This post brought to you courtesy of Google Maps.

I could tell that the road didn’t look right, even for Kentucky. At any minute I just knew the creek would turn back into a road. Or like the Wizard of Oz, everything would blast into Technicolor if I could just go a little further. I checked my directions by backtracking in my mind, and sure enough, I was still on course.

I was doing what the paper told me to do. Have you ever talked to a customer service rep who couldn’t understand the situation but could only follow the directions on the paper? Did you ever shout, “Could you stop reading your script and just THINK?” I was that stupid.

I realized there was going to be a problem about five miles in when I came across green branches hanging across the “road” and realized that we’d been where no man had gone before. At least, since this spring. There were no power lines, fencing, driveways, or any other forms of life. I was hoping for a beer can, but noooo. The reason I pressed on was because there was no way to turn around.

When I saw the mud, I swung for the left and punched it, hoping to bump over the worst of it like the Dukes of Hazard. I thought we had a decent chance because it hadn’t rained in a week.

We were stuck. Apparently, that flying stuff only works in the movies. I concede the 12-passenger van probably wasn’t the best vehicle to try this in. Our navy blue 4 x 4 that plays country music, which is what I would’ve been driving had the situation been normal, is in the shop because that’s the way my life works.

The lady at AAA wanted to know if there was pavement nearby because she didn’t want the tow truck to get stuck.

Oh boy.

That’s when I understood this wasn’t going to go well: “You do know I’m in Kentucky, right? There are stories about Kentucky. Let me tell you some.”

“Well, what ROAD are you on?”

This is complicated.

“What’s your cell number?”

OK, this is really complicated. I have a trac-phone about to die and/or run out of minutes, and I just got it, and I lost my real cell phone with my real phone numbers, and I don’t know my (!) phone number, and DON’T YOU PEOPLE HAVE CALLER ID?!

“Well, ma’am, what road are you on again?”

I need a professional. I need a local who knows how to take a left at the old oak tree and cross the creek where it’s low. I really tried to explain to her how I got here, but like the FBI, she wanted names, people, names. Just Google map it, and you’ll get here just like me, but do not look for nice little street signs before you attempt a rescue. You just gotta go for it, you know?

From the back seat, my girls want to know what we’re going to do. I used to watch Survivor Man so I took inventory of the situation. In the deep recesses of my brain, I kind of remember seeing Carri Peterson’s cell number before. I count cards when I play Rook and poker, so this wasn’t a huge stretch. Pulling this number out now could be an asset along with the stale french fries in the bench seats.

“Are you praying?” the girls want to know.

“No. I’m trying to hypnotize myself to remember Carri’s phone number. I mean, yes! Praying!”

Ring, ring. Ba-da-bing. It wasn’t an Indian who fixes computers; it was Carri! Don’t hang up or have to go! Carri assured me that guys in these ridges live for these moments, which would be great so long as we could find a guy. I’m sexist. Please don’t send me a lady.

And just like that, after a chain of phone calls by someone who knows someone whose cousin…. some guy in a Polaris Ranger pulls up out of nowhere. Awesome.

Let’s pause to thank the Lord and give it up for beer cans and bass.

His name was Chris and I almost married him on the spot. Hey ohhh.

He didn’t understand, “Aw shucks. I do this all the time.”

“Yeah, me and the 14 other people who got stuck out here today had a tailgate party. Man, it’s crowded out here. You should put down some gravel. Just saying.”

When the chain broke off and the Polaris Ranger spun out, he told me that I was lucky to have got stuck right here and not up the hill. It’s waist-deep up there and I wouldn’t be a gettin’ out of that. Three cheers for this spot!

So before he left to upgrade to a real truck, we struck a double pinky swear and picked a scab to become blood brothers for-ev-ah that he’d come back. Please. You don’t understand that I’m not from around here (or maybe, just maybe, he did….).

An hour later after my new very best friend forever, Chris, and I had some strategy talk —he did the strategy, and I did the talking—- and I was free free, I was free at last, just minus the suspension, shocks, and a tank of gas. Small price!

BFF Chris personally escorted me to The Valley where I was meeting some new friends (met right here from the ole blog). He knew the Valley. He knew my road, Burnt Beach. (Burnt Beach is a four-wheelin’ trail with cliffs and mudslides, which are mildly 78.2% different than in, say, Florida. One is t-ball and the other is MLB All Stars.) And he wasn’t taken no more chances today with them city slickers. And then he apologized for getting my ve-hi-cle all muddy.

