Everyone loves a volunteer

Last night I did something I didn’t think I had in me. I didn’t think I even wanted to do it until I’d started.

I became a volunteer firefighter.

This was my husband’s thing to start with. He’s been telling me since he came home from deployment that he wanted to find the volunteer firefighter program here in Kingsland once we’d moved and see if he could qualify. As you all probably know he was on a submarine for many years and this is our first (and probably only) shore command. Everyone on the sub has more than one job, handling the main duties on their daily schedule and pitching in on occasional but necessary jobs. Like handling fires when the happen. Alex happily volunteered and learned everything there is to learn about fighting fires on a submarine and was really pleased about it. He had a lot of fun with it and wanted to do more. As soon as we got here he got online and figured out where to go to talk to someone about the program and fill out the application. He went to the first night of training, while I stayed home and played video games, and when he came home we talked about it for a bit. He mentioned, sort of in passing, that they did support personnel training at the same time and that it might be something I would enjoy. I decided to go check it out.

I thought that would be all I would do. In the support class I could learn how to operate some of the equipment, use the defibrillator, even drive the truck. And it’s something Alex and I could share outside of the house, which is important to us. That’s pretty sweet right? What else could I want? Everyone was so nice, helpful, and encouraging to me and started asking me why I didn’t just go ahead and take the test. I should at least try. They were sure I could do it. So that’s how last night I found myself with an oxygen tank strapped to my back running up stairs, carrying hoses, and dragging a 165 pound dummy to safety.

It was one of the most physically challenging things I’ve ever done, and I did it in four minutes and forty seconds. It was the slowest time of the night, but it was still well under the required limit. Not to mention I was the only women surrounded by grown men (only three of which weren’t professionals) and, honestly, I think I could have done better. Everyone encouraged me. Everyone cheered for me. When I finished the test and took the helmet off, breathing hard and exhausted, Alex was right there to help me get the tank off, beaming and bubbling over with pride. It was a little surreal.

I did it. I’m qualified. I can still hardly believe it. And I'm thrilled.

Happy Farmer's Market Day!

It’s Saturday! That means in towns and cities all across the country it’s farmer’s market day.

I LOVE the farmer’s market. I love everything about it. Our particular market is outside which is my favorite type. I’ve been to indoor markets before but there’s just something so much more fulfilling about picking out your food in the sunshine (even when it’s overcast like it was today). It’s so fun to walk up and look across the tables at all the bright, beautiful colors of the food. I actually get noticeably excited when I see what’s there every week. We buy all our produce at the local market, which is a lot since we’ve been on this “we eat too much meat” kick and have been searching for more and a bigger variety of fresh produce for vegetarian dishes. So far we’ve been doing awesome with that. I’ve decided the best way to go about that is to continue to make the same meals you made before, but modified to be meat-less. I found that if I can change the flavor a little or add something else I don’t even miss the meat. So I’m always looking out for the next thing I can try to convince my husband to eat…

But I’ve segued from what I originally wanted to talk about. This is why I love the farmers market and why I will find one to shop at everywhere we live forever:

It’s fresh. In most cases when I shop at my farmers market I know that everything in front of me was still on its vine the night before. Healthy food is living food people! We get the most nutrition from out fruits and vegetables when they’re picked ripe and kept fresh. Even better if you can serve them raw, which is something I won’t generally do with store bought food.

It’s organic. 99% of the food I will buy at the farmer’s market was organically grown in someone’s backyard, and you can taste the difference. Fruits and vegetables grown on mass scales and selected to grown bigger and faster than they would naturally have to pay a price, and it comes from taste. My vegetables may be a little small, or misshapen, and may have some bumps and spots on their skin, but they taste great and have never seen hormones or pesticides. As I said above, this is something I’m happy to eat raw.

It’s local. Is my green showing? Good. Because we’re trying pretty hard to minimize our impact to the biggest extent we can in our circumstances. That starts with choosing our purchases carefully up to and including how far our food has to travel to get to us. Now, we do have to drive to our farmers market. When we lived in Virginia it was only a few blocks away and I almost exclusively walked. This market is in the next town, a 15 minute trip both ways. But, that means I’m purchasing tomatoes that were grown in a green house a few miles away instead of the ones grown in fields in Chile and shipped here by truck. Is it perfect? No. In a perfect world I’d be growing them in my own green house and picking them in my pajamas. I’m working on it.

