Category: Crooked Acres

Would the person who did a site search on “terrified pickles” please tell me what on earth you were looking for? You can leave an anonymous comment, you don’t have to out yourself or anything, I’m just very curious to know what you were hoping to find!

Y’all are some white sheet-having motherfuckers, aren’t you? I think I’m going to stick with my blue sheets for the time being, but maybe when they’re old and threadbare, I’ll look into buying some white ones.

I generally go a couple of weeks between sheet-washing. It doesn’t bother me to know that I’m sleeping on dirty sheets – they don’t LOOK dirty, they don’t smell dirty, why wash ’em, right? I wash towels once a week or thereabouts, and as far as I know I don’t walk around stinking. My towel dries completely between uses and I’m CLEAN when I use it, why would I use a new one every day?

(I also don’t have to worry about staining the sheets at certain times of the month since I discovered the Diva Cup, miracle invention.)

Really, when it comes down to it, I’m just kind of all-around nasty. I’m always picking at my face and chewing on my nails and pulling at my hair, and I sometimes don’t wash my hands after I go to the bathroom (because, come on. I do use toilet paper. I rarely get nasty stuff on my hands in the bathroom, and if I do, I wash them. Otherwise, my hands are always dry enough, why dry them out even more with more washing?). I do wear clean clothes every day (though when I work out, I’m known to wear the same shorts and shirt for several days before I wash them) and I can’t wear a bra for more than one day. My boobs get sweaty, okay? I can’t re-wear a bra that’s been sweated in. I CANNOT.

You people who carry around the antiseptic hand shit? You’re breeding bacteria that is going to TAKE OVER THE FUCKING WORLD. I don’t use that shit, and I don’t remember the last time I was sick. I don’t wash fruits and vegetables that come from the grocery store and I’m still standing. That “veggie wash” is a ripoff. Also, I don’t usually put money in my mouth, but I did it lots when I was younger (like, stuck a twenty between my teeth while I was looking for my keys, not put it in my mouth and chewed on it or anything), and I don’t think I ever got sick from it. The idea grosses me out now, though, I have no desire to stick a germ-laden twenty in my mouth.

I do clean out the litter boxes twice a day, though. Well. Before I had surgery I was. Fred’s been cleaning them out twice a day for the last four weeks. As of this morning, I’m back on litter duty, though I’m still not lifting any heavy buckets of clean litter (that’s Fred’s job for at least a while longer). I also change out the dish towels and dish cloth in the kitchen on a daily basis, which is why I have a huge drawer stuffed full of clean dish towels and dish cloths.

Everyone has their “thing” I suppose, whether it’s scrubbing out the toilets daily (I do; the cats drink out of them!) or using that antiseptic shit on their hands 45 times a day.

What’s YOUR “thing”? Tell me about it, you freaks.

The garden is slowly starting to produce. Fred’s bringing yellow and pattypan squash in almost every day, along with rattlesnake green beans. I LOVE the green beans this year – the ones we grew last year were supposed to be stringless, but they weren’t and we ended up not eating very many of them. The rattlesnake green beans are really good raw and even better boiled and served with a sprinkle of salt and pepper. I had raw green beans on my salad at lunch yesterday; pure heaven. I think today at lunch I’m going to go out and pick a handful of green beans and a yellow squash and eat them raw.

There are two tomato plants in the back yard. They’re located exactly where the chicken coop was last year. Basically, chickens ate the tomatoes, shit out the seeds and two plants resulted. Fred staked them up, and they’re loaded with little green cherry tomatoes. We call them the assmater plants, and so far they’ve only provided us with a couple of ripe cherry assmaters (which were DELICIOUS). No tomatoes from the main garden yet; I expect they’ll all get ripe at the same time. I’m waiting impatiently for an influx of tomatoes; considering how much I hated tomatoes as a kid, that still surprises me a little. We got some ripe tomatoes at a nearby farm stand over the weekend; they were flavorless and mealy.

I’ve started freezing stuff, mostly squash, a serving or two of green beans.

Come on, tomatoes and corn – get a move on!

Oh, we haven’t gotten any zucchini yet, either. I made a buttload of zucchini bread last year, then thawed a loaf and tried it a few weeks ago. I didn’t care for it. I won’t do that again this year!

The cucumbers are slowly coming in, too. Fred wants me to make him a jar of dill pickles using the pickling cucumbers. Considering the rate they’re ripening, it might be a few weeks before I have enough cucumbers for that.

Got a favorite summer squash recipe? Feel free to share, I don’t want to get bored with our usual (boiled squash, oven-fried summer squash, sauteed squash and onion, and Aunt Fannie’s Baked Squash)!

Today’s kitten movie is only about a minute long. You’ve got Zoe scratching around to cover something, Kaylee kicking River’s ass while Inara watches, and then Zoe falling asleep. Tomorrow’s movie will be the last one of the kittens at 6 weeks old (they turned 9 weeks old today), so I suppose I’ll need to get to shooting some more footage, before they’re completely grown.

See it here in MPG format.

