Natural High

My second favorite station on my Sirius Satellite Radio is 112, the Martha Stewart station. They talk about stuff I am interested in. I have been on the air 3 times now. It's easy to call in because I think I am the only one listening. I love it though, I get such a rush. I sound a little hyper on the radio, probably because I get so excited. I have talked about the mean dogs next door with this guy, won 8 Baby Genius dvds and was on this afternoon on the way home talking about skin care with Eva Scrivo.

When John and I are in the car listening to the Martha station, he says he finally understands how I feel listening to football or basketball games on the radio.

Marriage is about understanding. ;)

I'm back

Just wanted to make a quick new post to say that we are back. John rebooted our computer, so we lost everything that wasn't on our external hard drive. Everything is not back to normal on the computer, but we can at least get on the internet again.

Some family members mentioned they can't see the pictures on my flickr badge, or that after I added the flickr badge, the blog doesn't work as well as it used to. Do the rest of you have this problem also?

Lots to catch you up on, it will hopefully be a busy blogging week for me.

Happy Birthday Hannah!

Update

Computer at home caput. Blogging at work not acceptable (even though I am doing it right now.)

Will be back (hopefully) soon with Mardi gras pictures. (Matt, don't get too excited.)

No Good Deed Shall Go Unpunished

It has taken me a week to write about this, because it is so upsetting. Most of you know that there are numerous cats at the farm at any given time. Growing up on the farm and being so isolated, my cats were my best friends, and more times than often my only friends. When I was young, I would dress them up in baby clothes or Cabbage Patch clothes, sneak them upstairs to my room without my mom knowing, feed them milk from bottles. I related to my friends through my cats, endlessly making Heather and Natalie or Sara play with me and the cats. I even had cat circuses and sold tickets for a nickel to family members.

Animals (and sometimes people) get minimal attention at the farm. Cats get pregnant every spring, and kittens are born every May or June. Every year when I was young I would scour the barn or other sheds looking for my new friends. There was always a new crop. Any of our neighbors that accidently ended up with kittens always found a way to sneak them to our house. There are two sounds that I can pick out anywhere, sounds that are ingrained into my being; one is the sound of a bassoon, the other is a kitten's meow. It wasn't until I got older that I started to question the amount of cats at the farm. Not that I didn't love every single one of them, and try to give them the best life possible, but I saw more than my share of cats ran over on the road, or played with too rough by the dogs, or just moved on to a better home. I gave a few away, and that always warmed my heart.

Last Thursday I took three cats to the vet to be spayed. This was such a huge deal because no cat on the farm had ever gotten any medical attention; no shots, no stitches, no vitamins. We had one tom cat, Larry, that would show up with a dislocated hip on more than one occassion, and the next time you saw him, he'd be back all together again. The vet has a sale on spading every February, and after we had a kitten fiasco (be very happy if you didn't hear that story) last summer, I talked dad into splitting the cost of spaying a few cats. I had three girl cats that I could catch that I decided to spay. There are still at least two other female cats on the farm that I couldn't catch and spay. Of the three cats, one was older, maybe at least 7, her name was Sarah. I named her after Sarah McLachlan because she had such a melodic beautiful meow. The other two were Sarah's daughters from last year, Cassandra, and Black Kitty (Black Kitty still needs a real name.) They did great when I dropped them off at the vet in the morning. I called the vet around 1 p.m. to check on them, and they still seemed drowsy. When Lesa came to pick them up in the evening, Sarah was still drowsy, so the vet decided to keep her overnight. Then the vet called me at home last Thursday night and told me Sarah passed away. Apparently she had a bad reaction to the anesthetics. They tried to give her medicine to wake her up, then performed CPR, then she died. I feel so bad for her, she had such beautiful, friendly babies every year. I guess I should have just let her be. =( I never expected for her to die. The doctor said this very rarely happens, and he did all he could. I don't think it was his fault. I'm trying to convince myself that it wasn't my fault either.

On a good note, Cassandra and Black Kitty are doing fine. They have to go back next week to get their stitches out. One thing that did make me happy was when the tom cat (whose name is Bella (thought he was a girl at first)) tried to mate with Cassandra already, so we weren't a moment too soon. Ha ha, buddy, not this year!

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

You know I'm not politically active, and I don't mean to start a huge discussion about all this... but it is my opinion that it is not a good idea to react in a violent way to people who draw cartoons insinuating your leader is violent.

This is probably obvious, but does anyone want to guess one of the presents I got John for Valentine's Day?

Note to All Waitresses:

If you are a waitress at a restaurant, say, like Hooters, and your customer finds two deep fried feathers in his french fries, don't continue to tell these customers other bad stories about customers finding things in their food.

