For as long as we have been bathing children my very cautious husband has been warning me to be sure that NO toys go down the drain. We have a strainer that goes in the drain that is supposed to be used with every draining and nothing had ever gone down the drain. I was pretty comfortable with it.

Until…

There were no small toys in the tub only big things that I didn’t need to worry about. 8 had a fit about getting his hair washed, I got him finished and in bed then came back to finish The Goblin Child. She wanted to finish with a shower. I pulled the plug without putting in the strainer and she frantically began to grab her toys away from the drain. I started to laugh and tell her they wouldn’t fit down the drain but she was so worried I let her protect them and helped her out a little.

Then it slipped passed her fingers. I saw it as it rushed towards the drain but not soon enough to stop it. The nipple from big baby’s bottle, carefully removed from it’s ring and of course unscrewed from the bottle. I dove, hand first, down the drain after it and caught it with the tip of my finger. There was still water in the tub and I could feel it tugging at my flimsy grasp on the nipple. With teeth clinched I hung on with all my might. The last of the water finally passed and still it was there almost within reach yet totally beyond my grasp.

To make a long story short I tried to get it but only pushed it farther. I finally accepted the inevitable and told my husband. He had been warning me of the disastrous consequences should this happened. I expected to be in trouble. He was very nice about it and when he came home from work that night he started in on the plumbing.

He tore everything apart, hoping to dig out our addition, only to find that the pipes were rusted through, paper thin and leaking already. I wont go as far as to say it was in any way a good thing that we washed toys down the drain but it is lucky that he found the leaky pipes before they burst altogether. Then he started looking for the nipple, it had somehow disappeared. He started asking me if I was positive it had gone down the drain? Had I seen it?

I got in there with him and we stuck things up the pipes from each direction and poked and prodded. Nothing was to be found with our explorations. We were dumbfounded. There was no way it had made it past the P trap and it certainly hadn’t come back up the drain, it had to be there. I gave up and proposed flushing it out with water. Saner heads prevailed and he gave it one last try. And got it! It did exist! The day was saved and we got new plastic pipes and a shiny and handy new shelf in the bathroom cabinet. And a new strainer right it the drain so this can never happen again.

Not like rain floods, more like basement floods. Nobody ever goes into the basement up at the big house anymore just the kids when they are playing down there. Fortunately on Friday someone did. A pipe to an outside hydrant was leaking into the basement. Not inches of water but a slowly saturating spread. Of course the kids still had stuff in their bedrooms down there, this time by kids I mean my husband and his sisters. Who ever moves out and actually takes everything with? My husbands former room was hit the worst and of course he had the most stuff still there. Unfortunately mostly books, his collectors edition hard covers and very old books from his grandparents and other family. He’s the only one I’ve ever met who is as obsessed with books as I am.

He and his sister set to work cleaning out the basement, vacuuming up as much water as they could, setting up fans, rolling up carpet and hauling stuff out. We hauled two very full pickup loads to the dump and rushed the books to the only place we had room to spread them out, the playhouse. As I loaded soaking old books on to the table I couldn’t help but glance through. There was a happy birthday 1911 inside the front cover of one and, I haven’t gotten to read it over thoroughly, but what looks like a tax paper listing all of his grandpas assets from the fifties or sixties if I remember correctly. These are treasures that need to be saved. And we are working on it, they are damaged for sure but salvageable, only one that was so completely soaked it doesn’t show any sign of drying.

That took a couple of days and the job isn’t done yet. But it was Easter! So we stopped to celebrate. The Easter bunny paid a visit and brought lots of candy. No potatoes got planted but food was eaten and eggs hidden. Not dyed, they experimented with fake eggs that unfortunately wouldn’t take color. I thought that was the whole point? Why make fake eggs to color that won’t color? But other than slowing the fun down a bit, and we just had other fun while that got worked out anyway, it didn’t bother anything at all. We just got out the markers.

We had dyed our soon to be deviled eggs the the night before anyway.

