You look like a monkey...

OK- so tomorrow is my 40th birthday. I haven't really stopped to reflect on it- I think I am just too depressed by the idea that I really can't consider myself in-touch, hip, cool or with-it anymore. I really can't begin to squeeze into the category of 'young woman' as it now fits me about as well as motherhood fits Britney Spears. I am supposed to be all sorts of grown up and wise and well, old now. I'm not feeling that old- my eyes are fine, I have no major health issues and my back seems to still react alright to lifting a 45 lb. kid into bed. I'm also still fairly current- I mean, I just got an Iphone! But, still, there's the look you will get from a college student if you say "I'm 40" that will say it all.

But I was thinking on a T-shirt I saw (or something like that) that said "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you were?" It's not that deep or life-changing- just another way of saying that age is a number and old is a state of mind. I think I'd still be somewhere in my 30s- old enough to be seen as mature and yet not so old as to be discounted as out-of-touch. So, there it is. Fun fact about my birthday- it's a full moon rising in my favorite constellation, Orion- so its called the Hunter's moon. Also the Orioneid meteor showers are going on, but the aformentioned full moon and some much needed rain make those a little hard to see. Other fun fact- it's officially 2 months until Christmas. Start your engines!

The founding fathers- the new quote source

I made this comment sort of half heartedly last night while reading a book in which someone quotes Thomas Jefferson to justify their position on agriculture and society. George noted that it seemed like Jefferson had a lot of opinions on a lot of things, and I said that I suspected that much like people use select "proof text' scriptures to bolster or defend their opinion, many people in non-religious settings, or when the use of the Bible would be offensive, people turn to quoting the founding fathers. I am sure they were a diverse (at least as far as the definition of diverse would go for 1775) and complicated group of folks, and so you can likely find, and twist to your own devices, a quote from some founding father or another about your particular topic. And time and tide has dulled us enough as a nation to only remember that the person's name means they were important and yet we know little about their personalities. We forget little tidbits like Ben Franklin was a philandering lush and Jefferson a Bible-editing deist- or that George Washington shrunk from being president and Sam Adams was a hot-head. So, just as I do with those who would throw out a random Bible verse to back their argument, I also will think twice before giving much credence to a position backed by a random quote from a well-known name of the 18th century.

Cows coming home

So, I am seriously contemplating buying a cow. More acurately, splitting the cost of beef cow with some friends, so we can load up freezers and eat locally through the winter. There is a local farm that sells them, and thankfully also processes them. I am just not up for do-it-yourself meat processing yet. I think they have chickens too, but I haven't figured out if they butcher those too. Anyway- here's the website. And check out the cool design on this cow- must be genetically modified.