Cleaning out the Stove

A wood burning stove is not all fun and games. (though, its probably like 95% fun and games!) From time to time one must scoop out all the ashes and dispose of them without getting them all over your carpet, or yourself, or your curious puppy. I have mostly mastered this skill because it needs to be done fairly frequently, and with repetition comes mastery.

However, only once have I tried emptying out the back of the stove. It shouldn't get quite as dirty quite as often, so I don't worry about it too much. But recently, I decided it was time to give it a good cleaning.


Here is what it looked liked closed. Very normal and innocent looking.


Then I opened it...



I found some ash...


some soot....



some plain old grime....


and....



A dead bird!

Its kind of hard to see - but its body is that lump just above the brown leaf. Its head is not the furthest from the camera, wings to the right and left.


Needless to say, it was gross. And I realized I had a decision to make. I could leave the bird in the stove, not make a fire (now that I knew it was there, smoking it further was just a gross idea) and wait to let Mon Amour take care of it. OR I could take it out myself, and start the fire like I planned.

I decided on the latter, reasoning that it couldn't be much worse then the dozens of mice I have removed from traps in the past 6 months.

Well, it was. I had great intentions of taking its picture outside of the stove...to further document the gross-ness. However, as soon as I poked with with my stove-shovel, my nose informed me that this would need to be a speedy operation. (Marge's nose, on the other hand, thought it smelled like dinner....so it was imperative that I move even more quickly) Quickly into the double layered plastic bag it went - and just like that it was tied tightly shut and on its way to the dumpster.

Once I managed to clear my mind of gross thoughts, I discovered that I was quite pleased with myself. Smoked bird removal is much more impressive then dead mouse removal, and I can do both. (Though I will confess I would prefer refrain from doing either for a very very long time...if only our chimney had a cover to keep the birds from coming in....or the fields some corn in it to tempt the mice out of the house. Oh well.)

Marshmallow Toasting

My second favorite part of my wood stove (second to the fact that it heats the house) is the fact that you can, in fact, roast marshmallows in it. It is a fairly simple process:


First, build a fire. Let it die down some so that it is mostly really really hot coals...not flames.




Then add a marshmallow.



And toast to perfection.



Enjoy.
So much fun.

The Birds II: The Sequel

Actually, its more like a mini series than just a sequel at this point. Cause these bird, all multi-thousands of them, have made an appearance at my house just about every day this week. Which is nice, cause it has allowed me to get some more photos and videos. Sadly I have yet to capture something truly impressive....I think my camera needs more zoom or something....but you can get a small sense of the awesomeness of this spectacle the these new scenes.

First, some photos.


Then some video:




Don't forget to turn on/up the sound for this next one. It is an essential part of the video.

Oh, and you have to watch all the way through. It gets even more exciting at the end. Really, it does.

Yeah...I fear its' still not communicating the full extent of the awesomeness.
But my sister can attest to the awesomeness now. She hung out with me on Wednesday, and got to see it first hand! So, if you don't think this is cool, ask my sister. She will tell you of its coolness.

My Cold-Blooded Puppy

I would be the first to admit that we keep our house cold.
Before we got the stove up and running I would work from home all day long, wrapped up in sweaters, blankets and warm socks; and I would still end up with stiff, cold fingers at the end of the day.

However, now that we have our stove in good working order, it is hardly uncomfortable. In fact it can sometimes be quite cozy. Right now the galileo thermometer (which is the most accurate gauge we have) reads 80+ degrees. (it might lie...but even 10 degrees of lying in this case still indicates the room is quite comfortable)

Yet, somehow, the dog is not warm enough.
So she lays here:


....actually...that was just the beginning ...
Now she prefers to nap here:



It is toooo cute.
However, she loses track of time quite easily, and while a little heat is good, I am pretty sure that she is baking her brain. She's going to fry it to a crisp!
I made her move after she had been under there for a while...and as soon as she got up she started panting like crazy....she was incredibly thirsty!
I thought that dogs had some kind of sense of homeo-stasis. But apperently not ours. If we let her, she would be medium-well at this point.

A great way to start a Saturday...

This morning I got up (slept in till 7:45am - yay!) and stepped outside (taking the doggy out for her morning ritual) and was delighted to find on my door step this:

A cart full of wood that we can burn! Yay!

The best part is that on the way out the door, I thought to myself "Hmm...I think we are completely out of wood. (having burned the last piece just the day before) I guess we won't have a fire today. All day...in our small farm house...without being able to utilize its coolest feature. Lame."

