Good News!

Good news!  The county is finally getting the debris from the ice storm cleaned up on my road!  Woo Hoo!  It's only been two months, but to be fair, there was a lot of debris from that storm.  

It's going to feel kind of weird to be able to drive straight down the road, instead of weaving my way around fallen branches and stuff.  Well, it is a narrow road -- barely over one lane wide.  But we like it that way.

Except when it's blocked by storm debris...or the garbage truck. 

In other news, I'm sure you'll all be pleased to know that I made it into town and put the book I just finished back into the Little Free Library, and look what I found to replace it!

Funny thing is, I almost bought this one for my Kindle over the weekend, but backed out at the last minute.  Good thing, because now I don't need to.  This one ought to read up a lot quicker than the last one did, then I'll take it back for someone else to enjoy. 

By the way, Edna, I finally made it to The Nest Egg, but the yarn was already gone.  Oh well, it's my own fault.  I should have gone that very first day.  

Since I was in town, I briefly thought about running to Walmart and picking up a few more bags of garden soil, but I didn't.  I came home and watched the next two episodes of The Faithful: Women Of The Bible, and knit on a sock yarn hat instead. 

Here's a fun fact for you.  My mother wanted to spell my name Rebekah, like in the Bible, but talked herself out of it at the last minute.  She spelled it that way anyway, up until I started first grade, then figured she ought to spell it like it was on my birth certificate.  After I was grown, I had considered a few times going down and getting it legally changed to that spelling, but never got around to it.  I suppose I still could, but there just doesn't seem to be any point at this age. 

More bad news, that stray tom cat came into the yard and attacked the Incarnation of Evil again yesterday.  He mauled that same leg joint that she was still slightly limping on from the last time he got her.  This time, I was able to make it out into the yard in time to give him a good, hard kick, so maybe he'll think twice before coming back.  

There is no animal control out in the county, just in case you were wondering.  We have to take care of these things on our own.... 

And finally, I get the strangest earworms sometimes.  For instance, this was today's:

Don't ask.  Even I don't know. 

I've long since given up trying to find an explanation for such things. 

I Survived

I survived my first week back at work.  It wasn't easy, but I did it.  I was so tuckered these last couple of nights, I didn't even feel like blogging.  I hope you understand. 

So, what's been going on while I was busy not blogging?  Well, the big news is we got quite a bit of rain yesterday.  So much so, I got out and shaved some of the high spots down in my garden spot before the next round moved in.  

That next round started around 7:00 PM and it pretty much rained all night long.  According to my Raindrop app the two day total adds up to 2.25"  That's rain we desperately need, as pretty much the entire South is in drought conditions.  I know we like to grouse and complain about tropical systems, but those storms proved the majority of the moisture we get, especially in the second half of the year.  

We didn't have a single storm make landfall along the Gulf coast this year, so we're dry.  We're all dry.  Very dry...

I went back out this morning and checked the spot, and there are a few high spots I still need to level out a bit more, but for the most part, it looks pretty good.  Truth is, I could probably leave it the way it is and it would be fine, but I like working in the dirt.  I'm going to miss it when I'm done. 

Speaking of dry, I got my Strikeman dry fire training system out and played with it a bit.  It has a laser cartridge you put into your firearm and your shots register on the app.  I think I did pretty good, considering I haven't shot in ages.  

Unfortunately, because I wasn't logged in to my account, this session wasn't saved.  Now if only I could make myself practice regularly...and get new glasses so I can see clearly, I'll be a pretty good shot.   I'll have to figure out where I can set it up so I can shoot from further away, too.  

Back to the rain... we got a pretty heavy rain yesterday morning while I was at work, and when I was leaving, there was a truck backing out of its spot in front of me.  When he put his truck into drive and took off, water came pouring out of his truck bed.  It put me in mind of something that had happened years and years ago. 

Cody was in kindergarten or first grade, I don't exactly remember, but I had him in a local private school.  They claimed to be a Christian school, but they were more like a whitewashed sepulcher school in my mind.  But that's a different story for a different day. 

I had gotten off of work and was driving down to the school to pick him up, when there on the side of the road, I saw a unit.  An entire unit, like what we make, laying on the side of the road.  I cased coil, for my fellow plant people.  If I remember, it was a Lennox unit, too.  We don't even make those any more, but they were the high dollar brand name units. 

A few days later, the story came out.  There was a man who did the warranty claims.  When a customer sent a unit back because it wasn't working correctly or something else was wrong, this guy built a new unit and sent it back out to that customer.  

This guy -- I'll call him John Doe -- would get a copy of the bill of materials, and he'd come to tubing and say, "I need two of these header assemblies."  Then he'd go to fin press and say, "I need four slabs."  And four delta plates, and two top plates, and no one ever questioned him.  We just gave him what he asked for.  

But what we didn't know is that he was making one unit for the customer, then sneaking the other out the back door, taking them home, and selling them out of a shed in his back yard.  I'm guessing the unit I saw on the side of the road must have fallen out of his truck, and that's what started them looking into the situation. 

