Wood pile stacked! (At least until Dad gets a wild hair or the ground dries out.)

Computer virus or STD or something nasty like that had me down last week but I’m up and running again. Uninstalling Anti-Virus Number 1? Real pain in the ass. I’m not a computer geek so all that shit gets me yelling and stewing. All good though. $30 in new spyware and it’s all good. Apparently, this new bug infects your computer and rots your programs and data. Yummy. Like carpenter ants.

One of the ewes had twin buck lambs last night. She’s one of the black ewes and Dad and I can’t tell them apart, but judging by her bag, it’s the same ewe that had the twin ewe lambs last year. The other ewe’s bag swelled to large the cows got jealous last year so we’re pretty sure it wasn’t her that lambed. No word yet on if we got more lambs today.

Maxine is doing very well, though the whole leash law thing kinda went to hell. Keeping an eight month old puppy on a leash so she won’t overdo it with the other dog? Not gonna happen. She gets herself so tangled that either she or I is gonna break something.

The edits for Debris, my book, oughta be done today. I keep saying that. But these edits feel good, so that’s all I can say, I guess.

Been learning how to draw. Been reading about pirates. Scoping some writing contests and magazines to submit work to. It’s all kinda ho-hum this week without cursing and damning all technology since stone tools all to hell over the anti-virus. Made some awesome pancakes the other day and got to ride horses on Saturday. It’s another nice day today, but the weathers supposed to change, so we’re enjoying it. Something about its Michigan, wait five minutes.

'Riting, Farming, and Reading (The Three Rs...err, wait...)

I’m loving Theory of a Deadman’s “Hate My Life” right now. I think it’s funny in a weird context. Example: the line “I hate my job/ my boss is a dick/ I don’t get paid nearly enough to put up with all of his shit.” In my world, I work for myself, so I think it’s funny. My boss can be a real dick. Okay, maybe it’s just me, but I get a kick out of it.

Worked until almost 1 a.m. last night, so a little slow this morning. Excited about writing today though, so that’s good. Yesterday it just wasn’t there. So I ran errands instead. Maxine went with me and I think she had fun. She likes to look at stuff and smell things. It was nice so I could leave the window down while we drove and let her smell up the town. I tried to be quick so she didn’t have to wait long. Five stops in an hour and a half quick enough?

Dad’s been working on building a mobile chicken coop on an old (see free) snowmobile trailer frame. He likes doing stuff like that, taking old things and making something new. He comes up with some pretty interesting things sometimes. We get to order baby chicks when he gets the coop done and I can start seedlings next week on the full moon. At least I think it’s the full moon. I can’t see the calendar from here and I’m too lazy to get up and look. It’s one of the first years I’ve been excited about spring in a long time. Usually, I greet it grudgingly, since spring means summer is on the way. And summer is fine, but it’s, well, hot.

It’s odd how certain books or authors find you when you’re ready to receive them. I never would have enjoyed Stephen King before now. Granted, the Dark Tower series is different from his other work, but he’s a writer I’ve really learned a lot from about telling the damn story. But I don’t think I would have appreciated it at any other time than right now. I also started the Tao Te Ching last night, Stephen Mitchell’s translation, and wow. That old Chinese guy makes a lot of sense. And Mitchell’s interpretation really helps the process along. I’d try to describe it, but I can’t do it justice. Read the damn book.

Other than that, nothing new. Joseph came out and helped with chores this week and Maxine continues to improve. I can take her stitches out on Monday and she’s been totally off pain meds since the weekend. I can’t even describe the relief. I guess it’s right up there with a child in pain and healing. My animals are like my kids sometimes and I get upset when I can’t fix them. That’s why farming is something you either have in you or you don’t. I can’t control my empathy and need to do what I do anymore than I can change the color of my hair or the drive to write. I can dye it, cover it up, ignore it, but it’s still there, the need to do whatever the hell it is that I do. And it’s easier to learn to channel that energy than go crazy (probably literally) from the ignoring it.

