ipede on the bottom shelf. I froze, trying to decide whether or not he was real, as they are truly beautiful and plastic-looking, though scary creatures. If I had been thinking rationally, I would have known that my kids don’t own any ‘toys’ that look like that, so I should have known better, but, I wasn’t. I ran to the bathroom yelling for Craig, who had just gotten into the shower, and told the kids to keep their eyes on it and not to let Neco get near it. Craig didn’t get as upset about it as I did, but told me to stop it and he’d get it in a minute. Please! I managed to pin it with a plastic bowl and shove him into a box, then Craig put him into a jar. This picture is of him in a quart-sized canning jar, which measures EIGHT inches around the three sides he spans!! The world record, according to Wikipedia (not the most reliable source), is only TWELVE inches! That’s one.So, we had these amazing fresh black-eyed peas as part of our Meatless Monday fare, and we had all had a nice, big bowl of them when Craig fished something out of his bowl and transferred it to the table. It appeared to be a maggot, thoroughly cooked, I’m sure, so we all started scouring our bowls. I found several bean parts that resembled maggots, so I decided that must have been it. Craig still says his WAS a maggot, but what can you do but just shrug your shoulders and go on… Fresh beans, fresh bugs! That’s two.
About thirty minutes later, as Jake and I were making a disaster of the kitchen finishing up our massive batch of Baby Butter (68 jars!), I kept seeing a little black blob as I stirred. I finally found it and fished out a tiny red and black ladybug intruder. She ought to have a soft shell from that treatment! That’s three. (Don’t worry, my faithful Baby Butter users… she was tiny, and the Tea Tree oil more than makes up for whatever she added. Oh, and I DID get her out! If it had been the centipede, I would have started over!)
And, finally, thank goodness, as I was standing at the stove, probably another half-hour later, something fell from the ceiling onto the counter, just barely missing my arm on the way down. I looked on the counter and there was a rather large scorpion! And that’s four! It had only missed my arm by an inch or two, so I was looking up the whole rest of the night. I also sprayed everyone’s rooms and around the beds with lavender, to keep them from crawling into the beds. We’ve found 4 or 5 scorpions this week, now that it’s nice and warm, both inside and outside, and I do NOT like them! Only Craig has ever gotten stung, but we’re all pretty paranoid. We have avoided having the yard treated, just to stay away from the pesticides, but it looks like we’re going to have to break down and do that. It’s getting a little too creepy-crawly for my blood! Hope I didn’t ward off any future visitors… or scare any recent ones!
Other than those fun creatures, only the male-genital-targeting chiggers and the LOADS of stickers in the yard remind me fiercely that we ARE living in the country! On that note, we did manage to catch two hens and one half-grown chicken last Saturday night. We got them into the hen house, and found on Monday that the young one had escaped. We found and chased that one down, but forgot to go out and shut them up again last night. When I went out this morning, they were all gone. I don’t think they ever went back IN the hen house, so it wouldn’t have made a difference if we HAD gone back, because none of the fresh veggie scraps we took out were eaten. These chickens were FLYERS! They could fly better than any chickens we’ve ever had, for sure! The one hen that we didn’t catch on Saturday actually flew across the street. Oh, well. I’m starting an order from the hatchery for meat birds today, though. The egg-layers won’t be available for a while, so we’re going to get some Cornish x Rock hybrids to fill the freezer. By the time they are all raised and frozen, it should be time to get the layers. So, those of you who said you’d be out here for slaughter day can count on about 10-12 weeks from now, and you’ll have to bring your own goggles and gloves. We’ll provide the plastic bags.
Sunday night, Craig and I managed to complete one of the projects on my list. Well, okay, it’s not complete, but the hardest part is done. I’ve been wanting to make a dress form that I read about online, using duct tape. Once it’s made, you have an exact form of your own body to use when fitting patterns for clothes. (That’s the next project, or one of them – a vintage dress.) So, I put on my undergarments and one of Craig’s extra-long t-shirts, and he proceeded to wrap me snugly in duct tape. Thankfully, he had a giant roll in his truck, because it took a LOT more than I expected! We had to add a little foil to the top and bottom to get enough length, but it turned out pretty well. The picture on the left is when I was half-wrapped. I added the necklace
and shoes just to dress it up a bit, but it was a pretty good design, don’t you think? When all the wrapping was done, Craig ran the scissors up my back (THAT’s kind of scary!) to cut me out of it, and aside from my screaming and writhing as we ripped the few
pieces of apparently super-hold tape that were accidentally stuck to my hip and tender under-arm skin, it was pretty easy. (I actually had a bright red tape burn across my right hip the next day!) All that is left now is to stuff the thing (thinking about using Great Stuff foam) and make the stand for it, then cover it with a pretty fabric, and I’ll have a functional and decorative dress form. How cool is that? The picture on the left is the finished product… I cropped out my legs, as it quite resembles a tight black leather mini dress. Yeah, Craig liked it.For Sunday lunch, we got some pies from Marie Callender’s, and the kids and I just finished off the fabulous Double Cream Lemon. I got online to find a copycat, or at least a close recipe for it, and didn’t have any luck. Apparently, they also make a Cream Cheese Lemon Pie, for which the recipe is readily available, but that’s different. Here’s a recipe for the Sour Cream Lemon Pie that I think we’ll try, though, if you’d like to have a go at it yourself!
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