Bad TV Saturday

You know how there is never anything good on TV when you actually have time to watch it? Well, I always seem to find some sort of "bad" TV that I can become engulfed in, especially on Saturdays. Today I am catching up on The Hills, Making the Band, and a Hillary Duff movie is on ABC Family. This is the perfect bad tv day.

Okay, I'm mostly just watching bad tv because I already watched Twilight once today and Travis was giving me a lot of grief about watching that movie 5 times in the last week.

Easter Bunny!

Check out this happy Bunny!

So, I went out to worm my horses the other day, and this is really no big deal. Usually. I only took one halter.

It was pretty windy. There was a stray dog who had been chasing my horses all day. Yellow was in a MOOD. It was a total recipe for disaster.

I shook the boxes and the boys come to snoop. I threw a lead rope around Yellow and grabbed the tube. Well that goofy horse was too busy looking for crazy stray dogs and keeping Okie away from his food tub (that was empty) to have anything to do with holding his head still. So I put the halter on. He was still being a knucklehead, so I had to use my teacher voice and get after him. He held still for about 3 seconds so I could shoot the paste into his mouth, and then jerked at the last second so I got a good chunk of it on his lips.

As soon as I turned Yellow loose, he chased Okie to the opposite end of the corral. Turkeys.

So I re-caught Yellow and tied him up. He was jumping around and being a knucklehead again while I was trying to the rope tied, so then he really got told. He has been in that corral without anyone telling him what to do for way too long.

I went and grabbed another halter and headed out the the big corral to catch Okie. He saw me and I thought he was actually trotting up to me, but right on by he went! Then Yellow kicked at him (even though he was tied up!) and Okie came running back by me. We did this at least 3 time before I finally said, "Okie, WHOA!" He stared at me like, "Listen lady. I'm playing. What the french do you want?"

I haltered Okie, and, seeing as how he puts absolutely everything in his mouth, I let his natural curiosity take over and he put the wormer tube in his mouth on his own. But of course, because I'm always in a hurry, I squirted while his mouth was just a tad open and got some on our lead rope. But at least he got wormed!

So, anyway, my little crack heads were in fine form this windy weekend. But we got it done.

Here's another pic of my Easter Bunny:

Roll On!

Barn Cats!

So, on our farm, we used to have about 10 acres of grapes. Now we only have about 2 acres. Instead, we have a large clearing and a 24oo sqft shop. But you know what stayed behind when the grapes left? Mice. Lots of 'em! They are getting in the shop and being really gross and annoying.

Last Fall I asked my mom if we should get some barn cats to go to work around our shop. She said that we should, but we should wait until Spring when the weather is nicer. Guess what? It was 70 degrees on Tuesday, time for some barn cats!

I started looking in the paper for kittens, and thought it would be really fun to have a kitten for Gracie to play with. Travis hates cats, but he agreed that as long as it was outside, he was okay with it.

Well, I got to thinking, and realized that I really don't want to pay for a couple of kittens to be fixed. And I don't want to get too attached, because things sometimes happen to outdoor cats. Of course, I'm already slightly attached because I love all animals! But the less attached I can get, the better.

I got online and decided to check out petfinder.com - pet listings for animals at humane societies across the nation. I saw a line for Barnyard Cats. These cats are listed as wild cats who are being altered and then given away to people on farms.

CHA-CHING!

I shot off a quick email, and made contact with a gal named Nicole. After a few emails back and forth, Nicole finally called me and told me that she had a female half-wild full grown cat ready for a home on Wednesday. Nicole will bring "Eva" to my work on Wednesday of next week and I will take her home.

I decided a while ago that I would like a boy and a girl and I will name them WallE and Eva.

Anyway, I am very excited to get this little lady to her new residence and put her to work! Good luck mice.

It's in the Bag

My darling cousin, Pony Girl, participated in this really fun tag, so I thought I should play along! Especially because I am very fond of my current hand bag.

