Confessions of an Internet Junkie

1. Crappy day at the Casa for everyone. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.

2. Speaking of tomorrow, Dar and I will join two other members of the collective and head on down to East Auburn, NY for an alpaca seminar. The seminar isn't actually until Saturday morning, but it's too far away for us to make it there in time for the start. What's the subject, you ask? Why, it's Color Genetics. Breeding for color is pretty much a crap shoot, so we all look for as much guidance as we can get. Should be interesting. Plus the woman hosting it raises suris, too. There are so few of us that she's giddy to meet us. We're under orders to bring pictures of the babies.

3. Lost is winning me back. I like the turn of plot that happened last night, plus, you know, it featured my boy, Locke. Friday Night Lights was perfect, too, as usual.

4. Serenity is playing on the movie channel. I'm sucked in again. God, they were good, weren't they?

5. I bought some wash-out hair dye. It's too short and too dull looking right now, plus it's badly in need of some extra body until it starts to grow out a little. So, bye-bye to the gray for a couple of weeks. I wanted to dye it as close to my natural color as I could (light ash brown), but I couldn't find it anywhere. I went to four stores and nada. So I'm going back to red. That oughta freak the alpacas out.

6. I hoisted myself up to the loft in the barn to rearrange the hay bales and bring some of them closer to the edge. I'm still not thrilled with the height thing, but I figure the best way to overcome that is to just get used to being up there. And getting up there is a bit of a kick: it requires moving one of the hay storage bins over to the divider, then putting the 3-step stool on top of that, climbing on top of the bin, and then on top of the ladder and then kind of kicking off the top of the divider to finish getting my butt on the loft floor. We don't really have room for a full-fledged ladder in there, unfortunately.

7. The snow is still melting out back, but the flooding isn't as intense. The deepest snow is around the fence posts; I'd say we still have a good 12 inches of it out there. Soon, though - soon it will be gone. The paddocks are all muddy, but around the edges the green is starting to show. And we have bulbs coming up in the garden at the back of the house!

8. ( That pond will be frozen until July. )

We have this stuff around the house called The Killer Cough Medicine (TMDar). The following is why verbal shorthand probably isn't always the best idea.

Me: Can I take this during the day? (What I meant was: Is this going to knock me on my ass or is it a daytime formula?)
Dar: Sure. (What she meant was: It has an ingredient that they give to cancer patients when the morphine stops working, but since we're not going anywhere, go ahead.)

Uh, yeah. About 15 minutes later we're sitting on the couch watching TV when everything starts to go fuzzy and I'm feeling more than a mite sleepy.

Me: Does this have a narcotic in it?
Dar: (stares) Hon, that's (long chemical name).

Which is where I find out about the cancer thing and why I'm now about to fall on my face. Hee. It was a nice nap, though, and I did stop coughing.

The weather is the pitts. It's a windchill of -30C/-22F with blowing snow, snow squalls, ice in the wind. I haven't even stuck my nose out of the door (on strict orders), and poor Dar is once more the only one forced out into the elements to take care of the 'pacas. It's snowed every day for the past 10 days with no end in sight to that or the cold. I am so over this.

I'm not watching the Super Bowl this evening, although I may flip back and forth for the commercials. I hate all the hoopla; it's a fucking football game, OK? I love football, but I hate what they do to this game.

On the other hand, I'm counting the hours (2 3/4) until Rome comes on. I love this season so far, and I understand that tonight's ep is supposed to be outstanding. Why is this the last season? Why?

According to LJ, it's already Friday. Quick, someone get me a tardis! And if I had one, I'd certainly find a different time and place. It's bitterly cold out there.

I'm still fighting this goddamn asthma. I had two unpleasant bouts today, and may I just say that I am not pleased? I may? I am not pleased. Not fucking pleased at all. It's debilitating in a way that is both frustrating and embarrassing and I have no patience for it. As you might have gathered by now.

It continues to snow. It's not a huge amount at once, but it's added up and now there are foot-high drifts out there. I shovel mostly just so it won't get built up to impassable heights. It's supposed to clear up starting tomorrow with much warmer temps next week, so that's good news.

