Recently, I visited a friend and came home feeling entirely dissatisfied with my house/yard/general existence. (Note: my feelings of inadequacy had nothing to do with the my friend at all. She and her family are some of the sweetest, most authentic, loveliest, hardest working people ever. So to be clear, she did nothing wrong. This is not about her. It is about me.)

Most days, my cup feels half full when it comes to material possessions, so this was a bit odd. Sure, I sometimes have pangs of jealousy, and sometimes I get inspired to better my lot in life, but more often than not, I just think, “Wow, that’s beautiful,” or “They’re such neat people,” and then move on.

But his time, for whatever reason, I was suddenly excruciatingly aware of how tired and shabby my house is.

*There’s a violent hole in the leather sofa’s middle cushion.
*Various lampshades have been stapled, broken, smooshed, and scribbled upon.
*There’s the alarm clock that has to be flipped upside down in order to keep the alarm set.
*Dead house plants adorn cluttered, dusty shelves.
*The flower gardens look more like weedy patches of wildflowers than actual cultivated beds.
*Window screens are broken and bent.
*The dining room table has a broken leg and must not be bumped or leaned upon lest it go crashing to the floor.
*My bedroom has a bad case of the piles.
*The upstairs toilet is missing a lid.
*One easy chair lists to the side, the other screams every time someone sits in it, and the rocker walks.
*Rugs are faded and stained, and one of the kitchen tiles is broken.

And that’s the short list.

I read something recently in which the mother was describing their hot little home by the railroad tracks. Some of the doors are missing their knobs, she said, and extension cords for the fans are all over the place. As I read that, I mentally tsk-tsked and rolled my eyes, but now I realize she was describing my house, too, down to the missing doorknobs and extension cords trip-traps (yes, really). It made me depressed.

If I had some self-righteous high ideals to back up my style of shabby chic (which is shabby, minus the chic), it’d be a lot easier to cope with the state of things. Because then I could have glorified reasons for the faded and worn-out furniture—“we wear things out because we don’t want to add to the landfill,” or “we live simply so others can simply live.” Whatever.

Or, I could play the classic If I Just Had More Money song on my itsy-bitsy woe-is-me violin. Which is mighty tempting, I must admit.

But both of those arguments are hogwash. The truth is, I don’t have it in me to fuss over my house all day long. I don’t want to weed my flower beds to perfection or go buy fabric to fix the sofa. (I just want them to magically look perfect/be fixed.) When it comes down to it, I pretty much hate shopping and rearranging and matching. It’s much easier to throw a blanket over the hole in the sofa and then sit down on it with a bowl of popcorn and a good book.

So if I’m (mostly) okay with my holey sofa and non-lidded toilet (it flushes quite nicely) and squawking chairs, then why all the jealousy? I’m not really sure (and don’t want to spend the time thinking logically about this anymore). What I do know is that I’m not going to let myself wallow. Either I grab the bull by the horns and fix things up (those plants only have minutes left in his house), or I can decide to focus on all I do have and smile real big. In either case, the choice is mine and I WILL OWN IT.

I feel so much better now. Thank you.

A post-post disclaimer:
a. What feels trashy to me would probably feel (and be!) luxurious to the vast majority of the world.
b. I am fully aware that I’m a hard worker, that my house is cozy, and that we are wonderfully fortunate to live the way we do.
c. There is so much more to life than nice sofas. It’s the togetherness and kindness that actually count. (So what to do when we can’t stand being around each other and no one acts very kind? But excuse me, I digress. That’s a whole other post…)
d. Even beautiful people feel ugly, skinny people fat, and hardworking people lazy. These are feelings and feelings aren’t always rational. I’m just being honest here.

This same time, years previous: quotes for writers (and how I do it), baked oatmeal (the kind my family likes)

Last night I went on a little garden tour with my husband. I wanted him to see the freshly weeded asparagus and strawberries so he could give me some congratulatory back-patting. Plus, a walk around the garden usually leads to him attacking some weeds himself, and goodness knows, there are quite a lot of weeds to tackle.

