Chicken Drama, Food Poisoning, and a Saint

 1.) Chickens are very stupid when they're scared. 

I was lying down nursing the baby to sleep and Chris was reading in the other room when we heard the rooster making an unholy din outside. Chris went out to check what it was. He immediately came back in, grabbed the .22, and went back out. 

A possum had gotten into the coop and was wandering around and stirring up the birds. The birds, for their part, reacted by flying frantically around the coop and out the door. Chris managed to drive the possum out and shoot it. 

In the frantic scramble, one of the hens somehow got wedged in one of the pallets that forms the walls of the coop. By wedged, I mean really wedged. One wing was caught in between the slats, the other against the hardcloth covered window on the other side of her, and her toes were stuck in the hardcloth too. 

Rescuing her turned out to be a fairly complicated operation. Not only was she on the wall opposite the door of the coop, but we had a territorial riled up rooster to deal with as well. 

Attempts to bait the rooster out into the yard proved fruitless. Giving the hen a gentle assist with a pole from the coop door didn't work either. Ultimately, Chris and I had to work together to lift fence panels out of the way (they were right up against the coop), use wire cutters to cut through the hardcloth, and then gently wrestle the hen out without freaking out the rooster. 

The hen is since doing well, and the rooster remains his dunderhead self. 

2.) Little Boy got sick. Lots of barfing overnight and then sleeping all day. 

Stomach bugs are rare around here, thank God, but they are NOT fun when they happen. 

Little Boy woke up the other night with a fit of coughing that suddenly stopped. A gut instinct told me to go check on him. 

"Honey? Are you ok?" 

"I threw up." 

And boy did he. After depositing him in the shower, putting the bedding in the wash, and setting up the bed again (with a bowl within reach, just in case), we got him resettled. 

For about fifteen minutes. Then he barfed again.

 Thank God for that bowl. 

Ultimately he ended up on the couch, throwing up about every fifteen minutes for about three hours, before finally falling asleep. 

The next day I was able to coax some Gatorade and a saltine into him, but he pretty much just slept the whole day (all but a few hours in the afternoon) and then went to bed early and slept through the night too. 

Poor baby. It took a couple days for him to fully bounce back. 

3.) Nerd Alert

How on Earth did The Orville, a parody created by (and starring) the man who came up with Family Guy, end up a better show than Star Trek Voyager? 

Seriously. The acting is better and the writing is better (they don't always go for the obvious happy ending, and the societal critiques are on point). It's just a better show. 

I will say that the dynamic between the two leads gets on my nerves a bit, especially the girl. The rest of the cast acts more like regular slightly doofy people going through space; the humor surprisingly usually does a great job supporting the main story.  

I'd rank the show somewhere below Star Trek The Next Generation, but above most other Trek shows that I've seen. It's been well worth the watch. 

4.) Dog had to go to the vet for ear trouble. 

Poor thing. 

Our vet has this policy that you can drop your animal off in the morning, and they'll keep it all day until a pick up time in the afternoon. Thank God. There's no way I could have attended that appointment with a preschool kid and a baby in tow. 

Apparently she has allergies and that contributes to an everlasting yeast/bacterial infection in her ears. He gave us some antibiotics and a hydrocortisone solution for her ears.   

The vet wants us to take her a three hour drive away to San Antonio for surgery on one ear that's completely sealed up. 

I'm not sure what we're going to do. We adhere to an "outdoor dog" philosophy. It's our responsibility to make sure she is fed, watered, and has adequate shelter outside. Medical care is for basic maintenance and spay/rabies shots only; if our dog gets cancer, we aren't going to spring for chemo. A surgical consult several hours away is a bit beyond what we consider reasonable for an animal. 

We might shop around and get a second opinion from another vet. In the meantime, I'm making sure we're doing the medicines we have, in the hopes that at least makes her more comfortable. 

5.) Gardening fever. 

I bought summer squash seeds the other day. 

Last year I was hugely pregnant or taking care of a newborn, so the only produce we got from the garden was some volunteer winter squash. I'm hoping to actually get out there and plant some stuff this year now that the baby is a little older. 

Chris drove an hour away to buy a used tiller for the tractor last fall. We tried to do the layered mulch and compost thing, but the bermuda grass here is relentless. Literally the only thing we can do against it is to rip it out repeatedly. 

Little Boy got some seeds and gardening supplies for Christmas, so he might have a patch of his own too. I'm not the greenest thumb around, but I'm still hopeful we can maybe actually get some food out of it. 

6.) Cold weather. 

I don't know why, but we always get a freeze in early February, usually after a couple weeks of late 70s and early 80s temperatures. 

It's not as extreme as last year's, thank God, but it's still kind of miserable. Temperatures in the late 20s. We've had to insulate the back door by hanging up a blanket over it, and the kids are pretty effectively stuck inside. 

Propane is cheaper than electricity, so we've been partially heating the house with a propane heater. Chris rigged up a stand thing for it out of some scrap wood and has it installed in the living room. It doesn't work quite as well as the central heat, but it works well enough. We've been switching back and forth between the two as needed. 

 

7.) Food Poisoning

It turns out that summer sausage from a mom and pop butcher shop that smelled slightly off was, in fact, bad. I'm pretty confident that is what we're experiencing and not the stomach bug Little Boy had; a week is a long time between cases. 

Chris and I both ate it at the same time (the kids didn't, thank God), but for whatever reason my stomach reacted first. I spent most of the day yesterday in utter misery while my system, erm..."purged" repeatedly. I had to have Chris take Little Girl to work with him and my mom come over to watch Bitty Baby (thank God she's starting to eat solids)-- I was absolutely immobilized. I feel hung over today, but the worst seems to have passed. 

My husband, on the other hand, was pretty much normal yesterday. He started having symptoms last night but dragged himself to the school this morning to supervise a virtual debate tournament. 

"I'm sitting next to a trash can so I don't have to camp out on the bathroom floor." 

Yeah...I have no idea how he's able to power through stuff like this. He did say he would try to find someone else to lead things over there, but I'm braced for the possibility I'm going to have a sick, tired husband home today, possibly one I'm going to have to go pick up. 

Prayers for our family deeply appreciated. 

8.) I made something

Latest icon made from a holy card and a mini canvas. 

I like making these. I don't like throwing holy cards away, and I feel like they become something someone might actually use this way.