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I left work early yesterday, did my grocery shopping, then took the back roads home. I went through the town of Peru, a farming community where we first lived, in 1984 and 1985 when I moved here. On the way to that house I drove past this sign:




I wonder if I should just give up and buy my fish from these people. I laughed when I saw the sign.

















The little house in the center of the picture is where we lived. We rented it for 2 years. The bigger house with the huge barn behind it belonged to a wonderful farmer who adored us. He is one of the nicest people I've ever met. When we lived there he had fewer than a hundred head of Holsteins he milked. Now I see he's got a gazillion and a huge new barn. He retired and was thrilled, but the person he had running the farm for him left so he had to go back into the business and was really upset. He's in his 60's now. It was from him that I learned exactly what a hard life farming is. One year he had 2 piglets who were incredibly cute and used to run back & forth among the stanchions while the cows were milking, as if they were playing tag. One of the neighbors had a really sweet Jersey cow who used to come visit and hang out at Jim's farm. She was an incredibly sweet and personable cow. Jim was very sad when we moved out. We liked living there but the house was really close to the road. Jim used to ride by on his tractor, look into our living room window and wave at us as we watched tv. We had a chicken coop with a red heat lamp on in the winter--it looked just like a little manger, down there in the hollow.



This place is called Frog Hollow. It's very pretty. Just up the hill from here is where the man who bought the "works" (the sawmill itself) that was our sawmill has it set up. He bought it from the bank: once Jamie left, of course the dork who bought it from us had no one who could saw so it went belly up and the bank took it over. A sad end to a sad endeavor. Which I ended up paying $13,000 for.



The sun was shining when I left Plattsburgh, but it was raining by the time I got home. Oh well. The birds were singing. My summer birds are back: the oven bird, who says teacherteacherteacher and builds a nest on the ground; the black-throated blue warbler (sounds like a made up name), which has a multi-syllabic and nice song; the white-throated sparrow, who's been around for a long time now. No sign of the hummingbirds yet but I have to put the feeder out this weekend.

The other event of note when I got home was that the pump was running AGAIN and no water came out of the faucet. Well was dry. I don't know if it's a pump thing or if my shower used up all the water in the morning. I shut everything off and used up the 4 gallons I had stashed. This morning I turned the pump on, flushed the toilet, washed my face & brushed my teeth all without incident. Then I shut the pump breaker off and skipped off to work. Stopped at the dump on my way, stopped at the bank, stopped twice for coffee, since it's a 9-5 day. Here I am, having accomplished absolutely nothing at all. I want to escape to the comfort of cataloging all day but must meet with my minions to discuss their goals. How do I tactful explain that "work with correctional facility librarians" is not a goal, but rather is her actual job? She is not one who will take this well. But that's what they pay me the big bucks for, to face the wrath.

Oh, and guess what? It's raining.