But, happily, I was wrong. The fire has been blazing all day long. Thanks to the wonderful timing of the random gifts of wood from our landlord/lady (the timing, of course, having been orchestrated by God, who cares for even the "birds of the air" (Matthew 6:26) who taught us to pray for our "daily bread" (Matthew 6:11) who said not to "worry about tomorrow" (Matthew 6:34) and who delights to give "good gifts" to his children (Matthew 7:11) )

It was a great way to start the day.

The Birds

First of all. "The Birds" is a ridiculous movie. I saw it for the first time this summer (having previously been banned from seeing it cause it was just that scary. It was creepy at some points, disgusting at others. But when it ended....I was like...umm...no, sorry, that was lame.



However, on a couple occasions since moving to the farm I have had my own "The Birds" moments (without the being attacked bit). Usually it involves a very large flock of small black birds. They have a very high pitched chirp, and when their are thousands of them, it is really obnoxious. It drives Marge crazy!


Yesterday, however, "The Birds" were geese. White geese. Comfortably well over 1,000 of them. It was incredible! They are very skiddish, so its hard to get close and get a good picture. But here is the best I could do: (they are the white clump)

....perhaps this video will do the amazingness more justice.
Disclaimers - Its long, and I was on the phone so you will hear my voice at the begining...which I hate, and would remove except later you can actually hear the birds to, and I did not manage to hold the cmaera still...so forgive me if you experience any nausea. Despite all this I still think its pretty cool!

We Can Paint!

In recent weeks Mon Amour and I have decided that we are perfectly ok with (well, more like, mostly ok with) renting a home, rather than buying, for a significant portion of the future. This is a drastic shift for us. Pretty much since we got married we have been talking about buying a house - when could we afford it, where would it be, etc, etc. But, for countless reasons, buying a house right now does not make sense for us. So here we are. In our small farm house. Which will probably be home for a while.

Which means....

It's time to PAINT!

We got permission from our landlady today to paint the house how ever we want! So, off to Home Depot we went. We picked up paint chips, color guides, and mentally priced out some paint. We came home - and armed with paint chips, scissors, tape, and a none-to-skilled designers eye, we began to create a vision. So far, this is what the house looks like:

Kitchen (it really is green...the lighting is bad)


Spare Bedroom

Living Room

Main bedroom
(note the sweet sunset just barely visible out the window. Yeah - farm sunsets are awesome)

Hehe. Don't knock the color choices yet. Nothing is final. Due to the rapidly approaching holidays as well as some unexpected and expensive car repair - both time and money are short this month. But come January - the painting will begin!

The question is, where to start.

1. Bathroom? (the smallest, but also the one with the most cracks in the walls)
   
2. Kitchen? (the first room you see in the house)
   
3. Living Room? (the "show room", yet...the one with the most boring color plan)
   
4. Bedrooms? (need to get rid of that wood paneling...but no clue what color to paint them)

Wildlife

Today was filled with wildlife. Lots of wildlife.
(Disclaimer: This is a long post. And there are no pictures. For that I apologize. Nonetheless, I hope it is at least mildly enjoyable)

This morning Marge and I went for a walk. Around the cow pasture we went. I believe a diagram would help this story:


The brown box is my house. The green stuff is the cow pastures. The grey is my driveway. Everything else is empty corn fields. The picture is NOT to scale.

So there we were, Marge and I (represented, respectively, by the rabbit and the smiley face). Walking around the pasture, on our customary morning walk. We got some ways away from the house, when, off in a not-too-distant corn field, I see something that looks like a dog, just hanging out. I of course assume that it is a dog belonging to one of the hunters who are currently on the premises. It did seem odd that the dog would be so far from the hunters, which were no where to be seen.

Then is got up - and it was not a dog, at least not in the strictest sense of the word. It was, in fact, a fox. (represented in our diagram by the small tiger picture). This is actually the second time Marge and I have run into a fox on our walk. Had I been by myself, I do not think I would have fretted; I am confident in my ability to make myself sufficiently scary to ward off a fox. However, I do not know how foxes feel about small dogs and whether or not Marge would feel the need to meet the fox, or vice versa. So, just as we did last time - Marge and I turned around to walk quickly back to the house.

