Maybe everybody knows about this already, but it was news to me. Well, let me back up.
There’s a huge debate raging around the Kindle about whether it can actually replace paper books. I’d say both mediums have their advantages and paper books will not be going away any time soon. But the anti-Kindle / pro-book movement gained a little when it was revealed that Amazon has the ability to remove a book from your Kindle that you’ve already paid for. At least they were decent enough to refund the money, but, as the article points out, that is equivalent to Barnes and Noble sneaking into your house and stealing a book you’re in the middle of reading, right off of your nightstand. Even if they left a check to cover the cost, it is awfully obtrusive. A little too Big Brother for my taste.
The ironic twist? The novel in question was none other than 1984. “It could have been worse. It could have been Fahrenheit 451,” says Sara.
After having so much success picking strawberries last month, we decided to give blueberry picking a try. Sara heard the place got pretty busy and it was about an hour and a half away, so she wanted to get started really early (like out the door at 6:30 a.m.), but we all balked a little at that. It turned out okay, but let’s just say that her information was not incorrect.
The place was the Tammen Treeberry Farm and it was ca-ra-zy! By the time we got there around 10:30 or so, the parking lot was already full and they were parking people along the side of the driveway. They had people directing traffic, 3 checkout lanes and tractors and trucks pulling trailers with benches for people to ride out to the fields. There were signs explaining the proper way to pick berries and about 20 high school kids working all over the place. We had to wait in line until about the 5th or 6th trailer until we could get on. When we got out to the field it was a mad house! There were hundreds of people combing through the blueberry bushes and there was a constant babble of people talking. Compare that to the strawberry place where we just sort of walked up and and the one girl working just sort of pointed us in the right direction and turned us loose!
Despite the people attacking the fields like locusts, there were more than enough blueberries for everybody to pick until their hearts’ content. Picking the blueberries was easy, but it takes a *lot* of blueberries to fill up a bucket. Evie was doing a really good job of picking the blueberries and putting them in her bucket, even if they did then come back out of the bucket and into her mouth. I can’t even begin to count how many blueberries she ate. She also did a good job of holding her pee pees while we waited for 20 minutes to get a ride back to the checkout, 10 minutes on the ride and another 5 or 10 in line waiting to pay until I could take her into the men’s room (huge line for the women’s, the only people in the men’s were daddy’s taking their daughters).
All in all, very good and we froze 10 quarts of blueberries, plus more than one that we kept out for eating.
The day was not without it’s black spots however. We were only with the flood of humanity for like 2 hours and I can immediately call to mind several instances of people being despicable. For example, going down the row of blueberries with the guy shouting over and over again, “Please walk to the end of the row before you start picking!” and watching 3 or 4 people just blatantly stopping and picking, not more than 15 feet from him, as if the rules didn’t apply to them. Watching people practically pull berries out of other people’s hands in their haste to get berries, despite the fact that when they finally pushed by me and I went back to where they were standing, there were probably literally 500 berries on the bushes they had been next to. Watching people shove past Evie to cut in line and get on the trailer first after she was a perfect angel and made not a peep about waiting there for 20 minutes, her bladder ready to burst.
People are so entitled and disgusting. Not blueberries though. Blueberries are delicious!
Evie was having a fit about something or other and she flopped boneless to the floor while Sara was holding her hands. Suddenly, she cried out, clutched her arm to her stomach and yelled, “Noooo! Not again!” Later I found it funny that she remembered clearly enough the sensation of the first one, that she recognized it as the same. It seemed such an adult thing to say. Then she immediately called for a blanket and her teddy bear, for comfort.
Anyway, it was very clear that it was the same thing as before. They told us at the time that once it happened the first time, it was likely to happen again. It was a lot less scary this time having gone through it once. The doctor had showed us how to fix it ourselves, but our memory was not perfect. Sara tried it and it didn’t seem to fix it. We weren’t sure what to do about it, but I was a little suspicious that perhaps Sara had indeed fixed it, even though Sara didn’t think so. Evie had been crying and after Sara tried she stopped crying, even if she was still holding her arm close to her chest.
She said her arm still hurt, but I was still suspicious. I mean, this is the girl who’s still milking her skinned knee from a week ago, and still tells me about her “brave fingers” that got pinched in the closet door months ago. Also, the doctor told us that sometimes it took a little while for it to stop hurting, even after it was fixed. Sure enough, maybe 10 minutes later, Evie was giving us high fives with her bad arm.
So, once again, all’s well that ends well. At least this time it didn’t involve a trip to the emergency room.
In completely unrelated news, I saw the movie Once last night. I had never heard of this movie until the Oscars, when Falling Slowly, the song from the movie, absolutely haunted me and I had to listen to it over and over again.
There are tons and tons of good songs in there, some possibly even better than Falling Slowly, such as If You Want Me and The Hill. I think I’ll be needing this soundtrack for Christmas…
If you like to make home made blow torches but are vegetarian/vegan, you can follow the link for the vegan version, involving a cucumber and some bread sticks.
Shane Halbach 