if it ain't one thing it's another

ARRRRRRG!

So this pendant I just finished, which I haven't shown you yet... it's been Murphy's Law and every delay under the sun with this thing... It turned out fine, it's gorgeous, but I swear... yeesh. So it's done, and I was ready to input the client's credit card info for the final payment, and he's been so patient waiting forever for this thing, and I plug in the terminal, and...

There's an error message flashing on the terminal screen. Oh no! I called tech support, and they said it's a hardware failure, but "because it's still under warranty it'll ONLY be $150 to replace it." Only $150. Well super. That's just great. Really great. Are you picking up on the sarcasm here? *sigh* I need a new one, so what choice do I have. *sigh*

Thank you universe for crapping all over that today.

Oh yeah, and of course I had to tell the client that guess what, there's YET ANOTHER DELAY and now I won't be able to ship it out til next week.

*SIGH*

I think I need to go kick something.

pardon me while I rant...

Sorry, I need to rant and rave for a minute. I've been selling hatching eggs on ebay since March. For the most part my buyers are quite lovely and pay in a very timely manner. In fact, I require them to pay within 24 hours. It's not just that I'm uptight and picky about it, there's really a reason.

Auctions end on Friday nights. Payment is needed by Saturday night. Eggs are packed Sunday afternoon (without payment, I can't pack eggs). Eggs ship first thing Monday. Obviously that leaves a teensy bit of leeway... basically I need the money by mid day Sunday or else the eggs can't ship on time. This is a time-sensitive matter. Shipping takes a serious toll on them, and delaying that a day, or two, or more... it's really not helpful.

I make it abundantly clear on the listing that the buyer gets 24 hours to pay, and if they can't do that, they should not bother to bid. So I think five times now in the span of selling eggs this season, I've had complete nincompoop buyers. I send an invoice, and then another, and a reminder, and a threat to report them for not paying. And then Tuesday morning rolls around and I get payment, sometimes with no explanation, sometimes with the LAME-O "sorry, I couldn't get on the internet." Well for Pete's sake, find a way! Or if you knew you didn't have internet access over the weekend, DON'T #@($#$% bid!!!!!!!!!

Arrrg!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yeah, I know, it may seem minor but it just annoys the crap out of me.

the people who drive past

Did you know that walking down the road can be an interesting study of people?

I'm enjoying walking the dog. We now go 2.5 miles a day. That's the whole road. I have also, many a time, walked my horse up and down the road for fun. I've also ridden my horse on the road, but I really don't like doing that, I'm not as brave (stupid?) as I was in the olden days when I used to ride Thunder on the road all the time.

Anyway... I wave at everybody who drives past. If I know them they get a big enthusiastic wave, otherwise I sort of just lift my hand and acknowledge them, sort of a "I see you there in your car, and thanks for not running me over." I figure it's the neighborly thing to do, right? Oh, let me clarify that I generally only wave at cars that are coming toward me. I ignore those that come up from behind, it's not like they need to change lanes to pass me. If the driver knows me then they wave and I wave back, it's all good.

It's a rural-ish road that I live on. I mean, it's not one of the busiest roads in this town, but it's also not devoid of cars. It's a through road that comes off the main road, so it gets its share of people passing through. It's two lanes. No bike lane, and for the most part no shoulder. Seriously, there's the white line, and then a few inches of pavement, a few inches of gravel, and then a big ditch. So a person could theoretically walk on the "shoulder" (outside the white line) but a person and a dog cannot both fit there. Angus the dog usually walks on the white line, and I'm on the road. It's not like I take up much of the road. And hey, it's the country. And hey, we're entitled to walk there.

Now, I am careful not to inconvenience drivers. On rare times when two cars are coming from opposite directions and will pass me at approximately the same time, I get off the road as much as possible. The ditch isn't really practical, so at worst I'll have Angus sit on the "shoulder" and I'll stand next to him, both of us technically off the road. Then the cars don't have to worry so much about running me over. And I always try to get onto the shoulder as much as possible when someone is driving toward me.

But the people are interesting. They seem to fall into these categories, and this is in order of frequency I think:

1) people who slow down a tiny bit, get at least most of the way into the other lane, but give only a tiny "who the hell is that" wave in my direction. They seem confused by my presence, and in a hurry to be somewhere, and they don't smile.

