Free CIRCUS tickets!

Every year Jess blogs about going to the circus, and I've been with her a couple times. It's fun stuff.

The only thing better than going to the circus is going to the circus with your family or friends, FOR FREE!

This year, the Circus gave Jess 4 sets of tickets to give away on her blog. What an awesome giveaway! It's kind of like having a giveaway for 'magic,' or a superhero, or something. Who does that?

Her blog is small enough that I am going to win tickets for sure. So. Yeah. Kind of fun, because when TAMN gives something away there are like 900 entries and then it's just a waste of time even entering.

Since she has four to give away, all three of you guys reading this can go claim your pack of tickets on her blog. Hurry, because the deadline for the giveaway is TONIGHT.

Maybe we can all sit together!

New Toy!

Fun things to do with Carpet Tape Roll*:

1. Roll it like a BALL (on the roll-y side)!

2. Slide it like a puck.

3. Bounce it 3 feet high, like the pink bouncy BALL! and then GET IT.

4. DROP IT off of the side of the couch because it falls on the floor and makes noise!

5. Try to fit the whole thing in your mouth by squashing it a little.

6. Hold it in your mouth with the round part above your mouth.

7. Carry it in your mouth with the round part below your mouth.

8. GET IT and DROP IT so someone will throw it and you can go GET IT.

The carpet roll kind of reminds me of Abby, because when we got her as a kitten, her people told us we should let her play with the plastic ring around the top of milk containers. She loved them. Paley does too. Carpet tape rolls are the dog-version of milk rings. It's going to stay an only-under-supervision toy for a little while, because it seems pretty durable (and Chalce doesn't destroy toys) but I don't know if she could break it or swallow it somehow. So, we'll see.

Chalcy is more and more fun to play with because we communicate better these days. Chalcy is learning so much! (Learning is a lot of fun because when you do things you get TREATS, which are Very Very Good, and Definitely Worth Sitting To Get One.)

We've been doing Puppy Preschool for a month now, and Chalcy is good at:
- Watch me.
- Sit.
- Get it.
- Down. (But we still have to do Sit first and then Down).
- Up [on the couch, usually].
- Off [the couch, but even though she knows it, a lot of times she doesn't obey for this one.]
- Kennel up! (Very good at this now.)
- Come here! (Usually obedient for this one, but not always. We still need to do "Come" in class, so I think that will help.)
- Drop it. (Learned this a week and a half ago, but she is very good at it.)
- Leave it. (Another new one that she is pretty good at, except if she is supposed to LEAVE IT [the cat or chickens] or LEAVE IT [the compost], and I don't have a treat with me.)
- Take it.**
- Fetch! (Not a class one, and sometimes she doesn't do it, or she gets it and brings it but doesn't give up the thing she fetched. But usually she does it.)

I forget what else she knows. She does not know how to politely walk on a leash, because we've only been on a couple walks--we mostly just play in the backyard. But knowing how to politely walk on a leash is important for big dogs, so we're starting to go on walks sometimes. She likes them more than I thought she would.***

This is just a little update (which ended up being longer than I thought it would) because

* It can’t be ROLL, because otherwise how will we teach her to ROLL over?
** But it usually means you're going to have to DROP IT anyway, so why take it if you can just LEAVE IT before you're asked? Shouldn't that be the same and get you a treat faster?
*** Which seems like OF COURSE, because all dogs love walks, but I just kind of figured that since she gets plenty of exercise in the backyard, walks were not really very important or interesting(it's not like she needs more exercise or fresh air...). Plus, if she knows that she needs to stay in the yard, she is safer. If she feels like she knows the neighborhood, maybe she will decide to go on adventures or run off sometime, and that's not fine. I like her not-run-over, thanks. But walks are probably about teaching her to stay out of the road, too, so they're probably good, anyway.

The saga continues! - Episode 2

[CONTINUED FROM EPISODE 1]


I suddenly remembered--our carpet has gotten WET! Remember? When I walked in the alcove that one day, my feet got wet. We pulled the carpet up, pulled the sheet rock off, and set up a fan, but maybe we didn't get it dry enough? Maybe it molded?

And then I remembered the day that I had poured gallons and gallons and gallons of water in our furnace/water heater closet*, only a couple weeks before. When our furnace was installed, it had a little pump put beneath it. After I poured so, so much water in there, we tried to use a Shopvac to pick it up, but we got, like, a pint of water. "Huh, that's weird," I said. "I know there was WAY more water than we're vacuuming, but maybe the furnace pump already took care of it?" It seemed weird, but the water just wasn't there, so it had to have gone somewhere.

Maybe more of the water was in the carpet than we realized, and we couldn't dry it fast enough with our fans. Maybe it molded.

J and I decided I would pull up the carpet to take a look. Most likely, the carpet and carpet pad were moldy, and anyway, it wouldn't be a bad idea to replace them. I've really wanted fake wood floors, and one of my buddies at HD*** told me I could put in Trafficmaster Allure**** and it would be SO easy, and SO fast, and he said it's cheap, but it actually lasts. So. I was excited that I would be pulling up the carpet that day.

I got up to go look at the carpet by the furnace area, and as I headed that way I realized something. "J, no way, I just thought of something and you're not going to believe it..."

I crawled into the furnace closet to look beneath the furnace at the pump.

Back when I installed linoleum under our kitchen counters, I saw beneath the furnace: there was a line of 2x4s. It needed to be there to access furnace stuff, I just assumed.

"Yep. The pump is self contained. J. Remember how when you were buying this house, there was a line of 2x4s out in the hallway by the garage?"

"Mhmm?" (He was listening.)

"I think...I think the line of 2x4s goes all the way down the middle of our house...And that's why the floor is not level, and kind of goes up in the middle."

"Ohhhhh..."

