Jenna's World

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Veronica (Mars)?

2019-07-27T19:19:00.000-04:00

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Veronica (Mars)?

I’m assuming all us Marshmallows have, by now, seen the fourth season reboot of Veronica Mars. I’ve been stewing over it for a week, trying to get my feelings in check so I could compose something for the blog. I know it’s going to sound like I hated everything about season 4, but that’s not true. There were some great parts and, even though I also had some major issues with it, if they hadn’t killed Logan I’d have been on board for another season. But then the wheels came off the Veronica Express just as it rolled into the station and the more I read from the writers (and Kristen Bell, herself), the angrier I am about it. A solid week of therapeutic rage-tweeting just doesn’t do justice to my anger. It’s epic, spanning years and continents, lives ruined, blood shed. Epic. I hope that in the last week my thoughts have coalesced into something coherent. Maybe not, but I’m going to dive in anyway.

Ah, Neptune, how I’ve missed you! It’s like going home again. Not much has changed… and therein lies our first problem. But the issue isn’t what writer Rob Thomas thinks it is.

“The longer I play these high-school relationships,” he said, “the more it will feel like nostalgia. I almost feel like it will grow sad, it will be a process of diminishing returns to keep being the thing we always were.”[1] “The movie was intentional nostalgia and fan service. It was a fan-funded movie. It was like making a list of all of the things that we thought fans wanted to see, and trying to build a mystery plot that would allow us to get to those bits of dessert. That was what we set out to do. These episodes [season 4] are a bridge to what Veronica Mars is going forward. If we started off with something that was half teen soap, half noir-mystery show, these episodes are taking us to a place where we are pretty strictly a detective show.” [3]

— Rob Thomas

First off, what’s wrong with nostalgia? That’s your fan base. Country folks like me have a saying, Rob: you don’t shit where you eat. The fans are the reason your show that was cancelled after three seasons got a movie and was then resurrected from the dead 12 years after it last aired. That doesn’t happen on accident. Your fans are fucking necromancers. Fear them. They’re the reason you have this job. Stop degrading “fan service” and “pandering to the fans.” Without them, you’re just writing Veronica Mars fanfic. I’m so tired of patronizing showrunners telling us that they’re “giving us what we need, not what we want.” That’s like me going to work and telling my boss I’m giving him the work he needs, not the work he wants. It's not going to end well.

What’s sad, Rob, isn’t the high-school nostalgia— it’s the fact that Veronica as a character hasn’t changed at all in 15 years. She and Dick Casablancas are the only ones who have had zero personal growth. I love ~~Dick~~… um, Mr. Casablancas… but he has the IQ of a walnut so I’m gonna give him a pass there. Veronica, on the other hand, I expected better from. It wasn’t until I was a couple episodes into the new season, horrified by the way she was treating her friends and her boyfriend, that I truly realized something: that’s who she’s always been. Veronica is laser-focused on what she wants, on the mystery in front of her that needs solving, and she’ll walk over everyone in her path to achieve that. Her unbridled selfishness was expected, understandable, and even endearing in the first two seasons when she was a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl who had been through an unimaginable amount of trauma. It was less appealing in season three. Remember when she tanked her father’s election because she couldn’t be bothered to pick up the damn phone? Everything else is sacrificed in the wake of Veronica achieving her goals. And we’ve loved her in spite of it because, hey, her heart was mostly in the right place and she’s been through a lot.

And then we get to the movie. Maybe we were just so glad to have her back that we were willing to overlook her flaws, like the shitty way she treated Piz. I was never rooting for their relationship, so maybe I let that slide. But to be honest, looking back on it now, he wasn’t just some random dude she had dated for a hot minute. This was a guy who had loved her since freshman year of college and whom she had spent the last year in a relationship with. He deserved better than to be dumped over the phone. She knew when he was in Neptune that she still wanted Logan and she could have broken up with Piz in person, like an adult. At least Piz got a phone call, which is more than we can say for the law firm in New York that was trying to hire her. (Why does this girl even have a phone?) But we got our happy ending and it was probably the last time we’d see Veronica Mars, so I took the win and didn’t over-analyze it.

And then season four happened. I was really looking forward to seeing Veronica all grown up. What a badass woman she was going to be, right?? Wrong. Apparently, Rob only knows how to write teenage Veronica, so that’s what he’s done. And she is AWFUL! She’s a willful, selfish, myopic sixteen-year-old brat stuck in the body of a thirty-year-old woman and it’s become vastly unappealing. Let me count the ways:

LOGAN:

She was awful to Logan. She yells at him for proposing. She treats him like a loser because he’s actually made freakin’ heroic strides to better himself and take care of his mental health. The way Veronica belittles his therapy makes you wonder if Rob forgot that he gave her a degree in psychology from Columbia? Perhaps she should use that on herself because it was just disturbing the way she pushed Logan to lose his hard-won control and got turned on when he put his fist through the kitchen cabinet. For someone who spent the first three seasons badgering Logan to get control of his issues (and more than once breaking up with him because of them), it was just bizarre! Maybe the writers were going for one of those “be careful what you wish” for scenarios where she thought she wanted well-adjusted Logan but then realized she liked bad-boy Logan better. I think if that was the case, they could have taken some more time to explore that because it came off making Veronica look like a total psycho. And can we talk about the fact that when Logan Skyped her from deployment she got mad at him because she was doing something else and couldn’t just sit around waiting for him to call? Honey, when your soldier gets the time to call you, sit your ass down for fifteen minutes and talk to him! Wallace would have understood and the Murderheads would have still been in the basement. It was straight-up shitty and I lost a lot of respect for her as a character.

WALLACE:

She was awful to Wallace. Can we nominate him for sainthood for how many times he must have put up with her crap over the last fifteen years? I realize part of this is a pacing issue because they tried to cram what should have been 12 episodes into an 8 episode arc, but it comes away feeling like Wallace is trying to stay in her life and she doesn’t have time for him anymore. In one of the few opportunities to see him, the writers had her hijack their movie night to work on the case. Now I get that movie night with Wallace didn’t fit here because it did nothing to move along the narrative, but surely they could have found some other way to give him screen time? As a married father, I’m certain he doesn’t get many kitchen passes for time to hang out with his hot blonde best friend. He has a wife and a kid and a job, Veronica. Not everyone can just blow off the early showing of a movie and catch the later one. But, let’s face it, Wallace was never going to get to the 10:00 showing either, was he? I know there’s a murder to solve, lives on the line and all that, but it’s just another example of Veronica thinking only of herself and her wants and needs. Wallace was written like a dog, just her yanking his leash and taking him where she wanted him to go. He had about as much of a story arc as Pony, showing up as filler without any real purpose. We’ll get to the why of that later.

WEEVIL:

She was awful to Weevil. They never really explained what came between Veronica and Weevil. There was a vague mention of Keith and Cliff working on a lawsuit for him against Celeste Kane. Apparently Weevil settled out of court because he needed the money. So why is Veronica angry? Did Weevil not pay her dad and Cliff what was owed them? No explanation was given. Or was she angry that he didn’t hold out for more money? She couldn’t have been sympathetic to the fact that he had bills to pay and a family to support? As if she herself has never been in that situation? Come on. Or is it that Weevil had a wife and kid and lost them when he went back to gang life? Veronica, who hasn’t progressed one iota beyond what she was in high school, is looking down on him because he bettered himself and then fell back into his old life? Pot, kettle, black, my dear! And yet he still saved her ass in the end. Veronica doesn’t deserve him.

KEITH:

She was less awful to Keith than anyone, but she still failed him. Another example of self-absorbed Veronica is the fact that her dad is clearly struggling and everyone noticed except her.

MATTY:

Other than Keith, she was the only one to see a better version of Veronica. I guess she was included this season because Veronica needed some reason other than lots of money and saving lives to care about this case, but I really wasn’t feeling this character at all. Obviously she’s meant to be Veronica Jr, but holy crap does no one else think that perhaps this version of Veronica should not be a role model for a traumatized teenage girl? And isn’t it sad that Veronica herself has been written to the point that she ISN’T a good role model anymore? But Matty might be a lost cause anyway. This high school girl breaks into Dick Sr.’s house, sees him get stabbed, is looking him right in the eyes when he’s beheaded… and just turns and walks away with zero emotion. No shock, no horror, no disgust. And then she goes off and plays in the band at the new high school’s dedication like nothing has happened. If she’d been a hardened criminal, I might have accepted that reaction. As it is, I think she’s a sociopath and I doubt that’s what the writers were going for. Add to that, her selling the engagement ring she found was a pretty morally bankrupt thing to do, but maybe I’m dragging my own personal baggage into this. When I was a kid my mother had some family heirloom jewelry stolen from her, and by extension all of our descendants. I would have been on board with the justification of it if the Maloofs had been responsible for the bombs, but they weren’t. So this kid steals a piece of jewelry with priceless sentimental value from the family of a bombing victim, which results in the violent deaths of two (albeit shitty) people. And we’re somehow supposed to cheer her on for this?? Not me. The only part of her story arc I truly enjoyed was Veronica saving her from Liam Fitzpatrick. That was one of the highlights of the whole season for me!

LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE:

Veronica was just bloody awful to everyone and I rarely felt any sympathy toward her the entire season. I don’t like her as a character anymore. How did that happen? She’s been one of my favorite people for decades! I’ve always enjoyed her snark, but in this season it was gifted to everyone on the show in such liberal doses that it came off as spectacularly bitchy instead of smart and witty. Even her quips about Dick just seem tired and childish now. After all these years the two of them can’t cobble together some sort of amicable relationship for Logan’s sake? Really? And it’s not just Dick. Everyone got the sharp side of her sanctimonious sarcasm and the sheer magnitude of it made it lose whatever humor they were going for. Veronica Mars has turned into a Mean Girl. She’s basically become Madison Sinclair and that is just heartbreaking to me. Where is the Veronica I fell in love with? I didn’t see much of her here. But then they saved everyone at Kane High and Veronica had an epiphany. We finally saw some of her marshmallowy center again. I thought, “Ok, this is it. This is where they pull victory from the jaws of defeat where Veronica’s character is concerned.” Cue a great ending, with Veronica seemingly on the road toward being a healthier person, someone I’d want to watch more of in the future. And that lasted about five minutes. Thanks for nothing, Rob Thomas.

