A few random things

Just a few things to share tonight. No pictures, just... stuff. Random stuff.

I'm good at random! :D

-----

M2 is a cling monster lately. I'm referring to her as my Kling-On. If only there was a Bounce-like spray to remove her.

-----

There was an EF-2 tornado about 4 miles from my home around 5 o'clock this morning. M1 had gotten up to snuggle in bed with me because he heard the wind and rain and thunder. I checked the radar, determined it was nothing to be worried about especially since there were no warnings whatsoever, answered the text from my friend asking if I had heard the tornado sirens going off in the city (I can barely hear the sirens on a clear day if I'm in the house, so... no, not so much), and went back to sleep. In other words, if that tornado had been 4 miles closer, that would have been one NASTY surprise. I'm trying not to dwell on it, but that's a bit too close for comfort.

-----

Wolfgang Puck Bistro is going to open here soon. I'm a tad excited about that one because he likes to use local ingredients. And I'm a foodie.

-----

Chickies are doing great and growing like... well, growing like the garden. Pictures of both to be up soon. Tomorrow is 'open house' for people to come see the chicks. I'm excited.

-----

And finally!

M1 made himself laugh so hard he nearly choked this evening. He and I were sitting at M2's school waiting on her end-of-year program to start, and he pointed out a boy sitting up in the choir area.

"Taylor's always up there," he stated. "He's in the choir. He likes singing. I'll never be up there."

"Well, maybe not, hun, but he likes to sing, and you don't, so you're both doing things you like." That was me trying to make sure the boy feels good about himself. It's a mom's job.

"Yeah but he's really good. And I'm not good."

"No, but I bet he's not as good at science as you are, either. I bet he couldn't name three types of ants."

That one got a grin.

"That's easy! Fire ants, leafcutter ants... and... velvet ants."

"Good job!" I praised him.

And then he started giggling uncontrollably.

Lest you are as confused as I was and haven't clicked on the link to the corresponding Wikipedia article, he then went on to explain that velvet ants are not, in fact, ants. They are wasps that look like ants. And the little turd knew it.

Gotta love it when my 7-year-old is showing off his mom's ignorance already. God help me during the teen years.

They're heeeeere!

CHICKS!!!!!

I'm a tad excited. But let me get you the whoooole story.

It was a bizarre morning - mostly good, but weird. The phone rang at 7:15 a.m. with a message from M2's school saying that the power was out at the school and that while they were hoping to have it restored by 8:30, there was no guarantee. I took her up there hoping that it'd be fixed by the time we made it, but not only was the power still out, I have no idea where the teachers were hiding. The preschool was locked and dark.

So, joy of joys, I got to take two children with me (instead of the presumed one who had come armed with an atlas and an art book) to a dentist's appointment. Have you ever done that? I don't recommend it. Ever.

By the way, we skipped school today, even after we found out the power was back on and school was still in session. Yay truancy! ;)

On the way to the dentist's office I got a call.

It was the post office, but I thought it might have been the preschool since they have the same first three numbers.

"Sarah?" (They knew my name.)

"Yes?" (I assumed I knew who this was.)

"This is the West Side Post Office. We have some chicks for you."

"Oh... already???"

This was me, exiting the highway on the way to a dentist appointment with two kids instead of one, trying to mentally calculate not only brake times and how to corral two children in a tiny room while my mouth is stuffed full of suction tube and tooth cleaner and dental hygienist fingers but ALSO... do I *really* have everything for the chicks? Thank heaven I picked up the food 'early.' I thought I had till Thursday!

This was me discovering I was wrong.

So we all survived the dentist and then went and picked up the chickies. And got the aquarium turned chicken brooder set up.

I got exactly what I wished for in terms of breeds.

There are four of these (Barred Plymouth Rocks) which will be black and white striped as adults.

Four of these (Rhode Island Reds) which will be your typical 'rojo' type of chicken.

Megan, you better be laughing.

And four of these (Australorps). They'll be pretty much all black.

The cats thought that they looked like a very lovely dinner initially, but they've already lost interest for the most part.

