A CPA. Or maybe some other accounting type.
Because I'm just not getting it done. And it's another file-in-two states plus business from the home year. And the credit for the solar panels.
A assembled all the forms and booklets and receipts and it's 2 inches thick. I haven't even logged into tax-act and I 'm pretty sure my business books remain unfinished too, tho I haven't looked there for some time now, either.
Worked out a babysitting swap which should be working well for us per-diem types. However it didn't work today when work called at 7:58 to see if I could work at 8. If I could have brought JM it would have worked fine. However it isn't bring your preschooler to work day. *sigh* I just have to put up with this until he starts school in August.
Well, that's all for now, folks off to bury myself in accounting work. Oh yeah, and rescue a chicken later today. Because we're crazy. But if you've read much of this blog you already knew that.
Monday, February 27, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Fab Friday
Well if I think positively it'll be that way, right?
On the agenda today is finding the baseball uniform missing pieces for the boy's new teams. Fun times. And buy jock straps. Oh the stuff I didn't consider with having boys.
In other news we have only 50-something girls scout cookies left to sell in the next 2 weeks. This sounds like a ton, of course but we've sold almost 800, so 50 doesn't seem insurmountable. The light is at at the end of the tunnel.
The quail project isn't going quite as well as planned. Yesterday we got zero eggs and we're starting to think we have 4 boys and 2 girls instead of the other way around. Of course I'm reading about quail and you're supposed to be able to pick them up, flip them over and inspect the anatomy and tell what gender they are. Unfortunately for me, I can't seem to figure this out. Good thing I didn't pick veterinary school. If it wasn't for my rabbit humping things like an adolescent dog, I wouldn't be sure he was a boy, either.
Of course this is prompting the dilemma of 'at what point do the kids need to know the birds and the bees?' Because they saw the quail mating. And thought it was hysterical. And then started yelling "they're mating!!" all the time. yeah. great. They think the bunny is just "attacking" things particularly the stuffed animal we gave him so he's leave the kid's legs and arms alone. I'm a little afraid they'll go into school and decide to educate everyone on it. Kayla announced to her teacher and class about the quail the first day of school after getting them. Nothing secretive here. Our teacher knows our neighborhood and asked "you have all this at your house?! in your neighborhood?!" and I admit "yeah" I'm going to have to invite her over some day. She's house and babysat for a neighbor so she's familiar with the neighborhood. AND the neighbor she house/babysat for isn't really the sort to live near someone with chickens and quail and composting and livestock. So it probably adds to the surprise. When Larry was working on the cages for the rabbit and quail in the drive way, he did get a few neighbors stopping to ask what he was doing. Specifically was he getting chickens and/ or a rooster. Especially not a rooster. He assured them no rooster and it was going to be quail and rabbit. And they walked away relieved.
And as we're trying to hatch eggs here, I realize... what if they do hatch? There's a chance we will have a rooster here. At least until we find it a new home. I'm not 100% at what point they start crowing. I'm guessing that when the chicks go from peeping to clucking is when the rooster would start crowing. Stay tuned. I'll let you know.
We're using an incubator which looks like a big styrofoam box with a heating element at the top that appears to be the kind from an electic skillet. We were hoping that our chickens would get broody, meaning they want to sit and hatch eggs but since they haven't and since Larry bought the incubator for the quail eggs and since the feed store offered us fresh eggs from the hens with a rooster in the pen with them.... We candled them and decided to try to hatch the ones that looked like there was potential. 6 of them I think. Maybe 8? I could get up and go peek in the box, but I'm already wasting time here instead of getting in the car and going to the bank for the girlscout deposit or baseball uniform accessories.
Alright. I really do need to get moving here. Back to life where the kids are loud, the adults are a little crazy, and the homestead is a work in progress...
On the agenda today is finding the baseball uniform missing pieces for the boy's new teams. Fun times. And buy jock straps. Oh the stuff I didn't consider with having boys.
In other news we have only 50-something girls scout cookies left to sell in the next 2 weeks. This sounds like a ton, of course but we've sold almost 800, so 50 doesn't seem insurmountable. The light is at at the end of the tunnel.
The quail project isn't going quite as well as planned. Yesterday we got zero eggs and we're starting to think we have 4 boys and 2 girls instead of the other way around. Of course I'm reading about quail and you're supposed to be able to pick them up, flip them over and inspect the anatomy and tell what gender they are. Unfortunately for me, I can't seem to figure this out. Good thing I didn't pick veterinary school. If it wasn't for my rabbit humping things like an adolescent dog, I wouldn't be sure he was a boy, either.