THE PROBLEM WITH VERONICA:

Veronica’s problem isn’t her. Not really. It’s the fact that Rob doesn’t know how to write her any other way. He doesn’t know how to write her as a grown woman, and he’s freely admitted it. He wants to keep the same damaged, traumatized, angry girl she was in high school. He doesn’t want her to grow or evolve because he either doesn’t know how to write that person, or he doesn’t want to. If that’s the case, let him write for Matty and give Veronica to someone else. Or better yet, hand off this show to other writers and let him go write his tortured noir detective drama. From what I’ve read in his interviews, he has this vision of Veronica that’s so disassociated from what Veronica Mars is that it might as well be a different series. And that, my friends, is the core of the problem with Veronica. What Rob wants to write isn’t Veronica Mars. It’s a dark, twisted detective show that bears little resemblance to the series we know and love. But, hey, he has a show about a detective, and he has a loyal fan base already in place. Instead of creating something new, let’s just use what we have in storage. What could go wrong with that? Again, let me count the ways….

“But our hope is that we get to tell more Veronica Mars mysteries, and if we do get to do that, we want it to exist as a mystery show, Veronica Mars as a P.I. out in the world, solving mysteries. [2]

— Rob Thomas

This is where it becomes apparent that Rob and the fans have two very different ideas of the kind of show Veronica Mars actually was. He sees it exclusively as a detective/mystery show. I always thought of it as an ensemble show about this interesting town and all its diverse characters that just happened to be set against the backdrop of a murder mystery. For me, the show was about the characters first and the mystery second. Having Veronica out in the world leaves behind this huge cast that has rich depth and endless sources of narrative from which to draw. Bitter, angry, snarky, damaged Veronica alone in the world holds no appeal for me. Keep her in Neptune, where she belongs. She doesn’t need to leave home to solve murders. Murder, She Wrote ran for 12 seasons and in that time Angela Landsbury’s sleepy little fishing village in Maine had 5.3 murders per year. Have you heard of the BBC, Rob? England abounds with well-loved mystery detectives whose tiny towns have an alarmingly high murder rate. Perhaps you should check them out. I don’t think it’ll be jumping the shark if Neptune has one big murder per season.

And doing that with a boyfriend or a husband just felt less interesting, less sexy, less noir… [2]

— Rob Thomas

I couldn’t give a fuck how “noir” it is. (And saying “noir” over and over again doesn’t make it what Veronica Mars is.) Maybe it’s not as interesting for you to write, but it’s more interesting for us to watch! We love Veronica and we want her to be happy. None of us think she’s ever going to have an easy life, so giving her this one thing (a supportive husband) to ground her is what will keep her from becoming a character we hate. Having Logan there to try to drag her, kicking and screaming, into functional adulthood was literally the only thing I found interesting about her character this season. Take that away, and she’s not someone I’m rooting for anymore. Oh, and by the way, did you see Logan walk out of the ocean with that surfboard? All our sexy eye candy boxes are checked, thanks.

It’s just hard to imagine a detective show with a 35-year-old woman with a boyfriend. I just don’t want to write that. [3]

— Rob Thomas

Yes! Yes, I can imagine it, Rob! And it would be amazing. I don’t have the chops to write it, but you need to get some romance writer in to help you with this, since you clearly don’t want to do it. Veronica deserves this and you’ve created the perfect character in Logan Echolls to challenge her, to protect her, to fight for her and alongside her.

If you can’t have your detective have romantic interests, it’s hard. [3]

— Rob Thomas

Columbo, Poirot, Miss Marple, John Barnaby, Adrian Monk, I could go on. It’s not hard to write great detectives who aren’t getting laid every episode, you just want to write trauma porn.

And it teeters on phony trying to get Logan involved in the case somehow to keep him present. If he’s just going to be the boy she goes home to at night, that’s less interesting to me. I can’t say that it’s impossible. But it didn’t appeal to me as much.” [3] “And it was tough keeping Logan involved in this particular mystery. I didn't want that challenge each time. [2]

— Rob Thomas

I can’t think of anyone easier to write into a story about a detective than a Navy intelligence officer with martial arts skills! (Can I mention how glorious that fight with the Carr brothers was?) There is a bottomless well of ways to integrate Logan into the narrative and if he doesn’t fit at one point or another, deploy him. You need to torture Veronica that badly? Having her husband away God-knows-where, in God-knows-what kind of danger, is emotional conflict in and of itself. This isn’t rocket science. I get that it isn’t going to be as easy to fit Logan, Wallace, Weevil, and Dick into each story as it was when they were all in high school together. I don’t think anyone expects that. It would have been easy enough, though, to make one of the bombing victims Wallace’s star basketball player, or to make one of the victims (or suspects) someone from Weevil’s world. That would have given them a stake in the outcome. Instead, you chose four people no one knows or gives a shit about as victims. If none of your core characters fit anywhere into your story, you don’t need new characters. You need a different story.

Also, we're doing a show that's noir, and our noir detective and her happy home life with her boyfriend or husband just didn't feel right moving forward… Also in most of noir, that possibility for romance or sex exist in those stories, and it's tough to have that exist if there is a husband at home.” [2]

— Rob Thomas

Anyone else getting so damned tired of Rob’s “noir” hang-up? I feel sorry for his wife that I have to say this, but you can be married and have sex and romance! Why is it that everyone assumes that we can’t be happy unless our heroine is banging random dudes every week or is in a constant on-again/off-again relationship? I’ve been in that endless on/off relationship. It wasn’t fun for me and it sure wasn’t fun for the people around me. Maybe I’m just old, but I don’t want to watch that anymore. It’s fucking exhausting. That’s one of the reasons I was looking forward to this season so much. I was dying to finally see a strong, independent, successful woman with a great man behind her. There isn’t enough of that out there. When I got done with the first book in my series, my editor said, “Great! Now how are you going to break them up in the next book?” She wasn’t happy when I told her I wasn’t. “Well, how are you going to create conflict, then?” Lady, they’re vampires. By the time the series progresses to present day, they’ll have been together for 200 years. That’s 200 years of being married and fighting evil. I’m pretty sure we’ll have sufficient conflict there without me making either of them into assholes. I remember saying, “She’s a badass in her own right. Why can’t she just have a supportive husband?” And, yes, that might be why they didn’t renew my contract, but I will plant my flag and die on this hill.

“And I want to strip the show of nostalgia. I want it to be about a kick-ass detective solving interesting cases. I don't think we're going to be ever as pure detective as something like Sherlock, but somewhere between Sherlock and Fargo, I think we could exist. Moving forward, we're going to really build around [the idea that] the case is the thing and less of the soap opera of Veronica's life.” [2] “I think the next one is going to be away from Neptune. I think she is done with Neptune for a little while. And the thing that Kristen and I have been talking about, and I don't know that this is what it will be, but [we've talked about] doing one of those Agatha Christie-style mysteries. Like a mystery in a snowed-in manor or on a boat, putting Veronica in a very Agatha Christie-like, though modernized, setting. It's one of the things we're playing with.” [2]

— Rob Thomas

Can I be the one to break it to Rob? Pretty please? Rob, darling, the soap opera of Veronica’s life is why we all watched. It wasn’t the mysteries and I cannot for the life of me understand why, after all these years, you don’t get that! If you want it to be solely about the mysteries, then you need to come up with another show. You don’t take a show heavily built around a huge cast of characters and strip it all away. No one tuned in solely for the whodunit. We wanted to see how all of these diverse people from all different backgrounds came together in Veronica’s life. That’s what your show is about.

“After we decided we were taking a fourth season to the streaming networks, [Rob Thomas] said, ‘I have an idea in my head, let me work on it for a month and I will pitch it to you,'” star Kristen Bell says of Logan’s shocking death. “He pitched it to me over the phone — the entire mystery and gave me the spoiler at the end — and he said, ‘I know this seems crazy or harsh but Veronica is at her best when she’s an underdog and I don’t know that there’s much to root for if she’s now got a perfect relationship. I need to keep her fighting and I need to keep her a little bit uncomfortable in order to have a show. There’s nothing funny or interesting about perfection.' When it comes to the end of Veronica and Logan’s story, Bell says, “As it turns out, Logan and Veronica were in love, they were the perfect couple and because we discovered that, unfortunately, we had to tear it down.” [4]

— Kristen Bell

Girl, I don’t even know where to start with you. Can we all just assume that Kristen Bell has been Stockholm Syndromed into towing the company noir line by Rob Thomas? Because if she truly believes this, I am speechless. Season 4 Veronica is anathema to Kristen Bell’s whole life and brand. Kristen is a strong, funny, independent woman who has a successful career, and children, and a seemingly great marriage to a husband who has fought his own demons. She’s very much like Veronica and she’s got millions of followers who think her life is interesting. To hear her say that there’s nothing funny or interesting about the same qualities in Veronica, is just mind boggling. I truly would have expected her to be the first person to stand up for Veronica and say, “This is not my Veronica. This is not the kind of person I want my kids watching.” She’s said that she wants her girls to grow up in a world with Veronica in it, but is this the version she wants to show them? This hard, bitter, broken Mean Girl without a shred of empathy? Someone who has little regard for anyone beyond what they can do for her? Someone who is toxic and emotionally abusive to the man who loves her? Who degrades and sabotages the years of work he’s put in to making himself a better person? No one is a bigger cheerleader for Dax Shepard’s sobriety than Kristen and that scene with Veronica and Logan in the kitchen should have been a wake-up call to her that this version of Veronica is not someone to be looked up to or emulated in any way. I could forgive it if they’d let Logan live, let him guide her on a redemption arc toward making her an emotionally stable adult. But, no, Rob wants to tear her down, heaping trauma on her until she is a shell of what she could have been. (Does anyone really believe she’ll talk to Jane the Therapist for any meaningful reason other than they need content for the voiceover??) Do you know what you get when you do that? You get Cersei Lannister and SPOILER ALERT: she was the villain, not the hero. I’m sure Veronica will be drinking and drugging and banging randos every week too… because it’s noir, baby! That’s really the legacy of a “strong woman” you want to leave for your kids and ours, Kristen?

