Spring has definitely arrived in the NEK. And just two days before meteorological summer begins!
The chickens have been wandering all over, happily digging through the yard for bugs and resting in the shade when it gets too warm.
It’s been lovely to see things blooming and green again.
Our huge quaking aspen, which is always the last to wake up from winter, has its first light mint-colored leaves.
That particular tree sits right outside my office window, and is particularly lovely and calming to listen to when the wind blows through its branches in the summer months.
Speaking of vistas from windows, we finally broke down yesterday and bought curtains for Daphne’s room.
This is partly due to the increased light pollution motion-activated floodlamps on the neighboring houses, but mostly it’s because Daphne is getting older and needs some privacy. (Hers is a very visible window from the road.)
Alas, not all is coming up roses.
Between work, Daphne, our burgeoning online card sales business, and the leach field issue, I had a lot going on this last Tuesday evening. And because I was off my routine, I forgot to close up the chicken coop.
Sadly, little Daisy fell victim to my oversight…
The scattering of telltale feathers the following morning told us that something snatched her in the night and carried her away…
Although, if we’re being honest, this may very well qualify as a small mercy. Daisy never quite developed properly, and often struggled to walk/balance.
That video was taken back when she actually ran around with her sisters. Of late, she really hadn’t been doing very well. She spent most of her days just hiding under the ramp leading to the coop, as the other hens would peck her if she tried to be near them.
We’d had several discussions about euthanizing her, and typically fell back to the, “well, she hops out of the coop every morning and eats and drinks…” argument. Which, honestly, was probably more for our benefit than hers.
Still, it’s a little sad to look out at our flock and not see Daisy hobbling around.
We miss her.
j.s.
It kinda feels like I’ve been a font of negativity on here lately, so I was loath to make this post until I ran through the last few entries and saw that they weren’t necessarily covering all terrible things. In fact the last one was quite nice, about our dinner date night over at The Inn at Burklyn.
And so we’ll wade into this one which is, admittedly, not so great.
On Friday, just a day after we’d created this video talking about how “happy” Daphne was…
…we got a call from the school explaining that Daphne has thrown up three times and what would we like to do? So naturally Jen drove over to pick her up and it turns out she absolutely did have a stomach bug of some kind. We spent the better part of the weekend cleaning/vacuuming up emulsions of pee/vomit/liquified poop off of various furniture.
We kept her out of school on Monday and Tuesday of this week, as the bug hadn’t quite made its exit from her lower intestines. (Everything else certainly had…) Yesterday we agreed that she seemed well enough to go back to school, though. And while she is still having pee accidents, she is at least making it through the day there and giving her parents a short midday reprieve.
While she was home sick we enacted some child labor policies and put her to work stamping card sleeve envelopes.
There was some amount of parental assistance required so as not to end up with permanent purple moose prints all over the table/chairs/rugs/etc.
But I do think she was having fun helping us, as once we finished the stack she grabbed them and started re-stamping them all.
Which we did at least 4 or 5 more times.
I appear harried in that video because, shortly before it was shot, we’d just had the local septic pump guys come out again.
The same issue as last time arose, which set off alarm bells about the state of our septic system. Those concerns would prove to be well-founded (I PUN!) since the guys reported back that the leach field had failed and that I would need to have a new one built.
For those of you who are on city wastewater, this is no small feat. Particularly so in Vermont.
We have to have the soil drilled out and tested, then an engineer will come out and design/confirm the layout, then it will need to be approved by the state, then we’ll have to book excavators to come out and dig/build the damn thing…
All told, initial estimates put this somewhere in the $12,000 – $15,000 range. Now ask me how glad I am that I didn’t just sign us up for a business lease.
The good news is that we live on a huge sandy hill, so we shouldn’t (fingers crossed) require a “mound” septic system, which apparently can run upwards of $40k to build.
Honestly I feel like I’d rather just pay the guys to come out every month for the next 8 years for that price…
Okay, see you soon.
j.s.