Of course this is prompting the dilemma of 'at what point do the kids need to know the birds and the bees?' Because they saw the quail mating. And thought it was hysterical. And then started yelling "they're mating!!" all the time. yeah. great. They think the bunny is just "attacking" things particularly the stuffed animal we gave him so he's leave the kid's legs and arms alone. I'm a little afraid they'll go into school and decide to educate everyone on it. Kayla announced to her teacher and class about the quail the first day of school after getting them. Nothing secretive here. Our teacher knows our neighborhood and asked "you have all this at your house?! in your neighborhood?!" and I admit "yeah" I'm going to have to invite her over some day. She's house and babysat for a neighbor so she's familiar with the neighborhood. AND the neighbor she house/babysat for isn't really the sort to live near someone with chickens and quail and composting and livestock. So it probably adds to the surprise. When Larry was working on the cages for the rabbit and quail in the drive way, he did get a few neighbors stopping to ask what he was doing. Specifically was he getting chickens and/ or a rooster. Especially not a rooster. He assured them no rooster and it was going to be quail and rabbit. And they walked away relieved.
And as we're trying to hatch eggs here, I realize... what if they do hatch? There's a chance we will have a rooster here. At least until we find it a new home. I'm not 100% at what point they start crowing. I'm guessing that when the chicks go from peeping to clucking is when the rooster would start crowing. Stay tuned. I'll let you know.
We're using an incubator which looks like a big styrofoam box with a heating element at the top that appears to be the kind from an electic skillet. We were hoping that our chickens would get broody, meaning they want to sit and hatch eggs but since they haven't and since Larry bought the incubator for the quail eggs and since the feed store offered us fresh eggs from the hens with a rooster in the pen with them.... We candled them and decided to try to hatch the ones that looked like there was potential. 6 of them I think. Maybe 8? I could get up and go peek in the box, but I'm already wasting time here instead of getting in the car and going to the bank for the girlscout deposit or baseball uniform accessories.
Alright. I really do need to get moving here. Back to life where the kids are loud, the adults are a little crazy, and the homestead is a work in progress...
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Because I'm hoping to win chicken feed
I'm posting again today.
Over here at Urban Homestead is a give away for non medicated chick feed.
It's nice to see other people as "odd" as us and gives us something to aim for.
Heading back over there now to read about other new things I can try
Over here at Urban Homestead is a give away for non medicated chick feed.
It's nice to see other people as "odd" as us and gives us something to aim for.
Heading back over there now to read about other new things I can try
Taxes still aren't close to being done.
But there's only 1 week left to Girl Scout cookie insanity, hopefully.
Work is going well, this week I've been swapping child care services with another per-diem mom, which has worked out well. Our kids are in 1st grade together, and her son came to Kayla's birthday party and it came up that we both weren't sure what we were doing the following week for childcare on the days we were working. And Voilla we realized we could swap off. She's a teacher and substitutes so she's able to get the kids after school (convenient, huh?)
Work was actually kinda fun yesterday and the manager brought the next 3 months of available schedule and said I could have my pick of what was available. Sadly for me it was alot of nights and Saturdays, but I did find a few that would work. And as an additional bonus 75% of my patients yesterday spoke English, which was very nice. I'm going to get the learn spanish in the car CDs from the library again. I definately need a refresher course. And I realized the day I worked in OB that pretty much 95% of all the GYN terms I"d use I wouldn't learn from any learn Spanish CD. Como se dice Gonorrhea? IUD?
In happy urban homesteading project we have a new science project happening in our kitchen - hatching eggs. There appears to be a fairly steep learning curve on this, so it's possible we won't have adorable cute fuzzy things in 3 weeks. But if we do, I'll be putting pictures up somewhere. Facebook of course is easier for me to put pictures up on, but maybe I'll put some here also.
JM starts TBall tonight. I haven't heard from Joey's coach yet to know when that starts for him. The girls didn't want to do sports this season and I decided that I'll let them sit this one one. Largely because the boredom factor in Tball/baseball from the outfield is pretty high. And also because if I signed them up for Soccer it's possible I'd have to be in 4 places at one time opposed to 2 places at once.
I sometimes wish I could clone myself. Other days I think that'd be a bad idea- particularly the days I'm wishing I was someone else- better, more organized, less cranky.. 4 of me on a bad day would be just too much. We'd probably kill each other. And that would be bad.
Work is going well, this week I've been swapping child care services with another per-diem mom, which has worked out well. Our kids are in 1st grade together, and her son came to Kayla's birthday party and it came up that we both weren't sure what we were doing the following week for childcare on the days we were working. And Voilla we realized we could swap off. She's a teacher and substitutes so she's able to get the kids after school (convenient, huh?)
