Arggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!! More cold and snow!!!!!!!

The Arctic front is back!!  Right now it is 12 degrees and falling.  I am already frozen.  I never lost the last snow.  It melted a little here on my sloped driveway that I have to walk across to get to the car port and then quickly froze into a sheet of the slickest ice I have encountered since I left Kansas!  As I recall those days, when winter came it first rained.  Then that changed to freezing rain.  This left a sheet of ice on everything known as "black ice".  You have not lived until you have driven 200 or so miles on that. 

Black ice is just what the name implies.  Inevitably this phenomena would occur right before I wanted to make the trip from Garden City back to Hutchinson.  Course  who ever heard of postponing a trip?  Well, yeah, that and the fact that the ice would be there until Spring so why fight it?  Then it would snow and the temperatures would fall and 15 degrees below was a good day.  But you will recall that I left Kansas. 

Now I know you think Colorado is the land of beautiful snow falls and skiing and that sort of thing, but what you do not know is this......I live in a hole.  I am here in Pueblo where it never rains, temperatures are moderate and the sun shines every day.  Except of course, when it does not!  Give us an Albuquerque Low and we measure the snowfall in feet or the rain in gallons.  And then there is that little thing called an Arctic Front that comes creeping down from God only knows where and drops the bottom right out of the thermometers.

So back to the sloped drive and the sheet of ice.  I myself have found it easier to go out the back door, across the deck, down the side walk, out the gate, across the back lot, crawl over the front fence, stumble through the rose bushes and exit into the car port.  Most of the time I have the presence of mind to have my keys with me.  But occasionally I exit the front door.  Side walk is clear (Thanks to my back breaking work and Bret sleeping late cause he does not do a good job of shoveling.) so I can get up a little speed, lock my knees when I hit the ice patch, glide to the bottom and stop suddenly when I hit the dry gravel which marks the neighbors drive.  Then it is just a matter of turning right, walking spraddle legged and holding on to the trash can, water hydrant and springing forward to the first pole in the car port.  I could never do that sober!

Had a man stop buy last evening to pick up some thread.  Course he parked right in the middle of the ice patch I laughingly call "Widow Maker".  I was happy to see he had been around enough to have mastered the spraddle legged walk which I also laughingly call "Widow Maker".  When it came time for him to leave I told him I  would watch him to his car to make sure he did not fall.  He, of course, thought I would pick him up if he did.  I told him, "No, but I think I can slide you over to the car port and you can grab hold of something and pull yourself up."  Luckily he made it to his vehicle and all was well.

Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, I woke up this morning and what do I have?  Got another 6-7 inches of fresh snow out there.  I have no idea where I left that damn snow shovel.  I think it is with the sledge hammer I need to break the ice on the pond.  I expect they are in the tin shed which has yet another drift in front of it.  If life were fair, things would be different.  I know where I went wrong.  See, a couple weeks ago I went to have my tires rotated and the little guy at Peerless (whom I love) told me, " Gee, Lou, your tread is about gone.  Want to take care of that now?"  And I in my lackadaisical manner did my usual procrastination thing.  I love it when I do that! ( Sarcasm, just another service I offer.)

Ok, so I was wrong about it never snowing here.  If this were the first time I was wrong you might be able to cackle, but seems to me specialty.  That and dumplings that do not have a hard ball of dough in the middle.  So now you have a good day and think about poor old Lou out here in Colorado freezing to death and driving around on bald tires. ( I would insert a happy face here if I had any idea how to do that!)

From daughter Patty for Christmas, or a mindless blog today!

Today should be the day I blog about my second daughter, Patty, if I were on schedule, but I am not!  I need pictures and I am not prone to dig in that closet today!  Well, actually, ever, but that is beside the point.  So today, I will show you one of my Christmas gifts from said daughter and tell you what havoc it has caused in my home!

Do you see that picture?  Do you know what it is?  It is a bird house.  It is a bird house clock.  It has batteries.  It actually works and Patty gave it to me for Christmas.  As with all gifts I receive, I put the batteries in it, and started it up, as you should do with all gifts you receive that require batteries.  That was my first mistake!

