You shouldn't dye your hair in a snow storm....

We were on a 2 hr delay at work today. I figure I'd make the best of my time and color my hair.... my roots were showing, I needed a shower and I had 2 hrs.


I put all the stuff in my hair and went to wash the little squeeze thingy you mix and apply the hair dye with..... uh oh.

VERY low water pressure. We've lost water before and that is how it started.... with really low water pressure.


Oh crap. I can't leave the dye on my head!

Well. I have been reading all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books... there is snow outside. I could bring in buckets of snow and heat them on the stove to wash the dye out of my hair. I perked up feeling very pioneering of spirit.

Oh. Wait a minute.

I don't think "nice" girls dyed their hair back then. Pretty sure only prostitutes colored their hair. Especially red. My pioneering spirit flagged a little.

Not to mention that I tried to make some cardamom bread... when I pulled out the yeast packets in my cupboard one packet said "Best if used by Oct 2005". The other packet said, "Best if used by Sept 2008". I went with the 08... bread never did rise. I baked it anyway. It's pretty dense.

If I were a true pioneer I wouldn't waste it. I'd eat it anyway and be glad to have it.


Turns out I had enough water pressure to take my shower.... probably a good thing I'm not a pioneer. I don't think I'd be a very good at it!

Still no goats in heat... tho' none of them are venturing out of their houses and I didn't venture in to get a look this morning... note to self *crawl IN quonset hut tonight to look at goat private parts.*

Chiropractic re-check

Rosso had his chiropractor out yesterday for a recheck. I got home 7 minutes late and the chiropractor DVM was in my driveway waiting. *cringe* Hate being late! I jumped out of my car with my dressier work clothes complete with clunky funky old lady looking high heeled lace-up shoes... I shouted "I'm so sorry!" and went running to the tack room to grab a halter... ran through the horse pens and out to the pasture.

Funny thing is that since I began treating Rosso's pains, he's been much friendlier when he sees me. He saw me walking toward him in the pasture and began walking to me - "Hey Mom, whassup?" with a friendly interested look in his eye.

I had the halter just over his nose when he heard the chiropractor vet talking to the goaties.

ZOOP! Up went his head. DINK! went his ears straight forward.... "WHO is that?! Oh, this isn't general run of the mill - something is different. Verrry different..." And off he ran.

Sigh.

I walked him down in my high heeled funky gramma shoes and caught him. Brought him in with Sera following while Brandon wisely stayed in the pasture dozing.

The good news is he didn't show pain - he was pronounced 80% better with 50% better joint movement. She still did a few adjustments but said he held his prior adjustments well and would probably need maintenance here and there when he began to get sticky in his neck and having difficulty with his right lead. Maybe in 6 mos, maybe in a year.

Everything she says is so interesting. She's one of those people who is smart and super, super good at what she does. I could listen to those type of people all day long....

Now if he's a turd, there is no excuse.

I was happy he's so much more comfortable. He was happy when the hairless monkeys quit fussing with him and turned him back out with his "herd" in the pasture.

Alls well that ends well.....

(and still no goaties showing signs of estrus - tho' we are supposed to get 20" of snow over the next two days. Wanna bet someone wants to be bred when it's impossible to get her to a buck? Ha!)

I'm still here...

Don't worry!

Things with Dad are weird. Turns out he needed ambulance transport which we can't afford in order to move him to Denver. Sister wanted to move him herself but the risks sounded too great. No one on the nursing staff thought it was a good idea... I would have to sign a ton of liability ppwk... and really isn't that saying enough?

Sister thought if she drove fast with the stereo cranked to drown out any protests from Dad, how bad could it be? If something went wrong, she'd just drive faster.

I had to step up and say it wasn't a good idea and exert the power of the POA. She was mad at me but... really. The trip woulda been a disaster waiting to happen.

Evidently the lines of communique are still open - we will travel together on Saturday to visit. Wish me luck on that one. A relationship that hasn't worked very well at best will be under some pretty serious emotional juju.

