Natlie & all her Kittens

Now of course there is only Meeps! left. :)

Dan & Owen

Finally!!!

I'm in!!! :) OK so you wouldn't think it would be so hard but I forgot Balthazar's password and the emails to send it weren't coming & logging into blogger as Balthazar was kicking me out of gmail, which is all I use now. SO I'm now officially (Caitlin) a contributor on this blog as my gmail account and can use PICASA with it, so y'all are in for it.

After I get some work done today.
So, until tonight, let's talk about JIM and JIM's SUMMER:

We went to the Adirondacks this summer as you may recall.
Photo of the view from the top of our hike here:




On this weekend, Jim:

1. Got water in his ear to which he had an allergic reaction (and still doesn't think it's out)
2. While we were on this hike through a swath of logging detritus Jim was the 4th or 5th person over a hornet nest and got stung 3 times by big black and white hornets that hurt a lot
3. While screaming and running away from the hornets poor Sweetie fell down and banged his knee on a rock (it's still tender)
4. A few weeks later at home Jim got stung by one of the wasps living in our plastic hose reel (which he said was not nearly as bad as the black and white NY hornets). He squirted them with death-inna-can in the night.
5. The weekend after labor day Jim went camping with Adam, wherupon he came home with a spot of some sort of green goo in each of his hiking boots and promptly got some awful case of poison ivy (or sumac).

Does this sound like a 12 year old's summer to anyone else??? :)

PS Did I forget to mention that he has to get his braces put back on because his two front teeth won't stay where the orthodontist wanted them? Yeah. Uh huh.

Natalie & The Spit-up

Boy Annaliese sure does spit up a lot! :)
So, What's up with Alexe posting lots and lots of wonderful updates and Kagan posting every 2 months???
Pot, Kettle, I know I know :)

Awww :)

Hey! I've installed Picasa and you can blog pictures right from the page!
Hi families, good news - Jim found Natalie's high school photo shoot & we have backed it up so they are not lost, they are found.
Hope everyone is doing well. We've had torrential downpours punctuated by sun, and the driveway is getting quite rutted. Plus some of the road above our driveway washed down the bank beside Alexe's raspberry patch. :)

I have 5 new chickens - 2 auracanas and 3 silver laced Wyandotes in a dog kennel out in the coop.
New troops :)

This one's for you, Dan

We all know new technology is driven by, let's face it, sex.
Anecdotal evidence and scientific evidence as well all point to people providing prurient content being the early adopters for any new technology, and while I don't know the percent of naughty sites on the internet but a google search on the word "sex" returned a page that said

Results 1 - 10 of about 823,000,000

OK a lot of those are not going to be porn, but lots and lots are.

That's why, every now and then, I find it utterly refreshing to run across a web site that is so different from the rest that I can't even tell if it's serious or a joke. Jim found this on a blog collection and it is absolutely wonderful - this one's for you Dan.

http://www.carstuckgirls.com/

This is a web site where beautiful, helpless girls, get their tricked out cars stuck in the mud/sand/snow and full pictorials and even videos of the girls completely (poutily) unable to free their cars from whatever mess they've got themselves into. There's no nudity so visit away there is nothing shocking except the possibility that somewhere someone is serious about this.

The fuchsia VW about 5 cars down on the home page is particularly lovely.

You're welcome. :)

Cheap Coughlins Take Note!

For Mama - That Soap Recipe that Sarah gave me.
If it's too small click on the picture to see it larger.
It costs something like a penny a load to do laundry.


Laundry Soap:

Two rough weekends in a row. :(

Oof, I have a lot of things that need posting to this space. But nevermind that, I'm here to rant!

Last weekend as you may know, Papa and Mama came up to celebrate Natalie's birthday on friday, and to help murder roosters on Saturday. I had about 50 straight run assorted fancy chickens, some of which were top-hat and many of which had feathered little feet. Straight run means unsexed, so odds are we probably had about 25 roosters. Hard to count, and hard to choose who will die when they are all so different and fun to look at. But feed just went up another buck and a half a bag and we were going through a LOT of bags...

So. We killed and bagged and froze 13 that I could pick out as being more aggressive or less pretty. The barred rock thugs, a couple of the silkies but no other bantams, mostly large pretty birds. Papa kept the pelts for fly-tying.

