Amy’s Gripping Commentary

The first couple months of 2012 have been quite the ride… long story short I am single after almost eight years, resulting in being mostly homeless, haven’t felt too great and accidentally lost a bunch of weight during the anxiety of work and relationship woes, and now I’ve come out the other side. To get there I consumed a lot of drinks at bars and met up with some interesting people along the way, my work project was completed successfully, I bought a new wardrobe, and I found myself living with my best friend and also dating someone new and really enjoying myself. No idea how long the latter will last but it’s pretty fun for now! It’s looking good at least. Oh and I started drinking coffee.

I have had the rehab house for nearly two months now and so far it’s been gutted down to studs and now is being rebuilt. The new electric is nearly done, but everything else is pending… plumbing, HVAC, insulation, walls, floors, appliances, furnishings… all those things that make the house more than a shell. I’m glad I have a great place to stay in the interim because it’ll be awhile until it’s time to move in!

The animals are in flux. I hope to have Arliss and Clover move with me this week. The fosters are being scattered about to other homes. I see the dogs when I go feed the buns, but it’s hard not to sleep with a greyhound or Mr. Sensitive Walter-pup hogging the bed.

Today I’m relatively happy and I have hope. Most days have been trying but always still hopeful. A lot of friends, family, and coworkers have really come to my aid (seriously… even my boss offered to have me move in with her!) and I think that has made all the difference.

Here’s to a new house, coffee, first dates, and Manhattans!

David send me this picture he took today.

Of COURSE she has to put her butt on my pillow.

I had an adventure today at work which involved a muscle spasm in my back while at my desk, which was going to be a simple trip with a coworker to health services, but someone heard “back injury” and called the emergency number, and pretty soon I had lights and sirens and a trip in the company ambulance. SIGH. More embarrassing than anything! I am fine and back at work after they treated with heat, muscle relaxer, and ibuprofen. (I’m also very grateful to have medical services available right here at work! Talk about efficient and cost effective for the employees–and it gets us back to work faster too. Good for everyone.)

I stopped drinking milk years ago, but “From the titties to the cities” still sounds pretty gross.

Wow, that was a long unplanned blog break!

I am back in the United States. My year in Ireland turned out to be a year all over the place! Actually, looking at my complicated tax calendar:

I would definitely do it all again, but of course there were some low points too. I think those would have happened at home anyway so it doesn’t change my opinion of being abroad nor make me any less thankful (especially to my employer) for the experience.

I hadn’t been feeling well for a couple of months again beginning around Christmas. I guess I’ll attribute to that malaise why I haven’t been posting here, and I definitely feel better now after a bit of medical intervention in the midst of a lot of overwhelming stuff (largely managing a very demanding job with a lot of hours while trying not to be overwhelmed by another international move!). I’ve been home since early March and just now feel somewhat settled. We still have a lot of things to unpack and we haven’t properly restocked the pantry, but I’d say things are getting back to normal.

I still hope to catch up here on the missed travels, including Sweden, Tenerife, Amsterdam, Belgium, and around the rest of Ireland. I have lots more pictures to share.

Ms. Vegas bunny passed away less than a week before I got home, which was very sad. My other pets have come home now, including Arliss bunny with her much younger boyfriend (everyone is much younger when you’re an 11 year old bunny, it seems), the guinea pigs, and the frog. The dogs made it back ok and don’t seem to care where they live as long as we are with them.

Here’s to catching up!

Not only did Vienna not happen, but Prague didn’t either! We went to the airport on Saturday morning and our first flight was delayed four hours (not like they let us know until after we had checked in and the departure times came and went twice), which meant we would miss our connecting flight, which meant we may as well go home and forget it. And that’s what we did after I came to terms with no other options except staying overnight in Manchester (for hotel cost) to hopefully get on the next Prague flight Sunday afternoon for an extra couple hundred bucks, which would leave us less than 24 hours in Prague. I lost plenty of money on flights and hotels (which no travel insurance could help, since it doesn’t kick in until you are delayed for more than 24 hours), but I think I’m over it. Mostly.

