I'm just a faker, Frank.

an hour to an hour and a half at dawn, and then another again at dusk, and I'm basically done for the day.

so, that's a nice retirement, eh?

90% of the day, I'm napping, curled up with a book, or goofing off on the computer.

I just mostly TALK about the chores, because they define my day... like bookends, and give continuity and meaning to my life of basically slothfulness and leisure, lol !!

so, yesterday, I got to WATCH Persephone deliver her babies... she had three huge healthy little guinea piglets... they're the most amazing critters, within an hour, they're walking around, nursing, and eating lettuce... I got to watch mama lick her babies clean, and

raising children would've been a LOT easier for me, if THEY got independent as quickly, lol !!

of the 15 duck-moms on nests, 12 have hatched out their clutches by now, and we've a total of 107 (or so) ducklings cruising around.

yesterday morning I had to develop a new strategy... there's too many babies for the little waterers to be sufficient, so I dragged the giant black plastic water dishes I used for the goslings into the ducky nursery...

thought I was so smart, eh ?

NOT !!

mad chirping and cheeping woke me from yesterday's nappy, and I ran (hobbled, lol!) to the nursery to find two baby ducklings had somehow gotten IN the dishes, and were waterlogged, and exhausted from swimming.

they'd gotten IN, but couldn't get back OUT... silly duckies.

see, duckie-baybies mustn't go swimming this young, their oil glands aren't up-n-running yet, so water DOESN'T do the "like water off a duck's back" thing yet.

and ha ha ha ha ha, two of the mama ducks tried to BITE me when I attempted to rescue the lil early-swimmers...

geez, so protective !!

so, my fabulous solution was to find a couple of large rocks, and plop 'em into the dishes, so, the babies will have some help climbing back out if they should accidentally go swimming again.



hubby's been working all morning, creating a galantine... anybody here ever have that fancy dish?

I never have, and I'm looking forward to it... and he's really going from scratch, grinding up some pork (Kevin Bacon) for the forcemeat stuffing, and spending an hour carefully deboning the chilled bird that we plucked two days ago....

I smell the stock simmering deliciously, and am enjoying watching mi esposo figure out substitutes for some of the ingredients... really hard to find things like truffles and fennel and pistachios in the jungle, LOL !!

http://www.chefdecuisine.com/main/ch..._GALANTINE.asp

too bad it's gonna be HOURS before I get to taste it !