Do you suppose I’m ever going to get my ass in gear and make a new banner for Bitchypoo? (Don’t hold your breath.)
This week on Dinosaurs Can’t Eat Pizza, Nance and I made Strawberry Meyer Lemonade Spritzer. It should not be that difficult to find a damn ingredient.
“We should get some ducks,” said Fred.
“We don’t need ducks,” I said.
We got four ducks. They cost $16.
(There was an old Fredster who bought four ducks.
I don’t know why he bought four ducks.
What the fuck?)
“We should have a pond dug,” said Fred.
“We don’t need a pond,” I said.
“We do need a pond,” Fred said. “The ducks won’t be happy with a kiddie pool forever. And they’re swimming in the dogs’ water bowls.”
We had the pond dug. It cost a lot.
“We have a pond,” Fred said. “Now we need catfish!”
“We should wait a year,” I said. “And see how the pond does during the summer before we get catfish.”
“I don’t WANT to wait,” Fred said.
We got 200 catfish.
“The pond is drying up,” Fred said. “It’s been so dry, I don’t remember the last time it rained. Look! I put this rock at the edge of the water yesterday and the water level has dropped by, like, an inch. If not more!”
“It’s too bad we didn’t wait a year to get those catfish,” I said.
He continued as though I’d said nothing. “We should have a well dug. If we had a well, we could use the water to keep the pond full! I’m going to call the guys who dug the pond and see if they know anyone who can drill a well for us.”
The guy’s coming next Tuesday to start on the well.
(Yes, we have a well under the house. It’s a hand-dug well that doesn’t go down deep enough to provide any decent amount of water and would only provide surface water, which is probably contaminated. I suspect that a human body would fit nicely in it, though. JUST SAYING.)
Previously
2011: Really, I’m pretty sure they only invented weekends so everyone could take Saturday and Sunday afternoon naps.
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: I always forget what bitey little brats they are at this age. They’re so MEAN.
2007: “I’m so happy,” he said. “That if this were a movie, in the next scene you’d be raped or killed.”
2006: No entry.
2005: Every time I type in “u” instead of “you”, I die a little inside.
2004: No entry.
2003: What happens if you put a box on the floor?
2002: “Where was it, Bessie?” he asked, trying to draw me into the trap with him, so he could perhaps trip me and then run away, leaving me there for her to latch onto.
2001: What do you s’pose a realtor’s house looks like? I always assumed it’d be a real showplace, with everything just so, all appliances gleaming and so on.
2000: Every time I blow-dry my hair, it sounds like the phone is ringing.
But Robyn, the ducks only cost $16.00! That Fred is a crafty one!!
That’s the best verse to the tune of “There Was An Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly” that I have EVER read! I’ll be singing that all day now. Another morning of guffawing out loud at work, and everybody looking at me wierd again.
I’m convinced that when we voice our (more sensible) opinion to our men, it just comes across to them as a bunch of clicks, buzzes and whistles. That’s why they don’t comprehend what we’ve said….or listen to it.
Thanks for making me laugh, as always, this early in the morning.
I so love that photo of the catfish. It looks like a cartoon villain with that “stash”. All it needs is a black top hat and a cape!
A well is good for backup anyway. But if you’re on municipal water and they find out there’s an active well on your property, it’s entirely likely that they’ll make you install a backflow preventer at your service connection. That’s the rule in California for most systems, in any case. Look at almost another grand in materials alone.
Yeah, we’re going to get a backflow preventer, it’s part of the total cost.
Your last two sentences caused me pain, Robyn. You should be ashamed for making a body laugh like that. (c:
Right up until the end, I thought this was going to be that the ducks had done something underhanded, like flown off and abandoned you or murdered George and Gracie or tried to impregnate some of the chickens, and that this was going to be a story about how you did all this work for the ducks and now they’re GONE, flown off like a child going away to college without so much as a backward glance, leaving you stuck with a duckless pond and a stack of bills (for paying for catfish and backhoes and supplementary wells, not duck bills).
(It’s possible that I may be projecting just a little bit.)
I don’t understand how the well is going to help with the pond, though. Wouldn’t you have to carry the water, bucket by bucket, out to the pond, and in that case wouldn’t it be easier to just string together a few yard hoses and fill it up that way? (The increase in your water bill surely can’t be as much as the cost of digging a well, which may or may not just dry up in a few years anyway…)
I mean “string together a few yard hoses, connect them to an outside tap, and fill” etc.
The well is going to tie into our current water system, which runs out to the pig yard already. For the time being, we’ll run a hose (well actually, a hose connected to PVC, because Fred is in love with all things PVC right now) from that pump out to the pond. Fred did some sort of math that showed that by having our own water, the well will pay for itself in about a year (I am skeptical that this is true). Last weekend he ran water into the pond all day Saturday, which raised the level by about an inch… and three days later, it’s back to where it was before.
If getting water out to the pond meant carrying it bucket by bucket, I’d fill in the pond myself. Or rather, I’m sure that for the first three buckets I’d be all “This is a great workout!” and then for the next three buckets I’d be “This is not fun”, and then would come “Fuck this.”
I’m more excited (though “excited” is overstating it) at watering the garden with well water, because I suspect the plants would much prefer well water to city water.
