Quince Años for Hope

Hope will turn fifteen in October. Fifteen is a major, major birthday in Mexico - in the old days it was the traditional coming of age birthday, when a girl would be “presented to society” and declared eligible for courtship. And it was marked with an extravagant party for the entire community.  Rather like a debutante’s “coming out” ball. 

Hope will have her quince at home in October, but her abuelita wanted to throw her a party here as well. It was a lovely affair, just family and close friends, but that amounted to about thirty-five people. We cooked vats of posole (Hope’s requested meal) and Homero surprised her with mariachis. 

Opening the Waltz with Papa



Posing with the mariachis. Hope has become quite a good guitar player, and after the mariachis performed they sat down to eat - as is traditional - and Hope played a few songs. As they were leaving, the bandleader stopped Hope and told her that she has an enchanting voice, plays well, and should never stop. 

Last waltz with a doll.... this tradition symbolizes “putting away childish things” and becoming a grownup lady. 

There’s a lot to be said about Quinces, and I’d love to write a whole post about them. Maybe later, as right now I have to get downstairs and start helping with the tamales. 

Cooking in Oaxaca (Improv Style)

Meatballs in red sauce 

I love to cook, but cooking here presents some, ahem, challenges..  

We are staying at my mother-in-law’s house and that means I am cooking in her kitchen. Which, I will say, is pretty well equipped. Four burner gas stove with a cast iron comal; functional fridge and freezer. Decent selection of cookware, by which I mean there is a small skillet and a large skillet, stockpots of various sizes, cutting boards, and a full range of implements like spatulas and strainers. A pretty good blender. 

But most of the equipment is.... not of a quality I would buy at home. Pots and pans are aluminum, or whatever that sheet metal-covered-in-blue-enamel camping ware is. They are warped and don’t sit flat on the burner. Knives are cheap, dull, and plastic handled. There is theoretically an oven but it hasn’t been used since we lived here five years ago and is crammed with stuff I wouldn’t attempt to remove and find other space for.

Then there’s my mother-in-law’s organization system, or lack thereof. Now, I’m no neat freak and I know my own kitchen falls far below the standards of those of many people. So I’m not being judgemental, I’m just explaining why I have a hard time sometimes. 

Mamá keeps everything in plastic bags, usually opaque ones, twisted shut, knitted at the top, and thrown into the cupboard. There are probably a hundred such bags, and I can’t tell what’s in any of them. There are big bags, small bags, bags that crackle when you pick them up, as if stuffed with dried twigs, and bags that are heavy and solid enough to be full of sand. The knots are so tight I can never undo them, and I don’t want to tear open the bag to see what’s in it. 

The fridge is the same, as is the freezer. So of course I just buy my own food. I brought home a bag of rice and a bag of beans and mama says “No no no! Why did you buy rice! We have lots of rice!” Yeah - probably eighteen separate bags of rice, but which ones? 

And next time I look for the rice, or the beans, or the yogurt, or the cheese I brought home, it’s disappeared into little opaque bags. Some of her kitchen habits leave me mystified. I bought a loaf of sliced bread for sandwiches, and when I went to look for it, she had put it in the freezer and it was frozen solid. 

Mealtimes are also different here than at home. A fairly hearty breakfast whenever we stumble downstairs (we are not early risers), prepared by Mamá, who does not believe us when we say we prefer to eat lightly in the mornings. At home, we have coffee when we wake up, and then lunch a few hours later. Here, we are presented with tamales or quesadillas or chicken in mole or beans and rice with scrambled eggs first thing. 

Dinner is late, usually sometime between 8 and 9. If I want to cook - which I often do, both because I like to and because the children ask me to - I have to work with what I can find. Within walking distance, there are only very small stores in people’s homes that carry a quite basic supply of ingredients: rice, black beans, a few canned goods like tuna and evaporated milk, and a small selection of fresh produce. And a decidedly wider selection of junk food, mostly Bimbo products. 

Cooking Mexican food would not present much of a problem, obviously, as long as I stuck to simple recipes. But Mamá does all those dishes so much better than me that I prefer to leave them to her, and my kids often ask for dishes I make at home. So I improvise. 

