lenny

This is Lenny.  Lenny is our cook.  And as you know, I like to give people nicknames to protect their anonymity, if they so care.  So, why did I name him Lenny?  A book, I've alluded to before, Of Mice and Men, has a character named Lenny.  And you see, Lenny is...special.  He's big.  Like our Lenny.  And he has this bad habit of loving things a little too...roughly.  Which means, when he's holding a bunny, he ends up killing it.  Our Lenny?  He has that effect on kitchen utensils.  He loves them.  He really does.  He just loves them a little too...much.

The other thing about our Lenny?  He almost didn't get hired here.  Why?  Ellen couldn't hear a word he was saying.  Oh he's not quiet.  He's just...distracting.

Let's start at at the top and work our way down.  

First of all, he's got this on his neck.  What is it you ask?  It's a deer skull.

It wraps around to his head.  Apparently he did wear a cap to his interview.  He wasn't sure whether the hat would be worse manners or showing the tattoos.  Apparently it didn't matter.  Ellen still knew they were under there and couldn't focus.

 

Even with long sleeves, this leopard shows his spots.  

But really, he's more recognizable with this - a bottle of Jameson.  His signature drink.

  

This arm is pretty neat.  You see, Lenny is a man of many talents.  While he makes his "real" living by owning a couple of bars in California, his passion is as an "exotic" animal trainer.  And the full zoo can be found on this arm.  When you have some time, you can explore all the animals that collide with each other.

Now, you might also notice the cast on his hand. You can blame us for that.  Yep, sure can.  Lenny is not afraid of animals, obviously (he's trained lions and tigers and bears, oh my!), so we've been teaching him to ride.  Except that when we were loping, and I turned around to let him know that the people in front of me were stopping, he pulled his reins back and to the left.  Cimarron (her real name), did what he asked and stopped to the left.  Except Lenny continued going right.  Right over the side.  In the process, his middle finger got caught in the reins.  And broke it.  

Broke it good.  

But those surgeons fixed it good, too.  Like the pins?

Fortunately, he forgave us.  And he still loves us.  And still cooks for us.  And for that, we love him.  Ok, so we love him anyhow.  But I just wanted you to know we love his cooking.  A lot.

So this is him in all his glory.  In fact, this is his self-imposed uniform.  I think the most I've ever seen him vary from this is black jeans.  He had to get some new ones, since he ripped a pair.  

There you have it.  Just like last summer, once Georgia leaves, I realize I haven't done any meet 'n greets.  So I'll get going on them.  And they'll be farewells instead of meetings!

Oz

This is Oz.  As you may or may not have guessed by his name, he is from Australia.  And he is our housekeeper.  You don't even know much it delights me to know that our housekeeper is male.  Although, that means he gets pulled to maintenance a lot.  But he'd better not get out of it on a Saturday...that's our main housekeeping day.

Anyhow, that's unimportant.  Let's talk about Oz.  

Oz is a pretty darn cool guy.  He did let me take this picture of him under a pig's tail, after all!  And he is a male housekeeper, let's not forget that point.

Anyhow, let me tell you a little story about this hat.  As you may or may not be able to tell, this hat is sort of painted camouflage.  It's really wonky - bent all out of shape.  Let's just say it's got character.  As you can see the side of it bends up sort of like a traditional Australian hat.  So one day I asked him if he brought the hat from home, thinking he had some good stories behind it being so banged up, as cowboys tend to do.  No, he replies.  So I gently prod some more (as gently as I could ever prod) to find out why he is wearing such a hat.  I ask if he got it on his trip to the East Coast (more about that in a minute) - no, he found it here.  

He found it here?  Now let me just tell you, we have hats here!  We have tons of hats here!  And none so awful as this hat.  So I continue to prod, "Why didn't you pick a better hat?"  His answer?  First, let me just note that he was the first male here.  "I figured if I picked the ugliest hat no one would swipe it."  

Now how is that for reasoning???

If you're wondering what he's doing here, he just graduated from college, where he studied mechanical engineering and is taking some time off before joining the real world.  That mechanical side of him, I might add, has already come in quite handy for us and our machinery!

Speaking of machinery, I think he might have found his calling in life.

We put him on that tractor and the man just went.  And went.  And went.  It was kinda like Forrest Gump.  Only scraping manure, instead of running...

He plowed that manure until we told him he had to get off.  And begged to do it again the next day.  What can you say?  When you love something, you just really love it.

As I mentioned, he took a trip to the East Coast, kinda.  When he got to the US, he bought himself a little 70s Honda motorcycle, which wasn't running very well when he showed up at the ranch.  He tinkered with it a bit the next morning and took off for one of the Carolinas.  Apparently, he made it as far as Mississippi (I know, I asked him if he had a map...), where his motorcycle broke down.  He got a good taste of good ole southern hospitality.  The people he met were very kind hearted, took him in, fed him, gave him a place to stay, bought his motorcycle, took him touring, and then took him to the airport so he could make it back here in time for work.  I tell ya, some people gots them some goooooood karma!

Now, as good of a guy as Oz is, he does have his flaws.  I walked out about a month ago to find this.

Yes, Oz had made friends with Selene, the devil goat.  And not only that.  He was feeding her!

