It's The Little Things

When you deal with a chronic disease as I am, eventually you find yourself being happy about the weirdest things.  Sometimes it's having a day without pain.  Sometimes it's being able to navigate your way through a difficult problem at work without having to ask your friend that works in another department 40 questions because your chemo brain isn't blocking all of your intelligence.

Sometimes you're happy that the barium you had to drink for your CT scans put an end to that almost constipation problem you've been struggling with since you started chemo again.

Yes.  That's right.  I said it.  For the first time ever, the barium got things 'moving well' shall we say.  Who am I kidding?  Let's be clear.  I might as well have had a cleanse.  I guarantee they got a good look at my colon today because there wasn't anything in there to block their view.  Nope.  Hell - they could do another one tomorrow and STILL have a great view because  dayum - I'm empty!

See?  It's the little things.

It's kinda bizarre that I'm discussing such things on a public blog.  I never used to discuss such things.  I remember the first time my husband asked about the last time I had taken a crap and I looked at him like he had lost his mind.  Why in God's green earth was he asking about THAT?  We didn't discuss bowel habits in my house growing up.  Unless you were my dad.  I'm pretty sure we all knew way more about my dad's bowel habits than we ever wanted to.  But isn't that true of most families? Anyway - I certainly saw no reason to discuss my bowel habits with my BOYFRIEND - it didn't matter how long we had been dating.

Now look at me.  HA!

But that's the thing - with ovarian cancer, the fear of an obstruction is a very real thing.  I've been SO lucky that I haven't any any bowel involvement with my cancer - no tumors that we've ever known of, no bowel resections during my de-bulking surgery, no obstructions - partial or otherwise.  Many women do have bowel involvement and have to have large portions of their bowel removed, or colostomy bags.  We're constantly on the watch for the signs of an obstruction - because that could mean that the disease is progressing.  That a tumor has worked its way into the bowel.  Or that one has developed and grown large enough to compress the bowel or colon...

So - I'm sorry and I hope you weren't eating when you started reading this.   If nothing else, take the time today or tomorrow and see what you can think of to be happy about that you don't have the nerve to share with anyone else.   Then share it anyway and see if anyone still thinks you're inspiring.

Muahahahahaha!!!!

(No - really - I wasn't trying to ick anyone out.  But if I'm going to be honest, I  might as well be honest about everything, and this is totally a big topic for many of us with ovarian cancer.  That dreaded obstruction is often what finishes us off - eventually there just isn't anything else to be done.  So forgive me for being tickled that for once I don't have to worry about taking stool softeners or fiber capsules for a day or two!)

In other news, the cow formerly known as Steak is eagerly looking forward to the arrival of Son of Steak.  I believe she is also eagerly looking forward to her new half barn that MDH is going to build for her.  At the moment, that barn consists of 9 poles set into the ground, one of which is a good foot shorter than the other two in that particular row because MDH didn't stand outside and watch the men who were setting the poles in the ground.  Now he has to decide whether to try to raise that one pole up a foot, or just to cut a foot off of the other two.  I vote for the cut - not that he always listens to me.

The hubs has also decided that since our Java hens were such crappy mamas, they have a future in our freezer and he will be buying a new breed of chicken to replace them.  As long as he doesn't replace my Americaunas that lay the blue and green eggs, that's fine with me. And of course, as long as he is the one who gets them prepped for our freezer.

Dove continue to line up on our back yard fence and our back yard trees - taunting the hubs who did not get to go dove hunting this year.  He's also figured out just when he can hunt geese and woe unto any Canadian geese that fly too low over Digbyland.  They just might find themselves being marinated in Fred Meske's secret goose sauce!

In another couple of weeks it will be time to start seeds around here for the garden. Every year I start seeds, and every year I'm lucky if 2 out of the 30 - 60 seedlings I nurse make it into the garden.  Or survive the garden.  But this year I'm determined.  I will have heirloom tomatoes!  And cucumbers so I can make pickles!  I will!  Maybe.

So that's what's going on in Digbyland - what are you up to these days?

(By the way - my scans are still clear. Woohoo!)

Two Down...

Today I had one of my pleural catheters removed.

Last November, I had two pleural catheters put in when they installed my chemo port.  They did this because I had so much fluid around my lungs it was hard to breathe.  For a long time, we had to drain every day.  Then, as I went through chemo, the fluid lessened, and we went to draining every other day, then every three days.  Sometime last spring, the fluid around my right lung reduced to the point that I've only been draining that side once a week.  A few weeks ago, it became obvious that we just weren't getting anything measurable out of that side.  So - today the surgeon removed it.