The police executed a search warrant and found a shed absolutely full of our coils, and John Doe said with wide eyed innocence, "I have no idea how those got there."  They must have also found drugs, because that's what he went to prison for.  For five years.  

Needless to say, he was also terminated from the plant. 

There was also another man, I'll call him Will Smith -- who used to wad up a small piece of fin stock and carry it out to his truck every day.  Just a little piece, about the size of a tennis ball.  When he got enough built up, he'd take it down to the local scrap metal place and sell it.  Until the day he got caught, that is.  

Ah, fun times at the factory...

Abrupt change of subject, look what I found!

I'd found the cauldron cake a few weeks ago, and found the butterbeer yesterday.  The cauldron cake is pretty good, but I wasn't too impressed with the butterbeer.  Maybe if they'd had the one with sugar in it, it would be better.  Eh, they were fun, but not something I'm going to buy over and over.  

By the time I got home from the store and piddled in the garden spot a bit, I was too tired to do anything, even blog, so I just sat there and watched ...um, college playoff football until it looked like Indiana had the game well in hand, then I went to bed.  I don't know about you, but watching college ball after New Year's Day just feels wrong somehow.  But then, I'm old school, and still think the old ways are better. 

Believe me, I have a whole post about how NIL and the transfer portal are ruining college football rolling around in my head, but I'll save that one for another day.  

Today, well, not much exciting happened.  I finally got around to stripping the sheets off of the guest bed, washing, and replacing them.  Then I did my bed.  And I cleaned up a little bit of the stuff that gets piled on my desk in the spare room. Then I Swiffered the bathroom floor and cleaned the laundry room under the cat pan.  The last thing I did was clean the wood stove and bring in some more wood for tomorrow's impending cold snap.  

This one is supposed to actually stick around for a while, so it's a good thing I bought all of that firewood.  Usually, cold in early January makes me want to put my Christmas stuff back out, but I thing this will have to do.  

I got ChatGPT to turn a photo of my tree into a painting.  I think it did a pretty good job.  I like it anyway. 

And finally, today is the 125th anniversary of the Spindletop gusher in Beaumont, Texas that ushered in the oil industry on a large scale.  As is my custom, last night before I went to bed, I changed my profile picture to a photo of it.  

This morning, I woke up to this:  

Seriously, Facebook?  You don't have anything better to do than to nag me to change my profile picture?  If you can put this into my feed, then you can put my friends' posts into my feed. 

This is why you're a dying platform.  

All Patti's Fault

This is a post I'd originally posted way back in 2009.  When my friend Jennifer -- mentioned later in this post -- posted a photo of her and Patti a few days ago, this post immediately sprang to mind.  I don't know if Jen had ever read it, so I felt it was time for a rerun.  So without further ado, It's All Patti's Fault. 

P.S. If you go and read the original post, you can see some of Patti's actual comments.  

All Patti's Fault

Here's another blast from the past:

This is my friend Patti on the left, and Susan on the right. They were college buddies of mine. Patti often comments on my blog. Sometimes she tells off on me. She loves to tell this one particular story, which I fondly refer to as The Sheet Music Incident. In the comments a couple of days ago, she again referred to this incident. Since some of you may have missed it, I will tell you the story here, too.

I went to college at Hardin Simmons University, in Abilene, TX. While attending there, I was a member of a church called Elmcrest Baptist Church. Being located in a college town, Elmcrest naturally had a rather large college and career group. Many of us also participated in their college and career choir. I was never musically inclined myself, but I did enjoy being in that choir.

One Sunday evening, the choir went to sing at a smaller church in one of the nearby towns. We sang our 4 or 5 little songs, then we were standing there, still in the choir loft. Someone may have been praying, I don't remember. I was standing at the end of a row, and Patti was just to my right. There was an empty chair beside me, so I decided to toss my sheet music down on it. As it turns out, I put a little too much oomph in my toss, and the sheet music slid off the other side of the chair, down some steps, and into the little foyer behind the choir loft. There was nothing I could do but to watch it go--flowing like water down the steps.

It finally settled, and came to rest on the floor in the foyer. I turned and looked at Patti, who had witnessed the whole thing, and said, "oops." She got the giggles. Then I got the giggles, and we giggled over that through the whole rest of the service.

In the comments to my post a couple of days ago, she again mentioned that incident, and I was thinking about it last night after I had gone to bed. And I got the giggles. And then I remembered something else we had done.

Patti and I had a friend named Jennifer. Jennifer had a car named Faith, because she said that's what it ran on--faith. One Christmas, Patti and I decided we were going to decorate Faith. Patti went out and bought some red and green yarn, and we tied little yarn bows all up and down Faith's radio antenna. Jennifer didn't like them on there, because she said they made the antenna bend backwards too much when she drove. She would push all the bows down to the bottom of the antenna. Patti and I would spread them back out, and Jennifer would push them all back down. One day the three of us were driving somewhere. Jen was driving, Patti was in the back seat, and I was in the passenger seat. Jen had again pushed all the little yarn bows down to the bottom of the antenna, where they sat there in a wad. We stopped at a stop light, and who should pull up beside us, but another college buddy named Cary. Our windows were down, and Cary said, "What is that on your antenna?"

