In the meantime, I offer this old piece of art from my files, just ‘coz I like it; it’s a photoshop update of an old piece I did in college:

(c) 2011 copyright Karin A. Robinson

Well, it’s been a wild and expensive trip. Just like our pipers, I’m going to hire our drummers for street musician rates at $50 for two hours of drumming, or $600 for twelve. Add in:

Eleven pipers piping: $550

Ten Lords a-leaping $4,600

Nine ladies dancing: $360

Eight maids a-milking: $480

Seven swans a-swimming: $42,00

Six geese a-laying: $57.90

Five golden rings: $1050

Four calling birds: $100

Three French hens: $450

Two turtle doves: $40.00

And a partridge in a pear tree:$ 43.00

Grand Total: 12,530.90

Having a True Love to spend a little cash on: priceless.

Well, after all the astonishingly posh costs of yesterday’s extravaganza, I’m relieved that the pipers are rather simple. The friend for whom I’ve created this artwork, when asked what kind of pipers would be preferred, strenuously objected to bagpipers, as would any sane individual which is totally a matter of taste. So we decided to go for street musicians, so that the range of pipers could be left to the preference of one’s own true love. So I looked up what street musicians make and found some good rates in Chicago.

http://www.chacha.com/question/how-much-would-a-street-musician-make-monthly-and-yearly-in-chicago-on-average

Between that and my own experience of busking on the streets of Burlington, I’m going to hire the pipers for $25 an hour, or $50 for a two-hour engagement. So, for eleven of them, it’s gonna cost $550 for the day.

Now at first I thought that, for today’s grand total, I would simply have to add yesterday’s total again, just like I have over the last ten days. But this time, there’s good news! We don’t have to pay the airfare for our Lords — just their room, board and transport. The bad news is now I have to go back and itemize the costs, and, possibly, check my math. So, let’s see:

1 partridge: $20.00

1 pear tree: $23.00

2 turtle doves: $40.00

3 French hens: $450.00

4 Calling birds: $100.00

5 Gold Rings: $1050.00

6 Geese: $57.90

7 Swans: $4,200.00

8 Milkmaids and  8 more cows– wait, what?

[Screech to halt]

Oh, dude. MAJOR mistake. I’ve been buying unnecessary hypothetical milk cows!

For two days!

After all, just like the Lords’ airfares, the milk cows, once bought, don’t need to be bought again. Now, I know, we’re buying the swans, geese, gold, etc. again, but hear (or read) me out: the lyric is describing the repetition of a service provided, in the eighth verse. The gift, unlike the swans, is not the animal itself, but the whole agricultural package of service provider (maid), service to be provided (milking), and product to be gained (milk).

I will adjust the previous blogs and the running totals to reflect this. I’ve also realized that I’ve been calling the running total the grand total each day, but gimme a freakin’ break, dude. It’s more drah-mah-tic!

So, 8 maids a-milking: $480

9 ladies dancing: $360

Room, board and limo for the 10 Lords: $4,600

(just as a side note: I’m assuming the rest of my labor force — milkmaids and musicians — is already housed somewhere locally and providing their own meals, their income supplemented by this strange part-time job).

So, up to this point, the adjusted worth of the gifts is only $11,380.90, plus today’s eleven pipers at $550, we have:

Grand Total (for the day): $11,930.90

This is the most expensive day yet — plane tickets don’t grow on trees, and for this one there’s only one place we’re going to find Lords to leap for us.

Specifically, the House of Lords. Now, I’m just gonna cut through all the palaver and assorted malarkey and assume that these fine fellows will be more than happy to come and leap for us, especially as I’m plumping for airfare, transport, accommodations, and meals.

So here’s the rundown: Airfare (first class of course), British Airways (what else), round trip ticket, starting Jan.3 and going to Jan.7, to give them a nice time leaping here but still get home for the weekend. So, the airfare is $6,340.94 per Lord, or, moving the decimal over (thank Gaia it’s the tenth day — these numbers are making my brain cringe) $63,409.40 for the ten of them. However, British Airways isn’t running the flights we need with First Class into Burlington International, so I’ve got our lads a flight into Logan at Boston.

http://www.britishairways.com/travel/fx/public/en_us?eId=111011&timestamp=0103121131

Once they’re here, they’re going to need transportation, and I don’t think a yellow cab would do. Our local limo services won’t quote without an actual gig, but I did find the quote of $150/hour in a “what to expect to pay” site. I think the guys could share a limo, and 5 lords to a limo seems reasonable.  With transport from Boston up to Burlington (4 hours), and then another two hours to the leaping site and then back to their hotel, that’s 6 hours of 2 limos, or 12 limo-hours, which is $1800 for transport.

http://www.limoquoter.com/articles/3_Limo_Rental_Tips/90_Average_Limousine_Service_Prices

Then, of course, the good leaping Lords will need somewhere nice to stay. Well, I don’t know nicer than the Willard Street Inn, where Wally and I spent the first couple nights of our honeymoon. They’ve only got 16 rooms, but in our hypothetical universe, they’re all available. The rooms are beautiful (check out the link — we stayed in the Tower Room), and range in price from $145-$235 a night.  For sanity purposes, I’m going to use a median rate of $190, or $1,900 for ten Lords.