That, my friends, is service. Group hug!

When we pulled in my final destination, triple A, who never found me, wanted to know if I was “happy with my experience today using triple A.” Now that, friends, is what I call reading from the script. Long live common sense….for all of us.

One of letters I got this week was particularly important to me. Catherine seems to be saying that she understands now. Here it is with her permission:

I just wanted to say that your posts have blessed me. Particularly the one I re-read today about QF [Amy: contraception and what conservative Christians refer to as the concept of being "quiverfull"]. I commented on it over a year ago when it ran and I read my comments which looked *very* lame to me today. A lot has happened in the past year. [snip]

I have a baby now and my house looks like a bomb went off in it most days. I am frequently overwhelmed and think women with 2 or 6 or 10 kids must be from another planet than me. Maybe I’m just a “wuss”. This is to say, your post and it’s compassion towards overwhelmed mothers has new meaning for me today and is appreciated. I feel embarrassed about being overwhelmed because I only have one child but it is what it is.

This means a lot to me because there is one more woman in the world who gets it. Catherine, I talk a lot about doing hard things because that’s what life requires. On the other hand, now I understand I could’ve avoided a lot of pain early on in life if I analyzed the situation as it was and not as I wanted it to be. This is harder to do when you are busy convincing everyone, including yourself, that you are doing great. Kuddos to you for your honest assessment.

On the heels of that this morning, I read a post about — OK, of all things — pitch correction by our friend, Rick Saenz. Of course, it’s not my usual fare of the doomed economy. I read the post because I enjoy reading well written pieces, even if I don’t care much about the subject matter. (By the way, you will not subscribe to a better written blog.) I figure the discipline of reading good writing will rub off. If split infinitives are any standard, then we all know that my reason is a bold-faced lie. It’s not rubbing off.

Still, I read it, and my patience was rewarded with this gem. I put it here for your consideration (with my bolded emphasis), with the understanding that it was written in light of tradeoffs in performing and recording music but is applicable to many of the Mommy Wars.

Wisdom does not choose a particular approach and champion it over the alternatives. Instead, wisdom works to understand the pros and cons of each individual choice. It looks to understand how particular choices interact to produce results, sometimes unexpected ones. It considers how wishful thinking can lead us to make poor choices, hoping that things will somehow turn out for the best. It distinguishes between practical matters and pragmatism. It recognizes that when no perfect path is available and knowledge is incomplete, it is often helpful to reserve judgment on what appear to be poor choices that others have made. Most important, it does not refuse to participate in projects that are less than ideal, but applies itself to bring whatever improvements it can to whatever circumstances present themselves.

I think the last sentence is the answer on how to end up at a great church wherever you live.

Is anyone old enough or heretical enough to remember 88 reasons Why The Rapture Will Be in 1988? I sat by the mini blinds in the living room, repenting and waiting. It never happened, and I wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. It just was.

Like then, I sat by and waited for my blog to implode, and it never happened. My blog is still here, and I don’t know why. I only wanted to tell you before there was a permanent error message.

There is no secret reason about why I fake-quit my blog. I really just didn’t want to fiddle with c-panel stuff, and I didn’t want to transfer archives to blogspot. It’s as simple as that.

It was the rocket scientist who had a tantrum (complete with tears and stomping) and threatened to invoke his first ever Patriarchal “Submit, woman,” forcing me back to bloggerdom. It really happened just as I described.

I’ve never threatened to quit (or pseudo-quit and come back) in four and a half years of blogging. After Challies, that’s gotta be some sort of record. Of course, this isn’t proof of my emotional stability, just proof that I know how to hide my bad behavior – usually. Greg wishes I was this good with my behavior at public events.

[Edit: People with blog commitment issues are not emotionally unstable. That's not what I meant. Just roll with me here. I have writing issues, as well as arts-n-crafts issues.]

I wasn’t trying to be a drama queen. Thank you for your comments and emails. Now how do I tell the 2,000 people who have already unsubscribed?

My blog might blink-blink around here for awhile, but Greg says he’ll fix it up. I love having my own personal rocket scientist. I guess I should’ve mentioned it to him before I started my drama. The truth is, I just thought, “Hm. I don’t want to move it, so that’s that.”

