Then and Now, or some damn happy dogs!

This is a picture of Daisy at the pound, before she came to live with us.

This is Elvira at the pound before she came to live with us

Now I ask you this, do these dogs look like the same dogs to you?  No way.  And what I can not understand is why more people do not do the dog pound thing?  I am pretty sure if we had not come along when we did that these two little guys would no longer be just setting there waiting. 

Do not let anyone tell you that dogs do not smile, because these two are showing some serious happiness here.  I love my doggies and they love me.  We have a ritual at night, a ritual in the morning and a ritual all through the day.

And this brings me to the next phase.  I have knowledge of a very nice dog that needs a home.  She is a bigger dog, probably some greyhound and a dash of lord only knows what.  I walk her several times a day as she waits for her master who will not be returning.  She would make a lovely pet for someone who has a bit of land and no cats.  If you are interested, please let me know.

Crochet lesson at Starbucks.

Ah, there is just nothing as nice at meeting good friends for a cup of coffee and a muffin at Starbucks.  Unless, of course it is meeting friends who want to learn to crochet.  Crochet is a lost art and I am always happy to teach some one this craft.  Well, it did not actually start out that way.

See, my friend Kay, wanted to make an afghan.  Her daughter, Diane,  had suggested it as a past time since Kay knew how.  Well, seems it had been several years since Kay had done this and needed a refresher course.  I was most happy to oblige, being the kind soul I am with lots of time on my hands.  So we purchased the yarn, pattern and ONE hook.  Now in all fairness, I told her she might need another size and steered her to a set, which she declined.

To make a long story even longer, I wound up bringing the whole mess home to figure out the pattern.  I decided the yarn was not conducive to a beginner as it kept splitting.  So with a bigger hook, which Kay suggested, I got it to work, but found another pattern I liked so I started that one also.  Now keep track here.  I now have TWO afghans started.  So let's meet at Starbucks and see what we have.  Two of us had muffins and one of us cringed with a frightened aorta over those things.

When Kay arrived she had in tow her lovely daughter, Diana.  She was here for her dad's birthday.  Oh and it was her birthday also.  Happy Birthday to you!  There you see the paper that held her muffin which she snarfed down while using two hands to crochet.  The girl is good!  Back to the subject.  She was fascinated and decided she would like to learn to crochet right there in the middle of Starbucks on 4th Street right by the drive thru.

 Our first and probably the most daunting task, was to learn how to tie a slip knot.  Unfortunately her dear mother was no help on this one since she had carefully saved the first slip knot she ever made just so she would never have to make another one.  After many attempts and much pulling of hair on my part, the slip knot was completed and there you see it above!  And a beautiful slip knot it was.  Some man did find it necessary to come to our table and tell us he could not help but over hear us and his wife had tried to teach him the art and he had not learned.  We actually had several men advise us and one did say that perhaps we were having way to much fun to learn anything!  He may have been right on that!

To wind this up, let me say, a good time was had by all.  Diana was sent in search of a ball of yarn and a hook to match with instructions to practice form, tension, and patience with the ripping out and starting over in order to have something recognizeable.  And I am sure she will accomplish that when she gets back to Oklahoma.  I, myself, had a wonderful time and will be most happy when little Diana pops up here again because she is such a delight!

And guess what I will be doing this afternoon?  I am giving a crochet lesson to a couple ladies at the SCAP office.  Oh, and we are going to have a quilt lesson also.  But for now, I bid adieu to my two friends at Starbucks who I am sure are at home practicing slip knots and single crochet and double crochet.  The art is not dead!!!  Long live needlecraft of every sort.

(And when I find the link I need, I will be putting the whole show on in a slide show, so watch for that to come on here or facebook!)

When you are over the hill, you pick up speed.

I know that sounds foolish, but it is still so true.  I can remember way back when I used to find ways to "kill time."  Now it rather seems that time is killing me!  I hit the floor every morning between 4 and 5 AM and the next time I look at the clock it is almost noon and I am late for the next appointment.  By the time nap time rolls around I am so far behind that I know that ain't happening.  Running into town two and three times a day to walk and care for a friends dog probably isn't helping much, but that is life.  If there were only some way that I could squeeze a few more hours into my day.  Right now eBay sales are in the toilet so that is a good thing.

