On Saturday, after taking a road trip to Tennessee that took up most of the morning (and somehow, I managed to not take a single picture while I was up there, wtf??), we swung by Egg the Pig Man’s place and got ourselves some little pigs. I took a bunch of pictures around Egg’s place (which I will share with you on Thursday), but for now you can feast your eyes on the three little cuties.
Egg is always having issues with his back, and it hurts me just to see him walk. He’s 78 years old, and it’s been a rough 78 years. His wife’s trying to get him to give up the piggin’ business (and probably the cow business as well), but I think he just loves it too much. The day after the tornadoes went through (he had no damage to his property), he was checking his fence, and got his boots stuck in the mud and couldn’t pull them out, so he was barefooted. He was pulling himself up with his arms and got tangled in his electric fence, and when he got zapped by it, he pulled back and twisted his back which made him fall, and he busted his hand up when he fell.
Last week, he forgot his truck was in park and started to get out, then got his head stuck between the steering wheel and rearview mirror, and got a bruise on his head.
Poor Egg.
In the past, Egg’s always been the one to wrestle the pigs we were buying into the carriers, but this time he let Fred do it. We had told him that we wanted two pigs, but on the way up there we got to talking, and Fred’s got a couple of people at work who want to buy pigs (or rather, half a pig). We decided that if Egg had another pig around the same size as the other two for sale, then we’d buy a third. If not, then the people who want to buy pigs from us would have to wait. (We determined, after the other two pigs went to be processed in February and it was a godawful mess getting them into the truck because it was so wet in the back forty, that we’re only going to have pigs once a year from here on out.)
As it turned out, Egg had five little pigs for sale, so we got that third pig. Then he and Fred talked about how we should buy a sow from him and raise our own pigs, and yeah. I don’t think so. Especially after Egg casually says things like “She had about twelve of them, but she mashed a couple.” I’d rather not have to see any piglets who got mashed by their mama rolling over on them, thanks anyway.
There was a mama pig there with a large number of tiny little piglets (much smaller than the three we ended up getting) and I would have dearly loved to touch a wee piglet, but mama pig was giving me the “I will mess you UP, lady” eyes, so I didn’t even think about trying that.
We got home and then carried the carriers out to the pig yard and set the girls free, and they immediately ran around and ate grass and chased each other. They are certainly cute girls, but we realized that one of them has a bulge in her mid-section and that means one of the following: (1) It’s a boy OR (2) It’s a hernia OR (3) It’s an umbilicus (this is a Fred And3rson theory, and I don’t know what the fuck he could possibly be talking about, the pigs are NOT newborns, but he says it with enough self-assurance that he seems to think it’s a real theory, so I’m going to leave it in) OR (4) It’s a hermaphrodite pig. After much quality time spent staring at Bulgy’s back end, Fred is pretty sure that she’s a she and that the bulge is a hernia because it’s not pointy enough to be, y’know. Male equipment. The last time we dealt with hernia-having pigs, it didn’t work out so well and we ended up taking the pigs back from whence they came, but Fred doesn’t seem inclined to do that with this pig, so I don’t know. Whatever. Pigs are his area of expertise, not mine, so I’m going to let him figure out what he wants to do as far as that goes.
Saturday evening, I was wiped out (I think due to a Zyrtec I’d taken earlier in the day. I felt sleepy all day long, and that’s what I’ve decided to blame it on.) and we put in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 and I watched it when I wasn’t dozing.
Sunday morning I was awakened bright and early (5:45!) by Fred, who came upstairs to tell me that he’d seen the possum who eats out of the food bowl on our side porch, and the poor guy doesn’t have a tail anymore. We discussed what could have happened to it, then Fred told me something else that I don’t recall, and he went downstairs.
Since I was awake, I got up and got dressed, then went into the foster room to give the kittens and Maggie their morning snack and scoop the litter boxes. I found a kitten pee situation that required getting all the McMaos out of the foster room so I could do a thorough cleaning, which took about half an hour. I got all the litter boxes scooped and took a few minutes to relax before I headed out to start working in the garden.
I spent the next couple of hours cutting empty pig and chicken feed bags open and cutting a slit down the middle of each so that I could put a bag around each and every tomato plant so I won’t spend my summer weeding. While I did that, Fred got out the tomato cages and put one over each tomato plant. We took a break to eat breakfast, then he started driving T posts in the tomato row and tying twine along the row of cages, attaching the cages to the T posts.
It was all very exciting, as I’m sure you can imagine.
Then I put drip hoses along each of my rows of tomatoes and one along my row of onions and cucumbers, mowed the grass around my raised beds, planted two tomato plants in my straw bale (it’s an experiment), and declared that I was done working outside for the day. I went inside, took a shower, and then proceeded to putter around the house for a few hours. Fred’s father and stepmother stopped by and we spent about an hour chatting with them before they headed home.
It was a fairly productive weekend (well, Sunday) for me, but I have so much more on my to-do list that all I want to do is lay in front of the TV and do nothin’.
Sounds like a plan!
As the oldest cat, Spanky thinks that what to watch should be HIS decision.
“But *I* wanna watch those wacky Real Housewives!” says Dorothy.
Jake: ::facepalm::
(Dorothy won. She always does.)
Seven weeks old! Can you believe it?
Ciara goes for the butt bite as Cillian attempts to flee up the cat tree.
Declan (left) and Fergus Simon (right) in my lap. They’re looking all wild-eyed because the camera strap is hanging down, tempting them.
Their little faces crack me up (please note the foot-sniffer in the background).
Macushla and his fangs.
Finnegan at play (note to self: someone really needs to paint those baseboards.)
“I feel skeered, but I don’t know WHY.”
Ciara, hanging on the cat tree while Cillian’s over there all “I don’t know why you’re taking HER picture, she’s not doing anything all THAT impressive. I can hang there like that. I can hang there from only ONE paw. She’s nothin’ special. Hmph.”
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the Bat signal, and I am BatCat!”
“::sigh:: Picking that up would be SO much easier if I had opposable thumbs.”
Are we comfy, Suggie? (Sugarbutt and Tommy love to lay like this on the back of Fred’s chair.)
Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: Home! Will post when I can, don’t know when that will be.
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: Yes, a child’s dose of Benadryl on an empty stomach, and I’m about ready to dance on the bars and twirl my bra over my head.
2004: No entry.
2003: He’s a badass motherfucker, that’s right.
2002: Little baby piglets!
2001: “This is our song, Robbie,” she said.
2000: I can’t believe I’ve been doing this journalling thing for over 7 months now.