Allegheny Power Hates Us.

I am fairly sure that Allegheny Power is spying on us. My theory is that they wait until we absolutely positively need power and then they shut it off. You probably think that sounds insane, but you should stop judging me like that. Besides after what happened a few days ago, I'm not so sure anymore.

We were going to collect rocks. Because I want to build my house out of rocks. This involves getting the rocks from the middle of the woods, swamp, field, bee nest, or brier patch where they happen to be and moving them to one central location. Now, in the past this has involved using the wheel barrow.

I need to take a moment to point out that the wheelbarrow hates me. Really Really hates me. It waits until I have a large load and I have to go down a hill, and then, without warning it would dig the front bar into the ground, which would accomplish two things.

     1. The wheelbarrow would keel over on it's side like a large whale filled with rocks thus spilling my hours  of goddamned labor all over the fucking lawn.

     2. Now according to physics, an object will remain in motion until a force, equal or greater, is applied to stop it. So my body was still moving, meaning that my shins would meet the metal back bar at a considerable  speed. Also, and unfortunately for me, this also meant that I would then need to use the rapidly descending back bar as a spring board to avoid the handles from sweeping me off my feet and smashing my face into a pile of rocks.*

So when Scott suggested we use the truck I enthusiastically seconded the motion. There was just one little problem. It wouldn't start. That's alright we said we'll just use the battery charger. We hooked up the battery charger and I went down to clean out the animal pens, because they just won't stop pooping.

Well I clean out the pens and spread the shit fertilizer on the garden. Then I gather the eggs and head inside to discover the power is out. Which means the truck hasn't been charging. I call the power company and then head outside to inform Scott that our ability to take a shower is just fucking gone, man. I was pretty sure I could here the wheelbarrow laughing at me as I went and got it out of the shed.

We did not move rocks with it however, and instead moved some dead leaves as mulch for the garden, but I could still feel it's smug sense of victory. Asshole wheelbarrow. 

Feeling like at least we had accomplished something we went back inside to discover the power was back on. But the Internet wasn't. The Internet would not work. Turns out the router had gone all crazy pants when the power went out.** Alright we said, we'll just find the disk and reconfigure it or whatever the hell it is that one does to make it work. (It should be pretty obvious that when I said 'we' I meant 'Scott.')

Except we couldn't find the disk. (And by 'we' I mean 'Scott')

We tore the house mobile home apart looking for that disk. Finally Scott announced that if he had put it somewhere he had put it into another dimension. We were just going to have to buy another router. It was the only way. So we bought another router and did the magic thing and it worked. Just like magic.

To recap, the power being out caused me to be subjected to the evil wheelbarrow and blew the Internet somehow so that we had to buy another router, and screwed me out of a day of rock collecting.

You win this round Allegheny Power. You win this round.


* Yes we checked the tire pressure. I still have no idea what causes this. Oh, wait yes I do, the wheel barrow hates me and everything I stand for.

** You know, I wonder if I had left the wheelbarrow near that window for any length of time.

Some Thoughts on Murdering the Guineas.

Let me tell you something straight up, right now. Defeathering sucks ass, but not as bad as I thought it would. Another think I have to point out, you know how in Kill Bill when they slice off people's heads and blood comes out in a geyser and I always that the was awesome but stupid and it would never work that way in real life?

It does. That is exactly what happens.

I do not want to go into to much detail about our day yesterday, so I will leave you with these quotes. I think they sum it up pretty well.

“DON'T AIM THAT AT ME!”

“No, you are not allowed to Google 'getting blood stains off of clothing' do you want to end up on a watch list!?”

“You had better wash the blood off your face before going to the store.”

“Dude I look like a character from my video game!”

“These wing feathers hate me Scott. They motherfucking hate us all.”

“What the hell are we going to tell your mom when she asks how the guineas are doing?” “Well I don't think saying they were wonderful is going to cut it?”

“This is what happens when people just give us animals. *pause* You know, I think I'll just relate this story the next time one of our coworkers tries to give us a dog because we 'live on a farm'”

“Don't interrupt my nerd rant. Fine have it your way we'll just sit in silence while doing this boring repetitive task.”

And that was that. I think the really important thing here is that we learned a lot. Mainly we learned that saying this process is messy is like saying the titanic was a little ship. Trash bags became my friend that day.

BFFs for life trash bags!

BFFs For Life.

The Guinea Hens? We'll Miss Them.

We are going to eat the guinea hens.

