The weather here in Louisiana is NOT good! . . .

I'll tell you what - I'm SO glad I'm retired these days because I sure would have been unhappy about being unable to drive downtown daily for a number of reasons.  First of all - my truck is STILL being fixed since it was hit about a MONTH ago!  They originally said it would take just a week and a half or so to get it fixed.  But hey -- obviously THAT didn't work out at all!  They're STILL working on it.  They told our insurance outfit early last week that it would be ready to pick up last Friday so the insurance people told us we had to return that rented car I was using last week.   But as it turned out, the truck repair folks actually did NOT get it done by last Friday.  That day they said it probably would be this last Tuesday.  But then that day they said it would probably be THIS Friday.  Ha!  I guess we'll just see tomorrow if it's done by then or not.  Who knows -- they might end up saying even longer.  And for that matter, if it's storming here tomorrow I don't think I'll need to go get it anyway!

I'll tell you what -- the fact that it's been raining almost EVERY day over the last month or more has been quite an issue.  But now it's not just raining, it's STORMING like crazy around here!

Well, I also got this one Friday morning - and it also indicates storms are going to be happening ALL week!

And in this note (the one I got in my e-mail), it also indicates that it's going to continue to be storming at least until next week. Sigh.

Anyway, since both Mark and I are retired we're both glad we don't have to go out regularly when it's storming.  So now we just hang out here at home together.  We sure aren't happy with the weather currently, but we ARE happy to be home here together while it's happening anyway.

Getting ready for Christmas!

I have to keep reminding myself that Christmas is coming soon because it seems so much like summer around here currently. The general daytime temperatures are in the 80's at the moment!  Love it!  Of course tomorrow is supposed to be a huge storm -- 2 inches of rain and extremely high winds -- so maybe it'll get cooler finally.  We'll see.

But we ARE trying to get the house straightened up before everyone comes by for Christmas -- well, not "everyone" but actually Mark's sister and brother-in-law, and my own daughter and her guy as well.  I sure am looking forward to that, but the house sure does need a lot of changes!

We've actually gotten a lot done over the last couple weeks. We got all those books and magazines out of the room that WAS the upstairs library -- we wanted it to be just a second living room.

That corner bookcase is FULL of  only horse books and magazines.
Sure love those things!

. . . or maybe we should consider that room an office.  Mark's computer and printer and file cabinets, etc. have been moved out of what was previously an office for both of us, and it's now in the center of that large upstairs room.  

So here's what you see when you reach the top of the stairs - his office, huh?

But once you're all the way up there you can see the "living room" beyond Mark's desk.

That computer desk is why it does seem to be an office as you first go in.  But once you get up there and sit down it actually seems more of a living room. And he can watch that big TV while he's sitting there at his computer now instead of watching that small TV that used to be on his desk.  (That one is in one of the extra bedrooms up there now instead.)  

And we obviously got those bookcase doors closed in finally as well. Those bookcases were built back when we fixed up this house before moving in -- more than 10 years ago -- and those doors have been wide open since then until this weekend.  Wow!  FINALLY!

 This is that room before:

So here's what those bookcases fastened to the wall looked like from the time they were built (back in 2002) until last weekend when we added those dark red woods to those bottom doors (as you can see in that photo two pictures above).

As you can see in those above photos, we've also removed SO many books and magazines out of the bookcases, as well as out of our regular downstairs living room as well.  Of course instead of having four bedrooms, we now have only three because currently there are dozens of boxes of books and other things we don't feel we actually need now inside what used to be our office.  Check it out:

Soooo much "stuff" taken out of the main room and stuck into that one bedroom so we can put off figuring out whether to throw them out, donate them to Goodwill, or hand them over to someone who would want them.  

You can't see it in this photo because of that box on the bed, but behind it is a whole batch of folders taken out of the file cabinets.  I need to go through them and decide if they need to go back into the file cabinets that have been moved or if they can be thrown away. 

There's also still a queen sized bed in there as well, but it's sure not currently a bedroom since you can't move around in there with all those boxes of stuff all over.  In fact, the bed itself is covered with folders that were removed from the file cabinets if they're not currently necessary.  After everyone leaves after Christmas I'm going to make myself go up there and check out all those files to see if they need to be trashed or placed inside any of the current file cabinets.  But two of those file cabinets are now inside our downstairs living room next to the desk that I used at the office until I retired where I'm now keeping my own computer.  I WAS going to get a new laptop after my old one broke, but with my old desk right there in the living room, I can watch TV down there while using a regular computer so I have no need for a laptop anymore.  And I LOVE using this large screen -- WAY larger than any of those laptops!

