No Man's Land

Mah Boys are supposed to be returning from their mountain camping trip today. Thank goodness. I have been single parenting since Sunday morning and I don't really like it. Because it's hard.

I knew that already. It's one of those things I see other folks doing and I wonder how in the hecks they do it. Something I had a small taste of in the past and hope I never have to do again.

So anywho there's that and the added chores I have to do. In the dark. In the cold. After being at work all day.

And of course, as soon as the guys left town it did this:

That's 6 inches or so of snow. And it was 18 degrees yesterday morning and 12 degrees this morning.

When Mark asked me yesterday if it was OK for them to stay one more day because Sam was having such a fun time, it took all my power to not play my Girl Card and whine for them to come home as originally planned. In spite of my unenthusiasm, I really was happy they were having a good time, so I grinned and bore it.

My routine has been:

6am Wake up and lie in bed for half an hour pep talking myself into going outside.

6:30am Out of bed, put on the same stinky jeans I've been using for chores since Sunday and go directly outside to feed the furnace. So it's dark, snow is getting in my shoes and gloves, I'm hunting for logs I can actually heft, hot coals threatening to fall out on me. It's super dramatic.

6:45am Run to the shower because I hate the smell of wood smoke all over me.

7:30am Start the process of nagging the girls to get up so I can take them to Mawsi's house. Thank goodness for Mawsi...

Then time starts to blur. We're looking for shoes, we're forgetting things, arguing about who sits where in the car, complaining about how cold it is, etc. And then somehow I end up at work.

4pm Mawsi drops the girls off at the office so they can come home with me. They climb the walls in boredom for the next hour.

5pm rolls around and we head home.

Back into my stinky jeans, Mark's muck boots because I can't find mine (I think they took them to the mountains by mistake?,) and coat hood tied tight around my head because it's booger-freezing weather out there. It's a very sexy look, also.

To the barn, feed the cats.

To the van, which is parked a city block away and uphill both ways, where the steer feed is temporarily stored. Two full 5 gallon buckets of feed carried down to the troughs with a bit to spare for the chickens.

Back to the barn for the horse feed. Haul it down to the other gate where they are nickering impatiently and Nikki is wringing her neck at my slowness.

At this point the yard looks like a Family Circus cartoon of Billy's dash-dash-dash through the neighborhood, my footprints in the snow telling the tale of of where I've been.

It's damn cold and dark by the time I close the barn up again and head to the furnace for its second feeding of the day. Temperatures in the teens means I'm not about to skimp on feeding the furnace. By that time, I'm over the coldness because I'm coming in the home stretch. Sort of.

From then on it's all about the coon dog 'til she goes to bed at 9pm. I take her out, beg her to pee, she won't. We come back in, she paces in front of the door, I take her out, beg her to pee, she won't. Repeat, repeat, repeat. I'd leave her tied out for a while but it's just so dang cold I can't do it. Why won't she pee?! 9 o'clock can't come too soon after 3 plus hours of dog potty training paranoia. So far we've had no accidents, but I'm pretty sure the dog thinks I'm a loon putting her out every 15 frickin minutes.

And it makes preparing dinner a little hectic. Including Jill's dinner which requires me to mix her fish oil supplement with peanut butter to pour over her food. The dog gravy Mark bought her just wasn't quite cutting it. Ya.

Speaking of dinner, I've nearly accomplished my goal of personally consuming all the turning fruits & vegetables in the refrigerator. Two nights of squash & jalapeno stir fry. Just as good reheated the second day?

I did try to talk the girls into going to the little restaurant up the road last night, but Lily wasn't having it. She'd rather make me scrape together a sad dinner of tater tots and venison burger for her to complain about and refuse to eat.

But there's light at the end of the tunnel I think. Jill peed without me begging this morning. Lily did eventually fall asleep after coming downstairs at 10 o'clock to tell me about all the nightmares she was having. Thanks for that, Lily, because you halfway had me creeped out. Sheesh.

And the boys might be home in time today to relieve me of my stinky jeans duties. That wouldn't hurt my feelings one bit.

