pinned down

Suburb:  a place that isn't city, 

isn't country, and isn't tolerable.  

~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

George Carlin

Some of his famous oh-so-funny quotes - if you're sensitive to foul language you might want to skip this blog post. RIP, Conductor.

[about businessmen] They don't even trust each other. They don't trust one another. When a businessman sits down to "negotiate a deal", the first he does is to automatically assume that the other guy is a complete, lying prick who's trying to fuck him out of his money. So he's got to do everything he can to fuck the other guy a little bit faster and a little bit harder.

Whoever coined the phrase "let the buyer beware" was probably bleeding from the asshole.

Angels, shit. What about goblins? Doesn't anybody believe in goblins? We never hear from them, except on halloween, and it's always negative shit too, you know. And zombies! Where the fuck are all the zombies? That's the trouble with zombies, they're unreliable. I think if you're going to buy the angels shit, you might go for the zombie package as well.

I'm thinking of opening up a motel and calling it "The Sleep and Fuck". Wouldn't that be a good, honest name for a motel, who needs this "Shady Pines"-bull shit? "The Sleep and Fuck"-motel. Get me one of them big neon signs: "Sleep", "Fuck", "Sleep", "Fuck".

White people have no business playing the blues ever, at all, under any circumstances. Ever, ever, ever. What the fuck to white people have to be blue about?
"Banana Republic ran out of khakis"?
"The espresso machine is jammed"?
"Hootie and the Blowfish are breaking up?"
White people ought to understand it's their job to *give* people the blues, not to get them. And certainly not to sing or play them. I'll give you a little tip about the blues, folks: it's not enough to know which notes to play. You need to know why they need to be played.

This is my idea for one of those big, outdoor summer festivals. This is called Slug Fest. This is for men only. Here's what you do. You get about a hundred thousand of these fucking men. You know the ones I mean. These macho motherfuckers. These strutting, preening, posturing, hairy, sweaty, alpha male jackoffs. The muscle assholes. You take about a hundred thousand of these disgusting pricks, and you throw them in a big dirt arena, big twenty-five acre dirt arena. And you just let them beat the shit out of each other for twenty-four hours non-stop. No food, no water, just whiskey and PCP. And you just let them punch and pound and kick the shit out of each other until only one guy is left standing, then you take that guy and you put him on a pedestal and you shoot him in the fucking head.

Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man, living in the sky who watches everything you do every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of 10 things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these 10 things, he has a special place full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever till the end of time... But he *loves you*.

ok maybe not regularly, but... :-)

comforts

A day of comforts...

The heat wave is over, at least for now.

The storms are over, at least for now.

It's a perfect semi-overcast day, not too warm and not too cool.

Sweet breeze to tickle the senses.

The dogs are catching up on sleep,

wish us humans had the good sense to do the same!

Comfort food for lunch:

thick-sliced fried zucchinis, served with fat-free sour cream:

And a cold glass of home-brewed lemon iced tea:

Tending to my "herb garden",

a lovely potted gem given to me by a very sweet friend:

Hand-mowing bits and pieces of the property

such as the dog run next to the house

and the chicken coop runs:

Watching the horses graze in the field 

after yesterday's lovely ride in the woods - 

Old Man Jack and I had some awesome galloping time 

through freshly-harvested fields on the mountain,

it was bliss!

Cleaning and packing up some eggs for this week's delivery,

the girls have been too hot and too stressed to lay much

so it'll be what it'll be:

What's summer without beautiful sunsets? :-)

What are you comforts for today?

oh dear lord

Watch out what you wish for, eh?

My last post wished for rain-

and oh boy did we ever get hammered last night :-o

Got a minute of it on camera,

it lasted a good four hours in total.

You can see the force of the lightening in the middle

of the video and towards the end - yikes!

I'd never seen such a fierce tropical storm in my life -

something's terribly wrong with our weather patterns lately...

*scary*

One of our evergreens lost a limb

and smashed part of a chicken coop run,

so we had to fix that this morning.

The barn flooded and is a swamp this morning.

Our house flooded a few times last night too,

since the storm hit so hard and so fast

we didn't have time to close all the windows in time.

We played this game for 4 hours...

Open windows to try and cool the super-hot house down,

then rains would come smashing down

and we'd run around closing windows again

and suffocating.

What a summer!

if i had one wish right now!

Rain.

Blessed, cooling, refreshing rain.

Pretty please?

It ain't pretty...

I'm not ignoring you dear blogger friends, 

I've just been battling some pretty horrific chicken coop problems since the weekend - 

putting in 8 hour days is beyond draining, 

I've not once spare ounce of energy left for anything but sleeping.

Bug warfare, it's not really chic:

Notice the long-sleeved turtle neck top to match the head gear. 

There are also long pants, big rubber boots and rubber gloves.

Chemicals suck but bugs suck even more.

Fucking vampiristic predators.

To give you a clue of the misery,

the below sign says it all:

Hottest and most miserable week of the summer so far,

and it's only getting worse.

46C with humidex tomorrow, 

that's 115F for you non-metric peeps.

I have to keep my flocks alive somehow,

this is beyond ludicrous.

If I wanted this kind of shitty weather 

I'd move to India or to some tropical forest hell place.

Anyways.

Drained.

words for thought

One need not be a chamber to be haunted;
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.
~Emily Dickinson, "Time and Eternity"

well...

I'm bored with blogging these days, can you tell?

Introspections remain in my head, private life stays at home and all the traveling I'm not doing shows up here (sarcasm), it's too hot to cook or talk about food, I don't garden and there's nowhere to bring the dogs swimming so no pics of growing veggies or wet pooches.

