I Told You So

This is what I was looking at when a scrapbook store got dropped in my workshop, just two weeks before shipping!!! It was crazy! The cupboards that you can sort of see in the background house all of the supplies for Monday Night Class, so you can tell just how difficult it was to access anything!

Can you even see the tables that are under all of this crap? No wonder it took so many people to reorganize and sort all of this stuff. Where did it all go? Out in fifth wheel trailers, of course. Andrew was very cautious when he borrowed his to me. When he asked how long I would need it and I answered "For a while", he promptly asked how long a while was. I think that he has visions of going camping this summer with boxes of cardstock still being stored in his trailer. he might not be far from wrong!

I'm BacK!!!!

Can it be two months since I had the time to sit down for a few minutes and collect my thoughts? Whew!!! When you are right in the thick of it, you just keep on going, no matter how tired you are or how bad you hurt. Then when it is over, you can not imagine that you survived the whole thing!
My month from hell started with the last weekend that I worked at the Bloomin' Inn. It was stressful and sad and happy and a whole big ball of mixed emotions. Moving the store came the very next day. May I take this time to thank God for my daughter and a bunch of die hard, best friends who met at the Inn in minus 35 degree weather to pack up my store. I know it was exactly minus 35 degrees, because Caren took a picture of the thermometer in her SUV just to prove it to me!! The plan was to pack the store and leave it overnight sitting in boxes, the boys were going to go the next day with a host of fifth wheels and stock trailers and bring it all home for me. The plan changed in the morning, when Megan got a bee in her bonnet and started sending things home. Before I knew what was happening, my previously clean and organized workshop was piled to the roof with boxes, paper racks, computers, display units, cases of paper - nine years of accumulated junk!!!! I mean...good scrapbooking supplies! My plan to unpack the store over a period of about a month, in a very orderly fashion, went right out the window. Again, thank God for Megan!!! What a trouper.
Before we really had time to deal with the mess and disorganization, it was time for Mike's surgery. I kept him working right up until midnight the night before surgery. I figured he needed to have something to keep his mind off of the upcoming amputation. So we worked and worked and worked. Somehow we managed to clear a spot, about the size of a couch, in the workshop. That gave me hope for the future. I needed to get this all under control before shipping started again after the holidays and I had no idea how long Mike was going to be out of commission.
The surgery was awful, the hospital was noisy and crowded and so as soon as they would release Mike, we left the hospital to heal at home. Things didn't exactly go as planned. With only two days post surgery, Mike was still on a heck of a lot of pain killers when we came home. He did pretty good for the first couple of days and then all hell broke loose. I should have just called the ambulance and had him returned to sender, but he was adamant that he did not want to be in the hospital for Christmas, so I listened to him instead of my head. Had I known that he would not remember four whole days in a row I would have called , so we cancelled our traditional Christmas Eve seafood feast, but the turkey was already thawed and so some of us ate turkey dinner on Christmas day and then everyone went home. Mike does not remember anything about this time. He was right out of it!!! Around New Year's he started to come around and I expected him to live. Honestly, he scared the crap out of me - he had lost over 25 pounds and was gaunt and haggard looking - even more than usual after an amputation.
Then the company arrived - Mike's niece and husband and their family, my brother in law and sisiter in law and their son and his girlfriend. They came to HELP!!!! What an amazing gift to receive, although I don't think that Mathew and his girlfriend knew that they were going to be put to work, they were a real blessing!!!!!!! We turned that workshop on its ear - paper racks got dusted, paper got put out, cardboard boxes got broken down, stock got put out. What a lot of crap got thrown away!!!! We worked night and day until everything was in its rightful place. After New Years, everyone had to go home, but all was right in my world. I never could have done it with out Mike's family and my Mom and Dad. We were ready for shipping, even made it on time, but not without a lot of hard work.
This week, I really feel like I have won the battle. My house is in order, the workshop is clean, the kits are just waiting for instruction sheets, Mike has gained back a few pounds. All is well in my world - and I'm back!!!!!!!!

My Very Last Weekend

I would love to be able to put in words the emotions that I am feeling this weekend, as I prepare to say good bye to the Bloomin Inn and get ready for leaving for the surgery, moving the store and all of the last minute details that fall before Christmas holidays. Who am I kidding? We will probably be in the hospital right up to Christmas Eve and just how am I going to be able to get all of the shopping done? I know that the kids will be understanding, but it is still Christmas and they will want presents, a tree up and some sort of a meal.
This was not exactly how I imagined my last weekend would go - a blizzard that prevented over half of the ladies from getting here, and some ladies who drove 5 hours through hell to avoid being charged for their weekend. I can't comment on the "new rules" other than to say that it was unfortunate that message was conveyed to them. (Not by me!) My big 1/2 price sale was dead in its tracks. Now I have to pack all of this up and move it to the MNC workshop. Yuck!!!
I am so far behind, it is not even funny. I still have not had a minute to get the recipes up on the website - but they are coming!!!! I promise!!!

Oh, Please God, Do not let me get sick!!!!

