Way out in the Middle of Nowhere

Which is kinda an oxymoron if you think about it.  You're trying to focus on something but keep getting distracted!  Here at the farm, distractions come in all sizes: From the loose dogs that killed my duck (bad) to getting hurt at work and not being able to use my hand for a few weeks (worse) to new babies being hatched out (YAY!) Yes, two dogs came into our flock, killed Duck Duck and scattered geese to the wind.  I needed Dave's help to get them back to the farm, but when I was able to talk to the County Sheriff, I simply told him that if the owner's dogs got out again, there will be consequences.  This ain't no "Old Country Buffet" here. My hand..........well! I was working a month ago and a blender accident caused the blades to slice N dice my ring finger on my right hand pretty nicely. I'll spare you the really bad pics, it was gruesome. Seven stitches later, they wrapped it thinking it was broke.  Two weeks later, another scan showed no bre...

Twenty years ago, Alex and I had a cat nicknamed 'Pimp Daddy.' He was black and white and had a paralyzed tail.  Some incident happened while he was out rolling in the city and he got his tail paralyzed. About a year later, he ended up getting Feline Leukemia. I had him put down on a weekend where Alex was out with his cousins so I didn't have him witness the whole thing.  About a week later, a neighborhood kid named James came by with a little orange kitten.  See, Pimp Daddy rolled with James' cat named Miss Kitty and Miss Kitty had kittens.  He though I'd like a new Kitty. About a year later, a stray cat from the neighborhood dropped off two kittens on my doorstep.  We kept one, gave one away.  Vicky was our girl. As you see, Tigger and Vicky were best buds.  They'd be together all the time, snuggled up with each other...they were inseparable. Two years ago, Vicky was sent to the great beyond when she got oral cancer.  She was a good girl...

Vicky is the kitty on the right, sitting with her pal, Tigger. Sad to say, but I had Vicky put down yesterday afternoon. She was such a good girl, and I miss her already. She was born under the deck of the next door neighbor back in '99. We lived in town back then, and Tigger had a friend who was a stray cat we called Skank. Tigger was about 6 months old, and would jump in and out of the house via the kitchen door. There was a window missing on the bottom pane about 3' off the ground that I had not gotten around to fixing by then. So Tigger and Skank would jump in and out of the house, grab food and wander the neighborhood together. One Saturday Skank was acting oddly; jumping in and out repeatedly. I went to see what was going on and lying there in front of the door on the outside with this little black furry jelly bean...Vicky. I followed Skank around for a bit and found her birthing place under the deck, grabbed the remaining survivor..another black jelly bean...and...

We lost a goose last night. She got into the road and hit by a car. We noticed Penny dead in the road when we went to do night chores. Dave gathered her up and we put her in the yard so that the other geese could see she was dead. I have a theory that they accept the loss of a flock-mate better if they see the body. Penny was the gal that looked most like her Mom, Sissy. She will be missed. No amount of harassment and nothing short of a fricking 6' fence will keep those damned geese out of the road. They've got 30 acres of land behind that road ripe for the grazing, but they just wont.  stay.   out.      of.    the.   road. ~sigh~ I've been working on things to sell in my Etsy store: Things of interest I find in my trips to Goodwill, Vintage Patterns, Some Workbasket mags from the '50's. My decision right now is that attempting to get a job that would be able to work around the schedule here would be just as disastrous as before. EVEN THO...

I came to a crossroads of sort in my student career.  URock is refusing to allow me to take any more classes there due to some stupid f*cked up rule about maximum credits. Dude, it's all within the University of Wisconsin system anyhow, who gives a rat's hairy bottom if I take Statics in Janesville or Platteville. Apparently these people are SO stuck into their rigid rules and regulations that they cannot see they are losing students to it. I panicked, tried to think of a way that I could save myself the 4 hour round trip to Platteville every stinking work day and could not. This is Wisconsin, y'all - 9 months of winter and 3 months of bad ice-skating- it's not cool to spend that much time on icy winter roads! So..transfer to Whitewater (only 1 hour away) and major in Math until I could transfer to Madison? I bounced it off of David. "What are you going to do with a BS in Math?" he questioned. "I don't know, calculate my unemployment?" My a...

