Today was designated a holiday to celebrate Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays. While Washington was really born on February 11th and Lincoln on the 12th, the 90th Congress in 1968 decided to make the holiday a single day. When I was a kid lots of us aspired to be President someday. Now it doesn’t look like such a good career choice. Anyhow, to the blog….
Yesterday was a fun day. We started out by going to the horse (cutting) competition. Cutting is where you’re on your horse and you “cut” or separate one cow from the herd and try to keep it from getting back to the rest of the cows. Cows are pretty quick and can turn on a dime but a good cutting horse is quicker. The rider literally lets the horse do most of the work and just sits atop his or her mount as the horse rapidly jerks back and forth shadowing the moves of the cow. I rode a cutting horse in Wyoming last year and a good horse will throw you off if you don’t “go with the flow” of the horse. The boys had a good time and at one point while watching the event, our youngest asked “Dad, why do the horses tails come out of their ass?” My first reaction was to answer “because that’s the way God designed them” but then I had to tell him not to say “ass”. I guess we’d better  clean up our language around the house. Riders were as young as 9 years old and as old as 70. We sat with our friends who are the VP and Secretary of the Western States Cutting Horse Association. The boys also got down into the arena and pet a nice little 6 year old mare named Sally Bob Freckles or Sally for short. Our eldest kept wanting to know if I brought my credit card to buy a horse! I reminded him that Grandma (or specifically Grandpa) had promised to buy the boys a horse, not Dad. Upon leaving, the eldest began sneezing uncontrollably. I turned around in the car to notice his eyes were getting red much like they do when he’s around cats. Earlier in the day he had picked up a bunch of dog hair and then rubbed his nose so it must have been that or else all the cows and horses in one spot. He’s not allergic to horses as he rode for days in Wyoming with no problems last year. I drove straight to the nearest grocery store and bought some Benedryl which stopped the sneezing right away. We headed home, had some lunch and then played some football outside. It was really cold and windy yesterday but we played outside anyhow, kids don’t seem to care how cold it is. The boys cleaned the mud room and then I fed them dinner while I waited for Mom. She finally made it home finishing her 40 hours of work for the week. Mom finished her second review and is of course on pace to be the finest employee anyone has ever seen. That’s just who she is! The dog barked at 5am and after several nudges from my wife, I rose for the day to feed the dogs and make some coffee. As early as I get up, I might as well be living on a ranch as I’m always up before the sun rises. What’s the difference in feeding 2 or 20 animals? The way things are going with our economy and the price of food, it might be  smart move to get some cows right about now. Gas is now about $3.25 a gallon (over $3.50 for diesel!) with no end in sight. Wheat is up 78% in a year and with the recent freeze in Mexico and our southern states, you can expect fruits and veggies to go up as well. Lucky for us we have a freezer full of elk and pheasant to cut down on having to buy meat as it also is way up. We’re in for a big correction people, get ready as it’s going to take a while to recover from this hole we’re in. In our house, we’ve resorted to being as thrifty as we can in all areas and have cut discretionary spending to almost nothing. The days of seeing something in a store and buying on impulse are long gone. I can’t remember the last time we were in a mall except to pay a bill. Oh well, this is all actually a good thing, I just hope this wake up call on endless spending from the government on down, will be a learning lesson for all and we can somehow get back to living within our means. I know we have! Oh well, enough of my views as I’m drifting into politics once again. Lots to do today and the kids are still off school until tomorrow. Thankfully Mom is also off today. Hope everyone is well and until tomorrow, God bless.