Saturday night after we posted the blog, we had another patriotic dessert: Red Raspberries, Blueberries and White Vanilla ice cream. Yum yum.
Sunday. Will be a very light day, we hope. Nothing planned at all in town. John did get some gasoline in the Subaru, however, so we won’t run out if we do decide to go somewhere. I’m sure it will start out with John feeding the horses, and exercising the dogs. Kitty and I will stay inside. Good thing we did. It is getting to be a scorcher today. Imagine — it’s nice we don’t have any outside activities planned. Just stay in the cool house and do chores inside. Many need to be done. High temp of 89 predicted today, and it is well on its way there at noon being 83.
Monday. Was supposed to not be as hot today, but it got to 86, and then clouded over, and now is 76. So, John went outside in the back to cut brush. This morning we had to take our Annie (5 yr old Brittany) to the vet for a second opinion from my regular vet. Annie has a mammary tumor. The vet said it was best for her to spay her and remove the tumor, because the hormones from the ovaries would keep it going and she would likely have incurable cancer and die sooner than otherwise. I’m so sad that this “ends” our breeding program started in the 1970s. I’m in a pretty saddened, funky mood. She’s the one who had puppies last year that we raised when I was so sick. I’m glad we went ahead with having those puppies (from the accidental breeding). The extra sad thing is that her brother, Cork, the one we just lost to heat stroke, was the only other place we could carry on our bloodlines. Well, maybe not quite. My friend in S. Lake Tahoe has Cork’s full brother, and so we might consider someone breeding their Brittany with him. I think John is ready to be out of breeding, but I’m really not quite there yet. Yes, we are getting older, but, when you have been in this as long as we have, it’s hard to give up easily. At least that’s my story for now. We take Annie in for her surgery this Wednesday.
Tuesday. Morning during cool temps, John has been cutting brush. Now he’s running the dogs and feeding the horses, plus giving the strawberry plants a dose of chemical to kill the little bugs that come out at night and punch holes in the berries. Then we will be taking off for a trip to Costco. We did and have returned now. It was a good trip and we loaded up on a lot of things we will use for several months. We had a nice lunch, and then bought out the store (spent over $300), but with rarely purchased items such as color cartridges for the printer, and a container of 100 CDs, and a Verizon long distance card with 700 minutes on it, and we just spent an hour of it talking to John’s sister in Cleveland. They didn’t feel the earthquake. I need to get on Fox News and read about it. John was on looking but I haven’t yet.
Lunch was interesting, inexpensive and good. We shared a Polish Sausage (I had about 4 bites), and we shared a Chicken Bake. It was very interesting. A wrap that must have been deep fried with chicken breast (lots of big pieces), and the roll was 12 inches long. The chicken was in some cheese sauce, I guess, and there was cheese on the outside of the closed “roll wrap”. I thought there were little pieces of ham, but John said that wasn’t listed on the menu. I don’t know how to describe it. But now I do, because I just found the recipe on line:
http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/512/Costco_Chicken_Bake42333.shtml
You can see there — these INGREDIENTS:
6 ounces pizza dough
4 ounces grilled, sliced and seasoned white chicken breast
1 ounce mozzarella-provolone blended shredded cheese
1/2 ounce cooked and chopped bacon
1/2 ounce chopped green onion
1 ounce Caesar dressing (per bake)
1/2 ounce Parmesan cheese
and the instructions for preparation are on that site. They are BAKED truly as said and not deep-fried. They have a LOT of calories, however.
We also got a 20 ounce refillable Pepsi with the Polish. Also shared something called a Very Berry Sundae. It is a large cup (I don’t know ounces), full of vanilla frozen yogurt and an incredible number of strawberries (in a sauce). It only costs 1.65. In fact that whole meal was under $7.00, and yesterday we had for the same price from Jack In The Box, a much LESS quality and quantity meal. We had fries (small), a small coke, we split a spicy chicken sandwich (no bigger than a small hamburger roll), and John had two greasy Tacos (I cannot even stand to taste them).
