word mining central
Day 61:
Couldn’t find the chickduckling that slipped into my house last night. After I shooed it out of my bath it disappeared into the caverns below the cave house’s main floor.
Got up this morning, went down a few levels and south to continue digging toward the mountain. Dug all day. Came home to find one perfect egg laid in the middle of my bed.
Still no sign of the bird.
Day 60:
Spent all the time I planned to use writing this entry chasing a chicken duck baby (chickduckling?) around my living quarters. It got in while I was trying to go out to check on the cows, and when I came in, it had taken residence of my bathtub.
Oh hey, spent the rest of the day building my bathtub. I carved out enough stone around that spring in the middle of the cave that I can bathe in it now, and still get fresh water from the upper area where the spring actually comes out. So it’s almost like a sink/tub thing. Or something.
Anyway, did not plan to share it with birds.
Day 59:
The thing about carrots is that supermarket carrots are short and bright orange and sweet, and the rest aren’t.
Not all carrots are orange. Not all carrots are sweet. Not all orange carrots are sweet. Not all carrots are tiny things. My grandmother told me the carrots we call carrots today were called “baby carrots” in her childhood, and they were the smallest sweetest ones, or in some places, the sweetest part of the carrot carved out of the middle of a bigger not-as-sweet carrot.
Since I’m not a botanist, I’m not even sure that the things I’m eating and calling carrots are carrots. Scratch that — I’m on a foreign world that to my knowledge, while populated by humanoids, didn’t necessarily get populated by Earth humans, so these are almost definitely exactly not biologically like carrots.
On the other hand, they’re orange (or white or red or yellow, I’ve found a bunch of varieties) and can grow as long as half my forearm, and pack a pretty good calorie punch when you’re really hungry. They don’t go moldy in the cave, in fact they sort of like the humid muddiness in here. And they haven’t killed me yet, though if I eat too many in one day they do strange things to the color of my… output.
Still, they’re not sweet. They’re ruddy or dirty or russety and I have to cook the hell out of them to get rid of the bitterness They make a decent bread, but not a decent cake.
I miss sugar.
Day 58:
I fed the cows… I think i’m up to about 16 of them. Bessie is still my favorite to hug.
I fed the duckens too, and I’ve lost track of how many there are. There’s enough that they die of old age and natural causes and I occasionally get a ducken dinner out of the affair. Feels a little odd to eat something that I’ve lived with, but it beats another carrot salad by A LOT.
What I’d give for a handful of mixed nuts right now.
Other than that, digging toward the mountain.
Day 57:
I dug all day. Nothing really exciting there.
When I came up to eat dinner and get some sleep, all I could hear were the groans of the undead (or whatever they are). Groaning and moaning and carrying on… it was clear I wasn’t going to get any sleep if they were going to keep that up.
(Sometimes they rattle against the door, but I bar it at night, so that hasn’t been an issue.)
After a stressful mean of roast fish and zombie groans, I lost my patience. I slammed my water cup down, threw the fish bones in the corner where the mice could get them, and stormed out the back door.
The zombies were all at the front door, since the back door leads into the stockyard (for lack of a better term).
I slipped through the gate, snuck around the house and started picking the zombies off with my bow. It was awesome! I’m actually starting to aim relatively not-horribly, and only really had one arrow miss the target (though two hit the target in the feet which wasn’t overly helpful).
And if I hadn’t run out of arrows, I would’ve been fine.
I almost got jumped by two of the survivors, but I slipped between two trees where they had to come at me single file (because zombies are dumb and don’t go around) and I was able to stab them each to death.
It was hard work, exhausting, a bit painful, but ah the sweet bliss of no zombie groans when I go to bed tonight will be worth it.
