I’d spent the day up at Mom’s in Georgia yesterday and didn’t get home until fairly late. I *thought* I knew the time that she was going to leave (she’s an hour north of me) so I called yesterday morning at @ 8 a.m. for clarification before I fed the chickens, loosed the lambs, etc.
“So, you’re leaving at 10:45 for your appointment?”
“No! I have to BE THERE at 10:45. I’m leaving at 9:45!” CRAP! That meant I’d have to leave in 45 minutes. I raced around like a crazy woman slinging feed in every direction, raced inside, changed my sweaty chicken/sheep/rabbit manure clothes for something a little fresher, raced outside the house, jumped in the truck, and raced to Georgia. I got there with a few minutes to spare. I brought her two dozen eggs but forgot the bag of rabbit manure that she requested for her garden.
Well, shit happens.
After the appointment, we went out to eat, then shopping. She got a BBQ grill from Lowe’s, for my brother is going to be taking over a lot of the cooking duties, and he’d prefer to do it outside and not heat up the house. Then we went to (play music of doom here) Walmart.
I HATE going with Mom to Walmart. I’m a go in, find what I want, and get the hell out kinda shopper. Mom is a go in, look at everything in the entire store and then go back and look at it again, and then compare price per ounce for every available substitute kinda shopper. If I have the time, she’ll go to three other stores, compare their prices, too, and then maybe come back to the first one if the price per ounce is 1 cent lower.
I was walking along with my brother and mother when she called attention to some pretty T-shirts. I stopped and dutifully admired the shirts, looked up, and she and my brother were gone. This is not new. I’ve been losing my mommy in stores since I was a little kid. I saw a little white head bobbing along way over by the underwear aisle, so I hurried over to meet her down at the end. When I got there, I found that I’d been chasing the wrong little white head. Wait! There’s another little white head down at the end going into the garden department! She’d been admiring the flowers out front. Maybe she was going there! I went across the entire store to the garden department, checking out every aisle of the pharmacy first just in case I was chasing the wrong little white head with a short, spiky haircut again. I got to the garden department, and she wasn’t there. Several senior women in the Waycross Walmart must all go to the same hairdresser. I went across the store again, checking aisles, until I wound up in the grocery department. I knew she’d end up there eventually. Up and down the aisles, lots of white-haired ladies, none of them my mother.
Well. Pretty soon I was going to be accosted by security for following white-haired ladies around the store. I was becoming a white-haired lady stalker.
Maybe she’d already gotten what she’d wanted and left? I went outside and checked the car hopefully. Nope, not there.
I went back inside to the book section which was nestled within the front end with the cashiers, chose a book, and purchased it. Then I positioned myself comfortably against a post where I could glance up and down at all of the people coming up to check out. Eventually I saw them headed my way.
“Oh, THERE you are!” exclaimed Mom. I told her about following the white-haired ladies all over Walmart. She snorted. “Bet you looked like some kinda crazy stalker!”
“Yeah, the thought occurred to me, so I gave up the search.”
“You shoulda stood in the middle of the store and screamed ‘Mommy, where ARE you!’ like you used to!”
“Would it have worked?”
“No.”
Meanwhile my lil’ brother, who hates shopping even more than I do, pushed the cart up to a 20 items or less lane and prepared to unpack it. “WAIT!” objected Mom. “We have more than 20 items!”
“Uh, no we don’t!” said my brother with a crazy look in his eye. He wanted to get checked out and leave NOW, before she remembered something else.
“Yes, you do!” I told him. So nyah nyah.
“You could get shot for that!” said Mom. “This is Walmart.” She took the cart from his unresisting hands and went to a no limit line.
“She’s right, you know!” I told him. “Dude, you were in a 20-item-or-less line. If I were on a jury, I’d have to acquit the shooter because it was justifiable homicide.”
“Oh, wait! I forgot the Krispy Kremes!” Mom turned the cart to go back to the grocery section.
“NO!” exclaimed my brother, beating me to it. “No, you just stay here and unload the cart. I’ll go get them for you!” He hurried off to the grocery section. I’d introduced my mother and brother to the raspberry-filled Krispy Kremes by bemoaning that I’d never be able to eat them again. They have a serious addiction now. He was back with the donuts before we’d finished unloading the cart on the checkout lane.
We got back to Mom’s house, unloaded the groceries, and I headed back to the house. Since I had not had time to put the chicken into the crock pot, dinner was not going to be cooked and ready when SwampMan arrived home. I thought that he might like some bourbon chicken wings instead, and stopped at a store that said “Discount Beverages” and had some disreputable-looking people hanging around outside. Maybe they had bourbon!
I was disappointed to find that they only had quarts of beer and cheap wine. I was in the process of making an illegal U-turn across traffic when my phone started ringing. It was in my purse on the floor across the truck, so I waited until I completed my illegal turn across traffic before half laying on the seat and grabbing one handed for the purse on the floor while driving.
“Where ARE you? Why didn’t you answer your phone?”
“I was making an illegal U-turn out of what I THOUGHT was a liquor store against traffic. You probably don’t want to know the details.”
“No, I don’t think I DO. Where the hell are you? I have to go to Jacksonville.”
“I’m about 15 minutes from home. Where are YOU?”
“On the way to Jacksonville. I’ll turn around and meet you at the house.”
We went into Jacksonville to get the part he needed to fix one of the machines in class. Then we just made it to the feed store before it closed at 6 p.m. I broke the sad news to SwampMan that we were going to have a fast food dinner tonight, so we each had a Hardee’s Jim Beam Thickburger for dinner, his in a bun, mine wrapped in lettuce leaves.
When we got home, I unloaded most of the feed (I left about 150 lbs. in the back of the truck), carried buckets of feed to chickens in their movable pens, moved the chicken pens to new pastures, and gathered eggs. I flung feed to the newly hatched bantams and ducklings, all the loose chickens and ducks, and turkey. It was after dark when I finally made it to the sheep. The ewes and lambs were crowded outside their feed barn. The gate had blown shut. I counted the lambs by flashlight. I was particularly anxious about a newborn tiny lamb that weighs about 5 lbs., and two 1-week-old lambs. I wanted to make sure that they were locked in for the night with their mommies and not gamboling through the pastures in the dark which they are wont to do. The older lambs line up and fight for space at the feed bunks so I don’t have to worry about THEM. A few drops of rain dripped out of the sky in the dark as I walked to let the rams and nonpregnant ewes in to a more secure pasture after dark. They were anxiously baaing at my lateness. Then it was time to feed the dog and cats.
About midnight, I realized that I needed to make something for Swampman’s lunch today. Shrug. I still had the ingredients for Greek chicken! I could hear the peeping of the chicks inside the eggs in the incubator as I threw together the ingredients. I debated the ethical dilemma of slow-cooking chicken while chicks are hatching (the horror!) but maybe they wouldn’t have severe psychological problems.
I got up extra early this morning to pack SwampMan’s lunch and cook the asparagus. I also made two fried egg sandwiches for his breakfast, and ran outside in the rain to open the gate for him. I got back inside the house and looked at the frying pan and eggs, and looked at the left over already cooked fresh asparagus and Greek chicken.
And that’s why I had Greek chicken (and fresh asparagus!) for breakfast.
I put the (raw) chicken skin into the crockpot chicken broth/juice and cooked it for a couple hours, then added some dry dogfood for Puppy’s dinner to soak and cook in the juice. Maybe THIS will induce Puppy to eat his dogfood. Puppy will eat duck poop, the yellow baby poop of the new lambs, and cat poop, but he won’t eat dog food. Go figure.
A1A South 