Clicker Training Day 6

Okay, I have to say I'm impressed. It's either the clicker training, or the dog.

Actually, since we have FOUR other dogs, I could try clicker training on them. I actually did bring Penny in the house and toss her treats while clicking. She has a problem with being submissive and I'm very concerned that this could become a problem in the future with LJ.

I purchased two books on the American Pit Bull Terrier; they arrived on Monday. APBTs are quite the handful of a dog to own. I had to buy goat's milk today from one of our neighbors... he was not impressed with LJ. His dog is a Border Collie with an energy level of about 10,000. That dog just runs and runs and runs and circles and yips and yaps and runs. LJ was intrigued and barking. I wasn't sure what I was seeing from LJ. Was it dog aggression? I called Laddy (the neighbor's dog) over to me and got him to settle down and stop running and dashing by LJ. LJ was just tickled to see another dog. He LOVES our other dogs.

Believe me, I can relate to the neighbor's apprehension and negative reaction. Just seven SHORT weeks ago I felt exactly the same way!! I would have no sooner chose an APBT for a pet than a rattlesnake! The APBT book I was reading this morning was saying that APBT owner's have to face this kind of negative reaction all the time, and it is vital to have a well socialized, well trained dog in order to set a good example for the breed. It is so important to socialize him, yet it is difficult finding places to take him so that he can meet lots of people, other dogs, etc. Although I have to say, hanging out at Wal-Mart seems like a good place. The one nearest to us has this waiting area where people wait for rides, or they just hang out. I would be able to introduce him to all manner of people within just a couple of hours. I need to make that a goal.

For a great deal of my life, I have tried to do the right thing, make the choices that would make everyone happy. But for some reason, I keep finding things to embrace that are so totally against popular societal norms. Like owning an APBT.

Speaking of doing the right thing and making everyone happy, and being accepted and loved... my blog is supposed to be one place where I can be honest and really be myself. So I am having a hard time sharing its existence with friends... because they are going to learn things about me that I may not have shared with them, because I am afraid they might not accept those things about me. I seem to have sets of friends that I can share certain things with. But my blog is supposed to be a place where I can share anything (within reason, of course) and that anyone can read. I chose to make my blog private, not in the public listings and I don't allow anonymous postings because all I was getting was spam.

But I digress... back to the boy, I couldn't help but fall in love with him. I explain his plight and introduction into our lives in this entry here: Chilled to the Bone.


Here was a picture of him, look how tiny he was, nestled in the crook of my arm. He weighed barely THREE pounds, TWO ounces.

Anyway, back to the clicker training. I missed doing any lessons yesterday (supposed to do two trainings minimum, three optimum). And none all day today until just a while ago this evening. He goes right to the "bed" every time (see the first lesson described in this entry Clicker Training) once I put it down, and now once I show him one time that I want him to do the "down" he does it every single time.

You know those really cool dogs that are really obedient? I've always wanted one of those dogs... I know it takes time and effort to train them, but I think it also helps if the dog is motivated and seems to figure out what you want him/her to do easily. So tomorrow night is Lesson 2. We'll see how it goes because there will be two other puppies in the class. Lesson 1 was orientation, with instructions for what to do at home for the next week. Oh and I was supposed to pick out ten things off this one list of things to introduce LJ to. One of the things we are supposed to accomplish in the next six weeks is go to 10 different people's homes. Well, I got one of those done today.

Also, LJ is scheduled for surgery on Tuesday to be neutered. That is supposed to help with aggression. I know that a lot of people think owning an APBT is really stupid, because like I said, I used to be one of those people myself (it feels almost as if God has a lot of fun peering down at me and noting how I would NEVER own an APBT and he says, "Oh yeah? Try this on for size.") I am studying up on the breed and learning the facts, and we will have to deal with things as they come. Hopefully he will never become dog aggressive, but he could one day. On the other hand... it seems to have a lot to do with your leadership over your dog. I must order The Dog Whisperer's book. Also, the APBT is normally not human aggressive and he seems to love people very much. I just have to keep up the socialization until he is two years old! Quite a task to take on, but I am willing.

My birthday is coming, one more month and I'll be 43 years old. I would love to have The Dog Whisperer book and the DVD for Season One. I can never remember what I would like to have when my birthday is on its way. Also, Mother's Day is just around the corner. I already have my mother's Mother's Day card purchased. Now I just have to get it sent on time! All of my sisters are now mothers, so I will be sending each of them a Mother's Day card.

Boy, I tell you, some days I don't get a chance to write a thing, then other days I'm here again and again. On the days I don't get a change to write, I often think of things to write about, so that's why I end up posting a bunch of things in one day.

One more thing. I have a tooth that is bothering me. :-( The last time I had a sensitive tooth, I went to my dentist and he determined that nothing was going on. So this time I'm hoping the sensitivity will go away. I have two teeth that purportedly need to have root canals. I was told this was necessary at least FIFTEEN years ago. The same fillings have inhabited those teeth all these years, with no problems. I will not have root canals done, I have decided this based on limited knowledge from the Weston A. Price Foundation. There are two links here that give information:
http://www.westonaprice.org/nutritiongreats/price.html
http://www.westonaprice.org/healthissues/holistic.html

There is also a book on why to avoid root canals, I'm trying to find it now and not sure what you are supposed to do if you need a root canal!! I also have a mouthful of amalgam! I don't see that being taken out any time soon. I will have to ask on a list I'm on for the name of that book about root canals. I told my sister not to have one, but she said she guesses she is just too vain right now to worry about her health. :-/

I really must stop now. Until next time.

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Young Fruit Orchard

These are apples from our young apple tree. It is a Dorsett Golden. I didn't know that apples could grow in the low desert. But come to find out, there are certain apple trees that don't need as many chill hours in order to produce. We bought another apple tree, an Anna, but we were unable to keep it alive. The Anna and the Dorsett Golden do well planted together. I had also hoped to buy some pecan trees, but they are apparently difficult to purchase.

Here is an image of the apple tree itself. It is still rather small! The tree that you can see in the background to the right is a pink grapefruit tree. We also have a lemon tree and an orange tree. They all have miniature fruit on them as well.

Oh, and we have four grapevines. Two Red Thompson Seedless and two White Thompson Seedless.

Here is our peach tree, it is a dwarf version. I understand if we just let it grow, it will stop being a dwarf and will become a full sized tree. I still haven't decided if we should continue to trim it heavily and keep it a dwarf... it will definitely make protecting and harvesting the peaches easier, if it is a dwarf. Below are closeups of the peaches!

We will probably have to buy some bird netting pretty soon, if we plan to eat any of these peaches ourselves. I haven't had a good peach in years! The ones from the store are so often not ripe and they won't ripen. Even if you try storing them in a bag. When I was growing up, we used to go to a peach orchard where you could pick peaches by the bushel. You could eat them while picking, too! It was an amazing treat and I can still remember the peach juice dripping down my chin.

Until next time.

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The Old Back Porch Stairs

These are the back porch steps. I put in a request to dh and ds2 to please build new ones. I'm afraid someone's going to step on them and fall down and get hurt seriously. None of us are lightweights, so it would hurt pretty bad if these gave way. So hopefully within the next week or two, I'll have new pictures to share of the back porch stairs.

They are going to make real stairs, with "stringers" and there is going to be a railing around the landing and the steps. Ds2 has a router and is going to make the railing fancy looking. At least that is the plan. They actually started on the steps on Sunday, but couldn't figure out the formula for doing steps. We ended up purchasing a downloadable Excel spreadsheet program to plunk in the numbers. Pretty cool. Staircase Stringer Design. Well worth the $12.99.

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1 1/2 Day Old Chicks

Our newest baby chicks. Mutt chicks. We have a lot of mutt hens and most of them lay green eggs! A couple of years ago, our feed store sold me some Maran chicks. They lay chocolate brown/purple eggs. After a couple of weeks, I was pretty sure we'd been sold Ameraucanas. That's cool. We think the green eggs are pretty and unique. Only we already had 3 Easter Egger hens and I'd bought another six when I bought the six Marans. So now we have far more green eggs than brown eggs. Green eggs are -- like I said, "pretty" and "unique". It's weird enough when people get a couple of green eggs per dozen, but when they get 10 green eggs, a white egg and a brown egg, it is just too weird. So these two were hatched from green eggs. More Ameraucanas. ;-)

Until next time.

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*TYDSITC* Sheep

BTW, the subject header stands for Things You Don't See In The City. We see a lot of things out here in the country, that you just don't see in the big city! I've been thinking for a while that it would be fun to start sharing some of those.

Often as I'm driving into the small town 22 miles from where I live, I'll see sheep in the fields. Today was one such day. I had an appointment with my asthma/allergy specialist and told myself I'd stop on the way back home and take some pictures.

Upon closer examination of the photos, lookee what I caught! How sweet!! :-) This lamb is half as big as its mama, it has to be at least six months old. In the image above, this ewe and lamb are in the top left hand corner, I have three white triangles pointing to the pair.

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Clicker Training

Here's the boy about a week ago. We've decided to take a shot at keeping him. What am I saying? We're all madly in love with him.

I found The Dog Whisperer and have started watching him each Friday night. He is so amazing! He's funny and entertaining and he works magic with dogs. I am just in amazement at all the dogs he owns.

So I found a lady that lives 5 miles away, no small feat since we're out in the boonies. I was pretty excited that she offers obedience classes and puppy training classes. I signed up for the class. Well, apparently she does clicker training. For some reason, I have a negative impression about this type of dog obedience training. But for $120, I'm going to try it.

Here's the amazing thing... LJ responds to the training. One of the things you are supposed to do to get started is put down a "bed" and any movement toward the bed, you click and toss a treat. He totally got that right away. The next thing is you work with them to get them to do a "down" by holding the treat concealed in your hand, put your hand on their nose and then lead them into a down. Only LJ is so short still that he can put his head all the way down without lying down. So I helped... I don't think you are supposed to. But now, after just three training sessions, he has got that he has to go "down" to get his treat. His treat by the way is barbequed hamburgers with swiss that didn't get finished at dinner several nights ago.

