Today at the Grove we held a canning workshop of fruits and veggies. We made blackberry jam and dilled garlic carrots. I’m excited to try them out We tasted some of the blackberry jam earlier and it was delicious.

We also had the John Deere dropped off today, so dad will be plowing up the soil tomorrow to get things ready for spring. Everything is really starting to feel like home here. His friend Buzz is going to help us build the back deck, and says they can finish it in a weekend. I also hope we get the wood-stove soon because mornings are chilly up here in Gettysburg.

All that is left is 2 trailers and my yellow bronco. The blue one I will be selling probably. The two trailers hold 6 cord of wood and a bunch of outside equipment. Then we’ll have everything back again.

A lot of people came up to visit today while I was at the Grove, which makes me sad that I missed them. Still not sure when to start having people up to see the place.

My cousin Jon’s murderer’s are up for parole next month, 10 years after his murder. My mom wants me to write a victim impact statement to be read during the parole hearing. I will have to work on that in the coming weeks.

Last night after work I met with my friend Art and his wife from ADF for dinner at Brick Ridge Restaurant in Mt. Airy. Talk about more upscale than I am used to.

The restaurant was built from an old brick schoolhouse, but was beautifully done. Very capecod or “shores of Maine” decor with white walls trimmed with the old brick walls from the school house and wooden beams in the ceilings. It was extremely cozy and the lightning was very warm and ambient. It was definitely more fancy than I was expecting, but not so much that I felt too out of place. It felt more like a treat.

The food was more expensive than your usual restaurant, but not so much that you’d feel too intimidated to eat there. I had the cream of crab soup which was amazing. Very thick with a really intense flavor that, as Steph put it, just keeps going. I also had their homemade lemonade which was really sweet and a flavor comparable to what you’d find in an italian ice. Then I had their Chicken Delmarva which was a roasted chicken breast stuffed with blue crab, ham and cheese served with a very intense basil cream sauce.

We all tasted each others dishes which was a huge pallet of flavors I don’t even know what half of them were I just know they were all good. I think Steph had Venison and Art has steak with horseradish and both were very tender. They even had pomegranate soda.

The restaurant had little signs on the tables that talked about how their dining experience usually lasts 1.5 hours so you can enjoy the meal, but that if you needed things to be quicker that all you had to do was ask. Well, there was a couple there that arrived shortly after us that must not have read it because they started complaining to the waitress about the wait. They eventually said that they just wanted their food to go, which they got, but I really dislike it when people raise their voices when I’m trying to enjoy dinner.

Another older couple arrived later that I could tell were well off just by the way they dressed. The husband actually looked like he was dressed for some fancy affair with a cigar jacket (I don’t really know what it was called). They had ordered a bottle of wine (I don’t remember which) that the waitress said has to be ordered by the bottle instead of the glass. He said that was no issue. They also go their meal a -lot- faster than anyone else, which doesn’t bother me any, I’d probably do the same thing if I was serving rich people.

The woman was smiling at me a lot and they seemed really friendly and like they were just enjoying themselves.

When we got up to leave they commented on Art’s utilikilt, and it turns out they were from Scotland (they had cute little accents). The woman was also admiring my necklace and they were tickled pink to find someone wearing a kilt and curious about the style of it. When we left I saw an older modeled Rolls Royce parked right out front and knew it had to be theirs. While we were out chatting in the parking lot and Art was presenting me with a bottle of blueberry wine to celebrate my new house, I saw the couple leave in it.

All in all, it was a very special treat with very special people. Not something I could afford to do everyday, but I don’t think I’ve ever eaten somewhere that fancy so I’m glad I did.

My uncle Ronnie works from like 5 in the morning until 7 at night. My cousin Bryan does the same, but sometimes until 11pm. Those types of hours really take a toll on a person.

My uncle Ronnie lives 3 doors down from where I am staying and he’s really let the farm go. The barn is falling down, he barely keeps any animals anymore, he doesn’t plant anymore. All he does is work ridiculous hours at a job he hates, and it’s been sucking the life out of him.

When my father and I got evicted and moved in with my aunt, my uncle said we could keep some critters down at his place until we got our own. We let our pigeons loose down there, we keep our turkeys, peacocks and a few rabbits down there.

My dad and I were talking about it over breakfast this morning, and apparently my uncle is tickled at having all these animals around again. So much that he even took it upon himself to feed them all for us this past Sunday. He’s even started talking about getting some turkey’s again or something, and my dad said he could tell that a spark was lightning up again in my uncle. I think he really wants to enjoy his farm again, and I’d like to help him as best I can.

He loves having family over, so I want to visit more. He’s an amazing carpenter and has tons of equipment in one of his sheds for it, though he doesn’t do it anymore. I’d like to get him to teach me.