Last November, when I got out of the hospital, I had 3 tubes in my body (I also had an abdominal drain that was removed several months ago).  I was weak and could barely walk.  I couldn't sleep without being on an incline.  Hell - until we got a hospital bed installed at home, I slept in my recliner.  I was on IV nutrition twice.  And at times, I wondered if I would ever get back to normal.

Well - normal isn't what it used to be.  But I'm down to one tube.  I have hopes that someday I won't have any tubes.  That's what awesome in my world today.

It's been crazy busy at work lately, and this probably wasn't the best time to have to take a day off.  But I wanted that tube out so badly, even though I knew it would make my job a little bit more crazy tomorrow.  I have another oncology visit on Thursday, and that doesn't help matters.  But it is so worth working a couple more 11 hour days to be a step closer to tubeless.

I attended a cancer support group this month, and I found that to be really helpful.  I'm not sure why hearing the stories of a bunch of stage III and IV survivors helped me so much, but it did.  I even met another ovarian cancer survivor - one that has many years of remission.  If anyone out there is wondering if they should go to one of those meetings - do.  It's worth it.  The next meeting is on my son's birthday, so I'll miss that one, but I'm looking forward to the one after that.

Next month is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month.   A week or so ago, one of my staff was sweet enough to nominate me to win a cake from a professional bakery on Facebook, and we won!  I've requested an awareness cake.  September 5th is my son's birthday, the 6th is National Wear Teal Day, so we're going to have a little teal event at work with that cake.  If there's anything left, then I guess J gets a teal cake for his birthday.  (Oh I kid.  I'll get him his own cake, or big cookie or whatever he wants.  He's turning 18.  18!!)

On the 13th, Hicksville's football team will be wearing teal athletic tape, and I will be sitting at the booster club table, handing out symptom cards and selling bracelets to raise awareness.  A sweet Hicksville lady has designed a teal tshirt that we're going to sell so folks can wear them to the game, and raise a little more money for ovarian cancer research.  On the 14th, I'm hosting a "Teal Fest" at my house to raise a little more.  No idea exactly what we're going to do that evening, but there will be wine and good food, and good company.  Well - I hope good company! 

I probably won't raise thousands of dollars.  I may not even raise hundreds.  I'm starting small with this fundraising thing.  It's a brand new thing to me.  But I feel like I have to.  Like I'm almost being called to.  It's like I figure maybe this is why I got cancer - maybe this is why I survived when so many don't.  I could be just fooling myself, but I've always thought if I can make any kind of difference from what I went through, it'll be worth it.  One way or another.

In other news, Fricasse and the rest of the chickens have finally stopped sitting on their eggs.  Eventually we'll get the two different breeds we have separated.  Wilbur, the wild hog we attempted to raise to adulthood, gave in to the heat.  We are so not hog breeders.  Lactation and her pregnancy seems to be progressing well, but we noticed this evening that she's developed a pretty bad limp.  We're not sure what happened to her and we're hoping that it's not too serious.

The garden is doing very well - we're starting to get some tomatoes, eating green beans during the week, and I actually canned some black-eyed peas last weekend.  Good Lord willing, we should have home grown cantaloupe to eat before too much longer, and I've got my eye on this year's entry into the biggest watermelon competition at the fair.  Last year I got third.  I'm aiming for first this year!  I also made grape jelly a few weeks ago that was turned out *gorgeous* - so I'm going to enter that in the fair too.  Winning the bell pepper division last year turned me into a fair ribbon junkie.

All in all - just another fine day in the boonies. 

Living the Good Life

We've had rain out here in Hicksville lately.  Wonderful glorious rain.  Our fields are a pretty green color you can only get from weeds.  Ah well - so far, the cow seems happy with them.

Speaking of our cow - we used to call her Steak.  Because we're warped.  But now the hubs sent her off to get knocked up, and we're pretty sure she obliged, so she needs a new name.  I've considered Lactation, but only if you say it with a slow southern drawl.  Go ahead. Try it.  Makes ya feel a little like Scarlett, doesn't it? 

