Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Totally random

When I'm showering, as I was this morning, I always tip my head to let water into my ears; a nurse-practitioner told me that would prevent ear-wax building up and having to be removed, something I've had trouble with a couple of times.  
This got me thinking about earaches, which I've never had.  People who have had them, though, tell me the pain level is on a par with a toothache; I've had plenty of those.  I remember as a child waking in the night with that incredible pain and waking my mom up.  Her remedy was to have me hold an aspirin on the afflicted tooth.  Yuck.  But I was desperate, so I did it.  It helped, of course, because the bitter aspirin made its way to my stomach.  Perhaps the idea of holding it in my mouth made it work faster by dissolving it, but I read somewhere that it isn't a good thing to put aspirin against a tooth.  It erodes the enamel, I think.  
My son had earaches frequently when he was a baby, and throughout his childhood; there's nothing worse than seeing your baby in pain and being unable to do anything about it.  
I think the only time my daughter had the problem is when she got "swimmer's ear" in summer.  
When I was a kid and visited my Uncle Leo's farm in winter, you could bet at least one of his kids would have cotton sticking in one or both ears.  Seems like all four of those cousins had earaches at times.  I think the cotton was there to keep ear-drops in the ear, and cold air out.  
This brings to mind the way Cliff's mom, a hillbilly from way back, pronounced "ears" as "yairs".  And "sink" was "zinc".  
Cliff had an interesting childhood, but it would be a breach of privacy to tell many of the tales.  His family put the "fun" in dysfunctional.  
He does have happy memories of playing with cousins; I'll have to rehash those with him and perhaps share some of them.  
His Aunt Faye and her husband once worked at a peach orchard in a distant state... or was it an apple orchard?  Cliff still remembers the delicious fruit he ate when his family visited them.    
Which reminds me, we're out of ketchup.  I seldom use the stuff, so I don't always notice when we're getting low.  Cliff is absolutely addicted to ketchup.  I've had people suggest that if my cooking were any good, he wouldn't smother stuff in ketchup.  You can imagine how that makes me feel.  Anyhow, as over-salted and bad for him as ketchup is, he all but drinks the stuff.  I think he told me once that his parents got angry with him because they actually did catch him drinking it.  
So, being out of ketchup is an unhappy event for Cliff.  Not only that, but we're out of milk.  
"But Donna, don't you have a cow?"  
Yes, but because mastitis ruined one quarter and severely affected another, and because of the severe weather we're having, Bonnie isn't giving much milk at present; I figure her calf needs that.  


We're using the Dave Ramsey envelope system, remember.  And the grocery envelope has stayed totally empty since Thanksgiving.  The only way the system works is to stop buying when the allotted envelope is empty.   
Oh, it's easy enough to borrow from the dog's envelope, but she paid for the Christmas tree, for pete's sake; how much should a dog have to give up for her humans?  I happen to know Cliff's billfold is bulging with money (he called from work last night to tell me he'd left his wallet in a back pocket and asked me to fish it out of the dirty clothes, so yes, I counted his money), and trust me, he'd gladly foot the bill for his ketchup.  We haven't retired yet, so there's plenty of money outside the envelopes.  It's just the principle of the thing.  
Besides, any trip to the grocery store entails at least a nine-mile drive.  Our car gets twenty-six miles per gallon, so a round trip of eighteen miles would cost us a couple of bucks, which makes the milk and ketchup fairly expensive.   
I'll let you know how this all turns out.  
I'll betcha this is my most random post ever.  I'm not even sure it makes sense.

8 comments:

  1. It may be random but it was a heckuva lot of fun, too.

    Thanks, Donna.

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  2. Vicki9:52 AM

    Random works for me. Is Bonnie pregnant? Vicki

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  3. Dang. I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one whose mind works like that. It's like you were temporarily transported into my head!

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  4. Does Cliff ever substitute ketchup for tomatoes on a bacon and tomato sandwich? That's a trick I learned as a child. Sometimes I put ketchup on hot buttered toast instead of jam.

    Does mastitis ever go away or does it permanently damage the udder?

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  5. John puts ketchup on everything before even tasting it. I don't understand that, I like to taste my food. Sometime I think his taste buds may be distorted from smoking so many years. Did Ciff smoke at one time?

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  6. Paula, Cliff smoked some, but he had this thing about ketchup when he was a small kid, because I heard his mother talk about it. He just really loves ketchup, that's all.

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  7. "And "sink" was "zinc"." might not be so far from reality, after all. It turns out the first metal sinks to be used by most lower income families in the USA & Canada were made of zinc or zinc coated steel (galvanized steel).

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  8. Anonymous9:21 PM

    A young man I once worked with put ketsup on EVERYTHING, including pizza. Wierd. Have you ever noticed that ketsup labels do no say "refrigerate after opening".

    And there was a case before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the spelling of ketsup/catsup.

    http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Ketchup_v._Catsup

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