Fall/Wintertime Is Here!

It's been snowing. The highs over the next couple days barely break the 30 degree mark. The lows are ready to dip below 0.

If you weren't paying attenion, you would think Montana only had two seasons. Summer, a brief 8-12 week stint that isn't necessarily consecutive. And winter. Which has apparently arrived. A couple weeks ago, on a Monday, we had fall. Then, that night, it snowed and winter took over. Now the still green-yellow leaves are frozen to their branches and will either be blown off by violent wind, or stick around until spring's new leave crowd them out. What will not happen, is they will not turn orange, red, or brown and float gently to the ground below.

Lord help me, what kind of place did my Prince-Charming carry me off to?

Fire

Scaring the Baby

This memorial day weekend was certainly exciting to say the least, and a lot of fun to say it perfectly. Primarily, Prince Charming and I traveled back to his hometown to fraternize with his best friend, his best friend's wife and their new, barely 2 month old baby. Of course, there were some great side adventures, such as the 4 amigos reuniting to unearth new ways to have fun with fire (pictures and story in forthcoming post), and trips to the Sheriff's office to make a statement about threats on my life (story also forthcoming, but no pictures for this one).

Sunday afternoon, the new parents, Jack and Elaine, had a BBQ for all those in the small town who knew Jack growing up and wanted to see if his offspring was going to be as troublesome as he. The baby's grandparents hosted at their house and most of the home church showed up to enjoy the reunion, and the food.

I spent nearly the entire time snapping pictures with my new(ish) camera, enjoying the many range of emotions, smiles and events happening around me. Enjoying, too, capturing as many as I could with my camera.

Perhaps my favorite moment and range of emotions came when my beloved Prince Charming accepted into his arms for the first time little Landyn. The son of his best friend (and best man at our wedding), with whom he had gone through the pains of growing up, the joys of living in a small mountain town, and the excitement of setting everything possible on fire. Jack and my prince are very close, and each family accepts the other friend as a surrogate son. Thus, it was understood that Prince Charming and I were surrogate Uncle and Aunt to this young life and Prince Charming has already been planning on buying the young tyke his first BB gun as soon as he is strong enough to grip it.

At the all-important introduction of Uncle and nephew, Jack carefully passed his young charge to Uncle Zach.



"Offspring, meet crazy Uncle Zach. And vice versa."



My heart started to melt as my handsome and beloved husband cradled this young life. I started to dream of the day (far from now) when he would be holding our own child. Suddenly, I wanted that day to come much sooner.

But then.....this happened








Uh-oh



Someone's not happy



"What do you want, kid?"



Prince charming is conviced that he scares all little babies. But, I've seen him around children before where they haven't immediately cringed and cried. This poor little guy was just having a long day, with lost of strange people around him. And he missed his nap.

He didn't cry for me though. Thank goodness.

Leviticus

Starting yesterday, and for the next couple days, several churches are partnering together to read through the entire Bible at a local park. Straight through. Day and night. Without stopping. Genesis to Revelation.

With the help of volunteers, they recruit even more volunteers to read for 15 minute increments. I became one of the latter volunteers when a friend of mine (remember Kelly, from the branding post below?) became one of the recruiting volunteers. Each recruiter is given a 3 hour period to fill with people to read, and if they can't fill all the slots, or someone is a no-show, the recruiter fills in.

Kelly had been given the noon to three chunk yesterday afternoon and filled it primarily with the college students and other friends that weekly visit his family's ranch. I took the 12:45 to 1pm slot, a convienent time for me to take my lunch. And Sunday, when I signed up for it, I knew that I would be reading Leviticus. Something in my gut just knew.