Of course at the moment I'm checking out thousands of photographs down here, so I'm not taking a photo of MY computer setup since it's absolutely FULL of photographs at the moment!  So . . . later.  I will need to get things put away by the time our family folks show up beginning in just a week or so.  Okay.  Back to work on those photos and away from the blog for ANOTHER week or so.  Good grief.  I really thought I'd be adding MORE blog info after I got retired.  Well -- apparently not.  Sigh.

Well - at least there won't be any horrible fires starting next door anyway . . .

Those trees that were taken down in the pasture a couple weeks back were piled up over in Vickie and John's property next door, but we hadn't burned them at all to date because there had been no rain in about the last month so we were afraid that if we set those on fire, the entire acreage full of trees over there might ALL go up on fire and even burn over into the houses nearby!  But I'll tell you what -- despite the fact that Hurricane Patricia that's moving east from Mexico hasn't hit Louisiana yet, still over the last two days there has currently been PLENTY of rain here!  

It's storming so much that not only the pond has filled up, but so much of the pasture itself is coveredwith water as well!  Well -- it's good that the horses are closed into their paddocks because tramping around out there would be killing the grass big time.  Gees!

But fortunately, this Saturday morning Mark and Jerry put up four new pasture gates and repaired a number of the other former gates as well.  That was done so that we could close Arthur inside his porch so he couldn't get out into the rain at all.  But as it turned out, even with his porch gate open, he isn't going out into the rain since both Duke and Shadow have been staying there on their porch right next to him, so he's happy to stay there on the porch out of the rain right near them.  So I didn't lock the gate that closes him into his porch.

There are Shadow and Duke, both in Duke's paddock, and behind Shadow
on the other side of that gate is Arthur on his porch while it's pouring down rain.  

Unfortunately, though, we're still going to have to remove Arthur's boots anyway once the rain stops (if it ever does!!) and clean them up.  That's because, although Arthur doesn't stand out in the rain and get them filling up with water (which is what I was concerned about), he has gone out there when the rain stops briefly so he could poop out in his yard and not in his room or on his porch.  I'd be proud of that normally, but unfortunately, when he does go out into his yard, he walks in so much mud that those boots are absolutely covered with the stuff!  Yuk!  So even though he doesn't get rained on directly, his feet may no longer be nice and clean and dry. We'll have to check, but even if there's no water inside them, we'll still need to clean them up and get all that mud off the outside.  Well, we're going to wait to do that until this storms stops -- if it ever does!  Sure hope Hurricane Patricia doesn't come through here in a day or two.  But I think it won't -- I think it will be moving up NORTH-east and going north of Baton Rouge.  Hmmm . . . we'll find out, that's for sure. (Fingers crossed.)  

Arthur is MUCH better now - thank goodness!

But although Arthur seems fine, Mark and I aren't doing all THAT well -- changing out all the things on his foot took us a while and we both ended up soaking wet . . . me because it was hot, hot, HOT out there, and Mark because he had to sit down on Arthur's water bucket and unfortunately it was entirely full of water.  Uh oh!  

But we did finally figure out exactly how to more easily deal with Arthur and he actually doesn't seem to mind at all wearing that boot filled with all those things he needs to have on his foot to get it past his abscess.

For a few days Arthur -- well, all three of them, actually -- had been kept
inside the paddock where there was next to no mud so it couldn't get into his boot.

But over the last two days they've all been allowed out into the FRONT yard where there's plenty of grass and absolutely NO mud.  And now Arthur doesn't limp and he never bothers to  hold his foot up anymore.  He walks on it perfectly normally now.  

So there's Arthur's boot on that left front abscessed foot -- that boot is keeping
anything from going inside that little hole on the bottom front of his foot.

Since it was super hot yesterday, the three of them all stood close together
in the little bitty shade under one of the Magnolia trees for quite a while.
There are lots of bigger trees over on the other side of that yard,
but for some reason they all prefer to be under a Magnolia.
Well, everyone who drove by then could certainly check them out
while they were all standing out there close to the road.

