New Babies

Our momma turkey has been sitting hidden beside our garage since April 1st.  Today, out of 11 eggs, 5 hatched.   Three pipped but didn't make it out of the shell, one died after hatching and 2 eggs were clear.  We've been in a rush today to get the pen ready for her.  I know, we've known for 28 days that we were going to have babies, but I always say we do our best work when we are rushed for time!  We ended up putting metal around the bottom where the goats had destroyed the wire and repairing some other places with netting and zip ties.  Well after dark, we located the momma and her babies in the field behind the house and moved them to the pen.  At least for tonight, they will be safe from whatever lurks in the fields.

My Boys

Happy Birthday Caitlyn!

Wow, our 2nd baby turns 16 today!  It just doesn't seem possible.  She's become such a beautiful young lady.  It's been quite a different experience with her turning 16 than when Zack did a year ago.  She has no car, no interest in getting her license...and no interest in doing her 40 hour driving on her permit.  She's perfectly content just staying how she is.  I'm wondering how this all will work out in the future.  We went to Casa Montez for her birthday dinner yesterday and then made a trip to the mall for her to spend some of her birthday gift money.  It's always been bad with her birthday being so close to Christmas, but taking her to the mall 2 weeks before was just crazy!

New found interests...

My husband has always had an interest in drawing or painting and has, over the years, created a few beautiful sketches and doodles that manage to get crumpled up and tossed away.  It seems that my vision of what is good and his vision are somewhat different.  Over the past few weeks, he has dabbled in acrylic painting. I think it's a new found therapy for him if he were able to believe in himself.  Using my photography as inspiration, he has put together some beautiful translations on canvas.  I've watched him work and concentrate only to glance again too see him paint over his progress.  I wish he felt the urge to pick up the brushes more often.  After his first finished painting, he seemed to have a block and no matter how many times he tried, he just kept saying he didn't know why he could do it then and not during the multiple times following. 

Finally, during my ranting about my photography, he said I had gotten him wanting to paint again.  I handed him a package of ACEO acrylic cards that I had bought several weeks ago and told him he ought to try a painting on one.  My thoughts at the time I purchased them were that maybe if he didn't feel pressure to fill a large canvas in a short time that maybe he would try more often.  Surely completing a trading card would be a quicker sense of accomplishment.  Unfortunately I have found all of us lose interest if our goals take too long to achieve.  Something I'm not sure how to change.  The world seems to move at a much faster pace than our minds really want to go and we find ourselves concluding that we just weren't good enough...fast enough.  We look for approval from every outside source and look over the reality that the only true approval we need is within ourselves. We have to quit searching for our own perfection by comparing ourselves to everyone else and trust our own instincts. We have to learn to follow what is naturally in our own heart.  Then, and only then can we create things like this…an October sunset out our own backdoor.  Well, technically, God created the sunset…I captured it on “film,” and Troy translated it in paint…what a wonderful way to remember a split second in life that otherwise would have been forgotten…

 
Not only did he finish this painting, he also sparked an interest in our 10 year-old to grab some brushes and pour himself into his own creativity.  What a sight to see...a young mind...inspired by his Dad. 

Sleepless Nights...ARG!

Last night I spent several hours cooking apple crisp, peach cobbler, 2 cheesecakes and summer sausage for Thanksgiving dinner at my parents' house this after noon.  I was tired, but found it difficult to fall asleep.  After only 2 hours of sleep, here I am wide awake at 2:44am.  It's at these times that my OCD tends to take over.  I woke up having a difficult time taking a deep breath and in my panic, I ran through my usual list of reasons only to come to the conclusion that I may be dying.  Yep, dying...one of my many obsessions.  As I sit here, I'm torn between taking a Ambien to help me sleep and just staying up.  I have a fear of not waking up and leaving my family in the night.  Some nights, I will mentally try and figure out what areas of my life need to be fixed, rearranged, changed or finished to make my passing easier for my kids and husband.  I don't have a reason to obsess over dying...other than being overweight, I'm perfectly healthy with no ailments that are detrimental to my life. So, why do I do it? I wish I knew.  I took medications for a while to help me get things under control, to help with the obsessions and compulsions and the anxiety that usually follows.  While most of the symptoms eased while taking the meds, I wasn't "me" anymore.  Everything was dulled.  I had no interests, no emotions and no feelings.  Should I have kept taking them?  Maybe.  I'm sure that if one of the side effects would have been weight loss, I would have been more able to deal with the "dullness" of me...but I gained weight...only making things worse.  So, here I am, trying to reason with myself.  Trying to make myself believe that I won't die if I go back to bed and wondering if all this is bad enough for me to go back on medications.  Am I truly seeing things the way they really are or is all this just some made up "reality?"  I wish I knew.

Tree Decorating

This morning, I picked up my newest Woman's Day magazine only to find that the first article I read was about the memories one lady family had in the ornaments they hung on their tree.  I was reduced to tears.  Our home was hit by a tornado in 2003.  While we were able to salvage a lot, our storage shed and its contents were scattered as far as we could see.  We lost all of the ornaments from our kids, my childhood and my husbands childhood.  Over 6 years has past and we still have metal in and around the trees along the tornado path.  I often wonder if any of our ornaments are still scattered across the fields and woods.  I say that the memories are all gone, but my husband assures me that that the memories are still with us. I guess he's right, but holding those ornaments floods my mind with times that are long gone.  The are tied to smells and sounds and and a time when the kids were little.  Of course, we've made new memories and will continue to make more...we have lots of years ahead of us. 

Lost Hen...Found!

Our poultry situation has been very frustrating for the past year.  We have lost nearly all our chickens and 15 turkey poults.  Up until last night, we were down to only 1 cochin hen, 4 cochin roosters, 3 silkie hens and 4 chicks that hatched over the summer.  Our barred rock hen mysteriously disappeared several days ago and I have nearly drove myself crazy trying to find signs of what happened to her.  After the massive wild animal feedings over the past months, there has always been a trail to follow that sadly ended in a pile of feathers.  This time...no signs.  My oldest had tried to convince me that she hides in the yard, but I would have thought that over several days that I would have noticed her coming out to get feed and water...and I hadn't.

Our small barn is divided into 2 sides and was originally built for our silkies and bantams to keep them from being taken advantage of by the big roosters.  I'm assuming we have some very intelligent predators out here, since, despite having the doors closed, latched and locked we still lost chickens.  The interior of the barn is divided with netting and the chickens divided themselves into the two sides when roosting.  I think the last invasion was traumatic enough that the next night, all the chickens refused to go in that side.  I closed it off and blocked it more permanently until we attempted more chickens.   That was a few months back.  For some reason, last night, I opened the nest box lid and was surprised to see the missing barred rock hen!  I have no idea how she got in there and have no idea how she has survived for as many days as she has been gone with no food or water.  I felt much better until I realized that the chick that our 3 silkie hens had hatched was gone.  

Our family could easily go through a dozen eggs a day, so I'm trying to decide about hatching some now for next spring layers.  I just am not too fond of feeding the area's predators this winter, or any winter for that matter.  So, my brain is flooded with more secure housing ideas.  Decisions...decisions....