2) people who slow down noticeably, get at least most of the way into the other lane, smile and wave enthusiastically. Sometimes they know me, sometimes they don't.

3) people who don't slow down, do get all the way into the other lane, and don't acknowledge me at all. Often they are on cell phones.

4) people who slow down to a crawl, get way way way over in the other lane, and give me this stupefied expression as though I might jump out into the road and get them. (rawr, yeah, I'm like that). They wave timidly.

5) people who move over at most half a lane, don't slow down, and don't acknowledge. Literally, I could reach out and touch these cars, and I hate these people. There is a whole freakin' other lane wide open, and they barely get over. Without fail, these are young men. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all the young men drivers do this, just that the only drivers who do happen to fall into that category. It's all I can do not to flip these people off, and I'm sooooo tempted to carry something like a riding crop and smack the cars as they go past, just something to make a noise but not do any damage. Ugh, these ones really get to me!

I should write something

Yup, feeling guilty for not blogging in three days. The turkeys on the pistol grips are getting pretty close to done (still have to do the backgrounds, and the last image, okay this is REALLY hammering home how badly the prices need to go up, I am working my booty off on this piece). But I didn't photograph them just yet.

I've been sick for the last few days. It's a mild cold, but it's annoying, and I feel absolutely drained of energy. I baked cookies today (because me and Mom and my grandpa went to visit my brother at the fire station today, and I had the urge to bring the guys some cookies) and I sat down on the couch while waiting a few minutes for the pan to cool, and I was asleep in an instant. Hmm. Hopefully I'll be feeling better soon!

I'm about maxed out on family togetherness... it's weeks like this one where I envy people who have a separate studio into which they can sequester themselves. I need me-time!!!

Pet peeve of mine: people who call me something other than my name. I don't mean "you sexy gorgeous amazingly talented goddess" because that might be okay (though nobody's tried that specific one out on me yet), I mean people who don't know me who feel the urge to call me Kathy. Or Katie. Or Kate. Or Kathleen. Come on, that one's not even close. Seriously. My website is KatherinePlumer.com. I sign things as Katherine, that's the name I go by. Sorry, it just drives me bonkers, especially when I sign an email as Katherine and get a return email "dear Kathy".

Another pet peeve: how do I say this, body noises? Specifically people who sniff incessantly. Constant throat-clearing gets to me too, but incessant sniffing makes me want to scream and throw things. Now, I'm fairly forgiving if you're sick, or eating soup, or outside in cold weather, or have terrible allergies (because goodness knows all that happens to me too, but really though, blow your dang nose or be conscious of snorking your boogers in the presence of other people), but when someone's normal daily existence and conversations are punctuated by a frequent loud SNIFF, I think my insides are starting to tie into knots. Aaaarrrrrrg! How are people unaware of how annoying they are?!?! Call that my public service announcement of the day. Nobody wants to hear your nose.

Hmm, did I mention I need some me-time? I'll stop ranting...for now.

fence woes

Today I am going to talk about fencing. Not the kind that involves swords. The kind that (at least theoretically) contains livestock. It gives me something to rant about, plus I'm soliciting input from those in the know.

Whoever built the pasture fence here didn't do a very good job. It was in "fair" condition when we moved here, although the original owners had used this awful plastic mesh on the fence. Not only was it a complete eyesore, but it wasn't really all that strong, and when a big horse like Gwen decides to lean on it, she might just pop through on the other side (this happened!). So my brother J, bless his heart, got the horrible job of taking down the plastic stuff and putting up non-climb wire instead. Major improvement, but the fence still has some serious structural problems.

Here's the fence (and a lovely view of the blackberries out by the creek). It's about 5 feet high, it has posts and a top rail, and the rest is the non-climb wire. Sometimes I think it would have made more sense just to do the whole property with hot tape, but the wire does have the advantage of keeping dogs on the proper side of the fence.


Just for comparison, this is the corral fence. It's welded pipe. I love it. I could keep an elephant in this here (not that I have any plans to). I wish they would have fenced the whole place with this welded pipe, but I'm sure it wasn't cheap.

There are several issues that are all coming together to create a situation called "the fence is falling down." One is that the dorks who built the fence did a really stupid job of it. Instead of angling the top of the posts (so that rain would run off) and nailing the top rail to the outside of the post, they actually cut sections out of the top of each post (OMG wouldn't that be a serious pain in the asterisk? Worse than angling the top of each post?) and set the top rail in there, like it's on a little shelf. See that? Bad no no.