I say pretty sure, because we don't know how to tell if she is really knocked up or not.  I googled how to figure that out a minute ago and I would like to say oh HELL NO.  I'm not stickin' my arm up any cow's booty.  [shudder]  Just the thought wigs me out.  So I guess we'll just wait and see.  She's getting mighty rotund and spends alot of time laying around waiting for someone to feed her fresh green stuff or cow bon bons or something.  Maybe we'll have a cute little calf to get entirely too attached to so it'll never be sent to processor after all.

We still don't have any baby chicks.  A few hatched, but none of them lived very long because apparently Java's are crappy mama hens.  Now I have four more hens setting, but they haven't had a rooster on that half of the coop for weeks, so they're pretty much wasting their time.  I'm going to have to get some eggs that might actually produce chicks and move them over there.  Otherwise those poor hens are going to start doubting their ability to hatch chicks, and the last thing I need are neurotic hens.

My garden has been loving the rain we've had lately.  The green beans have tiny little beans growing, and I actually found potatoes under some of the volunteer potato plants.  I've found some green tomatoes.  My onions seemed to have all died out.  I'm not sure why - they were getting watered, and we had mulched them in, but I can't find any of them now.  So they either died, or the evil bunnies that inhabit our land snuck in and ate them all.  Bastards.  Unfortunately, the weeds and native grasses have enjoyed the rain as well.  I've spent the last couple of weekends pulling weeds and grass and mulching. 

We don't have but a few weeks left of summer - and it makes me sad.  Just when I start feeling like myself again - waking up to have my breakfast on the back porch, then spending a few hours in the garden.  Sometimes I almost forget what I had been doing over the last nine months.  Sometimes I fool myself into thinking it was a bad dream - or that it happened to someone else.

Then I bend over to pull a stray weed out of the lawn, and the fluid around my left lung follows gravity and ow.  Or my incisional hernia feels like my intestines are about to pop out.  Then I remember that I'm not the same person I was a year ago.  Now I'm a cancer survivor.  Now I have limits to what I can do.

It's better than the alternative.  I'm alive.  And I'm living my life.  Spending time with my husband, and my kids when they have nothing better to do.  Someday I hope it won't hurt when I bend over to pull those weeds.  I won't have to have a cart to sit on as I roll around the garden and pull grass.  I won't have to hold my hand over my hernia when I sneeze because I have a fear that my intestines are going to shoot out across the living room.  (No - I have no idea what hyperbole means.  Why do you ask?)

Another friend of mine will be laying her mother to rest tomorrow.  I never met her mom, but she sounded like a wonderful lady.  Skin cancer took her.  I don't know why I went into remission and she didn't.  I hate that my friend lost her mama.  Yet I'm glad my boys didn't lose theirs.  I'm glad I can call myself a survivor.   I wish her mama could have too.

Things are good right now out in Hicksville.  We're going to try to enjoy the last few weeks of summer.  I hope you do the same.  Live deliberately.  Embrace each moment.  I'm determined to do that myself, and to not let myself get caught up in the daily grind again.  Now I know all too well - you just never know how much longer you have.  And like they say - no one says "I wish I had worked more."

I'm pretty sure no one says "I wish I had stuck my arm up a cow's booty when I had the chance" either.

Old McDonald Had a Farm....

I might have mentioned before that we live in the boonies.  It's not as much the boonies as it used to be - we've had all sorts of families move in around us in the last few years.  And while I might rail against their pointless and wasteful pole lights and over-watering of their lawns, it's not too bad.  Since we live in the middle of our 15 acres, we still have some elbow room.

On that elbow room we have a cow and some chickens.  Some of those chickens are currently broody and sitting on eggs.  They've actually hatched a few chicks, but sadly, none of them have made it.  We don't know if one of the hens sitting is killing them, or if it's too hot, or what, but I'm getting pretty tired of finding cute baby chick bodies.  If anyone has any bright ideas on what is happening to our babies, let me know.

Our cow just recently came back from visiting my cousin's herd.  His herd has a bull or two, so we're hoping she got herself knocked up.  The only problem is that if she is knocked up, she probably won't be dropping her calf until February or March.  March won't be too bad, but February is an awfully cold month for new calves.

We might not have planned this very well.

Face it - we're amateurs at this homesteading stuff.  We've finally gotten the gardening side down pretty well, but we're still learning when it comes to livestock.  When our banty hens hatched some chicks a few years ago, we only lost a couple of chicks.  Those were good mama chickens.  These "heritage" breeds my husband wanted don't seem to be doing as good of a job.  And we're clueless when it comes to cows and calves.  It's a new adventure for sure, but one we like to think we're ready for.