I set the hands to 2:47 and then went about my business.  13 minutes later I heard a tweeting sound.  Had I been the only one that heard the sound, life could have been good, but 2 dogs snapped to attention and immediately set to barking.  If they could have found the intruder it might have been a different story, but they could not.  With the sound gone they were soon back at their favorite pastime, which is sleeping.

One hour passed and the tweeting began again.  This time Icarus was in the house and was bent on finding the helpless bird.  As luck would have it she was at her feed bowl which is located on a built in desk in my kitchen.  It is there so the dogs do not eat her food.  Her head popped up and in one quick leap she had the birdhouse clock in her clutches!  In one quick leap I had her in my clutches!  Of course the dogs were immediately on point and barking like mad.  This scenario was repeated every hour on the hour until I took the batteries out of the clock.

So, now here is the dilemma that I face today.   I know that there has to be a way to silence that clock.  Unfortunately, as with most everything I own, the first thing I did was throw away the instructions.  So now I can dig through the trash and try to find that little 4 inch square piece of paper.  I do not like to dig through trash under the best of conditions.  Oh, what I can do is put the batteries back in and put it up on top of my cupboards where there is a place for such stuff but I do not like to do that cause then I have to clean that because it will attract every drop of grease that floats in the air.  Amanda, my little flash fryer of food, adds to that little problem daily!

So, in the meantime, the little clock sets there very quietly, awaiting my decision.  It is a very pretty little clock and the cheeping did not bother me.  Scared hell out of me the first couple times because Icarus has been known to bring in a bird or two and give them flying lessons.   I blogged once about how she undressed that one a feather at a time.

OK.  It is time to go let the ducks and geese out into the pond area.  I have lost one duck so far this year.  Old age is invading my flock. Time marches on and all that.  I see we have another Arctic Front coming.  Wish I had recovered from the last one, before the next one gets here.

Meet the oldest daughter, Debbie and her hubby, Hammer.

Son in law, Hammer and middle daughter, Dona

This is oldest, Debbie and second, Patty off to the right.

This is the littlest great grandson.

And here he is showing Grandma Lou how he can ride his bike!

This is the great grand daughter.  Girls are few and far between this generation!

This is the trap that hangs on her wall to keep grand kids under control!

This is the radio and it actually works!

Welcome to Longton, Kansas and the Bar HD or HD Bar ranch.  I forgot just what she said her brand was.  I know I have the HD part right.  Since they are retired bikers living the good live in Eastern Kansas, I thought HD was Harley- Davidson.  She was quick to tell me that it was Hammer and Debbie.  Might have been H Bar D.  That sounds good!  Crap!  Don't tell her I forgot.  And don't tell her I forgot how long she has been married either!  But I remember that day very well.

Here she came dragging in this giant of a man, hippie type, 2 tours in Viet Nam and what more could I expect out of life?  I had known him about 6 minutes when he said something and I asked him, "Man, are you frigging nuts!" To which he replied, "I sure am and I have the papers to prove it."  Probably the best son in law I ever had!  Devoted to Debbie.  When they decided to tie the knot they picked me up and the lady who ran the U Pump It and off we went to the court house.  I was Maid of Honor and Shirley Smith was Hammer's Best Man.  That is how we do things here in Colorado!  That had to of been over 20 years ago.

They kicked around as kids will do. They lived in Lakin, Kansas.  They moved to Guffy, Colorado.  Then they bought 40 acres on Eleven Mile Reservoir.  They built a cabin with just their two hands.  They went to Sturgis and I am hoping she kept her shirt on, and if she didn't I do not want to know about it.  They moved to Pueblo, then to Lakin.  They bought matching Harley's.I am not sure of the order of all this.  I am sure that they had several "I have fallen and I can't get up moments."  Then they found this little piece of Heaven called Longton, Kansas.

They got the house and 40 acres with a pond and wild Raspberries and the rest is history.  They have horses and I do not know why.  Sometimes they have a goat or a cow.  Look at her picture up there.  Click on it and make it big.  Who does that look like?  That girl is the spitting image of me in more ways than one.  She looks like me, she walks like me, she talks like me, but I think she can spit further than I can, cause I am out of practice.  She can out hunt, out fish, out track and out shoot most men I know.  She can gut a deer quicker than you can bat an eye!

