Random Scribblings in the Margin

I blame the chickens.

Tomorrow I'm off to my birds-work to try and catch the nearly-full-grown red-eared terrapin (slider to the Americans) some bastard dumped in the koi pond. Hopefully once it's out and fostered at mine, I won't have to field idiots telling me "oh, but it's the kindest thing to do". No! No it bloody isn't! Skipping over the fact it's ILLEGAL to abandon animals like that, we have no way to provide it with an appropriate diet or the UV rays it needs. Also, the koi keep trying to eat its face. They're a lot bigger than it is. All we can do is hope it doesn't return the favour.

And they're a bugger to rehome, because they're a really common species for people to get sick of when they grow too big or need too much specialist equipment. Ho hum.

I managed to hand-feed and handle it last week, so I'm hoping that if I go in with a tin of sardines I can repeat the trick tomorrow. And I'm setting up its tank tonight.

I don't actually want to keep it though, so I've been emailing various rescue organisations. No luck so far.

A week after getting them, all four chickens are alive and as well as can be expected, and I've had loads of eggs. bokbokosaurus* for lengthy updates. When I checked on them at bedtime tonight, they were lined up in the nestboxes making soft trilling noises.

* Please don't mention this account if you're commenting on that one; I'd like to keep the two separate.

I did DIY in the dark. With hammering. I am legendarily clumsy and failed woodwork at school. I still have all my fingers, which is astonishing.

The two runs are both up, roofed over the wire to keep the rain out (with wood till I ran out of wood, and then with tarpaulins), lined with tarpaulins on the floor, and filled with straw, since my super-fast-growing grass seed, well, didn't. (They'll never have seen straw before. You get SO MUCH STRAW out of a compacted bale. It's gonna blow their tiny chicken minds, and it smells beautiful.) The coop roof is painted with: "These birds are checked at least twice a day. They are rescue birds and will need time and rest to recover. In an emergency call NAME on NUMBER." The run roof is painted with: "These birds were saved from tiny, overcrowded cages. Even this little run is big and scary for them. They had never been outside before. They will get more room and treats as soon as they can cope." Hopefully that will prevent well-meaning intervention. The coop and run meet and sometimes exceed recommended welfare standards - I wouldn't even think of using them if they didn't - but I look at it and think "that's a bit small", so I can't blame other people for doing the same. But chickens are creatures of habit, and I'm introducing them to all sorts of terrifying new things, so let's go slow.

I still have to join the two runs together, and join the ensuing megarun to the coop. There's gonna be a lot of hammering steel mesh over the gaps, because cheapass coop + uneven ground != fitting together well. I already covered the bottoms of the runs with mesh to prevent burrowing attacks. I also need to put hasps and padlocks on the hinged section of the coop roof (it wasn't hinged till I MacGuyvered it. Now it is) and the run roofs (ditto). Oh, and mesh over the bottom of the nest box and coop to stop foxes and rats getting in that way. I think... I hope... one more evening, and it's habitable? Better be, since I'm getting the chooks Saturday morning...

I'm getting 4 rescued ex-batt chickens on October 15th. Putting them on my allotment. Tasks yet to do:

- galvanised mesh floor for runs to prevent tunnelling
- replace wooden toggles and stupid little bolts with hasps and padlocks
- construct second run; finish painting second run; join two together
- draughtproof coop
- replace mesh roofs on runs with hinged wood
- acquire diatomaceous earth for de-lousing purposes
- knit jumpers in case of baldness
- tarps and some kind of soft scratchable flooring for runs
- sonic and stinky fox-repellents

( Less worryingly )

Oh, and I need to make a sign explaining that it's not my fault they look like hell and don't seem to know what to do with enough space to stretch their wings, and if the state of them outrages people, then don't report me to the RSPCA, just buy organic eggs in future.

My bank has a "Central Fulfilment Unit".

I don't know whether to be nauseated or terrified.

This weekend, there was a death*, a birth**, a wedding*** and some fighting****.

I'm currently feeling fairly detached from everything. This is probably for the avoidance of explosions.

* One of the little kids from karate. One of those very sudden inexplicable things.
** Family friend, emergency c-section.
*** Old school friend. First church wedding I've ever been to.
**** Karate competition. Got my ass kicked. Very very full of adrenaline afterwards. Didn't help that I found out about the kid just before.

But while it is, in fact, illegal, DON'T GROW IT ON MY ALLOTMENT, YOU MONUMENTAL ARSEHOLES!!!!!

So the wife was weeding up the far end of my allotment today, while I was digging out bindweed roots and planting spuds. And she says "Er, there's a plant with seven leaves down here." Well, there were two. With marks of watering, and potting compost still in their roots.

