This is What 47 Looks Like

It me! About mid-way through my birthday yesterday. It was a good day, but, man, it was busy, too!

James worked from home yesterday morning, so we got to chat just a bit before Mal woke up. Mal greeted me with, "Happy birsday, Mom!"

We realized that Aish wasn't feeling well, so I took her to the vet's (for the second time in two weeks) while Mal amused himself at home.

Mal and I went to Rounder's Pizza to meet one of my friends for lunch. I hadn't told her it was my birthday, because she would have done something, and I didn't want her to feel obligated... but she brought Mal a really neat "present." She'd found a very sparkly rock, put it in a square of cloth, and tied it with a ribbon. Mal dug it!

While we were there, the vet called twice, left two incomprehensible voice mails, and then proceeded to prattle on in excess of nine minutes before I hung up on her because I'd only called back during lunch in case there was an emergency. Short version: There isn't, but she had some ideas of things we could do to help Aish be less anxious/more comfortable.

When we got home, I went out to visit the chickens and take snacks, which is when I took the above picture. James was gone because his team at work had scheduled a half-day river "cruise" party boat thing. So I went to pick up Aish after they'd taken some samples for blood work.

After James got home, he, Mal, and I went out for frozen yogurt. It was neat; I had a birthday bonus of a free quart of yogurt, in addition to buy-one/get-one-free.

D had put the chickens up since we were out a bit past sunset. By the time we returned home, D was midway through giving the bedroom a thorough clean, which was an AMAZING gift for me! However, about 2/3 of the way through, D hit a wall. I get it. I finished up while D showered, and then I vacuumed and cleaned the carpets. D did two loads of laundry.

So. Full day!

Then this morning, I got up, fed the cats, and was getting ready to go do the every-other-weekly major cleaning of the chicken coop when Mal woke up about an hour and a half early, with a nosebleed and needing to use the restroom. I almost cried, but fortunately, James was up a lot earlier than usual for a weekend, so he just went and laid down in Mal's room while I did my stuff. They both fell back to sleep.

I had time to shower and dry off a few minutes before Mal woke up for good. James went back to bed, and Mal and I played together for a few hours. I did a load of dishes and finished up a load of laundry.

This afternoon, James took Mal to Little Land. They were gone about three hours, so I had some time to myself. I did refill the hummingbird feeders, and took snacks to the chickens. But otherwise, I just sat on my behind, watched YouTube videos and ate cereal. It was a nice, relaxing break from the busyness of the previous day and a half!

My parents had left me a couple of minis from Nothing Bundt Cake, so we broke into those today. Very tasty! Mal kept telling me "Happy birthday!" before each bite he took. He takes this very seriously.

James has Monday off work, but D still has banjo lessons, so after class, we're going to go out for sushi since James can stay with Mal. It'll be an awesome way to tie up my birthday weekend!

Summer Doldrums

Hi, friends! We've had a couple of very television- and computer-game-intensive days around here, but I don't mind that at all! It feels like there's been a lot going on, and when Mal complained about having to take D to banjo lessons on Monday (he'd been to meet a friend at McDonald's earlier, and said, "I only want to go one place per day!"), I promised him we could stay home for the next two whole days... so far, he's mostly wanted to veg. We've played LEGOs and Disney Cars and Numberblocks, too. But he is in no hurry to leave. I don't blame him. It's been really hot! In fact, although I'm speaking with D's therapist alone tomorrow, I was going to take Mal with me, because he could just play in her office while she shows me some test results. However, he asked that I have my parents come stay with him, because he's all about being a homebody at the moment.

I'm glad! He usually loves just running around, which is fine. But I remember giant swaths of time when D was little that we'd be home all day for days. It's a nice change!

Our chickens are about 19 weeks old. James told me today that egg color is sometimes related to earlobe color (there are exceptions), and that's cool. I was noticing the other day that one of the chickens has very green ears, and another lighter green/yellow ones. They haven't really shown until recently, so maybe they're getting close. We're in no hurry. They're great pets, even without eggs.

See the yellow/green tint? But also, most of them seem to have red earlobes, which means brown eggs. The two "puffy cheek" ones should have some kind of pastel eggs. I can't see their earlobes. They're pretty obscured by fluff.

It was markedly cooler yesterday than in the past six weeks or so, and I could tell the chickens were feeling it. They had a great day roaming the yard under cloud cover, instead of avoiding the sun. Also, we used a lot of non-solar-generated electricity, but whatever. It was a nice break. Here are the chickens taking evening "baths" on the fence.

And the other day, out in the back part of the yard. They've been getting over the fence more and more, but they're understanding how to get back without my opening the gate. They look like wild birds!

Our grass is pretty much shot, and they go over the tiny patches of green first thing in the morning, so it's good for them to have other places to forage. As long as they don't cross the street or make it back to our neighbor's yard! He hasn't started building yet, and I don't want them to get into the habit of going back there!

When I lived in Sherman, one time I came home on a Saturday and there was a guinea sitting on top of our opened garage door. Interestingly, I still have a picture of it. It was October 13, 2007.

We were confounded until a few hours later, our neighbor from two doors down knocked on our door. He asked if we'd seen one of his birds, and we took him out to the garage, but it had moved on. He said it was his son's birthday, and they were getting ready to make his birthday dinner with the guinea, and he thought that the bird knew, so ran away. What's funny is that I didn't even know he had these birds, and they're really loud! Oh well. Wonder what happened to it.

Anyway, I don't want our neighbors here to have a plump, juicy chicken show up and think, "Hey! Free lunch!" Our chickens are friends, not food. I haven't gotten to the point that I can't eat other chicken, but D's been there ever since the pigeons got killed. I think it's permanent.

I'm super excited, because I love planning stuff. And I love traveling. But travel is kind of expensive, so it's not something we do a whole lot of. However, since our Hawaii trip got called off (boo!), it's allowed us to take a couple of smaller trips, and then also both James and I have a single-parent weekend with Mal in the works. I mean, of course, I'm planning both of those, too, but that's just how I like it.

We're going to see James's parents for his birthday (kind of like Mal and I did last year, but with James this time... and we're going late enough that we'll miss the Christmas parade, which stinks... but we'll hit the premier of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, so that's something), then next spring, we're going to go ahead and take Mal to LEGOLAND, like we'd discussed visiting on our way to Hawaii. We found amazing deals on two different hotels there, one of which we had to prepay, but we'd taken out travel insurance when we'd booked our flights, so we felt okay doing that. It's such a treat for me to now watch the prices on the same rooms we've reserved go up, little by little. I'm always on the lookout for deals, and am ready to change the reservation we didn't have to prepay, but it really seems like we got an amazing price, and I'll end up being super glad I do stuff as early as I do.

They're finally starting on building a house across the street from us. They cleared it at the beginning of the year, and it seems like it probably just took a long time to get permits. It's kind of noisy, and a contractor parked in front of our mailbox earlier this week, so we didn't get delivery that day. But it's fun to watch from the comfort of our air conditioned front rooms. Yesterday, we got to watch some workplace rough-housing as three guys were filling sandbags with gravel and a fourth drove the Bobcat over, got the scoop close enough to one guy that he hopped up on the form wall to get out of the way, then the driver raised the scoop up just under his neck! It was precision driving. Pretty impressive, but I might not have the same sense of humor if it had been done to me. Mal laughed, though, and wanted an encore.

By the end of the year, we should have houses on both free corners. The caddy-corner from us is a neighbor's back yard. Unless he sells it because of property taxes, it should remain undeveloped. He has it set up like a park; it's so beautiful. I hope he doesn't. If so, though, we'll always have our back yard!

You might have realized that I will turn 47 in a mere two days. "What?!" you say. "You can't be older than 32!" But it's true. I'm old. I feel it in my reflection and pictures, but I don't care. And I don't feel any older/more decrepit than when I was 18. That's good. I need reading glasses. There is only 1.5 years more difference in my age from my younger child and my sister's age from her only grandchild, but... well, that one kind of makes me want to take up drinking but otherwise... no complaints. Having lunch with a friend and really hoping for a cool cake. That's about it. I don't want for anything else, so am pretty lucky. Actually, I *did* tell James I'd love to have the back porch power-washed. Love those chickens, but they're pooping up a storm out there. So I guess you could say, I have it really great. Happy birthday to me.

WHY AREN'T COMMENTS WORKING?? And other stuff...

