Fridge Spelunking

The backyard had 7 inches of snow, I didn't feel like the walk to the compost bin, so it sat.  The seven inches of snow morphed into 4 inches of slush and now it is 2 inches of slush and ice with bare patches in between.  It has been my silent justification to myself for why I didn't have to haul the compost and since the compost wasn't emptied I couldn't spelunk  into the back of the fridge to find the old leftovers that I knew were there, but I kept denying that they really needed to go, just yet.

Those with weak stomachs or the New Englanders laughing at my mere seven inches of snow can stop reading now.

Then yesterday my husband, a sweet man with little olfactory sensation (there needs to be a word for someone immune to the stink of mold and rot, if you know one let me know), said, "Ooooooooh, there's something in there that has really got to go."

Then this morning my daughter, who wisely will never admit to seeing dirt or mess for fear of being assigned clean up duty, said, "Ooooooh, why do I smell compost?" while sitting at the breakfast table. It had to be bad.

I knew what it was.  I was just denying its existence.  I was hoping I could pretend and it would go away.  It was a casserole that I had made with leftover chicken that did not win rave reviews, so the leftovers never went into lunches.  It lurked on the bottom shelf behind plastic containers with a few noodles, a quarter cup of baked beans and all the cat food that Aggie won't eat cold.  It kept being pushed a little farther back, until I almost forgot that it was there.  Luckily, it is really cold there and some stuff freezes, so it wasn't as putrid as it could have been.

I have yet to figure out how to delegate the task of cleaning the fridge.  I think I'd have to hire someone and pay them a lot of money and put a bit in a 401K for someone to take over the task.

Today was deemed to be the day by the olfactory challenged family.

I made a cup of tea.

What else does one do at a time like that?

I screwed up the courage to face the dateless whole wheat spaghetti, dried out take out rice, fuzzy not quite a single serving of tomato sauce, and the mysterious blue furry Rubbermaid container.  I pushed passed the Friskies can with the plastic cover that says "kitty cat food" -which Aggie refutes, on top.  I found the Pyrex bowl with its matching cover waiting for me.  Its beige and pink tones told me more than I wanted to know.  I doubled some garbage bags, turned on the ventilation fan, turned up the music in hope that sensory overload would cancel out the odor.  As I reached for it, I stopped breathing through my nose.  I placed it on the counter, checked my preparations, turned the Depeche Mode up little louder, and freed the demon inside.  In a smooth move I lifted the cover with one hand and simultaneously tipped it into the waiting bags.  It all went as planned.  Aggie came in to check out what ever it was that was dead in the kitchen and the dog was right behind him.  The stench must have been overpowering, because both the cat and Stella were within two feet of each other and oblivious to each other.

I quickly tied my knots and hauled the bag outside.  There it will freeze hard and I will drop it off at the landfill later this week.  I'll make sure it is the coldest day possible.  I just hope it doesn't reanimate, like the leftovers in Calvin and Hobbes, and come get me.

I need another cup of tea.

A $400 Fart and More

For a while there i was having trouble thinking of what to write about, after all every good story needs a bit of conflict, a problem to solve--a little excitement, well, it just wasn't there to write about.  Last week however, there was a little too much.

Last Tuesday my daughter had an orthopedist appointment in Baltimore, she inherited my unfortunate gene contribution and ended up with scoliosis (curvature of the spine).  I spent several adolescent years encased in a barbaric plastic structure called a scoliosis brace, I wouldn't wish it on anyone, especially on a hot, humid day.  So, the day the pediatrician looked up at me and said that she detected minor scoliosis, I had to swallow the giant lump in my throat to tell her that two people in the previous generation have it.

Suddenly, I'm hauling my previously healthy as a horse kid for x-rays and specialist appointments.  Tuesday was the day.  I was dreading it.  My experience was not stellar as a kid.  I remember going into the scoliosis clinic at Rhode Island Hospital thirty some odd years ago.  I remember starting the day with x-rays and then sitting for hours waiting on uncomfortable chairs with my brace biting into me and my legs going to sleep.  If I didn't know that I missed near full days of school to do this, I would chalk it up to my memory blowing it up bigger than it was, but I remember.  I remember getting hungry at my school lunch time, knowing that it could be several more hours until I would get a chance to eat, because there was no way to know when they were actually going to call you into the examining room. 

 

I knew that I sometimes waited an hour and a half inside the examination room in my little open backed outfit, freezing (according to what I've read recently us redheads have a mutated gene that makes us more sensitive to heat and cold), hoping the doctor would come, so that I could get dressed.  Only once do I remember the doctor coming in quickly, I was undressed and didn't even have my open backed outfit on. He opened the door and walked right in with four or five medical students.  I was horrified.  I was five foot ten, maybe 110 lbs and about 14 years old--and in walks a class while I'm naked.  No "Excuse us." or anything, I couldn't even speak. The class entered and then the doctor with his creepy handlebar mustache asked if it would be okay if they came in.   They took my silent rage as assent.  I still get angry thinking of the scene.