We were supposed to get a blizzard. Luckily it hasn’t happened, but that didn’t stop the weather from making everything and everyone crazy. Coyote went insane getting cattle in yesterday, I keep telling him he’s nearly twenty he should be calming down. And I’m always kind of glad he doesn’t listen.

This morning trying to get children ready to go feed I really thought I was going to have to kill them. Then I turned this on and we were saved.

It has an amazing affect. The Goblin Child isn’t as crazy about it but 8 will sit and stare. For whole minutes at a time, and he never sits still. Hopefully he will try to emulate them as he grows up. Mixed in with these cute little guys is Little Fred and, as always, Farmer Derek.

This is our kind of TV. Up at the in-laws house the other day they were watching real TV. I was as always shocked and horrified. It’s amazing what people will willingly sit and watch and it confirmed once again that I have no interest in getting cable (or Dish whatever)

The first I heard of it, the weather radio went of and they were talking fifteen inches of snow. Fortunately once I calmed down and listened to the whole thing that was for Goshen county WY. We weren’t officially under a blizzard warning like they were but we were supposed to get many inches and high winds. We are of course calving.

So Tuesday afternoon I went to get Coyote to go help bring the cows and calves in from the corn stalks and get them nicely tucked in behind sheltering windbreaks. As I led Coyote in I meet the father-in-law headed out with calf chains (they look like a choke chain for a dog, used to slip around a calves legs to help pull it when the mom is having trouble). He said a cow in the pen of old, crippled and fence jumping cattle was having trouble. There was one on the ground and she had legs sticking out. Apparently he was going to pull it out in the pen. I thought it sounded like an interesting plan and hurried to saddle Coyote.

As soon as I was on and down the lane a little, I could see over the fences that he was walking the cow down the lane towards the barn. I turned around and started working to clear a path into the barn to put her in the chute. He got her up to the last set of gates, on his fourwheeler by now, she stepped through the gate and stopped. He hooked the chains on the calf, gave a good pull and the calf came out and slipped to the ground. We all held our breath for that long heart breaking moment until at last, it took a tiny shuddering breath. It was alive!

We left it lay there trying to come fully to life with it’s concerned mama licking on it, once in awhile, and went to get the rest of the cows. Oh but wait! As we tried to clear a path to the barn I rode Coyote up to a closed gate preparing to reach down to open the latch when he leaped into the air spun about and took off the other direction. I shook my head at his antics and we tried again, it’s just a cow in there silly I told him. As we rode up to the gate again he did it again. This time I realized it was a cow and a rooster! That must be perfectly understandable then. He did it one more time before I got off and lead him through the gate. Had I known the ride this was foretelling I may have given up then and taken a fourwheeler.

The first cows came easily enough, the like to trick you that way into thinking it’s going to be an easy job. In the next bunch one shook her head at him and he lost it. Lost it worse maybe? Not sure he had been there to start with, must have been the coming weather change. He spent the ride leaping and spinning, prancing and trying to bolt. I know we were a little help, although the father-in-law likes to spend most of his time coming over to move the cow that’s going in front of me. I’m sure he just wants to be helpful? Maybe he sees the way Coyote is acting and thinks he needs to save me? We don’t need saving, this is how we roll. I don’t know what’s up with that but I do know that as rotten as Coyote is I’ll be sad if he ever realizes he’s getting up there, he’s going to be twenty next year when did that happen? Hopefully he never starts to act his age. He can be a little difficult. Some of those moves got quite painful to ride, by the time we were done I could barely move, it felt like I had been hiking down Pikes Peak, full body sore. He makes me feel like I can actually ride though, instead of perch up there and try not to fall off like I really do. And then I think he’ll make a kids horse some day? I must be crazy.

We got them all tucked away nicely and fed up against the windbreak this morning. We were ready. But the bad snow never started. It rained, that cold windy awful rain that makes everything miserable. There are going to be lots of sick calves after this, but luckily no blizzard.

