A Clerk Goes West, Part 1: From the train window

I was expecting something a little more grand, at the train station. I don't know why; Montana isn't really known for grandeur in its little towns, just in its glorious scenery.

First of all, I was the only one at the train station. And when I say I was the only one, that is an actual, factual statement.  After I'd been there about 10 minutes, two men working for Burlington Northern drifted in to the building, but other than that, I was the only body there. 

I LOVED the keep out/caution signs on the door next to the vintage candy machine in the waiting room! You can't read it, sadly, but the sign warns you of "asbestosis dust".

These waiting room chairs were vintage, too.  The word that pops to mind is "groovy".

(I bought a People magazine for the trip...shameless trash, really, and read it in about 20 minutes in the train station. Everything I didn't want to know about Gary Coleman and fashion don'ts...)

Across the room from my groovy orange seats, toward the tracks.

The train had uniformed conductors, with little hats and waistcoats and everything.  I wanted to hug the one who welcomed me to the train.  One of the BN workers told him that this was my first train ride and to take good care of me, and he certainly did.  He checked on me every stop and encouraged me to go get some food in the lounge car, which I eventually did, so he could relax a little.

First scenery out my window near Glasgow where I got on the train.  I was in the seats that had a northern exposure, and just couldn't stop looking at the most beautiful state in the most beautiful country in the world.  I had forgotten how incredibly breathtaking my state is. I'm so proud to be from Montana.

Malta, MT....these pictures are for Country Wife, because these are her old stomping grounds.  Several MASBO-ians had boarded in Malta the day before I did, including my friend the Lord Master of the Universe President Elect of our organization. (He told me later that his crowd had cocktails, thanks to the Malta business manager who had apparently spent time on the train in the past and knew the ropes.)

Love those groovy seats....

You can't see this very well, but the upstairs windows have been painted with various scenes, some of which appeared rather risque.  And the Mint Bar. I want to say (with no statistics to back me up) that probably one town out of ten in Montana has a Mint Bar. 

Right outside of Malta.  It's looking just gorgeous from all the rain.

In Havre, MT, we had a service stop to refuel, pick up chicken dinners and allow all the smokers a sanity break.  Anytime the train slowed a bit, the smokers jumped up from their seats and started pacing toward the lower level of the car, just in case THIS was the smoking break.  Incidentally, Amtrak is really strict with their anti-smoking policy. On the trip home, a smoker who tried to sneak a light was caught and over the intercom we were cautioned that anyone caught smoking on the train was escorted off at the next station to be met by law enforcement. 

The Hi-line has the most huge fields of farming that I've ever seen.  There was no way to capture it in photos, but I was able to take pictures of some of the grainaries.  Here in Cohagen, we might have 4 or 5 grainaries in a row.  On the Hi-line, there will be two rows of 7 or 8 grainaries.  It's stunning, how much grain is produced in north central Montana.

This looked like a feedlot for horses....there were several hundred head, here.  This is just a small portion of them.  After discussion with my husband, we decided it was, indeed a feedlot for horses, since there are no more slaughter plants in the US and they were going to be transported to Canada for that purpose.  That's an issue for another post, highly controversial and frustrating.

I think this was Shelby, MT.  Typical little high plains town....(If you are an Ian Tyson fan, he sings a song entitled "Little High Plains Town" that encapsulates the flavor of these places perfectly.)

Maggie wanted to see some pictures of the seats. Lots and lots of room and very comfortable.  It wasn't squeaky clean, but it was better than I'd anticipated. 

Charolais cows....(pronounced "shar-LAY")

I think they look like big white sheep, here.  They are a decent breed, big boned and heavy, but they're white and I just can't get past that whole color thing.  You'd think I'd like them for their French-ness, wouldn't you?

Typical reservation place.  This one is actually not as bad as some we passed. 

Smelter just outside of Browning.  It's an intriguing shape and I had no idea what it was until I showed Wayland the picture. 

Right outside of Browning, we start getting into the Rocky Mountains, and my heart starts beating faster....

