Happy Thanksgiving! This day has been an interesting mix of exciting and melancholy for me. I love traditions and the comforting consistency they bring, and my family has a wonderful Thanksgiving tradition. Every year for a very long time we've been going to Atlanta to my mom's parents and having the classic feast with a HUGE crowd of aunt, uncles, grandparents, great grandparents, great aunts and uncles and more first and second cousins than you can shake a stick at! This year, however, due to the fact that my sister Lauralee is working very hard to add another cousin to the mix any moment now (one week overdue and counting!!!), my immediate family canceled travel plans in order to be able to attend to the impending baby and new mother-to-be. So, for various and a sundry (sp?) reasons, I did not have a single sibling at my Thanksgiving meal today.

While it was sad to break from the tradition, it was exciting to try something all new. This year's crowd, held on my own stomping grounds, included my dad and grandparents (his parents), Joe's aunt and uncle and a whole family of local Floyd-ian friends. The food was just as delicious as ever, and the company was heart warming. We had at least three musicians in the bunch, so we ended with them passing the guitar around and sharing some songs with us all. Now everyone has gone home, and I have my own little cabin to return home to, with a fire crackling in the woodstove, and some of my favorite creatures on two and four legs waiting for me. I have oh so much to be thankful for. The refrain from one of the songs my dad sang has been a resounding echo in my head - "It is well, it is well with my soul."

Now Lauralee, start having that baby!!!!

I spent about an hour the other day on a blogpost, and in the end I abandoned it. In my mind it was going to be pretty funny, mostly about chickens, and slightly philosophical. Somehow it came out barely funny, mostly about people, and heavy on the philosophy. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

At the moment Joe and I are in Virginia Beach to attend his cousin's wedding. Every three to four years one of these dress-up events comes along and totally throws me for a loop. It's always the shoes that get me. I have my really nasty work boots, my decent pair of work boots, my nice pair of hiking boots and my rain boots. (That's maybe an exaggeration, but only a slight one.) After wrestling with the idea of going and buying a whole new outfit from the ground up, I remembered that many years ago my mother bought me a pair of nice, general purpose dress shoes. At the time I thought it a silly purchase, but she insisted that "You need at least one nice pair of shoes." She was right! I had to go dig them out of a plastic tote in our rickety little, mice infested storage shed, but they're still in great shape, and they still fit. That takes care of my outfit, however Joe is still convinced that he can find the perfect tie to go with his homemade duck/brush pants.

It's a Small World After All

Warning: The following story has been known to cause a certain Disney song to loop incessantly through one's subconscious.

Wednesday night, Joe and I met my parents in Christiansburg for dinner. After our meal, we were by the front entrance to the restaurant saying our goodbyes when a waitress came up to me and asked me where I got my hoodie. (There were a few moments of confusion because I thought she had asked me where I got my honey, the irony being that my parents were off to the beekeepers meeting. I wasn't sure if she had overheard our conversation and was interested in beekeeping or if she was looking to find herself a guy like Joe.) I was sporting a Wareing's Gym sweatshirt, and explained to her that my husband's family owned a gym in Virginia Beach. At that point, a guy sitting nearby at the bar spoke up and said "Hey man, we're kin!". The stranger's grandfather and Joe's grandfather were brothers, making them second cousins (trust me on this one)! He grew up in this area and still lives here, so we're looking forward to getting to know the local branch of the Wareing family.

We had a great time in Washington DC last week. Aside from being swept into the middle of a four-way girl fight in an inner city DC school, we mostly managed to stay out of trouble. :) Back home on the ranch, I'm finding myself in a weird state of limbo. I have this feeling like I'm an actor in a play that is between scenes or in the middle of a set change. I'm backstage, fiddling around, not quite sure what I should be doing until someone calls "Action!" again. I spent some time today dismantling the garden, pulling up frost bitten peppers and tomatoes. The garden paths were littered with tomatoes, ground cherries and peppers that had been rendered squishy and inedible by freezing temperatures, and this made for a VERY messy weedeating experience. I tried raking them up first, but overripe tomatoes don't rake very well. :(

The yurt project is still in motion, albeit slow motion. There are signs that we may resume activity soon. We've gotten a quote for the deck/platform materials, although we haven't actually placed the order yet. Now, if I could just find a way to switch Joe's attention from firewood to setting posts...

