Month: November 2009

FOAM 4: Food: New jam flavors.
Outside: Leaves are turning – and falling!
Abstract(ish): Okra pods, drying over the fireplace.
Myself: Sitting in the recliner in my room, being ignored by the kittens. Brats.

I understand and appreciate y’all wanting to buy chicken from us (both frozen and canned), but the word on high from Fred is: no. We’d have to charge too much to make it worth our while (and you might be willing to pay a lot, but we’re not willing to charge a lot, thus the conundrum), and in the end, the chickens are really worth more to us as food rather than an income source, since each chicken provides us with two or more meals.

I’ll let you know if that changes.

Our next door neighbor has a son in his (I think) 20s. Maybe early 30s. He doesn’t always live with her, he seems to show up around the beginning of summer and stay until late fall, from what I can tell. He seems to be the bored sort, and when he’s bored, he comes up with things to do. For a while, he was building small fires (even asked Fred if it was okay to take stuff off our burn pile to get his fires going). Occasionally, he goes into their shed and there’s the sound of hammer hitting something for a while (I have no idea what he’s building, if anything. Maybe he’s just working off his frustrations). Lately, he’s been taking up fishing.

In the back yard.

I guess, strictly speaking, he’s practicing fishing in the back yard. He stands out there with his fishing pole and he casts. Then he reels his line back in, and casts again.

(“He might be casting a weight,” Fred tells me. I’m not sure that really means anything; Fred might be throwing words together to mock my lack of knowledge of fishing. He doesn’t know that I’m a fishing aficionado from way back. Why, when I was a kid, I spent many an afternoon catching and releasing the same damn catfish from Malabeam Lake with my Dad.)

Last year’s attempt to stave off the boredom was hitting golf balls into our garden (which had been put to bed for the winter before this began) and tromping through the garden to retrieve his ball. If you’ve ever had a dog who wasn’t allowed in the living room (RIP Taffy!), you know that they’ll occasionally do something like “accidentally” drop a ball so that it rolls into forbidden territory, and then they prance after it, all “What? It’s my ball. I know I’m not allowed in here, but my ball! I can’t allow it to remain in here!” Same idea.

Recently, Fred happened to see the neighbor’s son inching closer and closer to our property line, casting further and further onto our property. We talked about going over and saying something, but it seems childish to be all “Could you not cast your FISHING LINE into our garden, please?” when Maxi and Newt tromp across their back yard all the damn time and they haven’t complained.

The other night, Fred said “I should go out there at night and put a “NO FISHING” sign in the middle of the garden.”

We laughed ourselves stupid at the idea.

Yesterday afternoon I emailed Fred to tell him that the guy had started mowing the lawn and wondered whether he’d get the front and back lawn done in the same day (he rarely does; and yes, we might need to get a life). Fred emailed me back and said:

It probably depends on whether or not the grassfish are biting.

And I laughed myself stupid again.

This is what big-time partiers Fred and I are: Saturday we left the house after dark for the first time in forever, as I believe I mentioned in yesterday’s entry. We went to get pig feed, and then headed for the movie store. Traffic in Closeville was heavier than we’d expected, and it made Fred crazy because he’s pretty sure that no one else should ever be on the road when he wants to go somewhere – they should all just pull over and let him through.

“You just don’t expect Closeville to have this much traffic on a Saturday night,” he said.

“No kidding,” I said. “There are no bars around here, where the hell are they all going?”

“Probably Huntsville,” he said. “But there are a few bars here. There’s that one in Applebee’s, and the other one in that restaurant we always think about going to, but never have.”

I had to ponder for several long moments before I came out with it “I thought we’re in a dry county?”

“No,” he said. “This is a wet county; [other nearby county] is dry, I think, but Nearville (which is in that county) is wet.”

“Are you sure we’re not in a dry county?”

“We had this discussion like a year ago,” he said. “Doesn’t Publix sell wine and beer?”

“I have no idea at all. I never noticed.”

“Yeah, I looked in the other grocery store before Publix opened. They were selling wine and beer.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I said. Obviously, alcohol isn’t a big part of our lives, if we (I) don’t even know whether we live in a county where you can buy it.

