Happy birthday!

The kittens are 2 weeks old today. Everyone has their eyes open and they are starting to be pretty mobile. Cyclops is thealmost advanced and little doobie seems to be the slow one of the group. Tyrone is the cry baby, Monkey likes to wrestle, and Big Black is the laid back loner. Big black and little doobie both has extra thunbs too.Here are a couple not so good pictures. The damn things dont stay still long enough to take good photos.

The girls (monkey & doobie)

The boys ( pretty hard to tell them all apart. Big has the double paws, tryone has a little white on his belly and chest, and cylops is all black).

Good Moodoo to you

The weather has been excellent for the last few days. So nice in fact I have a pretty sore sunburn on my back and arms. We have been busy trying to get the yard cleaned up and the gardens tilled. Only problem is our rototiller doesn't want to work and i am impatient. We need to bring it in to get repaired, but i have a feeling I will have hand turned everything by then. I've got close to 400lbs of cow, bunny, chicken manure and peat ready to add.Most of the seedling sare growing indorrs. I still have a few to plant.

So far we have snow peas, snap peas, spinach, parseley, basil, Roma & Steak tomotoes, lemon cucumbers, blue lake beans, cheroke yellow wax beans, and purple queen beans, carrots, chives, and lavender . I also have some potatoes that we never used that i think i will try to grow. I wanted to do pumpkins, but it might be too late. I also still want some squash and melons, asparagus, and lettuce.

front flower garden, yes that is still snow!

back flower garden, partially tilled

Side vegetable garden. I think i will do the root veggies here. There are already onions and chives growing here, as well as some mint i think, plus we will need to enclose this one to keep the chickens out (you can see the coup in the background).

Back vegetable garden. This garden is way back by the pond. We didn't touch it last summer so as you can see it is pretty over run with weeds (this is after i raked it). There were a few big rhubarbs here last summer as well as a stawberrry patch, so I will try to keep those.

I also need to clean up behin the garage. We have some blackberries growing wild there. I trying to learn how to cultivate them and would like to get them on a trellis. I saw some gold raspberries at lowes the other day that I would love to mix in with these blackberries.

Flooding and cyclops

The rain just won't stop. Roads all around us are closed due to flooding. The water is washing out the dirt under and on the sides of the roads, so huge chunks are breaking off and leaving 4-5 foot gullies. JR and Alicia's driveway (which is about a mile) is completely washed out and they are stranded in their house. Besides one leak that was dripping onto our on demand water heater and the now raging river in our backyard, we are doing fine.

In kitten news, Shaniqua has grown a pair of balls, and is the first to begin opening his eyes. We now call him cyclops ( and this is my new favorite picture of all time).

Well it snowed again, lots of downed limbs and power lines around the area, we didn't
have any big problems here, except for a few leaks from the
ceilings that we need to patch up.
Bout a foot and a half of snow over the last couple days, but then.......it started raining. Lots. The snow is melting and we have a running river where our little creek usually is. Its gonna be a muddy may.

The babies are a week old today. Nora has decided to move them around for the last few nights. That included bringing two of them in the bed while we were in there sleeping. She brought monkey under the covers with me, so I had to sit her down and tell her that this is not a good place for her babies. Thats monkey and tyrone in the first picture, little doobie and monkey in the second.

Doobabies

Here are Doobies babies at a day and a half. I think their pictures are in order of the oldest to the youngest.


Big Black Monkey Lil Doobie
Blackie (aka Tyrone)
Baby Blackie(aka Shaniqua)
And no, the names aren't permanant, yet.

Scooby Pooped Em!

Nora had her babies last night without any complications. I'll post more later but here is a quick pic of them today. She had 5 in all, 3 solid black, one mini version of her, and one dark grey version of her. Wait until you see the birthing photos, nasty stuff!

WTF?

So remember how I was just saying that the snow was almost all melted. Well yesterday morning was so unpleasantly awoken by the sounds of the plow trucks, and once again we got over a foot of snow. Hmpph>

I need to start shoveling as I am already late for my service accounts. (This entire post was written with a very fat Nora on my lap biting my fingers as I typed because she is being very needy)

Update on the Groceries

Well, we have improved. I'm sure we can still do better, but we have gone from spending $419.56 on groceries in the month of January to $272.00 in February, and then down again to $251.23 in March. While I may be making more than the two trips a month I was originally alloting myself, I have been writing lists and trying to preplan meals. It seems to help. Now i just need to make sure I remember the lists and coupons next time I go to hannafords.

Finally

Holy taco sauce, yes, I am once again typing my blog entries on my laptop. This can only mean one thing, my taxes are done. Finally! Five months later, all of my taxes are filed and I have my computer back.
I plan on adding new posts and pictures this weekend, the snow is almost all melted, nora hasn't pooped any babies yet, the mercy hospital thing fell through, I got a new tutoring position, went down to CT for my grandmothers funeral, one of the chickens went broody, and I have another headache. Oh, and most exciting of all, I ate macaroni and cheese last week!

NOT Amused!

Sooo.........Nora seems to be pregnant. I have been denying it for a couple weeks, but it is pretty obvious now. Shit.

