Because….

3 different people (two of them relatives) have given me grief (lovingly, I hope) about my lack of blogging, here’s a new entry.

Did that come across snarky?  I think it might.  It could have something to do with the headache that’s flirting around the perimeter of my awareness… popping up periodically in my ears to make me hear great yawning throbs of nothingness.

Sigh.

Last night wasn’t a good night.

But the day was good.  It started off rather early with me taking Jim to school and then dashing up the mountain to drop off the boys’ postplacement pics.  That was a good outing… so nice to see June and Esther and to meet…. ummm… the new girl (whose name I’ve obviously misplaced… blame it on the headache).  And then dashing back down the mountain so that M could finally go to sleep.  Then feeding, dressing and preparing the kids for an outing/adventure that has been long overdue for them. 

We had an interesting game of “is that Poppy” as we waited for his class to finish.  Xander was determined that Poppy had had a makeover in class and was now a petite long-haired brunette in heels.  That garnered barrels of laughs from Sophie and Beckett.  Me too.  So funny.

But eventually the correct Poppy joined us and we headed off immediately for Mellow Mushroom.  Of course it was dead as it was between lunch and dinner, but it was pleasant.  The kids thought they were big stuff indeed when the hostess seated us at one of the big tall tables.  Anyway… all was well until I happened to glance into the kitchen where I saw one of the cooks pulling out a bag of pre-shredded cheese.  My alarm bells clanged… but I decided to ignore it… since I couldn’t remember if they’d always used pre-shredded cheese or not… and then I forgot about it.  When the pizza came out it was way more gooey than I remembered it being so I made a mental note that the cheese must be different, but it was good and other than Sophie uncharacteristically not finishing her food… all was well.  At one point Sophie needed to go to visit the “flush-rooms” and as we passed by a guy at the bar (Harley shirt, I think a braided pony tail, definitely Harley biker vibe going on) Sophie reached out and tapped him on the shoulder.  When he turned around she very sweetly smiled at him and said “Bon Soir!” and then continued on her merry way.  I overheard the man telling his date that he “reckoned she was French” which amused me more because Sophie had copped the most Southern accent I’ve ever heard so that her Bon soir sounded much more like “Bone-Sware” than anything remotely French.  While in the bathroom we worked on pronunciation to the amusement of the nice older lady that was waiting for us to finish.

Anyway.  From there we headed over to Earthfare for a bit of pre-Holiday shopping.  It was a fairly nice shopping outing minus a few odd people that set off my Bad-Vibe-O-Meter.   And then it was off to Petsmart for dog food and then thankfully we headed for home.

Somewhere near West Greenville I realized that the cheese was something I should’ve really investigated as Sophie was a weepy, over-emotional mess and Xander had gone guano-loco. 

Note to self: Mellow Mushroom is no longer a good choice for Sophie.

Once we were home Sophie flung herself into bed and within minutes Xander found an opportunity to smack Beckett with the sharp edge of a wooden ruler and found himself in his bed as well.

After much cajoling I finally got Sophie to at least quit crying go back downstairs where she did find happy (happiness thy name is sausage) but Xander… that was a different story altogether.

He screamed.

He yelled.

He called me stupid.

He kicked the wall.

He threw toys.

He threw toys down the stairs.

He yelled at Beckett.

He yelled at me.

He yelled at Jim.

It. Was. Not. Pretty.

And it went on for hours.

I tried talking, I tried taking away toys, taking away privileges.

Nothing helped at all.  Finally we just all went to bed and he quieted down and finally fell asleep.

I did not sleep well.  Sophie was still clingy and demanded to sleep with me, Beckett woke up sometime in the early morning and wanted to sleep with Poppy so I ended up pushed out of bed.  I ended up in Sophie’s bed and sometime afterwards Beckett migrated to join me…  which wasn’t great because Sophie’s bed is a single.

Sigh.

But this morning everybody is up and happy.  Xander brought up the whole fiasco last night and apologized.  He said he felt like his head was spinning out of control and that he was so sorry for all he had said and done.   I asked if he slept well and he said that he had slept just fine, and didn’t even have dreams.  His behavior this morning has been stellar and  he’s back to his sweet self.

So was it the cheese?  I don’t know and I’m not willing to test it out again!  And I can tell you that I have no desire to go out for pizza anytime soon!

Meet Lady Annaliese

 

Wednesday we trucked down to Alpharetta GA to pick up another new horse… this time a Percheron that we have named Lady Annaliese, or Lady for short.

She’s a big mare.  Big and very HEAVY!  But more on that later…

Here are her stats:

She’s approximately 11 years old
She is a dappled grey with a wide blaze very different in her coloring than Alise or Fantine… I’m not sure that she’ll fade to white as they have.
She’s about 16.2hh (I haven’t measured her, but this is what her previous owner told me).
She weighs about 2000lbs maybe a bit more.

On the negative side she has poor ground manners and is also a bit overweight. Ok… I shouldn’t say she has poor ground manners as she doesn’t bully or drag people along after her. She actually has a pretty “soft” head (meaning she doesn’t pull against the lead line or halter) but she doesn’t stand still very well.

On the plus side she is already rideable so while she’s definitely going to need some fine tuning she at least won’t be starting from the ground up.

Unfortunately her previous owner sprayed her with a particularly foul fly spray (I do not know the brand) that smelled like cheap cologne and immediately made me break out in great red patches everywhere the horse touched me. So yesterday M and I decided that there was no way around it… Lady was going to have to have a bath! So we brought her out and for the most part she did ok. Until we got to her mane. At some point in the not so far off past (I hope) the previous owner had dressed Lady up like a unicorn and had dyed her mane and tail pink. There was still remnants of the pink in her mane and in the hair under her mane. It seemed to be very irritated as Lady played up considerably during that part of the washing (seriously, it’s totally wrong to dye a horse’s mane/tail/coat… I know it seemed cute, but nonetheless, to me, it’s wrong).

