Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Medical Humor

I've been working a string of nights, and the patient volume has been surprisingly low.  We have had some interesting cases... but, that's not what I want to write about tonight.  I'm on Facebook, and since about 2/3 of my friends are in the medical field, there's a plethora of medical humor that abounds.  I thought I would share some of my favorites.  You may have seen them.  Enjoy!  

Oh, and there's some excitement coming up in the next couple of days... a new member of the family will coming soon...!





Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Starting Fresh

Many of you know what happened to our goats about 3 weeks ago.  At that time I couldn't even begin to imagine having goats again.  But, today we took the leap and brought Boots and two new friends, Laverne and Shirley back to the house.

I never imagined my Jeep would be used to transport livestock...

Here's the girls' first look at their new home... for Boots, it was a welcome home...!

Ok, we'll get you out of there soon... 

They quickly got to work earning their keep, either that or they were hungry since we'd both been up at dawn to get them home and no one had eaten yet...

I had a tear in my eye when I led Boots around to the back and to the barn.  I know something was going on with her as she raised her head, sniffing the air catching scents of her Momma Josie and the other 2 former goats.  She seemed a little distressed at times; stopping eating and just staring at the barn.  At one point, I almost went to see if she was doing ok because she seemed frozen.  But, then, a flicker of the tail and back to eating.

I still don't know what to think.  I was a little surprised when my husband suggested we get Boots back with a friend or two.  

We didn't kill the bear.  I didn't get my closure.

I went out last week and looked at the goats that were available.  I picked these two because they seemed the cleanest of the group, not for any personality or friendliness, or because I liked their looks.  They were just replacement goats.  They weren't Betty and Josie.  They look like how Jazz would have grown up to look... would have...

I spent the morning like a robot cleaning out the barn, putting up the hay and laying down the pine shavings.  I remembered the salt lick and the feeding container.  I got the water bucket.  It didn't have the same excitement as the first time.  I stood in the yard wondering if I had missed anything.

Then Boots came over and stood by me; rested slightly against me and let me pet her.  Soon, Laverne and Shirley came over, nuzzling my leg, pulling at my shirt;  my husband was doing work on the fence and Shirley started following him around, going wherever he went, letting him pet and rub her back... tail up in the air and wagging.  

And, so now I have goats again.  And, they are a part of the family.

Speaking of which... 
I am happy to introduce
Marshal Dillon
born July 11th
who will be coming home in 2 weeks at the tender age of 7 weeks
...eek!


He's sure a handsome fellow...!


Tuesday, August 7, 2012

How Does Your Garden Grow...?

I've been posting a lot about death recently, so let's try to focus on life...

We've had our home about a year now.  I think I've mentioned before that the prior owners didn't do a whole lot of upkeep.  Here's the main "valley view" area on the side of the house when we first looked at the property...


Once I actually bought the property, I hired someone to start cutting through the mess before we took possession of the house.  See the before and after?  Amazing what one man and a weed whacker can do...


Then hubby got the tractor and the clearing really started.  Wow... opened that space right up..!


Just a few trees left around...


Then even those trees were gone...


Then around May I got my first batch of seedlings started...


And even planted in some box containers on the deck...


Hubby got out the tractor and the disc harrier and started churning up some level land...


Time for fencing against goats, deer, etc...


Seedlings started coming up...


And now look at those lovely rows of corn, turnips, pumpkins, sunflowers.  There's chard and mustard greens.  Even snow peas at the ends of the rows.  My cucumbers and carrots are not doing so well, but they're hanging in there.  It's also amazing how fast the weeds come up..!  It was nothing but dirt when we planted the rows... where did they all come from..?



My little boxes are producing enough lettuce that I haven't had to buy any all summer...


And I get some radishes and small carrots from the other box...


Salad, anyone...?


I can't wait as the season continues and it starts to turn into fall... those pumpkins should be just about ready for Halloween...!

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Small Town Incrimination

A story from the road...

After meeting up with some friends in Jacksonville, OR we continued westward heading to Lakeview, OR.  The city is known to be "friendly to hang gliders" as could be witnessed by signage all over town and in the local restaurants.  We decided to take the dog for a walk around town to stretch our legs and take some pictures.


In fact, I had just taken the above picture when all of a sudden we started hearing a hissing/ticking sound... If you've ever seen one of these, you know what I am talking about:

It was defect on the side of a tire on the last truck seen in the mural photo. (The above photo is what happened to our moving van when we came cross country.)  Anyway, it's like 90-something degrees outside and this thing starts getting bigger and bigger.  I'm just telling my husband it's about to blow and turning away when "BOOM!!!" the thing pops.  

People across the street start yelling as we're trying to recover our hearing from the explosion.  There's a big hole on the side of the tire, and it's flat.  As we considered where the owner of the truck might be (local bar we guess), we took some more photos and continued our walk eventually heading back to our hotel room.

We'd just gotten the dog settled in the room and were out the door heading to dinner when a sheriff's vehicle pulled into the parking lot.  I figured they were just going to ask us about the tire that blew, but it seems we were being accused of slashing the tire!  What we found out later (once the local police chief and another police officer arrived and asked several more questions) is that there's been a rash of tires slashings in the last couple of weeks, and when the tire blew, someone reported that "a couple with a german shepherd" were in parking lot when the tire was slashed.

The sheriff seemed reasonable, but one of the other officers seemed a little more accusatory and brusk telling us "don't leave until I get back" when we explained about the truck tire defect blowing and showing some of the pictures we had taken of the truck before the event.  After a few more questions and taking our information, they let us go and we headed off to dinner.

DH was very upset by the whole event, and I can understand.  Not only did someone acuse us of doing something which we didn't do, but the local law enforcement hadn't even investigated the scene.  Then there's the matter of the sheriff showing up at our hotel which means someone either followed us back to our hotel or the sheriff just happened upon us while searching the area for someone matching our description.  We also found out that the accusing party was known to the cops for some previous belligerent behavior so DH was a little upset that they took their word/report at all.

Anyway, it made for an interesting, um, welcome to the small town... Yeah...









Featured Post...

The Mid 40's are in the Books

For some reason I never got around to writing about traveling to National Parks numbers 44, 45 and now 46...! Back at the end of June...