Life. How I love it.

Oh hey! I have a blog!

My excuse for not writing for almost two weeks is that I was devastated by the recent election and am just 

now recovering. It is Obama's fault. Well that and the fact that my husband was away. And I was busy with babies, kids, family, and fun and simply didn't write on here.

So yes, Romney lost. But life marches on and will probably not be appreciably different. Except I don't have political articles to read. Just FBI/CIA scandals. And they just don't hold as much appeal. So I have been forced to do my reading off the computer. I got a good bunch of New to the Library, two week loan books from the library  about three weeks ago, so I read them all up this week. Some were good, some were lame, some were so-so. Here is a brief run down of them. All of them are novels because I am that shallow. 

Porch lights by Dorthea Benton Frank.               Verdict--Good.

Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel                  Verdict--so-so

Spring Fever by Mark Kay Andrews                  Verdict--Okay, but not her best work.

Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon                                Verdict--Good, read last page first

A Lady Cyclist's Guide to Kashgar by SJ*          Verdict--lame-ish,vauguely depressing

Where we belong by Emily Griffin                       Verdict--so-so, good writing, ending unresolved

 *Suzanne Joinson--Hey, it bugged me messing up my completely not formatted list so much.

Now I need to return my overdue books to the library.

Justin was gone to Colorado. He bought a truck from his Dad. A big truck. 

We love the truck. It has four doors and fits us all in. Orianna rides up front, which makes her the coolest thing ever. Owen taught Gilbert how to say "Ford truck. Vroom!" So Gilbert has been saying that and chortling with laughter anytime he gets in. 

Justin had a good time in Colorao, family, friends, a new truck. But we are glad to have him home. The world just seems right-er when he is around. While he was gone though, we kept busy with Olivia's senior play (pretty funny) and a weekend with Clover and Evan at Mom and Dads. You will just have to take my word that we were all there because I did not get my camera out once. It was a lazy-ish sort of weekend. Monday was Vetrans Day, so the kids had the day off school. Which was a good thing--Monday, we had a seventy degree day with gallons of sunshine. It felt like spring. All optimistic and bouncy. No way could we have let the kids fritter it away in school. We took the kids on a good long tromp through the fields and woods.

Love Cheyenne's skirt swishing and Gilbert running

Sister-cousins. Who fought a LOT this weekend, but couldn't stand not knowing exactly what the other one was doing and thinking and feeling.

Orianna and cows

Finding a late catepillar. And before you compliment on my mad crazy hair making skills, I didn't do her hair. Ashley did. She is the talented one.

Standing where we had a bonfire Sunday night

Cheyenne and Rilla discussing the kitten

Stick girl

Rilla and Lydia/Moxie. Not sure where those names came from, but they were used interchangeably. 

A patient Ashley and a boy with sticks

Fall woods

The grass is so much greener now than it was all summer.... 

Some wire all twisty

The intrepid kitty who followed us on our tramp

The crossroads, where two cowpaths converge.

Kids on a rock

Gilbert holding kitty. Poor kitty.

Lily rescuing Lydia/Moxie

LOVE Gilbert's happiness at seeing Lincoln coming

Love, love, love

We went to look at the cedars where we used to have forts when I was a little girl

Weeping willow

The sky was incredible

Awesome day. Like winning the lottery. For no good reason, you have a day of perfection. And pretty much every day this week has been sunshine. Not 70, more like 20, but I am okay with that. After all, I believe in weather being appropriate to the season. One day of 70's is perfection. Two days is weird.

So there is my life in the past two weeks. Well the highlights. I will leave out the over-stressed Mommy with an over-messed house and over-tired kids. Because I would prefer you all to think that I lead an idyllic life full of sunshine, good books to read, woods and fields to walk through, new trucks to ride, loving husband home, and fun family to do things with. 

So there it is. My mixed up happy list. 

1. Books

2. New Truck

3. Justin home

4. Family weekend

5. Sunshine

Hope your weekend is full of sunshine!

