Something Before I Go

From my friend, Ken:


Maggie, it is obvious that your chicken is none other than Martin Degville or "Deg" from the momentarily famous SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK (think "Love Missile F-111"). See picture below. Don't be surprised if some dude from VH-1 shows up at your door wanting your chicken for an episode of "Band Reunited"!

Somedays, I really love my friends!

I like Jamie's suggestion of Angela Davis. And I was also reminded of my friend Val's hair for a brief moment during the 80's.

Tomorrow I'm taking off to the wilds of Georgia for a week. It's summer camp time again and I'm going to my old camp to help set up the horseback program. I was horseback director for many years and then assistant director for a few before I finally "grew up". Now that I have moved back to the South I can go help out and visit with old friends. The only problem now is that I have to train 20 year olds and I'm starting to feel my age (oh the horror!!!).

So, I will spend the next week training the new riding staff and riding horses that have been out to pasture since August (can you say rodeo?). Hopefully I can have time to add a few updates between clearing riding trails, cleaning saddles and soaking my tired muscles. I really am getting too old for this, but it is so much fun.

Big Daddy and Monkey get to come join me for the weekend when we have our big camp reunion. It is a highlight of Monkey's year to get to sleep in a tent and shine her flashlight in my eyes all night. I'm glad I can oblige her.

After a brief hiatus...

I spent last weekend in Chicago for my friend, Lorraine's birthday. I ate well, drank well (but not too much) and slept little. I saw lots of old friends. I also walked way too much. I think I undid all the good I had accomplished by resting from running for the last several weeks. It was worth it.

I could rail against a certain airline with "Northwest" in its name, but I'll pass. My trip home was quite longer than the one to Chicago. I ended up on another airline and made it home several hours later than planned. My luggage made it home a couple of days later. If anyone finds my driver's license, please send it to me. I last saw it as I was boarding a plane in Cincinnati. The picture was much better than the new one I had to get today.

I was tagged with a meme by Jamie. I'm a newbie to this. It's short and sweet and about music. I used to be very cool when it came to music. No, really, I was. Now I live on the side of a mountain and have no radio reception. If I go to clubs, the smoke kills me. What music I get to listen to in my car is dictated by a three year old. So my situation is definately coloring my answers. Here I go!

The last CD I bought was: For the Kids, Too!

Song playing right now:
Look What You Have Done, Jet

5 songs that I listen to a lot, or mean a lot to me:
(Basically I'm forced to listen to them a lot!)
Clap Your Hands, They Might Be Giants
Mahna Mahna, Cake
The Hoppity Song, Five for Fighting
Anything on a Kindermusik CD - over and over again
Ziggy Stardust, David Bowie (I don't know why, and I'm not going to ask because of the other things I could be forced to listen too!)

Perhaps my short weekend away wasn't long enough...

Anyway it's good to be home. And it could be worse - I mean, my daughter could like Radio Disney.

Name That Chicken

golden polish

This is one of four Golden Polish chickens that I have. So far I've named a few of the chicks, but can't come up with good names for these funny girls. This one has the best "head of hair" so far. I hope it's not a rooster. I invite you to use your imagination and name that chicken!

Don Juan

My Mother's Day present is blooming.

How To Bake A Cake

by The Monkey

Preparation Time: 10 minutes

1. Wait until Mom goes outside to water plants.

2. Pull chair to kitchen counter and assemble the following ingredients from cupboard into a bowl:

• 1 box cornstarch
• 2 boxes chocolate instant pudding
• 2 packets grape kool-aid
• 2 packets cherry kool-aid
• 3 packets pink lemonade
• 1/2 bottle vanilla extract
• several drops each of blue, yellow and green food coloring
• 1/2 bottle of Thai fish sauce
• 1 bottle of blue sugar sprinkles

3. When mom discovers you in the middle of your baking adventure shout, "Turn on the oven Mommy! I'm baking cake!"

Surely my husband is the devil and I've given birth to his spawn.