Another weekend in icy Kinsale.

Then I got sick Sunday night anyway and stayed in bed all day Monday, so it was just as well to be stuck at home. Still bitter, though.

I was able to rebook one flight for free but it had to be back from Amsterdam, so that’s where we’re going next weekend! I hope. It was on our list too, but I’m sad we missed Vienna and Prague.

We took Emmy to the vet tonight and she has protein in her urine. PRAY it’s not her kidneys!! Waiting on bloodwork now.

Now nursing my white-spotted throat with fake Nyquil from the States! hooray

I started this post several weeks back and thought I’d resurrect it.

All this travel means so many pretty pictures and not enough rants on my blog! That’s like going against my own philosophy. I’m afraid I’ll become extra boring if I’m not staying true to my roots. Or I’m growing older, I guess.

Pretty much all of these items were posted by US friends on Facebook. Either I don’t have enough acquaintances here to be close enough to be pissed off, or Americans really are self-centered and annoying.

home parties
fireworks killing dogs
going to the circus
purpose breeding your dog
hunting
whining about how much you hate moving (not you, TMC!)
right wing insistence on radical Islam’s focus
UK TV (it’s so American)

I guess I’m done now.

I thought of something else Ireland doesn’t have: big bags of potato chips. They only sell big bags full of single-serve bags of potato chips. Useless!

I’m trying to decide if I should do NaBloPoMo this year. I will never post a real post every day but I have a bajillion pictures and could do one a day pretty easily.

Someone at work made fun of me for saying awesome a few weeks back, even mimicking me with an American accent. So I tried not to say it so often (I didn’t realize I said it at all), and then our taxi driver made fun of me for saying awesome this weekend in Belfast. I looked it up and have said it 22 times on the blog. That’s not too much over four+ years, is it?

Finally feeling better after having a nasty upper respiratory thing last week, though the cough is lingering. I’ve been frustrated by lack of cold medicine here–all they do is take acetaminophen and suffer. You can get codeine OTC but not cold and flu treatment. I saw empty blister packs for something orange called DayNurse at another sick person’s desk and got excited that it might be like DayQuil, but it was just the same pain reliever crap. Anyway, I learned two new words for being sick: dosed and smothered. “Oh, you must be smothered!”

I also heard someone use the term away for slates, which I picked up at corkslang.com but had never heard in person before! It’s something like being content or everything’s hunky dory (the more common phrase is “happy days”).

A peace wall in Belfast. Our taxi driver was a little strange and looked like he might have been in Flock of Seagulls. I think he said the walls, gates, and checkpoints are currently scheduled to come down in 18 more years. The gates are still closed at night. I took the name “Peace Wall” to sound rather hopeful, but really I think it’s just acknowledging that the only reason there’s peace is because of the wall.

I feel like carp. I mean crap. That is an excellent illustration of one of my ailments, bizarre goings-on in my arms and hands that keep me from typing well. Sometimes it hurts to use the computer and that in combination with other crappy health stuff means not a lot of updating here. I have thousands of pictures to present but I can barely scroll through Facebook.

Vegas bunny is quite ill and is having a ridiculous surgery on Thursday. I’m worried about her.

This month sure sucks so far. Next!

