cowboy

When I was a small child I wanted to be a cow boy. This past weekend I got a small taste of what a cowboy does and God was good to me by not granting me that one wish. Saturday morning I got up and was having a cup of coffee and pounding on my key board and chatting with the wife and I hear a loud MOO. Most of the times cows are quiet and don’t do a lot of MOOING, I knew something was up. Next thing I know my sister in- was asking me to help her with the cows that they got out of the pasture. I went and got a bucket of feed but then I found out that all of them were out and gone. I was walking around looking for them and my Dogs were with me and I looked at them and said go find the cows. It was like they knew what I said and they took off running through the woods. They let out a few barks and the other 4 dogs came running. I thought that all of this was kind of funny and I was still checking the fence to see were they got out. Peggy was out on the ATV hunting them and all of a sudden I hear all of the dogs barking like mad. I knew they found the cows and I started laughing to my self. Peggy came by and ask me If I had seen any of them and I told her no but it sounds like the dogs have found them. Peggy went off in the direction of the dogs barking and I went back to repairing fence. I heard Peggy driving down the road and I knew she had to have at least one cow with her. I dropped my stuff and went to check and found her coming down the road with a cow in front of her. Most of the time all you have to do is shake the feed bucket and they will come running so that is what I did. I had the pasture gate open and the next thing I know is the cow jumps the fence to get into the pasture. Just for starters cows don’t jump to good and she kind of went under the top strand of barbed wire and pushed down the metal wire and knocked the electric fence wire down. I was standing there thinking cows are not very smart. All she had to do was walk over to me and get some feed and it would have been a lot easier on her. I went back to fence repair and I get a phone call that my nephew has the rest of the cows and they want me to open another gate to the pasture. I get over there and Ted looks like the pide piper of cows. He is walking along with a pail of feed and they are all following him. I open the gate and all of the cows go in and then it is back to fence repair. The place the cows chose to tear down the fence is all rocks. Ted and I begin the task of driving new fence post in and I notice the post is not going in the ground. I told Ted I think you hit a rock and he moves the post and we keep doing that for about 30 minutes taking turns trying to find a place to put a post where there are no rocks. I told Ted this is like putting up a fence in the city that we need a jack hammer to make a hole. Finally we found a spot and put a new pole in the ground. That gave pain in the neck a whole new meaning. Usually you give it a few good whacks and it is in the ground. 4 hours later we have the fence fixed the cows back in the pasture and I was glad I was not a cowboy ever.

busy taken it easy

My brother once told me he didn’t know when he found the time to work. I think I’m getting the idea of what he was talking about. Most folks think all you do once you retire is sit and do nothing. For me that is far from what I do. I have thought just keep a blog of what you do and you can take care of that on a daily basis for something to fill in time. Wow is that ever a joke. Filling in time is something I don’t have to worry about. I can’t even keep a blog going as often as I would like to. Don’t get me wrong I’m not slaving away like a dog but I do stay busy. Last week uncle Norman passed away (Robert’s Uncle) He was a fine man and loved by many and had the respect of the community. Norman chose to be a farmer and he did work hard at it. I was amazed when he told me that when he was in the army he saved all of the money he made and this was during WWII. His wife worked in a five and dime and she also saved all of the money she made. When Norman got out of the army they had enough money to buy a small farm in Alabama. Working on a shoe string things were not easy for Norman so he had to do a lot of things by hand and fix things himself when they broke down. Norman wore many hats during his farmer days and not only did he farm but he was also a repairman that could fix just about anything that broke. He was a Husband to a lovely wife and a father. He was more than that he was also a uncle that loved his nieces and nephews and would do anything to help them along in life. Norman would treat himself to deer hunting in the fall because it was one of the things he always enjoyed. I don’t blame him for that myself, I also like to hunt for many reasons and the best one I can think of it takes you a bit closer to God. When you are out sitting in the woods by yourself you have a lot of time to think and reflect on life. To be honest I don’t think I ever started living till I retired and can enjoy the time I do have. Living and working in the city is just not fun at all. Too much dirt way to many stupid laws and fines. When I was living in Illinois I felt like I had another hand in my pocket all of the time taking money I needed to live on. I can understand the need for rules and laws but to me it would make more sense to have builders make wider streets so you can get a fire engine down the street with cars parked on both sides of the street. They didn’t even think about it they let the builders do what they wanted and made laws to work around the stupidity of it all and the residents of the community have to suffer by paying large fines for parking on the wrong side of the street. Well all of that is in the past and that is where it is going to stay. I park my truck where ever I want to but most of the time I park it in the same place to make it easy on others. Now here is the cool part if I want to have a yard sale all I need to do is pound a sign into the ground and have on it yard sale and sit and wait. Kind of like hunting and fishing and you get to meet some nice folks at the same time. Yesterday started out with a trip to the store not just any old store this was a store for hunting and fishing goodies. I thought to myself this has to be as close to heaven as you are going to get on earth. Only bad part is you have to pay for stuff. I found a real nice fishing rod and I was all set to buy it till the sales man told me it would cost me $159. I put it back on the rack and started looking at other ones. Ted told me if you want a rod get one of these and showed me one that was made by Fuji and it was only $40 and it was a $100 rod. I thought that was more to my liking. I never in my life thought that I would have more than one rod but that is a joke. Sometimes you are fishing with a worm and then you want to use a different bait you just pick up a different rod with that bait on it and keep on fishing. Most of the time I only use 2 different kinds of bait so I only need 2 rods, the one I never change is the one with the spinner bait on it. The other one I use worms, top water baits or deep water baits. I was looking at the cost of baits yesterday and just about choked. I guess there is a reason I use worms a bunch.

