Another year down the tubes!

Counting today, there are only 5 days left in this year.   

Momma nailed it when she said "When you are over the hill you pick up speed."  I look back over the years and try to find that skinny little girl that ran up and down Strong Street barefooted.  If only my life could be lived in reverse!  I see all my missed opportunities and think, "Woulda', coulda' shoulda' ", but I didn't.  Now it is too late!

When I came to Colorado all those years ago, I did so on a temporary whim.  I would come and live, but if Charlie and I parted ways, I would move back.  We parted ways and I stayed, but only temporarily.  But then one year turned to 2, and then 3.  I stayed and married Kenny, but with the goal in mind that when he passed I would return to Hutchinson.  When he passed, I didn't leave.  Things and commitments kept me here.  I own my home.  I have 2 kids here, 1 in Lakin, two in Longton, one in Texas.  My last husband is buried in Memorial Gardens and my name is on the other half of his tombstone.

I live all alone in a 2400 square foot house.  My friend list gets shorter every year.   We adopted Bret.  I also acquired 37 ducks and 7 geese,.  I built a pond.  Kenneth passed away.  I said when the ducks and geese were gone, I would move to town.  The foxes ate the ducks.  I said when the geese were gone, I would move to town. We are at a standstill now! I have 7 geese that are ageless!  I keep buying feed and they keep eating it.  Every night I close them in their house and every morning I let them out.  Once a month I go to Big R and buy 3 bags of grain.

My grass is dead because I forget to water it.  The 98 rose bushes I had at one time are all turned wild and been dug up and tossed on the heap.  Bret married and moved away and started his second family.  I just keep getting older.  I think about going back "home".  Where is home?  Hutchinson?  Nickerson?  Garden City? Lakin?

Every year I think back to what I should have done and didn't.  It is probably a little bit late for me to put the toothpaste back in the tube.  So, I get up every morning and go to bed every night.  Habit, I guess.  I know any one of my kids would like me to come and live with them, but I just can not see that happening!  I keep hoping I will get lucky and just not wake up some morning, but so far that is a pipe dream!

So, I close this and go let the decrepit old geese out, throw a rock at the neighbors cats that have wandered into my yard and look west at the beautiful mountains and remember why I never packed up and moved back to the flatlands of Kansas!

Peace!

Update on my trash service.

 Service?  That word is not in the vocabulary of the people who work for/own/ or drive for C & C Disposal.  My trash remains sercured in the back yard, but makes a daily trip to the front just in case they decide that I am worthy of having my trash picked up.  Better Business Bureau has not received my complaint yet.  

We used to have a newspaper and if we still did I could write a letter to the editor.  Maybe there is some way I can do that online.  Maybe I will call the health department today.  Since I have little faith in anyone doing anything for me I do not look forward to doing anything about this today.

So I am just going to leave this here and go get another cup of coffee.  But do this for me.... if you have a trash company that actually picks up your trash, give me a call.  I pay my bill on time and try to do all the things they ask, like not put dead animals and such in the bin.  I am just a little old lady who wants to get rid of her trash and not having much luck!  If I was even 5 years younger I would start a trash company and I would use my little Honda for the truck.  Sure would be better than the company now who just blows old ladies off and goes on their way.

Today I am going to do nothing about the trash situation, because I am tired and old and C & C Disposal does not give a big rats ass!!!  Maybe when the gray wagon comes to haul me out to the crematorium someone will notice my mountain of trash and give my estate a ticket for littering.

Oh, for crying out loud! Just do your job.

 I am having a very hard time believing that my life has completely changed and that Covid is to blame.  Prime example would be my trash service, or rather lack of it.  I got my bill.  I picked up the phone and called the office and paid my bill.  I know if I do not pay when I get the bill that I will do the procrastination thing and end up receiving a friendly reminder.  Most of my bills are on level pay with an automatic deduction from my bank account.  This one is one I need to pay every 3 months, so I paid it.

Next week I did not have much trash and so I am not sure if it was picked up or not.  Week 2 and no trash pickup.  So I called the office.  "Oh for sure!  So sorry!  Shall I send a special truck out?"  I did not think that was necessary.

Week three and the trash is now up over the top and the neighbor cats are having a field day!  So once more I called the woman  who is now my sounding board for frustrated old ladies who are spending a lot of time on the back burner!  

Of course she checked and they must have just missed me quite by  accident.  Could I just load it into the car and bring it out to the yard?  This struck me as rather ludicrous to say the very least!  I am 80 years old and drive a Honda Fit!  I am doing damn good to get a bag of groceries in it!  Trash is heavy and this is now beginning to smell like garbage.  I do not want to touch it, let alone load it in my car and haul it somewhere that I do not know where it is.  She assured me that this time my trash would be picked up next Thursday as scheduled.  Or Friday if it snowed, which of course it did.

By this time, the dumpster was overflowing, so I had wrapped it with a rubber rope and taken it to my back door to deter the 8 cats that live next door and love to forage.  So, I pulled it to the front yard for the trash man on Thursday.  It set on the front parking all Thursday night.  I did not untie the rope.  I thought I would run out when the man arrived.  

Friday morning dawned and my hopes soared.  Friday night I dejectedly drug that damn thing back to the back yard! Saturday we repeated the scenario.  Today is Sunday.  Tomorrow is Monday.  My trash day is Thursday.  I am beginning to see a pattern here.  Had I not paid my bill, they would tell me my trash would not be picked up because I did not pay.  So...... now what?

I will call out there tomorrow and she will tell me how sorry she is, but you know what?  Sorry doesn't cut it.  Society has rules and one of them is that we pay our bills on time.  I did that and here I set a month later with the same damn trash that I had when I paid my trash bill!  

So, do you have any idea how I can get all that trash in my car to haul it across town?  Will the secretary come to my car and unload it for me?  Or better yet maybe I can just take the tote up to South Road and leave it there.  Someone will see their name on the side and report it as abandoned.  Course that does not do anything about the 3 months of service that I have paid for, does it?