"Decorations," I replied.

Cary said, "It looks like you hit a bird!"

And I'm remembering that last night as I lay in my bed, and I start giggling over that, too. And I giggle half the night. So, I'm sleepy today because I giggled half the night over college memories.

And it's all Patti's fault!

Blast From The Past

Shortly after I got home from work yesterday, I got a message from one of my cousins.   She'd been cleaning out some stuff, and found this blast from the past:  

Yep, it's a letter from me, written when I was 9 years old.  This cousin was my first pen-pal, so see, I've been at it for quite some time, now.  The problem these days is everyone is so busy that nobody wants to write handwritten letters any more.  A quick text and you're done.  I've got a couple of pen pals in Australia who still write pretty regularly, and a couple of American pen pals, but I could always use more...hint, hint...

By the way, I think it's hilarious that I apparently thought she'd forgotten where I live.  Oh, and I see I was a grammar nazi back then, too!  

Well, I decided to be a rebel this week and not mow.  I've got a long weekend coming up, thanks to judicious scheduling of my vacation days, so I'll get it then.  I may even go up to Lowe's and see what they have up there.  For my flower beds, I mean.  Not for mowing.  Though I really do need a new lawnmower.  I guess I didn't realize when I got mine how fast and thick my grass would grow.  The mower I got just isn't powerful enough, so I want to get a bigger one.  I wish I could afford a riding mower, but my yard is in such bad shape between the voles and the dogs and the chipmunks and all.  

I sure wish I knew how to get rid of them.  The voles and the chipmunks, I mean.  Not the dog.  

Alrighty, then...

Moving right along, my zinnias are starting to bloom. 

And it looks like I might get some blooms in my wildflower bed after all. 

I've got some really tall things that are starting to bud, but I'm not sure what they are.  Some sort of Cosmos, I think.  Once they've bloomed, I'll be better able to identify them. 

My moss rose are really looking well, 

as are the marigolds I transplanted.  There are actually four, but the others look just like these.

That white stuff is crushed egg shell, said to repel snails and slugs.  It must be working, because they're growing like gangbusters.  And here is one of my lantanas, just so they don't feel left out. 

Except I did leave out my petunia and my calibrachoa.  I'll get them next time. 

Abrupt change of subject...I'd recently noticed that my washcloths are starting to get a little bit ragged around the edges, so I got some cotton yarn out and whipped out a new one.  

There will be more to follow, I'm sure.  That's about all the knitting I've done lately.  You know I'm slap worn out when I don't even feel like knitting. 

And lastly, I'm still doing those piano videos on YouTube, and have begun referring to the man making them as "my piano teacher."  The really creepy part is, he'll say something, and I'll reply.  I play the videos on my TV, so he is almost life sized on them, which makes it almost like he's in the room.  Not that that makes it less creepy, but there it is. 

As I predicted, the early pages went rather quickly, but now we're getting into more complex stuff.  I've already learned all these songs -- this is my third time through the book, after all -- but I'm finding it hard to play along with him.   I can play them fine by myself, but when we play together, I mess up more.  I'll play with the video, then go back and practice some on my own, then try to play with the video again.  

It works...sort of.  

Who knows, I might end up being a pianist yet.  

Random Thoughts Of A Tuesday Evening

1.  Today was the day.  The Big Man Up Front (BMOF) finally got approval from the home office in Dallas to require masks at work.  Sigh....  

2.  I'm debating on whether to make one out of my Navy material, or just keep wearing the disposable masks they're handing out.  If I make one of the ones that you can put a filter inside it, I can still wear it when I'm cutting the grass, even after all this is over. 

 3.  I'll be glad when it is all over.  

4.  I'll tell you what, I've been watching what's been going on around the country, and I'm really thankful for my governor, Tate Reeves.  I haven't agreed with everything he's done, but he's done what he feels is best for our state.  His decisions are driven by the data, and he doesn't even roll out a one size fits all policy for the state.  He breaks it down by the counties which are affected the worst. 

5.  One of my friends posted this photo on his Facebook.  I asked him if I could download a copy.  Can you find me?

6.  My brother is two years older than I am.  When he was 5, my mother sent him off to kindergarten at Cove Baptist Church, because there wasn't a kindergarten in the public school system back then.  He'd come home and teach me everything he'd learned that day.  I enjoyed it so much, my mother sent me to kindergarten the next year, when I was only 4.  Because I was so young, I didn't graduate at the end of the year.  Those of us who were going to go through another year of kindergarten are the ones in front wearing the bows in stead of the caps.  

7.  I was at work today, and shortly before lunch, I suddenly got a chill.  There I was, feeling my face, trying to see if I was running a fever, when I saw my coworker next to me turn her fan off and put her jacket on.  "Are you cold?" I asked her, relieved that it wasn't just me.

8.  What with all this going on, I've gotten somewhat paranoid.   Every time I'm feeling blah, I have to wonder...have I got the zoodies, or is it the 'rona?  Or is someone just mowing somewhere?  

