*cough*

Guess what? I'm really terrible at this. Fake it till you make it, right?

Ok. Wednesday and Thursday.

Christian and I helped out at Aunt Cendei's place. Here's pretty much what you can expect during a typical work day there.

It usually starts the day before when she either asks in person or via text if you can come work the next day.

Sometimes she'll say to just come when you can for however long you can, but on Wednesday and Thursday, she texted us when she wanted us to come over- about 9 in the morning. She didn't have us come earlier because she was picking up Joe (one of Christian's friends from church) to work as well. Sometimes one or both of his older sisters will come work too. If you come early enough, she'll either take you to breakfast, or pick up breakfast for you, even if you've already had breakfast at home (who wouldn't want second breakfast, especially if first breakfast was oatmeal?) it won't be fancy, probably McDonald's or Chickfila.

Now, Aunt Cendei could have you doing pretty much anything. Sometimes it'll be work inside (cleaning, or helping her organize), but nine times out of ten, you'll be working outside thus, wear barn boots. She has quite a few chickens (somewhere around 30, or more) and ten rabbits.

Usually the first thing she'll ask you to do is let the chickens out and make sure everyone has food and water. If you're putting the chickens away at night, she'll have you also check for eggs. The rabbits are each in their own separate cages, ergo you'll have to check each cage for the food and water levels.

Now that you've finished taking care of the chickens and rabbits, she almost always has a project for you to do. Wednesday, it was to first move the rabbit hutches to a different location so that one of those 10x10 dog kennels could be set up around them (the hutches wouldn't fit through the kennel door). Then we had to drive up to Lowe's to get wood for the next part of the project. We were building a roof for the kennel out of wood and tin, tarps will be attached to the kennel in such a way that they can be rolled up and down as the weather allows.

By the time we got back, I only had a couple hours left before I had to go back home (Dad had meetings, and Mom was coming to Aunt Cendei's to help her organize, so I had to be home to be aware of the younger three since Lydia was at Summit). So we worked until Aunt Cendei brought us lunch (Sonic), then I went home. When you work for Aunt Cendei, she will almost always buy you lunch. Sometimes it's from the gas-station-cafe-mini-general-store-car-wash called Bev's (their food really isn't that bad), or it's fast food (Sonic, Chickfila, McDonald's, etc), sometimes she'll take you to a nice restaurant (Chipotle, Burger Street, etc). So we ate lunch inside then I left with one of our chicks (four down, one more to go! The duck eggs should start hatching soon). Christian didn't get back until around dinner time.

On Thursday, we got there and breakfast was already waiting for us. So we ate that, then we had to go back to Lowe's because we  had forgotten some of the wood we needed. We also helped her empty her recycle. We were out a long time. I don't really remember what we did next, but eventually we got back and worked on the frame for the roof. Somewhere around two in the afternoon we went to Chipotle for lunch and to get the screws to attach the tin for the roof to the frame. We got back, but before we could start anything with the tin, we needed to straighten out the legs of the frame and put cinder blocks under them to keep them in place, and brace the legs. That took the rest of the afternoon. We finally went to go get the tin from a pile from one of Aunt Cendei's old barns. Seven pieces twelve feet long. We loaded them up into a trailer hooked up to the back of Aunt Cendei's heavy duty golf cart, so no we did not have to carry them. We finished between eight and eight-thirty.

So yeah. That's that. No, she did not get us dinner. I drove us home, then I took care of our own chickens. Christian was eating when I came back in, but I was not hungry at all so I told him he could have my dinner too (homemade BBQ chicken pizza). I was running on two days of dehydration and probably not enough sleep, so I pretty much just got cleaned up and crashed. Had we gotten home before the sun started setting I probably would have jumped into the pool, but even checking for eggs was harder than normal because of the lighting.

I'm feeling much better now that I've had nine hours of sleep and a cup of coffee, but earlier I felt like I could probably go to bed and sleep until tomorrow morning.

Anyways, eventually I've got two tags to do, plus the monthly recap.