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The resident grandson went on a trip to the Ozarks a few weeks ago (bachelor party, not his, thank God) and lost his phone in a parking lot. He finally found it, but it had been run over a few times.
So today he received his new phone. It has an MP3 player and all.
He couldn't figure it out. Neither could I.
I finally persuaded him to drive over to my daughter's. She's the local family tech wizard.
At least she helped him retrieve all his numbers from the old phone. And she's going to help him figure out the MP3 stuff this weekend. (New territory for her, but she loves a challenge.)
What's the big deal with young folks and their cell phones?
(Have I mentioned that I enjoy having my grandson here, beeping phone and all?)
Yesterday I told, on my Blogger journal, about saddling Libby and mounting her.
I put my foot in the stirrup and got on; she stood still as a statue. Amazing!
I dismounted; she stood still as a statue.
I got back on, she still stood quietly.
I clucked to her to go forward; she stood still as a statue.
I couldn't figure any way to get her to go forward without risking injury to myself. (One horse landing atop me is quite enough in one lifetime). If Cliff or Arick had been around, I'd have had them direct her forward with the wand or whip, or perhaps lead her. But I was alone.
There are knowledgeable horse people who read both my journals. Two of them suggested I use a halter or bosal with Libby, instead of a bridle, at least to start with. In other words, no bit.
So I did what Arick did on his first ride on Libby: I made reins out of her lead rope and used her halter instead of a bridle.
Then I got on. She continued to stand perfectly still while I got on. By the way, I don't have to use my mounting bucket with Libby, since she's much shorter than Blue.
Eventually, by turning her one way and another, I got her walking around the pen. I only had one slight scare: the two calves were outside the round pen, right up against it, grazing. They were out of sight unless they tossed their heads up chasing flies, or switched their tails high. Well, Libby saw that movement once and it rather spooked her. I had to spin her in several circles, but finally she settled down and I rode her some more, here and there in the pen. I kept only the toe of my left boot in the stirrup, so if necessary I could make a fast getaway. Thankfully, all went well.
So I can now officially say that I rode Libby, even though the ride lasted no more than ten minutes. I have no witnesses (unless the renter was looking out her window), so I took a picture while I was in the saddle. You've seen many pictures here that included Blue's ears. I now introduce you to Libby's ears!
A couple entries down I showed you some of Cliff's collection of junk. Someone asked, in a comment, why the car hood was there, on top of the tires.
On the rare occasions when it snows here in winter, the car hood makes a big sled to pull behind the tractor. The tires are also for kids to use as sleds. And just now, the car hood is keeping some free shingles out of the weather.
The car frame, it turns out, is something else that was left here "just for a little while" by my daughter's old boy friend. Geesh, we ought to charge him rent!
The grandson had to get up at 4 A.M. this morning for monthly inventory at work; and knowing he doesn't "rise and shine" easily, when I awoke and saw it was 3:30, I figured I'd get up and rouse him out of bed.
As I got up, Cliff awakened sufficiently to tell me there was supposed to be a lunar eclipse, and that I might want to check it out.
The timing was perfect! It's still going on, but the best part was between 4:30 and 5. There's a full moon, of course. so it's very impressive.
Trees block my view of the moon when it's in the lower west, so I had to go out in the yard and stand in the tree line on to see it, but it was well worth it.
As I've related our stories of taking scrap metal to the junk yard, some of you city-dwellers have wondered why we have all that junk, and where on earth we were keeping it. So I'll take you on a tour of our junk ditch. Every farm or farmette worth its salt has one.
Cliff uses lots of scrap and junk parts just building things. In the previous entry, the trailer you see that the junk is piled on was made from scratch, by Cliff. So if he thinks there's a possibility that he might use a part of something, or turn it into something else, he stores it down at the junk ditch, out of sight of the house.
Someone gave him an old sickle mower in the past. It didn't work, but it was a John Deere #5, which is what Cliff uses on the bigger tractors. So he kept it for parts. At the junk ditch.
Lots of times people without 43 acres of their own will ask to store something here... "just for a little while". Again, if you look in the previous entry, the long white metal things Cliff and the man are scooting back onto the trailer were something "stored" here by an ex-boyfriend of our daughter's. Folks, she's been married for years! I don't think he's coming back after his metal.
The calf hutches we kept are "just in case" I ever want to raise a bottle calf or two. That's why the rabbit cage was there too, but I'm afraid it's of no use to anyone now. Oh well, I didn't want rabbits any more, anyhow.
I should have taken these pictures before Cliff went to work, because he could have explained it all. But you get the idea.
Looks to me like he could make up a whole new load!
Today's load brought $160.
We were tooling along on Missouri's famous bumpy back roads with a load of heavy metal. We crossed a nasty little bridge that gave our trailer a huge "bump", and then we heard metal dragging. As Cliff pulled over, I looked back and saw a huge hunk of metal totally across the oncoming traffic lane. It didn't occur to me to take pictures until most of the stuff was back on the trailer
The situation could have been disastrous had we been meeting a car at the time; someone could have been injured or killed.
A man behind us who was taking his wife to work was wonderful, and helped Cliff get everything back on board for the remainder of the trip to the junk yard.
This is why there is a law that junk has to be covered when you haul it. And it's why we go the back roads to a small town, rather than the big city.