I've also been buying beef shortribs at $2/# and having the butcher cut them into smaller pieces. He gets one of these when he goes into his crate at night. One pound lasts about seven days. So it's a nice treat for him and makes going to his crate something special. At least that is my intent. Come to find out another family member gave him THREE this morning. He loves them.

I think we're catching him more and more before he potties inside. I am feeling more confident that we can handle owning him.

Until next time.

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New Baby Goats

Lots happening around here. We had two of our does kid. One kidded on April 3rd, giving birth to two bucklings. They are Nigerian Dwarf/Nubian mixes. Cute little guys, hoping to sell them as pets.

Z had a textbook delivery. She was in labor for just a few hours, progressed nicely and had both bucklings delivered within 5 minutes.



Unfortunately, our next doe to deliver we lost to milk fever, also known as hypocalcemia. I missed some important signs that she was in trouble. Subtle but important signs. Like her slow labor. Not taking notice that she was not eating after her kids were born. When I put her on the milking stand, her back legs almost collapsed. I noticed that, but didn't recognize it as being calcium deficiency. She passed away 26 hours after giving birth to three beautiful doelings. In the picture she was showing some interest in her daughters, but I had to tie her so I could help them get latched on because she was jumping around and kicking so much. One of her daughters was placed the same day she was born with one of my friends that lives closeby.


We still have one doe left to kid this month, she is due on April 26th. I'm really hoping she does well. We raised L from a baby. We've been giving her a supplement from Hoeggers that is supposed to prevent ketosis/toxemia. We also got all the items in stock that would have saved B's life.

I've done all the disbudding of the kids so far. Five kids disbudded. We are going to band the little bucklings in a couple of weeks. Already at 3 weeks of age they are acting very much like big bucks. Snorting and squealing and jumping on the doelings.

When Z's bucklings turned 2.5 weeks old we began separating them from their dam, so we can get her milk. We have one other milker, but she is giving us just over 2 pounds of milk each day. Z gives us about 2 pounds in the morning, then we put her in with her boys to nurse them. They stay with her the entire day. We will be weaning them at 8 weeks of age.

It has really been a drain on our milk supply for B to have passed away. We are bottle feeding the orphaned babies. They are drinking about three quarts a day between the two of them. I'm not even able to keep out enough milk to make kefir, and we've been unfreezing milk that we've had saved up. The milk freezer is just about empty. Just as well as no one seems to like using frozen milk as much as fresh milk anyway. :-)

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Tax Fiasco

I have thought of so many things I wanted to blog about in the past three weeks, but never found the time. I am thinking part of the problem is I have trouble being brief... I like to tell the whole story, regale every feeling and essence.

But one thing I wanted to memorialize is the mad fiasco of preparing one's taxes on the very last day. But you see, that's exactly what gets me into trouble -- writing big long stories about nothing in particular!

All I can say is, if it is going to go wrong, it will!!

I had done a quick run through a couple of months ago, yes, a couple of months ago... I was waiting on a 1099-MISC from a family member who swears she has never done her taxes this late in the year. That's cool... but usually I file my taxes by mid-March at latest since I usually get money back. Anyway, finally she got the 1099-MISC to me. On Sunday, the 16th, I finally forced myself to sit down and start my taxes. I used the online tax preparer that I used the previous year, which brings in all your previous year's information.

Then I went to get my W2. It's been traveling around with me since mid-January, at the bottom of my purse, the envelope containing it becoming more and more ratty and worn. But everytime I'd see it, I would have a good feeling, one of relief, knowing exactly where my W2 was located. Can you guess what happened? Exactly. When I went to get it, it was gone. I looked every possible place that it could have been, but could not find it. I finally decided I must have taken it out of my purse at work and left it on my desk. My boss has that information at home, but being it was Easter Sunday I couldn't bother her, because I know she has huge family get togethers every holiday.

I scrambled to find the pencil figures I'd completed earlier, and multiplied the figures on my W2. My paystub doesn't show year-to-date figures, considering our paychecks are still processed on an old Brother word processor (courtesy of my boss). I entered those into the system.

All went well for a bit. I got to the end of everything, including the state. The tax preparer was offering some kind of prepaid debit card and they would then waive the state filing fee of $30. I thought I'd try it out, but wanted to learn more about the small print. No one was available as it was Sunday. So I decided to wait and continue on Monday.

Monday morning... put a call into my boss about 7:50am. Whoops, she was still asleep. Said she'd been up late with the family there until all hours of the night (this is a woman who gets up every morning at 4:30am -- I didn't know senior citizens could sleep in!). So I put in a call to the tax preparer helpline. Come to find out with that prepaid debit card deal, sure they waive your state filing fee, but you can't move the money off that card, you can't pull out cash without incurring large fees -- $15 to pull out cash! $1 for purchases, some were free. And in addition to that, they send you a card which you receive in 7-10 days, then they don't put your refund on for another 10 days. So I said phooey on that.

Around 11am, my boss calls me back with the numbers.

I deleted out the state income tax and submitted my federal taxes. I thought I'd just do like I'd done last year to save the $30 filing fee, just file by mail.

So my printer cartridge has been leaking. I bought this cartridge off eBay. The person said they'd never used it, it was the wrong size for their printer. So shortly after we received it, it started printing out huge black splotches over anything I printed out. I had ordered a cartridge (which I found out on Tuesday the company it was shipped by could not find our home address on Monday -- I sure could have used that printer cartridge!). I had had luck once before with taking it out, cleaning everything and replacing it. I tried that, but it did not work this time.

So I was thinking I would have to go someplace and complete my taxes... then I remembered I have this old fax machine. I've never set it up. I thought I'd give it a try. I got it plugged in and printed a test page. Success!! So I hooked it up to the computer, thinking XP has all the drivers for everything. Nope. So I went looking on the 'net and wow, Xerox still has the drivers available! So I downloaded them and got them installed. Now I'm getting an error message. Try again. Still error message. Research error message on the 'net. Reboot. Try printing in spite of the error message. No luck. I'm about to give up, when I read the "read me" file again and discover that a known issue is that error message. Reboot the computer again, and tried to print again. YES! Things are going my way!

By now it was 6pm. All day long I'd had in the back of my mind... I know the post office stays open until midnight on these nights. So I started calling the ones nearest to me... 8 miles away... no answer... 16 miles away... no answer... 22 miles away... no answer... finally called the usps.com number to find out which one I'd have to drive to... DANG IT!! I have to drive 48 miles away. And I have to get up early in the morning and go to work! I'm not going to get to bed until midnight at this rate.

I started gearing up for that... completed the online tax form and printed it out... reviewing the filing information... OH NOOOOOO!!! When you send it in, in person, you have to send in copies of your W2! Which I did not have!!

All right... so my tax preparation company told me earlier that I could file an extension for $20. So I tried to do that only... that started the process of an extension for my FEDERAL taxes!

So then I thought... okay... I'll just suck it up, and pay the $30. So I get all that information back in there... and hit submit... and now I get a message that they are sorry, but they are unable to accept my state tax income tax filing until my federal taxes have been accepted! Please come back in 24 - 48 hours and submit your state taxes.

I'm now starting to panic a bit. Later, I thought... "What the heck would the punishment be for filing late, death?" You would have thought that was the case, the way I was freaking out.

So I decided to not do my state taxes with them and hit the "delete your state taxes" section. This is now the second time I've entered the state information, only to delete it.

I started looking for other online alternatives... isn't there anyplace that allows you to file STATE only?? I found one, they charge $20 to file your state only, and started entering the data, only to realize that I don't have my previous year tax information handy and would have to figure out what I did with that. I was already so stressed out that I am sure I couldn't have found last year's income taxes -- and why I didn't have a .pdf copy on my computer, I just don't know!

Then I check my email to find that my tax preparation company has (thank you so very much) already charged me $30 to submit my state taxes... CRAP!

So I started gearing myself up again to make the drive into town... thinking this time I'll just print out an extension and submit the amount I owed ($123) by mail to avoid late filing fee charges.

In a last ditch attempt to avoid driving 100 miles round trip... I decided to put in a call to my tax preparation company... of course at this late hour, they were super busy and I was on hold, on my son's cell phone -- with no earbud -- having to hold that tiny, hot thing right next to my -- by this time -- pounding, aching head... listening to that stupid music... for at least 20 minutes.

Finally the help line guy comes onto the line. I'm nearly frantic, but trying really hard to rein it in... what I really want to do is just started screaming into the phone as loud as I can. I take a deep breath and explain that I can't do my taxes with them because I just submitted my federal a few hours ago, and they have already charged me and, and, and, and, and, and what can be done about this mess I've gotten myself into??? So he took my username and social security number and name and he looks at my account... by some miracle... my federal taxes have BEEN ACCEPTED so it is okay for me to submit my state income taxes. Oh man, what relief. I was never SOOOO happy to pay $30 in my life and be done with the nightmare of filing one's taxes on the last possible day.

I will NEVER do that again!!

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Love Him, Love Him Not

This is about LJ. I keep thinking we can keep him, but then I get scared with all the things I read. About how you have to never, EVER leave them unattended with any other animals, even dogs and cats they have grown up with, they can turn on and kill, and on and on and on.

And everyone has a story about pit bulls and how they killed or mauled someone, or someone's child.

Kind of like goats, how everyone says "Goats eat EVERYTHING," and "Goat's milk tastes HORRIBLE and GOATY." This is so opposite. Goats are SUCH picky eaters, you would not believe the piles of hay they leave from picking through the flake for the best parts. And of course, goat's milk only tastes nasty if you buy it from the store or don't handle it right if you produce your own.

