this just happened

Dinner time.

I didn't plan ahead.  Need to call my husband for a consult.

(our slightly paraphrased conversation)


me:  On a scale of 1 to 10, how do you feel about chicken taquitos for dinner? You know those appetizers that have been in the freezer for a while.


Phil:  Uhhhh, 7.


me:  Sweet!  I had no idea what to make; glad you're ok with it.


Phil:  Wait, 7 is not ok with it. Seven is above five.


me:  Fine. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means 'absolutely not okay' and 10 means 'cool', how do you feel about taquitos for dinner?


Phil:  3.


me:  Are you giving me a 3 just so I don't spiral in to an irreversible state of depression?


Phil: yes.

This really does not belong on my blog.  Perhaps my ultra cool friend Jenny will ask me to do a guest post about it on her dinner related blog at http://www.whatididfordinnerlastnight.blogspot.com/.

Probably not.

This blog is a place for pictures.

So I give you this picture.

imminent zombie chicken Apocalypse 

For those of you who've seen this picture on Facebook, I apologize for the repetitiveness but these birds have got me paranoid.

superheros rock

He needs me for so many things.

I wonder if he knows how much I need him.


I'm sure everybody has hoped for a superhero in their life at some point.

I never would have guessed that a superhero would be one of the best things in my day to day life.

Lucky me I have two.

This one I call shadow boy (well, I call him a lot of things, shadow boy is one of the nicer ones).  He follows me everywhere, like my shadow, only he's there even when the sun isn't shining.

 Sometimes he's a viking hat wearing, samurai sword carrying, superhero.

I prefer shadow boy.

My superheros are less scary when they don't carry weapons.

I'm sure the masks and shields, and swords and capes will all disappear as they get older.

But I'm confident they will remain super and my heroes long after the accessories are gone.

this is my life... well this was my life. thankfully it was temporary

Its been a rough couple of weeks.  I had the flu.  It was bad. and long. I slept. a lot.

My kids survived because I locked the doors left a bunch of crackers and water out on the dining room table and gave them an all access pass to watch TV.

I slept for an entire weekend.  That is not an exaggeration. My husband thought it would be cute to take a picture of me sleeping.  Its not cute.

 (I can't believe I posted that.)

The kids wore the same clothes (or lack of clothes) for a few days

The laundry piled up.

My husband wants to name the laundry pile because "something that large deserves a name"

I pointed out it was only so large because it was in a pile on the floor instead of in the laundry basket, which was still full with the clean laundry from Friday.

He pointed out that clean laundry was from the Friday two weeks ago. Touche.

I refuse to post a picture of the laundry pile (aka Mount Kilimanjaro)

use your imagination.

The kids have started saying 'that's whack' thanks to their father being the only non-delirious adult in the house.

me: Please clean up your toys.
the boys:  Mom, that's whack.

The chickens have learned they can fly over the fence.

Perhaps they overheard my telling the neighbor that the fence was only a "suggestion of boundaries" when he asked me how we got them to stay in there.

Loose chickens = me wandering the yard in my pajamas shooing chickens.

I see my neighbors staring but when I give them a wave they suddenly turn the other way and are busy tending to their yard. car. shoes.

I'm pretty sure they all think I'm either on crack or on a psychotic break.

This illness all started after I did a major spring fall cleaning.  With the cool weather we turned the ceiling fans off for the first time in months.

That's when I noticed the two inches of dust on the ceiling fans. Which led to a four hour cleaning binge of all dust covered surfaces. Which led to a chest cold, then bronchitis and the flu.

There is a lesson here.

Cleaning is bad for your health.

Bad health leads to household chaos.

There is so much more ridiculousness that has happened these past two weeks but I was medicated so I'm not sure I could accurately recall it.

Apparently the Universe decided I needed a little something to make me laugh.  So when the chickens escaped again this morning and a squirrel moved in on the coop (it happens often) I closed the coop door and declared we now had a pet squirrel.

The squirrel, so excited to be our new pet and wanting to show off its amazing pet tricks, started flying from wall to wall, climbing the mesh walls in frenzied circles, and running around bouncing off everything.

Very chaotic.

I did not need any additional chaos so I opened the door and the squirrel reluctantly left. Well reluctantly left in a mad dash.  I can only assume it was his last attempt at trying to impress us with his awesome pet potential.

I did get video.  Though I was too awestruck by him walking on the walls to remember I had my cell phone in hand.  That was some mad squirrel skills.  My apologies that you will never see it.  But lucky you I have one minute + of our almost-pet squirrel to share with you... enjoy

 and you're welcome. :)

And for anyone concerned: I'm feeling better, the boys have had vegetables, protein, and dairy added back in to their diets, the laundry is being tackled.  However, the boys still say that's whack and the chickens still escape daily.

Our first egg

There's been quite a ruckus in the hen house today.  A stealthy hawk has been stalking and swooping all morning so when I heard the chickens loudly fussing later on I ran out assuming I would be chasing off a hawk.

No hawk.

Instead I found our long awaited first egg...

Its a beautiful thing (once you look past the icky goop on it and the fact that it came out of a chickens rear end)

Not quite as big as a store bought egg

We also have something else in the hen house we hadn't planned on.

A rooster.

When we began this raising chickens journey I had always just planned on eggs go in the refrigerator we eat eggs.  This rooster has me all thrown off.

Now I have questions...
Is this egg fertilized?
Can we eat a fertilized egg?
Can we try and hatch baby chicks?

I don't have answers yet.  But the girls did get an extra treat today for giving us an egg and for being such good pets to the boys.

 Looking forward to many more egg hunts :)