Author: christinestaffa

My life's journey has taken me from the streets of New York, up the Hudson Valley, to a little goat farm under Vermont's highest mountain.

Other Goats

We visited another angora goat farm today in South Hero. This one looked a lot like Bennie.
Seeing other angora goats is always uncanny! They look just like ours but not quite! Which feels weird.

The subject line “Other Goats” is kind of an inside joke. Like 20 years ago there were attempts at what was then the Fair to have angora goat shows. And this one year, we were the only ones who showed up. So the judge had to award us the ‘prize’ but she indicated that she really thought we should get “other goats.” (She had some kind of accent.) We have laughed at that ever since because she didn’t say “better goats.” Merely “other goats” – ANY “other goats.” Because our goats were pretty pitiful; they weren’t even purebred.

Mourning

It’s OK to grieve what’s lost.

I grieve for:

  • Trying out new restaurants
  • Sitting at a bar with X with a couple of interesting beers waiting for food to come
  • Montreal
  • Boston
  • Planning a vacation
  • Cirque du Soleil
  • Our annual bike down the St. Jean Richilieu
  • New York
  • Extreme Beer Fests
  • Getting my eyebrows done
  • Hitting downtown Burlington and being able to enter places & pick a restaurant at whim
  • Seeing my mother-in-law in North Carolina for the holidays
  • Having Tgiving at Ruth & John’s
  • The Route 66 road trip I was supposed to take with Maggie
  • My High Holydays at sheep & wool

And I am grateful for:

  • Food. Lots of it. The good stuff.
  • That I enjoy cooking
  • Takeout
  • Books
  • The library & Phoenix bookstore are still functional
  • Fiber to make beautiful things with
  • Healthy goats who don’t even know what’s going on
  • Vermont – never been more grateful for you than this year
  • My health
  • My marriage
  • My home
  • That I have always worked from home and can continue to do so

Alcohol purchases are up something like 10-20% in Vermont, I think I read. FB is full of memes about how drunk we are all getting. But in fact I’m drinking less than ever. Without going out, I don’t find myself sitting there with a tempting draft list waiting for food to come. I was never big on drinking at home in the first place. I’ve cut back now more than ever. For me, the pleasure of alcohol is how it makes me happy in a social situation or a one-on-one. I particularly like wine on an empty stomach with some carbs – i.e. red wine at an Italian restaurant with your bread basket waiting for the food. The booze + carbs is a good combo for me. And I just don’t indulge that way at home. I’d rather eat calories than drink them. I’d rather have a good dessert. Because drinking doesn’t make me feel good per se, or let me really forget any of the problems of the world. So why do it? I have less and less reason.

Thoughts in Progress

Avoid this paragraph if you don’t want anything depressing: the other day I listened to a podcast featuring an expert other than Dr. Osterholm (yes, I cheated on him). It was a Dr. Foege and here’s what kind of depressed me. He recently worked with the CDC to come up with four phases of prioritization for getting a hypothetical COVID vaccine. And basically, people like me and Xopher, who aren’t essential workers, don’t have pre-existing conditions, etc.? We’re last in line. Next, the hypothetical vaccine is not likely to be 100% effective, far from it. So even with vaccines, we all still have to wear masks, avoid crowds, and socially distance. So wait a minute. We’re all pining for the vaccine, and even once it gets here, and even once WE get it, it still won’t change a damn thing about our day to day life? What will? Apparently, we can all only get back to “normal” when the virus is effectively eliminated. Take a look at how many assholes live in this country, who are so uncooperative with mitigations strategies as to be openly hostile at times. Think long and hard about how long it’s going to take to effectively eliminate the virus under the conditions we’ve got.

Told you it would be depressing.

I’m not done yet. Time for my workday to begin.

Eight

I really am crazy about this one. I put all the colors down the center, rather than trying to keep them separated, as I had been doing lately. It definitely came out ‘muddier’ but I think I prefer it. Also in case you haven’t noticed I am now using colors that are closer to each other on the color wheel, rather than the sharply contrasting colors I’d always tended to pick in the past. Again, ‘muddier’, or shall we say more subtle. The family now – ordered in a way designed to most flatter, and to suggest skeins that could be purchased (ahem!) in combination to Make Something Beautiful:

Speaking of “Make Something Beautiful,” I’m considering making that my business name. Wiseacres Farm can stay the name of the goat breeding operation. The fiber arts can be rebranded. “Make something beautiful” is always my sentiment when anyone walks away with any of my product.

Ta Da

I (and each of my teammates) won an award at work, because things went south in August and we all worked so hard to make them right. I searched the website and actually could not find a kitchen gadget I wanted. This bag caught my eye though, for the color, obviously. It’s called “arugula.” I’ve never owned such a chichi bag in my life. It actually came with another bag to keep the bag in. I look forward to sporting it at Hannaford’s.

I had off today. Xopher did not. The guy doing the trim on the never-ending window replacement did not. So I could not sleep late and I could not go anywhere with my S.O. I passed the morning making a mini pumpkin chocolate chip bread, carding some ruby-amethyst mohair, doing a bit of an easy 16×16 sudoku, raking out the barn a bit. After lunch I took a bike to town hall to drop off our ballots! Then I went to Phoenix Books to slake my never-ending bookthirst, and then took a scenic drive to capture a couple of more Vermont towns for my VT251 club project. Was an OK day.

Book Corner 2020.44

Collected Stories of Carson McCullers

McCullers is at her best when her stories are about adolescents (almost always motherless, often gender-bending, and with a father who’s a jeweler) on the cusp of change. But I loved immersing myself in her world in every story.

This collection of short pieces culminates with MEMBER OF THE WEDDING; but I’ve read that very recently, so it wasn’t time for a re-read. For me it culminated with BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFE. This is a very sad piece (as the title warns) featuring a grotesque cast of characters and a miserable ending. It is not “my thing”; but it was still a story to grab me by the throat, and it provided all of the collection’s best quotes.

“It is known that if a message is written with lemon juice on a clean sheet of paper there will be no sign of it. But if the paper is held for a moment to the fire then the letters turn brown and the meaning becomes clear. Imagine that the whiskey is fire and that the message is that which is known only in the soul of a man – then the worth of Miss Amelia’s liquor can be understood.”

“The atmosphere of a proper cafe implies these qualities: fellowship, the satisfactions of the belly, and a certain gaiety and grace of behavior.” That should be put on a sign and sold to cafe owners everywhere.

“In order to come into the cafe you did not have to buy the dinner, or a portion of liquor. There were cold bottled drinks for a nickel. And if you could not even afford that, Miss Amelia had a drink called Cherry Juice which sold for a penny a glass… There, for a few hours at least, the deep bitter knowing that you are not worth much in this world could be laid low.” (  )

The Sultan of (Mood) Swing

My endorphins for some reason are on the rise.

Below is my new office window, twice the size as it was before; and my new Verilux, which is a SAD*-alleviating light source put out by a company in Waitsfield VT. My neurologist recommended it. So far it’s 100% effective!

And OMG just look at the pretty fall picture outside those windows. I like to think of my widows as picture frames. Lots of people would pay money for pictures like that.

* Seasonal Affective Disorder