“[Writer Diane] Ruggiero-Wright shared that there was actually some considerable back and forth in the writers' room about the beloved character's fate. But ‘not from Rob, because Rob is very confident in his ideas,’ she made clear. ‘He has an idea, he has confidence in it and then he commits to it. He's not going to get talked out of something for bullshit reasons... If it's just that fans don't like it, there's no way he's going to listen to that.’ " [5]

— Diane Ruggiero-Wright

As a writer, you’re selling a product. Telling the consumer that what they want out of your product is bullshit isn’t a really effective marketing strategy. Let me know how that works out for y’all. I, for one, won’t be tuning in to any more Veronica Mars episodes. A few days ago I would have said I’d watch if they brought Logan back and fixed Veronica, but now, after reading all these interviews, I don’t trust any of these writers anymore. They are all so clearly out of touch with their fans, their characters, and what their show actually is, that I can’t see a path forward for me as a viewer. I never thought I’d say that about one of the top 5 favorite shows of my life. If Hulu were to greenlight a “fixed” season 5, they really need to hire someone outside of Hollywood to consult on the scripts and make sure the writers don’t carpet bomb the fanbase again. (I’m available!) As for me, I choose to believe this is how season 4 ended:

Close up of Veronica lying on the her bed, screaming and crying because of the car bomb.

Pans out to a hotel room in Sedona.

Logan, rolls over in bed: Veronica, what's wrong?

Veronica, shaken: I dreamed Rob Thomas blew you up.

Logan holds her: Rob Thomas is a whore. Go back to sleep.

THE END

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[1] https://www.vulture.com/2019/07/veronica-mars-ending-death-rob-thomas-explanation.html

[2] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/veronica-mars-season-4-explained-rob-thomas-interview-1225788

[3] https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-features/veronica-mars-hulu-spoilers-rob-thomas-interview-860225/

[4] https://ew.com/tv/2019/07/22/veronica-mars-season-4-kristen-bell-finale-shocker/

[5] https://www.etonline.com/veronica-mars-producer-admits-there-was-debate-over-controversial-season-4-ending-exclusive-129169

Annabelle

2019-07-06T18:12:00.002-04:00

I’ve been thinking about my old ewe Annabelle a lot today. She was not our first sheep, but she was the first one that I claimed as “mine.” I was in college when Annabelle came to live with us. I woke up one morning to the angry and impatient sound of “BAAA! BAAA! BAAA!” Rolling out of bed, I went to investigate. I found my mom in the kitchen mixing up milk replacer for a bottle. On a blanket on the floor was a little white lamb only a few days old. She was hungry and was not shy about letting the whole house know it! Our neighbor had been at someone else’s farm and the old farmer had this new lamb who couldn’t walk. He was going to “knock it in the head” so my neighbor asked if she could have that baby. She brought her to my mom because we already had several sheep. It turned out the little one had white muscle disease, which is a lack of selenium, and after a few days on the bottle she was fine! Annabelle grew up thinking she was one of the dogs. All attempts to integrate her with the sheep were loudly rejected. “Who are these alien creatures? These are not my people! Let me out of here!” I believe part of the issue was that Annabelle was a Cheviot cross and all my sheep were Corridale crosses. They didn’t look like her!

Realizing we couldn’t have a grown house sheep and she was going to have to learn to be a real sheep, mom and I did the only sensible thing— we went to go visit my grandmother in Washington State and left my dad in charge of dishing out the tough love and making Annabelle be a real sheep. Honestly, I’m surprised that we didn’t come home to her sleeping in bed with him. (My dad is kind of a softy.) But he did it! Annabelle was living with the rest of the sheep when we came back! In true Annabelle fashion, though, she decided that she was clearly a better breed and therefore was Boss Ewe. And thus began the long reign of Queen Annabelle.

My mom loves to tell the story that, after her mare Missy passed on to the farm in heaven, she decided to open up Missy’s pasture to the sheep for grazing. They were not sure about that. They’re creatures of habit and that was not their pasture. There might be monsters in there. Annabelle and a couple of the older ladies were laying in the shade of the sweet gum tree on the hill, watching as Mom spent hours trying all her tricks to coax the rest of the sheep into that pasture. The younger ones were curious. A few went in. Nothing ate them up, so a few more went in. Success! Just as she got the last of them in, Annabelle, up on her hill, hollered, “It’s a trap!!!!” And all the sheep ran out of the horse pasture, back to their own, and never again set a hoof in there. The Queen had spoken.

She gave us beautiful sweet babies and had a wonderful sheepy life but eventually, in her older age, arthritis caught up with Annabelle. If a sheep lives long enough, they usually fall victim to this. It was harder for Annabelle to get outside and walk around. Eventually she was entirely incapacitated by it. It didn’t seem to make her uncomfortable, though, and she was always in good spirits. Still the boss! We moved her and a couple of the older sheep into their own stall (the Retirement Villa) where they could eat without having to push and shove with the younger sheep. Not wanting her to be stuck in there all the time, my dad made a sheep wheelchair for her. He cut the legs off of a plastic chair and attached it to a set of hand trucks. We would take it into her stall every morning and hoist her up, plop her butt in the chair, strap her in with her “seatbelt” (a padded saddle girth), and roll her out into the yard next to the barn! She and the other oldies would hang out and eat grass and I would go down every few hours and move her. She was a bit like a lawn ornament, but she was a happy lawn ornament. At night we’d put her on the golf cart and drive her back into the barn. Setting her down at her stall door, she could make her way to her favorite spot, with some help. I would get up in the middle of the night every night and check on her and help her move. (This is probably how I got the herniated disc in my back.)

When she first got arthritis we didn’t have a large animal vet in the area who treated sheep. Pretty much everything we know about sheep has been learned from books and talking to vet clinics up north who deal with sheep. Mom called one of these big clinics to ask what we could do to help her. The vet said, “Well, you’re gonna want to cull that ewe.” Mom asked if sheep could have Adequan (dog arthritis meds), and if so at what dosage? Also what dosage would you give for a glucosamine/ chondroitin mix? There was a long pause and he said, “You’re not gonna cull that ewe, are you?” Nope! We did everything we could to make her life happy. She outlived all her original buddies and quite a few younger sheep who came through her Retirement Villa needing special care.

Eventually, one year in early summer, we were faced with having to let go of her favorite buddy Thomas. (I’ll post about him later. He was quite a character! If Annabelle was Queen, he was King. He was my mom’s special boy, as Annabelle was my special girl. They are the sheep on the logo for our farm.) It was hot and only going to get hotter and I was starting to have a hard time keeping her comfortable, even on all her meds. It was one of the hardest days of my life. The worst thing I go through on this farm is having to let go of old friends who don’t feel bad, they just can’t get up and walk anymore. Arthritis is a bitch. We buried them both not in the sheep graveyard but in the pet graveyard with the dogs and cats. I think they would have liked that. They were both more dog than sheep, anyway. We’ve had other ewes over the years who took up the mantle of Boss Ewe, but no one ever held the authority Annabelle held over her flock. She was one of a kind! I imagine her on my farm in heaven, lying in the shade under the sweet gum tree on the hill, keeping all the young’uns in line.

Things I Love Thursday: Perfume

2012-03-08T17:11:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I promised I would do better about posting to the blog. Problem is, even though I talk constantly with my Facebook friends, I get here and I can't think of anything interesting to say! Of course, it's entirely possible I don't say anything interesting on Facebook either! But I thought perhaps I'd start off with something fun. Perfume.

I love perfume. I think every woman ought to have a signature scent. I smell Emeraude and I think of my grandmother. White Linen smells like my mom. My best friend is Chanel No5. I spent much of my 20s looking for that perfect scent that said "me". If I found something I liked, they often discontinued it. Sometimes a scent that smelled wonderful on someone else, like Clinique's Happy, didn't smell as great on my own skin. And sometimes I fell in love with a fragrance and my boyfriend hated it... which sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it? He and I went round and round about perfume for several years. Either I loved it and he didn't, or he loved it and I didn't. Victoria's Secret used to make a pear scent that one of my co-workers came in wearing one day. I thought it was wonderful and spent a good portion of my paycheck that week on Pear Glace perfume, lotion and soap, only to find that he couldn't stand the smell of it! (My co-worker's boyfriend had the same reaction to it, by the way... go figure!) Finally, I said, "It's Christmas. Go to Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works and pick out something YOU like the smell of. Anything but Happy Daisy. That smells like a funeral." Naturally, when he got there all he could remember was Happy Daisy and I got-- I kid you not-- a bucket-load of that as my Christmas present!

I had about given up on finding my own signature scent when I wandered into a little shop that sold handmade soaps and perfume oils. I always thought that perfume oils were used to make a fragrance and I had no idea that you could actually use them directly on your skin as perfume! I picked a lovely honeysuckle (always one of my favorite scents) and the lady showed me how to fill the roll-on bottle (like a lip gloss) and use it on your pulse points. A little bit goes a long way with perfume oil.

Honeysuckle, one of my favorite parts of spring on the farm.

My boyfriend loved it (finally! success!) and I got many compliments on it. I remember being in an auto parts store one afternoon and a man actually calling his wife over to smell me! That was a hoot and sent me right back to the store to buy an enormous bottle of this wonderful honeysuckle-- a wise move, since shortly thereafter the store went out of business and I have no idea who the manufacturer of my signature scent is! You don't have to use a lot when you use perfume oil, so that large bottle has lasted for years. I'm still on the hunt for a honeysuckle oil that compares and several years ago I started adding 1/3 sweet pea oil to the mix, partly to prolong my precious reserve of honeysuckle and partly to honor the passing of one of my favorite cows, Sweet Pea.

The scent from perfume oils lasts longer than spray perfume, it's far less expensive and one ounce can last you for years... but the best part is that you can play around and mix your own scent! I love the fact that no one in the world smells like me. I get the sweet pea for my mixture from Aroma Haven. They have hundreds of scents available and you can spend hours searching through their list! They used to sell the roll-on bottles, but for some reason they stopped carrying them. You can find them many places, though, including Amazon. I love the roll-on bottles because they're easy to use, you don't spray everyone when you put your perfume on, and they're small enough to slip in your pocket.

