Simple Pleasures

You gotta listen to a cute baby, right?

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:05:00 +0000

Just in case there's someone who reads this blog that doesn't realize I have another blog. A bigger blog, at least traffic wise, where I actually talk about, you know, stuff. Stuff like homeschooling and culture and faith. Stuff besides just what the kids said last week or choking on potatoes and stuff.

Well anyway, this other blog (Principled Discovery) was nominated for an award in the Homeschool Blog Awards and I'd really appreciate it if you take a moment and listen to what my baby has to say about it:

Motivation comes in a variety of ways

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:39:00 +0000

I have been sort of teaching the kids German for a long time. Or rather, I have been feeling guilty about not teaching them German as much as I should for a very long time.

Mouse has always been sort of interested. Maybe that is related to my sort of commitment. But she's never been all that motivated. She plays the games, sings the songs and otherwise doesn't really seem all that into the whole thing.

But suddenly she is. She has mapped out an aggressive school plan, and German language and history is featured highly. She has found a website with German sounds, grammar and vocabulary that she has been spending quite a bit of time on, and keeps asking me how to pronounce things. She's been chanting the bits of the songs she remembers and bookmarked a history of Germany I showed her. I think she even started reading it, but the printer is acting up so she couldn't print it.

I was pleased, if a bit baffled, by the sudden intense interest.

But then she showed me her notebook she is making. It is all decorated with locks and keys and "keep out" type messages. Odd connection, I thought, until her triumphant announcement after I looked over all the pronunciation keys and vocabulary she had copied.

When I'm all done, you won't be able to hide anything from me! I know what you guys are talking about and birthday presents and EVERYTHING!

Yep. We long ago had to leave off spelling things to each other. But Mouse is determined to take the ability to just say it in German away as well.

A little before and after

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:50:00 +0000

Well, ok, so mostly just during. The camera ate my before pictures so we're going to use a little guided imagination to picture the transformation this room is undergoing.

So close your eyes . . . well, maybe you'd best leave them open, else you won't be able to read what you're to imagine.

So picture yourself leaving the kitchen into a large, rectangular room. Spacious, with high, peaked ceilings AND A BAY WINDOW! I have wanted a bay window since I was a little girl, and I have spent almost as much time dreaming about my little window seat and the cushions I'm going to make to put on it as I have about any of the other projects I've set before myself.

The walls are white; the carpet is beige and in need of a good cleaning but otherwise in good shape. On the opposite side of the room is a large, sandstone colored chimney where a wood burning stove used to stand with a hearth of yellow ceramic. The same ceramic tiles are used in the entry way, and some of the tiles are cracked. When the realtor showed us the house, I was impressed by how good of shape the room was in and the fact that the only work we needed to do was to replace the shower and knock the moldy drywall out of the basement. Eventually, we'd replace all the carpeting with wood floors, but that was by no means necessary.

But then we went and showed the house to my parents after we bought it.

And here you have to imagine the other picture I took. This is where we removed one of the vents and pulled back some of the carpet. What should our wondering eyes behold but hardwood floors?

So you can probably guess what happened next. Tearing things up is cheap. And kind of fun, too.

We're hoping to maybe put an electric fireplace there against the chimney along with a small sitting area. A couch! Some comfy chairs! My parents won't have to bring their own seating when they come to visit! Imagine the joy and comfort!

And the view from the other side of the room, just so you can see all the carpet we tore up, as well as the stair leading to the basement.

Our dining room table will go there, more or less where the carpet is piled up. And I will have space. And a place to sit. And a place to feed people. And a little room to keep all our homeschool projects so they don't accumulate on the table.

Space.

I still can't quite fathom it.

A child's labor

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 07:40:00 +0000

A day of labor, pulling staples out of the floor and drywall screws off the wood frame in the basement. Cleaning counters, washing windows, sweeping the floor. Chipping tile grout off the floor and prying up carpet tacks.

My hands are exhausted. My muscles are tired. It is a pleasant feeling to have worked, to have made progress, to be tired. Sitting down to rest is like hot cocoa on a cold evening.

John asks Mouse to do the dishes, her normal evening chore, but throws in mention of the work we've been doing in the house while the children played outside.

"I was working all day, too!" she responds, trying to temper her indignation.