Something about the mountains makes me feel safe, while the prairie makes me feel free. It's an odd thing, in Montana, that the country is so big it makes a person feel like a speck of dust in it, but also very blessed for having been given the gift of experiencing it.

East Glacier depot....you can see that the architecture starts getting more lodge-y and tourist-y.  From here on out, everything was log. 

A resort on the edge of East Glacier....

I stopped taking pictures for awhile, because we went through quite a few tunnels and snow sheds and were getting close to Whitefish.

The train ride was really fun and I'm sort of glad I was travelling alone so I could just soak up the scenery and the characters travelling with me.

Seated right in front of me was a lady from central Michigan who was on her way to Seattle to watch her daughter graduate from college.  This lady worked in a tractor seat factory, oddly enough, and had never been west of Michigan....she grew up in Tennessee and thought she knew mountains.  When we hit the Rockies, her little jaw fell open and I don't think it closed until Whitefish.  She was also a smoker and had been on the train for 2 days, so she was just about to go nuts, I think.

Across from me was a couple of older folks also on their way to Seattle and they read, quietly, the entire time, never looking up except when the dining car person came around for dinner reservations. One time, the little husband made the mistake of asking his wife how her book was (which happened to be the third book in a trilogy) and she started in on a detailed re-telling, from the very first book.  I kept sneaking peeks at them during this literary diatribe and his head was up and nodding, but I could see that his eyes were not focusing and he was just out waiting her, bless his heart! She had started with the first book when they boarded in Wisconsin, apparently, and had been reading round the clock. My hat is off to her; I thought I was a reader, but she makes me look like a novice.

The man seated behind the elderly couple was a very loud, sloppy, stinky businessman who proclaimed his connections and influence to anyone who walked by. I'm guessing he was in his mid to late 60's and he informed us all that he'd been born into a U.S. Senator's family and was name dropping like crazy, trying to impress us.  The tractor seat lady rolled her eyes and whispered information to me about his previous stories, which were shocking if one chose to believe them.  He stopped and talked to me for about 15 minutes after spying my UTHSC sweatshirt, extolling the glories of Texas. He disboarded in Whitefish, too, and I was terrified he'd come to the Grouse Mountain Lodge for three days, but he wanted to find a Super 8.  Apparently he was banking per diem money from his big shot oil job....

When I arrived in Whitefish (WFH on the boarding pass), I met up with a group of clerks who had boarded in Wolf Point and we rode to the Lodge together.  We staggered to the shuttle bus with our big honking suitcases and carry-ons and collapsed, excited to see our lodgings.

To be continued.... 

All Aboard!

Tomorrow I leave for a school business officials' conference in Whitefish, MT.  It's about as far west in Montana as I can go and still stay in the state.  AND I get to take the train to get there!

This is an exciting first-time on a train for me....how sad is that?! We have to drive an hour and a half to get to the station in Glasgow, then the train takes me along the Hi-Line of Montana, through big, big farming and reservations to the Rocky Mountains, through the corner of Glacier Park and deposits me in Whitefish at 9:00 p.m. 

I can take three bags to check and two bags besides my purse as carry-ons. How in the world would I lug that much wardrobe around? Really, I need a porter to travel with me...

The age-old question for women is:

"What to pack?"

It's supposed to be stinking cold, there this week...highs of 55 and 65 degrees.  But it may also have a heat wave on Friday.  (Of course...) So.....mukluks and sandals. Tricky, that.

As excited as I am to go on the train, I'm already worrying about all my babies and the Farmer. Does anyone but me have that "if I leave, mayhem and illness will ensue, death-threatening situations that obviously wouldn't occur with the simple presence of me" feeling?  I'm pretty confident the kids will be alright, but I almost have panic attacks thinking about my dog. Everyone watches out for the kids, but they may not see Molly lying under the tire in the shade.....I couldn't stand it.

