September 2008 – Page 2

9/12/08

Edited to add: This made me cackle when Fred emailed me the link earlier. If you watch it, make sure your sound is on! + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + Fred’s got a webcam pointed at the eggs, … Continue reading “9/12/08”

Edited to add: This made me cackle when Fred emailed me the link earlier. If you watch it, make sure your sound is on!

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Fred’s got a webcam pointed at the eggs, which have begun to hatch. At the moment, one has hatched and wanders into camera view every now and again. Hopefully the others will start hatching soon!

Watch it here.

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Announcement: The Crooked Acres house tour some of you have been asking about will be up (on its own page) Monday. I’ve taken the pictures and resized them, now I have to put them in order and write captions. I think there are close to 100 pictures, and I think there are more outside pictures than inside!

Anyway, I promise. Unless there’s some sort of catastrophe this weekend, I’ll be linking that on Monday and if I don’t, then I forgot and someone remind me, eh?

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When I go out to collect eggs, usually around midmorning (and toss some cracked corn to the chickens), there’s occasionally a chicken sitting in a nesting box. Sometimes they’ve already laid an egg and are just resting from the effort (or so I assume) and sometimes they haven’t yet laid their egg. Most of them just look at me when I reach under them to grab their egg, but there’s this one Rhode Island Red who takes serious offense to my attempts to retrieve her egg. She scares me a little, with the noises that she makes, because I don’t like to be pecked by the damn chickens.

The other day, I happened to have the camera with me, so I made a movie. Enjoy the obnoxiousness. (The movie probably would have been a little less herky-jerky if one hand hadn’t been holding the bottom of my shirt out to hold the eggs I’d collected. I forgot to take the egg basket out with me, of course.)

Note to Fred: I NEED a Flip Video!

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The second shirt makes you look like one of the sentry guards on Gomer Pyle USMC. And as for that picture; it seems to me that it was seen on an older one of your sites some time ago.

I’ll have to Google around to find a sentry guard picture to see what that looks like – or maybe I don’t want to know!

I’ve never used that picture before and it’s not really “older” since it was taken on August 24th, but it’s entirely possible there was a similar picture (with a too-tight button-up shirt) in the past. I took a quick look through the pictures on my hard drive and didn’t see anything similar, which doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, just that I didn’t save it on my hard drive.

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Snort! Am I the only one who thinks you (in the last pic) and Zoe have exactly the same expressions on your faces? LOVE IT!

Well, now that you mention it….

(I have no idea why that picture came out in black and white!)

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My cat Bubba has to get a steroid shot too. He licks the base of his tail until it’s a HUGE raw spot. Then he gets all moody and starts trying to have sex with his sissy, Missy Mamas. I tell you…being a cat parent is hard!

I am imagining a cat with a raw spot at the base of his tail, twitching his tail and deciding that the ONLY thing that will make him feel better is if he gets it on with his sister, and the mental image is making me laaaaaaaugh.

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I thought you were going to say you bought that fugly painting! I was glad to hear you thought it was ugly too.

Oh, no way on earth I’d buy that thing. I just kept going back and looking at it because I was so amazed that someone painted it, and that the antique store thinks they’ll sell it (and they probably will!), and that someone might buy it. If it was ugly in an interesting way or a funny way, I might consider it, but no. That thing is just ugly in an ugly way.

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The Silkie will grow up to be seriously beautiful if it looks like the one on your link. It also says it has black flesh! Do you think that combination will result in a long and happy life at Crooked Acres? When I’m eating chicken breasts I wouldn’t be too enthused with black meat.

Actually, the Silkie wasn’t really bought to be a meat chicken. Silkies tend to be small, and we figured that the Silkie, along with the Rock Star and the Featherheads, will most likely have a long and happy life. They’re so small that they’re not really worth eating (also, the black flesh of the Silkie would be off-putting, to say the least) and we didn’t think they’d be much on the providing-eggs front (though the Featherheads are laying pretty regularly, tiny white eggs about half the size any of the other girls lay), so we consider them entertainment.

They’re very entertaining, especially when the Featherheads’ feathers grow to cover their eyes (we try to trim them back regularly) and they can’t see anything. When that happens, and then we go out with treats for them (and you KNOW the damn chickens get a treat at least once a day!) and the rest of the chickens are squawking excitedly, the Featherheads have this particular “WHAT TREAT? I DON’T SEE ANY TREAT IS THERE TREATS PLEASE GOD HELP ME I DON’T SEE ANY TREAT” shriek that goes through your brain like a spike.

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Do you still use your Roomba? You haven’t mentioned it for a while and I was just wondering since you talk about vacuuming – just not specifically with the Roomba. I bought one at the beginning of summer and love it, now I need a robot to do my laundry and cooking.

I use my Roomba regularly, at least three times a week. I tend to use it mostly in the kitchen, laundry room, and dining room, though I run it occasionally in the bedrooms because it’s particularly good at cleaning under the beds so I don’t have to. The batteries in the virtual walls died in the past few days, and I started the Roomba in the kitchen and went to run errands. When I got home, I found that it had run rogue – since there were no virtual walls to stop it – went into the laundry room for a few minutes, did a spin around the dining room and then went down the hallway and perhaps into the front room for a while before coming to a stop in the guest bedroom.

I do love the hell out of my Roomba. It doesn’t do a spotless job, but it certainly keeps the mess in the kitchen to a manageable level so I don’t have to vacuum every day of the week!

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While I can and do wholeheartedly agree with “never enough small glass bowls,” I AM curious as to whether or not there’s ever “enough chickens.” IS there such a thing on Crooked Acres?

Honestly, I don’t know. I feel like we might be getting to that point, especially with the 20 eggs that are due to hatch in the next few days. Fred has told me twice in the past week that in his mind the perfect amount of chickens to get us through a year would be 100, but I’ll be damned if I can remember his reasoning. He counted chickens last week and came up with 47, so… I guess we’re halfway to our goal?

Seriously, if we get too many more chickens I’m thinking we might want to just give up and fence in the back forty for them so they’ll have enough room!

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**Once I was at a museum and my husband asked if we could do something (I can’t even remember what) and I responded, “Okey Dokey Pokey!” A woman spun around and strongly expressed her disgust that I said that, and to a grown man! It still makes me smile to think that I could make someone soooo affronted!**

What happened next?! What did you do?!!

Yeah, Leslie. What did you do?

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Hey Robyn. Just wondering if you were planning on watching True Blood on HBO? I started reading the Sookie Stackhouse series b/c of you and I loved it! I’m so excited for the show! And Anna Paquin looks just like the Sookie I had pictured in my head…weird.

Not only did I watch the first episode, Fred was even willing to watch it with me! He loves vampires. I liked it a lot, and though I didn’t think Anna Paquin looked like Sookie to me before I watched the show, I’ve since changed my mind and I think she looks just like Sookie. Funny how that happens, isn’t it? I also didn’t think – from seeing the commercials for the show – that the guy playing Bill was all that hot.

I’ve changed my mind about that, too.

Fred didn’t like the show nearly as much as I did – he would like some violent deaths, please – but since the first episode ended on a good cliffhanger, he’s willing to keep watching it.

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On the whole bitey cat issue (most of them seem to do it) I heard a theory once that our petting them can cause static electricity, like when you brush your hair in the winter and it stands on end and that even though we can’t feel the electricity cats can because they are more sensitive and they are biting us because they’re getting little shocks and want it to stop. I have pet my cat during the poor excuse for winter we have here in Florida, in bed at night and sparks fly off her fur which freaks her out. It could be that or it could be that cats are just bossy and like everything on their own terms.

