The Mouse Hunt

I'm gonna start calling Hoss "The Great Mouse Hunter".

Saturday night Hoss stayed with me. I had told him that I had seen a mouse the night before in the living room and we needed to set some traps. He was all over that! We got that done and he was watching some cartoons while I was ironing my clothes for worship Sunday morning. All of a sudden he said "I saw a mouse!" Then the big hunt was on. I told him it might've been my shadow that was moving around. He was sure it was a mouse. Well, he was right. A minute or two later the little beggar ran from under my trunk/coffee table back to under the chair from whence he came. Not long after that he shot across the living room floor under the tv table and went down along the wall missing a couple traps along the way. At this point Hoss is looking for the rodent and I'm up on the edge of the recliner. What is it about these little mooches that puts me in a chair? Why can I kill a poinsonous snake and not think twice, but a mouse freaks me out? These are questions I'll ask my therapist, well, I don't have a therapist, but I'm sure someday I'm sure I'll be in need of one.

So, anyway, the little turkey ran into the kitchen, in front of the fridge, and down the side of the wall. I soon went and moved one of the missed traps in the living room to the spot next to the fridge. Everything calmed down after that.

Hoss checked the traps a couple more times before we went to bed. Sometime during the night I heard a snap. I didn't go check, but I heard it. Hoss woke up at 7:30 Sunday morning saying he needed to check the traps. I told him to get the flash light. We started back tracking over all the traps. He missed the one by the front door, but I could see it was turned over. I told him he better come back here with the light. When he saw it he said, "That must've been the nocturnal mouse!"

I'm fairly certain he'll have his own wildlife show someday!!! And I can't wait til he goes to school today and tells his teacher that his Aunt Red had a mouse in her house and we caught it with a trap and there was blood on the floor. Oh well, hopefully it won't make the paper!!

This has been one of those weeks that I don't want to repeat. EVER!

Let's start with Sunday night. Sis #4 calls our Mom and says Little Joe is sick. He's been puking since Saturday and woke up that morning with a bad headache. Nurse Mom told them a few things to do and didn't hear anything else. Monday morning Mom called me and said they were taking Little Joe to the doc because he wasn't better. Doc took one look at him and said he needed to go to the hospital. They took him straight to a room and started running tests and got an iv started to get him some fluids since he'd been puking for more than 24 hours. They recently moved back to Sis#4's husband's family's place which is 3 hours from here. So, since we've got horses to feed, we all can't go at once. Mom and Dad headed that way and I stayed home to do chores. Plus I had an extra job taking care of a friends place while she was out of town.

They were keeping me posted via cell phone. I then started making calls to the other siblings and various other family members. They ran tests for Lyme disease, tick fever, the Swine Flu, but since they are at a small hospital it was taking a while to get the results back. I'm talking 3-4 days! They also thought he might have Viral Meningitis. I'm sure that's not spelled right. Which, according to Nurse Mom, is the better of the meningitis's to have. Little Joe wasn't getting any worse by evening time. He had a popsicle and mashed potatoes for supper and kept them down. That was progress! By Tuesday morning he was a new kid. He was ready to get out of there. Mom called me while I was feeding that morning and put Little Joe on the phone. He said he was having mashed taters for breakfast. Hey, whatever the sick kid wants!!!

They released him that night and he's been good ever since. His checkup Thursday was good too. The doc said he thought it was a stomach bug. You know how some kids are pukers? His mom is a puker. Every time she'd get hurt when she was a kid you could bet she'd lose her lunch. Apparantly the apple doesn't fall far from the tree!

I went to Sis#2's Wed. and Thurs. to help with the kids while they went to a dr. appointment. There's a whole lot more to that story, but I'm tired of writing. Let's just say her dr. visit turned out good, and I lost a lot of sleep!!!!!

Clerical errrors

So, I'm not a perfect typist. Or and English teacher. Or Spelling Bee Queen of my county.

I've been told my sister #2 that I spelled kindergarten wrong. She said that when she read the post about her kid going to school she thought she should've sent some gardening tools with him. Some people are so picky!

Then there's my sad story about our UPS driver a while back. It was brought to my attention by a very good friend of mine that I wrote he had a wreck with a dump drunk. That could be some kind of new slang for a dump truck driver don't you think?

I think really all because I'm mentally, physically, emotionally, anything else anyone can come up with, EXHAUSTED!!!

I hope that anything in this post is even remotely spelled right today. I only got a couple hours sleep last night. I'm not sure why I couldn't sleep. There's three things that could've been contributing factors.
1. I took about a 30 minute nap yesterday afternoon.
2. Hoss was staying with me and he kinda snores.
3. I was hot.
4. I drank too much DP yesterday.

