I am the old generation.

 Today I awoke with a cat on my bed and a dog beside the bed.  The dog is not mine, but the cat is.  As I lay there thinking what the day held in store, and it suddenly dawned on me, that I had no reason whatsoever to leave my little bed.  Oh, sure the dog and cat need fed and let out for a bathroom break, but other than that I could just lay there all day and no one would know, or care.

Once upon a time I had a mother, father, 4 brothers, 4 sisters, aunts, uncles and lots of cousins.  I had friends galore.  I had places to go and people to see, but sadly that has all changed.  My family is all gone except for one sister that I never talk to or see.  The one friend that I had for many years moved down south some where.  She had a daughter who was very disrespectful to me and my "brood", so we stopped communication.  The friends that I made here in Colorado have mostly died , or pissed me off for one reason or another.  I have no room in my life for deceit, disrespect, and judgementalists.  So I guess, as Mother would say, "I have made my own bed and now I can just sleep in it".  We all know how wise my Mother was!

I live in a 2400 square foot house, all by myself.  I have a cat.  The cat loves me.  I have 7 geese who do not!  They depend on me for food, water and a shed to keep them safe from the foxes and such.  Bret was 8 when I got the geese as babies.  He is 32 now.  Geese, under ideal conditions will live about 16 years.  This makes mine 24 years old.  Every morning when I go to let them out, I expect to find one with his feet in the air, but it has not happened yet.  Someone suggested that I give them to the zoo so they could use them as food for the lions.  That is not happening.

I have always said that when the geese die off, of natural causes, I will sell this place and move somewhere else.  My destination is not set in stone, just so it is some where else.  I entertained the idea of buying a small van and just going from place to place, but even that seems like a lot of work.  I could just call someone to handle an estate sale for me and walk out the door with one suitcase.  That actually is the most appealing scenario at this point.  I could visit each of my kids for a month at a time.  They would be glad to see me twice that way (once when I came and once when I left!)

But for today, I will let the geese out of their pen so they can play in the pond I built for them in the garden area.  I am toying with the idea of planting fruit trees in the garden area.  If I cut down the cottonwood tree, I can fit 2 peach , 2 apricot, and 2 cherry trees in that area.  Or I can just drink another cup of coffee and wait for Jeopardy! to come on this afternoon.  I love that show.  I turn it on at 3:00 and then I wake up about 4:00.

Peace!

I am a hero!!!

 Yesterday I became a hero!  The day started out as just another day, only I had a grandson with me.  He had spent the night so we had the whole day ahead of us.  We usually take a fairly long walk and that was how we started this day.  We walked up South Road toward 25th lane.  The ditch angles off across the country in a sort of south easterly direction.  Before we got to the ditch we passed the goat house.  It is really not a goat house, but a man lives there who has raised goats since I have lived out here lo onto 40+ years.

We noticed a small goat with his head through the fence munching on a weed.  We stopped to watch, but he just kept straining at the fence.  My grandson noticed that his head seemed to be stuck in the fence.  Crap!  What to do?  The gate to the yard where the owner had his house was locked.  I called out a couple times, but there was not any sign of life forthcoming.  All the rest of the herd was gathered to watch the small goat struggle.

I am not a animal person by nature.  Dogs and cats and an occasional bird does it for me, but it soon became apparent that I was the adult in this situation and if the little goat was going to be freed from the fence, it was going to be me doing the freeing.  I had a short conversation with God, wherein I asked if he could take care of this, but he did not answer.  Great!  I knelt on the ground and touched his horn.  Yep.  He was in there very solid.  He was not going any where anytime soon.  

Now when I find myself in a situation like this I always assume the one who got into the pickle was a male.  I being the alpha female needed to solve this some how.  With the grandson breathing down my neck I grasped the little guy with one hand on his nose, (in case a goat bites) and the other on the horn.  He was very calm as I raised his nose so I could manuver the tip of his horn through the fence.  That being accomplished the nose and other horn quickly slipped through the fence.  He looked at me with what I hoped was a look of gratitude, turned to his herd, kicked up his back feet and ran for the barn, followed by the rest of the herd.

It was at that point that my grandson declared I was a hero!  I had saved the goat!  I must say, I did have a very warm feeling at that moment.  It is kinda nice to have a kid think I am  a hero, even if it was sheer luck that it worked out so well!  The owner of the goat will never know what transpired while he slept, but my grandson and I know.  I just talked to my son and my grandson never mentioned it to him, but that is alright.

For just a little while I was a hero and my grandson looked at me as something more than a cookie machine.  The little goat has probably forgotten his predicament.  He will no doubt grow up to be dinner on someone's plate.  

It is called the circle of life!

Peace!

Do geese eat grasshoppers?

   There are grasshoppers in my yard bigger than my cat!  They try to jump on my leg for a free ride around the yard, but I do not let that happen. I do not like their sticky legs.  I do not like their little tight lips, nor their bugged out eyes.  They are tricky little varmints.  They can land on a light bulb and not fall off before  propelling themselves off in any direction, except to the direction I thought they were going to jump.

