Goatie Poopie Dog

Today my DH and I spent most of the daylight hours working on the farm. How much did we get done? Oh, about 1 percent. Maybe. Hopefully.

The big project was getting gravel on the main paths that my DH uses to feed the animals every day. He has an unstable knee that won't see surgery until late spring, so traction is crucial or he'll tear what's left of the support system. He turned Brian and Finn, the Great Pyr puppies, loose in the upper pasture so that the goats would be on their best behavior. Then we got a load of gravel and went to work. He loaded up the wheelbarrow and ran it up and down the hill, while I cleared out the accumulated manure and old, slimy, moldy alfalfa that had turned into a disgusting slip-n-slide near the gate where we fed the boys alfalfa on the way to the shed where they got their grain. I slung pitchfork-fuls of this fragrant slop over the fence into a pile, to be delivered to the veggie garden later.

Meanwhile, Chase, the border collie mix, ran along outside the fenceline, following Rory up and down the hill and occasionally making a run at the fence in a lame attempt to scare the goats into running. At some point we stopped paying attention to her until Rory let out an oath of disgust. "Chase, no!!"

I looked over and guess who was playing in the pile of ick? Guess who had rolled in it thoroughly and now was covered in partially dry goat poop, mole hole dirt, and whose fur was stained green from rolling in rotted, piss-soaked alfalfa? Well, I can tell you this. It was not me.

Chase was so gross, so filthy that Rory didn't want to let her trot through the house to the bathroom, so he picked her up at the door and carried her straight to the tub.

Her white fur is now once again white, and her black fur doesn't look suspiciously olive-toned. Clean dog. She got a lot of exercise today, watching us work, so she's curled up in an adorable ball on the sofa. The way she's acting, she worked harder than any of us. And maybe she has.

We've had some beautiful days, with lots of opportunity to work outside. I hope Mother Nature keeps them coming. There's plenty more out there to do. Next time, though, I think I'll stage a second wheelbarrow outside the the fence right next to the goat shed to avoid future, ah, breaks to play.

Drama on My Deck This Morning

Another Helpful Hint: Don't hurt yourself

My posts about retail life and small acre farming are my most popular subjects, so today I thought I'd treat you all to one of the more important safety tips when working in a farm environment.

Don't clamp the gate's Y latch on your finger.

I know, I know, everyone does it, but it's not safe. Not safe at all. We're all especially prone to do it when the wind is blowing and our fingers are numb and the gate doesn't want to shut because there's a ton of snow in the way. I pulled hard on the top part of the gate while I braced against the pole on which the Y latch would clamp onto. My finger was in the way. And in the thoughtless way that all folks do these things, I pushed the latch down first chance I got anyway.

It took off a chunk of skin, which hurts, as these things tend to do, but the thing I seemed to have forgotten about (as one does when working around a farm) is that when metal and metal are forced together by extreme external pressure, any bone and flesh that gets in the way squishes.

Fortunately it only bent the joint backward rather than breaking bone or snapping tendon. I talked to the gate for a little while, and then I squeezed my finger nicely for a while, and I admired the blood dripping onto the snow. That's always pretty. And then I went home, talking to no one in particular because I'm quite the Chatty Cathy when the mood strikes me.

So, the point is, no matter how tempting it might be to go the easy route, remember, don't close Y latches (or any other sorts of latches) onto one's own fingers even when you're in a rush or you don't want to be bothered with doing it right. I got off easy. Next time, I might cry.

And that would be bad. That's, like embarrassing. Way worse than pain.

Just don't do it. Be safe. And stay warm!

Weird things Kamis do

Kamis are notorious for doing weird things.

This morning, this Kami got up at 6am so she could take down the hummingbird feeder (which she forgot to take in last night), thaw it, and fill it with fresh, warm nectar. She was very happy when the hummingbird showed up about an hour later to tank up.

Then she decided to take a look at her African violet seed pod. It was ripe! She danced a little happy dance, picked it, and then took a picture of it. This is what they look like:

African violet seed pod

 She's really looking forward to planting the seeds and raising them up to be new african violets. She has a bunch. This one was probably fertilized by a fly. Since then, she's hand-fertilized several other blooms, and once again her plants are pregnant. It takes months for the pods to develop and ripen.