So, ladies and gentlemen, do you have a signature scent?

You Know You Read Too Much PNR/UF (or watch too much Buffy) When…

2011-08-08T16:00:00.003-04:00

This is a guest blog I did that used to be on the RomCon website. I thought I'd repost it here for those of you who missed it the first time.

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I write paranormal romance. Even before I started writing it, I devoured the genre. My bookcases are filled with PNR and urban fantasy and I have watched more Buffy the Vampire Slayer than any sane person would be comfortable admitting to. Over the years I have come to believe that this has skewed my perception of the world a bit.

The first time I realized that I was reading entirely too many vampire books was when my friend Jamie went out of town and I agreed to stop by her house on my way home from work every night to feed her kitties. So here I am, walking up to a secluded cabin on top of a mountain in Middle-of-Nowhere, Georgia, my path lit only by the headlights of my car, and do you think I was worried about getting attacked by a man-eating bear or slaughtered by some redneck serial-killer rapist? Nope. What was going through my head was, “Geez, I wish I had a stake. Why the heck isn’t there anything wooden and pointy in this yard?”

The second time was a year or so later when I made a trip out to Seattle to visit Jamie after her move to the west coast. After having spent several enjoyable hours walking through Pike Place Market, we decided to take a few pictures of the sunset and then have dinner. In a stroke of “genius” that nowhere near reflected our combined IQs, we ducked out a back door, thinking that we’d get to the pier quicker by walking around the building instead of navigating the throngs of people that filled the market. As the door closed behind us it was like stepping into another world— gone were the shouting vendors and screaming children and suddenly Jamie and I found ourselves alone in a dark, eerily quiet cobblestone alley sandwiched between two tall buildings. After we’d passed the third shadowy doorway the folly of our grand plan suddenly struck me, but not in the way you might think. No, being mugged never entered my head. Instead, I stopped short, grabbed Jamie’s arm, and said, “Holy crap! We’re vampire food! We’re those stupid girls who take a shortcut through the dark alley and get eaten by vampires!” See, I’m telling you, way too much Buffy.

This whole topic came up during a recent discussion on my Facebook page when I was relating the story of how one night I’d nearly been eaten by a werewolf in my own front yard. Well, ok, it turned out not to be a werewolf after all. It was actually two baby deer happily cavorting in the tall grass of our front pasture. In my own defense, though, it was so dark I couldn’t see anything and upon hearing something thundering in my direction through the underbrush werewolf somehow seemed more reasonable to me than deer or coyote. Now, maybe this problem is just in my own warped brain, but maybe there are others like me out there. So I’d love to open the discussion up for anyone who’s brave enough to join in with their own version of “You Know You Read Too Much PNR/UF (or watch too much Buffy) When…”

Interview from dirtysexybooks.com

2011-08-08T15:58:00.000-04:00

This interview was once posted at Rebecca Baumann's dirtysexybooks.com. Unfortunately, Rebecca has closed down her blog (we'll miss you!) to pursue other projects, so I've reposted the interview here.
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Greetings Jenna! Thank you so much for giving me an opportunity to pick your brain here on Dirty Sexy Books.
Thank you for asking me, Rebecca! It’s a pleasure to be able to come talk to you and your readers about the series.

I've read a lot of vampires stories, but the Cin Craven series is one of the very few that skips forward a significant amount of time with each installment. How did you come up with this concept? Will there be a point where a Cin Craven book catches up to the present?
When I started writing I’d read a lot of paranormal romance and urban fantasy series set in the present day. There were all these wonderful modern-day vampires that had centuries of stories behind them and I thought it was a shame that we never got to hear those stories, except perhaps in flashbacks. I really wanted to read a series that started at the beginning of a vampire’s “afterlife” and worked its way up to the present day, but I couldn’t find one. So I wrote one. Eventually Cin will catch up to the present day, but I think there are a lot of fun and interesting time periods for her to go through first.

While I enjoy the novelty of Cin's dual nature, being both a witch and a vampire, I sometimes wonder if it makes her too powerful. I naturally want to root for the underdog in a story, but I automatically think anyone going up against Cin is toast. Is there a villain out there that can best her?
Oh, definitely. She’s going to meet someone in book four who will knock her down a peg or two. After the events in Bound by Sin she’s very confident in her power and her ability to be the baddest thing out there. As a writer, well, when that happens to your character you’ve got to pull the rug out from under them a bit. Looking back, the twentieth century is probably not going to be counted among Cin’s favorites. She’s going to have some major problems with Michael and with her magic, but eventually she’ll be the baddest thing out there again… just with a lot better understanding and respect for herself, her power, and her love for Michael.

I've always admired Michael's skill with a sword, and his reputation as 'The Archangel of the Righteous,' but as the series keeps creeping forward, will his skill become too antiquated? Will Michael lose his edge in another 50 years?
No, I think my vampires are pretty much going to keep their swords. Guns don’t kill my vampires, but a sharp sword will decapitate one, so it’s still the most effective weapon they can carry. I have a line in my novella in the Huntress anthology where Cin says: “As a rule, vampires, especially the older ones, don’t like guns. They seem to view them as cheating. If you can’t win a fight by your own physical strength and skill with a sword, then you deserve to lose.” Of course, she says this as she’s strapping on a Smith & Wesson. Cin seems to insist on being a gun-girl, which irritates me to no end because I am most definitely not and firearms aren’t really something I’m intimately familiar with. However, I’m sure some of my younger vampires will, at times, carry guns. I can imagine Justine and Michael in shoulder holsters, but I don’t think we’ll ever see Devlin packin’ heat. The big fights are probably always going to come down to swords and magic, but a well-placed bullet is certainly a good way to piss off your enemy.

Not many paranormal romance authors keep the focus on the same couple over multiple books. Is it getting harder or easier to write about Cin and Michael's relationship?
I know Cin and Michael well enough to not have a problem writing their relationship. Where it gets sticky is walking that fine line between creating enough conflict to keep their relationship real and interesting, and not creating so much that they’re constantly fighting, breaking up, and getting back together. I think a lot of people have enough of that in their real lives and they don’t want to read about it in their fiction as well. However, Cin and Michael have been together for decades and will be together for centuries to come and their relationship isn’t always going to be roses and puppy dogs. I think that having the two of them constantly at odds isn’t any more realistic than having them eternally happy and I hope I can do justice to their story. They’re going to have conflict and they’re going to fight, I just don’t want it to be so frequent that readers think, “Why are these two together at all?” Sometimes I just want Michael to be supportive-husband-guy while Cin learns what she needs to learn from a certain period in her life.

I noticed that Justine and Devlin didn't appear very much in this installment. I enjoyed the novella that told their story (in the Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance), but will they ever get their 'own' book?
Yes, Devlin and Justine took a bit of a powder in this book. I ended up with so many characters once Cin and Michael got to Georgia that I really didn’t have anything for them to do. I hadn’t intended for Cin and Justine to have that spat at the beginning of the book, but once I started writing the scene that was really the only way it could go. Add to that the trouble getting in and out of Savannah’s harbor and the only logical way to get everyone out of America once the story had run its course was to have Devlin and Justine leave Cin and Michael there and come back for them later. So that all worked out well, even though it wasn’t exactly what I intended from the outset. They’ll all be back together in the next book, though.
I’m glad you enjoyed Devlin and Justine’s story. The Mammoth books are intended to give readers a small taste of different authors’ styles and it’s not easy to fit a satisfactory story into 8,000-10,000 words. I’m not sure if they’ll ever have their own full-length novel. There are so many characters that I could spin off into another series and I’ll just have to see which one screams at me the loudest when this one is finished!

Okay, I can't resist asking if Cin and Michael will stay in America for the next book, or if they'll go back to Europe? Are there any teasers you can share?
They will be in America for the next book. Book four finds The Righteous in the Roaring 20s where they attempt to run a vampire speakeasy during Prohibition, deal with the Mafia, and bring the American vampires together under the rule of the High King. I’m having a lot of fun with gangsters, Tommy Guns, and (finally) cars!

Newsletter from July 2011

2011-07-27T19:01:00.000-04:00

Hello Friends!

I hope everyone is doing well and keeping cool this summer! I know it's been a while since you've heard from me and I wanted to send out a mailing with some news.

St Martin's Press won't be publishing any more of the Cin Craven series. The books got great reviews (and I heartily and humbly thank all the readers and bloggers who took their time and energy to write them), but sales were not what we'd all hoped for. In fact, my agent advised me that if I wanted to continue writing, I would need not only a new idea but a new pen name as well. As you can imagine, that was more than a little depressing! I wasn't even sure I wanted to continue writing at that point, but I've had such an outpouring of support from my wonderful readers that I can't just abandon Cin and her story. I'm now looking forward to finishing the series the way I want to write it and putting the novels out as independent releases. I expect to do this mostly through ebooks, but I will make the novels available in print editions as well. Print-on-demand books are incredibly expensive to produce, but I promise I will do my best to find a self-publisher with the best pricing and distribution options for you! If you have an e-reader, though, you won't see any increase in price without a publishing house behind me. I am hoping to get the next novel out around Christmas. I know it's been a long time between books but, to be honest with you, I believe that if you're going to do something, you do your very best and I didn't feel that I could do that until recently. Certain events just sucked all the joy out of writing for me and I was so burned out for a while that Cin stopped talking to me entirely. I'm trying very hard to get things back on track for you, though, and I want all of you who have emailed me or posted on Facebook to know how much your support means to me. I really loved writing these books and I'm looking forward to writing more for you!

In the meantime, if you haven't had the opportunity to read the two short stories from the Mammoth anthologies, they are now available for download as single stories on ebook. Right now you can find them on Smashwords.com but they should be available at your favorite ebook website any day now. If you've already read the Mammoth anthologies, then there isn't anything new in these editions. I retained the rights for these stories and they're simply reprints.

“The Eternal Warrior” from the Mammoth Book of Irish Romance can be found here:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/73955

“The Righteous” from the Mammoth Book of Vampire Romance can be found here:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/71459

Also, for those of you who waited so patiently for Bound by Sin to come out on Kindle, I just noticed that it's finally available! I don't know why that took so long and it's completely inexcusable, but there was some sort of miscommunication between Amazon and the publisher which I had no control over. My editor was aware that it didn't come out on Kindle when the print version came out, and beyond that there was nothing I could do about it. My apologies to all my Kindle readers!!

I've added a Twitter account to my social media sites, but I confess I don't really "get" Twitter, so I rarely use it. The best way to keep in touch with me is through Facebook. I post pretty much on a daily basis there and we have a lot of fun!

Thank you again to all of you for your support. I hope you all have a wonderful summer (don't forget the sunscreen) and I wish you the very best!
Jenna

Sometimes cleavage is a very useful thing....

2010-05-14T18:04:00.000-04:00

Sometimes cleavage is a very useful thing. I don’t mean just when you can use it to get a man to move heavy objects for you or hand you that item you can’t quite reach off the top shelf in the grocery store. Or to get out of a speeding ticket (so I hear… this has never worked for me). Cleavage is also a handy place to carry things. I once smuggled a sprig of lavender out of Cawdor Castle’s gardens in my cleavage. I’ve carried my cell phone, cash money, and, yes, even baby animals in there!

A few years ago one of my sister’s cats brought her a live and unharmed baby squirrel. We thought raising it would be a good experience for my nieces. For some reason, however, I ended up having to squirrel sit every time Sister had to go somewhere. My cats and dogs were enormously interested in the smell of this small aquarium Sister had set up as little Skippy’s house and I was afraid they might form a raiding party the minute my back was turned. Sister had told me to put him someplace warm, since baby squirrels were unable to regulate their own body heat and required warmth from their mom. Figuring I’d take care of both issues with one grand idea, I took Skippy out of his cage and slipped him down inside my bra! He nestled quite happily in there and none of the dogs or cats had any idea where he was. When he’d get a little too warm this tiny nose would pop out, or sometimes his whole head, but he was always quite happy to hang out in there.

After a few days we became concerned that the cats may have gotten the mama squirrel and there was a nest of orphaned babies up in that tree. You could kind of tell where little Skippy had come from by the feline audience hanging out at the base of the tree, just waiting for someone to toss them something new to play with! So we called our Tree Guy, Randall, who was just the nicest man you’d ever want to meet. He had helped us clear out the mess from the tornado and he agreed to come out and climb the tree and look in the nest for us. It was, thankfully, empty. When Randall got his feet on solid ground again, he was shaking his head.

“I can’t believe I came out here and climbed all the way up there just to look for a nest of baby tree rats!” he said good-naturedly.

Mom and Sister and I had been standing below, watching, and Randall didn’t know it but I’d had Skippy in my shirt the whole time. I have about 20 men’s cotton v-necked t-shirts that I wear around the farm. It’s sort of my farm uniform. I walked up to Randall and pulled the neck of my t-shirt down and leaned over, showing him dear little Skippy, contentedly peeking out from between my breasts.

“But Randall,” I said. “He’s just so cute!”

The poor guy turned bright red. He didn’t charge us for the visit.

So last night I was a little late getting to the barn, but nothing that a bit of hurry-up wouldn’t fix. I was efficiently going about my evening chores, standing outside at the water spigot to fill up Old Meg’s bucket. (Meg is my eldest ewe and she prefers hose water to sink water, thank you very much!) I had her bucket about halfway full when some movement caught the corner of my eye and it suddenly became One of Those Evenings. From the tree line next to the barn comes this little bird. Y’all know the song “You Can Fly” from Peter Pan, right? Everyone sing along with the baby bird now…

“I can fly! I can fly! I can fly! I can fly! I can….” WHAM! Barn.

The little dude flew right into the side of the big red barn and I’ll be damned if George Earnest didn’t just happen to be there to pounce on him the minute he hit the ground! The bird is screaming at whoever will listen, I’m screaming at George, George is looking for an escape route… and so I turned the hose on him! Well, he decided the bird wasn’t worth getting soaked over, promptly dropped it, and I jumped in and scooped it up.

So I find myself standing there with a wet cat glaring at me, a baby bird in one hand, and a running hose in the other. I just sort of shook my head and thought yep, this is my life. I shut the hose off, walked into the barn (George hot on my heels, just in case I dropped something), baby bird in hand, called my mom and said, “Well, you’re not gonna believe this shit!”

Now I’m really running late getting everything ready for the sheep to come in for the night. I have no idea where this little Tufted Titmouse baby came from, no idea if he’s hurt, or what the heck I’m supposed to do with him! And it’s getting dark and I don’t really have time to figure it out. I knew he was scared because I could feel his little heart just hammering in my hand, but I checked him over and didn’t see any blood on him and his wings appeared to be ok. I was pretty sure hitting the barn had rung his little bell, though. So I did the only thing I could think of— I tucked him in my bra and went about my chores. When Mom and Dad got to the barn I was dishing up feed and Mom asked me what I’d done with the baby bird.

I said, “Look, mom! I have a Tufted Titmouse between my titties!”

That pretty much had us giggling on and off for the next hour. I took him to the house and put him in a box out on the screen porch where he’d be safe from the kitties and decided I’d figure out what to do with him in the morning.

Well, this morning he was flying all over the porch, trying to get out! I was so relieved that neither the barn nor the cat had hurt him. I took him down to the barn with me and walked up into the tree line where he’d come from, deciding that if I put him on a safe branch he’d eventually figure out where home was. Well, that idea lasted about as long as it took to get him settled on the branch. He just looked so tiny and frightened, I couldn't stand it!

I said, “Aw, crap, dude! What am I going to do with you?”

As visions of raising this baby bird to maturity in my bra ran through my head, I scooped him off the branch and walked along with him in my hand, I suppoe hoping I'd just happen to run across a flock of Tufted Titmice. When I ran out of trees I decided to cross a bit of open pasture and check out the woods. I was getting really disheartened when he suddenly heard a familiar voice. That little head popped up and he started chirping his little guts out! And then I could hear Mama Bird talking back to him! He started wiggling and wanting to fly away, but I kept a firm hold on him, wanting to get closer to wherever his mom was before I let him loose. I finally found her in the trees just at the edge of the woods, and boy was she pissed!

I opened my hand and the baby flew off, making his way very well up into a tree. And then he flew to another tree in the absolute wrong direction! I just about pulled my hair out in frustration, but his mom came and found him. She swooped down and bitched at him some more and then flew back to her original tree. I could just hear it: “Oh my God! Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick, do you hear me? Sick! You are in big trouble, young man! Staying out all night and coming home smelling of human! Just you wait until you father gets home!” The little baby flew over to her (“But Ma!!!!”) and the last I saw of them they were sitting together on the same tree branch. I cannot believe that with all the trees and all the acres we have on this farm he and I managed to find one little Tufted Titmouse Mama!!

Let’s just hope the little guy has learned his lesson and stays away from the barn!

Vodka is the Devil

2010-05-03T01:06:00.000-04:00

Disclaimer: I do have permission to tell this story from all the drunks involved … mostly, I think, because they don’t remember it!

Before I start in on the complete disaster that was my friend Marie’s birthday party Saturday night, let me tell you that considering how we met, nothing that happens when we’re together should surprise me. I met Marie in probably freshman year of high school when I accidently went out with her boyfriend. How does that happen, you might ask? (And she did!) Well, I knew this boy from the school bus. He lived down the street from me and we used to talk on the ride home every day. One evening he calls me and asks if I want to go to the movies with him and some friends from the neighborhood. Now, I didn’t have any interest in this boy as possible boyfriend material, but it sounded a lot more interesting than staying home. Someone’s dad drove us to the mall, we saw the movie, came home, end of story.

Until I got to homeroom Monday morning and this girl comes up to me and says, “Marie is pissed and she’s gonna kick your ass.”

I said, “Who the hell is Marie and why would she want to kick my ass?”

She said, “Because you went out with her boyfriend Saturday night.”

I said, “I did what?”

This jerk had conveniently forgotten to mention the fact that he had a girlfriend. So I went and talked to Marie and we squared things up. And then we hunted this boy down and clouded up and rained all over his parade! It was a bonding moment because I don’t even remember his name but Marie and I have been friends ever since. And so I can say with all the love of twenty-plus years of friendship behind us…. the bitch can’t hold her liquor!

I tell her this (in between the 900 times she drunkenly tells me she loves me) every time she goes out on the town. Marie has three children and on the rare occasions she gets a kitchen pass to go out, she really goes all out! The dear girl doesn’t understand the concept of pacing herself. I knew this, of course, when I bought the birthday card that I brought to the party she was having at a local bar (which shall remain nameless) this past Saturday night. It had a picture of yard flamingos on the front of it and the picture was taken from such an angle that you’d have to be lying down, looking up at them. The card said:

If this is the first thing you see the morning after your birthday celebration, you may want to ask yourself these important questions: Am I naked? Is this my front yard? Who are these people and why are their necks so long?

I had no idea when I bought it how apt that would become! I showed up to the bar about10:30 since evening farm chores always make me late getting out. I knew Marie was already there with our friend Misty and Tanya, who I hadn’t previously met. I had Marie’s card and a bouquet of lollipops, but I couldn’t find Marie or Misty anywhere. Finally Misty wanders into the bar, beer in hand, and tells me that she thinks Marie is outside. So off I go and finally find her out front, already looking a bit bedraggled and green.

“Jenna,” she says, all drunk and slurry. “I’m in trouble.”

“Why are you in trouble, Marie?”

“I think I’m gonna be sick. Go get Misty for me.”

Ok, so back I go into the bar and return moments later with Misty in tow. I should have known Misty had had a couple too many herself when the following conversation went something like this:

Marie: “Misty, I’m gonna throw up.”

Misty: “No, you won’t. Come back inside and dance and you’ll feel better.”

(Seriously? That’s your plan?)

Me: “I really don’t think that’s a good idea. If she has to throw up we don’t want her puking in the bar, do we?”

Misty: “Jenna, I can’t handle throwing up.”

