temporarily single

Francie left this morning for 10 days in London. We were up before dawn to drive her to the airport shuttle. By the time she was airborne (~8:45), I had done a load of dishes, thoroughly cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, and mopped. If you've only been to our house for parties, you don't know how squalid it can get. There's so much more to do, but I'm rather looking forward to it.

So why the sudden cleaning binge? Partly due to Baitcon, because we're going to have neighbors taking care of the pets this weekend, and squalor is embarassing. Also, being left on my own, the mess is entirely my own responsibility to deal with. Normally, there are always other more pressing things to do, and neither of really owns the housekeeping portion. With Francie gone, I'm taking a couple weeks off aikido, and leaving work early every day to pick up Kylie from camp. It's kind of the opposite of a vacation, but it has the same quality of disrupting my usual habits and patterns, and focusing attention on things I normally don't deal with.

(Leave it to me to get all introspective over house-cleaning...)

quail update

Recall that we got 10 mail-order bobwhite quail eggs, and divided them between the two broody bantam hens.

Millie is a mille-fleur d'Uccle, who likes to sit in one of the two nest boxes in the coop. Unfortunately, this is the same nest box that Penelope, the big Rhode Island Red, insists on laying her eggs in. We tried to move Millie to the other nest box, but she abandoned the eggs for her familiar nest. What with one thing and another, five eggs became four, then three, then (mysteriously) two. OTOH, there haven't been any of the big RI eggs for a few days, and Penelope's usually a very consistent layer, so Millie may have been eating the big intruder eggs.

Thistle is a white silkie, who had already taken to nesting outside the coop, in the enclosed run. Her five eggs have only shrunk to four, and she's been positively devoted to them, sitting 24x7.

We candled all the eggs tonight. (Shine as bright a light as you can get through the shell, and look for signs of organization and life. Veins and opaque masses are good, especially if they're moving.) One of Thistle's four is either infertile, or otherwise failed to develop. OTOH, her three remaining eggs are more developed than Millie's, probably due to more devoted brooding.

So we should get five chicks, with Thistle's three possibly this weekend, and Millie's two several days behind.