10-22-07

(Pic taken by Nance) I totally did the housewife thing this weekend. I had decided that instead of half-assedly cleaning the house on Friday and then half-assedly making attempts (but never quite following through) on doing more cleaning through the week, I’d start (starting this week!) cleaning the entire house on Saturday, then I could occasionally run the vacuum during the week and not feel guilty about not doing any real cleaning. I got up Saturday morning (slept in ’til 7, slacker that I am), wasted some time in front of the computer, then started cleaning. I cleaned the downstairs bathroom, I cleaned the upstairs bathroom, I cleaned the back bathroom. Then I took a break. I finished cleaning the back bathroom, then I cleaned up the kitchen – put dishes away, put dirty dishes in the dishwasher, wiped down the counters – and hung out some laundry. I changed the sheets on my bed, even flipped my mattress for the first time since I got it, changed the sheets on Fred’s bed, and then stripped the guest bedroom bed and remade it with just the comforter. I hung out more laundry, started more laundry washing. Then took a break. I dusted the downstairs, then the upstairs, I put some of the clothes laying on Fred’s dresser away (note to my husband: “Put these clothes away for me?” does not translate to “Pile these clothes on top of the dresser for me?”). I took a break to make breakfast for Fred and myself (he likes egg sandwiches, I like plain old scrambled eggs) and surf the web a little. I vacuumed the entire house, top to bottom, front to back. Then I took my trusty Swiffer, and I put a cleaning rag over the end of it, and I used my trusty cleaning spray, and I cleaned all the hardwood floors in the house. Then took a break, waiting for the floors to dry. (flickr) More laundry hanging-out, more laundry putting-in. I finally took a shower around 1:00, and then took the recycling to the recycling center, and stopped at the grocery store for blackberries and lemon juice. I got home close to 2:00, had lunch and did some more web surfing. Then I took my iPod and a pile of black-eyed peas to the front porch and listened to Keith and the Girl while shelling black-eyed peas. After about an hour of shelling black-eyed peas, I always get antsy and hostile, and I ended up doing it for an hour and a half before I was down to the bottom of the first (!) bucket, and when I came inside to make dinner, I was more than a little hostile. We had dinner – leftover quiche and salad – and I spent some time with the kittens, then we settled down to watch TV, and I began shelling the rest of the black-eyed peas, about two buckets’ worth. GRRRR. We started watching TV around 6:30, and I didn’t get those goddamn things done until after 9:30. I don’t even want to think about how many dried black-eyed peas are sitting under the couch right now, because those fuckers can go FLYING. Fred was snoozing on his end of the couch waiting for it to be time to go to bed, when I finally finished the goddamn things. “You know,” I said, casting a pointed look at the clock on the wall. “If SOMEONE had helped me do these goddamn things, I would have been done an hour and a half ago.” “I knew you wanted to do them all yourself,” he said. “WRONG. Fucker.” Sunday morning when I woke up, my fingertips were hurting – especially my thumbs – and even this morning they hurt if I try to use them for anything. Obviously what I need to do is not do ANYTHING today that will require the use of my hands at all so that they might heal. Sunday I slept in ’til 8 (SLACKER), then started laundry and puttered around the house. I vacuumed the house, bagged and froze the black-eyed peas, spent some time with the kittens, cleaned litter boxes, answered email, balanced the checkbook. You know, the usual exciting stuff. It was a pretty good weekend – fairly relaxing, and the only thing I really hated was the shelling of the blackeyed peas. It’s the last bunch of blackeyed peas I’ll have to shell ’til next year, thankyajeezus. Fred pulled up the black-eyed peas and the okra this weekend, so all we’ve got growing right now are a million jalapeno, habanero, and green bell peppers, some eggplant, and in a few months we should start having turnip, collard, and mustard greens. The best part is that I can totally slack this afternoon, catch up on my TV-watching, and I don’t have to feel guilty about all the cleaning I’m NOT doing. I might vacuum the house first, though.