So  wish us luck.  It can't be any more frustrating than trying to type on my new laptop and constantly having the cursor jump to somewhere two paragraphs up because the base of my hand rested too long on the touchpad.

Stupid technology.

What new adventures are you exploring this year?

The Lost Girl

Trying to figure out what to blog about these days is getting harder.  Do y'all really want to hear more about my hair coming in almost totally gray?  Or what the doctor said about when my last two drain tubes can come out?  I could blog about how my chickens seem to have made it their mission in life to scratch the mulch out of my flower beds and eat my day lilies so they'll never bloom this year.  I'm about ready to put some frickin' chickens in my freezer if they don't leave my day lilies alone.   It's a good thing my husband put a cage around my newly planted bluebonnets, or they'd be roasted already.

The fact is - sometimes I feel like without the cancer, I just don't have much to talk about.  We had friends over for burgers and beer ( well - THEY had beer - I had burgers and cokes/tea), and I found that I spent a lot more time listening than talking.  More than once I thought about jumping into the conversation, but whatever I was going to say had something to do with my cancer, or its various side effects, and I didn't want to be the chick who is always talking about her cancer.  It's like I don't know how to make small talk without bringing it up.

Geez.  Might as well call me Debbie Downer if that's all I can talk about.

Yet the cancer is a huge part of who I am now.  I don't know how to leave it out of the conversation - but I don't want it to be my only topic of conversation.  I worry that my friends are getting tired of hearing it.  I try to make a joke out of it - using my ever-present scarf as my "excuse to get out of doing stuff" or a way to laugh it off when I use the wrong word (chemo brain!) or forget a date or something we've discussed.  Who am I if I'm not the chick who laughs at cancer?

Who am I indeed.

That's what I'm trying to figure out these days.  How to be the chick who used to have cancer.  How to chat with my friends about everything and nothing and not just about cancer and its side effects.  I used to be able to do that with ease.  But that was in the Before.  I used to spend long afternoons consuming chips and hot sauce and talking about nothing with my peeps.

Here in the soon to be After, I'm not so sure how to do that.

So if you happen to run into me in real life, and I seem quieter than I used to be, that's why.  My whole world has been wrapped up in cancer and treatment and side effects and fighting to get better, and now that I'm nearly at the end of that chapter in my life, I'm a little lost. 

It's just all a part of this new normal I guess.

Braaaiiinnnsss.....I Want Braiiiiiinnnnnssss....

Yesterday was a good brain day.

Since I started treatment, I don't think as well as I used to.  I used to be pretty sharp.  For the first few months after my surgery, I was on so many medications, my brain was a  little foggy.  It was hard to concentrate.  I didn't really read anything but Facebook posts for over two months.  For me, that was beyond weird.  I'm a reader.  I was always reading a book or magazine.  It took awhile before I was able to concentrate well enough to read magazine articles.  Then I worked my way up to "fluff" novels - the kind you don't have to think too hard with - no complicated plots to try to remember.  I finally worked my way up to the Game of Thrones series - then I knew I was ready to go back to work.  Try reading those books back to back and keep up with who is doing what to whom.  That's a pretty good sign your brain is working again.

Since I've been back, one of the things I've struggled with is concentration.  Most days I do pretty well.  But every so often - usually within a week or so of chemo, and certainly the days right after chemo - I have a foggy day.  A day where if a faculty member asks me a question, I let them know that I don't know, but I'll look it up.  I know I won't be able to look it up that day....most likely if I happened to remember where to look it up, I might not understand it fully anyway.  I've actually put off doing a project for my boss because I knew it was one that I needed a sharp day to even understand what she wanted....and not every day is a sharp day.

It's frustrating.  I had heard of chemo brain during my treatment, but actually experiencing it is unsettling.  Sometimes it's just taking longer to figure something out.  Sometimes it's searching for a word.  Sometimes it's using the wrong word.  And sometimes it's looking at a form you've completed dozens of times and thinking you're doing it correctly, then having it come back with instructions on how to do it right.

