The confused tree

We have a tree in our yard.  I don't know what kind it is, but it is season confused.

It's leaves have started to turn red and are falling to the ground.  It did this last July.  It was completely bare by September.

It's like how the stores get rid of pool toys and start putting out school supplies on July 5th. I just want to shout, "No, no stores!  It's only the middle of summer.  Put those school supplies away for another four weeks!"  I want to yell at the tree, "No, no tree!  It's only mid-July, keep your green leaves for another two months."

As much as I love fall, I'm not ready for it yet.

The cake contest

Mullet cakes, squished cakes, burning cakes.  This is the annual 4th of July cake contest!

Welcome, welcome to the annual Family 4th of July cake contest.  For the last number of years, Molly, her mom and her siblings (and their spouses) have taken part in this tradition.  This year was an especially good year.  The best so far.

First we have the " 'Merica Mullet" cake.  Liberty in the front, Freedom in the back!  Yeah, baby!

Next we have Big Tex.  For 60 years, Big Tex stood in the heart of Dallas Fair Park, welcoming all who entered the huge state fair.  Sadly, last year, his 60th birthday, he burned to the ground.  Here is a cake honoring the great Big Tex.

"Houston, we have a problem."  No, it wasn't Neil Armstrong who said that, but you know he wanted to when he saw Darth Vader pop out from behind his space craft.  "Houston, we've got an alien with a mask and a red pointy light standing next to the rover!" 

Next we have a homage to a great American tradition - hot dog eating contest.  Looks like he had a few too many.

And finally we have the beloved Texas road kill - an Armadillo.  No trip through Texas is complete without seeing one of these babies on the road.  No one in Texas has ever actually seen one of these things alive.

And that's it, folks.  Which cake will win?  Who do you vote for?

Let the canning begin!

I was very busy today.  I canned 2 jars of salsa from our homegrown tomatoes!  The funny thing is, I can't stand the touch or smell of any of the ingredients.  I don't like the texture of tomatoes and my eyes are still burning from the two onions I chopped, even though it has been more than 12 hours since I made the salsa.  However, I do like the smell of the cilantro I used.  The cilantro was grown in my herb garden.

I mentioned we had  two cucumber plants come up on their own this year.  They have produced at least 10 beautiful cucumbers and they aren't done.  This picture is from last week, when we first started harvesting from the garden.  There are also some pea pods.  Hubby cooked and ate those today.

We still have a ton of pickles that I made last year, but I didn't want this years cucumbers to go to waste, so I tried a new recipe tonight and made crispy refrigerator pickles.  They are cucumbers, garlic, dill, lemon juice and cold water.  We'll see how those turn out...

This is the jelly.  You can see the lovely colors.  The pink one is, of course, watermelon jelly.  The second is cover jelly and the third small jar is chamomile jelly.  Aren't they lovely?

Summer garden

We have a garden again this summer and it has been great.

I wrote back a bit about my herb garden and the things we have planted.  Here we are a month later and I thought I'd update.  But no pictures.  I've been rather lazy about the camera lately and my computer isn't reading my camera's card.

I've made three kinds of jelly this season:  watermelon jelly, clover jelly and chamomile jelly.  The clover was made from the billions of clover flowers growing right here in my own yard.  The chamomile was made from the chamomile flowers in my herb garden.  (I bought the watermelon)

The clover jelly is a light golden brown and was so delicious.
The chamomile jelly is almost clear, but with the lightest hint of golden color.  It's lovely, but I haven't tried any yet.
The watermelon jelly (more like a jam really, as it has some texture) is the loveliest pink.  It is tasty, but a little odd to taste watermelon in jelly form.

The funny thing is, I'm not a big jelly eater, but I love making the jelly.  Once we make it through this jar of watermelon, we'll open a chamomile next. 

Our garden has about 20 tomato plants.  Every plant has several tomatoes, and they are just now starting to turn red.  I picked four yesterday.  We didn't plant cucumbers, but we've had two volunteer plants come up and they are producing beautiful cucumbers.  I've picked four of those.  I'm not planning on picking this year.  We've still got about 80 quarts of pickles from last summer.

We have one strawberry plant that has produced 3 strawberries.  They are kind of little, sad, withered things, but I hear it takes a year and a half for them to really get established. 