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Fred smoked a pork shoulder and a couple of chickens (from the grocery store, not the back yard) yesterday. As he was preparing to take the chickens out to the smoker, he asked what I wanted him to do with the guts from the inside of the chickens – the livers and necks. “Just leave them,” I said. “I’ll chop them up for the cats.” I chopped up a liver and put it on a plate and called for the cats. They ran from all corners of the house and the back yard, sniffed at the plate of raw liver, turned up their noses, and walked away. Fuckers. So I put the livers in a pot of water and boiled them until I remembered they were there (I got distracted by That Goddamned Internet), which was luckily before the water boiled away. Spot smelled the cooking liver and came in to squeak incessantly at me, telling me that he was Starving! Goddamnit! Gimme some food, bitch! I made sure everything had cooled down enough, and I put the plate of cooked livers on the floor and Spot ran over, squeaking the entire way, sniffed at the plate, gave me a look of Ultimate “That Ain’t What I Was Smellin'” Betrayal, and stalked off, probably to pee or barf on something. I took the plate outside, and the Girlz came running from all over, making their excited ChickenPig noises, and I put the plate down, and that shit was gone in ten seconds. When I walked back into the house, Spot was walking back over to where I’d put the plate to perhaps sniff at it again and possibly deign to eat a piece or two of liver, and when he saw that the plate was gone, he gave me another look of heartbroken betrayal, and he went off to curl up on my desk and deal with the heartbreak. You snooze, you lose. That’s our motto at Crooked Acres.
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Friday, wanting something sweet for dessert, Fred stopped at Shoney’s and got a strawberry pie. We didn’t eat much of it and didn’t want to leave it laying around the house – if it’s sweet, we’ll eat it, that’s our other motto – so we gave it to the Girlz. That pie was gone in about three minutes. And the only reason it took them so long is because it was a dense pie, and due to the whipped cream on top, it was a little more difficult for them to eat. (flickr)
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These freakin’ spiders are everywhere these days, especially around the doors. I wonder if they sense the approaching cold weather and think they’ll be able to sneak inside where it’s warm? (flickr)
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(Picture taken by Nance.) When Nance and Rick were visiting, I impressed them with my mad wasp-killin’ skillz. Wasps are bugs that scare me a bit, because I’ve never been stung by one, and I don’t want to start now, thanks. We haven’t gotten the infestation of wasps that we had last year, but it’s still early. It’s supposed to get quite cold at night later this week, and I think we might start having an issue. My concern is that one of the cats might end up stung – years ago when she was little, Miz Poo had a bad reaction to (we think) a wasp or bee sting, and I’d rather not repeat that particular trip to the vet, thank you.
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Is it just me, or does this totally look like a picture you’d see advertising a new series? “In a world where kittens use the litterbox and then don’t cover up what they left behind, one small task force led by a kitten on the edge has taken it upon themselves to enforce the cover-it-up law. Join them every week as they follow leads bringing them to the deepest, darkest, stinkiest, most crime-ridden areas of the country. Litter Enforcers! Coming soon, to KittenTV.” Jesikat hangs out in here most of the time when I’m in the room. If the spirit moves her, she might come out and play, but she makes sure there’s plenty of room between me and her. I love how her eyes are the exact color of her orange fur. Rhian up close. Spooky up close. Peyton up close. ************************************************ Snoozin’ Boogs.
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Previously 2006: No entry. 2005: He wuvs his brudder. 2004: I need to win the lottery so I can hire someone to come to my house every day and style my hair while I read. 2003: Which is when Stanley thought “Hey! I shouldn’t just skulk back! I should run and leap! Into the air! Like a big mexican jumping Stanley-bean!” 2002: As if he was going to say to himself “By god, she’s RIGHT! I do not, in fact, reside here. What on earth was I thinking?” and run off. 2001: No entry. 2000: No entry. 1999: “Well, she took that well,” I commented.]]>

23 thoughts on “10-22-07”

  2. OK, I had to comment first so that I was the first one to comment and then I could come back to comment with my real comment after I posted the other comment just to comment. K.. Thankya
    Wasps and spiders are in the same category to me.. better off dead.. well better for me. I got stung for the first time in my life this year by a Wasp and then the next week by a “yeller jacket” You live in the country, like I.. and I am going to give you some advice I really hope that you take and run with, cause if you don’t it can continue a painful situation. Keep some of those blue ice things in your freezer, get a sting kit from Wally World, it is a syringe like thing that you can use to suck the poison out of a sting. I was stung by the wasp and we put ice on it and got the sting kit and sucked it out. It was sore but didn’t hurt too long. (The point of impact is like shoving liquid fire into your body) When i got stung by the Bastard Spawn of the devil Yeller Jacket I was away from home, it stung me on the back of the neck and I was alone. I couldn’t get a sting kit to it and didn’t have ice. OMG it hurt for the entire day like someone was jabbing a hot poker into the back of my neck. So, $12 from Wally World.. well worth it.

