another excerpt from a day in the life of a hillbilly wife!

So.
Yesterday cohen was staying at a friends house and jimmy and skylar wanted to go “fishing”. They said there is this really cool pond wayyy out in one of their hunting areas where they wanted to catch some fish. They realllly wanted me to come and gave me these super cute puppy dog eyes and somehow talked me into getting out of the pool, putting pants on and heading out into the woods in the 96 degree heat. (I had to wear pants or the bugs would eat me alive, according to the boys) As I packed the bug spray and my latest James Patterson novel into my purse I felt like I was being set up somehow because Jimmy and Skylar were both putting on camouflage pants and Sky even put on an orange vest… We stopped and got a pepperoni pizza on the way out. I wanted to wait until I had settled down pond-side to eat so I could relax while I grubbed, but I was starving. So. We drive out to the woods, get lost, which I don’t mind at all because I LOVE the peace and beauty that God has bestowed upon us…we turned down this dirt road and a deer dashes across the road in front of us! How exciting!! Then not two minutes later a turkey!! THEN about three minutes later Jimmy slams on the brake and the truck slides to a halt as he exclaims “RATTLESNAKE!!! A big one too!!!” My heart stopped beating until I realized Jimmy was about to do something…and given his reputation…I was convinced it just might be something stupid. Therefore my heart needed to begin to function again just in case I needed to save a life. He scrambled to get his .45 out while I begged “No Jimmy! No!” and Skylar begged “Let me shoot it dad!! Please let me shoot it dad!!”. Jimmy looked at me like I was stupid and said “I’m gonna shoot it!” Without leaving the truck he aimed his gun down at the side of the road and I curled into a ball in the passenger seat and plugged my ears.
POW! “I shot it right in the head!!”
I gingerly unplugged my ears and crawled across his lap to see. There it was. A four foot long rattler with 15 rattles at the end of her tail. Half of it’s head was annihilated and the bottom jaw was half gone. It lay motionless in the sand on the side of the road. As Jimmy climbed out of the Dodge and I begged him to be careful he grabbed a stick to poke at the snake. It didn’t react to the jabs and appeared to be as dead as a doornail, regardless, he pinned the head down and grabbed it right at the base to pick it up. He asked me to snap a couple of pictures with his phone so I did and he even put it around the back of his neck to pose before putting it in the bed of the pickup to continue our adventure. (At this point, regardless of the fact that we had a map, we could not find the road we were seeking) For some odd reason, I was no longer hungry. As we drove up and down the same road looking for the “trail” that led to the pond Skylar looked into the bed of the pickup and yelled “DAD! Your snake is ALIVE!” I twisted around to look out the back and see the most horrifying, traumatizing sight of my life…the snake was slithering around confusedly with it’s little tongue whipping in and out of it’s half of a mouth. I hope the good Lord forgives me because I sure did use his name in vain. Jimmy then pulled over and out of the kindness of his heart put the poor snake out of it’s pain.
We did eventually find the pond that we were seeking.  We didn’t catch any fish but were entertained by the alligator loitering about 75 yards out sizing us up, and the three doe grazing across the pond.  I made Jimmy cut the snake’s head off and throw it into the thickest brush we could find. I was not interested in any more snakes coming back from the dead.

Today, in the mail, Jimmy received a sweepstakes entry from the NRA where he had the opportunity to win 21 guns!  How exciting.  After filling out all the blanks and sticking all the stickers he walked into the room where I was and said “I don’t even know what I would do if I won 21 guns.”   “I do.” I said.  “You would put them in a pile and roll around in them.” “Yeah,” he agreed “Then I would spread out a blanket and sleep on them.”

Yeah, that’s pretty much what would happen.

I love this man.  We just don’t have anything in common.  However, never a day in my life do I doubt the ability or passion he has to provide for and protect my family…which makes him even more lovable in my mind. Hopefully, in the meantime, he doesn’t get bit by..Oh. I don’t know…a poisonous snake.

d.

You are only 5!

