interesting times

The other night when we were coming home from Springdale, I saw a rustling in the bushes at the house end of the driveway. I kept looking, and had just decided there was nothing there and was looking away when suddenly a cow head appeared just a few feet from my window! (It was quite dark, and the cows are solid black.) Turns out that when the children were playing outside earlier, Riah opened the gate from the yard into the pasture, and the cows took advantage of the new grass. (Did I mention before that a relative was keeping cows on Grandma's pasture?) So anyway, Bob went in the house for a flashlight and a stick. He chased the cows around the house (as soon as they saw the light, they started running), and I stood guard at the corner so they all trotted back through the gate and out to pasture. As we locked the gate the cows huddled in the farthest corner, plotting revenge.

Sunday night Bob's ex called him at 11pm, in hysterics about some "emergency" regarding stepson. Turns out he'd quit his job and she was mad at him. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but in my humble opinion (after 15 years of dealing with her) she sees us making life changes and figured it was a good time to reassert her influences. And it worked. Bob talked to her for 30 minutes, calming her down and promising to take care of things for her. Gah! I'm torn between self-expression and not airing dirty laundry. I guess I'll stop there and leave it to you guys to imagine how you'd feel if you were in my place. (Keeping in mind that Bob had long told me that we wouldn't have to deal with her once stepson turned 16 - 4 years ago.)

Yesterday we were awakened to William wailing. He was sick on both ends. Riah, Cedwryck, and Taryn were also sick. There was an excess of dirty laundry made, showers given, and rags used. Enough said.
Bob and I cleaned out the back room (since it is obvious the other family isn't interested in getting it done), finding a few gems among the Christmas decorations that are now "mine" (sorry, inside joke). After the shelves were cleared, we took them down. These were quality redneck shelves - cinder blocks and boards. Bob took the boards somewhere and I used the cinder blocks to start marking out my garden beds. Gardening makes me happy.
Bob got a call back from the trash people, and they agreed to come today to get the trash pile from the carport. It looks much better now (smells better, too!). So things are finally getting done.

This morning I got online to check my mail and Facebook, only to find my Facebook account was disabled for being a fake name! What??? Now I have to send them a picture of my driver's license to get it reinstated. So I got my camera out (Bob's memory card doesn't fit in my computer), but the battery was dead. And the spare battery was dead. And I can't get Bob's battery out because his camera was dropped once and it's a little bent there. So I can't do anything about that until he wakes up. sigh.

At least things aren't getting boring now that we've "settled down." :-D