I haven’t had any kind of alcohol since before I had weight loss surgery, which is almost four years ago. Before that, I don’t know when I had any alcohol – maybe a strawberry daiquiri when I was in Maine the year or two previous. I actually bought strawberry daiquiri mix and whatever the hell alcohol goes into daiquiris (vodka? rum? It’s not gin, I know that much. Is it?) a year or so ago, thinking it would be fun to mix up a batch and drink them one Saturday night. Still haven’t done it.

I’m curious to know what the effect alcohol would have on me, since the weight loss surgery (oftentimes it hits post-op patients harder); I was a lightweight to begin with, I’m wondering if all it’d take is a couple of sips before the room was spinning.

I guess I’m not curious enough to actually give it a try, at least not yet.

Ah, well – one of these days!

Gus is famous! He was on The Daily Kitten yesterday!

The Wonkas are really and truly enjoying their extra space. They’re very good in the mornings – they hear me get up, but it’s not until it’s light out and they hear me coming up the stairs with their snack that they start howling at the door. I open the door, put down their plates, and scoop litter boxes. They eat, then they come over for a snuggle, and then they start racing around.

It was seriously cute, the first day I opened the door so they could have the run of the bathroom and my bedroom. I opened the door, and then sat on the floor of my room. They came out slowly, slinking along the way cats do when they’re not sure what’s going on, and then it’s like Gus realized he had room to really RUN, and he reared up on his back legs and ran forward five or six steps.

It was like he was popping a wheelie!

(Too bad I didn’t have the camera with me.)

Most days, I go up and give them their snack, visit once or twice during the morning, then go up after lunch to lay down on the bed with them and perhaps (usually!) take a short nap. They love to pile on and around me (Mike always claims the spot closest to my face so he can demand kisses), and we all snooze together.

There’s just nothing that makes a nap better than having a pile of purring kittens around you. I highly recommend it!

The Cookie weaning is continuing. Most of the Cookies are doing well – they understand that the plate of food IS their food, and they generally don’t demand bottles. I’ve seen most of them lapping water out of the water bowl, which makes me happy.

Milano/ Pink is proving to be a tough nut to crack, though. She’d really rather have her bottle, thank you. I’ll let HER tell you about that.

“Oh, really. REALLY. You’re under the impression that a couple of plates of canned cat food and a bowl of formula makes a meal, no bottle is required? Boy, I have news for YOU. I am uninterested in the canned cat food, and I know you’ve seen me eat crunchy food in the past, but now? Nah. Not interested. Pardon me while I put myself to bed on the heating pad. I’m going to curl up in a miserable ball of misery, and when you come back in a little while to check on us and hang out and give out pettings, I’m going to just stay here. Sad. Miserable. Starving to death. I’ll ignore you SO thoroughly that, by 4 pm, you’ll be demanding Fred hold me while you make me a bottle. And I will drink that bottle down. SUCKER. I’ll take my next bottle WHENEVER I PLEASE, thank you. Oh, and the best part? You’ll discover, next time you weigh me, that I’ve packed on another 2 1/2 ounces. Clearly I’m starving. Did I mention you’re a SUCKER?”

All five! Left to right: TimTam (Blue), Milano (Pink), Lorna Doone (Orange), Keebler, and of course Hydrox.

I don’t even have to look at the paws of that kitten on the right to know it’s TimTam. She has such a sweet, open face I know her immediately! (She’s the only one of the five who doesn’t have white paws.)

Joe Bob has such a high-pitched, creepy meow. He’s a sweet boy, but that meow can raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

Previously
2008: The pigs gave it two (four?) hooves up.
2007: Write about your day!
2006: I guess you can teach an old Fred new tricks.
2005: Can’t a girl be a dumbass without the whole world going into an uproar about it?
2004: For once, he had no good comeback.
2003: “Oh yeah. I hate this feeling. I should have just had a Diet Coke.”
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.
1999: Can you tell this irks me?

The talented and adorable Betsy recently started this picture project she calls “Project FOAM“, and after some dithering on my part and a nudge from Nance, I finally got my butt in gear and joined in.

Each day, you take four pictures, one of Food, one of Outside, one an Abstract, and one of Myself (only, take a picture of YOURself, okay? I don’t have time to get gussied up in case you stalker types are planning to stop by and snap pictures of me looking like an idiot). Post them to Flickr, and add them to the FOAM group. Easy!

