Well, Snowflake, after days of looking as though she was about to pop any moment, finally gave birth yesterday to two beautiful healthy kids. Male and female, they're both white all over, with ears that can't seem to decide which parent to follow. We've very nearly chosen the names: Hail for the doe and Typhoon for the buck, taking the theme from Snowflake's name as Weather. Owen suggested Tsunami for the doe, but Sue and Ty....I don't think so.

No pictures so far, but I'll try to get some taken and posted.

Tension? Kinda.

First: Owen is trying to get a dog. An Irish setter. He wants a setter because he's been reading Jim Kjelgaard's Red series, which of course stars Irish setters.
Issues: He hasn't convinced Dad yet.
He has to earn the money.
Doug is worried that he's falling in love with something simply because of a book, which while perfectly acceptable in a seven-year-old is a bit much for a twelve-year-old.
While Mom and I think he has quite a good chance as long as he doesn't muff it, he is constantly falling into fits of pessimism as regards both his ability to raise enough money and his capacity for convincing Dad to let him get one.
I, while willing to support him until he either changes his mind or gets the dog, am getting sick of his paranoid dramas. If I say anything he doesn't like, he just goes, "Ha, I knew it. You actually don't want me to get a dog." I haven't lost it yet, but it is annoying. Little manipulator.


I think that about covers that.

Second: Dad is upset/tense about something.
Issues: No one knows what.
No one could do anything about it if they did.
Therefore no one is going to worry about it any more than they can help.

Third: Grandma Jane is in the hospital.
Issues: No one knows how strong she'll be after she heals.
No one knows whether she'll be strong enough to stay in her house.
No one knows what she's willing to do in the way of living with someone or similar.
Basically, no one knows what's going to happen, and we all have to live with that.


More generally, Mom once again is going to Colorado and hasn't yet decided who she's taking. I would adore to go again, whatever attendant circumstances, but only if Owen's staying home again. :\ As aforesaid, I have had enough--in only, what a week? Uh-oh. Anyway, wish me luck there. Actually, I'd like to stay there with Grandma Jane, keep her company and help where I can, but with her deteriorated condition I think what I can do isn't enough. I am finally putting some effort into learning to drive now, but if she can't drive at all I would have to be good enough to be driving, in the city, from the get-go. My present skill level? Practicing changing gears in an empty parking lot. I don't think we're there yet, sorry.

Awright! So Mom's going to CO to visit Grandma for her break, right? Well, she decided that I'm coming too. More importantly, it's just me. Well, and my dog. But the point is that Owen isn't. How cool is that? Of course, it's possible that she figured that if she stuck the three (four with Lark) of us together for a prolonged period again, the would be blood spatters on the windshield. Which is possible. But Yaaaaay! Of course, I'm going to be bored out of my mind with no one to talk to by about noon Wednesday, but it will be worth it. Besides, there's always Mom, Grandma, Lark, Trina, Sid, and possibly, to a certain extent, Phil. :d Besides the option of trying to catch the boys online, of course.

Got the hay room cleaned out in between loads. We had to stretch about three bales for nearly a week, and had to clean up all the leavings from various loads to make it last, which gave me plenty of time to think about this. We made it, nobody died of starvation, and I got about six inches of alfalfa (the then much thinner upper layer) and manure out of there today in the time I would normally have spent getting ahead of all those dishes, but Mom kindly did some, and it's done. The floor was nice and barn-clean, which means sort of smeared with this brown stuff that feels really gross on your feet, and seems to be a mixture of urine and dust. Probably. Anyway, it was good. And we got the hay in, and next time we have to do this there won't be inedible layers from keeping babies in there every winter for the past three or fours years. We'll just be able to sweep the floor! Lol.
And I came inside absolutely beat, and of course Peter had made molasses cookies. Obviously Owen was the wrong choice for assistant once they got home. But I got my second wind at about nine, so now I'm shaping and baking the cookies, which function as a sort of excuse for being online at ten-forty except that I should be doing dishes in between loads and furthermore I'm letting this batch sit while I finish the post instead of rocketing off and shaping the next. Hah.

