Love and Hate

I spent the morning finishing up the latest incarnation of the Swarovski crystal overload necklace that I worked on over the weekend, only to find that I was short four Simplicity crystals in the right color. Okay, so it's an excuse to order some more beads from Artbeads or wherever I could find the crystals, right?

The I spent the rest of the morning working on a variation of said Swarovski crystal overload necklace that was actually a bracelet with Czech fire polished beads and rondelles. At first, I thought I loved it. Then, as the day wore on, I hated it. Now, I'm somewhere in the middle with it, but my brain is too tired to figure it out. So I'm gonna let it sit alongside the other two pieces until I've had a few decent hours of sleep.

We had another rough night with Colden last night. I finally got to lie down for bed around 10:30, and sure enough, just as I was falling asleep, Colden was awake and in our room. Instead of going back to sleep like he did the previous night, he tossed and turned and kicked and grabbed my hair and yanked. It did not make for anything like a restful evening.

Then after we got back from the grocery store this afternoon, I let him sit in front of the chicken run and throw grass in to the big laying hens that were running around in the sun. When I looked up, I saw what I thought was the fully-feathered wing of one of the big white laying hens sitting in a hole in the ground. When I looked closer, I saw feet, and then realized that it was actually the dead chicken body of the little Polish Crested that we got with our last batch of baby chicks. The bigger chickens had been pecking at her the last couple of weeks, and I guess today when she got brave enough to jump down from the brooding area, they chased her outside and finished her off. Very sad, but very gross: because the only way in and out of the chicken run (for now) is through the chicken door in the coop, I had to cut a hole in the run with the wire cutters and wait for Tom's dad to come over with a rake so I could lift the body out of the run. Ew. Poor thing... It didn't look as if the any of the other babies had been pecked at by the older hens, so we're going to wait and see what happens. If any of the other babies start to look beat up, those older hens are going in the freezer.

And I haven't been to the gym in nearly two weeks. I'm starting to feel a bit soft around the middle again. I have to get back on that...