Last day of the month

One of the rose bushes I planted for Cherie

4/30/09 Thursday
It’s the 30th, the last day of the month. The first of the month is when I normally get my disability check and we always carefully plan on how the money will be spent. Not this time. Even if we do get a check we will have to pay it back and we will have to pay back all the money they determine was excess because of Cherie’s income. We had informed the VA Cherie was working last year but they didn’t move on that till now. Now they are going back to December 2003 and will review everything from that date. Cherie has a ream of paperwork to fill out. She is majorly stressed out about it. “Will the take the farm?” she asked with fear in her voice. I tried to assure her but really don’t know just how the VA will attempt to collect any funds determined to be excess.

I had hoped to rent a tiller attachment for the tractor so I could till under all the weeds that have popped up. Almost none of the 650 pounds of rye seed has come up and what did isn’t growing well due to lack of rain. There were several other things we hoped to do with the check, both for the farm and for our needs as well. The front tires of the truck are pretty much bald and I’d been shopping for replacements. That’s a safety issue. Yesterday, while talking to the veterinarian my phone died, just went black. It stayed dead despite my plugging it into the charger or anything else I tried. There’s another unplanned expense.

Dr. Law said that the X-rays confirmed her diagnosis of a spiral fracture on Ben’s leg. This will require a pin and she will wrap the bone in wire so it will heal correctly. If it doesn’t heal she told us that his leg will have to be amputated. She said that at least his hip is still in the socket. If things go well Ben will be home Monday.

It’s an incredible feat, Ben taking four days to struggle back home with a shattered leg. I don’t know how far he had to come but it’s nothing for dogs like this to travel five or more miles away in a short time. But Ben didn’t give up, he knew where home and love are. To think he developed this kind of attachment in less than a year (I went back and checked, we found him September 10. You can go back in the archives and read about it. There's a good picture of him on his first day with us) is something else. When we rescued him off the interstate he just laid his head on my shoulder as I carried him to the truck. When we tried to adopt him out because he killed our cats Ben went into a severe depression, wouldn’t eat and kept trying to tunnel out, so we took him back. He may kill cats but we love anyway. It is our hearts to always reach out to the underdog, the unwanted and downtrodden whether human or animal.

Folks, we need some help. If anyone wishes to donate to Ben’s vet bills you can click on the Pay Pal Donate icon on the right side of the blog. It wouldn’t have been such a problem before but we lost that $980.00 monthly check. We knew that it would be stopped but it still hurts.

Today I hope to get a lot of stuff done. I’m way behind anyway but the last four days sure set me back farther. At some point I should take the flyers I put out about Ben down. I did manage to get the buffalo grass planted on the side yard I’ve been working on so must keep it watered well so it will germinate. Only a patch of it came up on the other side of the house, that I had planted a couple or three weeks ago. I might till up the area with the two surviving apple trees so I can plant buffalo grass there too. But I need to plant the garden. There is so much to do before I can put seeds in the ground, tilling in compost and setting up the drip feed irrigation. It’s disappointing that Tommie got a hernia and thus can’t provide the help I so badly need. That’s just one of those things. Like Cherie said “It seems that everything hits at once”.