This may not seem all that weird until you realize that this Kami already has lots and lots of African violets. Yet she wants to make more. She will probably have to start giving some away.

Kamis have also been known to go out in their robe and slippers into the snow to take pictures of their cats:

Wizard in the snow with cute paw prints

Kamis also take delight when their chickens do weird things, like lay miniature eggs:

Tiny chicken egg, laid 2/2/2014

They'll even take pictures of said weird eggs early in the morning for a blog post. It's a good thing when Kamis have others, especially Rorys, take care of them because they may be too silly and weird to survive on their own.

An Old Perspective on Phones

Apparently I've gotten to that stage in my life when "I remember when ..." becomes seriously amusing. It's easier to notice and happens sooner now in our lifetimes because we're living longer and technology changes the world so rapidly.

So this morning, I heard an angry buzzing noise, followed by The Good, The Bad and The Ugly theme. My DH was still in bed, so his phone was not actually on his body.

That's another sign of our generation–we don't take our phones to bed with us, no matter how sexy the voice on the phone sounds or how many toys there might be on there to distract us. Now I'm editing myself as far as what we prefer to distract us. Moving on!

Back in my day, the phone rang on the other side of the house. We had a fancy house. We had one upstairs, in the kitchen, and one downstairs, in the family room. Sometimes it took a while to get to the phone.

To answer my DH's phone, I had to slide my finger over the screen, and I did an old lady thing. I said, "Rory's phone, Kami speaking." During my youth, no one had a personal phone. You had to learn to answer the phone, and it was a grave responsibility, like being a butler. "Hi, this is the Zeman residence, Kami speaking!" Because, get this, we had no caller ID. Unless we had a pre-arranged phone call coming in (that we had to sit by the phone and wait for) we had no idea who might be on the phone. It might be someone from my dad's work. Some of us were a little psychic and knew why the phone was ringing (or we were lucky guessers.) But my DH's phone told me exactly who was calling, so while I was doing the finger slidey thing, I was already on my way to get to him.

That's another thing. Phone cords! They got twisted and tangled and the older and more worn-out they got, the more often they did that. Longer cords were great because sometimes you could do stuff (or hide in another room with the door closed) but that only made tangling more likely and far worse when it happened. Of course this generation has been deprived of one of life's great joys–dangling the phone at the end of the cord and watching it unwind. (It's faster to hold the phone and let the cord unwind, but much less fun.) Another lost joy–playing with the coils, which could be interlocked, partially uncoiled and recoiled again, etc.

So I'm on my way to my DH with this cordless marvel, and I hand it to him with, "it's G." During the pass somehow, something that would have never, ever happened with the phone I grew up with happened. The phone took a picture somehow. Click! Wrong part of the screen touched or something. I can't wait to see the results. It should be the best pic ever, or at least best pic of the week. For a moment my DH wasn't sure if G. was still on the line. He couldn't hear anything. But eventually he got into the right phone mode and it was all good.

I was raised in the modern era, don't get me wrong. In the unlikely event of a dropped call (almost never happened) we did have one modern convenience during my teen years, and it was actually easier to access than on my DH's phone. A redial button.

But it only worked if we made the call from our side. And it was only the latest number.

Still, it came in handy. The digital phones (the early ones of which had to transmit the rotary phone noises in order to communicate with the switchboard) were a huge advance and my sister and I love playing with them. I did miss playing with the rotary phone dial, though. There was something magical about putting my finger in that little hole and turning the dial around the center pin. (Quiet, all y'all with dirty minds out there!) Also, not only were international calls expensive, we had to talk to a human being to make them, who then talked to a human being in another country to make the switch. There was excitement, drama, and suspense when we made a long-distance call!

And you were never in danger of your phone taking a picture of you, sending you on a wild-goose chase if you're trying to find your way through an unfamiliar town, compromising your identity or pocket calling someone who then listens to your garbled conversation at a cafe for gawd-knows-how-long until they get bored of yelling to get your attention or laughing at you.

