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

Parsley's Bachelor Pad, Wet Horses, and Topless Shots of Sage.

Parsley is now a swingin' bachelor, chilling out in his hip cool bachelor pad. The last time I tried to make him spend some time away from the ladies he cried. A lot. All day. Until i finally took pity on the poor sod and put him back. But at that point I had no reason to think the girls were expecting and I was just kind of toying with the idea. But now I am pretty sure we have at least two ladies in a family way and they need to not have a randy dandy buck pestering them while they try to grow the future of my herd in their bellies.

So Parsley got his own place, and moved to it yesterday. He fussed for about 10 minutes then seemed to notice that, oh my gosh, I don't have a herd queen kicking my butt and stealing my hay, but I can still talk to them all I want! They weren't putting out anyway, so I guess this gig isn't so bad after all!

He really enjoys not having to scuffle for his place at the hay pile:



He begs for attention every chance he gets, which isn't so bad now that the stink of rut is gone and he doesn't reek. he stands up on his hind legs and does this tiny hophophop where his feet come off the floor like 2 inches, max, haha!!! It's so cute.



We are in the midst of a snow storm, I made sure the horses had a ton of hay in the run in and what do they do? stand outside in the wet sticky snowy crap.










*shakes head* goofy ponies.

So, I needed to get indecent photos of my girls so i could show them to the folks at the goat forum and get opinions on the likelyhood of their impending motherhood. Since they are all set up in their winter digs it made it nice. In out of the wind and snow, I was glad I had them in the barn.



Anyway, I was looking at the pictures of their girlie bits and found a pair of pictures that show how Sage's udder is filling in. I cropped out the more inappropriate of parts to just show the udder. I got pictures of her boobies, and didn;t even have the decency to give her a string of beads.

This is her udder in september of this year:



and this is her udder this morning, hehehe: