my fireside chat for the day

Our Internet speed has been awful today.  For awhile yesterday it wasn't even up to one megabit.  Now it's about 2 1/2, but that's enough to do a blog entry.  Facebook friends from all over the country are having the same problem, all except a granddaughter who lives in Oak Grove, about fifteen miles from here.  She informed me HER internet is over 300 megabits.  I disowned her, but I'm going to have to apologize and own her, because she recently gave birth to my beautiful newest great-grandchild.  The Internet speed suffers when so many people are at home, using it.  When this sequestering is no longer necessary, my great-granddaughter is going to get hugged, kissed, and passed around.  Of course the poor child won't know anyone but her parents, and will likely be scared of the rest of the world.

Apparently Gabe has made some sort of deal with my two remaining cats:  When the two barn cats decide to vomit, they come up on the front porch to do it.  Then when I send Gabe out, he sees it and and thinks, "A snack!!!".  Dogs are nasty creatures when you get right down to it, but I imagine they think the same of us.

I think I'm coping pretty well with this being a hermit; after all, I've been practicing for this all my life.  I think if we stay out of the metropolitan area when we need to shop, and take the proper precautions, the chances we'll get this virus are slim.  So there'll be no Costco or Walmart in our lives for awhile, nor Aldi, either.  We are staying in the country, shopping locally.  

 pussy willow bush in the back yard

Yesterday we got out in the open air for a joy ride in the four-wheeler.  My long-time readers might recall how often I rode my horse down on the Missouri River bottoms; I miss those rides, so that's where we went.  I feel for the people who raise crops down there, because I'm pretty sure they won't be doing anything with that soggy, sand-covered land this year; it's still waterlogged.  

Yes, he is trying to jump out.

I'm always the last one to come out the door, but that's how it is with us women, right?  Gabe and Cliff were waiting patiently.  I snapped a leash onto Gabe's collar before we left, because he has a habit of jumping out through the front, which has no windshield, and that puts him right in the path of the vehicle, where we could run over him.

Gabe was excited to go bye-bye

This is the road to the river, but it was too wet to go all the way to the levee.  Cliff had to turn around.

I spotted a big ball that looked to be fully inflated and asked Cliff to get it for me.  Turns out it's a hard ball, not the kind you blow up.  Cliff said it's probably one of those balls you get for a horse to play with, which kind of excited me because the grandson's wife has mentioned in the past she wanted to see if her Great Dane, Apollo, would play with a ball.  When we got home I tossed it into his pen, but it went right into a great-dane-sized hole he's dug out of boredom and he couldn't get it out.  He did act like he wanted to play with it, though, standing beside the hole and barking at it.

Then I spotted a baseball!  I have no use for a baseball, but why leave it laying in all that driftwood the river dropped off?  It's a Wilson, by the way.

This one almost wasn't worth the effort, but we brought it home anyway.  

When we got home from that adventure, I wanted to go for a tractor ride to town.  Poor Cliff, no wonder he's always griping about my "hair-brained schemes"; he'd just gotten settled down on the couch.  I let Gabe eat his supper, then we were on our way.  I wish I'd taken my camera, because so many families were outside!  These days I almost never see kids playing outside, you know?  In this age of video games and Facebook, it's almost unheard of, but it looked like at least half the people in Wellington were outside, whole families playing or doing yard work.  Entire families!  Kids waved and dogs barked, which excited Gabe so much, he tried jumping out of our ride.  

Here we are, leaving our daughter's house to cruise the town

We went past our daughter's house and hollered at one another for awhile; I had an office chair she needed, since she's working from home, and we unloaded that.  Cliff is totally out of Diet Coke and bottled water... he doesn't like our well water, thinks it tastes like dirt.  I don't get it... I don't taste anything in our water, and it's been tested, so I know there's nothing in it that shouldn't be; thank goodness he considers it good enough for tea and coffee.   Oh well, he really needs the water, since he refuses to drink ours; older people, especially, must stay hydrated.  We may venture out to Lexington today... in the car, not on a tractor.

Watch this video, and you'll have the experience of riding home from the river bottom with us.  There's quite a bit of wind noise at some point, so you might want to turn your volume down.  Of course, if you turn off the sound, you won't hear Cliff wondering if we have a flat tire.  
added later:  He said that about the flat tire in a different video I did.  So you won't hear that if you turn on the sound.