First a little history of me. I grew up in the 60s, 70s, early 80s (there might be argument that I am still growing up). Parents weren’t rich, small Montana farm town, ate school lunches and any part of the farm animal that was generally cooked at that time. Mid college, I started to question the whole why should I eat meat thing. I had some experience in the whole meat production thing, thanks to my aunt and uncle’s farm. Saw the whole experience, from live chicken and cow to the ummmmm, yummy fried chicken and hamburgers. I wasn’t naive. I got to thinking in college, why should an animal have to die in order for me to eat yummy food? So I stopped eating meat, kept drinking milk and eating eggs.

My “theory” of vegetarianism is: if I had to survive to eat….. what could I kill? Well, since I can’t and don’t want to really test that for real, I have to go on my present day lifestyle. Could I take an egg from under a chicken and cook it and eat it? Yes, I could. Could I milk a cow and drink the milk? Yes, I could. These I could do (provided I don’t think about giant corporate production cows and chickens raised for milk and eggs). I lived my brand of vegetarianism for over 15 years. Enter: my children. I didn’t feed my kids hamburgers and chicken fingers. McDonalds and Burger King were a struggle, restaurants didn’t understand sandwiches without a slice of meat on them. But my husband and I decided early on, that if our children wanted to eat meat…. that was their decision. I think my daughter took the first real jump… a big one. She ate scrapple at a sleep-over. Scrapple is like an even eviler version of bacon. She didn’t really think it was really that different than scrambled eggs (which she had eaten maybe twice before). So she started eating meat when she visited friends.

I think my biggest jump towards eating meat again was after getting a cholesterol test. After so many years of not eating meat, my cholesterol level was at the cusp of being not normal. Not normal!?? Well, then what was the point of depriving myself for so many years for? I went off the no-meat wagon.. Screw my health. Turkey for Thanksgiving, chicken burgers at the drive-thru. I even sometimes cook raw chicken pieces in my house…. which is a huge step for me. It kind of grosses me out…. a lot. But I kind of feel like I am getting a better sense of me. Now I have to think, that if I had to, I could kill a chicken or a turkey for food. I’m scared to ever be put to the test. I would think, that if I had to feed my children, it would be an easy decision. But, it hasn’t come to that.

I’m not poor. Used to be, now I would not consider myself lacking. But it bugs me to no end to see perfectly good items at the side of the curb ready for the garbage men to pick up. I see all sorts of things. For example:

sections of privacy fence – do you have any idea how many poor people living in townhomes or small ranch homes or whatever would love to get your used fence? That used fence could keep many a kid safe in their own backyard or keep a really scary dog in.

lumber…. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen piles of lumber outside a house where someone has miscalculated how much wood they need for their deck or whatever. In this new “my house is picture perfect” era pushed on by tv shows that shame people for having clutter, no one will keep a pile of left over lumber in their garage or shed for future projects. When I was growing up, every dad had a pile of wood for whatever. Who knew when you would need a 2×4 for propping up a sagging whatever. And the garbage men do not want it.
dog houses…. I see a lot of those igloo dog houses. When we were left with a used dog igloo, we freecycled it. Don’t even want to go into how many dogs need shelter. Or cats for that matter. Although we did try to entice some neighborhood strays to stay in our empty dog house. I guess cats like to find their own way.

I could go on and on. I think that if there was a magnificent hand in the sky who could grant wishes for people, I would wish that someone could make it possible for me to have a space for a salvage yard. I would take all the stuff that people don’t want to bother with and make it meaningful for someone. There is just too much waste going on.

I say this because Monday through Friday of this week (I took Wednesday off to rest) I walked a total of 32.4 miles. Why, you ask? Just because. I feel like testing myself. I’ve always wondered why I find it so hard to exercise. I think it is because when I sweat, I think I’ve worked too hard. The problem is that I sweat a lot and turn beet red when I exercise. Which is great when you are in high school P.E. class and the teacher says, “oh my, you’ve worked too hard, you should sit down for a while”. Nothing like resting when everyone else is having to keep running laps.

