livin' in the country

today was pretty cool. tess and i went on an adventure around our little town to find fresh food! we went to the local produce stand (L&G farms) as the first stop to get some fresh fruits (a carton of 6 peaches for $2.50!), veggis, and eggs! they also have a nursery, so i inquired about fig trees. we've been hoping to plant fruit trees at the house since we moved in, and i decided that if they had them i was going to just buy one today! ...but they didn't, and they didn't have figs either, but (and this is how you know i live in the country) the 92 year old lady they sometimes buy figs from lived right down the road!

so after the produce stand guy called "ms ruby", he gave me directions to her house - and this is really what he said - just go down this road here, past the middle school, down and up a hill, and it's the first brick house on the right, there's a single-wide across the street. i mean really, how awesome is that?! so i went down the road and found ms ruby standing in the driveway with rollers still in her gray hair, and i bought 6 lbs of figs! i was hoping for 1-2 lbs, but when she asked me if i wanted 15 or 10, and told me it supplemented her income, i couldn't help myself. luckily, i know my dad will love the extras, and once you get them home, 6 lbs of figs isn't all that much. the best part? they were only $2/lb, so i only spent $12 on a massive bag of figs. try getting that deal at a fancy schmancy farmer's market for some "organic local produce".

then we went to lowe's foods (pretty much the fanciest grocery store in a 30 mi. radius) and picked up the rest of the necessities. so for dinner, tess and i prepared a feast for daddy! we made spicy bbq'd country ribs, homestyle green beans (from the stand, cooked in chicken stock i made a few weeks ago), wild mushroom rice pilaf, and la piece de resistance, fresh scratch-made peach pie! i made this thing completely on my own (with help from tess), from peeling the peaches to making and rolling out the pie dough! and since it turned out AWESOME, i'm going to give you all the recipes!
the crust:
Ingredients

* 1 cup unsalted butter, chilled
* 3 cups all-purpose flour
* 3 tablespoons white sugar
* 1/3 cup ice water

Directions

1. Combine flour and sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer. Cut butter or margarine or butter and shortening into tablespoon pieces; add it to the flour and butter (i used plain, unsalted butter). Use the paddle beater to cut the butter and flour together. Alternatively, this can be done by hand with a pastry blender.
2. With the mixer on low speed , or while stirring the mixture with a fork, pour in the cold water. When the dough starts to clump, and before it turns into a ball, stop stirring (i had to use a little more than 1/3 cup to get to the right consistency).
3. Lightly knead dough in the bowl until it forms a ball. Divide dough into two parts. Flatten each part into a disk, and chill for about 30 minutes before rolling.

the pie:
Ingredients

* 1 (15 ounce) package pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie *just use the recipe above!*
* 1 egg, beaten
* 5 cups sliced peeled peaches (6 medium sized peaches worked just fine)
* 2 tablespoons lemon juice
* 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
* 1 cup white sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
* 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 2 tablespoons butter

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F (220 degrees C).
2. Line the bottom and sides of a 9 inch pie plate with one of the pie crusts. Brush with some of the beaten egg to keep the dough from becoming soggy later.
3. Place the sliced peaches in a large bowl, and sprinkle with lemon juice. Mix gently. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. Pour over the peaches, and mix gently. Pour into the pie crust, and dot with butter. Cover with the other pie crust, and fold the edges under. Flute the edges to seal or press the edges with the tines of a fork dipped in egg. Brush the remaining egg over the top crust. Cut several slits in the top crust to vent steam.
4. Bake for 10 minutes in the preheated oven, then reduce the heat to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and bake for an additional 30 to 35 minutes, until the crust is brown and the juice begins to bubble through the vents. If the edges brown to fast, cover them with strips of aluminum foil about halfway through baking. Cool before serving. This tastes better warm than hot.

the crust tastes like a flaky shortbread cookie, and according to the hubby, the filling is PERFECT. the only modifications i made to the recipes were using a homemade crust (rather than a storebought as the pie recipe recommends), making sure all the ingredients were fresh (including lemon juice from a real lemon), baking for 10 mins at 450 and then 40 mins at 350 (instead of 30-35), and when i peeled one of the peaches, it was definitely not ripe at all, so i cut very thin slices and let them sit in sugar for awhile before incorporating them into the rest of the peach mixture.

let me know if you try the recipe! happy eating, and enjoy exploring your local foods!

the blunt truth

so i don't blog much anymore. i wish i did, because i love looking back at pictures of tess, and i feel like we don't have many current ones anymore for various reasons, but the blunt truth of it is that people probably don't want to read what i have to say these days.

i'm not thrilled with life, working full time hours with crap pay and no benefits is hard, marriage is a struggle, being a mom is challenging, having more bills than money sucks, and trying to cope with it all is just difficult. and honestly, who wants to read about that?

