Old Wet Hen

Now that the fall season in Texas has lasted all of one week, we will be getting our first freeze here in a couple of days.  I guess the hot days of summer are truly gone…for a couple of months, anyway.  This means that Opal Chicken will have to wait awhile for her next bath.  Believe it or not, I think she might miss them!

It isn’t like we bathed her all the time, but she certainly got more than one bath this past summer.  It began when the temperatures started climbing way above the 100-degree mark; even with fans blasting in the chicken coop, there was just no way to really keep her cool!  And a hot chicken is a very sad sight!  So I started bringing her in during the hot part of the day and putting her in a dog crate in the craft room.  Once it the temperature started cooling down, she would go back outside.

“She stinks to high heaven!” my husband declared.

“She does not stink!” I countered.  “She just smells…different.”

“She needs a bath!”  He wasn’t backing down.

After seeing how wild the dogs can be when Robert bathes them, I wasn’t quite sure how Opal Chicken would take to this.  But time after time, she would just sit calmly in the tub, letting Robert suds her up:

He would  take her out and sit her on top of something, and then pour clean water to rinse her off:

The only part she didn’t enjoy was the indignity of Cookie doing some sort of inspection:

But after that was over, now all clean and sweet (and cool!), Opal Chicken could strut around and enjoy her day:

 

Wheels!

This summer we finally accomplished one of our goals!  We have been looking around for quite some time to find a camper trailer, and Robert finally found one that was still in really good shape (except for a leak in the roof – discovered after we bought it, during the first major rainstorm).  We bought it at such an insanely low price, that even with the leak (which Robert is in the process of repairing), it was a really great deal.

Since it is used, there is the possibility that there were dogs and smokers in it.  We are going to replace the carpet with a hard floor and reupholster the couch, etc., as well as buy a new mattress.  It is important to us that it is fresh and allergen-free because one of the major things we are looking forward to using the camper for is taking the world’s most beautiful girl camping as soon as we can.  Also, since she still can’t come in our house until we are down some animals, we thought that maybe she could come spend the night sometimes and we can camp out in the driveway.  Fox will be coming as soon as he is old enough to enjoy it, but for now it is Paisley’s special thing.  In fact, we have named our new home, “Paisley’s Palace”.

Here are some pictures of how it looked when we bought it:

There will be new pictures when we get the re-do finished!

Robert also surprised me with a little something he came bringing home one day.  I have been aggravating him like crazy about moving to a small town…a town small enough that I could ride a bicycle to the grocery store, the library, and what-not.  I could just picture me waving to my friends as I ride by, just like Jessica Fletcher does during the opening song of “Murder She Wrote”.  Of course, if I was going to be hauling groceries home, I would need a big basket of some sort.  Well, I’m not moving to a small town any time soon, but half of the dream came true when Robert showed up with this bad boy:

An adult tricycle!  How fun is that!

I guess with all of these wheels, there’s a plan to get me out of the house more…