I decided right in the middle of the whole thing to measure me a warp for the loom.  672 ends of linen.  Now linen is about the consistency of a spider web.  My warping board that Ryan made me decided to buckle up so I am left with the small one I had purchased online.  It is great and I can measure a 3 yard warp, but it is a real knuckle buster.  If I go really slow I can keep from racking my knuckles on the pegs, but slow was never anything I did well especially when working with tiny things.  All thumbs here.   Now granted, if I get this measured and then threaded through the reed and then through the heddles and keep an even tension, it will be a beautiful piece and a miracle.

And while all this is going on, the weeds in the garden are growing, dust in the house is settling and I have to eat and eating entails cooking which results in a messy kitchen that someone has to clean.  I thought it was Bret and Amanda making all the messes, but they moved out a year ago and the messes continue.  Any ideas?  I stopped by the new Goodwill yesterday and that is like going to the mall!  I found a small George Foreman grill so I can cook me one little hamburger patty.  Whoops!  Then I have that to clean.  I also found a tiny little Belgian Waffle baker.  That might be fun.  What ever a Belgian Waffle is!

Michael came and mowed the yard yesterday while I was in town.  First thing that happened was he forgot to close the gate and the geese got out.  Michael is many things, but goose herder he is not.  Since they were all there last night I am guessing he figured it out.   He does have a fear of the perimeter around the yard so I am going to have to teach him about that. 

And I am still working on getting my first novel published.  I am actually waiting to see if this one company buys it.  That would be ideal and I could let them do all the work.  But if not then I will do the self publishing thing which looks very confusing and expensive.  The more companies I look at in that area, the more confused I get.  I just want to start writing the sequel!

So, I am off to do stuff.  Guess the geese are high on the list.  Then the dog in town.  Ross is bringing a load of stuff to store in the garage so I will need to be home for that.  See what I mean about killing time?  Just spent 45 minutes here writing this and I still need to do the tags and the location and my sponsor list.  Life is a circle.

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Tide pods, or what the hell do I do now?

I just saw something horrifying on the news!  You know the pretty little canisters that hold the Tide Soap Pods that I just toss in the washer and forget?  Well, I had one near catastrophe with them so far.  I tossed it into the washer part, it hit the spindle in the middle of the tub and ricocheted between the tub and the liner.  To the best of my knowledge it is probably disintegrated, or a least I hope so.  But worse then that, they are now going to make the canisters child proof!  Remember what I told you yesterday about that?  I thought I was safe in the laundry.  What kid actually wants to eat soap?  Apparently there are a lot of them out there!

Oh, when mine were young they ate soap a time or two before they learned acceptable language and the words I use are two entirely different things!  Now they did snack on the ex-lax once.  That was Debbie and Dorothy Renee.  I do not think either of them eats chocolate to this day.  As I recall, if there was something we did not want them to ingest we put it up very high and if we caught them near anything we had told them "no" to, there was a little thing called  "swat your hiney" that we played.  This was our idea of positive reinforcement.  We also knew how inquisitive the little bugger were so we used a tactic called "watching the kids."  No doubt we were infringing on thier privacy, but trust me here; a trip to the emergency room infringes on a lot of my rights.  So we did it.

There were other cruelties we did to them.  I liked to put them in "time out."  Time out usually meant that they would fall asleep and I could get a break.  Course since I ended up a single mother and child support enforcement at that time was a big joke, the kids were usually under the care of a "babysitter."  This was a person who was paid to come into my home and do the "watch the kids thing" while I worked.  I had a very lovely lady name Mrs. McIver who came daily and the kids loved her.  She read to them and took them for walks and all the things I never had time to do.  There was another lady who came when Mrs. McIver could not.  Her name was Ida Mae.  She was a very quiet lady and did her job of "watching" them.  This coupled with the fact that she had about 14 whiskers on her chin that were 5-9 inches long made them fear her.  She always brought them candy, but they never accepted it.  Could have been the ex-lax factor there.

