Thoughst of College, Smells and Sounds of Home

Down to the last few days before leaving the Great Plains back for the ol' South and my last semester. Did I mention yet it was my final semester before I have a Bachelor's in Science? No? Its my last semester. I only have ONE left.
One
Last
Semester!!!!
To be honest, I can't wait. I haven't a clue what I will do once I'm done. Revel in the glory of no more assigned reading, no more writing assignments where I have to b.s. my way through the required page amounts when I feel I can succinctly say the same thing in five (or one) sentances.
Yes, I AM considering further education. However, the dynamics of that degree and school will be completely different.
This season of life has been, in a word, hard. I've been sick with some very serious illnesses, discovered I have genetic complications that run in my family, watched people I deeply care about suffer - either through no fault of their own, or completely because of their own stupidity, but either way, still hard - been constantly told that I must revise this ro change that or mold myself to fill someone else's definition of 'correct.'
Has there been good in it? Of COURSE. I've met amazing people, made amazing friends, seen God work in amazing ways in my life and in others. I've seen Him redeem time, mistakes, people, choices.
But I'm ready to be done. I'm ready to stop living in a bubble of correct doctrine and conformity. I'm ready to see what God has next.
Do I sound cynical? Maybe. Mom and the littles started homeschooling last week, and today was full of trying to stay out of the way, watch them fight old battles that Mom and I used to butt heads against when I was under her skilled tutleage, and trying to decide if I NEEDED to overcome my deep desire to continue procrastinating reading Theology or just continue giving my brain a rest from acadamia before re-engaging it on the 24th.
Anyhoo. Mom wants to go watch Stargate Atlantis with me. :-) I made Souffle for dinner and decafe black tea is simmering on the stove. The littles are bouncing around, finishing final school assignments and asking to play computer games or watch with us, and Kendra is in the kitchen sweeping and muttering how she will NOT stoop to the level of SGA with us but not sure what else to do :-)
Ahh... sweet sounds and smells of home :-)
~Princess Ouch~

Christmas break sum up so far

I've been really bad this year. Last year, I was blogging regularly during the break, had even changed the music on my blog to fit the season. This is... what, the first time I've updated my blog in over a month? And how many posts this year?
Oh well. I'm sure my faithful few followers will survive. :-)

To sum up my break: Moved out of my apartment on campus and put all my stuff in storage. Am staying at a friend's house until February, and then I will move into a house with five other girls. *eek!* I'll admit I have a little apprehension about my new living situations, but the old place simply wasn't working any more for several reasons. So I moved out. I had packed up a bookshelf's worth, but my boyfriend and his dad came up one saturday and we blitzed the apartment and got the whole thing packed, loaded, moved, and unloaded. God bless men!
Visited Ohio for Thanksgiving, finished situating things around Louisville and beyond as far as storage, and somehow didn't drive Amber (my friend I'm staying with) Kyle or his parents crazy. Or if I did, they graciously kept it to themselves. Kyle took Amber and I to Nashville to meet his grandparents, (Pap worked building Ford car's engines for several decades, and likes to play with whoever's car is acting funny. Mine was IT, so he got it for the break) for lunch, see the new Muppet Movie (which was SOOOO good! And funny!) and then go to the Opryland Hotel Christmas Light display. Fun. Fun. Fun.


Then I flew to South Dakota to visit family. The weather was mercifully, gloriously, and amazingly not the frigid arctic blast that I've come to expect, but rather quite mild! Its been in the high 30's to 50's the entire time I've been here. The wind has blasted on occasion, but not as often as usual. Everyone is surprised and I am not complaining one whit. :-) Kendra and Derek are working at a farm close by where the farmer raises 200 culled bull calves to sell for meat once they've grown. So I've been getting up with them to help so they can get done faster. They do get paid by the hour, but they had to work Christmas day and on the day we thought Ethan had a birthday party, so I went to help them get done earlier.

Apart from working and getting sore and too tired, Christmas was really fun. It was one of our more frugal Christmases (as in there weren't piles and piles of packages under the tree this year) but it was still really nice. Mom cooked an AMAZING meal (again) and she and Dad bought me the "John Adams" mini-series and we started watching that together. Well acted, well written, amazing soundtrack, etc. Happy happy happy.