  4. I second the exhaustion. WHEW.
    But I’m completely skeeved out at the cannibalistic tendencies of the Girlz. EW.

  6. Is there anything the girlz won’t eat? Blech.
    You put me to shame. Every time I think I did a good job with the cleaning you make me feel like I just stood still.

  7. CarolH: I’ll put it on my shopping list! I figure with all the wasps we’ve got coming in the house, it’s probably only a matter of time before one of them gets me.
    Copper: Don’t tempt me. 😛
    Katrina: The only thing I’ve offered them that they’ve turned their beaks up at is green peppers. They couldn’t care less about green peppers – which is funny, because they usually love stuff with lots of seeds (tomatoes being their favorite).
    And as far as putting you to shame – you’ll note that I don’t detail my lazy days the way I detail my productive ones! 🙂

  8. I have to agree. Robyn, you exhausted me just reading all the cleaning you got done.
    I have found the best thing for a wasp sting is a paste made of baking soda and water. I have been stung 2 times by wasps and that will take the sting right out of it.

  9. Jesus, Robyn- I have finally met someone who is crazier than I am. I need a nap after reading this entry.

  11. Oh yeah, I totally did all that crap this weekend too. You betcha. Seriously, I’m drained.
    Ok, so I’m a filthy liar. I’m okay with that.

  12. How can I not comment when you have a picture of chickens with whipped cream mustaches? Sereiously, now I’ve seen it all.

  15. My parents live in the country and had a horrendous time with wasps until they got a fake hornet’s nest to hang on their porch. I don’t know what the proper name for this decoy is called, but they’ve had no wasps around since they put it up. It looks like their enemy nest, so they don’t come around anymore.

  16. you vacuumed the whole house on Saturday, then mentioned vacuuming it again on Sunday morning, THEN mentioned you might vacuum it again before you stopped cleaning for the day?? There is no WAY I could find the time NOR the energy to vacuum my house that much.

  18. I don’t think I’m ever going to get over how wrong it is that your chickens eat chicken. Ick. — Of course, if I owned chickens (wish I did!) I would probably feed them other chicken-bits as well.
    You sure that the eating of chickens doesn’t make chickens insane? Or are they to stupid to tell sanity from non-sanity?

  19. I was floored by the fact that you detailed several cleaning projects (including three bathrooms!) a break or two and THEN (and only then) you MADE BREAKFAST. It kind of makes me glad I don’t have three bathrooms. hehe

  22. Two things:
    1. What ARE your mad wasp killin skillz? I mean, what’s the technique? I have a small nest of wasps, hornets, something on the side of MY NEW HOUSE WHEEEEEEE!!!!!! (ahem, excuse me) that needs to be taken care of and I don’t know how without (1) getting kilt or (2) paying someone.
    2. Do your green peppers grow stupidly huge like the monster green peppers in the stores that are bigger than my (a 6′ tall woman) fist? Because I spend 87 cents on a damn pepper and then only use like 1/4 of it. (I pretty much only ever use it in spaghetti sauce, and there’s just the two of us, and we’re bad about leftovers, so I do one meal’s worth at a time.) I have long thought that someone, somewhere needs to invent little mini peppers. I will give it a shot at growing them if you tell me the homegrown peppers are a reasonable size. Maybe golf-ball sized instead of softball.

  23. Elayne, Don a long sleeved shirt, put a large hanky or tea towel on your head, put a hat on over it, a pair of gloves… dont laugh folks… seriously those bastards hurt… and get a large can of Wasp spray from Lowe’s, srping for the good stuff, its cheaper than an exterminator. Go out and spray the hell out of them while simultaniously screaming like a girl and doing the “chicken duck and dive” Once the spray hits them, they are lethargic. 😉 Seriously, spray them early in the morning before the sun heats the nest. They will all be asleep and you can pick them off!

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