Though toddlers were still capable of randomly calling and talking to perfect strangers for quite a while before you caught them at it.

I'm enjoying the hell out of this sense of perspective. It's a never-ending source of hilarity. The fact that half the population doesn't get it doesn't diminish it's charm.

Junk

I tried to find something today. It was a fairly important thing that at the time I thought we would need today, ASAP.  Turned out that we didn't, but, I spent about an hour looking for it.

I found:

Boxes of paperwork intended for burning.
Spiderwebs larger than my head.
Enough dust bunnies that they could probably be felted into a fine and substantial hat.
Old CDs I'd burned for bellydance classes that I haven't held in many years.
That although the floor had been recently swept in my office, there was enough accumulated cat litter tracked out of the cat box now that it's extremely unpleasant to walk in there barefooted.
Paycheck stubs from years ago waiting to be filed, along with a huge stack of other to-be-filed material.
That we have an impressive colony of the spiders I loathe and fear the most in our downstairs.

And much, much more.

I'm inspired to get some of this stuff organized, cleaned out, and whatever is junk, thrown away. I would also like the spiders to magically disappear as if they've never existed, and I will pretend that they were all nicely let outside where they belong and will lead their happy, long, creepy spider lives elsewhere.

And I would really, really like to find the disk we were looking for. We found the box, the instructions, the legalese ... but not the disk. Argh. We don't need it, but in case we do, I don't want to search through all that junk again.

Because, seriously. That was scary, and gross.

The Voices, They Are Stupid

I've been working out again. As always, I've rediscovered that it's absolutely true that you end up with more energy, not less, when you work out on a regular basis.

And the voices in my head--man, they know just what to say. What's with that? Everything from a whining "I don't wanna!" to "I really don't have time to work out" to "It's my day off, I don't want to spend my day off at the gym," and everything in-between. A stupid one yesterday: "It's almost lunchtime, so I'll be hungry by the time I get there, and if I go work out now then I'll have a really late lunch if I have one at all, and if I eat before I'll be too full to work out."  Really? As if I'm afraid of being hungry for an hour or two. Anyone who's seen me knows that I'm in no danger of starvation any time soon.

The voices in my head have no logic. That's probably a good thing, otherwise I might cave in to them (more often).

The voices in my head are not who I am, nor are the voices in anyone's head who any of us really are. They are, generally speaking (at least in my case) a vocal minority expressing my fears that goad me into laziness, and are mainly concerned with maintaining my comfort level. That includes my success or lack thereof. To these voices, success is scary. It's not just fear of failure, which these voices also have. What if I succeed? Then (OMG) people might see me, might notice, and that puts me in danger. What kind of danger, the voices can't really specify other than a vague unease and the notion that people will mock me if they, for example, read my books. Regardless of what might or might not happen, it's change and we're safe right now without the change. We're safe and nothing bad is happening and if there's change then there's all this bad stuff that might happen.

What bad stuff, they can't always delineate. Even if they did, it probably wouldn't make much sense. (See previous mention of the lunch logic.)

The main leverage that the voices have is that I've been embarrassed and I've failed and I've struggled, and just thinking about some of those moments makes my gut knot up tight. So their vague threats do have teeth. Take, for example, my garden. I've spent a lot of money and time and effort on my veggie garden. Last year, I had almost nothing to show for it. The deer ate my tomato plants and most of the broccoli. They even ate the zucchini plants. The thought of all that loss makes me feel horrible. I wasted money, and I ended up looking stupid. The time spent I don't mind so much--I love gardening, and it keeps me in shape. Still ...  And I have this project where I'm going to fence the whole darned thing in to keep the deer out. In fact, I'm going to work on it today. So why am I here, typing (and playing Bejeweled) when I should dash out there right now and get to work?

