47 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 2-15-17”

  1. I thought Mumsee didn’t allow four legged critters in the house.

    Good morning everyone.
    Sweet dreams Jo.
    Hi Tychicus.
    Everyone else? Roust out. Valentine’s over you can be your ornery self again.
    🙂

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  3. Good morning. Kids and lambs often end up in the house, unfortunately. Too bad they grow up to be goats and sheep, which are not nearly as appealing…..until they are in the freezer.

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  5. I have been asked to come into the office today at lunch. It looks like they have hired a new guy in our department. He will be working at my desk, so there won’t be room for me to go in anymore. Just another degree of separation from being part of things…
    While I am comfortable at the desk I have set up at home with two monitors, my laptop and stuff around me, I enjoy seeing other people. This is part of what spurred me to leave guy 4 1/2 years ago. It’s lonely to work from home. Sure Mr. P is here but it isn’t the same as having interaction with co-workers and it isn’t like I can just pop into the office and scare up someone to go to lunch with. We’ve lost what we had in common.
    Debbie Downer is going to get to work now. Have a nice day.

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  7. Good Morning! Sweet little kid up there…good to know he was allowed to come inside when he needed it most ❤
    I gasped when I read the freezer comment!! I love sheep…ask anyone who knows me well….there is something so peaceful and calming in watching the sheep in the pasture or on this hillside…I have never eaten lamb nor will I ever…I just cannot….I'm funny that way 🙂
    Yesterday was one of the best ever Valentines Day celebration….with 12 precious girlfriends….we laughed the day away…encouraged one another and reminesaced of the days when we were raising our children…the Lord is so good…then I came home and Paul took me to Rosie's Diner for dinner… 🙂

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  8. Only when they are dying, as little Tyrone eventually did. Pneumonia, we think, from being bottle fed. Sad.

    Yes, and calves are cute, and fawns, and piglets, and chicks, and the list goes on. Cute so we will adore them and take care of them until they get older….

    We have not tried them yet, but hear tell that the American Blackbelly does not have a mutton taste. We are still building up our flock so they are too valuable to eat yet. And it is possible we will find a hunting market for our grown rams. We will see if their horns develop to that stage. Meanwhile, I do enjoy my sheep and probably these even more than the wool sheep.

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  11. No lamb for me, I’m with Nancyjill 🙂 I think I had lamb only once as a teenager and didn’t like it anyway.

    I woke up to the sounds of fog horns in the harbor, our fog is back today. We’re expecting a good-sized storm on Friday-Saturday that should give us 3+ inches of rain. Friday afternoon/evening will be especially messy from the sounds of it.

    In about 30 minutes “Ramon” is coming over to look at the ceiling for another estimate/bid. The bed in the spare bedroom is made up, in case I need or want to relocate into that room for a while (will probably have to when the work is done, it’s expected to take 1-2 days, not long, though).

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  14. Kim, I’m so sorry to hear they’ve hijacked your office desk. 😦 Booooo, that kind of stinks.

    I’m not as social as you are and love to work from home when I get to do that on occasion; but if I had to do it all the time I’d miss the people and daily connections, too.

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  15. Mumsee, another woman who has read Kjelgaard!!! Yay! I didn’t find his books on Irish setters among his best, but I do think they’re his best known. But Haunt Fox is far and away his best, I think, among those I have read. Last week I managed to read a new one I hadn’t read.

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  16. I liked Ramon. He’ll leave me a bid later, said it would all actually take 3-4 days to demo and replace bedroom ceiling, but he seemed really knowledgable, has a 103-year-old Victorian house just a few blocks away so he’s used to working on old homes.

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  19. It’s going to be a messy, loud, disruptive job. 😦 Will have to figure out provisions for animals, maybe I can just leave them locked in the backyard.

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  20. Kim, I found it somewhat lonely to work at home, which is why I resisted freelance for several years, until it seemed the only way to escape down South, and then I took the plunge. Misten was a life-saver–I really couldn’t have done it without her. Now I still wish I saw people outside the family a bit more, but I’m not lonely as I was when I was single (I see people outside the family less than I did when I was single, and that isn’t a good thing since I went days without seeing people most weeks even then).

