July 6, 7

Good morning, I’m sitting here at the farm. The Samuels Family Farm. Sounds like this house has been around since 1839 or mid-19th century, I get two different answers. It is a quaint old house with a sit down shower, black and white photos on the wall from men and women in black ties and 5 layers of dresses on. Old collections of books and antiques are in abundance. The farm here in New Windsor, IL is the old house of Joel’s Dad. He lived here as a child and is now in a family trust where any one of 7 children or friends of the family can come and ‘retreat’ here, stay for a week, come do improvements, live here if they really wanted to to make use of this house. There are cattle out in the field which is rented out year-round. There is an old well water pump out front which still pumps water albeit a bit brown. There are vestiges all about which are left here by each of the children that come – they are in their 50s. Paintings, small trinkets on windowsills, paperweights holding up books, and in each of the drawers are a great smattering of items. When one of the ‘children’ as they are no longer children, come here, they look for a precious item that was left here only to find that one of the other visitors to the house has moved the item and the search must continue. Other old treasured items are left here because someone is afraid they might break because of their ever-moving lifestyles. Every single item in the house has a story behind it. Things are only thrown out or donated by committee, or so it seems, a sign labeled – Throw out or Donate or Give Away need to be clearly labeled and present for over a year so it seems in order for said direction to happen.
I’ve spent the last 2 days here with Joel, his parents and last evening, his 45 year old brother Rolf arrived. We have been having long lunches and dinners to talk and catch up, lots of greens and eating from the land in lettuce, lambs quarters, milkweed blossoms, and vegetables from surrounding gardens. We all spend our time with the roofers. They start at 7am and go on until 7pm. Go ahead, ask me how restful that is. :-p I somehow manage to sleep until 9am and my dreams incorporate the bang, bang, bang of the nails and shingles meeting the roof. I don’t blame them for starting early to avoid the 95+ degree heat during the middle of the day with high humidity and blazing sun, but goodness, I would love to sleep a little later.
Yesterday Joel and I were walking down the lane and saw a dump truck and a pickup turning into the cattle field. Any ideas on what might have happened? Well, as we watched, they drove through the middle of the field and stopped at a grove of 5 Cottonwood trees in the middle of the field. More ideas? They hoisted up one cow with ropes and put it in the dump truck, and we thought death during child birth, they hoisted a second and we surmised facetiously murder suicide, a third and we thought that perhaps the crop dusting yesterday was poison. After they drove out, we found out that there were four dead cows. The cause of death? Lightening. They had insurance on the cows – life insurance – and were covered for natural disasters like lightening from the big storm that happened on Wednesday morning. Another herd around here lost 27 cattle on the same night.
All in all, it was a good weekend, it is now Sunday morning, the 8th. We went fishing on Friday evening and Joel’s dad caught a 4 lb. catfish. It was on the first cast of the afternoon and then between us, we caught a few more small catfish and a baitfish, a small fish that will be put into the freezer to be used as bait the next time. We ate bunches of black raspberries and blackberries and headed home. When we got in yesterday evening, we ate some sweet yet spicy chicken wings, and then headed to my sister’s boyfriend’s place downtown. He lives near a downtown place called Lafayette Square. Headed down there and had beer, amaretto and milk on the rocks – tasty!, chips and pomegranate salsa, spicy nachos and rainbow chocolate chip cookies. We watched Finding Nemo in Spanish – Buscando a Nemo J and played a few rousing games of Spades and finished with a round of Hearts. I have missed cards J We may resurrect Euchre and 500 this week yet.
It’ll have to happen quickly as Joel and I head for Hawaii on Tuesday. My three siblings follow next Sunday to Maui and arrive in Hilo, HI on that Tuesday. I’m excited! I am Really looking forward to snorkeling again, to taking everyone around, and perhaps getting to see lava and the possibility of good weather. Mmmm…

One bit of last week that I had no time to write about was the 4th of July. It was marvelous, great holiday to eat and be with friends and not work. Sorry guys, but I enjoyed it for a change, taking a holiday off and not having to work. Not that I am working anyway, but after awhile, it is nice knowing you don’t have to work on a holiday. Behind all of that was a family party here at the house with a meal at 2, then we left and made it to dinner at 4:30 at Joel’s Aunt’s Party, and then at 6:30, we had dinner again at Annie’s house, my roommate from college. At 8, we headed downtown for the firework at the arch. I’ll post pictures and try to find a way to put video on here of the amazing fireworks. It is somewhat like the video that the Monster Librarian put on her website from YouTube, it was a great show! After the 20 minute fireworks extravaganza, we headed out to my house for my family’s fireworks. We live in a place that doesn’t allow fireworks, but that doesn’t stop anyone from doing them. There are so many calls into police on that night for mischief, they can’t check out fireworks. In that vein, with the 4th falling in the middle of the week, I’ve heard fireworks for about 10 days in a row. Lots of fireworks. Each time I head out of my house and down the hill, there have been fireworks shows off in the distance, all the local counties have their own show. I love it!
Fireworks festivities in upcoming blog…