What I’ve been doing instead of posting on the internet:
1. Child with bronchitis.
2. Same child with Chicken Pox.
3. Or is it an allergic reaction to amoxicillian? We may end up back at the doctor again.
4. Building Chicken Prison. It’s still not complete, but almost. I like having free range chickens. Some (by which I mean: All) of the people I live with do not like sharing their backyard with chickens. Who are maybe not the most fastidious creatures you ever met.
That’s not strictly true. Our chickens, given the space to do so, were quite particular about housekeeping. They roosted in one part of the yard where they otherwise spent no time, because what chickens do at night is:
a) Sleep
b) Poop
Yes, they poop and sleep at the same time, it appears, just like your very small children sometimes will. It is not endearing. Where chickens sleep is not a clean place.
But here’s the interesting part: They spend their day avoiding the place where they roost. And note, the chickens avoid a path into the roost that would require them to walk through the muck.
Double interesting: So we went to build chicken prison, and our first location was near the shed, at the time being used to store miscelleanous items that clogged up the around-the-shed area, making it a quiet, dark, and virtually impassable place where no human ever trod. Turns out chickens like this. We moved the old boat stuffed behind the shed, and discovered eggs! We thought the hens weren’t laying yet. But there were eight perfect eggs, neatly layed in an impeccable pine-straw nest. Not a sign of chicken droppings anywhere. The kind of place you could, say, raise a baby.
I was impressed with the chicken hygiene. Who knew?
So . . . in building chicken prison, one of my goals is to try to create spaces suitable for a hen-approved separation of sleeping, laying, eating and lounging areas. Soon as SuperHusband gets the gate and a few pieces of chicken furniture built (kitchen, living-room, nursery) we’ll see how it goes.
Also we’ve been:
5. Making beer. Jon likes this supplier for kits and equipment. Combine orders with your friends to get enough of a bill to get free shipping. While the wort was boiling, our brew partner pointed us to this very cool video of a free-range child left to his own devices:
Viewer Discretion Advised: Not All Homeschooled Children Spontaneously Take Up Arts Like These
6. Top-Secret Catholic Writers Guild Projects.
Okay, not really top-secret, just stuff you don’t announce until it’s done.
Terrifying news, guaranteed to bolster my prayer life: Our current guild president used her mind-rays to talk me into letting them put my name on the ballot for Vice President. So unless “No” defeats me in the guild elections, come December 1 I will be praying every day for the health and vigor of our new president, because basically as long as long as she’s well, the VP’s job is cush enough even for someone like me. I’m kickin’ God in the shins if anything happens that causes me to have to temporarily assume real responsibility.
7. Yes, God has shins.
What you should be doing while you’re wondering when I’ll ever post again:
a) Go ahead and register for the Catholic Writers Conference Online. It’s free, no-commitment, and you don’t even have to be Catholic to attend. Actually, only register if you like to write or have to write, and want to get better at it. Otherwise, do something else those weeks. The world needs chicken prisons built, all kinds of other non-writing work, you reading-only-never-writing people can go do that.
b) Pray for the Hathaways, of course. Hardly need me to remind you at this point.
c) Prepare yourself to say “Yes” if you one of the two or three readers here who I’m going to e-mail and ask you to present a short talk at the online conference, because you have something cool to say to aspiring Catholic writers that will help them do their work better and not make all the mistakes you made when you first started out. Or, since I am probably going to forget to e-mail you, but you’re a great writer who wants to help other new writers, you can just volunteer straight-up. Here’s the link. E-mail me if you’re not sure you really have anything to present, but you kinda want to, or you have this nagging feeling you should e-mail me just ’cause. Blog @ CatholicwritersGuild.com goes all the same places my other e-mail addresses do, any of ’em will work.
–> For the record: I am not queen of the conference. I’m a helper-bee rounding up potential presenters. But round up I will.
Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you when I’m out from the tunnel again.
I love your “viewer discretion advised” warning!
Perhaps we need a “NSFH” (not safe for homeschoolers) tag for links like this.
Yep. I mean, I think the cigar-box guitar is super cool. But please oh please let this not unleash a new wave of homeschoolers-as-prodigies. But it was too neato not to post.