I did the evening alpaca wrangling (Dar did the morning), and we'd figured that since the night is going to be so cold I'd shut all the barn doors instead of leaving one open as we usually do. Yeah, well - that might have worked if the freakin' door actually closed. It's warped. The barn is only four months old. We've had the door closed before. But now it's warped to the point that it's impossible to close; we'll have to plane it down. Does that seem right? I was ready to spit bullets. We figured that we'd hang a blanket over the doorway to keep some of the cold out, but that didn't end up happening either. I went back and reread some of the articles on suri alpacas and cold temperatures, and they should be OK tonight, but we're still going to have to fix that door. What I really want to do is take it off its hinges, drive it over to the vendor and whack a couple people upside the head with it.

Not in the best mood, am I? It's nothing that a good night's sleep and a clear sky in the morning won't cure. And, you know, some head thwacking.

And you get to figure out which is which. Although I think they'll be pretty self-evident.

We did get all dressed up for our grand night on the town. darlong looked fabulous wearing black pants, black blouse, black blazer, and a deep red chokerish necklace with a bright red flower. It suited her and her coloring. I wish I could wear black without looking like a member of the undead.

Some of the people at Realtor Sue's shindig were also dressed up, but at the radio affair it was, I guess drab would be the word. Although they did serve crab dip, coconut shrimp, and spring rolls. Which was great for me and horrible for Dar since she doesn't eat anything that swims or crawls through water. Mark wasn't too thrilled with the selection, either, but he did like the spring rolls. As you may have read in Dar's LJ, we didn't win anything anywhere. We did go to Starbucks later and then to one of the largest liquor stores in the province. It was nice and all, but it couldn't hold a candle to the big warehouse liquor stores in the States. Crazy Bruce's in Bristol, CT! It's like a Wal-Mart filled with booze! I loved going there to stock up for the holidays.

While I didn't go to Crazy Bruce's while I was in the States, I did bring a little something extra home with me. Dar thinks that I came in contact with Whooping Cough while I was there; I was sick for a couple of days last week, but thanks to Dar's nursing skill it didn't progress any farther. It kicked off some bad asthma, though. I was barking like a harbor seal there for a few days. I'm still trying to get my head wrapped around the fact that I have asthma, which fact makes Dar slightly nuts. But really, who thinks that they'll develop asthma? I'd always considered it something that you get in childhood, not something that blows up in middle age. Although after talking it out with Dar, it could be that I've had it for years and just didn't realize it. Thought it was smoker's cough or a cold or something.

We had a major "D'oh!" moment yesterday here on the farm. We looked outside and saw that where once there was a pond, we now had a contender for one of the Great Lakes; I mean we were beginning to worry about how we were going to make it out to the barn. We'd seen the pond overflow a couple of times already when we got heavy rain, but we figured that when Father of Tyler the Post Guy replaced the drainage tiles around the pond he screwed something up. Turns out to be entirely our own fault. Well, mostly our fault. Turns out that you're supposed to weed out all the drainage ditches around your property. It makes sense now, but honestly we didn't think anything of it until we saw that not only was our property flooding - the drainage ditch that the pond drains into was also flooded. Hence the water from the pond had nowhere to go. I took a look around the neighborhood and realized that we are the only ones who haven't cleared out their drainage areas. It's not all that obvious to us because what we can actually see from our place is the field next door (which shares our drainage ditch) and the big field across the street. To complicate things, the reason our ditch on the side is so hugely overgrown is because our neighbors seeded it with hay while they were seeding the field that adjoins our property. And then, of course, didn't harvest any of the hay from the ditch. So long story short (too late!), we have to get out there and start doing some harvesting of our own.

As promised, the temperature dropped long and hard last night; we woke up to ice and snow, although not a great deal of either. The wind was brutal, so much so that even the alpacas weren't venturing out. They don't mind the cold, but the really don't like the wind. Neither do I, for that matter. They're all snuggly warm in the barn, though, even with one of the doors open. You look out there from the house, and you'll always see one alpaca or another kushed in the doorway, getting some fresh air and checking out the neighborhood.