so maybe when i have something more upbeat to say, i'll return.

hilarious link!

hah! if you love pregnant people, or photography, or laughing, and especially if you love all three... this blog post is HILARIOUS!

and in case the link doesn't work for some reason, here's the link: http://pregnantchicken.squarespace.com/pregnant-chicken-blog/2010/12/10/awkward-pregnancy-photos.html

a new era - tess goes to daycare!

well, here i sit in caribou coffee, in the middle of the morning, with no child running around my feet, tugging at my legs, or fussing because she's sick of being here. i have been looking forward to this, and to having time to blog, and to tess getting enrichment with friends of her own age and other adults who know how to teach her things for so long, and i won't have many days that i can do this, since she'll just be a tuesday/thursday daycare kid, and i'll be working those days, but i just wanna run back to bright horizons and pick her up! i know it's a great place, and i know she'll do great, and i know i should just enjoy it! but... my baby girl is growing up! ::sniff::

last night i ran out to walmart in the middle of the night to pick up supplies for her "school" like diaper rash cream and sunscreen (both of which we have, but i needed to get more to keep there), and i realized this is the beginning of a new era. following rules of a school, having two sets of supplies, writing her name on everything, having to drop off and pick up on someone else's schedule, eat on their schedule, sleep on their schedule, "no toys on the climber", take turns, "mine" and "his" and "hers", oh so many changes for my sweet girl. i hope she's not overwhelmed. i hope her sharing, caring, giving attitude doesn't change from these kids pushing her around, and i hope she loves spending time with her teachers... but not more than she loves spending time with me! but i hope she doesn't have separation anxiety! oh the concerns that run through the head of a mother.

i honestly have peace, though, that everything will go just great. these thoughts that flit through my mind are covered by the belief that God has a hand in all of this, and i trust Him with my girl - she is His, after all, and though i can't comprehend it, his love for her is greater than mine could ever be. i know His hand has been in all of this because of how it just fell into place. i interviewed, was offered a job, found out about an opening at daycare, got the hours i wanted at work, got the first month's tuition together, and got her all enrolled just as smoothly as it could have been. and last year, we were looking at waiting up to 8 months just to get her in any spot, let alone a part-time one!

well, i guess i should be somewhat productive during this time off that i have before starting near full-time work next month, so i'm off to catch up on my reading for the mission trip i'm going on to cherokee in two days! until next time :-)

play-dough!

as usual, life is crazy! but here's a quick recipe for play-dough that tess and i made this morning:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Easy-Affordable-Play-Dough/
we had a lot of fun, and i liked the fact that i knew exactly what was in there in case she tried to eat it. she actually did lick her fingers once but promptly stopped and made a face to tell me how gross it was - i think due to all the salt. hah! it was really funny.

i did get pictures, but they're on my phone cause i couldn't find the camera, and the bluetooth is broken on our computer, so it may be awhile before i get them on here!

in unrelated news, tess will be starting tues/thurs at bright horizons, and i'll be working those days (in addition to my regular schedule) at oberlin. hopefully it'll all go well! my cherokee mission trip is next weekend, and the 4h camp is at the end of the month, so i'm going to be a busy girl!

aaaanyway, try the play-dough and let me know if you like it or have another recipe you like better!

so, i'm a little behind in the updates...

holy moly, what a whirlwind these few weeks have been! let's see... where to begin...

ok well 8 weeks of puppies turned into lots of visits to the vet, an emergency visit that had us weaning the puppies at 3 weeks, puppies living with me without their mama for 1 week, then puppies moving on to another foster and mama coming back to me until she is adopted! oyoyoyoyoy! meanwhile, andrew, tess and i took our first family vacation all together alone (without grandmas involved) and had a great time, tess has turned 13 months (why do moms count in months?! why am i succumbing to the trend?!), my work schedule is changing, i'm interviewing for another part-time job, we're looking into part-time daycares, there were tornadoes tearing through the state, i fell down concrete stairs and nearly broke my ankle, tess got her first cold (and passed it on to us), we went to several museums and even joined one, OH! and my house looks like laundry, dishes, trash, and baby toys EXPLODED in and around it! sheesh! mayhaps this is why i haven't blogged? on the other hand, sure would have made some fantastic material to read about... oh well.

would you like some details about our many events? here goes!

ok so the adorable puppies:

continued growing and doing well, being adorable and sweet, and growing like CRAZY! poor iris was taking such good care of her 10 little ones and trying to heal up her sad body. our friend liz was generous enough to watch the whole gang (including our two crazies) while we went out of town for a long weekend to boone!

