Oh Please !

I mean really people...what are  you thinking...

How many of you really think the USA is going to default on their loans.  Oh right...... they are just being diva's.... make the world remember just how important our little old country is....(said with a southern drawl)  But I predict the writing is on the wall for Barack Obama....sadly...I don't think he will get a second term as president...and God knows I hope I am wrong...because I think he is terrific...and given a presidency without a total market crash and wars to hell will have it...I think  he would have done a fantastic job for the country.  But much to every ones chagrin, he is not a miracle worker.

On the subject of Norway, well what can one say....there should be a special law, internationally, for the perpetrators of mass murder ...instant death penalty...by the most heinous, painful, humiliating method...no pleading insanity, only the most rudimentary judicial course and then bam....so it's that or a life imprisonment in solitaire in a Turkish prison where the accommodations are less than rustic...no Tv, no prisoner rights, nothing but basic food, a pail to crap in and four gray walls, with the occasional gang rape thrown in for good behavior....  Sounds pretty blood thirsty, but Christ I don't know about the rest of you but I am tired of hearing about shit like that happening...

Take for instance the young Burnaby woman viciously attacked by her axe yielding husband...God damn it but shit like that makes me furious....certain cultures that move to Canada to have  a better life and get away, supposedly, from all the violence and blood shed in their native countries and what do they do, but bring all the same shit and horror here... WE USED TO HAVE A FAIRLY PEACEFUL, UNEVENTFUL Country, until about 20 years ago...and it just kind of snuck up on us this violence, gang killings, honour killings and shit....bombings, violent protests, and mob mentality, where the hell did that come from....

We all know where it comes from, but it wouldn't be Politically correct to say it... I sometimes am driven to wishing that they would all go back where they come from and take the crime with them. THERE, I SAID IT OUT LOUD. so sue me...

Well, in a complete turnabout, summer is in full swing...haying is progressing as best it can between rain showers... I feel like I have spent a lifetime in the cab of this new tractor...since it is easier to drive, Robert feels I can put in a lot more time now.....

I am working on a lovely painting of a photo a friend of Jens took of a Blue Heron on a beaver house....and Robert is saying it is my best yet....we'll see, there's still time for me to fuck it up...hahahaha  But it amazes me how the time flies when I start painting...I get into the zone, my mind goes blank of all worries and I am not kidding but my blood sugar goes way down....I love to paint and could do it all day, everyday...too bad I can't make a living at it...I would have an argument for not farming any more...hahahahaha

Well gotta go, I'm making a pot of brown rice in my new rice cooker and a chicken zucchini stir fry...zucchini, baby carrots, onion, snap peas, and corn stir fried with chicken breast and a light sesame sauce hmmmmm just made myself hungry...  Have a great day all.

Oh ya, had this storm go over yesterday with the most vivid rainbow afterwards showing so many violets bands...

Blah, Blah, Blah

Sunday today and I am feeling pretty lazy.  I spent the whole of yesterday, pouring rain outside, baking up a storm while the weather was cool. Managed to bake three different cakes x 2 of each...a sourcream walnut coffee cake, a really nice pumpkin bar with cream cheese icing and a to die for scrumpscous upside down apricot cake , all from the splenda cook book. after they were all on the counter cooling I put together two big pots of Beef and black bean soup....one of our all time fav's.... with homegrown tomatoes, celery, onion and four kinds of beans, black beans, kidney beans, lima beans and white beans. This soup is full of fibre and yummy goodness. I freeze all the cakes and the soup so that we have quick good food when we come in from the field.  Besides the cake and the gallons of soup, I made baked spaghetti with meat sauce for supper and there was enough left over for three more meals for us both...so we froze that as well...

