Four shower days

The dog days of summer are finally here. We had a few hot days in June, but July is when they really start. Last Saturday, it approached 100 degrees F.

Generally, there are one shower days, and two shower days. The first shower in the morning is a given. I feel gunky all day if I don't shower in the morning. Some may say that it's an OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), but I call it good hygiene If it's hot enough during the day to make me bust out in a sweat, then it's a two shower day. There's no way I'm going to lay my sweaty body in the bed. (Mary probably appreciates that.)

Well, Saturday was a four shower day. That's not totally due to the heat. If I get particularly gunky, I'll shower off in the middle of the day. If I have to go someplace that requires that I put more clothes on, I'll shower. In this case, it was both.

I already treated you with a reasonably complete description of the process of turning live birds into tasty meat. I mentioned that it's standard practice to carry chickens by dangling them by their feet. It tends to relax them -- most of the time. If they aren't used to such treatment, they generally start by flapping and trying to right themselves. Also, they sometimes look relaxed, but suddenly get a wild hair and start flapping again.

So, as one bird was in the process of draining of blood, he got a wild hair and started flapping. After that, I would have probably made quite the picture -- splattered with blood and holding a knife.

But I got the job done without too much more mess. It helps that I used medical exam gloves when disassembling the carcass.

So shower two came after that.

Then, we went to Cadillac to deliver some eggs (our one steady egg customer had come out of surgery a couple days before, so we used that as an excuse to drive to town.) After that, we went to Mitchell State Park. It's right on Lake Mitchell, of course. It has a nice little beach with nice water. Unfortunately, it's just a bit murky, and the motor boats knock loose enough sea weed to give us the fun of dodging the stuff. Some people really get weirded out when they run into the stuff.

I generally take a shower after exerting myself, but the swim doesn't count. Even with the slightly murky water, we were all clean and cool enough afterwards. Still, it was warm enough at the end of the day that I felt like I needed shower number three before crawling into bed. By then, the night was cool (it rarely gets hot here at night). Shower number four came a couple hours after that.

But anyhow, enough about personal hygiene There are more interesting things going on around here. All of those sickly tomatoes that we planted died, so we bought two healthy plants at Wal-Mart today. I put them in as soon as we got home. We won't be canning many tomatoes, but at least we'll have some BLTs, Chicken Polmodoro (or however it's spelled), and stuff like that. Other than that, the garden is pretty much a bust this year.

The mother hens sat on the eggs for a little while longer, and are now leading three little peeps around. With two mother hens taking care of three babies, they are very well-tended babies. I wish I knew what happened to the other twenty-one eggs. We should have gotten at least twenty chicks out of that batch.

I tried snapping some pictures, but the old clucks tended to stay between us and the babies. I guess I'll have to try again later to get some better pictures. Meanwhile, I'll give you what we got.