My dear boyfriend was supposed to arrive on the 28th but he got a nassssty 24-hour flu that kept him from flying out that day. Thanks to heroic effort to his dad and no thanks to the airlines or travelocity who charged them another arm and a leg, he was able to fly out the next day. He was smiling but a little drained. Despite all setbacks, we had a nice visit. I've never 'brought a boy home' before, so there was absolutely NO precedent for anyone to follow. Add to that he had been sick and in a part of the country that was as foreign to him as another country, I'd say he did pretty well. He even let Hannah decorate him, as you can see ;-)

He and Ethan bonded over lego's, history, and similar personalities. So the little's vote is very favorable towards him, and Ethan keeps telling me how much he misses Kyle and how fun he was. He DID however inform me that I was 'sappy' with my boyfriend. He determined this to be neither good nor bad, but familiar. I think that's okay... seeing as we've been dating for eight months now!
Many a comment and hopeful question was voiced by friends back at school as to whether or not I would return to school with an engagement ring. I knew I wasn't, but nobody believed me. I turned out to be right and am fine with that. I've enough stuff to figure out this final semester without having to plan a wedding and remain sane and pleasurable company to anyone within a ten-mile radius or phone-conversation with me :-)

Mom and Dad have done an amazing job in rebuilding the house. The contractor is no longer in the picture and they are doing all of the second floor, basement, (attic?) and final touches of the first floor by themselves. The house looks amazing but very very different from when I lived there. Its still the same house, just completely different while still similar.
In the same way, the family has changed. Still the same people and same family, but different. Figuring out how dynamics are supposed to work now that I'm an adult but still their child has been challenging. I don't live at home yet while I'm at home I ought to contribute to the family but at the same time things are completely different. Its been an internal war with myself of not knowing how to jump in or not thinking of ways to jump in soon enough or simply not wanting to jump in as once I go back to Louisville I'll have to hit the ground running again.
Oh well. Sanctification is never a bad thing. I will confess, however, that once I graduate my goal is to be able to get my own place with absolutely. no. room -mates. Selfish? Maybe. Ambitious? Probably, as I just haven't been able to work enough hours to afford it while still taking five classes. But we'll see what God does and where He takes me. I'll also confess I really need to work on some New Year's resolutions: like praying and seeking God more, getting much more disciplined about managing things better, scheduling my time more wisely, etc.
Alright I'm lapsing into musing and therefore rambling. Sorry :-)
I'm flying into Chicago on the 12th and staying with my dear Great-Grandma for a few days before Kyle drives up and gets me. We're still trying to decide how visited-out we will be, and if we want to try and bum around Chicago for a while and then stop in Ohio to see relatives there, or simply zip back to Kentucky. My preference would be to bum and visitate a little more, but will see. :-) Logistics aren't always conducive to idealism. ;-)


~Princess Ouch~

Christmas greetings from the tundra

Back home again, jiggety jig. Well, that is to say, back with family. We are currently residing in a rather new rental home that is gorgeous, but entirely not what we are used to here in the Great Plains. There is a dishwasher, for pete's sake!!! I actually had to ask my 6-year old sister how to run it when Mom and Dad were out having dinner. She didn't know either, so we spent about a minute looking at the machine full of dishes, and finally one of the two of us suggested putting the newly-discovered dishwasher solution in the designated compartment in the door. Miraculously I pushed the right buttons in the right sequence, and the thing produced automatically sterilized dishes in about an hour.
Now the thing about dishwashers is that they don't ever actually WASH the dishes, they simply squirt water and soap suds at the dishes and then rinse it. Therefore we have to make sure the dishes are mostly clean before we put them in, which in my mind is half the job so why not do the other half while we're at it? However since there are now 7 people living here, 'just doing the other half' would take the hour that the dishwasher covers. Okay then.
Anyhoo. Am done with Christmas shopping and did about two thirds of my wrapping last night with my sister. She brought down two mugs full of egg-nog topped with some gourmet cinnamon purchased at the World Market and a bowl full of peppermints and we listened to christmas music on the computer whilst sharing war stories of how this or that was purchased. half the fun of Christmas is not neccesarily the GIFT but the story that goes WITH the gift. We don't do huge gifts here, like i-pods or what have you, but a small collection of tiny gifts that we put lots of thought and hopefully less money into. It drags the time gathered around the Christmas tree out longer, more laughts, more time to eat whatever ambrosia my Mom has concocted for that year, more stories shared.
Looks like we'll get a white Christmas, which is awesome, and the temperatures have stayed above 0 for two days. Happiness!
It's wierd living in this new house (the farmhouse was almost 100 years old) with mocha-colored walls and new kitchen appliances. But its been fun, also helping mom pick out new furniture and hear amazing stories about how so many people around the country even have chipped in to bless the socks off my family.
Now I have to go finish reading a book for class (two more chapters left!!) write a report on it, figure out what reading reports I have left on it, and then that class will be DONE. Which will be 3 out of 4. Whahooo!!

