Alergies, Pills, And The Miracle That Is Neosporin

So, I know I haven't been giving quality posts lately. Many apologies, but every class I have is winding up to finals, trying to cram as much knowledge as possible into our brains, and I've been busy.

Monkey horse has also been acting a bit of an idiot lately, so I've been spending some extra time with him.

Not to mention the whole Mechanic Cowboy thing. Been finding time to spend there, here and there, and we've got an outing to the bar for dancing and adult beverages planned for Saturday night.

As for today, which is actually one of my slowest days... well. The tree outside my apartment window and about forty bazillion others are in full swing budding out, and about half of those forty bazillion are flowering trees. Pretty, but they wreak hell on my sinuses.

And since guaifenesin does precisely dick for me, I've been popping the psuedo ephedrine stuff, which has fun partying with the ibuprofin I'm still taking because, well, there's a big freaking hole in the roof of my mouth. On top of that I've been popping acidophilus to help heal the big hole in my mouth and all the smaller irritations. Don't laugh, I've taken it for years when I'd accidentally bite myself and wind up with a big ol' tender canker sore. It works.

Have I mentioned that I don't like pills? Because I don't. I've spent a lifetime avoiding taking pills where I could, but let me tell you, the crap that's going on in my mouth right now has me popping more pain pills than when I first got the teeth pulled. And add a daily dose of allergy medicine, and a couple of Sudafed throughout the day, and the acidophilus, and I'm popping a lot of pills.

*Grumble*

Oh, and have I ever mentioned what a miracle Neosporin + Pain is? I've always preferred it for cuts and scrapes because lets face it why have that sting when you don't have to? Well, to help along the healing process, and because it's a dentist approved method to help secure my teeth in my head, I've been using Neosporin. The kicker here is that since the geyser of blood erupted, I've been putting it on the area that contacts the roof of my mouth too... and I've been putting a little more in the gum area than strictly necessary, because as I talk, eat, drink, etc, it squishes up into the areas of irritation, over the top of the denture, and eases some of the ouchy.

Most of the ouchy is on that one spot in the roof of my mouth though... feels like the hole goes straight up into my sinuses and the back of my eyeball sometimes.

Meanwhile, I'm a little off in left field a lot of the time lately, for one reason or another at different times... so please bear with me for another week or two and then I should have some more brain power to put hands to keyboard and come up with something good for ya'll.

Especially since I'm thinking of going back to road work for the summer for the money. That'll give me time, and stories to tell.

Mystery Kitty

It appears that someone dumped a new cat at the barn. She's a real sweetie, will launch herself into a pet like its the best thing in the world... but we discovered her presence because she was stuck behind a stall wall.

Well, not stuck stuck, but she saw daylight through gaps and wanted out there instead of the end of the row of stalls. So we moved the horse, pulled the wall down, and pulled the cat out. Then put the wall back up and put the horse back.

Of course, before we started taking the wall down I had to reach through the gaps where some boards had been kicked loose and make sure she wasn't actually trapped, and that we weren't going to drop boards on her if we took the other ones out. But we got it done, and put back together.

Mystery Kitty is out, and eating and drinking... she's pretty skinny, but has a good healthy, shiny coat, so she hasn't been without food and water for very long. I think she's just naturally long and lanky, and missed a couple of meals, to get to where she's at now. She's also in heat. Thank goodness we got all the boys out there fixed.

We'll check on her tomorrow morning, and make sure she hasn't trapped herself again, but I think she felt a lot more secure after controlled introductions to the other cats. I wouldn't let them pick on her but as long as they were sniffing noses I left them alone.

It is interesting to note, however, that Smoke, one of the Pixel kittens that got me in so much trouble here at the apartment, is highly territorial. She really wanted to chase the rival female off, until "mommy" got stern with her.

By the time I left they were standing on either side of me, both getting petted, and completely ignoring each other.... they should be fine.

Ya know....

When you're overdue for an adjustment by about two weeks, your mouth can get pretty sore.

I never knew you could get a blood blister on your hard pallate though. Apparently the kind of pressure I've had can cause that kind of thing.

Yes, I'm serious. By the time I realized what it was (other than just a sore spot) it was the size of a nickel. I was cleaning the denture and checking for bone spurs a bit ago and noticed that that sore spot in the roof of my mouth felt a little swollen (hard to tell with the denture in, really.)

And sort of... squishy. WTF?

Stuck my thumb in there and sure as shit it wasn't just my tongue playing tricks on me, it was squishy....

And then it popped.

And I don't mean the covering tissue split and the offending blood poured out. No, that would be too simple.

I had to clean my mirror. I gagged on blood twice.

Tears ran down both legs. In spite of the... ahem... large doses of Ibuprofen I've been taking so that I could make it to the adjustment I'm getting tomorrow without, ya know, killing myself. Don't yell at me, medical friends...

