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!!!!

Hey, I'm Back!!

It seems like it has been years since I had the time to sit down and blog! As much as I love this time of year, I also get a little stressed by the work load that falls on me when it gets cold and dreary.

Here is my to do list around the farm and yard:

1. Pickled carrots are all in their jars, looking so fresh with the orange carrots, green dill and the garlic...but the beets are still in the garden. Two rows... and it is cold out there now, and I don't want to go out and get them. If it does not warm up, I might just pretend that they do not exist and let them winter in the garden. No one will notice until spring, when it is time to rotortill and then I will just act surprised!
2. All of the flowers have been killed in the last frost, and most of them are of the type that will produce 2 million seedlings in the spring, if I just leave them there. All of the heads must be cut down and disposed of, before the November winds blow the seeds everywhere. Trouble is, I have acres of flower beds!
3. I still have a tree and a couple of perennials that are not in the ground. They must be planted!
4. All of the hoses must be drained and hung on the fences, so that they survive the cold.
5. Our old farm dog must make the last and final trip to the vet. She is not going to make it through the winter, and must be put down before it gets cold. I am not looking forward to that duty. I am the only one that will take her. Rex has been with us for 17 years. She really has been around as all of the kids grew up and has been on some pretty wild adventures with them. We lost Daniel in a grain field when he was two and if it was not for Rex, it might have had a very bad outcome! We owe her...
6. My house needs to be decorated for fall. That should take a couple of days!!
7. The fifth wheel trailer needs to be winterized after our trip to Creston for Thanksgiving. I hate that job! Bringing in everything that will freeze is a pain in the ass. Then you forget to put it back in the spring. There should be people for this.
8. My car has to be cleaned for the last time. I do not clean it in the winter. I don't even drive it much either, as I opt for one of the trucks when the roads are bad.
9. All of the apples have to be picked up off the ground in the yard. It is very bad to leave them there, under the apple trees, to rot - causes all types of mould and blight problems for the trees next season as the spores splash back up onto the tree when it rains in the spring. Millions of apples to pick up!!
10. I need to wash all of the windows after the flies are gone and at least be able to see out of them. I hate flies!!! This has been a very bad fly season down here this fall. Washing windows in the cold is one of my least favorite jobs, so the thought of cold water running down your sleeves to your armpits is just too much and I have procrastinated for weeks. Maybe I should just wait for the snow to scour the windows clean!

Just thinking about this list makes me tired. I am going to tackle it tomorrow, right now I am going to ignore all of the work and go scrapbook!

30 Years Ago Today

This morning started with the coolest message left on my answering machine. While I was over at the workshop, stuffing Jingle Bell Crop flyers into all of the kits ( which would have been a really good idea YESTERDAY before all of the packages were sealed ) someone left me a message. When I got home this is something like what I heard:

"Hey Cindy! This is Gloria. Imagine my surprise when I was standing in line at the grocery store, and I start thumbing through a scrapbook magazine and there you are staring out at me.
Do you know that 30 years ago today, we met and became room mates at college and lived together for about a year and a half ? From the photo in the magazine, I think that you are aging really well and look amazing for being "so much older". You also owe me $12.00, you bitch. I had to buy the magazine to read the article to see what has been going on in your life.
Phone me. Gloria"

I laughed so hard! It just made my day!

The First Sign Of Fall

I can tell that it is September! My mail box is overflowing with emails from ladies that are trying to organize their fall retreats at the Inn - exactly 134 emails today to be exact! It seems like the minute that the children walk out the door to go to school, everyone starts thinking about scrapbooking and getting away for some "one on one time" with their summer photos! I can tell that it is fall, those emails just keep coming!
I have to admit that this summer was a photography dry spell for me! I can't even find a photo that would sum up this summer's activities... because the exciting events of haying and working on the workshop just were too boring to photograph!
The one highlight of the past few weeks was having some of our Monday Night Class designers join me at the workshop for a planning session/BBQ and I don't think that anyone took any pictures! Shame on us! What a difference it makes to have everyone under one roof - to bounce ideas around, make a few decisions, plan for upcoming months and hand out materials. We really are a close knit team, it was great to spend time together and laugh at each other! Mike cooked us a mean steak, we had lots of "beverages" and we actually got some work done! The best part was that the electricians finished the wiring just the night before everyone arrived and so we had power, ceiling fans and lights in the building. We got to test out the new lighting system and see if you could really see true colors at 2:00am in the morning. Guess what? It was so bright that I am surprised that there were not planes circling the building, thinking that it was a landing strip! The bad part about that was that every moth in Southern Alberta was attracted to the bright windows and it looked like something out of a horror movie!
This month, we are going to be able to use the workshop for the whole shipping event. I am so looking forward to all that space! Now the next big hurdle will be getting the heating all hooked up before the weather turns cold. Then we can start moving all of the supplies from the "house" part to the workshop part.
Next weekend, Mike and I are heading out to Creston to enjoy a few days of vacation. Hit some fruit stands, do some shopping and just relax. Then I'll get to take some photos!!!! I am so excited!!!!

10 Random Things I Love About Summer

I Love...

- my veranda - it looks so funny to see this photo, taken in June, with the vines and plants barely covering the ground. It is a RIOT of color all summer long, you can hardly see the house by August as the vines have totally taken over. The perfect place for cats to nap, me to read and as of the other night's incident, bats to hide out in the hanging basket. Yikes!! What a shock, when the cat lept from the plant stand into the hanging plant and grabbed a full grown bat in its mouth, came crashing down and ran away with the squealing bat. I am going to check out the plant much more closely from now on when I go to water it!!!

- to see the girls riding down the road in the evening. At least twice a week, Megan and Marcie come out to the farm after supper to go for an evening ride. I love to hear the sound of the horses shoes on the hard packed road, and see their swishing tails as they try to keep away the mosquitoes.

- to hear the whine of the silage machines working in the fields to the east of us. From our vantage point on the hill, we can see about 30 miles or more to the east. Beautiful fields of grain and the high pitched whine of the choppers make me so happy to live in the countryside!

- the smell of the gardens. At night, the air is thick with the fragrance of blossoms that have baked in the sun during the day and are now cooling off and taking a break from the heat. Everything has grown so well this summer with all the rain. The weeds are giving me a real run for my money, though. Thank God for Wendy, my gardener, who comes out about once a week to help me from disappearing into a jungle!

- to go for an evening walk. With the ridiculous haying season this year, we are still baling and cutting in the evenings, as long as the dew permits. After Mike goes back to the field and I clean up the supper dishes (oh, what the hell, I might as well admit that we have been eating off of paper plates since the family reunion ) I walk down to the hay field to ride around for the last few rows. The smell of ripening hay is one of my favorite smells, even though it makes me sneeze. I have been trying to get in an extra 500 steps every day and so even just that walk helps out the total for the week.

- baby beet greens and Swiss chard - Mike and I could eat them every night for supper. However, I hate washing them, so we plant the rows, weed the rows and then plow the majority of them under in the fall, after they are all tough and stringy. But, the few meals that we do enjoy - we really ENJOY!!!

