Plodding Along

When Bob came home yesterday, I was sitting at the computer. He glanced around at the messy kitchen and asked, "Soooo, what did YOU do today?" (Well, for one thing, I did NOT wash the sink full of his dirty dishes.)

I had an answer all ready for him, though, because of my new "organizational" tool. A while back, I bought a pad of one-week calendar pages. The plan was to list items that needed to be done, each with a little square that I could check off when the task was finished. Except about two weeks into this plan, I discovered that I resent being told what to do, even if I'm telling myself. So, instead, I wait until the end of a day, and make a list of things I accomplished. That way, all the boxes are checked off.

The first thing I had done is set up the chicken breeding pens. Here is a chart that took me two weeks to figure out.

It makes no sense to you, does it? That's okay, it barely makes sense to me. This shows all the pens and the leg band numbers of all the birds. At this point all of the birds are included. It's going to be difficult to identify such a variety of chicks. After the first month, I'll be selling the extra adults and only concentrating on the best ones. I haven't start saving eggs yet, the hens are not laying reliably yet. Also, I still need to set up the incubators.

In the meantime, I've been collecting the miscellaneous unfertile eggs for the past two months. I keep them in covered, raccoon-proof buckets.

The fertile pigeon eggs go into the buckets, too. When the buckets start to stink, I load them up and take them a mile away, to the end of the property, right next to the creek. The raccoons and opossums can have a feast. I never leave old eggs anywhere in my yard because I want the wildlife to stay at the creek. Usually I use the golf cart to haul eggs. Yesterday I used my car. I did such a good job tarping the golf cart for the winter that never came, I didn't want to unwrap it. It might rain this week.

Once in a while, a pair of pigeons will sneak eggs past me and hatch some babies. These are two that I had to bring in this week and feed by hand. See their poor little, pecked heads? Their parents did that to them to get them out of the nest. Those parents will be going to the auction next time. Don't you think these two look like miniature seagulls?

This is a pair I have actually been encouraging to nest.

It's a pair of Copper Black Archangels I bought at the Ferndale show.

I've also had a chicken in the house all winter. You might remember Grandma, the ancient Old English Game Bantam hen. How old is she this year? Twelve, I think. She was a little feeble at the beginning of winter, but springtime is starting to perk her up.

I hatched 4 of her eggs last year. One of her sons actually placed at a couple of shows. At one, he was Reserve of Variety. I'd be quite happy if she lays again this year, but she's already made her contribution to the gene pool around here, I just don't want her dying for lack of care.

I had a lot of items on my "To Do" list than involved taking care of the birds: cleaning pens, catching and moving them around, trimming nails and beaks, weighing them (important for the bantams) and making sure everything is under cover because it's supposed to rain this week. If I keep saying that, maybe it will.

Here are some other things that I'd marked off the list.

Take a picture of Gollie in her little bed, to show you all that it does fit the proper size cat.

Take a couple of pictures around the yard. I almost hesitate to show these to folks in the rest of the country, who are still frozen under snow. It has been very warm here in California. The daffodils are actually almost finished blooming.

The camellias are making a good show.

The ones further away from the house have flowers that show signs of needing more water. I will run a hose out there. I just kept expecting we'd have rain. We did. It just wasn't enough. But it might rain this week.

I finally set my Texas Mt. Laurel outside. I'm keeping it in a pot on the porch, away from the cottontail rabbits that chewed off the Mt. Laurel seedlings I had planted in the dirt.

I also have some blooms in the house. The orchid Anna gave me last year has bloomed again.

I moved it to a slightly bigger pot and evidently it really likes its window space.

Wesley doesn't bother it, but he has been busy trying to get to the baby pigeons (bad boy), and "playing" with Biscuit through the screen door.

This is what I see through the window by my computer - Biscuit glaring at Wesley with hate in his eyes. If he could get through the door, I'm sure he'd try to kill the kitten. On the other side of the door, Wesley thinks it's all a game.