Well, I guess I now need to find out from the vet just how long it might take for that hole in Arthur's foot to close up.  I guess we're going to have to keep changing out all that stuff for as long as that takes, so I hope it won't take a really really LONG time! 

Well, I sure am glad we've been having really good weather over the last few days so Arthur hasn't had to be locked inside his stall.  There's already a hurricane just west of us over in Texas (Hurricane Bill), but it's been warm and sunny here all the time -- great for Arthur.  But then that storm is going to go all the way up north and go across Ohio. Uh oh!  I sure hope it doesn't make too much of a mess up there by Wendy and Gerard! 

Good grief!

Since it was supposed to be nice and clear for at least the next week, I bought 7 gallons of paint this weekend so Jerry could paint that new barn porch and we could paint those new wall panels on our house porch as well.  We've been holding off for quite a while given all that continual rain so I was really excited about finally being able to get all that done. So what happened this morning? . . . I got this new weather prediction e-mail telling me it's going to start raining every day AGAIN!  I guess I should have held off on all that paint after all.  Gees!

And when I went online to check it out, it said it's going to to continue raining through the entire next weekend!    That is NOT good. 

Jerry and Mark were going to put in that concrete for the horse bathing area outside Duke's stall this coming weekend. Guess that's not going to happen. Last weekend they installed a giant pipe underground that transfers the water from the gutter that comes down there at that back barn porch out of the paddock and into a deep gravel-filled hole outside the fence, and the space inside the paddock was then pretty much ready for that big 10 X 12 or 14 concrete floor just outside Duke's stall.  That new concrete will tilt over to the side so that when I bathe the horses that water will also run outside the fence and into that gravel hole.  Well -- I guess it'll be still ANOTHER week at least before that can get installed.  Sigh.  

I'll tell you what, though -- the weather program on TV told us that at the end of May all that rain over the last month or two had been the heaviest amount of rain in something like 70+ years. And they thought it was pretty much over, but given that e-mail above, it looks to me like it might be still another record-breaking rain period this June.  Gees!  I'm sure glad those horses have their porch these days anyway!  They DO love that thing and they sure do need it.

Wow! Lucky we live where we do!!

I'll tell you what, Mark and I have both lived in the Baton Rouge area most of our lives at this point and no matter what happens -- hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, etc. etc. etc. -- those things have NEVER happened to us where we live to date . . . thank goodness!  

Even if a hurricane comes ashore nearby, they settle down enough by the time they make it up to Baton Rouge that they haven't hurt our home.  In fact, after hurricane Katrina back in 2005 they brought all the dead bodies out of New Orleans and off the rest of the coast up to a huge building just down the road from us! Obviously they found this area completely safe!  And tornadoes until now have ALWAYS shown up north of Interstate 10, which is several miles north of us.  I have no idea how the weather understands the position of an interstate, but that IS what generally happens.  But yesterday the tornado came directly through Baton Rouge in the morning while I was at work downtown (they made us all go down into the parking area -- two floors below the main floor in our office building). Pretty darned scary.  And the tornado did go past our home property as well.  One of the trees on the land next door did go down, but nothing big happened at all on our own property. Whew!  What a relief!  

Now I hope nothing happens next month while I'm up visiting in Ohio.  But I'm sure glad Mark is retired so he would be able to deal with the horses and dogs in an emergency -- unlike an animal care person who wouldn't be there at all in case of a storm.  They'd sure be going to their own home instead of ours if there were an emergency.

I made my flight schedule a couple days ago but I had forgotten that we are supposed to have to go to court about a tree that fell during hurricane Gustav clear back in 2008.  A neighbor is suing us for not clearing one off his land.  Ha! Our insurance company said they would handle trees that fell onto our property from a neighbor's land, but not vice versa. Therefore HIS insurance should have covered that fallen tree, not us! Well, they haven't let us know when the court date is -- they just mentioned a couple months back that it would be in May sometime.   Well, I guess Mark will be stuck with that if I'm out of town at the time, but that is NOT a good thing.  I do have photographs of that tree having fallen so we can prove that it's been down for all those years, and it has not happened anytime lately.  (I was told by the attorneys here at my office that after more than two years he can't actually sue about it.)

