Why yes, Virginia, there is a crocus in my yard.

And with that title I must now tell you this has nothing to do with a crocus. This has to do with my inhumanity to myself.  As you know, in the past 3 weeks I have thrown myself off the treadmill, face planted on the sidewalk at the kayak course, dropped my camera that I loved face down on the asphalt and now I have a concussion and a broken arm all because I changed the ink in the printer.  Of course you want to know how that one happened, don't you?

Icarus, the calico cat is the one to blame on this one.  Icarus attacks the printer every time I print something.  So I contrived to put the printer inside the cabinet. Of course the shelf had to be lowered to facilitate this.  That being done I could then put two boxes on either side of the tray the printed stuff comes out on.  The boxes are there to hold the baby gate off the tray.  This makes it so Icarus can only swat through  the tiny squares, but she will hit nothing.  This is all well and good until the printer needs a little maintenance like an ink cartridge installed.  Looked easy enough during the planning stage.

Now the printer sets clear to the back and it is dark back there. On first glance it appeared that if I just got on my knees I could be on the printer level and I could see better.  But of course those are the same knees that were present for the landing at the kayak course and they did not want to be knelt upon.  No problem.  Here is this lovely box of printer paper.  Let me just set down on it and Holy Shit!  Printer paper boxes are not very sturdy.  I shot backwards off of that sucker and whacked my head on the bottom of the office desk which is very hard!  And somewhere along that ride I sustained a laceration to my left forearm and my left elbow, but nothing compared to the knot that mysteriously appeared on my right arm.

As I lay there bruised, battered, and bleeding staring up at the bottom of the desk I wondered if there really is a God.  As the stars blinked on and off in my good eye, I also wondered just who that doctor was trying to fool when he told me that I have osteoporosis and what ever I do , don't fall.  Brittle bones my big fat patootie!  I am ten feet tall and bullet proof.  If anything was going to break I am pretty sure there should be a bone protruding through skin after any one of those "mishaps". 

I have,however decided that I must start being a little more careful.  So, I am going to give up exercise althogether!  Now that the treadmill is safely ensconced in the basement I think I will sell it and have some one drag it up the stairs and out the door.  I will need to give up walking cause sidewalks are very hard.  And it looks like even this computer is out the door.  Or maybe I will just put the printer back on top of the cabinet and get a spray bottle and squirt that damn cat.  Oh, crud, I will probably slip in the water on the floor and break my neck for sure.  No winning around here so I guess I will just go to bed. 

Have a good one!

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Sluts, birth control and poor Rush is losing sponsors.

Got to weigh in on this one!  Now, granted I read the headlines and then the first line of the next 3 paragraphs and that is my news for the day. Anything else is overkill.  My take on this is that Rush Limbaugh was doing what he does best and that is being an ass.  Not the first time and not going to be the last time.  I am sure you all know who Rush Limbaugh is and how he leads his moral majority into the fiery halls of congress.  The man is not known for doing anything quietly and there is only one side to any story and that is the Ultra conservative.  As you all know I am a bleeding heart Liberal so no way will Rush and I ever agree on anything and frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. 
From what little I read about this woman, I can not help but applaud her desire to use birth control.  Just seems like the responsible thing to do.  Red blooded women with feelings have been having sex from time immemorial.  I have even done that myself once or twice.  We all know that sex sometimes has repercussions that are mighty weighty if we don't practice safe sex.  There is that AIDS/HIV thing that would stop me in my tracks.
But say you dodge that bullet,  and whoops, I am pregnant.  What shall I do?  Abortion?  That is not an option for a lot of women for a lot of reasons.  Have a baby alone and take care of it while finishing school and building a career?  Is that fair to the kid or you?  Seems like preventing that pregnancy in the first place is the wisest as well as the most economically feasible choice.  Oh, yeah, forgoing sex all together is the perfect answer as I am sure Rush and his cronies always do but not all of us have that will power.  If you are a man having sex you are a very eligible batchelor.  If you are a woman doing the same thing, you are a slut. Hmmmmmmmmmmm!
Now lets weigh the taxpayer cost here.  Birth control.  Abortion.  Medical care for single mother and financial aid to raise a baby for 18 years.  Too much for my little mind to grasp.
Just my humble opinion.

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I just now seen it out there by the carport!

