stuck

clay has started saying the word "stuck". he says, "uck". for everything he wants us to get him out of. he is "uck" in the high chair when he's ready to get down, and he's "uck" behind the gate when he wants to be on the other side.

he just started saying "ah keen" for "all clean" now. i had to give him a bath because he had cottage cheese for lunch and it is difficult, if not impossible to wash off with a cloth. it sticks to the cloth and then when you try to wipe him clean, the pieces on the cloth go right back on him. ughhhh.. but he loves it, so what can i do?

he also says, "up", "out", and "'shat" for "what's that?".

speaking of clay, my little monster is whining on the other side of the gate. i think he wants mama.

ciao for now

i've got a fat lip

no, i didn't get collagen injections. this was much cheaper, albeit slightly more painful.

we were at a family reunion this weekend, and so at the hotel, i was trying to get clay calmed down and to sleep, so thought we could cuddle on the bed while nick was brushing his teeth. well, clay threw his head back and caught me right in the mouth, and i cut my lip with my tooth. yeah that felt great.

its too bad that boy didn't come with an insurance policy. just the other day, he was playing and threw his head back (it was nick this time) and gave nick a good old crack across the nose. nick said he heard a crack, but not sure if he broke it. it was swollen and he had trouble breathing through his nose and it hurt, so yeah, probably.

maybe clay's just accident prone. he tripped today, walking up the steps and bumped his head! he's got this red mark in the center of his forehead. looks really cute. :P that's my kid! so, at the moment, clay's got a big red mark on his forehead, nick's got a fat nose, and i've got a fat lip. people are gonna look at us and think we got attacked by wild squirrels or someting. (i say wild squirrels because where we live, the chances of getting mugged are about as likely as the easter bunny coming to dinner).

at any rate... i am worn out from my weekend of fun (and subsequent abuse). i think i'm going to go to bed.

ciao for now.

why do people like animals?

i'm thinking of getting bumper sticker i saw. it says, "i love animals... they're delicious"

now why would i be so heartless, you ask? i'll tell you why:

so i finally got my garden planted. i love gardening, and it takes me a lot of time to figure out my garden plot, select the plants and seeds and plant them all. then i cover every thing with mulch and baby everything along, waiting for results. now mulching takes awhile, especially when you have to rake it all up, and you have a large garden.

so, imagine my irritation when i discover that something has eaten my cabbage --my beautiful red cabbage that i was going to grow this year. going to grow, anyway. the other morning, i went to check on my garden, and where the cabbage had been, nothing but the bare, naked stalks were left.

was it a rabbit? one of our dogs? i don't know, but i seriously thought about setting out mouse traps by the veg, and then we'd soon discover the culprit. but i couldn't bear the thought of some poor rabbit hopping around with a broken foot, even though i did like my cabbage. but i bought rabbit wire and put it around the garden. then i thought i would check on the morning glories i had planted by my arbor... and found a nice big old mole hole instead of my flower. how rude was that? i mean, eat someone else's flowers, you stupid mole!!

oh, and someone (some animal that is) at my broccoli and cauliflaurer too. so everything is surrounded with rabbit wire at the moment. i don't think i'll make it into better homes and gardens this year. gee what a shame, i was so expecting that i would. (insert laugh here)

not all gardening woes are caused by animals, though...

i bought a stupid sprinkler from walmart, which promised to cover a wide area... and it barely covered a 6 ft radius. i think our dog covers a larger radius when she pees! well, anyway, after wrestling with the stupid thing and trying to get the garden watered, i gave up and bought another one at the local hardware store. i paid more for it, but it works. so i can't complain.

yet.

so this sprinkler has a phenominal spraying power. in fact, i got soaked from head to toe, trying to get it in the right place. every time i would try and move the stupid thing, it would spray me and get me soaked, no matter how hard i tried to time things.

but i must admit, once i got it in the right place, it did a great job of watering the garden (and everything else in the surrounding area).

so a few people drove by in that time... i'm sure i gave them a good laugh. imagine me, if you will, running around wearing my old grey fat pants that i wore when i was 9 mos preggers with clay. they are horribly stretched out, and just look awful. the pants are soaked, my sweatshirt is soaked, and my hair is dripping wet and plastered to my head. talk about making an impression.