Because she was. All the children were. We may not place quite the same value on their labors down amongst the trees they've named Twin Clearing, but that does not make their efforts any less purposeful nor their muscles any less tired.

Join me for a tour of our new kitchen

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:47:00 +0000

Welcome to our little house out in the country. L.E. Fant, our gorgeous little greeter, is here to welcome you for a little tour of the kitchen.

And please note that we're going through the kitchen door. Because that's the kind of guests you are. No formal front door stuff around here. I'd put on the kettle if we had a stove. The kitchen door is very informal at this moment.

Because, uh, I broke the lock on the front door. The key wouldn't turn and I was afraid I was going to break the key and I pushed a little harder and the lock just spun. My dear husband didn't seem to believe me until he had the same trouble with the kitchen door, except he just went ahead and broke the key off in the lock. That worked just about as well as my take on the locks.

We contemplated the relative costs of breaking in versus calling a locksmith and as you can see my husband chose the former option.

The kitchen is the one room in the house that I wasn't too sure about it. It is small. Very small. The children will not be able to stand on their step stool to watch what is going on at the stove anymore. I will not have much room to move around.

But the room is growing on me. The cabinets are nice. I will actually have more counter space. There are lots of outlets for things like electric roasters and juicers and toasters. Oh, and the electric stand mixer I've had my eye on for years. And the space that is there is used more efficiently than in our current kitchen.

Just look at the pantry.

Surfing around to see how other people deal with small galley style kitchens, I came across some famous chef who designed his own super efficient galley kitchen and he had a cool pantry with shelves that slid out. I thought that was way cool and a great investment for my super small kitchen. It might make the whole small kitchen thing worthwhile, I thought, as I pondered a bit of remodeling just for the fun of it rather than because it actually had to be done.

But what should I find when I actually looked in my pantry?

Shelves that pull out! One of the cabinets has shelves like that, too. How cool is that?

And see, if you were really dropping in for a visit, I picture you sliding onto one of these little built in benches while I served you a cup of tea on the little table I have not yet found to put in front of the little built in benches. It seems like such a nice, neighborly, just-popped-in kind of place to sit and chat.

I think this will also make up a little for the fact the children won't be able to help with the cooking as much. Here, they can measure and mix and beat all at their level and without the step stool. And the seats lift up for storage. No idea what to store in a bench in the kitchen, but I'm sure something will come to me.

I hope you enjoyed this little tour. Join me again for some before and after pictures of the work we're doing in the rest of the house!

In which I am not happy about losing all my pictures. And a dog's nose.

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:21:00 +0000

I was planning on giving you a little tour of the inside of our house. I thought it would be a nice starting point for chronicling our progress. But then, well, my husband went on this weird anti-Google thing he does once in awhile and deleted Picasa off the computer in search of something like Picasa that wasn't owned by Google.

That may not seem relevant, but trust me, it is.

I had a gazillion pictures on my little memory card but no real way of viewing them. OK, so I could open up the card and view the pictures through Paint, but that was annoying so I didn't bother. I figured they were safe enough where they were. Eventually, hubby dear would give up his fight with Google and reinstall Picasa. He always does.

I was right about my husband and Picasa is back on the computer. I was wrong about my pictures, however. Neither the camera nor my computer will read the card.

Now, I believe the pictures may actually be on the computer somewhere, or at least most of them. Last week, I was browsing through them using Paint until I decided it was too tedious. But I'm not exactly sure where dear hubby had pictures go when I stick the little card in the little slot. I just know it asks me what I want to do and I click OK and then my pictures are there. Except now.

So I'm holding out a smidgen of hope that dear hubby will tell Picasa where he's hiding all my pictures so that tomorrow they will all be there for me to look at. And for now, I'll leave you with an old photo because it amuses me. Taken by Bug, my four year old daughter:

If you've ever had any experience with beagles, you know they are just a nose on paws, so she has captured the essence of beagleness pretty well.

Teaching the law of kindness

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:25:00 +0000

A casual conversation in the car, meandering through the day. Mention of a babysitting class at the hospital starting for ten year olds. Brief mention that I thought this class might also help Mouse in her relationship with her siblings because it might help her see them in a different light. Gentle words and patience go a long way in earning someone's respect, I tell her.

"Pleasant words are an overflowing of honey, sweetness to the soul and healing to the bones." ~Proverbs 16:24

We've had this conversation so many times before, but this time is different. She seems to actually be listening and thinking.

