Where all the money goes

Early this morning, Stud Muffin got up and washed the Bad Boy Buggy. See, it was making a 90 mile trip (not by itself, but on a trailer, silly!) to get some much needed service. We rely on this buggy every single day, but the batteries were shot, the wheels were out-of-round and bouncy and the headlights didn't work.



Nothing a couple of bags of money won't put right. *Sigh*

But the nice man who picked it up promised to take good care of it (for a price) and hoped to return it to us early next week.



Then there is Kubota Jane, my beloved tractor. I took her out of the shop the other morning to remove the bush hog mower and hook up the box blade to grade the roads.



Once I hopped down from the cab to wrestle the mower off I noticed that something wasn't quite right. Can you see it??



The front tire is not only flat, but almost completely off the rim!! Well, she needed service too... oil change, clutch adjustment, Pap smear and mammogram.

Red mower off, yellow box blade... not on!

So, tomorrow, a different man will come with a much bigger trailer and haul Jane off to be fixed.

Nothing another bag full of money won't fix. *Sigh*

And that is where the money all goes. Taking care of the stuff that takes care of you is expensive. Good thing I like margarine and crackers for dinner!

I may just live

Yesterday, Stud Muffin bought me a gift. I sent him to the pharmacy for some life-sustaining medication and he came back with this:



A variety pack of nostalgic-wrapped Hershey's bars found at Sam's Club. Reese's peanut butter cups, two kinds of Hershey bars and Mr. Goodbars.

Stud Muffin would make a great pharmacist!! I think I'll make it through another week!

Revenge of the Beaver

The dang beaver is at it again! A drive across the bridge showed that they had not, in fact, moved to Las Vegas where it is warm and they have all-you-can-eat buffets.



They had, instead, decided that they needed a new swimming pool complete with lounge chairs and cabana boys.



Luckily, the intrepid beaver hunter, my sister Christina, came for a short visit and was more than game to attack the new dam. If anyone mentions the two women who appear to be nothing but enormous breasts squeezing out of waders, I will never post a picture again! But here they are, in the Bad Boy Buggy, off to wreck the damn dam... again.



It took about an hour and a half of hard work, pulling sticks out and digging up the submerged pipe and anchor blocks. There was mud flinging everywhere!! But we did it, repositioning the drain pipe and placing the blocks to hold it securely.



The water drained out of the pool, we got the stream flowing again and sent the cabana boys packing!



We went home dirty, but happy with our effort!



BTW, Christina, 4 days later, the bugger is rebuilding the dam again! You better come back!

Today I planted garlic.

Separating garlic cloves.

Sorry no planting pictures, I kinda forgot! I got my garlic from Hood River Garlic in Oregon, a wonderful family owned organic garlic farm. All garlic, all the time! Their garlic grows so well, I only have to plant a new crop every other year to keep my stinky breath all year long! This crop will be ready to harvest in July, but the scapes will provide some garlicky goodness in the spring.

And of course, school is never far from my mind. I am half way through the semester, and can't wait to be done with it! It is pretty much all I do, which is why there aren't many posts these days. Unless you guys want to help me learn how to name hydrocarbons (1,2-dimethyloctane, etc) or memorize all the arteries and veins in the human body, we don't have much to talk about!

In fact, today's Sunday comics sums the situation up pretty well.



If you can't read this "Zits" comic, the father is asking if the son has much homework tonight, and the son says "A little" while he shovels books and notes onto a conveyor belt into his bedroom window.

Yep. That's me!

I'm mmmoldingggg....

Okay, now say that like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz, and you'll get a sense of what I'm feeling!

The rain just won't stop! In the 16 days since the start of October, it has rained 13 of them. Really! And when the rain comes like that, the mold spores have a party, get drunk and wake up with a hangover all over my stuff!

Like the back gate.

Windy, blurry picture day!

All of the porch railings, etc are white. Well, they should be white. But now??



It's time to get out the pump sprayer and some bleach water!

The ground is completely soaked, squishing whenever you step outside. Oh, I know that it is not as bad as the people who are getting flooded out of their homes, and for that, I am thankful! But when I put down the plastic to solarize the vegetable beds, I was counting on a bit of solar, you know? Now all I have is mossy pools on top of the plastic. A swimming pool for mosquitos, if you will!



The water has also cut some ditches in the rock surrounding the vegetable beds. I had the misfortune of stepping in one a while back and falling down hard. Felt like Ramona Quimby with her scraped knees!



And all that pretty mulch I worked so hard to put down in the front flower beds... gone, gone, gone!



There is some good out of all this rain. I'm getting some pretty cool moss growing in the flower beds!



Pay no attention to the weeds and the missing mulch! It's just an optical illusion!

