Random Stuff

Random Stuff- a well thought out title. Creative. Interesting. Allows for a bunch of unrelated stuff to come together under a banner of laziness.

So... here goes. I'm super excited because:

I got my third (and fourth?) tattoos for Mother's Day! I now have a ball pein hammer and a driving hammer (which farriers use) on the inside of my left wrist. They represent my lil' hammer gals. Audrey asked Eric when was he gonna "man up" and get tattooed. Oh, how I love her boldness!

We bought a newish car SUV thing. It doesn't make noise every time I put it in drive and doesn't have 140,000 miles on it so I'm thrilled. Plus, there are controls on the back of the steering wheel and I made my children believe I was magic by changing the radio station and controlling the volume without moving my hand to the control dials.

While Eric was signing paper work, the girls and I were outside removing our belongings from the Mitzi. Ava suddenly opened the backdoor, looked inside, and with such finality, said, "Goodbye, old friend", and burst into tears. It was so sweet and sad. She spent her entire life (100,000 miles) in it. The Mitzi was like a friend...

I got a new project tonight!! I love a new project. This one was handed right to me so that makes it even sweeter. I have 6 brand spankin' new bird houses (2 bluebird, 2 chickadee, and 2 wren) in the back of my brand spankin' new in 2006 vehicle. I get to burn images on the houses, create an info sheet about each of the birds, and install the houses in the Outdoor Explore Classroom at Shaw Nature Reserve. Like I said, SUPER SWEET!

This past Friday was the first volunteer day at Mastodon State Park that my MO. Master Naturalist Chapter participated in. It was the first volunteer project that I have headed up. We cleaned out the muck in the spring house and cleaned out debris from the spring as well. I saw my first sculpin and didn't know what the hell it was (neither did anybody else). Of course I ask Eric about it and before I get three words into my explanation he blurts out, "sculpin". I looked it up and he was right.

While we were cleaning out the spring, the practically empty park got a rapid onslaught of visitors. The high school down the street just got out for summer. Car loads of kids spilled in, honking, screaming, and screeching. There were truck beds full of water balloons and they had a great party. It was so fun to watch them. Then the two park employees we were working with made a bee line for those kids and told them they had to pick up every single water balloon otherwise they were going to call the cops. All those kids heard were "cops are coming" and just as fast as they came into the park, they all left-leaving 3 cars of girls to pick up the mess. Drag. It was cool while it lasted. I could totally feel their excitement.

Tonight I was trained by one of the master trainers (there are only 2 in Missouri) in the "Leave No Trace" program. Interesting guy. I learned a lot like you can get a ticket if you take watermelon camping with you in the Smokey Mountains (the seeds make bears choke). He almost got a ticket for that very thing. Also, when traveling out of state with your horse, you have to isolate your horse for 3 days while it "cleans out" before you leave, because the seeds in its poop may be an invasive species in the state you're visiting.

Plan and Prepare-the very first principle. If you're camping in bear country, you should pee on rocks or pinecones because the odor will be masked. Bears are attracted to ALL scents. There are 7 principles to this program. We are thinking of going on a weekend trip with Russel (the trainer) to become certified instructors. If you want to become a master trainer, you have to go on a weeklong camp on horseback in Montana. Sounds like fun.

I'm not sure if I mentioned in a previous post about horsebowl. I'm SO glad it is over! Audrey's team (The Sugar Ponies) came in first in the state competition in their age group. Audrey also came in first as an individual. We're super proud of our girl. She worked her butt off and was rewarded. When she was little, she was obsessed with winning a trophy. She would go to garage sales with my mom and buy old trophies. She had bowling trophies. Baseball trophies. It was cute.

This past Saturday, we went to Melissa and Tim's house. Melissa is our county's 4-H coordinator. They were slaughtering chickens for the first time so we went to watch/participate. Eric wanted the feathers for tying flies so we made a day of it.

As the date approached, I started questioning our decision to go. I was all for it in the beginning, but people started giving us trouble about allowing our girls to witness this. I still didn't think it was THAT big of a deal, but lots of other people did. I'm glad we went. The girls were not the least bit traumatized by it. They had a great time running around the yard. Tim has two rabbit hunting dogs (beagles) that the girls played with.

The chickens were interesting. Tim would go into the hen house, grab one upside down by the feet (it would immediately calm down and quit moving), walk over to the tree stump, lay the head on it, and in one swing of the ax, kill the chicken. After the dead chicken finished beating its wings, he would place it upside down in a cut out milk jug to let the blood run out. Within 5 minutes, the chicken went from living to looking like what you buy in the grocery store.

I learned a lot that day. One of the more strange things I discovered was that these huge chickens were only 8 weeks old. Tim explained that these were some crossbreed that made for huge chickens fast. So huge in fact, that if you didn't kill them early in life, they would continue to grow so much that their legs would actually break from the weight. Gross.

Memorial Day weekend is just a few days away and we have NO plans, which in a way, is really exciting. We're always going, going, going. It's nice not having to be any where and have the freedom to do whatever we want. Then the next weekend, we're going on a four day camping trip. Hopefully, I'll have more fun adventures to write about very soon.