I continued: "Yeah. I'll BET...I'll bet when all that water poured into the furnace closet, it wasn't pumped at all. It couldn't have been, actually, since the pump is all self-contained. You know what it did? It poured into this channel down the middle of the house. No way... Hm. I'll bet that's it. I'll bet that's why you're so allergic to the house. Think about it! The floor would get wet, from when it rained, and any water that got down there would sit beneath the floor, down the middle of the house. And it would just sit there. And that's why you're sick a few weeks after I poured so much water down there."

J nodded. "I think you're onto something. We never even thought about the 2x4s in the hallway. I think we just thought it was a vent..."

"Yeah."

J: "So you'll go ahead and pull up the carpet, then, because that would definitely cause mold under the carpet."

Me: "All right."

And I pulled up the carpet while J was gone to work, so he wouldn't get super-sick from participating in the project.

Sure enough, there were boards down the middle of our main room.

I started to pull up the 2x4s and I was in for a bigger surprise than either of us had imagined!

The ends of the boards were resting on little concrete ledges. Basically, there was a trench down the main room of our house. It was about 15" across, and about 10" deep. The bottom of the trench was gravel and dirt--just like the ground outside our house! Except, this gravel and dirt was damp, and very musty.

For sure, for sure, I had definitely found the source of J's allergy problems. No question about it.

The trench connected with the section outside. Down the middle of the trench, there was a 1" PVC pipe. The pipe we already knew about--it comes up from the 2x4s in the hallway outside.

When I talked to the previous owner (and also on the How the House Works DVD), he explained that the pipe went up along the wall of the patio, out to the roof outside, and then along a fence that no longer exists. They used the pipe to water their garden outside. Now, the pipe still goes up the wall, and outside, but then it is severed--there is no fence or garden.*****

So definitely, what happened is, all of the gallons of water went into a trench in the middle of our house, and sat there. But not only that! This year, we began irrigating. Any time water runs near the house, I am quite certain we have also been irrigating the middle of our house.

I determined that we should probably remove the PVC pipe and fill the trench in, but I wasn't sure what I needed to do, so I went to Home Depot to go find someone to explain what I would need to do.



[...TO BE CONTINUED!]


* This is a story that I meant to blog before, but I'm pretty sure I never did. Maybe I'll still get to it. This can be like LOST, with flashbacks that make the present stuff make more sense.**
** This is almost everything I remember about LOST, since I only watched part of one season.
*** Online, everyone calls HD "Orange" and Lowie's "Blue." So they're like, "I was at Orange the other day and they had x on sale!" Or, they'll ask "Orange or Blue?" and you're supposed to say whether you like Home Depot or Lowie's better. I don't get it. If I were talking about Vons, or Walmart, or Smithy's, or any other store, I would say the name of the store. Is there some reason we're not supposed to name names when it comes to Home Improvement stores? Like, I could say "Red, Blue, Yellow, or Green??" and mean, "Do you like Smithy's, Albertsons, Macey's, or Reams the best?!?" but I wouldn't...So, I'm not into using secret logo-color codes to talk about home improvement shopping, I guess.
**** When I say the names of home improvement project parts, it makes me feel like I am bragging about specs for something else--'It's got a 203948320 GIG HARD DRIVE, with 38 RPM!!' 'It's a Mac.' 'You just can't beat the suspension--nobody makes a better suspension than ThisBrand!' or 'We're installing Trafficmaster Allure. [*frownsmile*?] It has a 25 year warranty.' It's just like, whatever it is, it must be so good that for some reason I need to namedrop, and can expect people to know what it is. But actually, it isn't really bragging, because it isn't Pergo, and it's in my little house that is not deluxe deluxe at all.
***** The previous owner did not mention the trench went to the furnace closet. When I asked him about the 2x4s in the hall, and asked about what it connected to, he mentioned the garden, and he told me that, you know, they didn't do everything the best way, but that it had worked for them. When he said that, it confused me, and I just told him we enjoy the house a lot.

The roof/floor saga begins! - Episode 1.5

Here is the extra content that goes along with the first post of my blog-saga*!

It is a video of J demonstrating the installation of our fancy snow & ice tape.

Kind of makes me laugh to watch it now. This is from our ^*~cR-aFt-eRNooN~*^ on Easter of this year.



* My bla-ga?

The roof/floor saga begins! - Episode 1

I have been so busy lately.

My main project over the past month or so has been replacing our floor. There have been other things going on. This feels like my capstone [home-improvement] project, though. Like, I keep telling my Homies* about it, and they just can't believe all this. It's pretty hard core. I'll blog about it, but if you're going to read this, you should probably take a break to go grab some safety glasses, ear protection, and a ventilator mask. You will probably need all that, just to read this post. It's pretty intense.**

SO, here we go.

J has been allergic to our house*** ever since he moved in. It's a mold allergy. Sometimes it's been better and sometimes it's been worse. Before we got married, he sometimes moved into his parents' house for a little while, until he got better. When he's having an allergic reaction, he just can't do much of anything. He feels blah, and just not really great.

Right before he closed on the house (last summer), the bathroom ceiling fell in. There was mold everywhere.

It was a problem with the roof. On the How-the-House-Works DVD, the previous owner talks about getting on the roof to re-tar it.

We had the bathroom ceiling replaced. We had our [not-very-]handyman replace the sheetrock, and I told him to also replace all of the insulation that had mold on it, please. So he did. The "handy"man also patched the tar on the roof for us.

J did well for a while. We patched the tar on the roof a couple more times in September, and during the fall. When the bathroom ceiling kept getting moist, we had a roofer come out to replace the flashing around the chimney. He did a pretty good job, we thought, but we kept having problems.

We called him out, as part of the warranty on it (because he said we wouldn't have any more problems with it getting wet), and he confirmed that it was done correctly, and told us we could pay more to have them look for another problem. They started talking about re-sloping the roof (because it's a pretty flat roof.)

J and I applied more tar.

