Never thought retirement would be like this

NancyNGA said:
Came across this picture by accident. These are those prizes you used to get in capsules from gumball machines. I would beg for those whenever we went to the grocery store when I was a kid. Even now I'm jonesing for that little red knife. Some passions never die. Sigh...:)

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Oh, yes! No trip to the grocery store would be complete without a long drawn-out wheedling to get one of those out of the machine. You could little stuff for a dime or really prime stuff for a quarter.
 

Okay, I confess...years ago I loved the horse race game at the fair...you know the carnival area. I don't want to think how many quarters I spent. I had all the "trophies". I know I'm among friends and won't be judged :fun:


Well, from the tiny plastic horse to the ginormous metal one. No, I didn't get the one with the clock in its belly. :(


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Nancy..your post about the knife in the plastic bubble lead me to think of this....my sordid past!

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Karen, we used to have a horse just like that at home! Even had a ring hole its nose. I never knew where it came from or what happened to it. So maybe someone won it as a prize. I forgot all about it. What a coincidence.
 

Guilty as charged, in my youth & still celebrating what our county called 'Peach Days' in early Sept. 3 days of parades, gaiety and a carnival midway. I never rode the rides, my weakness was the games. One year I got into tossing dimes into plates. Got quite good in my mind, 1st level win was those rear view mirror dice you see in the Cheech & Chong movies. I never took them back uptown to upgrade to the next level and ended up with 27 pair.

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Son_of_Perdition said:
I never took them back uptown to upgrade to the next level and ended up with 27 pair.
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Twenty-seven pair! Did you keep them all?

You folks sound more experienced than me. The only one I remember was the fishing thing, where you tried to hook a (plastic) fish and each one had a number on the bottom. I never won anything.:sorrow: Safer to play the gumball machines.:)
 
Since last mention of the goats you could just cut and paste this statement in several times:
"Checked on the goats, swept barn, put out food, they were all fine. "
Boring. Until yesterday.

It was a beautiful day, high 61, no wind. It is a long walk down to the barn, maybe 300 feet past the fence gate. If there's no wind the goats always come out of the barn before I get there to see who it is, because they can hear the gate latch. They didn't come out. Starting to feel uneasy.

I walked in and they just stood there like: Who is this person? Just ignore her and maybe she will go away. (Not normal)

Dixie is lying in the corner shivering, doesn't get up to beg for ginger snaps. (Not normal)

Shorty won't eat ginger snaps at all. (Not normal)

The top banana goat we call Green (involves spray paint, probably explained already) has a hard lump the size of a golf ball on the side of his jaw. I wiggle it around to see if it's attached to bone. Could be a deep abscess. Too deep to drain if so.

Go back to the house for a thermometer and antibiotic. Decide to start pen-G on Green, will wait and see if it starts to get better or worse.

Dixie's temp is 101.8 (102.0 is normal). Now she acts fine.

Check Green again, and the lump is gone from his cheek.

Boy that penicillin works fast!!!

Evidently it was some hard chunk of cud stuck between his cheek and his teeth, and I dislodged it by wiggling it around. I panicked. It's always something new with them. There has never been a repeat of any illness. All this learning is going to waste. Shouldn't have given a shot, but I panicked, because we lost one once by being too cautious about starting antibiotics.

Rusty is just fine as usual. (darn)

So the whole day could be summarized in one sentence:

Checked on the goats, swept barn, put out food, they were all fine.

But it sure was exhausting this time.
 
Awww Nancy, exhausting's okay when the end result is good. Glad your goatkids weren't really sick, and you didn't really mean that about poor Rusty, did you? :p End lesson, boredom is good. :love_heart:
 
This is my final attempt to photograph some of the erosion terraces out on the farm, taken this week.

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I simply can't get a picture that does them justice...
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So, my solution is to keep a 1951 aerial photograph of the property. :) This way I can get them all, in only one picture.:playful:

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A few of those terraces are only about 10 feet wide. The original owner planted cotton on every little bit of cleared area that was available, according to the neighbors.
 
