Happy New Year

This post will be a hodge-podge. The two boys and my mother have been here through the holidays, and that means it has been a busy holiday season.

Jake, in particular, has so many projects going in the workshop that it’s hard to keep up with him. Just for the hell of it, the first thing he did when he got here was make an air cannon out of an old LP tank. It has a four foot barrel and will shoot golf balls several hundred yards. He and Mike swivel mounted it on a stump beside the house. It looks like a 30 mm anti-aircraft gun. The UPS delivery people probably think we’re a bunch of right wing extremists or an offshoot of the Branch Davidians.

Having the air cannon/anti-aircraft gun mounted beside the house makes me feel like I’m going to Outpost Delta Zulu on the DMZ in Korea when I walk to the workshop on a frosty morning. I must look the part. I’m usually wearing a Russian fur hat with ear flaps and an old and tattered Army fatigue coat. I look like I’ve just survived the Battle of Stalingrad.

Obviously, there is no good reason to have that thing besides the house. But know this: If the lousy Chicoms try to attack across my fence line, they will be met with a withering fire of old golf balls.

We had a special guest share Christmas with us. Mike invited a high school friend by the name of Nick to spend Christmas. Nick just completed Marine Corps boot camp at Camp LeJeune, S.C. Meredith and I were happy to have him. I have never seen one human being eat so much in a few days. Apparently all he’s had to eat in the last few months are MREs (military acronym for Meals, Ready to Eat). Between him and our two boys, there were no left-overs while he was here. I’d go to the refrigerator at night to grab a snack, and looked like a North Korean pantry—empty. Nick went into the service a boy and came out a lean, mean, food-destroying machine.

Our Christmas traditions are a bit different. For Christmas dinner we have handmade ravioli and braciola. It takes two days to make, and everyone gets involved in the process. The guys’ main assistance is to roll the ravioli dough using a hand cranked pasta machine. That usually happens around noon on Christmas day, by which time everyone has had a few rum-laced eggnogs. The usual formula is a mug full of rum, a dash of eggnog, and a sprinkling of nutmeg, shaken, not stirred.

Our pasta machine can make a 4-inch wide noodle. It takes multiple passes through the machine to get the dough thin enough for the ravioli. Depending on how big a dough ball you start with, the ribbon of dough can get seven or eight feet long. At times it can be like wrestling an anaconda. Imagine four tipsy men unskilled in the culinary arts cranking out the ravioli dough with Meredith and my mother in the background constantly telling us to quit fooling around, and you’ll get the picture. I felt like I was in a scene out of The Godfather. I’m pretty sure Nick has never experienced anything like it.

All the work is worth it. The ravioli and braciola are like nothing you have ever tasted. My mother’s tomato sauce, which has simmered for two days, is the stuff of legend. The men stuff themselves, washing the food down with glasses of strong red wine.

A rich meal like that tends to produce a little heartburn. Actually, I’m minimizing the degree of heartburn. After a meal like that your pyloric valve gives up and takes the rest of the day off. People are scrambling through the medicine cabinet frantically looking for the Alka-Seltzer and Pepto-Bismol. The bathroom looks like the entrance to a Wal-Mart when the doors open on Black Friday. It is not considered a successful Christmas dinner unless there are one or two people laying on the floor being triaged for digestive injuries.

Most of the major gifts exchanged this year were practical and related to life in the country. Among other things, I received a nice froe (used for splitting wood—look it up) and a 42-inch crosscut saw. When you walk around with that crosscut saw over your shoulder (which I do a lot for no reason other than I like the look) you are the very definition of a manly man. I look like I should be on the cover of a can of hearty soup. Show me a woman who doesn’t get turned on by a man with a 42-inch crosscut saw, and the odds are that she only dates metrosexuals. In the interest of fair disclosure, I need to admit that I have no frigging clue what a metrosexual is, and I’m almost afraid to ask. All I know is that I’m not a metrosexual. I’m a countrysexual.

