Her Side Funnies

This post follows Slipforming, part 16 – Balcony railing…at last. To see a complete index of slipforming posts, click here. For an index of comical posts, click here.

I’m calling this chapter “Turret’s syndrome” not because I intend to mis-spell and discuss Tourette’s Syndrome, which, for those who do not know, is an affliction that often results in someone blurting out profanities at inopportune times.  Instead, I intend to share some ideas on turrets, which are those cone shaped roof toppers that adorn some homes and government buildings.  Frankly, they cause the same symptoms…profanity.  For Tourette sufferers, there is medication and therapy.  For turret sufferers, no remedy exists, aside from ditching the idea of adding a cone-shaped roof topper to one’s home, or profanely gritting one’s teeth through it.

My own case of turret syndrome began with an old book on German castles, many of which were over 500 years old.  This inspired me because, ignorantly, I figured if they could do it 500+ years ago, without all the power tools we have at our disposal today, the project ought to be a cake walk with our advanced technology.  Oh my!  Ignorance truly is bliss.

Above left, a curved turret that adorns a Victorian home in Delta, Colorado.  I actually wanted the turrets on our home to be curved like these, but my husband, Ken, thought the idea was too “girly.”  Considering the extra labor, I conceded, but I still love this look.  The carpenter, who built this in the early 1900s, probably knew it would still be appreciated this much later, as it will 100 years from now, if the home stands that long. (more…)

I repeatedly mention that my husband is from Denver. It explains his innocence and gullibility and his resistance to accepting my core Redneck values.

Last spring we bought some chicks from the farm store. Buff Orpingtons. Golden Rolls Royce’s of the chicken world. They were cute. They were fuzzy. They quickly morphed into flapping balls of feathers coating the interior of the house with more dust than my liberal housekeeping policy allows.

A chicken house needed to be constructed, which brought the first of many misunderstandings between Ken and myself.

Ken believed that the chickens needed a far more “sturdy” home than I recognized from my childhood. My family’s chicken coop consisted of patchy chicken wire, baling string, a German Shepherd dog, and a door with a tricky latch that allowed cousins to be locked in the chicken coop for games of cowboys, Indians, robbers and jail until their mothers played squawk-n-swat, an unpopular farm game involving yelling and spanking. But, I digress. (more…)

Ken’s from the city.  He thought when I said I wanted fertilizer for the flower gardens that I meant for him to buy a bag of the stuff at the local garden center.  Silly Ken.

In the world of chickens, the Buff Orpington variety are big, fat hens that are hardy and lay brown eggs.  They are the Rolls Royce of chickens–in my humble opinion.  There are other breeds which are equally enchanting, but my personal pick are the Buffs.  They are docile and fun to watch.  We got them at the end of February and they promptly became dining room fixtures. 

Ken would come down from work for lunch and I would find him gazing into the make-shift water trough we were using to house the newly hatched chicks.  Soon, they exceeded my relaxed approach to housekeeping (with feathers and dust flying everywhere) and they had to be booted into the outdoor shed.  The cold nights made us nervous a couple of times, but the chicks did fine and continued to grow under the watchful eye of the dingo pup.  (more…)

To see a complete index of slipforming posts, click here.  For an index of comical posts, click here.

Colorado tax lien sales are a mystery to a lot of people.  For that reason, I took my freshly-turned-18-year-old out of school to attend her first tax lien sale in nearby Montrose County.  She was wide-eyed at the process and the people.  She returned to school and bragged to her high school civics teacher that she had done something “civic” during her absence.  She now knew about tax liens.  The teacher requested that I come to class and share the lesson with the other students.  I agreed, but struggled with how to put the enormous importance of tax lien sales into a lesson that a high school student would understand.

This Chinese restaurant in our local small town did not pay their taxes of $16,000.  A buyer who pays this amount for three years can apply for the deed to the property.  At present, this concept has benefits and drawbacks.

I gathered some facts and figures for the 28 students.  Dry statistics lose audiences, so I took a few pages of the tax lien along.  I created alphabetical jobs (26 occupations), plus one retiree, and one unemployed person.   I also grabbed some “Life” game cards with houses on them, and divided them into similar ratios as we have in our county, i.e., there are more mobile homes than mansions, and only a few very large properties. (more…)

This post follows “Brandy swamp juice at day 60.”  To see that post, click here.

Wow, wow, and wow!  For the last 90 days, I have had two gallon jars of cheap vodka (the cheapest I could find) fermenting with fruit that was falling from the trees.  I have endured ridicule, taunting, threats of jail time if I poisoned anyone, and skepticism that the new “hobby” would be a disaster.  Now, the verdict is in.  I have had a chance to taste the wicked brew and, oh boy,  was I surprised!   Look who’s laughing now!

First, let me go back a little bit for those of you hitting this blog out of order from the first two.  I had two full trees full of fruit that were going to waste.  I had fed the family all the fruit products I could concoct, and needed another fresh usage.  I went online to get suggestions and found apricot leather (too much work with the risk of my kids hating it), cookies (didn’t use a tree full of fruit) and then I saw a homemade brandy site.  Hmph, I thought, I’m not much of a brandy drinker, but the labor looked easy – pick fruit, add sugar and cheap vodka, put in gallon jars and turn once a day for three months.  I could handle that – and the shelf-life was very good.  (more…)