i hope those plants appreciate it.

email woes

my email isn't working! in fact, i can't get into any of my yahoo accounts, because i was having trouble with my instant messenger, so went to change the password. brilliant idea, considering what happened next.

the fact that i had registered with an alternate email (so they can send the new password to the alternate email) didn't seem significant to me until i realized that my alternate email was my old work email... an email that no longer existed.

i spent a few frustrating hours trying to figure out how to fix this from yahoo's "help" section, and finally found an email address to contact for help. i immediately got an automated reply sent to our home email... telling me stuff i'd already read (and which also didn't help me).

so i sent a strongly worded email venting my frustration to the hapless folks at yahoo who were stupid enough to send me another email, cheerfully asking me to give feedback on my situation.
i could look at it this way. although i've lost a million addresses, and it will take ages to get them all back...

i was getting a ton of spam every day, so that's sorted now. guess i won't be getting any more spam.

*disclaimer*

nick insists that the horse i call flicka is really "three-socks". he says its not fair that i get to name them all the names.

he also thinks "mcguyver" is a better name for shaggy cow, not chewy (chewbacca the wookie from star wars), like i thought.

a vote, my faithful readers? which sounds better? mcguyver or chewie? nick's reasoning is that "chewie" doesnt' sound scottish enough. but of course... wookies don't come from scotland!

nice surprise

i was shopping at target with clay the other day, and i ran into someone i hadn't seen since in almost 16 years. we'd been friends a kids, so it was nice to see her again. she was wearing a sling to carry her baby in, and so we got to talking about slings, and i found out she makes them! she even has her own website! ( http://www.gashibaby.com ) ("gashi" means "mother" in Ojibwe)

so anyway, i am so getting one! i am very pumped. okay, i know clay is like, 18 mos, but i've been wanting one, and he is very clingy right now when i'm trying to get stuff done. so it will be a lifesaver.

plus, if i ever have another one...

here's to you, john denver

"some day i'll be a farmer, workin the land... some day i'll be a farmer, work with my hands..." or something like that. wasn't it john denver that sang that? i think so. my mom used to sing that to me. anyway, he made farm life sound romantic.

while we don't live on a farm we do have farm animals, and the things they do are not always romantic. i wonder if john denver ever had a muscle pulled in his arm because he was trying to take a deranged horse to a separate pen after it attempted to chase a steer through the fence that he had just spent hours building. work with my hands, indeed. blisters and all.

so yeah.... update on that steer. we calmed him down. in fact, after a week, he was eating out of our hands and letting us pet him and was completely "chilled", as my father in law said.

nick and his dad spent the week putting up an electric fence to keep the steer in; and, like everything in life, it proved to be more work than it appeared. the welds (on the fence itself) kept getting caught, and the tension would snap back and jerk whoever was pulling the fencing. great fun. however, they finally managed to get it done.

so, after a week, we decided to let him out of the pen, and let him into the field with the horses. Now, while he had been in his pen, the horses had been quite friendly, and gave no hint of trouble. even frisky, the one with all the attitude, seemed fine.

yeah, right. that was until we let the steer out of the pen. this is where frisky calmly walked up to him and promptly bit the steer on the butt. this resulted in the steer bellowing and taking off, with frisky madly in pursuit. hidalgo and flicka ran behind, and the cow shot off down the field, making his way as fast as could towards the fence (where he'd broken out before).

i yell at frisky to stop, but he ignores me completely and keeps chasing the steer. meanwhile, nick and i are running towards both of them, and nick's dad is sitting with the four-wheeler at the top of the hill by the fenceline, waiting to head off the steer if he came up there. the steer sees the four wheeler and goes the other way, so we run after them, trying in vain to stop frisky. finally we catch up to them and the steer goes one way and nick manages to head off frisky so he can't chase him anymore. no matter; the steer keeps running, as though he's competing in the olympics.

i throw the rope to nick and he manages (after several wasted attempts) to get it around frisky, and i run huffing and puffing up the field after the steer. as i'm running after him, i'm realizing belatedly that should i run into him, he might be upset, and charge me, and then i'd be the run running for my life. but the steer takes off towards the other end of the field and hides in the shelter of the trees.

