What's Wrong with this Picture?

Here's a little game for you all.  Look at the following picture and see if you can pick out what's unusual about it.  Something about it just doesn't seem right, does it?

So what did you think?  Did you think it was the goats walking around on the kitchen counter?  Nah, that's not it.  What's really odd is that Jess hasn't even apparently noticed Kip and La Fonda cruising the counter top and continues on making her lemonade as though nothing is out of the ordinary.

Allan calls that when "The Absurd Becomes Normal."  What do you all do that you thinks is absolutely normal, but would another person gasp?  'Nuf said.

Everyone Has a Snickers Moment, Part 2

Dad never visited Mom while she was in the home.  He was too chicken shit.   Diane didn't either.  Well, she visited a few times, but only went she came to visit me and I took her.  She was probably chicken shit as well.  Hell, I was pretty damn chicken shit myself. 
Actually no one visited Mom except me.  And I certainly didn't go that often because it was just too painful. Allan went in the beginning, but that petered out. 

I really didn'texpect Jess to go; she was a freshman in high school and had never really known my mom while she was still sort of normal. 

 But I did think Larry would go since she and Dad were such a big part of his life when he was younger.  He didn't and that was sad for me.

When Mom was taken to the hospital after her odd falling-asleep episode, Dad had not seen her in over a year.  Two days after Mom was checked into the hospital, Dad went with me.  But he wouldn't go up to the room; he didn't want to "upset" her.  I left Dad in the lobby and had been sitting in the room for about an hour when suddenly Dad appeared in the room.  I about fell out of the chair, but Mom just looked at him and said, "Huh, well there you are," like she'd seen him just the day before.

The Buck Wars

I recently wethered both of my bucks.  CH. Highland Games First Hurrah and CH. Corrales Lil Critters Justy both got snipped.  But I'm not sure they realize it yet.  One day they got into one of their "buck wars."

It starts like this...after Harry's gotten some top-notch peeing on his legs done, he starts picking on Justy...

Justy tries to walk away, but now Harry is really talking some smack, so Justy has to step up to the plate...

and it's a body blow!

Harry goes down low for the hit!

Justy counters with a scur to the nose!

But wait! What the hell is this?

Harry???  Are you... biting Justy???

Are you actually PULLING his hair?

WHAT IS THAT?  THE GOAT EQUILVALENT OF A BITCH SLAP?

 

My Fifteen...er, Zero Minutes of Fame. Part 1

On April Fool's Day, the CBS Early Show ran the segment on "Urban Goats."  If anyone saw it, you probably didn't see me and wondered if you missed me.  You didn't.  I wasn't in it.  All that prep, all that angst, all that time we spent cleaning and all that time they spent filming here and we were cut -- nada, zip, nothing.  Ah well, such is life.  At least I don't have to worry about the camera adding ten pounds.  But for all my hard work and for my ten faithful followers, I've decided to do a reenactment....

Producer Robin and Cameraman Hank arrived shortly before 11 a.m.

Here's where they parked (we'd moved all of our cars down the street to be camera ready.)

Grace is showing where they parked their van.  Sam is just being a pita.

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Instead of coming through the front, where we had worked so hard...

They walked through the garage...

(it wasn't exactly the nicest approach...but oh, well.)

 to the back yard.

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And although I wanted to sit here...

...they wanted to go down here.

so we did.
We set up an area for the interview.  Now get ready 'cuz this is really high tech.  Here's the "stage" where we sat for the interview --- --
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Everyone has a Snickers Moment

One of my dearest friends called me this morning to tell me she's on her way to Phoenix because her mother is dying.  Jackie's mom hasn't been doing well for some months, but apparently she's taken a downturn in the last week or so and isn't expected to last much longer.
Jackie talked to her mom on Sunday and told her she would be over on Thursday.  Jackie's mom replied, "Well, you know, I'm leaving.  I may not be here." 
"I know, Mom.  If you have to leave before I can get there, it's okay."
"Okay.  But I have to leave;  I have to leave soon."
Losing a parent changes your life -- obviously.  Even when it's expected, even when it's blessing, it's just weird.  You are losing someone you have known your entire life.  If you have a good relationship, the loss is evident.  But even if you have a poor relationship, you have a loss as well.  You've lost the hope of reconciling, of ever having a good relationship.
My mom died five years ago from complications of Alzheimer's.  We had placed her in a group home near my home in San Diego when my dad became too ill to care for her.   Mom had been battling dementia for a number of years, but was okay in her own apartment in Atlantic City with a caretaker coming in four or five days a week.  Then my dad nearly died, and Diane and I were too busy caring for him to be able to care for her.  Dad left his apartment in March in an ambulance and didn't see it again until August.  That's a whole story by itself, but Diane and I flew back and forth for all those months to take care of him.  We did two-week shifts and would pass somewhere in the air.  My dad's survival was a miracle.  Even his cardiologist calls him "Lazarus."
Mom was in the home for a year and a half before she died, and I hated visiting her.  Isn't that horrible to say?  But it's true.  It depressed me beyond belief -- she would be so pleased to see me.  She'd ask me where I'd been and wouldn't remember that I'd been there the day before.  She'd tell me she remembered living somewhere else that she liked, but didn't know where it was.  She wanted to know where I lived and if she could go with me.  It was just so sad.  Even thinking of it still gives me a knot in my stomach and I get teared up. 
By the time we placed her, Mom had no ability to understand where she was or why, what day it was, or even who I was.  But, she never failed to recognize me, although she didn't know my name or that I was her daughter.  When I'd go see her, she'd be so pleased to see me.  I could usually get her to shower or do whatever the caretakers needed her to do.
Then my mom decided she was done.  One day in June, she got out of the chair she was sitting in, said, "I want to take a nap," and lay down on the floor.  No one at the home could get her up.  She just fell asleep and refused to be awakened.
She spent about a week in the hospital while they ran tests for everything they could think of.  They couldn't find anything to explain her sudden decline.  She wouldn't eat, would barely drink.  We had the option of putting her in a care facility with a feeding tube, where she'd be tied to the bed so she couldn't pull her tube out or get up to walk; or we could put her on hospice and return her to the home.  I couldn't imagine my mom wanting to live on a feeding tube with her arms and legs tied down, so we pulled everything and sent her back to the home to die.
(to be continued)

Fifteen minutes of Fame -- We're still cleaning!

Even though I had grand plans of never allowing anyone with a film camera to step foot into the backyard, we (ahem, ALLAN) decided that we needed to do some major debriding* down there.  I started picking up all the crap, such as buckets laying around and misplaced rakes, etc.  We took the all the lovely orange and yellow twine that was holding the panels together and replaced them with real holders. You all know what a disorganized barnyard looks like, don't you?

or like this --

and there's usually a lot of this going on...

and oftentimes, some of this laying around

Well we definitley didn't

 want any of that laying around so we cleaned and cleaned....

*** Debride. I love that word.  I learned it in court reporting school. It's French and means to cleanse a wound of any dirt, pus, grossness until you get down to clean, healthy tissue.  I like to apply it to cleaning around the house.  We had to debride  the back yard to get it ready for our fifteen minutes.