escape!

We did it. We escaped for a minute and it was great. Randal just called on his way home from work Friday and said, "Hey, I've (finally!) got a couple days off now... what are Grammy & Boppa up to?" So I called and found out! Grammy said, "Well, it's just fine if you just want to pack up and come this afternoon... no need to wait 'till tomorrow!" so I stopped cleaning the kitchen, packed up some (mostly) clean clothes for myself and the boys, waited for Randal to come home & do the same and we took off! It sure is nice to have people and a place to visit that is always welcome and refreshing... not to mention close & far enough to still be affordable, but actualy feel "away". I forgot the camera in my last-minute packing, so the ones here are just from my phone, but at least there are a few!

Most of them are from Saturday, where we went down to the docks to get crab right off of the boat, which was neat. As most of you know, we are primarily vegetarian, but I always told myself that I wouldn't push it on anyone else, including my children. I just want them to know the full cycle of where 'meat' comes from and save them from what I went through at 12- "You mean ribs are... RIBS?! From those sweet looking COWS?!? AAACK!!"

I think that we are raised so far from the farm that as children (and even as adults) we don't really put together that neat little packaging in the cold aisles of the store to some living creature that was killed for our consumption. Nature has been doing it for years, of course, but know for certain everything that hunts knows what it's hunting is alive and everything being hunted knows its place, all the parts are utilized by mother nature and there the animals are running, eating and excersizing as they should, not crammed into awful, unnatural conditions, scared sick and crazy from it. I don't need that in MY body, thanks. I am, however, not as grossed out and saddened by the consumption of free-range animals, that had near-natural living situations prior to their untiumely ends... I could go on a lot longer about the effects of factory farming on not only the animals themselves, but on the bodies they go into, the global ecenomy, the rainforests and on oil dependancy, but I'm too tired and the soapbox is bad for my back. For more information on any of that, try Jon Robbins' Diet for a New America, which is very informative and well researched.

But back to crabs...  I am okay ethically with the boys eating them because they were taken from their normal, natural habitat and given to us, alive and pinching. Aiden wanted to carry both bags, but found they were too heavy to get up the ramp, so Randal grabbed one bag, then Tobin picked up the other. Boppa said to him, "Now, if something wiggles in there, don't you get startled and drop it!", to which Tobin responded wide-eyed and very quickly, "You carry it!" :)

The next pictures are of our 'catch' and Randal doing as all boys seem to... playing with his food. He had one crab juicing a lemon over his compadres and then handed him a wooden spoon as well. Ah yes, the mind of a man unwinding. :) The (FREEZING) fresh air was cleansing and well needed (does there have to be an uncharacteristic cold front everywhere we travel??) and the visiting, as always, was cherished. Both Grammy & Boppa went through photo albums with the boys and their friend Mary, who is staying there for awhile, read Edgar Allen Poe to Tobin, which he loved and laid down for, asking questions here and there. Somehow, I'm not suprised.

He took his first placement test (math) for homeschool before we left town- it said most children take 30 minutes, to read him the questions and not help at all with the answers, -which I didn't- and he finished them all in under 10 minutes and got 100% right. Somehow, I wasn't suprised then, either. Amazed in amused, definitely, but not suprised.

Well, I have to get back to the laundry, dishes, lunch, Target and the rest of it all since we were gone for the long weekend. (Happy birthday, MLK Jr!) We are all mostly happy, healthy & well, although Randal & Aiden are still battling the end of the evil sinus-cold of doom... I hope you are all well and I'll try and write again soon... :)

quote for the day: "If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep the streets even as Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. The should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper, who did his job well'." Martin Luther King, Jr.