Murphy Pick On Someone Else

OK, Mr. Murphy, it is time for you to pick on someone else and leave poor Judy in peace for a while.  Not only has she been stuck in a RV repair facility parking lot for about a month, now her NEW refrigerator has died!

We were off to Billings this morning, Michael had a doctor’s appointment and received a healthy tongue lashing from his physician!   Poor Michael is not a compliant patient and detests taking medications.  But sometimes you just gotta!  She cut him very little slack but did seem to impress him with the reasons for taking this medication.

I had given Michael a birthday gift certificate to Al’s Bootery in Billings.  He redeemed the card for new boots today, snazzy new boots!

We had a great lunch at Jake’s, did a Costco run, stopped at Wal Mart and then the RV place for light bulbs.  Grabbed Emmi at Nat’s and headed home.  I had a ton of stuff to do before sitting down to write a blog—Jeane and I are off on an adventure tomorrow.

Remember the new sewing machine I purchased in Carter, MT on our way home from Canada in September.  Well, Jeane called the shop and reserved one just like mine.  We are going up tomorrow to pick up the sewing machine and take some classes coming back Saturday night.  A fun, quilting weekend!

Whew, a busy, busy day!!!!

Heart Warming

Remember the story of the young female wrangler here in Montana who forced her horse into charging a full grown grizzly bear in order to protect an eight year old boy and his horse??  She was on the David Letterman Show last night and here is a link to the interview from our local news provider.  The news clip loaded really fast for us and was a joy to watch!  That is one remarkable girl AND horse!  I love news such as this instead of all the usual gloom and doom! 

And speaking of gloom and doom—I am as guilty as the next person about talking on my cellphone while driving especially out here in the wide open spaces of Montana freeways.  I do not text and drive, never!  This past weekend a couple, 67 years old were out for a drive in their restored Model A, driving 40 miles per hour on the freeway, Saturday afternoon, sunshine, 3pm, light traffic.  It is legal to drive antique cars on Montana roadways.  A woman in a mini-van rear ended this couple and killed the wife.  Was she texting, was she talking on the phone, news reports have not said.  Please think about this when driving! 

A beautiful if windy day in Montana, on our walk this morning we took some great photos—I say we, Michael rarely picks up the camera but he does have a good eye and will tell me, “see that, take a photo.” 

“Are you like Al and don't want any people for miles, or do you welcome your new neighbors? :)”  Judy left this comment last night and the answer is, “we are like Al and Kelly!!!”

Explanations

This is an excavator—a mini-excavator.  Its track is only six feet wide.  You will see huge excavators at road construction sites with tracks as wide as 10 feet with equally as huge digging buckets.  The excavator in the photo is our newer one, it didn’t die. 

The yellow machine behind the truck is a backhoe—that’s what I used to push the mini-excavator up into that trailer attached to the truck. 

Kind of a nasty day weather wise—rain and wind squalls all day. Michael went to town after lunch to winterize our friend Jill’s sprinkler system and to run a couple other errands.  I stayed home with my cold.  Emmi and I took a nice long nap under the electric blanket again.

I felt a little better when I got up and managed to finish one of Jeane’s alphabet quilts—adorable! 

You used to be able to look up the East Boulder valley and see no houses—if you look closely you can see at least two. 

Still Yucky

Cold or allergies—the jury is still out and I am still miserable.  Sent Michael and Emmi off on a walk and I crawled back in bed with the electric blanket on high!  and Rick’s comment didn’t help me feel any better, “Hopefully, you aren't getting a nagging cold. The remedy? About 3 or 4 weeks as mine is finally starting to disappear.”  Let’s hope it’s allergies! 

I did manage to get some routine chores done today—cleaned bathrooms, laundry, made lunch (leftovers), etc.  Michael went to finish up the project he started yesterday.

When I married Michael almost 17 years ago, I was a city girl, born on a farm and vowed to never, ever live on another one ever again.  Well, we know how that turned out!  Michael is forever getting me into messes—asking me to do things that I’ve never done in my life, such as run the swather or the huge John Deere tractor.  Or steer a dead truck with a huge trailer attached in a blinding snowstorm as Michael pulls us home with another truck (that one made me hysterical!!)  I’ll save the story of how we fed cows for another day—that was an experience for this city girl, let me tell you!