Hope asked me for chicken and vegetables in Thai peanut sauce like I make at home. I told her I’d do my best. 

Chicken: no problem. It’s tough free-range ranch chicken, but it tastes good. So I boiled the heck out of it with garlic, onion, clove, allspice, and salt and pepper and shredded it, saving the broth. The corner store had green cabbage and green beans, so those were the vegetables. 

The peanut sauce was the tough part. I had to wait until Friday, when they hold the neighborhood tianguis (street market) to get ginger. There was a bottle of soy sauce in the fridge that I’m pretty sure I bought myself two years ago. 

The hardest thing to figure out was fish sauce. If there’s no fish sauce, it’s not Thai peanut sauce, full stop. Finally I had a brain wave. 

Charolitos

These are dried anchovies, or charolitos, as they are called here. They’re super tiny, less than an inch long, and dried crisp. I got them at the tianguis. Six or eight of them reproduced the flavor of fish sauce, at least somewhat. The tianguis also provided a young coconut, skillfully removed from its husk in one piece, with the water still inside, like a perfect snowball. The man does it with a machete.  

Mamás blender was not up to the task of turning roasted peanuts into a smooth paste, even with the admixture of chicken broth and coconut milk,  so the resulting peanut sauce was a bit gritty, but it had the right flavor profile. Hope was happy. 

Today I had a craving for spaghetti and meatballs. The carnicería right next door was closed, but I was determined to have meat balls so I took a mototaxi up to the big butcher about a half mile away. I asked for three-quarters of a kilo of ground beef. The butcher hacked off a few pieces of very lean meat - I have no clue what part of the animal it was, but there was zero visible fat - and ground it for me. I would have preferred a coarser grind as well as a piece with a little fat on it, but oh well. 

Back at home I mixed the meat with a couple of eggs and some very fine bread crumbs (Mamá had bought a bag of bread crumbs to fry fish the other night) and salt and pepper. I looked in the spice drawer, saw twenty or thirty little plastic bags of various colors, and sent Paloma next door for three pesos worth of oregano. 

No olive oil, so I fried the meatballs in vegetable oil. 

Making a red sauce was fairly straightforward except for the lack of olive oil. Garlic, onion, more oregano, whizz up some lovely ripe tomatoes in the blender. 

When we went to the big grocery store last week (it’s accross town always) I had been delighted to see Parmesan cheese in the green can, just like at home. I bought it, and set it on top of the fridge, but since then it has disappeared into the depths of some cupboard or another and I couldn’t find it. So I used the cheese I have, which is quesillo. It’s basically mozerella, but stringier. It’s basically string cheese. It melted into the red sauce in a lovely gooey way. 

I’m looking forward to seeing how my improvisation turned out. 

All the Fruit We Won’t Be Eating

The cherries are just getting ripe. Paloma and I went out and picked this basket of cherries in about four minutes flat, off of one of our three cherry trees. These cherries are perfectly ripe right now - but the Ranier and the other dark cherry (Lapin? Sam? Stella? I can’t remember) still have a few days to go. 

Homero is leaving for Mexico in the truck day after tomorrow; the girls and I are flying down a week later. We can gorge ourselves on cherries before we go, but there isn’t time for me to do any processing. It’s eat ‘em now or forever hold your peace. 

At least we get to enjoy the cherries before we go. This is shaping up to be a great year for the orchard, and we will miss out on some of my favorites. I’m especially mourning the loss of the greengage plums. That tree is finally starting to bear a respectable crop, after years of me wondering what was wrong with it. I guess it just needed time. Right now the branches are loaded with hard little green balls, which will ripen in August into luscious, sweet, golden orbs bursting with juice. And we will not get to enjoy any of them. 

Nor the raspberries. All of raspberry season will pass with us far away, and so we will not have raspberry smoothies this winter. I hope we will be home in time for the Italian prunes - that tree is absolutely jam-packed with little green plums. I adore Italian prunes, all ways - fresh, stewed, dried.  This year I was thinking to make wine again. It was delicious last time. But unless the weather is extraordinarily cooperative, we will miss Italian prune season as well. 