That is when the tiger...I mean, the fox...began to run. In our direction! (sort of...see diagram)



We froze. Much to my great good fortune, Marge is a lousy hunter, she was busy sniffing for worms the whole time, completely oblivious to the fox. And so once I concluded that the fox was not actually running towards, but more likely, running oblivious to us, I was able to enjoy the moment. The fox was beautiful. It was one of those moments where I wish I had remembered my camera...but at the same time he was moving too fast to get any kind of picture of him. You never really think of foxes as being elegant and graceful - but they are. I watched him run across the whole pasture and out the other side. Twas gorgeous.



My second wildlife encounter was less fun. I was building a fire in my woodstove to warm the house before settling in to a long day of work. I grabbed a piece of wood from the tub - and instantly dropped it. A spider. At least 3 inches across. And of the variety that nightmares are made out of (actually...is there any other kind??). I freaked out.

Then collected my thoughts, decided to look again. Maybe it was dead. I poked the tub with my foot. EEK.
No. not dead. very alive. I freaked out again.

Those of you who know me that I don't often "freak out". I get frightened, but freaking out is not typically in my nature. This time, however, i must confess. I freaked out - ran to the opposite end of my house (which, to my credit, is not huge - I did not run a very long ways). While contemplating what to do, and envisioning the spider slowly creeping towards me (which it actually wasn't) and seriously freaking out about the fact that the spider was between me and the only door to safety (i.e. the outdoors) there is in my house, and trying to tell my self that a spider in your house is NOT a legit reason to call your landlord for assistance, I became increasingly panicked, and was on the verge of tears (no lie. I have no idea the last time I freaked out this bad...I think it must have been in Milan 2.5 years ago.....).

But suddenly, I determined to gather my courage (whatever small courage I could find), and take care of the problem myself. I grabbed the dogs leash (without the dog - she was asleep. she is soooo helpful) and crept back to the spider infested bucket. Very gently, so as not to disturb the spider, who was not moving, but looked ready to pounce, I threaded the leash through the tub's handle. With the leash looped through the handle - I got as far away as I could, backing towards the door. I flew open the door - quickly dragged the tub, spider and all outside the house, let go of the leash so that it retracted safely away from the spider, freeing the tub, and ran back inside - closing the door with a slam! Success!

Only one problem - all my firewood was now outside. And I was not going to go near it. It was a cold, cold day at my house.



The final wildlife encounter was much more pleasant. The aforementioned hunters are goose hunters typically. Which makes sense, cause on any given day there are a lot of geese on the farm. Today, however, as the sun was setting (at a ridiculously early 4:30) I took the dog outside to stretch a bit - and there in the field were more Canada Geese than I have ever seen in one place in all my life. There must have been 200+ of them. Just sitting in the field.

Marge startled them (what a great time for her to start hunting!) and they all took off. What an amazing sight. Again, no camera. And no time for it anyway. But, the sky was orange, the pasture green, and geese amazing. Trust me. It was cool.

Free Home Improvements

Cold weather seems to be here to stay. And since I work at home (read: sit in my living room, doing nothing but typing, for 8 hours straight) I am very much aware of my house's inability to stay warm. We don't have a thermostat that reads actual temperatures. Each room has a really antiquated thermostat that has two temperatures - 50, and 90. All the area in between is called the "comfort zone". We do have a galileo thermometer which has, for the past couple of weeks, not managed to sink the 64 bubble. So I know it hasn't gotten above 64. The frugal person inside of me liked this.

However, as I began to realize that sub-64 degrees, coupled with my perpetual lack of activity throughout the day led to a perpetual chill and fingers that couldn't type very fast, I decided it was time to crank up the thermostats (all 4 of them). Up they went - and I sat and waited for a warming sensation that would restore movement to my fingers. It didn't happen. I turned up the heat more. Still nothing.

It didn't take long to realize that all the heat (in the living room at least) was coming out of the vent and going straight out the bay window. Suddenly, my back-burner make-curtains-out-of-the-free-fabric-I-got-from-my-mother-in-law project became my highest priority.

So, without pins, without a tape measure or ruler, and without a pattern, with just my iron and my sewing machine I made these:

For the bay window.
And these:For the kitchen.

They are not perfect. The thread doesn't match the curtains. And seams are not always straight. But guess what?

THEY KEEP THE LIVING ROOM WARM (ish). Yay!

And I kind of like the colors....maybe one day I will paint this place. But for now. Mission accomplished.

Molly

Now might be a good time to introduce you to the other baby creature (other than Marge that is) who has, in her own way, captured my heart here on the farm.

Her name is Molly. Molly is a black angus cow. Born sometime the end of the summer, beginning of the fall (yes, I know, I really should remember her exact birthday...but I don't). Molly was born the same day as another little cow - 2 momma cows, and 2 baby cows. Tragically - both momma cows liked the same baby cow. Neither momma wanted anything to do with Molly. So she was left motherless, friendless, milkless. It was not looking good.

