Reunion?

So, anyway, I think I’m missing a gene.  My friend, Philip, who somehow reconnected with me a few years ago and whom I knew slightly in high school, is trying to get me to go to our 50th class reunion.  Why?  I have absolutely no interest in reunions. I’ve never been to one, not high school, college, seminary, family…it’s just not part of my make-up.  When we lived outside of Princeton, N.J., years ago, occasionally we’d be in town during reunion weekend.  Every class had a different outfit, including a memorable one with pinwheel beenies on heads of 70 year olds, and white trousers with orange and black tigers on them…They would wear these outfits for what seemed like a week, or at least a weekend, even wearing them to church on Sunday.  They were all having a blast.  I had to keep trying not to roll my eyes.  They had a big parade down the main street of Princeton. I remember, once, hearing that Jimmy Stewart, who had graduated from Princeton eons before, was going to be in the “P-rade” as they called it.  Mere peons from the countryside were planning on lining the streets to catch a glimpse of this movie icon.  Not my thing.

Every year, Princeton Seminary sends me out a tri-fold on reunion. They hype it in their alumni magazine.  Oh, wow!  Look at the speakers!  Oh, wow!  Not my thing.

Every year, my college sends out information on reunion.  Come meet up and reconnect with friends from your class. Huh? FRIENDS from my class are my friends. I AM in touch with them. I don’t need an institutional, expensive weekend hundreds of miles away to connect with my friends.  I’m not a bit curious about John Smith or Jane Doe, whom I didn’t know in college, maybe passed in the hallway, or shared a class with, and what they have done with their lives.  As I said, I think I’m missing a gene…because everyone else I know (except most of the people I count as friends from those years!) are all gung ho on reunions.  Nostalgia for institutions and people I never spoke to in my life just isn’t there.  Schools were for education. I paid. I went. I got it. Sometimes I wonder what’s wrong with me!  But not often.

End of diatribe!

It is starting to get light here on the farm.  Lizzie, the border collie, is starting her “squeaking” at the door to my “study” (?sewing room, private room, whatever), which means “My sheep need feeding.”  Well, actually, no they don’t. They still have a half hour or so before I will go out to feed them. But she is hopeful that this morning, for whatever reason, I’ll give in early, stop what I’m doing, and go feed her sheep.  Not bloody likely.

There are conflicting weather reports this morning. My regular online weather, which is usually the most reliable, has been very weird for the last week or two, wrong most of the time. This has never happened before, and I’m wondering what’s happened at their weather central to have made such a change in their prediction percentages.  Anyway, they say no precipitation til Saturday.  The National Weather Service, posted on my regular weather site, says, however, that tonight there will be snow, 5 inches of it possibly, and then l/2 inch of ice.  Very strange to be so far off.  It will be interesting to see which one is right.  Probably neither.  With climate change, probably we’ll get a warm spell of 50 degrees, OR the temperature will drop to -5 by tomorrow morning.  It’s been a very weird winter. We still only have about 3 inches of snow on the ground.

I can see in the semi-dark that the sheep are starting to stand and look this way.  They are suggesting it’s getting close to feeding time as well. The roosters are crowing; the big one with his cockadoodledoo; the little one with cockadoo…The third one doesn’t dare open his mouth, apparently…The new hens are finally starting to lay. I’ve found three different shaped pullet eggs in the last 3 or 4 days.  Hopefully, egg production will increase.  My idea of freezing eggs was a good one.  I still have a few “disks” of 3 scrambled eggs, frozen solid in the freezer, with a tiny bit of milk in them to hold them together.  I took two of these out the other day to try; made a poundcake that called for six eggs. Worked wonderfully. That means, basically, that even though the chickens were on strike, resting, during their moult for 3 months, I had enough frozen eggs to get through, and didn’t have to buy any of those pale, confined hen eggs they sell in stores.  Yahoo.  More sustainable living!  I froze some eggs in ice cube trays, so I had individual eggs, and some in the blocks, for omelets and pound cakes.

I’ve just about finished Catherine Friend’s “Hit by a Farm”, her first memoir about the farm she and her partner, Melissa, have in Minnesota.  I think the second one was better (“Sheepish”) but it was good, nevertheless.  I love seeing other people making the same mistakes I made.  I’m wondering, if, like me, she finally has figured out most of the stuff, and has stopped making mistakes funny enough to laugh at, one reason I stopped blogging for so long.  Couldn’t find any funny material, and it just seemed silly to keep repeating the same stuff happening, year after year after year.  Same with a column I used to write for “Black Sheep Newsletter”.  You can’t write about other people’s mistakes!  It’s okay to laugh at yourself, but not to expose others making the same mistakes you made, and don’t anymore.  So, I ran out of stuff to write about sheep raising.  Now, I have other topics as well, so I can keep on keeping on.

But, I don’t think I”ll be going to any reunions any time soon.

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