By the time M (who was washing… I was holding) got to her back legs, Lady was pretty tired of the whole thing. So when Martha startled her it was really no surprise that she swung around a bit disconcerted to see someone walking up the driveway. Unfortunately when she swung around she stepped and twisted on M’s foot, knocking her down in the process. M’s sporting 2 possibly broken and badly skinned toes (yes she was wearing boots). So we finished up the bath and tied Lady out on a long rope to graze while she dried out.

And that’s when we discovered that Lady doesn’t tie out on a long rope well. She managed to wrap the rope around her hocks, ultimately cow-tying herself. By the time I got to her head she was sitting on her bottom with her head pulled to her flank. So I unhooked her halter and still she didn’t seem to be able to stand up so I gave her halter a tug and hopped out of the way. Unfortunately I didn’t hop quickly enough as her front hoof came slamming down on top of my foot as she stood up, knocking me down so that I was laying underneath her belly! By the way she has a GREAT “whoa” command! The whole time I was falling I was saying “whoa… whoa… whoa” over and over so when I stood up I just grabbed her halter and we walked off like nothing.

And initially I thought it was just nothing. Until I stopped moving long enough to actually get feeling back in my foot. Jim finally appeared and took Lady from me and I was able to take my boot off to assess the damage. She had stepped on the right middle part of my foot (she didn’t hit my toes at all) and it was swollen to tennis ball size. So I hobbled into the house and immediately put my foot up only to be informed that I was going to the ER to have it X-rayed so I hobbled off to the bathroom and peeled out of my very wet, very dirty, very horsey clothes and tried to look like I hadn’t been rolling in the dirt with a horse and off we went.

We were pretty much in and out in less than an hour and luckily nothing is broken. The doc told me to stay off of it for 24 hours which is laughable. Even the family thought so as they all went off to work leaving me to feed and maintain the kids… so yeah… no biggie.

So anyway, this morning I have a puffy purple foot and a strong desire to go out a mess with the horses, but I’m going to be good and stay inside and let my poor foot have until this afternoon to get better

But back to Lady… I have no ill-will towards the mare. If anything it was my own fault for putting her into a situation where she could get tangled and I simply got what I deserved. I’m hoping to be up to riding by tomorrow (or this afternoon if I push it) and will update more on Lady’s performance at that time.

Summertime and the living is humid

Jim and I had to run to G’ville to drop off something at Tech and as we were driving by the Walgreens at Augusta I noticed the temperature flash up on the sign… 111 degrees.  While I had definitely thought it was hot, I thought 111 was a bit excessive and figured that sign was fritzy.  So I hit the ext.temp button in the car (I think that button sat there unused for the first year that I drove Landy before I realized what it was) and 109 popped up on the screen.  Hmmmm.  Guess the sign wasn’t really all that much off after all.

So yeah, it’s been hot here and fairly humid… as in denim has been banned from farm wear because of discomfort and inability to get them off once you’re back inside!  The sheep refuse to graze during the day as they’d rather doze under the shady trees and the cows have stayed either in the barn or under the trees as well.  The horses are willing to brave the rays to graze, but even they have to hang out in the shade during the hottest part of the day.  Unfortunately we lost the smallest of the pigs.  I feel fairly certain that heat played a part as the bigger pigs were very nearly overheated that day as well… we’ve had to add a much bigger waterer and make more frequent trips out to re-wet their mud pit every day.  The day that the pig died was the day we were gone much of the day picking up the headgate and no one was here doing our regular observations and checks… yet another reason why I prefer to just stay home.

Speaking of the headgate… I’m still in shock that I found such a good deal on it!  A brand new headgate similar to the one we just bought sales for nearly $800 at the farm store.  I found an unused one on craigslist for $150!! Apparently the guy who was selling it had bought it 10 years ago when he was first getting into cows.  Then the cattle market tanked so he got rid of the cows and never even set up the head gate… so it sat in his barn unused and most likely forgotten.  Now he is moving and decided to clean out the barn so posted it on craigslist just to “get rid of it” and as luck would have it I was the first (of MANY!) callers.  I think he regretted that he didn’t ask more for it… but he was happy to honor our verbal agreement even when he got offers for 2x what he listed.  Now I just need to figure out how to set it up! 

And that needs to be soon because I firmly believe that Mary had a fling with the neighbor’s bull… either that or she’s packing on the pounds and had an udder augmentation. 

M’s palpated cows before but Mary’s a bit… lively… and M’s not confident that Mary would stand still for the procedure.

Anyway.

I’ve been making cheese again… just mozzarella this time.  We’re all out and I really should be making it every day… but I can’t get my cheese making mojo going…

Sophie gets her casts off on Tuesday!  Hooray!!  The poor girl has been so depressed and on top of that she’s got a sore throat, a horrible cough AND ear infections.  Unfortunately the cough and sore throat must’ve been catchy because now Xander is coming down with a horrible cough and has complained of his throat all morning. 

Sigh.

Summer colds are totally wrong.

Luckily Beckett has remained healthy!!  However I’m betting he’ll get sick just as the other two get better…. prolongs the fun agony.

Anyway… continuing on the farm front.  We’ve started processing some of the chickens.  We placed an order with Cornerstone Farm in NY for supplies (knives, tools, a plucker and a scalder) and are still waiting on the plucker and scalder.  We’ve had a lot of hiccups with this order, but we’ve all been pleased with the items we’ve received so far.  We’re all anxious about the plucker and scalder though.  So far we’ve done 6 of the roosters.  That leaves about 74 more to be done.  Yeah… 74.  So we would reallylike to have that scalder and plucker really soon.  Like today would be nice.  Seriously.  And I still need to clean out the freezer… which would probably be a good thing to do today (note to self).

