Mhm.

I'm so thrilling lately. I have nothing of interest to write about, but at the same time I like to write just for myself so that when I look back a few years from now I can remember how I was feeling and what was going on. Even though right now nothing seems significant, you never know how it will all piece together and turn out in the end.

Mhm.

I made major progress on the trashed house front today. Don't get me wrong--it's still a disaster. But I organized the mountain of dirty laundry! That took a long time. I now have blue jeans, bright colors/Rosie's clothes, solid white things that I am going to bleach to death because Tyler has stained them with mud (dog feet) and god knows what else...have to resort to bleach because I can't afford to throw them away and just buy new ones. Sorry environment...? And I also have a pile of dark clothes. This totals about 943 million loads. Today I folded and put away two huge loads and there are clothes in the wash right now and clothes in the dryer.

I also cleaned out Rosie's room and our bedroom. It's horrifying how trash can collect when I am not picking it up everyday. I've been sick for almost four months now.

Then I vacuumed, because well...the Feline Pine cat litter did not work out as planned. It's like saw dust. Saw dust that sticks to cat fur. My ENTIRE house (all hardwood) has been coated in pine shavings.

*sigh*

I got a great measure of satisfaction sucking that all up with the vacuum cleaner hose.

(See how thrilling my life is? I told you.)

Tomorrow my goals are to take a shower, do more laundry, and call the OB's office and request a copy of my records so that I can go over them with the (homebirth) midwife on the 18th. I also need to get my hospital records and Rosie's hospital records from her birth. I keep forgetting to call and ask them!

I am having major chicken issues. They have all taught each other how to climb the fence.

So frustrated.

Very, very, very pregnant hormonally angry and frustrated.

Tyler is refusing to help me fix their pen or their coop, or help me clip their wings. Of course.

I am considering hiring someone to build a walk in pen with a roof. I'm not sure how much it would cost, but I know it wouldn't be hard to build. Tyler could build it if he really wanted to help me. I might consider trying it myself (we have the tools!) but I can see about 10,000 ways that I would injure my pregnant body constructing a frame of 6.5 foot tall wooden posts using a circular saw and a nail gun and a staple gun.

Let's be honest here. I am accident prone on a good day. I've come to terms with it.

I'm thinking of how wonderful a walk-in pen would be..basically like a gigantic screened in rectangle with a screen door and their coops inside of it. They could never escape. Hawks could never swoop down and eat them. My stupid dogs would stop sneaking in and eating the chicken poop and their feed and then getting horrifying diarrhea. (I'm sure you didn't want to know that, but it has been a real problem recently. Pregnant+gagging+liquid dog poo randomly shooting out of a 65 pound dog on your kitchen floor=bad, bad start to the morning. Trust me.)

I've seen walk-in pens at farms we've visited, but they were on a smaller scale. Mine would need to be something like 20x30 feet in perimeter and 6.5 feet tall. I might call a handy man tomorrow and see if he can do something like that for fairly cheap. I think the wood will be what costs the most...why is wood so expensive?? There are some scrap lumber yards around here but I need it to look decent and not like a piece of shit gigantic cage randomly erected in my yard. Hah. If I lived in the country I wouldn't care and would be using all the scrap wood I could get, but since I have neighbors....yeah.

This is what I have in mind, only a bit larger as it would need to contain two 4x4 foot coops and all of their roaming space...I hope this is logical.

I think a handy man could build that fairly easily, don't you? To be larger it might need support posts in the middle or something, or possibly I could just use light weight nylon screen across the top...but maybe that would sag...and this is why I am not building it myself....

You know, if it is high enough for the birds to not fly out of it maybe it doesn't need a top. The hawks can still swoop but that's no different from how it is now and we're surviving ok.

Yeah.

So I'm going to eat some cookie dough and go to bed.

Oh by the way, something crazy happened.

Remember, I just took the picture on the left a few days ago. The one on the right is from tonight.

I'm telling you all, this is a difference of what, like five days? I need to go back and look at the date from the picture on the left.

No wonder my belly muscles are throbbing!

(PS: Please to ignore hysterically over tired child on the right.)