blogging break 2008!

Seems like all sorts of stuff starts coming down the pike at this time of year lately, which is why AWAAR will be going dark for a while. Don't give up on me, though.

As a very wise governator once said:

"I'll be bock."Follow @nicole_mcinnes

how I shall make my literary mark

I was out walking Lizzie the Cow Pup at the plumber's crack of dawn this morning when I started thinking about the whole Elizabeth Gilbert sensation.

I haven't actually read this book, but you don't have to read it to know the gal has made bajillions (with Oprah's help, of course).

And then it hit me - and I suddenly knew from whence my long-awaited literary fame would flourish.

So, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to write the biography of a highly fascinating individual who has made an impression on scads of people. You might say she's "made her mark" in a big way and in many places. I already have a title picked, out, too. It's short, sweet and manages to convey every key point of this highly fascinating individual's life:

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...but wait!

Maiden53 herself - being the honorable soul she is - has gracefully reminded me that she is, in fact, ineligible to win the bar of Lily of the Valley soap, since she did not, in fact, address the question of whether blogging is or is not like walking around without any pants.

So, I returned to my highly scientific calculation method, which this time involved asking a visiting neighbor kid to pick a number between one and four.

"Two," spake the child.

Which means Marla wins! Congrats!

This is somewhat of a coincidence, since this self-same gal recently tagged me via the following email. I've decided to reply here:

TAG - YOU'RE IT! If you opened it, you have to do it (it only takes a couple minutes I swear!) Then, send it to the rest of your friends!

Two names you go by: 1. "MOM!!!!" 2. Nix

Two things that you are wearing right now: 1. Fruit of the Looms (not going into any more detail) 2. rapidly eroding nail polish. And, yes, I'm wearing more than that. Get yer heads out of the gutter.

Two things you want very badly right now: 1. a break from work 2. to finally hear that my novel has found a publishing home

Two people who will most likely send this back 1. No 2. Clue

Two things you did last night: 1. Led a Clover Kids meeting 2. Picked up son from the folks who drove him to his baseball game one town over

Two things you ate today: 1. Monterey sourdough from Sam's Club (and it rivals some of the best Bay Area sourdough, imo) 2. Smarties

Two people you last talked to: 1. April 2. Lizzie (hey, she's like a small, four-legged person with fur, right?)

Two things you did today: 1. caught up 2. drank coffee (not necessarily in that order)

Two longest Car rides: 1. Flagstaff to Marin 2. Marin to Flagstaff

Two favorite beverages (hot weather): 1. ice water 2. Diet Pepsi (heavily iced)

So, there you have it, folks. Anyone who has read this far, consider yourself tagged.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

And the winner is...

A highly scientific process has, once again, been applied to the task of choosing this week's soap winner. Here's the process: I holler to daughter (who's watching the evening edition of Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends after a long day of being in town and attending her Clover Kids (4H) meeting), "Pick a number between one and five!"

So she did. And our lucky winner is Number 5 - Maiden53! Give me a call, Dear.

And the rest of you please tune in Friday for the next edition of the great Garland Prairie Soaps Giveaway. Thanks for playing!

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she's at it again!

In celebration of today being the official start of summer vacay for the offspring, I'll be giving away a bar of my newly-redesigned Lily of the Valley vegetable glycerin soap. I always start soaping again around this time of year, after a long hiatus from the insanity of the holidays. Plus, it looks like I'll be a vendor at the County Fair this year, so I'd better get soapin.'




These bars smell reeeeeeally good. Plus, they're bright and sunny...and after the weather we've had for the past, oh, NINE MONTHS or so, I find myself irresistibly attracted to bright and sunny.

Wanna win? Just leave a comment to this post explaining why you do or do not think that blogging is like walking around with no pants.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

so, my sister-in-law

told me that she finds blog-reading to be a very uncomfortable experience, because blogging is all about putting your personal "stuff" out there for the whole world to see.

"It's like bloggers are walking around without their pants!" she said (or something close to it, anyway).

So, J, here's the deal: I promise, when I'm out there visiting next month, that I will try my best to KEEP MY PANTS ON.