This is fine by me. I didn’t mean to be noncommittal in my last post, but when I say that I don’t take myself too seriously, I include my blog in that too. I don’t have an identity love affair with it, which is why it’s easy to see it in perspective and also to take my smackdowns when they deservedly come.

The bottom line is that Greg wants to fix it. It might go down for awhile. (It might not. Who knows. This is so complicated.) Then I’ll be back to lazy blogging right here.

You can resubscribe to my blog here.

Due to some problem I don’t understand (or should I say, can’t put the energy into understanding), my web hosting account is being suspended. I have no idea why it’s working now. It’s a “strain on servers due to a mysterious database issue.” Maybe the host company hates that Glenn Beck is my honey. Or maybe it’s computer code for “beats me … try rebooting.”

That leaves me with two options: I can move or I can quit.

After moving ourselves out-of-state nine months ago, I said, “I’m never moving again. Ever.” I think I was referring to unpacking china teacups and cranky children, but really, I have [pinching fingers] this much desire to move anything, ever, anywhere. I can only take so much.

Cocoa the Million Dollar mutt is acting almost dead and Greg is on his third trip in three weeks. Never mind the weeds and the laundry and the fake noises in the night. It’s just not on my radar if that makes sense.

The other option is quitting. Maybe it’s a sign. Maybe it’s time. Or maybe I’ll go to blogspot and start an anonymous blog saying all the stuff I can’t possible say under my own name. I’ll talk about my secret weapon stash; the evils of unit studies; how much I hate arts and crafts and my children live for arts and crafts and there are six of them—God bless me; my past life as a happy homeschooler, day trader, landlord, and public school teacher; and I’ll teach you how to always win at Rook and the Rainbow Resource table.

I’ll call it “Stuff Homeschoolers Like” because you know how unseriously homeschoolers take themselves.

Pause for the gaffaw.

I only jest, of course, on ever making fun of anyone other than myself. The blog disappearing very soon, however, is very real. See ya later or maybe not.

After four and a half years of blogging, I always thought my goodbye post would have some thought and effort put into it, but here it is, all five minutes it took me to write it.

This would normally go in the sideblog, but I wanted to put it out there a bit quicker. I’ll explain why in my next post.

On a related subject, this couldn’t happen without American apathy. Here’s an Obama voter who is intellectually honest (profanity at the link).

I hereby apologize for saying anything about Michael Jackson.

The largest tax increase in American history passed the House last night, and America was eating popcorn at the movies. I gave up from my phone calling, emailing, and letter writing from TARP days. I am a mother of six with only so many nerves left. Besides, I need to save my time and money for buying gold (that Obama will confiscate like FDR), treasuries from somewhere like Antarctica, and rolled oats that won’t get pantry moths.

Watch the video. Please. It’s worth your time.

Vote them all out.

We wanted someone to read the bill. If they cared, or wanted that pretense for the American people, there would’ve been a copy of the bill in the room.

Forget about the lost jobs, the fact that Obama is taped saying that electricity rates would “necessarily skyrocket”, the fact that it didn’t work anywhere else and gave Spain 18.1% unemployment as a result. Even the Australians are getting rid of their program. Forget about all that for a minute. Just read the stupid bill before you sign the biggest tax hike (according to the New York Times) in history.

The inconvenient thing, of course, is that the EPA (yes, our EPA, that EPA) said that jobs will go overseas as a direct result of cap and trade (because it’s cheaper to produce in a country without, um, cap and trade) and it will actually increase greenhouse gas emissions as a result. Brilliant. But let’s not talk about pesky details.

We just want some common sense.

A lot of people –AIG, Goldman Sachs, GE, Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi ($50,000 - $100,000 invested in Clean Energy Fuels), etc– stand to make a ton of money from trading on this. Politicians will get rich, the government will get more control, and businesses will pass on costs to us. We are the losers.

I’m just so ashamed that these people represent us, the American people. I’m so ashamed that this is the best we can do. We owe our service men and women better than this. If I was the mother of a soldier this week, I’d be livid at the mockery our elected representatives are making of the Constitution that our soldiers risk their lives to protect.

