The scary howling Toilet, baby goats, and other adventures

Hello again. I hope all is well with you. So this last big snowstorm left some awesome pictures for the taking.
Take for instance these cool tracks. I'm guessing that they are cat tracks, but they look more like a weird tread of a tire.

If I was in the right mood, I might write something thoughtful, perhaps a poem to go along with the cat track picture.
But I'm not in that mood. So I'll let you form your own poem in your head about the tracks in the snow.

Oh, and take a peek at the cute pictures of my baby goats. Seven baby goats were born a few weeks ago! And they are all so cute. I'll have to take some more pictures now that the snow's melted, and spring is here---I hope!


It's a windy day here in the backwoods. I can hear the winds loud rushing throb out my window like the sound of ocean. The crab apple blossoms sway in the wind, their branches are starting to swell with buds. Beyond the trees, I can see the field that surrounds our house. Spring has worked its magic and the wheat that had been planted over the winter is now greener than anything in the valley. I'm glad of it. Winter has been here too long. The days are becoming longer, and the birds are back. Oh, how happy am I to have the birds back. When they are gone, the world seems so much more dreary. But now that they have returned, everything seems more full of life.

Even the starling that worked very hard to build a nest under the rain gutter above our front door last year is back, and busy cleaning out old leaves.

I love spring, the earths way of reminding us of renewal---that even in the coldest of winters, spring can come again.

With spring, I'm starting to feel like myself again. I've been sick for almost a month. I still don't have my full voice back, so my sister and I haven't been able to work on recording songs for the music CD we hope to have out in the near future. But I am glad to be counted among the living again, glad to work on my projects that have long lay dormant, glad for the changing seasons, and glad to write. It makes me happy. Makes me not feel so lonely. Yes. Even I get lonely. Sometimes I can be lonely in a crowd of people. You'd think in a small town people would be more closely knit. But even here, people are busy being busy. I don't really know my neighbors like I should, like I would like too. I find out about peoples lives on facebook, and in church I might say hi. But we really don't know each other. Not in the way that I wish we did.

I would like to live in a town, where if someone died, or moved away, everyone would care, and when I say care, I mean, more than just say. "Oh, gosh. I heard so and so moved. Too bad."
Not that I don't like my town. I do. There are good people in it.
I just think in today's world we kind of get sucked up in a vortex of being chronically busy, and absorbed into the machine---the matrix. We are exhausted, and disconnected, and have a yearning for connection. To really know others, and for others to really know us.

But it's impossible to get to know others when we are too busy to even known our own selves.

I like to see the people behind the pomp and circumstance. I like to know that they too are human. I like for people to know that I'm human as well. I like to let people know when things make me feel uncomfortable, or happy. It's a horrible thing to feel like you can never make a mistake because someone thinks you are perfect.
And that's a heck of a lot of pressure. And nobody is perfect. So take a chill pill. Don't be afraid to be you.

So now I'll get off my preaching. Mostly It's to reassure myself. Most of my writing is to put down my thoughts and to make sense of my experiences. Call it my way of making sense of life.

So switching topics. I have to tell you a funny story. It's about our toilet. You are probably really thinking I've lost it. A toilet is the last thing you want to read about, right?

Wrong. This toilet is special.
You see. In my house we have two bathrooms. The old bathroom, that was in part of the house that my parents originally bought, and the new bathroom that really doesn't look all that new, but it is newer than the old one. The old bathroom is a very interesting place. For some reason the bathtub has never really been used. Instead it is home to potted plants, and random objects that nobody cares about. Spiders like to crawl up through the pipes in the tub, and live among the plants, and crawl on the walls. It's very irritating, because no matter what we do, no matter how well we clean it, the bugs come back. It's a fascinating place for peoples who like to collect all sorts of bugs, stinkbugs, beetles, ugly spiders, moths, sand spiders, and even scorpions.

I don't know why they like that bathroom. Sometimes I find a spider on my toothbrush, not cool especially if you're not looking, or a spider hidden in a towel, not cool if you are washing your face.
You also don't want to leave your clothes in that bathroom overnight. If you do, you better make sure to shake out your clothes before you put them back on.

So you get the picture. The 'old' bathroom is quite a interesting place. It's something I imagine the amazon to be like, full of plants, and bugs.

So going a few years back into the past, my sister was using the old bathroom. It was nighttime, everyone was making the usual bedtime preparations. I was walking down the hallway, when I heard my sister flush the toilet.
There was a loud, freakish, howling cry, like a baby crying.

The bathroom door flew open, and my sister rushed over to me, and grabbed me in a tight hug! Her face was white, and she looked like she'd seen a ghost. "Somethings in the bathroom! Someone's crying! It sounds like a baby outside the window, or one in the toilet!"

It was pretty spooky.

My sister was petrified. I was a little scared as well. We peered out the bathroom window. It was dark. No baby. We peered in the toilet. It wasn't dark. But no baby. There was a weird hum coming from the toilet, thought.

A few toilet flushes later confirmed what had happened. The toilet had problems, and wanted to be an opera singer. Seriously, I don't know what was wrong with it, but it scared us out of our wits. When you flushed it, there was this whining loud howl, and a moaning cry. It was terrible, especially when you had to visit the toilet in the middle of the night, and when you flushed it, it would wake up everybody in the house. I mean, whose toilet does that? No toilet should tell the world that it's just been flushed. No toilet should wake up anyone.

I'm not sure why the toilet liked to howl and sing, but as with all household fix it problems, we soon adapted. As with cobwebs, odd junks that find their way into houses, and uneven picture frames, the howler toilet just became apart of the household noises. Even when it wasn't being flushed it hummed and gurgled and sloshed, like a growling stomach. But we had grown accustom to its oddness.

