Today, after almost two years of searching, I found our Loafkeeper flag that Cabol’s old coworkers sent us!
It was cleverly hidden on the top shelf in the office the whole time.
Of course, with my amazing only-knowing-one-knot tying skills, I expect it to last about 1 day before the winds here blow it into the trees.
At our family meeting this weekend, I asked Anya for her monthly list of achievements. She stuck her thumb in her mouth and pondered deeply. After a few moments passed with nothing but a slurpy sucking sound disturbing the silence, Anya wiggled a little, clapped her feet together, and then blew a raspberry at me.
Now, if I acted that way at my performance evaluations at work, I would probably get fired or put on probation or at the very least told not to spray everyone with saliva. But, since Anya is pretty cute, I let it pass. I asked her again what she had accomplished this month, “I have to put it on the blog, you know!”
She didn’t even glance at me this time…she just thoughtfully examined a hairy cheerio on the floor.
What I’m trying to say here, people, is that I don’t really have a list this month. Anya’s agent (a small, grey bunny covered in slobber, baby tylenol, and prune guts) informed me that Anya is “on sabbatical” from learning new tricks and will maybe put together something new for us all next month. This past month, according to the bunny, Anya has been working to refine her existing talents and to explore various ways to perfect new skills.
So, if you came here expecting to read that Anya took her first step, learned how to use a spoon, or wrote a lovely symphony, I’m afraid you’ll be a bit disappointed. If you came here for a few pictures, I can do that. (Just don’t tell the bunny; I don’t think our contract allows public dissemination of photos without prior approval.)
A Portrait of Anya as a 10-Month-Old
Anya Reads Her New Contract Before Signing
Anya Teaches Aunt Rebecca and Uncle Chris about Shepherding
This weekend I finished caulking the trim in the basement room (the trim that is up, anyways) (don’t use the phrase ‘a little caulk’ around Cabol). We moved the bed, which involved a lot of grunting and groaning and Cabol hurting her wrists.
We still need to:
But hey, we can sleep down there now! And we can move the full bed out of the office and set up the tables to get the seeds started!
Farewell, Leigh. I hope you’ve finally found peace and light. Andy and I will make sure to tell Anya all about her Grandpa: Bounce-to-the-Ounce, snails, sweater vests, Captain Leigh, nurblies, hot peppers, and all the rest of your wackiness.
Leigh Volker 1946-2008
Well, I guess I officially live in the country now – this evening my back itched near one of my scars, which is nothing unusual…until I felt a bump. Turns out ticks don’t go dormant in the winter after all, and I had one stuck to me. My first one (that I know of).
Unfortunately, Cabol couldn’t get all of it out, but hopefully nothing bad will come of it.
Nancy at Keeping the Farm tagged us to post five things about ourselves.
Five Things About Cabol
1. I don’t have a favorite color. For a while it was green. Then when I met Andy, his love for purple infected me, too. But now, I can’t really say any one color is my favorite. It really just depends.
2. I only have half a nail on my left big toe. Which half? The middle half. When I was in high school I had some toenail problems, and both sides of the nail were killed off in two separate and excrutiatingly painful procedures. In one of them, I have a very vivid memory of the main doctor sitting at a computer playing video games while the student doctor did the procedure. At one point, main doctor checks up on student doctor and says, “No, no! Jam it in farther!”
3. I love composting. I really love vermicomposting. It’s like having a few thousand cute, wiggly pets who never have to go to the vet, don’t need any grooming, and eat for free. At my last job, I somehow convinced them to let me keep a worm bin in my office and eventually convinced several other floors to set up worm bins, too. The year I kept track, my floor composted a ton of organic waste. (Not all of that went into the worm bins. I took some home ’cause worms are kind of tiny and can only eat so much.) I was sometimes called The Worm Lady of Fleming.