The Great Prison Break

Made pages already today. YEY! Very encouraging, especially since getting pills down the Maxine has proved increasingly difficult. Yesterday Dad was a hero since he remembered that when I gave pills to the old dog I hid them in peanut butter sandwiches. It took the Old Man Max a few months to get wise to it. It took Maxine about a day. I think she gets suspicious when we give her too many treats. So we’re back to me getting the shit bit around of my hands trying to shove melting gelcap antibiotics down her throat. Oh. Joy. But she’s happy and alive and last week that was all I could have asked for.

Finally got back on track for the third Taylor book. I keep a forward momentum on rough drafts and keep figuring out where I need to go fix the old books. A weird way to write, but it works for this series. The magic system is tricky, since sometimes it surprises even me and if all else fails, throw in a demon or have Tay get pissed and get in a fight. I keep swearing I’ll quit talking about my characters like they’re real people, but so far no luck. Oh well.

Before Maxine got hurt last week, I meant to blog about the great prison break. Last Monday, I get a series of frantic calls from Gram and Dad about 7:30 in the morning. Now, I leave my phone upstairs in the morning and rarely hear it ring while I’m drinking coffee, etc, but I happened to go upstairs and caught like the eighth call and sixth voicemail from Dad and Gram: cows are out. Apparently, Gram opened her curtains and the entire herd, minus the three across the road, were all bedded down in her front garden, watching the morning traffic. I always tell her to just leave ‘em, they’ll go back in, but she got a little spooky and since she couldn’t get ahold of me, the eighty-five year old (I think) went out to try and put them back in herself. Dad had gone to work and was already in Diamondale, so he couldn’t help. Finally, I got down there to find the cow herd across the road at the little house and the big bull and the little bull trying to get at each other across the fence.

Now. I digress for some backstory. Big Red (the big bull) and Little Red (the younger bull) are good buddies. Like really good buddies. We call them Brokeback Bulls around here. Get my drift? All winter they bellow at each other across the fences at sundown like they miss each other so badly. So the jail break comes and both bulls are like, “Cows? What cows? I want him!”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: the cow herd is ambling toward the spring gate on the pasture side of the farm where we wintered the horses and three herd of cattle. The horses are now in the barn, so it’s just Little Red and two heifers. My plan is to get around them and open the gate, then run back and shoo the cows onto pasture. It’s March, but they’ll be contained. Oh well.

Instead, I drop the spring gate and the cows dash the other direction at a dead run, go back across the road, and run right into the barn yard. Score. Except one head. Big Red. I try to use my bull voice, but I’ve just sprinted down the road in heavy winter coats and knee-high rubber boots, and I can’t breathe. Mental note: up the cardio intervals. Anyway, Big Red is running all around, I can’t yell, so I get the reinforcements: Zip. Now Zip doesn’t herd cattle, he explodes them. Usually in the wrong direction. In this case, his track record follows through and he explodes Big Red right across the road to go romance Little Red again. I dash to close the gate on the cows before they escape and tell Gram she can go do what she does. After all, she doesn’t need to be out there helping me herd the bull. She’s scared to death of him, even though he’s one of the nicest, easiest bulls to get along with that I’ve ever known.

Ten minutes later and about six trips sprinting up and down the road, Big Red is lucky I don’t have a shotgun or he’d be a dead, rotting corpse in the middle of State Rd. I try to get him to go in the gate where Little Red and the heifers are, but one heifer escapes and Big Red keeps running past the gate. I can’t keep that gate open without Little Red and 5T escaping, so I try to run him around to the spring gate that’s still open. No luck. Keep in mind: sprinting, mud boots, heavy coats, dog not listening. Do I need to say I cursed the air several shades darker than just blue?

Finally, I backed my car up to the gate, opened it, turned the bull around from his b-line to the next-door neighbor’s yard, and pushed him through the gate. Score!

