The Amberstone Warrior is going to school!

I'm giving my nephew my beloved truck! He's the first one in my family to have the chance to go to college.

His POS Dakota would never make it in Nashville (or even TO Nashville!) so I am trading my truck for his truck. This boy is soo smart it is scarey! I want to help him as much as I can,since I can't help him money-wise I'm letting have my truck.

The topper will go back on this week...a totally uncool item for the younger set but nephew is practical about it...

"COOL! I can haul my stuff down and then throw a mattress in the back!"

...ahhhh, youth! Looks on the best side of everything!

On the other hand, I am giving up my 84,000 mile 1993 baby for a 250,000 mile 1990 beat-from-one-end-to-the-other Dakota!



I hope the radio works!

push push.....blow,blow...push push....blow,blow....

No I'm not having a baby (or having sex)! I attended CPR training today for my job at the jail.

We had to practice a bunch on these alien-looking torsos...

These things were really ugly...I'd have to be really drunk to date one
(Ummmmm, now that I think about it,been there...done that!)

WOW! This is hard work! At the end of the first full session I was ready for the paramedics myself!

It was a good class tho, I knew the basics (sorta, I have watched TV!) but this class really explained WHY you do these things in this order. That I never knew and having the WHY explained helped me a lot in remembering what to do.

I want to take some more classes and learn how do do this and overcome my tendency to be the one that runs around screaming like an idjit, or just stand there vibrating!

Who knows? I might be at a strip club on of these days and a dancer collapses onstage! I'll be there,READY!

Party Animal

We have an alcoholic squirrel out at the farm!
When Brother and I are working on stuff out in the shop and sometimes (always)in the evenings we will have a few beers (surprise surprise!). After we are done with the beer cans we toss them in an old milk crate,then the first one back out there the next day smashes them and throws them into the recycling bin we have out there for aluminum.
Well several morning in a row we have found a squirrel in there lapping up the dribbles out of the cans!
When surprised he jumps out of the bin and runs (slowly) over to the trees and just kind of sits there, looking at us. If we walk towards him he will try to scramble up the tree but sometimes he doesn't make it and slides back down!(I can identify with him, I've had problems climbing the three steps up on my porch at times!)
Poor guy! We don't chase him or try to annoy him and just let him rest there at the base of the tree til he can make it back up to his home.
We laugh about him,saying there is a squirrel up in this tree sleeping off a hangover and I'm sure he's getting hell from Mama Squirrel about laying around all day and drinking all night instead of out gathering nuts!

There's a tool for that????

The last few days we have been trying to straighten up the "shop" out to dad's,enduring the cussing and screaming and accusations from dad. Dad has hauled shit into here at the farm for the past 100 years and thinks he knows everything that is out there. Well he can't remember if he ate lunch or not or who we are! He calls bro by our uncle's name and often calls me by my mom's name! (God love her, I wish I was more like her but unfortunately the older I get the more I resemble the ass {dad} that made my childhood {and is making my adulthood!} miserable!!!)

Anyhoo, while moving stuff in the shop I happened to look up at the top of a post and spotted a bright red something. Looked a lot like and old keychain keeper or a coin purse. Upon closer inspection I found this...

...what on earth was this used for? (other than the obvious nasty thoughts that immediately came to mind!)

Okay, back to the dad rant! When dad retired back in the 80's...he RETIRED! I mean from doing anything except drinking beer and driving around everywhere (and yes, at the same time). He started going with Mom to auctions (Mom was an antique dealer) and drug home all manner of useless crap, if it was cheap he bought it,truckloads of stuff! We must have about 20 electric weed-eaters here. Including one that will totally light you up if you plug it in! I refuse to test anymore after THAT ordeal!

So today I tested electric drills that we unearthed from under a table, I guess I'll never learn!

The same with everything else,if there is one here there is a dozen! And sadly what stuff was good isn't now. Dad when he bought stuff just threw it anywhere and there it laid. We have run across so much stuff that used to be good and useful and is now scrap or trash. The shop is an old tin building with a damp earthen floor and stuff is just piled up helter-skelter. We have found probably 20 log chains that are ruined, rusted together in a lump (good log chains aren't cheap!)


Just another day of cussing and screaming and whining....

a normal day in my life....

any wonder I drink?
(which is the reason my posts are few and far between and rarely make any sense!)

'strokin' again...

....HEAT strokin' that is! If yesterday wasn't bad enough, today was worse as far as heat was concerned! I'm sure that Val thinks I am a total wimp because I can't handle 92 degree afternoons! But the humidity here is killer!

So bro and I mowed out to dad's today....thank god for the beer cooler! I don't think I woulds have made it otherwise!

HOT HOT HOT! No breeze what-so-ever!