Work was actually kinda fun yesterday and the manager brought the next 3 months of available schedule and said I could have my pick of what was available. Sadly for me it was alot of nights and Saturdays, but I did find a few that would work. And as an additional bonus 75% of my patients yesterday spoke English, which was very nice. I'm going to get the learn spanish in the car CDs from the library again. I definately need a refresher course. And I realized the day I worked in OB that pretty much 95% of all the GYN terms I"d use I wouldn't learn from any learn Spanish CD. Como se dice Gonorrhea? IUD?
In happy urban homesteading project we have a new science project happening in our kitchen - hatching eggs. There appears to be a fairly steep learning curve on this, so it's possible we won't have adorable cute fuzzy things in 3 weeks. But if we do, I'll be putting pictures up somewhere. Facebook of course is easier for me to put pictures up on, but maybe I'll put some here also.
JM starts TBall tonight. I haven't heard from Joey's coach yet to know when that starts for him. The girls didn't want to do sports this season and I decided that I'll let them sit this one one. Largely because the boredom factor in Tball/baseball from the outfield is pretty high. And also because if I signed them up for Soccer it's possible I'd have to be in 4 places at one time opposed to 2 places at once.
I sometimes wish I could clone myself. Other days I think that'd be a bad idea- particularly the days I'm wishing I was someone else- better, more organized, less cranky.. 4 of me on a bad day would be just too much. We'd probably kill each other. And that would be bad.
Friday, February 10, 2012
You're never going to believe it
But you can find the floor in our home office.
Taxes still aren't done and I haven't even gotten to Sept-Dec in quickbooks from the business yet.. but I have something to show for it.
In true squirrel chasing fashion after hunting for the missing statements, receipts and records I realized (for the 9000th time) that I REALLY REALLY REALLY needed to get organized. We're making baby steps in that aspect, but the office since 3 moves ago has never gotten back to the point where it was organized enough for me to find anything in it easily. Partly because mover guys dumped the entire contents of file cabinets into boxes and I never bothered trying to reassemble the order in it with all the other more pressing issues in my life.
But now, business has slowed down, 3/4 of the kids are in school and when I walked out of the room I left white foot prints on the dark brown carpet from the dust in there. And nothing says "you need to clean me!" quite like having a layer of dust that thick that you can leave footprints in it and with it.
So that's been the week's biggish project.
The other project was finding my camera.
Lemme tell you about that. Two years ago we had the house treated for termites and we got suckered into a "buy now" sort of deal where they removed all the mouse/rat/rodent filled insulation and replaced it with rodent repelling blown in insulation also. With promises that you'll never have rodents in your attic again. This of course has been a long term issue for us. Our first house we killed 36 mice the first year and in the course of remodeling that house I realized I'm quite allergic to the dumb things. And here in CA not only are there mice, there are RATS and those make me ill just thinking about. So the promise of not having them in the attic we'd spend a whole lot of time up running new wires, etc... was too much to pass up.
Of course as in many other cases of our lives, the people we hired weren't as great as promised. Dreadful in fact. And there was a big hang up with our attic being bigger than they anticipated so a 1 day job turned into 3 days. (how can you miscalculate an attic? It's not like there's a surprise room there or anything. Sigh - but I digress) Anyway it was a HUGE mess, and of course the guys getting paid for 1 day of work for 3 days of labor weren't happy and as such did a really terrible job. Of course if they all worked in stead of letting 2 guys do all the work while the rest of them sat around complaining for the group it might have actually been done in a day.
So, once it was "done" I refused to sign that the work is done because they put a foot through the ceiling and wanted them to have incentive to come back and fix it. We were on really good terms at this point, obviously. Larry got involved, they fixed the ceiling but didn't care about the insulation job being done poorly.
Fast forward 2 years. I hear something big running around in the attic. This of course can't be the case because we have the insulation that repels them, right? But, oh, wait, I hear foot steps on drywall which means... you got it, there can't be insulation there.
So. Because I finally took down our artificial tree (yesterday. yes. Feb. we're setting a record here) I went to bring it up to said attic and while I was up there I brought a flash light and tried to see just how bad the lack of insulation was up there.
If you haven't seen our house, it has alot of peaks and ridges and cathedral ceiling so it's not a simple attic like a "normal" house would be like. Normal Californians don't use their attics. We put stairs in so we could use it. However alot of the space has enough room for a 115 lb guy to squeeze through, especially on the cathedral parts.
So I get up there and crawl around and see that at least one corner isn't insulated (gee, and I wondered why that room was 10 degrees colder in winter...) and decide to call them and see if they'd do anything about it.The insulation/pest control people.
