Crispy Morning

It was pretty chilly out there this morning. All of the waterers had two inches of ice on them. So I got to use my little red wagon in earnest this morning. Since this was my first icy morning, I didn't have everything that I needed in my wagon on the first trip. It will take some planning and organization to be really efficient with my feeding schedule.

Let's see, I need a bucket of Chicken feed, a bucket of goat grain, two scoops of dog food, two flakes of hay and two buckets of warm water. I don't think that it will all fit, I will have to make two trips. I want to take the hay at the same time that I take the grain, so that I can fill the hay feeder without any assistance from the goats, they will be distracted by the grain.

I will have to come back for the water, that way I can take more than two buckets, I carried about five buckets this morning but they are small, it is the number of trips that wear you out.

This sounds like a good plan but it will change from time to time with the weather. If it is sunny then I will be taking Calico outside for the day and she will have to be fed and watered out there.

If it is raining, all of the feeding has to be done inside the goat/chicken shed and that is a mess. Just getting into the shed through the slick mud with buckets and hay in your hands with the starving, welcoming committee in the doorway is always a treat, if I can even make it without falling before I get there.

The ice in the water offers another challenge. I wouldn't have to haul as much water if I could effectively remove the ice from the water buckets and troughs without using my hands. I take a small hatchet or splitting maul (whatever is handy) to break the ice, then if I could pick out all of the ice chunks most of the water could be preserved, recycled, it would be the green thing to do, I could save the planet! Usually I just go ahead and grab the ice with my fingers and pitch it out but this is not the wise thing to do on a crispy morning. I need some type of small crooked pitchfork device or a small holey shovel for ice removal.

For those of you playing the home game, I have only smacked my head one more time on the nesting boxes and my DH ate a Wheat Thin last night, just one with no problems, he will probably insist on eating two or three tonight.

Stubborn Man

Yes, he is a stubborn man that must be why I married him. My DH loves Tomato and Basil Wheat Thins, it is really more of an addiction than a love affair. I can't even stand the smell of them. He usually eats them everyday but we hadn't been to town and he hadn't bought any for about two weeks.

On Monday we went to town and he bought some. That evening he started eating them and all of the sudden he started itching all over and I am not talking about a little itch, the poor man was going crazy and scratching all over. I tried to get him to sit down and try to calm himself but he said that he couldn't.

Before long, he started wheezing and could hardly breath. I gave him two antihistamine capsules that I keep on hand for bee stings and suggested that we go to the ER but he wouldn't. He broke out with little bumps all over his stomach and he was bloated. I prayed for him and then called my friend who has had three episodes just like this and asked her opinion.

She said to get him to the Hospital, I reminded her who we were talking about and she told me what they did for her, which was nothing that I could do at home. He was mainly focused on his hands that he has so much trouble with anyway. He was rubbing and scratching the skin off of them. He finally started settling down and put his hands in some goat's milk and he started improving.

When the medicine kicked in he started getting sleepy. I checked his stomach and the bumps were gone. He stopped itching and was ready to go to bed. His poor hands were a mess, very swollen.

I woke him up during the night to give him another dose of the antihistamine and he was fine the next morning. His hands were still a little swollen but that was all.

The Wheat Thins are still on the table, I tried to throw them out and he wouldn't let me. I am afraid that he is going to try them again when I am not looking. My friend's allergic reaction was to something that she had eaten lots of times before as well. The Doctors told her that it was probably a preservative that she had a reaction to.

My DH admits that it had to be a severe allergic reaction to the Wheat Thins but he is having a struggle with having to live his life without them.

The Lord just has to take care of people like him, I guess. I asked him during the middle of the crisis, what he would do if it were me, there was a long pause before he said that he would take me to the Hospital, but only if I wanted to go. He covered all of his bases there.