We went to the grocery store and laid in a pile of quick-to-prepare junk food, so they won't starve.  Frozen pizza, chicken nuggets, Eggos, potpies, chips, cereal....I can hardly stand to type it!  There are some bribe foods, too, just in case the Farmer gets desperate for cooperation.  (That's terrible parenting, we know, but desperate times call for desperate measures....)

My friend Anne (of the tulip post) wants me to take pictures of the train ride and post them, so I'll attempt to do so Wednesday morning, if all the electronics behave for me!

Now, off to pack...something. 

Dear Annie,

I have to get something off my chest and I hope you'll accept it with your usual grace and humor. It's been something I've wanted to tell you for a long time, but have never worked up the courage until now....

I really, really, really, really dislike tulips. 

(Illustration 1.)

They take advantage of color-starved, house-bound, winter-depressed people and bloom for about a week, maybe two if the conditions are pristine.  Then they hang around too long like second-cousins-once-removed from California. I can't cut them back because *gasp* they wouldn't have enough nutrients to bloom next year, so they flop around in my flower beds staying obstinately greenish until July.  (See illustration 2.)

I know you adore them and want to plant them by the truckloads.  I know they make you happy and remind you of home in Idaho.  And I'm good with that.  But I really and truly despise these wretched plants.  I'd give you mine if I could ever remember where they are, come September!

Anyway, I hope we can still be friends.

xoxoxoxo

MJ

More garden dirt...

First, a couple updates for my garden geek friends who truly and actually care about this stuff....
(Yes! They wait for these updates and comment as soon as they get them! Bless their frazzled little hearts....)

The yarrow seeds have not sprouted.
You read that right...have NOT sprouted.  Which baffles me beyond anything, because the seeds from the wicked plants in my flower beds where I DON'T want them have come in like a carpet in my lawn.

Fontie, I'm working on a picture of the hairy-legged weed.  It's not easy to capture the nuances of such a beast in a manner worthy of its reputation. 

In other garden news:

I have World! Champion! Dandelions!  They are so big in one bed that I contemplated having the Farmer take my picture with one, like those old ads you see in Gurney's catalogs where Grandpa G. Whillikers is holding a 10 lb tomato. (Below is an example...actual image from Gurney's catalog)

I resisted the temptation to have that picture taken in sensitivity to my in-laws who already suffer enough having me in the family without their good gardening reputation ruined by association.

I gave my kids seeds to plant, this spring, in the hopes that they'd:

A. leave MY expensive seeds alone, or

B. grow something that would make them want to garden for the rest of their lives.

Angus had peas. He dug a hole about 2 inches deep and 3 inches in diameter, dumped the ENTIRE packet of seeds in it (no amount of pleading could dissuade him) and covered them up with his little spade.

They are growing. In a big old pea wad, but they are growing! 

My friend Denise sent me gladiola bulbs! I've never planted glads before, but doesn't it just sound joyful to say, "You should SEE my glads!" ? (There was no good way to punctuate that...)

I planted zinnias in a flower bed that had previously held sunflowers and now have a dilemma....zinnia seedlings APPARENTLY look exactly like sunflower seedlings! Which brings me to a point that has driven me crazy since I started trying to grow things.  Does anyone besides me think it's absolutely pointless for seed companies to print that little picture of what your seedling will look like when it sprouts? They all look the same when they have two leaves! Seriously.  Go grab a couple seed packets and take a look. 

So now I can't pluck all the rotten sunflower seedlings out until I know for SURE they are rotten sunflower seedlings....probably when they bolt to 5 feet high in a week.  And then I'm not sure I'll have the heart to by then.

We've had so much rain in the last couple weeks that it's been pretty easy gardening.  It's so damp that I found a slug, for the very first time ever! Maggie thought he was a naked snail, which technically he was.  After all the horrors I've read about what snails can do to plants, I cheerfully squooshed him and it must've deterred all his slimy little friends from living here because I haven't seen another one.

My pergola went up last night! We still have to add the wood for shade slats, but the structure is up and I'm so excited!

