TGISunday

Thank God It's Sunday.

This was not my favorite weekend.

Friday was Friday the thirteenth, so I should have known that things may not go smoothly.

--FRIDAY--
First up, Cooper figured out that his electric fence was broken and decided to go visit his girlfriends, Bella and Kadey, next door. Special thanks to my neighbor, Rich, who was smart and kind enough to grab a leash and treats to help me catch Cooper.

Look out Rich, now that my ginormous following knows about you,
you may be getting fan mail, paparazzi, cover of 'People'. I apologize in advance! :)

The biggest bummer about this was that even though I had treats, when Cooper saw me, he ran away. :( I know it was because he knew that I was mad that he left the yard, and that he didn't want to leave his friends, but ouch. Guess Cooper didn't get the memo that he is a stray that was "rescued", not "captured." Sigh.

So that was early Friday morning. That afternoon, we let him out again with us because we assumed that he'd stay with us if we were outside with him. Nope, he jumped the fence. Turns out that not only is our electric fence broken, but our actual wire fence has also been destroyed in many places by the snow, too. And then that same evening (yes, this is embarrassing) he got loose again. What's that saying? "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." Now I will add "Fool me three times....I'm an idiot?" Cooper is now only allowed out on a leash line. He hates it. I hate it. But it's called consequences, buddy. If you didn't leave the yard (you have 3.5 acres to safely run, you know!) you wouldn't have to be leashed. I'm totally bummed. And the electric fence people still haven't returned my call. Hopefully Monday.

On an up note, my Jessie girl stayed in the yard through all three runs. Thank God. She doesn't have a perfect record either, but this weekend she came through for me when I needed her to.

So now, once this snow melts, we have to get the electric dog fence fixed AND we have to fix all the places where our wire fencing has been destroyed. Sadly, all that fencing is covered in vines which are more than likely poison ivy, so I'm probably going to have to hire someone else to do it.

--SATURDAY--
Saturday brought with it rain. Which is good because it is helping to melt away the snow. What is not good is that our yard is starting to flood. Big time flood, like right up against our house and down into our utility room. So far, we're keeping ahead of it with sump pumps, and we have a call into Roto Rooter because the drain that was put in to help with this seems to be clogged. Good times.

Flooding up to the house.
I think I'd like to skip the muddy months of Spring
and skip right to June.

--SUNDAY--
And the final (hopefully) heart attack of the weekend happened at 2:00 in the morning last night (Sunday morning technically.) I was sound asleep, when I was awoken by an exploding noise (I think?) and a bright orange/blue explosion light that literally lit up the sky. Think a giant lightning storm, but the colors were orange and blue. And then nothing? And then it happened again about three more times. For those of you who know me, you might know that when it comes to "fight or flight" situations my instinct in the past has been to fight.... Figure out the problem, and fix it, NOW! (I can admit that although my instinct literally makes me run to the problem, in hind sight, I realize that this is not always the smartest choice. Sadly, in the moment, I'm not actually making decisions, I'm just doing. I'll save those stories for another day.) But last night freaked me out like nothing else. I jumped out of bed, ready to run to the problem and fix it... Was there a fire? In the house? In the barn? No. The colors were so other-worldly that I couldn't wrap my head around what was happening. Was I still dreaming? And then it happened again, and I swear that for a second I thought that we were under nuclear attack, like the scenes from that movie we were all terrified of in the eighties "The Day After"? How was I going to fix that?!?! At this point I am yelling "What is happening!?" Thankfully, Jonathan realized the cause of all this.... a pole mounted transformer on our street was exploding/on fire. Oh thank God. This I could handle. I called 911 and they said they were already aware of it. Phew. Of course, our power was out, which sets off a bunch of beeping alarms in our house and barn which are attached to those sump pumps I mentioned before, which is fine. Annoying noises I can deal with over a nuclear attack. LOL. Now I just had to comfort my poor Jessie dog who was so scared she was shaking. Surprisingly, Cooper seemed fine. As some point, Jessie and I were able to calm ourselves down and fall back to sleep, knowing that the fire department and Eversource were on the job. To my amazement, when we woke up this morning, our electricity was back on! I couldn't believe it and I was so impressed! Yay!

I don't say this too often, but I'm happy to say good bye to the weekend! Bring on Monday!

Thank you to my brother-in-law, David, who bought my chickens a treat ball!
Lucky girls!

I filled it with a few of their favorite snacks
(cucumbers, strawberries & lettuce)
 and hung it in their coop. Fun!