A Funny Thing Happened

We had to go to town yesterday (Friday). It happens and that isn't what's funny. The local cigarette/tire store is right there on or route in and we stopped to get cigs. It has been a long time since I have been in there and I no longer know the people that work there, hence, they do not know me either. I walked up to the counter and asked the woman there for the cigarettes I wanted she got them and told me how much they were. I pulled out my debit card and then she asked for my ID. I didn't think much of it figuring she was asking because of the debit card--BUT NO. She looked at it and said, "Eighty-five, I knew it was close." I just stood there and blinked for a moment as it was sinking in that she was carding me because she wasn't sure I was 25 and they are required to card anyone that does not appear to be at least 25. I told her, "Bless your heart, you're wrong, look again." She glanced again at my ID then looked at me and didn't understand. I told her that she needed to look closer, it says '65 not '85. She did and then looked back at me and told me that I really look young. It is not like she mistook my shortness for youth either because she was barely and inch taller than me. I don't look bad for my age, especially considering the abuse I have put my body through and the cancer treatments, but 20 years? I didn't think I looked that good.

Good news, I am typing this out while not online and I am not sure when I will actually get to post it because we have a storm going on, lightning *and* rain--the whole shebang. I'll take every drop I can get. There is still a chance to get a cutting of hay for the farmers if we get rain and that will make all the difference in the world to them, especially the smaller operations. Actually, even a bit of green grass that the cattle can eat instead of the hay that was supposed to get them (the cattle) through winter could mean the difference between surviving until next year or not. Maybe Sweetheart sent the rain.

Oh, and on the chance anyone that might be reading this does not understand why the storm means I am not online… It is because lightning often strikes the phone lines around here and I have lost three modems, two telephones, and almost lost a computer that was hooked up to the modem; though it never was quite right after that; it needed a new power supply and motherboard. So if there is a storm the modem gets unplugged from the lines, they seem more susceptible to the power surges, and when the storms are real heavy on top of us the phone gets unplugged too. Our phone isn't plugged in right now. I am unconnected and I don't mind.

Update: I am able to post at a little after 1 AM, about 3 hours after the rest and we have *almost* 3/4 inch rain--still hoping for more.

08/02/2012 RIP Sweetheart

My Sweetheart died today. Sweetheart was a chicken; one that I have had since she was an egg around nine years ago. She was born outside of the coop, inside of the backyard. The coop is now in the backyard but it wasn't then and most "out-nests" did not/do not survive the nighttime monsters, like opossum and raccoons. She and her broodmates survived though. She didn't grow as well as her broodmates though and when she was about 4 or 5 weeks old I noticed her beak was too long and she was having trouble eating. I clipped her beak and she started growing but also became very personable, very pet-like. So her behavior named her, Sweetheart. She was very sweet. She also remained a bit of a runt though her eggs were medium sized just like most of the other hen's eggs. Her offspring are all over the place. She survived all the great chicken catastrophes; last years being the bobcat wiping out 3/4 of the flock (it is really more like a herd), and the horrid time when the 'coons discovered before we did that the back of the old coop had rotten wood, she survived the year of the hawks too. She was not a good mother-hen but she was a good "aunt-hen" to chicks; and her eggs were often raised by other hens. And she was still laying eggs until just shy of three months ago. Between her age and the heat we have been having this year I didn't think much of it but she was apparently getting sick. I am not sure if it was a tumor or an abscess gone too long. About a week ago I went out to open the coop and she was already out--meaning she hadn't gone in--very strange; and strange I had not noticed she wasn't in there, I almost always looked for her as I looked around before closing it up. I guess I wasn't feeling well myself. Anyway, she was obviously not feeling well and she had this "thing" on her back. I put her in a cage with water and food and stated treating her with antibiotics but she just kept getting worse and the heat was horrible and not helping. She was not going to make it. She died early evening in her beloved backyard in a spot that was very close to the place she was laid, brooded, and hatched. She was a good egg.

I got a surprising phone call this morning.

So I am out in the garden picking radishes (those Rat Tail radishes really do put out in the summer heat, record heat and I just canned 14 jars of pickled radishes) when Morg hollers out the door that I have a phone call. I thought "Who the heck would be calling *me* on a Sunday morning?" When I get to the phone and say "Hello." I hear "TJ?" I used to go by TJ but it has been a long time and as I was running though my mind who would be calling me that name, I came up with *one* person just as she identifies herself. Yep it was her. It was quite a surprise and we were on the phone somewhere around two hours talking and still didn't finish catching up but we had to hang up.