9.  Hypothetically speaking, if I were an entity, say a government or a billionaire, and I wanted to "reduce overpopulation," I wouldn't be doing it by mandating vaccines or funding vaccination programs in poverty stricken areas.  Smallpox, polio, measles, diptheria -- they killed way more people than vaccines ever have.  What I'd do, hypothetically speaking, would be to BAN vaccines, not mandate them.  Set them diseases free and let them work their evil.  That's what I'd do.

10.  Just to be clear, I do not think the world is overpopulated and the global population needs to be reduced.  I'm just trying to illustrated how ridiculous these antivaxxers are when they claim vaccines are mandated to kill people off.  Why go to all the expense of developing vaccines to deliberately kill people when smallpox did a much better job, and it was already here?  

 11.  I guess that's it for now.  

The Last Gifts

The last of my Christmas gifts arrived today.

For those of you new to the blog, or who have memories like mine, let me set the stage.  When Cody was here for Christmas, I'd mentioned my vacuum sealer had died.  He gave me money to get a new one, telling me it would be part of my Christmas.  Well, I'd ordered one, but received a notice from the seller that it had been backordered, and she didn't know when they would get some more.   I cancelled that order, and after some deliberation, ordered a different one.

It was a little more expensive than the first one I ordered, but it got good reviews.  I combined the money Cody had given me with the money my mother had sent and got it anyway.  It came with some pre-cut vacuum bags, and a roll of the stuff.  However, it is supposed to work with the rolls I already have.  Which are a different brand than my old sealer anyway, so it's all good. 


After ordering my new sealer, I had a little extra money, so I threw this into my cart as well.

My car has one of those long, sloping windshields, and to clean it -- me being short and all -- I practically have to climb onto the dashboard to reach the very bottom.  It is because of this that I seldom clean the inside of my windshield.  And it is because I don't clean it that I can't see coming home from work.  The sun hits it just right, and all I see is fogged up windshield.  Hopefully, this will help.  I've already run out and cleaned the aforementioned windshield.  I guess next I need to go drive around at quitting time to see. 

The handle comes apart so the cleaner will fit into the glove box, and while I was putting it into the box, I found a whole stack of receipts and old insurance cards.  I brought them inside, then said to myself, "Self, you ought to clean out your file cabinet.  It's been a while." 

Yes, it had.  I found receipts all the way back to 2013.  I tossed everything older than 2018 -- well, to be honest, I burned it all in my wood heater.  I had brief flashbacks to when I was in the Navy and had to burn classified papers and all.  We put it all into what we called burn bags, then once a week, hauled them all out to the incinerator and torched them.  While everything was burning, you were supposed to stir the ashes to make sure everything had been completely destroyed.  One day I was cleaning out the incinerator with another sailor, and she found some papers that hadn't burned.  Instead of just putting a match to them, she took them back inside and put them into a new burn bag.  I always wondered about that.

Oh, and we always got mad, because the NATO side would use the same incinerator, but they would never clean it out.  That led to us eventually getting a shredder.  But enough about that...

As I was saying, and you were probably bored reading, my file cabinet is all clean now.  Next step is to get all the stuff that has piled up on my computer desk and file or burn it.  Apparently, that's where all my 2019 receipts are, because I didn't find a single one in the file folders.  I need to clean everything off that computer desk anyway, and see if I can sell it.  I haven't used the desktop in years, and I'm not even sure it still works.  If I get that big old thing out of the computer/craft/snake room, I can put a writing desk in there.  But first, I'd have to clean all the junk out of it.  The room, not the desk.  Well, the desk, too, but mostly the room.

It really has become my junk room.  I've tried to clean it out before, but I usually get overwhelmed, and just shove everything right back where it was.  Maybe I just need to finish off my attic and store it all up there.  Or just throw it all away.  But I hate throwing perfectly good stuff in the garbage.  There is a thrift store here in town, but they're never open.  I have never once gone up there and they've been open -- not even during their operating hours. 

Well, I've still got a week before I have to go back to work.  At least I can start cleaning...

I'll let you know how it goes. 

Treasures

I have this app on my phone called TimeHop. What it does is to go back through your old social media posts and posts them in the app. Kind of like Facebook's memories feature, only Timehop sometimes shows me things Facebook doesn't.  Like old blog posts and such.

Anyway, I was looking through my TimeHop, when it showed a photo I'd uploaded of a piece from an old Christmas village I'd started collecting years and years ago -- like before Cody was born ago.  I'd only gotten two pieces before the company discontinued them.  I've found other pieces available on eBay, but I haven't gotten any.  So far.

The only one I'd actually finished was a barn.  I'd put it out one year, and had since forgotten about it.  I thought, I need to go find that old thing and put it out this year, too.  So, off I went on a treasure hunt.  And treasures I did find.  Like these:

Little salt dough ornaments I'd made the year Cody was born.  I'd planned on doing a set every year, but quickly realized that wasn't feasible.  His feet got too big too quickly.  I did his hand the next year, when he was 1, but haven't done any since.  