I have to be very careful to keep the door tightly closed. I'm not sure if having Biscuit neutered would solve the problem or not. He does fine in the woodshed with the girls, and seems to be keeping new ferals from settling here. I haven't checked off any boxes for this. Maybe I could add one that says "Wesley still alive."

There are two more boxes I did get to check off my list yesterday. First, I got my hair cut. Only two hours later and it's already a mess. Like my crooked finger? I shut that in the door of my truck 30 years ago. But I digress, I include this picture to show you the two boxes I'm pointing at in the background.

Those are priority mail boxes. The asparagus has just started to come in, so I actually got my act together and mailed some to Linda in Colorado and Merlene in Texas. Last year I waited until April, when it was way too hot. Colorado and Texas are still frozen, so maybe the asparagus won't arrive as a box of green mush this time. Keep your fingers crossed. That's one thing about a crooked finger, by the way, it crosses very well.

Expensive Toys

Sigh. That was an expensive roll of industrial strength towels. Wesley pulled the roll out of a box, tore off the wrapping, then shredded it as best he could. I was only out of the house for an hour.

The cat has lots of toys. Here's a bowl full of them on the living room floor (bottom left). But he knocked over the silk poinsettia instead.

And pulled off one of the flowers to make himself a NEW toy when he got tired of making artistic shapes out of the towels.

A half hour later I had to chase him out of the kitchen window, where he was happily munching the leaves off a little violet I'd won in the raffle in Fresno. It had to spend the night in a chicken pen.

Wesley knocks over trash cans. Not for food, for wads of paper and other things he can use as toys. He gets into drawers and fishes out our socks. He knocks our iPhones onto the floor, especially if there's an incoming call and he doesn't like the ring tone, but also because he knows they slide well on the linoleum. Can't find your phone? Check under the stove.

Wesley doesn't just enjoy irritating humans, he also bothers the two old cats. He likes to climb into their beds, right on top of them. Velcro's bed is big and she tries to just ignore him. That usually fails when he starts kicking her and trying to bite her ears. Gollie's bed is very small. She's the only cat that fits in it. Wesley doesn't care, as long as he can make her mad, he'll stay in her bed.

The only annoying thing Wesley doesn't do is climb the curtains. I don't have any.

Lost in Fresno

I've only been to the fairgrounds in Fresno maybe 10 times over the years. It was always easy, go down Hwy 99 to Fresno, take the offramp that has the "Fairgrounds" sign, then follow the same signs along the way. Right at Chance St., then left into the fairgrounds.

But I hadn't been to Fresno in a couple of years. And everything had changed.

Now there are two more freeways. I was trying to get to The Big Fresno Fair, marked on this map with an X.

When I exited Hwy. 99 at the "Fairgrounds" sign, it didn't take me to a surface street, it put me on Hwy 180. I kept watching the offramp signs from 180, but there was never another reference to the fairgrounds. Finally, when I saw an exit at Peach St. I knew I'd gone too far. So I took Peach. I knew from past experience to turn off Peach when I saw palm trees.

Uh oh.

I didn't remember palms on Peach. When I got nearer, I could see they had just been transplanted, there were wires holding them up. There was a lot of construction and I was worried they'd removed the palm trees from where they used to be, and I wouldn't recognize the turn off without them.

With detours and other distractions, I was soon in the middle of a residential area with no clue where to go. My trusty iPhone showed me where I was, but it wasn't much help. I used the old technique of asking for directions. It took me 40 minutes to find the fairgrounds.

I assume that when all the construction is finished the fairgrounds signs will be put back up. Several times I was thankful I wasn't pulling a horse trailer to this event. I had just as much trouble getting out of Fresno at the end of the show. The bad part about all of this is that now I have no correct route in my feeble brain, nothing I can rely on in the future. Maybe I will be able to hitch a ride with someone else.

The show is in a nicer building these days. It's bigger and not so dark, and there was a big area with tables where people could sit and visit. That's what they were doing when I got there.

The exhibition cages are to the left. There are sales cages at the back of the building, along the wall. I love shows where the management has made an effort to provide places where people can gather and talk.

Something fairly new to poultry shows are Oriental and American Game classes. This show had lots of entries in both. Game fowl are shown in separate cages that the exhibitors bring. Game fowl are unpopularly known as fighting cocks. Not everyone who raises them fights them, however. Now these people have a way to get together and share their birds in a more wholesome atmosphere.

This is a group of Oriental Game exhibitors.

Some of the more traditional exhibition poultry people have also started raising and exhibiting game fowl. Here, my friend Katherine is setting up a cage for her bird. He ended up winning the award for Best Small Cock. (Have fun with that.)

The American Game Fowl were set up just outside the door. Most of those exhibitors are Hispanic.

Some people don't like having game fowl at exhibition poultry shows. I watched these new people a lot and what I saw were guys who had brought their families enjoying a great time with their birds and friends. And they all bought refreshments and raffle tickets and bought and sold birds in the sales area. It was all good, it just took a little more work on the part of show management to make things run smoothly.

Here is a more typical scene at a poultry show.

People love their birds. This lady had a huge big Langshan. She was proud to show him off. I can only imagine how hard it would be to wash that chicken in my kitchen sink. I think I'll stick to my bantams.

I took my Dominiques and a couple of white Old English Game Bantams. I also took a pair of white OEGB for the raffle, which benefits the poultry club that puts on the show. I love my whites but they very seldom place. The two I showed did not place. But the two in the raffle won first place and $50!!

This was a very clever thing the show management did. Once there was a blue ribbon on the cage, people bought tons of raffle tickets to win these birds. I had a great time waving the ribbon and the $50 bill around and once I'd gloated to all my friends, I donated the money back to the show. Kept the ribbon, though. The birds were won by a young 4-H boy. He and his family were overjoyed to have them, which made me feel great, too.

My Doms were Best of Breed and Reserve of Breed again. One was up for Best RCCL, but the judge gave that award to a teeny tiny Sebright. He came around later and told me he really liked my birds, he just liked the Sebright better. Cool.

Here's the judge, Conor Keegan, examining the Dom bantams.

They put a rope across the aisle when the judge is busy there. Conor was a senior 4-H poultry kid when Bob was first in 4-H. I remember seeing him in showmanship classes then. Now he's a licensed judge. Again, cool.

In the raffle, I won a little violet in a planter. The show was finished by 3:30. By 3:40 I was in my car with the birds loaded, determined to make it home before dark. Except for the additional 45 minutes trying to get out of Fresno, I would have. It was a fairly quick drive home once I found the right freeway.

Wesley has taken a perverse interest in the violet. I have had to put it in a chicken cage with the door closed. He's stretching his paw through the bars trying to get to it. He doesn't even do that if there's a chicken in the cage. What a pain in the butt.

One more show to go.

Heated Conversation

I do, at times, have a terrible temper. Mostly I can temper the temper with a quick tongue and some snarly humor. My tongue gets slower as I age, though.

I like my tax man. He's very nice. He tries to deliver bad news in a gentle way. Nonetheless, I see him as a spokesman for one of the most perverted systems on the face of the Earth; as a spokesperson for the bloodsuckers.

I have 3 sources of income: my PERS retirement, Social Security, and a rent check for my farm land. There is no tax withheld from the rent check. This isn't usually a problem because the property taxes and insurance are so high that, along with even a minimum of maintenance expenses, there is no income to report from it.

Last year my big expense was to have the huge, aging irrigation pump removed and replaced with a small submersible pump. The big pump used a LOT of electricity, it was hooked to a system of storage tanks that needed to be replaced, and it had not been used for crop irrigation for 25 years. It was the only economical thing to do, but going from a 125 gallon-per-minute pump to a 5 HP submersible was quite a step down. It took the last of the rent check, plus some of my savings to have this done.

But guess what? For tax purposes, that wasn't a repair, it had to be listed as an "asset" and the expense couldn't be deducted all at once. So that made it look like there was a profit from the rent check and I was liable for taxes on that. Plus it put me just over into a higher tax bracket where 85% of my Social Security would be taxed.

