Squirrelly Girl

So, I had this self-revelation over the weekend: I am squirrelly. When I can't work out my squirrellies through physical activity, I work my squirrellies out by eating. What a bass-ackwards way to live. And I've been doing it so long! You'd think I'd've figured it out a long time ago. I suppose I did, but I ignored it, invoking the Wagner family motto.*

I'm a squirmer. I've known that forever, and I've been driving people crazy forever. I need to wiggle, jump, run, kick, punch (Pads! I kick and punch pads!) spin, stand on my head, bounce on the bed and any number of equally boisterous things.

Being squirrelly doesn't lend itself to grade school, middle school or high school. Or college, for that matter, but at least in college, your classes are a mile apart and you have to haul ass to get there on time.

It's not demure or polite for a grown woman to bounce her leg up and down through boring budget meetings or tap her pencil during yet another PowerPoint presentation. At least at the paper, I got to stand and pace (sometimes on the table) when I ran the meetings.

Anyway, my little moment of self-understanding feels so liberating. Isn't it silly? I feel like I should toss my hat in the air and grin like Mary Tyler Moore, who really could turn the world on with her smile. (But that statue is creepy.)

Now – I'm hungry. Heh, heh.



*The Wagner motto is "Fuck it." For the record, the Knapp family motto is "Clear off a seat anywhere."

Music Meme

This meme comes from Daniel.

Take your iPod or alternative, cheap, unfashionable, non-Apple MP3
player or even your music collection on your computer.

Pick a song, maybe one you like at the moment, doesn't really matter which one.

Using the alphabetic list of songs in your iPod/player/computer, list
that song and the following nine in alphabetical order. What do you get?

If I Didn't Know Any Better, by Alison Krauss & Union Station, from the album Lonely Runs Both Ways. I love this song. Kelsey likes it, too.

If I Ever Lose My Faith in You, by Sting, from the cheap collection Very Best of Sting. Eric popped this one onto a disk of other songs he thought I might like. That was an eclectic disk.

If I Had a Hammer, by The Weavers, from another collection, Greatest Hits. I swiped this album from Jackie & Dorothy when I was in Santa Fe. I haven't actually played this song yet.

If It Makes You Happy, by Cheryl Crow, from the album Cheryl Crow. Good song. I wish it popped up more often.

If You Were Gay, original cast, from the album Avenue Q. I love this album. I love this show.

Iko Iko, by Od Tapo Imi, from the album Panstyle. Od Tapo Imi are a steel drum band from Madison. For a time, they were my favorite Madison band. Eric's friend Dave Gochberg played on some of their songs. Dave died suddenly last year. Those heart attacks are nasty. Makes me want to go running. Well, makes me think of running, anyway.

Illegal Alien, by Genesis, from the album Genesis. Weird song, but it's got a good beat and you can dance to it.

In And Out of Love, by Bon Jovi, from the album Cross Road. Gotta say, this isn't one of my favorites. But Kelsey is a big Bon Jovi fan.

In Heaven There Is No Beer, by Clean Living, from the album Dr. Demento's 25th Anniversary Collection. This one usually gets skipped over, too.

In The Dark, by Vika and Linda, from the Live and Acoustic album. I like Vika and Linda in small doses. I'm usually not much for live stuff, but their Grandpa's Song live is exceptional.

How about your random 10?

Breakfast on the Farm

Always looking for cheap and novel things to do with the kids, I was pleased when, milling among the masses at the Dane County Farmers' Market's Cows on the Concourse, someone handed me a flier for Breakfast on the Farm.

I've looked into Breakfast on the Farm before. For a small fee, attendees visit a local farm and poke around and eat breakfast. We haven't gone before because the menus I've seen offered something like 12 kinds of meat washed down with whole milk. Yuck.

But this year, the menu appeared to offer enough that we would eat, although it had nary a fruit or a vegetable on it. (Not true, as I think about it – frozen strawberries came with the ice cream. Frozen strawberries at the height of strawberry season. Tragic.) It was quite dairy heavy, in fact, which could be expected in Wisconsin. Being dairy crazy, we went. Well, we three chicks went; Eric was in San Francisco being a geek at Apple's WWDC.

The farm, Hinchley's in Cambridge, was about a 25-minute drive through the rolling hills of southern Wisconsin. It was a cold, drippy morning, but by the time we got there, the skies had begun to clear.

I envisioned a quiet wander among the barns and a chilly breakfast with a few dozen blue-hairs and a handful of neo-hippies. My quaint (and naive) notions of a locavore experience were shot to hell when I saw the lines of people walking down the highway and county police directing traffic outside the farm. It would be me, my kids, and oh, thousands of other people eating eggs and warming our hands with coffee.

I steered the car over the muddy field that served as the parking lot that morning. Hayrides to the farm were available, and Kelsey wanted a hayride. The trailers came in many sizes, as did the tractors pulling them. Only one was horse-drawn. We had to wait for three to fill and leave before we got our turn, but the wait was less than 10 minutes, which only goes to show what a huge operation this was.



The hay bales were surprisingly soft. Usually hay bales are like bricks with slivers.



So we got our tickets and stood in the food line. We were getting pretty hungry, and the lines were really long. But we were in the line right next to where they cooked the food. They had two enormous pans of scrambled eggs going, and apparently they were boiling sausages in some milk cans. Three egg scramblers stood over the pans of eggs, mixing and turning them with huge spatulas, chatting and smiling as they worked.

A miserable-looking little dog wandered into the food prep area and was promptly shooed away. He looked even more miserable then, the sad bastard. I can just hear him, whimpering about all these people in his territory. It must have been completely overwhelming.



So, we sat at a Holstein-painted table and ate our cheesy scrambled eggs, which were actually very good, our cheese cubes (Farmer's rope and mascarpone), cheese danish coffee cake, and milk. I went with the full-fat chocolate milk from Sassy Cow. God. That stuff is too good. I made the mistake of looking at the calorie content – 230 per cup. Whoa. Usually I drink skim, at 80-90 calories per cup, depending on whose nutrition information you choose to believe.

Alice in Dairyland was passing out stickers to some small children at the next table. You know what I like about Alice in Dairyland? Her thighs. She's a real Wisconsin girl, not some twiggy, model wannabe with more face paint than Bozo.



After we ate, we started to wander. The farm was really very pretty. The barns were all well kept and they had a small area to walk through that had different pens of animals. There were the stinky pigs, goats, three or four kinds of geese, loads of many different kinds of chickens, baby chicks, pheasant, rabbits, and of course, cows. We all held the bunnies and marveled at how weird goats are and how huge goose eggs are and how cute chicks are. Cows are cows. They eat. A lot. And they're not the brightest animals around. But it's fun to get lickin' close to them and watch the younger set feed them out of their hands. Eew – spit.




It made for a pleasant morning, and I'm glad we went. Kelsey loved it so much, she wants to go to another one next weekend. We'll see about that. I'm just wondering how many eggs they cooked that day. Kayleigh figures a whole building full of them. She may be right about that.

Fifteen years

Kayleigh turned 15 today! Yea! Happy birthday, Kayleigh! I love you!