I think that “Cats are bossy and like everything on their own terms” pretty much covers, well, EVERYTHING when it comes to cats!

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Your new pigs are so much cleaner and pinker than the last two. Is it because they’re new, or because they’re girly-pigs, or some other reason I can’t think of? I guess maybe this is a question for Fred.

I’ve noticed that they aren’t getting as dirty as the boy pigs did. I thought that maybe it was because it wasn’t as hot, but it’s been pretty hot over the last few days, and the girls do go into the wallow to cool off (though they don’t hang out in the wallow; they just get in, get wet, get out), but they don’t roll around in the mud. The boys used to get absolutely caked with mud, and the girls really don’t. Maybe they’re girly-girls and just don’t like to get super messy!

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Did you know that spiders have six to eight eyes? That’s four to six more than are showing up on your scary spider! I KNOW! Creeps me out just thinking about it.

The day comes that I come face-to-face with a spider and see six to eight glowing eyes glaring at me is probably the day Fred finds me face-down on the lawn, dead of a heart attack. I don’t like to think of spiders having that many eyes. WHY do they need so many eyes? NO ONE needs six to eight eyes, that’s just a crime against nature!

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Season 3 [of The L Word] was a rough one for me, and the fourth season is really, really boring so far. (I hate Jenny so much. I want to beat her.) I just downloaded the fifth season, but am taking a break from the show mid-season 4 because…ugh. (I had to take a break after the third season too.) So I’m watching “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” which…whoa. Why are 16-year-olds having sex? Am I baffled by this because I’m not an American?

I think, unfortunately, that a lot of American 16 year-olds are having sex these days. I don’t know that they’re having as much sex in real life as they’re having on TV (or perhaps I’m just an optimist), but they’re definitely having sex.

I’m sure that if they increased the amount of abstinence-only sex education available to teens, premarital sex would stop, like, immediately. Ahem.

(If I might quote the brilliant Donna Martin regarding teaching your children about safe sex, “If you build a pool, and you know your kids are going to swim, you can build all the fences you want. But if you know they’re going to jump in the pool, don’t you think you should teach your kids how to swim?” Donna Martin? Totally graduated!)

Okay, I got a bit off the subject, I guess. This “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” show: should I be watching it?

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I’m going to pimp out your comments and request people click and go to my site. Partly for the two tributes I’ve done but even more so to click on the link at the end of my 2nd post to go to the page that will have the link to Project 2,996. And check out the other tributes.

Maybe some of you will be willing to do your own tribute. There’s still so many names out there that need doing.

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My monkeys are going to the pet store today. ::Sob::

“You mean someone’s going to adopt me and take me home and spoil me rotten? SUCKERS!”

Kara will be staying here until the huge number of kittens have (hopefully) moved on through and been adopted. I’ll be curious to see if not having the kittens around will make her spend more time downstairs, because most of the time she and the babies have been hanging out upstairs with the occasional foray downstairs to look around.

Local readers, if you’re in the market for a cat or dog, PetSm@rt on Univ3rsity Drive is having an Adoptathon all weekend. Zoe and Kaylee will be there for that (and then staying on if they’re not adopted, since they’ll be in a permanent cage) (but hopefully they’ll be adopted this weekend!!!), and other local shelters will, I believe, have animals available as well.

Here’s a short movie starring Kaylee and Zoe (with Kara in the background). They think the brush is made for biting, not brushing.

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Previously
2007: Human eggs, scrambled, taste just a bit too humany, if you ask me.
2006: I sense I’m being royally fucking screwed over by the goddamn advantage-taking photographer. Who’s probably lighting his cigars with $100 bills as he drives around in his limo.
2005: Ants ain’t fuckin’ welcome here, if you hadn’t guessed.
2004: No entry.
2003: What above the Bumsen is up with that?
2002: It’s the front yard or bust, baby.
2001: That’s pretty much how we all felt.
2000: That’s the price of getting old, my friends.

9/11/08

"These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve." First Steel Column For 9/11 Memorial Is Erected At Ground Zero + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 2007 2006 2005: No entry. 2004: No entry. 2003 2002 … Continue reading “9/11/08”

"These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve."

First Steel Column For 9/11 Memorial Is Erected At Ground Zero

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2007
2006
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003
2002
2001
2000

9/10/08

Torturing the Toms If we could bottle that level of resigned hatred, we could rule the WORLD. Or blow it up. The best part of this experience was the part I didn’t catch on film. Fred put Tommy down on the table with the purple braids still on his head, and Tommy tossed his head … Continue reading “9/10/08”

Torturing the Toms

If we could bottle that level of resigned hatred, we could rule the WORLD. Or blow it up.

The best part of this experience was the part I didn’t catch on film. Fred put Tommy down on the table with the purple braids still on his head, and Tommy tossed his head back and forth like a headbanger at a concert. I thought I was going to pass out, I was laughing so hard.

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Death of a Watermelon

Watermelon, about to go off to be sacrificed to the chickens.

“WHERE OUR FOOD?!”

“WE CAIN’T EAT NO WALLAMELLA LIKE THAT!”

10:07 AM: Let the nomming begin.

11:07 AM: The nomming continues.

1:07 PM: Not much left to eat, but they’re giving it the ol’ chicken try!

3:30 PM: Nothing left but the rind. They’ll continue to pick at the rind until there’s nothing left but the skin. And then they’ll continue to pick at the skin ’til it’s either eaten or someone (ie, Fred) comes along and picks it up and tosses it on the compost heap.

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Pics from around Crooked Acres

Hummingbird in the mimosa tree.

“Hey! You has food for us?!”

The little bitty newborn chickens are cute, but it’s when they get a little bigger that I have a hard time not picking them up and squeezing them with the fangers. (It’s not that hard to resist, since the little bastards run from me.)

Mother and children.

The babies are getting brave, venturing into the back yard.

It makes the Mommas nervous when the babies go through the fence into the back yard. Can’t say as I blame them.

Teeny web in the fence, covered in dew.

Big-ass web, built between the end of the house and the fence. I never did see the spider responsible.

I’m confused – are these crocuses? And do crocuses (crocii?) normally bloom in the late summer/ early fall? I thought they were a spring flower!

Fred put the baby chickens out in a “playpen”, because they like being outside. Maxi was watching them. She watches the chickens all the time and we’ve never had a problem. Five minutes later, Fred found her with a dead baby Rhode Island Red chick. Grrr.

Can’t really blame her, since she was just doing what cats do, but I’m not really thrilled with her right now. (We’ll be keeping a closer eye on her from here on out, and probably putting the “playpen” in the chicken yard from here on out.)

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“I would never kill and eat a baby chicken. I am a good girl.”

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Previously
2007: Google is THE SHIT.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: “Fuck it!” I said.
2002: “Stinky?” I said.
2001: I stole this survey from Noreen, but I’ve seen it all over the place recently, and god knows how much I love to be one of the cool kids!
2000: Look! It’s nay-chuh!

9/9/08

Poor Miz Poo. A few weeks ago I discovered that she’d been biting at the fur on her stomach, and I never noticed until I realized that she had what appeared to be a shaved spot from her “waist” (yeah, yeah, cats don’t have waists, YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT) down and she had a small rash. Then I checked her lip and realized that it was starting to swell. I put it off for a little while ’cause I always hope she’ll get better on her own, but she didn’t stop worrying at the skin on her stomach and when the sound of constant licking got to me, I finally took her to the vet.

