Now Entering Area 51

It seems like Troy's favorite way to celebrate his early-spring birthday is to have a mellow day, hopefully with some time off of work, to have dinner with his family and maybe enjoy a little slice of cake. He is not a fanfare kind of guy. This is great. Sometimes I have a desire to create fanfare but it's really not Troy's favorite. So I resisted that temptation and instead did my best to plan some really yummy, simple and healthy meals plus one slightly wicked cake.

The day started out very early - it was a Wednesday, which for us meant that the kids didn't have to get up for school. During this crazy covid year their Wednesdays have no live teaching. It's what we have learned to call "asynchronous learning." It's nice to have a little bit of a quieter day during the week and I hated to wake up the kids as early. So instead I got up early and made Troy one of our favorite breakfasts of omelets with sautéed vegetables, heavy on the mushrooms, light on the cheese. Add avocado on top and it's basically food fit for the gods. It was fun to treat him to that in the morning. Plus I found some funny little balloons to decorate the table for breakfast.

Troy went off to work, I spent some time making food for some friends who had a family funeral that day, then the kids started waking up and the day began to roll on as normal. Emma and Romney thought it was really fun that Troy was turning 51 and so we spent some time with my Silhouette paper-cutting machine creating a little sign stating, "NOW ENTERING AREA 51" plus an alien head. It made a funny topper to our cake, which Emma made. Double chocolate raspberry. Troy did get himself away from work, not quite as early as he was hoping but still early enough to enjoy the afternoon at home, even going for a nice long walk with Romney. He had wanted to go on a mountain bike ride but decided the trails were still too wet and muddy. A walk was just perfect. While they were out walking I made a Vietnamese Salad with rice noodles and veggies and egg rolls and grilled pork. I'm slowly refining that recipe and I think I've just about got it. It was super good. 

The best part for me was Troy's gift. I had asked him several times what he wanted for his birthday, and he never could really think of something birthday-worthy that he wanted. Luckily I had had inspiration strike a few weeks earlier. He loves this blog. I feel a little bad about it - I mean, years ago I was blogging constantly and trying to tell every funny little story about the kids and their wackiness. But now that they are teenagers it's a little less funny and a little more embarrassing for them so it's not quite as interesting as it used to be. But still, I think it's been a really good family record for us. Years and years ago for Christmas Peter and Sheri gave us a book of our first year of the blog, and a couple years after that I gave the second year to Troy. But since then the company I used has stopped printing blogs and I just didn't know where to go. But I decided to try again and I found another company to do it. It was actually great to have a surprise for Troy that made him happy. We ended up sitting around as a family reading over it - it was from 2009, the year that Emma was born and right in the height of Romney's most notorious behavior. We laughed and laughed together as we read it - and really, I think that's the kind of thing that makes for the best birthday of all, to be together, to be laughing. What a great night. I included at the bottom a photo of an old facebook post about Romney from not long after that same time, just as an example of what great material she had going at the time.

Happy Birthday to my Troy. He's my favorite. 

President's Day. I Forgot.

We have been to St. George over President's Day before. And we realized right then that it was a terrible idea because the entirety of the Salt Lake Valley goes to St. George for President's Day Weekend. It's killer. But somehow I forgot about that. I mean, I guess I was thinking that this year might be different. After all, when I decided to go, I thought that leaving a day early would make a difference. Also that a pandemic year might have an effect. I even thought that it would be different because I was only taking one child with me instead of the whole family. For the record, none of those things made a difference in the slightest. The whole valley still goes to St. George, even when it's a pandemic. Maybe even more now because it's a pandemic. And I guess half of them go Thursday night and half go Friday, because the drive down was just as chaotic and congested as other years. Now, why I thought that going with one child instead of three plus a husband was going to make any kind of difference is beyond me. I think that was subconscious, but that thought was actually there. 

In any case, I did go away for President's Day Weekend. I went with just Emma, and it was really good for the two of us to go away. How can I say this delicately? Emma is turning 12 this summer. And her two older siblings are well into high school and teenager-hood while their little sister is just beginning the whole teen experience. How about I just say that there isn't a lot of space at our house and I thought that getting Emma away for a bit would be a good idea. I was right. It was a really good idea, even considering the crowded state of St. George. 

It was great for Emma because she does love alone time with me, which she enjoyed in the car on the way there and on the way back. Even more than time with me, she loves time with her BFF/Cousin Cara. Those two absolutely adore each other. They are so loyal to each other. So besides the car rides, I barely saw Emma at all. As soon as we were there, after a slow drive and a 40 minute stop for dinner at a Wendy's, (not worth it), she was out of my sight and glued to Cara's side for the next three days.

