Rural Wisconsin = too much cheese and sausage.

I have been spending too much time reading other people's blogs rather than writing my own.  I also have been very busy vacationing.  Not since I was a freshman in high school was I able to enjoy the holidays with such workless abandon - and it has been wonderful.  I am a substitute teacher (more on that in another post) and with that job comes some great holiday off time. 

After school ended on Friday the 19th, I came home and packed up for a trip to see my boyfriend's mother in Rhode Island at 5:00 the next morning.  While we were there, we had a blizzard (18 inches of snow - woohoo!) and then 4 days later, due to weather in Chicago, were lucky enough to be the last flight out of the east coast toward home.  Then, after an evening of rest, we were up at 4:00 A.M. to start the 6 hour drive to rural Wisconsin to see my man's grandparents.  All of this traveling finally concluded Sunday night, after a quick jaunt down to West Bend to see my family, and finally into our Cat's love starved and attention hungry kitty arms.

Rural Wisconsin...oh what can I say.  We went last summer and I was lucky enough to be taken for a  ride on this:

There is a large Amish population where they live, and his Grandparents commissioned this from someone in that community.  According to the boyfriend, I was lucky enough to get a ride because I had  charmed them into liking me - a good thing.

We also spent a lot of time playing with cute things like this:

His Grandma informed us during our winter visit that this kitten later got sat on by a cow and died - a bad thing.

This winter, we spent a lot of time looking for my favorite kitten I had fallen in love with last summer:

It was very cold out this trip, and all the Barn Kitties were snuggled up hiding somewhere, so we never found him.  That's the boyfriend's cousin trying to give the cat bunny ears - a 7 year old thing. 

What made this winter trip the most exciting?  The buffalo hunt across the street!

We were in the country all right - but don't get me wrong, I spent my summers on a farm in South Dakota as a kid, so even though I consider myself a city slicker I know a little about rural life.

The story is really anti climatic.

Across the gravel road, there is a small buffalo farm, owned by a man who's ex wife has a restraining order against him. (On a side note: he seems like an interesting guy, and I know all the gossip on him - evidently he also deals drugs - the boyfriend's grandma is convinced he's running some kind of organized weed dealing ring.)  On account of this restraining order, he isn't permitted to handle his own guns, and therefore needs a friend to come and do any shooting for him.  Well, the owner of the farm rode into his field on a tractor with another man hanging off the back with a shotgun.  Around and around they rode, with many buffalo stupid enough to come within inches of their hunters; the man with the gun, incidentally and to our delight, continually falling off the tractor.  After 45 minutes or so of this, a buffalo was shot, and then another, and both were dragged toward the farm and butchered.

Could it have been one of these?  Yummy. 

On a side note, his Grandma pointed out several times that this drug dealing divorced farmer now lives with what she called his "live in woman,"  which made me wonder if she knew I lived with her grandson and if she would use the same words to classify me in our relationship.