Author: Veronica

  • A duck egg treasure hunt

    I have duck eggs hiding everywhere, increasing in number, one day at a time. We went without any ducks laying (where I could find them) for three weeks and suddenly, I’ve got duck eggs showing up again, in increasingly strange places.

    There are 11 in the blackberries (5 pictured, it’s an old picture and the eggs are mostly covered in leaf litter and feathers now).

    I stole some, so that my father can have duck eggs for breakfast. He rather likes them.

    It’s like a treasure hunt, as I discovered another nest in the shed, next to the building materials and my BIL’s car. It’s got 17 eggs in it and so far, aside from a few foray’s into sitting, no duck has decided to turn them into ducklings. Grumble grumble fucking grumble.

    We have a ramp. Before we moved in, we think it was used to drive motorbikes up. Since we’ve been here it’s a ‘castle!’ for Amy and she runs up and down it. Underneath:

    Another egg.

    The piece de resistance though, is this.

    You can’t see any eggs?

    No. Me either. Not until the duck, whose tail you can see, hops off the nest, leaving behind sixteen eggs that she is hatching – ducklings due this afternoon, or tomorrow sometime. I’m a little excited.

    I did a walk around the yard this morning, only to discover a new nest, in an old chook shelter that we haven’t cleaned out yet. 4 eggs and counting. Two nesting boxes also have freshly laid eggs.

    However. I know that at least two ducks are laying somewhere else. God knows where. No doubt they’ll disappear one day, only to appear 5 weeks later with a shitload of ducklings. One duck was spotted coming in from the paddock across the highway (currently full of ewes and newborn lambs) and another from the paddock bordering our property.

    It’s like Easter! Only with less chocolate.

  • The reality of having your own poultry. Plus cute chickens.

    The things with having chooks, is those chooks (if you’ve got a rooster) eventually have babies.

    And baby chickens, as tough as they are, sometimes they don’t do so well.

    A week ago, one of my hens hatched some chickens. Once I braved her attacks (she’s fucking vicious! I ended up with bruises everywhere) and took her off the nest to count chicks, I found a dead chicken in the bottom of the nest. Perfectly formed, hatched and squashed. Another chicken didn’t make it all the way out of it’s shell, dying at the finish post.

    However, we had 5 live chickens, even if one was a bit iffy. I figured I’d keep an eye on it, and left the mother to her angry clucking.

    An hour later, I scooted her off the nest and found the iffy chicken was doing even worse. Younger by almost a full day to it’s siblings, it kept getting squashed and left behind and frankly, the poor thing was half dead and exhausted.

    So into my pocket it came and inside for a few hours.

    I dripped some sugar water into it’s beak for energy and then tucked it into a nest of tissues with a hot water bottle underneath it for warmth.

    It slept for a few hours – after hatching, chickens are exhausted. This little one because it was younger than the rest, wasn’t getting a chance to sleep because it’s siblings wanted to peck and move about. It wasn’t able to walk yet and needed a break. The sugar water and time inside gave it some strength and the warmth and peace enabled it to recuperate.

    And while I was hopeful it would survive, nothing is ever certain.

    A few hours later, right on dark, I put the chicken back with it’s mother – okay, so I practically threw the chicken at it’s mother, while she tried to attack my hand – and I hoped it would make it through the night.

    It did and a week later, we still have the five chicks we had the first day.

    The hawks are hanging around and I’ve seen more kookaburras in the last week than I have in the last year, but they haven’t stolen a chicken yet. The mother hen is doing a good job and hasn’t taken the babies out into the open much, staying near cover amongst the stables, chook pen and blackberry bush.

    They’re pretty cute though.

    These chicks are our next generation. The hens will be kept for eggs and any roosters will eaten (like the egg eating chook from a while back).

    I love that at a week old, they’re already getting their feathers. I’m hoping the little stripy one is a hen, because isn’t the patterning gorgeous?

    Third from the left is the little chicken that would have died. It hasn’t gotten any adult feathers yet.

    They’re pretty cute. Amy is a big fan. So are the cats – although the way the mother hen attacked our tom cat this morning, I don’t think he’ll be contemplating a chicken dinner any time soon.

  • How a flippant comment on twitter can get you blocked and banned.

    We’re all human here in this giant blogosphere and that means human things, like bad days, or flippancy don’t always translate to the written word. Sometimes, it only takes something very small to set of a chain of events that leave you watching, wondering how did that happen?

    I wasn’t part of this one, just a witness after the fact.