The horses are cold, only Princess Onna looked like she was shivering any so she got the blanket. The barn has the cow and twins in it, I think they need it worse. I gave the horses some more feed up against the windbreak they weren’t using and it felt pretty warm to me standing there. I’ll go check again latter and maybe switch the blanket around to a different horse.

Rusty, recent recipient of my current obsession with clicker training, came when I called, while the others, seeing me trying to lead them to the windbreak, ran off and I was able to lead him, with no halter or anything useful like that, away from feed, past big mean Coyote and to another pile of feed. I am so loving clicker training. And rather fond of Rusty.

In case you ever wondered what it was like to ride a crazed, zippy, bouncy Coyote. Not doing anything overly interesting, I can stay on through his high school moves, airs above the ground and such, but I like my phone and don’t think I should try to stay on and hold a phone.  And maybe part of the reason we were only a little help.

Not as in a milk cow but a calf named Milk Cow.

An old cow had a set of twins. It’s a rare cow that will keep track of both and have enough milk for them both, this was not one of those rare cows. I had been watching the calf for a couple of days. She wandered around the corral bawling for her mama and trying to nurse all the other cows. It wasn’t working very well.

Finally this morning, after days of being bugged about it, the Father-in-Law called and said she was laying outside the fence again, still no mom, did we still want her? I did! We had talked about getting The Goblin Child a bottle calf, me enthusiastically, her father with great doubt and trepidation. Yes, I realized that I would end up being the one to feed it. But I would also keep it, or sell it, in the end, so fairs fair.

So we went and picked her up. She rode to the barn in the back of the pickup, held by my long suffering husband who never wants anything to do with cattle and still gets stuck helping with these things constantly. On the ride home we asked The Goblin Child what she wanted to name it? After vetoing Onna, because we can only have so many of those, she decided on Milk Cow. We thought it was quite fitting.

In the barn she refused her bottle of milk at first, despite being hungry for days. 8 was terrified of her bawling and The Goblin Child didn’t want to get near her. We went inside, regrouped and tried again later. These things take a while to figure out. Next try she was starving. Wolfed the whole bottle down and wanted more.

My mom and I have been having long involved discussions about any problems encountered while riding being the riders fault. I sent her a great article about how you are riding the horse you created not the one you bought or had trained, she said some people wouldn’t recognize themselves in it. Then she started to worry that maybe she should be recognizing herself. She and Smoke were having some problems at the moment, but surely they weren’t her fault.

I know that Coyote is perfect in every way, so of course I am riding the horse I made. Except for the times he looses his mind, like when that cow tried to eat him but that wasn’t my fault!

But if we were going to stand by our firm beliefs we had to think about this a little deeper, look for causes, even if we didn’t like them. So how was I causing Coyotes wild mood swings? I wasn’t communicating fear to him, I hadn’t been scared of the bony old cow that he made mad in the first place by biting on the butt. But, I do know of his fears and quirks. I fully believe that his double swirls signify a double personality, calm and completely trust worthy and crazed insane pony all mixed into the same pony all at the same time.

So while I decline to accept responsibility for him being insane we decided that I must take responsibility for putting a horse I know to be crazed in a position that exacerbates his insanity. Perfect, that puzzle solved.

Then I got an email from my mom last night it was the best one ever! She had, well a lot of stuff, I’ll let her tell you….

well, today I decided to own my belief that ‘its always the riders fault’. I thought harder about it and remembered that

for a year or more I have been blaming bad behavior on maybe-lame. Letting my horse get away with a little bit more

It’s been a bed winter. I often imagine that this is what the plague years were like. Or the influenza outbreaks or measles or any of the sicknesses that used to wipe out so many people before we were blessed with modern medicine. I hear people say that we don’t need it, their grandpa/ great aunt Charlotte/ some unknown person way back when lived to one hundred and they didn’t need any of this new fangled medicine. Or vaccines for that matter.

