Happy New Year!

I never make resolutions, mainly because I don't like to focus on what I seem to fail most miserably at doing in the first place. I would like, however, to focus on those things which make my life more meaningful. I don't know that I ever wrote anything meaningful in my blogs, but I do know that I found a lot of joy in the moments, thinking to myself that I would go home and blog about this. We shall see. If this one post is all that ever happens this year, well at least I didn't do any worse than last year!

Poor, cold Bonnie

Well, the St Bernard just couldn't be happier about this weather, but our Golden Retriever is beginning to feel her age. I had seen her holding up a foot now and then, but couldn't decide if her feet were just cold or if one was hurting. After Clyde took her for a run out to the other side of the road, I started to think it didn't really matter either way!! He was running around busting through snow drifts and she was doing well just to keep herself going toward the house! She looked so pathetic that I let her in the mud room to warm up a bit. Well, we don't really have anywhere to relax there anymore, so I let her come in, but just inside the door. I got the door shut and she laid down in front of it. Her eyes kept saying, "I'm a good dog. I'll stay right here!!" We got the little snowballs off her eyelashes and dug a few out of her paws and she spent a couple hours there, napping in peace and a little bit of warmth. Every once in a while, she would raise her head and get up to stretch, but then start panting like crazy. The third time, she looked at us like she was ready to go back out. Michael opened the door and she headed right out. Most likely to see what rules Clyde had broken while she was gone!! He seems totally unaffected by the cold!!

Important Medical Statistics

Not making any good guy vs bad guy judgements, but check this out:

Doctors
(A) The number of physicians in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by Physicians per year are 120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 17.1%.
Statistics courtesy of U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services.

Now think about this: Guns:
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000. (Yes, that's 80 million)
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.00188%.
Statistics courtesy of FBI

So, statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners.

Remember, 'Guns don't kill people, doctors do.'

FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR.

Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets completely out of hand!!!!!

[Out of concern for the public at large, I withheld the statistics on lawyers for fear the shock would cause people to panic and seek medical attention!]

Worm Mucking with my boys

Apparently there is a certain procedure involved in collecting night crawlers for fishing. I got the call this morning that the water would be turned on around 4pm. We told Michael when he got home, but he wasn't up for the challenge. The boys called my dad, but weren't having much luck with him, either. So I made the mistake of saying, "So it's up to Mom??" They scooped that one up!! They found me a pair of boots and a headlamp and were going to help me set my alarm. That was where I drew the line. I'm sorry, but a few worms at 9:30 is better than no worms at all. So we went out there and found that, sure enough, there would be a few early worms. (Yeah, that was bad.) So I learned that those little suckers are incredibly fast!! You don't just pick them up!! You come close and they scoot down their holes faster than you can get your finger curled around them!! You really have to do a palm grab, hold tight, and PULL!! Michael said that's really the midnight difference. If we had waited a bit longer, more of them would be completely out of their holes and not as easily able to flash down them.

Well, my boys are pretty proud of old Mom! I kept up pretty well and they think I got as many as they did. Better than nothing, anyway!

Lessons Learned

Well, everyone learns at a different rate, but I believe my kids may have leapt ahead today. Chores have been slipping a bit in urgency and this morning we found a very messy kitchen and a dishwasher that hadn't been run. Remembering back to the lessons of his mother, Michael had them completely unload the dishwasher and wash everything by hand. Apparently, when he and his brother were little, they didn't clean their dishes very well and their mom unloaded all the cupboards and made them rewash everything. The kids were reminded several times throughout this recollection that they had no dishwasher to help! There was plenty of time for reminiscing during this procedure!

This was certainly a time of life lessons. We'll see the outcome in the future!

Mother's Day

I've been telling the kids for weeks what I wanted for Mother's Day. Just a simple finch feeder and black thistle seed... NOT mix! I only wanted the simple finch feeder because the thistle seed is so expensive. Well, I was pretty sure they had it, but the only problem was that their dad didn't ask for their assistance!! He stopped by Walmart after work and picked up a couple movies. Now I really do love movies, but I was really looking forward to that finch feeder. So when the kids handed me the movies, I yelled, "Oh, cool!! A finch feeder!!" Well everyone was laughing at me and trying to get me to go outside and holler for Patrick, the cat. What I found was the biggest finch feeder I've ever seen! It's a bit more of a 5 star hotel with a casino! It's even pulling the pole over! He has a really good point, though. I usually go through 2 or 3 feeders a summer, and spend a lot of time repairing them. This one has metal stands, heavy duty walls and a wire hanger. I'm really excited that this one might last a couple windstorms! Patrick is just enjoying the birds it brings around. I think he's calling it the Bait Bar!

"Ya just have to save the whales, don't ya??"

Well, it's not like I mean to, but I just can't walk away from someone or some animal in trouble. This time it was a dog stuck in a culvert and Matthew was just as upset as I was. We actually had a field trip that we needed to get to, but we just couldn't walk away. We tried to coax the dog out, but we could tell which way he was facing and that he wasn't going to get out that way. We went to the gas station to see what kind of help we could find. We got a shovel and a hoe to try to clear out some of the mud that was making the tube smaller, but some farmers showed up and could tell he was way too far back for that to work. They tried several different things, but finally decided to go get their bobcat and dig it out. They suggested that I call a good welder who might be able to cut the culvert open. I was trying to avoid that call. We went back to the gas station for some coffee while I tried to work up the courage to call my dad. By the time I found my courage, he was already there and calling me. That's when he started in on the whales... which, I'd like to say, I have never embarked on a project to save whales. Never. I asked if we could get a cougar once, but never a whale.

Anyhoo... these three poor farmers, who were already rained out and bored, showed up with the bobcat. I was feeling pretty bad at this point. This was looking more like a stray that we were pouring so much time and energy into saving, but it was hard to think about what else to do. You can walk away and let it die and stink up the place for a month or two, along with plugging up a culvert that is supposed to drain water. You can shoot the animal so it doesn't suffer, but that doesn't change the stink and plugged culvert. Or you can go along with the farmers who are well into the project that I never asked them to do and was very careful NOT to guilt them into it. They were the ones who called my dad, too, so why he said he's sending ME the bill is beyond me.

They got the dirt moved and the culvert exposed, then recalculated where they thought the dog was. Dad started cutting about 2-3 feet behind him, but it was noisy, smoky and scary and the dog managed to move a couple more feet away. They got it open and got in to see him and decided that no one could reach him, so they took Daddy home to fetch one of his leghold snares, a lot like an animal handler's pole. Patrick got it on the dog's back feet enough to pull him within reach, then pulled him out. The poor guy was exhausted and took a little water and just enjoyed the fresh air. They moved him over to solid ground where the kids and I tried to encourage him a bit while Dad welded the culvert back together and Patrick buried it again. The dog was up and walking around a bit when we were getting ready to leave, but he just couldn't get up and over the railroad tracks. Dad and Sam carried him over the tracks and he headed home, so we're hoping this story is over. Now I have an awful lot of cookies to bake to thank everyone!!