"How," I asked through clenched teeth, "can a downgrade be considered an ASSET? And well over 75% of the bill was for labor. How is labor a %$#-ing ASSET?"

The tax guy sighed and gave me that look...you know, the one where he sees you as a poor, dumb person who shirked their responsibility to study the tax laws well enough to be able to cope with them? (I used to give the same look to people who came to me with computer problems.)

I narrowed my eyes so the power of my hate rays would concentrate and I could use them to blast through his head. Or maybe burn his pile of paperwork, or fry his hard drive. "Don't try to send me on a guilt trip," I warned.

He diddled with his computer for a minute and "tsked" a couple of times, then showed me a schedule I could use to prepay quarterly taxes in 2014. "There is no way I want to have this feeling four times a year," I said. "I'm sure I'd end up with an incurable disease from all that negativity."

So I paid the extra taxes. My whole income for a month and a half. The state can use my money to build a tunnel to siphon more water to Southern California. The feds can use their share to make sure CEOs get bigger bonuses, and maybe extend a senseless war somewhere on the other side of the world. I already paid a huge property tax bill to a county that does nothing but hound farmers until they sell out to the developers who run county government. What an amazing accumulation of assholes.

I'm going to have a cup of herb tea now. Then I'll start washing the white birds for the upcoming Fresno show and maybe pull some weeds from the flower garden. You can come back in a week or two, I won't assail you with anymore tax vitriol.

Presto, Change-o

When I left for the show in Ferndale on Friday afternoon, I was driving in a light drizzle through a very, very dry Northern California. I took this photo just as I turned west from the valley orchards near Williams and started into the coastal foothills. By this time of year, the hills are usually lush and green.

There were no cows out on the dry pastures. The cows were all in lots close to a hay barn or hay stack where they've had to be fed every day.

On the other side of these hills, about 60 miles, are the redwoods. California's redwood forests are greener than the rest of the state, mostly because they're near the coast and get some moisture from fog, I think. The Eel River that winds along Hwy. 101 was little more than a brownish stream.

The show in Ferndale was a lot of fun. It's fairly small, so there are lots of opportunities to visit. Even the birds got to visit. I had sent cockerel #37 home with Chris a week earlier. Chris brought him to the show, so I put his brother, #34, next to him.

The brothers had been together since they were hatched last March. They're still good buddies. I took 14 birds and got Best and Reserve of Breed for Dominique bantams. My good pullet was considered for Best RCCL, but didn't get it.

Dr. Bradley was judging showmanship at Ferndale, which is such a treat for the kids up that way. It's unfortunate she no longer judges at the big PPBA show, a lot of kids are missing out. This is not my picture (and I should have paid attention to the photographer's name), but it shows Dr. B with a class of 4-Hers doing showmanship.

They've just measured the egg laying capacity of their birds and are holding up their fingers to represent that measurement. I know, it looks weird if you don't know what's going on.

The official hotel for this show is an Indian casino. It's a great place to stay.

I had my birds packed up and ready to go early Sunday. I was on the road by 8:30. I wanted to take a different route home to see if it was faster than the 35-45 mph road that snakes through the foothills around Clearlake.

It had been drizzly all weekend in Ferndale and the Eel River had doubled in size. The hills are very steep in that area, rain runs off quickly. I expected to see some dampness on the road south.

Within an hour, it was raining heavily. There was so much water being kicked up by cars and trucks, I could barely see the road in some places. Luckily the little RAV4 does very well in nasty conditions, I just have to see where to steer it.

This time I went on down to Petaluma, where I intended to cross at Napa and pick up I-80 to head back north to Sacramento. Except I didn't know there had been 10 inches of rain in that area while I was in Ferndale. There was water pooled in all the low areas of the vineyards. The ducks and geese were thrilled. Not so much the people, who had to drive miles out of their way to detour around flooded streams.

I finally made it home. It took 6 hours. Chris left 90 minutes after I did and got home in 5 hours. He had taken the Clearlake route.

