A couple of things

My photographer friend and fellow blogger (hyperblogal) keeps entertaining us with his photoshop tricks.  Here's the latest:  

He suggests we keep the grandchildren away from the garden this year.  


I went with Cliff and his sister Rena to Jefferson City today, to visit their Aunt Gertrude in the hospital.  She is there to try and get her asthma under control.  They are giving her steroids intravenously, and that causes her blood sugar to soar... even though she is NOT diabetic.  So they have to give her insulin to control the blood sugar.  
Rena went for a walk in the halls with Aunt Gertrude.  

Maybe it's my imagination, but I notice a HUGE family resemblance here.  

Nothing new

It is 69 degrees right now.  I have spent considerable time strolling around the yard, watering garden seeds I have planted, and searching out the daffodils that are pushing their leaves up out of the ground.  This morning I went and had an echocardiogram, which will probably show the heart murmur my doctor was concerned with is harmless (benign).  I would be very surprised if it turned out otherwise.  It was interesting to watch my heart beat steadily on the monitor.  
Cliff has spent most of his spare time the last three days messing around with the old one-ton truck he found on Craigslist.  It was a service truck at a station, originally.  He sold our old 1988 pickup, and it has been a real pain to have to borrow a truck every time we need to transport livestock, so he bought another 1988 truck!  However, he did sell hid old truck for more than twice what he paid for this one.  Let's hope it holds up for the few jobs we will ask of it.   

He needed some sort of sides on the flat bed

The hood wouldn't latch when he bought it.

It didn't take him long to get that fixed.

You can see the old truck isn't the prettiest thing ever.  Pretty is as pretty does.


Having not much to blog about, I am going to share a quote from "The Art of Racing in the Rain" that really hit home.  Keep in mind it's a dog doing the talking here. 

“Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot talk, so I listen very well. I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. It's like being a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. For instance, if we met at a party and I wanted to tell you a story about the time I needed to get a soccer ball in my neighbor's yard but his dog chased me and I had to jump into a swimming pool to escape, and I began telling the story, you, hearing the words "soccer" and "neighbor" in the same sentence, might interrupt and mention that your childhood neighbor was Pele, the famous soccer player, and I might be courteous and say, Didn't he play for the Cosmos of New York? Did you grow up in New York? And you might reply that, no, you grew up in Brazil on the streets of Tres Coracoes with Pele, and I might say, I thought you were from Tennessee, and you might say not originally, and then go on to outline your genealogy at length. So my initial conversational gambit - that I had a funny story about being chased by my neighbor's dog - would be totally lost, and only because you had to tell me all about Pele. Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories.” 
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain  


The reason it hit home is that I catch myself doing this ALL THE TIME, ever since I read it... interrupting someone and stealing their conversation.