hqueen's collection of Far From the Usual stuff.

[lcertuche]

He pretty well has control of the finances. I wish I could get them. We really need some layers. You would think since he eats so many he would try to get them being the bargain but I fear they are already sold for that price.

 

[hqueen13]

OMG! 25 for $80!!! I would have bought them and then resold the rest to pay for what I wanted to keep!! Good lord!!

@Denim Deb So happy to see you again, too!

Glad that I've avoided most of the rain, and the bad weather. We're supposed to get more next week, so we'll see what happens. Hopefully on horse moving day it won't be so yucky. I have to nail down the schedule for that, too, and arrange to borrow the trailer.
I've got a lot I want to catch up on. I want to get the coop cleaned up. For some reason JB built a box and covered it with wire mesh, and then put the feed and water over top of it. I guess so that their poop falls through and then you just scrape it up. That's a great theory, however, what happens is the poop falls through and then begins to mold. I have my one chicken that was getting picked on in a wire dog crate in the coop locked up so that she's not bullied, and she's begun to sneeze every once in a while. I'm wondering if it's because she's sitting about 2 feet from a giant pile of moldy poop. It doesn't help that I'm only able to clean the sawdust in the bottom of the crate every few days, either. I'm praying that the weather is warm enough and not so terribly windy tomorrow that I can brave it and go get all that cleaned up. Princess Chicken needs some time to sit outside in the sunshine, anyway. I don't like that she's locked up in the dark coop all day, but I don't have a choice if she's getting picked. Her feathers are just beginning to grow back so I'm hopeful that they'll leave her alone soon. She needs to be able to run around and do chicken things all day to get better! The irony is that she lays one of the largest eggs out of all of the 8 birds. When she lays, which is about every other day most of the time.
So tomorrow, I have yoga in the morning, then I'll come home and grab lunch, then I have a call at 12:30. I have a little bit of time between that call and the next one at 3:15. I'd love to be able to go down there and work for a little while to try to get it cleaned up. We've decided we don't even want the big box in there anyway. I can do other things to keep it neat, and it will help the chickens be healthier. I don't mind scraping the dirty sawdust out of the whole floor once every month or two anyway. It will be so much easier when there isn't a giant box in the middle of the floor to walk around. The coop will feel HUGE!
In addition to working on the coop, I need to clean up the house and get a few more decorations put up. We've managed to get the tree, and lights on the tree, but that's as far as we've gotten. Sometimes we're way ahead, and some years we struggle with really getting into things and not being overwhelmed by all of it. But I have a guest this weekend that is teaching a workshop, and so I'll try to get the house in order and get a few more things up. I'm contemplating putting the artificial tree upstairs in the window rather than downstairs where the cats can get to it. I wanted to put up a barricade and put scat mats around the base of the tree to keep them away from it, but I don't think I have enough scat mats, which means I'll spend most of the season irritated by the number of ornaments that are on the floor instead of on the tree, and pulling the cat out of the middle of the tree itself. I do go upstairs enough that I will probably enjoy seeing it up there, though it will be a bummer not to have it in the living room. Heh. Funny thought of putting it on top of the entertainment center... I do have a 2 story living room
Need to clean Lilith's cage, it's horrid. I'm a bad chinchilla mommy right now.
Took the old dog to the vet yesterday evening for a blood draw and to check urine. I'm so grateful that my landlord's daughter, DB is a vet and doesn't charge me for half the things she does. It helps tremendously with the bills! So now we'll hopefully figure out why he's panting to much and try to find a treatment to make him a little more comfortable. He's driving me crazy with the panting because I can't figure out what he needs because he walks around constantly, pants, drinks, and then ends up peeing in the house when I didn't know he needed to go out. I end up getting annoyed with him, which isn't a productive thing, and I just want him to feel better but I feel helpless.
Sooooo.... that's about all that's up right now. You can tell I'm bored in the office again But at least I get to catch up with yall! I've missed you! And now I feel like I fit in even more cause I got chickens!!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Hope you figure out what's wrong with the old dog...sounds like he's got an issue of some sort.

Your life sounds like mine, lol. Too much to do - too little time! Grrrr.

But, I have a couple weeks off starting Tuesday next week so I hope to get closer to being caught up!

 

[hqueen13]

Nice! I love days off! I won't get any days to relax until the week before Christmas. I just found out that I'll be working one more day than I thought. The money is good, but it doesn't help me home schedule/cleaning/biz/farm stuff! LOL
Yeah, something's not right. So hopefully we'll get some answers from the bloodwork and urine sample. Hopefully it is something that can be easily managed. He's so old and out of it that he eats meds out of my hand Otherwise, he's doing fine, he's losing muscle in his hind end, but again, that's fairly normal for an old dog. He's almost 15 at this point, so I consider myself very lucky to have had him for so long.

 

[lcertuche]

I found two more eggs in the chicken coop yesterday. That make three all together. I figure those eggs cost about $66 an egg, lol.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

 

[lcertuche]

Well another egg today so that brings cost per egg to $49.50.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

LOL! Pretty soon the chickens will be paying you!