He was encouraging all of her bad behavior.  And worse, saying she was a nice goat!  Thankfully, she is gone now and I don't have to keep my on him any more.  At least in regards to her.

All in all, he's a pretty good dude and I can practice my Aussie accent on him.  I know he enjoys it.  He has to.  Because I said so.

And now you've met our male housekeeper.  Next up, our cook.  You're gonna love him!

sandra

I'm not sure where to start with this one. I guess at the very beginning.

The night Sandra got here from France, I took her to her room. She was up in the loft and I said very slowly, "I hope you don't sleepwalk."

"Sorry?"

"I hope you don't sleepwalk." She looked confused, so I motioned as I said, "WALK in your SLEEP." She still looked confused and then her face lit up and she said, "Ah! No."

I was so worried after that moment. I realized just how little English the poor girl understood. But Dan told us, she will either sink or swim. And swim she did!

It took a while for her to understand enough for her to come out of her shell, but once she did, WATCH OUT!!!

The girl is NOT to be trusted around water or flashlights. And regardless of the innocence she tries to portray...do NOT believe her!

She was the instigator of many a water fight.

It would start with a little innocent spray of the kitchen dish sprayer, which would escalate to a cup of water, which would escalate to a pitcher of water....

And as you can see, she and Urska were two peas in a pod.

I think they brought out the worst in each other! Or maybe it was the best...

But this is the ONLY time Sandra is truly innocent. And this was usually how you would see her on the way into town to go dancing.

The girl wasn't afraid of the dance floor!

And she even tried her darndest to help Duff learn to dance.

She's not afraid of tough tasks.

Including cleaning Selene's butt.

Although, I think she might have resented me for making her take the business end.

I don't know that Selene was her favorite animal, but Montee, now that was another story.

This was her big baby Montee, Montee...who she wanted to take to Par-ee, if only Dan and Ellen would let mee.

With all that being said, though, I realized that I wasn't sure how we were going to be friends when she left.

Pretty much everything that made us laugh were our faces to each other...usually me making them back to her. Here you go...

This is sort of a guilty look. Something you didn't see often.

This is one of her many innocent looks.

Oh my! Who me?

Too cold too put too much effort into it.

Uh-huh. Innocence? I think not.

So I guess if we're going to keep in touch, we'll just have to use webcams to make faces at each other.

I sure am going to miss that "cra-zee" French girl!

dizzy

So, Dizzy has been gone about a month already, but time flies and I wanted to make sure I took the time to write a nice post about him.

Dizzy was my right hand man. A "yes" man, if you will. If I asked him to do it, you could guarantee that it was done. And done to the best of his ability.

When Dizzy first got here, he had a really hard time watching women do any heavy lifting. For instance, if I was lifting a tray of plates into the dishwasher, Dizzy came over and grabbed it from me. Or, if I was filling the feed bins with the 50 lb bags, he'd take it away from me. I can't say that it got any easier for him, but he did realize that with 8 women working on the ranch, one man just couldn't possibly help every woman lift every heavy thing. He was always a gentleman, though!

Dizzy could play the part of the stoic Russian, ahem, BELArussian, but...

he always had a ready smile.

He loved to do "tough" guy stuff. He said he thought he could spend an entire summer shingling. It's good to have aspirations...

He did a lot of chainsaw work this summer taking down pine beetle infested trees, but to look tough enough for this picture, he had to turn the chainsaw on and rev it. I couldn't help but laugh!

Just as every man has a tough side though, he's got a soft side, too.

It never dawned on me that when he was giving Urska riding lessons and running around beside her as she trotted bareback, that perhaps he was giving her special attention. I told you, he was a gentleman and a "yes" man! (Or maybe I'm just dense...)

Dizzy's sense of humor never ceased to amaze me. And the fact that he could create puns in our language was just amazing. For instance, at the very beginning of the summer, he stepped on a loose boulder which began to roll towards a little girl and her mom. When it rolled, he lost his balance and fell on it, which kept it from rolling, essentially saving the mom and daughter from being rolled over. When asked to tell the story he said, "Oh, it is just old rock story about Rolling Stones." Come on! You have to admit that's clever!

He also liked to ride bareback often, since it makes you a much stronger rider. He would usually classify horses as, "Just like sofa," or "It will be much easier to sing 'Water' song now," which was really high.

I think Little Joe might be classified as a sofa...what do you think?

Here's another great quote along those lines,

Dizzy: "Actually, it is not so bad to feel horse's spine. When you get scared, your *** will squeeze spine to stay on."

Me: "Dizzy! I can't believe you just cursed!"

Dizzy: "Sorry, sphincter."

Too much, I suh-WEAR!

So, I'm not sure if you've noticed this or not, but I've never had a picture of Dizzy when we go dancing.

That's because he really, really does NOT like dancing, as evidenced here. But we guilt tripped him into going for Cookie's last night.

And believe it or not, we DID get him to dance!

Although, maybe we had to bribe him....

And finally, here are some pictures from Dizzy's last night. Everyone else wanted to go out for their last night, but like I just said, he doesn't like to dance. So we hung around the campfire.

And I dared Sandra to play chubby monkey.

Of course, Duff had to try to beat her.

And here's the sequence of Dizzy's attempt.

So there you have it...Dizzy.