Comedy of Errors

This past week, we made sure to take pictures as we went along our day to day. Sunday we sent Cupcake off on another whirlwind adventure, this time to Texas.
Lawman came home from the airport to write the blog, and that's where the fun began.

Our laptop took forever to load, and once it did, it said it had to restart to update. So we jumped through the hoops and after another thirty minutes or so, Lawman inserted the camera card to upload this week's pictures. No pictures found, it says. So Lawman rebooted the computer once again and tried once more. No pictures found. Next step was take the card out and back in the camera. No pictures found.
OK, so the card took a crap. Lawman goes to the laptop to write the update scans pictures, and the laptop won't connect to the interwebs.
By now, Lawman has 90 minutes or so invested in writing the blog and has not a single line to show for it.
This is from the cell.
While Cupcake is away, Lawman may be checking local establishments for new laptops. But that's a secret. Don't tell Cupcake.
The one picture came from the phone. Nothing like finding a brand new family of barn cats in your chicken coop straw. Go team us.
Just K this week.

Duck...Duck...

No gooses here.
After another sabbatical, we're back with some day to day stuff. Actually, it's more like crammed in to one day of the weekend stuff, but stuff none the less.
Cupcake and Lawman took turns getting sick over the past two weeks, but the good thing was, only one of us got sick at a time. So we took turns taking care of each other. It all started with Cupcake getting sneezed on during a flight to Florida, she brought the funk home and when she got better, Lawman took his turn on his back. After everyone got feeling better, Cupcake got called away again and was gone most of this past week. Lawman got everything mowed and weed whacked while she was gone, and when she got back, we did Acre stuff.
First day of fall, so we bought a bushel of apples.

We sliced them up and made apple sauce, apple butter, and apple jelly, all at the same time.

12 jars of apple jelly

12 pints of apple sauce, six of apple butter

While Cupcake was gone, our ducks started laying eggs. We got six by the weekend so we treated ourselves with Sunday morning breakfast with duck eggs.

Our first duck eggs

Much thicker yolks and whites than chicken eggs

Lawman and Pop went with scrambled

Cupcake likes hers over easy

During the week, "The Girl" discovered she likes pumpkin rolls. She wanted to make one, but when it came time to make it, she opted to let us make it for her.

A sort of project we tackled while the jelly was making, we bought a new shelf for the mud room. We have a lot more room now.

After we got everything cleaned up, we ended our week with wings.

K&K

We're Back

A few of you may have noticed we've been off the grid for the past two weeks.
We had a couple weeks of emergency room visits and doctor follow ups. Anyone who knows Lawman shouldn't be surprised by this revelation, but this time it really wasn't his fault. We went to bed one night and sometime during the night, Lawman got up to pee like old guys will do. When he stood up, he fell straight down in the bed. He was unable to put any weight on his left knee. He had to hobble around and find a crutch for his pee break.
Next morning he strapped on his brace and tried to get around, but was moving pretty slow. He waited a few days before giving in and heading to the doctor.
His knee has been held together with baling twine and duct tape for ten years now, we figured it had finally given out. It was swollen and turning blue.
First exam, the ortho doctor went ahead and scheduled surgery for the following week, then sent him for X-rays, MRI's and whatnots. A couple of days before the surgery we went for his final visit before the big day, and learned the MRI showed the knee was just torn and bleeding. The fluid from the bleed was causing the swelling and keeping him from extending it. So taking the doc's advice, he stayed off of it for a few days and it healed up enough to get around for his day to day.
But being flat on his back for two weeks, we didn't take any pictures or do anything anyone would care to hear about.
We did have a light switch break just prior to the knee giving out. It was an easy fix, but we're trying to jump start the updates, so.....

Our grapes came in this weekend, so we picked all we had after the birds got the majority of them. We had enough for one round of jelly.

Cupcake went out for Japanese one night for dinner. She brought Lawman some sushi to brighten his spirits.

And no matter how bad we feel, we always end the week with wings.

