Help Aaron get to Disneyland!!!!
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Someone please tell me how it is that this child right here:
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Flickr)
is now legally able to drive? He passed his driving test yesterday and is now a licensed driver. How is that possible? He’s still a BABY! Someone please stop the movement of time, would you?
Congratulations, Brian!!!!!!!!!! (
Note: It’s actually not his birthday – he got his license yesterday!!!)
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I forgot to link this in yesterday’s entry –
this is the jalapeno jelly recipe I used. I thought about using
Elise’s recipe (GOD I love that site. I printed out roughly 60,000 recipes from it last week), but I didn’t want to go out and buy apples to make the stuff, since I was really only making it to use up jalapenos and green peppers.
As a side note, though the recipe doesn’t call for it, I think that next time I make a batch, I’ll skim the foamy stuff off the top before I add the pectin.
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Fred mentioned in my comments yesterday that we’d tried selling eggs over the weekend. We had about three dozen, and since that’s more than we’d use in a few days, (and the chickens are producing at a pretty steady pace at this point), he said “We should try to sell eggs!” and I said “Go for it, just make it so I don’t have to deal with strangers knocking on the door. I got shit to do.”
So he put a “fresh eggs” sign out, put two cartons of eggs in a cooler (with ice) and a coffee can with a sign on it, saying “Fresh eggs, two dollars per dozen, please leave money in the can (honor system). Enjoy the eggs!”, and put them both on chairs in the front yard, not far from the “fresh eggs” sign.
A couple of hours later, just as I accidentally squeezed tomato guts all over the front of my shirt, the doorbell rang. Cursing under my breath, I went to the front door.
When I opened the door, the man standing there asked, “Do you have any eggs left?”
“If there are any in the cooler, we do,” I said, and pointed at the cooler. “If there aren’t any there, then we’re all out.”
He looked at the chairs in the front yard, shifted back and forth, and said “I… do I pay someone?”
“Just leave the money in the can,” I said, and pointed to the can.
He went off across the front yard, and his wife got out of the car parked in the driveway. They stood and regarded the fancy folding-chairs cooler-and-coffee-can setup, and I called Fred, who was out working on the shed.
“I think someone’s buying eggs,” I said, retreating into the house a little so they wouldn’t see me watching them.
“Are they buying both dozen?” Fred asked excitedly.
“No, just one.”
“Well, it’s a start.”
No one stopped to buy any more eggs that day, so Fred brought them in and took the sign down. Early Sunday morning, sure that he’d catch the eye of local churchgoers, he put the sign out, and set the cooler and coffee can up in front of the front door. He also put two dozen eggs out there, since the girls had produced enough eggs to make another complete dozen.
Not one single person stopped to buy eggs that day.
Fred’s father thinks that no one’s interested in buying the eggs because the people who live around here think that’s too much to pay. I think he might be right, and I think in addition since we don’t get a lot of through traffic on our road – that is, not a lot of people who don’t live in the area pass down our road – the only people who see our signs are locals.
That’s okay, though – I’ll freeze a dozen eggs, and tonight we’re having scrambled eggs. Later this week, we’ll have quiche. If it comes right down to it, we can cook the eggs and feed them back to the chickens.
Strangely enough, they think scrambled eggs are the shit.
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Speaking of the chickens, remember Frick? Who Fred was dead certain was a rooster? He’s not. In fact, he lays a lovely light-blue egg. So far as we can tell at this point, they’re all girls.
I still refer to Frick as “he”, though, because that’s a hard habit to break.
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I also forgot to write, yesterday, about the fact that we visited the dump Saturday. Well, I say “dump”, but it’s actually a “transfer station.” For those of you who don’t know what a transfer station is, it’s apparently a place where you show up, dump all your trash in a pile on the ground, and big trucks scoop it up and
transfer it to a landfill somewhere.
Anyway, Fred had a lot of stuff to get rid of – stuff that couldn’t go in the compost pile or in the trash for regular pickup – so he loaded up the bed of the truck and we went to the transfer station.
Imagine if a very industrious person took all the milk in the world, put it in one location, and let it spoil. That’s exactly what the transfer station smelled like. It was worse for Fred, I imagine, since he had to actually get out and breathe the stank, whereas I stayed in the truck (only the driver of the vehicle was allowed to get out, according to the signs) and breathed a filtered version of the stank.
I don’t know that that’s particularly a trip I want to make again, but it’s good to know where it is and how it works if we need to go again, I suppose.
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Flickr)
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Look who’s back!
At the pet store yesterday morning, I noticed that Billy Bumbler and Susannah had diarrhea. Since they’d been around the brown tabbies so much before they went to the pet store, I figured that chances were really good that they were struggling with giardia, too. Also, Billy’s eyes seemed to be getting red again, so he probably needed more eye ointment.
I called the shelter manager (who is suffering from shingles, poor woman!) and let her know I was bringing them home, then boxed them up and did so.
So far the brown tabbies seem to be accepting them, except for Roland, who keeps hissing at them. I imagine he’ll get over that in a few days.
As soon as I got home, I started Susannah and Billy on metronidazole. If nothing else, I’m learning how to pill a cat on my own instead of having to wait ’til I have help. Don’t get me wrong – it’s easier with another person to hold the kitten, but if I have to, I can do it on my own. With these sweet little kittens, anyway. I have a feeling that I’d have more trouble with a more feral kitten (HELLEW, Stinkerbelle).
With these two kittens and the three brown tabbies, it’s like a circus up in that room right now. They’re all just brimming over with energy, and if you’re in the front room you can hear them racing around up there. I’m not sure they ever sleep.
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“I ain’t skeered of you chickens.”
Previously
2006: I blushed, even though he couldn’t see me, and no doubt as a GI he’s elbow-deep in shit the majority of the time.
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: I’m sure my tendencies toward dumbassery has something to do with it.
2002: Sometimes when I’ve just finished doing my Firm tape, I feel like my brain is leaking out my ears.
2001: Maybe I should just shave my head.
2000: No entry.]]>