WTF McCain's Corky Impersonations

Granted I am no McCain fan but even his most die hard followers have to do a WTF at his apparent penchant for sticking his tongue out. I've seen less tongue hanging on a Saint Bernard after a hard run.






Looking at these pictures, I am suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to find a photo of the latest Palin offspring....





I just want someone in office who will say, look we've got to focus on ourselves for a while. Let's be like Sweden. Let's mind our own fucking business and clean up our own mess here at home, rather than get our knickers in a twist all over the damn globe. Iran? Iraq? North Korea? Fuck 'em. Let those living next to them worry about them for a while. We have our own mess here on the homefront. We got illegals streaming in like it's happy hour at IHop, we got meth on every damn corner, people are losing their jobs right and left while big execs get 45 million dollar severance packages, our kids can't string a fucking paragraph together and think handing out blowjobs on the school bus at 14 is acceptable. No one can afford insurance and no one cares if we get sick, unless of course we've got 4 kids by 3 guys and no job, and that's not fucking right. I want someone who can say, I don't care if you own a gun for self defense or choose not to have a child you know you won't take care of anyway. Someone who can say, let's treat each other like adults for a change, instead of a bunch of homeroom mommies trying to make everyone else on the playground mind us. And preferably, I want someone who can say it without his tongue slapping him on the collarbone.

Dow Panic Will Make Me Rich

Week after week, the stock market is all over the chart. Americans who are only familiar with getting rich in the short term have lost their minds and sold off tons of stock thinking they'll avert a personal financial disaster. I say, keep selling fools. Your panic is causing stocks to drop to lows I've not seen in years, and while you're screaming SELL SELL SELL, I'm burning up the keyboard buying shares for half what they traded for this time last year. Color me Kennedy, cashing in during a crisis, but I prefer to be able to afford to dine on the better quality cat food in my old age, vs that mouse in a can crap, and the way my portfolio is swelling it's looking like Fancy Feast may be on the menu.

I'm holding out buying on one particular energy company, hoping it will drop just a *little* bit lower than it's current $11 a share. It was at $44 before all this panic at the disco ensued, so I suppose I should not be greedy and just snatch it up now. The Asian markets are taking a tumble as well, so I've quadrupled my stock in a Hong Kong based semiconductor manufacturer for what my original handful of stocks cost me back in the spring. I was going to buy into Game Stop, after their stocks dropped from $44 to $21 but I waited too long and they rebounded to $32. I bet they'll drop again though, and that stock should be trading around $66, so it's well worth the price.

Oh my freakin golden god

In what I suspect was a drug induced stupor, a UK artist felt the burning need to deify our most famous example of anorexia and cocaine addiction with a statue made of gold. Contorted into a yoga pose that I doubt she could pull off even if she were flying on an 8 ball of heroin, Kate Moss is now immortalized yet again, just in case the 235,892 newspaper, magazine, and online articles didn't succeed in searing her image and arrest record into your brain. The artist, a Mr Marc Quinn, stated "For Kate, she thinks it lifts into her into a mythical level." I don't know about that, but I am sure she was awestruck at the prospect of all the coke that gold could buy.

Mr Quinn was also quoted as saying "If there was a war or anarchy this will be melted down and turned into bullion..."

One can only hope.

Time to clean house

Finally got photos taken of some rams I need to move out. I could just turn them out back and let them grow out for a few years but I need Vegas money. We've already spent $1500 on the trip and we're not even there yet. Airfare, 3 nights at the Luxor, tickets to Criss Angel and to Excalibur's Tournament of Kings, and *poof* there went $1500. Now I have to start stashing for slots and blackjack.

Waxed the hood and front fenders on the Cruiser today, too sunny and hot to finish up the rest of the car though. The bra is on now and looks pretty good. I need to get some pics. There are two others in town the same color but one is a base model. The bra will at least set mine apart a little. Hate having something a million other people have, but at least there's a ton of stuff out to customize these guys so it won't be much work to make it "mine".

Kashi GoFart

My recent attempt at healthier eating led me to bring home a box of Kashi cereal, specifically the Kashi GoLean high fiber. The cereal is as good as can be expected of a cereal devoid of sugar, chocolate, peanut butter, high fructose corn syrup, or any other wholesome ingredient designed to impart taste. I like that it stays crunchy in the milk for a long time. However, it took me a while to realize it was also providing me with an unwelcome parting gift.

Apparently the increased fiber content of the cereal leads to increased gas content of the digestor. I'm not talking little hoopty poots that can be hidden with a faked bout of coughing. These are The Second Coming Is Here trumpet blasts, accompanied by a stench that is a cross between rotten eggs and despair. Even worse, it lasts for hours upon hours, which would be great fun if I were riding a bus on a daily basis, but as I have no captive audience to victimize it's quickly lost it's amusement factor.

Actually I find it hard to believe it's all due to the fiber. I could eat 2 gallons of barley, 2 cups of lentils, a gallon of broccoli, a cart full of bran flakes, a truck load of oatmeal, two loaves of rye bread, and a barrel full of corn and turnip greens and not have as much gas as I do after one of these. There is something unholy lurking in that box of cereal.

Upon Googling for "Kashi farts", I found I was not alone.

I have a new addition to the family, a young Pyr/Akbash/Anatolian bitch named Lucy. Lucy escaped the day after she arrived, and managed to get herself hit by a car. Thankfully the driver was kind enough to take Lucy to the vet, where her broken leg was set and cast. She'll be staying at the clinic for a little bit, giving me time to get the hot wire up and running. Hopefully that will put a stop to the escape act.

iJoy indeed

This is the funniest thing I've seen in a while. As I watched the video, I could not help but thinking I could achieve the same motion with my boyfriend, for free.

In other news, I must have been completely tweaked out at the dentist, as the blood pressure reading today was a yawn inducing 119 over 74.

Fear of Mouth Rot and Hail Damage Turns Me From Dark Side

After more decades than I will admit of having issue free teeth, I was treated to having 5 cavities filled this week. My first ones ever, and 5 in one shot. This of course led to the dropping of much money on dental hygiene items such as floss, floss picks, new toothbrushes, mouthwash, tongue scrapers, etc, and many hours pouring over various websites and articles devoted to the maintenance of perfect teeth.

The other thing that freaked me out at the dentist was a blood pressure reading of 140 over 85. For the majority of my life I've enjoyed naturally low blood pressure reading around 114/54. At first I attributed it to being twitchy about having my teeth drilled, and assured myself that it would be considerably lower at the next visit.

141/90

A friend of mine suggested I might have "white coat syndrome" where apparently your blood pressure shoots up at the mere sight of a doctor or dentist. As much as I would like to cling to that theory, the truth is all of those absurdly low readings were also done by the evil men (and women) in white, so it doesn't wash.