PS: The male ducks do attempt to mate with the hens. It pisses me OFF. I do not like male ducks because they are just RUDE. And no, I checked, chickens and ducks can’t cross-breed. No baby Duckens for us. 🙂
That PVC love is an illness. In the last 10 years of his life, it had dad in its grips. The poor man made everything out of PVC, from racks to hold his golf clubs to a paper towel dispenser in his kitchen. If he could have made clothing out of PVC, I think he would have! (We have his PVC furniture DIY book, I kid you not.)
You might need to temporarily restrain Fred until that fever passes.
But it’s so handy! Though the PVC fruit tree protector (for our lemon trees) a few years ago didn’t quite work out!
Thanks for a chuckle this morning! Though it seems suspicion falls on the ducks, I’d say blame the little farm in the country. Happened the same way with me & late husband; if he was still alive, lord only knows how may outbuildings, horses, creatures we’d have. And his next goal before he died: get a pond on the back 40 and a well! Must be a man thing!
When are husbands going to start listening to their wives? We know almost everything. If we could only get them to understand that! Love the picture of the duck in the dog bowl!
But if you ask a husband to perform a simple task like “please fix the screen door, honey” it might take YEARS to get it done. And in the meantime you could have bought a new door and hung it yourself.
SO true!
Damn expensive ducks!
Our well is nearly 200 feet deep. Sounds great, right? Except when anything goes wrong with it. The well pump has to be hauled up (one repair guy did it by hand & I thought he wasn’t going to make it– he was bright red and pouring sweat –imagine 200 feet of water-filled flexible pipe being pulled vertically out of the ground on a 100-degree day. With a heavy pump hanging on the bottom end.) And the fucking thing needs a like $600 repair every 3-4 years. Oh, and the water is so chock-full of iron that it’s undrinkable without special softeners and a reverse osmosis filter AND a Brita pitcher. Meanwhile, zillions of iron bacteria (lovely–I never would’ve guessed there were such things in my former life) stain the sinks and toilets dark yellow, and grow slimy shit in the toilet tank that comes out in orange CHUNKS when you flush.
But other than that, I’m lovin’ that well.
Oh, I’m SO looking forward to this well business. They just dropped off the equipment!
We dug a well for our pond (in Iowa). Best thing we ever did. We turn it on and off when needed. We have a seperate well for the house. Good luck! Next thing you should get is a fountain for the pond. We have one and run it on a timer, so just for a few hours in the morning and evening. Love it!!
Talent shining through again as always! Very funny! I second Lori’s fountain comment. My Aunt and Uncle in PA have a large pond. He’s a former utility worker and he was able to take one they were disposing of. It’s really relaxing to watch and listen to.
Seriously? Our well cost like $30K. For fish? You could just catch them and eat them and buy new ones next winter… would be less $.
Don’t put Fred in the well, plz.
You need to move to Alabama, apparently. Our well is going to cost less than 1/10th of what yours did. 🙂
Don’t think I could handle the heat or the bugs in Alabama, lol. How deep is your well and what kind of soil? Ours is 375′ and a lot of rocks that got in the way… but I’m sure, like everything else in the great PNW it was a bit overpriced. That said, to hook up to city water would have been a $20,000 hook up charge PLUS laying down the pipe for a mile which would ended up being more $$ than the well.
I swear, this is not a my well is bigger than your well statement, just curious 😀
I think this would explain why your well was so much more expensive than ours is going to be – the well guy usually hits water at 100 – 160 feet around here. The soil is clay – 20 feet of bedrock or so, according to Fred. Not that I know what that means. 🙂
Kind of reminds me of the free gold fish one of my kids won, which led to free guppies and tropical when it died, which led to multiple aquariums, pumps and heaters, wafer food, dried shrimp, etc.
It’s raining here this morning and I thought – oh good, Robyn’s pond will get some water. Then I realized I’m in PA and you’re in Alabama. I love that you took Rupert to get neutered. The shelters are overflowing.
Most expensive ducks ever! Hope they lay golden eggs 🙂
TWO HUNDRED catfish?? How big is the pond?? I’d have got like, 5, and expected 200 in the pond a year later. Ha!
It’s a pretty big pond. I myself would have opted for, like, 20 catfish. But I wasn’t given a vote in the matter. 🙂
What happened to your link to your recipe page? I was digging around for something, and found it by searching for “recipe here” or something crazy, and made my way to it, but didn’t you have a link to it on your main page at one time?
Good luck with the pond. And the ducks. And the fish. And Fred. Heh heh heh heh heh. I am sure the well digging will involve at least one entertaining story.
It’s back in the sidebar – I must have deleted the link when I put up the DCEP link!
I actually ran hoses the 500+ feet out to our pond last year in an attempt to save it from the brutal drought here in southern Texas. My hubby just rolled his eyes. We don’t have ducks, but we have turtles and they NEEDED some water. Right?????
Maybe you and my long-suffering better-half should talk, or stage an intervention or something…..
We had ONE turtle in our pond, but I think he may have gone looking for wetter pastures. Fred’s been running a hose out to the pond in an attempt to stop it from drying up completely, but I imagine our water bill next month is going to be a nightmare. I hope like hell this well thing works!
You made a new banner, so now you have to make a new entry so that the new banner is not directly above the question about whether you’re going to make a new banner.
(If this ploy to get a new entry on Bitchypoo is successful, I’m going to try to use it every single time… lol)
But I love THIS one! It rocks!
200 catfish? WTF was he thinking? I’ve been wondering why they pond was so big for 4 little ducks. Was this his version of a lamborghini midlife crisis? I hope the rain overnight helped the pond and I hope we get more tonight to add to it.