- the sunflowers in my yard are one of the highlights of the summer for me. How can you be in a funk if there are sunflowers around!! I planted all different colors and varieties, in the back of every flower bed in the yard. Then I painted the front and side door of my house yellow. It caused quite a stir in the neighborhood, as no one "got" the yellow doors. "It will all make sense when the sunflowers are blooming" I told them. Trouble was, I forgot to tell Wendy (my gardener) that I had planted them and she weeded them all out when they came up. The only ones that are left are the four rows of sunflowers in the garden that I planted in rows to cut for vases in the summer. Next year, everyone will understand about the yellow doors, as Wendy and I will be on the same page!!!

- Payne Lake tops my list of summer favorites. We are going there on Monday for a few days of camping - just Mike and me and my scrapbooking supplies. Loons on the lake, calling to each other in the dusk is the most hauntingly eerie sound. I just love it!!! I am counting the minutes until Monday morning. If that damn hay is not baled - I really don't care, I am going to the lake. With or without my husband, that trailer is leaving!

- flip flops and sandals - every color of the rainbow. I have so many that I have to store them in suitcases after the summer season. If I had a buck for every time that Mike stares at my feet and says that he could not have something stuck between his toes, I'd be rich!

- my cool basement office. This year, I have not hid out there as often as I usually do. My 13 x 19 printer and computer are down there and when it gets too hot outside to weed or water, I retreat to the cool of the basement and print photos, play with Photo shop, or do some journaling for my pages. The tile floor in my office keeps it at the perfect temperature and I can waste a whole day down there (while my family is slaving away on some scorching hot roof). I don't feel guilty in the least...I am technically working, aren't I?

I LOVE My Workshop

So this was the first shipping session that we have been able to complete all of the orders in our new space. I started on Wednesday, because Dana had to work at another job, and we finished all of the orders before 2:00pm on Thursday. That has to be a new MNC record!!!! The reason that we were able to kick butt was the amazing space that we now have in the workshop! It was so easy to alphabetize and sort, when you have unlimited counter space. (I love my Dad!) It was also easy to walk down the isles and check the delivery instructions. It was just sweet! The only drawn back was that the lighting and the plug ins are not hooked up and I did not realize just how early it is getting dark these days. We also had to run some electrical cords for the calculator and the visa machine, but it was only a minor problem. I can tell that we are going to be able to do our work in half of the time and with so much more accuracy than before. I just love our new digs!

Free Loaders

These are photos of my two, free loaders that actually have been enjoying the summer on the farm! When I come back (in another life) I want to come back as one of the cats in my family...imagine getting to lay on a plant stand, on a shaded veranda all summer long, the smells of mint, oregano and thyme perfuming the air, hummingbirds flitting overhead to the feeder and nothing at all to do but sleep and laze around. Someone feeds you breakfast, a little morning nap, watch a few hummingbirds for entertainment (don't bother to even try and chase them, as you know that lunch will be served later on), an afternoon nap, groom yourself a little, stretch to get the kinks out and then have a late afternoon nap. What a life!

Sylvester and Marmalade came to live with us because they knew that life was easy around here. Sylvester was actually Marcie's, but she could not take him to college, he was not a street wise city cat, so he came to live with us last September when Marcie enrolled in accounting at LCC. Marmalade was a little kitten that Megan and Katrina found on a roadside when they were reading meters for Alta Gas. They took pity on him, as he was pretty small and saved him by bringing him home.

I don't know why people feel the need to bring all stray animals to our farm, but they keep coming! Res (my dog) was brought home by Daniel, after he was found wandering in a field on the Brocket Indian reservation (get it? Res is short for reservation!). Daniel just never came back and got him and he became very attached to me. We finally paid to get him neutered, then paid about $400.00 to get all of the porcupine quills removed from his mouth and throat when he attacked a porcupine. (Stupid ____ dog!) One day I had enough, and tied into Daniel when he showed up, demanding that at least he could buy some dog food if he expected us to look after his dog. The next day Daniel showed up with a GIANT bag of dog food and dumped it on the porch floor with a scowl. "Is that good enough?" he growled. Imagine my surprise when at the end of the month, I got our bill from the Co-op and he had charged the dog food to us!!! Seriously! From that point on, I considered Res to be "our" dog, knowing full well that Daniel was never going to accept responsibility for him.

Our last free loader is Rex, our old farm dog - really, really old farm dog. As a pup, she had a bad habit of chasing and killing cats. We tried everything to break her from her killing cats. Nothing worked. Until someone told us that maybe she could be trained in the same manner that farm dogs were trained when they were chicken killers. "Tie the dead cat to her collar" my Uncle Vic instructed me. Let the cat stay there until she can't stand the smell. (At this point I was desperate and so I thought it was worth a try - as disgusting as that sounds). So, the next time that Rex killed two of our black kittens (not little ones, but lanky adolescent cats) Daniel and I got some rope and tied the two cats to her collar. We only made one miscalculation. We left the rope a little too long and there was some "lead" in the rope. When Rex moved around, the cats would sort of "flop". We did it in the evening, thinking that by the next evening, we could release the cats and bury them. What we didn't plan on was the Swanns ice cream man to make his monthly appearance.

So imagine this scene... Rex really likes the Swanns man, because he always gave her treats. She is jumping around his van, anxiously awaiting her reward and the two, black, stone cold, dead cats are flipping and flopping around with every jump that Rex makes. Just enough slack in the rope to make them flop really good with every jump. I realize what is happening, rush to the door to try and call the dog off...the Swanns man takes one look at Rex, with two dead cats flopping all over, puts his van in reverse, speeds out of the driveway and NEVER COMES BACK!!! I am sure that he thought that were the hill billiest, red necked, cat haters that he had ever met. Luckily for me, no police or SPCA agents ever came to haul us off for cat abuse.

The end of the story, Rex is now 18 human years old and those two, black kittens were the last cats that she ever killed and we never got ice cream delivered to our door again! We are probably written up in some "incident" report and black listed from home deliveries for eternity!

Happy 50th, Mike!

I guess that a good thing to do before you take a significant birthday photo is to ask the subject to remove the toothpick from their mouth!!! What was I thinking? While at the family reunion, Mike turned 50 years old - we did not plan it that way, but what a perfect time to celebrate with his family! Every sibling was there, and Mike was spoiled rotten with gifts. This is the rag quilt that his sister, Joy, made for him. Megan and Murray gave him chrome rims for his Rhino - can you believe that he has a pimped out ATV with fancy rims and a stereo??

I got to thinking about the fact that out of Mike's 50 years, I have been around for 31 of them. Actually more, when you figure that we went to the same school, until he moved to Tofino for the last two years of high school. But officially, either as a girl friend or as a wife, we have celebrated 31 birthdays together. (God, am I ever old!!! )

There has been a lot of milestones during that time...

- Mike bought his roofing company and then later the eavestrough company

- he lost both of his parents, when they were both still very "young" and I have both of mine

- we bought a farm (again, what were we thinking?)

- we sold the roofing company, six years later we started back up again as the person who bought it from us moved away and shut down the company.