Political Junkie

I just voted. I like voting. I like walking to the fire station. I like everyone talking and joking around. I like people telling me my kids are cute. I like signing the ledger upside down. I like filling in the bubbles. I like pushing my ballot into the reader machine.

I like feeling American.

Some people like celebrity gossip magazines, but I prefer political gossip. I love reading what this person says about that. What so and so said to who. Who thinks what. I know this makes me weird. Everyone on facebook keeps saying "Thank goodness it is over!" Part of me agrees with this--elections make people really nasty to each other. But another part of me thinks things are going to get a lot more boring quite soon.

There, that is my confession for the day.

Because I like reading all this stuff, it is very easy for me to get worked up about it. To care who is in power.   To care about who was unjust in saying thus and so. To think it will make a massive difference in who wins. Today, after obsessively reading political articles, political projections, and checking exit polls, I went to feed Elsie. And I suddenly realized that whoever wins tomorrow, I will still have to read Mike Mulligan and Rosemary Wells' Mother Goose to my boy-o. Elsie will still giggle when I make kissey noises at her. I will still like fall evening walks. I will still love to see my kids run through leaves. I will still love sunshine.

All the best things of being American, freedom, pursuit of happiness, and peace are never up for vote. Sure, I think my guy will do a better job of keeping those for us. But neither one will actually ruin life for us. The president isn't a dictator--he doesn't have the power to ruin our lives.

So I am now able to obsessively check election maps and polls with perspective. At least until the polls close and they start recording votes.

I love elections!

Walking to the polls

Voting

Town clock on the way home

Goodbye for now by Laurie Frankel

Once again, here I am, shamelessly stealing an image from Amazon. I wonder if they could prosecute me for this. Please don't, Amazon. I mean no harm. I am just lazy. 

I read this over the weekend. Very intriguing. Short blurb:

Sam creates an algorithm for love, finds his soul mate--Meredith, and is fired from his job at a dating website because their registration fees are through the roof, but no one pays monthly fees, since they find their soul mate first go. Then Meredith's grandmother dies and since he is unemployed and wants Meredith to be happy again, figures out a way for Meredith to email her dead grandmother and get a response. 

This isn't supernatural. He just takes all the email they ever exchanged, creates an algorithm and it generates a response modeled on what her grandmother would probably have said based on what she said in similar situations in the past. Once he figures that out, what about video chat? Soon he has a projection of Meredith's grandmother, based on the accumulation of video chats they did in lifetime. It takes the grandmothers email account, her video chats, her browsing history, her purchases into account. This projection has the mannerisms, the voice, and responses of Meredith's Grandmother. So Meredith pushes to establish RePose, a service that will recreate a dead loved one in virtual form. They do. Business prospers. 

End of blurb. Read the book for more.

This was a funny book, well the first half anyway. I liked Meredith and Sam. The writing was well done. BUT I still didn't like it overly much. I have decided I like books that are like lullabys--comforting, reassuring, reconfirming a tomorrow and the goodness of life. Basically vanilla ice cream books. That is not to say I don't like a little grit in my books. But I want the end to be such that I walk away feeling like life is good. It has its highs and lows, but ultimately it is good. This book had a fairly wide open ending. That is another thing I am not fond of. Sure I can imagine the characters all sorting themselves out. But, surprisingly, I thought that was the authors job. 

And too, this book dealt a lot with death and dying. Surpise, surprise, since it deals with a business about recreating virtual projections of dead loved ones. I am not a fan of death and dying. I start imaging myself in those situations--leaving kids behind, losing kids, losing a husband, losing close family. And my imagination is uncomfortably vivid. 

Most interesting about this book was the idea of a virtual you being left here after you die. All your facebook posts, your blog posts, your pictures, your browsing history, your purchases. All that stuff is here to stay indefinitely. Does this make it harder or easier for people to mourn? This is not a quantifiable question. You can't compare mourning from the 50's to now. Every death is different with complex circumstances. No two people will mourn the same. Even for the same person. 