Everytime I think we shouldn't keep LJ, I sink into a depression and start crying, and can't stop crying.

I will have to continue this later. I have quite a pros and cons list. I joined a pitbull lovers list and they are talking about spanking their children. Okay... Hopefully the topic changes soon.

Until next time.

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Godiva Raspberry Chocolate Truffle

One of my coworkers told me today this is her very favorite chocolate (see title) and "...IS TO DIE FOR." I went looking for them on the 'net, and thinking that I'd like to remember this admission from her for someday when I might need to buy her a special gift. I found this place, which looks like their chocolates are even better.

The Chocolate Garden

This one looks good.
The Dark Chocolate Assortment has 4 each of Dark Chocolate, Dark Chocolate Raspberry, Dark Chocolate Cherry and Darkest Dark Chocolate. Price each - $39.00

Now to remember not to ever let her read my blog.

Until next time.

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Customer Service is dead

Today I was scheduled to take my ds to see a movie while my dh and other ds rearranged his room and set up his new bed. Somedays I wish I could just stay home all the time. I have been very disgusted with customer service in the past few years. It is just getting worse and worse.

My ds and I went to see a movie at the nearest movie theater, which is 22 miles away from our home. I go there partly due to the convenience of being closest, it costs less, and the theater is owned by a local man. Customer service is generally good in this small town. This theater reminds you when calling to hear the current movies that you should be sure to arrive at least one half hour earlier, because they have a "non-disturbance, no-admission policy" which they enforce along with no gum chewing and no cell phones allowed. This is to protect the patrons from their movie being interrupted.

However, today when the movie was several minutes from being over, and this was not just "outtakes" -- the movie was NOT over yet. The cleaning crew came into the theater, turned the lights on and even though the movie was not over, people all over started getting up and leaving! I could not believe it! At least 3/4 of the audience left, about 1/8 of us stayed seated watching the end of the movie, while the other 1/8 stood in the aisles watching, realizing the movie wasn't over. But hey, since the lights were on, it apparently was over?!

So I went up to one of the young people cleaning up, and I asked if that was the norm for them to turn on the lights when the movie wasn't over. He said, "Yes, it is a policy we are supposed to enforce." I could not believe it. I was really wishing to find the manager. But instead, I found a child of about eight or nine manning the food station. Okay, great. The whole family works there. I was standing there fuming, dumbfounded, and my son led me out of the theater, not wanting me to make a scene. I then saw the young man who took our tickets, who listened to my complaint sympathetically. He offered to find [woman's name] and I asked who that was. He said the manager, but then said she was flaky, too. I told him it was just as easy for me to drive to the next nearest town's theater, another 10 miles away.

Next I went to a Kmart. I was on the hunt for Red Devil lye. Which apparently you can't buy it in real life anymore due to it being an ingredient for making Methamphetamine. My youngest ds is making goat milk soap. I bought the can of lye we had over a year ago, intending to make soap myself. But never got around to it. Anyway, so I went into Kmart, looking for lye and also looking at area rugs. They were too much, ranging from $50 to $80. I didn't find any lye, but as we were leaving, I saw some kitchen rugs that I liked. They were marked $6.99 on the shelf sticker. I thought that wasn't too bad, so I picked one out. I looked at the price on several, all were $6.99. I get up to the front of the store, and my items ring up to nearly $15. I'd only bought a pair of finger nail clippers and a candy bar which came to about $3.50. So the total was too much. I asked the cashier why it was so high and she said the rug was $9.99. I told her it was $6.99 on the shelf. She explained that the rugs probably go on sale tomorrow, and she can't give me tomorrow's sale price today. She looked around for an ad for tomorrow, but didn't have one. I looked at her, and said that I would like to void this sale then, because I expected to pay $6.99 for this rug, not $9.99. She couldn't do that. I had to sign the credit card reciept first, then we had to go to customer service.

When we got there, she told them I didn't want these things after all and needed a refund. Another lady came over and asked what was the problem. The cashier told her about the price difference, the lady said to just give it to me for $6.99 and refund my $3.00 and make sure the price was correct on the shelf.

Here's the deal... it has been this way all my life. If it says one thing on the shelf, but rings up at a different price, you have a PRICE CHECK done on the item. Or, you can take my word for it. I do not have any problems with a price check being done. I'm nearly always right, and I usually go with the person making the price check to help them find the item (and to make sure they don't rip off the tag that shows the price that I saw when I picked up the item).

This is Kmart, a company in trouble financially. And this particular one happens to have been closed down for the better part of the last year due to the roof caving in during a bad rain storm. I don't shop Kmart much, usually only going there if I can't find an item anyplace else. Do you think I'm anymore inclined to shop there now? Nope.

I ate crap at the movie. Popcorn, nachos and soda. I already know I can't stop myself, so I just eat and eat until it's gone or I can't stand the thought of another bite. At least this time we didn't get refills like we have in the past. That is a positive.

I was so brain dead, that I forgot that I actually bought the nail clippers at Kmart. I also told my other son on the way home that we were going to get him a candy bar, but didn't. But we did end up buying that stuff! Anyway, so I went to another store, looking for lye, and realized I still had not bought nail clippers (oh but I had...) so I had one of the cashiers watch my paid for groceries and went to buy another pair of nail clippers. I was frustrated to see that they only had STORE BRAND nail implements. Name brand doesn't cost that much more, I wanted REVLON, a name brand I know I can trust to produce a pair of nail clippers that won't break after 3-4 uses and trims the nail properly. So I'm still looking, and finally I see the Revlon brand are hanging at the front on a hanger thing. I was relieved and bought a pair of the deluxe version.

We next went to a fast food place and I ordered four items. The guy recited back three items, and something unintelligible. It sounded like he said "No beans?" I asked him to repeat himself and then I guess he just turned off his end because I sat there saying, "Hello? Hello?" and finally drove around. I asked him at the window if he got all four items and he again recited them back to me. That was okay, but still annoying that he ignored me.

So I pull out my fingernail clippers, to trim my nails. I can't keep long nails for a few reasons. Mainly because my nails don't really grow long too well, never have. I started keeping them trimmed as a teen because I found that kept me from picking them and ending up with sore fingers from the nail pulling off too close to the skin. And now that we have goats, it's easier to milk with trimmed fingernails. So I started clipping my nails, only to find that my NAME BRAND clippers that I had to have, are doing this weird thing to my nails. I don't know how to describe it, but the cut was causing the top layer of my nail to stick up so if I wanted to, I could separate off that first layer, thereby making that portion of my nail very thin. Not a good thing. So I found out that if I cut my fingernails with the clippers held backwards, that bad cut wasn't happening.

SCREAM!!! I tell you, customer service is DEAD!!!!

I AM going to write a letter of complaint to the theater manager. I'm sure I won't get any response. The last two letters of complaint I wrote, I never heard a word back from the companies. It's not like I write them all the time. Those were written probably three years ago, in late December.

But I am going to let Mr. Theater Owner know how I feel about his so-called policy. I can only hope it's NOT his policy. If it is, I will not go there again. I can pay a few more dollars and drive a few more miles to be able to watch the entire movie without being interrupted before it's over. The nerve! To be so fanatical about not disturbing the movie once it's started, but it's okay to disturb your patrons just before it ends. How rude.

BTW, on the way home my son told me if I go to bed when I get home I won't be so grumpy.

Until next time.

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Update Picture of 7 week old LJ

Okay, here's the boy. Today he will be getting his first bath. I woke up yesterday morning and he had this dried blood looking stuff on his forehead. Turns out someone dripped some Hershey's chocolate syrup on the boy's head. He was probably begging and got a few drops on his head. The arrow is pointing to his favorite chew toy. It is a bone that is very hard, but spongy looking. It is from either a cow or goat's head.

I am really hungry now, and tired. So I'm going to get off this computer, eat my cottage cheese and snuggle back in bed.

Until next time.

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Puppy Sweater

OH my gosh. Look at that face! Isn't that the cutest thing?!

Okay, so here's LJ in his sweater. This is a picture that I took a few weeks ago, believe it or not! Next I'll post an update picture of the boy. He's already gotten so much bigger. This photo was taken March 17th and he was about 5 weeks old here.

He didn't really like this sweater too much. Although I think he did appreciate it when going outdoors, as it was pretty cold at that time. I made this one on the fly, kind of following the baby goat sweater pattern. But the chest area between the two front legs was too narrow, so kind of restricting.

By the way, I'm awake because I'm hungry. On occasion I do this thing where I wake up in the middle of the night and cannot sleep any longer. It is true, I was in bed before 7pm last night (still tired from last weekend!) but I woke up by midnight and was just lying there, trying to get back to sleep. I do not feel hungry when I'm lying there. Hunger does not actually show up physically for many hours. But then, I've been lying there, trying to sleep all that time. So I've found it's best to get up and eat something, even though it's the last thing my body wants.

But this morning, I've not eaten and am just now beginning to feel hungry. I think I will have some cottage cheese. That sounds good. I have to make sure I eat something moist.

Until next time.

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Crocheted Dog Scarf

Okay, here's the doggie scarf I designed and crocheted. I even wrote the pattern down, and have crocheted a second one to make sure I got the pattern right! I sell scarves on the Internet and a dog club in Canada wrote and asked if we would be willing to donate something to them. So I created this scarf.

I tried to reach the lady who emailed me twice, and finally she got back to me and said she'd been away from a computer for three weeks. She finally gave me the address where I could send the donation.

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We're NOT moving

In an earlier entry, I talked about our trip to a city rather far from where we live now, and said that we might be moving. We decided against that move.

I was very upset by the thought of moving so far away. It upset me more than I knew. I sometimes get triggered by things and don't even realize how badly it's affected me. Anyway, no one in our family really liked the place we looked at, especially not the home. It was an ancient single wide mobile home, and just looked really old.