I finally got to Wal-Mart yesterday to buy a third baby gate. This means that I can leave the house for a longer period of time without worrying that Kara climbed over the baby gates and killed all our cats, or Mister Boogers climbed over the baby gates and went running upstairs all “Let me show you who THE MAN IS, bitches!” and got his ass killed. With three baby gates, I can block the doorway completely.

There have been a few instances of the kittens venturing down the stairs and looking through the baby gates at Miz Poo, who likes to lay at the bottom of the stairs. They’re mostly curious, not really scared, though last night when we were wrangling kittens Kaylee ran out the foster kitten room and came face to face with Tommy; they hissed at each other, and she puffed up to twice her size.

Now that they’re spending so much time hanging out and playing on my bed, when I go upstairs to visit, they’re a little more willing to be cuddled. They’re also a little more willing to bite my face. It’s a fair trade-off.

“Hellew.”

Such a pretty momma.

More kitten pics over at Flickr.

Previously
2007: Since it’s wet outside, I don’t have to weed today. DARN.
2006: I hate that fucker.
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: Then, I stopped and thought about it, which hurt a little.
2002: I was an errand-running fool today.
2001: You always know you’re going to have a nice, clean system the next day if you’ve eaten you a big ol’ helpin’ of okra.
2000: Oh, that’s right. That was my bright idea.

I had myself a pretty damn busy weekend. It started Friday with me spending a couple of hours cleaning and rearranging the garage. I don’t park in the garage (we’ve had the brooder set up in there for the past several months, between the chicks we got from the hatchery and the ones we hatched ourselves), and we’ve just been tossing stuff in there. A lot of crap had piled up, and after I broke down all the cardboard boxes we had in there and carted them off to the recycling center last weekend, there was a lot of trash that needed to be carted off to the dump. When I was done, there was a nice-sized pile of trash sitting on Fred’s side of the garage and everything else was neatly arranged.

I don’t remember what the hell else I did Friday – hey, it’s been DAYS – but I do remember that I didn’t sit my ass down in front of the TV to watch Lost and Grey’s Anatomy until mid-afternoon, and I never did get around to watching ER. Oh look, a crazy person is holding hostages in the ER. All our favorite characters are in peril. Le yawn.

Saturday morning I got up early (I’d told Fred to wake me up if I wasn’t up by 7:00. HA. I was up before 6:00; I don’t remember the last time I slept past 6:00, actually. Damn cats.) and did my usual morning stuff, spent a little time with the kittens, took my shower, and it was time to leave for the dump. The dump was surprisingly unbusy for a sunny Saturday morning, so we were done pretty quickly there. We stopped by the ATM so Fred could activate his ATM card (after calling to activate the card, you then have to do a “balance inquiry” at any ATM, an action that they charge you 50 cents for. Fuckers.), then over to the co-op so Fred could buy pig feed and chicken feed and a bag of cracked corn (Jimmy did it. I don’t care.) so I could make my very own mix of no-waste wild bird seed for the bird feeders.

I know. I’m a dork.

We got home and I found that the loaf of bread I’d started as soon as I rolled out of bed

(Side note: We got a bread machine for Fred’s birthday (from Fred’s father). Guess who’s making all the bread now? That would be the person who doesn’t really eat much bread. HI. Is this fair? Like my birthday present to Fred is making him loaves of bread WHENEVER HE WANTS? So his birthday gift from me lasts all year? Not fair. Not at all.)

(Side note #2: Actually, it’s not that difficult or complicated. I just like to bitch. DUH.)

(Side note #3: I like bread fine, it’s just that I don’t eat many sandwiches. And even when I do, I consider the bread to be the device that delivers chicken salad (or whatever) to my mouth rather than something to be appreciated for itself.)

was done cooking, and it was lumpy and misshapen and not worth giving to Fred’s father and stepmother, who’d mentioned the possibility of stopping by during the day. We decided to walk down to the dollar store (which recently opened very close by) and see if they had whole wheat flour. We didn’t expect that they would, but it was worth a look.

We were about to head out the door when Fred asked if I had any cash on me. I reminded him that he’d gotten money back at the co-op, which I only knew because I’d been bored waiting for the guys to bring out the feed Fred bought, and picked up the receipt and looked it over. Fred informed me that he had not, in fact, gotten cash back. But we didn’t have the receipt, because he’d had to go back into the co-op to be refunded for the cedar shavings he’d bought and which, ultimately, they didn’t have in stock and they’d kept the receipt.

So we got in the car and drove to the co-op, and Fred pontificated at length about how much he hates this one kid who works there and is slower than molasses and always fucks something up. He was only in the co-op for a couple of minutes. Once the woman working there looked at the receipt, she could see what had happened and she refunded Fred his money.

Since we were so close to town (we’d stopped at the dollar store to check, but they had no whole wheat flour, no surprise) we went to the grocery store, and despite the fact that it’s a full-sized grocery store with a large baking aisle, the only kind of flour they had was white. We talked about it for a minute, decided to get bread flour and make a loaf of white bread for Fred’s parents.