"So it is like treating others the way you want to be treated?"

"Yes. Just like that."

She turns contemplative. I leave her with a single thought.

"You know, L.E. adores you because you always treat her with such gentleness."

We pull into the drive and I begin getting everyone in. Pajamas and teeth brushing. Straightening and gathering cleaning supplies to bring to the house. The children are strangely quiet as I hear them chatting in the kitchen and I go to check.

Spread out on the floor are the instruction brochures for her K'nex, the K'nex Bear has been asking her to play with five times a day for weeks. The little ones are looking through the brochures and picking things for Mouse to build while Bear makes a helicopter.

"A little honey goes a long way," I say and Mouse smiles.

In which my children lock themselves in the dog kennel

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:19:00 +0000

Over the weekend, we took my parents out to see our new property. The one that is really ours, complete with signed paperwork, keys and bills addressed to us! Anyway, the kids took off to explore. Dismayed at the fact we didn't have keys to all the padlocks and thus still couldn't get into one of the sheds, they determined to take matters into their own hands.

Mouse found a ladder in one of the barns and dragged it over to the window. They all climbed up and one by one dropped inside to explore. Model teamwork, it was.

They, of course, were thrilled with their success. All but one, that is. From inside the dark shed, my dad heard one, small little four year old voice.

"Hey! How are we going to get out of here?"

Good question, little Bug.

A note from my daughter

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:22:00 +0000

At the mother daughter craft night Mouse and I went to at our church, we were given an opportunity to write each other a note of encouragement. It is unlikely this small handwritten note on pretty pink and green paper will last long, so I thought I would both preserve and share it here.

I like the way you smile and how you are so cind and thoughtful and the food.

I smile, am kind and thoughtful. Also, I feed my kids. Not a bad start. Now if I were just more successful at teaching spelling.

Naming home

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:57:00 +0000

Perhaps it is due to many long and pleasant hours spent with Anne Shirley of Green Gables, but I have always had a bit of a romantic fascination with naming houses. Growing up in suburbia, however, it never seemed quite right. Here, we live in houses, not estates. But downtown, there is a beautifully manicured lawn with a sign posted at the corner: Hunley's Haven. Whenever I drive by, it makes me smile. They have built themselves something more than a house to come home to at the end of the working day.

When we were in negotiations to buy the house down the road from us, the idea came to me again. It was a large house on almost three acres. It was a home to be named, but what would we name it? What name would impart our hopes and dreams for it? A name would come, I decided, and come it did. The house named itself: The Stinky House. That's what the children called it. That's what we called it. That's what we still call it though we are no longer trying to purchase it.

A strange name, but one with a bit of history and meaning to us. I wonder what the neighbors would have thought?

And here we are again, on the cusp of embarking on this journey of country living. Five acres, a couple of barns, a pasture. And a home to be named. And here I am, again, unsure exactly how one goes about naming a property.

So far, two names have occurred to me. I sort of like them both, but for very different reasons.

Roscommon Acres. Because our family name originates in County Roscommon, Ireland. Ballaghaderreen, to be exact. Actually, I kind of like that, too, but would anyone be able to pronounce it?
A Very Nearly Nowhere. Because that is exactly where we will be living.

Then I'll have to start working on my sign so the cows know who we are.

Will you marry me? asks the Bug

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:31:00 +0000

Cooing over her baby brother, Bug announced:

"Mudpuppy, when you grow up, I'm going to marry you."

Bear, however, didn't think that was a good idea. Indignant, he replied:

"You can't marry your brother or you'll grow extra limbs!"

I sputtered tea right at the baby brother in question. He loved it, but now I'm picturing a six legged Bug.

How would you like your obituary to read?

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 05:17:00 +0000

The Omaha-World Herald led with a touching story last week that dominated the front page.

Mary Anaya fed the hungry and clothed the naked, all the while mothering 10 children, plus the one growing in her womb. But she died early Wednesday at age 42, leaving behind her family and a long record of loving her neighbor as herself.

Just think of that. To live such a life that the paper notes your passing so boldly, so prominently and with an emphasis that here passed a woman with "a long record of loving her neighbor as herself."

