A1A South

Daughter found out that they’re having a daughter this time. After two sons, she’s ready for the peace and quiet. BWAHAHAHAHA! I mean, yeah, sure, girls are all sweetness and light and quiet and never, EVER talk back and argue with their momma and kick their brothers. Nope, nope, nope. Hope the sonogram is correct because Mommy and MeeMaw are out going crazy buying little girl clothes.

She called tonight and said that Dylan needs a paddle for Christmas. I think that means that Mommy needs a paddle for Christmas. Dylan is the one to the left. I think she may be right.

Son was driving at night, hit a jagged piece of metal in the road that he didn’t see until too late, and blew out the front and rear tires on one side of his truck. The back end of the truck slung around, and he ended up in the ditch. He spent $300 on towing, and still needed to get two new tires and a radiator. I haven’t heard if his truck is gonna be ready to head up into north Georgia for some work to take him through the winter or not. I hope so, since he’s supposed to leave this weekend!

Jacob (to the right) is a Cub Scout now. SwampMan used to be a Scoutmaster. I asked him if he remembered anything useful from his Scoutmaster days. Mostly what he remembered was being eat up by mosquitoes on camping trips, and the scouts overturning the canoe (with him in it) several times in the St. Mary’s river.

I’m all nice and clean from my shower. My clothes are ready for tomorrow. Of course, last night they were ready for this morning, and I was running through the house in a panic this morning because I could not find them where I hung their hangers from the doorknob so I couldn’t possibly miss ’em in the morning, even before having caffeine in large quantities. Did I ever mention that I am NOT a morning person? I even put a lil’ bin on the bathroom counter with underwear and socks so I wouldn’t have to rifle through the dresser drawers in the morning. So, there I was this morning, rifling through the dresser drawers, waking SwampMan in my consternation that my socks and underwear had disappeared.

*sigh* I’m worried about my momma hen and her lil’ biddies, and my sick ewe. I’m worried now that perhaps ewe is in the pasture getting soaked by the rain instead of in the nice, dry barn. I need to check to make sure the biddies pen isn’t getting too wet. So, guess who will be going out into the dark, stumbling through mud puddles, and getting soaked to the skin again? Why didn’t I just soap up and walk into the pasture nekkid? It woulda been more efficient.

Update: Biddies are dry under Momma and under shelter in their outdoor pen. Sick ewe is lying in the barn. The only fool(s) out getting soaked were me and Puppy, who opened the gate and followed me out, patrolling for potential Mom grabbers (on account of I open the cans).

Oooh, and channel 4 just informed me that dark chocolate would make me feel better. Duh! Why the hell do they think I’m overweight?

Saturday morning I went out and found a dead ewe. She was quite stout and healthy appearing except for the being dead part but the previous evening, she hadn’t come up to eat. I checked her, noticed she was quite weak, and worried that she had stuck her head through the fence and nibbled on some bracken fern. It grows on the other side of the fences and there isn’t much greenery in our dusty pastures at the moment. It was dark, my flashlight wasn’t working, and there wasn’t much I could do in the diagnostic department. The next day she was dead, with a bloody discharge from the nose. That is what bracken fern poisoning looks like in cattle, but I *think* it is just supposed to cause blindness in sheep. It could also be pasteurella pneumonia which manifests when the sheep are stressed, whether by hot weather, drought, breeding, weaning, all of the above which are occurring right now.

This evening, another good ewe was affected. She wouldn’t come up to eat, her legs were trembling, and she was having trouble standing. I gave her a hefty dose of oxytetracycline just in case it was the pneumonia. She had a snotty nose, was weak, and having trouble breathing. *sigh* If it ain’t one thing, it’s another. If it is bracken fern poisoning, she’ll be dead by morning. I hope it isn’t. There’s nothing like disposing of a 150 lb. dead sheep that has been lying around in the heat and humidity all day, unless it’s disposing of a 1,000 lb. cow or horse. Plus, it’s supposed to be raining.

