Starting anew...

... Or am I back to the beginning?  I haven't yet decided.  Here we are back in Michigan.  For good.  I mean that we have moved back for good, but dammit, it just plain feels good too.

Home.  Such a satisfying word to say in a sigh.

Colorado is a breathtaking place, with mountain views and prairie sunsets and tumultuous skies.  But let's face it, I'm a Midwestern girl and I missed the water.  It never felt right to live in a place so barren, so burnt-to-a-crisp, so thirsty for water.  As our vet put it, "there are two kinds of people.  Water people and mountains people.  If you have water in your bones, it never leaves you."

When C and I were home for Christmas, we started looking at properties.  Oh, it was all very innocent at first, but once we realized that we could have land— with WATER— here for far less than we could ever dream of in Colorado, it seemed like an obvious choice.  We could have our "five-year plan" now.  We decided the opportunity was too good to pass up.

We hit the ground running as soon as we could.  Our house in Lyons went up for sale and we started the house-hunt in Michigan in earnest.  C flew back for interviews and house showings, and we worked feverishly on our house to get it in tip-top shape for potential buyers.  The logistical nightmare of planning to get all our belongings...

 my Buttertruck...

our three dogs...

 AND our two horses, goat and lamb home...

well that consumed just about all our energies.  But here we are, all in one piece.  We're still waiting to close on our new home but it's on 33 acres.  Dream life, here we are.  Oh and one more thing...

This year is already getting off to a great start.  I can't wait to keep building...

Rain at last!

A few days ago, someone told me the Boulder-area had gotten 3/4 of an inch of rain so far in July, which was more than we'd received in all of June.

It's been brutally hot the last few weeks-- animals, plants and people all suffer when previously-established [and long-standing] record streaks of triple-digit temperatures are broken. The heat coupled by a lack of rain has resulted in runaway wildfires all across the state and the region. Apparently, however, there's an upside this year; the weather patterns, coupled with all the haze and smoke that has been haunting us, were favorable to result in "monsoon" rains, to use the technical term I heard a weatherman use on the radio.

It rained today, starting in the afternoon and stretching languidly into evening. A cool grey sky, loop-de-loop clouds and a humid breeze begat a soaking rain. Goats, horses and dogs suddenly feel fresh and playful once more. Even the parched grass is starting to look feisty and green. I can't wait to wake up tomorrow and drink this newness in.

I asked Christian today, is it strange that I'm excited to do chores in the rain? My skin and soul have been thirsty too. No, he replied, not strange at all.

Hunting Mushrooms

It rained almost the entire 9 hours we spent in the car driving from East Lansing to Elkins. By "almost" I mean maybe 8.5 out of the 9 hours. When we arrived it was foggy and still raining on and off. It rained the first night as we slept soundly in our dwellings, lulled by the river.


And when we woke up that first morning it looked like... another day of rain. But that was not the case! We ate breakfast out on the porch, trying to ward off the chilly fog with hot black coffee.

West Virginia, Mountain Mommas

One of the classes I'm taking this semester is "Appalachian Literature and Culture," an "elective pathway" requirement within the RCAH that is being taught by Anita Skeen, a poet and West Virginia native. With the semester barely underway, she offered my class an opportunity to travel to Elkins, West Virginia for a weekend. The point of the trip was to be immersed in Appalachian culture and to get a feel for the place and history of an area we are going to focus on for the next few months. Of course, I couldn't pass it up.

Batteries

If you ever wondered why you should NEVER throw batteries away, well, here's your reason.

My grandfather recently passed away, and in the weeks following, my mother and I have the task of cleaning up and cleaning out his office. His filing system consisted of opening a drawer and dropping in whatever files and records he was holding, as well as the occasional golf ball or odd change. He also kept stacks of magazines, old bills, etc., variously piled on the floor or in filing cabinets. As the acting president of our small family business, he came in each day long enough to open the day's mail and make any calls to overdue accounts or business associates, as needed. Most days, if you blinked, you missed him.

So it makes sense that, after we moved to a new office building 10 or so years ago, anything he brought with him from the old office [and from the days when he worked a full day] might still be in the office, so many years later.

I was sorting through some things on shelves in his office and came across an unopened package of DD batteries, covered with a fine layer of dust. When I picked them up, I was rather horrified to notice that some of the contents of the batteries had managed to escape out of the bottom of the battery. Again, these were unopened and never used [or even touched after being purchased, apparently], so it could be assumed that this happens to all batteries at some point.