I realized that the sheets of metal on our part of the roof moved around a lot. So we got silicone caulking stuff and lots of screws, and we fastened the heck out of our metal sheeting that was on our part of the roof. We sealed the seams like crazy! The problems magically stopped.

And then it became winter. And then a few months later, we started having more problems. I forget what happened first, but basically, we wondered if maybe the rest of the ceiling/insulation in the problem area was moldy. We determined that I would demolish part of our ceiling so that we could just see what it looked like (without having to hire someone and pay a few hundred dollars if we didn't need to). So I did that (March 8-9th). It turned out that the part I pulled down was moldy, so I kept removing sheetrock and insulation until the parts I was pulling down were not water-damaged.

We had a guy replace it. (A handier-man.) He sprayed bleach and painted KILZ to take care of the mold. He also put a plastic barrier in some places. He reminded us that he is NOT a roof guy, but he said he thought it would keep the mold from being a problem. He repainted the area so that it matched the rest of our alcove.

A few weeks later, on April 1st**** it snowed again. I happened to go into our alcove to grab some cleaning stuff, and about 4-5 ft from the wall, my socks got all wet. I was walking into a giant carpet-puddle. It was not fixed. In fact, there were pools of water under the paint, and spots where water was dripping from the ceiling. OH, no.

We tore the sheetrock down, pulled the carpet up, and set up a fan to dry things out, but about a week later, J was seriously allergic to the house again. He was mostly living at his parents' house.

I called real roofers. We wanted to know what the cheap, quick-fix would be, and then what the lasting solution needed to be. We had heard before that we may need a cricket (a built-in thing to re-slope part of the roof), but we didn't want to spend $2-3000 to fix the roof.

One guy suggested water and ice tape. We tried this, actually. On Easter, between sessions of General Conference, J and I got up on the roof. I re-tarred it, and J was going to put snow & ice tape along the seams, and along the rain gutter. What a joke! It didn't stick to anything very well. It no-way would have solved the problem. Even a lot of it wouldn't have. J just kept laughing because the whole thing was so ridiculous.

Another guy told me with great confidence that we needed a membrane. I liked him because he called me "ma'am" and took off his boots before he came inside, and he had a nice accent (he was from South Africa). He also seemed like he REALLY knew what was going on. He kept explaining things to me, and giving me metaphors, and showing me things on the roof, and he seemed very genuine.

He showed me that our roof was basically rolled roofing (not sure what that is even usually for, but it's very cheap, very flimsy, not-at-all durable stuff), with sheets of metal attached to it. During the summer and winter, metal contracts and expands. So it was impossible for the metal roof to do much of anything. Basically, a 20 year old rolled-roof was all that was protecting us! NO WONDER J was having problems. The worker told me we needed to pull up all of the old roofing, replace all of the plywood, and put a TPO membrane down. (Because after years of getting wet, there wasn't much chance that our plywood would be good anymore.)

A TPO membrane is what they use for really flat roofs. The stuff was originally formulated to line ponds--water can pool on it and just stay there, and it doesn't go through the membrane. I don't know how they got started using it in roofing, but nowadays, it's very common for commercial and industrial buildings. Most people just don't build houses with flat (or very low pitched) roofs.

Another company verified that we needed a membrane, but they were willing to just do the junction between our back portion of the house and the front portion of the house. That was going to be quite a bit cheaper. We liked them until we Googled them to see reviews--and it looked like they had written their own fake reviews. It seemed really weird and dishonest, so we left them alone. We called the second company to see if they would be willing to do just the junction between the roofs.

They were willing to do that. So we had them do it on April 18-19th. And we felt pretty good about their work.

EXCEPT, even though the plywood wasn't in great shape, and there was obviously a lot of water damage in some places, there really wasn't much mold. So we were kind of confused.

Within a couple months weeks, it rained again, and J became sick again. Summer kind of started, and as J got sicker, I arranged to have another [cheaper, but still good] guy replace the rest of our roof with membrane (on June 22nd). Obviously since J was so allergic, it must have been a collective problem, right?

No!

The rest of the plywood was still in decent shape. We replaced it anyway. None of the insulation had mold on it. Our roof looks nicer, and our makeshift-skylight was transformed into a pair of very pretty, real skylights. But J didn't get better. He only got worse. J kept wanting to sleep outside (which I really, really didn't like), and he did for a week. Then we began sleeping at J's parents' house. J started moving his stuff over there, because he didn't even want to come home to get ready in the mornings.

We wondered...what could J possibly still be allergic to?

It didn't make any sense.

We guessed that it might be the carpet. Although we had new carpet "installed"***** when J first bought the place, we left the carpet that was in the main room, because it didn't look bad. We also left the carpet in one of the bedrooms. But J thought it was more likely a problem with the main room carpet, because he didn't spend a lot of time in our office and when he did, it didn't make him extra sick.

And then I remembered something very important!

[...TO BE CONTINUED!]







* aka. my friends at Home Depot. I mean, the workers.
** I was so tempted to put something like this (for while you were getting your stuff):

....
...
..
.

ARE YOU BACK YET??

DID YOU GET YOUR SAFETY ITEMS???

.

.
.

MAKE A WISH!

NOW FORWARD THIS BLOG POST TO 30 OF YOUR BEST FRIENS AND IF YOU DO YOU WILL BE KISSED BY YOUR CRUSH BY FRIEDAY AND HAVE A HAPPY LIFE AND IF NOT YOU WILL FAIL ALL YOUR CLASES AND YOUR TOES WILL FALL OFF!

THIS IS NOT A JOKE!!!

*** One way he knows it's the house is because he wakes up feeling like he is having an allergic reaction, and he doesn't do too well at the beginning of work, but then by the afternoon he is feeling much better.
**** Now, remember, J and I were married March 20th. So, I was tearing down sheetrock two weeks before our wedding (the day after my bridal pictures!), and hiring roofers, etc., was just a couple weeks after we got back from our honeymoon. Hey.
***** By the "handy"man. WORST Carpet Installation EVER.

