Badges and Books and Yay! (by sarah)

Yesterday I received through the post the little button badges of one of my illustrations - it is the Mummy Eating Cherry Pie. I am so pleased with them! I gave the girls their badges as soon as they came home from school.

There are a hundred of these and they are for the launch of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry 🙂 And to just add the icing to the cake yesterday - they themselves arrived! I thought I need to go and pick them up so was really chuffed to get them delivered to my door 🙂

I'll be sending out the pre-orders at the weekend and shall be finishing off the book marks today!

To say I am excited is an understatement, the girls already have a copy in their room and insisted I read it too them last night 🙂 Mary is actually responding to the poems now which is lovely 🙂

A Month of Chickens (by sarah)

I ment to do this post at the weekend but just didn't get the time! We have now had the chickens a month.

The anti peak spray seems to have worked wonders! And they will now let you stroke them though they do still spend a lot of their time running away from Mary who still excitedly cries 'Chicken!' everytime she sees or hears them.

My dad has decided they are velociraptors and they do have a tendency to come and stare in at you whilst you are cooking, they also tap their beaks on the door. I found this shopping list in his hand writing:

spread, olbas oil, cake, toothpaste, nappies size 5, cheese, bananas, VELOCIRAPTOR

Now cake is a bit iffy but velociraptor?

He says he just needed to check how it was spelt and the shopping list was a scrape piece of paper - I say LICKLY STORY!

But back tot he chickens - their feathers are looking really good!

We are still collecting the stats and the eggometer tells us that we are now under a £5 an egg but we are still out of pocket! However it has gotten down to that in a month and I ended up buying a run so when I do the cost benefit stuff I will do different combinations to show how economic this keeping chickens business actually is! They seem to go through about a sack of food and just over one of straw a month. When the jet washer needs replacing it will have to count as a chicken cost as we are jet washing the decking weekly at the mo but again that should reduce once we build the larger run - but of course you then have material costs for that!

The run should be sorted by the spring hopefully but I'm not too worried about it over the winter but chicken poo in summer will be a different matter!

The girls have been sitting in the autumn sun watching the birds and we do the main feeding and watering when Jean comes in from school - the corn is proving a very good tactic. Jean sprinkles that, whilst Mary sort of throws it about a bit (including on the poor things!), then Jean puts their food out and Mary does their grit. We all check for eggs and if needed I clean things up a bit and put fresh straw in the nest boxes. They mustn't have too much corn as it is a treat but I wanted something where we were properly interacting with them and weren't the scary things that just come and catch them!

They put themselves away in the hen house when it is getting dark but are also now more wary of being caught in the first place! They fluff themselves up if a cat gets two near them and spend their time trying to get into the shed (where we keep supplies) or into the bunny's run to eat his food, he on the other hand has been found eating their bedding in the nest box (though this was the day I'd run out of straw and say had put hay in instead and he loves hay!), I am forever having to remove him from the chicken run as he will eat their food!

We love the chickens! Also they have fluffy legs! (and yes the photo is upside down - I'll try and sort it later!)

Stickers and Proofs and Zines and Stuff (by sarah)

This week has been hard work but amazing! Really amazing.

Firstly I performed at Well Versed in Cheltenham on Wednesday - then Thursday I headed off to college to learn science writing and discovered there are things I am good at (though that whole spelling thing still evades me!).

Then there was the Bristol Comic and Zine faire with pre parties and after parties and some amazing work - I was at college for most of it so only caught the very end of the actual faire but then stole my friends comics to read whilst at dinner with some of the illustrators and co. I really enjoyed the pre-party where people did power points of their books - including a rousing song about S&M and cystic fibrosis which they made the audience take part in. I also doodled badly on the sketch pad put in front of me.

Whilst I was in Bristol the proofs of The Little Book of Spoogy Poetry arrive and so will hopefully be going to full print/press soonly 🙂

Incase you've missed what's going on - I am having a book launch at the end of the month! With goody bags - one offs for the first 100 books. The stickers arrived this week too!

I am now only awaiting the badges and material for the bags. I am making the bookmarks myself 🙂

Anyway my mind feels suitably stretched and I survived college and really hope I can actually take part in the zine fest next year though am sort of glad I didn't get a stall this year as Alaric would have had to man it whilst I was at college - also I now have more of an idea of which of my work would fit in there!

Goodbye Tom Long our Long Ginger Tom :( (by sarah)

He seemed out of sorts and actually scratched Mary - the first time he's ever done that - I turffed him and he went missing for two days - my mum was concerned but then I say him apparently sunbathing on the decking. I thought it was odd he didn't come in and eat but not enough to go and investigate. The next day Alaric was cleaning out the chickens with the jet washer and spotted Tom in a little hidden away bit of the garden - not running away from the jet washer.

He knew something was wrong - this was very un Tom like behaviour and he picked him up and dumped him into the kitchen stating - I think he must be ill and went back to jet washing. Then Tom just sat there whilst I decorated cakes - I don't like the cats in the kitchen whilst I'm preparing food especially Tom as he would always jump up on the sides when I wasn't looking or fish food of the worktop etc... So I tried to usher him through to the library and that's when I saw that he couldn't use his back legs 🙁

I called Al who phoned the vet and got changed into not wet chicken poo covered cloths and I got the girls to stroke Tom and say they loved him and explained he was ill, sick, hurt. I didn't think there could be a good outcome and I wanted him to know we all loved him.

Tom was placed in the vet basket and whilst I waited for Alaric, Lithium came and started nosing the basket and Tom her - he has/had been the one that bonded with her, cleaning her and snuggling with her and teaching her to eat etc... So I lifted Lithium into the basket expecting her to hope straight out again but she didn't she snugged down and licked him until Mary came back again.

Then Al left with our ginger menace, he came back with an empty basket and we had to decide what to say to the girls - did we do it before or after the party etc... We decided to tell them before so they would have the party to look forward to rather than a party ruined by the news afterwards, I was crying anyway so I doubt I could have hidden it.

He'd had a blood clot and though they can opperate, it is painful and comes back again really quickly, and he had basically already had three days of restricted circulation to his legs. He didn't purr when we stroked him and look so fed up and forlorn - when we chose for Hydrogen to have the op she had even though there was little chance of survival it was be she was still so purry and glad to see us - she hadn't given up. Tom on the other hand had come home to die.

Alaric stroked him at the vets and it was always Al's clothing he would curl up on. He was a beautiful cat and we shall miss him very much.

Mary keeps asking if Tom's hurt and if he is at school or work, she doesn't understand but she knows we are sad. We are getting the ashes back so maybe she will understand more then.

Bloody Chickens (by sarah)

So three weeks of chickens and... Bloody Chickens!!!

No I am not regretting getting them but they are actually bloody chickens, two of them are being naughty and peeking the other two so we have bought anti peck spray and sprayed them - it is basically the stuff you put on kids nails to stop them bitting them, so I think it just makes the other chickens taste bad - the only issue I have is that they preened themselves straight afterwards so I'm not convinced it is going to work - we will have to see!

Also they have destroyed the door on the compost bin :/ But they did give me a whopping 6 eggs in one day! So I shall forgive them 🙂

Also the feathers are really starting to grow back!

The rabbit seems confused about what species he is!