BUSY is a FOUR LETTER WORD!

Well, hey!

My My My! I forgot I had a BLOG! I was trying to follow another goat friend's blog and they were making me sign in and said my email address already had an account and pretty soon, I found it! I can't blame Alzheimer exactly, but I can legally and truthfully claim Busy. I really do hate BUSY, don't you?

I've been known to say, "I'd rather be busy than bored." And that is true - - because I said it for one thing, but it is logical, too. I don't have a job-job, you know, what most people think of as a job, employment where you get a regular check as payment for working : ). When I fill out forms, I always write 'SELF' in the little 'Employer' box. Then everyone who has a job thinks I don't work, that I sit around all day playing spider solitaire and writing book-long emails : )

But my day starts before the sun comes up most days. I awake, usually to a praise or worship song going on in my head, and first give my awesome Heavenly Father some time because He loves me and I love Him so much. I do make my way to the computer and check emails. I usually pull up spider to deal once or twice while I'm waiting for Yahoo to come up. I can hardly stand to sit and wait, so I play during those times.

The four boys get up at 6:30 and the next 30 minutes are CRAZY. Even though I try to keep them organized, shoes are lost and backpacks have literally disappeared (especially over the weekend if it's a Monday! : ). They never want to walk to the end of the street (maybe two football fields worth, so I put on my Taxi-mom hat and drive them. We wait for the bus and I bless them and pray for their day.



When I get home, it's just O'Pa and me, alone. We love this time of day. We have a cup of coffee over Fox and Friends. I might answer a few more emails and send out lots of resumes for editing jobs. Ron usually plays some spider, too, then I head to the barn to care for my animals and milk the goats. Ron helps me if he doesn't have to take off real early for one reason or another.


So you have to feed the crazy cats first or they will trip you and scratch you and make the morning miserable. Then I fill the horses an donkey's buckets first and let them in from the pasture to eat breakfast, locking them in their stalls.Then I get ready for the milkers - fill the feed tray, open the neck board, get the cookie bucket out and arrange my jars and bowls. When I go to the goat fold gate (off the barn's main aisle), there's almost always a milker waiting. I open it and she runs to the milk stand and starts gobbling. I lock her in by putting the boards together and pinning in place.

I use a washcloth to clean her udder, squeeze the first squirts into a bowl for the kitties who are waiting. You do that in case there's dirt or anything undesirable at the tip of her teet. It takes 300 to 500 squeezes to get all her milk out depending on how much she gives and the size of her orifices (teet holes). She gets 2 animal cookies - all the girls LOVE their cookies and as soon as I stand up, they're stretching their neck and licking their lips : ) I remove the pin and loosen the neck brace and she jumps down and runs to the gate.

I don't put her back into the fold, but let her through the first gate only into the aisle of the barn. Then I get another milker - usually waiting at the gate. Some of them - the last ones - make me come out and look square at them and say, "Come on, Vivian!" before they'll come. But they all make the bee-line to the milk stand and they all expect their after-cookies!

When all the milking's done, feed and water chickens, pigs, buck (penned separate from the girls), weanlings, hedgehog Gus Gus and rabbit. Run the milk to the freezer. Start the dog food. I cook their food - boil bones, wild hog usually, and leftovers, season, sometimes add bullion and when it's a rich broth, I add about three cups of rice. While I'm in the kitchen, I clean it because although I would love to rise to a clean one, mine's usually a MESS because after I cook at the end of the day and feed the boys, and eat, I needs go get off me feet. So I clean it the next morning. Heavy sigh - such as it is.

Whew, then I eat MY breakfast. Two eggs fried over easy, toast, homemade jelly and a tall glass of COLD goat's milk. By now Ron's gone if he could get off sorta mid-morn, well, we eat before I get the whole kitchen clean if he's here. So I go to the computer again and finish catching up emails and getting resumes out. I always have writing or editing to do. I often have CraigsList ads to post (Texarkana area) and I check to see what they have in the farm and garden section for sale.

I work on all that, make our bed, often start laundry, but not every day since boys do their own now - as of this past summer. So far only one load really messed up when Gregory Brahm used the bleach in place of the soap. He had some weird outfits in the summer : ) SO I usually don't think about lunch til one and I heat some leftovers then watch afternoon TV for an hour or two, resting up before the boys get back home! : )

During this time, I write letters to my prison penpals or hull purple hull peas or cut up my vegetables for dinner or fold laundry, or get back on computer to edit or write. Point being, I never hardly ever just sit and watch TV with nothing else going on. But I take a break off my feet. I often use this time to visit with my 30+ year sister-friend Elaine, too, so we can talk about our programs and families : ) She calls me most the time. Everyone should have a dear person in their life like my 'Lanie!

We've just finished a new children's chapter book titled ZacMaster.com that we wrote for a new friend. He was looking for a Christian editor, but on seeing his manuscript, I told him it wasn't ready for an edit, but instead needed to be re-written. He asked if we could, so we did : )

The boys get home around 4, then it's homework, chores, animals are all hungry again, cooking and serving dinner, eating, and falling in bed to cuddle with Benjamen while he falls asleep. That's at 8 p.m. and often, I fall sound asleep then, too. If I don't, I have time to pray before I do : )

Sometimes I have to add going grocery shopping or taking a boy to a sport practice - it's football for Christian now and baseball for Matthew and Gregory. I love to go vist the widow I visit regularly. They've become dear friends. I sell some goats some days or help kids be born. Occasionally the horses get out and I have to chase them. There's ALWAYS something!

See my days? How busy they are? But I wouldn't change one iota of them. I love my boys, their hugs and how much they like my cooking and their silliness. I love all my animals. I love my husband. I love living in the country. I am blessed beyond my due. God is so good and so faithful to us. And since I pray for Him to order my days, I believe I've accomplished what He gave me to do in this day.

And right now, I better get to bed. Benjamen already fell asleep, and tonight, since Ron's watching the Cowboys' game, I got back up and wrote this blog. I pray peace to you all, the peace that only God can give, the kind that far exceeds all human understanding and settles your spirit in His love. Blessing to you. Please do come again! I'll try not to forget and make more regular entries : )