Happy Mother's Day

This lamb was born in our pasture on Mother's Day. In this picture he is just a few hours old (he's much cuter now especially with the white tip on his soon to be whacked off tail) O.K., he was born the day after Mother's Day. Close enough. O.K., he wasn't born so much as he was pulled from the womb by his observant owner who happened to be driving by and saw the ewe in distress, thrashing wildly in her pain.

I had no idea this had occurred until I went out and saw a new lamb. Cool! No muss, no fuss on my part. I've been arm deep in sheep midwifery before and like goat raising, those days are behind me. Thank God. But there is nothing cuter than a little lamb hopping and bopping in the grass. So I'm glad the sheep and lambs are there and also glad they are not mine.

As for human mothers, I managed to remember Mother's Day and procured appropriate gifts (mother & mother-in-law) well in advance, which was quite remarkable for me. It's hard to find gifts for people who have tons of junk already. Plus the fact I remembered it was Mother's Day. Woot.

I went to visit my mother last Friday and brought her gift. I was excited to give her something that I thought she would use and thought she would like. It was a DVD player. Just a little, inexpensive one.

Oh, you shouldn't have, oh, pj, oh, oh. She seemed happy. I was thrilled that I made her happy. Until I couldn't get the damn thing to work. I had her all primed to watch the Michael Moore Fahrenheit 911 DVD and nothing, but nothing made the player play. I even took the player into my brother's house in town thinking HE WOULD MAKE IT WORK. But it never happened.

So I picked up a Pasquales pizza and went back to my folks and we ate the best pizza in the world. I left my folks with my car full of stuff, including the defective product which went back to WalMart today. WalMart sucks!

WalMart took the thing back without even looking in the box. WTF?? When I purchased it, I got the alarms and the shake-down at the door when I was leaving. But when I return it they don't even look to see if the box is filled with faucet parts from my junk drawer??

I took my money and ran to Target and got a replacement. I will test it first, then if it works I will take it to Mom. Then mother's day will be happy.

the other end of the witch AGAIN

The last weather report (see the other end of the witch) was about the ice storm that hit last weekend. So on Thursday school got cancelled and the weather arrived. It came in some sort of rain first, then sleet, then snow, snow, snow. Holy shit. But all was just ducky until the electricity went out at noon and stayed that way.

I went into pioneer mode and Mr. Man went to bed. He couldn't sleep the whole time the electricity was out, but I know he wanted to. I kept the house from freezing by boiling big kettles of water. I gathered snow to keep the pots full and for extra water for flushing the toilet.*

Between storms (see Incredible Mind Suck) I had gotten batteries at WalMart (WalMart sucks!) for my tiny black and white t.v. so we could watch the constant storm coverage. Light was provided by the antique kerosene lamp and candles from my car winter emergency kit. The candles from the kit proved to be much better at providing light the hundred scented soy candles I have. (When I discovered the "joy of soy" I threw out ALL of my old candles, which in retrospect, was stupid.)

We survived the night and woke up in a 57 degree house. I made cowboy coffee and washed dishes in hot snow water. We played cribbage. It wasn't too bad.

At noon I bundled up and waded through the drifts to the truck to charge my cell phone. Mr. Man went back to bed. I gathered more snow and set it on the porch. I had just gotten peeled out of my blizzard gear when the lights came back on.

Some of my neighbors weren't so lucky. They didn't get their electricity back until Saturday afternoon. And there were people in the state who still were without power from the storm the weekend before. So all in all, we were lucky.

On Saturday a neighbor came with his tractor and pushed/blew snow. Mr. Man took my car "for a little drive" and went straight to a bar. Then another bar.

I didn't venture out until yesterday. I went to town M for a few groceries then went to town B -- straight to a bar. Dammit, I deserved it. Felt like crap this morning though.

The roads are still crappy in a lot of places. And the parking lot at school is a damn joke. There were tons of empty parking spots this morning but very few that didn't have 3 feet of snow in them.

Short version: Another shitty storm, lights went out, we lived.

*For city folk -- Out here where people draw their water from wells, the water does not come out of the tap without electricity firing the pump which means no toilet flushing. But you can pour water in a toilet and it flushes like magic!