I just ran a package over to the post office on the highway and when I got home I looked over there and there is a pretty little yellow crocus.  Debbie called me this morning to tell me she just picked a Jonquil.  So you know what this means?  Spring is here whether or not it is actually here!  When the flowers bloom that means it is Spring, I do not care what no damn groundhog says!
The farmers are out plowing and I am fixing to pull the Cruiser out and dig out my rototiller.  Then I will go get some fresh gas and I been hearing from the tall guy that he will  "get out there and get that machine ready for tilling very soon."  Yeah, tall guy, by the time you get around to getting out here, I will have a crop in the ground.  Going to amend that old saying "Time and Tide wait for no man." to say "Lou waits for no man!"  Been waiting all winter and now I am waiting no more.
Neighbor man dumped a big load of manure out there and tomorrow the goose house is getting new straw and the old straw is going to line the pathways.  I can almost taste them tomatoes now!  Ah, and the eggplant, cucumbers, squash and Lord only knows what kind of seeds I may find in the drawer.  And I got the organic thing going on, so that is good.  If I hurry, I can get a little lettuce before it gets too hot!
So if you are calling me, just leave a message cause I can not hear the phone over the rototiller motor and the squawking geese and barking dogs!  And if I do hear it I will probably not answer.  Gotta make hay while it is sunny!!

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Roll of scotch tape; roll of linoleum.

I was thinking last night about how when I was small and we would move into a rented house what would transpire.  First the walls had to be repapered.  Before I could remember that part I understand sometimes the papering was with newspapers.  But we must have been rich because we had actual wall paper.  Usually it was some sort of flower stuff.  We did not always paper every room, but we did like the clean feeling new paper gave to the house.  After the rooms were papered came the most fun of all.

Off the parents went to the place, which was usually the furniture store, to buy our new floor.  Back in those days the furniture store was owned by Mr. Warn and his brother, Doc Warn, owned the appliance store and repair.  The furniture store also carried caskets, in case you died waiting for your new linoleum to arrive!  Did you ever hear of linoleum?  You measured your room and if it was 12' x 12' you told Mr. Warn and he would take you to the size you needed and show you a picture of it to make sure you liked it.  Sometimes there were several to choose.  The linoleum was rolled up and inside a big cardboard tube.  We usually carried it home since we did not have a car and the horses were supposed to be for work and this was fun!

When we got it home Dad would very carefully cut the tube.  Sometimes it would slide out the end and then we had the tube to play with which was way better than the linoleum to my way of thinking!  Any way, after it was out of the tube it had to lay there and rest and loosen up and we were not to touch it for any reason because if we did it would crack.  I think it was straight asbestos with a picture painted on one side.  As it relaxed it started to loosen and unfurl a bit.  At that point we were allowed to very gently unroll it.  If we met with any resistance we had to stop and wait some more.  This is the reason you only bought linoleum in the summer.  Cold weather slowed the process considerably.

After a couple days of tending to the roll it finally was completely unfurled.  It was rolled so when it was unrolled the design was on top.  Otherwise we would have had to flip it.  When it was all the way open we were allowed to walk very gently on it and finish flatening it.  Always in our bare feet.  Hell yes!  Well we never had shoes in the summer anyway!  So now the room was perfect.  And now the furniture could be brought back in from where ever it was.  Well, first, the wood stove had to be placed.  Moving into a new home always meant we got a new thing to put under the wood stove.  That was a big piece of asbestos covered with an enamaled piece of tin. 

You should make note here that asbestos is now illegal and is considered Hazardous Waste.  We did not know that when we were walking on it, setting hot pans on it, and generally using it for every thing imaginable.  Probably had a piece in each hand when we ran through the cooling mist of the machine spraying DDT to kill the mosquitoes on a hot summer night!

Ah, Home Sweet Home!!! 

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Wanna buy a perpetual calendar?

After the completion of a Bonnie Inouye Exploring Multi-shaft Design study,
six weavers from within the Handweavers Guild of Pueblo created a
delightful perpetual calendar for keeping a record of special birthdates,
anniversaries, etc., using their designs and woven samples.
Each month's design includes the threading, treadling and tie up along with
the actual woven sample. The front and back of the weave can be viewed in
it's own window.
Calendars measure 5 1/2" X 11" and have a spiral binding.
The price is $28.00 with delivery at Colorado Weavers Day Conference in
Golden on May 19. CWD committee has given their okay for distribution of
pre- ordered calendars at the end of the Conference. If you prefer having
your calendar mailed directly to you there will be a $5. charge for postage.
To preorder your calendar please contact:
*E-mail Orders*: Joanne Caldwell *caldwelltheweaver@gmail.com
*
*Phone orders*: Cathy Coatney 719.251.2959

Click here to view

6 degrees and one of us is rising!

I am setting here in my banana belt enjoying a lovely 6 degree morning.  Yesterday at 7:30 AM I took Elvira in to the beauty shop.  Noticed a few flakes.  Dropped the dog off and headed home in a blinding blizzard.  9:10 Doug called to say she was ready, but not to hurry cause it was supposed to stop at 9:00.  Hmmmmm.  By the time I drove back into town through the same blinding blizzard the snow was about 4 inches deep.  And when it finally got around to slowing down, this would be the view out my office window.  It was anywhere from 4-8 inches depending on where you stuck the ruler in the snow at. 

