My Weekend Off

I sort of disappeared over the weekend, didn't I? My bad. I was too busy on my weekend off. Yeah, we can go with that excuse.

The weather up here in Sticksville was rather iffy most of last week, and by the time Thursday had rolled around, no one was sure if I would be able to drive the four mountain passes to visit my family. Needless to say, I was a wee bit irritated with Mother Nature. I awoke Friday morning to go feed and there was a bit of sunshine peeking through, and I just knew I could make it. Every time I made it over a pass, I texted my grandmother and my mom. I hit snow over the last pass, which for some reason is the worst pass to go over (and it's 2000 feet lower than where I currently live). As soon as I passed the summit I hit snow. Heavy snow, but luckily the roads were too wet so it wasn't sticking. By the time I reached the bottom of the mountain, it was pouring down rain. Actually pouring doesn't quite cover it. It was raining hippos and elephants. Seriously. It was a deluge.

I floated rolled into town to have lunch with Miss Jo, whom I haven't seen since she graduated from vet school about two or three years ago. She was nice enough to drive to Redding to meet me, and we visited for a couple of hours. It was so nice to get to see her again, and I hope we don't go another two years!

After lunch I ran to my old bank to close out my accounts officially. Then went to pay my car payment early - because I'm a good girl like that. Then it was finally off to my parent's house. I officially got to meet mom's new little Yorkie, Libby. Llibby is freaking adorable and I'm not much of a tiny dog person. As she runs around the house like she's on crack, we call it "herd of puppy". She's every where at once and drags toys out all over the place. The downside to Libby is that apparently Yorkies are extremely tough to potty train. My parents have never had a dog that is so hard to train. While all previous puppies we've had had one or two accidents in the house (because you just can't avoid them), they've all been easy to train. Libby isn't. My parents will sit outside with her for half an hour and she won't do a thing. Two minutes inside the house and she's left little Libby Presents. Strange dog.

On Saturday, my parents took me to Costco so I could spend some money there. It's not economical for me to belong to Costco's membership, but my parents use theirs a lot, so I mooch off them. Plus I've never really needed to shop at Costco before, as I never needed to really buy much in bulk. However, now that I live in the middle of nowhere, it's much more economical to buy a ton of toilet paper than to buy it every week at the local store. I also priced laptops there and at Best Buy (and I had done so with Dell online), as in a previous post I had written about my old laptop dying a slow death. Or at least the battery.

After running some errands, my parents dropped me off at Granny & Granddad's while they went to Raley's to get some groceries for them. I had a good visit with them, and regaled them with my story of faceplanting in the moop (a much nicer term for mudshit . . . mud + poop =  moop). My grandparents were both raised on ranches/farms as kids, so they could sort of relate to my plight. I'm happy to report that my Granddad is doing better. He took a spill with his walker a few weeks ago in his house, and has been laid up in the living room since. My dad got him up for a bit of walking, and my mom says that he's improved a lot just since last week. My dad was surprised that my Granddad had the initiative to walk the length of the house and back to his chair with his walker, and he did so without any issues. Sometimes it's really the little improvements that make all the difference. My grandparents are a bit miffed that their home sale dropped out of escrow after a week. If that. No one can really move on the granny unit being put in on my parents property until the house sells. I guess they're just lucky that the buyers didn't back out several weeks into the deal.

After that it was dinner with Nana & Sonny. It was Sonny's birthday, plus we were celebrating my parents birthdays (both are this week). We had a wonderful visit, and had good food and excellent desserts. I was a bottomless pit: I ate all my food, part of Sonny's free dessert (it was a fudge sundae and he doesn't like chocolate), and part of his paid for dessert (it was strawberry cheesecake shooter, but he apparently doesn't like the cheesecake portion). Hey, don't tease Sonny for dessert persnicketiness, I'm much pickier at foods than he is. Trust me on this. Besides I got to eat the good parts. ;o)  Overall, we had a wonderful visit, and it was nice to see both of them improved in health, too. Next time I'm home and visit them, Nana will probably fill me up with dessert at her place because she loves to bake and feed her kids and grandkids. And none of us complain about it, either.

On Sunday, mom took me back to Costco where I spent more money, this time on a new laptop. This sucker's batter lasts like 4 hours and mine never lasted more than maybe 2 hours. Anyway, I got quite a bit of feedback through your comments, and then some comments on Facebook regarding Windows 7, and so far, it's not as annoying as Vista was. Vista was just crap. My batter cord is longer, but I now have a new problem. This cord has three prongs and all of my grandparents outlets are two prongs. Oh well. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, right? I finally decided on just purchasing a new one, as I practically live on the computer. Whether it's Facebook and chatting with friends or family, or blogging or now writing up articles for my grandparents publication, I'm on the computer quite a bit. I know that laptops aren't built to last more than two or three years anyway, so I got good use out of my old one. I still have it, I need to transfer the data to my new one, which will take some time. I need to back up my pictures and whatnot onto a disc anyway, which reminds me, I think I need to buy some more CD-RW's. But so far, I'm liking my new computer, and I hope we have will have a few good years together.

My drive back to Sticksville was as uneventful as my drive out of it. All my passes were clear and I didn't hit much traffic. It took me awhile to unload my car, and then to put everything away. Shopping at Costco is rather fun, but when you have to find room for all that shit, it ceases being fun real quick. I managed to buy a bunch of baking supplies so I get to bake myself some more cookies. Yummy yummy in my tummy!! I'm thinking chocolate chip . . . since Average Girl's recent post regarding food and sweets got me thinking.

Now it's back to the real world of feeding cows at 7:30 in the morning. There was one good thing about waking up early this morning: THE SUN. Seriously, that little shit has been hiding for awhile and I hate a constant game of hide and seek. Or Peek-a-boo.

An update on the calves in the barn. When I left on Friday, there was a total of three calves in the barn, with their mothers. The twin that we grafted onto Miss Surrogate awhile back, is doing excellent - both mother and calf have bonded well. Another two calves were put in the barn as they had been born in the mud. One of them didn't make it after a week of my grandmother tubing it order to feed it a bottle. But the other calf was doing well. This morning we put those cows and calves back into the herd. I know I promised a video of that twin that I took pictures of in the Miss Surrogate post, but my mom didn't have the right USB cord, either. So . . . for now it's stuck on my phone and the only way to get it off is to send it in 9 second increments and I'm too technostupid to know how to piece it all back together. Whenever I can get it off, I will and post it. Until then, I guess I need to take my actual camera with me each morning in case I want a video. That I can upload properly to my computer without much hassle. My apologies . . . please don't hate me too much.

And here's the latest tidbit: last week, Papa D and I went to a bull sale - my first one. He was doing a membership drive there, as well as making sure those that were members of the Cattlemen's Association were identified because if they bought a bull, they would 5% off their purchase for being a member. Not a bad deal. Anyway, Papa D, two other men, and myself made $1 bets on the average sale of the bulls. I had been hearing that the price of cattle had gone up, but I was seriously impressed when I saw bulls going for $4000. We wagered before the start of the sale, the wagers between $3600 (which was Papa D's) up to $4100 (mine). And today Papa D got the results for the average price of the bulls: $4177. I totally won $4. I never win much of anything.

So, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go swim in my $4.