I call the local number and it's routed to the nationwide company. And answered by a lady with a thick southern accent. Kinda a give away that it's not here in southern California. But I ask, just to make sure. "Hi, I'm trying to reach my local office" and she says oh, no you can't get the local office number. So I tell her that we got the "never have a rodent again" attic treatment and it sounds like a chipmunk is running around the attic. She says they don't cover chipmunks. So I say "ok, maybe it's not a chipmunk, I can't stand the thought of it being a rat, but we indeed have a rodent" and she says she'll pass the message along.
Ha. yeah, I'm sure I'll get called back.
So in a rumbling rage of sorts I decide to go up there and take pictures of the job they did and will write to the corporate office.
I put on my rain coat thinking that it'll keep the insulation stuff from sticking as I crawl around, put my camera in one pocket and my phone in the other (because you never know, you might get stuck and need to call the fire dept sort of logic). And I get to the first corner and take my pictures, pop the camera in my pocket, nearly fall through the ceiling at least a half dozen times (why I had the phone, of course) crawl up to the start of where I fear coming nose to nose with super monster rat, reach into my pocket to take the pictures and...........
No camera.
It fell out between corner a over my bedroom and corner b over the office. Which is the entire house, essentially. And of course it's not the rolled in insulation, it's the blown in fluffy stuff. So I re-trace my steps and can't find it.
Start feeling around in insulation with a stick.. nothing.
Go get a rake and rake it, get it stuck in electrical cords.. still nothing.
Get Larry's big magnet on a stick and wave it through everywhere.
Found a few nails, some bits of scrap metal of some sort but no camera.
And of course at this point 3 hours have passed and I have to go get the kids.
Get the kids and contractor trash bags and dust masks.
And after dinner went back to the attic and moved every.square.inch. of the insulation in that attic until I found the dumb camera. In the last 5 feet of space. I've been coughing up dust since. When they list a class action lawsuit on the rodent killing insulation giving lung cancer, I'm signing up.
But the pictures of the office ceiling haven't been taken. At this point it can wait.
And all this started because I wanted to do our taxes, started to clean the office, found the contract from the insulation, brought the Christmas tree into the attic.....
And that, my friends is how nothing gets completed, only a dozen other projects get started. Please pass the Ritalin.
Taxes still aren't done and I haven't even gotten to Sept-Dec in quickbooks from the business yet.. but I have something to show for it.
In true squirrel chasing fashion after hunting for the missing statements, receipts and records I realized (for the 9000th time) that I REALLY REALLY REALLY needed to get organized. We're making baby steps in that aspect, but the office since 3 moves ago has never gotten back to the point where it was organized enough for me to find anything in it easily. Partly because mover guys dumped the entire contents of file cabinets into boxes and I never bothered trying to reassemble the order in it with all the other more pressing issues in my life.
But now, business has slowed down, 3/4 of the kids are in school and when I walked out of the room I left white foot prints on the dark brown carpet from the dust in there. And nothing says "you need to clean me!" quite like having a layer of dust that thick that you can leave footprints in it and with it.
So that's been the week's biggish project.
The other project was finding my camera.
Lemme tell you about that. Two years ago we had the house treated for termites and we got suckered into a "buy now" sort of deal where they removed all the mouse/rat/rodent filled insulation and replaced it with rodent repelling blown in insulation also. With promises that you'll never have rodents in your attic again. This of course has been a long term issue for us. Our first house we killed 36 mice the first year and in the course of remodeling that house I realized I'm quite allergic to the dumb things. And here in CA not only are there mice, there are RATS and those make me ill just thinking about. So the promise of not having them in the attic we'd spend a whole lot of time up running new wires, etc... was too much to pass up.
Of course as in many other cases of our lives, the people we hired weren't as great as promised. Dreadful in fact. And there was a big hang up with our attic being bigger than they anticipated so a 1 day job turned into 3 days. (how can you miscalculate an attic? It's not like there's a surprise room there or anything. Sigh - but I digress) Anyway it was a HUGE mess, and of course the guys getting paid for 1 day of work for 3 days of labor weren't happy and as such did a really terrible job. Of course if they all worked in stead of letting 2 guys do all the work while the rest of them sat around complaining for the group it might have actually been done in a day.
So, once it was "done" I refused to sign that the work is done because they put a foot through the ceiling and wanted them to have incentive to come back and fix it. We were on really good terms at this point, obviously. Larry got involved, they fixed the ceiling but didn't care about the insulation job being done poorly.
Fast forward 2 years. I hear something big running around in the attic. This of course can't be the case because we have the insulation that repels them, right? But, oh, wait, I hear foot steps on drywall which means... you got it, there can't be insulation there.
