Work, Work, and no time for anything but Work....

Damn!  Putting in some BIG days at the moment!  And for the first time in 9 yrs (yep since I started driving in the fert spreaders!) I can say my back is not making me want to quit, or wonder how I'm going to do another few years of it!!!  WOOTWOOT!!!  Ladies and Germs, we have a winner!!!  Turmeric stopped me chucking in my job about 5 yrs ago, but adding Calcium and Magnesium to the mix and I can actually say I ENJOY my job again!!!!  of course the back and shoulders, and neck, and every other bit around all that still gets tight and there is an ever present graunching and still lots of stretching and pulling faces BUT when I compare it to how it used to be, I'm in heaven!!!!

Marcus has been thrown in the deep end with helping cook dinners etc lately and has learned the hard way that he is expected to actually do some stuff around the house when I'm busy working my ass off.... when his wee internet addiction got in the way of him doing things he needed to do BEFORE sitting on his ass, well, he lost his internet privileges!  Simple!  Took me a while to figure out how to enforce that, but eventually it twigged in my tired overworked brain that all I needed to do was unplug the modem and take it to work with me BWAHAHAHA.  Took him 5 days to lift his game and earn it back and he's had it back 2 days and hasn't dropped the ball yet, lets see what he's like next week when he gets home from his dads!

Thank God for long weekends is all I can say, hanging out for a break and altho one extra day off isn't going to cut the mustard it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick and 2 in a row (Anniversary Weekend is straight after Labour Weekend for us!) should get me thru to the Xmas/New Years break a tad easier :)  Cannot believe it's nearly Christmas already!  Holy crap time has sped up so much even young school kids are remarking on it, so it's not just the age thing.  Blink and it's gone, a month, a year, a life!  Treasure those moments people!

Right, one day to go before 3 blissful days off work, and I need to hit the sack.  Sweet dreams everyone out there that I hardly talk to anymore, still think of more than just a few of you often :(

Let's Face It...

I will NEVER be a domestic Goddess *sigh*

Marcus has had half a dozen safety pins holding his school uniform shorts together for months now, somehow he split the seam down the outside of his leg and well, I ain't no domestic goddess, so safety pins it was!!!  But school holidays have rolled around (and done and dusted, back at school tomorrow) so I thought I'd better do that "mum thing" and sew them up again.  Do you know what a pain in the ass it is to have "working hands" trying to sew???  How many times one of the cracks or rough bits on a finger grabbed the cotton and pulled it right out of the needle?!  Good Lord, next time it might be easier to just fork out for some new shorts!!!  But it's a small victory for this chick, cause I freaking well did it, and it doesn't look toooooooooooooo bad and you can admire how good it looks cause I only had white cotton in that little supermarket sewing kit I had and they are charcoal shorts ROFLMAO, but hey, the stitches are on the inside you can't see it's white from the outside LOL.

Sorry Marcus, life's a bitch and you got me for a mother LMAO, you and I must have both been BAD in a past life LOL.

Breathing a Sigh of Relief...

Cause, 1, it's the weekend!!!!  It's been a right royal cock of a month gone to be honest, I'm exhausted! 

And 2, Leo is A-OK... He only had one disprin this morning and barked and "bounced" when I got home tonight, apart from a straight tail and a bit more of a stiff limp than the old boy had before, he was smiling again and happy :)  And he hasn't needed another disprin tonight!  YAY!

One SUPER lucky old man!!!!  Not his time yet :)

Tomorrow the weather is supposed to suck big time and we are taking a ride to Kaikoura to meet up with some of the Canterbury BACA crew and others who are "celebrating" (seems completely the wrong word, but brain dead) the death of their Prez "Flint" a year ago.  Flint's ashes were put to sea just south of Kaikoura by one of the tunnels I believe, so they are coming up to lunch in Kaikoura and then do something there with/for Flint on the way home.

Will be nice to see them again no matter what the weather, they are a bloody awesome group of people.

Lucky Leo...

What an incredibly lucky dog he is!  He made his way upstairs last night and had a relatively peaceful night.  Another couple of disprin under his belt in the morning and he made his way back down the stairs OK, peed and pooped outside and looks bloody great considering!

