Here, Birdie Birdie Birdie Birdie... (Quail HUNTING, not Shooting)

I slept in just a little bit this morning…. Err yeah. But oh well, nobody seemed to mind incredibly. I was a little fuzzy-minded upon waking up, but hey, what else is new? A mug of hot chocolate cured that… After I had gotten dressed Daddy announced he was going quail hunting. He and Tyler had gone a few times a couple weeks previous and returned victorious with about 12 birds each time. Well Tyler didn’t want to go this time so I volunteered to fill his position. Grabbed my Beretta 12 gauge (we have four 12 gauge shotguns and one 20 gauge pump that I used to shoot… I love that thing! Too bad I outgrew it, I really really liked it) that is really Daddy’s but he never uses it. Anyway, grab my shooting vest and coat and off we go on a grand adventure! I should probably mention here that Daddy told Momma we would be back in about half an hour with dinner.

We weren’t home until 1:30. We left at 10:30. You do the math…

But it was fun! We found 5 coveys of quail. For those of ya’ll out there who have never really gone quail hunting… Well I’ll fill you in. There are different species of quail. If you watch fellas hunting quail on TV, those are most likely Bob Whites. Bob Whites are a heck of a lot easier to shoot then Scaled Quail, also known as Blue Quail.

Actually, when you are hunting Scaled/Blue Quail, it’s not even shooting. It’s hunting. There is a difference.

For instance. You’re gonna go shoot a deer. Some people bait the deer, which means putting out feed like corn and waiting for them to come, and then shoot them. Which is not sporting at all, its boring, and I think stupid and just plain wrong. That is called “deer shooting”. You hunt nothing. When you actually go out and search for the deer, and have to hike through the sand or rocks or brush or whatever, and go looking for the deer, that is “deer hunting”. You have to hunt the deer.

Same with Blue Quail. They aren’t just there and they don’t just fly up right in front of you for your convenience and they don’t sit there nice and pretty and wait for you. It’s not quail shooting… It’s quail hunting. These little fellas love to run. And you usually find them nested around water (dirt tanks, ponds, stock tanks) where the brush is thick. You have to look on the ground for them because you will see them running, then you have to run and catch up to them, ‘flush’ the covey, and when they go up, you gotta shoot em. Which is a lot easier said than done. Because you’ve been running, you’re breathing hard, in our case during quail season it’s cold and when you’re breathing hard in the cold, well, if you’ve ever done that you know what I mean. So then it’s sometimes hard to get your gun on the stupid birds and they don’t stay in the air for very long and GRRR.

Dumb birds.

But neither of us did good. We didn’t get any very good shots, which stinks. Daddy got 4 quail though and I got… 7!! Woohoo! Yep! They aren’t the same species as Dad’s, he got the Blue Quail. Mine are called Imaginary Quail, or sometimes Crazy-Person Quail. Because only us nutty people see them. And they only exist in the imagination.

*sigh*

But in my defense (!!), I haven’t shot a gun in months! Months! So HA!

Anyway, the four quail made a good dinner. Mom grilled some sausage on the grill, we had pork and beans (which is really just the beans... with little diced pork in it... not much pork... mostly beans), baked potatoes, and then Daddy ‘filleted’ the quail, so there were 8 pieces instead of four, and topped it with peppered bacon, and put that on the George Foreman grill. It was very very very good. Mmmmm… It tasted delicious! Of course maybe it tasted so excellent because it was 2:00 by the time I had dinner. But, I’m pretty sure it would have tasted every bit of good had it been noon.

So yeah. Quail season ends in a few months. So I have plenty of time to get my practice in.

Even if it means shooting 200 holes in the air before I get one quail.

But I’m telling you right now, when I get that dadgummed quail, it had better taste gooooood.

4-H Banquet & Stupid DVD Players

(This was supposed to be posted last night but the stupid Internet konked out on me and refused to load my blog page… Grrrrr. So let’s pretend that this was posted at about 10:20, Saturday night, 12/08/07.)

