Rain, rain, go AWAY!

Not really, but I sure do wish it would at least slow down. Our area's gotten five inches over Friday and Saturday, and we only had eight inches all during May. The yard, such as it is, is a mess. Everything's so wet and mucky, and so not a lot got done again. Lots of local flood issues going on around the Ozarks, but thankfully, we have been spared despite all the rain. *sigh* I did get out and get some small stuff cut up over the week itself, and many of you who know me off various yahoogroups know how Quentin and I spent our Memorial Day, but for those who don't know:

I slept in till a whopping 7 AM, which is a lot, when I'm normally up at six. BBQ with friends and family? Nope. Relax all day? Nope. We worked on the farm, which we consider all kinds of fun, and most people would just consider "hard work."

Quentin:
Cleared out the trailer of all that wood brought up on Sunday
Cut up all the big stuff to stove length
Moved the vehicles around so that I can get out easier to work tomorrow morning
Split all the big stuff so it would fit in the stove

Me:
Picked all the small metal (cans and such) out of the burn pit and tossed in the scrap can
Used the 5-gallon bucket to haul the raked-up stuff from by the house to the burn pit for tinder (I'd love to have used a garden cart, but right now, I have a bucket and my hands to haul it, make do!!)
Hauled the brush for burning from last week to the burn pit and lit it off
threw all the wood splits into the wood pile while the brush burnt down
Tended the fire till things burnt down
dishes

I never did get rid of the sun headache I had enough to get out and cut up some small firewood till Wednesday, when things were somewhat dried out, but then through the end of the week, I got a lot done. The plant was closed for the holiday, and with me being on probation right now, I don't get paid for holidays, which would have left me with a three-day check next week. NOT good when there are four mouths to feed. Because yeah, the USDA decided that our chickens weren't growing out fast enough to kill on Friday, so most of the plant got that day off, too. Me, I volunteered to work Friday and Saturday in another department that was running, so I'll still get a five-day check out of things. I'm just crazy enough to give up my weekend time off to make some money if it helps get things into order faster.

The plan is to get Quentin back to work, have internet at the house again, and me back to being a stay-at-home housewife and doing whatever I like to make moolah from home. There's my needlework patterns to sell on Ravelry (if I had more time to test the rewrites, I'd be putting them up), finished items to sell on etsy or yardsellr, eventually raw and spun fiber to sell on ebay, etsy or yardsellr, the garden once it's going better, and various other ways to make money online (I used to do quite well with mturk.com ... I need to get back to that, too). We know that with one full-time check (his, as he'd be second shift and get more hours plus the shift premium), and as long as I can make around $150 a week from home, we'll be "in high clover," as the saying goes. Plus it would mean the housework would be done to MY satisfaction instead of "bachelor ok" and there'd be more time for oddball small stuff to get done that hubby really doesn't like to do because it's such minor stuff that it's more a wife job than a hubby job (unless he's really, really bored). It means I likely won't make it much past my one-year at the plant before I'm done for good, but that's fine for us. We're rather traditional in the respect of who is supposed to be the main breadwinner and who is supposed to be the homemaker, and right now, it's all backwards to us and we don't much like it.

For those asking, Bouncer is doing much better. He's already back on all fours quite well, back to racing around the house like a crazy kitty, and going outside on his harness and leash for walks. And being a tom, he's spraying like crazy outdoors to let that tom know that he is NOT welcome on the property. We're not concerned with trapping the thing, because we'd likely trap a whole lot of other things instead, so a small rifle is going to be a necessity fairly soon so we can shoot it and toss it into a hole somewhere. Stray dogs, depending on their behavior, will either be shot or caught and dropped at the local shelter. I hate shooting pets like that but this is a working farm in the process of coming together and we both realize we have to harden our hearts to it all because those strays dumped on us could easily destroy livestock, crops or whatever in a heartbeat. We love animals, but there's a point where you have to decide what's more important - your livelihood or the animal's life, and sorry to the various bleeding hearts out there, but my livelihood is more important to me than some stray. The facial injuries Bouncer had healed in just a couple of days, the left hind is almost healed all the way, and while he's using it completely again, the right hind has a ways to go to heal. He's chewed off all the itchy scabs, and there's good pink skin under there, though it's got a ways to go to be all well again. He'll have a bit of a scar from this, and the wound is seeping a bit of pus, but no swelling and no indications of gangrene or sepsis in the wound, so he likely got away with nothing more than a major owie. Smudge has once again learned that he is NOT king of the kitty castle, with Bouncer smacking him upside the head regular when Smudge tries to take over due to wounded King Kitty Bouncer. Didn't work, lol.

For those who are like me and love, love, LOVE free books for their Kindle (the Kindle for PC, in my case), I found a new free ebooks site that is pretty comprehensive: Free Read Feed. I get nothing out of this, but trust me, once I get a chance to get a farm website up and running (it's in the works but a long ways from being live), homesteading and cookbooks and the like will be on a recommended products page with links to Amazon for folks to buy copies. Yet another way for me to make a few bucks here and there online - with Amazon's link system, I can put a  link to a product on a personal webpage and make a few pennies at a time when folks buy stuff off there. There's google AdSense as well, along with a lot of other affiliate marketing online things I am working on. Once the site's live, the blog will stay here but will link to the farm site, and vice versa. You can imagine how busy I am with everything, it's no wonder I'm so tired when I go to bed!

It's about time for me to get something to eat, see about some more free books to check into (like I need more, I have around 6000 already on the laptop, haha), and dump all my email. See you all next time!!!