Top Five Fave....Home

We’re not really sure where home is these days, but Floyd once said, “Home is where the Jezebel is”, and since the little princess herself is napping on her blanket about 5 feet away from me, I guess I’m home. Being home is a little unusual for us as of late. We’ve been traveling almost constantly for the last several months. We’ve seen some beautiful places, some not so beautiful places, and some very very ugly places. We’ve seen a lot actually...and I’m plum tired. I feel like I been rode hard and put away wet. I wouldn’t mind never getting on another plane ever again (except for the one that’s going to take us back to Portland for ever and ever).

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I love to travel and these past months have been such a huge gift. As a little kid growing up making dirt pies, I wouldn’t have...actually, make that couldn’t have, imagined seeing all of these places. I feel blessed in such a big way. But I think it is possible to have too much of a good thing. We were traveling so much there that I would wake up and not know where I was. I would get on a plane and forget where we were going. And we’re not talking pharmaceuticals here. This is just life moving a little too fast. So I’m loving home right now. Loving and adoring it actually. Here’s a few reasons why.

1. Sittin’ on the couch: This couch is a central part of our lives. It’s purple. It’s velvet. It’s ripped. Some might call it shabby chic...we call it a piece of shit. But it’s the couch and we use it man. We use it and abuse it. I’m sitting on it right now in a position that I’m in so often it should be on my headstone. Propped up, legs extending down the couch, feet on the cushions, with a laptop on my lap... “May God Have Mercy on Her Soul”. In the evenings, after we’ve had our dinner and Jezebel has come in from her sunset stroll, we all congregate on the couch, the whole pride. And this is what it can look like. Infinite happiness.

2. Making the house happen: Ahhh...the house. We haven’t actually started the restoration yet. I know I know. Let me just give you a little snippet...our mortgage company actually sent our first check to our house in Portland. Yes, the one that’s blackened like Louisiana catfish. Yes. After we told them MANY Many many times not to do that, we got an e-mail from our neighbor telling us that the Fed Ex guy had been trying to deliver it for days. So sad. We’re still waiting for that check. And while we wait....nothing gets done. But I tell you what! She’s going to be absolutely gorgeous when we’re (they’re) done with her. I think I’ll be starting another blog about that one so you’ll be in the loop. It should be a fun process once it actually gets started (yes, I am delusional). So, even though the house looks pretty much the same as it did a few months ago (except for a new roof...yea!) we’ve been bustin’ our humps. Counting beans basically. Moving beans from one pile to another and trying to find more beans. Beans anyone?

3. Cooking: The first night we were home and on our own, I roasted a chicken, an organic chicken, which, over here, cost me 18.50 euros or $25. It was a small chicken. Needless to say, don’t eff up the chicken. Fortunately, I chose a recipe from The New Basics Cookbook, which I love and has never failed me. The recipe is called “Chicken with garlic, lemon, and rosemary” and it was, seriously, the best chicken I’ve ever had in my life. It wasn’t me. I would never take credit for it. It was the recipe. A hands-down winner. We’ve eaten some pretty wonderful food while traveling as well but we don’t splurge on expensive meals but we tend to eat pretty rich, fatty (but cheap) stuff when we travel (hello...). So we just have more control over what we eat when we’re at home. I (mostly) don’t work and I consider cooking part of my job over here. It’s a job I appreciate and enjoy (who is this woman?). I’ve gone from fearing the kitchen to being pretty darn comfortable in the kitchen...and that’s just cool.

Have you seen our kitchen over here? We call it the “one butt kitchen” for pretty obvious reasons. It makes us really look forward to the kitchen we’ll have when we go home.

Oh, and here are the rhubarb pies we made over the weekend, with the rhubarb from the garden. Two pies, two people....coincidence? I don’t think so.

4. Me Time: I have loads of me-time when we’re sans guests at home. It’s everything that happens between the housework, cooking, restoration planning and errands. I read, I write, I exercise, I try to practice the piano, and not enough of any of those things. Stuff like that. I don’t feel guilty about it at all really. Ok, maybe a little. But I know what my life has been like up till now and I’ve got a pretty good idea of what it’s going to be like when we get back. And it sure as hell doesn’t resemble this. So I’ll wallow in it for now...thankyouverymuch.

5. Playing on the farm: Babies, babies everywhere! Who doesn't love the baby farm animals? We got the baby lambs in early March and then we just got two new foals a few weeks ago. They’re so much fun to watch. They "boing". One second they'll be lazing around and then all of a sudden...boing...up in the air. It's the damndest thing. The weather has been uncharacteristically “springy” and the days have been quite fresh and dry. We take walks down to the river..well, not quite to the river because the mean bullocks stand between us and river...but we get almost to the river before we have to run away from them. The farm is just really beautiful this time of year and this little slice of heaven is pretty tough to top.

Oh, big news! We finally got the hedgehog on film. He’s a funny one alright! He ambled into our backyard one evening and snooted around for a bit, keeping his nose buried in the grass. The epitomy of “rootin’ around”. They make kind of a quiet grunting noise...the kind of a noise you would make if you were rooting around I suppose. Because his nose was firmly lodged in the detritus, he didn’t smell my foul humanness so I was able to get quite close....loving the hedgehog. When he finally did smell me (ewww...can’t eat that!) he lifted up on his startlingly longish legs, and waddled off...rapidly.

So that’s what we’re doing while we’re at home and we’ve got the place to ourselves. We’re off to Belgium this weekend for a bike race and then we’ve got the folks here after that. We’ll be taking Floyd’s folks to Spain (Barcelona and Girona) and we’re taking my folks to Rome...not to mention the random Irish ramblings as well. Now that we’ve had this time for rejuvenation, we’re really looking forward to it all.