The Infirmary

It's Friday and I am still sick with this cold. And to top it off, so is Abby. Justina is still a little bit congested. It was a prety boring and non-productive day. I took a little nap when Abby napped. And this is the first Friday of Lent, which means no meat. (That is not a worry because I don't have much of an appetite for anything really.) One of my favorite things to do on Lent Fridays is to go to Stations of the Cross. But I didn't go tonight. I am still feeling too lousy.

Talking Turkeys in 2009

Alyssa holding one of the chicks on the way home.

Every year, the City of San Juan Capistrano celebrates the returning of the swallows to their community. Today a different bird has returned to our house. Turkeys! (Albeit not the same ones as last year.) Our 4-H Turkey Project met at Farm Supply in Santa Maria to pick up their turkey chicks. Alyssa ordered three and now they are brooding in a 4 x 4-foot enclosure in our garage.

The 4x4 foot brooding pen in our garage. This is where the chicks will live the

next six to eight weeks before moving to a coop outside.

Now this is really a fun project. These things literally grow before your eyes. What Alyssa feeds and says good-bye to in the morning, will have noticeably grown by the time she returns from school in the afternoon. In about 6 to 8 weeks, they will get their feathers and move to an outside coop. And in about 10 weeks, we will begin to see if they are toms or hens. Our club tried to ordered them sexed, meaning a specific gender, but Farm Supply was only ordering straight runs. With a straight run, you just get what you get.

Turkey trifecta!

These are not the brightest of the bird world. They are not a heartier heritage breed like you see in Thanksgiving decor. They will grow into plain white birds, which is what the Fair requires. They are stupid and hellbent on dying. So the kids raise at least 2 or 3, in the hopes that there is one decent bird in the bunch that survives and makes weight for the Fair. Already, we are keeping an eye on one in particular. It is not as active as the others and the other two dominate it. So we will see what happens.

I wanted to include a picture and update on Nasty Nelly, one of the New Zealand rabbits we are caring for. Nelly has calmed down a great deal. She is still skittish but she no longer leaps out at me when I go to take her out of her cage. As I mentioned earlier, I feed her hay with the cage door opened. And the food dish for the pelleted feed is actually on the cage door which she can still reach when its opened. She is now actually eating out of it as I am filling the dish up. I take her out about two to three times a day and just pet her, especially around her ears and face to get her used to my hands. When the time comes for the kids to breed the does to the buck, I will still use caution and have one of the older and more experienced kids in the group put her in Pink Eye's cage.

Justina with Nasty Nelly, one of the New Zealand does we will use for the 4-H Market Rabbit Project

In Other News . . .

It is a joke in our house that when James is travelling on business, the kids usually get sick. Well Abby had a fever throughout Tuesday night. She was very clingy and cuddly and slept in my bed. Needless to say, I was up for most of the night with her. Yesterday morning was Ash Wednesday. Amanda, Alyssa, and Justina were going to Mass through their schools and would receive ashes there. Since Abby was sick though, I figured I would go to the 5:30 pm Mass at our local parish.

Oddly enough though , by 9 or 10 o'clock though, she was happy as a clam and feeling allright. However, by 4 p.m., I was not feeling all that hot. Or actually I was, but feverish hot. And I was getting really congested and achey allover. I ended up not going to Mass. I handed Alyssa my credit card and told her to order meatless pizza. Then I took a three hour nap. Later that night, a good family friend came by to help us set up the brooding pen in the garage. I watched The Biggest Loser (blue team, what were you thinking?!) and went to bed, unable to sleep because I felt miserable. If only I could bounce back like Abby, if only.

After Alyssa's 4-H meeting this afternoon, we ran home and got the chicks moved into their new digs. I loaded up Abby and Justina and we headed down to Santa Barbara to Alyssa's soccer practice. This was the first practice Alyssa has attended with her team since the late summer. She was happy to be back.

Until the next time, take care and God bless. :)

P.S. I hope to return to polling this weekend. If you have any poll suggestions, then feel free to e-mail them to catsdailypurls@gmail.com. In the meantime, feel free to register as a follower of the blog.