I'd love to think she's reading this, of only to imagine the look of pure horror on her cute face. Alas, though, I fear I'll have to settle for just telling her about it.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

fluppy breath

This is Lizzie the cow dog - er, cow pup. She's new around these parts.

"u has a new WHAT?"

"cow pup! i'm a cow pup! is yur ears broke?"

It's okay that she's new, though. She already has lots of new friends showing her the ropes.

"o hai! another new friend fer me!"

"mabee not."

"i has a sorry. try agin pleese?"

(grumble)

"dis much bettur."

Welcome to our family, little Liz.

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ken asked for it

So now everyone who reads this entire post will have to suffer the consequences of one person being curious about what has been on my mind, musically speaking, lately.

So, let's see. I've been thinking about what it must have felt like to be a wanted outlaw in the Olde West, for one.

Dang, those Jovi boys were so young and...big-haired. And glittery.

And I've also been thinking about what might be done with an inebriated seaman:

(I know for a fact this is a direct result of having SpongeBob SquarePants playing all too frequently in the background while I work). (There's also a "waddle, waddle, quack, quack" song that's been implanted in my brain by my daughter, who will be a pre-schooler for only one more week. Talk about bitter-sweet.)

Oh, let's see. For a whole host of reasons Wagner's Ride has been a recent cerebral staple lately (which sounds rather painful, I realize, after typing that). Maybe it's because Rush was playing some of his old bumper music the other day when I happened to be tuned in. Who knows.

Also, Shakira. Because it's one of the best running-on-the-prairie songs there is. Don't believe me? Come on out with your spandex pants and trail running shoes and try it some time. (That midget mummy in the video totally creeps me out, though.)

Speaking of Latin loveliness, nobody else brings it like The Gipsy Kings. Nobody. I saw them at the Greek Theater in Berkeley in another lifetime. They were amazing.

And finally: Dang it all if I can't stay away from this cutie pie. He makes it so durned hard to be glum (and is it even possible to resist someone who sings a line like, "Scootch on over closer dear and I will nibble your ear"?)

So, there you have it. A random look inside the musical mayhem happening inside my brain at any given moment. Thrilling, I know.

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happiness is

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and then the weather does this

...and I feel bad for ever snapping at it.

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talk about an awkward pre-adolescence

Today's post is brought to you by Ivan the Terrible:

And by Elizabeth Swan:

And by daughter's "little baby hen" Maribella (who, I am suspecting more and more every day, is going to need to have his name changed):

And, finally, by Tiny:

Have I mentioned before that life gets considerably more complicated when you have four chickens living in the bathtub?

Their first day outside is going to happen soon. It was supposed to have happened already, but, unfortunately, it hasn't. Wanna know why?

Because today's post is also brought to you by the letter 'S.' As in Snow on the windows. On May FLIPPIN' twenty-second:


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okay, here's the thing

Be forewarned.

You should never give me something cool, random and free, like, say, an old hunting trailer:

Because something inside me will inevitably take over, until the original thing you gave me will start to become an Even More Original! thing.

Why is this? What is it about me that always wants to take something perfectly fine and scre- um, pretty it up?

Don't rightly know, but it's a streak I've always had. And I'm okay with that now.

As the "prettying up" process unfolded (and, really, the process is still just getting started), I kept hearing John Cougar Mellancamp's southern drawl saying, "...and we're gonna paint the mother PANK."

Does anyone remember that line from his Little Pink Houses/MTV album promotion back in the 80's, when JCM (or was he still just John Cougar at that point?) was supposed to actually show up at the contest winner's house and help a bunch of the lucky winner's friends paint it pink?

There's no telling how things might degenerate - er, how much MORE original things might get from this point forward (i.e. just wait 'til I get murals painted and epoxy some big ol' rhinestones on there).

You think I'm joking, don't you.

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um...

Okay, so it is the merry month of May, right?

I mean, it's not like I've slipped through a random crack in the space/time continuum, and it's really February again, right?

