My life lately
Chickens
I now own a white Leghorn rooster named Jon Snow, a black sex link hen named Brown Betty, a Welsummer hen named Shirley, two Speckled Sussex pullets named Lucy and Ethel, a New Hampshire Red hen named Ygritte, and nine Cornish crosses we collectively call 'the meatballs'. The Cornish crosses are a little over 5 weeks old and already weigh as much as a full grown chicken. Most chickens don't get to this weight until they're over a year. This is an extreme example of hybrid vigor. This is the breed Tyson Foods and others raise for commercial meat production; the breed you'd buy in the meat section of the grocery store. I ended up with them because Tyson sent out life cycle incubation kits to local schools with directions for the teacher to euthenize the chicks after hatching. Well ... not all the teachers were on board with this, so there were a lot of little Cornish cross chicks being given away.
If that wasn't enough, I ended up with five chicks from the feed store yesterday who were destined for the trash can. They'd been picked on and brutalized by the other chicks. I took them for free, brought them home, medicated them, gave them more room, and of course this removed them from the other chicks who were literally trying to eat them alive. They're doing much better now. It looks like they'll all make it. I think I'll keep one and give the others away, because I have a limit on how many chickens I want in my back yard. The meatballs don't really count because I'll be slaughtering them in less than a month. If I let them get too big, they begin to have joint and skeletal problems due to the unsustainable growth.
To manage all these guys, I have expanded my son's playhouse in the back yard from 4' wide x 4' deep x 5' tall to 4' wide x 8' deep x 7' tall. And given it a tin roof, roost poles, and three nest boxes. I re-attached the door, too. Today we put a coat of paint on half of it, as I found I had seriously underestimated how much paint I needed. I'll get more next week.
The Fence
I have chickens now because I have a fence. I have a 6' privacy fence, in fact, surrounding the 5/8ths of an acre that makes up my back yard. This means I can do things like have a hick chicken coop without the homeowner's association griping too much. It also means I can keep out all the varmints that might endanger my chickens, as well as whatever might eat the fruit off my trees. Deer can technically still jump the fence, but I hope this will at least be a deterrent to them.
Love life
I'm still living with Ivan. Things remain great with him. I recently finished the book Come As You Are, which I strongly recommend for women. It drew together a lot of information and showed me that I'd been thinking very negatively about sex for a long time. Like, always. Sex had become mostly a collection of memories of how things had gone wrong, times I'd been mistreated or taken advantage of, and mistakes made. I don't think about anything else that way - not working out, or working, or going on roller coasters, or eating sauerkraut. These other activities are not a catalog of problems and issues like sex is for me. I need to turn that around and make my sex life about me and not about my past. The book showed me how.
Physical
In two weeks, I have a Brazilian jujitsu tournament where I'll be competing in two categories. My goal at this point is to get myself to the tournament without any additional injuries, and on weight. My weight's fine right now, so I just have to maintain. The injury thing is problematic, though. I have had only small success in toning it down during sparring matches. I've learned to tap earlier. I've learned to submit my opponent faster. I've learned to not rely so much on trying to muscle my way through things. These are valuable, but they aren't the slow, flowing sparring I want to be doing. What happens is we square off, they make a move, and I try to out-move them. Or I make a move and I do it aggressively because I want it to work and I know if I do it slow, they'll block me. And pretty soon, I'm fighting hard, which I didn't intend to do.
As far as injuries go, my worst one remains the separated and dislocated left shoulder. A fringe benefit of that is that it made me seriously reassess my cardio and take up jogging, since jogging didn't aggravate the shoulder. This morning I ran an 11 minute mile, which isn't super fast, but considering six weeks ago I was struggling and failing to make it to a half mile (at any time period), I think I've done quite well. My goal is a 10 minute mile. When I get there, I'll set a new goal, like running full out for a mile, or seeing how far I can jog without slowing down for a breather.
Job
I like my job, but I don't like my boss. He's fine as a person (well, he's 'okay' as a person), but he has some very annoying management skills. He's not understanding, empathetic, or supportive. He's not personable or friendly. He has no kids, a wife who has her own very independent life, a bunch of highly trained sporting dogs, and no other hobbies outside of work. He is happy to work 12 hours or more a day. He comes off as vaguely disdainful that other people have kids, hobbies, interests outside of work, etc. So when one's work does not measure up to his expectations ... I'm left feeling disappointed and disheartened, even though I know I'm doing good work for someone who's held the job for less than three months. Grr.
Projects
Things I'm working on, in no particular order:
I now own a white Leghorn rooster named Jon Snow, a black sex link hen named Brown Betty, a Welsummer hen named Shirley, two Speckled Sussex pullets named Lucy and Ethel, a New Hampshire Red hen named Ygritte, and nine Cornish crosses we collectively call 'the meatballs'. The Cornish crosses are a little over 5 weeks old and already weigh as much as a full grown chicken. Most chickens don't get to this weight until they're over a year. This is an extreme example of hybrid vigor. This is the breed Tyson Foods and others raise for commercial meat production; the breed you'd buy in the meat section of the grocery store. I ended up with them because Tyson sent out life cycle incubation kits to local schools with directions for the teacher to euthenize the chicks after hatching. Well ... not all the teachers were on board with this, so there were a lot of little Cornish cross chicks being given away.
