What are We Doing Here?

I found myself rather disenchanted with humanity lately. I ask the question “what the **** does God see in humans?” often but this past week i really couldnt see anything redeemable at all. I do think it has to do with the fact that im surrounded by a lot of people who are going through something right now and hurt people hurt people.

Last week was the hardest one ive had in a long time in terms of disenchantment with humanity. And right when i was at my wits end God showed me the opposite of what i was looking at all week. He showed me people helping and supporting other people. I needed that. He also showed me two other people that see what i see. Their eyes behold what im looking at and their brains came to the same conclusion i did so im not crazy….

Today i saw an ad for a sweatshirt that said something like, “need prayer? Tap my shoulder. We’ll bring it to God together…” im an introvert who discovered the bible at 25 years of age, not infancy. So, the fact that im not a biblical scholar paired with the fact that im an introvert who dislikes the idea of drawing people towards oneself purposefully, has always prevented me from wearing one of those kinds of shirts, but i find ability for prayer doesnt come from word for word recitation of the bible…it comes from the overall understanding of Jesus’ heart and the messages conveyed through the bible. it is better to get the gist of something and be able to apply it to daily life than be able to rattle off exact passages and numbers of verses word for word. I pray daily by myself in my house and occasionally with others when they ask me to say grace at a table or my patient who is dying asks me to pray while they are either facing their diagnosis or actively passing. I have prayed with others before but always at their request and initiation. To wear a shirt that would draw others to me would be very out of character for me. But i lost faith in humanity last week…not like almost did or was kind of teetering on the edge…like i LOST all hope and faith in humanity. I asked that question “what the **** does God see in humans?” again and this time the answer i came up with was “not a **** thing. Thats probably why we’re steadily headed for self destruction at this point. He probably took a look down here, went ‘shit yall have strayed so damn far from noah…i think we’re done with the human experiment…im probably gonna let yall kill each other off here shortly or program your little robots to do it for you, and then when yall are all perished i’ll come up with something besides humans and dinosaurs and see how that works out….’” God showed me a bunch of people being kind to each other, a bunch of people being reasonable, and he put me in a room with someone who took a look at what i was looking at and saw the same thing. Sometimes its tiring holding a differing opinion from all those around you but i was reminded in that moment of a saying written in my quotes book: “right is right even if nobody is doing it and wrong is wrong even if everybody is doing it.” I felt like this whole time i had been trying to help people and God put this sweatshirt in my path and said, “you want to help people? Here you go….”

I bought the sweatshirt. My neighbor who is an introvert running for school board says the way you know God is convicting you to do something is if its the last thing you would normally choose for yourself but you feel in your bones that you are supposed to do it.

Frog and Toad Season

I keep trying to get images of the hundreds of baby toads hopping around the property this month but they move so fast. They dont hold still while i focus the camera. The tree frogs do tend to hold still so i have more images of them. I did get one image of a large frog in the plant pot. I am used to seeing a numerous amount of baby toads each year, and this year is no different. However, sightings of tree frogs are usually sparse and this year they’re everywhere.

Nana Pudding

There she is in all her sassy glory. Half the size of her orpington sisters but twice the amount of attitude. if i open the nesting box to load one up at night…she will fly out and need recaptured, you can be sure. Americaunas are smart chickens so if you are used to orpingtons…you’ve been warned. If you get an americauna, you’ve now got to have your eyes peeled and your wits about you at all times. Do not leave the gate pulled to but not latched. This will fool an orpington but this will not fool an americauna. She is a pain in my rear, but she sure does lay beautiful eggs. And her cheek floofs give her an undeniable amount of character. You have to laugh when looking at her full on, especially when she’s in judgment mode but the cheek floofs betray the seriousness of her expression.

The current mix

The Pullets’ First Carton of Eggs

This was the first whole carton of eggs the pullets ever laid. The eggs started out very tiny. I had to decide which of the people i supplied with eggs got the first batch of enchantingly tiny eggs because as the chickens grew, so too would the eggs, and only one carton was ever this small. I picked my coworker who gives the eggs to her near three year old and near one year old daughters. I figured they’d get a kick out of baby sized eggs. I was right. Her toddler loved them. As i kept collecting, the next two batches did get slightly bigger and continue to do so. That first carton is always enchantingly petite when you raise pullets from day old chicks.