- Mike lost two sisters and one brother

- I sold my flower shop after 17 years and became a SAHM for five

- we homeschooled all three of our children from kindergarten through high school (21 years)

- we sold our roofing company to our middle son when he turned 20

- we became empty nesters right after that, as Andrew finally moved out, and to my relief took with him all of the trucks, trailers, dump trucks, ladders and all of the shit that has been blocking my driveway and yard for 20 years. I no longer have to reserve parking to be able to get my groceries into the house!!

- I opened a scrapbook store at the Bloomin Inn and became a stay away wife for three to four days per week for the last NINE years!

- we paid off our home quarter

- Mike had a bad accident that totally changed our lives.

- we sold all of our livestock, except for the horses ( hard on Mike)

- Mike has had two amputations, due to the work accident and is scheduled for one more this fall, but maintains his optomistic attitude and his work ethic. I love that man, even though I make fun of him all of the time.

- I bought a house and had it moved to the farm, to house the headquarters of Monday Night Class and we then put an addition on it, making it the most beautiful scrapbooking space that anyone could imagine. Even though Mike had his doubts about setting up a completely different house, road and yard, ($$$$$$), he loves me enough to support me (even though he thinks that I smoke crack on a regular basis!)

It is hard to believe all that has happened to us and that we survived it all. Happy 50 years, Mike!

The Family Reunion

It has been a very long time between posts - it has just been more that a little crazy around here for the last two weeks. We started our "summer vacation" officially, with the arrival of Pat and Lorrie and their seven dogs. (only my sister in law would go camping with seven dogs!) They arrived on the Tuesday before the long weekend. We decided to camp at Cottonwood for a few days, before moving to the location where the family reunion/possible battlefield would be taking place. Those few days were quite peaceful. Then on Thursday, we moved to Hiawatha Campground (sounds like a good place for a battle, eh?) which is in the mountains, west of Burmis, Alberta. We had booked all eleven sites at the front of the campground, so that we were all together and could play games and visit.

I sometimes wonder what we spend so much time in planning everything, as it was quite obvious that no one can stick to a plan. Even though the sites were not supposed to be used until Friday, people started arriving early on the Thursday and we were almost half way full, a day ahead of reservations. The poor man running the campground was gracious and didn't seem to mind, even though we started moving fire pits and tables to suit ourselves. Then it rained and rained and rained.

Luckily for us, the worst thundershowers and rain happened late at night and not during the day, when we needed to be out and about and not trapped in RV's. The most "sparks" happened during the day, as people (who obviously second guessed the person put in charge of planning) changed those plans constantly, with regards to events and food. The day that we really needed it to be nice, mother nature did not disappoint us and we were able to meet at the grave site for the interment of Mike's sister, Mary's, ashes. Then it rained and rained

While at the service, I was able to snap a photo of Mike and his six remaining siblings. As you can see, Vivian was our one casualty at the reunion. She took a header out of a 5th wheel trailer and broke both bones in her wrist, and severely compacted all the bones in her hand. A night in the hospital, setting of the wrist early in the AM and without any pain meds, she made it the rest of the weekend (although she self medicated, liberally, with alcohol) and on to the interment. All done without any pain medication. She wouldn't even fill the prescription that the doctor gave her until she got back home to Red Deer. Man, she is one tough cookie! Then it rained and rained and rained.

We got home after the long weekend, just in time to start the push to get ready for the big 4 couple, 170 guest, 50th anniversary party for my parents and three of my Dad's first cousins (who were also married in the same year) Rather than hold four anniversary parties, we combined them for one giant party at my parent's farm. What an extreme amount of work!! These are the signs that led the guests down the road:

The signs said:

Did you remember...

Your supper meds...

your teeth...

your spouse?

There were also signs that directed the "old cronnies" were to park and then signs for the "really old cronnies" and then a sign for the "fat,lazy asses" to park, where they would have to walk quite a bit further. It was hilarious, as was the game of "Goldy Weds" that we had the four couples play, to see which couple had been listening to each other during the 50 years that they had spent together, and which couples had turned their ears off years ago. I had to watch every episode of the Newlywed game for months to come up with enough questions that would stump the four couples. It was a riot!!! Some feuds almost broke out between couples who thought that their spouse should know the answer to a particular question. It was pretty funny when my mom told the crowd that the first New Years Eve that my parents spent together as a couple was one year after I was born!!!! It was a calculating error that caused the answer, not a revelation to the family that I was illegitimate!! The best answer happened when my Dad had to run to the bathroom. His best man jumped up and declared that he would fill in for Dad because he "knew everything" about my Dad. The question was "How many natural teeth does your spouse have?" to which Eldon replied "1 -1/2 teeth" - my Mom could have killed him!!

This is a photo that I took of my Mom and Dad, in their yard on the farm - just as much in love as they were when they were wed 50 years ago. My Mom has never had a driver's license, my Dad patiently waits for her wherever they go. They are joined at the hip and always have been. I have never witnessed a fight between the two in all of the years that I have been alive. They bicker about how things should be done, but they NEVER fight. Both of them know the meaning of compromise and they are truly "soul mates".

They answered almost all of their Goldy Wed questions perfectly, but were beat out by Auntie Karen and Uncle Allan, due to the illegal question about the false teeth - way to go, Mom and Dad!!!!

So this was how my last two weeks of summer vacation played out -

- seven days of camping with my husband's family

- seven days of camping with 12 dogs

- cooking for between 25-45 people for all meals ( did I mention 7 days????)

- hosting Mike's 50th birthday supper

- guests from the reunion that did not go home and stayed for another week (at our house)

- clean up house for arrival of anniversary relatives

- set up for 50th anniversary party - two days

- prepare food for 50th party - 170 guests - cook everything but the beef, which was catered

- have house guests during the party

- be the MC of the party, don't eat anything because of nerves, have a few too many drinks. You guessed the rest!

- clean up after party, return borrowed chairs, tables, cooking stuff - one day ( while suffering from a hang over)

collapse.

End of summer vacation - THANK GOD!!!!!!!!!!

Indian Hill

Look at my baby!! Ain't she pretty? This is my workshop, freshly clad in "Country Lane Red" Hardie siding, nine great big windows in the workroom area - three per side. All of it is mine, all mine - 2650 square feet of prime scrapbooking space! (Filled with Monday Night Class supplies).Unfortunately, this photo was taken from the wrong angle, so you can not see Indian Hill, for which she is named, or the beautiful valley that lies to the west. Come and look inside...

Don't laugh, but this is how I have picked the colors for the walls. I choose all of the Bazzil colors of card stock that I like, antique them a little with paint, make my selection and then take the card stock in to the paint shop and have them duplicate the color on their amazing machinery. In this bedroom, I am trying to achieve the look of the sunflowers. So, I started with Cajun on the top of the wall and now I am choosing a color to paint the wainscoting that will be applied to the bottom of the wall. I lined up all of the card stock and looked at it for about a week, in the different lights of the day before I picked the card stock, on the right, closest to the calendar. I have "Chiffon" walls in the workshop with "Lily Pad" accents. Gotta love Bazzil for their wonderful colors.

Here are my Chiffon walls and my amazing red floor (that damn near killed me) just look at that shine! Notice all of the plug ins and all of the pot lights on the ceiling. It looks pretty bare, right now, but this morning all of the pine cabinets were brought over and set into place. They are not attached to the walls or have their counter tops on yet, but that will happen now that it rained again and the guys can not hay.