It made me think of all the column inches printed about Christians objecting to various policies or cultural practices, all the e-alerts I receive trying to rally support for boycotts of Pepsi or McDonald's or whoever has most recently offended our Christian moral standards as well as objections to holiday greetings.

I think sometimes we can be on the right side of a debate, but get so caught up in it that we forget the real issue. There are many conversations that are good and right and necessary to have within the church and amongst Christians. We are to encourage and correct one another as we journey toward the promised land.

But we forget that we are but sojourners here, strangers in a strange land. We are not supposed to be known by our adherence to a checklist of Christian behaviors and the eloquence with which we defend those behaviors. Christ gave us a mark, the mark of love.

By this all shall know that you are My disciples, if you have love among one another. ~John 13:35

Imagine if that really were synonymous with "Christian" in the hearts and minds of those we meet.

Redesigned blog while waiting for a phone call

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:56:00 +0000

Nervous energy is good for something. While fretting about the likelihood of the bank getting the appraisal back by today's closing date, I finished (most of) my new template. I may not have a house, but I have a header! Still a bit to do, but the dust is settling from the renovations.

Just in time, too. Hopefully the appraisal will come in just in time because my husband took the day off. That and I really really REALLY want to show you the inside of our new house this weekend.

Working on a new template

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:51:00 +0000

I am getting ready to reorganize this blog a bit to pull together the disparate things I discuss in a more meaningful way. At least for me. In the meantime, I am looking for a template so this blog may well look different every time you visit.

Unless I get this paint.net program figured out and can make the header I'm trying to make. At the moment, I'm thinking Microsoft Paint is easier. Feel free to leave your thoughts on my template. My main goal is to go to a two column design with bars across the top for the different categories of subjects I write about.

A boy and his dog

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:51:00 +0000

Over the weekend, I took the children out to the property to snap a couple pictures for the insurance company and then to just let the kids run. I gave Bear, my six year old son, the camera. He seemed to be impressed by one thing, given the number of times that one thing came up in his photos.

Photo after photo after photo of Hunter. When we got home, Bear snuggled up to me and said,

"Mom, that was so much fun. Can we bring Hunter with us every time we go out to the property?"

A boy and his dog and five acres. What more could a boy ask for?

Moving to the country

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:50:00 +0000

Standing in a field, breathing in the smell of soil, cow and fresh air, listening to the grasshoppers and the faint rustling of wind through dried feed corn, I think this is "the country." Soon it will be home.

Since I was little, "the country" has been a sort of dream world where all wishes and desires were put away and stored until that magical someday when we would move there.

"Mom, can I have a horse?"

"Someday, if we move to the country."

"Mom, can I have a cat?"

"Someday, if we move to the country."

Out here, there is nothing as far at the eye can see. And yet there is everything. The first time we went out, I thought you couldn't even see the neighbors from the property but I was wrong. See, there he is...in the truck driving out to his tractor.

And a few of the local teens walked down to say "Hi!" when they heard we were moving in.

I'm starting to get just a little excited.

Mom vs. Snake

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:20:00 +0000

This is seriously not funny you guys. I had the most frightening encounter and didn't even know enough to be frightened until it was almost over. Mostly I just fretted about the shoe.

See, we had an open house today, and open houses require two hours of me being somewhere other than home with the children. So I decided to take them to the playground. Driving along toward the playground, I saw a snake lying in the road. A big snake. Maybe three feet long and pretty thick. Being in no particular hurry, and thinking my son might like to see it, I turned and drove back.

When I got back, I was surprised to find it had moved to the center of the road where it had stretched out to sun itself.

What is it, mom?

The children asked. It was nothing like the garter snakes they chase around.

Look carefully at the markings and try to remember the pattern. We can look it up when we get home.

And they did. They studied it from the safety of the car, talked about it and finally worried that it might get hit.

Such nice children. Worried about the great big snake sunbathing in the middle of the road. That left me in a bit of a predicament. I drive by critters on the road all the time. Sometimes I even think, "Oh, I hope it doesn't get hit!" Especially if it is a turtle.

But there is a certain immunity in "just driving by" that allows me to go on without thinking much about it or feeling much personal responsibility. Unless it happens to be a box turtle, but that is neither here nor there.

Now that I had pulled over and it had become a point of educational curiosity for the children, I felt responsible. But what was I supposed to do exactly? I didn't know what kind of snake it was, and I'm not keen on getting bitten by anything. Then I thought about what my children would do if we drove by a flattened snake on the way home.