Yeah - that's embarrassing.  I'm sure folks in other departments around campus are getting annoyed at getting screwed up stuff.  It hasn't happened *alot* - but the fact that it's happening at all bothers me.  So - I look up directions on how to do stuff that I used to not think twice about.  I make my to do list more often.  I go through my email even more often to make sure I don't miss deadlines.  I try to remind myself that it's all part of the process - the process of getting better, of recovery.  And it won't be this way forever.

This morning I had CT scans to see where we are at with my cancer.  I've had the 6 carbo/taxol chemo treatments that are the standard front line of care for ovarian cancer.  I still have some fluid around my lungs, so I don't expect to be considered NED (aka  - no evidence of disease) just yet.  But I'm optimistic that I'm close to that.  That my cancer has responded well to chemo, and maybe I just need one or two more treatments to finish it off.  I'll find out next Wednesday.  Y'all keep me in your prayers until then.

Now - for something non-cancer related!  My youngest son J competed in the District/Area track meet for his school a few weeks ago - and placed 2nd in District and 4th in Area!  We are so proud of him.  This qualified him to go to Regionals for the first time.  That was the goal he had set for himself, and I'm so glad he reached it.  Unfortunately, he had a bad day throwing at Regionals - nerves I guess.  But next year he'll be a senior, and he has this experience to learn from. 

If I haven't mentioned it before, we have a cow and chickens on our place out in the boonies.  Currently Steak (our cow) is off at my cousin's place meeting some boys.  We're hoping she's playing the hussy and getting herself knocked up.  Ha!  Maybe once she's had a calf, I'll change her name to Lactation.  (Yes - we're terribly inappropriate in our naming of livestock. We are rednecks.  We don't hide that.  We wear it like a big ole badge!)

I'm currently considering names for the chickens - right now, Fricasse, Parmesan, and Korma are my favorites.  Let me know if you have any suggestions - I've got 13 chickens to name - 3 of 'em roosters. 

It looks like we're expecting yet another freeze tomorrow night.  I have 8 tomato plants that are trying to find a way out of the house.  And I'm about ready to hunt down Mother Nature and provide her with some damn Midol because seriously?  It's May.  There is no need for this freezing crap in May. 

See?  Life goes on.  Even with cancer.  In SPITE of cancer.  Because that's the way it should be. 

Vacation Gone Wild

So I took a vacation from work.

It was meant to be a “work around the home place” vacation – one where I caught up on my weeding, put down newspaper and cardboard mulch in the garden to keep from having to weed more, cleaned my house from top to bottom, and re-do the brick walkway in the backyard with landscape fabric to get rid of the grass going crazy and trying to invade my herb garden and strawberry bed. It was going to be a great plan.

Didn’t work out that way.

Friday, July 1^st, I developed a tooth abscess. To the point we had to call and bother my dentist at 9 pm so he could call in a prescription for pain killers and antibiotics. At 10 am on Saturday, we met my most kind dentist at his office and he ground that particular tooth down and suggested we might have to pull it since it’s already had two root canals – the most recent one just a few months ago. Woohoo! By 2 pm that afternoon, we discovered I cannot take hydrocodone with acetaminophen without getting nauseous and all those fun things that go along with nausea. By 4 pm, I looked like a chipmunk storing nuts for the winter in my cheek.

Not the best look for me. Just sayin'.

Needless to say, I didn’t get much yard work done last week. And we won’t even go into the whole unsuccessful IUD retrieval procedure on Tuesday. It was not my week.

But – I did finally get my house cleaned. Well, parts of it anyway. And the strawberry bed got weeded. We also harvested our first yellow squash from the one volunteer squash plant that came up in the corn. None of our melon/squash/cucumber section came up. Only volunteers in other parts of the garden. We’re grateful for whatever did come up since it’s been so darn dry this year. We’ve had maybe an inch and a half of rain since January. We see clouds and get our hopes up, then it rains somewhere else. *sigh*

My Rhode Island red hen is sitting on banty eggs at the moment. She tries sitting on the leghorn’s eggs, but since we don’t have a full size rooster, we sneak those out when she’s eating, since nothing is going to hatch out of those eggs anyway. We’re keeping our fingers crossed that maybe we’ll get a few new babies!

I’ve lost 5 of my tater plants – I’m not sure what is killing them underground, but it’s annoying me to no end. And I’ve yet to see a single new potato on the others. Methinks this tater experiment might be a failure. Luckily the onions are doing pretty well, so I don’t feel like a total root crop failure.