Blackberries are more hopeful. We will be home the first week in September. If the rains hold off, there will probably be blackberries still, although the best of the season will be ending. 

Apples and pears. Hooray! Apple cider season will take place as scheduled. The Comice pears will be perfect for eating out of hand, inshallah, and of course there will still be the farmers market and its late season bounty of tomatoes and squash.

And of course let’s not forget that I am traveling to the land of cheap and exquisite fruit. Mangoes. Tunas (cactus fruit, not fish). Watermelons. Avocados. Passion fruit. Papaya. 

Homecoming Harvest

We had a bit of difficulty getting home

from Oaxaca. Without going into details, we got home 48 hours later than we thought we would; paid more than a thousand dollars more than we thought we would have to; and had to take a seven hour bus ride to Mexico City instead of flying from Oaxaca, as we had planned. 

None of that matters, in the grand scheme of things. We are home - whole, hale, and hearty. We had a wonderful trip (recap to follow, with pictures). The farm, under Rowan's care, has flourished in our absence. 

I was sorry to have missed so much of harvest season. All the berries were early this year and the strawberries and raspberries came and went while we were gone. I got anxious as I saw my friends' Facebook posts of blueberries and even blackberries while I was still

thousands of miles away. 

Today I found out that there is plenty of harvest season left. As you can see above, the blackberries are in full swing but there are plenty of green ones left and there will be blackberries for weeks yet. 

The blueberry harvest is not over yet, either. My favorite local no-spray blueberry farm had many plants loaded with berries still, although some had begun to dry on the bush. It only took me twenty minutes to pick about 4 pounds. Sometime this weekend I'll be bringing the kids out to pick more.

Walking the orchard brought some delightful surprises. Some trees that had never yet borne fruit are bearing. Chiefly - the hazelnut. I don't know if this is due to the two new tiny hazels I planted this spring for improved fertilization or if the bush simply needed more time. In years past, it flowered but never developed nuts. This year there are hundreds of nuts all of a sudden. I need to read up on when to harvest them and how to cure them. 

Another tree, which I had pretty much given up on, surprised me: the greengage plum. We have two plum trees - an Italian plum and a greengage plum. The Italian plum has been providing us with a good harvest for several years, but the greengage plum had not set a single fruit, despite growing tall and flowering. For whatever unknown reason, it decided that this was the year it was going to fruit. The plums are just ripe - and delicious. The greengage plum is a heritage fruit that many of us remember, but which you almost never find in the grocery store. I'm so happy ours has decided to bloom.

All the pear trees look pretty loaded (we have four - too many), but one in particular is so weighed down with hundreds of enormous pears that the tips of the branches are actually resting on the ground. I think it is the Comice pear - my favorite. They haven't started to fall yet, so I'll leave them be until they do. 

Our first day back happened to be a Friday, which is farmer's market day in Ferndale. Overly ambitious, perhaps, I bought enough green beans for canning and several pounds of pickling cucumbers and dill to start a crock of lacto-fermented pickles. 

I've already got the pickles going in a big glass container on the kitchen counter but the green beans will have to wait until I buy some new canning jars - tomorrow. I swear. 

Oaxaca Trip (Bad Timing)

It's been three full years since we returned from our year in Oaxaca (for more about that trip, see my sister blog, www.newtomexicanlife.blogspot.com). Three years is a long time in the girls' lives - they were children of eight and nine when we returned and now they are young ladies of eleven and twelve. Their memories of Oaxaca are hazy - especially Paloma's, who is the youngest - and their fluency in Spanish has taken a few giant leaps backward.

Therefore we were very happy to be able to plan a fairly long trip this summer - six weeks. We are supposed to leave on Friday. Back in February or March, there was a short period of time when airfare was very cheap. It was so cheap that we decided to fly all the way to Oaxaca, instead of flying to Mexico City and going the rest of the way by bus, as we usually do. Mama was ecstatic that we would be bringing her grand babies back to her, and the girls were delighted at the prospect of seeing their cousins. In fact, since they are so grown up now, we thought we would let the girls stay at Tia Temy's house with their cousins, and Homero and I would stay at Mama's house, fifteen minutes away by car. Maybe we'd even be able to get away for a three-or-four day trip, all by ourselves. 