There's A Stranger In My House

Several things have come to light in the last 3 months or so that have fairly rocked my world. They all have to do with my husband not being the man I thought he was.

First, there was a lovely lunch Mark and I shared at a hidden gem of a restaurant. Yummy soup and a big basket of homemade potato chips between us, we sat nestled in a pretty little wooden booth. I was quietly, sneakily I thought, picking all the folded potato chips out of the basket because they are my favorite (because they are superior to flat potato chips) and leaving Mark the flat ones. It was an intimate atmosphere and I decided to share my innermost secret love of the folded potato chips and how I was picking them all out of the basket. Self-sabotaging, I know, but I was all lovey-dovey and sharing. Plus I was expecting to hear that he prefers the flat crisps, which would just reaffirm what a perfect couple we make because we each eat what the other doesn't prefer.
Anyhow, what I learned was that he too believed that he was sneaking out all the good folded chips and leaving me the flat chip dross. How rude! Talk about a bombshell.

Then, there was Thanksgiving over at my Dad's house. The house used to belong to my Dad's Dad who recorded our measurements on the wooden trim of the doorway betwixt the kitchen and dining room. There you will find measurements not only of all the grand kids, but parents, cousins, step-relatives, neighbors and dogs.
After some good food and cocktails we decided to update some measurements. We learned that Sam is now taller than me, but I was happy to discover that I was not lying when I've completed questionnaires with my height as 5'6", 'cause I'm 5'6 1/4"! Woo!
The disturbing thing I learned is that my supposedly 6 foot tall husband of more than 7 years/been knowin' for like 10 years, has really been 5'11" this whole time! We've been living a lie, and I told him as much.

Next there was our hardcore IKEA shopping adventure. I had 3-D sketches, lists, and measurements. I dragged him all over the store, while I touched, tried, and inspected all sorts of things. I was still puzzling through how the whole thing would work, if the whole thing would work, so I was questioning the salespeople, questioning myself, and questioning Mark, who just. wanted. to be. done. with the whole thing. But Mark was patient and did his best to pay attention to things that mattered not to him.
As we sat in the warehouse waiting for our things to be brought out, I posed some sort of question or scenario to him, to which he immediately nodded enthusiastically. Too soon he nodded enthusiastically, because in the very same breath I totally changed my mind and said, no no no, that won't work, and I caught his head full of glazed-over eyes mechanically start shaking no, no, no. I said You're totally not listening to a word I say, are you? And he was caught. I think he even surprised himself a little at how instinctual the nodding and headshaking agreement was. So what I thought was this great team effort was nothing more than some sort of evolutionary husband self preservation mechanism. I'll give him a pass on that one, because I'm actually a little impressed.

However, most recently, I learned something so sad, so shocking, that I'm not sure what to do with the information. We were chit-chatting ourselves to sleep one night, all cozy and content in our bed, when somehow we came upon the subject of smells. Smells we prefer, smells we hate, you know. It's a conversation we've had countless times before for whatever reason. Naturally I say that one of my favorite smells my whole life through has been the smell of a horse. Everybody can appreciate horse smell. It is unmistakeable, the fresh grassy, horsey smell. It is aromatherapy for me to go sniff the horses, and I do not have a problem with smelling like one myself after a nice long ride. I mean, not to go out to dinner or anything, but still, I like it.
But Mark, after growing up around horses his whole life, humoring me with my horses, tells me that on a scale of 1 to 10, with pigs be a mega-stinky 10, and baby, I can vouch for that, he would places horses at least as an 8. What? And he said that when he tells me that I smell like a horse, no matter how gently he says it, it is most certainly not a compliment and he thinks I stink. It's a sad state of affairs indeed.

I'm trying to look on the bright side though. I figure things shouldn't get dull when we have so many enthralling unknowns to discover about one another. And he's already told me about the biggest tree he's ever known, so what more could there be to tell?

I IKEAed the hell out of that room.

Whoop whoop. Merry Christmas and all that jazz.