~Princess Ouch~

Full day

Woke up, had breakfast with Dad while Mom filled us in some more about how her weekend at the Homeschool conference went. Then braided Flower's hair while talking with Mom and Feche boy and KB. After herding the cats - I mean the two dogs and two little kids - the four of us went for a walk along the river for about an hour. It was a nice welcome to SD when we got to the river and the pup leapt into the water to investigate what I thought was a rock but turned out to be the front half of a week-dead deer. I pulled the dog out of the water and with difficulty pulled her along the bank to a point where she forgot the deer and leapt into the water towards another "rock." This turned out to be the BOTTOM half of the dead deer. Yummy.

The two kids climbed tree's and fought over who 'claimed' which tree first while the two dogs investigated smells, rolled around, listened to the killdeers singing across the bank and got plenty of burrs in their fur and leads.
We headed back so the kids could start schoolwork and I decided to give the older dog, Diamond, a bath, which she hates. The new pup, Ursa, on the other hand, thinks that water and baths were the best thing invented. So between the pup jumping on my feet, Diamond's feet, and her own feet, and Diamond turning her cowardly tail and trying to escape as much as possible, most of the mud and dirt from the dogs ended up on me and they still didn't end up smelling as sweet as I had originally hoped, and I am sore and slightly bruised. Dumb animals!! I went inside and chatted with Mom a little more and got some lunch between helping pick up here and there before I decided to plant a few of the seedlings that were growing out of their little containers on the porch. (The picture is of mom doing the laundry while we were chatting in the living room) The next thing I knew, there was a family wide weeding and planting fest going on. It was fun, but we all got a little sunburnt and light headed from the heat. Its been warm in the south where College is at, but I haven't been sitting in direct sunlight for hours on end at all this year, and it's just starting to get above the 40's and 50's during the daytime here. It was about 70 maybe, but we were all HOT and sweaty by the end of it. Before we knew it, it was 5 pm and we were all bushed. Flower picked some lilacs and she and I took turns pozing. She's still trying to learn that when one takes pictures, it is a good idea to hold the camera STILL while pushing the shutter button. So most of the pictures she takes are still a bit blurry. But hopefully you get the idea, and it's the thought that counts, right?

So now we are going to crash in front of X-men 1, which no one but me has seen yet. :-D And eat dinner, not sure if the two will happen symultaniously, but whatever.
So anyhoo. I took the dogs and kids for a walk, washed the dog, weeded the garden, harrassed the teenager, helped clean, and had interesting discussions. WHEW. Been a full day. Life at home. And they say homeschoolers live sheltered, boring, unsocial lives. ;-)

~PrincessOuch~

Back home

Well, I am back home with the family. It's been nice but I'll admit I was hit with 'culture shock' yesterday and Mom, Dad and I ended up staying up LATE last night talking. It was good, but we're all pretty bushed today. :-)

So anyway, since my higher brain functioning abilities are at a low right now, I thought I would see if the computer would act counter-cultural to it's species and cooperate with me to post a bunch of pictures. Not sure that it will, as it's taking FOREVER to upload pictures onto here AND facebook, but I was having that problem back in Sinus Valley too, so... maybe it's blogger and Facebook, not me. Hehehe.

In the pool at the hotel on our way back from the eastern midwest to the WEST midwest. Sorry it's so blurred. :-) Me with tweedle Dee and tweedle Dum. Or Flower and Cub as Mom calls them on her blog. :-D

Cub and Flower looking out the window so it appears. But in actuality, they are trying to determine if they should leap into the door between the worlds and go visit Aslan and Narnia while no one is looking. ;-) Or at least thats how I think this picture looks. ;-)

This is me and Flower attempting to be tough and G. I. Joe-ish. Not sure we quite attained our goal of looking lean and mean. :-)

Da boys doing a better job looking military-ish with the picture of the "real army man" from WWI or something. Can you tell they are all related (not the cardboard guy, the real dudes) ?

Flower and I trying on plastic army hats. Not sure they are quite the right style. Whadaya think, should we try these at the Kentucky Derby next year?