This is my Mom getting my green door into position for the card stock room. Dad is behind her putting on the hinges. Now I am on the hunt for an antique glass hardware for the green door. I have been surfing the net looking for one, but I have not found the "perfect" door knob yet. But, believe me, I will! I can't wait to see what is going to happen in the next few days when the moldings, baseboard and the cabinets are finished. Want to come and scrapbook with me???

Mad Cow

I seriously just witnessed the funniest thing!!! On my way home from the Inn to get some kits for some of the ladies, I have to travel highway 6 for most of the trip. About a mile from our turn off is a farm that is literally almost on top of the highway. It is an old, old farmstead, as they would never allow anyone to build that close to a major highway anymore. As I was approaching the farm, I noticed some dark animal-type thing go running across the road ahead, run up over the highway and down into the opposite ditch, with a person in hot pursuit. I thought it looked like a young colt, but as I slowed down and rolled to a stop, I saw that it was the skinniest, sickest looking yearling that I have ever seen. It was obvious that this poor animal had been sick for a while and the farmer (Jamie) and his teenage daughter (Emma) were doing their best to head the escaped yearling back into the farmyard corral for treatment. I could tell by the way that the animal was running, it couldn't see out of one or possibly both eyes.
Sunday afternoon, highway full of 5th wheel trailers, SUV's and motorbikes, slowing down and piling up on both sides of the unfolding scene. It was causing quite the traffic jam! I was the first car in line, heading south and behind me is a big jacked up 4x4 with a spastic white dog in the back, barking his head off. The yearling keeps running back and forth over the pavement, from one side of the highway to another and no progress is being made. I start pulling on my coat(its drizzling) and getting ready to exit the car to help when I see the motorbikes pull out of the line up and start passing cars. Idiots!! I have chased enough cattle to summer pasture along this highway to know that tourists can be the most impatient, ignorant people on the face of the earth. So for a few split seconds, I cursed the bikers, until I saw that they were coming to help.
So imagine this scene: two Ninja type bikes come forward to assist. They are wearing those aerodynamic helmets that make them look like big, menacing grasshoppers. The yearling "sees" (or senses) the grasshoppers coming at him and FREAKS!!!! He runs and staggers into the east ditch, at which point the big 4X4 behind me crosses the opposite lane and veers down into the ditch, at top speed. At which point the stupid dog figures that they are crashing and leaps out of the back of the truck, starts running around and barking. At which point, the yearling runs out of the ditch and right into the front end of my car. My new Buick Enclave - Tiger Woods chocolate brown version, just like in the commercial. At which point, I am pissed off!!
Jamie is trying to apologize at the top of his lungs by yelling "He's Blind!!", "He's Blind!!" to anyone who can hear above the whine of the Ninja bikes, the barking of the dog and the squealing of the engine of the truck that I believe was now firmly stuck in the ditch. I resisted the urge to shout back "No shit, Maynard!" (But that might not be neighbourly) What did he think? We'all thought the steer was deaf?
The Ninja bikers are driving around like buzzing bees, people are getting out of cars, more bikers start pulling out of line and then the staggering yearling takes off due north - behind my car and the chase proceeds behind me. At which point, I decide that I had better take a look at my car and I drive away. (Not very neighbourly of me, eh?) In my rear view mirror, I can see that the Ninjas are winning and they have the yearling turned around and headed back south. Which is never going to work, because while they were gone, the line up of cars advanced forward and are now blocking the entrance to the farm lane. Go figure! Dumb tourists!! As I go over the hill, I just had to chuckle, I wonder what that yearling thought he was seeing when those grasshopper helmets came at him.
All the way home, I kept thinking about how I was going to explain this one. But, luckily my car is fine and a hour later when I came down the hill, headed back to the Inn, the highway was clear, the truck was out of the ditch and I could see Jamie and Emma over at the corrals and in the corral was one skinny, red brockle faced steer. Mission accomplished!

My Third Week of "Vacation"

Okay, I may be a bit spoiled and sometimes I do whine and snivel, but I really am getting a bit crabby due to the fact that my holidays are all but gone and not even one day has felt like a vacation! This summer sucks!!! Big time!!!!



Monday - Get up early and drive down to the Inn to see if all of the boxes and totes that are destined for Calgary will fit into Colleen MacDonald's car. Parked beside each other, the two cars do not look anything alike, as far as cargo capacity goes. Colleen assures me that she can fit everything in, but I think that she is going to have to leave both girls behind to do it! Holy, Moly, can she ever pack a car. Half an hour later, I convinced that she has a magic wand, everything fits and both girls can go home with their mom. Call Christy and leave message with daughter, for Christy to call me BEFORE she leaves the city to meet me (Christy is at the Doctor's office, so I don't call her directly). Need to head her off, so that she does not start driving to Nanton to meet me to pick up the kits. Get busy visiting with Colleen and do not realize that Christy has never called back. At noon, Christy phones to assure me that she is "almost" in Nanton. SHIT!! I guess her daughter forgot to tell her that I phoned. Christy turns around and heads home (saying a few bad words about me, I'm sure) Colleen leaves with the back end of her car almost dragging on the ground. Feel really bad for Christy, driving all the way to Nanton for nothing. Go home and clean out car, just pile the junk in the porch, will deal with that later. Take our 14 year old dog to the vet - not much fun (I think that she remembers the time that she killed a porcupine and had to be put to sleep to have the 450 quills removed from her throat) Help Mike in the field until 9:00pm, when the hay gets too tough to bale. Hay fever starting to kick in. My lips look swollen, sort of like an Angelina Jolie look (not too bad, I think to myself). Just to be sure, I put on some lipstick to see how it would look if I had plump lips. Maybe I should consider Restilin shots. When I mention that to Mike, he hoots with laughter and tells me that my swollen lips look stupid. What does he know, anyway? He doesn't even feel sorry that I am having an allergy attack! Make supper, help Mike go and pick up our new hay rake. Think about the fact that if I could scrapbook a page about the purchase of the hay rake, it would be more fun than actually doing the paperwork on it.

Tuesday - Edna is coming for a full day of income tax, we hope to have the entire four sets of books ready to take to the chartered accountants by suppertime. Everyone decides that Tuesday should be the day to come to the workshop and construct something. It is like a three ring circus, with Edna in the middle, trying to concentrate on figures. She gives it a valiant effort, but at 5:00pm (when she has to leave) she is still bogged down in capital gains calculations due to the sale of the assets of Easy Eaves - thank the good God that there are people who enjoy doing crap like that!!! I would hang myself from a rafter in the barn if I had to do bookwork for a living! I leave Edna to her boring bookwork and go to the field . Spend most of the day helping fix broken hay machines - baler, hay rake, tractor etc. BAD HAY FEVER DAY!!!!! Katrina comes out to clean the 5th wheel trailer for the reunion and pack it for the first trip of the year. I take her home at noon. Finally, when I go home in the afternoon to make supper, I decide to have a bath first and then start supper. Seriously...as I am in the bathtub I hear the phone ring. Not answering, I need to soak this pollen off. The phone stops ringing and then starts again right away. Okay, this must be important. It is Mike, he is plugged up again and needs some tools from the shop. I am not even dry, and again he needs me to get in the itchy, sticky damn hay. I am really cranky when I arrive in the field!!! He does not even notice. We finish fixing the baler and I am headed home to make supper. At this time, he tells me that he will take me out to supper - if I will come with him to the Parker place and help Mike Mayer and his son put on the copper roof above the bay window - only a couple of hours and then we can go for supper. LIAR!!!!!! We go to the job site, we fiddle around with the copper sheets (lots of bending required on the metal brake) we get the roof done - one hour AFTER all of the restaurant's close!!! I am freezing to death, because I forgot to bring a sweater and I am wearing shorts, I am hungry and I am all itchy and swollen up. Delightful...

