The retaining wall. Oh god the retaining wall.

Either I have gotten out of shape, or I have forgotten just how much pain I can be in after moving giant ass rocks all day.

We rebuilt a whole bunch of it today.

What we did was pull rocks off the top and then place them at the bottom to form a new bottom layer which we slowly integrated back up into the existing wall. I had, in a fit of planning collected rocks to be used in the rebuild. I had spent four fucking days doing nothing but collecting rock. I thought we would have enough.

We didn't.

It was handy to have them all there, as we had already moved them to the site, but there was still a lot of cursing and pain and sadness.

About halfway through the day I was alternately making a sort of whimpering sound that was also mixed with the grunt growl that people make when they are moving something heavy.

I'm pretty sure I sounded like a killer whale giving birth.

It was also as humid as the inside of a sauna. A sauna that is also filled with insects that will bite me even though I have two different kinds of bug spray on and really WTF nature?

Also at one point during this epic battle of wills between me and a slope I was ferrying rocks around in my tank top.

I'll explain.

We needed some smaller rocks, but of course we had already used up all of the one's around the wall, so I went off in search of more rocks. Except now the meadows have sprang up so I ended up having to go farther and farther into the woods for rocks and then of course I can only carry so many at a time. So I just flipped my tank top bottom over to make a sort of pouch and shoved rocks in there because none of the buckets were anywhere near where I was working. As in I would have had to have walked back down the driveway, through the yard, past the rabbit hutches and past the chicken coup to get one.

Of course I think I'm out a tank top now.

Anyway it was 'the terrible picking up the heavy rocks but now I have to throw them down to bottom of the retaining wall with out falling over the edge and dieing' edition.

So now I feel like my body has been pummeled and I find myself kinda zoning out while I am looking at the screen.

Wha?

Oh yeah. The blog.

I think I should just go to bed now.

Zzzzzzzzzzz.

Tearing down the old bunny shed (with smashing.)

So today we tore down the old bunny barn. Seeing as how they don't need it anymore. Plus it was kinda sitting where we want to put that house.

First thing this morning, and by first thing I mean after I had fed everybody and Scott started the laundry and I cleaned out the peep cages and did internet things and ate breakfast, we tore down the old bunny barn.

There was of course the obligatory beating on the damn thing with sledge hammers bit. Followed by the getting myself angry at the whole world bit.

Okay it went down like this. Scott and me got on opposing walls and standing outside the structure started wailing on the support boards. I took a shitty swing and saw it barely dent the wood. So I fixed my stance and swung again and again. And shit all nothing happened. Meanwhile I could here Scott on the other side smashing and thrunching his way through the other side like this was easy. So, I stared at that asshole board. I took a breath. A warm humid wind blew past me, ruffling my shirt and hat.

I call it PMS anger. It has no reason. It has no logic. It is pure. It simply is.

I gathered it to me like a shield. I took every single thing that had ever pissed me off and pushed it down into a little ball of rage. And then I swung.

Then the whole fucking building fell down.

I am not fucking kidding.

I hit that board so fucking hard it splintered into a million pieces and apparently that was the only thing holding that fucker up.

I would like to say that I held that sledge hammer in one hand and stood valiantly with my chest puffed out like Captain Motherfucking America while the building collapsed before me, possibly in front of a sunset and with everyone who had ever said anything mean to me watching in the back ground in awed silence.

What really happened was that I heard a second loud crack after hitting the board and the whole fucking structure kind shivered a bit and then started falling and I ran for it amid the sounds of tearing and smashing. But if anybody ever makes a movie about my life we will just assume that the Captain America version is how it went down.*

After that we decided to bring in King, the best backhoe in the whole wide world, to tear the rest of it apart.

And tear he did.

King took what would have been two days worth of work in less then an hour. He tore that fucker apart like it was made out of those flimsy shitty toothpicks that suck. You know that scene from Jurassic park where the T rex pushes the car up on two wheels with his head while he's trying to figure out why this thing he just killed tastes like ass?

Yeah. King totally did that, except replace 'car' with 'shed' and 'T rex' with 'backhoe.'

King wrecked that shit like it was a shit wrecking party. He tore and smashed and stabbed and crushed and pummeled that building out of existence.

And it was awesome.

It was awesome.

* If anyone ever asks, you were totally there and it was super sweet.

And now the Water Doesn't Work

Oh boy.

So last night I was taking a shower, in a good mood, singing Nightmare Before Christmas songs, and the water cuts out. Luckily, I had already washed the conditioner out of my hair. So I step out an turn on the sink, and it has water, for about oh a minute.