That’s great but what about everybody else? The ones who died by the thousands because there was no penicillin? No C Sections? My sister-in-law and I would not be here. To simple things like not knowing how much aspirin to take, leading to numerous deaths among those it was supposed to help during the 1918 flu epidemic. But I digress.

Everybody is sick. The two children are in bed coughing there poor little hearts out. Doctor says probably RSV, something the insurance company spent a fortune on, can’t remember for sure but at least a thousand a shot once a month, protecting The Goblin Child from as a baby. Hopefully it really is mostly harmless for otherwise healthy children. Both are on medication, might as well get it over with at the same time at least. Both for Strep Throat. Maybe they wont reinfect each other. The Goblin Child has tossed hers right back up once, tossed pain meds once and tonight it was her super for no apparent reason. Right on my feet, what fun. She has been running a pretty good fever for days now. Tonight she was actually feeling batter and of a normal temperature.

Yesterday I begged my hard working husband to come home and rescue me. A nasty bug hit me, and I think 8 earlier in the day. I collapsed on the couch letting him take over child care duties. Tonight it was his turn to be sick.

But I can hardly complain when everyone else seems to have it so much worse. My brothers children have been sick all winter it seems like, up all night last night throwing up. Again. Glad we haven’t gotten to do that. My mom has been trying to die for the last week. She sounds awful, the doctor says bronchitis. The flu has been going around and Cade got it bad, shared it with his mom. Ava somehow managed to avoid it. Yay!

A friend had a child go into Febrile convulsions. Talk about terrifying. She was ok, so was the child. Her new baby had a lung infection early on in the year, nothing is worse than a sick newborn. That whole family has been sick with one thing right after another all winter, now ear infections and tubes.

Another has had to deal with ear infections, sore throats, cough, sinus infections, throw up, diarrhea and dog poop. That is more bodily fluids on the carpet of one house than anyone should ever have to clean. Life is just not fair sometimes.

There is a family at school who had home schooled until this year. All four of their children are home sick, with one in the hospital. It’s like the natives being introduced to European diseases all over again and the only compelling argument in favor of public schooling I’ve heard. Get them exposed from a young age. In our little local school of two hundred children there has been around twenty kids and a handful of teachers home sick almost every day it seems.

Spring is coming, the weather is beautiful, surely something has to put an end to this season of sickness. Until then I will spend my time being grateful to modern medicine and keep dispensing the pain killers.

I often get the impression that my brother and my father for sure can’t figure out how we can stand to live out here in the sticks where there is nothing to do.

We have ways of keeping oueselves busy. They may not involve movies, museums and library’s, not that we don’t have those but they’re so far away and we are so busy doing other things, who has time?

Not late really, it just felt like it after meaning to get it done for weeks and not accomplishing anything. Did it on Sunday, the 28th. Important to keep records straight.

I planted Petunias! And there will be more to come later. I had Vining, wild, and seeds from our volunteer plants to plant. I ordered some Espresso Frappe Rose Hybrid seeds from Burpee taking advantage of their free shipping over the weekend.

And from Terroir Seeds more good old fashioned, sweet smelling, heirloom seeds. This time I chose the Dwarf petunia and Shenandoah to shake things up a little. The two types I got last time, a couple years ago, are still giving us plentiful volunteers and lots of seeds left in the packets still. This is a much smaller company than Burpee, which I like a lot and they are much cheaper, a hundred seeds for three dollars as opposed to fifteen seeds for five. Plus they come back from seed. I would never have to buy another petunia if I didn’t just want to. Unfortunately their website wouldn’t let me borrow any pictures, so follow the link (here again in case you missed it) and check out those beauties.

My gardener husband planted the first run of tomatoes and peppers. These will go in the greenhouse. Next planting he will do the ones for the regular outside garden. I don’t know which verities he planted but we are waiting impatiently for them to sprout. The few days always seems to take so long.