Meanderer:

Though I live in the valley of the red clay, I fear not erosion, because I *own* the valley. :playful:

Every bit of that property drains into the lake. In other words, the property is a big bowl, with a lake at the bottom. If anything, I will get some of my neighbor's dirt. The lake will never go dry, but it may get filled up with dirt one day. Deepest point I could find when I first bought it was 29 feet.
 
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Cut my hair a few days ago, and the current avatar is exactly the way the *cut* looks (well, at least for a few minutes after I comb it), but the *color* is not. My hair is a mousy brown. That looks like what they might call strawberry blonde. I'm seriously thinking about coloring it that shade just for fun. I'm leaving the picture up there for a few days to see if it starts to annoy me.

Just checking in to report progress.
I've got the main part of the kitchen all ready to paint, in fact more than ready because I kept thinking of more things to do to put off painting. But I did do a large patch on one wall just to see how the green color will look. It's going to be great!:)

But there is still a problem with the breakfast nook area. The previous electrician added a switch for an outdoor light and cut the hole for the box too close to an existing receptacle. So he had to use a metal cover plate and cut it off to fit. Plus he put it in crooked. I can't stand it. See how awful it looks!!!

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These are not on a wall, but on a wooden box built out from the wall, made to look like a vertical beam. Who knows what is under there.:eewwk: Will have to pull one out and see. I've been thinking about how best to fix this. Suppose I could paint the rest of the kitchen and think while I'm painting. :p (Did I say I hate painting.)
 
Monday morning I got the crowns placed for the teeth implants. It's over!!! First impression, based on less than a day, is these things are great. Already can't tell the difference from real teeth. It has been 9 months from start to finish, but one tooth took a couple months longer because of the bone graft. That's because the tooth had been missing for decades and the bone had shrunk. Fingers crossed nothing fails. I've read horror stories on the internet, but only people who experience horror tend to post. Dentist said he's never had anyone who had problems so far.

Update on the truck. It's been 3.5 months. Up until one month ago it had not used any oil. But on that day it acted just like it flooded when I tried to start it. I didn't think it was possible to flood an engine anymore.:confused: When it finally did start, a big cloud of blue smoke came out the exhaust. Three days later the oil had dropped by about a half quart. It couldn't have been a coincidence, could it? No change since then. Otherwise I was ready to declare victory. But why did it happen? Still wait and see. Now I have to get the oil changed. It's only been 2 years. Ha!

I'm stumped on the kitchen outlets. The electrician broke the little bridge between the two receptacle boxes when he put in the top one, so both will have to be moved slightly. Looks like the only solution may be to cut out a rectangular section of the box (fake beam) and replace it. That will not be easy. I might put trim around that piece and make it look like it was meant to be different. I did pull out the switch and the box is hollow. That's good. Talking to myself again.:playful:
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Need to fill in this space with something before it just becomes "testing"...:)

Last week I got a bright idea of mixing some sunflower seeds with the pellets for the goats. They need a little fat in their diet and the seeds have a lot of minerals.

The squirrels have been gone so long out there since I squirrel-proofed the barn ceiling, I forgot all about them. Last time I went out there was a squirrel in the barn and you could see the hulls in the feeder where they had picked out the seeds. Worst part is they will soil the feeder pans, and the goats don't like to eat anything dirty. Individual feeding is impossible unless you tie the goats all up at once in 4 different places, and I could never catch Rusty, anyway.

I have 39 lbs of sunflower seeds. Back to the drawing boards on that. The squirrels and the goats always keep you on your toes.:rolleyes:
 
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Whenever I can outsmart the goats it is a good day. :) Today was one of those days, and I'm feeling cocky, and want to write something silly.:playful: Sorry.

Sunflower Seed Feeding Strategy

Below is a picture of the outside of the partition in the middle of the barn for the goat pellet feeders. Keep in mind some of these goats weigh near 200 pounds, and can push very hard, so, yes, I did build it like a fortress.

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Below is the inside. There are 13 plastic removable feed pans---5 on the back side, which we don't use anymore, leaving 4 on each of the opposite sides.

