Gotta love a new handbag!  I bought this fantastic, destined to be mine from conception chicken purse from my friend Gillian.  She runs a sustainable sewing company and makes some really neat little things.  It arrived in the mail yesterday and I can’t wait to get some use out of it in the spring.  (Wearing it around the house is only satisfying to a point).

The kids are sickER today.  Poor miserable dabs.  Still running high fevers, still oozing green snot, still coughing and hacking like 8o year old smokers.  To add insult to injury for poor Meeps, her top two teeth have decided this would be the prime time to cut their way through her gums!  (Scott says “oh, that must be like having cigar cutters on your nipples”.  Yeah something like that.  Or nursing a beaver, take your pick).

In better news, Dishwasher Repairman came this morning and fixed the pump on our (brand new) dishwasher.  They sure don’t make things like they used to, oy.  Thankfully it’s fixed and I no longer have to have wash dishes take up four slots on my daily To-Do list.  Speaking of To-Do lists, I have to admit, these Hatley magnetic lists appeal to me greatly:

Turns out Dishwasher Repairman raises and slaughters his own pigs every year.  And he raises them on pasture!  We were talking about how much better meat tastes when the animal isn’t terrified when it dies (not to mention tortured in an industrial setting while alive) and he was saying that a friend of his (who raises a couple thousand pigs in one of those types of barns) tries to buy HIS pastured happy pork, because the guy won’t even eat his own product.  Nice.

So I got an education about pigs morning.  Here are some highlights: when raising give them each a name and teach them to come when called with marshmellows  (that way if/when they escape you just call their name and they come running back to you); pig slaughter (don’t use a 22 – it just makes them mad); and processing (using a blowtorch instead of a scald tank; Sawzall for the spine only; leave the ‘bacon’ on when you do cut your ribs for sheer culinary ecstacy).

I’m leaving you today with a blast from the past.  This picture is from my early university days.  Women’s Study minor, arguing that women are more than their biology, convinced I would never have the desire for children.  (And then my biological clock went off like a bomb.  Oh, how I could eat every single one of those essays!) Bleaching my hair, piercing my nipples and wrapping myself in PVC for parties.  And definitely, definitely not pining for magnetic ToDo Lists with roosters on them…

(I’m the one on the left).