So my little guy, Cohen, has decided he is going to surpass childhood and go straight to being a teenager. He takes after his father.
Skylar and Cohen have these friends, Ismael and Issac, that come over a few times a week. Whenever we go anywhere all four of them “call” things. For example, “I call that Mustang!” or “I call Pizza Hut!” And it’s not rare for them to get into arguments over “ownership” of items or places. I remember doing this as a kid, but my friends and I would flip through the latest toy catalog and “call” things like the strawberry shortcake dollhouse or the Barbie corvette, but I don’t remember having ownership quarrels or a full blown business.
This morning the boys were all watching a Vin Diesel movie and Ismael says “I call that corvette!” Skylar follows with “I call that house!” Isaac says “I call that motorcycle!” and here comes my teenage five year old with “I call the girl!!”……
Really?
It’s going to be like that? This chick is like 25 years old and barely dressed. Aren’t boys supposed to be a little bit older before they fall in love with grown ass women?! I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, after all when he heard that Transformers 3 was going to come out his first question was “Is Sam’s girlfriend (Megan Fox) going to be in it??!”
I already knew he was going to be a ladies man. He got his first girlfriend at 3 years old and gets lots of attention from the ladies, young and old. I just didn’t realize he was ready to start giving the attention back! I guess this is what I get for giving birth to Jimmy Stouffer’s offspring. It seems Cohen is going to follow directly in his father’s footsteps when it comes to girls….I am going to have to keep a reallllly close eye on him!

Counting my blessings

It’s Sunday and we attended church at New Beginnings Fellowship in Phenix City, AL. It was spectacular…the kids loved it, the husband loved it…we were definitely where we were supposed to be. Christians know what I’m talking about, a feeling you get when you are in the right place. I wanted to close off the day reviewing some of the most powerful blessings that I have in my life.

My family fo’ sho comes to mind first. I have this incredible husband. Sure, he plays poker online for hours on end (we are talking like 6 hour increments of time here) and pulls stunts like those mentioned in past blogs: (https://ssgstoufferswifey.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/15/) However, this man gives all of himself to this family and the way of life we have chosen (he’s been to Iraq twice now for a total of 27 months). He brings me bouquets of wildflowers after spending a day hunting for food for our family in ninety-five degree heat (he wants to do it, I swear I don’t make him). AND, he does dishes almost every night and cleans the pool (he’s a hot pool guy too). He texts me just to tell me that he loves me…I love that guy.
Moving on, My kids have blessed my life in so many ways I couldn’t fit them into a blog. I thank the good Lord every day for my family’s health. We’ve had minor setbacks, such as those mentioned in past blogs (https://ssgstoufferswifey.wordpress.com/2010/06/15/my-rough-draft/) These little studs have been troopers through it all though and they are super cute, ya gotta admit 🙂 However, if the children don’t stop arguing with each other I am going to enlist myself and volunteer for Iraq…ok, well that’s going a little far…but seriously. Skylar is eight, and Cohen is five. My children (and I love them, I swear I do) require constant attention because they are constantly arguing with each other (many times just for the sake of arguing), picking a fight with one another or causing pain to one another. Most days, I can’t wait for bedtime. Those little blessings! lol ❤

My family, however, is barely a fraction of the people I would count as blessings in my life. So many people have touched my life in ways that have helped my soul. My parents, Tim and Elaine first and foremost, my brother Trevor, Grandma and Grandpa Roberson, All of my in-laws (I got super lucky with that bunch!), Grandpa and Grandma Dills, Kelly Dills (God rest her soul), Kate-and-Ken dawgs (and their awesome families), Biz, Jillie, The Barbers, The Medfords, The Reine’s, The Keltners, alllll the old school Kent homies, the list could go on forever…and I vow to continue it, however, I am supposed to be watching Shutter Island with that awesome husband of mine and I gotta take what time I can get with him away from poker 😉

My Rough Draft *updated w/final*

So here is a rough draft of a paper that I have to turn in soon. I thought it might be entertaining for you all. It’s supposed to be a narrative with a point. The point I tried to make is be careful about the breed of dog you choose because if you aren’t it might just bite you in the ass. Feel free to critique it, like I said I haven’t turned in the final yet and I can use all the help I can get! Enjoy =)

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“That one has two different colored eyes!” I exclaimed after spotting the pudgy little black and white puppy running across the smelly, feces covered basement floor toward me. He resembled a lab puppy in physique with solid black coloring over his whole back and sides. White fur with the characteristic black speckles of a dalmatian covered his front legs and stomach and came up the underside of his neck to canvas his snout before continuing between his eyes and making a point on his forehead. He had one brown eye like his mom who is a dalmatian, and one blue eye like his dad who is a husky. Before I could stop him he jumped up putting his two front paws on my knees and licked my face as I crouched near the ground, leaving dirty paw prints on my pants. “We had a lady who was supposed to come get him but, we can’t get a hold of her,” the lady who owned the puppy’s parents explained. They were desperate to home the pups because in the next couple of days they were beginning their move back to the states from Germany. “Is he the one I get?!” I asked excitedly. The lady’s husband looked at her and asked, “Is it OK if she takes Lucky?” When she nodded in confirmation I could not hide my delight. “My boys are going to be so excited, thank you so much!” I said. Little did I know, the personality characteristics of these two breeds result in an astute, domineering canine with the strength and stubbornness of an ass.