Lost in the Storm

For about a month, maybe a little bit longer, my cell phone has been on a downward trajectory towards death. I had a Palm Treo 700wp. When I made or received calls about 75% of the time, I could hear the person on the other line but they couldn't hear me. I kept getting a running out of memory error message even though most of my files were on a storage card. And then I could no longer send or receive text messages. So clearly, I needed a new phone. Well, I had to wait until today when I was finally eligible for an upgrade. I went with the Blackberry Storm. And boy howdy, am I ever lost!

Seriously! I have only had the stupid thing for five hours now and I have a migraine case of buyer's remorse. I used the heck out of my Treo. I used it for all sorts of reminders, appointments and dates, contacts, and internet. With all that I have to keep track of, a smartphone is definitely something that I need. But this phone is going to take some work trying to get it to that user friendly status. And at this point, I do not even know if I can do that. But I have 30 days to try it out. So we will see, I guess.

In Other News . . .

It is that time again. Time to start getting all the animals for Fair. This Sunday, I went to a rabbit show in Santa Maria and picked up a breeding trio of white New Zealand rabbits for the 4-h club's Market Rabbit Project. We have 7 kids who are taking meat pens to Fair this year. That is far more than we have had in the past. A rabbit meat pen is made up of three rabbits, same breed and color. They do not need to be from the same litter or be the same sex. The maximum weight is 5 pounds each, but they must weight within a certain ounce range of each other. This requires the member to monitor their feeding carefully, especially those last few days before judging.

Since we have at least 7 kids doing meat rabbits alone, I broke the Rabbit Project up into two separate projects - Market Rabbits (for production of meat pens for their Fair projects), and Rabbits (for pet keeping and showing). And with 7 kids (maybe 8 - I haven't heard confirmation yet from one kid), that would mean that we need 21 to 24 rabbits to make like pens of three. That's a lot of rabbits! And meat pen breeders are not supplying as much as in the past. One girl in the group has a breeding pair of Californians (another popular meat rabbit breed). The teen leader for the group has a white New Zealand doe. And I have the breeding trio in our garage right now. A trio is one buck (male) and two does (females). All the does will be bred on or around April 1st to ensure that the kits (baby rabbits) will be ready for Fair.

The buck's name is Pink Eye, since white New Zealands have pink eyes. And the does names are Val and Nelly. Justina named Val because she just liked the name. I named Nelly after she attacked me and bit me. She didn't break the skin (maybe a little scratch) but I have a nasty little welt and bruise on the side of my hand. Mean and nasty just like Nelly Olson in Little House on the Prairie. She has begun to calm down a bit. I leave the cage door open when I feed her hay. And she is eating by the opened door now as opposed to dragging the hay to the back of her cage. I think the surroundings are new and is just very defensive of her new abode. But I am not taking any chances. I have a special pair of leather gloves, just for her.

The meat pens will be judged for meat type, condition, and fur. The fur part probably sounds wierd since they are suppose to be meat rabbits. But traditionally, the hide had its own value as well. The judge will look at all the meat pens, weigh them, and place them. The kids auction their meat pens a few days later in the Small Stock Auction at the Fair. The buyer may chose to take them, usually as breeding stock for themselves, or they may just give them back to the exhibitor.

Thursday? Already?!

I cannot believe that it's Thursday already. We had a pretty big weekend that I wanted to write about. Well tomorrow is Friday and a new weekend is about to start again.

For starters, Justina had her last basketball game of the season this past Saturday. Although her team started out very slow in the beginning of the season, they just meshed beautifully in the last four games, which they won. It wasn't so much the fact that they won their last four games, as it was the dramatic improvement they made. And the last game was amazing. They dominated against one of the toughest teams in the 3rd Grade Division. In the last quarter, their opponents had many free throw opportunities and tied up the game. In the last two minutes, Justina shot the winning basket. (Insert thunping my chest with overwhleming pride here.) After the game, they celebrated the end of a great seaon at Giavanni's Pizza.

