Thursday Babble

Other women will relate to this. We all have a little voice in us don't we ladies? That little voice, is womens intuition. I have learned as I have gotten older to listen to it. I slip up sometimes and I always regret it, saying to myself that I knew I should have just listened to my womens intuition.

I have been thinking about Sherry a lot these past few days. She had her little baby girl  a couple of months ago. When she gets in my head like she is now, it is usually for a reason. Usually it is because she needs me, just to be there, just to talk to. I am going to give her a call in a little while and see how she is doing. I told Ian my feelings, that she had really been on my mind for a while now, and I am missing her. I told him I want to go to see her soon. I will spend the night. I want to go before we start homeschool again. I am thinking in the next couple of weeks I will go. Its going to cost a small fortune in gas, but I dont care, I miss her and I want some girlfriend time with her.

So what have I been doing. Well, Ian and I went to Lowes on Tuesday and I came away with two small Lantana plants. I am good at growing lantana. Maybe because it is really a weed, lol, that is what Floridians will tell you anyway. I grew one into a huge bush at the old house. It was just beautiful and attracted so many butterflies, hummingbirds, and snowberry clearwings. If you have never seen a snowberry clearwing, they are really cool. They are a moth, but they mimick a bumblebee to keep from being eaten. They curl their abdomen under and their wings are always buzzing. If you dont look close, you will just think its a bee. Wow, I got way off base. LOL. Anyway, I came away with three different hibiscus plants, two ferns for half price, and Ian got another carnivorous plant. He loves those. I have one hibiscus in the ground, but still have the other two to plant. Its too hot out there right now to do it. I will wait until dusk like before.

Its time for the last of the babies to go out soon. I am waiting for Elvis Jr. to get a little bigger. The only reason the others are still in the house is because of him. They have to go out soon, they are so big! They really have been good though. They havent been jumping out of the box or perching on the sides at all.

 

 

Mocha is finally getting better. Her 'face" fell off...lol. Anyone who has had cats know their wounds are just always so nasty. The whole patch of dead skin and fur that had festered on her face fell off. She now had a naked cheek with just a clean small wound healing up nicely. I keep antibiotic ointment on there and it seems to be healing up nicely. Her leg has healed and she is using it. No limp or anything. I bought a kitten milk replacer at Walmart last week and put her on it with just Lamb cat food (Natural Life, no chicken lips or radiated tumors in this food). She is doing much better with pooping. She was just so young when she got here and needs that milk replacer still. Its kind of expensive, but she is worth it. One little quart is ten dollars, and thats at Walmart!

I had a great find on Freecycle. There was a lady in Paulding County that was giving up showing cats due to her battle with cancer. She is just not able to get around to go to shows and prepare for shows. She gave away her last cat the other day and I got the last cage. (Nelishia you may have seen the post on Freecycle, it was for a Red Persian) She had a cattery going and had some really great pens with floors and platforms. I jumped at the chance and got all of them. Here is a picture of Mocha in her enclosure til she gets bigger and her tummy is adjusted. The second picture is of Rudy. You can use the floors as tops too.

I had to wrap the netting around Mochas pen, as she is so tiny she can squeeze right through the bars!

 

This will probably be my last entry until Monday as Ian is off Friday, Saturday and Sunday so I will be spending time with my family. We plan on going to the Barnes and Noble on Friday. The book selection at Walmart is changing, and not to our taste. There are less and less of mainstream best sellers and more and more romance novels and for some reason African american novels and romances. I say this because well, there just isnt a market for these books in our area, plain and simple. I guess some high up executive somewhere at the top of the Walmart chain decided this would be a good idea for all Walmarts. So, we are going to check out the book store. I love Barnes and Noble anyway. They have one in Rome, very convenient. We love books. We are one of those families...you know, you walk in and there are books stacked two deep in every bookcase because what we really need is a whole room dedicated to all the books we have. ;) We love to read. I know some don't read books. I know people that dont get into books, and thats okay, but to me, there is nothing like settling down before bedtime with a good book.

