Night Rain

Posted on by September 21, 2009

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There is something about a mobile home that I never thought about until I bought one of my own.

The weather and the outdoors are a lot closer than a traditional stick built home. You can hear the rain and the wind and the crickets at night. You can hear people talking outside sometimes, and you can hear the UPS truck pull up, or for that matter, anyone that pulls up.

But what I love most is a night rain.

When the house is super quiet and you are half asleep and gently you hear the sound of raindrops on the air conditioner shell… then on the roof. And the sound of the crickets gets silent as the rain falls harder. A light rain is nice, and a good thunder storm is fantastic. Always wakes me up and I don’t mind at all.

It reminds me of sleeping in a tent, somewhat… it’s not exactly the same, but it brings those feelings back.

I remember the first big storm that I weathered in the moby… it was almost deafening and just a little scary. At first I didn’t know what was going on! Honest! I woke and I thought I felt the moby move, and it was just a little. The winds were so strong and the rain so hard, I think she was settling just a bit. We have super strong piered tie down straps and she’s stayed put for 30 years so I don’t think she’s going anywhere, at least not in a thunderstorm. Still… I remember laying there, wide awake and thinking “oh my gosh” this is TOO weird.

But now, heck, now, I live for these nights. And of course, now I’m wide awake and it’s 3:30 in the morning and the rain has stopped. The little frogs are croaking and the crickets are back to singing. And there is a train whistle way off in the background and I can even hear the sound of the wheels on the tracks. Pretty cool.

Well, I better try and get back to sleep. I get to drive Jessy to college tomorrow morning and then pick her back up later on. And I have to take the van in to get the window fixed and HOPEFULLY see my baby Taurus in the shop and take some decent photos of her. She got towed to the shop and they are going to start taking the trans apart this week. I am crossing my fingers and hoping that it’s just something simple… one of those “ahah!!!!” moments and it’s a $87 dollar part that needs to be replaced and it’s perfect!!! That would be something, wouldn’t it?

You just never know. So yeah, I need to get back to sleep. Typing blog posts in the dark is not a good way to do that, so I must say “good night” …..

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Very Disturbing….

Posted on by September 20, 2009

 
 

I will warn you. I did not watch the video. I could not.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090902/ap_on_go_ot/us_egg_hatchery_investigation

I am really slapped in the face about this one. You know, just standing there and feeling the sting of it all and thinking about it and realizing that oh my gosh… yeah…. if you want commercial egg business, you need only females. And if you’re backyard egg farming, you’re getting your girls from the hatcheries and heck, most cities have no rooster rules.

All because we can’t tolerate their crowing.

So we have a surplus of nearly 50% of the chickens commercially hatched. No one wants them.

Just one commercial hatchery claimed to sell out 33 million chicks to the meat and egg industries. What happened to the OTHER 33 million boy chicks???

The grinder.

Oh my gosh. That just makes me ill to think about. Forget this whole “feel-good” green crap about paper or plastic, or making a huge impact by doing little things… we need to start tackling more of the BIG things… like this? No more commercial eggs for us. No more.

We had been getting out eggs from a fellow, but he went and butchered his flock and stopped laying for awhile. So I was buying them at the farmer’s market, but occasionally buying them from the store… but no, no more. I’m not buying any more eggs from the store. Ever. I can’t even think of eating a commercial egg anymore, not after reading that article and putting two and two together.

Why can’t someone raise all those little roosters for meat? What is wrong with rooster meat? I mean… can’t they be raised for a few months then humanly slaughtered? Of course, they would be factory raised and that is also totally disgusting… like 48 chickens to a 3 foot area without hardly room to turn around and all that. Oh my gosh, there is just not a good answer to this all. Is there?

These are the things that really bother me. The feedlot meat industry…. the chicken and pig factory farms… we would never do that to kitties or puppies… yet I guess it’s okay for little piglets or baby calves… or unwanted little roosters. But the grinder? Alive? My gosh, how barbaric!

Why can’t they be gassed? A little sleepy gas to kill them in their sleep. And let me guess… this bloody chick pulp… where does that go? To that mythical farm in the country where they bury them, just like what vets tell you when you euthanize the family dog? (which ain’t true, sorry to say)

No, probably to a rendering plant so it can show up in your dog food, or worse, as chicken or cattle feed.

The answer is NOT to just stop eating factory food, or commercial eggs, etc. The answer is to eat these things raised by farmers with a conscious. Or to raise your own. If we would stop using these products, and search for those that are making a difference, like grassfed beef or freerange chickens and eggs, etc., there would be more and more of a market for these products and people would begin to ramp up their offerings of these products. It’s not going to be overnight, no way. But we have to start somewhere. Start by searching out a local egg producer. Yeah, they might be getting their eggs from a hatchery. But it’s a start. If you’re lucky, you can get eggs from someone that actually lets their hens go broody and hatch the next generation of layers. That would be a perfect situation.

And consider finding someone with local grown beef or pork or any meat you eat. Check Craigslist! I can’t believe how many people are offering home grown meat to folks. Yeah, the drawback is that you need to buy half a cow or hog or whatever. If some of these folks were a little better at marketing, they would drop that down some, to a quarter hog or less. Not everyone has a freezer yet.

