MFA Mama

updates from the animal kingdom

*   Black bears, y'all. Remember that fight Hotter and I had back in the The Summer of Surgimacallititis (kind of like The Summer of Love, except instead of peace, love, and hippies there were ER trips, rampant assholery, and surgical staples) where he basically pooh-poohed my fears? Black bears have become kind of a standing joke/sore subject in our household: we'll see one in a zoo/nature preserve and I'll point out on the information plaque that TECHNICALLY our state is within their natural habitat range, or there'll be a random noise in the woods behind our house and Hotter'll go "it's probably a black bear--HOLD ONTO YOUR FACE!" Har. Aaaaanyway, this morning as I was getting ready for work I noticed the most recent edition of the small-town free newspaper that comes with the junk mail, and right there on the cover? WAS A PICTURE OF A BLACK BEAR WITH AN ARTICLE ABOUT HOW ONE TRIED TO EAT A DEER HUNTER AND SIGHTINGS ARE ON THE RISE! Of course I woke Hotter up to crow over this. "Awww look at him," Hotter said, squinting at the picture of the bear (it wasn't the one that menaced the hunter, which he shot, it was just a stock-type photo of one sitting in a tree), "they're like Labradors that climb trees!" The bear in the picture did look kind of cute. Except that probably that is how they look when they're thinking about eating someone's face.

*   I...think I may have lost a friend over the rabbits. Yes, the rabbits. Said friend has rabbits. WE have recently acquired rabbits. But we view and treat our rabbits differently from how this friend views and treats HER rabbits and therein, apparently, lies the crux. There are many schools of thought on keeping rabbits, ranging from "tastes like chicken" and "these are our pets but their babies are dinner" all the way on up through "that's the rabbits' room" and "of course we don't CAGE them, we just rabbit-proof our ENTIRE HOUSE because OMG THEY ARE LIKE KITTENS THAT HOP." I used to have horses, and horse people tend to run toward The Crazy (with occasional super-cool exception--of course I didn't mean YOU if YOU have a horse!), but rabbit people, as it turns out? Rabbit people are also disproportionately touched by The Crazy (although if YOU have a rabbit then of course I didn't mean YOU; YOUR rabbit is tasty/adorable/pick one). Maybe it is just something about animals that eat hay? 

*   Worms: does anyone know, off the top of their head, whether you can start a worm bin with just regular old worms from the dirt that you find when you're digging in your garden? If so, I may try and start one when I begin preparing beds outside. If not, though, well. I'm not paying for a bunch of damn worms.

*   Finally, and this is totally random, because apparently even though Casa MFA is zoned Agricultural and plenty of people in similar neighborhoods in this very county DO have critters, if your neighbors/cyberstalkers are dicks there are ways of keeping you from pursuing happiness/low-impact sustainable eating by having any animal you want and that DASHED MY HOPES so I'm just saying: man I wish we could have goats here. Sigh.

ad space for sale

   So the most amazing thing happened last week, y'all. I got an e-mail with the subject "Advertising Inquiry," in which a nice person from Frugal Dad expressed an interest in buying ad space on my sidebar for a 160x300 widget (oh look, over on the left--THERE IT IS!). I had been disgruntled with AdBrite for a while (they're not a bad company or anything, in fact they've always been very good to me and are, in my experience, the most flexible of the ad companies to deal with in that you don't have to be HUGE or claw your way up a long waiting list to work with them) due to some of the ad content and the way they kept bugging out people's antiviral software (mine included). Again, it's TOTALLY NOT ADBRITE'S FAULT I was unhappy, it wasn't them, it was me: I didn't like having random ads whose products I may or may not hate popping up and while I could have cracked down and restricted things to what I personally approved, I also wasn't thrilled with the ratio of income-generated-by-ads to headaches-generated-by-ads in general.

   I was going to try BlogHer ads, but then when they approved me off the waiting list I was busy with life and working at a job that didn't feature computer access, so filling out the paperwork kind of got back-burnered and I lost my spot. BUMMER!

   Then came the e-mail from the Frugal Dad folks asking about my rates for a one-year ad placement. I asked them what size/type of ad and whether they had any URLs they could send me of examples, and proceeded to Google the HELL out of "blog ad space rates" and "ad rates by blog traffic" and such. They thought about it for a few days and kindly put me out of my misery by sending a URL and naming their own price, which...WELL OH MY GOODNESS. I'm sure it'd be nothing to the likes of The Big Dogs in Blogging, but the figure they tossed out was A Lot of Money by MFA Standards, and between that and the fact that the ad itself is quite unobjectionable (and having checked Frugal Dad out, it even seems like a pretty cool site that I'll use now that I know about it), I happily accepted. SO! Just like that, I apparently now sell ad space.

