So Long, Old Friend

Long about eighteen years ago, when I was a young Farmgirl, and the Farm Family still lived out in the country, our nearest neighbors had a pair of cocker spaniels. As often happens when you have a male and a female, they had pups.

Once the puppies were about eight weeks old, Farmmom, Farmbrother, and I went over and saw them. There were two left, and we took them both home. Farmmom knew we could find a home for the one we decided not to keep.

One was a solid blonde pup, with a head like a gallon jug of milk, the other was blonde and white particolored.

These pups were born in a remote corner of a dirt-floored shed, and lived there until they went to their new homes. Unfortunately, a large colony of fleas also lived in that shed, so the pups were just covered in them.

So, first order of business for the little furballs was a bath. Farmmom got them home, put them directly in the kitchen sink, sprinted to the bathroom and ran back out. By this time I was already on a stool at the sink keeping the squirmy pooches corralled and setting the water temperature.

The puppies yelped and cried when the water hit their feet, whimpered and shook as we tried, in vain, to work up a good lather with the shampoo, and we murmured soft reassurances and stifled giggles as they tried to crawl out of the sink.

Well, I giggled. Farmmom was slightly appalled at how dirty they would have to be to keep the shampoo from lathering after three washes. That is, until she declared it as good as it was going to get (we were both soaked from the waist up, and the puppies were convinced that it was the end of the world) and we wrapped them in towels. One arm full of puppy and towel, I reached out and snagged the bottle of shampoo, only to turn to Farmmom and say "I know why the shampoo wouldn't lather."

"Why?"

"Because it's conditioner."

Those puppies had the softest fur in three counties. But, the fleas were gone, either smothered by the conditioner or drowned and washed away by the repeated rinsing.

That was the beginning of a long friendship with Misty, the little particolored cocker spaniel. We named her Misty because she seemed to walk around in a mental fog about half the time, and had a habit for a while of bumping into large pieces of furniture.

I maintained that she was thinking deep thoughts about the meaning of the universe. Farmdad said she was just a blonde.

That pup took to farm life like a duck to water. Playful, sweet, and loyal, she was the epitome of a cocker. She also had a deep seated joy in retrieving freshly shot prairie dogs, from the very start. Before she was much bigger than her target she would wait patiently by your side as you took aim with the twenty two, and the minute she saw one fall, she was off like a shot, to laboriously drag the carcass back to within ten feet of you. She'd drop it, and pant heavily, while wagging her stub of a tail so hard that her whole body wiggled side to side.

She was so proud of herself. If you tried to take the dead prairie dog from her, though, she'd grab it and run away. It was her dead thing, she just wanted to show it to you.

She was fearless. When we brought her to town on a visit to Mamaw's house, she picked on Mamaw's Doberman bitch, playfully nipping at the bigger dog's ankles until Baby, the Dobie, snapped. Baby caught her on the face, puncturing a hole through the bottom of her jaw, and cutting her lip. Misty yelped, and hid under a chair until we dragged Baby to another room. A trip to the vets determined that Misty would heal, and as soon as she quit bleeding (and the little chunk of tylenol we gave her for the pain kicked in a bit) she was right back to growling at the much larger dog. Keep in mind Misty wasn't even half grown at this time. We kept them separated after that.

One day, we opened the door to find her laying on the porch, her nose swollen and her muzzle covered in blood. She'd gotten into a fight with a rattle snake. We weren't sure if she'd survive, for a while, the snake bite was in a bad place, the swelling nearly cutting off her air. A dose of anti-venom and a large vet bill later, she was back on her feet with a new scar and a bone-deep hatred of sticker-snakes.

Three more times we had to rush her to the vet's for snake bites, one of them the fang marks were so far apart they almost didn't find the second one. How big does a rattle snake have to be to have fangs nearly two and a half inches apart?

But, she never lost a fight with a snake. We'd find her on the porch, sick and beginning to swell on the site of the bite, muzzle covered in more blood than a snake could afford to lose.

She was a circus performer, a fierce guard dog, or a mighty bear, in games with my brother and I. She'd "Stand Pretty", and dance, and play "which hand is the treat in."

When Farmmom was working in Holyoke and we rented a house there for the summer, she came with us.

Whenever we went through Lamar with Misty in the car, she got chicken gizzards from KFC, or ice cream from the drive-in. She liked chocolate.

She was a friend, a family member. She was the world's biggest mother, and she never got to have pups of her own. The one time she got pregnant, it was from a stray lab mix, and the pups were just too big for her. We got her fixed when we had to abort the pups. That didn't stop her from being momma dog, though.

She helped me raise litters of kittens, and once, a calf. Somewhere I have a picture of the first night we had Moo, a feedlot calf out of the finishing pen. I'm in my swim suit and shorts (I'd been at the pool just before the Farmparents arrived with Moo) sitting in the kitchen with the baby-gates up, Moo standing beside me, skinny and still unsteady on her pins, with her head down by Misty, who is cleaning the calf's face.

Misty would lay perfectly still while you cut tangles out of her fur, which was so fine that no amount of brushing could keep it from matting. We had to trim her with scissors, clippers would just clog up and tangle into her fur. But she understood that she needed to be still, and you could trim between her toes, on her ears, or right next to the sensitive skin on the inside of her back legs, and she'd do her best to stay put, even when you had no choice but to pull a little.

She was a good dog, our Old Pup. Arthritic, and deaf as a post, but she still had days that she felt and acted like a puppy.

Until last night. Last night Farmdad had to put her down.

She's the only dog we've ever had that we've had to put down due to old age. We've had dogs that got sick, got hit by cars, got snakebit, but never one that was just too old to go on.

It feels like I lost a piece of myself, and I know Farmmom and Farmdad feel the same way. She's the first critter I've lost in a long time that I haven't been there to say goodbye.

They're going to bury her today at the farm, where she was happiest.

So long, Iddle Dog. Wherever you are I hope someone is shooting prairie dogs for you until you can't walk to get them anymore, and the snakes don't bite, and taste like Lil Smokies. I hope there are babies everywhere for you to love and that there's no such thing as too much ice cream.

We'll miss you, Misty.

Moving Again

I've been looking for a new place, since my lease was coming up on it's end. Actually it ended the first, but yeah.

I couldn't find anything, there were no one bedrooms or even two bedrooms in town.

Well, circumstances looked like they might conspire to hand me a two bedroom duplex with a little yard for two hundred a month plus utilities, but that fell through.

That is, until B (who lives there now, but is looking for a house to buy with her fiance) got fed up with her roommate. Well, Roommate didn't want to pay her part of the bills, so it's understandable.

So, B kicks Roommate out and calls me, knowing that I've been pulling my hair out about finding a new place, and had finally thrown up my hands, about half grateful to have the apartment at all.

"Give your notice and start packing."

See, I'm pretty sure I can handle having a roommate, knowing its a short term thing. And who knows, I might just like it. Regardless, that place is going to wind up being more space for about the same money as this one, without a roommate. And I can finally bring my pup up.

Now I just have to pack, and decide if being moved before classes start is worth basically giving them two weeks of my rent money here for nothing.

Oh, and basically move two households, since B and I talked about it and agreed that since she's going to be moving out anyway and has access to free storage through her fiance's family, we're going to use my stuff in the house and put hers in storage. So we'll be moving her stuff out and then my stuff in. Another thing in the "pro" column for moving before classes are over.

It's gonna be a busy month....

Just A Regular Old Irregular Girl...

Hit Big R today to look for some jeans. I was hoping to get into some Wrangler Aura jeans on sale, but that wasn't in the cards, and I can't afford to spend fifty dollars on one pair of jeans, right now. (And probably won't be able to bring myself to actually pay that much ever...)

Regardless, I needed to find some higher waisted jeans, because frankly, I'm not going to survive if I can't wear tank tops this semester. I haven't been out in the heat as much this summer and I'm not adjusted to it, and it's been high 90's and low 100's here.

And it's August. Hottest month of the freaking year.

So, must have tank tops at the barn, and in order to wear tank tops and not break the dress code, I have to have jeans that are high-rise enough to cover the portion of my long torso that is generally left bare by my tank tops. Lets face it, day to day, who cares if I show belly??

There are very few brands that fit the high-waist description that also come in sizes long enough to cover my legs, and throw in boot-cut and you're down to pretty much three brands. Rockies (great show and goin out dancing jeans, freaking expensive) Cruel Girl (a newer brand, they have the high-waist options but you have to dig for them, and they're freaking expensive) or, the old stand by, Wranglers.