Common people are decent and honest. They pay their taxes. They want to raise their children in a safe community. I know because I live near them. Our community is like that. America is not California and the Fourth Congressional district of Massachusetts (where they keep electing Barney Frank). In turn, we just want some common sense and decency. We just want them to stop lying to us. It’s not rocket science.

I’ve got a real crisis for the politicians in Washington, as opposed to a fake one. How about the economy and cutting the budget? How about Iran and North Korea? How about convincing the world not to dump the dollar?

I just want to go on record for railing against this too, just in case you missed my sideblog and didn’t know I was against all the bailouts and for common sense. ;)

The king of pop died today (in case you’re unplugged). I saw Michael Jackson’s 1984 “Victory Tour” in Jacksonville when I was a kid. That was back before his solo career when they were still the Jacksons, yet still after they were the Jackson 5. I thought it was so funny to see the Jacksons in Jacksonville, FL.

It was my first concert. After that, I was hooked on 80’s pop music and sitcoms, my youth spent in front of MTV jumping off the couch with a tennis racket as my guitar. My first record (got it for Christmas) was Thriller. My first cassette tape was Cyndi Lauper’s She’s So Unusual. My first memorized piece of “poetry” was the entire album of Prince’s Purple Rain. That might explain a lot.

I asked my kids at dinner tonight, “Do you know who Michael Jackson is?”

Nope.

“Do you know that song that goes, ‘Just beat it, beat it, ooo!’” (I sang it passably.)

Nope.

I did the moonwalk.

Nope.

“Do you know what a record is?”

“Yes, it’s the thing Daddy shoots with the .22!”

There’s going to be a ton of media coverage on Michael Jackson, so I thought rank his best songs just so you will know.

Best Michael Jackson Songs Pre-Man in the Mirror

Did I rank them right? I think so. Lemme know if I missed Bad, but I don’t think so.

PG - 13

My children are coming of age, and I feel good about living on a farm. For one, the biology is very natural here. Two and probably more importantly, it means that there is less for me to explain. I hate awkward moments.

I talk about the birds and bees as we go along in order to avoid a “sit down” time where we both feel really uncomfortable. I am the one at the party who will say something stupid just so that there are no awkward moments, and in doing so, create an awkward moment so that nobody feels awkward.

But man, did I ever find myself in an awkward moment last week.

I pulled into the local Methodist church one evening looking for Doug, the neighbor who does artificial insemination.

McGregor, our son who just turned 11, noticed the signs that Heidi, our milk cow, had not been bred. McGregor will make a very good husband one day, not just for his humor and work ethic, but because he intimately understands the female reproductive cycle. In a bovine, anyway, which are quite similar to women I’ve noticed.

The church happened to be holding their VBS last week, and the place was crawling with kids. Folks were standing around socializing. I said “hello” to a few of my neighbors and casually asked Doug’s sisters if anyone knew where he was. He was not here, and so I retrieved his cell number.

In the meantime, I asked the ladies if I needed my own “goods” for the cow or if Doug brought Jersey semen when he came to do the job. I know it is standard practice for the AI guy to bring his own materials, but considering the low cost, $15, I thought I’d ask to make sure.

So the woman I asked wasn’t sure. She decided to ask her sister who happened to be standing on the other side of the volleyball court and parking lot.

“DOES DOUG HAVE SEMEN?” she yelled.

Oh my word. Emily Post would have a heart attack, but what should I do? Where is the rock for a nice southern girl to crawl under?

The implications of the question had me in a quandary. Back in Florida, this would be a Jerry Springer moment, but out in the country, everyone, I hoped, knew for sure that we were just talking about bulls. Naturally. I’m obviously a girl caught between city and country. I can talk about this without giggling, but not yet like….this.

Just when it couldn’t get any worse, the recipient of the question hollered, “WHAT?! I can’t hear you!”

That’s like the dentist finishing a root canal and then telling you that it was the wrong tooth. We must start this over.

There were the children, after all. About a hundred of them all within earshot. I thought we should have a secret meeting behind the church to discuss these matters, but they weren’t having any of it. That’s when the pastor looked at me, but I think that was a coincidence.

“Semen! Does Doug have some? S – E – M – E – N! Has he got any?”

Oh Lord Jesus come quickly.

Indeed, the man had some. We cleared that up. I tried popping my eyes back into my head and drove on home, feeling real lucky to live in a place like this. I thought we were pretty liberal and loosey-goosey around here with the adolescent education, but apparently, I still have a long way to go.

