~ Retired and Starting My Future In The Foothills ~ - Page 120

Yesterday, I almost didn't go to work because I woke up with a very bad headache.  Very bad.  And some nausea...  I decided if I had to pull over to vomit, I'd call in sick then, before I actually turned the car around to head home.  Made it to work.  My supervisor recognized "not a good morning" and acknowledged it.  I made it through the day. 

Well, this morning, I woke up to the 8 AM alarm (just a bare 3 hours later than on week-days) with a demon inside my head, playing with my inside gyroscope and doing something just terrible in my gut.  The top of my head felt pulpy - not to actual touch, but I kept touching it to make sure it WASN'T pulpy like it felt. Light hurt.  Lovely - a freakin' migraine.  And an hour until that contractor guy was scheduled to arrive, which would normally be a nice event.  I'm gonna have to tell him I can't "assist" him, and stay inside in the cool, dim house. 

Oh, yah, and I have to look for the bunnies. 

Well, one of the baby rabbits was sitting in the hutch, drinking from the fresh water bottle I'd put up the previous night, even though there weren't any bunnies in it at the time.  A little girl bunny, she scooted out and around me, loping JUST ahead of me - not all that fast but literally an inch ahead of my fingers the entire length of the porch. And off it, across the side yard past some chickens, down the driveway and across onto one of the terraces.  A few minutes later, I saw a second youngster sitting in a sunny spot.  I added baby carrots to the food dish in the bottom of the hutch as a lure.  Especially since that little bunny girl had come back to the hutch on her own.

Two or three more times throughout the day, one or the other of those two rabbits would amble across from one side of the yard to the other.  Right past chickens.  The chickens showed some interest, but not much.  I'm guessing they'd already made their introductions during those the 13 hours I was away from the house on Thursday and Friday.  <*she said, wryly.*>  

John showed up about 9:30 and I warned him I had a very bad headache and might not be much of a "helper" today.  He had aspirin, offering some to me.  He also had a container of the soup he'd made, which happened to be chicken noodle & lots and lots of vegetables. "Here - this is proof I really do cook.  Oh, I could just be one of those people who claims they cook, but don't really make things from scratch, but now you know I do cook." 

"Oh, I'm really urpy, and I wouldn't want to lose any of something so special."

"Well," he said, "If you lose it, it wasn't very special.  If you don't, then it's the best soup you've ever tasted, good for breakfast or lunch."

I put it in the refrigerator for later, after my stomach wasn't so touchy about bright light, loud noises and movement.  Lateral movement was bad enough, but any change in the vertical, or of altitude, and I felt urpy.  Not a good helper at all.

He got to work unloading equipment and staging tools and materials.  I sat on the stoop, shading my eyes from the sun, but appreciating the warmth from sitting in it.  After a while, I felt okay enough to want a second cup of coffee (I'd already consumed one cup upon rising, which had come up shortly afterward).  "John, I'm going to go make myself a cup of coffee - would you like one?"  He accepted the offer. 

When I came back with both cups, he said, "That quick?"  So I explained I use a Keurig coffee maker, which brews coffee a cup at a time.  "Ah, always a fresh cup then!  Nice."   He took a sip, made an appreciative face, and went back to work.

After a bit, talking briefly about the escaped rabbits, the over-turned auto-waterer, and watching George go through a full-fledged, all out attack on John's boot, I felt well enough to stand up and lean against one of the deck posts to interact in actual construction-type conversations.  True, these exchanges were more along the size of "What's that?" and the answers, or responding to "What do you think of this?" questions, but they required actual, cognitive thought.  I got better at it after a time.  Well enough to want to try a bowl of soup.

Which I savored.  In a bowl decorated like a chicken, with head and tail-feather projections to hold it with more stability.  It was wonderful. So I said so, between spoons of it. He proceeded to tell me its ingredients - including the stock and seasonings and the noodles he'd made himself - and how they were utilized.  And what he sometimes changed. 

It was impressive.  Might even be more so if I knew exactly what cumin does and why it matters in what order one puts something into a .... well, anything one cooks from scratch.  But apparently the chopped garlic has to be added at this time, but the whole Brussels spouts, or the sliced mushrooms, or the peas and corn at a different time..... and when do the noodles go in? 

Anyway, it was truly a great soup.  Before too long, I was able to offer marginally more assistance.  Plus, my prescription medications stayed down, too. 