I will call the company Monday and the lady will be very sorry, but you know what, sister?  Sorry isn't going to cut it this time.  I am 80 years old and tired of being screwed with.  Every bill I have is on auto pay so I do not have to screw with people who do not give a damn about whether my trash gets hauled off or not!  You are not the only trash company in town so here is the deal....  I am going to send you a copy of this blog and then Monday morning I am going to call you, cancel by service and demand my money back.  Then I am going to call the Better Business Bureau and tout you as the worst trash service in town.

If you are so busy that you can not service your customers, you sure do not need any new ones!

Ten dollars and 200 miles.

 I do not know about you, but I have 20/20 hindsight looking back and right before the crack of dawn is when I can see all my choices clearly!  Today is no different.  I woke up about 4:30 remembering my last day as a married woman in Garden City, Kansas.  The events leading up to that choice are irrelevant, only know that I had reached the end of my endurance and whatever lay ahead had to be better than the current situation.  Had I remained in the situation I would no doubt have ended my life that day.

With $10 in my pocket and a full gas tank in the 1967 Chevy I waited for my husband to leave for work, or wherever he went most days.  With him safely out of the house, I loaded what I could for clothes in the trunk on top of the spare tire.  That was days when there were no seat belt laws, so 4 kids were stuffed in wherever they could sit, stand or lay and away we went.  I would like to say it was an easy trip, but only 20 miles later I had a flat tire and no jack.  Luckily a boy scout troop happened by and the leader had a jack.  I left the flat laying beside the road and trusted God and the universe to help me reach my destination.  And he did.

I can only imagine the sight when mother opened the door and found me and the kids there and finding out we were there to stay.  She quickly called in a few favors and a babysitter was lined up for the next day.  Since I knew nothing about making a living, I started at the Blue Grill as a dish washer.  There I met a man who was wiser in the ways of the world and making a living then I was.  His advice was to bluff my way into a job as a waitress.  Lie on my resume: they would not check.  And he was right. 

 Mother waited tables at the Red Rooster and soon I had a job waiting tables at the Red Rooster.  There I met Gibby, who told me the cook was the highest paid employee in a restaurant.  So I applied for a cooking job at the Red Carpet.  I kept the dishwashing job and the waitress job and worked as night cook at the Red Carpet. Frank and I remained friends of sorts until he went to work at the radio station.  Gibby and I were like brother and sister until the day he died in California. 

Finding babysitters was sometimes a challenge and more than once I was ready to throw my hands in the air and give up, but give up to what?  Or who?  The kids dad was quick to point out that he would not pay child support.  His reasoning was that he did not want a divorce and that I had the kids and he had nothing so I should just figure it out.  After time I would take the kids to him for a few weeks and then go get them.  I saved babysitting money that way.  It worked out and over the years we could actually be in the same room with out screaming at each other.

To make a long story short, time marches on.  Today my first husband and the father of my children settled down and we shared custody.  I moved to Colorado and he lived in Western Kansas on 20 acres.  The kids stayed with him to attend school in a small town.  Between us we got the kids all raised and out into the world before he passed to whatever reward he had earned.  

I am a stronger person then I was 50 years ago.  Three of the kids still live in Kansas, one in Texas and one here in Pueblo.  My last husband and I adopted one of the grandkids.  I was married to him for 20 years, and he has now been deceased for 20 years. Apparently my mind is still pretty well intact.  Dates are a little fuzzy, but mother always had a way to explain that.  She said, "As life goes by you get more memories in your head.  As you get more memories they are harder to find in your brain.  They are there, it just takes time to get to them through all the other memories."

So there you have it for this morning.  If you get confused reading this, think about how I feel!  Some where I have it all written down and documented, but I do not know where that is.  So just know, I am here now.  Then I was there.  And never the twain shall meet!

Thanks, mom!

1:35 A,M. This is Gordon with your local bank.....

 "It is the middle of the friggin' night!  Don't you people ever sleep?"

 That was my wake up call that woke me up out of a sound sleep and pissed me off.  When I go to bed, I go to sleep.  All day long I have fended off the robo calls that want to insure my eleven year old car with almost 200,000 miles on it against any repairs.  Bumper to bumper.   Or they want to loan me thousands of dollars on just my signature.  Or house insurance.  Or life insurance.  Or buy my house.  Or sell my house.  The list goes on of things I might possible want that I have not thought of by myself.

Tell me this, how can we put a man on the moon, but not stop robo calls that bombard me all day and into the night!  I pay for my phone.  I bought it and I pay every month for the privilege's of using it and it would be nice if when I picked it up on the second ring if it could be someone I knew and wanted to talk to, but such is not the case.  

"Hi!  This is Dan."

"Good Afternoon.  I hope you are having a good day so far."

"Don't hang up!  I have a bank that can solve all your financial woes at 0% interest."

"I want to buy your house!"

I have signed up on the national do not call list.  I have blocked calls.  I screen my calls with caller id, but I gave that up when I saw my late husbands name and  phone number.  I tried making a list of the numbers, but they are smarter then I will ever be.  There is no hope.

I could turn my phone off at night, but I have 6 kids who are subject to accidents and need momma.  Or maybe they just need to tell momma a little good news.  (That could happen!)  Sometimes a friend will call just to pass the time of day.  I should be able to actually use my phone for my personal needs.

On the computer I can mark spam mail as such and send it to the trash bin and it goes to a folder and gets deleted, but not here at home in the real world.  The phone is subject to jangle at any time, day or night.  I often wonder if these people ever sell what ever they are selling.  They must or they would not keep calling.

So here I set with my jangled nerves, ready to face another day of missed opportunities here in my home.  Wouldn't it be nice if Gordon could get a real job and work like the rest of us instead of spending all night trying to figure out a way to separate me from my meager savings?

Good luck on that!

Spring time will soon be here....again...Thank God!

