I swear that “the forces that be” knew that this was the week that I get my bonus.. This is one of the first times in my life that I qualify for a hefty bonus and expensive issues happen at our house.
First, the septic decided to make us miserable. Yeah, it was Monday when I got that bonus. Tuesday, the septic spills over into our entry bathroom. Wednesday, the septic shit sucker truck comes and hauls away a load. I scrub and seal floors that were pooed on. Thursday, the septic shit sucker truck returns with plans to replace our pump.   He opens the septic tanks and finds them full again, he rethinks and pulls out the plans from the county for our septic and guesses that our water run off (which is immense this year) is causing issues in our laterals. I ask him how much and he guesses that after they fix the pump, if they can get to it with the rising water table, and all of the shit sucking trips maybe 1200  bucks or more. Thursday, I find out that the total bill for my shoulder surgery is in the thousands (why do I pay for health ins again??). Friday, I wait for the septic truck to come and haul away more.. I need a shower. I need to wash clothes.. I am afraid to flush the toilets.. And the male llama has decided that he wants to crawl under our post and rail fences.. I spent a couple hours trying rope around the bottom parameter of the corral fencing to keep the sucker in. I’m waiting for the husband to go to the lumberyard and get wood so we can add a 4th row of rail for the llamas. We will have to add it tonight, cause I can not catch the llama to put him in with the goats.
We have a family vacation planned for this next week. Should we leave when we have this run off and the septic problem, hoping that the huge drift that remains above the laterals does not cause more issues?? and a rogue llama?? What if we come back and find the basement flooded with poo and Cheese missing? Grrrroan.

I am going to call this. It’s Country Living 7, Jinx 0. I am getting my arse kicked.

Last night I waltzed in the door, after visiting my favorite hair dresser for a few hours around 10:30. I was alarmed to find the toilet had backed up in the front toilet room! I called for help, woke the husband. We spent 2- 3 hours futzing with the toilet and to no avail the solution was not in sight. I even drove around town looking for a store open, to buy a snake.. Found one at Walmart around midnight. O M G the people you find at Walmart at this time.. wowza.

Today, the septic gods came and removed the lid.. found out that our little septic tank was brimming. The pump was dead. They hauled off one big load (shit load) of excrement and planned on returning tomorrow to haul a 2nd load and clean the septic out as well as replace the pump.  There goes my bonus $ (down the shitter)..

Let me start from the beginning.. Tonight I sat down at my pc and logged into Facebook and saw my friend Mel had done another stupid quiz about pet peeves. I thought what the hell and started taking the quiz too. (I am a sucker for idiocy) I started up the pet peeves quiz and wrote in Whining in the little search box… and low and behold a photo of XOE came up.. I jumped up and ran and got the family, dragged them in here and we all had a good laugh..
I was stumped. Who put her face on the word whining, and where did he get the pic? So I googled “whining” in the Google images Yahoo! Images and MSNs Live search and all of these sites came up with Xoe’s image! you know where they got it? From the etling.com server (that does exist any more) back in 2004. That is when it surfaced on the first website, listed below. I am sure there is more out there..

Crazy huh? I grab other folks photos and use them in my blogs etc.. I just never fathomed I would see X on the Atlanta Falcons site, let alone Babble or ClusterStock.com.
Here are a few of the sites I found with Xoe on them..

http://www.freeprintablebehaviorcharts.com/whining.htm
http://life.atlantafalcons.com/index.php?showtopic=3841779
http://www.mepreport.com/category/websites/
http://machetera.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/how-about-a-little-congris-to-go-with-that-whine/
http://janeheller.mlblogs.com/archives/2009/03/like_cc_i_lack_feel.html
http://www.priorfatgirl.com/2008/11/full-force-rant-not-for-faint-of-heart.html
http://vnboards.ign.com/ac_friends/b5258/110273322/p1/?9
http://www.psystudent.nl/web/lijfstijl/57-mind/136-ik-weet-niet-wat-ik-wil
http://forums.mammothmountain.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2054&start=45
http://www.larkinsway.info/archive/2004_11_01_archive.html
http://www.vividblurry.com/2004/07/
http://www.tektoonics.com/etc/parody/pocemon/scholarship_believers_independently.html
http://gamma.sitelutions.com/~toucans/sbc/secret/whiner.html
http://www.californiagoldenblogs.com/2008/10/1/625774/fantasy-week-in-review-wee
http://www.campussqueeze.com/post/People-You-Hate–New-Years-Edition.aspx
http://www.babble.com/CS/blogs/strollerderby/archive/tags/whining/default.aspx
http://dessertyears.wordpress.com/2008/06/19/camp-no-whining-after-extended-kryptonite-exposure/
http://www.gamestv.org/event/8781-masuj-dzika-vs-punkd/
http://www.clusterstock.com/2008/8/stop-whining-about-high-gas-prices-it-s-more-affordable-now-than-in-1960s
http://aire.blogstest.arlingtonva.us/cfl_lighting/

