Gettin' Stuff Done

I had a CT scan this morning, which revealed a couple things. The first, most useful and least interesting, is that I have two kidney stones in my right kidney; one is on the border of being too big to pass on its own. I have to see a urologist, who can either use a scope or shockwaves to break up the stone. Now that I think about it, that shockwave thing is pretty interesting.

So check off "not dying from kidney failure" on my to-do list!

The second thing, least useful and most interesting, is that I have two ureters coming out of my right kidney. Apparently this is a relatively common congenital renal condition; it occurs in about 1% of the population. I was feeling pretty special until I realized what 1% of 6 billion is (60 million). And the nephrologist said that about half of people don't have textbook renal anatomy. Either way, it's not medically significant; I just have two ureters that combine into one before connecting with the bladder.

Here's a picture of some random's kidneys that may resemble my kidneys:

I think the funniest thing about this revelation is that I had a panic moment as I was undergoing the CT scan: What if they find something hideously deformed? WHAT IF I WAS BORN A BOY AND MY PARENTS NEVER TOLD ME? (That is an actual thought that went through my head.) I'm glad it ended up being more like the first thought than the second.

The three other blondes are also mutants: Hobbes has no arch to his feet and his shoulders are all funny and his tail is crooked and basically his whole body is mutated. Finch has double dew claws in the back.  Tanner has ringbone on one leg, where bone grew around a joint. It's only fitting that the fourth Blonde Bomber is a mutant too. Mutant pride! Might as well start my own X-Men school.

Besides finding the answer to my kidney problem, I also took the plow off of the four wheeler until I have the pieces to fix the winch. This way I could at least haul hay to the barn. Tanner thoughtfully helped to clear the hay remnants from the back of Ludo, ignoring the much-bigger, easier-to-eat, less-chance-of-containing-screws pile of hay behind him.

I'm counting that as a thing accomplished, even if I just left the plow stranded in the driveway.

I'm slowly getting the wallpaper down...slowly. Bit by bit. However, I tried to paint the bathroom this past weekend but was thwarted by the old paint chipping off in places. So I have more prepwork to do there.

All in all, things are gettin' done. I am ready for spring to come so I can get more stuff outside done!

Cupid Schmupid

Welp, it's Valentine's Day. Part of me (the bitter, animal-hoarding lady part) is all "Bah humbug" about it, but the majority of me is just like, "Whatevs. Cupid Schmupid. I have so much other shit going on."

For example, yesterday I got the four wheeler stuck in the snow. BUT, like a BOSS, I pulled it out with the F-Bomb all by myself. And then the winch broke on the plow. So I'm back to hauling hay manually up the hill until I fix it / take the plow off.

For another example, I still don't own the farm. Apparently they have two of the four kids' signatures and the neighbor has proposed a decent land swap, but there has been no further movement. I probably jinxed it when I started taking down the wallpaper preemptive to my actually owning the house.

Speaking of which, even the wallpaper-removal refuses to be simple. The top layer came off really nicely, but the real danger lay underneath: another layer of wallpaper painted over. So that is why in the pictures the walls look awful; I haven't swung by Home Depot to get a scorer thing to put holes in the wallpaper.

And the last example, I may have a kidney stone or some other kind of renal issue. CT scan is next Tuesday, so hopefully I'll have an answer soon.

None of this is supposed to be about poor, poor me, and that's certainly not how I'm feeling...I am very optimistic about fixing Ludo, finally owning the farm, getting the wallpaper down, and not dying of kidney failure. It's just that, instead of the expected loneliness / righteous indignation of a single lady's Valentine's Day, the holiday isn't even a blip on my radar.

Nobby, on the other hand, is all about V-Day. He and his bud Bumbledore are all agog with anticipation. They're probably watching 27 Dresses as we speak.

Here's a close up of Bumbledore*:

* I used to never name things. In fact, I used to scoff at people who named their inanimate objects. How far I've fallen....

Blizzard of Ought-Thirteen

Winter storm Nemo was actually a non-event here at Blonde Bomber Acres. While some parts of the state ended up with over 30" of snow, we maaaaybe got 8", and most of that was blown away.

During:

After:

Really, the only difference is that you can't see as much poop.

The dogs had a blast in the snow but Miss Hattie was a huge brat. She was super impatient to be fed, whereas I was just enjoying being out in the beautiful snow. After she found out I wouldn't put up with her attention-getting ploys, she took it out on the dogs. Finch thought she was playing and delighted in teasing the cranky donkey.

Later that day (also my dad's birthday!) my friend Laura brought her stepkids over to meet the animals. While Hattie was minimally better behaved, she still demanded attention by bodily knocking into them and nipping at their clothes. Not acceptable! 