It was also good for our older kids. Troy said that it was a little weird - they kind of just came out of hiding. I may have felt a little bad - you know, oversensitive mother-type feelings - but truly, it was awesome. Troy said he made dinner on Thursday night and Chase and Romney just started chatting with him and they actually sat at the table together and talked and talked. This is a big deal. We are used to having the teenagers hide, especially the big one. So I was so glad to give them time and space with their dad.

We don't actually have too much to report from our time in St. George. We of course went for a hike, miraculously to yet another place I've never been before. We didn't get rained on until the last 50 feet of the trail so that was miraculous too. I got to snuggle up with Sheri's newest nephew, which was fun. There were friends and extra cousins for a while on Saturday, and they all got along. Plus Sheri splurged on a Valentine's Day dessert charcuterie tray that we devoured together. She's so good at celebrating. I did nothing for Valentines Day. 

There was only one really stinky thing that happened on the trip, and that was that on Sunday morning before we started to head home, I was packing up some things in my bedroom and when I leaned over just slightly, I felt a giant PING in my back. I was rendered nearly immobile. It was so awful! I mean, I wasn't sure I would be able to drive home. I could barely walk and I sure couldn't pick anything up. But it turned out that sitting in my van wasn't too bad. Emma was such a champ - she helped me as much as she could and we only made one quick stop on the way home, where I was greeted by my big strong family who helped me get out of the car and into a chair where I basically stayed for three days. Holy crap that hurt. Next time I'll make sure to not lean over at all ever. (Who knows what sets off a back ping like that? No idea!)

Our Animal Weirdness Continues

One day early in February I went out to the chicken coop to check on everyone, scatter a few tasty dried-worm treats, and make sure all was well. One of our four cochin chickens seemed a little weird. She was sitting down and was all fluffed up and not moving. At first I thought she was laying her first egg - our one chicken who survived the predator attacks last spring had been laying for a little while so we figured that all the new ones we got in April would be about ready. But she just didn't seem right. I'd never seen a chicken just not move like that. Then I realized that she was sort of holding our her wings to balance herself and upon further investigation I realized that she couldn't walk. Her legs were all tucked up tight against her body and she was immobile. Worse than that, her fellow coop mates had realized the same thing and started doing what chickens do, and most animals for that matter. They ganged up on the weak and sick one, and this poor chicken was started to get her crest pecked, to the point that she was bleeding. Gross! Awful! Yuck! And also sad. 

I brought this little hen inside, put her in a towel-lined laundry basket and began googling her symptoms. I even checked in with an online vet who told me that it could be one of three things but that she'd have to be seen in person to know for sure. Glad I did that on a free-trial basis and didn't pay because it wasn't very helpful. And the in-person vet was $75. Luckily I knew that was clearly over the line when it comes to chicken care. I paid $4 for this chicken, who will probably live 3 or 4 years. Not going to pay $75 to get her fixed. I figured she was done for.

But Chase, our future zoologist, decided he wanted to take a look. He performed a little exam, and I must say, it was very professional-looking. He felt all up and down her legs and realized that one of her knees was bulging out. He very gently pulled it out straight, felt the little pop of her knee going back into its socket, and voila, the chicken was totally healed. Or at least that's how it seemed. She was instantly able to walk perfectly normally again, and we put her back with the other chickens and that was that. For a couple of days everything was back to normal.

 

Sadly, that was not the end of this chicken's troubles. Either her knees just have a genetic problem and always will pop out, or once she popped them out once they loosened forever and could not stay in their sockets. We discovered her re-injury just a couple of days later, and this time, the other chickens had really ganged up on her. She was a mess. A bald and bloody mess. Here she is (yes, in our house) after we had cleaned her and applied some antibiotic ointment and attempted a bandage. 

 

The thing is, besides her knee, she's totally normal. Alert, eats and drinks like a champ, and she even started laying eggs during this ordeal. But still, it was clear that she couldn't be with the rest of the flock, at least until her head healed. We set up a private residence for her in the garage, and visited her every day. And since chickens don't do well when they are solitary, we got her out every day, not only to clean her feathers and poor little head, but to let her stretch her legs in the yard and also have some company: us. Yep, we got her totally acclimated to having people as her flock. And she LOVED coming inside. I know, you're thinking of all the problems of letting a chicken inside your house, and trust me, you're not wrong. We know. Still...it was also kind of cute to have her follow you around and hover around your feet. We just made sure to keep her off of carpeted areas.