Sure enough, after we pondered the pathetic green beans (two failed plantings in one season—what’s up with that?) and picked a few cherry tomatoes out of Miss Beccaboo’s garden, Mr. Handsome started pulling the weeds out by their hair (I know my man!) and I headed over to the red raspberry patch in hopes of filling the little bowl I brought out with me.

The first round of raspberry picking is always pretty skimpy (and some years I ignore it all together), but this year there are enough to warrant a go-over every couple days. In another month, though, we’ll be swimming in the berries, and I can hardly wait.

When we came back in, Mr. Handsome headed upstairs to shower and I decided to whip up a pan of red raspberry lemon bars while the kids finished cleaning up the yard before coming inside for bedtime stories.

I got the idea for these bars from Julie, though she uses rhubarb in place of the raspberries. When I spied her recipe I had a hand-slaps-forehead moment: But of COURSE! Red raspberries in plain old lemon bars is the most simple, most brilliant move EVER!

Every time I give someone a bite of these, I get the same reaction: a brief moment of silence followed by an explosive, “WOW!” or “MMMM!” or “Give me MORE!”

These are tastebud popping treats, if ever there were. The berries help to cut some of the lemon’s intensity while at the same time adding a tangy-tart contrast that totally enhances the whole eating experience.

Now that I’ve eaten these, I kind of doubt I’ll ever be able to make plain lemon bars again.

And you know what? I’m perfectly happy with that.

Red Raspberry Lemon Bars
Adapted from Dinner with Julie

Julie cuts the amount of butter in the crust is half, and while I kind of liked the idea, I couldn’t bring myself to go all the way. So I compromised, cutting the butter back by a fourth—her recipe calls for 4 tablespoons, mine for 6. The crust had a fabulous texture (perhaps even better than my old butter-packed crust?), somehow managing to be both crispy and chewy. (After patting the crust into the pan, I realized I had forgotten the salt, but a quick dusting from the shaker and the day was saved.)

I have plans to make another pan of these soon (the lemons in my crisper are slowly slipping beyond their prime), and I just may sub a bit of buckwheat flour for some of the crust’s white flour. I have a hunch the gentle nuttiness of the buckwheat will only enhance these bars.

For the shortbread crust:
1/4 cup sugar
6 tablespoons butter
1 cup flour
pinch of salt

Cream together the sugar and butter. Add the salt and flour and beat until you have a bowl of buttery sand. Press the crumbs into the bottom of a lightly greased 8″ x 8″ pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

For the filling:
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
pinch of salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
1 lemon, zest and juice (about 3 tablespoons)
1 ½ cups red raspberries, fresh or frozen

Stir together the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder. Whisk in the eggs and lemon juice and zest.

Sprinkle the berries over the hot crust. Pour the filling over the berries. Bake the bars at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes, or until set.

Cool completely (yeah, right) before cutting and devouring.

This same time, years previous: angst over my daughter’s reading, raspberry lemon buttermilk cake, and angel bread

Warning (as though you need one with the word “butchering” in the title, but still, I like to be thoughtful and thorough, kind of like the warnings that you see on the jars of peanut butter: “warning: contains peanuts”):

This post contains blood. And chickens, in their dead state.

I always take an exorbitant number of pictures every time we butcher. I think it has something to do with the outside scenery, the plethora of emotions and expressions flitting across everyone’s faces, the out-of-the-ordinary subject matter, and perhaps the fact that holding a camera protects me from getting my hands bloody.

“You know what?” my husband said last night as we were getting ready for bed, “I don’t think you touched a single chicken all day.”

He was right, I realized, with sheepish delight. (But I was there! See my coffee cup at the end of the table full of dead chickens in the above photo?) Except for briefly touching a couple necks and livers, I did not do any chicken handling. My kids are finally getting old enough to cover for me, hallelujah!