Rally Recap

Here are a few photo highlights from the "Rally to Restore Sanity" in Washington DC yesterday. We had a lot of fun. As Joe put it, it's nice to encounter such a large swath of humanity every so often. We both love people watching, and this was certainly a good gig for it. I know there's always controversy about how many people attend these things, and I won't even begin to argue for a specific number. All I can say is it was ALOT of people! The entire journey from the Metro to the Mall and back again was accomplished in very cramped baby steps amidst a throng of people.

The masses emerge from underground!!


An arms length aerial view of the people in front of me.


An arms length aerial view of the people behind me. Start counting and let me know what you come up with. :)


With my camera on full zoom, I was able to get this shot of Jon Stewart on the closest screen to us, even that barely visible to the naked eye. After a few rounds of chanting "Louder, louder!" they turned the volume up enough that we could sort of hear what was going on.


Joe said I couldn't post this picture on Facebook, but he didn't say anything about the blog. :)


Some incredibly sane horses.


Some incredibly sane horses, rear view.


Ahh, back to real life, where warfare is big business. This is one of a string of "Raytheon" warfare billboards at the Pentagon subway stop, how apropos.

We left the rally a little bit early to try and beat some of the crowds back to the subway, so we missed the final, serious moments of the rally. But upon reading Jon Stewart's closing remarks I can say "Hear hear!", glad I was there. :)


Joe and Wilson recovering from the rally.

This'll have to be the "highlights" version today because I've got a fire going in the earth oven awaiting a pumpkin pie I've yet to get ready.

Joe's home!! Yay!!! He had a great meditation course, and I managed to keep all the loose ends together while he was gone.

We've gotten the four corner posts set for the yurt!! Yay!! It's actually starting to look like we're up to something productive rather than destructive. Thanks so much to our friend Ben from Alaska for the extra muscle power required to make it happen. :)

Tomorrow morning we leave at 5 a.m. to head to Washington DC where we will attend Jon Stewart's "Rally to Restore Sanity"!! Yay!!! We've done our civic duty and voted early by mail, and now we're off to have some political fun. We'll be spending the whole week in DC helping my friend and former Wildlife Sciences classmate with a greenhouse project at a DC highschool. She has been putting her college degree to good use as an environmental educator in DC, and I'm looking forward to being able to help out a good cause.

Joe comes home in three days!! This is good because I ate my last Daddy Bob brownie (world famous brownies made by my grandfather) last night. I do have some chocolate chips in the house, though, so I guess that'll have to suffice for these last few days. :)

On Wednesday, I had the wonderful experience of unwittingly playing a part in my little brother's plans to propose to his girlfriend. It was truly a divinely inspired coincidence, there's just no other good way to look at it. I had been working in the office all day and just as I was leaving, my sister and her friend invited me out to the Olive Garden for dinner. Upon arriving at the restaurant, I found my little brother Joe and girlfriend Mariah waiting to be seated for their special, 6-month anniversary dinner! They were, of course, happy to expand their reservation to a table for 5 (well, Mariah was happy to :). Joe acted a little bit grouchy about the whole situation, but it turns out that was just nerves due to the fact that he was planning to pop the question later that night!! And she said yes!! So, the evening didn't exactly follow his plans, but it does make for a much better story. :)

Stink Bug Mania Sweeps the Nation!

Like apparently everyone else in the nation, I have been dealing with stink bugs in every crack and crevice of my house. I didn't realize how national a problem it was until just now Google tried to read my mind and automatically assumed that stink bug eradication was high on my priority list. I was going to do an internet search on early voting in VA as I'll be out of town on Nov 2nd, but all I had gotten typed into the search box was "How do I" and up popped 121,000 results for getting rid of stink bugs! Do I detect a theme in our collective consciousness??? :)