Meow Kitty

This is Meow Kitty, the one on the right….Meow entered our lives in May last year when we discovered that we had a little mouse problem in our garage where all of my husbands man-toys are housed. Fearing those little critters would chew wires, we determined we needed outdoor cats. Having grown up on a farm, we had barn cats all throughout my childhood that never spent time indoors, unless I sneaked them in, along with their fleas, and my parents would have to flea bomb our house and were very very angry with me about it. But that’s another story for the Funny Farm file.

 

Anyhow, back to Meow Kitty. I looked at online ads for free kittens, at which time there were very few. I looked for road signs for free kittens. There weren’t any in our area. And then one day I saw an ad posted for “8 week old” kittens and I called. We wanted 2 females so they could be buddies and keep each other company outside. We have quite a few out buildings on our property so we didn’t have any concerns about shelter in cold weather. And the ad said they were litter trained so we set up their little kitty camp in the shed attached to the garage and put a kennel in there and a litter box. Then Ava and Jim went to collect the kittens from the woman who wanted to give them away.

 

The kittens were NOT 8 weeks old. In fact, it would be safe to assume they were only 5 weeks old. They were left on her porch by an anonymous person because this woman was known as the Cat Lady in her neck of the woods. Their eyes were gunky, their bottoms poopy, and they resembled these little black puffballs except their paws were white. The only way that we could tell them apart was one had white on both cheeks of its face and the other had just one white cheek. Hence, my husband surnamed them Thing 1 and Thing 2 after the wild-looking Seuss creatures. Because our children were having some trouble sticking to one name for each kitten, (they named one Cupcake, then it changed to Sweetie Pie, then Shitty Kitty, oh that was Jim’s name for the one, sorry), I took the liberty of using my creativity and named one Meow and the other Kitty. Then when I called for them I could say, “Oh, Meow! Hey Kitty, Kitty, Meow!” Brilliant, I thought….

 

When we got them home, Jim feared they would become bait instead of fierce mousers, so he decided to put the kittens and their kennel and their litter box in the place that made the most sense. The chicken coop. The chickens were like teenager chicks at that time, still in their cozy stinky box with a heat lamp in the garage, and weren’t ready for the great outdoors yet, but the coop had windows and doors and linoleum and so Jim thought it would make a perfect little house for the kittens until they were big enough to explore their surroundings and come back in one piece. Those little guys loved their kitty coop. They played on the chicken run and hid in the grass under the coop. They stayed close to it and always let us put them in it when it got dark.

 

The sister kitties were very different. Meow was cautious and laid back. She hid from us a lot. She didn’t want to be the center of attention. She minded her business but was very docile and cuddly. Kitty was the alpha female. She hunted early in her little life. She ran to the door every time it opened. She followed my husband through the yard like a dog. She meowed at the door when she wanted in, meowed in the window when she wanted attention, and she ran right to us when we were outside. Both kitties took great care of each other, but Kitty was more of a mother to Meow. She bathed her, pounced on her, put her in a kitty headlock and played with her. They kept each other warm at night and rarely did you see one without the other. We were so glad we got 2 kitties and didn’t separate them when they were small.

 

By the end of summer the kittens had grown to young women kitties. They were long and sleek. And they had rid our garage of the mouse problem. Kitty would proudly kill a mouse and lay it by the door of the garage to show my husband in the morning before he left for work. They also were agile enough to get a few birds and bury them under our porch, which didn’t smell good on 80 degree days . We then decided we were going to bring the kitties in the house when the weather started to get colder because they were still litter trained and because they were Ava’s special little buddies. She fed them and played with them and took good care of them, so we thought we would wait until October and have them flea dipped at the pet wash and then we would bring them indoors.

 

Then one Saturday in September Jim had left for town. He had pulled out of the driveway and started down the road when I noticed him ripping back up the driveway and running to our backdoor. He was pounding on the door as if he had just seen a ghost, and he was welled up with tears, which is not something that my barbaric tough guy husband does very often. As it turned out, when he was driving down the road he saw something black and white and lifeless laying on the road just passed our house. He thought, please let that be a skunk. But it wasn’t. It was Kitty. She had gotten hit by a car during the night.