Well anyway -- it's supposed to rain a final time this morning, then it's supposed to be nice and sunny and comfortably cool for the entire next week.  Yippee!  Now maybe Boo will go back to sleep in his own bed and not be right under our feet continually any longer.  (He is terrified of storms so when he hears something coming -- well before we can hear it -- he wants to be right next to us until it ends.)

And once the weather improves for a period of time, Blaze is planning to replace the roof on the storage building out in the back pasture, then Mark can clear out all the stuff inside and make the building ready to put all his tools and mowers, etc. in there so he can actually (FINALLY!) park his truck inside the garage!  Nice!  And then the next thing for Blaze to do will be either to extend our utility room OR build a pantry off the side of our kitchen.  (We saw one of those pantries we really liked at a house we looked at Sunday and that looked like a fine idea.)

I'll tell you what about those houses we looked at Sunday, though . . . we checked out a number of houses in several new subdivisions within 5 or 6 miles of us.  The costs varied from a little over $400,000 up to $700,000!!!  Good grief!! Sure glad we bought and revised our own home well before all the new houses have gone up around us, that's for sure!

Well, time to go clean our place up!  I'll tell you what -- I really need to get rid of a BUNCH of things.  I think we're going to have a huge garage sale sometime soon.  Maybe next weekend!  We've never done that before but we sure need to!  Maybe we can get some friends to bring THEIR things over and hang out with us during the day.  That might be a lot more fun.  Hmmm.  We'll see.

GREAT weather down here!

It's been absolutely GORGEOUS over the last week or so down here.  It's around 60 to 70 degrees at night and around 78 to 80 during the day.  Perfect!  And all the trees are coming out and the Azaleas and Knockout Roses and a lot of other things are blooming and lovely.

And this year instead of trying to remove all the weeds in our garden area in front of our porch (more than 70 feet across!), Mark had Jerry remove EVERYTHING out of there except the three crepe myrtle trees and maybe two or three azalea bushes. Then he sprayed all the ground to kill all the weeds. Then that will be done one more time next weekend and then we're going to add LOTS of new dirt and put in a number of new azaleas and other bushes that bloom most of the time, and maybe even some knockout roses up there like we have in those raised beds over around the barn.  Those roses bloomed all winter! . . . wonderful!

Then I'm hoping we can add some louvers to the corner of the porch near the barn.  That way Mark can park his golf cart on the porch and it won't be visible from the road.  And all the other things we store out there (LOTS of boots and such) will also not be visible.  And then I'll be able to go sit out there unseen -- MUCH better in my opinion.  And from that end of the porch I'll be able to see the horses hanging out around the barn as well.  Sure hope we can get that done!

These look like they probably can be rolled open and closed -
but we probably don't need that at all.  The rest of the
open porch will be more than large enough.  And I don't
really like those very small pieces either -- big boards like
in the photo below would be better.  Very safe in rain storms.

Here's the one I REALLY like.  This is the way I'd most like to have it done -
using those fiber cement siding boards so they can't rot for the rest of our lives!

Well, we'll see what it takes to get that made up for us eventually.  Hope it isn't a fortune! 

We also need to get someone to come remove a water line that's sticking out in one of the upstairs bedrooms because there USED to be a sink countertop in there but we removed that.  But now there are pipes sticking out of the wall more than half a foot!  Yuk!

Oh - and we also want to get yet ANOTHER roof on the back wall of the barn.  We love that new roof over on the side so much that we want it to go all the way around the barn.  So we're getting Blaze Zuvich, the guy who did that side roof last summer, to come by later today and give us a bid on that back one AND on something we might also want to get done inside the garage.  

Then once we get concrete poured under Duke's roof on the side of the barn toward the house I hope we can also get someone to get the water to run off the roof into a gutter so that it will all end up in the drain area around that new concrete flooring outside Duke's room where we plan to bathe all the horses. It'll be VERY nice if Blaze can deal with that gutter as well!

And Mark wants us to get automatic gate openers for the front double gate.  We need to find an opener with remotes that we can keep in our cars and that has another remote inside the house so we can open it when company comes.  It would probably be REALLY good to have a way for someone to speak to us inside if they want in and we're not away of them coming, but I haven't found that kind yet.   

Gees! . . . always SOMETHING that needs done, huh?  Well, I guess that keeps us from just sitting around all the time anyway -- even if someone else is actually doing things for us!

Brrrrrrrrrr!!

