Month: August 2011

The question-answering entry I’d planned for Friday, before the internet went down for a day and a half, will be up on Monday. But so that you don’t have to wait to meet the new guys….

Here they are. I’ll introduce them to you one by one in Monday’s entry, but here’s the whole group for now.

There are five of them, obviously.

The silver tabby is a girl, the brown tabby is a boy, and there’s one black boy and two black girls. I’m going to get collars for the black girls so I can tell them apart (and the boy will be identifiable due to the fact that he won’t be wearing a collar). Though, I can kind of tell the girls apart because one of them is ever so slightly cross-eyed (that’s her on the far right).

They’re eight weeks old tomorrow. They were hissy-spitty when I first got them, but they’re starting to calm down. The black boy is a talker. The silver tabby is a feisty little thing.

A pregnant cat showed up on a man’s doorstep. He fed her, and then when he realized she was pregnant, he brought her inside. She gave birth to these five kittens and he’s been caring for them. But he was about to go for neck surgery and wasn’t going to be able to continue caring for them all, so through a friend of a friend, they came to Challenger’s House. (He’s going to keep the mom.)

Since Ciara and the Spice Girls are ready to go when room becomes available at Petsmart, I decided we had room for these guys!

I’ll let y’all ponder what their individual names might be, but I can tell you that they’re not named after types of peppers (Bell, Ghost, Habanero would be good kitten names, though) and they’re actually not really named after anyone in particular (well, kind of, but I’ll explain that to you when I introduce them properly).

As you can tell, Ciara, Clove, Coriander, and Cilantro are super-worried that they can’t get into that guest bedroom!

Actually, for the first day or so, they sat outside the guest bedroom, all “Why can’t we go in there? Why do you hate us? Whyyyyyy?”, but after a few days they seem to have forgotten that the guest bedroom is there (though if I spend too much time in the room with the little ones, I open the door to find seven cats sitting in the hallway waiting for me to come out!)

Sugarbutt, hanging out on the platform between the kitchen and laundry room, trying to stay cool.

Previously
2010: Oh, I crack myself UP with that picture.
2009: I like how he thinks he has any choice in the matter.
2008: Meet Michele the chicken!
2007: (Miz Poo, upon seeing me pick up a fly swatter and walk toward her, whines and runs away. Like I beat her spoiled ass on a regular basis! I don’t, but I oughta. She deserves it.)
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: The morning I wake up and find a cricket in bed with me is the day I start closing the cat door at night, believe you me.
2003: I HAVE THINGS TO DO THAT CANNOT BE ACCOMPLISHED WITH A PORTLY POO IN THE WAY.
2002: No entry.
2001: Yeah, like YOU don’t have a voice in your head that reads things to you…
2000: No entry.

Didn’t I tell you that everyone loves that Super! Awesome! shoe box?

Cilantro and Cori, in and on the box.

Alice patiently waits her turn (which is very much NOT like Alice).

Cori and Cila do their daily inspection of the box (safety first!) (Note Alice’s paw in the lower right corner of the picture.)

Are the peek holes clear? Apparently so!

Alice has just about lost her patience – not that she had a firm grasp on it to begin with, you understand. But she IS working on her anger management…

So she takes her annoyance out on a toy mouse instead. Good anger management, Alice! (Poor toy mousie.)

::thlurrrrrp:: Admit it – that little spotted belly is about the cutest thing you’ve seen today, isn’t it?

“Maybe I’ll cut HER….”

All the Spice Girls (and Ciara, for that matter) are snuggly little snugglers.

Ciara’s making a mental note to add Cila to the Cut List.

Oh, Ciara. SO annoyed by EVERYTHING.

On Sunday, I went out and cut a bunch of fresh catnip, which I tied together and hung in the closet to dry. Without realizing it, I dropped several pieces on the floor. All the ‘nipheads in the house knew about it pretty much instantly, and before I knew it, they were gathered in the kitchen to get hiiiiiiiiiigh.

Newt’s like “I don’t know what they’re doing, but I disapprove.”

Spanky just eats the catnip. The rest of them roll around on it and sniff it, then roll around some more. Miz Poo is a mean drunk, and smacks at anyone who gets too close to her when she’s hiiiiiigh. (Okay, truthfully she does that whether she’s high or not.)

Previously
2010: Give Gus a little satin jacket, and he would have been at home in the 70s, no?
2009: I assumed wrong.
2008: No entry.
2007: Questions answered.
2006: I’m sorry, but my Aunt Fanny am I a size 40C.
2005: I suspect people as beautiful as Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have to be a little bit nuts, anyway.
2004: WONDERFUL.
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: A Day in the Life of a Bitchypoo.
2000: Maine recap.

