I just now realized, at noon, that the pants I’m wearing today are not the ones I thought I was putting on when I got dressed this morning. They’re the same color and all, but a totally different pair than the ones I meant to grab out of the closet. Nice.
I thought there was something odd about them…
The Brewers have been running a promotion called “Where’s Bernie?”, Bernie being the team’s mascot. Over the past week or so they’ve been hiding mini-Bernie lawn statues in county parks around the state, and today was the day the hunt for them began. Starting at 5:00 this morning you could go out in the parks and look for the “stach”-ues (Bernie’s got a big handlebar mustache), taking one if you found them. They were placing 1,400 total – 400 of them were spread out across all the parks they chose and had prizes attached (game tickets, game-used merch, zoo passes, etc.), and the remaining 1,000 were all in one location which was not announced until this morning. Bernie had been leaving clues on Twitter as to what parks were going to contain the “stach”-ues, but the location with the big 1,000 lot wasn’t revealed until 5:00 am today.
Now here’s the kicker. The 1,000 Bernies weren’t supposed to be available to get until 7:00 am today. They announced the location at 5:00 when the rest of the scavenger hunt began, but you couldn’t grab these Bernies until 7:00 (the 1,000 Bernies did not have any prizes attached, they were just plain). As I was getting ready for work I checked out the Brewers site to see where the secret location was, and I was excited to see that the 1,000 Bernies were going to be placed in the lakefront parks downtown, really easy to get to from our house. Sweet! No way were we getting up at 4:30 to try to find a park to start looking for lawn ornaments at 5:00, but we’d said last night that if the big stash happened to be near us and we could stop on the way to work we’d give it a shot. So we hurried to get ready, dropped D off at daycare about half an hour early, and headed down to the lakefront to nab a Bernie. We got there around 6:50, plenty of time to spare, and we even saw a Brewers van with a guy in it. Awesome! We’ll get a Bernie for sure.
Um, not so much. We stopped by the Brewers van as another man and his young son were talking to the guy in it, and R hopped out to see how this was going to work. Well, turns out they’d already given away all the Bernies. And it wasn’t even 7:00 yet! What?? That’s not fair – all the press on this explicitly stated in bold and underlined that the 1,000 Bernies were not available to grab until 7:00 am (bold and underlined?! that means it must be so!). That totally sucks! So we drove down the lakefront a little further to where a big Brewers truck and Bernie himself were stationed. A big truck – they must have more Bernies there! Nope, they were gone too. WTF??
We were so annoyed. I mean, I know it’s not a huge deal; they are just plastic lawn ornaments after all. But it would’ve been a fun Brewers souvenir to have (not in the yard, mind you!), and we followed the rules like they’d asked! If I read it once I read it a million times throughout all the tweets and clues leading up to this – you won’t be able to pick up Bernies from the secret location until 7:00 am, and if you find more than one please be nice to other Brewers fans and only take that one. So who played nice? Apparently no one, not even the Brewers people themselves! If you’re going to hype this all up, make these rules, and then emphasize them so much, at least follow them yourselves so the rest of us who are trying to play your game have a shot at success. Don’t say ah well, people are already here early and trying to cheat so we may as well just let them win. That’s not how it goes. I don’t care if there was a camp of 8,000 people overnight hoping they were in the right spot for the secret 1,000 Bernies. We followed instructions, we looked up the location, we were there before 7:00, and yet you catered to everyone else. Way to instill trust in your fans, shitheads.
And the worst part? People already have these up on eBay. I just saw one for sale for $500! What?! These things were free you greedy bastards!
So the Brewers get a big thumbs down for their “Where’s Bernie?” game. What could have been a really fun community event was turned into a big fat failure by all the cheaters and those who allowed them to cheat. If you were one of the lucky ones who actually followed the clues to a park to find a Bernie with loot attached, or got down to the lakefront half an hour early to grab a plain Bernie when the jerks gave them out before they were supposed to, then bully for you. But leave it to people to ruin it for the rest of us. *sigh*
So this whole milk drying-up procedure has turned out to be much more painful than I expected. Remember how I thought that since my pumping had slowed down so much recently my risk of exploding boobs was pretty much gone? Yeah, I was wrong. Everything I read said that in order to get your milk supply to end you need to stop pumping/nursing entirely, so even my every-other-day pumping was making my body think I still needed to keep producing. I thought I was just teaching my body to produce less and less until finally it would simply get the hint that I no longer needed any milk. Apparently I was mistaken. So this weekend I decided it was time to stop for good, and I haven’t pumped since Thursday morning.
And I want to rip my boobs right off my chest. Actually just the right one; the left one has been behaving nicely. But righty? My god it’s being a turd. Full, hard, extremely sore, just all around unbearable. I’ve been popping ibuprofen like it’s my job since Saturday because I can finally take it again and it’s the recommended pain reliever for going through this process, but it hasn’t been doing much that I can tell.