I did the hand out of some stuff put out by PlayDoh.  I can't remember what it's called, though.  It's very light, but strong.  I wish I'd known about that the previous year, because the salt dough is very delicate.  The ornament hooks have already pulled out, and cracked the dough where they were.  I wrapped them all very carefully, and put them back into the box, putting it back into the closet where I'd found it.

That closet -- the one in the snake/craft/computer room-- didn't have the little barn in it anywhere, so on to the closet in the bedroom I went, where I found this:

It's the tree topper I thought had been ruined in a hurricane!  Obviously, it hasn't, so now I'm wondering where that other nativity came from.  It must have been just a glass ornament or something.  I really don't remember.

Also in that box was this little bell ornament, which I bought in Italy.

I keep it wrapped up and packed away, because it's already got some cracks in it.  I don't want to risk breaking it completely.

I mentioned on Facebook a few days ago that I still have my favorite childhood stick.  Y'all thought I was kidding.  I wasn't.

That stick has been a rifle, a bow, a sword, an quarterstaff, a fishing pole...you name it, it's been it.  It is once again safely back in the closet.

At long last, tucked way back in a corner, I found the little barn I'd been looking for.

It is now proudly on display in my entertainment center.  If Cody ever finishes building my mantle, it's going to go up there.   He keeps insisting he's going to.  Build my mantle, that is.  It was supposed to be part of my Christmas -----last year.  Sigh...

After all that was done, I decided to start making my Christmas candy.  Only to discover I was out of one essential ingredient.  Sigh, again...Back into town I went.

First I stopped at the Dollar General store, the one on the corner of 51 and Papermill Road, for you local folks, but they didn't have it.  On to Walmart.  Yes, Walmart, two days before Christmas.  I must be crazy.  Into the lion's den...aaaand they didn't have it either.  Dang it.

The third store, a locally owned mom and pop shop called Grocery Basket saved Christmas!

They had the Knox unflavored gelatin I needed for my lemon Turkish Delight.   Which has now been made, and is setting up on the counter, right beside the chocolate fudge.  All I've got left is the peanut butter fudge and the candy will be done.  Then it'll be time to make the cookies.

I guess the big news is, while I was in Walmart, I broke down and bought a new computer.

When it got to the point I didn't feel like I could blog for fear of killing my computer, I knew it was time.  I went back and forth forever debating on whether to get it or not, but I finally did.  I put it on my credit card -- you know, the one it doesn't seem I'll ever get paid off.This one is so nice!  It's got tons of memory, and is much smaller and slimmer than my old one.  I briefly considered getting a chromebook, since most of what I do is play on Facebook and blog, but I opted for one with a bigger hard drive.

It cracks me up, back ages ago, when my mother in law gave me my first ever computer, she said it had "oodles of memory".  It had 7 G.  This one has a terabyte.  It wasn't that expensive, either -- mid $500s.  It'll be a minute before I get it the way I want it, but the good news is, it is once again safe to blog.

Speaking of, as soon as I'm done here, I'm going to finish the post I started yesterday, and didn't publish.  Be sure to be on the watch for it.  

What Was I Thinking?

When I was a kid, I always wanted to live somewhere where it was cold and snowy.  Now that I'm a little older, and hopefully wiser, days like today come along,

and I wonder "What was I thinking???"  When I got off work, my car thermometer said 38.  This is January weather, not November weather.  What happened to all that global warming we were supposed to be getting?  I was wishing I had another day off to stay home up under the covers. 

Last night Cody called to wish me a happy birthday, and we ended up talking for nearly an hour.  He said, "That's what happens when you don't keep in touch often enough."  I asked him how his job was going, and he said it's going well.  He said he's considering switching to commission only.  Right now he gets a base salary, plus commission.  It's a bit lower commission than he would get if he were commission only, but having a base salary is a bit of a safety net.  I'm a bit worried about him losing that safety net, but he's a grown man.  It's his decision.  Plus, he can always switch back if things aren't going so well.  He said he wants to make enough money that he can pay my mortgage off for me, then move me to Texas, or up to Memphis with him.  I'd be torn about that.  I really want to move back home, but at the same time, I don't want to be so far away from him.  We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. 

We chatted about various other things, then I told him a story...

As many of you know, Cody is a big, big LSU fan.  For those of you who don't know, Cody is a big, big LSU fan.  He's the one who got me hooked on them as well.  I grew up a Texas fan, but Cody used to go watch LSU with James, who is a big, big LSU fan seeing as how half his family is from Louisiana. Then Cody'd come home and ask, "Mom, can we watch LSU?"  I said, "OK", and that's how I became a LSU fan -- which I am, except when they're playing Navy or Texas.

Naturally, being a big, big LSU fan, he was thrilled with the result of Saturday's game against Alabama.  We were talking about it, and I told him the aforementioned story, which I will now relate to you.

