Chicken Scratch

Chickens can fly!?

2011-07-08T06:51:00.009-07:00

I didn't realize Black Stars were similar to guineas.

Chicks at 2 weeks

2011-03-14T18:05:00.004-07:00

The chicks are now 2 weeks old. They are growing fast, and we decided to open up the top level of the chicken coop a few days ago so they would have more room to run.

Today we uncovered the ladder leading downstairs. Twelve of the chickens eventually came down.

Orange Alert

2011-03-09T14:36:00.004-07:00

I don't usually talk about work, but I heard something funny last week.

While transcribing dictations, I often hear background noise and announcements over the PA system. On this particular day, I heard the following sequence.

"Code orange on the ground floor. Code orange on the ground floor."

Not knowing exactly what "code orange" was, I did a quick search on the internet and found this definition: Hospital message announced over a hospital's public address system warning the staff of 1. a bomb threat 2. a radioactive spill 3. person with mental issues is loose in the halls of the hospital.

I didn't give it much thought and kept typing.

Then 3 minutes later, "Code orange on the 3rd floor. Code orange on the 3rd floor."

And a few minutes after that, "Code orange on the 7th floor. Code orange on the 7th floor."

Somehow it brought to mind the Keystone Kops.

New Chicks

2011-03-03T15:28:00.006-07:00

Here is a picture of the trap left by the Fish and Game Department. It didn't catch anything after a week of being out in the backyard, and now it is gone. But so far we haven't had any more visits by either the cat or the javelinas, and all is well with the 4 chickens that we have left.

So... we decided to start all over again. Here are the new baby chicks - 26 Black Star chickens and 1 exotic chicken, which we think is a Buff Cochin.

They make wonderful little peeping noises all the time without ever opening their beaks. It's so cute.

Sometimes they get pasty butts when they are first born, and this has to be cleaned off. I let Paul do that.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My

2011-02-03T08:54:00.010-07:00

Our chickens have been vanishing one at a time during the night. We were suspicious that people were jumping over the fence and taking them for food, so we filed a report with the sheriff's department. We began closing the chicken yard gate at night and then letting the chickens out during the day to run around in the bamboo, and for the last month none of them vanished. So thinking that the threat had moved on, we began leaving the gate open again. Very soon after, though, 2 more chickens vanished over a 2-day period. So we called the sheriff's department again. They got in touch with the Fish and Game Department about the issue, and they thought perhaps a mountain lion was getting into the coops at night and taking the chickens.

Additionally, we have had a javelina problem in the past where they dig under the fence and get into the chicken yard and knock everything over to get to the food. Last night about 8 o'clock I was out with Findlay before going to bed and heard a sound in the chicken yard. Thinking I was perhaps catching the mountain lion in the act, I ran to get a spotlight. It wasn't a mountain lion that I found but instead 5 javelinas wandering around the chicken yard eating all the food they had just knocked over.

So today we had a fish and game agent come to the house to check it out. He said it was probably a bobcat that was getting in and eating the chickens. He said a chicken was too much bother for a mountain lion to go after -- just a light snack -- but a bobcat would stay around the area and eat chickens on a regular basis. He is going to set up a trap to hopefully catch the bobcat if that's what is eating the chickens. Maybe we'll have an update on the situation in a few days. For the javelina, he suggested getting an electric fence to run along the bottom of the fence.

Another One Bites the Dust

2010-11-12T09:36:00.003-07:00

This is what greeted us at the door when we got home from church on Sunday.

Two eggs for breakfast please

2010-09-10T10:13:00.008-07:00

I went out to check for eggs yesterday and found this in the chicken coop. It scared me half to death initially, but then I went running to get the camera and Paul.

We watched him for about 10 minutes. This is his first egg for breakfast. We only filmed for about 30 seconds at a time, so you have to watch all the clips to get the full story.

And this is his second egg.

After the egg got about 4 or 5 inches down, he suddenly contracted his muscles and lunged forward a few inches. This caused the eggshell to crack and the big bulge when away. Unfortunately, we didn't get this on tape.

Here's Paul playing with the snake about a month ago.

Heinous Guineas Part 2

2010-08-13T11:07:00.009-07:00

Just some pictures to enjoy.

Their eyes are a nice pretty blue. Can't really say much about the rest of them. You can certainly picture them pecking a hole in a chicken's head. I hope these guineas behave themselves.

Nighttime rituals

2010-08-05T06:30:00.012-07:00

While most creatures slow down, get quiet, and settle in for the night, the guineas have quite another nighttime ritual. They eventually do settle down, but before that there is quite a bit of activity and a cacophony of sound. Our neighbor Joe called last night to see if the guineas were all right because he could hear them from his house. They have recently started sleeping in the mesquite trees at night.