I've managed to cut the sodas out for the most part, only having had a handful of them in the past few months, but I guess it's time to accept that I'm no longer 18 and the equivalent of a human trash compactor when it comes to eating whatever I want with no ill effects. For the next two weeks, it looks like I'm on the Dr Mirkin "Show Me" diet and then will attempt to eat along his DASH diet as much as possible. I don't believe in "diets" in terms of Lose 20 Pounds By Labor Day™ because I'm well aware that the instant you quit the "diet" and resume your old eating habits you just blow up all over again, which is why I never bother with "dieting". However, that 90% of my brain that is not used for normal functions likes to entertain itself with worst case scenarios, usually something along the lines of what it would be like if I lost control of the vehicle and slammed into that concrete retaining wall at 84 mph. Lately it has been showing me what my teeth could look like should I continue on my soda and snackies path, along with what my ass could potentially morph into should I refuse to get back on some semblance of an exercise program.

Time to eat my oatmeal.

Dog training

I went to a friend's house today and was treated to a good 10 minutes of their dog jumping all over me and howling like an idiot. This ALWAYS happens if I go over there. I hate going over there. I hate being jumped on and barked on. I have one thing to say to people who have dogs that jump all over people.

Even an idiot can teach a dog to stop jumping.

Dogs do every single thing that they do in their lives for a reason. Their reasons may make no sense to us, but it does to the dog. The dog jumps on me because he wants attention. He does not reason to himself, she is yelling at me and shoving me so I should stop. The dog is not that smart. Instead, he thinks SHE TOUCHED ME SHE SPEAKS TO ME YAY!!!

There is a common school of thought that says to step on the dog's toes when he jumps on you. It works, to an extent, but only because you are causing the dog to associate jumping on you with pain. It will not work when the dog decides he will accept pain in order to get your attention, and believe me many dogs will accept pain in their efforts to get what they want. Just watch some dog being choked to death as he drags his owner down the road. He can't breathe, but he doesn't care because he's doing what he wants to do.

Then how do I teach my dog to stop jumping, you ask me. Well I am going to tell you. It's extremely simple, but requires patience and restraint on your part. Can you do it? Well, unless you're an idiot, you can.

Ignore him.

That's right, ignore him. When you come home and your dog loses his shit and jumps all over you barking and licking and acting like he is demon possessed, stop what you are doing, cross your arms, do NOT engage in eye contact with him, and keep your mouth shut. Let him jump. Let him bark. Let him act like an idiot while you act like a statue. Don't scold him. Don't touch him. For godssake don't try to step on his feet.

At some point, and it may take 10 minutes, that dog is going to realize he's not getting anywhere with you. He's going to be confused, and at that moment he's going to stop acting the fool and just stand there staring at you in confusion. If you're lucky, he may even sit down. When this happens, break your statue impersonation and praise and pet him. If he starts to go all stupid again, resume the Michaelangelo pose and hold it until he goes back to silent confusion again.

This concept is known as Learn to Earn. Your dog must earn your attention and praise. He can't demand it by acting like a dumbass. It will take time, but a lot less than you think. I have broken hardcore jumpers of that annoying ass habit in a couple of days with this method. Your dog WILL figure it out, and believe me once a dog learns what to do to gain attention, he will do it every single time. It is your job to ensure that what he learns to do is something that makes him a joy to be around, and not a royal pain in the ass.

My final comment on this is that using pain as a training tool is just a piss poor way of training any animal. The easiest way to train any animal is to put them in a position where the right choice is also the most pleasurable one, rather than the least painful option. I could train my friend's dog to stop jumping, but since none of the other family members will follow through, it's pointless. So, they continue thinking their dog is a hyper shit, when all the while they themselves taught him to act that way.

On a separate note I dropped off Jack & Diesel at the clinic for shots and grooming and OMG I'm so embarrassed at how nasty Jack was. His coat matts up, that Kommodor in him really makes it ugly, and I had no idea how many ticks he'd picked up under there. Frontline says it's good for a month but it's really only effective for about 3 weeks, and he is overdue by about a month so ugh. So embarrassed.

Walmart does NOT save you money

I sat down the other day and actually figured up my budget, something I haven't done since I was 9 and mom made me save 10% of my allowance for college. After figuring and refiguring a half dozen times, I came to the realization that somewhere along the line, I was blowing anywhere from $600-800 a month with no clue where it was going. A quick check of my debit card transactions, however, showed exactly where that money was going.

Walmart. I simply cannot go into that place and come out with just the 50 pound bag of dogfood I went in for.

This is hardly something unique to me. Half a dozen comedians talk about how you go to Walmart for Q-tips and come out with $800 worth of crap. The truth is, Walmart wants all your money. I mean ALL of it. The really big ones look more like a mall than a single store, with the idea that if they can keep you there all day, you'll spend every penny you make on worthless crap that won't last a month anyway.

Therefore, I have a new policy regarding Walmart visitations. In the interest of saving money, I now buy groceries at United. Sure that Bambino watermelon is .50 cents cheaper at ChinaMart, but if you factor in the additional $8 I spent on a bargain bin DVD and another 6 pack of socks, it's not so cheap after all. If I absolutely HAVE to go there, I only take enough cash to cover the item I'm after.

I've always thought Walmart sucks. I would not work there unless I was starving and my only other option was to walk the boulevard in Amarillo looking for tricks... and even then it'd be a hard decision. I know a lot of people who work there, and they all hate it. The only reason they can give for staying is the insurance, and it's not even good insurance at that. THEREfore, I have an added incentive to no longer shop there.

This really doesn't go anywhere except it's the end of the first month of not shopping at Walmart and I actually have a surplus of cash in my account, something that has not happened in many years, and I feel like telling someone, ha.

cloth toilet paper

Lately I've been Googling about for ways to save money. Of course I get page after page advising me to "cut up those credit cards!" and telling me how to pay down my credit card debt.

I don't have credit cards or credit card debt. I wised up to my inability to use them with discretion a long time ago. Ditto a checking account. Unless I have cash in hand, I do not seem to grasp the reality that my money is not infinite, so I limit myself to cash and a reloadable VISA. The money I've saved in interest, late fees, overdraft/over limit fees, and just fees in general would pay for a phat vacation to Thailand. I seem to be in the minority of Americans though, considering the dozens of bloggers and posters who complain about how they've maxed out all of their cards and try to pawn the blame onto the credit card companies.

However, what caught my attention was not the usual mundane advice but the disgusting suggestion to use "cloth TP". I had to reread that one a few times before I accepted they meant cloth TOILET PAPER. Never mind the fact that you're wasting water and laundry soap and bleach just to be able to reuse your butt wipes, it's a money saver AND eco friendly! Ahh baloney. There's no damn way I'd be washing shit covered rags with my regular laundry, so that's an extra wash load, and unless you're ok with crap smeared cloth festering in your laundry basket until Saturday, it's more like an extra 3 or 4 wash loads a week. Laundry detergent isn't cheap, so tell me again how that's saving money?

Just thinking about that makes me wanna go squeeze the Charmin.

Gunpowder and propane

As I pulled in the driveway this evening I saw my Himalayan cat, Jazz, batting at something under the propane tank. As the truck's headlights swept across the tank, the object of his affection turned out to be a small rattlesnake. I parked the truck, leaving the headlights on, and headed for the house to get my shotgun.

Now I know what you're thinking. I'm about to use a shotgun to kill a snake... under a tank full of propane. Essentially the snake is hiding under a 500 gallon bomb. I wasn't thinking this far ahead at the time though.

