My Favorite Post

This is an old post and one I like to re-post every year in honor of my very good friend Becky on her birthday.

This is Becky.

When Wyatt was five Becky decided a good pet would be a turtle.
A turtle I thought... Not much effort would go into the care and feeding of a turtle.
Turtles are quiet.
Turtles don't stink.
Becky said she knew someone who had a turtle that was like seventeen years old, so obviously they're a good return on your investment.
After very little thought, I agreed and Becky and I were off to the local Pet-Smart in anticipation of the best pet purchase ever!
We walked in, and there she was, quiet in her tank, looking at us with those big sad turtle eyes, begging us to choose her and take her home and love her forever.
At that moment, I felt like the best Mother and biggest humanitarian.
Giving this cold blooded little creature a home, and giving my son what would surely be a childhood filled with wonderful memories of he and his turtle.
We would call her "Sweetie."
As we walked to the car I reached out to hand Becky the box that held Sweetie, and as I recall, it was there in the parking lot that Becky gave her first initial cringe of fear and maybe even a wince of disgust.
Hmm... I was confused.
I asked Becky why she would encourage my to buy Wyatt a turtle if she was, might I say, a little repulsed by the animal,
Becky looked at me and shrugged and replied, "Your Kid."
We returned home with Sweetie to what I assumed would be squeals of joy and laughter.
Instead, I was met with stand offishness and a little reservation.
My son looked a me and said, "a turtle?"
Whatever.
I liked Sweetie.
It turned out, like things usually do with kids and pets, that I was the sole caregiver and companion to Sweetie.
Wyatt would take her out to "play" but it didn't take long (usually between 31-33 seconds) for him to become bored and walk away forgetting to put her back in her bowl.
The search for Sweetie would then ensue, with nobody wanting to be the one to find her as she would usually be a cold clammy bumpy surprise between the couch cushions hiding under the cover of darkness.
Even I was a little creeped out by that.
That Summer, Becky and her boyfriend Pumpkin Head were in the midst of buying and remodeling a new house and while they did they stayed in a camp trailer that lacked many of the normal comforts of home so Becky would often come to the house and use our washer and dryer.
One evening, while we waited for her wash to finish we decided to open a box of wine and do some online shopping and as I often did while relaxing around the house, I had tucked Sweetie safely in the front of my bra where she could be warm and comfortable instead of being alone in her bowl and that, I assure you, was more than Becky could stand.
A turtle in my bra.
It gave Becky a giant case of the heebes, so I did what any good friend would do and took it upon myself to help Becky get passed her fear and loathing of Sweetie.
After all, the turtle was her idea.
I took sweetie out of my bra and told Becky she had to hold her
I think I might have even called her names and tried to shame her into bonding with Sweetie.
She really didn't have a choice, it was either be a big baby or hold the turtle.
So she held Sweetie high and at arms length and started petting her shell.
Sweetie liked that and poked her head out and looked at Becky as if to say "thank you."
Becky was surprised to find she was not as repulsed as she had expected to be.
Sweetie wasn't so bad, in fact, I thought for a minute maybe Becky was beginning to like Sweetie as she started softly rubbing her her neck.
Before I knew it, Becky was holding Sweetie to her face, talking smoochy talk and caressing Sweetie's neck as Sweetie bobbed her head up and down, up and down, stretching her neck out as farrrr as she could.

And that's when it happened.

Before we even had time to prepare ourselves Sweetie ejaculated all over Becky!

Her neck and bare shoulder were instantly covered in a sticky, gross, white, slimy, ooze. 

The situation quickly grew out of control.

Madness ensued.

Becky was screaming, tears falling down her cheeks.

I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe.

Sweetie was on the kitchen table sound asleep.
I wanted to help Becky, I really did, but I couldn't.
I. 
Could. 
Not. 
Stop. 
Laughing.
I have tears in my eyes and I am laughing right now.
I don't remember what happened next, and really, who cares what happened next.
My friend Becky made Sweetie the happiest turtle in the trailer park that night, but sadly it was also the end of what may have otherwise been a beautiful relationship.

And that my friends, is my favorite post :)

If You Plant It...

I want to dig up my back yard and plant all native drought resistant plants, some raised vegetable beds, a winding gravel path to the barnyard and an arbor with something tangley covering it.
Can you see it?
For some reason I can't explain it in a way that Six sees it and gets as excited about it as I am, but that could also be because he sees all the work that he's going to be doing to achieve our vision.
I just need to figure out where to start.
I also need to get the barn demo'd but that's another project, and it isn't a fun project, and every time I bring up my yard garden idea Six reminds my of the tearing down of the barn.
Ugh. I really wish I had more husbands.
Back to the backyard.
I want something like this.

Minus the cactus of course.
But you get the idea.
So how and where do you start something like this?
Obviously with a backhoe to dig up the lawn that taunts you, but after that, other than contacting a garden wizard what are the first steps.
And, Six just pulled out a bunch of rotten old fencing from the corner pasture by the road so now that's all open lawn but instead of lawn I want to plant a little orchard and some berry bushes, but do you know how expensive fruit trees and berry bushes are?
Holy cats man, I could buy cases of applesauce and bags of frozen berries for a lifetime longtime for what we'd pay for the real thing, let alone all the work I would Six would have to do planting, picking and trimming.
It doesn't matter, I'm still going to do it.
I wonder if there's a garden college that needs to take a "field" trip...

Monday Funday!