Well we're fucked.

Okay. So Scott went outside to see what was up. Apparently, we may have drained out 500 gallon holding tank.* Cause we are in a drought you know.

So we go to bed and then the next morning we have water again. For all of about a half hour. Turns out the water pump picked that hour to die. I'm kinda at the point where I am suspecting that fate has it in for me somehow. Like it follows me around hiding and shadows and plotting dark malevolent things. Like fate has been waiting ever since I got this farm because it knew it was giving me what I had always wanted and it was just building me up to break me down.

Ahem. Anyway.

Being the problem solver in this relationship, Scott drove around looking for a replacement.

All the replacements were about oh, 300$ and they were also shitty.

Having just written out checks for my personal property taxes, that was not going to fly. However with some digging, we found out that we could order one off the Internet, identical to what we had, for about 100$ plus shipping.

Except that it is going to take up to a week and a half for delivery.

Being the mature rational adult that I am I think I took the news pretty well.

 I was giggling like a loony when I took this picture. Take that as you will.

I mean, there's nothing like lugging in water from the yard every single time I want to bath or poop or wash anything. There nothing quite like that lukewarm bath that's filled with plastic smelling bucket water!

Fuck.

Ah, nothing quite like life in the country.

So peaceful.

So calm.

*Turns out we had a leaky hose going to the garden. Now I can't look at the corn without feeling a jealous pang.

Rabbit Hutches Day 5 & 6 the Finishing

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 My new bunny condos. They will be pimpin it yo.

Today it was hot. Like way too much sweat on the goddamned under boob hot. Which meant that we didn't actually start working until around, oh, 7pm or so. Luckily a thunderstorm had passed over head and took the outside temperature down to bearable.

Like all projects we had worked on it sporadically over the past few days as out schedules permitted. So the doors got made and the outside painted which Scott had to do by himself because I had to treat the entire house mobile home for fleas. It was better that he wasn't in the house. It was better for everyone.*

And of course we had done minor things to it around our other tasks but this evening was the big push. So we fixed up a few minor odds and ends and then we put the goddamned roof on.

So to began with we had to add some wire at the top of the cage dividers because I figured that if we said, “eh rabbits can't jump that high” that Mr. Bun would find his way into Miss Bun's cage and we would have a whole other problem on our hands. Unfortunately this involved me climbing into the cage which was actually big enough to accommodate that fairly well, except that I had to put all of my wight on the center beam because I did not want my ass to come crashing down through the wire. Also The staple gun is evil. Evil I tell you.

I have this theory that staple guns were made for those old timey men in those weird weight lifter outfits with the hands that could crush walnuts. For everyone else we are just fucked. So instead of the staple going into the wood flush with the surface they always stick out slightly and it bothers me. Also I kept missing the wire and having to put in more staples.

Also, Scott was working on the roof at the time which meant that I was hearing what sounded like two giant metal robot butterflies have a battle above me while he slid the metal roof pieces in place.

Fun.

Then we had to trim off the excess roofing. My job was to hold the roofing up so he could cut it and also keep the roofing from cutting his face open when he finished a piece cause roofing is a bitch like that. We also realized that we should have been wearing hearing protecting but at that point it was kinda too late to do anything about it.

Whoops.

I also learned that holding metal roofing while someone else sawzalls it means your hands will go kinda numb. Kinda.

But we got it done and found that we had enough daylight left to move the rabbits out of the hot narrow shed that they had been living in and into their new bunny condos. Despite the fact that the old cages were shitty and I could only get one arm in a time and everyone who had ever owned a rabbit just cringed because they know exactly what I am talking about (think rabbit ping pong with your hand as the paddle.)

However once the nervousness wore off they seemed to quite happy. They were playing with their hay and exploring their nest boxes and hopping around and enjoying the fact they finally had SPACE! These new hutches are more then twice what they had in their cages and I fully expect that come morning I will find them sprawled out in happy exhaustion after spending the whole cool of the night rearranging their hay and putting things to rights.

Meaning that they will be doing the bunny equivalent of hanging pictures and moving the coffee table around.

And nobody died and nothing exploded.

So I'm counting this as a win.

*There was a point that he had me pass him a clean shirt through the door, plus his phone and some deodorant so he could go to town. I'm not really sure he needed anything in town, but there you go.

 Confused? Here's Part 1.

Dogs.

So my dog Razzle died. She was bit by a snake. It was awful.

We will miss you, little girl.

 So much for going quietly in her sleep.

Well, Holly's coping methods are kinda limited, so I went out and got another dog.