Come on, you know you wanna. Join us!

Here are mine so far:

FOAM 1: Food: Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup (they were on sale!)
Outside: Under the bird feeder (seeds fell on the ground and sprouted; that’s not grass)
Abstract: Some people call it “blurry”, I call it abstract! Heh.
Myself: Me and one of the Cookies. I spend far too much time with kittens perched on my shoulders.

FOAM 2: Food: Mmmmm, Bugles (I swear every food picture won’t be of packaged foods!)
Outside: The weather has been all sunny and blue skies this week.
Abstract: Hummingbird feeder that desperately needs to be taken down and cleaned and stored for the winter.
Myself: All gussied up (HA!) for Walmart.

Food: Shrimp (before cooking).
Outside: The thing growing between the garage and workshop. Someone told me what it was; I don’t remember.
Abstract: Cat bed.
Myself: Kitten on my shoulder, sniffing my eyeball.

We actually left the house after dark on Saturday AND I DO NOT KNOW HOW THE EARTH REMAINED ON ITS AXIS. We were very low on pig food, so we ran up to get a bag of it at Tractor Supply, and then we stopped at the movie store on the way home and rented The Proposal.

(Because we’ve been watching so little TV lately, I changed our Netflix plan down to the lowest level, where you get two movies per month. When we go back to watching more TV (whenever that might be), I’ll change it back again. ‘Til then, that generally means when we feel like watching TV and have already watched V (liked it), Modern Family (LOVE it), How I Met Your Mother, and Two and a Half Men, we’re shit out of luck because there’s nothing left on the DVR.)

We watched The Proposal, and although there was nothing unpredictable about the movie, I like Sandra Bullock a lot, and Ryan Reynolds is really fucking funny. How come no one ever told me how damn funny he is? When he’s standing in the office after Sandra Bullock told her boss that they’re getting married, the look on his face had us howling.

Fred is conflicted, and I have to say that I am, too. We have too goddamn many chickens, we really do. I mean, that doesn’t stop us from sticking eggs under hens when they go broody so we end up with MORE chickens, but still. We have too goddamn many chickens.

He processed 15 chickens a few weeks ago, and it didn’t even make a dent in the population.

Saturday morning, when he put the “Eggs: $2/ dozen” sign out, he also put the “Chickens for Sale” sign out. Eventually someone stopped and wanted to buy a chicken. Fred sold them one of our older roosters (they specifically wanted an older chicken), which they were planning to eat.

(And then we both felt sorry for the rooster. EVEN THOUGH he was on the list to be processed by us, soon! We’re dorks.)

Later that day, a man stopped by and asked how much our hens were. Fred told him, and he said that that was more than he’d wanted to spend. He said that he’d been hoping to get a “good price” on them, because then he’d buy a bunch of them and take them up to the flea market and sell them.

Fred immediately went and took the “Chickens for Sale” sign down. We have too many chickens, and this might sound strange, but we’d both rather kill and eat those chickens than to sell them to someone who’d keep them crammed in a cage and sell them to someone who might keep them penned up in a tiny yard.

Our chickens live the life of Riley. They have plenty of room to roam, they have dirt for dust bathing, food provided to them, friends to hang out with, and occasional treats tossed out to them. If they get sick, they’re treated for whatever their illness is. They’re safe and protected, and I think that in their own chicken way, they’re happy. We can’t stand the thought of them going from this life to a life where they’re not as happy.

See how we are? We immediately assume that no one else would treat the chickens as well as we do. Mighty impressed with ourselves, aren’t we?

So Sunday morning Fred got up and processed ten more chickens, older ones who’ll be perfect for cooking in the pressure cooker and canning, later this week.

He’s considering processing another ten on Wednesday, and then thinks that once that’s done he’ll do another ten in a couple of weeks.

Our freezer is going to be STUFFED. And of course, the problem is that one chicken will last us for at least two meals, if not more. With something like 50 chickens in the freezer and (in a month or so) an entire pig in there as well, we are going to be SET.