Because of the voices. And when I press them past the "I don't wanna, it's my day off and it's cold and dreary outside" (although the sun is peeking out right now, yay!!) the best that they can come up with is "what if you don't have enough materials to finish and we can't afford to buy new and if you buy stuff we'll be short and lose the house or worse, what if you finish and the deer still get in and then we'll have lost the house and we'll be starving for nothing or worst of all, what if the deer stay out and the garden still fails? Then you'll be a gardening total failure because you can't even blame the deer and we'll have no food and no house and we'll all die and it's all your fault and your husband and kids won't blame you because they're so nice but you'll see their large, tear-filled eyes and know you are to blame for their total destruction."

This is, seriously, the best the voices can do.

Why do I listen to them? Why do any of us listen to the voices in our heads?

Right now I can't think of a damned reason why. I'm going to go out and work on my garden. Type atch'y'all next time!

Sometimes, Fun Things are a Chore

Another animal day.

First off, woke up and looked for Carey on the deck, like I do every morning.  No Carey.  It's really hard to keep my hopes up when I hear the coyotes cry all night.

Then, deer, not once but twice.  They savaged my super-expensive ($2.45 for only 25 seeds!) broccoli, but I didn't see that.  What I did see was a doe with her spotted fawn helping themselves to our apples.  Which was fine, and actually really cute.  We have more apples than we know what to do with this year.  There's really only so much applesauce, apple pie, apple tart, apple juice, baked, fresh, and caramel and/or candied apples a person can eat, you know.  They did a nice job of picking the fallen ones first, before moving on to the ones hanging from the tree branches.  How nice.  Every time a car or truck went by, the doe would look annoyed and the fawn bounced around or dashed like mad for cover.  They left, and then returned for more after about an hour.

Last but not least, the suicidal baby robin.  I tried to save it.  Really I did.  The girl and I chased it around until I caught it and put it up in our big trees.  It should have been able to hop and half-ass fly from branch to branch all the way back up to the nest.

But, of course, when I went back out to change the sprinkler, there it was.  The Poop was stalking it.  She ran for it at the same time I did.  She dropped it because I yelled at her at the same time that one of the parent robins dive-bombed her.  The Poop jetted for the edge of the tree's dripline while I dutifully put the stupid, spotted thing with not enough flight feathers or tail to fly back into the tree.  All the cats were then banished to the house.

If it's still alive when we get home, and on the ground again, we might have a guest for a week or two while it finishes fledging out.

Wildlife.  Ugh.  Didn't I used to marvel at it when I was a child?  Actually, I still do, and it's neat that we get to experience this up close most of the time.  Sometimes, though, it makes me a little crazy.

Customers that make me cringe

Had a return today from a gentleman who didn't like the flip flops he'd bought.

"These have two problems," he told me very seriously.  I put on my best grave attention face.  "First of all, I want you to see this."  He took a flip flop and pushed it across my counter as if it were a Hot Wheels special edition car.  It went about six inches.  I had a really, really hard time not laughing, especially since he looked even more serious.  "Did you see that?" he exclaimed.  "I wore those on a vinyl floor and almost had a very serious fall.  You should pull these all off the shelves immediately."
I imagined demonstrating the Hot Wheels flip flop to my boss and almost laughed out loud again.  I think my serious face cracked a bit around the edges.  "I don't think they'll let us do that."
"Then you'll just be part of the pay out for the lawsuit against the manufacturer when someone is seriously injured in these."
I thought about people suing because they wore high heels in sand and broke their ankle.  Mmm, not so much.
"The second thing is that they have this cloth on the bottom that's peeling off," he said.
"Yeah, that's really bad."  I finished processing the return, thinking about kids skating gleefully around hardwood floors in these things, and why more people don't sue manufacturers for making those hard plastic bottomed slippers that are far, far worse than the Hot Wheels flip flop.  But I left it alone.  "Sorry those didn't work out for you."
He gave me that 'you'll be hearing from my lawyer' look and stalked off.

