Baby Ramos-Glew

Yesterday, Baby Ramos-Glew was a week old! A week! And he is so cute!

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Here is Augustin with his mama and his grandma Carole, who drove out from Illinois for the festivities.

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Here we discuss the ins and outs of clothe diapers.
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Lizzy is home to do contact improvisation dance work with local college students this next week, so she got to hold Augustin too!

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Finally we had to leave, but here’s one parting photo of this lucky babe, snuggled in arms of his mamacita.

I try my Luck with Ebay

It’s cold and dark at nights now. This means I am back to knitting during the cosy evening hours. William’s afghan, predicted to take the three weeks of the Winter Olympics, has taken thirty seven weeks and counting, BUT I am closing in on the project. Really. I am down to the last side of knitted edging. I would show you how close I am, but this would take the surprise out of the amazing moment of triumph photo in which you see William wrapped in the finished product, a photo I will be taking really soon. Really.

As this afghan project draws to a close, thoughts drift to the next project. For some bizarre reason, I am drawn to doing another afghan. Usually I am so sick of afghans when I finish one that the very word afghan makes me shudder. I need to knit a veritable flock of socks to recover.

But this time, an afghan pattern in a book called Mason Dixon Knitting keeps calling. The pattern is called Curve of Pursuit and was created by a mathematician in England. Way back when I first saw an example of the afghan in the book, I emailed the address given in Mason Dixon Knitting to start the process of buying the pattern. Then I waited with baited breath. And waited. Then I emailed again. And again. Then waited. And waited. My pursuit of Curve of Pursuit did not go well.

So, I gave up for awhile. I know what can happen when you get mentioned in a book or magazine that people are reading. You can get REALLY BUSY! At one point, a mention of one of our Flower Essences by a specific healer more than doubled our volume of orders overnight. I have been told by an MBA toting cousin that more companies fail because of too rapid growth than for any other reason. I remember to say this fun fact a lot during negotiations with the Angels about growth. Oh the Angels! They probably recognize me by the way my heels are dug into the ground so I as to slow things down. For many years we doubled in size every year. I am happy with the more moderate growth of the last few years. I enjoy this more moderate size growth because it allows us to do every order with love and makes it possible for me to bring on new people to work here in a more orderly fashion than say, that year of the famous overnight bump when we made nine year old Will pack orders when he got home from grade school. Here’s some milk and cookies and that pile of invoices is yours!

Anyways, back to Curve of Pursuit. Yesterday it occurred to me that I could google this pattern and when I did, I found myself on eBay where I was promised I could Buy It Now! I have been avoiding eBay for a couple of years, mostly because I couldn’t remember my user ID or password. Also there was the eBay cautionary tale of Kevin Ramos-Glew getting caught up in someone else’s snowblower scam, an experience in which he found himself listed as the purveyor of six snowblowers for sale with all payments sent to the scam artist. Then there was my brother in law’s eBay adventure with the nonexistent Kubota tractor he almost bought from someone in Bulgaria. Anyways, there seemed some sensible reasons to remain the only American not shopping on eBay, but in the face of my growing obsession to get this pattern, I was suddenly willing to jump through all the eBay hoops to find out what my user ID was and reset my password. This proved a lively little pre dawn half hour in which I sprinted back and forth between this computer where I had started the whole eBay re-entry process and another room of the building where I had to go to pick up all the cryptic email that eBay sent me to move along this re-entry process.

Having been prompted by eBay to remember who I was, I was ready to Buy It Now! But sadly, eBay both send me a heart message of congratulations that I had purchased this pattern on eBay and my life would be forfeit if I didn’t stand by my obligation to pay for this product while simultaneously telling me that because I had not filled in the shipping and handling fee with what was owed in pounds sterling, I could not proceed to Pay Pal to pay and therefore could not receive my pattern. I did not know how much shipping in pounds sterling it was going to cost to send me this slim life giving pattern, but it was a moot point, because for the life of me, I could not figure out how to get back to my mid process transaction.

Suffering this agony of defeat, I sent the English mathematician a note via eBay email telling of my heroic but unsuccessful efforts to buy the pattern. Miracle of miracles, I received, the next day, an email from the mathematician himself who reported also having trouble with Pay Pal. We agreed that I would send a check by mail for the pattern and he would send the pattern.