Anyway.  So there’s lots going on here at the farm.  My apologies to my friends that have called or emailed only to get no response.  August is a tough month with very little reprieve in sight as the garden is starting to come in and there will hopefully be a lot of canning and “putting up” going on soon, as well as doing all the chickens and getting them in the freezer and making chicken stock (with feet!!) to put away as well.  Not to mention getting things winterized. 

So that’s it for now…  Look for a chicken post soon!

Quoted

1.  When Sophie was first assessed by the ER staff they put a neck brace on her just in case.  This drove her absolutely mental and she, in her pain filled, medicinally loopy state, repeatedly tried, begged, pleaded and demanded that it be removed.  It was rough telling her no over and over again but finally after her CT and Xrays were read the doc came in to remove the brace.  By this time Sophie was looped out on Ativan and morphine but she woke up enough to tell him,

“It’s a good thing you’ve done for the planet.”

before going right back to la-la-land.  He thought she said something about flying planes (he’s a pilot when he’s not doctoring) but no… she was just letting him know the devastation that was at hand… if she hadn’t been drugged out the wazoo.

2.  When they took her back for her second CT she tried so hard to be perfectly still and to cooperate as best she could, but even with her trying so hard to do it herself, she still needed help from the nurse and a tech to move her from her bed to the CT table thingy.  When they helped her back to her bed she turned to them both and said,

“Thank you so very much for helping me.”

Which I thought was sooo incredibly sweet… I almost cried.  She’s such a sweet, sweet girl.

3. When we were first home we only had the two doses of Lortab that were in 4 dosing syringes (half dose in each obviously).  So she associated pain relief with medicine in those syringes.  Over the weekend she would start to hurt and would tell me,

“Mommy!  I really need pinch medicine!”

So called because the syringe reminded her of when she gets shots and we tell her it’ll pinch and then be over.

4. During the first night we were told to wake Sophie every few hours to make sure she was “OK”… we were supposed to ask her if she knew her name etc…  So, Jim woke her up at one point and she was most indignant (so was I… but that’s another story), but answered Jim easily enough.  Jim followed up her name question with a slightly odd one, “do you know who you’re sleeping with?” (I blame it on lack of sleep) which made her pause for a moment and then she answered,

“I don’t know, but there are statues in Mommy’s bed”

At the word statues she raised her splinted arms up… they’re plaster… statues… too funny!  I deemed her normal-enough….

5.  Once Sophie was aware enough for us to explain to her about what was going on, we told her that she would have to go to a special doctor, an orthopedist, who would take care of her bones.  She immediately latched on to the concept and immediately dubbed him

“The Bone Doctor”

And while we tried to explain to her that he’s actually called an orthopedist, she was adamant that he’s called a bone doctor.  So imagine her triumph when we wheeled her into his office and there emblazoned on his door was NOT Easley Orthopedists or Such-and-Such Orthopedic Medicine…. No it said Easley Bone and Joint.  To which Sophie craned around in her wheelchair to say,

“I told you he was a bone doctor!”

Hmph.

6.  Sophie decided while we were still in the ER that the only doctor she needed was the one to fix her bones.  She was so sure, in fact, that he would have all that she needed to survive the accident that she informed everybody that,

“the bone doctor will fix Sophie’s bones AND has squirrel spray!”

Gotta love a doctor that fixes bones and gets rid of vermin!  (I tried explaining that one to the bone doc, but he didn’t get it… guess it’s only funny to us!).

7. Throughout the early part of her recover Sophie begged for her best friend/cousin Elizabeth to come visit.  Initially we stalled Izzy coming because we wanted Sophie to get used to the idea of having all her casts and to let her body heal a bit from the fall (she was quite sore for several days).  Then Izzy went to the beach and I must have explained that to Sophie a couple 100 times before Izzy (and family) arrived at our house!  During my many explanations I tried to reason with Sophie about waiting for Izzy to come visit… explaining that she wouldn’t be able to do anything but sit around and that wouldn’t be much fun, but Sophie was adamant!  So I asked her why she wanted Iz to come right away and she said,

“because Elizabeth can use the remote!”

So we had to have a big conversation on how Elizabeth was coming to see her and play with her, but was NOT coming to be her personal attendant.  That’s my job (evidently!).

8.  Everybody has told Sophie to be careful climbing trees, or not to climb trees or some variation thereof.  At this point she tries to beat people to the punch saying,

“… and no more climbing trees”

 (this is more about the way she says it than the actual quote imagine a very droll/exasperated tone, occasionally accompanied by a slight eye roll)  I totally understand where she’s coming from…

 

There are several more, but I just can’t think of them all right now… I’ll have to get M and Jim to remind me of the ones I’m missing… I’ll update as we remember or hear new ones!

 

A Girl, a Tree and a Very Nasty Squirrel

Thursday July 2, pretty much started like any other.  Jim and M were off feeding the animals and I was hanging out with the kids in the house.  Sophie was watching one of her programs on TV when one of my friends called on the phone.  So I sat down with my coffee, opened up a mindless game on POGO and settled in for a chat, secure in the knowledge that Sophie was sucked into her program and the boys were doing their own thing.  Periodically Sophie would dance through the room so I knew she was still with me.  Several minutes (maybe 20) later Jim came in to take out the waste milk to the pigs.  And very few moments later I heard Jim coming in the door and saying to hang up the phone that Sophie was hurt. He was using the “this is serious” voice so without much ado I hung up and rounded the kitchen corner to see him holding a bloody and obviously disoriented Sophie.