I also had a lady dash in.  "I just bought this," she said breathlessly, setting hair color on the counter.  "I just want to trade it for a lighter color.  It's way too dark.  I didn't notice until I got outside."
The color was 'Clove,' a very dark, reddish, almost black brown.  "Sorry, I have to run this as a return unless we're trading it for the identical color."
"Can I go grab the one I want?"
"I need your information--"
She left her ID on the table.  I filled out the stuff while she was away.  When she came back, she had a very, very dark brown, but without the reddish tones.  "This is the one I want," she gasped.  "How much longer will this take?  We're buying a pickup truck and I have to meet someone."
And you're buying hair color ...? Now?  Oh, never mind, it's not worth it.  "Just take this to the cashier and you're all set."
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."  Enjoy your almost indistinguishably dark brown hair color.  It'll cover your light brown hair ... a lot.
I expect to see her back tomorrow.

Silly Farm Stuff

Cute mental picture of the day, if you like chickens.

Beatrice, the buff orpington, and Sophie, the silver lace wyandotte, excited about strawberries.

I had about five strawberries leftover whose skins were starting to get dark and they were becoming unappetizing.  Not to the chickens, though!  They spear them and then run around with the strawberries stuck to their beaks before shaking them off.

Beatrice wasn't as thrilled as Sophie, for whatever reason.  She kept checking out different strawberries, as if hoping that the promise of all that red wonderfulness would pan out to something bigger.  She kept reacting to eating a bite with an expression I swear said, "Really?  That's it?"

I've been getting only one egg a day.  Comparing eggs, it looks like the biddies are alternating.  They both seem healthy.  I think it's the on-again, off-again weather.  After a couple of days in the 70s and 80s, we're back to the 60s and rain.

My tomatoes were terribly disappointed.  Their leaves looked very disapproving when I checked on them this morning.  Maybe even judgmental, as if the rain were my fault.  If they could have pointed at me, I'm sure they would have.

Every Possible Combination

I haven't done a mean post about customers lately. See? I can be good! Except I had one the other day that I just can't resist being mean about.

She came in and let me know she was from out of state, which apparently in her language is code for don't hassle me with my return. (Now now, don't have too much fun guessing what her home state is. Be nice!) Whatevs, it's not like returns bother me unless they're clearly user-damaged and/or a form of free rental. Anyway, she puts a headlamp, like the kind you'd wear in a cave, and a very sticky hummingbird feeder--the easy fill kind--on the counter. "This doesn't work and this leaks," she told me. "I just want another headlamp, but the hummingbird feeder is my mom's and she decided she just wants her money back."

"What's wrong with the headlamp?" I ask, truly and purely innocent.

"It doesn't work."

"Maybe the batteries are dead. Here, let me test them." I start to open it up.

"Actually, I think they put in the wrong ones. Both of them are positive, and it needs one positive and one negative battery."

Luckily she didn't notice my eyes popping out of my head. I put them back in discretely. "Maybe we can try flipping one of them over," I suggest very, very gently, trying not to fall over and roll around on the ground laughing. And I feel bad for wanting to laugh, because seriously, lots and lots and lots of perfectly fine and smart people do just fine without knowing the first thing about batteries and how they work. But ... still. I would have laughed if I wasn't trying to figure out a way to help her without embarrassing her.

"Oh no," she said. "I tried that. I tried every possible combination and it still doesn't work."

"Okay," I said. "I'll tell you what. I'll test the batteries to see if one or both of them are dead, and you can go get another headlamp. Okay?"

"Okay. I'll want to test it first to see if it works."

"I don't blame you. We can do that."

So she leaves and true to my word, I test the batteries. And they are whack the top green, fully charged. I put one of them + side up, and the other I flip over. They're the flat kind with the rough bellies, so the stamp showing what pole is what is only stamped on one side. I close her up, click, and voila! There is light.

It's like magic. Seriously.

I knew then that the hummingbird feeder was perfectly and utterly fine. I bet that when they put it together after they filled it, one of three things happened. They put the gasket and the washer/bar thingie (see? I don't know what it's called but I'm not stupid!) in the wrong order, they misthreaded it when they put it together, or they either forgot to set the bar to 'feed' or put it together in such a way that the feed/fill bar were in the wrong place and couldn't be adjusted.

Was I going to say crap to her? Heck no! That would be truly stupid.