Today I made a roast chicken with sausage stuffing, mashed potatoes and broccoli, baked apple yams  and beets.  We will eat that again tomorrow and then I make up a few TV dinners for the freezer and turn the rest into thick hearty chicken soup.....hmmmmmmm

I got my hair cut on thursday...quite short...and for now I am wearing it all spikey looking...it is a nice change from the past few years hair cut I have been sporting...I liked that one very much but felt I needed a small change for the hot summer...hahahahaha  My friends looked at me on friday like I had lost my mind....but hey, it's just hair..it grows back...

the weather today is fairly warm at 24 and windy...if it holds in this pattern we will be baling more hay in the next couple of days. grrrrr

I got the tin on my little shed project with R's help and I t hink  it looks great. now I just need to install my wooden dowel rods and I can hang up all my garden hoses and such....no more having to lug them all the way back to the far garden shed...no small feat with my gimpy ankle. My fake windows are the last project to tackle and I will get to them in a day or so...it has been so humid that I wasn't able to paint the final coat...

I just ordered three kick ass beach towels from general mills cereal offer....last month the offer on the box of cereal was a free frozen yogurt or ice cream worth $5.00... so we tried some great walnut caramel brownie frozen yogurt...hmmmmm it was delicious, so we redeemed the rest of our coupons and now have a years supply of frozen yogurt...which is half the fat of ice cream..I love freebies...and it's healthy...gotta love that.

Thoughts go out to Jen, surgery tomorrow and I will be thinking of her all day.

Gotta go warm up some soup for supper..maybe homemade biscuits  with cheddar cheese in them....hmmmm   i'm all about food the past few days.

Too bad about amy winehouse. 

new Photos



me, of course



my favorite planter



my favorite man



my new shed



A cool perspective



Ruby King (hen and chicks)

Another Day, another Dollar

Well after weeks and weeks of rain, it has finally been sunny for more than two days consecutively.  Unfortunately that spells the end of my summer idleness (well, semi-idleness) and back to the salt mines.  We managed to rake and bale 25 acres of hay yesterday, that has lain on the water logged ground for more than two weeks. It was surprisingly green underneath and looks like it might make decent feed.  The confusing part of the whole day came when I arrived in the field to go to work and there sat my trusty old white tractor and chain baler....the ones I was feeling like I was cheating on...by coveting the new baler we bought last year and the new tractor that will arrive in a couple of weeks. hahahaha  I didn't think I would have to run those two pieces of equipment again...they being demoted in leu of the new equipment, Robert would be running them, which was to be a huge step up from his old equipment...that he insisted on still using...

Roberts reason for us using these old machines, they are lighter, bigger floatation tires and field ready....so I spent the day clutching with my left leg (the one with the broken ankle that hasn't healed well) and my arthritic hand, that today is swollen to twice it's normal size from the strain I put on it yesterday while baling.  I keep telling him I am used up and spit out but he turns a deaf ear and puts me to work...

so while I slaved away out there in that old equipment, here at home sat a year old baler with a ton of newer features that make baling way easier than the old baler...and a brand new loaner tractor that you can drive and not have to push the clutch 2000 times a day in.... it just didn't make sense to me...but what do I know....I'm just the dumb smuck that does what she's told....but he'll be sorry I think....when I do finally get to retire...I will be so crippled up that he will have to push me around in a wheel chair, and wipe my shitty ass.

More baling today, if the weather holds...it sounds like we will be getting a touch more rain this week...oh yay...Why the hell not...the ground is saturated now and it just pools in the low spots, we are having to drive around them..it is quite the mess...

Finally got my damn camera to work...

Frustrated

I have been sporadically trying to get this new camera to work...I might have finally managed to figure out the picture quality issue but then couldn't get the pictures to show up on the computer grrrrrrr  Thanks to my in family computer whiz...(Jen) I got that problem solved now to.   So why don't I  have pictures up on my blog... hahahhaah  good question...it might have something to do with the shitty quality ....I am back to square one in that regard.  Today I am going to do some radical experimentation with it and if that isn't the answer then it's going on ebay...or kijiji....ahhahaha  I need to have a camera that takes awesome pictures...it is imperative to my phsyci....I see a lot of beautiful things about me and need to have pictures of them to later refer to when I want to turn that beautiful thing into a painting.