Chalcy + Paley = BFF

Chalcy (our new puppy) and Paley (my cat) are best friends.

(Well, Chalcy thinks so, anyway.) (Sometimes Paley thinks so too.)

They're working through their differences.

Paley was initially afraid of Chalcy. She was about the same size as Paley when we brought her home*, but Chalcy looks kind of like our renters' dogs--Chalcy looked more like the lab, but was about the same size as the min-pin, like some terrible combination of Paley's two mortal enemies. Our renters' dogs are MEAN**. And they CHASE her. We kind of expected Pae to be afraid of the puppy.

Pretty soon after we brought Chalcy home, Pae realized that Chalce was not the same as the other dogs. Chalcy would notice Paley and try to go be with her (like the other dogs (!!!)), but as Chalcy would scamper toward Paley, the puppy kept tripping on grass. And then, Chalcy would get near Paley, and the puppy would suddenly lose interest in the cat because she would suddenly notice, OH WOW, A NEAT PIECE OF GRASS! So Chalcy would lay down--right by Paley, but totally disinterested in her--to chew on some grass, or whatever. Chalcy was not exactly quite the same threat Paley was expecting. So Paley started trying to sniff Chalcy, and a little bit tolerated Chalcy sniffing her. Within a few days, Paley started to rub up against Chalcy sometimes.

Chalcy liked Paley, because they were about the same size, and Paley is black like Chalcy (and her missing littermates), and Paley has a tail. Chalcy licks Paley, so Pae knows that the puppy likes her.*** Since Paley is a friend, Chalcy always wants to play with her. Her littermates always wanted to play, so Paley must want to play too, right?

This is how their interactions usually go:
1. Paley rubs up against Chalcy, or comes to sit near her.
2. Chalcy gets excited. Chalcy licks Paley and nestles her head into Paley's side. (Paley is ok with this.)
3. Chalcy begins to suck and chew on Paley's face/side. (Chalcy is little rough with Pae, but Paley is willing to tolerate it, because it's obvious that Chalcy is trying to be friendly, and not trying to be mean.)
4. Chalcy starts to play-bite Paley, which Paley will sometimes put up with.
5. Paley gets tired of playing too rough. She yowls and smacks Chalcy with her paw.
6. Chalcy is excited about the new smack-each-other-with-our-paws game, and starts wagging her tail. Chalcy backs up a couple feet, and does that playful-puppy thing, where her bottom is up in the air, with her tail wagging, and her front is crouched down, ready to pounce on Paley. Chalcy jabs a paw towards Paley a couple times.
7. Paley playfully bats her paw at Chalcy's paw.
8. Chalcy tackles Paley and pins her down to chew on her.
9. OH NO! Paley does NOT want Puppy Fun. (Also, Chalcy is quite a bit heavier than Paley, so being jumped on hurts, or is uncomfortable at least.) Paley yowls and hisses. If Chalcy does not move quickly, Paley will GRAB onto Chalcy's front leg with her claws, and Pae begins biting Chalcy repeatedly, while she growls. (GET OFF, DOG!)
10. This hurts a little bit, but it is Puppy Fun too, so Chalcy enjoys it for a minute, and then it hurts a little, so Chalcy will back off, or Paley will jump out from under Chalcy (to go sit a few feet away).
11. [Repeat.]

As I've been typing this, it sounds a little mean, but everyone is playing, and nobody gets hurt. When Paley is really done playing, she will go climb a tree, or jump up a fence, or hop up onto the car, or go somewhere else Chalcy can't get to.

A lot of times, Paley and Chalcy will play on opposite sides of a fence, batting at each other through the fence. Sometimes they'll run through tall grass. Paley will run through the tall grass, and stop somewhere, and Chalcy will run though the tall grass to "catch" her. Then Paley will run somewhere else a couple feet away and crouch down, and Chalcy will bounce through the grass to find her again, and the game continues. It is a game for both of them--Paley loves all of the attention from Chalcy.

Sometimes they're not too interested in playing, and they'll just lie down near each other, a couple feet away. Usually Paley will come sit kind of near Chalcy and I, and after a couple minutes, Chalcy will take whatever she is already chewing on ("Tug!" or "Stick!") and go lie down near the cat, so that she can keep chewing on her toy, but also be near Paley.

In the past week or so, Chalcy has realized that Paley does not like to be jumped on, so now Chalcy catches her by standing above her, instead of knocking her over. Paley likes this better (of course), so she is willing for longer.**** I think they will be better friends as Chalcy gets older and learns to be a little more gentle. Paley sometimes gets tired of Puppy Games. She does like Chalcy, though.





* Except that Chalcy's mass is all bulk, and Paley's mass is all fur. So. Not exactly quite the same.
** To cats.
*** Chalcy also licks the calves and the goat, so they know she's different than our renters' dogs, too. She likes them, and they are friends.
**** Chalcy still loves to bite Paley's tail (because it is long, and it moves, and it is covered in FUR!), and she loves to bite Paley's ears--this is tricky, though, because Chalcy's mouth is bigger than Paley's ears, so she ends up biting half of Paley's head. This is not Paley's very favorite game.

Farm Update, etc.

It's been a little while since I posted about our little farm.

Our calves are doing well! We fenced the front and back pasture areas well enough that the boys are always out grazing. That's what they do all day, every day. Pretty much. We de-horned* them and castrated them, and after that they had the worst 6 hours of their lives, but they're fine now, and they've forgotten all about it.

The calves are suuuuper cuddly. They are the friendliest guys in the world. They both love to be scratched. When I go out into the backyard, often one (or both!) of the calves will come up to me to be scratched. They stick their necks out, so that I can reach to scratch their chins, and their necks, and I'll scratch behind their ears, and their little bangs, and their foreheads, and they just soak it up. If I'm busy, or stop scratching, they'll rub their neck against me, so that I know what they want.

