ok, here's your mission.

find the chocolate brand "Jacques" and buy like a TON of the kind that has rum, orange peel, and currents.

and then tell me where in the States i can find it, so that i don't have to bring back a lifetime's supply. i've never been a chocoholic before now. mmm.

french lesson

i'm learning a lot of french, living with a french-speaking family. it's great being able to really express myself in this language.

for example: i can now go into any french restaurant and tell its patrons to "use your spoon!", and "you have to eat two more bites before dessert."

as they give me a dirty look and head for the door, i can say, "don't touch the door until you wash your hands!"

if they ignore me, i can then bust out with, "NO! say you're sorry!"

i could continue, you know, asking if they need to pee-pee, offering to wipe them when they're done and all, but you get the point.

book club of one

finished Lila, started and finished my first graham greene book, The Human Factor, and now have started 1984.

i highly recommend the graham greene book, although i hear it's not one of his best. i wouldn't know, since i have nothing to compare it to. i didn't realize until i'd finished it that he is considered a "catholic writer", like evelyn waugh. his biography claims that, but then goes on to say that, by the way, after he left his wife for another woman in the late 40's he didn't go to Mass or Confession. so, not really sure how that makes him a "catholic writer".

i'm also reading an interesting cookbook called The Healthy Hedonist. i was a bit concerned by the title, but she says people want to feel good after they eat. i agree. she then says that with traditional, heavy meals people end up feeling bloated and guilty. but with lighter, healthier food they feel better. she also really pushes organic, hormone-free, and local food, saying it really DOES taste better. the subtitle is something about "flexitarians", saying many people today eat only small quantities of meat, or only certain meats, but don't quite qualify as vegetarians. plus they don't have the rigid mindset that many people with (to use auntie trish's term) "food rules" are married to.

i now consider myself an official flexitarian.

we live with a 4 year old who can whine in 3 languages.

heh heh, but that means he gets yelled at in 3 languages, too.

computers suck

the computer keeps telling me:

Your browser's cookie functionality is turned off. Please turn it on.

i don't think there's a more depressing thing it could say. if i knew how to turn the "cookie functionality" on, i would have done so a damn long time ago. mmm... cookies.

so we packed up our life, put it away, and headed for a new horizon.

we told everyone we were moving to hungary to work on an organic farm.

they said, "*choke* WHAT!?!?!," as they mopped their drinks off the fronts of their blouses.

we haven't quite made it to hungary yet. we call ourselves "flexible" travellers. our loved ones call us "irresponsible" travellers.

anyways, on our way to hungary we had a job offer in belgium (not far from brussels, the center of the EU) and we took it. WWOOF connects volunteers with both organic farms and with organic gardens. our current job is the latter, playing with a garden and taking care of a home so that its owners can spend more time promoting healthy agriculture. we hope to move on soon, but for now we have no living expenses and are having a lovely experience living with a european family. everyone always says newlyweds should use the lower income for living expenses and use the larger income to pay off loans and put into savings. no one ever told us that we could use the larger income the same way, but for "lower income" substitute "volunteer on a different continent in exchange for room, board, and an office (and free french and flemish language lessons, and experience with children, and european cooking and bread-baking lessons, and a garden, and weekend trips to paris/amsterdam/luxembourg)" and it all works out the same. we had to figure that out on our own.

my husband is singing like johnny cash.

i divide the world's population into two categories. the growers and the eaters. or, the producers and the consumers. everyone fits into one of these two categories. there is a bit of overlap (i.e. those who eat out of their garden in the summer, but shop in the winter), but not much. and there is gradation in the "consumer" category: the person who consumes locally grown, in-season products purchased directly from the producer is clearly better than the person who consumes heavily-packaged, well-traveled products. but they still are not producers.

the growers in the united states make up less than 2% of the population. and the vast majority of those in the 2% are over the age of 60. what if they all died at once? what would the consumers do if all the growers disappeared? would they step up to the plate and become growers? or would they perish? or just pay massive amounts of money for other countries' food in order to maintain their "non-grower" status?

we want to be growers. i'm not sure what the emotional reasons are, but i could give you loads of economic, environmental, social, philosophical, and theological arguments. the purpose of this trip was to gain "growing" experience. but for some reason we felt really called to this job, this situation. maybe it's a humility lesson... we have to be consumers for a while so we don't get to high on our "grower" horse.

for now we are "third-hand growers". the first-hand growers are the guys with the muddy boots and strong backs, pulling beets out of the ground and collecting eggs. the second hand growers are the people, like our current hosts, who work their butts off for the first guys. they may have never seen dirt before, but they are writing grants and educating the public through newsletters and conferences, encouraging the average consumer/eater to spend his grocery money responsibly. then there are the third-hand growers, like us, who take care of the second guys by making their meals and bathing their children so that they can write more articles and spend more time promoting responsible farming and husbandry. yes, the second- and third-handers are right there in the consumer category, but they actually have something to do with agriculture, unlike the average stockbroker or store clerk.