She gets up at 5 AM and feeds the animals, works the land, cans the bounty and has never tackled a job she did not finish.  Her husband loves her, grand kids worship her, her friends adore her, her siblings look to her for validation.  How did I raise such a strong, independent woman?  How did she go from the first tiny baby I suckled to this survivalist, frontier woman?  Beats hell out of me!  I think she was just born with a mind of her own. Course her father might have had something to do with the hunting and that stuff. 

I know Hammer has another name, but I told you I would keep a few secrets.   So, daughter Debbie, know you have made your mother proud.  You were my first born and I think you were a learning process for me.  Hope the next one I had turns out as well.

Longton, Kansas, center of someone's universe.



 This is a tree growing out of a roof on a building at the end of Main Street!



This is looking down Main Street from some direction.

I be thinking this is the grocery store.

Now we are leaving town.  This barn is on Main Street!

This is the house on 5 lots with a garage my other daughter bought for $12,000.

  I have decided to let you meet my children.  This is about my daughter, Debbie.  She is the oldest.  Today I am going to introduce you to her fair city.  Tomorrow you will meet her and the grand kids.  Her grand kids, my great grand kids.

So this is Longton, Kansas, down in the Southeast corner of the state.  Just got off the phone with them and it rained there, while it was dumping snow all over me!  Today they had a little frost on the window. Now, a brief description of Longton and then a link so you can explore further if you like.

It was established in 1870, elevation 918 feet, and population dropped from 396 in 1980 to 389 in 1990.  Some body must have left town or a lot of them died.  The Cappers Weekly , if you remember that paper, was founded by the Capper Family and the Capper home still stands there to this day.

Longton is in a very lush, beautiful part of the state with gentle hillocks and oak trees in abundance.  Debbie is on 40 acres and has her own pond.  Unfortunately she also has Copperheads and other poison snakes which just scare the bejeepers out of me.  When you are headed for their house you better know where you are going because physical addresses mean nothing back in those hills.  And do not be surprised if you encounter an Armadillo running across the road.

I know people think Kansas is a flat, desert like place, but Longton is the exception to the rule.  It is very humid down there and I think if I were to leave Colorado it would be for somewhere like Longton.  Might buy that building with the tree growing out of the roof!  I would be close to my friend Ely May in Missouri and closer to Vi on over in West Plains.

So, see you tomorrow when you will meet my daughter Debbie and her husband, Hammer!  They are the biker survivalists in my family and if the world is going to end in 2012 I am headed for their house, snakes or no snakes.  So see you tomorrow!

Here is that link I promised you!
http://www.skyways.org/towns/Longton/index.html

Here is Sister Mary in her new jammies all ready for bed!

You should know that one of the favorite past times around here is going to bed.  Just love to do that, you know.  This is my sister Mary who lives in Wichita, Kansas most of the time.  This is January and it is very cold every where, so she has come to stay with me for a while.  The first night she was here it got down to -20 and the second night it was -13.  So I am sure she is not here for the heat!  She is here because she likes me and likes to come stay with me!  I think a lot of it is the cooking!

See, my mother used to come a couple times a year and stay.  She would con someone into hauling her out here and leaving her for a couple weeks.  When she stepped out of her conveyance, she would have a piece of paper clutched in her bony little fingers.  This was handed to me before the second foot hit the ground.  It was the "Things I want to eat" list that she had been working on.  She need not have bothered since it was always the same.

1.  Cream puffs with that filling you cook.

2.  Tomato soup made with home canned tomatoes and milk.

3.  Salmon patties with onions like I like.

4.  Potato Salad and don't put Miracle Whip in it or sweet relish.

But this is not mother, this is Sister Mary and her desires are different.  She will eat what ever I put in front of her.  Well, not the beets.  And she does not eat enough to keep a bird alive.  That may change.  She sets at the kitchen counter while I am in the kitchen and nibbles at Carmel Corn that her daughter, Tina made for her. We got a bag of Clementines she also likes.  And coffee!  Girl is coffee hound.  Someone gave me some coffee beans for Christmas and we had a bit of a problem there.  I use my coffee grinder to pulverize Habanero's for a dip I make (and sell to a choice few).  Now, I do not think she was real fond of that first pot of coffee!  Then there was the problem of getting it just the right degree of strongness.  Finally solved that problem by buying a can of Maxwell House Breakfast Blend!