"Hey," I said when she came back. "I fixed it!"

"How'd you do that?" she asked, amazed.

"I flipped one of the batteries over. Do you want to see?"

"No, thanks."

"Did you want the new one instead?"

"No," she said, hopefully pleased that I was giving her power of choice and treating her like the good customer she was, "if it works I want it." She took the headlamp and clicked it on and off several times to satisfy herself.

We did the return on the hummingbird feeder, and she went on her merry way. And that's when I realized that she had said something kinda dumb.

She'd tried every possible combination, she'd said.

Sorry, dear. You should know better.

But again, to her credit, I have this terrible fear of electronic things blowing up if I put them together wrong. She may have been afraid of shorting it out or something if she put one of the batteries in upside-down. I don't blame her.

Still.

Hee.

Free the Bird!

I have an excuse for not posting in a long time. No, really. And it's not that I've been working non-stop at my day job, although sometimes it feels just like that. I haven't even been sucked into garden-world, though I did rototill a bit during the good weather, opening up some more ground for the planting that will be coming soon (I hope!)

My Bamboo tablet came in, and I'm learning how to play with it. In the name of learning how to work with the stylus, I played a few rounds of Free the Bird. Man, is it addictive. And cute! OMG it's so cute. And in a couple of minutes I'm going to be searching around online to see if there are additional levels available, because apparently ten is not enough for me.

I'm so bad.

Anyway, I haven't tried the tablet with GIMP yet, but I'll be doing that very soon. Really. Just as soon as I find out about Free the Bird.

Because sometimes, ten levels of cute simply isn't enough.

Update: Wah. No additional levels seem to be available. Heart broken. Tears falling. Back to work, I guess. Siiiiiiiiiiiiiigggggggghhhhhhh

Twins and Other Surprises

We had a few surprises over the last week. First came the cute little twin tomatoes. So adorable, and tasty too! They weren't just attached by the green. The skins were connected too.

Then we had a double yolker egg. These actually happen pretty often. Grandma House (my mom) got a double yolker in the last batch of eggs we sent her. Young hens tend to make mistakes like that while their bodies learn how to make eggs. When Chihiro laid her first egg, she forgot to put the yolk and the shell on it. The result looked like a weird white waterballoon. The membrane was really tough, strong enough to bounce on pavement without breaking. The second egg was better. Still no shell, but it had a yolk.

And now she appears to be sharing a nest with our best egg-hider, Sophie!

We were looking for the hens. We lost our rooster to a predator (probably a raccoon but it might be the return of the super-bold coyote) and we were worried when the hens didn't come running up for their mealtime. I don't usually go all the way to the NE corner of the pasture because I can see pretty clearly if there's a chicken there, but this time I went to see if the predator had dug a hole under the fence.

And that's when I found thirty eggs all cuddled up together in a chicken-sized nest.

The girl, when she put them all in a basket, found that some of the ones on the bottom were actually partially buried and had to be dug out.

Sometimes living on a small farm can be painful, sad, frustrating, and even scary.

But some days, a lot of days actually, it's a lot of fun. I'd even go so far as to say hilarious.

I love living on a farm.

Now, the girl and I have a lot of eggs to float-test.

(If you're not sure about how good an egg is, just submerge it in water. If it lays flat, it's fresh. If the nose tips up a bit, it's good to hard boil. Super fresh eggs don't hard boil well because the whites stick to the shell. If the nose points straight up, it's iffy. I might still hard boil it, but I'd probably give it to the dogs all chopped up rather than feed it to a human being. And if it floats--run away! If it bobs on the surface of the water, don't even run. Just carefully--very, very, very carefully--pick the egg up and dispose of it somewhere where the evil smell when it inevitably breaks won't foul up the whole neighborhood. Yech!)

Rage at Work

I had a horror movie moment at work today.  The customers usually stand pretty close to the counter, and I have to use the lower part of the counter to do paperwork.  So there I was, paperworking away, while the customer was talking to me, when bam!  I got splashed in the eye by a tiny ball of spit.  Tiny though it might have been, I felt changes going on inside of me.  And I thought, this is Rage.  Soon now, the zombie virus will take over and I'll be infected.  I'll have to take out as many of them as I can before they come after me with baseball bats!