I have been in this house for 36 years and I have fought the bind weed every step of the way.  Elm trees are my nemesis, especially when they grow in the fence line or sprout up in the middle of the Choke Cherry bushes.  But last year, I noticed that I am now blessed with cacti.  They are the flat leafed ones and I forget what they are called, but they have that fruit on the end of the leaf.  Prickly Pear.  I first encountered this little fellow 50 years ago when I lived out by the airport in Garden City, Kansas.  We had friends named Don and Claire .  She was of Mexican descent and wise in the ways of foraging for delicacies.  She came by one day and told me she found a field of Prickly Pear Cacti and wanted to go harvest some of the new tender leaves for food.

Since Duane was at work, I agreed and we loaded the kids up and away we went.  Oh, and I took a pair of Duane's leather gloves because she told me they were deadly sharp and we would need them.  So we picked a big basket full and then went home.  Since I had no idea what they were I let her take all of them with the promise that she would fix something really good to eat.  I carefully put his leather gloves back where I got them.  Bad mistake.

The first time he put them on he began to cuss.  They were full of something very sharp.  Oh, oh!  I of course confessed and I know they say confession is good for the soul, but trust me, it was not good for the ears or the body.  I had ruined his good gloves for nothing!  He was not going to eat that damn cactus and that woman better not ever show up at our door again and Don was an idiot for ever marrying that piece of what ever.  Any way.

So imagine my surprise when I went out behind the garage  to the area that was home to 500 million goat heads and 300 Sunflowers and lots of bindweed and found the cutest little Prickly Pear Cactus.  I was tempted to just leave it grow, but thought better of that and got the shovel out.  I cut the root and tossed it into the milk crate.  Then I saw another.  And another.  And soon the big double milk crate was full.

The survivalist  in me rebels against killing anything be it a cactus or a big tall Sunflower.  I could eat the cactus if need be for survival and the birds could harvest the sunflowers.  The strangest part is that I see no signs of cactus growing any where and the field out back is planted sometimes to a cash crop, so I doubt it they worked their way in from there.



Another mystery is the Centipede and how it manages to slither in my house when there are no visible signs of cracks, but slither it does nonetheless.  That is second only to how the bull snake manages to get in the goose house and eat the eggs!  I have actually drilled holes in the eggs and blown them out so my daughter could paint them and it is no easy chore!  First it is way bigger than a snake mouth and the shell is very thick..



So I guess, my biggest problems out here on the Mesa are the snakes, cactii and the myriad of cats that now occupy the neighbors garage.  Guess I will just set right here and let it all sort itself out.  If this is the worst that happens to me, I guess I am pretty lucky!

The beautiful Colorado sky!

Every morning without fail, I leave my back door and head out back to the goose house.  When I built it, it was a duck house.  An influx of foxes changed all that.  At the height of my goose/duck raising , I had 37 ducks and 17 geese.  I also had a very big pond which was lined with heavy plastic.  It was about 35 feet long, 30 feet wide and 5 feet deep.  They loved it and swam in it all day long.  I still have pictures of it some where, but that is history and I do not like to live in the past.  Very slowly the foxes began to sneak in and carry off a duck now and then.  When I realized what was going on, it was too late and the houses behind my empty field prevented use of a gun.  One of the neighbors who lived down there, told my step daughter that he had shot over 10 foxes in one week.  But that is history.  I now have 8 geese and no ducks.  None of this is relevant, however.

This morning as I stood in my back acre, I reveled at the beauty of the blue Colorado sky.  Not a cloud in sight.  It was not cold, just a little cool, which is to be expected this time of year.  It was just that the beauty of the Colorado sky struck me as the hand of God at work.   It is so wonderful to live here in the center of the United States of America that I could not help but thank God above for delivering me to this place!  I fully intend to live out my remaining days right here on South Road, but can I?

I watch the news.  I know that south of here, children are locked in cages because their parents are trying to escape the drug lords in South America.  North of here, the Indigenous people who lived on this land since before Columbus or whoever came and they were eventually pushed back to reservations.  The government has penetrated into every aspect of our lives so that we are no longer allowed the security of our own planet.  In lands across the sea, bombs and war are an every day occurrence.  Running water, heated homes, electric lights at our fingertips are not givens over there.  I do have a radio in my bedroom that will bring me messages if the depot ever implodes.  It will also let me know if a tornado is on the horizon.  It was installed in my home over 30 years ago by the government.  They have changed the battery twice.  It is tested every Wednesday at noon.  I also get a calendar every year from the same place that furnishes the radio.  I am sure that it has some purpose, but I really do not know what it is.  Perhaps it is the government spying on me.  If so, somebody is pretty hard up for someone to spy on!  There is very little outside activity in my home and the bedroom is pretty well a "dead zone."

But back to the sky that is such a beautiful blue that it makes my heart ache!  If our government could spend the money on taking care of our weakest citizens that they spend on securing our borders and monitoring the rest of the world, wouldn't it be a beautiful world?  My grandfather came here 120 years ago with nothing but the clothes on his back and a hand held by my great grandfather.  I love my family history, and I love to go back to Plevna, Abbyville, Huntsville and all the places my grandparents lived.  Some of my fondest memories were made around the oak table at the little house in Plevna where I lived with my grandma and great grandma.  The school is gone now.  Last time I was there, only the gymnasium was standing.  The Hinshaw general store had burned.  That left the bank, the phone company and one gas station.  The Smith house was gone and 3 trailer houses were on that lot.  The Congregational Church still stood next door to our house.

The sky in Kansas and the sky in Colorado are different.  Colorado is a deeper blue.  Kansas sky goes on forever. The night sky in Kansas is not polluted by city lights and I can hear the coyotes yipping  across the prairie.  There are more stars then one could ever count.  The sky is total black with only diamonds sparkling against the velvet background. but it is the sky that fills my soul.

At least that is how I remember it.

'Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good.

The wind was blowing all day and this is what happens when that happens.  This is just up the road from my house.  Sadly this is not the first time that this has happened at this same house.  Just the first time in landed on the house.