I am thrilled she called and I've really needed a friend recently just to talk about the ups and downs of life. The  email "support group" I used to use let me down real bad a few months back. I had been growing away from them for a bit, maybe less growing and more depression had to do with that since my sabbatical, now that I recall, took place during and after cancer treatment. But then I started interacting more and things seemed to be fine with the group. The group owner's wife  had a heart attack and he understandably was away from the list for a short time and people quit posting. I wrote a post that he would not want that and to keep the posts coming so at the time I was being quite active in the group. About 3 weeks later I made a post  and wrote about finding out my favorite aunt was dying. Since the list owner's wife was in the process of dying herself I harbor no ill feeling toward him whatsoever for missing the post, I know he would have said something. (I think he is the only one that reads my blogs and is hearing this stuff for the first time, but he has probably been wondering anyway why I have disappeared from the list.) But not one person made a comment, not one "I'm sorry" or "What a drag" or "Damn that sucks," nothing. I realized I had not really felt "supported" by the group at all since I had been back, it was friendly but…  I sort of have had a hard time even reading the posts anymore and have not posted. A support group isn't any good if there is no support for one anymore. A lot of the people had changed, maybe I was just too odd for an odd bunch.

So, having an old friend look me up was really nice. She and I had been through many things, good and bad, together. We knew each other since I lived in Bailey CO. I don't remember the exact year but it was around 1989 or 1990. We still have more catching up to do.

Trouble Ahead

 For a while now we have had only one vehicle, an extended cab pick-up truck; the kind with a small back seat. That was fine when the kids were small AND we had another vehicle for most trips. The truck is not the best in gas mileage and the main purpose for it was to haul hay and be a second vehicle when needed. There was another vehicle that got better mileage and had more room inside for passengers--it had a good payload too for those big store trips; but that poor vehicle was used heavily and eventually became non-usable. So, we were stuck with the truck as the only transportation. It is hard to go to the store when it is raining (not that it has rained here any time recently this year). The ride is rough (I do not know if I need to take a pain pill just because of the truck ride or if any vehicle ride hurts as I haven't been in any other vehicle since my surgery was kind of fresh). The kids have gotten a lot bigger too. But we have been managing.

Well, Ron was doing some maintenance on the truck on Monday. He discovered that a noise he thought was caused by one of the running boards was, in fact, was being caused by a broken frame. That is bad, very bad.

I have been trying to figure out how to afford the tires we needed for it.

I have no clue as to how to afford a new vehicle all together. I have been trying to figure that one out for over two years because of the whole "truck is too small for us all (etc.)" situation.

Now it is even worse because the new vehicle has to be able to move hay as the current truck is useless for that now. It is not safe to drive, really. We have a neighbor that has heavy-duty welding stuff and will be able to weld the frame to make it safe as a light -duty truck, hopefully today (Tuesday) but we have yet to talk to him.

We were in need of a second vehicle, now what? I am panicking a little..

What a Busy Few Weeks

Oh goodness I am exhausted. My two stepdaughters decided to come out for a visit from Colorado with their kids, as it turned out it was only two out of the three grandkids that came though; it still doubled the house population. The planning stage was confusing, back and forth on when and how long, etc. One of the kids is autistic also. We are no strangers to autism here as my eldest (Ron's third) child, Tink, is autistic. But autism is as individual as each unique person. And he used to have a tendency to dump things out, like shampoo, medicine, cereal, etc. and our house was not set up well for him. We had almost all of our meds and bathroom stuff in boxes in the kitchen because we needed to redo the hallway outside the bathroom. To say it had been going slow is an understatement, I had been waiting for Ron to finish something before moving on to painting and he was apparently waiting for me to paint before he finished doing the door to the tub works. But the hall had to get done before they got here for safety and space reasons. I went ahead and painted but I still think it should have been done the other way around, as it is something didn't get caulked that should have and now I am not sure it can be because we hung a set of shelves in the spot and it leaves that spot with only a fingers width to get to the gap between the wall and the door frame for about half of it. And the other half will really show up when caulked if I don't go back and repaint that area. Anyway, the floor also was needing tiled. We have had the tile for a while, and the paint, so at this point no money was needed to do it. Then I noticed that where the hall floor met the bathroom was not equal, the hall had a dip right there that at its worst point was about a half inch. So we had to get some  floor leveling stuff and it had to go on in a few layers because of the depth of it. The put the whole thing behind a little bit and they final date of them showing up was still not decided. But I got it done and the floor tiled. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the white paint turned out to be a light gray. I was concerned about that because this hallway is dark, it just swallowed light, but luckily it would not clash with the medium gray that I was planning on painting the trim work. The paint was also a semi-gloss (planned) whereas the old paint was a flat, semi-gloss reflects (and cleans) better than flat paint and brightened up the hall more than I expected especially with a darker color than I had wanted. Then adding a light colored tile to the floor--my golly we can see in the hallway now! Now for the fun part. The date had been decided and we still had a few days but the free-standing cabinets we had in the kitchen needed to be emptied of food and other kitchen stuff and moved to the hall and filled with bathroom stuff. Of course this still leaves the kitchen a flippin' mess and after quite a few years of trying to explain to Ron the free-form box shelves I wanted in there I gave up and defaulted to regular shelves--which we didn't have. We bought the shelf brackets and got those hung and Ron fetched some shelving wood from the neighbor and got some shelves put up, not all. We are running out of time before thy get here at this point but we still could get almost all of it done--but the kids left a day early. So, when they got here there was still food in boxes on the floor. Oddly, we still had more kitchen floor than we have had in a while. We got a couple more shelves up on their second or third day here and we are down to just two boxes on the floor but the renovations pretty much came to a standstill as our house population doubled. The hallway looks great though.