Me: “Well neither can I! Marie, if I walk you up the hill so you can throw up in the privacy of the bushes, will you be ok then?”

Marie: “Yeah.”

So Misty goes back into the bar and Marie and I head off across the parking lot. In an effort to safeguard Marie’s vanity, I figured the bushes were a better place for this business than the bathroom or, from the looks of her, right in front of the door to the bar. I walked her across this little access road to a nice concrete drainage ditch and told her to have at it.

Now, I’m a farm girl and I have a really high ick factor. I’ve been elbow deep in nasty stuff that would make you gag just to hear me tell it-- and then gone directly home and eaten dinner! But there are three things I cannot handle: childbirth, either human or animal; human poop (boy was I ever glad when the nieces were out of diapers!); and human vomit.

I gag just walking into a public restroom, so you know I was pleased to hear Marie say, “Jenna, don’t leave me.”

“I’m not going to leave you,” I promised, “but I can’t watch you throw up or I’m going to be throwing up too. So I’m just going to be right over there and I’ll come get you when you’re done. Are you going to be ok?”

“Ok.”

Well, ok then.

Turning around, I’d taken about two steps when I heard WHAM! I spun around to see Marie sort of rolling down the concrete drainage ditch! I ran over, stopped the rolling, and got her into a sitting position. She’s crying and I’m pushing her hair out of her face and then I see it… blood just pouring out of her mouth!

“Oh my god!” I yelled. “Do you still have your teeth?” And then, “Honey, spit out the blood. No, not on your jeans, on the pavement. Do you still have your teeth??”

When I’d established that she’d cut her lip but still had her teeth, I told her to stay put and I ran back down the hill to the bar. I still had her damned card and lollipops in my hand so I left them with the cop at the door and told him what had happened. There was a city police officer there talking to him and apparently he went out to check on her because by the time I’d run to the bathroom and gotten paper towels, run into the bar and gotten Misty, and we got back outside the ambulance was pulling up. I will say one thing for Marie, she knows how to cause a scene! We had two cop cars, one ambulance, three paramedics, me, Misty, Tanya and at least one member of the house band standing there watching her cry and bleed. The paramedics got her cleaned up and put an ice pack on her mouth and that’s when things just got silly.

Misty says, “Damn it, Jenna, I left her with you. You were supposed to take care of her.”

“Hell, I just got here!” I said. “I didn’t know she was that drunk. What have you been feeding her?”

“She’s had the same thing I had. And I had two beers on top of her!”

“Two beers on top of her? Really?” I said. “Misty, I didn’t know you two were like that!”

And, of course, some male in the group commented on how he would have liked to have seen that.

That got me one hell of a smack on the arm from Misty. And then Marie started hurling. Tanya, bless her heart, sat behind her and held her hair. Misty and I, good friends that we are, had to walk down the hill a ways until she was done. We decided we needed to tie her hair back with something but, go figure, neither the cop nor the paramedics had a scrunchie. I went back into the bar and managed to come up with a rubber band. Pulling her hair back and wrapping the rubber band around it, I said, “Boy, she’s gonna be pissed in the morning when she sees her face and then can’t get this rubber band out of her hair.”

Now, apparently there’s paperwork to be filled out when the ambulance has to come for you, so while I was bending Marie’s glasses back into something that resembled what they’d looked like before she took a nosedive into concrete, the paramedics started asking the pertinent questions like what’s her address? Hell, I didn’t know.

So Misty crouches down and yells at Marie, “Marie, what’s your address?”

We got her address and all the important stuff down and then the paramedic decided to get funny and asked her blood type.

Misty yells into Marie’s face, “What’s your blood type?” And then looks up at us and says quite earnestly, “I think it’s vodka and Monster.”

That, of course, sent us all into giggles.

Now, at this point the cop tells us we’re going to have to get her out of the street because if they get another call they can’t leave us all on the side of the road. I pointed out that it was hardly a “road” since there were only a few houses up there and I doubted anyone was going to come barreling down it in the middle of the night and hit us, but he insisted. The birthday party had a designated driver coming to pick them up at close, but no one other than me had a vehicle there. We’d called someone to come get Marie and take her back to the house, but in the meantime we had to put her somewhere.

I said she was definitely not getting in my truck because she was alternately semi-conscious, wanting to lay down and go to sleep, or throwing her guts up and there was no way I was cleaning barf out of my truck. We decided that maybe we could lay her down in the bed of the truck, though I wasn’t sure how the hell we were going to get her up in there. I pulled the truck up to where she was, though, and two of the paramedics and Tanya’s brother lifted her up onto the tailgate. Then we sort of rolled her and… smushed her… into the bed of the truck (I remember saying at one point, “Jesus, it’s like a dead freakin’ deer in the back of my truck!”) and put the tailgate up so she didn’t fall out. The paramedics got her a pillow and a blanket out of the ambulance and we covered her up. And then we all suddenly found ourselves with nothing to do but lean up against the bed of my truck and watch her sleep it off.

At which point Misty and I told her, “Happy birthday, Marie! We love you!”

And then we took pictures because we’re good friends and we knew she’d want something other than a busted lip to remember her birthday by!

That's the cop with the flashlight. I'm standing next to him in the dark tank top. The green wristband is Misty. The clipboard is one of the paramedics. Marie, of course, is the dead deer under the blanket!

She was out like a light until her ride showed up, and then there was more hurling. I think the girl threw up things she ate in high school! Misty and I once again found ourselves standing on the other side of the truck, taking deep breaths and gagging and telling each other we were horrible friends.

Misty said, “You realize if we’re ever drunk enough to throw up, no one’s going to help us!”

Tanya, I still don’t really know you, but if I am ever that drunk I hope you’re there! You were a rock, girl!

So Sunday morning I get up from the barn to find a voicemail on my phone from Misty that went something like this: “Hey Jenna. Marie is ok. We were wondering if you’d call us back and tell us what happened.”

Well, girls… that’s what happened!

"Those" Days...

2010-04-28T18:52:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was One Of Those Days. You know those days when about halfway through you just want to go back to bed and start over in the morning? That was my yesterday. I was an absolute menace! Other than everything I touched breaking, from my curling iron to the golf cart to my stapler, I almost broke my Beagle! It wasn’t funny… well, ok it was kind of funny… and my mom and I (after the fact) got entirely too big a laugh out of it for me not to share.

Mr. Beagle on the golf cart this past winter.

(Yes, I know his sweatshirt is pink and he's a boy. Hey, it was the only one I had! Besides, dogs are red-green color blind so I figure he thought it was a handsome shade of gray!)

It was one of those partly cloudy days with just enough of a chance of rain that I had to watch the radar all day to make sure Mr. Beagle wasn’t going to get rained on while outside on his trolley, but not enough of a chance of rain that he needed to stay in his stall all day. About noon it started to cloud up and I could hear thunder off to the north. With a check of the radar I decided that perhaps I should bring him inside for a bit because it looked likely that we’d get a quick drenching. It was getting progressively darker and starting to sprinkle as I pulled the golf cart up to his trolley, snapped his leash on, loaded up one Beagle, his bed, his binkie (because it was a bit chilly),his food bowl, and Spike the barn cat. Mr. B and Spike were standing on the floor of the golf cart (they usually ride on the seat but that was taken up with all Beagle’s various paraphernalia) and I hit the gas. And all of a sudden…….

<-----------zzzzziiiiiiipppppp went the Beagle off the left side of the golf cart

Spikey panicked bailed off the right side ------------->

And I slammed on the brakes.

So I find myself sitting there, looking around, thoroughly confused as to why Beagle went sailing past my legs and did a bit of a thumpity-thump along the side of the golf cart, was now standing there sort of plastered up against it, and why his retractable leash was practically imbedded in my thigh. And then it occurred to me. Aw shit! In my haste to get him into the barn before the rain, I forgot to unhook him from his trolley tether when I snapped his leash on! Poor little B! He wasn’t hurt at all (I, however, have a lovely purple bruise across the top of my right thigh that hurts like hell) but he darned sure wasn’t real interested in getting back on the golf cart! Spike looked at me in that way that cat do, as if I belonged on one of those Sarah McLachlan commercials for abused animals, and high-tailed it to the barn under his own power! I did manage to get Mr. B and the Old Folks into the barn before the downpour started, but it was a close thing.

And to top it all off, after The Incident Beagle’s retractable leash would no longer expand or contract. So I had the bright idea of opening it up and fixing it. Just in case you should ever have a similar idea, don’t bother. After finally getting all the little tiny screws loose the whole thing exploded like one of those gag cans of snakes and there is no getting it back together again!

But on the bright side, I haven’t broken anything or pissed any of my animals off yet today… so hurray for me!

A Little More About Skunks and Kitties

2010-04-19T05:33:00.000-04:00

I'm glad everyone got such a kick out of my skunk story. My mom was highly amused that I managed to tell it without using the F word, as it probably would have been more accurate if you liberally sprinkled that through the dialogue. What can I say? We're tough farm girls. No, really, we are!

Tonight at the barn I chased a bumble bee around the lounge and trapped him in a cup and set him free outside. Mom looked at me and snorted and said, "And you were going to kill a skunk. With a shovel."

I said, "Yeah, well, the bee hadn't pissed me off yet!" And then, "You know I wasn't really going to whack that skunk with a shovel, right?"

She laughed and said, "Oh, yeah. I know."

Yes, Mom knows me well.

The truly amazing thing about the whole skunk event was that my sister and brother-in-law live right up the hill from the barn and somehow managed to sleep through the whole fiasco-- shouting, screaming, beagling, and all. This was fortunate for Pepe because my sister would have blown him away in about 2 seconds and gone right back to bed. Notice I said my sister, not my brother-in-law! The poor men in this family sometimes lament the fact that the women run the show around here but, as I often point out to my dad, it's all his fault. My mom likes to tell the story that in the first year of their marriage the car broke down and she didn't know what to do. She called the airline and they patched her through to the tower, who patched her through to the cockpit of my dad's plane as he was sitting on the tarmac, waiting to taxi down the runway. Apparently you don't call an airline pilot in the plane unless someone is in the hospital or dead because he said, "Are you kidding?! I thought it was an emergency! Deal with it!" So, yep, his job managed to create a bunch of women who can deal with it. Most of the time, anyway. Hell, I once had a boyfriend give me a machete for Valentine's Day and that pleased me more than the jewelry, if that tells you anything. But that still doesn't mean I want to shoot and kill a little critter, even a skunk, so I guess it all worked out ok in the end. I could have done without the loss of sleep, however!