Which is when the vet looked at Miz Poo’s records and we found that the last time Miz Poo needed a steroid shot (for her lip) was in June of 2007. We were both amazed – for a while there, it seemed Miz Poo was going every three months – and it would be really nice if she didn’t need another shot for another 15 months.

She got her shot of steroids, which will hopefully clear up her lip and her rashy belly, but if it’s not completely cleared up in three weeks, she’ll go back for a second shot.

After we left the vet’s office I ended up running some errands, which thrilled Miz Poo to no end, which she proved by snoozing through the entire process. We stopped by a donation bin between the vet’s office and Madison (I donated bags of stuff to a local women and children’s shelter), I ran into the grocery store in Madison to get my thyroid medication (I need to start having my prescriptions filled closer to home, but I keep hoping they’ll get that damn Publix they’re building ten minutes up the road finished so I can start going there), I ran by the post office to check my mail, drove through the credit union drive-up, and then I was thinking about stopping at Lowe’s to get some new doormats for the back door, but I decided I’d put the poor cat through quite enough for one morning, so we came home.

When Fred got home from work, I did what I’ve been putting off for ages – I got the window cleaner, rags, paper towels, and the vacuum cleaner, and I went outside and cleaned the inside of both our cars. Mine has had about fifteen pounds of corn on the driver’s side floor since we went to the safari adventure place last month and the camel was all

“I SEE YOU HAS CORN GIVE TO ME NOM NOM NOM”

and corn was spilled.

Fred’s car, oh my god. That was one dusty-ass messy-ass nasty-ass fucking car, and though it took me forever I got his car in decent shape. I stopped at one point to ask him “When you get change back, do you just toss it over your shoulder into the back of the car, or what?”, because I must have found fifteen dollars in change scattered all over hell and creation.

After I was done with the cars, I swept out the half of the garage not taken over by the brooder, and I wiped the dust and dirt and thousands upon thousands of spider webs and cobwebs off the exercise equipment, freezer, bookcase, etc. All of this took about two hours, so it was a lucky thing we were having leftovers for dinner instead of my having to cook.

I still need to do some more cleaning in the garage – I hate to have it such a mess – so maybe I’ll do that later today.

Or maybe I’ll just be a lazy ass and watch TV and read all day long. That seems more likely, really.

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So last week, I stopped by Target after I went to the pet store, and I browsed a little, and then I bought a couple of shirts I thought I’d like and was pretty sure would fit me. All of the shirts I currently own are t-shirts, and it would be nice to be able to go out into public in something that doesn’t have a snarky saying or a picture of a cat on the front of it.

I put on the first shirt, a size medium, and I thought it fit okay, maybe a little tight, but then I looked at myself in the mirror, and then I summoned Fred to take a picture, and before he took the picture, I said “Does this shirt make my boobs look… LOW?”

He laughed and said “I didn’t think so ’til you said that!”

And then I took the shirt off and tried on the second shirt, which was a button-up in size large. BY THE EXACT SAME COMPANY WHICH MADE SHIRT NUMBER ONE.

A wee bit small, I’d say.

So both shirts went back to Target, and I have made up my mind that one day soon I’m going to take the frickin’ day and I’m going to go to Target or the mall or whatever and instead of buying clothes without trying them on first I’m going to TRY THE FRICKIN’ CLOTHES ON BEFORE I BUY THEM.

God. I’m 40 years old. You’d think I’d have LEARNED this sort of thing by now.

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I do not know what on earth I was saying to Fred or why I was looking over at the dresser while I was tugging on the front of my shirt while I said whatever it was, but the look on my face in this picture cracks me UP. I’m sure I was saying something particularly assy or mocking Fred for mocking me.

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“So I says to him, I says, look, you. If I want to play with that rattly mouse, YOU are not going to stop me, mister, and you can go het on someone else. Your het does not scare me. AT ALL. And he pretended not to care, but I think we know he cares. HE CARES. I think he was crying a little.”

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Miss Momma on the front porch. This is her welcoming look.

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Previously
2007: Who needs a stinkin’ appendix, anyway?
2006: No entry.
2005: (I shot a man in Texas, just to watch him die.)
2004: No entry.
2003: So basically I paid twice as much for a keyboard as I would have on my own for no good reason, all thanks to that Staples employee, may he rot in hell.
2002: I hope that leaf doesn’t give me a damn yeast infection.
2001: No entry.
2000: I’m not sure what happened next. I believe I blacked out.

9/8/08

Good lord, what a weekend. I got up early Saturday morning because I was covering for the Saturday morning cleaner at the pet store. I got there to find that there was only one cage of kittens – there’s been an upper respiratory infection issue going around with the cats at the pet store, so the shelter manager decided that the kittens needed to be cleared out of there (going to foster homes to be treated with the proper medication), and the woman taking the last cage of kittens hadn’t picked them up yet. So I spent some extra time with those kittens and cleaned out their cage and a couple of the empty ones that needed it, and was out of there in about an hour.

I stopped by the grocery store on the way home to pick up the few items we needed, then I got home and ate breakfast, did a few things around the house, and then Fred and I loaded up the car with a pet carrier (just in case), and headed for Lacon Trade Days. Lacon Trade Days is basically just a big outdoor flea market where they sell just about anything you can imagine.

Fred has gotten it into his head that we need to have a turkey, no I mean we NEED TO HAVE A TURKEY RIGHT NOW, despite the fact that we have nowhere to put a turkey. We intend to put a turkey yard where the garden is right now (we’ll be moving the garden spot out to the back forty), but instead of waiting until we have a place all set up for turkeys and THEN going to get a turkey, Fred is a man on a mission and HE WANTS A TURKEY.

“Where do you plan to put this turkey?” I ask whenever he brings it up.

“We’ll put it with the chickens!” he says.

“No we won’t,” I say. I’m adamant that I don’t want to just throw a turkey in with the chickens because (1) That will stress them out and I DO NOT WANT MY GIRLS STRESSED, and (2) Who the hell knows what kind of illness a new bird might introduce to the flock?

Fred just shrugs me off and tells me, basically, that he’ll worry about that when he has to worry about that.

So we got to Lacon and we made a pretense of checking out the booths along the way for a few minutes, but we pretty quickly gave up and made a beeline for the best part of Lacon Trade Days, the back part where the animals are kept. There were a lot of chickens, a lot of bantam chickens (what’s the point of a bantam? They lay teeny eggs and they don’t provide a lot of meat. They sure are cute, though.), a lot of kittens and puppies, but no turkeys. Not a one!

In the end, we bought a couple of boxes of cookies for the pigs and then headed home. We took the scenic route home which took us by an antique store and so we stopped and went inside to browse and we determined quickly that it was pretty overpriced and had a few scary-ass items.

I couldn’t help myself, I had to go back several times and look at this picture. I don’t know if it’s the horribly rendered faces, the way the dog is about to fall off the swing but apparently doesn’t care, or the huge calves on grandma, but it just really boggles the mind.

I ended up buying a set of six small glass bowls. We have some small glass bowls that we use all the time for various things when a regular-sized bowl is bigger than we need, and you can’t have too many small glass bowls, I always say.

We stopped for lunch and then headed for home. It was kind of overcast and drizzly out and Fred had no pressing tasks, so he watched some TV, snoozed, and surfed the web. I went upstairs where I lay on the bed with Kara, Zoe, and Kaylee, read for a long time, then snoozed for half an hour or so. Then I read some more, and eventually made my way back downstairs.

We watched The Ladykillers that evening, and I cross-stitched for the first time in a LONG time, and it was just generally a good day.