    The unexpected pleasure of going freelance–and I’m guessing you don’t have this one, since apparently you still have set office hours–was the ability to work my schedule around people and not people around my schedule. If a friend wants to go to lunch on Thursday, we can go to lunch on Thursday, and she can choose the time. If a friend calls and needs someone to talk to, I’m nearly always able to say yes (if I’m on a deadline, then I’ll tell her “I have 10 or 15 minutes” and at least talk for a little while). When a friend’s husband landed in the hospital, I was able to head there right away. Another friend always fed her mother lunch (in a nursing home); I got to know her mother, too, and when she was out of town I went by a time or two at lunchtime to feed her mom. I had next-door neighbors who traveled a lot, but when they were home they walked around the block four times a day. I had a standing invitation to go with them anytime I wanted to. My house was to the right of theirs, and they always started by going left and around a little cul-de-sac we had where my block dead-ended, so I would see them heading out and I had time to get my coat and my keys, turn off the oven, etc. I’d generally walk with them daily when they were home. Setting my own schedule meant I ended up working quite a bit later in the day than most “office hours,” but with freedom to adjust the schedule whenever necessary. It was a real challenge when I had foster children–I expected to be able to edit after they went to sleep at night and while they were gone at school, but in fact they fought going to sleep and nighttimes were hard and exhausting, and too often in the daytime i had to do things I couldn’t do while they were home, like grocery shopping. So it was tough to juggle and I couldn’t have managed a 40-hour workload in those weeks–but I kept up with what came in, somehow.

    For me, having gone freelance I might have a hard time going back . . . though I think I would have done so before now, to be honest, if there was a good publisher located in a temperate climate, just because of the income drop. But if I could maintain at least half what I made in the office, I wouldn’t look back, because of the freedom in working at home.

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  21. That picture immediately reminded me of when my dad brought a colt into the house. I still still hear my mom yelling that my dad was going to clean up any messes. We children thought it was very hilarious, to say the least. Of course, we would also bring rabbits in and try to race them using carrots or some such to get them moving. I don’t think that worked out well and we grew bored with it quickly.

    Kim, is there any possibility of you going free lance and just staging houses for sale or something? I know someone who started doing that and now has a lot of workers working for her. You have such a good eye for decorating and know the business well, obviously.

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  23. I, on the other hand, have eaten a lot of interesting things. Which does not mean I don’t like animals. Can you imagine the world if nobody ever ate a horse? Or a deer? Or a rabbit? Or a cow? Or a goat? Or a sheep? Or a pig? Or a frog? Or a fish? Or a rattlesnake?

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  24. Mumsee, I thought it bizarre overreach of our government a few years back when they changed the law to get rid of a loophole–not only can horses not be sold for consumption within the U.S., but they now can’t be sold to other countries for food.

    Huh? What is innately immoral about eating a horse, that it needs to be made illegal? (Is it illegal to eat goldfish?)

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  25. People don’t seem to grasp that too many animals means slow painful death. We do love our animals in this country but is it a selfish love or in the best interest of the animals love?

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  26. I thought you would want to be the first to know, front loading washing machine is leaking water out the seal and not an engineer in sight.

    Of course I’m washing clothes I plan to wear this weekend to a writer’s conference.

    This is after Google maps turned to the Thai language on me as I printed out maps.

    Of course I’m on a deadline.

    🙂

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  27. Well, I submitted my paper on time, and just wrote my midterm exam (don’t ask me how it went, I never discuss tests until I get my results 😉 ); just one more class and then I get a week’s break.

    Ah, baby goats. I agree with RKessler, kids and lambs are cute and fun when they are small, but the bigger they get, the more obnoxious they get – well, the goats are obnoxious, sheep are just sheep. A farm down the road used to keep sheep, which presented a pretty picture when we went for walks. We used to collect the wool they left in the wire fence along the road. The sheep’s ‘baa’ is usually background noise. However, a goat’s ‘maa’ is annoying. They have an ability to add a peculiar whine into the sound when they want something, which is most of the time, which grates on the ears. And, unlike sheep, which simply perceive the grass as being greener on the other side of the fence, goats perceive the trees, the bushes, garden plants, laundry, and anything else outside their enclosure as being more edible than the hay and grass inside their enclosure – and they are escape artists of the first order.

    I haven’t got a problem with eating lamb, or kid, but I don’t really like the meat. Having grown up with the smell of goats, I detect a similar taste to that smell in mutton, which, having dealt with goat manure, I find unappetizing.

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  28. I love lamb. Lamb chops, roast. Yes, the odor while cooking and the flavor of the meat are strong, but once you get used to it you love it. Mutton, on the other hand, takes longer to appreciate.

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  29. Lamb is mild, mutton is not. I learned to eat mutton stew when I worked with the Navajo guys. I agree with Peter about lamb.