Scott's mom got them for us despite our insistence that we did not want or need any. When I complained they were slowly chipping away at my sanity she said that many people who have them hate them at first but then grow to love them.

Yeah.

So you know when you are dating someone and there is that moment when you catch yourself thinking 'when I leave him/her I am going to take the TV' and then you realize that you have been subconsciously planning to leave them for awhile but haven't got there yet? Like that but with guinea hens.

For one thing they never shut up. I was assured by the Internet that they would in time, but that was before one of them injured its foot. Now Gimpy freaks out because she is unable to keep up and starts -I don't even know how to define this sound- squawking? Screaming? A possessed demon chant from another world? It never stops. Heaven help us all if Gimpy gets stuck on the opposite side of the fence from her friends.

They have only one job on this farm, and that is to alert me when predators are about. One job. Yesterday there was a hawk in the sky. Just chilling. I spot the hawk, and move myself and the dog closer to the chickens and glared at the offending bird. Then I realize something. It was quiet. So quiet. They had not even noticed. Gimpy was with the herd so therefore all was right in the world.

I have to amend that previous paragraph to say the they were excellent at alerting other predictors that we stepping out of the house with the gun and that they should run. Forget trying to sneak up on stray cat or a raccoon, oh no. If a human being stepped outside carrying something it was code fucking blue motherfuckers. They would yell like the sky itself was raining down lava boulders. This applied to anything: tools, shopping bags, the dog, car keys.

They also developed a habit of coming up to out sliding glass door and beating on it with their beaks.

The final straw was when they started attacking the chickens. I know at least one guinea hen was male, and I think he was doing the worst of it, but since males and females look identical, I made the decision to kill them all.

Lets recap. They were not doing their jobs. In fact they were attacking the very things they should have been protecting and hindering out attempts to protect the chickens as well. They were as loud as fuck all.

So we murdered butchered them all.* My aunt has offered to cook them, so we will see how that goes. I was told that they are not good eating, but the Internet told me that they have a good flavor and are often cooked as a lean alternative to chicken.

You know what? You know what I don't hear right now?

Life is good.

* I do not like killing animals, but I do like eating meat. So there you are. It is my firm belief however, that if you do eat meat you should have to murder something and butcher it. Just once 'cause it ain't fun. I wish more people did that. I wish more people had an understanding of what the process is like. I think we would see more respect for dinner time that way.

Sledge Hammers and Waffles.

So yesterday and the day before that we have been working on tearing down the old barn. Which involved me using a sledge hammer. Yeah. Let me tell you something right now. Sledge hammers are fucking heavy. Also, I cannot aim one very well. Nonetheless it was extremely satisfying to take out my anger at the world on some old boards. I kept yelling things like 'I hate everything' and 'fuck the world' and my personal favorite 'bastard motherfuckers.'

Now the old barn was mostly on the ground, but not really. So we had to bash out boards until it fell over. Sometimes while standing on what was the roof because safety is apparently not important to us. Also there was a nail literally every two inches. I am not exaggerating for the sake of comedic effect here people.

Every. Two. Inches.

There were so many nails in the joists it looked like a comb. This baffles me completely. They didn't bother to put a foundation on the building, or you know, keep the roof repaired to any degree what so ever, but they put in so many, many nails. I can tell you one thing. Whoever built this was getting those nails for free. Somehow. Plus, I am fairly sure I have tetanus by now.

This morning I awoke to the sound of rain hitting the roof and thought 'oh thank god.' Since my spirits were high I rolled over and jokingly asked Scott if we could have waffles for breakfast.

Well I come if from feeding the animals and HE IS MAKING ME WAFFLES. I love him. Except for the fact that the waffles kept sticking to the waffles iron like grim death. It was like the waffles were dead set on ruining Scott's god damned morning. I kept wandering around the kitchen saying things like, 'It's okay I still love you' and 'I'm so sorry I said anything about waffles.' In the end he just made me pancakes and we pretended they were waffles.

This is how my chickens ended up with a nice waffle breakfast this morning. Which they had better fucking appreciate.

Ingrates.

I've Done a Bad Thing.

I have done a bad thing. I purchased a TV. For my office. An expensive TV. The conversation mainly went like this.

“Hey Scott, can you help me hook my PS3 up to the TV in my office?”

“Huh? What TV?”

“You know the one that's the size of our car. The shitty one.”

“Why would you want to do that? That TV sucks and your PS3 has an HDMI cable.”

