Fowl Play

Posted: Wed 31 October, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green Garden | Leave a comment »

I know, it’s a clichéd title – but hey ho. Live with it.

Anyway, we’ve had contact from the person supplying us with our chickens, coop, and all the guff for starting us off with three chickens. We pick them up on Sunday – just in time for my birthday. The coop is fuckin’ huge – 3′ x 2′ x 8′, so I’m hiring a van for the day to pick everything up.

In a bizarre way I’m actually looking forward to getting them – it’s going to make for some interesting times, having three chickens as well as Hound and Psycho Cat…

One Week To Go

Posted: Mon 29 October, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Own Business, Resolutions, Work-related | 1 Comment »

It’s hard to believe that in one week’s time I’m going to be thirty-bloody-six. It doesn’t seem like ten minutes ago that we were down in Roadwater for me being thirty-fucking-five.

This year, we’re not going to be going away for Fireworks Night. (Guy Fawkes, whatever) Instead, we’re going to see just what our new place is like when it comes to the joys of fireworks. So far, we haven’t heard any – which is a massive improvement on Bracknell, when we were getting them going off from about the start of October. The next village along will be doing a bonfire and firework display, but we’ve seen nothing about anything in our place.

Of course, we’ll still be working on exhausting Hound – we’ll most likely go up to the beach at Wells-next-the-Sea or Holkham, let her run round like a loon, and take a couple of toys for her to chase, catch and return. By the time we get home, she’ll be knackered enough that she’ll sleep through just about anything, on previous evidence.

At the same time there’s going to be a couple of big old posts about five year plans, resolutions and the like – they’ve been fun to write, and have helped me lay out some of the ideas for the coming year. Particularly as one of the checkpoints is just about crossed off already, which is a definite bonus…

Snoozy Pooch

Posted: Sun 28 October, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic | Leave a comment »

For whatever reasons, it’s obviously been a busy (and tiring) weekend for Hound. She’s currently fast asleep in her basket, with just the occasional wake-up and look-round thing going on.

It’s very sweet – and gives us both an excuse to do Not Much, so that Hound can snooze on. Not that we needed much of an excuse, to be honest.

Downside

Posted: Wed 17 October, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Own Business, Work-related | Leave a comment »

The downside of working from home?

Hound is being an awesome pain in the arse. She’s already been taken out for a walk, but still wants to be played with, and is just being really fucking annoying.

I may have to do some thinking about this. I’m meeting with another potential client, so at least then I’ll be out of the house. At that point, maybe Hound will shut the chuff up.

She’s going to have to get used to these changes too, but if she’d just bloody lie down and sleep like she normally does during the day, that’d make life one hell of a lot easier!

Routine

Posted: Fri 12 October, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic | 2 Comments »

I’ve commented many times before about the fact that Hound is distinctly autistic, and has what amounts to a very set routine to get her through the day. This has eased up slightly since we started her on the homeopathic pills (known colloquially round Chez Lyle as ‘Happy Pills’- it’s a pretty descriptive name, really) but she is still highly driven by her routines and patterns. A lot of the time it’s a pain in the arse, but at the same time it also gives us a good indicator when something’s wrong, because the pattern changes to her “not feeling well” one.

Anyway, she’s happier when everything is routine, and she knows what’s going on, and (I think most importantly) what’s likely to happen next. At the moment mornings, in particular, are a case in point for this. She still doesn’t actually like me leaving the house – despite plenty of knowledge that I will be coming back later – but so long as the morning follows her timetable pretty well, she’s OK with it.

The knock-on effect of this, though, is that it means I’ve also developed a kind of routine for the morning. In fairness, it’s probably no bad thing to be working on auto-pilot when it’s 5.30 in the morning. But I do find it interesting how easily I slip into a routine of my own – I’ve written before about the fact that despite the fact I like to think I’m pretty random, I do have a lot of bits of my life that fall into their own patterns, which I still find weird, but there we go.

As it is, though, it just makes life easier in the mornings to have that pattern – it means Hound still gets stressy when (for example) I put my bag by the front door, as it means I’m going to be leaving soon, but so long as I keep things fairly standard, she’s then fine when it comes time for me to lock up the back door, and go out the front.

It has to be said, sometimes I don’t know who’s more insane – us or Hound.

Plucking Hell

Posted: Mon 10 September, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green | 1 Comment »

So yes, after yesterday’s visit to the chicken place, it looks almost certain that we’ll be getting some chickens before the end of the year – and quite probably some time in October.

Whether we buy them from the place we visited, or (as Lionel suggests) we try to get some ex-battery hens that’re in need of rehoming (and that would then just have to be called Duracell, Ever Ready, and Energiser) is something that has yet to be decided. Ethically, we’d like to go for the latter, but there’re also the issues about a) finding the ex-battery hens, and b) the fact we’ve never done this before.

Perhaps on that score we’re better off starting off with new birds, rather than ones that’ve already had a crap start, and (in our case) will certainly have “issues”. Mind you, the ones with “issues” would fit in with our other animals… Then again, it’d be nice to have at least one sane creature in the house. (Not literally “in” the house, in the case of chickens, but ohhhh, you get what I mean)

It’s certainly going to be interesting, though.

What’s that coming over the hill?

Posted: Fri 7 September, 2007 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic | Leave a comment »

Last night, we got another reminder of just what a total fanny Hound can be.

The garden has a large number of frogs in it – no bad thing at all – and last night, a tiny one had made its way into the kitchen. When I say tiny, I mean one that’s a maximum of 2 or 3cm in size. That’s it.

Not that you’d believe it, if you’d seen Hound’s reaction. Total meltdown, panic, faffing about, whining, just not knowing what to do at all. If she’d have been able to speak, the conversation would’ve been something along the lines of “Look, look, there, I don’t know what it is, it’s a monster! Run! Run! Hide! It’s a monster!”

She is such a fanny.

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