I will attach some more pics of Xoe in that series and a photo of Xoe now..

We have babies! Today while we were at work, our goats decided to multiply! We have 2 little guys. We have not sexed them yet.. Check them out.

Goats- Jami Lynn is Looking Huge.
I just do not know.. We bought her bred and she never had babies.. Awesome-o humped her all fall (as a buckling) and now she is so fat her belly drags.. I want to say she is PG, but I do not want to get everyones hopes up. Croy says her little goat nipples are not so little anymore. Is she bred? I hope so.. I am going to stop saying she is.  Maybe believing she is “jinxes” it.. hmm.

Horses are Fluffy.
Winter coats are thick and the horses are quite warm with their long fur. This winter has been particularly cold. I try not to throw a blanket on them unless the weather goes below 0. The weather man has not been to great at predicting the weather when it gets below 10… I missed putting the blankets on them on some of these freezing nights. The horses are still alive. No colds. I am suprised Sunny is as healthy as she is. She is in her upper 20’s and has Cushings Disease. Her disease has not gotten worse at all. We do not ride her anymore and she has become a lawn ornament. She has the life of companion.
Con and Roverd are best buds. The run and play all day. It is somewhat funny, because Con is so huge and Roverd is so small.

Cat show next weekend.
yes, you heard it right… Cat show. Our kitten Steve aka Reti Opening, has a cat show on Valentines Day weekend. He is our curly Laperm kitten that my friend Christina sold to us. I am going to show him with her. This should be fun. I have never shown CFA before. I used to show Pixie-bobs in TICA. I had 2 cats that ranked in the top 5 of their breed internationally, and I barely showed. It was fun.

The House is a Celebrity……. well sort of.
I have photos on Flickr of alot of the stuff that goes on here at Wind Ranch. In December, we got an interesting inquiry through Flickr. This person asked about our house, because they were building a Field of Dreams (not so big) house too. They were wondering about the things we would recommend to them. I said they needed great out door furniture, because we use the porches here, all of the time in the spring-fall.. After talking a little more, we found out they are building their house in Iowa! Not only that only about 15 miles from our house… amazing. We have become contacts in Flickr so that we can watch their house go up. Right now, they are starting their framing. Amy, the one who I am talking too, asked for a couple shots of the stairwell yesterday. She is having a hard time explaining it to the framers. I shot a couple and posted them. It is neat to follow their journey.
There is a creepy weird aspect of this connection. Since they live so close, though a suburb of this big city, there has been a chance we would run into them. Beyond email contact…. Well, at one of Xoe Futsal (indoor soccer) games, we ran into them.. They recognized Xoe from Flickr pix. Their son plays Futsal too. Croy and I both have had a chance to chat with them.. They seem like good people, but the creepy factor still lingers..

Our Family in a Nutshell.
Croy and I are still employed, even with the economic turmoil. We both quietly worry and are always listening and watching for red flags on our projects. You can never tell. Xoe is playing Futsal and is participating in soccer clinics in town. We are amazed every time we watch her play. her foot skills are really improving with these clinics. When our little local soccer league starts up, she is going to totally be bored.
Sage is starting to read more and more. As I have been trying this blog entry, she has been in here 3 or 4 times asking what this or that word is from her favorite Dick and Jane.. She is out on the sun porch reading in the swing, now.

Meet Fatty Patty. Sage got a teddy bear hamster for her birthday!