Sunday morning I slept in ’til almost 6:00 (seriously, that’s the latest I’ve slept in ages) and was awakened by a loud crash from downstairs. When I got down the stairs to see what had happened, it turned out that Stinkerbelle had somehow knocked all the shit off the mantel in the front room, including shattering the small milk bottle I’d been using as a vase for a set of fake sunflowers.

Fred cleaned that up, while I went back upstairs to take my shower. I got a load of laundry going after, hung it out to dry, started a second load, and then Fred and I hit the road.

This time we were headed to Dog Days Flea Market in Tennessee, the same place where we got the pigs last weekend. This time we were on the lookout for cheap watermelon for the chickens (those birds can strip a watermelon to the skin in a matter of hours) and, of course, turkeys.

We found the watermelon, we found the turkeys, but in the end we didn’t buy the turkeys. Instead, we bought something else.

Yes, more chickens. Seven Rhode Island Reds (we really, really like the Rhode Island Reds; they’re curious and friendly and docile and grow to be pretty big), one Ameraucana, and just for shits and giggles, one Silkie. They’re about a week old, cost $1.50 each, and are currently residing in the brooder in the garage.

And yes, we’ve got another twenty eggs in the incubator that should be hatching around the end of the week.

I think we might be chicken hoarders.

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The rest of Sunday was pretty low-key. I finally got around to cooking my tomato puree down into tomato sauce. I finally bottled several quarts of the Family Secret Tomato Sauce a few weeks ago and we gave it a try for dinner Friday. It was okay, but the fact that you have to add lemon juice to the sauce before canning it adds a flavor to the sauce that neither of us particularly cares for. I decided that I’d just make tomato sauce out of my tomato puree, put it in the freezer, and we’d use the tomato sauce to make spaghetti sauce (or whatever) when we needed it. I ended up with 10 quarts of tomato sauce in the freezer, which is not particularly good for an entire summer’s worth of tomatoes, but considering that we didn’t get nearly as many tomatoes this summer as I would have liked (story of my life), it’s not bad.

Truth be told, we don’t use THAT much tomato sauce in the course of everyday eating, anyway.

I got the laundry put away, vacuumed the house, we ate a late lunch/ early dinner consisting solely of foods grown here at Crooked Acres, and Fred began preparing for next year’s garden by tilling a patch of land in the back forty near the pig yard.

Saturday’s overcast, drizzly weather was followed by a lovely cool, foggy Sunday morning. The fog burned off by mid-morning, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky for the rest of the day.

I’ll take a few more weeks of that weather, please.

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Lately, Kara, Zoe, and Kaylee have been screaming to be let out of the kitten room earlier and earlier, which means I have to get up earlier and earlier to let them out. I decided Friday night to just leave them out and see how it went. I figured that if there was a lot of fighting or if they kept me up all night, I’d just go back to putting them in the room at night.

It’s been three nights, and so far so good. Zoe likes to curl up behind my knees and sleep for at least part of the night. Kara comes up and checks in with me three or four times a night – sniffs at my head, waits for me to pet her, and off she goes. I have no idea what Kaylee does with herself at night, maybe she sneaks downstairs and snuggles with Spanky, who knows? They did race around for a while in the middle of the night Saturday night, but not for too long, and they didn’t keep me awake so I’m going to continue letting them have 24/7 access to the rest of the house. After three nights of freedom, I have a feeling they’d object strongly to being locked up again, anyway.

I also stopped the morning Yummin’! Time! and am continuing with the evening Yummin’! Time! for the time being.

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Smilin’ Joe, in the back yard.

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Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: I think that “Proven to be beneficial to livers” should be Fred’s new tagline.
2005: Give me some of that, Barbara Bush, you ignoramus.
2004: No entry.
2003: Because believe it or not, it never once occurred to me that the Walton family was comprised of hillbillies.
2002: Look, I drink a gallon of water a day. I need to know that I can pee when I need to, so stop rolling your eyes at me.
2001: No entry.
2000: Can I tell you how much I loathe Bret Easton Ellis?

9-5-08

Guess who I got to see yesterday? The kittens formerly known as River and Inara (they’re Nate and Dora now). I was afraid that they’d run from me, since they’ve been in their new home for two weeks now. They were a little cautious at first, but then they let me pet and hold them, … Continue reading “9-5-08”

Guess who I got to see yesterday? The kittens formerly known as River and Inara (they’re Nate and Dora now).

I was afraid that they’d run from me, since they’ve been in their new home for two weeks now. They were a little cautious at first, but then they let me pet and hold them, and they ran around and played and just generally put on a show. They kill me with how cute they are – they’d run off and play, but if we walked into another room, they’d be “Wait! Where my Momma and that lady go?!” and come find us. Luckily, I didn’t squeeze them to death, but it was hard not to.

They are definitely very happy in their new home and with their new Momma and big sister (who pretends she cannot STAND them, but is clearly very entertained by them), it was so good to visit with them and their Momma!

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I’ve been told the bitey during petting thing is a dominance issue. Not sure how to cure it though. The strays that have tried that with me usually end up just not getting petted, or else immediately put down and left alone, which did seem to cure one of them of it. Another reason I think it’s a dominance issue is that the same cats that will bite at me don’t bite at my husband. Any cat behavior experts out there?

When a cat gets overwhelmed by petting, I stop them by blowing in their face. The majority of them HATE that and will stop immediately. Sometimes they’ll try biting again, but if blow a puff of air in their face, they’ll usually give up and either calm down or (most often) run off. But in any case, here’s an explanation for it:

OooOOooo! I have the answer to the bitey cat question. I was reading a book by Dr. Bruce Fogle called “The Cat’s Mind” and he talks about bitey cat. He says that cats like to be petted because over the years they’ve been bred so that their development has been sort of stunted in a permanent kittenhood state. Petting is a lot like what momma cat does when she licks her kittens so they really dig that. Except cats as a breed aren’t really social contact creatures (like dogs are) so it kinda freaks them out to have prolonged contact like a marathon petting session. So while the pettins feel really good, they also wig the cat out because lots o’ touching triggers their fight or flight response. Thus, the cat will hang around until he/she MUST LEAVE ARRRGH! bite and take off.

I’m adding that book to my wish list, it sounds like an interesting one!

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BTW… squirrels really like the suet cakes for birds… You need to get the butcher to save some of the hog fat so you could render into lard to make homemade suet cakes…

I wish I’d thought of that – though to be honest, that sounds like more work than I’m willing to do for some suet cakes. I have a feeder hanging on one of our trees, and I fill it with peanut butter suet balls, and those damn squirrels are always out there picking at the suet through the screen of the feeder. I’m pretty sure that the birds never actually get any of the suet balls! I do have a suet feeder on another tree (it’s bird-feeding central in our side yard!) that the squirrels don’t seem to care for, and there’s usually a woodpecker hanging upside-down eating the suet. I sure do hate the smell of suet, though – when I need to fill the suet holder, I put on gloves to handle the suet because if I don’t, my hands smell like old grease for the rest of the day and NOTHING gets that stink off!

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When do we get the house tour promised so, so long ago? Huh??

It’s on my mental “to-do” list, I swear it! I need to just stop worrying about whether the house is clean and picked up and just take the damn pictures already!

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My mom describes Asians as “Or-ree-EH-ul.”
My mom-in-law call vitamins “The Minrels.”
Instead of the word “themselves” my husband says, “theirselves.”
My daughter calls the killer whale, Shamu, “SHUH-moo”, and Spiderman, “SPIDER-mun.”

Once I was at a museum and my husband asked if we could do something (I can’t even remember what) and I responded, “Okey Dokey Pokey!” A woman spun around and strongly expressed her disgust that I said that, and to a grown man! It still makes me smile to think that I could make someone soooo affronted!

