Tuesday, July 26, 2016

We have become comfortable with the idea that we're going to die

In the past few years, most especially in the last ten years since Cliff had open-heart surgery, he and I have talked openly about our own deaths with no problem.  I rather like being comfortable with death, as opposed to being filled with dread at the very thought.  

I recall when my parents got to this point:  They bought their tombstones and had them placed on the graves they'd previously purchased.  In fact, Mother took pictures of their future resting-place that she took pride in showing friends and relatives.  The only thing lacking was the date-of-death on the headstones... and of course their bodies, their earthen vessels, not yet laying beneath the sod.

Mother really got carried away:  She wrote her own obituary, designated who would sing at her funeral (20 years later he couldn't be located), and even picked out the songs for her funeral.

This seemed odd to me, at the time, but I can't say it really freaked me out.  It just seemed silly.  
I have no memorial-service plans; I leave that to those left behind.  I've told them to just do whatever makes them feel best.  I don't really care what anybody does with my ashes, either.  I do have just the slightest desire for someone to put a headstone in the town cemetery with mine and Cliff's name, so anyone walking by it will realize we once existed.  I've always loved strolling through graveyards, reading the names and dates.  However, I won't know about it, so if they want to skip it, that's OK with me too.  Here's a little video I took while riding my horse, Blue (may he rest in peace), through the Wellington cemetery.  The song is written and sung by Loudon Wainwright III.  

But I digress...

I get up hours earlier than Cliff, and it isn't uncommon for me, as I pass through the bedroom, to check and see if he's still breathing.  He's done the same with me, he says.  Because even though we aren't all that old (71 and 72, I'm the oldest), we know it could (will?) happen that one morning, either of us might have shuffled off this moral coil while the other was sleeping.  Now, if I think too much about this as I pause to listen for Cliff's breathing, it does freak me out a little:  What if, this time, he IS dead?  ACK!  

Here's what really amuses me:  No relatives want to hear us say anything that suggests we don't plan on living forever.  The oldest grandson thinks it's downright morbid to mention the farm sale that will be held after either or both of us die.  Cliff has not-so-young relatives that are just as bad... "I know I'm going to die, but I don't want to talk about it."

So, talking about death will make it happen?  Really?  

I don't know where I was going with this entry.  I guess I'm just putting words to my thoughts to see if I can figure out why anybody past the age of sixty wouldn't want to face reality and get comfortable with the idea of death.  

Once you have accepted that a person's life on this earth doesn't last that long, you can wake up every morning thanking God for just one more day, knowing we have a limited number of days.  Why go around trembling and sticking your head in the sand every time somebody mentions a thing that is going to happen to all of us?


RELAX. YOU'RE GOING TO DIE
Donna Wood 12/15/2015
With thanks to Tai Sheridan for the thoughts

Embrace what lies ahead of you.
Enjoy the earth and sky.
Don't clench your fists and cling to things:
Relax. You're going to die.

Whatever comes your way, accept.
Let others ask the “why”.
Don't fight a thing that's part of life:
Relax. You're going to die.

You truly won the lottery
With your first, newborn cry.
There's nothing left for you to fear:

Relax. You're going to die.

We have become comfortable with the idea that we're going to die

In the past few years, most especially in the last ten years since Cliff had open-heart surgery, he and I have talked openly about our own deaths with no problem.  I rather like being comfortable with death, as opposed to being filled with dread at the very thought.  

I recall when my parents got to this point:  They bought their tombstones and had them placed on the graves they'd previously purchased.  In fact, Mother took pictures of their future resting-place that she took pride in showing friends and relatives.  The only thing lacking was the date-of-death on the headstones... and of course their bodies, their earthen vessels, not yet laying beneath the sod.

Mother really got carried away:  She wrote her own obituary, designated who would sing at her funeral (20 years later he couldn't be located), and even picked out the songs for her funeral.

This seemed odd to me, at the time, but I can't say it really freaked me out.  It just seemed silly.  
I have no memorial-service plans; I leave that to those left behind.  I've told them to just do whatever makes them feel best.  I don't really care what anybody does with my ashes, either.  I do have just the slightest desire for someone to put a headstone in the town cemetery with mine and Cliff's name, so anyone walking by it will realize we once existed.  I've always loved strolling through graveyards, reading the names and dates.  However, I won't know about it, so if they want to skip it, that's OK with me too.  Here's a little video I took while riding my horse, Blue (may he rest in peace), through the Wellington cemetery.  The song is written and sung by Loudon Wainwright III.  