The calves usually come when I call them. I'll call, "C'mere boys!" and they come running. This is helpful if they have gotten somewhere they're not supposed to be.**

When we brought the calves home, they had ropes around their necks. We left them on, and it helped us tell the calves apart. I think we could probably tell them apart without the ropes, but eh, just to be sure, we've left them on. They are also helpful for directing them to particular places. The calves are getting BIG, though, and the ropes have been getting tight. So about a week ago, I got them collars. IFA was having a sidewalk sale, so I bought cheap collars in basically the same colors as their ropes were. I feel like they need bells, because don't calves wear bells around their necks? J tells me he can't think of any useful reason to put bells on them, and it's true--I can't think of any reason to bell the calves either. Oh well.

I have the funniest video of the calves with Paley. I need to figure out how to post it, I guess. See, [months ago] I used to come home, and sometimes Paley would be all wet. Half of her head would be wet, or she'd have a big wet blotch for a couple inches on her tail... and I started to wonder whether the calves were licking her.

They were!

Paley would go up to the calves, and rub against them, and the calves would lick her! Except, their mouths are so big (and they're so slobbery) that they soak her.

One time J and I were out with the calves and we saw it happen. Too funny! We laughed and laughed. We were like, that's so weird! But then I told J, cats lick each other.*** And J was like, "Oh, yeah! They speak her love language!" and that made me laugh too, because it was like, "of course!"

The calves are great. We like them. The very best thing, I think, is when I go outside and Stew first sees me. He looks up at me, kind of like the dramatic chipmunk YouTube video. I feel like he's thinking: "*GASP!* SHE'S HERE! You're here, finally!" Often he'll start walking out towards me, to say hello.

The chickens are mostly doing well.

We moved them to a different area (because the calves were EATING the chicken coop. Hey!) so they have plenty of space to dig around and eat bugs. When we put them in their area, it was grassy, but now it is just dirt, because they tear up the grass so effectively.

When we had moved them before, one of our chickens went missing. It was Gertie, from the chicks that we actually raised. I mentioned to J that I wondered whether she might have gotten out and ended up across the street with the flock across the street. She did! Our neighbor came over one time, and we were talking about chickens and she asked if we had lost one of our birds a few months ago. Actually, yes!

She said a new bird had shown up at their house, and the bird kind of stayed to herself. Our neighbor had wondered if the bird might be ours, since she thought we had birds too. J went over later and picked her up. Gertie was so skinny! And! Our birds didn't remember her. It was pretty sad. They all pecked at her, and chased her. So she started spending a lot of time on top of our chicken coop. Poor girl! She spent every night on the roof of the chicken coop.

Gradually she has integrated back into our flock. She's fattened up again, too. Now, several of our birds spend some time on the roof of the coop. It's kind of a pain, because they poop all over it, so I hose it off but it often looks dirty.

We started irrigating this year. When we water, snails come out! They slide all over our ag water pipes, and they climb all over our water access places. I pick them up by their shells and toss them to the chickens. What a treat! The girls love snails. They all cluster together and it's like watching a game of football--one bird will grab the snail, and start running, and everyone will follow, and try to get the snail. Awesome.

Yesterday morning when I went out to take care of the birds, I found that our white bird with more black was dead. I think she died of natural causes. She was one of the older ones, and it didn't look like anything interesting had happened.

We also recently picked up our final addition to our farm: a goat! She is a Nubian doeling. Nubians are the best milk goats, so J really wanted that kind. They are also the least pleasant, supposedly. Their bleat is kind of annoying. We named our girl "Feta" and she is about 4 months old, so we plan to start milking her probably next March.

She was very nervous about coming to our house, but she fits in very nicely. She feels like she is part of a herd with the calves. She just follows them around. Feta is very friendly! Especially for a Nubian. The family we bought her from had 4 young children, so the goat definitely got her share of love from them, and I think it made her a very patient goat. She lets people touch her and she is not aggressive at all**** (except with Chalcy! Poor Chalce!), so she's pretty nice.

It's very funny because the kids next door are SUPER interested in our animals. They love to come up along their side of the fence, and watch our calves. They like the goat even better, though. Yesterday I saw them outside bleating at her. It was the funniest thing! The calves are mostly quiet. (They only 'moooo' once in awhile, when they're really hungry and they think we've forgotten them.) The goat bleats fairly often, though. Not all day, or anything, but quite a bit, and a few times a day. So the boys 'bleh, bleh, bleh'-ed at her from the fence, and she would turn around and look at them, and sometimes 'bleh' back to them.

Well, Chalcy is crying because she is Not Allowed to play inside today (because of the work I'm doing), and she does not like to play outside Without Me. I think it's nap time, and time for me to get back to work. I do feel like I have so, so much to blog about, but this is a good start, eh?*****





* (Not for the weak of stomach:) For dehorning, we used a paste to burn the root of the horns. I think it hurt them a lot and they hated it. For castration, we used a band castrator, which is basically a contraption that stretches a really really tight rubber band, and then you stick the whole thing over their parts, and then let the handles close, and roll the rubber band off. I think this actually didn't hurt them much.
** A couple weeks ago, J moved the calves into the back pasture and forgot that he hadn't closed the fencing on the other side of the house. In the morning he was leaving for work and as he drove out of the driveway, he stopped and came running back towards me-- "Em! The calves are out! Come help me bring them back!" So I put Chalcy in her crate, and went to help him bring the calves back. He was trying to tug on the ropes around their necks, and they weren't too interested. They were hanging out in the middle of the road, in front of our house. (And I thought ducks in the road was funny...) So, not a good place for them. "C'mere! Chuck! Stew! C'mere boys!" I got them excited and started jogging in front of them, toward their other pasture. So they started trotting and followed me. Of course.
*** I remember at the Humane Society, when I adopted Paley they told me she was a really sweet kitten and she had gone around grooming all of the other kitties that were in the same cage as her. If cats lick each other, it means they're being sweet.
**** Except with Chalcy. Poor dog!
***** Happy Canada Day!

