Things I have learned this year.....some the hard way.

Back in July, I started keeping this blog post saved in my drafts so that from time to time, I could come back and fill in those little things that struck me as weird or funny for the rest of the year. I learned a few strange things this year, often the hard way so I'm sharing them with you as a kind of, look back on 2009.


1. When the refrigerator accidentally gets turned up too high, your raw milk will freeze (I know, that's obvious). What I really learned from this is that when raw milk freezes, the cream turns into butter. How did I figure this out? I made myself a nice, tall glass of chocolate milk one day. One swig and the tiny butter chunks that I didn't notice, nearly gagged me.

2. Chicken manure is evil and so are fire ants. I was always told that chicken manure was a fantastic fertilizer. Oh, now I get it, it's a fantastic fertilizer for fire ants.



3. When you plant yellow crooked neck squash in the garden, don't be surprised at all when you harvest zucchini. Things never go as planned and you just need to learn to roll with the punches. Hey, it fries up just the same anyway. You know the old saying- "When life gives you apples, make applesauce". Knowing that, I say, "When life gives you zucchini, don't look a gift squash in the mouth- just put it in yours".

4. If you have the slightest inkling in your mind that you want to make a family photo: Don't tell any children under the age of 18 ahead of time. If you do, chances are, one or more will come up with a big blue bump on their forehead, have a younger sibling give them a haircut in secret, or knock a tooth out (in the front of their mouth- no less) within minutes of your announcement.

5. Skunks can and will take up residence in your outhouse if you are not careful. That information seems as though it should come from an old timer's textbook but in this day and time, it really can happen. By the way, baby skunks are kinda' cute.

6. Snakes like holes in trees. Snakes like to scare people that walk by holes in trees. Snakes can sometimes "jump" from holes in trees to petrify people that walk by holes in trees that snakes like.



7. If there is a mud hole around your place, you can pretty much be confident that a little boy has already discovered it before you did. You, by the way, will discover the fact that you have a mud hole around your place, when you walk through your living room and it looks like a herd of muddy footed elephants stampeded through just recently.

8. Ponder the fact that when your three youngest kids left the dentist's office, the technician gave them each ice cream for the trip home.............. (I'm serious- this really did happen- I kid you not!)

9. A thunderstorm (or at least a very ominous black cloud) will show up at your door step the exact instant you think about going to the park or work in the garden.

10. If you manage to hide some chocolate from everyone else in the house, they will instinctively come running from all directions as soon as you walk into the kitchen to get it for yourself.

11. If the day is relatively calm, expect a storm before that day is over (and I'm not necessarily talking about weather here).

12. You can not trust seed companies to actually include the seed in the package, that they have advertised on the outside of the package.

13. Deer like pinto beans, fire ants like potatoes, and ground hogs like zucchini squash (or at least they do in my neck of the woods).

14. If your toilet fails to flush properly once, don't ignore it. Trouble is on the horizon....



15. If water pours from the bottom of your washing machine at the exact moment that the machine makes a "shriek, clunk, clunk, rip" sound, you just aren't going to wash clothes that day.

16. If your washing machine gets fixed and you finally get to wash that much needed load of dirty clothes, expect the heating element in your dryer to go out the "exact" same day that the washing machine was fixed. Needless to say, the clothes WILL get washed, they just will not get dried.

17. If you notice these beautiful green patches of new grass growing in your backyard and you have experienced #14 from above, you just got your second clue that trouble is on the horizon.

18. If the septic tank man takes 4 days to show up, 5 minutes to look at the backyard, and another, lets say, never comes back, let's just hope that it's not a bad sign that more trouble is on the horizon.

19. Knitting is addicting, plain and simple.

20. If you washing machine, dryer, and septic tank goes out on you - all within the same week, don't be completely surprised when your dishwasher goes on the blink too.

21. Farmville on Facebook is extremely addicting.



22. Wearing a white turtleneck is not a smart thing to do when cooking spaghetti- you get the picture.

Well, there you have it. Some goofy things I learned this year. Mind you, they are not all of the things I learned this year, just the ones that I happened to remember. I wonder what's going to happen this year?

Wishing you and yours a very happy and prosperous new year!