Weekend ...

Spent most of Saturday sleeping and trying to recover from last week!  Don't know why I'm so exhausted lately, but I sure have been. 

Sunday we planned to head over to visit Janet and Mike and check out the progress they've made on all the work they're doing at their place right now.  More about that later.  But shortly after Mark went over to feed the horses, he called from the barn to tell me that ladybug had a huge abcess in her right ear that had popped and was draining down the side of her face!  I jumped in the truck and drove over there and she was a MESS.  The abcess was almost the size of a softball.  The hole that was draining was about 2 cm across but the abcess was still swollen and HUGE.  She couldn't stand to have it touched at all, so I cleaned off her face and then coated the abcess with cortisone cream just to keep the flies away from the hole and try and prevent any infection from being added to the mess.  I'll call Dr. C. first thing in the morning - or maybe I'll just stop by the large animal clinic when I drop Joey off at therapy.  I thought about hauling Bug over there, but if they have to sedate her to drain the thing then it might not be possible to get her back home in the trailer so better the vet should come out to the barn and deal with it.  I can't imagine what could have caused that, though.  It looks kind of like those enormous hematomas dogs sometimes get in their ears from shaking their heads, except that it's draining really yukky pus and not blood.  Poor thing.  It has to be REALLY painful.  But she isn't in enough pain when no one is touching it that she doesn't want to eat or drink, so I'm sure she'll be fine until tomorrow.

As for our visit to Janet and Mike's place (we did finally get over there), they are really making huge strides.  Janet has had all the floors in their downstairs replaced with gorgeous bamboo floors.  REALLY nice.  They're in the process of redoing the downstairs half bath completely - new vanity, new top, new fixtures, new wall color -- the works.  All the old fixtures and vanity are going out to Mike's new building.  Not sure what to call it.  It's not exactly a shop, not a garage -- but whatever it is, it's about 75 feet long by about 25 feet deep, at least, with four regular garage-size doors, 3 along the front, and one on the back, and one HUGE, super-tall roll-up door on the end that their tractor will fit through.  There's one huge open space, plus two other smaller rooms, plus a bathroom with doors opening both into the building and directly to the outside.  Really handy for folks working outside or at the barn.

They've had the vinyl siding on the house replaced with cement board and the windows on the porch are being redone with artificial transoms above the windows that look like there are closed shutters over them to make them appear taller and with working shutters on the actual windows.  It's going to make that huge 50-foot porch look very "Louisiana." 

Then they're having a huge circular drive put in with a pond with cypress trees in the center.  The steps up to the front porch are going to be the kind with rounded sides that curve out toward the bottom.  It's going to be SO gorgeous.  (Pictures will follow on our next visit.)

As for us - I'll just be glad to have horse fence up!  Mark is on the phone as we speak getting prices from everyone for the fence posts.  Hopefully, the guy will be able to come out to start putting them in by the end of this week. 

Hopefully.

The vet from LSU just called and she will be heading out to deal with Bug's abscess in just a little while.  And as long as she's there, she's going to give them all their West Nile boosters.   

So . . . that's about it, I guess.  Better get back to work!