But I digress...

I get up hours earlier than Cliff, and it isn't uncommon for me, as I pass through the bedroom, to check and see if he's still breathing.  He's done the same with me, he says.  Because even though we aren't all that old (71 and 72, I'm the oldest), we know it could (will?) happen that one morning, either of us might have shuffled off this mortal coil while the other was sleeping.  Now, if I think too much about this as I pause to listen for Cliff's breathing, it does freak me out a little:  What if, this time, he IS dead?  ACK!  

Here's what really amuses me:  Relatives don't want to hear us say anything that suggests we don't plan on living forever.  The oldest grandson thinks it's downright morbid to mention the farm sale that will be held after either or both of us die.  Cliff has not-so-young relatives that are just as bad... "I know I'm going to die, but I don't want to talk about it."

So, talking about death will make it happen?  Really?  

I don't know where I was going with this entry.  I guess I'm just putting words to my thoughts to see if I can figure out why anybody past the age of sixty wouldn't want to face reality and get comfortable with the idea of death.  

Once you have accepted that a person's life on this earth doesn't last that long, you can wake up every morning thanking God for just one more day, knowing we have a limited number of days.  Why go around trembling and sticking your head in the sand every time somebody mentions a thing that is going to happen to all of us?


RELAX. YOU'RE GOING TO DIE
Donna Wood 12/15/2015
With thanks to Tai Sheridan for the thoughts

Embrace what lies ahead of you.
Enjoy the earth and sky.
Don't clench your fists and cling to things:
Relax. You're going to die.

Whatever comes your way, accept.
Let others ask the “why”.
Don't fight a thing that's part of life:
Relax. You're going to die.

You truly won the lottery
With your first, newborn cry.
There's nothing left for you to fear:

Relax. You're going to die.

Sunday, July 24, 2016

Cat mystery solved

For the past couple of months, my cats seemed to have become "clean freaks" concerning their food.  It all started when I bought a big bag of cat food at Costco.  Both Mama Kitty and Jake seemed to love the stuff, but three or four days later, they were leaving most of their food untouched in the barn.  I tried just leaving it there and not giving them more until it was gone, but they only grew thin.  

Maybe they didn't like the Costco food after all?  So I got another brand that I knew they liked.  They ate some when I first gave it to them, then left some behind that seemed to never get consumed.  If I pour more on top, they wouldn't eat it.  I wracked my brain trying to figure out what might be the problem.  

I talked it over with Cliff, who has no idea about the workings of a cat's mind, but sometimes it's helpful if I can just talk a problem over with someone.  I decided to wash the old Teflon pan I feed the cats in.  Maybe a skunk had been eating out of their pan and stunk it up, who knows.  I put cat food in the nice, clean pan, and they ate as though they were starved, both of them.  

Next morning there was very little food left.  I figured I'd wait until they ate it all, then feed them more.  

Same old problem:  They were not going to eat the food that remained in the pan; they'd starve first.  If I poured more on top of what was already there, they'd dive in for awhile, but leave more than they ate.

I talked to Cliff again.  This time he had a suggestion, which at first seemed nuts, but I had tried everything else.  "Take a paper plate out to feed them on," he suggested.  "Shove it down in the pan and see what happens."

They ate ravenously.  Next morning I went out, looked in the pan, and there were only a few pieces of food left in there on the paper plate.  It looked clean, and I had forgotten to carry another paper plate out with me, so I just left it in place and poured some cat food in.  

Yesterday, same old story.  The food hadn't been touched.  There was another empty paper plate on the floor, one I had placed there the previous day to give Mama Kitty a chance to eat alone, since her son pushes her away with his big old head when I first feed them.  For some reason, I decided to pour the untouched food in the pan onto the paper plate on the floor.  That's when I saw the problem.

That food was full of tiny little black ants!  They were so small that, mixed in with the food, I hadn't seen them.  There were hundreds of them, it looked like!

I imagine the ants bit the cats when they tried to eat.  Ouch.

I sprayed their pan with bug spray (outside ONLY) because it doesn't take much bug spray to discourage ants.  

