Awkward moments, Becky

Life goes on at work and at home but it is a little awkward at times – in both locations. At work, the awkwardness stems from the fact that I know what is coming for me and yet have to maintain a sense of normalcy throughout the process. At home, I know what is coming and have to get Mama ready for a serious change of spending patterns.

I printed out a bank statement yesterday in an attempt to track down just where we are getting so far off budget. After all, I have to know where the spending holes so we can start to plug them. I was actually surprised by what I found. The overspending in not in the area of farm expenses or house repairs, although those have certainly been higher than I predicted, but rather it in our frequent trips to Walmart and Sam’s.

When I looked at those numbers I discovered we were spending more than twice our budgeted amount for grocery related items. When I added up the household items Mama buys at Family Dollar, Dollar General and the like, we were nearly in budget but still a bit over in that category. So, when I showed this to Mama last night she was a little surprised but when I told her what we were going to be budgeting for groceries and household items in the very near future, she was very unhappy with those numbers.

Our grocery budget, which we were over by double, will shrink by about thirty percent. But if you do the math, the reality is that the amount spent will shrink by over seventy percent from our current spend levels. Mama’s ready answer was, “There’s no way!” my answer to her, ‘There’s no other way.” I have not found another job yet so I really do not know what the final budgeted numbers are going to be, but I do know there is a big change coming. That change is less than two weeks away. It will be a very big adjustment for Mama.

For Mama’s birthday yesterday I bought her four cards. She was not feeling well Monday night so it gave me the chance to distribute them after I got home from church that night. I put one on the refrigerator, one on the washer, one in her Bible and one in the garage attached to the cage we are raising the chickens in. She called me yesterday morning when she had found the second of two. She called again when she found a third and I told her there was one more. We did not get anything for each other, gift wise, so I wanted to make the most of the little bit of cash I did spend on her.

Victoria is finally better and was able to go to work yesterday. She is off today and is urging Mama to take her to the Cantrell’s house so she can rescue her pup. I advised waiting until Friday to get Kira but I do not know if that will fly. Kim Cantrell says the two are getting along very well. Having Kira there seems to calm Leo - when he is not overcome by the urges of nature from Kira’s present condition.

Be praying for Becky. She called last night and told Mama she is going back to work at Walmart. That is not a bad thing except that she has a very new baby in the home. What set off the alarm bells is that the plan is for Mike to quit his job and stay home with the newborn and the children Becky is currently babysitting. That just sounds wrong – in so many ways.

She also told Mama they are going to church tonight. Pray that God will get a hold of her and Mike’s hearts. We worry for little Bridgette.

Dog news, a pig story, Mama’s birthday

Mama spent the entire day out of the house yesterday. She has been bemoaning the condition of Sam’s coat for a couple months now and yesterday she had the chance to do something about it. Sam and Sasha have adopted a large area to guard – some of which is pretty rough pasture – and because Sam’s coat is pretty knotty and course he picks up briars and thorns that get bound in his coat and wind up causing irritations against his skin. Several of those places have become inflamed and needed to have the hair cut away so they could heal. The poor woman that took on that task deserved a better tip than Mama was able to give her. But whoever she is, she did an amazing job.

This is the second time we have had this done. Each time the groomer has left the face and head pretty well untouched. Last time she left a small tuft at the tip of the tail but this time she took off all the hair up to the ears – even shaving the throat and jaw. He looks skinny and pink right now and is struggling to stay warm in these cooler nights but Mama and Victoria are able to get to the places on his skin that need attention. Hopefully by the time it is really cold he will have regrown all his hair, but he could end up being quite chilly for the next couple weeks.

Right after she got that chore done she packed up Kira and took her to Kim Cantrell’s house so she and Leo could have some time together to hopefully make some puppies. Leo is a full blooded German shepherd. Kira is half German shepherd, half Akita. From that dalliance Victoria is planning to have some little puppies to sell in the very near future.

Mama tells me it was the first time either dog had been in this delicate situation but after some very awkward attempts to figure things out they ended up succeeding. I think she and Kim Cantrell got a pretty big kick out of watching the two of them as they worked their way to understanding what goes where. Mama will be returning to get Kira by the weekend – assuming they have had enough time together. I know Leo will be disappointed to see her go.