I snuck this picture this morning on my way downstairs.

With all my complaining about this and that, there are things that go right sometimes.

But this is not one of them:

Meet Pup. I picked him up last week at an Amish farm. He was one in a litter of nine puppies, and I felt sorry for him soaked in the rain. Now I just feel sorry for my stupidity. But I’m in real good with the kids.

“Helicopter parents” are getting tired of spinning their wheels, er, choppers. Attachment parenting is falling out of trend now. Time for a change:

But whatever you call it, and however it began, its days may be numbered. It seems as though the newest wave of mothers is saying no to prenatal Beethoven appreciation classes, homework tutors in kindergarten, or moving to a town near their child’s college campus so the darling can more easily have home-cooked meals. (O.K., O.K., many were already saying no, but now they’re doing so without the feeling that a good parent would say yes.) [...]

After a decade of earnest immersion in parenting, though, the times are ripe for a change. The first sign was the wave of confessionals — from anonymous Web sites like truumomconfessions.com (where mothers admit to transgressions like feigning stomach cramps to steal quiet time hiding in the bathroom) to bylined blogs like the wildly popular dooce.com (where Heather B. Armstrong chronicled her postpartum depression and continues to write about her struggles as the mother of a charming but somewhat high-strung 5-year-old) to memoirs like Ayelet Waldman’s (in which she cops to such “sins” as using disposable diapers and loving her husband more than her children).

Normally, I’m not one to cheer honesty over doing the hard work of parenting. Truthfully, more parents need to own up than to get real. But read on.

But in the past few months, a second wave has taken hold — writers are moving past merely venting and are trying to gather the like-minded into a new movement. Carl Honoré is one. He calls it “slow parenting” — no more rushing around physically and metaphorically, no more racing kids from soccer to Suzuki. Lenore Skenazy is another. She calls it “free-range parenting,” a return to the days when childhood was not ruled by the fear (overblown, she says, with statistics to prove it) that children would be maimed, kidnapped or killed if they did something as simple as riding their bikes alone to the park.

So, now we’re allowed to relax. I think.

If you happen to be a conservative Christian, you also have to navigate whatever current trend is making the marketing rounds in evangelical circles. Parenting is stressful enough, but add to that the guilt and stress of fitting in with your particular homeschooling homebirthing homesteading micro-culture, and it’s no wonder more women don’t call it quits.

I’m not advocating that, by the way. I think we should call it quits, but only with the defensive posturing we assert on the playground.

I don’t get involved in the arguing anymore. One, because I realized that it doesn’t really matter how, when, and what method you use to switch your baby from a bottle to a cup. Some people really care about these things, and for them, no amount of being right will ever fill the inadequacy they feel when they lay down at night. Let them be right.

Two, there is a deep feeling inside a woman that correlates with the esteem a man receives from doing his job well: This is all I do, all day every day. I want it to be right. Me too. What would it feel like to devote your life work to this and find out you’ve been doing it all wrong all this time? So it seems better to use my words to build up my fellow mother in the trenches than to spend that time building myself up (in my eyes, anyway—nobody else is thinking well of me).

I’m with Erin Manning on this one:

….deep down inside the reason many parents–especially many mothers–are so caught up in parenting fads in the first place is because of a female tendency I’m going to get some flack for admitting to publicly: we need to be right. Especially when it comes to our kids.

And if we’re laid back, under-scheduled, casual moms, and we spend a coffee hour with moms whose kids are learning Sanskrit, competing in geography bees, and on track to be the youngest ever Van Cliburn competitor, we get that dreadful chill up our spines: no matter how well life is going or how happy we are with the way we do things, the sickening possibility arises and won’t be banished, haunting us at inopportune times, whispering in our shivering ears–am I failing my kids? Am I ruining my kids?

[snip]

What’s the solution? I like Catholic blogger Danielle Bean’s oft-repeated mantra: do what works best for your family. That doesn’t imply that you’ll never spend time considering (and reconsidering) what’s working, of course.

And then the money line:

But it does mean that you don’t have to read up on all the latest parenting trends to find one that’s sort of close to what you’re already doing, so that you can defend it the next time someone who’s doing something completely different inadvertently makes you wonder if you’re doing it all wrong.