Once the chicken population is down to something manageable, we’re seriously considering turning the maternity yard into a yard for our Light Brahmas, who’ll be our meat chickens (they get very big, but they do it a lot slower than Cornish Cross chickens). The largest part of the chicken population will remain in the back 40 to provide eggs (and remain under the protection of George and Gracie), and then we’re talking about moving the little coop to the back yard, and keeping the Silkies, Crested Polish, and the crippled chickens (Charlie, and one of the Black Copper Marans who has some sort of foot deformity) back there. They’re so little that I’m afraid they’ll end up being harassed and ultimately hurt by the full-sized roosters.

Wow. I can go on and ON about chickens, can’t I? I bet that’s more than you ever wanted to know about the Crooked Acres chicken population!

One month down, one to go! It’s been a month since the Wonkas failed their Combo test (for the new readers, they all showed up as FIV positive). One more month, and they can be retested – and I’m certain they’re going to end up negative this time around.

I’m pretty sure you can actually see the ear floof growing longer.

“Something doesn’t feel quite right…”

A basket full o’ Violet = a basket full o’ LOVE.

We are in the process of weaning the Cookies off their bottles. Fred got up Sunday morning and gave them canned food on a couple of plates, and two bowls of watered-down formula (we’ve seen them all lapping out of a bowl in recent days). When I got up a few hours later, the plates were empty, and so were the bowls. I went ahead and tried bottle-feeding them, but except for Milano (Pink) and Hydrox, no one was interested.

At noontime, I gave them two more plates of canned food and two more saucers of formula. The food didn’t disappear as quickly (though I did give them more this time around), and there was still formula in the saucers a couple of hours later. Everyone seemed happy and not starving to death, except for Milano/ Pink. She seemed kind of sleepy and slow to move, but she was also sleeping when I walked into the room, and I think it takes her a little while to wake up. She came over and sat in my lap and asked to be petted, and then she played with her siblings for a while. When I got up to leave the room after half an hour, she ran over to the side of the bed (which is where I sit when I bottle feed them – they can get up onto the bed from the floor just yet, so I can feed one of them at a time without the others trying to steal the bottle away) and howled and howled.

I talked to Fred about it, and he said “Well, make a bottle and I’ll see if she’s interested.”

I did, and she was. So was Hydrox. And between those two and the minimal drinking the rest of them did, we emptied about a bottle and a half.

So the plan for now is to bottle feed them in the morning and again at bedtime, and supplement the bottle feedings with canned food (and formula in saucers) at both those times, and again in the middle of the day. Obviously, if anyone begins to lose weight or seems to need it, I can supplement with bottles in the middle of the day, but I’ve seen all of them eating either canned or crunchy cat food AND lapping formula out of the saucers, so there’s no reason they should go hungry.

Speaking of not going hungry – TimTam/ Blue feels so heavy these days, because she’s SUCH a good eater (she was the first to eat the canned food) and has such a big round belly that I said to Fred, “I swear to god, she’s gained a pound. I’m going to weigh her!” She’d gained an ounce and a half in the two days since I last weighed her. It’s funny that she felt heavy to me – god knows that if I were to pick her up in one hand and a Wonka in the other, she’d feel like she weighs nothing. I would dearly love to get a picture of a Cookie next to a Wonka next to Elwood next to one of our big cats (maybe Tommy), just for a size reference. There’s just no way I could pull THAT off, though!

All slap fights end with a lick. It’s the rules!

Is it just me, or does it look like someone just got a TALKIN’-TO?

It’s rough to be this cute.

Time to balance on my foot! Here we have TimTam/ Blue, making herself at home.

Maxi would like it known that she will put up with NONE of your tomfoolery, thank you.

Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: Stupid bossy car.
2006: “Damn pansy-ass city folk.”
2005: as a customer and a HUMAN, I outrank the computer, and I’d like a little RESPECT, thank you.
2004: All this cleaning is making me lightheaded.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: Little things make me happy.
1999: Guest entry by Fred.

Vote for Suzanne!

Good Mood Gig from SAM-e

I finally got the Anderson Kitties Calendar for 2010 put together (you can see it in the sidebar to the right). I’ve got the pictures for the Foster Kitties 2010 Calendar narrowed down – now I just need to put names on each picture and get them uploaded. I expect to get that done later today, and will add it to the sidebar.