Doghouse? I thought this was my private chicken coop!

2010-08-04T10:04:00.015-07:00

Every morning this chicken jumps over the fence to get into the backyard and lay her egg in the doghouse. Here is part of the sequence. By this time, she has already walked across the lawn and is circling the doghouse.

After she's done, she goes back across the lawn and jumps back over the fence.

Then we have to get the egg out of the doghouse, which is the hard part for us. The lid, which is a 4 x 8 piece of plywood, lifts up so we can get into the doghouse without crawling in.

I wore this shirt for my beloved sister, Vivian. She hates my shirts with the holes in the sleeves.

Rain

2010-07-30T20:09:00.007-07:00

Last night we had a huge rainstorm. It was accompanied by tremendous amounts of lightning and thunder. The storm must have been directly overhead. Findlay was sleeping inside our room as usual, but even being in the same room with us was not enough to keep him calm with all the noise. He kept walking around to Paul's side of the bed. I guess he had to get the real "alpha dog's" reassurance and not just mine. Eventually, I moved his dog bed right beside me so I could keep my hand on him, and every time there was a clap of thunder he would jerk his whole body. I had never seen him so scared before.

When we checked the rain gauge in the morning, we had gotten 2.9 inches of rain. You could see in the backyard that there had been rivers of water flowing from one side of the property to the other.

Our burn pit (which is about 2-1/2 feet deep) was completely full of water.

It looked like there were oil slicks on the water.

When we looked more closely, the oil slicks turned out to be thousands of little bugs floating on top of the water. We have no idea what they were.

Heinous Guineas

2010-07-21T06:43:00.003-07:00

Yesterday, my sister wanted to know how the "heinous guineas" were doing. This picture should confirm that they are indeed heinous. The guineas are starting to practice their calls and other vocalizations. I'm not sure what they're so excited about in this clip, but they do this every evening. The distinct two-syllable call is from a female guinea. The males can't make that sound.

Horses and Goats

2010-07-09T12:07:00.005-07:00

One of our neighbors is keeping their 4 horses and 1 goat on our property. They are very fun to watch, especially the goat who is quite friendly.

Shortly after the horses were moved over to the property, another neighbor and her 2 kids came over to look at them. We had gone into the house to talk for a while, and the little girl, Lizzy, came running in to tell us that one of the horses was pregnant. We told her that that wasn't the case, but she insisted that not only was one of the horses pregnant but was giving birth at that very moment and one leg was already out. I won't go into any more detail except to say that one of the horses is a male.

Guineas and Chickens

2010-07-08T10:26:00.010-07:00

We've been slowly introducing the chickens and the guineas to each other. At first the guineas were very afraid and would go to the top portion of the coop and hide. The chickens seemed to be more interested in eating the grow feed, so they pretty much ignored the guineas and went straight to the food hopper. You can see they are mingling together in this picture.

This is the top half of the coop looking straight down. When we first opened up the cage to the chickens, the guineas would line up next to the stairway and look down at the chickens. They would hang their heads way over, and it was pretty funny to see from below.

We left the cage open one night and Buffy, the alpha chicken at the top of the pecking order, went up there to be with them and show them who was boss.

Last night was the first night the guineas slept outside. Previous to this, the chickens (all 19 of them) were crammed into one coop and the guineas in the other. Guineas naturally sleep out in the open like this, so soon the chickens will be able to use both coops again. Unfortunately, the guineas got quite a scare this morning when some javelina broke into the chicken yard. Two of them flew over the fence to get away from the javelina, and they were making quite a racket this morning trying to get back into the chicken yard. Thankfully, they all survived. Findlay didn't make a peep while all this was going on. He's not a good watchdog. Maybe he's deaf -- or scared!

Guineas

2010-05-28T19:01:00.006-07:00

Today we got our guineas in the mail. They are African white guineas.

Here's how they were packed in the box.

This is their setup with the heat lamp and their food and water. One of them drowned in the water bowl within hours, so now we're down to 15 guineas. It looked like he/she fell asleep in the water and drowned.

No fashion sense

2010-05-25T18:46:00.007-07:00

Today Paul said, "That's an interesting outfit you're wearing -- Black shorts, extremely white shoes and socks, and white legs."

San Diego 2010

2010-05-22T20:28:00.010-07:00

Campsite setup

Becky cooking a delicious shrimp fettuccine dinner

Camping with electricity and internet access - the only way to camp

Jet ski fun

Red Dragon

2010-04-22T15:16:00.008-07:00

Paul got a new toy to play with. He bought a Red Dragon propane torch to burn the weeds in the yard.