I guess I’m just at the point where I’m willing to live and let live. I’ve also been publicly humbled enough — and I’ve got really great kids. There is more than one way to skin a cat, but you don’t know that when you’re a new parent.

There is a certain imbalance mothers fall into, especially new mothers—a sort of hyper-interest in all things motherly, which is well and good when it is balanced with the most important things in life and not tangled with the gospel. By that, I mean that the gospel stands on its own merit and that our justification is dependent on Christ’s work and not our failure or success as a parent, perceived and otherwise.

Faith is not separate from our lives; it’s integrated. It is the driving force behind all our decisions. I only mean that our worth as mothers, as parents, as Christians is from Christ and not a parenting philosophy that changes with the times. Easy to say, but women everywhere feel the weight of the burden of these “gospels”.

In fact, it was just this month that I realized that a particular conservative Christian “tenet” (for lack of a better word) was a burden that I inadvertently allowed others to put onto me and not one that Christ asked me to bear. The freedom from that feels amazing.

Normally, I would just link this article in the sideblog, but there were some sleazy ads on the website. Glenn Beck read this article on his show, and I had to share it.

You know that hypothetical question, “If you could have anyone over for dinner, who would it be?” My quick answer is Glenn Beck and Jack Bauer, but I’m sure I could answer that better if I had time to think. Christians are supposed to say, “Jesus.”

Anyway, this article is from the Russian propaganda news tank, Pravda. I know, I know. But listen. The author is basically pointing out that Americans have their collective head in the sand. On the heels of that, during Timothy Geithner’s recent trip to China, the Chinese laughed loudly when he said that the dollar was safe. Is anyone asking why are we the last to know this? Is everyone else wrong or are Americans drinking up the ObamaRamaLama (as my buddy likes to say)?

You can take this article two different ways. The first is that the only way to support the thesis that we’re on the path to inflation is to find obscure Russian journalist with an axe to grind. Or second, that maybe along with the Chinese and the rest of the world, he’s right. You decide.

Here’s the translation without grammar corrections, emphasis mine:

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics.

Remember, the author has already seen how this happens. He ought to know. This isn’t a rah-rah point for the homeschooler or private schooler, but rather a point to make sure that we are teaching our children well whatever schooling choices we make. Substandard education happens everywhere.

Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

The economists who predicted the housing bubble pretty much say the same thing. Most, however, give the hope that we are not past the point of no return. We’re close, but a radical course-shift could avoid this situation.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

Not only does Goldman Sachs get a “Get Out of Jail Free” card, but they are given the keys to run the whole system while we sit back and watch.

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama’s command that GM’s (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of “pure” free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a “bold” move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our “wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper…but a “freeman” whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set “fair” maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Stanislav Mishin

I often tease my husband for his “it can’t happen to me” attitude. When we came home the other night, we found our door had been blown open. If I was back in Orlando, I’d have immediately thought, “We were robbed! Don’t touch anything. Fingerprints!”

Greg would’ve said, “Guess the door blew open. Hm.” Well, in fact, if we were in Orlando, we would’ve been robbed. Maybe murdered. It’s in the top 10 most dangerous cities. I hate that place. We were robbed in the middle of the day once, and our brother-in-law was mugged not long ago.

Since we live in Nowhere, Kentucky, we both knew that everything was fine. Around here, the mailman just comes in your house if you don’t hear him knock. (Somebody better tell him about me and what I do about noises…)

My point it that people think they live like us in Nowhere, Kentucky. One day they will realize that this Mayberry has turned into Orlando—or worse, Detroit—and all along, they thought that collapse could never happen to us. Every civilization has fallen. Every single one of them. The only question is when and how much you decide to help it along.

1. Garden
Greg gets all the credit for our garden. He has put in an incredible amount of work. We wanted to make our berry beds permanent, so that the epic battle to fight and conquer weeds was mostly won in the beginning. Time will tell.

Not an interesting picture, except to show the heavily mulched paths. Three benefits: I can walk in the garden when it’s wet. The children don’t walk on the plants. It’s pretty low maintenance after the initial set up.

Behind me in this picture are traditional mounds of melons. The melons aren’t in permanent beds. So we have a “permanent” side and a tillable/row crop side not shown. Also not shown are hundreds strawberries and a row of blueberries.

