The Past Week

Hi, remember me? The person who used to post to her blog about what was happening each day? *chuckle* Yeah, I've been slacking a bit lately. But I swear I have had many good reasons, and I shall present them here. *grin*

In the last week since I slacked off on posting personal things; (no particular order)


Took the boy ratties to a homeschool play day, and they had a lot of fun, sucking up all of the lovings, snugglings, and cuddles they could get their little ratty paws on, managing to sniff the heck out of nearly everyone there. Who would've known that nearly everyone there would be rat lovers? They rode down a slide, and ate gluttonous amounts of discarded and ground-found kid-leavings. There was much napping when we got home. *grin*

I saw a camera crew filming near a local apartment complex and had to ask what they were doing. Come to find out they were doing a bit about air conditioners and the weather, and urging people not to call their repair persons, as there was nothing wrong with their machinery, but the temperatures made it very difficult for the conditioners to do their jobs. So I told them about putting awnings over the machines to shade them from the sun, and about planting shrubbery near (2-3 feet away) them to both shade and still allow airflow. I also told them about using canned air to dust out the motor, filters and such of both air conditioners and fans to increase their effeceincy(sp?). The reporter asked me "are you an expert?" and I replied, oh no, I just own that little permaculture farm over there" and pointed to my house. *chuckle* As we were walking back home, Keebler said "no, but she stayed at a holiday inn last night" I couldn't help it, squealed with laughter, and told him to shut up. It was too funny!

The baby bunnies were born on the 18th, cute and hairless.

Bunnies have their noses, ears AND eyes sealed shut when they are born, and their skin is marked with their most prominent color markings. Very cute. The morning of the 19th, I woke to squealing. One of the most surprising noises in the world (you find it cute within a day, I swear. *grin*) Anyway, I went to check on everyone, and accidentally stepped on bunny. Seems the super hero of the litter decided to go for a romp. Crawled out of the nesting box, across the cage floor, through the bars, and half-way across the floor of my bedroom before finding a t-shirt to snuggle in for a nest. The screaming was horrendous, but even now, it is just fine, and amazingly, it is the largest and healthiest of all of the babies. Very strange. I'm just glad it survived. I was SO worried!

No Paparatsi!

Baby bunnies trying to leap at 1 day old is just too cute. They have some fur at this point, cute teef & claws. Leaping looks like some sort of seizure, bunnies are making a disgruntled sounding squeak-grunt noise when/after trying to jump. Eyes not open yet.
At 4 days old, their fur is still short, but is coming in nicely. Handling them daily has made them into very good possible pets (we want to keep some for breeders, and would like them friendly like our doe, and we also have some folks wanting to buy some breeders off of us already when they are weaned.)

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The kids seem to want to stay at grandma's every chance they get (she spoils them) So we let them stay over for a few days. On Tuesday, we rode our bikes to the bar. The kids were to return home by noon the following day so that we could go do a fun homeschool adventure together (it included swimming, but we ended up not going because of the stunt below)

Came home to things in house rearranged, balloon hats on floor in LR, and other various horrors. Keebler checked the last dialed number on his phone and discovered that not only had the children come back home and climbed in through one of the windows, but that they had also called the police. *sigh* The house was a mess because the kids weren't home and we were rearranging and sorting some drawers & shelves (which we can't do when they are here). Stuff was everywhere, Ladybug called the police because she was angry because her grandmother had driven off without her. This is AFTER we told the kids that we were not going to be home, and not to come back over because, (in case they hadn't heard the first time) we would NOT be home to let them into the house. *growl* So police were once again in my home, no doubt thinking I raise my kids wrong and we're somehow neglecting or abandoning them.

Let's remember that there was someone from child services over here not too long ago for a similar problem (kids thought they were unsafe, panicked and called police. The SS was called on us because Ladybug had forgotten to put Littlebits dinner away and "food left out" is a health hazard.). At least the last time Ladybug had some inkling of a reason to be concerned about her safety. I called my mother and discovered what happened. Needless to say, she will NOT be having my children again for quite some time, as the actions she displayed by leaving my child alone in my house in the way that she did was not only rude, but also likely got social services called on US again. *Growl, Hiss, Spit* Of course Ladybug, being under the age to legally give consent for police to enter our home, let the officers right on in so that they could get a really good view of the mess we had made while sorting before we decided to take a break and go on a bike ride.

I swear, every single time we try to be adults and good parents at the same time (arranging and quadruple checking everything) and try to have a little amusement for ourselves, we are punished for it. One would think that just once, we could have a nice time and not have some sort of catastrophe awaiting us when we arrived back home. *sad, tired sigh*

wound out what really happened about the whole thing the next day, when I literally had to half climb into my mother's car as she was driving off so that I could get her to stop and talk to me about what had happened. Ladybug now swears that she hadn't heard me say not to come over (right) and that she was confused. She had not told my mother they were not to come over and in fact had begged and coerced her to do so, then had refused to get back into the car when she realized that she could not get into the house, and that we were indeed not home. My mother had driven off to go get a friend to coerce Ladybug into the car. While mother was gone (3 minutes) Ladybug called the police. When my mother returned, they waited for the police, and my mother invited them INTO MY HOUSE!!! (she apologized for that later) So that's about the all of that story. Amazingly, we still have not found a card on our door from CPS, so we can hope nobody was called and we won't have to deal with that annoyance and waste of time again. Needless to say, the stuff is all back in the drawers where it belongs now. *chuckle*

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We spent most of one day digging in the garden and chatting with our friend V. After ladybug birthday party

(which was great and had the biggest turnout ever),
the girls went to stay with my mother for a bit (started out as only overnight and for most of a day, but extended at the kids' request like usual) because we had to work Pridefest and didn't want to risk Littlebit having another sun problem.

