you may find yourself….

in east texas, miles from anywhere with a population greater than 10, with a car that slowly ground to a halt after being unable to climb hills, with a nine-year old, all his worldly possessions, which includes cowboy boots and underwear labeled with his name, wondering what to do next.

only to find that your cell phone doesn’t work this far out in the country.

and then you may find yourself coasting to a stop at an intersection with one store on one corner, and the woman who works there may offer to let you use the long distance, which you do, to call your spouse, the people also going to the same camp an hour further into east texas (who are already there and also don’t have cell coverage), the insurance people, the wrecker down the road, and your spouse again, to tell him that you’ll be ok and the other family will be coming to get you and taking you even further into east texas than the camp to spend the night and deliver you home again the next morning with freshly washed clothes, a toothbrush and bed, etc. having been provided.

and then you may wonder if you might be shopping for a new car sometime soon. perhaps this week?

but you won’t be wondering if there are people in east texas that will stop to help a damsel in distress.

soup you may hate, and other good pictures.

well, i can’t say that you’ll come away from reading with a recipe to try, but i can promise that for another week. trying things means that you sometimes….

fail? have your family and friends making you promise never to try *that* again? swear off beets for the rest of your life?

the soup was spring country soup out of a cookbook by madeleine kamman called ‘the new making of a cook’ and i had memories of good vegetables, sour cream on top, and really, really, i was looking forward to cutting all the round veggies into nice slices. but the beets were too much, so you’ll notice there isn’t even a picture of the finished soup. we ate it, and i liked it, but so much was there a discrepancy between my likes and everyone else that i ate a LOT of spring country soup.

i have laundry to fold, but as a parting word (or 1,000), here is a happy backyard moment. the small people of the house wanted to have matching shoes, and i was happily reminded of alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day by judith viorst as they picked out the same shoes and were very excited that both sizes were available. no white with blue stripes here… velcro all the way baby.

shoes are like recipes….they always get you somewhere?

nothing ever happens….

on this blog, when i’m trying to build a house, have friends, enjoy your husband, play with your kids, teach one to ride a bike without training wheels, email and call all your friends that no longer live in town. oh, yeah, and eat and sleep.

oh, sorry. you’re still there. i’m very sorry that i haven’t posted in forever.

interesting developments right off the bat, in list form:

1. we haven’t started building for realsers, yet.

2. there is now a fence on the property line (as opposed to almost 2 feet into our land) that has lovely horiz. stripes in varying shades of cedar.

3. our lot now looks just as small as it is, making passerby in cars and on foot wonder, aloud, ‘you’re going to build a house there?’

4. it also now has a construction fence, which was built by hand in the pouring deluge that is central texas this summer by taylor, alone, while the rest of us attended the city swim meet.

5. i’m working super hard to forge new territory, namely, a swimming pool made from a shipping container. we’ll see if that pans out. more later, because there’s a lot to say on a few subjects [recycling architecture, trying new things, taking risks, and the size of our new backyard]

and there you go. if you happen to know someone who already has a shipping container pool in their yard, please have them post here.