Willpower: 1, chocolate: 0 ... for now

I made the mistake of buying a box of chocolate creams (my weakness... although if I'm going to be totally honest, almost anything with chocolate or sugar is a weakness of mine - I have a serious sweet tooth) a couple of weeks ago and I finally opened them on Monday. (No relation to Valentine's Day - it just happened to be the day that I finally gave in and opened the box.) This is probably extremely counter-productive to my goal of losing weight, but so far I have managed to limit my sweet tooth to one cream a day. I even managed to talk myself out of a second chocolate this evening after dinner when a serious craving hit. This craving was made worse by the sad realization that the dogs actually had a better dessert than I did today - they were scarfing down brownies while I was looking at a fine selection of ripe, over-ripe, and one-day-away-from-totally-rotten bananas. How depressing.

But, in case there are any canines following this blog (or people who enjoy spoiling their dogs) I'll include the recipe, and my notes, here:

Bow Wow Brownies

1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 tablespoons honey
1 cup whole wheat flour
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup carob chips
1/4 cup carob powder
1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. In a medium-sized bowl, blend the oil and honey thoroughly with a wooden spoon. Add the remaining ingredients and mix well. Pour onto a greased 15x10 inch baking sheet. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes. Let cool, then cut into bite-sized squares and store in a sealed container in the refrigerator.

Notes: I pretty much followed this recipe exactly, except that I put the batter into a greased 6x9 pan instead of onto a sheet. It baked perfectly and I sliced it once it cooled and they turned out great - just like regular brownies. The dogs absolutely love them. (They appear to have inherited my sweet tooth...)

The recipe, by the way, is from Real Food for Dogs by Arden Moore

Recipe for disaster

This post is long overdue. I really should have written it a few weeks ago but school has kept me too busy to write anything until now. Okay, okay - it wasn't really school, it was a combination of procrastination, napping, and writer's block - but saying it was school sounds so much better than admitting the truth. At any rate, back on New Years I promised a post about yet another mishap involving Buddy, and it is time to deliver. Here goes.

For Christmas, I decided that instead of buying yet another treat dispensing ball for the dogs, I would simply skip the middle man and give them treats as their gift. But this was Christmas - I couldn't just give them the same treats I make all year, it had to be special. The solution I came up with was to make them little peanut butter, dog-bone-shaped cookies and drizzle them with carob. (This, by the way, did not turn out so great - the drizzle didn't hold to the cookies strongly enough and it tended to chip off when the treats rubbed against other treats and/or the bag I had them in.) After making several bags of treats, I still had a considerable amount of carob chips left over and had decided to use the rest of them (as they were human-grade) in chocolate chip cookies. At the time, however, the pantry was already full with all the other ingredients for the Christmas baking season so I left them on the kitchen table, along with whatever else couldn't be crammed into the cupboards. I did, however, take care to keep all edibles (as we always do) in the center of the table and thus out of reach of any dogs (read: Buddy).

Alas, it was a recipe for disaster. Buddy, having sniffed the carob out, I'm sure, managed to somehow get to the chips in the center of the table (I'm still not entirely sure how he reached them... we really should put cameras in the kitchen to monitor this kind of thing) and take his prize into the living room to enjoy it at his leisure. And enjoy it he did, eating almost all of it. Unfortunately for him, his enjoyment would turn out to be short lived as it seems that eating approximately three cups of carob chips is a bit much, even for Buddy. I came home later and noticed Kita licking something off the living room carpet. Upon closer inspection it turned out that it was the remains a pile of carob and dog food pieces that Buddy had vomited all over the floor (there is, apparently, no accounting for taste in dogs - they eat the grossest things sometimes.) Further investigation revealed that Buddy had also vomited another huge pile of the disgusting concoction all over my bed. Needless to say, Buddy went to bed without dinner that night. (Honestly, the last thing I wanted to do was add fuel to the fire - giving his stomach a break from food seemed the wisest course of action at that point.)

(As for the carob chips: I have yet to make any more attempts to experiment with carob, and don't foresee any in the near future.)

