April 21st 2010
Today started off not so good. I might have a sinus infection? Or maybe I am just suddenly allergic to everything in Vermont but only at night. I feel fine during the day, just tired. Coming back from NYC is always a sort of dooming or humbling experience.
Monday and Tuesday were more like puppet-days that seem fake and only held up by strings. I can’t remember Monday other than I wrote a poem and got a letter from Pareesa. The only good thing about Tuesday was that I scraped the Fil-A-Busters. They get this real goopy film all over them and Laini thinks it is best to scrape it all off. “Like taking a very thin layer of icing off a cake.” I filled up a whole bowl with this cheese film and it was hilarious and disgusting all at once. Sometimes I look at what I am doing and wonder, ‘what the hell am I doing?’
April 13th, 2010
Shipping. I love and loathe Tuesdays. Boxes, packing peanuts, paper, tape the worry about the cheese getting there, the Fed Ex guy forgetting to pick-up, not enough ice packs, fucking up the invoices which I do at least once a week. I still have a fear of math and I constantly doubt my abilities in this regard, not that I actually have “abilities” but I can count two at a time and do simple multiplication and division. The damned Fed Ex Ground, which isn’t really part of Fed Ex at all, just a subcontracting division that does it for the name, the service charges, the fuel surcharge, the pick-up fees…its all too much when you have 5 orders and all those fractions ending in odd un-rounded figures.
Again, like yesterday, I was very sleepy. I haven’t been sleeping well or that one night of staying up all night really did put me all outta whack. Laini and I discussed the definition and causes of rancidity and she diagnosed Jack Lazor’s cheese as definitely rancid. Ah well, we all knew it he is too damned stubborn to let anyone tell him that though.
I dropped two pieces of cheese lately due to utter exhaustion. A La Roche and an Oh my heart. I took both home. I got Friday off! So I can go visit Daniel and people this weekend in NYC. I still have yet to make definite plans with family but I am thinking I may just drive straight to New Haven, but maybe I will be too tired in actuality.
After lunch today I worked for 3 more grueling hours un-molding buck hills, pre-washing, washing forms, washing tables and then making boxes. My finger is worse I think. Thursday night in Johnson, it is a long story that is somewhat boring but Brett drove me home and I was passed out in the back of his mini-van and we almost hit a moose and my arm and hand and finger are now fucked up (as if they weren’t already). My fingernail was black and blue when I got up. The nail is assuredly going to fall off.
March 24th, 2010
Monday we only had 214 pieces, oh my hearts, to ship to PI. I messed up and forgot 15 of them down in the cave, then realized it then had to do the invoice over again. Work is sometimes almost too boring to write about. I took Buck Hills out of there forms and prewashed them. It was raining like hell all day and all night. The sound of it on our crappy old tin roof sounded like small barbarian nightmares smashing each other with glass clubs. I couldn’t fall asleep. Usually the rain puts me to sleep but not here, under this roof. I dreamt of many things that went wrong, Nate Burgess was in it, the old farm and its characters made their weird ominous appearances. I did yoga in my room. Stoked the fire, ate some delicious salad with spelt and mayo with Chris. I read Savage detectives, drank a glass of wine. Tuesday I moved Buck Hills to the rack. Turned old BHS and Oh My Hearts packaged up some cheese leftover from Farmers Market to go to Buffalo Mtn. Co-op. Went home around 10:30. Had nothing to do. Doddled. Made egg salad (we have 3 dz. Eggs again) ate it on toasted rye bread. Went to feed babies at 12:30. The new little one wouldn’t eat. They are frustrating but as long as they all get something to eat I am satisfied. Cleaned out pen 4. The rain stopped around noon. The streams were all swollen. Then it got cold. Snowed a little. I read more, freaked out a little with boredom. Dog slept, stoked fire, read, drank a beer. Chris came home. Excited about beer. Dan Blakk came over to drink. Dan called. We talked for almost 2 hours. It was a good chat.