 

[hqueen13]

LOL @lcertuche Yeahhhhhh that's probably closer to where we are. I'm solidly getting 8 eggs a day now. Princess lays the BIGGEST egg. I can't even put them in the cartons, which is probably ok because I've got 6 cartons of 18 in my fridge right now. I need to sell some of these babies!!! Trying to build a market is the hardest part. I need to send texts to a few people to nudge them and see if it helps. I did notice yesterday afternoon that somebody has nipped Princess's shoulder again. She was healing really really nicely, and then yesterday I saw some damage again. SO frustrating!! I need to get her out of that little cage! It can't be doing her any good, especially since she's standing in more poo than she should be, and she can't scratch easily, and she's not getting the scraps that the others are getting. I really need to find a source of green scraps for them, too. I think it would help them a lot if they were eating better scraps (we don't exactly eat as well as we should either!!)
OMG I've been SO maxed out. I'm covering for one of the gals in the office who is away, BO, and doing her job. Well, poor planning on the part of the rest of the front office team has meant that I've had to cover for them, too. That is normally what BO does. But when I'm covering for BO I can't do her job plus cover for the front office as well. It's left me exhausted, frustrated, and I had to skip yoga this morning. That does NOT make me a happy camper!! Especially because it was being taught by one of my favorite teachers!
We have wet weather rolling in tonight, on top of the chill that we got yesterday. Wednesday night the temps dropped, and yesterday the high was only about 24 with winds gusting to 50mph, sustained 20-30mph. It was GROSS. I was GRATEFUL to be in the office yesterday! This morning it was 9 when I woke up. Wednesday I left the office at 2 trying to get a couple errands run, and then get home to prep some of the packages I'm going to have to mail down to NC for the holiday. Got home, started feeding horses, and realized how bad the weather was going to be and realized that we needed to take care of some things to make sure that stuff didn't freeze, and to seal up the barn better for winter (we have a couple temporary panels that get taken down in summer to open the barn up, and then get put back up in winter, never got around to it until now...). So ended up doing that all evening, and hardly got time to work on presents. I'm just praying that I have energy to do it tonight when I get home, and that I can get stuff boxed in the morning to get it to the post office before they close tomorrow, which will probably be in the rain.
Tonight it's supposed to start snowing, we're supposed to get around 1" before it shifts to freezing stuff, and then to rain. The high tomorrow is in the 40's. I think we're blessed that it might stop around midday, and then it will begin again tomorrow night. Sunday we're supposed to hit a high of 58 in the morning, and then the low will be 22, hitting 35 by dark. Which probably means more wind. I'm SO NOT thrilled about this.
I was supposed to go to NYC to visit a friend, but I cancelled the trip. It cost me $5 to change the bus ticket, but at that point I was willing to take the penalty. I've been so overwhelmed in the office that I just couldn't wrap my head around going up there, losing my whole weekend, and being on public transportation around strangers who are probably all germy.
So instead, I'll stay home, take care of extra chickens for SR since he's away, and then work on Christmas gifts, and hopefully get a few more much needed chores done. I desperately need to make a few more adjustments to the coop for the chickens to finish cleaning it up from the way it used to be set up.
So I'll be in the office today for about 10 hours. I came early to try to catch up on some of the work that I didn't get done yesterday because I spent most of the day in meetings, and doing the most necessary parts of BO's job. I should probably start working LOL
Oh, still don't have my friend's horses on the farm yet. I'm rather frustrated about that because every day they aren't here is a day they aren't paying me. That's a bit of a story, and reminds me of other news I haven't told yall about.
The BF got his first deer on Sunday! He went out early in the morning, though it was later than I should he should be going out, and got a really nice hefty doe. He was all in a tizzy and rattled, and thankfully JB was on the farm so he was able to help guide him through gutting it. Well, actually a friend of his who was randomly on the farm helped him. So it's at the processors and we'll hopefully get a call in the next day or so to go pick it up. I can't wait!
So the story part is that on the way up to the processors with the deer, which was thankfully not that far away, the pickup truck stars getting sluggish. We limp to a parking lot, and he looks underneath and says that exhaust has blown off, so the engine isn't getting the pack pressure. So he grabs his tools and the bolt breaks immediately. So he curses, and we limp to the processors. We're almost there and all the sudden the noise changes under the truck and now is sounds like we're a flock of banshees going down the road. Awesome. Everybody in a two mile radius knows WE'RE DRIVING DOWN THE ROAD because the truck is SCREAMING as we creep down the road. Apparently it blew out pretty much all the way.
Finally half way home it stops wailing, but now we have absolutely no power. So we're limping down the road at about 25. The WHOLE. WAY. HOME. On roads that are normally 40, which people often drive 55 (don't know who that would be... ). We keep pulling off every opportunity we get to let the string of cars behind us go by, which is not all that often cause back roads have nowhere to pull off. And we've got steep twisty roads, so up the hills was only 20mph. Fun times.
So the truck's been busted. Poor BF repaired the problem, only to find out that the reason the problem happened in the first place is that the carburetor is clogged. Insert more cursing here. So he's trying to figure out what to do about that since a new carburetor is about $400 for the old '88. Wheeee!
So my friend's horses aren't here yet, and their friend that they gave their trailer to that said they'd haul for them, well, his dad died, so he's been out of commission, too. They're going to reach out to him again tomorrow, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they can haul over on Monday afternoon. That will be the best time for me, and then I can start getting them settled before the bad weather hits again. We'll see what happens.
I suppose I ought to get some real work done now before things get cranking around here. It's mostly me by myself on the front desk today (that's job #3 that I SHOULDN'T be doing... See aforementioned note regarding poor planning of the front desk team!)

 

[lcertuche]

We can always get eggs for around $2-$3/dozen or $5/flat. We have a local 1st Saturday of the Month Trade Days where people sell eggs and all kinds of stuff like produce, small livestock, clothes, small appliances, tamales, eggrolls, baked goods, etc. People also advertize farm eggs on Facebook. Some will give out their phone numbers to customers or get customers numbers and will call them to meet them at a public place at a certain time. I would love to be able to have enough eggs for the family and maybe some to sell to recoup feed cost, or even a few to give to our church family.