This is the same place up on South Road.  This was several years back.  That time I had been working with a family on Gale Road and when I came home down 25th to South Road I had to back track  and come up County Farm.  When I came in and turned on my computer, this picture was in an email from my son in Dallas, Texas.  Little a--hole never did tell me how he got that picture.  Kind of creeps me out to think he has spies up here in Colorado.  I must say that this man has some pretty bad luck.  I also must say, I am glad it was not my house.

That having been said I think I am going to call the tree company and have the Apricot tree behind the house taken down.  that tree is actually only about 15 feet from my head when I am in bed sleeping.  Sure there is a wall between it and me, but as you see, walls do not stop falling trees.  It isn't like the damn tree gives me any Apricots any way.  To take it a step further, I do not even like Apricots in case it did decide to give me some fruit.  Once it had lots of fruit and I fed it all to the geese.  So now I suppose you want to know why I planted the damn thing!  Ok, here is that tale.

Many years ago Kenneth was working on a job in Paonia, Colorado.  We had a park model camper that he pulled around to different jobs.  Park model is just a way of saying a small camper that is the equivalent of a tiny trailer house.  It had a small front room, kitchen, full size bath and a bedroom in the back.  When he parked in a trailer park, he hooked into the water and sewer which was better then having to store water and empty sewage.  His little home away from home.  I would travel over to the job a couple days a week and that way he and I kept in touch, so to speak.

Paonia was just a small town that attracted a lot of hippie sorts.  The job he was on was a BLM job so he was privy to all the amenities of the land.  Peaches and other fruit was plentiful on the site and Kenneth was always going to pick me some when he got time.  Sadly, he never got time, but Joe Fisher to the rescue.  He was another trucker.  One evening he was setting in the roadside park and just enjoying the evening when he noticed a tree loaded with Apricots!  He scrounged around under the seat and came up with an empty bread wrapper.  He then proceeded to fill it with plump, juicy Apricots which he presented to me with the stipulation that I would give him a jar of Apricot jam.  Sounded like a deal to me.

As soon as I got home I worked up the Apricots and made my jam.  The seeds I threw on top of the septic tank where I was sure they would rot and make compost.  Joe was pleased with the jam and began to tell me of other fruits on the BLM including Sarvis Berry trees.  Sadly they were dried up by then.  And can you imagine my surprise when I noticed little tiny trees coming up in the compost pile!  I moved them to a protected area and "heeled" them in to winter over.  The next Spring I had 40 Apricot trees.  Some of them I planted at my mother-in-laws house.  Several I planted in the front yard and several out back.  One I planted behind the house and there it stands today!  The Bores have about killed it, but still it tries.  Usually it blooms and then a freeze comes and the flowers fall off, or it may actually go ahead and set fruit, but then comes the "June drop" and there goes my crop.

I keep thinking I would like to have fruit just one more time so I can have some more Apricot trees so I can sell the house and leave them, I guess.  But that is the tale of the Apricot tree.  I know I should have it taken down, but that is just something I can not bring myself to do.  When the Apricot tree goes I am afraid my heart may follow.

Just the musing of a silly old woman.

Keep right except to pass and do not pass in an intersection on a country road.

A couple days ago I was coming home down South Road and driving my usual 40 MPH in the 35 MPH speed zone.  Actually my speedometer is off by a couple digits, so I was driving about 38MPH.  There is a stop sign on 25th Lane and 27th Lane has a "widow maker" dip.  See out here this is how we control water. The dip is so water on the road has a way to get off the road so my car does not flood out.  I slow down so my car does not bounce.

Let me tell you about the history on this dip.  Our mailbox is on the North side of the road.  It is about 1/2 a city block from the dip.  When we first moved out here and the dip was new we lost our mailbox 2 times because people neglected to slow for the dip, became airborne and wiped out our mailbox.  The dip is clearly marked so over the years people have learned to slow down at that corner.  They also have the added attraction of seeing long black marks where brakes are applied very quickly by drivers who wake up at the last minute.  Back to my experience.

So I am driving home and stopped at 25th Lane.  A red car was behind me.  It also stopped and caught up with me very quickly.  I knew the dip was coming so I tapped the brake to slow.  Red car whipped out around me and romped on the gas.  When it hit that dip, it became airborne and then came down very hard on the road.  I heard the crash when the bottom of the car hit the pavement.  The car continued forward out of control and swerving from side to side.  By the time it got to Scalese's house it was finally under control.

Now my dear little Bret hit a dip in Pueblo West once and raised his radiator 2 inches.  He was only going 7 mph.  (snicker, snicker!)  This car was probably doing 55 when it hit the dip.  Wonder what it did to that radiator!!  I do not know exactly why I shared this with you, but I must have had a reason.  I wish I had a dash camera and I could have shown it to you.  Might make you want to drive a little more carefully out here.  I do know I just watched this video.  

CLICK HERE

I know they have this law here in Colorado, but no one pays attention to it.  Do we still have traffic enforcement?  I pass more on the right then I do on the left.  In all fairness lots of these drivers are on the phone and not really noticing what I am doing, or what they are doing either for that matter.

I could be wrong , but I think if you are going to be herding a 2000 pound vehicle down a public road you really ought to be aware of your surroundings.  I have niece's that like to text going down the road.  Real important stuff isn't it?  I do not do that because I am old and I can remember when the phone was hooked on the wall and if someone called and I did not answer they just figured I was not home.  Imagine that!  Now I call someone and Lord only knows where they are located.  They could even be in my back seat.

I guess what I am trying to tell/ask/beg people to do is this.  When you crawl in your car, leave you other obligations on the seat or in your pocket and pay attention to driving.  In a perfect world all the cars are going the same place at the same speed, but inevitably someone colors outside the lines.  In a perfect world the only fatality would be the driver with the phone in thier hand, but life does not work that way and I have come too far to be a statistic because someone else heard a phone ring, or heard a text come in, or missed that sign about "DIP".

The road to hell is paved with good intentions!

Happy New Year! Or it might be subtitled "Here's hoping!"