 

During all this, our little project-hen finally got a name. We had tried to name these hens when they were little and we could kind of tell them apart. I think they were Biggs, Pip, Dipper and Mabel. But as they grew up they became 100% indistinguishable from each other and we just called them the cochins. With the injury and subsequent pecking, this one hen became extremely distinguishable. And also bald. We began to play around with names for her, based on our favorite bald people. She was Patrick Stewart for a while, but it didn't really take. Then one afternoon Troy peeked down on her in the garage, saw her very Franciscan Monk-like baldness and had an epiphany. Friar Tuck! That was it! We've been calling her Friar Tuck ever since.

Tuck's feathers are growing back in nicely now. She's happy and mostly healthy. Two problems though. One - her knees don't stay in their sockets. About once a day they need to be popped back in. It's no big deal but that leads to problem number two - she can't be with the other chickens in the coop. Not only do they go after her when her knees are out, they go after her all the time anyway. She has been rejected and we can't help feeling a little like we now own a flock of mean girls. Pictured below is the head mean girl, aptly named Mean Francine. She got this name a long time ago - we discovered early on that she's a biter. It's hard to blame her though because she was one of four seabrite chicks, and all three of her companions turned out to be roosters. We figured she is pretty traumatized after being stripped of her three boyfriends. Frankly, if she were the only one going after Tuck we would have found a new home for her. But she's not. 

So yes,  now that Tuck has been thoroughly humanized all of the other chickens attack her as well. Tuck is not welcome at all in the coop. We were laughing a little on Saturday as we were trying to get Tuck regrouped into the flock and imagined her comments to us, things like, "um EXCUSE me I believe you just put me in with some CHICKENS. Get me out of here and back into the house where I belong!" We have created a special needs chicken. It's a pain. But we are also very attached to her. What a nightmare! The whole point of building the coop and run was to have low-maintenance chickens that we didn't have to worry about. And now there's this one. We can't quite bring ourselves to just do the deed and send her off to chicken heaven. It's not healthy for her to be a lone hen, and we did finally draw the line at letting her in the house. I don't think she'll do well if we find a new home for her - she'll still have knee problems that will make other birds attack her. So....we are stalling. For the time being she is roaming free in the yard, mostly hanging out on the outside of the coop. At night, after the other birds are in their sleeping spots I go out and sneak her into a nesting box and everyone ignores her. Then in the morning I have to go out, fix her knees, and set her free in the yard before the others go after her. She pecks around the yard all day and if I open the back door she comes running on her feathery little feet in the cutest way.

Oh. Good. Grief.  

I am the worst. I can't even throw away a stuffed animal without feeling horrible. (Thank you Toy Story.) So what am I supposed to do with this one sweet and very tame chicken? I guess for now we will keep on postponing the decision. Maybe a cooper's hawk will come solve the issue for us - I'd feel better about that than the poor little thing getting slowly tortured to death by her flock. But not great. Stay tuned for a future post about how we either gave up and put her in a diaper and made her part of the family or we did what any sane and capable farmer would have done long ago. We are clearly not farmers.

And FYI, Emma is as bad as I am, if not worse. She said she'd rather lose all the other chickens than Friar Tuck. Even I'm not going that far. Here she is in the process of teaching the chicken that she's not a chicken. More of a lap dog.

I must also include, in other chicken news, the fact that we are now getting eggs. We get 2-6 every day and so all our efforts are finally paying off. Troy's coop design and construction have been so awesome. Getting the eggs is so easy, and all of the hens actually lay them where they are supposed to! Miracle. Just what we were hoping for. In just 15 years we will have saved enough money from not buying eggs to pay for all the building supplies. These eggs are tiny, by the way. Our favorite was the one about the size of a big marble. We think it was Francine's first, but of course we can't be sure.

Our Little Bingus

I don't know if anyone has figured it out yet but we are a little weird about animals. We seem get abnormally attached, especially to things that are not your run-of-the-mill pets. No dogs or cats here. We had a brief stint with some guinea pigs where we learned that they are not the pets for us. We were very fond of Chase's spider, if a little creeped out, and were very sad when the spider didn't make it. The tortoise was dear to our hearts, which are still aching a bit over his horrible passing. There's the bearded Dragon Omnom who's been in the family for 6 years now. He's awesome. And of course you know about the continuing saga of the chickens. Heaven forbid we open our hearts to an animal with a life-span of over a decade. 

