Yay, cows!

The girls had a field trip to the MTSU dairy farm today. It was fun and educational. I found out that diary farms are much stinkier than I thought they would be. It wasn't cow smell or poop smell. The barn where they milked the cows and stored the milk before transport smelled like rotten milk. Yummy! I also discovered that cows are expensive to feed. They eat 30+ lbs of grain a day at a cost of about $5 a day. No wonder milk is so expensive.

Furthermore, I think that there is something really wrong with the world when it is more cost effective for a dairy farmer to not allow calves to nurse at all and feed them from a bottle. WTF? They loose money when the cow is out of production because she is nursing her calf, and apparently bovine milk replacer is cheaper than bovine milk. So they pump off the colostrum for the calf (humans don't get that yummy bit) and give it to them by bottle, along with every other feeding until they are eating hay and grain. It's a strange, strange world.

We got to pet a cow, and that one obliged us by pooping just as we were walking up. All the kids had great fun yelling "EEEEEEWWWWWW!!!!!! POOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPP!"

And we got to drink some chocolate milk, which was very appetizing after smelling the rotten milk smell in the barn.

The barn cats seemed to steal the show with our class, though. The kids were more interested in petting them than learning about cows. It was a fun trip, though. And now I want ice cream.

Book Review: Jenny Crusie's Faking It

I've been on a Jenny Crusie kick lately. Her books are generally fun, funny, fast paced and pretty hot. Faking It was no exception and might just be one of her best books. Tilda is an art forger gon straight and Davy is a con man gone straight. She just wants to save her family and stay out of jail. He just wants to get back the money that his former lover swindled from him, that he swindled from her. When Tilda and Davy meet in a closet and agree to help each other, tempers ignite, passions flare and secrets will be revealed.

Throw in the sister that has an alternte personality, her gay ex-husband, the hit man, an attempted murder or two and it's just all good. I give it an A+.

Maybe I should indulge my horse's maternal desires

Every so often, I email the very nice lady from whom we bought Hope. I sent her an email this week with a picture of Hope watching over the new foal at the farm and asked her if Hope had ever had any foals. J told me that yes, she's had one foal, before she bought Hope. The people she bought Hope from were in the process of negotiating that sale as well, and supposedly sold the cold for $40,000. No, my fingers didn't stutter. Forty-fucking-thousand dollars. Da-yum! That kind of money is enough to make me rethink my stance on exploiting my horse's uterus.

Of course, I don't have a clue who Hope was bred to, I'm not a trainer, and not going to allow any foals she might have in the future to be trained in the "Big Lick" Walking Horse world. And "Big Lick" people are the only ones who are going to drop $40,000 on a Walking Horse colt. Of course, there is still the biggest reason of all: if we breed her, it will be because we want the foal, and I'm not going to be willing to sell it. So, no exploitations here. But $40,000 is enough to make me fantasize anyway.

Remebering Maggie

Today is my beautiful Sundust Maggie's birthday. She would have been 18 yrs old. I've thought about her so much these last few weeks, thought about all the things I was looking forward to doing with her that we never got to do. I still miss her every single day. Having Hope is a blessing and a balm. She so clearly needed us, needed the love that we have to give. She eases the ache in my heart. But Maggie is not forgotten, is still loved and there will always be a piece of my heart that belongs to her.

Storm trauma

Last Friday, we had some sever storms to come through middle TN. The tornado that left 2 dead and 35 injured and many houses destroyed was less than 10 miles from my house. My kids spent about 45 mins or longer huddled in the downstairs bathroom while I stood watch at the back door, looking to the SW so I could see what was coming at us. I watched a rotating clouds go over my house, clouds that in less than 5 miles from here had a funnel cloud hanging from them. I don't know if it ever touched down. There were so many small tornadoes in the area that day that it might have been one of those or it might have just made a funnel and then fallen apart.

Monday afternoon, we had yet another line of thunderstorms come through. They hit just as school was letting out, and wouldn't you know, the kids all had dentist appointments that afternoon. We had to stop by the house and get the stroller for Sam, because he had gone to sleep, and while I was out of the car getting it, we had some lightening to hit really close by. FLASHCRACKBOOM! And I screamed. I was a little bit wound up.

Well, apparently so were the kids, or at least Ellie, because when we got to the dentist, we sat for a bit to let the rain slack off, and then I pushed the button to open the door and told them to jump out and run to the door. But Ellie wouldn't jump out. She got practically hysterically crying and saying "No, I don't want to go out! I'm scared. Please, let's go home, can we please just go home, Mommy?"

Dude, I just about fell apart over that. But, it also snapped me back together and made me realize I can't let my fears get a hold of me so badly. I mommied up and got her calmed down and we went on in to the dentist and she was fine.

The only blip after that was Sam had a come apart when we tried to wake him up for his turn in the chair. I ended up having to reschedule him for a time that wasn't nap time.

Thank god the rain and storm was done and over with and the sun shining by the time we came back out, though.

Man, other countries get all the good commercials

This might just be the funniest commercial, evah: http://tinyurl.com/ck8kra

Warning, not safe for work, contains some innuendo about shaved pusses.

You might be a redneck if...

...you transport a horse in the back of your van. Well, it is a "mini" van and the horse is a mini horse.

After the pro haircut

I took Em to see Ms. Jane, our hairstylist tonight. She did a great job with what she had to work with. Emma likes her hair, though, so I guess that is all that matters.

Kids and scissors

My mother tells me that every child goes through a phase with scissors. Ellie had a short phase where she liked to cut hair off of her stuffed animals. When she was 4. The girls are 6.5 now. And yet, apparently Emma is just now having her scissor phase. She claims that her hair was getting on her nerves.

I almost cried. I might still cry. I was on the phone with our hairstylist less than 10 minutes after we saw what Emma had done. Behold the damage: