Prickly, Grumpy, and Moving Forward

Good Morning -

Were you starting to wonder if I had fallen off the edge of the blogging world again? Almost did, but caught myself after three Virgens.

It's back to work in the University World today, so it seems as good a day as any to get back into some sort of routine - like blogging every morning about the Virgen I made the night before.

Unfortunately, because it is Back to Work (I think we should have a big consumer celebration complete with lots of sales like when it's Back to School Time - they could market to us all of the things we didn't know we needed (or didn't know we needed a new one to replace our old one) like they do with Back to School. Instead of backpacks and notebooks, though, it'd be travel coffee mugs and blackberries), I have the sense of time marching on without me, taking my paycheck with it, so I'll need to be brief this morning (which might mean an end to tangential parenthetical asides...).

Let's get to these Virgens, eh? The first one is from Jan. 2 and is in reference to how I've been feeling lately. I told my partner on Friday that I felt like the lion in the children's story who is in a bad, mean, grumpy way until the mouse comes along and helps.

As I told my partner, I couldn't remember if the lion had a sore tooth that the mouse extracted or a thorn in its paw that the mouse extracted. I checked Google, but all I found was a story about a mouse that had pissed off a lion but convinced it to spare its little life, which was good because later on the mouse was able to chew through the nets the lion had fallen into and save it. No rotting tooth, no thorn in the paw...apparently I was making up stories - the point of which were that I had a pain (sadness) and was grumpy and acting out and needed a mouse to come along and, through kindness, snap me out of my static.

When it came time for the Virgen, there were only tigers to be had, so that's what we have - although it does look a little grumpy, no?


This goose filled Virgen is in honor of my partner, who wants to change the mantra from "goats and chickens" to "goats and ducks or geese". She read recently that they lay more consistently and are easier to manage than chickens. I entered the conversation with some skepticism (I still need to try a duck egg to see if it compares), so did some reading to learn more.

One of the things I learned is that geese are generally bitchy and mean because, unlike their smaller, more agile, and more camouflaged duck brethren, they are large, clumsy, and not camouflaged, so they have to defend themselves from predators by being mean (this seems to be the same strategy employed by some people I've encountered). I love that they try to mean away an attack.


This Virgen from last night is in tribute to the big step forward my partner and I took yesterday. Our lease ends April 1, so we started looking over the break to get a sense of what was out there. We want to rent for another year while we continue to root and get bearings, so were looking at places to rent.

It's early still, but we thought we'd get a sense of what's out there. Turns out, we found and will confirm with the traditional trading of signatures for money tomorrow evening a great little house in Louisville. It's still commutable via bus or car, but is out of the city in a great little town surrounded by fields and cows and goats and such. The house is wonderful and has a yard that comes with the encouragement by the owners to garden. Okay.

The house is a step in the direction we want to head, which feels so good I'm almost not dreading the collecting and filling of boxes that precedes most moves.

Here's to that. Here's to steps forward. Here's to cute houses in darling towns surrounded by lane after bikeable lane of field and flower. Here's to being close to the city, without being in the city, and here's to having friends and allies at the ready so that one never has to resort to being bitchy as a defense.