As much as I love Christmas, I hate wrapping presents. To say that I’m no good at it is an understatement. When I finish wrapping a Christmas gift, it always seems like I’ve used more scotch tape than wrapping paper. And I’m talking about wrapping square stuff, like boxes. I wrapped a gift card the size of a credit card, and by the time I was done I had gone through two square yards of wrapping paper and most of a dispenser of scotch tape. After working her way through multiple layers of paper and tape, Meredith was disappointed to find that that the package only contained a gift card. She thought it held an attaché case.

It’s worse when I have to wrap an odd shaped gift like a colander or a ladle. The end product can best be described as an abomination. Gifts I wrap always get placed out of sight in back of the Christmas tree.

I suspect that most real men—men who chew tobacco, have heavy beards, and shit with the bear in the woods—share my clumsiness at wrapping gifts. Show me a man who can neatly wrap a Christmas gift complete with a bow, and I’ll show you a man who knows all the words to “Macho Man” by the Village People, owns Celine Dion’s greatest hits, and makes quiche for breakfast.

This Christmas season will go down in the annals of the Yacavone family. We had squirrel stew. The day after Christmas the kids went prowling in the woods with their shotguns and returned with four fat squirrels. My mother, who grew up in the country during the depression, volunteered to make squirrel stew. The kids and I were all over that. Meredith, the trooper, gamely went along, though with a little less enthusiasm. The stew was actually quite good. The squirrel meat was not gamey. Everyone went back for seconds. Our young Marine friend scarfed it down with no problem.

It has been cold here. I’ve started wearing long underwear under my bib overalls. In a prior post I commented on how difficult it is to pee when you’re wearing overalls. It’s almost impossible when you’re wearing long underwear under your overalls. It’s like that part of my anatomy has gone into the witness protection program.

It goes without saying that 2013 has been an eventful year for me. I have a new life in a new place with new challenges. The bottom line is that I feel like I jumped in whole hog with no safety net and have landed on my feet so far. Any time you can say that about the past year, you’re doing well. I’m looking forward to what 2014 will bring. On that note, I wish you a sincere happy new year. Thanks for following my trials and tribulations on this blog, and thanks for your support and good wishes.

Christmas in Dixie

 

“Christmas in Dixie” by Alabama

 By now in New York City, there's snow on the ground
And out in California, the sunshine's falling down.
And, maybe down in Memphis, Graceland's all in lights
And in Atlanta, Georgia, there's peace on earth tonight.

Christmas in Dixie, it's snowin' in the pines.
Merry Christmas from Dixie, to everyone tonight.

It's windy in Chicago, the kids are out of school.
There's magic in Motown, the city's on the move.
In Jackson, Mississippi, to Charlotte, Caroline
And all across the nation, it's the peaceful Christmas time.

Christmas in Dixie, it's snowin' in the pines
Merry Christmas from Dixie, to everyone tonight

And from Fort Payne, Alabama
God bless y'all, we love ya.
Happy New Year, good night,
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas tonight

To which I would add:
And from Mineral Bluff, Georgia
God bless y'all, we love ya.
Happy New Year, good night,
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas tonight.

I Get the Holiday Spirit

Things are going well in the United States of Yacavone. The holidays are here, and I’m beginning to adjust to the cold weather.

There is an austere beauty to winter in north Georgia. Shorn of their leaves, the hardwood trees stand like silent sentinels on the hillsides and in the hollows. Their packed ranks are interrupted only by the pine trees. An undulating carpet of fallen leaves covers the forest floor. Here and there among the trees you see the low shapes of the hollies with their prickly green leaves and bright red berries. Round clumps of dark green mistletoe cling to the top branches of oak trees; they are silhouetted against the wintery skyline. The naked trunks of the trees allow you to see the crumpled and twisted terrain of the ancient southern Appalachians.

On a cold morning there is a thin sheen of glistening ice on puddles of standing water in the fields. A white dust of frost and rime coats the shorn hay pastures and stubbly corn fields. It melts as the sun rises and touches it, but patches remain in the shadowed places. The air is cold and clean, and every now and then you catch a whiff of wood smoke from someone’s chimney. The cloudless sky is a brilliant blue after a front passes through.

