{"id":7126,"date":"2012-12-22T21:49:50","date_gmt":"2012-12-23T04:49:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=7126"},"modified":"2012-12-24T13:19:12","modified_gmt":"2012-12-24T20:19:12","slug":"all-is-calm-all-is-bright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=7126","title":{"rendered":"All is Calm. All is Bright."},"content":{"rendered":"

I realize a lot of you are scrambling around in the stores and malls right now.\u00a0 Sounds like lots of fun.\u00a0 I, however, have been a bit pinned down.\u00a0 2 of the kids were already out of school.\u00a0 1 stayed home sick for several days.\u00a0 And 1 lost a bracket off his braces and then missed the bus on the last day of school.\u00a0 Which seemed like a bad omen on the day the world was going to end so I kept him home just in case things got worse.\u00a0 So the week days were a loss.\u00a0 And, of course, the boys’ Saturday basketball games started at 10am and were scheduled 3 hours apart.\u00a0 Which was too too early to do anything ahead of time, too long to hang out in town inbetween games, and finished just in time to go home for milking and dinner.\u00a0 So, no shopping for me.<\/p>\n

Dang.\u00a0 ‘Cause you people really look like you’re having fun.<\/p>\n

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Compared to all that hoopla, our days have been calm and quiet.\u00a0 The broccoli and brussel sprouts are developing serenely under the frost cover.<\/p>\n

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The greenhouse offers a few tomatoes each week that ripen nicely on the kitchen windowsill.\u00a0 As long as they are rescued from the greenhouse before the cabbage moths get to them.<\/p>\n

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Enjoy your winter sun room, moths.\u00a0 As soon as spring arrives and the summer transplants move out of the greenhouse, I am going to lock you in there and let the sun scorch your larvae-leaf-eating-pupa and your adult-winged-menace bodies into ash.\u00a0 Ho ho ho, punks.<\/p>\n

Some of the herbs in the garden survived the last few frosts.\u00a0 Which meant we made a delightful visit to the cat shelter bearing some Christmas catnip.\u00a0 Which some like to eat.<\/p>\n

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And others like to play with.<\/p>\n

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But some just want a snuggle.<\/p>\n

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Or, of course, to play with the bag that the catnip arrived in.<\/p>\n

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After an hour of escalating cat antics, we bailed for the peaceful pastures of our own barn yard.<\/p>\n

Where the new quick connect hose attachment I installed makes detaching the automatic waterers from the hydrant on freezing nights incredibly easy.\u00a0 So easy that The Other Half and I won’t have to play the “Who Still Has Their Shoes On?” game any more to determine who has to go out and shut it off before bed.\u00a0 Please note this game automatically rewarded those of us who always remember to take their shoes off when they come in the house.\u00a0 As it should, people, as it should.<\/p>\n

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Plus, Tina had discovered new way to relax her gimpy legs.\u00a0 While still hanging out with her brothers, as always.<\/p>\n

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And the Silkie chicks flourished in the brooder room.\u00a0 They are already feathered out enough to peep and scratch happily without needing to huddle under the heat lamps.<\/p>\n

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Even Zorra settled down and decided that TS was actually not as smelly and nasty as much as he was the most handsome and sexy buck she’d ever met.\u00a0 Mark your calendar, P, you’ll have goat kids at your house by Memorial Day.<\/p>\n

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Oh, I’m sorry.\u00a0 Was that T.M.P (Too Much Picture)?\u00a0 We can get so indelicate around here.<\/p>\n

As if things weren’t restful enough outside, the children were desperate for last minute gift cash.\u00a0 Which meant they were up for cleaning the bathrooms,<\/p>\n

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vacuuming,<\/p>\n

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mopping,<\/p>\n

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and whatever else they could do to earn a few coins.<\/p>\n

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Yes, Virginia, Christmas truly is the season of joy.<\/p>\n

Leaving me free to finish making, taste testing, and packaging the peanut butter clouds and chocolate peanut pretzel clusters for the neighbors.<\/p>\n

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In addition to getting the chocolate caramel pecan coconut fudge (with marshmallows) done for Christmas eve dinner.\u00a0 I know, it sounds over the top.\u00a0 But it so isn’t.\u00a0 Because fudge cannot be over the top.\u00a0 It just can’t be.<\/p>\n

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Since using all that peanut butter left us with an empty jar, we also made a treat for the wild birds.\u00a0 Another bird feeder.\u00a0 Which they like enough to wait in line for.<\/p>\n

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Although they kind of have to wait in line no matter what.\u00a0 Because the other feeders….<\/p>\n

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….are already full.\u00a0 Although the dark-eyed juncos and the sparrows are kind enough never to monopolize a feeder.\u00a0 Instead they spread out on the lawn, eating up all the grass seed we sprinkled this week.\u00a0 Every grey smudge in this professional quality photo is a dark-eyed junco or a sparrow.\u00a0 And that’s not all of them, just the section of the lawn with the highest concentration.<\/p>\n

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Dark-eyed juncos and sparrows.\u00a0 Aren’t they just so….considerate?<\/p>\n

So I’m glad everyone’s getting their shopping done over the last few days.\u00a0 Even my kids have scheduled some time out with Grandma and Grandpa to spend their earnings.\u00a0 But our biggest activities have been watching Christmas movies.\u00a0 Playing a few hands of Pictureka!<\/a><\/p>\n

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and a visit to the incredible Paschal light show.\u00a0 Which had more lights….<\/p>\n

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and lovely little houses….<\/p>\n

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filled with more Christmas collectibles….<\/p>\n

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and more miniature train sets….<\/p>\n

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than a person could possibly count.\u00a0 Never mind take pictures of.\u00a0 Which is awesome.\u00a0 Because lights and Christmas collectibles and miniature train sets cannot be over the top.<\/p>\n

As long as they’re at someone else’s house. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

We even got to see Santa Claus.<\/p>\n

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The half-hearted smiles are not because the children were posing under duress.\u00a0 They were under duress, of course.\u00a0 (Except for Little.\u00a0 Little always smiles for the camera.\u00a0 Little smiles and calls to you to take his picture and provides multiple poses and asks to preview them on the camera in case you need to take a better one.\u00a0 Which I think is his way of trying to make up for the fact that we have almost no baby pictures of him because, really, he was the last of 4 and, let’s just be honest—- the novelty wears off, people.)\u00a0 But mostly I think the kids were cold.<\/p>\n

It’s hard for a Southerner to summon the Christmas spirit in 35 degrees and a bitter wind.\u00a0 If Pretty didn’t have her newly knitted poodle yarn scarf she probably would not have survived.\u00a0 Or at least not smiled at all.<\/p>\n

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Good thing we came home to a toasty house with a freshly cleaned and functioning woodstove.<\/p>\n

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So that everything around here was calm and bright.\u00a0 Which is worth writing about.\u00a0 Since tomorrow I’ll be making the side dishes for Christmas eve dinner and The Other Half will be tackling the last minute shopping.\u00a0 And all that calm and bright goes out the window.\u00a0 ‘Cause let’s face it.\u00a0 You can’t have your calm and your family meal and presents, too.<\/p>\n

Unless there’s wine.\u00a0 Which, now that I think about it, is both calm and bright and probably still available at stores everywhere…..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I realize a lot of you are scrambling around in the stores and malls right now.\u00a0 Sounds like lots of fun.\u00a0 I, however, have been a bit pinned down.\u00a0 2 of the kids were already out of school.\u00a0 1 stayed home sick for several days.\u00a0 And 1 lost a bracket off his braces and then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7126"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7201,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7126\/revisions\/7201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}