Wednesday - Mike and I meet Megan in town for coffee and toast before we all go to work. Back to the hayfield...make a round, break down...make a round, plug up, make a round etc.... By lunch time I am ready to slit my wrists to end the misery. Luckily for me, I have an excuse to get out of town for the afternoon, Megan picks me up at 2:00pm and we go to Lethbridge to buy all of the groceries for Mom and Dad's 50th wedding party and Mike's family reunion and Mary's Memorial. We buy a whole truck load of groceries on the hottest day of the week and then have to load them and then unload them - in three different places, as they are for three separate events. Just about died of heat exhaustion. Then we get a phone call that Robin, Gord and Cooper are going to stop out for a drink on their way back from vacationing in the states. Yahoo!! That means that Mike can visit, he will enjoy the company and I can de-swell and stop itching for a period of time. The Bell's stayed over night, which meant that I had a diversion in the morning. It was a beautiful evening, cold beer, a gorgeous view from the veranda and ruined only a couple of hundred, angry, blood thirsty mosquitoes! This ONE night is the most like what I imagined my summer vacation to be like - even if it only lasted about three hours!



Thursday - Mike gets up and goes to the hayfield at 6:30am, but I don't have to help until after Robin leaves. Maybe I should have bribed them to stay longer???? Everyone gets up around 9:00am and after coffee, we check out the progress on the workshop. I think Robin was impressed by the amount of work that had been done since March when they came skiing! Into town for breakfast (Thanks Robin and Gord!!!) Back to the hayfield. New scenario. Now Mike's leg is too sore to push in the clutch, the stump is swollen and red and so I run the clutch. I have to sit on the little dinky quarter size seat (with no back support), bounce around the hayfield and push in the clutch, twice, for every bale. NOTHING ELSE TO DO TO PASS THE TIME!!! (Except hate moles) The radio is all static, there is no wildlife to see, the seat is poking up my butt, I can't feel my right butt cheek at all. Because I came on the spur of the moment (with tools), during a break down, I neglected to bring any cold drinks. I get thirstier and thirstier. Which is when I dream up my next greatest job for myself. I think that there should be a girl on a beer cart (just like at a gold course) that goes field to field and sells cold beer, sandwiches and snacks to all the farmers!!! When I mention that to Mike, he sarcastically replies that was what "I" (or any good farm wife) was supposed to do. I guess he has a point there.... So I bite my tongue and we continue to bounce around until Daniel phones us and tells us that a thunder storm with hail is coming our way. We kick the tractor up a notch, to beat the rain and I undergo a more severe form of torture with the stupid postage size seat. Then a baler belt breaks!! For those of you who don't know what that means, lucky you!!! For any farm wives who have experienced this, (and then the experienced the process of fixing a broken belt) I bet you feel sorry for me. Two hours later, no supper, no drinks, covered in sticky hay that is pasted to EVERY crevice of your body, I am just about suicidal. I'm bleeding up and down my arms from hitting the pick up rake with my forearms as I was pulling hay, I have sharp, little hay slivers in my fingers, I am all greasy (black variety) and there is DUST between my toes and under my feet, with some stuck hay bits between my flip flops and my feet. Not to mention the hay fever issues! As we BOUNCE around at top speed, the photo of Kim and Avery on the boat (that she posted on her blog - on her vacation) comes to my mind. I am so envious that I can hardly stop from thinking bad thoughts. I resist the urge to do bodily harm to Mike and bale him up in the baler. No one would ever find him, as long as I left that one hay bale in the stack yard every year and did not sell it. Would wild animals start sniffing around it if they smelt a decomposing body? Okay, so maybe I had a few bad thoughts. By 10:00pm, all of the hay that was ready to bale is sitting neatly in rows, all baled up and protected from the rain. Which is good, because it is really starting to rain. We get home and I let Mike have the first bath. I wait until the water is hot again and then soak off all of the blood (seriously), sweat, grease, aphids and alfalfa leaves. I am glad that I am past my child bearing years, because I think I am seriously ruined from that damn tractor seat!!! I sleep through the worst thunderstorm of the season and do not wake up....

Friday - I am leaving for the Bloomin' Inn. I have never been so happy to go to work in my life!!! No matter how late the ladies stay up tonight - I do not care!!!!!!! My vacation is over for this week and I am back to work for the weekend and I have seriously never been so happy. Because it rained last night, Mike can not get into the field and so he will probably just rest his leg and heal up. There is no hay in my future for a couple of days - just scrapbooking and resting!!! If we didn't need the money from the hay to pay bills for the next year, I might go and start a small prairie fire (after parking all of our farm equipment in the fire's path), but that might look suspicious.

My Second Week Of Summer Vacation

After great hopes of having a second better week than the first, I am now resigned to the fact that finding a little time for myself - not going to happen! This is how week #2 went:

Sunday Evening - after washing the red floor for the painter, I went home to have a bath. As I was soaking in the tub, I realized that Monday morning was the start of shipping. I jumped out of that tub like it was electrified and ran to the phone, dialed up Nicole and asked her if she had completed the invoices for shipping. (Nicole comes out just before we start shipping every month, makes a list of who has placed an order and generates a computer invoice with all of the shipping information on it, not the facts of the order, because that can change right up to the last minute, but at least we don't have to hand write the top of the order form and it saves a little time). Nicole did not have the invoices done ( it is now 10:00pm) but she promises to stay up late and do just the calendar club invoices. Because I was so worried about having the floor ready for the painter, I have neglected to clean up and organize the area in which we actually do the shipping, so over to the workshop in my pjamas I go. Check to see that all the boxes and bags, blank shipping lists, signs on the totes are all ready. Clean a little. Go home at 12:15 and try to sleep. Can't sleep, too wired - possibly the Diet Coke at midnight had something to do with that????

Monday - get up extra early and be at OK Tire at 7:30am to pick up the invoices from Nicole. She promises that she will be out to the workshop after supper to complete the invoices for the regular club. Pick up freight, forgot to pick up case of beer (necessary during shipping), and some ink for the computer - back to the workshop by 9:00am. Dana is already there, coffee is made and the painter has shown up and is setting up scaffolding. Start shipping calendar club, end at 6:00pm. Clean up all of the shipping area, go home and cook supper, get back to the workshop by 7:30pm as Edna is there to work on year end books. Wait for Nicole, try to call her cell, paint wall in the master bedroom ( AGAIN!!) wait for Nicole, call her mom to try and locate her, give up about 9:30 and start doing the invoices myself. Edna leaves at 11:30, I am done invoices by midnight, shut off computer, go home to fall in bed with clothes on. Nicole still missing in action.

