Bob and a Norse Love Goddess

I haven't written about chickens in a while, so the vicarious poultry keepers will get their time today.

We lost one chicken over the fall, Lucy, named after C.S. Lewis' character from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. She didn't sit on her perch for a few weeks, then one morning fell down the coop steps.  She died that afternoon.  She had always been the chicken apart.  The other three would scurry about in a little cluster and she would either be 20 feet behind or off somewhere else completely.  She was lowest in pecking order and Ursula made sure that she remembered that, body checking her away from the best snacks.

Athena is out pet chicken, she barely lays.  If this were a real farm she would have been soup long ago.
She is currently the lowest in the pecking order, and during the prime summer laying season she would lay a couple of times a week, maybe.  She has the most attitude though.  She makes it very clear that this snow was not requested and that she commands that we send it and the low temperatures back to Canada where they belong.  She resists being put into the chicken run every morning, wanting to stroll about, tempting fate and the neighbors' over-sized dogs.  Rules are for the other chickens.

The other two Paisley and Ursula, lay their share and a bit more.  Paisley is a homebody, who can usually be found within a few yards of the food dish, even if the gate is open.  Ursula has found every escape route available out of the run and will casually scratch about the yard in the afternoon.  She seems perfectly happy to hang out in the run in the morning, but late afternoons are for freedom.

This spring we are considering getting a few new chicks, since we are down one and one of the remaining girls doesn't pull her weight in egg production.  They are also really cute for two whole weeks.  My daughter has already named two, one will be Bob, not Bobbi Jean, or Bobbi Jo, or Bobbette, just a hen named Bob.  Bob is to be a Cochin, a basketball shaped chicken with feathered feet. She thinks it's funny, and well, it is.

The second will be Freya, after a a Norse love goddess whose carriage is pulled by two cats, a fitting name for our egg laying hen.  The question is: Will having Freya and Athena together cause a goddess power struggle?  My daughter believes that Freya should be a Wyandotte, but I'm not sold on it.

The third (you have to get several chicks at a time, they huddle to stay warm, if they can't huddle then they would probably die.) is unnamed.  I'm thinking she should be a ginormous Brahma and we should give her a Hindi name.  My daughter doesn't want a Brahma, but won't say why.

Any ideas for chicken breeds or funky names (we don't do ordinary)?

About all of this my husband just shakes his head and says, "You really want to do this????"  Thinking of all of the tears from the fire, and the lost girls now buried under the quince bush and behind the shed and all of the work and hassle involved in keeping the little chicks alive.

I guess it's like what they say about childbirth, that you just forget the pain and do it all over again.

Waiting, again

I've just filled in many of the newly scheduled practices, appointments and meetings for the coming year on my new tablet.  To do it all at once was time consuming and a bit of a shock, I started reflecting on the number of hours a week that I spend just sitting and waiting for my daughter.  

I recently read a book More Work For Mother: The Ironies of Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave about the changes in household duties for housewives/homemakers/stay-at-home moms.  Each name we have used reflects the focus of the time, the housewives focused on cleaning the house and preparing meals, the babies were in a playpen, the kids running around the neighborhood or in school.  No playgroups, play dates, or even pre-school, the mother was focused on waxing the kitchen floor, not the social development of the child.  Homemakers add another layer, not only was the house supposed to be clean and the meals prepared, but there was an expected effort on interior decorating and making the house homey. Those kids still tore through the neighborhood at will. Then comes the stay at home mom (or dad), housekeeping, homemaking, and a focus on the child.  Leaving a child in a porta-crib or bedroom all day is not an option, social services might come find you.  The focus is on the development of the child, the safety of the child, and the wants and needs of the child.  Sure there are washing machines without wringers now, dishwashers, and wrinkle-free clothing, but there are added  chores that either didn't exist or used to be the domain of their spouse.