(The doughy, misshapen loaf – which I attributed to “old flour” is being fed to the pigs and chickens.)

We got home and finally got to get started on doing the stuff we’d been planning on doing. I started the new loaf of bread (Fred came in and interrupted me 17 times and I threw up my hands at one point and said “If this bread comes out okay, it’ll be a MIRACLE.” It turned out just fine.) and then helped Fred as he packed eggs for shipping.

I see that big cartoon question mark over your head right now. Yes, eggs for shipping. Turns out, you can sell fertile eggs on eBay for about $1 an egg, and so far Fred’s sold 2 dozen of them (the second dozen is going out in the mail today). What with the price of food these days, it seems that more and more people are raising their own chickens for food. Who knew?

I cleaned up the kitchen, did some dusting, vacuumed the entire house, spent some time with Kara and the babies, and just generally puttered around the house most of the day. At several points I went outside to see what Fred was doing, and watch our new Momma Chicken walk around the chicken yard followed by her babies, and see the toddlers* run around their new playpen. I also mixed up my first batch of no-waste bird seed (25 lb roasted peanut chunks, 25 lb sunflower chips, 25 lb white millet, 10 lb basic canary seed, 25 lb cracked corn), and filled the bird feeders.

So far, the birds seem to like my no-waste mix. Or if they don’t, they’re pretending to. Maybe they’re just being polite.

Sunday, I was up early again due to a cat I’M SURE (actually, now that I think about it, a really loud car going by the house woke me up.) and I rolled out of bed and hit the ground running. I started laundry, cleaned the kitchen, scooped the litter boxes, took my shower, then spent some time with Kara and the babies. When it was almost 8:00, I took my massive grocery list and left for the grocery store.

Too damn much money later, I got home and put the groceries away. I had breakfast, and then at 10:00, I started cooking.

Since I’m going in for surgery on Thursday (plastic surgery in the form of a lower body lift, for those of you who haven’t been paying attention) and won’t feel like cooking for at least a couple of weeks, I wanted to cook and freeze a bunch of meals so that all Fred will have to do is either put something in the oven for a specified amount of time, or take a container with a prepared entree in it out of the freezer and nuke it. I started cooking at 10:00 and wasn’t done until about 3:00.

Now, granted, I took plenty of breaks, but still. That’s a lot of damn cooking!

What I made, for the curious among you: Light ‘n Luscious Lasagna (this will serve as two meals for the two of us, plus several lunches for Fred to take to work), jambalaya (six entrees), chicken and rice casserole (all Fred has to do is put bread crumbs on top and put it in the oven. It’ll make at least four meals for us, plus some lunches for Fred), and beef taco skillet (four entrees). That’s enough food to get us through a couple of weeks, though Fred might have to cook once or twice.

Once the last batch of food was done, I put some laundry away and then headed to town for the recycling center. I stopped by the grocery store for a few things I’d forgotten earlier in the day, then got home, cleaned up the kitchen (I did so many dishes yesterday my hands may never recover), put laundry away, goofed off online, and then it was time to start dinner (chicken fajitas).

Today, I have plans that will keep me out of the house ’til about lunchtime. I have an eye appointment, need to run to Target and the pet store, Sam’s, the mall, back to the eye place to pick up the glasses I’ll pick out after my appointment (it’s a one-hour place), and then hopefully that’ll be all I need to do and can go home and relax with Kara and my babies and stop spazzing about the fact that in a few short days I’ll be sliced and diced.

You know how on South Park the Canadians have those heads where the top and bottom aren’t attached? I imagine that if something goes terribly awry and my stitches give way during a bout of post-op vomiting, I’ll be walking around with the upper half of my body detached from the bottom half. It could be funny if I fart and my lower half goes blowing (HA HA) across the room.

Fred has already received the instructions that if something goes wrong during the operation and they have to use bionic parts to make me better! stronger! faster! he should give the go-ahead. We all already know I’m totally a badass. With my bionic legs and arms I’ll just be able to prove it much more easily.

*We’re calling the 5 baby chickens that were hatched by a buff orpington the “newborns”, the ones we hatched ourselves the “toddlers”, the ones we got from the hatchery back in March the “teenagers”. And I suppose that when the other eggs currently sitting under a buff orpington hatch, we’ll probably call them the “new newborns.”

As I mentioned up there somewhere, one of the buff orpingtons hatched five eggs last week. She’s a good mother (despite the fact that she was a dumbass for a while there, leaving the coop to eat and then going back in and sitting on the wrong nest) and keeps a protective eye on her babies. Well, unless one of us goes out with food for the chickens, in which case she runs across the yard and those babies are on their own.

Priorities, y’know.

(pic)

(pic) Giving her sister the “back off bitch, these are MY babies” look.

(pic) The other chickens seem mostly unconcerned and unimpressed with the babies.

The problem is that now that Momma Chicken has brought her babies out of the coop, she refuses to go back in. When it starts to get dark, she takes her babies under the coop. We tried to force her into the coop and were unsuccessful, so she and her babies have spent the past two nights under the coop. We don’t like it, but we’re at a loss on what to do.