So. Because I finally took down our artificial tree (yesterday. yes. Feb. we're setting a record here) I went to bring it up to said attic and while I was up there I brought a flash light and tried to see just how bad the lack of insulation was up there.
If you haven't seen our house, it has alot of peaks and ridges and cathedral ceiling so it's not a simple attic like a "normal" house would be like. Normal Californians don't use their attics. We put stairs in so we could use it. However alot of the space has enough room for a 115 lb guy to squeeze through, especially on the cathedral parts.
So I get up there and crawl around and see that at least one corner isn't insulated (gee, and I wondered why that room was 10 degrees colder in winter...) and decide to call them and see if they'd do anything about it.The insulation/pest control people.
I call the local number and it's routed to the nationwide company. And answered by a lady with a thick southern accent. Kinda a give away that it's not here in southern California. But I ask, just to make sure. "Hi, I'm trying to reach my local office" and she says oh, no you can't get the local office number. So I tell her that we got the "never have a rodent again" attic treatment and it sounds like a chipmunk is running around the attic. She says they don't cover chipmunks. So I say "ok, maybe it's not a chipmunk, I can't stand the thought of it being a rat, but we indeed have a rodent" and she says she'll pass the message along.
Ha. yeah, I'm sure I'll get called back.
So in a rumbling rage of sorts I decide to go up there and take pictures of the job they did and will write to the corporate office.
I put on my rain coat thinking that it'll keep the insulation stuff from sticking as I crawl around, put my camera in one pocket and my phone in the other (because you never know, you might get stuck and need to call the fire dept sort of logic). And I get to the first corner and take my pictures, pop the camera in my pocket, nearly fall through the ceiling at least a half dozen times (why I had the phone, of course) crawl up to the start of where I fear coming nose to nose with super monster rat, reach into my pocket to take the pictures and...........
No camera.
It fell out between corner a over my bedroom and corner b over the office. Which is the entire house, essentially. And of course it's not the rolled in insulation, it's the blown in fluffy stuff. So I re-trace my steps and can't find it.
Start feeling around in insulation with a stick.. nothing.
Go get a rake and rake it, get it stuck in electrical cords.. still nothing.
Get Larry's big magnet on a stick and wave it through everywhere.
Found a few nails, some bits of scrap metal of some sort but no camera.
And of course at this point 3 hours have passed and I have to go get the kids.
Get the kids and contractor trash bags and dust masks.
And after dinner went back to the attic and moved every.square.inch. of the insulation in that attic until I found the dumb camera. In the last 5 feet of space. I've been coughing up dust since. When they list a class action lawsuit on the rodent killing insulation giving lung cancer, I'm signing up.
But the pictures of the office ceiling haven't been taken. At this point it can wait.
And all this started because I wanted to do our taxes, started to clean the office, found the contract from the insulation, brought the Christmas tree into the attic.....
And that, my friends is how nothing gets completed, only a dozen other projects get started. Please pass the Ritalin.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Been a quiet week here in Lake Bonsall
Well, no. Not really.
The quiet or the lake.
Larry and the guys are out blowing stuff up that on a good day makes the house shake and you wonder momentarily if it was an earthquake or just the Marines. (the earthquakes last longer)
And seemingly when he's gone I think the kids are decidedly more obnoxious than when he's here. Like run around the house screaming like banshees obnoxious.
And tonight, if that wasn't enough. They decided to put the hood that they zipped off a winter jacket over each other's head and then run away from the blindfolded kid who then chases them yelling "MARCO!" while they answer "POLO!"
Now of course the hooded kid can see some because we haven't been to the ER for stitches yet. But it doesn't slow the running and chasing each other one bit.
So I decree "WE DON'T PLAY MARCO POLO IN THE HOUSE!!!!" and in about the time it took me to blink JM says "ok, we play Farco polo" and then yells "FARCO!"
I both laugh and cringe at their creativeness. But of course being bad cop mom, they're no longer running trying to loose a tooth. The older kids are in the shower and Kayla and JM have lined up all the pencils in the house, I think so they can decide which is the "best" and then of course will proceed to fight over it. As it is, they can't agree on which pencil is the best. So they're skipping straight to the bickering part of the night.
T minus 32 minutes 30 seconds to bed time. Not that anyone's counting or anything.
The quiet or the lake.
Larry and the guys are out blowing stuff up that on a good day makes the house shake and you wonder momentarily if it was an earthquake or just the Marines. (the earthquakes last longer)
And seemingly when he's gone I think the kids are decidedly more obnoxious than when he's here. Like run around the house screaming like banshees obnoxious.