On a lighter note, Furry Husband and I went to see Steve Martin's banjo concert Saturday night. We were 4 rows back and it was so weird to be so close to someone I've always really appreciated and loved their work... not to mention someone that "big" in the entertainment world who has been around for so long.

I snapped some iPod video and if I can figure out how to post..... y'all will see some Steve Martin! Gots to give up the love for Mr. Steve Martin.... What an amazingly talented man!

And still no goats exhibiting any signs of wanting to get down and dirty with each other....

S'allright

Everything is fine. Lines o' communication with sister remain open - tho' it is really, really, really hard.

I think she needs him in Denver to be more at peace with it all. If she can do the move, I'm o.k. with it. Things are fine. This is only one moment in time... it's not gonna be like this forever.

I'm hoping to go tracking tonight with the baby dog and I have my new Equus magazine so the world is all good right?

It's breedin' time!

Now is the time our does begin going into heat... tho' I think the two does we have left are going to be very quiet and sultry about it vs. screamers.

That means I'm gonna have to start watching doe hooha's...

If you asked me 10 yrs ago if I thought I'd be closely inspecting goat hooha's for signs of heat I woulda fallen off my bar stool laughing.

We'll breed our yearling doe, Speck, this year to one of Marylou's bucks so our poor buck (Speck's Papa) will not be used. How frustrating that must be when you get ONE and only ONE shot at love all year long!

I rode Rosso Sunday in my lesson - he was good. Rex rode him as well and it was a treat to watch. He is very nice, his eye is much softer and he was much more relaxed. I know he has it in him to be a really nice horse. We just have to get over the hump of his young horse stuff - all of which will make me a better horse person ..... I hope.

I find I am not feeling very strong emotionally right now with stuff going on in my family so I don't know that I am in the correct frame of mind to ride Rosso. I need to be confident and sure! Instead I'm feeling distracted and upset.

Sister wants to move Dad to Denver all of a sudden.

She thinks Dad is faking it for attention.

Right.

People fake their way into hospice all the time. Happens every day.


Repeat after me: "Shanster's sister is a piece of work."

Birf-day Boy

It's Furry Husband's BIRF-DAY today! I'm so glad he was born *ahem* so many years ago.

I took him out to a birf-day breakfast and I surprised him with his present. He's hard to surprise. He always figures me out.

I gave him an iTouch. I wrapped it in 5 boxes, each one bigger than the next. That really threw him off the trail... I can be sneaky when I need to be.

Hellooooooo 21st Century! Do you see us waving at you?

We are going out to dinner tonight for some tender and barely cooked fillet mignon....

Tracker Toe

I met with Joelyn for some tracking training tonight. Y'know, being outdoors and working with your dog just helps...

Toe did really well - Joelyn brought clothespins with ribbon as markers for ME so I could make sure Toe stayed on track when she put in a right or left hook. Toe was cutting across the hook to get to the glove, vs. truly staying on track.

The markers helped me stay on the trail and Toe is all gangbusters in his little harness - just like an Alaska sled dog - in miniature.

Joelyn says Toe will ruin it for me. She says he's going to be really good and the next dog I get won't be as easy....

Then she brought out her little bitch, Rumor. (I love using "bad" language that is actually completely and totally appropriate in the dog world) Toe and Rumor played and frolicked... I'm sure when he goes to sleep tonight he'll dream of Rumor in a risque leather collar and lead.

Off to drink wine and eat pizza - have a good Friday night!

No motivation...

Dad had a hospice evaluation today. They say he's a good candidate and will be admitted to the program once I fill out the paperwork.


I'm o.k. with it. It would be a blessing really.


He turns 65 in January. Young, I know. He has early onset Parkinson's that started in his 30's. He has Parkinson's related dementia and he is truly miserable. It's a very cruel existence. No matter your relationship, you would NEVER wish this disease on anyone.


Being admitted to hospice means they think he will die within 6 mos. time and in talking to the woman who contacted me, most people don't make it that long.

It's a very odd feeling. I'm really doing o.k. - just feel tired and unfocused.