I am weirdly fascinated by “Or-ree-EH-ul.” I feel like I have a stuffed-up nose when I say it out loud. Heh.

And for god’s sake, of all the things to snarl at someone about! You’ve gotta assume that that woman was either having a bad day, or is one of those people who goes around waiting to be offended.

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I have a friend that says “basketti” for spaghetti and “vodika” for vodka. Too funny.

Danielle (the spud) and Brian always said “pasketti” when they were little and I do believe Debbie and I picked it up from them, at least for a little while.

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I’ve watched “America Unchained”, it was on tv here in the UK a few months ago and it’s pretty interesting. I enjoyed it a lot but then I’m a sucker for documentaries anyway. The guy who did it is a British comedian and he’s got a pretty dry sense of humour imop. Worth watching anyway.

I went to add it to my Netflix queue, and it’s not on Netflix! What’s that about? I thought EVERYTHING was on Netflix!

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Will the new pigs use the old wallow, since it’s full of the other pigs, uhh, stuff?

Yeah, as gross as it is, the new pigs are using the wallow. Fred scooped as much of the nasty green stuff off the top of the water as he could (I told him I think we need a pool skimmer to remove the green nastiness effectively!), but the new pigs don’t seem bothered by it at ALL. They don’t actually, uh, wallow in the wallow, they seem to just kind of get in long enough to get wet, then get back out again.

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I never heard that phrase (“said my piece and counted to three”) until I saw O Brother Where Art Thou? a few years back. My husband and I say it now.

and

“I’ve said my piece and counted to three.” Too funny. O’Brother is one of my all-time favorite movies. That line, and when Holly Hunter responds to George Clooney’s question, “Why are you telling our gals I was hit by a train?” and she says, “Lots of respectable people have been hit by trains.” Cracks me up.

O Brother is probably one of our favorite movies. There are so many lines in that movie that just crack me up. I was never a George Clooney fan – I mean, I didn’t hate him or anything, I was just mostly “Eh. George Clooney. Whatever.” – but he was just so perfect in the movie that I started to really like him. Every line in the movie is just a masterpiece.

I always half-hope when I say “I’ve said my piece and counted to three” (which I apparently messed up – it’s “I’ve spoken my piece and counted to three in the movie, according to IMDB) that Fred will counter with “She counted to three. Goddamnit! She counted to three. Sonofabitch!”, but he hasn’t. YET.

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Did we change from “who’s ready for the snackin’?!” to Yummin’ time?!

“Who ready for the snackin’?!” is for the permanent residents. “Who wants de yummins?!” is for the fosters. The fosters get their snack at a different time than the residents, so I don’t want to get the residents all riled up by yelling “Who ready for the snackin’!” when they won’t get anything.

I might need a life.

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So when you say the kittehs are not giving you the love, may I ask if it’s… um… they’re just not that into you, or is it that they aren’t that sort of kitteh?

It’s more that they just don’t like the snuggling and the being-kissed. They’ll give love, it’s just in their own way, usually consisting of slumping against me and allowing me to pet them, or (in Zoe’s case), climbing up under my shirt when I’m laying on the bed with them and smacking at my stomach. There’s love to be had, but when it involves snuggling or kissing, they’d rather get that kind of love from Kara. Brats.

My cats, on the other hand, will start purring if you kiss them on top of their head – especially Miz Poo, Mister Boogers, Tommy, and Sugarbutt. Joe Bob, too. And Spanky. Really, all of them except Stinkerbelle. I’ve never tried kissing Stinkerbelle on top of her head, because I strongly suspect that she’d respond by clawing my face off and then swishing off down the hallway to rub against Her Boyfriend Tommy.

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I cannot imagine the pecking order fights in your house. It’s bad enough in mine and I only have 3 cats. Of course, two believe they are top cat and hence the fighting. They tend to conduct their power wars during the middle of the night. I just love being awakened by a cat screaming and the thunder of running cats. I’ve actually had to put one cat in “time out” several times because he just don’t know when to stop. Five minutes in the bathroom by himself does wonders.

These days, the pecking order fights almost always include Joe Bob or Stinkerbelle, and both those cats have got some big, bad lung power. If you hear a hellcat scream from the other end of the house, you can rest assured that it’s one of those two. If we can identify the offending party (very often Mister Boogers, SHOCK) we’ll usually put him out in the back yard until he calms down a little.

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My comment is really for yesterday, but it being a holiday and all I treated it like a weekend day and didn’t read your blog. When I don’t go to work my routine’s all messed up. Anyway, the pic of new little pig standing in the trough should win some kind of prize. It’s wonderful and should be framed! Really!

Yeah, I have to agree that’s a pretty good picture. It’s like she’s posing in a beauty pageant, you know how they walk to the microphone, say their name and where they’re from, then walk over, pose, and then walk back to their “spot”? She’s totally posing before she walks back to her “spot”!

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How many chickens are there all together now? I seem to have lost track, but then there were some sitting on eggs. Wow! Quite the chicken farmers y’all are turning out to be.

I don’t know the exact number and neither does Fred, but it’s in the area of 50. We also have 24 eggs in the incubator (the eggs we bought in Tennessee from an Amish man), due to hatch in a couple of weeks, and Fred’s candled them the other day and thinks we’ll get between 16 and 18 chicks from that batch.

I think we might be chicken hoarders.

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That spider was S.C.A.R.Y!!!!!!!!!!!!! How big was it??????? Those eyes made me scream on the inside. YUCK.

I might be remembering wrong (that thing creeped me OUT), but I think, legs and all, it was about the size of my hand.

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You know, I remember that my Mom used to wash our shower curtain liners every so often, but the last time I tried to do that, the liner came out full of holes from the machine, and I had to go buy a new one. Do you have to use a gentle cycle?

Yeah, you definitely need to wash it on the gentle cycle!

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I wash my shower liners, too, but I hang them right back up in the shower from whence they came. Hanging them up outside to dry sounds like too much work!

I hate dripping water on the hardwood floors, which is the only reason I hang them up on the clothesline before I take them through the house to hang them back up in the bathroom.

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What’s with cats and their stainless steel brushes? My cats play with ours too. They insist on trying to bite it – bristles and all. I have to hide the brush in the tissue box on the end table so they don’t see it. I keep it on the end table so when they are sitting with me and they are all sheddy, I brush them. I swear I’m going to get the Furminator – but since we are ending the shedding season, I might put it on my wish list.

There’s got to be something about the pointy little ends of the cat brush that makes cats want to bite them, because every cat that I try to brush with that brush ends up grabbing and biting it.

I love the Furminator. LOVE IT. I just got it out the drawer the other day for the first time in ages, and went out to the back yard and brushed Tommy and Mister Boogers with it. There was SO much fur flying around the back yard when I was done, you could have easily made another cat with it! The Furminator is just AWESOME. I highly recommend it!

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Have you seen the Am. Funniest Home Video of the college boys and the praying mantis. One of the boys pretends he’s boxing it, the praying mantis takes his foolishness for about 10 seconds and then jumps at him. The shrieking and running that ensues is priceless. I’m sure the young man needed a change of underwear once the camera was off. Big bad frat boy 0 praying mantis 1.

That sounds very familiar – I’m sure we’ve seen it.