 

Our hearts broke for our little kitty and for our little girl who would be so devastated at the loss of her friend and for Meow, who has only known her life with her beloved sister kitty. We both cried off and on all day at her loss. Ava was at her dad’s house for the weekend, and I lamented on how to tell her what had happened. Jim recovered Kitty’s remains and buried her in the woods below our house. And he shared that when he got into his truck that morning before he went to town, there at the garage door Kitty laid a mouse out for him proudly as if to say, “Here, Dad.” He saw Meow sleeping in the stroller in the other part of the garage and figured Kitty was out hunting. When he saw her lifeless little body he was heartbroken. I couldn’t bring myself to help him lay her to rest. He brought Meow in the house from the garage with the intent to not let her out of our sights again for fear she would have the same fate as her sister. Then he went to town and bought the things we needed to make her an indoor kitty.

 

The next day when Ava got home, Jim and I sat the children down and told them the news of Kitty’s death. We all cried, even Jakey knew something was wrong. And Ava held Meow in her arms all day and talked to her about how special her sister was. Meow knew she was gone, too. She wouldn’t eat for days. She laid around in a sad state. I was worried about her. I am not a pet person, and this was our first experience with indoor cats, but I was amazed at how human they were. Meow started to come out of her sadness around day 3 and then she took it upon herself to put my little girl to bed every night. When I get Ava settled into her bed, Meow climbs up beside her, gives her kisses and nuzzles in right next to her. There she keeps vigil til she knows Ava is asleep and then Meow comes to find me and say goodnight.

 

She still misses the company of her sister kitty, especially at 5:00 in the morning. They must have had a kitty party at that time every day because she is looking for someone to cuddle with and wrestle with and runs around this house like a nut. It is hard not to think of Kitty when we look at Meow, because they were so similar in their appearance. And since she has gotten settled in our house, we have realized she carries the spirit of her sister kitty because she has opened up in ways she never had when her sister was alive. We are enjoying our feline friend. She is a nice addition to our home. And we miss Kitty very much.

In Loving Memory of Kitty



Ava's Eggs

This is my daughter, Ava, washing and drying her chicken eggs that she collects every day. It's like having an Easter Egg hunt in the coop on a daily basis. She looks forward to collecting, counting, washing, drying and packing the eggs in cartons, all by her little self. My husband built her a deluxe chicken coop and fenced the chickens in a 20'x20' area so they could have some room to roam. We ordered 15 chicks through the mail and one day in April we became the proud owners of 33 chicks. That's right, folks. There was a mix up in the chicken department at the farm that day and they sent us not one shipment, but two. We ordered a straight run of female Red Sex Link chickens. That's farmer talk for we ordered all females so we wouldn't have a rooster issue and Red Sex Links are the type of birds that we purchased. These chickens grow to a nice size and are good eatin' chickens when they have finished their egg laying duties, roughly a year or so after they start laying eggs. Their eggs are also brown eggs and are large to extra large in size, often producing double yokers (for you superstitous folks it looks like for my next pregnancy I will be carrying octuplettes).

I called the company and they were very apologetic however, they don't accept refunds in terms of chicks, so we had twice the amount that we really needed. This presented a problem when the box that we kept them in until they were big enough for the coop could only accomodate the number we ordered, not the number we received. Also, the company could not gurantee that the second batch of chicks that were sent were a straight run of females. So we ordered Raising Chickens for Dummies, this is a true statement, and began to look for signs of roosters in our brood.

Jim and the kids faithfully fed and watered the cute little buggers and wiped their little bums religiously so they didn't get backed up and sick until there was hardly any room in the box for them all. We then gave them away to a couple of nearby thankful farmers who put the chickens to good use on their own farms. Raising chickens has became quite a nice hobby for our family. And it's amazing how thankful you can be for something as simple as an egg. When we go out to the coop and lift the lid of the nesting boxes and see all of those eggs waiting for us, we turn and say, "Thanks girls!" before they start pecking at our toes.