My eldest son turned 18 yesterday. I’m having a bit of a crisis about it – but quietly, because how silly is it to have a crisis about the fact you managed to raise a handsome, intelligent, witty, kindhearted child to the age of 18? But really – 18? How did that happen? It’s just surreal. Does this make me officially old?

Changing Seasons

Well hello there! I've been very remiss in my blog duties this year - I blame my job. I've been having to work of all things. (Oh - I kid. Really. Mostly.)

Anyhoo - life in Hicksville has been hot and dry this year. We're in the midst of an extreme drought of Dustbowl preportions - complete with the appearance of haboobs. I think we have had a grand total of maybe an inch of rain since January, which has stressed my garden to no end.

This year, we decided to attempt growing potatoes and onions - you know - root vegetables that are 90% WATER. Yeah - not the greatest idea, but to be perfectly honest they're growing better than nearly anything else in the garden. Certainly better than my corn and green beans and black-eyed peas. Those have been plagued with being planted a bit too deep and not coming up (my fault), evil grackles coming along and pecking the seeds out of the ground when they weren't planted deep enough (evil birds' fault) and windburned because my heavens - the wind - it won't stop blowing. So I'm not very optimistic that I'm going to have much of a corn crop this year. Heck - at this point I doubt I'll be able to even can much in the way of green beans and black eyed peas. I think we'll have enough for meals once they start producing, but canning? Not so much.

None of my cucumbers came up. Neither did the cantaloupe, the honeydew, the squash or pumpkins. One watermelon that we intentionally planted came up. Luckily, we have volunteer squash and cantaloupe coming up by the corn & beans, and volunteer watermelon everywhere. But I was really hoping to make pickles this year. Hmph.

But hey! I have 102 onions growing, and 34 potato plants. If I can get at least a couple of pounds of taters out of each tater plant, I'll be happy. We decided to mulch around the tomatoes and peppers this year, using a thick layer of newspapers covered with landscape fabric, and we already have little green tomatoes. I attempted yet again to grow tomatoes from seed as well, and so far have around 12 that have survived and are just about ready to be planted and covered with a milk jug until they're big enough to survive the desert on their own. Unfortunately, the wind got my peppers. That makes me very sad.

This year, we also applied something called BiotaMax to the garden. An old buddy of mine from high school has a company that came up with it, and when he heard me blathering on about gardening on Facebook, he sent me a sample. I can't help but wonder if that's why my tomatoes are doing as well as they are in all this heat and wind, but it's too early to tell. Apparently it doesn't ward off those damn grackles. We applied it to half of the new strawberry plants we put in this year to see if we could compare. I'll show pictures at the end of the summer and let everyone judge for themselves if it made any difference. Right now, the strawberries are struggling to survive in this heat. Today it's only going to be in the mid to upper 90's. Tomorrow - back to the 100's for the foreseeable future. I like summer and I like the heat, but dang - I'm dreading July!

Now for the chicken update - one of the banty hens was setting for awhile, but apparently we messed with her eggs one too many times, so she up and said 'pfft' and that was that. No baby chicks this year. Although our bedraggled Rhode Island Red went broody on us this weekend. Poor darlin' - we don't have any full sized roosters, so she's sitting for naught. The hubs is supposed to be tracking down some fertilized full size eggs for her to set on, but hasn't located any just yet. I hope we can find some - I love baby chicks!

The boys are enjoying summer so far - sleepin' til noon, then playing video games all day. I can't really blame them - it's too hot to work outside by the time they get up, and it's not cooling off until 8 or 9 pm at night. E has his first job not working for a relative this summer - he's a sacker at a grocery store in Mid-Size City and loving not having to ask mom and dad for money all the time. (Mom and Dad are enjoying that just as much!) E still struggles with being accepted out here and right now the other boys are still boys. I'm not sure when teenage boys grow out of being little turds and embracing the mob mentality, but apparently it's not the summer after junior year. *sigh* Luckily J has embraced the "whatever dude - who cares what you think about me?" attitude and doesn't seem to be bothered by the mob. I'm hoping E does the same soon. He's such a smart, witty kid. Too bad the mob doesn't have the maturity to get that.

As for me and the hubs, we are slowly learning to adjust to life with boys that are fixin to be men. While we enjoy being able to do more without having to track down babysitters, I have to admit missing all the time we used to spend together as a family. Thanks to his work, poor E wasn't able to go with us to see the 1st three blockbusters of the summer movie season - and who knows when he'll be able to? We're lucky if we get a couple of dinners together as a family every week between E's job, and summer workouts and just life in general. And J is about to start driver's ed. I know it's just part of the season of our lives right now, but I still struggle with having to let them go.