This morning the food was gone.  I gave the outside of the pan another shot of spray, fed the cats, and felt like a bad cat mama for so frequently starving my cats over the past two months.  Poor things, I should have known Mama Kitty, who is the epitome of class and grace, would never be so picky about her food.  After all, she remembers starvation:  She was very hungry when she first moved here with her kittens.

I apologized to both cats.  I'm not sure, but I think I'm forgiven.

Saturday, July 23, 2016

I wish I hadn't thrown away my old slow cookers

Remember when you could put a roast in the slow cooker in the morning and come home to supper, ready and waiting?  Or when you could cook a pot of beans overnight in the slow cooker and when you got up next morning, they were done?  Try leaving a nice pork roast in one of the newer Crock Pots now and it'll be dry and overcooked after a full day, rather than falling-apart tender.  These days, whether you use the "high" or "low" setting doesn't matter:  The contents will be bubbling and boiling like crazy.  Whatever happened to "simmer"?

Yesterday I researched this problem, and found out that "somebody" decided the older slow cookers didn't keep temperatures hot enough to destroy bacteria, so now they all boil like a witch's brew, no matter what setting you use.  Just google "crock pot cooks too hot on low" or anything similar, and you'll find the same answer.  HERE is what I learned.  HERE is a link to a forum discussion about the problem.

Unless:  you spend a larger wad of money on a programable slow cooker, but reading reviews on Amazon, I'm not sure I want to invest more money just to end up with the same, or a worse, problem.  Even their highest-rated slow cookers, with 4 1/2 stars out of five, have dissenters who are unhappy with either the temperature or something else, like the glass lid breaking while something is cooking and raining glass pieces into the food.

*sigh*

I've found several articles explaining the new "hotter" crock pots and recommending programable ones, but when I go to Amazon to check out what people are saying after they purchased some of those, it scares me.  One model with high ratings has a lot of people saying it only worked four or five times, then stopped working.  How does it get such high ratings if that happens all the time?  

Why do people always have to fix something that isn't broken?  We used crock pots for years before the changes, and I personally don't know anyone who got food poisoning from the things they ate at church dinners or family holiday meals.

GIVE ME A DECENT SLOW COOKER!    

Friday, July 22, 2016

Diaries burned to ashes

A Facebook friend and I had an online discussion about our old diaries a couple of months ago; we agreed that we'd be better off getting rid of the diaries.  It wasn't so much that I was ashamed of the contents of the books, it's just that I'm not that person any more, and reading some of the trite things I had put in those various-sized journals embarrassed me.  I decided I would burn my diaries on the next full moon, and I swore to myself I wouldn't save anything.  


On June 20 at 4 A.M., I took my portable Amazon Tap to the back yard and got it playing Native American music, flutes playing softly and drums beating.  I then carried my armload of written works out.  Oh, there were some valuable things memory-wise, stories of things the grandchildren said when they were small, letters and kind notes and letters from friends and relatives, back when I was more gregarious and actually interacted with people.  Some of my fancier journals had pictures, greeting cards, and all kinds of mementoes taped and pasted inside, but I was relentless.  Whole books don't always burn very well, so I tore handfuls of pages out at a time and tossed them on the fire, making sure they burned to ashes.  In the light of the full moon, and by the light of the fire, I saw a few things that made me want to stop and pull them out, but I resisted temptation for the most part.  My daughter, for instance, had obviously spent lots of time and considerable money buying the most appropriate birthday and Mother's Day cards you can imagine.  At my age, it seems useless to keep stuff that people will have to sort through when I'm gone.  But seeing all those cards in the light of the moon as I burned them reminded me of a daughter's thoughtfulness.   

I burned until I was sick of sitting in the smoke coughing and then burned some more, but as the sun was coming up, I still had four diaries left.  I resolved to save them for the next full moon, which was last Tuesday.  This time I allowed myself to go through the pages and pull out a few pictures, but the remaining diaries were burned.  The deed is done, and I don't really feel a great loss.

My daughter wishes I hadn't done this, but as I told her, none of those writings represented who I am now.  Many of the lines I wrote seemed trite and self-centered.  Sometimes I ventured into criticizing individuals for one thing or another, and who wants that left behind them?  Also, many of my core beliefs and ideals have changed.  

