Happy Festivus!!!

So... look, the full water tank!



The heater makes bubbles for some weird reason.

A picture of Mister Fish before the tank was filled:



I was killing time while Brego ate his lunch (I'll get to that soon) and fluffing the hay in the goat's stalls. I just leave the hay they won't eat for bedding and every other day I fluff it to let the goatberries fall to the bottom and to let it air out. I laid the Ladies table on it's side and moved it out from the wall some, this way they have some semi-enclosed areas to curl up in, for them and for the babies. That doesn't stop them from climbing on it. Please ignore the gross blue blanket. It was Sparrow's Blankie until he got bored of playing with it, now I gave it to the goats and they toss it around. It looks horrible but they have so much fun with it that I leave it in there. In the summer I hose it down now and then. Right now it is just jammed with hay and straw.



Sage's udder is twice the size it was just two weeks ago. YAY!!



Anyway, Brego's lunch... I've spent almost 2 years now trying to perfect an easy way to feed Brego without having him share it with Mary. It wasn't until recently that some folks online were talking about feedbags and it occurred to me that a feedbag could be the perfect solution. Well, it took me a month or two to earn enough cash through doing surveys to get one, but I got one! Last night he got his first meal in it. He was confused, and so were the other two little boogers. But he very quickly figured out that meant all the food was his and he COULDN'T share.

So breakfast today was his first regular meal in the bag, since last night I stood right there and made sure he didn't freak out with the bag on his face. But this morning I put it on him, then got hay, fed the goats, checked and filled everyone's water, and by then he was done and I took the bag off. But at lunch time Brego is the only one who gets anything, so I fed him, got some pictures, then went and hung out with the goats while he munched.

PICTURES!

Hey! What 'cha doing?



Can I have some?



HEY! What are you guys doing?



DANG IT!! I can't get in there!!



HAHAHA!!! The minis were SOOO ticked off!





It looks like the bag is going to work GREAT.

Not a good day to have a bad day.

Seriously.

*sigh*

Sometimes I wonder if there is some cosmic conspiracy to make every simple thing as absolutely difficult and complicated as possible.

Simple thing: fill the water trough.

How it is complicated: The water line to the big barn (closest water faucet to the tank) broke under ground over a year ago. So I have to run the hose from the trailer to the little barn, which takes about 175/200 feet of hose. So the hose has to be hauled in to the house the night before to thaw. The hose is heavy. I can barely move it. Then the next day it has to be hauled out into the yard, run from the faucet to the tank. then once it is hooked to the faucet I have to open the skirting (which was jammed and didn't want to open) turn on the spigot underneath and hopefully fill the tank. Unless the pipes are frozen. In which case you need to find a way to thaw them before the hose freezes back up.


urgh.


You know, I have simple dreams. One of them is a faucet within 10 feet of my stock tank, well insulated with heat tape.

The horses have water, I had a massive melt down, and I totally jacked up my shoulder trying to deal with it. But hey, at least the tank is full and I won't have to deal with this again until... next week.

Oh, and all my winter clothes are soaking wet now. So me and my jacked up shoulder are going to go do laundry now so I have dry winterwear for doing chores tonight. lol. So much for handling things ok this winter! *rolls eyes*

The shortest day of the year....

Things only get brighter from here on out. I made it through to the Solstice ok, just a few bad days here and there where I could feel the S.A.D. trying to crawl in. But for the most part, so far so good. I just have the actual holiday to get through and I should be home free. I even made it through the anniversary of Jamie's death without a total melt down. GO ME!!

It's been a bit of a fight, though. After having two winters with low dose Prozac I am not sure it's worth the effort to keep mentally healthy and fight the S.A.D. without meds when the meds work so well. I've done ok but it has taken a LOT of effort. Part of the reason why I went without meds was because we had a financial crisis hit right when I would have been going to the doctor for my check up, so the money that would have gone to the copays went to keeping our lights on instead (long story, lol). By the time that was resolved I decided to just give a med-less winter a try and see if I did ok compared to how I had done pre-meds.

Well, I did ok, but I don't want to have to fight this hard to keep it together. Especially not after having two years of not having to even think about it. It's EXHAUSTING. I don't want to do it again if I don't have to.

My "Indian" name is "Smells Like Goats".

First, i woke up with this song stuck in my head:



*sings along and rocks side to side* Now THAT is music, my friends. I may love a lot of kinds of music from power metal to reggae to mariachi to 70's and 80's and classic rock... but this kind of stuff? It just still blows me away. I just have NO idea why I woke up singing it today. Drifter, Platters, Temptations, etc... just love it. On the Roof, Under the Boardwalk, Only You, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, STAND BY ME!! Looooove it.

OK, so... on to the goats. Yeah, I'm allll about the goats these days. The closer we get to kidding day the more obsessed I am getting. Rosemary is actually getting an udder now, too. SO CUTE! Yes, I'm "awwwwww"-ing over goat mammaries. So I made a run to Tractor Supply and got some iodine for dipping navels, CDT vaccine, some free choice minerals (I ran out), and a few other things. I also picked up some cheap pet clippers from Walmart to clip back the hair on the Ladies tails and udders for hygiene reasons. Yesterday my big project was to update their shots and give them their mommy makeovers. Thanks to Thyme, I got a little CDT vaccine myself. *sigh*

I think the clipped tail looks stupid, but it will be much simpler to keep clean during birth and the week after. Look how round and bulging Sage looks:



Rosemary and Thyme are getting a tad bit portly themselves:



Since it is pretty cold out there and likely will be when the babies are born I am knitting sweaters for them. No this isn't some crazy idea I came up with, google "baby goat sweaters" and you will see it isn't entirely uncommon.I made my own pattern and I am still tweaking it, I'll post the pattern when I finish it. I made the first two out of scraps of left overs so they are super gaudy. Here is Nigel modeling the first test baby goat sweater:



Brego modeling them both:



obviously they would work ok for dog sweaters, too.



I plan to have 4 of them ready in slightly different sizes and the Ladies due dates are spaced out enough that the first set of babies won't need them any more by the time the second set get here.

Parsley seems to be enjoying having his own bachelor pad and not getting beat up trying to munch his hay.



Gratuitous pony pictures:



nomnomnom