Friday, January 30, 2015

Driveway Drivel

Driving V.E.R.Y. cautiously to the barn last night (and equally slowly home) should have been a big hint.

Slip sliding out to the van this morning should have clued me in even more.

The fact that the traction control kicked in as soon as I put the van in reverse should have decided it.

But I wasn't about to let something as simple as ice keep me home today. I had an appointment to make, a fridge that was emptying out, and thanks to a week's worth of tax time book keeping/number entering/receipt sorting/all that good stuff (Yes dear, I'm still working on those books. I just took a fifteen minute break from typing on one computer to type on the other. I'll be back to the books as soon as I finish this blog post.) a steadily increasing case of cabin fever. No way was I staying home for anything short of a dead vehicle or a sick kid.

And to be perfectly honest, the ice was mostly on our driveway and the dirt roads. Once you are on the highway, it's smooth sailing...er driving...

So I braved the ice rink that leads from the road to my house and off I went.

And off I went indeed. Or nearly so.

Backing out of my parking spot involved me putting the van into reverse and sliding it backwards about 10 feet. Traction control promptly decided to control traction and my van moved in the proper direction after that. Except when the traction control decided to turn traitor.

See Traction Control and I have a love/hate relationship. 90% of the time, it's great. That's when it's OFF. The other 10% of the time, when I actually do need it? Not so much. It likes to think my wheels should go straight instead of turn even though there's a corner right in front of me. Or that the ditch is so much more inviting than the road. Or my wheels are spinning too fast so let's slow them down and make Jill stop right in the middle of that piddly little snow drift that doesn't even come to the bumper but is covering a 2 inch thick layer of ice so once she's stopped she can't go anywhere and it'll take her and her husband a good half hour to get the van unstuck. Yeah, Traction Control and I are frenemies.

So I should have KNOWN to turn off the darn thing before I left. But I didn't.

And here's where I'll admit that my annually expanding experience with vehicles, icy surfaces, and snowbanks came in very handy. Despite how the previous paragraphs sound, I did NOT go in the ditch. I made it to town and back without incident.  I will say having the van do a 90 degree power slide around the corner of the driveway unintentionally (impressive when you consider I was doing about 5mph at the time) was a  teensy bit thrilling but I don't care to repeat the experience. I think it's just tempting fate (and those ditches!) to try it purposefully.

And the next time I leave, I'm turning off Traction Control before I leave my parking spot. I have this nasty suspicion that computer program/gadget doodad was only playing Cat/Mouse with me today. Next time I may not be so lucky...

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Last Year in Review

Looks like it's been a while since I last posted. Ooops. As usual, I guess. This is just part of my personality and anyone who knows me should know this. I'm horrid about remembering birthdays (including my husband's as well as my own), I usually get the last of my Christmas cards out after New Years (still have a buncha them to do so par for the course), and I tend to forget things quite easily.

But there's many things I managed to NOT forget over the last year.  Here's a recap of 2014 on our farm.

The farm was busy. Well, when is it not? But you know what I mean. We fought rain, snow, sun, and pretty much everything you typically get weatherwise in a year but the fields got planted, the crops got tended, it all got harvested, and it looks like we had a pretty decent year. Not phenomenal but decent. Can't ask for more than that, right?

We started renovating our house again and while progress seems to be agonizingly slow, progress IS being made. The plan is to finish wiring the basement this winter, move the bedrooms downstairs, and then start working on the upstairs. We're still looking at a few years before the whole project is done but what's a few more years when we've been doing this for the last 7 years? :) However, until we can move the bedrooms, our bed shares space with the couch in the living room.

Another big change was in our family. Baby girl joined us in early July and she has been a joy ever since. Her big brother and big sister simply adore her, and spend hours every day talking to her, reading to her, playing with her, and just generally entertaining her. It was an adjustment for me to have a newborn again because until R came along, my 'baby' was going on 3 but it wasn't long until it all started coming back to me. R is now 6 months old, oh so curious about e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g., babbling up a storm, and trying to roll over & sit up. V & A are growing by leaps and bounds too. V will be 5 in just a few weeks and is still farm kid through and through. It's not uncommon for him to ask if he can go with Daddy and be a bit sad when he can't. A hates being left behind because she's Daddy little shadow too. It just amazes me that my almost 5 year old and my 3 year old know more about farm machinery and how it operates than I do but it's like they are little sponges. They just absorb so much when they are out with L in the field, in the barn, checking irrigators, wherever. My kids love farm life and I hope they always appreciate it this much, whether they stay in the agricultural industry or not.

The rest were mundane, ordinary things. We worked on a few building projects here and there on the farms, still have two dogs keeping the rabbits out of my garden and coons out of the chicken coop, the cows are still milking, calves are still being born, and we even squeezed in a trip or two. It's been mostly life as usual.