Sandy is an avian American found street walking at night in a lesser part of Sanford Maine. Now she is the grande dame of a small but productive multi-ethnic flock, doing her part to encourage the other hens as they labor.
Let me go back to the beginning: Over a year ago I was visiting my brand new pair of mothers I had just gotten when I found Sandy trying to cross the street at night. No that’s not far enough, let me go back to the VERY beginning . . . there once was an egg, who met a sperm, and they made a zygote. But the egg and sperm were still in high school and the zygote became a blastocyst that would need shoes for the next 225 months. As this was the dark ages of Camelot, the Catholic church got to draw a name of of a hat of a pious yet childless couple and present them with a bouncing demon puddle splasher whose first and only word was NO. Are we far enough back yet?
Flip forward through 53 years punctuated by death, detention, depression and divorce until the Catholics finally offer up my address for an outrageous price to my only non-mother blood relation. Using their outdated and inaccurate mother-data provided me and my incredible stalking superpowers, I managed to locate my biomoms address in less than an hour. Of all the US states in all the world, my biomom had married a woman from Maine and they had moved to less than an hour away from where I would eventually make landfall. Being the instant gratification brat that I am, in lieu of sending them a cablegram, I drove to their house and rang the doorbell. <insert family reunion montage here> Very quickly my dance card went from zero to sixty, with biosiblings and aunts and non bio siblings and other extended relations yielding a Marvel universe worthy family tree.
Back to Sandy…remember Sandy? Every few weeks I take a run over to my mothers’ house to bang some yarn and stock up on eggs. One night coming back I find Sandy wandering around in the bike lane at an intersection. After corraling her into a collapsible cat carrier, I brought her back to my mother’s hen house. With her trimmed beak and wing feathers, she had obviously escaped from a truck taking her to no place good. It took a few weeks of rest and ‘recooperation’ for her to join her new flock where there are no expectations for her to take part in the production aside from moral support. Although every so often she pops out an egg just to prove she still has what it takes.
I need to start using up more of the yarn I already have, I am just not a creative knitter. I’m a subsistence knitter, I just create usable things. I know I can never create things that are as beautiful or complicated as the ones I can buy. I am very happy with the sweaters that I own and right now I don’t feel the urge to waste a lot of yarn trying to make one. But if I can turn out a few plain scarves, shawls, handwarmers and socks, then I will never need to buy those things. After I master handwarmers, I am going to do some hats, that should keep me busy. The first thing I will need to do is repair the one I bought that my dog found pretty tasty.
I got it into my head to learn to make English meat pies. I haven’t had any from 
The key to it all is the pastry. 1 lb flour, 4oz butter, 4oz lard, salt to taste, and several tablespoons of hot water to form a dough. Paint everything with beaten egg to get things to stick shut and glaze nicely, this makes a great portable and tasty crust. And yes you need the lard, I even rub all my tins down with it so they don’t get rusty.
I kept trying used hiking clothing made of all the new and improved fabrics for hiking clothing and finally threw in the towel and redonated the entire lot. I just can’t wear anything made of polyester next to my skin. I bit the bullet and bought a merino t-shirt (although I found a $50 shirt for $20!) I can’t wear it in summer as they claim, but it’s fine for the rest of the year. I will usually only buy clothes on ebay after I have failed to find something I really want in thrift shops. At $50 this Aran Merino hoodie was probably the most expensive item of clothing I bought this year, I also picked up some merino lounge pants and a lightweight merino hoodie at $20 each, both needing light repairs – I write all the woolen purchases off as ‘heating’ expenses. I didn’t buy as MUCH yarn this year as other years, though I did stop knitting in the summer when the weather got sticky. I am going to TRY to use up the yarn cache under the bed, including sweaters I bought specifically to unravel for their yarn. I wasted at least $60 buying ‘hiking’ socks which I loathe, so I finally mastered knitting my own socks. I may have to add to my needle collection next year, and move onto other things.
After going 5 days without power I FINALLY ordered the Mr Heater, which had been sitting on my wishlist for like 3 years. It would have been $20 cheaper if I had picked it up in summer, but I was playing chicken with the climate. Hopefully I won’t actually NEED to unbox it . . . ever. I also picked up a butane stove which I am using regularly instead of the hotplate. It takes way less energy and fits nicely in the cupboard. 
The Subaru Forester was probably the biggest expense of the year, though selling the truck covered the actual cost. It does free us up to go traveling, we managed to hike a lot of different places this year. I have intentions of doing a bit of camping or at least CAR camping so I can see the rest of the state. Her K9-SportSak was probably the most used purchase this year..and one of the most expensive at $79, well worth every penny. I did drop a significant amount on a Ultra lightweight backpack that I had my heart set on, though I did some horse trading to get it paid for; it should last me a good long while.
When I started hiking further afield around the state, it was a challenge to bring along not just snacks and lunch but have a way to brew up a hot drink. It all goes to keeping costs down. This little kit is something I have been working on for the last few months, it is something I will probably be tweaking and improving on, but with a few recent purchases it’s complete for the most part.
Death Takes a Holiday (2/23/34) Emo Death is feeling unloved, hangs up his shroud and crashes an affluenza weekend houseparty looking for the meaning of life or maybe get laid, whichever. He takes turns hitting on each girl until he finds the manic depressive who is probably cutting herself in the powder room. Seriously THESE are the people he chooses to visit? We are introduced to these entitled one percenters at a drunken party, on their way back to their baroque castle in a made up country, they nearly kill a poor schmuck of a flower seller and his donkey, but it’s okay because they bought all his flowers. What the hell? who are these people? WHY them? I realized it was an Italian play, and until faily late in the 19thc, the place was carpeted with disenfranchised princelings, but I think we could have been treated to a little Americanization so the audience can identify with SOMEONE. Personally I identified with the flower seller’s donkey. 
