I grew up in the country. And I spent many happy hours and days of my childhood at my grandparents' house which was located down the road from our own house. My grandparents house sat on a piece of land that was hilly and wooded. There were several gardens and small fields around the house. If you took a walk down an old trail through the woods, you would come upon another set of fields that everyone called the Estes field.

The Estes field was also accessible from the main road by a field road but, as children, we rarely went there by the road. We always just cut through the woods on the trail. The Estes field wasn't visible from the road or from my grandparents house. The trail we took to get to the field wound down through dense woods, across a tiny spring-fed brook, through a meadow, and then we would arrive at the first part of the field.

The Estes field was actually three fields. The largest field sat on the highest section of that land. The other two fields were much smaller and were cut as terraces into the hill at the side below the larger field. I remember the family planting corn in the Estes field always, with some watermelon vines also at times.

The land at the back side of the Estes field dropped off into a couple more terrace areas but these were heavily grown over with pine trees. The nice thing about having lots of pines is that the pine needles blanket the area under the trees and prevents lots of small plants and briars from taking hold. My cousins and I loved to play there. Our grandfather would be plowing the Estes field sometimes and we would play nearby. As we got older, we went to the Estes field by ourselves.

One time, I guess we were about 10 years old, my two girl cousins, Cindy and Steff, and I decided to make a picnic lunch and go sit under the pine trees at the back of the Estes field. We walked down the trail through the woods and around to the back of the Estes field. We spread an old blanket and took out our lunch.

Then we all three got the worst feeling. We looked at each other and could tell something was wrong. It is very difficult to describe now but it was just this overwhelming feeling that something there was terribly wrong. We quickly packed our stuff and got out of there as fast as we could. We never went back there by ourselves again.

I had forgotten all about that incident until a few months ago my brother and I were talking about the Estes field which sits mostly on land that now belongs to me. I can hardly tell where the Estes field is anymore because it hasn't been farmed in 25 years now. The trees and brush have grown up on it. My brother was telling about one time when he and my cousin Mandy and someone else went walking down by the Estes field. Suddenly a bobcat jumped out of a tree directly over their heads. It sailed over their heads making a loud cry and scaring them almost to death. The bobcat landed on the ground and ran off into the woods. Needless to say, my brother and the others took off running in the very opposite direction. I believe there may have been murmurs of messes in pants too, but I may be mistaken.

Now I wonder what made my cousins and I feel so bad that time. We talked about it some later and think that someone may have been watching us. But we didn't see or hear anyone in the woods. I am glad that we went with our instincts and got out of there as fast as possible.

I recently made Potato & Leek Soup for supper on a cold night. It is my own original recipe that I cobbled together from other recipes I have seen and customized to be my own.

5 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes
2 cups low sodium chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup water
3 Leeks
1/2 of a medium onion, chopped
1 tsp olive oil
Salt & Pepper to taste
1/2 cup heavy cream or half-and-half

Toppings: shredded cheddar cheese, chopped green onion, chopped cooked bacon

Place the potatoes, broth, and water in a heavy pot over medium heat. While potatoes are cooking, prepare the leeks by removing the green part and discarding, slice the white part of the leeks into thin slices. Then rinse the sliced leeks well in a colander under running water.

In a skillet combine the leeks, onion, and olive oil over medium heat and sautee until onions are translucent and softened. Add the leeks and onion to the potatoes. Once the potatoes are completely cooked and very soft, add the heavy cream, salt and pepper. Heat for 3 more minutes.

Spoon this soup into bowls and top with shredded cheese, green onion, and bacon.

The work begins on the outside of our house today. You see, we bought this house 3 years ago. It had a new paint job on the cedar siding that covers the entire outside of our house. That new paint job covered up a world of bad news. There is wood rot and pieces of siding have suddenly started falling off. It has begun to look awful. So we had to bite the bullet and get the work done.

The house was built in 1977. It is 3,200 square feet and is three stories tall in some places. It is a wonderful house that was custom designed by an architectural firm out of Houston. The siding is original to the house and it has now reached the end of its useful life. The time has come to rip off all the old siding and replace it with new siding.

I am very excited about getting this fixed. But I am not so excited about the crazy expensive bill that we'll be paying to get this work done. I suppose it is just one of the perks of homeownership: pouring our money into projects to fix and improve our abodes.

I will be sure and post pictures of the progress of the work over the next three weeks (that is the timeline the contractor has given us for this project.)

Since our town has such an excellent recycling program, I strive to recycle everything I possibly can. That includes all paper, plastics, and metals. Last night I was flattening an empty Kleenex box to put in the paper recyling when I noticed a pithy little paragraph printed on the bottom of the box:

Say goodbye to the stiff upper lip...
Tell calm, cool and collected to take a hike.  Whoop it up!
Laugh, scream, cry, holler! And when tons of stuff stuffs up
your nose, blow it loud and blow it proud!
Show your heart and show some tears...of joy and sorrow,
in awe and pride. Just let it out!

I liked that! I liked that the Kleenex box had something on it besides just maybe a list of best uses and the usual marketing banter. I like the fact that they really thought about how people use their product and put a humorous spin on it. And I bet a Southerner had something to do with the writing of this paragraph because they included the word "holler". Of course in Southern vernacular, holler is a way of speaking loudly and it is also a sort of valley or depression of the land (as in: "he lives down in that holler over yonder."

So I looked closer at the bottom of the Kleenex box and they have a website for this whole idea: www.letitout.com

Now don't confuse this with www.let-it-out.com which is a gay and lesbian accomodation service in Australia.

