#156. or, Piss and Vinegar

Do you remember a couple posts back, where I went on and on about the terrible bout of the flu that my wife and I were dealing with? At least I think I wrote that post, although, I may have only imagined it in my delirium.

  Anyways,  it's been a few weeks now, and to tell you the truth,  I don't really feel like I've completely recovered from it. I mean, I'm not suffering from a debilitating headache or alternating between, one minute shivering cold, and the next, sweltering hot. I just seem to have this nagging cough and feeling like I can't catch up on my sleep. Of course, part of that could be due to the fact that I actually, CAN'T catch up on my sleep this time of year. Or, it might just be that I'm old.

  Part of the plan my wife devised to deal with this, while we were standing in the aisle at the Wal-Mart, was that I should be on some sort of once a day, multivitamin. My part of the decision was that I got to choose which multivitamin was suited specifically to my needs, based on my age, body mass index and the particular workload, my day to day life entails.

  I chose the awesome blue bottle with the word "MEN'S" across the label in bold type.

  As soon as I got home, cut away the protective cellophane, bested the child proof lid, sliced through the foil bottle seal, and dug out enough cotton to stuff a throw pillow, I knew right away I had made the right decision. From the size of these pills, they had to have some of every vitamin in the alphabet in them. Being the size of my thumb, they're a little tough to choke down, but as long as I take them before my wife leaves for work, just in case she has to give me the heimlich, it's all good.

    Now, I'm pretty sure that legitimately, I'm getting some benefits from these pills. And as awesome as I'd like to believe that I am, I'm not so bold as to believe  that my body was topped off on every vitamin in the spectrum. But in the week or so since I've been on these vitamin pills, I think those levels have slowly risen back to where they need to be, or even beyond.

   Despite the fact I still feel a tad shitty.

  I think my vitamin batteries are now fully charged. And like I've said, while I don't quite feel completely up to snuff it seems, because of the surplus of vitamin-ly energy coursing through my veins, I've developed luminescent pee. In fact, my pee has become so brightly charged, I'm confident that if I were to pee in a water bottle, Frodo and Samwise, and the other hobbits, could have used it to light their path, all the way from The Shire, to the bowels of Mount Doom. Of course, that would have also given up any element of surprise they would have had, so that may have been a bad example, but still, you get what I mean.

  I realize, that there's also a pretty good chance that this is all just an unfortunate side effect of taking these pills. But if that's the case, I think that the manufacturers are missing a golden opportunity here. (see what I did there.)

     If my job was making, "MEN'S" vitamins, and I knew that taking these pills would eventually make your pee shine brighter than the HID lights on my tractor, I don't think it would be too difficult to add a few other dyes to make your pee glow green or blue or even purple? I would imagine that men might line up to buy a bottle of vitamins that, despite the obvious health benefits, would enable you to you use your lightsaber to write your name in the snow in the colour of your choosing. And they would probably make that swooshy humming noise while they did it.

  Given the choice of Jedi's, and taking all things into consideration, if I had to emulate the lightsaber of any one of them, I suppose would probably pick Master Yoda.

    ..............because compared to all of the other Jedi's, Yoda is much shorter, .......um, no......WISER than all the other Jedi's. Ya, wiser.

#155. or, Day One Bust

  I'm sitting in my tractor seeding today. I mean, literally,
Sitting. In. My. Tractor. Seeding.

  It's posts like these that tend to add a little validity to me labelling myself as, -inatractor.

 This is actually 3rd day of seeding wheat. Yesterday was the 2nd. But for all intents and purposes, I'm calling today two, and yesterday one, and pretty much writing off my first day altogether, as it was about one of the worst days of seeding that I can recall in quite some time.

  When I finish seeding for the year, I try to put my seeder away after doing any repairs it requires. Same thing with the tractor, although, it gets used for a lot of other jobs, so we tend stay on top of what it requires as things develop. That being said, it still takes me 2 or 3 days to hook everything up, change oil, and go through all the nooks and cranny's, so when I go to the field, I can go with the confidence that I can put in a good days' work.

