Joan

When I woke up this morning, I had over 99 Facebook notifications.  It would appear as if Auntie Datenut decided to look through every picture of mine over the past 6 years and like and/or comment on them.

Some of the comments were hilarious, as one would expect from Auntie Datenut.  She is like my mom with technology, but worse.  If you can imagine such a thing.

The best part is that she takes pictures out of context and then leaves odd comments.  For example, there is a picture from like six years ago of when I was teaching kindergarten.  My partner teacher and I had done a bunch of fun things for St. Patrick’s Day.  One of the things we did was put green food coloring in the water of the kinder toilet so the kids would think a sneaky leprechaun had pottied in their toilet and did not flush.

Don’t scoff.  This is what primary teachers do.

So, Auntie has not commented or “liked” any of the other pictures of that whole day, but instead commented on one picture with the green water toilet.  There is no photo description, which is totally on me, so it would appear as if I posted a picture of green toilet water for no reason.

Auntie’s comment:

“Thanks for sharing.”

Oh, she was probably scolding me through her computer way far away in Sunny California wondering why her crazy niece is posting toilet pictures.  And I guarantee you, Auntie has no idea that picture is six years old.  She probably thinks I just posted it.  It must be hard to get old.

Let us discuss Terribly Sick Pig.  Terribly Sick Pig was not really having the bottle, so I decided to syringe water and milk into her mouth.  We looked at her private regions.  She was a she.  Anyways, she appeared to love being nourished.  And then I decided to really impress the socks off myself and start feeding her egg and milk mixed together.

Because, protein.

She loved it.

And as I was nourishing her, I decided that I was finally a true farm and ranch wife.  I was like all no-nonsense-y and took over and didn’t even ask David what I should do.  I was imagining people rising and calling me blessed for my superior knowledge of how to care for terribly sick pigs.  I felt like I should be wearing mom jeans, a sweatshirt with a lace doily stitched around the collar, and change my name to Joan.  Because don’t you think if Joan told you to mix raw egg and milk together to cure a terribly sick pig, you would listen?

LD:  Mom, we should name her.

Me:  Yes, we should.  I think she is going to make it.

LD:  I think Petunia is a good name.

Me:  Sounds good.

I kid you not, Petunia died within 7 hours of us naming her.  What in the actual heck?  Joan has no idea what she is talking about.

***

I am spending like 10 hours a day at that dang rental house.  I hate it and I love it.  I hate it because I generally dislike manual labor and I love it because I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THAT HOUSE.  I don’t want to sell it.  I want to move back there.  Because it is cute and everything I ever wanted and David built it how I wanted it and we even just put in a new front door and it is the cutest door I have ever seen in my whole entire life.

I forget that the boys were super young when we moved and don’t really remember living there.  We moved right before LD turned two and HD was three.  My boys are not meant to live in the city.  I am sure our neighbors love us coming to the house and all the shouting that ensues.  Not angry shouting, per say, just general loud talking because we are used to being loud because no one is around us.  One of LD’s best tricks it to have to “poop” when it is time to work.  Oh, it drives HD nuts.  LD loves it.  I think he just sits on the toilet listening to HD explode and smiles.

HD came to me to request LD stop pooping as he had been pooping for like 20 minutes and it is so way not fair for him to be pooping while HD is working.

So, I shout:

“Ok, Dude.  That is enough poop time.”

Totally forgetting all the windows are open and I am in an actual neighborhood.

Classy.

My boys are so helpful.  Seriously.

Yesterday, HD got a trailer all hooked up to my car so we could go and purchase beauty bark for the beautiful rental house.  I do not tow trailers so this was sure to be an adventure and I guarantee you that HD has more experience towing things than I do.

So, I drove the 40 miles into town and didn’t mess up one bit.  But then we got to town and had to navigate round abouts.  And I am pretty good at round abouts, but our town put in these fancy new two lane round abouts.

Me:  Oh, boy.  A round about.  And it is two lanes!  What sorcery is this?

HD:  Mom.  You are in the wrong lane.

Me:  No, I think I have got it.

HD (Napoleon Dynamite):  Gosh.  Whatever.

Me:  Oops.  Was definitely not in the correct lane.

When we got to the house, I had to get out and have HD back up and park the trailer.  Because that is just too much for me.  The boys had the whole yard beauty-barked in no time.  Guess who didn’t even scoop one shovel of bark?  That’s right. ME.

Since I failed you on how to cure a terribly sick pig, I will tell you how to fix worn wood.  The medicine cabinet in the bathroom was not looking good.  It is a dark wood and the stain was very much worn off.

I had already started working on it before I took the picture, but you can kind of see how bad it was.

I bought some Old English scratch cover for like $5 at The Home Depot and look at it now.

My favorite part is that I could do it all by myself and did not need David and his superior knowledge of all things.  David would have been like, “Well, we need to strip it and sand it and stain it and finish it.”  BUT WE DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR ALL THE THINGS.  So a $5 fix by Taylor was the way to go.

In a perfect world, David would follow me around that house with his handy toolbelt and help me get all the things done.  But he is usually being an electrician and not my personal handyman.

I best be going.  I need to check on the cows and go work at the rental.

That dang Miss America was supposed to calf around May 10th and she has not.  What is up with that?

Later, Dudes.