There was another post I needed to address. That was one for a dog scarf I'd crocheted. I promised to show it when I was done. I will make that reply next.

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Exhaustion

Just a quick note. After Friday and Saturday, I had a very hard time getting motivated on Sunday and Monday. I got the bare minimum done, like washing the dishes and vacuuming. I actually rarely vacuum, but of course being in such a dusty climate we could vacuum several times a day and still pick up dirt. My goal is to vacuum every morning (of the days I'm not working) as one of my chores. I had some neighbors over for about an hour and a half on Monday, to see the critters. It was funny, the hubby brought his camera to take pics of his wife holding the baby goat, the baby chick. The pics are to show their granddaughter. The wife said their grandchildren would be in HEAVEN on our little mini farm. I told the lady that I would have been in heaven here as a child. They live back east and we babysit their "winter" home.

Anyway, I have been exhausted all week long. Tired, like falling asleep while driving. That is not good, since I have a long drive. I was so tired last night I was ready to go to bed by 6pm, but I managed to stay up a bit longer. I was in bed before 7pm, and asleep by 7pm. My back can't take that many hours in bed, and I was stiff by the time I finally got up about 4:45am. My back does not get as stiff as it used to, but 9 hours in bed still is an issue for me.

We have decided we want to keep LJ. I've been reading up on pit bulls and it appears that much of the things we've heard about them is urban legend/myth. Like the locking jaw thing. It's well-known that they clamp onto someone's leg, and there is no getting them loose due to the locked jaw. Well, apparently that's not true. They are a lot of work though. They must be socialized carefully. That will be a big thing for us.

I've invited my mom to come visit on Saturday. I'm not sure if she will or not, but she would probably enjoy seeing and holding the baby goat, and baby chicks. Oh, speaking of my mom, I have a new baby nephew. My sister who is 9 years younger than me just had her first baby on Tuesday morning at 12:09am. My mom also wants to buy two of my green egg laying chickens.

Anyway, I have to say I feel well rested and wide awake this morning. I haven't taken a day nap in weeks (on my days off) so this says to me that my energy level is better than it used to be. But Friday and Saturday were just exhausting. I will need to pace myself this coming weekend. I plan to clean the "boy's bathroom" and hopefully mine (the only female in the house). I'm actually kind of excited about getting this done, the bathrooms are really messy and it will be much easier to keep them clean once I do a deep cleaning on them. I must remember to pace myself though!

I had my power cocoa this morning. It is sooo good and healthy. The point is to not heat too hot, thereby killing the good nutrients with heat. I use 1 cup raw milk gently warmed, add a heaping tablespoon organic cocoa, some honey/maple syrup - about a tablespoon or so, 1/2 t. vanilla, 2 Tablespoons organic virgin coconut oil and two egg yolks. Whisk together the first four ingredients and warm gently, then remove the pan from the stove, plop in the coconut oil and let it melt, whisk again, then put in the two egg yolks and whisk again. I use one of those stick mixers. Wonderful invention! I also took my cod liver oil (Green Pastures Blue Ice) before leaving home this morning.

Until next time.

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Saturday Burst of Energy

I was able to get a lot done yesterday, too. Here's what my day looked like:

5:30-7:30

1. Internet/computer

7:30-8:05

1. I lost track of this time.

8:05-9:15

1. Talked with my mom on the phone.

9:15-11:00

1. Milked LS and Dallas
2. Rebuilt the nesting boxes. I removed the debris from the other two nesting boxes, repositioned the lid so it is tilted, so the chickens cannot stand on it and poop. I put in a nail so we can hook some hay twine around the lid while gathering the eggs.
3. Placed hay in the nesting boxes.
4. Fed the chickens.

11:00-11:30

1. Spent time with LJ and on the computer.

11:30-12:05

1. Lunch, and talked with my sister on the phone.

12:05-12:40

1. Feed everyone for lunch.

12:40-12:50

1. Processed milk (shhhh! another long delay before processing!)
2. Changed out kefir milk.
3. Washed milk pails and strainer.

12:50-1:15

1. Computer.

1:15-1:30

1. Break. Can you tell I was having trouble getting motivated?

1:30-4:30

1. Cleaned living room.
2. Vacuumed under couch.
3. Cleaned table off - put everything in a box that was worth anything.
4. Bring desk in from outside.
5. Used circular saw to remove shelf from desk.
6. Moved computer, monitor, keyboard and mouse to new desk. Didn't get it hooked up until this morning, though.

That was a MAJOR, major piece of work there. I totally redid the living room to how I've been wanting to do it for months now. We need to get rid of the couch we have now. It is one of those "L" shaped ones, and it just takes up too much room. We just need one long one and a chair.

4:30-5:00

1. Fold clothes.

5:00-5:40

1. Feed.
2. Milk LS.
3. Gather eggs.
4. Fill water.

LJ came with me to do chores. He was a little bit scared while in the chicken pen. He kept sitting and whining.

5:40-7:05

1. Continue working on the livingroom, finding a place to put things.

7:05-8:25

1. Washed two loads dishes. Put one load away.
2. Swept and mopped floor.
3. Started leftover enchiladas warming, made another batch of sauce.

8:25-8:35

1. Shower.

Dh and ds arrived home about 10 minutes later. We ate dinner, and I went to bed.

I am going to make myself take a break today. I need to work on a client's website, and hopefully spend some time visiting one of our neighbors. She is in town until the end of the month. We babysit their home.

There is just so much to do. I know I'll get burned out if I try to keep going every single day.

I am rather impressed with my level of energy though. I am trying not to get my hopes up, so if it dissipates I won't become depressed.

I'm hungry, and it's almost time to start on chores. The guys are home today, so I won't have to do it all myself.

Until next time.

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Everything in its place...

DISCLAIMER: Before you get the impression that no one in my family does ANYTHING, let me set that straight right away. We have a lot to do, it's just that some things are more important to me, than to others. Things do get done, and done better than when I was a stay-at-home mother. At least the dishes do get washed each day, meals are cooked, clothes are washed. It's just the little extra things that a "woman's touch" adds. Things that don't occur to men, as a general rule. That may sound sexist, but at least in my home, the menfolk don't seem to understand what organizing, and deep cleaning are... and on with my ranting.

An ex-coworker of mine and I finally got a chance to get together at her home. I had taken pictures of her backyard when it was just dirt, and she finally got it finished. It was pretty, although I'd envisioned something quite different. I had envisioned green grass, she had flagstone all over the yard with ground cover planted in between. She hates grass, she has spent the past couple of years trying to kill it. A cat has been visiting her yard, you can tell by the muddy pawprints on the wall. My friend lives in an HOA and LOVES it. She thinks it is the greatest thing (I think they are horrid). She says she is going to find out whose cat that is, and REPORT it. Anyway, she was saying she comes home and spends most of her time sitting at her porch table outside. Her house is immaculate. She made a comment about "everything in its place".

I found myself feeling a bit envious. I mentioned on my days off that there is so much to do that I could work from morning 'til night for a year and never be finished. It is overwhelming to say the least. I have learned from reading various "get organized" books that you really have to take little bites and just stay with it, exercise consistency! I was doing "FlyLady" stuff before I even knew what the Internet was. FlyLady is based on Sidetracked Home Executives written by two sisters named Pam Young and Peggy Jones. I started doing S.H.E. back in 1988. And I'm still not organized!!! Well, that's because I've tried again and again and again. Now I've come to believe that getting organized just won't happen for me.

I mean, I used to get my hopes up that THIS TIME would be the time, that I'd get organized and STAY organized. But it takes SOOO much effort and time to even get things in order. So now, when I make the kitchen spotless I just try to keep it that way for as long as I can get myself to do so. That thing about 21 days to make a habit? Doesn't work for me. I usually can't make it to 21 days, but the times I have, I get sick and tired of it by then.

Anyway, I just wanted to detail my day yesterday.

4:30am to 8:00am Mostly this time was spent figuring out how to download the .qif files from the various institutions that deal with my money, importing the files, reconciling accounts, etc. I needed to find out where "the money is". I figured it out, we're in the hole, but it will be okay due to money coming in.

8:00-8:30

1. Watched an episode of Amazing Stories on Sci-Fi

8:30-9:30

1. Milked our primary milker (who gave me 2 pounds)
2. Fed the turkeys and cows
3. Raked out the turkey pen
4. Filled up the cow and turkey water containers

9:30-9:50

1. Took a break, sat with LJ until he fell to sleep (he whines and cries when he is tired and wants to be held until he falls to sleep.

9:50-10:10

1. Internet break

10:10-11:10

1. Gathered Wednesday and Thursday's eggs. 38 eggs, luckily it is still cold enough out that it is like they were refrigerated. This really got on my nerves because the eggs should be gathered at least once daily.
2. Cleaned out one nesting box. There are three nests in the main nesting area. The design is flawed -- the lid opens, but the chickens stand on it and poop, and when you open the lid, the poop falls down into the nesting box. When it rained the other day, the nesting box apparently became soaked and so today when I started to fish out the crap in the nest, I discovered there was a 2-3 inch layer of wet straw, hay, dirt, etc. I have asthma and can't do too much dust. I had taken an Allegra earlier, anticipating allergic reactions. So I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth and used a hand shovel to scoop out the debris.
3. Bagged up three feed bags with the debris from the turkey pen.
4. Picked up the empty baking soda boxes that were just tossed on the ground weeks earlier.
5. Milked our herd queen, since one side of her udder looked really full and the teat was really big. The baby can't latch on when her teat is that big, so I milked her out. She gave me 1.5 pounds. That's not a whole lot -- but for her, it's pretty good. The milk will be for LJ.
6. Walked down to the cows to see if their "old hay" could be used for nesting material. It is so awful and MOLDY. So I didn't want to make the hens nest in that. I picked up dried hay that was around the cow's bales of hay and that had blown from the corral for the strip nests for the hens. Some of the hens use these nests, but the main nesting box is much more popular.
7. Blocked open the main nesting box so it could air out and dry out. I still have two nests that need the crap dug out of them. Dh told me where the dust masks are, so I will do one or maybe both nests today.
8. Walked the yellow square plastic soap container full of nest debris to my garden and dumped it there.

11:10-11:45

1. Went inside, went back outside to get an old beat up plastic trash can that I'm going to use to recycle aluminum cans. No one here can (okay WILL) recycle, but I'm determined that now that I have more time off, we're going to. Because I'm going to do it myself, and prove that it CAN be done.
2. Mashed all the aluminum cans with my foot (about 2 dozen).
3. Cleared the area in front of the china hutch (which doesn't have china in it). I cleaned it last weekend, but of course during the three days I was away from home much of each day, people dug things out of the hutch and left them on the floor, and made other such messes in that area. I am a pig, and live with a bunch of pigs. It would just be nice if ONE of us wasn't such a slob.

11:45-12:35

1. Strained my kefir grains, put them into new milk. Poor things, I forgot them in the cupboard. Have been forgetting them lately.
2. Filled the ice cube trays, which are always empty. I'm the only one that seems to know how to fill them back up... (grrrrr).
3. Processed the milk (it is supposed to be done within minutes of milking, but since it was to be used for kefir today, I just let it set until I got around to it).
4. Cleaned milk cooling pail, which sits in the milk fridge. The water has to be removed frequently, at least twice a week or it becomes stale (starts stinking, okay?). I am the only one that knows how to do this, also. If I don't do it, it won't get done. Anyway, ice cube trays being full of ice are necessary to milk processing, so it was lucky today that the milk was going for kefir, since it doesn't need cooling.
5. Soaked the eggs, then rinsed and dried them, then cartoned them.

12:35-2:00

1. Threw hay, brought LJ with me so he would be tired and take another nap when we got inside. Intersperse in the day, little trips to take LJ out to potty.
2. Lunch. I made some leftover chili, with cheese. I also had white spaghetti with butter and garlic. I'm trying to avoid white spaghetti (regular cheap store brand) because it is so processed. But I was hungry for it, so I had some.
3. Watched some television. Another episode and a half of Amazing Stories.

2:00-3:05

1. Tidied up the livingroom so I could vacuum (while my oldest son made his lunch).
2. Washed two loads of dishes.
3. Washed the bread maker -- the little thing that goes round and round on the bottom gets dough stuck under it, and we can't seem to get the thing removed to clean it properly, so it has to be soaked for about 24 hours. I made rye bread last weekend, and so it ended up soaking from Monday, all through the week until I tended to it myself today. Another thing no one else seems to be able to do.
4. Wiped the stovetop and counter to the right of the stove. This is another chore no one knows how to do. If I don't do it, it will not get done. Trust me. It is aggravating that no one seems to notice the debris on the counters...
5. Tightened the handle on one of my pans. Yep, you guessed it. I'm sure if I didn't tighten the handles, then eventually we'd just use the pans without handles.
6. Wiped off counter on the left side of the stove.

3:05-5:30

1. Began cooking. I made Enchilada Sauce from scratch. I use the recipe from La Leche League's Whole Foods for the Whole Family, the 1987 edition. And guess what? That particular page has gone missing. I keep the book safe inside a gallon ziploc bag, but on occasion someone removes it from the bag, and I then have to make a point to give the book a new bag. It is spiral bound; you find your recipe and then PLACE THE BOOK BACK INSIDE THE ZIPLOC BAG. This protects the book from further wear and damage. So I went to the 'net to see if I could find this recipe, I could not. Then I decided to see if by chance I had placed it on my favorite recipes webpage. Thank God, yes I had.
2. I made cheese enchiladas, and chicken/cheese enchiladas for my dh.
3. I browned some broken up pieces of spaghetti to make spanish Rice-a-Roni. I had some leftover brown rice from last weekend's meals. That turned out really good.
4. I had taken some frozen pinto beans from the freezer to make refried beans.
5. I also discovered that freezer was thawing out, and finally dh called back and told me it was unplugged. I had checked that, but not every extension cord connection, and missed the one that was plugged to a different extension cord. We have to use several long extension cords to get anything done around here. HEY, I just realized! Dh and ds can use their new generator now, instead of stringing cords all over the place.
6. I used the stick blender on the pinto beans, that works GREAT!
7. I wiped the remaining counters.
8. I washed the dishes I'd used to make the enchiladas. The only thing I didn't get done was sweeping/mopping the floor. I'll do that today.
9. Threw hay for the goats.
10. Milked Little Stupid. I should have gathered eggs once more, but didn't.

5:30-8:00

1. Dh and I left for town. Dh and ds had just arrived home about 5:20. I had to make two pickups (I am paid $15 each), so we had to go to one town 15 miles away, then another one that is 25 miles from there. Then it's 22 miles back home.
2. We did a bit of shopping at Walmart. I bought a plunger for MY toilet. I seem to be having problems with it flushing properly of late.
3. Picked up a couple of items at Home Depot.
4. Purchased gasoline. There is a three cent discount when you "swipe your card" but I don't have a card, I use my phone number instead. The machine told me "See Attendant" so I went to the attendant and he said they aren't set up to use phone numbers, you have to have a card. So I huffed off, immediately ticked, and told dh. He was all mellow, "Okay, we'll just do it next time." I told him, "No, I don't want to get gas here." So he was okay with that, and was putting the gas cap back on, and then a lady getting gas next to us gave us her card. She said it is her second one and we could have it, since she has another, and one on her keychain. I thanked her and told her I didn't have to throw a hissy fit anymore.
5. Drive home for 30 minutes.

8:30-9:30

1. Ate dinner.
2. Had a small portion of some Breyer's Cherry Vanilla ice cream.
3. Spent some time on the Internet

And that was it. Into bed for me. I slept in this morning, until about 6am. I think this blog shows the time that you started writing. I could be wrong. I will see when I publish it. (I actually started typing here around 5:30am. I was not typing every minute).

So was that a really busy day? I think it would be in comparison to my ex-coworker.

Until next time. P.S. I'm really falling in love with the puppy, and was crying on Tuesday morning and all depressed because we shouldn't keep him. I'm thinking of buying one of those Internet books that you can download as an e-book.

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oh dear!!!!! We love our worms...

I forgot the last straw to driving me to maniacal laughter.

I finally made a point to check the feed tags on the chicken feed, the stuff we've been giving to the chickens that produce our eggs, and that we are planning to eat... and the "plant protein" they use is SOY. Great, just great.

So I went onto the 'net to look for this one place Lions Grip which has chicken feed calculations, so I could see what we could give the chickens, to make our own feed for them.

I discovered that worms are very high in protein. Chickens need a lot of protein to produce their eggs; eggs are, after all, a source of protein.

So I have a couple of questions about worms. How many do the chickens need to eat? I read that they can live happily in rabbit manure. Goat manure is like rabbit manure, so could they live happily in goat berries? Also, what about when it gets hot? How to keep the worms alive?

So I found a Yahoo group and joined. I asked my questions in my introductory post and I kid you not, this was one of the responses:

"oh dear!!!!! We love our worms and would never feed them to animals. We use the worm compost to feed gardens. Your poor worms are on the wrong end of the feeding chain."

Come on, we're talking about WORMS! Hello?! Worms!? Worms, that birds eat?

Gimme a break!

Until next time.

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Uh... heeheehaaaheeheeeheeeheeee

That's me laughing maniacally, how do you spell maniacally anyway?

I was thinking a few minutes ago, this is my blog. If I want to write LONG entries, that's my choice. I don't have to care that anyone is falling asleep and they won't be able to drop my letter behind their headboard having fallen asleep from apparently sheer boredom.

So I took a vacation of sorts this weekend. Not the kind of vacation that anyone would consider calling a vacation. I was right on the spelling of maniacally, for the record. Anyway, I got to stay home this weekend, instead of having to leave most days.

So what that meant was I got to clean house and cook dinner every single night. Don't get me wrong, I love cooking for my family, but it sure does take a lot of time out of each day.

I won't go into all the details, but suffice it to say, things look more tidy. You couldn't say perfect, and most people would probably think things look messy, but there you have it, as Sticky D would say.

So the puppy we are fostering, as expected, I'm falling in love with him. He's very aggressive, definitely we should not keep him. But he is such a baby. He cries when he's tired, he wants to be held. He loves sleeping with me, with his face on my throat, of course.

I disbudded our first baby goat of the year. She did good. I did good. I have done three others, last spring. Two of our own, one of the lady who taught me. But this time, it was just me. I also gave two of our pregnant does a kidding clip. That just means we clip the hair around the bottom and the tail. After they kid, they have discharge, as females usually do, and clipping the hair prevents the gunk from building up and looking messy. We have never done clips before, but this year I did our first doe to kid, and it has been so much nicer. Before I'd have to get out there with scissors and clip the dried clumps.

Note to self. Follow the advice of goat mentor and do NOT use that yellow antiseptic spray stuff after disbudding. She says they will scratch their heads with their little hooves and the little doeling did just that. Next time I will not forget.

So this morning, dh and ds take our second vehicle to get two new tires and have the brakes checked. I knew it wasn't going to be pretty, and when they called I decided to run down with a credit card. Nearly $800 for two tires and brake repair. They wanted to, in the end, put in a master cylinder for another $250. Funny, huh? My dh told them, "Sorry dude, but no thanks." He can do the master cylinder himself. Then when I started to go back home, my vehicle decides it is jealous and wants in on the action. The brakes on my vehicle start shuddering and grinding. I have not had any problems, save for some odd grinding now and again. So it was pretty bad, and I didn't want to drive that way. So they checked out my vehicle and as it turns out, I need the rotors REPLACED because they are too thin to grind, and my front pads are 95% gone. Interesting, dh just looked at my brake shoes last weekend and they looked fine to us. But, we decided to just have them take care of it. Dh could have done this repair also, and we could have saved probably $150-$200. That ended up costing just a couple dollars shy of $500.