The deck now has trusses and posts for the railing and overhead cover have been cut to size and placed.  In the case of the three posts attached to the concrete footings, placed twice.  The second time was after the trusses had been set..  Y'see, the Magic String showed us exactly where those posts needed to be cut to be exactly the same height within a 32nd of an inch.  In order to get the BEST and cleanest cut, John decided to remove and cut 'em with his bench circular saw.  Otherwise, he'd have to get on a ladder, hold the small circular saw sideways and up in the air to make the cuts.  So he removed the twenty-bazillion screws from each post, cut it, put it back, matched all the screws to the same holes and re-installed 'em.  Having marked them where they abutted the lateral boards, we levered the deck frame up with two boards previously used as concrete post forms and a shovel.  "Fulcrum," I said, smugly, "and lever," pointing to each, to prove I knew something already. 

"Gold star!" 

However, later, I was corrected for using the word "level" when USING the level to determine if an upright object was also inside the bubble.  "That's "plumb." Flat this way is "level" and this is "plumb."  Do you know where that comes from?"

"Um, it relates to the drop of the plum-bob, right?"

"Very good.  But you can't keep calling plumb "level" and expect to earn respect from all the other construction workers."

All righty then.  I will remember that.

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The reason you don't see any chickens in the photos is because I put up a Tether Cabbage to distract them for part of the day.

Sunday is obviously a day during which many, many people do not wish to work.  Especially this particular Sunday.  My contractor is "taking the day off" and will return on Monday to install the truss braces, lay the deck boards, and get started on the cover and railings.

The two bunnies I saw throughout the day - and which John would point out when he saw one - returned to the hutch and even got up into its second level.  I closed the bottom gate and latched it with the carabiner I bought yesterday.  Two down, only six more to go.

As I exited my driveway for a dog food run, my next door neighbor Carl Jr pulled up in his pick-up to talk to me.  He wanted to let me know the reason HE had attended the special meeting at the Retiree's house was to ensure nobody said, "Carl said this, Carl said that."  I reassured him I totally understood the roosters were disturbing him and his father.  "Yes, but you got rid of some of them and I'd noticed it was already quieter."  Next to him, his son said something to him.  "Oh!  Do you have a rabbit?"

They saw one in their yard, at first mistaking it for a cat.  "That's the most messed up cat I've ever seen," he said he'd thought.  Then it hopped away and they knew it was a rabbit.  But what kind? And does Linda have a rabbit? 

I 'splained about the Mass Lionhead Bunny Escape.  So, they'll try to catch any they find in their yard. 

Lizbeth now has full run of the house. She returns to the guest room even when the two dogs are up on the day bed.  She's very affectionate.  She still goes to sleep in the wicker cat bed, still uses the litter box in the guest room, and there's been no drama today. 

In the early evening before dusk, quite a few chickens discovered the deck joist boards.  It was Chicken Headquarters on those boards for some time.  They also discovered they could crane their necks to see in through the French door window panels.  Lizbeth sat there to watch them watching her for quite some time.

Tomorrow I'm going wabbit hunting in earnest. 

Well, yesterday I slept until 11 AM, then napped on and off until 3:30 PM.  Not much wabbit hunting time.  Nor any success at finding more of them.  And I misspoke - only four to find, not six, as I have two already in the hutch.

Very late in the afternoon, a large collection of chickens perched on the deck trusses.  I got a shot of Alex and Hitchcock.

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I took four hours off work this afternoon to come home and interfere with my contractor's work.  I mean, to assist him.  <*innocent expression*>  I have to teach a class on Tuesday and another on Wednesday and I didn't do laundry this weekend.  Kinda have to wear "presentation" attire, so I'll have that ready. 

All the metal braces were installed on each truss and John was measuring for the 3 notches in the first deck board.  My job was to sand down the sharp edges of each board, even inside the cut notches.    Here's the work completed today.     

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This is my Amy.  Isn't she adorable? 

It's supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow.  We could use it.  The deck work will have to be suspended for the duration, though. 

Lizbeth has become more and more affectionate and does not react negatively to Zorro or Dooley when they come into the guest room.  A little while ago, she jumped into my lap here at the computer and I spent some time loving on her.  Then the silkie chicks had a burst of chirping, so Lizbeth got down to go study their movements.  She's fallen asleep watching them and is now curled up into the compact cat circle on top of the silkie cage.

Oh!  Last night I called back a fellow who had left a message on my answering machine about the roosters.  He wanted two, also checking to see if I would give him two hens PER rooster, so he'd get four hens and two roosters.  Yes.  Then I tried to give him directions here, which he had trouble understanding.  All of a sudden, he said, "That's an hour and a half away!  That's too much - not worth it for chickens."  He disconnected, just like that.