Cub playing soldier on the mock-cannons on the river-side. He REALLY got into it.

This is how I play soldier on the cannons. Hehehe. More on the melodramatic, Celtic-warrior-maiden side, less on the G.I. Joe side. :-D

Fashion and cannon-balls. A winning combination, no?

"Viking Man" Dad and his dear 'lil brother, with MY little brother in the background, DETERMINED to be a part of this photo. :-D

Cub and Flower looking cute as they check the dams out along the river.

Just playing. :-)

A wittle bit sweepy maybe?

Miss Elizabeth eating a banana on the way home from Church. Yeah I'm gonna be in trouble for putting this online, but isn't that what older sisters are for? To cause consternation, irritation, built character and funny picture posts to appear on blogs? :-D

The countryside, on the way home from Church.

See, he was all bragadocious that he is FINALLY taller than me. However, Feche boy did not realize that with great gain comes great responsibility. Thus, it is now his duty, honor and priviledge to not only be my lacky but horsey whenever I get lazy and want/need a ride. We have determined that it will do him good rather than harm, as well as benifit my picture collection, to have him carry me everywhere. J/k, but I had fun jumping on him and having him carry me around. ;-)

Love you Bro!

Self Portrait. :-)

Plane ride from Purgatory

The other passangers were calling it,"The plane ride from Hell." My personal thought is that if it were the plane ride from Hell, we would have crashed and blown up, burning to death. But we didn't, we were just simply refined and had our faith stretched, our patience expanded, and our stomachs excercised as we fought off severe nausia and motion sickness.

So here's what happened. I fell asleep around 1 or 2 AM on the 8th of December. Part of it was excitement that I got to go home for Christmas. The other part was some girls decided that they were going to go outside my window and express their joy at freedom from school by feral screaming. I guess they forgot that some people still think nighttime is for sleeping.
Anyway, I then woke up at 5 AM the next morning and got ready to go. Nicole drove me to the airport and we hugged goodbye and wished each other a Merry Christmas.
Once at the ticketbooth, the guy was convinced that it would be faster if I changed my flight from flying into Minneanapolis and then flying to Omaha to drive home, to flying into Memphis then Omaha, and then driving home. I said I didn't want to change it but he insisted and I was too tired to argue.
Biggest mistake of the day!!!
I found out later that a flight to Minneanapolis was cancled and the person was pretty sure it was my flight. I can only hope, because it helps ease the intense frustration I felt at the poor dude at the ticket counter.
So I got onto the airplane. Business as usual. Normal safety procedures demonstration, normal introducing yourself to the person sitting next to you and then pulling out your book, normal, "Why on earth are you reading Albert Mohler's latest book for PLEASURE?!" conversation (okay I've never done that before but the conversation that insued was pretty normal. 'What are you doing with your life and why, hunh okay you are interesting but wierd' conversation) etc.
Until we got to Tennessee. Then the nice normal scenery of cool bumpy carpet-like clouds below us and wispy clouds above us changed to complete white of clouds all around us. And they started to get grey. The Captian announced that Memphis was experiancing some storms, but not to worry, we would land soon.
The turbulance started getting bad and my stomach began commenting about how it would like to either land or go home now.
The stewardess or flight attendant or whatever we call them these days then got on and said that we still couldn't land and would be circling for a while.
A half hour later it was announced that we were going to fly into Nashville as we were running out of fuel.
Oh joy.
So we landed in Nashville and parked. We then noticed that there was a plane that had landed before us and three others were pulling up. Not good.
They finally gave us a gate and we pulled in. I was able to get out and call my friend who was going to pick me up at the airport in Omaha and call my parents to let them know what was up. CNN said that flights in Memphis and Baltimore were backed up by an hour. Joy.