This is something I have thought about. Even with my blog posts. These suckers will stick around. I can't just rant about something or trash somebody and think that it will go away. My kids will probably still be able to see this when they grow up. I can't complain about them. I might be mad at Justin, but my anger doesn't last, so I can't put that in a post because a post does last. It really makes you consider what you put out there on the internet. How it will be viewed posthumously  And creepily, how anyone who really wants and has the no how can go see all that stuff now. I googled myself the other day and all the pictures that I have ever put on my blog popped up. (Well once I made the computer stop googling Bethany Cotton, which is not me. Apparently there aren't many other Bethaney Cottens out there.) That sort of freaked me out. Fortunately, I don't think anyone cares. 

Point is, with technology, we are leaving a lasting impression. Some people who were dying in this book were comforted by that--their wisdom and accumulated knowledge was not just dying with them. It used to be just authors and prolific letter writers who left words behind. Now everyone does. Does this change our perception of death? Does it make it easier on those left behind? The technology to make RePose does not exist. But it is within the realm of possibility. Will it make it harder for people to move forward? What would prevent people from hacking video chat so you are chatting with a believable projection of your live brother that says what someone else wants it to say to you? Is this technology ethical? 

It sort of creeped me out in the way robots do. I want discernible lines between real and not real. This technology blurs that line into oblivion. Maybe your brother died, but hey, you can still video chat with him and cook dinner with him via video chat every night like you used to. But technology can't fool the heart. It seems like every time you close video chat it would be a fresh pang of sorrow knowing that he is actually gone forever and you are just pretending with a stale version of him that can't even comprehend that you are a completely different person than they ever knew because now you are grieving for them. 

What do you all think? This might be like those books about the future that had people hovering to work and  jetting to the moon for the weekend. May never happen. Still, it is worth thinking about.   

Optimistic Happiness

1. We will have clean sheets tonight. Lily threw up on her sheets and then on our sheets last night.

2. The kids are home from school due to Lily being sick and are in cozy clothes, sweatshirts, tights, sweatpants or jean skirts and slippers. They are dragging every blanket out and making a tent and camping beds under the dining room table.

3. The kids are fighting over the swiffer and the dust mop. But my floor is getting clean.

4. Our immune systems are getting a good workout--cold #4 in 4 weeks. At this rate, we will be able to survive the bubonic plague by spring.

5. I have lots to do today--dishes that didn't get done before meeting last night, lots of laundry (see #1), and paperwork stuff for Justin's taxes. I actually like having things to do. I know this sounds dorky, but days when I have stuff to do generally end up better than days when I have nothing much to do and waste the day on the computer.


Yeah, this isn't a chirpy Happy list. I don't like stuffy headed colds. I don't like sick kids and stuffy babies. I don't like waking up to a messy kitchen. I don't like fighting kids.

But it is still all mine and for that, I love it.

Here is to a better weekend!

Bathes and calves

I started this post on Monday. It has been one of those weeks.

Saturday, after a nice busy-ish day, I did myself proud by getting the kids bathed and in jammies by 6 PM.

Ten minutes later, Owen called from Jim's to say a calf was being born. Ten minutes after that, my fresh clean babies were absorbing barn smell into their clean hair and clothes. I realized that this was the first time in 10 years that I have been in a functional dairy barn. Crazy. Not much changes though. Silage, hay, milk and manure still smell the same. But now people talk on cell phones in the back alley. I found that quite funny. Imagine a smartphone while you are milking. Woah.

It was nice to be back. Just for a few minutes.

Ashley and Lily looking in the calving pen

Cows

How Jim likes to keep from being whacked in the face by a manure-y tail

Elsie and her new baby

Tori came too

Milling around

Talking to a calf

Owen helping the cow along

New wet baby calf

Interested Gilbert in his Christmas jammies. (Hey, christmas jammies are cheap in January!)

Getting a lickin'