When I was out there this afternoon doing the dinner feed/pasture clean routine, Hannibal followed me out to the poop pile to a) satisfy his curiosity and b) leave a little something for me to add to my poop bucket. (Delilah is usually the main culprit. Nine times out of ten, as I'm cleaning up, she's standing right next to me peeing and pooping to beat the band; and I swear that she's grinning.) Anyway, Hannibal became fascinated with a pool of water that had iced over; he kept poking it with his nose, trying to lick at it, sliding his hoof over it. I love how goofy he is.

I wish all of our animal news was that cheery. Mokie has been going downhill; she's eating and drinking a lot, but she's vomiting it up and losing weight. We took her to the vet today - traumatic for all concerned - and it's not looking good. She has very elevated white cell counts, and the vet is pointing us toward it being leukemia or diabetes. It came on very rapidly, too; she compared the blood work taken today with the blood work done a few months ago when Mokie had that awful mouth abcess and the change is truly shocking. The vet (Piera, a wonderful vet, truly) wanted to send some blood out to a pathologist just to lock down a diagnosis; we should get the results Monday or Tuesday. We're not optimistic, and we're facing the fact that Mokie is going to have to be put to sleep. Euthanized. Put down. Choose your term. Poor girl has had such a rough life, and still she's so sweet and affectionate. (Unless you're another cat, of course. Then it's Mokiesaurus Rex time.) It's all very sad, and I can't help but think of cajoje and thewalnut and their experiences. When it's time, Piera will come here; at least Mokie won't have to make that scary ride back to the vet's again. At least there's that.

Well, we all survived: people, cats, alpacas. Mostly. darlong is down for the count today; it was a case of too little sleep over the weekend and too much bad weather today. Her head is killing her, and the most she can do is lay there and hope that her shunt drains and relieves the pressure. The low pressure system is supposed to clear out tonight, so she should be back to her old self tomorrow.

So. Party :) It was great to have everyone here who could make it; those who couldn't were missed, be assured. The place was buzzing, and to be honest I was so busy that I don't remember too much of it except for laughing a lot. Loads of people, loads of food. windrider67 baked some out-of-this-world cookies and breads; liquidize hit the Jewish bakery in Toronto and brought along some of that yumminess. (Seriously, Jewish bakeries are my downfall - I love every single thing there. Every. Single. Thing.)

Everyone seemed to get along well as the Yanks met the Canuks and the LJers got to meet each other face-to-face. Then we mixed in some of Dar's longtime friends and a big helping of our new alpaca-rancher friends, and it all seemed to flow. Yay! I didn't get to visit with as many people as long as I would have liked, but between the party preps and the alpaca preps, I was waaaaaay busy.
We had very welcome help from our guests, thankfully. And thank you all! I think my favorite sight was the Tochicks hammering heavy staples into the field posts to help finish up the fencing. Yes, sffan was hammering away regardless of her urban garb and her nasty allergy attack - never let her tell you that she's a slacker, OK? liquidize is more used to it, because of her archaeological fieldwork, but I truly appreciated the way she threw herself into helping us out, too.

I think the two of them are a little bit in love with the alpacas :) They helped to corrall the four alpacas when they managed to break free before we could get them into the barn; the next day they spent some quality time petting some of Diane's young alpaca girls when we went to visit over there. liquidize even got to bottle feed one of the crias; Di said that she was a natural. So, yeah, I'd say we have two confirmed members for our commune there :)


The alpacas are settling in nicely. I gave them showers with the hose yesterday; they loved it to death. Today I was out there with them for about an hour, doing some small chores and mostly hanging out; they're more comfortable with me now and will eat out of my hand. Later from the kitchen I could see the baby racing around the pen at high speed (she's fast like a cheetah!)and doing the little "pronking" jumps that baby alpacas do. (Think Pepe LePew in love.) It was fantastic to see her so at home and happy. The adults were out there, too, rolling around in the dirt and generally acting in a typical ditzy alpaca way. Dar was out for a while tending to Hannibal's wounded eye, but her head was too bad for her to stay that long. She's anxious to get out there and let the new guys get to know her better, too. Tomorrow.

