Goats in Coats

The temperature dipped last night.  Down to freezing at least and maybe a little lower. Brrr.

Last week when it was not that cold I took the goats out and Twee shivered and shook like crazy.  She was cold.  My goats are short haired creatures and they are still kinda young and I worry.  While I was standing out in the pasture with my chilly goats I whipped out my smart phone and Googled "Goat Coats."  Surprise Surprise, there are several goat coat makers out there.

Because I'm cheap, and aware that I may be just a tad, uh...odd, I did not order them.  But that didn't mean I didn't think about it.  A lot.  I Googled it a couple more times and found more sources and more information.  Apparently goats don't usually get cold.  They get their winter coats and they are just fine in normal winter weather.  Sick goats might need coats but not healthy goats.

Well... sick or not, my goats were cold!  Why would they shiver if they weren't?

This morning when I woke and there was ice on the ground and the rain that had accumulated in the last week was now a skating rink, I couldn't possibly trek my goats out of the warm barn out to the cold, freezing pasture.  I started Googling again.  This time I found a pattern.  A pattern for goat coats.  Now that appealed to my crafty side, my frugal side and the weird side that wanted to keep my goats warm.  (who knew I was a triangle??)

My goats are now styling like nobody's business!

Een says "Thanks for the style makeover!!  The "E" doesn't make me look fat does it?"

Twee says "Those "nehhhh-sayers" need to spend a day in 32 degree weather without any clothes on!"

The people that sold us the goats have mocked me a bit (one of the risks of posting pictures on Facebook).  I don't think it was very nice of them, and it bothers me.  I love my creatures and I care about them.  I worry that my dog feels bad when I pay more attention to the cats.  I worry that the alpacas think we don't love them if they don't get their favorite grain.  I worry that the chickens will get taken by hawks.  I want them all to be happy and think they are the luckiest creatures in the world to be here, in my care.

And I worry that the goats are cold.  So those mean people can go suck raw eggs.

Jack Maxwell

Jack is now 9 days old.  I don't know what kind of Grandma that makes me... waiting a full week plus to tell the world about his arrival. But I've been busy!!

Jack was born October 18th at 8:30 a.m.  He was 8 1/2 pounds, 21 1/2 inches, and three weeks early.

Peter was unable to get away - but I was in the car headed south as soon as I could manage.

My son seems to have fallen in love with HIS son

My daughter, despite her general aversion to babies, seems to have fallen in love with her nephew

And then there is me..  quickly falling under Jack's spell.

Mary, Jack's mom is doing well and recovering quickly.  Unfortunately, seeing as how we all hogged Jack - I don't have a photo with HER in it.  How rude is that??  She was very understanding though, and for that I'm grateful.  It's not every mom who so willingly shares her new baby.

Vacation Fallout

Talk about an expensive vacation!

The fraud department of my bank called me this morning.  They were questioning some charges that started showing up at 6:00 this morning.

Had I made a 99 cent purchase with Sony Entertainment?
How about a $5.00 donation to Africare?
Oh... and did I spend $948 on something called a streetman?

No, no and NO!

It seems the bad guy also opened up a pay pal account in my name, on my dime.

Gah!!

Fortunately the bank is on top of it (yay US Bank!!) and I am not responsible for any of these (and about 20 more) charges.  My account is now locked and secured and a fraud case has officially been opened.

I asked the bank fellow if there was something I could do to eliminate or minimize my risk of this happening again.  For instance change the way I shop on-line or don't let my card out of my sight, ever.  He replied that in this day and age, with current technology there is NOTHING to prevent a determined crook from committing these crimes.  It's just a game of Russian roulette and it was my turn.  He did say it was most likely someone that had my card in the last few weeks.

I can't help but wonder which seemingly lovely person I met on my vacation committed this crime.  Was it the nice old lady at the botanical garden gift shop who took so much care to wrap the gift I purchased?  Was it the nice bartender, recently moved from Key West, new grandpa and the unhappy owner of his first pair of "real" shoes?  Was it the English-as-a-second-language parking attendant we tipped so generously or the cute girl with the interesting tattoos, piercings and hair color that had never been jet skiing but worked at the jet ski place?

Unless I'm in a hurry (or they are) I generally do not just "do business."  I chat and visit and learn about the people I deal with.  And I admit it, I'm a pollyanna and it breaks my heart that someone that I had a conversation with had the nerve to do this to me.  How rude!

Now I am cash only until my replacement card shows up in a week or so.  It'll probably be good for me to get back to cash.  It's way too easy to spend money I don't see.