Darn kids - who said they could grow up?

Hail Sucketh. Much.

A few short weeks ago, I uploaded pictures of my cool weather garden to my Facebook. My cabbage, brusell sprouts and cauliflower (shut up - I *like* veggies!) were so pretty. And since then they have been growing like crazy. I had even begun to find tiny heads of cauliflower here and there.

Tuesday evening, as I was walking out of my office, my cell phone rang. It was J, who had been at home all day.

J: Wow mom!

Me: What son?

J: It looks like it SNOWED!

Uh oh. It's June. It does not snow in June in West Texas. It does, however, storm. And it had indeed been storming Tuesday afternoon.

This is what I found after driving home in the pouring rain:

*sigh*

Life of a "farmer," eh?

I won't even tell you what it did to our garden. It's too depressing. And although I love shredded cabbage, this was not what I had in mind.

Last night, MDH, the boys and I got out there and re-planted tomatos, peppers, cucumbers and squash seedlings. This morning, MDH will be re-planting green beans, corn and canteloupe.

Because we are nothing if not gluttons for punishment. As for my cool weather plants, I think we'll just see if they recover. It's fairly early in their development - who knows - maybe by fall we'll actually have some cabbage and a cauliflower or two. And since the brusell sprouts hadn't started with the sprouts, maybe they'll be ok.

A girl can dream, can't she?

To be honest - we certainly needed the rain. And we got plenty of that. But man - I sure hated seeing my plants and trees so beat up. One of my daylilies was a week from blooming - all but one bud was beaten off the plant. And my asparagus? Oy.

Stalks. No ferns. I certainly hope it grows back some ferns. Otherwise I guess I'll be re-planting *that* next spring.

Our one and only chick is eatin', poopin' and growing. It is very very cute. It started growing tailfeathers the other day. I'm hoping it's a hen, because I'm afraid I'm already too attached to the bugger to be eating him/her someday. If it's a hen, then at least we might get eggs.

You know - if we get her some friends and a rooster and all.

That's my life lately - work, a lot of gardening and talking to Chickie. Our only other excitement was going to Sonic last night for our free rootbeer float. I'm still convinced that my eldest is meant to be a lawyer - because that kid will argue about *anything* and hates to be wrong. No idea where he got *that* from....

I think I'd rather have free floats for excitement than this:


Ugh. Hail sucks.

Living the Hicksville Life

Life in Hicksville has been hectic lately. What with all the planting, weed pulling, watering and glaring.

Glaring? Yes - we have been glaring. For the last two years, since we moved to the boonies, we have enjoyed the distance between us and our nearest neighbors who were a good 15 acres away from us. At least until someone purchased the property between us.

Since then, our new neighbors ( let's call them Jethro and Ellie Mae, shall we?) have

a) let their 3 big dogs roam free - free to dig up and destroy my compost heap. Our sand heap. Our gutter that we hadn't put up yet.

b) when informed that the folks to the north of them free range their chickens, and letting their dog roam wild might not be appreciated, Jethro replied "Heh huh - guess they won't be free range for long!"

c) put up a pole light 200 feet from my front porch. Directly across from my bedroom window.

d) are now building one of those cheaply built homes about 6 feet off the property line - directly across from my front porch.

I know - I'm being petty. But for pete's sake. Control your dogs. And don't be a tool if you're *not* going to control them. I'm just waiting for someone to take a shot at those dogs because they were going after someone chickens.

Speaking of chickens, we borrowed an incubator and put in 24 eggs and have one cute little baby chick to show for it. We are such amateurs. We actually had two hatch, but the hubby forgot to read all of the incubator directions and took one out of the incubator too soon - and died. Our little chickie is very cute, and is pecking and cheeping very well. I went to look online to see if we could get some buddies shipped in for him (since we apparently suck at this incubatin thing) and found this:

Barbecue Special

That's so wrong. FUNNY - but wrong.

E made it through his first year of high school, and survived. Now both boys are out of school and looking forward to sleeping late and surfing the internet and watching TV all day.

Ha. Like that's gonna happen.

The hubs and I have already started our summer to-do list. Starting with "Build a Chicken Coop for Chickie."

Heh.