Until my landlady stepped in to save the day (much like she did the day the cows escaped, only this time in a more nuturing, less rodeo-cow-girl fashion). Molly was removed from the pasture and given her own, adorable cow-house near the barns. There she was fed, walked, loved on, etc. Marge and I would visit her often. She did not so much like Marge for a while.

Molly made our farm feel almost like a petting zoo. Those who were perhaps a bit nervous around our all-too-forward dog, could be taken to see Molly, who would have liked to run and hide if she hadn't been tied to her cow-house.

Note - I used to have pics of her as a little cow. Sadly, they were all lost in the week-of-disasters-2008. So, just imagine a cute little black baby cow with huge eyes, and a blue collar. That's her.

One day, we even got to feed. Our landlady said to heat it like a baby's bottle. So we did:


She also said to test it like a baby bottle - by squirting a bit on your wrist. This was more difficult, since it actually required 2 hands to hold it steadily. So...we mostly just guessed at the tempature of the milk. We must have guessed right, cause, goodness gracious, did she ever eat it fast:


It took her maybe 2 minutes to down the entire 1.5 ish gallons. Truly intense.

Truly a we-don't-live-in-the-city-anymore moment.

Fire! (a.k.a Free Heat)

It has been a long process from start to finish. There were a few weeks of waiting on our landlord to clean the stove. A few days of denial that we would actually have to de-rust the stove ourselves. There were a few afternoons of me scrubbing the stove. There were some trips to the hardware store to buy the appropriate bolts. Then there was the move-in party. Then there were the rusty pipes that needed replacing. And the vents on the front that were stuck shut. Yeah, its been complicated. But finally....


Success!

And a video. Its not really interesting - but its kind of cozy:






It was a little smokey. Actually - a lot smokey. But I think the stove was drying out (I had previously soaked it in WD-40....so I guess a little smoke was to be expected). We are hoping next time their will be less smoke. If so - then we will have found a nearly-free and super-fun way to heat our small house.

A Serious Mouse Problem

Whenever you decide to do something in life, there will be undoubtedly follow a few nay-sayers who manage to find something negative to say about your decision. For example, when I decided to seriously consider going to Washington College, I knew I wanted to go there because it had a good English program, was a small school, and was fairly close to home. I was very excited about it. The first question I received from the very first person I told outside of my immediate family was; "Isn't that the college where they have naked day?!?" Yeah...way to burst my bubble. (to answer the question: yes, technically, unofficially, some of the students on campus celebrate a version of naked day. That is not the reason I went to WaC. Nor was it a good enough reason NOT to go).

Anyway...back to the story at hand.

When we moved in to our farm house, the bubble burst-er was "You're going to get rats." Yeah, that made us feel good about our decision.

Well, we don't have rats (that we know of). But we do have mice - and a lot of them! It got cold, all the corn was harvested, and suddenly all the mice were relocating into our house. This is what we have learned.

• You know you have mice when you start seeing little mouse droppings on the counter
• You know you have a lot of mice when you can hear them running through the ceiling and the walls when you go to sleep.
• You know the mice have gotten comfortable with you when they run through your living room while you are sitting there quietly typing at your computer.
• You know your dog has gotten too used to the mice when she will nap through one running across her bed.
  
• You know that you have really uppity mice when they will crawl up on the arm of your sofa, while you and six of your friends are sitting in your sofas, talking loudly

• But, you know you have serious mouse problem when the mice start eating through your ceiling:

(yes, our walls are wood paneling and our ceilings are also wood paneling. There must have been a sweet sale on wood paneling when they built the house)

So, yes. The rumors were true. We have 3 holes in our ceiling. We have a serious mouse problem.

Our Stove Party

When we moved in to our small farm house, there was one piece of our living room we did not understand. It looked like this:


For the past 4+ months, we have affectionately as our "brick stage". It was my least favorite part of the house. Until now!

After a significant amount of scrubbing, WD 40, and much heavy lifting on the part of mon amour and some friends, we have transformed the stage into this:



Thanks to everyone who helped move the stove this weekend! We are just a few stove pipe pieces away from having a real, functioning wood burning stove in our house!

