What She Says

I'm beyond busy today, so please just go read this. I would add that despite the fact dh reacted to yesterday's photo of me with "there's something wrong with this photo - you look like a midget", I do not want to increase my size.

Not What He Dreamed Of?

On a day like today (27 degrees), one has to take drastic measures. That means giving up all vanity. That means not comparing your 40-something self to the picture in your head taken on a beach on your honeymoon. When working outside, I was decidedly comfortable, not cold, but I looked like a truck driver. Layer upon layer of clothing and with a chin muff reeking a little of eau de cheval, I was thankful dh was at work and could not see this less than flattering image of me. (But of course, now he will.) On the other hand, perhaps he prefers a strong woman that can hook up a tractor and move the hay bale to a willowy, young wife without a clue how to manage the horse and chicken chores. Wouldn't he??

...With Garlic, Please

We almost had roast chicken, and I don't mean for dinner. When the girls went to let out "the girls" (aka the hens in the bigger coop), they found the bulb broken and the wood near the bulb blackened. It was a near miss. The strong winds we had last night likely blew around the heat lamp and broke it, but somehow, it was still on. So, in today's arctic air, I got to spend the day outside doing animal chores.

After what felt like several hours getting William stuffed into his snow pants, his shirttail properly tucked without being wrinkled, we headed outside. I contemplated the economics of having chickens. Perhaps the fact that it was 27 degrees affected my thinking. I am thinking that with feed, electricity, calcium supplements and water, not to mention labor, I'm paying about, oh, $10 an egg (since we are only getting about 4 a month).

Farm Notes
Moved the triangular chicken tractor to the barn, and moved the bantams there. Hoping to avoid buying another heated water bowl. Their water bowl is freezing nightly.

Cleaned up the big chickens' coop, watered them, fixed the heat lamp, re-bedded the nest.

Used the tractor and hay fork to move the hay bale to the horse pasture.

Filled up the bird feeder. Birds are drinking from the chicken water and eating their expensive food.

Roxie (miniature foal) likes to run up and lean on one with all her weight. Training to do.

A Few French Fries Short of a Happy Meal

A few nights ago, I drank a little too much coffee before bed. Later that night, awakened by our cat who seems to think that rising time is 4 a.m., I laid in bed trying to go back to sleep. There is something about that time at night. Every possible anxiety that I have, things I've neglected to do, worries that I've destroyed my children's future by homeschooling them, things I need to do tomorrow, all come visiting in my head. I think to myself - I'll write them down in a notebook when I wake up. Finally, exhausted, I fall asleep. When I wake up, the anxiety is gone, but so is my list of all the things I wanted to remember to do.

Contrast that with Wm. Before going to sleep, he asks if we can play Zoombinis, his favorite computer program. No, it is too late, I say, but we'll play it in the morning. I swear, the first words out of the child's mouth, before wiping the sand from his eyes, are to ask if we were now going to play Zoombinis. It is as if he has never been asleep. It must be that his neurons are still young, and mine, I need new sparkplugs.

Farm Notes:
I hear rain is coming, and in fact, hear drops hitting the windows of my darkened bedroom right now.

I got two chicken eggs yesterday. Both Aracaunas laid! None today. Chicken feed is up to over $12 a bag. It was $8 a bag this summer. Corn and wheat prices are driving the increase. They are becoming more like pets, if they actually liked humans, that is. With this cold, I imagine we're spending $25 a month on electricity to keep them warm.

Went and bought another round bale today. We're using about one every three weeks at $40 a bale. No grass to be had in the pasture - just mud.

It's the Season....

...for sharing cooties. Last week, dh and I went in to see a financial planner. Very nice office, very nice guy we've done business with in the past. We sat at a large conference table and watched the tall, well-dressed guy put his coffee on the table and begin apologizing for the cold he has. Being polite, we both kind of waved it off and smiled. Oh, no problem, no problem.

As he sat and began his presentation, however, we both noticed that the guy had large flakes of skin hanging from his lips. Visualize torn strips of white paper, perhaps toilet paper, stuck to one's lips. As he sipped his coffee two feet from me, it was hard to concentrate on his pie charts.

