Laying chickens are bred for maximum egg output, so they tend to have shorter lives; two of our older hens died in the past few weeks at three and four years old, respectively, and both were laying up until the end. But Jae brought in four Ameraucanas a few years ago, which are now six years old; they don’t lay nearly as often, but they’re still laying at what is quite an advanced age for chickens. When I went to collect my eggs on Saturday, I found this in the middle of the henhouse floor; it’s even smaller than pullet eggs, and since it’s green it’s obviously from one of the Ameraucanas. Presumably, near the end of their lives they experience something analogous to menopause, and this is the result; it does make me wonder just how much longer I’ll still be getting at least some output from elderly hens that have always laid more eggs than I expected.
Posts Tagged ‘Sunset’
Diary #816
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset on February 16, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Diary #815
Posted in Diary, Miscellaneous, Q & A, tagged STEM, Sunset on February 10, 2026| 2 Comments »
As I mentioned last week, CenturyLink finally got around to fixing my internet problem; the main issue was a corroded wire in the node near my house which was causing a series of errors that eventually caused my modem to “time out”. The technician said having an older modem, while not the actual cause of the issue, was exacerbating the problem, so he gave me a new one, and everything has been fine since. However, two other tech problems have now materialized, and with Grace gone I have nobody here who knows about this stuff enough to help me. So I figured I’d ask my many tech-savvy readers for help.
The first issue is that the PDF Architect software I bought in 2014 and have built seven books on suddenly decided that my copy was not “authenticated” and refuses to function without a new key PDF Architect will not give because they conveniently no longer “support” the software I bought and paid for which still perfectly fulfilled my needs up until now, and want me to pay for their fancy new subscription-based service over and over again each month, though I only use the software when I’m publishing books. Frank found me free software that will run on my XP machine, but he has never used it himself, so I’d like recommendations; all I need is resident software (not web-based) that will run on XP and combine multiple Word files into a PDF. That’s it; no bells & whistles are necessary, and free is good but inexpensive is also OK.
The other is that on Saturday evening my TV, which has been unhealthy for a few years, did something really strange: I was watching a show and a sharply-delineated vertical white band, bounded by several alternating bands of grey and black, suddenly appeared in the exact center of the screen. Stopping the disc had no effect so it was obviously the TV rather than the disc; I turned it off and turned it back on, and the problem vanished for the rest of the evening. But this smells like a harbinger of imminent catastrophic failure, so I’m going to replace it. Given that the last attempt at replacement was a failure, I should probably get either a newish low-end Samsung (to be compatible with the DVD players) or a 7-8 year old refurbished something else. But again, I don’t need bells & whistles, and I don’t even really want it to connect to the internet; I want the closest thing to a dumb monitor that will simply allow me to play DVDs that I can get. Any advice?
Diary #814
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, drugs, psychology, Sunset on February 3, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Axel has been slowly improving where Speck is concerned; if she crosses the floor while I’m in the room, he just watches her intently but doesn’t move toward her. And every time she completes a back-and-forth I tell him he’s a good boy and give him a treat. But it’s much harder to train a dog to refrain from doing something than it is to train him to do something, so progress has been slow. But last week, we hit three landmarks. On Tuesday, CenturyLink finally sent someone to fix my internet (it was a corroded wire in the node out in the lane), and when the technician came into the house Axel barked at him once, smelled him, and then was calm for the rest of the time. Then on Wednesday, I had to go to Seattle; I left him outside when I left at 11 AM, had Chekhov come by about 4 to feed the farm animals and let Axel into the house, and then he was alone until I got home about 11 PM. He was pretty excited when I got back, but I was able to calm him quickly and there were no signs he had acted up (chased Speck or torn anything up) while I was gone for about 4x as long as I’ve ever left him before.
But the best was late Friday night; he was with me on the sofa while I was watching my show, then around midnight he had to go out. He was gone for a while, probably doing poo-poo, and while he was out Speck came and sat on my lap, then moved to the arm of the sofa. When he came back in, he got back in his spot, and though he kept looking at her he didn’t lunge or growl or anything else. I stayed there a while between them, petting them both, then eventually got up to check my social media one last time before bed, and took this picture during that time. He kept looking at her and occasionally at me, but did nothing bad for about an hour, at which point Speck decided to go back into Grace’s room. And of course I praised and rewarded him. Then Sunday night they got even closer; Speck came to cuddle with me on the sofa while Axel was right next to me, less than an arm’s length away. So I think we’re getting there; as of Sunday I’ve lowered his trazodone to 75mg/day, and I’ll keep it there until the beginning of March. And within a few more months I think he will complete his transition from nervous wreck to happy, well-adjusted puppy dog.
