the dog sort of tired.

some days homelife is more thoroughly tiring than worklife. yesterday we spent all afternoon making christmas cards (their steps to creation may border on too ambitious this year...why do i insist on a typewriter when the computer is sitting idly by.) last night was devoted heartily to canning 10 pounds of cranberries and 40 pounds of carrots. resulting in more pints, 1/2 pints, and quarts than is good for our nomadic selves.

on the topic of burdensome material objects...nick and i had christmas with each other early this year. 13 days early. precisely. as i retrieved his present from the seashore on saturday and given its size --17 feet long-- i couldn't imagine hiding it in our one room home for very long. a wooden canoe that was built in 1963 in old town, maine. it's lovely. most assuredly. but i'm not sure it was a wise purchase. it will take up the majority of the bed of our truck. it is delicate. it was pricier than my farm-hand bank account could afford and it needs a winter's worth of repairs. but i've always been a romantic for wooden boats. my summer's have always been speckled with them. and nick and i have always wanted to build a ship. so i think what is wise about that dream would be starting small, by fixing up a canoe.

nick got me an ipad. which i am Over The Moon about as i haven't had any new computer/phone anything since i worked at facebook. its wonderfully curious to think how totally different our gifts were to each other this year and how much it highlights our pull between the Old and the New worlds. all we want, most days, is to be together with the simplest of technologies. the tent. the canned goods. the wooden boat. the raw milk. the livestock. but other days, how could we resist the promise of connectivity the World of Apple and the like can give us?