The BoneBlog

Warning: This post is not for the faint of heart. If you are the squeamish type, go elsewhere.

Back last February when we bought chicks I refused to name any of them for fear we would grow too attached to them and they’d die.

We paid for pullet chicks, and got them – for the most part.

But then there was Clyde.

Clyde was a beautiful red rooster with iridescent green and black tail feathers. He announced his presence at around 4:30 a.m. each morning. Sometimes as early as 3:30 a.m. He was a confused bird.

Clyde grew meaner over the last few months. He had attacked Ethan a time or two and he had attacked me.

Yesterday, Greg and I went out to move the coop and Clyde tore into Greg.

Really, it was one of the few times I lost myself in gales of laughter. Clyde was rushing Greg, and Greg was yelling, “Oh, no! He’s attacking me, sweetie!”

I was laughing so hard I couldn’t move.

After collecting myself we worked to get Clyde back in his pen, but he was having none of it and absconded to the woods behind our house, where he sat two houses down in the thick brambles and crowed loudly. Greg couldn’t stand it. He worried about the noise, he worried that Clyde would attack a neighbor child. He’s a bit of a worrier.

“If someone approaches that rooster, they deserve it,” I said. “And it’s not like the neighbors don’t know we have a friggin’ rooster, what with all the racket he makes.”

I figured Clyde would eventually come back to roost, if not before. We discussed what to do when he did, and decided it was probably time for Clyde to go. He’d gotten mean, he was prone to escaping, and he eats a lot of food without producing eggs.

I had mixed feelings about it.

Pretty soon our neighbor came to the door to let us know Clyde was in his yard. And so began a rousing round of Catch the Chicken, wherein the three of us chased Clyde all over the neighborhood with a fishing net ready to throw over him. After several near catches, Clyde was cornered in a cellar staircase. Greg cast the net over him and that was all she wrote.

I carried Clyde back to our house in my arms, and doing so made me really sad because he was so calm – scared to death, I’m sure – and his weight and warmth reminded me of a baby. It’s as if he knew we were making The Decision.

Greg and I stood on the back patio for a few minutes debating whether we could really go through with the planned execution. After all, slaughtering a chicken is by nature a very hands-on procedure. I knew I wasn’t going to do it. Greg thought he probably could if he had to but I don’t think he relished the prospect.

Reluctantly, I made the call to go forward with it.

I didn’t really want to watch it, but told myself I had to. After all, I was the one who wanted the chickens and knew at the time this might be part of it. Greg did the deed. I am not ashamed to admit that as Clyde lost his life for no other sin than being a rooster, I cried. I had a soft spot for Clyde, even if he did wake us at all hours of the morning and fight us when we messed with his home.

Then we had to decide whether to eat him.

By the time we got to that point I wasn’t in such bad shape. Now I was feeling more adventurous – I’d never slaughtered a chicken before, and now the hardest part was over. At this point it was more a matter of, “Hey, here’s something we’ve never done before, now if we go ahead and do it, we can say we’ve done it.” So we sallied forth with our knife and the book I call the “Chicken Bible” telling us just how to proceed. The Chicken Bible led us step by step through the process, and Clyde is now sitting in the refrigerator downstairs, skinless (we don’t usually eat the skin), his meat ageing for better flavor. I imagine that on Thursday or Friday he’ll be roasted up or made into chicken and noodles, with a likely casserole to follow.

This morning it was awfully quiet out in the chicken pen. I do sort of miss Clyde. I feel a twinge of regret, but I’m sure that will pass. After all, one reason I got the chickens to begin with was so the kids would know something about how their food arrives. Witnessing this ordeal, they certainly learned a lot about that. They also learned about respect for the dead. When Ethan wanted to chuck rocks at poor dead Clyde, Greg put a stern stop to it with a warning to have respect for the animal who died so you could eat.

Which is more than most kids know.

Photos:

For our friends Brian and Erin, who are expecting their little girl in just a few short months. We had the pleasure of delivering it this weekend at Erin’s baby shower in Columbia. The whole family went along and we made a family trip of it. It was awesome, and Erin looks gorgeous.

So, regarding this post about our stalker:

It wasn’t my friend after all. It was a couple of nutty les/bi broads who live in a fucking RV out there in Vegas. He’d gotten involved with one of them, and when she found out about his ‘feelings’ for me she went ballistic, and so did her girlfriend.

You can’t make this shit up, folks.

We have 266 hits to our blog from the girlfriend’s place of employment logged. That was in one month. On one DAY she hit the blog 112 times. We’re even missing a few days in there so I’m sure it’s more than that. They were blocked but started using proxy servers. After she made a Twitter account and followed me around on that (suggesting that I’m a whore, copying my followers in on posts, releasing my full name to the public, etc.) I’d had enough. Still under the impression that my friend had gone off the deep end, Greg let my friend know that if this shit didn’t stop we were releasing the server logs to his employer, and let the chips fall where they may.