Then this happened:

Fires set by protesters to block the road

And this: 

a truck carrying chickens set ablaze and used to blockade the highway

And this:

civil unrest in Nochixtlan

The perennial dispute between the branch of the teacher's union known as section 22 and the federal government has once again flared into violence, as it has been doing every couple of years since at least 2006. This particular exacerbation is probably the worst since that time. Eight protestors have been killed by police, and there are fires and marches and blockades and rocks being thrown and molotov cocktails being tossed and batons swinging all over town.

Blockades are nothing new, and for the most part have been traditionally seen as nothing more than annoyances - inconvenient, yes, but a legitimate tactic nonetheless, like a strike. In fact I would venture to say that most Oaxacans view blockades and strikes with a kind of grudging admiration: "these people have guts" sort of thing. If it weren't for these people putting themselves on the line we'd all be ground under the heel of the imperialist oppressor. At worst, a blockade is met with a resigned shrug.

That changed, however, at least among the people I knew, a few years ago when the teacher's strike dragged on so long that schoolchildren missed almost a half a year of school. Those who could afford to sent their children to private schools. Those who couldn't do that had to miss work to care for kids or else leave them at home alone. Blockaders were so inflexible that a woman died in an ambulance that was not allowed to cross the blockade to the hospital. Tourism shrank away to nothing and many jobs were lost.

This time looks to be pretty bad. But it's so hard to judge without being there. A friend of mine who lives in the city center says that the blockades are so bad that grocery stores are running out of food. He said all he could buy at the local market was potatoes, yams, and cucumbers. Mama, on the other hand, just returned from a trip to Tuxtepec and said her bus had no trouble with blockades and that the stores in her neighborhood are perfectly well-stocked. She and my siblings-in-law are pooh-poohing the situation and say that we ought to come down as planned. In three days.

Here is a case where differing cultural expectations can be glaring. When I expressed concern to Homero that there might be a blockade on the road leading from the airport to the city, so that we might be stuck at the airport with no way to get to mama's house, he waved off my fears.

"The blockades are only stopping vehicles," he said. "you can walk around. It's only a few miles."

Somehow, the idea of attempting to traverse "a few miles" of terrain like that in these photos - a terrain littered with tire-fires, riot police, dead chickens, and rock-throwing youth does not inspire confidence. Especially when I imagine having to do it in 90 degree heat, with young children in tow,  dragging all our luggage. I know those Oaxaca highways and even at the best of times they are not suited to those little plastic suitcase wheels.

Thus far we have not been able to contact the airline. My brother suggested that given the situation, the airline would probably waive the change-date fees. Maybe - IF we could get ahold of a human. But really, what good would that do? Who knows when the situation will be any better? Homero spent an hour attempting to contact the customer service department of AreoMexico and only succeeded in soliciting the information (from a computerized voice) that the change-date fee is $250/ticket.

I think we will go. Nothing is ever as bad as it looks on the news.

But I'm bringing a carton of Cliff bars in my carryon.

Christmas 2014 (Musings and Menus)

Preparations for Christmas this year are just about done. The presents are all bought and wrapped, the tree is lit, the house is decorated and plans are firmly in place for who we are visiting when. I've enjoyed the run-up to Christmas this year. The girls helped me decorate and seemed to enjoy it - I wonder how many years I have left of making snowflakes and decorating cookies with them? We staged a small Christmas piano recital for family and friends, and we went to Vancouver to go see the lights in Stanley Park. 

2014 Christmas Altar

Because we finally sold the property we have been trying for many years to sell, we have a little extra money this year. Which is a good thing, because my husband LOVES to shop for and buy Christmas presents, and often we have some friction around much we ought to spend vs. how much we (ahem: he) actually end up spending. This year I was able to mostly relax around it and let him go to town. 