I just feel like a new breath has risen in him and I think it is really good for him. I hope he can find a different job that he can deal with and still have time to be the farmer that’s in him and in all of my family. It’s just so sad to lose yourself like that, but I’m very glad that my father and I can help.

It was weird coming home Wednesday night after I told my dad we would have to move because we just couldn’t afford this place. He’s always had those little white-flame electric candles in the windows, including the ones in my room. Whenever I’d accidentally unplug them, he’d always have to make sure they were plugged back in so all the windows were lit.

But when I came home Wednesday night, they were all gone. That was the first thing he removed (we are going to be replacing them with solar lights at our new place), and it was like, the light inside the house dying. It was oddly symbolic to me, and rather sad.

Seeing all the pictures coming off the walls, the shelves being emptied, etc, makes everything seem so surreal. I haven’t lived here all my life, I did live with my mother throughout middle and high school, we did live in another house for a short stint in the 80’s, and I spent a good amount of time on my grandparents farm growing up. But we’ve been in this house in some shape or another since 1979. It’s the house I was born in and have grown used to over the years. We’ve developed a good relationship with our neighbors, our egg customers, etc. We’re the exact same distance westward to work as I am eastward to the Grove. We can still drive to Orrtanna in an hour to visit family.

Where ever we move is going to disrupt that balance. I will probably be further from the Grove by choice, because I drive to work everyday and to the Grove once a week.

But at the very least, wherever we end up will be ours. I called a place today that was for rent, a beautiful farm house in libertytown that would still be a perfect distance to work and the Grove. But they don’t allow cats. I didn’t even get to discussion about price or having a garden or keeping farm equipment there. I just can’t see throwing out my cat, even for something like this. It’s the very type of “restriction” that I’m trying to avoid by not renting. If we rented, we’d be full of all kinds of restrictions, and that’s no way to live the next several years.

I’m probably going to try and take a lot of pictures tomorrow and Saturday of the house here. Just so I have them for keepsake.

Here’s one I took of my dad removing the feedbags from around the tomato plants this past November.

I was looking for a box to put these Xena tapes in to ship, and I found Alex’s (my ex-husband) old class ring. He’s been wanting that, and I had always worn in throughout highschool while we were dating, and I guess it got mingled up in boxes when I moved back home in 2001.

I never had a class ring because I could never afford it and mom never bothered with any of that school stuff. I never even went to my graduation cause I couldn’t afford the cap and gown and all that. Not that I would have wanted to go anyway, I’ve been to my friends graduations before and they are pointless and boring and a waste of my damn time.

Still, I decided to look up prices for class rings. I remember Balfour being the catalog they passed out in highschool. $179-$400 for one, who the fuck wants to pay for that? I’ll pass. Give me a wooden ring any day.

Guess I better get ahold of him so he can have it.

This weekend there were a lot of things going on that I had to choose from. Faerie Festival, a Beltane Ritual up at Highland farms, and a cousin’s baby shower. I chose the baby shower because I know my cousin has been having a hard time and wanted to support her.

I got her some organic baby items that I know she’ll need like powder, diaper ointment, chlorine free diapers, etc. I would have gotten her cloth diapers, but I don’t think she’s the type of person to use them, so I do what I can.

I wrapped her gifts in newspaper and cloth that I had saved from a gift someone gave me for my birthday. One of her friends came up to me and said they were very impressed to see me doing that, compared to all the other gifts that were wrapped in brand new fancy one-time-use wrapping paper. Maybe it’ll make some of them think?

She also loves my music so asked me to play for her shower, which I did. I actually enjoyed it a lot because apparently some of her friends listen to my music myspace quite a bit and know a lot about me, or they talk a lot about me, or something like that.

I also got to meet a cousin who I used to be very close with growing up, but hadn’t seen in 15 years. That was probably the highlight of my day, because I did miss her quite a bit. I talked with her mom about some genealogy stuff and got some more information for my genealogy website.

All in all was a calm family weekend, which is a nice change from how busy I’ve been with rituals, camping, pagan conferences, etc. Even though I have the Grove’s Beltane next weekend -and- a Sweatlodge later this month, -and- other stuff I can’t remember right now.

When I was little, we used to have a Capacitance Electronic Disc player or “Video Disk”. This was before VHS came out, naturally. I used to remember watching The Last Unicorn on it.

When I was married, for some reason my ex-husband thought it would be a good idea to buy one of these players and some disks at a yard/garage sale.

Thus I am now stuck with the clunker and a big pile of disks. Fortunately I stumbled onto that site above which shows there’s at least an oldschool fanbase for the damned things. Kinda like old 1970’s hackers and computer programmers you’d imagine from War Games.

Needless to say I think I’m ready to get rid of it. It works, and it’s a charming idea to keep and mess with an ancient piece of technology. But there’s no real desire for me to watch it regularly.