In the meantime, Sera is lame in her left front. I think it's an abscess from the winter storm melt with all the mud and goo this week... I looked her over and can't find any heat or cause. I'll soak her hoof with Epsom salts and try to get the abscess to surface.


This means my lesson on Sunday will be with the youngster Rosso.


I'm not feeling very motivated or dedicated to my riding right now. Tho when I told Rexanne Sera was off and I'd bring Rosso to my lesson Sunday with an added, gulp. She said I was one of her dedicated and tenacious students and I was definitely not a nancy girl.


I'm feeling like a big lame-o nancy girl. (similar to nancy boy... only my reproductive organs are in the inside... uterus... ovaries and all that mess)


Definition of nancy boy from Urban Dictionary:


nancy boy
A nancy boy can be: A completely pathetic coward, who is generally afraid to speak their mind or do anything difficult or unpleasant....



At least Rosso will take all my focus and attention.... I'll be brave and let you know how it goes.


It's Cozzola's pizza with good red wine tonight cuz it's FRIDAY. It's our Friday night ritual. ALWAYS a great way to end the week....

yum......

I guess I needed them...

I bought these boots in 1998. Furry Husband and I were in Jackson Hole, WY at one of his buddy's condos or something. We went into town and I bought these boots as a splurge. Blundstone paddock boots.

Lookit - the heel is coming off... there is a crack in the sole... I didn't realize I really needed new boots... they still worked. My feet didn't get wet at the barn or anything.

Mom came out to see me, took one look at my boots and told me they were well past the worn out phase.

And now.... drum roll please.

Do you hear the heavenly music? The angels singing on high? Do you see the holy light shining down from above?

TADA! My new Blundstone boots for riding and mucking around the barn.

Thanks for the boots Mom! I guess I needed them?

Oh. GEEZ!

I was sitting at work innocently listening to NPR cuz generally it's the least offensive station... it's not hard core rap or head banging metal or swirly, twirly country ballads ...

I turned it up a notch listening to a story on Jewish deli food. Cuz. Well. ANYTHING about food captures my full and undivided attention...

And then the story moved on and I tuned out --- comforting NPR voices gently mumbling away over to my right

And then?


And then I hear the word "vagina" and "penetration" and "fluid"

Oh - good grief! Where is the volume button and why did the building's white noise machine turn off just at the very moment those words were spoken?! They were ECHOING around the suite... vagina vagina vagina......

Geez, oh, geez, oh geez!

I don't even want to think about vaginas or penetrating or fluids with ANY of the people I work with.

What happened to the talk about pastrami on rye? What about mustard and kosher and and... where'd the FOOD go?

Shew...

I turned the radio way low...

It's some crazy story about countries where it's important to marry virgins. Some genius developed a fake vagina virgin contraption. It provides some sort of barrier and some fake blood.

Wow. Talk about inventions. Who was the test group for THAT product?

Hey! (light bulb over my noggin) Maybe I could go as a virgin for Halloween!

Oh.

Wait.

I guess no one would be able to tell what I was exactly....

What a feast!

Canadian Thanksgiving was INCREDIBLE! THREE turkeys.... green bean casserole.... stuffing.... sweet potatoes....biscuits....gravy....and pie - lots and lots of PIE. I was good and had a little bit of each thing without going back for seconds... tho' I was pretty stuffed with my firsts!

My stuffed mushrooms were a hit and disappeared within 20 minutes. There were 40 people feasting... I can't even imagine cooking for a crowd and Deb does such a wonderful job! Furry Husband showed up around 4pm so he had a bit o' everything as well. We rolled ourselves back home and it sure was nice to have him back!

I'm off today for Columbus Day... (oh these durn gub'ment workers anyway!) and I have a list of things to do:

* take horse blankets in for repair

* pick up some beet pulp and Equine Senior

* stop by Mountain Vet for some tapeworm pills cuz I discovered tapeworm in Toe this morning while he was on his back in my lap and I was trimming his nails - EWWWW! I'm sure he picked it up from one of those voles Punkin' caught this Fall. (DAMMIT PUNKIN!)