Well, this IS "the South" but it sure doesn't seem to be at the moment!  It went down into the 20's last night and it will be even worse over the next few days!  Eeek!  

We dealt with all our critters yesterday to be sure they could all make it through.  We plugged in a heater for the cats out on the screened-in porch in addition to the little heated cat houses that also plug in so they can be warm inside.  I figured they needed to be able to come out of their little buildings without freezing so they would be able to eat comfortably over the next week!  

As for  the dogs, they ALL stay inside except for periodic five minute runs outside to go to the bathroom.  And even when they're inside Joe wants to be covered up with a heavy blanket!  

And then there's the horses.  They all got their blankets on last night -- even Shadow who is obviously NOT used to wearing one. That's what I was doing when she grabbed my arm and bit it and threw me down a month or two ago - I was fastening her blanket on her for the first time.  So THIS time she got tied up inside her stall while I put her blanket on so she could NOT throw me down!  I hope she reaches the point where she's actually happy to have on a blanket.  That's certainly the case with Duke and Arthur.

As for Mark and me -- we're hanging out in the living room with the fireplace on all the time!  Well, except while Mark goes out to feed the horses.  (He does that for me while he's home - lovely!)  Good thing it's not all THAT cold inside the barn anyway.  

Well, I sure hope we get back to normal southern weather SOON.  (I definitely want it to get back to warm by the time Wendy and Gerard make it down here.  I really want Gerard to LIKE this place!)

Our "Family Compound" has expanded!! . . . again!

Last July Mark's sister Vickie, and her husband John, and her husband's  brother Bruce and his wife Bonnie, bought the four acres right next to us where they plan to build their two homes when they all retire in a few more years.  We were SO excited about that!  Then this month, exactly one year later, Ben -- another of John's brothers -- bought another two acres on the other side of the property they had bought.  Talk about GREAT!! 

 

And that's particularly great since he already lives here in Baton Rouge, so maybe he will get his house built even sooner! 

 

Now if someone else in our families would just buy some of that land across the road (there on the right side in the picture above) . . . .  Hmmm.   Wonder if Wendy would like to live in the south?  Wouldn't THAT be wonderful!!!

 

Here is the turn from our road to Ben's road -- Iberville Street.  (His new property is there on the left.)

 

Here is a better view of his land - but it actually runs way back through those trees so it's actually twice as large as what you can actually see.

 

It's interesting to know that just down the road from his property is a HUGE building (at the top of the picture below) that was used to store all the dead bodies found after Hurricane Katrina back in 2005.   And those buildings that are angled there on the top left are actually the St. Gabriel city mayor's office, etc. 

 

 

During that terrible time after Hurricane Katrina, rescued horses and dogs were kept just 10 miles down the road at Lamar Dixon Expo Center in Gonzales. 

 

 

That place is enormous.  Good thing, because they kept hundreds and hundreds of horses as well as all the dogs out of New Orleans that were found in abandoned areas where buildings were gone and the people couldn't get back to find their pets.  LSU Vet School handled everything.  (If you haven't read it, check out the book "Horses of the Storm".)

 

 Anyway, my point is that although our state here in the south does of course have hurricanes, our home is far enough north of the coast and far enough south of storms moving across from the west that we simply have never had serious storms right here where we are.  We get a lot of rain at times, but so far we haven't ever gotten any serious destruction around here.  Of course we DID make our barn extremely strong "just in case" but I hope that's never really necessary!

Horrendous front ditch --

No idea whether they will be closing in that front ditch as we have been requesting for the last five years -- or not.

 

 

 On that side of the driveway that used to already be filled in, they removed everything all the way up to the very edge of the driveway!

 

 But looking down toward the area that has been flooding down the road from us (above), all that water that was all the way to the top of the ditch and sometimes running over is gone now.  All that water is completely drained away.

 

They dug that ditch out all the way across the main canal, too!  That pipe at the back of this picture above, and in the one below, is just the one running across the front of our neighbor's yard.  Since THEIRS works, I would think one that same size would work for us as well -- rather than the 36" pipe they kept saying we would need when they talked with us last.  (Waaaay more expensive that that regular one.)

 

I have to say, having that ditch just as deep as that main canal does make me a bit nervous.  All the water that flows out into that main canal from all the houses around us could now flow back down the front ditch! THAT can't be a good thing, I would think.  Well, we'll see how it goes next time there's a huge rain.  (It was supposed to storm this afternoon, but they were no longer positive about that on the weather reports this morning.)