I’ve been staring at a blank screen for 10 minutes. Grasping desperately with my mind at little wisps of thought. Something, anything, to say! Because, well, there isn’t much to talk about. Or, what there is to talk about, is boring and I can’t, for some odd reason, construct a creative paragraphy out of the happenings. And for some strange reason no random thoughts are entering my mind at this specific time. So why am I sitting here attempting yet another pathetic blog post? Hmmm… Well… It’s been an entire 3 days since I posted. I figured you guys might be suffering from blog post deprivation. My blog, to be specific. Yeah… See, I was worried about ya’ll! I’m so considerate… All heart. So compassionate.

Let’s see… Last night was a 4-H thingamajig. It was our 4-H club’s Christmas banquet, also the time and place where the new officers were… inducted??... into the club as, well, officers for the up-and-coming year. Yeah… It really wasn’t all that exciting. The plan—leave home at about 2:45, drop the unbaked lasagna off at the Extension office where the banquet was scheduled (unbaked because it wouldn’t be warm by the time we were going to eat, so we just baked it there) at about 3:10. Drive over to a car dealership to meet Daddy at 3:30 so they could discuss a pickup truck Tyler was looking at. Went for a little spin in the truck, ended up deciding to kind of loan the truck out to our place for the weekend so he could try it out, anyway that took til about 4:00. Yipes! D’aun (our 4-H club leader) needed me to be there at 3:30 at the latest to decorate! It was about 4:15 by the time we got back to the Extension office. Oops. Everything was already decorated… Please don’t hurt me, D’aun! (D’aun is slightly feared by the club members… lol) She was okay about it. Anyway there was only Amanda, Justin, Ashley, Tyler and I anyway. Grrrr. Crazy people. You’re supposed to be here! HEL-LO you’re officers… Sorry. It was annoying. Because… well I don’t want to discuss it. It would take some effort and cause me to actually THINK about the long reasons why and then I might get a headache, and you wouldn’t want that would you? I didn’t think so. Basically, we had to “rehearse” stuff we had to say and the whole deal was actually pretty boring. The entire thing… Yeah. During our little inductation thing… Inductation. Like. When we were inducted. Us, the inductees. Those aren’t real words? Ugh whatever! Anyway, we had to hold candles and the current president aka Amanda had to light our candle with hers after we took these little responsibility vow things… Then Sterling decided he wanted to pour hot candle wax on his hand during the ceremony. And he seemed genuinely surprised that it hurt. *roll eyes* The dork. Okay, so I was pretty much cracking up while he was muttering little grunts and groans of pain. And he kept pouring the wax on his hand too! But… yeah, even if it was stupid of him, thank you Sterling for breaking the dullness of the banquet. After the banquet thingy we had to take down alllll decorations, and finally GO HOME! It was only 8:10 when we left out of there though, so it wasn’t all that bad. So yeah… And then we got home, and Momma had bought a DVD player while in town. DVR I think it is. Because none of us want to actually stay up and watch the National Finals rodeo, but we want to see it, but it doesn’t come on until 10:00 and we are all in bed by then. Well Tyler is sometimes, okay usually up, but he doesn’t want to watch it really so anyway yeah… So we were wanting to record it. So we could watch it. Later. And not lose any sleep…

Let me give you a review on our experiences with TVs and DVD players. We had the same TV for… I don’t know how long. 10, 13 years? So it finally broke down. Omi & Opa’s neighbors had a TV they wanted to get rid of, big nice one, really big though, not at ALL flatscreen, but nice and pretty new. We accepted. They did tell us that the power didn’t work on the remote, you had to do that part manually. They did NOT tell us that the volume also had to be controlled manually. Very annoying. Anyway… we bought a DVD player for our old TV, and we couldn’t get the stinkin thing to work, probably because the TV was so old. It broke shortly afterwards. We tried it on this new TV. Stupid DVD thing didn’t work. Forget it. Buy another one because the other one is a piece of crap. (In our opinion.)

