I'm gone for too long and now I am lost.....

Google is trying to hold my blog hostage but I somehow got back here :). I must get re acquainted with the inner workings of this place, and how to not give my phone number out.  Do you guys give out your numbers?  My pictures that come through my email are public now and I had no clue it was happening.  Good news they were just pic of wildlife from my neighbor and pics from Hawaii last summer.  There are two you tube videos posted god only knows how???  Could be one of the teenagers messing around?
So don't laugh at me, K?

Still have a blog!

Ok so I closed my alpaca web pages down...trying to save $ for hay.....apparently it has gold in it?  $10 a bale around here?  Anyway I have been throwing business cards around???  Wait! I thought....where are people going if I don't have a website.  SO I typed in Housetop Mountain and it brought me back to you loveys.  Hi loveys!  If I ever get three seconds I am going to hunt everyone down...if you are still out there!

Oh look I did it again

I seem to be right on schedule for blogging twice a year :)  

Wait till you see the total cuteness and then you will understand.

 Ok this isn't so cute but what kind of crazy weather we have had...I'm loving the green summer

This is Rendezvous 1st born this spring

 I got this guy to help out Miss Molly his name is Boss, I know he looks loveable but he is all business

This is Little Bit

                                       She's a little bit brown, a little bit black and a little bit ornery!
                                       Remember Honda Rhonda?  Well she is Miss Ornery's mom

These are alllll my new kitty's...mama was busy this spring

Sorting fleece in really dry air

Miss Mitra and her Colorado Blue....he was born with a blue tongue

Blues first day in the big blue world

Nieces and nephews

Stormy just being cute

 Blue Mesa Reservoir 4th of July

This is Corona a little ausie

                                                                    

And her owner, my cousin the cowboy who's legs had not seen sunshine for years until this day  :))

See you about Christmas time!!  Just kidding...I have two more cria's due still :))

Predators 1 Housetop 1

 The war wages on...I found a dead chicken on Sunday and thought little Miss Molly had killed it.  I'm still not sure BUT my beloved BubbaLoo brought me this yesterday afternoon.  Hmmmm.

 This is my fabulous photo skills at work.  I got a Canon Rebel last year for Christmas and I thought I knew how to use it???  Turn it on to "Full Auto" and this doesn't happen.  That is my Christmas tree by the way...kinda cool looking picture, right?

Housetop 3/Predators 4

I know, I know the predators seem to be winning...but I wouldn't really call it winning.  In the past month I have lost 1 alpaca to the two huskies and 3 chickens to a  bobcat that has been terrorizing the neighborhood.  Good news this morning... Dead-eye hubby took him to meet his maker. 

 As far as bobcats go he is a monster!


We brought Buccaneer home yesterday from his surgery and I feel so bad for him.  His eye just wasn't healing right so we decided to remove it.  He's a real trooper though...handling it as good as can be expected.   He will get his stitches out January 4th and God willing he is going to have a good year in 2011.  I don't think I will ever forget 2010.  It will not be one of fond memories. Eight more days and I will be done with it.

This little gal (Miss Molly) earned her keep ten fold this morning.  She is the reason we caught the bobcat in the chicken pen.  I am just soooo happy that she didn't try to take it on by herself.   She is only 4 months old and a big ole lovable teddy bear.

 We tried to get pictures of last summers crias to update the website....Miss Mokey does not like the halter, the lead, the camera or me for that matter.  She kinda acts like me when she doesn't want to do something.  She throws herself on the ground and has a big fit!  Little brat.  Mokey...not me.

 

Well in other news I have gained my usual 10 lbs in honor of ole St Nick.  So stupid.  I will lose the last of it probably about next Thanksgiving.

We have lived up here on the mountain for 8 years and I have never had a brown Christmas, until 2010.

Are you seeing a pattern here?

Try this one again

OK so it's been almost a year...I am turning over a new leaf 14 days early :)  You know I can't do anything by the book or normal or on time.
It has been kind of a rough year for us on the mountain. 
Aunt Rita passed away October 4th 2009 and so soon after dad's passing, it threw me into some kind of weird tail spin.  So so sad.  I just want to pick up the phone and call her...all the time. 

Anyway this year has continued to be full of some of the same.  I had to put Sammy down in October of this year. RIP buddy, I will miss you forever!

I had an alpaca get mauled by two huskies on Thanksgiving day this year...poor guy hadn't even made it to the blog yet.  His name was Kace and he was my up and coming "Oh my God!" full accoyo herd sire.  He was as sweet as they make alpacas. 

Yesterday I go out to feed the boys and notice something is wrong with Buccaneer's eye...He hit his eye so hard on something that the lens popped out, the cornea is in the bottom of his eye and the lens was sitting in his fleece??  Gross, Gross, Gross.  Off to the vet an hour away.  We don't know if he will be blind but we do know that without the lens he won't be able to focus.  My second herd sire!

