• Monday 1 - Standing Up Shower

• Wednesday 3 - Back to Work

• Thursday 4 - My New Cat

• Tuesday 9 - Skunked Again

• Wednesday 10 - Hay

• Thursday 11 - SPOT

• Friday 12 - Sore

• Saturday 13 - Sitting Henlet

• Sunday 14 - SPOT Testing

• Tuesday 16 - Quilting Woes

• Wednesday 17 - Quilting Woes Cont.
• Thursday 18 - Chili's New Collar/Quilting Woes Cont. Cont.
• Friday 19 - Winter Has Arrived
• Saturday 20 - Virginia City 100
• Sunday 21 - Cabelas/Cheap Diesel
• Monday 22 - Hopi
• Tuesday 23 - On the way back from PT
• Wednesday 24 - Outdoor Chili
• Sunday 28 - Health and GIANT Quilting Frame
• Monday 29 - Juju and Quilting
• Tuesday 30 - DVE Thoughts

Back to August 2008 • Forward to October 2008 

Monday 1 - Standing Up Shower

For the first time since June 20, I got to shower standing up. Whoo! It felt really good.

Recovering from rasping Fergus yesterday felt less good - I think perhaps that was a mistake.

My horsie activities for today consisted of haltering Zini and removing her from the paddock, shouting at Jackit for slithering past and also coming out of the gate (he's a bit like an octopus in his ability to squeeze through small spaces), fly spraying Zini (she stood like an angel), admiring her latest crop of bite marks (she pissed someone off, evidently), then haltering Jackit, fly spraying him (he wasn't keen and wiggled a bit), ShowSheening and brushing out his mane and tail and rebraiding his mane so he was all shipshape again... oh, and admiring his latest crop of bite marks. He was actually much better behaved than expected.

Mouse, Zini, and Jackit's feet look awful, so I guess that's who Farrier Ted will trim tomorrow morning, since I don't think I can.

Wednesday 3 - Back to Work

<sigh>

Thursday 4 - My New Cat

Last night pft calls me into the bedroom to come and see something. He counsels me *not* to go in the mud room first:

		After he'd gone, I went to bed and was reading, only to hear "crunch, crunch, crunch" about 45 minutes later... he was back.
		This time he came all the way in the bathroom and spent ten minutes stuffing his face from the cat dish.
I'd swept the floor in the mud room earlier and dumped the dirt and bits of cat fud in this box... very tasty.
He was totally unconcerned by me/me turning on the light/ the creaking door/the flash of the camera - just scoffing away.
	...And I thought Chili's claws  were long - this guy needs  to get out and do some  serious digging.

Tuesday 9 - Skunked Again

Chili got skunked again for the second time in three days last night (and we're surprised after our visitor the other night?), so spent another night on the front porch. When it happened at the weekend, she was just lightly misted so smelled OK by morning but this time she's still fragrant. I'm going to try spritzing her with Nature's Miracle which I read the other day can work. Have to see (and I have to find the spritzy bottle). I'm thinking maybe she needs to come indoors in the evening after we come home... I haven't seen the skunkie since he came visiting, but Chili sure has... :(

How is work going?

I went into the office Wed/Thurs and was pretty wiped out and sore by the end of Thurs. Worked at home Friday and took it really easy over the weekend which helped. Yesterday was back in the office and it wasn't so bad. Now today, I'm back home, but have to go out and get hay later (I missed it last night) with the truck-n-trailer and then go to PT on the way home, so I'll be sore by then.

I'm a bit "bleah" at the moment, not sure why... maybe just tired. And frustrated that I can't really *do* anything.

The other night I dreamed that I rode Fergus bareback and it felt OK on my poorly leg, so I decided I'd be OK to ride Tevis the following Thursday on him (there are so many problems with this dream, on so many levels).

pft went out and rode his dirt bike on Saturday and explored. Then Sunday he took Fergus out and rode on the BLM behind the house and then went off and discovered another couple of new trails down the lane that we didn't know existed. I'm really happy he's doing this, but bummed for me because I can't  :(

SPOT

Since both pft and I love to explore and the last two times pft went out he ended up nowhere near where he said/thought he was going and I never would have found him, this week we ordered a SPOT GPS locator whatsit. This way, when pft falls off his bike/Fergus and is lying in a ditch with a broken leg I'll be able to find him.