1. The hydrangeas here can’t pick a color. I know they vary based on soil acidity, but the variety here is amazing and often occurs on the same plant.
2. I don’t think these were the intended diners when the pet store put out this dog food.
3. General Tso’s Tofu
4. The thing that trims the hedgerows
5. Stuffed portobellos and campers
6. Walter lounges

Wednesday night I developed a sore throat. By Friday morning, my baby sinus infection was much worse, and I got desperate enough to figure out the employee health services since I only had a couple Sudafed left from home and wasn’t sure what I would find at a pharmacy (which all close by six p.m. anyway). My doctor in Indianapolis is very stingy with antibiotics and would wait until I had green stuff coming out of my head before she’d give me anything, so I’ve gotten in the habit of waiting out some of these horrible sinus things with cold medicine and throat spray, because by the time I’ve had that green symptom I’ve already been sick for five days and it seems kind of pointless to bother with it then. (Sometimes this backfires into a three-week illness but other times my immune system catches up in a few more days.) Anyway, the nurse at the health center couldn’t give me much more than “Sinutabs” (which were much appreciated), and acknowledged I needed an antibiotic, but she did give me the name of a clinic in town, which is more information than I had when I went in there. At this point I still had to work the rest of the morning, then get the keys to my house, move in, and accept/unload delivery of my big shipping container. But at least I had the afternoon off, so I called the doctor place, and got an appointment for quarter to five.

Except after successfully wandering around Kinsale making sure I could find the clinic, scoping out the pharmacy (also called a “chemist” here, but the building still says pharmacy), getting a few groceries, and determining if I had enough cash for the doctor and the rest of the weekend – I get paid Monday which will be the first time there is money in my Irish bank account, and the ATM percentage charge off my American bank account is annoying — I arrived at the clinic at 4:20 to find out my appointment had been at 3:45! I guess I just didn’t understand the accent on the phone and while the receptionist seemed annoyed, I asked if I could at least fill out the forms to be a new patient so I could establish a GP somewhere. I guess you need GP blessing to go get any other medical work done anyway. She handed me a slip that consisted of my name, DOB, address, and phone numbers. That was it! I thought I would get the full six-page questions with a nurse later but I never did. It was kind of weird not to detail my history for a new doctor… even my root canal guy at home wants every detail since I was born.

She still seemed annoyed but said she would try to squeeze me in since I said I was really sick, and I went into a waiting room which was a little dumpy like the rest of the place, but I felt too crappy to even read the magazines and listened to a three year old bother everyone else in a cute way. After about fifteen minutes someone called me (I think it was the actual doctor, again no nurse in this setup), and I went in his office and explained how I’d just moved there and that I had a sinus infection and what the symptoms were. He took a VERY brief history right into his computer, which was basically what meds I was already taking and if my immediate family had any major illness history. Not even height and weight, but heck, this was pretty awesome to get right in and have him proclaim I needed an antibiotic. He did check ENT areas and when he listened to my lungs he kept saying “excuse me” as I lifted my sweater jumper, which was also a little funny. I guess this is where the super-politeness comes in; my doctor at home never “apologizes” for each move of the stethoscope. He even apologized that it might not have been my fault for misunderstanding the accent when I apologized for being late to my appointment!

Dr. Tony Somebody also asked how I was doing with the move and being away from home and suggested being on airplanes and the big stress of moving could have contributed, though we also discussed how many of these stupid infections I’d had before. I liked that he listened to me and seemed to respect that I know my particular history with this affliction well, something I don’t always get with my home doctor. By this time I was practically in tears anyway, being so sick and having such a LONG day already (I did successfully move into the house and get my shipment), so I was glad he not only wrote a prescription but that he also was happy to write others for meds I already took if I just brought in my current containers, no third degree to reestablish my various ailments to be deemed worthy of medication. Most of what I’ve taken recently seems to have a different name in Ireland, so we worked out some of those differences and I ended up with name brand Augmentin for under €12. The actual visit cost €50 and they don’t seem to file your insurance for you (while it’s true there is some form of national health insurance, many Irish people buy private insurance too). I would have had to file my own anyway with the new international insurance I’m supposedly on. I can’t seem to get any info on the plan and I don’t know how/where to file a claim yet.