What has been helping, though, is cabbage. What? Yes, cabbage. Everywhere I looked for how to go about doing this warned of the engorgement I would experience (they were right!) and recommended putting cabbage leaves on my boobs to relieve the pain of the swelling. Har – yeah I don’t think so. Raw cabbage leaves? In my bra? You’re crazy. Nope, you’re a genius! That shit saved my sanity this weekend. I’m not kidding, from the very first leaf against my skin I wanted to cry with joy and relief. For all the sites I read that suggested this I still can’t tell you what exactly is in the cabbage that helps, but I am now a believer. If Mr. Cabbage told me the world was ending tomorrow night at 6:00, I might actually listen, that’s how much of a cabbage convert I have become. You take raw green cabbage leaves, either slice off the top edge of the big veins in them or smash them down with a rolling pin (i chose the latter), and put them on your boobs for about half an hour or until whenever they’re wilted. I just wore a sports bra so they were easy to put in and remove, and I plowed through almost an entire head of cabbage in two days. The colder they are to start the better, and seriously as soon as you put the leaves on it’s instant relief. They don’t actually reduce the engorgement that much since they don’t do anything to make the milk dry up, but just like ice packs work, the cold compress on your skin does help take a little of the swelling down and provide some pain relief. And I guess women have been using this remedy since the 1800s, so who am I to judge? Bring on the cabbage!
I’ve also read that it may take up to a week or two for the milk to finally be dried up, and if that proves to be true too I may just have to be locked away by the end. I can’t even describe the level of discomfort, for although I’ve felt it before when I would go too long without nursing or pumping, knowing that I can’t relieve the engorgement or else I’ll have to start this cycle all over makes me a little crazy. If the pain gets too awful or I start running a fever I’m supposed to call the doctor at that point, so let’s hope it doesn’t get to that. I did have to express a little by hand last night before the right one exploded, which is such a fun endeavor all in itself. I tell ya, the human body? It’s a crazy machine.
To switch topics to try and take my mind off the boobage pain, let me tell you how my 5k went. I rocked it!! My original goal was to break 30:00, which, after I ran the route earlier last week I knew I’d be able to pull off. So then I had the 27:00 mark in my head. I secretly wanted to break 27:00, but the whole time I was running I kept telling myself I’d be happy with 28:00 something and felt like that’s the pace I was holding. Imagine my surprise when I crossed the finish line and my watch read 26:57!!! (it wasn’t an officially timed race so i used my watch instead of their clock) I mapped out the race route and it actually was 3.24 miles, so that’s an 8:18 pace! Holy shit. The whole time I was running I couldn’t believe my legs were holding in as well as they were, but I had no idea I was going that fast. Well, fast for me, I should say. So I was very happy about that.
Then Saturday night R smoked another scrumptious rack of ribs and we enjoyed 2 bottles of wine. These:
Both were quite tasty. The zin was pretty sweet for a red zinfandel, which I love, and the riesling was nice and light, tasting very much of pears. Last night R used his new pizza stone and pizza peel and made 2 homemade pizzas for dinner. They were both on whole wheat crust, and one was topped with his homemade bacon and cheese, and the other was topped with pepperoni and cheese. Need I even say it? Delicious!! Unfortunately he didn’t take pictures of any of the food this weekend, so you’ll just have to imagine the savory delicacies yourselves.
Today it was finally nice enough outside that I could get our veggie gardens in for the year. I know – 75 degrees, not a cloud in the sky, warm breeze? Was I in the right place? I figured before Mother Nature had a chance to answer that question and piss on us again I’d better hop to it. (good thing too, for as i type this we’re in the middle of a thunderstorm)
Of course everyone else in the greater Milwaukee area had the same idea, and the garden store was PACKED. But I got everything I needed relatively painlessly and was home an hour later to get to gardening. I got 2 Roma tomato plants, a Boxcar Willie heirloom tomato plant, a Mr. Stripey heirloom tomato plant, a green pepper plant, a red pepper plant, romaine lettuce seeds, sweet basil seeds, purple basil seeds, cilantro seeds (yuck! but R loves it), tomato stakes, some new netting to put around all the gardens so I no longer have to scratch the crap out of my hands trying to weave together all the stupid short pieces of chicken wire I’ve been using the past couple years, and 3 Gerbera daisies for the pot I put on our front walk. R went to Home Depot this afternoon and brought home some more seeds – cucumbers, sweet peas, and more herbs – so I planted those as well as some green bean seeds we had from a year or two ago.
Keep your fingers crossed that my netting works to keep all the vermin out, our seeds germinate, and our vegetable gardens flourish. If they all survive we will have quite the bumper crop! Here are some more pictures I took today to show off my handiwork from this afternoon as well as the color that’s now blossoming from my bulbs.
R and I watched an awesome documentary tonight, “The Real Dirt on Farmer John”. It was about a guy who grew up on a farm in northern Illinois, took over said farm when his father passed, turned the farm into kind of a hippie commune as he actively farmed it in his 20s, went broke and had to sell almost everything at age 30, and his subsequent return to the farm and eventual transformation of it into a CSA. (side note – we joined a CSA last summer. wonderful premise, but unfortunately we were disappointed with ours. so this summer we’re just going to try to get more veggies going in our own gardens and frequent the local farmer’s market)
The movie also showed the sad demise of so many surrounding family farms in the 1980s. Seeing a farmer actually start crying as he spoke of watching the concrete being poured for all the neighborhoods that sprung up on the beautiful farmland brought tears to my eyes. And it got me thinking, as I have so many times before – what’s going to happen to R’s family’s farm when his dad dies?