Now, these guys aren’t stopping at MacDonald’s. I’m going to assume they’ll want to do breakfast at the Inn, where $15 for a breakfast is a good deal — and believe me, the food is worth it, if I remember correctly.

Lunch can happen downtown, where you can get a $25 lunch that’d please any Lord, and supper can be somewhere really nice for $50/plate. This is based not on web-crawling, but years of restaurant crawling in Burlington; your local rates may vary.

So, for all ten lords, $150 for breakfast, $250 for lunch, $500 for dinner. I realize these are round figures, and after eating at Burlington’s finest, so will the Lords be (round figures, I mean). That makes $900 for food.

Plus the $1,900 accommodations, the $1,800 for transport, and $63,410 (I rounded up; gimme a break, okay?) for airfare, that’s a whopping $68,010 for the day, or, plus $6,780.90 worth of previous gifts, (note edit)

Grand Total: $74,7909

It took me a while to find what it would cost to hire a dancer — the individual troupes won’t post their quotes until they know what they’re getting into, so I wasn’t going to bother them with a hypothetical gig. However, I did find a good list of relative payscales by profession, and they list $19,000-58,000 (ballpark) as the range of yearly salaries earned by ballet dancers (I decided to go the classic route).

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Ballet_Dancer/Salary/by_Employer_Type

Taking $38,000 as the median income, it’s an easy extrapolation to calculate an hourly wage of $18.36.

So we’re going to hire our hypothetical ballerinas for a nice round figure of $20/hr, and I think a two hour show would make it worth everyone’s while. So $40 per ballerina makes $360 for the day.

EDIT:

It turns out, that in calculating the previous day’s gifts to be added to today’s gift, I didn’t consider that it’s the maids-a-milking, not the milk cows, that needed to be re-paid for (that is, hired for another day’s work). So instead of adding another $9,280 for the day, we need only pay the milkmaids to milk the same cows again, making the total for day 9:

$5,940.90 for swans, geese, gold, etc., plus $480 for milking services, plus $360 for our dancers:

Grand Total: $6,780.90

All right, happy campers, thanks for sticking with me through all the birds. Now before we get into the fun world of labor for hire (4 of the final 5 days will involve the services of trained professionals), we need some milk cows for the milkmaids to milk. Now, folks have suggested leasing the cows, but although the $100 day rate I found was indeed less expensive than actually buying the cows, I couldn’t find any reputable leasing company that didn’t require a 2-year contract. So, we’re buying those moo-cows, not leasing, and maybe the true love in question can sell ‘em on Craigslist later.

So, 8 Milk Cows (reg. Jersey) @ $1,100.00 ea — $8,800.00 for the cows

http://www.bestfarmbuys.com/classifieds/detail.asp?classified_id=113861&category=Cattle+%2D+Dairy

Now, I won’t even tell you what I found when I originally started looking for milkmaids on the internet. Not even gonna comment. Eventually, I went to the Department of Agriculture, and found what agricultural workers take home, then gave them an extra quarter-dollar an hour for coming to milk these cows while listening to all those birds squawking. At first, I thought I needed them for an 8-hour shift, but it only takes 20-30 minutes to milk a cow. I’ll figure 2 30-minute milkings per day (no sense in rushing these things), so:

8 Milkmaids for 2 1/2-hour shifts (1 hour total work) @ $7.50/hr., $60 per day, multiplied for 8 milkmaids, makes $480 for the maids, and $9,280 for the day.

http://www.dol.gov/compliance/topics/wages-agricultural.htm?cm_sp=ExternalLink-_-Federal-_-DOL

Add up another round of the previous festive insanity ($5,940.90), and we’ve got:

Grand Total: $15,220.90

Happy New Year!

Now, it turns out that swans are really, really, really expensive. A grown one can fetch up to a thousand dollars, but since they’re ready to swim at 3 months (they’re cheaper when they’re cheepers, apparently),* I found some 3-month old swans for $600.00:

http://redmoonfarmandarena.com/Swans_for_sale.html

so that’s $4,200 just for the day, or, adding in the $1,740.90 for another set of the previous days’ gifts,

Grand Total: $5,940.90

*I know. No biscuit.

After the relative expense of the other birds, the geese are pretty cheap, only $9.65 each, for a daily total of $57.90.

http://www.cacklehatchery.com/toulousepage.html

Add in another 5 gold rings, 4 calling birds, 3 French hens, 2 turtle doves and yet another partridge in a darn pear tree, ($1,683.00) we’ve got:

Grand total: $1,740.90

I found a good deal on the five golden rings: $210.00 each.

http://www.goldenmine.com/p/Plain-Bands/4mm-Benchmark-Yellow-Gold-Comfort-Fit-Wedding-Band/125393.html

That’s $1,050 for the day.

Add in another dose of the previous day’s assorted bird-extravaganza ($633.00), and you’ve got:

Today’s grand total: $1683.00

For calling birds, I chose canaries: go with a classic, y’know? $25.00 each, for a daily total of $100.00 even.

Plus another pear tree, partridge, another 2 turtle doves and another 3 French hens ($533.00):

Today’s grand total: $633.00