So what do I do? When I get home I decide to burn all the twigs and branches and clipping I gathered up last night. (remember the no breeze comment!)

No breeze...no wind... I rarely get to chance to burn stuff here in town (for some reason the town frowns on burning when it is windy, I don't know why!!!!)

So I light up the brush...and guess what... a breeze starts up! So here I am running around with a rake trying to contain burning debris in a gale storm in 90+ degree heat!

So of course a burning leaf decides to go down my shirt...I do a major screaming funky chicken dance around the yard...I'm sure the neighbors were majorly entertained!!!!

Singed chest hair smells AWFUL!

Courting Heatstroke

OMG IT IS FREAKIN HOT AND HUMID!!!!

Okay that statement is out of the way! But it is hot and miserable here right now.

And rain! It seems it rains everyday! Not just little pissy showers, we're talking about thinking about hiding under the house storms! BOOM BOOM BOOM are we going to end up in Kansas type of storms!

So there was no storm forecast for today (tonight is another matter entirely!) so I took a day off (not from work...from DAD'S!) so I could hopefully get some yard work done before the next monsoon comes thru tonight.

The grass was getting so high that sheep and cows from outside of town were putting in for transfers to my yard!

And so out into the heat I go in my cute little shorts and cut off shirt ( I'm sure the neighbors were impressed) and enough sunscreen on the top of my bald head to coat an entire girl scout troop and attacked the jungle that normally is my yard.

Nothing sexier than a bald fat man trying to have sunstroke and a heart attack at the same time!

One good thing, my farmers tan is darkening nicely,the legs are still snow white but they are shaded by my belly the whole time!

I have so much yard work to do it is not funny. Flower beds to weed,edges to trim,gravel to rake,mulch to put down....
The list goes on and on!

It really depresses me to look at my yard, I always took so much pride in it and my flowers but since Dad got bad I have no time to work on it. The weeds are taking over.However I was thrilled to see while I was courting a coronary that the cactus is finally blooming this year! You have to ignore the weeds!



And my Mimosa tree (that I started from seed from Mom's tree which is now dead) is going great guns! I had about twenty sprouts a few years ago and this was the only one that survived a freak freeze we had that year. The Mimosa is about three years old now and I think it's gonna make it! (again please ignore the weeds!) I should have blooms probably next year!Some things thrive on neglect tho! This is my "miniature" Japanese Maple! Don't always believe the tags on clearanced plants at Wal-Mart! This tree was supposed be (according to the tag) a small,weeping Japanese Maple like my buddy has! His is about 10 years old and only about 3 feet tall,cascades beautifully down and behaves itself in its spot. Mine has turned into a monster tree! I love the tree but if I had known it was going to do this I would have planted it in a different spot!

The hostas are going berzerk and hopefully I can divide them this fall...I had to cut down the roses, those damn jap beetles wiped them out!

I guess I have to be grateful of what plants did survive while I was away and just hope I can replace what bit the dust!

Happy birthday to me,somewhat!

Today is my birthday,only one year away from the half-a-century mark now!

And if that fact isn't depressing enough (actually that doesn't bother me)life in general sucks.

I am finally close in getting caught up with all the bills, but you know how that goes,get caught up and something else happens to put you behind again. I my case I found out that I have to now replace the gas line in my house. The gas company showed up and it seems I have been lucky,my gas line under my house is full of holes and my crawlspace was full of natural gas!

YIKES!

I have been living on a time bomb! I could have lit a cig or flipped a switch and ended up in Kansas!

They pulled the meter and shut the system down but now I have to have a new line installed under the house. More money to spend that I don't have! I am grateful that the company found that and that my ass didn't end up in Kansas (and every state between here and there!) but why does every silver lining come with a price tag?

On a less life threatening note,(but still very frustrating) my computer has some major problems, I'm gonna have to take it in and have someone give it an enema and fix it (more money out!) but since the computer is my only link to the outside world I need to have it done.

I can't access my e-mail now, or most anything else, I can't even get on my Fiesta message board! I did manage to get on the message board briefly tonight but after reading one post and replying, the 'puter went dead and I had to restart. So I guess I'll have to wait til after I get this dastardly thing back from the shop to acknowledge any messages there.

After the restart, this infernal machine did let me into my blog so I thought I would try to do a post, I have no idea if it will let me or not!

There was a bright spot today, when I got to work, there was a birthday card waiting for me signed by a bunch of the staff and several of the inmates!!!

And one of the inmates came out with drink cups stuck under his shirt and performed the Marilyn Monroe JFK version of Happy Birthday for me! It was a hoot and a hell of a way to start the day! Imagine a skinny,tattooed inmate with pointy "breasts" singing a breathless song to you at 5am!