So, the old design is back. I messed with that damn banner for ages and ages, and could NOT get it to do what I wanted to do, and I DREAMED about it Saturday night, so then I said “Self, it’s either the banner looking good OR the threaded comments, decide now and shut up!” and so I decided the banner’s going to look good (please tell me y’all can see all of it now!) and the threaded comments have gone away.
I thought those threaded comments were pretty freakin’ cool. Ah well. I guess we’ll just have to muddle through – TOGETHER WE CAN PERSEVERE!
We had a pretty quiet and boring weekend. It rained quite a bit on Saturday, and there wasn’t much Fred could do outside anyway because it was still wet and soggy from the night before, so we hung around the house, moaned about how bored we were, and ended up taking a couple of naps, one around 11 and the other around 3.
Fred told me that he’d spotted something interesting in the ditch that, basically, divides the front part of our property from the back forty. So I grabbed the camera, and we went out to see if we could spot what he’d seen. We did, briefly…
The ditch. To the right is the front part of our property, to the left the back forty.
Crawdads! Unfortunately there were only one or two of them and they weren’t anywhere near eatin’ size, or I would have happily made some jambalaya for dinner. Crawdads, for those of you who haven’t seen them before (and can’t tell from my pictures) look like little bitty lobsters.
Pollywog!
“Whatcha doin’ out there, and where’s my snack?”
We decided we were in the mood for BBQ at lunchtime, so we went out and got some.
The sign at the BBQ place cracked us both up, and Fred threatened to ask if they could give us some BBQ that was cooked NOT to USDA specs.
We hung around the house all afternoon moaning about how bored we were, took a nap, and then I made meatballs so that we could have meatball subs for dinner. We’d been planning to use the rolls I made last weekend, but when Fred opened the bag to get a roll, he announced that they had started to mold. I need to remember to store my homemade bread in the refrigerator, damnit, ’cause homemade bread doesn’t last nearly as long as the stuff you buy in the stores due to the lack of preservatives.
Luckily, we had hamburger buns left over from our package of BBQ, so we used those. We talked about making meatball subs with spaghetti sauce, but in the end I just cut a couple of meatballs in half, put them on the hamburger bun bottom, put a thin slice of horseradish cheddar on top of that, and it was perfection.
Usually when we’re coming up on a weekend, I look through the always-growing pile of recipes I’ve printed out and pick something or a couple of somethings to bake. I rarely let Fred have any input on what I’m making, but last Thursday I was feeling uninspired and not like I wanted to look through my recipes, so I asked if he had any requests. He’s been having a real hankering for lemon lately, so he asked for maybe a lemon cake or perhaps some kind of lemon pie.
I googled around and came up with a recipe for lemon cake and one for lemon squares (with a graham cracker crust), and in the end I made the lemon squares and am saving the lemon cake recipe for the future.
The lemon squares were FABULOUS. They were a huge hit with Fred, and I liked them quite a bit. My only mistake was in over-baking them by a few minutes, so they were a little chewy. Next time I make them, I’ll start checking them earlier so they won’t get overbaked.
Sunday morning, I slept in ’til 7 (SLACKER), then accompanied Fred on his errands to Lowe’s and Tractor Supply. When we got home, Fred pulled into the driveway, and I looked over to my right and said “Oh my holy Jesus god in heaven!”
“What?” Fred said, wide-eyed.
“There’s an ARMADILLO!” I said.
“Where??” he said.
“Right there! It’s dead!”
There it was, large as life, laying there ON IT’S BACK, dead as a doornail.
We got out of the truck and approached it. Fred poked it to make sure it was dead, but since it had organs visible we were pretty confident that it was.
“Joe Bob!” I yelled at Joe Bob, who was sitting on the side stoop smiling the way he always does. “Did you kill the armadillo?!”
Joe Bob just kept smiling.
Fred came to the conclusion that the armadillo had been dead for a few days and we decided that perhaps a dog had dragged it onto the property (while we were gone) before George and Gracie’s barking scared it off.
“You think I should put it in a freezer bag and stick it in the freezer ’til trash day?” Fred asked. Last summer something killed an armadillo just over the church property line, and the guy who mows the church property was kind enough to mow around it, so for half the summer we were treated to the particularly nasty stank of rotting armadillo. In the hottest heat of an Alabama summer, the smell of that rotting armadillo was so thick you could taste it. (In retrospect, I think I should have insisted that Fred sneak over there and bury the goddamn thing.)
Gah.
Fred ended up dragging it to the very back of the back forty and tossing it into the undergrowth back there. Hopefully something will come along and eat it – but at least if it starts rotting, it’ll be far enough away from the house that I won’t have to smell it every time I leave the house.
And, yeah. I took a picture, but I’m not sharing it ’cause it’s gross. It’s a DEAD ARMADILLO, and it’s got internal organs showing, and it’s gross. Trust me, you don’t need to see that and I’m not sure why I took the picture anyway.
The last thing Fred said before he dragged the damn thing off to the back forty, despite the fact that we’ve probably seen 10 dead armadillos by the side of the road in the last month or so, was “I didn’t think armadillos came this far north!”
Sunday afternoon Miss Beulah jumped up on my desk. She brought a bit of a stank with her, so I lifted up her tail to check her nether regions (she gets no respect) and said “Whew! Did you just poop?”
And Fred said, sounding utterly offended, “Me?!”
HA.
Beulah has finally, FINALLY hit two pounds. I’ll be calling in a little while to make her an appointment to be spayed later this week. And then, assuming there’s space at the pet store, she and Bessie will be going off to be adopted!
Those of you who mentioned that Beulah’s got big ears and maybe she’ll end up being a big cat after all – who knows? Sugarbutt was the runt of his litter, and you can’t by any stretch of the imagination call him a little cat.
And those of you who wanted to know what Fred thinks of Beulah now that she’s grown up a bit? He still says she’s ugly. But I’m pretty sure he’s only saying it because he knows it’s RUDE and OFFENSIVE. She’s clearly grown into a gorgeous little thing, and I’ll be surprised if I even get her into the cage at the pet store before there’s a riot of people wanting to adopt her.
Doesn’t she look evil?
“I shall take over the worrrrrrrrrrrrld!”
Tellin’ secrets.
Bath time!
Kinda looks like she’s pouting and he’s asking her what’s wrong, doesn’t it?
Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: Ten.
2006: I walked over to them and threw Cheerios at them, and they looked at me as if I were mentally disturbed.
2005: Which he proved by dancing lightly about the room once I’d said we should just stay home.
2004: He asked questions, he really listened to the answers, and he was just really a nice guy.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: She’s obviously picked up her mother’s bad attitude.
2000: My day in pictures.