Damn chickens.

(More chicken pictures over at Flickr)

The kittens are growing so damn fast I swear I can see it happening. I want them to stop growing and be tiny forever! They’re all using the litter box (though Zoe got confused last night and had an accident on a cat bed, poor little peanut) for peeing. I have seen no poo in the litter box, but I didn’t ask Kara any questions about that. Also, hey. Did you know that kitten pee doesn’t smell at all? I swear to god, I picked up a cloth that had been peed upon by them and smelled it to see what the hell it was, and no smell at all. It’s too bad THAT goes away as they get older!

I’ve seen them all drinking water out of the water bowl at one point or the other, but they’re still not interested in the cat food. Some of them – Zoe, especially – like to get into the litter box and chew on litter. I’ll be glad when they stop THAT. We use the plain clay litter for them, and I have to completely empty and refill the litter boxes every day, because you cannot scoop that stuff. I was using the scoopable stuff for Kara’s litter box (it’s bigger, and in the closet), but now that the kittens are exploring a lot more, I don’t want them to eat the scoopable stuff, so I’ve gone to the plain clay litter for her, too.

The kittens are now at the point where they’re in control of their legs, so they zoom around the room and bounce off each other and pounce at each other (I love the way they get low and wiggle and wiggle and wiggle, and then they POUNCE, and go the amazing distance of about two inches). Saturday, all four of them piled on me (Inara up on my shoulder and the other three in my lap) and went to sleep. It was seriously sweet.

Inara, when she’s getting sleepy, will climb up so that she’s resting on my chest and she stretches her front paws out and demands that I kiss her on top of her head.

I love the holy hell out of these kittens.

I don’t have time to go through the pictures I got over the weekend – I’m about to leave for my appointment and errands – but I’ll share with you one picture I took that makes me laugh ’til I wheeze. Poor long-suffering Kara.

(pic)

(pic) Miss Momma sure does love to sit on Fred’s lap.

Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: And we might have expected Mommy/ Whatever to tell the Little Prince “no” and, well, we can’t have THAT.
2005: We’re foster parents.
2004: Because WHY HAD IT NOT OCCURRED TO ME TO THROW MYSELF DOWN THE MOUNTAIN TO AVOID THE CONCERT???
2003: The words “ass ugly” were invented to describe these shoes.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: She hasn’t claimed boredom since.

Crooked Acres, 7:13 am:

::coughcoughcough:: ::throatclearing::

“I AM THE MAN!”

“THE MAN!”

“THE! MAN!”

“THE MAN! IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING! THANK YOU AND HAVE A GOOD DAY!”

(Above scene repeats 130 times during the next eight hours.)

Crooked Acres, 4:48 pm:

“AHEM.”

“I am…”

“.. the man.”

“Hmmm….”

::thinking::

::considering::

::blinking whilst pondering::

“Yes, that’s correct. I AM the man.”

“The man.”

“The man!”

“THE. MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!”

“THE MOTHERFUCKING MAN! YES, ME!”

“And to drive my point home, let me raise my neck feathers in an umbrella-like fashion as I reiterate to you: I AM THE MAN!!!”

“Got it?”

(Scene repeats itself every three minutes until it gets dark out, whereupon McLovin’ is of the opinion that the world is aware of his studly manliness, and retires with his bitchez to the chicken coop to rest up.)

River and Inara are such the little hellions these days. They love to take turns climbing into my lap, and then they kick and bite and scratch at me, and then if I make them stop biting, they give me the big blue eyes and are all “Ah am jest a little bitty baby kitten and ah could not hurt a fly, le WAH!” and meow sadly at me.

BRATS.

(pic) “Momma! Pay attention to ME!”

(pic) Fight!

(pic) “Do you SEE what I have to put up with?!”

Tons of kitten pictures up over at Flickr.

(pic) “Attention passengers, would all orange kittehs please report to the Lido Deck for fun and games!”

Previously
2007: Random pictures.
2006: Mystery solved, I guess.
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: So far, I believe she’s ahead in the fart wars.
2002: That damn PTA. I will NOT be suckered in again by them, damnit!
2001: Realtors.
2000: New eyes, new hair – I’ll practically be a whole new woman!

I had blood drawn yesterday so that they could do all the usual preop lab work before I have surgery next week and I don’t believe I’ve ever had so much blood drawn at one time, I was wondering if they were just going to completely drain me to make the surgery a bit less messy.

This afternoon I have my preop appointment with the surgeon, and then it’s time to spend the next week alternating between twiddling my thumbs and racing around in a panic to get everything done beforehand. Everything = cleaning the house, making meals ahead that only need to be warmed up, and… well, that’s about it, I guess.

An interesting note is that although the surgeon told me it takes about a month after surgery before patients wake up and roll out of bed feeling completely normal again, it would take six months to a year before I could scoop litter boxes. So no scooping for me for at least six months, that’ll be Fred’s job! No really, he said that! True story!

