Ready, Grandma, weaning woes, Andrew

This weekend was a little more relaxed than the last. I spent the entire day working on the apartment but it was small finish up items; nothing urgent. It was a day of “punch-list” items. Those are the last little detail items that have to be done before completion. In this case “completion” meant being ready for electrical and sheetrock work to begin. I had hoped to get the other garage door opening done but the winds gusted in excess or fifty miles per hour so any outside work – especially requiring large pieces of OSB or plywood – was pretty much shut down.


I have heard murmurings of help on the way but that remains to be seen. Grandpa, Grandma, Norman and Seth are supposed to be heading this way on Wednesday morning. Grandma went to the emergency room on either Saturday or Sunday morning due to chest pains but it turned out to be nothing urgent – according to the hospital. Grandma was clearly dissatisfied with the diagnosis, but with the diet she and Grandpa have such pains seem to be commonplace.

One minute she is telling the story about a cardio evaluation in which she was told that she had the heart of someone many years younger in spite of the fact that she cooks everything with lard. The next minute she is having chest pains that are more severe than anyone who has ever lived has ever felt, followed up by the acclamation; “Look at me. I’m 67 years old and I get around better than my grandchildren.” Then she can’t get out of bed the next day. All I am saying is, it is difficult to tell what is going on.

I would appreciate the help on the apartment, but I am not putting all my hopes in that basket. Grandpa, Norman and Seth have big ideas about whirling through the apartment and getting it finished in a week. It will be interesting to see what happens to be the first thing they find that thwarts those ambitious plans. Like I said, I would appreciate the help.

Though Mama weaned all the calves on Friday, they are not fully adjusted to the idea of not getting their morning and evening bottles of warm milk so every time we go to the calf lot to feed we are harassed by slobbery mouthed calves that are desperate for that bottle of milk. They are worrying us a little because two of the younger ones still do not eat their feed as well as we had hoped they would.

Giving them another bottle is out of the question. It would only start the cycle over again. Yesterday morning we fed before getting dressed for church. To do so we locked the younger calves in the lot until they got the idea and ate the grain we put out for them. After we got dresses none of us wanted to go down and let them out of the lot because of the dread of having calf slobbers smeared all over our backsides. It was not real hindrance to them except that they would not be able to graze until they were let back out. So by the time we finally got home they were ready to get out and eat some grass.

Yesterday we had Andrew with us because his parents were out of town. He is al ways fun to have around. I am not sure if more of his company would wear out the welcome, but in small doses he is pretty funny. We took him to CiCi’s Pizza for lunch yesterday. He ate a more than a dozen pieces of pizza lathered in ranch dressing; nothing else; only pizza. He ate only the “good” part of the pizza slice and left the accumulated crusts on the plate. Then he took a spoon and cleaned out the bowl of ranch dressing Mama had gotten for him.

He was a slight mess after all of that, but he got cleaned up before we came back to get him for evening services. I told Mama he is quite the contradiction. He loves playing Halo but his favorite TV show is Wings Club. He was even telling us as we dropped him off after lunch that he had only two hours until the show came on TV that afternoon.

From Halo to Tinkerbelle, what an interesting combination of interests.