Further proof that I am not really a grownup

I have to admit that I was beginning to feel pretty smug. I was all the way into January, and I hadn't gotten sick. I was pleased that I was taking my vitamins, being healthy, washing my hands enough, blah blah blah.  To make it worse, J had been fighting off a cold for weeks.  Well, Karma can be a real *itch, and she smacked me down but good.

So, last Monday, I was feeling the tiniest bit of a sore throat, but didn't think it was any big deal- I blamed it on the smog/inversion in the air.  Then I woke up Tuesday. UGH.  So sick with a cold. Absolutely miserable.

Wednesday was even worse- by day's end my right ear was starting to hurt, and my voice was starting to go.

Thursday, I had no voice and my ear hurt even worse.

Friday, I managed to drag myself to a closing, even though I couldn't talk at all, and I was completely distracted by the pain in my ear.  I finally went to an instacare Friday night, hoping they could "fix" what I was sure was an ear infection.  The doctor didn't seem terribly impressed, but did say it was infected and gave me some antibiotics.  I mentioned that I'd started to notice a little bit of fluid coming out of my ear, and he asked if I'd been using ear drops. I said I had, but that there was more coming out than I'd ever put in. He noted that it was unusual for an adult to get an ear infection, and even less common for their eardrum to burst.

Saturday morning I woke up with all kinds of scary creepy goo coming out of my ear, and almost completely deaf on that side. Greeeeat! To make it even funner, my balance was completely gone, and I had a pretty good case of vertigo.

The weekend passed much the same way.

On Monday, I had a friend take me to an ear/nose/throat specialist, who confirmed that yes, my eardrum had burst, and yes, it probably had been really painful. He gave me stronger antibiotics (he very diplomatically said that he disagreed with the course I'd been given) and antibiotic ear drops.

I'm finally feeling comfortable driving- vertigo is pretty much gone unless I turn my head too quickly. Loud noises still bother me a lot, and I'm still mostly deaf and in some pain. But, I am starting to think I'll recover.  The doctor feels that my deafness is temporary.

Feeding the cows

I have to admit that I am quite the slacker cow mom. The cow guy has made it very, very easy. He loaded all of the hay he bought into the loft of the barn, bought an enormous tank (like small pool sized) for water, a big heater for it, and a big trough at the edge of the barn. He's got a pretty nice system to feed/water the cows. Because they're a herd, it's impossible to just feed his, or just feed mine. So, he's been feeding/watering all of the cows. He's said that when he runs out of hay, we'll move our hay over to the loft and go from there. We've got it covered pretty good with a tarp, so hopefully it'll be safe from the elements.

Anyway, yesterday, he called and said he was going out of town for the weekend, and would I be willing to feed/water the cows? Sure!  I've been feeling guilty that he's been going there twice a day and doing all the work. I definitely don't feel like he's getting the fair end here- doing all of the work. So, I jumped at the chance to feed them.

The cows were pretty excited to see me arrive to feed them. Bali, the bali steer was standing lengthwise in the trough, which made getting hay into it rather tricky. You can see Casanova on the far right, which Tbone right next to him. Tbone is still a pretty little guy, but he is getting bigger. He looks tiny compared to everyone else because he's several weeks younger.

I started to toss the alfalfa down, and hoped that Bali would get out of the way. Nope. None of the cows were terrible interested in moving, so by the end, Bali looked like a green monster.

Mermaid Costume

My seven year old, S, is obsessed with mermaids. She loves the show "H2O" and watches it frequently. When she swims, she tries to swim like a mermaid. When she bathes, she pretends to be a mermaid. She desperately wants to BE a mermaid.

For Christmas this year, I decided to make her a mermaid costume that I'd seen online.

It was going to be a little tricky, because I wanted it to be a surprise.  I bought a monofin from amazon. I bought 3 yards of swimsuit fabric at the store. I want to make a matching swimming suit to go with it. I borrowed an old one piece pattern from my mom, but I'm thinking I'd like to have it be a tankini. But, I'll admit that 3 yards was definitely overkill on fabric, so I could easily make 4 or 5 swimming suits with the leftover fabric.

Then, I got a large piece of butcher paper, and told S that I was going to trace her body on the paper so she could make a life sized mermaid version of herself to color as a fun activity. She thought it was a great idea, and had a blast making her mermaid.  She made her mermaid, cut it out and decorated it.

When she was distracted with other things, I measured her waist and cut out an elastic waistband from that. She was busy coloring her mermaid tail, so she didn't really even think about what I was measuring her waist for and why.