The Fruits of My Labor

salad

Candy Land

Monkey had her third birthday on Sunday. We had a small party with her favorite friends - all boys. None of my friends have girls. Monkey is the sole girl and ruler of all. We had devils food cake with bittersweet whipped ganache frosting and homemade strawberry and vanilla ice creams. Monkey ate the last piece of cake for breakfast this morning. After your birthday you can have cake for breakfast every morning until it's gone. That's the rule at our house. Fortunately for her teeth and my waistline, the cake is now gone.

All she wanted for her birthday was Candy Land. Now it says that it is for ages 3-6. Have you ever played a board game with a three year old? First she changes game pieces with every turn - "I'm green... I'm red... I'm blue... I'm green!" Then she starts talking to the board - "Hello Chocolate Monster! Ooh, you're scary!!!" Forward movement on the board is a foreign concept. Board games with three year olds are a scattering of new rules and nonsense. I wish I was three again.

Every Garden Needs One

Monkey and I made a scarecrow today after lunch. We created it power tool free with lots of sawing and hammering completely disregarding the use of safety goggles! I feel the steel wool hair was particularly inspired. Most of the wood is scrap from the chicken house construction. The fingers are last years tomato stakes. The eyes are glass drawer pulls from our old house. I now have one garbage can missing a lid, but the tidiness of our shed can suffer for my art.

I wonder if it will scare any crows?

3:40 p.m.

Here Comes the Rain Again

We've had waves of thunderstorms roll over this afternoon. They've been brief and furious. Our little mountain stream is a rolling little river right now.

I planted my tomatoes before the first storm hit. I managed to mulch one row. It looks very neat and tidy. The second row looks a little mud-splattered. It hailed during the first storm. I kept my fingers crossed that it would not damage my little plants. They are fine.

We are on storm number three now. Mountain storms are funny. You generally hear them before you see or feel them. I heard the thunder about a half an hour before the rain started. I worked faster, hoping to finish. You hear the wind and water hitting the trees, getting progressively louder before the storm arrives. For someone who grew up where you could see a storm coming long before it arrived this can cause a little anxiety. I like to see what's coming my way.

I'm not afraid of storms. Actually I'm one of those people who likes to stand out in the middle of them - to commune with the elements, to feel the wind full force. To get struck by lightning... If I had a video camera, I'd be the fool filming the tornado with the distraught relative in the background yelling, "Honey, come to the basement!" So let's say I kind of like the anxiety - the da-du... da-duh... da-duh... feel of the storm's approach. It gets the blood pumping. The dog is hiding under the bed. I'm going to go stand on the porch for awhile and enjoy the rain.

A Weekend in the Garden

7:22 p.m.

The weather this weekend was sunny and breezy. It was a weekend devoted to being outside. To weeding, tilling, building and spending too much money at the nursery once again. It was a weekend for breakfast out, lunch on the run and late dinners eaten in a quiet state of exhaustion. It was one too many trips to the hardware store. It was a progress measured by a pile of rocks at the end of a garden row. It was a perfect weekend.

I spent the weekend in the garden. The lettuce still needs some serious thinning. I'll get to it tomorrow hopefully. I tilled the future tomato and pepper beds. All the little plants are ready to go into the ground. The rest of the week looks to be warm, so I may just put them in tomorrow. I also got the mounds ready to plant squash and zucchini. This year we are putting down pine straw between the beds. Big Daddy can bring it home from work for free, so we may as well put it to good use. Hopefully, it will help keep things tidier than last year. I've only two more rows left to prep. The asparagus bed is almost filled in. I'm excited to try a little potato farming. The heat of the last couple of days has helped them finally sprout.

Big Daddy spent the weekend working on the chicken coop. It now has a fancy double door and shutters on all the windows. The fence around the run is almost complete. We just need to finish burying the fencing around the bottom and to hang the gate on the run. I think I'll move the chicks in this week. They are already trying to escape their brooder. I found two outside of it this morning. I really didn't expect them to grow so rapidly. They are starting their little pecking order with short scuffles that are all about ruffling up their feathers. They get kind of goofy and flap around the pen - some take flight. One strange noise and it's, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling! Run around like a chicken with your head cut off! Hurry, cross the road!" Yes, they are one giant list of cliches.

