All photos were taken today.

My 3rd division graduates on Thursday. I’ve had days off but they’ve been spent sleeping or getting qualifications done. So today, the Sunday prior to graduation is just for me. I graduate next week, but spend the following week in a class for an NEC to be competitive during evaluation season. Then I pick up another division the next week. So no time off for now. Today I’ve just been enjoying the kittens, the dog, and doing some chores since the wife and kids are out of town.

Jelly turns 5 in December, so right now she’s the perfect age for an Australian Cattle Dog. Most dogs are out of puppy stage after two years, these are 4 years as a velociraptor, then they calm down.

She’s an incredible dog. Killed two dozen four and two-legged creatures. Put my brothers bull dog on his ass when he got too close to the little girls. Bites me when I pretend to spank the youngest. And looks for “mom”, my wife, anytime she and I break the rules together. She still puts
bruises on my arm when we, “wrestle”. But she’s my best friend. And I joke with my kids that Jelly is my favorite daughter. Mostly my oldest who at 14 years old named Jelly and can understand the joke.

She’s a bit too rough with the male kitten, often carrying him around by his collar. Whatever sign language the female has given seems to work. The dog won’t mess with her.







The kittens are doing extremely well. We’ve investigated the potty issue. They were indeed going to the bathroom under the basement stairs. We added an additional litter box upstairs and it seems to have solved the smell problem. We also used one of Jelly’s travel crates to kind of crate train them. Less of a bathroom solve, more of a stayğh off the counter solution when we aren’t around. They don’t seem to mind it. We feed them in the crate so Jelly can’t get to their food, she’s a bit of a fat ass. They have started to naturally go there when they want to sleep or eat. It’s worked out well.



The female is my girl. She won’t leave my side. She does the typical cheek rub, licking my face and chin, chases my hand for pets. Sleeps with me.

The male is mean to everyone except my youngest. She can even pet his belly, which is a death sentence to anyone else.



My wife planted some veggies this year so we could test the growing season and how much we could produce. Everything has done very well, even if we haven’t quite mastered all of them. I watered everything today, we’re nearing the end of the growing season but we’re still producing well.

Her tomatoes, 1 grape and 1 regular (I don’t know what strand she planted) have produced quite a bit.



Mint and Basil, both of which we use a ton of have done WAY better then we imagined. We’ll definitely be planting a bed full of each in the future. We can’t even use enough right now to stop it from wilting.





We’ve also got some perennials that came back strong in the past week. Little too big for my liking but it has our yard full of bees which I’ll take any day. In the future they will help with the zucchini and cucumber pollination.



Lastly I did some work on the guns, which I posted in the rifle section. Also cleaned up the cars and parked them both in the garage.

Put in the Husky trunk mat in the new Kia. Really liking the car. Averaging 37 MPG to and from work, which factored against the F350’s 12 MPG means my gas savings pays for the new car every month.

I have no idea how you balance it all, but I’m certainly glad you’re on the good guy’s team.

Yeah, the F350 is not a good daily driver. Even with the new Kia, have you tried the train? I realize it’s probably not as convenient as driving, but maybe you could use the time to get paperwork done?

That's a great story from the House of Otto!