Because, when I woke up this morning and looked out the back door, this is what I saw:

The animals, all of whom have lost their winter coats by now, were looking at us humans like this was somehow our fault (when we all know it's really Bush's fault). Daughter built a snowman:

(which, uh, had a rather embarrassing skin condition apparently). Then she came inside to drink some hot apple cider and watch A Charlie Brown Christmas (I kid you not), which somehow managed to get left out months ago after I packed away all the other Christmas videos and DVDs. Listening to Linus plinking out "Jingle Bells" on his piano and hearing Lucy say, "Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you're the Charlie Browniest" was extremely jarring somehow, with summer only weeks away. I told the husband it was like eating liver pate' for dessert - just plain wrong.

Fortunately, yesterday, we were able to visit the Grand Canyon Deer Farm with our 4-H Clover Kids group before the snowstorm moved in.

No, shy, timid wallflowers, these ungulates. Especially when the nearest human has a handful of deer treats.

Yeah, so I got a hump. What's it to you?

Okay, okay. I get the picture. No donkey treats. Sheesh.

Maybe I should have taken the reindeer as a sign that all would soon turn funky in the world of Northern Arizona weather.

Course, I got me some goat love, which means that even a spring blizzard can't bring me down.

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attention Wal-Mart shoppers

So, I'm in Wal-Mart on Saturday, returning a $6 toaster which (shock!) stopped working after the fourth toast, when an announcement comes over the speaker system:

"We have a misplaced little boy back here in the layaway department. He appears to be about four-years-old and Native American, wearing a red shirt and blue jeans."

A Navajo lady nearby turned to one of her teenaged children, sighed and said, "Sounds like your father's lost again."Follow @nicole_mcinnes

you tell me

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hell yeah

How cool is it that Gretchen Wilson went back and got her GED at the age of 34? As someone who used to teach GED classes in an uber-rural part of Arizona, I know firsthand what a challenge it can be for working adults struggling to just put food on the table to carve out the time for something like that. It's such an important step, though, and I've seen how finally holding that little piece of paper can make a person look at him/herself in a whole new light.

Gretchen is out there giving interviews, talking about how it was a mistake not to graduate from high school and how, now that her daughter is in school, she realized it was important to set the right example, to be able to help with homework, etc. How many of her fans who chose to (or had to) leave high school for whatever reason are now thinking to themselves, "If Gretchen can do it, so can I"?

I think it's awesome.Follow @nicole_mcinnes

cowgirl bling

I spent Saturday at a rodeo queen contest with a bunch of 4-H girls. For as much time as I've spent in the horse world (about 25 years now), I've had pretty limited experience with the rodeo. I mean, aside from watching a few local events, admiring the scenery

and noticing that bull riders at the National Finals have started wearing crash helmets (It's about time, says I, the old riding marm), Rodeo and I haven't crossed paths much. Of course, every time I hear Garth singing about it I wish I'd spent my life on the circuit. But I digress.

I have to remind myself occasionally that I chose "Try it" as my motto for 2008. Besides, it's not like the whole rodeo queen thing was for my benefit. As the great Bob the Tomato once said, "It's for the kids." And what the 4-H girls want, the 4-H girls get. I'll admit it. I'm a total pushover (I've even managed to wheedle them in as my ring stewards for a show I'm judging later this month, so they can get a center-ring view of the classes).

So, anyway. Rodeo queens (like cheerleaders and beauty pageant contestants) = Extremely visible, flashy targets for all sorts of ridicule. But, you know what? Some of those girls were really impressive. Not only did they have to memorize and perform a reining pattern on the spot, but they had to dismount in front of a panel of judges and stand there looking pretty while answering a bunch of random, off-the-cuff questions like, "Can you name a famous bronc rider?" and "Can you point to your horse's gaskin?" and "Who is the stock contractor for the 2008 Pine Country Pro Rodeo?"

A couple of the girls were clearly flustered by some of the questions, and I heard a few of them tell the judges, "I'll look into that and get back to you" (with those dazzling smiles glued firmly in place, of course). After the Q&A each girl had to mount up, ride over to the announcer's booth, take the mic and deliver a speech to the crowd about why she should be chosen as this year's queen. Then she had to demonstrate a victory lap around the arena - at a gallop - while holding up a huge American flag. Heck, I'd do that and more for the chance to wear the flashy chinks that get passed down from queen to queen every year. And don't even get me started on the tiara.

