Where the Screen Door Slams

The kids had a good week back at school considering this week followed spring break. Even though it's unseasonably cold, we've planted flowers on the porch, cleaned out the cobwebs and I've really enjoyed sprucing everything up. We're looking forward to summer. I love summer break. There are few benefits to being a teacher these days, but one of the few remaining is summer break. When I saw this picture posted a few days ago, I instantly thought about what a slamming screened door sounded like. I must have heard that sound ten thousand times growing up and now ten thousand more times since having my own children. Addie in particular, will get out of bed in the morning and head outside without telling a soul she's even awake yet. The slamming screen door is official notification! Praise the Lord she's able to do that here. 

We are counting down the days.. 

Literally...

Check out my new hummingbird feeder...

And the new blooms on my orchid...

My foxglove is blooming!

Our power went out during last night's downpour. Came back on around 2am I think. Nights like that make me have fleeting thoughts of city living.But, then that Great Horned Owl will perch high in a tree in the backyard and I could sit on the porch and listen to him "hooHOO, hooHOO" all evening. The older I get, the more I appreciate things like that. Maybe in my younger years I was just too busy to notice. Life, even at its best, can be stressful. What a blessing it is to come home to the country every day where a screen door slams behind me.  When we decided to leave Effingham and move here close to grandparents, the decision was easy but actually doing it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I was leaving wonderful friends, a great job, and headed for something totally unfamiliar. We took a leap of faith. There's no other way to say it. My heart still kinda hurts when I think about it. When we came here, my daddy said there was 6 acres across the dirt road he'd let me build on but he had no idea whether it'd be fit for anything.  The woods were thick. There wasn't even a path through them. Once we hacked around with a machete, and got a good look, I knew it would be beautiful. Beautiful it is...

But we carved this place out of the bush... quite literally. AND the bush is constantly trying to reclaim it. Briers grow every day. Sweet gum saplings appear overnight. Poke salat grows out by the chicken coop by the hour. It really is a constant battle to beat back the bush. However, right now in the middle of a cold snap in the middle of spring, I am thankful for this place. Thankful for new friends who haven't replaced the old but brought something totally different to me in a different stage in my life. I'm thankful for my husband who can fix anything and that even though he says repairing the tile in my kitchen is "the eighth circle of hell", he loves country living too. I'm most thankful that we enlarged the screened porch on this house and that we put a wooden screened door on it. What a blessing that the spring is broken and it slams loud enough to hear it all over the house. I won't be asking Pete to repair it. It's all about perspective I guess. 

Easter is a perfect time to reflect on perspective. 

Happy Easter everyone! 

Sleeping with the Ag Teacher

This past winter was the worst winter ever. At least the worst one I can remember. We missed a lot of school, went without power for almost a full week, and the last throes of winter are still trying to hang on with a death grip. Yesterday I wore a skirt and a cute pair of sandals in utter defiance. I wore white before Easter. I bought the girls new swimsuits even though we haven't opened the pool yet. I've done everything I know to do and the temps just won't stay in the 80's! I really ought to check my GPS coordinates to make sure I haven't been relocated to Minnesota. Yesterday was sunny but chilly. Pete and I went to the hardware store and bought some gorgeous geraniums and he brought me some ferns from the greenhouse. There are a FEW advantages to sleeping with the ag teacher. Those FFA kids know how to grow a fern. They are just gorgeous. So after shaving the scab off of a mosquito bite this morning, I officially declare spring here- 80 degrees or not.

We've had a few spurts of really warm weather over the last month and we took advantage of it when we could.. The girls enjoyed ambling about on Peaches all over the farm.

We put up a few jars of strawberries...

Addie's friend, Lillie, came to the farm for a visit..

David, Jess, Emma and Sarah came over for supper and s'mores...

I tagged along with The Teacher of the Gifted for a few days at Jekyll Island with some really awesome students..

It took a good soaking bath to scrub the island off of Addie. (notice the Pepsi can).. 

This spring break week our beach plans kinda blew up in our face, but a little time at home is nice too. I need some time to recharge before the crazy two weeks of testing starts at school. The girls have enjoyed staying up late and sleeping in.. Today we're going over to The Big House to help open the pool. I'm just wondering when it'll ever be warm enough to swim.

The awful no good very bad week.

Three times in my teaching career I can honestly say I've had an awful, no good, very bad week. This week was one of them. All three times I've had horrible neck pain. It's the hallmark of an awful, no good, very bad week.  Thank goodness that the cure for an awful, no good, very bad week is a sun dress, friends, and temps in the 70's!  So glad the Tomlinsons came to visit this weekend. It was just what the doctor ordered.

I got to meet Pirie for the first time today! Right now she's saying "please let me stay at the farm a little longer mama". 

Pete never does anything small scale and he decided a couple days ago he wanted to make some strawberry jelly. Don't ask. I have no idea where that came from. Anyhow, we totally destroyed my kitchen today. I'm telling you this too- I won't ever gripe about the price of Smucker's Jelly again. That's all I have to say about that.

Here's a few pics from the awful, very bad, no good week... When I  look back on in pictures doesn't seem so bad after all...

We celebrated Addie's birthday a little late with a paint party with several of her friends and cousins. 

Addie wore a cute scarf her friend Caitlin's grandmother made for her for her birthday.

The girls and I had a couple girls nights because well... Pete worked late a lot and during an awful, no good very bad week , I'm not making it worse by cooking. 

And despite this blown out shoe that had to be fixed with baling twine at work...

I survived the awful no good very bad week.  

Thanks to Daylight Savings Time and warm weather next week I think I may be safe saying that I've survived this awful winter. I can't wait to start a little spring cleaning. I'm also excited about getting chickens again! Pete has repaired the chicken coop from the ice storm and we should have fresh eggs again by mid summer! 

Special thanks to those good friends who helped me survive the awful very bad no good week. CB

Thank You Sweet Baby Jesus We've Got Power!

  

This afternoon as we grilled ribs outside on the patio and the outdoor thermometer read 77 degrees, it was really hard for me to fathom that just a week ago, I woke up at 5am, took a shower and then as I was drying my hair, the power went out. I'd been expecting the ice storm so I'd prepared, so I thought. 

The first DAY in the sticks without power wasn't too bad. We have a gas cooktop so I cooked a big pot of chili. We have a fireplace that will heat half the county so we were snug as a bug in a rug in the living room. Pete pulled the king size mattress off our bed and we slept on the floor in front of the fire. Ali and Addie slept on the sofa and loveseat but eventually ended up in the bed with us along with a chihuahua that probably kept wondering why the heck we didn't just turn the lights on. The first night everyone slept but me. The trees were popping outside so loudly it literally sounded like gunfire.. sometimes rapid gunfire. I could not sleep and my phone was dying so I went out to the garage at 2am, got in my car, turned on my heated seats, plugged up my phone and found out that half the county was also up at 2am completely wigged out over the sound of trees snapping around them. I just prayed Lord please don't let that big huge tree in Mama's back yard fall on the Big House. Lord please don't let these spindly pines snap and land on my roof. I could not see what it looked like because it was dark but I heard it and I knew it was going to be ugly when the sun came up.

This is the girls' swing set in the backyard:

I've seen places tornadoes tore through that didn't look this bad. Structurally, most everything around here was fine, but I never imagined how devastating ICE on those gorgeous Georgia pines could be to a power grid. OH. MY. WORD. You would just have to see it to believe it. The devastation was just surreal. Power lines were laying on the ground everywhere, tangled in trees that were snapped in half, wrapped around fences, and laying across highways.

The next day was Valentine's Day. Addie was so bummed about not having school. EBA does Valentine's Day in an EPIC fashion and Addie wanted to wear her new Valentine's Day shirt for the occasion. I let her wear it even though there was no school. The weather got a little warmer and the ice started to thaw, but still no power.

Stir craziness was starting to set in, so Ali Grace and I started cleaning up the limbs in the yard. We worked for a couple hours and made two piles taller than we were and you could hardly tell we'd done anything. We got a good laugh or two out of Ali Grace's "pine tree power clean". She insisted on honing her weight lifting technique while we worked. It was good to get outside and burn off some energy but still no power..