When he had walked out on the porch he heard her crying in a tiny voice “I need my Mommy” over and over.  He had looked over the edge of the porch and found her disoriented, trying to make the stairs, but unable to negotiate the temporary fencing we had put up for the sheep.  He leapt over the edge of the porch, swept her up in his arms and brought her in.

We immediately took her to the bathroom to assess the situation.  She had blood all over her face, but the only injuries I could find were on her wrists, no blood in her ears or nose or eyes, just her wrists.  She was repeatedly chanting that she needed to lay down on the sofa so that she could go to sleep.  So we washed her up and figured out that she had rubbed her bloody wrists on her face and had bitten her tongue (but not terribly).  Once she was clean we noticed that her hands were quite limp with her right index finger painfully swollen and bruised, and that she wasn’t walking well.  We couldn’t decide if her walking was due to a foot injury or due to a head injury.  So after a brief screaming match (me against M and Jim, who are a nurse and nursing student respectively) I decided she needed to go to the ER.  So Jim called ahead to tell them we were coming and off we went.

I am not going to go into the horrors of the ER visit.  Suffice it to say that I was unhappy about a few things, especially since that’s where Jim works and you’d think it would be better because of his familiarity.  But no.  They gave her a drug that I didn’t approve, blew off my concerns about her foot, and had to be reminded an obscene amount of times about her finger. 

But anyway.

Needless to say Sophie pretty much had every part of her body (except her legs, interestingly enough) X-rayed and we now have lovely images of her brain (they gave us all the films on CD… Sophie hasn’t seen them yet, but I think they’ll fascinated her!) and bones.  So it was decided to just splint her arms and even though I repeatedly asked for them to X-ray her foot I was blown off and informed that it was simply soft tissue damage and she would be able to just “walk it off”.

HMPH.

So they splinted her up.  Splints are very heavy cotton wrapped plaster bandages that are held on with ACE bandages.  Once the splints were on we were invited to leave the ER so fast my head was spinning!  I was a little overwhelmed!  They sent us home with a couple doses of Lortab Elixir from the hospital pharmacy and wished us well.  Jim was supposed to go to work that night, but was given the night off due to the trauma of the situation, M was able to be off as well. 

So we came home, a rag-tag ball of misery.  We had been in the ER for a very long time, Sophie had thrown up her breakfast during the X-rays and had had nothing else to eat, so M had made homemade pizza for her.  She ate half of a piece and then asked to go to bed.  Jim carried her up and when he laid her in the bed she tossed the pizza as well.  So there was a flurry of activity to change the bed, wash Sophie (her hair had to be washed, which was difficult what with the splints and all) and get her settled back down. 

That night was horrible.  Sophie slept in our bed with me.  Jim slept on the couch and the boys slept with M.  We gave her some of the Lortab and that seemed to help, but we only had the two doses so we were giving her half doses to make sure she didn’t have a bad reaction to it while still meeting her pain needs.

By morning I knew that the foot was a problem.  She was unable to bear weight on it at all and it was puffy and slightly bruised.  So I thought, that’s ok, we’ll just have the orthopedist look at it when we go in this morning (July 3) as we had been told by the ER doc that we had an appt(more or less) for that day with the orthopedist.  After a multitude of phone calls to the orthopedists we discovered that their offices were closed for the 4th and that we would have to wait until Monday.  This was not happy news.  So I had Jim call back to the ER to talk about the foot.  They had us come back in and have a few more X-rays and  what do you know?  Two broken bones in her foot.  WOW… So I do know what I’m talking about… imagine that.   I was a little more than P.O.ed at this point. 

On top of that, they relegated us to the nurses’ break room (which is tiny) to have the splint put on (which they weren’t going to do because they thought we could just keep her off of it… yeah right! So I had to pitchanother fit to have the splint put on…which is probably why they were so ill with me).  Anyway.  All the nurses were trying to eat lunch, andwe were taking up over half the room with Sophie in a wheelchair… so there was a lot of bad energy going on.  Sophie had had her last dose of Lortab that morning and it was fast approaching afternoon and she was beginning to really hurt, plus the bad vibes were getting to her so at one point she was crying and I had to hold her (cradled, baby style) to comfort her, which again didn’t go over well with the nurses who were trying to eat.  Jim ran off to the hospital pharmacy  to have Sophie’s Lortab script filled and guess what?  They said they didn’t have any. WTH?!?!  We just got the same medicine the day before and now they mysteriously didn’t have any?  So Jim tried to get the ER doc (who had prescribed Tylenol 3 not Lortab, a diff. ER doc had prescribed the Lortab) to explain to the pharmacy that we needed the Lortab but he refused.  He stood by his Tylenol 3 prescription. So we were screwed.  We waited and waited and finally they splinted her foot giving us firm instructions to keep her off of it, several of the nurses indicating that Sophie didn’t even NEED pain meds because she was just a kid and they’re “resilient”… um no… kids are resilient, but how about you break 7 bones and not take any pain meds for it… see how that makes you feel….

SO ANYWAY!

So we left the ER and headed over to the Publix pharmacy only to be told that they didn’t have the Lortab elixir either.  So in desperation we had the Tylenol 3 filled only to discover that it’s bright orange… which means red #40 which makes Sophie hyper and jittery.

But what could we do?

Back home again, a dose of the Tylenol 3 (chased with Benadryl) and the mayhem ensued.  Sophie was agitated, coming off of the anxiety med that they had given her in the ER (the one I told them not to give her), the Tylenol 3 was making her head spin and the Benadryl was making her drowsy.  She was a ticking time bomb and we all knew it. 

So Jim tried to call into work again, knowing that I would be alone with all three kids (M had to work too) and that Sophie would need to be carried to the bathroom or wherever if she needed to move and that the odds were good that she wasn’t going to sleep again which meant I wouldn’t sleep which meant I would be keeping the boys (who would be well rested) and Sophie who needed constant supervision the next day while he and M slept.

