Playing with my meat!

Yup, all day, in the kitchen. Making jerky, (what were you thingking?)! Here is what I will be making:

No. 9
A glorious blend of sweet heat. Starts off sweet, quickly gets hot with lots of wonderful flavors coming out with every piece. 
*This one will be a very small batch, as I can no longer find the recipe for it. It may have to be retired.

Phoenix Fyre
Much like No. 9, but with less sweet and more heat. You will be consumed by this fire.

Tropical Heat
Firey hot, with tropical citrus fruits and a hint of rum. This one may even scare the Phoenix.

SoCo Special
One of the few with out heat, an addictive blend of BBQ, honey and Southern Comfort.

Blueberry (new)
Still needs a name, Fresh picked local blueberries and a hint of lemon. The taste of summer here in New England.

Wisdom (new)
This is a chicken jerky, as the name says, its sunny citrus fruits and wise old sage to balance it out.  

The Frustrations of Being Homeless

Ok, well not really living in the streets homeless, but instead, living with Volante's Parents. The house is too small for all of us and we are tripping over ours and their stuff. Then there is the non-physical side of it, the various "rules" and the comments and general attitude sometimes, and MAJOR lack of privacy. The kids are sleeping in the living room, and we are sleeping in what was at one time, the dining room, which really is too small to be a bedroom for 2 adults. As for the "rules," I have nothing against living to other peoples rules in their house, but its how they are presented and enforced that get to me. This is no way to live let alone raise our kids. Dont get me wrong, I am GRATEFUL to have a roof over our heads, really, I am, but its time to go.
There is another side to it; house hunting, particularly, rental house hunting. Buying or renting, house hunting can be a PITA, no, it IS a PITA. There are (obvious) differences between looking to buy, and looking to rent. Probably the most frustrating part of renting is that it the own can pick the renter. Lets look at some of the issues, first there is credit checks. Really? Credit? To rent?  Ya, I get that you COULD use a credit report to see if they pay their bills, but at the same time, what if MOST of what you have paid in the last 7 years is NOT on a credit report? (They required a credit score of 600 or better).You can NOT judge someones ability to pay NOW against what happened in the past. Then there is work. Ok, I have been employed now for a month and a half, so does that mean that I do not have good employment history? I can see if I had 7 jobs in 3 years. Yes I know it does not look good that i have been unemployed for 2 years, but look around, how many other people are in that situation or have been in that situation. Does that mean they can not keep a job?
We went up to Maine 2 weekends ago to go look at a house. That same day there was to be another family to look at the house as well. He seemed to like us, we asked all the right questions and gave all the (assumingly) right answers, and a few in particular such as his very anti-pesticide stance for his yard, we completely agreed on that. We went home and filled out the application and emailed it to him. The only response we have been given is that there are "othere applications we're going to go over." When buying, if you have the $$, its jsut a matter of some legal paperwork (mountains of it) to be done and its yours. I can remember (while in my previous marriage) looking to rent and it was pretty much "first come first served." there was no "competing" to rent a house. Another frustration; obviously there is a large demand for rental properties, otherwise we would not be waiting like highschool grad waits on hearing from a college. With such a demand, you would think that if you have an advertised (on-line) rental property you might want to respond to emails from people wanting to rent it! Oh, and include a damn phone number! Unless of course you really dont want to rent it. I have no idea how many emails I have sent out inquiring about houses, asking for pictures (for those that include NO pictures, ya there is a smart advertising idea) with 0 responses, that's right, 0, not one. People keep asking me how it is possible that we have not found a place yet, well that's how. The internet is a wonderful tool for moving to another state, but only if everyone uses it the right way.

New Design

So, what do you think? New design for my blog, thanks to the awesomeness that is my wife, Volante ^_^ Thank you my love!
I think its easier to read now, not so much of an eye strain.

She did a great job on hers too, go check it out http://thecelticbutterfly.blogspot.com/