And tonight, if that wasn't enough. They decided to put the hood that they zipped off a winter jacket over each other's head and then run away from the blindfolded kid who then chases them yelling "MARCO!" while they answer "POLO!"
Now of course the hooded kid can see some because we haven't been to the ER for stitches yet. But it doesn't slow the running and chasing each other one bit.
So I decree "WE DON'T PLAY MARCO POLO IN THE HOUSE!!!!" and in about the time it took me to blink JM says "ok, we play Farco polo" and then yells "FARCO!"
I both laugh and cringe at their creativeness. But of course being bad cop mom, they're no longer running trying to loose a tooth. The older kids are in the shower and Kayla and JM have lined up all the pencils in the house, I think so they can decide which is the "best" and then of course will proceed to fight over it. As it is, they can't agree on which pencil is the best. So they're skipping straight to the bickering part of the night.
T minus 32 minutes 30 seconds to bed time. Not that anyone's counting or anything.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
I hear today is an important day
Something about a bowl and a game?
Go ahead. Throw something at me. I don't care. Even being from New England, I don't really care about this silly day.
Instead today was a garden-working day.
Yesterday we went and got fresh manure for our compost pile. The things my kids are going to remember from their childhood, sheesh. "yeah, remember when mom took us to this farm, we got to play with a horse and dogs and she filled buckets of manure and put them in the trunk?" I'm pretty sure we don't have enough saved in the kids' therapy fund yet if I keep pulling stunts like this.
Larry has been working on other improvement projects around here and the garden is starting to grow. This of course makes me happy.
The kids have been thrilled to have us let them explore the land behind our house and Larry's been thrilled that he can hold one walkie talkie they got for Christmas, they can hold the other and explore to their heart's content. Joey's found about a dozen golf balls thus far. We also found a creek and might have found a way to get a backhoe there so that Larry can re-arrange the dirt on the other side of our wall to make room for more gardening, a possible pair of goats and heaven knows what else he's been plotting.
There are also plans in the works for quail. Since the hatch to laying time frame is 6 weeks, you can in theory have a whole lot of birds in a whole little time. And the males aren't *quite* as loud as roosters. And since meeting a family that raises rabbits for meat.... it's hit the interest radar again.
We bought a 1/4 cow (grass fed) this weekend. And I spent the better part of Saturday re-packaging and re-cutting the meat into portions/steaks that we could use. And using the meat grinder attachment Larry got for our new mixer. I have a new appreciation for buying hamburger meat from the store- it's a whole lot less work. But with our current hamburger meat I *know* for a fact what went into it. And it's practice for the theoretical deer Larry hopes to bring home from hunting one day. I know, you're thinking "how hard can it be to hunt a deer?" because if you live in New England like we used to, we had a countless deer living in our yard, not to mention the several who where hunted the urban way with cars directly in front of our house...... In fact I know lots of non-hunters who have managed to bag deer that way. And cars, but who's being technical like that?
Anyway. There's not much else to write about that I can remember. I remember there were other things that cracked me up that I would share, but of course I can't remember them.
Go ahead. Throw something at me. I don't care. Even being from New England, I don't really care about this silly day.
Instead today was a garden-working day.
Yesterday we went and got fresh manure for our compost pile. The things my kids are going to remember from their childhood, sheesh. "yeah, remember when mom took us to this farm, we got to play with a horse and dogs and she filled buckets of manure and put them in the trunk?" I'm pretty sure we don't have enough saved in the kids' therapy fund yet if I keep pulling stunts like this.
Larry has been working on other improvement projects around here and the garden is starting to grow. This of course makes me happy.
The kids have been thrilled to have us let them explore the land behind our house and Larry's been thrilled that he can hold one walkie talkie they got for Christmas, they can hold the other and explore to their heart's content. Joey's found about a dozen golf balls thus far. We also found a creek and might have found a way to get a backhoe there so that Larry can re-arrange the dirt on the other side of our wall to make room for more gardening, a possible pair of goats and heaven knows what else he's been plotting.
There are also plans in the works for quail. Since the hatch to laying time frame is 6 weeks, you can in theory have a whole lot of birds in a whole little time. And the males aren't *quite* as loud as roosters. And since meeting a family that raises rabbits for meat.... it's hit the interest radar again.