After she went to bed, I folded the bottom fin up, since I'd just guessed how that would be shaped. Then, I laid the monofin and the mermaid paper on my fabric, and cut it out like the directions. I used a sharpie, and drew about an inch bigger than the paper, and a little bit less on the thinner part of the fin.













Sewing it up was surprisingly fast- I had it sewn within 10 minutes. 

 Christmas morning came, and I was so excited to see her reaction.  She was just as thrilled as I'd hoped she would be. She can't wait to go swimming while wearing the fin. I plan to be right by her side because the mermaid swimming can be kind of tricky, and frankly, I am not sure she'll actually want to do much swimming with it on. For now thought, it's been a lot of fun for her.

Crazy Days

I have been running around so busy that I'm actually a little surprised that I'm sitting down to blog. The odds are excellent that I won't even finish this post before I'm off and running around.

I have three active buyers and one listing right now. One of the buyers will close (hopefully) next week. Another will hopefully close mid-January (though they texted today that they're thinking about backing out of this deal), and my listing hopefully by the end of January. I was hoping for end of December, but feeling less optimistic about that.

I'm also busy volunteering in my kids' classes, sitting on the boy scout committee, being a girl scout leader, and working on Christmas gifts. I was up late last night baking cookies for K to take to school for some school party.

Today is a great example of how things have been.

7:30am: Door knocks. M's carpool is here, but he overslept and isn't ready, so they leave without him.  I rush to get everyone ready, and we run M to school.

Then, I ran over to my listing- it's a vacant house, and the bank never winterized the house. It's been in the teens at night, so I'm worried about the pipes freezing. I have a space heater in there that I'm running occasionally to keep it warmer.

8:45: take the little kids to school.

9:45: eye doctor appointment for me. They dilate my eyes, which I hate.  It also means that I can't read at all.

11:30: get Z from school. Ask him about his day, which sounds uneventful. Run to the grocery store to get stuff for lasagna for dinner.

12:10: Take S to the dentist- her remaining lateral incisor chipped and started bleeding, so we needed to pull the tooth. She was very brave, considering how long that root was.

12:45: Check S back into school. While in the office, the principal stops me and asks how Z is feeling. Ummm, what? Why are you asking that way? He then tells me that two boys got into a little bit of a scuffle today, and Zac ended up getting knocked over, and then they fell on top of him. Well. Ok then. This is very interesting considering he'd told me earlier that the day was uneventful.

1:30 Take Z to my MIL's so that I can go volunteer in S's class.

2:00-3:30: Volunteer in S's class. This is somewhat difficult, given that I still can't read, and I look like a morphine addict with my dilated eyes and sunglasses. Then we pick up Z from Grandma's.

4:10: Go for allergy shots. With the way my day was going, I expected one of us to have a systemic reaction, but all went smoothly.

4:15: Get a phone call from J that he'll be home from work late, and "the civic will be in tow." Uh oh. Turns out the skid plate fell off the car ahead of him, and he didn't have time to swerve to miss it. It sheared through the front bumper, and destroyed the radiator and the fans. Excellent.

4:50: Vision returns to normal. Yay!

5:00: Stop at the store to buy a Christmas gift with two kids acting like crazy people.

6:30: make waffles for dinner. Lasagna plan didn't work out. Maybe Saturday?

7:30: go to a quick birthday party for a friend's daughter.

8:45: wrestle all kids off to bed.

9:45: bake brownies to take to the teachers tomorrow.

10:30: work on quilt that's a birthday gift.


I am ready for Christmas break!

Thanksgiving

Normally, we try to go to both J's family and my family for Thanksgiving. We don't necessarily eat at both houses. But, each year, one side has priority, and we just try to fit the other side in. We've always been able to get it to work out until this year.

This year, both feasts were set to begin at the exact same time, and my inlaws had "custody". My food assignment was all of the pies and the rolls. So, I didn't want to bake all of those pies and then not be around to eat them.  We made the difficult decision to not see my family for Thanksgiving this year, which was really sad. However, I really like my inlaws a lot, and enjoy their company, so it was a very fun day, which was exactly what I expected. My mother in law got out her (actual SILVER SILVER) silverware, which was awesome for me. I now desperately want actual silver silverware. Guess I better get working on being fabulously wealthy, since my SIL and I had a quick battle over who got the silverware when MIL dies (yeah, I'm super polite), and I admitted that the daughter definitely gets precedence.  Oh well.







Pies this year included homemade pumpkin (including pumpking that I had baked and pureed), cherry, apple, and razzleberry. The girls helped cut out the stars for the cherry pie.

