Transplanted City Girl

• Tuesday, April 18, 2006 - Windy Days and Dirty Houses

Wind.  There is always wind, and lots of it, here in Penrose, but we periodically have a few days that can be thought of as nothing but one long dust cloud blowing straw and grit into every possible entrance into your house and face.  The last few days have been like that, and by the end of each day there is a heavy, brown swirl pattern stretching from my back door across my kitchen floor.  Tables, pots, pans: they are all covered in a thick film of fine dust.  While bottle feeding my little ones, (goats) I am constantly having to tuck my head down at a very uncomfortable angle to keep the wind from blowing things in my eyes.  I used to bend over, but my growing tummy is making this a more difficult, and painful, operation each day. So, with grand plans to clean out several pens yesterday, the wind was so severe I had to settle for cleaning my house.  Which, after several days of wind, is just... dirty.  Oh, add to that the fact that my wonderful husband gave the shedding dog a bath, and said shedding dog proceeded to dry himself off in the livingroom and shed much more in the process.....  Anyway, the house did need a thorough cleaning, which it got.  There were problems I ran into, such as finding out the dogs had destroyed my one and only duster, .  But that was really my fault for leaving the door open and falling asleep.  Did a few loads of laundry as well, and had to hang them all around the house, because there was simply too much dut to hang them outside. Dad's deep freezer had somehow come unplugged, and so I took a thoroughly thawed ham and cooked it up for everyone: when I cook their food up for them then I get enough to take home for our dinner.  It was a nine pound ham, and the entire thing was gone by this morning.  Well, I used a few scraps that were left from our dinner and fried 'em up with Chris's breakfast.  Overall, it was a productive, but exhausting, day.  I slept like a rock, which is getting more and more unusual lately. Speaking of cooking, I made a sweet goat cheese the other day.  Tried it, and it was really not that special: the sweetness with the goat was..... weird.  But I needed to eat it, so I had it with some strawberries that were still a little tart: It was DELICIOUS!!!  Something about the tartness with the cheese just balanced everything right out, the cheese was so creamy and soft with the berry.  I have eaten quite a few bowlfuls of berries and cheese since then.  I've been eating so much cheese lately, but the midwife kept telling me that fresh fruit was fine to snack on, but I should make it a habit to get some protein every time I had something fresh.  The goat cheese makes it easy to do this, and any way you look at it, Chevre is better then store-bought Cottage Cheese.  I like to add Garlic Powder and Chives to the Chevre, and everyone here seems to like it that way.  It makes a wonderful spreadable cheese you  can use on bagels, crackers or eat by the spoonful.  Every now and then I go through a few days where it feels like my stomach just triples in size: suddenly half of my clothes don't fit any more, constantly bumping into stuff.  Things like that.  Well, the last few days have been "those days".  I don't sit anymore, I sprawl.  Can't bend over, I have to squat down to pick stuff up.  And now perfect strangers offer congratulations.  Finally into the third trimester, I simply can't wait.  Every day I get more and more excited.  I know they say worrying is bad, but is excitement?  Because I'm not in the least worried and I am terribly excited.  Next Saturday we have another midwife appointment, and if everything is still going great I think I'll stay excited.   We're not going to get the garden planted until the first week of May, but we do have all our transplants ready and going strong.  I'm actually getting to see some green now.  YEA!!!!  I want to take soem pictures of our house before anything is planted, and then some of afterwards.  I KNOW it will be so pretty once everything is in place.  Believe it or not, that's all I can think of to say.  So I'll say goodbye for now.

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