By 2 o'clock  the snow had stopped.  I had to run over to the highway and drop off some packages.  At that point the roads were snow covered and it was slushy. 2 hours later I walked up to get the mail and South Road was clear.  Patty came in about 6:00 and arrived on a sheet of ice. 

Now my point is this, where is that damn groundhog when I need him.  I had been setting here on Wednesday plotting the tilling of the garden and planting of the seeds.  Then the next day I am digging out the snow shovel again.  As I recall, back home, it was a simple matter of watching and when things started popping up, it was time to plant.  We used to start tomato seeds inside in flats in January and when planting time came we had big nice plants ready to stick in the ground. Such is not the case here in Colorado. 

Remember when they had a car advertisement that said "Zero to 60 in 9.9!"  That seems to be the motto here in Colorado only just reverse it.  Now I see that the 7 day out look is calling for this to happen again on Tuesday.  Want to come shovel for me?

When Amy was here nary a flake fell.  Wait, yes it did, but not much.  What happens in Colorado is almost comical.  See it drops down to exactly 32 degrees.  Then it starts to rain and it drops another 1/2 degree.  This causes snow flakes that are about 4 inches across.  Looks like a bunch of white feathers coming down.  These, of course, pile up very quickly.  So we have a very deep snow going on until it stops and the temperature shoots up to 32.5 degrees and it immediately starts to sink into itself since snow flakes are very delicate.  This is my scientific description, by the way.

Well, kiddies, I got up this morning with a headache, so I am going to cut this short, go deal with my eBay stuff, print a label and start my day.  We are off to an apron class this afternoon.  Not because I want to, but because Patty wants to and I do not think Garden City is conducive to new sewers.  So tomorrow I will try to post about our class, unless of course, I get side tracked which has been known to happen.

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Well, that was rather anti climatic if I do say so myself!

I some how wonder just what that was all about, the star business, I mean.  But I sure found out who my supporters are!  To refresh here, I needed only a few feedbacks to reach my thousand feedbacks and my star would change colors.  Several of you emailed me that you would leave me feedback on eBay if you could, but they do have thier rules.  First you have to buy something from me and then you can leave feedback.  And you can only leave one feedback a week.  So I lingered at the 998, then along came Cindy Darrow, my niece,  to the rescue.  She left lots of feedbacks for things she had bought previously.  That put me up to 999.  She then began buying Lip Bong and leaving feedback.  But they still did not count!  Only one per week counts. ;(
Then some time in the night pheadwood left feedback for an Avon necklace and my purple star quietly turned red.  That was it!  No glowing letter from eBay extolling my virtues as a seller.  No fan fare.  No nothing.  But I do have to tell you about this niece of mine.  She is the daughter of my late oldest sister.  She lives in Oklahoma, so I do not see much of her, but I may make the effort to remedy that this summer when I head south to see my son in Dallas.
I am not sure just what the girl does down there, but I do know she sent me 250 of the big Crown Royal Bags.  She also sends me lots of electronics that actually work along with new stuff that comes from Lord only knows where.  I think she may have connections and may be one of  "Lou's Little Angels" who are people who work quietly behind the scenes for my little causes. 
Some of this is routed through her brother, my nephew.  And why does she do this?  These things are earmarked for the AIDS clients that I work with here in Pueblo.  If we want money for something like candle wax to make candles for the homeless, the office in the Springs does not fund that!  If we want to have an outing away from the office and just let out hair down, like at the bowling alley, the office in the Springs does not fund that.  A long walk on the Nature Center trail followed by a hamburger some where; the office in the Springs does not fund that.  While I do my own funding for most of the social events as far as the food aspect goes, there are a lot of little things this money furnishes.  I call this the "Lou fundraiser". 
Of course this is not tax deductible for you or me either.  If I were walking the streets asking for money it would probably be illegal.  What I have done is just let it be known to  a few of my friends that here in the Pueblo office we like to do special things for our clients to kind of raise their spirits and make them feel a little more human.  This money goes through no channels except me.  My first donation came from my friends Kay and Frank.  Then Cindy took up the banner and ran with it.  Last week I put almost $300 in the "Lou Fundraiser"  and I have more stuff on eBay now, along with a box right over there that needs to be photographed and listed.  More then one way to skin a cat in this old world.
As long as I have friends like Cindy and Kay and Frank, I will do just fine operating on the skirt of  the organization.  And as for my feedback number and the sad little red star, life goes on.  I am now setting at 1002 and I do not know when the next change will be, but I do know that I have friends out there rooting me on and that is all that really matters! 
And do you know what sponsored links are?  Those are places that pay me money when you go there and buy stuff.  And where do you suppose that money goes?

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