(I wonder if I could get that in writing?)

You guys are smart motherfuckers who know a lot about a lot. I need a dress that buttons or zips up the front to wear home from the hospital. Go find me one. All suggestions appreciated!

Miss Momma (aka “Maxi”) went missing for almost an entire day. She didn’t come home and didn’t come home and Fred went down to ask the neighbor if she’d seen her, and she hadn’t, and we called and called and got all kinds of worried, and then around dinnertime the neighbor’s kids brought her home and said she’d been hanging out over at the (empty) house next door to them.

Brat.

I think I’ve mentioned that we have a couple of chickens who’ve “gone broody” and were spending all their time sitting on eggs. We had to be careful and keep an eye on them to make sure they were sitting on the right nests (one of them got out of her nest, went to eat, and came back to the wrong nest several times, meaning we (Fred) had to move her back to the right one). A few days ago, Fred went out and candled the eggs to see if they were all fertile and to see how far along they were. He predicted that the dumb one (who got back on the wrong nest several times) would be hatching her eggs this week. Last night, he reported that they’d started hatching. We went out together to take a look, but every time we open the flap, the hen puffs up and looks scary.

Well, she TRIES to look scary. Mostly, to me, she looks scared so we left her alone.

We know there’s at least one hatched baby under her. I’ll be curious to see how many hatch okay, and how that works out.

(flickr)

The land next to our back forty is owned by a family that has a bunch of horses. I don’t know exactly how much land they have, but it’s enough to support six horses or more. Every now and then when Fred and I take a walk around the back forty, we hear horses. The other night when Fred was out there himself, a white horse came over to be petted (and to see if Fred had any food, I’m sure).

Last night I got some pictures of a couple of them.

They certainly are pretty. Too bad I’m not a horse person – or not, I’m not sure we have the room for a horse in the back forty. I’d like to see Mister Boogers riding a horse around, though.

(flickr)

After using up the tape in the camcorder, I went through all the footage and cobbled it all together and made a way-too-long movie that clocks in at 7 minutes long.

Sorry about that.

I’ll try, in the future, to go through the footage a little more often and make shorter movies.

In the meantime, you can see the movie at YouTube:

or watch it in MPG format, here.

(I used Muvee AutoProducer for this one, which came free with my computer. It’s pretty simple to use, I’m pretty sure I’ll be using that from here on out. It’s made for the dummies like me who can’t deal with anything too complicated.)

Also, I’m sorry about the incessant babbling and baby talk. I thought about adding music to the video, but I wanted you to be able to hear the babies and Kara “talking”.

Kara and the babies are continuing to kill me with the cute. I witnessed River using the litter box last night and when I made a fuss over him (“Look, Momma! He use the litter box!”), all the cats looked at me like they just might be getting tired of the incessant baby talk.

I cannot help it.

All the kittens are sniffing around the cat food when Kara eats. Inara’s very interested in the bowl of water and though she hasn’t quite hit the point where she’s drinking it, she is sniffing at it, getting her nose in it, then licking the water off.

These babies are just growing up way too fast. I want them to stay itty bitty forever, but they’re already HUGE compared to three weeks ago.

(flickr)

(flickr) “Where my Momma? I’m STARVIN’!”

(flickr) “HI Momma. I’m your favorite, right? You love me most?”
“That’s right. I love you most of all, little whatsyerface.”

Tons of kitten pics up over at Flickr.

(flickr) “That Momma cat did NOT kick my ass. I let her THINK she was kicking my ass because sometimes after wimmins has babies, they get to thinking ‘I used to be a badass. Am I still a badass, or did having them babies weaken me?’ and I wanted to reassure her that she was still a badass. So I went into the room and I was all ‘Kick my ass!’, and then I rolled around and pretended to scream and let her think she was kicking my ass. But really, I was having a GOOD TIME pretending to be scared. Did you hear me screaming ‘OhmylordjesuspleasedonthurtmeowowowowowOW!’? That was all acting. I’m a very good actor. Tom Cruise calls me all the time for acting hints. I tells him ‘Tom, you just get into the scene and let your heart lead the way. If your heart ain’t feelin’ it, you let the hetred lead the way. The hetred will never steer you wrong.’ It’s true!”

Previously
2007: Ugly, but somehow oddly appealing to me.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: Memeriffic.
2003: “One of the cats brought in a baby possum and it appears to be dying.”
2002: A mother can dream, can’t she?
2001: I almost shot a red bean out of my nose, I was laughing so hard.
2000: No entry.

So? How was your Cinco de Mayo? Did you eat Mexican food and drink tequila? Yeah, me either.

Fred had to work late (but he gets off early on Friday, woo!), so I had a long day to myself. I prefer it when he gets home at 3:30. He’s usually outside somewhere puttering until about 6:30 or so, but I like having him home doing stuff so I can go out and see what he’s done, or tell him what the cats just did (he’s always just as fascinated as you might imagine when listening to the tale of Listen What Tommy Did Now!) or whatever.