K&K

It's Fall, Y'all

We've declared it. Fall has arrived.
Naw, we're just funning everybody. But we did harvest some pumpkins this week. Mostly because the rotten birds have found them in the pumpkin patch and started to eat holes in them. You know, because we don't feed them 100lbs of pellets a week or anything. Poor birds are about to starve to death.

While we were down in the pumpkin patch, we found this gem. Nothing like a homegrown watermelon to snack on after a hot day on a lawn mower.

We are still getting a steady stream of tomatoes from the garden. We figured we had enough sketti sauce for the winter, so we changed gears to tomato soup. We add kale to all our tomato things now. Because, vitamins.

We had old school steak for dinner one night this week, and had some left over. So, steak and eggs went down over the weekend.

Next week should be a bit more busy for us. We are a week into our new bed and one of the differences we've noticed is this one is a lot higher than the old one. Lawman made our end tables even with the old bed, so now phone charging and remote control retrieval are dangerous events. We've got some bee hive lumber left over, Lawman says he may get around to building us some new tables, level with the new bed. We will see.
We ended the week with wings.
K&K

Short Week

The rain kept us inside most of last week. We did take the pickles we had from last week off and canned them up. That filled up one day. We had a request for jelly that we shipped out, and a second request we delivered in person. Our pal JJ was in town for the weekend and we fixed her up a goody bag to take home with her. Lawman dropped it off and would have liked to spent a little time to get caught up, but we had a delivery coming.
Two weeks ago we took a trip down Big Lick way to the Sleep Number store. We had been reading up on the new innovations and thought we could benefit from an upgrade. We tried out several on the showroom floor, and settled on the one Cupcake liked, because Lawman is no dummy. We scheduled delivery for Saturday after the end of the month.
They delivered it, took down the old sleep number bed and hauled it off for us, then set up the new bed. It has bells, whistles, and a frame that lights up when one of us gets up to pee, which is going to be a knee saver for one of us. It also has a remote, and a smartphone app that we both downloaded to our phones to control the thing. It may take a week or two of tinkering to get the hang of sleeping in it like pros?
We've spent one night on it so far, and it rocks. We recommend it, if anyone has considered purchasing one.
As for picture updates:
Pickles

The best part of being a nerd? Laundry day, so all your neighbors know you're a nerd.

And lard. First we made a chocolate pie early in the week to have for dessert.

Best.Piecrust.Ever

Sunday morning biscuits with lard instead of butter. Yeah, this is the stuff.

We ended the week with wings in lard.
K&K

Perfect Timing

Anyone who remembers Lawman from the People's Republic  will get the reference.

Cupcake was on another whirlwind adventure for her company this week, so Lawman stayed in close to the house. We got a lot of rain early in the week which caused our cucumbers to swell up faster than we expected. He was going to make another batch of lime pickles while Cupcake was away, but the cucumbers were too big for pickles. He saved a couple of them for cucumber water then fed the rest to the birds.
Second on his list to do was more sketti sauce. We are getting tomatoes at a steady pace.

When Cupcake got back, we drove to a local produce stand and bought some more straw for the slanty shanty and found they had peaches on sale. Last year we made a small batch of peach jelly, and it was at a premium all year, only being opened for special occasions. So when we found these, we bought a half bushel and juiced them for jelly.

 We started on the juice late Saturday and had to bottle it and keep it overnight until Sunday morning. This made one gallon of pure juice.

Sunday Morning after breakfast, we made four batches of jelly. Twenty seven jelly jars and a pint jar we used for leftover jelly to eat on.

And at the same time we were making jelly, we picked a new batch of cucumbers which were just the right size for pickles. We had to break out "ol #5" once again. More lime pickles are in the tube for next week.

On a couple of food related notes, before Cupcake left Lawman made a scratch batch of dinner rolls. This recipe uses cottage cheese and pineapple juice in the mix. It changed our lives.

We switched our chicken wing oil this week from peanut oil to lard. The Interwebs say it's a better taste for the wings, we will report on our findings next week. We also used lard in the Sunday morning biscuits, going "old school."

We end the week with wings. And ducks, because ducks are just stinking cute.

K&K