   Do any of you have any interest in buying ad space here? I can send you my rates if you are, but I'm also willing to entertain any and all quasi-reasonable alternate offers (pretty much the only way I'll say no is if your ad button is a picture of your unwashed taint or you want me to design and write the HTML for your ad that you only want to send me a coupon code for by way of payment). If you have an Etsy shop that features products I might enjoy and want to work out a barter, or pay in holiday gift-cards to merchants you don't love but that I don't mind patronizing, I'm even down with that. Because hey, I'm the boss, right? Look at me sitting here typing LIKE A BOSS!

   How are all of YOU?

on strike, back tomorrow

   If you don't know what the strike is about, go here for more information. And someone remind me to fix the damn header when this is over with. Cheers!

it's not apathy, it's GREEN

   I don't know, y'all. There's a whole lot of ugh in my life right now, including (but not limited to! NEVER limited!):

   * My SI joint is still a dick, although it's improving, thank goodness.
   * I am getting a fresh cold, and am very bloaty, which...well, I'm trying to think positive and tell myself I'm just coming down with a virus and very, very hormonal (yes, THAT is me thinking positive these days) but I'm worried it's going to turn into another sinus/ear debacle, which I can't afford on any level.
   * Hotter and I had to have A Big Talk, of the "What The Hell, Dude, No SERIOUSLY Have You Lost Your Mind" variety. It went well, which was a relief (I'd been avoiding this particular talk for fear of coming off like some kind of asshole, but then I realized that bottling it all up until I snapped and beat him to death wouldn't really be very non-assholy either). I think he know Some Things Had To Change. We're not, like, On The Rocks or anything. But the thing with Hotter and me is, even though we've had the occasional wobble, I still put him on a pedestal as The Light At The End Of My Twenties, Saver Of My Sanity and am therefore unreasonably disappointed when he effs up, as well all tend to do (yes, even yours truly, which is probably a good thing as I just turned thirty-three and that was not a very good year for the LAST perfect Jew, or so rumor has it).
   * My ex-husband. Oh my word, y'all, I can't even. Really, I can't. He is largely to blame for this recent autoimmune bullshit; stress triggers that stuff in me in the very worst way and it is no great coincidence in my mind that while I was mostly bed-bound and on copious time-release morphine during the last years of the XY's and my marriage, I was upright and fully-functional, working for a living within mere weeks of kicking him to the curb. I have had to re-draw a line with him that I smudged and finally pretty much erased after his big car accident, namely I will not communicate with him off-record anymore, at all, effective immediately. I had relaxed on my "texts, e-mails, and talks in front of third-party witnesses ONLY" policy after his near-death experience briefly rendered him a kinder, gentler XY, and it was going okay for a while, but either he is over his post-concussion syndrome or has gone off his antipsychotics or hell, I dunno, maybe CATHERINE! stopped putting out or something...at any rate the result is no bueno. I can sit here right now, having not spoken to that man about it in DAYS and say that of COURSE he isn't going to succeed in taking my children away from me, because I am a (mostly) good parent, they are happy, healthy, and well-adjusted in my care, and he is an unstable, unreliable bastard who doesn't follow court orders worth a damn and has THREE psychological conditions that would render any sane human being dubious about awarding him full custody of a GOLDFISH on record with the judge. But five minutes of him screaming at me and calling me names on the phone on a day when I am feeling vulnerable can CONVINCE me that I'd better go home IMMEDIATELY (as in, leave work--I really almost did) and hug my babies because my days of seeing them regularly are numbered. I hate admitting that, and it feels like weakness to have to set these kinds of limits with that wretched man. As a psychologist friend of mine recently reminded me, though, he is a sociopath and I am not. It's not a fair fight. There is no shame in defending my sanity. And maybe if I say that enough times it will start to ring true? I dunno. 