Anyway, the winner was a completely adorable Navajo cowgirl with a smile that could melt steel, a personality that could re-carbonate a keg of flat sarsaparilla and a thorough knowledge of all things rodeo. She was a solid hand, too, on her big, borrowed paint. Total crowd favorite, and I think everyone but the runner up's mom was thrilled that she won.

When I got home I saddled up Zzari and headed out for a long ride all over the prairie. I rode up to a big ridge I'd never visited before, and from where I could see a little lake/cattle tank below. Then I discovered an old homesteader's cabin, long abandoned, before heading to my favorite spot on Earth, which is basically a big pile of boulders that sits on a hill overlooking the prairie below with pine-covered hills and mountains all around it.

I love bling as much as any cowgirl, but I guess I love the simple stuff just as much. It was pretty fun to enjoy both in one day.

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how was my weekend?

Oh, it was great, thanks. Really special. In fact, it was a lot like this.

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the quick and the dead

Well, it was quite a weekend. Our hatch that was due on Friday didn't start making an appearance until Sunday. Here is some of what we saw when things started moving along:


This was on of the first "pips" in the shell that we saw:

After a chick pips, it "zips" the shell -sort of pecks away in a semi-circle until it's able to start pushing its way out:

It's so exciting to see that first real fissure in the egg shell start opening up:

Then you start to see some feathers. Silkies have black skin (and even black bones, apparently), so even the lighter-colored ones look black when they're still wet at hatching time:

There's one little claw:

Free at last!

...except for this darned sombrero, which was a bit hard to shake:

Ah, nap time. Nobody told us they were going to look and act like drunken space aliens who'd been severely slimed on their journey to Earth:

This is a bit more comfortable:

And before long, there's a buddy in the 'bator:

By late Sunday night, we had three new chicks and one more pipped egg. The chick that took the longest to zip the shell (about 30 hours) had its feet curled into little clenched fists, so it wasn't able to get around like the others. I ended up splinting its tiny, weak toes to try to straighten them out, after being told that this should be done ASAP. For a while it looked like it was rallying: I'd dipped the tip of its beak in water and tried to introduce it to some warm chick starter mash so it could get its energy up. By last night, though, my husband and I agreed that it didn't look good, and despite all efforts my son went into the bathroom first thing this morning and woke me up to tell me that he thought it had died. Sadly, he was right. It was hard, but it wasn't a shock; and I also knew we'd done as much as we could for the little one. So, we had a chick funeral first thing this morning before school. My son asked me if the burial spot was a chicken graveyard now, since that's also where we buried his prize-winning rooster after it was killed by dogs last fall. I told him I guessed it was.

So, that was a little somber, but it wasn't the hardest part. The hardest part was when I went to check on the remaining pipped/zipping egg in the incubator. Since yesterday it had been making progress, but it was very slow progress. Last night, my mother-in-law and I debated about maybe putting it under the broody hen to see if that would move things along, but we eventually decided that leaving it undisturbed would be the better option. I wish I'd paid more attention and intervened, though, because it didn't take long for me to realize that, though it had about a centimeter of the shell zipped, there were no cheeps and no signs of life as there had been last night. Sure enough, when I took the egg out and started picking away at the shell with my fingernail, I could see that the little chick had died, probably at some point during the night.

Part of the problem, I believe, was that it had pipped the wrong end of the shell (the smaller, pointy end), which meant it didn't have as much room to move around and peck itself out. The chick was also huge (and perfect looking), so I'm pretty sure it suffocated in there. That was the part that got to me - the fact that I could have easily chosen to get in there and help it out if I had maybe paid closer attention and realized the chick was in trouble. That was the part - that sense of culpability - that had me sitting out on the back step with the dead chick still partially cradled in its egg bawling my eyes out. If only.

But I have to remind myself that I didn't know. That even experienced egg hatchers lose chicks at all stages of the incubation and hatch process. It's a beautiful and brutal thing, this life and death business. Now, it's time to tend to the life part, to the sweet little survivors:


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day 22 (or: and then there were six)

Chicken eggs need 21 days to incubate before they are ready to hatch. During those three weeks all sorts of changes are constantly taking place, eventually turning that microscopic little dot on the yolk into a full-fledged chick. Tons of genetic and environmental factors can influence the final outcome, however. For instance, if an incubator's temperature spikes a few degrees for an hour or so, there's a good chance all the embryos will die. I haven't had to deal with temperature spikes during my first incubation experience, but I have had humidity issues. One of the biggest was the discovery at the end of week 2 that my PetSmart hygrometer was defective. I thought I was maintaining a lovely 62% humidity for days on end, only to find out (when I finally got suspicious) that the stupid thing read 62 percent whether I put it in the 'bator or outside (where the humidity was right around 15%).