Here's the story: There is man who loves me very much, and who got very tired of me oohing and aahing over other women's giraffe handbags. He also got tired of me constantly going into Nordstrom's to look at said giraffe handbags. So he bought me one! He works at Macy's, so he had it all wrapped up and decorated when he gave it to me. Other than the handbag, it was just an average Thursday night!

Here's the rules:

1. Post a picture of whatever bag you are using today - not last weekend when you and your hubby went out to that fabulous restaurant. No cheating!!!
   
   
2. Tell us how much it cost. This is a no-judgment zone -- there will be no ridiculing or eye rolling here. And, if there is a story to go along with how you obtained it, I'd love to hear it.
   
   
3. Then tag some friends.

So here it is, the handbag:

The matching clutch, that now is usually either hooked to the diaper bag or the car seat. Loverly.

Every new mom has to have pictures of her munchkin! I carry around 200 or so, just incase I encounter someone who has an hour to analyze how much my punkin matured during her first month of life!

Ah yes, my FABULOUS zebra Nine West sunglasses. These are definitely my favorite shades. I will be hearbroken when I finally break or lose them. I should have bought two pairs!

The necessities: hand cream and chapstick. Right now I'm toting around Irresistable Apple hand cream from Bath and Body Works and Cherry Carmex. Carmex is the only chapstick I use. I don't know why. But I wouldn't be caught dead without it! As a matter of fact, one of my biggest fears about having my baby was not being able to find my chapstick, so I bought an extra one and put it in our hospital bag, just to be safe.

The Blackberry. My lifeline to the world! I know that I have mentioned before that I used to have 2 cell phones, and the cousins teased me about constantly having to be "connected" with my laptop and what-not. Well, I've consolidated and now I can be a lot more discrete about needing to check email or always being reachable. I went ahead and got the World Edition, which means I can make calls anywhere in the world. This'll be handy for my Mexican cruise wedding this Fall!

Reading glasses, that I never wear. But I should!

What's this? A cap to a baby bottle. Yet another sign of being a mom! Baby remnants everywhere! When Gracie was about a month old, Travis and I went shopping and while digging in my handbag, I found one of her little hats...I just about had a meltdown and told Travis I wanted to go home and see my punkin right away! Instead, he just had me look at the 50 pictures I had just printed and he reminded me that she was just sleeping, and we had more shopping to do! Since then, I've tried not to keep baby things in my handbag.

Okay, so that was what was in my bag! And yes, that is the bag I carry every day. I LOVE it!

Thanks Pony Girl!

Things I learned this week:

1. There are no bad bits, just bad hands.

2. Sliding your boot further into your stirrup prevents you from putting too much weight in your stirrup and makes you sit down.

3. Riding a horse like he's broke will help make him a broke horse.

4. The 5 most important things in cattle work is: 1. Stop, 2. Stop, 3. Stop, 4. Stop and 5. Stop.

5. The 6th most important thing in cattle work is backing up.

6. Look where you're going, and keep your eyes up all the time. If you're headed straight forward, look up and straight forward. If your cutting a cow out of herd, look at the cow you're cutting, no where else. Sounds simple, it's not!

7. Ninety-five percent of the time your horse's nose is tipped outside, it's because your reins are uneven.

8. Keeping your reins perfectly even is a lot harder than it seems, especially if you're not used to riding with a loose rein.

9. It's better to use 3 or 4 different bits all the time, because different styles of bits rub different areas of your horse's mouth, and then they callus. Move on to a different bit until a new part of the mouth gets tough and when you "hang up" your previous bridle, it recharges on the wall. If you cycle through 3 or 4, the bit will be effective again when the calluses are gone.

10. Expect your horse to succeed and be behaved, and he probably will. Let him fail you, don't expect him to fail.

More detail about our week at "boot camp" later!

Quicky

Not much time to write, but Okie is doing AWESOME at sorting! We've had two lessons, and the instructor and the entire barn absolutely adore the Oklahoma man! Yesterday they had him all saddled and warmed up for me when I got there.

He's a completely different horse than the one I took up there! More later!