It might not have been so easy to burn all those memories except for the fact that I've been journaling online since 2004.  Because this has been done in the public eye, I censored myself a lot; at this point in life, I feel that's a good thing.  I kept a lot of my personal feelings and beliefs unspoken, but I told many, many stories of my childhood, and even included my mom's "biography" in installments, at one point.  I certainly shared hundreds of pictures and stories of day-to-day activities in my online diary, things I had never bothered to write about in my old hand-written journals.  My two online blogs, as far as I'm concerned, will be here for my children and grandchildren long after I'm gone.  I like to surf through these entries and relive our motorcycle period, my horse-riding times, our antique-tractor-show travels, and all the other adventurous chapters of my life.  I have told many stories of my childhood in this blog.  I believe this is a much better sort of keepsake than those trite little jottings in the now-burned-to-ashes diaries.

So there you have it.  

Monday, July 18, 2016

Higher Ground

The other day while I was pedaling away on my exercise bike listening to my Pandora folk station on the Amazon Tap, Ola Belle Reed came on singing "Higher Ground".  As I listened to that old song, I got downright happy and, I believe, even pedaled faster.  I went about my day with the song in my head and, at times, on my lips.  The upcoming Sunday (yesterday) was my day to sing a song at Church, so I chose that one.

Before I sang it, I explained to the folks that this song took me back to the Eagleville, Missouri, Church of Christ.  "Higher Ground" was a song I particularly liked, even then, at the tender age of ten.  Looking back, I realize now that I was always drawn to peppy, happy, optimistic songs.  Higher Ground wasn't so peppy when we sang it at Eagleville, so maybe it was the words and tune I loved.  

The Church of Christ doesn't have musical instruments in their worship.  Now, in the larger, big-city congregations, the acapella singing is lovely, with the song leader using a pitch pipe to get the song in the proper key and everyone singing their parts.  But the congregations in north Missouri were all in farming communities and thus, smaller.  The regular song leader at Eagleville was an older man named Joe Bartels.  I thought then he was REALLY old, but now I realize he was probably in his 60's.  

Most of the songs started slow, and it seemed as though the longer a song went on, the slower it dragged.  I learned to hate "Trust and Obey" early on:  It was song number one in "Christian Hymns", so maybe that's why we sang it so often.  I swear, it felt like that song lasted twenty minutes every time we sang it.  Billie Jo McCallister didn't take that long to decide to jump off the Tallahassee Bridge;  Marty Robbins could have gone to El Paso and fallen in love with several Mexican girls while we were singing "Trust and Obey".  Yes, the song has wonderful, meaningful words.  But I was ten years old, and perhaps my priorities were a little twisted.  

And here's a thing Brother Bartels did:  Just when we got to the third verse of a song, he would decide to skip it, stop singing entirely, and say "Laaaaaast verse", drawing it out slowly.  Then we would resume, singing verse number four.  This was so common that when we kids played church (do kids play church any more?), whoever was the pretend song leader would always throw in "laaaaaast verse" in imitation of Joe.

Here's something, though, that came to me yesterday afternoon:  Growing up, we went to church three times a week at various congregations we attended as we moved from one location to another.  We never missed the once-a-month, all-day meeting where the best song leaders came from miles around and led us in glorious song for two hours (I loved those Sunday singings).  I've probably seen 500 different men lead songs at Churches of Christ.  But I only remember the name of one of them.

Joe Bartels.

He'd probably enjoy knowing that someone remembers him at all, after all this time.  

Saturday, July 16, 2016

What is your passion?


A young relative had a discussion with a friend about this passion thing and concluded that she has "no goals, no passions, and nothing she is really 'good' at".  

It occurred to me that I, at the age of 72, am in the same boat.  And I don't care!  

I've canned and gardened all my life, and enjoyed it.  But it was never a passion.  If it had been, my garden would have been weed-free.  I have a history of growing the weediest gardens anywhere.  Why worry?  I seem to get plenty of good things to eat from my garden.  Could I get more if I worked at it?  Of course, but I've never been much for work.  I care nothing for fine houses or housework, new furniture or carpet or curtains.  My favorite part about this trailer house I live in is the back porch, where I can gaze in any direction and see no sign of human life.  When weather permits, I go out and watch the sun come up.  I go to bed at night anxious for my back-porch time that will come in the morning.  Today I watched a deer over on the neighbor's property, heading to the safety of the woods as the day grew brighter.  I think I've mentioned before that I no longer take pictures of the sunrises, because that simply distracts me from the beauty and only gives a pathetic little substitute of the glory of the real thing spreading across the sky.  My back porch in the morning is "the center of the earth" for me.  Maybe that's a passion.