Everyone have a fantastic weekend. :) BIG HUGS TO ALL! :)

My Babies Are Growing So Big

Just wanted to post some up to date pictures of my three 'baby' emus. They can look me in the eye now and they are only half grown. I have raised them well though, they are very sweet and not scared of people at all. You better share your bread though, I was trying to get the chickens back in their pen yesterday evening with some bread thrown in their pen. The emus knew I had bread and wasnt sharing so I got a pinch on the back of my arm! Naughty little emu! It didnt really hurt, just startled me. I did give them a little.

Aren't they just getting so beautiful. There hasnt been a day that passes that I regret getting these beautiful birds.

 

Everyone is Sitting Sitting and More Setting

 

Trying once again, Nick and Nack are sitting on two eggs. With pigeons, they only lay two and then they incubate. They take turns too, isnt that sweet? I wish them much success.

 

I found this sneaky gal nesting on about 23 or so eggs a couple of weeks ago. Guess we are going to have some little keets running about. She gets off the nest for one short period during the day, but I havent been able to catch her off so I can take a picture of all the eggs. Only once did I catch her off, and that was during all the company July 4th weekend and I didnt get a shot of it. She is a good guinea mama, very protective of her nest.

One of my C Serama hens is broody and was sitting on about six eggs but has kicked three to the curb. I guess she knows which ones are bad. I don't really want anymore C Seramas right now, but just a couple won't hurt anything, and it makes her so happy.

One Video

I did manage to get this one video loaded but it was slow going yesterday for some reason. Will work on the other today.

 

June Bugs in July

The GreenJuneBeetle is a bit late this year. I guess this year the beetle decided to be a July Beetle. I have never seen so many as this year though. You can walk outside and hear them all...buzzing and banging into the house. They are truly swarming right now. This makes for great fun and feast for chickens. I just couldn't let them go without on a day like today so I let them out. They are all having a great time catching that little crunchy delicacy right now. We have a thunderstorm rolling in same as we have every afternoon just about all week so that may literally put a damper on their fun. Here is one of our master june bug catchers. She is also one of "Ians hens' about this time of year. He likes to catch the bugs and tries to give them to someone that will come to him and take it, but they don't get him all the time and don't see what he is trying to do, except this barred rock hen, SHE knows and she is always there for her treats from him. He isn't here to catch them and feed them to her right now though, so she has had to do all the work to get her little green crunchy treats.

If you look closely below her over that weed leaf is a green blur...that was one of them flying by. That is how many there are out there! You can easily get shots of them in a picture. Can you see the one she has there? Crunchy! Mmmmm! ;)

 

I have a couple of videos of the girls chasing the june bugs around. I will post them on a seperate entry when they are both loaded.

Good Friday Morning

I hope everyone is doing fine this morning. I am doing pretty good myself. We finally got some of that rain that has been coming through the area for days each afternoon but always seems to miss us. It cooled things off from the nineties down into the seventies. What a relief that was!

I want to thank y'all all for your views, votes, advice and comments on the dilemma I had with hatching those eggs.  I gave it a lot of thought and I feel like this...

I don't like to hurt anyones feelings, even if they have upset me like Ricardos dad did when grabbing Eddie, my goat. I don't believe that he thinks he is doing anything wrong. Some people have that mindset that you are not going to change or make them understand otherwise. I absolutely didnt want to contribute to giving life to those eggs after seeing the way he does not understand the way animals think. I can see he does not relate to animals and try to understand their way of seeing things in this world, and I wasnt going to be able to give him an education on this. In their home a woman doesnt seem to know a whole lot about anything except keeping the home and cooking. Another mindset I don't like at all. So rather than start a big uproar over what he thinks and what I think, I just cut it off at the base right now. I know some think I should have given him what-to-for, and when I was in my twenties I probably would have raked him over the coals good, but I take medication for that now. ;) He just isnt worth it anyway. I wouldnt waste my breath. Some thought I should tell him the truth, but that would entail me getting upset, and again, he isnt worth it. I know some don't approve of lying no matter what, but sometimes I feel it is justified to keep the peace. I feel this is what I have done.