I have Tibbs still and he is producing crias finally.  Mokey was born late last summer and she is a looker!!  We named her after the Mokey Wall in Lake Powell.  She is a beautiful copper color.

Then there is Landslide who was shone and won 3rd place in a pretty big show (Fall Fest in Loveland Colorado).  Thanks to Linda...the sweetest alpaca expert in the universe!   I bought him from her and she so graciously offered to show him for me.  He is also an ooooh la la alpaca.  He is as black as black can be and just as shiny as a new born cria.  Thankfully on Thanksgiving day he was at Linda's house...he would have been mauled also...it happened in his pen.


That is all I have left for herd sires.  I am looking at a five year old, full accoyo herd sire in Oregon that is priced to sell.  I think he will do nicely in my program.

OK that is enough sadness...I need a priest to come and bless this mess!!
Next year has got to be better, Right?

I am expecting 5 new crias this summer, cross your fingers for me!  I will post again before that...I'm sure of it :)

Wow 6 months goes by really fast

Hi all,
I know, I know I am the worst blogger of the worst kind.  My barn is done with the exceptions of a few minor things and I cannot seem to stay in the house and out of the barn.  I now have fleece coming out of my ears and I am trying to figure out what to do with it.  Hubby bought me a knitting machine for Christmas and it is going to eat up what little time I have left over, especially since I put it in the barn :P  As soon as I learn how to run the damn thing...right now I am missing a few hairs from teaching myself to knit at the age of 44 pfffftttt.  Will I never learn?
Does anyone else believe that the Ice age has returned?  We have not been above 25 for over a month.  I live in the high desert for hells sake.  We lizards are not used to such fridgidness...is that a word?  It is now.
OK I have to go feed the girls and boys, I now have boys!  I just bought a mom and cria from Michigan (they are also freezing their asses off!!)  The cria is a 4 month old boy and he is awesome...
I had to mess around with my commenting because of my post for droopy (alpaca) lips...I have been bombarded with nasty, nasty comments :{  Pigs.  So you are off the hook for commenting, yay.

Hi All...Remember me?

For those of you who didn't delete me by now...Hey! How the heck are ya?

My barn is done finally, isn't it purty?

We are still putting in electricity but the animals said they were ok w/o power and we moved them in. First thing they did was start a nice poop pile...inside the dang barn :[

I'm trying to convince the cats that they need to move in next...they ain't believing me.

This is my new herd sire Tiburon...aka Mr Tibbs.

I got this little gal in the purchase also. She is Miss Mitra.

I finally got about 39 feet of yarn spun...I will be dead before I can make a blanket!!

Buddha and his girlfriend..Toes the terminator. If Buddha was 8 inches taller we would have terminator baby's :P

I now have a 13 year old. When the hell did this happen? Look away for a minute and they are half grown..sniff.


I was trying to convince him that the smoking candles weren't hot hahaha. He didn't believe ole mom.

And what the hell was I thinking????? He loves them but still...WTH?



My youngest got an award at the end of the year. I thought it was gonna be for the biggest screw off in class. It was the presidential achievement award???????????????????????????? I hooped and hollered until I embarrassed him and then I fell out of my chair.


Because this is him in his natural state.

So there you have it. It's not much but it's all I got.

Droopy lips

I went out to feed tonight and 2 of my girls were standing around with their mouths hanging open. They looked like they had eaten something bad or something that had numbed their lower lip. Scared the crap out of me. Last fall I threw out a bunch of clover seed...some alpacas can't eat clover because they are allergic. I am a nervous wreck all the time that they will eat something that they are not supposed to. So you can imagine my horror to walk into the pen and find this

l

1

1

1

v

They look totally silly!

This is not one of my alpacas, it is a picture from Intrepid Alpacas.

After I closely inspected my girls I ran in he house and got online immediately...

and this is what I found!

The Sulk--When alpacas get upset they will "drop their lip". The bottom lip will become all droopy and fall away exposing the bottom teeth and gums. Some alpacas will take pieces of hay, grass or leaves into their mouths and just hold it there for extra effect. Saliva will sometimes drip from the bottom lip as well. If all this sounds rather pathetic, it is. They are sulking. Don't worry about it. They have probably just come off second best in a disagreement with another alpaca and they will get over it in a few minutes. (Often the sulking alpaca will have a few globs of green spit on their face as evidence of the disagreement!)

Thank goodness I found this explanation!

The silly girls were tiffen ;)

Full of eggs

Hi Guys, I know I have been mia for quite some time now and I'm sorry. I have been really busy having a mid life crisis ;)

I am going to turn my blog into an alpaca blog only. It will still be worth checking out when I do post, however posting will not be everyday, as I was TRYING to do before. I am trying to get this little alpaca business off of the ground. I have been taking classes, watching any videos I can get my hands on and driving the seasoned alpaca farmers insane! I have found some local farmers that are less than an hour from me, whew! I was worried I was going to have to move to Denver lol.