2. Baseball
I’ve never seen a regular season Little League game where there were no walks on either side. Last night I saw my first game in which the three pitchers walked nobody in six innings. I’ve seen this sort of pitching on All-Star and travel teams, but not during regular season 9/10 Little League play. (It was probably about a 65/25/10 ratio on strike outs, put outs, and hits.) Now, the ump made about three ridiculous calls in which the strike zone was as wide as the Mississippi, but even still, that’s some good pitching in the regular season.

My favorite player calls time as he slides into third.

3. Tractor
Greg used to tell McGregor that people who bought John Deere tractors were over-paying for the green paint. So you can imagine how pleased McGregor was to walk in from the auction and tell me, “Guess what Dad bought!” He loves his own jokes. Poor Greg is still being razzed by an 11-year-old.

It has a front loader, takes diesel, and happens to need some touch up paint. That’s about all I know.

I’ll never forget when Charles (age 3) saw Greg’s “new” tractor. His eyes got big and he said, “Wow! I have one too!” then he ran to get his toy tractor. He was right. It did match.

4. Eggs
Abigail’s egg business is going bonkers. She can’t keep up with the demand. We are selling free range eggs for $1.50 per dozen. I would feel a little guilty about raising the price, even though $2.00 - 2.50 would be more in line with our inputs when you consider winter feed and a fair exchange on labor.

I’m unsure if people are buying the eggs out of pity for her or if they really feel like they are getting a fair exchange. I suppose we’ll know the answer if we decide to raise the price, but from a marketing standpoint, it might make more sense to build a customer base this way and add other products more in line with our labor and input costs.

If I knew before how easy it was to raise hens and how much the children enjoy them, I’d have done it in my suburban backyard. (Actually, I was going to, but I figured it’d hinder selling a house.)

5. Simple Living Observations
One of the reasons that we were inclined to move to an Amish area was because we wanted to live in a community where people bartered and exchanged basic goods. (Now with the 25% VAT tax Congress is tossing around—in addition to income tax— perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea, theoretically at least.) I understand now that Plain communities aren’t synonymous with simple living or homesteading. I don’t mean that as a critique, just as an observation for others’ benefit.

Whenever Greg and I sit down to figure out how make a basic budget work for our now-large family, we always get hung up on health care costs. Right now we are covered by Greg’s employer, but we’ve often tossed around ideas that didn’t involve traditional means of employment. We are less inclined to toss around crazy ideas now since he works much less than he used to work. Plus, the economy.

Now, we’ve been self-employed numerous times over the years, but Greg’s two or three jobs enabled us to buy basic health coverage on our own. It is very expensive, and one time we only carried catastrophic insurance, but we’ve always carried a form of health insurance. What I’m trying to understand is how to live a reduced cash lifestyle without government (taxpayer) assistance.

I recently navigated the health care system with a young Amish woman having her first baby. As you might know, the Amish do not carry insurance. It most communities, the typical protocol is that the church pays these sort of bills out of a community fund. However, in our particular community, the budget won’t cover a 4-day Cesarean delivery.

So, the larger question for me is one of sustainability with a mix of morality. Somebody is paying the bills for those who are unable. (If it is written off by the hospital, the costs are absorbed through higher fees for the next guy.) It seems if you deliberately choose a lifestyle that won’t afford the ability to pay a basic hospital stay, there are three options: choose another lifestyle, forego medical treatment, or accept taxpayer assistance.

The first option, planning for a job that will allow us to afford healthcare, is the only one my conscience allows me to choose. We could not choose to quit working, knowing that one mishap would force us to rely on the government to forcibly tax other people for our decision. It’s tempting, knowing how much we’ve paid in though. (Of course, I am thinking through this in regards to people who deliberately set the course for their lives, not people who suddenly find themselves jobless one day.) Others choose differently based on their conscience. I am unsure how the Amish reconcile their use of modern medicine while living premodern lives—lifestyles that seem to preclude their ability to pay for such a thing. I only know that from an outsider’s point of view, it appears unsustainable.

I’m just saying: Besides the economy, it’s another reason why we’ll probably never quit the day job anytime soon.

6. Land
The land across the road is ours now. It is 48 acres of bottom land with a large creek. We are cutting hay on it for now. I have pictures somewhere, but I don’t organize my photos. Disorganization makes me crazy.

The day began at 1:51 in the morning with a phone call from the county 9-1-1 operator. You always hear about “the call you never want to get in the middle of the night” and for a second, I knew what that meant.