Recently there was an America’s Funniest Home Video of a couple of women and a very small child, and they saw a frog (or a toad) on the sidewalk, so they stopped to look at it, and then the toad jumped at the small child, all ::SPROIIIIIING!!!:: and landed on the child’s leg, and they all screamed and the woman holding the child’s hand picked him up by one hand, the abject TERROR on that child’s face made us laugh until we wheezed. We actually saved it on the DVR so we can watch it whenever we want. We also saved the episode of AFV that had a woman and a bird – a cockatoo, maybe? A big bird, anyway – and she’s patting the bed and saying “Jump, Kramer, jump! Jump, Kramer, jump!”, and the cockatoo considers for a moment and then starts jumping and it makes us laugh our asses off.

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When you know you want “pork” for dinner, do you let it thaw just that day? And do you thaw it in the frig or on the counter? My mom always used to thaw meat on the counter and it makes me insane. I’m OCD about my meat and how long it’s been “sitting out.” I’m always curious as to how other people take care of this instead of going to buy meat every time you want it, which is what I do. Which is NOT cost effective OR time effective, but I’m a freak.

It depends on when I know we’re going to want to have pork (or beef, or whatever). If I know the night before that we’re having, say, pork chops for dinner the next day, I take the pack out of the freezer, put it on a plate and leave it in the fridge to defrost. If I don’t know until that morning that we’re having pork chops for dinner, I leave the pack on the counter (on a plate) to thaw. If I forget to take the pork chops out of the freezer until mid-day, I’ll put the whole pack in cold water in the sink, and it usually only takes a few hours to thaw.

I know you’re not supposed to thaw meat at room temperature, but I’ve been doing it for 20 years and my mother always did it that way, and we’re still here to tell the tale, so I imagine I’ll keep on doing it when I need to!

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I noticed that last year’s entry talked about ants in the kitchen. I have little, black ants in my kitchen that I CANNOT get rid of. Did you ever find a solution? I’d love to hear it!

The only thing that worked for me was cleaning the damn counters off (with my favorite cleaning spray) and never ever leaving any kind of food out. Oddly enough, we didn’t get any ants this year, despite the fact that we keep a bucket on the counter in which we toss scraps and egg shells and things of that sort for the pigs, and I don’t think I’ve seen a single ant inside the house this year.

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Was suggie stretching or does he always sleep with his toes spread out?

He was stretching. I actually grabbed the camera because he was laying with his head hanging over the edge of the bookcase, but he heard me move and lifted his head up, looked at me, then put his head back down, stretched his toes, and went back to sleep.

I had to go squeeze him and kiss him on top of his head after I looked at that picture. I sure do love my Suggie.

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Yoga kitteh is surprised that you’d interrupt her during such a crucial exercise. Sideward Facing KittenDog with a Twist is a difficult position and requires concentration!

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What I love about this picture is how evil Tommy looks in the background and how completely unaware Mister Boogers looks. He has NO IDEA the evil that lurks behind him!

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Previously
2007: I wanted to take a BATH in the stuff, I wanted to stick it in my purse and take it home, I wanted to marry it.
2006: Mister Boogers seemed to disapprove of the land, and at one point the seller of the land started having a discussion with Mister Boogers, only instead of “Mister Boogers”, he referred to him as “Curtis.”
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: It’s a good day, indeed.
2002: FUCKING telemarketers.
2001: I turned to Fred and said “He looks all dilemmanated, doesn’t he?”
2000: Trip to Tennessee.

9/4/08

The spud started college on Tuesday. She gave her first class – Psychology – two thumbs up. So far she seems to be enjoying college – hopefully she won’t have too many problems balancing school and work. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + … Continue reading “9/4/08”

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We’re on the third disc of Heroes Season 2, and I have got to ask – does anything else want to go on a shooting rampage every time Niki comes on the screen? Jesus god in heaven I CANNOT STAND HER. I loathe her as Niki, but she’s tolerable as Jessica. It’s amazing, the difference. I suppose that’s the sign of a good actress.

Also annoying me, Kristen Bell as Elle and the way she PAWS every man she’s near. GOD PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.

Speaking of TV, at someone’s – several someones’, actually – suggestion, I started taping and watching Chelsea Lately. She’s pretty damn funny, and I’ve added her to my regular rotation.

I seem to recall reading a book by her a few years ago – a check on Amazon reminds me that it was My Horizontal Life – and I enjoyed it, so I don’t know why it never occurred to me that I’d enjoy her show, too.

So thanks, y’all who recommended her!

Also speaking of TV, I got almost 3/4 of the way through Season 4 of The L Word, and I suddenly realized that I didn’t give a shit what happened to anyone on the show – didn’t care about Jenny, didn’t give a shit about Max, was bored to fucking death by Marlee Matlin, dreaded sitting down and watching the rest of the show, so I sent the last discs back to Netflix and have decided that I’m done with The L Word.

Unless someone tells me that Season 5 is worth watching, that is.

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My cleaning streak lasted through most of yesterday morning. I pulled down the shower curtains in the downstairs bathroom and tossed them in the washing machine (did you know that you can wash shower curtains? The vinyl ones I mean (or whatever environment-destroying material they’re made out of), not the cloth ones (which are ridiculous, because you get a cloth curtain for your shower, but you still have to buy a liner to go with it, what’s the point?). The shower curtains in the downstairs bathroom (there are two shower curtains, because the rod around the tub is super-long – it covers the side and end of the tub, not just one side) have been there for a year and a half. I wash them every three months or so, use laundry detergent, wash them on warm, use vinegar in the rinse cycle, hang them on the line to dry (so I don’t drip water all the way through the house), and they’re perfectly good as new.)

I cleaned both the downstairs bathrooms, which desperately needed it. I vacuumed the entire house, cleaned all the floors, went around with a wet rag and wiped down all the windowsills, and dusted. I ate lunch and thought about cleaning the inside of all the windows and then wiping down the baseboards, but then I said “Fuck this” and went and watched TV ’til Fred got home.

That’s the problem with feeling the urge to clean. You never know how long it’s going to last!

Last week, after putting it off FOREVER, I finally hauled my ass to Lowe’s and bought some bins so that I could rearrange the big upright freezer in the laundry room. It was stuffed full of vegetables (I did WAY less canning this year than last, preferring to freeze almost everything) and every time I reached in there to pull something out or put something in, piles of frozen vegetables would attempt escape.

Not surprisingly, once I got it organized, there’s a lot more room in there!

(To be honest, I took all the tomatoes and tomato puree out to make room for the pork Fred would be picking up at the processor’s; that freed up a LOT of room. It should be mostly thawed by tomorrow morning, and I’m going to cook it all down to tomato sauce and can it.)

Before:

After:

And because I KNOW you want to know what’s in the freezer. Top shelf: (left bin) Whole, frozen okra. (Right bin) Dehydrated eggplant slices. Second shelf: (Left, behind the blue-topped containers) Summer squash, cut up and boiled and mashed (for making baked squash). In the blue-topped containers: Various leftovers, for Fred to take to work for lunch. (Right) Sliced okra in 1/2 cup servings. Third shelf: Corn on the cob, in both bins. Plus a loaf of bread that’s been in there forever. Fourth shelf: Empty, waiting for pork. First drawer: Diced summer squash, eggplant, and zucchini, waiting to be stir-fried into vegetable medley (with dehydrated cherry tomatoes and sliced okra). Bottom drawer: Nothing but green beans, baby. Well, except for that one pack of cooked and mashed summer squash. On the door, from the top and going down: dehydrated cherry tomatoes, black-eyed peas, shredded zucchini, chopped summer squash and okra.

The pork that we’re keeping (we gave a bunch to Fred’s mom and stepfather, and sold about 70 pounds to someone who buys eggs from us regularly – and who’s buying half of one of our current pigs) actually fits (just barely) on that formerly-empty shelf (I took the “after” freezer pic before the pork arrived on the Fred Express yesterday).