In pre-automobile and early automobile culture, the person working away from home would pick up things on the way home from work or the groceries were purchased at a corner grocery, which was reached by walking.    The milk was delivered, sometimes eggs, meat or groceries were also delivered. Now grocery shopping entails a car and a drive, and a serious time commitment inside a warehouse sized building.  For me it is a twelve minute drive, forty-five minutes (sometimes more) inside the store and twelve minutes back to the house, for basic shopping.  During the week, I will need to go once or twice for fill in shops for more milk  and bread (they have cut back on the preservatives in some the bread, it can actually go moldy!!).  Each one of those trips take a minimum of 15 minutes of driving and fifteen minutes of shopping and self-check-out. 

The one thing the author had found changed the most was the amount of time the parent spent driving, before cars it was never dreamed that a child would attend meetings, practices or games twenty miles from home on a school night.  If they couldn't walk to the meeting, they didn't go.  Now the parents drive the child and sit there waiting for the meeting to end, because the meetings seem to be scheduled in places where an errand is just out of reach with the time limit.  So, the parent sits on Facebook for part of the time, plays Candy Crush, reads a little and stares off into space for an hour to an hour and a half.  Then they get back into the car to go straight home, past all of the places where they could run errands, because it is a school night and it is already too late.  

 

This coming week I'm anticipating 5-6 hours of sitting and waiting for my child and three hours and 20 minutes of driving her to and from basketball, a 4-H related activity, and coding sessions at the public library (not the local branch, of course).  This does not include the nagging needed for the child to arrive at the activity clean, appropriately dressed, with the correct equipment and with homework completed beforehand, nor does it include the time required to get the kid into the shower after practice and to get all equipment and clothing placed in the appropriate spots. Looking at it this way it easily takes 15-20 hours a week just to have my kid participate in activities, it's like a part-time job. How do parents with many children and full-time jobs do it?  From my observations, they appear to do it with sugar, caffeine and sleep deprivation.

The next question is why do we put ourselves through this?  Much of it boils down to the fact that getting into a good university these days is not just about having straight A's, though that is part of it.  A child has to start building their resume for their college applications from the moment they start attending school.  A kid can't expect to make the soccer team if they never played before the 9th grade, but they need that for the application, the other kids have been playing since they were four and attending summer camps focused on skill development.  In order to stay competitive and have half a chance, they have to start developing the skills they need early.  It really sucks, because sometimes a kid isn't interested in something until they reach the age of fourteen, but the others their age have been groomed since pre-school in that activity and to catch up and surpass them is a daunting task.

I spent much of my youth running around in the woods, riding my bike (with no helmet), smashing rocks together to see which shattered first (with no safety glasses), and trying to figure out what kinds or rocks they were.  I spent it bird watching from the back window.  Floating leaves down the stream.  Reading books.  Arguing with my sisters.  Playing with my sisters. Hauling firewood.  Pulling rocks out of my mother's garden, and putting them into a giant pile (see smashing rocks). Coloring.  Not one thing would be fit for a resume, nothing quantifiable before I enter high school, except four years in Campfire Girls. 

 

It was the transition time between the housewife years and the homemaker years.  We were told to go outside and play and were only expected to come inside to retrieve something or to use the bathroom.  The neighbor kids had the house door locked behind them and it wouldn't be unlocked until lunchtime, I guess their mom was still a housewife. They still used mecurochrome.  Of the six kids, between us and the neighbors, all six went to college, and at least three of us have advanced degrees.  Would that happen today?  Would they be placed in foster care for neglect and deliberate exposure to toxic substances? 

Those days are gone.   

For Christmas I received a tablet computer, I hope to be able to write while I wait.  Its case, with a wireless keyboard  built in, is due to be delivered by Santa's elves in the brown truck any day now.  Bring on the activities!

 

Happy Mid-Winter's Day!

It's the season to fight back the darkness, the sun sets early, rises late and most days lately have been overcast or drizzly.   I have strung 400 multi-colored lights in the kitchen, 400 more on the tree and about 300 flashing on the porch.  I put them up the day my daughter and I agreed that it was just too dark and gloomy.

