Monday, July 5, 2010

the fourth

We spent the weekend with my parents, had a great time.

It rained a while and we watched these birds bring food to their babies. All day long, every five or ten minutes there they were, shoving bugs to the babies. My dad says those babies are ready to fly any day.

the rain, the original log cabin, and the barn with fresh siding
the birdhouse is in the middle there

click on it to see their little faces peeking out of the hole

Tim caught some interesting bugs


Julia played Barbies


They played dress up in the log cabin


rode bikes

Julia learned to ride a bike all by herself, very much glee


My dad attempted to teach us a bit of oil painting. He's patient and positive. I liked Jay's painting better than mine. His lines are bolder, more imaginative.

bananagram

And this is a real bad dog named Sidney Annie. Sam gets hot spots if we're not careful, and has antibiotics to take. But she has a super sensitive mouth with pills, hates them. So we have to hide them in food, and she still often is able to use her big tongue to find and separate the pills and spit them out.


Okay, this morning I cut a slit in a sausage and put in three pills and after tossing her a couple decoy bits of sausage, (and a few for Sidney) I tossed the real loaded sausage.

Sam missed.

Sidney nailed it. I snatched her off the floor with my left hand, and with my right had her by the skin on the back of her neck, shaking it and yelling, "Spit it out! Sid-NEY! Spit it out! Spit it out!"

She would not. Dangling in the air with me shaking her skin and hollering and carrying on, she chomped it down as fast as possible.

This has happened once before, and since Sam is 145 pounds and Sidney 12, the dosage scared me. That time I called the vet to find out if we had a dangerous overdose on our hands. Would it burn out her kidneys or something? Well, that time Sid barfed it up before he called, so I called back and told him not to worry.

This time we figured she'd vomit it up shortly, and the vet had said it wouldn't injure her anyway.

Yeah, in an hour or so, Maria was cleaning up puke off the rug. Fun times. Then when we played Barbies later, we were told this about the Barbie dog: "He's outside barfing up medicine." Yep. Wonder where that came from?


And my grandma--the rock star of my childhood--came yesterday afternoon in the rain. This lady (and Grandpa) used to have our family overnight at their house all the time, let my sister and me come stay at their farm with them by ourselves for weeks in the summer. They were incredibly patient and indulgent. (I adore her.)

(When we left today, there was a sign in Ridgeland that said, "June is Dairy Month. Hug a Farmer."

I snickered. We already had. Hugged her a couple a times, even.)

Yesterday she played with my grandsons--her great-great grandsons, and listened to the kids' stories and told me all the news of the cousins, what there was to tell.


Then she kicked all our asses at Scrabble before she ate a piece of pie and left. Dang. My mom laughed and said maybe she cheated. Hmm. I really kind of doubt it. I think she's that good.


Oh welll. We're to the middle of summer now, believe it or not. Perfect, wonderful July. love, Val

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