Suddenly, he realized that something was there, and still talking, picked one of the flakes off, looked at it, wiped it on his trousers and kept talking. We watched in hidden horror. At the end of the meeting, he apologized. "I get this once a year and then I'm fine, you know. Just a simple herpes virus." Herpes! Did you say herpes? Sure, I'm well aware that's the name of the cold virus but just saying it makes it seem so much more, I don't know, STD.

And then, he stuck his hand out in assertive businessman-like fashion, and well-trained businessman dh is and I was, we shook his hand. After getting in the car, we simultaneously began wiping our hands on our trousers. I pulled my Germ-X from my purse and we sanitized! I don't know what's worse, the cold or the cooties this time of year. Neither of us contracted it and it's been a week, so I think we're in the clear.

Farm Notes

The people that wired our house were geniuses. When a new "sunroom" was added on sometime after the house was built, they ran the lights for the room and outside electrical sockets all off of the same circuit as the bathrooms upstairs. They actually had the ceiling fan wired in with extension cord wire.

Though we'd redone some of the wiring when we remodeled the sunroom into a family room, we didn't realized the full extent of the bad wiring until the weather turned so bitterly cold. We found that if you ran the electric bathroom heaters, the circuit kicked off, turned off the bathroom lights and the sunroom lights. Oh, and guess what? Also the two heat lamps in the chicken coops, a heater for a 100 gallon water tank, and the electric fence, all plugged into outside sockets. I guess it's time to work on the wiring again.

Our digital remote NOAH weather gage did not register an outside temperature this morning. Evidently, it goes on strike when the temps fall below zero. Can't say I blame it.

Death by Tostito

My dh almost killed me tonight. It probably wasn't on purpose. We were eating at his favorite Mexican restaurant. Not mine? For me, Mexican food and "favorite" are an oxymoron. It may be that I'd gotten there earlier than he and I was on my second Corona. It may be that he knew that and took advantage of the fact.

A waiter was serving an nearby table. My dh, who, as those who know him know, grows not much grass on his playground, that is, he might have had more hair at one point in time, remarked that the Mexican waiter had more hair on his forehead than he had on his whole head. At the moment I looked up, I'd just taken a large bite of a tortilla chip.

The man had a hairline centimeters from his eyebrows which, perhaps it was the Corona, struck me as funny. As I laughed suddenly, I felt that feeling we've all had before, tortilla chip in the windpipe. Alternating laughing with coughing, my eyes began to water and dh asked if I was alright. I tried drinking my water. No effect. It was in there good and I coughed and coughed. People were starting to stare. It's then you realize you'll have to cough until you make that retched retching noise like you're going to barf and ruin everyone's enjoyment of their refried beans. I was able to mask it, and somehow coughed the boulder-sized (by now) chip into my esophagus, where it merely tickled rather than choked. I continued to cough and cry until I finally got it into submission. See why I don't like Mexican food? It can kill you.

The Perfect Blog - Almost

Some people do wonderful photos on their blog, and I'm only a charged battery away from capturing those perfect photo-blog moments. Never fails I can't find the camera, or when I do, the moment has passed.

So you'll have to imagine my perfect photos. Anna and I were on the way to her art class on Tuesday and simultaneously had to jinx each other for seeing the most gorgeous, huge orange moon on the horizon and saying, "wish I had my camera".

Yesterday, Whitney decided that Matthais' closed laptop could do double duty as a dog warming pad. Either that or Japanese Chin dogs can lay on your computer and be laptop bling. I don't know which. She got up just as she heard the whine of my camera powering up. What do you do? Keep it on at all times and hung around your neck? At any rate, we are learning not to put our closed laptops on the floor.

Today is so cold that we can't even get the wood stove warm enough to stay lit. Okay, that and I don't have a degree in boy scout camp fires. Sue me.

Homeschooling at Its Finest

Wm and I went to the main library downtown last night where there was a display in honor of Lincoln. Wm knows who he is, as we'd seen the display before and discussed it. He, however, decided to display a different side to the world and declared loudly, "He looks like the first Willie Wonka." I'm so proud.

How'd I Do That?

My new laptop (thank you, Dad!) is wonderful. I've not yet loaded it up to the gills with programs and photos. Unlike my desktop, it doesn't take an hour to load, asking me to sign into AIM, MSN Messenger, some error message about my mail default, load some clock I don't remember installing, load up fifteen other programs I never use. Yeah, yeah, I know I can fix all that but it still has gigs and gigs of old photos on it (that I intend to organize some day RIGHT) and it's slower than molasses regardless. It is so much easier to just use the laptop and ignore the old desktop and the hours of work it represents.