I grew up in Texas.  My uncle and his family all live in Alabama.  Every year, between Christmas and New Year's Day, they'd come to visit.  We loved it.  It was like having a second Christmas.  By and by,  we all grew up, went to college, and eventually went on our way.  My two oldest cousins both attended the University of Alabama.  The other two might have as well, but I don't really remember.  Some cousin I am, huh? 

This particular year, sometime in the early to mid 80s I reckon it was, Texas and Alabama were playing each other in some bowl game or other -- I can't recall which one right off hand, and I'm too lazy to go look it up.  You can if you want to.  It shouldn't be that hard to find.

Anyway, we were having our second Christmas dinner, in line buffet style.  My dad was standing there waiting to get his food, he turned to my cousin Diane and asked, "Are you going to come back next week and watch the Crimson Tide become the Pink Puddle?"

Cody absolutely LOVED that story.  I must remember to tell him more things about his grandfather, since doesn't remember him at all.

Finally, you know I've decided to add the fiddle to my list of instruments I'm trying to learn.  Cody had bought a violin several years ago after listening to some Vivaldi Four Seasons videos on YouTube.  It inspired him to want to learn to play.

Me, on the other hand, this is my inspiration:




What can I say?  I am who I am. 

Oh, and I haven't forgotten about your Christmas concert, either.  I've got five songs picked out that I'm learning for you. 

Creeping Crud

It would seem the crud that has been creeping along behind me has finally caught up.  I don't feel too bad, but I don't feel great, either.  My throat is very sore, and my voice is iffy at best.  Not a good thing when you work in a noisy factory.  I already have to shout to be heard.  I'm sure my coworkers did a lot of lip reading today.

I'd intended to post yesterday, but really just didn't feel up to it.  I got out Sunday night and watched the Super Duper Bad Wolf Blood Moon Total Lunar Eclipse, but that is not what caused me to get sick.  It's been coming on for a few days, now.

This post might be a bit long, but I want to get it all in, so just bear with me.

Now, about that eclipse, it was nice that it happened the night before a holiday, so I could stay up and watch it.  It was cold as heck, though.  I'd run out, look, then run back inside and warm up.  About halfway through, I suddenly remembered, "Hey, I have some insulated coveralls!"

I got them out of the closet, and put them on.  Those things are amazing!  Even though there was frost on the ground, I stayed toasty warm.  Except for my feet.  Which might have been warmer if I'd put on my shoes.  But I didn't.  I just slipped my rubber boots on, which have no insulation whatsoever.  Thus, frozen tootsies. 

Cold feet aside, I watched until maximum totality was achieved.  About halfway through, I suddenly remembered, "Hey, I have binoculars!"  I ran inside and got them, and whoa!  What a difference they made.  I almost felt like I could reach out and touch the moon.  And I saw Orion's nebula and a bunch of other stars. 

I didn't stay up until the eclipse was completely over, though.  Remember, I'm used to going to bed at 7:00, so staying up until after 11:00 was quite a stretch already.  I slept in until nearly 7:00 the next morning, and woke up with my throat on fire and barely able to speak.  Lots of chamomile tea with honey and lemon.  I'm not sure of its medicinal properties, but it sure was soothing.   Still, I didn't really feel like doing much, so I mostly watched TV. 

I signed up for Acorn TV, which shows BBC shows.   I already have BritBox, and you really need them both to get everything.  But they're not expensive.  The both of them together are less than $13 per month.  And what did I end up watching?  A documentary on King Arthur's Britain. 

I told you I was a history nerd. 

I did get another letter written and ready to mail.

To whom will this one go?  Who knows?  But, if I have your mailing address, it could be you!  Speaking of, today I received a lovely letter from my friend Cyndye.  I'd almost forgotten how fun this is-- sending and receiving snail mail.  By the way, Cyndye is having some medical issues, which I won't go in to here, but if you've a mind, lift her up in prayer.  I know she'd appreciate it.

Now, on to today's news.

Back when I was a child, my dad had gotten all these records -- vinyl for you millennials-- from The National Geographic Society.  I loved listening to those, and had even made myself a mix tape from them.  With my recent foray into sea chanties on YouTube, I began thinking about those albums.  I asked my brother if he still had them, and alas they'd all gotten ruined in Hurricane Ike.

I lost a lot of my childhood to that storm.

But anyway, after talking to Scott, I began searching for them online.  I couldn't find any uploads of them, except for one on YouTube.  Undaunted, I checked Ebay.  Lo and behold, nearly all of them are available there.

I quickly ordered my five favorites.  Four of them arrived today.

As you might guess, this one is train and railroad songs.

This one is songs of the American Revolution.

This one is songs of the westward expansion, and has my all time favorite version of Wayfaring Stranger, that I've never found anywhere else.

This one, oh this one, was our Traditional Christmas Tree Decorating Album, and Dad's Traditional Fruitcake Baking Album.

Seriously, when I was in the Navy, he wrote me a letter telling me how his fruitcakes didn't turn out right because he couldn't find his traditional fruitcake baking tape.  (He'd made cassette copies of all of them.) This was the traditional fruitcake baking tape album. 

