Fall 09

White turkeys are the ones generally sold commercially. I meant to take a picture of both the bronze and whites before, but I just have a white before and a bronze after.

And After II (yes, we cook our turkey's upside down, it's part of a very elaborate turkey roasting ritual my husband carries out):

Our white hens that we got last year still lay wonderfully--one big fat white egg a day usually. But, I'm down to 6 now. I had them loose for much of the summer and I guess I lost two to predators.

Cute lucy on the tree ladder.

Lucy and Noah in the back yard.

Mother hen (used to be the rooster I called "sissy chicken") and her 12 chicks out learning how to forage. She is pretty fierce if you get too close, as you can kind of see in this picture. She's a great mother, and she does gather them under her wings, just like the scriptures say God will do for us.
I need to take more pictures of the trees here--it is so gorgeous. Yesterday we got the sod cutter rented again and took out more grass for next year's garden. It seems counterintuitive to follow up my miserable neglected failure of this year with expanded ambitions for next year, but we feel we should try again. The first year was very fulfilling, and we did get some good out of this year's but I was learning how to juggle the work/family/health/garden issues.

Talk about fall, we picked tons of apples yesterday from the neglected tree way back on the property (you have to commando crawl under a fence to get over there, then pass the buckets back over when done). Some of them were so perfect and huge. If we found a wormy one, we threw it to our neighbor's (very grateful) sheep. I have applesauce canning on the agenda this week.

Yesterday I also inventoried my food storage, and I'm not so bad as I thought. We are fervently working on that now. I'll go on record that I think the constant media talk of signs of recovery is just that--talk--and I personally think we haven't yet seen the worst of it. I realize only 20% of economists agree with me on that, though.

I heard a comment in general conference that perfectly summed up what I've been feeling as I've been reading about both the economy and studying the scriptures much more than I have before (funny how well they go together!)

It was D. Todd Christofferson who said, "We cannot presume that the future will resemble the past—that things and patterns we have relied upon economically, politically, socially will remain as they have been."

I think there is a lot of false security thrown about in the name of what has always happened, but real security is in obedience to and trust in God and trying to live by the Spirit.

Sigh

I watched a clip from "The Crash" from PBS this morning and have been ruminating about where things are going with this crazy world. I couldn't agree more with Megan's post today (and LOVED the videos). There's no point in worrying about it, we just need to do what we can to take care of ourselves, our own friends and families.

The bailout news everyday makes me sick to my stomach, "The Crash" explains it perfectly, although he takes 30 minutes to do what he could in 5 and is self-important about it, but the bailouts are just so wrong. We are trying to prop up a way of life that was unsustainable on so many levels.

I don't regret my support of Obama, I guess I felt like if the plane's going down I wanted the pilot to be calm, a good communicator, intellectually engaged, well-read and open to many options. But in the face of what we're dealing with, the policies of the left are just as destructive in different ways as the policies of the right, and I get almost as angry and frustrated reading the paper as I did before, but I guess my vote helped pay for that "almost." I guess we just got to choose which brand of bad choices would lead us down the toilet.

Sorry to be so negative about it--if you are still looking on the sunny side and seeing stocks as nothing but bargains right now, please go read another blog with my blessing. :)

Well, at least we can still have our sense of humor about it. I stole this relevant video (also from Megan's blog), laughed myself silly every time I watched it.

Birthday

I woke up under-medicated, under-estrogened and feeling like a train wreck. I took a handful of pills and slept another couple hours and tried again. Then I had a nice day. --French Toast
and Pot Roast . I worked on getting my recipes online so I could find them easier all in one place like Shauna, but it won't be done for a few more Sundays.

Happy Birthday to my dear sweet Birthday Buddy Michele , I'm thinking happy thoughts for you today.

Since I'm in the camp who believes our national crisis is only beginning and the natural and unavoidable consequences of our collective behavior for many decades (and not in the camp who thinks it is a creation of that evil media that is too happy to report on all those scary economic reports, and really everything would be hunky-dory if we all stopped believing the news)–I found this article a sobering and good read, thought I'd pass it along.

Rich: America in Denial

Well, here it is.

I decide to log on quick tonight and see the news on the bailout negotiations. I see an 8-minute-old article that says WaMu has failed and been seized by the government. I just put in David's paycheck today.

I go in and use bill pay to pay everything that needs to be paid.

I call David in Florida and tell him to get the rest out of the ATM.

The WaMu ATM says no.

The bank across the street's ATM says, "Bank routing number not found."

What is that old proverb?

"May you live in interesting times."

Another epiphany and clarification II

First, I got a great email from my friend Lisa who challenged my "sins of the left" vs. "sins of the right" claim because the subtle yet dramatic sexualization of our culture and the decline of the family is worse than financial oppression. It took me a very long letter to my friend Lisa to realize exactly what I really thought on the matter.