My friend called, we talked, found out what was REALLY going on (turns out he knew nothing about the harassment) and he promised he’d put a stop to it.

Well, he did, but…

…now he’s BACK WITH THEM. Making APOLOGIES for their behavior. Telling me that yeah, they may be loopy but they mean no harm.

Are you fucking kidding me?!

I could just scream.

I am so disappointed that he is going to let a couple of destructive women control his life. They want to move into his new house with him (of course they do! They can’t get one themselves, why not latch onto someone who can?). They STOLE from him.

Well.

This time there will be no warnings. If I even get a whiff of these knuckle-dragging broads trying to interfere with my life – if I even have a suspicion of it – those logs go straight to Clark County’s IT Department.

He might be willing to let The Krazy into his life, but I’ve had enough of it in mine and will not abide any more.

I guess I’m going to go to that handgun training after all.

GAH!

A few years back, I burned up a sewing machine. I was mostly interested in sewing garments, and made several for Laurel and even a couple for myself. When I purchased a new machine, I went for a nice one. I bought a quilting machine.

I figured I’d learn to quilt. It’s a tradition in my family, I guess you could say.

That, as I said, was a few years ago. I finally decided to take a class this past fall when Ethan went to Kindergarten.

Then the class was canceled.

So I got a couple of books and got my nerve worked up, and began. I didn’t follow a pattern. I saw a windmill quilting block and liked it, so I went through the entire rigmarole of designing the quilt top myself, measuring, figuring how much fabric I needed, the whole nine yards.

And I’m awfully proud because I only messed up once, the result of which was a trip back to the fabric store for more material. It could have been much worse.

Well, I guess I should say I actually messed up twice. When it came time for the actual quilting, I got a little too ambitious in my design and it just was more than my skills can handle right now. So I picked hundreds of stitches out and tried again.

It’s not a great quilt. It’s got errors in the stitching. It’s puckered in a couple of places. But it’s pretty good for a first try.

I learned a lot doing it.

And it’s mine. Even if it is going on Ethan’s bed.

Back in October and November when we were putting up the hoop house I wasn’t sure what that really meant. Sure, I knew it would extend my growing season. I knew that it was more likely to be successful in allowing me to begin next year’s season early rather than extending last year’s growing season late.

But this morning I went down and lo, nearly all my spinach planted last week is sprouting with terrific germination (the best I’ve ever had from spinach).

Further, I harvested a big bowl of salad greens and several sprouts:

We eat a lot of salad, but I think in the past 8 months or so I have bought one bag of spinach…maybe two.

I’ve also got healthy rosemary, kohlrabi, dill, and turnips. The perpetual spinach chard planted last spring is still going gangbusters.

I think I have watered twice – if that – since November.

That hoop house just might be a good investment after all.

Got it?

Good.

I had a friend for 10 years.

He was such a good friend we even welcomed him into our home for Thanksgiving this year. In the past he’d stayed with us on his way through town, but this year we actually enjoyed his company for Thanksgiving itself.

But something in my friend snapped.

For the past few weeks he has, for lack of any better word, stalked me.

It started off innocuously enough – he would make comments he considered ‘flattering’ about my looks. I’m not the kind of girl who enjoys those remarks. I’d much, much rather be known for my intelligence than my hair or my legs or whatever. Greg was a good sport about it and brushed it off, but eventually, after our Thanksgiving visit, I nicely told my friend to cool it.

But he couldn’t.

He got more and more intense – even when I told him in no uncertain terms that he was being offensive and he needed to stop – until the point where I had to block him on Facebook.

Then he – get this – made up a fake Facebook profile and wormed his way into my friends list. Normally I wouldn’t let someone whose name I didn’t recognize be my Facebook friend, but my name has gotten ‘out there’ by virtue of some of my public activities and he did a very good job of making the profile fit the kind of person I might expect to send me a friend request out of the blue. The guy spent a lot of time on this profile. It wasn’t an obvious fake. He invented kids, careers, information about parents and in-laws, the whole nine yards.

It took me about a week to get suspicious enough to think ‘she’ was not just an eccentric. Then, thanks to Google’s reverse image search, I found out that every single photo on this person’s Facebook profile had been stolen from other people on the internet. After that little revelation, I confronted ‘her.’ ‘She’ claimed that yes, that was deceptive, but that ‘she’ really WAS a housewife stuck out in the sticks in rural Missouri, boo-hoo-frickin’-hoo, and while the photos were fake everything else was true.

I’m not all that gullible.

So Greg set to work, and within 5 minutes found out this person had commented on our blog from St. George, Utah.

Not Missouri.

St. George, Utah, is where my former friend sometimes goes on the weekends, and yes, those blog comments were posted on a weekend.

Then we checked our Statcounter logs and realized that he had been searching his name on our blog every single day and reading it over and over, sometimes for hours at a time.

So Greg blocked access to anybody in Nevada (the guy lives in Vegas).

And now the guy’s been reading Google cache versions.

Greg’s asked Google to remove them.

