Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Roy Disney

He was the last of the Disney family to actually have a say at Disney. He gave us some of the greatest movies made since the death of his uncle. His work played a huge role in my preteen and teenage years. He will be greatly missed.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Tristians birthday

My youngest baby turns eight today. He and Stephie will be the same age until October 3oth. It is hard to believe it has been eight years since I brought home a beautiful baby from the hospital only to be woken up two days later by my mother screaming into the phone that we were being attacked. What is even funnier is that his name means Noisy sorrowful outcry. No I wasn't being psychic with that one at all. His middle name however means joined. So maybe just maybe he will have some possitive effect on the world bringing them all together and he will do it by being the one that sounds the outcry not the one that causes it. Yes, a small part of me looks at this beautiful yet devious child and thinks, it wouldn't take much to push him over the edge into the evil person that people join together against and that the sorrow noisy outcry comes from all the people he hurt. But, Then I watch him agree to share with his sisters or do something unexpected and very sweet for someone and I know that like every child his halo is held up by his horns. I hope he lives up to his name but in a very good way.

I named all my children that way. Brittney Alexis. From the Land of Brit Defender of mankind.
Geneva Marie - Origions of Woman, Bitter, Floyd Alexander - Dark or grey defender of mankind, Amber Kelian- Fiery Jeweled Warrior, Stephanie Danniella - Crowned in Victory judged by god, and last but not least Tristian Levi- Nosy Sorrowful outcry, Joined.

Through their names I tried to give them a standard by which to live. Now if only, I can find a way to balance out their father. Floyd Robert. His first name means dark or grey. His middle name means Bright, shining or even flame or fame. A dark or gray shining flame. LOL No he isn't a contradiction at all. My name is easy. Jennifer Rebecca. If you take the native american meaning of Jennifer instead of making it a derivitive of Ginnever then Jennifer means White Capped Wave. Rebecca means captivating. My father use to say, there was nothing more beautiful or more deadly than a white capped wave and from what he had seen of me I had both the capacity to captivate and kill, even if it was just with my facial expressions and lack of tact.

Nothing really on the homesteading front at the moment. Summer is winding down, my tomato crop is slowing down and life goes on.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

We need more guys like this

The 2010 football season will be the first season in my life I won't be rooting only for the Razorbacks. Not, only will I be rooting for Mississippi State but I will be rooting for them over the Razorbacks. I will be doing it because a highschool Sr. from Yazoo County Mississippi who has already verbally pledged to Mississippi state has renewed my faith in the strength and bravery of your average american teenager.

I don't guess Kabel Eulls is your average american teenager. He is ranked 19th nationally amoung highschool defensive linemen and 4th overall in highschool defensive players in Mississippi. Tuesday morning, this young man was nearly asleep listening to his MP3 player on the bus when he was awakened by one of his three younger sisters. A 14 year old girl had gotten on the bus with a loaded semi automatic handgun and was waving it around and screaming at everyone.

With no thought or concern for his own safety, Kabel Eulls, opened the back door to the bus while talking to the girl. He got her to point the gun away from the driver, away from the other students and only at him. He evacuated the majority of the students from the bus while talking to her. When she was distracted by movement outside of the bus, he tackled her, got the gun away from her and ran off the bus with it. He unloaded it so it would no longer be a threat.

He later admits that he wasn't thinking about his own safety, he was thinking about all the people on that bus that could get hurt. If anyone was going to get shot he wanted it to be him. There is a hero for you. With the majority of our heros serving overseas, we need more boys like Kabel Eulls. After seeing the tapes of Columbine where teenage boys pushed girls towards the gunmen so they could get under the tables, I lost all faith in our abilities as mothers to raise brave young men. But, that faith has been returned.

I hope to the heavens, that this young man manages to survive his Sr. year unscaithed on and off the field. I pray that during his time at Mississippi state, his body isn't hurt and his morals aren't compromised. The NFL needs young men like him. We need an Anti Vick. Someone who can say not only is it not okay to commit a crime, it is not okay to let others potentally lose their lives because you did nothing.

I salute you Kabel Eulls and I wish the greatest of success in life. With that one defining act, you have renewed my faith in humanity and for it, I will be for the first time in my life rooting for a bulldog over a Hog.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Its been a while

Wow, amazing how time flys. I got started focusing on my fiction writing and dealing with the puppies having parvo and my blogs really suffered. Sorry for that guys. Good news is, my writing course is over, the dogs survived the parvo and we are back on track with training and I am almost over this cough I developed around the same time the dogs got sick at the end of July.

The Chickens- Well all but one of my B.B red old english game hens are dead. My aunt said most likely it was a family of raccons. Three of the roosters are missing all together the rest were either dead in the run or just outside of it. Two survived actually only to have one drop dead when one of the dogs started barking a little to close to it. I guess it scared it to death. So we moved it with the four chicks I got from my aunt. They were all suppose to be hens but it is starting to look like that only one of them is. Thats okay being half silky half something else, (she isn't sure which rooster sired them) they are already large enough to eat. Im just waiting till they start crowing so I know for sure which are males and which are females.