Wednesday
3/10/10
Laini told me to come in at 10 today. I got up around 8 went downstairs to a colder than usual house. Chris was up and was sipping a big mug of chai tea and said the fire went out last night because we forgot to close the back damper. Oops. And we had such a good fire going. I made coffee, talked to Chris until she left at 8:30 for work.I made an omelette and bacon. Then called Daniel and talked for a half hour. Then got ready for work. I got there around 10:10. Laini was already in there tatooing the kids. She had one pen done! She is funny like that and will always start when she is ready even if you are not there yet. I swabbed kid ears with alcohol, dried them, painted them with the roller-ball green tattoo ink and Laini clamped them with the old-fashioned, torture-device-looking, tattoo gun. It went pretty quick especially since they were all sleepy in the warm solar barn. Rude awakening. Wiggly little things. One has a pink nose and she is really cute. Then I made boxes in the shed. Dexter showed up for a chat. Then is was feeding time again and Laini and I got the kids on the bucket. The last two pens were pretty difficult and their little tongues couldn’t quite stay under the nipple. Ah goat babies, they are all the same, either they drink good, they drink good but get unfocused or they are low on selenium and just can’t figure it out, or they are just totally retarded.I kept getting green tattoo ink, which was and is still all over my hands, all over them and in their little mouths as I tried to pry them open. I went home for lunch. Came back at 1:30 to call in next weeks order. Then I washed mats and buckets. Then I took the forms and everything off one of the metal racks and gave them all a quick wash and rinse. Then I cleaned the rack and put everything back on it again. A simple task yes, but it took me maybe two hours. I listened to The Story on NPR about a military family and a lady with the weird job of buying gold. Then I scrubbed the floor near the wrapping area. Laini brought me some chocolate she made with cashews and cranberries and a piece of Mulled Over cheese that is wrapped in grape leaves and rattan, very pretty.
I got home around 4:30. Chris was outside chasing the next door neighbors chickens that had got out somehow. Carter was freaking out but on his leash. Chris gave up and brought the dog inside and left to go back to work. The dog barked at me a lot and I kept yelling at him to shut up and be good. Then I did some dishes. Then Carter who could not stop wiggling and annoying me. I decided I would take him for a walk to shut him up. He was excited. It was nice out and we walked to where Balance Rock meets Buck Hill then walked back. It was only a half hour. Then I finished the dishes and stoked the fire. Made a snack of cheese crackers eggplant tapenade and hummus and drank a smoked porter with it while reading my book. I called Dawn finally. She had a bad day but was in good spirits. We might hang out Friday. She is pregnant! Now me and carter are chillin by the stove keeping it real yo.
3/9/10
Yesterday was my first day back at work at Laini’s. I woke up at 6:15ish. The house was cold but not freezing. I made coffee, two eggs, cinnamon toast, ate only the yokes and tossed the whites which were too goopy. The sun was rising through the bare birch trees. Chris was already up, she is always already awake. Maybe she was trying to start the morning fire. I left or work, which is now only 5 minutes away. I got there at 7:10, I think that is the latest I’ve ever got to work at Laini’s. But it doesn’t seem to matter much anymore, sometimes I wonder why I always got there so damned early. I like getting up early. And working that early is easy because you are like a numb lifeless robot that only needs coffee with Butterworks cream and maple syrup to keep going. I got right to the old shipping protocol. PI orders, which I never used to pack I got ready. I had to go fetch the cheese from the cave, a lot of cheese, or maybe it just seemed like a lot because the path down to the cave was pure March morning ice. Norca, the cheese sled, was still intact, though she has seen better days. It was chilly, windy, but sunny and beautiful, March in its blue-veined sky bareness. Laini was all over the place having stayed up till two a.m. to deal with the ever-kidding does. I got only a quick re-briefing on the shipping paperwork then was just forced to stare at the stuff until some synapses were re-fused. I turned the new Oh My Hearts. I washed mats, racks, brushed the Oh My Hearts in the cave and turned the Buck Hill Sunrises. Made some phonecalls. Went home for lunch. Nachos? Felt brain-dead. Went back to work, packed up more cheese from the cave for Tuesdays shipping. Boxes, invoices, tape, paper, VPR, Barry’s anonymous loud interjections, Laini talking on the phone between running around and feeding babies.
I left at 3 p.m. Came home. Carter barked at me as usual. I let him out. He went on a long 3 hour adventure somewhere and I could not find him. I brought in more stuff from my car. Twiddled. Did dishes, organized the piles and collections of strange useless things in our house. Made fire. Drank beer at five p.m. Made bacon and Kale. Chris came home. Made elbows and was going to make American chop suey until Chris’ co-worker Dan Black called to invite us to the JVI, Jay Village Inn. I was tired but I agreed to go. It was only like 6:30. It was the Canadian intern’s last night. He was super cute, red hair, gap teeth, freckles, weird accent, silly demeanor. We drank beers in front of a much too hot fire place. The waitresses were strange and so was everyone else. Tourists or locals, that is the only two kind of people around here except maybe me, who is both or neither. We drank far too many beers for a Monday night. Dan is excessively hilarious and I cried a lot from laughing so much. I remember staring at the cover photo on the recent Nat’l Geo magazine for a long time in the ladies room, it was awful yet wholesome, horrific and yet hypnotizing.