My mind does tend to wander.  I was going to tell you about the new pajama's Mary has.  She got them for Christmas and they are pink.  I know the picture does not show pink, but they are.  I think Mary's favorite color must be pink!  Yesterday when we went to church she wore a pink sweat shirt with Gingerbread men on it that says, "My grandkids are Sugar and Spice."  Very pretty little lady she was!  She likes my church cause it is very old and the people are very nice.  Course they are very old also, but that is what God put us here for, I'm a thinking.

Well, I better get off of here cause she is going to be getting up in just a little while.  I went yesterday and bought her the bread she likes.  She likes the 7 or 9 grain bread, but we found some yesterday with 12 or 14 grains and it is very good.  So I will make her toast and she puts her own jelly on cause I use to much.  I do not actually eat jelly, but I think that people who eat it should put lots on the toast.

Ok, I am off to go play with Sister Mary.  I have a friend who thinks Sister Mary should be a nun!  I will sing her a song.  That always makes her smile.

Have a good one, because I intend to!

It snowed at my house last night and now it is very cold!

Well, this is what greeted me this morning!  I had gone to Lamar yesterday morning to pick up my little sister, Mary, who you shall meet tomorrow.  We hurried right along cause I knew we had a storm headed our way.  As luck would have it we pulled into the drive way just as the moisture started to fall!  If there are doubting Thomas's out there who think the Good Lord does not look after this woman, think about that one!  It continued to snow all evening and this morning everything was white.  We must have gotten 5-7 inches except for that 3 foot drift in front of the tin shed where the snow shovel was snowed in.

 Down the steps I went to go take care of the water fowl out back!  Very cold !

 This is the end of my sidewalk and here is my Lilac bush.  Way on out there is my garage, the biggest garage in town.  I think it is about 1300 square feet on the bottom floor.  Course I have it full of crap.

 Now here is what I want to show you!  See those footprints?  Those are very big feet there and they are not mine.  No one else has been outside cause the boy does not arise until noonish.  Mary is still in bed.  What do you think they are from?  I do not know.  I do know I shall keep my doors locked and keep my trusty side arm at the ready, if you get my drift.

So, this shall remain a mystery and the sun will come and melt the snow, someday, and the footprints will go away.  In the meantime, tonight is New Years Eve!  Tomorrow will be 2011!!  Good Lord the years are shooting by in a blur!  Seems like only yesterday it was 1965 and I was stoned!  Oh, not like that!  It was the height of my baby making days.  You knew that!  Now here I am no longer counting kids, or even grand kids, but great grand kids.  I look back on the years and I am sure I remember because I surely was there, but all I can think of is that old song....

Old pappy time is a pickin' my pocket, can't make him stop it, pickin' my pocket!

or something like that!

The Chemist is at work in her laboratory!

OK, I am going to let you people see what happens in my kitchen when I am not cooking.  See this stuff here?  This is chap stick, or Lip Balm as I prefer to call it.  Now this particular concoction is made with Hemp Seed Butter, Hemp Oil, Beeswax, almond oil and e acetate.  It is out on it's trial run under the name "Lip Bong".

I had a lot of people offering suggestions for names all the way from Hippie Stick, Seeds and Stems, Calm Balm, to Moss Gloss.  I just thought Lip Bong hit the funny bone.  So far this is a rousing success, but I have not yet listed it on eBay.  May find my little self looking for a new place to sell.

After those tiny tubes are filled I need to let them cool and then put a label on each one.  Next comes the job of slipping a tiny little shrink wrap around each one and get out the hot air gun and shrink to fit.  If I am taking these to a sale I slip a tag with a string on it through the shrink wrap before I shrink it.  That gives me a place to put my price.

Now you can use this lip gloss and still pass your drug test.  I would not recommend eating it, though.  Not because you will get high, but because all that grease will no doubt make you very sick.  This stuff is green and kind of has the taste of swamp water, so I am sure I need to make a few adjustments to my little formula.  As a by product, however, I have some facial scrub that is wonderful.  See this butter had seed shards in it.  I had to strain them out.  So I mixed that stuff with some of my body butter and smeared that on my face!  Girl, I have the softest face in town!

Stay tuned for what happens next if and when anything comes of this.