It reminded me of a story I heard about a farmer that hauled his sow to a neighbor’s farm so that the neighbor’s boar could breed his sow. He did not have a truck so he used a wheelbarrow for transporting his sow. He returned several days later to retrieve his sow and was assured that the boar had done his duty. The farmer then asked how he would know if the sow was bred or not. “If she rolls in the mud once you get her back in her pen then you will know that she is bred. If not, bring her back and we’ll let them try again.”

The sow did not roll in the mud so the farmer took her back a second and then a third time. After returning the third time with his sow the discouraged farmer asked his wife if she would keep an eye on the sow to see if she would finally roll in the mud. The wife kept a vigil for several hours and finally came to her husband and reported that the sow was not rolling in the mud. “Well, what’s she doing?” he asked. The wife smiled, winked and said, “She’s sitting in the wheelbarrow.”

Mama’s birthday is today but it might not be a very happy one. Both she and Victoria are still not feeling well.

Today is also Chase's birthday.

Coop work, revival meetings

Mama and I had a good weekend. I stared my weekend a little early by taking off Friday.  Between Thursday evening, all day Friday and all day Saturday I managed to get a good start on Mama’s new chicken coop. We need something pretty soon because her chicks are not so little anymore. We had them in a pretty large cage but they are but they are growing so rapidly that we are having to find other cages and spaces for them to give them enough room to grow without being overcrowded.

With that as a plan I took a little coop that we inherited with the purchase of the Chico property and mounted it on a stand so that it would be easier for Mama to take care of. It is a cute little salt-box style prefab coop with a nesting box that extends out the back of the coop. It has a removable tray on the roosting area, little windows and little doors. So there is plenty of access for Mama to clean and service the coop.

We have not moved any of the chickens to the little coop because Mama is still able to carry (with help) the large cage from the garage – where the chicks are placed for the night – to the carport where they spend the day. It will not be too much longer that she will be able to do that because it is getting quite heavy as the chicks continue to grow.

We even have a separate hospital cage that now houses three birds. All three have injuries to their legs that require them to be separated from the flock. But, much to Mama’s great pleasure, all are doing quite well and should be able to return to the general population in a couple more weeks. She views it as her first successful attempt to rescue an injured bird.

What I worked on all day Saturday was the large coop building I wanted to build last year when Grandpa and Mama got the idea of building the little metal building to be used as a coop. It has done well enough but I am happy to finally be building a nicer, more permanent structure. In the new building Mama will be able to raise two separate flocks when needed. She has read that we should not raise our meat chickens with our egg layers – due to differing diet for the different outcomes.

I struggled getting it laid out by myself but finally got the rough out close enough to start digging the holes for the posts I needed to put into the ground. Friday I struggled with the power auger getting only a few inches at best into the very hard ground. So I got each hole as far as I could then filled each with water to soften the ground, reworking each later that evening or the following day.

By Saturday when I finally quit I had all the holes done, posts set and most of the stringers attached to those posts. I have enough lumber from the deck lumber I cleaned to do all the floor joists and the rafters. With revival this week Sunday through Wednesday night followed by FBI on Thursday night and RU on Friday night I will not get more added to the frame until Saturday – unless I take time off later this week.

Sunday morning in Sunday School the evangelist was making a point of how easy it was for us to share photos on our cell phone with complete strangers while we will not share the gospel. He was pretending to share pictures of his horses with me when he said, “This guy could not care less. He’s a city slicker.” That got everybody going. So later that morning I said I knew this was going to be a rough revival for me when the evangelist insults you the very first morning of the meetings.

It has become a recurring theme through the meetings so far.

Mama at the dairy, Fall

We had an interesting experience the other day. When we opened a gallon of the fresh milk we get at Dry Valley Dairy it did not taste good. None of us could tell if it was bad – as in spoiled – or if it was our taste buds so we drank about half the gallon before opening the second gallon we had bought. It had the same slightly off taste – not spoiled but definitely not good. So Mama went back to the dairy yesterday to ask about the milk and see if he would replace the gallons.

As she walked into the office there, which is just off the milking room, the owner was talking to a group of men. As it turned out he was telling them about the bad milk. Here is what happened. One day last week he hired a crew to trim fences and brush hog some places on his farm that had not been tended to that year. The farm was looking like is got a facelift as a result.