The upshot is that my behavior won't change.  I will continue to shop online, use my debit card and chat with everyone.  It's who I am and I'm not gonna fight it.

Vacation!

We just got home from vacation.  It was the best vacation ever despite the fact that it got off to a really rocky start.

We live two hours from the Seattle airport.  Our flight was scheduled to leave at 6:00 am.  With all the security measures they say you need to be at least an hour or so early for your flight. That means that MINIMUM we had to leave by was 3:00 am.  Which of course means we had to get up by 2:30 am.

Clever me thought why not leave the night before and get a hotel with park and fly?  I just happened to get an offer from Orbitz for % off a hotel in Seattle.  That made it far cheaper to spend the night than to pay for parking. So I took the first one I found that offered park and fly.

I worked the day we were to leave.  It was a long day that involved me accidentally putting the work cell phone in the outgoing mail which required I chase down the big mail truck headed to the Seattle sorting station.  I caught up with it in Bellingham  (thank goodness!) but that meant I didn't get back home until after 6:00.

When I got home I immediately joined Peter in taking care of animals, last minute packing, house cat-proofing (since we were leaving our three indoor cats with the keys to the castle...) and doing all the other things that needed to be done.  We didn't pull out of the driveway until 10:00 - arriving at our hotel just after midnight.  We figured by the time we got to our room and got to bed it would be 1:00 - and with a 4:15 wake up call we were looking forward to a full 3 hours of sleep!  Oh but the desk clerk informed us that they no longer had park and fly services but they did recommend some nearby parking lots that offered shuttles to the airport.  I was irritated to say the least.  Now we would be paying for a 3 hour hotel stay PLUS parking. We would have stayed elsewhere or even stayed at home but it was too late to do anything about it.  I have a bone to pick with Orbitz!

4:15 came way too early - and then began the scramble.  We hadn't calculated the extra drive time into our schedule and missed the 4:40 shuttle at the parking lot and the 5:00 shuttle was slightly late.  We arrived at the airport 35 minutes before our plane was scheduled to leave.  We did the airport sprint.  Peter, unfortunately, was selected by security to have his bags searched - he was bringing his doctor equipment (like stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter..).  The clock went tick tock.  Once they decided he wasn't a national threat, we sprinted again. We made the plane by the hairs of our chinny-chin-chin.

An hour or so into our flight, the flight attendants began scrambling and messing with their emergency equipment.  Someone on the plane was having a medical emergency.  A seizure and anxiety attack.  The call went out for medical professionals.  A nurse answered the call, as did Peter.  Between them, and since fortunately Peter had his medical bag with him, they got the poor woman resting comfortably and valuable information was able to be forwarded to paramedics on the ground.  The nurse stayed with the ailing woman and Peter returned to his seat where he was offered a courtesy cocktail by the grateful flight attendants.  It was 9:00 in the morning.  Peter turned it down.

Originally we only had 35 minutes between planes, and of course our first one was slightly late.  Plus we were in the back and by the time we got off the plane, we were down to 20 minutes. Off we went on the airport sprint again.  It was the Houston airport and in Texas they make them big!  Our gates were quite far apart. We were the last ones to board - but by gum we made it!

Fortunately on this flight there were no medical emergencies.  We arrived in Florida now truly and completely ready for a vacation.

We had rented a beautiful little cottage in Indian Rocks Beach.  We had a wrap-around deck facing the Gulf of Mexico and were just feet from the beach.

We were in Florida for 10 days.  We napped a lot.  We walked on the beach.  We breakfasted on our deck enjoying this view:

We watched the sunset over the Gulf of Mexico ..

We swam in the ocean, fed alligators, went sight seeing, attended my nephews wedding..

We visited with brother and his wife and children.  We ate well, we drank rum in exotic tropical drinks.  I found a fossilized sharks tooth (three actually).

We visited 2 aunts and an uncle from my fathers side of the family, went snorkeling in a fresh water spring and put our toes in the Atlantic Ocean at Daytona

We played putt putt golf and went jet skiing where I dumped us both in the ocean when I took a turn too tight.  I laughed until I nearly cried.  Unfortunately, Peter lost his good (read expensive) sun glasses on the dunking.

Coming home was uneventful despite the very long day of travelling.  When we got home we needed to tend to our animals and found they had been very VERY well fed by the babysitter who had the theory "well fed animals are happy animals".   A theory I can't entirely argue with.. Our goats gained weight and look a bit like pigs.

It seems most of our animals were glad to see us come home.  The goats and alpacas don't seem particularly happy since they've been put on a diet but I'm sure they'll be fine.  Eventually.