Snowshoeing, Mt. Hood

On December 28, we (my brother, sister and I) took all three dogs up to the mountain to go snowshoeing. This trip up to the mountains necessitated the use of our 1980's Subaru which, while it is our best car in it's ability to handle in the snow and ice, is also a relatively small car, especially when it is crammed with three people, three dogs, and snow gear for everyone. We parked in a lot located above the lake we were planning to snowshoe around and let the dogs out. Kita and Maia - who have been to this lake with us before - recognized the area as soon as we opened the car doors and were immediately ready to head out on the trail. Buddy was another matter. The first thing he realized when he jumped out of the car was that he was standing in snow. This is NOT what he had in mind when he realized we were going for a road trip. He probably figured we were going to the beach - or, at the worst, going camping. Snow, in Buddy's mind, is simply rain, but colder. He is not a fan. Why Kita seems to love it so much is a complete mystery to Buddy. I'm sure Buddy would have been more than happy had we gotten back into the car and gone home right then and there. No such luck.

We got everyone suited up - winter gear and snowshoes for us, coats for Kita and Maia, and a coat on top of a sweater for Buddy - and headed out. (I should perhaps mention that I did make an effort to keep Maia and Buddy's feet warm with little boots, but they managed to get them off in a matter of minutes so we had to leave them in the car or risk losing them in acres of snow.) We let Kita off leash within minutes of heading out on the trail and he had a blast. He loves the snow and was off and running as soon as his leash was off. You would never know from looking at him then, that he is suffering from arthritis. The only sign that he wasn't feeling as good as he once did was that he stuck to the trail instead of going off into the woods like he had the last time we were up at the mountains, several years ago. He made an attempt early on in our walk to go into the deeper snow but soon abandoned that and stayed where the snow was already packed down.

Maia is a bit less dependable when it comes to behaving while off leash so we waited until we were down near the lake before we let her off leash. Once off, she behaved relatively well although her hearing tended to be a bit selective when we asked her not to wander so far ahead. Maia also seems to think that everyone wants to pet her. Whenever we let her off leash (say at the dog park or on the beach) she spends all her time running up to all the people to see if they want to pet her. This presented something of a problem while we were snowshoeing in that as soon as she saw a cross country skier coming, she would run over and sit down in the ski tracks, right in front of the skiers. Fortunately, she is cute enough that no one seemed to get too annoyed at her, and we were usually able to get her out of the way quickly enough.

Buddy was the last to be let off leash. To be honest, I wasn't even sure we were going to let him off at all, given his track record. He comes when called well enough but becomes overexcited around other dogs and has a tendency to bite whoever is within reach: unknown dogs, Kita, Maia... me. Being well aware of this fact, we kept his muzzle on him for the first half of the hike in case we ran into any other dogs on the trail. (Note: we do not like to muzzle Buddy, but it is sometimes the best option for his safety and everyone else's, and we use a soft muzzle and always take it off if he seems hot or if there are no dogs around to rile him.) At any rate, halfway through the hike we found a quiet area where we could take off his muzzle and let him off leash. As Buddy loves to chase balls, we scooped up handfuls of snow and took turns throwing snowballs for him. He loved being able to really run for the first time in a long time (being confined to running up and down our hallway as he cannot yet be trusted at the dog park) and he chased snowball after snowball, but was always somewhat confused when he couldn't seem to distinguish the snowballs from the snow it landed in. He had fun, at any rate, and might not be too terribly disappointed the next time we decide to go snowshoeing, although he was quite happy to snuggle under a blanket in the car on the way home - he is, after all, still Buddy and, as such, is a creature of comfort.

Above are some of the pictures we took during our trip - see how happy the dogs are? I love it when they're happy.

