Go Spain!

I take note of things to do with Spain mostly because of Grandpa Alfred's interest in it. Today his interest and mine overlap though, the news said Spain has legalized same sex marriage. Good for Spain. Especially considering how catholic the country is in general.

Cardeau is improving now, although it took some further washing and cleaning out around his horns Monday, and a couple of changes of medication. Now the regime includes two shots a day, and covering the open skin area with a medicated cold cream. But he no longer stinks, which is a big plus.

We're looking in to sending out this year's wool for processing in to yarn. Is anyone interested in, eventually, buying some Jacob yarn? I don't have a clue what the price will be yet, it is priced by the pound for the cleaning and spinning, but I don't know how many skeins per pound we'll end up with.

The processing of wool is somewhat delayed as we wait for the insurance company to get its ducks in a row and send us the payments it says we are owed. We were told to replace things, turn in the receipts, and we'd get reimbursement. So, months have passed. Credit cards wait to be paid. And Insurance, or possibly the adjuster aren't in a rush. There has also been debate over whether some things, such as some of my yarns, are actually worth what we listed them for. This is mainly, I suspect, because the adjuster is thinking of this rather than what I had in the house which was more along the lines of this. More of my yarns were actually from local shops, and some were yarns that are no longer made, and many were from Joslyn's Fiber Farm which wouldn't load politely for me this morning. Around the time of the coffee gathering last summer I had Zara's helpful daughters winding balls of lace weight yarn from some I had salvaged and washed. Now, of course, I don't know where it is again, but I'm determined not to let it go to waste if I can clean it, unlike some of the fire damaged things.

I visited the Eugene Waldorf school briefly to drop off payment for Logan's two week s of summer art classes in July. She was at Lorane Little School on her own for the day. She's concluded that she likes to be able to stay for the whole day while I go to do errands in Eugene, which is a big change after the two and a half years of me being there constantly while she was. I may have to find a good place to Knit in town now. I think Logan's going to really enjoy her morning's at Waldorf School in the second half of July. It makes me wish it wasn't an hour's drive to get there, so she could go more often.

Today Aidan is four years old. We'll see him at Library Story Time, and probably for lunch and some play time in the afternoon. He was six weeks old when I first met him, although my main memory of him from that meeting was that he was in cloth diapers, which made his mom, now my friend, Andrea, the first other mom using cloth who I'd met in the Roseburg area. We found we had more in common as Aidan joined Logan in not appreciating cow's milk in his mother's diet.

I've been having some trouble getting to both email and Dreams and Bones web page, I suspect it's from my end, either my computer or my isp. If you have trouble with them, send a note -- and if you don't hear back from me, send it again. Email mostly seems to get to me, but about 1/3 of what I send vanishes in to the ether never to be seen again. Um, Cher-wa, I should note I am getting your email, and I keep thinking I'll answer it, but I haven't yet. :-)

As for Saturday:

We took a stinky Ram to the vet. He's always had, evidently, an itchy nose. And sometimes he gets an infection where he's rubbed the skin too much. This time it wasn't backing off with home treatments. So we hauled him in to Dr Mary at Sutherlin Vet, who is sympathetic, even to smelly sheep.

Cardu had his face and around his horns scrubbed with betadine, and shaved, and had a shot of antibiotics. And we repeat that once a day, plus give him a small tablet of "bute" twice a day. He's not finicky, if we put it on his grain and dump a little molasses on it, he doesn't even notice it. We go back in two weeks to see if he's doing better, and with luck, smelling better.

Aside from that, we had an exciting day of clearing things out of the workshop and moving them to the house, the cabin, the trash. . . there was way more cat pee on things than I'd have liked. And no kind book fairy came and magically cleaned the sooty books that are in boxes waiting for me to check them for sentimental books before finding someone to donate them too. We still have Patrick Parker's books too, four boxes all in a stack. Not sooty fortunately, and waiting for him to claim them again some day, when we match schedules or one of us manages to travel in the right direction.

We've seen signs of a skunk living around her for a while. The barn cat was sleeping in the same nest, maybe even snuggled up to the skunk for part of the winter from the smell of her. I saw the skunk on my way out to lock in the chickens last week, and we'd thought one might have nested under the chicken coop last year. Now, in addition to the cats, the workshop smells of skunk. I kept waiting to move a box or suitcase had find her! So far no skunk. Maybe she'll decide it's not a good place to be and move out again. Or maybe she's just there to eat the cat's food.

Disposable Digital . . .

Did you know you can get a disposable digital camera? It's not even as horridly expensive as it might be. There is info on it on this page. Basically it's $11, plus around the same to get a set of prints and a cd with your pictures on it. Not perfect, but it's a step. Maybe even in the right direction since they recycle the camera's. Mom & Cheryl, do you have a Wolf camera around? Or the other one the mention in the article?

Party Aftermath:

John: "Logan, when I asked you to move that lemon, I didn't mean in to the bathroom."
Logan: "oh."

John: "it's quiet in there, what's she doing?"
Penelope: "making birdseed cake."
John: "oh."

Andrea, Andrea and Penelope sitting inside: "where are the kids?" "outside swinging garden tools and pool noodles at each other." "oh".

We had a houseful of twenty people, from age Taylor (5 months +/-) on up. Vegetarians, carnivores, cow's milk free, egg free, nursing and milking. (not the same people.) Eva brought her mother, who was happy to see the bee hives as the daughter of a bee keeper. Madalyn (age 2) happily carried an egg to John (after Aidan and Logan carried it in from the chicken coop), and received a boiled egg to carry around with her instead. Judith and John put together his grill and shisk kabobs were grilled by Steve. Keith build a fire (in the wood stove) for Daphne, and then chopped up pineapple for grilling and not grilling. Joana remembered to write down the ingredients in her pound cake. Neither cake was dairy free, but Logan never noticed since there was dairy free whipped topping to put on the chopped strawberries Joana and Steve picked and brought. People ate, and drank and followed children. It was a success! It was a blur.

Reactive

I'd say I've inherited mom's tendency to um, overreact to some insect bites and stings.


A couple hours after the sting


late last night

The sting causing the swelling was directly above my eye, about half an inch behind my hair line. The other sting was on the top of my ear on the opposite side. It's causing swelling too, but mostly behind the ear, and not so much at all. It itches, but other than that I can forget about it. The one in my scalp, well the sting doesn't bother me at all but the swelling is a bit annoying. As is the headache.

I did take pictures of my reaction to the set of stings from May 5 too, where swelling was even more impressive. But I haven't wanted to study them closely enough to edit them. Yet.

Onion on my head

Like egg on my face? No, not exactly. Ty recommends a slice of raw onion on bee stings to "draw out the poison" effectively. I got two stings today, scalp and top of ear, so I'm trying it. It's not making my eyes tear up. Yet.

I got called today to see if I wanted to capture and relocate a "hive" of honey bees that was in the wall of a building that's to be torn down. I was willing to try. Now Logan and I have a box of bees and honey comb in the car, and when John gets home, shortly, we'll go set up a hive box and move them in.

My new bee suit works well. The stings were between taking it off and getting in the car. My appointment for bee venom testing tomorrow, probably canceled. I was to have no antihistamines for a week, and no stings for at least a week. So of course this is the day before it. Ah well. No shock, no need to use the epi pen, so far so good.

The party is in two days. Mostly we've heard from people who can't make it. I'm hoping some few do.