I can't help, however, contrasting Christmas in the U.S. with Christmas in Oaxaca. Sure, people here go to parties during Christmas season, and many of us go to church, but if we are honest we have to admit that Christmas, for Americans, mostly revolves around buying gifts and exchanging them. That is not the case in Oaxaca, where we have spent more than a couple of Christmases, most recently in 2012.

Christmas 2012 in Abuelita's house

Christmas in Oaxaca begins on December 16th. For the nine days leading up to Christmas, there are Posadas, a celebration, a reenactment of the journey of Mary and Joseph before Christ's birth that moves from house to house and involves pinatas, singing, and food. Although parish-based, Posadas truly are open to everyone, including random tourists who are brave enough to accept a waved invitation. 

Aside from the posadas, there is a nearly endless string of parties and visits. Everyone wants to entertain at Christmastime, and pretty much everyone does. On Christmas eve, the neighborhood Posada finishes its nine-day journey at the local church; there is a big street festival and mass is spoken, and then everyone heads home for a big, late dinner. And then that's it; that's Christmas. Christmas morning is for nursing hangovers and - eventually - cleaning up. Gifts are reserved for Epiphany, on January 6th, and are pretty much just tokens.

In many ways, Christmas in Oaxaca is a lot less stressful, not to mention expensive. The holiday is much more about events - parties, mass, going downtown to look at the decorations, visiting family - and much less about spending money and gifts. Of course, it is still expensive and stressful to entertain visiting family. The average American family might be totally aghast at the thought of hosting three or four different families, sequentially or simultaneously, and feeding them all and being gracious for weeks on end. Or at the thought of throwing six to eight parties during the Christmas season instead of one. Personally I'm thankful to not be hosting any parties at all.

I am, though, doing Christmas eve dinner. Just here at home, and the only invited guest is P., Rowan's ex-boyfriend, who is leaving Christmas day on a greyhound to go back to the mid-west from whence he came. We love P. and will miss him, and are glad to have him with us. So I'm only cooking for six, which is fewer than the number of people  cooked for every single day last year, when P. and the cousins Alehida and Shidezi were living with us. But of course it has to be special.

I asked Homero what he wanted for Christmas eve dinner, and he said "Roast chicken, but not like you make it. I want it like my grandma makes it. And also the noodles she makes. And the potato salad."

If there's one thing I think all us wives can agree we don't like to hear about our cooking, it's that "it's not like Grandma used to make." Especially if Grandma happens to come from an entirely different country with different, unavailable ingredients. At least I have the advantage of having eaten Grandma's Christmas eve roast chicken. It is, indeed, delicious. I think I can come up with a pretty good approximation. Also it is true that Grandma herself showed me how to make her guajillo salsa, which is, as Homero says, "good enough to make you eat the tablecloth where it spilled."

Abuelita's Guajillo Salsa

20 or so guajillo chiles (dried California or New Mexico chiles are good substitutes)

3 cloves garlic

large pinch whole cumin seed

tsp. white vinegar

salt

Heat a large cast iron skillet or griddle. Also heat a kettle of water to boiling. Wipe with an oiled napkin, but do not let any oil remain. Tear open chiles and shake out seeds. Toast, turning often, until they become highly fragrant and begin to emit fumes - about 1 minute. 

Put toasted chiles into a blender canister and cover with boiling water. In the same hot skillet, put the peeled garlic and turn until blackened in spots. Also roast the cumin seed until toasty-scented - about 30 seconds. Add to blender canister, along with vinegar. Allow to sit and soften 1 hour. Blend on high for a few FULL MINUTES, until as smoothly pureed as it will ever be. 

Pour into a small saucepan and simmer to reduce. When finished, the salsa ought to coat the back of a spoon. Serve with roasted chicken and potato salad. 

It's a Dog's Life

Ivory on the beach at Huatulco

Ivory had a tough year. She was ten, nearly eleven, when we left for Mexico last summer, but still a very active, healthy dog. As a farm dog and sometime chivera (goatherding dog), she was used to being outside all day, every day, free to roam, dig, and hunt rabbits. Life in Mexico was a culture shock for her as much is it was for any of us; probably more so. 