At home, the creek was up and the horses were standing in muck around their feed rack. It had "only" rained 5 inches in Sloughhouse.

Only 4 days later, as I type this, the countryside already has a green tinge. The grasses aren't taking a chance there's more rain to come, it seems they're determined to grow as fast as they can.

Unfortunately, California's water troubles are not over. Cattlemen have already spent a great deal of money feeding their stock hay, a good deal of their natural grazing time has been lost and that's an expense they won't be able to recover.

A recent article I read has blamed the federal and state government for totally misjudging our drought. Last year, when our reservoirs and dams were a little low, but could have kept Northern California going for 3 years, the people in charge drained them, sending our water south to Los Angeles and the big corporate farms. They were evidently counting on enough rainfall and snow in the north to replenish the shortfall. The reservoirs in the south, as a result, are full, while ours are empty. This was managed by avoiding any public meetings, they just did it. There will be lawsuits, of course, but that won't bring the water back.

When mother nature takes a more unpredictable course, it quickly becomes apparent that our government isn't working. In California, politicians will toss everyone in the north to the dogs just to keep agribusiness (do not EVER confuse them with real farmers) and the hordes in Southern California appeased.

I'm off now to see the tax preparer. You just know he's in for a great time today, don't you? I so love paying money to a government that I have absolutely no confidence in; not at the county level, the state level, nor the federal. I no longer see them as incompetent; there's a lot more evidence that they're scheming, lying bloodsuckers.

Smooth as Silk

Aaaargh.

All I needed was a silk scarf. I needed this to polish my birds before I put them in their show cages. Why silk? I don't know, it's what all the guys who win all the time use, so it must be good.

I could not find a silk scarf. Correction, I could find one online for $45. Ho ho ho, like I'm going to pay more for a chicken scarf than for one I'd wear?

So when I was shopping on Sunday, waiting for Bev to call, I stopped by a fabric store to buy a half yard of silk. Rather than go up and down the aisles and buy a bunch of stuff I didn't need (which is something many of us ladies do in fabric stores), I asked for directions at the counter. The young lady told me silk fabric was on Aisle 7. Sure enough, there was a sign that said "Silky Fabric." But when I started looking at labels, I found that all this material was 100% polyester. I wasn't about to buy polyester, it might mean the difference between a $2 blue ribbon and a red one.

So I found an older attendant. She actually knew the difference between "silk" and "silky" and sent me to the correct aisle. I bought a half yard of maroon silk. I figured it would bring out the red in the birds' combs and wattles and give an overall impression of cohesion. I could wear a black turtleneck and my maroon vest. It would say, "this exhibitor is obviously color-coordinated and knows what she's doing, she MUST have superior birds."

Once I got the material hom, the real fun began.

I needed to hem the silk because it had lots of little strings hanging off it. Messy looking strings. This should have been no problem, I have been sewing since I was 6 years old. I own not one, but TWO sewing machines. One is old, I've had it for 40 years. The other is new. I've had it for 5 years, but I've never used it. Sewing is one of those things I was going to do when I retired, but I haven't found time for it.

I had put the old machine in the back of the closet from Hell, and left the new one on a very convenient shelf where I could easily get to it. This was going to force me to learn to use the new one.

Oh my goodness! Mostly what I learned the rest of the afternoon is that I'm not as smart as I used to be. If you add that to directions written in 4 languages, fingers and feet that don't work as well as they need to, and a total lack of even the small bit of patience I used to have, that's a bit of a handicap.

It took me 3 hours to get the machine together. A lot of that time was spent just trying to run the thread where it was supposed to go. I finally followed my instincts instead of the instructions.

I got 2 scarves hemmed. I think I'll wait on the others until I see if the first two are going to work.

Fruitcake Day

Sunday was just one of those days. The kind that starts out great, then turns weird as soon as you add people.

