A Day of Sickness

More than anything, your blogger does not like feeling sick. For the last month, I have been dragging from home to work and back again, filling my Saturdays with errands, and generally feeling worn out. It started with a cold which spread from me to husband to stepson. Finally, husband went to the doctor for antibiotics, and returned to the Land of the Living, while I dragged on. Today I finally relented and saw the doctor for ten days worth of antibiotics to get over the upper respiratory condition that has bothered me for a month. I spent the afternoon dozing with the pugs, listening to husband hammer on the new porch walls. I got much needed rest, and am looking forward to a good night's sleep.

The temperature was beautiful today, in the fifties, and we can expect more for the next few days. I spent most of the day on the couch or in the recliner, but I could see, when I got up, the hens running back and forth about their work in the pasture. They keep the manure in the horseyard broken into a fine tilth for us, so that we never have to shovel or move it out. Soon that will be a hard job, as we will have to lock up the two oldsters for a while while the grass renews itself. Letting them out an hour a day will be the drill for a while, so that the foundered mare won't hurt herself on the fresh grass. We may not even be able to do that with her, as she can be hard to catch and is now permanently being medicated.

Isis the hen is better, and we turned the light off on her so she would not get too hot today. Keith will turn it back on tonight, to keep her warm, and we will unplug it in the morning. We have noticed before that concentrating a warm light on sick birds often helps them, but this time we also put medicated crumbles in her feed. Today I slipped out there in the evening, to catch her eating out of her bowl, and was overjoyed. We collected 9 beautiful eggs, and left one under Dovey, to give her the pretense of setting. We are now finding duck eggs, huge duck eggs, in the horsebarn daily. We think it must be Maggie, as she is mature. One was so large it would not fit in an egg carton, but had to be put in the meat drawer. We should be able to take a good three dozen eggs to the food bank this week, so we are glad and grateful to our hard-working girls.

Still not feeling tip-top, so will close for the night and go listen to our new President speak to the congress, and to us about what we can expect with our economy.