The alpaca farms on my side of the mountain a few and far between and they are struggling to start up a fiber processing mill and a network of local people to help this thing grow. Soooo I am doing my usual knee jerk reaction and jumping in head first! You would think I would get tired of all of the bumps on my head but this is something that is near and dear to my heart.

Alpacas Rock!

Here is what I have going so far: I am signing up for a class in August at some place beautiful in Idaho to become a certified sorter. A sorter can either go out with the shearer on shearing day or have it sent to them and sort out the #1, 2 and 3 parts of fiber. The #1 fiber is worth more money than the 3rds of any fiber.

I am teaching myself to spin the fiber into luscious yarn.

I am teaching myself to dye the yarn.

I am teaching myself to weave, I may give up the "teaching myself" and go find some help on this one!

I went to a neonatal class a few weeks ago. Very informative...and I'm terrified now! When an alpaca is birthing and by some sort of bad luck she has a distosia (sp?), you can lose your cria, I will just die if something happens to En Vogues cria :(

Speaking of En Vogues cria, I had to take little miss Rita in to have her teeth trimmed...that was a freaking rodeo. When you are holding an alpaca for someone....stay close to them...I mean like bear hug close! I thought she broke my collar bone when she decided to jump out of the chute. It doesn't hurt them she was just a little freaked out by the hour long ride in the horse trailer and weird people sticking weird things in her mouth.

I learned something right after I had her teeth trimmed that day and I trimmed her toenails on another day and had the traveling vet up to give them their vaccinations and to do fecals on another day. I FIGURED OUT THAT ON SHEARING DAY YOU DO ALL OF THAT.... WHILE YOU HAVE BIG STRONG GUYS HOLDING THEM DOWN!!!! Hahahahahha that was a good one. Ouch my head hurts.

But as you all know I wanted to go to school and learn something that I could do and love until the end of my time....well I have been to the school of hard knocks before and they were missing me so I decided to enroll yet again!

It's a good thing that all animals are pretty forgiving, especially when I'm in charge.

I have been playing around with and learning the different fibers out there in the world and I have decided that I want to raise angora rabbits.

Have you seen one of these?

Is this the cutest damn thing ever!?

Their fiber is like sticking your hand into a cloud. I'm sure all of you have had an angora sweater at some point in your life...right? I think I had a hand me down when I was 12 or something but I had forgotten how heavenly it was.

If I could mix angora and alpaca....mmmmm it would be yummy!

My niece just found out that she is preggers and I would love to make a baby blanket out of the alpaca/angora mix....well someone else will make it cuz I ain't learning how to knit. Too much on my plate right now.

...I went to San Diego for spring break and it was cold and windy the entire time I was there...pffft. The beach..any beach is still beautiful any time of year, but cold and windy just for me??? Why???

I took Buddha and he was not welcome anywhere. I thought Californians were the dog lover capital of the world.

OH Well.

Mother Nature is being testy today

Last night it snowed and snowed all night. We woke up to about 18 inches and the drifts in some places were over 2 feet! My sons truck is what you see over the edge of the wall...the bed is full of snow, more funny is my radio flyer wagon just barely peaking out right in front of the wall. I. Moved. Snow. All. Day. The pacas appreciate me for it :)

Warning...This may make you sick!

I got nothing today, it snowed AGAIN...5 inches this time. It seems to melt off in one day, but still! It snowed again!

I haven't been posting my workout times because...I haven't been working out per say. I pick up pounds of alpaca poop and ounces of Buddha poo, does that count?

I shoveled snow for an hour this morning trying to find my truck???

Anyway...

Google or Wildblue are giving me fits today so I can't play on the computer if I want to keep my sanity.

So I leave you with this really, really bad Irish Joke!

BANK ROBBERY
Excerpted from an article about a bank robbery which appeared in the Irish Times on 2 March 1999: Once inside the bank shortly after midnight, a gang of raiders' efforts at disabling the internal security system got underway immediately. The robbers, who expected to find one or two large safes filled with cash and valuables, were surprised to see hundreds of smaller safes scattered throughout the bank. The robbers cracked the first safes combination, and inside they found only a bowl of vanilla pudding. As recorded on the bank's audio-tape system, one said, "At least we'll get a bit to eat," The robbers opened up a second safe, and it also contained nothing but vanilla pudding. The process continued until all the safes were opened. They found not one pound sterling, a diamond, or an ounce of gold. Instead, all the safes contained covered bowls of pudding. Disappointed, the robbers made a quiet exit, each leaving with nothing more than a queasy, uncomfortably full stomach. The newspaper headline read:

IRELAND'S LARGEST SPERM BANK ROBBED EARLY THIS MORNING.