Counter-intuitively, I have Nirvana blasting on my husband's prized 1980's state-of-the-art stereo. The dog has run for cover.  The parrot is whistling along.  The bass line of Come As You Are can fight back any darkness for me, I'll be humming it all day.   I just googled  the lyrics to find out what I've been mumbling for all these years, but I've found in this case ignorance just might have been bliss. Nat King Cole it isn't, but if it gets me in the spirit of the season, so what.

The ripening fruit cakes are in the pantry where I tucked them a month and a half ago. Gifts are purchased, wrapped, hidden and then re-hidden in a new spot, because I'm a sneaky mom that way. The annual letter/powerpoint has been sent out, missing the last two slides, because I was waaaaaaay over the file size for an e-mail document.  This year I added music, because I knew I could, but had never tried.  It will take more practice to get it just right.

Cookie ingredients are sitting on the shelves ready for the right moment, which will come very soon. I feel a sweet tooth coming on. Lemon sugar, molasses crinkles, peanut butter and something with chocolate may be the varieties, may be not, we'll see.

Off to Whole Foods to find goat/sheep/buffalo milk  cheese suitable for the traditional family pork chop/macaroni and cheese dinner for Christmas Eve.  The chevre in the supermarket just doesn't cut it, but my cow's milk allergy won't get in the way of 56 year tradition.

Squirrels?

I started filling my bird feeder a few weeks ago.  The birds have come in abundance, but it is strange, a pint scoop of bird food lasts three days right now.  Last year, I put out that much before breakfast and it would be gone by lunchtime.  The difference seems to be the squirrels.  Last year they were brazen, three of them hanging about the feeder, one swinging  and spinning on the feeder like it is an amusement park ride and two underneath enjoying the bounty sprinkling down upon them.  Then they frisked about, ran up and down the tree and tussled in the yard.

This year there are squirrels, but they are behaving differently.  They hide.  The sneak.  They scoot from one point of cover to the next.  They are acting like the prey that they are. I'm guessing either the hawks have been voracious or a neighbor has a BB gun.  Whatever it is, the birds are able to eat the food that I put out for them.

So far this year, the usual birds, cardinals, juncos, chickadees-both Carolina and blackcapped, bluejays, nuthatches.  The titmice have been hanging out at the picture window making faces at the cats on the other side of the glass, teasing, usually the wrens do that.  The cats tightly swish the tips of their tails and make their "eh-eh-eh" hunting sounds and bonk their heads on the glass as they try to fire themselves through it.  They recover with their usual, "I meant to do that. I knew what I was doing, really." look.  I swear I heard the titmice  snickering.

The crows are strange.  They appear around the hedges from the neighbor's yard and slowly walk, like middle school kids, in a loose bunch, talking amongst themselves.  The stroll down the hill, about 50 feet, and then eat some of the millet  that has spilled on the ground under the feeder. Some days they pick at the ground to eat other things.  When they are done, they gather together and slowly walk back up the hill and disappear back around the hedge.  There are other groups of crows that fly in, but this bunch likes to hoof it. Strange.

Pros and Cons of a Polar Vortex and my "To Do" list

The Polar Vortex is heading this way again facilitating a chore that I have been postponing for chilly weather, insulating the crawlspace under the house.  It could be done in warmer weather, but I choose not to for serious reasons. 

First, I put on one of those Tyvek suits to keep those itchy bits of fiber glass out of my clothes and it is rather warm in there. 

Second, the chilly temperatures change the critters out and about, namely snakes.  I've seen a ginormous king snake, a couple of rat snakes and the creme de la creme of giving me the willies, the copperhead.  The king snake, I know, is harmless, but he/she is so big that it really doesn't matter that I know it is harmless.  The rat snakes and I seem to have worked out a bit of an agreement that they stay out of my way and I'll stay out of theirs, but they keep shedding their skins just to the west of the foundation of the house, so I know that they are still there.  Then there was that little bitty copperhead, the problem with little bitty snakes is that odds are their siblings are also nearby.  The venomous bit isn't exactly a selling point either.  The polar winds will blow and those legless reptiles will wiggle their way into their little holes in the ground and stay there until spring.  Works for me.

