Gone Geek

I fully blame Joe. It's all his fault.
Since I can't have a big girl blog because, well, I'm a cheap bitch. I'm adding all sort of shit to this one. Oh and my home website too, where I market my goats. So I have two, count them TWO stat counters. That's so I can keep an eye on the three people who come here. I could drive to their houses, get a cup of coffee or maybe have some ice cream faster, but that's NOT the point.

The point is, I've gone geek. Shut. Up.

I really do need to market the goats harder, so I think this might help. If I can figure out how to work the damn things. I couldn't go and pick easy ones. I wanted something to tell me what people search for to get here or there. There mostly. I'm not sure anyone is going to stumble on this little gem of writing and say WOW, donkey porn! (Psstt, you'd more likely find that at Avi's, and it's mostly monkey porn.)

Over there (aren't I just the little link queen today?) is where I want to get some more traffic. And since Joe says I can't have my blog over there to drag in those three extra people, I need to wrangle up some hits. Watch out google here I come.

Ahhh, I managed to ruin my whole blog reading pattern.
I have this pattern man, I read bloglines, then I read those who don't have feeders, then I go to DIST, then I go to AOL blogs. Well, ok, people who I thought didn't have feeders. You see I realized yesterday that I'm an idiot. I really already had an idea about my idiocy, but this time it was just thrown RIGHT in my face. Those people who I've been haunting daily? Had feeders. On the sidebar. Where I never look.
So I added them to my bloglines. But, I have this pattern. And now it's all thrown off.
Of course, Avi, Amy, and Miss Britt had to go and throw me a curve ball too. That's just further set my pattern off. Threw it off, but was well worth it. Funny funny shit man.

*Hurmph*
So now what is a girl to do. I have no one to stalk. They all are coming neatly in my reader.

I swear it was that black cat that passed in front of me today.

Track meet hell

The track meet yesterday was pure hell. It was pouring rain, windy and cold. Meet was to start at 10, so we arrived early at 9:30 or so. After arrival we find out that shot and discus will not start until 11. So an hour we sat in the rain waiting and passing time. We did get to see some of the running events that we usually miss. Wanna bet there are a whole lot of sick kids on Monday?

At 11 we moved to the shot area and stood there. In.the.rain. It's supposed to be open pit so we can throw at any point during the day.
At 11:15 we're still in the rain no officials.
At 11:20 I decide we're all going back to the car to warm up and dry out just a little.
I send Gee and Bill off at 10 to 12 to see whats going on. They found everyone over at the discus area and now it's no longer open pit. There are 80+ kids waiting to throw. Gee made it in plenty of time to throw shot and Bill came back to check on me while Gee waited to throw discus.
I ended up, for the first time ever, missing Gee compete.
I just can't afford to get sick. I was already soaked to the skin from the first 2 hours in the rain.
Gee was fine with it. Dad was there, so all was well.
We think he won the 5th grade shot put. We don't know how many of those other 80 kids were 5th graders. He might have won the discus too, they are pretty sure he threw the farthest. Our coach was totally unhappy with the disorganization of the field events. I can't say that I blame him. By the time they were done with the shot and discus they were already done with all the other events.

At dinner last night:

Two waitresses are at the register. One is Mexican (MW), one is white (WW).
The WW says in replay to something the MW says, "Cool beans."
MW says "Excuse me, what did you say."
WW "Cool Beans!"
MW says "Ok, whitey whatever."
WW says "What? Cool beans, like Cool, Good, Awesome."
MW says " Oh I thought you were saying that cause I'm Mexican."
WW "Uh, No?!"

I'm not sure why this struck me funny. I think it was the obvious fact that people are too fast to jump the "are you being racist" bandwagon.
We've been talking alot this week with random people about the VT tragedy. It's so shocking (?) the differences in safety since even when I was in school last. I'm not even sure it's safety, maybe it's the moral fiber, or the take on right and wrong.
I carried a gun in my car every day to school. Every day. It was probably loaded some of the time. I would have NEVER ever thought to walk out there and use it to settle a dispute. No one in my school would have thought to use mine or their own to settle a dispute. Did we fight? Hell yeah. There were a few pretty good knock down drag out's in the halls. A few in classrooms too. When the dust settled we were embarrassed for the fighters. We were a little concerned for them too, because you knew that phone would be ringing at home in a few minutes and the punishment would be worse than anything the school system could muster up.
When you got caught playing a prank you were made to clean it up, all of it. And you would probably be mowing the lawn of the persons house you TP'd until you were 18.
I guess it boils down to taking responsibility for your actions and being willing to pay the consequences. What happened to teaching that to our kids? Have we become so fearful of what other people will think of our parenting skills to worry about how this child, who's life we are molding, will turn out. I am not always the best parent. I let things slide I shouldn't sometimes. But I will yank my son up my the bootstraps in front of God and everyone if he deserves it. I still remember my mom literally kicking my ass on main street one day in front of everyone there.
Surprise! While you may think everyone will rain down on you for disciplining little Susy or Tommy in public, you may find thank yous and pats on the back instead.
Please. Hug your child. Love your child. Discipline your child. You are making a better person. One who will hopefully know the difference between right and wrong and be embarrassed for those who don't.