we took tons of pictures, which you can see in my facebook album, and had a blast! we drove up late thursday night in hopes that tess would sleep through the drive. we got a later start than we'd planned, and instead of leaving at 8 or 9, we left at about 10:30, which meant we didn't get in to boone until about 2am. luckily, we'd planned to stay in a hotel room that night, so the late arrival time wasn't a big deal for our accommodations... unluckily, that was where our "planning" ceased to work anymore. tess slept for a good hour into the drive before waking up and deciding she was going to stay awake FOR THE REST OF THE DRIVE. she was so out of it and so exhausted that she just sat there staring in front of her like a zombie and occasionally whimpering pathetically but refusing to sleep. it was so sad! then, about 45 mins from boone, she decided she was no longer ok, and we had to put the elmo movie on for the rest of the ride. also, andrew - not being much of the night owl, was about to fall asleep and run us off the road, so my swollen, bruised, nearly broken ankle and i had to drive almost the entire way.

so we got in around 2 and got to sleep around 3am. here's a picture of tess from the next morning:

such a tired baby!

but the rest of the weekend was wonderful! i hobbled around, we swam in the hotel pool, we ate at great places, we hung out with old friends like the newells (who were generous enough to welcome us into their home for the rest of the weekend) and crystal, sue treated us to a birthday celebration with newer friends like andy, kelley, and lucas, we explored king st, drove around our old haunts, and on the last day, took a trip up grandfather mountain!


when we got back home, we had to settle back into real life - boo! and we hadn't been doing that for long before we went out andrew's theater picnic and returned to find iris looking literally like death. andrew called me out because i was propping my ankle up, and he'd gone to take her for the last walk of the night, and he said, "i think she had diarrhea" - so i got off the couch and went out to check on her, only to find her crashing. she had no eyes because her body had had an inflammatory response and made her 3rd eyelids turn red and puff up to cover her eyes. when i peeled those back, her eyeballs were bloodshot and she couldn't really see. her gums were white and tacky, and there was diarrhea everywhere in her whelping box. i freaked out and called the vet and took her in (in my pj's because it was 10:30 by the time we left) as fast as i could drive. we got her all set up with catheters in and bloodwork running, fluids, plasma, and antibiotics going, x-rays and ultrasounds done, and basically if we had gone to bed earlier that night, she would have been dead by the morning. her overwhelmed body had gone into septic shock possibly from her worm infestation (which we hadn't been able to get rid of due to the puppies also being infested), a mastitis we found developing that night, or possibly other things - we didn't really know what caused it, but we treated it. unfortunately, that meant the puppies had to be weaned - which caused the mastitis to get worse, and eventually lead to 3 of he breasts having to be removed. the puppies stayed with us for a week while waiting on an spca foster who is more used to taking care of orphaned puppies, and iris was returned to us.

the whole experience was a harrowing and exhausting tornado of stress. and on top of that, then raleigh and the surrounding areas were hit by... tornadoes.

i was actually working the whole time the storm was going through, and the crazy people at work kept coming in to while the storm was going on! during the minutes that the worst of the storm was passing right through, past work, and we'd gotten the call to "go to a safe place" this crazy lady came in and insisted we trim her cat's nails - WHILE THE TORNADOES WERE PASSING WORK! what is wrong with people!? i cannot understand people sometimes, but we did it. ridiculous. anyway, work was unscathed, as was our house, and everyone in our family, so we were very blessed to be spared minus a few branches and one of our walkway lights.

and speaking of work - i tried to get more hours recently and was basically told that there were enough people working and they didn't have hours for me (even though the doctors and my coworkers were all in favor of me working full time again), so i gave up for awhile and just figured it wasn't time to work more. however, i browsed the local listings and found that a nearby mobile vet was hiring a surgery tech position for tuesdays and thursdays. i got in touch with them and was set up to meet with them, when they stopped responding. i took that as a sign to pursue other things and let it go. recently, however, they contacted me again to tell me that the person they'd hired was pregnant and they needed to re-hire the position. so, while i'm a bit put off by their flakiness, they are nearby, seem nice, the job is appealing and part time, and i'm going to go in to interview with them tomorrow morning. i'm excited byt going to be very selective to ensure it's a move i want to make. i'd continue working at oberlin as i am, but i'd work there as well.

that led us to resume our search for a good, affordable daycare for tess. i still really want her to be at bright horizons, as they've impressed me like no other place has, but they are not only expensive, but also apparently impress everyone else because they ALWAYS have a waiting list. so we bit the bullet and put her on the waiting list there and have looked around at other, closer, cheaper places. the problem with places around here is that they're cheap but... you get what you pay for :-/ meaning they aren't as clean or interactive as i'd like, they know nothing about organic or even homemade food, and the idea of cloth diapers is completely alien to them. however, we may put her in one short-term while we wait for an opening (potentially september) at bright horizons.

soooooo, that's the long of the short of our april whirlwind world, and i hope to be more regular about updating during may!