I don’t know if it’s the particularly hot, dry weather we’ve had this summer, but it certainly seems to be the summer of BUGS here at Crooked Acres. Last night, Fred and I were walking out to the back forty to give the pigs their cookies and the dogs their snacks, and I looked down to see a bright red ant-shaped bug walking across the top of the grass.

Back when we bought this house, in 2006, we were walking around the back of the property, and I spotted one, and then a few minutes later, another. After some research online, I found that they’re called “velvet ants” (info and pictures of them at Wikipedia), although they’re actually wingless wasps rather than true ants. They’re also called “cow killers” because their bite is very painful and is said to be strong enough to kill a cow (it isn’t really, though; that’s just hyperbole).

Fred’s stepmother told me that if you corner one of them, they’ll squeal. I haven’t found this out for myself because, although they are really interesting and exotic-looking bugs, when it comes down to it they’re BUGS and they have a painful bite and I don’t think we need them roaming around the property, thank you, so when I saw it last night I stomped on it.

Ten feet away, I spotted another one. And the ones we saw back in 2006 were tiny ones, but the ones I saw last night were huge, about the size of my pinky (which is not huge, unless you’re looking at a bug that size), and I feel that that does perhaps not bode well for us. Like maybe I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night face-to-face with one of the fucking things.

The middle of last week, I did a search on how to order a copy of Fred’s birth certificate. At some point in the past, we HAD his birth certificate – or at least I imagine we did, I’m pretty sure we had to have a copy to get our marriage license – and now I have no idea where it is. I’ve been through every file in the house and while I have every single report card that Fred got in his entire school career, along with every special award he got (attendance award for Bible School when he was five!), no birth certificate.

So I found that I could order it online from Vitalchek.com, and so I went and filled out the form and provided all the information they required. They were all “And you are…?” and I was all “His wife!” and they were all “Very good, then.”

But they didn’t require PROOF that I was his wife, in case you were wondering. Of course, they asked questions (his mother’s full maiden name, for one) that your average person isn’t going to know (I had to call and ask him what her middle name was, actually), so maybe they aren’t all that worried about it.

I placed the order, and what happens after you place the order is that Vitalchek passes the information along to the Alabama Vital Records division, and then they pull the birth certificate and send it to you in an expedited manner. “Expedited manner”, in this case, means that they sent it via UPS with a signature required.

I placed the order on Wednesday. Friday, late morning, I went out to the back yard to dump the stuff in the kitchen compost bucket into the compost bin. The compost bin is at the back of the back yard, perhaps eighty feet from the house. In the two minutes that I was out of the house – THE FIRST TIME I LEFT THE FUCKING HOUSE ALL DAY LONG, MAY I ADD – UPS came, knocked on the door, and then left a “We were here and you were not, sucks to be you” note on the door.

So I turned the note over and signed where it had the “No really, it’s okay, use this as my signature” line.

Friday night, Fred and I were sitting in the front room – the room where the front door is located – watching TV from about 6:30 on. No one ever knocked on the door. According to the tracking info on UPS.com, UPS attempted a second delivery at 7:11 pm.

WE WERE SITTING THREE FEET FROM THE FUCKING DOOR AND NO ONE EVER KNOCKED.

Saturday morning, I looked on the front porch and found a second “Sucks to be you” note next to the first one, with “The sender required a signature at the time of delivery” circled. They indicated that they’d attempt delivery again on Monday between, basically, 10:30 and 5 pm.

I did not set ONE FUCKING FOOT outside the house after 9:00 yesterday morning, and at noon I glanced at the front door to find the third and final “suck to be you” note hanging on the door. I was within earshot of that fucking door with the exception of the five minutes I was upstairs in the foster room, which is located partly directly over the front room (where the fucking front door is located) and partly over the porch.

IF THERE HAD BEEN A KNOCK ON THE DOOR, I WOULD HAVE HEARD IT, FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET PICKLED BABY JESUS.

I was so beyond pissed off that I went into the bathroom, closed the door (I truly cannot for the life of me imagine what you think I’m going to say next) and screamed obscenities at the top of my lungs.

(I didn’t want to scare the cats. Though they did look pretty freaked out when I came back out of the bathroom.)

I shot off tersely worded “I’d like to know how you’re going to fix this” emails to UPS and to Vitalchek (though I think we can agree that Vitalchek could not possibly care less about this whole thing and if they ever respond to me, it will be to tell me that although they took $55 from me, I have to deal with Alabama Vital Records and it sucks to be me.)

The best part is that I could have just filled out the fucking form and taken it to any area county health department and they’d have printed the fucking thing right there for me, for fifteen fucking dollars, but I was so thrilled that I could just order the fucking thing online that I failed to notice that part.