Greg was out of town with Charles and McGregor. He took the boys to their first MLB doubleheader in Cincinnati for McGregor’s 11th birthday. Greg is from Philly and McGregor likes the Reds, so it was perfect.

In the hotel lobby in Cincinnati, a man was eating with his son, a boy about the same age as my oldest. The father and son were both wearing Reds ball caps, and so Greg sat down with him for advice. “I guess I’ve failed,” referring to McGregor wearing a Reds cap and himself wearing a Phillies cap. “Do you have any advice for me?” I’m not sure what’s funnier: their ensuing conversation or the fact that Greg would approach a stranger and start talking.

Anyway, back in Nowhere, Kentucky, the 9-1-1 operator wanted to know if I was Amy Scott. At two in the morning, which is very different from dinnertime. Of course, I thought about my husband and sons and my stomach sank. I was asleep, but now I was awake.

“Did you call us?” he asked me.

“No, you called me,” I said, wondering if this was for real. I decided to let his manners slip-up slide.

“Well, someone called from your house and hung up.”

This is one of those Oh Great moments. The good news is that my boys are safe, but the bad news is that there’s an ax murderer in my house. Are you sure Charles wasn’t arrested for excessive talking and his three-year-old hiney needs to be bailed out of jail?

“Well, if you’re sure you didn’t call, maybe there’s a short in the phone line…..so.” What? The phone is on the blink so it calls 9-1-1?

“Waitwaitwaitwait. Um. You’re just going to call me, inform me that I’m about to be murdered and then HANG UP!?”

“Yes.”

“Are you kidding?” says me, reaching for the .38 special.

“I can send out an officer.”

I’m going to die.

Other people might go to bed, but my mind started running about how this could totally be a setup. Definitely. That’s how I’d do it if I were a bad guy. I’d do reverse psychology. Call the cops from the victim’s house, put them off the trail so they think there’s a crank caller in the house, and then move in. When the victim really calls, the 9-1-1 operator will answer, “I know you. You’re just a boy who cried ‘wolf’! No cop car for YOU!”

When I was a kid, I used to watch Lifetime After Dark so I know about these things. Good thing I could clear the house Jack Bauer style, well maybe, if I could get the safety off. This is only funny if you know that a .38 special doesn’t have a safety, which of course, isn’t funny at the time. Geez.

So I decided the best way to confirm my impending doom was to call back 9-1-1 to confirm that they called me, which if their story is straight, would actually be my second call. No matter if you’re confused. The fact that the phone was now dead is now the important thing.

Is it just me or does this stuff happen to everyone else?

I suppose I could use my cell– but just like in the movies, especially the Lifetime one of which I was about to be a part–the battery was completely dead.

So I checked the house and waited for the officer, who may or may not be from 9-1-1. I still hadn’t determined who called and why. Greg, later on, wants to know if I looked like Charlie’s Angels when I cleared the house. I think he used to watch too much TV if you ask me. This is so not funny.

While I waited, I wrestled in my mind about how to approach the situation. I’m not brilliant, but I figured I couldn’t draw down on the cop if he really was a cop. While I thought this through, I cleaned the house. I am still a southern girl, even if I’m nervous, and I wouldn’t want a real guest to see my house like this. Just in case he was a real cop from my community and not about to kill me. This is a small town and word would get out that I slunk into bed without doing the dishes (or the floors). Goody gumdrops. If you don’t live in a small town, you just don’t understand.

I waited, folded the dish towel into perfect thirds, and thought about which picture of mine they’d use on the evening news. It turns out that the house cleaning and my dilemma about how to secure my home and children from an unknown man with a gun coming over was irrelevant. He never showed up, even though I waited until dawn.

Later that day, I confirmed it was, indeed, 9-1-1. I do not, however, know why they didn’t show. Maybe they read my blog. When I explained to Greg my idea about how to answer the door and approach the situation, he said, “Oh great. I would’ve had to bail you out of jail for that.”

So I’ve organized in my mind about how to deal with this sort of thing in the future. It seems silly to think through far-fetched nonsensical scenarios, but you never know when your life might be just like the movies.

p.s. I hope you all had a good Mother’s Day. I got a fake rose, plastic grapes, an iron bell, a Twix bar, and homemade cards. :)