Tuesday - arrive back at the workshop by 7:30am, move all of Edna's books out of the way. Check computer for new orders, make coffee for painter, get out Dana's BIG bottle of Bailey's for coffee for Dana and I, alphabetize all of the orders and collate with invoices, Dana arrives at 9:00am. Painter is beginning to question the color that I have chosen for the workshop, so we look through samples and choose another (lighter) color. She starts to repaint the edging that she did the day before. Start shipping regular club. End at 6:30. Still no word from Nicole. Quickly run home and have a bowl of cereal - back to the workshop at 7:30 for the next round of income tax books. HATE BOOKWORK!!! Pretty grouchy! Edna tells me that the reason why Nicole did not come was the fact that her computer crashed at work and she had to stay and do payroll. Work with Edna until 1:00am

Wednesday - Last day of shipping. Mike has to call me three times to get me out of bed. I am really grouchy!!! Dana and I just start shipping and my Mom and Dad show up to put the oak trim around all of the windows and around the floor in the master bathroom and bedroom. I catch them trying to carry in a table saw and I point out that no more cutting is allowed in the house, due to the fact that we have kits in plastic bags spread out all over the house. They keep carrying the table saw. I get a little more frantic and suggest that I will personally run outside and cut each and every board, myself, if they will just leave that thing outside. My Dad persists and soon I have a table saw whining in the background and sawdust flying everywhere. Shut the door to the room they are working in, take a deep breath, go outside and smoke three cigarettes in rapid succession. Go back in and continue shipping - done by supper time. Cereal again for supper and then drive over to my parents house to plan the 50th wedding anniversary party. Home by 9:30, bath, water the almost dead plants on the veranda, when was the last time I fed the dogs??? Notice that the two farm dogs are all clean and are wearing new collars. Where did they get that? Mike informs me that I forgot to take the dogs to their appointment so the groomer came out to the farm and picked them up. Fall into bed around 11:00. Exhausted!!!

Thursday - Go to work extra early to check out the paint job, as today the painter should just be cleaning up and packing away her supplies. Check over all of the walls and LOVE the job that she did! However, every time that her bright yellow scaffolding fell on the ground, it left big yellow streaks on the cement floor. Going to have to wash those all off before the glaze goes on. Spend the day checking over orders, seeing that everyone has the right kits, the orders have been placed in the right bins and that all of the names are on the correct sheets. Load up all of the boxes for Canada Post and go to the post office. Make seven trips into the building, stand in line for one hour while they scan in all of the postal codes and put the stickers on the boxes. Look at the grouchy faces of the other people waiting in line (because of me) and decide that next time I should come at a different time of day to avoid death threats! $340.00 later and a till tape five feet long, all of the parcels are on their way to the scrapbookers. Yahoo!! Run a few errands, drop off the boxes at the courier, pick up something other than cereal for supper and go back to the workshop. Dana is gone, the painter is gone, clean up the mess from the table saw, notice that the wall beneath the bathroom window will have to be repainted because Dad has marked it up putting in the mouldings. How many times am I going to have to paint this thing????? Go home, make supper and start cleaning up the house. Start with the laundry room, only get as far as the top of the basement stairs and I seriously can not put one foot in front another to do any more. See Edna's car coming up the road. Shit, forgot that she was coming back$^$$$&& Spend until midnight doing books. Fall into bed.

Friday - Get up to the sound of the tractor starting right below the bedroom window. Haying season has begun. I guess Mike was too scared to wake me up. Go downstairs and survey the damage in my house. There are unwashed dishes from last weekend when Phillip and Haida left, the floors are sticky with the puppy pee, garbage is overflowing, decide that I can not meet Christy today to give her the kits because I would be unsafe on the highway. Way too tired to drive to Nanton - have to clean this house!! Spend the day cleaning, thank God for good tunes!!!! Finish up around 7:00pm, take Mike supper in the field, go home, lay down on the sofa for a few minutes. Remember that the floor in the workshop needs to be washed before we can put glaze on it, go over and start mopping. Paint won't come off, so get out a putty knife and start chipping away at it. Wash the whole 1100 square feet on my hands and knees, scraping as I go. Mike comes to pick me up at 10:00pm just as it is ready to glaze. Fall asleep on the sofa.

Saturday - Wake up at 6:30 am, need to get the glaze down before it gets too hot - it looks like it is going to be a cooker today. Go over to the workshop, vacuum the floor and start painting the edges with the sealer while Mike rolls the glaze on the middle of the floor. The fumes start out not too bad, but the further we go, the more toxic the fumes become. Flies start dropping dead from the ceiling. (Maybe we should have worn masks????) Finish the first coat, go over to Mom and Dad's and dewinterrize their 5th wheel trailer, go to town for lunch, come back and put a second coat on the floor. Go back to town and get groceries, invite Colleen MacDonald and her girls over for supper. Cook, eat, enjoy supper out on the veranda, take Colleen back to the Inn and crash into bed.

Sunday - Sleep in until 8:30, bath and do hair properly for the first time in a week (starting to look like a homeless person), wave at my husband as he goes round and round the field. Stop in town and get snacks and go out to the Inn. Poor Mike, some farm wives would probably stay home in haying season to take him drinks and food during the day, but not me. Today, I am going SCRAPBOOKING!!!! Colleen and I are going to sit and enjoy the day, catch up on our visiting and do a little scrapbooking. At least that was the plan. But, by 5:00pm, he is already broke down and needs me to come home and run a part into Pincher Farm Equipment for repairs. Well, so much for my day vacation. Finish up the laundry, pack all of the totes into my car to get ready for tomorrow.

Week #2 is over, only one more to go. This vacation thing is a myth!!