One Time Diamonds

I am not an accessorized kind-of girl. For those of you who know me and see me on a regular basis, I am just thankful that I remembered to put on my bra and deodorant, and that my shoes match when I leave my house for work every day. I work with several women who are very accessorized and I admire their beauty and attention to detail and the care that they put into each day to make themselves look and feel better. But because I function in survival mode at work and at home, accessories, while I own them, are not part of my repertoire.

However, here's a vain little secret that I have....   I LOVE DIAMONDS!

And apparently, I am one of those One Time Diamond kind of girls. I may only ever receive diamonds for that one special momentous occasion. Upon the anticipation of being proposed to, there is an expected diamond figured into the equation. And then apparently that's all you get, cuz I have seen neither hide nor hair of one since and I don't get the feeling there are any pending in the future. I am chuckling while I say this because I know I am being completely selfish in wanting more diamonds in my future. However, they are a girl's best friend, aren't they? 

I stare at my beautiful sparkly engagement ring and diamond studded wedding band wherever I go. Some lights really capture all of the glittery diamonds and it reminds me how much I love my rings. My husband really outdid himself when he picked out my set, and I never cease to tell him how beautiful my rings are and add a little hint hint hint that maybe I need earrings too! :)

Do you have any quirky little things that you love selfishly and wish you had tons more of? If so, please share them with me in the comments section. :)

I, I, I was abstinent….

As a Kindergarten teacher, I have accumulated so many funny stories from the little people that I have taught over the years that I could probably write a book. But because I have the attention span of an ADHD Kindergartener, I am only going to share one of those stories right now (instead of starting that book) as a tribute to one of my former students (let's call him Chuck) who is moving out of my school and who I will miss seeing every day. :(

Chuck was what we call a "repeat offender." That's redneck for someone who has repeated a grade more than one time. I happen to be a repeat offender, myself. I went to Kindergarten twice, and now I teach it! I entered school the first time at the ripe ole age of 4 because I was turning 5 within a few months of starting school. My mom thought I was ready, until I clung to her leg every morning and screamed and cried and had to be picked up from school repeatedly because I was such an emotional basket case. I had never attended preschool and my mom was a stay-at-home mom, so I had never been away from home. And when she put me on the bus that first time I thought she was sending me to an orphanage never to return home again. It had finally gotten so bad that my teacher, who was extremely pregnant at the time, told my mom very clearly one day, "Keep her home for the rest of the year, and let's try this again next year."

Anyhow, back to Chuck. Chuck had a tendency to miss a lot of school for random reasons that didn't always pertain to sickness. Chuck also had a severe speech impediment and he stuttered, so at times I felt like I needed an interpreter to tell me what he said. One week he had missed school on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and finally on Thursday he came skipping in to class at arrival and I said, "Chuck! You're here! Where have you been all my life?!"

Chuck looked at me and stuttered out, "I, I, I was abstinent." (That's Kindergarten speak for absent apparently). Another teacher was walking passed us at that exact moment and I thought he was going to wet himself laughing so hard. :)

The Garden is Life

My husband has a need to plow and toil and plant and pull weeds :) … I love to watch it grow and harvest. Our daughter Ava loves to plant and pick. She is a pea-eater :). Jim and Ava plant rows and rows of peas and Ava picks them one at a time, putting them in her little sand buckets and gives them to her neighbors Pat and Sue and PaPa.

Last year we had the usual vegetables that grow well in our climate here in western PA: green peppers, Hungarian wax banana peppers, jalepenos, peas, zucchini, acorn squash, basil, watermelons, cantelopes, and of course lots and lots of tomatoes. We like to make our own spaghetti sauce, although the year before last we lost 16 quarts of our sauce because we didn’t process the long method. Cutting corners was a huge loss and made us both sick as we dumped each jar of that sauce we worked so hard for.