I don’t have to sacrifice variety. They have EVERYTHING here. I don’t know about your farmers market, but there’s a table for everything at mine. From raw food, to candies and pies, to handicrafts, even whole meals prepared right there on the street. There’s a local bee keeper selling honey from his bees he bottled himself. There’s a lady who sells the organic eggs she collects from her backyard flock of chickens. We can even buy canned goods there. It’s really quite amazing.

The people are awesome. All those people I mentioned in the above paragraph? They know me. They like to chat with my husband. They remember what we bought last week and ask me what we made with it and how we liked it. I am continually humbled by how nice everyone has been to us. It is inspiring.

Today I bought zucchini, yellow squash, tomatoes, cabbage, green peppers, fudge, and black bean and corn salsa. All for around $20. Yeah, it’s that good. You should check it out.

I almost forgot to mention my absolute favorite purchase of the day:


That's totally a habanero pepper plant in my kitchen already producing peppers.
What's the best thing you ever bought at a farmer's market?

And now for something exactly the same!

...Well, almost.
I know I've fallen off the planet for a while. My bad. I'll try to explain without making too many excuses:


...That's a lie. All I have are excuses. Honestly, I just got frustrated and depressed with my blog. The progression goes something like this:

1. I look for new and interesting ways to occupy my new found free time after graduating and moving in with my fiance, leaving all my friends and hobbies in another state and being painfully aware of how difficult it will be for me to make new friends and find new places to enjoy my hobbies. I build a blog to chronicle my awkward, haphazard adventures in the far away land of Connecticut. I will blog once a week.

2. Wedding planning overwhelms me a little and I forget about all the cool wedding planning posts I wanted to make on the blog about dress shopping and sweet DIY decorations to focus all my attention on not panicking. It happens. In retrospect I should have known it would happen and been annoyed by it less, but I think we all know that that would have been impossible. I will blog later.

3. Once the wedding is over I have the energy to get excited about blogging again, and I do. I post about my wedding. I talk up my blog on Facebook. It is going to be awesome! I will blog forever!

4. Suddenly, my new husband is deployed. I am not as prepared for this as I thought I was. I tell no one I am struggling. I eat a lot of delivery and play a lot of video games for about two months before I venture back out into the world. I don't feel like blogging.

5. I make new friends. I read books. I find new things to do. I am amazed by my new situation and embarrassed that I ever felt I couldn't do these things. I still tell no one. I don't feel like blogging.

6. My grandmother is dying and my family needs my help caring for her. I move back in with my mom and dad to spend my days cooking and cleaning for my grandma and my nights anywhere else. My mom seems disappointed every time I leave. My dad just seems tired. It takes him a few weeks but he finally tells me he has CLL, a type of leukemia, and he will die without a bone marrow transplant. I am not a match. I am numb. I don't feel like blogging.

7. The rest of the deployment (six months in total) passes uneventfully and I go back to Connecticut to meet the submarine that kidnapped my husband. I have lost time to make up for. I don't feel like blogging.

8. New orders for him means it's time to move again... but only for 6 months (Where the hell are we gonna live?)... and then move again. I feel like my life is a giant mess that I am doing absolutely nothing with. I don't feel like blogging.

9. The craziness has died down. We are moved into our house for the next three years and I love it. I am surprised at how easy it is for me to get established with friends, and outlets for my time and creativity. I feel like I'm in my stride again. I have my groove back. And it only took me almost a year and a half.
I feel like blogging.

If "I don't feel like blogging" seems like a lame excuse to you don't worry, it does to me too. The problem is when I first got excited about blogging I looked up all these fabulous women bloggers (Hello Ladies, The Feminist Breeder) and even joined BlogHer. Even my super cool sister-in-law started her own blog about her super cool handy crafts. I continued to read them even after my interest waned and my own blog stagnated. All of a sudden I felt this pressure to have something insightful or important to say or it wasn't good enough to post. And we all know that in our heads nothing seems good enough to post. So it seemed that wall I plowed head first into was lowered, but not completely down. Until I saw this yesterday on TFB:



Challenge accepted. I have lots of projects planned this month and they'll all end up on here. Along with thoughts and feelings and anything else I've got. I hope I can be interesting and insightful, but mostly I hope I'm fun. Here goes.