Winter on the Ranch

It looks like winter is here to stay. Well, at least for awhile. Of course Christmas day was still plus 16, warm, and sunny so, I shouldn't bitch too much. Took a long walk with just my sweat shirt and shorts. Highly unusual for the great white north. Then, as it will, the temperatures dropped and so did the white stuff. I went from wearing shorts to long pants, winter coats, head bands and neck warmers.

Today the sun came out after being cloudy and kind of miserable for a few days, and even though I still had to bundle up and wear spikes on my shoes to stop from killing myself on the ice, I had a great walk with the hell hounds.

All in all this autumn was pretty nice. We managed to get all of our wood cut, bucked, split and stacked before the snow fell. Wood for the winter of 2017/2018. Oh yeah, two years worth of wood already to go. Woot. And it was all done with having to worry about being chewed alive by black flies, mosquitoes and other loathsome critters. So much better!!!!

Our new chickens seem to be weathering the season not bad, so far anyway. And seeing as it hasn't really been too cold that should be the case. We wrapped the outdoor run with plastic so that even on the bad, snowy days they would be able to go outside the coop for awhile. Now, whenever the sun comes out it is almost tropical in there. Like a green house. We have eight new guineas and nine chickens together. The idea was that the guineas would become much more domesticated because of their influence. So far they have been giant asshats to the chickens. Yeah, that's not working. The old guineas are pretty much trained, but they are in their old coop and don't spend much time giving a shit about the new birds. They are easy peasy when it comes to taking care of them.

Well, back to editing.

The Pretend-War on Christmas…The Return!

Well it looks like Halloween is over and the pretend-war on Christmas season is upon us.

Some of the old incendiary memes are starting to appear. “Post this if you will say merry Christmas instead of happy holidays this year.” Sigh. Then the old bogus stories from five years ago appear and are refreshed. My husband’s friend told me that he knows someone’s aunt’s, cousin’s, bestfriend’s, mother’s, father-in-law who was fired from their job at the K-tel patty stacker factory for uttering the word Christmas. But, before they let him go everyone on the assembly line had to take a turn squishing his ass between plastic disks.

People—this did not happen. It does not happen! These stories are fake. Only people who are desperate to be persecuted make this shit up (and Fox news). Unfortunately there are still a few gullible people who share this crap without realizing that it’s just some turd trying to stir the pot.    

There are no government laws, rules, policies, or any other nefarious organizations out there who want to limit what people say to each other over the holidays. If you want to say merry Christmas, go for it. I’m 99.99% certain that there won’t be a mandatory jail sentence handed down if you do.  Unless of course, if you happen to be naked and flashing your raincoat while you are saying it, then all bets are off.  

The latest target in the pretend-war on Christmas is Starbucks. Apparently if you want to buy a seven dollar chai, mocha, low fat, latte decaf, with a candy cane stir-stick, you now get it in a holiday cup. These cups are the same as their regular ones except they are red. Yes, you read that correctly. Those bastards! How dare they? Instead of putting pictures of snowmen or reindeer onto their cups like they usually do they decided to go with a red cup and a white lid. I don’t know about you, but that’s enough to make me wonder why someone hasn’t reported them to the Human’s Rights Commission.

I understand how we can be sucked into bullshit agendas. I try really, really hard not to fall for this kind of stuff, but I can still get swept up in crap. For example, during the election someone started a movement to get niqabs banned from the swearing in ceremonies for Canadian citizenship, and I fell for it.  Not because I give two shits about what someone wears during the ceremony, but because I do care about women being forced to do things that they don’t want to do. In my mind, when I see a woman walking around wearing a sack over her head I immediately think that she is doing it because she has been brainwashed to do it since infancy. Or, some asshole is forcing her to look like a complete dweeb to make himself feel manly. So when I saw that meme I thought, “Dam right they shouldn’t wear one. It’s unsafe. What about security?” Ho-boy. Thanks Harper government, the pinnacle for promoting women’s rights in this country, for making me feel like an idiot.

I think it’s important to remember that when we begin to get offended after reading something on line, we need to start asking ourselves a few questions. Is this true? Do I really care? Could there possibly be a hidden agenda? What does Snopes have to say about it? Do I need to expend my time and energy with it? Would I look good wearing a Zorro mask?