    Twitter is, by it’s nature, an extension. An extension of us, of our blogs, of our websites. It doesn’t matter how much we might try, we can’t explain ourselves fully in 140 characters. God, I’ve had trouble explaining myself completely in 1000 words!

    Another problem with twitter, is that if you’ve been unfollowed, everything you say after that point is moot, because they can’t see it.

    I witnessed this this week and thought it interesting, how something so simple, could spiral downhill so quickly.

    The tweets following are from @TotalArtSoul and @frogpondsrock respectively.

    Please note, I am not taking sides with EITHER person, I just thought it was interesting.

    At which point, Total Art Soul blocked and banned @frogpondsrock and left in a huff.

    Which proves my point, that 140 characters is not enough to explain yourself, or to ask questions or make statements if someone is having a bad day.

    Total Art Soul is a forum for artists. Unfortunately, not everyone who signs up for forums has time to be an active member and I can vouch for Frogpondsrock being a VERY slack member, as I’ve seen it first hand on AMB. Hehe.

    However, MY issue with this whole thing is something different:

    When does supporting your community and helping out other people on the InterWebs, start being a push/pull shared thing?

    Is there a point when you look at what you’re doing for your community and decide that it isn’t worth it? That YOU aren’t getting enough out of it personally to bother promoting anymore?

    If you run a forum, you help to publicise your members, you RT links, you share experiences and you do all that without any glory, because it’s part of being a social network owner. Banners on sites aren’t about traffic, so much as brand awareness. Brenda and I don’t expect hundreds of click throughs to AMB based on our badge, because it isn’t about traffic. It’s about having people aware of your logo and knowing instantly, who you are.

    Without the goodwill of your members, your social networking site sinks pretty fast.

    I’m not saying Total Art Soul was wrong, to be honest, it looked like she was having a bad day, with too much work and not enough appreciation. A flippant comment from frogpondsrock hurt and she got snippy.

    But, 140 characters is not enough to explain yourself in and it leaves itself open for misunderstandings, which is where TAS blocked and banned Frogpondsrock and left.

    The other problem with twitter, is that if you are too prolific, people will unfollow, not because they don’t care about you, but because you’re cluttering up their timeline with things they aren’t interested in. I’ve had it happen personally and okay, I was a bit stung, but it’s how things work.

    There seems to be a problem here on the Internet, with ‘bigger’ bloggers (I use the term both bigger and blogger very lightly) thinking that by every link they RT, by every mention, by every helping hand, that they are doing the ‘smaller’ blogger a giant favour. In reality, unless that ‘bigger’ blogger is in the league of Dooce, it’s very unlikely that your helping hand has been as big as you think it has been. This isn’t aimed directly at TAS, mind you, it’s something I see all around the blogs/forums.

    People are by nature, judgemental. You like to look at someone and know how you fit in, in relationship to their life. She’s got better shoes, but your handbag is nicer. Her car is more expensive, but you ate at super exclusive restaurant last night. She has more money, but your kids are cuter. Their house is bigger, but you’re pretty sure you get along better with your husband. Right?

    It’s how things work on blogs too. We visit a blog and while we may not notice that we’re doing it, we scroll the sidebar looking for our own link (even if we’re certain it’s not there), we tally up the amount of comments on the last two posts, we check out follower/subscriber numbers and subtly, sometimes without even realising it, we’re deciding whose site is more successful. The more blogs we discover with ‘less’ numbers then ours, the bigger we feel.

    When really, we’re not at all.

    I’m guilty of this too you know, making a snap decision on whose blog is better. I tend to smack myself up the side of the head though, because it’s not what the Internet is meant to be about – unlike some bloggers I’ve stopped reading, because their opinion of themselves makes me stabby.

    So really, no matter how much better your numbers are, don’t feel like you’re doing someone a giant favour by sharing their link. Share their link because you like it, or because you like them. Don’t feel inclined to RT their horoscope, just for the sake of retweeting them. It’s not smart, it’s silly. People will pay more attention if the links you share are quality, not if you share loads of them.

    And if that means we get to have favourites, then brilliant. I have my favourite bloggers and I share nearly everything they write. Because I love them and because the quality is there. Not because I’m doing them a favour, but because I want people to see their amazing work and love it like I do.

    Maybe that’s what we all should do. Share because we love it, not because we feel obliged to.

  • Cooking in a commercial kitchen vs cooking for children

    White poached chicken. Recipe here.

    In another life, I worked in a commercial kitchen. I might even have mentioned it a time, or ten.