R grew up on a 400 acre farm about an hour north of Milwaukee. His dad’s parents started it, his dad and aunts grew up on it, and his dad has been farming it ever since he came back from California in his 20s to take over. It used to be an active dairy farm, but now it’s mainly crops. They have a few cows left, but not nearly as many as they did in the milk-producing hey day. There are also some pigs and lambs, but it’s definitely not a meat producer. We occasionally reap the benefits if his dad slaughters a hog, but it’s not like we get all our beef and pork from there. They used to raise chickens, but those are gone as well. His mom still tends a magnificent garden each year, though. And when you’re on a farm, your garden isn’t your little run-of-the-mill thing like we have in the backyard. It’s a garden. I can’t even list how much stuff she grows in there, but the first time I saw it I was like this isn’t a garden, it’s a field!
R’s brothers both still live in the area of the farm and have helped their dad with the farming and chores their whole lives. R was much more sports-oriented in high school and then went away to college, so his days as a farm hand ended years ago. We have talked seriously, though, about maybe someday moving back to the farm and starting a rural life for our little family. He has a plot of land on the farm that consists of roughly 40 acres, and it’s beautifully situated on the river that runs through their land. He has said how he’d love to build a little cabin up there for a weekend house or something like that, but we’ve also discussed relocating up there to start a hops farm. These are all just pipe dreams right now, but it’s something that I know would free his spirit and take him back to his roots.
Every time we start talking about this I can’t help but ask myself, would I really be good on a farm? To tell you the truth, I actually think I would. I obviously have never done farm chores (save the one time i helped pick stones in a field, but that doesn’t really count since i got to drive the tractor the whole time), but I absolutely love being able to spend days outside and see and enjoy the fruits of my labor. I think that’s one reason I’ve taken so well to gardening. Yes, I know gardening and full-on farming can hardly be compared, but I’m just saying I think I can picture myself in that setting.
And if we were to someday move to the farm, like I said, we think it would be to do hops farming. There is currently a rental house on the farm land that we could remodel and fix up to live in, then we could dedicate just a little plot to the hops. This is an enormous undertaking, and one that would take years to bring to fruition, but the more we talk about it, and especially when I see documentaries like the one we watched tonight, the more I can see it happening someday.
I’ve always said I never want to live up there, and I still have a hard time picturing myself living in Sheboygan Falls, but a rural life would be pretty great. It takes less than an hour to get there from Milwaukee, so we could still come down here whenever we needed pretty easily. And if I’m perfectly honest with myself, what’s the big thing we do around here now? It’s not like we’re going to the museums or theaters every night, or even out to eat. I would miss our friends most of all, but then I’d just have to come down for girls’ nights that much more often. Plus with all that land, we could have everyone up for cook-outs and camping and visits whenever they could come.
Having seemingly endless property like that to roam and explore would be wonderful for the kids too. Assuming D has a brother and/or sister someday, but even if it ends up just being her, having acres and acres of nature as your backyard is something amazing that there’s just no way she’ll get here. And instilling in her the importance of respecting and nurturing the Earth by experiencing that daily would be pretty cool. Obviously we could teach her that from the city (i grew up in the city and learned that lesson at a very young age), but being able to play in the wild blue yonder every day I think would help her appreciate that firsthand.
(another side note – we’ve also contemplated moving to a more rural area just north of where we live now, not going all the way up to the farm. that one is much easier for me to accept. i already love it there, and if we really wanted to get hops farming started, R could get up to the farm as often as he needed more easily than from where we live right now. and as long as need be, i could keep my current job because that move wouldn’t make my commute impossible, whereas moving to the farm would)
R thinks his oldest brother will probably take over the farm after his dad. I know his family has expressed interest in actually living there in the farm house after R’s parents, which would be fantastic. While watching the documentary tonight I just started worrying that no one would want to take on the full responsibility of the farm after their dad and all that spectacular land would end up being sold like so many of Farmer John’s neighbors’ farms. That’s what always spurs me to ask myself, “Could we do it?” “Would I be willing to sacrifice our city life to save the farm if we had to?” And I think that answer is yes. Because if I saw concrete being poured over all that precious black soil, I would cry too.
I absolutely LOVE this! Anything with the word “bougie” in it is definitely my hoodrat style. 😉
Plus it just makes me want to groove. Perfect for a Friday afternoon!
A friend of mine always says that when you make fun of him. I guess it’s his way of saying, “Oh you think you’re funny do you?” right before he rips you a new one, because he’s pretty sarcastic like that. Must be why he’s my friend.
But I just heard a joke that I thought was funny. You may think it’s lame, but such is the beauty of the internets. I can still post it anyway.
Do you know what the 2 sexiest animals in the barnyard are?
(i’ll give you a minute to think…)
The brown chicken and the brown cow. Do you know why?
(another minute for pondering…)
BROWNCHICKABROWNCOOOWWWWW
🙂