That's all the dirt from the garden at the Chronicles. 

Stay tuned for more scintillating posts....

Cow Tales

We've been doing little cow projects this last week, like branding the 16 pairs of late calvers.  We did those 16 with just the Farmer, his father and me and it was surprisingly calm and uneventful. (Translation: I didn't get yelled at.)  After we finished, we dispersed the cows and calves to the different pastures they belong.  My father-in-law hauled 8 pair to the Jacobsen place with a horse trailer (2 loads) and the assistance of the little bosses, Maggie and Angus.  The Farmer and I trailed the other pairs north to Thelma's.

*Little note, here.  Pastures are named for the people who USED to own them. Or for what grows in them.  Or for a land feature. 

Anyway, the bunch we were trailing took off confidently to the north, at a good clip.  When they got to the first gate (not the one they needed to go through) the lead cow pulled up and looked at me with that "Open the dang gate, already! We're here!" look and I had to deny her. She was extremely disgusted and with great reluctance turned to the west where the right gate was.  And appeared to pout a little the rest of the trip. 

In the next pasture, we encountered a cow-eating salt trough that had been tipped upside down to keep the water out.  One cow could NOT stop looking at it, circling gingerly with her calf, nose pointed at the salt trough, ears forward.  She was convinced it was gonna "get her".  It was just wrong and she knew it. 

At the next gate, it was as though we had given them a break off the freeway at a rest area.  But when they got through that gate, they were close to the pasture they needed to be in and finally staggered up to the final gate with a whole lot less ginger than they'd started out with.

Last night, we moved the yearling heifers to thier breeding pasture.  As I've mentioned before, anything to do with yearling heifers is like junior high girls....extreme.  High speed or dead stop.  They don't just slightly turn, they do a 180 degree turn.  And whatever the FIRST heifer does, they ALL do. 

They are in good shape and they should be....all the green grass they can eat in a day and mild weather (for cows).  I was excited that we couldn't pick Daisy, my yearling bum, out of the herd! She fits right in, which is amazing. 

Once those girls were moved, we went back and sorted off the little bulls that will join them today to (as Maggie puts it) "get married".  Maggie is completely mystified as to why we don't have a bull for each heifer.  How does THAT work? She already knows quite a bit about the birds and the bees at age 5, but she still thinks it's a bit unfair that there's only one bull for 30 heifers. 

So this is Daisy's big moment.  If she doesn't breed up, she's down the road and that's the end of the OC herd for a while.  Pray that she's alluring.  And fertile.  (It's terrible to have one heifer that carries the brand. And she won't even GET her brand until we're SURE she's bred.)

And finally, my two bum calves for this year, Cosmo and Linnie are doing just fine.  The Farmer and I had to doctor them this last week for scours, give them the Ivermectin treatment and put fly-tags in their ears.  The Farmer got Linnie's tag a little close to the end of her ear, on the same side as the number tag, and she has a goofy, loppy-eared look now.  It makes me laugh every time I see her, but she's embarrassed and feels silly. 

That's about all the cow news you can handle...and more. 

Adventures on the high seas....or plains....

This week is vacation Bible school week in Jordan for the kids and I, and the theme is nautical! God was watching out for our VBS crew, because the prom theme this spring was ALSO nautical and we snagged all the decorations to use. The church has a big old cardboard ship in the santuary, now, and nets and fish tacked up all over the place. 

I have the drama portion of the program and have elaborate sets and action that changes DAILY.  Today is a Bible times house, tomorrow a ship with water all around, the next day a Biblical city and so forth.  It's great fun for the kids, but always a little dicey for the person setting up because I'm never really sure the ship will hold together through four groups or that the walls will stay up.

I don't have a helper this year, unless someone shows up from Michigan or Iowa or someplace, so it will be tricky to do.  But, it's not like I'm putting on a Broadway play or anything, so it doesn't have to be professional!

Please pray for our little VBS if you get a chance, today.  Especially that I'll make it to town without mishap, because it rained ALL NIGHT, 4/10ths of an inch at 5 a.m.! A blessing for the crops and grass, a serious challenge for someone driving in mud to town.....