Wranglers aren't as cheap as what I'm used to buying for work jeans (eleven dollah Wal-Mart specials, here we come!) but they're not as expensive as rockies, they're sturdy, and they come in whatever inseam your little heart desires, pretty much.

Now, usually when I'm buying women's jeans I wear a 0 or a 1. Shaddap, all of you. My main problem is finding "tall" or "x-tall" lengths.

Wrangler has a neat twist on their women's sizing, though. They size the waist like what most people think of as "normal" and that's your first size number. Men, and women who have bought western style jeans for men will recognize 32/34 as a size, and it's not like the size 10/12 you see on the Wal-Mart shelves.

That's a 32 inch waist with a 34 inch inseam. When I buy mens wranglers I buy 29/36. 27's are just too much of a struggle to get over my hips (shaddap, I do so have hips) and since men's jeans have a little more room in the crotch area (waistband to crotch, dirty) I buy a couple inches longer inseam than I need if I'm buying women's, to allow for the different fit, and prevent ride-up incidents.

So anyway, my size in womens would be anywhere from a 0/34 to a 1/36. I can wear those, although the 1's don't fit as well.

Now, generally, I've bought mens Wranglers, because I can get the inseam/waist combinations better in mens. Apparently there are more beanpole men than women. But, as I was perusing the women's jeans today I happened to glance at the rack on the wall and saw the big sign: "Irregular Jeans: $18.99"

Hmmmm. Went over and looked and about wet myself. I was standing in front of the largest collection of 0 sized Wranglers I had ever seen in my life. I went ape. Bypassing the garish red, stain-magnet white and heat-stroke black, there was still quite a selection to choose from.

Lots of pairs of standard dark blue denim, seen one pair of Wranglers you've seem 'em all style, which is fine, but there were others, that looked like a little different fabric....

Two pairs of stretch denim 0-waist Wranglers. If you're a woman, and you ride horses, stretch denim is a miracle. It keeps you from getting bruises on your thighs where your jeans bunch and pinch when you mount, which is only avoidable otherwise by not bending your legs at all. Or, you know never wearing new jeans. I love stretch denim, as long as it's denim, and not denim-like material that's paper thin and gonna tear at the first opportunity.

I bought both, plus a standard pair. At that price, I couldn't pass them up, especially since the "irregular" portion is simply a strip of slightly discolored fabric (lighter) on the outside seam of one of them, and the same discoloration in the fabric on the inside of the knee on the other. The dark blue ones were just a minor coloration problem as well. Who cares?? I'm gonna be wearing them to the barn anyway, they're gonna have a lot worse than a light/dark patch of fabric on them by the time I'm done with them. Three pairs for under $60. Barely, but still under sixty bucks.

So I get home and talk to Mamaw and brag on how cheap I got three pairs of new jeans and she tells me, "Well, why don't you just go down and get you another three pair on me, since they've got em."

Don't you just love grandparents? Thank you Mamaw, for helping to cover my skinny butt with spiffy new jeans!

Anyway, I have six pairs of jeans that I can wear my tank tops with now. Four of them I need to take back to the Old Homestead and run through the washer and dryer about a bazillion times, before I climb on a horse with them, but that's a small price to pay for ventilation when classes start.

I always knew I wasn't normal, but I never quite thought I was "irregular"...

Pens...

Yesterday, LawDog put up a post about fountain pens, praising them highly.

I've never used a fountain pen in my life. The Farm Family always seems to have a few old ones floating around, but well, they're old, and dry. And ink for fountain pens is thin on the ground, locally. It's easy to find super non-fade ultimate indelible ink for marking cattle ear tags, but fountain pen ink? Not so much.

I do, however, seem to have a bit of a thing for pens. I like different pens, ultra fine point, fine, medium, colors and weird barrels and different inks... I've got nine different kinds of pens in the cup on my desk right now, and seventeen individual pens. I buy packs of pens whenever possible, because, well, I lose them. Or the gremlins take them, that seems to happen, too.

That's another reason that I don't own a fountain pen. I don't want to lose the danged expensive thing.