Well, that's four. I forgot about the hot part til right then. For some reason I just couldn't get comfortable. Finally, at about 5am I fell to sleep on the couch and made it til the alarm went off at 7:30.

I really just want to whine. I'm ready for summer to be over. It's not my favorite time of the year!!!

School Starts

I have to say that I'm glad I'm not a parent. I don't think I could take it when big things happen, much less all the little things!

Buzz started school yesterday. Little Joe started today. Hoss and Rowdy start back next week. I've gotten reports from my sisters about the whole thing. I'm excited for them to learn new things and grow. However, it's the start of them really seeing the outside world and that scares the hooey out of me! So far they've all been with family members pretty much all the time. Now they aren't. I know anything can happen at anytime anywhere. Just because they are with family doesn't mean they are safe from something bad happening.

Buzz already has another girlfriend, although he doesn't know her name. How can a kindergardner have so many girlfriends? He had a grand time and I hope that continues! His little brother Woody wasn't so sure about big brother being gone though. He kept crying and saying he wanted to be with Buzz. Finally, after they were home a while and all this crying made his mother start crying, his dad found a Transformers show on tv. That pretty much took care of all the crying! I don't know if it helped my sister any, but at least Woody felt better.

Little Joe started pre-K today. His 5th birthday was day before yesterday. This will be a huge adjustment for him since he's not really been around other kids too much. He's not been that excited when I've asked him about starting school. I called him on his birthday and asked when school was starting. He said he didn't know. Maybe he'll decide he likes it a little better when he gets use to it. Actually, I think it will be a bigger change for his dad who's pretty much been with him the most. Last night he was in the "Stick horse barrel race" at the rodeo in their town. Apparantly, he was all wound up and blew the pattern and was a whopping 16 seconds off of first. Since his parents aren't hoping he'll be a barrel racer when he grows up I don't think they minded his mess up!!!

We'll see how Hoss and Rowdy do next week. Since this is their second year I think they're ready to go!

And now, onto a very important issue in my world. George Strait's new cd came out Tuesday!!!!
Here's my review:

IT'S GREAT!!!!

The photos on the cover aren't typical George, but that doesn't mean they aren't good.

I haven't decided which is my favorite yet, but I'm really liking "Where Have I Been All My Life". It's just what I'm going through now since I'm fixin to turn 40. Yikes!!!

The last song is all in Spanish. I've always loved the Spanish language even though I didn't pass my semester in high school with flying colors! Mostly I think it's the Spanish guitar that gets me. Anybody remember the soundtrack to "All the Pretty Horses?" Wow!

Ok, enough about Jorge, I mean George!

The Best Beverage Ever!!!

All who knows me knows I'm a Dr. Pepper fan. Fan might even be the wrong word! Addicted fan might be more appropriate. The best is the old school Dublin DP with pure cane sugar instead of that very bad for us high fructose corn syrup. Even though those ads put out by the corn growers say "everything in moderation" I'm not sure I believe that. Anyway, mostly one can only get the good Dublin DP in West Central Texas near, you're not gonna believe this, the town of Dublin, TX. So, I was absolutely trilled when we discovered that Pops, a convenient store/cafe in Arcadia had this wonderful drink.

This morning I was feeling a little frivolus, or maybe stressed might be the better term. I had to go into Edmond to pay my truck payment ( always stressful) and find a microwave for Grandma's birthday from the family. Got all that done so I drove through Sonic to get a DP and bacon burrito. When the guy handed me the drink I knew something smelled weird. Then I took a swig and knew they had a very bad mix! First I let out a huge sigh and thought maybe I'd just had some toothpaste still in my mouth from earlier. I tried it again. No toothpaste could make something taste that bad. Needless to say I was very disgusted!

I was headed out of town and a thought jumped into my head, I could run down to Pops and get the real thing! So, I went a little out of my way thinking it would only ad a few minutes. HA! I was wrong about that. I pulled up to Pops and the place is running over with cars, bikers, and lots of people. I went inside and saw the checkout line was about 15 people deep. There's no turning back now. I trucked right over to the fountain and got the biggest cup they've got and filled it up! By the time I got to the register I had it about 1/3rd gone. I waltzed right over to the fountain and filled it up again. First I tripped on the rug, but thankfully, that didn't end too badly. I made my way back outside and left the madness to the rest of them.

I'm just gonna say that tasty drink was worth the whole thing!!!!!

