Cozied Up With the Mountain Mama

Happy New Year everyone! It's so crazy that February 2010 is already upon us! But what a wonderful year it promises to be. Brian and I had a fantastic trip to Santa Rosa over Christmas. We got to see our families, friends and go dancing!(A special thank you to Clay for throwing that impromptu dance party). It was also wonderful to announce our engagement to everybody in person. To those of you whom I didn't get a chance to see, we shall play next time.

It's still cold as can be here. There is a light coat of snow on the ground and icicles hanging from the bottom of the truck. I feel tucked away here, like I am in a little cup inside the beautiful Appalachian mountains, the mountain mama. I've been back at work, 5 days a week now instead of 6. It's rather nice to have that extra time off. Both Brian and I have been walking to and from work and school. It's a 30 minute walk one way so by the time I get back to the house I'm ready to put on the ol' snowman pjs, cook dinner and read a book! Speaking of cooking dinner, I started a new blog about being in love and cooking! Here's the link if you'd like to check it out. http://lovestandsachance.blogspot.com/

Wedding plans are slowly coming together, I'm so glad that we have time to take care of everything, and so much wonderful west coast help. It's hard to do a whole lot from out here. I am so excited to celebrate our upcoming marriage! Another bit of great news... one of my best friends Shalane, who happens to be my cousin is getting married in May. Her fiance Aaron proposed to her on Christmas Eve! I am in the wedding so we will be coming back to the West at the end of May, it will be a shorter visit, but hopefully we shall dance some and see some people. And after that..... it looks like we will be taking another road trip back across the country, and moving back to CA! We are trying to decide whether or not to take the truck again, she needs some work. We also have the Karmann Ghia and the scooter, but then we would have to figure out a way to get all of our stuff over. Ha! It will be another adventure, isn't life amazing!

Appalatian Winter

The ground is painted white this morning. It's so beautiful I can't stop smiling. Snow fell all day yesterday and on Friday night. The whole town is white. It was about two inches of perfectly powdery soft snow, I walked to work while it fell... amazing. It really feels like Christmas time now, Joellen's playing of Christmas carols in the house helps. I love it. She and Brian are bringing down the decorations right now!

I have some fun news.... on the Sunday after Thanksgiving Brian proposed to me, and of course I said yes!! I am so happy, so blessed to be in such love!

My work has been quite nice, I am meeting all sorts of wonderful people and enjoying what I do. I imagine one day I will create my own business,

or be self employed in one way or another.

Brian and I have been teaching wedding first dance lessons, and we just started to teach a swing dance class last week. We shall see how that goes.

Speaking of swing dance, a few weekends ago Gwen came out to visit, and we went to Pitt Stop Lindy Hop in Pittsburgh. It was a blast!

We had a wonderful host named Mark, who used to live and dance in the bay area. We got to go to a museum, and we saw a special exhibit that was visiting from New Zealand about whales. Beautiful whales. There was a room where you could listen to the songs of all the different whales and porpoises, very magical... Brian and I have talked about

moving to New Zealand and we have a thing for whales, so it was really special. I was so glad to dance all weekend and see the wonderful Gwen!!

Lately I have been thinking poorly of the whole facebook experience. I often want to cancel my account, but I get so caught up on it sometimes, looking at pictures, and messaging old friends. I feel like it's a waste of time and a very impersonal way to have relationships. It's a bit of an addiction, I'm sure some of you can relate. I mean, why do I need to check it everyday? Is it really that important to know that Jimmy from high school went to the mall today?

Or that the girl I met on vacation had stewed beets for dinner and posted pictures of it?? The answer is no. Once a week would

suffice. Perhaps I will exercise some self control and only go on once a week, or just cancel the darn thing anyhow. I sit here blogging and wondering if it would be nice to go 100% back to hand written letters. Ha! I do my share of that, but the Internet is such a grand thing in so many ways.

We are coming home for Christmas in... 17 days! I am thrilled! Our time there will be full, with family events, both mine and Brian's, friends,

and dancing, I really hope to get as much dancing in as possible. So if you know of

anything going on while we are home, please let us know! Happy Holidays to all! I do hope to see many of you on my Christmas vacation, and get a chance to connect. My dreams of a white Christmas have come true.

I got some money cause I just got paid

Overcast Sunday morning here in Morgantown, my one day off in the week. Oh yes I'm a working girl now, Mon-Sat. Things are good. It was Brian's 28th birthday on Thursday, I made vegan, soy free, gluten free chocolate cupcakes like I did last year. Yummy. I think things like Birthdays make me and probably Brian too, realize how far from all y'all we are. Hmm.

