Less Poo, More Eggs!

Thus was my disgruntled complaint as I reached into the chicken coop in which five chickens roost and only one lays an always poo covered brown mottled egg.

Earlier this morning I did manage to collect an underdeveloped egg from one of the other chickens. It was at least whole which is a vast improvement over the cracked shells and yokes my dad has found prior. It was half the size of Butterscotch's eggs which makes it about three fourths the size of a white store bought egg, and it was kind of pink looking because, although it is that pretty orangey brown of Butterscotch's, it was also covered in little white spots so it looks very nice, (once I washed the poo off).

Life on our ten acre "Farm" seems to be full of poo. I walk through cow poo to check on my dying climbing rose and chuck poo around the base in an effort to keep it alive. Apparently, not only did I plant it in clay laced soil that won't drain, but what I thought was a fairly sunny spot against our ugly pole barn, is shaded for a lot of the day by both the barn and a nearby tree. I am stupid, and as much as I pray for and check on my poor little rose, I'm afraid that I will never see our ugly metal barn covered in roses as in Robin Mckinley's Beauty. Alas, if only I had a Beast who loved me enough to send magic rose seed and hurry them along!

In other news, I may have saved my dear cat Starr's life by finding a book called Crazy Kitty. My mother read through it and realized that Starr's use of the living room carpet to pee and other various ways of incorrectly using the litter box may stem from recurring tenderness of the paws. She had a very rough time with her declawing years ago and after tearing out the glue, had to be stitched and has never allowed anyone to touch her front paws. She was nicknamed Miss Prissy Paws because of the way she sits up with one paw held up, limp wristed. To fix this problem, we've moved a spread of newspaper and the cats food dish to her favorite corner to pee in the living room and found a finer, softer kitty litter. After being placed in the box, she went and after I made her try, she actually covered where she had gone! A miracle! if only it will last!

Things I've accomplished today so far.

* Dressed and ate breakfast while reading/stalking blogs and facebooking.
* Watched K tune my piano, yay!
* Dusted piano.
* Sneezed
* Dusted Dining room and piano
* Sneezed a lot more.
* Chatted with brother J1 (my brothers both have the exact same initials, JDS so they will be J1 and J2 in further posts) J1 and J2 are coming home from their respective summer living arrangements for the Fourth, we are very sad to learn that J1's girlfriend, the very sweet C will not be joining us.
* Emailed J1 finished novel.
* Mourned the passing of Billy Mays
* Planted Wine and Roses bush in front of ugly propane tank.
* Considered possibility of hauling ladder out to barn to hang old fence pieces as trellis myself, envisioned myself falling from ladder into muddy pile of cow poo and called boyfriend D for help.
* Successfully found nails, hammer and ladder and dragged all from the garage to side of barn.
* Lifted heavy, dirty, spider-infested, water-logged tractor tire from mud mire and began to role it away to lean against far away fence post to make an archery target.
* Dropped tire, screamed and killed very large spider.
* Righted tire and rolled further, imagining D coming over to find me trapped under said tire, attacked by giant, Harry Potter's Aragog's descendants.
* D came to the rescue, rolled tire the rest of the way and figured out how to use complicated folding and extending ladder.
* Dumped can of nails into muddy poo and had to pick them out.
* Handed poopy nails to D and held fence in place while he nailed it to ugly metal barn wall.
* Kissed my hero and sent him on his way.
* Cleaned up.
* Fixed lunch
* Will eat
* Next, I get to go visit Grandma R. and help her pick out a new purse. Yay. at least this doesn't involve poo. : )

Finished!

The Acorn's Crown by Laura G. Smith is finally finished. At least until I get it printed and get feed back, but the original manuscript is finally finished despite attempts by Starr to keep me from my work as seen again here! (actually mom took this picture, I left my work up and the picture of Starr in front of the screen was up and Starr sat in front of the screen again!)

Anyway, now that it's basically done for a while, I'm going to catch up on some sleep. K, a man I know from church is coming to tune my piano in the morning, then I'm taking Grandma R. purse shopping. Pray for my sanity on that one! I love my Grandma, but she can be trying.(as all people can) Good Night!

Dog

Sirloin, the cow's eye is still there in her head, Thank God, but it is all white, so she is probably blind, can we say Sirloin will be a sirloin or two or five?
Leila, my mother's precious baby one year old Sheltie, is now a muddy mess. I took her out so she could go potty and she followed me as far as the bridge over the creek and refused to be carried over it. I left her thinking that meant she would stay on the other side of the muddy creek since she doesn't like to cross it when it's dry. However, shortly after crossing the bridge, I heard splashing as she jumped into a giant collection of cow created holes in the mud full of water and (probably) cow pee. Yay! I yelled and she got back out and I made her SIT beside a tree and STAY until I got back from checking the cows where they stood across the sunny field in a mud hole in the one spot of shade.
In lighter news, Butterscotch the Chicken followed me as far as the creek as well, but she was smart enough to wait at the edge and not get covered in cow-pee mud. That's what I call Smart Chicken!

Cows, jobs, what-have-you

Yesterday I had to get up early to help herd cattle around our back yard and into a shoot so the vet could put them in his fancy headlock thingy and administer vital pink-eye medication and fly tags. The entire small herd has pink-eye because they either: a. step in their own poo and then scratch their eye with said pooey hoof, or b. are covered in flies which hang around both pooey end and face end and infect them. Both are likely.

In other news, I had an interview with the Claycomo library and now I have a job. A twelve hours a week, paying me a pittance, so far away I will burn most of my paycheck in gas job, but a job nonetheless. Yay.

now I must go check on Sirloin, the cow with the bugle like moo, cutest calf and most atrociously infected eye. She was given a shot in the eyeball, (it bled alot) and now I have to go make sure said eye ball is still in cow's head. ew.

New photo

This is a photo of me from a shoot I did last summer. Last night I did my best to turn it into a fairly decent likeness of my novel's main character, Grace Allonmyer, the Ferinya or Queen of Syarador. Photoshop is pretty cool, although I am quite the novice and it shows when looking at said picture close up! Enjoy! It isn't really an awesome pic of me, I think I sort of look sick actually, perhaps hungover, although I've never been hungover so I don't really know, but the light on the crystal in the necklace is cool! The people of Syarador are different from Earth peoples, they have a wide variety of skin and hair pigments, which signifies nothing more than to show who's child you are. They inherit their skin from their father and their hair from their mother, making it quite obvious if someone hasn't been faithful, no need for Maury and his paternity testing here!

Pet Peeves

People who aren't aware of the fact that they are bothering those around them is one of my pet peeves. Among those people are parents who allow their children to be loud and obnoxious in public, especially in libraries.
2nd and most egregious are smokers. Your right to fill your lungs with disgusting, tar producing smoke ends at my right not to breath it. Today at the library, a stack of Easy Readers came in so bitterly smelling of smoke that it made it difficult for me to handle them to shelve them. In order for a book to smell that badly, it is quite obvious that either some very young child is smoking while reading (highly unlikely lets hope), or some older child (who smokes) has a very low reading level, or most likely, some poor child has idiot parents who smoke while reading to them. Very sad. No parent has the right to fill their child's lungs with smoke, it is one form of child abuse that has yet to have a law against it -and that is wrong.