Blame it on the Kidneys

No, I have not deserted you. And I have not come here to pile on the excuses either. I've simply been the victim of a kidney infection for the past week. Between running to the bathroom every 15 minutes, homeschooling, cooking, cleaning, and scowling at the wind, the week just disappeared.

I spent the entire week drowning in a river of cranberry juice until a dear friend clued me in on the fact that cranberry tablets are available. Who knew? Between the cranberry tablets, cranberry juice, Cystex, Activia, lots of water and prayers from the great gals at Bible Study, I am no longer dependent on having access to a bathroom at all times.

Last night ~ or rather this morning ~ at the not-so-convenient hour of 3:00 ~ I found myself wide awake with voices running through my head, "You haven't blogged lately...", "Shouldn't you be writing something...", "You do know that blogging comes with responsibility...", "tsk...tsk..".

Grrr...thanks a lot! So here I sit.

The bright spot in my week was when I was hired for a photography shoot!

Well, kind of...

No money changed hands, but I did get a kiss!

DH asked me to take some photos of the Corriente steers so that we could send them out to prospective buyers. I jumped at the chance to leave the schoolbooks and dishes behind and grab my camera. He knew that my kidneys were having issues so he offered to reschedule, but I told him it would be fine. Ha! Let's just say that I don't recommend climbing over fences, sitting on tops of gates and standing on the top rail of a fence with one arm wrapped around a pole for support or dodging cattle when you are plagued with a kidney ailment. Just thought I'd share that piece of information for future reference.

By the time I saw the boys heading towards the pens that morning, the thermometer had risen to 42. With no wind and the sun beaming, it was absolutely beautiful. I was really excited to test out my zoom lens and I'm tickled with it's capabilities. I was pretty far from here:

And even further here, but I had to laugh when I saw this photo. Our dog, Sam, is a 12-yr old, retired cow dog. I wasn't even sure whether he would make it through the winter and here he is, acting like a puppy doing what he loves to do and what he does so well:

And here's what I was supposed to take pictues of:

No, Clint, please don't say anything funny because the bathroom is W...A...A...AAAAY over there and I'm not sure I can scramble off the top of this fence and run through all these pens fast enough to get there:

I should have used a higher aperture on these because the automatic mode yielded a shallow depth of field, but in the end, I kind of like how the guys aren't in focus:

Alas, the only thing they really want pictures of is the horns anyway, but I had fun although I forgot just how far it was from the top of the fence to the bathroom.