At Mama's house, Ivory learned to live like a Mexican dog, running around on the roof and barking at children passing in the street below. When we took her out for walks, she tried to play with the street dogs, but they weren't interested. Once in a while she ran into a puppy who responded to her play-bow, but for the most part, the dogs in the local packs were too cool to frisk or wrestle. Mama's other dog, Dielta, is a guard dog, not a pet. She is a Rottweiler, and she's crazy and dangerous. We all stayed away from Dielta, Ivory included. I think Ivory was lonely and bored a lot. 

There were a few scary incidents, as well. On the way down, we almost lost her outside of the world's biggest motel six passing San Bernadino. When we stayed at my dad's house, his dog bit her in the face. And worst of all, shortly after we arrived in Oaxaca she got hit by a car. Thank God nothing was broken, but she was hit badly enough that she couldn't get up, and it took her about six weeks to fully recover. The Mexican penchant for fireworks nearly drove her crazy; we lived right next door to a church of Guadalupe, and during the week leading up to December 12th, Ivory had to be sedated. 

Of course, it wasn't all hell for a dog. We took her with us everywhere we went. We were lucky enough to do a lot of traveling, and Ivory became an extremely well-travelled dog. Like most dogs, she loves riding in the car. It didn't seem to bother her even when we drove for days at a time and the rest of us were stir crazy. 

She attended many parties, and ate many goat bones. As our dog, she was a privileged  guest and immune to the kicks and broom-whacks delivered to other mutts that tried to edge under the tables for scraps. 

Ivory sleeping it off after a barbecue

 She visited ruins with us, and loved running up and down pyramids. She was certainly the fastest of any of us. Of course, dogs are not allowed at the major ruins such as Monte Alban , but there are hundreds of archeological sites in Oaxaca that haven't yet been officially excavated, or that are deserted most of the time. There is a site about a mile from Mama's house which was a favorite place to go exploring. The mounds are all overgrown and secret-seeming. As Ivory would tear through the bushes looking for mice and snakes, the kids and I would crawl around looking for pottery shards.

The trip home took seven days. We drove twelve hours a day, climbing the mountains of Oaxaca and Puebla, then rolling straight on through a thousand miles of hot flat nothing to the border. The girls and Ivory did just fine, playing and laughing, for a long time. 

 But sooner or later, there's just nothing left to do but sleep.

Things That Need to Happen (Before We Can Go)

As I wrote a few days ago, we are moving to Mexico this coming year (The Big Reveal (What We Want)). We are hoping to be there by September, when the new school year starts. That would be great, but when I start to think seriously about all the things that need to happen before we go, I just can't see it.

1) Rowan needs to be enrolled in University. My oldest daughter, Rowan, will not be coming with us. Unless, that is, she doesn't get her ass in gear and get herself accepted to a decent program. If she doesn't get in anywhere (which will only happen if she doesn't apply, because she is a freakishly talented artist and a grade A student), then she will have to come with us because there is no way I'm leaving her here with nothing to do all day.

2) Assuming she does get in to her first choice, which is WWU's graphic design program right here in Bellingham, then we need to convert the computer room into an apartment for her. It's mostly ready already: the previous owners converted a two car garage into a master bedroom suite with it's own entrance and bathroom. All we will need to do now is create some sort of cooking area and then Rowan will be set. That, of course, makes it sound easier than it actually is. For one thing, we need to clean out approximately two tons of crap from the walk-in closet/cum food storage area in the way-back. Alas, this isn't something I can do on my own. One example of the crap is a full set of racing tires for a Lamborghini Diablo, which my husband bought for the kit car which he is never going to build.