They are not afraid of humans.  Insect spray does not harm them.  They eat everything in sight except weeds.   They do not eat weeds. They travel in packs!  They go from a tiny thing the size of a gnat into a 3 inch long giant grasshopper in seven minutes! 

If it were not for the fact that they are the most destructive things on planet Earth, they would be fascinating creatures.  They can fly.  They can take off from a dead standstill and become airborne in a blur.  They can jump further than a kangaroo.  I think they fly.  They are both aerodynamic and waterproof.  I think they chew tobacco, although I do not know where they get it!

I do not know where they sleep, or if they sleep.  I know I go out early in the morning and there is no sign of them, and suddenly the air is full of them.  Insecticide does not phase them.  I did buy something once that the man told me makes them sterile.  Birth control for grasshoppers??  That did not work either. I think it actually increased the horde!

I have seen my mother goose try to catch and eat one, but she failed in that endeavor, so I am guessing the geese prefer grain.

So, I am praying for frost.  It will not kill them, but it slows them down.  Back in the days of the pioneers, they talked of "herds of locusts, that blocked out the sun!"  They don't fool me.  It was those damn grasshoppers!  

They can put a man on the moon, but they cannot find a spray to eliminate the grasshoppers.  So what can we do to get rid of them?

 My answer to this is , "who knows?"  Just pull up my big girl pants and move on!  Winter will come someday!

Sunshine and grasshoppers!

 We are in the middle of a heat wave....again.  This probably does not come as any big surprise to most of you.  While the heat is almost unbearable, I have another problem out here in the country.  That problem is grasshoppers.  They are every where!  Or at least they seem to be everywhere.  I could rephrase that and say, "they are everywhere I try to walk!"

Grasshoppers are fascinating little creatures, to say the very least.  They have barbs or something on there feet or legs that is very disturbing to my skin when they land on me.  Now, granted, they do not make contact with me very often, but once was enough.  The fact that they are ugly as sin does not help at all!  So when one does land on me there is a lot of jumping and screaming going on from my body.  

Now I have a lot of weeds out here on my little acre.  I try to keep them at a manageable height with my mower called a weed whacker.  It has 2 high wheels in the back and a nose out the front with a string trimmer.  This thing is very powerful and can sling a rock the size of a lemon through the garage window in a split second, but it does not harm grasshoppers!  Nothing harms grasshoppers!

Now, I speak as an expert on grasshoppers because I have tried everything!  I even got a bag of something that is supposed to make them sterile.  Now, it will not kill them and it takes a season to get them all sterilized, or so the instructions on the bag said.  So the spray that was supposed to kill them only made them bigger and meaner!  The sterilant appears to be more of an aphrodisiac then any means of birth control!

One would think that with a ratio of 40 grasshoppers per every square foot of weeds I have that at the very least I would get rid of the weeds, but that is not happening either.  I have no idea what these beasts actually eat.  They do not trim the grass.  They do not eat the weeds.  The trees still have their leaves and the geese eat the garbage.  

I have thought about moving in to town, but I can not find an apartment or house that will allow me to have 7 adult geese.  And on that subject, how long does a goose live?  My friend looked it up on google.  Now google knows everything!!  It told us, a goose lives 16-17 years under ideal conditions.  Ok.  I got these geese for Bret when he was 6 or 7 years old and he is 31 now.  You do the math!  Hell, even Google is jerking my chain!

So, as I try to type with the cat laying across the keyboard and the grasshoppers laying in wait right outside the door, I am trying to count my blessings.  Actually, they are many!  I have a computer that works, a refrigerator full of food, and friends who love me!

Peace!  

Talk about a flashback!!

The fourth of July is fast approaching and holiday traffic is expected to set a new record, again.  Some little chickadee was telling me this during a segment on the morning news, so I know it is true.  Her segment  was on traffic and how it will set new records.  New records also means more accidents due to distracted driving.  She gave me a few pointers on how to make sure I am safe when riding as a passenger.  I am still in wonder at her nativity!

When I am riding as a passenger and I notice the driver fumbling with his/her phone I should simply take it from his/her hand and say, "Here, let me make that call for you."  Anything that is distracting the driver should be taken care of by me.  Alrighty then!  Now I know.

My mind flashed back to my younger years as a young bride and later as a young mother, married to a man whose sole purpose in live was to remain in a degree of "plastered' in one degree or another.  Had I shown the audacity to question either his sobriety or ability to operate a vehicle in any shape was sure to meet with resistance of one form or another.  He was the man of the house and it was his responsibility to get the vehicle and the passengers in that vehicle from point A to point B.  Far beit  my right to question his ability.  

Getting there was only half the battle as the reason for trips on the 4th of July was to blow up a weeks salary in a 15 minute frenzy.  That and drinking several cases of beer and then playing poker with his brothers and brother in law.  That was guaranteed to end in a fist fight.  It was my job to take care of the kids.  Since I did not drink, the 4th of July, like many other holidays was always something I looked forward to with a sense of dread, but so be it.

