Ho Hum

Enjoying the warm up we are having right now...makes it a bit nicer for R, who is outside readying things for the start of calving.... I do notice as he gets older that he is less and less enthusiastic about it...hahahah  I on the other hand am officially DONE.   I help tag the little beasties, tattoo and process them after birth but other than that...I am forbidden...and it is all because of the accident a couple of years ago...while calving... It was storming out and R had gone to town..for necessities to do with the cattle and I was on watch...he had let the cows come into the pen in front of the house...so I could watch from the house...which worked fine until a cow's calf slid out still enclosed in the sack...I had to throw some outside clothes on and run like hell to get there in time to break the membrane....when I did the cow spooked and ran away and I had to grab the slimy, stinky calf and give mouth to mouth...Now as hard as that is on a human, try doing to an animal that weighs a hundred pounds and is as long as you are tall....you have to clamp the mouth shut after removing fluid and gunk and making sure the tongue is not back in the throat...then cover one nostril while blowing into the other to expand the lungs...yuk... if that doesn't work you have to grab it by the back feet and lift it so the fluid that it swallowed when taking it's first breath in the fluid instead of clean crisp air, drains from it's throat or lungs...but I am not really tall enough and it was in the open field with nothing in sight to use to hang the calf over...so I ended up just flopping the calf around and the massaging its upper rib cage to get the heart beating....then tried mouth to mouth again and just as it seemed to respond by fluttering its lashes and twitching and I was about to renew my efforts..i got knocked ass over tea kettle by the cow...who had regained her senses and witnessed my resuscitation of her calf (to her it probably looked like I was abusing it)  she charged back towards us and hit me...and in the process, trampled right over her calf to get to me and push me, while I'm on my back trying to get up, across the pen fifty feet or so....luckily for me, I have been a hood ornament on the head of a cow many times before and have perfected a self preservation trick...I hit her in the eye and then grabbed  her nostril (their noses are very sensitive) and yanked for all I was worth...she bellowed and jumped away from me and that is all I needed, I was up and running, all be it, a bit slowly...miraculously the calf was standing already and tripping through the snow...so she spun on her heels and joined her calf...I limped to the house and wasn't sure why my leg was so sore but when I stripped to jump in the shower and wash the amniotic fluid from the calf off me I was shocked to see a huge lump on my leg where the cow had stepped on me...but I didn't feel a thing at the time from the adrenaline rush...but boy did it hurt afterwards....so by the time R got home, we had two new calves and I could barely move.... I had a huge bump on my thigh for a month the size of a football. I am not kidding...and the skin is still purplish blue colour there nearly two years later....that is a side effect of my disease...the bruising...R is worried there is a blood clot but ultrasound of the leg did not reveal one... but as a result of all that I am forbidden to go into the pen with the cows during calving...

But necessity has had me back in the cow pen since then he just doesn't know about it.  the part about calving I like the best is the end of it....when R gets to spend time back in the house and things get back to normal...I did the night shift for 31 years...man that seems like a lifetime...and it is amazing to me how I never missed it, last winter was the first time I never went out at night to check cows....and R used to always get exasperated with me because I chose to get dressed at midnight and just stay out in the barn all night, doing crossword puzzles and reading...I even used to draw a bit out there...the dogs are in the office to keep me company and I wouldn't have to get dressed every hour to go outside and check, just throw my coat on and waltz out to have a quick look through...if there was a calf born then I would get the sled and pull it into the big part of the barn and close it and it's mom inside...until morning when R would come and help tag them. so it worked for me for 30 years...I even studied for my diploma exams at the age of 30, while in the barn checking cows...and aced all the exams I wrote in the gymnasium with the 17 yr old...

But Robert, last winter, doing his first night shift since we were married, soon came to realize...the benefits of just staying out in the barn...he tried at first to come to the house and sleep and just wake up every two hours, get dressed, walk up to the barn, pull a calf inside, then come back to the house, undress, wash and get back into bed and try to fall asleep only to wake up again in two hours...do that several times during the night and you feel like shit...so he tried it my way and found it to work much better.   He still sleeps in the barn, for since he took over he has bought a cot with a new mattress that he crashes on for a couple of hours at a time, but he doesn't have to undress each time...so it makes it a bit easier...although he did have a problem with a few frozen calves, and that is him sleeping in after the alarm goes off....I never had a frozen calf on my watch...but I didn't sleep, we only had a rocking chair out there then...hahahaha so I did doze off a bit now and again but never for very long.... I slept during the day a bit...and I did try to keep doing the night watch after I was diagnosed with LUPUS...but it was horrendous..and I ended up getting very sick..and run down...and the doc....forbade me to do it...so....... R does it now...and he doesn't like it...

I have a Rheumatologist appointment tomorrow and an MRI on saturday...and then it looks to be clear sailing for the rest of January...Woooo Hoooo

nothing else too exciting ...took the xmas tree down the other evening and am glad to have my space back... haven't been toboganning again yet but haven't given up hope that we will..  my friend is back working since school is back in and her time off is limited...so we will try to work a day in some where...