Thankfully, though, we don't get that many skunks here. Dad killed a rabid one when I was in high school. When I was in college we had a mama skunk that lived down in a burrow under a tree not far from the barn, but she rarely made a nuisance of herself. One year when the nieces were little we were all gathered together one evening to celebrate Mother's Day and my mom looked outside and saw this mama skunk taking her kittens out for a walk. She had them all in a line and they were walking up the fence line toward the back pasture. Mom, sister and I of course hurried the girls out onto the back porch to see the babies. The next thing I know my dad is standing next to me with the rifle to his shoulder, sighting in on the skunks with the scope. I leaned over and whispered, "You're not really going to shoot that mama skunk in front of her babies and your grandchildren on Mother's Day, are you?"

He looked a bit surprised, looked down at these two little blonde girls with their big brown eyes and said, "Ah, no, I was just trying to get a better look at them."

I said, "Perhaps the binoculars would be a bit less traumatic?"

I think it was the next year we discovered that mama skunk had wandered onto the neighbor's property and earned herself a trip to heaven and we had a whole litter of orphaned baby skunks on our hands. They'd apparently gotten hungry because they’d come out of the den and were wandering around under their tree, I suppose looking for food. Mom made a few phone calls to see what to do about it and was erroneously told by someone who should have known better that baby skunks don't spray. So I drag my boyfriend-at-the-time down with a cat carrier to rescue this litter of four babies. He as a good redneck boy and absolutely pitched a fit about that!

"I know they're cute now," he said, "But they're just going to grow up to be skunks!"

"Well, we don't kill baby things around here," I told him as I was scooping up little black and white balls of fluff and shoving them in the cat carrier.

"Well, I'm not riding in the car with a bunch of skunks," he informed me.

"Then it's a good thing it's a pretty day. Enjoy your walk back to the house," I said.

He did get back in my little Mustang with me and the babies, but he wasn't real happy about it. Now, we were very confident that baby skunks didn't spray because we had it from a “reliable” source, so we put them out on the screen porch off my mother's bedroom since that was the only place where the cats couldn't get to them and mess with them. For two days we fed them and played with them-- my nieces were all over those kittens, practically loving the fur right off of them-- and they never once sprayed. Mom found a wildlife rehabilitator who agreed to take them and raise them. This nice lady worked at a vet's office about an hour away and so my dad, dressed up in his pilot's uniform, took them with him on his way to the airport (an hour in the car with four baby skunks, mind you) and dropped them off to her. She called later that night to tell my mom that she hadn't had them there for long when they sprayed all over everything and the vet sent her home with them! Oh my goodness, if they'd sprayed on my dad on his way to the airport for a trip (or on the porch outside their bedroom, or all over my nieces…)! We'd have NEVER heard the end of that!

That was probably a good 10 years ago, though, so I suppose we were due for another skunk invasion. I'm just immensely grateful that Pepe seems to have gone very far away because I haven't smelled even a whiff of him/her again!

Oh, and just for fun....

Here's a picture I found of my sister's cat, Georgie's friend Ozzy. You can understand the dear boy's confusion when he saw the skunk:

(and, yes, he was named after Ozzy Osbourne-- because that's just how sister rolls!)

And a couple pictures of dear, goofy George showing off his belly dots:

A Little Catching Up & A Very Long Story About A Very Stinky Visitor

2010-04-16T23:32:00.000-04:00

Long time, no post! It’s been one thing after another for the past few weeks and I’m still trying to get caught up. Shearing went well.

Annie Pepper being shorn, Spring Shearing 2010

It was a bit colder than I would have liked and rained on Sunday (with hail at times… eek!). Temperatures were up near 80 by the following weekend, though, so the sheep were very glad they got their coats off when they did! They’ve been very happy, naked little things now that spring has finally sprung. We even had a few days of summer last week with temps in the upper 80s, but it’s finally cooled off to more reasonable spring weather. I posted a lot of pictures of shearing weekend in my Farm & Animals album on Facebook, so if you missed them (or aren’t a friend yet) please go over there and check them out!

Jenna with Cookie, Spring Shearing 2010

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The Tuesday after shearing we had a terrible loss for our farm. One of our big, woolly boys passed away in his sleep. JellyBean (aka Bean or Mr. Bean) was very much a treasured member of our family. For some reason these big wethers just seem to have an abundance of personality and Bean was no exception. I still miss his freckly little nose begging for carrot treats as the sheep come in every night. He always used to get in line several times, trying to scam me out of more than his fair share of carrots. And if I ignored him I’d soon get gently whacked with a hoof on the back of my leg, just in case I hadn’t realized he was still there! He was a wonderful boy and I know he’s enjoying greener pastures with all his friends who have gone before him.

JellyBean

*************************

Even on the saddest days, though, you know one of these critters is going to make you laugh. My Dad and I were on the golf cart, headed to the barn shortly after having buried Mr. Bean when I looked into the pasture where the ram lives and saw something strange. It took me a minute to realize what I was looking at and it felt vastly inappropriate on so many levels to laugh, but laugh I did! Here’s our big, manly ram Jeremiah standing there with a blue 5 gallon bucket on his head! I’d left a couple buckets out in the lower pasture for him and our stud llama and alpaca boys to drink out of. They have a creek down there but they seem to prefer a bucket. I’d not refilled them in a few days and apparently that morning Jeremiah had gone down and tried to get a drink out of whatever water was left in this bucket and the handle had fallen over his head! All you could see were his eyes over the rim! I had visions of us having to chase Jeremiah and his bucket all over the pasture but, surprisingly enough, he stood very still and let Dad take it off his head! The worst part was that when Dad tipped the bucket up to pull it past his nose, those few inches of water in the bottom fell out all over Jeremiah’s head. He looked so embarrassed like, “Oh, God, I hope the ewes didn’t see that!”

Jeremiah

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Well, Spring Break has come and gone since I last posted. My dad took my two nieces out west to explore Arizona and the Grand Canyon for the week. This was the second trip for eldest niece, but the first time the youngest had gone. Dad says eldest niece turned into quite a mother hen on the trip, telling him at the Grand Canyon that he should “remember, Bepaw, when you walk down you have to walk back up again,” and spent a lot of time admonishing her younger sister to stay away from the edge of the canyon! This is, of course, the same canyon she was cavorting along the edge of a couple years ago. When I reminded her of this I was informed that (at the ripe old age of 14) she’s older and wiser now!

So with Dad gone, that left his share of the barn chores to Mom and me. That wasn’t so bad. I figured there were parts of me that could certainly use the exercise of pushing that wheelbarrow. What sucked was the skunk that came visiting the night after he left. Oh, friends, let me tell you about Pepe!

Now, the women in my family have had to learn to be strong and independent because my dad was an airline pilot and nothing ever broke or got sick when Dad was home. So we’re quite adept at knowing how to suck it up and deal with anything. Mom and I did not, however, deal well with the skunk. Maybe we were just really tired or maybe we’re just too tender-hearted, but this is how it went:

I go down to the barn in the middle of the night every night to make sure Roo can get up and move around and isn’t lying in the same spot for 12 hours. He has arthritis which has made one leg a bit crooked and he doesn’t get up so well by himself anymore. So at 2AM I roll out of bed and let the Jacks out to potty. They immediately dash out, barking their fool heads off, and the next thing I know it smells like a skunk has walked in and sprayed my entire living room! I managed to get the dogs back inside and thankfully they hadn’t been sprayed, but that skunk smell was just gag-worthy and it was everywhere. Being a lovely spring night the windows were all open (naturally) and I thought about closing them and turning the air on, but I figured that wasn’t going to do anything but trap the smell inside and recycle it through the house. Instead I gathered up box fans and put them in the windows to blow the skunk smell outside. So it’s now 2:30AM and my cell phone rings. This is never a good thing.

It’s my mom, who says to me in a very sleepy voice, “Do you smell the skunk?” (As if anyone could miss that stench!) And then, “Your Beagle is beagling.”

Mr. Beagle

Obviously in the time it’s taken me to deal with his visit to the house, Pepe has moved on to the barn so I hop on my trusty golf cart and ride down there. No skunk in sight, which pleased me immensely. I couldn’t smell the skunk in the barn, but by then my head was so filled with Pepe’s rank perfume that I wasn’t not sure if he’d been there or not. I was really kind of hoping that Mr. Beagle was carrying on because he had to go do his business but since he never howls like that at night I should have known better. I put his harness and leash on and the minute he got into the alley of the barn he started snuffling with that wonderful nose of his. And then he strikes up a howl as if he were a hound from hell instead of one small, portly Beagle. Sheep scatter. All thoughts of going potty fly right out his little Beagle brain and I cannot get him to shut up. I fully expected my phone to start ringing again with a cranky sister on the other end. Finally, I managed to drag Mr. B into the lounge where he quieted down long enough for me to pull up the pictures from the barn cam and see what in hell was going on down there before I got there. Sure enough, I had pictures of Pepe coming into the barn… and less than a minute later (insert Beagle barking) Pepe quickly exiting the barn! I made the appropriate “good Beagle” comments and put him back in his stall, quieted the sheep and got Roo up, and went back to the house.

By now it’s after 3:30AM and I’m wide awake, waiting for the skunk perfume to dissipate from my room so I can get back to sleep. Good luck with that! I had just drifted off around 5AM when that freakin’ phone rang again!

“Your Beagle is beagling again,” Mom says, “and I think the skunk is in the barn.”

So this time we both went down together and, sure enough, right there outside the barn was the skunk! And he had definitely sprayed this time. I left Mom flashing the flashlight at him and went in and got Mr. B.

“Let’s get the skunk,” I said, and he was more than happy to oblige.