Today, we brought home a pan of Chicken Alfredo that will last four meals for the two of us, and was marked down $3.00. It was $14.74, I think, so $11.74 divided by 8 is not too bad, $1.47/ meal. Surely couldn’t go out to eat for that! And all we have to do is heat it. John added cashews to the part he fixed tonight.
Wednesday. Last night John encountered two kitties by the back woods where he was cleaning brush. He took them food and water, and the food was gone this morning, so he replenished it. It’s just in a cleaned out path behind our large shed. He retrieved empty dishes and replaced with a bowl of food, but they haven’t yet found it. Perhaps they are out hunting and will return tonight to sleep and check out the food bowl.
Plans changed again, but John started the day by taking Annie to the Vets. My noon meeting was canceled and so I decided I would skip today’s blood draw and exercise class, and do the blood draw tomorrow when I’m in town. Meanwhile, I have worked on taxes. Got a couple more months done and am starting on another.
We heard from the Vet at noon that Annie went through her operation fine, and it was good we did it, as she had a large, nasty tumor. My vet and her assistant were pleased we made the choice we did. Me too. As several of our friends (many of you included) said, she will have several years more of quality time making us happy.
We are awaiting a phone call from a former student moving back to EBRG and needing help unloading his moving van into a storage locker. The later the better. It’s damned hot here.
Thursday. We missed them last night, and this morning, but they got unloaded and we might join them tonight with pizza, beverages, and tomatoes. We did run back to town tonight, buy a pizza add tomatoes (washed them) from my friend (just put them on a plate). They are tiny Romas, and very very tasty. Also threw in a box of Costco cookies (there were three different types: choc chip, snicker doodles, and white choc/nut chip cookies (my favorite). We took beer, lemon lime, Pepsi, and my old standby, Crystal Light (lemonade). It was a nice visit.
It started out cool this morning but got terribly hot by afternoon. John put fly spray on all six horses, including the 3 new horses (we’ve now had for a year), and rasped all four feet of Jazz. Jazz has two issues. He won’t allow our regular farrier anywhere near him – must be the full Santa Claus beard. Next, he “forges.” When he walks there is a clicking sound as the same-side front and back feet touch. Here is an explanation:
http://bwfa.net/93forging94_referred_to_as_clicking.html
With all the other things we’ve been doing John has neglected Jazz’s forging and other horse issues. Once he starts working with a horse it is poor practice to stop until something positive is accomplished and the horse is “comfortable or happy” with the outcome. Thus, one doesn’t start with a time deadline. After everyone got some fly spray, John used a new (and very sharp rasp) to remove material from the front of the front feet of Jazz. This web-photo illustrates the idea.
http://media.photobucket.com/image/horse%20rasp%20front%20feet/Parellihorses/feet/fredrf.jpg
and this – see the last picture — shows the activity:
http://knowyourhorse.org/2011/01/trimming-hooves/
Once you can get the horse to hold the position with a foot on a stand, then you can rasp off quite a bit, with the front a little flattened or “squared-off” (as in the first link) and than that foot will “break-over” more easily as the horse moves forward. Try this, put your own hand flat on a table with palm down and fingers forward. Now tip your hand forward (pivot over the straight out fingers) until your knuckles (top) are laying on the table top. Now tuck your finger tips under your palm (make a fist) and again rock your hand forward. It’s a lot easier to do without your fingers sticking out in front. It is much easier for the horse too, without the hoof sticking out in front. John’s not doing anything extreme here – just helping the horse a little. Jazz will stand “ground tied”
http://www.equisearch.com/uncategorized/tied-nothing/
for John while this work goes on. Soon we’ll try a trained farrier without a beard, actually a female, and get the correct angles and shoes on this guy. Now, back to our regular programming . . .
We won’t pick up Annie till Sunday morning. I called today and she is doing well, and everyone likes her and is “loving up” on her.