I paused, considering my first move.  

My fingers

twitched ...

But then the moment passed and I realized I wasn't infected with Rage.  I was just grossed out.

So I completed the transaction.

Of course, I might simply be resistant.  Perhaps, over time, the virus will overtake me and then, at my next day at work, I'll start making strange noises and grunt at the customers.  And then, savagely, I will feast!

Feast I say!

On the paperwork that inspires such Rage in me.

The horror ....

Money Growing on Trees?

We had a fun time at our local fair. One of my favorite things was the Pirate Parrot Show. If they show up at a fair near you, be sure to go.

I totally have to train my animals to bring me money like this.

Totally.

Roughing It

Here we are at Worldcon in Reno, Nevada. So far I've gone for a swim, ate dinner, and met a couple of great friends in the hallway. We got to the convention center too late to pick up our badges, so I have a temporary Thursday thingy. Not that I'll use it. Exhaustion has set in.

I love our room. It's so ... tacky. Normally I'm all over the gilded mirror, elaborate tile and big beds but partly because it's squeezed into a relatively small space and partly because it's not very well matched up stuff, I feel like I'm staying at a Victorian-meets-pseudo-Roman bordello. It's wonderful. I especially like the huge jet tub (almost as big as our bed) that's right next to the bed. And the jet tub has a mirror over it--gilded (of course!) Our shower doubles as a steam room.

I would love to peek into their giant suites like the bridal or presidential just so I could giggle. And yet, in its own tacky way, it's almost kinda gorgeous.

If you've stayed in this hotel you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not going to out them, though. I don't want even the slightest chance of anyone feeling bad, though I'm sure they're not exactly blind to the shortcomings of their decor. And those shortcomings are offset by the fun.

Tomorrow: more pool time, silly drinkies by the pool, meet-up with some wonderful writers, gawking at art, writing, etc. But first I have to go to reg and pick up my badge. I come all the way out here and it's nothing but work work work ....

It Can be Good when a Kitteh Sprays

Tom Riddle

We have this cat that hangs out around outside.

I refuse to adopt this cat.

This cat is an unaltered male and sprays everywhere.  This is extremely helpful to me, as I'm far less likely to let this cat that I absolutely will not adopt into the house.  I mean, I'm not even thinking about it, although it would be easy to do, since we're feeding him.

But we're not really feeding him that much.  Just a wee bit.  He catches rats and mice in the barn, and that's what I'd like him to do--to remain healthy and happy catching rats and mice in the barn, as opposed to hanging around so much on our deck cutely touching noses with the Poop and napping on the deck chairs.

Not that he's cute.  Well, okay, maybe he's a little cute.  But he sprays!  And, I haven't named him, so we're safe.

Actually, he has a name but we did not name him.  I was telling my friend R about him (not that I'm interested enough in this cat to actually talk about him to my friends that much--just a couple of mentions here and there) and she said, so you're not naming He Who Shall Not Be Named.

So I blame R that we call him Voldemort and Tom and Tom Riddle--which, I should mention is particularly fitting, him being a tom and all.

But we didn't name him.  That was R.  Just because he has a name now, it doesn't mean we like him.  We don't.  We just like what he does.  And I don't (usually) talk nice to him or anything, nor do I take any pleasure (well, okay, some) in the fact that I can get closer to him now before he runs off.

But, in the highly unlikely event that I put hands on this cat, he is not coming into the house.  Because, yay!, he sprays.  And even if we fix him, assuming we can put hands on this cat, it would not stop him from spraying.  

So we're never adopting this cat.  He'll stay outside, un-named (by us), forever.

I really, really mean it.

Even if it starts to snow really hard and his ears are folded down and he's staring in outside and we have a snuggly fire.

Because he sprays.

Thank gawd he sprays.