So I looked around the car, looked at the snake, thought about opening the door to scare it off and thought something about the shape of the head really sort of was making me want to run it over myself. Then I did what anyone would do and threw a little window squeegee thing at it.

I missed. The dumb snake didn't even appear to notice it was under attack as the window squeegee thing bounced and flopped next to it.

Then I threw my daughter's croc at it. That hit its mark, but again, the snake didn't seem overly concerned. I guessed it was a little chilled seeing as it was only 50 degrees out. After all, that was why it was sunning itself in the middle of the road, right? And reluctant to leave even while being pelted by random objects from my car?

Something about its passivity under fire emboldened me. I backed the car up and grabbed my baby's back carrier and got out of the car. The plan was to slowly but noisily approach the snake and sort of shoo it off the road. Most animals, even snakes, choose to leave rather than mess with people so long as there is a place to leave to. The whole rest of the world seemed like a good escape route to me so I clanked the thing on the road and stepped toward the snake.

It totally didn't care.

So I did it again. And again. And louder. And then with a touch more motion. And suddenly I got a reaction, and not at all the one I was looking for. Around went the coils, and back went the head. Its entire length seemed suddenly in motion as it drew itself into a defensive posture. And then...what's that? Rattling? Seriously, that thing was rattling at me?

I yielded the road. In fact, I went around the back of the car and got in on the passenger side even though it meant climbing over two dogs and a gerbil cage.

What's wrong, mom?

I know what kind of snake it is.

What about my shoe?

If he wants the shoe, he can have it.

And we drove away.

From the safety of my computer chair, I discovered that I saw a western massasauga, an endangered species of rattlesnake thought to possibly still be in this area, though it is generally more to the south of us, where the University even goes out on field trips looking for them. The image is from Wikipedia.

Garden planning

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:28:00 +0000

It's fall again, and as I noted at the start of this little gardening adventure, it is my absolute favorite time for gardening. Neither drought nor flood, neither insect nor rabbit can touch the garden I'm planning out in my notebook. Some things I learned this year after sort of kind of using The Square Foot Garden:

Successive planting is a nice idea. It sort of even works, but it takes a lot of work if the goal is to have things continually ripening.

I seriously underestimated how much we needed of just about everything. I really had no idea what the yield was of the things I planted, so the garden mostly produced snacks and sandwich toppings. We had harvested two family-sized salads before the lettuce bolted to seed.

There's no point to growing anything related to cabbage. Some day I may build a greenhouse or build a mesh cage to keep the cabbage moths off them, but until then I'm just not going to bother.

Gardening is a whole lot easier when you aren't recovering from a hip infection. All summer I've looked at my disappointing yields and had to remind myself I missed the peak planting time AND was just not able to keep up with many of the gardening chores until later in the season. That just can't be helped.

So this year I'm starting with a little more planning and hopefully a little more information, starting with approximately how much of various garden vegetables I expect our family of seven to consume in a year. Later I'll work out what can be planted early, late or multiple times in the season and decide which veggies I want to grow. Then I can make a nifty planting calendar and see how far off target I can be by June.

corn = 364 ears = 364 sq ft
beans = 3744 plants = 416 sq ft
carrots = 832 = 52 sq ft
potatoes = 52 plants = 52 sq ft
tomatoes = 35 (including canning) = 18 sq ft
lettuce = 384 (over three plantings) = 43 sq ft
onions = 156 = 17 sq ft
green onions = 320 = 20 sq ft
garlic = 100 = 12 sq ft
snow peas = 1664 plants = 185 sq ft
yellow squash = 6 plants = 24 sq ft
zucchini = 3 plants = 12 sq ft
beets = 36 = 4 sq ft
eggplant = 12 = 24 sq ft
green pepper = 70 = 140 sq ft
hot peppers = 10 = 20 sq ft
radishes = 100 = 17 sq ft
watermelon = 10 = 120 sq ft
butternut squash = 52 = 104 sq ft
pie pumpkin = 10 = 20 sq ft
okra = 16 plants = 16 sq ft
cucumbers = 4 plants = 20 sq ft

That's a total of 1700 square feet, or 1/25 of an acre, assuming no successive planting, second harvests, etc. And assuming I can add, which is highly questionable given the hour.

