And now, for a recap.

(Note that I wrote this post a couple weeks ago, so when I say "it is" it should be "it was" etc.)

Since Blogger was causing me so many problems, and it now appears to be working, I thought I'd give a recap of all the things I wanted to post!

Yes!  We now have chicks! We went out to Terrell (about 30-45 min. east of Dallas) and picked up 4 six-week-old pullets, and 2 two-day-old Silver Laced Wyandottes.  The chicks are currently living in a small brooder, and will "graduate" up to the bigger brooder in a couple weeks.  The bigger brooder is being used (although a tad cramped) by the pullets, because....

IT'S FREAKING COLD!  The temps in North Texas dropped...like a brick of lead in the ocean.  I'd say the average temperature for the last day or so, and for the next couple, has been in the mid-teens.  At night it's getting down to around 13* F, with a wind chill far into the negatives.  The entire Metroplex is covered in a thick layer of ice (locally about 1" - 1.5" thick).  There have been rolling blackouts, frozen pipes, and wrecks galore.  Animals are living in the house, and going outside requires 10 minutes of preparation.  The dogs are afraid to pee out of fear!  Not only did all that hit, but, a portion of the fence fell in the storm (that makes 10 posts snapped and 15 fallen panels since moving in).  Because of that, we couldn't house the chickens outside.  They are illegal chickens, and if the neighbors behind us saw them, we'd for sure get written up and they would be removed.  It sucks, I know.  But those are the crappy rules.

And yet, I had jury duty.  Not city, but county, which meant 9 hours of sitting and waiting in downtown Ft. Worth (only to be told I was dismissed, yahoo!).  This just happened to coincide with Superbowl XLV being held RIGHT down the street, and mass chaos ensued all week.  Remember the ice from above?  I'm sure you heard about how big of a disaster the Superbowl was thanks to it.  

So eventually I am working from home, during the "Snowpocalpyse."  Going well until...bam! hit by a ton of bricks, aka the flu.  I've never had the flu, and wow - the flu had my number.  That number was 102, as in degrees Fahrenheit, for three days.  Needless to say, nothing got done around the house.  When we were finally able to drag ourselves to the kitchen, we found that the pipes had frozen (see Snowpocalypse, above).  "Life is so cruel," we thought....

But now, life is back to normal (*is life ever really normal around here?).  The pipes are unfrozen, there are illegal chickens eating bugs in the back yard, there are 2 chickens sitting on our dining room table, I no longer have the full-blown flu, and best of all, the dogs are no longer fearful of frozen pee.

Life is great around here.