  That was my plan for Wednesday. To pull into the field and do some serious seeding. I made it about half way around my first pass, before I got stuck. Not stuck bad, just to when any forward movement stops happening. I don't like getting stuck bad. That happened to me last year and requires unhooking everything, and pulling out each of the three pieces separately. Also, I discovered that the degree to which you bury your tractor and seeder in the mud is directly proportional to the number of neighbours that will show up to watch as you try to get out. I had a lot of neighbours watching me last year, and really wanted to avoid that happening again.

  Anyways, I had  no chain because no one likes to anticipate getting stuck, and to bring one would also imply that my tractor driving might not be up to the standards as to avoid getting stuck in the first place. So we had to send for a chain before I could get towed out.

  While I was waiting, I called my tractor salesman to see if he had a set of rear wheel duals I could put on my tractor to give it more traction. He said he had a set for about $12 000, but he could get me a deal for $10 000. Which was about twice as much as I had expected, and about $10 000 more than I really wanted to spend. So for now, I'm being really, really careful.

  When the chain came, it was relatively easy to get pulled out by the other tractor we had there cultivating the field. Then I proceeded to get stuck again. Three more times. Three more times in as many acres. And, because my ego could no longer stand any further crushing blows, I left to find a drier field.

  The second field was much drier and it appeared that I was going to be able to salvage the remainder of the day. Until the fan hub
on the tractor blew up. They didn't have one in town, and it would have been a days wait for them to bring one in, so it was required that I make an after hours call to the John Deere parts warehouse, an hour and a half away in the city.

  Fortunately, I talked my wife into coming along for the drive with me, so that made the trip a bit more fun, she also suggested we pick up some coffee and doughnuts from Tim Horton's, for the drive home.

  It's funny how less than $10 worth of coffee and doughnuts can make getting stuck 4 times and a $1200 fan hub seem not all that bad.

  ................of course, that could have also had something to do with the sex we had later that night, but I hesitate to mention that, because well, doughnuts AND sex in the same evening, is likely more good than anybody deserves.

#154. or, Blow Me Down

  My wife brought the flu home from work. And to be fair, she told me that if I didn't stop kissing on her, I was going to get infected by it too. I suppose, looking back now, that that was good advice. However, as part of her nightly ritual toward attempting some semblance of sleep while she had this flu, she let me rub her back and chest down with Vap-O-Rub. Which, I'm sorry to say, is a job I may have taken to heart, with a little too much vigor, because, well........you know.......boobs!

  That's part of the reason I couldn't resist showering her with affections, but now, unfortunately we both have the flu.

  Actually, she's almost through the worst of it. I'm just getting started. If you came to our house today, and I was to take you on a guided tour, you may mistake our bedroom for a pharmacy. There's everything from anti-inflammatory creams for my shoulders so I can lift my arms above my head, to flu medicines, to hippy oils that are somehow supposed to make you better by rubbing them into your feet.

  We have nasal decongestants that you squirt up your nose, ranging from mild, that sort of feels like you're  breathing in a blast of cool ocean mist, to the industrial strength variety. Which tend to feel more like a gang of rogue oompa loompas have invaded your nasal cavity and are scrubbing out everything from your sinuses to the backs of your eyeballs with a mixture of battery acid and the ebola virus.

  We have pills to keep you unstuffed and alert during the day, so you can safely operate heavy machinery. And pills that you take at night, with a mild amount of sedative, so you can sleep peacefully through a natural disaster. But those make it a little hard to get up at 3:00 AM to check cows, so I've been avoiding them.

  Also, we each have a partially used roll of toilet paper going, because eventually you get to a point where you can no longer be bothered to pluck tissues from the box, one at a time to blow you nose, and it's easier and more efficient to make use of a continuous roll. If it's good enough for bear's asses, it's good enough for my nose.

  The time of year is upon us where I'm getting quite a bit busier, as we move into spring, and with the snow now mostly all gone, there's plenty of work to be done outside. Because I'm outdoors, and one couldn't possibly carry enough kleenex to last through the day while I have the flu, I get to employ one of the less graceful maneuvers, that I learned from my Dad. The farmer's blow.