At the pharmacy I also found actual Sudafed (hooray!), though they didn’t have a generic, and some sore throat spray, and that stuff is so strong it almost hurts more than the ailment it treats. Much of the OTC stuff is behind the counter so you have to ask them to get it for you. The pharmacist pronounced my name correctly, which makes him the second person since I arrived to do that. I kind of thought Europeans might get the whole German spelling/pronunciation right more often, but not so far. The other guy who got it right was a Polish guy on the IT help line at work. I need to find more Poles and test the theory for other parts of the continent.

I had dinner plans with other Americans from work at one of their homes and sniffled my way through that. Despite being ill, I’m glad I went, not only because they had a dog and a cat but because even this introvert gets tired of eating in a restaurant by herself every night. Some nights I just haven’t eaten because it seemed too much of a hassle and too depressing to walk into town for food I couldn’t store as leftovers anyway, and I was never that hungry after the big lunches at work.

I spent an hour or so unpacking enough things to have pajamas and bedding and slept pretty well that night with all my drugs. The next adventure: driving to Cork to shop for household goods. I survived, but you’ll have to read about that next. Also, I have no phone, TV, or internet yet, and I’m going insane. If you are reading this I must have stolen a wifi connection somewhere.

World’s End is the name of the location or neighborhood or whatever this place is. I’m staying in the Trident Hotel, and that’s their address. A lot of the homes and businesses here don’t seem to have (or at least use) numerical addresses, just names like Old Head and Seaward and Highlanes Gallery. I’m glad I’m not delivering pizza here. Also most streets don’t have signs with the street name, just arrows pointing to various named shops and points of interest. My GPS SatNav goes by street names, and they’re on maps, but not actually posted in public. Very confusing.

I’m moving into my house tomorrow, but the phone and internet connections could take a few to several days, so I may not be around much on here or on the phone. Meanwhile I’m fighting the early parts of a sinus infection, but my insurance is suddenly bizarre and the pharmacies don’t stay open past six, so I’m doing my best with Aleve and Sudafed–glad I brought at least a couple things with me. Apparently rather than having a selection of OTC meds on the shelves at any grocery or drugstore, you have to talk to the pharmacist and explain your symptoms and they might sell you something.

Also: Arliss has a Twitter account now too! She’s advanced past my own level of connectivity. I expect I’ll see her cell phone bill on my credit card next. She has a couple new posts at her blog, too.

Pics I took right before I left.

I was reading an interesting series of short articles on public school food in D.C. The switch from shipping in pre-packaged individual meals to be warmed before serving to the kids to ‘fresh cooked’ meals in a brand new school kitchen actually means shipping in pre-packaged larger quantities of frozen food that are then reheated in a steamer by people who have never cooked in an actual commercial kitchen before, and everything is served with disposable tableware. They don’t even have a stove or a dishwasher in the new kitchen. The worst is the junk the kids are actually served. It sounds awful in taste and is just marginal in nutrition.

Anyway, it got me to thinking about my own cafeteria experiences. First off: Safetypup was on the milk cartons! His cartoon taught us safety tips while using good grammar. Matches are tools, not toys with which to play. Unfortunately I can’t find any pictures of Safetypup in his cartoon form, just scary costumed people dressed as Safetypup.

I used to keep my lunch money coins in the zippers of my Kangaroo shoes. It was really hard to stand on one foot in the lunch line as it moved forward and unzip my shoes to get the money out. Seems bizarre that I swipe a credit card at the work cafeteria now.

Mom would post the weekly school lunch menu from the newspaper on the fridge, and each morning she’d ask if we wanted to buy the menu choice or take a packed lunch. One of the most humiliating experiences of my elementary school lunch career was when the sixth grade girls (the meanest one was Jamie McCarthy!) made fun of my fifth-grade lunch: a hotdog in a Thermos of hot water, which I assembled with the bun at the table. Mom was creative in keeping the food hot, but the teasing stuck with me for, oh, 24 years now.

Our Little Hoosier meetings were held in the cafeteria. We made Indiana-shaped cookies once a year. I also remember thinking how dumb some of my classmates were during these meetings.