    I was resistant to goat at first, but figured if it was good enought for all those people in the Bible, I was not too good to eat it. It got Jacob the blessing belonging to Esau after all. Goat can be a little strong, but cabrito is wonderful.

    As to adult animals, I have found goats to have way more personality than sheep.

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  30. Well, I think I saw our first “sign of spring” today (and sent AJ photos). My husband and I were going into town–my first time out of the house, unless you count going to the doctor, since getting sick Thursday. We drove by one field, and at the edge I got just a quick glimpse of something neither of us had ever seen on our road. “Honey–there were sandhill cranes right at the edge of the road–six or eight of them!” He turned around and drove back. He watched the road while I took pictures of the birds, including a good series of action shots (the best of the series sent to AJ). There were six in a group, and just as a car was coming down the road and we needed to drive on, I noticed there were two more several yards in the rear.

    That’s why I nearly always take a camera when we leave the house. Most of the time I don’t need it, but there’s always the occasional time to see something really cool. (Like the time I saw a mother opossum loaded with babies, crossing the road very slowly and allowing plenty of time to take photos . . . except that I didn’t have a camera with me.)

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  31. I would say the same about personality of goats and sheep but really, sheep do have personality. They are just more laid back. Many sheep wethers we have had have gone out of their way to babysit the lambs and kids. They will let them climb on their backs and leap off. They will sidle up to the tree stump so the little ones can climb up on it and then jump on Uncle Wether. It is cute to see. And even the rams are each unique. But as for inquisitiveness and all that, goats rule. I have my two American blackbellies (sold to us as Barbados) ewes coming to their names. They both eat out of the scoop in my hand. Still quite leery but much calmer.

    And the goats. Who can not love a goat? One of our kids appears to me to be an albino. She is sweet. Unless of course, she is a he, nobody checked.

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  32. Oh, goats have personality all right. But personality isn’t always likeable 🙂

    I have had lamb as well as mutton – lamb was the first time I noticed that taste – and I’m pretty sure I also had goat in West Africa. The objection stands. Although, I didn’t mind mutton so much in the shawarma we used to get in the city when we crossed on the ferry – probably the sauces helped drown the taste.

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  33. I suspect that is why a lot of cultures use such strong seasoning.

    Kind of like in people, not all personality is attractive? What are those old personality types? Choleric? Phlegmatic? And the other two? The goats would be the other two, sheep the first two.

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  34. However, we have had some amazingly brain defective goats. We think they were half sheep as the ram was in with the goats part of the time.

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  35. Sheep would be phlegmatic. Goats, namely the males, would fit the definition of choleric – bad-tempered or irritable. The other two temperaments are sanguine and melancholic. We’ve seen goats that got so melancholic that they up and died – when a goat has decided it’s going to die, that’s it, you can treat it all you want and it will still die. Sanguine, well, young goats and sheep are remarkably sanguine that whatever is on the other side of the fence is better than what is on this side.
    Much of my knowledge of goats and their habits comes from personal experience, but observations such as the goats who decide they are going to die also come from the lore of a family friend who worked most of her life with animals. She had been a veterinarian assistant at one point, and kept all kinds of animals, taking in unwanted animals from others. Veterinarians were too expensive for us, so she often would treat our sick animals herself or tell us what to do for them. She had to stop caring for animals when she got sick with MS. It is that woman who, along with her husband, is staying with my parents right now.

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  36. Goats are always looking for something, anything, to get into. Sheep will just be happy where they are. The Bible tells to to be more like sheep.

    I have had more ornery goats than ‘good ‘ ones. We had a goat named Gertie for a number of years. She would milk calmly, stay where she was supposed to, come when called, affectionate. I miss her. She was one of the few critters to die of old age at my place.

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  42. Love the goat video ! 🙂 Goats are popular in LA, I’ll have you know — they’re being used to graze overgrown lots and hillsides. A couple fell victim to coyotes locally, unfortunately. But the goat herder decided to get a llama and that seems to help. I wanted to do a story hanging out with him (the goat herder) but somehow it never came to fruition.

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  44. Busy day, had to cover a fatal shooting at a local fast-food joint (cop reporter was in court all day); took a tour of the under-construction Elks Lodge (destroyed by arson in 2014) which overlooks an amazing view of the harbor, downtown LA (they’re using lots of glass in the new design to take better advantage of the views); and wrote another story on rain damage at a historic cemetery where Civil War & WW I veterans are buried.

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