ramblings

As you can see, I put my regular picture back on the blog, but my previous entry has the fun picture that David (Hyperblogal) doctored up for me.  If you missed it during the few hours I featured it, just scroll down to the entry before this one.  
I don't do so well with winter, these days.  I more or less just grit my teeth and push through it, trying not to think about the weather and how long it is till spring.  So if somebody can doctor up a picture that causes me to laugh out loud, I appreciate that. 
I've never met David, although I feel as though I know him.  After all, he is the reason my computer is a Mac Mini.  In my comment section and also on Facebook, he extolled the wonders of Apple computers to such an extent that I just had to try one; the Mac Mini was the only one in my price range.  Considering the huge price difference between Apple and Microsoft, I doubt I'll be buying another Mac of any kind.  PC's keep getting cheaper, while Apple products get higher-priced, and we are retired, living on a stringent budget.  When the time comes that I need another computer, I'll probably get what is cheapest.  For now, this Mac Mini is chugging along just fine.  If it ever quits, at least I will always be able to say that I once had a Mac!   


When my husband strolls down memory lane, he sometimes talks about various places in Kansas City where he lived, when he was a kid.  Sometimes he would tell stories that happened when his family lived in the Shirley Apartments, back when he was in the lower grades of school.  For some reason, I've always wanted to know exactly where these apartments were located; Cliff could never quite remember.  
His cousin, Edna, visited recently.  I was asking her how she met her husband, and in the process of telling about the early years of her marriage, she mentioned that she and her husband had lived in the Shirley Apartments.  Well, once I heard that, I stopped her in the middle of her story and said, "Where were the Shirley Apartments?"  
"17th and Jarboe," she answered, without even having to think twice about it.  
It turns out she and her husband lived there at the same time as Cliff's family, and we shared a story that Cliff sometimes tells about some woman attacking his mother, Melva, when they lived there: his mom hit the woman on the head with a pop bottle in self defense, the way he remembered it.  
Turns out it was Edna wielding the pop bottle because that woman was pulling Cliff's mom's hair so viciously.   
"She was a big woman," Edna said, "and she wouldn't turn loose of Melva".  
I don't even know why I cared about these details, but I'm overjoyed to know where the Shirley Apartments used to be, and to have found out who cold-conked who, back in the early fifties.   
Cliff just doesn't talk much about his childhood, so I got a rare glimpse into his past that evening.  


People often assume Cliff was raised on a farm, what with his love of tractors and all things rural.  Not so.  He was born at his parents' home in Versailles, Missouri, but the family moved to Kansas City when he was very young; he attended schools in Kansas City from first grade on (several different schools, because as Cliff says, "We moved every time the rent came due.").  He didn't get to the country until after he married me, and we've been in the sticks ever since.  I like to tell him that if he hadn't met me, he'd probably be living in the suburbs someplace with a boat in the driveway, and not a tractor to his name.  
I'm the one with small-town and rural roots.