A Bad Day gets Better

I had had a very trying day. Everyone and their cousin and their dog had unmet expectations about how i should be both on and off the clock and nobody really seemed to care who i was. A patient’s brother was taking it very personal that i didnt pay attention to everyone in the grocery and immediately notice when he was standing in an aisle that it was him and that i knew him. Once off the clock, i dont pay attention to who is where…i just shop. I talk to myself, plan the chores im going to do later, plan what im making for supper, read ingredient labels, and read my grocery list. “Scan store for people i know” is not on the agenda. Little does this man realize, theres actually two different coworkers that purposefully avoid saying hi to me when they see me in the grocery after work because they know saying hi just basically means i have to repunch my time card and clock back in to the social dog and pony show that i do at work where i pretend im not an introvert who hates and distrusts people. And i appreciate the heck out of them for respecting me enough to give me what they rightly assess i want…to be left alone to shop in peace.

A new patient at work has a tendency to be inappropriate. He’s overly flirty (and married) and he acts like a 5 year old, throwing temper tantrums and asking “what are you gonna do about it” a lot. He frequently does exercise at hyper speed and then argues as if he’s in the middle of a court case when i change the reps to 40 instead of 20 because he insists upon doing them twice as fast as he is supposed to, thus cutting his amount of exercise achieved in half. He does have a habit of holding onto exercise equipment and refusing to give it back when he’s done simply because he can and its fairly disruptive. He tries his best to be disruptive and this would be the reason i resent him. Everyone else has settled into a nice routine and is cooperating and this one patient is not only being defiant and unsafe himself, he occasionally tries to trip other people because he thinks its funny. Its funny until someone falls. He told me i was making his treatments boring and it wouldnt kill me to play a little bit during his sessions. Im not the type to ‘play’. Im the type to professionally dole out exercises and ADL activities that must be completed to work towards goals outlined in the patient’s plan of care.

Then the feed store employee seemed to think that since i know what the bag of chicken feed looks like i should have been able to muster the assertiveness to tell the new guy that he was loading pig feed instead and to stop putting that on the dolly and get the chicken feed instead. Well that was the plan but im not one to go into someone’s warehouse uninvited. I was going to wait until the man came close to me with the dolly and then tell him ‘wrong bag’. Instead the men just got into a shouting match and the regular was disappointed in me that i didnt set the newbie straight, since i clearly knew what a bag of 9779 looked like and had been buying it for years.

By the time i got to the feed store i was just mentally done and wanted to go home. So when my neighbor said i should stop by to pick up my hemmed overalls on the way home and by the time i read the message, i was already in the house and settled, i did not want to leave the house. Well, after letting me know that she was not available any other day of the week to give me the overalls, i put shoes and clothes back on and got back into the car to drive over and get them, reluctantly muttering the whole way about having to get up, get re-dressed, and go back into the world of people. When i got there she handed me the hemmed overalls. They were beautiful. One leg was hemmed facing inside and the other outside but i really could care less. It was a piece of folded over fabric that probably constituted a 1/4 of a centimeter. Nobody would ever see it unless they knew to look for it. And i now had these wonderful flare leg patchwork cloth overalls of all different kinds and patterns of fabric. They were a beautiful belated birthday present. And i’d always wanted overalls ever since i became an adult and grew out of the ones i’d had as a child. I thanked her and was about to leave when she fessed up that the real reason i had needed to come to her house was because she and her husband had gone to cstco recently and they’d gotten me a bag of cashews! She pulled a jumbo bag of cashews out of her pantry and presented them to me. I lit up like a christmas tree. I hugged her so tightly. She laughed and said, “i knew uou would like that surprise!” I said, “i love cashews so much i named a dog cashew” and she said laughing, “i know.” She said, “im so happy you are so easy to please. You’re just really thrilled over the simple things in life! All i have to do is get you a bag of cashews.” Yes, cashews are securely outside of my food budget simply because of their high cost. However, every solid vegan cheese sauce starts with a cashew base. Cheez sauce on rice, on pasta, on fruit, on gluten free bread in the toaster oven, and on carrot sticks….its all delicious. Beyond that, you can toast cashews in a pan on the stove and add them to rice dishes where they taste amazing. I had an heirloom tomato left in the fridge and some chickpea pasta. I also had some chives from my neighbor’s garden that needed using up before they went bad. I put those and some basil in the cheez sauce and made vegan mac and cheese with cut up tomato on top. It was heavenly. Gluten free pasta with cashew cheese sauce is a real treat at my house because i only have it when someone has gifted me cashews. I had endured a terrible day and i failed miserably at meeting the expectations of people i dealt with throughout that day, but all of that faded away when cashew cheese sauce came into the picture and all i could see was a plate full of cheezy goodness and thoroughly savored flavor.

