We Bought a Farm: Year 2 Ballet-cation

This book. Mannnnnn .... I keep thinking “Why do I need to write a book about our farm? This lady has done it for me.”

Another truth: I love to read. But I rarely read a book twice. 

This is the second time thru this book for me. Armed with a highlighter, I am capturing all the times this book says exactly what is on my heart. 

Like this paragraph: 

“I had come to the farm with the unarticulated belief that concrete things were for dumb people and abstract things were for smart people. I thought the physical world — the trades — was the place you ended up if you weren’t bright enough or ambitious enough to handle a white-collar job. Did I really think that a person with a genius for fixing engines, or for building, or for husbanding cows, was less brilliant than a person who writes ad copy or interprets the law? Apparently I did, though it amazes me now.”

Or this one:

“I thought about how the devil is supposed to have a cloven foot, just like the pig.”

Or another: 

“In one week, two people knocked on the door of our rental house bearing actual welcome baskets, and three others came by to invite us to the Tuesday-night potluck at St. John’s Episcopal Church. I didn’t know what to make of such friendliness. In the city, the only reason neighbors knocked on your door was to complain about the noise you were making. It occurred to me that there is more distance between rural and the urban in the same county — the same state! — then there is beteeen cities on different continents. I would have felt more at home in Istanbul, Rome, or Yangon. Here, I was a true foreigner, making it up ad I went along.”

(Oh and I have written about The Dirty Life on my blog previously where I included a whole lot of other quotes. 

I can’t say enough about this book. I want every friend I have to read it so they can hear my heart clearly. 

Okay but why am I reading in the middle of the day? It’s ballet-cation time! Abigail is taking two weeks of ballet intensives. The first week is 3.5 hours a day. Week two is 6 hours a day. I bring a camping chair, a cooler, some books, fun food, and I put my feet up and I chill out!! 

(Of course it takes a ton of planning to have all other kids and farm covered, but it’s worth it!!)

Here’s a quick video from her at her camp with Nanako Yamamoto with the American Repiratory Ballet.