Doc Ron is gonna yell at me for you. For not making a run up there before now, if nothing else.

But ya know, that sore spot? Not so sore anymore.

Scuse me, I need to go eat now, I'm starving.

Win and Awesome

That's what I'm made of. No, really.

See, we went to a consignment auction Saturday, and in spite of freezing cold and high winds, I stood outside and stoically kept on goal.

And do you have any idea how hard it is to be stoic while you're hanging on to a steel trailer for dear life with your feet flapping above the ground? Let alone bid??

Well, I got a couple of good back cinches, and a couple of good leather breastcollars, and some quirts and bats because they were really cheap and honestly you can always use a beating stick.

Oh, and I came home with a Frank Vega handmade custom trophy saddle, too. It's a barrel saddle, which I didn't really want, but its construction is such that I could tie on to a small to medium calf to doctor it if I had to, without breaking the horn completely off.

I'm about to go into some detail about this that some of you may not get. Those of you who ride western or have ridden western will get it, and most of the things that anyone doesn't get should be explained when I get the pictures up, so please bear with me till then... and I'll be happy to answer any questions, as usual.

It's all hand tooled, full basket weave on the skirts with oakleaf accents, and matching flank cinch billets. Rawhide edged cantle and gullet, in a silver threaded cherry pie roll. Minimum "flash" with three conchos on each side and the silver on the cantle and gullet. I can pull the conchos later and put strings under them to make them actually useful, so I'm happy enough about that.

This saddle is probably worth upwards of a grand, at the low end of the estimate, and I won the bid at under four hundred and fifty dollars.

Sure, it's got writing and engraving on the stirrup leathers but that doesn't make a bit of difference to how it rides. This thing... I swear until I threw it on Monkey to try it out yesterday, it had never actually been on a horse. Brand new, stirrups weren't even turned.

Which means I've spent most of the weekend smelling like neatsfoot oil, as I very carefully condition the leather. Farmmom would beat me if I tried to put a couple of heavy coats of oil on it and call it good...

The fenders and stirrup leathers are roughout, which I like for riding, but hate for the first good conditioning... cause you have to go in from the back side (the grain side) to oil it... and to get the whole thickness of the leather moisturized you have to do very light layers. Over and over again.

Too much oil at once will saturate a few layers of the leather fibers, and that will block the oil from going any deeper, which results in leather that's nice and supple and shiny... half way through. And dry and cracking on the other half.

I've got a few more days of regular light oilings before I'll have it to where I'm satisfied I can back off on it a bit. It's good leather but it was built in 2001 (so it says on the stirrup leathers) and I think it's sat around without much care since then... which is fine, if all you want is an object de art.

But if I'm riding that sucker it's gonna be conditioned, and being Farmmom's daughter (she's dabbled in leather work most of my life, only dabbling from lack of money to buy the materials... shes good) it's gonna be conditioned right.

I'll try to remember the camera when I go to the barn today, and show ya'll how good Monkey looks in leather. He's not real sure about the creaks, it's been a while since he's had leather on, but he'll get used to it again. Just like I'll get used to a fourteen inch seat instead of a sixteen.

It is just plumb amazing what a difference two inches makes.

Six Words...

AD tagged me with this one and I've been pondering it for a while now. It's tough to condense a memoir into six words. But, I finally figured out one that works, so here it is.


The Rules:

1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want.
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to the original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4. Tag at least five more blogs with links.
5. Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play…

Laugh, cry, scream, but always.... Ride.

I'm tagging... no one. If you want to play along, go right ahead, and leave a comment so I can come see what ya'll have to say.

Life is a Mystery...

And sometimes you just have to deal with it. Other times someone decides to explain the mystery.

Not in any great detail, of course, but still. Here's the simplified version, possibly with more to follow later:

Farmgirl has met Mechanic Cowboy.

Farmgirl and Mechanic Cowboy really seem to be hitting it off.

Mechanic Cowboy is a very fun, very sweet smartass, introduced to Farmgirl through the machinations of their mutual friend D. Ya'll remember D, don'tcha? Yeah, him. Playing Yenta.

And so far, seeming surprisingly good at it. Time will tell but Farmgirl is seriously considering keeping Mechanic Cowboy around, and not for his skill with a hydraulic motor.

For Mechanic Cowboy brings Farmgirl really good 1800 tequila first, and only then switches to the more traditional offerings:


We'll see what the future brings, but for now, Mechanic Cowboy is a serious contender for the much coveted (HA!) title of FarmBoyfriend.

Scuse me, I gotta go be girly and smell my flowers now...

Sometimes...

I think I have too much willpower for my own damned good.











Yep. That's it.