What some of you may or may not know about me is that I used to have some real anger issues. If I got mad, and it could be something that didnt amount to a hill of beans, I couldnt stop this snowball effect inside me. Most people vent and feel better. I would get on a roll about something and before you knew it I was lecturing Shelby for thirty minutes all the while yelling and just almost in a rage you could say. I couldnt keep doing that to her. I also got to a point where everything got on my nerves. Just someone walking through the room, just being in my viscinity would tick me off.

Some will say I should be able to control myself better. Some will say its a chemical imbalance. I believe the latter. Before this happened to me I would have laughed it off and said taking pills for that kind of thing was silly. But when you are in a turmoil that wont subside, eventually you get help. I was put on Prozac years ago, and as long as I stay on it, I tend to be a pretty evened out gal. I dont sweat the little stuff. I dont get mad over any little thing. Things dont annoy me anymore. Don't get me wrong. I still get mad, I might even raise my voice, but you can bet it will be because something is REALLY going on.

With that said, I took the easy going road and opted to just ease out of this whole relationship. I absolutely feel no guilt about not hatching those eggs for him, or lying to him. The other option was just not an option. It would have caused bad feelings and nobody was going to learn anything. If I thought he might change his way of looking at things, maybe then I might have tried, but I really believe he just wouldnt have gotten the message.

So that is what Prozac does for me. Keeps me pretty level headed I think.

I have had several of you mention how y'all like my new look and my new sidebar. THANKYOU! :) I just wanted a new look, something more, some bright summer colors and some of my favorite pictures I have taken of my chickens. I found lots of sayings I liked too off of CafePress.com. They have lots and lots of cute stuff you can put on t shirts, mugs, buttons, stickers, all kinds of stuff. I just went through and borrowed some of their stuff. ;)

So what is everyone doing after the big weekend that went on last weekend? I am going to color my hair. I am currently really looking like white trash walking around with my hair half blonde and half brown...lol. So I am hitting Sallys Beauty Supply today and doing my hair over the weekend so I can at least look like respectable white trash. ;)

I think I will mow the weeds over the weekend too. The grass isnt keeping up with all the dandelions and other weeds out there so it looks wild and scraggly. I love to mow anyway, it is something that I find pretty relaxing.

The animals are all doing well. I have started letting the layers out in the evenings for a couple of hours, but the thought of all day makes me a nervous wreck, so I am not up for that yet.

Did you know June bugs are great yummy fun for birds? The chickens have always loved chasing them down and crunching them up and eating them. The emus, are having just as much fun. There are so many out there all they have to do is stroll around and one will be right there for them to snatch out of the air. At first they tried chasing them, then they realized they didnt have to do all that work, the bugs come to them! Fun to watch them.

Well thats about all I got for now. Ian is working this weekend so I am sure I will get caught up on everyones journals and take some pictures over the weekend.

Have a nice weekend and stay COOL! :) 

 

Talked To Ricardo

Okay, so he called me back. I told him Ian switched with someone at work for vacation time off and that we would be going during the time I would need to be monitoring the incubator. I told him they could come get the eggs I already had planned for the incubator, and they could try again on their own.

He says well thats okay, that they would just leave the incubator with me til I get back from vacation.

I said no.

Shelby asked what if they drive by sometime and see that we are here...I said well, if I have to tell them the truth, then I will, but I am trying to avoid hurt feelings.

So they will come by tomorrow and get the eggs and incubator. I think they should probably take their hen too. We will see about that. I really want to start to sever the ties with them.

Oh I also got asked who was going to be caring for my animals while we were gone...I didnt leave room for volunteers...I told him, and this is the truth, that I already have someone to do that.