I figured that Pepe would be scared of my vociferous hellhound and take off for the hills. Boy, was I wrong! Mom had chased him around the side of the shed and he was headed for the woods by the time Beagle and I got out there. He’s beagling, I’m hollering, Mom’s shining the flashlight… and I’ll be damned if that little beast didn’t turn right around and come straight for us!

Mom and I start high-tailing it for the barn. I’m dragging the Beagle behind me yelling, “Run, Mr. B, run!” What followed was an hour and a half of trying to keep one very determined little skunk out of our barn! I think now that Pepe was either a juvenile who had no clue what he was doing, or a female looking for a nice place to have her babies. Whatever the case, he wanted in that barn. Both Beagle and his stall reeked of skunk but I had to put him back in there because I couldn’t deal with Pepe and him at the same time. I did have the bright idea of putting up bales of wheat straw in front of the big barn doors to keep Pepe out. Of course, that started a whole debate between Mom and I about whether or not skunks can hop. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to climb over the bale, but Mom was sure he would.

“They have claws, you know,” she said.

“For digging,” I replied. “You don’t see skunks in trees.”

I don’t know whether skunks can hop or not, but this one did not try to climb over the bales. He did once manage to weasel between them, causing a mad panic to move the bales and shoo him back out. I put them much tighter the next time, let me tell you! So here we are, watching this skunk go back and forth in front of the bales, trying to get inside. Occasionally he’d go around to the side of the barn and then come back again. And during this whole fiasco Mom and I are sporadically having a conversation (in between several way-too-girly screams and lots of blue words) that went something like this:

Me: “I’m gonna shoot that little bastard!”

Mom: “You can’t shoot him here. He’s going to stink up the whole barn.”

Me: “Have you smelled the barn? I think he sprayed my Beagle. He needs killin’!”

Mom: “Do you really want to have to clean up and bury skunk parts?”

Me: “Well, no, I don’t want to have to shoot anything at all, but are we just going to stay down here all night playing skunk pong?”

Mom: “I think he’s gone.”

Me: “Nope, here he comes again. Dude! Seriously! Don’t go away mad, just go away!”

Mom: “If your dad was here he’d shoot him.”

Me: “Do you want me to shoot him?”

Mom: “It’s gonna stink.”

Me: “Maybe I could just whack him with a shovel?”

Mom: “Well, that’s just going to piss him off.”

Me: “Not if I whack him hard enough.”

Mom: “Could you do that?”

Me: “No, probably not. I’d wuss out at the last second. Aw, hell, this is ridiculous. We’re way tougher farm girls than this! We should be able to handle one skunk!”

This went on for about an hour, during which time Pepe was all over the place. The barn cats kept a respectful distance but seemed to think the whole thing was great fun. Except for George Earnest, the kitten, who apparently thought that the skunk might be kin to my sister’s tuxedo cat, Ozzy. As if I didn’t have enough to deal with, dear George sprints up to the skunk and very earnestly (because he’s just a sweet, earnest sort of kitty) says, “Hey, are you my friend Ozzy?”

George Earnest

I, of course, didn’t even think about it before dashing up to the cat and the skunk, snatching Georgie up, and tossing his little orange butt back in the barn. I’m lucky we didn’t both get sprayed. Meanwhile, Mr. Beagle is rolling around in his stall, trying to get the skunk smell out of his nose. I still don’t know how the skunk managed to get him. He has one little hole in the corner of his stall where the walls don’t quite join to the sloping floor. It’s big enough that he can stick his nose out (and nothing else) and I think Pepe got him there. Whatever happened, I was washing a Beagle the next day and, bless his heart, his stall still has a faint skunky odor to it.

Eventually Pepe wandered around the side of the barn and Mom and I found ourselves leaning out over the wheat straw bales with our flashlights, afraid to hope that he’d given up and gone away. I was just about to whisper “I think he’s gone” when mom yelled, “Holy shit he’s in the barn!”

The little monster had figured out we weren’t going to let him in the front doors, so he’d gone around back and come in through the gate to the sheep’s paddock. My sheep, let me assure you, were not amused. So here’s Pepe, wandering around in the big stall with several of my braver sheep preparing to stomp him into little smelly bits. I grabbed my pitchfork, yelled at Mom to open a path through the wheat straw bales and went in to do battle.

First I coaxed and cajoled, trying very nicely to shoo him out of there… and then the wee fiend backed up and sprayed at me! Now, I have endless patience with animals and a very long fuse on my temper, but I had reached the end of my tether at that point.

“Oh, hell no, you did NOT just spray me!” I roared and it was on. I was like Alice in Wonderland playing croquet, only with a skunk instead of a hedgehog. By the time I’d whacked his little black & white ass out of the big stall, down the alley, and through the front doors of the barn, I was livid. And we were all gagging from the smell. I can’t believe Pepe had any skunk juice left at that point.

I looked at Mom and said, “That’s it! I’m going to get the gun. Pepe is toast!”

Wouldn’t you know it, though, by the time I got back to the barn Pepe had decided that whatever he wanted in there was too damned much trouble and had taken off across the pasture. I’m glad now that I didn’t have to kill him, but at the moment I dearly wanted to shoot something! Apparently Mom and I made an impression, though, because he hasn’t been back. Nearly two weeks later, however, there are parts of my barn (and Beagle) where you can still catch a faint whiff of Eau de Skunk, so Pepe made an impression of his own.

And in case you were wondering, it was 6:45AM when I crawled back into bed. This is why I always say that John Denver was full of it when he sang “Life on the farm is kinda laid back.” My ass. LOL…

'Twas the Week Before Shearing And All Through The Barn....

2010-03-22T19:29:00.002-04:00

... Fleeces Ready To Be Shorn and Spun Into Yarn....

Hello Friends!

Well, I finally started a blog. I've been sitting here looking at it for days now, sort of like one of those presents you receive and think, "Wow, that's nice. What am I supposed to do with it?" Since I tend to post updates on Facebook that ramble on far longer than a status update should, I guess I'll use blogging to tell those stories. For starters, spring shearing is this weekend!

We have Corriedale, Cotswold, and Corriedale/Cotswold cross sheep. We shear twice a year, on the last weekend of March and the last weekend of September. In the fall, only the Cotswolds are shorn because they're the only ones who can grow their wool back fast enough to have a decent winter coat. Everyone gets shorn in the spring, though. I'm a bit nervous about this spring shearing because the weather has been so unusually cold this winter. In the last three days alone we've had weather ranging from sunny and 70 to cloudy and snow flurries. The 15 day forecast looks great, but I still worry about all my little woolly babies getting naked and then a cold snap coming. I don't think they're worried about that at all, though. They are more than ready to get those itchy winter coats off! For my first blog post I thought I'd tell you about shearing day so that when I post about it on Facebook you'll know what I'm talking about.

On Saturday Randy, our shearer, will arrive around 9AM. We'll have a system of gates set up in the big stall to allow us to separate the sheep into small groups for the shearing. First in line, though, are the Old English Babydoll sheep, who live in their own stall. These guys are very tiny compared to my Big Folks (think knee-high as opposed to hip-high) so they get their own quarters with a lower feed trough and waterer. Then come my Old Folks, those elderly ewes and wethers who have arthritis and don't get around so well anymore. They also have their own stall-- the Retirement Villa-- where they can eat their hay and grain without having to push and shove with the Big Folks and they can sleep all stretched out without worrying about 40 other sheep walking around, stepping on them. Once they're done, Randy moves on to the Big Folks. He'll shear half the flock the first day and the other half on Sunday. So how do you shear a sheep?

Andrew "Roo" being shorn, spring 2009

We lay out a big plywood board in the alley of the barn to keep the wool clean and to give Randy a level surface to move the sheep around on. Bringing them out one at a time, Randy will lay them back on their butts, turn on his big electric clippers, and start on their tummies, working his way around the sheep from one side to the other. We love Randy because he is so very gentle and sweet with them! Putting them upside down like this makes them a bit catatonic and they will (usually) lay quietly and let him shear. We throw away the wool from their legs, tummies, the tops of their heads, and their faces because it isn't great wool for spinning. What you're going for is the wool from their sides and back.

Annie Pepper before & after shearing, spring 2009

Once they're naked, I take the raw fleece (this is very neat because it usually comes off in one large piece and it's still warm from their body) and pile it on a sheet, tag it with the name of the sheep it came from, and hand it off to my sister. Mom sweeps up the little scrap bits and pieces so the plywood board is clean again and we start on another sheep.

Magic's fleece, spring 2009.

Once sister has the fleece, she weighs it and then skirts it. Skirting is when you strip off all the yucky wool that might be left (say, from around their butts or anything from their tummies that might have gotten mixed in by accident) so that all you're left with is the wool that will be sent off for processing. She weighs this again and writes down the weight of the fleece and which sheep it came from. Then the fleece, tagged with the weight and sheep's name, is sealed in a plastic bag. After shearing all those little bags go off to a fiber mill where they're individually washed, carded, and made into roving. They send them back to us with the original tags that say what sheep they're from. It's very cool to be able to spin the wool into yarn and knit or weave that into something and be able to say, "Oh, this is Annie Pepper" or "This is Gracie Willow."

Spring Shearing 2006 & 2009

The best part of shearing day, though, is that the sheep feel sooooo much better once all their wool comes off. And they're incredibly funny just after they're shorn. They spend about a day having to "get to know" each other again because none of them smell the same now that their wool is gone. And some of them don't seem to realize that, yes, they too were shorn! A freshly shorn one will go out to the pasture and the others will say, "Holy crap! What happened to you? Hahaha.... You look so funny!" Often there's some head-butting involved at this point. The worst part of shearing (other than just the work involved in it) is that a good part of their little personalities is in their wool. I know all my sheep by name and I can look out across the pasture and often tell who is who simply by their wool and their shape. Once their wool is gone that's very hard to do that until they start fluffing up again. Sometimes even up close it's hard to tell one from the other when the wool on their faces is all gone. And, of course, dear old Meg looks forward to getting at least some of her coat back because, as one of our two senior ladies, without her wool her butt looks a bit like an old lady whose nylons are sagging!

I hope you've enjoyed this post. Feel free to make comments and ask questions. I'd like for this blog to be a running conversation, not just me talking to myself!

I hope you have a good day!

Jenna Maclaine