These things have an "I'm OK" alert button, a "Help, help, I'm being eaten by a grizzly bear" alert button, and tracking so you can see where the person is via a website (and if they don't move for hours you can assume that they are either lying in a ditch with a broken leg, or the tree cover is too thick to get the signal out).

Chooks

Not only did one of our henlets start to lay marble sized eggs - she also started sitting on them. So now she's hiding out in the St John's Wort outside the front porch, totally incognito, and only gets up in the morning to forage. The other chooks all go to bed without her. She's got at least three possibly viable eggs (the other two she's sitting on are marked as "old", so I don't think they'll work). Closer to hatching, I'm going to transfer her and her nest to the cage that Ann found for me outside someone's house and we went and fetched. That way, the small chicklets won't immediately get eaten/stood on/attacked as soon as they hatch.

Wednesday 10 - Hay

I went to get hay yesterday - 20 x three-grain ($13 per bale) and 20 x orchard/pasture ($15.50 per bale) (100 lb+ bales). These prices are for 10+ bales at Dave's Hay Barn: 

• 60/40 grass/alf $15.49 
• 80/20 grass/alf $16.99 
• Orchard/pasture $15.49 
• orchard rye alf $12.99 
• orchard $17.99 
• timothy meadow $17.99 
• timothy $17.25 
• three-grain $12.99 
• oat $15.49 
• wheat oat $15.49

When I came home, I went in the barn and gave Roop scritchies and looked at his back. It looked very inviting. I could just hop up there. Just for a minute....

Thursday 11 - SPOT

pft and my new SPOT arrived this morning, so we detoured to the post office to fetch it. I'm in the process of setting it up, so it may be a bit odd for a while. To see us moving around, you can go here:

https://share.findmespot.com/shared/gogl.jsp?glId=1uETUc5PodsEFTfUms30eWbcnCpu9lBKr

and in theory see where we are. This page is password protected, so email me if you want the password.

I went to lunch on the river with some people from work and it picked up the signal very well, even though we were under an awning. Once I took it back to work, it was no good - I put it on the windowsill and it never did pick up the satellites again. pft says it doesn't like large amounts of metal, so maybe that was it. Cell phones aren't keen inside our building either and my GPS gags a bit, although it's OK on the windowsill.

Friday 12 - Sore

Chili hasn't gotten skunked in several days.

The sitting chook disappeared <sniffle>.

Am really sore - both leg and the rest of my body. Just wanted to lie down with ice packs when I got home last night. I overdid it getting hay on Tuesday (who knew driving all the way to Penryn would do me in?) then did two days in a row at work, which seems to wipe me out. I went to PT, did good there, and came back and slept for a couple of hours on the sofa.

I'm trying to teach Chili the same trick that a friend's dog can do - sitting on her haunches and raising both paws. So far, we're just working on "give paw" and she's not too sure, but sort of getting it. She thinks being treated is very fine.

Saturday 13 - Sitting Henlet

Yesterday evening pft thought he'd lost the other light speckled hen, so he checked the nest just in case and there she was.

Bummed that we'd already lost the dark speckled hen, we decided to move the light one into the chook house, eggs n' all, so she wouldn't be at the mercy of the local raccoon who was hanging around the other night (and was sure to have been the hen-eating culprit).

I carried the chook and pft carried the eggs. All the while I'm looking at the light speckled hen thinking 'she looks really dark, it's odd...'. Then we got to the chook house and looked inside and counted five chooks... plus the one in my arms, makes six... oh.

Somehow he'd missed seeing the light speckled hen in the gloom - and, a miracle, I was holding the dark "lost" hen. Yay!