We bought a 1/4 cow (grass fed) this weekend. And I spent the better part of Saturday re-packaging and re-cutting the meat into portions/steaks that we could use. And using the meat grinder attachment Larry got for our new mixer. I have a new appreciation for buying hamburger meat from the store- it's a whole lot less work. But with our current hamburger meat I *know* for a fact what went into it. And it's practice for the theoretical deer Larry hopes to bring home from hunting one day. I know, you're thinking "how hard can it be to hunt a deer?" because if you live in New England like we used to, we had a countless deer living in our yard, not to mention the several who where hunted the urban way with cars directly in front of our house...... In fact I know lots of non-hunters who have managed to bag deer that way. And cars, but who's being technical like that?
Anyway. There's not much else to write about that I can remember. I remember there were other things that cracked me up that I would share, but of course I can't remember them.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
It's been a fun few days
You didn't expect sarcasm here did you?
But really, the low point of the week was taking JM to the dentist for his cavities to be filled. I'm not sure if it's from my parenting failures or from his reflux issues and years of eating Maalox in the middle of the night but he had a cavity between 2 of his teeth, meaning it affected 2 teeth.
And he was SOOO good in the dentist, for the novacaine and everything.
And as we were leaving he was crying and I felt so bad for him. And right before we left, the dentist said "make sure you don't bite your lip, I know it's tempting while you're lip is asleep." And by the time we got from dentist to the dollar store for his ballon for being good at the dentist he had eaten the side of his mouth. I'm not kidding. Blood pouring down his chin and all. If you picture popular vampire images, that's what I found in the backseat 10 minutes after buckling him in.
So I wisk him home and started icing it. And it bled the rest of the day and when the Novacain wore off he cried. for hours. That his lip hurt.
And since then it's been huge, swollen and covered in yellow oozing crust. Seriously gross. and he's refused to eat anything that doesn't come out of a straw. Although we did get a spoon of peanut butter into him twice. So it's been 3 days of smoothies and milkshakes and Popsicles. And everytime we go somewhere people say "WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS LIP!?!!" and I have to admit that above story that his horrible mother let him get cavities and then let him eat his mouth for a snack.
I'm going to come up with a snappy response like "snake bite" or "got it stuck in a vacuum" for the next time. And I'm sure there will be a next time. It's only 1/3 of the way healed. if that.
In other news, being cookie mom means I have people showing up here pretty much any day asking for more cookies. They give me some notice but it's giving me an incentive to keep the house entry way from looking like a tornado went through lately. Of course a tornado did come through here and has thrown up several hundred boxes of cookies. And piles of paperwork for the pending income tax stuff.
Speaking of income tax.. did you know that big brother is alive and well and getting bigger? Now paypal reports to the govt what your sales were. Not that I plan on being dishonest, but even in the best situations my numbers don't always match up. I mean really, I don't balance my checkbook because the numbers were always a few digits off. Can you imagine what it's going to be like when it's all inputted into quickbooks? I bet it'll be more than a few digits off. And nothing says "audit me" like numbers not matching what the govt thinks you made. Ask my about our other incorrect tax filings. Of course at this point I think the audit people probably realize there's a math idiot putting numbers into tax act on this end and it's not actual intentional. As if I'd intentionally not include a w-2. I just never guessed one employer issued 2 different w-2's.
Anyway, because I can't find 8 months of bank statements and my bank says "access 18 months of statements online" on my statement and when I went online I could only access 3 months of statements, and after 10 "I can't help you with that, let me transfer you to womeon who can" transfers with the bank I am now waiting for 10 months of statements to arrive before I can proceed. Because you can't actually access 18 months from my accounts. Good thing I'm not starting this April 10th, huh? This year is another file in 2 states year. Fun times. And every year I say "yep. good thing I didn't pick accounting as a career choice"
Of course this whole "cookie mom" this is one big accounting headache. With people getting more cookies and adding them to their tab and keeping track of who's paid what and who owes what...... ack!!! And I'm going to get more cookies tomorrow. 2nd time we've re-stocked and re-ordered in 1 week. From a person who did.not.want.to sell this dumb things. Sonia's sold 5 boxes. 2 of them to her family. And if I don't get these dumb things out of here we'll be eating and buying more. In that order.
In other news, San Diego now passed an ordinance that everyone in the county can have chickens and 2 goats (not more and not less than 2 goats) so the question is arising of "do we want goats?" and frankly, I'm not sure. I joke that I'm holding out of a dairy cow, but seriously it's a joke. Besides, they smell. And they're work. And I have enough work as it is.
Speaking of work... I got my license this week. It might have arrived last week but I don't check the mail all that often. So work now has a copy of it and now we can go back to working for pay. I'm not calling and trying to get shifts yet. I still want to get my taxes in order and still get these stupid cookies off my plate.
My next fun Lasik or PRK surgery is scheduled for March. More fun times ahead. I've decided that my eyes are just my thorn in my side. I'll spare the rest of the world the nitty gritty details but I'll focus on the fact I can see at all and not on the fact that I see double what the rest of the world sees. still. yep. fun times.