A bit sore when I got home tonight as it was over 12 hours after his morning painkillers, but the devils claw has kicked in now from dinner dosing and he's upstairs again (no keeping him away from mum!) and resting on his bed (and snoring his old man snore he's developed cause he sleeps so deeply as an old fella LOL)

You can see a bit of the pain in his eyes, but hell, considering he was bowled, rolled and assholed, he looks bloody good eh?!  Not a sign of anything wrong until you see his straight tail and a missing claw (and a limp)

Oh No!!!! Leo!!!!

I had told the boss I'd be a bit late in for work this morning as I had to catch horses for the farrier (lucky I did, cause even I couldn't catch that little bastard Smokey for 10 mins when we saw him rock up!)   Roger is lucky last (and very well behaved considering he hates having his feet done, even at 24 yrs old!) and Leo and Vada are busy chewing away on the off cuts of the hoof (it's like doggy chewing gum I swear!)

I go to open the gate for the farrier to leave and Vada comes over to me but Leo has gotten old and deaf and the old bugger doesn't hear me yelling for him, but just as the ute aims towards the gate, he looks up, sees me and starts dawdling towards me, right in front of the frigging ute!!!!  Jesus Christ dog!!!!  He was run completely over by the front wheel, while I'm waving and yelling and running flat out to the ute and he stopped parked with his back wheel on his tail, as I'm yelling "YOU'RE PARKED ON HIM GO BACK, GO BACK!!!!"  Thankfully it seems it was only his tail, (which now hangs limp and dead straight instead of the border collie ring tail he had!) and with blood coming out his mouth, and he got up from under the ute to stagger out, sit down side ways, bite me, snapped at the farrier and I'm saying, "oh god, cut his throat for me!!!  I can't get him in the work truck to get him to the vet and I'm not spending thousands on him, he's 12 and deaf and going blind, just cut his throat for me!!!!"  Well Leo heard that and rallied himself, got up, trotted off without a trace of lameness, went inside, lay down, got back up, came to me, lay down again and didn't look like he was ready to die after all!!!!  He's as sore as buggery this afternoon tho... limping on a front leg, missing a claw on a back foot, broken tail, and trying really hard to NOT cough after a drink, so I'm hoping he hasn't broken ribs, but is just bruised.  Poor old snot!!!

It's been a looooooong day at work that's for sure!  Very glad he'd already had breakfast so he had turmeric and devils claw on board already, and he's just had some more turmeric, calcium and magnesium and a couple of disprin when I got home.  Bloody lucky he's so fluffy and overweight and was in soft springy grass, and SOOOOOO lucky the back wheel didn't go over him cause the amount of steel in the back of a farrier's ute would have crushed the poor wee soul.

He's banished downstairs for now and was going to try to get up the stairs too!!!  But I'll go crash in the spare room downstairs so he can sleep by his mum, cause he NEVER doesn't sleep with his mum and I'm not carrying him up and down the stairs!

So let the healing begin!!!  He didn't want ME doing any on him, but I had been telling him all day to do some self healing...

12 1/2 yrs old, ain't quite time to go yet eh old boy xxx

oh dear.... they do tend to come in threes......

Boss got flown to Nelson Hospital late yesterday afternoon.  Sadly he died before the rest of the family could make it there by car :( 

Higgi was a bloody cowboy when I started at the firm 9 yrs ago, but a great boss none the less.  We kicked him out of the spreader trucks 3 or so years back and semi retired him to the wee farm which he promptly turned into a vineyard.  Still you can't keep a truckie out of a truck and when we were busy and I was still stuck in the vineyard trucks, Higgi would steal my big truck and help out on the farms, leaving it dirty and often something gone wrong with it LOL, but the man was always smiling and had the most cheeky grin when he was up to no good.

Feel for the kids and Mrs Higgi cause where mine won't be missed, he most definitely will be... by all of us.

Have warned the boys at work, the grim reaper always takes 3 and it's only 2 around me so they better get to the doctor at the smallest niggle.  One who is over 65 looked rather freaked out by that comment BWAHAHAHA.

Life and Death...