I'm also getting some neat leaf prints on the driveway.



A final note: Stud Muffin thought it would be fun to show you how (terribly) I look when I study at night! Surrounded by my computer (usually two) books and papers, all while trying to participate in family life in front of the television. It's sad, really.




Oh, and it's raining again. *Sigh*

Things that go beep in the night!

Cartoon by media.rd.com




I am so tired of things that beep, beep, beep. I swear, if one more electronic appliance thing beeps at me, I might just grab a gun and plug it. Just like Booth did on Bones when he shot the ice cream truck clown. This has not been a good appliance week, folks! I blame Stud Muffin, because he's been out of town for a few weeks.

It started two weeks ago. I went into Studly 's office to walk on the treadmill. Beep, Beep, Beep. The smoke detector wanted new batteries. Fine. Got out my last two 9 volt batteries and replaced the two in that room. Bought more batteries and replaced all the other ones in the house so they wouldn't go off in the middle of the night. I hate that!

Then there is the washing machine. It doesn't want to fill with water and quietly go about its business. It wants to beep at me and tell me "F1" which I am sure is graphic machine swearing. It wants me to have to stand next to it and clear the profanity 3 or 4 times to get the cycle started, and then stand around when it wants to rinse and push the button some more. It took 2 1/2 weeks to get a replacement valve, cuz they didn't sell very many of these fancy-pants Whirlpool washers, so nobody has replacement parts. Finally got one, but after the guy put it in, the problem (and the song) remains the same. Can't wait to find out how much the next repair part will cost, and if anyone has one.

Washer and replaced valve

In the middle of the night... more beeping. I ran to the middle of the house trying to locate the annoying sound and found that my oven had turned itself on. Well, it started to turn itself on. It wanted me to press "start" so it could start heating. But at 3 AM, there is nothing I really want to bake. Pressing "clear" only stopped the beeping for a moment, and we were back at it. Finally had to shut the whole oven off at the circuit breaker. It even starts this routine when it is already baking something!!! Stupid, stupid little machine! Repair guy says it needs a whole new control panel... at least $150 dollars, plus his time, of course.

The same oven that blew out its own window early in our life together!

"Push Start, push start, push..."

Last night, after disconnecting the oven and silencing the washer, I sat in my chair to study and watch a little television (Yeah, don't start with me.) The next thing I knew... "What is that beeping?!?" It was the friggin' weather radio telling me about thunderstorms in some county I didn't even know existed. I'm telling you, the next appliance to make a peep is going to get it!! I'll tell the repairman that it shot itself.

In other news... I got my acceptance letter to the nursing program! Guess my scores were good enough. Now I need to go to a 4 hour orientation where they tell us about the drug test and background checks that are required before we can start. All I can say is, none of that had better beep!!

The sun is finally shining!!

Okay, well, it's actually been shining for a few days now, but I've been busy!

First, I need to show you how the great pear adventure ended up.



This is my handy-dandy outdoor cooker! Stud Muffin bought it for me for Mother's Day or my birthday, so some such holiday, but I haven't set it up to use before now. I figured it was a good investment in case the World Ends As We Know It. This way, not only will I have a grill, but another fire-producing setup to boil water or whatever.

I can't show you the bottling process, because I was much too busy to take pictures. But here they are!



Seven quarts of homegrown pears in light syrup. And look at these cute labels! No, not my lousy handwriting!



They were a free download from over at Bitter Betty Blogs.

So, on the first day of ... er...daylight, I ran out to gather as much basil as I could hold. I was just sure it had all rotted away in the rain, but there was plenty. I even left some to see if I would get more growth before the frost comes, and to let some of the flowers go to seed to save for next year,



I decided to chop up all the basil I brought in and freeze it for use during the winter.



I picked all the leaves off of the stems. Millions of them. The house smelled divine! heck! I smelled divine... for hours!



Then I whizzed them in the food processor with just a bit of water so that I could...



freeze the green mush into cubes!

When I'm not studying wieners and hoo-hoos, I am working outside. Stud Muffin and I have been chipping away at the pile of downed trees behind my studio. I guess I don't have a "before" picture, not that it would be anything much to look at.



Well, this was a couple of days ago, after I dragged a cedar tree out from under a bunch of branches.

But when we aren't chopping up the branches with the woodchipper, I am making bundles of twigs to use as kindling.



I have enough bundles to last me awhile, so I pushed the rest of the junk back into the trees with my tractor.





Better??

Now these last pictures are for Studly, since he is away from home at the moment.

My road man came out to fix some washed out areas of my new-last-year road.



After he filled in the rather large trench caused by all the rainwater, he put down rock.





Hope this stays put this time!