So here I am in another year.  Who would have thought this would keep happening to me?  I am recalling a time when when the kids were little and I had a moment of clarity and purchased a life insurance policy so when I bit the big one there would be money to finish raising them.  Nice thought at the time.  So for a few years I made my payments and then seeing that I was still pretty much alive, I cancelled it, but they sent me a term life paid up till 1979.  I was pretty sure that would cover me until I met an untimely death in what ever manner it could be.  You must know that I have not always been this sweet little old lady you see before you and I have also not had much of a filter on my mouth especially when I was upset.
But, to make a long story short, I outlived that policy and several more after that.  Finally gave up on term life insurance as a bad bet on my time here on this big green/blue ball.  And now, rather then making a list of all the wonderful things I am going to do in the new year and all the bad things I am going to quit doing, I am keeping a score card!  Now, even that is a waste of time because I do not remember what I did last year so what am I going to compare it to this year?  So, I am going to just tell you a few of the improvements I have made in my life over the last ...well since I came to Colorado.
Having dropped out of school my senior year, I went to college and received a degree in accounting.
I became proficient on the computer.
I opened a store on ebay and maintain 100% feedback after 6 years.
I started attending church regularly.
I learned to weave and spin.
I quit smoking.
I volunteer my time for others through SCAP, Sangre de Cristo Hospice, Los Pobres, and anyone else who needs me.
I wrote a book and published it.
My blog is successful.
I do a little hiking in the mountains, but not alone because I am afraid of bears.
So, I am guessing I am in better shape this year then I have been a lot of years before.  And I can see a bright future ahead if I just keep my eye on the prize.  Just gotta say it though....

HAPPY NEW YEAR...2015!!

  

Take time to read this and save your own life!

 Gluten free recipe #1 without nuts.  Looks very good, but pretty crumbly.  Moist.  Very choclatey.  A definite to make again.

Gluten free recipe #2 with nuts.  Very good flavor.  Holds together well.  Freezes and travels well.
  This is the clear winner.





Doing the gluten free thing is always a challenge.  When I do find something I really like I make a mental note and then I forget all about it.  When I want to make it again, I can not remember what book it was in or what the name of it was, or why I even liked it.  So I am beginning to wise up.  I now have a notebook for all the little recipes that I like as well as ones I do not use and why. 
Seems like gluten free is now becoming rampant.  Ever wonder why?  I have my own theory.  Years ago on the farm we raised our own food.  Grain was grown with the seed from last years crop.  Beef was raised from the momma cow and the neighbor's bull.  Vegetable seeds were kept from year to year and if your seed was lost, you borrowed seeds from your neighbor.  We ate cream so thick you could put it on toast with a fork and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar, it was to die for.  People were skinny cause the worked hard and ate natural.  My ancestors lived to be 90+ and many hit 100 years of age.  When mom died at 80 years old, they all said, "Oh!  She was so young!  Her whole life ahead of her!"  But that was then, when we grew our own food.  This is now. 
Now we have people like Monsanto helping us.  We plant thier seeds and we grow very big crops.  Used to be dad would check the wheat and pick a head and rub it in the palm of his hand.  He would do this several times in a week.  One day it would "shatter" and it was pronounced "ready to harvest."  What I am telling you is that the wheat we grew then and the wheat we grow now are not the same.  It all becomes "ready" according to when the harvest is wanted to happen, which is incumbent on when the machine that harvests the grain will be there to harvest it.  And what all that means to you and I is that the gluten is not the same and we can not digest it.  Couple that with the fact that farmers are now growing corn that will cause a worm to hemorrage inside and die, and we are in some big trouble.
It is amazing that countries over seas will not allow this stuff to be grown in thier countries and will not allow it to be imported.  We call these countries "third world" and backward.  Get on your Internet and check out cancer rates here and abroad.  Check out obesity here and abroad.  Do not take my word for any of this.  Do your own research.  Remember when cancer was something that happened to some one else?  Autism was a rarity?  Casearean births were not an everyday occurence?  Is the world really changing that fast or are we allowing it to be changed by big corporations and thier need for more money and power?
The good old days were naturally organic.  Now we have to make an effort to find organic and we pay a lot more for it then the crap they are smiling and handing to us with a glass of grape koolaid.  All I am asking is that you take an interest in what your government is doing to you in the name of Corporate Greed.  Sure they are pushing national health care.  We are sure as hell going to need it!

Took my friend Patty to Beulah a couple weeks ago....

I think my friend, Patty, has not been out and around much.  Rather think she might be a city girl deep inside.  Early in the spring I took her for a ride out to Avondale to meet Sister Nancy and she was fascinated with the gardens and and countryside in general.    I thought  if she liked the ride East she would really get a kick out of the ride to Beulah.
So I gathered her up and off we went to The Stompin' Grounds coffee shop ran by my friend Jan.  I usually have soap and lotions for sale up there along with my book.  I do like to rotate my stock and since I had not been up since the Spring, off we went.

While we were in there a herd of deer trotted across the street toward the coffee shop and went out back to have a little snack on the neighbors lilac bushes.  I snuck up on them, because that is what I do!

And when I was through wondering just how I would go about butchering one of these things, I decided to sing the song she had painted on the door to her garden shed! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r0MQpUTIow

 

 

Coffee cup drained and our goodbye's said, it was off to one of my favorite places when I go to the mountains...an old cemetery.  I have an insatiable appetite for tromping around in one of those places.  When I first came to Colorado, Charlie took me to a ghost town up around the old LaVeta Pass.  I want to go back there some day, but in the meantime, I make do with the ones at the lower altitudes. 

 

 

 

I hope you are enjoying the little slide show, because I sure enjoyed making it.  And so Patty and I,   a couple frustrated but laid back hippie's bid you a fond farewell from beautiful Beulah, Colorado.  I am sure we will return here again and again.    I am sure of one thing and that is The Stompin' Grounds in Beulah is both a hippie haven and a damn good place to get coffee on a cold winter day!

 

If summer comes, can fall be far behind?

Ah, the garden has finally yielded nectar of the Gods, or in simple language, I finally got a tomato!  Let me show you my little garden of Eden here.  At first glance it may appear to be a patch of weeds.  That would be the untrained eye! 

See, if you just look way down here you can see a squash.  I planted two full packets of squash so the geese would have lots.  One packet was yellow summer squash and the other was zucchini which is there favorite.  I have 26 squash plants and only 2 of them are zucchini.  Big thank you to Monsato for that one, I am sure.

 

Here is the beginning of a yellow squash.  It is about 2 inches long.

And here is a bunch of them getting ready to be made into goose food.  See, if I pick them when they are 5-6 inches long and slice and sauté them with a little garlic and maybe a green onion....oh they are so good.  But then the skin is no longer smooth they are almost impossible to chop let alone eat.  The geese do not know the difference.  Stupid geese!

Now if you look real close here you can spot a little watermelon.  It is about 3 inches across and is going to have to do some growing if it wants me to eat it, and better yet, if it does not want to get frozen and have wasted all the summer trying to grow for nothing!  Geese don't even like green watermelons!

Some where over there on the west side are some potato vines, but I have learned that I need to wait until the vines dry up or I will have no potatoes.  I do not know why the call them "vines" because they grow straight up like a tomato plant.  Well, come to think of it, they call those "vines" also.  Here is one of them and if you can see a tomato, more power to you.

But, while I was rooting around there, I did find a big red tomato.  Hell, I almost jumped out of my skin!  What you see here was lunch yesterday.  Sorry you missed it, but there was only enough for one, and what can I say?

Oh, look!  Here is the angel Lyn set in my garden to make it produce and keep it safe.  I am thinking this little chickadee is falling down on the job!  But then again, I did get that tomato.

Now,  look what is right over the fence!  This is my New Mexico Sunflower taking over the area between the Choke Cherry Bush and the actual garden area.  That is where I bury all my pets, so it is some very fertile ground.  This is the first time I have had blooms for a while, because if you remember, the Llama's were over there for several years and they liked to eat them and they had very long necks and really big teeth!

 

Remember this?

So there you have my garden.  I have been telling myself for 40 years that next year I will do better and nothing has changed;  I grow weeds and occasionally God will toss me out a little something to eat.  But, you know what?  It has worked pretty good so far, so why mess with something that works?  Like momma always said..."If it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just a heads up for you biker fans or Sherman fans.

This is the "Sherminator" and it is ready to run.  Pretty sure this is going to Bonneville this fall!  The BMAC is having the annual Sherman Schroeder run and Dana called yesterday to tell me the plan.  We are not sure exactly where but it will be before noon. 

 

As soon as I know I will let you in on the specifics.  For now, just know it is in the works!

 

When Sherman passed last year he left the garage to his beloved British Motorcycle Association of Colorado, which he had helped found back in 1983.  Only one of the founders is left and hopefully he will be there that day. 

Any way, the club dug this out of the rubble in the garage and have spent the past year restoring it to museum quality.  This is going to be very exciting, at least for me

The cat and the hummingbird and NO CAMERA!

I have Sherman's desk that he left me right by the front window.  Outside the front window hangs the hummingbird feeder.  Inside the window is a bookcase and of course, a window sill.  Scenario is set!
I sat down in the little chair at the little desk for just a moment.  In that moment, the calico cat, Icarus, leapt on to the bookcase.  At the same moment outside the window, the hummingbird arrived for his afternoon feeding.
Hummingbird and cat spotted each other at the same moment.  Hummingbird came closer to the window to tease get a better look at the cat.  Icarus was plastered with front feet against the window while hummingbird dove and fluttered within inches of those deadly claws!  I knew exactly where my camera was.  It was on the front seat of the car, ready for action.  But I was inside the house and the action was here!

And isn't that rather how life goes?  Seems if I have the good shot in my eyesight, the camera is not near.  If the camera is near, there is not a good shot!  So, what does this say about my life?  Could it be that I am missing a lot of good opportunities simply because I was not expecting them to arise and I did not appreciate them when they did?  See the word tease up above?  See the word tease here?  That is called a strikethrough and it is done with a process called HTML.

 A couple of  years back ebay had chat rooms and I spent a lot of time in one.  There I met a man who was an editor for a newspaper in Chicago or some such place. (And he really was because I googled him and found his bio.  See, on the internet, you can be anything you want, until someone googles you and you are reduced to being an everyday nobody.)   Maybe Cleveland.  Anyway, at the time I was interested in learning the art of HTML.   I would ask him "How do I do the copyright sign?" and he would tell me. ©   See how easy that was?   Or something like this:

WATCH THIS

So I hung out in that chat room until ebay finally did away with our little playroom, but I still have my HTML sheets and I may very well surprise you from time to time with my prowess in this area.  Give me an HTML format and I can dazzle you, but do not be confused that this means I am a computer genius by any stretch of the imagination.  Just something to do.

Alas, back in May of 2011 I noticed Dan was no longer hanging out.  I emailed him.  Nothing.  I thought that odd and I started asking around the chat rooms.  Finally I got an email from someone I did not know, sent outside of the chat rooms.  It contained short note that said simply "Because you care." and a  link to an obituary.  And that was it.  I do not know why this came up today, but it just goes to show how thinking about a hummingbird led to thinking about a computing process which in turn led to thinking about something silly that happened many years ago.

I guess this just goes to show that nothing ever really goes away.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  And that, my friends, is my words of wisdom for the day!

 

Button class today, ah the brilliance of it!

Here we are at Lane's House of Glass where we can throw no stones!  This is located at 111 Colorado Ave., Pueblo, Colorado.  Phone # on that is 719-542-2210.   Now the way I happened to wind up in here was I was at the Weaver's Guild meeting and they said who would like to take a class on fused glass and I got confused.  For some reason I thought it was a wine tasting class and since my hand was already up and I was hollering "Pick me! Pick me!" when I actually figured out what was going on and I did not want anybody to know I was not paying attention, I signed up for the fused glass button making class.  Now, I had walked past Lane's House of Glass a time or two on my way to the homemade candy store (which incidentally, is going out of business if they don't find a buyer.)  I knew they had beautiful stained glass hanging in the display window, but that was a far as my tiny mind had taken me, until that day.