4 Jobs?

Sooooo..... I think I am about to have another job interview. While I have been looking for another job, this one was kind of just on a whim. I filled out an online application and wasn't really expecting to hear back, but i did, and the manager sounds quite interested in having me work there. It is at Mercy Hospital , and yes that is in Portland. So therein lies the problem. This might be a really interesting job and I can probably get benefits, but this will be another hour in, hour out commute. Oh well, I am still going to set up an interview. If I can get the right hours and benfits, I think I will do it. They have lots of benefits including free medical services, medical insurance, dental, eyecare, retirement, tuition reimbursement, and a few others. The position I applied for is a phlebotomy position, but the message I got was 'I have a position that I think you would really like', and 'I think we can help you further your career with your biology degree', so we'll see. Bu then again, it could be a job diagnosing poop samples. Hmmm.

Groceries

Just came across this article.
Take a Bite out of Groceries

I have a headache.

Woke up this mornig with a throbbing headeache, was assigned several chores by Tony as I was still asleep and he was heading off to work. I am struggling to remember what they all are but recall him saying thats the most yeses hes gotten out of me in a while. So i guess i better do them. Please hold. Need more coffee.

Its effing freezing again. We are just about to be out of wood for the umpteenth time. Hopefulle these are the last of the cold days for this year. The poor chickens are locked in the coop right now. Wind chills yesterday were -20 yet they all decided to stay outdoors. Today is a little less windy, so I may let them out when I go out to feed them and dethaw their water.

I worked a full day of inschool yesterday instead of my regular half day. It was sooo boring the one room all day with 7 little asses, i was ready to scratch my eyeballs out. Normally I just do the academic portion, someone else does the reflection portion, and the school police officer does the community service portion. For some reason they had me do all of them yesterday. The reflection portion was espically difficult for me to do. The students answer questions as to why they are in inschool and how their behaviors affect them and other people, etc.... The I sit with them one by one and review them. Out of the 50 or so kids I have had in my classroom, only about 3 or 4 have been placed in inschool for something really 'bad'. The rest were either late to school 3 times, missed a class, unexcused absence, missed a detention, etc. The school overuses inschool I am finding. I have had one girl 4 times straight now. This tells me that assigning her an inschool is not reforming her. Anyway, im bored with talking about work. Oh, but i did get mistaken for a student again yesterday (that #3). Dem Bastards!

The money saga contines. Wait, do you feel that? That sinking feeling? Yes, that is us going under. T got the water/sewer bills for the apartment house. Usually water is about $150, sewer is about $100. These bills come in 3 month increments. This time water was $800 and sewer was $400. So we owe the city of bath $1200 this month. Oh, and the furnaces needed to have some repairs a couple of weeks ago at the tune of $500. O.H.S.H.I.T. Don't ask me why the water bill is so high. T had someone from the city go recheck the meter and sure enough the reading was correct. An the guy said the meter is spinning like mad still. So something must be runnning somewhere. The only thing I can think of is that good old earlimester (the rotting 80 year old deaf tenant who used to yell and me through the walls) maybe has the water running to keep pipes from freezing?? The whole idea of he died in the shower with the water running and no one has found him yet was proved false because we recently recieved yet more good financial news in a letter from him. Aparently he has run out of checks and needs to get a ride into town to go to his bank. He expects do have it done within a week and will then send us his rent check. Let me clarifyy this matter. #1 He is deaf. #2 He has no phone. #3 He has no car. #4 He has no family. Therefore I dont know how he expects this to happen.

Another Reason We're Poor

I've taken to entering all of our income and expenses into an Excel spreadsheet so that we can look at our situation in graph form and gasp in horror.
In January alone we spent $419.56 in groceries . We are two people. Two none gluttonous people.... or so I thought.
I or we have decided that this is way too much so the new plan I have devised is as follows. Every 2 weeks I will construct a meal plan, list all the necessary ingredients, form a shopping list, and stick by the list. So thats it. No more twice a week visits to Hannafords. Two visits a month and i must only buy what is on the list. We'll see how long this lasts.

How to annoy me-

Wake me up 3 times by saying loudly, "I can't believe you're asleep".

Spring Yet?

It be snow!

Shoveling is fun!

Valentine Blizzard

Yesterday was valentines day and maine was hit with a blizzard. Our first big snow of the year. I would say we got about 2 feet. Went snowshoeing in our woods earlier in the day... it's more of a workout than you would expect. Then i fell a couple times and an asscrack full of snow means its time to go inside. Notice the look of enjoyment upon my face.

Afterwards we braised a chuck roast which came out very well.

The boys shared their bed and stayed warm by the woodstove all day. This is their get out of our faces with that damn camera look.

She was raised by squirrels

Nora scooby dooby is a freak of nature. I think before we found her she lived as a squirrel with her adoptive squirrel parents. Anytime she is outside she runs up into the trees.

You have to look close or click on the photo to enlarge it, she up up about 40 feet.

Here she is in the crab apple or cherry or some kind of tree. She climbs up this one to knock the fruit off of the branches. Bodhi has learned from her and makes attempts to climb trees behind her, but can only drag his fatty ass up a couple of feet.

Fiber Stuff

I decided to knit a pair of mittens from Girl Bunny's fiber. For some reason I always knit stuff for myself to fit the exact size of my hand or head.... this proceeds to make everything a smidge too small. No matter how many times i think i am knitting extra rows, the outcome is alwyas the same. anyways here is the start of mitten one.