Go 'head and laugh. Isn't this just so tender vittles? The family business. Awwwww. (Not sure why I look scared-ish. Look at all those fiveheads!)Oh, but hey, we went to see Avatar opening day. Loved it! The effects, that is. Fun time with the fam.
But before that, I decided it would be a good idea to rip my entire house apart right before the holidays. I thought Let's paint. Let's tear up carpet. Let's put a new kitchen counter top in and swap bedrooms around. We can pile garbage and debris 4 feet high on the porch in front of the door. Let us grossly underestimate the amount of time everything will take and make our house barely liveable for a few days. Yes, now is a good time to do these things.

I'm kind of exagerating (who me,) but not much. And as always, I don't have true before and after shots to illustrate the makeover-ness of it all. So picture the entire room that sickly flesh color shown inside the closets. The closets we left unpainted because we were at the end of our painting rope.

Also picture the most dastardly, wickedly ugly striped! (in shades of crap) carpet and you're halfway to imagining the Before. This was my bedroom (well, Mark's, too,) but now it's Sam's. He selected the wall color. It's very soothing.

This is the girls room pre-carpet. Aggie picked out the wall colors. I was a little scared about the colors, but I like them ok now. This room had pinky pink walls and a turquoise piece of carpet which didn't fit the room. It was super nice of the previous owner to leave it behind for us. I just covered that square hole they cut in the carpet with an equally ugly area rug. Way pretty! The girls even helped paint a little, which is a test of patience after spending all day prepping the room, let me tell you.

Not sure if you can read this: but Mark, ever the role model, painted "Aggie Stinks" on our newspaper window blinds.

"So-in-so Stinks" is like our own family grafitti. I don't get involved too often, but it's not uncommon to find this sentiment scrawled on homework, the newspaper, or a scrap of paper towel left for the allegedly stinky person to find. But Aggie fixed it to say "Dad(ie) Stinks." And there it will stay until JCPenney's sweat shop (kidding!) sees fit to ship my Roman blinds.

So this is basically an after shot. I didn't stage this so well, what with the busted handles on the shabby dresser (I'm gettin' to it!) and the not quite made bed.

Sam's room didn't photograph so well either. Plus I didn't include his sweet TV/PS3/Wii setup hidden in the closet. He has revealed his inner neatnik also. He had this room whipped into shape in no time. The bed is YoYo approved as you can see. (Pile of laundry wasn't supposed to be in the photo.)

And this represents 10 lbs of $#!t in a 5lb bag.In moving our bedroom down to Sam's former room we lost about half the area and nearly all closet space. We also increased the size of our bed thereby taking up even more room.

Why do it then? Well, because this room sits right on the porch giving easy access by window to the bedroom. Usually all the kids camped out in this room. I should probably be embarassed to admit that I've let the girls sleep on the floor in Sam's room for years, but it's been going on for so long that I've grown numb to it. Eh, so sue me, right? Point being that I was way upstairs at night and all my chilluns was down in that room where someone could break right in an' snatch them.

So I've been puzzling these many years how we could create storage and a livable space in an approximately 9 foot by 9 foot room.

Enter IKEA, land of "affordable" (cheap? flimsy? nah!) furniture. We've never really invested in any good furniture to date figuring on heavy use and abuse with 3 children and a somewhat occasionally careless (no offense Darling!) man in the house.

So for our purposes IKEA works wonders. It's functional (if you're selective,) versatile, and you aren't totally heartbroken if it breaks because it didn't cost a fortune. My only beef with IKEA is that they (purposely, I swear) don't tell you everything you'll need for some projects just to force you back into that store where ohmygoshhowcuteisthatthingIdidn'tseetheotherdaywhenIwasjusthere jumps up at you and you buy something else.

Not to mention it's a good half hour away. Totally incovenient when you've unloaded a van load of boxes of unassembled furniture, had a remodelling-fueled meltdown with your husband and then sat in a teary heap on the floor after opening the very first box to find that they gave you the wrong damn colored cabinet.

But anyway, the final result is swell. I love having a small but efficient bedroom. It forced us to get rid of even more excess stuff, something I've been working on for the past year or so. Mark also bought a big honkin' tv to put on the wall. Probably horrible fung shui but awesome for watching movies in bed.