8 weeks of puppies: week 1

as many of you know, we have taken on the responsibility of fostering ELEVEN dogs! originally, i thought it'd be 9, but what's two more? hah! so the story is that we have a local woman who owns a store in cameron village called cat banjo, and she runs a dog rescue out of the store - how cool?! well, she always brings her dogs in to work, and we've gotten to see these poor creatures come back from literally death row at the shelters all around the state (and sometimes neighboring states), to happy, healthy, well-loved pups with great homes! they don't have any facility, since it's not a shelter or anything, so they rely on foster families to care for the pups once they've left the hospital.

this dog in particular was so sad to me. she was HUGE with puppies - we thought she had 8 in there, and we thought she'd deliver as soon as she arrived at work. however, her contractions stopped, and a week went by with her hanging out in her "birthing turtle" upstairs. on wednesday, we got the word that they were either going to induce or do a c-section... but the doctors changed their minds. then on friday the same thing, and then finally on sunday, we went through with the c-section. somewhere in there, i found out that this dog, iris, and her puppies did not yet have a foster home... and who in their right mind would take on a dog and her 8 puppies?

well, i thought, i'd love to be useful, and i've always wanted our house to be a home for all - a place where people could come to get away and have respite. it just seems right, since we don't have lots of money and can't give thousands of dollars to charities, and we aren't active in a youth group (something i always foresaw for myself) or busy with church things (since we aren't very close to either of the churches we attend and currently have a car-hating 1-year-old), but we do have a lot of land, and it is a great place to just sit and be. so since i've always wanted our house to be that for someone... and i thought, well, it's not a PERSON, but it would still be helping 9 dogs - and that's good! so andrew and i discussed it, and we decided that if they were ok with having the pups grow up (for their first 8 weeks of life) on our porch, then we'd be happy to have them.

so sunday came and the c-section/spay commenced. the uterus was pulled out of the mamadog, and the babies were peeled out of their birth sacs one by one. 8 or 9 volunteers and i stood around the table, peeling out puppies, suctioning their mouths and noses, shaking them, and rubbing to stimulate them to breathe... and live! usually in large litters one or two pups won't make it, and with SUCH a large litter, i was prepared for that, but when it was all said and done, all of the puppies and mama came out of it with flying colors. we went to counting. by this point, we were actually pretty sure there were 9 puppies. ok, i thought, 10 extra dogs, what's one more? but when we counted them all... for a shocked 3rd time... there were actually 10 puppies! poor mamadog! i can barely handle 1 baby!

so that night, andrew, tess, and i went to andrew's work to build the whelping box to take to our house. it took a long time because once it was built, we had to take it back inside because it wouldn't fit in the van! andrew had to cut the top 3 inches off to get it to fit. but, we got it home and all set up. i went in to work on monday, and brought the pups home that night. unfortunately, that's when the weather decided to start sucking, and we began the days of cold COLD rain. mama and puppies had to stay inside the first few days, but after she pooped in my bedroom and kept trying to break out of the dining room, we decided they had to go outside, like we'd agreed. we set up the box with lots of blankets and towels, and 3 comforters (it's a large box), and put a packing blanket over the top to keep the heat in. we even bought a heat lamp, but after feeling the heat under all the covers, we decided they'd be warm enough through the night. and they were! each day, i checked the pups to make sure they were all still alive, i was so sure we'd lose one or two just from the size of the litter, but they continued to thrive!

thursday, mamadog had been particularly frustrating. though we'd taken her out to go to the bathroom literally 7 or 8 times by mid-morning, she kept trying to (and did successfully once or twice) jump out of the box. not a good idea for a dog that was just split open and sutured up! she also began vomiting. so, i packed her and the puppies and tess into the car, and off to the vet we went. when we got there, it turned out that she was just SO FULL of poop (despite the fact that she'd been pooping like crazy all week) that she just didn't have any room for food and needed to empty out. we deduced that she must have been over-eating. usually an undernourished dog nursing 10 puppies should be allowed to eat as much puppy food as she wants, but it appeared that this mamadog was just so used to being deprived that she thought she had to gorge herself lest the food disappear. so she stayed overnight at the vet for some fluids and no food. and we modified her diet to a limited number of cups per day, and she kept pooping like a champ, stopped vomiting, and we brought them all home the next day.

since then she's been pretty regular, pooping twice a day and eating two cups each meal. she did get stapled up to fix the stitches she'd popped jumping out of the box, and andrew extended the top of the box over a foot higher so that she cannot jump out anymore. so far, so good! mama and babies are doing great after week 1 [click to see each pup on their fb page]. their eyes and ears are still closed, and they mostly sleep and eat all day, but that's what babies are supposed to do!

[some photos blatantly downloaded from cat banjo - credit to debbi cochran.]