Time And Tide

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose. Lyndon B.Johnson

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Look what the cat dragged in

I look at how long it has been since I've had time to sit here and blog and I wonder...if I've been so busy that I haven't been able to take fifteen minutes or so to do this every day, why isn't my house clean? I mean, surely it means that I've been busy keeping up with other things in my life. Doesn't it?

A whole big bunch of stuff has happened since the last time I blogged. Jake has turned 8. He actually did that before I wrote last in April but that was one entry in, like, two months, so I seriously doubt I blogged about that. Emily just turned 10 at the end of July. Double digits now, something that impresses her enough that she still feels compelled to add that little tid-bit whenever someone asks her age. Leirin hasn't gotten any older. At least not yet, but October fast approaches. Naturally, this being our house, and me being the mad-woman that I am, dogs have come and gone over the last few months. I had a shelter pull named Joey that was recently adopted into a wonderful home. A little over a month ago the sweetest little (actually he was gigantic) Shar Pei mix wandered here and decided he never wanted to leave. He was sweet enough that we'd have actually kept him, but he got snakebit and died on us. That set off a whirlwind of clearing out the snakey places around the yard where we find ourselves engaged in activity fairly often. I mean, when someone goes out to feed the chickens, they're not looking to get snakebit. The clothesline is another place you want to avoid many hiding places for snakes. I'm a shortie and I have to look up to hang the clothes - not down at my feet where I could see a big poisonous snake curling up about my ankles. Weeds here grow faster than a highschool boy can do sex. My roses have practically been assimilated by the weeds out back. Occasionally I'll notice a striking little circle of pale color amongst the green spirals of weediness and I think, next I have to do the rose bed. Well, I just haven't managed to make it out there yet and I don't know for sure if I'll still have roses by the time I get to fire up the old Cub Cadet or not. Doug and I did manage to get a handle on the shrubs and azaleas planted on one side of the house out front. Fifty feet of more than head high, bigger around than a barrel, bunch of grungy looking shrubs that haven't been maintained in years...one more side left to go. I didn't get snakebit, but I did come away with a nasty case of poison oak.

We're working on a bunch of barn cats now. In the house I have 10 kittens, doing their best to grow big enough that they aren't easily snatched up by whatever bugger it is that steals my chickens all the time. Soon they will be moving outside. It might be later on today if they don't stop hanging off my curtains like furry little tassles. I am not convinced that moving them outside will be the answer to all their little irritating ways though. The two older kittens that are already outside (supposed to be living in the barn) have migrated their way to beneath the cars in the drive. Now we never get to leave without someone hanging their head out the window watching to make sure both of them come running out whenever we crank up to go somewhere.
They are hanging out with our two large male cats though, and so I hold on to hope that they will make hunters yet. Surely The Pig will teach them the art of snake nest raiding underneath the muscadine vines. I mean, The Pig is the master of snake killing. Many are the times he's disappeared under the massive vines and came our meowing around the body of a small-ish Copperhead, still wiggling, and lived to (have us) tell about it. The Pig is such a mighty hunter, Doug has had a man insist he wanted to buy him, "How much you want for that snake-hunting cat? And if you've got more, I know people that'd want them too."
At this moment, The Mighty Pig is napping on top of my van. A neat little row of footprints lead the way up the center of my windshield right to the spot he chose for this morning's respite.

We've got goats since the last time I blogged too. I make soap, and when we moved here I told Doug I'd love to have a milk goat or two for soaping. My father-in-law bought me two of them. Both male. Twins, even.
Pan was abandoned by his mother in favor of the other baby, so he was raised by hand. A person walking up to the fence out back brings Pan squealing goatly pleas for baa-baa. Lucifer, on the other hand, is not quite so friendly. His introduction to the fence consisted of him lowering his head and asking "Who's gonna be first?" Lucifer doesn't have the soft baaa that Pan has. Instead, he screams like something in the throes of death. His favorite activity is digging up the satellite cable and making me crawl back up under the house to pull new wire. Again. I've done this, I know 6 different times now. We hope to get the new run built around the hen house sometime before next spring and the goats will move into the other side of the building. Hopefully my cables will be safe.

Emily is homeschooling this year with me and Jake. We finished up our first week on Friday. So far, we are having lots of fun. We will spend a couple of weeks, I'm sure, working the kinks out of our schedule. In two weeks, we start a unit on ancient Greek and Roman civilization. We'll wear togas and put kudzu in our hair. Hopefully, avoiding poison oak in the process. I can't wait.

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