Pray for warmth and green paper.

I'm back in town. Wait, I was out of town. I don't think I mentioned that. While I was gone, drinkasyourpour and limenal has a birthday, but luckily I have this upcoming weekend to see them both and perhaps make up for missing the actual day.

So, I went to upstate NY to visit my "in-laws" (I kinda love that term) for a big family gathering on the occasion of dommeyourass's grandmother's 90th birthday. It was a great trip, though parts of the drive were a bit more grueling than usual. On Friday we went from Chicago to Rochestor, NY, spent the night with DYA's sister and husband (K & P), as well as breakfast the next morning. It has become a bit of a tradition, and its good to have some one-on-one time with them. They have this great old farmhouse (new to them) and I got a tour of their chicken coop and their new chickens (5 months old, but pretty much full-grown). They are hand-raised, so I got to pet one. This is also handy, I'm told, for when they inevitably escape from the coop -- easier to catch and scoop them up. I was talking to K about our new 5 year plan and how chickens are involved so I was excited to meet them and get some lessons and when we opened up the nesting boxes, the very first egg was there! She took my picture holding it. I also learned that no roosters are needed to lay eggs, which was a concern of mine after a recent group discussion at camping.

Saturday morning we finished the drive to Galway. DYA had to make an afternoon trip while I stayed at the house and pitched the tent in the backyard and chatted with her parents. More family started trickling in. That night we had dinner plans a couple towns over with DYA's friend (who's totally gay-famous) and her partner. It was nice to spend some times with queers, visit their big gorgeous house, and especially hilarious to me how entrenched their dogs are into their existence. I can relate to a certain level. We barely made it home awake. Fall is already arriving out there, so getting in the tent was a bit chilly at first, but I ended up sleeping very deeply, for a long time.

Sunday, after sleeping in, after breakfast, I played the card game "Guillotine" with the kids (and their parents) and then some makeshift whiffle ball in the backyard, and then there was lots of sitting on the deck and drinking wine and telling stories about birds and nature videos. Dinnertime was the big party with all the amazing comfort food you can imagine, including turkey and ham and cheesy twice-baked potatoes and chicken cutlets and fruit salad and jello molds and cranberry sauce and corn on the cob and....other things I'm forgetting probably. After dinner, as much as I was enjoying everyone's company, I needed some exercise and some alone time, so I went for an impromptu hour-long hike through the woods nearby, on the ATV trails, and then along the rode by the lake. I made it home just before it got too dark to see and before I did any more major sweat damage to the dress shirt and dress pants I was wearing: we had taken a family portrait earlier in the day and I just never got around to changing -- I'm sure I looked slightly bizarre coming out of the woods and onto the road in my outfit.

Yesterday we made it back home in almost exactly 14 hours. We picked up Sophie, who got to spend the weekend with friends who don't have a dog and planned their days around doing activities with her. I worry she's now depressed to be back home and lying on the couch all day. I'm a little sad too, puttering around and unsure what to do with myself, still trying to get re-grounded after being in motion for so long. I had a therapy appointment, but he called at 8:30 to reschedule for Thursday because he's sick. I have a list of things I want to do (getting back on board the novel-train, post office, library, grocery story, reading, list-making, planning, etc.), but I haven't yet found the energy to do any of it. The sun is starting to peek out though, this will help. And maybe later I'll write about my/our new plan involving building utopia on a small 2-acre plot of land. Or how I just called to cancel the delivery box and we're switching to shares in a local farm (thanks foxycoxy). Well, never mind, I pretty much covered that last part in one sentence. I think its just that in my brain, its related to selling records, its related to recent thoughts on ethics, on living, on books I need to check out from the library. On being happy. I think that's maybe what I've been doing, even when feeling all the unpleasant stuff. Even when having hard questions and harder answers.

I think its goodbye to a lot of things like christmas and the mediterranean.

So in addition to learning about hand-raising chickens and how septic tanks work, this past weekend I also learned this trick for dogs. The folks we saw on Saturday, who have gotten really into dog training (which was a little daunting, but also, inspirational), feed their dogs almost exclusively with kong toys. They mix up the wet/dry food and fill up the containers and freeze them. (Or you can just fill them with dry food, though they don't last as long.) The idea is that the dog then has to work for their meal, it mentally and physically stimulates them in a way that most house dogs are lacking in their everyday life. Today I went to the pet store for a few items, including training treats and picked up two new kongs. I got home and loaded them up -- I didn't really take the time to freeze them, since they were primarily dry food with just enough canned food to make them a little sticky and more tempting. Also, because the more gooey the filling, the more cleanup that could be required, and I am not looking to create more chores in my house to do. Given that Sophie is a very strange and picky eater, she responded really well to this new game, and got adept pretty quickly at figuring out how to bat the toy around, or pick it up to get better access. I gave her one and she came back for a second. And she cleaned those things out -- I picked them up when she was done and ran some water through them but visually they seemed pretty damn clean anyway. whirledpeas, this might be a feeding technique you could explore with your Sophie (if you don't already).

I also learned the difference between bail and bond, the lack of credence in cows lying down before rain, the scientific v. reality of the safety microwaves, and a bunch of random facts about english castles. Too bad I don't have to write any back to school essays on What I Learned On My Summer Vacation, because this past weekend was a treasure trove of material.

I'm back at work, and its strange whenever I'm gone more than a weekend, going into the office suddenly feels foreign and a little scary and then I get here and its like everyone is the same and I'm treated as if only a day has passed and I wonder what I was worried about. I also had a little bit of stubbornness on the train about having to come here. I don't have that very often, that sort of resentment about my day job, which, believe me, I feel pretty grateful and lucky that I can quite easily tolerate this and even find a modicum of satisfaction about how I make use of my time here. I think its just surreal, how routine of day-to-day works, and how quickly things get defamiliarized. Now I'm just procrastinating for real. I've been here an hour and I'm waxing philosophically? This could be a long night.