Mysterious modem and a very long post

My modem went wonky on me last Wednesday and I was unable to connect to the internet. I couldn't take the CPU into town to my computer guy until yesterday. Thomas connected up my modem and it worked fine for him. So, I brought my CPU home, hooked it all back up, and my modem worked again. Who knows? All that counts is that the darn thing is now working and I can post again.

Saturday was bliss. I was able to make the IH35 Stitchtogether for the first time since July. It was really great to see everyone and to catch up on all the news. I also got to fondle and gawk at Mary's and Lynn's new stash. Everyone had lots of Show-n-Tell finishes (except me). I so enjoy seeing everyone's finishes. Peggy and Di brought framed finishes; it's always fun to see "completely" finished finishes. Gloria showed off the really cool frog fob she stole from LoriRay. She actually made it home with it as none of us were able to "acquire" it from her. But best of all, I GOT TO STITCH FOR A WHOLE AFTERNOON UNINTERRUPTED BY COWS!!!

We find it necessary to have lots of food available at our stitchtogether. We all brought stuff to eat. Unfortunately, the lady who brings all the cutlery, napkins, and plates had an emergency and couldn't come. So there we were with food we couldn't eat because we had nothing to eat it with or on! And wouldn't you know it, the library switched from paper towels to air hand dryers, so we couldn't even appropriate paper towels to use as plates! Gloria brought Schlotzky's sandwiches and we were able to munch on those, but the Snickers salad and unsliced bar cookies sat there temptingly with no way to eat them.

On the home front, we got a lot of things done on the house last week. The kitchen is 95% done. We just need to put a threshold down in the doorway, but must wait until DH can use his table saw (which is in pieces somewhere out in the shop).

I have one more coat of paint to put on the doorway molding in the bedroom and then I'll be done with that. In the past, I've always used inexpensive ColorPlace paint from Wal-Mart. Well, I researched paint and bought the pricier and "better" Behr paint to use on trim molding. It is awful. I hate it. It doesn't cover near as well as my old cheap Wal-Mart paint. It also doesn't brush out or feather edge well. I'm having to use two coats of the Behr paint on the door moldings because it didn't one-coat cover my spackle. Stupid paint. The next room I paint, I will be going back to using ColorPlace.

I had the brilliant idea of using plastic cable ties to hold the new hog panels in place on the fence railings until our friend can come out and weld them on. He was supposed to come back two weekends ago, but got called into work. He will be out in the middle of November to try again. Anyway, the ties hold the panels quite well, and after working on the fence all last week after DH got home from work, we are nearly done with tying it. We should get it finished tonight even if we have to do it by flashlight as we no longer have Daylight Savings Time (whine). Then DH will have to install Emma's dog door and I will no longer be her personal door slave.

Our neighbor's cows enjoyed freedom so much that they started getting out of our pasture and visiting a lot of other pastures. Three days in a row, they followed DH up the driveway when he got home from work. Then on Friday, we saw hide nor hair of them. Our neighbor called to report that a friend of his down the road had found them and put them in his pasture until our neighbor can secure his fence. He was going to come out this weekend until DH reminded him that it was the start of deer rifle season. It would not be a good weekend to be wandering a fence line in the woods. Indeed, at dawn and dusk all weekend, you could hear the frequent sound of rifle shots.

On that note, DH hunted on our land this weekend and got a nice spike buck that yielded about 42 pounds of meat before processing. My freezer and I are excited! And DH is no longer a gloomy hunter.

I really miss Daylight Savings Time. It gets dark way too early now. Yesterday, I went to Lowe's and bought DH two shop lights for his shop. He doesn't have electricity out there yet, but can run them off extension cords from the house for now. He needs to "nest" out there and get stuff arranged/rearranged before we can move all the tools out of the den. Hopefully, he can get that done and we can move furniture into the den this weekend. If it doesn't happen this weekend, I'm sure it will happen by the next weekend. You'll know when it does as you'll probably be able to hear my hollering for joy from several states away.