My gut, though sometimes completely off base, was right on the money this time. When I arrived, I was just in time to start reading from the end of Leviticus 13, all about infectious diseases, proclaiming things clean or unclean, sacrifices to become clean again, mildew in fabrics and houses, and a woman's monthly period. It was quite educational. Did you know, for example, that in order to be declared clean after a disease (and after the requisite minimum 7 day waiting period, and ceremonial bathing), you have to bring 2 doves or pigeons (whichever you can afford) to the priest along with hyssop, a scarlet thread and an epaph of a certain substance? The priest will then kill one of the birds over fresh water, tie the other bird up, then dip the living bird into the dead bird's blood and the fresh water and sprinkle it before the Lord 7 times, ending with a few douses on you? Makes you kind of greatful that we have freedom in and under Christ, doesn't it?

At least I didn't read any faster. After me, my friend Jacque read all about sexual regulations. Good stuff.

Branding

Yesterday afternoon, I ventured into uncharted territory. Well, uncharted at least for a born-and-raised-city-girl like me. Along with prince charming and a friend of ours, Aaron, I helped brand, vacinate and castrate about 40 calves. (We only castrated the boys.)

I'm mostly going to let the pictures speak for themselves (which they can do in abundance!). But I will give you some background. The family are very good friends of ours who live on a ranch and graciously invite us, as well as almost a dozen other college students, out every Sunday for dinner and fellowship. It is well known that anyone is welcome to come by whenever the mood strikes them and this family of 8 (including grandma), will always be happy to see, and usually feed, you. When we arrived, The Dad (Kelly), Mom (Cindi) and oldest child, a daughter named Rachel, were finishing up with the mama cows. Every year at springtime, the mama cows are run through the chute so they can get their shot of vitamins. Their part is pretty quick and relatively painless. Their babies, however, get a little more attention. The calves have all been born within the last month and a half. They need to be branded, vacinated for various diseases, and the boys need to be castrated.

This is Rachel. She is very sweet. But she also knows how to wrestle heifers. She pushed the calves down the chute into the contraption that we used to hold them down while we worked on them. She also held the front legs so they couldn't squirm too much when they were being given a shot and branded.

This is Kelly. He took a lot of kicks to his stomach cause he was working the back ends. He would hold the back legs, check if it was a boy or girl, and then castrate the boys. (I'll explain how they castrate them a little later. Guys may want to skip that part.)

This is our friend Aaron. She gave the shots and prepared the castrating tool. We kept her at the safest end so that she wouldn't get kicked. She's carrying a baby and a strong kick from a powerful back leg to the stomach did not sound like a good idea for her.



This is Prince Charming. He worked the table. We worked together to cinch the cows down with the metal bars (I worked the head bar) when Rachel would run them into the machine. Then he would heave them on their side (some of these babies were near 400 lbs!) while the rest of us worked on them. He also took over branding the last half. Since the smell of the burnt calf hair and flesh was kinda getting to me.

This is me. Like I said, I helped my prince with slamming the metal shut on the calves so they couldn't just run through, stopping for just a few minutes to snap pictures and document this process for you lovely people. I also branded the first half of the group.



This is the brand. It is hot.


These are our victims...I mean patients.

This is the table in use.



These are the concerned mama cows. The entire time we worked. there was constant concerned "moo-ing" from the mama's to their babies and the babies answering back.

Here is how things worked.

Rachel drives a contestant down the chute, towards the table.

Then, Prince and I slam our respective parts of the table shut at just the right moment to keep the calve from just running all the way through. Prince charming then pulls the calf and table to a horizontal position. Rachel and Kelly grab their feet.

Aaron administers the vaccine to the lower neck.

Kelly then checks to see if it is a boy or a girl. If it is a girl, we move straight to the branding and let her go. If it is a boy, he gets a little more "special" treatment. (Guys, this is where you might want to close your eyes and just scroll down)

To keep the boys from becoming bulls, filled with testosterone and attitude, they are castrated. Some operations simply cut off the testicles. But here is how we do it:

Kelly grabs the testicles. Rachel hands him a special tool that has a very strong, very small, rubber band on it. Using this tool, Kelly "bands" the testicles with the rubber band close to the calve's body. This cuts off the circulation. Over the next few weeks, the testicles will eventually just fall off.