Great, so now there's this area on the top of each post where rain water can flow down and puddle and.... you guessed it, rot the posts. They're all rotten, at least the tops. Most are still firmly in the ground, but a few wiggle. So what happens when the post rots? The top rail falls off! And you get a fence line that looks like this:

I'm NOT proud of this, I hate this, this is embarrassing, and I've been working on fixing it (that's obviously a section I have not gotten to) and it's probably going to at least many weeks to do. Sometimes it's basically just the wire that's holding up the fence. Aaack! I can't nail the boards back up, they won't stay put in rotten wood, so I have to drill holes, loop wire around each post, and wire the stupid top rails back up. It's rednecky to say the least, and feels like putting a band-aid on a gushing wound. But, it'll at least buy a few more years. The entire thing seems to be all falling down now. For a while it was just one board here and there, but omg in the last month I swear it's just all gone to heck.

Of course, a major contributing factor is that the darling mares are VERY fond of scratching themselves on the fence. ARG!!! They are both fond of scratching their butts on it (yes, they are wormed consistently, and yes I do take care to clean the gunk out of the udder-area to prevent itchiness, but they do it anyway). Gwen will also lean into the fence at about a 45 degree angle and scratch her entire body along the fence. I about have a heart attack when I see her do that, I can hear the wire stretching and the posts groaning and popping.

So, this brings up the thought of hot wire. It may be all that can save the fence, the horses really need to be kept from leaning on it. Without going out and measuring, I don't know many feet of fence there are. Thousands I'm sure. At different times of year they have access to different pastures. They always have access to the corrals, and sometimes are off pasture entirely. This is a VERY not-to-scale drawing, but this is pretty much the lay of the land. I'm having a hard time figuring out exactly how this could be hot wired, or if it's even doable ($$$). Thoughts about hot wire/hot tape? I want to hear them. Only the wire fence would need it, the red pipe fence is fine.


Sigh.

things that annoy me

Maybe they will annoy me less if I write them down.

When planning a party:
People who don't bother to RSVP. I assume these people aren't coming, but it would be nice to know. Like, even an email would be fine.
People who say they'll be there and then don't show up. Common courtesy I think would at least be a phone call afterwards saying "so sorry, we were deathly ill and couldn't make it." Or whatever the excuse of the day may be.
People who don't RSVP and then show up anyway, sending me scrambling to find more chairs.

Okay I kind of hate party planning, and twice in two weekends is threatening to make my brain explode.

Other things that annoy me:
People who write "U" and "R" instead of "you" and "are." And other things like that too. I'm down with the LOL and the BTW, but when someone writes and says "I want 2 get chickens from U, R U selling any" I don't want to reply, and dudes, you need to know that when you send me a note that says "How R U?" you lose major IQ points in my book and that's pretty much an instant dealbreaker. Call me picky, I just HATE THAT. Really, is it THAT DIFFICULT to write a few more letters and not look like a flaming idiot? And I only thought about being an English minor in college, thank goodness it didn't go any farther.

little old lady

Pardon me, I have to rant. I was raised to believe that one does not open a can of whoop ass on little old ladies, which is why, at various occasions on my life, I've shown great restraint in not doing so. One of these occasions was on Saturday. I was one package of cream cheese short of what I needed to make my birthday cheesecake, and the local convenience store didn't have any so I drove down to the Raley's in Galt, picked up my one little box of cream cheese and was waiting in the express line while the couple in front of me wrangled a couple of kids and paid for their groceries. This little old lady got into line behind me, but stepped sorta in front me me and put her one little package of bacon on the checkout counter. I gave her a weird look but didn't think much of it, maybe it was a very heavy package of bacon or something, who am I to judge.

The checker, without looking, reached over and grabbed the pack of bacon and scanned it. And little miss little old lady marched her butt right around and cut in front of me. "Um excuse me!" I exclaimed. She didn't even bother to look. That b----! What a clever ploy! From now on I will always set my own groceries on the little shelf to avoid being scammed by little old ladies, or maybe I'll just start using a shopping cart even when I only have one item, that way I have something to fend them off with. Ugh I know it's ridiculous but I was SO mad, I just hate it when people do stuff like that.