The cold weather is great for sleeping. Tucked under several heavy blankets on a cold night, I sleep deeply and heavily. It’s as if my body wants to hibernate. Maybe that’s attributable to my Danish ancestry. I’d like to think there is a lot of Viking in me. That means that summer is the time to rape, pillage, burn, and steal. Winter is the time lay around a roaring fire in a great hall in a drunken sleep after drinking flagons of mead, eating slabs of roast meat, and fornicating with scantily clad, buxom, blonde Valkyries wearing large brass breast plates. Okay, you caught me in one of my wild fantasies. I’m really not like that. It’s the secret life of Walter Degenerate.

Getting into a cold bed is an ordeal. The first contact between your warm skin and the cold sheets has a high shrivel factor. It’s like going swimming in a chilly swimming pool−you’ve got to take the plunge before you can have some fun.

Cold mornings pose a dilemma when you have to pee. There is a dynamic tension between your desire not to leave the toasty comfort of your bed and the insistent demands of your bladder. If you made a graph with “Need to Pee” on the X axis and “Desire to Stay Warm” on the Y axis, the need to pee eventually becomes greater than the desire to stay warm. In other words, the bladder always wins in the end. I suppose there is a great moral lesson there, but I can’t figure out what it is. Maybe the lesson is that no good pee comes to those who sleep. I think Ben Franklin may have written that in Poor Richard’s Almanac.

Showering in the cold weather can be an experience. Fortunately we had the foresight to have hot air heaters installed in our bathrooms. There is no way I’m stepping out of a hot shower into 60 degree air. Unfortunately we did not have the foresight to install heated toilet seats in the bathrooms. There are two things that are not supposed to touch my butt: other men and cold toilet seats.

Driving anywhere on a cold morning is a minor hassle because you have to get the ice off your windshield. You can scrape it off your windshield or do what I do: start the car and turn on the defroster until the ice melts. Using the defroster means you have to sit in the car until the heater develops enough heat to melt the ice on the windshield. The process is painfully slow, especially when the temperature inside your car is the same as a meat locker. I race the engine to speed things up. I’m sure that one of these days Meredith will find me slumped over the steering wheel unconscious from carbon monoxide.

Waiting for the ice to melt is about as exciting as watching a wooly caterpillar race. There’s nothing to look at because your windows are iced up, so you just sit there shivering and staring at the ice on the windshield. The other day I believe I slipped into a full blown meditative trance watching the slowly rising line of melting ice. I would have achieved enlightenment if it weren’t for the fact that my ear lobes were so stinking cold.

I’m not complaining though. The cold weather has put me in a festive mood. It was tough to get into the spirit of Christmas in Florida. It’s just not right to be wearing shorts and flip flops as you’re decorating the Christmas tree.

Meredith is feeling the holiday spirit too. She has festooned the outside of the cabin with lights. The first time I drove down the gravel road to the cabin at night and saw the bright, blinking lights through the trees, I thought I was going to have a close encounter of the third kind. It looked like the mother ship had landed.

It’s strange how cold weather, snow, holly, and mistletoe and songs about sleigh bells and a winter wonderland put you in the Christmas spirit when the original point of the holiday is to celebrate the birth of a child born in a dry and rocky place.

The local country music station has been playing a lot of Christmas songs. Many of them are religious carols. Radio ads for local businesses talk about celebrating the birth of Christ and the true meaning of Christmas. It struck me as odd at first to hear so many religious carols and ads on a radio station that plays popular music. Then I realized I have grown accustomed to a more secularized version of Christmas in Florida. It’s different here. This is the Bible Belt, and people around here take their religion seriously.

I am aware that Christmas is not a religious holiday for everyone. Undoubtedly there are Atheists, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Humanists, Druids, Pagans and members of other faiths and sects who do not celebrate Christmas and find it offensive to be bombarded with religious Christmas songs and messages on the radio. Under the prevailing doctrine of political correctness, these people can argue that because they find the songs and ads offensive, they have the right to demand that radio stations not play them. Well, I think it works both ways. Because I’m offended by the fact you want to infringe on my enjoyment of the holidays, I have the right to tell you to take your overly sensitive, namby-pamby, heathen ass somewhere else. How’s that for a display of the true spirit of Christmas?