  The farmer's blow is achieved by holding a thumb over one nostril, aiming the uncovered nostril slightly to the side, and blowing with enough force to blast out any snot you may have lodged up there, away and onto the ground. Then you repeat it with the other nostril in the opposite direction.

  I realize this is a little disturbing, but consider, before there were tissues, almost every farmer used to pack a handkerchief to blow his nose into. I'm talking way back here, before handkerchiefs were hats. Now, I've glanced into the bit of nastiness that comes out of my head when I have a cold, mostly to make sure I haven't lost any valuable grey matter in the blow, and I think it may be better to leave that mess on the ground as opposed to folded nicely into a piece of cloth, tucked away in your pocket, to deal with at some later time?

  I try to be discreet about it though. It's not like I'm aiming up tin cans on the fence or blasting one out onto the pavement at the CO-OP, if I stop for coffee.

  This takes place mostly in the barnyard. And I usually try to not let loose until I'm alone. That's not so bad is it? I mean it IS the barnyard,

   ............frankly, there's usually much larger and disgusting things out there to avoid stepping in.


  Linking up this week with the I Don't Like Mondays blog hop.  Stop by and read a few awesome blogs!

#153. or, Not Really a Hair Show Post.

  On Monday I took a bus load of budding young beauticians from the high school, into the city to see to the Hair Show. I wanted  to try to slip into the show with the class, on the schools dime, but where I was directed to drop them off, and where they let me park, was a quarter of a mile apart. By the time that I got into the building, my cargo was nowhere to be found.

 It was my intention to write this masterpiece on my adventure at the Hair Show, but as much as I love and appreciate the few of you who actually come here to read this drivel, the $25 that it would of cost me to buy my way into a show, that I didn't really want to see all that badly, just to report back to you on it, didn't seem like all that good of an investment.

  So, as an alternative, you get the non-Hair Show, Hair Show post instead.

  First, the obvious. If you're going to go to the Hair Show, and you're a guy, you're going to be in the minority. Very much so!

   Now, I realise that there are also a good deal of very talented men in the beauty culture field, and I saw some of those men there. But for the most part, I would say it was at least 95% women. And, if you are apt to do as I am, when faced with the situation of having to wait for a good deal of time before you are called upon for your particular set of skills, (which in my case, was driving the bus) you are going to watch the crowd.

  The best way to watch the crowd is to blend in and to not draw attention to yourself. Blending in is a little bit hard to do when you when you're in the 5% of the minority and you wear a cap to the hair show. Which is a funny turn of events, because I blended in quite nicely when I wore pretty much exactly the same outfit to the Farm Show, a couple weeks prior. Also, when you're so radically outnumbered by the opposite sex, it's harder to feel like you're friendly appreciative guy, and more like oggle-ing creeper guy. Unless of course, you're extremely confident guy, which I tend to not be.

  I pretty much drank coffee and pretended to play on my phone. Which, now that I think about it.........pushes me more into the creeper category than I really want to be.

  I consider myself to be pretty open minded and willing to try new ideas and experiences. That being said, I don't really think I belonged at the Hair Show. Don't get me wrong, if I had been there, in the company of my wife, or even a friend with any sort of connection to that field, I would have been more than happy to wander about the exhibits. But as a fellow who, more often than not wears a cap as part of his wardrobe, and has had maybe 3 different hairstyles over about 40 years, I was more out of place than not. I enjoyed myself, but I don't think I would have gone if I hadn't been asked to drive the bus.

  As the show wrapped up, I parked as close to where I dropped my crew off as I could and went inside to wait for them. I found it extremely interesting to watch the different hairstyles as people left the show. I assumed that they must have been doing make-overs there, because the hairstyles were far more interesting on the way out, than the had been on the way in.

  Maybe, if I had gone in, this 45 year old farmer would have stepped up and gotten some bold new doo? I can't say for sure, but hey, why not? I suspect that I'm not going to have the hair that I've still got for all that much longer. Maybe it's time for grand new hairstyle #4. I wonder how I would look with green hair, and a John Deere logo shaved into the back? I'd probably stick out at the Farm Show?

  ........................also, I'm currently trying to convince my wife to shave half of her head and dye the other side blue. So far, she hasn't warmed up to the idea.



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