When “Lucky” (we changed his name to Stryker) was about nine months old he had grown to the size of his father, who was a rather large husky. His challenging personality began to surface at this point as well. Our family had moved from Germany, and bought our first home in a spacy neighborhood in southeast Alabama. Stryker refused to have his free spirit tamed and he wouldn’t allow us to walk him, he was one of those dogs who insisted on walking us. If he managed to get out front, he wouldn’t even look back to acknowledge us calling his name as he ran up the street to explore the neighborhood. Whenever he decided he had enough of the Alabama heat, he would jump in our pool and swim in content circles to cool off before exiting via the ladder.

Last summer we made the mistake of allowing him to accompany us on a family fishing trip at the Chattahoochee River. I was walking across some large rocks with him on his leash when something interesting caught his eye. He decided he was going to check it out regardless of what I intended to do. He yanked the leash so hard my body went sideways in midair, and when I crashed down on the rocks the wind was knocked out of me. I had a funny feeling in my foot and when I looked down I realized it had landed in a pool of water, which was quickly turning bright red with my blood. The top of my foot was split wide open, so my husband rushed me to the emergency room where I received 13 stitches.

The incident at the river resulted in my having to receive surgery on my foot around the same time Stryker realized he could scale the four foot wood fence between our back yard and driveway with the agility of a show horse. My husband, James, and his buddy fashioned some chicken fencing on the top of the wood fence to prevent his escape so, that while James was out of town I would not have to chase Stryker around the neighborhood in my bulky cast. How silly of us to think that some chicken fencing was going to deter him from his reconnaissance of the neighborhood. Stryker escaped every day, and left me baffled on how he was getting out. Eventually, I put him on a chain and was forced to do so every time I let him out. When James got home from his business trip he was conversing with the neighbor who informed him that he had witnessed Stryker escaping the yard by climbing the 6 foot chain link fence between our homes “like a man”.

Stryker is not only the master of escape, he is fiercely protective. He will bark at anyone who is not in his immediate family. If you were walking him through a park on a leash and a stranger stopped to comment on what a beautiful dog he is or, how cool his eyes are he would bark just to say “don’t touch us”. When he escaped he would run on to other people’s property and bark at them as if they were not supposed to be there. While he has never bitten anyone, he is pretty intimidating and, people do not appreciate being barked at by a strange dog in their own yard. Last month, he came close to giving an actual bite for the first time when a close family friend decided to playfully rough up our eight year old son. When Stryker saw our son in distress from being tickled, he decided to help him by trying to rip our friends face off. Luckily for our friend and, for us, his reflexes are on point and he was able to divert the dog with a fist to the jaw before his teeth made any contact.

Not wanting our dog to live it’s life on a chain, we invested in an expensive underground fence system. The system required us to bury a wire around our ¾ acre property line, which took hours of labor in the southern heat. We then placed a special collar on Stryker, which would deliver a warning beep if he approached the property line, and a shock if he tried to cross it. The system worked beautifully for about a month before he made the discovery that if he got a running start, he could cross the line quickly with minimal shock. Once again, our dog was AWOL on a regular basis. Our neighbors were now beginning to give us dirty looks.

In our last attempt to corral our free spirited mutt, we replaced the four foot wood fence with a six foot wood fence in addition to the electric fence system. I am happy to report that this has worked in containing Stryker, for the most part and, his escapes have been reduced to only about once a month. These are the times that he manages to push by the children as they come in or out the front door, from where he can do his running start to cross the electric boundary.

While I appreciate Stryker’s protective tendencies and, enjoy his company most of the time, I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I adopted this half dalmatian, half husky beast. Needless to say, his ingeniousness and strength have led to some difficult times. James and I recently decided to get a playmate for Stryker and, in our decision on which breed to acquire we were sure to carefully research temperaments, tendencies and physical characteristics. We settled on a sweet dopey Catahoula named Benjamin, who has no interest in running off, or doing anything besides licking strangers to death. Our family has now reached a contented balance between Benjamin’s agreeable personality and Strykers obnoxious one. Honestly, I don’t think we will be getting any more dogs in the near future.