He was having a wonderful time burning weeds in the backyard. After about half an hour I went outside to see how things were going. I looked around the yard and saw some smoke coming from the corner of the yard by the fence. So I said to Paul, "Should the fence be smoldering over there?" He calmly looked around, didn't seem too alarmed, and said, "Go put it out." I don't think he could tell from where he stood that the fence was on fire. He told me later that he wasn't going to go near the fire because he had a propane tank on his back. I suppose that was wise!

Paul surveying the damage.

McGoon

2010-03-02T19:24:00.009-07:00

Goony is 13 years old now. I can't believe that many years have gone by. Over the past year he has been losing weight and now weighs only 11 pounds. He used to weigh about 20 pounds. Last week he got another infection in his head in the same spot where he had one last year after the cat fight, so we decided to take him to the vet -- or I should say I made Paul take him to the vet.

This is what Goony's head looked like last Friday morning. We couldn't really see where an injury was, but his head was all puffy and he suddenly had a bald spot on his head.

The vet drained out the pus and prescribed this combination of antibiotics.

We have to administer it using a plastic syringe. It smells like bubble gum, but Goony is not very fond of having it squirted into his mouth and a lot of it ends up all over my hand and his neck.

While we had him at the veterinary clinic, we decided to find out what was causing his weight loss. The vet said his heart rate was 246 and all signs pointed to an overactive thyroid. So after the blood test came back, that is indeed what he has. This is the medication that we are supposed to give him.

This end of the tube is to be turned 2 times (where the arrows match up). This squirts out a very small glob of medicine that is to be applied to the inside of Goony's ear. There's a foam applicator where the medicine squeezes out from under that yellow cap.

Another strange thing happened to Goony while he was at the vet's office. She said he was dehydrated, so she took him into the back room and administered some kind of subcutaneous fluid under his skin. He came back with his hair all wet, so I'm not sure how much actually made it into his body. He seemed to be okay until the next day when he suddenly was nearly unable to walk at all. It was as if his back legs had no strength or coordination at all. He could barely stand up, take a couple steps, and then squat back down. When he tried to pee in his litter box, he didn't have the strength to squat for long, so he ended up lying down in the litterbox. It was quite sad and distressing.

So I took it upon myself to diagnose the problem. I had watched a TV show that showed a person with severe potassium deficiency who had become paralyzed in a short period of time. Well, I figured that Goony might have a low potassium. We just happened to have potassium pills in the house, so I ground one up and put some of the powder into Goony's food. He got a couple small doses of this, and by the evening he seemed to be a little better and was back to normal by the next day. Of course, I have no idea if I was correct or not in my diagnosis or if the potassium had any effect at all, but Goony is back to his normal self so that's all that matters.

Bookmarks

2010-02-26T18:41:00.014-07:00

I've been experimenting with different fabrics and threads for some Hardanger bookmarks that I'm making. I work at the dining room table and my workspace is pretty messy, but everything is right at my fingertips.

Here are a few examples. These haven't been washed and ironed yet.

Disciple Now Weekend

2010-02-19T19:02:00.012-07:00

Last weekend we were one of the host families for the Disciple Now weekend for our church youth group. The weekend went well. We had 8 junior high boys and 2 college leaders staying at our house for the weekend. The boys were very interested in music. We had one boy that played the piano and several who played the guitar, so they were entertaining themselves and us for much of their free time. They also were quite amused by the chickens and also liked playing in the bamboo.

This particular boy especially loved the chickens. He just couldn't get enough of them.

Findlay was having a good time in the bamboo looking for chicken poop.

After a full day of being with the boys, Findlay was exhausted. He actually went to bed before everyone else did. We use that towel as a blanket to cover Findlay since our house is usually cold.

Of course, no visit to our home would be complete without Paul serving up wheatgrass juice! We only had one adverse reaction, and that was the college student on the right in the picture who drank orange juice with it and had no food. He said he felt better once he ate a bagel.

Climate Change

2010-02-10T11:48:00.007-07:00

It's cold again today and we're expecting some rain and maybe snow later tonight, but the climate change I'm writing about today is the change in atmosphere of the household since Chani died. Since Chani died, all the animals have had personality changes. The cats and chickens are less afraid, but Findlay is more afraid.

I went out to the back area where the chickens live and left the gate open for just a moment. Almost instantly, all the Red Star chickens ran into the back yard to play in the grass. They seemed to know that Chani wasn't there to kill them. We have one chicken that comes into the backyard routinely now. I guess she couldn't get back over the fence, and I found her wandering around the yard late one night when I let Findlay out before going to bed. We both heard something moving around in the fallen leaves by the house. Instead of running to find out what it was and protect me, Findlay just stood there and let me go rescue him from the big bad chicken. For a couple days after that, he was afraid to go out at night unless I went with him.

This chicken wanted to come into the house and look around.

Even BD has changed. She used to only go outside in the middle of the night when she knew the dogs were asleep. Now she goes out during the day and plays in the backyard. Here are BD and Goony in the backyard.