This political correctness crap is too complicated for me so I’m going to keep on doing what I always do which is to keep on doing what I always do. If you don’t like it, that’s too bad. I suggest that people who are offended by Christmas songs and ads on the radio do what I do when I hear Al Sharpton or Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the TV: change the channel. I’m pretty sure that if you switch to NPR you can make it through the holidays without ever hearing the words Christ, Jesus, or Nativity.

Anyway, I’m not too worried about people being offended by religious carols and ads here in Fannin County. It’s a safe bet that there are not a lot of Atheists, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Humanists, Druids, or Pagans in Fannin County to be offended. If there are, they won’t admit it. According to the census, over 80 percent of the residents in the county are Southern Baptists and most of the rest belong to other Christian denominations. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure there aren’t a few Druids in these parts. I think some of the ladies who are Georgia Master Gardeners may secretly worship trees and plants.

As for me, I like hearing the religious Christmas songs and radio ads. They make me feel like I’m experiencing an old fashioned, small town Christmas. “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing” and “We Three Kings” put me in the Christmas mood better than “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” I don’t mind hearing about the birth of the little baby Jesus at the same time as you’re trying to sell me three snow tires and get one free. As John Mellencamp once sang, “Ain’t that America?”

Post Script. I’ve written before about the well endowed Postmistress at the small Mineral Bluff Post Office who favors wearing tight blue jeans and low cut sweaters. Evidently she is also feeling the holiday spirit. I had to pick up a package at the Post Office yesterday, and she was wearing a bright red sweater that said “Merry and Bright” in large letters on the front. I would have added “and large too.” I wanted to ask her which one was Merry and which one was Bright. I had to bite my tongue to refrain from saying anything.

If It's Not Winter

If it's not winter here in Georgia, then it's something close, and it sure has me fooled. I’m in the workshop watching the sun come up. The grass in the upper pasture is white with frost. Even the tips of the branches of the white pines along the fence line are coated with frost. It looks cold outside. It is cold outside. I feel like I’m in a store window Christmas display. I’m playing the role of an icicle right now. If it warms up I get to play a puddle.

I’ve got a little heater pumping out hot air at my feet. It’s supposed to heat a space of 150 square feet, but in the large workshop it’s about as effective as pissing in the ocean. I’m warm from the knees down, but the rest of me is nippy.

I’ve always wondered about word “nippy”. Why do we describe a cold day as nippy? I could be wrong, but it may have something to do with the effect that cold has on nipples. Back in the good old days of the women’s liberation movement when women were burning their bras, I used to hang out in the frozen food section of the supermarket leering at braless women shoppers because it was nippy in that part of the store. God, I loved the late 60’s. Make love, not war. Yeah, Baby.

I’m wearing gloves to keep my hands warm. They are the type of gloves that that expose the ends of my fingers so I can type. I look like Bob Crachet slaving over Scrooge’s ledger. Please Mr. Scrooge, can I put an extra lump of coal in the fire? Because I’m a two finger typist, I’m looking for gloves that only expose my index fingers. I bet a proctologist in Alaska could tell me where to find them.

I pay a lot more attention to the weather now. The only time I ever paid any attention to the weather in Florida was when a hurricane was days away or I wanted to go fishing. But it’s different now. I check the forecasts daily because the weather here is more variable than in Florida, and it has a greater impact on my daily activities. Thus, I derive the following essential truth about living the country: you are forced into a closer relationship with the elements.

It was a dark and stormy night a couple of nights ago. That may be a literary cliché, but it is not a trivial one when you live in the country. The wind howled through the trees and shrieked around the corners of the cabin. The sound rose and fell; sometimes it was a faint whisper and sometimes a full throated roar. Sporadic gusts caused the rain to rattle sharply against the windows. There was an occasional odd thump outside in the darkness. The weather interrupted my reading; I could not ignore it. I found myself looking up and listening when a particularly intense gust came through.

The darkness outside was total and complete. There was no moon, no street lights, no comforting glow from a neighboring house to take the edge off the darkness and reassure me that I was not alone. All I could see looking out a window was my own reflection staring back at me. Beyond the window pane was utter blackness like the cold dead eyes of a snake. I am not given to irrational fears, but I could not help but feel a faint uneasiness over what could be lurking in the night. I believe it is a primal fear shared by all humankind; a racial memory from our earliest days huddled around a fire on the African veldt.