I think the nearest thing I have to a life-long passion would be my love for cows, specifically Jersey cattle.  Even now I'd like to step out the door and lay eyes on a doe-eyed, large-uddered Jersey cow,  heavy with calf.  I wish I could go to the barn with my stainless steel bucket and milk a cow this very minute.  And yet I am finally wise enough to realize that there is no way to keep such a cow bred and producing.  There's also no way to really prevent a cow from escaping to visit the gigantic bull next door, not with our old barbed-wire fences; she would be bred by a bull whose offspring could kill her due to their size.  But I'm not miserable without a cow.  

Truthfully, I never had a strong enough passion to do everything that's involved with cows "perfectly".  I just sort of got by.  That's really how I've made it through life.  
I've not had goals of any kind.  Now, that may seem sad to most people, but I have had a blast living life day to day, waiting to see what happens next.  I've spent my whole life like a child playing, just going from one thing to another, staying there as long as it was fun, putting forth very little effort.  

Who makes the rules, anyhow?  Who is T.D. Jakes to tell me I have to have passion?  (Yes, I know he's a preacher on TV, but he isn't the boss of me.)  

So, if you know someone who just "wings it" through life, maybe some of us were meant to be free spirits and you should leave us to our own devices.  

I've shared this poem by John Burroughs before.  I discovered it in the old Book of Knowledge when I was thirteen years old and memorized it because I loved it so much at the time.  Little did I know that poem was describing the life that lay ahead of me, and it's been a glorious one indeed.

Serene I fold my hands and wait,
Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea.
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.


I stay my haste, I make delays,
For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day
The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my bark astray,
Nor change the tide of destiny.


What matter if I stand alone?
I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap when it has sown,
And gather up its fruit of tears.


The stars come nightly to the sky;
The tidal wave comes to the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
Can keep my own away from me.


The waters know their own and draw
The brook that springs in yonder heights;
So flows the good with equal law
Unto the soul of pure delights.


JOHN BURROUGHS.


Here's a thing to think about:  If I had no other reason to believe in God, my life would be enough cause for belief.  Because really, how can somebody spend all her time sashaying through life with no planning whatsoever and have this much joy?  Only by the grace of God.  And who but God could have hooked me up with a life partner who learned to put up with my carefree ways?




Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Hello from Monsoon territory

It continues to rain at least every other day.  Some of us are getting tired of it, and yet, it's better to have too much rain than none.  At least the weeds are easy to pull when they're growing out of mud.  The good news is that the rain has kept the tomatoes growing, so I have a lot of huge tomatoes, and they're starting to turn ripe.  Cliff and I had BLT's for breakfast this morning, although the tomatoes I used could have been a little deeper red.  They needed to ripen at least one more day.  Oh, there's bad news, too:  Some green bean plants blew over onto the electric fence that's about a foot from the ground to keep raccoons out; the plants grounded it out, and a raccoon had been in there nibbling on the biggest and best tomatoes.  I would think once they've all gotten shocked by the fence, they'd be scared to return.  Evidently they're willing to risk getting shocked.

Cliff has been wanting a sturdier folding chair for outside, something he would take to tractor shows or reunions. Many portable chairs are so low to the ground, Cliff and I can hardly get up out of them.  The father of the little girl we babysit has a chair that we have admired.  Most such chairs cost anywhere from $40 to $80, but Bass Pro had one on their website that looked good, and had 3 1/2 stars.  We went all the way to Bass Pro in Independence to find out they did not have the chair we were looking for.  When we were back at the car, I went to the Amazon app on the iPad to see what they had.  I was about to order one with four-out-of-five stars and many recommendations, but then I read a couple of reviews and one caught my eye:  "This is a good chair, but I like my Picnic Time chair better."

So of course I looked up the Picnic Time chair and saw it had an almost-unheard-of five-star review from hundreds of people.  I read a few of the reviews, and Cliff said, "Go ahead and get it!"
  
But wait.  I could use a chair like that, so I ordered two of them.  At almost seventy dollars apiece, they had better be good.