Chani 12/1/2001 - 11/17/2009

2009-11-19T07:48:00.005-07:00

Our poor little Chani died on Tuesday. I guess she had something quite a bit more serious than what we initially thought. She became very anemic and thin and we finally had to put her to sleep. We got that cute body suit for her because she was having trouble staying warm and her hair was always standing on end. She seemed to actually like the suit, and it did keep her warm.

We were thinking of some funny stories about Chani, and I remembered that she barely made it past her childhood. When we first got chickens, I forgot to shut the gate to the back area where the chickens live and did not secure the little wire mesh gated area to their coop. Chani (and Findlay) went out there and killed 8 or 9 chickens before I caught them, but it was mostly Chani who did the killing. I thought Paul was going to kill Chani on the spot. He said she had "blood lust" and would never be a good dog after that. It took weeks for him to forgive her.

Findlay and Chani always slept right next to each other. Chani had been sleeping alone for the past few days because she didn't feel well, but on the day that she died she once again curled up right next to Findlay. When I got up in the morning to shower and get ready for the day, Findlay stayed right next to her on the dog bed and didn't leap up to get his breakfast as usual. He must have known she needed him to be with her.

In the last couple days since she died, things have been considerably calmer around the house, though. I always thought Findlay was the one waking up several times per night to go out (on those nights we kept them in). Now that he is on his own, he stays asleep all night. I think he was responding to Chani waking up, and then he in turn would wake us up, making him look like the bad dog.

On a side note, I thought I should mention that the vet actually turned out to be quite good through this whole 2 months. After that initial visit and the remarks about Chani's lack of socialization and needing Xanax, Dr. Ferris was actually very patient with Chani and took good care of her. I could always talk to her on the phone about Chani, and she even called to check on Chani a time or two.

We buried Chani under our bamboo. I guess we'll have some lush new growth in that spot next year.

Trunk or Treat

2009-11-03T14:39:00.013-07:00

Our church held its annual Trunk or Treat event on Halloween. I always twist balloons for this event, which is always fun. According to the registration records, over 1000 people attended the event. Luckily, only a fraction of those came through my line. As it was, the event went from 5:00 to 7:30, and I twisted my last balloon at 8:00 while they were sweeping and cleaning up the room around me.

One funny thing happened this year. Living in a military town, swords and guns are a hot item to make with balloons, and no one ever has a problem with it. Well, I was done twisting the sword and was just about to put it into this little boy's scabbard, when suddenly his mother yells out, "No weapons! No weapons!" The poor little boy was taken aback and told his mother, "It's not a weapon, it's a sword." Well she practically had a fit. Needless to say, I had to make something else for him.

The girl in the picture above and her mother did not have a problem with swords. I thought that was so cute... this pretty little princess wearing a sword. She was quite happy with it.

I have been trying to get pictures of me making balloons and children holding balloons for my website. So I asked Paul to take pictures for me. I guess I didn't give clear instructions. He thought I wanted pictures of the event itself. He took a lot of good pictures of the crowd and the kids, but unfortunately many of them were taken from behind me... of my behind.

Again...

Again...

And again.

I guess now when I ask the infamous question, "Is my butt as big as..." I can now just go back to a picture and see if it is or not. Haha!

Oven woes

2009-10-13T17:38:00.005-07:00

This is my lovely kitchen complete with harvest gold stove/oven and orange Formica countertop, perhaps one of the most beautiful color combinations one has ever seen.

Last week the oven broke. I was so looking forward to eating a cheese crisp when unexpectedly the broil setting stopped working. I turned the oven to bake so that I could eat something, but that just made my cheese crisp have a dry, cracker-like tortilla with barely melted cheese on top. Yuck!

This was the perfect opportunity to get a new stove and get rid of the hideous harvest gold... but instead we tried to fix it.

It was obvious that it was only the top element that was not working, so we unscrewed it and pulled it away from the back of the oven. Sure enough, one of the wires had broken/corroded and was no longer connected to the element.

The wire had pulled back a bit from the opening, so we had to reach in there with some pliers to grab it and pull it back out. Fortunately, we were able to do that and reconnect it to the element.

Sigh. I guess I'll have to wait a little longer before getting a new oven.

Helping around the house

2009-10-11T20:13:00.002-07:00

Saturday morning started like this. I said to Paul, "I have 2 choices. Since Monday is a holiday, I can either work all day today (at my transcription job) since I'll be missing work Monday or I can take the day off and get stuff done around the house."

After a brief period of thought, he told me I should probably do my transcription work.

A short time later, I picked up the conversation again and was mentioning all the various things that needed to get done, like vacuuming, mopping, laundry, etc., hoping that he would get the hint that he could help me by doing some of them.

