Kidnapping Bastiaan…. And Vanilla Bean Ice Cream…

Yep, I admit it!
I kidnapped my husband!
And I LIKED IT!

We don’t go out much. Our life pretty much evolves in and around the dairy. We don’t feel the need to go too far and away places, because when we were “young” (yes, this means in our teens and twenties) Bastiaan and I traveled the world. So now we are just happy to sit on our own couch in our own house enjoying each other’s company.

But sometimes you (well, I anyway) get this feeling and you just need to chance paces a bit to keep yourself and your relationship happy…

Soooo, I kidnapped my hubby!

Last year my sweetie turned 30 (such a young pup...)! And we needed to celebrate, but I am not very good at giving gifts and I am also ALWAYS forgetting his birthday day (yes I know, it is usually on the same date every year…) but somehow it always sneaks up on me! So to make up for all the years that I almost (or fully) forgot I planned a little get away trip.

He did not know ANYTHING! I just told him he needed to make sure to shower and shave and be ready at 11 am Thursday morning.

The night before I packed his favorite shirts and yeans, tossed some cologne and gel in a bag and put that with my girly girl stuff in the trunk of my car. At 11 am he was ready and was anxious to know where going…. Bastiaan is not very good with surprises or gifts; he just has this need to know what it is or what the surprise is…. But I was NOT going to tell him!

I had to be pretty crafty because after his shower and getting dressed, with me telling him “Sorry honey, that shirt of yours is still in the laundry basket…”, “Yeah I know it is been in there for over a week….”, “I’ll do it when we get back tonight…”. And sneaking back into the house, while he waited in the car, with a lousy excuse of having forgotten something, to get his toothbrush and shaving stuff, in two Walmart bags, so he couldn’t see what was in it... We finally got going.

No I didn’t need no handcuffs, and also I didn’t need a blindfold, but I had him in my car and I wasn’t gonna let him go!

After we drove for 4 hours he REALLY wanted to know where we were going. I told him, “surprise!” and kept driving. But of course I got a little hungry and he got a little grumpy after all this driving, so we pulled over at an exit close to Cincinnati. Bastiaan was all ready to hop out of the car and do some driving with race cars (that was what he thought we were going to do) but when we pulled into the parking lot of a Steak and Shake, he figured it out pretty quick! No racing cars, not today!

After we had a fabulous burger and a shake, YES some VANILLA BEAN (hehe), we hit the road again. And finally after driving a little over seven and a half hours we were there! By that time Bastiaan knew we weren’t going home that night, but he still did not know I booked us a Bed & Breakfast close to the Smokey Mountains and we were going to stay there for two nights. We ended up staying there for THREE nights, just us, our lovely hosts and some wonderful house guests. No phones, no TV, no computers and NO COWS! We did have long walks, amazing breakfasts and even more amazing desserts, some incredible views of the mountains and our own porch and Jacuzzi! It was fantastic!

And..., because of all of you, we made it into the final round of the Progressive Dairyman Ice Cream Face Off!!! AND because Bastiaan is going to be 31 this weekend and yes I am kidnapping him again today! But this time with his knowledge, I am gonna ask you ONE MORE TIME to please vote for Vanilla Bean! And I promise you, I will do my best to find the best ice cream place in DollyWood and eat some Vanilla Bean Ice Cream and let you know about it…. Well…. And if we won the contest of course!

A big THANK YOU SOOO MUCH to everybody who voted AND a big THANK YOU AND A BIG HUG for everybody who where brave enough to try my Ice Cream and multi colored Peppercorns recipe, and actually did LIKE it!

You guys are the best!!!



….

Withdrawals….

Sometimes I watch tv.
Sometimes I even watch tv without really looking.
Sometimes I watch TV and I think by myself, “Why on earth am I watching this???”

I used to love Grey’s Anatomy. Bastiaan and I would sit down on Thursday evenings and watch it together. When I got diagnosed and the months after, during chemo, Thursday was the best day. As in that was the one evening where I would be almost completely  “present” and without uncontrollably shaking or sweating, most of the times anyway... Normally Bastiaan likes other shows than I, but this was one of our “Let’s watch together shows” and try to forget about all the bad stuff going on in “real” life.