I don’t expect anyone but us is interested in a calendar of chicken and pig pictures, but I always put one together for Fred to put up in his office, so I’ll link that in the sidebar as well, once it’s done.

This year, I’m adding $2 to the base cost of the calendar. As always, any money that’s made off the calendars goes straight to Challenger’s House.

I’m sorry it took me so long to get them put together. The problem is that I copy all the pictures I take, all year long, into a folder and then when it’s calendar time, I have to go through them. And I take a freakin’ LOT OF PICTURES in the course of a year!

I’m going to experiment with a new way of saving pictures that will hopefully save time next year.

I have been a canning fool this week. Monday, I made two batches of Caramel-Apple Jam and then experimented with a couple of jams. One of the jams was a definite NO, so that batch got tossed on the compost heap. The other batch is a maybe, so we’ll see.

Tuesday, I canned 13 pints of applesauce. It’s amazing how you can have a huge pot of apples, cook them, puree them, and end up with a relatively small amount of applesauce, let me tell you. My applesauce is probably boring to the average applesauce connoisseur, because it’s literally nothing but cooked, mashed apples, and a little bit of water. No cinnamon, no sugar. Just good ol’ apples. I use most of the applesauce I can to make sweet habanero hot sauce. I also use it to make 88 calorie brownies.

(Hmm. I haven’t made those in a long time. I need to!)

What else did I do? I spent a lot of time bottle feeding kittens and hanging out with the Wonkas. I got laundry folded and put away, did some decluttering.

I had to take Miz Poo to the vet because the rodent ulcer on her upper lip was starting to act up again, so she needed a shot of steroids. Because she was way overdue for her yearly vaccinations, I had them do a Combo test on her (she was negative for everything, as I expected – but the vet tech discovered that her veins are in odd places. Miz Poo, a weirdo? Say it ain’t so!).

My New Year’s Resolution for 2010: keep everyone current on their shots and stop being such a slackery slacker! 90% of the time when I get fosters, they’ve already been tested – but when things happen like Fred coming home with the Wonkas or the lady down the street bringing us the Cookies and they’re too little to be tested, all we need is to get a batch with Feline Leukemia, and watch it take down the Crooked Acres gang.

(We do keep the fosters separate from our guys ’til after they’ve been tested, and we’re super careful about washing our hands after spending time with them, but you just never know, do you?)

As I was paying, a woman came in with three medium-sized dogs. She said she had two more in the car, and she wanted to get rabies shots for all of them. I smiled and told her she had her hands full, and left.

In her car, in the parking lot, were her two other dogs. One was a Great Pyr (like George and Gracie) and the other was a black lab. And her car was NOT any bigger than mine. Those two dogs were taking up the back seat of that car, and I could only wonder how she managed to fit all those dogs AND herself AND her daughter in the car at the same time.

Just as I snapped the picture, the Lab dropped out of view, of course. But still – is that one FULL back seat, or what?

I tell you what, I don’t know what the hell else I did this week, but I kept busy and got a lot accomplished, believe you me!

Today I’ve got some more jam experimenting to do, need to make some hot sauce, and get some laundry done. Also, I’d like to get some decluttering done around the house, but I don’t want to be TOO ambitious!

Okay, here’s a question for those of you who shop at Publix: Where the holy hell do they keep the canned pumpkin? I swear to god, yesterday I must have spent ten minutes walking up and down the freakin’ aisles looking for it. It’s NOT where the canned sweet potatoes are, and I couldn’t find any near the pie crusts. What the hell? Where IS it?

Anyone?

Wait. I’m thinking maybe I didn’t look near the canned fruit. That’s where it is, isn’t it? FIGURES.

I need me some pumpkin! Well, the fosters do, anyway. I think I’ve mentioned that I believe the only place pumpkin belongs is in a pie, haven’t I?

How is it that I stopped at the super craptastic, always disappointing Pet Dep0t yesterday and ended up signing up for a freakin’ “savings card”?

I always walk into that store with high hopes, and always walk out without buying anything -except yesterday, when I went in looking for canned Fancy Feast Medleys (which is what I give our cats at Snackin’! Time!) and left with a bag of bird seed. They have six thousand different kinds of dog food, but like three kinds of cat food and it annoys the shit out of me.

