We have a nice Saturday planned.
Kevin brought home some bleach and a big box. The bleach was for the bathroom drain, which remained clogged even after I tried all my hippie baking soda/boiling water type cures and finished off his parent's bleach. The new bleach worked, sorta, but it took the plunger (the one for the toilet! Blech!) to get it 90% cured.
The big box, swiped from a local furniture store, is for our chickens. Our rapidly growing chickens. They've just about outgrown the first box and, without a coop prepared or a chicken tractor made, will have to hang out in their 2-box duplex in our dining room until they're fully feathered and the weather is consistently pleasant.
We have 9 chickens that we got from the local farmer store. There are 5 Barred Rocks, the black and white striped that we had before, and 4 Brown Leghorns, lovely birds all colors of brown and taupe. We'll get a combo of brown and white eggs. They eat chick starter, which looks remarkably like Grape Nuts, but they really like cornbread. Soon, they'll like ticks and worms and Japanese beetles, which I will pluck off whatever plant they're devouring and throw to the chickens who eat them like popcorn.
This afternoon, after a fairly lazy, mixed-up morning that combined decorative pillow sewing with biopics of FDR and the 43rd viewing of "Cars" (which is really funny) and legos and cuddles and perusal of a middle school textbook for another Hill gig, Kevin and I dropped the kids off at the old folks home and went to Columbia for an adventure.
First, we headed to the granite countertop place to pick through many cubic feet of granite countertop scraps. We loaded the good-sized pieces of pretty granite onto the truck. Kevin will turn these into name plates for desktops, plaques, pet markers, whatever. To get the good pieces, we have to unstack and carefully restack many other pieces on top of palates, carefully fitting odd-shaped pieces ranging from too heavy for one person to lift comfortably to barely more than shards. They were wet and dirty, and it was a cold, misty day, and we were there for 2 hours. But we headed home with at least 8 layers of approximately 2" thick granite that loaded the truck down so perilously that the suspension was totally gone and I was sure we'd blow a tire on the way home. (We made it, no problem.)
Then we went to Lowe's and used the last little bit on our gift card to pick up seed trays and seed starter and a soil pH kit and various garden tools (including a post-hole digger. Blech!) so that I can further trash the feng shui in my house by clogging up all the south-facing windows with little seeds. As if the chicken duplex wasn't enough!
Yes, I got my seeds the other day! Very exciting. All heirlooms, all from a local-as-possible mom-and-pop-and-God operation. These seeds have history. And I got WAY too many. I spent an entire evening pouring through gardening books (organic, naturally) trying to figure out what needs to be started inside and when and which seeds are friends and which are enemies and, most importantly, how long the seeds are viable because I got WAY too many.
If I want to grow most of our food, I gotta start somewhere.
Which is a big reason why I withdrew my application for the Chamber of Commerce job. I already have a surprisingly absorbing part-time job, I don't need another with its full set of headaches. Then I'd be working full-time again, for about a third of the pay of my last full-time job and none of the benefits! Besides, I want to be able to concentrate on the business. It's picking up a little! Thank goodness for spring.
Then we went to eat some Mexican food. I had enchiladas and a coconut-pineapple margarita. Kevin had a chimi and a Corona. We both had plenty of wet dust and dirt on our work clothes. It's good to not care.
And, just now, we unloaded all of that granite. I have a bit of an exertion headache. The last task, completed just seconds ago, was lugging a large pallet full of granite up the small incline and into the shop. Kevin pulled, I used a heavy steel post and levered--quickly--so we didn't lose momentum and so I didn't have to jump off the 4-foot high concrete pad in order to avoid a pallet with about a ton of granite rolling off onto my fragile body. There are probably times that Kevin fantasizes about having a gorgeous little wife that he can hoist onto his shoulders at concerts and feel all large around, but this was not one of those times. I am a good wife for a monument builder to have.
It's 8:30 and time to fetch the kids. What will I do with the rest of this amazing evening? Aren't you just dying to know!
The big box, swiped from a local furniture store, is for our chickens. Our rapidly growing chickens. They've just about outgrown the first box and, without a coop prepared or a chicken tractor made, will have to hang out in their 2-box duplex in our dining room until they're fully feathered and the weather is consistently pleasant.