    However, kitchen work taught me an awful lot of things, the least of which is that the amount of energy that goes into getting your meal on your table at a restaurant is astronomical.

    For example, a  brie cheese and herb stuffed chicken breast, with sundried tomato reduction sauce, chat potatoes and baby vegetables.

    A popular dish in the kitchen.

    So, a few days before you order your meal, I am chopping enough herbs to see us through the next 3 days of prep, generally 500g of each herb, parsley, dill, rosemary, mint and thyme. I have 40 chicken breasts defrosting in water in the kitchen sink and I am prepping vegetables. This included turning 10kg of carrots into batons, 10 broccoli and 10 cauliflower into florets, top and tailing 5kg of snow peas, peeling 10kgs of potatoes and putting them on to parboil whole, before chopping them into a dice, slicing 7-8 large zucchinis and then blanching the lot, before refrigerating everything.

    You see, nothing in a commercial kitchen is done small scale, so while the chicken breast and vegetables is not a hard dish to prepare by any means, it is all done in bulk ahead of time, sometimes up to a week ahead. Prepped vegies were used for most meals, so we prepped the above amounts every 3-4 days.

    Once the vegies are done, I’m hopeful that the chicken breasts will have defrosted enough to work with. A quick poke in the icy water lets me know I’m good to go, so I start to set up, stalling on needing to julliene a 20 litre bucket of stirfry mix.

    First is the bain marie tray I’ll set the chicken in so I can fridge it afterwards. Then the cling wrap, catering size, set at the top of my chopping board. Then comes the brie – I need to cut 40 pieces of brie from the wheel and maybe an extra bit to nibble on. What? It’s a perk.

    I set the plastic container of herbs up next to me, with the brie laid out on another piece of clingwrap, spaced out so they don’t stick together. I work fast, moving backwards and forwards, doing 3 things at once. Somewhere, in a trip to the coolroom, I’ve dumped the semi-defrosted chicken into a colander and set it above a bucket to drain while I finish prepping. I beg the apprentice to sharpen my knife because I’m not fantastic at that yet.

    Once I start, I need to hit a rhythym, as fast as I can.

    Pull out a sheet of clingwrap. Grab a chicken breast and in one motion, remove the tenderloin and any excess fat. Throw the tenderloin into a spare container, slice through the chicken breast to create an internal pocket, dip a piece of brie into the herbs and shove it into the cavity. Then slice the clingwrap off, wrap the breast and pop it into the metal bain marie container.

    Repeat. Forty times.

    Then scrub your hands, scrub your chopping block and knife, throw any remaining herbs out (chicken blood, cross contamination issues) and put everything in the fridge, well covered.

    That’s the chicken done for the next few days service.

    When an order comes in for chicken that that week, I don’t cook it. I’m on cold larder/desserts/dishes/general runner (depending on the night and whether the other kitchen hand is working), but I do run to the coolroom and grab the preprepared chicken from the fridge, in between doing everything else I’m doing – which sometimes, depending on the day, would be scrubbing walls with a scourer. Yay.

    A chef grabs a handful of cooked diced potato from the bucket and sets it aside, ready to deepfry. The chicken probably takes the longest to cook of any meal, except well done steak because you can’t precook chicken (unlike the roast meals and various other things). The chicken is panfried to crisp the skin, before being thrown into the oven, still in the pan for 30 minutes.

    A minute before it comes out of the oven, a chef drops the chat potatoes into the deep fryer, the serve of vegetables into the boiling water to reheat them and mixes a few tablespoons of pureed sundried tomatoes with some cream in a saucepan. All this while the chef is making another 4-5 dishes at once.

    The chicken comes out of the oven, is sliced in half, set on the chat potatoes and the sauce poured over. The vegies are salted, buttered and put on the plate too, parsley is sprinkled and the plate is sent.

    The customer, usually, appreciates how much work has gone into the dish, they enjoy it, they pay and they leave.

    Let’s now look at cooking for children.

    With children, the amount of effort I put into a meal directly corrolates to how much is eaten.

    If I spend the morning prepping and then spend 2 hours cooking and bringing the meal together, you can guarantee that they won’t eat a mouthful. They’ll hate it, or be too tired, or too hyper, or SOMETHING.

    They won’t eat it.

    If however, I make a quick tomato sauce, pour it over pasta and serve it with grated cheese, they’ll whinge that there isn’t enough.

    While family cooking means that there is always less work to be done than in a commercial kitchen, I sort of miss the satisfied feeling of seeing an empty plate come back and a quick report from the waitress on how much they enjoyed it. Not to mention missing getting to play with food for a living.