New Stuff & Fishing

Yesterday I received my new Blackberry. I don't know what I was thinking about when I bought it but it didn't come with a manual but I found I could down load one from AT&T. There is a lot more to one of these things than meets the eye and I guess my major fear is the cost of using it. I figure in time if I don't like it I can just use the phone features and forget about the rest of the stuff. I just thought it might come in handy for me from time to time. So far so good. I love the phone part of it. I found it is not as easy as I thought it would be but in time I will figure out all of the things I need to know about it. As far as a Cell phone goes I don't think you can find a better one. I was more than pleased with that aspect of it. I use a bluetooth head set and I have used this with both Motorola phone and Nokia phones. I thought that it was the head set that had the poor quality and I just didn't use it all that much because I'm hard of hearing. I decided to check it out and see how well it works and Bingo it was a winner all the way around. When I first got the bluetooth I thought that it was not working and I got the idea to change ears and see how that works. Well it made all of the difference in the world but I knew I had to see a doctor to find out what was wrong with my right ear. After doing every kind of hearing test that they can do one me I was told that I had lost more than half of my hearing in both ears with the right one worse than the left. The doctor told me that the only thing that could be done for me was hearing aids. That was when I found out that a hearing aid cost $2000 or more. I just about passed out at that news and called my insurance company to find out what they paid for hearing aids. I was shocked when that my benefit was $500 I ask the lady if she was sure about that because I had the premium insurance plan. She told me yes that is a generous amount. I told he that the hearing aid cost over $2000 and I need two of them and I didn't think $500 was a good down payment. Well that is all in the past and I still don't have any hearing aids but I do have a phone that I can hear on. Now for the cool part of my day is we went fishing at night. Just for starters I'm not the world best fisher man but I do enjoy fishing. This time we went to the River in Florence Alabama and it was so nice I found it hard to believe. I would like to go in the day time just to see what I missed at night. Fishing was not all that great and I was getting nothing but still having a good time with my Nephew and Brother in-law. All of a sudden Ted got a fish on and I watched him get it into the boat and it was a real nice black Bass. Ted took the hook out and tossed the fish back in the lake. His dad ask him what he was doing and Ted ask him "Do you want to clean fish" and he said not really and Ted said I don't either that is why I tossed it back. Ted said the way we are fishing that might be the oly fish we see tonight. About that time Robert got one on but it was not as big as Ted's So then the typical father son razzing started. I just sat and laughed and kept on fishing. Ted got another fish on but it was not as nice as the fist one but it was a fish and that one also went back in the river. We fished about another hour and then Robert got his second fish but it was not very big. Robert told Ted we better go some place were Dave can get a fish or two. We moved the boat and it took about 20 minutes and I had a fish and I got another fish in about 20 more minutes. My second fish was not as big as the first one but it faught twice as hard. I thought that it was a big fish and so did Ted when we got it in the boat Ted said to me it might not be a big fish but it is a fighter. All in all we got 6 fish Ted had the biggest one catching the first fish.

Puppy Fun and games

I received a call from the vet the other day to bring in my pups for their shots. At first I didn't give it much of a thought but then I realized that neither one of them like to go in the truck. I thought that I would just put them in and go and that would be it. Not that easy at all, the pups had a different idea about this trip. First I put Lottie in and when I bent over to get Dolly Lottie had hopped out. So I put Dolly in and got a hold of Lottie and Dolly hopped out. I just bent over and picked up both of them in my arms and put them in the truck at the same time and tried to hop in my self but about that time both of the dogs were on my seat. I did manage to get the door closed on the truck but then I had to get the dogs out from under me at the same time and finally we were on our way. I thought if I petted them that they would relax and calm down some. By the time we got to the vet they appeared to be relaxed and doing just fine. I took their leads in one hand and got out of the truck and both dogs were out about the same time one going in one direction and the other in another direction and me holding them with my sore hand. It didn't take long for me to change hands but they had the leads wrapped around my legs and I could not walk. I got out of that mess and then they both just put on the breaks and sat in the parking lot not wanting to move. I started walking over to a grass area and they were OK with that and sniffed around a bit and I started heading for building and they put the breaks on and refused to go in. I finally got them in the door and was in the vets office in a matter of minutes. The vet was checking out Dolly and she just hopped off the table. By the way she is the fat one at 19 lbs and Lottie is 18 lbs.They both got their shots and new tags (like they really care about the heart shaped tag)and we were on our way again. Again getting them in the truck was no easy task but it was easier going home. Once I got back home it was kind of funny I took off the leads and told them to get out of the truck and they did not need to be told twice. They came flying out the door like they were on fire. Their feet were moving in the air and they hit the ground running. They ran to the other dogs and gave them a hello sniff and all was well once again but they were not to anxious to get to close to me for a while. If you Want to see pictures of the pups check out this link
http://picasaweb.google.com/simokie