I decided that I didn't really want to go to Memphis at that point. I could re-switch my flight and go to Minneanapolis as planned. Unfortunately quite a few other people had the same idea and as soon as I was the next person in line the Captain came running down the gangway and told everyone to get back on the plane.
So we did, and fifteen minutes later we took off again. They had re-fueled and were going to try to land in Memphis.
As soon as we got close to Memphis the clouds went from white to dark gray and the turbulance was terrible. My stomach said if I didn't do something it would go on strike. So I closed my eyes and began praying kind of hard.
We kept that up for what felt like an hour but was probably 15 minutes before the Captian announced that once again we were running out of fuel and would have to find someplace else to land, and Huntsville Alabama would probably be it.
"What, are we doing a tour of all the 'ville' airports in the South?" Someone asked.
So we arrived in Huntsville, Alabama. We were all glad to be on the ground but starting to wonder how we were going to make our connecting flights as it was 11 at that point.
The captains voice crackled on the speaker, "Uhhh.. Ladies and Gentlemen, we will deplane as soon as we can, but no one is answering us at the airport and we don't know if they have a gate for us or not... so as soon as we get ahold of someone, then we'll let you know what we know."
Seriously?!?!
"What, no one noticed there's an extra plane just parked out there?" A businessman asked.
Several minutes later another voice crackled over the intercom.
"This is the manager of the airport. We want to welcome you to Huntsville, Alabama. Right now we are experiancing an unusual situation with the storm in Memphis, and we have a lot of people in our airport who don't belong. So we're gonna just ask you to sit tight till we figure something out."
"They are not going to make us sit here the whole time! How long is that going to be?" people started asking. It was now almost 12 and our flight had left at 7:30 am.
"This is the manager of the airport again. The Captain has requested that we allow you to deplane. So we'll allow you to come up to the gate, but do not I repeat DO NOT enter the main airport or we will not allow you to come back. You don't have a boarding pass for any other flight as you aren't even supposed to have landed here. We will let you know once we know something what your next course of action will be." He then told us about their coffee shop/snack shack/'hot dog stand' where we could get food in the airport and repeated a few warnings about not leaving the terminal we were in.
So we went into the airport and got lunch. Ten bucks for a tea, a water, and a sandwhich. I hate eating in airports. It's SO not worth the money!!
So I ate with two other ladies from my flight and we watched in growing perturbation as CNN announced that the storm system in Memphis was slowly taking over the midwest.
"They had better not leave us here!" One lady commented, and the two began saying how this was the plane flight from hell.
Hmm... no, more like the plane ride from purgatory! We hadn't crashed, we had just all felt somewhat sick during the turbulence and were having beautiful opportunities to practice patience!
I personally stayed in Huntingville (or huntsville, I still can't remember it's name) until 5:30. They were able to change my flight so that I could fly into Cincinnatti and then straight home instead of flying into Omaha. Yay!!
So i arrived around 9:45. At 10:00 I discovered that while I was able to make the flight to Cincinatti, none of my luggage had!! Part of the problem was that I had switched from Northwest Airlines to Delta, and my bags apparently made it to Omaha, where i was originally supposed to go!! So the bags apparently made it to Omaha this morning, and should get here tonight or tomorrow. Usually it's the younger sister stealing clothes from the older sister's closet, but apparently my sister and I are gonna pull a switch-er-oo on the ol' tradition. Fortunately we're built pretty similar she's just taller and has a shorter torso.
Okay I want my own clothes!!

