The mixed messages in my email box.

I opened the email when I got home from church.  Most of it goes into my spam folder and it is amazing that AOL can guess what I do not want, like certain body parts to grow, others to tighten up,  and some things I do not want to do all night long.  But there are still things that get through that they could discard and I would never miss, but then I would have nothing to read.

So first is that there is a man in my area wanting to meet me!  He is marriage minded, as am I.  (This I did not know!  I thought I was content with the single life!)   Seems he is going to be devestated and doomed to a life of loneliness if I don't click "show me more" right away.  That one was preceeded by a list of assisted living centers where I could be most happy and everything is on one level for my convenience.  Since I live in a four level home, that would definitely be worth looking into further.

I was pleased to know that I have fallen heir to over  $35,000,000 due to the passing of a dear distant cousin in the Ukraine.  I was surprised by that one, because I really do not remember the fellow and never knew that our family even knew where the Ukraine is located.  I know I have no idea.  But, nonetheless, I will gather all my information; social security number, birthday, bank account numbers, mother's maiden name, and the color of my first car and send it to this lawyer.  After a week or so, when I am sure he has received it, I will contact an attorney about how to invest all that money to give me the best tax break.

And there are the usual daily recipes that pop up every morning.  Some of them actually look good and I am sure all that fat, butter, white flour, and cream will help me live a long time to enjoy my aforementioned inheritance.

I do sell on eBay and there are limitless questions from potential buyers.  "What size cover do I need for my bird cage?"  "Do you ship to Arkansas?"  "Is your junk jewelry for 99 cents pure gold?"  "I see you have free shipping, can that be combined?"  I want you to know that I dearly love my eBay customers and gladly answer thier questions.  I have developed several lasting friendships through this media.

So for now I am off to answer my emails and save some poor lonely guy a life of misery.  Oh, yeah and dream about my newly found fortune.  Have a good one.

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Lunch with friends, I think.

Well, here we are.  On the left is Frank and Shelly, his daughter.  On the right is Ron and Cliff.  I had crossed paths with Ron and Cliff a few weeks back and we decided, since we could not remember when we did it last, that a lunch date was in order.

See, many years ago, in a land that time forgot, Kenneth and I had worked with Frank, Cliff, and Shelly who have an excavation and demolition business called Colorado Dirt Contractors.  I think that was back in 1982.  Frank's mom and dad were wonderful people and for a while we all attended the same church; Temple Baptist on Thatcher Avenue.  I rented my home on Scranton from Frank, via his mother.  I loved that little house. But, I digress.

The date was set for our outing and we agreed to meet at Papa Jose's at noon on Friday.  Of course I arrived first, being the anal retentive that I am.  I was amazed to see that none of these people had aged.  Shelly tried to tell me she had, but I was not buying that.   I was taken aback to learn that her "baby" was 24 years old.  I do not know how that happened.  I knew Frank's dad had passed many years ago, but I was saddened to learn his mom was in a nursing home.  Last I knew she was still canning tomatoes in the back yard with all her daughter-in-laws.

As we all set there it was apparent that they all were on thier lunch hour from work, so I asked the question that was foremost in our minds.  "Hey guys, remember when we were all together and we talked about how we would retire when we were 55 or 60?  What happened with that?"  Blank looks, everyone.

Then Frank said, "Well, we don't work very much.  Just now and then.  Mostly we set around and try to remember people's names, or something we did and wait for lunch time.  Like, 'Remember Kenny Mercer?  What was his wife's name?'"  We all laughed at that. 

I told them the last time I had seen Gene, another acquaintence of bygone days,  he invited me to a barbeque and I told him to have his wife call me.  That was right after Kenny passed.  Still waiting for a call on that one. 

Then we tried to remember the last time we had gotten together and found that one eluded us.  I told them I had written a book and was going to have it published.  Some one asked what it was about, but I could not remember.  I asked about the wives and confessed that I probably would not recognize them if I saw them.

We discussed a former nemisis, recalled the junk equipment we had started out with and decided they had come full circle, once more tried to remember when we had last had lunch together and vowed to do this again very soon.  As we said goodbye in the parking lot and tried to find our respective vehicles, I could not help but laugh.  Here we are, a bunch of over the hill (Shelly excepted) friends who are still capable of being friends, and if they are like me, thinking of each other on a regular basis, but not bothering to do anything about it and then when we do, being very happy that it had happened. 

