Ramblings

I have today off from work. Well, kinda. They swamped us with 2 trucks last night. Almost 5000 pieces! A typical night is somewhere between 1,000-1,800. It was simply crazy! I had 350 break pack boxes, and of course I was by myself. I usually have around 50-75 boxes- 2-3 pallets. Last night I think there were 9 pallets! I only took a 30 minute lunch and stayed until 6:10am. I told Barry I would only stay if I had tonight off. There is no truck tonight. Not sure who's planning that was, but it was awful! There was so much freight on the floor last night you could hardly move a cart thru the aisles! Typically I'm done sorting and delivering carts by 8-10pm. Last night I was still delivering carts at 1am! I got up at 11:45 and I still feel pretty run over, but I'm going to just relax today and of course go to bed at a normal time. Tomorrow I'll have to take a nap in the afternoon before work.

The weather has been nice enough that we've had the windows open for 3 days. Thank goodness, as the a/c units were running hard for about 10 days! It's going to warm up into the mid 80's, but the humidity is way down so it should be fine. I am definitely going to work all the dogs tonight during the nice evening it should be. I did get most of them worked a couple days ago. Yesterday it was too warm in the afternoon for the sheep, so I just played ball with the dogs for awhile. Maddie is recovering fine. She's pretty much herself now today.

I need to order the right comb for the sheep shears. The one Tony has on there is for "blocking"- whatever that is. I need to order it so on my next 2 days off (wed & thurs) I can get my girls sheared. I'll need to check and see if they need deworming too. I dewormed and trimmed their feet a couple months ago.

We're supposed to get some rain and maybe storms on Friday and Saturday. We sure need it!! Ben is home today too. They had their PRT this morning. He got some things at wal-mart and got the oil changed in his car. Think I'll have him load the truck for the dump. The trash cans are my only issue with the dogs having full run of the 3 acres. I lined them up on the back of the kennels and bungee corded them to the kennel, but some (or one) of them are still knocking them over and then making a big mess. uugggh!! I get pretty angry! Especially when it's just "stuff" and not even "good" stuff. Like one day it was all kinds of stuff from cleaning the garage. I was hoping if they could not easily tip them over, they'd give it up- but no such luck. I might have to put them (cans, not the dogs) in the chicken pen. There won't be many chickens left soon anyway, as I can't keep them in, and there is a very well fed Broad Wing Hawk living in the woods. I had found one dead chicken in the coop a week ago. I thought it was probably the one that Maddie happily retrieved to us alive a couple weeks ago. Being a retriever, she did not break any skin, but what kind of shape it was in when she caught it was unknown. Well now I think it was one that managed to get away from the hawk. Broad Wings are known for being quite brave and tame. Indeed this one is! 'He' was on a dead chicken the other day and I as was walking towards him I kept blinking, thinking it really wasn't what I was seeing- 'he'd' never just stay there. Well, sure enough it was. I got 25' from him (on the other side of the fence) with 13 dogs and he did NOT move for several minutes. He only half-heartily flew off when Maddie spotted him and rushed the fence. I had my phone, and didn't think till later that I could have snapped a photo of him... He came back for the bird before the end of the following day. We'll have to make a chicken pen that is enclosed. Even though he had my chicken, it was quite a treat to see him so close. I have great interest in animals of prey. The behaviors and team work of pack animals simply amazes me and the solitary hunters are simply incredible! I'm a huge big cat fan.