I've got one more still on the way.  I'm going to try to eventually get the whole collection, but wanted to grab these, just in case they were no longer available later on.  I guess my next investment will be a record player.  I've been looking at some on Amazon that convert vinyl to MP3, so I can save them to my computer, and not wear out the records.

By the way, I was kind of concerned about records making it through our on again off again postal system, but they were very, very well packaged, and arrived unscathed. 

The final thing that arrived today came not from Ebay, but Amazon.

I think this book maybe single handedly responsible for my life long love affair with snow.  Well, that, and I so seldom see it.  Living here in the deep South, you know.  Even though they're predicting it for tomorrow.  But we'll probably just get freezing rain. 

As usual.

Traumatized

It was the first day of seventh grade.  I had my schedule, and headed out to school.

Now, let me say, when I was in sixth grade, they passed out the schedules on the first day of school.  You went to either the auditorium, the boy's gym, or the girl's gym, depending on which grade you were in.

Yes, my junior high had two gyms, because it used to be a high school.  It had been built back when boys and girls did not have co-ed P.E. classes -- thus, separate gyms.  Funny thing is, sometimes girls were allowed to go into the boy's gym for pep rallies, awards days, or other various school functions, but boys were never, ever allowed into the girl's gym, for any reason.

But I digress -- from my digression.  Junior high consisted of 6th, 7th, and 8th grades when I went.  It used to be 7th, 8th, and 9th grades, and 6th grade was in the elementary school.  My old elementary school was shaped somewhat like an H, with 1st through 3rd grades in one wing, and 4th through 6th in the other.  The crossbar of the H was where the offices, cafeteria, gym and music room were.

When my school district added kindergarten to the public school system -- which coincidentally, was the year my sister started, my older brother and I having gone to a kindergarten in Cove Baptist Church -- they moved third grade to the "big kids" wing to make room for them.  Sixth grade was moved up to the junior high, and 9th to the high school.

The summer between my sixth and seventh grade years, two school districts merged.  Ninth and tenth grades were on what we called East Campus, while eleventh and twelfth grades were on West Campus.

Now that you know more than you ever wanted to about my childhood schooling, let me get back to my story.  When I was in 6th grade, they handed out the schedules on the first day of school.  Within the next year or two -- I don't rightly remember when -- they'd started mailing them to your home before school started.  However, I got said schedule, I had it, and it was the first day of 7th grade...I think it was about 4th period.  I went into the classroom and noticed I was the first one there.  No biggie.  I chose a desk, sat down, and waited for my classmates and teacher to arrive.

Time passed...  I was thinking everyone else must be running late  Really late.  Then the bell rang.  No one else came into the room.  Still I sat, thinking surely people would come soon, even though the period had already started.

Finally, I went to the classroom across the hall and told the teacher there that nobody else had come to my class.  She sent me to the office, where they told me they'd changed that teacher's schedule and had also had to change all the student schedules, too.  Somehow, mine had gotten overlooked.  They made me up a new schedule, and sent me off to my new class.  The rest of seventh grade continued without a hitch -- well, without a scheduling hitch that is.

Be that as it may, that event left me so traumatized, I still have nightmares about it 41 years later.  That event left me so traumatized, even now, when I schedule a vacation day at work, I keep the request form, get a print out of my vacation schedule from the work computer, mark each day on my calendar, then double check, triple check, and octuple check each day before it arrives. 

And I still spend half the day worrying that I got it wrong.

What can I say?  It's the INTJ in me.

In the midst of all that worrying, I actually had quite a productive day.  It started off pretty chilly, though not cold enough to start a fire, and certainly not cold enough to turn on the heater.  But it was chilly enough to make the coffee taste just a wee bit better.

One of the things I've been working on since I moved into this house is cleaning up all the junk the previous owners had tossed over the back fence.  I only had this little bit left,

so I made that my main project for today.  Once I finally got out there and got started, it didn't take long to get it cleaned up.

When I moved in, there was junk piled from the gate all the way to that half rotten tree stump. It looks so much better now.

And it'll be a whole lot easier to mow.

Out of that pile of junk, I pulled all these tires,

plus all this scrap metal,

plus a bunch of other stuff that was just garbage -- and quickly made its way into the garbage can.   I advertised the tires and scrap metal in the local free-bees group.  The same guy who didn't come pick it up 6 months ago said he was going to come pick it up.  Yeah, I'm not going to hold my breath on that. 

Want to hear a funny story?  I was picking up one of those tires and I heard James' voice in my head.

"Lift that from the side away from you, just in case there's a snake under there."  I pick the tire up, lifting the side away from me, and what do you think I found?

Yep, this bad boy.

And a toad, but that's not nearly as exciting.  Big old, beautiful rat snake -- and despite my descriptor above, it's probably a female, judging by the size of her.  I apologized for destroying her hiding place, and let her go on her merry way.  She quickly found a new nest in the rotten stump nearby, where I left her in peace.

 The only other thing I did was to wash my bricks off really well.  I kind of actually like this distressed look, but alas, it'll be primed and painted anyway.

I hope to get that done tomorrow or Saturday. 