The laptop takes some getting used to. For some reason, they've designed all laptops with the mouse pad right about where your thumb pads rest when using the keyboard. Next thing I know, the window I'm using is minimized. Where did it go? Okay, I touched the mouse pad and I'll retrieve the window from the taskbar. The cursor and window bounce back and forth as I fight for control of the task at hand, accidently bringing up menus and deleting whole sentences. Sometimes, I find myself typing in the middle of the wrong paragraph, and don't know how I got there.

Sadly, it echos my life lately when I find myself standing at the top of the steps, and I don't know why I went upstairs, though I know it was for something.

I'd Better Tell The Horses and the Rooster To Behave

Several years ago, we were dismayed to find that the one acre behind our barn had already been sold, though we'd not even known it was for sale. We'd always envisioned it as a good place to make an outdoor horse arena. The land was good for little else, sliding off into a ravine on all sides save one, which was bordered by our (then) dilapidated barn and large manure pile.

The owners did wonders with the lot, and now it is a beautifully landscaped yard with a new house on it, bordered by our now newer barn, but still behind the manure pile. And - they're trying to sell it. I watch prospective buyers walking around and wonder how long it is before a new owner objects to our horse manure, our muddy yard, and the crow of our rooster. Yah'd think that people moving into the country because they like the rural atmosphere would expect a certain amount of, well, rural activities. But you can't count on it. Read here about what happens when city folk try to take over rural areas.

More on the story here.

A Gray Day

Bluppp!

Lauren was startled this morning by a noise. It was just the wine fermenting. I've finally ended my wine-making drought and started another batch. It bubbles continuously at this stage and fills the air with the smell of fermenting grapes. To top it off, it's one of those "quick" nights for dinner and we have cheese enchildas cooking. Wm, not liking that choice, had a tuna fish sandwich. Oh, and we've started some sourdough starter. We've named him "Wilson" after the ball in the movie, "Cast Away". Lauren declared that "there are too many smells in this kitchen!" I think it's time for my evening coffee. (wink)

To the left, you see the airlock that keeps out wild yeast. The gas produced in fermentation bubbles through liquid to escape, as the container is otherwise sealed. I think it's a very soothing sound, like an aquarium. Bluppp!

Cold

Cold drives the mice indoors. If the garage door stays open for a second, they sneak in, climb up to the ceiling on the mounds of things we store there for no good reason, and get into the drop ceiling of the basement on the garage level. From there, they can find spaces in the walls to get to my kitchen. For this reason, I am a mouse hunter. It is the only animal I know that I deliberately set out to kill, but I do. I'm up to two a day.

Yesterday, though I fancy myself a woman that can do anything a man can do, I reached up into the drop ceiling to put my hand directly on the dead mousie. While washing my hands until they were raw, I asked dh, a foot taller than I am, to see if he could stick his head up in there and retrieve the trap. Which he did.

Other notes: It is a beautiful day outside, sunny. Looks so nice. It's 18 degrees. Nature can be so deceptive.

Wm and I watched the old Willy Wonka last night while the rest of the crew watched a grown-up movie. Wm immediately declared "that's not Willy Wonka" and that Gene Wilder didn't look anything like the real Willy Wonka (aka Johnny Depp).

Holy Smoke!

Smoking has been a big part of my life. Well, I should say of those around me. I've never tried once to smoke, which is only a matter of timing, I suspect, for both my mom, dad, and all my adult relatives smoked. They'd just started teaching in the schools that smoking kills, and that was enough for me. I went home, found Dad's open pack of cigarettes, and broke them all in half, thinking that would get the message to him and he'd quit. I remember Dad yelling at me that I'd better not ever do that again.

Smoking continued to be a big part of Dad's life until his heart attack. He wrote about his smoking career on his blog today. Go here.

For What It's Worth

I check Google's Adsense now and again to see how many people have visited my blog, and how much money I've earned from people clicking on the ads to the right. Since December of 2004, I've earned $65 whole dollars. I think that works out to about $.002 per hour. Anyway, the other day I remarked that I'd made 2 cents! Lauren remarked, "Then you got it back." What? "Well, you gave your two cents worth, and they gave it back to you."