So, my pursuit of Curve of Pursuit may or may not be drawing to a close, but Will’s afghan will be done this weekend. Really. I am certain I will finish it this weekend. Certain. As Will would say “Famous Last Words”, probably while giving me tips on packing an order. He really set a high standard for the rest of us!

Rhino’s New World

With no new dishwasher on the horizon and frankly few dishes to be washed, Rhino continues his search for a new life purpose. He tries a spiritual approach. He reminds himself he already IS everything and doesn’t need a sink of dirty dishes to be someone in the world. But it’s not easy to be a rhino without a mission.

Sometimes he goes out to the greenhouse and tries to call his old housemates on his cell phone. They are all on his family plan so it’s free, or at least he thinks it’s free. His former housemates are constantly getting him embroiled in new calling plans involving new companies and new numbers all offering fewer dropped calls. Worrying about dropped calls at the farm is a little silly because there is only cell phone coverage when you stand on a greenhouse bench and point your cell phone in certain directions and even then, somedays this doesn’t work.

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Here Rhino gets some bars, but it doesn’t help because no one answers. He tries not to think of his former housemates out there making dirty dishes in other sinks. He is determined to be upbeat. To console himself, he stops to smell the Flowers, this time, a lovely Tuberose.
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Molly can see Rhino is feeling a bit woebegone. So she tries to get him to help her strategize about where to put all these bulbs she ordered. She has lost her mind master plan that noted where she was planning to put the 47,000 new daffodils, crocus, allium, and lilies bulbs she purchased earlier in the summer.
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Placed on one small pile of bulbs while in such close proximity to all that orange, Rhino’s mind drifts from the topic of bulbs to the topic of pumpkins. He stops to consider what kind of faces he’ll carve on this year’s pumpkins.

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Molly tries to interest him in another project, making the day’s Red Shiso tincture.

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But Rhino is a philosopher and so his attention is drawn away from the brewing of Red Shiso to pondering the big question on the label of the coffee filter’s Molly uses.

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Of course he cares. He’s a Rhino for goodness sake! Seeing his ecological soft spot, Molly suggests another project.

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Recycling the week’s used cardboard at the town recycling shed. She tries to sell Rhino on the idea. She tells him it would be a chance to drive the truck! Molly’s never met a Rhino that didn’t love using gasoline powered engines while simultaneously saving the planet. But Rhino’s attention wanders yet again as he sees all that wood Willy and Jim stacked this summer.

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Rhino can hardly bear the thought of the coming weather that will make it necessary to burn this wood to heat the house. Solar gets you a long way, but not ALL the way on a cloudy thirty degree day. Like this coming Saturday. Snow flurries are predicted

Rhino does the only sensible thing for a self respecting Rhino to do.
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He wraps himself in his Bayern Munchen football club scarf, settles himself out on the porch, and thinks next spring.

On Sunday

While Vicki got to know her new baby, while Deb kayaked the cold waters of nearby Grafton Pond, while Patricia learned how to play Mah Jong, while Jane visited with her daughter and new grandpuppy Josie, and while Rhino loafed atop a dead dishwasher, I was out with the potatoes. They were proving slightly more labor intensive than my breezy words on Friday. I hornswaggled Jim and Lizzy into helping me on Sunday morning. By noon, we had the rest of the potatoes dug up, sorted, washed, and put to cure in the open air potting area of the barn. It’s so true that thing about many hands make light work.

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Lizzy looking for any rogue potatoes while May May tries to convince her that potatoes are meant only for games of catch.
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Jim sorting and cleaning various piles while I take the cleaned ones into the barn to cure in a windless, sunless, frost free spot.

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Was this the attractive butt shot Lizzy asked me not to post?
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There was even time for some bulb planting in the afternoon. And then for supper……

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SPUDS!

An October Baby

Vicki had her baby on Friday morning at 4:30 am, October the 6th. He was seven pounds six ounces and was named Augustin Richard Ramos-Glew by Kevin and Vicki. Yessenia was at the birth. She said it was a wonderful thing to be at a birth and not be the one in labor. We will look forward to sharing a photo when we have one to share!