Then I realized the spring gate across the pasture was still open and Big Red and Little Red are butting heads as they run straight for it.

My bull can cross the pasture in 8 seconds and so can I.

Luckily, Little Red thought the gate was still there, and didn’t get out, but it was a near thing. The escaped red heifer went in a lot easier and I managed to capture all the cattle. Near as we can figure, Big Red or someone got rubbing on the main gate and it fell open. Actually, other than how fucking pissed I was at the goddamn bull, it worked out well. We’d been wanting to pull the bull anyway before he tried to breed the two six month old heifer calves still nursing on their mommas. But Gram’s yard has hoof prints about eight to ten inches deep and she freaked about the foot high piles of cow shit.

Maybe she’ll believe me now when I say the cows won’t go anywhere. Will post updates on how the yard project goes. Dad shut down attempts to get a landscaping service in to spread black dirt and reseed the whole damn thing. (Her lawn is about an acre.) We live on a farm. Animals, regardless of species, get out and make holes. This is far from the first time and surely not the last.

Boy, is she gonna love it when we get a boy and girl pig. ;-)

Miscellany

The Max is getting better every day. She's bored as all hell, so it's getting increasingly difficult to keep her drugged and calm. She can break the bone either at the original break site or above or below the plate if she gets too wild. And no one accounted for how hard her tail whips from side to side, moving her whole body. Talk about the tail wagging the dog, that's exactly what she looks like. Nights have been good. She wakes Dad up to go out and seems to sleep most of the time. Of course, if she was jumping on and off the couch, neither Dad nor I would be any wiser.

Yesterday and today have been beautiful March days with clear skies and mild (for March) weather. Dad even took over the Max-watch so I could get out and walk around outdoors yesterday afternoon. Mostly its been hang with Max and keep her laying down or at least not cavorting around with her kong.

I got a rejection from a magazine yesterday for a story I submitted. No big deal. I guess if it comes down between that and Maxine I'd rather have the rejection, but still. Rejections build character, right? And short stories have never been my thing.

Been reading Stephen King the past few weeks and have really enjoyed the first two books of The Dark Tower series. I never got into horror, but this is more fantasy oriented and I like Roland the Gunslinger a whole lot. The Grand Ledge library has been a wonderful resource lately for books I want to read but don't want to buy. I also read a book on pumas in Michigan that was very informative. After seeing puma tracks when I lived up north, the big cat has intrigued me ever since. My grandparents used the GL library a lot and said they'd get some books that were good and some that were bad and they wouldn't read. I laughed when I got two books last week that I liked and two that I didn't. Gram knows what she's talking about I guess. But the error didn't cost a thing. Gotta love libraries when you just dropped $900 on a damn dog. ;-)

Maxine Update 4 - Home Again

And here is the baby girl's brand new, reinforced leg.

The Max is home and recovering from surgury. She came through it all like a champ and has a new plate in her leg to match the ones in my jaw. We have a bed on the floor and I'm sitting with her doing the writing thing while she naps. Supposedly, these first few days will be the easiest to keep her down as she's still sore and sleepy. The first two weeks are critical to her recovery and if those go well, she should be back chasing cows in two months, so the middle of May or so. I've been alternatively griping and happy that I work at home lately. Today is one of those days I'm really glad I have this time. And that I'm out of college (oh wait, that's everyday... ;-)

Maxine Update 3 - The last one today I swear

Been sitting with the baby girl and the laptop all day and I smell like dog pee. Or maybe it's just her. I'm not sure. Anyway, she keeps wanting to get up and run around which she isn't quite up too with only three operating appendages, so we've been trying to keep her subdued all day. She has an appointment to get her leg reevaluated and maybe set tomorrow at 9am. Fingers crossed.

Maxine Pics

My poor broke baby. I'm honestly not sure why she looks so wide-eyed surprised. She looks normal when I'm not trying to take a picture.