Oh, I've recovered from the bronchitis/walking pneumonia stuff and am feeling normal.  As much as I hated to have to take Prednisone, I could tell it was helping by the second day.  Perhaps the antibiotics helped too.  Anyhow, it's great to feel good.

Here's a poem that fits in with the weather we're having... it's a favorite of mine.

  
    The Rainy Day
by
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.


Peace!


Friday, July 08, 2016

Life is just a bowl of cherries



Yesterday I turned 72, and a fine day it was, but I'll get back to that in a bit.  

I have a weakness for cherries.  Cherry pies made with sour cherries, ice cream with chunks of cherry, Smith Brothers' Wild Cherry cough drops; but I especially love sweet cherries.  Most of the time I can't bring myself to pay the going price for them, but about once a year I'll find them on sale.  This year, it was a wonderful sale:  $1.99 a pound at Price Chopper.  I do most of my grocery shopping at Walmart, and I realize they price-match.  However, when it comes to produce, I make Cliff take me directly to the store having the sale, because Walmart produce just isn't quite up-to-par and fresh.  So the day before Fourth of July weekend, I bought two bags, probably adding up to five pounds of cherries.  I ate cherries for four days, all I wanted of them.  It was glorious, but I realized I had not yet reached the limit of cherries I'm able to eat.

Tuesday I had a doctor appointment in Oak Grove.  It occurred to me that those cherries at Price Chopper would still be $1.99 a pound until midnight, when the new weekly ad would take effect.  So I asked Cliff to take me for more cherries.  "We'll burn more gas than you're saving on cherries," he said.  But when I told him the regular price vs the sale price, he agreed to drive to Blue Springs.  I bought another five pounds or so of cherries.  

Yesterday was my birthday.  My birthday breakfast consisted of a boiled egg and two cups of sweet cherries.  (I repeated that breakfast this morning, since it served me so well yesterday.) 

After I'd had my birthday breakfast yesterday, Cliff got up, went through his usual wake-up routine, and then offered to take me to Sedalia to "that store you like".  He meant Menard's.  Then he suggested I buy anything I want there (up to a certain amount of money, ha ha).  I thought hard, and then told him, "I'd love to go browse at Menard's, but truthfully, there's nothing I want, so you can keep your money."

Let's face it, Amazon takes care of about anything I might want to buy.  

By the time we arrived in Sedalia, I was starving, and there just happens to be a pretty decent Golden Corral there.  I had pot roast, potatoes and gravy, creamed spinach, fried okra, a dinner roll, some green beans, watermelon, a piece of carrot cake, a piece of cheesecake, and some CHERRY PIE with ice cream.  Did I mention I'm taking Prednisone for what the doctor claims might be walking pneumonia?  I've been eating nonstop for four days.  Rather convenient, though, with all the celebratory birthday meals I've been having.  First the nurse tells me I've lost four pounds (no doubt from constant coughing), then she gives me something that makes me eat like a hog.  Thanks.


After eating, I told Cliff I wanted to go tour that ammunition place, Sierra Bullets.  Our tour guide was a congenial man, a twenty-five-year employee.  He took us through the place, explained how things worked, and answered our questions.  Even though I have little interest in bullets, seeing the work that goes into making them is fascinating.  I would recommend the tour to my local friends.  You'll find the information HERE.  No cameras are allowed inside, though.


After spending ninety minutes on the tour, we  went to Menard's.  They had some pretty flowers marked down, and there are some bare spots in my flowerbed, so I bought myself some birthday flowers to plant.  It was a perfect day, spent with my best friend. 

On another note, we have been getting huge amounts of rain, far more rain than we want or need.  Five inches over the weekend, and we've picked up another inch in the last two days.  The future doesn't look much drier, either:
 Yeah, just look at next week.  *sigh*

Tomorrow we go on a tractor drive with the club, so Cliff will get the big Oliver cleaned up and ready today.  The drive is held in connection with the Mayview picnic.  Cliff finds the tractor drives rather dull, but I enjoy them, creeping through the countryside at five miles per hour.  It's like a motorcycle ride, only in slow motion.  And there's a police escort, so I feel safer than I did on the bike.

I'm sorry I've not been blogging, but we had a big weekend with our Georgia son here, and I really haven't been feeling up to snuff.  I believe I'm ready to return to my regular routine now, such as it is.