When Andy’s son, Kenny, was only a couple of years old our friend Kim lived with us for a while and spent some time with him. I don’t remember exactly how it came about, but she decided to call him Fred. Sometimes he was okay with the name, and other times he’d stomp a foot and scrunch up his face and wave his arms and bellow, “My name’s not Fred! It’s Kenny!” Alas, he doesn’t seem to remember this anymore.

Fred came for a visit over the holidays for his first stay at Loafkeeper Farm. His first morning we put him to work. He fed chickens…

…and fed sheep…

…and found a neat leaf and ice sculpture…which wasn’t really work but makes a neat picture.

We also did some improvements on the house and got satellite tv.

After all the work was done, we went out to explore one of the local sights, the Dixie Caverns (and campground! and antique mall!) The place was a bit worn and reminded me a little of the cowboy and indian tourist traps out West, but the caves were well taken care of and the tour guide rocked. I wore my glow-in-the-dark alien shirt just in case the lights went out.

Dear Santa,

My name is Cabol, and I’m sort of old, but I have been a fairly good girl this year. Mostly. At least, I haven’t been arrested or been given any tickets, so that must count for something, right? How are the reindeer? Do you have any spare reindeer because I bet our sheep would like a reindeer friend. Do reindeer eat hay? We have a lot of hay. Did you know pigs eat hay?

For Christmas I want a great pyrenees puppy, a baby donkey (but not a miniature donkey), or a baby llama. I think I’d most like the puppy, but my honey says I can’t have a puppy. Also, puppies don’t eat hay. I also want a turret added to the house for the kitty boxes, a spinning wheel, and a sawsall.

I hope you know we’ve moved. We don’t have a fireplace now. We do have a chimney, but you don’t want to go down it because it ends up in a wood stove that is sort of buried under stuff and you would probably get stuck.

Oh yeah, and if you can manage it, what I really really really really really really want for Christmas is for someone to buy our other house.

Thanks,
Cabol

P.S. I ate all the cookies, but I’ll leave you some slightly squishy fudge and some blackberry wine.

About two weeks ago, Andy dragged me to the Habitat for Humanity store…it’s kind of like the Reuse Center in AA, but not quite as cool. We were looking for an exterior door with windows to put in the living room. It’s too cold to leave the back door open, but we both really like the extra light. So, we thought, how about a door with windows? The only door we found that was the right size had a creepy doorknob that didn’t work and wouldn’t really come out too easily. We found another door we liked, but it was about an inch too wide. We walked around the store while we pondered if it was worth it to try and cut it down.

One of my favorite areas of the store is the tile room. We headed there next. They have tons of ceramic tiles, but most are white or off white or some nasty color. This time, though, we found some groovy green tiles…and then some groovy yellow tiles. They are sorta like lemon and lime colors. Not all the green ones match exactly, and the little tiles we found to go around the top definitely don’t all match, but it’s close enough. We managed to find enough to hopefully tile about halfway up the walls in the upstairs bathroom. We’ll paint above that. We also want to put in tile floors, but I think we’ll have to buy those from a real place because I have in mind what I want, and I doubt they’ll show up at the HforH store. Good thing the room has little floor space, so it shouldn’t be too pricey.

After we had paid (10 cents a tile, bay-bee!), we were headed out when we saw this:

If you look closely at the left front foot, you’ll see it’s broken. No problem. The vanity is sort of high, so noone will even notice when all the feet are taken off. Then, it’s good as new. The sink on top is a nice, heavy ceramic sink that sits into the top of the vanity. The vanity itself seems to be made fairly well; it is probably laminated particle board or something, but it’s very very nice. We should be able to use our old faucet on it for now, but eventually we’d like to get something a little more cool.

Then, last week, we were at Lowes and spotted the clearance shower curtain section. The shower curtain that was left in the upstairs bathroom was very girly and froofy and had roses in all phases of blooming on it. There were some that were sort of open that looked to me like giant monsters with gaping mouths. It was kinda scary. But hey, Lowes had shower curtains on clearance! Andy was really entranced with this one curtain: pink background with little purple crowns all over it. He was very excited that there were even matching purple crown hooks to hang the curtain. Then he noticed…the curtain had “Princess” written on it over and over and over again between the purple crowns. Even then, he hesitated putting the curtain back. Those purple crowns were really calling his name, I guess.

We ended up with this one. You can see Andy holding up some of the tiles in front of the curtain. Not sure if they go together, but the curtain will probably fall apart before we get around to putting the tile in.

Around 4:00 this afternoon, I looked out the window of the building where I work and watched a couple of guys standing on the sidewalk, huddled around a grill drinking beer. Nearby, one of the parking spots had another grill…this one blazing orange flames. My coworkers had almost all fled. The campus was closed, and the stadium was open.

I’ve never been a sports fan, but I did develop a fondness for the Wolverines. Maybe one day I will feel a similar fondness for the Hokies, but right now I have a hard time believe that day will come. When I was in high school, a lot of my friends applied to VT, and all I could do was laugh at them for choosing to attend a school whose mascot was a turkey. A turkey? You can call them the fighting gobblers all you want, but when you get down to, you’re talking turkey. And Hokie? How hokie! (Have I said this all before here? I’ll probably say it again.)

Every now and then VT has a home game on a Thursday evening. All the non-essential workers get kicked out of work an hour early. I guess that’s not so bad, but it is sort of creepy how it happens. I could feel the tension as my coworkers tried to finish up so they would make it outside to move their cars before the tow trucks came by. The word was, if your car wasn’t gone by 4:15, you’d be walking home. It was like that episode in Buffy where Cordelia wishes Buffy never came to Sunnydale and so Sunnydale gets taken over by vampires and all the school kids have to run home so they aren’t caught outside after dark.

“Run, run! They’re coming!”
“But I dropped my lunchbox!”
“No, don’t stop! Don’t turn around! They’re coming!!!”

But I wasn’t afraid. Nope, not me. I was a Sunnydaler with no blood, or in this case a VT employee with no car.

Hey Mom! I’ve got your thermos, and I’m holding it hostage! If you want to see your thermos ever again, you must answer my demands. Here is what you must do: Bring a 20 pound bag of Vidalia onions to Loafkeeper Farm on or before my next birthday. You must not come alone. If you do not bring Dad, Bubba, and Chewey with you, the deal is off!

Just so you know I’m not kidding, here is a picture of your beloved thermos. See all that singed grass around it? Your thermos will be next if you don’t do what I say.