I reach in the door just enough to grab the shotgun, when the hanger it rests on breaks, and the gun slips from my grasp, hits the floor, and goes off.

It took a moment to realize why I was deaf. Blinking stupidly I peer up at the ceiling to see a 2 inch diameter hole where the #7 birdshot hit. Oops. I could have sworn the safety was on.


Back outside at the tank it became obvious the snake was not going to leave the protection of the propane tank any time soon so I laid the shotgun down (this time with the safety on) and grabbed a hoe. I am still surprised that he never tried to make a break for it. Instead he held his ground and repeatedly struck the hoe as I tried to pull him out from beneath the tank. Eventually I got him out and went to cut his head off, but the pile of crap hoe wouldn't hack a dandelion in half so it took a few hits.

Hailstorms and tornados

This week has been rather trying for me. First the last goat I had left managed to get into my garage (long story), wedge herself behind a broken down washing machine, and die of old age. Of course she did this while I was out of town for a few days, so by the time I discovered her, she'd been marinating for a bit in the June heat and was too soupy to remove without the use of a wet vac and a spatula. Then my sewer line backed up, causing the washing machine to flood the damn house when it tried to drain. Sunday I and everyone else where I live was treated to a 30 minute hailstorm with 80-100 mph winds and a couple of tornados tossed in for added effect. The end result of that is the roofs on the hay barn and my house are destroyed, every window is broken, my french doors were blown open allowing the dining room to flood (and now they won't close), and every sheep shed I have is in someone else's yard. Hail killed a few lambs, but considering all their shelters had blown away it's a miracle any of them survived. My Nissan has more hail damage than Michael Moore's ass and is littered with broken glass, dirt, and grass thanks to the hail busting out a window. I was at work with my truck, and it took the full brunt of the sideways flying hail on the passenger side, but amazingly enough did not get a single dent. However, the driver side view mirror shattered despite being on the protected side. Hrm.

There is no vegetation left standing, only shattered stalks remain. Trees were stripped bare of leaves and bark. None of my fruit trees will survive, and only the oldest of my pines came through ok. My flowerbeds are blasted almost down to the ground and one massive cactus that had been nearly as tall as me lies on the ground looking like someone used it for target practice with 00 buckshot.

However, I came out pretty well compared to others. A friend of mine's roof first turned into a swimming pool before finally caving into her house and flooding it.

I took a ton of photos of the damage the next morning. Last year we had a tornado come through and my insurance company tried to say that despite the broken windows and raised off the rafters decking, there was no damage. This time you can see the stripped and broken shingles from the road (and even see half the shingles still IN the road), so they better not EVEN try to pull the "Oh it looks FINE" crap again. They tried to tell me that my house is crappy so unless the house is a total loss, they won't be paying anything. Funny, I don't recall seeing a "Since your house is a POS we won't pay anything unless it's razed to the ground" clause on the policy.

What do sheep count when they can't sleep?

Somehow I have been relegated to sleeping on the couch while my bottle lamb sleeps on my waterbed. At any given time he can be found snoring away on it, head up on a pillow, one leg draped over a teddy bear. Even when he is awake, he prefers to recline amongst the pillows while surveying his domain. Meanwhile I come home from work, shower, and head to the couch.

I read a story once about a dairy farmer who had a bunch of stalls with huge waterbed bladders in them for his dairy cows, and how the cows would actually take turns napping on the beds. He said the cows loved their waterbeds and were producing more than ever so plans were underway to add more stalls with waterbeds so the girls wouldn't have to wait their turn.

Than Shwe Antoinette

This may only be funny to me but after reading an article about Than Shwe kicking refugees out of the camps and sending them back to the delta with the excuse that they could eat frogs, I decided to have a little fun.

While it is generally accepted that Marie Antoinette never said "Let them eat cake", there's little doubt the Burmese junta wouldn't even be that generous with their starving, dying population. They are, however, loudly condemning all of us for not coughing up 11 billion in aid for them, in cash paid directly to the ruling junta natch. No doubt that is why they've had to resort to stealing aid intended for their victimized populace. Hard to afford things like million dollar weddings on a small country's budget. Doubtless that 11 billion would go a long way towards finishing up the renovations at the junta's new bunker... er, capitol.

Sooner or later the Burmese people will rise up and slaughter him and his ilk just like the Romanians and Italians did to their own despotic leaders in years past. Their total lack of weapons won't matter. They'll simply lose their minds from all the crap that's been inflicted upon them for decades, and tear the bastards to shreds with their bare hands.

Blade

Thought I'd show off Blade. Took this at 2 weeks old. He's on my waterbed with his favorite stuffed teddy bears. Yes he's living in the house for now. Believe it or not he's pretty well housetrained... or well, he'll pee on a towel on the floor. I just had to make sure there wasn't any other cloth on the floor because he doesn't care if it's a towel or my dirty clothes. Spoilt rotten is an understatement. I'm about to go out to the barn and set him up a private stall so he can stay in it during the day. I'd let him out with the main group but I don't trust Diesel.

Hindsight is a bitch

When I bought this place the pastures were in mediocre condition. The middle and back pasture were dominated by 10 ft tall sunflowers, ragweed, tumbleweed, and careless weeds. The back one had one large patch of bermuda, and another large section of switchgrass. In the winter, both of them covered up in rye. Overgrazed to be sure, but not destroyed. I figured by running the goats on them, it'd eradicate the weeds and give the grass time to come back. I didn't understand the concept of rotational grazing or the real causes of overgrazing at the time.

The other day I went out and walked the middle pasture and took a long hard look at bad it's gotten in the last 10 years. As expected, the ragweed is completely gone, along with the tumbleweeds, and the careless weeds and sunflowers are following suit. However, there was not a single blade of grass of any sort in the center pasture. Instead, thick carpets of purple nightshade, thistle, cockleburr, and buffalo burr coat the majority of the pasture. It's a complete wreck out there, and I can only blame myself for it.

I'm marking out new fencing for the center pasture now, 4 paddocks 100 ft wide and 400 ft deep, with hooks to subdivide them via temp electric fencing down to 20 ft wide sections. Spent yesterday afternoon spraying the worst patches of buffalo burr and thistle, will order grass seed this weekend to start putting down. I'm thinking if I rotate them once a week, that will give each section a solid trampling down and then a month to rest before being regrazed. That plus running some irrigation lines along the fence should help to bring this one back.

The back pasture needs to be shredded and seeded. It's got a bad patch or two of nightshade but still has a lot of native grasses in it. I'll figure out how to divide it up after I get the center one done.

If I'd done this 10 years ago, when I was making twice what I make now, I'd not be looking at this mess of prickly poisonous weeds taking over. File that in the Too Late Now folder I guess.

Zenni Optical

I tend to buy 90% of what I need online. A while back my glasses broke and I was faced with either paying $150 for some ugly ass frames here in town, or squinting a lot. I decided to see what I could find online, and I found Zenni Optical. Frames start at $8, shipping is $4.95 no matter how many pairs you get. I'm guessing they are getting the frames out of China because they've got a lot of designer knockoff looking frames.

