A pack of dogs, new sewing projects, joyful news, sad news, basement flooding, a yarn party, asparagus, roller derby, lots of driving, kitty-sitting, and naps where ever I could squeeze them in. These all filled my time the past several days to the point of almost overflowing. Well, you could say it did overflow since the heavy rains leaked into our basement. There was lots of mopping, ringing out towels, and mumbling profanity as we watched water come in from a newly discovered crack in our foundation. This seemed like the icing on the cake for a rather bumpy week. It certainly wasn’t ALL bad. I suppose that’s what makes the roller coaster of life difficult at times though. For the briefest of moments, it feels like you get to enjoy happy news, only to be slapped with sadness and challenges again.
One happier note was that I started a new job, part-time at a doggie daycare called Back in the Pack. Each day has meant meeting new dogs and learning new personalities. It has been fascinating to watch the dynamics of “the pack”. An average day seems to be about 24-28 dogs, so things can feel pretty chaotic at times, but I’m slowly getting a handle on all of it. The new job has also opened up the possibility of new product to sew and sell, which has led to a bit of brainstorming and sample making.
On Saturday, hubby and I got out of the city for a while and ventured into the countryside to the Asparagus Festival. It was quite a lot of fun, actually! We were both quite curious about how asparagus is grown and it was neat to be on such a large working farm. The farm itself has been in the same family since 1907 and is primarily a traditional grain farm, but in recent years, they have started growing market garden veggies, including asparagus. Needless to say, we picked up a BIG bag of asparagus, which hubby quickly turned into soup and jars of pickled asparagus.
Also scored a bunch of ground beef, to restock our deep freeze, which has been sadly lacking “happy cow” these past couple of months. Can’t wait for the autumn, when we can pick up more local “happy cow”. We have convinced ourselves to buy a full half cow this time around. We are down to our last package of “happy pig”, but this is an easier meat to re-stock and we still have plenty of “happy lamb” to keep us nourished. If you’ve never really tried eating any of these “happy” animals, then I highly recommend it! I find it is soo hard to eat meat from the typical grocery store now. “Unhappy” meat has so little flavour and even the colour seems odd to me after experiencing “happy” meat. 
Hubby and I call it “happy” because the animals get to live like animals, free range, grass-fed, not locked up and pumped full of hormones. We aren’t into being vegetarian, but we do choose to buy the majority of our meat from local farmers who respect their animals. The one “happy” critter we have yet to track down is chicken, so sadly we have continued to buy small amounts of it from the grocery store. We’re still searching though… we’d love if Calgary by-laws were finally changed to allow residents to keep backyard chickens, so at least we would have “happy” eggs to eat.
Somehow this post turned into a moral meat talk. That’s how scattered my brain has been. Wish me luck this week, that I can keep it all together enough to get through each day.