Books of Retail

I'm going to shorthand a few things here:

Whining about technical difficulties (primary--can't upload pics from camera yet)

Whining about soreness from gardening.  Garden is looking better w/o blackberries

I've been writing on a book of financial guidelines and wisdom as seen from the point of view of a retail clerk.  I've seen people do this stuff.  Yeah, that's you I'm talking about ...

So far I've got a chapter about how people really don't know or don't seem to care about what they're buying, and a chapter about how I'd love to be on some people's Christmas lists because dang ... I'm not talking so much about overspending but an increasing trend where it's all about the recipient's happiness and the unintended consequences of that belief.

I'll most likely epublish this book, but I may send it around to some publishers after it's done because I think people will learn and enjoy at the same time.  I'm still groping for a title. Tales of Retail Shame and Redemption: A consumer's guide?  I just kicked that out there.  I haven't given it very much thought.

BTW, if you like fun retail stories, one of my favorites is The Acts of Gord.  Even my DH who has never worked retail enjoyed the Acts of Gord.  It's not about financial advice.  More along the lines of things some retail employees wish they could do.

Attack of the Poop

We have nicknames for almost all of our animals. Veronica also answers to 'Poop!' One of these days I'll have to have the boy video one of my exchanges with Veronica, which is probably only entertaining to me. It goes along the lines of:

"Poop!"

"Meow?"

"Poop!"

"Mrrow!"

"Poop!"

"Mmruw?"

"Poop!"

"Mow?"

On and on pretty endlessly. I only really want to document it in case anyone tries to attribute any sort of decorum or fussy propriety to me. I'm a kites-with-pictures-of-my-goats-with-wings-on-them, chocolate-cake-smeared-on-one-cheek kind of gal.

Just sayin'.

Not that it's ever likely to be an issue.

But I'll be watching, so you better not do anything too toward in my name out there.

Veronica originally got the nickname 'Poop' because I thought her coloration is reminiscent of bird poop. I'm also a fan of Winnie the Pooh, and therefore I'm perfectly happy with silly, somewhat inappropriate cutesy names for things. I know, I know, blame the innocent Pooh for my weirdness--how gauche. But there you have it.

Anyway, the Poop is spoiled rotten. She gets away with all kinds of stuff.

Brian is so sweet and patient.

Plus, he's a total attention hog, so as long as he's getting his pets, he doesn't care.

Sweater Swap?

It's been cold and rainy. Just now the sun came out, perhaps signaling some clearing--but since we're getting on toward evening, that may well mean freezing temperatures tonight. It sure feels like it. Brrr. It's been awhile since I've felt 39 degrees F during the day.

Naturally this sudden chill has inspired me to look at gardening magazines. In particular, I've enjoyed Horticulture: The Art and Science of Smart Gardening (the February/March issue features Alnwick Gardens, Alnick being the castle where Harry Potter was filmed,) Fine Gardening, and Birds and Blooms.

The Austin Rose ads haunt me in particular. Oh, the roses I could grow!

Which reminds me of a conversation I had with my friend R one afternoon a few years back. She and I discussed how someone she knew married rich and spent her husband's money on such things as expensive hand-knitted sweaters, some of which cost thousands of dollars.

"Now spending thousands of dollars on the garden," I said, "that isn't silly at all."

"Not at all," R agreed.

"Five thousand on planters and plants for the deck, including cast-iron hooks and iron cages for hanging baskets."

"A few thousand for a pond and waterfall."

"Toss a few more thousand on full-sized trees--I think a chocolate mimosa over there would be nice." (FYI, a small chocolate mimosa will cost a couple of hundred dollars.)

"A copper trellis for a really nice climbing rose."

"Stone columns and maybe one of those really fancy garden houses with an all-glass second floor."

"Six foot high stone walls."

"With stained glass windows."

"Ooo yeah!"

We went on like that for some time.

"Now that wouldn't be silly to spend money on at all," I said.

"Absolutely not. Not like sweaters."

We sipped our wine and enjoyed the deck view of the garden, thoroughly puffed up with virtue. After all, think of all the things we could do for the price of a few sweaters! Of course, the sweaters would be pretty nice to snuggle in while wander the garden in early spring ....