Freakishly Happy

Imagine that you are walking down the road on a nearly 100 degree day. As you walk down the path you spy something up ahead, and realize that it is a dead deer carcass. The sun and high temperatures have not been so kind to our friendly woodland friend, and as you pass by you notice an offensive and penetrating odor. Against your better attempts at self-control, you also notice that the animal is puffing up and beginning to decay and it's not very pretty.

Now imagine that the road your are walking on is your intestines, which are also at close to 100 degrees, and that the dead deer is the hamburger you ate yesterday. Just something to think about.

Hi All!

June has been a very busy and exciting month for us.  We're getting closer and closer to our move out date at the end of July which has us scurrying to get rid of all the crap we've accumulated during our  53 years of accumulated existence so that we can move into the  next phase of our lives less burdened by our stuff.

On the first weekend of the month I hosted a baby shower for Jaci.  Luckily for me, our sister Juli happened to be in town :).  I feel that I am fairly good at party planning, and getting party preparations and details all worked out in my head. But party implementation is not my strong suit (as was seen during our wedding).  I tend to leave things till last minute (perhaps to continue planning the perfect party as long as possible?). Juli blew into town with some thunderstorms and tornadoes on the Thursday night before the party, and we spent all day Friday getting things ready for the impending bash. 

The day of the party was a lovely sunny and cool Iowa June day (it was hard to believe I'd been married 3 years previously on the same weekend, which was then hot, humid and buggy).  Jaci was satisfactorily surprised to see Juli there.  We spent the morning going to the farmer's market, picking up flowers and baked goods and setting up chairs and party games.  We had a great time finishing food preparations with Jaci's best friend Wendy.  It was a lot of fun to share a kitchen with Juli, who, being the baker that she is, added sugar to almost everything.  :)

The guests began to arrive in the middle of the afternoon After introductions were made, we played some party games, guesstimated Jaci's girth, stuffed ourselves full, and watched Jaci open gifts. A wholly successful party. 
The next day Jaci came down to Iowa City, and we all walked around down on the ped mall.  It was really nice being together, I'd forgotten what it was like to hang out with more than one sister at a time.  The dynamic was really quite different, where each person added something to the group and it was a more well rounded and animated.

 Sadly, they both had to leave later that evening. Although it was sad having them go it was nice being able to rearrange my kitchen to where I could find things again :-P

On the 12th John and celebrated our third anniversary.  It was a hot day (as seems to be the norm for June 12ths), so I put on one of my 1950's sun dresses, which inspired us to have a 1950's day.  Johnny dressed up in a white t-shirt and jeans with the cuffs rolled and his hair is finally long enough to make a respectable pompadore complete with duck-tail (he even had a cigarillo behind his ear).  We went out to the Hamburg Inn for malts, veggie burgers and fries.  After lunch we went to see the movie the Waitress. We both really liked, although we agreed that at times it was difficult to watch. After taking in the movie, we stepped out into the bright June sunshine to find that a farmer's market had sprung up in the parking lot of the mall.  We bought some beautiful yellow and red tomatoes, peppers and a lovely early summer bouquet with red velvet coloured snap dragons and busting with lilies.  On our way home we stopped by Jim and Faith's to pick up our mail and to steal some rhubarb from their garden.
Once home, we hustled to get Jorgi outside and fed and change our clothes so that we could go out to dinner. We tried a great little hole in the wall place here in Iowa City called the Motley cow.  The dinner was delicious! We shared a lovely cheese platter with different artisianal cheeses and breads and a meal of risotto cakes topped with vegetables. For dessert we had the most decadent dark chocolate truffles hand rolled in cocoa powder. Migraines be damned!

Last weekend we spent our Saturday hanging out with various members of Johnny's family.  Early in the day we went to John's maternal Aunt Virginia's house.  I always have a great time with Virginia's grandkids, and was eagerly anticipating some quality tag and hide and go-seek time, but sadly the 90+ day kept us inside for most of the afternoon. Although we did get to go out and visit their  burgeoning grape vineyard, and I got to go on a photographic treasure hunt around the farm with my buddy Jack.
After that we headed across the Wapsipinicon River to John's paternal grandmother's house.  We had a nice visit on the front porch, and got a tour of her gardens before a storm blew up and she kindly shooed us out the door for fear of us getting caught in a deluge. 
We then went to John's Uncle Steven and Aunt Deb's house for dinner, a quarter mile drive from Grandma's house.  We had a great dinner of veggie pizza, and discussed some hot-button issues that are near and dear to us, including the animal food epidemic, the state of local farming and the farm bill.  Deb also showed me her collection of family quilts that have been passed down to her.  Lately I've taken an interest in quilting.  I've begun to realize that a quilt doesn't have to have a cabin and country feel- that it can be much more than that. I've been wanting to start a project taking old prom and bride's maids dress from thrift shops and turning them in to quilts.  I will upload pictures of a quilt that is over a century old that we found in a favorite shop that I've been inspired by.  

In other news, our little dog is growing up!  She has her puppy class graduation tonight. Hopefully she will do much better than she did at our make up class on Monday, and not pee on the floor and drag me around the room as we are practicing leash walking.  We took her to the vet yesterday to get heart worm meds, and it turns out she's gained 5 pounds since February. I'm happy to hear it, because I thought I was just becoming a huge wuss whenever I picked her up and my elbows cracked.   

Currently I am doing house-wifey things (well, currently I'm avoiding them by writing this blog...) and reading a fantastic blog by beloved author Barbara Kingsolver, entitled Animal, Vegtable Miracle.  In this book she and her family move from the sweltering Tuscon home, to a farm in Appalachia, where for an entire year they attempt to eat only what is seasonal and locally grown, and by locally most of the food was grown by them in their own garden.  I am inspired!  It is a book that kind of accumulates all of the dreams that I've been having over the last few months, combining a little hard work, strong ties to the community and a lot of good eating! Pick it up if you have the chance, you might just learn a lot about what is wrong with American food culture today, or if you are already aware of the problems you might be inspired to do your own little part to help change it.  And no worries, it's an easy read. She doesn't stand on the mountaintop shoving Slow Food down your throat. I believe that it is a lovely book and palatable even to the most die-hard junkfood addict.   

Well I'm off to do more house wifery duties.