His work said no.

Matter of fact, they said Sophie wasn’t hurt badly enough to warrant it.

O.

M.

G.

So off to work went M and Jim and off to insanity went I.

I refused to speak to Jim at all over the rest of the weekend.  I was furious.  Angry. Sleep deprived and irate.  How dare they!  How dare he?  This was Jim’s beloved ER that was saying that my Sophie wasn’t really hurt “all that bad” and that I was just being melodramatic! 

Grrr.  Getting mad again just thinking about it.

So the whole weekend was horrid.  I never really saw the boys other than to make sure they had something to eat and that they were still in the house and to put them to bed.  Every night Sophie would sleep listlessly and at least once (more like 2 or more times) she would pull off her splints.  Which necessitated immediate rewrappingas she would flail around and threaten to worsen her wrist injuries.  She was so agitated but luckily we were finally able to get the Lortab Elixir problem sorted out Saturday (I think… the days started running together there after a while) and that helped with the pain.  But even with that she pretty much required someone watching her 24/7 as she would either take the splints off or try to walk (which she was absolutely not supposed to do). 

So Monday morning dawned and Jim called the orthopedist and was told that the first available appointment was on Wednesday.  It should come as no surprise that that was totally unacceptable to me after the Hellish weekend I had just endured.  So I snatched the phone away from Jim and preceded to illustrate how “guano loco” had become over the weekend before bursting into tears on the phone with the receptionist, who took pity on me and called back 5 minutes later with an opening that morning!  Hooray!

So , because I was still mad at Jim by association, I asked M to go withme to the orthopedists.  But first we gave Sophie her last bath for the foreseeable future.  Her poor wrists were bruised and she was very ginger about being splint free, however I’m glad she was able to have that pre-casting bath.  So off we went!  After filling out reams of paperwork (no surprise there) we were taken back to be assessed and Sophie’s BabyLeg covered splints were quite the big hit in the office.  And then in walked Dr. Roberson.  He rounded the corner and pretty much the first thing out of his mouth was”they didn’t tell me about the foot” so he immediately turned around and went back out to email for the films.

And then he returned and confirmed that 3 casts were in order.  Turns out her foot is pretty much the most severe break.  Her 2nd and 3rd metatarsals are cracked into the growth plate in her first joint of her foot.  Apparently it’s serious enough that he’s going to keep an eye on it and may require surgery (EEK!) at some later date (here’s hoping it doesn’t!).  Also her finger is pretty serious too in that it’s a crack that runs down her finger towards the growth plate but not into it… and it too may cause problems as she gets older, so he’ll be watching that as well.  As for her arms, she has buckle fractures in both bones of both arms at the wrist but not in the growth plate so while they’re annoying and painful, they’re not as “bad” as the other cracks. 

So she’s now sporting a bright pink cast on her left arm, a bright green cast on her right arm and a blue cast on her right leg.  God Bless BabyLegs and Hannah Anderssen leg warmers!  We would be insane without them!  Seriously!  The casts are quite rough and the BabyLegs have helped protect her clothes (and us) from being scraped to pieces!! 

So anyway, once everything settled down I asked Sophie what had happened. 

She had gone outside to the sheep paddock and decided to climb the hickory tree near the clothes line.  So she positioned the ladder (don’t start with me about the ladder… we have rules about ladders, and Sophie has always been very careful with them and other than a means to get up the tree she was careful with it) under the tree and climbed up.  Then she climbed up into the tree.  According to her she was “way above the ladder” so we’re guessing about 15 feet from the ground.  She was happily climbing “chasing a bird” when she was accosted by a rather nasty squirrel who took offense that a human was in his tree. And since Sophie didn’t leave immediately, it (the squirrel) threw a nut at Sophie, hitting her nose (she did have a bruise on the bridge of her nose to back up this claim) and startling her.  When she brought her hands up to protect her face she lost her balance and fell out of the tree. (Aside- we do have an ill tempered squirrel in the sheep paddock, it barks and throws things at people who get too close to its tree so this isn’t a far-fetched story).  She doesn’t really remember anything from that point on, but we believe that she landed “monkey style” on her hands and feet, which would explain the foot and finger and the wrists as well.  After the fall she got up and staggered out of the sheep paddock but didn’t remember that we had put up a temporary fence for the sheep that blocked the porch stairs so when Jim found her, she was trying to find a way around. 

It was, quite honestly, the scariest thing I’ve ever encountered with Sophie.  At one point, as she was laying in a morphine induced sleep in the ER bed, I let my mind go to the “bad place” and nearly came unhinged.  She was laying there, still and non-responsive and she looked so unlike herself. And I kept feeling like I couldn’t get the staff to understand how Sophie is and they were just breezing through like nothing in the world… and poor Jim… he kept reliving Sophie saying “I fell from the tree and you didn’t save me” (which she told him when he picked her up when he found her).  And I am very much an emotional loner… don’t try to comfort me, touch me, don’t even look at me… because that means everything isas bad as I’m imagining it to be… I think I yelled at Jim twice and I mentally b*tch slapped a couple of the CT people for being rude to Sophie before she had anything for pain.

But in the end, we’re ok.  Sophie is still our same Sophie… albeit a little more respectful of trees.  She and I have had some pretty serious bonding over the last 2 weeks and in some ways I think it’s been a good thing just for that… not saying I want to ever go through something like this again.  Ever.

Virtual Travel

This past week my brother, Kyle, his daughter, Iz, and M went on a whirlwind trip to Pittsburgh, Hershey, Baltimore and Monticello.  Those of you who know me on Facebook know that I did not go on this trip, however I feel as though I did since I provided Shea*Star(tm) services the whole time… complete with restaurant suggestions AND directions.

