It's 12 minutes past midnight

So that makes it officially Christmas.  I have my daughter, youngest sister and grandson all together this holiday which makes it really nice.  Things have been very hectic with travelling, visiting and the general holiday frenzy but we made it.  The last gifts have just been placed under the tree and everyone is now nestled all snug in their beds with visions of who knows what dancing in their heads. Of course the evening didn't go exactly as planned and was not as idyllic as we would have liked.  It ended up including a spanking for the grandson who decided to take off all his clothes and run around the house terrorizing the dog and tearing up the decorations. When told to stop and get dressed he responded "No Way!" and proceeded to hit his mother. This resulted in the drinking of gingerbread martinis on the grownups part. Speaking of gingerbread, my daughter and sister decided to make a gingerbread house from a kit today with my 3 year old grandson "helping".  At one point my daughter  had icing all over her hands and my sister was trying to hold the sides of the thing together so the house wouldn't all fall down. Meanwhile my grandson was happily eating all the candy decorations that came with the kit and licking the icing from the icing bag while everyone else was busy trying to get the house to stay together. I decided that was a good time to leave and go to the store for something I needed at, of course, the last minute.  When I came back the house was pretty much done and actually does look better than the photo above albeit minus most of the candy. 

So now all is calm, all is bright and quiet and I am enjoying this time along with a nice buzz from the martinis.  Ahh, Santa's drunken elves! I don't remember them in the Night Before Christmas!

Hope your holiday is great! Or at least uneventful! Cheers!

I am turning into a Golden Girl

Of course it is still snowing here.  The weather hasn't changed since last week-cloudy each day with snow showers/flurries/snow accumulation.  brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

It seems that I am entering the phase in life where I am soon to be confined to a nursing home as I am managing to spill everything on myself.  I have already had on three tops today.  My three year old grandson is less messy than I am.  I managed to get wood ash from the fire on my new cream colored sweater and since I was already in the basement I took it off to soak it in the laundry tub.  I put on a clean, white t-shirt and proceeded to bake chocolate cookies and -you guessed it-managed to get chocolate on it.  Crap!  Off it came and down to the laundry tub to join the sweater. I then put on an oxford shirt as I was done baking and now determined that I could manage to make it through the rest of the day stain free. Unfortunately I was cleaning up the kitchen and moved a bottle of cough syrup that someone had not tightened the top on (those child-proof lids do sometimes annoy) and the top fell off and I managed to dribble red cough syrup down the front of my shirt. Oh Man!  Really?!?!

I wish I could chalk this up to one of "those days" and perhaps it is -a bit. But I have noticed that lately I have become best friends with Oxyclean, Shout, color safe bleach and 20 mule team Borax. I can't seem to eat anything, cook anything, or basically touch anything that doesn't wind up on me somehow. I feel like I am living in a commercial for laundry products and becoming somewhat of an expert on how to remove various stains from clothing.

I'm sure my kids think I have lost it and should start wearing a bib and being spoon fed (at the nursing home).
Some days I think the home would be nice. I could take long naps, watch tv, shuffle around in my bathrobe and not have to shovel snow, get eggs, check the cows or feed the fire.  I will let you know where they send me. Maybe you want to come along?

Mooory Christmas!

Just about two weeks til Christmas.  There is snow all over the farm, the tree is up and decorated and the kitchen has been producing wonderful scents of homemade goodies. Sounds idyllic doesn't it? Well, life on a farm just looks that way.  Now that it is cold there seems to be more work to do. 
The cows seem to eat more now that it is colder and they let me know when they need something by moooing - loudly!  I know when I hear that noise that I will need to trudge out to the barn to see what they need. They used to be afraid of me but now they are friendly. Too friendly!  I didn't know cows would lick you like dogs do but they do only but they are much bigger and have really large, rough tongues. Trudging out to the barn in the snow is not much fun. The boots I bought at Tractor Supply seemed like a good idea this past fall but I am finding that the deep treads on the bottoms tend to get clogged with snow and other matter (we won't mention what) and I gather this stuff up until I am walking around with a large, heavy mass under each foot which I then need to knock off to get into the house. I can never get it all off so I end up with a yucky mess that melts all over and have to clean the floor. Besides having feet that look like I am wearing snow shoes made of ice, snow and crap, I come back to the house with wet spots all over from cows licking me. Ewwwww.
We have to be sure to gather the eggs on a regular basis each day so that they don't freeze.  The cows and chickens need their water checked as it is freezing and needs to be kept fresh so they have water to drink.    The wood burner is going full time and eating wood like candy. I have to shovel the snow off the steps and walks and put down some salt.  Have I said how much I HATE snow! I think I have.

