10/5/10 – Tuesday

The Crooked Acres jam (and hot sauce) shop is now open!

Go buy jam and hot sauces here.

(And there’s a permanent link in the left sidebar, for future reference.)

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Readers, some help? Does anyone recognize this cross-stitch picture and who the maker is? Debbie wants the pattern, but the only place she’s been able to find it is selling it for more than she wants to pay. She’s hoping to have more luck finding it if she can figure out who the maker is.

(Click on the picture for a slightly larger version.)

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This email from Fred first thing this morning made me laugh:

I heard an ad on the radio this morning for a local mortgage company, wherein they were bragging that they’d helped a local family get out from under an onerous mortgage. The family was struggling to make their payments, and also had SEVEN credit cards contributing to their bills. With a re-finance from this mortgage company, they lowered their monthly payment by $400, paid off their credit cards, and didn’t have to make mortgage payments for October or November. So what did they do? Did they save that money, to keep from getting in the same situation again?

OF COURSE NOT. THEY TOOK THEIR KIDS TO THE BEACH FOR A FALL VACATION.

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Have you ever noticed that if you Google “unexplained weight loss”, the ultimate answer seems to be “you’ve got cancer and will be dying any minute now but at least you’ll be skinny HA HA HA”, but if you Google “unexplained weight gain”, the ultimate answer is “You’re putting too much food in your fat face, fatty”?

(An unexplained two pound gain since yesterday morning – after an unexplained three pound loss over the weekend – made me think of the Googling on both topics I’ve done in the past.)

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Over the weekend, Fred opened the big freezer in the laundry room, and said “I feel like we’re pushing our luck, here. One day I’m going to open this door and the shelves are going to collapse under the weight of everything we’ve got piled on them.”

In that freezer was the entire half pig we just got back from the butcher, an entire summer’s worth of green beans, shredded zucchini, boiled and mashed summer squash, spaghetti squash, corn on the cob, and a million other things.

“I really need to cook and can some of the chicken in the chest freezer in the garage, and then we can move most of the pork out there,” I said. “I keep meaning to do that since we’ve used up all the canned chicken, but keep putting it off.”

“We’re some procrastinating motherfuckers,” he said.

“That’s right.”

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Sunday night, we went out to give the pigs their evening cookies and the dogs their evening treat. Fred herded one of the momma chickens in the maternity yard back into the small maternity coop along with her seven babies. As we walked through the chicken yard to the gate, he indicated the two roosts sitting in the middle of the chicken yard.

“I wonder if the seven chickens who have been sleeping outside are going to go into the coop tonight,” he said. “It’s supposed to get down into the 40s tonight.”

“I hope they’re smart enough to figure it out,” I said.

We said goodnight to the dogs and went back to the house.

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Monday morning, Fred came upstairs to say goodbye to me before he left for work. Even if I’m dead asleep, I hear him coming up the stairs and wake up. He hugged and kissed me, and then stood at the end of my bed, petting Miz Poo.

“Houston,” he said. “Our procrastinating chickens have come home to roost.”

“Oh, good!” I said. “Did they all go into the coop or just some of them?”

There was a confused pause. “I didn’t mean that literally,” he said.

Fred found, when he went through the laundry room, that the freezer was dripping water. Whether it was due to being overstuffed or was on the verge of breaking down, who the hell knows?

“Can you take a few boxes of pork out to the chest freezer?” he asked. “We may end up having to empty the freezer completely and unplug it to defrost it. Blah blah blah something about a hose.”

“Yeah,” I said. I got up and went to take my shower and get started on the day.

I showered, dressed, fed the kittens, posted my entry for yesterday, and then grabbed one of the boxes that Fred had left for me on the side stoop. 45 minutes and 10 trips from the laundry room to the chest freezer in the garage, the laundry room freezer was empty.

(I figured that since we might need to empty the freezer anyway, I’d just go ahead and do it. Which would let me see whether we’d be able to fit everything in the chest freezer in an emergency. And as it turned out, everything (just barely) fit in the two freezers we have in the garage.)

So I present to you:

NOTES TO PAST AND FUTURE ROBYN FROM PRESENT ROBYN.

1. Hey, hi, how’d that LABELING thing go? You know, where you CLEARLY LABEL the shit you put in the freezer with details such as WHAT THE FUCK IT IS and WHAT FUCKING DATE YOU PUT IT IN THE FREEZER? Remember that brilliant plan? The plan that seems to have vamoosed in mid-2009? I almost put two big blocks of mozzarella cheese over with the fat I’m intending to render into lard SOME DAY because I thought it was fat. Then some voice in the very back of my head pointed out that the OTHER pig fat we have in the freezer is not neatly made into a square, and then I remembered that we had bought a big-ass block of mozzarella from Sam’s club sometime in 2008 with the intention of eating it with cherry tomatoes. And then WE DID NOT CARE FOR THE TASTE OF THE MOZZARELLA SO WE PUT IT IN THE FREEZER. Brilliant move, me.