Diary #813
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, Washington (state) on January 27, 2026| Leave a Comment »
The climate here at Sunset is not unlike that of England; rainy and on the chilly side, and rarely extremely hot or extremely cold. Because the utility room containing the well and the water tank are inside the atrium, I don’t need to take any precautions if the overnight low is going to be warmer than -3o C, which is usually the case for >80 days of the winter. And if it isn’t going to be lower than about -5o C, all I need to do is turn on a heater in the utility room and let one faucet run at a trickle. But once in a while it gets colder than that for a night or two, so I need to take a few extra precautions, like running the hot water tap for a few minutes whenever I get up to use the bathroom (since the propane heater is outside). It was like that Friday and Saturday nights; if the daytime temperatures are reasonable I don’t need to make any special arrangements for the big animals, because they just huddle together in the stable and emerge to sun themselves after dawn. But our cats are not used to these kind of temperatures, so I bring the outside cats inside on nights like that. Rocky got the atrium bathroom and Lilith the old one; I need to keep the door closed so she and Speck won’t fight (and Axel adds another complication). But Sunday night was back to normal, with a low of only -2o C, so I was able to suspend the freeze protocols. And unless we get some stray cold front later in February, that’s probably it for this winter.
Diary #812
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, drugs, Sunset, video on January 20, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Axel is definitely settling into life at Sunset. As I’ve written before, I’ve been reducing his medication by 50mg/day every week, and now we’re down to 100mg/day. Last week I tried to give that to him in one bedtime dose rather than splitting it into two 50 mg doses at bedtime & midday, but that left him a bit too exuberant in the afternoon and evening, and he tried to chase Speck a couple of times. He immediately stops when I say “Leave it!” but I want to get him to the point where he doesn’t chase her at all, so for right now I’m going to hold him at 50mg twice daily until the end of January, then I’ll try to nudge it down by 25 daily mg a month until we can get him off of it completely. On at least 5 or 6 occasions in the past week Speck has trotted through the living room right in front of him with no reaction beyond his perking up a bit, even without my saying anything, so I think we’re on the right track. I think it helps that Trip, whom he seems to look to for guidance, does not have any issue with cats, but we’ll see; unfortunately, Trip has this weird habit of occasionally running up to Jonathan and barking at him for no apparent reason, and as of Sunday Axel seems to have picked up that habit from him. I’m not too worried because Jonathan just stands there and looks at him like, “What the hell are you on about, dog?” and he’s much too big for the dogs to hurt. So one thing at a time: “Don’t chase things smaller than you” is much more important than “Don’t irritate things big enough to stomp on you”, because the latter tends to be self-reinforcing.
Diary #811
Posted in Diary, tagged carnival, holidays, psychology, Sunset on January 13, 2026| Leave a Comment »
Unless there is some compelling reason to do otherwise, I always take down my Christmas tree on King Day, January 6th. This year was not an exception, but it was raining so hard I had no desire to drag the tree across the muddy paddock to the fence line, especially because I don’t actually get dressed in the wintertime except on days when I need to go somewhere. So I put it outside, but it has been a week and I just haven’t felt like moving it yet. Though there’s no real danger of my becoming a recluse, I’m beginning to understand the mindset of elderly ladies in Gothic novels; I have a routine that I am comfortable with and prefer to maintain, so I tend to grumble when I have to break it to go to Aberdeen for some reason like groceries, and I really grumble when I need to drive to Seattle, especially in rainy weather. And if I were wealthy, I probably would have a handyman nearly as old as I am who does those chores for me. I wonder how much it would cost to have a manicurist come to me instead of vice-versa? Alas, too much. But it’s nice to think about, at least in monsoon season.