Shaddup, I just like having him home.

Yesterday morning I didn’t even sleep ’til my usual 6:30, because we talked for a few minutes before he left for work and I was so peeved at what he’d told me (someone peed on his bed I WILL KILL ANY CAT THAT I FIND PEEING ON FURNITURE. Which is probably why they don’t do it when I’m around, now that I think about it.) that I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I got up and put his peed-upon sheets in to wash and did all the usual morning crap. I was sitting at my desk captioning my Flickr pictures (I’m sure my captions are just fascinating. “Oh look, dear, she’s captioned another one with “Feeding Time”! Where DOES she get her innovative and creative captioning skillz?” I can’t help it, I feel bad if I leave them uncaptioned!) when something caught my eye and I looked out into the back yard to see Joe Bob flying through the air and then landing on the ground with a bird in his mouth. I swear to god, that bird must have been six feet off the ground when Joe Bob caught it. This isn’t the first time he’s caught a bird in mid-air, either. He’s quite the hunter, our Joe.

“Oh shit!” I yelled, kicked off my slippers, and ran out into the back yard. I stood over Joe Bob and bellowed “Drop it! Drop it, Joe!” But not only did Joe NOT drop it, he evaded me, did an end run, and flew into the house. I ran after him screaming “NOT IN THE HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUSE!”

I found Joe Bob, the bird in his mouth squealing like a pig, surrounded by cats, in the front room. He tried to evade me, but I was quicker than he’d expected, and I grabbed the bird out of his mouth. The bird – a young Cardinal – rewarded me by squealing like a pig a few more times and then biting me really hard on the hand.

“I’m trying to save you, stupid!” I said. I thought for a moment, then went onto the front porch and put the bird in one of the big plant pots on the porch. I figured either it would recover and fly away, or Newt or Maxi would come along and take care of it. It didn’t appear to be too badly hurt – more scared and stunned than anything – so I went back in the house and started picking up the trail of feathers. A few minutes later I looked out the front window and the bird was still there. As I watched, Newt jumped up on the porch, totally did NOT see the bird sitting there, and so I opened the door and called excitedly to him, and he ran inside.

On a side note, Newt is SUCH a good boy. If I open a door, he’ll go through it whether he was intending to or not. Maxi, on the other hand, does the “Do I waaaaaaaaaanna go out? Or stay in? Out or in? In or out? I cannot DECIDE… Let me stand here halfway in and halfway out and see how that feels.” I’ll put up with indecision from her for a few minutes before I bellow “IN OR OUT! One! Two! Three! Four! Five!” If she’s not out by the time I count to five, I push her out and shut the door.

Goddamn cats.

So then after I’d gotten some laundry hung out to dry and had given Kara her morning snack and done a few other things, it was time to head to Wal-Mart for a few things I’d forgotten to pick up on Saturday. After meaning to for weeks, I finally remembered to bring the camera with me. There’s this field of yellow flowers (weeds?) on the way to Wal-Mart that’s really pretty to look at, and I’ve wanted to get a picture of it for ages. After my trip through Wal-Mart, I stopped on the way home and did just that.

(pic)

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The rest of the day was pretty peaceful. I watched the rest of Atonement, which I’d started on Friday. I usually like to cross-stitch when I’m watching TV or a movie, but I got lost a couple of times in the first few minutes and had to rewind, so finally gave up on the cross-stitching so I’d know what was going on. I ended up liking the movie a lot, despite the very sad ending and despite the fact that the way Keira Knightley talks annoys the snot out of me.

So, all in all, a pretty peaceful day.

Today, I get to snatch Sugarbutt up, toss him into a carrier and take him to the vet. He’s been licking between two of his toes and it’s gotten pretty bad. We’ve tried putting antibiotic ointment on it, but he just licks it off and then continues licking ’til his toe gets bloody and then he tracks blood all over the place. Poor Suggie. I hate to terrorize him by taking him to the vet, but he clearly needs some medical attention. Also, his shots.

(pic) Is it just me, or do they appear to be posing for a picture? Like for the monthly Chicken newsletter or to hang in the front lobby? “Bob, please put down the coffee and get in here, the photographer doesn’t have all day and the Big Guy says we have to present a united front for this stupid picture. Anyone found giving the finger will be fired immediately!”

(pic) I was going to say that I really like the little red chickens who look like Rhode Island Reds, and then I was going to say that I really like the black ones with cream-colored markings, and then I was going to say that I really like the little yellow ones, but really? They’re all my favorites. I think they’re all just as pretty as can be. I can barely stand the beauty of the animals here at Crooked Acres.

Well, maybe except for this obnoxious ass:

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The pigs are so pushy and obnoxious that they have certainly not wormed their way into my heart at all – and I’m not being facetious. If Fred hadn’t called and reminded me that I needed to feed them yesterday, I would never have thought of it. I rarely go out there unless I have food for them, and I never ever enter the pig yard at all. They’re growing quickly, and anything they see, they try to eat – including clothes and boots – and I can totally imagine them knocking me down and chewing my face off. They’re certainly entertaining enough to watch, especially when they’re eating, but I’m not going to miss them when they’re gone.