Looking back, I feel rather bad for visitors. I don't think we ever bothered to explain. Seriously not a good idea for those who want to potty train their kids. :)
Their kids would probably not get potty trained. I can just see it now, 10 years old and going to therapy for Toilet phobia because they got frightened from our howling bathroom. Ha. Oh. The things that frighten us.

I remember being really scared of flushing toilets in my grandma's house because it would always flood over.

This year, I'm happy to report that the howler toilet is finally back to normal. We fixed it, with some genius, and a five dollar part. I almost miss the slosh. But not really. It now flushes like normal toilets do.


So now that I got that story off my chest, I've decided to do some show and tell, and share a little bit of the highlights of my past two months. Please note, that these are highlights, so do not compare yourself to me and my highly exciting life. (in which I write about household fixtures such as toilets) Okay. Now that we have that out of the way. Here's my show and tell. In no real order.

This picture is of our biggest snowstorm, right before we all got sick for the third time. It was beautiful. It was morning, and the clouds were rising off the mountains. It felt like going into a enchanted land.











This Second picture is what me and my sis built with the snow. Dragons and rabbits---a strange combination. As you can see, it melted fast. We were sad to see it melt. Just think what we could do with lots and lots of snow!









This picture is also my snow rabbits. Aren't they cute?














This picture is of the sky a few days ago. Chem trails strike again. Full of poison, but so kind of pretty until they spread out and cover the sun.







This is a picture of the strangest phenomenon that happened to me last week. So I like to think of myself as a person who likes to be healthy. I have this goal to grow my hair out really long. My sister Holly has super long, thick hair that grows down past her hips. It's so awesome. I haven't been able to accomplish that. My sister takes barley green powder almost everyday for as long as I can remember. So I decided to try it. Some health person says barely green helps build strong nails and hair, so I judging by my sister's hair I'm pretty sure that theory is right. So I've been taking barely green powder mixed up in some water since January, along with Msm (super good for you stuff as well) some cherry juice, um...what else? Cranberry powder, along with calcium/mag powder, and whatever I can mix up in my cauldron. I have to say that all mixed together makes for a boggy pod of slime. It doesn't taste too good either. But my hair is growing, so I'm not going to complain.
Back to the the picture. I was mixing up my potions, (really mixing) trying to get all the gross lumps out. I must have stirred pretty hard because the next thing I know my lap is all wet, and all the liquid in my cup is on the floor. "I was like what the?"
The bottom of my cup broke out in a perfect circle. Very strange. I'm still scratching my head how it happened. Perhaps I stirred two hard?

This picture is a nifty hairdo my mom did on my sister. My mom is fantastic at braids. She got this idea of of Pintrist. They didn't give any directions, so she just did it by guessing. I thought she did a good job.




















This pic is also of my sis. She did a awesome job re-carpeting our stairs. I love new carpet. It's so fun to step on! My sis knows how to do so many neat things.














Since I'm in the show and tell mood. I did it! I finally managed to successfully cook an angel food cake from scratch. A cake that is fluffy and beautiful. It took me several tries.

The trick is to make sure the egg whites are warm, and you stir the eggs until you feel like your hand are going to fall off. And when the recipe says to fold in the flour, use a spatula and fold it in. No using the mixer. Very bad idea. And another good tip. When you take it out of the oven be sure to tip it upside down, so gravity doesn't make it flat.
I've got addicted to make these cakes now. It's so fun to watch the egg whites go from this pasty goo to fluffy clouds.



I'm sounding my trump, and showing off my good deed.
This picture is of my last week adventure. My sister and I started noticing how much trash was accumulating on the side of the road by our hose where we go on our walks. We live on a road that people often take to go to the dump, so a lot of trash blows out onto the side of the road.

So we decided to do something about it. We gathered the trash into piles, and then later that day me and my mom came back with the truck and trash bags. We filled up the back of our trucks, and I counted an estimated total of 150 plus beer cans/bottles. Very gross. I think those were intentionally thrown out. Very not nice. Yep. So pick up your trash peeps. It's nasty.

This is a braid my mom made up on the spot. It's my hair. I'm proud of my mom's skill. Perhaps someday I'll learn.

So I was vacuuming the other day, and decided to clean out the filter. Whilst I was I was doing just that, I found this magnetic word amongst the dust. For some reason it seemed very fitting. Never underestimate the power of words. This gave me a good laugh.

Last but not least, I post this picture because it made me laugh.

I live pretty close to the railroad tracks, and you wouldn't believe the weird things that I see go by. The other day I saw a line of windmill parts go past. It was quite interesting. This time I don't know quite was going past, but I thought it looked interesting.

What do you think they are? They look like star war huts.

Well I think I've finished my show and tell. This is like ten posts all meshed up into one. I'm thinking I'm going to go to bed now. It's dark outside my window now, and I can see flecks of frost accumulating. Perhaps spring has gone back into hiding. Drat.

Well, talk to you soon. For those of you who are waiting for my second book, please be patient. It is coming. I have illustrations to finish, and many pages to edit and re-edit. I have to keep on telling myself that life is a proses. So if you have a big goal you're working on. Don't be discouraged. Keep on doing what you can. Take breaks. Give yourself time. Enjoy the ride. Life is short. Love what you do. Notice the extraordinary in the ordinary, and your life will be richer.

Until we chat again,
Night, ya all. Thank you for letting me share a little bit of my world with you.
Steph