Except for Dorian Gray, who took one look at the "wildlife" in the house and scurried away as fast as his chubby self could go.
They're awfully nice little birds. This is the matriarch. I'm calling her Sophia, after the Golden Girls. Michael loves that show, and quite frankly I think that those names make great chicken names. The other Reds will be Rose, Dorothy, and Blanche.

Yes, I'm naming the chickens. But as I told some friends today, if Dorothy turns out to be Danny, he'll very quickly find himself being Dinner. Names do not a pet make.

And no, I did not get pooped on in the making of these photos. They're well-behaved ladies.

-----

And now, come with me as I make another step away from being a "city" girl with no chicken experience to a "country" girl who fears nothing.

Except tornados, but they're gone now, thank heaven.
Chicks are cute when they sleep, aren't they?

No, it's not dead. THIS is how chickens sleep. Well, not always. But apparently how this one does.

Until I woke it up because some of the chickens were getting a condition called 'pasting up.'

Wanna know what that means?

It means they're constipated. And their... um... holes... are clogged.

Guess who gets to clean that?

That's right. I cleaned chicken butt tonight. And applied olive oil to try to prevent it from happening again.

They don't teach you about THAT in school, do they??

What a shame...

Storm update!

Well, there have been several tornadoes already, all off to the north or southwest. There's been damage to a truck stop and a trailer park down near Oklahoma City and at least a few fields hit up north. Here's some footage of the storm down SW.

If all goes well with this round, we'll be safe. It looks like the storms are going to go north and south of us and we'll barely see any rain... which I do need rain! C'mon! Compromise?

Anyway, this storm is bringing in VERY warm air behind it and has the risk of developing a *second* line of storms behind it. How odd is that?!?

I'm feeling a lot better at the moment, though, and am very glad to see that all the preparations may have been for nothing. I would MUCH rather have made the effort for no reason (all dressed up with no place to go in this case is a very, very good thing!) than to have been blase and gotten my family into a nasty situation.

Maybe one more update, but for the moment *knock wood* we seem to be in the clear. Woohoo!

Not funny, God...

Any time the weather forecast for the day says, "Near-perfect conditions for destructive tornadoes," I freak out just a little, and God and I start having conversations where I start bargaining for safety. We do have a shelter, but I'm pretty darn scared of the potential of this storm today. Oz has already gone down there and made sure the hydraulic jack, snacks, and water are down there. I'm packing a bag of all the things I want to take down with me and, once storms start cropping up and I start watching the radar like a hawk, I will let the kids do the same.

It was tough to take M2 to school this morning. She started squalling on the way there and was screaming and carrying on that she didn't want to go. The teacher literally had to pry her off my leg. That didn't help my paranoia any because all I wanted to do was just cave and bring her home and snuggle her all day, not that it would have done any good because she would have wanted to know why she was home, and I'm trying hard not to share the anxiety.

Tornado watch is already in effect till 10 p.m. Hopefully I won't need to use the camera I have in the shelter bag!

However, it's in there, just in case...

I'm off to clean random things in my house to deal with the anxiety and continue to bargain with the Big Man Upstairs. I'll try to keep you updated with radar pictures if I can swing it. 'Cause there's nothing like a big red and black radar picture to make me feel better.

It's a great day because...

... I have a beer in my hand.

... my kids are having an impromptu overnight stay in the tent in the back yard. I can hear them playing and laughing.

... Oz worked on the coop again today. There are now roosts and flooring in it; all that is left is the fence.

... we are 5 days away from the arrival of the baby chickies.

... I picked the sweetest strawberry EVER off of one of the plants in the garden today and discovered another baby rhubarb plant growing. And saw runners on a different strawberry plant. And tons of baby tomatoes and baby bell peppers.

... we took a walk down to the back of the pasture today and discovered about half a dozen new blackberry plants, all in bloom.

... I talked Oz into letting me also have raspberry and blueberry plants after...

... we had a 'Celtic' dinner with fresh raspberries and blackberries for dessert.

... this dinner also consisted of roast chicken (the carcass is in the freezer to be made into stock later this week; I also have some shrimp shells to do the same with) and a 'soup' that my kids adored. What was in it? Carrots, onions, salt, water, fresh rosemary and parsley from the garden, chicken drippings, and thickened with cornstarch.