Before the polar vortex gets here, I had a few things to get done. This morning, I patched the fault line that had formed in our driveway.  It had filled with weeds and bits of soil and to my surprise, many, many earthworms.  I cleaned it out and patched it.  I loved the instructions on the package that told me that if I didn't feel like renting a tamper, I could always drive the car back and forth over it.  So, with my little Scion, I tamped it.  Doing the pot hole that had formed on the shared part of the driveway was more fun to tamp, it is on a pretty steep incline and I have a five speed car.  Going back and forth over it, having to gun it a bit to pull back up the hill may have entertained the neighbors a little.

Later today my daughter and I will dig up the dahlia corms.  A month ago I should have dug up the irises that need to be divided, but I didn't, maybe that will happen also.  The daffodils need relocating and...it will be dark before it all happens.  Tomorrow is still supposed to be nice, the list will carry over.

Quests for Mincemeat and Currants

The holiday season approaches and as with many holidays past, I would like some of my family's traditional foods.  The problem is that after so many generations the ingredients are getting harder and harder to find.

My family has a policy, we eat no fruitcake other than that someone in the family has made from the family recipe, otherwise who knows what we might be eating.  This year I'm going to give it a try.  I did it a few years back with my mom in Massachusetts, but this effort is to be all on my own.  Except, she has had to help me a bit.  Currants are not to be found in this area, I've checked all the stores.  So, after a few discussions, she located a box and mailed it to me.

The other item we perennially have an issue with is mincemeat. Now I know there are many folks out there who haven't a clue as to what this mysterious stuff is, in fact I spoke with many of them in my search.    At each grocery store where I inquired I was faced with a quizzical look, "Oh, you'll find that in the meat department."  Nope.  I'm not talking ground beef or pork or chicken or meatloaf mix, I'm talking good old raisins, apples and suet, yep, suet.  After a brief discussion, I'm usually asked what the heck would anyone do with that stuff.   

 Once I have found an employee who knows what the stuff is, then I spring on them that only the boxed stuff will do, the mincemeat in a jar has funky thickeners and an an extra bit of flavoring that no one in the family finds appealing.  The grocery clerks scratch their heads trying to get their brain around how anyone would box the mush that comes in a jar. (It's all dried, it needs to be rehydrated before using.) Out come the handheld inventory computers and the cell phones to the folks in distribution.  Everyone seems really puzzled by all of this.  I stumbled upon the right employee in Safeway, my fourth grocery.  After four other clerks hadn't a clue, she pipes up, "Oh that's back in the dairy section on the end cap."  The mystified four all drop their jaws, astounded that this stuff made of raisins, apples and suet is real.  We took a walk to the far back corner where the dairy is always kept, and there it was, next to the jarred stuff.  The clueful clerk noted that the type of tag on the shelf indicated that it was to be discontinued.

I bought eight boxes.  I'll share with my family, a little.The magical filling rivals Twinkies in shelf life, so I know I'm set for a few years, even if a few boxes head north in a suitcase after Thanksgiving.

Pies, lovely pies, I've found there's a bit of a trick.  The package has directions for several different sized pies and how many boxes you'll need to make each pie.  The rule is to make the smallest pie with one box, because the larger pies have the wrong filling to crust ratio.  The big ones are too sweet,  and seem soggy, a small pie gets two crusts and just enough of the filling to go with a cup of tea, without feeling overwhelmed.

It's 3:58 PM, tea sounds like a good idea.

De-Fauxing Before and After

Spent a good chunk of the day in the bathroom, it has changed a bit.

Before:

Before, shiny 1970's faux marble econo-bath

After, 2014 color blast econo-upgrade

It still needs another coat of paint, but the color effect is there.  The cringe I felt every time I went into the bathroom has gone away.  Now to find or make some art to go on the back wall.