Lady Asian Beetle season has hit in full force, and the Wonkas are finding it rather fascinating. The mornings are okay, but when the sun hits the end of the house where their room is, the beetles start squeezing in around the windows (looking for a place to hibernate, I guess?) and the Wonkas find it much fun to jump and leap and try to catch them.

I’m sure they’ve gotten their paws on plenty of beetles – there are SO MANY of them, it drives me nuts – but I suspect one or two bites of the nasty things has shown them that they’re not food.

This would have been SUCH a beautiful picture, they sat there POSING for a good long time. But I was laying on my back (they were actually sitting on my stomach) and just couldn’t seem to get a good shot of them. ::sigh::

I find it hilarious that the kitten who was the slowest to come around (if you’ll recall, he was Mr. Standoffish for several days) is the biggest baby, and will lay like this in my lap for ages.

Isn’t he a smug little brat?

Gus isn’t ALWAYS the laid-back one.

“I dub thee… Sir Poopypants! Hee hee hee!”

He haz claws.

I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel with the Cookies. All five of them have been spotted eating either canned food (TimTam, Lorna Doone, and Keebler) or crunchy food in the form of Baby Cat (Milano, Keebler, and Hydrox). I didn’t think Hydrox was ever going to show any interest in real food EVER. A few days ago I put a little canned cat food in his mouth, and he looked SO disgusted, it was like I’d shoved Metronidazole in his mouth, he was so horrified. But yesterday I saw him eating pieces of Baby Cat off the floor, and then later he was eating it directly from the dish.

I’m seeing an end to the days when I have to get up at 4:30 to feed them!

(Dear God: That is not an invitation to send more bottle babies my way. Love, Robyn.)

this is either Milano (Pink) or Lorna Doone (Orange), I’m not quite sure which.

“Who, me? NOTHIN. Okay, I was checking to be sure it’s machine washable before I go use the litter box, step in my poop, and track it all over the bed, if you MUST know.”

Fred and I were snuggling with the babies after feeding time one night, and he decided he had things to do (sitting on the hardwood floor starts to hurt him after a while), so he got up and left. Every Cookie followed him to the door and HOWLED for several minutes, their feelings hurt that he’d abandoned them so coldly.

The girls gave up after several minutes, but Hydrox was determined to call Fred back to the room. Look at him standing there, so determined, howling his little head off. And he’s usually the quiet one!

I had to pull everything off the bottom shelf of this cupboard because ants showed up to swarm all over a poorly-cleaned bottle of corn syrup, and after I’d cleaned the shelf, Sugarbutt wandered along and was like “Oh, hey, what’s this?” He fits perfectly – but he found it wasn’t terribly exciting.

Previously
2008: WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH SCOOP HANDS?!
2007: I thought if the remote was lost, you were screwed.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: Did you think I was writing this from The Great Beyond?
2003: Wonder if I appear too old and feeble to help with the loading of the groceries.
2002: That’s your trivia fact for the day. You’re welcome!
2001: Amish country.
2000: No entry.
1999: Hey, this is some exciting stuff, isn’t it? What will I talk about next, dryer lint? Woohoo, somebody stop me!

New month, new logo! This one was created by Christine, who did one of my logos last month, and has done many awesome banners in the past.

Thanks, Christine!!!

That said, I’m taking today and tomorrow (and Wednesday, as usual) off from updating. (Clearly I am NOT taking part in NaBloPoMo this year.) I’ve got jam-making, applesauce-canning, and house-cleaning to get done. I’ll be updating over at Love & Hisses, but I’ll be back here Thursday with bells on. See ya then!

Could you just DIE? He looks like a toothless old man. An EXCITED toothless old man. Like, “I heard they was servin’ chocolate pudding at the Senior Center. Outta my WAY!”

(More cuteness over at Love & Hisses.)

Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: How’sabout you win us $100 billion in the lottery and we’ll negotiate the terms after that, foolio!
2006: No entry.
2005: He’s a class act, that Vincent Gallo
2004: “Squee!” it reiterated. “Squee! Squee! Squee!”
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: Is it just me, or do you get pissed off when you’re the victim of unexpected pain?
2000: No entry.
1999: Damn that Halloween candy!