So the kids were here for eight days, eight hectic days, from Thursday to Thursday. It was a good visit though. And the one grandkid doesn't dump things so much anymore, thank goodness.  We went into town on Friday evening to watch the annual firework show, the kids were all excited, Tink just *loves* fireworks. We got there a bit early so we could get a good spot and the kids could use the playground, both boys are eleven. About ten  to fifteen minutes before the show was probably going to start it was announced that it was cancelled due to the drought conditions. It made sense but I really think they could have cancelled it earlier in the day, we were not the only ones out there and inconvenienced. We stopped by the fireworks tent in town and bought some of our own to set off to alleviate the kids tension. We did our annual show on Wednesday, the actual holiday and the night before they left. Some neighbors showed up to join the fun. For the first time we accidently set a couple of fires with them. We were prepared, even with no drought we keep a bucket of water to douse used sparklers and Roman Candles, and we have the hose nearby and ready. One of the fires might have happened even in a normal year, the one that set it off had sort of blown up, well, that is a bit strong but misfired would be too mild of a description. Ron got his hand a little burnt, nothing serious. We also went to Baker Creek Seed's Bakersville in Mansfield. It is a old timey village. Ron took Morg and the non-autistic grandson out shooting; Morg has been shooting off and on for a bit now but the grandkid had never fired a gun before. They all had fun but Ron was real happy he got to take the kid out the very first time. I was up until 3-3:30 every morning talking to the girls, they would sleep in and I had to get up for chores.

The heat for the last few weeks has been unbelievable. We have been breaking records left and right, including the hottest day of June since record keeping began. The weird part is that the humidity has been low, very low. The weather folks have been calling it a "saving grace" but I really think we would be better off with a tad higher humidity. When each breath robs one of vital moisture and after ten minutes outside, in the shade even, one needs to drink a pint of water just to replace what you exhaled, it is too damned dry.  This is the Ozarks and we have been real close to single digit humidity. And breezes do no good to help cool because the sweat  dries too fast to get the body wet to catch it. Between a sauna and a dehydrator, I prefer the sauna.

The good news is that we are expecting a cool-down and some rain after today (another record breaker but there is moisture in the air).

I write this in MS OneNote and the paste it to the Blogger site. As I was getting ready to post it I go to the Blogger Dashboard and get a warning that Blogger does not support my browser anymore, I use Firefox, and I should switch to the Google Chrome because not all features will work otherwise. Screw you Google I dislike Chrome and you are getting more and more domineering.

