Procrastination and a Fritz update

This post feels so disjointed to me. I started writing it three days ago, then Wednesday I ended up with a miserable high fever which knocked me flat on my behind. I still have a headache. I never get headaches, which is suprising considering my life with these little ones. Anyway, here you go.

My husband was gone all last week. There was one thing he wanted me to do while he was gone. By that I mean, in addition to my usual job of keeping our children alive which is the bare minimum of my successful day.

I'm a fairly good mom. All three of my children are still alive.

I was supposed to look over our taxes, which my patient husband had completed, and check for any mathematical and/or stupidity errors.

Remember, I had all week to do it.

So I reorganized the living room.

That project was actually necessary for the baby's survival (which is an important part of my job as I just mentioned). The little bean had begun attempting to take flight lessons off the back of the couch. She thought it was funny. I did not.

For safety reasons, the couch is now backed up against a wall. Problem solved, except that it meant I also had to move two chairs, scoot the large playroom area rug over a bit, and generally vacuum and extract toys from underneath every piece of furniture in the room.

Why do a job except to do it well, right?

I dusted the corn soot off the baseboard and window trim. I sorted through the kids books, replaced batteries in a few much loved toys, and even vacuumed underneath that big playroom rug. I'm not sure that we have ever vacuumed under there. Now we have.

In between changing diapers, feeding kids and gathering eggs, that was basically a full day project.

The next time the thought of taxes went through my head was also the same unfortunate moment that I noticed a carpet beetle larvae crawling up the baseboard in our sun room. Gross. If there is one, there are more. How many more I am going to keep my little secret.

Let's just say, I carefully peeled up the tiniest corner of that yucky carpet to see what kind of floor was underneath.

And then I peeled it some more.

Like some really amazing dark chocolate, I could not stop myself.


I ripped the whole dumb thing out. Good riddance carpet beetle larvae!

The baby laughed.

The three year old said, "Oh MOMMY! You shouldnint have done THAT!"

The five year old said, "What did you do?"

I said, "I wonder what your Daddy will say?"

Of course, then I had to pull up the carpet padding, vacuum, pull staples up, and vacuum some more. I wasn't sure what tool I needed to get those nail strips off the floor. They were stuck tight.

Anyway, in the spirit of procrastination and distraction, I want to tell you a little story about this tool. A tool that is mine, and one I actually did use in my carpet beetle larvae removal project.


You see the rust?

No? Of course you don't.

This little tool of mine, it is a handy one. Someone else likes to use it too.

Once upon a time he used it in late summer, and then it disappeared. It was gone all fall, the entire long winter, and finally turned up the next spring, as rusty as anything. And not for lack of searching either, believe me!

Any idea where it was hiding all that time? The one place we never thought to look?

The garage roof, of course.

There is still some rust on it. And even though I'm glad to have it back, it just hasn't been quite the same since.

I did finally look over our taxes, ummm... after my husband returned safely home, and I did indeed fine one minor error, but it didn't change any of the final numbers in any way.

Alright, I know the truth is that you read all this way just for the news regarding Fritz. People, it's good stuff. It made me laugh out loud, and I hope it does the same for you.

Ready?

Let me simply give you this, which is as close as my foggy brain can recall how it was told to me, "King Fritz did scare our other rooster enough that he flew the coop and the dog ate him."

And that was the end of the Leghorn.

Seriously, I am wiping tears from my eyes. I am so glad I did not axe that guy.

Of men and toilets

Men. Seriously.

If a woman had been in charge of this project, this would never have happened.


It would never have happened, because the woman would have had the foresight to cover the toilet with an old blanket, or something. Because otherwise, the woman is the one who has to clean the mess up.

And.

When the men cut the first section of cast iron pipe loose, it fell.

The last time they did a project like this, the cut edge of the pipe hit my husband in the lip, causing his mother and me to insist he go into the clinic. As you know, a gash in your face embedded with sewer yuck is always an awesome thing. Being a man, and invincible, of course he thought we were nuts. And so we are, but that's beside the point.

Had it not been for the tetanus shot they gave him, we women would have been in big trouble. Right.

