My Day started out good…..My husband is not home for a few days so it is my job to do the outside chores. Tuesday morning I went out to feed our barn cats and let our geriatric horse out of his stall to join the rest of the horses. Lucky is 30 years old and gets put in a stall by himself each night and given his own old man horse food. It takes him a long time to eat as has trouble keeping his food in his mouth as it falls out of his cheeks as he chews. We feed him in a large bunk so the feed that falls out goes back into the bunk and he gets it all gone eventually. Here he is in the pasture after I turned him out. As you can see, he really looks like an old horse as his back is saggy and his ribs are more prominent too. He was my father in laws horse and will live out his last years here on the farm. The life span of horses is 25-30 years so you know he is very old for a horse.
More good news….I next fed the cats – we have lots and some are tame and some are wild. I even got to pet some of the semi-wild ones. We feed them in the barn in the mornings so the food will be all eaten up by night as that is when raccoons and opossums come into the barn at times and they love cat food. We don’t need to be feeding them as they will eat a lot and once they know the food is there they come in all the time and it makes it dangerous for the cats as raccoons will kill cats and especially kittens so we don’t want to attract them. The photo below was taken in 2012 of John feeding them. He always tries to pet the ones he can catch and feeding time is a good time to do that since they are a bit distracted by the food and has tamed down quite a few that way.
Starting to get to the bad news….I next went out to check the water tank for the cows and horses and it had frozen and had about an inch of ice on top. The cows were licking it trying to get to the water underneath. Looking around I found a wooden fence post so decided to use it to pound holes in the ice for the animals to drink instead of wait for the fellow that is helping with the cattle chores to come and break the ice. First hole done; this post is working great! Well, if I got one hole punched through I might as well do more. After about the 3rd hole I reached across the tank to make one on the other side, raised the fence post high over my head and slammed it down as hard as I could. Whoops…here is where the bad news comes in…. As the post hit the ice on the far end, the near side where I was grasping it with both hands hit the edge of the cement tank. Wow, that hurt! Checked my ring finger on my left hand and the tip was tilted down. Thinking it was my fingernail I just pushed it down, no problem as the finger was numb. I wrapped it in some tape and iced it down and continued with my day figuring I would probably loose my fingernail in time. Here is the old cement tank where I smashed my finger.
More bad news….It was hurting some in the afternoon but not too bad. After thinking about it and talking to someone about it they suggested I better go to the Dr. and get it x-rayed. So that is what I did yesterday and guess what? I broke the bone in the last section starting below my fingernail and across to the other side. I now have this lovely finger protector to wear until it is healed. I asked the Dr. how long that would be and he said 3-6 weeks until tapping the end on a table doesn’t hurt but did suggest not to do any tapping with it for about 3 weeks. As you can see from the photo below the finger protector thing I have to wear sticks out a ways. It is hard to type and I have caught it a couple of times but have not hurt my finger so it is doing it’s job.
Some good news…The Dr. did tell me that when I pushed the fingernail down I probably put the bone back in place. He asked if that hurt and I said no, it was numb. He chuckled and said it would have really hurt if he would have had to do it yesterday. Everything is in line now to heal and hope I heal quickly.
Some more bad news….I am left handed so some things are just a little difficult to do with this thing on my finger. Typing is hard but not impossible as the other fingers can take over but I do make more mistakes. Holding anything is very awkward too and I have trouble holding a knife and cutting anything. It is a good thing that I am somewhat ambidextrous and can use my right hand a bit.
Good news….no more making holes in ice in the tank as it warmed up a little and our neighbor who is helping me check the cows will do it if it needs to be done from now on.
No one will ever accuse me of being graceful and coordinated, klutzy and clumsy is my name!
Until Later,
Lynn
We set up and decorate two trees in our house each year. This is the big one in the living room that will have gifts under it today, awaiting the arrival of our family. It is decorated with a mixture of ornaments, a lot of which have sentimental value to us.
I took this photo of the pencil tree as the sun was coming up this Christmas morning and you can see the sunrise through the window. John has two train sets a large O scale one he puts under the big tree and a tiny N scale one he puts under this one. This year he is waiting for the grandkids to arrive so they can help him set them up then they all will play with the trains, taking turns….even grandpa!
In 2010 I made Christmas stockings for my whole family from old denim blue jeans. It was a fun and fairly easy project to do. I blogged about the steps to making them on several posts but never posted a pattern until now. It has been a very popular blog post series and has been passed around Pintrest a lot the last few years. It seemed when ever I would think of getting a line drawing of the stocking pattern the stockings were all packed away with the Christmas decorations but you are all in luck now. Again a reader asked for the pattern and I just happened to have them all out ready to hang on the fireplace so traced around one of them and made a PDF pattern that you can download and print.