Now do you understand the maniacal laughter? No, I'm not really going crazy. It's just once again, been a BUSY weekend and next weekend I need to seriously take a break. Going to work tomorrow is going to be like going on a vacation.

There's more, but now I have to go pick through some corned beef so we can have Reubens for supper. Cooked them using a recipe I found on the 'net for Beer Brisket. We don't drink beer or wine here, but have found it can add some awesome flavor to food.

So that's it for now. I think somebody (a cat) peed near my desk, it sure smells like it. They don't usually do that. Maybe it's the puppy that has them upset.

Until next time.

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Chilled to the Bone

So we finally broke our drought record and it began raining. 144 days without measurable rain. During the last few months, we grew lax at our rain shelters for the critters, and so when I realized it was going to rain all day long I knew I had to figure out something for the bucks. They were already wet and it was cold. They used to have a covering on the top of their shelter, but it had holes in it. I ended up having to move them to another pen area altogether. In the process -- since like a dope I went out in shorts and a long sleeved shirt -- I got very chilled. I didn't feel cold while I was out there, but once I got inside I realized my shirt was almost completely soaked. I changed clothes and climbed into bed to warm up, but even though I felt thawed out I remained cold to the core. I finally got into a hot tub of water and kept adding more and more straight hot water until the water was very hot! I had to sit there at least half an hour until I finally warmed up. I imagine what happened is that the blood in my legs and lower body was warmed as it moved through my body parts that were in the hot water, then coursed through to the rest of my body. Finally I was feeling too warm, and started sweating. After I got out of the tub I climbed back into bed and slept for a couple of hours and felt very snuggly warm and needed to stay warm.

I crocheted a baby goat sweater for our first baby, born on Thursday. An uneventful birth. One single doeling born to our herd queen. She is tiny in comparison to what this doe produced last year. Last year she produced twin bucklings and they weighed 10 and 9 pounds each. The new little princess weighs just 7 pounds.

Because she was a singleton and sleeping all alone, while her dam was outside of the barn, looking in at her, calling to her, I decided to make her a sweater to keep her warmer since the wind was blowing and it was chilly in the barn. I'm really glad I made her one because the next day was when it started raining, and it was freezing cold out there. The little doeling was snuggly warm in her sweater.

I think about my blog occasionally, but most of the time it is just so busy that I don't think of it, and don't have the time.

I did not finish my billing at work, thankfully the lady who approves it on the other end is on vacation until next week. That was lucky for me.

Better get a bottle for the new baby. We have her on a bottle several times a day. She is still nursing her dam, but her dam has never given much milk and also has bacteria in one side of her udder. Staph aureus to be exact. I do not know if she had the bacteria last year when she raised her bucklings herself, but we were drinking the milk raw and it didn't kill us. So I'm sure it will be okay for the little doeling to have some of her mother's milk straight from the udder. I am also milking the doe twice daily, pasteurizing that milk for the doeling's bottles.

Last year's kids were skittish and not as people friendly as I'd like. I want a happy medium. Not Little Screamer friendly, but not as skittish as ours were.

We are also fostering a puppy for a friend that does rescues. He is caramel colored all over, except for a white spot on his face, a white tipped tail and white on part of his body. He is barely three weeks old. He sleeps A LOT. Yesterday he slept almost all day long. He loves to be snuggled and held so he can fall asleep. We are pretty sure he has pitbull in him, and we have always said we will not have a dog with pit bull. He certainly is mouthy at his tender age. He looks sweet when he's asleep but once he wakes up, he's all mouth. We are disciplining him to not bite us at all, and we don't allow him to growl either.

No one knows the lineage of this little boy and it is very possible that he is from long lines of aggressive dogs. My friend said she will take him back and place him when he is eight weeks old, but she was mostly interested in our fostering him because he was so tiny that he needed goat's milk. He took his milk from a bottle for a few days, but then weaned himself from that. He was a little bony when we took him in, but he's looking better now. He weighed 3.2 pounds when we got him and now weighs 3.9#.

Okay, out to survey the damage from the rain, and to milk and feed.

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Busy, Too Busy

Here I am finally. Long days lately. We might be moving. We live on 3.5 acres, and have caught wind of a 10 acre property about 150 miles from here. I hate moving. But the city is closing in on us here, and we want to be out in the COUNTRY.

It would be 200 miles from my job. I just got a raise of $1/hour and make $21/hour. I'm not going to find a job making that much money per hour in a small community.

But the thing is, our property has risen so much in value (maybe FOUR times in four years) that we could pay for our mortgage here, buy the new place outright AND not work for a few years, just concentrate on building our farm and making it into a profitable business.

I feel a great deal of obligation to my current job. I am an important piece and relied upon heavily by two of the main people. I do nearly all of the billing. I don't know how they will survive without me. When my ex-boss left, it dealt a great blow to our agency. But we survived.

A "rotten apple" was hired by my ex-boss before he left, and since no one will ever be fired under the current management, he was there every day, rottening the whole work experience for everyone. Thank you God, for answering my prayers. When he went to another state with his wife for vacation at Christmas, I prayed that he would find a new job in the other state. His wife's family lives there. And he came back from vacation, and gave his two week resignation!!! Praise God!

We have two new employees, they are both a breath of fresh air. The person to replace "rotten apple's" position seems to be a pretty good kid. We talked yesterday and I am tentatively giving him my seal of approval.

Better get going to milk. Just too much going on to document it all.

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Little Stupid

All right, I've finally caved in and my ds was so pleased to hear that I've picked up on his nickname for our newest milker. She is really a sad little thing because she's so bonded to people that she screams bloody murder when she sees us. I mean, LOUD, obnoxious screaming.

Oh, the nickname is "Little Stupid". Calling someone stupid around here is an inside joke. Based on our son that has Down Syndrome calling his father stupid because he couldn't figure out how to get the VCR working. Dh is incredibly skilled at mechanical things, but balks at anything technical. So my ds said, "You stupid. Get mom." And so it started, calling each other stupid and then cracking up over it.

Anyway, my other ds has always said the goats were stupid. Drinking their milk will make us stupid, etc. And one of our goats is stupid. I guess she's "Big Stupid" ;-)

My reason for writing is that "Little Stupid" gave us 1.7 pounds yesterday morning. Her most at once before this was 1.3#.

We didn't milk last night, so it will be interesting to see what she gives this morning. We were SUPPOSED to milk when we got home. Ds did all the chores, cleaned the kitchen from top to bottom (including removing things from cupboards and vacuuming them out!) and he was worn out and didn't want to milk. But then it was 8pm by the time we got home, and I didn't feel like milking either. It was dark out, and chilly and I was VERY hungry and we'd broken down and bought our first pizza since we've been out here (nearly 4 years). And it smelled good, but it was nowhere near as good as ours. Fresh from the oven, this store's pizzas are fantastic, but not 25 minutes cooled down.

With regards to LS, not milking her last night could either help, or hinder her. Sometimes it is good for them to go longer to help their bag stretch so it will hold more milk. On the other hand, when they don't get milked for that long, the body automatically thinks the baby has weaned and it's time to dry off. The body absorbs the extra milk.

Our other milker, our best milker, is due April 26th and she is starting to give us fits when it comes to milking her. Many people dry off their does 8 weeks due to their due date, so technically we should be drying her off. But in other countries (like Australia and New Zealand), goat owners do not force dry their does. I am scared that it is will cause mastitis, so I don't force dry either. But we are going to start milking our best milker once each day. She is okay with benig milked in the morning, but not in the afternoon. She is still a little skittish about the new milking parlor... and I'm sure that doesn't help matters. But we don't want to deplete her body by forcing her to be milked, so we will go with once a day milking as she dries herself off.

Now, off to other things.

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Running Hard

I can't believe how fast some days can pass by. My last blog entry was 3 days ago.

Thursday was a full day. I was busy at work, mostly helping our Executive Director put together a slide presentation via PowerPoint. Then I had to stop by a client's house after work. Only they weren't going to be home, but at their daughter and son-in-law's home, which happened to be just off my route going home so we made plans to meet there. Then I stopped at Jo-ann to buy some butterfly appliques for a dog scarf I'm making. I ended up getting home close to 7pm.

The presentation was nowhere being done, and was needed by Monday at 2pm, so I volunteered to come in yesterday to complete it (this was after our ED said could I just show him how to put the photos into PowerPoint -- uh, he's nearly computer illiterate so that wasn't going to work). It took the entire day, I didn't take lunch, breaks, wasn't visited by any talkative coworkers. We ended up having to leave home at 4:40am because I had to take my dh to his sister's house, where he is repairing her barn. We arrived at her home at 6am, and I was at work by 6:35am. Everyone was saying we are crazy, but it was either that -- spend 2 hours driving, or spent 3 or more hours driving once the traffic got going or should I say the freeways turned into parking lots. I was amazed at the amount of traffic already on the freeways by 5am!

I took a LOT of pictures for the presentation. On Thursday, I tagged along for an orientation and mobility lesson for one of our clients. This particular client is a young man, who in spite of being blind (I'm not sure if he is totally blind, or if he can discern light from dark) walks very fast. I had to walk as fast as I could, just to keep up. But I needed to get ahead of them to take pictures of them coming toward me, and so I spent quite a while RUNNING. Plus the sun was in the wrong position and so I had to compensate my position when possible to accomodate that.