Pretty in Pinkness

Once upon a time (more specifically the late fall immediately following the summer we got married) my husband and I decided that it was time to invest in some flannel sheets. A brilliant decision considering the fact that we kept our house at a chilly 60 degrees (and only that cause the landlady said we had to keep it that warm). Consequently we found ourselves at the local outlet center at the linen store that was conveniently going out of business (read: having sweet clearance sales!). That said, there were still 3 or 4 different colors of nice flannel sheets left. Now came the big decision.

What color should we get?
Obviously, we selected these:


Doesn't the red go so nicely with our black comforter? yup. That's what we thought.

Until we washed them. Now, I am smart enough to know not to wash red sheets with ANYTHING else the first time you wash them. However, I did NOT realize that you actually must wash them by themselves FOREVER. Never ever ever should they be allowed to share a washing machine (even one washing in cold water) with anything else.

Otherwise you will get something like this:


It really is pinker than it looks. In real life they look approximately this pink:

Well, maybe that doesn't help as much as it should have. Just take my word for it. They are much pinker than they should be.

Now, I know that when we purchased these red sheets, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable decision. What could be more fun than bright red flannel sheets? In retrospect, I don't know what we were thinking. Along with fun red sheets, comes either half-full loads of sheets-only laundry, or fun pink "whites".

A Blanket Fort

Background info: I live in a very small house. This very small house has a lot of doorways. But only 2 actual doors. One to come in from outside, and one for the bathroom (this door is actually only about 5'8" tall. Tall folks, like most of my family, must duck to enter safely). We are very grateful for both of our doors. Our house also has a lot of windows (12, actually) and only 2 of those windows have blinds or shades of any kind on them. Which room has been blessed with such fabulous privacy, you ask? The laudry room. Yup, our laundry is very safe from prying eyes, or bleaching sunlight.

The remaining 6 empty door frames (including the ones to the bedrooms) and 10 windows, make for a lot of open space. Similar to the field in which we live. We do not particularly enjoy living in such a poorly insulated fishbowl of a practically one-room house. However, we also don't want to put a lot of time or money into this house that we rent. All these factors combined along with a ton of free fabric from my wonderful sewing-quilting-fabirc collecting mother in law yielded this fabulous solution:

We have turned our house into a Blanket Fort!

Like this:

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Blanket-Fort

Well, actually, something more like this:

Our doors (and in one case a "wall") are made out random pieces of fabric or old curtain sheers, and all the windows will soon be covered various other pieces of random fabric. To hang everything we put a nail in on either side of the top of the door frame, and strung clothes line between the two nails. This rather simplistic way of overcoming the lack of curtain rods reminded me of the blanket forts my siblings and I would make growing up. I was basically hanging sheets across all the doorways to make it feel "cozier" and "more exciting". It felt wonderfully childish.

The perks of this home project are practically endless.

1. It was free.


2. It gives the house "character" (in case it didn't already have enough)
   
3. It makes the house look bigger (yeah, don't know how that happened, but with all the "doors" closed, the place seems much bigger)
4. Random people working on the farm can't stare into (and all the way through) our house any more.
5. All the heat from the vents (which are all directly under windows) does not instantly leave the house.


6. We don't necesarrily have to heat the whole house because we can close off rooms we don't use


7. Where once our house felt like a box, with glass walls, where we hung out cause we had no place better to go....it now feels like a home!

Marge

Today was less exciting than yesterday. So I shall take this moment to introduce you to the smallest member of our household (excepting the mice, who we don't name. So they don't count)

This is Marge:

She is 100% Beagle. 7 months old (well, she will be 7 months on Friday). And the cutest, sweetest, most stubborn little creature you will ever meet.

We are not ashamed to admit that for the time being she is our baby. See:
When we found out that moving to our farm house meant we could get a dog, we immediately decided we had to have one. And that it had to have a sweet name. We had two requirements for the name

1. It could not be a "dog name" (i.e. Fido, Spot, Lassie)
2. It could definitely not be anything we would ever want to name a child (I knew someone who named their dog a name they really liked, thinking they were done having children. Then, oops, they had another child, so they named it after the dog. weird. just plain weird)

Marge was the first name that came to mind. And it stuck.
And it fits. She is such a Marge. I don't really know what that means. But if you knew our dog, you would know.

Marge has had many a grand adventure since becoming part of our family:

She has been overwhelmed by the vastness of the farm. (she was so tiny!!!)

She has fought with the cows.

She has stayed in a hotel (for our 1st anniversary trip)

And she has had surgery (that was an adventure and a half!)

Fun Marge Facts:
She scarfs her dinner down in less than 5 seconds.
Her ambition in life is to be a lap dog (i.e., LOVES to be held)
She loathes socks with a passion. On your feet or off, she will eat them.