Oh, and I found this really nice music website, Radiomanga.net, which is set up as album playlists: you click on the album name, you get all the songs on it, in the order of the CD. Which is lovely. Although their engine or whatever seems to be Youtube, which is....disturbing. I mean, I hope they don't depend on Youtube. I'm also happy because Doug's adopting it, and I don't often find sites that the others use. Although Mangafox and Mangaupdates are getting some use, which is satisfying. Interesting that all three are manga/anime related, though. Lol. And, by the way, Philip, thank you very much for helping me get going with the manga on my comp. :D I'm a menace with it.

The lambs are all doing great, enjoying this warm weather. It's actually supposed to snow in the next few days (sob) but in the meanwhile the pump finally thawed out, wonder of wonders, so we don't have to go through the basement. It's really annoying hauling from the basement in forty degrees of sunshine. One feels cheated. What good is warm weather if I still have to haul water from the basement? Well, for a start, my hands aren't numb when I finish. I might not even have to wear a coat. And even if Starling lambed in the middle of the night, the babies wouldn't freeze to death if I didn't find out 'till morning. *cheers* Of course, I'm still going out there with a flashlight before bed, a policy the neighbors probably disapprove of by now, as it reminds the bottle boys that there is a mother and she has just left. Drat them. So they bleat and wail for the next ten minutes or so. Maybe less, but since I alway expect them to continue for the next three hours I've never timed them. Rabbit, the youngest, is actually finishing his milk first sometimes, which is shocking. We used to have bottle races to see who finished first. Lots of competition. Of course now I only have one assistant and sometimes none, which is a little tricky with three bottles but my hands seem to have grown since last time (looks surprised--it's only been three years *roll*) so it's a bit easier. Also the A&W and Dr Pepper bottles both have long necks, so if I hold 'em right the necks sort of fit together and they're pretty easy to hold. Note to always have a Dr P and A&W in future. Unless it's four babies, in which case I'm doomed to an assistant. Sigh. Owen seems to think that nobody would ever want to be outside alone. Now I know why he always tries to go on walks with me. Maybe he doesn't like thinking. From the stuff he tells me when he's in a mood to talk about thoughts, I wouldn't be surprised. Owen seems to depress fairly easily....and the jumble he's picked up from Dad does not help. With Dad's personality, as I see it, one can be zonked out on drink/drugs (see B), fantasy/fiction (see me), or be really, really depressed (see Dad and, apparently, Owen, although he makes a pretty good case for "zonked out on Internet".) Feh. The kid seems to seriously expect the world to actually end in 2012 or so. I think it has something to do with a discussion about a prediction by Isaac Newton or somebody and how it was wrong because he made a mistake and the correction brings it to 2012. Something like that. He doesn't seem to have gathered that none of us were taking it very seriously. Sigh. Poor Owen. And, by the way, I am not thrashing all this out with him. No way, no how. Not me. You do it. Leave me out of this.

Also I have to go bake cookies and finish cleaning up the kitchen.

So night before last (Thursday) Dad caught me up much too late. This was not the entire problem. I'd been on the computer for hours without having mopped the floor. This was not the main problem. The main problem was that Dad, having been once been woken by Baron, who I hadn't brought in yet, couldn't get back to sleep. So it's no surprise that he came home from work with no sleep quite prepared to mete out just punishment.

He came home and said I had to do all the dishes for the rest of the month: Owen's, Peter's, mine. Now, this situation has its upsides. I like having full control of the kitchen without having to see what those do do with/to dishes. It's soothing washing lots of plates rather than a pot, then a cookie sheet, then an eggy frying pan. The main problem, in fact, besides suddenly losing a lot of free time, is that I'm always exhausted by the end of the night. According to Mom, this is a good thing. It would be if I were exhausted after I finished, rather than slowing down at about nine-thirty when half my dishes are still to go, so that I'm lucky if I finish at eleven, so I can go upstairs, die on my bed, revive after fifteen minutes or half and hour to get into the shower by eleven thirty, and maybe to bed by midnight or twelve-thirty. Fatigue does not hasten bedtime.

So it's not really a surprise that I broke down in tears at about ten tonight. Granted, it wasn't just dishes. It's been a long day. Dad and I drove to Crete to get three bottle lambs from Scott Borgman, who breeds Australian Shepherds and whom we met while looking for Lark. He didn't have her, but it's an acquaintance--one probably to be perpetuated, since he's now raising sheep in addition to the Boers, horses, and Aussies. So we had to get the lambs settled in, and Owen and I had to go out and feed them right before dishes. Also I'm just getting over a cold, which is going on to make Peter and Doug miserable....and their sore throats struck after Owen and I had finished off all the throat lozenges. And now Dad's coming down with it too.