So yeah, we basically aren’t technical geniuses. Daddy refuses to even try to hook it up. He is a brilliant man, and yet- nevermind. Tyler, we just don’t let Tyler touch anything we are trying to set up anymore. He seems to think he can make it work with the flick of his wrist and he usually ends up breaking something or other by pushing every combination of buttons possible. Mom and I… I love Mom. But we both stink at this stuff.

We were up till 11:00 trying to get this stupid thing set up. Yes, 2.5 hours, pushing buttons and GRRR. We followed the instructions, honest! But for some reason, there are buttons on our strange TV that you have to push before the DVD player or remote will work that are not included in the instructions and then you have to format the disc to DVD format and after we got done trying to record something you had to finalize it (this took about 5 minutes), and even after that there was nothing on the stinkin DVD.

I hate gadgets. Stupid things. Why does everything have to be so complicated? It’s like they do it on purpose! Why do they have to make everything in technical-genius language instead of English? Because, hello, in case you guys haven’t noticed, most Americans aren’t the smartest people in the world! (No offense, I love America, but we have grown pretty spoiled and lazy, don’t you think?)

Anyway. We can finally play a DVD! For the first time on a TV ever! Woohoo! It took us about 1.5 hours to figure it out though. Never did get the durned thing to record. But we will figure it out! With a little, um, *cough*, technical support via the telephone… Maybe… Just a little…

Anyway. I’m writing this kind of late. 10:14. Daddy and I were watching UFC. Cage fighting. Hehe… See Daddy started watching this and I got into it- well, that’s another blog post for another day. I gotta git to bed. I’m getting just a wee bit… Sleepy. *yawn*

Sleep. Sleeeeeep. Ssssleeeeep.

Haha. Sleep--- is good.

Night night!

"Attitude Of Gratitude"

There is an awesome blog called "Attitude Of Gratitude". (http://sippiambrose.blogspot.com/)

The mere title caught my eye, and it's just really cool I think. This guy has health problems and every day he posts what he is grateful for, along with a little semi-paragraph or quote about thankfulness and such things. It's a really cool blog, and I think we all should adjust our mindset so that our attitude is more set towards gratitude rather than the negative.

Come on, we all do it!

It's too windy outside!
Ugh I have to do all these dishes
That dog won't quit barking
I don't want to wash my laundry, there is so much to do!
I can't believe I have to wear these glasses!

I won't deny that every one of little thoughts above belong to me. I should instead be thinking:

I'm grateful to have a home where I can be out of the wind, a place to call home and stay warm
Even though those are alot of dishes atleast we had good food to cook within the pots and serve on the plates, and I never have to worry where my next meal is coming from
I'm thankful I am priveleged to have a dog and glad I can hear his bark
I have lots of clothes to wear and I'm glad I don't have to worry about things like clothes
I'm grateful my family has enough money to get me these glasses so that my health does not worsen

It's hard to think like that. But I know that the Lord can help me think like that, and wants me to, and with His help I definitely can! I think it's an excellent goal to have, one that I am definitely setting for myself. Everytime a negative thought, even if slightly negative, enters my head, I want to correct myself and find the "silver lining" to that negative situation, because there always is one. And sometimes it's hard to find! But if you practice on the little things like chores and day-to-day activites, when the big things come along, it will be alot easier to find the good things. And I believe that the more good things you find, the happier a person you can be, and the better person you are.

That's my new personal goal- to have an attitude of gratitude.

Each blog post, I'm posting what I am thankful for that day.

Right now, Mom is nagging at me to get off the computer and go do my schoolwork.

Or maybe she isn't.

Lord, thank you for giving me a mom who cares about me, and about giving me a good life and dependable education, and for giving me parents to help me along and raise me to be a good person.

Introducing... My Room!