So anyway. There's my latest adventure! I was able to help out a pregnant mom by playing with her six-year old and four-year old (and every once and a while her 13 month old) daughters by coloring with them and playing on the wheelchair with them. So my arms hurt now but we had fun. :-D
So yeah.... there's my wonderful traveling story for this six-month period. Woot woot!

So now I'm home, which is great, and have been shown or am discovering the latest changes and updates and recent homework and cooking victories by my siblings and catching up with mom. Yay!!
And I still need to finish reading Acts through Revelation and write an 8 to 20 page paper on a summary of one of those books before next week. *sigh* Ah well. I sort of brought it upon myself by signing up for so many D-and-J-terms.

More later!

~Princess Ouch~

Work on a Farm

Wrote this for English class for my example paper. Hope you enjoy :-)


Work on a Farm

Work on a farm is hard and never finished. This is an international truth. While many believe that a farm is a romantic place full of cute fluffy kittens and sweet lambs, it is in fact a virtual disaster zone. It doesn’t matter how put together, neat, organized and quaint it may look up on first inspection. The reality is that a farmer never experiences the satisfaction of saying to himself, “I’m done with this week’s work. I can finally take a break this weekend in good conscience.” No, if the poor farmer has somehow miraculously finished his goals for this week, either he knows he should tackle next week’s chores to ‘get ahead’ and actually make some profit from his lifestyle, or some kind of natural (or unnatural) disaster strikes, creating more work; either undoing whatever the farmer accomplished or rendering it obsolete.
This was the case on a dairy farm in New Mexico. Hundreds of cows serenely chewed their cud in large plots sectioned off by PVC pipes used as fences, or escaped the hot sun in aluminum, three-sided barns. They appeared as though they hadn’t a care in the world. The Hispanic employees of the dairy however were always hurrying and scurrying to and fro, either cleaning the milking equipment (a never ending chore as the cows were milked in rotation several times a day) or cleaning out stalls (which was never finished as long as living, healthy cows were around to create ‘messes’) or helping a sick cow recover from some bovine malady. There was of course the occasional collapse in fencing which required immediate attention or some dramatic episode in which a mother cow died and her calf needed extra care, all creating extra work for the employees. The owner of the dairy, a Dutchman by the name of Rinke, was a very quiet, laid back man of six feet two inches and maybe one hundred and fifteen pounds. He towered over his employees but was very invested in making sure everyone was well cared for. How the Hispanic men understood Rinke’s Texan-influenced-Dutch-drawl was beyond me, and how he understood the quick staccato Spanglish of his employees continued to be a mystery. However, they all had a system that each appreciated, and encouraged each other in their never-ending tasks.
Another example of never ending farm work was the quaint village home I visited while in Transylvania. This was a farm on a much smaller scale than the New Mexican dairy. The family only owned about three acres of land as opposed to the several hundred acres the dairy was on. The family raised most of their fruits and vegetables and all of their meat on the small plot of land they owned. It was a beautiful example of efficiency. The chickens were at times allowed to run through the gardens munching on whatever bugs were harmful to the steadily growing crops. The pigs were very content in a tiny shack near the garden and took up little room. The grandparents practically lived outside. The grandfather was constantly either shucking corn for the animal’s consumption or chopping wood for the stoves when his help wasn’t being employed by his son-in-law, who not only helped maintain the farm but had a job as a security guard in the village. During the summer months the grandmother maintained the garden and fields, always stooped over weeding and carefully maintaining the grape vines as she walked past them on her way back to the house. Her daughter was the housekeeper-chef extraordinaire, keeping the house meticulously clean despite the mud constantly being tracked into the house and rain creating cracks in the stucco walls or holes in the roof. They were a very happy foursome, all working together to keep the place smoothly running. The seasons each had their designated chores and it was a cheerful circle of life that they lived in. It was efficient, but constant, never ending work.
One final argument proving the validity of the idea that farm work is never ending and hard is my own personal experience of the last five years on a small acreage in South Dakota. When we first moved there, the place was a mess. The previous owners had decided that it was too expensive to take garbage to the local dump and had instead thought it a brilliant idea to bury their trash in shallow graves all over the place. After a hard winter with heavy snows, these mass graves of unwanted objects and deteriorating trash bags were brought to the surface. As a result, the first year of our occupancy on said farm was spent in cleaning up other people’s messes. A wonderful opportunity for training on the mission field, one might argue, however at the time it was simply thought of as a rude move by the previous owners, who made quite a lot of money when selling us their mess. After fixing up the place somewhat, we thought it would be a good experience for the kids growing up to have some livestock. So in irrational group insanity, we bought ducks, geese, chickens, goats, and sheep all within a matter of months. The result was fairly catastrophic. Garden beds which were just beginning to perk up the landscape were ravaged by the fowl, the goats decided the newly-planted fruit trees were far preferable to the weeds, and the sheep were just stupid and tried to kill themselves in every way imaginable. After finally realizing our lesson, the livestock which hadn’t somehow killed itself was all sold at auction. We then set about the task of repairing the discouraging mess that was our landscaping. While garden beds can be established, they still require constant work. Weeding, mulching, fertilizing, planting, and pruning do not stop. Harvesting one’s own food is a wonderful experience but unless one eats it all at once it must be preserved through canning, drying, freezing, etc. A satisfying experience, I say, although still time consuming and never ending.
Life on a farm can be charming, rewarding, and a fun experience. It can also be harrying, hard work, stressful, and downright awful. In either case, it requires hard work. It is not for the faint of heart. It is not for those who like to have clean nails or who believe that flip flops should be worn at all times. It is not for those who think that sheep are cute animals that will peacefully graze unattended in a large field with a delightful brook running through it. No indeed. The sheep will try to drown themselves first chance they get and probably break their legs on the banks of the brook on their gleeful way towards death. Flip flops are hazardous to health on farms as there are rusty nails everywhere and animals who like to stomp on human feet. One’s nails are cracked, chipped, broken, and full of dirt from the garden or the animal pen most days. Oh yes, work on a farm is hard and never finished, although it can be rewarding and adventurous.