I am not a Professional Striper.

It's been another busy week for us.

(Every week is, though, so that's nothing new.)

Last Monday, I striped our parking lot. The lines were really faded, so it seemed like a good idea. The previous owner told us it was one of the best things he ever did, and he said you can call up a company and they'll come out and paint the stripes for like $100.

Here is a "before" picture:


But we only have 7 or 8 stripes, so I was like, "NO PROBLEM! I'll just do it!" Because I have experience with that sort of thing, anyway.*

So I found out that there was striping paint that you could just buy(!)** at Lowie's or HD, to do parking lots. Piece of cake! It's called "Striping Paint"*** because it's for making stripes. And it would seem like stripes would always be for parking lots, but it turns out there are SO MANY USES for striping paint.**** In fact, striping paint is such a big deal that there is a whole secret code for what colors you're supposed to use when you stripe things. [The legend (key?) is on boxes of things, in case you don't know it. One example is, you don't use red paint for painting parking lines.] They also make marking paint, which can be used for stripes. It's more popular for marking gas lines, or power lines, or trees to cut down, though.

So anyway, I really looked into it and I saw online that you can paint stripes with either a striping machine thing, or with a marking wand thing. The difference is, the striping machine (about $100) has four intense (all-terrain! (I think)) wheels, to keep things really straight, and the line you spray can vary in width. The marking wand (about $20) just has a little wheel to keep things as straight as you can draw them.

I decided that I was not a hard-core enough parking-striper to buy a special striping machine. The wand would work for me! So I went and bought my can of striping paint (to cover 250 ft! Wow!), and a wand. I bought some pink plastic DON'T GO HERE! tape, so that I could block off the parking lot and our tenants would remember NOT TO GO THERE.

On Friday I posted a sign on everyone's doors to say:
1. We're re-painting the parking lot stripes on Monday!
2. Please move your cars by 8:30 am and don't plan to park in the lot again until 7 pm! (Because I knew I would probably be there at 9:00 or so, and I wanted to give them a little extra time to be moved. Also, the paint said it would take 8 hours to dry, so I wanted to allow myself an hour or so, just in case it took me longer to paint than I thought it would, plus plenty of time for things to dry.)
3. If you don't move your car, I reserve the right to tow it, at your expense. (To emphasize that it was important, and just in case.) Buuut, please just plan to park somewhere else, pretty please.

It was a great sign! It even had a border and a giant can of paint in the lower corner, just like people would expect.

So on Monday morning, I gathered my striping paint, and my marking wand, and my pink tape, and some masking tape (just in case!) and I headed off to the property.

A car was still parked there, but two of the other tenants who were home had moved their cars to the street. (Good job, guys!) The car was parked on one end, so I decided I would just block it off, and then if I could, I would paint around it. And if not, then I would knock on doors and ask whoever it was to move it. Or maybe paint another day. Towing cars is pretty mean, I think.

So I put up my pink DON'T GO HERE tape, and I stretched it from the fence on one side, allllllll the way across the ends of the parking spaces, down to the mailboxes. I tightened it so that it would remain as taut as it could for being stretched so far with no support in the middle.

I started laying out masking tape, so that I would be able to see my lines really clearly. The existing lines were pretty worn out, so I just wanted to be sure that I did a good job, and kept the lines pretty straight.

I taped up one line and part of a second one, and then I ran out of masking tape.

Oh well! No big deal!

But the tape didn't stick too well (because it's an old parking lot, and the asphalt is gravel in a lot of places now). So I would use my hand to brush the little rocks away, and tape it down where it was coming up. I also brushed the rocks out of the parking line area, because OF COURSE if you paint lines on gravel it's going to look pretty bad pretty quickly.

I was ready to go!

I pulled the marking wand out, and I assembled it, by attaching the wheel. It popped right in! Good!

I read the instructions. Twice. And then I shook the can (vigorously!) for a full two minutes after I could hear the little metal ball inside. I took the cap off of the striping paint, and put the can in the wand, and I think I lined things up right, and I went over to my taped line, and I lined it up straight in the middle of the space to be painted. (You've got to be careful with lining things up when you're using a wand instead of a striping machine, but it's just a sacrifice you have to make.)

I pulled the trigger on the wand, and...


Nothing happened.

I rolled the wand back and forth, and click, click, clicked the trigger.

Nothing.

I picked it up, and looked at it, and I wondered if maybe I hadn't lined it up right. Maybe I had mixed up the thing something was supposed to be parallel with, and it wasn't working right. So I turned the can around, and put it down, and centered it...

And nothing happened when I tried to stripe that time either.

So I looked at how it was working. The little lever needed to hit the top of the paint can, and it seemed like it did, but it just wasn't working. I sprayed the striping paint, to be sure that it wasn't unusually difficult, or clogged, or something. It worked.

Hm.

I called Rust-Oleum to see if we could figure it out together, but they were currently experiencing a high call volume. So I stayed on the line, but I continued trying to get it to work.

After several minutes of it not working, and several minutes of Rust-Oleum queue music, I headed towards Lowe's. Obviously there was either something wrong with my striping paint, or with my wand. Maybe the wand thing that pokes the top of the can wasn't assembled facing the right direction.

Halfway to Lowe's, Rust-Oleum answered. I explained the problem, and explained that I was on my way to the store, to see what was wrong. The Rust-Oleum girl was like, "OH, well, I know exactly what your problem is." I told her, "Oh! Great! You do?"

Her: "Yes. You see, you're using the marking wand with striping paint. That's not gonna work. The tops are shaped differently. That's why it isn't working. That's not gonna work. With the marking wand you've got to use marking paint."