So, this is our gardening/preservatives successes so far for the year.  I'm looking forward to more as the summer continues.  With the many tomatoes I hope we will get, I'll make the Hubby a lot of salsa and I will try my hand at tomato sauce for pasta.

The herb garden

The herb garden!
Did you know chives put out purple flowers?  Neither did I, but they do!

Chamomile Flowers:

Last year I had almost no chamomile flowers and my parsley was only about three inches high.  This year is very different.  That's Chamomile and parsley next to each other in the picture below.  Since taking this picture a two weeks ago, they have both doubled in height.

Mint!  I've got peppermint, spearmint and chocolate mint growing.  The smell is lovely.  Also in this picture is cinnamon basil and lemon thyme.  It's not a great picture, but as you can see, everything is doing wonderfully well this year.

Next post:  The Backyard Garden...

Here chickie, chickie, chickie

We've got more chickens!!

Last Thursday we got some new baby chicks.  These are Americanas. 

 

They are very different from out other chickens, which are red pullets.  They are cute and fluffy, but they are more skittish, faster and pretty good jumpers.  I can't tell who is who.  I haven't learned their names, but they include Blackie and Joey (the two black ones), Cinnamon, Papalapa Ding Dong, Kirk, Jean-Luc, and Cleopatra. They were a random pick after they hatched and we don't know which ones are males and which are females.  We'll find that out as they get older.  We only want hens, though.

 

 

They like to sleep in their food and they jump on each other's heads.  I still just call them all nuggets.

 

Our other chickens are lovely red hens now.  They have not started laying eggs, yet.  Still waiting on them.  We've bought two grown chickens.  For a while they were both laying eggs, but now only one of them is.  The other one had a bit of excitement this week.  She got out of her pen and flew off over the fence.  We couldn't find her or catch her.  For two days we kept an eye out and set traps to get her back.  Finally our neighbor saw her.  It took three separate attempts with no less than five people each time, but our wayward chicken was finally recaptured and her wings promptly clipped. 

 

I go visit the chickens every day and usually take a treat for them.  They LOVE bread.  They also love macaroni and cheese and spaghetti noodles.  When I come up to the pen, they all run to the door and start hopping, excited for their treat.  I'm certainly enjoying our chickens.  I hope they all start laying eggs soon and I hope more of these baby chicks are hens rather than roosters.  We'll see.....

Cicadas

Cicadas!  Apparently, every 17 years, a species of cicadas comes out to eat, shed, grow, mate and die.  This is the 17 year.  These cicadas hatched back in 1996!  They are everywhere!  I grew up with cicadas.  They are part of the summer sights and sounds, but I've NEVER seen so many at once. 

Shells all over the ground in the front yard.

See the shells hanging all over the trees?

They are everywhere!!

I can not take credit for this photo:  http://www.learnnc.org/lp/multimedia/8787
Personally, I wouldn't want to get close enough to take this picture.

This is what they look like up close.  They are UGLY!  The cicadas I grew up with were green and white.  These are like Halloween nightmares - black and orange with red eyes.  Thankfully they are pretty stupid bugs (I guess that's what happens when you live underground for 17 years) and they don't bother me too much.  Cicadas are just a part of summer.

Also in bug land, I've started seeing lightning bugs in the fields in parts of the county as I drive from park to park.  Summer is just around the corner when the lightning bugs appear!

Ruby Cube is Back!

Ruby Cube's latest episode of "Projects in Your Pajamas" is available for your listening pleasure.

This week she is talking about lawn décor and what to do when your broken mailbox is beyond repair!

Enjoy y'all!

Writers Block

I've been having writers block for quite a while.  The stories I want to write aren't happening.  I sit down and can't come up with two lines that I like.  It's been like that here at the blog.  I want to write.  I pull up a blank page everyday, but nothing comes to me.  Nothing.  I don't know where my brain is these days, but it's not feeling very creative.

I find it very frustrating.  Usually, if I start to feel this way, I just move on to a different project.  Unfortunately for me, I've been feeling this way for such a very long time now and I move from project to project feeling the same way with each one.  Perhaps I should try something new, but I would really like to finish one thing before starting more.

I don't know what it will take.  The muse is gone.  Hopefully she will return.  Until then, I'm feeling so unlike myself.

When you just keep moving....

We've lived in so many homes over the years.  I can't find something in this house, even though we've lived here for about 15 months.  I can remember where it was in the house before this one and the one before that, but I can't find it here.

So frustrating.....