The Pullets Lay their First Eggs

When the rat snake posted up inside the pullets’ pen i thought, “what in the world are you doing in there? Why not get in the adult chicken pen where they have an occasional egg? Because the pullets were not supposed to start laying until september, so they started 3 weeks early. Turns out, the snake knew something i didnt. Though i still havent killed him, ive dragged him with a snake stick once and spent a night eternally frustrated with jammed less-than-professionally-made rat shot stuck diagonally in my rifle and may or may not have hit him with rat shot once on that night when the rifle actually ejected a bullet once without it becoming lodged…on those days he did not visit the chicken coop for a bit and it resulted in me noticing something i hadnt seen before in the coop; Eggs. The blue egg confirmed that nana pudding was indeed an americauna with her little cheek floofs and it turns out i have at least one speckled egg layer out of the chocolate orpingtons. One of my rather religious friends that usually gets free eggs is now overly concerned about eating a concepted being now that there are roosters involved which led to a rather unexpected conversation about when a baby chicken is considered alive…. Which ended in me saying, “look, this is farming. Theres roosters and the eggs are fertilized. But its not like you’re going to open the egg and it’ll be a bird inside. Its just an egg. Eat it or dont.” The person eats meat and so it was a concern that took me by surprise. I just didnt have the patience to convince someone to receive my free resource nor was i going to get rid of the roosters because the person who eats animals is now concerned with whether eating a fertilized egg is considered killing a baby. What i didnt realize was that nana pudding was about to be famous. Everyone who had ever received eggs from me was used to getting light brown eggs. But bow they were getting cartons with four blue eggs dotted amongst the brown in each carton. People liked nana pudding’s eggs so much i realized that i would have to make sure i always had a token americauna amongst any batch of orpingtons i raised, as people were now enchanted with the combination of brown and blue eggs. I say token americauna rather than just raise americaunas because nana pudding is way faster, smaller, and smarter than the orpingtons she was raised with. The orpingtons are friendly, docile, kind of lumbering 10 lb chickens. They’re easy to catch, easy to load up, and they dont attempt escape very often. Nana pudding is sharp as a whip, tries to escape daily, is the ring leader of any and all mischief achieved, and is impossible to catch for load up at night or poultry lice dusting. She is a giant pain in my rear…and perhaps the most important chicken i have. Because a nearly 3 year old child has announced that from this point on she will only eat the blue eggs, even though her mother swore to her that the blue and brown eggs taste just the same! So, we either lie to the child and tell her that the eggs on her plate were all blue eggs, or nana pudding needs to lay 5 for that child’s carton. I think one americauna is enough for me to deal with at the moment but i dont want the baby to go without her breakfast protein so, even when it takes me a fifteen minute wild goose chase…i do make sure nana pudding is loaded up at night so that predators cant eat her. Ive already asked and my coworker who raises americaunas exclusively agreed to sell me a female chick to add to my next batch of orpington chicks a couple years from now. Because i cant tell the hatchery to throw a mystery chick in the box next time…there’s no guarantee it’d be an americauna. Estella said she will definitely sell me an americauna or two in the future if i need her to. I think that’s a requirement now, a token americauna in the mix, because people are going gaga for these little blue eggs mixed in amongst the brown ones.

Hand Stitching Scrubs

Im currently in a financial era of my life where i cannot afford the services of a tailor…and the one i had retired anyway, so, if threading busts, i have to fix it myself. Due to a bunch of trauma surrounding my sister sewing through her finger and passing out still attached to the sewing machine, which had to be brought to the emergency room with her….i do not and never will own one of those diabolical and dangerous machines. I do however have needle, thread, and scissors. So i now do crude patch jobs when the threading of my scrub pockets pops loose from where its sewn. I tack the now loose loop of thread back down where it used to be and then get on with life. The only thread i have in the house is black so now matter what color the scrubs, the patch stitching is always black. I dont really care what it looks like, only that it is functional.

Sili’s New Addiction

This damned dog has started eating cactus. And that goes about like one would think it would go. I know she’s been doing it again because she comes back with a face full of cactus needles. I mean hundreds. And not the big spiky white ones either. No, the teeny little orange ones that are thin and brittle and break off in the tweezers, resulting in raised pus filled boils. I was telling my coworkers that in 7 years, neither dog had ever done this, and my australian shepherd never partook. it was always only the mutt. I said, “she’s supposed to be the smart one, the brains of the operation. Historically she has been. I just dont understand what’s happened here. Maybe she’s gone and developed dementia?….temporary psychosis…?” My coworker said, “no, i know what happened. The cows do this sometimes. The flowers smell sweet and the ripened fruits smell sweet to them so one will get curious every once in a while and try the cactus fruit and once they try it they get addicted. Its like nicotine to them. They cant resist it. So they’ll just deal with all the needles in their face and throat at that point. And i get a herd of cows coming in from the field with one who has needles all in her face.” So, now i have yet another thing on the to do list, which i’ll get on after doing about 30 other things first…but i’ve added “pull up all the cactus in the dog run” to my to do list, because the damn dog has lost her ever loving mind.