Eighteen down...

I have washed 18 chickens in the last two days. Actually, technically not, because 4 of them were still clean from last time around. But still, they count toward the final tally. At this rate I may actually finish on Monday, that would be nice! Of course there will be a lot of touchup work to do on Friday...

I've been looking at the BBRed cockerels and trying to figure out which ones to keep for breeding pens this (will be hopefully selling the rest next weekend.) It's so tough, none of them is perfect. Some have better type but poor color, some have better color but poor type. I'm sort of feeling like I need to keep the ones with the best type, since "type makes the breed and color makes the variety, and type always must come first." I do get pretty hung up on color though, since it's darn near impossible to get it right. So when I have a bird with proper neck color, it's almost easy to overlook that his tail feathers aren't long enough, or he has red spots on his chest (should be solid black). Maybe I should just eeny meeny miney moe them...

I finished up drawing for the night last night at 12:15 and then headed off to bed. Olin was asleep on my bed, and I was feeling generous so I decided I'd let him sleep inside (knowing it meant I'd have to get up around 5 to let him out... but I always have faith in my ability to go back to sleep. If I've never mentioned that I'm not a morning person, I am NOT a morning person). Anyway, around 12:45 he left my room, and about 5 minutes later I heard it--the Sound of Impending Doom. When you hear it, it's too late. I launched out of bed in movie-like slow motion, the voice in my head shouting "noooooooooooo!!!!!!" But it was too late. Four, count em four piles of cat barf in the hallway. Do cats ever barf on linoleum? He could have walked just a foot and a half down the hallway and had a vast expanse of easily cleanable floor in the laundry room, but no... I had to be out there in my pj's scrubbing cat puke out of the carpet at 12:45am. I love my cats, but I hate cat puke.

So then this morning I stumbled out to the kitchen (was it early? Nooo, just takes me a while to wake up!) and what did I encounter? No, thankfully not more cat puke, but a very substantial trail of ants traipsing across the kitchen floor from the grate under to oven, to the cat food dishes. Gross. I was pretty sure I could hear them all gleefully singing the "hi ho hi ho" song as they went off to work, but those were not the words going through my head. I blasted some ant poison around the room and wiped up all the little carcasses. There are always strays though, running around the floor in a "oh crap oh crap!" panic. I'm not a big fan of ants.

In other news, those drawings I said I was going to finish the other night are more or less done, I just need to sign them and make sure I don't need to tweak anything. I've noticed that my drawing style has actually changed a fair amount between now and the start of the Standard project. Evolution, I guess. I think it's improved, but I'm noticing that just the way I handle the materials is different, things like more frequent use of graphite to "outline" things. This pair of illustrations are white birds. I think white is the most difficult color to draw, trying to get the shadows believable. With other colors, the drawing it much more saturated and the lines are pretty sharp, but white tends to look soft and blurry, so without even really thinking about it I've been putting a bit of a line around certain edges. I think it looks good. Dang I can't wait to show all those drawings on my website!

And....

Did you see the clip on the news where a crowd was stampeding into Wal-Mart at opening time the day after Thanksgiving and people were getting knocked down and trampled on??

Oh my.... There are no words.....

I know some stores here opened up at 5am. Yeesh. There are few things in life worth getting up that early for. I can think of maybe one or two, and none of them include shopping. Then again I have a pretty strong aversion to shopping anyway.

Holiday Cheer?!

I love Christmas a much as the next person, and certainly more than some people, but for crying out loud it is November. I think it gets worse every year. I am just not ready for decorations yet, and there are TWO local radio stations now playing ONLY Christmas music. Stand aside, I am going to be ill. When it gets to be mid December I might tune in, but now I frantically skip those stations when I have my headphones on while working. I just think it's all kind of disgusting, and strays so far from the spirit of Christmas.

Yesterday started out gloomy and gray, windy and wet. We need rain though, so that's not a bad thing. Got a little over a quarter of an inch, and I'm hoping that will be enough to kick start some grass in the pastures (the horses are eating way more hay than normal for this time of year). I was looking at pictures I'd taken of Shylah the other day (and pics I took this time last year) and the difference in the pastures is really weird. Right now they are barren, not a green speck in sight, and last year there was a good couple inches of grass already growing. I read in the paper there were something like 12 days over 70 degrees this November, while last year had none. Mind you, the weather has been GORGEOUS and absolutely perfect for horse training and horse riding, but it's weird. The chickens are all out of whack too. This is the screwiest year for molts. Usually they lose and regrow all their feathers between, oh, July and October, depending on the individual, but I think there are some out there that never molted, and quite a few of them just started within the last couple weeks. Very weird.