My 'puters return

My computer fan had been struggling and making noise and I knew I needed to replace it--it was too far gone for just a cleaning to be right. We had recently got Morg's back after some work (it had lost its ability to charge) and the guy did the work well for a reasonable price. I am a little uncomfortable getting into this little netbook because my eyes are just not working well and I had/have many other things on my plate to do so I decided to have this same guy do the fan. Ron had been dealing with him so I told him to call the guy and find out how long it will take to replace the fan. I should have been much more specific but it was more of a reminder as we had covered it once before. I have been babying it to keep it from getting too hot for about two months and didn't want to be without it for any length of time--I thought when I was told a couple of days to replace the fan that meant I would have it back in a couple of days. He did not have the fan in and *that* is what I wanted Ron to get the guy to do, order in the fan then have us drop off the 'puter.  I think maybe Ron gave the guy the idea my 'puter was the same as Morg's (he has fans for that model)  but I have an earlier model and it is not the same; he didn't have a fan for mine. But after the phone call, Ron said he was to take it in that evening and it would be a couple days. I asked if he had the fan already and Ron told me had had lots of fans. A couple hours after the 'puter was dropped off, Ron was still in town, the guy calls and tells me that he cleaned the fan up but the bearings were shot. Heck, I knew that without taking the thing apart--it can't run with hair and dust wrapped around it for long without tearing up the bearings and it ran long. He said he had to order in the fan and so it would take a few more days. That was what I was trying to avoid. He offered to let us take the 'puter back and he would call. But I had no way to get hold of Ron in town and it was Thursday so the next time anyone would be heading that way  would be Saturday and then when he got the fan it (on Monday or Tuesday) we would have to just run it right back to him, making a special trip to do so. I was a tad irked because this was the very thing I wanted to avoid, him having the 'puter during fan shipping time, but saw no point in that. Well, a week and a half later, the fan he ordered with a rush shipping never came; he ordered another and it hadn't come in yet. I told Ron get my 'puter. Aside from the internet, I use MS OneNote for a few things including my garden map--and I need that so I am not lost; at this time of year it is too easy to confuse melon with cucumber, some plants are new to me and I am not so familiar with the look of it, and until there is fruit there is no easy way to tell variety; row markers/garden tags always seem to fade. The garden maps, or should I say maps, have been wonderful. We have two fenced gardens plus three unfenced and they spread out a ways. Living in a holler we need to take advantage of full sun where we have it, even if it is only a small spot of it.  And then there *is* the internet part of it. Granted, I have not been overly active but I do have email (I still haven't caught up on)  ad some other things I don't like letting go for more than a couple /few days at a time. And, we use Google voice a lot to save money on long distance. Considering that we can't even call the police or fire dept. as a local call and sometimes a call needs made when the 'puter isn't on, I will not cancel our long distance service but since about the only local calls are pretty much our next door neighbors, the bills can add up. Morg has it  on her computer but it is an imposition to be hitting her up all the time to call up folks. I am glad my 'puter is home, I wish it had a new fan.

I wanted to write about the movie we saw today but I think I ought to let my machine cool a bit first.

A Funny Letter

I first saw this around eight years or so ago, I am thinking one of my sisters sent it to me. My husband just found it again and I have to share (and not lose it again).

Letter from a farm kid

AT SAN DIEGO MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT

Dear Ma and Pa:

I am well. Hope you are.

Tell Brother Walt and Brother Elmer the Marine Corps beats working for old man Minch by a mile. Tell them to join up quick before maybe all of the places are filled. I was restless at first because you got to stay in bed till nearly 6 a.m., but am getting so I like to sleep late.

Tell Walt and Elmer all you do before breakfast is smooth your cot and shine some things. No hogs to slop, feed to pitch, mash to mix, wood to split, fire to lay. Practically nothing. Men got to shave but it is not so bad, there's warm water.

Breakfast is strong on trimmings like fruit juice, cereal, eggs, bacon, and stuff, but kind of weak on chops, potatoes, ham, steak, fried eggplant, pie and other regular food. But tell Walt and Elmer you can always sit by two city boys that live on coffee. Their food plus yours holds you till noon, when you get fed again.

It's no wonder these city boys can't walk much. We go on "route" marches, which the Platoon Sergeant says are long walks to harden us. If he thinks so, it is not my place to tell him different. A "route march" is about as far as to our mailbox at home. Then the city guys get sore feet and we all ride back in trucks. The country is nice, but awful flat.

The Sergeant is like a schoolteacher. He nags some. The Capt. is like the school board. Majors and Colonels just ride around and frown. They don't bother you none.

This next will kill Walt and Elmer with laughing. I keep getting medals for shooting. I don't know why. The bulls-eye is near as big as a chipmunk head and don't move. And it ain't shooting at you, like the Higgett boys at home. All you got to do is lie there all comfortable and hit it. You don't even load your own cartridges. They come in little metal boxes.

Then we have what they call hand-to-hand combat training. You get to wrestle with them city boys. I have to be real careful though, they break real easy. It ain't like fighting with that ole bull at home.

I'm about the best they got in this except for that Tug Jordan from over in Silver Lake. He joined up the same time as me. But I'm only5'6" and 130 pounds and he's 6'8" and weighs near 300 pounds dry.

Be sure to tell Walt and Elmer to hurry and join before other fellers get onto this setup and come stampeding in.

Your loving daughter,

Gail Ann

Pasted from <http://gobobpipe.com/funniesAndFollies_farmKidLetter.html>