New Zealand is fewer than 40 days away. WOO HOO! I am getting super excited now. And a little bit anal, as well! But it’s all good!
PET/FARM ANIMAL CARE SHEET FOR JACKIE
The other night I typed out a two-page care sheet for my sister Jackie to follow when she takes care of the critters that I usually have sole responsibility for while I’m gone for two weeks. When I handed it to her, I said, “Relax, dear! It took me longer to type this list by far than it will take you to actally do the tasks. I reckon you won’t be spending more than five minutes a day doing all of it, and some of it only has to be done every couple days.” (Clean cat litter box. Feed venus fly traps that open up.)
The list includes the various foods for each species (cat, goat, chickens, fish — plus my new Venus fly trap, which may or may not survive until March but, so far, so good!!) and where they’re located. It lists amounts to feed. It lists when to feed. I will have plastic jugs filled with chicken feed so she doesn’t have to schlep it from the shed. I fill those jugs every couple weeks for myself, too, for the same reason: so it’s fast, local and convenient to pour it into their feeding bin.
SHOW BEFORE I GO
And I will show her the routine a couple times before Lisa and I leave, so she can watch/visualize how fast and easy it is to care for each of the species.
Jackie has to walk her dog four or five times a day, which takes five to ten minutes each time until Hope decides to piddle or poop. None of my critters require walking, and the flock of chickens retire on their own at dusk, so all she has to do is lock the predator-proof gate after they go in. If she wants them to go in before nightfall for any reason, all she has to do is take some bread crumbs or other food out to them and throw it into the predator-proof pen area and shut the door behind them. There’s an artesian well coming up out of a mole hole in the predator-proof pen, too, so she doesn’t even need to clean their water bin while I’m gone unless that dries or freezes up. It’s all very easy and straighforward.
CATS WON’T GET PETTED WHILE I’M GONE
Jackie came to me, concerned, a week or so ago saying, “You know I can’t pet your cats.” (She’s allergic.)
I said, “I know. That’s fine.”
She added, “I can’t sit with them to keep them company, either.”
I said, “That’s fine.”
She asked, “Won’t they freak out missing you?”
I smiled. “That’s the least of my worries. They’ll be fine. Charli and Miss Kitty have each other, and none of the three get me (at least not while I’m awake) more than about fifteen minutes every day. I take turns sleeping in areas where they’ve staked out their nighttime territories, so I sleep with a different cat, or two cats, every night or so. Cats aren’t like dogs. Mine will do very well without me; most well-adjusted cats do. Just keep their dry cat food dishes full, keep their water fountain filled, and scoop the poop every other day.” (I usually scoop their poop twice a day, but they can go longer without that. I’m just fastidious ’cause I know they prefer clean litter to having to dig around looking for pristine places to do their business.)
I think that relieved her. If there’s any separation anxiety or withdrawal symptoms, it will be at my end, not the cats’! And Helen has Rafferty, her dog, so I will have someone fur-bearing to hug, stroke, play, and smile with. So, I expect I’ll be just fine, too!
But it was super sweet of her to worry about them in that way.
While in New Zealand, I plan to leave everything that’s of concern to me and my sole responsibility in the U.S. back in the U.S! Lisa and I are going on vacation. We’re going to veg, and rest, and relax, and chat with Helen and Deborah, and go see a few sights. No stress and no pressure. If Helen has a crock pot I may even make them a pot of my homemade soup, but that will be the extent of my culinary showmanship, as I have zip zilch nada beyond that to impress anyone with. The kitchen and I are pretty much virtual strangers.
I WANNA GO NOW — but then it would all be over by Valentine’s Day and that would suck. So I just have to keep holding my horses!
In Other News…
I drove to AMC in Lakewood the past two days to see two movies, BOYS IN THE BOAT and ORIGIN (a movie based on the book CASTE: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson). Both were bestselling books when they debuted and I wanted to see them on the big screen. I wasn’t disappointed. BOYS IN THE BOAT is an edge-of-your seat sports underdog true story about the University of Washington (Seattle) rowing team that made it all the way to Germany during the Hitler Olympics — same year that Jesse Owens won Olympic Gold, too. ORIGIN is about the similarities and origins of racism/casteism in the United States.
Distressing factoid from ORIGIN: Hitler’s minions began their purge against Jews by carefully studying the US’s marginalization and subjugation of Black Americans in the South. He just took it farther with Jewish folks and other so-called “undesirables” (LGBTQIA+ folks, neurodiverse individuals like me, Roma peoples, dissidents, and more) and systematically murdered them after subjecting them to the most despicable, depraved human behaviors possible. It is chilling to know that.
And it can happen again. We need to vote blue in every election to be sure it doesn’t.