I Want One!

Scientists in China have successfully bred glow-in-the-dark pigs. I first read about this on the BBC website as reported by Chris Hogg (no joke). What in the world? Is this so farmers can find their missing pigs at night? Perhaps so one can eat green eggs and green ham? I wondered if I can get my chickens injected for when they go AWOL?

Want to get ahead on next year's Christmas? How do you wow kids that already have a Wii or iPod? How about glow-in-the-dark kittens? Speaking of kids, how about glow-in-the-dark kids? Kids will now be able to stay out past sundown safely. Oooo, ooo! Glow-in-the-dark HORSES! You can now ride safely at night. You can quickly check horses left in the field. "Yup, I see four glowing green blobs out there. All accounted for."

Last night, dh and I had a date at a local restaurant. Couldn't help but notice that the long hair of the Asian man sitting at the next table occasionally glowed blue. I suppose he could have been wearing a Bluetooth (wireless cell phone device) but now, I'll never know. Perhaps he was genetically altered.

Although there may be scientific advantages to green pigs, I'm too base too not think of the more practical ramifications. If you eat fluorescent meat, do you start glowing? If not, what does happen to the fluorescence? Given the sensibilities of my daughters, I'll stop now and let your own imagination go where it will.

Charitable Contributions

I regularly get phone calls soliciting money for two police organizations which is not prevented by the no-call list (they are exempt). Though I'd given money in the past, I became rather frustrated with the repeated phone calls, suspicious that the phone calls were from Ohio not KY, and the increasing rudeness of the callers when I would not give more than once per year.

That is when I heard on the radio that in Kentucky, you can look on a website to see who is actually soliciting these funds (in this case it was an organization that does nothing but solicit funds for charity or other organizations) and the percentage that the charity or organization actually receives.

Organizations soliciting funds in our state must register for this website. You will see on the table that each organization must list who is calling and what percent actually goes to the organization. (Some organizations get as little as 1%! Some actually lost money!) Armed with this data, the next time they called, I had the following conversation:

Caller: I'm soliciting funds for the police who use it in saving children blah blah blah blah.....
Me: Are you actually part of this organization?
Caller: No ma'am.
Me: What organization are you with?
Caller: Community Safety.
Me: So you are not a policeman?
Caller: No
Me: What percentage of my donation actually goes to this program?
Caller: The Chiefs of Police are guaranteed to receive $80,000 for.........
Me: I asked you what percentage?
Caller: About 17% of it goes...
Me: Sorry, I only donate to organizations where the majority of it actually reaches the organization. Please remove me from your list.

If you look on the table, Kentucky Association of Chiefs of Police got only $67,372.80 in donation, whereas the company that manned the phone for them got $327,050.60 for making phone calls. And that's just one organization they represent.

Another more amusing way to handle such calls is to say that you'd like to research the charity first. Ask for the name of the caller and their home phone number, telling them you'll call them during their dinner and let them know how much you'll give.

I share this info with my teens so that they can learn to handle these types of calls when they are older. Here I am at....well, not a teen....just learning how to handle them with confidence.

Extreme Flylady

After the third load of dishes in a day, I decided that something had to change. Because we homeschool, it seems it is always time for someone to get something to eat or drink. As I looked down at the racks in the dishwasher, I realized that most of the loads were glasses. Loads and loads of glasses - yet during the day there are five people here. There should be five glasses, tops. Why then, did the dishwasher look like I just had a dinner party for twelve?

That day, I decided to assign a different looking glass to each person. I‘m such a Martha Stewart that I actually had six non-matching glasses in my house. “This is your glass,” I announced. “Recognize it, protect it, love it.” I took all of the other glasses and put them up in the highest reaches of the cabinets.

Immediately, dissention reared it’s ugly head. “But my glass is dirty.” Wash it. “But it was in the dishwasher and it’s hot.” Rinse it in cold water. “I don’t know where it is.” Look for it or drink out of the faucet. There were even a few attempts at subversion. “I’ll just use a coffee mug.” No you won’t. “Yes, I will.” Now, I have to hide the coffee mugs and assign each person a mug.