Not surprising. But very inconvenient, unless I want to explain to Dad--amid gulps, sobs, and sniffles--that I can't possibly deal with all the dishes during lamb season, and that we practice division of labor for a reason. So I went up to break down on Mom's bed. (I almost capitalized bed. Maybe I should.) She told me I was tired because I had a cold, that I had better not think about the fact this is continuing for a month, and evacuated me out to check on Starling. When I came in, she'd finished the dishes, drafted Doug to do the floor, and generally cleared the way for me to go to bed. I wonder if competency if a talent, or comes from raising lots of kids. I hope it's acquired, because otherwise I'm in trouble.

Tessa and Judy (Lizzie in the back)

Lizzie lambed today! Incredibly, she did so in broad daylight on a nice day with warm weather! There were some problems with getting food into the babies--idiot mother has overdeveloped licking instinct and atrophied feed instinct--but everyone's doing fine. The product of the afternoon's work is two beautiful, healthy ewe lambs, both perfectly willing to eat constantly, thanks to their mother's refusal to permit this. *sigh* Every time a lamb heads for her udder, Lizzie turns around to follow it, swinging the milk away. Geh. Let me tell you, I was very tired of this by the time we finished up with everything and went inside. The worst moment was when Gan, proud *#&*^$#*% father, decided he'd been left out too long and came over the apparently inadequate fence to try to breed Lizzie. I eventually decided that crouching over Tess to keep her from being trampled wasn't doing the job and went on the offensive. By the time my reinforcements arrived I'd wrestled Gan away, and Peter and Owen helped me escort him out, with me steering him and the boys providing incentive. Then Peter distracted him outside the paddock and Owen held Lizzie so I could get some milk into Tess. Owen, by the way, was a great help all through. It was great having an able pair of extra hands, and he made some good suggestions. The names are his--I do like naming myself, but they're quite good names and he's always crushed when I don't like his suggestions. The entire affair was very exhausting, however, although I admit Lizzie--thanks to whose efforts I am exhausted--worked much harder than I did. She just didn't utilize any sense. >:[ Anyway: net gain: two strong ewe lambs and some more experience for me. I didn't lose my head about clearing mouths like with Susan, although I think the problem then was that I was in panic mode by the time I found them and any clear-headedness was out of the question. I'm still mildly surprised those two were fine, and accept the death of the third as due for my own tardiness. TT_TT And I wouldn't be surprised if I had panicked with Judy, because I was feeling around trying to find her other foreleg, and when I pulled her I was not at all certain that she would be fine. But she was, and she was vocal enough to signal her mom that there was someone new requiring her attention. (Tessa was ridiculously clean by this time. Lizzie is very good at one thing. Well, she also produces a lot of milk and twins to drink it...Good genes to keep, I suppose.)
Lark was very martyred by the time I came in to make dinner, poor brat. She had to stay inside the whole time, except for a few minutes after she slipped out with the boys to help with Gan. She was very intrigued by the odd goings-on in the paddock, of course, and expressed this by barking. You see why she was inside. Actually, I first realized it might be Lizzie's day because of the way she was reacting to Lark. Being a sensible sheep, she's usually wary to hostile, but this was stronger than usual, and she was talking funny--grunts more than bleats. So thanks, Lark, even though you're a dingbat who shouldn't be let within a mile of any stock without more training.

So next is Starling! *shudders* Pretty soon, too. She's bagged up, and as I haven't a clue when she was bred I don't have a due date to glance at. So she could actually drop anytime, except I'm a little incredulous that this is as big as she gets. Notasinglepleasetwinsnosingles! Besides being uneconomic, single lambs are hard work to deliver, having had more room to grow.....

......Wow, it has been a long time. Huh. Well.

Doug ended up simply refusing to sort the manga. It's all on Reading, and it's all on chapter 1. Grr. I've been surfing around reading sweet little series that are only up to chapter four or so. Sigh.

Anyway, Peter and I are starting an organization. We haven't quite decided on the name yet, though. It could be Freedom Fighters Against Algebra, or Freedom From Algebra, or Free Us From Algebra (Doug was helping with this), or.....oh well. We don't have to really decide until the balaclavas and AK-47's come in.