3 1/2

Posted on May 23, 2013 by Tracy

(He loves this shirt because the cat is using the copier to make more cats. He only wants to wear shirts that involve cats.)

I’m not gonna lie. 3 1/2 is a challenging age. Is it like this for everyone? I’m guessing it is. There’s a lot of yelling, not for any reason but just because that’s the kind of voice you want to use when you’re 3 1/2. EVERYTHING IS VERY EXCITING. MOMMY LOOK WHAT I DID! And the mommy-look-what-I-dids are awesome and I’m not complaining about them. But there’s also the conversations that go like this, when you’re in the middle of folding laundry or washing dishes or making almond milk because you’re a goddamn hippie or editing summaries of court of appeals opinions:

Him: Mommy, can I have [insert name of thing here]?

Me: Yes, just a minute.

Him: Mommy, can I have [insert name of thing here]?

Me: Yes, in a minute.

Him: Mommy, can I have [insert name of thing here]?

Me: Son, you need to learn the value of patience. (Not really.)

Him: Mommy, can I have [insert name of thing here]?

Me: One second!

Him: Mommy, can I have [insert name of thing here]?

Me: AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

When you’re 3 1/2, there is no “in a minute.” There is only now. And that’s cool, but I’m not particularly well-suited for dealing with these kinds of intrusions on my flow. In the rare event I’m focusing on completing a given task, I want to complete the shit out of that task before I go get you something else and then wander around for the next half hour like I just consumed too much mescaline in Vegas in 1971.

Today out of nowhere, Soren looked at me and said, “Mommy, I’m sorry I’ve been getting you all riled up lately.” To tell you the truth, he kind of rolled over “riled up,” like he knew what he wanted to say but wasn’t sure he was saying it right. “I’m sorry I’ve been so grumpy,” I said, and gave him a hug. “Now we can be friends again,” he said. And I hugged him forever and we were friends again until five minutes later when he yelled and asked me for something 900 times and then we were friends again and when you’re 3 1/2, the highs are so high but man, the lows are so low and you never know what you’re going to get next.

Also your 3 1/2-year-old might sing this song 800 times a day.

Redesign!

Posted on May 22, 2013 by Tracy

Yesterday, I completely redesigned this site, if by “redesigned” I mean switched to a different theme, which is something I don’t think I’ve done since I started blogging here in 2006. Everything should function as well (or as poorly) as before, and I hope you like it!

If that’s not exciting enough, here’s a picture of Soren enjoying a peanut at last night’s Rockies game.

Chicken Coop & Garden Tour

Posted on May 20, 2013 by Tracy

So, here’s what’s been happening in our yard.

Here is the framed chicken coop, with the interior wall about to go in. All window and vent openings are covered in hardware cloth. The main thing you need to know about building a chicken coop and run, if you’re into that sort of thing, is that when they’re inside, the chickens must be surrounded on all sides by a solid surface (such as wood) or hardware cloth. That includes above and under the ground of the run portion — yes, you have to dig up some dirt, install hardware cloth along the ground and attach it to something, be it other hardware cloth or a frame) and then put the dirt back in. Otherwise, you might have wildlife or Rottweilers digging into your chicken run, and nobody wants that. We used 1/2-inch hardware cloth from Amazon, because it was the best price we found. (When the coop is finished, I’ll let you know how much it cost and provide links to stuff we bought online. For now, I’m living in denial.)

The triangle on top here is a vent. One thing I learned from my extensive perusal of backyardchickens.com is that your chicken coop needs more ventilation than you might think, even in winter. So we (well, Ben) put in lots.

Here is a view of the beautiful linoleum floor Ben got from Habitat for Humanity. It’s always good to visit places like H4H just to see if you can score any materials on the cheap, or cheep if you’re a chicken. (Sorry.) I was partial to the blue floral linoleum tiles, but we figured a big sheet would be cleaner.

Back of the coop, also with a big vent area. The big open space is where the nest boxes will go.

View of the other side wall, featuring one vent and one window.

Looking toward the run.

Here are the framed and linoleum-ed nest boxes. We certainly don’t need 3 nest boxes for 3 chickens, but we can have as many as 8 chickens in Denver, so Ben designed everything to accommodate as many as 8 chickens.

Side view of nest boxes. The nest box roof is a door that opens upward, so we can reach in to gather eggs.

This is the current state of the coop. This weekend, Ben did the flashing on the roof, put in a ton of insulation, and installed the windows (there’s another window across from this one on the other side) and the outer walls. The windows are shed windows, installed so they can be opened and closed from the outside.

From here you can see the human doors to the coop and, on the right, to the run. Both have locks, mainly because we don’t want to risk any child we know opening a door on his own.

Here you can see the coop and run, as well as the main plot of our garden. Here’s what’s in there:

arugula (in a container)
mint (in a container — always put mint in a container because it is super aggressive)
spinach
onions
carrots
3 kinds of lettuce
kale
tomatillos
jalapenos
Joe E. Parker peppers
pepperoncini
broccoli
brussel sprouts
tomatoes, including several heirloom varieties

This looks like ass, but bear with me. When it comes to gardening, we are passionate about two things: spending as little money as possible and using what we already have. This giant thing used to be part of a trellis that Ben removed to make room for the chicken run. Rather than throw it out, we’re using it to keep the dogs off our plants. Here we have several varieties of cucumbers (marketmore, lemon, homemade pickles, something else, and maybe something else — I want to make pickles this year and cucumbers are great for juice, so I wanted to have as many cucumber plants as possible); edamame; zucchini; and mini eggplants. Way in back are a few more tomato plants in containers — Ben put our favorites in containers: peacevine (which are little), red pear, and early girl.