Then it will be on to the next project -- my shutters, which hopefully won't take nearly as long.

Lazy Day

Apparently, yesterday was National Lazy Day.  Who knew?

I decided to observe the day by being lazy.  After paying bills, grocery shopping, doing the laundry, washing the dishes, filling the bird feeders, and mowing the yard, that's exactly what I did.  Of course, by then it was bed time, so it didn't mean as much, but hey, I celebrated Lazy Day!

 I have at least three deer coming to feed, so while I was at the store, I bought them a salt lick.

I haven't seen them licking it yet, but that doesn't mean they haven't.  I finally managed to get a half- way decent picture of the twins.

It's the best I can do with my old point and shoot.

This afternoon, I was in my chair knitting, when Cody walked by and said, "You have a deer out there."

I threw my knitting into the air.  It landed, I know not where.  I dove my body out of my chair ...and that's where my rhyming abilities stop.  Reverting to prose...

I flew to the window and pressed my nose against the glass.  Sure enough, the big doe was out there eating.  Soon, a smaller deer came out of the woods.  Cody said he thought he saw some buttons on that one.  I said, "I'm blind as a bat.  I can't see anything.  Hey! I'm going to go order some binoculars!"

Away to my computer I flew, and began looking at binoculars.  It was then that I remembered somewhere in this house, I have a pair of my dad's binoculars.  I even thought I knew where they were.

Back to my bedroom I flew, and began dragging boxes out of the closet.  Oh, I found so many treasures!  I won't bore you with all of them, but here are a few I did want to show you.

I'd completely forgotten I had this.  It's my ET A School class photo.

The sad thing is, I only remember about half of these people.  I'm going to get my boot camp photo framed and hang them both up.  I'm not sure where, but I'm going to hang them up.

This is a fishing lure my dad made for me when I was about 3 or 4 years old.

I can't believe I still have it after all these years.  I don't think I ever caught a fish on it, though. 

And this...oh, this is probably the most prized possession I have.  My dad's cap gun. 

Some of you may remember the story of how my dad shot the chicken hawk.  If you haven't, click on through and read it. 

It's one of the favorite stories of my dad's childhood. 

I showed these treasures to Cody, who kept coming into my room every time I exclaimed, "Oh, LOOK!" then packed them carefully back into the box-- at the bottom of which I had found the sought after pair of binoculars-- then went back to the window and watched the deer until they had finished eating and went back into the woods. 

I still haven't found my old film camera, but at least now I know where it's not.

Shine On

Shine on, Shine on Harvest Moon

It has been a family tradition for as long as I can remember that we would get out and watch the Harvest Moon rise.  It was one of the highlights of Fall.  Sometimes we'd watch the Hunter's Moon rise, but we never missed the Harvest Moon. 

When Cody was little, we would watch the moon rise, then come back inside and drink hot chocolate and eat Harvest Moon Cookies.  They were just giant sugar cookies, but they were still special. 

Even more so, it was the memories that were special.  They still are.

Tonight, I got out for and watched the Harvest Moon rise, for the first time in a long, long time.  I thought of my dad, and I thought of my son.  And for those few moments, they were both with me.

(Not my picture.  I shamelessly swiped it off the Farmer's Almanac page.)

Long Hours

You know you work a lot of hours when you get your paycheck for the week you were sick, and you still have more than 50 hours on it.  Suffice to say, I work a lot --and I mean a lot --of hours.  The good thing is, this year, I won't have those major outlays like I did last year.  You know, paying off my son's college tuition.  Cutting down a huge old tree.  That sort of thing.  That means I can spend my money buying things I want.

I guess I went a little crazy at the store this evening.

First thing I bought was the last shower curtain masquerading as a closet door.  This one for Cody's room.  I only went over to that department to look for a curtain rod.  While I was there, i figured might as well check out the shower curtains, too.  I found this one that goes perfectly with what I'm trying to do in that room.

Now, I just need to find him some curtains -- actual window curtains for his actual windows-- and that room will be pretty much done, except for hanging things on his wall.  I'm thinking of making a run up to Batesville to Lowe's after work tomorrow, or maybe Sunday afternoon.  They're having a pretty good sale on garden stuff, and I can look at the curtains they have while I'm at it.  Maybe.  If I can get moving, that is.

Back when I was a kid, my Mammaw always bought us Peeps at Easter.  I never really liked them that much, but I always ate them anyway.  Because Mammaw bought them.  I've carried that tradition on into my adulthood.  Each year, I buy one package of Peeps and eat it, for my Mammaw.  Since I was in the store already, I headed towards the Easter candy aisle, and thought, "Might as well buy the Peeps and get that over with."  When I got there, I found this

 package of Peeps with a plush Peep toy. 

I picked it up and thought to myself, "If I buy this, I'll never have to eat another Peep again."  So, I bought it.  Now, every time I see that Peep, I will think of my Mammaw and how she always bought Peeps for us. 

And my final purchase of the day.

Which may override my desire to go to Batesville this weekend. 

Eh, Lowe's will still be there next week.