Again, after giving it some thought, he said, "Well, you could work today and then do the vacuuming and mopping on Monday since you have the day off."

Clearly, he didn't get the hint.

Today, I was laughing about the whole conversation again and asked him about it. He said, "I was helping... I was helping you organize your time."

Needless to say, tomorrow he has a list of things to do. You'd think after 23 years of marriage I would know that I have to be specific.

I love you cutie pie!

Goony and the vet

2009-10-09T18:47:00.008-07:00

I seem to be spending a lot of time (and money) at the veterinary hospital lately. The latest saga involves Goony.

Last Friday night Goony was in a fight. This is very unusual since he stays very close to home, and he has not been in a fight in years. We hear cats fighting pretty often at night, but this time we didn't hear anything. The picture above is what Goony looked like on Saturday morning. We could tell that his eye had been scratched and there was the blood on his forehead. He spent the day sleeping and pretty much keeping his eye shut.

By the next day, the eye was not getting any better. So being the kind of people we are, we decided to treat his eye ourselves instead of going to the vet. We did some reading online about eye infections and brewed up some concoctions. We were using boric acid drops and colloidal silver drops in the eye, and actually his eye got better over the next couple days.

The problem was that we didn't deal with the bite on his head. We could obviously see the puncture wound and scab, but it looked okay. Around Wednesday, though, it started to form an abscess. By Thursday, he had a rather large bump on the right side of his head that was full of pus. So this morning we took him to the vet.

The vet, a different one than the one who treated Chani, took a look at Goony and started pulling the scab off and pushing on his head and checking Goony all over. Goony was quite calm through the whole thing. Even when he pulled off the scab, though, the wound was still closed and wouldn't drain. Well, he started talking about how we could give Goony some antibiotics and eventually the body were absorb the pus. We explained about how we have an aversion to giving cats antibiotics since the incident with BD.

For those who don't know this story, Paul ended up in the emergency room with a hematoma in his arm when BD, our other cat, bit into his arm when he was trying to give her an antibiotic pill.

The vet assured us that this would be in liquid form and have a good flavor. I wasn't getting a good feeling about the big lump in his head being able to be absorbed, and apparently the vet was rethinking that as well because after a few minutes he decided to open up the bite wound. Thankfully, he took Goony to the back room so we didn't have to watch.

A couple minutes later, Goony came back with a nice little hole in his head and no lump. The vet said it had drained 2 ounces of pus. Disgusting!!

This is Goony back home and recuperating. He was pretty wiped out by the whole ordeal of driving in the car and getting treated. He pretty much slept the whole day, but he is up and about this evening and feeling a lot better.

Chani update

2009-10-01T16:55:00.007-07:00

Atypical Addison's Disease -- adrenal insufficiency. That's what Chani has. Have you ever heard of such a thing in a dog??

To update the story on our poor little doggie, she ended up not eating for 10 days. So we took her back to the vet who took some x-rays and did some more blood tests. They also gave her a steroid injection. That perked her right up, and she started eating again. This made them think that perhaps she had an adrenal gland problem, so we were to take Chani back to the vet and have a specific test for this. Finally, they let us give Chani a tranquilizer. Apparently, the tranquilizers would not affect this test... or maybe they got tired of muzzling her. In any case, we gave her a tranquilizer before taking her in on Tuesday.

The above picture is what she looked like that day. It's a pretty horrid sight, but it didn't seem to bother her much. You can see what they call the "third eyelid" and of course the droopy lids, but really she was okay. She was walking around but not very coordinated, slipping on the tile floor a little. The funniest thing, though, was that she became incontinent of urine. At first I didn't notice, but after she laid down for a while and then got up, I noticed that there was a puddle and her hind end was all wet. So I went to clean her up, and while I was washing her off I noticed that a drop of pee would form and then drop off and immediately another drop of pee would begin to form and then drop off -- like a leaky faucet. And then I accidentally pressed too hard somewhere (not sure where) and this stream of pee came shooting out. I have never seen anything like that in my whole life. Needless to say, she was sleeping on a blanket with plastic underneath for the rest of the night. Thankfully, all was back to normal the next day.

Chani and the vet

2009-09-17T09:08:00.009-07:00

Today we took Chani to the vet. For those of you who don't know, Chani is just a wee bit insecure and can behave badly around other dogs and scary situations. Chani has been sick for a few days and not eating any food or drinking water, so we called the vet's office to see what we should do. Of course, they said, "Bring her on in." So Paul (he makes all my phone calls for me) mentioned that Chani gets a little "excited" when she goes to the see the vet and asked whether we should use the tranquilizers that were given to us before. They looked it all up on the computer and told us those tranquilizers were so old that they probably wouldn't work anymore. Well that tells you how long it's been since we've taken her to the vet.

