solar hot water heater project

solar hot water heater I am putting this in my blog as a project I would truly love to try this summer if we can and also so I can find it again. Today I started clearing the space for a compost box so we'll see how that goes. Too late to do much else today but got it started anyway ;)

Insomnia

My toddler has it.... Was up all night until about 6am this morning when hubby got up with her (he hadn't gotten any sleep either) and I went and crashed was feeling sick as hell and had been all day and I am not sure when she finally climbed up in his lap and passed out and he put her in the chair but I took her and put her in bed and went and curled up with her. Dunno why he didn't take advantage of the time to go lay down in bed or if he was afraid of waking her to go crash on the couch but he stayed up for the most part and then I guess finally caught a short nap on the couch and then went to bed about 2:30 or so this afternoon...so hopefully he gets some zzzz's. 
Anyway I came across something today that I found disturbing. I am not so sure it explains all the mass die offs by any means but apparently all those starlings and such that supposedly they couldn't figure out why they died or said it was fireworks???? I was pointed in the direction of the USDA where they have a list of their intentional and unintentional die offs....USDA < Click to see it. 
Also now they are apparently wanting to install little black boxes in all cars to keep track of everyone in detail. Like Onstar on steroids. little black box  It was also on our local news. I'm seriously thinking bikes sound more and more like a good option. No black boxes, get more exercise, no high gas cost, no repair costs really (okay maybe a few but definitely not like a car), fresh air (not so great during bad weather) but while it does have it's downside....the upside is looking pretty good. 

April showers

Well we made it through the weekend of doooooooommmmmmm unscathed. There was a large tornado outbreak set to happen and the worst we got where we live was some straight line winds and hail and the sirens went off once when a tornado went around from Norman to Shawnee. (I don't think it even did any damage in Shawnee but it did in Norman) We did see this as an opportunity to learn and have realized we need to rethink our emergency bags. I also need to hopefully get my kids to understand that things like makeup kit and radio are not essentials. On another note looks like we get to keep our little garden a while longer...yayyyyyy! Hopefully long enough to get some veggies from it all. Last time we had a decent garden we weren't so lucky and got hit by a tornado and lost it all but an easter egg plant. Looks like we get another swing at a tornado around the first week of May. I am torn...I love stormy weather and sometimes wish I'd taken up storm chasing ...yet I don't want to see anyone hurt of course. Anyway. 


Our latest project that I hope to start on soon is a compost bin. Double sided so that you let the one side settle for a year while you use the other. Not a hard project really just have to find the time. Today I spent mowing and doing yard work. We have found that if you have alarms on your doors the cops will assume you must have something to hide even if you don't especially if your house is not this glamorous nice looking one since of course you must not have nice things either or things that are of value at least to you. Note to anyone else who uses alarms on their doors....or locks. We keep them on damned near everything. Even our chicken coop because we caught someone getting into it and messing with our chickens. They had even torn their roost down once so yeah. Locks everywhere. Anways just a note there. We have been drooling over like an underground storage thing but too costly and no way to do that. People are now buying up shipping containers to do that with. Would make a nice tornado shelter/root cellar. I will say though that this funky weather is playing nice with my roses. They are blooming now more than ever before and are absolutely beautiful. 

 I am doing a bit of a fun earthquake prediction experiment also. My first test kinda failed. We were having a decent sized quake every other night (3.0-4.0) and I thought we might have one last night but we broke the pattern and had absolutely nothing. My 2nd test is my chickens have been laying only 1 egg on the days that we have those size of a quake. Well last night despite my following the pattern ...they laid 4 so now following their pattern if that is correct then tonight we should have one. We had a really small 1.something earlier so now I am just going to wait and check on that tomorrow. The funny thing is this all started with an odd wrinkled egg. 