This is a play. it’s not scary, it’s not funny, and since so much time has passed, it is not even THAT thought provoking. The set decorator should be shot at dawn, unless they shot it in a church or museum, then its the location scout that should be shot. I hadn’t watched this film in a very long time, I remember enjoying it when I was in my Frederick March phase and I was working through a list of Hollywood heaven/hell/afterlife films…I remember liking it, but seriously what was I thinking? There is no one in this film I like. I loathed every character including death. He’s a bully, he’s basically kidnapped a houseful of people to entertain himself and prove a point that he should have dealt with millenia ago, how can we sympathize with him? And the women whom he flirts with are rather useless vapid women, they neither sow nor spin, and the one that ‘loves’ him? and has ALWAYS loved him and always seen him as a large floating shroud? yeah that woman is well passed medication time, her profession of love is a suicide note. Death, dude, only people who have all the money and all the toys are so bored out of their minds that they can afford to be in love with death and not fear it. You want to meet people who LOVE life and would fight for every scrap, go hang around with the Flower Seller and his donkey. 
The Invisible Man (11/13/33) Reputedly clever man makes a string of bad decisions. If he really wanted to be left alone, he woud have gone to London. Once he chose to go to east bumfuck he became the center of their attention, of COURSE people spied on him, that’s WHAT small towns DO for entertainment. Mind you that wasn’t his first bad decision, experimenting on oneself never ends well; he really should have stuck to lab animals, or maybe he did and he misplaced them all. Griffin and Kemp are supposed to be equals assistants to an older scientist, well Kemp seems to live very well in pretty damn nice house, how come Griffin is so incredibly poor he has gone so completely obsessed for power to impress his girl friend? IF he works all night every night on this for 5 years, WHEN did he had time to romance Stuart? When did THAT happen? I suspect there was something else going on before he starts terrorizing the country side. “We will begin with a reign of terror,” that had to come from a childhood trauma. The book paints him as crazy BEFORE he starts injecting himself with things, the film says it made him crazy, probably because we can’t imagine Gloria Stuart falling for a madman. I can see why the script delayed the production, it does rely on a lot of distration. If you are looking for the plotholes you are missing the big picture. The film isn’t about how he got himself invisible, it’s about the ensuing paranoia, what do you do when there’s an invisible hostile force roaming about? What do you say to a naked man?
This was an ideal project for Whale, a generous dollop of science fiction smeared over a traditional English setting. He got to paint a portrait of people he knew and then set about terrorizing them. Where would the world be without Una’s screaming? Watch for Whalesian details… when Griffin is removing his headbandage in front a mirror using a matte techinique, the matted arm keeps ‘bumping’ the curtain which is on the other image. When he lies down for a goodnight’s rest, the scene cuts to the man he just killed also covered in a blanket but being carted out on a stretcher..morbidly clever. I always laugh when he gobbles up the toast soldier. Love the sly wordplay – like the Little Willy joke about sucking the boy out of a snow bank (Little Willies were the naughty 4 line poems from the 1910s. http://ruthlessrhymes.com/category/little_willies), or when a naked invisible Griffin complains about the cold freezing icicles of an Eskimo..and “Icicles” rhymes with what body part? Dwight Frye, cub reporter repeatedly asking for any ‘special secret plans?’, as IF they were going to tell him. Even visual jokes, like filming Kemp hitting on Flora completely obscured by what would have been a very expensive mid winter floral arrangement. The ladies of the pub all bundled up snug in their Snug. And the not so vielded reference to Chancellor Hitler with the posturing and the Power to Rule speech about conquering the world with invisble armies. The long drawn out stalking and murder of Kemp is pretty damn ghastly, as is the over the top crashing of an entire train load of people; but what reign of terror is complete without a little mass murder?
Supernatural (5/12/33) The first reel of this film is jawdroppingly batshit creepy. Multiple murderess is gleefully counting down the days to her own execution…and I MEAN Gleefully. Mad scientist has cockamamie idea of evil spirits escaping the executed body and cons warden into a little gross abuse of a corpse. Which brings us to all the other reels: Socialite Lombard is mourning her dead twin, and starts messing around with fat fake spiritualist who for some reason was banging the murderess and thinks he has a shot with a socialite who keeps a tuxedo clad Randolph Scott around just for arm candy. Lombard stumbles into mad scientists….living room? where he just happens to have the murderesses still bangable body and is zapping it with electricity for kicks.
King Kong (3/2/1933) In March 1933, Mr. Kong’s home was invaded by pirates from the SS Venture. After a traditional island ceremony performed by the local Chieftan, the pirates succeed in carrying off Mr. Kong’s new mail order bride. Despite defensive actions taken by Mr Kong and his neighbors, wherein 15 of the invading pirates were successfully killed, Mr. Kong was subsequently kidnapped and taken to New York City without his consent. After escaping captivity and scouring Manhattan island, Mr Kong was briefly reunited with his wife. Mr. Kong was then subsequently murdered by US Army Air Corps biplanes. Carl Dedham, the criminal mastermind resposible for the home invasion and kidnappings is still at large, but is expected to be charged with the deaths of one stegosaurus, 15 pirates, 12 Skull Island citizens, 30 New Yorkers and two US army pilots, along with the damages to one Skull Island Village and one historically significant large wooden Wall.