Cancer insurance saleswoman?

I received an email this morning about a lady that is going door to door in my town selling different kinds of insurance.

It's pure bullshit, what she is doing is getting all of your personal info so she can steal your identity AND she is coming back when she thinks your gone.

Several peoples dogs have already tried to munch her, too bad they missed.

Remember I live 10 miles out of town and If you can find my house, you can steal everything in it. It's a joke of course, don't come looking for me...you will get lost.

But wouldn't that be funny if she did find me up here all alone and pissed off, cuz I have no life and all I ever do is clean, and I'm pms'ing? She might need some of that insurance she's selling. I could tuck her away somewhere and let Buddha chew on her till the po po's got here.

He he..I'll take entertainment however I can get it on this retched mountain.

Mwhuhuha

It's only time.

Einstein’s lock

It's that time again. While my hubby absolutely hates this one, I kinda like it, I get more done.

As I'm sure you all know I have way too many animals. Animals don't live by the clock, they go off of the daylight, well mine do anyway.

For the past 3 weeks I have been in tears first thing in the morning. You see my asshole black cat would come tearing ass across the bed around 4:30 AM, across Buddha, who in turn tears around the house with his little dog tags clanging together like the fucking liberty bell, while he chases asshole. Two weeks ago I started sleeping with a squirt bottle...I am deadly at 20 feet. Asshole hates water.

Today I figured it out...it was time for assholes breakfast...it's starting to get light out and all of the animals (not just asshole) think it's time to eat. So the animals have me trained already. He wasn't being an asshole after all...he was helping me train to get up an hour earlier. Now if I could just sick them all on the hubby my life will be awesome.

Hubby makes such a big deal out of this time change. He asks 40 times a day "What time is it? In old time?"

By May I want to hurt him.

I hope all of you working stiffs do ok in the morning.

Excuse me while I tear your face off

Have you ever thought about the fact that an entire nation knows how to drive by all of the same rules?

How cool is that?

Well except for the few asshats that come out when ever I have to go to town.

Apparently I can't read and I am a dummy...according to an 80 year old man that I tangled with yesterday. I went the wrong way in a parking lot (this parking lot was empty, save for he and I)...and he yelled to me that I needed to learn how to read and that I was a dummy!

A dummy!

This was towards the end of my day running around in the big town. I lost it on him. I never lose it while driving. I probably set the old farts ears on fire before I got done. And I am positive I taught him some new cuss words.

Why would you want to block someones way and tell them they are dumb all the while holding your hands up in the air? I did fit past him but he had to scoot over about a foot....grrrr.

It's too bad that courtesy isn't a nationwide learned behavior.

Even if you are my elder...you could still show some form of humanity.

In other news...it's snowing AGAIN! We have about 4 inches so far and it's still blowing sideways.

I am going to go off in a corner and snivel while sucking my thumb:(

There's no place like home Toto (Buddha)

OK the weather has gone insane here.

Remember the 3 ft of snow that I had last month? It's all gone and the mud is almost gone. This is the weather we should be having in April/May.

The wind is typical of March, however I have never been through a typical March with a dog that only weighs 6 lbs. I made the mistake of going to the grocery store with the dog and BOTH boys :(

If I hadn't been so irritated it was probably pretty comical....

I was putting grocery's in the back of the minivan while Buddha stood on the console up front well... a 60 mph gust of wind hit about the time I opened the back of the van. Buddha wound up on the floor and I had bags flying around me like birds on crack and the cart kept trying to roll up my butt and into my car and into the the car next to me. Needless to say it was pretty stressful and I am staying home today with my little dog tucked safely in the house!

Spring is a comin...and I'm a goin outside!
I will write more when someone beats me to come back in the house :)

Melancholy Monday

Go visit this place if you want to get all warm and fuzzy.

My bff that lives in Louisiana sent me these pictures of the rig that her hubby works on. I'm not sure how it caught on fire...she didn't write anything...she just sent me pictures of his platform on fire. That's how she rolls.

Am I being punked?

I got these pictures in an email this morning, do they look real to you?

Cuz if they are, they should be on the Today Show or whatever show, cool and unusual elk would be on?

Hubby and I are/have been avid hunters for years and I've seen one albino elk in my 43 years of playing out in the woods. I don't hunt anymore but my hubby is...well a fanatic. These two gringo elk were spotted not to far from where hubby hunts.

I think they should move...soon.

Can you see the normal elk in between the 2 white ones?

They are pretty aren't they?

Other news from my neck of the woods.

It's a sad day.

The newspaper called the "Rocky Mountain News" is shutting down. I loved that news paper. They put it together so you could read it like a book...I know I'm a dork.

It was the largest newspaper in Colorado and it will be dearly missed.