Meet Jack.

The pumpkin king?

I swear if anything happens to this dog I am going to stand outside and pump rounds at the sky to get back at the cold uncaring universe. Asshole random events.*

We basically went back to the same lady we got Razzle from and picked out another dog. She also remembered Razzle and expressed her sympathizes. Which was somehow both touching and also the most sad thing ever.

We decided that we wanted a dog about Razzle's size so that we could use the crate and carrier we already had.

What? I'm being practical people.

So we wandered around the kennels looking at dogs. There was the normal hyper but none to bright dogs, the attention whores and the laziest dog I have ever seen. It was a fat yellow beagle lab mix that went to sleep while we were looking at it. We looked at all the dogs in the size that we wanted.

Jack stood out because she described him as lazy. He liked to get up, run for about a minute, and then he was done. Perfect. Also, he was the just the right size.

When we said we wanted to see him the dog lady went in to get him. He acted extremely confused.

“What? Me? The lead? Go OUTSIDE? What? Really?”

Even the other dog that was with him seemed confused. After pulling him out with her she explained that Jack had been there for two years and that nobody ever asked to see him.

Which pretty much meant I had to adopt him on the spot.

Apparently, he had been adopted by one family briefly but they had returned him because the father had wanted a dog to go jogging with him, and Jack does not jog. He had reported that Jack would get about halfway along the route and then want to go home and lay around on the floor.

Hey I like sitting on my ass too! It's like it was meant to be.

It also turns out that he had been there so long that he was free.

So we filled out the paper work and took him home.

I have to state here that many people have said 'remember your new dog won't be Razzle.” And I can tell you straight up that he is not Razzle. Because he spent the whole car trip back sitting calmly on the seat. (we didn't bring the carrier although we had our doggy seat belt rig in.) He didn't try to get in the front seat, he didn't throw up, he didn't try to shove his nose out the window. If I hadn't been looking back periodically to check on him I never would have known there was a dog there at all.

He also walks on the lead correctly. Hey, I can walk the dog without it trying to pull my arm out of my socket! That's wonderful.

However, unlike Razzle, Jack appears to spending his first weeks with us by being terrified of everything. Scott gave him a bath when we got home, and now he treats Scott like he is a demon from the ancient world that has come to sacrifice him on the terrible alter of “Bath.”

He slinks around the house, trying to fit himself into small safe places. He even crawled under the bed. Hell, the cat had problems getting under the bed.

I'll be sitting in the kitchen and I'll see a head slowly creeping around the corner. I say “Hi jack watcha doin?” Head disappears. Head reappears a moment later. Repeat until I leave the kitchen. I'm still disciplining him, as it appears he has had almost no training whatsoever although it does appear that he is housebroken. If I ask him to sit I get a blank look. If I ask him to lay down I get an even blanker look.

I can almost here the wind sailing between his ears.

He's not Razzle. He's Jack.

But I needed something to plug the terrible gaping dog shaped hole in my life.

So I just plugged another dog in my life.

Seems to be working.**

Aww.

*Being an atheist really limits my ability to blame everything on God/Satan.

** My logic is that I won't see the half full food dish as oh my god Razzle is dead and she is never going to eat that food again *sob* and instead I look at it and go, oh it's Jack's dish, that's okay then.

My Dog Just Died.

My dog died last night. It was traumatic. That is all.

Rabbit Hutches Day 4 The Sawdusting.

We came, we sawed and we conquered.

Today we did the framing, put the cage dividers in, put the plywood on the roof and covered it with roofing paper. Everything went pretty well.

No, it actually did this time.

Okay, so there was the one bit where we were using a chainsaw because we did not want to drag the generator all the way down there and we didn't trim one post at the correct angle and then we tried to trim it by hand but then we hit a screw that we couldn't get back out of the wood and now we had to drag the motherfucking sawzall down there anyway.

Or the bit where we test fitted the door but then when we came back to install it it was too large. I am blaming that of fucking witches because that goddamned door fit like a dream until we needed to put on the hinges.

Or the thunderstorm that was menacing us and rumbling until it started sprinkling and then we were all like 'oh we had better put shit away now before the real rain starts.' So I ran up and put everything away which involved wrestling the table saw into the shed by myself and then we rushed to throw the roof plywood up and slap on the roofing paper and then it never did rain really and the sun came out.

Motherfucking weather.

Plus I got sawdust both down my shit and then of course into my damn bra. If you are a man you may not be able to grasp this, ah sensation, but it's pretty much like rubbing your nips on sandpaper. Oh and also got sawdust in my eye somehow, despite the eye protection which I am beginning to think is against me somehow.