So I meant to post these past two days but I just didn’t get the time to do it… Sorry. You’re just not important anymore.

Just kidding, just kidding!

Well there isn’t a lot to talk about… Monday night was Youth, as always. And Justin blew me away, as always. And my head was spinning and my mind racing on the way home, as always. I don’t know how he does it, but I’m glad he does!

Yesterday was extremely busy. I got up at 4:45 to spend 15 minutes lying in bed leisurely… At last I dragged my lazy butt out of bed, proceeded to dress myself (many are amazed that I am capable of this arduous task), and stepped out into the cold, cruel world. Well it wasn’t too very cold, really, I doubt it was below 38. Though I’m not good at guessing things, whether it’s the temperature or the amount of rain we got or the day of week.

So that went pretty good, while we were waiting for the vet to arrive (he has to give the Bang’s vaccination…) Clint taught us a rope trick! It’s a pretty cool trick… It’s not like the butterfly you do with a regular rope, you use a soft piggin’ string (about 2 ft long rope, softer the easier). You hold one end in each hand, move them through a series of loops and holes you make, and then you have to say the magic word or it won’t work, flip off your hands and kaBANG there’s a knot in your rope! It took us all a while to figure out how he did it but it was pretty cool! It was a little bit funny to watch 3 grown men, a woman with a camera and two teenagers stand in awe of a rope trick… A good way to pass the time! Us ranch folks find good ways to pass the time… I remember once back on the ranch in Texas, we were waiting for the cattle trucks to arrive so we could ship off our steers, but they were like an hour late. So we just took a rope and Daddy had us kids jump rope, to our spelling words! The worst was “Philadelphia”. Each time we jumped, we had to say a letter, and if we messed up, Daddy would make us stop. See? Us ranch people get pretty creative…

Anyway, we came in to eat after working, and I was covered in dirt and cow crap and WD40 and who knows what else! Daddy and Clint were at the chute, ‘catching’ the cattle as they came through to year brand, vaccinate, ear tattoo, and put this purple liquid stuff to shoo off the flies. Dave and Grandpa were horseback, feeding groups of heifers into the tub and Tyler was pushing them into the chute alley, and I was manning the alley thing. Woohoo, go me! So yeah I got a lot of cow manure kicked up in my face, and once I put the butt end of the hot shot down to pop a heifer in the nose and get her to back off, and the one ahead of her PEED ON IT. Peed on my handgrip! Why, how, I mean, she, she just, she… she peed on my hot shot! Yeah… But whatever it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.

Came inside, ate, took a quick shower, blow dried my hair (I really need to just chop it all off), threw on a t-shirt and pair of jeans. But then Mom reminded me that this evening we weren’t coming home after errands, but staying for Tyler’s guitar recital at which I would be performing a duet with him. Joy. So I had to go digging through my dresser for something decent. Found this little short sleeved black sweater thing, threw a black tank top under it, and we’re good! Grab the piano books and we are out the door.

Have I ever mentioned I hate town? Well I do. Lord, I know I’m not supposed to arbor hate against anybody or anything, but I’m just not perfect. I’m working on it, but it’s very very difficult to love a place full of people. Nasty germy people. You know, every time we go to town, we take a shower after coming home. Because we feel so germy and icky and we sometimes get sick if we don’t. And then some people, after coming out here, feel the same way! Odd… So anyway. Town wasn’t too terrible, just same ole same ole. But here is the very sad part… Prepare yourself with tissues and forlorn faces...

While Tyler was inside the water place, filling the water bottles (there was only two and he never lets me carry one of them if there’s only two to fill, I guess he just wants to be Mr. Macho Man or something) , the cell phone rang. It was a random number. That’s what I told Mom, and handed it to her. As she was talking… She got this funny look on her face. She grinned, her eyes got this funny glint, and she had this certain tone of voice...

And, ya’ll, I just knew.

It was them.

My glasses were… They… *gulp*… Were ready.