One of the newly hatched little biddies was having trouble walking today, and I noticed that he or she was growing more listless through the day. I moved six of the little ones to an outside pen with the hen mom that came to rescue the chicks from my collection efforts. I left the dying chick underneath a hen still on eggs. Two additional chicks were hiding another hen, and I’ll leave them there with her inside the permanent hen house.

I have a chicken house with newly-hatched lil’ peeps inside, and danged if I didn’t walk out Saturday and leave the chick starter at the feed store. Luckily, I have some greens going bad in the fridge and a search of the garbage can revealed maggots growing in the liquid left in the bottom of some of the cat food cans. Woohoooo! Chick starter!

I’d like to move the chicks out into a temporary pen where they’ll be safe from being stepped on, eaten by snakes, rats, or picked to death by non-maternal chickens, but it is supposed to rain. It’s getting black out there. *sigh* Those temporary pens sit right on the ground and, in a deluge, the chicks could drown.

In the meantime, I really need to exercise. Maybe somebody out there can do it for me (grin).

Woe is me. SwampMan ain’t never even conceived of suffering in silence! I’ve been steppin’ and fetchin’ all week to make up for my sin. I’m still feeling a little puny myself. In the meantime, he has left his laundry prominently in front of the door so that I will feel guilty enough to carry it out and do it. So far, I haven’t felt THAT guilty.

I called my mom, and she didn’t know who I was. I identified myself, and she told me that I sounded like an elderly lady of her acquaintance. I knew my voice sounded bad, but I was startled that it sounded like a 90-year-old lady with a cold. She told me that she couldn’t understand what I was saying and recommended that I call back when my voice comes back. I think I was creeping her out.

I *think* SwampMan is nearly well. I still sound like a frog. With emphysema.

I don’t know about y’all, but when I feel ill, I start nesting. I cover myself with blankets and sip hot tea. And I watch videos about sewing and such. Normally, just the sight of a sewing machine is enough to send me yelping to the barn, much like a dog that grabbed hold of what he thought was a domestic kitty cat and finding out he had a bobcat instead. Somehow, when I’m ill, I start having delusions that maybe this one time, I will be able to create a fashion masterpiece using nothing but old blue jeans and stretched out T-shirts. Maybe this time, some talent that nobody believed that I possessed will come bubbling to the surface, much like methane out of a settling pond. People will come up to me asking who my designer is instead of “I can’t believe you put paint on the cat’s paws and made him walk on your shirt”. Hunh. I LIKED that shirt. And it was ink.

So I’ve been watching Threadbangers and had almost convinced myself that I, too, have the spirit of a clothing designer inside of me, but I’m coming down to earth. I’m currently wearing a hot pink, sky blue squirted T-shirt decorated with a bible verse and neon colored flowers and squiggles and polka dots. Nobody has ever asked me where I got such a unique T-shirt because….they know. And they’re probably scared of what is coming next.

I suppose if I can’t impress the neighbors with my (nonexistent!) fashion sense, scaring the hell out of ’em that I might grab a scissors and do some creative cutting on clothing is good enough.

*sigh* The bad thing about Threadbangers is that when you’re young and beautiful, you look good in anything, no matter how butt ugly it is. When you’re old and butt ugly…….hmmmm. Well, I guess that would mean that you would be butt ugly no matter what, so I might as well enjoy myself. Now, where’s my scissors?

I said that I’d post them a long time ago, but didn’t have the time. Since I’ve been requested to take the day off and not cough on anyone, I’ll post them today.

It was an early morning appointment, so the boys had to be awakened early, fed, and hustled off to the doctor’s appointment. Of course they had to closely inspect the wound.

I understand that the Desperate Party is going to attempt to demonize the Tea Party even further. Heh. Talk about shooting themselves in the ass! Guess they seem to think that they’re the arbitrators of behavior and How We Should Believe.

Keep in mind Aunt Eller’s verse at the end.