We have 9 chickens that we got from the local farmer store. There are 5 Barred Rocks, the black and white striped that we had before, and 4 Brown Leghorns, lovely birds all colors of brown and taupe. We'll get a combo of brown and white eggs. They eat chick starter, which looks remarkably like Grape Nuts, but they really like cornbread. Soon, they'll like ticks and worms and Japanese beetles, which I will pluck off whatever plant they're devouring and throw to the chickens who eat them like popcorn.
This afternoon, after a fairly lazy, mixed-up morning that combined decorative pillow sewing with biopics of FDR and the 43rd viewing of "Cars" (which is really funny) and legos and cuddles and perusal of a middle school textbook for another Hill gig, Kevin and I dropped the kids off at the old folks home and went to Columbia for an adventure.
First, we headed to the granite countertop place to pick through many cubic feet of granite countertop scraps. We loaded the good-sized pieces of pretty granite onto the truck. Kevin will turn these into name plates for desktops, plaques, pet markers, whatever. To get the good pieces, we have to unstack and carefully restack many other pieces on top of palates, carefully fitting odd-shaped pieces ranging from too heavy for one person to lift comfortably to barely more than shards. They were wet and dirty, and it was a cold, misty day, and we were there for 2 hours. But we headed home with at least 8 layers of approximately 2" thick granite that loaded the truck down so perilously that the suspension was totally gone and I was sure we'd blow a tire on the way home. (We made it, no problem.)
Then we went to Lowe's and used the last little bit on our gift card to pick up seed trays and seed starter and a soil pH kit and various garden tools (including a post-hole digger. Blech!) so that I can further trash the feng shui in my house by clogging up all the south-facing windows with little seeds. As if the chicken duplex wasn't enough!
Yes, I got my seeds the other day! Very exciting. All heirlooms, all from a local-as-possible mom-and-pop-and-God operation. These seeds have history. And I got WAY too many. I spent an entire evening pouring through gardening books (organic, naturally) trying to figure out what needs to be started inside and when and which seeds are friends and which are enemies and, most importantly, how long the seeds are viable because I got WAY too many.
If I want to grow most of our food, I gotta start somewhere.
Which is a big reason why I withdrew my application for the Chamber of Commerce job. I already have a surprisingly absorbing part-time job, I don't need another with its full set of headaches. Then I'd be working full-time again, for about a third of the pay of my last full-time job and none of the benefits! Besides, I want to be able to concentrate on the business. It's picking up a little! Thank goodness for spring.
Then we went to eat some Mexican food. I had enchiladas and a coconut-pineapple margarita. Kevin had a chimi and a Corona. We both had plenty of wet dust and dirt on our work clothes. It's good to not care.
And, just now, we unloaded all of that granite. I have a bit of an exertion headache. The last task, completed just seconds ago, was lugging a large pallet full of granite up the small incline and into the shop. Kevin pulled, I used a heavy steel post and levered--quickly--so we didn't lose momentum and so I didn't have to jump off the 4-foot high concrete pad in order to avoid a pallet with about a ton of granite rolling off onto my fragile body. There are probably times that Kevin fantasizes about having a gorgeous little wife that he can hoist onto his shoulders at concerts and feel all large around, but this was not one of those times. I am a good wife for a monument builder to have.
It's 8:30 and time to fetch the kids. What will I do with the rest of this amazing evening? Aren't you just dying to know!
posted by lulu | 5:57 PM
2 Comments:
well actually I am dying to know - so pray tell what did you do??? thanks for keeping us up to date. love, mom
Wow. I gotta say--all I have to do these days is read one of your posts to feel like a totally lazy slug! You've got so much going on . . . it's amazing that you can keep track of all these projects while raising children, caring for all those animals, working part-time, AND doing freelance work . . . I'm getting tired just thinking about it. So, you go, girl! I'm totally impressed.
And Kevin has never struck me as a trophy-wife-wanting kind of guy. I'm sure he's much happier with a beautiful wife who's about 1000 times more capable--at everything!--than your average woman. Which is you, my dear. Miss you guys!
Post a Comment
<< Home