My birthday sucked. Pretty sure my two small toes on my “good” leg/foot are busted, not a day after the damaged meniscus in that knee decided to get caught in the joint and PULL/tear again. (After all, it’s not fixed yet.) 0/10, do not recommend. I mean, I’ve been in worse pain (from migraines) but the first two days of the toes being damaged in a whole lot of “top of the lungs” shouted obscenities. Other things, including knowing I was being excluded from a long time activity because I can’t wear a mask, and knowing that most of the people I thought gave a damn about me were cheerfully ignoring my existence for the duration of that activity (and in the lead up to it), and being home alone with the kids for over a week with no respite, all combined to make for a sucky birthday when that rolled around near week’s end. I’ve had worse. Dunkin Hines’ “keto friendly” cake turned out well enough that Little Girl ate more than one piece of it, and she almost never eats cake. (She doesn’t even necessarily lick the frosting off, just crumbles everything.)

I’ve played a lot of Skyrim the last few weeks, trying to keep myself distracted (and relatively immobile for the last week, because every time my toes flex, it hurts like an SOB).

I did decide to give up on the tanning hides project for now, perhaps permanently. I don’t have the time, the attention, or the ability to keep the Little Boy out of toxic chemicals. All of that’s in the trash now, including the bucket because I’m not sure how much the plastic absorbs of that stuff. This, not coincidentally, frees up floor space in my shed.

I also decided to cull ALL of the males of the white quail. Every generation has been slightly smaller, and fewer eggs. Obviously, there’s some sort of genetic issue going on — perhaps the lethal white gene? — and I’m tired of them eating expensive food with little return. So I have a Celadon male over the remaining white hens, and the youngest female is in with the Celadon pen. She’s the only female of four surviving quail from this last hatching, none of them particularly vigorous for no discernible reason. The culls are all together to give them a few days of “no babes” to calm them down a bit, and fatten them up a bit, and then I’ll cull them for eating.

While I appreciate the volunteer tomatoes, I am going to try to make sure a better variety turn into the tomato forest next year. These are all around a quarter to half dollar sized tomatoes, and more than half seeds. They’re not bad for snacking on, and a batch of homemade salsa turned out okay. But they’re half seeds, and very little flesh in comparison. It took an entire large soup pot worth of halved little tomatoes to get milled down, and then simmered down, into a quart of tomato sauce. There were a LOT of seeds and skins from the milling. Of course, there’s also a LOT of tomatoes, and although I did try to spend a couple of days selling them (and eggs) at road-side, it didn’t work. I probably need a better method, and more traffic. (That’ll be fixed soon, with the frontage road being worked on as it is.)

Today is the first day that Little Girl is back at school, and even if it means I’m bearing the brunt of Little Boy’s boredom alone, it’s one less source of noise. 😛

He napped after we got back from dropping her off, and I took the opportunity to rearrange / clean up the area where I keep the chicks in the brooder. I don’t know if it’s better, and it still needs a bit of work to make the rearrangement functional, but … I guess we’ll see.

After his nap, Little Boy wanted to play outside. It’s a beautiful blue sky and relatively cool.

Yep, we can do that.

So I started trying to do … some kind of work. Something. (Especially something that wouldn’t involve too much heavy lifting, or banging my toes around. The rubber boots for going into the barn area HURT a lot to put on and wear.)

There are only about 10 billion things that need my attention. All at once. All today. So I spent a good half hour … trying to decide how to approach a project. Couldn’t decide. Still can’t decide. (I need to get the yard related power tools up off the ground. Preferably, also the other battery operated power tools, at the same time.)

But I did manage to do a little bit of picking up… and, I also managed to get the rolls of wire, except the 4′ one, up off the ground and into my shed, in the recently freed up floor space. They’re even stacked neatly. Discovered that my hay hooks work pretty well for carrying the shorter rolls of wire, at least. Definitely would want to have it secured to itself before doing that, but anything to make transporting that easier.

Longer term, I intend to use the pallet fragments in use for the wire to make a sort of shelf or proper corral type thing. But I found myself dithering over how to do that, so it’s not a done-today thing. I’ll get to it. Eventually. Maybe.

But three large items are now properly stored and out of the way. One less item on the never ending, never shortening to do list. One less drain on my thoughts when I head outside to work on a project. Every little bit helps.

Especially when I have another large batch of tomatoes to start processing, in just a few days’ time.