Not the first person I added, Beverly was fine. She had caught another feral cat and we had an appointment at SPCA early in the morning. When we got there, the people standing just in front of us were the same people as last time. They were a nice fellow and his wife. They were quite proud of themselves because they'd finally caught their neighborhood's elusive feral mama and had brought her in to be spayed. We had a fun time exchanging trapping stories.

Bev and I were actually third in line. The second person had brought 6 cages of cats, but we didn't see her anywhere, so we were let into the SPCA office ahead of her. After the first couple was waited on and had left the office, she showed up. She seemed to be upset.

We thought it was because we were let in ahead of her. But that was not the case. She started complaining about the fellow who had just left. "He shouldn't be allowed to have animals, he's cruel, he abuses animals!!!"

Bev and I looked at each other and traded eyebrow signals. As the weird woman ranted, going in and out of hysterics and crying, I thought she must be talking about someone else. Someone Bev and I hadn't seen.

I believe I said, hoping to settle her nerves, "The man who brought this cat in is just fine." Bev may have added, "He's a nice guy."

"NO HE'S NOT!!!" she burbled through tears. "He kept lifting the towel on the cat's trap and tormenting it, it was panicked. And he told me he knows who I am and that I have a fat ass." And she went on...and on...and on about how she's been sick and no one has EVER talked to her like that. Boo hoo.

I'm not making fun of the boo hoo, I do that too when I'm upset. Or mad. Or sad, or mostly anything out of the ordinary. But this woman was a certified (by me) nut job. The kind that gives crazy cat ladies a bad reputation.

If our new friend was a bad guy, he would not have helped his wife spend weeks trying to catch the cat and waited in line at the crack of dawn on Super Bowl Sunday to have it neutered. He probably would have shot it and thrown it back over his neighbors' fence. Or trapped it and dumped it at my place.

That wasn't the end of fruitcake day.

I took Bev home to wait for the call to pick up her cat. Then I went shopping until Bev called me.

In the first store, there was a woman with two tall, thin teenage girls wearing hoodies, and a boy about 5. He called the older woman "Grandma." I'm pretty sure one of the young girls was the his mother. The girls seemed to think that "shopping" meant you picked things up, packed them a couple of aisles away, then dumped them (instead of taking them back where you got them). It was the 2nd of the month. I think government assistance checks arrived on the first. Yes, I'm making an assumption.

The worst thing was the very loud, nasty-mouthed, repulsive little boy. He wanted everything. He would grab something and try to put it in the cart. His mother would be saying "no, you can't have/don't need that," and he would scream at his grandmother to get it for him. Finally his mother took something away from him (and set it on a shelf where it didn't belong). He screamed, "You f--k, b--ch!!"

Perhaps he has a learning disability, he appears to transpose words.

I couldn't believe that not one of the 3 women did anything about this. There are things you can do, even when you might be arrested for physical abuse. A barely noticeable handful of hair might work, or a pinch on the underside of the arm. I was starting to chew the inside of my cheek raw, and my foot was really aching to kick his little butt, so I detoured down another aisle.

When I got to the checkout, these folks were in front of me. They were taking most of the things out of their cart because they suddenly didn't want them, and were tossing those things everywhere. The mother took something away from the little brat and he started screeching and knocking things off the shelves. And no one did a thing. What CAN you do? Certainly nothing logical, group mentality these days has been overcome by political correctness.

Twenty minutes later I had moved on to a nearby store when the same family trooped in and started to repeat their routine. This time the mother was again trying to tell the boy he couldn't have something. Another woman was pushing her cart down the aisle from the opposite direction. When she passed the screaming boy, she popped the package out of his hands and tossed it onto the top shelf of a nearby display, where he couldn't reach it. She didn't stop or even look at fruity family, she just continued down the aisle as the kid laid down and went berzerk. It was pretty cool. People wanted to applaud her, but of course no one did.

Just Wondering...

Cousin-in-law Beverly and I would like to know,

Why can't men just do what we ask?

Instead, this is what they do:

• ignore us
• argue about whether it really needs to be done
• make us feel we're stupid for asking
• put off the task until we find another way to get it done

I don't recall that my mother had this problem.