Thoughts on weeds....

Yes, you can tell from the title of the post this is going to be an absolutely riveting piece of writing.  Well, actually, it's better than you might imagine.....(Sara H., put down your coffee.)

I have weeds with hairy legs. 

They DO!

I don't have any idea what sort of weeds they are, but they are bountiful and sly and I've been pulling them by the truckload. 

They hide in amongst the daylilies and the iris and try to masquerade as such.  In some spots I can't see them very well, but I can feel their stems and that's how I figured out they have hairy legs.  It makes me feel better about ripping them out of the ground to know this; I feel I'm sparing them some embarrassing moments in the horticultural arena.  They hang out with the smooth stalked daylillies, who are elegant and grass-like.  They rub shoulders with the stately iris, efficient and strong. 

Of course, I think they are sort of like the people of Walmart and don't really care how they look, as long as they get a good deal on soil and water. 

Weeding with children is tricky, because they want to "help".  Kids are absolutely indiscriminate when weeding....if it's green, they pull it. 

Which reminds me of the time Karen Yost asked me to weed her daisy patch and I ignorantly pulled every single plant out, thinking I was doing the best weeding job ever.  (I was 22 at the time and didn't know a daisy from a dandelion. How sad is that?) Karen graciously forgave me, saying that she was getting tired of those daisies anyway, but I still apologize to her every spring and wake up in the middle of the night with weeding nightmares from the incident.....

Some weeds are just well-meaning flowers that happily seed and sow on any quarter-sized patch of soil.  These are the tough weeds for anyone who has ever struggled to try to get anything to grow.  I still have a horrible time pulling them, but they will take advantage of a sentimental garden.  Pretty soon, they will have overtaken every bed, like little colonies of cheerful pirates.  Plants as pirates....bet you never put the two things together, huh?!

Weeding is contemplative work, so I've been thinking of this post for quite a while.  And now I have to get back to the philosophical task....

Since the rain...

One of my very favorite recording artists of all time is Ian Tyson.  He sings real, true western cowboy songs....not redneck songs, not purtineer-pop songs, not whoopie-tie-eye-aye chuckwagon songs, but authentic cowboy music. 

He sings a song called "Since the Rain" from I Outgrew The Wagon album that starts out like this:

Since the rain

Things look so much better.

Since the rain

Honey, you should see it now...

That song has been dancing through my head for the last couple days.  It's glorious green, as far as my eyes can see and when I walk through the prairie bunch grasses, there are hundreds of tiny little flowers popping up.  This is the time to see Montana.  She's putting on quite a show, this spring. 

Yesterday, the kids and I spent most of the day outside, planting/unplanting and playing.  I got all my greenhouse plants plunked somewhere and a bunch of seeds scattered.  After a quick inventory, I seem to have too much oregano and not enough basil, too many tomatos and not enough pepper plants, too much flax and not enough daisies.  And the infamous white ghost iris is looking glamorous and stately, despite the wind. 

Here are some pictures from our yard. 

Anyone want a kitten? The white one is a male, the black one is female, both are kid-proof...

My beautiful stepping stone from Lori at Altered Glass!

Everybody's crazy bout a sharp-dressed man....

I don't know if you can read it, but his Wolverine underpants say, "I've got your back!"

Garden Ghosts

I have no idea where the white iris came from.  And I've never been fond of white flowers, other than daisies, because they almost always look dirty and ragged in my garden.  But aren't these just breath-taking?

Big honking clouds! (But no tornado. Whew!)

Last night, the National Weather Service issued a tornado watch and severe thunderstorm warning for the residents of seven Montana counties, including Garfield County where our humble single-wide trailer is anchored (horrifically) on cinderblocks. That's it. Cinderblocks. 

Nice, huh?  The only trailer park in the Langs Fork Suburbs of Cohagen.  Can you spell "tornado bait"?

I was a wreck, because the day had been muggy and warmish and just had that "weird weather" feel to it. 

Wayland had the computer radar up all evening, watching big ugly green patches of precipitation with red centers and startling little yellow boxes float around the map, like ugly amoebas under a microscope.  I appreciate the radar and all, but I trust my eye witness more, so I paced around the yard and deck with my camera, taking pictures of the incredible clouds to the east. 

Blessedly, the storms went on either side of us.  I believe it was due to the fervent prayers of a little girl and her mother all evening.  But here are the pace-y pictures for you, along with a couple cow images, just because they are adorable.

This is how it started out, to the southeast:

Oooo! That's impressive! (I didn't really think the clouds would get a whole lot bigger or more "poofy".)

They did.  I couldn't get them all in one frame, so from here on out, they are in chunks, so to speak.

This side of the storm kept morphing into different types of clouds, every few minutes.

This old girl thought I was nuts, taking pictures of clouds.  She'd graze a little, then lift her chin to check out the photo shoot with some suspicion. 

And my babies, Cosmo trying to nap and Linnie ready to bed down.  They've had their bottles and have warm, full tummies.  Isn't Linnie pretty?

It's "...a misty, moisty morning, when foggy was the weather..." sort of day, today.  I'm going to head out and check on all the baby plants, pull a few (hundred pounds) weeds and sprinkle seeds with great abandon.  When I come back in, to fetch up cocoa bobboo for the barnacles, I have a picture of my white iris for you.  White!

Breaking up is hard to do....

I am in mourning, folks.

My hair stylist of 11 years closed up shop and is moving to Bozeman to be with (get this) her new husband. 

How could she do this?!!! I thought we had something special. 

We've been through everything together....infertility, divorce, pregnancy, new babies, weight loss and gain and loss, moves, mothers, mother-in-laws, coffee.  And even more serious issues like bad home coloring jobs, whether or not to get bangs again and the organic hair products guaran-dang-teed to give us lift and volume at the bargain price of $20 a bottle. 

She left me.

I walked around the house in shock, yesterday. Seriously!!! 

I was JUST getting through all these insecurity issues from the Beth Moore book; I'm believing that I'm clothed in strength and dignity and all that jazz.  How, I ask you, am I going to be secure with myself when I have bad hair?

And I JUST KNOW I will have bad hair all summer, because no one knew how to color the grey to where it looked perfectly naturally blonde and how to trim that odd little cow-lick-y thing at the nape of my neck.  It's going to be bad.  And I'm feeling a little panicky.

(My three, no!, FOUR male readers are rolling their eyes and saying things like, "It's just hair," and "I think she's over reacting a little" and "Color, shmolor...get over it and get on with it."  Bless your hearts, I wish I could explain how painful this is to a woman!)

So I got the number of one of the stylists that used to work in the same salon and called, with a trembly voice, requesting a cut and color in June.  That'll give me time to work through some of these issues.

*sniff*

Garden Dirt

I got my tomato plants in the soil, last night.  All 8 of them.  Does that seem a bit extreme to you, considering I'm the only one in this four person household who even eats tomatos? 

Well, I count on a high mortality rate. 

I've always had a hard time calculating how much to plant.  And as you may have noticed, I'm not an incredibly moderate person, but it's even more extreme with plants and seeds.  And weeds. But that's another post....

A packet of cosmo seeds doesn't really look like it could cover all the area I need it to cover! So I buy two.  Then, I think I want to send a packet to a friend.  So I get another.  When I look on the back to see the planting "ideas", (Never "instructions"; that's way too limiting...) it insists that the plants will grow to be 12-16 inches tall and that I really should space them about 10 inches apart when seeding.

I have absolutely NO FAITH that my seeds will grow into anything more than 6 inches tall, if at all.  So I seed heavily, hoping that at least half will germinate.  I KNOW not to do this.  I KNOW the plants will be bigger than I anticipate. I KNOW the reason there are "ideas" on the packet is because that's the truth of the plant.  I cannot seem to reconcile what my concrete knowledge says with my planting insecurity!