She is sometimes more ridiculous than we bargained for.
But really, life would be lame with out her. So I guess she can stay.

The Day the Cows got Away

Mere moments after I started up this blog and posted my first post, I started having second thoughts. They went something like this, "What in the world am I going to blog about. I don't actually do anything interesting. I get up, clean the house, go to work, come home, make dinner, do more house cleaning, and go to bed. No one wants to read (or for that matter, write) about that! I don't even have neighbors with interesting quirks".

But then yesterday happened. My only neighbors, the cows, proved to be very quirky. And all my fears of an uneventful existence were dispelled.

It started off like a fairly typical day. I left pretty early in the cold and miserable wind and rain to go have breakfast with a friend. Upon returning, as I turned down our driveway, I noticed the cows seemed to be a little closer to the house than they usually are. In fact, they were in my drive way and all around my house. I have a tendency to over-react about farm-life stuff (i.e. being very much concerned for the well being of a new-born cow that looked a little sick ish. Apparently they all look that way right after they are born. Who knew). So this time I tried to come up with a reasonable non-crisis type explanation for why the cows would be out of the pasture. However, as I parked my car, and went to open my door, only to be greeted by a very large black cow, reasonable explanations became impossible. Cows are much bigger and scarier when they are mud covered and on the same side of the fence as you. I called my landlady.

"Hi Landlady, there are cows in my driveway"
"Big cows or little cows?" (note, the baby cows like to wander out of the pasture. Little cows in my driveway would be significantly less shocking)
"Quite a few big cows"
"Oh....I'll be right there" *click*


By this time the herd had wandered past my house and were headed towards the nursery that is past the fields. So my puppy and I felt it was safe to venture outside. We watched the cows get smaller and smaller in the distance, wondering if this had ever happened before, and what the ramifications of losing that many cows would be. And where did the cows think they were going? Would people in this part of the country take in stray cows they way many people take in stray cats and such?

Soon enough, my landlady and a fellow who works on the farm showed up. They quickly assessed the situation and the landlady turned around and drove back to the farm house to get her "buggy" (i.e. super-cool-all-terrain golf cart that they use to get about the farm quickly). A few minutes later the buggy goes flying down the drive way!

I watched the whole situation unfold, but I am still not entirely sure how she did it, but soon enough all the cows were rounded up and heading quickly back up the driveway, and back to their pasture.


I enjoyed the whole experience because I got to "save the day" in a way, and I got to do it from the warmth of my living room, while my landlady was getting soaked and muddy rounding up those big creatures. My puppy enjoyed the excitement mostly because she enjoys interesting smells, and there are now cow pies in our driveway which are much easier to get to than the ones in the pasture. All in all, a very exciting morning!

There is never a dull moment when living on a farm I suppose. This incident may even top the time where I encountered a bear while walking the dog. But that story will be for another post.

Hi my name is...

I suppose an introduction is the place to start. I live on a farm (but am not a farmer) with my husband, and beagle puppy (Marge). How we came to live on a farm, or to be married, or to own a dog, are all stories for another time. The important parts of the story for the time being are, why am I blogging, and why "InDeeds"

I have started blogging for one simple reason: I have recently acquired a lot of spare time. Despite my full time jobs personally (as a wife and puppy-care-taker) and professionally (as an Event Manager), starting at the beginning of September, with my husbands re-entry into the world of academia, I find myself with many quite evenings with a paper-writing-husband, and sleeping dog, and clean house, and nothing to do. Hence the blog.


Why InDeeds? Well, you don't have to know me for very long to know that I get stuck on certain words or phrases. Some are passing phases; they may come and go with in a few weeks. One word that has stuck for an indescribably long time is the word "Indeed". It is so universally useful, that in a typical conversation I will use the word many many times. I use it so much, in fact, that a friend of mine has learned to see it coming, and will say it for me from time to time during our conversation. So my title choice thought process went something like this: "Well, I say it a lot. That counts for something. And, I shall be telling stories, making observations, and the like, and 'indeed' an appropriate response to pretty much any story. And on top of that, I will from time to time be writing about actual 'deeds' or actions. So...it just works".


That's all for now. Nothing worth writing home about I suppose. But hopefully it will get more interesting from here. Eventually I will post pictures...and perhaps even share the story behind why I have almost no pictures that were taken prior to October 08. But not now. For now - goodnight!

P.S. - Oh, and the picture at the top was taken at sunrise from my driveway.