Since we retired those moments had decreased until today.  The older mini-excavator we have died this afternoon, Michael came home got the backhoe and I drove the truck and trailer back to the job site.  He’s not sure how this circus is going to play out but thinks, OK, I will try to start the excavator one more time—it STARTS!!!  He yells at me, “get the backhoe!”  OK, now what???  Motions for me to come up behind the excavator with the loader bucket and push the excavator as he drives it up into the trailer.  It worked!!  I didn’t have time to get scared and since the excavator is so old I didn’t have to worry about scratching or damaging it!

Almost each time I see Lonn (Michael’s son) he will ask me, “got any music loaded on that iPod??”  And I usually have to answer, no, not yet after all I’ve only had it 10 months!  But today, success, I have music on my iPod!  I was able to figure out how to download audiobooks several months ago and have really enjoyed that feature.

It was a good day!

Emmi’s favorite perch for looking out the windows seeing if Dad is coming home.

Double Yuck

Woke up during the night coughing with a sore throat.  Allergies or a cold??  I am rarely sick but do have some allergies such as to wood smoke to which I was exposed yesterday.  Let’s hope it’s allergies—they go away faster!  Double yuck!!

Michael was off to help Mark on a project for our friend Geoff—something about horse watering tanks, digging and plumbing—doesn’t sound like much fun, does it??

I thought about going back to bed when he left but talked myself out of it.  Instead I went downstairs and got the binding sewn onto the turkey gobbler wall hanging.  Also got one of Jeane’s cute little quilts on the frame—talk about adorable! 

It is a beautiful fall day here, about 60 degrees, sunny, clear blue skies. 

 

Happy Thanksgiving to all our Canadian friends!

And The Mountains Have More

Snow that is

It was raining when we got up but after lunch the sun came out.  Nat was going to come up for lunch but called and canceled—had a bit of a bug.  My pot roast was all ready in the oven and smelling divine—I don’t make pot roast often but The Pioneer Woman had a delicious sounding recipe on her blog the other day.  Man, was it good!  I’m not a fan of crock pots and it takes a dang long time to cook a pot roast in the oven—not something you want to do in the RV! After our late lunch Michael and I were couch potatoes literally—even took a little snooze.  He was out in the garage all morning and I was quilting, finished my little turkey wall hanging and a table runner for Jeane. 

We took a late afternoon walk with the Emmi girl.  Our walks are taken these days with a little more awareness.  While talking to one of the USFS workers on the recent prescribed burn he mentioned the crew on the fire had seen three grizzly bears!!!!  That fire is only about 2 miles from us as the crow flies, just a walk in the park for a grizzly!  Only in recent years have grizzly bears been spotted around our country, just the black bears.  Guess that has changed, YIKES!

It’s Fall Now

Or did we just skip fall and head on into winter??  A high of about 45 degrees today with a cold, blustery wind and rain.  We’ve gotten about an inch and a half of rain and the mountains around us have their first coating of snow.

The Beartooth Pass road is closed as are some roads within Yellowstone Park—all for snow. 

Today was one of those days when I should maybe have stayed in bed!  Scurried around this morning—I had a massage appointment at 9am.  Michael decided to go into town with me to visit with his Dad.  When I walked into the salon and Gayle saw me I could tell from the look on her face that something was wrong.  As she was telling me that no, my appointment wasn’t at 9am but at 10:30am I watched Michael driving out of the parking lot.

You might ask—why didn’t you just call him on his cellphone telling him to come back and get you??  Well, as I’ve said before, cellphones don’t work well here in Montana, not well at all, not enough cell towers.  So, we don’t waste the money for two cellphones that sit unused, powered off on the kitchen counter waiting for our trips to civilization.  We just have one and it was in my purse!

Gayle very graciously gave me her car keys and off I went to Nat’s surprising Michael when I walked in.  I finally did get my much needed massage then we headed home.

Neither one of us had much ambition—I did manage to get the vacuuming done and the buttons sewn on my new red sweater.  I also took Emmi for another walk so I could photograph the nest Michael pointed out—YIKES!

 

And that’s about it for our Friday.