The women were right, did you catch that?

Back to my story...

Down tumbled the sewer pipe. Again. Yes, this is the third home in which we have done this same project. It's getting just a bit tiresome.

I heard my father-in-law, as he peeked through a hole in the floor where the original toilet was recently anchored, ask my husband if he was OK.

Don't you just love when that happens?

"Yeah, but the toilet broke."

Oh crap.

That would be the new one. The one we installed just so we would have a toilet while this project was underway. The one I wrote about here.

Overnight we got a few new inches of snow on the ground, more coming down now, and the wind is going to pick up which means we will be stormed in, way out here on the frozen prairie.


And my husband just said the new toilet is broken.

NO WAY!


I am so grateful it was only the lid, maybe we can glue it, or something.

"I need to go poop!" my bigger boy said.

"Get your boots on and go downstairs."

"I need to go potty!" my littler boy said, grabbing himself.

"Get your boots on and go downstairs with your brother."

Then a chorus of, "But I want to use the real potty chair... what if it's too cold... I need socks..."

I sent them downstairs to their dad, since he is in charge. I have no idea if they even used the toilet, but it became clear within a few minutes that they were not coming back up. They were helping, and being schooled in the proper man ways of doing a project of this magnitude.

I have to pee too, but I'm going to hold it. Remember, that is not a bathroom down there, just a toilet in the middle of a work zone including two grown men and two miniature men-in-training.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can hold it.

I took advantage of the boys being out of the way, and got the little bean down for her nap. Perfect, now I can write, right?

She's having a party in her bed. She sounds like she's having a grand old time, so I think I'll just leave her there.

And guess what? My husband, bless his heart (as some important women in his life would have said), actually did clean the toilet. Some. At least he tried.

Honestly, I'm so grateful that he can fix things around here. He can fix anything.

It's why I married him, you know.

The excess toilet

This is not a bathroom.


You're looking at that photo in disbelief, aren't you?

Believe me, it is not a bathroom. It needs a door.

We learned that when were in the midst of selling our last home.

By definition (whichever one mattered at the time) a bathroom must have a door. You know, a door for privacy.

Lucky for us, it didn't have to be a very secure or very private door. A few dollars for a cheap curtain and rod and we were approved to sell. (The main bathroom did have a working, solid wood door. It was the second bathroom which was having an identity crisis.)

I'm sure the new owner was thrilled.

Around here, it really doesn't matter if a bathroom has a door or not. There is no privacy with young children about. I couldn't tell you the last time I pooped alone. However, it is on the list of things I hope to do again someday when my children are older. What a list! I should write about it sometime.

This is only a toilet.


Too bad, because otherwise I might be able to say it was the fastest bathroom my husband ever built. I was rather impressed. Not the best bathroom he ever built, but certainly the fastest. That must count for something?

I was the first one to use it.

Now that must surely count for something?

I used it because someone had parked himself on the other one.

My three year old has issues. One of his issues is that he sometimes needs to sit on the toilet for awhile before he can get his poop out. It doesn't seem to be a real problem for him, or anything, just that he sits.

Well, it is a problem in that we only have had one toilet in the house, and there are five of us.

Alright, there are only four of us that use the toilet. But still!

That child will sit there, for something like an hour or longer... almost every day. Yeah, I give him prunes for lunch a few times a week. He loves them and thinks they're just the coolest thing ever, besides gummy worms. Doesn't seem to matter though.

If I am so rude as to bother this child and ask him if he is finished sitting there on his throne, he waves me away with his hand like some snobby royal prince, while commanding, "AWAY!".

Seriously, I have no idea where he got that from.

This is toilet paper.


My five year old was given the task of obtaining several rolls of paper for our shiny new toilet. He was so thrilled, you would think it was the greatest honor we could have bestowed upon him. His level of excitement went far beyond his level of involvement in the project. (He did help install the dumb thing.)

I was minding my own business doing dishes (which usually has nothing to do with a toilet) when he suddenly appeared beside me.