So who's the latest creature to leap into our affections? This one is worse than ever. It's a squirrel. 

A SQUIRREL.

Our neighborhood has had an influx of these gimongous fox squirrels over the past few years. I kind of love them - they are so huge and adorable as they scamper around. Of course, it's less adorable when they chew on people's houses and stuff, which we have seen them do. But romping through the yard and chasing each other from branch to branch in the trees is so cute. But of course you could never tell one apart from the other...except...this one. One poor squirrel had an accident of some kind and now only has half a tail. And he's really extra chubby. It made it easy to pick him out of a crowd. Chase named him Bingus, though I have no idea where he got the name. Seems like the kind of word you'd use as a curse word filler. But it also seemed suddenly like a great name for this critter we saw around. And, because we are us, we started paying more and more attention to it which of course led to us trying to make friends with it. 

It seems so wrong to just admit that we left treats outside for this one squirrel but we totally did. I think at this point in the story, "we" is actually just me. Like I'd make popcorn, see Bingus in the yard, and go and leave a little scoop of kernels for him at the base of a tree. It must have worked because eventually Bingus was showing up on a regular basis, even venturing onto our back porch. (It became important not to put anything on the back table that squirrels could eat if we didn't want them to.) And with his increased interest came our increased treat supplying. By the beginning of this year I confess to actually buying a bag of walnuts with him in mind, leaving a few out every day. And that did the trick. I now consider Bingus an official friend/pet/wild-animal-acquaintance. Every day around the same time, Bingus would arrive at our back door and peek inside, leaning his little paws on the glass to see if we were there with his walnuts. Chase tried really hard to get him to take a nut right from his (gloved) fingers, but Bingus never came that close. He did however stop fleeing into the tree when we came out. He just scurried to the edge of the porch while we made the deposit, and as soon as the door was closed he'd return to gobble them up. So if you see a massively over-weight half-tailed squirrel around, you can blame us. 

Bingus has disappeared lately - we haven't seen him in a few weeks. I'm sad. I loved seeing him waiting for us at the back door. I would be worried but it's happened before, that he disappeared for a while. Maybe he is a she and she's off having this year's little squirrel babies. Who knows. I do hope Bingus makes a return though. I still have half a bag walnuts waiting.

Bleak Week 2021

Normally we celebrate Bleak Week in the 3rd or 4th week of January but since we were otherwise occupied with feeling awful and being contagious and being too grumpy to celebrate anything at all, we put it off. Turns out that celebrating in the 1st week of February isn't such a bad idea. We were feeling actually not as bleak, since we knew we had made it through January already!

Here's what we did:

Monday: Shrimp cocktail and fresh flowers from Costco made our first day fun. Plus, I brought home surprise desserts from Gourmandise Bakery which we ate together while sitting in a circle on the living room floor, forks in hand. The hazelnut cheesecake was not what I had hoped for but the raspberry napoleon, tiramisu, creme brûlée and chocolate mousse were fabulous.

Tuesday: Dancing and singing to loud music. Too loud for Emma. Also we played a few rounds of apples to apples - I think on this night but it might have been another night. I can't remember! But we had all the belly-laughing I was hoping for.

Wednesday: we baked treats and delivered them to a couple of families in the neighborhood.

Thursday: Out to dinner to the kids' new favorite spot, the Korean BBQ Ombu. We didn't get as many weird experimental tastes (no tongue this time) and we learned that the giant shrimp are not worth it (too hard to peel). But the bulgogi? So worth it. Worth two orders actually. And Chase went for a whole mackerel that I was not very interested in. It's so fun though. 

 

 

Friday: pizza and a movie for the kids while Troy and I went out for Greek food with friends. 

Saturday: Crystal Hot Springs, and we got the Burnetts to join us again, to our delight. If we had not already had Covid we would have been very nervous. It was absolutely jam-packed. But the hot water was magically soothing. Plus we always end up back at the Burnett's place for tasty food and a little hanging out. 

Oh and also here are some other happy things -

Emma had a school assignment to do a report on Medieval Food and she had to make a model of a Medieval feast. She did such a great job! Fun fun details that she worked so hard to get just right:

Also, I started working on my aunty-sweater with my Christmas yarn and it is fabulously satisfying. I call it my aunty-sweater because my dear Aunt Rosanne bought me the pattern a year ago when she was here with my dad as he was sick. It was really nice of her. The sweater is occasionally intimidating and yes I've had to go back a few inches from time to time to get things right, but overall very fun and I love it. Yes, of course it's sage green, like everything else in our house.