Sunday morning, a family friend, Justina, and I went to the Paso Robles Event Center in Paso Robles to see the Cal Poly's Western Bonanza Junior Livestock Show. Western Bonanza is one of the largest junior livestock shows in the west. Kids show swine, lambs, goats, steers, and heifers. Since Justina will be showing a lamb and a goat, I wanted her to watch some of the classes. And for me, it was a great opportunity to learn as well. Unfortunately, it was freezing cold. And by that afternoon, we were ready to go home. But while, Justina and I were checking out the show, Alyssa was having a little livestock adventure of her own.

That Sunday afternoon, Alyssa went with some of the kids in her 4-H Swine Project to Pork Palace in Gaviota. (Seriously. That is the name of the place.) The owner and breeder, Randy Jones, showed the kids the baby pigs and taught them how to castrate, notched the ears, give injections, and cut the tails. It wasn't much fun for the baby pigs. But the kids had a good time and learned a lot, especially Alyssa. I have been informed by some that she was a lean, mean, castrating machine. And I have the excited text message from her relaying her feats.

Since Justina had no school on Monday, I had arranged to go to Porterville to White Rail Ranch to look at some goats. Justina and I left around 7 a.m. It was pouring rain out. Since the weather was so cruddy starting out, I already didn't have a good feeling about the trip. I got all the way to Kettleman City where I had to stop and use the little bloggers' room. Now Justina had pretty much slept from our house to Kettleman, and that isn't quite like her. So I woke her up. She looked at me with red, glassy eyes. (Hmm . . . not too promising here.) I said that I didn't think she was feeling good. She just mumbled that she was very tired. Okay. . . So I called the breeder and told her that Justina wasn't feeling too great and we would have to meet another time. And back home we went.

Pretty much the rest of the day, Justina curled up with a blanket and pillow. And around 6 p.m., she fell asleep on the family room floor. By that evening, I wasn't feeling good either. And I thought for certain that Justina would miss school the next day. But she didn't. She is on a mission for Perfect Attendance for the School Year. She woke up at 6:30 a.m. and got ready. And we had our 4-H meeting that evening also. As quickly as she caught this bug, it left her. I wasn't so lucky though. It stayed with me for another day. And James even got stuck with it also.

Well that is pretty much the update. Until the next time, take care and God bless. :)

Feeling Blah

Justina and I are feeling kind of blah tonight. I'll catch you up later.

Image from www.smileys.on-my-web.com.

12 of 12 for February 2009

My alarm goes off at 5:00 a.m. Now this doesn't mean that I spring out of bed at 5:00. There might be a few hits of the snooze alarm. But I get up to take my thyroid medication about this time. Since I am suppose to take it on an empty stomach, taking it early in the morning means that when I do finally get up and around an hour or so later, I can eat breakfast with no worries.

Justina overslept this morning, which is very uncharacteristic of her. She really dislikes being late for school, and for her that means anytime within fifteen minutes before school starts. Actually, she prefers being there a half hour before school starts. She got up and got dressed and got there with fifteen minutes to spare.

Speaking of thyroid medication, I had to get my prescription of synthroid refilled. So after Abby and I dropped Justina off, we went to Walgreens.

Abby's blankie was pretty gross, in my opinion, and it really needed to be washed. It's actually white in color, not a dark ecru. So she put it in the washer to "give it a bath", poured in the detergent, and pushed the buttons. Of course, what happened while magic blankie was in the wash. She stubbed her toe, bumped her head, slipped on the kitchen floor, and cried for the blankie the whole time. Naturally, I had ran it on the longest cycle.

See this countertop. It is the most unusable space in my kitchen. It is not near the sink or refrigerator. So it is totally useless in food preparation. What it's function has been is to serve as the dumping ground for everyone's crap, junk mail, Gameboy, school papers, etc. I started to clean it last night and ran out of momentum. So I finished it off today.