Here she is looking all cute with Gloria...but the second Gloria's attention wandered, it was back to Bratty Hattie.

Even though there were three other folks happy to pet her, she couldn't stand it when Tanner got any attention.

Hopefully this is just her adolescent phase and she will chill out a bit as she gets older. Even with her bratty behavior, the kids had a great time and we all survived Nemo.

Drumroll, Please

It's my mom's birthday! She was so supportive the day of my accident. In focusing entirely on the insurance debacle, the very real support of my parents was left out. Plus, this post wouldn't exist without my dad, who offered up his truck (and treasures) without hesitating. So, lest you think that I am an ungrateful daughter, I hereby officially thank my parents for being the most awesome parents ever. Not only did you get me through that day and the days following, but you also let me have the gem that is the subject of today's blog post.

This is what we've all been waiting for. Without further ado, please allow me to introduce Lord Bearnesin-Noble, affectionately known as Nobby to his chums.


Nobby is terribly embarrassed about the unfinished walls behind him.



Nobby is a gentleman and a scholar, hailing from the aristrocratic Alaskan society and until very recently, a resident of Pine River, Wisconsin.



He first resided in the kitchen, but felt that staring pensively
out the living room window was more appropriate.



Some of you may be thinking to yourselves, Did Kelsey hit her head when she flipped her car? Why would she bring a bear home?? The answer is yes, I did hit my head, but I've always been this weird. Sorry, it's a permanent affliction.

Speaking of weird, as I've been driving the F-Bomb I've noticed that when I go over big bumps it feels like the tires leave the road and the whole thing shifts over. Especially on that godawful Road-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named. I'm sure that it's just related to shocks or suspension or whathaveyou and it's not how I imagine it, but this is what comes to mind every time it happens:

Anywho, welcome to BB Acres, Nobby! I haven't decided yet if he should get his own entry on the "Furred Residents" page or if that is a step over the line into truly-crazy-lady territory.

PS - SPEAKING OF WEIRD: Did you know that bears and raccoons have penis bones? I sure didn't until my dad asked if I wanted to take Nobby's baculum with me. I did not. (To be fair, my dad is not a total weirdo...it came up after I observed that Nobby's family jewels were painstakingly preserved in the taxidermy process. And apparently the baculums [baculi??] are kept as hunters' trophies; there's no better way to display your manliness than by wearing boner bones as jewelry.)

PPS - Upon doing baculum research, I learned that a 4.5 foot long walrus penis bone fossil sold for $8,000 in 2007. The penis bone, belonging to a walrus species that went extinct 12,000 years ago, apparently still has "weathered skin and dry muscle tissue" on it. It's simutaneously horrifying, disgusting, and fascinating. What a great conversation piece: Oh, that art hanging over the fireplace? It's the largest known mammal penis fossil.

Long Journey

After a brief interlude, we are back to light-hearted posts.

Friday morning I flew out to Wisconsin, where my mom picked me up from the airport and promptly took me to Jimmy John's. For those of you unfamiliar with JJ, it is a delicious sandwich shop that I have been craving for 2 years. And then I got to reunite with Sukie, my parents' chocolate lab.

We had to pick up the truck from the shop where it had gotten new tires. Apparently, these tires are made out of Kevlar...I'll have to test to see if they're bulletproof.  Meet the F-Bomb!

F for Ford/F-250, not the other four-lettered f word

 It is a behemoth.

After cleaning my dad's stuff out of it, my parents promptly started offering me stuff to take back with me. They're downsizing, and I had a whole empty truck, so we filled it up with treasures.

I'll introduce the best one tomorrow, but I will show you the awesome hat I took with me.



This is the look I gave passersby.

Why yes, what you're seeing IS a raccoon hat with its face chewed off by a beagle! After driving with it on for a while, I set it up on the dashboard so it could see out the window / people would think I had a pet raccoon on the dash.

[For those of you who don't know, my father is an avid hunter and my uncle is a taxidermist. There are lots of treasures at my parents' house. (Just wait til you meet the subject of tomorrow's blog post!)]

Besides seeing Marm and Dard, I also took the brief opportunity to visit my friends and meet their new baby. (Who spit up on me, requiring me to borrow a sweatshirt. Billy thought it would be hilarious to give me a Chicago Bears sweatshirt, knowing full well my family's loyalty belongs to the Packers. I spent the weekend hoping no one would notice the blasphemous article of clothing.)



Billy the Dude, Heather the Mama-cita, Ozzie the Baby, Winston the Dog, and Booger the Cat


Despite two very long days of driving (13 hours yesterday - yikes), I was back at work today feeling chipper. Although that may just be the sugar rush from inhaling too many cookies from my hometown cookie factory.

Either way, I am glad to be home and glad to have the F-Bomb. Thanks to Alex for watching BB Acres while I was gone!