My "Feel Good" Moment For the Week

I love a good storm!! Seriously, I have never been afraid of thunder, lightning, wind or hail - having owned a roofing company for many years, I know that a good storm brings us a lot of business and everything can be fixed. (Unless, of course, you are dead). I am the kind of person who would make a good storm chaser, the louder the thunder and the bigger the cracks of lightning, the better I like the storm! Even four years ago, when we had hail the size of golf balls and all of my koi were floating dead in the pond, I thought that storm was the best I had ever seen! Two nights ago, we had a killer storm in early morning and I woke up and went outside on the veranda to watch the display. I have to say, it topped all! This one had a down side, however.
The storm only lasted about a half and hour and it was hardly worth going back to bed, so I got dressed, went over to the workshop and started some last minute printing of the title bars for the October calendar club page (which I had forgotten to do after handing in my layout). Everything was working just fine until I went to the Internet to check my emails. I thought that over a nice cup of coffee, before everyone arrived to paint and work, that I would get caught up. No Internet. Computer seemed to be working fine, but I couldn't get on. I called the host and asked if someone could stop by RIGHT AWAY!! You can not be without an Internet connection on shipping week! The dude walked me through all of the normal system checks that he could do over the phone, and he determined that the receiver was not sending out a signal. So today they sent someone by in person to check it out. I was a little frantic by then. Isn't it weird that a day or two without Internet can cause such a surge of anxiety??
Turns out, the receiver was fried by the lightning and the problems only began there. My computer was damaged too - the part that accepts the signal. The guy that came out to fix it is Japanese and was brought right from Japan (didn't speak a word of English when he got here) to do this job with the high speed Internet guys. Taku and I are no strangers. I seem to have a problem keeping my receiver in one location for more than a couple months. He has moved it three times during this renovation alone!! He does even act surprised when I phone to have him come and move it out of the way of some type of construction crew. He is a friendly little fellow, but you have to concentrate hard to understand what he is trying to tell you. (It doesn't help that I am almost computer illiterate, maybe I just don't understand the terms and I am blaming his accent in error). Anyway, after spending most of the afternoon patching up my system so that we could continue shipping, I asked him what I owed him.
Imagine my surprise when he told me that he would like to have a cup of coffee with me - with sugar, please! He went on to tell me that no one "talks" to him. He can be on a job site for hours and hours hooking up a high speed system and no one takes the time to have a conversation with him. He was happy to come out and rehang my receiver every week or so, because I talked to him. He wouldn't take anything for pay, except the cup of coffee, so we sat there and chatted for almost an hour. Turns out that in the four years he has been here, I am only the second person to have a receiver damaged by lightning. And the only person who took the time to stop and talk.
I guess the storm blowing up my receiver was actually a good thing, because after he left, I had this amazing feeling, like I had gotten to know someone - totally by accident. It reminded me of the time that I gave a drywall crew, working on our garage, some cold beer and they left me a drawing and a thank you note on the drywall. It was so cute that I didn't want to paint over it! It was my smiley face for the day!
Thanks Taku! You made my week!!!

My First Week Of Summer Vacation

Okay, I want to go back to work!! Being on vacation is just too much hard labor and after week one, I can see that I am not going to get any R&R and I might as well just give up!! See why?

Evening #1 - go home from the Inn, dead tired and ready to crash, so that I can sleep in the next morning. Discover that Phillip ( our nephew, who is coming to put the new siding on the workshop) is almost in Pincher Creek and he has driven all day without stopping or eating. Turn off bubble bath and get out frying pan. Finally get to bed around midnight, after visiting and catching up on all his news.
Day #1 - Day starts early, no time to sleep in. The rest of the crew arrives around 8:00am and stops for a quick coffee at the house before going over to the workshop. Make breakfast, clean up , start on lunch, clean up, bake dessert for supper, run to town to get freight (siding company forgot to send touch up paint) pick up Slurpies for crew, rain starts, downpour ensues, all crew come to our house to out wait the storm, doesn't happen, feed everybody supper, go over to workshop and clean drywall dust until 11:00pm
Day #2 - Day starts early again. No rain today - got a full day of work in - didn't know that I was part of the work crew now, picked up garbage and plastic to keep it from blowing away, feed crew twice, paint master bathroom for the LAST time, help put in two windows, plant two flower beds and water grass, answer emails until late at night.
Day #3 - Work at Inn with Shelley's group for the day, work crew has to go to town for lunch. Country Lane red siding is looking pretty good - they are half way around the house by now. BIG MESS!! Start cleaning it up, realize that it is time to start supper, feed crew and then go back and clean up the job site. Drywaller has come and sprayed the ceilings, left the plastic on the floor for the painter. It is looking like a workshop around here, the room has a terrible echo.
Day #4 - Last day for the siding crew. Feed them three square meals, clean the house, get ready for the rest of Phillip's family to arrive, as they are meeting him here to start their summer vacation. The siders work very late into the night, with the aid of floodlights. Take them coffee and dessert around 9:00pm - get stuck cleaning up the mess (again) Painter drops by around 9:30 to do a walk through and look at the job. She does NOT want the plastic on the floor, she wants all of the plastic up, the drywall dust washed off the floor and everything clean when she gets here on Monday. GOOD GRIEF!!
Day # 5 - Siding crew comes EXTRA early to beat the rain and pack up all of the tools, Mike and I visit with Haida and the kids while Phillip puts the finishing touches on the house. Megan drops off her untrained puppy, for us to puppy sit while she goes off to have fun in the Okanagan with her boyfriend. She has two dogs, so that makes a grand total of five dogs for the weekend. Phillip's twins begin to torment dogs. They refuse to leave the little puppy alone. Puppy is peeing and pooping all over my house. %^%^$$^& Lock up dogs, send kids to bed early, get a stiff drink, start washing floors. Visit with Phillip and Haida until wee hours of the AM
Day#6 - Company leaves, as soon as they are down the road, Mike and I take over the HUGE task of washing 1100 square feet of red cement floor. After 15 minutes we realize that we are in over our head. Luckily, Caren comes to the rescue and borrows me a 100 year old floor cleaner with spinning heads. THANK GOD!!!!! We pour water on the floor, run the machine back and forth until it lifts off the drywall mud globs and the dust and then I wash the floor with a mop until I get it clean enough to move on. We wash the floor three times and it still is covered with drywall dust. Back hurts so bad that I think I am going to die!!! Little puppy has made a big mess in my porch and the house is upside down from the company. I am not doing so well, starting to hyperventilate.
Day#7 - Today. Come back to workshop, wash the floor one more time - say "piss on that"...Get tractor and clean up all of the big rubble (old windows and doors) and put them in the dump truck, get stung by a bee, wash drywall dust off the floors in the house, paint the master bathroom (again) because I still don't like the way that it looks, go home and help Mike back fill around the new cement koi pond (only get two sides done and I am so hot and sunburned that I get crabby), Edna arrives to do year end books and so I get a reprieve from more back filling. THANK GOD!!! I am aching all over by now. Notice that puppy is no where to be found, spend half an hour looking for him, find him chewing on a dried up leather-like gopher. Lock the little bastard up. Work on year end books until 10:30. Wash paint brushes and roller. I'm going home!

This is just the first week of my summer vacation. By next week I should be just about dead.

Call 911!

A tragic thing happened at work a couple of days ago, utterly horrible, unimaginable...my vacuum cleaner broke. Surely you jest? - you're thinking. Nope. I just stood there in shocked horror as the little plug in thingy popped off as the cord retracted into the bowels of the vacuum cleaner and spun crazily around inside for a few seconds. "NOOOOOOO! " was all I could shriek. I have a personal relationship with my vacuum cleaners, I have even scrapbooked a layout on my Beam vacuum in my house. The breakdown of my good, old faithful,workshop vacuum almost pushed me over the renovation edge! I just stood there, making frantic hand signals for a few minutes before I calmed myself down. I picked up the little dismembered body part and tried to breathe deeply... is there 911 for vacuum cleaners?

If you don't know it by now, I am a cleanaholic. My name is Cindy. It has only been one hour since I last cleaned something. Okay, maybe not even that long, because when I sat down to blog, I dusted the screen on my monitor. Okay, less than five minutes. I have tried to get sober several times without success. I am a repeat offender and I drive everyone around me to drink.