I ordered some stash this weekend. I saw this pattern by Twisted Oaks, "Trixie and Treat." Now, normally this type of pattern is not my thing, but this one struck my fancy so I ordered it. I also ordered Sue Hillis' "Yo Ho Ho Ho" pattern that I showed y'all several posts ago - the Santa pirate.

Well, I'm off to vote, and I hope you are voting today also!

Knicker Knotter #6 - HUH?

October is "National Protect Your Hearing Month." I think it's too late for the generations behind mine. And statistics back that up. People are losing hearing at earlier and earlier ages. Probably because they've had headphones or earbuds stuffed in their ears since they were old enough to stuff them in by themselves, and they are almost always turned up too loud. (BTW, if you have earbuds on and the person next to you can hear your music, your music is loud enough to damage your hearing.) They think loud is better.

I usually always wear my hearing aids out in public or when I am with another person. I feel more connected to the world that way. However, lately, I've stopped wearing them when I run errands in town. Mainly because just about every store I go into (and most restaurants) play music so darn loud that I end up turning them off anyway.

I have several marvelous conditions often associated with hearing loss. One is called "hyperacusis." This means that loud sounds sound REALLY LOUD AND ARE PAINFUL TO ME. That's why I turn off my hearing aids. Grocery "shocking" is bad enough without being in physical pain.

Everything is louder here in the college town I live near. The students are used to blasting their ears with sound, so this loudness is "normal" to them. There's one store I frequent where I can tell which manager is on duty by the volume of the Muzak. The college student has the volume turned way up; the guy my age has the volume much, much lower.

I bought a CD recently and the seller told me it was a great album and to make sure and "turn it up real loud!" Volume does not equal good music. Experiencing music is not dependent upon how loud it is. More bass is not better. But then, I'm a music and singing snob - what do I know? Uh, I know enough to protect what hearing I have left.

Molding away

Before you ask, yes, we still have cows. Yes, the neighbor came up to work on the fence. No, it is still not cow-proof. Yes, he will be up again this week "sometime" with some bobwahr to "fix it." No, I am not hopeful.

I have not stitched much at all lately. This makes me grumpy. I hope to stitch some this week. I have backstitching to finish on my WIP. No, I am not a backstitch hater - it doesn't bother me a bit to backstitch. Once the backstitching gets done, I will post a picture.

We are making progress on the house. Hopefully, it will go much faster now that bowhunting season is over and DH won't be gallivanting around the state hunting on the weekends.

This weekend, DH finally got all the door and floor molding installed in our bedroom. (Notice I did not mention the window molding; that will be done later. I SOOOO want to cover those pink studs!) I will be spending the next couple of days spackling the nail holes, caulking all the seams, and touch-up painting it all. Then I will remove all the various bits and pieces of construction debris and bring in some furniture! Only the bedroom furniture, but it is better than nothing! Yeehaw!

Unfortunately, this will not include my stitching chair. Yet. Soon, very soon.

The Bovine Conspiracy: an epic tale (or tail)

As always, I truly appreciate all the comments y'all take the time to make on this blog. I'm glad I can entertain you and hopefully put a smile on your face - you certainly put a smile on mine!

I have some weird connection with an alternate universe. It seems that every time I pick up my current WIP and begin to backstitch, cows appear in my yard. This does not amuse me.

When our neighbor came to get his cows, I learned that checking fences regularly is a main part of keeping them (literally). In fact, I helped him check the fences adjoining our properties for cow escape routes. Apparently, we missed one as the cows came back, and Socks (the black one with the white on her legs) was already down the driveway about 10 yards through our open gate when I spotted them.

Of the four cows, three are all black as they are Angus cows, and the fourth one is black with white splashes on her legs as she is an Angus cow mixed with another breed that I don't remember the name of. They are all cows (female), but are not heifers (cows who have calved). I figured since we were neighbors and that we seemed to see a lot of each other, I might as well name them. Of the four ladies, there's Socks, Baby (the smallest), Middlin (the middle sized one), and the biggest, Bossy (because when you walk with her, she'll nudge you gently in the backside with her head if she thinks you're not walking fast enough).