But since then, I’ve had one of this heart stress tests (after pneumonia wouldn’t go away a few years back) and my health is fine. I think I really just don’t like working past the feeling of uncomfortableness to the place of enjoyment of exercising. I think I might be finally starting to understand that. Sometimes different parts of your body start hurting when you walk. If you keep walking, sometimes those parts of your body stop hurting and new places start hurting. That might sound kind of stupid and simplistic, but if you don’t have a doctor or a physical trainer explaining things in your ear as you exercise…. you can kind of freak yourself out. “Oh my god, my knees are going out!” or “oh my god, I better stop my foot hurts”. Every little thing is magnified when you are by yourself out there walking.

I might not keep up the pace I’m at. I really doubt that I can, it takes up a lot of time and the weather is not always right. But it is nice to know that when I want to push myself past the pain, I can.

Chloe wins!

As part of a math assignment at school, Chloe’s class had to create a poster about the Presidential election and enter it in a contest. Chloe made a poster about how much each primary vote costs the various presidential candidates. She won 1st place for her school district in the state for 9th through 12th grade (she is in 9th). And at the State competition, she won third place! Yeah Chloe! Here she is receiving her third place award at the State House. I couldn’t be more proud.

Why are they so sad? I don’t know, maybe because it is so freaking hot here on the East Coast.

I love this painting, it is huge and hangs in my dining room. I didn’t paint it, but I wonder why someone decided to paint such a glum looking painting of two little girls. This to me is kind of a modern colonial portrait folk art. Straight on paintings of people who don’t want to be painted. Or photographed for that matter. If I could paint this good at painting bad, I’d be happy. I think that is why I like the untrained painter’s eye, it sees what I see without all the fanfare…. “here is what I see, like it or don’t. I don’t really care.” That is the attitude we should all have about painting.

After getting a needle biopsy on my thyroid to rule out cancer, I got this fancy Januvia bandaid.

I think Merck should be sending me a check as I visited the #7 Beer Store in the World, State Line Liquors in Elkton Maryland wearing this badge of honor (sorry to scare you if you were in the store). People sure did double takes seeing me with an advertisement on my neck. And I actually should be getting a double check for showing a picture of my neck with embarrassing mid 40s emerging wattle.

I painted this on yellow paper. Kind of like how it turned out. This is the first day of summer vacation and I feel uninspired to do anything. I guess it is the stress of knowing my thyroid will be needle biopsied on Friday kind of makes me too foggy to focus. I know it won’t be a big deal and I will wonder what I was so afraid of but the anticipation of something happening always is the most stressful for me.

This was a first for me, I actually looked for specific things at the flea market and found them. Earlier this week I was thinking, wouldn’t it be cool to have an old record player to play old records out in the studio/shed while I paint. Not like BTO or Boston, but old scratchy records with warbly voices from the 20s and 30s. First thing I saw when I entered the flea market, someone had boxes and stacks and boxes …. of old 78s and 331/2s. I started going through them and picked a few that had names I recognized, the Mills Brothers, Dizzie Gillespie, Frank Sinatra (back before he really sounded like Frank). Then I picked things that had odd titles and different labels like BlueBird, Decca, Capital, Coral, Edison. The Edison ones are super thick. While I was sorting through the boxes, some of records would just come off in chunks in my hand. Some nice man next to me said “don’t worry, every 10th one or so will do that”. The records were 3 for $5 and people would come up and complain that the price was too high.

After buying a stack, I started checking out the other vendors and there was someone selling this old portable record player, has a needle and newish cord and sounds pretty good, for $5. The flea market gods were good to me. And I must say, if you are a single gal there is no better way to meet guys than to walk around with an armful of old records. Every 10th man wanted to see the records I had purchased or commented “wooo, records!”.

I brought the records and player home and listened to all of them. My 15 year old daughter sat out with me in the shed and listened to them (okay, the internet was shut down because there was a thunderstorm warning). But, good times!

For some reason my photo links aren’t working. My photos are at:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/littlewaif/