Sunday, November 25, 2007

Shame On You, Daddy...

Maybe ya’ll remember the post where I got chewed out for talking to Sara until midnight on the phone. Halloween night, it was. And I took a shower at 10:30. And Daddy got just a wee bit irked and I got just a wee bit chastised.

The tables have turned. Bwaha.

Whenever winter rolls around, we always buy atleast one puzzle in addition to pulling out our current collection and spend a good part of the evenings watching sappy Christmas movies on TV, sipping hot cocoa and doing puzzles. It’s a great way to spend winter evenings… Anyway, yesterday Tyler got out this horse puzzle we have of a mare and foal grazing in a field. He did just a little bit of it, Mom did a good bit of it, I did like 4 pieces (I get frustrated easily, and the fact that there are 37 pieces that are shaped the same but NONE of them won’t go in the spot it’s supposed to, just doesn’t help it any) and then Dad came in…

The puzzle master has arrived.

Daddy is a brilliant mastermind. I mean, honestly. He never got a B in school. Never. I know, it seems impossible, but it is. Because he never did. And not only is he brilliant academically, he can figure almost anything out, he can design a brilliant set of pens or anything really. He has the most common sense out of anybody I have ever met.

Too bad I didn’t inherit his brains.

Anyway—Daddy likes mind games, but he also likes puzzles. He will deny the fact that he wants to do a puzzle, or is at all interested in it, but once it is out, and he gets into it, he becomes addicted. This puzzle becomes his… obsession or something, and he won’t stop until it is completed.

So last night, I hear the little metallic twang as Tucker strikes his toe nails across the metal mesh of the door on his crate. I hate that sound. Because I KNOW I have to get up, let him outside to do his ‘business’, and then wait to let him back in 5 minutes later so he won’t wake Mom up in 10 minutes by launching his entire body against the screen door. So I opened the crate, and went into the dining room… And Daddy is sitting at the dining room table doing the puzzle. He was so absorbed, he didn’t even look up. I let the dog out, give Daddy a strange look, pad back into my room to take a peek at my clock…

12:28.

Oh. My. Gosh.

Hypocrite!

Anyway, I didn’t chew him out about it because he let me sleep in until… well, about 8:30. *cough cough* So no hard feelings.

This afternoon, Daddy needed us kids to help him gather up some yearling steers… And I didn’t know this until about 10:30. Oh well. So after lunch I removed my slippers, lounge pants and sweat shirt and put on thick winter socks, silk long johns, jeans, a t-shirt, long-sleeved sweater-type-shirt thing, very thick warm jacket, roping gloves and a cap. And out I go, into the cold, cruel world.

I catch Wyatt, brush him off, saddle up… It was pretty cold outside. I don’t know how cold, I guess maybe about 40 degrees, which isn’t exactly COLD but it’s pretty darn chilly. I felt very fortunate to be riding such a gentle old plug as Wyatt. In fact, all four of us (Tyler, Daddy, Grandpa & I) were riding gentle horses, the other 3 probably weren’t exactly kid horses, but they were gentle. At 1:00 Clint shows up, and unloads his horse from the trailer, a horse that was acting pretty dang fresh. He looks up at Daddy with a grin and says, “This is gonna be real fun.” And we all laughed… Then Daddy asked Clint where he had seen the steers driving up here (they were in the house pasture) and Clint told Dad there were about 15 up by the highway, and the rest right by the salt shed, kinda. So Daddy and Clint load their horses back up… They go to the highway to get the steers that are hanging around up there, and Tyler and I lope ahead to stop the bunch of steers around the vicinity of the salt shed, because they were running North, towards the highway. Got them stopped… Grandpa had stayed behind to count a few head right by the house pens. Anyway, it wasn’t anything really exciting. All 5 of us joined up with the steers, they ran off a few times in quick spurts, but they were going in the right direction, so it didn’t really matter too much. At the pens, we sorted of 4 head that were sick, lame, etc. Then we moved them into a little water lot (which took all of 5 minutes) where we got a count on them, and then we were pretty much done. I was very proud of Wyatt, he wasn’t being his lazy-butt self.

Any of you out there that have worked with frisky yearling steers/heifers on a chilly morning, know full well how they tend to behave.

Well when we were sorting the puny steers off, they had several quick bursts where they began to ran out, but with us being such excellent hands (including me, of course *sarcasm*) they ended up milling around in a circle until they settled down. Well it was so cool, because I’ve never ridden a really cowy horse, until Wyatt. So he would really sit back his ears would go forward and he would turn pretty hard on his haunches and follow the leader… Follow the leader, teehee, that sounds funny. Anyway. It was cool, I had fun, and I didn’t mess up too bad, so yeah…

Okay, just because I’m thinking about it, I’m gonna talk about my Christmas list. Right after Thanksgiving, Omi starts asking my mom for our Christmas lists. This year I came up with a pretty good one. Stuff like a full length mirror, a cool painting, some CDs, a cheap digital camera (to take with me when I go for rides, so I can take some pics)… But then Omi said she needed more, so I added stuff like earrings and pillows for my bed… Mom was looking at iPods for us on the computer, and Tyler said he wanted the iPod Classic… 160 gigs! OH MY GOSH. Those things are stinkin expensive! Have you looked at them? Like $350 for the one he wants. I decided I would like the iPod Nano, 8 gigs, which is like $199, but the 4 gigs is $149 or something like that, and for only $50 more, you get TWICE the space. And for as much stuff as I’m gonna put on there, that is a good size. I’ll probably put some pics on there, a good amount of songs, maybe like 1 movie when I go on a trip or something… So yeah it’d be cool to have. I would NEVER use up all the space on a 160 gig Classic… Oh my gosh… That just blows my mind!

So yeah, now that’s on the list, but it’s Mom’s fault because she came up with the idea. But it would be cool to listen to songs whatever, it’s small, I can put pics on it to show friends, watch movies on road trips… That’d be a cool gift. =)

Okay, well I’m done babbling. I’m gonna go… read Sara’s blog. And… eat... trees.

2 comments:

Sara said...

Getting to work cattle... lucky duck. Haha I want a iPod too! but they are really expensive so I doubt I'll ever get one... maybe... :-)

Ranch Kiddo said...

Haha yeah it was fun! I didn't get yelled at once! =P Yeah they are pretty expensive but my grandparents really want stuff to get us for Christmas, and it's a good idea- Christmas is when you ask for the expensive stuff. ;) Ask your Grandma! =D