I am starting to freak out a little bit. First Dad came back from a sheep hunt in the NWT with a wicked head cold and flu symptoms, then he passed it on to Mom. Sorry, I normally would be a good daughter and take over some food or stop and see if they needed anything - but HELL NO!!!! I am not going within a mile of that farm!
Then Andrew missed a week of work with the flu, but luckliy for me, he was flat out in bed and had Vanessa to care for him and see that he did not die. I talked to him on the phone a couple of times, but unlike a caring Mom, I let him fend for himself.
Then Megan and I spent two days painting trim at the workshop and I decided that I needed a baker's rack for one wall. While we were Googling to find the baker's rack, I noticed that her nose was lightly running. I warned her not to go out on Halloween night in her SKIMPY costume ( of course, every 19 year old girl has to wear about six square inches of fabric) and get hammered and then come down with something horrible. Well, little did I know, it was too late already for my old lady advise.
Halloween morning, Megan was already in the hospital, half dead and needed fluids and stuff to calm her stomach down. She missed the big Halloween party at Twin Butte and she had to phone me to tell me that it was all my fault (????) The workshop was too cold, apparently. Marcie had to go and look after her because she was so sick. I just spent two whole days with her. Shit!!!
I just talked to her and she was crying because she feels so bad and she has to clean a commercial building tonight and then read meters for Alta Gas tomorrow. I guess that I will go and clean the property for her, but I am not going anywhere near her!!!!!!!!
I have desserts to bake this week, kits to prep for shipping and a whole lot of painting to do in the workshop and house. Then pick up Edna and Debbie and head to the crop. I CAN NOT BE SICK!!! Of course, my imagination is running away with me and my eyes feel scratchy and my nose was running yesterday. Am I paranoid, or what???
To top it all off, there have been a lot of women at the Inn that have been sick during the weekend. I have been avoiding everybody that even looks tired! I just hope that Megan is feeling well enough to cover for me when I leave for the Jingle Bell Crop!

Painted Ponies

All through the summer and fall, Megan and Marcie have been keeping Flash and Flint in shape for us. With Mike's leg keeping him from riding, our horses have been getting a little "robust". The girls like to get off work, grab something to eat and catch the horses for an evening ride. Quite often, after dark, I will hear the "clop, clop" of Flash's shoes on the hard road and the laughter of the girls as they ride home in total darkness.


I can't imagine life any other way, we are so privileged to live in the country and enjoy the perks of being on a farm. I don't miss the cows!! Mike made me sign a piece of paper, stating that he could buy his precious cows back as soon as he was up and walking. That was the morning that the cattle liner was coming down the road to pick up all of the honory old b-------s. I hope that day never comes when we have to go back to using the horses for work and not for pleasure!


I don't really get why Mike is so adamant that he needs to have them back. You like freezing your butt off, carrying a frozen calf to the barn while his retarded mother tries to eat you alive? You love trying to cut the pairs out of the herd and push them into the big field when the frozen air from the Arctic is blowing down your back and chilling you to the bone? Or trying to pull frozen baler twine off big round bales that are solidly frozen to the ground? Or getting pooped on by a scouring calf that stinks to high heaven? Or sitting at a fall calf sale, thinking that you are going to puke and wondering if you are going to have to plead bankruptcy? I like my cattle, triple A, flash frozen, in a neat little package and I don't mind paying some other poor dumb farmer to raise it for me! Cows? I say, bullshit!

Too Concerned About Clean?

My girl friend, Loretta swears that the reason why my children were so sickly as youngsters is that I kept my house too clean and the kids did not have an immunity to germs that were out in the "real" world, just outside the door to the sterile environment that I had created.
I had to chuckle this week when I finally got around to reading some of the magazines that I buy for a "rainy day" but never get around to looking at them. An article caught my eye in Mother Earth News about a renegade farmer, hauled off and procescuted for selling raw milk off of his farm. I had to agree with the writer, today's mentality about dirt, germs and protecting kids from everything will be the cause of extinction of humans at some point.
I don't think that my cleaning fettish has anything to do with being a germaphobe, I just like things neat and orderly and clean. My kids dug their own carrots out of the garden and wolfed them down with grubby little hands, they drank raw milk all of the time, I made angel food cakes with cracked eggs (God forbid!), they played in the milk barn while we were milking and only got kicked a time or two and I know that Andrew used to drink out of the dog dish before he could reach the hydrant and turn it on by himself. They had Beaver Fever from playing in pond water, they got wormed on a regular basis (like any farm kid should, whose favorite place to play with the John Deere tractors is the manure pile!) and I am sure that the boys had a bug eating contest once or twice. It didn't kill them. But I am not so sure that the lethal amounts of hand sanitizer that is flowing around here, would have made them healthier.
This past week, all toys, magazines and newspapers have been removed from all of the offices in Pincher Creek. Hair salons, dentist's offices, coffee shops - no one escaped the purge. Computer keyboards have to be cleaned between users at the library etc. etc.
If Loretta's theory is correct and we have an H1N1 outbreak in town, then we are all going down. We will be so immune suppressed from the cleaning products and removal of all germs in our environment, we won't stand a chance. One thing is for sure, the farm kids will survive - they are virtual pig pens of germs and they are very happy about it! Just ask any kid playing in a shit pile!

A Little Bit of Heaven

This is heaven for me!!! Just look at that color and texture. We were just a little too early for all of the scarecrow and pumpkin displays that the fruit stands put up for Halloween, but they were starting to harvest the pumpkin fields and bins were starting to appear in front of the stands. Piles of hay bales were sitting to the sides and so I am sure that when we go back next week, the displays will be complete.

I had so much fun wandering around with my camera, I think that the fruit stands know me by name by now!
When I retire, I am so moving to Creston !!! Unfortunately, they do not have a scrapbook store or even a scrapbook department within one of their stores, but they do have a few very good restaurants and amazing veggies and fruit. We cook all of our meals out of the produce that we buy at the stands. Only five more sleeps!!!!