Me: "Ohhhhh, so if I want to use striping paint, I need to use the more expensive machine. See, I'm new to this. I've never done this before, and it's just for our little parking lot. So I just thought stripes were a kind of marking, so they seemed like the same thing to me. [Chuckle.]"

Her: "Yeahhh. ... No, you can use the marking paint, though, and that will work for you."

Me: "Even for parking lots? The lines won't be as good though, will they? I thought the marking paint was for like, marking gas lines and things. Can I still get crisp lines with the marking paint?"

Her (reassuringly): "Oh, yeah. The marking paint works for parking lots too. It won't last quite as long, and it won't be quite as crisp of lines as you would get if you were using striping, but..."

Me: "Right...that's understandable."

Her: "But. Yeah, you can still get that crisp line you're looking for."

Me: "Ohhh, okay. Well, I guess I'll do that, then. That should work. I'm still driving to the store, so I'll just plan to get that instead, and now I don't need to figure out what's wrong. [Chuckle.] Thanks."

Her: "Okay. And don't get mad at the people working at the hardware store for it, because that's what you bought.." [Or something like that.]

Me: [Confused.] "What? Oh. ... No. I'm not a mean customer like that. I'm just going to get the marking paint instead. ... All right. Thanks for your help. Have a good day."

Her: "You too. Goodbye."

I wasn't like, angry on the call, so I don't know why she told me to not get mad at the hardware store. But, whatever, it was nice to know what the problem was.

So I got to Lowe's and I went in, and I grabbed a can of (white) marking paint, and some masking tape (just in case), and I hustled back to the parking lot.

I could see that the top of the paint was totally different, just like she had mentioned. I shook that paint for a couple minutes, got it centered on my taped up line, and started spraying.

And it sprayed!

But...it made such a skinny (and semi-transparent!) line that I had to go back and forth, back and forth to get to the sides, and to make it opaque enough. I taped up the second line the rest of the way, and I started spraying that line. And then, I ran out of marking paint.

After 1 1/2 lines!

[Please note: most of the white in the picture is masking tape.]

Good grief.

So I could see that marking paint was not going to work for me. It didn't look very good. The lines were not crisp at all (except for what the masking tape did), and they weren't very solid, and I went through the stuff SO fast. It wasn't even all that windy! And I had brushed the gravel away!

I drove to Home Depot and got myself a paint-striper. I bought another can of striping paint, too, just in case.

And I drove back, shook the can (vigorously!) for two minutes, and put it in the machine. It worked! I ended up needing to brush away gravel on all of the stripes, and that was a pain, but our parking lot is re-striped!*****


So, I'm pretty happy with how that all went. Now that we own a marking wand and a striping machine, plus I used three cans of paint (1 marking, 2 striping), the job cost us about $150 plus 3 hours of time (instead of $100 and no time). So, it was not the most profitable decision, at least for the short-term. But now I know what's up--I know the difference between marking and striping. And if anyone wants me to paint parking lines for them, I have the tools!

(It kind of makes me want to set up a race. Because I could maybe find temporary marking paint, and then it would be just like what they use for 5Ks and stuff. Not sure what I would raise money for, if I had a race. But I should probably think about that, since, of course, the only thing people really need in order to have a race is a marking wand, right?)


SPOILER FOR MY NEXT POST:
When I finished at about noon, I hurried home to take Chalcy outside, and then I hurried over to J's parents' house, because J's dad had volunteered to fix sprinklers with me.



* One time, (in California) I was walking over to the grocery store from the little Italian restaurant where I worked, and there was a guy re-painting the STOP letters on the asphalt, in the parking lot. I'd never seen anyone do that before! So I stopped and asked him about it. He was using a (big!) stencil and some paint, and rolling it out. It was pretty simple, he said. He offered to let me do one of the letters, and I DID. I thought it was kind of cool. So, I have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, actually, you know?
** As long as you are 18 or older.
*** (which I always confuse with "Stripping Paint" so it looks more risque than it actually is, but what would "stripping paint" even be used for anyway? Usually stripping is removing, not adding, so like, for removing paint from walls, I think you use a stripping solvent or something. I don't know.)
**** Like painting aisles. Or basketball courts. Etc.
***** Except for the one paint line by the car, because I ran out of paint right then anyway. (And the store was all out. And I was tired of doing that project, because I thought it would take like an hour, and it was already almost noon.)

Bringing Chalcy Home!

Now, here is a short post with some pictures from when we brought Chalcy home.

We met up at Chalcy's dad's house, so I wouldn't have to drive all the way up to Smithfield again (2 hours each way!). His name is Axel and he is 36" tall (at his shoulders?), which is very tall, even for a Great Dane. The lady who owns him said she hasn't weighed him in a while, but the last time she did, he weighed 150lbs. He is massive! But he is just the friendliest guy.



Me with Chalcy, right after the lady (not the one in the picture above; the one who owns the mom) gave Chalcy to me, for us to keep.


Holding Chalcy for the ride home! I put a towel on my lap after the picture. She licked and licked and licked me! And then she was a little nervous for the first half of the ride. She slept in my lap for the second half of the ride.


After we got home, we took her out to the backyard to do her business, and to romp around a little bit. Mostly, she just wanted to sleep in my lap for awhile. This is the first non-blurry, awake picture of Chalcy, at home.

J playing with Chalcy. He plays nicely with her. She thinks he is a lot of fun. (He is.)


And then this last picture is of Chalcy, the morning after we brought her home, playing with her KONG for the first time. She figured out how to get the treats out, and I think she could smell the treat inside the toy, but when the treats would fall out, she didn't realize treats had come out, so she would just leave them around on the floor. (Which kind of defeats the purpose of the toy, because the dog is supposed to feel rewarded for figuring out how to get the treat out. But, whatever, she'll get it sooner or later.)