“I know, but I can't hear my game when you are playing your music. It was all like ' the magic Urn of Ashes is BWAA-MOW-MOW-BWAAANNGG-your most important quest.' I ended up killing an entire village and I'm not even sure if I was supposed to.”

“I could have just turned it down. Why don't you just buy another TV?”

“I can do that. I have money! I'm an adult! But I really shouldn't.”

“Why not. You don't usually go out and buy anything.”

“Get in the car. Were going to Walmart.”

“There's a blizzard outside.”

“We are also out of cheese.”

“I'll warm up the car.”

Which is how I ended up wrestling a giant 32' inch TV into the shopping cart at the Walmart. I could have got the smaller one but it wasn't out which meant that I would have had to talk to the employees and almost nothing is worth that.

I also bought a bottle of red wine, because I wanted to forget how much I was going to be spending on this thing. This is retrospect, was a mistake.

We got said TV home and Scott both simultaneously made dinner and hooked up my TV. Which is why I love him. He handed me the remote and went to go ladle food onto plates. This was it. The moment of impulse buy glory. I flipped on the TV and turned on the PS3. Which is when I received the first error message stating that the PS3 had not been properly shut down (it had been) and needed to do a system restore.

I do not know what a system restore means but in my mind it meant this:

System restore = all your game saves and updates are shit gone.

This was followed immanently by the TV screen turning blue and an error message, this time from the TV itself telling me that it was not compatible with the PS3 because of the screen refresh rate. So let me recap here. My PS3 is trying to system restore and I can't help it because the TV won't let me see it anymore.

I. Freaked. The. Fuck. Out.

Have you ever wanted to see me lose my shit? Like really lose it? I was so close to having my brain synapses just start fucking exploding right that minute. I think I ate three whole bites of dinner while feverishly flipping through the TV manual. Scott assured me he would fix it. He got to enjoy dinner with a crazy person that night, as I kept muttering things about how ' the HDMI connection was a lie' and 'sweet Jesus what have I done' and 'why god why.'

Scott went into my office to try to fix the TV. Now often is these situations it's better that I am not in the room. It's better for everyone. But I could not stay away. I peeked around the door to see him fiddling with the remote. He asked me which HDMI port I was in and then hit two buttons and it worked.

The TV. The PS3. Like nothing had ever happened.

I still do not know how he did it. If he had not been in the room with me I would have thrown myself at my PS3 and held it in my arms until it was okay again. But I didn't I followed Scott back to kitchen where my eyes fell on that bottle of wine.

The bottle of wine that I ended up drinking most of. It was terrible. It was from the Walmart. But I did it anyway. Have you ever been at that tipping point of drinking, where you ask yourself if you want to get any drunker and you know you shouldn't? I did.

Which is how I ended up having to get vomit out of my nostrils at 2 am. 

Strange Cats and the Weather

Remember a few posts back when I said the weather was watching? Plotting against me? I was right, because it's blizzard time now. There I was sitting in the living room playing my video game when the radio announced a murder death blizzard was coming.

5 to 10 inches in the higher elevations (that's us BTW)

Wind gust up to 55 mph.

Overnight lows of 9 degrees.

Travel may be difficult is not impossible due to white out conditions.

We decided to call out of our job that we were supposed to be doing and hunker down. So far we have not received even five inches, but it's impossible to tell for real because the wind keeps blowing the snow around and making little snow tornadoes. All in all it's not a very bad blizzard so far compared to some that we have had.

Except for one thing.

A strange cat showed up.

It was about two days ago. A gray well cared for tabby was strolling around checking things out. I tried calling to it, because I love cats and it was very handsome, but it just ran. It is either a neighbors cat that got loose, or a dump.* Things continued to be peaceful until my male cat Tom Tom Tiger III became aware of the situation. What followed was a series of West Side Story like cat violence.

I'm going assume that all the wailing they are doing is singing. Angry singing.

So periodically during the storm I would hear the angry male cat tango start up as Tommy Tomerson III would drive the stranger off into the woods across the road and then strut around like he owned the place.

Until the newcomer would return! Dastardly fiend!

Then the yowling would start all over again.

You know what I love about life in the country? It's the quiet.

* People who dump pets are just terrible. If you are too poor to afford your pet anymore you should just eat it. BAM! Two problems solved!**

** Don't actually do this. This would be bad. I hate pet dumpers and the stress and horror that pets go through. Dumpers is how I got my outdoor cats. And my dog. I can't take in anymore here people.