So I did what any sane, rational person would do. I went to bed and pulled the covers over my head. I plan to pick up silver bullets, garlands of garlic, and holy water when I get a chance.

High Hope Plantation. Fannin County continues to surprise me. Meredith and I have started going to St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Blue Ridge. The church held its annual crafts bazaar a couple of Saturdays ago at High Hope Plantation just outside of Blue Ridge, and Meredith and I went to check it out.

High Hope Plantation is incredibly cool. You will not find it listed in any tourist brochure. It is a reproduction of Colonial Williamsburg, though on a smaller scale. The 44 acres of grounds feature a large house, a tavern, stables, a post office, a church, and various out buildings all modeled after colonial buildings. Click on this link to see photos of High Hope Plantation.

The story behind it is interesting. It was built by a man who inherited a small fortune. He admired Colonial Williamsburg, so he built High Hope Plantation using designs he copied from Williamsburg.  He lived there in his make believe colonial world until he spent his fortune and went into bankruptcy. I’ve heard about people pissing away their money, but this is probably the neatest way I’ve ever heard it done.

The second owner of the property operated it as an attraction for a few years, and then he sold it to the present owner. The present owner and his wife are members of St. Luke’s. They live in Atlanta, but spend many weekends in Blue Ridge. Obviously, they’re not living off social security. When they are not in Blue Ridge, the property is cared for by resident caretakers.

The property is not open to the public, but the owner lets St. Luke’s use it for the crafts bazaar. The crafts are made by members of the congregation who, I might add, are very talented and creative. Now that I’m a member of the church, I suppose I will be expected to contribute to the crafts that are for sale. This poses a quandary for me since I’m not particularly talented or creative when it comes to crafts. When I went to high school you had to take shop class. No matter what I tried make, it always ended up as an ash tray. Even my project in electrical shop ended up as an ashtray.

I’ve been a lawyer all my adult life. I have no practical skills. I don’t think a jar of opening statements and closing arguments will fetch much. Maybe I can make walking sticks. How tough can that be? You find a stick and cut it.

If push comes to shove, I may buy some jelly, put it in mason jars, and slap a handwritten label on it. This leads to a moral and legal question: Is the Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act implicit in the Ten Commandments?

While at the bazaar I met members of the Revolutionary Patriot Guard who put on a demonstration for the crowd. No, they are not former supporters of Mao Tse Tung, expatriate Iraqi soldiers, or members of the local Tea Party. They are like Civil War reenactors, only they reenact the American Revolution. They dress in authentic Continental Army costumes.

I’ve toyed with the idea of becoming a Civil War reenactor for a long time, but this may be better. I wouldn’t have to choose sides like I would as a Civil War reenactor. I also think I would cut a dashing figure in knee breeches, a powdered wig, and a three cornered hat. If it didn’t work out, I would still have a hell of a Halloween costume. I could be anyone from George Washington to the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Still, I hesitate to join. I am genuinely concerned that being associated with an organization that has the words “revolutionary”, “patriot”, and “guard” in its name will cause my emails to be flagged by the NSA or me to be scrutinized by the IRS. It’s a sad commentary that such a thought would even occur to an American citizen. I have to wonder whether we as a nation have forgotten the principles for which the Founding Fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

Cheese Class

I attended my first cheese-making course. The instructor was a large, earthy, disorganized woman who resembled Golda Mier in stature and appearance. If she had been a couple of feet taller, I’d have guessed she was related to Andre the Giant.

She was born and raised in north Georgia, and I believe she is fully capable of wrestling a cow or delivering a foal. It’s no surprise that she lives on a farm and raises goats and chickens. I can easily picture her as a pioneer woman leading an ox cart across the Cumberland Gap to settle Kentucky and wrest the wilderness from the Indians. In fact, I can see her pulling an ox cart across the Cumberland Gap without the aid of an ox. If I were crossing the continent in a Conestoga wagon in the 1840’s, I would want a woman like that standing behind me. For one thing, if she stood in front of me she would block my view.