If you've been aching to leave us a comment and haven't been able to, then join the club! I typed this comment into James's (as it was posted rather late on a weekend night, may I guess semi-drunken?) rant about mass shootings and gun rights fifteen times before it dawned on me to cut-and-paste it somewhere safe until comments started working again. They still don't work. So, in case you were wondering:

"I would agree that people who commit mass murder/violence of this nature certainly have wrong/dangerous beliefs, but I don't think they're 'insane.' The whole 'mental illness' thing is bandied about in a way that might make people with genuine mental illnesses hesitant to get help, because is this how they're going to be perceived? Anyway, LOTS of people in lots of countries are 'insane,' but the gun violence isn't as high in any other developed nation.

"The guy in Dayton apparently had a history of threatening and frightening behavior that was reported by classmates to his high school, and also referred to the police. Many of them said hearing this wasn't a surprise, and that he never should have had access to a gun. So while the 'red flag' talk seems sort of subjective and 'slippery slope'y, there might be some merit to it.

"Lastly, I do not think the Founding Fathers could fathom what kind of rapid-fire, powerful guns would be available a couple of hundred years later. I'm fine with changing the constitution, if that's what it takes. I know we agree to disagree on this. But so far, no one has used high-capacity magazines to protect their families or property from aggressive government forces; they've ONLY been used to murder as many people as possible."

FIN.

And, yes, I would likely feel different about this if we were talking about limiting access to caffeine or sugar or anything else that is deemed dangerous by some people. I'm also a parent, and I'm susceptible to the fear that comes from knowing people can and do this, and have access to tools to help them... even knowing the statistics. So I can admit that fear is never a great basis for demanding legislation, and yet... here we are.

But that's not really what this post is about, is it?

You're wondering what's going on with us. aren't you? Nope? Well, too bad. Navigate away, then!

Our chickens are now almost 19 weeks old, which means that they might start laying within the next month or so.  When I went out to close the coop tonight, four of the chickens were already roosting for the night. "Fluffy Cheeks" (I tried to name her Monstro, but I think Mal's winning on this front) had her wing over AW's back. I only had my phone, and when the flash pre-shot, they both started to stand up to see what was going on, but I caught it.

I don't know whether the chickens are ready for the heat to break, but I AM READY FOR THE HEAT TO BREAK. Also, the unrelenting lack of rain. It has rained once, for approximately one hour, since July 4. There is no rain in the forecast for the next two weeks. The weather forecast does keep showing the temperatures dropping from the low 100s/high 90s into the mid-to-low 90s, but that keeps getting pushed out two weeks and now I don't believe anything. Our grass is crunchy and dormant, and every time we go outside, we get about 15 stickers in our shoes.

I guess the good news is that we haven't had to pay someone to mow our yard since the beginning of July? And it's weird: we had .12 inches more rain in July than in the average year, at 4.45 inches. And all of it was within the first 3 or so days of the month.

Our solar power is up and running, and our bill for last month was $100 less than it was last year, including a few days when we didn't have the system installed yet. It's been around 100 degrees every day for the past month, so that's not bad at all.

Mal is such a fun kid. Today, he had quite an emotional roller coaster of a day. At one point this evening, we were playing Star Wars with LEGOS, and I noticed one of his ships had a brick missing from under the seating area, so when you picked it up, the pilot fell out. I was trying to put a new brick in place, and Mal pulled the ship away from me. He wanted to keep it the way that it was (he does not like change in the least!). I "yoinked" it out of his hands and was placing the brick when he started bawling. Real tears and everything. And he wailed, "Mommy, no! You are breaking my heart up!"

When I handed him the ship back and showed him that he could just push the brick back out, he smiled and said, "That's better. It's fixing my heart now." Poor sweetie. He has so many feels.

Oh my goodness, though... yesterday he had the worst nosebleed I've ever seen him have. He used to get little bleeds quite frequently, as a result, frankly, of digital probing up in there. They are much fewer and far between now. Used to, we could expect one every couple of days. Now, it's every six months maybe? Well, he got one yesterday. I dammed up the nostril with a tissue and went outside to do something. When I came back in, Mal was still sitting at the table, but sounded weird when he said he'd mistakenly removed the tissue. There was blood all over his face, all around his mouth, dripping onto his shirt, and I even had to wash the chair. Yikes. Fortunately, he was fine. Just... a mess.