Also made a decision on the kitchen countertop. It's white with teensy black stippling (word?) dots? that give it a grey appearance. It looks like the silestone sample I was coveting but it is good old formica. I did splurge on the integrated sink though. Love it! Loved it even more when they finally delivered the damn backsplashes on Christmas Eve. Retrofitted to preserve our crazy tile backsplash. Very important.

Not the Taj Mahal, but pretty good for a formerly almost condemned 100 plus year old house!

So all this stuff meant we kept putting off getting a Christmas tree. There simply wasn't any place to put it because the living room was our stuff receptacle. We kept saying Tomorrow we'll get the tree, tomorrow but then tomorrow was Christmas and we had no more time. So thankfully we had Lily's beautiful fiber optic tree from the dollar store. Perfecto!

See that Santa's hat up there? On it is a peel of the clementine Lily left for Santa. No milk and cookies this year. Her only regret was that she forgot to leave something for the reindeer. I told her I'm sure they had plenty from all the other houses, no worries.
I think it was still a good Christmas.I even surprised Sam with his gifts. Mah Boy needs a hair cut!Mawsi is thrilled with our Christmas gift to them.Christmas breakfast brimming with pork and biscuits.

That's Fluffy Fluff Fluffbug sleeping in the crook of Lily's arm. Cat is weird!

Laughing at Lily's mechanical cockroach toy.

And now here I sit as the satellite guy installs a cable for our new tv (lot's of tv's in this post huh.) Mark, Sam, & Pops are in the mountains for the Men's Christmas Trip. Aggie's at a friend's, Lily's at her grandma's and I'm here babysitting a coondog.

Miss Jill is learning to be a house dog but she needs attended to like a toddler. It's very tiresome because I'm so out of practice! Crate training, potty training, don't leave me when I'm eating, I'm bored, Can I play with the cat?, can I eat the cat?, pet me, where's Mark?, where's the other dog?(camping with Mark,) wipe my feet when I come in from outside, whoops I peed on the porch....

I want to sit in the rocking chair, crap, I'm stuck in the rocking chair, help me off the rocking chair...Thank goodness for stuffable kong thingies. I swear to you, she just sat down beside me and farted 3 times. Fartingest dog I ever met. Husband, you owe me!!! And it snowed last night. Don't you hate when you have to go scrape your windshield and brush all the snow off your cow?

This is the view from my new bedroom. And we love it, don't we, yes, we do!

Better Than A Bratz Doll

'Tis The Season

Not that Season. Deer Season!

Time to locate that one special, strategically placed tree. The one with the most prehistorically giant poison ivy vine growing up it. It's itchy branches reaching out like an umbrella of poison berries over your head. Time to enjoy the irony of your little plastic safety glasses as you climb the tree with no safety harness. (The thing Mark's sitting in is the thing with which he is climbing btw. It is in two parts and he inches each one up and settles his weight onto it hoping it holds. Sorry if that is elementary to anyone reading.)

Time for me to lose my hunting license at 6am on the first day of hunting season so I can't carry a rifle into the woods. I can however don my gayest orange apparel, go out in the pouring rain, climb a jumbo steep hill, shimmy under the electric fence in the mud, and sit in the cold, cold rain with Mah Boy for his first ever first day of deer season.

And it was great! And way luckier than usual on a boy's (or girl's) first hunt ever. It was a very good shot though.

So I'm proud and happy. And Sam was, too, I think. And he immediately went into the house and cooked up some pumpkin chocolate chip muffins & hot tea.

Muffins.

And Hot Tea.

Deer Hunting, Muffins, and Hot Tea.

So there you have it, Sports Fans. I guess that's how we do it here in Hickory.

The Circus Is Coming To My Hometown!

First I'm going to admit that I did a google search for "animals that look like Sarah Palin."

Yep, I'm one of those people. But come on, that would've been funny a little. Plus I really like to enter weird searches into Google because I like to think about who might get to see what I searched for and hopefully they get a kick out of it. I'm thoughtful like that.

So, oh, and the only thing I found was a puppy dressed up like Sarah and it wasn't that funny. But I'll tell you what is funny, or at least interesting: TotallyLooksLike.com
Also not the reason for this post....