Sigh.

The life of a virtual traveler.

Anyway.

M & Co. had a grand time!  Kyle was speaking at the RPCNA Synod in Beaver Falls PA as a fraternal delegate from the ARP and had thought that M and Iz would enjoy exploring Pittsburgh while he was off doing the church thing. 

First they had a picnic:

Then they crossed the New River Gorge Bridge (notice the haunted look of terror in Kyle’s eyes:

 

After a delicious supper at Abay Ethiopian Restaurant they saw this lovely church and decided to have a look around:

This is the East Liberty Presbyterian Church.  Kyle said it’s the most ornate Presbyterian Church he’s ever seen!

Kyle and Iz inside the church… the stained glass windows look so lovely!

M took this knowing how much I love thistles.

The next day Kyle was off to speak at Synod so M and Iz were off to explore on their own.

 They hit Penzey’s

Happiness is a well stocked herb&spice cabinet. There’s a whole other side of the cabinet that I was unable to open due to a milk pail in the way so imagine even more spice-goodness and you’ll have the full picture The only thing that I forgot to tell her to get was more ground ginger… oh well… I can order that!

Then they went to the Carnegie Science Center where Iz got to meet the “for-real” R2-D2 and C-3PO (I won’t go into the hilarity of M explaining to Iz who the iconic robots are, but seriously Kelly… aren’t you a Star Wars fan??).

Don’t you love the look of confusion on Iz’s face… it’s one of those “O…K… Mamama… if you say so” kinda faces.

And while at the Science Center Iz got all turned around and ended up here:

which she quickly discovered was NOT the ladies room.

Anyway, while M was looking around the souvenir shops she found a little something special for Sophie:

And really, doesn’t EVERYBODY need a posable Albert Einstein Action Figure???

So anyway, it was a full day! The next day they left Pittsburgh and headed for Hershey.

Chocolate World… how I wish you were Valrhona and not Hershey…
Iz had a grand time on the tour (there are photos, but I’m already pic heavy on this post so suffice it to say there’s lots of chocolate) and making her own little candy thingie.

And then they went to Gettysburg.

At this point, those of you who know my brother know that this is a near religious experience for him. For those who don’t know, Kyle’s major at Erskine was history. And he’s a regular Southern history guru. He knows amazing amounts of stuff. Seriously. It’s amazing.

Kyle took this pic and I think it’s really great. Good Job Kyle! Especially since you were using the little point and shoot.

Here’s Iz at Pickett’s Charge.

And finally here’s a pic of Kyle and Iz in front of the statue of Robert E. Lee and Traveller

And then they were off to Monticello.

Where Iz hung out with Thomas Jefferson:

And they had a fabulous meal at Michie Tavern

I love the metal plates and cups.

And that’s about it. Or at least that’s all the pics I have. M brought me back a cookbook from Monticello and two glass dip pens with several small bottles of ink. Jim got a space-ink pen from the Science Center and the boys got super cool Thomas the Tank Engine Flashlights (with Morse code button) that have a (not so cool) whistle on the other end. M picked up several other this and thats along the way. Several books, some seeds and a really cool inlaid wood stamp holder that she got for Martha.

All in all I think it was an excellent trip both for real and virtually

Clean Up

Since I don’t post all that often anymore (why is that anyway?) I thought I would force myself to do an entry while taking a bit of a break from cleaning up.  Yesterday I spent the bulk of the day making a birthday cake for one of Jim’s co-workers and in my typical style I managed to dirty nearly every surface in the kitchen.  This morning I was determined I would work until I could find the bottom of the sink (and that’s saying something if you’ve seen our sink) and I’m now waiting on the dishwasher to do it’s thing  before starting in again.  At least my technicolored fingers are fading.  Unfortunately the kids are still alittle hyped from the icing frenzy or it could’ve been the strawberry muffin they had with breakfast.

So anyway… M’s started pulling some of the potatoes.  We’ve enjoyed all kinds of new potato dishes, my favorite being new potatoes boiled and then finished in heavy cream with chives.  I think partly this is my favorite because everything in it was produced on the farm (potatoes, cream, chives and butter… all made right here!).  Probably not something you could eat everyday, but definitely yummy!

M has finished up planting all the tomatoes and peppers and I believe that she’s made a second planting of greenbeans (the first didn’t do so well).  She’s made all sorts of little lettuce boxes on the porch and I am very excited about having our first homemade salad!  She also made boxes for carrots and radishes and for the first time that I remember we actually have little carrots coming up!  The radishes have made glorious tops but no radish… not sure what that’s all about, but the greens taste good.

Let’s see what else is new? 

We put up another clothes line.  It’s much higher than the other one, although right next to it.  Now I can hang out King sized sheets and they have no threat of touching the ground, which is a good thing.  I love our clotheslines, we got them from Lehmans and it’s just too cool to walk out on the porch, roll out the laundry and not have to drag the clothes basket along with me.  Yeah… lazy… I know. 

Jim possibly destroyed his phone this morning.  Maisie side stepped and kicked the bucket (not figuratively… she’s still alive) which caused a great tidal wave of milk to slosh over the side which somehow (and I’m a little sketchy on the details) his phone was completely drenched.  I purposefully saved by old BB Curve just in case something like this happened… but here’s hoping that his phone is actually ok, otherwise he’ll be carrying around a pink phone and he’ll lose all kinds of man-points for that.  Just kidding of course… if his phone is totally dead then I’ll give him my Storm and I’ll take back the old Curve.  But I’m still hoping his phone is ok.

