Where did I put that?

Now, if you look around my farmhouse of little to no storage, you will see that I have made many attempts at "everything in its place."

But some days I lose my coffee cup enough times to become a math lesson (probability and estimation) for the bigger girls. "Let's see, Mom lost it [the cup, the cup] three times before 8 a.m. She drinks coffee from 6 a.m. until, oh, 8 p.m. If she lost it that many times in two hours...."

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And some days I just plain lose it over a lost item. Last week we were having spaghetti for dinner (sans pasta for the ever-carb-deprived mommy). Where-oh-where did the parmesan (stinky cheese in Suite talk) go?

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We searched high and low. The refrigerator and the top of the microwave where odd things go to hide and the dark and depressingly crammed innards of the antique icebox I use as a pantry (remember: no storage here). Parmesanless we sat down to the dining table. Two bites into the meal my five-year-old gets a visible lightbulb above her little pigtailed head.

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"Oh!"

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Beat, beat, beat while she pauses to consider whether she'll be rewarded or in big trouble.

"It might be in my play kitchen."

So upstairs she trots and downstairs she returns with the empty parmesan tub. Yes, she ate approximately a cup and a half of grated parmesan with a spoon in order to "clean it out" to use in her kitchen.

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These weeks are busy with homebody homesteading and homeschooling. Say that five times fast. Today I am taking care of tomatoes and peaches. I am loving my dehydrator this year and hoping to buy my own pressure canner too. Tomatoes in a pressure canner take just one-quarter the time of a water bath, so for that I'd be willing to confront what essentially looks and sounds like a homemade b*mb on the stovetop. (I had to put in that asterisk after my good friend KL got a cybervisit from the Fibbies over her use of the word "b*mb-b-q." Homesteading blogger mommies by day, revolutionaries by night? I don't think so.)

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The girls are flying through their formal studies in about two hours a day, which leaves the rest of the day for fun and, let's face it, chores. Yesterday the farrier was out to trim Two Spot and Dolly's hooves. He brought his lovely wife with him, which I had to take as a hint that my incessant jabbering slowed him and his usual (large, cowboy-rough, male) assistant. His wife, though, was a kick in the pants. She entertained us with stories of her adventures in raising meat birds (don't go there) and learning the loathe bloodthirsty neighborhood dogs (again, been there).

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We pulled about 10 pounds of carrots out of the ground before I realized (duh) that I could have stored them in the ground.

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The new hen, Talullah, is laying one perfect white egg per day. We are told by our chicken guru that she's a leghorn. No foghorn. The established girls are all brown-egg layers: two red hens of indeterminate heritage and a beautiful speckled girl. Our "baby" Ameracauna laid her first tiny blue-green egg yesterday. Now our egg cartons will be so colorful! There are four more Ameracauna pullets who will contribute soon too.

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Against my better judgement I answered some questions this week from a school district representative about why we homeschool.

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Our good friends moved to Kentucky last week. Kentucky.

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I had a visit from another friend who moved away -- just 10 miles -- yesterday afternoon. Her baby, let's call him Johnny Danger, is nearly as big as Laura. He's four months of flirty and gorgeous. But he's not stealing the peanut butter lid. Yet. And of course I had Katie's kids to play for a while yesterday before the big Duck game brought their whole family here to cheer on our team.

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That kept me up a little past my farmgirl bedtime. So if you'll excuse me, I have to go find my coffee cup.