Some fucker planted cannabis on the overgrown end of my allotment. I pulled it up in a rage, and I was going to dispose of it somehow (hadn't planned that far ahead), and the Voice Of Reason (also known as the wife) pointed out we should probably contact the police. So we did.

I'm not in favour of the war on drugs. I think drugs should be legalised. I don't give a damn if someone smokes weed (although if you drive stoned, you're an irresponsible potentially-murdering fucker and you really should be arrested, just like if you drive drunk). I disagree with arrests for possession. I also think growing your own is better than giving money to organised crime.

But here's the thing: it is still illegal. When you possess or grow weed, you are taking a calculated risk. And you don't get to make other people take calculated risks without their knowledge or consent. You don't get to plant - no pun intended - drugs on me. Take responsibility for your own fucking habit, and grow it on your own fucking property.

Also, I know you can't tell because it looks like shit, but I work hard on that allotment. Clearing a couple of cubic feet of stones and invasive weeds takes me about an hour of sweating and hayfever and sunburn and backache. You don't get to treat it like an abandoned piece of waste ground that's yours for the taking. Fuck off.

And then things took a turn for the weirder still, when the police did show up and tried to convince us it was just mint! What species of mint has long, thin, serrated leaflets arranged in three pairs leading up to a single long one? What species of mint smells like the top deck of a bus that goes through Handsworth? And who the hell goes to that much trouble to cultivate mint where they think it won't be found?

The police were also singularly unhelpful when we raised the issue of my stuff being trashed in revenge for destroying the plants. "Did they see you pulling them up?" Well, no, but I think they'll notice that they're not there any more! And when they do, I'd quite like my garden to stay in one piece.

Okay, so sometimes it's too much like hard work to put someone who actually knows about medicines behind the medicines counter. Even though that sort of raises the question of why the hell you bother having only-available-with-consultation meds, if you're going to fill that counter with staff who can't do consultations. If I'm gonna end up going through the meds myself and picking my own anyway, why have the barrier and make me feel like a supplicant? Okay. Fine. It's the school holidays. Maybe all your qualified staff were taking their spawn to Butlins. Okay.

Although it was kind of annoying when I asked for "a non-drowsy antihistamine that isn't loratadine" and she went through several loratadine brand names before offering me cetirizine and chlorphenamine. Does it say "non-drowsy" on it? Does it? Then I don't fucking want it. Okay. Chill your beans, Lorna. And it was also sort of annoying when she tried to claim loratadine, cetirizine and chlorphenamine were the only antihistamines there were. Er, no they ain't. Don't make me vault this counter and start rifling through the boxes myself. Okay. Deep breaths. Calm happy place. Whalesong. Yeah.

Could you at least have a member of staff who has remembered her glasses, and so doesn't need me to read the medicine boxes for her? Please?

(I got acrivastine in the end. Let's see what this does.)

That means that the senseis think my performance of enpi kata is adequate to grade on. (You have to get three tips on your belt, for combinations, kata and semi-freestyle sparring, before you can grade.) I wasn't even going for any tips. I just did the course because it was compulsory for brown and black belts. At the start of the course, I didn't know all of enpi and I couldn't do the jump.

This course really brought home how much fitter and stronger I need to be, as a brown belt. Afterwards I was just exhausted. I sat on the floor, drank Lucozade and ate cake for twenty minutes until I had the energy to get up and get changed. (Much like after the Halesowen Aquathlon, where I spent twenty minutes sitting on the changing room floor, eating cake, rubbing moisturiser into my chapped belly, and staring into space.) In a year or less, I'm going to have to do that, plus a four-to-six hour grading afterwards. Oh god.

OKAY! Now I'm off to the gym.

If there's anybody who reads my LJ who doesn't have some kind of mental or chronic illness, it's probably not clear what all the fuss is about. But for me, this is one of the best days I've had in a long time, and I've done a bunch of stuff I've been meaning to get around to. There's still stuff that needs doing - I didn't get around to picking up my prescription, for instance - but still, this was a damn good day. Recently, if I'd managed one of these things, I was calling it a success.

( Stuff I did! YAY! Go team me! )

Phew! Now I think I'm going to bed.

* Bad thing: discovering the raspberry bush you want to save is thoroughly tangled up with couch grass you want to fatally kill very hard to death until it dies of it and isn't alive any more.

Worse thing: starting the uprooting and untangling process with your bare hands, and finding the large and thriving nest of red** ants in there.


** Since I didn't get stung, I'm thinking they were actually yellow ants, which are less aggressive. Still startled the hell out of me.