Happy New Year

Here it is, 11:35 on December 31, 2010: less than thirty minutes before midnight and how am I ringing in the New Year? By writing this blog. My brother is out at one of several parties he'd been invited to but I am choosing to stay here on the Unfarm with the animals. (In the interest of full disclosure I should probably say that I wasn't actually invited to a New Year's Eve party as all the people I know are animals, and most of them already live here on the Unfarm with me - but that's fine with me: I don't get along with people nearly so well as I get along with animals.) So here I am, at home, trying to finish my massive to-do list before I go to sleep (another classic case of I-think-I-can-handle-it-itis, for which I am well known - it is rare occasion when I tackle a project that I actually have a reasonable chance of completing.) I have decided that instead of (or most likely, in addition to) spring cleaning, I will clean (and even dust) my room, do all my laundry, change the sheets on my bed, and try to catch up on my workout so that I can start 2011 fresh tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, I spent most of the day procrastinating so now I have an unreasonably long list of things left to do and I am quickly running out of time to accomplish them.

I also need to write out my resolutions, which will probably include trying to make a dent in the massive pile of books I have yet to read (I did manage to read at least 12 of them this year but I probably also bought close to that many, if not more, new ones.) Books are my one weakness. I generally hate collections, but I will admit to having a fairly large book collection - but in my defense, many of them are reference books having to do with animal health and art techniques. The only problem is that I am now running out of room for all my books. I have four bookshelves (one of which is an IKEA shelf almost as tall as the ceiling) but they are now all at capacity and it will take a small miracle if I am able to rearrange them enough to fit in the new ones.

Fireworks. It's midnight.

I will probably have several things on my list of resolutions, but one of the most important goals is to lose weight. I know, I know: everyone makes that resolution and very few people keep it - if I am being completely honest, I made that resolution last year and didn't manage to keep it, so we'll have to see if I'm able to do any better this year. I am not looking forward to a weigh-in tomorrow as I have been eating fudge and butter toffee and cookies for the last few weeks. I have a terrible sweet tooth and I have discovered that if I try to simply limit my sugar intake, I generally go overboard and my self-imposed limits are usually out the window before lunch, so this time I'll try going cold turkey and cutting out sugar (in the form of candy, cookies, ice cream, etc - it would be too difficult to eliminate all sugar from my diet) altogether. Whether or not I will manage to keep any of these resolutions, however, will have to remain to be seen. I will try to keep you updated as to my progress on my goals, but whatever the animals have been up to lately is usually far more interesting than whether or not I lost a pound or finished reading Think Like A Cat yet.

So, as a special treat for New Year's Eve, here's a sneak peek at some upcoming posts from the Unfarm. First, a report from the field: we took all three dogs - even Buddy - up to the mountain for some post-Christmas snowshoeing (by which I mean that we were on snowshoes and the dogs were barefoot: we tried giving them little boots to wear but the dogs had them off within minutes.) And secondly: what do you get when you mix Buddy, a low table, and a bag of carob chips accidentally left out? Hint: the answer is not pretty.

Sigh

Note: Forgive the delay, I started this post before Christmas, but with all the last minute shopping and spending time with my family, I wasn't able to get it posted until now.

It is, unfortunately, almost Christmas. This is unfortunate for two reasons, first, the sooner Christmas comes, the sooner it goes and all that's left is dreary, gray, wet winter; and second, I am - once again - nowhere near being ready. Why does that sound so familiar? Perhaps because I went through the same thing last year. The difference is that this year I have very little help with all the baking. And I got a much later start than I would have liked, due to the fact that I was slogging my way through a depressingly thick microbiology textbook and trying to cram the common names, scientific names, and identifying features of a huge list of deciduous plants. All this studying left very little time for doing anything. I think the only people less excited about all my schoolwork were the animals. The dogs were lucky if I managed to walk them once a week, the bunnies rarely got their usual time out in the evenings, and the ducks... who am I kidding - the ducks are exceedingly adept at getting whatever they want so my studying didn't bother them a bit.

The other task that fell by the wayside was keeping up on this blog. So, since I know everyone has been clamoring for an update (all one or two people who read this blog), I will oblige. There is nothing new to report with Kita and Maia, which is usually a case of no news is good news at this point: it means that their arthritis isn't getting any worse and their health is holding fairly steady. Kita is, however, on more pain medication in addition to his Rimadyl which seems to have made him a bit more playful, but he's still dragging by the end of our walks. But, despite his convincing performance of utter exhaustion, I am still not entirely sure that he's telling the truth. He always seems to be able to get up the energy for a second wind whenever he finds himself out without a leash or able to find a hole in the fence. As for Buddy, he temporarily acquired the unflattering nickname of "conehead." This was due to the fact that he managed - somehow - to rip a quarter sized piece of skin off the front of his shoulder which required stitches to patch it up (resulting in yet another vet bill, but on the plus side, they are naming the new wing of their building after us). And to keep Buddy from picking at his stitches, he was required to wear one of those plastic e-collars, hence the conehead nickname. He bore it tolerably well, though and after two weeks he was able to shed both the collar and the nickname.