Well, once again, I had to wrangle cows. I grabbed the five-gallon bucket that DH and I have taken to leaving on the porch for cow emergencies, chucked a couple of rocks in it, and shook it at the ladies. Bossy, Middlin, and Baby all gathered around me. And since they were all around me, Socks came back into the yard to investigate, which was what I'd hoped would happen. I then sauntered down and shut the gate.

Next, I went back to the house and put on jeans and some shoes. Then I went out and led the ladies around to the back of our property, hoping to find where they had escaped. I stepped in cow poop a lot as it hides well in goatweed. I could not for the life of me find their escape route. After about 45 minutes of this, I went over to a different section of fence that could be opened to let the ladies go back to their own pasture. Middlin went right through. Baby was next in line, but I had to really sweet talk her to get her to come through. While I was talking to Baby, Bossy wandered down the fence about 20 feet and ambled through it near a tree. AHA!!! Mystery solved!

Once the other three cows were on the correct side, they mooed at Socks. Socks is suspicious of me (probably because I've poked her in the flank with a stick a few times lately). The other three will let me scratch them on the head. Anyway, after much mooing back and forth at each other, Socks finally came through the fence and I closed the opening.

Then I investigated the escape route. All of the fence around our property is in really bad repair. All the wooden posts are rotted and falling over, the few metal T-posts are falling over, and most of the barbed wire is either rusted apart and falling off the dubious posts, or is so loose that it can be conquered by cows. Our neighbor had a small stash of old hog panels (4' x 20' long steel mesh), so I grabbed one of those and wrangled it to the hole in the fence. That took me about ten minutes. I'll bet it weighed about 70-80 pounds. But I'm a strong woman and I was determined to remain cow-free. I got the panel in place and managed to get it to stay there.

Note to self: never wrangle cows without wearing leather gloves to handle barbed wire (bobwahr to us Texans), always carry a knife and some rope with you to repair fences, and a pair of pliers to bend bobwahr with wouldn't hurt either. Wellies would be nice for your feet so you don't have to scrub cow poop off your sneakers and wash them. Again.

It's a conspiracy, I tell you!

Yesterday afternoon, I settled on the porch to stitch for a couple of hours until I needed to get supper started. I had the laundry done. The dishes were done. DH had called to report that our neighbor would be sending someone out to tend to the cow infestation. There were no cows in sight. Stitching bliss...

Yeah, right. I got about 20 backstitches done when I hear, "Hallooo! Here cow, here cow! Anyone home?" A man appeared out of our woods from one direction, and the cows darted out of the woods from another direction heading towards him. Our neighbor had driven up from Houston to tend to his cows. I think he mostly felt bad because they were on our property again. Other than the cow pats and their presence driving the dog nuts, they really aren't that horrid (unless you step in a cow pat!).

I didn't get to stitch much, but I met our neighbor, learned a lot about cows, and learned a lot about some of the other neighbors (and yeah, a lot of them live in Houston!). And DH ended up with spaghetti and meatballs for dinner (my back-up cook-quick meal).

I'm a knowledge junkie, and I'm always willing to learn about something I don't know anything about from someone who does. And our neighbor, who rents the 62 acre pasture behind us from a guy who lives in California(!), is passionate about cows. So I picked his brain and learned a lot - at least about beef cattle; he doesn't know much about dairy cattle.

I also learned that it's best to wear jeans instead of shorts when tramping about an unmowed pasture. (Hey! At least I put on shoes!) And that you should not run in a pasture lest you step in a hole, lose your balance, and fall face first into a bunch of goatweed. And I learned that the nicely pungent-smelling weed I fell in was goatweed. It can be used in skin care products. ☺

Oh well. Maybe I'll get to stitch today. Uh huh.

Battling bovines again

DH returned late last night from a weekend hunting trip. He got nothing. The other two guys got nothing. Which means I will have nothing to put in my freezer. Although he saw a lot of deer, he only got one shot and missed. He is a grumpy hunter. And I am washing/drying mounds of grubby hunting clothes. (But he gets to fold them and put them all away!)

