They're coming too fast!

Yes, yes, it’s been a few days since I’ve blogged. I have missed it!! The holidays are coming fast, and I am getting stressed. I keep telling myself that it is part of my new strategy not to be stressed by the holidays. It’s not the “simple” way. And dammit, I am going to be simple! (And you know how I meant that!)

I am going Christmas shopping this weekend. Let’s hope I can stick to my guns. Not a whole ton of presents for the kids. I think I am going to do some cooking for my brothers/brothers-in-law/sisters-in-law. Nobody will turn down a basket of baked goods, I hope. Nobody here will turn them down anyway! I was thinking of some fudge, peanut brittle, truffles, and anything else that comes to mind before I shop. Would you think that was a bad gift?? I guess I can’t assume that everyone else will appreciate my simple approach.

The cats are getting coal. I didn’t tell you that I did a bad thing. One of my bedsheets ripped, and I trashed it. Well, I STARTED to trash it, and then decided that the kitties might appreciate another warm thing in their little cat house. So what other barn cats sleep on 440 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets? And then, what do those ingrates do??? Abandon me. They are gone, all except Mark. And Mark sleeps on the hay bales, and meows constantly for me to feed him (which I only do rarely). I am sick of those freeloaders. ; ) Whose idea was this to put out the welcome mat?

And the craziest thing is that they have run away to the neighbor’s. I fed the neighbor’s horses last week. It was miserable. That bitter cold rain, not-yet-freezing temperatures, those gray and soggy days. You go outside for 45 minutes and it takes 4 hours to warm back up—the kind of cold that chills you deep to the bone. So I am out there, feeding five horses and his dog. Each horse has a different food, different amounts. The well pump runs at a trickle, and some water needs to be hauled across the yard. The stock tank will fill only if the hose is running downhill. Gates are wired together with wire and baling twine, some gates are torn off and mired in mud. The horses only have lean-tos, not a barn. The mud is ankle deep.

Not that I see anything wrong with this—I am just painting the picture here. Horses can live outside with minimal shelter, and these horses have all their needs met. Work with me here…

So I go over in the steady rain, cold and soaked to the bone. I am just about to head home when I hear a cat. Who do you think it might be? Yes, it’s Miss “Egyptian Cotton Sheets and Science Diet Aren’t Good Enough For Me” barn cat! She and two of her rugrats are roaming around the mud bog, sleeping in the lean-to with the horses!

I give up.

I am still quite a bit citified.

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A bad thing happened to B the other day. We have a 4-bay machine shed. One of the bays is finished into a garage (1-car). The other bays just have the sliding wooden doors. . You’ll remember the karmic choice he made early when we moved in: he decided his car needed the garage slot. My SUV has to stay in the machine shed.

I’m generally lazy, and I don’t put it inside. Hell, it’s so muddy and grimy from the gravel/dirt roads that I don’t bother washing it much. Plus, I let it warm up before I go to work, so the frost is melted by the time I leave. I will put it in when it snows, cuz again, I am lazy, and it will be less effort to park it inside than to scrape the snow.

I’m digressing.

But, B parks his car in the nice warm garage. And what lives in the nice warm garage? Mice! Yes, he’s already had the problem once, and it solved itself. However, he was driving along and a different mouse ran across the cowl and back underneath the hood! Driving down the road! Then he heard a big clunk and the heater fan stopped working! There is a HORRIBLE stench in his car now, and the heat doesn’t work, and it makes a gawdawful noise when you turn the fan on. Poor him. His little luxury sportscar is the mousemobile. When I drove it, I nicknamed it “Speedy Gonzales.” Like the mouse.

He wasn’t impressed.

But hey, she who parks her car outside in the cold air that’s unattractive to mice seeking warmth, does not have mice in her car.