Hen23's Journal~Goodbye

[Henrietta23]

Woohoo on the goat's milk! Are you finding yet that one lactating goat is not enough?

(snicker....)

Not yet. Since I've barely been home this week I haven't done much with it so it's piling up. My mom is taking a quart of milk and one of yogurt twice a week. I consider it payback for picking up DS and lots of free babysitting. It looks like I'll be making a lot more mozzarella (string cheese for school!) and yogurt so I'm sure it won't be long. Daisy is on that milk stand every chance she gets. I swear she knows what goes on there and can't wait to be milked. I sure it's all about the grain but still, she is too cute. As soon as she can get her head into the hole I'll give her bits of grain in the dish. Now I just hold some in my hand and let her eat while standing there. She's very comfortable up there.

Done with camp- I get my life back!! We had great weather except for yesterday morning's rain. But what is Scout camp without some rain, right? It builds character. Most of our toughest kids made great improvements, including the one who missed the first day. He didn't have any tantrums today and I don't think I heard him whine once. That was HUGE. One of the littler guys had a really rough day. His mom was with him which made it worse instead of better. He melted down at least three times and she didn't handle it well. They got to try to earn a special patch in BB by earning enough points for it. He didn't even come close but couldn't get why he didn't get the patch. He wasn't the only who didn't earn it. It was about 50/50. But "it wasn't fair!!!!" Sigh. No one could help him through it. I hoped his mother would just ignore the tantrum but she didn't. I had to leave the area it got so frustrating to watch. He also melted down at archery because we had a different instructor and she did things just a little differently. He couldn't accept the change. I think if Mom hadn't been there one of the leaders could have taken him aside and helped him. I can't even remember what the third tantrum was about.
I did make one of my own Scouts cry.... I felt awful. He was bossing around one of the boys from another pack. I didn't get the whole story but apparently this other boy doesn't have an official diagnosis but his mother told their leader that she believes he's probably got Asperger's Syndrome. He's a great kid, fun to work with, but quirky. And one of his things is being bossed around by other kids. My Scout was really just trying to be encouraging and helpful but the other boy started to lose it. He did tell A. to stop but when A. didn't realize that the boy was trying to say, "I need some space" and tried to help even more, the other boy hit the tackle box he was carrying. A. still didn't stop and I could see the boy winding up to smack him. So I told A. "Back away now!" I got the group headed back to our area and got the boy settled down and then realized that A. thought I was mad at him. So I called him away from the group to talk, telling him was definitely NOT in trouble and I wanted to explain. He still started to tear up and I felt just awful. I couldn't tell him much of course but I know he's got all different types of kids in his class. So I just explained that I knew this boy seriously didn't like being told what to do by other kids and that I was worried that he was going to hit A. so while it sounded like I was yelling at him I was actually trying to protect him. He's a smart kid and understood. I gave him some space to pull himself together and we were fine. And for the rest of the day I watched him being very kind and patient and not a bit bossy to this other boy. Some kids might have avoided him so as to not push his buttons. Not A. He went out of his way to find a way to be helpful that this boy could accept. Made my day!

Wow, that was a ramble! My own DS had a great time, so I did as well. I could never have done it being in such bad shape last summer. By today I was walking up the nasty hill to swimming without really feeling it.

 

[Henrietta23]

Well, the two stonewall ducks were standing up last night so we peeked under their nest. Nothing. We rounded everyone up and made them go into the duck condos and found there are absolutely no eggs in either nest anymore. There were. Now there aren't. Weird. I suspect the dog may have gotten them. I don't know what else to think. At any rate we are relieved that we won't have 19 new ducklings to find homes for and that the 3 sitting ducks aren't waking everyone up at 5:10am!

 

[freemotion]

Woohoo on the goat's milk! Are you finding yet that one lactating goat is not enough?

(snicker....)

Not yet. Since I've barely been home this week I haven't done much with it so it's piling up. My mom is taking a quart of milk and one of yogurt twice a week. I consider it payback for picking up DS and lots of free babysitting. It looks like I'll be making a lot more mozzarella (string cheese for school!) and yogurt so I'm sure it won't be long. Daisy is on that milk stand every chance she gets. I swear she knows what goes on there and can't wait to be milked. I sure it's all about the grain but still, she is too cute. As soon as she can get her head into the hole I'll give her bits of grain in the dish. Now I just hold some in my hand and let her eat while standing there. She's very comfortable up there.

Ginger is a first freshener, as you know, and I get 16-20 oz per milking from her. Since yesterday, when fatso Peach was totally separated from her, I've been getting 20-22 oz more consistantly.

 

[Henrietta23]

Woohoo on the goat's milk! Are you finding yet that one lactating goat is not enough?

(snicker....)

Not yet. Since I've barely been home this week I haven't done much with it so it's piling up. My mom is taking a quart of milk and one of yogurt twice a week. I consider it payback for picking up DS and lots of free babysitting. It looks like I'll be making a lot more mozzarella (string cheese for school!) and yogurt so I'm sure it won't be long. Daisy is on that milk stand every chance she gets. I swear she knows what goes on there and can't wait to be milked. I sure it's all about the grain but still, she is too cute. As soon as she can get her head into the hole I'll give her bits of grain in the dish. Now I just hold some in my hand and let her eat while standing there. She's very comfortable up there.