Monkey's third birthday is next Sunday. We are planning a small birthday party. Her little friends are coming for a garden party. Hopefully the weather will be nice and the children can all run around outside. As for a birthday gift, she really hasn't told us what she wants. Forget toys, all she wants is chocolate cake with strawberries. How can I deny her that? Monkey simply wants a chocolate cake with strawberries. Actually, she wants Chef Boots to bake her a chocolate cake with strawberries. Not me. At least she knows who can truly make a cake worthy of her birthday. Boots and his wife, Dr. E, are planning on driving in from Winston. Monkey wants them to come. I'm sure her motives involve chocolate. She's very cunning that way.

12 Days Old

5:20 p.m.

Side bar still at bottom of page. Side bar. At bottom. Fix please!

Open Sesame!

10:40 a.m.

This is how I spent my morning. It was 90 minutes of overwhelming loudness. It was loud to drown out the screaming children. Some were happy. Some were just screaming. Monkey was dancing. She was happy. Some day when she hits puberty and is particularly rotten and blaming me for all the ills that befall her, I will recall this day and say, "I took you to Sesame Street Live. We are even."

I hope the fact that I wouldn't buy her an $8 Elmo balloon hasn't permanently scarred her. I will say that when we went to lunch after the show she was the best behaved of the children at our table. Now if she'd only start using silverware consistently.

My daughter said something to me that nearly broke my heart:

"Momma will you make my hair big and pretty?"

I never thought a child of mine would utter such words.

Tuesday!

Tuesday is Kindermusik Day - at least for one more week. Monkey was in rare form, even for her, this morning. We had "discussions" about what to wear to class. It was in the 50's this morning. I thought jeans, a pink polo shirt and an aqua sweater would be nice. She thought a smock top, pink tutu and white patent leather shoes with pink bows was appropriate attire. She didn't see the need for underpants. While the logic of my choice had little affect, letting her go outside in her outfit for a few minutes convinced her to change. She did manage to change back into her choice for dinner tonight. Dinner was followed by dancing to the digital cable Dance Music channel. The Monkey was ready for clubbing.

The chickens are growing at an alarming rate. I thought I'd have at least a few weeks before they needed to be in the chicken house. Several are already trying out their little wings. One is trying to cluck. I've also figured out which one is my rooster, only there seem to be two of them. Two roosters. If the mystery chicken is a rooster, that will be three roosters. Three roosters. Somebody is going to end up in the pot. Hopefully I can find a home for the extras. I have found homes for several of the hens. There is no way that I want to have 26 chickens.

I weeded the garden while Monkey napped this afternoon. The potatoes are starting to come up. I've never grown potatoes before, so I'm kind of excited. I'll need to thin the lettuce tomorrow. The beets, carrots and peas are coming along nicely. And the radishes are doing well.

Monkey's garden has radishes and carrots coming up. She is growing shallots for my mother. She and the cat were watering them today and having a very important one-sided conversation over her pansies. She has a cabbage. She had two, but the rabbits got one. Is she too young to know the heartache of gardening? I've got a cherry tomato plant for her to plant. We'll plant some sunflowers in the next day or two. I would love to plant a pumpkin or watermelon, but think it would cover her whole garden. Maybe a cucumber on a trellis? Catnip for the cat? I'm trying to think of things that can survive the monkey, grow big and be colorful, flavorful, or smell extra good. She loves berries, but they are planted in other beds around the yard. I like the idea of her being able to pluck something and pop it into her mouth. I think she likes that idea to. Finally something we can agree on.

Why?

Why is my profile at the bottom of the page? Can anyone tell me? It seems to be happening on and off for the last couple of days. Grrr.... not happy with blogger today!