One is entertainingly tricky, the other requires sheltering in place. And because there’s no Fujita Scale for life, it can be difficult to tell when one starts to escalate into the other.
I mentioned a while back that Jen and I were tinkering with a little online business venture, and after I wrote that post the whole thing sorta began to take on a life of its own. An online-only store quickly morphed into necessitating a brick-and-mortar address, which led to potential site visits, rent/utilities/insurance discussions, buildout costs, furniture estimates, etc.
And after playing with the idea, and seriously entertaining the costs vs. potential rewards, we’ve battened sail against the tailwinds and slowed the whole thing down.
We’re still doing an online shop, but adding a physical space is decidedly off the table for now. Partly because we can’t make the numbers work, and partly because it would utterly decimate anything resembling familial free time. And all for very little (if any) monetary return.
Strategizing this potential venture has taken up a lot of my already very limited attention, which is why I haven’t posted much here over the past few weeks.
Back to the topic of familial free time.
We had a set of Daphne’s grandparents in town over the past several days, which is always great.
It also gave Jen and I a chance to step away for a dinner out, which provided an all-too-brief respite from YouTube Kids, chicken nuggets, and post-toilet cleanups.
We went up to one of our favorite Vermont spots, The Inn at Burklyn, for dinner.
Oh, as you can see I got my beard trimmed last week too.
Anyway, dinner was great. And sorely needed. Our server mentioned at one point how we were her “relationship goals,” since apparently Jen and I were happily engaged in everything that the other was saying throughout dinner.
We didn’t have the heart to explain that if we dare to speak directly to one another for longer than 45-60 seconds at home then our 10-year-old screams/stomps/bites things/hits herself/pees on the furniture (or all of the above), to reclaim our undivided attention and force us to drone nursery rhymes at her for literal hours on end.
Regardless, it was very nice to get away and be adults for a little while.
Speaking of adulting, I need to get back to work.
j.s.
I didn’t mention this earlier because I don’t like advertising to the world when I’m going to have an empty house, but we took our trip up to Quebec City this past weekend.
And, so as not to bury the lede, it did not go as planned.
The chaos began when we stopped at the Wal-Mart just before the Canadian border to pick up some snacks and meet family to caravan the rest of the way to Quebec. (Safety in numbers from those spooky Canucks.) Daphne was not thrilled that Grammy walked off and didn’t get into the car with us, so she cried.
And screamed.
And threw her head against the back of her seat.
For 45 minutes straight.
Which made for an interesting conversation with the border agent as we crossed into Canada, but then again I’m sure we weren’t the first car with a crying child she’d seen that day…
Anyway, Daph eventually calmed down and the rest of the 3 hour-ish drive was uneventful, but our nerves were pretty raw at that point.
We got to our hotel, Le Chateau de Pierre, and despite having requested it multiple times the staff still hadn’t sent us the passcode to enter the building, nor the keycode to get in our room.
I think they happened to catch me glowering on the lobby camera and had an, “oh $#*@…we forgot to email those people, didn’t we?” moment since the email with all the info arrived while I was in the process of sending a WTF? text.
And the room was…fine. I did mark with concern how thin the walls were, though, and hoped that we’d have a calm and easy evening with Daphne. Alas, that was not to be.
We caught up with family and headed out for a walk, and Quebec City is quite lovely.
We all agreed that we were hungry, so I spent a few moments researching places I thought Daphne might eat, and landed on “Le Chic Shack.”
And it was quite good. I mean, it’s just hamburgers and french fries, but still very good.
And Daphne, for a fleeting moment, calmed down and was happy.
We went on a short walk then headed back to the hotel and went up to bed at around 8:30. At which point Daphne attached herself to Jen’s phone and would. Not. Let. It. Go.
Each time we tried to redirect her attention somewhere else, she’d shriek at the top of her lungs and hurl herself against the bed.