Beer and Rattlesnakes

So…even though I have just begun this blog with the oh-so-crafty name of “A Day in the Life of an Army Wife”  (which I totally bit off my girl Lish’s awesome blog “A Day in the Life of a Rock Star Wife” http://www.adayinthelifeofarockstarwife.wordpress.com) I’m thinking I may have to change the name to something like “A Day in the Life of a Hillbilly Wife”.  Let me explain.

My husband, who I love dearly, has become very “country” since we moved to the south 14 months ago.  In the past 14 months he has begun to drive a pickup truck, listen to country music (and we are talking like…Hank Williams Jr.), hunt for critters like boar and turkey, use words like critter, and….get drunk and shoot at rattlesnakes. I have re-named my husband and from now on he will go by Jim-Bob.

He has this buddy, we’ll call him Country Boy, who lives super far out in the sticks.  He doesn’t hang out with Country Boy often, but when he does it is sure to turn into a weekend long drunk-ass hunting trip.

So Country Boy and Jim-bob decided they were going turkey hunting on a Saturday a few weeks back.  The plan was Jim-Bob was getting up early Saturday morning and meeting Country Boy out in Timbucktoo where he lives.  But on Friday night the plan turned into JB leaving that night so that he didn’t have to get up at the buttcrack of dawn to drive all the way out to Timbucktoo (I’m pretty sure he was just ready to start drinking).  So they humped through the woods in the sweltering heat Saturday morning by noon they were exhausted and their clothes were soaked through with sweat so, they decided to give up and start drinking beer.  Around…7pm I got a call from JB in which he asked me “do you want me to come home, cuz if I drink one more beer I’ll be drunk and won’t be able to drive, so I just want to know if you really want me to come home, cuz I will.”  As far as I could tell the drunk line had already been crossed so I told him I was fine with him staying and getting drunk with Country Boy, I just really really didn’t want him to drink and drive.  He agreed and I went back to painting our sunny room (it’s a really odd room in our house between the kitchen/dining room and back yard, it has big windows and a slider so it’s bright and sunny) and drinking my 6 pack of MGD 64 (The kids stayed the night with friends).

I’m not sure exactly how long but about 2 or 3 hours later Jim-Bob sent me a text that said “I just killed a rattlesnake”  My heart dropped into the pit of my stomach…I already knew without knowing that a really stupid drunken stunt had just gone down.

What happened was Jim Bob and Country Boy were driving (yes, DRIVING, the one thing I asked him NOT to do that night) through the woods after leaving Country Boy’s hunting club and CB spotted a 5 foot long rattlesnake alongside the dirt road they were on.  When he yelled out “Stop! Wanna kill a rattlesnake?” Jim Bob slammed on the brakes and grabbed his shot gun.  He then jumped out of the truck and walked up to the rattlesnake, who was now coiling up and rattling it’s tail, JB stopped about 5-6 feet away and (drunkenly) aimed his shotgun at it.  He pulled the trigger……..and missed.  I swear to you, the man has a guardian angel.  He shot again just as the snake lunged forward and he blew it’s head right off.  The momentum from the snakes lunge landed it right at Jim Bob’s feet.  So, you see I was right about the stupid drunken stunt thing, right?

This hillbilly even has our 8 year old out in the woods shooting rattlesnakes now.  They did a father/son hunting trip this past weekend and ran into a small rattler on a trail.  This kid has been dying to shoot something so when he begged his dad to hand over the gun so he could shoot the snake …he did!  I got another stomach clenching text and luckily everything was ok and everyone one was sober this time.

I just can’t even imagine what the good Lord has in store for me with all these country boys but I’m pretty sure I’m up for it =)

testing testing 1-2-3

I decided to start a blog for two reasons:

1. I have read in quite a few different publications (I’m an avid magazine reader) lately that keeping a journal can have many benefits like stress reduction and weight loss.

2. I often find myself in the mood to vent, nag or just have some sort of conversation that is not with a child.  When this urge comes about I don’t do anything about it because for some reason I lack the motivation to keep an actual journal.

ok and I guess there is a third reason.  Today is Mother’s Day and my husband is adamantly refusing to allow me to do anything around the house.  So I have sat here bored most of the day and lazed around to the maximum of my ability so I came up with this constructive little project that I can do while sitting on my ass =)

Of course right now is not one of those times where I find myself with the urge to let my inner emotions flow into words so…..

I’m going to awkwardly end this first blog entry with a big fat HAPPY MOTHERS DAY for all you moms out there.  Special shoutoutz for my mom and grandma, my mother in law and grandmother in law, and my BBFs K.T. and Ken and Jill

❤