Oh.  Well.  Okay, then.  I don't think he knew much about chickens, even though he'd said he had 11 acres and a coop.  Hmmm.  Comparing notes with HHandbasket about the conversation, it seems it may be the same guy who called her once about roosters she advertised on CraigsList.  He wanted them on his schedule; when she wouldn't deliver the roosters within the next hour of his call, he just said driving to her place wasn't worth it for chickens.  And disconnected just as abruptly.

HH and Farmer Lew are coming over this evening and will pick up one of the Cardigan boys to keep in their flock.  Just 'cause they're so darned cute. We're guessing Cardigan and Ross - who look so much alike - are Frick's offspring, and Nugget fertilized the egg from which Joey hatched.  Earlier when I had been admiring Nugget aloud, to John, he said, "Linda, all your roosters are good looking.  There's not an ugly chicken in your flock.  And those geese are magnificent."

Honestly, unless they're sick - or molting!- I can't see how any chicken wouldn't be cute or good-looking.  But I have to admit I have some pretty gorgeous poultry!

The interior of my house is getting more and more ship-shape as each week passes.  Lordy, but I love my cleaning lady!  The dining table (in the kitchen - no separate dining "room") actually has some of its surface visible!  More and more things have found Their Places in the cupboards, too.  It's like a sort of strange, full-sized Advent Calendar, opening a cupboard and finding something that makes such perfect sense in that spot. 

After being teased about it, I took down my artificial Solstice tree last night.  HHandbasket and Farmer Lew came over with dinner.  They took Cardigan home with them to join their flock.  HH wanted to see the progress on the deck; as it was cold outside and we were in the guest room, I simply opened the French door so they could look at how much of the deck John had completed.  Lizbeth came out of her kitty bed and went right out that door. As debiraymond would say, "Craptastic."

Well, Farmer Lew doesn't just whisper chickens - he also witches cats back.  She came to him but wasn't happy about being picked up and handed back through that door.  (He was standing on the ground between the uncovered deck trusses closest to the house.)  Once she was back inside the house, she lashed her tail a bit, as cats are wont to do when they are irritated.  But she still wound her way around our legs. 

I had to go outside to get something to show HH and FL.  Earlier in the day, when I was puttering about filling yard waterers when there were no sharp edges to sand down at that particular period of time, I had trouble with one of them. It has to have the top screwed on quite tightly to make a vacuum.  I couldn't get the top off.  Because I tend to talk to myself (or to chickens and ducks, geese, dogs, cats, bunnies, sparrows, trees, my Crocs, burnt out light-bulbs, a whole myriad of animate and inanimate objects) John heard me utter an expletive.  "Do you need some help?"  I admitted I did.  He came over and removed the top with very little effort.  "I have poor strength in my hands," I explained.  (Probably not for the first time.)

He returned to his portable work bench and what I called a circular saw but he said was something else whilst I filled that recalcitrant waterer and couple more of them.  I had chicken followers which I conversed with during these tasks.  John said, "Here - this should help.  I made a wrench for you."

And he had.  A wooden wrench which fits exactly into the top of the waterer to make it easy for me to loosen it.  He'd picked up a bit of scrap two-by-four and sawed it into a wrench.  Just like that.  

Farmer Lew admired the wrench a great deal.  Quick fix solutions like this are his forte, so he was as impressed as was I.  I will have to take a picture of the wrench inserted into the waterer lid, because it's such a hoot.

John's solution for the auto-waterer which the geese over-turned was to use some of the Magic String to make a loop stretched tightly over its lid, then tie the two ends of the string to nails in the board upon which the unit rested. Far simpler than what I had thought would solve the problem. (However, I suspect it won't be too long before the geese manage to mess with that string enough to dislodge it.  John doesn't quite understand the cleverness of geese and how they can utilize  their bills to disassemble stuff.)

As per John's instructions, I bought a gallon of white, semi-gloss enamel paint with built in primer when I was "out and about" on my lunch break. This is to paint the balustrades for the deck railing.  When I entered Home Depot, the commercial sales associate called out to me, "Hey, girl!  Where have you been?"  He is the guy who always helped me when I was buying tools and materials to build my coops.  So I stopped and chatted with him a bit, telling him I had moved to the Foothills.  He shared his news: he now has chickens!  So we talked a while longer about his flock. 

Makes me feel good to know I brought another person into the coop, so to speak. 

Well, here's the wrench made especially for me to use with the one "difficult" waterer in the yard.  (The other waterers are easy enough for me to fill without trouble.)