I've gotten three pairs from them so far. The most expensive pair ran me $27 including shipping. That's with anti glare coating, tinting, and a half rim frame. If you need glasses or prescrip sunglasses but are short on cash, you have to check this place out.

Now for the warning. If you are of average brights, you won't need the following but I post it anyway for those folks who get pissed off when they get something for nothing and then don't get their butts kissed in the process.

1. The glasses cost less than a trip to the chicken hut. Do not expect them to be the same quality frames as say a $200 pair of D&G frames. They're very thin and lightweight. Actually that's why I like them so much, feels like I'm not wearing anything. That said, mine have survived a lot of abuse so provided you don't run over them (like I did to one pair), they should last plenty long enough to justify their paltry price.

2. The glasses cost less than a trip to the chicken hut. Do not expect the customer service to be any better than what you'd get from the crackheads that work there. It's pretty much nonexistent.

3. When you fill out the order form, do not screw up anything. If you put in the wrong address or the wrong sphere measurement, you'll just have to eat the loss. They're not going to send you a free replacement because you were too lazy to double check all the info and make sure it was right.

Blade

In a nod to the vampire trilogy featuring the now incarcerated Wesley Snipes, I named my solid black bottle lamb "Blade". He is currently asleep on my feet under my desk. His mother didn't have any milk, and by the time I found him he was more than 24 hours old and hadn't had any colostrum. I mixed up powdered colostrum in his bottle for a week, can't hurt right? Been keeping him indoors most of the time to avoid him picking up any nasties from the other sheep, but I had to leave him at the clinic over the weekend and he came home with a head cold. Adding B12 and antibiotics to his bottle now, so far he doesn't seem to notice the taste.

Speaking of taste, I tried lamb milk replacer once and it tastes like ass. No wonder it's so hard to get them to take a bottle at first. I would have to be starving to drink that swill too. And so I bring you my own lamb milk replacer mix that no lamb of mine has ever refused.

Take a gallon milk jug, pour in 1 cup of buttermilk, 1 cup of heavy cream, and 1 can of evaporated milk (not the low fat crap either), then fill jug up with whole milk.

Basically the same thing that a lot of goat people use, but I upped the milk fat by adding the heavy cream. It smells sweet and it must taste good because I've had lambs who had been nursing on their dams come over to try to steal his bottle. So far he's growing fast and is fat as a tick. It's not cheap... not with milk running $4-5 a freakin gallon now days... but for the occasional bottle lamb I can handle it.

Shaving Jack

Since the temps are climbing nearly to 100F now, I decided it was time to shave Jack down. This is a biyearly undertaking, once in May and again in late July, and it's an all day affair to remove the matted, cocklebur infested pelt that encases him. I've gotten into countless arguments with Pyr purists who insist this breed does not need shearing, but to them I say, piss off. Until they've had one running amok in the west Texas brush for a few years, they don't know jack. Or in this case, Jack. Originally I had wanted something with short hair, like an Anatolian or Akbash, but Jack was given to me 6 years ago as a pup and I wasn't going to quibble about hair on a free dog.

Last summer I passed on the $100 grooming visit and just bought a pair of $25 clippers at ChinaMart. I viewed these clippers as a disposable item, because no one would expect them to survive more than one shave down. They did a pretty good job, but as expected, did not last long enough for a repeat shave. This time, I borrowed a friend's clippers to do the deed.

I should have known better.

Normally you'd bathe the dog prior to letting the blades anywhere near them, but Jack's coat forms an impenetrable barrier once it mats up, and any attempt to get him clean is futile. He's actually 1/4 Kommodor, which I suspect is why his coat dreadlocks if left unattended for more than a few days. This meant I had to clip him dirty, and calling Jack dirty is calling Scientologists misguided. He was filthy, and before I had even gotten his hips cleared off, the clippers dulled to the point of uselessness.

That left me with scissors, and dull ones at that. Only the very tips would cut, so through the matted mess I went, snip snip snip a few hairs at a time. Chunk by disgusting chunk came away, held together by thousands of fuzzy little burrs. Fine white hair was everywhere, in the air, covering my clothes, wrapping around my teeth. It seemed as if for every hair I cut, twenty more appeared on me. Jack was fairly stoic about the ordeal, until I got to his butt. This led to a half hour of him trying to sit down, and me trying to make him stand up so I could clip the dingleberries free. Gross. Working my way down his tail proved nerve wracking, since he'd broken the very tip years ago and now it's crooked end was buried deeply in the middle of everything. Eventually I got around the tip and peeled the pelt off like a filthy fur muff.

Three hours later, and still only 1/4 of the way through, I let Jack loose, and leaned back to survey the disaster on my porch. Huge piles of hair lay in drifts against the door, and coated my flowerbeds. It looked as if I'd clipped twenty dogs, but Jack hardly looked touched save the one spot on his hip where the clippers worked.

Guess I will buy another $25 set of clippers tomorrow and try to finish the job.

Stupid white boys

I just watched Into the Wild, the Christopher McCandless story, and once again I am stunned by the idiocy some white boys are capable of. I mean, all PC bullshit aside, when it comes to things like running off to live in Iceland armed with a wet t-shirt, a sack full of books and a half dozen twinkies, white boys got the monopoly.

Sean Penn romanticized the crap out of it but what it comes down to is a guy of above average intelligence but an utter lack of common sense decides to head off to Alaska, without a compass or any real survival skills, and with no means of communicating to anyone should he say, oh, fall off a cliff or something. I mean I get the whole "society is the root of all my problems" theory. It's a lot easier to pretend you're unhappy because of your upper middle class suburban raising and your mean ole dad who yells a lot, than to just admit you're a spoilt jackass who has read Jack London books one too many times.

I do have respect for anyone who can toss aside a steady paycheck, the comfort of a permanent home, and weekend steaks on the grill, for a life of total freedom. However, I fail to see how a guy who managed to starve to death while living beside a river full of fish is some sort of hero. He wasn't even smart enough to wander up and down the river looking for an easier crossing... because if he had he'd have found a friggin tram just 1/4 mile down from where he took one look and said oh hell and went back to die in his bus. There are plenty of folks who run off to do what he did, the difference being they took the time to actually learn how to survive in the wild, and they succeeded. This is no doubt due in large to the fact that they were not suffering from overblown egos and delusions of grandeur.

I was reading a heated argument on another site that basically consisted of, you couldn't do what he did, oh yes I can, no you couldn't, back and forth. I don't get the issue here. Of course I can wander off in the wilderness and starve to death. Just because I'm not asinine enough to do it doesn't mean I'm a puss. And even if it does, well at least I'm a living, breathing puss and that beats being a dead dumbass any day.

The heretic has a mild conversion

I showed calves in high school and was forced to listen to country music at every stock show we attended, by virtue of one of the wannabe cowboys always bringing a boombox well stocked with Straight, Nelson, and Hank Jr. Every time I went to the barns, there was some whiny booze boots and Bocephus crap blaring. My tastes ran more to Flock of Seagulls and Howard Jones at the time. I could also be caught blasting Run-DMC, Sugarhill Gang and LL Cool J from the cheap speakers of my 76 Cutlass while in the school parking lot. In FFA in 1987, this pretty much branded me a heretic.