Meanwhile, my time is about up here at the library where I've been posting this. And I should get back and check on Dar. Again, thank you to everyone who traveled to help us welcome our alpacas home; our friends are beyond price.

Mokie is feeling better since she had that shot of cortisone to help stop the inflammation in her mouth. Dar talked with the vet this morning, and we took a ride over to the clinic later to pick up some injectable pain killers and steroids. We still have to give her the antibiotics in pill form, but it went more smoothly this afternoon now that she's not in so much pain. Not that there wasn't struggling and pill-spitting, but there was no screaming, just the usual feline indignation. She's eating better and grooming herself again. Hopefully by the time the troops arrive on the 11th, she'll be in fine form.

Dar and Mark and I worked in the field yesterday, and I gotta say it's looking pretty damn good now. Mark mowed it all down to a uniform length; Dar spread some more seed around, and I - I went at it with the bushwhacker.

Ah. The bushwhacker. It's a weed whacker on steroids. It's a weed whacker designed by Freddy or possibly Jason. No, Damien. Definitely Damien. It's a gasoline powered steel pole with a 10 inch circular saw blade on the end; it screams like a demon when its powered up, and it handles like a homicidal weasel on speed. And on top of all that, it isn't very effective. But the best part is the gear you have to wear while you use it: a hardhat with ear protectors and . . . chaps. Chaps.

Now when the rental guy at Home Depot told us that I'd have to wear protective gear, I was all for it. But when he said the word "chaps", Dar said my eyes got very wide. She thought I was scared, but really I was purely, simply agog. You see, when I think of chaps, I immediately think not of the glorious cowboy tradition but of the gay leather scene. Hey, you go with what you know. So for one horrified moment my mind conjured up the image of me standing out in the field holding this, this steel, rotating, ragged-toothed phallus (Dildo of Deathhhhhhhh!) while I'm dressed in leather chaps with my ass hanging out for all of rural Ontario to see. I finally focused on where Mr. Rental Guy was pointing and I saw these bright orange coverall thingies. Whew.

So home we go, and I gear up. Lovely. The hat was adjustable, but the left ear protector kept slipping down to around my jaw line. The "chaps" were a jumble of snaps and belts that still ended up being too big for me; instead of being protective, I was kind of worried that I was going to trip over one of the legs and end up impaled on the saw blade. There was a shoulder strap on the contraption, but in order to actually use it, you had to bring the saw blade up near your face. The engine got really hot and scorched my arm. Nice design! And the damn thing kept conking out. It ended up being caused by Mr. Rental Guy not assembling it properly (there was no safety/instruction manual with it), but our kindly neighbor managed to figure it out for us. And after all that, it turned out not to be the tool that we needed for the job. I spent about 90 minutes hacking and sawing away at the weeds, and it was mostly to no effect. So back we went to Home Depot where I gladly gave up my chap-wearing ways.

I went around to a couple of places in the area to see if we could rent the machine that we need - sort of a lawn mower on steroids. It turns out that it's called a . Oh for Christ's sake! I knew the name 30 seconds ago! I go to write it now and I can't remember it. Just. Shoot. Me!! Gah!

Anyway. (ack!!!!! calm down. damn it.) Anyway, whatever the hell it's called, no one rents one. We'll have to find a farmer who'll come in with a tractor and a rotary blade attachment to cut it all down for us.

The barn will be finished tomorrow, or so they say.

And today is (oops, was, since it's past midnight) my baby brother's birthday. I never did get to see him, but at least I got to talk with him on the phone. You take what you can get, eh. Happy Birthday, Bruderlein.