I have zero love for UPS at this moment, believe you me, and I think what I’m going to do is immediately go and order as many extremely heavy things to be delivered by UPS and UPS alone so that my douchey UPS guy will throw out his fucking back and will be replaced by one who might understand the concept of knocking on the goddamn motherfucking door.

Ciara’s trying to decide who she’s gonna cut.

“Maybe I’ll cut this bratty little Spice for flipping over the Ham-mick.”

“Maybe I’ll cut the Ham-mick for letting itself be flipped over.”

“Maybe I’ll cut YOU.”

“Yeah, you. You look like you deserve it.”

Evil thing. (Except that she totally isn’t – she’s a complete sweetheart!)

Sleepy Clove.

That cat hair on the couch behind Clove horrified me enough that I immediately got up and ran the Fabric Sweeper over it. Nas-TAY.

Cilantro, sharpening her claws in the front room.

When Sheriff Mama (Kara) is asleep in the house instead of in the back yard keeping an eye on things, you know it’s GOTTA be hot!

Previously
2010: “You’re a douchebag category all your own!” he said.
2009: No entry.
2008: No entry.
2007: Really, here at Crooked Acres, it’s sometimes best to just look the other way, and not ask aaaaaaany questions.
2006: No entry. Sorry!
2005: I wanted to lay in bed and sniff my hair all day long.
2004: me: “Brian, I sure do love you, but I’m glad we’ll never have to sit this close to each other ever again.” Brian: “I feel the same.”
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: $1200 for one single washer. What the fuck’s up with that?
2000: can you say “Bring a book”?

One thing I do, when I’m sitting down to write an entry, is open a recent entry and copy and paste the code for the divider line – oh, it LOOKS all simple, but if I don’t put line breaks in there, things get too close to each other and I get all annoyed – from an already-posted entry to the entry I’m working on.

I opened Friday’s entry to copy the divider line code, and I glanced at the part where I’d posted the recipe, and for a moment I thought it said “Sweet Pickled Jesus.”

I cannot wait to use that line in a conversation. “Sweet pickled Jesus is it hot out there!”

I had what felt like a very busy weekend. Friday I blanched ears of corn that Fred had picked Thursday evening. I got them blanched and cooled, then wrapped each ear in plastic, put them all in a larger freezer bag, and put them in the freezer. That took longer than you’d expect, between the blanching, the cooling, and the waiting for the ears to drain, and I used up every bit of ice we had in the house.

(There may have been an afternoon nap that I just couldn’t seem to wake up from, also.)

Saturday, Fred harvested the rest of the corn, and I spent the morning blanching, cooling, and draining the ears. We left the house around 10:00 to do errands (Dollar Store, dropping off mail, buying feed at the Co-Op, browsing at Lowe’s, stopping by Publix to pick up lunch), and when we got home, I started cutting the kernels of corn off the ears. Now, I’ve always just frozen whole ears of corn, because it’s easier and they taste just fine. But we ended up with something like 150 ears of corn, and though we have a lot of freezer space, I didn’t want to take up all that freezer space with corn.

I had read, at some point over the winter, the idea of using a mandoline to cut the kernels off your ears of corn. I have this one, and it’s come in super handy this summer, I’ve used it a lot to slice squash for dehydrating. So I gave it a try with the corn, and it worked out really well. I spent a couple of hours running the ears of corn over the mandoline, and then using a knife to scrape all the left-behind corn goop off each ear. It was a pain in the ass, but when I was done I had something like 15 packages of 1 1/2 cups of creamed corn, ready for the freezer. In addition, I’ve got three dozen ears of corn in the freezer for when we’re having a hankering for corn on the cob.

I love the hell out of corn. Fred will eat it if it’s there, but I LOVE it. Especially paired with mashed potatoes!

What else did I do on Saturday? Oh, I sliced up a cantaloupe to dehydrate (we’re about to get a ton of cantaloupe from the garden and are looking to preserve it so that Fred can eat it all. I’m no fan of cantaloupe, but he loves it.) and I also sliced and pitted cherries he’d gotten on sale last week. By the time I was done dealing with the cherries, my fingers were stained purple and two days later they’re still stained a bit.

I’d intended to vacuum on Saturday, but that just didn’t happen. Oh, don’t give me that look – I’d just vacuumed on Thursday!