We had our first visitor from the west coast!! Jonathan came out last week on his way moving to NY for school, he and Brian went to Seneca rocks to climb and he stayed for several nights. It was so nice to see a familiar face and visit with such a nice friend. On that note if anyone feels the urge to visit the east coast you have an open house to crash in, and I'll even throw in home cooked meals.

I got a full time job at the health food store called Mountain Peoples Co-op. It's a wonderful place and it's really little. There are only four people working there including the manager and assistant manager. Ha! I love it though and it's really great to work in an environment that I know much about and really support. So I guess we will be staying for a while after all, Brian got a position in the grad program, he starts this week. I admit part of me hoped that we would be unable to really work things out here and would be forced to move on (westward), but alas here we shall stay.

I think I'm going to sell the Karmann Ghia, I don't want to dump any more money into it, especially when I'm making 4 times less working here than I did at home.

The garden is a sad subject for me.... now that fungus got the cucumbers, zucchinis, sugar pie pumpkins, the eggplants are screwed up by flee beetles, the corn is really tall, but each stalk only created one cob, a rabbit ate the lettuce, the watermelons and cantaloupes shriveled for whatever reason, deer ate anything they could possibly reach, and I find this all disheartening. We did get lots of tomatoes and peppers though, and kale and chard. The onions fluked. Oh, one exciting thing we dug up our potatoes and made homemade french fries, and this morning I made my mama's potato pancakes!! My favorite.

I'm trying not to be homesick, but it's hard. I really want to go dancing, Ellington style, and I want to see my kitty Homer.... and my family and friends of course:)

Sorry if I'm being a downer.

A Garden Moment

Garden excitement! I just made fried green tomatoes! They were ridiculously good. We harvested our first corn, which were mostly yellow and white, but had a few pink or blue kernels inter mingled. We planted some heirloom colorful corn varieties as well as basic corn, and they cross pollinated a bit, making the cobs look beautimous! Dug up all the potatoes, I was expecting a much larger yield, but it's all good. We may try to make some gnocchi. We are still eating salsa every day, and have eggplants and peppers ripe for the picking.

Yesterday, we drove to Grafton to visit Uncle Joe and Cathy, they took us mushrooms hunting! Now we have a bunch of beautiful golden chanterelles in the fridge just aching to be cooked up. It was a fun adventure. I think Brian and I should open a restaurant, we both love to cook and seem to be good at it (a nice combo). Th.. th.. th.. that's all folks!

Hmmm... Things I like about Morgantown and areas in close vicinity.

1. Each house is unique, no developments and track housing. I've found that to be the case out here in the east. Homes are beautiful, actually thought out and designed by different people. No cookie cutter blocks! Everything is younger out west, and you can feel the age of towns here, pretty sweet.

2. Fireflies

3. For some reason (I can only imagine it's the good times of the college students), there is a plethora of shoes thrown over the telephone wires. It's all over town, and usually they come in clusters, you don't often find that lone pair of dirty old track shoes. Together with sneakers, boots, girly shoes, they hang from the wires like flocks of birds eyeing the streets below.

4. The weather, well... now I'm starting to wish it felt more like summer.

5. Downtown there is an old movie theater. It opened in 1924, designed for silent movies and vaudeville, re-designed in the 50's for Cinerama movies. Anyhow, movies are only $5.00 there, and once in a while they show a movie from my childhood, like E.T. or Back To The Future. It's just rad, I wish i could work there.

6. That my car insurance for a 6 month period is the same I paid in Cali for 1 month.

7. Streets here are like a giant maze. It seems that whomever settled here didn't really think about designing a city, they just started building wherever was convenient. The roads swirl around and bumble in and out of downtown, across the river and over hills. I like it, it's without rhyme or reason.

8. The beautiful little health food co-op called Mountain Peoples. There is a mural/collage out front that Brian and I helped make, and I might work there a few times a week.

9. OMG!!! People at the DMV, the post offices, and other similar businesses are so nice! And helpful! It's a breath of fresh air compared to the Santa Rosa DMV... dun dun dun.

10. My wonderful Uncle Joe lives 20 minutes away with Cathy and Moose(the greatest cat in the world, besides my Homer of course) and Beau and one other kitty I can't remember it's name. They have a beautiful piece of property with woods and a pond, and a little flying squirrel that is their friend.

Those are all nice things around here.

On another note Brian got the Karmann Ghia running!! I just got the plates, insurance and new tires, soon I will be on the road! Super exciting!

She just needs a real good cleaning, and a little extra TLC. This pic is of the day we brought her home. (She has no name yet, so I call her Chief for now, little BSG inside info)

Also, I got my motorcycle permit today, so now I can take off on the vespa whenever I want, but I'm taking it slow, to make sure I feel comfortable when I finally start going on the main roads. Woo! I know my pop isn't too thrilled.

