Give Up and Go Home

Sometimes it is just better to give up and go home. Friday was one of those days.

The day was going pretty well for me. I went to paint with my friend Barb, who was one of the painting ladies from way back. We watched some watercolor videos and did several exercises on painting ocean waves and then storm clouds. When her husband came to see what we were doing, I said that we were painting up a storm - ha! After I left Barb's, I went to get my hair cut and colored.  Going to the hairdresser always makes me feel better.

Once back at the Lazy B, Toby wanted to work on the fence. With my hair looking great, I thought why not? It reminded me of the time I got my hair done in NM.  Because my hair is think and wavy, it will do most anything except lay down and be flat. The hairdresser loved my hair and enjoyed fluffing me up. When he was done fluffing, I looked amazing - maybe not like myself - definitely different. The hairdresser was quite proud of himself and asked what my plans were for the evening. When I told him we were planning on working cows, he was horrified.

 Such is life with Toby. No matter how good your hair looks, he still wants to do ranch work. So Friday night when he wanted to do fence work, I put on my fake diamond earrings and work clothes and headed out to be his ranch-hand. As sometimes happens, Toby has an idea of what he wants to do, but has not thought out the small stuff. We have been using the four-wheeler to pull the wire from post to post. The part we are doing now is down in the creek-bed and then up a hill past the neighbor's pond to a corner post - some pretty tricky terrain.  Toby decided that I should take the truck and flatbed trailer and drive down to the work area on a well traveled trail, while he came with the four-wheeler. Since he had the pond dam worked on last week, he took off on the four-wheeler to drive across the dam and check things out.

So I took off in the truck and was soon waiting on Toby at the fence. But he didn't show up. Hmm. I thought about the recent rain and the re-worked spillway on the dam. I bet it was muddy, and Toby probably stuck the four-wheeler in the mud. Even so, there was little I could do about it. Sure enough, he came walking to where I was in the truck. He said the four-wheeler was stuck in the spillway. He needed the chain, the tow-rope, and the come-a-long. I handed these tools to him. Still, there was little I could do to help him. So he gave me instructions to string a wire (from the left over spools) across a short span -  across the creek. While waiting on him to unstick the four-wheeler, I pulled a strand of barbed-wire across the creek using the spool of wire Toby had pointed out. But the spool did not have enough wire on it, and it was too short. Wasted time! Then I had to roll the wire back up, which was a real pain.


Toby finally showed up with the four-wheeler, and we managed to string one wire. I pointed out to Toby that he had probably better cross the wire and get on the neighbor's side of the fence in order to get the four-wheeler home. He ignored my advice. Instead, he slowly drove the four-wheeler down the hill toward the creek. He was going very slowly when the earth disappeared under him (couldn't see well in the deep grass) and the four-wheeler rolled over with Toby. It did a complete 360 and came to an upright position in the creek-bed depositing Toby out in the grass. It was one of those slow motion things. Interesting to watch, kind of funny, and horrifying all at the same time. He was not hurt at all - thank God. We had to use the chain and come-a-long to pull the four-wheeler out of the creek-bed. Then we had to work at getting the four-wheeler up the hill and back to the house. There was no point in trying to do any work. By this time the sun was setting, so we gave up and went home.

Yesterday afternoon we went back out to try again (of course, I had had my toes and nails done earlier that  day - perfect for ranch-hand work). We managed to get two wires strung this time without any mishaps. Yay!

Today, I am going to WF to court - to probate Mom's will. Yay again!