In later years I developed a mild appreciation for some of the newer country, but still lean towards the pop charts. However, when Michelle Branch joined up with Jessica Harp to form The Wreckers, I had to add their CD to the collection. And now, there's Miranda Lambert. She's got a decidedly old country sound to a lot of her stuff, but I have to say I like her enough that I picked up her Crazy Ex Girlfriend CD the other night. Blessedly devoid of overbearing religious references, wrist slitting sob stories, and pointless professions of love towards someone who don't want it, it was worth the $15. I really like the drive to Crazy Ex Girlfriend too, though my head banger boyfriend cringes at the lyrics, heh.

Don't count on seeing me go redneck any time soon though.

My bad attitude

A comment made about me by an ex boss worked it's way back to me. She said something about me being extremely smart but having a bad attitude. Also that I'd be rich if I'd move back to Dallas and work there.

Big newsflash. I have an attitude, something she knew about BEFORE she came begging me to come work for her. I don't take kindly to someone throwing their trash on the floor right beside the trash can and expect me to drop what I'm doing to go clean it up. I damn sure don't smile when someone chews me out for something I didn't do and then act like I'm lying when I tell them so. Getting in my grill for not doing everything that you meant to tell me to do, but never actually told me, only serves to make me fantasize about lighting you on fire. I'm not a psychic and calling me at 10 pm to bitch about ain't gonna make me into one.

I never would have accepted the job had I not been harnessed to a hateful crackhead for the past 2 years. She wasn't really a crackhead, but I don't know of an appropriate name for someone who tweaks on Dramamine. I was so desperate to get away from that chain smoking, mouth twitching, paranoid, tourettes afflicted harpy that I'd have taken a job prepping Tijuana donkeys for their stage performances. I liked the new job for a while, but it wasn't long before I started having to put up with all the bullshit the other employees warned me about. I shoulda known when the employee both bosses told me was lazy and worthless proved to be anything but. She busted her ass cleaning and straightening and all they could do was tell me she was lazy and never did anything.

I eventually got fired (only the 2d time in my life, wow) and praise Jebus because my old job offered me the position the twitchy nutjob had recently vacated. It paid double what I was making, and kept my days free. I don't have to clean up someone else's messes or watch my two bosses screaming at each other in the middle of the store over something as asinine as suitcases. No more asking me if I did something and then going over to check it right in front of me as if to say "Just in case you're lying let me check it right now". Best of all my pay stubs actually show the hours I've worked and what I've made, vs the blank page I used to get because they were too "busy" to set up the system to provide us with earnings statements.

Despite my "bad attitude" I work unsupervised each night and everything get done right, and the people I work with don't go home calling me a harpy bitch every night. Except for Donna, but she was too stupid to tie her own shoes so she doesn't count.

I am a slob

We're having a downpour today. It was raining when I woke up and hasn't stopped yet. The holding pen is flooded, and the sheep trails look like small creeks running through the pasture. They've grazed the rye and weeds down to the dirt, so the timing couldn't be better. I'll pen them all up for a few weeks and give it time to come back in so they've got something to eat on for a while.

Since it's too mucky to go outside today, I've been cleaning the kitchen. Domestic goddess I am not, a fact proven by the inch thick layer of dirt on the cabinet shelves. Yes I said dirt, not dust. I gutted the kitchen a few years ago and I left some built in overhead cabinets in place, despite the fact that they were open faced and therefore subject to frequent mouse invasions. I've tossed a few things up there over the years but never really paid much attention to them. In anticipation of doing a lot of canning this summer though, I decided I'd better clean them out and get them ready to use.

Normally I listen to hip hop, but today I have an 80s channel on. Eddie Murphy is singing Party All The Time. Oh Eddie, why? Thank goodness he never did THAT again! And hey, what happened to the guy who did DELIRIOUS? That was some of the best standup I've ever seen. Now I get Daddy Daycare? I can't reconcile the two, not to mention everyone under 25 thinks of Eddie as nothing more than a cross species telepath and the voice of Donkey. I did like Dr Doolittle though...

Anyway, these shelves are NASTY (which is why I'm on here instead of finishing what I started) and now I'm quite embarrassed that I've had people over and let them go into the kitchen. Hopefully they didn't take a close look.

Garden 1.0 Game Over

Wretched cats. I am down to 1 intact tomato plant, 1 very chewed up one, and 1 pepper plant. All the onions have been yanked from the ground. Now I have to start ALL FREAKIN OVER. I am thinking carpet tack strips aren't going to be enough. Maybe some mouse traps in the mix...

I have been reading up on Akbash dogs, of which Diesel is half. I did not realize that they are rather bad for play chasing. So, I guess it's back to the puppy pen, supervised visits with the sheep, and a shock collar while he's with them so if he DOES go to mouthing or chasing, I can zap him in the act. Not like I can chase him down, and anyway he stops it if he knows I'm watching. He's just a year old, and they don't really mature until 2. Hopefully I can retrain him.

I have a new lamb today and he is a chunk! Tri color paint, pretty little guy. I didn't even realize mama was due, she hides it well.

Diesel gets a temporary reprieve

So much for hauling off Diesel. It appears he's been granted yet another a stay of execution. What can I say, I like the dog. I sure can't justify keeping him around when he kills off my lambs though. I had planned to move the bigger rams to a separate pasture and put him in with them, but the fence isn't Diesel proof. He pretty much comes and goes where he pleases. It's going to cost a small fortune to fence that pasture up to where he can't get out. I always thought the sheep would be hard to keep fenced in, but they never get out. I could probably post photos of a fence around the perimeter and they'd see that and go, crap we're stuck in here. Diesel, OTOH, can get in or out of just about anything.

I should start one of those Gimme Money websites to raise fencing money, like that guy who threatened to eat his rabbit if people did not send him money. Maybe I could threaten to eat Diesel. Probably taste like lamb by now.

The Aegean Stables, aka My Barn, is finally clean! $180 worth of tractor rental and 4 hours later, it is down to the bare concrete floor and ready to pack full of hay. I have a feeling this is going to be a bad summer for hay.

Cats suck, and a final decision for Diesel

By Friday afternoon I had 8 tomato plants, 2 basil, 4 jalapeños, and a bunch of onions planted. By Sun afternoon I'm down to 5 tomato plants, 2 basil, 2 jalapeños, and half the onions. The cause?

Cats.

They chewed everything up, pulled up half the onions and tossed them aside, and then left behind several big, steaming piles of crap right where my knees would go were I foolish enough to kneel without looking first. The gardening forums offer humane, non poisonous methods for control, however I'm thinking a margarita and a .22 would be more gratifying. However, since *my* cats are the ones doing the damage, I will have to settle for something that doesn't cause permanent damage.

Tomorrow I'm headed to the hardware store to buy a lot of carpet tack strips. I've found that's about the only thing that will stop the wretched beasts from walking around in the bed. Mothballs work really well too, if you can ignore the howls of outrage from the chemical free crowd. That stuff they sell in stores that you sprinkle around to keep cats out is useless. If a cat has ever pottied in the area, you have to remove 3-4 inches of soil, lime it, and then cover it with the granuals, and I've still had cats use it after that.

I suspect a Caddyshack meltdown is coming.