We lose electricity with alarming frequency. It's always weather related, but still. We were without power for a couple of hours Tuesday night; today a big storm came through and the electricity went out about a half dozen times for only seconds at a time which is really, really annoying. What's most annoying, though, is the fact that every time I figure I should shut my computer down when I see a storm coming, the damn electricity goes out while I'm in the process of bringing it down. Just. Wait! Arghh. We most definitely have to get a generator before the winter storms come rolling through, because according to everyone, we're gonna be spending a lot of time without electricity during that very cold and snowy season.

Lately as we're driving around, we've been noticing how many of the farms in the area have started piling up these huge stacks of firewood. It's making us more than a little nervous. Like maybe they all know something that we don't. Heh. Of course they do! We've got a few logs out by the firepit, and there's a slew of small trees that I've cut down, but they're mostly good for kindling rather than keeping the house warm. We're going to have to order in a cord or two of the big logs fairly soon.

The mustard massacre goes on apace. Nothing was done yesterday because I spent oh, about 20 hours nodding off and generally being zombified thanks to a sleeping pill I tried out the night before. I sometimes have very strong reactions to pharmaceuticals, and this was one of the more memorable ones. I was worse than useless all day, to my shame. I think I made up for it today, though, because I pulled a buttload of weeds before the morning got too hot to stay out there. Depending on the weather tomorrow, we may actually finish pulling the mustard (which sounds incredibly dirty to me all of a sudden), and then phase II will start. What is phase II you ask? It involves going back over everything and pulling up the verdammte milkweed, which is also toxic and also widespread throughout our humble little pasture. And then, because the top half of the pasture is so overgrown that it's difficult to see everything that needs to be pulled up, I'm going to mow it down because 1) the alpacas won't graze on anything that tall and 2) we'll have a better chance of clearing everything toxic that we missed on the first go-round as it regrows. (Regrows? Is that even a word?)

I was planning on going to CT this week to visit with my brother and SIL, but the plans fell apart. The barn was supposed to go up tomorrow, but because of the rain that will be put off until next Monday. Nothing goes as it should, eh.

And apropos of nothing that I've talked about so far, I've realized that I'd have a hard time living in a city now. I mean, I love being out and about and seeing cows and horses and sheep and beef cattle and raptors. Oh! Driving down the road by our house we passed two turkey vultures: one was sitting on a fence post and the other was in the road chowing down on some roadkill. They are big and ugly and utterly magnificent because of it.

I used to be an interesting person. Now it's mustard, milkweed, and turkey vultures. Heh - it sounds like the makings of a very weird sandwich, doesn't it?

darlong and I (and The Nana) went into Elmira to speak with the people at the co-op where we bought our Seeds of Doom. Dar decided to start things off by mentioning that we're the ones who are going to be raising alpacas because that usually kickstarts their memories about who we are. It worked and the manager recognized us. We told him about what happened and he was totally flummoxed because . . . they do not now nor have they ever sold canola seed. WTF?! He doesn't think we're lying, especially since we brought in some live samples from the field, but he's completely perplexed. "Yeah. That looks like canola," he sighed. I think what really got him was the fact that canola seed goes for $700 a bag. He actually squeaked when he said it :) He's going to be sending an agricultural expert out to check out the pasture just to be sure that it's really canola. He's not trying to get out of anything, he's just not an expert. Neither are we, so we're pleased as punch to get someone out here who is. Maybe it'll turn out that this is some canola wannabe and the alpacas can munch away on them to their hearts' content. Yeah, figure the odds on that one.

However, if it is canola, my brilliant, brilliant wifey has actually come up with a way to kill the fucking plants. We're talking a breed of plant genetically engineered to resist weed killers - and she killed a whole section of them because she is, as I said, brilliant. She did some research online and came up with a two-step process involving vinegar&water and an herbicide that did not have the main ingredients in Round-up (which is the specific herbicide the canola is bred to resist.) And it worked! I saw the evidence myself. So if the worst happens, and it's confirmed to be canola, we can at least kill off the crop that's out there and add sod over it without having to have it plowed under and retilled. That will save loads of time, money, and work.