We stopped by the dreaded optometrist’s office and got the dreaded glasses. My face tried to run away from them, but it was to no avail. Stinkin glasses… Oh well. I guess I will live. *sigh* Grrr… I. Hate. My. Glasses. Oh, and in case you are wondering, or perhaps hoping, you aren’t getting any pictures. HAH!

I was bored the other day (surprise, surprise), so I took pictures of my room while it was clean… Actually, it usually looks like this, except the bed sometimes isn’t made and there are a few dirty socks thrown haphazardly across the floor… But I’m a pretty neat person! I mean neat, in the semi-organized way… So here is my room! (LOL yeah I don’t really have anything to talk about and I don’t feel like talking about my glasses, so this is what ya’ll get.)

(From my doorway...)

(My hamster cage! The monster... Hehe I spy with my little eye... BLUE SQUIRRELS!)

(Nightstand... Great big doggy Tyler won for me at 6 Flags.. yeah)

(My bed! I wuffles my bed... Nice cozy bed... Mmmm...)

(Tucker's bed! Well, his nighttime bed... His crate. With a cat crate on top. Some towels aka bedding sitting there, uh some treats, and since he is a stinky doggy, my good friend, Febreeze. My nighstand is on one side of my bed, the dog crate on the other.)

(My desk... How exciting. =P It's very tiny and I would like a new one, but for now it's good)

(Bookshelf... It's pretty well crammed. Poor thing, it's very rickety too, not very trustworthy, but it holds my books! So I'm pleased... temporarily... Until it falls apart... In case your wondering, off to the left there is some carpet nailed ot the wall. Aka a homemade scratching post for the cat.)

(And here is my dresser, you can see the bookshelf to the left and the doorway to the right... Hehe that's my light-up garland hanging there, very cool to turn it on at night. The boxes for the missionary trip are sitting to the left as well...)

(And here is as wide of an angle as I could get of my room, from the doorway...)

So. Yeah. I guess I'll go let you free of your boredom now. Marquita is contagious and spread that blogger guilt thing that's going around... Blogging made me feel a little better though.

But if I bored you to death. Blame Marquita. She got me sick with Blogger's Guilt!

Just Call Me A Bum

Hmmm. Not much to say really this afternoon. Yesterday evening all four of us drove into town to attend a 4-H Christmas Party/Banquet/Awards Ceremony thing. Yeah… it wasn’t all that exciting really. There weren’t a ton of people either, considering that this particular event was by and for the entire 4-H in the area… Our 4-H is broken up into different groups, I’ve discussed this before, and labeled them as tribes. They just have their own dances and meetings and stuff like that, anyway… It was pretty uneventful throughout, except for the part where Kullen (a somewhat rude but very entertaining fellow) paraded down the isle (all of the newly elected Council officers had to light a candle, take a vow, in order to be ‘sworn in’ to the council), hollering at the top of his lungs and sporting a makeshift bra… From string and what looked like small black plastic plates, I really couldn’t be sure what they were, but I’m entirely certain I would like to find out. While he was standing in the front, and the rest of the people were coming up the isle, separately and getting their candles lit, Amanda and Shadoe were sitting at the table behind Kullen and kept untying his stylish garment. That was pretty much the highlight of the night. It went on for about 2 and a half hours. Ah, well… Next Friday night is the banquet thingy for the Kuntry Kids ‘tribe’, which I am a part of. I have to be sworn in as well, since I was elected VP. They will be sorry, I promise you. Very sorry I was ever elected.