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I really need something like one of those basketball play diagrams to explain the rest of this.:joke:

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Details of strategy:
Use only 2 pans, separated by at least one pan, on each side. Tie Shorty to a pan, because he will hang back and just watch otherwise. Let the other 3 goats run free. Put seeds in 2 pans on opposite side from Shorty first. Then run around and fill the other 2 pans ending with Shorty. Stand guard next to Shorty and hold your position until it's all over.

Predicted behavior of goats:
Dixie and Green (the 2 overweight ones) will race for one of the first two pans and duke it out because they will be afraid the other one has something better. Rusty is 3rd on the totem pole so he will run to another pan. This leaves one pan momentarily vacant. Eventually Green and Dixie will shift to that vacant pan. They will then try to horn in on Shorty, but I will be waiting there to stop them. I'm still top banana in the pecking order, so Rusty won't come near me.

It worked like a charm!!!!

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Dixie tried to get into Shorty's pan twice, but I pulled her out by twisting her ear. No left over seeds. Squirrels will have to dig up some of their acorns tonight.:devil:

Wish I had a video of it.:giggle:
 
Goats are very strong, Nancy. Our old Billy goat would knock out the side of our barn just to get out. I think he did it just to chase me all over the place. I use to hide in the outhouse until he tried knocking that over. Geez, I hated that goat.
 
Pappy said:
Goats are very strong, Nancy. Our old Billy goat would knock out the side of our barn just to get out.
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They really are, and also when they try to compete with each other for food. I can still beat them in a pushing match, though, as long as they don't get a running start. :)

One drug me across the ground for a long ways once while I was hanging on to him with a rope. It happened when the vet came out. I knew if this goat ever got loose we'd never catch him again, so I was determined not to let go.
 
There are more problems in the breakfast nook area than I thought. Not surprised. So I've decided to finish the main part of the kitchen and then start on that part. That way I can at least move some stuff back to the walls and have more room to maneuver. I've got one coat of paint on the main walls. Will do a second coat tomorrow. It might take three.

The problems:
1. That pair of electrical outlets. Came up with two possible solutions for that.

2a. The plywood underlayment above the subfloor doesn't come close enough to the wall in many places. I think the best thing to do is visit the floor installers and ask them if that is my responsibility, and if so, what do they recommend. I don't think most houses nowadays even have a subfloor.

2b. There is a small piece near one corner that really should be replaced. It evidently got wet long ago and the plywood has separated. The nook used to be a back porch. You can see it in a 1923 aerial photograph.

3. There are way too many lights and receptacles on the electrical circuit there, and it is the only circuit left in the house that is not grounded. If I'm ever going to fix that, now might be the time to do it, not after painting. [Not sure it's worth it. It's been like that for 33 years and I've never tripped a breaker yet.]

[I learned from asking questions on (expert) DIY forums to try to use the right terminology. Else you really get clobbered.:(]


I think I'll start counting calories tomorrow. May actually record everything I eat here, for accountability. Would still like to lose those 5 lbs I tried to lose last spring without much luck.
 
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If you want to torture me, just make me paint walls. No, ceilings are worse. It took all afternoon just to cut in around all the woodwork and ceiling. The second coat is worse because you can't tell where you've been. Enough whining.

Put the wall rolling off until late evening. [Did the first coat with a brush.] Forgot that I threw away my old roller pan last time. Used a (new) cat litter pan instead, because I really wanted to get this done tonight. It worked well enough, as long as you kept it tilted.

Good news: Didn't drop the paint bucket on the floor, didn't have to worry about covering the floor with plastic, and maybe it only needs two coats.

So here goes the diet....

