End of harvest

Captain will be winding down harvest over the next couple of days.  I have to say that this fall has been nothing but one frustration after another here at Chez Brogan.

First off, the neighbor that has helped Captain for the last ten years passed away this summer, so Captain has been missing his friend these last weeks.  A positive side to this is that Young Man and Cubby have been helping so we have had more time with them than we usually do.

Not even halfway into harvest, our old combine had finally had enough and went to the Great Scrapyard in the sky.  A positive note here is that we were able to find a replacement quickly, and Captain says it has been fun using a machine where "hey...everything works!"

Last weekend as Captain was really getting going on corn harvest, our semi, which Captain lovingly calls The Little Pete, also gave up the ghost and died on us.  Another positive note, we were able to arrange with CHS in Kasson to haul the remainder of our crop for us at a lower cost than what buying a different semi would be.

While Captain is off fighting those battles, I am waging my own war on the home front.  Calf Country has been a struggle this fall as we have had a bug move through our babies, and we lost a few before we found an effective protocol to detect and treat the virus before it could really take hold in any more babies.

Part of this protocol is that I walk through their little calf neighborhood every two hours to make sure no one is deathly ill.  Should I happen to find one that is even remotely "off," the rest of the protocol kicks in which involves administration of electrolytes, antibiotic, and an anti-diarrhea medication.  With this action plan, we have decreased morbidity rates to almost nil.  Go us!

Apparently feeling smug about one thing just causes another thing to happen.  Once we got that GI thing under control, we had a couple of babies do this weird thing where their tongues would stick out the side of their mouths while they were trying to suck a bottle...which just plain didn't work.  I remember my mom had that in a batch of her calves back in the day, but I can't remember what it is or how to treat it.  The calves generally outgrow or get over that oddity within a day or two, but it's annoying to deal with it while it's happening.

The other thing--on a much brighter note--that has been new this fall is that Gammy and I have been walking three mornings a week at the high school.  It's a community education offering, and we are amazed that we are the only ones who are taking advantage of it.  I really thought there would be oodles of people walking those hallways!  Not so; it's just me and Gammy.  That's okay, though.  We get nearly 5,000 steps in before 7:15 a.m., plus we solve a lot of world problems while we are at it!

As we get ready to gather with friends and family for Thanksgiving, I need to remind myself to quit being a whiny ass and be grateful for what I have:  my health, a good job, family that is close by and close-knit, and good friends with whom I can share my joys and burdens.

From Chez Brogan to your chez, Happy Thanksgiving!!

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Jekyll & Hyde

All this talk of costumes and dressing up that I've been doing lately made me remember something our kids did.  It involved costumes, props, and scripts.  It was imagination at its best.  Young Man would decide on any given night, "Let's play church." 

Our kids, good like Catholics! 

So they got the VCR cabinet pulled out and partially opened up to make a pulpit.  They would line up the dining room chairs as pews.  Young Man would get my bathrobe to use as priestly vestments.

Poor Molly, she was the congregant who had to listen to Young Man's hellfire and brimstone sermons, and let me tell you, he could get fired up and be a real Judgey McJudgemuffin!  Then it was time for communion, so they broke out the bite-size tortilla rounds.  Molly would be sitting in the front "pew," get up to receive her "wafer" then go back, sit in the second pew for a couple of seconds, and repeat the process until she had processed for communion from all four pews. 

This is where it gets interesting, lest you think my kids were practicing for ordination in the convent and seminary.  After Young Man gave his benediction and dismissed church, he would say, "Okay, let's play saloon!"

I'm not kidding even a little bit. 

Church was transformed into a saloon by replacing the robe with a barkeep apron, opening the VCR cabinet up all the way to make a bar, lining up the dining room chairs as bar stools, and getting empty beer bottles from the recycle bin and filling them up with water to serve.  Young Man was the barkeep and poor Molly...she was the down and out town drunk. 

Our kids, good little Irish souls!

I'm fairly certain that only our kids would go from holy to unholy in the blink of an eye.  It was almost a Jekyll and Hyde thing. 

Which got me thinking about how most of us...okay, maybe it's just us...who have two sides of the same coin in our personality. 

For example, in my case, I tend to be a free spirit, go-with-the-flow kind of person and don't have OCD habits.  Except for hanging clothes on the line.  I know that the clothes will dry no matter where they get hung on the line, but it literally makes me grind my teeth to see Captain put three items on one line, two items on another line, four items on the next line, and one item on the last line. 

Dude, seriously?!?!

The proper way (meaning MY way) to hang clothes is to start at the left end of the first line and work your way all the way to the other end of that line, and then go to the left end of the next line.  Repeat as needed.  It's logical.  I don't know why that is my organizational kryptonite, but it is. 

So the opposite side of that coin is that once the clothes are dried and folded...I don't put them in their drawers.  I usually (a) leave them on the laundry table and take them as I need them or (b) take the pile off the laundry table--because I got told in no uncertain terms that it was not the responsibility of the clothes folder to also deliver the clothes--and carry it up to my bedroom and put the pile on the cedar chest at the edge of the bed and take them from there as I need them.  Go ahead and judge me, I don't care.  I want there to be full disclosure there before I move on the Captain's OCD quirk.

So Captain is in charge of unloading the clean dishes from the dishwasher.  His organizational kryptonite is that the plates have to be stacked according to pattern.  We have about six different sets of plates, so this gets to be something of a pain in the butt.  But it's his thing.  Fine. 

However.

The bowls, which should be stacked according to size so that they nest nicely, are shoved in there haphazardly so that they look like the Leaning Tower Of Pizza.  I don't get it, but I've learned not to criticize because I've had that whole pile of clothes thing tossed back at me (and rightfully so). 

But I digress.  Back to our kids going from church to bar.  I think it shows that they know how to work hard and follow the rules, and they also know how to play hard and enjoy life so that it doesn't become a drudgery. 

Our kids...just plain good people!

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