In boarding school we shared a cafeteria with college students. The most famous dishes were Limelight chicken, or Chernobyl chicken as suggested by the strange glowing color, and Tater Tot Hot Dish, or TTHD. The lady who ran the checkout was kind of socially awkward (I guess she fit in with us) and had some classic lines which made it to the Masochistic Board, a piece of MDF we propped in the lounge on our dorm floor, which we decorated with things that drove us nuts and then beat on it with a cat o’ nine tails-like device my mom had at home for distressing wooden frames. It had chains attached to a wooden handle and made a hell of a racket! It was so bad that the girls on the floor downstairs started crying because they thought someone was being beaten and we had to stop attacking our Masochistic Board. I’m not quite sure how it got that name, except maybe because we were punishing ourselves by going to a really hard school, but I do remember the director of student life taking a couple swings at it before it was retired.

Pissed? Bitter? Test your beating skills on the f***ing Masochistic Board! (One of the girls on our floor had a bad emu experience)

Our work cafeterias are decent, but some days are better than others when it comes to veggie options. Still better than school food! I hated Hamette on Bun, which was a common Friday lunch.

There’s a program to fund veg options in school lunches!

I was going to end with a little rant about the pro-HFCS commercials, but instead I recommend a viewing of King Corn instead, which streams free from Netflix.

This post made me hungry.

Some random thoughts to prove I’m still alive.

I did indeed have cadaver bone put in during my osteomyelitis treatment! It was irradiated, powdered, and mixed with what is basically plaster of Paris, but it still sounds exotic. Unfortunately I’ve had some additional dental pain recently. You’d think I traumatized my teeth or something.

Arliss had her fourth surgery a week ago (vet and I agreed she didn’t need a CT scan after all) and she’s doing great! She even gained weight in the last two weeks.

Loving the Indy Winter Farmers Market on Saturday mornings. The place is PACKED and I love seeing cyclists with panniers riding in the snow! Note: the local chickens went on strike when it got super cold the last couple of weeks, so eggs were harder to come by. I like being able to get a half dozen a month since we don’t use more than that, and then I can take the carton back to the farmer to use again.

I discovered recently-reopened El Sol de Tala. This town has more Mexican (I use that as a geographic/ethnic term loosely) restaurants than you can imagine, but this one place stands out. They even have a veggie menu. It’s not the same old enchiladas anymore, people!

Following a craving, I had French toast at Denny’s, and even if they hadn’t ruined it with cinnamon and powdered sugar, it still was nowhere as good as Dad’s. He also blows away every pancake on earth.

I’ve finally heard from some of the relocation folks and the target start date in Ireland is March 1. There’s so much to do that it’s hard not just to plop on the couch with 81 SVU reruns on Tivo and ignore the obvious (that’s how many were scheduled in this two week period). One of my current focuses (okay, foci) is pantry raid: use up all the groceries that line our cupboards and freezer. In the past week we had breakfasty stuff to use up biscuits and fake sausages and last night I made chik’n and rice casserole. My freezer has several fake meat products that I’ve always kept as backup, but usually have been creative enough not to need for most cooking. I see a lot of chili in our future for the ground ‘beef’ crumbles…

Arliss, who had her incisors removed less than two weeks ago, had another surgery Monday when an abscess popped up at her one-week checkup. Now there’s a hole in her face (‘marsupialized’) that we are flushing daily to get the gunk out and hope it heals from the inside out. Meanwhile she won’t eat so I’m syringing food and pain meds. I tend to panic when bunnies don’t eat (it warrants panic, actually). We are having lots of cuddle time even if she’s pissed about it, and it’s gratifying when she laps up the liquid food from the syringe. Poor thing is hungry but it hurts her to eat.