A Hefty "Stupid Tax"

[Edited to add] I wrote the bulk of this yesterday when everything was super raw and wasn't sure if I should publish it, since it's full of melodrama.

Thanks to some amazing people in my life, I have a better perspective on it today. My intense fear of being seen as a failure eclipsed the fact that, holy crap, I survived a serious car crash, walking away from it without a scratch.

I'm leaving the original post up because I'm starting to laugh at how melodramatic I was about something so inconsequential compared to what could have easily happened. It's a little embarrassing though, so read it with a grain of salt.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
***This is about a car accident, so you may not want to read it/look at the picture.***

The heating company came yesterday morning to do a gas check (something they require for new customers), and the technician came later than expected. So I was driving a little faster than prudent under the conditions to get to work when my front right tire caught the edge of a slush/ice puddle, fishtailed violently across the road, hit a snow bank, flipped upside down, and slid into a tree on the driver's side.

Aside from an "Oh shit, well, this is happening," there really wasn't any time to freak out. The worst part was being upside down, trying to get unbuckled and find a way out before the car blew up (which is what my treacherous imagination told me would happen but totally didn't). It probably only took me a minute to unbuckle, roll down the passenger side window, scoot over, and wiggle out, but it felt like a lifetime. By then the driver of the car that had been in front of me had run down the embankment to see if I was okay and had called 911.

I walked away completely unhurt (aside from a headache and some muscle aches).

Once the tow truck had arrived, the sheriff ('s deputy? I don't actually understand the sheriff's department.) drove me into work, where I checked my email and settled in to make a few phone calls.

You'd think a day couldn't get any worse, but hoo boy, it can. I found out that when I had signed up for insurance with Geico two years ago, I had chosen the bare minimum which covered bodily harm and property damage, but not collisions. (The only reason I can think of why I did this was that I was in AmeriCorps at the time and had a very limited monthly budget.)

 I don't think the owner of the tree will be making a claim (the insurance agent asked if that was a possibility), so basically I'm on my own. I am incredibly lucky in that, besides not being hurt at all, nothing was owed on the car, my dad had been planning to pass on his truck to me anyway when he got a new one, and I have enough disposable income to cover towing and other costs.

None of that makes me feel better. Not even the part where I walked away unscathed.

I just keep asking myself how I could be that much of a moron, to not have collision insurance. For such a small action, it had big, huge, expensive consequences.

I think the worst part was the dismay and disappointment in my mom's voice when I told her, and the imagined disappointment and judgement from my dad. I'd let my parents down as well as myself. I just wanted someone to tell me that it was okay, that other people are idiots too, that $6,000+ wasn't that big of a loss...basically I wanted someone to build me a delusional world where I didn't have to feel so bad.

Unfortunately, I have to live in this world, a world in which I almost wish I had been injured because at least that would have been covered. A world in which I made such a colossal mistake.

But it is also a world in which there are bright points as well as dark ones. My friends and coworkers have offered me their cars, their time, their hugs, and their boyfriends' expertise. I also made a work connection with the police officer around my prescription drug abuse education work...networking is key!

My sister texted me that when she had made a costly mistake, our dad had told her to "think of it as a Stupid Tax, write it off, and move on." Despite the fact that I feel like I'm always paying Stupid Taxes (and usually with my parents' money, which makes it soooo much worse), it does help start to put it behind me.

I'm still kicking myself for not having the right insurance, but as our family sayings go, "If it's dead, it's dead." "It is what it is." So my car is dead, that $6,000 is gone, and I can do nothing about it but sign up for better insurance and be thankful that I wasn't hurt.

And I'm flying out tomorrow to Wisconsin to drive the truck back to Maine, so I get an unexpected trip home to see my parents!

Scenic Route

The temperature is finally back in the range where I don't immediately want to die when I step outside. So I went for a ride for the first time since moving to BB Acres!

The dogs and Tanner and I set off up the road. After a few brays, Hattie seemed to settle into being alone just fine; I was worried I was going to have to pony her along (and kind of hoping I would have to, because how awesome would that be?) but I didn't.

The road BB Acres lies on goes up a hill, turns into a dirt road, and ends in a dairy farm. At the top of the hill, you can see for miles.

You can't really tell from the bad cell phone picture, but there are mountains in the distance. Being a Wisconsin-bred flatlander, I have yet to stop going "Oooooooo, aaaaaaahhh" whenever I see mountains. There's a spot on my drive home from work that I look forward to seeing every day because of its amazing view.

It was wonderful to be able to take in such a view while spending quality, peaceful time with Tanner. The dogs had a blast, and we met two giant Belgian horses and an appaloosa at the top of the hill.

All in all it was a good day.



Headed back towards home