Things that make me happy!

Summer

Sunflowers

Books I’m excited about

Provisions for the week

Of course what made you happy yesterday won’t necessarily make you happy tomorrow. You’ve got to find what makes you happy over and over and over again.

I had Barbie. I had the Barbie Townhouse. The elevator was very cool.

But I have next to no memories of playing with Barbie.

I have memories of the various Fisher Price dollhouses and playing with them, particularly with my little sister, who called the little dolls “Peoples”. I have memories of my friend’s dollhouse and having a blast playing with it with her, right before we got too old for such things.

Those dollhouses all had family units, lots of characters to play off each other. Barbie was just Barbie. I know this is going to sound anti-feminist – but it should, as I had an anti-feminist childhood. But what did you DO with a character who was just a single woman? Did I have any role models of single women? Zip, nada. I know Barbie had Ken and maybe friend-Barbies. But still, I think that was the reason Barbie wasn’t so much fun. I had no idea what to do with a single woman in a townhouse, once she’d gone up and down the elevator a few times.

Peak Life.

14th Star – Railcar Refresher – made with yuzu, really interesting (and good)

Goodwater – German Wheat – loved

Mill River – Watermelon Gose – mmm!

Switchback – Katie’s Love Poem – ‘a traditional Grodzsikie’ – what the hell is that? Polish wheat. We both liked

Switchback – Smoked Oyster Stout – mostly smoke, I really liked the smokeds this session

Lawson’s Finest – Elderberry Gose – loved

This is a very scenic bit of landscaping we’ve added to the front yard this year. You just throw some aspen logs down and let the weeds grow up between them.

This evening I had the classic rock station on playing “Lyin’ Eyes” by the Eagles, which is really a crossover country song. I had this very brief period age 17 or 18 when I liked to listen to the country music station in the kitchen. I used to stand there washing dishes and listen and imagine my future, someday, with my own little kitchen, busy domesticating for my future family. I was so eager to begin my adult life at 18! I imagined I’d get married right after college, of course to my current boyfriend, and we’d live somewhere that wasn’t Staten Island; I imagined it being Wichita, and I imagined lots of kids. Poor me! I had seen so very, very little of the world, literally and figuratively. How could I have formed any realistic vision? I did the best I could with limited information.

Anyway there I was tonight, washing lettuce leaves at the sink of my own little kitchen, listening to a country song while domesticating for my own family of one spouse and five goats. “All my dreams have come true!” I thought.

I can still sing for your a few bars of several top country hits of 1986-1987.

It’s funny how in my childhood home there was this pleasant little window above the kitchen sink, just like I have now. Well, I guess most homes have a window above the kitchen sink; but it helped with the memory.

So I’m only half-joking when I said my dreams had come true. They had. Just the details changed. Because people don’t change, only the details do; and the details naturally change based on all the contingencies of life. All the wacky things that had to align that had me marry the person I did and end up in this house with this crazy hobby of angora goats. I didn’t realize at 17 that this is the nature of life, and that the visions I was forming were just my current wild-ass guesses at the future, not to be set in stone. I took everything so seriously. I could not stray. I’m not sure if I could go back in time if it would do any good; I can’t see myself listening to me. I had to get whacked upside the head by real life to shake me out of my rigidity.

Spinning wheel around my neck, and bike helmet on my head.

In keeping with this and this taken in Bozeman MT, the above taken in Middlebury VT.

I’m afraid we are going to miss out on the irises.