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Monday, November 5, 2012

Day 20- Burns, Books, and Wildlife

Oh my god.  I can't fricken believe it.  Yesterday I moved pot after pot of boiling hot water- filtering, cleaning, filling the bathtub- no problem.  This morning I make a coffee and tea like usual, and then dump the tea pot all over my foot!

I ran to the bathroom and jumped in the tub.  Thankfully I filled the tub back up yesterday, so there was cool water in it, but honestly when it happened I was running for the tap.  Autopilot.  The only ice we have is in the pop bottles I set outside to switch in the cooler every day.  It's pretty much impossible to wrap that around my foot.  Husband takes several wet cloths outside to cool while I hold the pop bottle on it.  It's red and blotchy, but luckily not blistered- at least not yet.  The boys clean up the spill and make me a new pot of tea.  What a crappy way to start the day.

The boys make breakfast- back to the pancake routine.  Eggs need to be saved for baking.

The boys go out to do chores and find a dead turkey.  Two more are missing.  There are large paw prints in the garden.  Large fox or small wolf- hard to say which.  Either way, we are down three more birds.  They check the chickens, which are fine.

It's cool but sunny, so Husband and the Bigs decide to do firewood again after they work the horses.  Knightmare is finally starting to understand the reins.  They give Samson a quick work out with the reins, and then hitch him to the stone boat.  He does really well pulling it.  Husband is certain he's been trained to pull before now.  They decide to go to the back for firewood and use Samson to pull logs.  The Littles tag along.  There won't be much for them to do, other than moving small branches out of the way, until the logs are back at the house, cut, and ready to stack.

I'm left at home with my aching foot.  I switch the cloths on it, but I'm bored out of my mind just sitting here.  I decide to package up my seed.  Some of the sunflower seeds that spilled did sprout, but there's no mold.  I pick out the sprouted ones and toss them in the bird bucket.  I pack the rest in old jars.  It's not a great selection- sunflowers, tomatoes, peppers, parsnip, beans, asparagus, crab apples.  With what I have left from this year, next year's garden should be ok.  Still, I'll have to be much more diligent about saving seed in the future.

Husband has Samson pull up six logs in two trips.  #1 walks him up on the third trip.  He's done extremely well.  They break for lunch and put him back in the pasture.  They make a pot of chicken noodle soup for lunch- nothing fancy, just the package and powder type.  They use the last of the crackers.  I have a couple of recipes for crackers, but we didn't really care for them.  While they might go over better now, with that secret ingredient added in (hunger), I don't think I want to 'waste' the flour to try it.

After lunch Husband puts the oven on the stove top for me.  I'm hobbling better now, but can only handle a couple of minutes without a cold cloth on my foot.  Still, the cattail starch is not drying very well, so I want to put it on cookie sheets in the oven.

Nira and Diego come after lunch.  They had a crazy mad dash for water yesterday as well- baths, laundry and drinking water.  They take my library books, our empty jerry cans, and siphoning hoses and head to town.

Husband and the Bigs cut up the logs and the Littles stack them in the wood shed.  Then they cut more wood from the lot across the road.  I read a book.

Nira and Diego return just before supper.  Things in town seem better than our last visit.  They traded a few jars of pickles for a pumpkin, two turnips, and a cabbage.  The store would have taken more, but there wasn't much selection, so they decided to keep what they had.  They had to go a ways out of town to find cars that still had gas, but they managed to refill all of the jerry cans.  The library has grown, but the selection isn't great.  Nira has picked a bunch of harlequins for me.  Better than nothing, I suppose.  They head back to their place.

Husband takes the oven off the stove.  #4 makes hot dogs for supper.  The temperature is dropping outside, and the cloths are nearly frozen when I switch them for my foot.  It doesn't look like it's going to blister, but still hurts.  The Bigs do chores and double check that the turkey shack is secure.  We're going to leave the dogs outside loose overnight.

The Bigs bring in the heavy blankets that were hung on the clothesline in the rain yesterday.  They're not quite dry yet, so we hang them over door frames and chairs for tonight.

We spend the evening playing clue, and then head off to bed.  My foot aggravates me repeatedly throughout the night, waking me up. 


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