But, ya know, I didn't give a hoot if the groundhog saw his shadow or not. Because I live here in paradise, and that, my friend, IS fun.
But really, the low point of the week was taking JM to the dentist for his cavities to be filled. I'm not sure if it's from my parenting failures or from his reflux issues and years of eating Maalox in the middle of the night but he had a cavity between 2 of his teeth, meaning it affected 2 teeth.
And he was SOOO good in the dentist, for the novacaine and everything.
And as we were leaving he was crying and I felt so bad for him. And right before we left, the dentist said "make sure you don't bite your lip, I know it's tempting while you're lip is asleep." And by the time we got from dentist to the dollar store for his ballon for being good at the dentist he had eaten the side of his mouth. I'm not kidding. Blood pouring down his chin and all. If you picture popular vampire images, that's what I found in the backseat 10 minutes after buckling him in.
So I wisk him home and started icing it. And it bled the rest of the day and when the Novacain wore off he cried. for hours. That his lip hurt.
And since then it's been huge, swollen and covered in yellow oozing crust. Seriously gross. and he's refused to eat anything that doesn't come out of a straw. Although we did get a spoon of peanut butter into him twice. So it's been 3 days of smoothies and milkshakes and Popsicles. And everytime we go somewhere people say "WHAT HAPPENED TO HIS LIP!?!!" and I have to admit that above story that his horrible mother let him get cavities and then let him eat his mouth for a snack.
I'm going to come up with a snappy response like "snake bite" or "got it stuck in a vacuum" for the next time. And I'm sure there will be a next time. It's only 1/3 of the way healed. if that.
In other news, being cookie mom means I have people showing up here pretty much any day asking for more cookies. They give me some notice but it's giving me an incentive to keep the house entry way from looking like a tornado went through lately. Of course a tornado did come through here and has thrown up several hundred boxes of cookies. And piles of paperwork for the pending income tax stuff.
Speaking of income tax.. did you know that big brother is alive and well and getting bigger? Now paypal reports to the govt what your sales were. Not that I plan on being dishonest, but even in the best situations my numbers don't always match up. I mean really, I don't balance my checkbook because the numbers were always a few digits off. Can you imagine what it's going to be like when it's all inputted into quickbooks? I bet it'll be more than a few digits off. And nothing says "audit me" like numbers not matching what the govt thinks you made. Ask my about our other incorrect tax filings. Of course at this point I think the audit people probably realize there's a math idiot putting numbers into tax act on this end and it's not actual intentional. As if I'd intentionally not include a w-2. I just never guessed one employer issued 2 different w-2's.
Anyway, because I can't find 8 months of bank statements and my bank says "access 18 months of statements online" on my statement and when I went online I could only access 3 months of statements, and after 10 "I can't help you with that, let me transfer you to womeon who can" transfers with the bank I am now waiting for 10 months of statements to arrive before I can proceed. Because you can't actually access 18 months from my accounts. Good thing I'm not starting this April 10th, huh? This year is another file in 2 states year. Fun times. And every year I say "yep. good thing I didn't pick accounting as a career choice"
Of course this whole "cookie mom" this is one big accounting headache. With people getting more cookies and adding them to their tab and keeping track of who's paid what and who owes what...... ack!!! And I'm going to get more cookies tomorrow. 2nd time we've re-stocked and re-ordered in 1 week. From a person who did.not.want.to sell this dumb things. Sonia's sold 5 boxes. 2 of them to her family. And if I don't get these dumb things out of here we'll be eating and buying more. In that order.
In other news, San Diego now passed an ordinance that everyone in the county can have chickens and 2 goats (not more and not less than 2 goats) so the question is arising of "do we want goats?" and frankly, I'm not sure. I joke that I'm holding out of a dairy cow, but seriously it's a joke. Besides, they smell. And they're work. And I have enough work as it is.
Speaking of work... I got my license this week. It might have arrived last week but I don't check the mail all that often. So work now has a copy of it and now we can go back to working for pay. I'm not calling and trying to get shifts yet. I still want to get my taxes in order and still get these stupid cookies off my plate.
My next fun Lasik or PRK surgery is scheduled for March. More fun times ahead. I've decided that my eyes are just my thorn in my side. I'll spare the rest of the world the nitty gritty details but I'll focus on the fact I can see at all and not on the fact that I see double what the rest of the world sees. still. yep. fun times.
But, ya know, I didn't give a hoot if the groundhog saw his shadow or not. Because I live here in paradise, and that, my friend, IS fun.
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