It doesn't seem like she was thrilled with the move and I'm not sure she's sitting any more - the eggs felt cold this morning when I let them out, but at least she's safe.

I have a scientific desire to crack the eggs open to see what was going on, but will wait a few days to make sure she's definitely lost interest in sitting on them.

[Update: After a week or so, I broke a couple of the eggs open to see what was going on inside and wished I hadn't - there were the beginnings of chicks in there :((( ]

The other two hens are useless and haven't ever laid. Now they are all on strike and no eggs are appearing. Maybe they'll wait until spring now.

Sunday 14 - SPOT Testing

Yesterday, pft's went out on the dirt bike, so the SPOT will got its true test. Before he left, we put it on the back deck zipped inside his Camelbak and it sent one signal. I told people to keep an eye out for him moving on his dirt bike - it managed to send about four signals - not great, but better than nothing.

Then today he went out with Fergus.

Later:

Spot’s not finding Patrick today either.

That's because of operator error. He didn't realise he had to press two buttons, even though we went through it before I left. He had a nice ride with Fergus and is still in love.

Tuesday 16 - Quilting Woes

I sandwiched my squiffy log cabin quilt at the weekend - that hurt, crawling around on the floor with my poorly leg. I've got two more to do, but I think will wait a while.

Since then, I've been trying to quilt it, but have been having all sorts of problems. The first bit I did I had to unpick because the tension was too slack on top (which luckily meant it was relatively easy to unpick). Then I decided to switch to a light thread on top and a dark one underneath but I'm guessing it doesn't like the difference in thread sizes because now it's skipping stitches and breaking the thread every two inches which is really frustrating (top thread is thicker).

After PT today I'll go down to the quilt shop in Auburn and see if I can get some heavier bottom thread of the right colour. I'm pissed.

At the State Fair, I saw some 100% bamboo batting that I liked, so I ordered enough for the three quilts I'm working on now. It arrived last week and is *really* nice, I love it. I was worried it would be too thin, but it seems to trap air as it feels loftier than it actually is.

Later:

I tried sewing slower and the thread still broke (and now I've got tight, tiny stitches to unpick, since I was doing free motion). I think the machine has too many layers to go through and doesn't like it. I'm getting tired of unpicking.

Wednesday 17 - Quilting Woes Cont.

Per instructions from the quilt shop, I replaced the needle with a sharp, big-eyed one; I rethreaded the machine using a jar to put the spool in and a safety pin taped to the back of the machine as an eye; I put silicone sewing-helper (or whatever it's called) on the thread and on the needle; I cleaned the fluff out of the bobbin area... and the result was better, but not 100% fixed. I still broke thread so I suspect it just doesn't like all the layers it has to slog through.

I also need to clean and oil my machine as it makes interesting squeaky noises when I sew and is full of fluff, so that might have sommat to do with it too.

Thursday 18 - Chili's New Collar/Quilting Woes Cont. Cont.

Chili got her new citronella collar and tried it out tonight. She made one woof and came scuttling back in the house. She's out on the front deck right now being very quiet. :)

I suspect that getting your machine cleaned and oiled will do the trick.  
Sometimes a little piece of fluff can cause a huge problem.

I ran out of thread last night anyway, after only having a few snags and one breakage. Can't do more of the meander quilting on the squiffy log cabin blocks until I get some more - it's special variegated cream-to-light-beige quilting thread which of course I can't remember where I got it from in the first place...

So I started quilting the narrow sashing with normal green thread, but that didn't go great. The fabric is fluffy homespun and not really smoothy-easy to do delicate quilting on, so the results were a bit lumpy. Oh well. I'm keeping this one, so it's not the end of the world...  Then I realised it was midnight and I'd promised myself to get more sleep so I'd be cheerier and less down (which I have been recently, so it hasn't been so good).

Friday 19 - Winter Has Arrived

Yup, winter's definitely here - the horses are acting like idiots, pft got attacked by the silver seabright rooster (aka "Cocky Little Sh*t") when he went out to feed, Chili's teeth were chattering when she came back in this morning, the cats are galloping up and down the house, and my toes are cold.