The next afternoon we decided to "bug out".  Even though I'd filled the entire jacuzzi tub with water in preparation for the storm, it was starting to run low. I can live with just about anything but I CANNOT abide by an unflushed toilet. Note to the city folks: if you're on well water, your pump won't work during a power outage so you've got no running water. We were all getting on each other's nerves at this point anyhow so we decided to go to Gran and Papa's house in Jesup for a couple nights. We took the girls for an ice cream at Dairy Queen, since with all the madness, we hadn't been able to get them anything for Valentine's Day. STILL no power.

On Sunday, we heard David and Jess had power in Harlem! Finally! Yay Georgia Power! Since they were so much closer to home, we started operation bugout 2.0  and set out to Harlem. I think at this point Pete had had about enough. He really felt like we'd have power by then. Tempers were starting to flare around town and everyone and their brother was either complaining  about the power company or complaining about the complainers.. It was a good decision to go stay with David and Jess for awhile. This is a pic of Addie with her bug out bag!

I got to babysit Sarah Rose, who introduced me to her "crazy pills" (Reese's cups)! I know I let her eat too many crazy pills but she's just so precious when she asks and she squints her little eyes and puts her hand over her mouth and giggles. You just can't tell her no! Plus, at that point I needed crazy pills too so we shared.

Mama called me on Monday morning in Harlem and yelled "Carmen!!HART EMC just pulled into the yard!!!"  Honey I felt like I'd won the dang lottery and that ain't a lie! What was completely unbelievable is that HART County is where I grew up, my old stomping grounds.. born and raised! I thought to myself, if anybody can fix this mangled mess of power lines and get us back on the grid, it'll be those fellas!!

As soon as Jess got home from work, we took off back to Vidette.

After literally being in the dark for 5 days, the girls had a blast with their cousins Emma and Sarah. 

And when I got home, I found out the Teacher of the Gifted had brought over her mama's pimento cheese. It is the best pimento cheese since people started cultivating pimentos. OUT. OF. THIS. WORLD. Mama hadn't left me much, but what was left was sooooo good. But still, no power. The Hart EMC guys had promised my Mama they'd do their best to get her power on though. 

We cooked supper over at the Big House in the summer kitchen and as the sun started to set, so did my hopes for getting power that night. I was eating a piece of chicken and standing out on the patio of  the Big House looking at my house across the road when all of a sudden I noticed a flood light come on. I started screaming like a nut! THERE ARE LIGHTS ON AT MY HOUSE THERE ARE LIGHTS ON AT MY HOUSE! I dropped my piece of chicken and took off running across the road and rang the bell outside my house!! WE HAD SURVIVED!!

Top 5 things I learned from this 6 day Amish Experience:

5.  Never underestimate how much water it takes to flush a toilet or water a horse.

 4. I don't care if we only have a catastrophic ice storm every ten years, we still need a generator. People have criticized the power company for not being prepared. Maybe they weren't, but I wasn't prepared either. I'm going to start watching more episodes of Dual Survival too. Next thing you know I'm going to know how to make a slingshot out of a granola bar wrapper and use it to kill a rabbit. 

3. My husband needs a battery powered CPAP machine. His snoring was much more likely to make me lose my ever loving mind than was the power outage. That CPAP will be the first thing plugged into the generator the next time this happens! Before the freezers, before the lamps, before some old person's oxygen. The CPAP machine will be first..

2. Dr. Klaus Steinbeck, one of my UGA Forestry professors once said "Mother Nature is not a sweet blonde with bunnies and butterflies. She's a mean redheaded bitch." I was somewhat offended by that comment back then, but you know what? Mother Nature is indeed a mean redheaded bitch.

1. Friends can get through just about anything together. Whether it's offering a hot shower, helping clear your neighbor's driveway or hand delivering the best pimento cheese in the South, friends helped friends survive this mess of a week and if there's nothing else positive about this disaster, I've become a little more appreciative of my friends and a little more proud to be both a Burke County woman and a Hart County girl.