I went to the greenhouse(s) on Wednesday of last week and bought quite conservatively, in my opinion.  Once the tender annuals and tropical vegetable plants had been purchased, the weather turned to frost, wind and general misery. And the grasshoppers hatched.  I've been moving the little plants around the sheltered outside corners of the house, promising them sunny skies and balmy days to come. 

There are about 6 pepper plants, 28 marigolds, 16 zinnias,  all my herbs, interesting flora that I can't remember the name of but want to try (ie: kill) this year, and some statice.  Okay, a LOT of statice.  And a gallon ice cream bucket's worth of flower and vegetable seeds.  When the Farmer comes home for lunch, I'm sneaking out the back door and spending about 30 minutes planting, even though it is raining and windy and cold. 

Does anyone else but me have garden eyes that are bigger than their logic?

Computer Klutz

I am a computer klutz. 

(Whew! I'm glad that's out...)

This doesn't come as any great shock to my friends, but they have no idea the actual depth my ineptitude actually goes to. 

We bought a new computer tower with some of our tax refund money this year and I'm still getting to know it, 3 weeks later.  I had JUST gotten familiar enough with the old one to make it do most of the things I wanted it to! We'd only had it about 8 years and we were finally getting along fine.  He'd grind along slow enough for me to change my mind and I didn't expect too much from him.  But it was time to put the old Gateway out to pasture.  He didn't want to deal with 1200 digital images a year.  And who can blame him?

Our new computer is all that and a side of fries, but it is WAY beyond my limited range of ability.  This computer actually sort of sneers at me. Yes, sneers.  I know computers aren't supposed to have personality, but when the machine smugly "ding"s at me as I fumble around, looking for the 3 photos I downloaded, opening files that look promising but are obviously none of my business, according to the computer, I'd consider that sneering. 

She's sleek.  She's fast.  She has more memory than I ever had or hoped to have.  She's great at filing, anticipating my searches on the internet and condescendingly asks me if I'm sure I want to do that.  I don't think she makes coffee, but that remains to be discovered....

I apologetically sit down and request access with my crummy little password.

She considers it, and finally with a sigh of her fan, allows me entrance to my screen. 

From there, our relationship deteriorates.

She brought with her the latest greatest versions of everything; sort of like a Mary Kay lady who brings all the same products only *NEW*IMPROVED*MORE EFFICIENT*CHANGED PACKAGING!  It sort of looks the same, but it's not.

  For instance, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get a Word document to print! I could translate the entire thing into Ethiopian, but it appeared I'd have to pack the computer to my friend in order to send the actual message.  In Excel, I can make pivot tables 'til the cows come home (and at my house, that's literal) but I couldn't get a simple formula to show real numbers. All it would do was: ######.  And everytime I tried to fix it...."ding".  Yeah.  That's the computer, calling me a moron.

I was excited about having Photoshop! Yes! At last, I could whiten my teeth, imperceptibly, in my photos before releasing them to the rest of the world!

Photoshop requires a person to think in layers.  I have to think of the end product and work backwards, layer by layer.  So I can't just highlight my teeth in the picture and shazaam! they're fixed.  No. I have to work with opacity, hue and saturation. (Doesn't that sound like the members of a funky band?  Opacity, Hue and Saturation...live....from Saturday night!)

I'm sort of with Donkey, on the movie Shrek.  Parfaits have layers. And I can find my way around parfait layers, as you all know. But photo layers are killing me. 

So I end up closing down the programs and my computer asks me if I really and truly want to do that.  And I feel like such a quitter! But I say yes.  Then she asks if I want to SAVE my changes.  Looking at the 27 pivot tables enumerated with #######, I get the feeling she's mocking me.  I say no.  She shrugs her electronic shoulders dismissively and I'm back at the main screen.

I'm allowed to use the internet without much comment, but occasionally I get nagged about the security updates. I love telling her "Not Now" and x-ing that little box! That'll show her!