(We're planning on leaving for Virginia City 100 late this afternoon, so I'm working frantically trying to reduce the pile - they are heaping it on and my co-worker [who was covering for me for 10 weeks while I was out] keeps taking vacations - paybacks are hell. Didn't get out of work until 8:30 last night. The pones were jolly miffed when we finally got home).

I was practising "walking nicely" last night when we finally got home. It actually looked proper-like, even if I did feel like I was goose-stepping to create the "look". Anyway, walking proper-like apparently used some things that haven't been used in a while because my ankle's quite sore this morning, so I couldn't possibly feed.

Saturday 20 - Virginia City 100

In the end, pft and I stayed at home Friday night, sleeping in our own bed (something to do with being at my desk at 6:15 am on Friday) and set the alarm for 5 am and actually left home 6:30 and were at the first VC at Foothill market by 8:30, which was quite a feat.

We took pft's dirt bike in the back of the truck, so when we were done at Foothill, I took Chili on to Washoe Lake and pft went to watch the Ferraris doing the hill climb in VC and then we met up at camp later on. We all had a lot of fun. Even the weather cooperated and it was very pleasant (particularly for Virginia City, where it usually blows wildly and bitterly all day).

My leg stood up well to the abuse - I really worked it hard - helping the in-timers and doing vet secretarying in the wee hours of the night (stayed up until the last rider came in at 4:30). Although it ached, it wasn't as bad as I worried it would be (staying up on it for 24 hours and doing a lot of walking, etc). I managed to get 2:45 hours sleep, so was pretty floppy by Sunday evening. 

pft and I set up the tent in the back of the truck (protected from the little wind by the cab), pumped up the airbed and made a nice, warm nest in there. Chili slept in the truck and seemed quite content.

We came home very pink.

Sunday 21 - Cabelas/Cheap Diesel

He has a pair already that he likes (closed toe and heel so he can't gash his toes/heels open outside)(very likely scenario, knowing pft), but they are getting tired. Cabelas had "last year's" model (the ones he has) on sale for $30, so he bought a pair, then decided to get two pairs for that price (they're usually $90). Turns out the second pair were only $20, so he did do well.

And best of all, we filled up with diesel in Dayton as we were leaving VC and it was only $3.71 WOW!?!!  (I paid $4.40 in Cool last week). pft had to go back three times and re-do the ATM card, since it didn't want to give him more than $50 at a time, but the truck was full-full-full for the first time in ages and we pulled out of there with a potential mileage range of 578 miles. WOOOO!

Just now there was a crash on the front deck. The skunk is back helping himself to Chili's leftovers. I got up and shut the front door and pretended I hadn't seen him. :)

Monday 22 - Hopi

Poor Hopi. He sticks his head through the panels to whiffle up all the bits of hay outside, so as a result has no mane at all in the middle of his neck and looks really stupid. I'm tempted to take the clippers to his entire mane and roach it completely off. Just think if we did the same with his tail? <snicker>

I go in each night and beat him with baling string (this is his training). Initially he was convinced I was trying to kill him, but as soon as the food arrived, he changed his mind. He's still convinced I'm out to get him, but will happily stand and be flopped on with string so long as he gets paid for it.

Tuesday 23 - On the way back from PT

Things I've got:

• A flower arrangement from Cool Florists (courtesy of Sally)
• Two 50 lb bags of shredded beetpulp (one in the boot, one across the back)
• One Corbin seat for dirt bike (euww, Corbin seat) (across the back of the miata)
• One letter from Dept of Treasury, dated 9.22.08, saying we are entitled to a stimulus payment of $1200 which we can expect by 9.19.08 (??) and that if we don't receive it within six weeks of this notice to call  them.
• One sore leg from PT.

VC100 was good incentive as I pedaled my way through my 10 minutes/1.64 miles of bicycling: "I - will - be - fit - enough - to - do -VC - next - year <puff>..."