John came by this morning to check on the condition of the ground around the deck area after the recent rain.  I had called in sick, so I was home at the time.  We discussed the next steps he will take tomorrow and Saturday.  I am to tarp the partially completed deck surface so mud and/or Chicken Evidence won't get ground into it by foot traffic once he starts working on that surface. Then we went inside to drink coffee and sit on the sofa while he perused the channels available in my DirecTV package.  (He has Dish Network.)   He doesn't get National Geographic, the Military Channel or SPEED and is considering upgrading his satellite TV service.  It appears we have similar tastes, although I'm not a sports fan; the ESPN stuff and other sports channels aren't important to me.  We checked out the HD music channels - not the video ones, just the ones that play music.  Hmm.  Then back to scanning for "good" channels.  There was something about the variety of cichlids and how quickly they mutate into different types of feeders which cannot breed with the other types of cichlids. 

There was discussion during this interlude and I practically choked on my coffee when he mused aloud, "I wonder if fish get thirsty?"  Once I recovered, I posed my own question: "What do you think chairs would look like if our knees bent the other way?"  He nodded, then added - just that quickly - "Or if we had tails."

He loved on Lizbeth for a while - "She's a GREAT cat, Linda!"  then left to go home.  The chickens followed him all the way down the driveway to the gate, but wandered back after he drove away.

HHandbasket and Farmer Lew came over this afternoon after they found out I had called in sick.  We went a'hunting eggs, as I had not gathered any for two days.  One location I hadn't checked for five days after gathering about 18 eggs from it.  Y'see, many of the old kit coops from the back yard where I used to live are now here, too.  They have nest boxes in them; some hens must "remember" using them in the past.  But the eggs in each spot are - for the most part - segregated by color.  Really.

MOST of the white eggs, large fowl and bantam, are being laid in the Infirmary Coop, as it's not occupied right now.  Most of the lighter brown eggs, green eggs, and light olive eggs found in the coop in the Formal Nest Boxes.    Darker brown and a few blue eggs are located in the coop on the first terrace.  Some more dark brown, light brown and the bantam green eggs are in the kit coop near the Official Coop.  A new nest of only pinkish-brown eggs has been found ON THE GROUND in a hollow dug under a section of the Chicken Bush.  Probably the Cinnamon Queens started that collection spot.

Nobody is setting on any of these eggs.  Whew! 

I have wonderful friends! During the day yesterday, while I was at work, my friends HHandbasket and Farmer Lew let themselves into my house and cleared the living room floor of boxes and stuff.  They put the boxes in the shed and packaged up most of the other stuff into more boxes and put them into the shed, too.  There's just some little stuff for me to either put away or discard.

The propane heater installation team is due to arrive here between 8 and 9:30 AM on Monday morning; I confirmed "we are a go" as scheduled. 

John was working on the deck when HH and FL arrived - she told me they "caught him" playing with my chickens.  As in reaching for the closest hen or rooster to pick it up.  And talking gently to the chicken in his arm while he calmed it.  I've seen him do that a few times before so it wasn't at all surprising to me.  What, doesn't everyone's contractor pick up their chickens?? 

The floor of the deck is complete so I can open the French door and step out onto the deck surface.  He's got the outermost horizontal board for the half-deck cover up, too, with the first supporting boards as triangles at either end of the run.  HH and FL had some questions for him about mechanical issues with her scooter, Bella Rosa.  He gave them his card and they'll talk later.  

Having spoken on the phone Friday night, I wasn't surprised to see "Blocked" show up on my phone's Caller ID this morning.  We'd planned for him to come over and finish the construction portion today. He called to ask how wet it had gotten with the overnight rain.  Wet enough to make it not a pleasant day for anyone to repeatedly walk from a portable work bench to the deck to hang the other horizontal boards. Even with the tarps over the surface of the deck.  Ah well.

But we talked on the phone for a while about building a BIG pond for the waterfowl.  Sure they have the stock tank, but they're just swimming in circles in it, he reasoned.

While we were talking, he Googled "ponds for geese" to get some ideas of a good pond size for 'em.  I suggested he go look at BackyardChickens.com and choose the Duck forum.  So he did.

The first thread he found with photos of someone building a duck pond captivated him.  He admired the work and we discussed the construction steps at some length, including a drain, filter and pump.  He also liked the photo of the duck peering over the edge of the nearly completed pond, waiting for it to be filled with water.  Do I want to have the pond dug out of one of the terraces or built ON the ground, using the terrace wall as the fourth side of the pond?  Hmm.  Gotta think on that.  We are talking something at least 10 feet wide, maybe 15, by 15 or 20 feet in length. 

So that is another Project on the list.

Lizbeth jumped into my lap a little while ago.    Right now, however, she's standing on her hind legs, chasing an outside moth batting against the French door glass panes.