Now it came to be my daughter's turn.  I don't think either of us slept well.  We seemed in super-slow-mo getting ready and needed to run around a bit near the end.  Fifteen minutes before we were due out of the door I woke the dog up, so that I could feed and walk her.  She has never liked mornings and seemed especially sluggish.  When she walked into the light of the kitchen, I think I screamed, or at least stifled one.  She was bloated like an engorged tick.  Her legs looked like little sticks trying to bend around her huge belly.  She struggled to walk.  She was trembling and her eyes appeared full of pain.  A day and a half before she had again attempted to eat the upholstered chair that matches our couch, the vet calls it a dietary indiscretion.  I feared that some of the foam had become lodged in her system or that she had developed bloat, which could be fatal.

 

 

I rushed into the office to google the location of a local emergency vet, all the while trying to figure out how I was going to leave for the appointment in Baltimore and get the dog to the vet at the same time.  The emergency vet had already left for the morning and the wouldn't be anyone there to help her for two hours.  My dog's regular vet would open in forty-five minutes, but I was supposed to leave in fifteen minutes.  I called, the answering machine picked up.  My husband was at his doctor's office, not sure if he had strep.  

 

My daughter, watching my dialing frenzy, suggested that I call our neighbor and friend who pet sits for us to see if she could take Stella.  She said she could after she got all of her kids on the bus, knowing I had a back up plan I felt a little better.  I decided to see if I could get the dog in before regular vet hours and drove her to the vet, which was right down the street.  I knocked and they let me in, I convinced them to take the dog because I had to get to Baltimore for a specialist appointment.  My daughter stood there in the vet's office looking stunned, terrified and hadn't had the opportunity to comb her hair after coming out of the shower.  She had a giant mass of red frizz, dark black circles under her eyes and was on the edge of a sob.  I don't think the vet techs thought I was taking her to the orthopedist.

By the time I checked the dog in, Stella already looked thinner, she was moving around better, she still wasn't right, but she seemed better.

We headed out the door.  We needed gas.  We hadn't had breakfast, it was sitting sitting ready on the counter at the house.  We had used all the the extra time I had put into the schedule for us to get lost in Baltimore, to find the parking garage and the wander through the maze of hospital corridors.  There was not time for an error.  We stopped at Mc D's for breakfast, with my food allergies I can only eat the hash browns (and from how I felt later, I fear I may be mistaken on that point).  I pumped the gas and we quickly continued on. Traffic was light.  The GPS took us through all of the worst neighborhoods in Baltimore, so that we had a lovely mother/daughter talk about poverty, inequality, and industrial decline.  

 

We parked without a hitch, found the office on the first try and checked in using the electronic kiosk right about on time, somehow.   We waited for a few minutes and were told the the staff member we were to see was not in.  Would we like to reschedule or wait a little to be squeezed in to another staff member's schedule? Of course, we waited.  I was not going to attempt another re-run of that morning.

The appointment was fine, they even paid for our parking, because they made us wait an hour and ten minutes.  

 

The day was on the upswing.  We were able to get on the highway toward home and call to check on the dog.  My husband was at home, the dog was still at the vet.  She appeared to be okay, they had x-rayed her and found nothing and the swelling had gone down.  She appeared to have had a nasty case of gas and just needed to pass it.  Yes, it was a $400 fart.  

My daughter and I stopped for authentic burritos for lunch and headed home.  When the adrenaline left my system that afternoon, I napped for three hours.  That was our Tuesday.

Thursday, I came home and noticed two of our chickens in the yard, but I didn't see the third.  Ursula and Athena were standing jammed inside a lilac bush, looking ill at ease.  I went inside.

L to R Paisley, Ursula and Athena

My daughter's bus pulled up a few minutes later.  The dog made her usual "she's home!!" noises, but they changed, became deeper, a little disturbing sounding.  I was walking down the hallway toward the front window when my daughter burst in the front door sobbing.  Paisley, the Barred Rock, was next to the driveway, I had been looking off into the distance for her, I had missed seeing her body, half plucked and fully eviscerated, near the turn in the drive.  A hawk, raccoon or something had caught her.  I buried her behind the shed, while my daughter, still in her jacket, sobbed face down on her bed. Paisley had been such a sweet thing.  She was my favorite chicken and she's gone.

It has been quieter this week.  I am thankful.

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.