How I Drove A Dozer

 First things first ..... PROGRESS!!  My sweet boy was almost his normal happy self in the morning.  He ran around looking for the B A L L or any toy he could maul.  Sadly, I have had to put them all away for at least two weeks.  He's about as bored as I am.  

The critter cam I set up while I was gone at Bingo?  It made me cry.  There were a whopping 82 videos of him getting up and down off the couch.  He would walk to the front door window, look out, then return to the couch.  Needless to say my little bundle of joy misses me when I'm gone.  Now I'll feel terrible every time I leave!

At least this quick trip to the grocery stored didn't take me long.  I was a little shocked when I saw some of the food prices however.  Though I keep hoping they will come back down, inflation is still alive and well in California.  That whole chicken I did NOT buy for $10.00 is now $13.00 ... and this AFTER the big chicken die off event was over.  If only we could go back two years!!

Back to ranch stories .... this is not my picture of a D3 caterpillar, probably built in the late 1940's.  To be honest, I don't think I ever knew exactly what year ours was, but pre 1950 for sure.  It hung out behind the quonset hut until we needed it for plowing a field to plant hay.  

During the wintertime, there wasn't much grass growing, so cattle were taken to the mountains for feed while we planted our fields with grass seed.  Originally we had a National Park lease to run them in the Sierra Mountains.  It helped kept fires to a minimum since the cattle would eat all the green grass before it died and became a fire hazard.   We tried to warn them ........

Several years of that trashy tree stuff building up on the forest floor, along with one lightning strike, and BOOM ... a fire of epic proportions.  Over and over again.  But I digress .....

It only took one ride on our caterpillar and I was hooked.  I think it all began with those little words ... you can't do this, you're a GIRL.  I was pretty stubborn even as a little kid.  My train of thought was this ... if I can learn to drive the D3, I can be outside where I'm happy, and NOT inside doing laundry, or dusting or ironing on the big mangle iron ... that GIRL stuff.

A few times here and there Dad would let me pull the levers.  In no time I had a big pillow at the back of the seat so I could REACH the levers.  The ones on each side would put the brakes on that side only, leaving the other side still moving ... which turned you.  It took lots of finagling with both feet and both hands to keep her straight.  Add to that two transfer cases and clutches so stiff that I almost fell off the seat every time I had to reach for it, along with the controls for the plow and it kept you busy.

Turning a circle at the end of the row with a big plow attached was the most fun ever.  I know, I'm weird ... but being able to get that thing to go exactly where you wanted was a kick in the pants.  Finally Dad let me take over an entire field.  He warned me it better be STRAIGHT rows when I was done.  

I think I was 11 or 12.  The secret was to keep the corner of the cat on the fence post at the far end of the field.  Do that and your lines would be straight as an arrow.  I was out there all day long by myself, just plowing away.  I finished the field and walked back to the house looking like someone had dumped two buckets of dirt on my head.  Although I never got an ATTA GIRL, he did say my rows were straight.

As time went on, the caterpillars got bigger and bigger, as did the stories we have to tell now.  I think this probably looks familiar to Jim who just came back from working a farm up North.  I have no pictures of how our cats got stuck in the mud, but this is a good example.  That story is coming up tomorrow.

Unlike my lunch on the caterpillar which always consisted of peanut butter and jelly, this corn dog looks yummy, yes?  It's cheap eats from Costco, along with some sweet potatoes fries, both of which came out of my air fryer.  

THIS is what we have been dining on at Bingo, so I thought it would be a perfectly cheap replacement for dinner.  I was completely taken aback when I read they are chicken dogs!  OH NO!!  You mean I've been eating CHICKEN?  Let me just say they are not NEAR as good as when boiled in oil for five minutes.  Dip them in enough mustard and you can't taste them ... which is what I did.

Here's my pretty boy, looking more poodle-ish since I trimmed up his mouth.  All his fur was gunked up from the surgery and getting in his mouth, causing excessive licking.  He's doing so much better today, we are actually going for a long walk.  In his book, that's almost as good as playing the ball game.

My luck continues ... more meetings tonight at the Elks Lodge.  Nancy is pretty happy that at the end of this month I will get a reprieve from them for awhile when I head to Arizona.   Shhhh don't tell anyone!