 



 

Those guys took away that giant pile of dirt that they had dug up and piled between the ditch and the road, but they did leave a little dirt there in back of the ditch by the fence, so maybe they DO plan to fill that ditch in again eventually . . . I HOPE!  Then again, if they think they can fill it in with that tiny bit of dirt they must be planning to use a giant pipe after all.  Boooo!

BUSY week!

Well, it's been a while since I've taken time to write in my blog, hasn't it?  But a lot has been going on. 

I was really grateful that the storms that had been predicted pretty much daily just hadn't happened.  Nice.  I had been able to let the dogs out and deal with the horses without any problems -- except the fact that the grass in the dog yard had gotten about a foot high in a lot of areas in just the two weeks Mark had been offshore!  Hey - it IS spring!

 

Well anyway, it was supposed to storm last Sunday night but it hadn't done a thing when I went to bed.  Great! 

 

But when I got up Monday morning it had not only rained, but the entire property was completely flooded, including the canal that runs down the side of our land.  The water in that 10- or 15-foot deep, 20-foot wide canal was running up over the edges and back onto both our property and the neighbors' place.  Oh no!!   I turned on the news and found that most of the area gotten just 2" or so of rain, but just south of the city (that's us) had gotten 5 to 6 inches!  No wonder we were flooded! 

And of course the horse paddocks were completely flooded.  It was still dark when I went outside initially and their entire paddocks looked like mirrors!  The sky was reflected in the water everywhere out there.  THAT was a first!  Gees! 

This little pond in the pasture was also running over.  This photo was taken Monday evening.  A lot of the water had soaked into the ground by then but the pond was still running WAY over -- probably because the canal was so high the pond couldn't flow out.

And when I went out later to feed them, even walking across on the stone walk-way that goes from the house to the barn, I had to walk through deep water.  Hey - THAT was a first, too!!   So I closed both Duke and Arthur inside their (dry) stalls with plenty of hay.  They didn't need to be wading around in that deep water. 

 

It was supposed to storm again on Monday night, but it just rained a little, and it has been wonderfully dry for the whole rest of this week.  All that water has soaked back into the ground now, too, so that Mark has been able to mow that horrendously tall grass.  The front yard and dog yard are done and tomorrow he will be going to work on the pastures.  Big job. 

 

And then there's Gigi . . . when I put her out after the storm Monday, the yard was so wet that she ended up pooping inside her crate for the first time in a couple of weeks.  NOT a good few days! 

 

But not only is the grass cut back and looking really good again now, but we have cleared out our office too -- big time!  We got rid of all sort of things that still worked just fine but we haven't been using so the room is much, much, MUCH clearer now at last!  AND Mark got Jerry to help move the queen-sized bed off the sleeping porch up into the office and they're going to move that giant crate of Gigi's from the dining room out to the sleeping porch - where the bed used to be.  Once that's done we can take down that "fence" we put up to keep Gigi out of the living room since she will not be hanging out inside until she's grown and stops eating everything in her sight!

Having that bed upstairs does make the office a bit tight, but on the plus side, we now have THREE guest bedrooms instead of two.  Probably a fine thing if we have another bad hurricane this year.  (We kept people with dogs at our place during Katrina since they wouldn't let them take their dogs with them to the rescue facilities.)

A queen size bed in an office with two huge desks DOES make it a bit tight.  But it's not a problem.  There's still plenty of room for us to hang at our desks.  And it's good that that bed can be used now for company.  No one but me ever wanted to sleep on it when it was on the sleeping porch -- not even Mark!  Well -- I guess I shouldn't say "no one" . . . the dogs definitely enjoyed it!

Until now I had been forced to lock Gigi outside in the yard when she went outside because when she came into the sleeping porch she just destroyed all the bed clothes.  So now that the bed is gone, all there is out there is her small crate and several dog beds and a couple of steel chairs that she can't eat!  So the dog door is unlocked again now and she LOVES being able to come into the porch.  She just got left back in this afternoon and every time I went out to see what she was doing she was sound asleep in one of the dog beds out there.  Happy girl.