Shot up North to see mum on the weekend.  Crap weather to ride the bike up there, but like I kept saying to everyone who commented in that vein, it wasn't raining when I booked the tickets!

Mum was good, she was about the same as when I saw her in April, which is good because I was expecting to see some more decline in her!

So few words left it's impossible to understand a damn thing she is trying to say, altho I'm sure she makes sense to herself, you have to watch her face when she finishes a sentence and go from the inflection of her tone and whether she looks amused or not, before you can respond with a "no way!  surely not!" or something similar, but she is still very able to laugh and be happy and that's the main thing.

I got home to a few missed calls and a text on my other phone from a mate of my dads.  I called him the next day and found out that dad had died on Sunday night.  The end of an era....

My dad was an asshole.  A wife beater, a child abuser (in more than one sense of the word) and we were ALL glad to be rid of him when I was 15 and mum finally had enough back up in us kids to chuck him out.

I had shifted in the police to Golden Bay in 1998 and my dad got wind of it, rang the Takaka Police, said who he was and that I was his daughter and could he have my phone number.  Huge no no for info like that to be given out to ANYONE, but the cop working at the time gave him my number and that is how my father got in contact with me again.

Funny thing is, his phone call to me came only a day or so after a phone call to my older brother where we had talked about him and our childhood and the shit that went down and he said he had come to realise that his "family" was mum and me and Cammy (brother) and that was it.  "He" was just a stranger.  Obviously that came at the perfect time (great believer in "everything for a reason" because when a couple of days later I picked up the phone and recognised the voice on the other end of it, I didn't have a heart attack, but after the initial "holy shit he found me!!!!" I realised Slade (brother) was right... this man on the other end of the phone was not family to me, he was just a stranger wanting to talk, and that was the final stage of me making peace with my past.

Dad kept in contact over the years and after Marcus was born he visited twice, the last time when Marcus was about 3 or 4, and he rang to keep up with what was happening, and he always sent birthday and Xmas cards and presents for Marcus which was always appreciated. But at the same time, as harsh as it may sound, his death is no great loss for us as a family.

I've talked to him since I heard the news, he thinks its rather funny that he can talk to me more now than when he was alive, and I know that as spirit energy he is no longer the asshole that my dad was, but have told him to just give me a bit of time to now separate the 2 things in my head before he tries to start advising from that side, cause him butting into things going on in my life like he had the right to over the last 10 or so years used to bug the shit out of me and there were a couple of short sharp conversations when he would try!

I'm glad mum has outlived him, even if she's in no fit state to appreciate it....

And bonus of a windy day back at work, where there isn't too much we can do I got to put some fertiliser on MY paddock tonight!!!  Just as the grass is thinking about having a sprout, great timing :)

the stupid things that make kids kids....

The things I used to post to FB so I wouldn't forget them and because lots of my friends there know/knew Marcus and find his actions or words funny...

So today we were driving home from town and Marcus was in one of those moods where if he had a sibling he would be antagonising them till a scrap happened, except without a sibling it happens with me, which is silly cause his ego desperately wants to win but heck I'm an adult and craftier than him by far, so he always gets the twack around the head as we're driving and he really can't retaliate like he really wants too cause I'm his bloody mother AND I'm driving, you just feel his frustration as times LOL.

He had lost this particular round in the battle and had tucked his head under my arm so I couldn't twack him easily at which point I was closed my arm on the top of his head and told him to sniff my pit LMAO, it was just too easy!

When I let him go to a  "I hate you mumma" (which I hear often!) he said "I'm going to put my head out the window" which he did and then he promptly let rip with an almighty spit!!!!!  Except the dork was still looking straight ahead BWAHAHAHAHAHA  nek minit.... he pulls his head straight back in and wipes a very impressive massive spit off his face with his sleeve looking rather sheepish with it.

Oh dear lord, I mustered up as much disdain as I could to save wetting myself and told him he was a right royal dickhead.... I allow the laughter as I'm typing this instead!!!  What a dork!

Funny as hell at times tho LMAO.

Used to love seeing the FB memories come up reminding me of equally stupid things he'd done that I'd shared that I had completely forgotten about!  Won't get any reminders now, all those wee gems gone!  Poof!