Here are my 10 random, craziest things that I have ever done:

1) Mike and I had weekend guests one time. They arrived Friday evening, after supper. By the time I went to bed, I was already "anxious". Saturday, I planned an excursion that would take everyone out of my house. While we were gone, I arranged to have my house cleaner come in and "clean" before we arrived back home. I lied when we got back and said that the spotless house was a result of it being my day to have the cleaners in. The people never came back.

2) When my new Beam vacuum broke down after only ten months of service, I took it in only to find that the motor was gone. Stupid me!! When they asked me how many times I vacuum on average, I told the truth. They meant per week. When I told them that I vacuum three to five times per day, the look on their faces told me instantly that I had made a tactical error. When I went to pick up the vacuum, they had prepared a waiver, saying that I could not get another free motor, because I was using it excessively. I refused to sign, the conversation got pretty heated. I figure that if the warranty states that the motor is covered for seven years then it should be covered for seven years, regardless of how many times it gets turned off and on in a day! I killed it in ten months! This spring, the company closed up shop and the owners retired. I am sure that they did that because I am about due for another motor!

3) My best friend told me that my children became sickly as young adults, because they had left the germ free environment that we live in and they had entered the real world. (She was dead serious)

4) I wash my bathroom floor every night. Except for nights that I am at the Inn. I have tried to recover from this one, as for some reason it is particularly irritating to Mike. Possibly because crutches and a wet tile floor are not a good idea? So now I have to dry my floor after washing it every night so that he does not slip when he goes in to brush his teeth. See, I am good at compromise.

5) I used to clean after my family went to bed. That came to a very sudden stop, late one night. My old, old vacuum broke down and I had borrowed my mother's. (Do you see a pattern here?)How was I to know that it was louder than mine? When it stopped, I turned the switch off and on an couple of times to see if I had accidentally shut it off. Nope. Maybe it unplugged in the hallway? I poked my head out of the office to look down the hallway and see if it was unplugged. Mike was standing at the outlet, the cord in his hand and he didn't have to say a word. I got the message loud and clear, just by the look on his face! I had to alter my plans and only dust and wash after midnight. Later, he told me that he was not surprised that I didn't roll him onto my side of the bed after he had fallen asleep, change the sheets and then roll him back so that I could finish making the bed. I hadn't thought of that one!

6) When Daniel's girlfriend, Vanessa got a Swiffer dust mop on Christmas Eve and she was so excited that she wanted to go right home to their house and try it out, I knew that she was the right girl for my son. While I was sitting there, smiling my approval, the rest of the family was stunned to silence and were contemplating the repurcussions and the expense of sending both of us to EdgeWood Treatment Center in Nanaimo. B.C.

7) Two cleaning companies have left my employment. One just packed up and left and never came back, I had to fire the other. Now Megan cleans for me, partly because I trained her and partly because she knows that she'll make good money off of me. I clean before and after they clean. I just keep relapsing.

8) With regards to the cleaners that I fired...after I complained several times about cutting corners, they started leaving me check lists of what "should" be cleaned in each room and how often it should be done. When they left me a list one day, they had circled in red, in big bold letters "DOES NOT HAVE TO BE DONE EVERY WEEK''. (I am so dead serious! ) That really ticked me off, am I not the paying customer???? They didn't even bill me for the last two times that they cleaned. Do you think that I am on someone's list somewhere with the words "When hell freezes over" written behind my name?

9) My daughter opened her own cleaning company last year and does about four commercial properties and about six or seven houses. There are so many cleaning products on my grocery bill that she steals my grocery receipts and deducts them for income tax. (I am not kidding).

10) I came home from work one day (Mike was recuperating from his first amputation) and he excitedly told me that there was a lady "just like me" on Doctor Phil that day. When I asked what he specifically meant by that, he said that she had a cleaning compulsion as well. Then he earnestly exclaimed "And you can be fixed!" So if I open up a card someday and there is a gift certificate for Edgewood, I guess I should know that I had it coming! Is there a 12 step program for cleaners???

Until the day that my family commits me, I will happily continue to dust, clean and vacuum everything in sight. I am Cindy and I am a cleanaholic.

If Tomorrow Ever Comes...

I admit I am a serious procrastinator...I have always worked better under pressure and if the pressure is off, well, then I am turned off too. Consequently, I am always running around in a state of panic. Yesterday was a good example:

- Christy drove down from Calgary to get my October calendar page from me, because I had not mailed it to her. I was so busy procrastinating that I was literally finishing it as she was driving into the driveway. I looked all casual when I handed it over, like it had been done for ages, when you could still smell the fumes of Mono Multi wafting off of it. It wasn't even dry! I guess the boss should not be admitting this on a site where all the designers have access, it doesn't look good when "I" miss the deadlines, does it? And, no, Christy will not make house calls to pick up your kits!!!

- The last of the guests left the retreat in the early afternoon, yet at 4:00pm I was just starting cash out, because I really didn't want to look at it - I already knew that I was not going to balance. So I spent the afternoon in the empty workshop, googling a new recipe site that I already knew that I will never cook anything from. But it was fun to kill a couple/three hours in the peace and quiet. Then I realized how late it was and panicked, so I rang off the till, stapled the till tape on the invoices and added a cute little note that said "Sorry Edna, I Can Not Make This Balance" and put it in the box for Edna to deal with. But, I did find a really good sounding recipe for a grilled scrimp and yellow pepper Greek salad! (That I will never make, but I will admire the great photo of the dish)

- As my accountant, Edna, left on Sunday, she made me PROMISE to add up the inventory sheets and balance the insurance account. I did promise (like I had many times before). But how did I know that a lady at the retreat was going to introduce me to the world of digital scrapbooking??? The next three days of the retreat was spent creating a digital 8x8 album for my sister-in-law's memorial service. I was slightly guilty every time that I passed the pile of undone bookwork, but only "slightly". Edna comes again on Sunday to balance everything so I can tell that Saturday night will be an "all- nighter" for me! (At least I know myself)

- In the evening I was too tired to go and weed the garden, which I have been putting off for a couple of weeks now. I had already devised an answer for when one of our farm neighbors asked about the three foot high weeds on the east side of my house. I was going to tell them that it was a test plot for a new type of Round Up and that we had been selected as a test station, but the instructions said that the weeds had to be four feet high. (I thought that would buy me another week!) So I put off weeding the garden, it would be cooler in the morning to do that much weeding, anyway. But this morning I didn't feel like it either, so I slept in a little and then went to town for coffee with Mike. This afternoon, that damn patch of weeds was clearly staring me in the face and it looked like a jungle. Okay, Cindy, you are going to have to deal with it. I did take two, half hearted swipes with the hoe. Then I decided that it would work up much better with softer ground, turned on the sprinkler for a couple hours and then decided that it was too wet. Maybe I should just leave it until tomorrow...

-So here I am, blogging. I could be trying to figure out the cash out problem/problems, so that Edna does not have to try to make sense of it. (Not really interested) I could be adding up the inventory sheets or balance the insurance account. (Boring) I could finish the last few pages of the tribute album and send in the order so that the books will arrive before the memorial service (but I still have a week or so) I could go out in the nice cool calm of the evening and weed that test plot (but I have already had my bath). I should be writing my portion of the MNC newsletter (not inspired) Nope, there is nothing that I want to do tonight.

What would I do tomorrow???