A week goes by. Thursday evening (the 11th) Jim & I spent a bunch of time erecting a sort of fence funnel to let the birds from the left stall into my fenced garden so that they could eat all the weeds for me. I let Stephen and the other 6 roosters ( a couple silkies, a black and white top-hat, the pretty red one we kept and so on) from the smaller pen on the right into their existing fenced area but only Stephen would stay out. They are chicken :) Evening comes around, we chase them all back inside. Friday I let the left-hand pen out and I can see Stephen in the right-hand through the plastic sheeting that kept them warm but I don't let him out. WELL friday evening when I go out with fresh water I open Stephen's pen and he is huddled on the very top roost and ALL SIX of the beautiful roosters I spared are dead, mangled. Only one is partially eaten. Something has come in and apparently murdered them all for *fun*, probably in the night and I didn't know all day. It looks like it pushed open the slot door enough to get in, maybe it was a weasel. I must have forgot to put the wedges that make the drop panel tight back when I let them out. We wedge the panel shut and go to bed, really annoyed but I still have all the hens.

Saturday we go to Morgan's engagement party which is an afternoon event. Chris and Morgan have put out an amazingly delicious spread of home-cooked goodness, including homemade lasagna, wild turkey meatballs, and ice cream from scratch. I blow all my intentions and eat it all. Not realizing it was a sleepover, we head home around 10 pm and get home just before midnight. Out we head with a bucket of water for the chickens. the lights are out because it's warm now so we turned off the expensive heat lamps and it's hard to buck the reflex of turning off the overhead light when leaving. I flick on the overhead light. In the right hand pen where Stephen is there's a bunch of sawdust pushed away from a rat hole in the *left* corner, having nothing to do with the door I thought the murderer came in the day before. Stephen is on the highest roost. The hole looks like it also passes under the partition to the next pen...

I throw open the left pen door... and there are 6 or seven DEAD chickens, starting from the hole and fanning inwards. One of them is still twitching! I think we interrupted the murder spree that would no doubt have continued through everyone on the floor and probably on the low roost too. "They got Dash!" I yell and Jim says "no, here's Dash" he's on the low roost about a foot and a half up. Captain Jack is OK, but they got both porcelain boys and the really beautiful little red rooster, and several hens, and my last silkie rooster. I think another seven, all Bantams.
So. We are exhausted but we spend an hour tacking hardware cloth (metal mesh) over that hole and any other knot holes that look too large, and reinforcing the door at the bottom and top, and so far so good. But I am ANGRY. MY birds. EXPENSIVE birds that we've fed and watered every day for 8 months now, and paid for lights to heat them when it's cold, and brought them inside when they are sick. Hens that have just started laying. I had that little porcelain rooster in the basement for 3 months until he grew out his pecked feathers, and I trimmed his beak when it got too long and heard him learn to crow. It kind of makes me want to beat a weasel to death with a shovel.

Chickens are *tasty*, and it is damn hard to keep them alive out here.
But I aim to try.
Damn it.

Really? You want some Natalie? :)

These appeared on my camera on Saturday morning right before we went to look at the place Natalie has her eye on. Right before she ran upstairs and took pictures of me in the tub, yelling at her to get away. Don't worry I got her back.

House Natalie took us to look at. It looks pretty rundown inside, but it's in a nice spot.

It was coooold while we waited for the realtor

I burst out laughing when I saw the tiny tub... or the very large Natalie, depending on how you look at it...

Look Alexe, the *inside* of the fridge is *perfect*!!! :)


The rest of the photos Natalie can email you, I don't have the bandwidth.


Freeze-Or-Burn this Saturday!!!

Ha HA! More Art for Papa!

OK I have a backlog of photos a mile long to deal with, but for all you louts complaining about looking at the same artwork repeatedly (Dan!) Here is some new artwork for your viewing pleasure.



I will accept votes: next, should I post Christmas photos, or Mississippi trip photos., Arisia photos, or Dan's wedding photos? :)
Ciao!

Superbowl Sunday

Hey kiddoes, I've sure got a backlog of photos to post!
I've been up here on the mountain, trying to stave off a mental meltdown.
Apparently, if you provide instant gratification to anyone, they then think that's normal and you should do that all the time, personal evenings and weekends be damned!

Anyway I am taking a step back from work for a bit to make some new rules and policies, doing some work of course but stopping before dinner and not picking up again after.

Hey, I'm not even a Patriots fan and I was disappointed for those losers.
We had a small "white trash potluck" gathering, only about 10 people this year, and Jim and I came up with a beautiful piece de resistance...

SPAM n GRITS SUSHI!

Ha HA!

(These were surprisingly good. Recipe: The night before make grits, put ina shallow pan in the fridge to congeal. Next day prepare 1 cup (raw measurement) sushi rice, stir in a tb mirin and a tb vinegar when done & let sit while frying spam in thin slices. Arrange rice over nori (seaweed layer) , put in slice of spam and slice of grits in a long strip, roll up and slice. Serve with wasabi and soy sauce, to the disgust and marvel, and eventual "Hey that's not bad" of your friends.)

I'll post more often now that I am mandating personal time, *smooches!*

Blogging from Springfield...

Mmmmm DSL... :)

Look at it! Marvel at the beautiful art I made for Papa! You're all in it & I have to call The Southerners to make this come true. Click on it!