Well, anyone who would like to visit a working farm and enjoy the life is welcome to come!  There's a snow shovel, feed pail, and muck rake just waiting for you!

sNOw!

It started snowing on Saturday and hasn't stopped. It will never stop. I am doomed to live in snow. Ugh.

As I think I have mentioned, I HATE snow~! The weather forecast is calling for snow everyday for the foreseeable future. As tender of the home fires I am trudging up and down the stairs to put wood in the furnace every hour or so now that it is so cold. Good news is I can give up the gym membership as I have my very own version of a stairclimber.  I thought I was living in the 1940's house, but I was sadly mistaken. I am living in the Dr. Zhivago house.  I can't decide if this is the one that was covered with ice and snow and was so pretty to look at (ha ha--easy to look at from the comfort of your couch!) or the one where he has returned to his home to find the stove out and scolds his wife for not keeping the fire going.  Her father tells him that she lets it go out everyday while he is at work as they do not have enough fire wood.  I can relate.  The stack in the basement grows smaller each day and I am starting to eye the furniture.  I am trying to watch movies with the word "beach" in the title hoping I can pretend I am somewhere warm.  I listen to Jimmy Buffet and dream of islands (any old one will do) and boat drinks with little umbrellas. I can be very delusional when necessary! I would feel much better if Zhivago himself were here to keep me warm and write poetry for me.  Sigh.

EEEEEEEEKKKK!!!!!!!

I was quietly performing my morning ablutions at the bathroom sink the other day when I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of something running across the hallway floor. What? What was that? I stepped out of the bathroom, went to investigate and found a mouse hiding under a table. EEEEKKKK!!!  I managed to scream loud enough that any of you reading this must have heard me and I scared it back into running in the hall. I stood there frozen in terror as I watched a small, grey mouse run under the oven.  Oh crap. I had been warned to expect their intrusion but still I had hoped I could get through the next few months without  having to encounter one.  I HATE mice (and their larger cousins rats of course).  Ugh. I knew that, left uncaught, it would climb onto the counters, nibble on various snacks and bread stored there and create all kinds of havoc particularly that of me having to scream again when I next encountered it which I was sure would happen.  I also have a strict policy of not sleeping in a house that has vermin.  I just know that while I am sleeping they will crawl on me and I will awaken to feeling little mice feet walking on me. EEEEEEKKKK!!!!!
I remembered seeing some mouse traps in the house and went to get them.  This was war and I planned to be fully armed.  These traps were the old fashioned kind with a spring loaded snapping bar that kills the mouse when it tries to eat the food in the trap.  I prefer the new kind that are a box type where you can catch and kill the mouse without ever having to look at it.  (as previously mentioned there are enough dead things around here already)  It took me several tries and pinched fingers but I managed to bait the trap with peanut butter and hook the spring bar open.  I removed the drawer from the bottom of the stove, pushed the set trap to the back of the oven, replaced the drawer and set about my daily chores hoping I would not hear the loud SNAP of the trap being sprung.  I want to catch the mouse and  want it to be killed but I don't want to hear the sound. ewwwwww. 
Later that evening I decided to check the trap as I wanted to know whether I would be sleeping that night or not.  My daughter was in the kitchen and had heard about the "mouse incident" earlier that day. She is worse about mice than I am. When she saw me start to remove the drawer to the stove she ran from the kitchen and wouldn't come back until I had it restored back to its condition pre-mouse.  Since I had not heard the snap of the trap I was not sure I had caught anything, but upon removal of the drawer saw one grey mouse caught in the trap. At least it was truly dead. I have seen these traps manage to just catch enough of the mouse to allow it to live and struggle. EWWWWW!!!  I do not like to see these things.  I gathered up the rubber gloves (which I am finding that I can't live without here) and a wire hanger - always be sure you have some wire hangers on hand no matter what you may have heard in "Mommie Dearest". 
I DO NOT clean out traps.  I steeled myself and bent the hanger into a long handled hook, donned the rubber gloves, grabbed a trash bag and proceeded to reach under the stove.  I hooked the trap with the hanger and dropped everything into a trash bag.  After securing the trash bag and placing it into the trash can I replaced the drawer and told my daughter she could come back into the room.  Tomorrow I will go to the store and get the new boxy mouse traps so I don't have to see dead mice any more.

