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When i was in college, our school had a chaplain, whose name i don't remember.  He was sincere, kind of dramatic, had a great speaking voice, and often struck a caricature thinking man type pose, multiple times during his sermons, a behavior which made him the subject of good-hearted mimicry and laughter on many occasions.  But we loved him, and he helped teach us wisdom, and even though i don't remember his name, i find that God used him to make a valuable impact on my life. Thinking Man Chaplain often told us about lessons he had learned from his mentor, whose name, also, i don't remember.  But one of the very often repeated lessons that Thinking Man Chaplain had learned from his mentor was, to practice, "hindsight in a foresight position."  You know, because "hindsight is always 20/20," and foresight is where you are before you can see clearly where your choices will lead. This is a very difficult concept.  Hindsight is 20/...

I don't bring up stuff like this very much, because i really don't have any desire to "share my weight loss journey" with, well, no offense.....anyone.  But i will share a little, but mostly, it's not really about weight loss. It's about growing stronger. Several years ago, i shared a very personal bit over on Rage Against the Minivan , about my personal struggle with PCOS and obesity.  Very personal.  Writing that bit was an important turning point for me.  Like facing something you don't like, out loud, instead of just in your head.  Something about that makes the problem seem smaller and dealt with, like venting to a friend.  Just the venting makes the problem smaller. This past year, after reaching a new high weight and seeing a trend of effortless and constant weight gain, i determined that i had to make a change.  I didn't know what change i had to make exactly, but i decided that if i could only start a trend, no matter how slow, toward be...

I've been thinking about food a lot lately.  You know, with all of the many diet trends, not just nowadays, but always, it gets very confusing. Grains are all bad.  But maybe only processed grains.  But maybe it's grains in general because of monsanto, or something else i didn't understand.  Or maybe grains are good, and it's all a scam. And then there are eggs.  Free range, cage free, organic, vegetarian....  But maybe those words don't mean what it seems like they should mean.  Should chickens really be vegetarians in the first place? Oils.  Olive oil is the best, but it turns out that not all olive oil is really olive oil.  It's a scam.  And did you know that even though butter is really good for you, it's only really really good for you if it's from grass fed cows? It just keeps getting more and more complicated.  And it seems impossible to navigate.  And if you can find a source of food that seems good, do you know...

Back in the good ole days when i was occupying my time as a full time wannabefarmer and stay at home wife, i also got to spend some of my time writing as a contributor for an old friend's blog.  The host of the blog presents some sort of opinion question to contributors, and contributors respond.  He called it Six Perspectives.  This was fun for a couple of reasons - it's fun to spar with other folks' opposing opinions, and because i appreciate opportunities to practicing putting my thoughts to paper and honing my writing skills. One of the reasons i enjoy writing, is that i have noticed that issues and truth become clear to me before my own eyes when i write.  Thoughts that i can't fully realize in my head, make sense when i write them down.  At least they make more sense to me .  And sometimes, it seems like that when i write, truths that i didn't even know, that didn't come from me, appear before my eyes in written form.  I'm not trying to be cr...

Right after Christmas time, one day we came home and found our beautiful Buff Orpington rooster mysteriously missing from the coop.  Since the chicken run was completely undamaged, we concluded that some chicken-hungry neighborhood dogs must have somehow lured or found him escaped from the chicken run.  He was a beautiful beautiful rooster, and one who was raised by our previous stay-at-home rooster dad, who sadly came to a similar fate. This sudden loss of good genes in the flock inspired an immediate rush to reproduce a new flock leader.  The fertilization of a rooster, lasts 3 to 4 weeks in the hen, so i have collected every egg laid since December 28 to incubate, plunging our reduced chicken farm, head long into full-on chicken production. I'm so excited! Incubating chicken eggs is one of my all time favorite activities, and right now i have two incubators baking my tiny buns in the oven, and i find it very very exciting.  All those little lives quietly ...

This past week, when Candace Cameron-Bure's book, "Balancing It all," came out, her statement about "choosing a submissive role" in her marriage, met with some very loud public criticism from those who would criticize her for ignoring the advances of feminism. To some, "submission" is the dirtiest of dirty words and represents some sort of marital prison, in which women are not allowed to think for themselves and spend their lives attached to hot ovens, wearing high heels, perfect make-up, and pearls, and have to beg their husbands for permission to have an independent thought, a bath, or a bowel movement. To be clear, if that's what the word submission meant to me, i wouldn't like it either, but this isn't the Dog Whisperer.  We're not dogs being taught to remain calm submissive so that we can eat our kibble without fighting; and we're not talking about a culture in which submission means having the pleasure of following your m...

One of our humble ambitions for the new year is to make a visit to see my parents in the great white snowy north.  This hopeful date (the specifics of which i am not going to announce on the interwebs because i don't want to invite some mean sneaky robbers to break into our house and meet the reportedly trigger happy fellow who's watching the place while we're gone) is coming up, sometime sort of soon, and i've been making plans. I'm kind of excited. I made a map. I've flagged restaurants that have been on t.v. . . .  and Love's truck stops because i like that place. Several years ago when my gun slingin' super hero and i made a similar trip, i learned that road trips with my hubby are tons of fun, so we're doing it again.  I'm including the hyper-planning for extra extra fun!  And because i'm too excited. One of the restaurants on my map is a place called Gizzard City.  How can you not at least try to go to a place called Gizzar...