Writing

Anyone who tells you that writing is easy has probably had a frontal lobotomy. Writing is hard work. Good writing is the hardest. The funny thing about it is that if I had to choose between an easy peasy lemon squeezy job and writing, I'd pick writing. It may be hard, it may be frustrating, it may be pretty skint in the paying department, but at the end of the day I still love the feeling of a word, sentence, paragraph, story...well written.

Summer the Season of Shit...

Wow! What a crazy summer it is. Why is it that we save all of our shit to do for the few months of the year when we should be out enjoying the shit out of it? Between moving crap from one house to another, raising chickens and guinea fowl, and painting, painting, and more painting a person can get no rest.

Thankfully it has been gorgeous this year. So much better than last year where it rained 24/7.

Quick, someone bring me a rum and Pepsi and get me to the beach.

War

I have a veritable war going on just outside my window. At any given moment my humming bird feeder will have anywhere from one to twenty would be customers. They zip about, they fight, they land, they flit, and they attack. Birds are mean.

My guineas are mean as well. Last year I started with six. One, ended up with an injured foot and automatically became low man on the pole. He (or she) was literally hen pecked all day long. Then one day death came in an instant, and just like that, a new low man was born. To me, it was hard to tell why, but to the others it was easy. They spent the rest of the summer chasing and pecking at him (her) until she too was murdered. Then a new low man was born.

I live in a rather secluded area and get to see many types of birds. We put out feed in the winter and watch them going in and out of their bird houses in the summer. They are blue, yellow, black, grey, red, pink, brown, and everything in between. They are big, small, fast, slow, in the air, and on the ground. Their behaviours are a varying as their looks, but the one thing which they all have in common is that they are assholes.

I can only imagine what this would was like when dinosaurs roamed the planet. Large, constantly shitting, and forever battling. Perhaps that asteroid did us a favour. At least the devolved species of dinosaurs are small.

A Lesson in Too Much

Yesterday was the first day I was able to get to my favourite sea-glass beach and go combing. When I arrived, a thick bank of white was sitting just off the shore and a fog horn across the bay kept up its steady tolling. It is in Old Lunenburg town. I couldn’t those colourful buildings, but I could picture the reds and yellows in my mind. I could picture its narrow streets, its funky little shops and its tar covered piers. I crunched over pebbles and sand while I listened to that horn and the sough and crash of the waves on the shore. At one point I looked up and just caught the stern of a sailing ship disappearing into the thick mists. It was like a scene right out of a Hollywood film. Did I actually see it? I stood for a long time looking out into the fog as tendrils of mist curled around my legs before blowing away like ephemeral spirits.

My very first glass find was a light blue piece, a rare treasure. I was thrilled. Normally I have to wander up and down, back and forth, to and fro for a couple of hours before I find anything so wonderful. My usual beach combing M.O. is to spend two hours wandering. I might find just enough pieces to cover the bottom of my bag. Once in a blue moon I fill it to the top. Yesterday I filled my bag in twenty minutes. Sea-glass lay scattered everywhere. Initially I was ecstatic, than as I bent down and picked my hundredth piece, leaving about twenty on the ground, I realized that this cornucopia of finds had reduced the experience. I felt cheated.

Literally there were too many to pick from. More than half the fun comes from the search. It came as a bit of an epiphany this act of finding too much and I realized that sometimes the best things in life come from a lot of work.

The fog moved further out to sea and I watched a lobster boat weave in and out of the curtain of white. The deep tolling of the horn kept up its warning of shallow waters and the tide began to move back in. I slung my bag of treasure over my arm and took one last deep breath of the wet, salty air, and then turned to leave. Sometimes the best things in life are free. Sometimes the best things in life come from knowing where to look. Sometimes the very best thing in life is what you have to work hard for. Understanding this lesson, deep down inside, is one treasure I did not expect to find yesterday.

Another Pile...

Yes, another day, another pile of the white stuff. I am living in Westeros where winter has arrived and isn't going anywhere, anytime soon. Four more inches.

I'm starting to work on putting together a bit of a writing class. I'm thinking of offering one in the fall. My nefarious reasons--because I want to surround myself with like minded people. I know, shocking. But when you have the bug, you have the bug, and there doesn't seem to be a cure for it. Even when I'm not writing, I think about writing. (Which I'm sure for those of you who can crank out the words day in and day out don't mean a thing. In order to produce, one must sit down and work, this, thinking about it, business is for losers.)

Speaking about thinking about it...time to get up and walk around before I seize up.