Ah well, I'll find it the next time we move.  (NOT anytime soon, thankfully, although I would like to find a few missing items - my bluebirds of happiness, a folder with some old play scripts I used when I did theater as a kid, a particular kitchen utensil.... you know, that stuff.)

Ruby Cube's newest episode

Hey ya'll, my comedy home improvement podcast has 5 episodes now.  This newest episode is all about projects for the outdoors. 

What do you do with the old jalopy in the yard?  Ruby's got the answer.


http://mollysrandomthoughts.podbean.com/2013/05/02/ruby-cube-ep-5-outdoors-pt-1/

List of questions

A list of interesting questions:

1. Describe your note-taking style and habits.
2. Do you believe that we are all here for a reason?  What might the reason be?
3. What comes to mind when someone uses the phrase prolonging the magic?
4. Have you ever done something just to feel the danger, or to feel alive?
5. What is your favorite cliché?
6. How do rainy days make you feel?
7. What is the most amount of money you have had at one time?
8. Write a celebrity crush list.

Definitely interesting questions.  Some inspire deep thought, some require very little, some are just feelings about something or an observation.  Just quickly to go through these eight questions:

#1 - Note taking.  When I was in elementary school, we had to learn how to take notes.  My teacher would write outlines on the board for us to copy.  I HATED it.  It was several years down the road when I realized how important knowing how to make an outline is.  Kids in schools don't learn this anymore.  It's too bad.  Important skill that is being lost.  One that can make report writing easier.

#2 - Of course we are here for a reason.  Why?  Too deep to go into.  There is also a very basic physical reason why we are here.  Don't understand?  Time to have a long talk with the parents.

#3 - "Prolonging the magic" - I guess is another way of saying anticipation.  Sometimes the anticipation of something is better than the actual thing.  It's like Christmas.  I love Christmas day, but the month long anticipation leading up to it is even better.  I guess in the phrase "prolonging the magic" is not quite the same.  It would be like waking up on Christmas morning and finding out you can't open presents or eat the turkey dinner until tomorrow, when Grandma is scheduled to arrive into town.

#4 - Have I ever done something just to feel the danger?  Not really.  Nothing dangerous anyway.  I guess I've done some things slightly on the rebellious side just to do it.  I suppose driving the golf-cart-like vehicle in the dark, at it's highest speed through the walking paths of the park I work at, just because I can, could be an example of this.  Not necessarily dangerous, though.

#5 - Favorite cliché?  "It never rains but it pours."

#6  - How do rainy days make me feel? I love rainy days.  They make me happy. They can fuel my sadness if I'm having a sad day.  They can make me feel nostalgic.  They make me think of magic, too.  Not magic tricks, but like magic in a wonderful fairy tale.  Hard to explain.....

#7 - The most amount of money I've ever had at one time?  I don't really know.  In my hands?  In my bank account?  Stashed away in a secret hiding place in my room?  Don't know.  Not telling.

#8 - Celebrity crush list?  Not putting that here.  I have one, don't get me wrong, but it will not be revealed here.  Sorry.

No reason for this post.  I was looking through a list of journal-prompts.  Some of them inspire deep thoughts.  Many I found among the list, I wouldn't want to answer, such as "If you could tell the world one thing, what would it be?"  First off, I don't really know.  Secondly, I know it could never happen, so why torture myself with the idea.  Thirdly, if I could, most of the world wouldn't care what it was I had to say.  Fourth, I don't think it is a question that should ever have an answer.  If we only have one thing in our lives to say, our minds aren't thinking creatively anymore and I couldn't bear that.

More Bluebirds of Happiness

Some more funny pictures I took of my Bluebirds of Happiness back in 2009 and 2010:

Very patriotic Bluebirds of Happiness!

Happy Thanksgiving!  Don't you love the big bluebird, who is about to eat a TUMS?

The Bluebirds of Happiness with a bar of soap that just makes you happy look at.  I don't know why I took their picture with a bar of soap.



 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!



Growing tomatoes with the Bluebirds of Happiness:

Preparing for a rainy day - The Bluebirds of Happiness and food storage

Nothing like sharing a fresh home baked cookie with the Bluebirds.

Getting ready for a new school year:

Visiting friends at the family castle:

Spring flowers make even the Bluebirds happy.

 

 

A Toally Useless Possession that makes me smile

I found the quirkiest writing prompt recently and I had to try it:

Name a totally useless possession and how you came to acquire it.