Thank goodness I have a chicken blog or I'd be invisible!

Vegas is in town on business until tomorrow so I may take the dogs out for a walk tonight after sundown, which we never do. Adventure in the hood!

Tomorrow night I'm picking up three new white cochin chicks, it's a bit of a drive but it'll be fun to visit some new friends and see their coop setup. Saturday I have a photo shoot the next town over, looking forward to that too :-)

Hopefully horseback riding on Sunday - we'll see, since the temps have been above average lately and aren't going down anytime soon.

Next summer I'm lobbying for a pool in our back yard!

So there you have it, the calm before the storm - I have a feeling life's about to rock n'roll pretty soon (in a good way), so no complaints. I'm just not used to having the luxury of enjoying a summer from beginning to end, you know?

Happy :-)

/end of SPF 60 post/

love, pure form

Animals are such agreeable friends - 

they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.  

~George Eliot

seven nights of noise

Every July our town hosts a music festival - annoying in itself because the bands are crappy and we're close enough that the racket carries loud and clear, but this year they started early: tonight.

And the Grande Finale is... Sunday.

Seven freaking nights of trashy noise blown into our house until midnight.

GAH!

Vegas said that this year we'll walk up there with the doggies one evening and hopefully they'll pee on a a piece of equipment or something.

*snicker*

Summer is kicking our asses this year, too. I kind of love it despite the 24/7 sticky sweat, the sleepless nights, heatstroke, the bugs and the fields-gone-crazy-with-eight-feet-tall-weeds. Because this year, I'll have had my fill of the heat and winter won't feel like such a nightmare.

You know?

OK maybe you don't, but try to imagine ;-)

Did you know that cooking your pancakes in vegetable oil instead of butter makes them crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside? Yes yes, it's awesome! Then you add a pat of butter on your stack and drench with real maple syrup and - oh god. Have a mega craving now. Dammit!

Don't watch The Food Network, it's evil.

Speaking of evil, there's a leftover home-made ice cream sandwich in the freezer.

It's totally mine.

Good night!

and fashionably so

Fashion can be bought.  

Style one must possess.  

~Edna Woolman Chase

A Male Fairytale

(I got this in my email this morning, had to share the giggle!)

Once upon a time, a Prince asked a beautiful Princess, Will you marry me?

The Princess said, No!!!

And the Prince lived happily ever after and rode motorcycles and banged skinny long-legged big-titted broads and hunted and fished and raced cars and went to naked bars and dated women half his age and drank whiskey, beer and Captain Morgan and never heard bitching and never paid child support or alimony and banged cheerleaders and kept his house and guns and ate spam and potato chips and beans and blew enormous farts and never got cheated on while he was at work and all his friends and family thought he was frikin cool as hell and he had tons of money in the bank and left the toilet seat up.

The end.

snapshots of life

When you can't sleep, get up and take pics!

5am misty sunrise from a couple mornings ago...

It was beautiful :-)

Another foggy morning - 

fascinating, eerie, ghostly:

It *does* get thick as pea soup sometimes!

We have a pair of these gorgeous birds that hang out

in our back yard - are they doves?

Snack time, yummy snack time!

(random, unstaged pic - yep, we live the high life)

More of our back yard - 

I'm a big fan of the clouds, can you tell?

Sleepy fathead aka greyface aka Dakotah-bean...

Already going on 8 years old.

Where did the years fly to, old boy?

Good night :-)

smoking is so passé

Thank you for Not Smoking. 

Cigarette smoke is the residue of your pleasure. 

It contaminates the air, pollutes my hair and clothes, 

not to mention my lungs. 

This takes place without my consent. 

I have a pleasure, also. 

I like a beer now and then. 

The residue of my pleasure is urine. 

Would you be annoyed if I stood on a chair 

and pissed on your head and your clothes without your consent? 

~Sign from Ken's Magic Shop

(s)well!

The good thing about hot summer months is that you drink loads more.

Which, in my case, leads to alot of bloating - yeah, neither comfortable nor pretty.

But!

It makes my boobs a bit bigger, so that's nice :-D

Same old at the technofarm: battling the heat, trying to keep the critters as comfortable as possible, selling eggs to happy friends, reading on the shaded back deck with a cold drink in hand, enjoying this beautiful summer enough to make up for all the ones I where I was locked up in an office - ah! How lucky can a girl be? :-)

As you can see, blogging took a kick in the pants but I'm still posting polls (go votesies!), I'm all over facebook and, well, life is good.

Going on vacation by the "sea" in less than 7 week, OMGOSH!

You guys going anywhere this summer?

/end of Little Bits post/

counting sheeeeep

If you can't sleep, then get up and do something 

instead of lying there worrying.  

It's the worry that gets you, 

not the lack of sleep.  

~Dale Carnegie

sleep: 0

Ah, yet again another night of getting up to pee 8 times and thus getting no sleep. That'll teach me not to make salty rice and bean soup for dinner!

So. Bleddy. Tired.

And yes, that was with a dose of melatonin, too.

I'll just plow through this day as best I can, got plenty of chores to keep me busy - after all, it's Canada Day which means everyone's on vacation and everything's closed, not much else to do.

I like my farm chores :-)

Vegas gets to do his man things, like reading:

Cozy home, comfy weather - it's all good :)

I don't know where time is disappearing to, days melt into weeks that vanish into months - but I can truly say that I'm enjoying every moment and take nothing for granted.  Every year brings new challenges and awesome opportunities, I've no idea what's in store for us down the road but part of the anticipation lies in the not knowing: all these possibilities!

So tell me, what's your joy these days?

/end of Sharing The Mojo post/