Now as I anxiously awaited the day of my class and told people, "No, I am busy that day at my fused glass class", I was asked several times exactly what kind of class it was and what was I going to do.  Did I get here before you?  What is fused glass?   I have no idea.  No idea whatsoever, but when I get done I will know what I did.  That seemed to satisfy my most ardent admirer; sort of anyway.

So today it arrived and off I went at the allotted time.  I was greeted by two of the nicest people I have encountered in quite some time; Bob Lane and his able assistant, Lisa.  We were ushered into the workroom in the back which was all laid out for us.  I at first thought the dark marks on the table were dried blood but was told that was a  crock.  See, I am smart enough to know that glass is sharp and broken glass is really sharp.  Bob asked if any of us had ever worked with glass before and I told him that one time I actually washed a window, but that did not count.

This is my work station.  It consisted of a big square of paper, glass cutters, pliers, some glue and lots of containers of broken scraps of glass and other stuff that I did not remember what was. 

These are my little palettes which I shall attempt to turn into works of art.  They are squares of thin glass.  The big ones are about 1 1/2" and the little ones about an inch.

Now after much brilliance I ended up with little piles of stuff that I am sure were what I did although I am not sure what I saw in my head and what ended up on the palette were any where near the same thing.  You people do know I have about as much artistic talent as a slug, but I gave it the old college try.

Here is my efforts laying in the bottom of the jewelers kiln.  Look kind of sad, don't they?  Ah, but wait!  The master will bake them!  10 minutes at some temperature, then raise it for another 10 minutes and then raise them to 1600 degrees.  I think that is right.  And voila!  The glass I had piled and glued and placed strategically would begin to slump and fuse together, hence the term, fused glass.  Get it too hot and apparently it all turns into a big ball and is good for not much of anything!

 

 

 

 

So, now tomorrow, I can go pick them up, because today they are really hot! 

 

So, I count today as a good day and let me tell you why.  I learned a craft that I had never had an inkling of how to do it.  I now know what fused glass is and I made some.  That is one thing.  I met two very wonderful people, Bob Lane and Lisa.  I tell you this much, they were very kind to me as I navigated this world that was totally foreign to me.  Bob did a lot of my glass cutting for me because I think he could foresee a lot of blood if he didn't.  Lisa is a font of knowledge and the two of them together made my journey a lot of fun.  And my fellow classmates were quick to point out my mistakes.  Ah, bless them! 

So if you think you can not do it, just pop right in to Lane's and tell them Lou said.  I am sure they will work you into a class and what is life if it is not the never ending quest for knowledge.  And it is always fun to learn how to do something first hand.  I am probably not going to take this up as a full time hobby, but it was fun.  Hey, if I can do it, you can do it.

 

 

 

 

 

Riverside Printing is my friendly printer!

When I decided that I really wanted to publish this book, I wanted to go local because Pueblo needs the money as bad as anyone else.  So I called several printing companies in search of one who did books and that included the "perfect binding" as opposed to the spiral.  I found one, took my info in the them and they promised a price.  Two days later I stopped in and the boss was still not in.  Couple more days and a couple more phone calls and still nothing.  After almost two weeks I renewed my quest.  And that is when I found Riverside Printing!

Here we are right on the corner of 9th and Elizabeth.  Riverside Printing. 

And here is Evelyn, who took my order, gave me a price and told   me all the little things I needed to know to make this book a reality!  Very nice lady.  I left my little flash drive with her and toddled on home, still raw from my first rejection.  Hopefully this one would want my money!

                                             

I was absolutely amazed when the phone rang that evening and Evelyn had a price for me!  I was astounded at the price, but then we discussed a larger quantity and the price began to fall.  My hat is off the that woman!  And then again when I ordered the books and said I would like a proof copy, I sat back to wait.  Soon I received a call for my original art work as it needed a bit of a tweek.  Emailed that over and sat back to wait.  Nothing on Friday, so I figured it would be another one of those deals.  Silly me!

The phone rang on Saturday afternoon.  Lady named Susie was at the golf course ready to tee off and had my proof in the car and if I would run by and pick it up she could get on with her game. I did not know that anyone in this town actually did business on Saturday!  So off I went and picked it up and the rest is history.   The pictures and barcode were perfect.  Inside looked good (I have since found a booboo, but that is my bad.) so we were good to go. 

I picked up 10 copies on Friday and those are already gone.  So I am waiting for Susie to crank up the presses and then I will launch the website and very soon you will have your copy in your hands!

One of my dreams has come true.

WHOOPS!!!



Yesterday, when I was young...

Do you remember that song that goes "Yesterday, when I was young, and the taste of life was sweet, like rain upon my tongue."?  I can hear it playing in my head, but the words do not jell any more.  This is like so many other things in my life that have gone awry. 

I remember when beer bottles had screw on caps and sometimes they were a little hard to grasp and that is why God gave us teeth; to open bottle caps!  Alas, those days are over and gone.  Well, actually, so are the teeth.  I think I used to have 32, but that number is slowly dwindling.  Granted, four of them were wisdom teeth which never fit anyway, but nonetheless, they were there.  Unfortunately the caps that were so easily removed with my super powerful jaws have now been replaced by caps devised by a mad scientist.  The first thing I need to do is read the "how to remove cap" instructions printed on the miniscule cap.  Well, the very first thing I have to do is find the magnifying glass so I can SEE the instructions.  Ok, here we go!

To remove cap grasp bottle firmly.  Push down on cap while twisting counterclockwise.  You may need to exert extra pressure.  Now, we are dealing with a prescription bottle with a cap that is maybe an inch across.  My fingers quit bending that far many years back, but I am game to try.  So I grasp the bottle firmly in my left hand.  I press my right hand onto the cap.  Everything is plastic and of course my hands are sweaty in anticipation of this chore.  Ok, push down and twist counterclockwise.  I am assuming the cap goes counterclockwise; not the bottle.  And in a perfect world, something would turn and something would open.  Hell, maybe I was supposed to turn myself counterclockwise.  So, I try again.  Once more with feeling!  So this time I grasp the bottle in my right hand with the cap in my left.  Counterclockwise should still be the same direction.  I recall life lessons that say "Lefty loosey, righty tighty."  Sounds great in theory.

