Life is a Conundrum: Never Forget

I was at work when it happened. We still lived in the city.

What I remember most of all is in the days following, the airport was shut down and it was so quiet. It was very obvious since we lived near the airport and could hear the planes warming up and taking off throughout the day and night.

I went to the zoo and took four photos with my company's camera (that is all the high resolution photos it could hold). I took them specifically so I could turn them into vision loss simulation photos to illustrate to others what different types of vision loss might look like.

I also remember in the days following that everyone put flags up everywhere.

I pray for the families that lost loved ones.

Until next time.

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We have two does due to kid in February. One is due on February 22nd. I haven't figured out the date on the other doe (oops). I am sure I have it in my barn records, I just have to look for them.

Last year, I put in a request to my husband that he build me a maternity ward for the pregnant does. Well, the wedding kind of took up all our spare time and the doe ended up kidding in the doe pen. Which wasn't that big of a deal except that made it basically impossible to get hold of the babies and spend time with them, so they are the wildest babies we've ever had.

Also, one of the does due to kid is half wild. She is not scared of me, but she won't come up to me readily either. So I am going to have to really work with her, to tame her down for milking. My hope is to get her into the maternity ward by next weekend, and then start spending time with her every day. I also hope to be present when she kids as that helps the bonding process between the doe and her human milkers. We let the does keep their kids, but we get kidding goo on our hands and then let the doe lick us clean. She's licking her kids clean, which helps her to bond to and get to know her kid, so licking us helps in the same way.

It is very important that a doe licks and cleans her kid because she will reject them otherwise. If a doe has twins or triplets and she licks and cleans one and the other crawls off in the other direction and she never gets to "know" the kid, she will very likely reject the kid. Most does hate other kids, and will head butt them. If she doesn't bond to her kid, she treats the kid as another doe's kid. Then you end up having to bottle feed.

Bottle feeding isn't that big of a deal, but it does add about an hour to chores as there are now bottles to clean, babies to feed, in addition to milking the dam, processing the milk, etc.

So we decided this weekend we'd get the maternity ward built. We are building a small shed 8 feet by 8 feet square. Dh is also supposed to be working on his other weekend job, but he keeps going 90 miles to the jobsite, only to find the electricity isn't turned on. That's a real bummer, not to mention a huge waste of gasoline!

After we get the maternity ward built, we'll paint it. After it's painted, we'll put a fence around it. We have a lot of fencing material, so we just need to take the time to put the posts into the ground and we'll be set. Hah. Here's the hubby sawing the boards down to seven feet long.

Here I am framing the wall, which means I'm hammering the wall studs together.

I have to make sure the 2x4s butt up to each other, and since the ground isn't perfectly level I have to stand on one stud with my foot angled over onto the other one, press down and hammer. Dh took some pictures of this technique, but they didn't come out. The camera actually considers them a different format and won't show the image at all.

Okay, I hammered all the walls together, and now we have to move the green swimming pool (the dog's water for drinking and laying in, when it's hot in the summer) and the dog's shade area.
Here's a closer view.

Here's Mocha, one of the pregnant does. She's standing with her front legs on a higher surface than her back legs. They like to do that later in their pregnancy. She's also chewing cud as you can see by the golf ball wad sticking out the side of her mouth on the right side.
Here dh and ds2 are carrying the walls to the area where we're putting the maternity ward.

The walls are up!
Now the plywood is up! We've got a BOX!

Here's the front side. We only framed in three sides. We'll leave the middle section here open for a doorway.

Dh had to leave at this point to go in and make Rattlesnake Stew for Question and Answer night at church tomorrow.

I stayed outside to finish shearing the walls - which means I was hammering 8 nails into each set of studs. 8 nails multiplied by 23 studs. Okay? That's 184 nails. It takes about 6 to 8 whacks to get each nail in. Not to mention the ones I nailed into the stud, but missed by a fraction of an inch, had to remove and nail it back in so it would catch. Let's say an average of 7 whacks to get each nail in. That's a minimum of 1,288 whacks.

Speaking of nails, I broke my thumbnail by whacking it.

And my hands are covered with rust from handling all those rusty nails.

OH yeah. Chuck's not my husband's name.

Here's Chuck:
Remember when we took Chuck 1100 (Total Gym) back to Walmart? Well, his big brother Chuck 1700 Club actually had showed up the day before. I swore myself to secrecy so I could see how it was going to work out.

My goal was to get some exercise, and that was it. Not get sucked into diet mentality, just get my body moving.

I am very pleased with the results. I'll tell you more about it sometime. To say the least, one month ago I would not have been able to pound in over 200 nails (remember I also pounded two nails into the top and bottom of each stud on the walls, so that would be another 44 nails) without having exercised this body like I have been for the past month.

Go Chuck!

Until next time.