But the next morning he was finishing the chilling of the milk from the morning milking and noticed the batch smelled bad. He got a gallon from the pallet he had been filling that morning and opened it to taste it and it seemed okay but just to make sure he opened another – and it was awful. A third gallon was no better. So he dumped the entire batch from the chiller, unfortunately he had put several dozen gallons in the sales cooler already and could not be sure if he had gotten all of them back out to be discarded. Mama ended up getting two of the bad gallons. He replaced those gallons for us.

It seems that the cows had found something in the freshly cut grass and weeds of the cleared fence lines that was not normally part of their foraging in the pastures and whatever that plant was it had strongly flavored the milk. To remedy the situation he put the cows up in his lot and fed them good hay for a couple days and the milk returned to normal. He lost at least two milking’s work of product but that seemed to be the solution.

I suppose the same thing happens to nursing mothers. They eat something that strongly flavors the milk the baby is getting and we would never know it – but that poor baby would. Maybe, if the baby is not seeming to eat well on a particular morning it could be chalked up to the milk being flavored differently than they are used to. There is no good way to tell but it is something to consider.

It was hard to tell that yesterday was the first day of Fall. Mama has decorated accordingly but outside the house it still feels like summer. Days are a bit more mild with highs only into the mid-nineties but things are still and quite warm overall. Very few people I talk to are dreading the coming cool weather; most are lamenting its late return. I am psychologically ready for the cold weather but the farm is still not prepared yet.

Getting water to the animals during freezing conditions remains the biggest priority. We are still a couple months away from that but it will be upon us before we know it. Dust off the jackets, shake out the flannel shirts and start planning for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Ready or not, here it comes.

Work, travel delays, chickens

This is one of those times that I wish I could say that the days were flying by – but it is not. The hours spent at the office are more of an endurance contest than a normal working day. As the company begins to finalize the personnel roster there is an unavoidable shift to the new role assignments even though they are not yet announced. That means that everyone scrutinizes every meeting invite and every email for clues to determine their further participation within their job roles.

There is quite a bit of sensitivity around whether or not you were invited to this meeting or whether or not you were copied on this or that email. Speculations run rampant and new possible scenarios are referenced and cross referenced hourly. But the truth of the situation is that no one will really know their status within the future organization until the announcements are formally made and those of us who are going to be released no longer come to work. I cannot imagine what it is like in some of the larger offices.

On the home front, Mama is feeling better. She is not back to full capacity yet but definitely on the upside of recovery. I did advise her not to spend the day out with Victoria and Erin who have a shopping day planned this afternoon – Victoria would rather go shopping than clean the house with Mama. (That’s how much she dislikes cleaning.) Mama would be better off to continue to rest as much as possible and gather her strength for Friday when she will be watching Erin’s children all day. I will see if she can resist the temptation to tag along.

AS far as Grandma and Grandpa coming home, that is going to be put on hold for another month. It seems – how  unexpected – that something has come up that will keep them in West Virginia for a little longer. The plan now is that they will come down mid-October.  Seth and Norman will tow the trailers as Grandpa drives the car. We will wait to see how solid a plan that is when we get nearer to the time.

You have to understand that any delay will add an additional month to the schedule because Grandma and Grandpa order their lives on the date that his Social Security check is deposited to their bank account. That happens sometime in the middle of the month each month. That is not necessarily a bad thing; it is just the reality of their lives. So anything that holds them up adds an entire month to their schedule.

Mama is very quickly running out of room for the chickens as they grow. Two have been injured so far by getting their lags caught in the wire at the bottom of the cage they are being raised in. There is not much we can do about that without lining the cage with paper – which defeats the purpose of having the wire mesh in the bottom of the cage in the first place. So we are exploring options to give them more space but about the only course of action I have left is to build the chicken coop I have been talking about. Now Mama wants to know how quickly I can have that done.

Probably not quickly enough.

Mama, farm plans, work

Mama is still feeling sickly. She has begun to take some meds to help her deal with the fever and aches but she continues to trade being too hot for being too cold. Normally each morning she and Victoria take the cage the young chickens are housed in out of the garage and place it on saw horses set up under the carport. For the past several days the chickens have stayed put in the garage pooping on my table saw. By the time I get home there is no point in taking the cage out of the garage so I will have a mess to clean up some time later this week.

