A Blog About Green Livin' and Raisin' Chicks in Arizona

So I haven’t been updating my blog lately, shame on me.

Life is busy, as always. I took on a part time position as the webmaster for a non-profit which takes up most of my evening time, Lilly takes up the rest.

School is going okay, I have a couple classes that I’m really struggling in, of course there’s a ton of math in them and I suck at that.

I started a walking/running group with the other 3 people that I did the color run with (which was awesome!) and we are trying to plan out fun events. Our next two are the Firefly Run (not Whedon related, unfortunately) and the Neon Run. Both are night events, Neon Run involves paint too.

Ranch life is pretty much as usual except my chickens keep figuring out how to get out of their run and we lost 3 more due to wild animals. It really sucks when this stuff happens. So this weekend we have to resecure the coop and figure out how they’re getting out.

My friend Zel is going to start her own chicken farm this spring, she’s getting her hutch ordered soon, and I’m going to send my “chicky bunker” to her to get her started on securing the little ones. We’ll both be starting up again in march with new babies. (that’s when it starts warming up enough here to keep them outside, I will never again try to raise the little ones inside. That was too much.

Other than that, Lilly’s growing up so quickly (she’s out for a nap right now, so I’m taking a quick moment to blog). Everything is funny to her, and in general she’s a really happy little girl. Except when she’s tired… or hungry… and then she’s just like her Daddy. lol.

I rarely have time to blog right now and my poor blog is feeling lonely so I thought I would stop in and pop in a note.

Things are crazy with school, Lilly, and home-life.  I’m (currently volunteer status) also working on helping maintain Astronomers without Borders website which is a huge undertaking. I’m enjoying doing it, there’s just a lot to keep up with.

My winter garden is doing really well, striving on it’s own thankfully because I have not had the time to get to it. (I have it set up for automatic watering, or else I’m sure it would have been dead by now.)  I really should take a picture of that!

Finals are next week, one class has been a particularly troublesome class for me and I’m barely hanging in by a thread on that one. We’ll see what happens with it after the final, that’s all I can really do.

After that, I have to prep for us to head back to Iowa for Christmas. It will be good to be home for the holidays.

Somewhere in there, I also need to start working on a novel that I have in my head that’s begging to be written. I haven’t written like that since 2005. Maybe this time I will get the guts up to try and get it published. Who knows.  Or maybe it’ll end up sitting in the filing cabinet like my other one where I was never satisfied with the development or the ending. This time I’m writing the entire outline, beginning to end, so that it has purpose as it goes.

Let’s see… anything else? Wow, for someone who thinks she’s busy, this sure was a short post.

Man is it late.  I’ve been tinkering with the website tonight while waiting for 1:45am to roll around so that I can irrigate the pastures. I have never irrigated this late at night, my husband always did it, so I am slightly concerned about falling in the ditch in the middle of the night.  I don’t that would quite qualify as “going for a midnight swim”.

What stinks even more is that I’m flooding the fields for 2.5 hours, so technically I am supposed to go back out at 4:15 and make sure that they shut off the water pump… I really don’t think I’m going to make it that long.

We had a little bit of rain tonight as well, so the horses are all tucked away in the barn for the night. Chickens were out playing in the rain earlier today. They’re just weird.

Other than that, not much going on, other than watching my cat take over various parts of the new office.

This is where he’s currently chilling out.

Alrightly, time for me to go open the flood gates… literally.

• Sleep is no longer required until you fall over.
• You look at your friends who have 3-4 kids and wonder how the hell they survived
• You realize that there’s no way to do full grocery shopping because the car-seat takes up pretty much the entire cart and loading food on top of your baby is completely inappropriate.
• You find time to wash out bottles twice daily but the other pile of dishes are taking over the counter-tops
• You’re too tired to walk outside, across the street, to put a letter in the mailbox.
• You realize there’s no such thing as a quick run into the gas station for caffeine, and then you realize why drive-thru’s were created and successful.
• You find yourself on Facebook when your little one is sleeping, hitting the refresh button over and over because it’s the only thing you have energy left to do.
• You’re brain is too fried to continue writing a list.