Ooh! Just found a garden planning guide from the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service! This should help to at least verify some of my figuring!

Brush with the law

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:17:00 +0000

OK, so I'm reading Crazy Texas Mommy's willful defiance of the law and thinking I cannot imagine myself ever ever ever trying to talk my way out of a ticket. I talked myself out of all kinds of things in school, but in front of a police officer I'm all "Yes, sir. No, sir." I don't have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, being generally observant of speed limits, but you know how it is. And I fumble for words when I'm asked any variation of "Do you know how fast you were going?" Or "What's the hurry, miss?"

Like what am I supposed to say? I teach my kids to fess up when they're caught and get on with it. They haven't learned it very well, yet, but questions like that just seem to be inviting some absurd story.

And when they hand me the ticket, I say "Thank you, sir." That's all to say that you probably will never see any of my interactions with police on YouTube. But there was this one time...

See, I was driving the group home van full of the young men in our group home. I was driving along this very deceptive road. Very deceptive because it is rarely traveled, is very wide and it feels like the speed limit should be 45, not 35. I think they set the speed limit at 35 just to have a good place for a speed trap.

So anyway, I'm driving with this van full of kids who totally don't get how to interact with police. They tended to either duck and try not to be seen or flip them off, neither of which are good policies for getting a warning rather than a ticket. In fact, they all had neon signs flashing above their heads that said, "I'm guilty!" Even when they were just sitting in the van on the way back from a trip to the grocery store.

That may not seem important, but it is. Because, you see, I was driving with these kids down that road at 45 mph when a police car pulls out. I dutifully slow down as quickly as I can, but the officer pulls up right on my tail. It follows me around the curve and turns right with me right into the drive way.

I'm caught. And I decide it is an opportunity to teach the boys about how to talk to the police. Sounds good, right?

I get out of the car and immediately confess to going a whole ten miles an hour over the speed limit. The officer listens patiently while I tell him that I know the speed limit, and that I'm sorry. No excuses, no pleading and no cursing the poor guy as my charges were wont to do.

He hands me an envelope. I stare at it and it slowly dawns on me that the officer was there serving papers about one of the boys.

"So you weren't pulling me over?" I ask, feeling like a complete idiot.

"No, but while I'm here, are there any other crimes you'd like to confess to?"

The boys about fell out of the car laughing.

And that's how I act when the law catches up with me.

I am not going back outside. Period.

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:20:00 +0000

I'm sitting here early in the early morning, a time my blog is quite unaccustomed to. But...well, the buts get pretty long on this one and why my blogs have been sorely unattended to of late, but the dog needed to go out.

At four in the morning, the lab mutt thing just had to go out. I know from experience to listen to that whiney, shriekey prancey thing he does because he has digestive issues and I don't like cleaning those messes. Ick.

So I take him out. Or, rather, I open the sliding door and am surprised by the weirdest, creepiest, other-worldliest cacophony of wails and shrieks I have ever heard. Even "I'm about to poo myself" Hunter tucked his tail and ducked back in the house.

And now I'm afraid to go back outside. Hunter is just lying here, my not-so-fearless and really not that into the protector role mutt. He won't even bark. He just lifts his ears and cowers now and again, looking to me to make the bad thing go away.

I'd go back to bed and hope the chicken coop holds back whatever it was, but the fact my dog is afraid has me worried. We have another dog outside, and I don't want a chained dog left to fend for himself. But so long as Hunter the Scaredy Cat can't be coaxed out, I'm less than enthusiastic about going out to bring him in.

So I sit here, peeking out the window and flipping the porch light on and off. I peer into the darkness and perceive nothing.

It was probably a fox, I tell myself. But why would my dog be afraid of a fox?

Reupholstering chairs--It really was that easy!

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 02:24:00 +0000

When we bought this table set, we knew we'd need to reupholster the chairs eventually. OK, so most people would have probably thought soon rather than eventually, but when you have five kids and two dogs, serviceable seems much more important than style.

Unless you call blue faux suede accented with spaghetti sauce and painted in wet play-do stylish.

Enter the cat. And one chair found itself and its stuffing soon parted. And this chair became the catalyst for my first real do-it-yourself home decorating project.