The Rabbits - We have now had two litters of babies and both died. The first litter was my fault. The water bottle we put on the cage we had mom in, wasn't working properly and I didn't know it. She got enough water to keep herself alive but not enough to keep her milk from drying up. It was both my first litter and hers so I guess thats part of the costs of learning for both of us. My other female proved to be a better mother. She did a better job at making a nest and everything before the babies were born. Unfortunatly, all the babies were stillborn. That got me to thinking. I remembered that the baby with the grey ears was the one that he said he thought was a boy. Turns out she was a girl. That meant the two albino rabbits came out of the same cage and rather than being both girls one of them was a boy. So the babies that were stillborn were to genetically alike. Snowbell enjoys being in the same cage with Thumper and Xaveir but I can't put her back in with them or Xavier will have her pregnate again and I will be starting all over with the genetics problem. That isn't fair to her. So, I have to get her a bigger cage and her own boy bunny all her own to keep her company. Unfortunatly, no one is selling bunnies in the paper right now. So its either wait or get one from a pet store.

So thats where my life is right now. Not much else to tell.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

I don't think the rain will ever stop

I just checked for offical totals. Right now my area of arkansas has gotten a total of 7.25 inches of rain since the first of may. We are looking at, at least another week of scattered thunderstorms. It rained off and on all day today. Its suppose to keep going like that for at least another week.

The paper today said we haven't had that kind of rain levels in the month of may for 127 years. To put it in perspective. We average around 49 inches a year. By the time this is over we probably will have gotten a full ten inches this month alone. 49 inches works out to be about four inches a month each year. We will have gotten at least ten by the end of the month. Thats nearly a quarter of the years rain in one month.

The air is staying so heavy with water that right now I feel like you do when you get water up your nose in a swimming pool. The burning has stopped but I still fill like their is water in my sinuses. Thats how wet and humid everything is.

The closest thing to a flood I have seen in Arkansas, in my lifetime, was when I was in K-grade and we got like ten inches of snow in the north east corner complicated a week later by another 4 inches of rain. The flooding which was up to my fathers knee lasted all of about a week. It took a month to get the roads between where we lived and my grandparents reopened due to bridge washouts.

We haven't flooded like that yet. But, its getting bad. Crops are starting to suffer for some of the farmers. Even the rice fields don't know what to do with all this rain. We have a pretty good flooding system. We went down to lake Nimrod and the Nimrod dam Monday on our way back from Mt. Magazine. The flooding there seems under control. They had the flood gates open full blast and the water on the drier side still hadn't covered the rocks enough you couldn't walk across the river bed. Its whole purpose was to help control the flooding. There are three dams on that river that work to control flooding not to mention all the lock and dam's on the Arkansas. Hopefully they will be able to do their job.

But all this rain is going to move out just in time for the Spring thaw in the Rockies. The Arkansas starts up that way. Lets just hope our creeks down here have drained out enough that the Arkansas can handle the load when that water hits or my attempts at gardening and homesteading this year will be for nothing. We aren't in a flood plane, but we are in a flash flood plane. Gotta love it. Not

What I really want to know is how can my plants be withering from to much water while the weeds are growing so fast, I can't keep up with them in this weather?
Hubby had his first three day weekend this weekend. We took the kids up to Mount Magazine yesterday. Its the highest point in all of Arkansas. The view from the summit known as Signal point isn't as great as you would think it would be because of all the trees. But, they have put in a really nice stone map of arkansas. The views from the look out points were amazing though. We may go back at the end of june for the butterfly festival, I don't know.

Since he was home, Bear sat down and figured up all of our bills and how much he would bring home during a 40 hour week. The time with him will be nice. The lack of money won't. He is going to bring home about a hundred dollars less a month than we need. I am going to have to figure out how to bring our flexable bills down enough that we can keep doing everything we are doing.

The garden still has a couple of months before it really starts to put out anything. I harvested the lettuce but that won't last long. I still have a bit more I can harvest that wasn't quite ready yet. Without my pea's though, Its going to make it harder. I swear Im going to start planting in November. Ill get some of those gardening blanket things to cover the plants when its going to get below 25 but truth be told we probably only have about two weeks of scattered days that ever get that cold at night. Mainly at the end of January.

I just hope I can keep this writing course. It would suck to have to quit again because of money.

Friday, May 8, 2009

Visit is over something wrong with my peas

Well, Luce finally came for a visit and has gone again. We had fun though I must admit, I'm glad to have my house back.

My peas came up and looked real pretty. They bloomed and everything, but they haven't produced any peas. The plants are starting to die and I don't know if its because of all the rain we have gotten in the last month or what.

Ive discovered that if you have a week straight of rain, chicken coops and runs can smell as bad as a pig pin. Now that its quit raining we put down fresh straw and it smells much better.

With Luce here we killed and cleaned one of the roosters. I can say with all certainty when plucking game hen roosters be very careful. You would be better off to skin it rather than try to pull the feathers off. One good yank and half the meat off the wing will come with it.

On a not so joyful but possibly just as interesting note, we don't really know if Hubby has survived the layoff or not. We know its almost over but they haven't told him if he is to be there on Monday or Tuesday. If he doesn't know in another half hour, that very well might mean that hes been layed off. I don't know what we will do if that happens. I can tell you this much. It put a damper on Luce's visit and sent my stress level through the roof.