In other news, Diesel has graduated from killing chickens and baby goats, to killing lambs, finally producing the straw to break my back with two dead ewe lambs in the past 3 days to add to the 3 lambs I suspected he killed but wasn't certain. I don't understand that dog. He can't keep from harassing small critters. We've had many MANY Come To Jesus meetings over this behavior, and I thought the last one had an effect, but apparently it was short lived. When I had the goats I absolutely could not trust him around the kids. He killed over 2 dozen, just chased and played with them until they were dead. He never had any interest in the sheep though, so I thought *maybe* he could work out with them. Evidentially not. I hate to do it but tomorrow he's headed to the clinic. A flock guardian who kills his charges is lucky to be alive past his first kill. I worked with him for another year trying to break him of it. Anyone else that I know with sheep would have shot him the first time he killed a kid. It's possible they'll attempt to rehome him, but I won't hold my breath.

That leaves me with just Jack. I wish I had a dozen like him.

blah blah blah

I have an arrangement with a guy who brings me waste produce from the store to feed the pigs. I was given 3 sick pigs a while back, 2 turned around and are fine, the third never did. I told him that if he'd bring stuff out for all the pigs to eat on, I'd let him have one when they were butchering weight. Of course, pigs aren't going to grow fat on tomatoes, cucumbers, grapes, and lettuce, so I buy pig finisher and corn for them. Mostly it's just to provide a little variety for them. This would be a good arrangement except that this guy never misses a chance to imply that 1) I'm not taking care of my animals, and 2) he'd do a better job.

This hasn't been the best of weeks. A gate fell on KC and killed her, and the third pig who never got well finally died. I get a phone call at work from Mr Produce, the gist of it being that I am not taking care of my animals. "You should have given her to me I would have taken care of her". As if the goat knocking a gate off it's hinges and on top of her is somehow due to my negligence. Then I hear how "we" can't afford to lose any more pigs because "he" has worked so hard. Never mind that all that finisher and corn I *pay* for, or the time I've spent cleaning the pig pen, or my water bill, or the fact that that pig was screwed up from the day he was given to me (and where's my applause for bringing the other two back from the dead?), apparently he's doing all the work and I'm just letting them die. Then I get to hear how looking at my horse hurts him and how he'll fatten her up on tomatoes or something, because you know that 16 pounds of feed a day that I'm giving her isn't nearly as good as what he'd do. Never mind that she's 30 and a gummer. I must not be feeding her. Of course, a bucket of lettuce and carrots will fatten her right up. More likely it will give her the runs and she'll lose even MORE weight.

Next time he tries to act like I'm not doing what I need to do, I'm going to drop the nice and let him have it.

Burn Baby, Burn!

Saturday we headed to Amarillo where I visited a Yoga instructor at his home for a private session to focus on my skewballed spine, and boy did it make a difference! Just 20 minutes into the hour session and I could feel the muscles relaxing and the pain going away. Of course it came back a few hours afterwards but hopefully if I keep this up, it will begin to decrease as my back strengthens and loosens up.

Sunday we headed to the lake for some bass fishing, and I decided it would be a good idea to wear a backless sundress in the bright sun for a the entire afternoon, sans sunscreen. After catching 3 bass I decided to crash on the boat's deck and catch some sun, because I guess I thought I'd not already gotten enough the previous 3 hours in the bright sunshine. I really didn't realize how cooked I was until that night when I got out of the shower. The worst of it could be seen on the left side of my back, where the skin remains magenta now three days later. I'm just waiting for the water blisters to make their appearance. A friend later asked if I was unaware that I was a redhead and did not tan well. Apparently it's a new condition for me. Last summer I wore sunscreen like I owned stock in the company, no idea why I didn't bother with it this weekend.

I had planned to start on the gardens today but it's crap weather out and my torched back is still screaming every time I move, so guess it is couch potatoing with a book instead. On a side note, I went out and bought some Aveno SPF 70 and will marinate in it the next time I consider hitting the lake.

A regular HR Pufnstuf weekend

I spent this past weekend at Quartz Mountain over in OK, camping and fishing along the river. I knew I was in for a trying weekend when I went to set up the tent and discovered the poles were not in the bag with it, nor were they anywhere else in my car. Sticking the camera's tripod and a folding chair inside was the best I could come up with.

I fished for about an hour using corn for bait, per local advice, but eventually got disgusted with the constant tangling of corn, hook, sinker, and bobber, and switched to a topwater crankbait lure for no other reason than I like to watch him skitter across the top of the water. With no expectations of catching anything, I was pleasantly surprised to hook a handful of small perch. Now I have never caught much of anything, unless you count the numerous boots, tires, used condoms, snakes and turtles, and assorted trash that I've snared in the past...that BMX bicycle was pretty cool though... but fish have always evaded me and so I really had no idea what to do with them once I caught them beyond tossing them back and hoping for another one to come my way. Sort of like my dog chasing my neighbor's SUV. After a while I tired of this and headed back to my camp.

On the way there, some kid offered me a trout she'd caught. Figuring I might as well learn sometime, I took it and headed off to attempt to clean my first fish. I'd seen the pictures online, read the instructions. It looked easy enough. Stick the knife in it's butt and cut towards the gills, then cut the horseshoe looking thingy and it all pulls out. Except, I must have cut something wrong. The guts remained firmly attached, and the only thing I pulled out was his jaw. Additional cuts freed the gills out, but the guts remained hanging by the intestine. This was getting messy. I finally just sliced off the tail, and freed the guts from the body. Then there was the matter of the bloodline, which the guy online made dissappear with a simple scrape of his thumbnail. Not so mine. Many many thumbnail scrapes, a fork scraping, knife scraping, and digging with some pliers later, I had 99% of it out. One more cut removed the head, and at this point I realized why I should have left the tail on. Scraping the scales off would have been a lot easier with something to hold onto. Then I remembered, I was supposed to fillet it. Now what did that guy online say? Cut from the belly to the backbone? Or was it the backbone down to the belly? I opted for the backbone cut. So much for being easy. A nice hack job later, I had done little more than peeled the skin off one side. Then I remembered what one fellow said. Flour the fish, toss it in the pan in some butter, and once it's cooked you can pull the backbone and the whole skeleton comes out in one yank. COOL.

One floured fish fried up and one yank later, and I had 3 backbones and a couple of bones out. It took a few more yanks to pull out the skeleton, and one touch to realize the thing wasn't fully cooked. Back into the skillet to fry some more. By this point I was really getting hungry. The butter and fried flour coating sure smelled good. Eventually it finished cooking and I eagerly pulled off a chunk to try it out.

And just as eagerly spit it back out. Blargh. The texture was similar to what I'd imagine a fried ziploc baggie would have, were it dipped in fish oil first. Luckily I had the foresight to pack a cooler with hamburger fixings.

The rest of the night was fairly uneventful save for the rampages of 5 boys from a neighboring camp, which mercifully ended the instant I told one of them I had just been released from prison. I crawled into my droopy tent, watched a movie on my DVD player, and went to sleep.