I've got Bic ultra fine point pens, because I needed the red one for revisions. I'm not normally a fan of ultra fine points because many of them have ink flow problems, but the packaging touted the smooth ink flow of these, and well, I needed something that I could use to make small notations in between double spaced type. My medium point pen was just too chunky, I was writing all the way across the page to fit it all in.

I've got Papermate medium point pens, because when I'm taking notes in class, I want that bold writing, it's easy to read at a glance.

I've got a funky pen that's covered in a squishy outside, that, now that I look at it, is another Papermate. I bought six of those one time when they were on clearance for some ridiculously low price, in varying off-beat colors, and I'm down to one, the pink one.

I've got el-cheapo Papermate plain old twenty-to-a-pack pens. You know, the plain plastic barrel, at least three in the pack won't write at all right off the bat, but you buy them anyway because they're cheap kind.

I've got gimme pens from a couple of different places. Gimme pens tend to break before they run out of ink, but they're free, and some of them write really well.

I've got Uniball Signo pens, which I bought yesterday to restock the backpack pen supply, because they were on sale. I've written with them a little, and they seem to be really nice.

Really, I've got a... thing.... for pens, I guess. I want to try them all, and the ones that I really like are usually the ones that I wind up losing because I cart them everywhere with me, tucked into the spiral rings of various small notebooks, clutched in my sweaty paws, tucked into the console in my car (which eats everything that's in there at least once a week, it seems like,) hung on the collar of my shirt or tucked behind my ear. I've even been known to shove a pen through the hair behind my pony-tail holder, so that I know where it is.

Whenever I'm at a store, and I've forgotten something on the list of things that I need to get (except for grocery runs,) I usually think to myself "well, it was probably pens."

So I buy a couple of pens, and I bring them home, and I take them out of the package, and I stuff them into the over-filled pen-cup.

And now that I know about the low-cost disposable fountain pens, I'm probably going to come up with a couple of them, too.

.....................

I wonder if they have Penaholics Anonymous meetings?

Gremlins!

In dryers all over the world there is a sub-species of the same creature that gnaws through important automotive belts, drains all the oil in a vehicle, and generally clabbers up any mechanical device.

It is.... the Sock Gremlin.

It's native habitat is unknown for sure, as no one has ever actually seen a sock gremlin, let alone followed one home. Theories vary from alternate dimensions, to mouse holes in laundry room walls, to dryer motors. Personally, I think they live in a symbiotic relationship with the boogey bears that our dogs chase and bark at, in between chasing and barking at the birds.

Anyway, these gremlins are notorious for stealing one sock of a pair, and leaving the poor laundry doer scratching their heads over a pile of "strays." Occasionally they have been known to deposit one mismatched sock, usually in a color and/or pattern that you know you don't own. Whether this is their idea of trade, or just an amusing joke for them, I don't know.

Why am I telling my fabulous readers all of this, when they're sure to have encountered the sock gremlins before? Well, I've discovered a new kind of gremlin, closely related to the sock gremlin.

The Lesser North American Underwear Gremlin. Maybe some of you have run across this particular type before, but I haven't.

I've named it the Lesser North American Underwear Gremlin, because it only seems to be interested in little boys' underwear. Particularly, Middle and Youngest Child's.

When CM moved in to his apartment, he somehow lost all but three pairs of their underwear, so he bought a package of six. Assuming there weren't many accidents, and that CM did laundry once a week (not such a stretch) they should have been able to make do for a while.

Vanishing underwear was at first attributed to Youngest Child. He doesn't always wake up in the middle of the night when his bladder is full. When he'd gone a couple of weeks without a late night accident, CM let him wear his underwear to bed instead of a pull-up.

Of course, when he did have an accident after that, he was embarrassed. So he would hide the soiled underwear and put on a pull-up, when he awoke to the... er... oops.

A small talk with Youngest Child quickly solved that problem, assuring him that it's not the end of the world if he has an accident, but that he needed to put the dirty underwear in the dirty clothes and not hide them.

Most of the time since then, he's put on a pull-up on his own before bed, anyway.

And yet... there are five pairs of underwear for the boys in the house. We looked where Youngest was hiding them before... no dice. Under beds, under dressers, in closets, behind the toilet, in the couch cushions. No sign of the missing tighty-whiteys.

Farmmom chimed in that they might be going down the potty ("undies go down the hoooole!") but CM swears that their toilet doesn't have the juice to suck a pair of underwear down.