Fast forward to 1:45am, and she’s still awake. Still listening to the first 12 notes of “Row, Row, Row, Your Boat,” on repeat (for the 3,000th time). Still stimming by scratching her toenails against my leg.
And her parents are on edge, expecting her to scream again if we try to take the phone away and make her go to sleep.
Eventually I hit the “enough, come what may” moment and took the phone from her before it could run out of charge and she had a full-on meltdown. I plugged it in, set a Mozart lullaby on repeat, and hoped for the best. And by 2am, she’d finally gone to sleep.
It’s hard to say who awoke in a worse mood on Saturday, Daphne or her parents. Still, we took a quiet walk around the city to try and salve things and calm everyone’s malaise….
We also wandered through the Fairmont Le Château Frontenac which is the castle-looking building from the earlier pictures…
Alas, after it became clear that things were not improving, the thought of spending another night concerned about Daphne screaming and stomping through a boutique hotel was too much. So we packed it up and headed home a day early.
Now I’d be lying if I told you that my initial reaction wasn’t, “we are never attempting anything like this, ever again.” But on the way home cooler heads prevailed, and better strategies began to form for traveling with an autistic child with sensory processing disorder.
And that strategy is, AirBnB.
By that I mean we are never going to try to stay in a hotel again. (Or at least not for more than one night, anyway.) We require a separate building, with no shared walls or floors, in order to travel. That way we can enforce bedtime, which comes with a semi-regular meltdown or two, and we can also feed Daphne effectively. (She ate a bag of Goldfish, 64 oz. of water, half a milkshake, and a dozen french fries in 24 hours.)
And so expensive lessons were learned. But hey, we did at least got to walk around Quebec City for a day. It’s a very pretty place.
j.s.
This damn chicken…
…is about to take two rounds to the back of the head if she doesn’t calm down.
Susie here has gone full attack mode on me a few times now, with the most recent one this past Tuesday.
I was trying to lock the girls up for the evening, and as I reached down for the door her head shot out from inside the coop like a damn moray eel, and chomped my hand hard enough to draw blood.
I stuffed her head back into the coop and shut the door, only to have her come after me again as I reached in to collect the eggs.
And so she took several angry shots to the forehead/beak with a Birkenstock for her troubles.
She attacked Jen just a few moments ago and she responded by just picking her up and holding her to establish dominance.
It’s not clear what’s caused the sudden aggression with this hen. I suppose it could be hormonal, now that they’ve started consistently laying eggs. Might also be the lack of a rooster around and so this one has decided to take on that role.
Which, I mean, she can identify however she wants. She just can’t bite or she’s not going to have a home here with us…
j.s.
Man, it’s been a week since I posted here, hasn’t it? So I’ve either been ridiculously busy or trying like hell to force relax in between my various and sundry obligations.
So today’s is Daphne’s 10th birthday!
Hard to believe it’s been 10 years since we were here…
And somehow we’ve made it to here…
And I would say, “none the worse for wear” but look at that poor guy. He looks like a swamp wizard.
Daph is currently at school (hopefully having a good day, because the drop off didn’t go so well this morning) and we sent cupcakes for her and her classmates to celebrate today.
We also decorated the house a bit and set all of her gifts on the table…
And it still isn’t right.
Well, all the gifts save one…
The big gift from her parents arrived in a couple boxes last week, replete with its own hobby kit of washers, bolts and tools…
Yes, we replaced her bed.
We also moved it to the corner, which opened the rest of the room up quite a bit.
I put it together on Friday afternoon in between meetings (did I mention I’d been busy?), rearranged the rest of the room, then disassembled* her old bed. She seems to really like it; she’s slept quite well both nights that we’ve had it built.
[*Disassemble – sometimes in violent troglodytic fashion since the majority of the screws had been completely stripped upon its last assembly, so it proved impossible to take apart with any dignity.)
Okay, I’ve gotta run. See you tomorrow.
j.s.