   All that is to say that I think I'm going to stop shampooing my hair. Wait, what? No, really. Lately I'm knee-deep in Novella Carpenter's blog archives and so jealous of her for having goats that I can hardly see straight. I miss my poultry. I'm planning on acquiring a rain barrell and diverting the grey water from our washing machine for garden use in the Spring (I'm already making my own bio-friendly laundry detergent), and lately, with finances being what they are, I am trying to figure out some ways that I can be green and be frugal at the same time. One of those is that I'm breaking free of as many personal care products as possible (except toilet paper and good ol' highly-carcinogenic industrial-strength antiperspirant--there are LIMITS to my insanity, y'all). I've already stopped using lotion (instead I use coconut oil with a jot of lavendar essential oil in after showers for now, although I have Big Plans for when we get our bees up and running and have access to beeswax on the regular) and fancy leave-in conditioner products (I use the same combination on my ends as I use on my skin, actually). Next up to get the boot, when I run out of what is currently in the house? Shampoo.

   I'm not mired in depression and apathy, I'm GREEN. 

   Okay, fine, there's maybe some overlap. Or maybe my friend Morgan is to blame for sending me her copy of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer and pushing me over the brink of dirty hippie-dom. Either way.

   How are all of YOU?

contented

   Three hours in a minivan with children is its' own special kind of hell, but it was worth it:

Figure One: Instabunnies! Has on the left and Pfeffer on the right. They are pure white; the dark shadowing in Pfeffer's left ear is her rabbitry tattoo.

   We stopped at the feed store we used to use when we had the MFA Flock on the way home. Winter greeted me with a smile and a "long time no see." She was sorry to hear about our birds but pleased to sell us a bag of rabbit chow, bundle of cedar shavings, and 60-lb bale of compressed alfalfa hay (I have no idea whether two bunnies can consume that whole thing before it goes musty or not, but considering that a "bunny bale" from the pet store is half the cost, an eighth the quality, and 1/30th the size I think it was a sound purchase). From there we triumphantly returned home and installed our rabbits in a large tank that has housed generations of poultry and various reptiles.

   Since it seemed like a celebratory occasion, we roasted a whole chicken with herbs from the garden cut into butter shoved under the skin. It made the whole house smell like a holiday, and everyone enjoyed it (even picky Little Child, who scorns most meat, had four helpings of the moist, flavorful breast). After dinner, we took the bunnies out to pet and fuss over.

   I was holding Has when my children quite literally scared the shit out of him by getting up in his face. He let loose, filling the palm of my hand with dry, round rabbit turds, some of which rolled onto the floor and bounced around. The children shrieked, the rabbit looked terrified, and I took him to join Pfeffer in pulling apart a handful of alfalfa back in their cedar-scented home and picked up the mess. I poured the manure-balls around the base of my potted Dwarf Meyer Lemon as the children squealed in disgust, and gave the plant a cup of water to start washing the nutrients into the soil.

   I think we're going to enjoy having bunnies.

 

rabbit

   So work today got canceled (boooo) and I got to sleep in (which still means I was up before eight, because I have kind of lost the ability to sleep late). The boys should be home from their father's soon and I am effing DETERMINED that this will be a good day.

   To that end, we are all packing up and going on a road trip to pick up some baby bunnies, because baby animals are nature's finest (legal) antidepressant. We're getting a boy and a girl. Any ideas for names? So far Has and Pfeffer are in the lead but I'm open to ideas.

   Fact of the day: rabbit manure is the only kind of manure you can put directly on the roots of plants without composting first (chicken poo, horse poo, etc. will burn your plants' roots due to the nitrogen content if you use it fresh).

yesterday sucked too, actually

   Oh ha HA! Yesterday after I posted Hotter ROYALLY pissed me off and...well, I might no longer be married if I hadn't been too crippled up to kick his ass, because he really effed up. 

   On the bright side, I was so furious I cleaned the bathroom, hallway, and kitchen. And they all needed it.

   Today I worked again, which was just as well, I think. I also work tomorrow (PseudoCorp is closed but New Weekend Warrior Job is not), which is good. We need the money since it's another short week at PseudoCorp (made even shorter by the face that Hotter OOPS FORGOT to tell me he has Transplant Clinic this week! Yes! HI THERE NEW BOSS, I NEED A DAY OFF WITH VERY LITTLE NOTICE BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE AROUND HERE ARE REALLY FUCKING INCONSIDERATE, OMG SOMEONE SHOOT ME PLEASE).

   I still feel like utter crap. I don't even know, y'all. Something's got to give, and soon, because I can take a lot of shit but there are LIMITS, y'know?

at least I was right...

...when I predicted that today would suck.