Then, I did an old fashioned apple pie (J's favorite).

The kids were really wanting to help, so I made a bit of extra filling, and let S & Z make their own "mini" apple pies.

The kids were nearly out of their minds with excitement, and Z was trying to decide what to wear. I told him that it's a nice idea to try and dress up a little for Thanksgiving. He thinks for a moment, and then declares that he'll wear his Darth Vader costume, because it's his best outfit, in his opinion. I managed to keep a straight face. Sort of.

After dinner was over, we had a little fun with Z's outfit and his light saber, and had him pose like he was going to carve the turkey. He is such a fun kid to have around.










I have to admit that although I was sad not to see my family, it was nice to not be rushing from place to place, stressing over whether we spent enough time with each side of the family.

Dead Meat

We agreed to let KC, the guy who sold us our calves, pasture some of his cows in our field. It's worked out beautifully for us because he helped us find a great deal on our hay for the year. Even better, because of the deal he's worked out with my neighbor, he's providing the water for the whole herd for the winter. Considering this was one of my top worries in keeping a couple steers, I'm thrilled. He's also been keeping everyone fed. I've offered to help, but for now, he's liking doing it on his own, and says he'll just pull from our haystack when the time comes. Yes, folks, I have a haystack now.

One of the steers KC introduced to the herd freaked me out more than a little. I think he came a bit sick, and his left side seemed a bit distended. KC put a valve INTO THE SIDE OF THE CALF and that helped reduce the bloat. Which was good. On the bad side, this cow had poo oozing out of the valve and running down his side at all times. As a novice cow raiser, this freaked me right out. Here was yet another thing I didn't realize I had to worry about. I guess this is called "bloat" and isn't completely unheard of. Great.

Let me interject here by saying that KC is one of the biggest animal lovers I've met- he's realistic about what happens in livestock, but he seems to love taking on the tricky cases, and bringing animals back from the brink of death.

So, Oozy (as I privately called him) was actually a fairly friendly guy, and knew I had treats and would always come when I came to give my cows a little something. I felt guilty because his gut was really gross and scary.

Yesterday, I went out to feed my chickens the leftover cereal (dangit kids, why can't you pour JUST ENOUGH?!) and I saw Oozy laying on the ground, kicking up his legs rather frantically. I've seen horses do this to scratch their backs, but not cows. In my limited experience, this seemed very, very bad.

I jumped the pool ladder that I have going over the fence and went out there. Oozy looked very, very bad. I noticed the valve was gone out of his side, and his side looked awfully big.  I hurried to call KC, but as I was leaving the voice mail, the steer stopped breathing.

KC was to the field within 5 minutes. He told me that the valve had fallen out a couple days ago. He'd been watching the steer closely, but so far, had been doing really well. A valve is kind of a last ditch effort because it really increases odds for infection, so he was hoping the calf had worked through whatever was causing the bloat and could be done with it. He'd fed him the night before, and had seemed fine then. When I was consulting with Dr. Google, DVM, it sounds like bloat can kill within 15 minutes, so it can come on awfully fast.


I felt so terrible! It's sad to see an animal die regardless. But, to see an expensive animal die, especially one in which the owner has put so much time, effort and emotion into fixing was even worse. Also, the hassle involved has got to be tough too- I'd guess Oozy was over 500 lbs. That's not exactly a simple disposal, like a goldfish.

Anyone who says animals don't understand death or have feelings just needs to be around when an animal die. Oozy was definitely scared and in pain. After he died, Tbone came over to see what was going on, and he definitely seemed upset by the fact that his big buddy was down and not acting right.

The Children in France, or one of the ways I lie to my children

J was on a business trip in France this week.  He promised the kids presents upon his return.  In Z's mind, it turns out that "presents"= toys.

He was out of his mind waiting for his daddy to get home. I wanted to think that he just missed J, but I suspected it was the present.

This afternoon, J got home from his trip.  He got each of the little kids a tshirt from Paris.

Z tried really hard to hold it together, but he absolutely crushed that he didn't get a toy. He was trying really hard not to cry.  In an attempt to cheer him up, S says, "I'm really sad that I didn't get a toy too, but I'm not crying about it." Ouch.  Poor J.

He asked J why he didn't bring toys.

Me, in a fit of deceitful imagination, burst out, "Because the children in France don't have toys!" This stops both kids cold, and their eyes got very big.  "Why not?!"

"I guess they just don't believe in toys for children."


They've done nothing but talk about the poor children in France who don't have toys, and are contemplating sending some of their toys over there.


So, if my kids say something about toyless children in France, I have no idea where they heard that idea.