And the darn cows are back. I've been chasing them away from the front of the house for two days. There are cow pats everywhere. Darn cows. And the dog is completely obsessing over the cows being in her yard which is making me want to duct tape her to a wall.

In fact, I’ve already chased them twice this morning, once before and once after breakfast. Picture a short disheveled woman in a long bathrobe who is barefoot running across the dewy wet grass yelling, “Hyah! Hyah! Get out of here!” at the top of her lungs while brandishing a stick and leaping tall mounds of cow poop. Yep. That’s me. Scary, huh? ☺

We're trying to get a hold of the neighbor. DH is going to see if he can temporarily repair the fence this evening when he gets home from work. Of course, this means he has to persuade the cows to go over to their side of the fence. Yeah.

Thankfully, there only seem to be four of them right now, instead of the eleven we had trespassing before. And it means we have to keep our gate closed and open and shut it every time we need to leave or come back to our house. Darn cows.

And life conspired to keep me from stitching all weekend. I hope to stitch this afternoon between tending to loads of laundry. Hope forever springs eternal.

Long ramblings

No, this isn't my cat - I'm allergic to them. The picture was posted on a message board and I thought he was cute. It reflects my mood. Some days, you just want to bite a flower.

Yesterday, I wrote a long blog post, carefully edited it, checked it for spelling and grammar, added a picture, formatted it, and then somehow deleted the whole thing right before I hit "Publish Post." GAH! And no, I couldn't find it in "Drafts." Weird.

Hopefully, today will be better post-wise. WARNING: This will be a long ramblin' and rambly post.

Yesterday afternoon I made cookies for DH to take on his hunting trip. Every time my oven timer went off when the current batch was ready, my silly dog would run like mad into the utility room where we keep her food bowl and start gobbling her kibble like a starving dog. She does the same thing when my cell phone goes off. Silly dog.

I have stitched some in the last few days, but I want to get some backstitching finished before I post a picture. Also, it's been rainy, dark, and cloudy (glummy and grismal) here weather-wise which makes taking a decent picture difficult. And hence my biting-a-flower mood.

Being a "home-moaner" is a pain sometimes. Our 1000-foot driveway has a hump and a low spot about a third of the way in. The previous owner made the hump to raise the driveway out of a boggy area, and the low spot is "supposed" to channel away water from the bog. All that really happens is that every time it is actively raining, the hump gets slicker than greased snot and any car/truck attempting to drive over it slides off the side of the driveway into the ditch. The low spot fills with water and becomes a car trap until it dries out (usually after three to five days) unless you speed up right as you come off the hump. If it is not raining, you won't slide off the hump, but you still have to gun it through the low spot. It's quite exciting to drive on this section of the driveway - not for the faint of heart or light of right foot. Oh, did I mention that you have to make a 30-degree turn as you come off the hump?

Wednesday night, DH slid off the hump in the Jetta and had to call a tow truck. The planned work on the house for that evening didn't happen. Shucks.

While waiting for the tow truck, he slipped in the mud and fell, twisting his left knee. His PT wife and the Certified Orthotist guys at work who fit lots of knee braces on people with knee injuries all agree that he probably tore his ACL and a meniscus. Joy. He will "go to the doctor if it keeps bothering him." Uh huh.

DH and I have decided that the driveway needs attention. This will push back work on the house in other areas, but it will be cheaper in the long run than paying for a tow truck visit every time it rains. Oh well. Luckily, DH knows a guy who knows a guy with a bulldozer and does driveway work. We'll probably need to put down some caliche rock in that area also. But the bulldozer guy knows a guy that delivers caliche. :-)

Our fence is still not Emma-proof. Our friend came out to help DH weld it last weekend and although they had two wire welders, neither one of them would work correctly, despite them working on and with them all day long, and with a trip to Lowe's right before lunch. So he is coming back next weekend to try with a larger arc welder. I am still the dog's personal door-opening slave at this point.