The Weekend from Hell

Its been such a terrible weekend! The one dog rolled in dead animal. The other dog stuck her face in cactus 4 times this weekend. An 8 foot rat snake took up residence in the juvenile chicken pen and ive been trying to kill it ever since but i cant get it separate enough from the chickens to use the rat shot without getting a chicken. The pet food store wouldnt let me use my coupons cuz my dog food is currently on sale even though the coupons were both better than the sale, so i have to come back within 2 weeks and buy 2 more bags of dog food to use them, assuming their sale is over, but the better question is where i’ll be storing all that extra dog food in a 1 room 384 square foot house, i broke my invisalign retainer right after 5 pm on a friday…called the emergency line and the regular number…nobody ever called me back, im guessing they didnt see it as the level 5 emergency i did but this is literally how i ended up doing Invisalign for a second time because the retainer broke and my teeth moved and they refused to remedy it unless i bought Invisalign full price all over again, used denture repair adhesive to patch it for the weekend and drove to san antonio Monday morning at 8 am to beg them to make me a new one even though i didnt have an appointment because i was supposed to be at the dentist in austin at 11:30 am. Got measured for two replacement retainers, made it to austin with 30 min to spare, hit MT market real quick to pick up asian produce…with 10 minutes to spare, made it back to san antonio to pick up one of the two retainers 45 minutes before closing (i skipped a part where i had a deer run out in front of the car 4 separate times friday night), also skipped a part where i had to eat nothing but soup all weekend so nothing moved the teeth too much before they could measure me for a new retainer…went to 2 different HEBs to get ingredients for soup, and encountered my old stalker who followed me down every aisle in the second HEB so i had to run down the aisles in loops until i’d collected everything i needed to make the soup because if i stopped at all he tried to talk to me. Luckily i knew where all the ingredients were and was able to grab some of them in a fly by as i zoomed down the aisles. Ive driven 325 miles today and san antonio insists upon closing access roads and exits to both 1604 and i10 all at once instead of 1 at a time so its impossible to get anywhere, a car almost backed into me at the gas pump, i witnessed 3 car wrecks today…1 involving a baby and one in austin requiring 20 cop cars and a complete highway shut down in 1 direction so im gonna guess: fatality investigation….i finally have functional retainers again, got teeth cleaned, and got exotic fruit but for real, this weekend Murphy was working overtime, and so was my sanity.

Also, after you get your teeth cleaned at my dentist you always get to pick out a waterloo and the top ripped off without opening the can at all, because consistency.

Connect the Dots with Fedex

I’ve been fighting a lot with Fedex lately. I’ve been receiving a misfits market box in the mail for years now. Misfits market has a deal with Fedex. FedEx delivers the package. In the entirety of the time I have had the service, I have never had to sign for the package, nor have I ever had to be present to receive the package. Lately the most recent fedex driver tasked with driving my package to my property decided that in his infinite wisdom it was too hot to leave the insulated package equipped with an ice pack if no one was home so instead of leaving it in the yard for a few hours until i arrived, he started taking it back to the distribution warehouse with him and redelivering it friday afternoon, in the excessive heat, after the ice pack had melted and the food had thoroughly spoiled. this led to misfits market having to issue me a weekly refund for nearly all the food and me not having groceries because if you want to eat produce at the local grocery, you really have to pick it a week in advance before you plan to eat it and leave it on the counter to ripen. I started calling every week to see if i could be allowed into my account to write the note myself or get the customer service rep to write a note to leave it in the yard because it has insulated foam and an ice pack in the box and its designed to be left out in the elements while people are at work. Well, i had to do this every week because they refused to reset the password or give me my username for my fedex account and they swore they could not put a permanent note on my account and id have to fight with them on the phone for hours every wednesday. Finally i managed to get ahold of a manager who put a permanent note on my account not to require a signature for any packages and to leave the misfits market box in the yard no matter what the weather. After that…the box started being left in the plastic toybox with baseball sized hail dents in the lid up at the fence. Today, however, i came home to find the lid had been removed but the box was 6 feet away on the ground. I was happy they left it but i got curious why they had taken the lid off the toybox if they werent going to put the box in it. It was not a windy day and the lid would not have removed itself. I peered in the toybox to see what critter may have deterred the fedex man from his plan to put the box in there. Sure enough, there was a juvenile male black widow spider. They carry a lot less venom than the females and are typically only alive a few months anyway. Im not sure if the delivery driver knew what it was or just said, “SPIDER! Hell no!” Either way, the presence of the male black widow was probably definitely why he left the package a full 6 feet from the makeshift mailbox at the fence. Another day of life on the homestead.