I have known these guys since I moved to Colorado.  Frank since 1979 and Cliff shortly thereafter.  That is well over 30 years.  Never had a disagreement with either of them.  Like their wives, care about their kids and in-laws.  Just never bother to keep in touch.  Is that the mark of an enduring friendship, or what?  I think so.

The last thing Cliff said was "Hey, Lou!  Let us know about that barbeque."  I stopped in my tracks, dumbfounded.  What was that all about?  And then I remembered about Gene and realized that maybe we were not as forgetful as we thought we were, or at least Cliff was not! 

So, guys, I look forward to our next meeting, when ever and where ever it may be!  My regards to the family!

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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.

May 1 a week early!

Well, Lisa, I want to give you this little tidbit of info early so you can think about it while you are making your little baskets with your daughter.  Many years ago in a land that time forgot, there was a practice that people had which was really cool.  May Day!  Today the term May Day!  means that something is happening and we need all hands on deck to save the whole damn mess.  World wide it marks Workers Day and led to the first passage of an 8 hour work day.  In ancient times it was a Druid Holiday called Beltane, celebrating the return of warmth to the earth.  Purifying fires were used to assure a clean start.  Romans had a similar holiday called Floralia to celebrate flowers.  They were combined to become our current (or past) May Day celebration.

Here is a quick link for you. 

http://www.lifescript.com/food/articles/article_archive/c/celebrate_spring_with_a_may_day_party.aspx?gclid=CIzwzLSBy68CFbMEQAodiw2PYg&trans=1&du=1&ef_id=sbZPiEpOU3UAAIVt%3a20120423125052%3as 

Ah, but back to Nickerson, Kansas and a great memory.  There was at that time a special rite called the May Pole.  Our teacher constructed a pole with 6 streamers attached to the top that hung way down.  Our job was to take a streamer and skip around the pole thus winding the streamers around the pole and producing a rainbow affect.  Those who were not skipping merrily were to toss flowers at the feet of the skippers.  When the big day arrived the skippers arrived in their finery.  One of the girls was a little bit heavy and much better endowed then the rest of us flat chested flower throwers.  It soon became apparent that dear teacher had not put a lot of thought into the finery the girls were wearing, which consisted of pastel dresses with scoop necks.  Perhaps it was the mother at fault here.

The music began to play.  The girls began to skip.  As the music picked up tempo so did the skippers and so did the chest of Weezer.  As she skipped and bounced it became a spectacle to behold and we stood transfixed in mortal terror that she was going to put out her own eyes.  Some one should have thought the skipping thing through, but I will say this;  It was a lesson well learned for the teacher and all of us who would some day  be blessed.  And it was a memory burned forever into our memories and to our credit and in my knowledge, I do not think anyone ever teased her.  Well, not after the first day or so.  And she finished school just as respected as the day she started.

Fast forward to Huchinson, Kansas and 217 West 5th Street where I lived with my nest full of children.  May Day was on the horizon and the kiddies wanted to make baskets and give them to the neighbors.  So the night before they carefully constructed several baskets and awaited the morning.  I had to work the early morning shift and when I arrived home I was told that the baskets had been a big success.  Well, it seemed so until I found out just where they got the flowers for the baskets.  Seems they took thier little baskets up the street and picked flowers along the way.  Then they came back and hung them on the door handles, knocked and ran away.  Not all the neighbors appreciated a herd of kids tramping around in thier flower beds and harvesting thier bounty.  I think Debbie was the ring leader on that one!

My first neighbor on the West was an old lady whose son was a policeman.  The kids would see her coming from the store and run to carry her bags and help her across the street.  Good little kids or maybe they were just anticipating the need of one day having a friend on the police force.    One day her house was egged.  She was devastated.  How could she hope to get that mess cleaned up?  Being a good neighbor I got a ladder and my kids and I instructed them in the fine art of cleaning up that mess, all the while wondering who in our neighborhood would do such a foul thing.  I found out many years later just who those mean kids were!  I think Debbie was the ring leader on that one also!

So there, Lisa, go tuck the wee one in and cherish this time because I am trying to recall a cross stitch I did years ago that went like this;

Cooking and cleaning can wait for the morrow,

For babies grow up, we learn to our sorrow.