The garden is doing pretty good, we are in an abundant tomato heaven, we've been eating the best homemade salsa I've ever had for the last week. Every day, we pick a big bowl of fresh heirloom tomatoes, an Anaheim pepper and fresh cilantro. Roast the pepper, mix it up with a little sea salt and garlic!! Wow! It's amazing!The Zucchini plants are all dead, and a fungus has attacked our sugar pie pumpkins... so I might cry, though we will at least get three off the plants. On a happy note, my poppies and cocks comb are blooming and amazing, once we get a new camera I'll take some more pictures. I don't think I'm going to mention why it is that neither of our cameras function anymore. For dinner tonight we steamed fresh little carrots and fresh beet greens with some purple potatoes we bought at the farmers market, yum!

So, I keep smiling and eating good food, and loving. I really feel the un-permanence of our situation here, we won't be here too long, I have no clue where we shall adventure next... maybe back to breath taking Sonoma County. I miss my peeps, and the ocean. Who knows what the universe will bestow upon us? It's all an infinite mystery, and that my dears, is what keeps me excitedly ticking. Love love love. I hope our paths cross again soon.

P.s WHy the font went blue on me, i'll never know.

New York New York

I just returned to Morgantown from a week in New York. We were in Auburn for Brian's brother Wes's wedding. I'm happy that I got to see the natural side of New York, because I always think of New York City when I think of NY.... but the country side was beautiful. We were near several lakes, and all was green and full of life. It's agricultural around Auburn and there are fields of corn and other such crops. We went to Cooper's town, to the baseball hall of fame one day. Brian's family is really into baseball, though we don't really care about it one way or the other, we went along. It was a good time, we walked to the local health food store that was 20 minutes away, then came back and met up with everyone in the hall of fame. I called my dad while I was there, wanting to know where Goose Gossage would be, and he said that the man hadn't made it yet, well dad... he made it last year and we found him!

Pretty nifty eh?

JoEllen rented a house at the Inn where the wedding was. It was a 5 bedroom, and there were always people there, we stayed for the whole week, while others popped in and out closer to the actual day of the ceremony. There was lots of cooking, eating and drinking.... one night I drank and got way too sloshed, no bueno.

The wedding was lovely and Brian and I danced our fannies off, impressive, heh.

We just got home yesterday and the garden is a little sad, tomatoes fallen smashed in the mud, deer eaten gourds and morning glories, some small creature got in the garden and ate all the butter crunch lettuce, the zucchinis have a disease and I think the peas are dead. I guess it rained really hard while we were gone and then was extremely hot.... that doesn't make for happy plants. But on a nicer note, my poppies are blooming, and we have eggplant, peppers, tomatoes to pick, and one of the sugar pie pumpkins is turning orange!!

This morning we will make omelets!

More exciting news... I bought a 1971 Kharmen Ghia! It's so cute... well it's actually pretty shabby but with a little love and hard work Brian and I will have it up and running in no time! It's red, but I'm going to go orange someday (I'll put a picture of it up real soon). I'm still on the job search, I'm tired of not having an income and spending all my savings. Life is good, treating me well. I miss everyone and think of you often.

Galactic Journies

The weather here takes my breath away..... a few days ago, I went out at twilight and there was a layer of fog hung low to the ground. Fireflies whirled about the garden like magic sparks. It was warm enough for shorts and a tank top, so awakening. Last night as we laid down to sleep it started pouring, and a few nights ago we went to sleep with thunder again. I love it, something really feels magical about the air, the quick changes in the elements, I'm hooked.

It's definitely been a slow week, after returning from Cali and the movie shoot came to an end, we've been taking it really easy. I feel like I'm living like I'm 80, not that there's anything wrong with that, I love the mellow ease to my days and nights. Brian taught me how to crochet a few weeks ago, and I'm on a roll, I've made five hats, still working on perfecting, but I like them all. Don't be surprised if I try to keep your heads warm for Christmas. :) I've also been reading a lot, I finally finished the 6 huge novels of the Outlander series. (Though I just found out that she wrote a new one, coming out in September!!!, I know my mom's excited.) Fabulous series if anyone is looking for something to read. Also, within 2 weeks I read all four of the Twilight series, they were pretty awesome, the last one especially.

On a more productive note, I've been applying to WVU and trying to figure out a way to afford such absurd expenses.... working on getting in state tuition. Also been poking my nose around for a job a may enjoy, anything but waitressing...at least in this juncture. But alas, Brian and my gypsy ways may have us off into the world again. If neither of us find work or school holding us back, perhaps we'll head to Australia, or gypsy caravan through Europe, we both want to do a little space travel, so it might be galactic journeys that beckon us. I hope y'all are smiling and happy, I miss you and hope to hear word of you soon.