Aspen is overjoyed that my brother - who had left for a month to visit relatives in another state - is back at home as this means that he will once again be getting decent milk. I should mention that the milk I give Aspen is the exact same milk that my brother gives him, but Aspen is convinced that what I have poured him is sub-par milk. He will drink almost anything my brother pours him, but should I make the mistake of pouring him anything less than half-and-half he looks at me like I'm trying to feed him dog food or something equally absurd. He will, however, grudgingly accept whipped cream from a can, cream, and eggnog from me. Mynx is easier to please and is quite content as long as the cable box with her blanket on top stays warm.

The chickens are finally out of trouble. A couple weeks back they were regularly staying out at night instead of going into their coop. This then necessitates an in-the-slippery-mud-and-pitch-dark chase of the chickens around the yard - a chase that the chickens nearly always win, being much smaller than us and therefore able to dart under the deck and wiggle around bushes much faster than we can. After several nights of slogging around in the dark after the chickens I grounded them to their run for a few days and that seems to have cured them of their rebellious attitude: they are now going into the coop on their own once it begins to get dark.

Things continue much the same with the rabbits: Jojo hates TJ. TJ hates Jojo, but gets along with Suki. Suki loves Jojo, tolerates TJ, and hates Clover. Clover spends all his time out of the cage marking every spot that Jojo has marked but is otherwise prevented from having any contact with TJ, Suki and Jojo by an elaborate system of gates and blockades. All attempts at bonding the rabbits are temporarily on hold, but I am hoping to start up again soon as their hormone levels will be lower during the winter (or so I am told - we'll have to see if that really makes the bonding any more successful than it has been previously.)

As for the ducks, Minna is - once again - laying eggs. This means several things: one, that Minna is regularly leaving eggs in the bunny room every morning; two, that Minna has become very insistent - and very vocal - in demanding multiple trips to the dog's water bowl every night; and three, that Maggie's hormones are in overdrive and she (he) frequently attacks both Minna and myself in multiple attempts to mate every day. It is particularly dangerous to refill the dog water bowl in the evening as that seems to have a sort of aphrodisiac effect on Maggie. I'm not entirely sure why that is - but it is almost a guarantee that as soon as I start pouring the water Maggie will either hop on top of Minna or go after my ankles.

Ah, and there it is, right on cue. Minna is demanding her third, or maybe fourth, trip out to the water bowl which means my peace and quiet has come to an end. She is, as I said, very vocal.

Kettle Corn, part 2

Here we go, "kettle corn, the sequel." The first batch I made, while tasty, was more like caramel corn than kettle corn so I was forced try out another recipe. Which is a not entirely unpleasant way to spend the evening, and I found the perfect recipe. This one has a light coating of sugar and a hint of saltiness to make an awesome batch of kettle corn. As is my custom, here is the recipe, followed by my comments on it.

Kettle corn part 2

1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup yellow popcorn kernels
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Pour the oil into a large pot with a lid, and add three kernels of popcorn. Heat the oil over medium heat and once the kernels have popped, the oil is hot enough. Pour in the rest of the popcorn and the sugar. Put the lid on the pot and shake frequently until the kernels have stopped popping. Pour the popcorn out into a large bowl and sprinkle on the salt. Toss to coat with a wooden spoon. Let cool and enjoy.

The recipe is pretty good as it is, but I had a bit better luck with it when I stirred in the sugar instead of just shaking the pot to mix it. It's also a good idea to use a really big bowl to mix the popcorn with the salt, so you don't have popcorn falling all over the counter. In addition, if you want a large batch of popcorn, I would make several small batches (where this recipe is one small batch) instead of trying to double this recipe - adding any more popcorn to the pot will make it hard to evenly cook the kernels, plus you'll need a larger pot and the bigger the pot the harder it's going to get to pick it up and shake it well enough. With that said, good luck and have fun. It's actually surprisingly easy to make.