I supposed to be studying Circuit Modeling, and yes, I'll get back to it. That in itself is at least a 12 page rant. The book I was supposed to be using sucks, the Proctoring is bullshit, and I've got at least 5 supposed professionals from the UW who are annoying me with their inability to think outside the procedures. If one more person sends me the 'procedures.doc' and insists that I peruse it again..I'ma throwing a brick at them. Yes, I know the bloody 'procedure' and I know you're hiding your inadequacies behind them. These people couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag without their ever-loving, vaunted 'procedure' And here's the kicker for all 5 of them: I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR PROCEDURES! I DON'T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT LAME EXCUSES!! And their inadequacies has made me rethink my college of choice..maybe NIU has a better program... Onto knitting: Three people in one week let it be known they have cancer. Three...

We lost our Sissy girl last night. Found her dead in the coop this morning. She'd been sick last week, with a swelling under her beak. We let her stay inside the house, and she was stumbling and bumping into stuff. Her bad eye went worse and I was treating that but she seemed to take a turn for the better last night. She got in her last nibbles on our hair and Dave's beard and we put her in the coop because the others were harassing her. Going to be a crappy day............

Taken one morning on my way to school. This is the Rock River in Janesville on River Road.  It was a foggy morning and the water was very calm. School is progressing.  Financial Aid is not. The final word came down that I will not get any aid this semester. I'm $500 in the hole for Calc and if I drop the class they'll add another $700 to it. Damned if I do, Damned if I don't. And they won't let me register for classes until I pay the $500. My only course at this time is to pick up as much money as I can selling stuff that I don't need, selling plasma and keeping expenses low.  And Dave is digging into his 401(k).  I'm less than pissed that it needs to be done, but what can you do? I've also applied for a credit card to put the $500 tuition on. That way I can pay off minimums, STILL register for next semester and pay it off with my grants next semester. Still not happy about that either. On a MUCH funnier note - Dave and I watch Duck Dynasty. M...

Updates: 1. STILL fighting with school over financial aid.  Due to the fact that I dropped that Lit class, they've withdrawn my ability to get any loan. I'm 1 credit short of what they consider 'part time'. I had my advisor find another credit -working with the theater dept.- but they say it's too late. which brings me to: 2. Fighting with the UW about that stupid flipping book. At this point, their obsessive love of this book detailing the abuse of young girl is becoming hilariously ridiculous.  You mean to tell me that this is THE  definitive book on the African-American experience? This book is 40 years old! Try finding a book from THIS century! But still...I've got an interim director who just freaked when I told her that she was being insensitive by her vehement defense of this book. She STILL defends it! 3. I've got a Calc test today. Wish me luck. 4. I came home yesterday to find 3 dead geese lined up by the mailbox.  Someone had hit 3 of Mol...

I'm nice? Well-behaved? Taught better manners?  Ah I don't know. Y'all remember that shortly after Christmas I invited family to our home to celebrate Christmas, right?  Man, I had the best intentions, a good dinner, great family fun...even Skyped Deb in so she can see her family. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.  I've saved the photos from this debacle, because up until the moment my BIL intentionally started the fight w/Dave...it was going very well.(I'm deliberately trying to forget my BIL's emotional abuse of me. I'm considering the source) My In-Laws' were talking of this huge get-together in the summer for their 60th Wedding Anniversary.  It was going to be fun. That weekend is here and all the rest of the family are in BRF celebrating.  We got an invite, and discussed it.  After all was discussed, we were pretty sure it was an empty gesture.  We don't go where we're not wanted. There's still a lot of animosity, ...