... Oz is now out getting screws to install a new kitty-cat key holder next to the back door. It was a birthday gift from a friend.

... my sister got me a subscription to Mother Earth News, and the card telling me about it arrived today. It was a great surprise!

... Oz is going to get me gelato while he's out.

... one of my friends may be heading this way in a while just to hang out.

... I have sausage thawing in the fridge to make biscuits and gravy for breakfast. With grapes.

... I got two new books last night, specifically A Brief History of the Anglo-Saxons and Sacred Hearts. I'm loving them both.

... tomorrow is Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day to all my readers in that category!

Beautiful surprises

We've been in our current house about 8 years now. We moved in when I was pregnant with M1. When we got here, the previous owners had planted rosebushes in three places in our yard. I'm not good with roses, so I resigned them to their fates. One was beside the wishing well with a trellis that fell down the first spring we were there. The rose itself died last year when we had some nasty wind. The other two were in front of the wagon wheels that border our driveway. One of those died a couple years after we moved in. The other one, slowly but surely, has kept growing. It has never produced more than two or three roses per year, though.

Until this year. It is COVERED in roses. Beautiful roses.

It kind of reminds me of our children, in a way.

Small buds... that grow into beautiful flowers...

... and fill our lives with joy.

I promise he's not being cruel...

Let me introduce you to the basics of my son.

He has Asperger's. That means that when he has pictures taken,

he tends to freeze into one position. Notice the lack of emotion on his face? Let me assure you he was a very, very contented boy at that moment, no matter what his face might be telling you.

Now, whether Speed Bump would agree with that whole 'contented' thing is another story.

By the way, meet Speed Bump, the giant Corgi who is becoming less giant and more active by the day. He can run up the back steps now instead of taking five minutes to climb them!

Back to the boy... so Asperger's boy is scientifically-inclined. And he also has ADHD, mixed type, which means impulse issues abound.

And when you combine a massive lack of impulse control with a boy who wants to scientifically test EVERYTHING....

you get...


This.

Let's play a game with this photo. It's called "Find the Whiskers."

That's right... THOSE whiskers. The ones my son trimmed because he had NO idea it was potentially harmful to a cat... and he wanted to see what happened if a cat had short whiskers.



"Mom... make him stop using me as a tester, k? Thx."

Poor Hermes. Thankfully his whiskers will grow back, and... well, this is going to sound horrid, but at least M1 did a wonderfully symmetric job of it, right??? Hermes' jumping abilities haven't been affected in the least, as I verified the day after I discovered the whisker-trimming job when Hermes parked his busybody butt on the top of my 6-ish-foot dresser.

As a girlfriend posted on my Facebook the other day when I mentioned I was having a rough time: "I don't think Einstein's mother had it easy, either."

I like the way her mind works.

Can I get an AMEN?

In no particular order, the top 4 reasons I don't ever really want to leave Oklahoma (well, other than the regulation-free homeschooling):

1.
Braum's. If you have never had Braum's ice cream or milk or shakes or BURGERS... you haven't really lived. They don't have 1/4 lb. burgers. No way. They have 1/6 or 1/3 lb. burgers. And they're irregularly shaped. Yes, the service is a bit slower than your average fast-food joint, but for the love of all things foodie, it's worth it. And they have things like cappuccino chunky chocolate FROZEN YOGURT.

I say no more.

Except to say that they concentrate their milk which is rBGH-free. That's right, folks. It's the only kind of milk I'll drink. And they sell produce and other groceries.

OK, really now... I say no more.


2.Shiner Bock. Yes, I know it's a Texas beer, but srsly... it's *REAL* beer. It's not in every state yet. One day it will be, but till then, I must live where there's Shiner.


3.
QuikTrip. The GOD among convenience stores. Even people who think 7-Eleven is the bomb-diggity are awed and bow to the goodness of QuikTrip. Let me put it this way: You can go in there any time, day or night, 24/7, and get a truly decent meal that you won't regret eating half an hour down the road. My favorite QT breakfast is a coffee/French vanilla cappuccino and a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit. Or a doughnut. It's heaven.