Now tomorrow Mark and Jerry are going to be repairing the fence in the front paddock where Shadow will be initially when she arrives on Tuesday.  Duke had stuck his head through that fence and pulled loose one of the wires that were not electrified.  With that wire out of place, it's possible that a horse COULD climb through that fence.  So to be on the safe side, Mark is going to fix the wire AND electrify it so Shadow will be secure in that paddock until she gets together with Duke and Arthur out in the big pasture in a day or two. 

I'm taking off work Tuesday, and they will be bringing her down late Tuesday morning.  Can't wait!!

Oh - and speaking of taking off work, I got a notice today that I have to serve as a "Petit juror" over in Plaquemine from May 5 until who-knows-when.  Sigh.  I hope John can come up with a reason to have me excused.  (I WILL ask him on Monday!) 

Okay, back to work.  I've been going through all our file cabinets.  There are all kinds of files in there that I'm getting rid of -- like bills from 2002 or before!  Who NEEDS all that crap!  

Too bad I hadn't taken a picture of this desk BEFORE we began getting rid of things . . .
I'm sure it still looks like there's a lot of stuff on there, but it's NOTHING like it looked before, believe me!

Then our next project will be clearing out the library.  We're just going to pack up all the books we would read only once and drop them off at Good Will or at Here Today, Gone Tomorrow.  I WAS going to take them to a used book store where they give you credit for additional books in exchange, but when I thought about it, I realized I really don't need credits for additional books.  I just want them ALL gone!  Well, all the mystery and fiction books, anyway.   We certainly wouldn't want to read any of those a second time.  I DO want to keep my horse and dog books and Mark certainly wants to keep all his history books.  And I want my non-fiction books about various things like linguistics, gardening, decorating, law . . . well, everything else! But compared to all those fiction books, those won't take much space at all!    There are hundreds of fiction books to go.  We can get books (and CD books) from the library or download them to our Kindles.  So we actually won't need to buy many books at all anymore!   But it's going to be quite a process.  In fact, in addition to all those books, there are still all sorts of things removed from the office, even though most of that stuff had been taken away.  Okay, I guess I'll take some "before" pictures of the library so I can remember specifically how awful it "used to look."

The two saddles on the back of that loveseat are inside so they'll stay tidy, but that giant red one (see below) is a Mexican parade saddle that I have  no intention of ever using but I just haven't gotten around to getting rid of it -- yet.

That box under the table contains every single John D. MacDonald (Travis McGee) book in that series -- 40 or 50 of them as I recall. 
We both loved those things. 
So we may well decide to hang onto them and actually read those again down the road.

 

Life is good - well, "improved" anyway . . .

First of all, Mark is home!  Yeaaa!!

 

And the weather is going to be great for the rest of the week.  Well, not at night -- it's going to be down in the 30's again -- but it's going to be dry and sunny during the day.  That not only means the paddocks may actually begin to dry out (until the rainy weekend anyway), but it also means Gigi can eat out on the patio instead of in her crate and I won't have to clean up after her - always grateful for that.

 

This year has been completely awful - more freezing weather than there has ever been in all the years I've lived down here.  But as always, March IS spring in Louisiana.

 

Everything has been in bloom as of the beginning of  March (including the clover
since the front lawn hasn't been mowed while Mark was away -- it's been too wet to do it).

Oh - and we apparently have a new cat, too . . . NOT that I wanted one.  I had decided not to ever have any more cats since I've gotten more allergic to them over the last several years.  And the "garage cat" who has decided to live here for the last 4 or 5 years has kept the place pristine -- she has allowed NO additional cats!  But not this time.  She actually seems to be happy to have this new guy hanging out with her.  Well - I guess if she wants him we'll just have to feed him, too.  Not that that's a decision I need to make!  I think he's been eating with the garage cat for the last couple months since the food has been disappearing WAY faster since then.

 

 

He used to race under the house the moment he heard anyone.  But all of a sudden he seems perfectly happy to have any of us around -- even Boo, for goodness sake!  I can't imagine why he's not afraid of a big ol' dog!  I've been letting Boo go out in the front yard lately so he doesn't have to deal with Rocky and Joe.  But no matter where he is, that cat just sits there and watches us while we're out there.  Guess he's going to need a name.  And I think he'll also need to be neutered eventually.  Once I get used to seeing him, I'd hate to see him get run over if he feels the need to visit un-spayed females down the road.

 

Well, I forgot to bring a lunch today, so I'll need to be leaving early.  Better get back to work.

