9/17/09 – Thursday

So the scheduler called from the hematologist’s office yesterday, and I’m scheduled to have my iron infusions next week, Monday through Friday at 8:30 every morning. The process will take about an hour each time. I imagine that the drive will get to be a pain in the ass by mid-week, but at the moment I’m kind of looking forward to having an excuse to spend time on that side of Huntsville. There are lots of stores I’ve always wanted to check out, and assuming I’m not too wiped out by the infusions, I’ll have plenty of time to do so.

 

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Yesterday, after I dropped Terry off at the vet, I stopped and got a few groceries, and then came home and cooked four whole chickens, one at a time, in the pressure cooker. Once they cooled, I deboned the chickens and shredded them (while Jake and Elwood walked around the kitchen rubbing on my legs (and the cabinets, and anything else they came across), crying that they were starrrrrrving to death and that chicken sure did smell good…). Later today, I’m going to can them. We have a lot of recipes that call for shredded chicken (or can be adapted to use shredded chicken), and I’ve been talking about canning chicken for several months now. I’ve certainly used canned chicken in the past from the grocery store, hopefully the home-canned chicken will be tastier.

I plan to clear out the garage freezer, actually, and can all the chickens we have out there. A guy who bought hatching eggs from us several months ago ended up with 15 roosters (out of 3 dozen eggs, so those aren’t bad odds). He doesn’t want roosters (and you really can’t have that many roosters in a flock as small as his), so he’s letting us have them for a very low price. We have roosters from our own flock that need to be processed too, so Fred’s going to be one chicken-processing fool this weekend.

You may have seen the link going around that shows what happens in many big hatcheries to male chicks (I won’t link to it, I’m sure you can find it if you Google around) – they’re tossed into a grinder alive, because there’s a much larger demand for hens. When we get chickens from hatcheries, we get a “straight run”, which is basically a “you get what you get” sort of thing – they don’t sort them by sex, they just grab ’em and box ’em. As a result, we tend to process and eat roosters exclusively (you can only have so many roosters – too many roosters in a flock, and you end up with harassed hens who have bare backs).

But it makes us both happy to know that rather being tossed alive in a grinder, the roosters are allowed to live a pretty pampered life before they’re quickly and painlessly killed and then processed.

(Fred once said “It makes me sad that they’re killed like that just because they’re male.” I said “In a world where human babies are abandoned and allowed to die on the street because they were born female, I’m having a hard time mustering up too much sympathy for male chickens.” But I lied – it makes me sad, too. Of course, if we were the true softies we like to think we are, we’d be vegetarians. THAT ain’t gonna happen.)

 

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Terry ended up spending the night at the vet’s last night. His surgery took longer than she expected – I know I’ve mentioned he’s got the worst eyes of any of the kittens – and when I showed up at almost 5:30 to pick him up, she was just finishing his surgery. She said that I could hang out and wait for him to be ready to go, or let him spend the night. Since I knew I would be dropped Sookie off this morning for her eye surgery, I opted to leave him there overnight. I figured that being confined to a cage wouldn’t hurt, and I knew he’d be safe and warm.

I can’t wait to see him in a little while, though!

When I took Hoyt, Lafayette, and Sam to the vet on Monday, she mentioned that Sookie has the most normal eyelids of any of them – it’s not ’til you look closely at her eyes that you see there’s eyelid missing on each eye. Kind of funny that the one with the worst eyes (Terry) and the one with the best eyes (Sookie) are the last two to get their new eyelips.

I got these pictures on Monday, after the kittens got their vaccinations, which made them sleepy for the rest of the day. Obviously the only way to get a decent shot of all six of them, they need to be drugged and very, very sleepy. (I still couldn’t get them to sit in a line, though. Brats!)

 

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Spanky disapproves of this “foster kitten” nonsense.

 

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Previously
2008: The Godfather Catmother
2007: I don’t know what you do to surprise your husband – lingerie, or a gift from the local “adult” store, perhaps – but I know the direct way to Fred’s heart, and mowing the lawn so he was free to come home and work on his shed instead of having to mow the lawn made him one happy man.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: How’d you like to wake up in the dark and see the Baldwin noggin coming toward you? I bet your life would flash in front of your eyes.
2003: “Freakass freak” is two words.
2002: As I pointed out to Fred this afternoon, it makes me uncomfortable when Dr. Phil is nice.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.