Planes, trains and automobiles?

On my recent travels my car broke down in a small town in North Carolina. I stopped in this little town to get some lunch, parked the car and when I came back it wouldn't start.  Of course it was pouring down rain and I didn't know anyone in this town or what to do about the car.  I decided to stop in one of the little stores that inhabited the strip alongside where my car was parked to inquire as to where they suggested I call about my car.  I was told to take it to a local place that everyone swore by.

I called for roadside assistance and a tow truck showed up within the 45 minutes promised. Unfortunately I was parallel parked and there was a car behind me and one in front.  I expected the tow truck driver to be very peeved with the situation and I tried running from store to store in an attempt to locate the owners of the cars to get them to move.  I have to say that the people there couldn't have been nicer.  When I explained that I was only passing through town and was going to be stuck there several of the shopkeepers offered to help. One offered to take me home with them to stay the night. Another gave me a free bagel.  The guy who owned the little wine and gourmet store gave me his card with both cell and home numbers and made me promise I would call him for "anything at all". And he really meant it. It seemed as if the Christmas spirit had really taken hold of the town folk. I was amazed and really felt blessed. The tow truck driver stayed around until the cars were moved and didn't even charge me anything extra. I was starting to feel like I landed in some strange Brigadoon-like place where everyone was nice until they all vanished the following day.

Once the car was towed and the guys at the shop had looked at it, they told me it might take a few days to repair it.  Somehow I expected this to be the case and began to calculate the cost of staying in town along with the cost of the repairs which all started to add up to quite a lot.  As much as it would have been nice to hang around the lovely little town, I really wanted to get back home.  I decided to rent a car and drive back thinking I could always get back to pick up the car later.  I started calling car rental companies and was turned down by several who either had no cars at that time or did not rent one-way.  I began to get desperate and started thumbing through the yellow pages for an option to get home.  It was too late to get a plane out of town.  The local rental companies were beginning to close as it was nearing five o'clock.  I decided to try U-Haul because I knew they rented one way.  I figured I could drive home in a truck if needed. Unfortunately they had nothing small to rent and I really didn't want to drive a big honking truck all the way back (7+ hours).  I was really beginning to despair when I got a call back from one of the car rental companies that had a car if I could get to the airport to pick it up.  Hurrah! I called a cab and we took off in the pouring rain for the airport. On the way to the airport the cabbie told me he had to stop for gas and asked if I minded. I told I would mind more if we ran out of gas along the way.  He pulled off the highway into a gas station, got out and then came back and got in the cab without getting gas. I began to wonder what was going on and asked whether there was a problem. He explained that he couldn't use his credit card at that gas station. I asked if it was a cash only station and he said "No, they just don't take my brand of credit card here".  OK, I know this is a small place, but what kind of credit card could he have that wasn't accepted at most gas stations?  Fearing that I would be stranded once again I offered to pay for the gas if he would only get me to the airport before the car rental place closed.  He got the gas and we took off again.

I made it to the car rental place in time to get the car and then had to drive back to the car repair facility to retrieve my suitcases from my car.  I hadn't wanted to drag them in the rain to the airport so had to go back and get them.  As it was still raining I managed to get soaking wet during the transfer of items from one car to the next. Cold rain had plastered my hair to my head and was running down my back managing to soak my clothes from the inside out as well as the outside in. As soon as I finished getting everything into the rental I took off on the highway for the very long ride home. 

I had to drive through the mountains in either pouring rain or dense fog.  At one point I was only able to follow the taillights of the car in front of me to know where to go.  I kept praying that the rain would stop.  Well, you know that old saying about being careful what you wished for?  It stopped raining. It turned into snow. The roads got slippery and the going was slow.  I really began to once again think I would not make it home.  A seven hour trip turned into a nine and one half hour trip and at 4:30 AM I pulled into the driveway at the house.  Whew!  I don't think I was ever so glad to climb into bed!

Unfortunately, the saga continued as the next evening I had to return the rental car to the local airport and it was still snowing.  Took extra time to get to the airport and on the way back we had to take a detour as there was a jack knifed tractor trailer in the road.  We managed to turn a 45 minute return trip into 3 hours.

Sometimes when you hit the road, it hits you back. Big time.  Think I'll stay home for a bit.