I dreamt about bats last night...my niece Kim got one in her hair and had to have her head shaved...and in support of her I had Robert shave my head...only he didn't do it right. WTF... how the hell can you screw up head shaving I don't know... but it turned out all funky and weird...and thankfully I woke up just as my fingers were closing around his throat...hahahahha just kidding... I wasn't trying to throttle him in my dreams...

I just glanced out the window and am shocked...I see blue sky and it's so bright out there my eyes are watering...I feel like a mole coming out of the ground for the first time in spring.the light is blinding.

I am not sure which of my outside projects I will tackle first... maybe just a walk about to begin with, assess the damage of 40+ days of rain.... I am seriously thinking about hoisting the old red canoe down from the rafters of the machine shed, evicting what ever has set up house in it and taking a turn about the lake south of the house...I want to take pictures of the baby ducks ....

So I am heading outside for a bit....the wind is even blowing...yahoooooo

that should thin the mosquito's down a bit

INCREDIBLE

The weather we have had this past month and a half has been so polar opposite of the pattern we have been in previous years that we are somewhat baffled as to how to handle it. Our first inclination is to just wait it out, sooner or later the rain will cease and we can get to work but 42 days into the monsoon season and there is barely a glimmer of hope as to that happening. The  moment it heats up and the sun comes out we can probably expect some severe storms, what with all the humidity now.  It is 98 % outside and 89 % in the house, ya that's right   ICKY and sticky. Rain hasn't actually fallen from the sky in nearly two days but water is seeping out of everywhere and the lawn is saturated...We had 6 inches of rain in June and so far in July nearly 7 inches more...and still half a month to go. Good Grief..

I quickly ran over the heavier parts of the lawn today, my mower gliding through standing water...but if I don't cut it while it's wet, and wait until it is dryer it will to be too tall for the mower to cut and that spells disaster..because anything bigger will make ruts on the lawn. 

Some people may think I am a bit too anal about my yard..but to me it is a sanctuary of loveliness, a buffer between our house and the general ugliness of a functioning farm. So I like my yard to be immaculate, no junk lying about, no manure, no weeds or ruts from the tractor.

I picked a few tiny zucchini's and tomatoes from the garden today but I nearly had to call for help to get myself back out, the soil is so wet it sucked my feet in like quicksand. Ha, even the deer last night tried to walk across it and after only a few steps, thought better of it and turned back. Time to put the 8 ft fence up around the garden...or I will lose all my carrots to the deer again this year.

I am at my whits end as to what to do about Riley the chocolate lab, pulling all my flowers off the plants.  He has especially been bothering the planters I have, that by the way are just gorgeous this year, flowers cascading over the rims of the pots and I come home to flowers and petals littering the sidewalk and a bald plant.. I am afraid to put Tabasco sauce or pepper on them for fear of attracting the other dog Owen, he eats anything that comes from the house...and so far he does Not bother my flowers...so I am thinking of getting some of that animal repellent... but for now as a last resort I have placed the planters on top of the big boulders by our house, where he will have to go quite a ways out of his way to get at them...it looks a bit ridiculous but so far it's doing the trick.