Idea well is running dry

Where has all my creativity gone? Mayhaps it is my environment? Either way, I need it back. Gypsie and I are attending a Lammas Faire ( http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=230376633643646 ) at the end of this month, as vendors, this means that I need to get creative again with the making of my staves. I have a few that I have made, and I have the ones that have been around for quite a while. I have been told be people who run things like this that they wanted *ME* there because they like what I do and mine are very different from what most other people do. They are right, I never really paid much attention to what everyone else was doing when I started this, and i still do just what ever I want. I have made some beautiful pieces in the past, now, I can not get a decent idea to save my life. I have contemplated re-making some of the staves that went really quick, but that is nothing new, just a rehash of something else I have done.
As for the jerky,
*Off On A Tangent Here* typing the word "jerky" reminded me that my "k" key seldom works the first time anymore. It is non-existent, thans to a certain 2 y/o minion. so if you see typos here that are due to a missing "k" that is why.
I have only a small amount of the marinade left of the 2 best selling flavors of jerky. I can not find the recipes for them anywhere since the move. I am at a loss for creating new flavors, again, loss of creativity. There are some older flavors I could drag out that I would have to do from memory, and hope they come out right. Over all, I am feeling rather, well, stale. That is the only word I can think of right now. Something has to give here, and VERY soon, for my creativity. I even have pieces I have half started and I KNOW they need to be finished, but because of not nowing what to do with them, they linger, unfinished, collecting dust. I have nowhere to get fresh wood to wor with here either. I was lucky enough to have to foresight enough to bring many unfinished and raw wood with my from NC to here. But once that is gone, what then? Its almost like I dont want to finish them all because I dont want to come to the point of not being able to because of not having the materials.

BTW, I just acquired a small blueberry branch today while we were blueberry picking. I will be making a wand from that. There is just something very springy and fun about a blueberry wand, it maes me smile just thinking about it. hmm blueberry jerky? daring.. possibly? Why not?

Recycled Poetry?

Wow, its been just about 8 months since i have posted anything. Too Long. Anyways....

And away we go...


Something has been bugging me for a very long time, years even. I have written hundreds of poems, a great many of them have been about a specific person. The person has been many different people over my 23 years of writing. My issue is recycling. Some time ago I read some of what i have left (I only have a few years of my writing, but that is a story for another time), and noticed that some of them, had meaning for the time I was reading them, and about the one I have been with the longest, have the most memories and been through the most with. Obviously, if you know me at all, I speak of my wife. As I look back, i noticed that i never once wrote anything for my previous wife, but there are many many reasons why she is my EX-wife. Oops.. tangent.. sorry. I have not wanted to share them for fear of insulting her because they were not originally written specifically for her. I suggest that, unless there is a specific name or some other very specific mention, it shouldn't matter, what should matter is the content, message, and feelings involved the poem to whom I give it. There are some simple arguments I will make for this, and some much more esoteric.
First, lets put this anecdotaly, but more as an anecdotal question. The real question here is: is it wrong to recycle a poem of deep emotional meaning? Simply put, no.

Let say Jack is in love with Jill, and wants to do something romantic for her but lacks the ability to put his feelings on paper beyond rudimentary prose. He goes on-line (because he has no library card, what would he do at a library?) and Googles romantic poetry and comes to the most often quoted, recited and most prolific writer of romantic lines; William Shakespeare. He skims through a few and find one that strikes a chord with him and expresses how he feels about Jill. Later he recites said poem and she gushes and throws her arms around him and thanks him for being so romantic. Was what he did wrong in anyway? Only if he takes credit for writing it. Here is why; Mr. Shakespeare died 395 years ago, surely he did not know Jill, nor Jack, but he knew of the love they felt for eachother. He did not write it for Jill, but does that take away any meaning that Jack sees in it for Jill? No. Maybe he wrote it for someone specific? Even if he did, again, it does not lessen the meaning, and emotion that Jack wishes to express to Jill. Recycled poetry. Jack has something to say, it has been said before, better than he can think to say it, so he chooses someone else's words that were written for someone else, because they express what he wants to say to Jill.
That is the simple explanation. The other, is just a little more difficult to grasp, but no less important.
There have been many odd connective events that have happened between Volante and I and some still happen today (which still puts a smile on my face that only love could produce). One example is regardless of distance between, we still manage to think the same thing at the same time. Another is this, VERY early on in our relationship, something happened that was similar to, but not quite de ja vu. I remembered a dream I had years before. It was just a fleeting moment, a glance at her at a certain place at a certain time, that happened in a dream. Yes, she had been in a dream of mine years before I met her. I did not know it at the time, but still, one of those dreams that just kinda sticks for some reason. This suggests some sort of clairvoyance on some level of things to come. These little moments happen to me more often than I pay attention to and I really should learn to read them and pay attention to them better. When this dream happened, i was involved with someone else. I was doing more writing at the time than I am now. What if, I consciously was writing about [Person] I was with at that time, but subconsciously was writing about someone to come into my life years later (Volante)? Why not? I did see her in a dream (yes, just saw her in a dream, did not specifically dream about her) years prior to actually meeting her. This has happened with many aspects of my life, my dreams that i shrug off as meaning less, sometimes years later, happen just as I dreamed it. So, entirely plausible that I was (unknowingly) writing about Volante but [Person] i was with was just the trigger to get it down on paper.

This is a dilemma I have fought with myself over for a few years now. I, in a way am my own Shakespeare, I write, but years later find new meaning in what I wrote, for a new time to express how I feel at that time.

So, I ask all of you out there, is it wrong to recycle poems?