Y’can’t love everyone, I suppose. They’re still spoiled as hell, as is every animal who steps onto our property, and will be ’til slaughtering day comes around.

Kara and kittens are doing just fine. I have not squooshed a single kitten to death. YET.

(pic) “We iz sleepin pls leave alone thx.”

(pic) “Hey, wha – is it time to EAT? No one called ME. There better be some left for me, or I’ll be kicking ASS.”

More pictures over at Flickr.

(pic) The hallway outside the guest bedroom is a busy, busy place.

Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: No entry.
2005: Hoverers make me want to just get the hell out of that store as soon as humanly possible.
2004: I think it’s a boy, though.
2003: He’s his usual Fancy self.
2002: “I can’t believe you let me go out in public like this!” I yelled at Fred.
2001: No entry.
2000: No entry.

Oh. My. God. I read over at Tessie’s that Center Stage 2 is in production. I cannot tell you how excited I got when I read that. I love the HELL out of Center Stage, I in fact OWN IT, and I’ve probably watched it 7 or 8 times. Pretty people dancing! The underdog kicking ass and taking names! The snotty princess telling her stage mother where to get off! Peter Gallagher’s eyebrows! Is there a better dancing movie in existence? I don’t think so.

Late last week, the Saturday morning volunteer at the pet store sent out an email asking if anyone could cover Saturday for her. After some deliberation, I volunteered and decided to make it my big errand-running day. I hadn’t realized, when I was out on Thursday, that I needed all kinds of cat food and litter, and since I was going to be out anyway, I would stop for groceries so I wouldn’t have to get up Sunday morning and go get them. I could SLEEP IN.

So I got up Saturday morning and did my usual morning chores, took a shower, puttered around in front of the computer, and left the house at almost exactly 7:30. It takes me about an hour to get everything done at the pet store (probably the fact that I spend a lot of time kitty-snuggling is why it takes me so long), and so I’d wanted to get there no later than 8. The store opens at 9, and I don’t like to be in the cat room cleaning after the store opens, because people are always peering in at me or knocking on the door to ask questions.

Poor HG was still there, so I gave him some extra snuggling time, and he just about broke my heart when he rubbed his face on the sleeve of my shirt and then rested his head on my shoulder. He is SUCH a good boy and he so likes other cats, I hope he’s adopted soon, into a home with lots of other cats for him to befriend. He’s a little ambassador in training!

I got done cleaning and scooping (and snuggling) a few minutes after the pet store opened, so I bought two big bags of dry cat food for our cats, cheap cat food for the bowl on the front porch and a ton of canned adult and kitten food. Then, I drove down the road to Sam’s Club. Luckily, Sam’s opens on Saturdays at 9, so I didn’t have to kill time until it opened. Saturday morning is apparently THE time to go to Sam’s, because I don’t think there were 20 cars in the parking lot, and I was able to get in, get what I needed, and I didn’t even have to stand in line to check out. That has NEVER happened for me at Sam’s before, so now I know when to go!

I loaded my six 40-pound buckets of Fresh Step into the car (alongside the million pounds of cat food I’d bought at the pet store) and headed toward home. On the way, I realized that Bed, Bath and Beyond was open, so I stopped there to see if I could find an over-the-door towel bar (which a couple of you mentioned in my comments last week), and after some searching, I found one. Yay!

Then I headed for home and stopped on the way to get groceries. I swear to god, I can never remember from one trip to the next where the hell they keep the white vinegar (which I use as a fabric softener, and no – you can’t smell the vinegar on the laundry once it’s dry), but I finally located a bottle of it, and was on my way home.

Three and a half hours after I’d left the house, I was home again with a back seat full of buckets of litter and cat food (if I’d been thinking, I would have taken a picture of it. It sure did scream CRAZY CAT LADY.) and a trunk full of groceries. Fred and I unloaded the car, I made lunch, and then spent the next few hours recovering from my busy morning, spending time with Kara and the kittens, and just generally being a slacker.

Also, I cleaned up the kitchen, made hamburger patties, sliced tomatoes and onions, and chopped up strawberries for strawberry shortcake. I bought a big-ass container of locally-grown strawberries on my way home Thursday, and I decided to toss together some strawberry shortcake and then dehydrate the rest of the strawberries for snackin’. Unfortunately, once I had enough strawberries for the shortcake, I discovered that most of what was left had started to mold, so I tossed those in the pig bucket.

We started watching Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, watched about 20 minutes of it, and decided we weren’t all that interested in it, so turned it off. We watched Earl and Scrubs, and then since we didn’t have anything else to watch, we started watching the most recent episode of The Office again. I watched up until the opening credits played, then I fell asleep while Fred watched another ten minutes or so.