(Side note: I miss the hell out of my Dyson. I probably didn’t tell y’all, but I finally took my poor broken Dyson to the repair shop, and the problem turned out to be… something (I don’t remember what) that would have been way too expensive to fix. I’m currently using a Kenmore canister vacuum (one that we’ve had for five years), and I have to tell you that it does a fine job, but I hate the fuck sweet pickled Jesus out of canister vacuums because you have to pull the damn thing around like a dog on a leash, and it’s always getting in the way and making me want to kick it. I am noting VERY CLOSELY that the Dysons currently have five year warranties, and even though Dyson haven’t lasted very long for me in the past and I know that non-bag vacuums are no good for a home with 73 cats, I MISS MY DYSON, because everything else is clunky and heavy and annoying to me.)

When I got up Sunday morning, I did all my boring usual morning stuff (one day I’m going to capture the magic of my mornings in excruciating detail WITH PICTURES and y’all will have to bookmark it for those nights when you cannot fall asleep) and then I went outside to work in the garden. I got a ton of Sungold cherry tomatoes (they’re coming in like gangbusters), and then I had to pull up several tomato plants that were all blighty or dying for some other reason. Then I picked the jalapenos (which are also coming in like crazy) and THEN I went into my raised bed garden and started pulling up carrots.

I think I’m going to just give up on carrots. I like them well enough, but the thing I find annoying about them is that each carrot plants gives you (drum roll) one carrot. Unlike a tomato plant which gives you on average 3,794 tomatoes, you only get one lonely carrot from each carrot plant, and these carrots took for-sweetpickledjesus-ever to grow (I did start them early enough, but then there was this tornado and I had to replant and even though the directions on the packet claimed that they’d be ready in 60 days, they ended up taking more like 90 days), and I was a dumbass and didn’t thin the carrots once they’d started growing, so I ended up with all these tiny carrots, and fuck you carrots. YOU ARE NOT ALL THAT.

Then I cut a bunch of catnip off the catnip plants (I hear that they’re hardy plants and will respond to being cut back by growing even more vigorously) and I brought everything inside and started dealing with it. At some point, some catnip fell onto the floor, and all the ‘nipheads in the house (Spanky, Miz Poo, Jake and Elwood, and Sugarbutt) came running and had themselves a bit of a ‘nipfest. I bundled up the catnip I’d brought inside, and hung it in the hall closet to dry.

Probably the Brown Recluses will have a field day with it. I’m imagining them rolling them into ‘nip doobies and toking up.

I vacuumed, did Fred’s laundry, let the Spice Girls and Ciara out of the foster room, and took a shower. Then I sliced about three billion cherry tomatoes in half and put them in the dehydrator.

It’s my goal to get a gallon jar full of dehydrated cherry tomatoes before the tomatoes stop growing. I’m about 1/3 of the way there!

Then I started slicing jalapenos and made another triple batch of sweet pickled Jesus jalapenos. While I was waiting for the liquid to boil, I seared a pork roast and then put it in the crock pot.

Dinner last night was pork roast, boiled carrots, and tomato mozzarella melts. All grown at Crooked Acres (well, except for the spices on the roast and the mozzarella on the tomatoes!) and it was really really good.

And that was my weekend. How was yours?

When I first got the Spice Girls, Cori was a bitey little thing. She’d bite and bite with her sharp little teeth, and OH was it annoying (and painful). But she has turned into the biggest lovebug in the last couple of weeks. All she wants to do is sit on your lap and be petted, and she never bites any more. She’s a lovah, not a biter.

::thlurrrp!::

Clove and Ciara, playing with one of the many packing straps floating around the house.

Cilantro, biting the ham-mick.

Cilantro and Cori, fighting. (Also, we have too many shoes in this house.)

She’s ALWAYS giving me this look. Fred says she looks smug. I think she looks like she wants to cut me.

Sweet Miss Clove.

All fosters in this house eventually love to hang out by the back door.

No longer a tiny thing, Alice is on her way to being portly. One good thing, though – remember when we first got her, and she was always making that wheezing sound? And then we took her to the special vet so they could knock her out and stick a tube down her throat to see what was what? And they found nothing but a little scar tissue? Well, she’s not making that wheezing sound any more at all! Fred thinks it might come back in the Fall. We’ll see. At least she’s not sounding like she’s at death’s door any more!

Previously
2010: No entry.
2009: No entry.
2008: (This site does not condone stealing.)
2007: Did the Zodiac Killer curse them with doughy bodies, was that the unspoken conspiracy?
2006: No entry.
2005: Debbie: “Oh, right. I used to boil Brian’s nipples when he was a baby.”
2004: Hawaii.
2003: No entry.
2002: Y’know, I have way too much fun making fun of that man.
2001: Excuse me, he’s known about this closing for well over a month and still can’t manage to be on time? How self-important can you be?
2000: Fucking every time I drive through Pennsylvania it fucking pours down rain.