Here's the back, partially finished:

Bleak week was definitely a success this year. We had more to celebrate like being done with January and being done with Covid. The light is returning, the air is warming, we are going to make it. 

Surprise! Not a Cold After All

I don't think I'm that dumb but sometimes I'm wrong and I'm actually super dumb. What was it....about TEN DAYS after Peter and Sheri were at our house with their "colds" I started feeling a little sick myself? And even then I thought, oh no, there's no way this is Covid. I would KNOW if this were Covid. I would just be able to feel it. This just felt like I was a little under the weather. But in the interest of science and the well-being of my fellow man I decided to get tested one Sunday morning in January. 

Boy was I floored when I got my little text message that read, "You have tested positive for Covid-19." And then I felt really stupid. And like a total pariah. (I had to sleep in a far away corner of my attic bedroom and no one would come near me, rightly so.) We immediately got everyone else tested too. Only Romney came back positive. She had mild cold symptoms for exactly one day. The other three were negative, but got re-tested by the end of the week and then Troy and Emma both tested positive. Chase remained negative, and never did contract the illness as far as we could tell. He even got tested one more time after that when he had a mild headache for a day - but still, nope, he was negative. We attribute this to the fact that he never leaves his room and prefers that none of us talk to him. Ever. 

So yeah, we got it. And since that has happened I have realized that many many people that I know also got Covid. Some know where they got it and some don't. Some people were extremely careful and still got it, some were a little more carefree. And some people I know didn't seem to take precautions at all and never have gotten it yet. It's really weird. And hard to not feel ashamed that we caught the pandemical disease.

It was also quite strange that we all had pretty different symptoms. Like I said, Romney seemed to have mild cold symptoms for about a day, maybe two. Emma had a pretty bad fever and felt totally miserable one Thursday afternoon and evening but was pretty much fine the next day. My main symptom was a lingering and persistent headache that ibuprofen could barely touch. No sore throat, barely felt like a cold at all, but man that headache would not quit. And then really tight breathing for several weeks afterwards. Like, it hurt to take deep breaths and still sometimes does when I go for a walk. Troy's main problem was also the breathing, and has been much more severe and long-lasting than my issue. He still has days that are pretty uncomfortable. Oh yeah, he and I both lost our smell and taste but not 100% completely and only for a week or two. Other people I know lost it completely for months. Isn't that just weird, that the symptoms varied so widely, even in just one family?

So there you go.  We were very grateful for people who went grocery shopping for us and people who brought us dinner. That was so nice. We had an extra EXTRA long boring January because, even though we were doing a pretty good job already of staying socially isolated we really locked it down for the duration of our illness and even for 10 days after that, due to the fact that it was possible for Chase to contract Covid on the last day of our contagion, thus making him need to quarantine the longest out of all of us.

 

Romney spent quite a bit of quarantine watching cooking videos on YouTube and cooking up some very tasty grub. We love Binging with Babish. 

I made a list of the shows I watched while in quarantine and it's actually a little alarming. Here's a sample of what I covered in January and February. (And, by the way, I did not just sit on my behind this whole time. I watched while doing laundry and dishes and cooking and cleaning and knitting and other stuff too. Still. It's a lot.)

Cobra Kai season 3 - with Troy and Romney. That was so funny actually - it totally stressed us out. OH the bad choices that they made over and over! (Here's Troy burying his face in horror at yet another terrible choice made by Danny or Robby or Johnny, who knows which one this time. I watched while stress-eating my fingernails.)

Merlin, seasons whatever the last two were. I had watched the beginning years ago and never got around to finishing. Oh how I loved the characters and OH HOW I HATED THAT ENDING. Traitors. 

The Crown, seasons 3 & 4 - basically had me speaking in a British accent, especially because also:

Downton Abbey, seasons 4-6 plus the movie. I finally got over the ending of season 3 and let myself watch it again and immediately got so hooked that my friend Becky had to find something else for me to watch as a detox which was....

Gilmore Girls, seasons all-of-them. (Now I'm trying to detox from those)

A LOT of The Great British Baking show including the master classes (more British accents)

Parks and Recreation, also with Troy and Romney

Attack on Titan, Chase's favorite anime. It's gross and engrossing. I'm starting to understand a little Japanese I think.

Wandavision. The MCU continues to delight and amaze even when I had low expectations for this show.

And I've started the new All Creatures Great and Small. 

WOAH that's a lot of shows. Talk about checking things off of my to-watch list!