Poor guy. I imagine this is the same look on the face of any guy who dared read this part.

Then the boy gets branded.

And sent off to join mama. Go free, little guy. And bask in the knowledge that you'll never have to go through that again.

If it isn't that much consolation, I understand. You've been through a lot.

Someday

Someday, I’ll have photoshop. Someday, I’ll be able to edit, enhance, crop, clean up, and play with my photos until I’ve sat so long in my chair that moss starts growing (believe me, it could happen when playing with photos – its addicting). Someday, I’ll have a high powered computer that can handle uploading the high MB, fat photos that I’ll edit with my photoshop. Someday, I’ll have a tiny waist and smaller calves. Someday, a lot of things will happen. But today, my waist is in good competition with my hips and I still have the thick, soccer-player calves that my Dad gave me. Oh, and today I don’t have photoshop.

But I do have a pretty sweet camera that can mimic a few of the more basic actions of photoshop. And I’ve been having some fun with that. It isn’t nearly as advanced as what photoshop can accomplish, but it gets the job done in a rough, primitive way.

On Saturday, my beloved Prince Charming and I went on a small hike/walk with our good friend Aaron. (Sidenote- Aaron is, in fact, a girl. She is married to our other good friend, Joe, but her name is spelled in the masculine because her parents wanted to be biblical.) The hike part is the first 1/3 of a mile, steeply uphill, and it was fairly muddy on Saturday considering the amount of precipitation that was dumped on it the week before. The rest of the walk follows an old rail road track as it winds along with the mountainside it was carved out of.

I took along my camera, tried to be kind of artsy and then became even more artsy when I played with the editing functions on my camera. Here are some of the fun things I did.

I’m mostly going to show you a select few of the different functions as they affected one of my artsier pictures. Here is the shot straight out of the camera (sooc).

I think it is a fun shot. Of course, I have an overly creative mind. I can imagine that this is a weary traveler. Someone trying to follow the straight and narrow path of life as easily as he can follow the straight and narrow tracks.

Now, the simplest things to play with, and what most digital cameras can do, is to make the picture either black and white or sepia tone. As follows.

This is the same guy. Only 70 years ago. Funny how history repeats itself.

These are nice. Simple. Classic. (Although I will pause to mention that a bonus feature my camera has is to make the sepia and the black and white different levels of each.)

The next thing I did was tack the SOOC shot and imposea tint of yellow over it. My Camera can do several different tint colors, in 3 different levels. This is the lowest level of yellow.


I like this effect. It adds a little bit of rustic quality to the photo, makes it less severe, but doesn't go all the way to "old-timey" the way sepia does. I have a lot of fun with this effect.

One of my other favorite actions is to "extract" color. Basically, I can choose either red, blue, green or purple and the camera will only pull that color. Leaving everything else black and white. Here, I extracted yellow only:

Call me weird. But I enjoy the fact that now you can clearly see the color of the tall grass and his pants, but his hands, water bottle and everything else is a dull shade of gray. This photo tells me how one can find color and meaning in the oddest places, while oneself remains lost and unsure.

The next feature that I really appreciate is the "soft" feature. It kind of rubs the edges of the photo to make it more surreal and dreamlike. It looks pretty cool. Here, I softened the sepia version. Ooooooo. Here is the dream I could have had about long ago. In my dream, this is a young man, on the cusp of leaving his childhood so that he can go work in the mines to support his family, now that Pa has succombed to influenza. Ma is doing all she can to keep hose and home together, but there are 7 other mouths to feed and he is the oldest, so it is his responsibility. He takes one last day to play with his brothers on the train tressel as they had done so many other times. But tomorrow, he must pack up his childhood in his tin lunch box and leave for the dark labarynth of the mines instead of walking with his brothers and friends to school.

I had fun mixing different effects, like in the above photo. I already showed you the black and white feature, as well as tinting colors. The next photos, I started with the black and white and then tinted them different colors.

First, I did blue.

Fun. Kind of gives it a gloomy feel. But this might be a little TOO blue. It comes off more comical than anything.