John’s back at his computer, in the other end of the house. I’m getting tired, no nap today, and it was a fairly busy day. We played music and it was TOO DAMNED hot in the nursing home. Even the residents were complaining, but they sang along and enjoyed themselves.
Went for a blood draw (my INR was a little low, so my dosage has been upped).
My friend in the music group went to a surplus sale at CWU (my old school) and bought a Dulcimer case for $5. Incredibly it fits mine PERFECTLY. And the case is hard, which is nice. I have been storing mine in a folding-chair holder (nylon), and I did buy a keyboard padded case for at a yard sale, but it still is soft. This will protect it a lot better. Also got a cute little doll for my fiddle teacher from Nampa, ID who collects dolls. This is a pretty little girl with ‘Monday’ written across her shirt, big blue eyes, a nice white straw hat with purple flowers, and dressed nicely (total size about 8 inches). I hope she likes it.
Friday. Not much going on other than maybe checking out a garage sale on my way to or from the exercise class. Just talked in person (phone) to my vet. She said it was a hairy operation and she had another tumor on her ovary, so our decision was definitely the right one. She said it might have been iffy if we had bred her. Now she is doing all right, but still healing, and she has a hematoma that our Vet’s decided to check out next Tuesday, but not to do anything to for now. She said it was messy in there and they had to “tie” off a bleeder. Annie is doing fine and eating.
I just called to see how she was, and the receptionist said she thought she was fine but would check. Dr. Thea came back on the phone to talk to me in person.
Other thing done this morning was taking a few photos of things around the house that I needed to send to various people. I took a picture of the case that looks custom made for my Dulcimer. Also took a picture of a painting John’s dad did of a slide I made in 1965 looking toward Helsingborg, Sweden.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsingborg
I have a friend (Osa) who was born in Sweden and whom I met and had dinner with in Portland, and want to include it with a picture taken of her and me at the NCGE banquet. Also took pictures of 2 other paintings of Brittanys in our past: FC Simons Ruff-Shod O’Dee, given to us by Ethel Moore (artist – Huston), and another of Lovely Wistful Lady (Wisty), our first Brittany we got in Iowa. She had beautiful brown, wistful eyes. John’s dad painted Wisty in front of a cascading stream from a picture he had taken in Cook Forest State Park near where the family lived. Dad’s picture looked about like #13406 on this page: http://www.kaltenbaughphoto.com/cookforest/page5.cfm
This isn’t a typical birddog portrait but from a person that really didn’t like dogs, it is special reminder of both father and dog – both now long gone.
On another topic: Our friends’ cross-country tandem bicycle trip is nearing the end. Their blog can be found at the following link:
http://web.me.com/kpcc2011/CCat140/Cross_Continent_2011.html
if you are interested. The past week included Niagara Falls and the Erie Canal. They will end their journey in Maine. Hopefully, they are not impacted by the hurricane. They are concerned about a son in Virginia Beach close to the water. They will be visiting him before returning to Marysville, WA, and then to New Mexico. We have enjoyed sharing the trip through their blog.
John’s going with me today to shop at the grocery, while I go to my exercise class. He will pick up apple fritters for me. This morning about 7:45 a.m. I got a call from the bakery that the fritters were of the quality I prefer and did I want a dozen. Of course, please. John was amazed and said I was probably the only person in the world to receive such custom service from a grocery store bakery. I don’t mind being spoiled. I’m sorta used to it, with all John has done for me.
We are headed to the “Wet Side” on Saturday for a birthday party and to pick blackberries on the property of our friends. Actually, it is expected to be a nice day and the berries are “ready.” Blackberries are classed as invasive weeds in the Puget Sound region and the patches are considered enter-at-your-own-risk entanglements – take flares, cell phones, and first aid kit. It will be a long day with a 1.5-hour drive each way. Sunday we have to be at the Vets at 10 AM to pick up Anne.
Therefore, we are posting on Friday evening – thinking it might be Monday before we get back to this wordsmithing thing.
So, that’s it.
Nancy and John
on the Naneum Fan