Freedom in the Hills of New Hampshire

Knitting: I finished my sister’s baby shower present and I’d love to show you pictures, but I have to wait until after the shower so she won’t find out what it is. It took me longer than expected because I’m still not a competant knitter and my gauge swatch wasn’t big enough for an accurate gauge so I had to start all over. Oh well. It’s done now and I love looking at it, with its smooth stockinette stitch. Yay! I’ve also started my husband’s scarf; he expects it some time around 2020, so I aim to get it done before Winter starts. Due to time constraints and the fact that it’s knit using fine yarn and size 3 needles, I might get it done by Christmas, but only if I work hard.

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Going outside: Haakon has decided that being outside is the BEST THING EVER. We go outside every day. If it’s raining, we try to stick to the balcony or wait for a break in the downpour before heading out, but rain or shine, he loves it. We go out once in the morning (usually to the play ground and a walk up and down our street watching animals and picking berries), once in the afternoon (to the pool if it’s warm and sunny or a repeat of the morning if not) and occasionally after dinner as well (to Livingston Park, where he can watch the  dogs and then play on the equipment). Even so, he pitches a huge fit when we go inside. The outdoors are where he wants to be and I dread Winter. He’s also walking now and has officially moved past the Zombie stage to the drunk stage. I’m sure any day now he’ll be a normal human walking.

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Cooking: I rendered my own lard! I got tired of using the hydrogenated crap from the store, found a farm that has it and got a big thing of fatback for free with the skin still on. The bristles were scrapped off but it was still a bit disturbing. But the lard is awesome; white, creamy fat that has less bad fat than butter even if it has more fat overall.

I’m trying my hand at croissants today. We’ll see how that goes.

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Gardening: We have tomatoes growing! They’re still green but they’re there. We have 8 at last count and my heirloom tomato is getting ready to blossom finally. Our store bought pepper plant blossomed but has formed no peppers. It’s simply too cold and our balcony doesn’t get enough sun. We harvested our cucumber and now have two more growing large. The smaller ones seem to just wither away. I wish I’d planted more than one.

I checked out a book about gardening in northern climates and it’s filled with such gems as:

“The climate up north is often known as 8 months winter and 4 months rough sledding” and “Some days, it’s even hard to rejoice over a south wind, because just as often as not it’s only the north  wind coming back.” It’s full of good advice on  wind breaks, where the best place to have a garden is if you live on hilly terrain, windblocks, micro climates, etc.

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House hunting: As soon as my husband gets a full-time job, it will go “richtig los”. We’ve already started scouring NNEREN . We found a house we fell in love with and thought it was awesome, perfect, a real fixer upper, let’s ignore the fact that neither of us are skilled contractors….and then found out that it had actually sold around the same time we discovered it and the system just hadn’t updated. We were extremely bummed out, but renewed our search and have found a few more houses that have potential and hopefully we will refrain from falling in love with any of them. It will be hard though—we do this sort of thing constantly.

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Armchair politics. I didn’t go to the “Town Hall meeting” in Portsmouth. Haakon hates his car seat and I wasn’t going to subject him to an hour of it just to stand in a loud crowd when he hates loud noises. But it would have been worthless. Our dear leaders have already made up their minds; we’re going to have universal health insurance. Those of us against it are simply misinformed and obviously don’t know what’s best for us. I’d care more than I do, but I don’t because of two things:

1) At least nationalized healthcare will prevent people from pretending that the problems with our healthcare system are all due to the free market. Over half of the healthcare dollars spent in this country are from the government and the numerous regulations surrounding the health care industry make  it nothing close to free market.

2) We can’t afford it anyway, so it’s kind of like my husband and I debating whether or not we should buy a BMW. or a Lexus. Who cares, we’re not going to get one. The US has $70 trillion in unfunded obligations and debt. We have no way of paying that, short of inflating the dollar to toilet paper and raising taxes to about 90%. Health care for all? Sure, why not! I’d also like a BMW with a leather interior and sunroof while we’re at it. They’ve conveniently set the healthcare to kick in in 2013 because “the  recession will be over by then.” So will the next election, so Obama won’t be face with the consequences of the bill until after he’s re-elected. Or if he’s re-elected. His approval rating is about as high as Bush’s, so let’s not expect too much.

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Reading blogs: I discovered a great blog, A Homesteading Neophyte. I clicked on it originally because it said she was from Kansas and since I’m from Kanssas, I figured why not? Then I found out she voted for Ron Pau l and I fell in love. I read the blog back to 2006 before stopping and just waiting for regular updates. I can’t recommend it enough. It’s enjoyable, they have animals, they’re in Kansas. They talk about Kansas-y things. Go to places I know of (Yoder? Exploration Place? The Zoo!) and deal with tornadoes. They also get to plant outside in April. Gr. I’m not bitter….technically, we’re in the same planting zone as northern Kansas. They’re in southern Kansas and have like, an extra four weeks. Odd, it seems longer than that.