he's stopped at least, and seems calmed down, but i decide not to take my chances and get any closer and come down the hill, watching as nick tries to lead frisky to the smaller pen. however, frisky does not want to go, and put on a show worthy of any wild west rodeo. nick is quite grumpy after he gets the horse in the pen, and is nursing a sore arm. however, we realize that we will have to separate the field, and so instead of being finished, we find we have another job.

so all day saturday, we build that fence, and think that we are once again done.

sunday morning (happy mothers day) rolls around and the divider fence is totally knocked flat. apparently the deer just ran right through it. must have been a bit of a shock to them. so... back to square one. we had to go fix the fence and get some stronger materials to reinforce it. then nick, wanting to make sure it wasn't trampled again, but these big bright red flags on the fence. yeah right, now the deer will just think there's a circus in town.

seriously, though, it must have worked because the fence hasn't been trampled. at any rate, everything seems to be fine now.

then again, who knows what will be happening a few weeks from now.

the catcher in the rye

well, after two weeks of searching and driving through woods and fields (and catching nothing more than wood ticks), we finally caught our steer... with a lot of help along the way.

it was a week before anyone even saw the stupid thing, and then he was like this evasive ghost, appearing for a minute and then disappearing again. I called a few people, and really didn't get very far in finding someone who would be able to catch him. i called one guy with a tranqualizer dart, who thought he might do it, but seemed very non-committal. he actaully told me to just shoot this one, and start over... but maybe get two instead of one, so they wouldn't run away. yeah. right.

i finally was able to hire some guys who round up cattle on horseback. they came over with their horses and were finally able to catch him. he was wild and terrified and looked like a great, red, shaggy demon steer.

so at work, someone asks me what i did this weekend... and i told him. he laughs, and pats me on the shoulder.

"you're so full of it," he says, and rolls his eyes. "guys roping your steer on horseback... yeah, right".

he totally didn't believe me. no, i have a pretend steer, you moron.

at the moment, the subject of this post (the steer, that is) is safe and sound in the cattle trailer until we get his pen built. but he is a lot calmer than he was! he doesn't ram the walls when you come up the trailer at least. so that's a positive start.

at any rate, this should be an adventurous summer.

the colt kicked me in the butt the other day, when i tried to catch him. so we have some work to do. fortunately, with the big old butt i inherited from being a mom, it didn't hurt that much. see... big butts are good for something.

so, i'm off until i have another adventure. hopefully it won't involve me coming into contact with any hooves... or horns for that matter... or mice. no mice would be good.

hmmmm.... maybe i shouldn't be living in the country then. i'm such a dork. buying big shaggy cows that are half-mad is not exactly the way to ensure that you'll remain injury free.

this should be an interesting summer.

of mice and men

the fun never ends around here. the other day, i was horrified to see a mouse sitting on the chair in the bathroom, as if he owned the place. he just looked at me and didn't even flinch. just stared at me, challenging me to make him move.

so, i got my trusty mice killing machine -- the cat (the one that actually kills the mice), and let him into the room, and shut the door. immediately a wild chase ensued, around and around the room. lots of scrambling and crashing into things and wild squeaking. except the mouse kept running towards me, so i thought it might be a good idea to leave. except that if i left, the door would open and the mouse would escape too.

so my clever idea to trap the mouse trapped me as well. so i sat on the toilet and tried to stay out of the way of the wild chase. suddenly, i had the horrible realization that something was running up my pants legs and the cat was jumping wildly at my feet. the mouse had crawled right up my pants legs and was actually climbing my leg! oh the horror. immediately, i started screaming and doing a little wild dance, trying to shake the mouse out of my pants. i was afraid he'd bite me, so i didn't want to hit him, and afraid to take my pants off to get him out, only to have him run higher...

so i danced and screamed and looked like i was doing some dance at a ho-down. finally, i managed to shake him out, and he ran and hid behind the cat's water dish, terrified. i'm not sure who was more frightened by the incident, me or him. i imagine it was quite a surprise to climb up a tunnel and have it started dancing and screaming and realize it was alive. hmmm...

so, the cat couldn't catch it and i caught it (carefully) in a jug, and let it outside. i figured after his brave fight for survival, he deserved to live. just as long as he doesn't come into my house again.