of the UK for dinner. It was pretty pricey for dim sum, but the dumplings were the best I’d had since leaving China. The restaurant is just outside the Chinatown area, which incidentally has very few actual Chinese restaurants and way too many Hooters & La Tasca type places.
The next day, we took the tour of the White House, which was short but very cool. Next, we headed over to the Air & Space museum and took in an IMAX movie, followed by a late lunch at the Museum of the American Indian. (Lunch at Air & Space = McDon@lds, lunch at the American Indian = homemade tamales. ‘Nuf said). We then had a tour of the Capitol lined up for late afternoon with a staffer from our Senator’s office.
Don’t know why the boy is checking his watch again; perhaps he really is spying.
And that was pretty much it for DC. It’s too bad that the weather was pretty cold and rainy. The National Mall looks like it would be nice in the warmer months, but in a wet & chilly cold spell in mid March, everything felt kind of gloomy.
Over the weekend, we had a fantastic visit with friends formerly from Chicago. ZZ and his buddy spent a couple of days acting silly and having fun. It was wonderful to catch up with them in their beautiful new home.
We spent the last night in Baltimore; on the way into the city, we stopped for a brief visit with one of the families I traveled with in China. Baby time again! ZZ made a new friend with their oldest daughter, and it was great to see how much the baby had grown in just a couple short weeks. It was wonderful to see the whole family again.
On our last day, we went to the National Aquarium, hung out around the inner harbor,
and went aboard the USS Constellation. ZZ couldn’t resist ringing the bell on the ship, but wasn’t prepared for how loud it would be:
That picture will keep me laughing for a while.
There is a point in that flight home from China – I remember it well from 2 1/2 years ago – where it seems almost impossible that we will ever get off that plane. It’s right around the time where there’s 4 more hours to go. By that time, I’ve slept a few times for about 15 minutes at a time, I’ve attempted to eat and then have promptly discarded the “mid-flight snack” that is for some reason always awful, and the end is in sight and yet so, so far away.
We went through immigration and customs in Newark, and here I have to applaud again a very kind immigration officers who fast-tracked the three of us through. Both D and I had connecting flights to catch, and since we arrived in Newark at quarter to return-from-vacation-time, the regular line was long and we were quite stressed about being able to get through. We did, though, and then said a tearful goodbye as D & her daughter headed towards their flight and I towards mine. I must have looked a tired, red-eyed wreck as I waited to board my plane home.
I saw ZZ and Mr. T at the airport before they saw me, and in my tired, emotional state tears were streaming down my face as I walked up to them. For a few minutes, ZZ was shy – he doesn’t like tears. It wasn’t long, however, until he grasped my hand tightly, and aside from sleeping and him being away at school yesterday, he has barely left my side. We have a busy week ahead, but no real plans for this weekend. I plan on having some good, quiet cuddle time with my boy.
It’s good to be home.
