Never thought retirement would be like this

Georgia Lady, my list of people to hire to fix things is *shrinking* because many of them have retired! I need to find new ones. But folks
that know how to do things and do good work don't want to take on small jobs. I don't want to leave my house either, but it could sure use
some serious remodeling.;)
 

Hi Nancy, good to hear your vertigo is better and the washer problem wasn't too big. That's always nice when there's a simple solution, and you don't have another mandatory project on your hands. I keep my hair long, so it use to take forever for my perm to grow out, without having to cut my hair short. It is super easy to care for when you have a perm though, that's for sure. :)
 
SeaBreeze, hair turned out real good this time. It takes about 5 minutes to cut the front but 20 minutes to cut the back. I need more mirrors.

Since last post the only unusual thing I did was trim hooves on 3 of our 5 goats. That is a fun job (not). You hook them to a wall. Back leg goes between your legs. They start jerking their leg kind of like a slow reciprocating saw, meanwhile you have to try to cut with a pair of sharp pruning shears. Front feet are easier, but when you try to turn them around to do the second front they lean against your push and then step on your foot. I'm convinced they do it on purpose. The one that did it this time weighs 180 pounds. While you're trimming they act like it's killing them, but when you untie them you have to push them out of the way to do the next goat. Two more to go, but one of those I can't catch. Maybe on Christmas day.

Last Christmas was not so good. My mother and I spent Christmas day in a cold barn with a blanket draped over a goat and a space heater trying to bring his body temperature up. He just quit eating. Vet had been clueless as to what was wrong for weeks. They always assume farm animals are disposable and figure you just want to cut your losses. Had to put him down shortly after the new year. Turned out to be a stomach impaction. No cure at that stage. I'm still convinced it was from eating too many acorns. We had a bumper crop that fall. Lining of stomach was burned according to necropsy. Vet said acorns were not the culprit, but admitted they had an unusually large number of cows with impaction that same winter. She blamed it on bad hay due to rain. Ours had good horse quality hay from up north and alfalfa pellets. There was no other explanation, imo. This one will haunt me forever.

BTW, I always wanted to be a large animal vet, but girls didn't do stuff like that back then. Now the students at the vet school at UGA are approx 75% females. And the girls are the ones going into large animal practice; the boys tend to go for cats and dogs ($$$). My dad said I would be too soft-hearted to be a vet, but he didn't know me very well.

Put 2 coats of the red paint on bench of the outhouse. It is really RED.:eewwk: I've never *seen* such a red, red---maybe on a stoplight. But that's about all I've had time for. Sawed off the rotted portion of the panels and cut them in two pieces 4 feet up from the bottom. Placed braces between studs on front wall and between opening of the door. The steel siding is going to be the difficult part. I'm presupposing trouble. It's an old superstition---bad things only catch you by surprise, when you aren't expecting them. So I reason if you worry enough about something bad happening, it won't.:)
 

I can just picture your goats Nancy! Very interesting...when you're done trimming...you can paint their hoofs with the red red paint!
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Nancy, happy to hear your hair turned out good! :cool: I don't envy you having to do your goat's hooves, you're a better woman than I, lol. I can't even handle trimming my Standard Schnauzer's nails, he acts like you're killing him too, I let hubby take that job! I'm so sorry to hear how you spent your last Christmas, you have a kind heart of gold caring for your animals like that. I'm a big animal lover, and really appreciate hearing about folks who do all they can for their creatures. I'm sure it makes the holiday very bittersweet for you. :( I bet you'd make an excellent vet, not me, I'd constantly be in tears feeling sorry for all the sickly and injured animals. :eek:
 
The rain stopped Christmas eve and Christmas day was very nice. Trimmed hooves of one more goat. Tried to catch the

last one a couple of times and gave up.
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He's the one I don't like anyway. After the Thanksgiving food, which no one wanted,

we decided to have pizza and potato salad for Christmas, topped off with a couple of Snickers bars.
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Pizza by Kroger and
potato salad by me.
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Much better than turkey.
 
Meanderer, progress is slow. It probably would have been better to start all over and build this thing right. It would have been good practice in learning framing. But I don't want to spend a lot of time---too many other irons in the fire right now. Last night I shored up the front section. Didn't realize how temporary it was made. It held up 25 years anyway. It's turning out to be quite a puzzle how to put this back together with the additional restriction that I have to be able to do it by myself. But I do enjoy puzzles. One problem is he used thin-wall framing (2x4s sideways). Hard to make good connections. But I'll get it. Deadline isn't til April.

ps. I will not cut out a moon shaped hole.:)
 
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A picture of our 5 goats this afternoon just before the coldest night of the winter so far. Supposed to get
down to 13F with wind child 4F. They only have a 3 sided barn, which is fine for all but a handful of days in
the winter. Put out 2 bales of straw inside and left water trickling in trough so it hopefully won't freeze.