Diary #810
Posted in Diary, tagged internet, Sunset on January 5, 2026| 3 Comments »
Normally, my internet works just fine. Whenever we have a power outage the internet usually goes off in tandem and returns in tandem, because the local substation draws power from the same local power grid Sunset does. But last December an internet outage lasted a full three weeks, during which time I was stuck using my phone’s hotspot. I had hoped that was a fluke which wouldn’t be repeated, but a few weeks ago we had a 3-day outage, and since the 29th it has been going on and off unpredictably. The light on the repeater is much easier to see from my table than the tiny little globe symbol on the router, and it generally turns red when there’s no internet. But this time even that’s undependable; as I type this (on Saturday afternoon) the light is red, but I was able to save this column with no problem, and at other times I’ll have no connection despite the light being blue. They tell me it’s a problem with the lines near my house, which will be fixed on the 15th; however, that’s what they said last December when the problem was eventually fixed remotely with nary a technician in sight (or on-site), so I’m not exactly disposed to believing them even though this looks like a local problem (in my limited understanding of their network) to me as well. And I’ve already got a promise to get a billing credit for weeks of undependable service, but as you can probably guess I don’t believe that, either.
Diary #809
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, drugs, holidays, psychology, Sunset on December 30, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Several of y’all have asked me to keep y’all up to date on how Axel is adjusting to life at Sunset; here’s a picture I took on Christmas day before most of the guests arrived. Axel is in late middle age at 9, but he’s actually the youngest of this pack: Trip, to viewer left, is 12, and Hallie, to viewer right, is about 11. She’s my friend Sophie’s dog, so she’s a frequent visitor and mostly knows how to behave herself at Sunset. Axel is no longer a nervous wreck; he’s largely pretty calm, and seems quite happy most of the time. The shelter vet sent him home with a bottle of 100 mg trazodone tablets and some rather vague directions regarding dosage, but I quickly found about 400 mg a day worked well. I’ve been weaning him off of them at 50 daily mg/week, so as of Saturday we’re now down to 200 mg (one pill at bedtime and one in the early afternoon) with no noticeable effect on his behavior. He even did well on Christmas day with all the company, though people did feed him too many treats so he had an upset tummy that night (the trazodone may aggravate that). The only behavioral problem that is still a major issue is his tendency to chase cats; if I’m in the room a quick “leave it!” command works to stop him, but when I’m not in the room he will still do it (as I discovered to my great irritation when I was rudely awakened at 2 AM on Christmas Eve and had to clean up cat piss and cat shit from the kitchen, where they were literally scared out of Speck when he attacked). She was not hurt, but since I can’t ensure that will be true next time I’ve moved her food, water fountain and litterbox into Grace’s room, where Speck enjoys spending time anyway; at night I can close the door to protect her. But I’m working on breaking the bad habit (which his first owner either allowed or actively encouraged, as some sociopaths are wont to do), and given that he’s an extremely intelligent dog (dramatically more so than poor Trip, who is a low-watt bulb), I have confidence he will eventually learn that attacking his fellow-residents is not cool.
Diary #808
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, holidays, Sunset, video on December 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Yes, this was taken from the spa; in the cold months my old back injuries often act up, so it’s nice to be able to immerse myself in hot water with a cup of cocoa and Christmas music. And by the time you read this I’ll be done with last-minute holiday preparations, and should be ready for company tomorrow evening. Merry Christmas from me, Axel, and everyone else here at Sunset!
Diary #807
Posted in Diary, tagged animals, Sunset, Washington (state) on December 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Though December is the rainiest month here at Sunset, with rain nearly every day, it doesn’t usually rain as heavily as it did last week. When I cleaned the stock tank in October, I decided not to refill it and just let the rain do the job, since Jonathan and Hercules have been drinking out of the rainwater catch basin anyway. Between mid-October and December 7th, the rain filled the tank about 1/3 of the way, then by Tuesday morning it had reached the 2/3 level; in other words, we got as much rain last Monday as we did in all of October and November! It rained some on Tuesday and then heavily again on Wednesday morning, so by Wednesday afternoon the east paddock looked like this despite the fact that there’s a drainage ditch between the barn and henhouse, to the right side of this photo. Jonathan actually likes the rain and Cicero doesn’t seem to mind it much, but Hercules hates it, the chickens prefer to stay inside during it, and Louie could barely be coaxed out of his nest all week; for a few days there I was actually feeding them inside the stable, because it was the easiest way for everyone. Thursday and Friday were much lighter rain and Saturday was actually clear and sunny, so the standing water has drained off and the animals were all roaming around as normal; I’m glad I took the precautions to ensure proper drainage when we first moved here.
Visit my bookstore
This Month
Old Posts
Call me
Become a Blog Patron
If you want to donate but don't want a recurring charge, you can send any amount you like via PayPal to my email address (see below). Be sure to include a note so I can thank you!Contact Maggie
Boring but necessary legal stuff