So dust you just lay there, cobwebs go to sleep;

I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep.

Well, my eyes were open very wide!

You know I sell on eBay, right?  And you know I run a lot of junk through there, right?  Earlier in the week I had listed a Minolta 35 mm camera on the auction with a starting price of $4.99.  Well imagine my surprise when I popped over there to check on my auctions and found I had not listed a Minolta at $4.99, but rather a Leica digital 16 mega pixel and the starting price was $4,000.00.  

Now my little mind alternates between forgetfulness and  worrying about forgetfulness.  What in the world had I been thinking.  I quickly clicked on the item thinking perhaps some one else's items were inadvertently thrown in my store.  No.  There it was and the Seller was loumercer3, power seller, 1080 feedback, bronze star.  I went back to the list and discovered that a cheap bauble for $1.99 was now a set of something for a drum set.  Dead panic.  I immediately called eBay security and learned that this was an account takeover.  Needless to say, I was on the phone with them until I thought my ear would fall off my head.  But they immediately suspended action on my account, removed the items, refunded my listing fees, and then we went through my store item by item to be sure that all the listings in there were mine.  After that I then had the pleasure of changing passwords and security questions.  I did thank my lucky stars that no damage was done and that I caught it very early.  (And people wonder why I hang out on this computer!)

Now, this brings up the rest of the scenario.  Say I had not caught that.  First I would have paid a very high insertion fee for this $4,000.00 camera.  Then say it sold, I would have $4000.00 deposited in my account.  Of course, when I did not mail the camera to the fellow who just gifted me with $4000.00,  I would be out of compliance and in big doodoo with big Mama eBay.  No doubt they would jerk the money back, sue me for the fees and there would go my stellar career as an eBay top seller.  Which leads me up to my big question here;

No doubt this is what is called a hacker, but why?  What did he/she get out of this little intrusion into my life.  Apparently they have more time on their hands then I do.  I squeeze time out to do my listings.  Course the Minolta that they altered is gone now and that one will need to be completely rewritten.  May be able to work that in Monday.  The thing is I will be busy the rest of the morning changing passwords on everything that has a password.  Damn jerk!

I love my computer and I love the ease with which I can dance around the Internet, buy stuff, talk to people in other lands far away, look up information, and just all the good things, but don't I hope that someone invents a program that the next time someone tries to access my information, it just fries their computer.  Oh, that would be ideal!  Especially if there were a camera to record their face as it happened.  If someone is smart enough and determined enough to go to all the work of getting into my account they should be clever enough to do that.

Ok, done for the day.  I am off to alter pin numbers, passwords, and whatever else.  Have a good one and be safe out there!

OK, Shea kids, here it comes!

Way back in the deep recesses of my mind I recall working at the Ineeda Laundry in Hutchinson, Kansas.  Now I seem to be drawing a mental blank on this one, so it was probably in the days before I had sense enough to actually remember stuff.  I strongly suspect I may have been doing a little extra drinking back in those days.  So I am assuming it was before I began the wild child bearing cycle.  But maybe not. 
I do recall one afternoon Sister Mary called and told me to come to her house on 25th (?) Street as Tommy, your dad, had called from work and said there was a tornado heading right for her house and she needed to grab the baby and head for the basement.  Now back in those days, I was good!  I could beat a tornado to some one's house and save them. So I clocked out and made a bee line to Mary's.
Upon arrival we began to carry stuff to the basement.  Snacks, milk, pop, water, blankets, coffee pot, coffee, bread, tooth brush and tooth paste, the bassinet,  a change of clothes, pillows....and at last we were ready.  We secured the door and awaited the wrath of the storm.  I do not remember which one of us realized first that we had locked Dorothy Rene on the other side of the door.  We immediately undid the door and saved the baby.  Then we laughed so hard and made a deal that we must never tell another soul what we had done.  Oops!  That slipped out.
Then there was the time she called frantically alternately between laughter and horror.  Seems there were a couple cats on the roof doing what a couple cats are known to do, and she was mortified that the neighbors would see.  She insisted that I must come immediately and get them down.  Well, kiddies, needless to say, I did not answer that call to do the big sister duty that time.  Even in a drunken stupor, I am smarter than that!
Once she invited my husband de jour and I to supper.  She was making Chicken and Noodles.  At that time they owned a big black hairy dog.  I watched the dog eating his kibble and then helped set the table.  When she appeared with the Chicken and Noodles in a big pink plastic bowl, I  remarked, "Oh, do you have two of these bowls?"  She replied that she did not.  More fits of laughter because I had just seen Poochie eating out of this one!  Your dad was horrified, but we got a big kick out of it and my boy toy never knew what was going on there.
I remember way, way back when Mary was maybe 9 or 10,  Mother would cut our hair and it was a rite of Spring, so to speak.  But Sister Mary did not want hers cut, so she was the only one of us kids who did not suffer the dreaded "bowl hair cut".  That was in our house on Strong Street.  I also remember once mother was going to run the vacuum for some reason unknown to me since we had linoleum floors, but when she opened the bag there were a nest full of newborn mice in it.  She handed them over to us to take out to the front sidewalk (And why we called it that is beyond me since it was the only sidewalk on the whole block!) and smash them with a rock.  Even writing that sounds gruesome!  We, of course, spirited them off to a safe place where mother could not find them.  I think the cat took care of our little hatchet job.
Anyway, this is the first time in a few years that your mom has not come to spend a month or so with me and I sure miss that.  I am going to try to get down sometime this spring, but it just does not seem to be working out for me.  I miss Mary very much.  I miss all the sisters, but I guess life just hands us all these little twists and turns and then Dame Fate sets back and laughs at us.  I wish you kids could peer inside my head and see some of the sights in there.  Glad I still can!

