A Week From Hell

Ok, maybe that is a little too dramatic, but really it was quite the stressful and eventful week. First of all, Monday was my first end-of-month by myself. Well, all the week before I had prepared - got all the extra little stuff done and all my deals completed. Then I sat and sat on Friday looking for work, and nothing. So the weekend was wonderful. 80 degrees, breezy sunny and absolutely beautiful and EVERYONE decided it was the day to get a new car! So I get in and there are lots of deals and they were all funky. Nothing was easy and straightforward. There were trades and payoffs and credit life and all kinds of crap. So Kathy helped me and costed two or three deals for me and then she posted them all for me, which freed me up to do the other stuff like the inventories and stuff. I stayed until 8:00, so I put in over 12 hours without a break. We ate lunch in and Kathy bought dinner since we were staying. And the next day I tidied up all the loose ends and that was that. All in all it was not too very bad. They all said I did a great job and Sally suggested they get me a t-shirt that said "I survived the March Month End". So a note to remember: it was hard and I had to work late, but it was not that hard. There were some extra things that I didn't have to do that Kathy did, but every month I will get better and faster and it will become more routine and I will be able to get more done faster and with less stress. So There!! And the rest of the week I sat like an idiot with my thumb up my butt looking for stuff to do because we sold NO cars at all. So I helped Karen do some things and got some files in order and stuff like that. I really need to continue to refer to these notes when I start to feel overwhelmed about work. I will get better and faster and more confident and all.

So a couple of late nights and the two of the cows decided to get sick. Both Hannah and Ring-eye got really sick and we decided it was grass tetany. They had a lot of the symptoms and I was pretty sure that it was that. What it is is a deficiency of magnesium in their systems due to nursing calves and the new fresh spring grass. The new grass has not had a chance to build up its mag content and the cows were depleting their systems too drastically. We got a couple of tubes of mag gel in them but the next day they were still no better. So I called the vet to be sure we were right and he said he thought we were and to keep giving them the mag gel but to do it orally. So we went down and gave them another dose. Well, Hannah was fairly sweet and didn't put up too much of a fuss and went into the headgate and I decided to check her throat to be sure there were no obstructions. I put my hand in there ( dumb move Cindy) and she tossed her head and my hand got caught between her back teeth and she chomped down and ground my hand hard. I thought it was possibly broken but I was lucky. She just broke the skin and really bruised my joints. Lesson learned. Then Ring-eye decided she wanted to kill me and she charged me and kept ramming at me. So Chip thought he could go in and sweet talk her and she plowed into him and sent him flying. Thank God we were not hurt. So I became the bait ( she hates me more than Chip and besides I am smaller and faster) and I teased her into chasing me into the chute. It took a while but she finally got mad enough to run me all the way in and we caught her in the headgate and gave her her meds.

This continued through the rest of the week and yesterday I discovered that if I got a halter on her, she gave up and let me pull her into the chute. So we did that. Last night, she went down in the chute and we couldn't get her up and we figured that she was probably going to expire there and we'd have to get the tractor and pull her out. But right when we said that, she got herself up and walked off into the pasture. So she is out loose now but Hannah is still in a stall in the barn. But Hannah seems to be responding well to her meds and will probably be ok. We walked out this morning to look for Ring thinking she would be dead, and there she was, her usual nasty bitchy self walking aroung the rest of the herd. So maybe she will get better too.

I dyed my hair for the first time ever today ! Karen and Yvonne took me out and picked out a color for me, and I got brave enough to try it today. Not bad. Just a darker version of what I used to be when I was younger.

Last weekend I was feeling really blue about Brandy and a new puppy and was really having a hard time of it. On Monday Karen asked me if I had decided I really did want a puppy and I told her about how I felt and she said we could talk about it after Month End was done. So Tuesday she was asking me all kinds of questions about Brandy and while it made me sad, it also made me feel a lot better too. It is so nice to have a new friend like Karen, who has the same feelings that I do. We have lots of fun talking about the dogs and the farm.

Speaking of friends, I missed talking with Raka last week. We got to talk on Saturday, but on Sunday she was visiting someone and couldn't talk. And today I have to go take care of cows, so I don't now that we will get together today either. But if you read this, Raka, I am thinking about you and can't wait to talk with you!

Haven't had much time to think about Ron Perlman this week. I have been absolutely exhausted from work and chasing crazy cows around. Not to mention getting beat up by those crazy cows and I am so sore I can hardly move. Ron's birthday is Friday, and I didn't send him a card this year. He probably gets so many anyway. I would like to send him something special, something memorable so he would say " hey, that's really nice!" but since he doesn't answer his mail, I would never know if he got it anyway. I guess I would just like to know that I was able to touch his heart a little bit , like he touches ours.

So I have rambled on quite long today and am getting a bit of a headache. Going to go take some aspirin and wash up the breakfast dishes, and spruce up the rest of the house so I can take it easy the rest of the day. Oh, by the way, HAPPY EASTER!!