   I spent today wondering why everything was so fucking awful. I thought it was that all of the "OMG I almost ended up without a job when we had NO savings" (but I got the new job, which it turns out is something I could rock with one hand tied behind my back and the people I am working with continue to be lovely) plus "GAHHHH HIGHER RENT NOOOO!" stress had finally caught up to me, but while that is MORE than enough to ruin a gal's sunny disposition it was worse than that. 

   I woke up this morning in the throes of a fullblown autoimmune clusterfuck, complete with sacroiliitis (which, well, I guess that'll teach me to snivel over the World's Worst Heartburn sensation of a gelcap disintegrating in my lower esophagus). As something of a pain connoisseur I have to say that sacroiliiac pain is really up there and one of my very least-favorite things. Booo, body.

   It got preempted by the Day of OMG SUCK yesterday, but I meant to tell y'all that the XY had been a (reluctant, heavily coached, but I was still prepared to give credit where credit seemed to be due) mensch and agreed to kick in an extra fifty dollars per month so we wouldn't have to move IF I could talk the landlord into a fifty-dollar raise in rent instead of the proposed hundred-dollar one (yes, the XY is STILL underpaying in terms of child support but oh well). But that was yesterday, and today when I called to tell him that yes, I had succeeded in talking the landlord down to a fifty-dollar increase and make extra sure before agreeing to sign a new lease that he would keep his word the XY cursed me out, accused me of "nickel and diming" him, called me a liar about the rent, and threatened to sue me and take the children away if I left the school district. Which was how I came to spend nearly an hour discreetly weeping at work.

   And then the PMS Buddy reminder e-mail arrived, an apparent day late. Ballllls. Et tu, ovary?

   All in all I feel like I've been beaten heavily with a bat and left for dead by my thirty-third birthday, and my hiatal hernia is still killing me, and I'm working an eight-hour shift tomorrow as a prep-cook for a local banquet through Temp Agency #2. If my stomach was up for it and I didn't have to work and I had the cash to go to the liquor store I think I'd be looking for the bottom of a bottle right now, but as it stands I'm going to...

...EVIDENTLY PASS THE HELL OUT! The above was written yesterday, 1/13 and I fell asleep writing it. Work today was good. Still in hella pain but oh well. Feeling slightly less grim about things over all; it seems Temp Agency #2 might be able to find me weekend work on the regular and maybe the demise of Weekend Warrior job won't have such a major impact on my little family, after all? At any rate, this year's birthday was not my favorite but at least it's over, and thank you to all of my sweet friends on here and the facespace for your kind words, small presents (OMG PEOPLE GAVE ME PRESENTS?!?) and reminders that no matter how bad it gets, y'all care. I...am going to go wash the fryer-grease smell out of my hair and probably go right to sleep.

bad day

   Yesterday wasn't done hurting me after I published my last post, because one of my bedtime pills stuck in my hiatal hernia on the way down.

   I spent the night mostly awake in searing agony. I got up several times, to take TUMS, to take naproxen (yes, I know, horrid for the stomach actually but it was 2:30 a.m. and I was desperate), to eat yogurt...nothing helped. It's not quite as bad as the last time this happened, I think because it wasn't motherfucking Clindamycin in the capsule in question, but it's close. Hopefully the GI bleeding won't be as bad this time, because last time I did have a few dizzy spells.

   I almost didn't go to work this morning. Hotter literally nudged me, moaning, off the bed with his foot, and before you hate all over him (keep reading, he gets his later I promise) it was a good thing I went in because I managed to finagle another temp job out of PseudoCorp that'll keep things afloat for another two months.

   Then comes the part that pushed me over the edge, and I wish I could tell y'all about it, especially since nobody at work was being an asshole (quite the contrary, actually), but I am too paranoid about what Eyeballs Who Dislike Me would try to make of it and who they would try to make it to so I can't. So instead I'll just say that everyone involved in my new position seems positively lovely and I really look forward to showing them my gratitude for the job by rocking it.