The pigs are growing nicely.  They are soon going to outgrow the pen they’re currently in and will need to move to the “permanant” pig pen below the sheep paddocks.  Only thing is, that hasn’t been fenced in yet.  Good thing Jim is finished with school for a little while and can work on it otherwise I think the pigs are going to succeed in digging up that big dogwood tree in their current paddock!!

The pigs are so funny!  I enjoy watching them and their pure joy whether it’s eating or wallowing in the mud… they are thrilled with themselves!  They, unlike most everybody else, can tell the difference between my voice and M’s.  I call them up with a good ole “pig, pig, pig, pig!” ala Farmer Hoggett’s wife (from the movie Babe) and if M does it they just sort of cock an ear and roll their eyes but if I call them they come running!  Smart wee piggies.

I think I already mentioned that we put the new chicks out in the big poultry paddock.  They don’t have that much longer before the meat birds are ready to be… harvested? what is the right word? processed?  Whatever… I’m looking forward to it as the price for free-range chicken has gotten appreciably higher (most recently we payed roughly $6/lb for breasts).  The naked necks will take a little longer to grow off, but the others should reach prime size by the end of next  month I think.  Again, it’s a good thing that Jim’s going to be off for a bit as we’re going to be mighty busy!

And in completely unrelated to the farm news:  Jim and I will be taking our first ever just-the-two-of-us vacation.  The only other vacation we’ve had was 9.5 years ago… when we got married.  This vacation (and I use that term lightly) is only for one night and we still have to do farm chores (ie milk) so it’s not like an escape-it-all kind of affair.  The hospital periodically has silent auctions to raise money for Rape Crisis services.  This year one of the items was a night at La Bastide, including dinner and breakfast.  Jim won that one and also the weekend loan of a X6 BMW.  The X6 is made right here in the Upstate and I think Jim is just as thrilled about getting to pick it up at the factory as he is about getting to drive it for the weekend.  Luckily too, La Bastide is relatively local as it’s on the TR side of the Cliffs.  Also the chef there is big on sustainable cuisine!  Anyway… I’m excited… even if it’s only for one night. 

And the whole dressing up for dinner thing led me to realize that I have no shoes to go with the dress Jim bought me so I found myself at Belks since they were having a shoe sale.  But unfortunately I had no Jim with me for a second opinion so I had to resort to this:

 yes, a pic of the contending shoes…

complete with the little footie sock that the shoe-woman all but attacked me with.  She’s a serious footie-pusher, and she almost got mad at me for the pics, but she let it slide… this time.  Not too many weird looks… but there were a few.  Hey… I don’t like to shop alone!  The dress Jim bought for me is a black and white number.  So what do y’all think… black shoes (which are comfortable-ish) or candy-apple red ones?  which I will have to practice walking in as they are the highest heels I’ve ever worn… seriously I think I am well over 6ft tall in these jewels but they are soooo pretty!  By the way, M, I bought the red ones, they were seriously on sale (like under $30).  The black ones ended up being under $20 once all the discounts and coupons were added up.  So I have options.  Jim likes the red ones, probably because I have to hang on to him to walk in them!  Xander, y’all might recall, has a thing about women and their shoes.  My fellow KG APs will remember the fine shoes that most of the women sported over in Bishkek (I should’ve bought a pair of the pointy toed shoes… just so Xander would be happy!).  Anyway, Xander has been most upset that I seem to have an “ugly” shoe collection (I sport Danskos as a general rule, although I’ll occasionally wear a pair of Keens just to mix it up… LOL).  He has taken to pointing out women with appropriate shoes (and clothes) when we are out in town… going so far as to physically point me in the right direction when he’s spotted a particularly lovely lady.  So you can all imagine his joy when he spotted me showing off my new heels to M.  He was like “FINALLY!!!” everytime he sees them he grins and gives me a thumbs up.  He likes the red ones too.  I modelled the whole outfit for him and he was most impressed, telling me I was quite “prilly” but would be even “prillier” if I did my hair and put on my face. 

Seriously.

So anyway… the dishwasher is done and I must return to the grind… especially since I now have 3 children telling me that they are starving and are desperately in need of lunch.  Tacos anyone?

Overheard outside the bathroom door….

Me- Beckett you have to go potty AGAIN?!?! You’ve been what 10 times today?

B- I need to go PEE-AH!!!

Me- OK, OK, go!  Bring me your pants when you’re done.

B- OKkkkkkeeeee (running to bathroom).

enter Dandy, who follows Beckett to the bathroom.

B- I’m going poop.

D- Hey Beckett!! (said petulantly), you can poop more!

B- I done.

D- No Beckett!  This is how it’s done.  First you sit on the potty (sits on potty) and then you poop (poops).

Sounds of toilet paper…

D- See look,  1…2…3…. you poop all at one time.

Beckett- Ohhhhhhh

Totally Awww-Summmm!!!

  So my pal Michelle crowned me a Queen of ALLL things Awe-Summm!!! even though she accused me of an unverified addiction to Facebook since my sporadic blogging has become more sporadic than normal.  I’d play the “busy” card but she’s not buying it (it’s that whole doctor thing)… but I must say that if I could find a WordPress app for the Blackberry I’d blog on an hourly basis.

ANYWAY!!!  The way it works is simple!  First I give you 7 reasons why I think I’m awe-summm!!! and then I nominate 7 peeps to be totally Awe-Summmm!!!! Queens too   This should be totally interesting since I don’t think I’m all that awe-summm!!! (or even just awesome) at all!