It’s been a busy few days. On top of 8 not sleeping, at all ( Hey 8, your sister started sleeping through the night just before she turned one, we really wouldn’t mind if you wanted to follow her example. And when she was up at night it was once or twice, not hourly, all night.)

Thursday we shipped the calves to the sale barn, the sales are on Friday and the father-in-law didn’t think there would be time to get them all there Friday morning before the sale. It took all day, there wouldn’t have been time. I didn’t do anything but watch in the morning, soaking up the sunshine. Wait. Thinking about it we helped feed then went to help get them in, waited at the gate to count, it was still really cold and 8 had a messy diaper. We went home. Then, much later, I went to watch in the warm sun.

After the first loads my hard working husband went into town to his other job and the kids and I played outside.

The afternoon loads were more exciting. It could have been that they  had me to help instead of my cow whisperer husband or it could have been that the crazy’s always hang back till last and there was lots of last minute sorting. I was bringing calves up the lane when they started sorting in the front pen. They had decided to pull any heifers that had been ridden. They didn’t sort well. Then a gate got pushed open, they needed sorted again.

There were a few more heifers with the hair gone off their tail heads that he wanted to pull (that’s how you can tell if they’ve been cycling, the other cattle ride them, it rubs the hair off. They are teenagers after all), some trouble loading, I should have been helping I suppose instead of googling info on cow whorls,  and at the very end the bulls. There were three in there. One that sorted off nice and easy in the very beginning and two who were in the very last sort. One pulled off easy enough leaving the crazy’s, the very last three head. One that wanted out, one that has my vote for being the one that could jump like a deer and lead the great escape escapade a few weeks ago. She was running back and forth crashing into the fences until her nose was gushing blood, nobody was stepping foot into the pen to sort her off because the last bull was in there and he wanted to eat us. He was just a little guy, a bull only because a band broke after he was banded this spring, but he was on the fight. His head was up and he was charging everyone he looked at. By pure chance, after many laps, he and crazy ran opposite directions and they got them separated, loaded and on the road.

Not the bulls, they stayed home. I went back to check the children and brought The Goblin Child with me to put the little bulls out in the pen with the big bulls and the saved heifers out in a pen of their own. Finally that day, that exhausting part of it was over.

Saturday was gorgeous, warm and calm with lots of sunshine. I started the day, without water actually. My multi talented husband ran out first thing in the morning to get the pump for the well going. Then after feeding kids, dressing kids and so on I started the morning by saddling Coyote. Clint the neighbor who does seem to live here sometimes was back again, with his saddle this time to ride Onna, we’ll leave the princess part out for him, and we went to sort cows.

My cow hating husband held the gate and we started looking for the ear tags of the cattle who had been jumping fences all summer, skinny lame cows and anything else that had to go. We saw lots of cows springing and bagging up, calving is going to start soon. Coyote and Onna were hot and raring to go. I was very glad I had put on my big cow working bit and Clint with a snaffle was getting a workout. Onna turned from black to white with lather. She loves chasing cattle as much as Coyote does and would not slow down. He had no trouble getting her to gait today, she zipped the whole time. She doesn’t know how to work properly, her turns are wide and slow but executed with great enthusiasm. She did very well and he had nothing but good to say about her.

Coyote was a cow eating fool today. He sat down and worked those cows properly, I don’t know that he would have held up to a calf at a real cutting but up against an old cow he was matching step for step. Nose to nose he leaped back and forth holding those old girls. Then he started plodding back after the next cow a little slower every time. I remembered that he is nearly twenty, out of shape and still, rightfully so, wearing his winter coat on a hot day. The father-in-law was out there on his fourwheeler by then so we quit helping sort and stood by the gate to help when they got there. He was still wanting to work them as they came but after he was perfectly willing to stand quietly and so was I. Poor guy.

Of course I can’t get pictures during the exciting stuff, I do have work to do. Ruins all the fun. But taking it easy on Coyote did allow a little time for picture taking. Course I had to stop and get back to work just as it got interesting.