Wal-Mart is Now Selling Caskets and Urns....

Just when I think I have seen it all. I absolutely did NOT see this one coming! Wal-Mart? Caskets? Urns? Yes, it is true. I think a major line has been crossed here. I think someone needs to put a stop to it. I swear, one day Wal-Mart will take over the world. And we'll be forced as a society to wear those blue vests to show our loyalty, or be shot. ;)

I'll admit, I shop there ALL the time. All the time. Several times a week in fact. They are a lot cheaper in so many aspects. And convenient too. But today I am seriously considering not shopping there ever again. That would be a total life challenge as well as having an huge impact on our budget. Understand what I mean when I say they will take over the world?

This may be one of those times that I have to put my personal interests aside and do what I think is in the best interest of the world at large. Maybe that sounds completely silly, but really, where does one draw the line?!?! Wal-Mart? Caskets? Urns? Anyone else think that is totally "off"?

Anyone Else Freak Out at the Thought of Painting the Woodwork?

It is just the thought of covering up that beautiful wood. And knowing that it would take A LOT of work to undo it if I ever were to decide to. Seems so permanent. Such a BIG commitment! HOWEVER. I have seen some gorgeous rooms lately with painted door frames and baseboards and they look so put together and wonderful! I love and long for the look of it! Yet I am pretty sure I lack the courage. What is your take on painting the woodwork? Done it and loved it? Done it and regretted it? Eeeek! :)

By the way, I bought a gallon of paint today! It is called Dark Toast. Yummy name, eh? I swear, pictures are coming soon and I will do before and afters. Currently, I took a paint brush and painted a few splotches here and there to get a feel for and decide if I loved the color before I paint the entire thing. Do other people do this too? Hubby seemed to think it was odd! :) I am not sure it is as dark as I want for the little living room, but I think it may be perfect for the laundry room! I know, a brown laundry room?!?!?! Weird-O! I just really have a thing for brown earthy tones! Pictures. I promise!

Those Naughty Dirty, Dirty, Divas.....And Everything You Wanted To Know About Duck Eggs...

Or you can call this post "Yes, we have NO bananas". (If you have read the book 'Eat, Pray, Love' it just made that banana reference even funnier. Sorry, I'm in a good mood and thus my warped sense of humor shines through)

There is not a drake one in our flock. That is, not unless he does a VERY good job of female impersonation. No one has a darker head. No one has any curved tail feathers. No one has anything characteristic of a boy duckie. They all look just alike, even the one that sounds a little different. I know what you are thinking...but the pool surfing and the weird egg thing.....Yes, let me tell you what I have learned!!!!!

Over at The New Agrarian under the section of Raising Ducks: 4 - 5 months They reported this from their female duck experience....."More new behavior: when the ducks get into the pool first thing each morning, they hump each other. It seems to be the same ducks every day, but it doesn’t correspond to what we thought was the pecking order. It began just after we found the first eggs, and the ducks we believed to be laying first were the ones being humped, so our best guess is that the ducks who were less sexually mature were a bit confused by the new hormones in the flock. But the morning ritual continues now that everyone is laying, and so we really have no idea what is going on."

Humping....surfing....po-ta-to...po-tat-o. :) Apparently this is something that girly ducks do. They are ornery like that, you know. Why do they do it? I have no clue. Maybe I'll become the Duck Whisperer and we'll find out. Or maybe you are a Duck Whisperer and you can tell me?!?!?!

Eggs....Consider this your crash course on duck eggs. While I didn't get to see the egg that my hubby's friend thought was fertilized, I have seen two from ours that I think may be what they saw. Mink Hollow Farm has a great page about duck eggs. There I learned about Meat Spots.....

This is a meat spot. (Photos courtesy of Mink Hollow Farm)

This is a Meat Spot visible through candling.

So what is a meat spot? Mink Hollow Farm says that "Meat spots, while unappetising, are generally considered to be harmless. They are thought to be what's left of some tissue that has been sloughed off during or shortly after the yolk was released into the oviduct. The most likely explanation is that the meat spot is a piece of the follicle that once held a yolk. Sometimes a bit tears off. Another possibility is that a follicle that is no longer functional breaks down and 'falls off' from the ovary.Eggs containing meat spots are generally considered unsuitable for hatching. The meat spot can usually be easily removed."

So the presence of a Meat Spot does not mean an egg is fertile. I have begun candling all of our eggs to spot anything unusual and I have had two that contained a meat spot. I suspect this is what hubby's friend saw too.

Next egg fact...the Chalazae. Go here to hear that word spoken. I did, but I still can't say it right! The Chalazae is the white cloudy looking stuff. See it? Bottom left? Sometimes it looks like a tiny squiggly pig tail or a teeny tiny umbilical cord, which it pretty much is, and anchors the yolk. It is a normal part of an INFERTILE egg. It is perfectly natural and normal. It's presence also means your eggs are FRESH. As the egg ages, the Chalazae shrinks and becomes less noticeable. So they are really noticible in our eggs!

And the next egg one...you can almost barely see it in the picture above (top center of the yolk, not the bright camera flash spot on the bottom right) but our duck eggs tend to have a tiny noticeable light dot on the yolk. This is called the True Egg. For an egg to become fertile, it must be present, but it's presence does not indicate an egg is fertile. It is just a normal part of an egg and means it is a good egg.

Last but not least, the shells are thicker than a chicken egg shell, so you have to make sure you give them a good hard bonk on the side of your cast iron skillet.

So, there you have it. No boy ducks and lots of crazy egg info! I'm sure I have left something out that you are dying to know, so any questions? Ask away! :)

Ladies & Gentlemen...I Think We May Have An Impostor Among Us...