Morning weight: 128.4

Calories:
McD's cheeseburger + 1 french fry: 320
Lean Cuisine dinner: 220
1 cup mixed vegetables: 100
Small apple, 1/2 oz cheese, fat free Coolwhip: 280
13 peanuts: 100
Total: 1020

Yes, it is possible to eat just one french fry, but it ain't easy. :playful:
 
Pretty day today---high 58 F and sunny. The weeds have been growing in the yard all winter and the summer grass just turned brown last week. Daffodils are almost ready to come out. Very strange winter so far. I should have done something more productive today. Instead just did little things that needed to be done. Not worth mentioning. Went shopping at Tractor Supply, then Walmart for groceries, and Lowes.

Morning weight: 126.6 (drop means nothing)
Calories:
2 frozen dinners: 410
2.5 c mixed vegetables: 250
2 small bananas: 200
1 oz cheese: 120
peanuts and oyster crackers: 130
Total: 1110

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Rings (by Cymarron) Orginal version, 1971.

Going to post a link to a song occasionally at the top of this diary. My obsession with music may have started when I discovered the player piano in the basement as a little kid. While the others were singing How Much Is That Doggie In The Window, I was probably humming Silver Threads Among the Gold, or Marching Through Georgia. I've always been out of sync.
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Unloaded 4 bags of goat pellets and put out a whole bale of straw today. The goats may get lost in all that straw tonight, but you can't really put out a half bale. It explodes when you cut the strings. Found this mess on the floor of the barn---sunflower seed hulls. And that many more on a shelf above.

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Left a large glass jar of seeds down there last time and the squirrels chewed a hole in the lid.:censored:

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They got nearly the whole jar emptied through that little hole! At least they didn't knock it on the floor and shatter it. The goats really need some fat in their diet. It will show up as dull coats eventually. I've changed goat pellets back to timothy/alfalfa to cut calories.

:tmi:
Squirrels have a bladder smaller than a marble (fact), so they leave a trail of stinky greasy stains wherever they go. That smell attracts other squirrels and is almost impossible to remove completely from wood or concrete.

Shorty has back problems. His spine appears to be gradually curving upward. Could be because of an injury? I doubt it's arthritis because I don't see problems in any joints. Gave him a shot of pain killer today just to see if his behavior changed. Couldn't tell much difference, but he certainly acted more "mellow" and not so nervous around Rusty. I feel sorry for him.


Morning weight: 125.8 (drop still means nothing)
Calories:
4 oz very lean gr. beef + 2 tbsp catsup: 350
1 small banana: 100
2 ginger snaps: 50
3 tbsp flaked coconut: 70
1 frozen dinner + 1c boiled vegs: 270
Salad (1/3 sm head lettuce, 1/2c vegs, 4 tbsp dressing): 260
Total: 1100

It is so much easier to stick with this diet when I have to post everything here every day. :thanks:
 
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Nancy I always check in to see what is going on with you. Imagine my shock when I read your post about your haircut and that it was like your avi, I look at your avi and it is a goat!

Those pesky squirrels, they would get in my horse feed. Now I just battle them for my bird feeders. Pam works good on the stands though.
 
Waterlilly said:
... Imagine my shock when I read your post about your haircut and that it was like your avi, I look at your avi and it is a goat!

Those pesky squirrels, they would get in my horse feed. Now I just battle them for my bird feeders...
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Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, Waterlilly. I said I'd post that avatar until it annoyed me. It did.

I battled the squirrels in the bird feeder also. After them, the mourning doves moved in. One would land on the feeder and scratch all the seeds down to the ground. Then it and its friends would come eat them off the ground. A few doves can pack away a lot of bird seeds. I gave up.
 
Nothing happened today. It seems like if I do a lot of work one day, I'm useless the next day. Is it physical or mental? I suspect mental. Trying to keep under 1200 cals/day. Today it was hard to stick with it, mainly because I didn't do anything productive, just fun. And woke up hungry. Normally I don't want anything but coffee (or maybe hot tea) until noon.:confused:

Morning weight: 125.2
Calories:
1 McD cheeseburger and 1 mozarella stick: 370
1/2 c lima beans, 1 apple: 220
1 Lean Cuisine frozen dinner + 1 cup vegs: 330
1/2 fried egg sandwich (1 sl bread, 1 egg, 1 pat butter): 210
Total: 1130
 

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