If that wasn't enough, I ended up with five chicks from the feed store yesterday who were destined for the trash can. They'd been picked on and brutalized by the other chicks. I took them for free, brought them home, medicated them, gave them more room, and of course this removed them from the other chicks who were literally trying to eat them alive. They're doing much better now. It looks like they'll all make it. I think I'll keep one and give the others away, because I have a limit on how many chickens I want in my back yard. The meatballs don't really count because I'll be slaughtering them in less than a month. If I let them get too big, they begin to have joint and skeletal problems due to the unsustainable growth.
To manage all these guys, I have expanded my son's playhouse in the back yard from 4' wide x 4' deep x 5' tall to 4' wide x 8' deep x 7' tall. And given it a tin roof, roost poles, and three nest boxes. I re-attached the door, too. Today we put a coat of paint on half of it, as I found I had seriously underestimated how much paint I needed. I'll get more next week.
The Fence
I have chickens now because I have a fence. I have a 6' privacy fence, in fact, surrounding the 5/8ths of an acre that makes up my back yard. This means I can do things like have a hick chicken coop without the homeowner's association griping too much. It also means I can keep out all the varmints that might endanger my chickens, as well as whatever might eat the fruit off my trees. Deer can technically still jump the fence, but I hope this will at least be a deterrent to them.
Love life
I'm still living with Ivan. Things remain great with him. I recently finished the book Come As You Are, which I strongly recommend for women. It drew together a lot of information and showed me that I'd been thinking very negatively about sex for a long time. Like, always. Sex had become mostly a collection of memories of how things had gone wrong, times I'd been mistreated or taken advantage of, and mistakes made. I don't think about anything else that way - not working out, or working, or going on roller coasters, or eating sauerkraut. These other activities are not a catalog of problems and issues like sex is for me. I need to turn that around and make my sex life about me and not about my past. The book showed me how.
Physical
In two weeks, I have a Brazilian jujitsu tournament where I'll be competing in two categories. My goal at this point is to get myself to the tournament without any additional injuries, and on weight. My weight's fine right now, so I just have to maintain. The injury thing is problematic, though. I have had only small success in toning it down during sparring matches. I've learned to tap earlier. I've learned to submit my opponent faster. I've learned to not rely so much on trying to muscle my way through things. These are valuable, but they aren't the slow, flowing sparring I want to be doing. What happens is we square off, they make a move, and I try to out-move them. Or I make a move and I do it aggressively because I want it to work and I know if I do it slow, they'll block me. And pretty soon, I'm fighting hard, which I didn't intend to do.
As far as injuries go, my worst one remains the separated and dislocated left shoulder. A fringe benefit of that is that it made me seriously reassess my cardio and take up jogging, since jogging didn't aggravate the shoulder. This morning I ran an 11 minute mile, which isn't super fast, but considering six weeks ago I was struggling and failing to make it to a half mile (at any time period), I think I've done quite well. My goal is a 10 minute mile. When I get there, I'll set a new goal, like running full out for a mile, or seeing how far I can jog without slowing down for a breather.
Job
I like my job, but I don't like my boss. He's fine as a person (well, he's 'okay' as a person), but he has some very annoying management skills. He's not understanding, empathetic, or supportive. He's not personable or friendly. He has no kids, a wife who has her own very independent life, a bunch of highly trained sporting dogs, and no other hobbies outside of work. He is happy to work 12 hours or more a day. He comes off as vaguely disdainful that other people have kids, hobbies, interests outside of work, etc. So when one's work does not measure up to his expectations ... I'm left feeling disappointed and disheartened, even though I know I'm doing good work for someone who's held the job for less than three months. Grr.
Projects
Things I'm working on, in no particular order:
- Doing touch-up paint on my car, very badly. It was hit by a wrench bouncing down the highway a couple months ago and I've finally tried to fix it.
- Installing a laundry chute from the upstairs bathroom to the utility room
- Wishing the rain would stop (seriously), but being glad that my parent's pond/lake has filled in as much as it has.
- Wishing it was dry enough that I could plant more of a garden, or continue with my landscaping plans
- Trying to figure out how to balance social life and time with my kids with everything else I'm doing
- Trying to get more than 6 hours of sleep a night
- Meditating, or at least trying to. Sometimes. Like, occasionally.
- Watching Game of Thrones
- Thinking I need to rewatch Heroes but not actually doing it
- Thinking I need to edit the next two MBU chapters
- Thinking I need to cut my son's hair today
- Taking care of my parent's chickens, because they're in Texas again for two weeks
- Thinking I need to shop online for my kids' summer clothes
- Getting ready for Ivan's mother, who has just retired, to come visit us for two weeks. Mostly this has entailed tasking the kids with cleaning up two rooms a day for the last week.
- Trying to accrue enough frequent flyer miles to swing a good vacation next year. This has been through initial application to a couple credit card offers and then re-routing my spending to maximize miles. Looks like we'll have two round trip tickets on two airlines, so we just have to pick a vacation spot that both airlines serve. Then the four of us can go - two on one plane and two on the other.