the trouble with things that grow...

is that weeds grow much faster than the things you want to grow. for instance, burdocks. those proliferate and an alarming rate, and our back pasture is filled with them. and of course, the horses only want to graze around the burdocks. there's plenty of grass about, but apparently there is more flavor to the grass by the burdocks. thus, their beautiful manes are full of burdocks. i have decided to cut them down before attempting to comb their manes, lest i get it all out and they go right back and get full of burs again.

that being said, i just spent the last hour outside, trying to cut the stupid things down, and succeeded in cutting down a few; but also succeeded in getting a large and painful blister on my finger.

hopefully, i can get the rest done tonight, when clay goes to bed, and tomorrow. then... the fun part. rounding up the horses and convincing them that it is fun to stand still and get brushed.

the two yearlings are still getting halter broke, so we have some work to do. and they don't like to be separated.

so nick is working on making a bigger round pen, one that they won't knock over, get hurt in, or hurt me in, and when that's done, i'm gonna be out in the round pen every night. now that i don't have to study for that test, i can finally do it and not feel guilty about neglecting my studies if i tend the horses or my horses if i studied.

at any rate, i need to get out there.

important

echoe is still in the hospital, although she is getting much better. please keep praying for her. she has a goal of getting out in two weeks, and had a day pass for Saturday and Sunday and those both went well. so that's great. she's able to walk a little bit, too, so that's alot of improvement from when she first went in! so thanks for your prayers -- there were SO many people praying for her, and she firmly believes that the prayers were what has helped her get through this.

so, i would also like you to keep a little boy named milo in your prayers. you can read his story at www.carepages.com his page name is milojewell -- one word. he has a rare form of brain cancer which the doctors say is not cureable; right now they are doing chemo, but it is just to prolong his life, it is very unlikely that it will cure him.

so if you pray, please pray for a miracle for this little boy and his parents. he is a little younger than clay. i can't imagine going through this, and my heart aches for his parents. he also has a myspace site; www.myspace.com/prayformilo. there are more updates on the carepages site, though.

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I passed the NCLEX Practical Nursing Exam!!!! Yeah!!!! i'm so jazzed. now i can work as a nurse. wooot!

why metal ladders were invented...

we had the mother of all thunderstorms last night, and i am almost positive our chimney was struck by lightning. after a very close and very LOUD thunderclap, i went into the kitchen and noticed that it smelled sooty. like a chimney. so i went outside and didn't see anything. well, nothing besides sheets of rain coming down with hurricane like force. but... nothing was burning, so i went inside and tried to study.

so when we went to bed, i noticed that the chimney in our bedroom was cracked... and that the plaster surrounding it had wet patches on it, so i knew it was leaking. it it definitely was not there before.

nick however, did not think that lightning had struck the chimney. so i decided to climb on the roof, look at the top and prove him wrong. there was an old wooden ladder leaning on the side of the house and i proceeded to climb it.

suddenly, there was a loud snap, and my body instantly followed every law of gravity. my shins smacked on the rung below and i stood there panting, hanging on for dear life to the rung above me. i regained my footing and stupidly thought. the other rungs look sturdy enough, they can't all be bad, right?

no. not right.

this time, i get up to the next rung and that too, snaps, about as easily as a chicken bone. again, gravity takes over. this time, i bang my thigh on the ladder and decide that i don't give a rat's behind whether or not the chimney was struck. my legs hurt this time, and i go limping inside.

nick looks at me and asks, "well?"

"well," i say, through gritted teeth, because i'm in alot of pain, "if the flipping ladder hadn't broke on me, i might have been able to find out."

he dares to laugh.

needless to say, i have a few nice bruises.

me -- 0 : ladder -- 1

more pics from the mall of america

we went there with some friends. my friend, jilly is taking the picture, and her kids are in the pic with us. :) we had tons of fun.

clay is trying to consume my smoothie. he was at about his limit for social interaction that day. within 10 minutes of leaving the mall, he had fallen asleep.

i love the mall of america! we (a group of friends in chat) had our first IRL "chat" meet up there, and i have kept in touch with almost all of the people i met since then.