I had the best day yesterday!
The sun was out, Six was at work, Wendy was at work, Wyatt was at school, it was just me and the neighbor kid soaking up the sun listening to the radio, playing outside, cleaning up inside and baking.
It isn't to often I have one of those days.
A day that isn't full of things to do or places to go or phone calls to make, just doing whatever we wanted.
It was a great day.

I made this cake...

That turned out sooo good and looked like this...

I know the angle of that photo isn't the best, but you get the "picture" .

It was amazing and just in case you haven't heard of it yet or made it yourself I'm going to tell you how it goes.

Pineapple Angle Food Cake

1 box of Angle Food cake mix

1 20 oz can of crushed pineapple

Mix the two ingredients together and bake as directed on box.

Got it?

Good!

Island Video Denise in Arizona said she made it with a can of blueberry pie filling and LOVED it and next time I'm going to use a can of cherry pie filling.

Can't wait.

Then for dinner we had homemade pizza which is without a doubt one of our favorite things.

I usually make it with pesto, artichoke hearts, mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes, but last night I made Wyatt's favorite, pepperoni.

You could throw anything you have in your fridge on it though and you don't have to use fancy pizza sauce, we just use tomato sauce, tomato paste, spaghetti sauce, alfredo sauce, whatever you have in the cupboard, use it.

But as I said, last night was pepperoni...

I should have taken another picture after it was baked, but I was to busy burning my mouth eating pizza straight from the oven.

I know you're thinking to yourself well we do Pappa Murphys and that's just like homemade pizza. 

No it's not.

Anything like homemade pizza.

At all.

And this is seriously SO easy and I don't even use a rolling pin to flatten it out I just use my hands and it isn't even round, it's whatever shape it is when I feel the dough is right.

Not to thick, not to thin, even though some pizzas I like thicker crust, red sauce pizzas and some I like thinner crusts, any other sauce.

So here's the recipe for the crust.

Easy Peasy Pizza Crust

2 1/4 teaspoons of yeast (or one package)

1 teaspoon of sugar

1 cup of hot tap water (not boiling)

2 1/2 cups of flour

2 Tablespoons of oil

1 teaspoon of salt

Mix the yeast, sugar and water and let it rest for about 10 minutes.

Mix in the other ingredients and let it rest another 5 or 10 minutes.

Flour your hands and counter and roll out or shape your crust and then lay it on a lightly sprayed baking sheet.

Bake in a pre-heated 450 oven for about 20 minutes, but start watching it after 18 until it's done.

See how easy that is!

Ok, I have to go to town, I slacked off yesterday so today I have places to go and things to do.

Here's a picture of the neighbor.

Don't blame me for the camo tank top and brown socks, he came that way.

Peas.

Catching Up Again...

Something has been wrong with the blog for a month or two.
I'm not sure why, but it kept showing a 404 error and you couldn't access it from Facebook.
I was in contact with my domain people and Blogger with no success, but it seems to have somehow fixed itself.
For some reason though it's still showing on other blog links as The Trailerparks which is my email instead of The Fat Bottom Farm.
Oh well.
A little bit of a lot has been going on around here and if you follow on Facebook you haven't missed anything and if you don't follow on Facebook you haven't missed much just enough to keep me busy and I won't go on about everything today because I don't want you to fall asleep during the boring parts and then miss out on a good part so I'll spread out the old news with the new news over the next few days.

Lambs

Our final count this year was four lambs.
One set of twins and two little ewes.
Belle had the twins and Dingle, the littlest twin was a house sheep and her brother Dangle who is a wether now because we don't need any more rams.
Polly Pancakes had a snow white ewe lamb, Clementine, who is made out of rubber bands and fireworks and tears up the pasture like her feet are on fire!
Judy had a ewe lamb, Jesse, who is the size of of a 1997 Geo Metro.
I'm not even kidding.
Her neck is the size of a tree stump.
She's huge.
Then, our biggest surprise this lambing season was when the neighbor across the road gave us his two Jacob rams, even though at the time we didn't know they were rams, we were just so happy to have them.
They haven't been shorn since before we moved here in 2006, and believe me, they needed it!

Jacobs are a heirloom breed of horned sheep that produce a beautiful spotted fleece.

Even the ewes have horns and either sex can have between two and four horns and I think even up to six!
I need to brush up on my Jacob smarts and get my hands on a ewe or two and get busy growing this flock.
You can imagine how thrilled Six is for me to have another new endeavour ;)

Arts & Crafts

Wyatt has been really busy making his jewelry and is having quite a bit of success selling his stuff which works out great for me because he can finally support his own habit!
For the longeat time I have been trying to convince him to make earrings but he would have no part of it...
Until it was his idea.
Then it suddenly became a good idea.
Whatever.
Here's a pair he made yesterday.

Check out his Etsy shop, he's pretty amazing, or maybe I just think that because I'm his mom :)

Winded Wire

I've been making soap again, mostly because my friend Shelly has opened a great new store and had space for a bar or two and some candles too.

And I kind of missed the process.

There really is nothing like the look and feel of handmade soap and knowing that you're not lathering yourself up in groddy chemicals is an added bonus too.

This is the last batch I made. 

It's for problem skin made from local honey, finely ground oats and aloe.

Non scented, it should be great for anyone who has issues with acne and eczema.

And this is what I have listed on Etsy and what Shelley has in her store

(Shelley's Shack 100 W State Street Sedro Woolley Wa)

Garden Scrub.

Orange oil and blackberry with dried orange rind for scrubbing and dried blackberry leaves for exfoliation.

And...

Kitchen Counter 

Made with vanilla espresso to get the garlic and onion stink off your hands!

And, last but not least for today...

The Neighbor

I could go on all day about him, but I won't :)

Peas.