Moving right along

On the plus side, the doctors at LSU didn't find anything specifically wrong with Boo - no liver or stomach problems anyway.  So for the time being, he's just going to be on a few kinds of pills and prescription dog food to see if we can get him back to "normal" (or as "normal" as he ever is). 

 

Looking forward to the weekend, that's for sure.  I finally realized that we would be driving by within just 10 miles of Morton's in Madisonville -- that restaurant we've always gone to for our anniversary --  when we go pick up that new puppy Saturday.  Mark said we would be close by a restaurant we used to go to when Jan and Mike lived over in Hammond, but it didn't dawn on me that he meant Morton's!  Great!  So I checked with Jan and Mike and they will be going along with us.  We'll all go eat over at Morton's and then go on up to Bogalusa to pick up our new baby.  Really looking forward to that!  At least I HOPE Jan and Mike will be going along.  They plan to, but Jan's dad has been having medical problems lately and if anything more happens she will be heading up to Hattiesburg Saturday instead.  But I sure hope not -- for more than one reason!

And Mark gets home tomorrow, thank goodness!  Well, he's supposed to anyway.  With all this winter stuff up in north Louisiana and over in Mississippi, some of the guys may not get down there in time to come out to the rig.  And it's supposed to be storming just offshore in the Gulf, as well.  So I have my fingers crossed, hoping against hope that he actually DOES get home tomorrow!  Things are an absolute MESS right now at the house.  The place is beginning to flood and it's supposed to go on raining until Thursday morning!  Yuk!

I've left Duke and Arthur closed in their stalls since last night because it's just AWFUL in their paddocks - and if they're out in the pasture, they'll be trampling  the grass down into the mud and killing it!  So with them closed in, their stalls have become even more of a mess than usual and I haven't been able to reach Carl today for some reason.  SURE hope he makes it over soon!

What a MESS, huh?

But anyway, Mark will be home tomorrow -- I hope -- and by Thursday afternoon it's supposed to quit raining for the next week.  Life is looking up -- eventually!

Miserable night!

Heavy rain, super high wind -- and all kinds of crap in the kitchen! . . . stuff I've ordered, and all the boxes all that stuff came in.  What a mess!

 

 

There is just SO much crap I need to get put away -- or thrown out, in the case of all those boxes.  All those Aloe Vera jugs needs to get carried out to the barn, but they're so heavy I just haven't bothered to do it yet.  And all those yellow boxes contain wet dog food that I add to the dry food for Rocky and Boo to encourage them to eat.  I just need to make room in one of the cabinets and get all those put away there in the kitchen. 

When the kitchen is clean, it looks like there's plenty of room for everything - hard to believe it would end up looking like it does now, huh?



I need to keep this picture handy -
maybe it'll help me get around to cleaning the place up!



Maybe.      Sigh.
 

And speaking of the barn where the Aloe Vera needs to go, the horse stalls are a huge mess, too, out there.  I've done what I can to clear them out, but it's so muddy out in back that I haven't been able to haul out the wagons.  Well, I hope Carl will be over to deal with all that sometime after the rains quits this week. 

 

On the plus side, Boo has taken over that new bed I just got.  I'm really happy about that since he was the one I actually bought it for to begin with.  But the way Joey was acting, I was afraid he wasn't going to let Boo have it.  But Joe has gone back to sleeping up on the chaise by the fireplace again now, so Boo finally gets that bed -- and he does love it!  He's sleeping there all the time now.

 

 

Looks like I have a few things to put away there in the living room, too, huh?   A lot of the stuff in that basket there on the coffee table is actually mail I haven't bothered to open.  But on the plus side, by sticking it all in there at least I'll know where it is when I decide to deal with it!

 

I'll tell you what, it's a darned good thing Bettie is going to be coming up this weekend.  At least that gives me a good reason to get busy and get everything straightened up.  That way, even if they don't make it up here AGAIN, at least the house will be tidy and I can kick back and enjoy that for the rest of the weekend! 

 

Mark sent me a picture someone he knew posted on his Facebook page.  Since I don't know them, I didn't see it online so he e-mailed it to me.   Once I saw it, though, I posted in on MY Facebook page.   I definitely agree with that!  (Except from my perspective, every home should have "several" dogs, not just "a" dog.)

 

Beautiful, isn't he?  Poor sad baby.