Then I was wide awake, and after Fred toddled off to bed I was all “Oh, I’ll read my Harlan Coben book for half an hour or so, then go to bed!”, only of course I couldn’t put the damn book down and I was like “One more chapter, then I’m turning the light off!” and I’d get to the end of the chapter and be all “OMG! What happens next?!” and kept on reading and it was close to midnight by the time I’d finished the book. I highly recommend it. Harlan Coben is definitely one of my favorite authors.

(THANK YOU, Dora, for sending it my way! You rock!)

Sunday morning I slept in ’til 7:30, which is an HOUR later than I’ve been getting up. During the week, Fred wakes me up around 5:45 to kiss me goodbye before he leaves for work (AWWWWW) and I go right back to sleep, then at 6:30 my eyes pop open and I think about everything I need to do, and there’s no hope of going back to bed. So I rolled out of bed at 7:30 feeling like I was way behind in doing what needed to be done, so before I even sat down at the computer, I put laundry in to wash, scooped the litter boxes, brought Kara her morning snack (she also gets a noontime snack and a dinnertime snack as well. She’s creating food for four very quickly growing babies, y’know. She particularly likes the Science Diet Kitten Turkey and Giblets canned food.), cleaned the kitchen, and took my shower.

By midmorning I’d done everything I needed to do (which included vacuuming and dusting the house) and so I sat down at my computer and put a bunch of stuff on eBay, mostly stuff I’d been meaning to put up for ages, along with CatIt filters (after cleaning the CatIt on Saturday, I was trying to screw the bottom part back onto the globe, but the part that you turn had popped off, and upon trying to force it back into place, I cracked the globe and then I was all “FUCK THIS!”, so I’m selling the filters I had on eBay and between that and the other stuff I’m selling, maybe I’ll make enough to get a damn Drinkwell, which appears to be much damn easier to clean.). I spent a lot of time with Kara and the kittens, finished my laundry, switched the couch cushions around. You know, fun stuff like that.

Fred spent all day making cages for the tomato plants (of which we now have 54. We gave the rest away to friends, because I imagine 54 plants will be more than enough for the two of us. One hopes, anyway.) and in the afternoon I held t-posts for him while he used a sledgehammer to pound them into the ground. One day our luck’s going to run out and that sledgehammer’s going to slip and I’m going to end up rolling around the back forty in a mouth-controlled wheelchair.

If that man cripples me with the sledgehammer, y’all make sure he gets me the LUXURY wheelchair.

Then I spent time with Kara and the kittens, and my GOD those kittens are SO freakin’ cute that I literally have to bite my tongue when I’m around them so that I don’t squish them to death and my tongue is pretty much shredded at this point. (I’m not sure how it works, that biting my tongue stops me from squishing kittens, but I don’t question it.)

In and amongst all that stuff was about 10,000 trips out to the garage to look at the baby chicks. Of the 22 we started out with once the hatching was over, one has died. It was the one Fred ended up “helping” out of his shell (with my encouragement) after it had made no progress after hours of trying, which indicates I SUPPOSE that mother nature – that heartless bitch – knows what she’s doing. If we’d left the chick alone, it would have died in the shell instead of stumbling around and then dying in the brooder in the garage, surrounded by perfectly healthy chicks and being PECKED as s/he died. Poor thing.

The 21 surviving chicks appear to be perfectly healthy, they’re eating and drinking and awfully cute. Hopefully they’ll all STAY alive.

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These kittens, y’all. They are going to be the DEATH of me, they’re killing me with the cute. Inara and River love to have belly rubs, and will come right over to me for them.

All the kittens have their eyes open – all that worrying for nothing, but what am I if not a worrier? – River’s got one eye that’s still a little bit closed, but it’s open more every day, so I think he’s okay. They’ve all got those gorgeous dark-blue eyes and they’re still working on the focusing part. Inara spent a good five minutes yesterday trying to figure out how to touch my arm with her front paw and when she accomplished it, you could see the “So THAT’S how it’s done!” connections being made in her brain.

I made a video of them yesterday. I apologize profusely for the fact that I am a blithering goddamn idiot and apparently cannot shut my mouth to save my life. I watched the video after I’d uploaded it and just cringed. The horror lies not so much in the incessant talking as the incessant INANE talking in a baby voice. Ugh.

But anyway, admire the cute here, at YouTube:

or see it here, in MPG format.

It’s getting much easier to take pictures of them, because they’re spending so much more time out of the box. They sure are adorable little things.

(pic) Kaylee, waiting for the belly rub.

(pic) Inara, waiting for the belly rub.

(pic) Zoe, Inara, and River.

Buttloads of kitten pictures up over at Flickr.

(pic) This is how Newt gets in and out of the back yard. He can’t figure out the cat door in the laundry room, so he asks to go out the side door, runs over to this fence post, climbs it, and jumps down into the yard. Bless his little heart.

Previously
2007: No entry.
2006: “Motherfucker say WHAT? You wanna prance?”
2005: Did you know you could use it to relieve muscle soreness, as a plant fertilizer, and as a laxative?
2004: Okay, girlfriend? Just how fucking stupid ARE you?
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: No entry.
2000: God, please tell me when I was 19 I didn’t sound that much like an airhead…