Getting to the point here.  As an old lady with stiff fingers I am living in terror of what they are going to devise to keep me out of my Tide Pod container.  If they just secure the lid I think I can get the butcher knife and cut the top off and throw it away.  But if they make the container itself  heavier, I have to be careful.  I have scars from trying to chop away the heavy plastic and since my skin is getting thinner the kids are starting to hide my knives.  I think this is why old people end up in the nursing homes!  We are confronted on a daily basis with challenges on these damn child proof things.  So we don't use soap in the laundry, we don't take our pills, and even the bottle of milk sets on the shelf because we can not grab that tiny ring (assuming we know it is there and we can see it).

It is just easier to go to the nursing home and let them do it for us.  Then we get in there and find out they got the laundry mixed up and I now wear underwear that need to be held up with a safety pin and a bra that perches on the tips of my nipples.

I am telling you, this old age shit is for the birds!

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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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Clara Bartholomew? Where are you?

I have been researching the family tree and I am now at my wit's end.  Dad's first wife was named Clara.  Apparently the had 5 children together.  Two of those did not survive to adult hood.  The three older boys were placed in an orphange.  Two of those were adopted.  I know what became of them.  The third one, who was the oldest walked away from a town in Northern Kansas or southern Nebraska and vanished into thin air.

But, Clara.  The last trace I have of her was the 1930 census.  At that time she was 26 years old and her oldest son was 8.  Poof!  If there is any of may family out there who knows anything, I would like to know what you know.  I am waiting for the 1940 census.  I know on it my mother will be married to my father and they will have 2 kids.  Josephine Walden (my half sister) and Delbert Leroy Bartholomew.  Delbert would later become known as "Jake".  I would be born in 1941 so would not show up yet.

This tells me that Clara was no  longer married to my father in 1936 since Jake was born in 1937.  I know when we were growing up and met the three older boys who were our half brothers that we asked questions and I am sure we were given answers, but I do not remember what they were. 

I know that Earl has three kids and Josephine used to stay in touch, but she is gone now.  Wish I had listened.  Richard wound up in Denver and he died many years back.  Gene was never adopted and I recall that he married and had a son.  He was declared legally dead an eon ago, but the son is still out there some where.  It just seems that the more I learn the more questions I have.

So, I am going to stick the family tree back on the shelf for a while and concentrate on getting back into a routine so I can keep this blog thing going.  But if you do happen to stumble on something that might help just contact me.

Watch dogs one; intruder zero!

The top picture shows Icarus the cat, Elvira the dog, and the black and white photo is Daisy.  Daisy is the oldest and the ring leader.  Icarus somehow has decided that she is a dog also, and last night proved her metal as a "watch dog."

We went out to close up the geese at our usual time.  For some reason the geese were on full alert.  When I opened the gate Daisy and Elvira tore off to the front gate.  As  they were raising Holy Cain, I hurried to see what was treed over there.  I was halfway to to front gate when three animals shot past me and I turned in time to see Icarus launch herself on something that had just flew by me. 

Lordy! Lordy!  All three of them had a big cat cornered in a corner by the tin shed and the garden fence.  I could see flashes of staggering vet bills for eyes being ripped out, so I ran for the deck knowing full well, three of those animals would follow me.  Luckily that plan worked and I immediately shut the gate, thus giving the intruder the opportunity to escape, which it took full advantage of very quickly.

The excitement being over, we continued to the goose house and our chores for the evening.  The animals were unpertubed by our little intruder and I think they quickly forgot.  I, however, have not.  It was such a treat to see my three little defenders protecting thier kingdom.  Some how I know that those little guys, will keep me safe from harm here on my farm.  Somehow it gives me a feeling of security to know that those three would be all over danger before I could even get my weapon off safety.  They are fearless!

So all you little worry warts out there that think I am helpless can relax.  It would take a complete lunatic to think I am at anyone's mercy.  I would hate to think how far anyone would advance into the room with a calico cat implanted on the top of thier head and anchored with razor sharp claws for added stability.  And how far can one walk with a dog latched on each ankle?  Oh, and nothing slows down a raging intruder like a gaping hole from a 45 slug!

I am in very good hands here and today I am going to make a fresh batch of treats for my little soldiers, but right now they are having a nap.  Been a long night.

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