Interior Design is a Lie. Really.

Interior Design. I think I understand it now.

I like my living spaces to be comfortable. I like how a well thought out room leaves a person feeling calm and at peace. If my living space is too dirty and cluttered I can't think and I start to get depressed. (Let the fact that I am writing this instead of cleaning go unmentioned.)

However, if I read enough design blogs, I start to get very cynical, very fast. I live in a mobile home. I line furniture up along the walls because that is the only place it will go. I have to move mountains of crap and slay a dust bunny the size of a small dog to find an electrical socket. None of your small space living tips will help me. I am beyond help. If I were to write a design blog for mobile homes, it would tell you to just burn the damn thing to the ground and use the insurance money to build a small house.

That isn't what annoys me though. Mobile home owners aren't expected to have Internet at all, let alone read design blogs. No what makes me mad is looking at all of these 'room transformations.' Here is how a room transformation works.

Step 1: Paint everything white. Oh I know they claim its Benjamin Moore Ships keel white with a blue base to represent the sky on a winters day, but it's god damned white you god damned well know it is.

Step 2: Paint one wall, or the floor, or the cabinets a wacky fun color. Party Red, or butter yellow, or remorsefulness green.

Step 3: Buy shit from Ikea. For that clean modern Swedish look. What ever asstastic furniture you had before goes back in 'to add some flair.'

Step 4: Go buy one of those rugs that look they they are real fur but aren't. Lay rug in a high traffic area because you obviously do have any pets, children or spouses. Also, rugs that say hand wash only are good too!

Step 5: Go to Target, or in a pinch, Hobby Lobby. Buy decorative shit that has no use what so ever. I'm talking things like a basket filled with wooden balls. Or mason jars filled with sticks. Or a glass bowl filled with tree back. Bonus points if the objects are impossible or near impossible to clean. (I'm looking at you vase filled with moss!)

Step 6: This is tricky step, because it involves never touching things in your house again. I'm pretty sure you'll learn to live with it however, because the alternative is too mess up your perfect, perfect house.

And there you have it folks, Holly's guide to Interior Design and Decorating. Up next on my helpful series, we will explore why having a small hobby farm means that nothing will ever be clean again.

The Chick Coup Saga: The Roof

So over the past week we tore down the old chicken coup. And by we I mean Scott. I mostly helped move boards around and generally tried to look busy and vital to the process.

The first step was to remove the old metal roof, which would become the new metal roof through the use of the magic of reusing. Scott fought his way on top of the structure, which I missed because I was paying the fuel oil guy money for precious, precious heat. I think I can capture the experience with these carefully selected quotes:

“This roof pitch is steeper then I thought.”

“Okay, it's very slippery up here. Really slippery.”

“Here tie a knot around the hammer and the crow bar so I can pull it up. If you tie it like that the crowbar will fall out and hit you... this is an interesting knot.”

Once the roof was down Scott bashed the building apart with a sledge hammer over a period of about two days. If you are wondering why I didn't get to use the sledge hammer, it's because I wield a hammer like a drunk monkey. I have no ability to aim. Anything with hammer in the name is like my Kryptonite. If you named a drink The Hammer I would toss it back and hit myself in the eye.

Anyway, the actual putting on of the roof went fast, since we did not have to cut any pieces. Scott was up on the roof and I just handed him up sections.

Immediately after we had placed on the last bit it started to snow. We have about an inch outside. Don't be fooled into thinking the weather was on our side though. It's not. It was trying so hard to snow all morning and fuck up our plans, it was just late to the party. You could almost hear the weather shouting for us not to work so fast. It's just up there lurking. Waiting. Watching.

Me paranoid? Never. That's crazy.

Want More Chicken Coup Adventure? Here's The Final Part. (Thank God.)

Oblivion: The Elder Scrolls IV Sucks Donkey Balls.

I got this game for free, thank the sweet lord.

I spent more time stuck in corners, the floor, or redoing shit because auto saving when I complete something is apparently very hard for it to do. In fact I developed this theory that every time Oblivion auto saved it was extremely painful for it and therefore it kept that to a minimum.

The other problem, and oh boy, there were problems, was that I had no idea what was going on. I have never played any of the games in this series before, so I had no idea what the fuck was happening half the time. What the fuck spell was that thing shooting at me? Nobody knows? I have to fight the terrible menu system and fish through four pages of shit where my map should be to find out? Wonderful!