Anyway, we're at day 22 now, which means the hatch is officially overdue. But I'm not worried or anything. Nah. Not me. I've just been shining a light through the incubator window every five minutes because I have nothing better to do. Yeah, that's it. I must have stared for hours yesterday as the eggs started to rock and roll a little, and when the kids and I actually heard cheeping from a couple of the eggs this morning you would have thought Willy Wonka himself had just announced that we'd all won golden tickets.

It would have been lovely if my broody hen had been ready to set when the eggs arrived, thus allowing me to bypass all this anxiety and overwroughtedness (is that a word?). But she wasn't. She is now, though:

The other hen isn't broody at all, and I think it's because she views herself as just way too above all that sitting-on-eggs nonsense. That blue ribbon from the fair last year went straight to her head, I tell ya:

My mother-in-law (aka the genuine farmgirl in the family) came over to candle the incubator eggs a second time, this time with a more powerful candler. Unfortunately, when held to the light, most of the eggs glowed like little yellow Christmas lights (which meant there were no chicks inside). In fact, when we broke those 18 eggs open (outside in the fresh air, of course), only one of them contained an embryo, and that one looked like it had died in the first week. The others showed no sign of an embryo presence, much less development, which leads me to believe they weren't fertile in the first place, or they were scrambled by the post office en route from Florida to Arizona, or a combination of both.

Anyway, so there we were - down to six eggs. It was sad to see the incubator so uncrowded all of a sudden, but that's the breaks (especially with shipped eggs, as I've learned). The good news was that we saw definite chickage in the remaining ones. That's when the last, longest part of the wait began. I was glad to get away to Phoenix for a couple days, and then a new job started up, which kept me further occupied. There was a 4-H meeting to get ready for, too (I lead the local horse group), and that turned out to be fun. My husband gave a shoeing demonstration, and we all stood out in the arctic wind, proving what tough equestriennes we are (yeah, right).

There was a new tomcat to figure out, too. This is Mogi (short for Mogollon, which is pronounced Mogiyon)...

...so named because the Mogollon Rim just south of Flagstaff has the dubious distinction of being one of the most lightning-struck places on the planet, and I think Mogi looks just like a grey thundercloud over the prairie.

He may be something fancy, too, like one of those Russian Blues. All I know is he's young and sweet, and he definitely seems to be sticking around. Also, those fuzzy little round things between his hind legs will be snipped off very soon.

But still, despite all these distractions, I have continued to worry, and I continued to obsessively research all the things that can go wrong not just during the incubation process, but during the actual hatching process, when you'd think you'd pretty much be in the clear. But Nooooooooooo. Chicks can drown in the air sacs before they pip the egg (make that first little hole). They can suffocate inside membranes that dry out too quickly after pipping (back to the humidity issue), and they can fail to fully absorb the yolk or hatch with their intestines hanging out. Nightmare-creating stuff, I say. I told my husband that I would have made a completely neurotic hen, so it's a good thing God made me a female human instead.

He chose the strategically intelligent response of total silence.

Then I started to worry about my kids. They've been so patient and excited during these past three weeks that the thought of a failed hatch hurt my heart on their accounts. So, I hemmed and hawed, and deliberated and thought...and then my neighbor mentioned that the feed n' grain in town was due to get another shipment of day-old Silkie chicks in the next day.

You just knew this was coming, didn't you?

There's four, one for each person in the family. Mine's the big yellow one, and I've named it Ivan the Terrible due to the fact that it unmercifully tried to peck the sh*t out of all the others their first day home. If it turns out to be a pullet and not a cockerel, I'll call her Ivanka.

I dare you to tell me the last time you saw something cuter.

I'll let you know how the hatch goes.

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