There were five of us in the class. All of us were on the retired side of life so it wasn’t exactly a young crowd. In my opinion, I was the only normal person in the class. That probably tells you a lot.

There was a pleasant, well dressed and well spoken woman who struck me as ditzy. I don’t think she was raised in the country. I bet the closest she had ever been to a farm was the Pepperidge Farm section of the supermarket. She reminded me of an earnest Mrs. Thurston Howell on Gilligan’s Island. She was nice but mostly clueless.

There was a man who retired from IBM. He was into healthy foods. He was okay. He even laughed at some of my cynical comments and obscure references. I’m not sure whether it was genuine or he was trying to humor me. I think the ten gallon cowboy hat I was wearing may have made him a little leery of me. Evidently he was concerned over my nutritional well-being because he gave me a handwritten list of books and websites at the end of the class so I could educate myself on how to eat right. Damn, I seem to have lost it when I stopped for a Slim Jim and a high sugar content soda on the way home.

There was a thin woman who was very nice. I think she lives in a trailer; I never did get her story. Her husband delivered her and picked her up in a Prius. I didn’t see whether it had an Obama sticker or a Save the Whales decal on it. If she had told me that she was a retired librarian, had attended Woodstock and lived in a commune in the 60’s, I’d have bought the story no questions asked.

The last woman was the kicker. I bet her car has a sticker that says “I’m a Wingnut.” She went on and on about her holistic lifestyle and the dangers of processed food and GMOs. The first time she used the term GMO I thought she was referring to a Chevy muscle car that I never heard of. I finally had to ask her what the hell GMO meant. She said it stood for genetically modified food. Wouldn’t that be GMF?

According to her, processed foods and GMOs are going to cause the downfall of western civilization. I tried to think of all the places in the world where people do not eat processed or genetically modified food, and all I could think of were places where there is rampant disease, malnutrition, and starvation−you know, the type of places where if you give a dollar a day, you can feed three families for a week (probably with processed or genetically modified food). I bet people in those areas would kill for Cheez Whiz and Ritz Crackers. Try telling them that a genetically modified chicken is no good to eat.

Frankly, she irritated the shit out of me. I know that my reaction to her is a character flaw on my part, but I’m comfortable with the fact that if I didn’t have character flaws, I’d have no character at all.

I don’t know whether there is any truth to what she was saying about the dangers of processed food and GMOs, and to be honest, I don’t care all that much. I’m not giving up pizza, beer, Velveeta, or french fries for a tasty plate of macrobiotic pabulum and bean curd. If that means that I won’t live to 110 and get a chance to drool all over myself and wear adult diapers, that’s fine with me.

It doesn’t bother me that she believes in that stuff. What irritates me is that she wore her holistic lifestyle like a badge. Like many people who think they have discovered the true way, she wanted to proselytize her life style. She was so proud of herself for eating free range chicken eggs, avoiding processed food, and, for all I know, foraging for food on the forest floor. Who cares, lady? If it floats your boat, fine. I just don’t want to hear about it.

Back to the class: We learned to make yogurt, cream cheese, feta cheese, and kefir. It was only recently that I had even heard of kefir. According to Wikipedia, kefir originated in the north Caucasus Mountains around 3,000 B.C. I have no idea me how they figured that out. Maybe it’s based on the fact that Kefir tastes like it’s 3,000 years old.

I don’t know much about that area of the world. After doing some research, I know why. The northern Caucasus region is where countries like Chechnya and Dagestan are located. Until now I didn’t know there was a place called Dagestan. If you had asked me, I’d have guessed that Dagestan was a type of polish sausage or an alien planet on a Star Trek episode.

Chechnya and Dagestan are not places noted for their cuisine or hospitality. You don’t see many travel brochures advertising a pleasant vacation at the Stone Hut Hilton in Dagestan. I bet a book of popular recipes from Chechnya is about as long as a book about Italian war heroes. I think Chechnya’s biggest export product is Islamic terrorists.