Ahh, that's better. It is the same color blue tint, but at a softer level. It isn't so in your face. This is a more realistic gloominess. This guy could be walking the tracks, trying to piece together his life after loosing his love.

This one was a light green tint. I like it. But I'm not sure why. Although, I probabaly should have brightened it some. The pants look so dark, there is hardly any distinction between legs. Oh well. It is hard to tell stuff like that on a small viewing screen.

For the last three photos, I'm going to switch pictures. Here is the SOOC shot.


Good picture of the smiling prince charming (isn't he handsome?) but the sky is pretty washed out. It makes the entire picture seem over-exposed and ho-hum. In photoshop, I would probably have several different ways of bringing the sky back and livening up the photo. But with only my camera edit options, I got to make do.


Here, I jsut tinted the photo a light shade of red. It doesn't completely fix the washed our sky (maybe if I had used a blue tint....ahhh, hindsight), but it at least livens up the phot a little bit and brings some warmth to the scene.

I have a lot of fun playing with my camera. I still have a lot of buttons and menus to lear. hopefully, the more I learn, the less I'll need photoshop.

And now, because I can, I'll leave you with this:

Ahhh, Spring! When the silent earth that has been slumbering in a cold, severe chill, pushes back the covers, whipes the sleep from it's eyes and dawns with fresh life! When the trees and flowers bud with new colors long missed over the winter months! Birds return in song, the sun begins to regain it's warmth and backyard BBQ's roar to life after spending a season dormant! Let us revel in the rebirth all around us! Hail, Spring!

Uh, Spring?

Oh.

Um, Brr?

Wow. Well, how about that BBQ?

Sheesh. This is awkward

Well, I guess spring is running a little late.....but hang in there with us! I'm sure it will be here before June.....I think.

Shame on me

*Sigh* I'm a failure in so many ways. I haven't been keeping up with this blog (oh, I had such high hopes of what a great blogger I would become), and I failed to come through with pictures documenting the cleaning of the flame-seared fridge. Which has been a wonderful addition to our home, by the way.

I guess the bottom line is my life just isn't that interesting. At least not in the day-to-day way. So I find myself struggling to find something blog-worthy. My standards for what is blog-worthy might also be too high. So many character flaws....but I'm working on them. Honest!

Recently, I've been on a big Dick Van Dyke Show kick. I found an old vhs tape with about 6 episodes on it that I vaguely remember using the remainder of a Christmas gift-card to purchase. After re-aquainting myself with the simple, laugh-out-loud and wholesome humor, I found dozens of other episodes on the site hulu.com.

I enjoy the adorable and humorous relationship between Dick Van Dyke, who plays comedy writer Robert Petry, and his tv wife, Laura Petry, played by Mary Tyler Moore. Van Dyke, always well known for his limber physical humor, has brialliant comedic timing and uses his elastic frame to create stunningly entertaining situations. Moore is the not-always-sterotypical 1960's dancer-turned-housewife, who balances out her husband's energy when necessary, but also creates her own hilarious situations. She matches Van Dyke in both comedic timing and talent.

The other strong characters are Rob's writing partners, Buddy Sorell, played by "Human joke machine" and vaudville original Morey Amsterdam, and Sally Rogers, played by Rose Marie, whose caree started at just 3 years old when her grown-up voice made her the famous "Baby Rose Marie." The show consistently allows each of the actor's other talents to be showcased in different episodes, the music, dancing and vaudville-esque mini-shows always add to the show's charm and never take away from the story.

Check out these episodes (I have to show both because they are a 2 parter of a larger story) to see what I mean:

Episode 1:




Episode 2:



I tell you, it makes me want to through an old-fashoned dinner party complete with 1960's party dress, heels, and home-grown entertainment.

When life gives you a smoke-charred, used refrigerator...