Thus... The Lesser North American Underwear Gremlin.

I wonder if they prefer plain white undies or the Spidey-man kind? Or if its more about the scent of dirt and sticky things that hovers around little boys everywhere?

I shall pursue the investigation into the habits and behaviors of the Lesser North American Underwear Gremlin... any other data on the subject is of course, more than welcome.

I wonder if I could catch one for further study... sticky traps maybe?

Ahh Domesticity

I'm feeling much better today, folks, so you can stop worrying. My glands are still a little swollen but the sore throat is going away and my energy is returning. Thanks for all the advice (which amounted to "go to the doc"... HA! We don't need no steenking doctor,) and warm wishes!

Last night CM asked me if I wanted pork chops for dinner tonight. I gave him a look and said "I'm making pot roast tomorrow."

"Oh, really?" He said skeptically.

See, I've been promising him a good old down home pot roast for a while. I had the roast, and had him pick up onion and carrots last week. Then I got sick. For two days the thought of food, making it or eating it, made me want to blow chunks. So no pot roast.

The third day, I was just wiped. I couldn't summon the energy to peel and quarter the potatoes. How sad is that??

Ever since the day I mentioned it last week, CM has been bugging me about the pot roast. When I was sick, the first day he left it alone. The second day, when I was complaining about nothing sounding good, he was throwing out ideas, and gave me this ingenious look and said "Pot roast?"

The third day (yesterday) he told me I wasn't allowed to die, because I still "owed" him a pot roast.

Today... I put the pot roast in the crock pot with the potatoes, carrots, and an onion, and some salt and pepper. It's smelling really good right now. I love my crock pot, have I mentioned that? Granted, I don't love it so much that I don't still want one like Farmmom and Mamaw have, but I still love it. I have two, actually, a big one and a little one.

Given his... disbelieving... attitude about it last night, I pretty much expected him to ask me about it by now. "Did you remember the roast?" He hasn't, yet, but I noticed when I got in his fridge this morning to get the veggies that he thawed the pork chops. Distrustful darling man. Either he thought I would forget, or he's skeptical about my pot roast.

Just because I don't cook very often, he starts to assume that I can't cook. Which makes me want to prove him wrong. Unfortunately most of the things that I enjoy cooking the most (and that I'm damn good at cooking) are fairly expensive, and everyone is on a strict budget. That, and I can't do things like my fantastic whole baked chicken, because none of them will eat chicken on the bone. Philistines. Maybe once I'm back in classes and get my financial aid disbursement I can splurge once or twice, make trash pizza, or fondue.

Given the size of his appetite, and the appetites of the children, I'm not sure that there's going to be any leftovers. I threw in extra veggies just in case, and I might do the frozen corn on the cob that's in the freezer as well. When in doubt, make more sides.

I'm contemplating making mashed potatoes and gravy, but more than one kind of potatoes are usually reserved for holiday dinners, in my family. It might be a bit much. But maybe devilled eggs? Hmmm...

Sicky

For the last two days I've been down and out with some kind of rampant illness.

It really started Thursday night, with what I thought was my body's usual reaction to the new month on das patch. For several months I'll get a little queasy in the first week, as my body adjusts to the hormone rush, no big deal, it goes away eventually, I can deal.

I also had a tiny bit of a sore throat, on one side. not too surprising this time of year, plants are starting to cure out and for some reason I'm mildly allergic to dying things. Unless it's a pine tree, and then I'm seriously miserable around it.

Woke up Friday morning and I felt like hammered crap... body aches, queasy stomach, sore throat, swollen glands... just a touch of a fever.

The last two days have sucked. I've been weak as a kitten and twice as useless (I haven't even been cute!)

I'm feeling better so far today... more alert, no fever, body aches seem to be more a case of being horizontal for most of the last couple of days than illness related now.... but my throat still hurts, and my glands are still swollen.

It sucks... I can handle sitting up for more than ten minutes now... but I can't yawn, talk very loud, or swallow anything without wanting to cry.

We'll see how it goes today, I'm going to putter a little bit but not get really exited about doing too much, see if things start easing up. If not, I guess I'll have to go to the doctor and see what the heck is wrong with me.

Can't really afford it, but if this doesn't start resolving on it's own soon, I'm not gonna have much choice.