Got back home and planted the last of the melons (those white watermelons I had too many of? This was the last two, the ones we had saved for our personal garden).

Planted some purple pod beans, along with the corn and squash. The three sisters are now successfully in the ground. (That's them behind me, next to the greenhouse skeleton)Keebler took a good aerial view of our tiny yard.
Met some folks on square and visited for a bit. Had fun showing off the garden multiple times.

Scoped out rooftop for rooftop garden to utilize all possible growing space. It looks somewhat promising, but we'd have to make special self-watering boxes for it to work right without us having to go up a ladder every day or more to water.
We finally filmed some more for TV again. It went really well, and people are coming up to me telling me that they have seen me on TV. *chuckle* It feels kind of weird to hear that again.

We saw some planters in downtown loft windows, ad it made me happy to see people, even with no space at all, caring enough about the appear of the downtown area to put in at least a little greenery.

Planned on attending sign making party for Midge Potts after the Pridefest, but person who's house it was to be held at wasn't home. Tried to go to radish to see if anyone was there to make signs, but of course it was Sunday, so they were closed.

Accidentally backed into a pole trying to park for pridefest. Good thing I was going slow. Still dented bumper. Well, not really dented, more like pushed one side into the car a bit, and turned it a tiny bit lopsided. *laugh* REALLY hard to dent solid steel at 3 MPH.

When we went to get some more air in our tires, we saw a church bus that had run out of gas getting filled up by men using a small trash can and a funnel. It was interesting to watch them work, as they spilled about a gallon of gas onto the ground while the children in the bus looked on, waiting to get home.

I got a serious sunburn at Pridefest, VERY glad I used SPF 45+ sunscreen twice. Even my HANDS are sunburned. I'm also really glad I remembered to bring about 3 gallons of water with us (some frozen in containers) It and the sunscreen saved me today, I can nigh on guarantee. *laugh* Really weird that my legs sunburned in patches. I know I sunscreened the entire leg, so it's really weird that I had red spotches for a while. Even now, I'm still a bit pinkish around the edges. *laugh*

We got a lot of great pictures at the Festival, including this cute picture of Segway police eating blueberry snowcones. The one standing was having trouble with his segway...
Here they both are on their little gyroscopic transportation:

Saw lots of folks we knew, made back what we had spent on the endeavor, which was pretty darned good for a Sunday only event on a holiday. We'll be doing the festival again next year. Even though we didn't make any profit, it was still really fun.

Our solar cooker we made to heat up our sandwiches for lunch. It worked great.




There were performances on stage for most of the day.

Painted about 20 rainbows, one color-matched moustache/beard combo, and a silhouette of a woman on her partner's arm.

At the Radish dinner, was told I lost weight recently *squee* Very much with the celebrating and the happiness. Especially since I refuse to diet or anything and am really just being more active.

We rescued a pepper plant from the grocery store, and somehow it managed to be food stampable! *shock* I guess since it had fruit on it, it was a food product. I'm not complaining, that's for sure :P

Saw 4 car pileup on the road, took B shopping at the overstock/freight/dent store and split costs of the bulk food with him.

Sliced a BUNCH of really excellent cheeses and meats on the slicer my grandparents gave me for my birthday 2 years ago.

Took the new rat babies to the homeschool park day, where

Keebler took a really interesting picture of a spider.

After we took B home, went to the radish for a talk on converting cars to run on or be supplemented by hydrogen, but that quickly disintegrated into a talk about immigration, which I was no part of, as I was involved in revamping, reorganizing and anarchying the space with DC. We are creating a capitalist corner because without some money coming in, The Radish will fail and have to close. No matter how community, free, or anarchist a place is, they still have to make rent and pay the bills. Now if we can just get everyone else to realize that. *sigh*
There was a bit of sneering going on by other radishals about "selling" things in the space. But really, they are 2 months behind on the phone bill, have less than 1/2 a month's rent ready for next month, and they don't want to change anything so that things can keep going. It's pretty sad really. If there are problems with a thing, change is needed, but the radish is starting to go the way of the government (in my eyes) where there are several people who just want stagnation and control, and others are looked down upon for trying to change the status quo. It is really weird to have a community run infoshop that tries to stop people from having a say in what happens at the space. (Especially when they are making it work better and stay available for the entirety of the community.

I'm really hoping that the few of us who are "taking over" to keep it in everyone's hands instead of a few core people, will be able to save it. It really is a beautiful thing, and it must keep going!


V talked about us having permaculture, but I didn't believe it could be that, no matter how good we were doing. Of course that was until I saw this little guy hanging out around our pond. *chuckle*