Tractor Pull

Impressive sign


David and Trina heading to the ultimate tractor show


Yeah, tractors everywhere!

A real MAN'S sport, Tractor Pull!


Nice shiny tractors!

Folks watching, the tension is intense :)


Mini versions!


The old train station.


The doctors surgery room. Wouldn't you just rather not go to the doctor then being strapped to this torture bed!


A diesel engine collector shows off his finds!


Good old days!




Sorry guys,

this was a long wait. Had some more serious health issues but all is more or less well now. The typing is also a bit better since I can take off the splints now.
But never less we went to some cool events. This Saturday we went to a tractor pull. Lordy, that was a sight. All those farmers in the neighborhood brought there tractors, there must have been more then 60 of them. I cant believe how much those people here loooooooooove their engines. They polish them and spit shine them and tweak the engines so they go a bit faster, it is to cute!
Well so I thought that a tractor pull is where two tractors try to pull each other on the end of a chain and which ever is stronger is pulling the other from the spot. Little did this city slicker know about a real, real tractor pull. They are pulling this big humongous machine down a track past the judges and are being measured how fast they making the distance. Gosh the poor machines were roaring and it smelled of burned rubber and the folks were cheering. Such great simple entertainment. David just loved it and watched for two hours.
Meanwhile I checked out the little village. It is a recreation of an old circa 1830 village with authentic buildings which were moved from their original place and lovingly restored. Volunteers are playing the citizens as blacksmith, postman in the post office, telephone operator at the telephone company, candle maker, printer, doctor at his office, etc. Very impressive. They are looking for a volunteer for the candle making so I just might do that. Seems like fun though the little houses have no air conditioners and at 91 degree and 89% humidity as it was the wax probably melts without warming. And the candle maker (me) probably would faint after a few hours. Got to think this over. Maybe have to volunteer somewhere else.

Jebb's Open House

Some of my fancy party food!

Tractor Bruce on the left, Dog Bruce on the right and David in the back

Crafty Susan's daughter, Crafty Susan, Angie, Joe, Ella and Susan (Dog Bruce's wife)

Ella and grandma Susan. Ella adopted us because we have this petting zoo. She drags her grandparents over to our house so she can pet the dog, the kitties, the chickens and feed the fishies!!!

Left to right on our deck: Delynn (with back to us), Susan, Dog Bruce, Crafty Susan, Tractor Bruce, Crafty Susan's daughter and Trina.

Susan and Dog Bruce, our favorite neighbors. The pond beyond our pond is theirs, huge!

Delynn (Tractor Bruce's wife), Lynn and her grand daughter.

Joe, Angie and Ella returning from petting the chickens!

Cotton like fluff floating on our pond from ours and the neighbors cotton wood trees.

More mess and hard to get out of the pond!

It is like snow and gets into everything!


We decided to have a little Open House so we could meet all the neighbors and more important let them see the house since we remodeled everything. They were so curious about what we did that we just thought to have them all here and then we are done with showing it.
They all accepted our 2pm-5pm invitation with all being here exactly at 2pm (there is no being fashionable late here in Ohio) the last one though leaving at 8pm. Well that's Defiance, never rush anything. We had Tractor Bruce (our neighbor to the right with a bunch of tractors) and his wife Delynn; Dog Bruce (our neighbor to the left with 2 matted smelly lab mixes) and his wife Susan; Tony and wife Mary from across the street; Lynn to the left of them; Dale and Edith on the right of them and locked in a "many year feud" with Susan; Joe and Angie and little Ella (Dog Bruce and Susan's son, wife and grand daughter) from 2 houses away... and Crafty Susan (does all the craft one can think off) from next door to Dog Bruce!!!!! We all had a marvelous time though as usual I bought way to much food. The problem was that I bought all that fancy food at Costco like Gruyere and Brie and Mozzarella cheese, fancy olives and crusty Italian baguettes, little quiches, roasted Pine Nut Hummus and Pita chips and avocados where as the folks here probably would have preferred Cheddar Cheese on Wonder Bread and good old greasy Potato chips. Maybe a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for selection. Even the nice wine was not a great success and I am sure to remember to buy next time wine in the box. Also the imported beer found only one taker while the rest of the guys went for coke and diet coke. Interesting!
But everybody loved the party and decided that we should do this more often. Probably will be our job to get them together again. Some of the people had never met though they all live here for 6-12 years and not more then at the most 4 houses apart.
But David is the social butterfly here and is friend with all the guys above. There are days when Tractor Bruce would come over and chat with him for an hour or two followed by Dog Bruce and ending with Tony for a total of 4 hours gabbing. Yeah, those are the guys who say that women chat to much.
We will probably organize a get together about every 3 or 4 months, will see how it goes. I will insist though on potluck, just to learn what folks prefer to eat here.