I am just now recovering from a real shock to my system, I got this morning when I went down to get my mower out of its shed...as I approached the sliding doors I could hear a squeaking noise and scratching so I looked around, thinking it was BATS. We have a family of bats that live here and help us with mosquito control...and I have not, as yet got around to building them a bat house...but it is next on my list of things to do.  Any way, the bats sometimes roost, squeezed in between the two rolling doors of this shed. They like the snugness I guess, and I have on other occasions rolled the doors and had a bat or two fall out on the ground by my feet...some of them get injured and I always feel bad about hurting them...so I was leery about this noise and went back to the house to tell Robert about it...he was coming down to put gas in the mower anyway so he hopped onto a barrel inside the shed (gaining entry through the one door that was partially opened at the far end of the shed..) He said there was a birds nest up there...and that he could, HE THOUGHT, baby birds crawling along the soffit...HAHAHAHAHA so I am standing about ten feet away...and he comes back out, grabs the door that is closing off entry to my mower and rolls it open....WELLLLLLLLL...   this big thing, flew out from between the two doors, heading right for me....I mean seriously, it flew right at me...I was, apparently, screaming in a deep gurgly voice (but that's another story) and it was no damned baby bird....it was an adult brown bat....big and fat. When it was about a foot away and still hadn't veered away I put my hand up to swat it away and just as it turned away, my hand brushed against it.....ewwwwww....  and it latched onto the sleeve of my shirt...so there I was, gurgling like a little girl with laryngitis, waving my arm in the air to dislodge the bat and jumping up and down... it was the most exercise I have gotten in a couple of weeks....Robert (it all happened so fast that he barely caught a glimpse of it) rushed out of the quad shed just in time to see me throw my hat into the brambles beside the shed.....I had used my other hand to grab my hat and brush the bat off my arm...and it grabbed a hold of my hat so the hat and the bat went sailing into the raspberry canes and tall grass...the last I saw of my hat it was resting on top of a raspberry cane and the bat was flying towards an old chicken house.....ewwwwwwwww.  It took nearly an hour of steady mowing before my heart stopped beating so fast.  I am not usually afraid of bats when I am prepared for encounters but that was just a bit too close for comfort....  Any way, I got a hug out of it, Robert was so amused at my reaction that he was still chuckling about it a while later when he drove out of the yard on his quad. 

I am now going to print plans off the internet for a bat house....

Oh, the Indignity

I have been working feverishly to get my projects done, with some success I must say. My Hydrant shed is complete except for the metal roofing which on order. Yesterday I painted my fake windows...another coat tomorrow and they should be complete as well, ready to be hung. The lawn growth has slowed a bit , giving me time to breath between mowing. I hoed the garden two days ago and need to go over it again to get control of the blasted chickweed. It is rampant this summer with all the rain. It is Roberts job to hill the potatoes but I will run the small cultivator up and down the rows to loosen the soil and make it easier for him..

I am in a bit of a fix, medically wise.. I went for blood tests last week and my specialist in the city phoned and left a message about the results...normally it should be the family doctor that does that but mine is semi-retired and only in the clinic 1 day per month...so the specialist is aghast at some of the numbers on these tests and after explaining how bad they are, tells me to see my family doctor and get these issues resolved....uhhhhhh there in lies the problem, I phone immediately after getting that message and the soonest I can see my Doctor is September 17.  So I decided I need to change doctors, to one that isn't retired...I ask for an appointment two different doctors...with much the same results...Jly 29th was one opening or Aug 22 for the other...the earlier appointment was with a doctor new to Canada from south Africa, and is very hard to understand or he was the last time I was forced to see him, perhaps his accent has diminished since then....and the august appointment is with a lady doctor that I swore I would sooner gouged my eyes out with a tea spoon than ever go to again.... SO ya, spoiled for choice aren't I...

I would just ignore all the problems but two of them are or could become serious issues..and I, contrary to what I may bluster on about, am not ready to die or spend what's left of my life hooked up to a machine...

My thyroid is totally dead it would appear, the numbers so badly out of whack in spite my gargantuan dose of thyroid med....Robert wants me to see a thyroid specialist. At this point, what the hell, why not.