We're a stop on the Sarah Palin book tour! We are. Here in relative nowhere. At our Sam's Club.

Who decides these venues?

So what do you think? Should we go? I have a morbid curiousity, but is it enough to motivate me to head in to that kind of ...of...well, you know what I'm saying.
My hometown has a Stephen King vibe to it without the freak show coming to town, so the possibilities are endless.

But if I do go, and you catch me going rogue, please whap me with a rolled up newspaper and rub my nose it.

Does Your Face Hurt? 'Cause It's Killing Me.

No one has ever accused me of having flawless skin.
My relationship with pimples started in the fourth grade when my Mom tried to thwart the eruptions on my forehead by pinning my hair up tight with a barrette..... thereby showcasing all my pimples.

I remember so many battles waged against those wretched pustules. Over the counter stuff, prescription stuff, homemade stuff. Recommendations to put my own pee on my face. Picking, popping, and then panicking: Why the hell did I just butcher myself like that?!

It was either my 6th or 7th grade school picture and I was already having a bad hair day.( Ya, who wasn't having a bad hair day during the big AquaNet boom.) Add to that the dime-sized crater on my chin that refused to heal before picture day and you have a quintessential puberty moment. And captured on film with a baby blue and paint-splattered background! Not even my popped up collar could distract you from all that ugly goin' on. Thanks hormones!

So I eventually upgraded from the Noxzema's and the OxyClean's or whatever it is you can buy in the drugstores to lovely salon skin care products. I even managed to get a few facials like a real girl! Very nice. Who doesn't enjoy a well done facial?
I got all kinds of education on what not to do, what was causing the problems (maybe,) and so on.
But there was no big Before and After like you see on the infomercials. Just the skin in between the acne was in better condition.

And I'm not going to tell you that I ever found the answer. I found the products that I love to use. Found the routine that seems to cause the least troubles. And I just keep telling myself that this oily skin that's causing me zits now will keep me from getting wrinkles as quickly later.

But what I wanted to tell you about was my discovery of foundation primer! By Jove, it actually does something!

When I wash my face it has always shined like a new penny. Not in a youthful, dewy kind of way, but in a plastic-y, not so attractive way. Plus there's the uneven skin tones and that big hairy wart on the side of my nose. Kidding! But the primer really helps with that shininess and the unevenness.

Also, I don't like much makeup. I'm not skilled at it, have some vague goal in my head of the natural French standard of beauty (which I may have created in my own imagination,) plus I can't even get away with a little loose powder without Mark asking me why I have on so much makeup. He doesn't like it either. He insists on telling me I'm beautiful when I'm at my most undone. Darn that man!

But when I decided to give the primer a try I was super stoked to find that it really minimizes the shine without looking too matte. Plus my skin, which is very stuck up about moisturizers--it will only let me get away with a super light, spray on toner-type moisturizer--seems to enjoy it, too. It stays less shiny but more moist and fluffy without feeling congested.

And that's what I'm all about: not pissing off my face.

Oh, and it was not an expensive primer either. Bought it at Target, the brand that Kate Moss receives gobs of money to endorse. I was a little freaked out by its orangey color, but it goes on invisible.

So there you have it, Peeps. Beauty advise from the Pig Whispering Rat Smasher.
You're welcome!

I Killed A Rat With A Shovel And Other Weekend Doings

But first let me start with the post about the weekend before this one.