* pick up some pix at Walgreens to put in my Mom-in-Law's care package, then mail said package.

* drop my books off a the library and pick up some more - I'm reading the Little House series. I know they are kids books and I'm really sorry to the 7 yr old girl I pushed down last week so I could get the last Little House book on the shelf... but I'm an adult and I'm bigger.

(don't worry - karma dished me out a nice, big pimple the size of a walnut on my right cheek for everyone to see because I made that little girl cry at the library last week)

Canadian Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! Canadian Thanksgiving that is....

The neighbors across the street are Canadian and they invited us over for their thanksgiving dinner. I'm making stuffed mushroom caps - 1/2 will be stuffed with green chilies and the other 1/2 with blue cheese. MMMMMMM

Furry Husband called and he's on his way home.... HOOORAY!

Our favorite goatie family called - most of them are at the Dairy Goat Convention in NY, the 2 left home are milking the herd and wouldn't you know, the milk machine broke. One of them has a permanent injury to her arm which leaves her unable to milk by hand....

I told her nothing is more fun than milking Larson goats and we'd be over tonight and the next few nights if they need us. It's true. You haven't HAD fun til you've milked a Larson goat. (wink)

I cancelled my lesson today cuz I am a big weenie. It's 23 degrees and it began misting - leaving a nice coat of ice on EVERYTHING.

Staying in and making mushroom caps .... along with some cardamom bread sounds much more conducive to today's weather I think.

October Snow

Hmm - doesn't usually snow til Halloween round these parts.....even then it's only enough to ruin Halloween costumes cuz you have to put a coat on, but not enough to stop the trick or treating fun.

Not today!

This is our snow gage. The 300lb concrete dog. I should live with The Trailer Park Boys....

I think THIS snow gage is much cuter... Bye-bye little garden square.... see you next spring. No more purty flowers...

Ponies are snug in their blankets.

Goaties are bedded down in deep straw inside their quonset huts... I threw them hay in their houses so they don't have to come out. Breakfast in bed for the goaties.

All the kitties and the dogs are inside doing what they do best - sleeping.

Snow and Sonoma

Furry Husband left this morning at 5:00 AM. ouch.

He's on his way to Sonoma. He won another wine trip for being such a Super Salesman.

I swear he has a super hero outfit under his work clothes. I know he ducks behind cases of wine to change and there has to be an image of grapes on his chest with a billowing cape. He must have a bottle of wine in one hand and the correct wine glass in the other.

Oh yeah - there are all types of wine glasses depending on the wine you happen to be drinking.

(I'm not picky. If I don't have a paper cup, I drink straight from the bottle....)

He is gonna be wined and dined this weekend.... fancy schmancy dinners, wine tastings and vineyard tours at Francis Ford Coppola's Rubicon Estate winery in beautiful Sonoma CA.

The front page of today's Ft. Collins Coloradoan newspaper says there is an Arctic front coming through today. 40 mph winds, 3" of snow, ice, highs in the 20's. The city has 50 snowplow drivers and 20 plows at the ready.


Somehow this just doesn't seem quite right to me....

Kitty Crack Whore

I am an addict.

An addict I tell you.

Cats.

Kittens.

My horse trainer friend, Rex, came for dinner the other night. Furry Husband made his "better than sex" pasta sauce and mounds upon mounds of pasta. There was garlic bread. Wine was flowing like a river.... I had an Esther Williams movie on the t.v. I love Esther Williams.

Shhhhhh - don't tell anybody it was my 39th birthday. I don't age anymore. Didn't you know that? My fingers are in my ears and I'm shouting LA LA LA LA LA...... seriously. I stopped aging.

Anyway... over the course of the meal and free flowing wine and Esther's amazing swim numbers.... oh, did I mention I had a magic glass that night? It was never empty no matter how much I drank. Isn't that weird? (oh Furry Husband, you are sooooo good to me.)

Well Rex told me she saw kittens crouched and huddled on the dirt road... little innocent balls of fur.... all alone in this world. Cold and crying for their mommy.