To be honest, Chani gets a little bit more than "excited." About a year ago I had taken our other dog, Findlay, to see the vet and right in the examining room was a computer with all the dog's information - a very nice feature. As they brought up my file, this huge warning popped up about Chani. I don't remember the exact wording, but I remember being instantly horrified.

At today's visit, a new vet saw Chani. She wisely had brought a muzzle with her, and even though Chani wasn't feeling well, she felt well enough to express her dislike for the vet. The vet, Dr. Ferris, immediately made a remark about how Chani needed to be socialized - as if we hadn't heard that before. We tried to explain that she was actually considerably better than she used to be and that she had been through 16 weeks of training classes, etc. Of course, she just looked at us and didn't say anything.

She led Chani off to have some blood taken, and we could hear yelps, a curse word, and other noises coming from the back room, and finally someone brought her back. Then she wanted a urine sample. So we were supposed to walk Chani around outside until she provided a sample. I thought I had mentioned to them that Chani hadn't been drinking any water, but I guess they were hoping. Needless to say, they didn't get a sample. Later when we got home, I was able to get a sample, and we had to drive all the way back to town to deliver it.

We don't know what exactly is wrong with Chani. She had a fever and a higher-than-normal white blood count, so they suspected some kind of infection. Consequently, they gave us antibiotics to feed Chani. The vet, perhaps thinking this was a positive thing, gave us large chewable tablets. Again, I thought I had mentioned that Chani wasn't eating anything, and certainly not huge pills. I don't know how we'll ever get her to eat those.

The final issue Dr. Ferris brought up with us was Chani's "anxiety" problem. She gave this spiel about how some dogs do very well on alprazolam. They lead a much happier life, blah, blah, blah. She wanted to give Chani Xanax! Poor Chani. I love my unsocialized, insecure dog.

I'm on Fire!

2009-09-07T10:25:00.004-07:00

I set myself on fire yesterday while trying to burn the trash. I won't go into the gory details. Just be advised that using gasoline, even in small quantities, is not a good idea. But I can vouch for the "drop and roll" technique working. Here is the only real burn from the ordeal. It is on the inside of my left leg just above the ankle. I was very fortunate!

Goony

2009-09-02T21:14:00.004-07:00

Is this not the strangest way for a cat to sleep? I'm not sure if it is more comfortable for him to sleep this way because he is so fat or because of his arthritis. This picture makes me want to bury my face in his fur and snuggle with him.

The Last Scrap

2009-09-02T20:24:00.006-07:00

Today, I finally have some news to report regarding the craft fair that I hope to enter in October. I finally got all my paperwork back from the state and city that is required to participate. I had to apply for a TPT with the state of Arizona. That stands for Transaction Privilege Tax license. Somehow the state of Arizona has managed to twist everthing around and make it a privilege for me pay taxes on anything I sell. They lost my first check and application, so I had to send it in a second time. Then I found out I had to get a license from the city of Sierra Vista -- an occasional use permit. It has taken 6 weeks to complete the necessary paperwork. I hope it was worth the trouble. Today I sent in my application, and hopefully it's not too late to participate in the craft fair. I'll be trying to sell origami boxes, paper wreaths, and paper stars. Some examples of the boxes can be found at my Etsy shop.

I figured I would get some business cards to hand out at the fair in case I got accepted. So I went to a website to get "free" business cards. Clearly, my mind wasn't firing on all cylinders when I went through the ordering process. I needed my sister/advisor to be here to help me. I chose a lovely card and entered all the information. I didn't want to pay any extra to change the font or anything (after all then it wouldn't be free), and it looked fine on the computer screen, so I ordered them. Of course, I also had them shipped the slowest way possible, which took 3 weeks. When I finally got them today I discovered that people may need a magnifying glass to read the information. Well... at least they were "free."

Canning 101

2009-08-31T16:12:00.007-07:00

Okay, so I copied that title from The Pioneer Woman. She had a lovely description of canning strawberry jam. I, too, have been busy canning. Last week, we canned the rest of the tomatoes. Of course, I didn't bother taking pictures. It was all I could do to manage the canning. If you want to see lovely pictures of canning, click on the title "Canning 101," but instead of strawberries and sugar imagine tomatoes and lemon juice.

The garden has pretty much come to an end for the year, so we let the chickens go into the garden to play and eat whatever they wanted, bugs mostly.

Here's an example of one of the bugs that the chickens enjoyed. We pulled this huge caterpillar off one of the tomato plants. The chickens loved it!

I'm glad we had the garden and have enjoyed the delicious vegetables, but I'm ready for a break.

Lizard poop and other thoughts.

2009-08-08T17:59:00.009-07:00

Today's blog will be a mishmash of various events from this week.