I did not stay asleep, however. My back pain kicked in around midnight, so I popped a couple of hydrocodone to ease it up. I vaguely remember waking up again at some point and taking two more, and I clearly remember waking up at 6:11 with a screaming back to take two more, which must have finally done the trick because I didn't wake up again until 11:30. That was when I realized that 3000 miligrams of hydrocodone, in a 6 hour period, on an empty stomach, was probably a really bad idea.

I staggered out at the crack of noon feeling like I'd just downed an entire case of Boone's Farm. Everything was swimmy, including my stomach. I barely remember packing camp and heading back for home. To say I was looped was an understatement. I was hammered, fried, stoned, thrashed, pickled, and bombed. What I do clearly remember, however, was the realization hitting me like a tax audit that I was about to puke, and I had very little time before I did so. The car slid in sideways as I braked it hard onto the grass, and I bolted out and around to the passenger side just in time to remove the last bits of undigested hydrocodone from my system.

Now I'm not the sort who desires assistance when I'm bowing to the porcelain god. I don't want someone to help hold my hair out of the way, or rub my back. I just want to be left alone. Sadly that was not quite an option on the side of the road by the park. I can only say I hope none of the passerbys had weak stomachs, because I haven't been that sick since that roadside party my freshman year of college.

This pretty much continued the entire trip home. Drive a while, stop and "ruminate" for a while. Eventually the purging stopped, but the paint sniffing feeling remained. I know I watched a Jet Li movie with my boyfriend that evening but I can barely remember it.

We're going camping/fishing next weekend, on the condition that we bring an air mattress and some of those hand warmer things to slip under my back should it wake up and begin to sing again. I'm leaving the 'scripts at home, ugh.

Diesel - $3.99-$4.09

Next stop, $4.

Freakin diesel just rolled to $3.78 a gallon here and my car is in the shop so I'm driving the truck and hoping that quarter tank I have in it will last until the car is ready. CrapOLA we are being played for suckas by the oil companies. Fat bastids are giving themselves raise after raise and recording record profits while the rest of us choke every time we fuel up. I'm due for a feed run real soon and if I take the truck it'll cost about $40 in diesel because I get my feed at a place an hour from here. Even with the drive, it's cheaper to go there than buy local, provided I drive the car which only uses about $10 worth of gas round trip. Hoping it's ready tomorrow, because I don't have enough feed to last beyond the weekend.

Everything is going up. I never thought I'd find myself obsessing over the cost of fuel, getting pissed off every time I see that price roll up another .10 cents a gallon just in time for payday, but here I am doing just that. I priced bicycles over at ChinaMart today. They had a trike with a little basket on it and I thought, man I'm gonna look like an idiot on that. Heh, I could put a bumper sticker on it that says "I Look Even Dumber Paying $4 Per Gallon For Diesel". But then I look at it's price tag, and it's $238. Crap! Had a neat mountain bike though, $84. I think when they get the underpass that I have to take to get to work finished up, I'll get it. Until then, no. I'm not interested in getting splattered all over the road by a semi barreling through the construction zone.

Actually my horse is starting to look like a viable transportation alternative.

Two more babies born this morning, both black with white hind legs and white stars. Not sure on the gender yet. I sure do have a lot of black sheep this time.

bacon and ham and sausage oh my

I hauled a pig and two sheep to the processor yesterday. In the past I've had lamb and it's been awful, but there's a Mediterranean place called Fadis that has the most amazing lamb shank to ever melt in your mouth, so I thought I'd give it another try. They have locations in Houston, Dallas, and Frisco, TX so if you're lucky enough to be near one, you really should give it a go. Anyway I told them to make a little sausage and summer sausage with some of the lamb, to see how it turned out. Probably my cooking has more to do with it's past wretchedness than the lamb itself. I meant to take some seasoning mixes for the pork sausage because their mix is pretty blah and I'm wanting more flavor and not just more heat, but of course I forgot.

The remaining 3 pigs seem quite pleased to be rid of the big oaf who had been hogging all the food, mudholes, and the best spot in the shed. One of them is my boyfriend's pig, another goes to a guy who keeps me supplied in bruised fruits and veggies so the pigs have a regular salad bar out there, and the third probably needs to be shot but I keep him out of pity. He had a respiratory infection when he was younger that must have ruined his lungs, because he can't go more than a few steps without sucking wind. He is the Mischa Barton of pigs, all skinny and bony and painful to look at. My sucker gene has kicked in though, so I keep feeding him rather than put him down.

Spring fever has kicked in big time. With a slew of 75F sunny days, broken up on only a few occasions by cold, wind, and wet, I'm getting the gardening itch bad. I've got new beds started all over the place, not a one more than 10% complete but I never was good at finishing what I start. I need to get a bunch of pads off my big thornless optuna, have some dry beds planned and need to get those curing before it's time to plant. I scored some sections of a rat tail cholla and am trying to get it to root but it's not too responsive yet. I need to go ask some rancher friends if I can go cacti raiding on their spreads, looking for some horse cripplers and some yuccas to add to the beds this year. Be damned if I'm gonna pay $10-30 each at the local nursery for them when they're so easy to lift and the ranchers want them gone anyway. The Mexican Feather grass I put in last year did REAL well so I'm planning to install a lot more of that this spring. Also want some Desert Willows but I really don't want to start them from seed so I may have to break down and buy those.

I waited too stinking long to order pine seedlings from the forestry service. They're sold out of the Afghan pines.

Robert and I have plans to take the boat to the lake this weekend and go fishing and throw some steaks on the grill, but the 10 day forecast has gone from 70s and sunny to snow, so we may be ice fishing instead.

Diesel just went to $3.68 a gallon, and the Nissan blew the alternator belt so I'm back in my truck and cringing to watch the gas gauge.

Crappy weather makes everyone go into labor

I woke up to 45 mph winds out of the north, a temp gauge that barely reached 28F, and 5 new babies on the ground. Fawn has a beautiful red one and also a solid white, both by Wapiti. Both of her lambs are big and healthy, no idea the sex yet. One of the Dingo daughters has a nice black ewe lamb on her. Then I find one running around with no mother. She looks like she started out white, but someone poured a bucket of black paint on her, making her front 3/4 solid black and ending in a wavy pattern over her hips and sides to leave the back end white. She was hollering plenty but no one was answering. I started to catch her, but saw Dingoling had been courteous enough to drop HER new lamb out in the open to enjoy the lovely freezing wind, and was now pawing it to bits trying to get it to stand up. I left the unclaimed lamb and headed over to get Dingy's lamb, who was just about knocked out and very cold. I tucked her inside my coat and buttoned it up to keep her warm, only to turn around and see Dingy heading after the black and white lamb.

Dingoling is by Dingo (Black Hawaiian) and out of a dun Corsican ewe. I'd bred her back to a dun Corsican ram, so there wasn't much chance she threw a black and white lamb. "That's not your girl" I informed her, but she didn't pay much attention. It was a baby, and she was going to take it whether it wanted her to or not. And it did not want her to. Not one bit. She didn't smell like mom, sound like mom, and sure didn't look like mom.

After 10 minutes of hoping mom would make an appearance, I gave up and put Dingy and her adopted daughter into one of the stalls in the trailer.