So Romantical

We handed temporary custody of our kids over to Mark’s grandparents last Tuesday night. That was in order for us to leave at around 4:30 Wednesday morning for my day and a half of out of town business doings. Mark came along for the ride, partly because he’s semi-free after the seasonal closing of the market, partly because we had a babysitter and a really nice hotel room at corporate rates. Don’t get excited though, my time was spent either in one intense class or meeting or other, or sleeping because the mental stress was exhausting. Stupid brain. Where’s the off button on that thing? Mark lounged about on the big plushy bed and ate chicken wings from room service.
Class ended at around noon on Thursday and I was giddy with freedom. Giddy, I tell you. I’d asked for Friday off, so I was going to live the good life for the next 3 ½ days.
Lunch with my husband at a restaurant we’d never been to, on a weekday: Now that’s livin’ the good life.
Taking the long way home and coming across a family owned apple cider press where we stopped to chat with the owners, bought homemade cider and apple butter, and got some really great ideas & connections for the farm market: Score. Check out this little dude.He's the grandson of the owners. There were 3 generations there working. He was adorable.
Friday, Saturday, still no kids at home. We called at least once a day to see if they want to come home or if the grandparents are weary. We just aren’t quite sure how to feel with them out of the house.
So what were we going to do with ourselves? We could go any number of beautiful places. Just get in the car and drive. Stay wherever we wanted. Mountain resorts. Bed and Breakfasteses. We had packed extra stuff just to be prepared. Wanted to make the most of the opportunity.
Thursday night and what do we decide to do? Well, on a fair and clear moonlit night such as it was, of course we went raccoon hunting. And we parked in the wrong spot and Mark fell down umpteen times. Blamed it on “barbed wire,” our quote of the night. We freaked ourselves out listening to weird noises from the woods: owls, coyotes, gas well equipment. And we talked and laughed and seriously, you are missing out if you don’t take walks in the woods at night when the moon is full.
Friday, what joyous slackitude. Putzing around, cleaning house together, and the obligatory horseback ride to pacify me. Then, that night, the highlight of the whole long weekend, more raccoon hunting. But it wasn’t the hunting that was all that incredible, it was how overwhelmingly beautiful it was. I’ll never be able to describe it and no picture could capture it, but I will tell you that the moon was huge and nearly full. We parked along the empty country road that leads from our house to Mas’ & Pops’ house, stepped over the guardrail and into a strange land.
We crossed the grass-covered breastworks of a flood control damn in that singular bright blue light of the moon. Everything was illuminated in the otherworldly glow; I imagined a sister planet to our own where this was their daylight.
It had been very warm during the day and remnants of the warm daytime breezes alternated with cool evening breezes. Cool, warm, cool, warm. I wondered if I was imagining it, but Mark felt it, too.
We rarely needed our flashlights, even in the thick of the woods. I swore oaths to myself that I should never again fail to go walk in the woods and fields when the moon was clear and bright. That I should drag our kids out to soak in it as well. I tried to absorb as much of that beauty into my brain as I could, store it away. I wanted to remember those breezes.
And it only got prettier. We came out of the woods at the top of the large hill to find perfectly groomed paths cut for pheasant and rabbit hunting. A road in the wilderness! A thing of beauty when you’ve just blazed through 6 foot tall thorn bushes. So we strolled in the moonlight. We let the dog hunt and run. We followed the path as it led us through the woods and down to the creek.
Eventually we called last hunt when Mark had to drag Jill out of a hole in the ground, and we walked down the middle of the road in the middle of the night to the van, another simple pleasure. No cars, no houses, just the country road, wide open spaces, and the moon.
We did some other stuff on our remaining days, went out to breakfast and dinner, bought some shoes, slept in, but nothing was so restorative as our time outdoors. Thank goodness we decided to stay home for our romantic long weekend. All the fancy hotels and mountain resorts ain’t got nothin’ on our home sweet home.

This Weekend's Fun

Unseasonably (and Un-Western Pennsylvania-y) warm and sunny weather all weekend. We even had the windows open. There were big plans to insulate the attic which were promptly postponed for a less beautiful weekend.

There was porch sitting. Pleasant BSing with Aggie's friend H's parents. We watched from the porch as our girls ran to and fro, playing with the barn kittens, climbing fence gates, and talking quietly amongst themselves as the travelled about attached at the hip. It does my heart good to see kids playing outside. Love it.

H is Aggie's beloved friend and she was finally, finally able to come over and stay the night. Good times.

We headed in to town for some Mexican food. (Pretty sure I didn't cook the entire weekend!) There's something fun about having an extra child every so often. As long as they're a good sport, and H definitely is one of those. Especially when she was excited to go coon hunting after supper.