Anyway, the rain cleared up and the day ended with breeze blowing enormous pink and gold clouds across a sunny sky. Amazing. I love this time of year. Today is sunny, windy, and cool.

I stayed up drawing til 11:45 last night. I really do well at night, which offsets my general lack of productivity in the mornings. And actually I think it's working out pretty well, because now I knowingly give myself "mornings off" to run errands, work the horses, read (I just started a book about art pricing!), etc., and I can still get my hours in by working really late (I may even try to push those hours back more, and go til after midnight...we'll see). Seems to be a good system, and since I pretty much have no life anyway, it's not like it infringes on anything. :-D

I oiled most of my tack today, which took several hours, and I didn't even finish because I ran out of oil half way through the saddle, so I'll have to get more on Monday. Not sure what inspired me to do that today. I was just going to oil the reins because they are still annoyingly stiff, but then I figured I may as well do everything. I guess having nice tack is inspiration enough to take good care of it!

Well, time to go feed the critters.

I need to rant.

This used to be a long post about something that happened in the neighborhood, but I have decided to delete it, on the off chance that the subjects of my rant ever did decide to surf around my website. The bottom line is:

1) spay/neuter your pets unless you have an extremely legitimate reason not to.
2) if an animal is sick, get it treated.
3) if an animal is in pain and is untreatably sick, do the right thing and have your vet euthanize it.

Cooper's hawks and women's fashions

No, the two are not related, they are just the two things on my mind. I almost lost my nearly-blind BBRed hen to a Cooper's hawk this evening. "Catty" has bad cataracts (hence her name, I know, how weird) and can only see in certain directions--behind and above is not one of those directions. So I was heading in after collecting eggs, and I heard a bunch of squawking and out of the corner of my eye saw what looked like two birds "tumbling" across the driveway. Immediately I knew what was going on, so I ran out there with the dogs close at my heels. The hawk was perched on top of a roll of fencing, and Catty had scrambled inside the roll. I went straight for the hawk, and when the dogs saw me going after it, they went after it too and barked while it flew off. Good for them, I want them to learn I don't like hawks around the birds (the dogs hate pigeons too, and will chase them). Catty is fine, other than some emotional bruising. I couldn't find a scratch on her, but she was pretty shook up. Poor girl, she's unfortunately an easy target. Kids love that bird, she is so easy to catch (of course, she can't see much!) and she's really docile when caught. Seems like EVERY summer there is a very brazen juvenile Cooper's hawk that hangs out and harasses the birds. Can't be the same one, it's a juvenile every year! Arg. I am not a hawk-hater, don't get me wrong. I would never harm one. I have a lot of respect and admiration for birds of prey, and everybody has to eat. I just don't like it when they choose my birds as their potential meals! 99% of my birds are cooped up, so it's not usually an issue. Maybe it will go away.

The other thing on my mind tonight is the current state of women's fashions. I had to go to the mall today to attempt to find something to wear to a family reunion thing this weekend, and holy moley there is a lot of ugly stuff out there. Not just ugly, but totally unflattering. How do people bend over in those short skirts??? How do people cram their feet into those pointy shoes? There are some really cute looking shirts, but geez they are not flattering! Unless of course someone fits into a size small...but hey, that's not me. One would think that clothing designers would realize that someone who doesn't wear the little bitty sizes might not look really hot in a skin-tight shirt...right? Yeesh. So I think instead of trying to look nice this weekend we should have a "wear the ugliest thing you can find at the mall" party. For me, it would be the orange/black/brown/white broomstick skirt (think calico cat), a lime green velour and lace halter top so low cut that it would leave NOTHING to the imagination (I am assuming one is supposed to wear something under those?? Or do you just not bend over? Gosh if you wore that with a little butt-bearing skirt you couldn't even walk safely!) and of course to finish the outfit it would have to be the rainbow-sequined pointy-toed high heel shoes. Oh yeah, I'd be hot stuff...sheesh. Shopping is bad for self-esteem.