I inadvertently put Mama on high alert by telling her that I had seen a coyote on our road when I was on my way home yesterday. We have the two big dogs that stay constantly on guard but their focus is the front of the house. They spend the majority of their time running down trucks and cars that come to the gate at the outside edge of our property. They do not seem too concerned about the animals we have in back of the house. But, to their credit, we have not lost any chickens or hogs in the time we have been living at this property.

Now we are seriously talking about getting sheep. With the failed experiment we had with sheep in Bowie we are making preparations to fortify the sheepcote and the pasture we will keep the sheep in to prevent any scavenging by the coyotes we continually hear howling in the distance. It is a risk but there are quite a few people around us that have successfully raised sheep – and do quite well at it.

Grandpa and Norman are poo-pooing the idea before we even get started but the reality of our situation is that we do not have the room for the cattle they so earnestly desire to raise. Nor am I in the market to acquire more land. I need to constrict financially not expand. So given the area I do have available we will try to maximize our land use by minimizing our animal size; at least, that is what we will try.

Having said that, Mama found a rancher in Fredericksburg that she wants to buy a couple bred heifers from in the very near future. We can probably keep three to four heifers on the portion of the property I have set aside for that purpose if I continually supplement their feed. There is not enough grazing for four head and their calves but if we put out hay all year long they will get enough to do fairly well without us having to get more land. Right now we are waiting for prices to come down to a more reasonable level before we buy.

Things at work are getting very interesting. Plans are shifting, org charts are changing from one day to the next as outgoing managers and incoming managers debate the merits of individuals they are considering. From the looks of things, unless there is a specified skill set the cut off age is 50 to 55 for consideration within the new organization. That’s the starting point of discussing individual merit. From there, it is anyone’s guess.

It will be a long couple weeks as we wait.

Birthdays this week, Mama Sick, work

As we enter the last half of month of September there are several birthdates still ahead. Becky’s birthday is today. Nate’s birthday is tomorrow and Mama and Chase’s birthdays come on the 29^th. This always was a busy month for me and Mama.

Speaking of Mama she was sick through the day yesterday. It all started on Saturday evening when she got up from the recliner she was sitting in and complained of being thoroughly chilled. She spent the reminder of the night trying to get warm. By morning she was better but not by much. Through the day yesterday she had short spells of feeling pretty good but the fever always seemed to return. This morning she was fevered again. Hopefully, from here, she will get better quickly but I am not holding too high an expectation for a full recovery today – maybe by Wednesday.

This week is going to be a very hard one for those within ConocoPhillips awaiting confirmation of future employment. This is the week that managers will assign names to roles and fill out their org charts. Those persons whose name does not find a home in a box on the new org chart will be slated for termination through the coming layoff. I am, as far as I know, among that group.

We are awaiting final confirmation, but Grandma and Grandpa have been planning to leave West Virginia on Friday or Saturday this week and come back to Chico. As many of you know we will not make any final preparations until we know they are actually on the road. In ways, it will be nice to have them back in Texas with us. I think Mama is looking forward to getting them back home in spite of the friction that inevitably comes from having parents in the home with their grown children.

Grandpa continues to recover slowly. He is scheduled to see a specialist in Amarillo during the first part of October. Hopefully, he can get some resolution to the questions that still haunt him and Grandma about the underlying cause of his continued weakness and very slow recovery. As it stands right now he has been lead to believe that this is as good as it is going to get and he will have to adapt accordingly. We believe there ia probably a better answer than that, but are not sure.

All the items he accumulated for Victoria’s house while he worked with Norman in West Virginia will be brought down to Texas by Normand and Seth some time later in the month of October. At least, that is the plan right now. Grandpa and Grandma will be driving home in a car that they bought there for their return journey. I have suggested that Mama and I make a run to West Virginia to get one of the trailer loads soon after I am laid off but I have to coordinate that with fixing Grandma and Grandpa Kline’s roof in Chappell Hill and finding employment so we can continue to meet our financial obligations.

It is a time for much prayer.