Well, an impostor among the Dirty Divas, that is. I think one may very well be...A BOY! Well, a drake, technically, but a boy nonetheless. What makes me think this? Two things. Three actually. Wait, four.

Number one....remember this post about our first eggs when I said we noticed some odd duck behavior in the pool? One duck was surfing on another's back and hanging on to it's neck feathers with its beak? Faith from over at Lemonade Adventures commented and said that she thought it was mating behavior. At the time I thought it was funny, because they are all girls! Right? RIGHT? I'm not so sure now!

So...number two. We had this one egg that we found in their play yard instead of in the coop. It was different than the others. It was darker, kind of splotchy looking. I thought maybe since it sat outside for who knows how long it was just a bad egg. Since we are new to this whole duck and egg thing, I marked it with a black X with the intention of looking into it further. However, I went ahead and put it in a carton with other eggs until I could get back to it, because you know I am a busy mom and all, and my husband gave that dozen to a friend of his! Which was lovely, but then he found out that when they cracked that egg with the X there was an embryo in it! Or so that is what they think it was. Since I didn't get to see it, and probably wouldn't know what I was looking at if I had, I have no clue if that is what it really was. Man, I wish I could have seen it!

Number three...there is one duck that does not sound the same as the others. It never has. I never gave it much thought...until now!

Number four...we ordered a straight run of 15 Khaki Campbell female chicks and they threw in an extra chick, as hatcheries tend to do, so perhaps number sixteen IS a boy?

So my suspicions are heightened and I have a lot of observation to do to get to the bottom of this foul mystery!

Can you spot the fake...I mean Drake?

Me neither. But I'll keep you updated on this investigation!!! Oh and one more thing, if there is a boy, I will be absolutely thrilled! I had planned on getting a couple this spring! :)

An Emergency Room Trip at 3:00am.....

Short version: About 3am Saturday morning I thought I was dying.

Longer version: I woke up around 3ish to go potty, as usual. But on the way to the bathroom I noticed my abdomen hurt a little. By the time I was on the way back to bed, it hurt a lot. Then the left side of my chest hurt. Then the next thing I knew my heart was racing out of control. Really, I didn't know a heart could beat THAT fast. I thought my heart was going to explode. And about that time as I was waking up my husband to tell him I don't feel right at all, this strange burning sensation was overcoming my body, and when it hit the back of my neck and then back of my head and my heart was racing and chest was hurting I told my husband to call 911, that I thought I was dying.

This is the scariest thing I have ever been through.

So the ambulance comes. Slowly, because we are rural, and might I add that they turned into our drive and then pulled back out and then my hubby chased them down the highway and brought them back. He's such a good hubby, bless HIS heart, I scared the crap out of him. We really need to make our address HUGE on our mailbox. If I wasn't already dying, the trip down our front porch stairs on the stretcher was about enough to kill me! It was like a roller coaster ride, which I do not do. But while I was waiting for the ambulance I was shaking all over uncontrollably, but my heart rate was slowing, which I was not sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing so I laid on the bed in one position, scared to death to move. My hubby had to put some jammie pants on me because I had went to bed in a tshirt and undies. I have also been really run down the last week or so - taking a lot of naps and going to bed early. I thought I was fighting off a bug so I didn't give it too much thought...UNTIL all of the sudden this was going on - then I was sure it was because something was terribly wrong with me.

So in the ambulance they are trying to get an IV in, which they could not, and they hooked me up and monitored me. The paramedic told me I had the most beautiful sinus rhythm he had seen in a long time. I blushed.

At the hospital they ran a bazillion tests. All tests came back negative. My heart is fine. My electrolytes and all that jazz are fine. My blood is all fine. My chest x-ray was fine. My thyroid was even fine. They kept referring to my test results and "Perfect" and "Beautiful". Which made me think...are they normal because I am crazy?!?!?

So I have to see the Dr on Monday. The ER doc suspects a massive ANXIETY attack, which I misinterpreted as a massive HEART attack. And the more I research nocturnal anxiety attacks, the more sense it makes. I have had some issues with anxiety before, but nothing compared to the magnitude of this experience. I really hope to never go through that again! So my suspicion this far is that perhaps I was either in the process of an anxiety attack when I woke up and it escalated. Or in my sleepy stupor I had an anxiety attack in response to the abdominal pain I was having. I don't really know.

So I spent yesterday resting and taking it easy. I still had a little bit of abdominal pain off and on. Last night I slept in a chair because the thought of sleeping in my bed was just not appealing at all. When I woke up for the usual bathroom trip at 3am last night, I was wide awake and nervous just thinking about the night before. I did a lot of deep breathing to get me through last night. I'll see the Dr tomorrow after work and go from there.

So there it is. Anyone have anxiety issues? Nocturnal anxiety attacks? I could really use some "You are not crazy" hugs right now! While I am thrilled there is nothing wrong with me, something IS wrong with me. Know what I mean? Ugh.

FLASHBOOM!!....Guess What Happened?

No, it wasn't fireworks! It was LIGHTNING! And Sunday it hit the tree in our front yard, while I was standing under the carport a mere 100 feet from it! All at once there was a giant FLASH and BOOM and the house shook and it happened so fast that I didn't realize what had happened until bark flew off the tree! My heart pounded. I was shaking. Wow.

I bought some tree wound stuff to paint on so hopefully the tree won't die. It also blew our modem, so it got replaced today.

And just a friendly little PSA reminder...stay away from trees during a thunderstorm.

I can't see the garden through the weeds. There are just too many and it is too big. I have started a "weed directly around the plants only" protocol to keep up the best we can. I also did resort to Chemical Warfare in The War Against Squash Bugs. Sevin dust.

We pickled a whopping 24 pints of peppers over the weekend.

And I am sure there is a lot more to update but I have have HAVE to get the wood floors waxed!