I want to apologize to my friends here about why I haven't written a blog in so long.  I've been in severe, chronic pain, & had surgery to either stop or reduce it.  I had a line of electrodes implanted under the skin on my right cheekbone by the 2nd branch of my trigeminal nerve...& a pulse generator above my right breast/below the collarbone.  So, I guess you could say I'm a bionic woman now...lol...  At any rate, it's reduced the head pain by 80-85%, so I'm extremely happy.  I still am recovering from the pain of the incisions where they threaded the wires from the electrodes to the pulse generator, but that's well worth it considering how much it's helped.  I'll be seeing my pain MD on October 4, so he'll help me to start reducing the pain meds.  I've been on them for almost 15 years so it needs to take time to get them reduced without impacting my health.  Lance, my husband, says I'm more lucid & my eyes seeem to much brighter now that I'm not dealing with such significant pain...makes me happy to hear that considering he's never known me not in pain.

I've decided that I'm not going to keep as many sheep & may get rid of all but 2 alpacas.  It has nothing to do with the pain or lack of pain, but because of the crap the government is trying to do...namely the National Animal Identification System aka NAIS.  I belong to a group called Stop NAIS WA on Yahoo, but I believe all the states have similar groups to stop the ID system.  I'm just too tired to deal with it, so I'm not going to be sellign sheep after this year, though I will continue to sell fiber, yarn, & handmade items for people & their homes.  I'll keep fighting to stop it, but am not too sure it's going to do any good as they're hell bent to pass it in one form or another, like they did the Homeland Security...by piggy-backing it onto other bills for things we really needed to have.  So, I'm only keeping my Icelandic sheep, 5 ewes, a ram & a wether.  I keep the wether (a castrated ram) & the ram together for when I don't want the ewes or won't breed them for a year.  We'll slaughter some of the sheep that we aren't keeping for meat for the year because we don't use very many chemical dewormers on them or hormones & stuff like that, so we feel a lot better about eating the meat, especially safer to eat it.  I'll start to milk the ewes next spring so I can make my own cheese, yogurt, drink the milk, & make sheep milk soaps to sell/use.  A friend of mine used to live on a sheep far & grew up on sheep's milk, & says it is very good, so we're going to give it a try.  I just don't want to milk more than 2 sheep so that 1) I don't have more milk than we can drink or use, & 2) the amount of time it takes to milk them may be more than I want to do. 

Now that I don't have the level of pain I did, I'm planning on developing my business so that I can make a good living at it.  As it was, it's been more of a hobby to help keep the pain at bay, but now that the pain is almost gone, I can work a 40-60 hour week or however many hours I decide is good, & start putting money into my KEOGH again.  Because I've been medically disabled, I haven't been able to do that, nor really put in many hours because of the pain, so couldn't really make a living at it.  So, self-employment will be my mode of making a living from now on.  Now, I'll have a going concern...I may not get rich doing this, but I'll be doing what I love doing, & I think that's more important than working for a company that doesn't care about you.  It's harder to be self-employed than it is working for someone else, but in the end, it's more rewarding. 

I'll miss my animals though...you get so used to having them around & getting the affection from them (yes, sheep & other animals can give you affection), but it will be easier for me as I'll need the time to really develop my business. 

Because of the lack of using the nasty chemicals to keep them free of internal pests, I use herbal dewormers.  I do have to give them shots of selenium once a year because there is none in the soil, so none in what grows in the plants they eat/need, in the Pacific Northwest (& other areas of the West as well, or so I understand), you have to supplement the animals.  I also give them a shot of A&D as a supplement once a year as well...  My babies are healthy & happy. 

Next spring when the farmers market starts, I'll be selling my yarn & other items.  I'm adding other items to the selection I already have: felted/fulled purses, afghans, sweaters, hats, mittens/gloves, scarves, dolls, baby blocks, socks, & teddy bears, & will continue with what I already make.  I'll be donating 2% of what I earn to a different charity every year, so they could be getting substantial money from me.  My first charity, probably New Beginnings in Seattle, WA.  They help abused men, women & children.  My second charity will be Heifer International who donates funds to women in countries who need help making money to support their families.  Not sure where I'll go from there, but it's a good start on a good idea. 

I've been working on a plan so that everything will go wtihout a hitch.  I do have to remember though to take things slow.  I've been so run down by the pain, that I've been overdoing things, so have to keep reminding myself to take it easy and to take things more slowly.  If I get too run down stamina-wise, it won't do me any good at all, so I need to make sure I do things a little less than moderately.  But all in all, it's going well.  It feels so wonderful not to have such intense pain...& once I get the pain medication reduced, it will help a lot, too. 

So, for right now, I'm writing my friends and my blogs to let peole know what is going on, & to let them know I'm fine.  I know they'll be happy for me...Dec. 2 would have been the 16th anniversary of when the pain started, so I'm going to have a large party to celebrate with my family and friends that things are better now & so they can share in my joy & celebrate with us.  Lance is just ecstatic about how much the pain dropped.  I mean  that it's not every day that a man has a bionic woman  for his wife...  LOL  

TTFN, and I'll write more later.