They were all (with the exception of Sweetsie) incredibly excited for butchering day. We told the older ones that we’d have to wake them early, and I promised the youngest that I’d wake him up, too. The older two were already working by the time I crawled out of bed at 6:15 (they didn’t even need a wake-up call, it turned out), but the baby Nickel was sound asleep. I almost left him be, but then I remembered my promise and, disregarding all my natural instincts that tell me to never, ever wake a sleeping child, I went into his room and jostled his shoulder. When that didn’t do the trick, I leaned over and whispered in his ear, “It’s time to butcher the chickens.” Immediately, he was in a frenzy, tearing off the sheets and running/stumbling down the hall, forgetting to get his clothes in his panic.

The expression he wore for pretty much the entire day:

To shake things up a bit, I’ve decided to let the rest of the family do the talking for a change. I gave each kid their own personal interview. They were tickled pink. (Mr. Handsome got a phone interview. He wasn’t quite as tickled pink.)

Miss Beccaboo

My worst part was when Dad was killing them. Definitely.

And my favorite part was gutting them, of course. I loved it.

Because inside it was warm.

You can kill a chicken at winter and then use them for gloves.

Also, I don’t like when Dad—I mean, Mr. Handsome!—is plucking them because sometimes he gets it stuck [in the plucker], and yeah, it freaks me out too.

But afterwards, I liked when Mom was taking pictures because it was really funny and then we looked at all the pictures.

Another thing, there was this chicken that we thought had a broken leg and Dad killed it and cut off its head and then we discovered that the chicken above its leg had a huge bruise so Dad decided not to finish plucking and gutting it, so he left it on the ground next to the plucker and then it got stiff and I picked it up and its legs were sooo stiff that when I picked it up by the feet it stood straight up in the air like a rod.

And we got some funny pictures of that.

The Baby Nickel

I liked when Dad was cutting off their heads and slicing them like this—SLICE—and then he cut off their heads and it was so fun.

I loved watching Dad plucking them, and I liked when [Yo-Yo] plucked them ‘cause he did it on the side and it made a big bruise. That’s all.

Oh, I liked sticking my hands inside of them.

Sweetsie
I didn’t like about it when I smelled the … um, it smelled like something disgusting. I thought I was going to throw up but I didn’t.

It was good I didn’t.

They cut their heads off and did all of that other stuff—disgusting. I didn’t dare to stick my hand in that chicken because it looked disgusting, but it was warm and there was a lot of feed in the necks.*

And then I stuck my hand inside it and got all these things out. There was this brown something that looked like an egg or something. It was all weird.

Yo-Yo
I thought it was fun and not gross like it was last year. I was able to help out more.

I got up at six in the morning and set up a lot of it with Dad. We brought the chickens up and then Dad sliced their throats and bleeded them and drained them and chopped off the heads with a hatchet and then scalded, plucked, and did the gutting.

I tried plucking them and the wing got caught and it was kind of funny. Dad turned it off and I thought it was just choking up so I turned it back on, and it started grinding really loud. I scared myself out of my wits.

I scalded them and was able to gut a few. I cut off their legs and cut off their necks. And I was hot and sticky and tired when we went to swim lessons.

That was pretty much my day.

Mr. Handsome
The kids helped out, and they were eager and willing helpers, especially Miss Beccaboo.

I felt a little more confident, like I knew what the heck I was doing this time.

I had the cones already made and a sink set up.

I used a 17-gallon trash can for scalding—it leaked until the metal expanded and then it didn’t leak any more.

I don’t know if putting the chickens in a bucket of water was such a smart idea—I’m afraid they’re waterlogged.

When you’re set up to do something, it goes a whole lot faster.

For the record
Mr. Handsome was up at 5:30 and the older two at 6. We all worked until 10 (I was working, just not with chickens) when I took the older three to swimming lessons. Everything was finished by about 2 pm, though there was a little leftover clean-up later in the day.

Results: 16 chickens averaging 4 ½ pounds each.

Tidbit: both Yo-Yo and Miss Beccaboo were sorely disappointed that we didn’t have chicken for supper that night. “But I know which chicken I want to eat!” Miss Beccaboo pleaded.

*Regarding the corn in the necks. The chickens were off their feed for about 24 hours prior to butchering, but unbeknownst to us, there was some corn in the bottom of the container that we used to haul them from their pen to the slaughter yard.

This same time, years previous: sauteed Swiss chard with a fried egg