Yeah. But other then that it went pretty damn well. We just have to put on the metal roofing, make the other three doors, add nest/bedroom/hang out n' party boxes and then paint the damn thing.

So hopefully this project will keep rocking along like this and nothing terrible will happen to it.

Hopefully.

Maybe.

I just jinxed it didn't I?

Fuck.

Want more Rabbit Hutch Adventures? Or course you do Here's Part 5 & 6.

Confused? Here's Part 1.

Rabbit Hutches Day 3 The Pour

Today, today we poured the concrete slab. It was slabby.

There was the obligatory run to town in the middle of it because we only had half the concrete we needed, and the usual feeling that I have coated all my sinus cavities in concrete dust because I can never remember to put on goddamned dust mask.

Other then that it went well.

Except for the part where I accidentally set a 94 pound bag of concrete down on my own foot. I know it was 94 pounds because it said so on the bag. Helpfully. In big block letters. I know you all think I am strong for a girl, and I am, but now I know my limits. It's 94 pounds. Specifically my right foot knows my limits.

The worst part was that I couldn't pull my foot out from under the bag of doom because I was afraid of ripping it and seeing my hard earned effort spill out all over the lawn. I had to call Scott over to help me, only to realize that the way I was standing meant that he couldn't help me at all which meant he got to stand there while I slowly heaved a bag of cement off my foot.

Fun.

The other problem, which is a classic example of not thinking things through on my part, was that I put the leaky ass motherfucking hose uphill from me. Which of course turned mixer land into a clay mud mess that tried to both make me slip off my feet and also suck my shoes off.

As pours go this was a small one, but I still woke up extra early. Even though our hey lets go buy more supplies because we are bad at eyeballing quantity like that still meant we were working through part of the heat of the day.

But it's done now. And I resisted my urge to go draw penises in it or something equally juvenile. Only to discover that one of the cats had already tagged it with her gang sign while I was having lunch. Or at least I assume that was her gang sign.*

Bitch ass cat.

Anyway the sun is setting and I am tired and I still have cement gunk on my arms that showering and sink scrubbing and cursing the cruel hand of fate have yet to remove, so I am going to stop typing this shit and go scrub my arms some more.

Hey, do you think I could use the pot scrubber?

No?

Oh well.

UPDATE: Yeah, have you ever tried washing your own arms off in the kitchen sink? I wouldn't recommend it.

*It was a perfect, neat paw print, made into the right side about as far as she could reach without having to actually step onto the stab. You can't convince me that wasn't deliberate.

 

Want more Rabbit Hutch Adventures? Or course you do Here's Part 4. 

Confused?  Here's Part 1.

I Have More Peeps!

Guess what was waiting in the chicken coup this morning!

Aren't they adorable. The black one with the white is going to be called Miss Penguin and the other is going to be Miss Wickenshire.

I had gotten up that morning feeling like I was still half asleep. I had gone to bed early the night before only to to be treated to some of the most horrible nightmares I have had in a while.

So I staggered down to the coup feeling like the monsters were still waiting to get me. So I did not immediately notice the peeping until I was almost done feeding them. I think I must have stood in front of the nest box for a whole minute just staring at the little fluff balls in complete bafflement. Peeps? Now? For real?

So I ran in to tell Scott and he was all like “What! Really?”

And I was all like “Yeah.”

And then I realized that we only have one cage. The cage Miss Peeperington is in.

Oh boy.

So then we brainstormed and decided to go buy another cage but then I had a brain wave and thought, I'll just empty out a plastic bin and BAM peep cage. Luckily Miss Peeperington doesn't really need the heat lamp anymore although I put the cages pretty close together so that they could kinda see one another cause I want them to understand they are chickens and not some sort of dog or something.

All day they have been doing adorable peep things like sleeping and trying to groom themselves but they are not very steady on their feet so most of the time they flop over onto their sides and it's fucking hilarious.

 See adorable. And all it's doing is fucking standing there.

However my office is now a fucking sauna and kinda smells like chicken. Not poop, because I keep those cages/plastic bins pretty damn clean, but more like, chicken. Which is really not a smell I can describe well. It's a little dusty kinda outsideish smell.

You know, it smells like chicken.

But don't go smelling the package of drumsticks you have in freezer, it's not the same thing.

Anywho, I am so fucking excited because I have two new sweet adorable baby chickens in my office right now.

Even if they don't wanna be.

 Talk to the butt.

Ingrates.