Prince Charming and I are getting a new fridge. Our current model was state of the art around the same time Moses chatted it up with foliage. It is small, ugly, grossly inefficent energy wise and the motor is so loud, our neighbors in the other half of the duplex can hear it kick on and off (seriously). I've had silly daydreams about a fridge that could hold all my food, and didn't put us at risk for getting a ticket for disturbing the peace. But, alas, a fridge is an expensive thing. And right now, shelling out a thousand dollars or more for a new appliance is not the best move for Prince Charming and me to make.

This is where the unluck of our friends becomes our luck. About a month ago, some friends of ours had a serious kitchen fire in their extra house. It was especially tragic since they were a mere 2 days from finishing a 3 week remodel they had been doing. The fire was so serious, they have had to start from scratch in pretty much the entire house. Demo-ing back to the frame and working to rebuild from there. Fortunately, no one was in the house at the time, and the insurance should cover all the repairs. Prince Charming and I were over for a group hang-out like every Sunday at the main house. He was staring thoughtfully out one of the side windows at the re-construction progress. Recently removed from the charred house was a smoke-covered fridge. He wondered aloud, "I wonder if they are going to clean that fridge or replace it."

To make a long story short, they are planning on replacing it. But it still works, is a very nice, high quality fridge that is much larger than ours and doesn't break sound level restrictions when it turns on and off. The outside is a little black and it needs some serious TLC, but after that, it will make a lovely new addition to our home. Prince Charming and I are going to spend this Saturday cleaning it up and getting it back to our place, and I can't wait! Because now I'm going to be spoiled. This fridge even has a bottom-load freezer drawer, with a nice big fridge part on top! It will also be a blessing that we will actually own it ourselves and can take it with us when we move.

Saturday can't come soon enough. I promise I'll post pictures of this adventure and kick off my introduction to tech-saviness!

What? A Blog? Oh, yeah, I have one

I've been sick for the last week. Good ol' sore throat, stuffy head, coughing, sneezing, ugh sick. My husband was very sweet and threw every kind of vitamin, including copious amounts of different brands of vitamin C, at me. While at the same time, downing as much as he could, himself. And now? Now he is sick. It amuses me that Mr.-I-Always-Take-My-Vitamins-And-Haven't-Been-Sick-Since-I-Was-15 who constantly hounds me to take vitamins so I'll stay healthy, is sick. Let me say that I do appreciate his concern for my health, and try to remember to take a vitamin every day or 2 weeks, or whenever I see them on the counter and can't remember the last time I took one. When that happens, I'll sometimes take 2 just for good measure. AND I'll also say that I am really sorry that I passed my cold onto my loving, attentive, caring husband. But just the smallest part of me, or maybe just a little bit more, finds humor in the situation.

Coming Soon: Pictures! Once I get a little more handy with my new camera and take some pictures of an exciting event (be forewarned, I have VERY low standards for "exciting"), I'll start incorporating photos of my spectacular life under the sun. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words. So maybe I'll be able to type less.

Keepn' it real

Since getting married, my boundries for joke-telling have certainly stretched. Especially with friends that are also recently married. Take, for instance, the following examples. (Forewarning, some examples may contain TMI.)

Example one: While on our honeymoon, Prince Charming and I were casually meandering up and down the festive wintery streets, window shopping. There were plenty of cute trinkets, delicate knick-nacks, appetizing candy and whatnot. And then we stopped in front of the store. The store with amusing, clever, suggestive, entertaining shirts, cups, playing cards and anything else you could decorate with sarcastic blather. Up in the corner of the window, my beloved Prince Charming pointed out a onsie. A onsie that was clever, amusing and suggestive. A onsie I would have never thought of purchasing and giving to another mother-to-be. A onsie I now insisted that we go in and purchase immediately for his best man and his wife who are recently married within the last year and already expecting a baby in April. A onsie we did purchase and that I took great enjoyment in sending to the couple. A onsie that read: "Surrender the Boobie" With a pirate smiley face directly beneath the printing. And even now, I get a good giggle out of the saying and only wish I could have been present when they opened the gift, to see the looks on their faces. I'm sure they were overjoyed.