She stopped and tried to capture them.

ZING - they disappeared into the tall grass.

She notified our friend Amber since Rex was on the way to our place for dinner.

Amber is tenacious. She is like a starving pit bull with a porterhouse steak. You can't call her off.

Amber took over.

Amber caught the wee darlin's.

I'm gonna go see them tonight at Rex's house but she promises me she will boot me out of her place without another cat.

Did I mention we have 6 cats already? I don't need any more.... but oh, the little whiskers and rumbly purring .... my hands are itchin' to touch a kitten.

My name is Shanster. I am an addict.

Along came a spider....

This cat face spider kept making his web right in the doorway of the milk/feed room. Every time we went in to milk or to make up the horse's beet pulp mash we'd have spider web in our faces...

About 30 min. after the last time we demolished his web, he had it re-built... isn't it cool?

We threw him a fly!

Everyday stuff...

I absolutely believe WHO we are is way, way more important than what we look like on the outside.

That said, I decided I should try to be more mindful of what I'm eating. (I sound so adult here don't I? Mindful... snort)

Y'know - more "whole" foods - veggies, fruit, fiber. Less processed crap like deep fried Twinkies.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not dieting. I don't diet. The minute I think I can't have something, I want it exponentially more. You tell me I can't have peanut M&M's? Heh. I'll buy a 2lb bag, eat them all in one sitting then ask you for more. (I ate a 2 lb bag of M&Ms as a dare at a party in college - so I know it can be done - lucky they didn't have the 45 oz size back in the day.)

I'm simply trying to use better fuel for my engine as I age and my insides get a little musty and dusty.

I found this site that has a free food tracker... http://www.fitday.com/

It's sort of a pain in the ass to input what you eat each day, but it's helping me be more aware about WHAT I'm eating, which is so weird, because truly, I can pack food away like an Iowa farm boy and I'm not usually too discriminating about what I eat.

I'm also trying to move more.

Several years ago, we bought hay from this guy named Schlagel, who was around 70 years old.

Furry Husband and I would pick hay bales out of his hay field. We had to use both hands and hoist them into the truck with effort. We had to take breaks. We fought over who got to drive the truck and who had to pick bales...

One day, ol' Schlagel came out to visit, grabbed a bale SINGLE HANDED and tossed it up in the truck like it was nuthin' - using only one arm. he wasn't any taller than me, it's not like he was some huge Andre the Giant man.

I think Furry Husband and I stood there slack jawed in complete amazement. We STILL talk about that day.

Anyway, Schlagel told me he tried to slow down and he tried staying in bed but he always felt so much WORSE than the days he got up and moved around and THAT my friends is what makes me want to keep moving. I don't need to feel worse when I'm tripping on my sagging boobs at age 70.

Tracking Toe

Toe had his second tracking lesson... I'm totally geeked about it. He did really well - Joelynn lays a track and there is a glove at the end.

Toe gets to sniff the glove and he watches while Joelynn lays the track. You'd think since he watches, he'd run to where the glove is, however, he does sniff and look for the scent trail. We did three tracks total. The first one was straight and then she put in a right hook on the second track and a left hook on the third track in this lesson.

Sniffing the left hook you could tell he lost her trail... he cut across the hook vs. following it around. He stopped, looked at me wagging... sniffed around a little and then BAM! you could see when he found the trail again cuz he was off and running with his little sled dog like intensity. It was pretty cool.

The harness I bought for him wasn't right and since we had 40mph winds last night, I decided to take the harness back and shop for a correct tracking harness. I certainly wouldn't be working horses ...

Besides, Furry Husband called because there was a fire near-by. He said there was smoke and it smelled like a big bonfire at home. He went driving to see how close it was.

Right now it's not so close, but with these 20-40mph winds it could get close fast. There are lots of firefighters working around the clock, homes in Livermore have been evacuated and fire lines are being watched. I hope the winds die down today but they aren't expected to until tonight...

So far no homes or structures have been lost. Keep your fingers crossed for all those in Livermore CO!