I have checked out 5 books from the library this month and none of them is quite interesting me. I want to read a really good work of fiction along the lines of Maeve Binchy or Rosamunde Pilcher. But I haven't found anything this month yet.

I usually have two or three books that I am reading. I will keep one downstairs and a couple of books upstairs in my room. Then I read whichever one I feel like reading. Sometimes I will read several chapters in one book and then pick up another book and read a chapter or so. Some people may think it would be confusing to read several books simultaneously but I don't seem to have any problems.

One book that I am reading right now is The Lost Art of Gratitiude by Alexander McCall Smith.

What I like best about this book is the sheer Scottishness of the setting and the characters. It is a little heavy on the main character's moral contemplations.But maybe that is to be expected since she is a philosopher. I have not finished the book yet but so far, it is ok.

The Lost Art of Gratitude on Amazon.com

I hate to exercise! I mean I really, really hate to exercise. I have a friend who practically lives at the gym every evening, 7 days a week. That concept is so totally foreign to me.

I know I need to exercise. It is good for you. I can't deny that. But it seems like such a collosal waste of time. There are so many other things I would rather be doing with my time. Like reading books. Or writing. Or working. Or poking my eye with a stick. Anything besides exercise.

Exercising is just so darn boring. The only exercise I really half-way like is yoga. I was taking yoga classes for quite awhile at a studio here in Lake Jackson. But the instructor keep extending the class time until it got to where we were doing yoga for 90 minutes. That was too much for me. After about an hour, I'm bored and looking at the clock. So I dropped the class.

And I don't mind too much if I go for a walk a couple of miles around my neighborhood. But even that, it takes some real talking to myself to get up the energy to actually get out and walk.

But I know I need to exercise. And I'll continue making myself exercise. I just felt the need to rant about it this evening!

I like to read blogs from people in other countries. I love to see what their life is like and peek into their day to day activities.

Here is a new blog I recently started to visit. Irish Cottage Dreams is a look inside the life of a blogger in a small village in Ireland:

Irish Cottage Dreams

Also visit Diary of a Country Wife in Ireland

And Irish Fireside blog and podcast

My daughter made a list of wishes to send to Santa Claus this year. Then when Christmas morning rolled round, she got some of the things on her Santa list. She also got a few things that she didn't ask for. She told me later on Christmas day that Santa always brought her some cool things that she didn't ask for but were just perfect. She said Santa thought of neat presents to bring her that she never even thought of herself.

Santa used to do the same thing for me when I was a kid. I'd get a few things that I never thought to ask for.

One Christmas in particular stands out in my memory. I was about 8 or 9 years old. Two of the things Santa brought me was a little blue suitcase and a guitar. The suitcase was great. I did not have my very own suitcase before that. I wonder if that first of many suitcases I have owned is what fueled my wanderlust for travelling.

The guitar was a mystery to me though. Santa forgot to include a how-to guide or music books. It sat propped in the corner of my room as I grew up. It lived in all my homes that I have occupied as an adult. It was propped against the piano in my livingroom at my house in Wild Peach, Texas. That was the house that burned down completely while we were out of town in winter 2006.

And so that guitar met with a sad end. I never learned to play guitar. But my cousin Micah did. He told me awhile back that the guitar I got that one Christmas so many years ago was what spurred him to learn to play the guitar. He said that every time he was at our house visiting, he picked up my guitar and picked at it. He saved and saved his money as a child until he had enough to buy his own guitar. Then in high school and college he had his own rock band.

He still plays guitar even though his rock band years are long over. It makes me happy to think that my guitar that sat un-used by me, brought some joy to someone else. I think if I had known how much he yearned for a guitar way back in childhood, I would have simply given him that guitar. I feel guilty now for having that guitar and never using it while someone else would have used it and loved it far more than me.

There is no sense in me discussing the arctic freeze that is gripping the nation this week. We all already know about it. And I am on the Texas gulf coast were it is practically balmy. We are at 33 degrees right now. The reason I say it is balmy is because I was looking at the weather.com map of current temperatures and those poor souls in Montana are sitting around in -21 degree weather. That's a full 54 degrees colder than us! So I'm not complaining. Much. I'm sure I'll be doing some complaining when the power and gas bills arrive next month.

In other news, I wanted to push this great website I visit often: Aiming Low: Taking Low To New Heights. This website glorifies those who aim not to strive constantly for perfection. it is made up of a whole gang of women who write about their lack of perfection. They positively revel in it. How refreshing is that?

So this evening we had dinner at a local Japanese steakhouse. We've been meaning to go there for awhile but it is fairly new to the area and the crowds were still rampant. We waited until the "new" wore off the place and we could get a table easily.

We sat around one of those grills and watched the chef guy toss spatulas and throw eggs as well as grill our meal. There was another family sitting around our table also. We did not know them. That is the nature of these hibachi steakhouses: they seat you where there is availability. The other family was a couple and their four children who appeared to range in age from about 5 years to 14 years old.

When we left the restaurant and settled back into our vehicle to leave, I turned to Dan and asked him if he paid much attention to the other couple. Did he notice that something about them was off?

His answer: mail order bride. That one threw me because I was thinking the same thing but wasn't sure if my instincts were right.The woman had something of an eastern European accent. The guy was straight Texan. They didn't talk much. Their children were extremely well behaved. But I got these weird vibes. Hmmm....maybe we're just imagining things. But maybe not.