life. faithful.

Have you ever had really weak coffee? I'm not talking about the light roast or anything like that. Though we drink mostly bold, dark roast in our house, a few of my favorite k-cups are light roast flavors. No, I mean the stuff that's really weak--so watered down that it looks more like tea than that heavenly beverage (that I'll be drinking once again on Easter--you don't know how excited I am for that small joy!). It's not really good for anything. The smell is barely there, the caffeine is non-existent. You don't get that happy, relaxed feeling after you take that first sip (can you tell I've missed my daily cup?). It becomes so weak that it is useless. There are a lot of crazy things going on in our world right now that I'm not going to get into, a lot of controversies I'm choosing to back away from. Those who truly know me know where I stand on all of them, and for the moment I'm okay with letting it go at that. One thing I'm incr...

That's always been me, for as long as I can remember (well, as long as you ignore those strange years of tears and tantrums...but hey, that's a teenage girl for you!)--the one who strives to keep everything under control, everything together. I'm not a big fan of chaos, though you couldn't tell that by looking at the state of my house. I like--no, I'm desperate--to have everything fit nicely into place, just the way I think it should be. I'm a big fan of having all my ducks in a row, so to speak. I've had a "5 Year Plan" every year probably since I was old enough to know how long 5 years is...with some 10 and 20 Year Plans thrown in for good measure. The thing is, my life has this funny way of refusing to go according to my plan. Really. Start reading some of these posts if you need proof! Do you know what that does to someone who's a bit of a control freak like me? I can tell you, it's not a pretty picture. I start getting stressed...

My last post was getting a bit long, so here's part 2 of lessons from the dairy :0) A) Competition can bring out traits you never knew existed--and what works for one may not work for another! ~When my parents bought the farm (wow, that comes across a bit strange--maybe I should say "purchased"...), a Border Collie came with it. His name was Jimbo, and he was incredibly timid--so much so that he was sharing his doghouse with a litter of kittens when we moved in. Border Collies are great herding dogs to be sure, but Jimbo didn't know us and he seemed unsure of himself around the cows.      On the other hand, we brought with us a Great Dane & German Shepherd mix named Duke. He was a huge black dog with more energy than he knew what to do with and a major chocolate addiction. His tongue was huge, and when he ran it flew out of the side of his mouth, waving like a flag, causing him to run crooked to compensate.      Duke thought the cows looked like...

*Note: I typed "lessons from the diary" first, but that would have been a whole different kind of post!* When I was scraping the snow (which was over a sheet of ice--not much fun) off the sidewalk last week, one thought kept popping into my head: This is so much like scraping the holding pen after we milked... Since that was my thought at the beginning of scraping, I had a decent amount of time to dwell on the thought...so naturally that turned into me figuring out how to write about it. This, my friend, is the result of my snow-scraping exercise: Lessons I Learned as the Daughter of a Dairy Farmer 1. Mornings aren't entirely bad. ~If you know me, you know how dramatic that statement really is. Growing up, it took at least 3 wake-up attempts to get me out of bed in the morning. One of those attempts was undoubtedly my brother jumping onto my bed, placing one hand on the bed beside each of my shoulders, and bouncing me as high as he possibly could while holle...