Looking back, in retrospect, those were the good old days.  At least the kids remembered them as such and later in life, after the divorce, the kids always went to Daddy's for the holiday.  He built a club house on 20 acres of land in Western Kansas and every holiday was cause for a party!  The kids grew up knowing Daddy always had a party going on and that was good.

So there you have it.  I hate the fireworks on the 4th, but it is what it is.  I am rather a prude about most things like that, but that is just me.  You all have a happy and safe 4th of July and keep the powder dry!

Peace!

As twilight falls....

 When I awake in the morning, I usually reflect on times gone by.  Often they are waaaaaaaaaaaaay bygone, but sometimes more recent.  This morning I was counting my blessing, one of which is that I still seem to have a healthy body and a good portion of my mind at my disposal!  But then I drifted to a place where a friend of mine named Nancy was stored.

Nancy was a lady, to say the very least.  She was very smart having a background in teaching both in primary school , but later in college.  She was married with 4 children, grown and gone.  The children were also very smart and successful in their chosen fields.  She was always very well groomed and never seemed to be flustered by anything life handed her.  She was a widow by the time I met her.

She and I were both retired and widowed.  She lived with two sons who were old enough to have families, but had never married nor reproduced.  My family was grown and gone on to build lives outside of the Pueblo area. So as two settled in our lives adults, we became friends.  

As such we went to lunch usually once a week.  Sometimes she prepared food and sometimes I did.  But mostly I would pick her up and we would go "out for lunch".  We took turns picking up the check or we went dutch.  Just depended on our mood.  We would then go for a walk somewhere interesting, like the Nature Center, or one of the nearby parks.  Just two adult women killing a little time and catching up on the weeks events.  But that all changed.

Sometimes there would be a lapse in the conversation that lasted longer than it should.  I would ask a question and she would smile at me.  Usually she was waiting on the porch when I arrived since I called her from a block away, but sometimes I would have to go to the door.  It became my responsibility to do all the driving at one point.

Then I began to notice, her hair which was a beautiful silver, was not always combed.  Our conversations became more me talking and her listening.  Then our weekly lunches became further apart.  She never called me, I always called her.  So we began to drift apart.  Then her daughter called to tell me that she had gone into a senior retirement home, temporarily.  Of course I went to see her.

She was the perfect lady, as usual.  She began to talk about how she remembered the kindness my son had shown her when he removed a tree from her yard.  My son lives in Dallas, so I was sure that was a hallucination.  The next visit she asked if I would like her to make us lunch.  She explained that she had lots of food in her refrigerator and opened the door to reveal one orange and a bottle of water.  I knew the facility had a dining hall so she was fed, but she sure was not equipped to prepare a meal from that meager refrigerator.  My heart broke that day.  

I never went back.  She had no idea who I was, so I did not want to further confuse her.  It just broke my heart that such a beautiful and brilliant woman could have this happen to her and she did not even know it was going on.  She passed a few weeks later.  I guess that is how this disease works.  You forget your friends, your family and then your body.  It is so sad, but then it is over.

I miss her.  I will always miss her, but I miss a lot of people at my age.  It looks like I am destined to live for a long time because I have the genes for it.  I do not think I have the dementia gene because only one member of my family ever had it, to my knowledge.  My hope is that I will get older, have a clear mind and then just drop dead watching the geese chasing grasshoppers in the back yard.

Momma always used to say  "God will never give you more than you can handle."  Momma is right.

Momma was always right!

Peace! 

What the hell?

I had a dream two nights ago that was so horrible I am just now able to write about it and analyze what it means in my simple life;  Here goes;;;;

I dreamed I was setting in a lawn chair beside a green meadow.  Beyond the meadow was a forest.  To my other side was a parking lot with no cars and beyond that a super highway with parked cars.

As I gazed into the clear blue sky, I saw a round object pass from right to left.  It was about 75 feet in the air.  It was silver with blue trim.  It had a door and one window.  A banner over the door read DONALD TRUMP.  It disappeared, but very soon reappeared again on my right and once more slowly passed out of my line of vision on my left.  This happened several times.  I do not know how it managed to disappear and then reappear unless it was orbiting the earth very fast.

After several times of passing from right to left, it stopped and hovered in front of me.  The banner disappeared revealing a door.  The door opened  and what appeared to be Donald Trump stepped out onto  the landing in front of the door.  He was dressed in a peach colored tuxedo made of satin.  His name was on a cream colored banner across his chest.  His shoes were white and he wore white gloves.  He waved at me and asked if I had a ladder.

I woke up.  Now, it is the job of anyone reading this to explain to me what in the hell that dream was all about and where it came from.  In my day to day life, politicians rarely even enter my mind.  I like to bake cookies and watch soap operas.  That is the extent of my existence;

So there you have it. Any thoughts?