Okay. That’s my next need. A freezer. And to find a solid source for local eggs and meat. Thankfully we don’t use a lot of milk. But I still am looking for a local dairy for buttermilk for butter and cream. I’m very proud to say that it’s been almost 2 months now and I’ve successfully stayed out of a Walmart, Miejers, and those big box food/junk places. It’s been hard, at first. But now, I don’t even consider them as resources. Not even on my flight plan.

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So Proud of Maggie….

Posted on by September 19, 2009

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CAUTION!!! Mom bragging on a kid coming up…. Please pass this post by if you’re not interested…… but I just gotta BRAG on this kid a little bit!!!!!

Yes, my baby. Maggie. My youngest child. Of two. She’s 15 and well, she’s had a rough ride of things… she’s an autistic kid, with some learning delays and it’s really the main reason that we started homeschooling. My old kid was have a few issues as well, so we said, we can’t do any worse than they were having at the time in school… so we started homeschooling about 8 years ago and never looked back! Jessy is going great, in her second year of college and doing wonderfully. And Maggie just tested out to be really close to her age appropriate skill levels for her K12 classes!!! Considering that she only just became a fluent reader about a year, year and a half ago, max… we are SUPER proud of her.

But, really…. something super cool happened last week. To me, it was just simply wonderful.

Jessy used to do all our order fulfillment. She was great at it. She packed orders, made her rock kits, and oversaw all the business of our hard goods sales. I loved it! I pretty much was only involved in the order process of stock. And of course, toting the stuff to the post office. But she did everything else.

And then the rotten kid went and started college!!!! HAHA… And now all the sudden, with her big deal 15 credit hour class schedule, and harder classes and all in her second year… well, guess who gets to do all the order fulfillment again? (sigh….) Me.

(I’m being silly, of course, I want Jess to have all the time in the world to deal with the more important priority in her life at the moment… but still, it is a big paradigm shift for me! Back in the order desk room!!!)

Well, of course, I was having some trouble getting back into the swing of things. Having my other work to do, and then the school and college schedules and all to adjust to, and now, all the orders, too? Talk about overwhelmed Mom here. And add a couple huge orders that were late and some mad customers… well… it was not a pretty picture.

But then, something wonderful happened.

Maggie asked if she could help. And I’ll be perfectly honest… I thought, no, that’s okay… I can handle it, but then I thought, no… that’s dumb. Yeah, a year or two ago, she couldn’t really handle it. It was primarily the reading issues. Hard to pack an order when you can’t read the invoice and can’t type in the addresses to our mailing program, and things like that. So I thought, yeah, let’s give it a whirl.

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Of course… Jack approved. After all, it was Maggie’s kindness that gave him a home. He’s a big fan of Maggie!
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And of course, Lune knew that Maggie would be awesome help. After all, Luna sits and watches how diligent and focused Maggie has been with her online school. She’s almost logged in 100 hours in less than a MONTH!!! I kid you not. She’s been doing all that they ask and more. And not one whisper of complaint or lack of dedication. She loves it. Well, maybe not LOVES it… well, no… she loves the history and the science. She likes the art. Math and language arts? Well, those are not favs yet… but at least she’s giving it a good honest try.

So we started out. First I had her helping to bag pounds of rocks and she was using the scale and packing and worked like she’d been doing it for years. And then she started to pull stock, read the invoices and find the products that were needed. I had her set it aside, each order and I would check it, which she was fine with. And she made not a single mistake. It was perfect, every order. So then we both were packing orders and boxing them up… and she asked if she could address them! And dang it… a little part of me started to say no no, that’s okay and I said, no to my stuck brain and thought patterns of old… and told her, sure, give it a try!

After all, what would be the harm? A messed up box? I asked if I could check it before we printed the label from Endicia, and she was fine with that. To be honest, a double check is a good thing… good customer service and makes it easier to catch any mistakes.

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Larry in Arizona? You might have a few little super duper proud Mom tears on your package!! (g) I hope you don’t mind! Naw, I nearly felt a little teary though with just bust-a-gut pride. She did a great job! Even the one turned around D… well, hey, we’re working on that! I knew what she ment and Jessy was able to read it just fine.
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Jessy came home from school as we were finishing up the evening’s orders and at first she was a little puzzled to see Maggie doing “her” job… but then she started in like a good big sister and was giving her pointers and help in getting things perfect. But to be honest, Maggie knew the whole routine and was doing wonderfully!!!!

It was just so cool to me. I mean, she’s been paying attention all this time and knew our routines and was just waiting for a chance to show us that she’s growing up so wonderfully and talented. Her eager spirit and her focus on getting things done right is so strong. I’m so stinking proud of her! She’s still got challenges ahead of her. No doubt. And Maggie can find some social interactions puzzling and problematic, but every week, every day, she’s getting so much more accustomed to the ways people act and react and how to deal with it.

I just love it when she talks about when SHE learns to drive and when SHE is going to college and all. I know she’ll do those things and so much more. Maybe not on the same schedule as most of the world, but I don’t care. She’ll do it in Maggietime and that’s all that is important to me. And now she’s got a new job too! (hahaha)

Oh shoot. Another kid employee to have to start paying!!! She even asked me how much order filling pays!!! I told her she was an apprentice right now and that we’d talk. She told me that since we didn’t have a guild and I wasn’t an official master craftsman at order filling, then she couldn’t be an apprentise!

Dang, it’s bad to educate these kids in Medieval business practices! Okay, okay… yeah, paydays are once a month…
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Jack is very good at supervising the whole process for me. He is one funny cat.

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