Kefir is a fermented milk drink made from kefir grains. Wikipedia described it as a sour, carbonated, slightly alcoholic beverage, with a consistency and taste similar to thin yogurt. I bet that makes your taste buds sit up and palpitate. My ears perked up when I heard that it was slightly alcoholic, but then I found out you have to drink about eight gallons of the stuff to equal a six pack.

Sandor Katz, in his book “The Art of Fermentation”, says that “Kefir is notable among milk cultures in that rather than using a bit of fermented milk to start the next batch, it relies upon a SCOBY, a rubbery mass of bacterial and fungal cells that has evolved into an elaborate symbiotic arrangement, sharing nutrients, coordinating reproduction, and co-creating a shared form…” SCOBY is an acronym for Symbiotic Coordination Of Bactria and Yeast. Hmm, yummy!

The instructor had a kefir SCOBY in a plastic container, and she showed it to us. Looking at it, all I could think of was Dr. Frankenstein shouting, “It’s alive. It’s alive.” I’ve seen more appetizing stuff growing on the bottom of a petri dish in a laboratory. I’ll put it this way: If I saw kefir grains on the floor of my shower, my first thought would be to put on a HAZMAT suit and bomb them with Lysol, Round Up, and penicillin.

Kefir is supposed to be really good for you. Ms. GMO claimed that ten years of drinking three glasses of kefir a day cured her long time digestive ailment. I asked her what exactly her digestive ailment was, and her response was that the doctors never came up with a diagnosis. I could see that coming. Well, I know what the diagnosis is: she’s a fucking hypochondriac. She’s so somatically focused that she’s not happy unless there’s something wrong with her. Every little tweak, gurgle and pain becomes a threat to the lengthy existence she’s trying to achieve. She doesn’t need kefir; she needs Dr. Phil.

So there you have it. I can now make yogurt, cream cheese, feta cheese, and kefir. I don’t think I’ll be making a lot of kefir. I heard it gives you the farts.

I’ve signed up for the intermediate cheese-making course. I can’t wait to see what type of people will attend that class. With my luck, there will be a Dagastani who is into tofu, faith healing, and high colonics. I can’t wait.

Where's The Sun?

I haven’t seen the sun in four days. If I were a weatherman, I’d describe the weather lately as shitty with a thirty percent chance of rain. It has been chilly, wet, and overcast for days. That’s great for salamanders, mushrooms, and residents of the Aleutian Islands, but a little hard to take for a long time Floridian. I feel like I’m in an old black and white movie playing the role of a repressed peasant in some place like Moldavia. I’ve never been to Moldavia, but it sounds like one of those places where the sun seldom shines, people live in hovels and eat turnips, and wolves howl at night.

When I’ve been here in the past in winter, the weather fronts have moved through quickly like they do in Florida. The bad weather has lasted only a day or two and then the sun has come out. I hope that’s the typical weather pattern and that what we’re experiencing now is usual.

I can deal with the cold. It’s the absence of the sun that gets to you when you’ve lived in Florida for 40 years. Say what you will about Florida, it’s sunny most of the time. A day without at least some sunshine is unusual. Two consecutive days without the sun causes people to get grumpy. Three days without the sun and people become psychotic.

I’ve lived up north and in the Ohio River valley. In winter the clouds roll in, and the sun is seldom seen until spring. I imagine winter weather in the Midwest is much the same. I know that people can live and work under such conditions, but it’s not fun unless you’re a fungus. I think that’s a fair conclusion based on the number of people who move to the sunny states the minute they retire.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to live in Barrow, Alaska, where the sun stays below the horizon for 65 days in the winter. It must not be that great since Barrow’s population declined from 4,683 to 4,212 between 2000 and 2010. I think I’d rather live in Moldavia.

At any rate, I hope the sun come out soon. Until it does, I’m going to sulk in my gloomy bedroom.

I also hope that things dry out around here. I spend most of my days working outside. There’s not much you can do outside when it’s wet. The Georgia clay sticks to your boots worse than dog poop, and pretty soon you’re moving around with an extra pound or two on each foot. On the plus side, I’m developing some shapely calves. On the negative side, I haven’t seen my calves since October.