Yeah, me too.  Then I said to my husband, "We should get chickens and raise them." Famous last words. Yes, there are birds in that incubator, but you have to look REAL close. Our hatching survival rate for ducks this year has been dismal: 20%. So I threw out the rule book and decided to assist the buggers in hatching.  We had 20 eggs with 4/19 written in pencil  on them.  Of that 20: 3 were infertile, 2 died in the egg, one died after 2 days of life (aspirated yolk, he was looking good for a while) and that one top left - who is still amazingly alive. I thought he was dead. I'm not kidding, I SWEAR TO GOD I thought he was dead. I massaged him, poked him a bit in the shell to see any movement: None. Of course, I was poking and massaging the wrong end of him. You see, 3 of my eggs were presenting backwards; a sort of breech birth.  It's nerve-wracking not seeing that cute beak where it should be.  And the fact that it's turned 180 degrees m...

I was thinking about this so maybe it's time to address bullying in a different way: by a story.  You see, I'm the only one in the knitting group who has been kicked out of a Knit Along. Ok, as I say it, "I was asked to leave."  a knit-along.  Yeah. because I called out the List Mom on bullying. I used to join Knit Alongs.  The jist of them is that the person running the knit along - the List Mom - puts out a section of a chart or directions each week and you knit that part, not knowing what you'll get for a design until the end. The knit alongs is run through a email group, which allows you to control how many people are in the group and who gets what kind of message. Each week the email goes out to gather up another clue and others chat about things and post pictures of their progress.   It's a great way to get a few thousand people to test-knit your designs.  Heck, one of my favorite shawls was made that way: Dem Fisher Sin Fru from Monika Eckert ...

A truly British term that means more than surprise or astounded: Gobsmacked.  Dave's out doing morning chores.  He offered and I stood there, gobsmacked.  He got offended. I apologized, but I was still gobsmacked.   7 days a week I schlep my lazy butt out early in the morning to let out the animals.  I tote out 3 buckets of water for fresh drinking water plus swimming water.  Bleary-eyed, I get them out for the morning, listen to the cacophony of honks and quacks and then watch each one for a minute to make sure they are OK. Someone else is going to do this? AWESOME! Even for one morning. Our house guest this week is Tony the Pekin Duck.  See that foot? It's swollen and infected.  So I called out the vet who took a look at it, and the duck and prescribed antibiotics for the guy. It's not quite bumble foot, but it is the same thing: A Staph infection of the foot. Hard to treat, actually.  The antibiotic is a stron...

Let's just list the crap pile that was my week. They are in no particular order of crapitude but some are worse than others. 1. I can't wear my wedding & engagement ring because I bashed my hand against something doing chores and bruised my finger. Every time I put the rings on I get a burning pain.  Great.   2. My Hubby got his hours cut, again. Now he's down to 30 and we're scrambling to cut budget and/or make up the loss in funds.  3. Which leads me selling plasma. I'm all-around healthy, so it's not all that difficult. I DID find the 4 hours spent there yesterday and the 30 mile round trip to home and back to get a marriage certificate to prove I changed my name to be almost too much to endure. And all that for 20 bucks.......... 4. I was sitting down in the garage on a bale of straw cleaning the fog off my glasses when my left  lens fell off into a pile of straw.   Think of it as trying to find a needle in a haystack, blind.   We h...

I'm on that quest to cleanse my soul, so here's another chunk of miasma for you: I've learned not to like people these days. And as each day progresses on, I dislike people more.  It's gotten to the point where I just don't want  to be around others. People have become nothing more than hateful, spiteful, narcissistic asshats. Hell, Even my In-Laws' refuse to behave for two fucking days. They have to make my Christmas *just that more horrible* because some person on TV told them to hate their own kid. Their own child! Someone they've known since birth!  Their ability to be swayed into thinking the worst of their Son simply because someone on TV told them so, shows how really moronic they are. That concept in itself shows me how shallow their real intelligence is.  It's superficial, meant to dupe others into giving them respect, but not an iota of respect is shown the other way.  And they are not the only one; millions do that every day.  Pe...