I just used the term "IRL" (in real life). yes, i'm a nerd for actually knowing what that means... and using it. but i'm a cool nerd.

why ppl don't have pets...

so cody is getting old and i think she is deaf. well, last night, nick called her to come in and she didn't come... didn't come and he couldn't see/find her anywhere. so because his shoes are already off, he reasons that i should go out and look for her. i take the flashlight, only to realize that the battery is dead because of forgot to recharge it. well.. almost dead. the light would work for like ... 5 seconds, and then die. so i would shine it quick and try to peer into the black gloom of darkness that was our yard.

nothing.

nick is yelling, "cody!!!"

i'm yelling, "cody!"

no cody.

so i'm stumbling around the yard, but its pitch black outside and i can't see where to put my foot, let alone, if a great big dog is hiding somewhere. i manage not to trip and go back to the house. i tell nick that i can't see anything, so looking is pointless.

he's coming out to help at this point... and we both stumble around... nothing

finally, after about half an hour of this, i hear something. its the tinkling of her dog tag, cuz she's shaking. a few seconds later, she emerges from the shadows between the two garages... acting totally innocent.

"what?" her look seemed to say.

nice...

i love dogs.

i'm no handy manny

yeah, so my attempt at the round pen didn't go any better. flicka went in, decided she wanted to get out, leaned on the fence until it collapsed and calmly walked through. and i was watching.

training them is going to be a blast.

fun at the mall

took clay to the mall of america the other day and went to the park and went on some of the rides. he loved it. so you can't see him in the last one, but i swear, he's there. he's trying to honk the horn. nick says it looks like i'm on it by myself. :P

too smart for his own good

so today, clay is playing in the living room while i'm on the computer. all of the sudden, it gets quiet. too quiet. so i check. clay has taken his little blue chair, put it next to the gate, and is standing on the chair, getting ready to climb over the gate.

when he realizes i have caught him, he looks at me in total surprise like, "how did i get up here?"

so now he's learned another great new trick. yay.

do it yourself jobs... and things that can go wrong

so nick put up a temporary round pen for the horses, and i told him how big i thought it should be. as usual, i was pathetically off on my calculations, and it was not big enough. but, i thought it might be a good idea to leave it up so the horses could get used to it.

again, apparently i was wrong, because they knocked it over in the middle of the night. so last night, i go out to fix the thing, and make it bigger. i discover that my normally intelligent husband for some reason used garden stakes (you know, those 5' tall greenish plastic stakes for tomato plants?) to hold up the ropes between the fence posts. that was his way of saving money, but not apparently, for making it actually stand up to 500-800 lb animals that didn't want to be in there.

so i took those out, did some adjusting, and we have a round pen again. in theory. i haven't used it yet. it was 10pm by the time i finished the stupid thing and too late to get a horse trotting about in it. all i could see of them was their dark sillouettes, moving silently across the field in the moonlight.

so we'll find out today. that should be fun.

another thing that was a recent do-it-yourself job was a clothesline. nick absolutely refused to let me buy one, stating that it was much easier to just make one that could be off the wall of the house, and would take "seconds" to put up. he decided something that could be stretched across when i needed to hang clothes would look much neater than a permanent line.

only problem is, he hung the line about a foot and half higher than i am. i asked him how i was supposed to reach it to hang clothes.