Ginger is a first freshener, as you know, and I get 16-20 oz per milking from her. Since yesterday, when fatso Peach was totally separated from her, I've been getting 20-22 oz more consistantly.

I only get a quart per milking out of Donki. A half gallon a day is not going to be enough for long. DS is doing great eating a piece of string cheese and about a half cup of yogurt a day. He won't drink the milk straight up but I can mix in a little dairy free chocolate syrup and he's okay with that. We do that only once in a while.

 

[Henrietta23]

It's done. DH has signed a contract with the new school and handed in his letter of resignation to his old one. They were stunned. Had no idea this was coming. Doesn't seem like they are going to hold him to 30 days notice since it wasn't his fault he couldn't sign the contract until today. His salary will be a bit higher. Now we pray that the old school will compensate him for unused sick days. He's got about 4,386. He won't get $$ for all of them but possibly for some. That would be awfully nice! At any rate it is good that it is all out in the open now and we know what his salary will be. He is very excited about the change which is highly unusual. He truly thought he would retire at his current school. He taught one year in NY then moved here and has been at this school for 28 years! We met when I worked there for a year. But enrollment is dropping and one of the towns wants to pull out of the district. There's every reason to believe the school won't be there for him to retire at..... We have a lot of mouths, beaks and bills to feed here!

All the ducks are in the condo again tonight. Edna and Maude did not go back to their empty nest this morning but Louise did go back to hers so we had to shoo her off at lock up time. Hopefully we'll break her broodiness soon. We have a couple of broody hens too, my Black Australorp and one of the Barnevelders, Betsy and Carrie. Carrie is a nasty mean bird when on the nest. She growls at me and I confess I'm scared so I make DH gather eggs from under her. We don't need any more chickens and certainly no more roosters so we're not letting them hatch.

We all got on our bikes and rode on the trail in town yesterday. Wasn't a long ride but I honestly didn't know if I could do it. Piece of cake!

School uniform fitting at DH's new school tomorrow. I've ordered a few things already online but the shorts I ordered are too tight around his waist. Unheard of!! I don't know if I can return them tomorrow by I'm going to ask. If not I can send them back.

 

[freemotion]

Yay on the job!!!

From what I've read, many dairy does "hit their stride" from their third freshening onward. So expect more from Donki next time.

Now that cheesemaking is more of a comfortable habit for me, I am frustrated to have so little milk. I have 200 new recipes to try, for cryin' out loud! C'mon, goaties! Next year won't be much better, with a second freshener and one or two first fresheners. I am trying to control myself with those CL ads....saw a 5 year-old Nubian doe for sale yesterday....

 

[framing fowl]

Congrats on DH's job! Hope it all goes smoothly for him adjusting to a new system, new people, and new politics. Glad he's excited about it!

 

[Henrietta23]

Yay on the job!!!

From what I've read, many dairy does "hit their stride" from their third freshening onward. So expect more from Donki next time.

Now that cheesemaking is more of a comfortable habit for me, I am frustrated to have so little milk. I have 200 new recipes to try, for cryin' out loud! C'mon, goaties! Next year won't be much better, with a second freshener and one or two first fresheners. I am trying to control myself with those CL ads....saw a 5 year-old Nubian doe for sale yesterday....

Yeah, I was watching them too a month or so ago. There are a bunch down this way including some neat breeds like Toggenburgs and Alpines. Nice prices I thought too. Much less than Stella was. (Still wonder about Stella.......) Oh crud, now I'm going to look at Paul's site.......
DH says thanks. He's still working at the old school doing maintenance for the summer. He's got 28 years worth of materials to clean out. I'm going to be driving my wagon over at lunch time next week to help him start hauling it all out.
Today we have uniform fittings and a dog agility demo at the library. My kind of Tuesday! Tomorrow we're taking DH out to celebrate the new job. Temps and humidity are due to go back up and we're expecting storms so a lot will depend on the weather. DS and I realized that we could actually put our bikes on the back of the car, drive to the bottom of our scary hill, get on the bike trail and ride into town and without too much difficulty ride to his school!! We won't try it today since we're going to the agility demo right after the fittings but we also have Cub Scouts there and will definitely try it some day.

 

[Henrietta23]

Congrats on DH's job! Hope it all goes smoothly for him adjusting to a new system, new people, and new politics. Glad he's excited about it!

Thanks! We were talking last night about what it will be like to be the new guy instead of THE guy that everyone comes to with their problems. He's been interupted in class so many times by requests to fix this or that, or photograph or video tape or borrow a tool.... he's hoping not to set that precedent at the new school. I suspect it's universal for Tech. Ed. teachers to end up in that position though.

 

[Henrietta23]

Ah, summer in New England. The wood splitter's going full tilt as DH splits and stacks wood for the winter. The noise is giving me a headache but the wood was free so what am I gonna complain about???
He found out today he will get a nice big check for unused sick days. Next July! Which is good in the long run because he won't be working next summer at the old school. It will cover a lot of our summer bills or DS's tuition+uniforms. Good timing over all.
It's hot and humid again. Blech!
Checked Paul's website Free. No goats for sale. I guess he's found homes for all of them. I found myself kind of sad. Not that I can afford to go get Stella now either but man, she is a pretty girl.