Wednesday 24 - Outdoor Chili

Now that Chili has her new citronella collar, we have started leaving her outside during the day so she's not shut up in her room all day long when we're at work. We prop the mud-room door open, so she can go in there and sleep on her bed. This is much better for all concerned. 

Sunday 28 - Health and GIANT Quilting Frame

I had a really good weekend, health-wise. If you ignore the fact that I spent the entire Saturday lying on my bed reading and sleeping (I had a pretty intense work week and needed to catch up), by the time I got up, I was able to walk around the house hardly looking like I was limping at all. It's a good fakey.

I even looked at Uno and considered riding him, although that's not allowed. I've got one more weekend to go before I get my next x-rays and Dr visit and hopefully he'll clear me to ride then.

Today we spent the day in Placerville and I walked a bunch in my boot at the quilt show and by the end my heel was very sore and the leg was tired but it didn't swell up much and doesn't feel too bad tonight. I do believe it is on the mend. Yay!

Hobbling about at the quilt show, the nice salesman <g> from Cottonwood talked me into buying one of his 8' quilting frames and a Juki TL98Q to go with it. He didn't have the sewing machine with him, so I have to wait a couple of weeks for that, but came home with the frame and carriage to start playing on with my old machine.

YIKES is it BIG!!!! Right now it is completely FILLING the dining room.

Monday 29 - Juju and Quilting

From what I can tell, my soon-to-arrive Juju is a good machine.

Sewing machines are a lot like vehicles - different people have different opinions/loyalties, but if you can't afford thousands of $$ for a long-arm machine, the Juju seems to be a popular smaller, cheaper option.

It does seem that a lot of people liked the simplicity and eveness of the Juju and they really liked the thread cutter. The only person I read who didn't like it hadn't tried to figure out why it wasn't working correctly.

From a forum:
... because of the speed of the motor, I do oil it every time I use it, as recommended. 
In fact, if I'm sewing all day, I'll oil it again after 3-4 hours.

Interesting about the oiling... I need to find out *where* one oils it. And likewise with my old Kenmore - it's squeaky and I'd happily oil it if I knew where to poke the oil.

Re: the Quilting Frame and Carriage:
You'll love it.

Definitely practice alot on muslin.  At least until your circles are actually round.

I can do meandering OK, that's not a problem, but I can't do any precise stuff (like sewing back along the same line - it looks like a 4 year old did it). And I'm working on stars - sometimes they turn out perfect, other times I lose track of where I've been and it ends up looking like a star-burst.

There are lots of things you can do now...like pantographs.  Have you heard of them? 

I needed a tiny sash pattern the other night and found one online with two loops and a star, which you then reversed the next time you did it. Looked simple enough - until I was doing it. :)

The thread was the same colour as the fabric (big time), so I couldn't see what I was doing, and couldn't figure out which side to put the loop or start the star. I traced it onto a yellow sticky off the screen and stuck it to the sewing machine to remind me what I was supposed to be doing. 

It looked OK at the end and I did get better as I went along, but was a little haphazard to start with :)) 

Tuesday 30 - DVE Thoughts

Right now, my pones are all covered in bite marks. It makes me feel bad, since they seem to get on relatively well with each other *when I'm watching*. But it's probably a case of too many pones in too small a space. I *really* need more fencing to expand their areas (or to move of some of them to new homes - I'd be happy if I could slim them down to six only).

... anybody thinking of going to DVE this winter?

I'm thinking that even if I don't have a horse ready (or - more likely - I'm not ready), I might go anyway. pft is also interested in bringing Fergus and his dirt bike.

Either way, it'll be fun.

I was even considering seeing if I could get Uno ready for LD activity (or even Hopi, since he's a better match, speed-wise, with Fergus since he can walk, where Uno tends to amble). We'll see.

pft came in from feeding this morning and I asked him "Did you see anything good out there?". He replied "Nothing you'd want to see..."  :)   Apparently Roo was doing his leaping impersonation. Eurk. Maybe I don't want to ride him for a bit.