I have a Bluebird of Happiness.  By itself it is completely useless as it is a bit of blue glass in the shape of a bird.  Even more useless, but adding to the fun, is I have two of these blue glass birds - a normal size and a baby size.

I wish I could remember exactly how they came to be in my possession.  I only know that I got both of them from my mom.  I believe mom acquired them (or at least one of them) from a student when she taught school, many years ago. 

We laughed about these little Bluebird of Happiness knick-knacks.  It became something of a joke between us - the useless glass birds and the fact that we possessed two of them.  In all honesty, the Bluebirds of Happiness have brought my mom and I just that: happiness.  They make us laugh.  I smile every time I see them.  They make me think of mom.

These are my Bluebirds of Happiness.  They are playing in the pool on a hot summer day.  Can you see them?  They are rather camouflaged in the blue pool.

 

One day I might share the reason I took such funny, ridiculous pictures of my Bluebirds of Happiness. :)  Until then, I hope they have made you happy today.

My hand's weird skin issue

I haven't written much here.  For whatever reason, I'm not thinking terribly creatively anymore.  I don't have my funny little random thoughts anymore.  I'm not sure why, but I come here, to my blog everyday, trying to think of anything to write and come up with zero.

My life isn't bad.  My kids are generally really great and I love my job.  Because of my job, however, I haven't been an active part of my improv group anymore.  I always ask for those days off, but every improv night, they call me up. Someone has called in sick and from what I can tell, they don't have many of us available to work at the large number of  parks that need to be staffed daily.  I'm always happy to help out, but it has prevented me from participating in my theater group.  I miss it.

One thing that I've been dealing with for a while is the skin on my right hand.  It started a little over a year ago, a small rash on the knuckle of my index finger that has gradually spread across the top of my hand, and up the sides of my fingers.  It is now spread to the underside of my fingers as well, but thankfully it hasn't reached my thumb or my palm.  Weird, isn't it?

I don't know what it is.  Eczema maybe?  That is the closest thing I can find to a diagnosis.  My hand not only itches all the time, but the skin is very painful.  It is hard to make a fist or straighten my fingers without cracking more of the skin and causing more pain.  The skin of my hand is covered in open sores.  The skin is dry and flakes constantly.  There are tiny blisters up and down my fingers.  They hurt when they are full and itch when they pop and it takes very little to make them pop.  Just moving my hand or my fingers rubbing against each other can make the blisters pop.  Lovely descriptions, I know.  My skin is red, itchy and painful.

Daily activities are sources for pain - hot water stings and is painful, so washing dishes and taking showers are tough.  Opening jars or bottles tear the fragile skin up.  The dry, flaking skin gets caught on clothes while I'm folding laundry.  The most mundane of tasks are a pain to my poor right hand.  What can you do?  Do the chores anyway.  They have to be done.  It's sad, but I've learned to live with the constant itching and stinging in my hand.  Perhaps that is just what I'll have to do.

I'm trying different things.  Some friends suggested tea tree oil rubbed onto the rash.  I've tried and will continue to try until the bottle runs out, but all it seems to do is dry out the skin more, making it more painful.  It stings like crazy too when it gets into the open sores.  I have used creams meant to relieve eczema and I have a cocoa butter stick that is soothing (and smells great.)  The creams don't take away the pain, in fact they usually add to the stinging, but they relieve the skin of it's dryness for a little bit.  And when I say little bit, I mean 10 - 15 minutes before my hand has dried out again.  I've started slathering my hand in cream and wearing a glove to try and keep the moisture against my skin for longer.  It works in it's own way.  However, I feel very silly walking around with one glove on and I can't do chores that involve food or washing with the cotton gloves on.  I've wondered if a pressure glove, like the ones burn victims wear, would be helpful.  They are tight on the skin and would prevent friction from anything else touching my sensitive skin.

I'm also trying a few herbal extracts that are suppose to be helpful.  So far, nothing has helped.  I'll get through these bottles of herbs and if nothing changes, I won't take them again.  I'm trying to cut sugar out of my diet.  I went four days without sugar this week.  Let me say that was not a good four days.  Despite getting rid of sugar and eating any sugary snacks, thus lowering my caloric intake by a good deal, I managed to gain four pounds.  WHAT'S UP WITH THAT???  I know that four days is nothing, but I had hoped it might make some sort of difference to my health, weight or skin, but all it accomplished was me being an awful witch during that fourth day.  Sometimes emotional health is more important.  Sooooo, I'm trying to go three days with no sugar and one day to enjoy a special sugary treat.  I think I can do that.  Three days is about my limit.  :)  Pathetic, I know.

OK, long post for my weird skin issues, but it is a 24/7 thing I deal with.  What a pain.

Life's funny little joys

One of life's funny little joys, by Molly - 

Reaching into your purse for one thing and finding a chocolate kiss.

Smart vs. Beauty OR Mom vs. Too-Smart of a Four Year Old

My soon-to-be 5 year old is smart.  She knows she is smart.  But, she loves to hear me tell her how smart she is.

She comments on how she was a smart baby. She requires that I agree with her.

She comments on how she is smart now because she can do _________ (fill in the blank with anything she knows how to do.)  Once again, I am required to agree with her or she will say it over and over again until I do.

She asks me things like, "Am I smarter than Sister?" to which I usually end up replying, you are both smart, but Sister is older and knows a lot more than you do.  And then she reminds me how smart she was as a baby.

She will announce to me some reason of logic she has come up with.  You can't tell her it is anything otherwise, even if her logic is completely off.  She will simply say, "I know, but___ (and restates her own logic.)  Arguing with her on this point is futile. I just smile and nod.

I didn't want my daughters to grow up with the idea that they should only be beautiful (even though they both are.)  I once read an interesting article written by a Dr. Mom in one of those highly over-priced parenting magazines that:  If we only tell our daughters how beautiful they are, they will think that beauty is the most important thing and they will not work to learn, go to school, or do anything of value with their life.  So, throughout their lives, I've told my daughters not only how beautiful they are, but how smart they are as well.  I've encouraged them to learn anything they want and become whatever they want because they are smart enough to do so.

I think I've created an overly-smart-smarty-pants of a four year old monster.

Growing Nuggets

Our chicken nuggets have grown a lot.  Each day they change and get bigger.  After the first week, they started to change.  They were quite ugly as their adult feathers started to sprout under their baby fuzz.  We joked at how they are going through the awkward teen stage.  They aren't quite so ugly anymore.  They still have some baby fuzz and sound like baby chicks, but they have many of their adult feathers. 

They are speedy fast and getting more difficult to catch.  We take them out of their bucket to clean out their stinky bucket each day.  If they day is sunny, we put them in the yard while we wash the tub.  They are happy chickies when we do this.  They are very unhappy when we catch them to put them back into their bucket.

Really, they are getting too big for their bucket, but we don't have anywhere else to put them yet.  We are hoping the weather will turn warm soon.  They keep pecking at their bucket, trying to escape.  We've also had to put a chicken wire lid on the bucket because they can hop out now.

We can't tell them apart anymore, not since they've gotten their real feathers.  I call each one Nugget.

A little time in the yard.

Really, they've changed a lot since this picture was taken 3 days ago.  It's amazing how fast they are growing.

The improv group's latest show

Today my teen improv group had their 4th performance.  It was at the local mall, on a stage, with sound equipment.  Yeah, we're going for the big time here!~

We had some technical difficulties and the first few sketches the kids did were completely inaudible.  But, with a little help from a friend, the mics started to work.  It was a lot of fun and a good learning experience for us all.

Check out my theater's website for pictures:  Teenprov! Performance

Meet our nuggets

We've got ourselves six little chicken nuggets.  They have survived two days and two nights with us.  They are getting lots and lots of love.  They have been given names.

Oldest son named his Mary Elena
Second son named his Berk
Oldest daughter named hers Fluffette
Youngest son named his Frosty
Youngest daughter named hers Rosalinda
I picked the final name and it is Nugget

They are almost impossible to tell them apart, but Berk does have a different pattern on her back that makes her a little easier to distinguish.  My husband attempted to 'mark' the chicks by dyeing two of them.  Frosty has some blue in his wings and Rosalinda is pink.  You can kind of see them in the pictures.  I just call them all Nugget.

I was getting ready to clean out their stinky bucket when I took this picture.  They didn't like the box I had for them....

They live in a bucket in the bathtub and will live there until they are big enough to be outside. I've never dealt with chickens before, so I don't know how long that will take. Three weeks, maybe??  Until then, they are super cute and oh so fluffy!!!