MEANWHILE, foster Jolene came down with one heck of a URI this weekend so she’s on antibiotics, but she’s SO congested she’s not eating either! At least I think that’s why she’s not eating. I had her in the bathroom tonight after David’s shower. He thought I was nuts, but I’m hoping to steam her nose open. She sounds terrible. Acts hungry when I syringe her food too, but it’s a slow process because she panics when she stops to breathe around the snot. I think the nebulizer is next.

Vegas has been on antibiotics for her snotty nose for weeks and is not sounding particularly better, but at least she’s acting great and eating on her own.

Of course Casper’s on quite the regimen now too, but she’s eating and holds still for fluids, plus I finally learned to stuff pills down her throat, so she’s relatively easy. Feeding her four times a day is hard on the work schedule, though.

And I had my top-down root canal on Monday, courtesy of friends Halcion and Valium, so I don’t remember a darn thing after they let me snooze with a blankie and neck pillow with the lights off, and I never did find out if they put a cadaver graft in there. Guess I’ll find out next week at the recheck. The Darvocet made me sick so I’m limping by on OTC stuff. And I broke some of my Frankengum stitches already. In an odd twist, I am flushing my surgery site with Chlorhexidine, the same stuff we’re using on Arliss’ abscess.

I’ve been so confused by all the pet medicating I keep forgetting to take my own antibiotics.

If the bunnies would just start eating on their own I would seriously cry with relief.

I thought all my dental woes were behind me now that I’ve had my restoration done for about two years. Well, a couple months ago something started feeling ‘funny,’ so I went to my regular dentist to see if there was anything of concern. Several radiographs later, she saw nothing there, but did observe that one or more crowns had gaps at the margins and she wanted to replace them. She’s doing this at her cost, since she feels they were never seated completely in the first place (and when you do 20 crowns at once I can see where something might not fit ideally), so for me it’s just more hours in the chair and some deja vu.

Of course my dentist has moved to a new practice in Westfield, which takes forever and a day to drive to, but after all the work she did, I figure I better follow her. She’s the expert in this stuff. By getting a new practice, she now has digital x-ray, and that’s why she was able to see this glitch in my crowns that we didn’t see on the old school film x-rays at the dental school practice.

So I spent three hours Saturday morning having two crowns sawed off and then had my tissues under them lasered for a nice long time. This was slightly more pleasant than the old-school equivalent electrodentistry (and smelled less like stir fry, too). The tissue-retracting astringent was still nasty tasting but was able to be applied by syringe this time so it wasn’t as bad as the cord method. In a couple weeks I get to go back for the new crowns.

Meanwhile, she referred me to the endodontist who did the root canal on the tooth that was bothering me, who says I need another root canal on it! This one will go through the gums and come in from the root end, an apioectomy. Greaaat, another chance at gum surgery! He has already agreed to give me happy drugs for my anxiety.

I asked what could cause that, since I already had a root canal and crown on that tooth. He said, “trauma from extensive dental work.” Geez. I hope I don’t need this on all the rest of my teeth… and he already sees a dark area on a nearby molar.

EDIT: Hey look, I found the blog post from when the first root canal happened. And this cool one with a picture that talks about trying to avoid the apioectomy on a different tooth!

EDIT 2: Forgot to mention that they suggested I might need a bone graft – from a cadaver!

I’m anxious about a dentist appointment today, since I have a tooth root area that feels way funny and I don’t think I have the psychological stamina (nor the excellent insurance) to go through any more fancy dental work. Plus I think I had a root canal on this one anyway so I’m not sure what the problem could be that isn’t really bad! I remembered one of my favorite Sesame Street clips, though, which makes me feel better:

I just called an automated prescription refill line for my mail-in pharmacy benefit. I’ve called this line for refills many times, and while the voice actuated ordering is really annoying, usually it’s quick and, oh, automatic. So I went through the whole automated refill process, including confirming my address (which it knew) and my credit card, confirmed I didn’t want any other refills, and then it said it was connecting my call and I was on hold for ten minutes. What?? Usually they confirm immediately and ship without me talking to a CSR. This must be the cost savings from the mail-in pharmacy selling their operations to someone else. Awesome! When the CSR answered, she asked me all the same questions again, and I asked, “Why am I talking to you?”