so here we are, following the same guiding light that led us to europe, then specifically to belgium. who knows where it will go next, but for now it rests over this house. for an unknown reason we are third-hand growers (intermittently venturing into the "second-hand" to write some articles for the next newsletter), and first-hand consumers. strange.

the longest i've ever gone without a shower is 6 weeks.

but, let me tell you, the 6 days this past week seemed much longer than those 6 weeks. there is a huge difference between being unshowered in civilization and being unshowered in a wilderness area 100 miles from civilization.

to-do list

X make cookies with two year old

X convince two-year-old-who-only-understands-french that she CANNOT spit the cookie dough back into the bowl, no matter how much it tastes like baking soda

X check woodstove so we don't freeze

X convince two year old that it would be more fun to climb up the ladder WITHOUT the long piece of wire in her hand

X clean kiddy poo off the toilet

X put more wood in the stove so we don't freeze

X convince two-year-old-who-only-understands-french that the avocado is for eating, not squishing

X heat pans of water (for cleaning) on stove

X clean hunks of brown avocado off the bottom of the table

X eat lentils for lunch

X convince two year old that she CANNOT put her head in the woodstove

X wash hair with ice cold water

X stock woodstove so we don't freeze

X eat lentils for dinner

X heat more water (for dishes) on stove

X wash dishes with boiling water and rinse them with freezing cold tap water, hoping when the glasses explode from the extremes that not too many chards lodge in my hands and face

X freeze

zen and the art of writing a sequel

ok, in pages 200-400 i changed my mind about Zen and the Freakin' Long Title.

the battle with his mental illness became quite riveting, and at the end he has to break it to his son that he, too, is mentally ill. that scene was very moving... and i rarely getting choked up over a book.

his philosophy is really impressive, groundbreaking. but my favorite part was when he goes to a small liberal arts college to study aristotle. his criticism of the method, the professors, and the classes are exactly in line with my feelings about my own experiences. it took him 15 years and shock therapy to be able to put it as clearly as he does, so i guess i'm not THAT jealous of his clarity. he challenged his professors in the opposite way that i did. he practically memorized each reading, and frequently asked them to define terms in relation to one another. i, on the other hand, refused to open my books or my mouth. both methods of protest arouse anger, but i don't believe that either really cause reexamination of principles.

anyway, i finished the book on time... minutes before i parted ways, in glasgow, with its owner. now i'm at a different home--a home that contains 3 copies of Zen (one in english, one in flemish/dutch, and one in french), and 3 copies of Lila, his 20-years-later sequel. i'm halfway through the sequel. it's interesting, a bit lighter, and a bit more depressing. worth the read, so far. a bit graphic.

so the heater even has a "party mode"... like, you press a button and it goes into party mode, whatever that means.

but it doesn't have a "hell-oooo, piece of $&!+, you've been nonfunctional for 6 days and i want a hot shower and some heat" button.

We made it to Belgium... right?

we are in belgium, despite some controversy surrounding its existence. we were briefly shaken after reading the following "information":

For too long we have been told lies.

The existence of the supposed European country of Belgium has been taken as gospel for years by members of the Liberati. It has long been held up as a shining example of Liberal philosophies in action. However, now is the time the truth be known. Belgium doesn't exist.

do read on...

"Belgian" citizens are sad, deluded victims of a vast conspiracy -- little pewter schnauzers and top hats doomed to live out play-lives as they loop endlessly 'round the Monopoly board of false places that is the Belgium Simulation.

we were almost convinced, when our original flight from glascow to brussels was "closed" when we arrived at the ticket desk with a whole 10 minutes to spare. maybe ALL flights to belgium are mysteriously "closed" when people try to go there...

Belgium= BE
Over Compensating For A Lack Of Being
Belgium has conveniently managed to wind up with the two-letter country code BE, which is used for everything from their top-level Internet domain to tracking FedEx packages shipped into the "country". Besides being at the end of the address of every website "hosted" in the "country," this code is also featured prominently on the "official" Belgium website (i.e. belgium.be), as the site's -- if not Belgium's -- logo. The choice of this code was no coincidence. By associating "Belgium" with "be", Belgian Conspiracy memeticists are trying to inculcate the "country" into being. Their primary goal is to have one think "be" whenever one sees the word "Belgium", causing a cognitive fusion with the verb "to be" that will result in one believing that "Belgium" exists.

but we are here to tell y'all that belgium really is a place. we ARE here in belgium, enjoying ourselves... or are we?