Additional note: You can also make this recipe using white popcorn kernels, but I would advise using less than the recipe calls for - maybe only one third cup? - because the white kernels are smaller than the yellow kernels and when I made the recipe with the white popcorn I had more trouble getting the popcorn evenly coated. The extra popcorn makes it harder to mix the pot by shaking it and so you'll end up with some pieces well coated and some with almost nothing on them.

And, as is proper, credit for the recipe goes to: http://pinchmysalt.com/2009/11/24/lets-get-old-fashioned-homemade-kettle-corn-recipe/

Kit Kat

Kit's grave, and the view from it of the ocean.

A few weeks ago I decided to take a mini vacation up along the Puget Sound. I went for a walk on the beach and made something of an unusual discovery. Most of the time when I am at the beach I find seashells or seaweed or the shells of dead crabs (none of which I take home, by the way - I am not a fan of beachy smells) but that day I came across a cat. Or rather, the cat found me. And, as you may have noticed by now, I can not resist an animal, especially an animal in need. So I scooped her up and took her with me into the house. (Was there ever any doubt?) As soon as I picked her up I realized just how much trouble she was in. She was covered in fleas, had enormous mats in her long fur, and she was light as a feather - I'm pretty sure that you could see just about every bone in her little body, and she was extremely dehydrated. She must have been trying to survive on her own out there, without any food - and probably precious little fresh water as well. As I had not planned on finding a cat I neglected to bring with me the basic necessities: litter and a box, as well as food. Every cat - every animal, for that matter - needs a name so I dubbed her KitKat (the inspiration was a KitKat bar that I found in the house sitting on the kitchen counter), secured her in the bathroom so that the dogs wouldn't bother her, and took off in the car for the 12 mile drive to the nearest market to pick up some litter and much needed food. I got back to the house and spent the rest of the day neglecting my homework in order to take care of Kit. I gave her some food - she couldn't eat much though, as her stomach must have shrunken during the weeks she had been without food. The dogs, being fairly accustomed to my habit of bringing home strange creatures, took little notice of Kit after the initial introductions, although they were careful to give her space on the couch or bed and not crowd her. I set up a litter box and showed Kit where it was, although she hardly needed it - she couldn't have let out more than a tablespoon of urine. A couple hours later I decided that Kit needed a bath. This was somewhat of a difficult decision to make - on the one hand, getting her wet might force her to use more energy to stay warm, but on the other hand, she had so many fleas on her that I worried they were sucking out any nutrients she might have and weakening her further. In the end I decided to try the bath - I soaped her up in the kitchen sink, washed her down with warm water and wrapped her in soft towels to try and dry her off. When I noticed her shivering I put her under the covers in the bed and snuggled her next to my chest to keep her warm. I tried to get her to eat something later in the afternoon but she wasn't feeling up for it and her movements became less coordinated. I let her sit on the couch with me when she didn't want to be held, and cuddled with her when she did want to be. Her breathing became a bit labored in the evening and I let her rest against my chest and cuddled her to try and comfort her. Around 10:30 that evening I felt her stretch and was relieved that she was finally feeling better, and that her breathing was finally quieting. I took me a few seconds to realize that I wasn't feeling her breath much at all. I shook her gently and said her name to get her attention. Once. Twice. A third time. But she was gone.

Usually, I am not much of a crier, but when it comes to animals I have a soft spot, so I will admit that I did cry for about an hour after she died. Partly because I felt guilty that maybe the bath had pushed her over the edge, but mostly because I didn't want her last weeks of life to be so miserable. I wanted her to be safe and warm and loved and happy before she died. Full of good memories to take with her. I wanted her to have enough good life that it would make this hard time a distant memory. Instead of being cold, hungry, thirsty, lonely, and looking for help but unable to find it. I can only imagine her going from house to house, looking for someone to help her, but at that time of year there are fewer people at the vacation homes. And even worse - what if she had found someone but they had refused to help her?