Until Izzy (one of the main characters of the show) got sick. Guess what she got???!!! Oh, was so mad.

She could have gotten ONE HUNDRED THOUSANDS kinds of cancer. But nope, she ended up with my kind, and that was besides the fact that she was almost the same age and blond too!!!

The ONE evening during the whole week were I would crawl into Bastiaan’s embrace and were we would try to forget for an hour about the fact that we had cancer and just moved to a new country…

They had her, get my cancer!
We stopped watching Grey’s that night.

Getting on chemo is not the hard part. Being on chemo is not too good as in really, really (here you can put your own curse words if you use them) NOT GOOD! But we were in for a real ride after we got OFF the chemo!

On my dad’s birthday, October 9th, 2009 after 64 weeks of chemo I got my last dose. It was a great day and we even had a cake to celebrate. All it wanted was a Big Mac, but the cake seemed more appropriate. In the following days I was under the impression that now that I was off the nasty stuff, life would go back to normal in a swiffy. A girl has to have hope, right?!

That first weekend I got a headache. But I still had some of those great pills from the doc so I could keep going, suppressing that headache. I wasn’t going to let a little headache going to ruin my fine “new” life after chemo!

The next day I still had a headache. I didn’t help that I already to 4 of those “special” pills were normally I would be happy as a pumpkin in a sunny pasture after a half of one of those pills…

BUT I was stubborn and we needed to go shopping, at Menards. After 6 pills and lots of begging, my dad took me home, but it became clear, that home wasn’t the best place to be at that moment. And after my mom, dad AND Bastiaan found out I had eaten my little stash of “special” pills it was time to go to the emergency room…

The Bluffton Emergency room wasn’t the best place either because after a CAT scan and a HUGE needle and syringe of some kind of pain reliever (in my buttocks!) they sent me home… and I was feeling like that fat happy pumpkin again!

The next day, the pain was back! FULL FORCE!!! We skipped the emergency room in Bluffton. We brought out the big guns and went to the big city emergency room! I am not sure but the doctors there were a bit puzzled too. After several scans, including CAT/PET and MRI’s they found nothing, but I was completely overcome by this terrible pain in my head. Finally they gave me a shot (and yes this was even worse than the buttocks shot the day before!) in my spine! I never had a shot in my spinal cord before, and let me tell you this IS NOT FUNNY!

What was even more disappointing was that the shot did not work. So as a last resort they finally gave me a little cocktail… they had checked out everything and anything and were still afraid to numb any symptoms and thus figuring out what was wrong, but they were even more worried about the pain that I was still having. And no that cocktail was not a stiff drink, but a cocktail of pain relievers, and yes some big names like valium and morphine drifted by. 5 minutes after I got that cocktail I wasn’t even a happy fat pumpkin anymore I was just… floating…

They kept me in the hospital for five days.

Three of those five days are a bit cloudy because of my “not to make at home” special cocktail. But the last two were pretty “good”. The oncologist told me that what probably happed was the withdrawal from all these weeks of chemo, had something to do with this headache of mine (I am not even sure if headache is the right word, but for a lack of better word…) Gradually things went better and during the day I would sleep and I had visitors who would come and cheer me up. In the evenings I would watch TV. Books were too much of a strain, but the TV would do the trick and take my mind of things.

I watched my first “after Izzy”, Grey’s Anatomy episode by myself in that hospital bed. The sweet girl was gone, I believe she survived her illness but they “cut” her out of the show by moving her to another town or something. I’m glad she didn’t die. And yes my mom told me when I was little that I shouldn’t believe everything I see on the ‘tellie’, but I was happy anyway. There were just too many resemblances and i thought if she can survive so can i....

When doctors tell you that you are sick, you are sick. Your brain tells you that you are sick and you need to get better. This is a given. When doctors tell you that you are better, your brain doesn't always tell you that you are better... Especially when you can not do all the things u used to do, or have the stamina you had before, or seeing the thirty plus scars on you body. Basically your brain and body are having withdrawals from cancer. And then there is the worry of getting sick again that sometimes  is sooo overpowering that you "forget" that you are actually well.