Now, at my weight, I don't run very fast, nor do I run very often. Also, since I was a child, I've HATED running with a passion. But I really needed to stay ahead of them, so run I did, in a dress and dress shoes no less (thank God I only ever wear flats). LOL. I would say I probably ran at least 1/2 of a mile. Because the lesson was a 1/2 mile away, and we walked down there and back. The client was practicing crossing the streets of a busy intersection. I took 138 photos on the way there and back. I got a LOT of excellent footage! I think we should just make a presentation on that alone! I know one of the secrets to getting good pictures is to take lots of pictures. Boy, digital cameras sure do offer that option. I seem to have a knack though for getting good pictures. I created a vision loss simulation a few years ago, and I only had four photos available in the camera. It was our first digitial camera, and we didn't even have a memory card for it yet. So it only held four high resolution pictures at once. I actually took the photos in the days following 9-11. I took the photos at our local zoo, which is near the airport. The planes were still grounded, and it was so serene and quiet without the overhead noise.

I digress. People don't know much about the travel procedures for people who are blind or visually impaired. For example, my MIL saw a blind man leaving our agency a week ago, and was concerned because he didn't have his DOG with him. I had to explain to her that people are not allowed to own a guide dog, unless they can travel alone with a cane.

By the way, if you are a young person, or you know of a young person looking for a good career in the helping field, tell them to look into becoming an Orientation and Mobility instructor. They are always in demand, they make *good* money (I've seen from $25/hour to $45/hour), they get to be outdoors, they are always very slender from all the daily exercise of walking their clients around and orienting them to their neighorhood, how to get to work, to the store, school, wherever they travel, they need orientation. Even around their home, job, school campus. You can get a job anywhere there is a blind agency.

Yesterday, I met our O&M instructor down at a building that has stairs, where he gave another client a lesson in how to climb stairs using the cane to guide her steps. I drove down to that lesson, and then gave them a ride back home. Then I tagged along while he trained a client in bus travel. We went down the road a couple of miles, got off the bus, then reboarded the next bus going back the opposite direction.

Turns out this client is a Native American who had a grandfather who was one of the last chiefs and they think he lived to be 130 years old! They aren't sure of his actual birthdate, but he always used his baptismal certificate as a birth certificate and he was baptized when he was 14 or 15 years old. He was 115 when he died in 1954.

Digressing again... It took me 9 hours to complete the presentation, between taking photos, then photoshopping the photos, sizing them and placing them in PowerPoint. The ED set up some photos for me to shoot, and he chose which of the 138 O&M photos we should use, and he chose pictures from our photo database. We got a lot of good pictures in the last couple of days. I'm excited about it! I printed out all the pictures he had to choose from, then cut them into individual photos (6 printed on each page) and then he put them in order. He's going to write the verbage for each photo in the presentation. I think there are almost 90 photos.

Anyway, I've just been really busy in the past few days. As usual. And this weekend won't be any less busy. I have to get the kidding/birthing kit assembled!! It is now TWO WEEKS until our first doe is due to kid. Today is grocery shopping, which always takes several hours.

We have also been hauling water for some of our neighbors whose well is down. Five people are on this well, and we've already taken them 3000 gallons of water. It takes 1 hour to get 1000 gallons of water. We are hoping that they are all being conservative with their water usage! They did pay us $20 for the first 1000 gallons. It costs us $4.00 from the well, then there is the hour of our time.

About the dog scarf. Apparently there is some little dog that is called a butterfly dog. Papillon. Anyway, I'm going to crochet a scarf which will be wider at the ends, then narrower around the neck. I'm crocheting it in neon colors, then I'm going to sew the little green butterflies I got from Jo-Ann to the ends of it. I'll post a picture when it's done.

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Eating Alone

I hear a lot of people talk about not liking to eat alone, but I love it. I grew up in a large family, and was a loner as a child. I never had many friends, usually one "best" friend in each grade. We moved a lot, so I went to a different school every couple of years.

Yesterday, I didn't have any leftovers to bring for lunch, so I went to a local fish and chips joint all by myself. I brought a Guideposts magazine with me. A friend brings me his copy after he's finished with it. Guideposts always gets me teary-eyed with the inspirational, spiritual stories. I have to say though, I'm dismayed at how it's filled with medical prescription advertisements. I don't think I could bring myself to purchase a subscription and pay for that. Anyway, I sat there all by myself at a table with four seats. I really liked the feeling of being all alone, by myself, reading, not having to act any certain way for anyone I was with.

New Topic: I remember when I was young, how the "old" people would complain about things like customer service, and the quality of things, and how it was so much better in the olden days. Well, more and more I'm hearing myself complaining about the same kinds of things. If it was so much worse when I was a youngster, how much worse has it gotten now? It's pretty bad, if you ask me!

And just how people are in general, how they don't seem to think before doing things. Like this morning. The sun was just beginning to rise, and I got off the freeway, and in the right hand lane there was a man and his car broke down. He was obviously out of gas, as he was holding a large red plastic gas can. There was a highway patrolman behind him, in an unmarked dark green SUV. The patrolman had his flashers on (not his flickering lights) and he had the man get into his vehicle, apparently planning to take him to a nearby gas station. I was looking in that direction, but not making eye contact with the patrolman. However, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the patrolman was making "thank you" gestures to me. I realized that he thought he had my attention and had asked if he could cut in front of me. Lucky for me that I can read gestures well.

So he pulls in front of me, and amazingly, neither one of those men bothered to turn on the flashers of the disabled vehicle. It was a small dark car -- and remember, it's still dark out, the sun is just beginning to rise -- right in the path of traffic coming off the freeway. The cars coming off the freeway round a corner, and THERE'S this car, sitting here.

I don't understand why they didn't do something else, like 1) Maybe push the car one block to put gas in it? 2) Turn the flashers on to warn oncoming traffic?

The way that this off ramp is situated, you can't get back to where the car was at, without going a mile down the road, getting on the freeway again, then fighting through a mile's worth of morning rush hour traffic. Maybe the patrolman was planning to use his flashing lights and go backwards through the traffic over to the disabled vehicle?

I was so puzzled by this lack of using one's brain that I actually walked back over to the convenience store where they were getting gas, to tell the patrolman that they forgot to leave the flashers on, and they'd better hurry back to that vehicle. They pulled off as I got over there. (This particular convenience store is a couple of buildings from my job).

One more thing. I found a website today that made me cry. I have come close to being a vegetarian in my life, but I believe that God provided us with animals to eat their meat. I believe it is necessary to our health. The only thing this website did was make me want to hurry things up as fast as we can, and stop buying meat from the store. It was a short movie about how inhumanely animals are treated. Chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs. I'm sure the group that produced the movie used the worst possible situations they were able to find and put them together, to portray the entire industry as a bunch of abusive humans.

It didn't turn me into a vegetarian. Actually I felt better about what we are doing. We are raising our animals humanely. Our chickens don't have a huge pasture to range free on, and they don't eat organic food, but they aren't jammed into cages together and electrocuted. They can fly and run, jump up onto high perches to roost, sunbathe and take dirt baths. We probably overfeed them. When we got our dairy bull calves, they were so young that they could not use their legs too well. Apparently some young cows are kept in small cages so their muscles cannot develop to produce veal. Ours run and enjoy the sun. When we "harvest" one, they are killed quickly and humanely. They don't suffer needlessly on a long trip to a slaughterhouse packed and crammed in with hundreds of other frightened animals.

Kind of a depressing entry. I've been going through a period of not wanting to talk much to anyone. It was therapeutic eating alone.

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Still Paying the Price

Oh boy, cleaning the shed without using a dust mask was STUPID of me. I am better today, but still feeling not quite myself. Mostly tired and a bit groggy, but don't want to spend the day in bed because I have to get up early tomorrow, which means I have to be able to get to sleep by a decent time tonight! I've been taking a homeopathic medicine for allergies, which seems to be helping quite a bit. My nose is no longer clogged and the sinus pressure and headache has abated.

I am brewing a new batch of organic black tea for my kombucha. My brew is done and still tastes slightly sweet. Just the tiniest bit. It took six weeks to finish.

I am also trying Pineapple Vinegar from Nourishing Traditions. Then I can make Latin American sauerkraut the authentic way, using the pineapple vinegar.

Yesterday, we found a bale of hay on the side of the freeway, in the city! Immediately I felt a strong feeling that God was saying, "Stop your fussing, I'm going to take care of you." It was so exciting, and my dh and laughed and felt so blessed.

We talked to a lady who knows horses and she said it was probably better to not get the two horses, even if they were free. She said if we had pasture, that would have been one thing. She said they would probably have needed some veterinary work because of their ages. So I guess it's a good thing. The lady with the horses never did email me back.

Our youngest (16yo) cooked a gourmet meal for our dinner last night. Cheese Souffle, Curried Chicken and Spaetzle Noodles, Green Beans Amandine, 8 grain sprouted whole wheat bread (wheat berries sprouted a few days ago! I've never even sprouted wheat berries!) and individual Pineapple Upside-Down cakes. It was a divine meal.

Our newest milker gave us her record amount yesterday. 2.5 pounds. That is the most she has given in one day. We milked at 6am and 6pm. Usually we milk around 8am and 4pm.

So other than that I'm just having a relaxing day, trying to recuperate from the dust!

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Rare Energy

I don't know where it comes from, or why. When I was younger, in my 20s and 30s, I would get the "nesting urge" every single month in the days before my "monthly" was due to begin. In the last few years though, it started coming less frequently, to the point where I thought I might not be ovulating every month. I chart my cycle, and know I am still ovulating. But the bursts of energy are far and few between. Like, one day every six months? I used to depend on those bursts of energy for housecleaning and deep cleaning. Nowadays it is a struggle to keep up with things.

But today, for some reason, I seemed to have a huge burst of energy. I started out by cleaning the shed. The shed doubles as our milking parlor and it was just a nightmare in there. Cluttered with things all over and dust, cobwebs, you name it. It is very dusty in the desert, so it's to be expected. It's nothing for computer monitors and televisions to be covered with a thick layer of dust.