So as to not traumatize any of you delicate folks, if you’d like to see what Big Pig, processed and packaged, looks like you can go check out the pictures in Fred’s entry.

Or you can surf on over to Flickr and see the picture I like to call “The pork and the dork.”

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Previously
2007: I can’t help it if giant forks make me happy.
2006: Does it make me strange that I can handle the thought of field mice in the house, but the idea of ants in the house just REALLY infuriates me?
2005: No entry.
2004: My Gram.
2003: If I had a brain I’d be dangerous.
2002: What I’ve been doing.
2001: I’m wise to your stalker ways, Margaret!
2000: No entry.

9-3-08

Quick entry, mostly pictures. I’m on a cleaning spree this week, for some reason, and I want to go with it. When the cleaning bug strikes, you don’t ask questions! Maxi hangs out under Fred’s truck and keeps an eye on the chickens. The back part of the chicken yard (the chicken yard is shaped … Continue reading “9-3-08”

Quick entry, mostly pictures. I’m on a cleaning spree this week, for some reason, and I want to go with it. When the cleaning bug strikes, you don’t ask questions!

Maxi hangs out under Fred’s truck and keeps an eye on the chickens.

The back part of the chicken yard (the chicken yard is shaped like an L and wraps around two sides of our back yard). The mother chickens like to hang out in this part of the yard in the afternoon. This is where the pond used to be, the one we had filled in last year.

That mass of greenery is the Sungold tomato plant that popped up (in what used to be the chicken yard area of the yard). I’ve never seen a happier tomato plant, but we did nothing to keep it contained or pruned back, and it’s kind of taking over. Tommy and Sugarbutt like to hang out under there.

One of our compost piles. A green bean plant popped up, along with a couple of tomato plants. Instead of turning over the pile we left the plants as they are, to see what happens. Have you ever seen a happier bean plant?

Charlie (or George, I can’t tell which is which without seeing their feet) takes a dust bath.

Fred cut down a small tree not long after we bought the house, and this greenery started growing. We never cut it back, and the chickens have taken to hang out under there (and roosting on the lower branches), so I suppose it’ll stay that way.

The back of the chicken yard (where the pond was), from the other side. Lots of Mommas and babies.

Buff Momma and her three babies. I love the color selection, here.

This spider was weaving her web outside Fred’s workshop. Is she not the biggest, scariest spider EVER? The way the flash glinted off her EYES gives me the willies.

Fred cut a tree down (a couple of trees, actually) in the back yard and this stuff started growing. I was going to cut it back, but the cats adore hanging out there (Tommy and Joe, especially), so I’m going to leave it ’til later this Fall. Or forever. Whichever.

In this trash can, I had my no-waste bird seed mix. The pantry moths invaded and made a big nasty mess of it (my own fault for not being more diligent about keeping the can tightly covered, I’m sure). When the last four inches of bird seed was nothing but a solid mess of NASTY, I finally dumped it out in the chicken yard (the chickens were very appreciative!) and cleaned the trash can out. I left it in the back yard to dry, and of course Miz Poo claimed it as her own. (Unlike the greenery, the trash can won’t be staying!)

Do you see what those monsters have done to the cat tree in the foster room? I’ve ordered some Brazilian sisal rope off eBay, and I’ll be rewinding the rope around that one leg, and replacing what they’ve torn off. Hopefully I can salvage another year or so out of this tree!

Praying Mantis, next to the side door. I wanted to get closer, to get a really good picture, but I was afraid that it would fly at my head and pop my eyes out and eat them like grapes, so I kept my distance and used the zoom. Praying Mantii scare me more than a little.

Kitteh aerobics!

The quintessential Zoe look.

“‘Sup?”

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Previously
2007: Bob Goodlatte fights the good fight against his opponent Joan Badespresso.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: “She looks… she looks.. she looks like a PIRATE!” he gasped. I started giggling.
2003: I guess Spike TV really IS television for men.
2002: When married characters are that cruel to each other, all you can think is, “Why the hell are they married if they hate each other so much?”
2001: Gatlinburg pictures!
2000: No entry.

9-2-08

New logo for September, thank you to Christine, who heeded my cry for a new one! You rock, Christine! ++++++++++++++++++++ icanhascheezburger Good god did this picture make me laugh ’til I cried last night at 11:30 when I was sitting in front of the computer in an internet daze. It’s the crazy “WTF? I … Continue reading “9-2-08”

New logo for September, thank you to Christine, who heeded my cry for a new one!

You rock, Christine!

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icanhascheezburger
Good god did this picture make me laugh ’til I cried last night at 11:30 when I was sitting in front of the computer in an internet daze. It’s the crazy “WTF? I was sound asleep and I wake up and this thing is MOVING?!” eyes on that cat that really get to me.

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Fred worked his butt off yesterday, pulling up tomato plants from the garden. They were pretty well played out – any ripe tomatoes left were splitting open or had holes from bugs in them. Again this year, despite the fact that he planted twice as many plants as last year, we didn’t get nearly as many tomatoes as I’d wanted.

We’re moving the garden out toward the back forty next year – planning to, anyway – and maybe the tomatoes will be happier out there.

I did a lot of puttering around the house, did my Monday morning chores*, then did laundry, roasted some cherry tomatoes, made a batch of cookies for the pigs, put the laundry away.

Sugarbutt’s been especially loving lately, climbing between me and the keyboard and falling asleep. He did that at one point yesterday and proceeded to spend the next half hour farting on me.

FARTING on me.

No one deserves to live that way, people. After half an hour of it, I decided I’d had enough and put him on the floor. He gave me the big sad eyes before he wandered off to fart elsewhere.

Bastard.

We had an early dinner, grilling out chicken and potato salad and coleslaw, and then didn’t do much for the rest of the evening.

I call it an excellent Labor Day.

*Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday I:

(1) Empty, clean, and refill the two hummingbird feeders on the front porch and the one on the door off the computer room
(2) Scrub out and refill the two water bowls on the front porch
(3) Water all the plants on the front porch
(4) Refill the food bowl on the front porch
(5) Scrub out and refill the water bowl on the back porch
(6) Scrub out and refill the water bowl in the chicken yard, and the two waterers, if needed
(7) Refill the bird feeders, if they need it

I had to make it so that those chores got done on certain days of the week, because if I wait until they NEED to be done, I’ll always put it off ’til another day. This way, they’re scheduled to be done on certain days, and that when they get done! They might get done on days other than M-W-F, but they always get done on those three days.

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Friday, after the tray of habaneros I’d put in the dehydrator were completely dehydrated, I told Fred that I wanted to go ahead and grind them up before bed so I wouldn’t have to do it Saturday morning. First, I did the cayenne peppers, and then I dumped the habaneros in the blender, and then I had to pee, so he offered to take care of the habaneros.

He did while I ran to the bathroom, and from the other end of the house I could hear him start coughing. The instant I set foot back in the kitchen, I started coughing, too. For the next half hour, it sounded like a TB ward in our house as we tried to expel from our lungs the fine powder we’d stupidly breathed in.

But the habaneros, they are powdered. I think Fred’s probably got a freakin’ lifetime supply of the stuff, because I think that stuff is best used sparingly.

Over the weekend, he pulled up the rest of the habanero plants. I put the habaneros we had in the refrigerator into baggies, to put in the freezer with the other habaneros so Fred can use them whenever he gets around to making all that habanero jam he wants to make. We now have over 500 habaneros in baggies in the freezer.

That’s a LOT of habanero jam someone’s gonna be making, and I’m glad it’s not going to be ME.

