Monthly Update

I keep promising to be better at posting, but I never seem to fulfill that promise. Kind of like the New Year resolutions I stopped making years ago when it was apparent that I would never follow through and I decided to stop putting so much pressure on myself. Besides, how many (and what sort of) resolutions can a tweny-year-old make?

Sorry about the tangent.

Last weekend was gorgeous- forty degrees and sunny- a perfect weekend to cut wood. Art spent Saturday in a friends' cattle pasture cutting down a dead oak tree and came home with a pick-up bed full of wood. It was another beautiful day on Sunday, and since Art was going back to get the rest of the wood, I decided to go with him (I brought my Kindle just in case it proved to be boring). We came home with another pick-up bed full of oak. It won't be ready to use until next year, but it's always good to be prepared. The wood is sitting in a (massive) pile beside the barn and will need to be split before we put it away in the corn crib. I told Art that if this weekend is nice I will split wood, and while it's supposed to be sunny and in the low thirties, it's probably covered in snow from the storm that went through today. Darn.

We also burned horns last weekend. The three calves we bought are an Angus-holstien mix; they shouldn't have horns, but the older (the all black one if you look back in the posts) calf must have had more holstein in her because she developed horns while the other two did not (angus cows don't grow horns). We borrowed the de-horner from the vet and I held her while Art did the dirty work. It's a necessary evil and she was already starting to use the little nubbins to push the other calves around. Since we burned the horns she has stopped doing that so I will assume the other two are grateful.

The calves are doing very well and growing like weeds. They are still adorable and one of them is almost friendly. I still haven't come up with any names for them, though, and I feel kind of bad about that. I've just been calling each one "baby cow" but that's kind of like how I name each cat that shows up "Kitty", completely unoriginal and extremely generic.

We had the first real snow of the season today! I want to complain, but I feel like I can't because it's January 12th and the snow wasn't even terrible. I think we go around three inches and while the wind is terrible, it's not even that cold. I had thought about taking the RAV today, but when I looked out the window this morning it didn't look too bad. The Yaris did fine on the roads, but when I got into Coralville and had to stop at several stoplights, I discovered that the little car has no testicles. I'm used to stepping on the gas and moving- never in my life have I driven a car with two-wheel drive and I can't say as I like it (at least in the snow). When I left my office, I had to go a back round-a-bout way to get to the main street because I couldn't get though the snow drift in the driveway left by the plows. I also couldn't get up the hill on the side of the building. I've never had such a problem before and it made me miss my RAV. Art has it all ready for me to take tomorrow, though. I made sure that he drove it around a little today as there have been mice living in the glove box. Art said I don't have to worry about a dead mouse and I told him I wasn't; I was worried about a live mouse crawling up my leg as I'm driving down the interstate. This is a very real concern as Art took the RAV out a few weeks ago and saw a mouse run across the dash. It could happen. And if it happens to me, I cannot guarentee that I will make it to work as I will surely drive into ditch.

Hey- I never said I was a real country girl.