Example two: The second example has to do with my twisted husband. One of his groomsman got married two weeks after we did and when they came back from their honeymoon, they moved to our city and said they would be here on Sunday. We agreed to meet them at their new place and help move them in. Sunday came and after church, Prince Charming and I went back to bed. (We'll just leave it at that.) Later, we were lying in bed when his phone starts ringing. We weren't going to answer it, but it was said groomsman and he was calling to let us know their progress and when to meet them. So, I answered it. A couple sentances into the conversation, my Prince Charming spouts, "Hey! You are interrupting some hot sticky magic!" Mortified, I couldn't say anything else and just tossed the phone to him, while make sure I slugged him good in is stomach. I barely had time to recover and hope that maybe the indelicate comment hadn't been heard by the groomsman, when Prince Charming answers "No, we just finished. We're in the cuddling stage now." Ahhh....how romantic. And, I admit, how very funny. Mom? I'm sorry I've become so un-ladylike. I know you taught me better. But I couldn't help but laugh. And now it is an inside joke between our friends and us. Again, I'm sorry.

There are other examples, but in the hopes that you haven't already run away screaming, then hopped into a hot shower to try to feel clean again and arranged to have your computer ceremonially burned by illiterate eunichs, I'm going to stop now and leave you with a happy, warm and fuzzy picture. Do you forgive me now?

Drowning in Forms

Ahhhh....now to the less glamorous side of getting married. Forms. Everywhere. IRS, SS, Driver's Licensing, Vehicle Licensing, Bank, Insurance, Post office...forms, forms, forms, Forms, FORMS!!

And they all need to be filled out in the right order, with the right color ink and submitted in the right way, at the right time. Otherwise the disgruntled, hates-his-job government worker will come and eat your eyeballs. Then laugh at your misery because making life difficult for the general public that needs his help is the only thing that makes him feel good. He's not nice, I tell you.

I have decided that I will never get divorced if for no other reason than I don't want to have to fill out all these forms again!! Oh, and Prince Charming (PC) can't die first either. I made sure he was aware of that. Because besides the traumatic and overwhelming grief that accompanies such a disaster, do you know what makes it worse? What is the terrible icing on the already terrible cake? FORMS!

I tell ya, we may have a great democracy that is of the people, by the people for the...blah, blah, blah, but Britian got the last laugh. Because even to revolt against them required a form! And I bet that if Thomas Jefferson had written it in blue or red ink instead of black, they would have returned it and charged him for refiling.

From Single To Married

I guess this is supposed to be the blog where I introduce myself, give a brief history, list my goals and reasons for this blog and generally try to be interesting enough that you might come back once every year of the rat and validate my blogging world with a comment or two.

Well, I'm me, I've lived a couple decades or so, my goal is to ramble, and I started it because I wanted to.

I never was good at formalities.

I'm married. Just recently. As in, that mystery "leftover" that has been living in the back left corner of your fridge in the tupeware with the missing top, so you wraped it in 12 feet of plastic wrap and cut yourself on the sharp edge of the plastic wrap box, causing you to curse not only the manufacturer, but also his (or her, we are equal opportunity on this blog) mother, dog and the dog's fleas, that leftover has probably been scaring away hungry scavengers longer than I've been married.

When little girls play dress up in anything white, watch every disney princess known to man, and practice a kind of march that if done in any normal public setting would have you classified as either a stroke victim or "special," they are typically dreaming of prince charming. As we all know, Prince Charming is generally European, about 6'1", has dark hair, blue eyes, and dimples. He wears pressed pants, shining shoes, and pom-poms on the shoulder of his shirts. Oh, and he rides a horse. A white horse. At least, that is what most little girls picture when they line up their stuffed animals to witness the wedding of the century.

I've got news for you. Prince Charming is allergic to horses, is 5' 11", has brown (well, more honey-colored) eyes, a goatee, and wears carhartts and hiking boots. He also carries a knife and leatherman on his hip.

Reality is so much better than fiction.