It's 4 in the morning and once more the dawning.....

It seems like I do my very best thinking early in the morning.  The clarity with which I can see the world at 3:30 or 4:00 AM is almost blinding.  My house is a wreck.  I thought it was Bret and Amanda that were the messy ones, but I have since discovered that it is I!  There is no one here but me and these animals and yet the place looks like it was struck by a hurricane, and it very well could have been.  So yesterday I decided it is time to take control of the situation.  I decided that I spend way to much time on this computer, so I am going to limit the social aspect of the Internet.  I have lost contact with several of my "e buddies" so there is no reason to keep copies of our correspondence. 

So, first goes the guy from Vermont or where ever he was actually from.  Idle curiosity made me weigh that file.  One and one half pounds!  That is a lot of paper wasted.  I thought about reading it, but opted to just toss it in the recycle bag.  I do confess I may have leaked a little tear on that one, but life goes on.  I am sure the demise of that friendship was all his fault.  Then I picked up the one from Gino.  But he is still my friend.  We correspond on a very irregular basis, but I know he is there.  Niagara Falls.  I will probably drop him a line this week.  But Wayne, Steve, and the interminable list of "one week stand's" are lost to me.  I do keep my little Amy in a special file on the computer and I will not lose touch with her.  Alex is a 3 minute job a couple times a week.  So my butterfly days are over.  Unless somebody really interesting pops up on the horizon.

Now eBay.  That is a vital part of my livelihood, so that has to stay.  But I will henceforth hold myself to a schedule.  I will do all my listing in the evening from 4-6.  I will still answer questions through the day when they arise.  I will do the packing and mailing thing early in the afternoon so it can go in the mailbox by 4.  This will work very well except when eBay surprises me with free listings or penny listings.  So I have to add, unless eBay changes my pattern.

The blogs will be taken care of early in the morning.  Like now.  I will stop rambling and keep them short and concise!  I will keep a list beside the desk of things I want to write about.  And I will adhere to that list.  Unless something comes up that I really must address like a spider making a web over there in the window on the outside and I am afraid it will come inside so I have to watch it. 

Oh, and then there is the yard to maintain, geese to take care of, garden to till and plant, seed catchers to make, newsletters to write, people to take care of, visitors to entertain, cookies to make, dogs to walk, lunch with Phyllis, and that nap thing in the afternoon.  I guess we will just see how commited I am to this getting a handle on things.  First I better make a list.  And get ready, Lisa, Dorothy, Tina, and Tommy, because I am going to tell secrets on your mother in the very near future.  I just been thinking about her and this will make you laugh!

Well, surprising as it may seem, I have once more gotten off track.  So I am going to get with the program and take 2 steps over to that desk and throw away the floppy disks I have been saving since 1994.  I will make you proud!