   I went home, and Hotter made a fabulous Bambi Stroganoff for dinner, and then the children were acting out because they need more attention, but I was tired and bitter and in an unbelievable amount of pain, and we proceeded to have a horrible evening. EVERYBODY demonstrated the absolute worst facets of their personalities. EVERYONE. And then I sent the grounded children to bed crying with admonitions that I just couldn't. Take. One. More. Thing. and then Hotter accidentally wiped a hunk of raw chicken ALL OVER THE KITCHEN in the process of preparing the dogs' food and I LOST IT. I have issues with raw chicken. It is gross. He knows this, and chose to berate me for using hot soapy water to clean it up when there was hand sanitizer closer to the scene of the crime against my sensibilities, and that, gentle readers, is when I as a grown-ass woman of nearly thirty-three years old beaned my husband with a large, wilted carrot.

   Do I really have to say anything more about my mental state than that? I assaulted the person who loves me most with a wilted root vegetable. Shiiiiit.

   In the midst of my subsequent bawling, Middle Child got out of bed and apologized for his role in the evening and told me not to cry, that he knew I was doing my best, and oh, y'all. My kids deserve a better mother.

   Tomorrow is my birthday. I can't afford to take the day off, even if it's just to go to the doctor, because I don't have the co-pay. Honestly I kinda hope I get lucky and bleed out in my sleep, because it's the happiest ending I can think of right now, but chances are I'll wake up feeling like death itself and a torrent of shit will rain down on me from the sky the moment I walk out the front door.

   And you?

crappy anniversary to meeee!

*   MFA Landlord, when Hotter e-mailed him to ask about a new lease, voiced his intention to raise the rent by a hundred a month. Which...well, if it was JUST that it wouldn't QUITE break us, but with that AND my health insurance going up AND the MFA Minivan being, unexorably, drifting away toward The Big Junkyard In The Sky...no. So our lease is up at the end of the month, and we may have to move. We'll see. The house clearly wants us to stay, being as it's unsaleable without $20k in septic system renovations, tiny, possessed of only one bathroom (in need of tilework), drafty, reminiscent of nothing so much as a brick shoebox, and in a very odd little neighborhood. To rent it out to anyone else the landlord would have to paint the entire interior, fix the bathroom up, repair a few other miscellaneous things, and generally spend at least one month of vacancy sprucing it up. And realistically he's not likely to get any more for it than we're already paying. So there's that. We've countered with "well in that case can we have three months at the old rent amount to find a new place to live; we wanted to stay but can't afford (another) rent increase, plus you promised us there would not be one." We'll see, I guess. I am Very Worried and also bitter as when this news came I was moments away from clicking "confirm purchase" on seeds and other supplies for this year's garden. Balllls.

*   But that's not all! Apparently PseudoCorp told me the truth in the interview about my position being temporary. Which means that either they weren't truthful with Temp Agency #1 or else Temp Agency #1 was overly optimistic when they described the job to me as being temp-to-hire (I have no way of knowing which it was and would be maligning an entity that has helped to feed my family if I ventured a guess either way, so I will refrain from verging into conjecture; either way it sucks). Apparently now that they've hired someone for a key position, The One Who Dislikes Me (who has been downright decent lately...all in all there are much worse people to work with and if my next job is with a bunch of lazy cretins I know I will miss her quiet and innocuous competence) will go back to doing the job I've been doing, and I will be going the way of the dodo. Sigh. There are three potential rays of hope that I am trying to cling to right now or I'd be a total basketcase: first, the co-worker who is on the way to becoming a friend may have a lead on a permanent position within the company that I'd be suited to, second, there was mention of another department within the company needing a temp (said department has one of those incomprehensible corporate-speak names that tells me NOTHING about what they actually do, so I dunno whether I'd be qualified or even able to fake it convincingly just yet) and I'd have a leg up in that I already know a lot about the company, know people's names and positions, and have a badge and a parking pass, and third, Temp Agency #1 might have something for me (they're looking--I expressed my dismay to them about the situation and they were apologetic). I've also been scouring local job postings and there's at least ONE full-time with-benefits position listed currently that I think I'd be qualified for. Which is approximately 100% more than there's been in weeks. 

*   I can't really tolerate even thinking too hard about being potentially jobless and homeless by the end of the month, because it will break me, so let's not discuss either of those possibilities any further. The landlord will surely be reasonable and I will find something. That is how it HAS to work out. SO LET IT BE WRITTEN, SO FUCKING WELL LET IT BE DONE.

*   It's Hotter's and my second anniversary today. Things could be a whole lot better in our lives right now, but the marriage itself is still a great big win and as I told him earlier today, "there is no one else I would rather be co-piloting this flaming shitshow of a plane with besides you." He made this for dinner and it was fabulous. So at least there's that.

*   How are all of YOU?