Where is that hearing aid?!!!

Honor guard for fallen police officers on "Fallen Police Officers Memorial Day" last weekend in front of our beautiful Court House

sweet smelling Lilac under our bedroom windows

Can you find the eggs? Well hidden in the rocks surrounding our pond

Soeckli reading my magazine!

Can you find Soeckli?

Billboard on my way to the hospital. Makes you want to be on oxygen. Wonder what is really in this oxygen bottle to make this guy look so silly!!!

Isn't it just fun having a tube stuck up in your nose and blow soap bubbles. Are you sure that he is inhaling oxygen???

Victims of a drive over!!!



Started physical therapy and love it! I have to go 3 times a week and it is just haven. They wrap me into heating pads for 20 minute all cozy and warm to loosen up my muscles and then a nice massage. And the health insurance pays for this!!! Nice! Then some stretching exercises and then I am done. Easy, and I do feel better already. I am just so dang knotted up that my muscles actually stand up! Crazy. Then I also got a call from the doctors office that I have actually carpal tunnel syndrome on both wrists and they want both wrists in a splint for 3 weeks. Well now I look rather funny and of course this way I can't do much housework (how sad)and typing is a b...h so you won't get that many postings in the next couple of weeks.

About a week ago David got a mailer that Sears would have a special on hearing aids to the tune of $1500 off. I try to talk him into getting new ones for months because he hates the old ones and barely ever wears them which makes me shout all day long and he doesn't hear anything or anyone. So we decided to go and just have them give us a price because our insurance doesn't cover hearing aids and then we would make a decision. We went there and on the way out of the house I grabbed the old ones just in case the guy at Sears would want to see them.
We listened to his sale pitch after he gave David a hearing test, then told him we would sleep on it. I wanted to show the guy the old hearing aids but couldn't find them in my purse which is not that unusual if you ever saw the content of it. I assumed that I left them in the car and was not to concerned.
Then we went out to the car and I rummaged again in my purse, dumping everything on the seat, nothing. Also nowhere in the car. Well I must have left them on the kitchen table on my way out. So we went to the farmers market just across the parking lot. All the time I had that distinguished feeling that I DID grab those dang hearing aids. I just couldn't shake that feeling. I asked David to drive back to the spot were we were parked and...thanks God they were laying there in their little pouch on the asphalt right in the spot were we had parked just 5 minutes ago. Phew..., they had cost us 6 grand about 10 years ago. I was sooooooooooo relived.
David started driving and mentioned casually to check them out and,.. see above pictures what came tumbling out of that dam little pouch...,a handful of little crumbs and electronics. But man I just started laughing it was just so hilarious how pathetic they looked. And I didn't had to talk David into getting a new pair unless he would have wanted to try to crazy glue this mess. I was just to frigging funny. I couldn't stop laughing for the next 10 minutes. What a coincidence, here we go and check out about hearing aids and the next minute we run over the ones he had. He keeps on teasing me though that I secretly threw them under our truck just to get him to get new ones!!!

Health Scare

Our new additions to our family are Soeckli (swiss for little sock) a girl kitty...
...and Baerli (swiss for...you guessed it right... little bear)a little boy cat.
Victim of hard play!
innocent looking kitties!
David and Trina cleaning the pond of dead vegetation
I am helping!
Got to drag it out!
Good job, Trina!
Give me that load.
So much muck!!!