Today while I was walking outside I found this lizard poop. It was about an inch long, so this was obviously from a large lizard. You can see a crack in the poop. I had already broken it open before I thought to get my camera. Anyway, this poop was near an ant hill. In the past, we have seen lizards just sitting by the trail of ants and picking them off one by one as they walk by.

And as you can see, the poop is full of ant carcasses.

I've been asked to post pictures of the dogs, but their normal pose is sleeping, which is not very interesting. I was able to get them playing a couple days ago, but every time I got the camera out they would stop what they were doing and come over to me.

So this is the best I could do from far away and the dogs moving around quite a bit. I thought this was interesting because Findlay is actually the one chewing on Chani (usually it's the other way around). Now, just imagine them chewing on each other and making the Wookie noise from Star Wars for the full effect.

Last, but not least, one of the chickens has started jumping on our shoulders whenever we squat down. When we stand up, she won't jump off. She just kind of arranges herself so that she can go for a ride while we walk around. It can be kind of painful when she digs her "talons" into your shoulders for balance, and you do have to either wear glasses or not look directly at her. She tends to want to peck at your eyes.

Family Reunion

2009-07-27T11:32:00.006-07:00

I would have posted last night, but I was suffering from a near-comatose condition from having taken the "less drowsy" formula of Dramamine. I hate to think what would have happened had I taken the regular formula. Anyway, the plane rides were great since all I did was sleep from the time I sat in the chair until we landed.

The reunion was great! Paul has an interesting family genealogical chart. His grandmother, Theresa Sundal, married Henry G. Dybvig. Theresa's sister, Agnes Sundal, married Henry's cousin, Henry N. Dybvig. So 2 sisters married 2 cousins. The Henry G. family had 7 children, and the Henry N. family had 11 children, so that made for a lot of relatives. This reunion mostly consisted of the Henry G. family. Of these 7 children, all were there who are living except one who lives in a nursing home in Dayton, but many people were able to get over there and visit him.

In this picture is Eugene, Elaine, Talman's widow Carol, Philip, Roger, and Stanley (my father-in-law). Stan is the oldest at 89 years old.

Two sisters from the Henry N. side of the family were also there -- Rhoda and Ruth.

Many of Paul's cousins were also able to attend the reunion and even 2 of the their children. Below is a picture of the whole group.

The highlight of the reunion this year was not a bath and massage in the hot springs (another story for another blog) or anything nearly as funny. What we did do was a bus tour of the Dayton area to see many of the houses the Dybvig family had lived in over the years, some of the schools, and even the cemetery where family members are buried. Grandpa Dybvig was a patent attorney in Dayton, and apparently based upon his financial fortunes or misfortunes (the great depression, etc.) the family moved to a lot of different houses. We got a lot of history and interesting stories from the siblings as they revisited their old homes. Several of the siblings had also written up short memoirs that provided interesting anecdotes.

We also were able to sneak in a quick visit with Paul's cousin from his mom's side, Doug, and his family. We had not seen them for 8 years, and it was wonderful to get reconnected with that side of the family again and learn some family history.

A highlight of Friday morning was the trip to Dorothy Lane Market, which is a specialty market known for its "killer brownies." Of course, we had to sample one just to make sure they were as good as we remembered. They were! A "killer brownie" is made from multiple layers of chocolate brownie, rich caramel, and chopped pecans. That certainly is killer. Can you imagine the sugar content?!! It was very good, though.

One of the granddaughters who attended this reunion has volunteered to organize a reunion for next year. We will look forward to attending that reunion.

Hmmm... Am I Pregnant?

2009-07-14T13:50:00.003-07:00

I knew that title would get your attention! This picture reminds me of the women who don't know they're pregnant and give birth in the toilet. I think one of the little chickens wondered what was going on and just squatted and plopped out the egg right there in the dirt. Perhaps next time she'll know what's going on and lay the egg in the coop.

R.I.P.

2009-07-09T19:30:00.002-07:00

Today we mourn the death of one of our pet spiders. I'm sure all our family members will be happy about this since they only have one spider now to worry about crawling on them at night -- okay, one of the black spiders. There are still plenty of daddy longleg spiders to crawl on them at night.

I think we may have inadvertently led to the death of the spider. Here's what happened. A few days ago, we saw one of the spiders caught between the curtain and the lining of the curtain. Being the conscientious pet owners that we are, we rescued the spider and put it back up in the window track where it lives (on the same side we found it). For those who don't know about our spiders, one lives on the left side of the large window in our living room, and the other spider lives on the right side. I think perhaps we put the rescued spider back on the wrong side of the window, though, and into the home of the spider that already lives on that side. The reason I say this is because last night I saw a live spider come out at night, and the dead spider was unceremoniously plopped on the bottom window track just beneath it. I think maybe they had a fight to the death.

