Thankful?

Indeed.

Happy Thanksgiving, poppets.

Mighty Mighty Pleasin', Pappy's Apple Squeezin'*

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, so today is a kind of Friday, right? Right! So let's talk about alcohol.

Specifically, let's talk about A.'s hard cider, which did indeed, uh, harden in the bucket and morph from innocent, innocuous sweet cider to nasty, alcoholic, disgusting hard cider.

Okay, so I'm not a fan of real hard cider**. But A. and the MiL, both of whom have some experience with real hard cider, have pronounced it good. Which means that A. now has six gallons of alcohol (SIX! GALLONS!) that he made for free (FREE!).

Now he just has to keep himself from drinking like a gallon a day because, you know, it's there and it was free. It's a challenge.

He's started drawing it off into screw-top bottles to further ferment and get all bubbly. So stay tuned for how that works. Maybe all the bottles will blow up from over-carbonation! You just never do know.

* For the many of you who probably have no idea about the song I'm referencing in the title, please go here for a video. For those of you who did get the reference? You're my kind of people. And you should also view the video. It's pretty awesome.

** I use the word "real" to distinguish it from commercial hard cider, like Woodchuck*** or something, which bears about as much resemblance to real hard cider as grape juice does to red wine.

*** HA! I just now registered the humor in that name. This stuff that A. made is authentic woodchuck cider. Woodchuck in the Blackrock sense, that is.

Confusion

This morning when Cubby and I went outside to let the chickens out, it was a frosty 27 degrees. Literally frosty--every surface had a half-inch layer of frost on it. Including Cubby's beloved tractor.

The tractor had been left out by the dog pen, so it too was covered in a thick layer of frost. Cubby grabbed the steering wheel in preparation for climbing aboard for his usual play session, and then snatched his hand back. He tried this a few times, and then turned to me with the most bewildered expression on his face. "Co?" he said, holding out his cold little hand. "Wah?"

Yes, my sweet, cold and wet. This is only the beginning. Brace yourself, son. The Blackrock winter has arrived.

So I Broke the Bed This Morning

How I wish that were a joke, but no. I was pulling Cubby into bed with me so we could read his schlocky "Mommy Loves" book for the millionth time ("Mommy kangaroo loves her joey. Mommy polar bear loves her bear cubs . . .) and CRASH. Cubby and I dropped down about a foot.

A. was still in bed. We were all quiet for a second, and then I heard from under the covers, "That really just happened, didn't it?"

Indeed.

Were I a more self-conscious person, I might be upset about the implications of my body weight (well, mine and Cubby's) breaking a bed, but as it was, I found it sort of funny. Except for the fact that our bedframe is broken and we'll probably be sleeping on a mattress on the floor for a few nights until A. can fix it.

But still. Yeah, it was funny.

Tales from the Huntin' Logs

Yes, it is indeed huntin' season again. Opening day was yesterday, so A. got up at 4:30 a.m. and drove to the state forest where he likes to hunt. Cubby and I had many discussions about Daddy going hunting. That he was hunting ("Hut? Hut?") for deer ("Deah? Deah?"), that he would shoot ("Shoo? Shoo?") them with his gun ( "Guh-NUH? Guh-NUH?") and then we would eat ("Ee? Ee?") them.

Unfortunately, A. came home without a deer. But with a really ridiculous story.

He was all set up in his spot and had been sitting there for about an hour when a buck wandered into view. The buck didn't know he was there, and was in no particular hurry, so A. figured it would be a pretty easy shot. So he lined up the shot and pulled the trigger. Click.

The gun didn't fire.

He quickly loaded another round in the gun and . . . click. This happened with eight shells, one after the other. Click click click click . . . By the time he finally got one that would actually fire, the buck was too far away.

He couldn't believe it. The shells were a couple of years old, sure, but still. One shell, okay. So that one was defective or got some moisture in it or something. But eight? And it was definitely the shells, because he test-fired some other shells when he got home and had no trouble with them.

So, lesson learned: Make sure your ammunition is new before you sight a buck. Also, don't buy Remington shotgun shells to begin with. Let's hope the Winchester shells are better.

And while we're on the subject of shooting deer, let me tell you what happened when Cubby and I accompanied A. to the local Huge Outdoor Store to pick up some functional shotgun shells. We walked in and A. pointed out to Cubby the stuffed deer on the wall. Cubby grinned, pointed, and said, "Pshew pshew."

At least someone got a shot off at some deer yesterday.

Gruesome Even for Blackrock

Early yesterday morning Cubby was ramming around the living room and ended up on the chair in the bay window, from which he perched to view the happenings outside. I was sitting on the couch and I heard him say, "Lee? Lee? Ee? Ee?"

"What?" I said. "Leda? Eat? Yes, Leda already ate her breakfast."

Then from Cubby, "Lee? Ee? Chukah? Chukah?"

"What? Chicken? Oh no."

I ran over to the window, and sure enough, Leda was chewing on something bloody that did look exactly like a chicken. I didn't think Leda would have killed one of the chickens, as the dogs have shown not the slightest inclination in that regard. I yelled upstairs to A. to let him know that Leda had one of the chickens and that I was afraid something might have gotten into the coop in the night. Then Cubby and I went outside to inspect further.

It wasn't a chicken. It was the head from the lamb A. had killed the day before. He had skinned it and salted the pelt in preparation for tanning, but, obviously, cut the head off the pelt. The head and the innards he had put in a feed sack and put in the back of his truck to dispose of the next day. But the dogs got there first.

I've done a lot of disgusting things since moving to Blackrock, but picking up a severed lamb's head by the ear and putting it in a bucket is by far the most grisly. That, without doubt, qualifies as gross.

A.P.D.--White-Knuckle Driving

Last night as A. and I were reluctantly leaving the house to drop the Awesome Subaru off at the mechanic, I said with some false cheeriness, "Well, at least it's not snowing!"

Them's famous last words.

It was drizzling as we pulled out of our driveway. It was snowing three miles up the road. On the way home, the snow was so bad, A. could barely see and drove about 20 miles an hour the whole way.

Driving in snow is always way worse when it's dark, of course, because then your headlights reflect off all the snow flying into the windshield, effectively blinding you. As A. was creeping our way home, I was reflecting on the worst driving conditions I had ever experienced.

I've driven in some pretty nasty snowstorms in the mountains of Arizona and through rain that was so heavy I could barely see through the waterfall on the windshield. But my absolute worst driving experience was in fog.

When I was in college I worked at a dude ranch in the mountains outside of Fort Collins, Colorado, for a couple of summers*. One very early morning--as in, around 2 a.m.--I was chauffeuring several of my fellow workers back to the ranch after a night out at a bar in Fort Collins. Everyone in the car was asleep except for me, and about halfway up the mountain, I drove straight into a bank of fog so thick, I could literally see only a few feet in front of me.

Talk about a white-knuckle drive. I thought I was going to die. I'm not kidding. I thought I was going to drive the car off the mountain and everyone in the car was going to die. This was a serious Colorado mountain road, with the sheer drops and hairpin turns and everything. It was not a road I had driven a whole lot yet either, and I couldn't see anything.

Needless to say, I did not die, nor did any of my passengers. But I did go out the next morning to find my car parked at a very odd angle and far too close to the horse barn for comfort. Yeah. The fog was so bad, I couldn't see a barn.

Now your turn, duckies! Hit me with your worst driving conditions. Fog? Snow? Ice? Sandstorm? What weather on the road made you contemplate your mortality?

* Perhaps I haven't mentioned this before. I am a woman with a mysterious and intriguing past.**

** Not really.