To be fair, the manager gave us the equivalent of $20 off. More than generous, IMO.

Expanding Family

John and I have a new nephew, William Henry Walton. John's sister, Melissa, and her husband, Brant, got a present from the stork a couple hours ago. Even though I'm pretty sure they don't read this blog, I wanted to say "Congrats!"

Whoever You Are, I Want To Thank You.

Me + driving in the snow = disaster.

6:50 a.m. this morning we get a message on the machine from Mr. C the principle at Ste. Gen High School saying that school was cancelled because of school. John left 45 minutes ago, and I have no way to telling him, SINCE HE DOESN'T HAVE A CELL PHONE. I call my dad, he says the roads are fine, and to come to work.

7:30 a.m. this morning I'm talking to Matt on the phone on the way to work. There's not much snow on the road, and Ste. Gen has called off school. I told Matt I thought they were whimps for calling off school because the roads weren't bad.

7:50 a.m. this morning I am in my car, on Hwy Y, sliding backwards down a really big hill. I'm crying, I'm pissed off, I'm scared. My knuckles are white; gripping the steering wheel with a death grip. When I get to the bottom of the hill, I turn my car around, and decide I'm only about 2 miles from the major highway, and I will just go home.

8:15 a.m. this morning my front wheels are in the ditch, a mere 2 tenths of a mile from the big hill. I call my dad, I call a tow truck. You know things are bad when the tow truck doesn't want to come get you. He tells me he'll come out if I can't find anybody else. Thanks for the reassurance, dude. I call John, he's at school. Dad starts to prepare the truck (that has no 4 wheel drive and is about 12 miles from me.)

8:20 a.m. I try to go forwards and backwards, inching down the ditch instead of pulling out of it. A Jeep Chereokee flies over the hill, swerves directly towards me going about 50 mph, I say the F-word on the phone with my dad and start crying again.

8:45 a.m. this morning a really nice guy in an Explorer pulls over. His car starts sliding towards mine, and I freak out. His wheels stop (I realize I must buy new front tires because my car would have never been able to stop mid-hill like that) and he gets out to give me a push. He is older, has long hair in a ponytail, and a faded bomber jacket on, but he looks like Superman to me.

8:50 a.m. this morning two younger guys show up with a huge white truck with 4x4, and big monster tires. They said they went passed me earlier and came back to help me. They chain the back of my car to their truck, one guys drives, the other younger guy and the bomber jacket guy push my car out of the ditch. No damage to the car, just my nerves. I'm in the middle of a little hill that my car won't go up now. Two cars are waiting down the road on one side, and three cars are waiting at the top of the little hill. I let one of the younger guys try to drive my car up the little hill. He spins my car around, front tires sliding, back tires staying in the same place, like a cop car in a chase on t.v. turning a corner at top speed. He gets a good running start, gets very close to the top, but doesn't make it. The bomber jacket guy is in his car, and motions for me to get in his car because he can see I'm cold. The guy driving my car backs back down the little hill, they let a few cars go past. He's at the bottom of the little hill, revving my engine, loving every minute of it. He makes it up the hill. The bomber jacket guy drives me to my car. I tell him I work for the Sainte Genevieve Winery and I don't have anything to give him, but would like to offer him my card and tell him to go to the winery and get a free bottle of wine. He declines. I get out of his car, thank the guy getting out of my car and offer him a bottle of Red Raspberry wine that I had in my car to give to Sally on Friday but forgot.

9:15 a.m. this morning I am back in my car driving to the highway. The bomber jacket guy says he will follow me to the highway. I get onto Hwy 67, honk at the bomber jacket guy and call John and dad.

9:45 a.m. this morning I am waiting for John to meet me at the Herculaneum commuter parking lot.

10:30 a.m. this morning I am safely at home. Ug.

The whole purpose of a snow day is so you don't have to battle the snow. What a waste of a day off.

Those guys... I wish I had a better way to thank all of them, especially the bomber jacket guy. I appreciate them more than they can imagine. I like to think that what goes around comes around, so they are due some good fortune, and I am due to help a stranger.

Cute or Not?

I know absolutely nothing about html, but I hope you will notice what I added under the Archives. I just cut and pasted, but it makes me think about endless design possibilities. Makes me interested in learning more.


Update: Annnndddd..... in my above mentioned curiosity, I added a flickr badge. I am thoroughly entertained. Get ready for more pictures taken by me than you can stand. =)

John has a pep band at every home basketball game. He is not home a lot. I went to a game last night. My favorite song was "Whip It" which John arranged.