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New recipes you might want to try! I’ve been meaning to post these recipes for the past few weeks, and am just now getting around to it.

Cooking Light Blueberry Coffee Cake. I made a double batch of this stuff a few weeks ago, cut it into individual servings, wrapped each in foil, and froze it. Every now and then, I take out a piece, let it thaw out, and eat it. Hey, it’s got a ton of blueberries in it. It’s so good for me it practically has negative calories, right? (Okay, maybe not.)

88 Calorie Brownies. I found this recipe on Jenna Fischer’s MySpace and have been referring to them as Jenna Brownies, but apparently they originally came from Discovery Health. In any case, they’re delicious and weirdly filling. You might want to eat more than one, but don’t or you’ll be reeling around whining about how FULL you are. I swear it! Also, I cut our brownies into 9 servings instead of 12, so in that case they’d be 117.33333 calorie brownies.

Roasted Cherry Tomatoes over Pasta. I am sad that I discovered this at the end of summer instead of the beginning! I made it twice, once with penne and once with angel hair. Both times, it was FABULOUS. We had enough cherry tomatoes over the weekend to make another batch, but it didn’t fit in our meal plans, so I roasted the tomatoes yesterday, mixed the tomatoes, basil, and olives, and froze them until we’re ready to eat them. Hopefully once they’re thawed, heated, and tossed over pasta, they’ll still be fabulous!

Crooked Acres Easy Potato Salad. (I took a picture, but it’s hard to get a flattering picture of potato salad, believe me.) Easy and tasty. I used some of the sweet pickle relish I canned last year and it was really good.

Speaking of food, I believe I mentioned I was going to make a batch of the Ball Blue Book Boston Baked Beans, substituting maple syrup for the molasses, and see if they were as good as the Bush’s Baked Beans.

Last week we had hot dog and bean casserole made with the beans I canned, and I can say that the Ball Blue Book Boston Baked Beans with maple syrup instead of molasses? Really good, and indeed very close to the Bush’s. I highly recommend it! The Ball Blue Book recipe, here.

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Laundress Kitteh despairs at the task before her. (Is it just me or is Zoe looking at my bras all JUDGMENTALLY, like ‘DAMN, woman has some hooters!”?)

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Smackdown at the Computer Room Corral.

Poor Joe Bob. He just wants to be everyone’s friend, but they’re still working out the pecking order (everyone but Joe thinks that Joe belongs at the bottom of said pecking order, since he’s the new guy. Joe does not agree. Joe thinks Stinkerbelle belongs there. Stinkerbelle does not agree.)

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Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: My god, has Bill O’Reilly always been such a pontificating blowhard?
2004: (No, he’s not going to remove her eye. Thank god.)
2003: The first time I did actually inhale was the last time I ever put a cigarette to my mouth.
2002: “What’s “porn”, Mama?” she would ask.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

9/1/08

I am completely out of new logos! I’ll leave it with the current one for now. Anyone out there feeling creative? Help a sister out! I needs logos! Thanks, Christine!!!! +++++++++++++++++++ Happy Labor Day, Americans and Canadians! Happy Monday to the rest of you. We figured it would take all weekend to find little … Continue reading “9/1/08”

~~I am completely out of new logos! I’ll leave it with the current one for now. Anyone out there feeling creative? Help a sister out! I needs logos!~~

Thanks, Christine!!!!

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Happy Labor Day, Americans and Canadians!

Happy Monday to the rest of you.

We figured it would take all weekend to find little pigs – if we were able to find any at all – but the first place we looked (Dog Days Flea Market in Tennessee) had them. We ended up with girls this time around, and since one’s bigger than the other, we’re calling them “Big Pig” and “Little Pig.” Hey, if it ain’t broke, right?

These are the same kind of pigs as the last ones – Yorkshires – but they’re thinner and longer than the other ones were. They’re a lot friendlier than the other ones were at first, too, I don’t know if that’s because these were better treated in their initial home or because they’re girls, or what.

Big Pig loves – LOVES! – tomatoes, but has no use for donuts (they’re the cheap and crappy donuts, to be fair. Perhaps she requires a fancier donut?). She also ate the hell out of a miniature pecan pie Saturday night.

Little Pig loves the cheap and crappy donuts and will eat tomatoes but they’re not her favorite.

Neither of them was interested in celery (can’t say as I blame them) or raw eggplant (ditto). They’re eating the hell out of the grass in their yard, though. They “talk” to each other a lot, always grunting back and forth, and they stick together most of the time, too.

It was a lonnnnnnnnng week without pigs, and it’s really nice to have some out there again, ready and willing to eat (most) kitchen scraps and look cute and entertain us.

I don’t know how they feel about piggerdoodles, but I’ll be making a batch later today, so we’ll see!

In the almost-week of disuse, the wallow got even nastier. I have nightmares about falling in this thing, have I mentioned?

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For the record, despite the fact that Fred’s been pushing for it for at least the last couple of months? We are NOT breeding pigs. Two pigs in that pig yard is the perfect number, I never smell the pig stink from the house (in fact, you have to get pretty close to the pig yard to smell them), and I have no desire to stress out over baby pigs.

NO THANK YOU.

Don’t be all “Oh suuuuuuure you won’t breed pigs, I bet this time next year you’ll have a whole OPERATION going!”, because you’ll note that despite Fred’s often-repeated desire to own goats, there’s not a goat to be seen anywhere on Crooked Acres.

No goats, no pig breeding.

I’ve said my piece and counted to three.

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Kara seems to be getting more and more interested in the outdoors. She likes to sniff around the back door, and yesterday I had to push her back with my foot when she rushed the side door. If she ever gets to the point where she actually goes outside through the cat door, I’ll put a collar on her and let her hang out in the great outdoors. She seems leery of the cat door, though, so maybe she’ll remain inside. Despite having been allowed to come inside for the past year and a half, Newt still hasn’t gotten the hang of the cat door, so apparently it doesn’t come naturally to all cats.

(Maxi, on the other hand, goes in and out the cat door all the time.)

Zoe and Kaylee spend the majority of their time upstairs. I visit with them several times a day, and sometimes they come downstairs and look around (more Zoe than Kaylee), but they prefer to hang out on my bed.

When I go upstairs and they’re sleeping on my bed, I greet them and then lay down with them, and they look at me like I’m a great big interloper and WHY am I harassing them?

They don’t love me the way I love them, the little brats. They’ll tolerate my holding them for a few minutes at a time, but they don’t seek me out and ask to be petted.

Unless it’s Yummin’! Time!, of course. Yes, I’m still giving them morning and evening snacks consisting of a dab of chicken baby food and a dab of canned kitten food. They’re spoiled rotten and they LOVE ME when it’s Yummin’! Time! and I have a plate full of Yummin’!, but the rest of the time I’m just a great big slobbering goober who insists on PETTING them and KISSING them and wanting to snuggle them.

I know. I’m an unreasonable monster.

Kara disapproves of this “snuggling” nonsense.

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I’m thinking we should have named him Teddy instead of Tommy. He looks like a great big stuffed teddy bear.

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Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: The truth is, Fred has been excitedly pricing tractors every minute of every day since our offer on the house was accepted.
2005: Ahhhhh, smell that fresh, crisp autumn air! Why, it’s down to 90 degrees today. I almost need a sweater.
2004: She turned 86 last Thursday. She’s the only grandparent I’ve ever really known.
2003: (and you KNOW he insisted on it, was all temper tantrumy, screaming and beating his fists on the floor, wailing “ACTOR AND NOVELIST! ACTOR AND NOVELIST!”)
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.