I NEED COOKIES!

Cookies are comfort food. My husband's younger brother said I married him for his snickerdoodles. OK, OK, I did hang out in the kitchen and eat snickerdoodles hot out of the oven, but that was 6-7 years before we got married, and I'm sure there were a lot of other reasons I married him. I'm not blind to the fact that they have calories, but all food does. They're probably more nutritious than a lot of breakfast cereals and donuts, and I rarely eat more than 2 or 3 a day.... I could do a lot of justifying. I think that, as a child, I may have believed that the right kind of cookie was the cure to all ills. Not a bad idea, but adult reality caught up.

I have long since realized that I'm probably incapable of working only one job at a time. Even when I was single and had a full time job, there were pursuits outside earning enough to manage to live that were work. Other times, I've worked 2-3 part time jobs at once, and still carried on other, personal, work. I finally realized that I may as well quit fighting it, find ways of working several occupations at once, and be content to make that work for me.

Not only do I happily multi-task, another personal trait is that I will have at least a small menagerie. I once had one cat, an aquarium, and 2 parakeets sharing less than 1000 square feet with 4 people. The cat did learn that the birds were not hers to hunt. Momentarily, it's 4 cats, a tiny rabbit, and 3 people in about 500 square feet. The housing is in a transitional period. The cats aren't sure what the rabbit is, but the lone male will lick the rabbit's head. Male bonding?

I knew I hadn't checked my e-mail lately, but 1,162 un-read messages! How'd that happen? I know I've felt extraordinarily busy, but that busy? What have I been doing?

Things have changed at work due to some personnel changes, so I've had more to do. Tax season and college are both underway, so sales have picked up. My son's been finishing up 4 high school classes, and I've helped a little with that. He has a final for one class Friday, then one more online course to get his diploma. I have been working on learning how to make this blog thing work for me, and putting things on it that I've had in mind for months. The weekend farm takes 2 days a week. There's always something to do, firewood, cleaning out the chicken coop.... next weekend, providing the weather's good, de-horning young goats. I have curtains started for D's room.

I have 4 crochet projects at various stages that I keep packing around, picking up at odd moments. I keep trying to finish the rag rug I started knitting several months ago. I could kick myself for making it a pattern of blocks rather than hit and miss stripes. It looks fine, it's just that it takes more time. I think the next one I make will just be stripes of whatever, no planning, just "git 'r done". I'll see about more "planned" designs later, after we move.

I have a box of clothes to mend and/or alter that I keep trying to get to. I actually managed to do some sewing yesterday. I started to modify a cotton sweater that's just the right colors for a skirt that I made from fabric I bought in Nevada. I decided to turn it into a shrug. So I cut the front into a curve, cut the ribbing off the bottom, did a serpentine stitch around all the pieces to hold the knit so it won't ravel apart. Eventually, it will have the bottom ribbing around the fronts, I'll hem the back, and I'll use the remainder as the top tier of the skirt. Kill 2 birds with one stone: tie the shrug into the skirt, and have a top tier that's slim. I intended the skirt to be a 3-tiered broomstick skirt, but wasn't satisfied with the lack of fullness. So it's packed in a box up at D's waiting for me to make time to re-do it.

What I really need to mend is thermal bottoms for my husband. Most of his are out at the knees, so if I patch them using parts of other worn thermals, I can get them to last a little longer. If Steve were working full time, I'd just go buy new ones. But construction isn't enjoying the boom it did a few years ago, so I'm just glad he's had work this week. As an older lady put it to me years ago when I was kind of griping about mending the knees of a 4 year old boy's pants "Well, dear, at least you have the skills to do that!" Mrs. Rhystrom was right.

Carter has 4 crocheted blankets. I made one before he was born, knowing my daughter would be unhappy about him getting his hands caught in the holes. The second I made for his first birthday. I may have roped myself into making one a year to keep up with them wearing out. My own fault for making loose stitches with big hooks because I don't want to devote much time to making afghans. He insists on having all 4, or he can't go to sleep. I was wearing a crocheted sweater once when I was at their house, and Carter petted it, and rolled up with it when I took it off.... I told him he could touch it and play with it while I was there, but it was going home with me. The LOOK he gave me! His dad caught it, laughed, "Grandma, that wasn't the bargain I had in mind!" No, but the sweater did come home with me.

Carter's Birthday BLT's

Now that I've learned how to add pictures, whether they're perfect or not, a bunch of stuff I've wanted to put on here will work. My grandson watches a lot of food network with his mom & dad. I saw a crochet pattern for a sandwich, modified to suit myself. My son spent a week with them, says I need to make more. Carter evidently likes playing with the bacon, lettuce, tomato, and bread - but he wants them to be BIG sandwiches, with lots of bacon.

Firewood

There's a saying that wood is a fuel that warms you twice: once while you're cutting and splitting, the second time when you burn it. Since both families heat with wood, cutting and stacking wood is an ongoing task.

Speckeldy Hens

Found some info on omlet.com about Speckledy hens. They're the result of a Marans/Rhode Island Red cross. I will have to look up more info, but I seem to remember that the chicks are sex-linked; that is, different colors or patterns at hatching, so it's easy to tell pullets from roosters. Yeah, if you know what you're looking for. Obviously, I will have to do more research on this. I do have a few more weeks before eggs hatch. If they're different, I guess I will just figure out how to separate or band the chicks, or both. Speckeldy hens lay chestnut, speckled eggs. Evidently they're darker than Rhode Island Reds, lighter than Marans, and speckled rather than plain. It'll be 5-8 months before we'll see. I am rather reassured that omlet says they're prolific egg layers, so evidently I can expect that trait to follow through from the Rhode Island Reds. This picture is of a commercial white egg, light brown Rhode Island Red eggs, and Speckledy eggs.

Rhode Island Reds

The hens we have are Rhode Island Reds. We think we have 22. On an off day, we get 16-17 eggs. Most days, we get 19, sometimes more. They lay brown eggs. One of the things I've learned in reading about these chickens is that they have laying cycles and the color varies within that cycle. We have one broody hen that we decided to leave be, and another that wants to be, but I frustrated her yesterday.

My dad's mother raised hundreds of Rhode Island Reds. My dad says she got them from another old-time breeder. He doesn't know how she persuaded him to sell her some, but they were not what we know now as Rhode Island Reds. I think they must've looked like what are now called New Hampshire Reds. When she was done with them as laying hens, she would call a kosher butcher in California's Bay Area; he would bring his truck, delighted to be able to buy all the chickens she'd sell him.

Marans, Part 2

Cuckoo Marans lay dark Mahogany eggs. They're known in England, barely known here, although I've seen pictures of them in a Seattle newspaper blog. There are chicken breeders in the US who have 4 different varieties of the Marans.