Our Little Friday: Hardware Happenings, Painted Windmill, and the Fig That Thought It Was Audrey II

This morning found us in the aisles of Lowe’s.
Cowboy bought a trimmer, which raised both mine and Badger’s eyebrows.
Cowboy is notorious for never buying himself anything.
Then he ambled over to the mailbox aisle—and bought one heck of a gigantic mailbox.
Didn’t even look at the cost.

Cowboy always looks at the price—several times—gripes a million times—and walks away empty-handed.
Badger and I sent a picture to the brothers and told them either the aliens took over Daddy, he had a stroke, or he flat-out won the lottery.

I asked him why we had a new mailbox, and he said, “Why do you think?”
We speak fluent sarcasm in this family.

I’m going to assume he’s tired of hearing Badger scream about creases in her new books.
The mail person will take a huge old book and cram it into our mailbox.
You have to stand there and tug and pull before it finally pops out.
It’s murder on books.

Then he moseyed over to the lights aisle—and got a motion-detecting light.
I gave him a look, and he mumbled something about it being dark around the she shed when he gets off work, and how anything could be out there.

Then, to top it all off, Cowboy opened his mouth and requested pizza.
He never asks for food—when we eat out, he just suffers through whatever Badger and I decide on.

At least when we got home, it was the normal routine: feed the chickens, gather the eggs, eat dinner, take a nap, go to work.

While she cleaned the laundry room/storage area and took a shower, I caught up on laundry.
There is always laundry.
It breeds like bunnies.

After that, we watched the rest of our movie.

Later on, we decided to walk around the block, but they had the pit bull out on his tie-out—and that line is flimsy.
You can see it straining when he lunges.
We’ve got history with that dog.
They usually let him run free, and he’s chased us home before—snarling, growling, the whole way.
So we did a very, very quick backtrack and went to the Senior Citizen Center instead.

When we got back, I headed straight to the computer—of course—and Badger took the dogs to the backyard.
I looked out and saw she’d repainted the back porch railings white. 
Cowboy’s going to have a fit; he had them black.
White is just cleaner.
And she had the cow windmill in pieces.
By the time she finished, our black windmill was a cheerful rainbow of colors.

Heron’s fig had a massive burst of growth this summer, and it’s slowly inching its way to the end of the porch.
And it’s not supposed to do that.
The windmill—the fig was strangling.
Hence, the windmill’s new home. The fig won.

It’s getting dark earlier and earlier now. 
Boo.

Badger finished up and retreated to her room.
I’ve got a few more things to do, and then I think I’ll head to my room and watch my show.

We’re planning to walk to the school tomorrow—they’re having another yard sale.
That might be the only plan for the day, unless Cowboy decides to go out.
He said he needs a board for the new mailbox, and we forgot a stencil for our address.
I told him we’re painting this time—we’ve always used stick-on numbers.
Nope.
 We’re going neon orange.
And I dare the post office to tell me we need our name and address on the box.
We’ve been fighting them for four years now.
They either lose our mail or send it to the wrong house.
Cowboy finally got sick of their bull and made a giant metal sign—and I mean huge—then mounted it on the house where it’s clearly visible from the road.
At one point, I had our address on everything that didn’t move.
But stick-on letters peel off over time.

Our patient is doing well, although she started bleeding a bit earlier.
That stopped, thankfully.
We usually lock the cats in the laundry room at night.
Eight cats running wild with no supervision are destructive—I woke up one morning and my wooden monks were hanging on the shelf by a thread.
Cowboy’s fake deer? They love to sit on top of him. The antlers pop off, and they use them as weapons.
We’ll keep Smudge out for at least a few more weeks.
She came out of her anesthesia fog this evening and beat the living daylights out of poor Foxie.
It’s too risky having her locked up away from us—I’m worried she’ll start bleeding again.
Coyote and Annie, and possibly Carl, won’t take kindly to being smacked.
They smack back.

Let’s get this up and go soak up some Hawaii.
I’ve been watching this series for a good month, and I’d almost swear they’re using the same houses over and over.