I found it MUCH harder to be "better" than to be "sick". I know this sounds strange, but i can't describe it any other way.

I do not know this body of mine anymore. And i defiantly do not know this brain. Whatever those drugs did to get rid of the cancer, they, also "messed" ME (as in I ) up. I tell myself not to worry, I'll find "ME" again. It just will be a little bit of a different ME that i was 4 years ago...


...

Feeling hot hot HOT!

You know that song....
"Feeling hot hot hot..."
 It supposed to be a funny feel good summery song...

Our ladies (cows) don't think so!

Actually they are pretty disappointed that we (the humans) can't make this hot air that is going true the barn right now a little less hot.

Generally our ladies like it to be cool. Anywhere from 15 degrees Fahrenheit to 70 degrees Fahrenheit is fine with them. 95 Degrees Fahrenheit with a humidity of 85 percent does not make them happy cows.

We try to make our girls as comfortable as possible but with weather like this it is kinda hard and it gets a little depressing. I know that they have it better inside than if they would be standing outside in the FULL SUN! But still i feel bad that i can't do more. But let me tell you  what we DID do too keep our girls cool:

We have BIG fans. The fans hang over our cows and if the temperature gets above 72 degrees, they kick on automatically. This way nobody can forget to turn them on or off and so the ladies will be a little more pleased.  BUT because of this crazy weather about 3 weeks ago we decided to add more of those big fans. (Guess what we did last Saturday and Sunday...). We have 4 pens of 200 cows and those girls are our "high cows" this means that these ladies give the most milk on the whole farm.  And these girls deserve some extra attention, so we installed 5 more fans in each pen. Also our "Close Up cows" this is the pen where the girls are who are gonna have a baby calf within 3 weeks, we put 5 more fans. We wanted to make these soon to be momma's as comfortable as possible, after all giving birth is hard enough if everything goes right, right???

We also have sprinklers. Yep, sprinklers are those things that make you feel like if you are on the beach!

If you are HOT, and your on the beach (or in your back yard) you will jump in the water and cool off. When you are cool enough you get out of the water, lay on your towel or stretcher until you get hot again so you jump in the water again. This is the same thing as what we tried to to for our cows. When they get into the "holding pen" this is the area before they are getting milked, the are closer together as in their walk/sleep/play area and the closer you are together the hotter you get. Since we don't want our girls hot, we installed sprinklers. Every 6 minutes they turn on for 3 minutes. So it's like the beach! We cool them down, and when they warm up again, we cool them down again. Generally the ladies are in and out of the holding pen and milking parlor (where they getting milked) within 45 minutes. We try to keep this time as short as possible, every girl needs her space!

Also we spray for flies! You might think, "What does this have to do with the heat?", but it is a LOT! Because of all these girls we also have quite a bit of poo. Flies just like poo. Well, and cows. And all kinds of other animals. So in the summer, like everybody else we get flies, but because our farm is a bit bigger, we are abt to have more flies. And i don't know if you noticed but lately those flies are getting MEAN! They bite! They don't bite just us, but they also bite our cows! And of course we can't have that! So two or three times a week my brother will drive with the tractor in and around all the barns and spray for flies. Last year we tried to do it with predator flies (so no chemicals) but that did not work very well. And once a week we will put a little fly control spray on our cows, so not only the living quarters of our ladies are fly free they also can't lay there nasty little eggs on our girls either! Because of all this fly control we have less flies with 2200 cows than at our own house with one horse, one baby calf and a dog and 2 cats!  Which of course makes our girls feel pretty special and at least a little less grumpy in this "horrible" weather... hehe...

So if you have that song "Feeling hot hot hot" stuck in your head for the rest of the day (yes, you can listened to it because of the linky thing and blame me!) while eating your ice cream or drinking your milk i hope you think about our girls and the girls at another farmers ranch or farm close to you, and pray for some cooler weather! Just a insy tinsy little bit....


Thank you!