Yesterday we held a family party for my grandparents’ 60th anniversary! It was nice to rehash the old stories. Grandma wrote Grandpa a letter which recounted how he’s not often outwardly affectionate, and gave an example of her tough day home with the kids when he came home and didn’t reassure her as much as she would have liked. She asked if he loved her, and he said, “I come home every night, don’t I?” Somehow this seemed very sweet given my gentle grandfather’s nature.

When I was young, we’d go visit my great great aunt and uncle’s farm on the west side of town. Uncle Walt and Aunt Dorothy had 80 acres, and at various times, cows, chickens, corn, a pond, an inground pool (this was the most exciting part for my brother and me at the time), dogs, woods, strawberries, you name it. They had a long dirt lane and when you drove on it, the resident dog (jobs included guard and groundhog killer) would come running to meet you.

My mom and her mom both spent lots of time at the farm when they were young. I am SO glad we got to go visit too, but I wonder what it would have been like to live there for whole summers. There are stories of using dynamite to blow up field rocks and my mom getting lost as a toddler and the dog finding her.

They lived in a creepy-cool 1850s(?) farmhouse and the upstairs, a place we rarely visited, wasn’t even vented for heat. The dirt cellar had amazing jarred veggies on old shelves. The big wraparound porch had rocking chairs and bees would visit the flowers while you sat around and talked.

The old barns were really amazing to me. I was not very adventurous and didn’t explore as much as I should have, but the falling-down old chicken coop and slatted corn sheds fascinated me. My memories don’t include the animals that lived there, since Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Walt were older by then and rented their cornfields to other farmers, but the old buildings were right there by the house as a reminder. There’s a picture somewhere, one I clearly remember, of kids bottle-feeding a calf. I remember the wooden ramp with rails where the grown cattle apparently climbed on the truck to go to slaughter. My mom said Uncle Walt would cry when they left.

Whatever happened to that world? It must have been amazing to be an American farmer through the bulk of the last century; the changes in fertilizers and yields, the move to families shopping in big grocery stores, the selling of this beautiful property in the country to be another fancy subdivision after the old farmers went off to assisted living facilities. Uncle Walt suffered from illnesses related to his life’s work, but I just remember him sitting in a recliner and telling deadpan jokes. (When asked why his dog was so spoiled, he responded with the title of this post.) Aunt Dorothy climbed on top of the shed in her 70s to paint; I remember her still liking to eat Long John Silver’s food, of all things, in her 90s, long after moving away from the farm and going deaf.

I was thinking of the farm after watching Food, Inc. last weekend with friends. Please go see it–it’s amazing what we don’t know about the food we eat and where it’s sourced. I visited a farmers’ market just before the movie, and went to another one this past weekend, but yet that’s not where the bulk of my food starts. I’m trying to take advantage of more markets this year while we are in growing season, plus we are growing more vegetables ourselves. When I stop to think about this basic thing, food, it amazes me what an industry it’s become. Now there are even concerns about ‘food security,’ whether from national perspectives or right here in my city.

Maybe it’s not helpful to idolize the old family farm in this day of WalMarts and a bigger population, but I know none of Uncle Walt’s cows stood knee deep in their own manure their whole lives, nor did his chickens live in cages the size of a sheet of paper. The unchecked growth of factory farming and seed law signals to me the dirty politics and the greedy side of capitalism that tosses aside any reasonable treatment of worker, animal, or planet.

The power of consumer dollars: a vote every time you eat.

I’m very excited about the upcoming opening of our first non-profit community grocery in a rehabbed building in an underserved part of the city: Pogue’s Run Grocer!