On the very first day of the crackdown, dh knocked his glass to the marble floor of the kitchen, turning it into tiny slivers. I, of course, was to blame because I was unloading the dishwasher and had put it on the counter in reach of his elbow and he has the wingspan of a pterodactyl. Because I didn’t have another different-looking glass, he was relegated to using plastic for several days until I obtained a new one for him. For some reason, this became an inside joke, and dh had to go around saying, “ha, ha, very funny”. Finally, a neighbor gave him a glass and he now looks like the grownup he is at the dinner table.

A friend asked if guests had to bring their own glass. Obviously, this restriction of freedom hits home for many people. And, no, I do still have spare glasses, hidden. The idea is this - with all the machines and technology available today - dishwashers, washers, dryers, electric stoves, microwaves - why do we housekeepers work as hard and as many hours to keep house? Because, dear ones, we’ve said since it’s easier to wash clothes, we can wear more. We do more loads. Because it’s easier to wash dishes in the dishwasher, we use more dishes. We have cars, you can drive around all day, every day and cover miles that took our ancestors weeks to cover.

Neighbors have taken an interest and have imposed a one-glass policy in their house as well to the dismay, I think of the dh. Their organized daughter suggested everyone should have their own plate and bowl as well. I’m working on it. Hey, we could cut down on global warming one glass at a time. All this writing has made me thirsty. Now, if I could only find my glass…..

Farm Notes
If you noticed I said five people are at home during the day (dh goes off to work), it is because we’ve added a new member to our household. We’ve welcomed a cousin to the area who will be living with us as he studies for college and works. Likely, he’s in the category with my girls - not fodder for blogs. Yah never know though, so watch yerself, Matthias! Anyway, we’re happy he’s here. He keeps bees, so perhaps he’ll teach us and we’ll add that to our little farm.

Lester, famed rooster, died while protecting his coop. Lauren, going to shut the coop up, found him one night with his bloody neck through the fence which defines their yard. Very sad. We still do have his son who has taken the crowing job seriously; he crows at night he's so smart.

It is so very cold, we are happy for the electric water buckets. What a great invention. It is too cold to ride horses.

Lauren is working with Roxie, the miniature horse born this summer, who wants still to climb in your lap or be held. We hope to use her for pet therapy, and it wouldn’t be cool if she climbed up on a little old lady’s lap.

Well. He Minds Really Well

Red Rover, Red Rover......

I don't know where I was in the past years when primaries were going on, but certainly this year was the first time I'd paid any attention to the way a caucus works in Iowa. As some pundit put it, it reminds one of a game of Red Rover, Red Rover.

In this day and age of computers and technology, I truly cannot understand how a group of people can decide something as important as who they want for President by standing around in groups and counting people. Your group is smallest? You have to go stand with another group or go home. It's like choosing sides in elementary school for a team.

You can use a debit card to instantly determine the balance on your account, use GPS to determine where you are on the planet (or now, where your teen is), you can use web cams to check on things at home while away, you can instantly send mail to anyone in the world with an email address or write on a Facebook "wall". And yet, they can't figure out how to securely and electronically cast a popular vote?

My suggestion is that we take Bill Gates and Steve Jobs hostage, we put them in separate rooms and insist that they redesign the voting system. ...I dare you over.

You're Not As Young As You Think

Sometimes, I stand looking in the mirror and using one index finger, pull back at the corners of my eyes. Yes, I daydream, I could look like I once did. I imagine acquaintances who might have said “boy, she is looking old” will instead think “wow, she sure looks good for her age”. I smile smugly in the mirror with my slanted eyes. I turn sideways. I’ll have to have the “girls” lifted back to their previous glory to match. I could look younger. Never young, just younger.

It’s interesting that I do this, because I become ENRAGED to hear Rush Limbaugh saying that America won’t elect Hillary because we don’t want to see a woman age before our eyes. (This is not a political endorsement of Hillary, just an examination of this particular attack on her (and American women) by Limbaugh.

He says:
But men aging makes them look more authoritative, accomplished, distinguished. Sadly, it's not that way for women, and they will tell you. … I'm just giving an honest assessment here of American culture. Look at all of the evidence. I mean, I've just barely scratched the surface with some of the evidence, and so: Will Americans want to watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis? And that woman, by the way, is not going to want to look like she's getting older, because it will impact poll numbers. It will impact perceptions.

Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps Americans are shallow enough that appearances are more important than anything. But I look at this unflattering photo of Hillary, and I think of all the more recent unflattering photos of myself. I’m getting older - right along with her. I am that woman, the one with the wrinkles, the one aging before your eyes. I am the one that you might not want to look at everyday on the TV. Women close to me are wrinkling, aging, getting older. And, they are becoming more dear to me every day.

Sometimes, I read the obituaries. Morbid, I know. I read about how these people were loved, how they made a difference in their life and in the lives of others, and then, I look closely at their photograph. Usually, it isn’t one from their 20s, but one from their late years. A photograph taken when they were surrounded by people that cared about them, and knew them as wrinkled, gray-haired and balding. And I see the beauty in those faces.

Where do we get these twisted values that only youth is beautiful? Do wrinkled men look more distinguished as they age? Perhaps women do, too, if you look closely enough in the mirror.

Thanks to Tex's Missus for the writing prompt, and I guess, in retrospect, my answer would have to be "no".

You're Not as Clean as You Think

William and I were in the YMCA's indoor pool last weekend, which was moderately crowded and watched by two lifeguards. We were playing with one of those foam noodles, hollow in the middle, that are supposed to be used to aid flotation. Unless you are a boy, and then it is used as a water cannon. Trying to divert Wm from shooting water at nearby swimmers, I suggested that we use it to talk secretly to each other. Demonstrating, I held it up to my ear, only to have a burst of water forcibly pushed into one ear canal and out the other. Wm, at the other end of the tube, laughed uproariously.

My automatic response was to fill the tube with water and blow water onto him. He had the tube currently about eye level. Just as I blew the water, he decided to follow my suggestion and speak into the tube, moving it into the vicinity of his mouth just as I shot the water from the tube. The water shot into his mouth all at once as a surprised look came over his face. He sputtered and then began turning red. Oh, Lord, I thought, he's choking to death and it's my fault. Swallow, swallow, I encouraged him.

That's when he began retching, and I, an experienced mother knew what was coming - he was going to throw up in the pool and they'd have to evacuate, call Homeland Security, and drain the pool. I'd be posted on the bulletin board with known terrorists at the Post Office. I moved him as quickly as I could to the side of the pool, but it was already coming out. Holding my hand over his mouth as most mothers do without thinking so that you can somehow catch the vomit or somehow shove it back into his mouth until you are someplace else (something NO ONE would ever thinkingly do), I can remember pondering "what is this you had to eat? It's blue. And some pink. Oh, yes, blueberry muffins for breakfast".

Getting him to the pool drain, I rinsed off his face and the drain while looking out of the corner of my eyes. Did the lifeguards see? Did anyone else? No, phew! Then, Will let out a huge, "YUCK!" because he had slime all down his floaty bathing suit. I jumped out of the pool, pulled him after me and ran to the ladies' locker room and hosed him down in the shower. Quickly, we returned the the pool, got in and acted like nothing happened. I added in a little whistling to make sure.

Then I caught the eye of a mom nearby. She looked at me with that "look". She glanced up at the lifeguard, and then just ever so slowly, shepherded her kids away from us. I wanted to shout, "He's not sick - I just almost drowned him, that's all!" I looked down to see a filament of yuck with a purple piece of blueberry attached float by and decided it was time to leave. I will probably never think of the cleanliness of a public pool in the same way again.

Back in the Saddle

Since friends are starting to call with offers of chicken soup (in case I'm sick) and suggestions for blogs (in case I have writers' block), I suppose it is time to push ahead and try to regain some momentum. The holidays always take a good deal out of me. Believe or not, I'm still working on my Christmas cards. I take procrastination to new heights.

This particular season, we went hiking in the mountains. Having forgotten to bring my gym shoes, I walked miles in my unsupported mules. I then drove three of five hours home in a mini-van that hates me (my husband's opinion) for the seat somehow pinches me into agony. Since that day, I've been in constant back pain and unable to sit at the computer. As you see from this blog activity, I'm nearly recovered if I take it easy.

I have missed countless opportunities to turn extreme exaggeration of family events into funny stories. I can only begin where I am and start again. But, it will have to wait for a short time, for my family would like to know if I plan to write or make dinner? Don't they know that serious writers must work long hours and their families must make sacrifices (or at least their own dinner)?