And hi, if we’re going to label, WE NEED TO BE CLEAR about what we write. Do I have any goddamn clue on god’s green earth what the fuck “r” on a processed chicken means? Does it mean “roaster”? Why no, it does not mean roaster, because a roaster would have skin, and these do not. Perhaps “rooster”? And why the fucking shit are we marking the roosters and not the hens? WHAT THE FUCK?

Why did we bother to write “Michelle” on the bag that contains Michelle, the rooster who was processed a year and a half ago? What the fuck am I supposed to do with Michelle NOW? Was that so I’d know it was Michelle, and Michelle was kind of old – as chickens go – and thus to be stewed? WHAT THE FUCK?

2. New rule: the only chickens that go into the freezer are the roasters. Every other chicken must be stewed, picked off the bones, and canned. How many chickens do we currently have in the freezer right now? I DON’T KNOW, I STOPPED COUNTING AT 22. And of course because NONE OF THEM are labeled (except for the ones with the date hastily scrawled on them, and of course the “r” chickens), even if we were willing to sell some chickens, I couldn’t in good conscience do so, because the buyer might end up with an old, tough, nasty chicken. Guess who’s going to be stewing, picking, and canning chickens ALL WEEK LONG? Is it me? I THINK IT MIGHT BE. (Not that YOU care, Past Robyn, you lazy whore.)

3. What the fucking fuck is up with THE CHEESE? Jesus christ, are we afraid there’s going to be a cheese shortage? How much cheese do we have? I don’t know, I STOPPED COUNTING AT 30. THIRTY FUCKING PACKAGES OF SHREDDED CHEESE, PLUS. No more cheese until the cheese we HAVE is used up. NO MORE CHEESE. Jesus christ.

4. No more perusing the Publix flyer on Wednesdays and running to the store to take advantage of the “buy one get one” sales. I mean, don’t get me wrong, some of those sales are AWESOME, but truly how many english muffins need to be sitting in the freezer for months until we’re in the mood for them again? I’ve gotten the okay from Fred (and you KNOW what a frugal bastard HE is) to actually go out and BUY a package of english muffins AT FULL PRICE if we run out! I know, right? THE LUNACY!

Future me won’t listen, though. Present me always thinks that if I know something at a certain point in time, I will ALWAYS know it, and thus cryptic notes like an “r” scribbled on the bag holding a chicken will absolutely mean something to me.

Past, present and future me are all dumbasses.

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There are two things that has pretty much convinced me that Bolitar (who I’ll be calling “Buster” from here on out, because that’s what I call him in real life, and it’s too difficult for me to call him “Bolitar” when I never do!) and Rhyme remember living here.

The first was that on Friday afternoon, at Snackin’! Time!, I gave the cats their snacks, and then I walked down the hallway to the guest bedroom to go in and see Starsky and Hutch (this was before I moved them upstairs). I just so happened to have a plate in my hand, and Rhyme came FLYING down the hall after me and tried to lead me into the guest bedroom. Back when all four Bookworms were here, I gave the four of them their snack in the guest bedroom, and he clearly remembered.

The second was when, not an hour later, I looked out the back door and saw Buster and Rhyme frolicking in the back yard with Jake and Elwood.

And I guess I should add a third: yesterday morning I glanced out the side door to see that Buster had climbed over the fence and was in the side yard. I coaxed him inside and put a collar on him (for those who don’t know, we have an invisible fence around the back yard and the problem cats wear collars to deter them from getting too close to the non-invisible fence, so they can’t escape the back yard), and he hasn’t escaped since. Brat.

I’m not quite sure what Rhyme was doing here, but it kind of looks like a seductive dance, doesn’t it? There needs to be a feather boa involved.

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Starsky and Hutch have now hit one pound. Hutch is one and a half ounces larger than Starsky, and that one and a half ounces is all in his big round belly. I told Fred that we should have named him Waddles McGee, because he waddles so when he walks – which is the MOST adorable thing to witness. (Yes, it could very well be due to worms – they’re both on dewormer – but they’re also at that age where they’re tiny and round little things. In a few weeks, they’ll start to lengthen and thin out, I suppose, so I have to enjoy the round stage for as long as it lasts!)

Detective Starsky detects.

Small enough to put in coffee cups, big enough to escape them. I love this age!

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Loony Jake is loony.

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Previously
2009: We are far too amused by ourselves.
2008: No entry.
2007: I had NO IDEA Red Lobster was such a den of heathenry.
2006: The rags used on that closet: ONE MEELLION.
2005: And then the last straw came along and broke the fat woman’s back.
2004: Because he’s a skinny bastard.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: Day One.
2000: So obviously I don’t know nothing’ ’bout picking out no paint.