My blood sugar is just berserk...I have had two low blood sugar episodes in June alone...and numerous spikes where it is through the roof ...okay, I admit to not being religious about what I eat...but we don't eat crap, I take my meds. and get lots of outside activity...but where I struggle is to match the food intake to my activity level....when I eat smaller meals and go outside...I tend to be out longer than I should and work to hard....I start getting confused...my hands might get shaky and if I am stubborn and don't go in right that moment..my knees get weak and I get dizzy... when I do go in and test my blood it has been as low as 2.4   but I start to feel weird at about 4.0... 
I suspect the gliclicide they have me on is responsible...and that I should be taking more than just that...Metformin nearly killed me when I took it, I had such a bad reaction but they must have a different drug that performs the same task....So I need to have a serious sit down and hash it out talk with my doctor and I think be referred to a diabetic specialist... I know that most of the responsibility falls on me to do what I need to....and I am struggling with making the changes to my lifestyle...like carrying a grocery store on my back..so that I am never far away from food...but I have been conditioned to thinking that eating that much food is what made me so fat...that I have a hard time with the whole snacking thing...and then there is the working thing...the work I do is very physically demanding....carrying, pushing, hammering, bending, lots of walking , so that the bowl of cereal I had for breakfast doesn't last that long...and then the next day...I might sit in the tractor all day and the most strenuous thing I do is climbing in the tractor...but on the days when I am active...Once I get started doing the work...I am reluctant to stop and go to the house for a snack....and once I have low blood sugar, and I have to eat, I have a hard time to feel satisfied..and I tend to over eat...which makes the blood sugar go through the roof...it is a roller coaster.

On different note, our friends Barb and Norm have moved away, they sold their farm and moved to Airdrie....closer to Calgary...to a mid unit Town house...BOY !!!! what a dramatic change... I know I would never make that kind of change in my life... I am all for selling the farm but I would prefer to move to an acreage closer to the city...so there is less driving time to get anywhere but still maintain some of our privacy and space...a yard to tinker in. Robert and I have plans for retirement that include, landscaping, and beautification of our large yard, walking trails through our property, a bit of travel if the budget allows, but a whole lot more free time to visit family.
He talks about it a bit now, like it is actually going to happen, he even puts a time frame on it...with in seven to ten years...and that is without me begging...I can see changes in him the past year, he is feeling a bit older...not as unflaggingly energetic...like he used to be...the winter bothers him the most.. The cold, since he is outside for 12hours a day, and the muck and mud in the spring.. carrying hundreds of pails of grain this spring just plain wore him out.  He takes pain killers a lot more than he used to ...for his hip and back...

Well we will get to use our new tractor for a few years before we sell out...it should maintain a good resale value, being a John Deere...hahahahaha at least we hope so.

I just have to go off into a bit of a rant here for one second....how in the hell, when we have had 6 inches of rain in the month of June, can we have a grasshopper problem...I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is no GOD. I thought grasshoppers were only an issue when it was dry...but apparently NOT. because we have grasshoppers, thousands and thousands of the little creepy bastards in our hay fields and crop...just Jim fucking dandy.

I have a sore butt today....yesterday when I was in the barn with the big doors jammed open, painting my fake windows...the mosquito's were swarming me and I could hardly stand still they were biting me through my pants...which were over 12 years old and the material is paper thin...which is why I like them on a hot day, they are cool....but no protection from blood thirsty insects...so I rushed to the office part of the barn and grabbed a nearly empty can of bug repellent from by the door...It wasn't OFF or Muskol....it was some product called REPEL, our ex-friend Rick must have left here once...so I spray my legs and butt and shoulders with it...barely enough in the can to do the job...went back to painting and not even 15 minutes later my butt is on fire...so much so I can barely stand it...the other places I sprayed it, the material of my pants and shirt were thick enough that it didn't make contact with my skin...but on my butt, where the material is super thin from wear....I got a rash....and blisters...yup....super....  I endured until I finished my paint job but my ass was so inflamed by then I had to nearly crawl to the house...it was the longest 100 yards of my life it seemed....walking carefully with baby steps, so as not to pull the skin of my buttocks at all.... I hit the shower the moment I was inside...which burned like a son of a bitch...and left me gasping against the wall of the shower....but after it brought some small relief... I put on a sun dress. The most humiliating part came when I had to ask Robert to take a look and treat it with polysporin...I couldn't stay still...it stung and tickled all at the same time... Oh My God, how the hell does shit like this happen to me....
Robert went to the barn and got the can...read the label...it says can cause severe skin irritation in rare cases.....hahahahhahahahahahah   figures...  I would have been slightly happier if it had reacted to the skin on my leg rather than my butt. since it makes sitting an agony...and I am currently typing this post, standing  up...hahahahahah