I was out of dextrose and I needed to get the twins and my Chihuahua from the vet where they've spent the weekend (I went out of town) so I took the cold lamb along. Everyone oohed and ahhed over how tiny she was (2.98 pounds), and she got dosed with some dextrose until her eyes started to brighten up and she became more alert.

Back at home I found the orphaned lamb (Wave) had decided strange mom is ok since she had a working milk bar. I put her lamb in with her for a bit, and was happy to see she immediately accepted her and let her nurse, though I'm keeping her in the house in between feedings until she gets a good bit stronger.

So far the girls are outnumbering the boys at around 8 to 1, not counting Fawn's two that I haven't checked yet.

RIP Numbers

The last couple of weeks I've been having some problems with the sheep. A lot of them have been losing weight, their hair looks awful, and having the runs. Sounds like parasites right, except they're all on a regular deworming program and are clean for bugs. After that nice 50 mph wind filled day I could add pinkeye and snotty noses to the list. Two lambs died but they were weaklings anyway so I just chalked it up to nature doing it's job. Then my two goats aborted.

Yesterday my spotted ram Numbers Malone went down and went down fast. Within 4 hours he'd gone from walking and eating to three feet in the grave. I couldn't even pull the skin back enough to sub-q him, he'd dehydrated so fast. Took him to the vet, where they popped an IV in him and loaded him up with everything under the sun, but he died within an hour. Vet said he was toxic, something he'd eaten. She's taking tissue samples to A&M to see what happened. Makes me sick. I really really liked Numbers.

Cortez and Fuego were acting sick yesterday but they seem fine today. I'm changing the feed out though, on a hunch that it's aflatoxin related.

In other news diesel is up to $3.69 here, making me hug my 18 year old, 30 mpg Nissan. The truck is parked until diesel returns to a normal level (which will likely never happen in my lifetime) or I have to pull the trailer. I have found that I can haul 10 feed sacks in my Nissan if I put 3 in each seat and 1 in the trunk. I could probably haul more than that but I don't want to squat it. You can imagine the looks I get at the feed store, heh.

Hay and Rain for $200 please

Last summer was the best ever for the Texas panhandle in terms of rain and temperatures. Everyone who grew hay had bumper crops. One friend said she put up 400 square bales off her little pasture, and that was before the baler broke and left the rest to waste. So wtf can't I find any to buy?

Because the brokers are snatching it all up by the semi loads and transporting it out of state, that's why. And what's worse, they're putting contracts on the rest of the season's expected hay production, so folks like me are just SOL. Unless of course, we can afford to buy 55 tons at a time. I just don't have the storage space available for more than 100 bales at a time.

Some of the older ewes and one of the older rams are looking pretty rough. I've wormed them heavily, which only served to make them look worse. Once they lost their Buddha bellies, they turned into scarecrows. This is a hard time of year for them. The pastures are a mix of sticks, stalks, and dirt as you can see from this pic. The rye is trying to come up but unless we get some rain I doubt it will do anything. For once I'm glad I didn't plant the middle section in wheat, because it wouldn't have come up. I have protien blocks out and am feeding a corn/oat/soybean mix, but I have to find some hay pretty fast.

If it were not for internet radio, I'd pull my hair out. Downside of rural living - if you don't like country music, you're in trouble with regards to radio stations.

Caprock Canyon visit

I went with my boyfriend over to Caprock Canyon to hike around a bit, but the wind caught us by surprise and we wound up leaving after a few hours.

The fact that I consider a walk to the mailbox to be strenuous had nothing to do with our premature departure.

I wish I'd taken my tripod. I'm not the steadiest of people on a good day, and with a 30 mph wind knocking me about, I had a hard time keeping the camera still. We have plans to return later in the spring to do a little hiking/camping weekend, will bring the tripod then. I still got a lot of neat shots, nothing fancy but it does show off the interesting geology of the area. There was a rock of some sort that I did not recognize. It appeared to run in a solid sheet beneath the red dirt, almost looking like white marble on top, but along the edge it had a glitter to it, and would splinter off.

In other news, Dirty Harriet died over the weekend. She was the first Boer goat ever born here, and while she was not the most productive of girls (4 kids in 6 years hrm), she was always my favorite and she knew it. When I sold all the goats, I kept her, her son Earless Joe, and one other old girl who was the first Boer goat I ever bought. She was spoilt rotten. I'm not too happy about her passing.

The Twins Go Outside Yay

Last night I put the bottle babies KC & Sunshine out in the trailer for the first time. They were born during an ice storm so they'd been in a box in my hall and they were really stinking up the place. I ran to SquallMart and got a heat lamp for them, and resurrected some of the baby goat coats that I thought I'd never use again, and now they're hooked up. My trailer doubles as portable stalls, and it's parked beside the house where there's an outlet for the light.

KC is on the left, Sunshine is on the right. If you're over 40 you'll get the reference. The group was before my time but my brothers are all at least 10 years older than I am so I grew up on a lot of 60s and 70s music.

When I had the goats, I was always using these blankets. I can't count the times I heard some goat breeder brag about how the babies were so strong and tough and how they could handle the weather. Pffft. Every one of them had heat lamps in a stall somewhere for winter kidding. I must have 30 of these blankets, because otherwise the babies would get cold and that was that. On the other hand, I've seen lambs born into a snow bank who were up and running like antelope within a half hour. These two wouldn't need the blankets or heat light except I had them in the house for a few days and I figured it'd make the transition from 70F inside to 20F outside a bit easier on them, heh.

Eh it's bottle time again.

Who's Yer Mama?

I brought some ewes home late last night and one of them dropped some lambs tonight, and proceeded to knock them ass over teakettle every time they tried to get near her. Guess the stress of the haul right at the time she was due was too much for her, because she absolutely hates them.

Guess that makes me mom. Ugh. Not to mention, we're in the middle of an ice storm now so in the house they go.

Bottle feeding is a pain in the butt. Every four hours for the first couple of days, then you can slowly draw them down to 3 or so bottles a day. I learned with the goats to always put a 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda in every bottle. It works like an antacid and I never lost one to overeating. That doesn't make it any less of a PITA but at least I can let them chug down two huge bottles a day instead of 4 small ones without worrying that they'll bloat up and die on me.

Of course this means they'll wind up with names. 500+ goats and now nearly 200 sheep later, I'm really scraping bottom of the name bucket. I used to name them after things I'd like to have, like Miata, Carerra, Mercedes, Ocean, Lottery, then slowly dropped down to things I needed, like Washer, Dryer, Insulator, Charger, Radiator, Clutch. Now it's just whatever comes to mind when I look at 'em.

I got Bucked

You know that feeling you get when you think you got a steal of a deal on something, only to realize you took it up the spine and didn't even get a kiss for it?

Meet Bucked. As in, Bucked Knees. I can't believe I did not see those wonky legs. I was too busy congratulating myself on getting a weanling with enough horn to make a 10 month old proud to notice his ground dragging front pasterns and bucked knees. When his head is up, it's even worse looking. There are grills all over town callin this dude's name. He's so gimpy he can't even keep up with the other boys, so he mostly hangs out near the pens hoping for a handout.

Just when I get to thinking I'm too clever for words, I bring something like this home.