Well I had a rough couple of weeks. Went to the doctor on a Friday for a check up because my arms and legs keep on falling asleep and I have some dull pain in my right arm and right knee. He listen to my lengthy complained list and then blasted me with the remark that all those symptoms plus my fatigue, stiff neck, frequent headaches and dizziness suggest Multiple sclerosis and that he would like to run some test. Oh my gosh, my heart dropped in my pants and I could hardly wait to get out of there and drop into David's arms and sob my heart out. Now I had to wait through the whole weekend for my first test. Plenty of time to read up everything there is to know about MS and the symptoms were all there.
Monday the testing began with a brain and spine MRI. Oh man, how I hate when they shove you into this tub and then the banging begins. One and a half hour later with also some dye in my veins and brain I was on the way home. Two days later I had a test where they run electric currents through your nerves to test how well they work. I was scheduled to run this test first on my arms and then the following week on my legs. Went to the hospital again and had this trigger happy (grumpy person number three in Ohio) doctor who just loved to electric shock me. My arms were flopping and took on a life on their own every shock hurting like a SOB. A few days later came an extensive blood test. The next day came a call form the doctors office that my cholesterol was way high but the doctor wanted to wait with seeing me till he had all the results from all the tests. I still had the 2nd shock test for my legs the following Wednesday. Then Saturday before mothers day I got that fateful call, again from the doctors office, that the spine MRI was not normal.......but the doctor would wait to see me till my final testing was done which would have been another week. I asked if he could see me sooner and the nurse agreed to have him see me on Tuesday. 3 days waiting, hard to do. I never understood quite the "sinking feeling" expression but at that moment I felt it in all its dept. It was a dark, dark moment. I told David and we kind of started to make plans what to do if...... .It was a miserable mothers day and hard to stay cheerful (and write cheerful blogs). Then came Tuesday and we sat across the doctor and he started to tell me that.....the MRI was not normal because I have 3 severely depressed vertebrates which pinch several nerves. Hence the stiff neck, headaches, numbness in my arms and legs. The dizziness is still caused by my menieres disease, the pain in the right arm turned out to be carpel tunnel syndrome and the pain in the knee is ....old age (arthritis).
Here I went again sobbing but this time with relief. Suddenly then sun was up again and I felt like I came out of a dark tunnel. I still had to take that last electric shock test but even this time my legs flopped helplessly, I forgave this trigger doctor knowing it would be okay which he confirmed.
So now I have an arm splint for 3 weeks for my carpel tunnel syndrome, a knee brace to heal the inflamed arthritic knee, am on cholesterol medication and have 3/week physical therapy for my neck. He thinks that the high cholesterol is genetic. Have to check with my brother to find out if my mom had high cholesterol. Anyway friends, I never have been so thankful for being as healthy as I am. We just always take it for granted until something like this happens.
Just to make my happiness complete I went the following day shopping. It is magic, shopping always helps to restore my mood!!!
I love you all and I am happy to be alive!

Chickens

One day old and very cute!
10 days old and still very cute!
About 2 weeks old and trying to escape!
Ugly, ugly chicks!
The beginning of the barn!
David hard at work...
...and so am I!
I am good at this you know!
Of course Trina is helping!

Our new kitty is fascinated by the big birdies who are not afraid of him!
Finished! The chickens moved in and David is putting the finishing touches on the fencing!
Beautiful!




Like our life wouldn't be busy enough we also have chickens now. We got this dream of waking up in the morning, the sun shining in our faces and after some stretching and yawning stroll out to the chicken house to get some still warm fresh brown eggs. Now here is the reality. David was researching for weeks which chickens were right for the area, most resistant to diseases, also good for meat, best laying......and so on. I also ordered him the "Chicken for Dummies" book. He was all excited about having his own chickens.
So we ordered 14 hens and a rooster for good measures. Of course the neighbor had second thoughts about us messing with the value of the neighborhood us starting to bring in "livestock"! We assured him that we would fence in the chicken run so they would not stray onto his property. So in April our chicks arrived just before Easter and it was real cute to have real live Easter chicks. We had them in our enclosed sun room since it was still to cold outside for itsy bitsy chicks. Well they started growing and turned into those ugly adolescent chicks who looked like they had some disease, half feathers, half down and some bare skin, ugly, ugly. The also grew out their tub and it smelled pretty darn farmish in our sun room.
Then came building a chicken barn which took David with a bit help from me about 2 weeks hard, hard labor and about $2000. Then the fencing took another few days and those dang things kept on growing.
Well their housing is done, they moved in and David knows them all by name. He is totally be smitten by his girls (and one boy) and he doesn't mind to clean their water, food, bedding and still wait till about August till they will start laying eggs. I tell you, they better be laying LOTS of eggs to make up for all the headaches and cleaning the sun room, and putting up the chicken coop and for the 2 grands we spent on them. They have to lay 12000 eggs ($2.00/dozen) to pay for their home. They better be busy little birds!!!!