Have I mentioned that she's brilliant? Brilliant :)

We have no water. None. I discovered this dire fact after I did my midnight dash to the bathroom and found that the toilet wasn't flushing. Hmmmm. I took off the lid and noticed that the tank was empty. Hmmmmmmm. So I figured that I'd fill it from the bathroom sink. Turn on faucet and hear the sound of glug, glug, pffffffffffffffft. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. So I go out to the kitchen and try that faucet. Again with the zen faucet and the sound of nothingness. Damn! Because I'd missed out on the tour of the water/heating unit when the repair guy was first here, I have no idea how this whole thing works, which means . . . I gotta wake up Dar.

Then we have the merry chase around the house trying faucets and playing around with the water tank. Mark and I traipse around outside looking for the master switches to see if those have been toyed with. Nope. He goes back to bed, and Dar and I and The Nana try to puzzle it out. It seems that we've lost pressure because 1) the a/c has been going full blast all day since it's been over 90 with high humidity, and 2) we've been using water like we've got a private line to Lake Erie in our back yard. Dar thinks that if we turn the a/c off and wait for a couple of hours, everything will right itself. I sure as hell hope so, because there are no public bathrooms out here. The guys can just point and shoot into the ditches around here, but we female types have it less simple.

Oh, and just to add it, on my second trip outside to check that the water to the field had been turned off, Mad Maoser decides to make a break for it, so I'm chasing him all over the yard in the pitch dark. Much fun, let me tell you.

And speaking of the outside, Dar and I have been sweating bullets working on the field and the surrounding area. She's been watering and reseeding, and I've been working on taking out the forest of wild dogwoods that have taken over the back property. And that's not an exaggeration; I've got to figure out what to do with all the debris now that I've cut most of them down. I've also been mowing down the waist-high weeds so that the area to either side of the field and little beyond it is clear. I'd use the lawn tractor, but again - there are all sorts of bushes and deadwood that has to be cleared before I'd try to bring the little tractor in there; the lawn mower is more maneuverable. (Is that a word? And if so, is that how it's spelled? Huh.)

And now I see Dar is up and getting ready to check the water situation, so I shall join her. Wish us luck.

I seem to have screwed up my jaw. I was chewing on a protein bar - a soft protein bar - when I felt a sharp pain shooting up my jaw and into my ear. Wtf, people? It's still sore, but as long as I don't actually try to chew anything it's not zapping me. You know, I think our body warranties are written in slowly disappearing ink. Jaw? Jaw? Uh, sorry; I didn't see any mention here of a lifetime guarantee of usefulness. Sigh. And damn. Hopefully this will settle down in a little while, because I gotta say that I've done the liquid diet thing, and it loses its allure pretty quickly. (Although you all must, must, must try putting ice cream and pound cake in a blender. Bliss, I tell you!)

Earlier today, though, pre-jaw wackiness, I sowed the field with orchard seed. How well I did it remains to be seen, but I had a good time. I was trying to come up with some kind of bin to carry around with me to hold the seed, when darlong suggested that I use the "Kill All Humans" messenger bag that browncoat had designed for Television Without Pity. So I'm out there like some nihilistic Johnny Appleseed with a red bag featuring a demonic robot hung around my neck, merrily strewing seed left and right. I swear I should tape some of this stuff. The wind seems to be a constant in this area, and I had a little trouble in one area compensating for that; plus one part of the field is so wet that I sunk up to my ankles when I tried to walk through it and I ended up improvising on that portion. So now we wait for a bit to see where the grass will actually be coming up and then reseed where necessary. There's also some compost to put onto of the seed, but I'm going to need darlong's input on that, because apparently you can smother the seeds or something. (Just remember, guys, except for eight years, I've lived the rest of my life in apartments; this yard/field stuff is all kind of new to me.) I know that Dar is itching to get out there, too, but she's been held hostage to some bureaucratic paperwork that has a deadline approaching. Soon, though, it'll be the two us back out there causing all sorts of mayhem :) Just the way it's supposed to be, eh?