I planted a few things in the front yard, too: garlic (Soren and I planted some cloves in the late fall and they’re all growing), a few more tomatoes, and more zucchini.

We still have a bit more to plant: more tomatoes, basil, oregano, corn, and some kind of bush beans.

A cool thing about this year’s garden! With the exception of a few jalapeno plants, everything was grown from seed or acquired for free at an awesome neighborhood gardening festival. So if all goes well, we’ll get tons of food without spending much money (for once)!

As you can see, Sadie is really interested in the chickens all day every day. And we’ve been pretty busy!

Chickens in the Coop

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Tracy

They seem to be enjoying it. (For the record, it’s habitable but not finished. Eventually, what you see here will be painted awesome colors, inspired by grandmas who live in Miami and like to go to the beach, and there will be a chicken ladder instead of straw and a plank, arrrrrr matey.)

I finally figured out the purpose of Vine.

Posted on May 19, 2013 by Tracy

It has something to do with dogs and chickens. Make sure to un-mute, so you really get an idea of what it’s like at our place. Oof.

This is my stupid life . . . and why you need a predator-proof enclosure for your chickens. Although to tell you the truth, I think they just want to play with the chickens, but it’s not going to happen because I value the safety of our avian friends.

How to Fix Your Broken-Ass Old MacBook

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Tracy

As you may know (at this point I’m just making fun of myself because I’ve told you this 100 times) the hard drive on my MacBook died.

I have a 13-inch, late 2008 aluminum MacBook, running Lion (not Mountain Lion). It’s not even an Air or a Pro or anything, just a MacBook. Now that I think about it, that’s kind of old in computer terms, but it does what I need it to do (download and listen to music, occasionally sharpen and enhance my shitty pictures in iPhoto, talk shit on the internet). Plus I like it and although I happily spend wads of cash on shit like chicken coop supplies and a goddamn Vitamix blender (this ridiculousness is not sponsored but holy sweet Jesus and Mary Chain that thing has changed my life and I don’t know that I could even attempt veganism without it), I am pretty stubborn about not replacing things — especially $$$ things like computers and cars — until it’s absolutely positively necessary.

So when my hard drive died, I ordered a new one (this one, no affiliate link). And waited for it to arrive. Then it arrived and Ben was going to put it in for me because he has replaced hard drives and I haven’t . . . and one of the tiny little screws that you have to take out to release the old hard drive was in so tightly we needed a new screwdriver to get it out because we didn’t have the right one. So then we got a new screwdriver.

And then Ben did a bunch of shit to fix my computer and then this thing I’d never heard of happened. It’s called a kernel panic and apparently is very bad. You turn on your computer and hope it’ll work what with your fancy new hard drive and all, and you get this:

That’s some Lost shit right there. Next a polar bear will run through my house and the whole thing will implode in fiery magnetized chaos.

Then Ben did some more shit Wednesday night when I was out having someone poke my skin with needles, which was far more pleasant than being home worrying about my computer. (The good news is my tattoo is finally finished, pix soon.) He reinstalled Lion and tried to restore from Time Machine. He did some other stuff. It was all kernel panic all the time in here. I started to worry that I was going to need a new hard drive or, worse yet, a new computer. Or that I’d have to go to the Genius Bar, which I’m sure is incredibly expensive.

So then I did some shit. I installed, in order, every operating system the computer had ever known: Leopard, then Snow Leopard, then Lion. This took hours. (Also, if you ever purchase on OS from the App Store on your computer, be sure to burn a copy. I tried to get Lion from the App Store, which is how I originally got it, and apparently it’s no longer available in the U.S. store.)

Then Ben and I had a festive argument regarding whether I should restore my computer from my last backup on Time Machine (I backup sporadically on an external hard drive) or do Migration Assistant. I wanted to do Time Machine, because after all this shit, I just wanted my computer to be what it was (in January, when I last backed up) and Ben said he’d do Migration Assistant, because there was less chance of fucking something up and it would be more “clean.” So I did Migration Assistant and went to bed.

The next morning, I awoke to . . . a bunch of shit. Migration Assistant is an asshole. What it did was transfer over a lot of crap, like Photoshop and other Adobe shit I haven’t been able to use since I upgraded to Lion. (I decided long ago never to pay for Photoshop again because I just don’t use it and find it incredibly tedious.) It didn’t transfer things I actually use, such as Firefox, or any of my shit. I opened iPhoto and it was empty. There were no documents. There was no kernel panic, which was awesome, but there was nothing else, either. It was like all the power went out and I was going to have to make fire and wear cobbled-together leather clothes and learn to use a sword while unexplainably always having very clean and shiny hair.

So Thursday morning I said fuck it all I’m restoring from my Time Machine backup. That took about two hours.

And you know what? It worked. It was like it was January again. All 19,999 of my photos were back! My random “stuff” folder, filled with shit I’ll probably never look at again except for the picture of the sugar skull Chihuahua that might serve as inspiration for my next tattoo, was back!

What wasn’t back was all my music, but that’s a pretty easy fix. To get music back after your hard drive crashes, do two things. First, if you bought anything from iTunes, you can download it again. For all the shit you got elsewhere and have on your iPhone but not your computer, you can use Senuti (itunes spelled backward). (Just make sure before you do this, you go into iTunes and turn off automatic synching.)

And there you have a super-annoying but effective $63 fix for your broken-ass old MacBook and all is good and right in the world and from now on you will back up your shit more often.

We Are But Seeds of Social Change

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Tracy