Dave got a 2nd buck - a button buck - yesterday. 2 deer in 2 days of hunting!! He decided to butcher that one himself rather than pay the processor $75 to do it. So I helped him. He cut out the meat at a friend's house, but then brought it home for me to rinse off the meat and sift out the remaining fur from the cooler. That was a big step for me. I did it because he asked me to. That is NOT something I would ever have done 10 years ago. There were several times in the process, as I was leaned over the cooler in coveralls, dipping my hand in and out of the cold water, that I almost threw up. I could not really believe that I was doing that. The wound area was all bloody and nasty and the meat kept clogging up the valve in the cooler. I kept trying to block it out of my mind so that when it comes time to eat this meat, I will actually be able to. I would sometimes look away from the cooler, only to see 2 deer heads staring at me. It was really a weird experience for me. Then Dave decided he wanted to keep one of the deer heads, so he tried to cut it off the rest of the body with his knife. Ended up having to get the reciprocating saw to finish it off. That about put me over the top. But...this is what I want, I guess. So I don't have to work. It's just a different kind of work. And I suppose I will get used to it. It was just kind of tramatizing for my first time.

I'm realizing that the problem is that so many women (myself included) today want to be at home and not work yet want to keep having the same lifestyle we became accustomed to while working and that is just not possible. We say we want to be home like our grandmothers were but we forget that our grandmothers raised their own chickens, got all their eggs from them, killed and plucked their own chickens (rather than buying boneless skinless breasts from Costco) and that they spent their spring and summer planning, planting, and tending massive gardens and canning lots and lots of food, not buying canned and frozen convenience foods at the store. They made their own flour, butter, milk, whatever they needed. They didn't go buy it. Essentially Dave and I both feel pretty retarded when it comes to all of this. We feel like we never learned how to fend for ourselves when it comes to producing food, etc. And we even grew up on farms! It's just in this day and age people just assume that we will go to school, learn to make big $$ and never desire to know this stuff, because we can afford the warehouse membership and the Schwan truck.

This is where Possum Living will come in. This lady wrote it because she doesn't want people to feel like they have to work to put food on the table and survive. Very interested in this line of thinking. I'm determined to beat the 2 income system of America. I've been talking about going back to engineering and I just don't want to. I'm not ready to give up on my dreams and I realize I've got to work a lot harder than I have been to make this work.

Really contemplating what the purpose of this blog is anymore. At one point, it was a way to inform our families of what we are doing in our day-to-day lives. However, it seems to have morphed into something a bit, well, a lot, more emotional for me. I thought that I was doing Dave a service by keeping up the blog so that his family members would know what he's up to when he doesn't take the time to call them, etc. However, he doesn't feel like it's a service at all now. I have been deeply wounded by a couple comments that have been made about the blog now and I know it is really just my fault for putting it all out there for everyone to see. Therefore, I'm contemplating deleting the entire thing and not blogging any more, or at most, once a week.... I probably waste too much time on this computer anyways. Our youth pastor put this quote up on facebook and I've been thinking about it a lot. Another lady even brought something like this up in Sunday School this week. With all the communications we have today, we have a lot of idols.

"...an idol is anything in your life that is more fundamental than God to your happiness, meaning in life, or identity." - Tim Keller

Basically, I feel like when someone says something rude about the blog that I'm being personally insulted. It is part of my identity. And that is so WRONG. In Sunday School we were discussing our cell phones (among other things) and how in the Bible someone knew that someone else was coming, just by sensing it and hearing God, not because the other person called ahead on their cell to announce their impending arrival. We often rely so much on TV, radio, internet, cell phones, etc. that we don't take the time to be still and quiet and hear God's voice. In all honesty, I typically pick up the phone and call someone or blog about something rather than praying to God about the situation. That is WRONG. I typically start my days on the internet, checking email and my calendar and blogs, rather than with the Creator of the Universe.

The easiest way to deal with this problem would be to get rid of the internet totally, but that doesn't fix the problem of my self control issue with abusing the internet. And then I will just find something else to abuse. I need to learn to be disciplined with my time.

So, essentially, I will try not to get back on here to blog for a while. If any of you are curious what's going on in our lives, just give me a call. I'm always glad to talk. :) Love, Katie