 

This year we were determined to not make the same mistakes in the processing department. We endured a very dry summer, producing tomatoes that we bought from a man on a back road one day on our way to a picnic, in which he said were heirlooms. The tomatoes were monstrous in size and very complicated and bulbous in their shapes and dense and not juicy. So on my travels to take the children to meet their dad we passed a little farmer’s stand owned by a preacher and his wife who have a bountiful garden. I asked if they had any tomatoes to spare and the lovely older woman grimaced as if to think for a moment until she said she thought she could rummage up "some". I waited all that Saturday for her to call me to come and pick them up and at about 7 p.m. I got a message from a very tired little woman that she picked quite a few and to come get um. 12 bushels of tomatoes were waiting for me on her door step! My husband nearly fainted at the thought of squeezo-ing that many tomatoes. Overly confident in thinking I could give some away I took all of them because I felt so guilty that she had picked and picked all day and could have gone into cardiac arrest, although she is probably in better shape than I am. I was only able to give away 2 bushels so my loving amazing husband and I washed and cored and squeezed 10 blessed bushels of tomatoes in one day. Exhausted, we froze the juice in gallon freezer bags and had to buy a new deep freezer to accommodate the massive gallons of tomato juice. Finally many weeks later we boiled it down into tomato juice to can into spaghetti sauce. 64 quarts and almost a month later and they are all still sealed! Hallelujah!

A Lineman's Wife

Being a lineman’s wife means my husband’s cell phone rings any time, any where and the dispatcher on the other line responds to names such as Donk or Bow. It never fails, if there is a telephone pole anywhere within the vicinity of a road, someone is going to hit it and my husband and all his buddies at work are going to get called out to repair the lines or pole. Linemen, at least the ones I know, are simple, hardworking, and down to earth guys. They tend to drink a lot of beer, chew a lot of tobacco, and use a lot of curse words. Their hands are beat up, their clothes get really dirty and grungy, and they love Sheetz coffee. In fact, I met my husband in a Sheetz (local convenience story chain) and the rest they say is happy history. J

Me, Myself, and I

A day in the life of…..

A farmer’s daughter

A lineman’s wife

An old school educator

An overworked underappreciated public school kindergarten teacher

Mother of three brilliant beautiful little humans

Hunting widow

Want to be hunter

Wife of an incredibly sexy barbaric hardworking intelligent and amazing man

Great neighbor

Harley Rider

Gardener

Canner/Preserver

Loyal friend

Open book

On a mission to become a personal chef

　

　

　
When I grow up I want to be….

All of the above J ….

I am who I am, and I am asking myself, who am I that I could write a “blog” and anyone would actually want to read it??? I am a multifaceted individual with a lot to say about each different facet of my life. My hope is that someone somewhere is going to relate positively to something I have said.



A country girl’s kitchen is what I want to officially name my someday personal chef business… that dream that I carry to not do what I do everyday. Or is it my dream to do what I do every day?

Every day when my eyes open I am that incredibly sexy barbaric hardworking intelligent amazing man’s wife and I am so thankful. Jim, or Conan as I will refer to him as, is my best friend. My drinking buddy. My support system. My encourager. My provider. My dream come true. He is an incredible father. He is simple and kind. He is smart and can fix anything. An amazing hunter. We share the same hobbies like riding motorcycles and 4-wheelers and gardening and canning, hunting and enjoying our children.

　

The children

Caleb is 8. He is such a sweet little boy. He is the best big brother I have ever seen in a child. He is a wonderful reader. He loves shooting his bb gun and riding his bike. He is an easy child to love and raise.

Ava is 5. She is my sweet little dolly. She is creative and giving and oh so smart. She went from being 3 to 13... Ava is the little girl my mother never had. I was a tomboy, A raggamuffin. Ava loves to wear her Christmas best all year round, has had up to 36 barrettes in her hair at once, and is a crafter and baker, both of which my mother is. When Ava says jump, MooMoo, as she calls my mom, asks her how high?

Jake is almost 2. That should say it in a nutshell. He is our Wildman. He is Conan the Barbarian Junior. He too is very smart for his little size, and comical. He is his father’s universe. He looks like him, acts like him, is just like him. On this day one year ago my husband experienced a part of his soul become human form and he is eternally grateful for the gift of a son.

Caleb and Ava are my husband’s step children. They love Jim, and he loves them and cares for them as if they were his own. They call him the “big guy” and think he has Super Man strength. They also think we are the richest people on the planet, which isn’t a true story monetarily. J They have a nice friendship, as well as a familial relationship. He jokes around with them and teaches them how to do things in the yard, woods, and garage. We have a wonderful family. :)

I hope you stay tuned for more adventures from our little neck of the woods :)