I wrapped her in a towel and, because it was beyond dark out, put her on the bed in one of the back bedrooms and shut the door. I couldn't bring myself to put her body outside for the night, all alone, but I also realized that I needed to separate her in some way from the dogs because the fleas would start jumping ship now that she was gone and I had to protect them from the fleas as much as possible. In the morning, I found a spot on the hill above the house, in the sun, with a view of the ocean and dug a hole as best I could in the rocky ground. I laid her inside and covered her back up, feeling guilty that I would be leaving her there on her own when I went back home again.

Had Kit lived, I fully intended to bring her home with us and make her a permanent member of the Unfarm. After what she had to go through, trying to survive out there on her own, looking for help but unable to find any, until me, I wanted to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that she would never have to go through anything like that again. The only comfort I could take in the situation was in knowing that she was, on her last day, warm, and safe, and very, very loved.

And so I have decided to add her, posthumously, as a full fledged member of the Unfarm family. In addition, because I was unable to save Kit, I decided to make a donation in her honor to a local cat shelter. I have recently started drawing pet portraits for friends as gifts and so I decided to give a gift certificate of a pet portrait to the cat shelter, and they would choose one of their less adoptable cats to give the certificate to. The certificate would be an added incentive for someone to adopt the cat, giving that cat a chance at the life that Kit should have had.

Kettle Corn

It has been a while since I've written anything, not so much because I have nothing to report but because I have been too busy with school and homework to find time to sit down and write. I've been short on time, long on stress, and heavy on homework. But tonight I attempted to make kettle corn and I figured I'd pass along the recipe and my thoughts on it. So here you go:

Kettle Corn

yellow popcorn kernels
vegetable oil
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
salt (I used 1/2 teaspoon)

You will need a pot with a lid, a smaller pot, a wooden spoon, and a large bowl. Pour some vegetable oil into the lidded pot, enough to cover the bottom. Add the popcorn kernels - put in enough to make a single layer on the bottom of the pot in the oil. Put the lid on and heat the popcorn over the stove, shaking the pot every five to ten seconds. The popcorn is done when it's no longer popping continuously. Pour the popcorn into the large bowl and set it aside. Combine the water, vegetable oil, and brown sugar in the small pot and heat to boiling. Once it starts boiling, lower the heat to medium and let simmer for 3 minutes. Mix the salt onto the popcorn, and then pour in the sugar mixture and toss with a wooden spoon to coat the popcorn. Let cool a few minutes and then enjoy.

Okay, so that was my first time making popcorn on the stove and it turned out pretty good - much better than the disaster I was expecting. As for the finished recipe, it wasn't exactly as kettle corn-y as I thought it would be. Not that it wasn't good - it was. I mean, how can you go wrong when you put sugar on popcorn. (Or almost anything, for that matter.) But I would describe it as being more like caramel corn than kettle corn, which could be due to a couple of factors. It could be that I didn't put in enough salt. And it would probably have been more like kettle corn if I had a made a LOT more popcorn so that each piece got a light coating as opposed to being drenched in sugar. I should also note that the popcorn was fairly sticky and messy-ish to eat, not as dry as the kettle corn I'm used to. I think that the next time I try out a kettle corn recipe I'll try one of the versions that uses regular sugar instead... I'll keep you posted on how that turns out.

And now, unfortunately, it's back to my microbiology notes - I have a midterm coming up on Tuesday and I am dreading it as the teacher gives us a study guide and then promptly tests us on material not on the study guide.

By the way, I found this kettle corn recipe here: http://www.aliciakachmar.com/blog/life/homemade-kettle-corn-cheap-and-easy/ in case you want to check out the whole thing and see the pictures that go with it for yourself.

Cross that off the list

It's done! Finally! A picture of every single animal that lives with me here on the Unfarm. Getting the pictures added to this site has been on my to do list for a few months now - I needed to add pictures of Minna and Maggie (now that they are full grown and sporting their adult plumage), as well as Maia, Jojo, Clover, and Mynxy cat. But getting the pictures was - as is customary on the Unfarm - easier said than done.