Anyway. This morning I slept in… yeah… Until about 7:18. Yipes. I hate sleeping in! Oh well, I went to sleep late (about 11:00) and I enjoyed my wonderful 8 hours and 18 minutes of glorious sleep. I got up… To find the house empty. Creepy. Spooky. Eerie. It was very very quiet. (Haha I just got a mental image of Elmer Thudd in my head… “shhhhh be vehwee vehwee quiet. I’m hunting wabbits!”) And I almost screamed when the cat came up behind me, very quiet like and jumped on my leg in an attempt to convince me it was her newly found scratching post. I shook off the ferocious beast and fought her off with a candle stick, before collapsing on the couch in a muddled heap. I sat for a few minutes… Heaved myself up and proceeded to collapse in the computer chair. (You can already tell I’ve started my day with every intention of efficiency.) I checked my email… Made a mental note to blog once my brain was semi-functioning… Wandered around the kitchen for a moment. There was obviously lots of cleaning to do all around the house. Laundry to be done. Constructive things that should be… constructed. But it was Saturday morning. I was very tired. I wanted to be a bum. Being a bum is one of my talents… I mean sometimes I get in those “moods” and I can’t stand being a bum. I start with schoolwork… then a simple chore… And before long I’m dead set on cleaning the house from head to toe! Or floor to ceiling, whatever…

Today was not one of those days.

I knew the boys were gone, Tyler had went pheasant hunting on some place near us, Bitter Lakes I think it’s called, and Daddy had gone with him. Mommy finally ventured in, she said she was out feeding horses. I watched some TV. Had some hot chocolate and 2 Hawaiian rolls. I basically crashed in front of the TV for the morning watching LMN movies. Those things aren’t half bad, in my opinion. They’re all suspense… Murder movies. I love those things, bwaha. Anyway, yeah… I’d better stay away from the TV for the rest of the day. My eyes hurt now. But I won’t say a word to Mom, because she will reply with…

a) well you’ve been watching the TV all morning!
b) don’t worry, honey, you’ll have your glasses soon
c) all of the above!

So I think I’ll just keep my mouth shut. Something I’m usually not smart enough to do.

So yeah it’s just Mom and me today, until the boys get back. Which they should in about… an hour. Or an hour and a half. Or half an hour. Or 5 minutes. There’s no telling really. I’m guessing an hour and a half, max. I had a handful of potato chips, two little sweet midget pickles, and a ham and cheese sandwich for lunch. And for dessert… A Rice Krispie Bar! Mmmm… Made them this morning. Daddy loves those things! We’re all pretty big fans of them, well except Mom. She doesn’t eat hardly any sweets. I wish I would have taken after her in that aspect. I love sweets! And around the holidays… Wow. I love food. Hehe. The funny thing is, I won’t eat a lot at one time, but I eat all day. I like… graze. Yeah, that’s it. I’ll have a bowl of Cheerios in the morning. Later on, maybe an orange or apple. Then lunch. Then I’ll have a bowl of pretzels a couple hours later, followed by a trail mix bar, then comes supper. That’s what… six meals a day? They say that’s healthier for you though. In small amounts. Which I do eat in small amounts! I don’t like eating a lot at once. Because then you’re miserable, and you don’t have good memories of the food.

It’s kind of like going on a rollercoaster. Let’s say there’s one called the… Goose. Yeah, the Goose! It doesn’t sound scary, so you go on it. The ride may have been fun, but you spend the next two hours hovering over a garbage can. You probably won’t be that eager to go on the Goose again. Same with good. The food was good! But I was miserable after. Bad memories.

Okay, that was weird. But I’m bored with nothing interesting to say! Or do. Except take out trash, wash the dog bed, clean the bathroom, make my bed, scoop the litterbox, wash the dishes…

Ugh. And people wonder why I’m so brain-damaged. I’m worked to the bone! I’m a slave! Yes, a slave, to my own family! –sob- I’m a… a… Cinderella! (I wrote a post about that a while back, punch “Cinderella” in the search bar at the top of my blog page, it should come up.) Just waiting for my handsome prince! –dramatic tears-

Yeah. Okay, I’m leaving. I’m gonna go hide now. In my closet. All alone. With no friends. And nobody to talk to.

Feel sorry for me. You know you want to. Go ahead. Then I won’t have to do it myself.