I hope it doesn't take 8 years to make peace with Dell-a.

 (Yes, that's her name. Don't you name your computer?)

Multi-tasking

I'm still here!

I always feel apologetic to you when I haven't posted in a while....as though you are hanging on your computer, checking the Chronicles every 15 minutes.  (Because THAT'S how riveting ranch life is.)

(Sarcasm is hard to express in type...)


It's been crazy busy!
Or maybe just crazy.

And I left my camera at Marisa's house last Thursday, so I've been nearly handicapped! I didn't realize that I took photographs constantly.  All week, I've been wandering around reaching for my camera, only to remember it was taking a vacation in Jordan. And what a week to be missing it!

The kids and I left in a flurry on Saturday to go to the Miles City Bucking Horse Sale parade, swooping in to pick up Celestia on the way.  I'd informed everyone that I couldn't go, because we were branding, so my friends were shocked to see me.  Especially my friend Elise, whom I've never met in real life, only in Blogger and Facebook! She brought her four kids (beautiful, funny, kind kids) and we were able to watch the parade together.

The high points of that day were free cotton candy in the park, Angus touring every bathroom in a 1/2 mile radius, losing my car keys when the town's population had quintupled with visitors, and seeing our favorite Caledonians piping and dancing in the parade. (I didn't say they were all GOOD highlights.)

Sunday and Monday were basically eaten up with my school board job.  I think I complicate things.  Things like Quickbooks, Excel and Word.  Anyway, we had our board meeting Monday night until.....(get this).....a little after midnight, when Traci and I turned into pumpkins and the other two board members gave up on us.  I got home at 1 a.m.   Summer conference had better be a whing-ding-dilly this year or there's no reason for me to continue on with this little jobbee!

Tuesday, we branded a big bunch of calves. And I messed up with the ID tags. I wake up in the night, in a cold sweat thinking about it!  To quickly explain, we are putting button tags in the calves' ear to verify the source of the animal, so when it's processed for food, it can be traced all the way back to our pasture.  The button is about 3/4 inch in diameter and has a 21 digit code on it that has to correspond correctly with the number of the calf tag. 

My job, when we brand, is to put the button tag in the calf's ear, record the calf number and sex beside the ID number, reload the tagger, grab a syringe with Nasalgen and squirt that in the calf's nose, run back and pick up the tagger and then do the Ivermectin on the calf's back before they turn him out.  In a couple minutes. Accurately.  And when the syringe runs out, refill it.  And keep track of the kids, who are running around the corral. 

I had gotten up early to make coffee cake for treats for the crew and was just rummy from no sleep. (My mother-in-law had thoughtfully made bar cookies, but I didn't know that! Drats.) I didn't write down one number, toward the end. That can mess EVERYTHING up, in a big way, if it's not caught immediately.  Fortunately, I caught my error immediately and we adjusted, but it still makes my palms sweat to think about it....

Yesterday, I thought I was going to have to move bulls and work with them in the corral for (Alice, brace yourself) semen-testing.  My father-in-law told me he thought they could handle it without me on the top rail of the corral, waving my sorting stick, ready to bolt. Strange. But okay! 

I went to the green house in Miles City instead, thanks to a kind offer from my friend Traci to watch my kids.

I can spend hours in the greenhouse.  I had the incredible privilege of working there one spring and summer, and don't tell them, but I would do it for no pay.  And when I'm there, I usually end up selling plants as I shop, myself.  And deadheading. 

Here's the thing about green houses: when you assemble your plant purchases THERE, it looks conservative...pitiful, even.  When you get home, the plants have grown in number and size in the back of your car and you wonder where you're going to put them all! (Well, I don't, really.  But my husband does.)

I'll write more about my plants tomorrow.  This post is LONG.

Today we gather another big bunch of pairs to brand tomorrow. And I get to plant up some pots!

Thanks for hanging in with me! Come back to the Chronicles when you can....I miss you all when I don't visit with you in a while.  What's going on in your world?