So I worked on that for several hours... from at least 9am to about 1:30pm. I found a lot of empty boxes, mainly when combining things from two or three boxes into one box. Our best milker would not get on the milking stand, due to the drastic change in the milking parlor. We finally had to physically put her up there, and she stood with her hooves spread and would not eat her concentrate while I milked her. Oh, that was something else that I did. I FIXED the milking stand. I have wanted the headlock to work for the longest time, but have just not gotten around to fixing it. Actually, that's what started me out on cleaning the shed was fixing the milking stand. See, the newest milker has tiny teats and so I have to milk her with my finger tips and thumbs and it takes much longer than it does with the milker with normal sized teats. So the newest milker is a good girl and stands patiently, but she also likes to tuck her head in between her body and my head and peer into the milking bucket WHILE she is chewing cud and burping in my face, nuzzling my face with her stinky breath. I know her former owner locks the headlock on her stand, so I know this girl is trained to not go nuts when the headlock is in place. It was much easier milking her, but she did still keep trying and trying to pull her head out of the keyhole. Her head is so small that if she was willing to risk shearing off her ears she could pull her head out.

The dust got to my asthma. I've got to use my Albuterol soon.

I put up a shelf in the livingroom for our most popular books, which are usually strewn about, or more recently in a tall stack about 2 feet high. It's kind of hard to get one book when they are stacked like that.

I washed my oldest son's sheets, blankets and pillows. I even went out of my way to load the washer (gallon by gallon) with hot water. For some reason the place we live didn't have hot water hooked up to the washer, so we usually wash in cold. But bedding should be washed in hot water in my opinion.

It feels good to get a lot accomplished like I did today. Just for the fun of it, today is Day 6 of my cycle. Also, something I noticed last month was during the time I am nearing ovulation, and usually feeling rather mellow and fairly happy, I was highly agitated and feeling like I was this close -> <- to just telling everyone off. I seem to feel this way at work, just can't take the stress. The feeling is one of feeling like I have to mentally concentrate on keeping myself reined in, so that I don't just start blasting everyone verbally. My boss and another coworker keep telling me it is most definitely the beginning of menopause. I've thought I was in perimenopause for at least eight years now.

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Finished One Sock

So I finally finished my first sock on Thursday night. It's definitely not knit correctly, but it is in the shape of a sock, so it's a sock!! I am going to try making my next sock using the directions from Simple Socks but cuff down, instead of toe up. See how the part of the sock opposite the heel is so wide? And the toe was finished wrong, too. But, it's my first try, and at least it turned out. Part of the problem is I really wanted to use five needles, instead of four, but the pattern only calls for four needles. It's supposed to be easier using five needles. Less tension on the material.

I had better get out to milk! I just placed an order for more supplies. I am readying our kidding/birthing kit as we have our first doe due in three weeks! I am determined to have it ready two weeks ahead of time as advised instead of running around the week before trying to make sure everything is ready.

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Old Horses

Oh man, I came so close to acquiring *horses* yesterday. I am still bummed about it, but not getting them is -- I guess -- the right thing for us to do. There is a lady placing two old horses, I believe their ages were 25 and 26, in new homes because she is moving out of state and cannot keep them. She said the mare and gelding have been together 15 years, and cannot be separated. She said they are easy keepers and she has taught all her children and many others to ride on these two. She said they are great city horses, can walk alongside the road and aren't scared of cars. She had lots of stuff to give away with them, and could sell us a saddle for $200 and we could make payments. Coincidentally, her daughter is driving a goat out to where we live, which is about 75 miles from where they live. The only condition is that she wants the two to have a good life until their end and be put down humanely and not sent to a slaughterhouse.

It seemed like a perfect thing. I mean, how much more could one ask for? Free horses, perfect for folks who know practically nothing about riding horses, being delivered right to us? Then I sat down and looked at our budget and even though things will ease once our 10yo vehicle is paid off in a few months, it is going to really create havoc now to feed two horses. The estimated cost is about $50-$75 for each one. Plus, we are working one extra job that we'd like to give up and once the vehicle is paid off, we can do that, but if we have two more mouths to feed... not to mention we have five does pregnant and will have lots of baby goats here within a couple of months.

Plus, one immediate family member voted nay. My mother was oohing and aahing and so excited and hoped we got the two. As was my sister and niece.

I've decided to leave it in God's hands. If He wants us to have the horses, for what logical and practical reason I don't know (except to give us the desires of our hearts which He is surely willing and able to do that)... then the lady will email and ask if we are still interested. I'm sure she has found a good home for them already. Maybe something will fall through. If she does write back, I'm taking that as a *sign* and we'll take them.

Owning horses would be a dream come true for me. One part of me is squealing with delight and voting YES, YES, YES! However, the more practical side votes no. For today, I'm going to have to go with the practical side, and leave it in God's hands.

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Knitting Socks II

For many nights I tried to knit a sock from the toe up using the directions in Simple Socks, Plain and Fancy by Priscilla A. Gibson-Roberts. Remember this is my very first attempt at something other than making knit stitch only scarves...

Last night, I gave up and decided to try my other book Learn to Knit Socks by Edie Eckman.

I guess I could have tried making a sock from the cuff down from _Simple Socks_ but by that time I was feeling like this book obviously isn't taking someone really new to knitting into consideration. I really needed more information, more step by step information. Like the yarnover. I must have tried six dozen times to do a yarnover and am still not sure I figured it out. I even ordered The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knitting and Crocheting Illustrated by Barbara Breiter & Gail Diven, in my frustration.

I started on a more advanced sock - DUH (when will I learn?) - and realized I didn't know what those stitches meant either so backed up to the "BASIC" sock. More my speed. I actually got the cuff completed, and the HEEL TURNED. Yay!! I will continue working on it today.

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New Doe

We got a new doe a couple of weeks back. She turned one year old beginning of February. She is our first purebred, and the lady we got her from had just moved about 2 hours from her previous home, and the doeling was bred, and aborted. She came into milk since she was far enough along in her pregnancy. We got her because she is purebred, and her owner thought her production would increase to over 4 pounds a day. So far, she is holding steady at right around 2 pounds. It will be enough to get us through the dry period when our other does are in the late stages of pregnancy, dried up and then kidding and feeding their own kids.

I have always heard and read that you should not breed a doeling until she is a certain age and weight. For some reason, 70# always sticks in my head. But in rereading our books, I discovered that I remembered that wrong, and it is 80# and 8 months.

I felt guilty because with our first breeding, I only paid attention to the fact that she was 79 pounds, thinking since she was over 70# that was okay. After we let her get bred, I discovered that she was not old enough. She was 6 months and 9 days old!

We decided to get weights on our youngest does this past week. Our two doelings that turn 1 year old in March, are both bred weigh 113 and 101. They are littermates. The doe that we purchased recently weighs *65 pounds*!

I have never understood why people will wait until their doelings are almost 2 years old to breed, but now I know why. Apparently the stock this girl comes from are very petite.

Our kids are big at birth, ranging from 8.5 pounds to 10 pounds. Twins, not singletons. For example, our herd queen gave birth to two bucklings, 1 weighed 9 pounds, the other weighed 10 pounds. I hear that a normal weight for singletons is 10 pounds, not for twins!

We are not sure though if we are just feeding too much during pregnancy (which can cause kidding problems as the doe is too fat), or that our buck just throws big kids.

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Knitting Socks

My latest goal. I have two books, one is _Simple Socks_. I have never knitted anything but scarves. I have all the things I need: needles, yarn, books. I started a sample pair, and after four rows finally figured out what I was supposed to be doing for the yarnover. I am dying to have some real sock yarn, the kind that makes automatic stripes. My local Joann's and Michael's did not have any sock yarn. Maybe I will find time to work on them again this coming weekend.

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Still Learning NT

I hate to say it, but I can't believe my last entry was in SEPTEMBER? 5 months can pass by like such a flash. It was a whirlwind.

On the NT front, I tried a new kind of sauerkraut, Sally's Latin American Sauerkraut. I didn't want to chance the whey making it taste goaty, so I used twice the salt. It was good, but so salty.

In October we tested our does' milk separately and found that two of them have subclinical mastitis. I thought perhaps the extra bacteria could cause the whey to go goaty, and so I tried a second batch of LA Sauerkraut with only kefir whey from our doe with clean milk. Same results. Goaty flavored sauerkraut. What a disappointment.

Five of our does are bred and we are confident four of the five are settled. The fifth one we are not so sure, but fairly so. We expect our first kids in March, and the last to be born end of May. The fifth doe is a 75% American recorded grade, bred to a purebred buck. Her kids can be registered as full American.

We bought a new milker to help us through the dry period. My sister is very grateful as her young son has developed a rash from drinking cow's milk when at school. The new milker is quite talkative, as she was bottle raised. She is just one year old. She aborted due to the family moving about 1.5 hours away, but came into milk. Her owner hoped we could increase her lactation to over 4 pounds daily, but so far she's staying steady at about 2 pounds. Every little bit helps.

We finally harvested one of our wethers. The meat is wonderful. It took months to finally do the deed, and now we are glad we did. Unfortunately, that probably won't make the next harvesting any easier. The meat probably costs $20/lb due to our procrastination. At least we know we can grow and eat our own meat. Some people absolutely will not eat their own goats. I can see their position, it is a difficult hurdle to jump. Mentally challenging.

The most significant thing is once again the path the Lord has led us down. I was thinking last night, how awesome that we were led to buy a dairy goat. So impulsive of us, but such a strong feeling. We are raising some dairy calves, but it is going to be quite a feat to process them. Goats grow faster, are ready for harvest sooner, are smaller and much easier to process. I can't quite put into words. I guess it boils down to being another miraculous blessing. The feeling of being cared for and loved is huge.

Until next time.

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