No great news today.
G-Pa is doing pretty well. He finally asked for something to eat. And he smiled. When Bill was smacking me with a shoe lace he found. Sadistic old man.
Did I mention I shaved Gee's head? It's what he wanted. Until he came home from school telling me he was sick of hearing "Man you're bald."

Track meet was fine. 26.6 was his top throw. He placed second to his buddy so it's all good. It was a practice meet anyhow, I find out later. Another meet this weekend. These meets are saving me from goat meetings I don't want to attend anyway.

I just realized I'll be coming home from a training seminar to head to OR for a goat show the next day. Shit.

Ahhhh, Gee is off to school again.

We're back on our 6am milking schedual which, while a PITA, is a nice set start to the day. Except today.
We have a routine. While he opens up the out shoot (where the goats exit to the field) I put the first two on the milk stand. While I'm getting them grained and washed, he starts up the generator.
Today I grained and waited. Silence. I waited some more (sometimes he's a little slow in the AM). He comes to the door and says;
"Mom the generator is gone."
My jaw hits the ground and I have flash backs to the morning we found my 4 wheeler stolen. The sheer look of shock must have made him think again.
"No, not gone gone, gone like it won't start gone.... it's broken."
"oh." I stumble out to see it I can figure it out, I can't, I call Bill at 6:30 am. He decides he needs to come look at it.
Gee and I start hand milking. I have a milking machine for a reason. I hate to hand milk. It kills my shoulders. Arm numbing pain.
We milked over half by the time Bill came to the rescue. Luckily all my big or hard to milk does wait to the end so we didn't have to milk them by hand.
And thinking about it, we missed one. Come to think of it, where is she? No not the one I sent off, I know not to look for her. Her partner in crime though is missing. Uh Oh.

I work today. I was supposed to work tomorrow also but my client called and canceled. He didn't have time to get his new cows tagged. He bought them on Friday and we were set to test on Tuesday afternoon. He only bought 30. My guess is it won't be done by test day either.

I bought gas today. It looks like it is a good thing I did. It went up this morning in town to $3.47. My gas bill last month was more than my mortgage payment.

Two does left today. I'm not sure Molly knew I was coming, she seemed surprised to see me. I'm sure Sarah told her since she knew about the kid with the horns. *shrug* I'm left wondering about the hay exchange still. I told her we could work the same deal she made with Sarah but nothing more was said and she went on to say she didn't fit as much hay in the trailer as she thought. I'm thinking at least two does are gone.

We went back and milked and came home. My head was starting to split by then. 3+ gallons of milk today. What am I going to do with all this milk? I need a milk outlet.

Our friends goat Noodles has them SUCKERED. He hurt his front end the other night, jamming his front feet and probably hurting his shoulder or neck in the process. We've been keeping a close eye on him since them. That means I've been out to look at him daily. I might as well own him. Yesterday the owner caught him standing up eating berries on the fence. When she stepped out on the porch he spotted her, dropped to his knees, and started crawling again. Ha! Last night she called to say his stomach was bubbling. I'm sure his rumen was just working and she (since she was sitting in his house with him) heard it for the first time. I am finding I have to be VERY careful what I tell them to do with him because they do it LITERALLY. If I say keep an eye on him, they will sit in the yard watching him. I told them to offer him baking soda every day in case his tummy was upset since he was crawling around, I was afraid it might upset the rumen. So since he was just sniffing it then sneezing she gave him some in his bottle of water (which he gets because they were afraid he wasn't drinking enough). Now we know why she could hear his tummy grumble.
Noodles has found a great home for sure. This is the kind of home you hope all your goats find.