The Mowing Monster

OK kids, never operate machinery you know nothing about! Last night I had a near death experience. Maybe not near death, but at the moment it felt like near death.

My employers are out of town. Have been off and on for the last 2 months. Last time they were home there wasn't time to mow. It wouldn't be a big deal, but there is a coliseum across the road from us and there is an even this weekend. I felt it should look like someone at least worked here at the shop. It was a little too big of an area to mow with my push mower so lady employer said I could use their's which I've never even started. I was apprehensive at first and tried to figure out another way to go. What if I tear something up? What if I hit the fence? What if I turn the thing over? We're talking about a zero turning radius big ol' mower with a roll bar and those handle stick things to steer with instead of a steering wheel.

I got my tutorial over the phone and got it started with no problem. I looked it all over and thought I knew how things were gonna go. Since it was backed up to the backside of their house I wanted to make sure I didn't go the wrong way right off. I took off the brake, took the driving sticks out of neutral and that's when things went a little haywire!! I wasn't prepared for how sensitive the sticks are and just exactly how it all worked even though my tutorial was very thorough. All of a sudden I shot to the right going right over the air tank, weed eater, and little garden tiller. I thought I was going in the back door of the house which was closed by the way!! I was so mixed up I just kept moving those sticks and it was yanking me all over the place. Somehow I got it into neutral. I sat there for a second and then realized the weed eater is still under the mower. So I got off and got it out and put back where it belonged. I picked up all the other items I'd run over and drug around. It looked like a little tornado went through there!!

I took a deep breath and thought I better take things a little slower. It went a little better from there. I drove around a little to get the feel of this powerful machine. I almost quit and left it where it was but decided I had to overcome this huge fear I had inside me at that moment. Surely I can do this right?

I headed down to the front of the shop area where some of the grass is knee high. I started out down by the fence around the electric pole. I kinda forgot about the roll bar and got a little close to the guide wire. Let's just say I got so close I thought I was gonna tip the thing over. I stayed away from that and everything else pretty much from then on.

By the time I got finished I was way more comfortable and kinda had the hang of it. It was just about dark by then and I headed back up towards the house. I got it backed in without any problems. I knew that man and lady employers would be sitting in their motel room wondering how things went so I called them. She answered the phone saying "How'd it go?" I replied, "Well, nobody died." It was really quiet on the other end of the line. I kinda relayed the story leaving out the part about hitting the wire. I thought that might be a little much. I probably should've left out the first part too! I told her I thought everything was ok and if not she could take it out of my pay.

I probably won't need another experience like that again any time soon!!!

Anybody feeling old?

So, here's the thing, I'm gonna be 40 in a couple months. How is that possible? I guess since I was born in 1969 it is possible, but it just doesn't feel right in my head. However, it's feeling right in my body.

My back has been "tweeked" for a few days now and I'm sick of it. All I was doing was looking for something to wear Sunday morning to worship. I guess I was leaning a little weird over the bed when I was digging through the pile of clean clothes. As the day went on it didn't feel that much better. A friend gave me a work over Sun. night and that definitely helped. Monday morning I felt good. As the day wore on, though, it got worse. I've just been babying it since then. Yesterday I hadn't even felt it at all til last night. I was putting a sack of feed in the can and I felt it start burning. Not good. It wasn't the worst it's ever been that's for sure. I'll get over it I know. I just need to keep thinking about our poor UPS driver.

Last Thursday afternoon he was on his route (heading to my work actually) and had a wreck with a dump drunk. He's doing well now, but it looked bad there for a while I guess. My boss's heard about it through our neighbor around the corner here at the shop. She called me about 9pm and told me about 9pm that our driver had been in an accident and been killed. She said it could be wrong information but that was what she'd been told. I didn't immediately start balling, but by the time I got off the phone with her I was losing it. I cried the whole way home. I've known this guy for a few years now. Sometimes he's the only person I see when I'm at work. I know about his family and their garden. His little girl has some chickens she just loves. All that stuff kept going through my mind when I got this news that he'd suddenly been killed. There was no way for me to verify this info at the time since I was working at another town and didn't get back to the shop til almost 11 that night. Friday morning I came in a little early and called the UPS center close to us. I started asking questions and the girl hesitantly answered. When I asked if he'd been killed she said no. I was so happy and shocked and relieved! I made the calls to my employers and they were glad also.

So, the moral to this story is DON'T jump to conclusions. Find out more info before you cry your head off for hours for no reason and lay in bed with the thoughts of your UPS guy's family being distraught by the tragedy that's just come into their lives. My eyes would've felt way better if I'd not overreacted!

I guess I can handle a little back discomfort after all.