We unbelievably found enough working flashlights for everyone, loaded up into the car and headed out to another lovely hunting spot. Everyone had fun. They had foot races in the dark. The night was starry and pleasant. We laughed and had ridiculous conversations. I think H is eager to go again. In fact, after talking to H's dad, Mark said it sounded like her whole family wanted to come! Fun!

Sunday we had a date with my grandmother to take a driving tour of her old stomping grounds. She spent much of her childhood in the county south of ours, out in the country, moving from one farmhouse or log cabin to the next.

We stopped at a general store that claims to be "The Oldest Active General Store In Southwestern Pennsylvania."

We stopped at a diner for lunch. I had an egg salad sandwich and a homemade apple dumpling. :)

And I learned lots of new things about my grandmother. Mark and I also agreed, between spending this Sunday with her and when we stopped over at her house just to chat during our child free weekend it only reconfirmed, she is one good looking woman. Even without makeup, she's still a knockout. You go, Nan! Let's hope I've got those fountain of youth genes.

The kids were well-behaved in spite of being dragged along on a Sunday drive. They snacked on sunflower seeds we bought at the general store, spitting the shells out the car window. They weasled a Webkinz a piece out of Mark when we'd stopped at Cracker Barrel for breakfast. Nan and I laughed when he came stumbling back from the register, receipt in hand. He said, "They told me they were $3 dollars!" Meaning the girls, but he just misunderstood when Lily said she only needed $3 on top of the $11 in her purse. Poor guy!

But it was a very lovely time and we still got home in time for the kids to take a hike and for me to play with the horses. I saddled Admiral up and took a spin the yard. He's been a little ornery for lack of being ridden and a little bit of work did him (and me!) good. Of course I let him take a break to get a drink from the pond and blow bubbles and splash with his front legs, pawing like a dog. I love those horses! Nikki I lunged a little bit. She does not enjoy it especially, but it was good interaction. Even though she did rear up on her hind legs like Hi Ho Silver once or twice. She and I are too alike sometimes...I love those horses!

I'm going to tell you about the rat in a second, but 2 things at work that we've been enjoying lately:

My new nephew, Crosby:

He is my brother's furkid, and he comes to work everyday to see his Aunties.He is a way better insurance mascot than a gecko.

And courtesy of one of our customers, the latest catch phrase: "Do you want to see something creepy?"

It was the Monday after Halloween and she stopped in to make a payment. She asked me the above question and I balked at her digging around in her purse. She produced a photograph for my inspection that I've tried to recreate for you here:

Her picture also had a flowery sofa in the background.

So I'm looking at this photo which is quite obviously a picture of someone's out of focus hair and living room, listening to her as she pointed out pictures of a ghost face and ghost dog. Even being generous I could not muster up enough imagination to see what the hell she was talking about. So I nodded and agreed and just waited for it to be over. Good news is, we can now at random say to one other with great enthusiasm "Hey....(wait til you get the other person's attention)...'you wanna see somethin' creepy?"

And, in conclusion, I killed a rat with a shovel. It was a first for me. Killing something other than during hunting. I've never done it in all the chicken, pig, and beef harvesting we've done. Never put something down because it was ill or irreparably injured. Nothing.

But as I walked into the barn to put my saddle away I came upon one of the kittens in a face off with a rat very close to it in size. The rat was squeaking at the kitten, and the kitten was just staring with an expression something along the lines of "Ew."

I said to the kitten "Git it," but I couldn't blame the kitten for running away. I was trying to think quickly. We'd put rat bait out very recently after rats had burrowed under the barn wall, dislodging the water hydrant, and I figured this rat had to be half-poisoned to be out in the daylight like it was.

I didn't want to kill it, but I knew that I should. I considered that it would likely be dying soon anyway, but said to myself 'what if it doesn't die. what if it recovers or is just a very bold rat.' And I still had trouble. I even thought about fetching Mark from the house to do it for me but I thought it might run off. So I reminded myself that they leave disease-causing urine all over everything including the feed our animals eat, so I picked up a shovel, poked at it a few times-it squeaked and viciously attacked the shovel, and then...wham, wham, wham, wham.

Imagine my disappointment when I told Mark of my accomplishment and he didn't even ask me to tell him the story!