Out of the blue while I was writing this last night, Mal decided he was tired and wanted to go to sleep, and it sounded like a good idea. So now I'm up and have started my Saturday and will fill you in on other developments later! Have a great weekend!

Malcolm's Almost FIVE!!

Mal's birthday rolls around next month, and this morning, I was thinking about how, this time last year, I was starting to get a little concerned (I'd passed "annoyed" about a year and a half before) about how we were going to wean him. I knew I didn't want to make it a traumatic break, but my son is easily traumatized, so even saying, "When you turn 4, you'll be too big!" would have broken his heart.

Then, lo and behold, right after his 4th birthday, he just... stopped.

Same thing with overnight pull-ups. We did use them when we went to Disney World just before his birthday, but that was because it wasn't our bed, and they don't have waterproof mattress covers, and... he was just suddenly dry all night without much of a transition.

Now there's just one developmental thing we're still working on. For some reason, when he needs to #2, Mal's first instinct is still to come kind of hide out in his room instead of heading straight for the restroom. He does then go, but the "brewing" time in his room beforehand baffles me.

Beyond that, Mal can read a bit, mostly small words that follow very strict rules about letter sounds. And he's picking up SO much math with Numberblocks. He watches several episodes a day, and watches them over and over... basically rote math facts, but sung with colorful animation and fun music. It's his choice. I've asked him if he wants me to find him something else to watch, and he'll say, "No, Mom, I need to learn my maths."

Speaking of that... he asks us math problems all of the time. Usually, it's because he wants us to "learn" (i.e. answer incorrectly so that he can teach us the right way). Occasionally, he actually doesn't know and wants to hear the truth. Anyway, last night, I was super tired of math and had kind of zoned him out when he asked me something. I said, "Sweetie, I don't know." He said, "Yes, you do. What is it?" I said, "No, I'm serious. Ask Dad. I was not good at math in school." Mal looked at me and said dismissively, "Oh, Mom, you don't need school!" Guess we've already indoctrinated him?

Mal doesn't know, but he and I are going on a tiny trip for his birthday. He has been begging to go to a hotel recently, especially after we visited my parents when they were overnighting near the airport for their 50th anniversary trip. On his actual birthday (the party is the weekend before), we're going to drive up to Dallas for a couple of days. I'm really looking forward to that.

Right now, Mal's favorite toys are the Micro Machines Millennium Falcon we got about a month ago, his "Numberblocks" (but not really) magnetic blocks we lucked into, and his Sonic the Hedgehog figures. He still plays with his Cars some, but not as much as he did this time last year. He went through a big Teen Titans Go! phase earlier this year, but that seems to be waning. He also went through a Mario stage, and we even got him a Nintendo Switch with Mario Party. I think James and I are going to get games we want to play (like Scribblenauts for moi!) since Mal doesn't seem super interested in it at the moment. He likes to watch Numberblocks and Gumball on YouTube; he watched and re-watched a ton of Clarence before his Kindle cleared the cache so YouTube can't remember what he tends to enjoy.

Oh, speaking of that, we had a second Kindle charge port crap out, so I found a relatively inexpensive iPad 3 on eBay that he's been using the past couple of days. He loves to play Woody Puzzle and Happy Glass.

Now he's saying he wants some Skittles, and since it's 10:00 PM, that sounds about par for the course. Night, all.

Mass Shootings and Gun Rights

Last weekend, 31 people were slaughtered in 2 separate (and probably unrelated) mass shootings.

The "really" nasty one was pretty cut and dried. Some asshole in Texas decided to do something about all the brown people who are "corrupting" "our" country, drove around 10 hours to El Paso, and then shot up a Wal-Mart because it had a bathroom available.

Laura tells me that there were several people there with concealed carry licenses, along with their handguns.

I'll be honest: If I happened to be carrying a handgun (no comment), and if I heard gunshots happening...I honestly don't know what I'd do.

Before I got married and had a couple of kids, that would have been easy. Of *course* the answer was "Take that fucker down hard, now."

I have an advantage there: my skin is very pale, so the cops probably wouldn't have murdered me for being armed when they showed up.

The "problem" (from a conservative gun-owner stance) here is that liberals want to add more restrictions to firearm ownership.