Spring has Sprung!!!!

Good God, the years are now FLYING by, and before anyone says it's age, even the school kids are commenting on how fast time is going!!!  I think we really have  been sped up!

Work is FLAT OUT, which is not surprising for this time of year, makes for some decent pay packets thankfully and since I added Calcium and Magnesium to the cocktail of what I take nutritionally my back has never been better!!!  Well, it has... pre driving spreader trucks LOL.  But prior to finding turmeric I was at the point of thinking of other jobs I could do, turmeric saved my job, but now cal/mag has made it enjoyable again!!!  Only thing is, I can't afford to NOT take them, miss one day and the back is screwed again in that time and takes a week to get back to being OK.

Got the Bighorn and float on the road and legal again, just need to start getting on Smokey again too LOL.  Heading up north to see mum again next week so the bike will be clocking over some more kms and the heated grips will get a torture test done on them hahahaha.

Marcus is still a decent human being for the most part, loving this year for bringing that change about in him and in the right light you can see a tiny black smudge on his upper lip hehehehe.  The little boy is growing up!

Cats are all good, Bear the Demon Spawn is coming up 7 mths old, Leo is getting old but a bit of devils claw added to his food has put a little spring in his step again, Vada LOOKS old (he's only 7 but that is already getting on for a Great Dane!) but he's still as loopy as ever, he is feeling the spring rush too, looping around in the paddock like a grey hound at night LMAO.

On the bike this weekend, a bit of a full on weekend actually, tons to do and still no energy to do it.

And that's my life, all caught up on just like that!  Don't know what I used to post on FB every day!!!!

oh yeah, stuff like this....

Procrastination Beaten AGAIN....

FINALLY the bighorn, tow wagon and float are on the road and legal and usable and poor wee Smokey IS gonna get dragged out to some trail rides this season!

Blew a radiator hose pulling the hay in back in December, is just sorted again now LOL.  Just need to grab a new battery from work on Monday for it, tried charging them both twice, but one is still letting the team down, so last thing to do and then to use the damn things and stop the cobwebs from covering them!

I feel so accomplished LOL, it truly is the little things!  And now it's a raining and miserable day so the rest of the weekend will be spent doing sweet F.A. after a BIG week at work (which went surprisingly quickly!)

Vada hasn't had a guts ache in over a week (touches wood super fast!) Roger is grazing across the road in a shit load of grass, and now I just need to book the ferry for the next trip up the North Island next month to see mumma bear.

I sort of feel like my life is getting sorted in small ways.... oh and it may not seem like much, but last pay day my mortgage finally dropped to 5 figures instead of 6 WOOTWOOT, #winningatlife

(seriously, what the fuck are hashtags all about????)

Boredom leads to sleep which leads to...

no longer being stuck in a cycle of only 6 hrs sleep!  First time since the kid has been born I guess!  Sadly I still feel tired during the day too, better look into the thyroid playing up again... always something to keep an eye on LOL.

But within that boredom that leads to just going to bed cause theres nothing else to do, is my life closing off more and more.  Hermit like.  Have my very dear soulmate that reckons he's a hermit, he's fucking deluded!  He has people texting him left right and centre!  Whether he answers them is a different story!  But he has people in his life big time.  And I introduced him to FB where he spends a LOT of his awake time, just being around people in that sense that FB allows you to do.  I'm thinking of canceling my text plan cause it's just a waste of money, that's how little contact I have with people outside of work!

No one to talk to, no one to take an interest in, no one to take an interest in me quite quickly leads to isolation.  Just sleep your life away.  Life becomes the pocket of your backyard and place of work and I have NEVER socialised with workmates.

Plus side of having animals, they start bellyaching loudly if you sleep in too late in weekends, so you have to get up to feed them and while you're up, you might as well do some other stuff.

And I got TWO rides in on the weekend!  Oh yeah!  Just what was needed.  The shit weather didn't really eventuate on Sunday so went for a wee 100km spin for a green tea and to watch the world go by for a while (yep, more isolation even while moving thru the countryside hahaha) and then raced the temp. drop to get home as the clouds just started rolling in.  Good weekend.