What's going on? How can the city watch materialize through a locked door into the basement with me, and yell at me for taking a book when I am surrounded by skulls and pentagrams and dirt encrusted shovels? I think I spent more time wondering what the hell was going on then I spent excited about what I was doing.

Why do the NPC's not move there heads and bodies at all when they are talking to me? Oh they move there head slightly, but have you ever had a conversation with someone who was wearing an invisible neck brace? Right. Now imagine talking to a whole world of people who are wearing invisible neck braces. It gets kinda downright creepy after a while. Like I landed in the kingdom that was attacked by a guild of angry chiropractors who were hell bent on their revenge.*

The thing that really tipped me over the edge though, the thing that made me want to put my fist through the game disk, was the horse. First off all the horses looked weirdly like what a ten year old girl would draw if you asked her to draw you her dream horse. Seriously I saw a purple horse. A motherfucking purple horse. Riding the horse was a exercise in sadness. Steering the horse, was well, interesting. Also, the horse had only one speed, as near as I could figure out. That speed was slow. Forget about galloping around on a majestic steed, it was more like lumbering around on some sort of alien that was wearing a horse skin to fool the humans, Men in Black style.

To add insult to the many horse related injury's I sustained was the fact that I could not fight from horse back. At all. Not even shooting off some spells. So that meant every time I was attacked by something, and there was a whole shit ton of somethings, I had two options: One try to out run the problem on my alien skin horse, or two, get off the horse and kill the thing.

Which is how I ended up fighting a wolf at the bottom of a pond.

I don't think I can make myself play this game anymore. It is painfully obvious that this was a PC game that they smashed into working on a console.** I think I am going to put in a new game, and stop ranting to the Internet about a game that came out in 2006, because I am a mature adult like that. Yeah. Shut up.

* I think if someone hasn't made this game, they damn well should.

** This probably made an awesome PC game, but not a PS3 game. My map has a god damned mouse pointer on it. Why? Why the fuck? Oh never mind.

We Moved. It is Done. DONE.

We moved.

It all started when Scott went out for a walk came home and announced in his best I-am-serene-because -life-can't-take-anymore-from-me voice that the sewage line was broken. Ignoring the fact that the EPA might want to kill us, this would explain why the toilet was flushing poorly and the sink doesn't work.

I suggested moving. Scott said no on the bases there was no Internet over at the newer mobile home. What followed next was hours of passive aggressive bullshit. I knew the only way I was going to get to move sometime in my motherfucking lifetime was by driving my husband insane.

So the next morning, before he was fully conscious I rolled over and said. “Can we move?”

“Pack your shit.” Was his response.

So I god damned well did.

There was Scott sitting in front of his computer, happily listening to his pod cast. Not a care in the world and then I started parading by with books, and half my desk and my lamps. At that point I think he realized that there was no going back.

Our solution to the fact the dish, and subsequently the Internet are all located down a hill from us was to buy a shit ton of Cat5 and run along the ground from one structure to another. It was a pretty ghetto solution, but I live in WV so it seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do.

Scott made the Internet work, while I moved all of our possessions over. I was hoping that at some point he would make the Internet happen and then help me move, but sometime around 3 when he announced his need to make an emergency run to Lowes I lost all hope.

Now the thing I have to explain here is that I moved everything. My desk. Our nightstands. All the clothing. My computers. The TV. The food. EVERYTHING. This was all made worse by the fact that it was raining off and on all day. Which then turned into snow at some point. I was moving my electronic items whenever I saw a clear spot coming. I had no boxes and one plastic bin that I had taken out my closet and emptied. Also, everything I was carrying I had to be able to move with one hand, as there were two doors I had to open to get to victory.

Now let me state that my job involves moving heavy shit. Lots of it. I know how to lift. I know how to pace myself. All I can say is that I entered a zone that day. It was like all of my pent of frustration about living in a shit-hole had just built and built until I reached a peak of absolute drive and PMS driven anger that had burst over me like a tidal wave. I still have no idea how I did all that in one day. NO IDEA.

I was wiped. I was more tired then I had ever been in my LIFE. I didn't tell Scott, but I kept experiencing rolling pains that would run up and down my sides. I ate very little of dinner. This was when we discovered we were out of fuel oil over here and it was approaching witches teat inside. Scott made a fire. Which involved even more good ol' WV figuring. I did the only thing I could do at that point. I got drunk. Really drunk. Because that would fix it. Which it did. Until the next morning.

Which was also my Birthday. This is how I spent my special day crawling around like death was coming for me and being cold.