What do I hate about tax time every year? Getting all thes necessary documents in to our accountant, that's what! And for some reason he expects them on time. I got all the papers except for the pick-up registration. It needs to be smogged this Saturday before we can get that from the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Here's Abby waking up from her nap with her clean blankie. Notice the magical transformation from ecru to white.

Alyssa wanted to go see the St. Joe's boys varsity soccer team play Santa Ynez this evening. She invited Justina to tag along with her. She also wanted to drive. Here she is with Suburban keys and learner's permit in hand. And Justina is taking no chances as she clutches a bottle of holy water. Don't be surprised if you see a lot of Missing Cat signs in our neighborhood tomorrow. (Just kidding! She did fine.)

I left Alyssa and Justina at St. Joe's and went to Walgreens to get my prescription. I headed back for the second half of the game. SJHS' boys soccer team is not as strong as the girls'. And that is due in large part to the fact that club programs in this area are greater for girls than boys. Also, I don't think building the boys program has been focused on as much as on building the school's girls program. Santa Ynez beat the St. Joe's Knights 2-0.

Alyssa's friend, Tamara, took a picture of the three of us. The school principal's daughter is in Justina's class at school. He happened to be there with his children. So Justina got to hang out with them as Alyssa hung out with her friends.

When we got home, I slaved over dinner. James and I had planned on going out to the Santa Maria Gun Club to go shooting. Since this would be a pseudo date night, that meant pizza for the kids.In thirty minutes or less, dinner would be served.

That's me, or the back of my head rather. We were there for an hour, give or take. And we had a great time together.

BONUS PICTURE

This actually was taken last week. When it is bedtime for these two, Abby fails to realize that Justina actually wants to go to sleep. And Abby also doesn't realize that Justina cannot hear anything when she doesn't have her implant on. No matter how much she calls out her name, Justina just doesn't seem to answer her. So Abby's solution is to throw stuff at Justina. In an effort to escape from these projectile objects, Justina went into our room and went to sleep in my glider chair. Not to be left behind, Abby eventually went in to join her.

Until the next time, take care and God bless. :)

SPAM, the Scourge of the Internet

A few weeks ago, James installed a wireless modem from Verizon. Unfortunately, it just never seemed to work right. The connections were extremely slow and the browser would freeze constantly. Eventually, after a couple days, we couldn't connect at all. Of course, Alyssa had a homework assignment to do that required research on the internet and James was working out of town. So I called tech support. Three hours later of what seemed like forever, the person on the other line basically said that it must be our computer. Really? It worked fine before we hooked up the modem! Besides, all the other programs were working allright. Eventually, he agreed to send out a new modem, which meant we were without internet access for about a week. Well, lo and behold, James installed the new modem when it arrived, and viola!

Honestly, I don't know what is worse - being without the internet or having become so dependent upon the internet. It has become as essential as having a toilet or refrigerator in the house, of which I am a little ashamed to say. Fortunately, Alyssa's assignment was not due the next day after it completely stopped, which bought her a little time. But there was 4-H enrollment work that I had to finish online by a certain date. (And praise the Lord and pass the peas, that is all done.) My history and cookies got wiped out. So that was inconvenient. But the worse was checking my e-mail accounts.

One e-mail account had 2,000 messages in it, most of it SPAM. And then there is the e-mail connected to this blog. I am lucky to get a comment or two a month. But when I opened up my inbox, there were fifteen? The next day, five more. And the next days, there was more. That can't be right. Of course not, because the comments left were SPAM! And I am not talking about a salty canned meat product with an exorbitantly long shelf life. I finally just deleted everything. So if anyone who is not pushing something has sent me an e-mail, chances are it was destroyed in a scorched earth assault on the scourge of the internet, SPAM.

Poll Results

I would like to post the results from the New Year's Resolution Poll. Unfortunately, the Favorite Things About Winter Poll just didn't pan out. That was when the modem hibernated on us. There were 20 votes in the New Year's Resolutions Poll.

Well until the next time, take care and God bless. :)