1.  I’m the person everyone wants to know when they need info.  Need directions?  I’m a whiz with a map.  Need to find a restaurant in a state I’ve rarely been to?  I’ll find it! (and have multiple times… just ask Kyle).  Need to modify a recipe? or recipe fail?  Call and we’ll work it out.  Need to google that guy that might be a potential suitor?  I’m all over it.  The Internet is my friend

2.  I can cook anything and can typically replicate meals I’ve eaten out with relative ease.  I personally enjoy this ability as I love to cook and while I love to go out to a fine restaurant, I can’t always justify the expense.  The only thing I don’t attempt is sushi.  I just don’t think I can match the quality at our local sushi place… that and I just don’t like handling fish.

3.  I’m a regular she-bear about my children.  I’ve fought doctors on Sophie’s behalf (garnering myself a reputation with her b/d group) and teachers on Xander’s (anyone remember the McD’s episode?).  I think it’s awe-summmm!!! as I wouldn’t have always thought I had the strength (or the fortitude) to stand in the face of their education and experience and say “this isn’t right for my child” and know that I am right. 

4.  Everyone says I have an amazing memory… but I don’t think so.  I can remember really weird things like snap-shots in my mind, but can’t remember what I was supposed to pick up at the grocery store… I’m blaming it on having kids.

(running out of ideas… asking family…)

5. I can make cheese and other dairy products.  Apparently this is akin to working magic for Jim and his crew and the kids think it’s “cool” too.

6.  I know how to make my own food from scratch (grow it, raise it, kill it, clean it, cook it) or at least know enough to muddle thru and come out with a usable product.  I know how to clean, spin and knit wool, and I know how to ride horses and drive a team.  I can milk a cow and assist with birthing a lamb.  I know how to preserve the food from our garden.  Everybody wanted to be my friend back during the whole y2k scare

7.  I’m really ok with being highly eccentric (geneticist certified!). 

Wow… that was really really hard to do!!!

So on to my 7 similarly awe-summmm queens!

1.  Sally- homeschooling, unschooling, birthing babies (her own very soon!), living and learning in her old farmhouse in VA… we met when she still lived locally and became good friends just before she moved far away to VA!

2. Robin- Sugar maples and mega-mooing bulls… she’s living the dream somewhere up north… I never can remember where… I feel good about saying NY… she’ll correct me if I’m wrong.

3. Mia- Even if Mia and I are complete and total opposites, I think she’s pretty darn cool

4. Andrea- The mother of “Dandy’s Baby”… she’s totally cool :)

5. Esther- Even if she’ll no longer be local, I’m sure she’ll be totally awesome way down in Florida

6. Rosemoon- Totally awesome, totally almost my neighbor… hey NC isn’t THAT far away

7. And even if she did crown me, I’m totally crowning her back: Michelle!  Here’s hoping that we can work out that visit this summer during break   I’m determined to keep Des on a bottle until L can have a go at feeding him

So there you go   Takes me forever to get around to these things!

Catch Up Continued

- the boys dentist appointment went well, although Beckett screamed like a banshee for the duration!  No cavities!  Yeah!

- continuing on the farm front: We’ve made the decision to raise Desmond as a beef.  We took care of his “bull-ness” earlier this week and all seems well on that front.  Honestly, he doesn’t seem to even notice. 

-I’m growing tired of all the people who think that we will not actually take the pigs and Des to the processor.  The pigs were brought here with one purpose in mind.  Desmond had the possibility of being our herd-bull, but his size ruled that out.  Our desire is to breed for ease of calving and his birth wasn’t exactly easy. 

-Sophie has taken over Des’ bottle feedings as well as feeding Zenzi, although Xander “helps” to some degree.  Sophie really likes feeding Des because it’s over quickly, but she doesn’t like to feed Zenzi because it takes so long.  Seriously.  The other morning Sophie was sitting on the edge of a bucket, legs crossed, arms crossed with her head in her hand while feeding the lamb with an extremely bored expression on her face… I wish I had the camera… it was a classic M pose.

-Jim is being very patient about me blogging instead of doing morning chores… even if I was playing QWERTY just moments ago because I was suffering from a continuing bout of writer’s block.

-Just to pat myself on the back: I played the word “sermonizingly” which caused the person I was playing to leave the room.  That so amuses me.   Of course I just had my butt kicked by the last guy I played… but it was actually a really good game. 

-We are averaging about 5.5 gallons or about 44lbs of milk a day, which is somewhere between AWESOME and OVERWHELMING!  I need to make more butter and cheese, which is probably on the docket for today.  The pigs shall be happy regardless

-Speaking of butter.  We finally broke down and bought an electric churn.  It’s lovely.  It has a really quiet motor and best of all can do 2 gals of cream at a time!  WooHoo!!

-We also went ahead and upgraded our canners.  We’ve had the same pressure canner for ages so we decided it was high time for a new one.  We now have an incredibly cool looking All-American Canner 930.  Yes it is wickedly expensive, but since so much of our pantry is stocked by home canned goods then I think it’s perfectly ok… plus the thing should last forever.  We also went whole-hog and got a Weck water-bath canner(no photo on that link but have a look-see at those beautiful jars) as well (with faucet), simply because it can be used for cheesemaking as well as canning.  We did break down and buy a couple different jars… how can you resist?  They’re just too lovely.  Even Angry Chickenmentioned them on her blog a couple times   FYI: Weck doesn’t have online ordering, but their phone people are so incredibly nice that it’s sort of fun going old-school with a call-in order.

-Feed situation update:  We are now mixing the feed half and half with no problems whatsoever.  Seriously, I totally don’t understand why the feed doesn’t bother them as long as it’s mixed with the old.  We’re going to keep weaning out the old feed to see what is the lowest percentage of mix they will tolerate.  Even at the current rate it makes our feed bill much nicer.

-just read the above paragraph and realized it’s a grammatical nightmare.  Meh… I’m leaving it.

-And because I really need to jump on the whole dairy aspect of my day I’m going to stop here.  I seriously hope to have something more interesting than a “bullet-post” next time!