"MOMMY!!! I saw the parts on the inside of the tank that makes it flush! And it flushes really, really, really good! And when it flushes it goes KASHOOOOOOOOOOSH! And there was a leak! But Daddy tightened it up and now it's fixed! And Daddy wants me to bring him TWO ROLLS OF TOILET PAPER!"

Just as quickly as he appeared, he was gone.

Have I mentioned we don't have a television and tend to be rather easy to entertain?

Anyway...

We had to put in a second bathroom toilet in preparing to fix the gashed sewer pipe which I mentioned in this post. Remember?

One hundred dollars for a toilet in the middle of my basement. It was the cheapest one. I would rather have spent one thousand dollars for ten toilets and sent them to Haiti, along with a good plumber and a backhoe and pipes and whatever else they need to make them work.

At the moment, I'm feeling guilty about my second toilet. Yeah, we need it while we repair the big pipe, but how long will that take?

The truth is, it is excess, and we already have so much more than we need.

The sad thing is, after some time, most of the world is certain to forget about what happened in Haiti.

My hope is that this extra toilet will remind me of how much I have, remind me of how blessed I am, remind me to give and pray.

My hope is that I will remember that somewhere, someone is hurting.

Oh yeah, and I hope this toilet (since it does happen to be in the middle of my basement) does flush really, really good. Because the truth is, an excess toilet will probably be a useful thing to have.

Heating the chicken

It's cold out tonight, really cold.

This egg was not out there too horribly long. But obviously it was long enough.


For some reason I had -20 in my head as the point at which I would put heat on in the coop. The weatherdudes say we're already at -25, and think we're headed to somewhere near -30 tonight. I was just out there, and it is almost -15 in the coop. So that is it, time for heat!

My husband helped me nail a heat lamp up with some wire staples, and it is now hanging very securely over the roost. My goal here is to NOT burn the barn down.

Once that was done I took my gloves off and started rubbing petroleum jelly into my two rooster's combs and wattles. It's supposed to help prevent freezer burn frostbite. I still had the hens to do, but after just those few minutes of bare skin exposed I could hardly move my fingers.

I ran back to the house.

My long underwear were missing, because I had to empty my bedroom closet.

This is the reason why.


Nice, don't you think?

A huge gash in the sewer pipe, which was letting a whole lot of very stinky air right into the wall between the bathroom and my bedroom closet... but usually only when I did laundry. But even that is often enough to be a real problem. Finally I had gotten everything emptied out of the closet so my husband could attack the wall. I'm just thrilled the problem was so obvious. It's now temporarily patched up with a bunch of caulking. Still stinky, but not as bad as it was before.

Like I said, my closet is empty... and my clothes (and honestly I really don't have much after being at home with these kiddos for almost five years) are now in three random locations around the house.

So I searched for awhile and eventually found them, the long Johns, and also grabbed my ski pants too. I now had three layers on my legs. My husband found me a pair of disposable nitrile gloves (like exam gloves).

Back out the door and to the barn, which at the moment is colder than my freezer, again.

I peeked in the coop door, and guess what? Not a single freezing frostbit bird of mine was anywhere even slightly near the heat lamp! Birdbrains!

Did you know that a tube of petroleum jelly gets awfully stiff at fifteen degrees below zero? Crazy weird that stuff is, it actually freezes at 100 to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Rubber bands get really, really interesting at -80 Celsius, but that doesn't have anything even slightly to do with my farm, where I tend to measure temperature in Fahrenheit degrees.

Anyway... what a difference that thin layer of nitrile made on my hands. Too bad I couldn't coat the chickens combs and wattles with nitrile. But even if I could, they would probably just eat it. Birdbrains.

After greatly disturbing each hen to give it a petroleum jelly luxury frozen prairie spa treatment, I placed it on the roost right under the heat. It was amazing! They transformed from the grumpy, hunched up balls of poofed out feathers that they are in very cold weather. They stretched out their necks and looked all around, preened a few feathers, stretched their legs out one at a time, and then settled in.

By the time I was done I had a roost full of hens snuggled in side by side. The lucky ones were right below the heat lamp. Ah, so much better.

I ran back to the house again, hoping I don't wake up tonight to a barn bonfire and blackened chicken. Wish us luck.