Mrs ERJ is on her way to Florida

The way to tell if a country girl is going someplace fancy it to check to see if she put Armor All on her Red Wellies.

Mrs ERJ and her brother pulled out of our driveway at about 10:00 this morning.  They are traveling to Florida to pick up Uncle Bob's ashes and to have him interred at a cemetery in Mobile, Alabama.  They will be gone until the middle of next week.

They picked a good time to go.  We are expecting a low of -12 tonight.

Distractions

The plan is to have a steady stream of distractions.  Belladonna proposed that we watch 90 minutes of The Office DVD each night.  We also plan to have a bowl with the names of restaurants in it.  Belladonna will put in the names of three restaurants, Kubota will put in the names of three restaurants and I will get to pick three.  Then we will pull names out of the bowl.

Also, as a distraction, the house is filled with the piping of fifes, flutes and piccolos. The source of that music is shown below.

Not a great picture.  The chipmunk-striped birds are Ameraucana pullets (girl chickens) and the yellow birds are ducks...either Khaki Campbells or Indian Runners.  I selected the individual birds myself.  Much to the amusement of the sales lady, my choices were based on their native predator avoidance skills as much as anything.  In other words, this was one of the few times when playing hard-to-get scored points with me.

They were too crowded and have since been separated.  The chickens are in one banana box and the ducks are in their own, private banana box.  The ducks love water and splash it all over the place.  They are real party boys.  The chickens are prissy around the water and do not care to be wet.

Introducing the dogs to their new mates should provide plenty of entertainment and activity for the next few days.

Comfort foods

I laid in a goodly supply of comfort foods: frozen pizza, lasagna, Cherry Pop-Tarts, pancake mix and iced tea.

I rarely do New Year's resolutions but I did this year.  I stopped drinking.  I plan to give myself a mulligan on that resolution for the next 6 days.  Nothing dramatic, just a couple of beers a night as we are all settling in for the night.