woman

As Cute as a Civil War Button

  • May 25, 2016

I saved $291 in fuel, 6 pit stops at questionable country gas stations, 2728 miles on my odometer, and 40 hours of children screaming in the backseat. I’ve always wanted to visit Washington. I probably would have preferred sipping a cup of medium roast in a hipster coffee house to three weeks of constant rain… but I’ll take what I can get. Whether the recent rain was a result of the untimely passing of Prince, May compensating because April was snoozing on the whole April Showers, or a storm track hovering over the Mid-Atlantic… we may never know. One thing is for certain: We’ve had a record...

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Cobweb Crown

  • October 21, 2015

My mother-in-law loves telling the story of "Jocelyn and the Moth." The story goes a little like this... One crisp autumn morning in 2011, our small family of three combined forces with my husband's family of four. The seven of us piled snugly into the Ford Explorer and set off on a grand leaf-peeping adventure. My brothers-in-law--both Mark and Neal--were crammed into the back. Billy and I sandwiched our little guy's carseat in the center. Julie sat shotgun. Bill drove. (This was before he lost his fight with ALS in 2013.) Given that this was early October, the leaves had yet to reach...

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The Underestimate-able Digger

  • September 24, 2015

I am an enigma. The more I interact with experienced diggers and historians, I've begun to realize that strangers have a tendency to underestimate me. I'm underestimate-able. You aren't likely to find underestimate-able in the dictionary--however--I do like the ring of it. (Underestimate-able, adjective: a person, place, or thing that is thought to be smaller or less than it actually is.) For all intensive purposes, consider me underestimate-able. A few years ago, I embraced that perception. When I was picking for profit at yard sales and estate sales, I took full advantage of my clueless...

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Rain? You Mean Relic Primer.

  • September 11, 2015

Summer is gone, but she went out kicking and screaming. These past few weeks were downright brutal. The earth was baked solid--concealing the good signals and testing my patience for digging plugs. Also, I might be taking this one a bit too personal... but I'm pretty sure the sun tried to kill me last week. I've never sweated so much in my life. There was sweat beading on my nose and dripping into my eyes. By the end of the dig, my makeup had nearly melted off my face and all the flammable junk in my hair had almost ignited. In the end, all I had to show for my suffering was a few bobbles,...

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The Button Conundrum

  • September 10, 2015

We all have that property that we gawk at but can never muster the courage to approach. For the longest time, my unapproachable permission was a brick farmhouse on a hill. I drove by this house every day for years, but something held me back. Instead of asking for permission and facing the possibility of rejection, I'd settled for thinking that I could get permission. I'm almost positive that I'm not the only hobbyist who thinks this way. We all have that unapproachable permission that we silently salivate over... A few weeks ago, I had been poking around the remains of the Fickel House...

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Trickle of Time

  • August 24, 2015

Saturday, we visited my family in Central NY. We were up at 4:20AM, out the door by 5:00AM, and rolling into Fabius around 10AM. My great aunt's service was a intended to be a celebration of life--complete with a bubble maker, jazz music, and fancy red hats attributed to the society of the same name. At the grave-site, we continued the red theme by releasing red balloons. The balloons were whisked away in the breeze and struggled to rise above the treetops before being snagged and entangled in a malicious pine. In between visiting with relatives, I did a little putzing around with my detector--both...

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A Shirtless Man and His Dog

  • August 17, 2015

We had a rough week. While my kids suffered through a nasty stomach bug, I suffered through the final days of Comm 101. The good news is, I survived the class--the same class I'd been putting off since I started working towards my Associates Degree in 2008. The topic of my speeches, you ask? Well, metal detecting, of course: http://www.youtube.com/embed?listType=playlist&list=UU9D3lVCpT6kljc61gm6h_Yg So in the midst of completing my final assignments, I fell into the role of Dr. Mom--cuddling on the couch, watching a million-and-one episodes of Sesame Street, and cleaning partially digested...

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Another Day, Another Schoolhouse

  • August 10, 2015

It happened today. I was at church, watching my children skip across the rows of sanctuary chairs like circus acrobats--when a visitor posed the question, "You're that metal detecting girl, right?" I must have blushed ten shades of red. Had he been a regular at our church, I probably wouldn't have been so flattered--but he was just visiting for a baby dedication that morning. He recognized me from my blog! I asked if he metal detected--nope, he just followed my blog. Needless to say, this stranger made my day--perhaps even my month... dare I say year? This must qualify for celebrity status?...

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Digging at the Thrift Store

  • July 20, 2015

I've been out of commission this past month--taking a much-dreaded speech course in pursuit of my associates degree, remodeling our house with new floors and fresh paint, and chasing after two hellions--one who recently learned the word NO and the other who has it mastered. That being said, I haven't had much opportunity to fire up my new Makro Racer. I'm hoping that once this heat dissipates and I put the public speaking torture to rest, I'll find some time to hit my newest permission--an abandoned house in the woods that was once the Fickel House. Now, from creeping around in the detecting...

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Heebie-Jeebies

  • June 17, 2015

Even before I started metal detecting, I'd always had a weakness for old homes--the crumbling stone facades, the weathered brick, and paint-peeled clapboards. These properties--with their overgrown vegetation, collapsing outbuildings, and crooked shutters--possess some sort of decrepit beauty that I've always found to be both haunting and mesmerizing. I think sometimes we forget that these sad structures were once the pride of a family name, a booming industry, a community, or a righteous cause. Now, they stand in ruin and waste away to the tune of the passing decades... until someone like...

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