By this time I have worked up a sweat and wonder if I really need these blood pressure pills open at all.  Surely some one will stop by later today and they will open them for me.  This leads me to remember all the things I need open, like the jar of pickles, the bottle of lavendar cleaner, and that bottle of aphid killer that I threw across the fence in total frustration.  What has my life become?  I can not even try to catch the rain on my tongue anymore, because I might catch pneumonia instead. 

And all this brings me to the crux of the matter.  I am getting old.  Not only are my fingers stiff and my teeth gone, even words take on new meaning.  Like colon is no longer a punctuation mark, it is now something inside me to be babied and cleansed on a regular basis.   Will no longer means determination, it is something I have to make and file with the court or when I go toes up the state of Colorado will be my beneficiary!  Friends and family are no longer just people to be cherished, they are to be feared and revered and do not tick them off or they will not come to my funeral.  (I do not want to be the only one there!)  Walker is no longer someone I meet on the path, it is what holds me up.  Depends is not an act you perform when counting on someone to do something, it is now a noun to replace "string bikini or thong."

And I could go on all day, but I can't because I want to make a cake and I have got to get that new bottle of vanilla open.  Think I will take it down to the Senior Center and make that our challenge for the day!  Please do not laugh at this because one of these days you are going to be wanting to taste the rain only to find that it is now acid rain and you want no part of that!

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Spring time means baby geese on the ditch by my house!

Well, I almost wrecked the car on the way to town a couple days ago.  I knew there was a pair of Canadian Geese hanging out on the ditch, but I did not know they had already hatched the babies.  I counted and there were 7 or 8 of them, but those little suckers are fast.  When I stopped mother and babies were in the water and father was up on the topside.  He immediately jumped into the water and headed them upstream.  Guess he thought I might eat them.

Now at my house, I am staying up on the birth control thing.  Goose lays an egg, I grab it, run in the house and blow out the contents.  No babies here on the farm!  No, siree!  Now Diane at church also has a farm over by Penrose where geese and other fowl abound.  She has offered to give me some of her flock since I have no babies, but I have a better idea.  I would like to give her my flock and she can keep hers.  Granted they do a fantastic job of keeping the weeds down out back, but then so does Round Up.  And a bottle of sterilant costs about the same price as 2 week supply of goose food.

And then there is the grasshopper control factor.  Grasshopper would have to be completely insane to land on my little acre!  Oh, and when someone tells you that geese eat stickers, you can say with all certainty that is false.  They will eat the stickers if I pull them when they are young and hold them in my hand for them.  I have started tilling small areas and planting Rye which should mingle with the stickers and the geese will eat the Rye and trample the stickers.  At least I hope so.

The Apricot and green apple trees are loaded.  Now I eat neither of these things, so they become ready goose food.  I will plant 5 or 6 Zucchini plants and let the Zucchini get big and chop it up.  Well, I do not actually let them get big, they just seem to do that on their own!

So, things are going along right on schedule here in the Rockie Mountains.  Well, not really.  I planted 6 tomato plants and two packages of tomato seeds yesterday.  Also some potatoes that were already growing in my potatoe  bin.  Then the man on television told me, "Don't get excited and plant stuff just yet.  Looks like we may get a freeze next week."  Damn!  But you and I both know that 2 feet of snow next week is not out of reason for this area.  Would not be the first time, but there is always the possibility I can pull it off and have the first tomato of the season.

Spring time in the Rockies!!  I love it.

Getting a little weepy in my old age.

If you have ever been to my house, you know how I love flowers and the Lilac is one of my favorites.  I have seven or 8 altogether, but the one at the end of my back sidewalk is my favorite since it is also my biggest.  It has been blooming now for almost a week.  Every time I go out back, which is a minimum of times a day doing chores, I am met with the most heavenly fragrance.  It is strongest in the early morning and early evening, but all day it is on the air.

There is just something about a Lilac that invokes my younger days.  Seems like there has always been a Lilac bush every where I lived.  All the old Aunts had Lilac bushes.  Lilacs and Spirea.  Oh, and Forsythia.  My Spirea bush is about to croak and the Forsythia quit blooming years ago, but the Lilac is better than ever.  My Lilac bushes came from roots at a lady's house where she was ripping hers out cause she was "sick of the damn thing."  Lilac's are very hardy and can me started from a thought of one. 

Back to the weepy part.  When I pass this Lilac I always stop and breathe deeply.  My mind flits away to Grandma's house and a much happier time in my life.  But it makes me sad.  I know that this will only last a couple weeks and then it is gone until next year.  There is no way to capture the smell.  I have Lilac fragrance that I use in my soaps and lotions, but the headiness I experience at the end of my sidewalk is irreplaceable.  I stand there and just wish I could stop time.  My friend in New York sent me pictures of the Lilac festival there a few years back.  At the time I thought how nice that would be to go visit, but then I thought how nice it is to stroll around my yard and touch my own little crop. 

The one by the sidewalk is getting very big and I have to trim it so it does not close my sidewalk.  Today I am going to dig up some roots on the sidewalk side and take them out back and plant them for the geese.  I know I will have to put a fence around them because 13 geese can trample a lot of my transplanting efforts, but I don't mind.  I just want to share with them.

I don't remember being weepy over a smell before, but I am now.  So I attribute this to the fact that I am getting old and probably a touch of senility is setting in as well.  Or it could also be that I am getting older and have learned to appreciate the little gifts that God has given me in the form of a beautiful bush and a fragrance to carry me back in time.  I am sure that when I get to the Pearly Gates, there will be a Lilac bush on either side, and they will be in full bloom and I will just follow that fragrance right on in and up those streets of gold!  

And that, my friends, makes me smile!