Jinx isn't amused by my French Canadian traditions. Never mind Easter Egg Hunts, we prefer rabbit hunting. Alas, Cole is still crate-bound, doctor's orders.
In these parts, the Easter Bunny delivers a delicious home cooked meal right to your door. No hopping about through the pasture, she's efficient, she arrives in a golf cart.
Wrapping up yet another fabulous weekend. Third weekend in row off work! The Big Boss (me) mandated that her best employee (me) get four weekends off in a row to get some projects finished.
My doctor had mandated even more time off work for me due to my neck sprain and back twist from my fall last Tuesday. How am I supposed to pay for those X-rays if I'm not at work? His recommendations: pain killers, muscle relaxers, absolutely no jiu jitsu, no running, no heavy lifting. Take away all my fun! My solution: no meds, I drink milk to soothe myself, lots of it lately. I sleep like a baby, in spite of getting up a couple times at night. OK, the radiographs convinced me, we'll quit Brazilian jiu jitsu, my neck is too damaged for chokeholds. No running until I can trot down the drive without feeling like the jarring will make my head pop off. Heavy lifting replaced by light lifting.
See, I'm using a small bucket to bilge out the tiger trap. I'm also standing atop an inverted feed bucket. The spring I hit fills the hole within a few hours. Today, I had to bilge out 4 feet of water, over and over again to dig footers to cement in the chains that will be used to keep the storm shelter from floating up to the surface. It's become a much bigger project than planned. But, if you're going to go all the way, you way as well go overboard.
Sunday coffee time spent playing with my mock-up of the shelter. Paper clip legs and rubber band for a chain. Oh fine, I was procrastinating.
I reached 2000% of my daily requirement for iron.
I used the grinder to blast the inside of the tank to prep for painting. The mask stopped some of the rust dust, but not all.
JD Weld was puttied over the welder's welds, in case he missed a spot. Then I put two heavy coats of primer on the inside surfaces. Hopefully, she'll be sea worthy by next weekend. The suspense is killing me: will she be my safety capsule or the S.S. Minnow?
Most of my projects require fine tuning in the R & D Department (Research and Development, not Retarded and Demented, thank you very much).
My success with the chicken sweater was short lived.
After one week of haute couture, Poppy seemed to quit laying. She waddled like a Sumo wrestler towards me for treats one morning. I picked her up and two eggs fell out from her T-shirt. The tailor needs to fine tune her suits. Upon cutting her out of the shirt, a full back of feathers sprung out. 7 days to regrowth. 1 day for the bullies to pluck her bald again.
This ain't over!
Officially, I'm not speaking the bully hens anymore. Unofficially, they still get my homemade peach butter. It's chicken cocaine. I made a heck of a lot, the taste is acceptable, but the brownish color nauseates me.
I'm also waging war against the chipmunks in the yard. I have disassembled the insulation under the hood of my truck 3 times, I spent 2 hours vacuuming out all the leaves, twigs and acorns stuffed into the hood's recesses.
My latest stroke of brilliance was to stuff the hood's crevices with moth balls. You bet it works: a month free of vagrant rodents. Unfortunately, one must drive with the windows down because a hot engine releases noxious fumes from the moth balls. What's the half-life on those anyway?
Since I can't gush about any great running adventures, I'll regale you with my sighting of two new birds to my yard.
Whaddya mean, you don't know what it is? That is as close and zoomed in as I could get to....be still my beating heart:
a scarlet tanager (courtesy of Google). Blindingly gorgeous.
Who else showed up Sunday morning? I won't annoy you with an even worse cellphone picture.
A red-headed woodpecker (Google again). We have downy and red-bellied woodpeckers here at the farm, but this one's new to me.
Now if I could just see an albatross--that would make my century!
