I’m on a farm right now, which is a little bit different than Tiff’s rave yesterday. I fed horses, sheep, chickens and dogs this morning, then cooked eggs straight from the coop. It’s a really nice way to start a day.

It’s cold here, unreasonably so, considering that it’s June. Pick it up Virginia, this is not what I packed for. It’s beautiful though, with the misty mountains living up to their name, and you can’t throw a rock without hitting a winery. (Note: don’t throw rocks randomly.) I am enjoying the high snuggle index, and the rainy morning excuse to drink coffee for 4 hours.

Picking up a John Stienbeck book this morning, the opening quote from Travels with Charlie: In Search of America, got me.

“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ships’s whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, once a bum always a bum. I fear this disease incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself.”

And this is the face that wants to play while I am posting. I have to go play with this face now.