3) Somehow make the house presentable to potential renters. This is such a sweeping generality that I haven't even the faintest idea how to go about describing the particulars. The list of jobs that absolutely must be completed before we can even hold our heads up if potential renters come to visit includes:

a) Remove and replace all the carpets in all three bedrooms. The off-white carpet that was here when we moved in has, let's say gently, outlived it's usefulness (When the Cat's Away (the Mice Will Get Some Work Done)). Not so gently, I can say it is thoroughly disgusting, no longer remotely off-white, and smells strongly of cat pee.

b) Repaint two of the three bedrooms. The master bedroom, where Homero and I reside, may not be exactly house beautiful material, but at least it isn't embarrassing. The little girl's bedroom, on the other hand, has been lavishly decorated with sharpie (Oh I wish I had photos to show you right now. None of you can possibly believe the level of sharpie desecration unless you have seen it.). Homero and I had a very intense discussion about whether or not the girls should be allowed to sharpie their walls (can you guess whether I took the "yea" or the "nay" position?) and the end result is sharpie from here to hell and gone. The other bedroom in question is Rowan's, which most closely resembles a landfill.

When the painter-guy showed up today to give me an estimate, he looked into Rowan's room and said, "so, you'll be ready in like, two weeks?" Yeah - if I go in there with a bulldozer. Otherwise, never.

c) So many outdoor repairs. Probably the main one is the porch. This house enjoys a commanding view of the Canadian Cascades and takes advantage of it with a wrap-around deck that is something like 1,000 square feet. We have totally ignored any maintenance on this deck since we moved in five years ago. Given that we live in the wettest, moldiest, windiest, nastiest part of the state, the deck needs serious attention. There is also the playroom (new carpet) and the main bathroom (new vinyl flooring). There is the situation under the kitchen sink. Oh my God. Hyperventilating right now.

d) forgot the "landscaping" situation. Once upon a time there was actual landscaping: now I just have to hire a strong man, equip him with some serious weed-eating technology and ask him to chop everything down to an even four inches. It'll be green, right?

4) figuring out what to do with the animals. I told Homero that I was willing to sell all of the animals except the dogs and the horses. Rosie was a rescue and she can't be re-homed due to behavioral problems. The only way to get rid of her is to send her to the auction, and I won't. And Poppy, of course, is our pride and joy, our delight and the equine apple of our eye. She's not going anywhere.

However, boarding horses is crazy expensive. Going rate around here is approximately $200/month/horse for full care board. That is just not do-able. I've been looking around and I may have struck a deal with a guy - a rich, retired, Redmond fellow - who has five acres and wants to set up a petting zoo in his old age. We talked about my giving him my small herd of (gorgeous) dairy goats and my large flock of chickens in exchange for care of the two ponies for a year.

By the way - if it works out, that is a smokin' deal. At $200/month/horse, a year's board would cost me nearly than $5,000, not even counting farrier service or any vet care they might need. On the other had, a very good price for an in-milk Nubian goat is about $300. A VERY good price. I have four of them, plus their offspring. If I count optimistically, I might be able to convince myself that the whole herd is worth something like $2,000. Therefore, it's totally obvious that the above deal is smokin', right?

My husband, when I told him about it, said "You aren't going to give him ALL the goats, are you?" Seeing as how he hadn't done any research and didn't know the relative prices of goats vs. horse care. I told him, "Yes, I am, plus all thirty laying hens. Look on Craigslist at least before you judge." He clearly thought I was making a terrible deal and he could have done much better.

5) Renting out this house. After some thought, I decided it might be worth the expense to hire a property management company. There's one in town, and I stopped by to ask about their general rates and if this kind of specialty arrangement (one year lease; teenager in residence) is even something they do. I expected that a management company would charge about 15% (Don't know how that figure got in my head) and was delighted to find that they actually charge 8%. Of course, they charge separately for advertising the property, for the background check on applicants, and for any repairs needed. The fellow I spoke to (extremely nice) answered all my questions and inspired confidence. He said "Have the place ready for us to check out by May; we will tell you what we think it will rent for."

May is only four months away. Holy Crap. There's not even enough time to do half of making it presentable. I did say to the man "There are a lot of nice things about this property, but it is an old farmhouse. There's no getting around that."

Maybe I should stop focusing on things like slow drains and slippery porches, Maybe I should focus on the best freaking view on the entire county. Ok - here's my mantra. Practice this, Aimee. When he says "Your Jacuzzi tub doesn't work" you say "have you SEEN Mt. Baker?"

When he says "there's a draft around the front door" you say "They don't call it Grandview for nothing, y'know!"