I have to admit that my last blog post was hideous,  but necessary. My soul has been slowly crushed by all the bile that others force me to bear.  These people think they are doing something awesome, and something that they feel they have a right to do: Treat others like they are less than dirt. All I've been feeling for the last few months is pain.  Oh I hide it well, because showing it will cause distress in those who have not put that pain there. Dave does not deserve it. Alex does not deserve it.  But the pain is there and I'm not willing to walk about this earth carrying it any more. Isn't time I deserve better than to be someone else's dumpster? All I have ever wanted was love, but if that's not possible, then maybe just to be left alone? But no. Your goal is to make me feel unwanted, unloved and undeserving of what you give total strangers. Yes, I know all the psychological bullshit about not letting it get to me and all that, but face it people: It DO...

This is a long post, filled with cursing, ranting and bile.  I apologize to anyone not in my family.  For those, let me say that Christmas was ruined again, this time it is solely the fault of my Brother In Law, Dan. Readers Digest Version: I invited Dave's family for a celebration here on Saturday.  They intended on spending the weekend here. Everything was going great until about 10 pm when my Brother In Law deliberately started a political fight with my husband. This escalated into a whole family fight. In the end, my Father In Law decided they weren't welcome, shoved every one into the van and took off.  Despite all efforts to make them calm down, they refused. Mostly because my Brother In Law would not shut is mouth. David and I are now disowned by that side of the family and will never see them again. For those of you who still think Christmas is a beautiful, wondrous time of year, please stop reading now, because your life does not need this. ...

Reality is what hits us every day.  Sometimes we accept it, grasp whatever bits of goodness come out and move on. The people who deal with reality every day will tell you that sometimes the hard parts are unbearable, but must be done. We've been dealing with reality a lot here: Alex gets a job, but it's 45 miles away.  $40 bucks every two days to fill up the car so he can go to his job.  Which means $50 to fill up the van every 2 1/2 days to get both Dave and I to work and school.  $180.00 per week IN GAS.  Reality sucks, my friend. And today I get to finish my chem lab early, drive back home, disarticulate a deer and put what large pieces we have in the freezer to butcher later after I drive back to school at $4 in gas  to take an Algebra quiz. If we don't get this deer butchered, the meat will rot and we'll be eating chicken all winter long.   Reality is we cannot afford to waste meat, nor buy it from the store.  My Brother In Law offered u...

Fred the goose died last night. That's a picture of Fred.  I was out buying new work boots for Alex and found him in front of the pen..already dead. Two geese dead within a week. I'm exhausted emotionally and physically.  I've spent the better part of the last 2 weeks trying to will Fred and George to good health and then cried over their bodies. I'm up early every morning to let them out, feed and water them and to try to keep Fred and George alive for one more day. School is well, school : Professors demand you drop everything in your life to study and then get all shitty when you can't.  Perhaps it was stupid of me to think that returning after 25 years to get a degree was going to work. I've got no tolerance for bullshit profs -and both of them are not as competent as my HS Chem teacher by far- and their inability to remain focused, no tolerance for people who cannot comprehend there's a REAL life outside of University.  School is making us all cr...

Well, Georgie the goose died last Tuesday.  I came home from school to find him collapsed by the lilac bush. I  had him on my lap for about 10 minutes hoping he'd come out of it, but in the end, he convulsed a few times and died.  Dave was a trooper and got him dressed out and  put in the freezer for me. I've put his feathers and down in a bag that I made from pillow ticking and dried it. We learned quite a bit from the process and we'll be using those skills soon.  Cuz you see, Fred's been doing the same thing: Collapsing out of breath...horcking up a lung like he's got asthma.  We've discussed the future of Fred and the ducks, but it will wait until we have the cone. http://meadowcreature.com/poultry/  sells one like we have on order.Ours is on backorder for another week.   Basically it's a galvanized steel cone with a hole in the bottom. Drop your poultry into it, pull out the head and chop it off, or slice the jugular and let them bleed o...