The brown one in the middle (Rusty) is the ornery one I can't ever catch without resorting to trickery.
The other 4 get along well. The 3rd white one from the left (Mike) is the one who had the inner half of his
left front hoof removed 9 months ago. It forces him to hold his leg at a bad angle which will probably be
trouble one day. But he was dancing like a kid today, at 10.5 years old, so I think he is a happy goat.

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I love your goats Nancy, thanks for posting the picture of them! :love_heart: Poor Mike, I can see the problem with his hoof, but he does still look like he's smiling. :) Hope they all stay warm tonight!
 
The second white one from the left is the top of the pecking order and he is too fat.
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With goats, when food comes it becomes a competition to see who can eat the most in the shortest amount of time. You have to put out enough food for the day so there will be enough left for the slow eater at the bottom of the totem pole.:shrug: The only solution might be to tie each one up separately and feed them individually (twice a day). No way I'm doing all that...
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Reminds me of our goats when I was a youngun. Josephine was pure white, like Mike, and Rags, a long haired goat, was like the one on the right. Button, the male goat, was like the brown one. Grandpa had a stand that the goat would jump up on and eat while being milked. Button was the terror of the hill and would come after you for just looking at him. Grandpa was the only one that could handle him. Hated goats milk. :mad:
 
The goats made it through the night just fine and their water didn't freeze. Supposed to be not quite so cold from now on (18F tonight). :)
 
Haven't posted much here lately because too much has been going on, and it would have been not-well-thought-out gibberish.

New Years Eve morning I had my mother taken to the hospital because she was having hallucinations with incoherent speech. I thought she might be having one of those TIA pre-strokes. They found evidence of an earlier small stroke, but it was at least 2 weeks in the past---could have been years ago. So she either has some form of dementia, or problems with arteries smaller than what a brain MRA can detect. It came on rather suddenly but, from what I've been reading since, every case is different. Maybe it was a combination of things.

They sent her on to what they call an after hospital rehab facility for observation and physical therapy. They will come up with a recommendation for what to do about aftercare. This process has been very helpful. I learned for example that she has A-fib, and that her heart rate can jump to 200 bpm when she does certain activities. This explains why she has been complaining of being tired and spending too much time in bed lately. When she doesn't get enough sleep and wakes up during the night in a strange place, like the hospital, she will get disoriented and try to leave the room.

She can stay in this rehab facility up to 20 days under Medicare. I am hoping they keep her for the full 20 days because they do 750 minutes of physical therapy per week. I know she would fight me if I tried to make her do it, but she will do what strangers tell her, at least until she gets to know them. They have nice facilities and special equipment. She obviously cannot be left alone at all now. I have at most 16 days to figure out what to do. This place also employs people to help you make any arrangements you choose. I would have been lost to figure all this out on my own.
 
Steve said:
Please fill me in as to exactly what I am supposed to post on here..
My life story ?? ......... That will be about 4 pages long ...
My lately story ?? ..... That will be about 2 pages long ...
My ongoing story ?? ... That will be about 10 words .....

I would like to post, but am a bit confused........
Click to expand...

LOL Steve!! Your life sounds like my life!!
 
We had two goats, a Billy and a Nanny and two geese on our hog farm back in old northeastern Indiana. I got a kick out of watching the goats rear-up at the geese when they were coming at them with their necks straight out and honking. Got a kick out of the goats doing the same to the hogs.......rearing-up when the hogs got to close to them. Also, got a kick out of the geese chasing after the hogs and honking like mad. In-between the our two dogs barking and the geese honking, we always knew when someone pulled into our driveway!

Oh yes, those "good old days" of farm life! Do I miss them........one word, NOPE!!
 
One day we pulled our work truck into a farm market place to grab a bite. Our truck was closed in the back with a drop curtain, and while in the store, a billy goat climbed into the back. We drove back to the shop and when the driver, who was a city boy discovered our "passenger" he exclaimed: "What kind of dog is THAT"?:)
 
My mother has been mistakenly putting her clothes in a large wastebasket, so the staff has been throwing them away, and she ran out of clothes today.:whoops: I didn't know she was doing this. When I went to visit today they had found some very tight skinny-legged, stone-washed jeans with rhinestone trim, and a black turtleneck for her. I had just given her a different haircut that makes her look younger. She just turned 93 and looked so cool, I couldn't believe it.:cool: She usually wears baggy clothes. Luckily I brought some more clothes with me. She seemed in much better spirits than yesterday. She has trouble talking---can't think of the right words.

They moved her up to the second floor because she got up in the middle of the night and started walking down the hall the first two nights. They told me this was not uncommon. There are 6 doors to get outside downstairs. Upstairs is where the long term patients stay. Had dinner in the dining room tonight with these patients and only one other woman appeared to be coherent. I asked her name and she told me "Marie" and asked me if it made any difference.;) Took me by surprise. I will not go into the details about the others, just to say it was both depressing and funny, because only one woman seemed to be unhappy.

If they cannot solve this hall wandering problem we may have to move her to a more secure facility for what's left of the 20 days. They had a different weekend staff so I didn't know who to ask. Her situation will be discussed at a meeting tomorrow. The first meeting with me is scheduled for Thursday. I have no idea what to expect.
 

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