The Things We Do For Love

The curtain opens on a dark and chilly evening with a harried mother scurrying through the big box store, her 5th store of the evening, in search of Halloween stuff for her children. She had mere hours before she left town on a business trip, hadn't packed a stitch of clothing, and scrambled at her only chance to do her motherly Halloween duties. Party snacks! Costumes!
Her mission, should she choose to accept it: For Aggie, something scary. For Lily, a witch costume with broom. Again. For Sam, nada. Zip. Which his mother couldn't understand because pre-teen Trick-Or-Treating was a highlight of her younger years, but whatev, as the kids say.

Behold her texts to her awaiting children*:
*I'm not sure if this is the same for everyone, but "j" in our family is our text code for any sort of "affirmative."

Me: u want costume? nanny said she’ll bring stuff for u to dress as a doctor. let me know.
Sam: naaaa no thanks
Me: ah ya party pooper!
Sam: aww come on!
Me: pooper!
Sam: unpooper!
Me: makes it look like theres a fat disgusting monster w arms and legs on you shoulders

Me: eh?
Sam: aggie said ya she wants to know if shes going to get a costume
Me: well i could get a cape. Or I could get a different mask which makes a complete zombie or werewolf?
Me: or a skull mask and cape?
Sam: aggie wants pics of the full zombie and werewolf if possible
Me: theyre kind of lame. But ok. R u sure you don’t want one? after i send pics tell her to hurry and pick cuz I need to get home.
Me: not too bad i guess
(unfortunately I don't have the werewolf costume picture.)

Sam:no thanks again. j
Sam:aggie wants the fat ugly monster on the shoulders
Me: for sure? cape or not? or jusr some pplain black cothes would prob be better
Sam: aggie says she wants the cape
Me: grrrrr. Ok :)
Sam: aggie wants to know if she can get both
Me: GRRRRRrrrrrr. i’ll try
Sam:aggie says GRRRrrrr
Me: j

Arms overflowing, the mother heads to her 3rd incompetent checker in an attempt to escape the big box Halloween hell, uncharacteristically snags a little bag of the Cheetos that turn you mouth blue when you eat them (a gross treat for the children that just made her costume shop via text for half an hour,) and returned home triumphant!
And scene.

When This Mountain Mama Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy

I don't do much preaching on this blog. I'm just no good at it. But that doesn't mean stuff doesn't get me riled. Especially since I have this crazylady attachment to our Appalachian Mountains. (I mean, two of my favorite words are Appalachian and Appaloosa, so you know I'm serious.)

I love my Appalachians and all their mountain kin, and naturally I am not cool with chopping their heads off and turning them into toxic waste dumps. Not here, not there, not anywhere.

Grist said it best: "Mountains Look Best With Their Tops On"

From iLoveMountains.org 's Flickr photostream (graphs, too.):
Before Mountaintop Removal Mining (Kentucky)---After---And so then you do the math---Versus Wind Farms which would be perfect! for those un-beheaded mountaintops----(I also love wind turbines!)And that's not even taking into account the jobs that would be created (more) and the environmental impact (duh) and the people who live there not being poisoned (reason enough by itself.) So, you know, you don't have to be a rocket surgeon to see what's what here.

Save Coal River Mountain from Mountaintop Removal Mining

So, if you're feelin' it, you can follow the widget over yonder to join in my resounding "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!"

Country Fried Weekend

Bee on my windshield. Kitten in a hole in the barn. 'Coon hunters. Raccoon hunters, if you please. All about a Saturday night!

' Coon Dog in a cargo van. Treeing Walker Coonhound. Code name: Jill. Very expensive GPS tracking collar.

Treed. 2 raccoons in a gigantic tree.

She is craazy for the raccoons.

Eh. I thought this would turn out better. All eyes in the top of the tree.Um. The brutal part. I spared you the worst. But she earned it.

Coon dog as lap dog? She's a first in our family. Sunday, fun day. Wood choppers. Log splitters.

Now that's what I call a family photo.
I also call this a family photo. Log splitter serving as camera tripod.

I didn't have to ask Mark twice to pose with his chainsaw.