Oh, and they have clean bathrooms, too.

4.

Taco Bueno. Bell sucks. Bueno rocks. There's just no other way to state it. They make their queso, refried beans, and guacamole daily. Fresh. Which means you can figure out your favorite queso-making person and find out when it's their turn to fix ;) And for some reason, their sour cream is the best on Earth.

Any other regional favorites out there? Oklahoma or otherwise? I need something to drool over (other than Trader Joe's and Costco, and we're working on that).

He *ASKED* to do art!

Let me say that again: HE ASKED TO DO ART!

Excuse the yelling there. It boggles my mind.

M1 has *never* liked art. It's too abstract. From an early age, it's been difficult for him. Never mind the difficulty he has with fine motor skills, even imagining a picture is tough. Getting it onto paper is nearly impossible.

Imagine:

I say, "Draw a tree."

Most kids, M2 included, will happily draw you something swirly and green with a brown stalk coming out the bottom in about 10 seconds and move on to something else.

MY son has a thought process: 'What kind of tree? Oak? Maple? Pine??? What season is it? Should I draw seeds, too? What about roots?'

And then he panics and asks, "MOM!!! Can you draw the tree, please? I'll color it in if you draw it!"

So I have pretty much foregone art this year. I did think, at one point, about learning about artists, but... nahhhh.... didn't so much happen. Art history ain't my bag, anyway.

And then I found
It's been sitting in the homeschool bookshelf for a month or two, and M1 found it last week.

"Mom, what's this?"

"Oh, it's an art book. I figured we'd pull it out from time to time next year and maybe do a few pages if you wanted. It's technical art, so you don't have to do any coloring. These are the kinds of drawings that architects and engineers make and use."

"REALLY???? Can I do some next week? For school?"

*blink* "Um... if you want...???"

But he meant it!
It's different from every art book I've ever seen because it doesn't focus on paintings or imaginary drawings or different mediums or colors, all of which overwhelm my boy. Nope. This book focuses on pencil drawings of pictures that are GIVEN to you. It's wonderful. The first page, which he did today, was four simple shapes. Circle. Equilateral triangle. Right triangle. Acute triangle. THE. END. You trace them using a sort of dot-to-dot format. And then it encourages you to try to draw these things freehand. And M1 *did*. That was huge for me. The fact that he even tried just blew me away.

Once he finishes with the basic shapes (oval, ellipse, trapezoid, etc.), you move on to simple shapes.

Then 2-dimensional sketches.

Followed by isometric shapes,

isometric sketches,

... and all of a sudden...

... you're understanding vanishing points, perspectives, depth of field... and all still tracing those same shapes that you use at the beginning of the book!

I can't wait to see how much M1 learns from this. More importantly, though, I'm excited that he's excited... about ART.

Presenting Project... Poultry!

Meet our chicken coop!

It all started in the garage on a rainy Saturday (my birthday, no less) with some vague plans I printed from the good ol' Internetz. Oz and his brother(s), however, have well and truly outdone themselves in the actual making of the thing.

They worked so hard, from step 1 on, to make sure that this chicken coop would be the prettiest, sturdiest thing in the whole wide West, that I really feel that I owe them bigtime.

Well, mostly, as Oz told the owner of the horses that live in our pasture, "I'm only doing this ONCE."

But he's doing it very well. Everything from replacing the chain link on the gate with chicken wire...


... to the making of the coop itself. (The kids picked the paint color, by the way... I had no choice in that one).

He even worked out a system so that the windows can be opened or closed as needed!

This is the flip door to the nest boxes...

There are dividers in between the boxes now, but it'll be so handy to just reach in, get the eggs or clean out the boxes...

... and all the while our 'girls' will be able to roost happily in their home. The roosts have yet to be installed, and Oz is even going to cover the floor in linoleum for easy bleaching when deep cleaning time comes.

Even real shingles cover the roof! And check out how sturdy it is... his foot is standing on the nest box roof!

It's been hard work, and we won't recoup the costs for quite a while, but what a gorgeous home for our chickies. Thanks, babe, for all you've done!