Only had the one like that...wrinkled eggs can be caused for a number of reasons though in this case stress seems to have been the cause... and then they started this pattern of only giving us one egg on the nights with the decent sized quakes. They had been laying like clockwork and producing about 5-6 eggs a day before that except for of course when we had the other bigger quakes....so anyway. Like I said just a fun experiment nothing serious but I will be interested if we do in fact have another larger one tonight. The one we had a couple of nights ago was a 4.0.  Will try to remember to post what I find on that :) For now I am off to go draw some I think and listen to some music. Trying to unwind. 

Civil Unrest?

I am a bit of a news addict I guess and I do keep an eye on those parts of the news that appear more in the back ground. I usually hear about them a bit before they come to light in your local news and such and I do make sure to check multiple sources (I don't rely on just one and I make sure it is a reliable or reputable source) I do have a few sources that I might take a glance at and mostly dismiss as they are strongly biased and will twist the story to what they want it to convey. In any case I'd been hearing about this one a lot in the background and it is now bubbling up to the top as more people are noticing and trying to decide what to make of it. Here is a link to video from RT which gives you a good idea of what is being discussed.  There is a lot of talk about why the US is buying up 450 million rounds of .40 caliber  high performance rounds. Especially in conjunction with other things such as new laws regarding protesting. The theory here is that they are preparing for civil war. I think civil unrest is a better term. I think that when this election in November comes we are in for a lot of change. This country is very divided on their ideals for presidential candidates as is and no matter which party wins ...things are going to get nasty. Put that together with other things going on right now. Such as high gas prices that seem to be continuing to rise. Solutions to that being just as divided such as drilling which some see as an easier fix to new sources of energy that are more renewable because the drilling may be just a band aid and will be more damaging to the earth which is all ready showing significant damage. Then there is severe weather that seems to be  becoming more wide spread and more severe and as a result is doing more damage to crops and livestock whether it be drought, tornado, snow storms, etc. This means that besides gas prices causing commodity prices to rise the weather plays a factor in it and also we are starting to run low. Water is also becoming a worry as clean sources start to become harder to come by and amounts of fresh water decrease. Are we past a tipping point? We may very well be or we ARE right on that tipping point now. 

Hello dear blog

Did you miss me? Well I haven't forgotten you just been busy as usual. We went and bought our plants that I'd been wanting. Got several tomato plants (two different kinds), banana peppers, zuchinni, lemon verbena, spearmint and chocolate mint (which by the way smells exactly like chocolate mint and I had to convince the 16 year old that no she could not eat my mint plant)....anyway and then a blueberry bush that all ready appears to be putting on some blue berries. If this does well I plan on getting some other bushes and maybe a grape vine. I can hope!!! We are now off water restriction but still using the neighboring city's water so we are going to fill the pool while we can. Going to put it together this weekend I think. Had it part way together and discovered the ground wasn't as level as we first thought so had to start over which sucks. Took care of a flooding problem in the chicken coop via putting down a pallet that had a solid side to it for their food, water, and for them to get up on and then adding shavings to their coop floor. Cleaned it up a bit in there and then opened up one side that looks out into the run so they can have more fresh air.  
Been keeping an eye on the news as usual (news addict that I am) and am watching of course gas prices going up...though we live in a state where they are still under $4.00 though they are getting close to that amount. Where a friend of mine had to travel to it is $4.30 a gallon. Noticing that trucking companies are having a harder time with this and my trucker friends are noticing as well. I don't just pay attention to the news I find it is very important to listen to what the people in that field are saying as well...if they aren't worried I don't worry so much but when they notice problems and they are all certainly noticing problems right now and major ones...I pay attention. I am also paying attention to food prices which are of course going up. Today when we went to a sale at the local grocery store a package of chicken breast (albeit a decent sized one) ON SALE was 12$ on up. This was at a store known for lower prices. They had ham on sale for Easter and the freezer section was wiped out and looked like it was mauled. There were like 3 or 4 packages left and some ripped open. I still do seriously want to invest in bikes and one of those toddler trike things. We can't use them for the appts that are farther away but for local in town trips we could and it would be nice to have something to fall back on (and healthier hoenstly) I am also watching some of these laws they are trying to pass which I will cover at a later time but for now wanted to check in. :)