Minna and Maggie were relatively simple as they tend not to run around as much as the other animals. Not that they can't run - don't ever think that just because they have large feet designed more for swimming than mobility on land that they aren't fast - it is at times hard to outrun Maggie when she (I mean he, but it has become habit to refer to Maggie as a "she") is determined to catch up to me.

As for Mynx, I happened to catch her during a rare moment when she was not sleeping. She did, however, decide to investigate the camera and I was eventually able to get a shot of her whole face, rather than just her nose.

When it came time to get a picture of Miss Maia it took considerably longer than I had originally thought that it would as Maia was convinced I was about to deliver some cruel treatment of some kind. As a result, although she did as I asked and sat on the couch, she spent the entire time trying to avoid looking at me while trembling throughout her entire body. It may have had something to do with the fact that I often corner her on the couch or chair when it is time to clip her nails - something she (well, all the dogs actually) abhor. To be fair, I try to be as careful as possible when clipping their nails, but both Kita and Maia have black nails and sometimes accidents happen and I nick the quick.

The most difficult photos to get were the pictures of Clover and Jojo. The rabbits, while they do many, many cute things and strike numerous adorable poses, only hold those poses for approximately 2.3 seconds - not quite enough time to get the camera in position and focused. After about 10 minutes or so of taking pictures of Jojo and Clover, I had 5 decent photos to choose from, and 63 photos depicting only a blur of bunny moving across the screen.

But they're here, they're done - uploaded and titled and off of my to-do list - now all I have to do is tackle the other 374 things on my list.

Unfarm updates, for lack of the writing mood

I have been trying, on and off for the last couple of hours, to come up with some kind of amusing, fascinating, witty couple of paragraphs to post but so far I've come up empty. I've managed to come up with a few sentences on one or two different topics, but I can't seem to complete my thoughts, so rather than wait for perfection and post nothing - yet again - I will instead admit defeat and post a couple random thoughts and observations tied together under the rather vague title of "Unfarm updates, " so here goes.

Updates from the Unfarm:

It's raining. I'll allow you a moment to recover from your shock. All better? Good. As I said, it's raining. And while our garden produced, over the course of the past few months, several very large zucchinis, thirty-one pounds of beans - a mixture of both wax and green beans, a number of delicious ears of white corn (my favorite), dozens and dozens of huge scarlet runner beans (which we didn't eat as they were planted mostly for the flowers to provide food for hummingbirds and bees), a few cucumbers, many delicious basil leaves, and countless flowers; it has not, unfortunately, managed to produce the bumper crop of tomatoes that we were hoping for. I should clarify. We planted several tomato plants - a mix of romas, cherries, and heirlooms - that produced tons of tomatoes, all of which are now... green. We neither eat nor particularly like green tomatoes but it appears that we are going to be stuck with pounds and pounds of them. The rather slow start to the summer and the less than hot temperatures have resulted in a glut of green tomatoes all over the northwest and put a damper on our plans for making bruschetta and margherita pizza using tomatoes from our garden. We may try out a few recipes using the green tomatoes, or we may try to ripen the tomatoes using the technique my great-grandmother used to use: place the tomatoes into boxes in a single layer and store them under our beds. I'm not entirely sure on the reasoning behind storing them under beds, but I think it had something to do with finding a cool, dark place to ripen the tomatoes combined with the lack of storage options that occurs when two families (six people total) live in a small house with only three bedrooms. Our house is considerably larger, but even so, with the amount of tomatoes we have on our plants I suspect that we'll have boxes of tomatoes under all of the beds as well as the living room couch, the computer desk, our grandmother's armchair and anything and everything that we can stuff tomatoes under.