    Cooking for children is definitely harder than cooking for a restaurant. Trust me.

    However, commercial kitchens are more stressful. Give me a screaming baby over a screaming chef any day. At least I have a chance that the baby is screaming because it can, and not because I fucked up.

    What would you prefer? Cooking in a restaurant for appreciative customers, or feeding your children day in, day out?

  • Things Like This Don’t Happen To Someone Like Me

    This post comes from my friend, Kristin, who is going through a really tough time at the moment and can’t post it on her own blog.

    ***

    It’s hard to tell where it started. Perhaps it was the night I stood in the kitchen. The kids were in bed, he was down in the basement doing god knows what, lifting weights probably. I was alone. I was angry. My body was trembling. And that is when the thought entered my mind. That I could take a glass, one of his glasses, a Guinness glass, and throw it against the wall and it would feel very good. I had bought him a set at Target last year. They were large, over-sized drinking glasses. I stood for a moment and tasted this thought. I had never thrown anything against a wall, never broken anything before. I didn’t think highly of people who did these sorts of things. But wouldn’t it feel good?

    It wasn’t just that he had been reading my private emails. It wasn’t just the elaborate lie he had made up to cover up the fact that he had been reading them. Nor was it the lie upon lie upon lie before that. No. It was the eight years of stifling every sharp-edged truth that rose up in my heart lest it disrupt the precarious balance of his emotions and tilt him into a slide. A slide into what? I didn’t want to find out what. I lived in fear of that what.

    In the end I picked up the glass and walked to the stairwell and in one easy motion chucked it against the wall where it smashed into a thousand, glorious splinters.

    A glass thrown against a wall in an empty room. Immature, perhaps. Fateful, it would turn out. But so clean and honest. I turned and walked quietly to my room. Did I know then that I had aroused the slumbering beast?

    It’s funny how when tragedy falls we act so surprised, as if we never saw it coming. This was my very reaction three days later when I sat in my bathrobe filling out the witness statement as the police took photographs. I couldn’t believe any of it was actually happening. But looking back all the signs had been there. I had lived in fear of this moment for months. Years, really. I had gone so far as to pack bags and prepare a safe place for myself and the kids to stay after each legal meeting, just in case, knowing that he would be agitated by the discussions over child support and alimony. I woke often during the night, nervous and on edge. I felt trapped and afraid living in the same house as him during our divorce, waiting for my settlement so I could get out.

    No one had ever laid a hand on me in anger before, ever. Not my father, not a boyfriend. No one. I had only seen my parents argue once in their 16-year marriage.

    When I sat in the Victim’s Assistance office of the county courthouse, just before my husband was released from jail, I told my story calmly and with careful attention to detail. In truth, I was both exhausted and terrified. I never thought I would be sitting here. I was intelligent, well-educated. Wasn’t this something that happened to other people with different lives?

    I told her about the phone call I received from jail. He wanted to make sure no one at his work found out lest he lose his job, was quick to point out that we both relied on his paycheck. He blamed me. Asked how I could do this to him. I didn’t do it, I said. Well, it was your fault for making me angry, he said. The victim’s advocate shook her head. Typical abuser response, she said, no accountability. She was the third person to tell me this.

    I am still digesting these words. Abuser. Victim. I don’t like the way they sit in my gut.

    I relayed my concern for my children, who seemed by turns angry and stunned. My daughter, 7, sitting alone at the kitchen table, staring off into the middle distance. My son, 5, full of turbulent emotion. By the close of the weekend they were yelling, hitting, kicking, crying. My daughter in the bathroom, my son on the outside, “I’m going to break down this door!” I tried to pull them apart, hold them, comfort them, isolate them from each other, scold them, talk to them, nothing worked, nothing. They were like two broken satellites hurtling through untempered black space. Lost.

    * * * * *

    I try to imagine what it was like for them, how this must have rocked the simple order of their world. What was it like through their eyes?

    That morning they are watching a movie. I come downstairs and sit on the couch with them and I can tell right away he is angry. He immediately begins to pick a fight. He demands I apologize for the glass throwing incident three days before. I tell him I don’t want to argue. He persists, is clearly worked up. Please, not in front of the kids, I say. He walks to the kitchen and picks up a large ceramic artisan bowl my father bought for me before he died. It is my favorite bowl. Do you want me to throw this against the wall? He lifts it up and holds it precariously, tilting it from side to side. No, I answer. Apologize, he demands Please, I say again, not in front of the kids. The children are silent, their movie forgotten. They look back and forth between us. My heart beats fast. I avoid his eyes. They are like steel. He badgers, needles, provokes. I ignore. He disappears upstairs.

