What the pedicure was for...

Yeah, it's a non-farm post, but I gotta tell somebody.  Today was our sho-dan test.  I'm a black belt in Shohei-Ryu Okinawan karate.

(Wonder if that will make the goats behave?)

The misadventures of Kitty (or why I can't get a DAMN thing done around here)

For the umpteenth time, a service person has made an appointment to come to our house, but is unable to narrow their arrival down to less than a 5 hour window.  The service industry apparently has NO understanding of farming or any other stay-at-home enterprise, because they are convinced all you have to do is sit around in the house and wait for their arrival.  Around here, they have taken to calling you before they arrive, and GOD FORBID you not answer the phone, because that's all the excuse they need not to come...

Being the good-natured person I am (cough, cough) I decide to make the best of my time indoors and do something constructive and hopefully profitable like making jam/jelly for the final market on Saturday.

I make several lightening fast trips outdoors to collect apples and quince, running like a frantic rabbit between trees (my neighbors must think I am completely soft-headed) and settle in to prepare fruit.  I notice (slowly) that the indoor cat has been absent for the last 15 minutes or so, and then I notice that there is a cat outside the bay window in the kitchen that looks remarkably like our indoor cat.  Hmmm....

S--t!  I throw on my house slippers and fly out the door (again) to try and retrieve the cat.  She runs away from everything, so I approach slowly and she moves onto the front porch.  Not wanting to scare her further away, I run back inside the house to open the front door and coax her in.  Thankfully, she comes in, but as she passes by me, I notice she has something in her mouth.  Ick!  a mouse...

Before she can get the chance to drop the disgusting thing and chase it all over the house, I scoop her up and head for the bathroom, where I dangle her over the tub and shake her to loose the varmint from her jaws.  (The thinking on this, in case you are wondering, was that if she does drop it, the mouse will fall into the tub and be unable to scale the slippery sides, giving me time to do....something...)

Finally...

It's clearly dead.  Only now I have to wad up enough paper towels to protect me from actually feeling the mouse as I clean it up, dash the whole mess in the garbage can, put all of that outside the back door (no time to run to the burn pile lest I miss the furnace man!) and go back inside to scrub down the tub followed with a bleach rinse for good measure.

Finally back to the fruit, I resume peeling when I hear a strange scrabbling noise coming from the living room.  The cat is up on the PC.

No, she is not adjusting the connections.  Nor is she chasing dust balls, like I had hoped.  She is stuck.  Yep, stuck.  As in her claw has hooked itself into one of the teeny holes in the metal cover plate on the back of the computer and she can't get loose.

Believe me, she tried.  And I tried.  And there were six or seven really good tries where I grabbed a hold of her leg and maneuvered it forward to try and wrangle the curve of her claw out of the teeny hole.  (Kind of like trying to crochet with a fish hook...)  She hissed.  I hissed back. She growled.  I growled back.  Finally, I had to clean off the entire table top, pull the PC tower around so we could pull at a better angle, and worked her loose.

Forget putting all the stuff on the table and the PC back, my jam is boiling over.

Follow the Leader

Your Autumn Test Results

You are a energetic, warm, optimistic person. You approach everything with a lot of enthusiasm. When you are happiest, you are calm. You appreciate tradition and family. You enjoy feeling cozy. You tend to be afraid of change. You are never ready for things to be different. You find abundance to be the most comforting thing in the world. You love shopping and having nice things. Your ideal day is active and full. You like to keep busy with your favorite things, and you appreciate a routine. You tend to live in the moment. You enjoy whatever is going on, and you don't obsess over the past or future.

The Autumn Test

OK, Michelle, I caved. Took the test.  Three things in common...but I had to laugh about the shopping part...have they LOOKED in my checkbook?

A day at the office

No..., I did not go and get myself re-employed at a real job.  I've kind of had a second (or third) one all along.  It's just I don't talk about it much.  But I still have to put in some days at the home office for this one...like Monday.

Husband and daughter out the door by 7 a.m. - check

Kitchen cleaned and dishes washed to empty the sink - check

Dye materials ready - check

Animals fed and what not for a few hours peace - check

Dance music CD's prepped and ready - check

Large glass of Diet Pepsi, chilled - check

Ready, set, go!

Seven hours later (with a lunch break to the feed store) - 

There's 19...in case anybody's counting.

Back from the Anti-farm

So, if you've been wondering where we've been...we're just getting back from a stint in NYC.  Yeah, the anti-farm, as I like to call it.  The polar opposite of where I like to spend my days...no grass, no chickens (although PLENTY of pigeons), no sheep, lots of dirt (although not the kind you want to run your fingers through) and WAY too many people.

DH had a training gig (actually he's doing what I used to do, and training community social workers with the curriculum I wrote!) and we went along for the trip.

There was Times Square (hence the picture up top - which I thought would be a perfect memento for Madison to bring to her school to show them where she had been - she refused...)  Actually, due to election fever, Times Square was REALLY crowded, so I stole the stock photo because ours were so full of people, you could hardly see the Cowboy...

And we did the museum thing...

It's the Museum of Natural History, Central Park West @ 79th St, in case you don't recognize the bones...

And they had a reptile show:

(Which, BTW, was pretty much the same offering as was in the Berkshire Museum several years ago, so I feel very good about our local level of culture, if we are on par with NY)... 

...and there was lots of time lazing in the hotel with TV (don't tell my mother) and general walking about Manhattan (much to Madison's dismay) including a trip to FAO Schwartz, where Madison decided it was interesting but too juvenile for her tastes, a subsequent trip to ToysRUs that was somewhat more mature, but still not satisfying for the Princess of Lego, lots of restaurant food (including one breakfast out at a ridiculously expensive hotel restaurant where two pancakes cost more than I will admit to anyone, but Madison loved the decor and the lady sitting next to us with the $5,000 mink coat she shrugged off and left in a pile on the floor while she ate...) and lots of wandering around on Election night taking in the partying, dancing, and live broadcasts on practically every corner.  Here we are catching a quick rest somewhere around 52 st...

Madison's favorite part of the trip (besides the restaurants) was the Paley Center for Media on W 52nd St. which houses thousands of archived TV and radio shows from forever, and you can actually browse the collection and watch some on private viewers (we took in an X Files episode and a crime show from way back...).

But my favorite part (aside from the excellent knitting time on the train) was this:

I got to patronize my favorite salon (Joy Nails, 7th Ave, btwn. 30th and 31st).  Lest you think I've gone to fancy farming...this was for something that is coming up in three weeks.  Tell you later...