From an asshole-douchebag stance, so does President Trump.

He wants to do something to keep guns out of the hands of the "crazies."

That's valid.

If you're the sort of person who's willing to walk into a Wal-Mart (or a nightclub) and shoot the fuck out of everybody...you're probably insane.

But tarring everyone else with that same brush simply is not fair.

If you can come up with a way to generally identify white supremacists and keep weapons out of their hands, that seems reasonable.

If you can find a reasonable way to spot check violent assholes and people who are on the verge of suicide...saving lives is obviously a good thing.

How are you going to do that?

How do you identify the real threats?

The Part of the Year That Sucks

It sprinkled a bit on Saturday, and you'd have thought we won the lottery. The child and the chickens were so happy. But here we are again, with 100-degree highs and zero rain in the forecast for the next two weeks. Blehh. I hate this part of summer. I guess I mostly hate summer. It was pretty mild until about the second week in July. I'm ready for a break in this crap already. Ugh.

Hey, here's something fun: I can see decay on ANOTHER tooth in Mal's mouth. Hopefully, I caught it early enough that doubling up on brushing and finally forcing him to use fluoride will help. I guess he just has super porous teeth. We can't go in for another cleaning/fluoride treatment until January. I'm going with another dentist's office, because... I just am. We have friends who are really happy with their dentist's office. Then again, her kid doesn't have cavities (and brushes maybe once a week), so he sounds like D. D LOVED the dentist, because it was always kudos for no cavities.

Something funny I was thinking about the other day: I don't remember brushing D's teeth. Like ever. I know I did, up to a certain point. But I have no memory of it. Or of when we went from baths to showers. All lost to the ages.

I deleted my Instagram account yesterday. I'm still on Twitter, but who knows for how much longer. Social media is the way that many activists I enjoy communicate most, but also, I know I'm in an echo chamber. AND people hate re-tweet (or screen cap and then share) so much, then the same talking points are heaved on both sides, and it's just tiring. I'm still using groups on Facebook under a fake name, so I can follow "Be the Bridge" and a hyper-local inclusion group, and a smaller (than Austin) area homeschool group, as well as Buy Nothing.

The only thing I miss about social media is sharing cool pictures with everyone. As much as I have always enjoyed writing, I think I increasingly process stuff visually. Before Google Photos sucked up Picasa, you could just make your entire photo page public, and I'm sad that I have to share each individual album with people I want to see my pictures. Most likely, nobody cares about this nearly as much as I do.

The chickens are around 16 weeks old. Their combs are getting increasingly red/pink. This is/can be an indicator of sexual maturity, and on average, Easter Eggers can lay as early as 20 weeks. I'm hoping it will cool down a bit before they have to start working on that, though.

I joined an online chicken forum, and asked people more knowledgable than I: apparently, the seller was right and all six birds are pullets! I'm so glad, as we really like them all and wouldn't want to have to break up "the set" if any of them were cockerels. But also, there's a likelihood that we may end up with a couple dozen eggs every week! Some weeks, we go through that many (especially when Mal was loving scrambled eggs -- which he now hates -- and D is on a ramen kick). Otherwise, if we have excess, I think I'm going to offer half a dozen eggs at a time for free to whoever wants them. It'll be a nice way to meet more neighbors. Maybe I'll use them as a welcome wagon gift, with all of the new construction and people moving in.

Mal and I are going to go see the live-action Dora movie tomorrow, and I'm actually super excited. It looks very cute. Yes, I'm a dork. After that, he wants to go to the Lego store (which is so very far away) and see if they have any Minecraft mini-figs. So that'll keep us mostly indoors and air conditioned tomorrow.

One good thing: This heatwave makes me really glad we got solar panels! We're using a bit under 20 kWh of PEC electricity on the hottest days, which is less than a third of what we were using before. So that's pretty exciting.

Tomorrow is my parents' 50th anniversary! They're on a cruise and will be arriving in Quebec City in the morning, then will finish up this trip in Montreal for a couple of days. I want to go back to Montreal soon. And Glacier National Park. And I'd love to go to Yellowstone for the first time. Basically, I'd love to just travel for a year or so. D could take care of the chickens and the cats, so it'd totally work out. I should definitely start a GoFundMe, right? Right??