That's all for now! I'll have to post more later about lots of fun things, like 'Meeting Paley!', and 'Deep Cleaning My Entire Carpet, 6" at a Time!'.

Naming Puppy, or "Rules for Naming Dogs"

It is so difficult to name pets, I think.

The thing is, it's awkward when you give a pet a person-name. Jess and I had our cat Abby, and it seemed to just be kind of awkward because sometimes there are little girls named Abby, and I just think "Hey, I had a terrible cat named Abby!"

I would have liked to call our puppy "Gracie" because I think that's a cute name for a dog, but one of the girls in J and I's primary class is named Grace. How weird would that be to name our dog Gracie and then tell our primary kids about it.
Me: "Brother K and I got a puppy!"
J: "We did!"
Kids: "Oh!" "What did you name it?"
Me: ... "Gracie!"
Kids: "Like Grace in our class?"
Grace: "That's my name!"
Us: .... [?]

It's a little different if you're copying a person name for a person, because then it's just like you liked the name. Dogs are not people, though. Like, how would everyone I know feel if I named my chickens after them? Somehow it makes a weird association that doesn't belong. Like, if your name is Sam and I named a chicken after you, and I pretend it's actually named SAMantha, but I always call her Sam. Then I talk about Sam laying eggs, and maybe I share Sam's eggs with Sam, and eventually I have to eat Sam because she doesn't lay enough and it's time to have some fresh chicken. Like, do I invite my friend Sam to come eat dinner that day? (Because it was the bird named after him, so he should get to enjoy some?) Or do I especially, certainly, most definitely not invite him for dinner that day? (Because we're eating his namesake?) The whole thing is just a little weird. Dogs are different, because we're not eating our puppy, but still.*

Anyway.

So, people names that are uncommon are okay, because people name kids weird things anyway. You could name your dog "Comeheregirl!" and some lady in downtown New York could name her daughter "Comeheregirl!" too, anyway.

Tracy and Freddy named their dog Riley, and that seemed like an okay dog name. Dog names that are people names but also common dog names are okay, because if you're a lady who names your kid Riley, you've just got to know that your precious baby is going to share the name with slobbery dogs. Jake? Same thing. But you name your kid Jacob, usually, not Jake, and everyone calls him Jake, but nicknames are fair game for dogs, so your kid can still be dignified.

I kind of like old names for pets. It makes them charming, I think. I wanted to name our dog Betsy. J thought it sounded like a name for a cow. I said no, that's Bessy, not Betsy, but he still didn't like it. I also liked Dolley, because she's going to be a big dog that just kind of flops on the couch, like a doll. J said no, that's a sheep name. I guess it sometimes is.

For a few minutes J and I both liked 'Sadie.' But it turns out Jess likes that name for a kid, and it's not nice to use the name your sister actually really likes and specifically mentions when you're naming your dog.**

I also really like giving pets names that are somehow meaningful. Paley is named after something on purpose. When you're naming things, it does not matter what the actual definition of the word is.*** What I mean is, if the definition of the name 'Susan' is believed to come from Susanna which is believed to come from 'shoshan' in Hebrew, comes from the Egyptian word which means "lotus flower," who cares? Because your daughter Susan is not going to become a flower, and nobody else will know (or care) what the name meant**** hundreds of years ago.

What I mean is, I think the best names for dogs are ones that mean something to me. What I really wanted for Puppy was a name like 'Dewalt[e]' or 'Makita' ('Kita' for short?) since I like tools and want to be BUILDING THINGS. (Or 'Easa' for like Easement since that's a real estate word and I'm doing property management these days. Or 'Cara' to be short for Carolyn, who was our excellent real estate agent, and after Cara my stylist*****. Or 'Beck[a]' because I like Glen Beck. Eh. But people would think it was Becca, and that's too close to a people name, since there are SO many 'Becky's.)

None of those were quite right, though. So instead, we decided to go with a name that was inspired by this book:

We are calling our puppy Chalcy, after one of Kyra Sundance's dogs that co-author. The actual Chalcy even has an author page on Amazon.com.

When I was buying puppy stuff, I saw this book and another book by Kyra Sundance, 51 Puppy Tricks. I bought the puppy one because it seemed more geared towards people with puppies. One of the reviews on Amazon says not to buy the puppy one because the dog one includes all of the puppy ones too, so I felt bad for a few minutes for buying the puppy one instead of the dog one. But actually, the puppy one uses a lot of clicker training, which I knew we wanted to do, and it has instructions and advice specific to puppies, which makes me feel more confident about doing this whole process.

So anyway, J and I both liked the way 'Chalcy' sounds and it is:
a) not a people name;
b) not too many syllables;
c) doesn't sound too much like 'Paley';
d) doesn't sound too much like "sit" or "stay" or "down" or other things we want her to know later; and
e) a good daily reminder for J and I of what we want our puppy to be like (and what she will be like, sort of, if we are Diligent Dog Owners and do what we need to to be Responsible and train her like Good Dog Owners do).

So far, the only problem with the name is that it sounds similar to 'Chelsea' so when people ask what her name is and I say 'Chalcy' they say "Oh, Chelsea? How nice!" But her name is Not Chelsea. But it really doesn't matter too much, because random friendly shoppers at PetSmart don't actually care what her name is and they are not going to see her again anyway. So it usually isn't worth correcting, and once she has her tag, people will read it and understand anyway.


* It almost seems a little bit to me like those dolls that people put pins in to cast spells or something. Like, you're here against your will, or something.
** When you're naming children, if you're pregnant first, you can use whatever name you want, even if your sister likes the name. But when you're naming dogs, that's not nice, and you're not supposed to, even if the person who likes the name is not expecting.
*** Unless unknown definitions mean something special to you.
**** (Supposedly, probably, people think)
***** Who also had (and loved!) a Dane when she was younger. We talked all about it when I had my hair done last week. She's fantastic.