Smart phones are great things when you live in a warm place or spend most of your time indoors. Smart phones are not that convenient when you’re outdoors and it’s cold. Touch screens work by sensing the heat from your fingers. If your fingers are cold, you can poke that son of a bitch all you want, and it isn’t going to respond. If you are wearing gloves, you have to take your gloves off before using the phone or else the touch screen will not respond. If you take off your gloves, your fingers get cold after a few minutes and, you guessed it, your touch screen won’t respond. I may have to give up texting until spring or find a cell phone that has levers and pushbuttons.

The other thing about a cell phone is that there is no good place to put it when you’re working outside doing manly things in cold weather. I’m doing things like planting trees, painting a pole shed, chopping wood, and driving a tractor. (I feel like I should break into the chorus of Ol’ Man River at this point: “Tote dat barge. Lif dat bale.”)

The point is that I need to put my phone in a protected place on my body to avoid accidentally damaging it when I’m working outside. I usually put it under my coat in an inside pocket. It’s a pain in the ass to get a phone call. When the damn thing rings, I have to go through a multi-step process to answer it. I have to stop what I’m doing, take off my gloves, unbutton my coat, reach into my coat, find the cell phone, pull it out, and poke at it hoping it will detect the slightest bit of body heat in my cold index finger. Half the time, the caller has hung up before I can answer the call. When I get a phone call I look like a man who’s discovered a wasp crawling under his shirt as I frantically claw at my clothing in an attempt to answer the phone. People think I'm having a conniption fit.

Switching gears, we planted some apple trees near the fence line between our property and the neighbor’s. I was tending to the trees a couple of days ago when I had this odd feeling that I was being watched. I looked around and discovered that the neighbor’s six cows had wandered over to the fence and were standing there, motionless, staring at me intently. They were twenty feet away. Now I like to think that I’m a riveting and fascinating person and the natural center of attention in any situation, but those cows began to freak me out.

I understand that the entertainment options for a cow in a pasture are limited, but there was something creepy about the way those six cows were fixated on me. It was almost as if they wanted something. I kept waiting for them to hold up a sign to eat more chicken. The horrible thought occurred to me that maybe I represented something edible to them. What a scary vision: man-eating cows. Then I remembered that I dated a few during my college days.

As I drove the tractor back to the cabin, I looked back, and they were still there watching me. I don’t know if cows have facial expressions, but these cows appeared to be either sad and wistful or hungry and disappointed. Either way, I’m not getting near them from now on.

Thanksgiving. I had a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. My family is healthy. I’m healthy, though a bit creaky at times. The move to north Georgia has been completed successfully, and retired life has been great so far. For the first time in a long time I do not wake up angry, tense, and dreading the day ahead. I’m having a ball.

We’ve made considerable progress on the homestead. Meredith has gotten the house organized, and I’ve brought order to the workshop. I’ve had a large pole shed built. I purchased a subsoiler and a cultivator for the tractor and a heavy duty rototiller and have used them successfully to help prepare a large garden plot. In the process I have learned the intricacies of a three point tractor hitch. We have planted apple trees and blueberry bushes. Raspberries, blackberries, and nut trees are soon to follow.

I’ve learned how to sharpen handsaws, chisels, and hand plane blades, and I’ve reconditioned a number of old saws and hand planes. I’ve signed up for cheese-making classes, and pretty soon I will be making my own cheese. Meredith is learning how to make wine thanks to the urging and example of two close friends. She is tracking down sources for pork so we can start experimenting with making our own bacon, smoked hams, and sausage. I have enrolled in the Georgia Master Gardner course.

I do not believe in fate. I believe that shit happens. Sometimes it’s good shit, and sometimes it’s bad shit. I believe that a person can influence whether he or she experiences more good shit than bad shit, but ultimately what happens to you in life is largely random. Bad shit happens to good people, and good shit happens to bad people. All things being equal, I suspect that in most cases a person’s good shit and bad shit even out over a lifetime, but I am aware that every time a coin is flipped, the odds are 50-50 that it will come up tails, even if it has come up heads the prior 100 times. There’s no guarantee that a string of bad luck will be followed by a string of good luck. Thus, I am truly grateful for being on the receiving end of so much good shit this year. And that, my friends, is Yacavone’s Good Shit/Bad Shit Theory of Life.