Ah well, it was probably some deadly species of spider anyway. Now if only I would vacuum up all the daddy longlegs.

Golden Barrel Cactus

2009-07-07T18:26:00.014-07:00

Paul tried something new this year. For the 20 years that we have lived in this house we have had a beautiful golden barrel cactus in the front yard (now with a pup that is also quite large). So this year we decided to try to grow some new cactus plants from seed.

The first step was to gather some seed pods from the top of the cactus. Each of the seed pods had hundreds of seeds in them.

We soaked the seeds overnight, then used an eyedropper to pick up the seeds in the water and deposit them in the soil. Then we put the tray under the grow lights and waited to see what would happen.

About a month later we finally saw the first signs of life.

After another 2 weeks, we could clearly see the needles. The little cacti are now about a centimeter tall, and it is time to transplant them to their own little pots where they will live for another couple years before being ready to transplant outside.

I Spy

2009-07-03T21:11:00.004-07:00

Many years ago, I heard a radio broadcast about looking for God's presence in everyday life. This could include answers to prayers, evidence of God's care, help in doing God's work, or unusual timing, and they are called "I spies." Today I had an "I spy." I was craving a BLT, but I had no tomatoes, and it was too far to go to town just for tomatoes. Then, just around lunch time, Paul went out to water the garden and to his great surprise found a ripe tomato buried deep within the plant, our first of the year. Mere coincidence or "I spy," I'm not sure, but thank you Dear Father for letting me have a BLT today.

Chicken Egg Update

2009-07-01T19:41:00.005-07:00

Just a followup on the young chicks. We have gotten only 2 eggs from the little ones. As you can see, the first eggs are much smaller than a full-sized egg. The green egg is from one of the Ameraucana chickens.

Another characteristic of the first eggs are that they seem to have double yolks more often. The bowl contains a double-yolk egg and one regular-sized egg. They taste the same, though -- very delicious.

Bumblebee

2009-06-30T20:39:00.006-07:00

This is just one portion of our garden. We have 10 rows of bush beans. We planted Blue Lake heirloom seeds, but some of the seeds were obviously some other variety because we have several pole beans growing. We are staking them up using some bamboo poles from our bamboo grove. Interestingly, we found that all the beans are being pollinated by one lone bumblebee. Every day we see it flying around all by its lonesome self from plant to plant. Now that's one busy bee.

Bugs

2009-06-29T19:12:00.009-07:00

Today, Paul discovered a very odd situation involving bugs. Very close to the shed was an area about 3 inches in diameter that looked like iron filings. Upon closer inspection, he found that the mass was moving and was actually hundreds and hundreds of very, very small bugs of some sort. By the time I got my camera, the mass had spread out and was crawling along the base of the shed. Each of those bugs is about 1 mm. We have no idea what they are.

Stranger still, a few hours later a dead beetle was in the same location upside down (also unidentified). This was about an inch long. We didn't try to figure out what it was.

We don't know if the two things were related, but it was strange that they both occurred in the same location.

Chicken Eggs

2009-06-25T17:52:00.006-07:00

I'm not sure what to think about this really, but I think one of the chicks has laid her first egg. She is only 14 weeks old, and I think she is still quite small, but I clearly heard her clucking and sitting in the coop (photo above), and later there was a small egg. I think 20 weeks or more is a more appropriate age to start laying eggs. I'll have to keep a close eye on this to see what is going on.

Also, I think one of the "hens" is a rooster. He/she is developing quite large wattles and a large comb. I hope he is just maturing more quickly than the rest and is actually a she.

In any case, the chickens are growing and developing their own personalities. There is one chicken who has a dark circle on the tip of her tail. She is curious and friendly in the sense that she comes running out to greet us each time we go outside, but when we reach down to touch her she bites our finger (not hard), then she lets us touch her.

Goony's new bed

2009-06-18T18:29:00.012-07:00

Isn't this cute. I've been working on the computer while sitting on the couch, and Goony likes to sit near me. I guess the couch wasn't comfortable enough for him, and he wanted even more cushioning.

Etsy

2009-06-18T12:39:00.008-07:00

As you can see, my blog is still a work in progress. There will be some changes over time as I tweak the look of the page.

Yesterday I opened my Etsy store. I am going to try to sell my origami boxes. I got so excited today when I saw that I had only 8 items for sale when yesterday I had 9 items for sale. I actually thought someone had bought one -- but there was no sale listed. After doing some checking around, I found the missing item. Somehow it had become inactive but was not sold... sigh. I don't understand how these things happen -- evil gremlins perhaps. The whole Etsy thing is new to me. Any and all feedback is appreciated, especially regarding pricing and photos. Kudos to Sarah for taking all the pictures and photoshopping them.