    I wait. I wait until I think he is in the shower and then I go upstairs to get some clothes for my son, who is still in his pajamas. But of course he is waiting for me.

    What did they hear next? Probably nothing for a while, as I try to defuse the situation, talk him down as I retreat backwards into my room. And then? His yelling? Did he even yell? I don’t remember. The door to my room banging open, the pursuit, the crashing of fists through the bathroom door, my screams. His animal-like wail. By this time I can hear them crying downstairs. Then they see him run down the stairs and flee the house–the police had been called–crying, his fist bloodied. The 911 operator is telling me to repeat myself, slow down, breathe. This is when I hear them sobbing outside the splintered bathroom door. My son is clutching his blanket. I let them in, lock it again and hold them close until the police arrive.

    * * * * *

    Here are the facts:

    • On Saturday August 14th, my husband was arrested and jailed for domestic violence.

    • He was released on $1,500 bail the following Monday and given a 72-hour no contact order that applied to myself, the kids and our residence.

    • I was urged by the Victim’s Assistance unit at the courthouse to file a restraining order to extend this.

    • I was urged by my lawyer not to file a restraining order as this would interfere with our Collaborative Divorce case, which was fully negotiated and settled, but not yet drafted and signed by us.

    • Instead, my lawyer filed a temporary order extending the no-contact order until our divorce is finalized. It allows me to remain in our current house until then and gives him limited contact with the kids. I am responsible for paying the mortgage and all household and child-related expenses and he has been ordered to start support payments. The support payments will not cover the expenses of the house.

    • Two days after my husband was released I was out front doing yard work with my son when he said, “Is that Daddy?” I turned around to see a car identical to my husband’s driving by the house. We live on a dead-end street. It had driven by once, turned around at the cul-de-sac, and was driving by a second time.

    • I was told by the Victim’s Assistance unit at the courthouse to immediately file a police report seeing as my husband had violated the no contact order.

    • I was told by my lawyer not to file a police report as the police would again arrest my husband and then he might not sign the divorce agreement.

    • I didn’t file a police report.

    • Since the incident on the 14th I have had no direct communication with my husband other than the phone call from jail. I have been told through my lawyer that he wants financial restitution from me for the expenses incurred by him for having to hire a criminal attorney and pay for anger management classes, all of which he deems to be my fault. He is now refusing to sign the divorce agreement and instead asking for a reduction in alimony payments to compensate for this.

    • I have incurred several thousand dollars in legal expenses getting a temporary order filed in lieu of a restraining order and otherwise dealing with the fallout of this incident.

    • He has never apologized to me or expressed concern about the trauma experienced by the children on that morning.

    * * * * *

    I’m not sure I can properly convey the way violence can shift a world. I have a jar of compost scraps on the kitchen counter that is full. I need to empty it. The compost bin is at the far end of the backyard where the lawn meets a thick stand of trees. I won’t go empty it.

    I’ve had a locksmith out to change the front and back locks and I’ve changed the code on the garage door. And still, at night, I don’t sleep. Every sound, every creak of the house settling, sets my heart to racing. The kids are in the next room and they feel so far away. I want them closer.

    I used to think nothing of going out to the mailbox.

    I have dealt with a lot of setbacks in my life. I have lost my parents. I have been through break-ups, left old lives behind, started over time and again. I have the drill down. I know how to catch my breath, get up and dust myself off, tuck my humor back in my pocket and head off down the road.

    But this. This has quite knocked the wind out of my sails. Because this man is the father of my children and I can’t take their hands and walk off down the road without him. He will always be there. And just when I think I’ve turned a corner, he’s found a new way to break me, financially, emotionally, psychologically. And now the threat is physical.

    My own blog has sat silent now for two weeks. I have so much inside me that I want to say but I’m afraid to say it because there is the silent threat of a backlash. Will he sign the divorce documents or not? If not, I stay in a house I can’t afford and we start over again with new lawyers, another 15k down the drain. Will he respect a piece of paper telling him to stay away? Or ignore it as he did earlier this week?

    People ask me if I recognize him as the man I knew during our marriage. The truth is yes, I do. Only darker and more amplified. It’s myself I don’t recognize. I don’t know this woman who is paralyzed by fear and stunned into silence. I never dreamed mine would be the face of domestic violence.