I'm pretty proud of it. :)

Happy Birthday tooooo You

HAP-py BIRTH-day toooo youuuu...
Happy BIRTHday deaaaaar Papa...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU! :)

Happy Halloween!

Boy lots of stuff backed up to post about, but for today let's just show a lovely series of pictures of Caesar's outfit!

AWWWW what a cute little sheep-dog! :)

And here's a nice spiderweb that Jim & I made (mostly Jim) for Halloween out of tomato twine on the side of the house. I "sharpened" this in photoshop so you could see it better, even so you may need to blow it up... IMAGINE THE SPIDER!

May you all have a lovely Halloween. We're gonna hole up and watch scarey movies on TV tonight after I get some more work done - drowning a little over here.

Don't forget what tomorrow is! =)

Caitlin's Chickenerrarium

Photos taken this very evening. I tells ya, these little buggers will be going outside this weekend - I started prepping the pen for them wednesday but found it just wasn't a one-afternoon job, so they are still inna basement! :)

Altogether now, to the "Jaws" theme...

Da-dump

Da-dump Da-dump

Da-dump Da-dump Da-dump...

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!!!

Aren't they just adorables? :)

Stuff been going on round heah.

Well Hello there! :) Lots of crazy business, lots of work to do around here and not enough time to do it in. I've been fighting a cold for days but so far I'm winning, and the harvest is in and I was just too busy working to make dilly beans this year. You'll all have to settle for cheaty store boughten beans I'll dill later this year. :)

Papa & Jim preparing to install a window a couple weeks back, hopefully it'll get done this weekend. It's getting cold, and that plastic bag we taped up just isn't working that well to keep out the breezes!

Cute blond points at daylight streaming through wall.




JimE's pirate beard. Sorry no photos of the pirate getups - we forgot our camera.
Maybe we can get one from a friend later.






The banties, this last Saturday. Look at the cuties! There's some frizzy looking craaaazy white ones, and some little silky poofy tail ones with green beaks, and little tiny gray ones, and more!



Banties!



The full size chickens. Starting to be all feathered out. The barred rocks are the least timid, but this whole batch freaks out more than the banties whenever I feed them. They look more varied at first, but I find myself gravitating to watch the little ones, with their giant snowshoe feather feet and cute little faces. Plus the feather hats are coming in on the full size ones and boy they do look nuts. :)

Bleah.

What a sucky week. This time of year is hard on many of my readers. I think we're all trying to spare one another by dancing around that giant white elephant in the room, the big empty space left by our missing family member. That's right Brendan, I called you a giant white elephant, what're you going to do about it??? =)

Anyway, it sucks. Natalie and Dan and Jim & I are going to bake Brendan a birthday cake tonight, and then eat it for him. Like the Priests do for Buddha I guess, someone eats those offerings and it isn't the Buddha statue. Well, maybe the Hindu statues do: click here. Natalie proposed we ought to also buy presents and then keep them for ourselves, but I'm afraid my emergency gift supply doesn't have anything in it I fancy or I would already have kept it. Maybe we'll watch Rat Race, or XXX with Vin Diesel, or the Boondock Saints (yuck), all movies Brendan particularly enjoyed. And almost certainly, we will gripe about the way we all had something precious cruelly stolen from us, and we're all pretty bitter about it. Damn it.

In more positive news, look how cute these babies are!!!
They arrived this morning to distract me from my doldrums, adorable as anything and very hungry and thirsty, and I had to go out after these photos were taken to get another set of food/water holders so I could separate out the teeny tiny banty chicks. into the second tank I think I got some chicks that are going to have the crazy feather hats I was hoping for, I'll post a good pic of those a little later. That green stuff is "grow gel" a vitamin supplement to offer after they get out of the shipping container.

A letter from 1995

Oof, I've got so much work to do & I'm just not making any progress! I have a play data with Nate & Ciara tonight which I have to go pick them up for right now. This weekend I have every intention of cleaning the garage *and* preparing for the chicks I am expecting next week. Eek! :)

Anyway, I was cleaning last night and found some really adorable old letters.
Here is one from 1995 (I can tell 'cause that's when Toy Story came out.)

Whose the cutie? Who is it? It's YOU!

Natalie and William when we went to see Harry Potter. Didja notice that Natalie and I look very much alike when you take our hair out of the equation? (Except I'm not usually making a sourpuss.) William, on the other hand, is just adorables. :)

We Prognosticate your Progeny

The Coughlin sisters foretell the future.

Alexe's future that is. :)

Week 12.
So beautiful, and dainty, too.

Week 24
(a couple hundred bowls of grits later)

Week 36.
Pickles & grits, 100 jars of nutella and a 9 lb baby later.


:)
*love*, us.