In addition to preventing the tomatoes from ripening, the rainy weather also means that the rabbits are stuck indoors again all day. Last winter, this was hardly worth concerning myself over but the addition of a new rabbit has, predictably, complicated matters. The old routine was for the rabbits to get time out of their cages every evening: TJ would get the first hour and a half out, then he would go back in and Suki and Jojo would be given their 90 minutes of free time. TJ and Jojo remain on less than friendly terms but have at least become accustomed to one another and, for the most part, tend to ignore each other when one or the other of them are hopping around the room. The novelty with Clover, however, has yet to wear off and rather than spend their free time doing binkies they tend to spend it fighting and scrabbling at each other through the cage bars. This is problematic for two reasons: first, it reduces the chance that the rabbits will eventually bond with each other, and secondly, this territorial behavior is often accompanied by territory marking (read peeing or leaving bunny berries on the carpet.) So the addition of one new rabbit has created a huge logistical problem if I am to keep all the rabbits apart from each other while still giving them the much needed chance to stretch their legs. At the moment I have a wire gate separating TJ from Suki and Jojo, while still giving Suki and Jo access to their cage (and, more importantly, their litter box.) TJ, who is the best behaved of all my bunnies, is allowed free access to the room, including under my art table – a privilege not usually given to the rabbits as they have too much opportunity to get into trouble under there – but, because the ducks have their bedtime set-up in front of TJ's cage, he cannot get into his cage, so his litter box has been brought out into the room. Suki and Jojo, meanwhile, are hopping up and down the hall to get their exercise, but they are not allowed into the living room (too many cords attached to expensive objects to give the bunnies free range, especially as they have already demonstrated their willingness to chew through any and every electrical cord they can get their teeth on) so I have put up an old mirror at the end of the hall to block them from accessing the living room. The reason I am using a mirror and not, say, a gate, is because the gate also succumbs to bunny teeth – I have set up the gate a couple of times only to come back five minutes later and discover the bunny where he shouldn't be, and a suspiciously bunny-sized hole in the gate that wasn't there five minutes ago.

Speaking of Clover, after having lived here for over a month now he is proving to clean up quite nicely. He has put on weight and his coat is 100% better than it was when I first found him struggling to survive starvation and coyotes in the small patch of woods at the end of the street. He is becoming quite a handsome rabbit, sleek and healthy. I will have to try to get a good picture of him to add to the blog now that he has become a permanent resident of the Unfarm.

Life has not been as smooth for another Unfarm resident. My brother has come down with a case of digestive upset. It could be giardia from drinking stream water while backpacking, but on the other hand, it could also be a particularly nasty case of Karma. The same brother that is recovering from a bout of explosive ---------- (illness specifics will be withheld to protect some of my brother's dignity, not that he ever actually reads this blog – supportive fellow that he is) promised me that we would go camping this summer but never seemed to be able to find the time to actually go. It is now mid September, mere days away from the official start of Autumn, and I have given up on us going camping this year. The karmic retribution comes in because just last week my brother was able to find the time to go off backpacking with some friends of his. He was to leave on Wednesday and return four days later on Sunday. “But,” he said, “maybe we could go camping next Tuesday and Wednesday, if I don't have too much work to do.” Come Sunday evening I received a text from him stating that he was going to stay out longer with his friends and that he would be home on Wednesday. While my brother never can seem to find time to go camping with me, as soon as his friends want to do something his schedule miraculously clears up. Amazing how that works. Needless to say, I do not feel the least bit sorry for him.

I can, however, sympathize with our chicken, Penny. It rained all day today and the sun never could manage to break through the heavy cloud bank that blanketed the sky from one horizon to the other. And while the ducks can't understand why anyone would ever want any weather than this – I mean, water actually falling from the sky, and it's everywhere! – the chickens are miserable. They spent a large part of their day standing around under the redwood trying to stay dry, hoping that perhaps, if they were lucky and Maggie wasn't around, the squirrels would drop some of their food down on the ground for them to break up the monotony of the day with. But by 6:30 Penny was already settled into the coop for the night, a good hour before dark. I don't blame her. She probably decided that it had been terrible weather all day and it wasn't going to change any time soon so she might as well go to sleep until morning... or May... whenever the weather improves. I'm tempted to follow suit and head off to bed to hibernate until spring. Unfortunately, school begins – for yet another year – for me on Tuesday. Microbiology and Deciduous Plant Materials, so hibernation isn't really an option at this point. Although, with five hours of Deciduous Plant Materials, from 8am to 1pm every Wednesday, it is a very good possibility that there will yet be some napping in my future.