"use a ladder," he said. he was serious!

so picture this. i'm naturally clumsy, and if there's something to fall off of, i'll probably discover (unwillingly) how to do it. so me, on a ladder, trying to balance a basket of clothes? i don't think so.

i so hate tall people.

so now, every time i want to hang clothes, i'm going to have to get him to put it up for me. which he'll probably not be too keen on if there's a game on. which is why i wanted the permanent line in the first place.

don't get me wrong, i think he's sweet for doing it, but i just wish i could actually reach it, as that would be much more helpful.

this is why all do it yourself books should be banned, and then burned. it would save people like me from the acute distress of having their husbands make things for them that they can't use, because it "saves money."

and why am i on the computer at 7 am?

someone decided to wake up before 6am. no chance of him going back to sleep either. wide awake, chattering away, and very excited about getting up and starting his day. so we're up. i'm having a coffee... maybe two, but we're up.

the joys ... and trials... of potty training

so we've been having clay use the potty for awhile, and he's been doing really well, but still obviously can't tell us when he has to go. so its us catching him.

but lately, he's been pulling at his nappy when he has to have a poo. which is cool. except when nick says to me, as he's lying on the couch, watching the game:

"clay's been pulling at his nappy. i think that might mean he had to have a poo, because he needs to be changed."

i'm in the kitchen, washing dishes. so i come to the living room to check, and sure enough, he's already gone.

"why didn't you tell me when he was actually pulling his nappy?" i ask.

"i didn't know that's what he was doing," nick says.

well. now you know. not quite as bad as last poo mishap, so i'd say we're improving.

so much for fresh banana bread

i made fresh banana bread the other day. its lovely smell permeated the kitchen. it was heavenly. the next morning, i cut a piece for clay for breakfast, and put peanut butter on it. then i went into the living room to have my morning cup of coffee. when i went back into the kitchen to make myself a piece, i couldn't find it.

"that's odd," i thought. i was sure i had left it out. then i noticed that the floor in front of the counter was dirty, and was annoyed because i had just swept and mopped the night before.

"what is that anyway," i wondered. and then i realized what it was. a great big pile of bread crumbs. where was the rest of the bread?

i looked at cody, nick's huge malamute, who looked back at me guiltily. she's tall enough, that she can reach the food on counters. if it smells good enough, she considers it fair game. in fact, one year she stole a pumpkin pie off of the dryer, where it was cooling.

another time, she stole a double batch of chocolate cookies that were cooling on the table. a whole friggin double batch!!!!

nick's solution to his kleptomaniac dog?

"don't leave food out where she can get it, honey..."

right. maybe i should just start hanging it in bags from treetops, like you do to keep bears from stealing your food.

knowing her, she'd figure out a way to get it. she always seems to find a way to get what she wants. in fact, most of the time, the way she moves, you'ld be convinced that she was old and arthritic and feel sorry for her. that is, until she sees a rabbit. then, she is able to get off the floor in a single bound, and clear the space between her and the rabbit in a matter of seconds. no joint stiffness there!

but, if you want her to go outside and answer the call of nature when its ten below zero out, she'll take ages to get up, then move slowly and stiffly across the floor, eliciting your sympathy and making you feel guilty for making her out to go to the bathroom.

i'm convinced its an act. most of the time, she limps around stiffly, putting on the "tired old woman with arthritis" act, but when no one is around, she does things she shouldn't be able to do. thus, when you come back into the kitchen and half of your pantry is missing, she is lying on the floor, looking innocent, and you wonder if you're going crazy.

or maybe that's her way of telling me i need to take the lower fat option.

what they DON'T tell you in those "what to expect books"...

so clay had a bit of a diaper rash, mostly from all this heat and humidity. so, like a good mom, i did what the books said -- i took of his diaper and let him air out for a while. so he's running around, sans diaper, and as happy as can be.

then he walks up to nick, stands there, poops, and hands a piece of poo to nick. nick of course does what every great dad would do -- he panicked and yelled frantically for me to come and clean it up.

"OH NO!! HE'S POOPED ON THE FLOOR!!" he informs me, as if i can't see it.

so yeah. what they don't tell you when they give you these wonderful nuggets of wisdom (no pun intended) is that perhaps your whole house and furniture should be coated with a protective covering of stain-proof plastic.

but that answers another question i had:

are we ready for potty training?

no... i think not.