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.

Florestan T. Goat, 2011-2022

We got Florestan as a kid in 2011 from Grandview Farm in Washington, VT. They were getting out of angora goats; they’ve since become very successful with Gotland sheep. They had two buck kids for sale. His brother, I recall, had some more reasonable name, like Fern. For whatever reason, we chose Florey.

He grew into a behemoth, as you can see. Sara used to refer to him as “Buster.” He got mean. I blame Xopher for the way he socializes buck kids. 2 out of 3 times we had a long-term buck, twice they turned out mean, and those were times we got the buck as a kid. X “plays” with them and I think he teaches them to challenge us.

So it was just the way he was raised. He was mean, and he hurt us from time to time, but he was only being himself. He wasn’t a bad goat. Just smelly and ugly and mean. And I MISS him, dammit.

Hold the Wheel & Drive

Yesterday in that well-known journal of philosophical studies, popularly known as the AAA magazine, I came across this: “Expectations are the great enemy of happiness.”

But what my esteemed colleague is neglectfully discounting is this: Expectations are so often a source of happiness, in and of themselves.

And consider another of his points: “Travelers with fewer expectations… maintain an attitude of radical acceptance, open to whatever comes their way, good or bad, and as a result have more authentic encounters with the great big world out there.”

For many of us… or some of us… or at least one of us, though, this radical acceptance affords a novel joy for only a brief period of time, with happiness soon giving way to a sense of aimlessness. Then pointlessness. Then futility. Then we are dealing with a full-on depressive episode.

Do not discount the fact that purpose and drive can be true sources of happiness. “Authentic” even.

Teetotality

I’m doing a Dry April. Observation so far: it’s boring waiting for food to come without enjoying a drink. Don’t tell me to order something non-alcoholic; I hate drinking calories. I think of beer almost like a foodstuff. I like the complexity of wine. Never cared for most cocktails. Not interested in having a root beer or mocktail out of boredom. Also, I think beer and wine complement food, whereas sugary drinks don’t. (Hence not into cocktails.) Will just try harder to make conversation.

All the Things! Kitchen Cupboard Edition

Cupboard #1. Found an unopened bag of popping corn bought from the boy scouts years ago. I never make popcorn. Yet I’m embarrassed to say I’ve been known to buy $7 bags of gourmet organic local pre-popped popcorn in fun flavors. Anyway I said I should really make popcorn some time. Then I said dude it’s Saturday afternoon, make some damn popcorn. I looked up online how to make popcorn. I made it. It was delicious. I mean, addictively delicious. I said, why do I never make popcorn? It takes almost no time. It’s relatively healthy. It’s relatively cheap. I mean it’s effectively free once you’ve bought it from the boy scouts and it’s sitting in your cupboard.

This is just one out of three shelves, representing a little taste of my kitchen:

Cupboard, Food Items

In progress

1

Hannaford diet drink mix, peach tea, unopened

3

Hannaford diet drink mix, raspberry lemonade, packets

1

Crystal Lite, pink lemonade, packet

1

Non-fat dry milk powder, bag, 8 quarts worth

x

1

Dried lentils, bag

1

Dried red kidney beans, bag

1

Dried black-eyed peas, bag

1

Grits, bag

x

1

Popping corn, bag

1

Vitamin C drops, bag

1

Ghirardelli baking chocolate, bar

x

1

Roasted cocoa nibs from Hawaii, bag

x

1

Dried currants, bag

x

1

Xanthan gum, bag

x

Almond flour

x

All-purpose flour

x

Cake flour

x

Vital wheat gluten

x

Elbow macaroni

x

Organic cane sugar

x

Rye flakes

x

 

Home Again Jiggety Jog

Home after 3 days away. Slipping back into my life like a warm bath of oatmeal.

I offered to bring Xopher home some dark chocolate coconut halva, then forgot to go back and pick it up when he said yeah. Oh well he said, they probably ship. I said, they probably sell it here. There’s really not a hell of a lot you can’t get here anymore, but I still always feel the urge to bring Xopher home some little souvenir.