daily cyn: Super awesome tansy time

I'm not quite sure why the kids all seem so distraught that it's that time of year again-- time to pull, poison, and kill all the Tansy Ragwort on the property. So far I have pretty much been the only person who has done anything about the dreaded weed so far. I've been having PTSD and flashbacks of last year. I think I developed arthritis last year from pulling so many weeds. This year I'm determined not to let any of the tansy go to seed. I got a 4 gallon backpack weed sprayer and made the rounds on a lot of the weeds. I've been trying several concoctions. So far the diesel fuel I sprayed seems to have worked the best. Unfortunately it has been raining for several days which is not conducive to poisoning these devilish weeds. So today I went out and pulled all the really big ones. I will succeed! They will die!!!

I often feel like there are eyes watching me. Then I turn around and voila, dogs, dogs, dogs. They are literally everywhere. Shadow has developed a skin condition. She has lost a lot of hair and has very itchy and bumpy skin. Darren took her to the vet. She was so stinky. Beyond any kind of dog stink I've smelled. It has been three days of steroid and antibiotic pills and special shampoo and she finally smells normal. Normal for a dog, just the normal stink. She's such a sweet dog but I didn't want to pet her because I had to immediately wash my hands.

The good news is that Roxy seems to be completely healed. She's running around again and even ran out with the big dogs to chase away a coyote that was out by the fire pit. I hope that she doesn't get herself into trouble again.

I'm getting really excited for lacrosse to be done. Between both girls there is practice every day and Saturday games. Which means a lot of driving for me. A lot. Then Drew decided to do track too, which I'm happy about. It adds in a Wednesday track meet every week. Drew has made it to finals. I'm so proud. She runs the mile in 6:23. Pretty darn good! I could never do that at her age. Or at any other age. I can, however, do a workout with 100 pull-ups in it. Which is how I trashed my hands and had painful open blisters for days. I know that it doesn't make sense to many people to put myself through this kind of torture but for some reason I love it.

On Saturday night we went to go see Star Trek with Rebecca and Tyler. The movie theater was full so we had a couple of hours to kill before the next movie. We could hear the NASCAR race at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe. Darren just couldn't resist. We went to watch the races. Afterwards the girls ran down to the front because they wanted to get a picture with the winner. They got a picture with the second place winner. Then Gillian said that she wants to be a race car driver when she grows up. We are truly a redneck family now!