The directions I found said it was easy. Perfect for a beginner, even. The voila in step seven made it seem so much like "and that's it!" Like "Yeah, even you, Dana, who found out that "Quilting for Dummies" expected too much prior knowledge, can do this."

So I armed myself with a cushion and went to Jo-Ann Fabrics, hopeful but not particularly expectant. After all, it wouldn't be the first project I'd undertaken that looked easy from the directions and turned into a nightmare I'd never care to repeat.

OK, so maybe normal people would give up on their plan for a quilt when their materials list included a sewing machine--something they hadn't operated in 20 years. But clearly I'm not most people and I often completely miss those warning signs of rough waters ahead.

I take "perfect for beginners" with a grain of salt. I'm not your average beginner. I'm generally somewhere far behind that noble newbie. The only thing I've really got going for me is that I'm not particularly afraid of failure. We're on familiar enough terms, it's like having an old friend pop in for tea.

Here's the surprising part: it was easy. I even tackled stripes. I even had to restuff one of the chairs. The hardest thing I had to do was run out for more staples because the ones I was using were too long for the project. But I just handed the staple gun to the guy who looked like he was dying of boredom anyway and told him I needed something 3/8 inch. He handed me a box and I took his word for it.

My husband said, "Wow!" I think maybe he was expecting failure over for tea, as well. Even our real estate agent noticed as she sat in one for a two hour open house with no visitors.

I said, "Children, you are not allowed to eat on the kitchen chairs. Ever."

All for $24.

Waiting for the egg song

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 03:34:00 +0000

We had read that chickens can be rather noisy, especially when they lay their eggs at four in the morning. We read this and I fretted over where to put the coop so that they wouldn't disturb the neighbors. We read this and my son's eyes lit up. The Egg Song. Now that sounded like a song he could get in to.

Imagine his delight when we noticed Diego go into the nest box. I think you can probably see it here as he sits vigil over his hen, waiting not for the egg but for her song.

And little Diego sat. And turned. Hollowed a little nest for herself and threw grass on her back. Then, as the big moment was almost there, she stood up to let her little brown egg drop.

Without a peep.

Then she returned to her sisters to forage as if nothing had happened. Now Bear is lamenting the silence of his little hen. This is what he was expecting to experience:

He's holding out hope for one of the others. Certainly one of the four will sing?

And we have lift off!

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 01:47:00 +0000

Little Mudpuppy is on the move. After a long, frustrating journey, he seems to have arrived at his destination.

Arachnophobia

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 05:53:00 +0000

My husband says he will not visit my blog again until that nasty thing is off the front page. I really didn't have anything to say today, but I figure my husband is more important than my readership so I'll humor him.

So I have to come up with a post long enough to get the spider at least down below the fold so I don't creep him out just for stopping by to see what we're up to. He doesn't like spiders.

When we were first married, he'd run screaming out of the room whenever he saw one, demanding I do something.

Australia has more venomous spiders than any other continent.

He'd rationalize as I scooped the spider into a jar and released it outside.

There's one with fangs strong enough to bite through a child's fingernail.

He pleaded as I shook my head.

I don't know how he survived, unless all Australians run screaming from the room every time they see a spider. A somewhat neurotic survival strategy, and not becoming of other Australians I've met who seem to have a certain, uncanny lack of sense when it comes to our relationship with the wild.

For some strange reason, I suddenly want to watch Arachnophobia. Nothing like a good Creature Feature. Wonder if John will join me...

Another good thing about chickens

noreply@blogger.com (Dana) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 03:24:00 +0000

So I'm out in the backyard, caring for the chickens. A handful of feed, a pint of fresh water. Then I stretch the tarp over their tractor to give them shade throughout the day. I toss it over and there--right there--not two inches where my hand just was is the largest spider I have seen outside of Texas.

She was huge. As big around as the back of my hand. Up her front legs went in a defensive position, and though I was already nowhere near close enough to get bitten by the time I even saw her, I jumped and screamed, just for good measure.

That, of course, brought the children running. Somehow, my son always has a stick, or several, so I commandeered it and poked the spider. Up she went again. I poked her again and she jumped off the tarp and started to scurry. I poked her again and she decided to head the other way at a full run.

I lifted the corner of the tractor and in went the spider. She barely had time to raise up those legs before she was in four pieces and being paraded about by clucking chickens.