Hodgepodge

I kept saying I would, and I finally did.

Beer. It's brewing. I've been wanting to get some going for a long time. I really, really like good beer, and I really, really despise bad beer. And I really, really can't be buying good beer. (So, yeah, this is the part where I cross my fingers and hope that what I make is actually, you know... good.)

I kept waffling about what I was going to do. Most people brew five gallon batches, but that just seemed a little out of my reach right now. Aside from the part about "what if it flops and I waste five whole gallons?" there's the investment. Yeah, I know that the equipment all pays for itself after a few batches, but I just don't have a hundred bucks to put up for the stuff all at once. Besides, where the heck would I store fifty bottles of beer?

So I scrounged together some things around my house, made an order from a brewing supply company for just a few essentials plus some ingredients (spent waaaay less money), did a bunch of reading (especially this post at Real Food, My Way), and started a batch. One gallon. Yeah, I know. The inefficiency. Well, whatever. I like the idea of starting small. I like the idea of experimenting and having plenty of opportunity to gain experience in this new endeavor.



I put it all together, and now-- I wait and hope. To be safe and since there's very little head space in the carboy, I have it set up with a blow-off tube for the first few days (after which I'll switch to an airlock) in case it decides to... blow.

~~~

After Jonah brushes his teeth before bed, he usually brings me the dental floss and asks for some "frost" because he "has to do frosting." Tonight, he gave me a more detailed explanation--

"After you've been outside all day, you get bugs in your teeth. You have to do frosting to get them out of there, other wise, they stay there, in your teeth, and that's really yucky. That's why I do frosting. To get the bugs out."

~~~

We have bad colds. Pain, despair, and misery, oooOOOooh... I feel like I'm wasting the last good days of summer (what little there's been of that). A month ago, we had the flu. Just finally got over that and back to normal, and then it was appendicitis. Now we're just picking up where we left off, and we have miserable colds.

I do not understand. We don't usually get sick very easily or very badly (at least not since we started taking our cod liver oil regularly). Er, that is, I might get miserably sick, but it's unusual for Nathan. He is particularly bad now, wheezing so much he can hardly breath at all and nothing, nothing we do helps it. My cold isn't too horrible this time. I can certainly work through it, but then to top it off, I got a migraine today. Nathan came home and saw me lying on the couch with a pillow over my head, assessed the situation, and sent me upstairs. He, himself, wheezed his way through the milking (with an ornery goat who rewarded him with a foot in the bucket) and through the dishes as well. Don't I have a sweet guy?

It seems like God it always trying to point out to me (in my infinite stubbornness) that it doesn't matter how much of a "health nut" that I am, that I do everything "right", our bodies are still broken, and health and life are still gifts. Like a friend helped me see recently-- "Imagine how impossible I would be if I were a health nut with perfect health?"

~~~

My van reeks. I mean, it reeeeally stinks. No, I didn't spill a gallon of milk in there. No, I didn't accidentally lock a cat inside.

I took one of my goats on a "date" the other day. Not with me, but with a, um, boy. A boy goat. I dropped her off at his house for the day, and then I went and picked her up. And all the way home, she dutifully transferred the "eau de buck" from her boyfriend to the upholstery in my van.

~~~

Aren't you just so glad now that you read all the way to the end of my potpourri and got that lovely little tidbit?