Out with the Old, In with the New

Goodbye 2010!

Overall, 2010 has been a good year for me - although at times it did not seem like it. I finished student teaching, became a licensed teacher, and then sat around for too many months waiting to find a teaching job. Fortunately, many other employment opportunities came my way while my teaching dreams were on hold. I started the year the way I have for the past several years - working at my dad's tax preparation business. I won't be able to give my dad as many hours in 2011, but I expect I'll find myself assembling a few tax returns come March. Near the end of March, as the taxes were rolling into their final weeks, I was finally hired as a substitute teacher, just in time to take a trip down to Indianapolis to visit my quite-pregnant sister. I had my first substitute teaching assignment on April Fool's Day - a half day of school before a long weekend - and I survived somehow.

In May, I took a week off from subbing and headed to Indianapolis for the birth of my niece. On that trip Adele helped me shell peas from the garden, and even ate a few peas for dinner. She decided, without any prompting, that the large peas were "man peas" and the tiniest peas were "baby peas." The morning after her sister was born, Adele woke up and came down the stairs asking, "My baby sister came out last night?" We're not quite sure how she knew, since her mom was in the bathtub when Adele went to bed, and the baby was not born until Adele was fast asleep. We got home from the hospital around 2 or 3 in the morning, and I don't think anyone woke Adele up to tell her. However she came to find out about it, I am still awed that my sister allowed me to be in the room to watch the whole birth (except the epidural) and will never forget that the nurse mistakenly gave Anna to me before her dad had a chance to hold her. (In my defense, I did not realize that Brian hadn't held his daughter until she was already in my arms.)

In July, my nieces came to Wisconsin for a visit, and I got to have a very special sleep-over with Adele! She ate Memaw's raspberry jam, shelled a few more peas, and went for a walk along the river.

I was disappointed not to get three teaching jobs over the course of the spring and summer, but spent four hours volunteering at a booth at the county fair hours after learning that Michael's uncle had undergone a successful liver transplant, and ended up meeting a new friend and getting a job where I actually had the opportunity to do some teaching, albeit in a museum rather than a classroom.

Over the course of the spring and summer, my dad and I grew a fairly productive garden (although the tomato crop could have been more successful) and I canned and froze a substantial amount of produce, which has been a godsend in the recent weeks when I've been too tired to cook when I get home from work. Dinner is as easy as thawing out a container of grass finished beef and garden turnip soup I made in July.

As the summer came to an end and the farmers' markets and museum closed up for the season, I was fortunate enough to get another job (for which I had not applied) at a small law firm in town as my dad recovered from knee surgery. The weekend after I started that new job Michael and I headed to Indianapolis again - this time to serve as godparents for Anna Kate. We had to rush home after the church service, so I missed seeing Anna Kate dressed up as Raggedy Ann, but she brought the costume to show me for Thanksgiving.

Work at the law firm was fairly stress free, interesting, and manageable, but I kept applying for teaching positions, and was shocked when I finally got a call, many weeks after the interview, asking if I could come in right away to start a long-term subbing position teaching English an hour and a half from home. And later that same day, I was just as shocked to get a call inviting me to interview for another long-term substitute English position - at a school only 20 minutes from my house.

I am halfway through the six weeks in Beloit, and was hired to begin in Pardeeville at the start of the second semester - so I will have exactly one weekend (during which Adele will turn 3) between jobs.

2011 is shaping up to be a good year. I will be employed full-time as a teacher until the first week of June, I have resources about companion planting and food preservation (and a new rack for my water bath canner!) and I am excited about growing a years' worth of food in the upcoming summer.

Until the garden starts growing, I have a freezer full of fruit and jam, vegetables including peas, green beans, asparagus, corn, zucchini, and tomatoes, cupboards with jars of pickles, cranberry preserves, tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, and one last lonely jar of applesauce. I have many pints of chicken, beef, and turkey stock, much of which was produced using all or mostly local food.

I never got around to making resolutions for 2010, but I'm pretty proud of the way I was able to use local, real food sources for so many of my meals. One of my goals for 2011 will be to continue my efforts to wean myself off of processed, highly-traveled foods. I also want to be able to talk to other people in a coherent way about why I am making the food choices I'm making - not just so that I can be understood (right now I tend to ramble endlessly without making a lot of sense) but also so that I can introduce many of the people that I know to a much healthier, earth-friendly way of living and eating.

I am sure this post could use some significant editing, but I need to go get ready for this party! (My plan is to come back and update this post with pictures when I have time.)

Happy 2011 everyone!