4. The Little Prince bothers me intensely. A little kid living on a planet about the size of a VW bug? What does he eat? Where does he poo? How can the thing even have gravity or an atmosphere? Who cuts his hair? Where did his clothes come from? It’s just plain freaky. Nothing quite bothered me in the same way until those creepy caveman commercials came out. What the heck are cavemen doing here? And, ya know, even if they somehow managed to get frozen and then thawed out recently, they wouldn’t be all educated and well groomed and standing upright. It’s just wrong. Utterly wrong.
5. I took five or six years of French class, and all I can really remember is how to ask if your goldfish are wearing pantyhose.
I tag Andy, Anya, and Larry to post five things about themselves.
So I’ve always avoided making Vietnamese food because, like Korean food, I don’t really know much about it so it scares me. Aunt Linda sent us a Vietnamese cookbook, though, so we gave it a whirl. I made caramel chicken (because we had all the ingredients in house), which was surprisingly good and not all that strange. And it gave me an excuse to use part of our big bottle of fish sauce. Which may have gone south, but, really, with fish sauce it’s pretty hard to tell.
So my latest obsession online has been sweepstakes. I stumbled across a sweepstakes site near the end of last December while hunting for information on something, and thought ‘hey, maybe I should try some of those.’ So I started working my way through the single entry ones and the daily and instant winner sweeps. It’s nice because if I don’t do it for a few days, it’s not like I’ve missed much, and since it’s just filling in your name, address, and so on, I can do it while we watch tv.
So far, I’ve won five things (four of which haven’t arrived yet): a Tide pen, a loaf of bread (hehe), a Jelly Belly baseball hat, $100 worth of cream cheese and bagels, and a pair of women’s pajams with one of those little eye masks and a package of licorice. I’ll probably give Cabol the pajamas, although I probably look sexy in a stretchy black tank top.
So no new car or trip to Jamaica yet. That licorice is sure good, though.
Before Andy was struck down by the mighty gods of bronchitis, he put in many hours of sweat and toil in our bedroom. He almost got all the flooring down, and it looks really great. Anya thinks it is pretty nifty, too, and likes how the walls match her outfit.
I think there are about two rows left to go, but they are the most difficult because that side of the room is where the weird angle walls are. We also need to get a threshold to go down between the bedroom and the rest of the basement. Eventually the rest of the basement will have the same flooring, but we won’t put it in until we build the kitty room and get the kitty boxes out of the basement.
Speaking of floors, Anya can now slide around on them a bit. In reverse. She can also do this neat thing where she puts her arms over her head and bounces. I’m not sure why her arms have to be over her head for her to bounce, but it seems to work and helps her move a few inches.
Nine months. Three quarters of a year. Lots and lots of minutes. It’s been a month of sickness here at Loafkeeper Farm. Andy is battling bronchitis, Anya trounced an ear infection, and I’m dueling with a cough that just won’t toss in the towel. Don’t worry; you can’t catch our germs through the blog, so you can keep reading.
This month Anya…
+ Got the knack of the clap. She loves to clap. She claps, and then she claps to applaud her clapping. I clap, and she claps to tell me I did a good job. Andy burps; Anya claps. Larry eats a pea; Anya claps. She’s very encouraging and will make a great manager some day.
+ Discovered the joy of The Raspberry. When she first learned how to Pblblblblbbllb, she did it ALL the time. Even when she had a cheerio in her mouth. Or a pea. Even when she was falling asleep. Plllllbbbbbbzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….zzzzzz….zzzzz. I’m not sure which is better: Smooshy Face or Raspberry Face. I’d let you vote, but I don’t think we’ve captured a Raspberry Face yet.
+ Read Cat in the Hat (with some help from me). She thinks Things 1 and 2 are very naughty and should have to sit in time out.
+ Said the following (and then Andy said): Bonzai! (Look, it’s a cat!); It’s a chicken! (No, that’s your foot).
+ Ate lots and lots of cheerios. Lots. And peas. And popcorn butts (you know, the soft part).
+ Decided that crawling is for babies. She will skip that and walk. No, she can’t walk, but every night she and her Daddy practice standing (Andy’s pretty good at it). She’s still practicing crawling, too, because her bff, Emma, can crawl and has told Anya all about how yummy DCP’s silk curtains are.