I’ve thought about taking the blog down, at least temporarily, until this is all over. But dammit, why should I have to do that? This blog is up here primarily for us, and for any others who actually find it entertaining. Why should I have to take it down because someone can’t control himself and this seeming obsession with absolutely no basis in reality?

Anyway, this is one reason I haven’t been posting lately.

Sigh.

I’ve never been a big fan of having firearms around, and have especially been opposed to them because we’ve got children in the home, at least one of whom is still too young to fully grasp the gravity of firearms. My feeling is that if you’re keeping a firearm around for protection, it’s not going to do you much good unless it’s loaded and ready to go so you’re not fumbling around with trigger locks and ammunition boxes and the like while someone’s coming through your front door.

Now I’m seriously rethinking this position of opposition. Greg and I have spent significant time talking about how to keep a loaded firearm where I can get to it from a position of fortification within our home.

And it really pisses me off that I have to do that.

But when it comes to my family, make no mistake. I have zero compassion for anything – man, woman, or beast – that tries to harm me or my family. I will not hesitate for one second to kill anything – ANYTHING – I think is a threat.

Know that.

Now that Thanksgiving is out of the way, we begin our mad rush to Christmas.

For us, that means endless orchestra / Fiddler performances for Laurel, including the next two weekends plus two mid-week performances; Laurel’s ACT test; a work event for Greg; getting the Christmas tree; shopping; and putting up Christmas lights.

Maybe we’ll get to that last one this year, maybe not. Yesterday afternoon I was betting we might not, with all our other obligations and the weather, so I decided to take it upon myself to at least decorate the back deck. It wasn’t too bad in the beginning, but as the afternoon wore on and the wind picked up, it got blustery and cold, cold, cold. I had just about had it. My fingers were frozen, raw, and sore from untangling lights and affixing clips to the deck. My nose was running like a faucet. But then inspiration struck.

I ran downstairs and out the basement door. On my way, I decided I needed to move the chicken coop. As I was moving the pen, I felt something on my leg – a repeated drumming. It didn’t hurt, but it was one heck of a strange sensation. I glanced back – I had my back to the chickens – and I’ll be damned if that rooster Clyde wasn’t attacking me over and over. It was as though he was repeatedly chest-bumping my leg with a few good wing-flaps thrown in for good measure. I gave him a couple of half-hearted, gentle nudges with my foot to discourage him.

Clyde was undeterred.

He continued his insurgency, so I responded with a good sound kick that sent him tumbling across the pen.

My counterstrike addled him just enough to get the pen moved where it needed to be. Clyde recovered quickly, then redoubled his efforts and did his best to attack me through the pen’s fence.

Dummy.

So Clyde may not be long for this world. I have little patience for violence in most circumstances, but I sure as hell will not deal with it from an animal I have cared for since it was a baby.

* * *

After dispensing with our civil war, I continued my quest. About 30 minutes later (or so), it was complete:

Ta-DA!

This morning’s harvest from the garden:

I spent the morning re-burying the fig trees, covering the strawberries, and generally winterizing the crops. I can safely say this is the first year I’ve had generous crop harvests this far into November. Yay!

The plastic arrived
and we got in gear
on one of the windiest
days of the year.

We set to a-cursin’,
a-pullin’, eye-rollin’,
And then Greg observed
that there were some holes in

the plastic, “Oh no!”
(he wasn’t that calm.
He reminded me of
a nuke-u-lar bomb)

I eyed up the holes,
so worried, but – BUT --
most holes were right where
we were going to cut.

We set back to work
spirits lifted, but then,
then came that awful,
that garrulous wind!

It mocked us and stalked us,
It blew without fail!
It transformed that plastic
into a big sail.

We pulled and we tugged,
while that film ran amok!
We fastened, and found we
were in luck—it STUCK.

And that, my dear friends,
was what brought back our cheer
on one of the windiest
days of the year.

_______________________________

Almost-finished product:

We’re going to do some tucking under of the plastic, some insulating around the bottom of the outsides as needed, make some minor adjustments to the doors, and we should be good to go for the winter. The good news with all that wind is that we found out we’ve got a pretty sturdy structure.

Yesterday morning when it was about 65 degrees, it hit 100 degrees inside the hoop house and I scrambled down to prop the doors open to get more airflow. I don’t think we’re going to have much trouble keeping it warm. We didn’t get the shipment of plastic in time to save my peppers from last week’s freeze, as you can see below, but I should have fall crops for some time. I’ll have to keep it from getting back to 100 or they will suffer. Bother, bother. The broccoli and brussels sprouts are still going strong, along with turnips, lettuce, spinach, and kohlrabi. The rosemary looks great, too.

Ethan calls it the ‘coop house’ instead of ‘hoop house,’ which is pretty astute considering its future use as a winter home for the chickens. As for the girls (and Clyde), they seem eager to try it out:

And naturally, what would this household be without a wireless thermometer and hygrometer to keep track of conditions in the hoop house from the warmth of our abode?

Let the good times roll!