Hey, look who made Cute Overload yesterday! I actually submitted that picture right after I took it almost two months ago, so I never expected it actually to be posted.
I feel so famous!
Yesterday, after I puttered around in the yard for a while, visited with all the chickens and dogs and gave a cookie to each of the pigs, I couldn’t decide what to do. I threw in a few loads of laundry, considered and rejected the idea of mowing the lawn (I don’t think it’s been a full week since Fred did it last. Which is a bullshit excuse and my way of saying “I didn’t want to mow the lawn because I am a lazyass.), and then decided I’d get out the sewing machine and sew a few pads for the cat beds, maybe make a few couch pillows.
I bought some material last year when Fred and I talked about making our own ottomans to go with the couches we got from his parents (an idea we discarded not because we didn’t think we could do it, but because neither of us was all that motivated to get it done, so we ended up buying ottomans (ottomen?) from a site online), and I think couch pillows covered in that material would look nice on the couches. But when I got out the material and started cutting, the kittens got all crazy-eyed and started climbing my legs so I gave up on that idea.
I puttered around the yard some more, filled up the bird feeders, cleaned and refilled the bird waterers, took some recycling out to the garage (I need to get my ass to the recycling center one of these days), put the littlest chickens out in their play yard, ate lunch, snoozed on the couch in front of a couple of episodes of Oprah, and then started dinner. It was a very relaxing day, all in all.
We had a ham roast for dinner last night, and it was really, really good. This was one of our last roasts from the very first pig we had processed last year (Big Pig), and the butcher doesn’t cure or smoke any of the meat. So I just rubbed the roast all over with seasoning, popped it in a roasting pan, and cooked it for half an hour per pound at 350 F. Probably because there was a fairly thick layer of fat on the outside of the roast (which I cut off and discarded when the meat was cooked), it was perfectly moist and flavorful. Fred gave me his permission to cook all our ham roasts like that – but we’ll see if he still says that after we’ve eaten it all week long!
After dinner, a couple showed up to buy hatching eggs from Fred (before you ask, the difference between hatching eggs and eating eggs is that the hatching eggs don’t go into the refrigerator; the eating eggs do. Also, I never wash hatching eggs because that removes the “bloom” from the egg and makes it less likely to successfully hatch. The eggs that have to be washed, I wash and then add to the “eating eggs” pile. It’s all very complicated and fascinating, I assure you.) Fred ended up giving them the tour of Crooked Acres while I sat inside at my computer and idly surfed the web. I looked out once or twice while they were out at the big chicken coop to see George and Gracie do their patented “I love you! I LOVE YOU! Will you take us home with you? It’s terrible here, they only give us snacks 15 times a day and they kiss us and hug us and tell us how gorgeous we are. No one should have to live like this! Do you love me? Do you? I LOVE YOU! Do you have a snack?” routine, the one they go through every single time they meet someone new.
Way to look ferocious and defend those chickens, puppies.
They were out at the back forty with Fred for a long, long time and then I glanced up to see all three of them walking toward the house, and Fred was holding an upside-down rooster in one hand. He’d mentioned offering to sell them one of our roosters (they had to buy hatching eggs from us because something – an owl, they think – got their rooster), so I figured they’d taken him up on the offer. I got a box to put him in (and a baby blanket to put on the bottom of the box because I didn’t want the poor guy to slide around), and then I think we stood around and talked for another 45 minutes. They were very nice – like I said to Fred, “They seem like our kinda people. Well, except for the beer-brewing and the deer-eating.”
The rooster they bought was actually one we were talking about processing this weekend (we still have too many roosters, damnit), so the lucky guy is going to a new home where he’ll be the head cock in charge, have his pick of the wimmins and won’t be attending freezer camp anytime soon.
He has no idea how lucky he is!
Question, master bread bakers: I made a batch of Amish bread dough this past weekend and then – because the recipe makes enough dough for two loaves of bread, or ten thousand rolls – after letting the dough rise, I deflated it and put half of it in the freezer, then made rolls from the other half.
So my question to you is this: when I’m ready to use the other half of the dough, the dough that I put in the freezer, what’s the correct procedure? Do I thaw it out, form it into a loaf (or rolls), let it rise a second time, then bake it? It seems like that would be the right way to go about it, but I just need confirmation from those of you who know what the hell you’re doing, since I very much do not when it comes to baking bread!
On Monday, when I called the vet’s office to make an appointment to have Beulah spayed, id chipped and rabies shot’d, they told me I could bring her in right then, if I wanted to. I debated for a minute, then decided to just do it and get it over with.
Unlike Bessie, Beulah is a little more quiet in the carrier. She’s not silent by any means, but she didn’t howl all the way there and all the way back the way Bessie did last week (more on that in a minute), and when we got to the vet’s office, she wasn’t scared at all, just sat there and looked around.
When I picked her up from the vet’s office, the lady at the front desk told me she’d been the last procedure they’d done, so she wasn’t all that long out of surgery and still wobbly on her feet. She slept all the way home, and when we got home I let her out of the carrier to find that she was SERIOUSLY wobbly on her feet. Since Bessie had followed me upstairs and seemed happy enough to stay in the room with her sister, I shut the door to the foster room so Beulah could recover without the older cats coming around to sniff and hiss at her (they always hiss when another cat smells like the vet). She was sleeping every time I checked on her through the evening, and yesterday morning she was moving a little slower than usual. By late morning, though, she was bouncing around as though nothing had happened.
Regarding Bessie in the carrier, I haven’t mentioned before now that last Thursday I noticed that she was getting in the litter box, getting into position to pee, and then when she was done, she’d only passed a few drops. She did that twice in the span of about fifteen minutes, and though I’ve never seen the behavior in a female cat or one so little, I can recognize the signs of a possible Urinary Tract Infection. I took her up to the vet and that girl has got some LUNGS on her. She howled and howled and howled, all the way there. I left her at the vet’s so they could get a urine sample from her. She was there for only about three hours before they were able to get the sample and test it, and I got a call from the vet letting me know that there’d been a small trace of blood in the urine. She’s been on antibiotics since then, and after the first few days, she cleared right up and now she’s right as rain.
Both kittens are going to the pet store on Friday, hopefully to be adopted very quickly. Even Fred admitted that he doesn’t think Beulah will be at the pet store for more than a few hours before someone snaps her up!
Here are a couple of movies of the babies, one of Bessie howling, and one of Beulah playing (on May 5th) and then sleeping (yesterday).
I sure am going to miss the little monkeys.
“Wha-?”
A few years ago, my sister gave me a package of mink tails someone had given her for her cats. Her cats weren’t interested in them. My cats are slightly interested in them, but the foster kittens? Oh, they LOVE them. There’s always at least one in every litter that will pick up the mink tail and carry it around, growling at any cats who come too close to their “kill.”
Not the best picture, but it cracks me up that Beulah is licking that toy.
What I’ve recently learned – if you have a single cat bed that your cats refuse to sleep in? Put a second cat bed on top of it, and they will FLOCK to it.
Previously
2008: And I’m sure there’ll be plenty o’ bitching.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: It is, in fact, a happy-go-lucky-shpadoinkle-dy daaaaaaaaaaaaay.
2004: First day with the new brain, you know.
2003: So, Fred got it into his head a few weeks ago that he wanted a kayak.
2002: And further, you don’t get to be indignant and hurt when they act pissed off and boo you off the stage.
2001: No entry.
2000: Yesterday, I sneezed twenty-three times in a row. Fucking allergies.