Tourists, business travelers, and other visitors are allowed to "come" to the "country" in order to "witness" its "existence." In reality, these people are waylaid at the common borders of Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg and taken to NWO branch facilities where they have false memories of vast sprout fields and chocolate factory tours implanted.

we'll never know, but we CAN buy t-shirts and bumper stickers here.

my husband is going crazy from too much programming and too little physical activity.

i can tell from the way he is playing the guitar.

it's kind of strange, this business of housekeeping for a woman i've never met.

who is this mystery woman, with the cute clothes (my size, despite having 2 kids and one on the way), and adorable, trilingual children with wonderful manners? how amazing is she, to be the co-founder and -developer of a nonprofit sustainable agriculture organization, a full-time university professor, a mom, and historic house renovator, and still manage to iron EVERYTHING (even t-shirts) and mop all 3 stories once a week?

cow intestines taste good

all of scotland smells like haggis. seriously. and bagpipe music wafts thru the streets. we are 8 floors up from street level and we can still hear them in our room.

we tried haggis the other day, and it's actually quite tasty. we wandered the streets of edinburgh, looking for trouble, and happened upon a gorgeous old building with a bar downstairs and a restaurant upstairs. we had all just woken up from a very restful nap, and spirits were high. everything was 50 times funnier than it should have been, and by the time they started bringing strange things that we hadn't ordered (they couldn't understand our american accents) we were in hysterics. no alcohol was involved.

now in glasgow, at a 9-story hostel with an italian opera singer and an ancient old man who just got back to scotland after 4 years in china and 30 years in africa.

claim to fame

ok, any other "oldest girls" out there?

i always have held the position that the older sister's job is to correct and guide the younger siblings. for some related reason my parents thought it necessary to repeatedly borrow from the library the book, "Little Miss Bossy."

at various stages of my life, "Mister Messy," "Little Miss Curious," and "Mister Cheeky" also mysteriously appeared in my reading pile.

well, (fact of the day) the author is from the very town we are in: Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire!

a tea and book day

today i started Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance for the 3rd time. i've never gotten very far because i always read it while travelling and am usually reading my travelling companion's book, which must be returned at the end of the trip. these circumstances are identical to my current situation, so i am on a tight schedule to return the book to it's owner before 12pm on monday when our ways part in glasgow.

the author is very insightful, was a bit before his time, and he and i have many common ideas. as i read i wonder how many of my ideas have grown from seeds his first 50 pages planted in my mind during my first two readings of them. this quote is certainly not one of my favorites, but it is very relevent to a conversation my husband had about islam, with pat carter at a bar in portland:

"You are never dedicated to something you have complete confidence in. No one is fanatically shouting that the sun is going to rise tomorrow. They know it's going to rise tomorrow. When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt." -Robert M. Pirsig

why are they so angry?

however, mr. pirsig's book would be a little more entertaining had he not used the names "Phaedrus" and "Chautauqua" in every-other sentence. it gets a lil old. the philosophy and the motorcycle trip are sufficient material for a book. the personal re-discovery and mental-illness history are not necessary.

still, a must-read.

so we were riding on top of a double-decker bus today, going to the photography museum in bradford. we discussed how unstable these buses seem, yet you never hear of them tipping over.

until...

sprouts?

brussels on monday?

i am eternally destined to be a house painter. it's true. everywhere i go there is painting to be done. everywhere. even europe. i've painted two ceilings in the past two days.

it's laundry day. i now have The Paint Pants and The Cow Poo Pants. my husband has The Cattle Sludge Pants and The Champagne Pants. high time to do some wash. hopefully the radiator in our room can dry them all by tomorrow--northern england in january isn't exactly shorts weather.

york, cow dung, and pork fat

we spent yesterday in York, walking on Viking, then Roman, and currently English ground. (who will it belong to next?) The vikings called it Jorvik.

the town was flooded, at least the parts closest to the river. the rest was just drenched, as were we. we drank hot chocolate next to a castle, beside an ice skating rink. we still got the laughs, minus the sore bums (why do the dads always take the hardest falls?). i had my first pasty: it was steak and stilton and damn good. it warmed me and filled me for several hours. i'm a fan. it's tied for "favorite english food" with the steak and ale pie i had the other day at a little pub among the cow pastures. the taste is still in my mouth (and the cow shit still stuck on my shoes).

we went to a folk session tonight. heard some amazing ballads, one guy sang about an old gypsy woman who was white as the bone and fiddled to turn day into night. couldn't remember the chords and words to anything but our ol' standby, so we sang some You Ain't Goin' Nowhere for the Yorkies. had some pork scratchers, didn't know they were pork rinds.

i finished the 2004 bob dylan book today. i guess it's called chronicles: volume one. it has 14 pages of "praise for chronicles: volume one" at the front, then 114 pages of namedropping, but once you get past that it's a worthwhile read. some of his sentences remind me of his songs. imaginative man.

somewhere in northern england, in the middle of an american folk song, the clock switched to 0:00 and fireworks exploded for a good 15 minutes.