(Sorry, my friend, but our relationship is sustained almost entirely by friendly political debate, which gives you the less-filtered email version!--oh, and I changed my preferences, FYI, so you can comment.)

I went on and on about all the abominations of the right (not the voters, the politicians) far beyond financial matters, and in my mind, more evil (think murder, violence, torture, secret abominations, hubris, grinding the faces of the poor and the destruction of millions of families at home and abroad). I'll spare you the details of that (for now). Note the fancy new quote widgets for context.

In the end, I realized that I sincerely believe the "sins of the left" -- let's just say it--abortion and same sex marriage -- simply do not have political solutions, only spiritual ones.

On the other hand, whether it is true or not, I believe that the "sins of the right" also involve murder of innocents and brutally attack the family, yet they still do have some room to be solved politically. So that's how I vote.

And a tangent: When it comes to the decline of the family, it's not just at the feet of same-sex marriage. It is at the feet of divorce, selfishness and the idea that marriage is passe. It's at the feet of people who think that the idea that a child needs a father and a mother is outdated, not a true psychological and spiritual need. People of every persuasion have come to feel that marriage is not a social entity at all, just a fuzzy happy place about love and whatnot.

The fact is, marriage, from a legal, economic, historical, social and spiritual standpoint, is an office with a function far beyond warm fuzzies and the couple itself. Because of that, the damage done on the same sex side is being handily matched by the heteros.

So, there's that. Oh, I love having a place I can talk crazy talk.

And the clarification: It was implied when I said that I knew civilation would collapse without the bailout that the flipside of that would be that I believed it would not collapse with the bailout. Not so. I think it's likely to collapse either way.

It just smells SO fishy. W, who has had no shame in making hasty and self-serving decisions in the name of urgency, has a record of this, and he is soon to be out of office. "Hurry! No questions! No time for checks and balances! Just hand me the money! Hurry, don't ask, don't wait, just hurry and give me what I want, or we will all be in breadlines by Christmas!"

Maybe he understands we will all be in breadlines by Christmas regardless, and he just wants to make sure he and his buddies get a little stashed away.

They are selling the taxpayer bad debt and telling us we'll get a great return on our investment. Put simply, if that were true, then the firms would keep those debts, wouldn't they?

The American people vastly oppose this--yet the leadership says it must and will happen. It's going to be interesting.

In other news, David's out of town and the crazy 16 hour days from day care drop off through very busy work and driving and pickups and dinner, and errands, and teaching students, and bedtime--it is seriously crazy. With this schedule, I have no license to rant to my blog or Lisa on these things, yet I also have no husband to rant to (when he's home, every night consists exchanges of, "OMGosh, did you HEAR what happened TODAY?!!", "Wow! NO, but did YOU hear . . . ")

If I don't get it out, I might head might explode. I've never been so riled up about politics in my life.

I'm off to bed to dream of crumbling economic infrastructure.

Day Two

I may have to switch back to weekly eventually, since I can't just say, "Did some marketing stuff at my job today." The job is going great, I see some exciting things happening with the company and they are booming, which is weird, since apparently today the "experts" have finally caught a whiff of reality and realize our economy is officially tanking. Some international banking officials have actually said they expect a Great Depression-esque situation. Made me think I really need to have a cow--by which I mean, buy a cow.

So, there's a paradox between my work and the pulse of the world on that point. I actually did some writing today--some promotional blurbs for merchants. I actually used the words "savings a la mode." Granted, the merchant was pie-related. I'm a hack.

Well, my home time is cut short these days, just dinner, baths, bed, stories, then running outside to weed as much as possible before dark. I've gotta get on that.

My friend Pam is coming to visit tomorrow!! I haven't seen her in years, although we talk often. I'm so excited!

Good things come in ugly packages

I admit this is not generally true, but true in this case. After reading this article in the LA Times about analysts' projections of life when oil hits $200/barrel (in the next 6-12 months--that's $7 gas) I can see first how crippling it will be to lose something our daily life is so dependent on as well as why more extreme environmentalists are applauding the higher prices.

Oh no! Without cheap oil we will have to:

• Bring manufacturing back to the United States from China!
• Start to keep our money in our own communities by buying goods and services locally!
• Be unable to cheaply eat oil-derived food additives and preservatives (see coal: fun and yummy)
• Have to pay more for our inane practice of moving our food around the world and country!
• Have to eat foods in season!
• Pay more for the oil-derived chemicals we use to pollute our products and homes!
• Over the next few years, adjust from sprawling, anonymous commuter towns to more insular communities!

Oh no!

This is all overly-simplistic, of course. This process could be very ugly and devastating on a personal level, especially to those required to do long commutes to support their families. Maybe we can't do it and it will be irreversibly crippling. But whatever steps we can take to lower our dependence on cheap, imported products, processed oil-based food, food shipped from far-flung places, etc. etc., the easier this forced change will be for our family.

Read the article--it's an interesting mental exercise, and apparently is becoming quickly an actual fact of life.