Life and death. Life and death. Our Life Cycle Unit has grown past the hours of school time and encroached upon every area of our daily life.
I've been
so tired this last week with the growing of this little life inside me. I just want to sleep all day (one day I took four naps). I'm tired of going into public and having people ask me if I'm having twins or if I'm due any day now. Don't they know any better than to mention anything like that to a pregnant woman? Shouldn't they just keep their mouths shut? Or say something like, "You are positively glowing with new life!" Not, "Oh my gosh! You are HUGE!" I have only gained 17 pounds as of this morning. So all those people can just go to the lake of fire and fry! Okay...getting past the cranky. I haven't had a lot of motivation to get anything done. In the last paragraph of
this post, I wondered how motivated I would be to...
...pluck and gut our meat birds while 8 months pregnant. Well, it's done. All 20 birds are dead and resting before their trip to freezer camp. Was I supremely motivated and full of energy like I was a month ago making freezer meals? NO! My motivation was: I'm not getting any less pregnant! It's a three day weekend! And I don't want to pay their feed bill anymore! And when it is done, it will be DONE and I won't have to do it again (like laundry). I won't traumatize you with butchering details, but these birds are the fastest, easiest birds to process. One of them died when M picked him up. Two heads fell off all by themselves (practically)! I am getting very good at my job in the processing and we have become quite efficient with our routine...okay, enough with the death...
...on to the LIFE! Funny how we spend two mornings (four hours total) taking care of our food and then the afternoons saving little guinea keets from the big mean hens in the yard:
I found this little one being pecked by a hen in the nest. It is our first guinea to hatch! I quickly rescued it and brought it inside to treat its wound and keep it warm until we could get a warm spot set up. It's living on the other side of the chick brooder until some siblings can come and keep it company. Two chicks ended up with the pasties (a chick problem that can kill them), so I spent some time nursing them and trying to save their lives. Really, a very strange way to spend the day.
We captured some frog eggs at the pond and S now has his very own life cycle project:
Watching the tadpoles turn into frogs! We will let them go in the pond when the project gets boring or forgotten. Like the butterflies. M let them go yesterday (without warning me) so he could use the terrarium for guinea keets. Out with old, on with the new, eh?
