God has a sense of humor.

My blogger friends have listened to me for two or three years, moaning and groaning about the lack of rain.  I didn’t realize Mother Nature was just saving it up so she could give it to us all at once.  I told my husband to remind me of how much I've been wanting rain, in case I start griping about it now.  In 1992 I wrote a poem about this, when we lived in our old two-story house.

NEVER CURSE THE RAIN  by Donna Wood

Because I've seen some years of drought, I never curse the rain,

For once you've had to do without, you learn to not complain.

Our old roof leaks a little more with every passing year,

But never mind how hard it pours; I'm happy living here.

I have to say I miss the sun when clouds control the sky,

I'll be glad when the rain is done.  (It will stop, by and by.)

But I'll take what the Father sends and thank Him for it all.

The sun and rain are both my friends, so let the sweet rain fall!

If trials come into my life, they're sent here for a reason

My character is shaped by strife that comes in its due season.

When everything is said and done, the good Lord knows what's best

He gives us rain, then sends the sun; by both, our lives are blessed.

In case you are wondering, we did have a leak in the roof back then... it wasn't in the two-story part of the house... and no money to fix it.  It was right above the bathroom stool.  The good thing about that was that we didn't have to put a pan or bucket under the leak to catch the water; the bad thing was that if you were using the stool when it was raining, you had a constant drip... drip... drip on your head.  Later on Cliff, with brother-in-law Patrick, got the leak fixed somehow.  The grandson who lives in the house now has had it remodled, so all the troubles we had are a thing of the past.

Last night there was quite a thunderstorm going on when my dog and I were ready to go to bed.  I always send Gabe out to potty first, and I knew it would present a problem; I don't know of any dog that likes to pee in the rain.  However, if I stand on the porch and remind him of why he's out there, he usually manages.  Not this time, because of the thunder and lightning.  He lifted his leg (good dog), but then came a booming light show that shook the ground and Gabe turned and ran up to the door.  Oh well, I figured he could hold it.  

He was so scared of the lightning that he wouldn't lay down after I put him in his cage and shut the door.  I do not let dogs sleep in my bed; but since Cliff has been sleeping in a chair again because of his aches and pains from working so much on that old tractor, I decided to let him get up on the bed with me... NOT under the covers or on the pillows and sheets, just on the bedspread.  After thirty minutes of him shaking and still refusing to lie down, I put him back in his cage.

At  six in the morning, I go out to feed the cats and let them in the garage for the day where I can keep them fed.  I can't leave it open for them at night because of racoons.  Then I come inside, put Gabe's breakfast in his bowl, and turn him out.  He normally eats his breakfast as fast as he can, then goes outside.  Eating is his biggest pleasure in life, sort of like me.  This morning he ran to the bowl, but realized he needed to do something before he started and ran to the door.  I would never have thought an 18-pound dog could pee that long; then he went a little further and did the rest of his duties in the rain, but there was no thunder to scare him. 

We've had over four inches of rain in three days, and there's more coming today.  Let the sweet rain fall. 

Duckduckgo browser

I'm trying out a new browser I had never heard of before.  So far, it works as it is supposed to, which presents a problem:  Duckduckgo does not use third party cookies, so I can't sign in to my Google account on other folks' Blogger comment sections.  Except for that, it is GREAT!  No more ads about every little thing I have ordered on Amazon!  

I will continue to use a different browser for blogs.  I wouldn't really have to, I could just use "anonymous" to comment and tell people who I am, but I'd rather not.

Time will tell if I keep this new browser, but so far I'm loving it.  The first time I went to facebook using it, there were a lot of sponsored ads

If you're interested, click HERE.  It tells everything about Duckduckgo.  Maybe some of my readers have used it.  If so, feel free to tell me what you think about it.

Rainy days

The words of a song from 1921 (my mother would have been nine years old), originally sung by Al Jolson, has been going through my mind since yesterday.  I shouldn't even be familiar with it, but I used to watch Captain Kangaroo as an eleven-year-old on our very first television; he and Mr. Greenjeans often introduced some of the old standard songs and broadway musical tunes that young people could relate to.  So maybe that's where I learned it.

Life is not a highway strewn with flowers,
Still it holds a goodly share of bliss,
When the sun gives way to April showers,
Here is the point you should never miss.

Though April showers may come your way,
They bring the flowers that bloom in May.
So if it's raining, have no regrets,
Because it isn't raining rain, you know, (It's raining violets,)
And where you see clouds upon the hills,
You soon will see crowds of daffodils,
So keep on looking for a blue bird, And list'ning for his song,
Whenever April showers come along.

And where you see clouds upon the hills,
You soon will see crowds of daffodils,
So keep on looking for a blue bird, And list'ning for his song,
Whenever April showers come along.

After three years of drought, we are getting rain; two inches so far.  As I look at the fourteen day forecast, rain and storms are predicted for seven of those days.  I'm not complaining, though.  Better too much than too little.  We are in an area that often floods, but we're on a hilltop.  I may have to get some tall boots in order to wade into the garden to pick spinach and lettuce, though.   

By the way, I just went to Youtube, did a search, and guess what?  

Oh, the memories!

               

Good things are happening around here

My garden is going places now!  We've been eating leaf lettuce, and I cooked spinach from the garden, too.  The taste of canned spinach can't compare with cooked fresh spinach.  My first green beans are breaking though the top crust of soil in my garden, and out of ten asparagus roots, nine are now up.  I'm wondering if that one that hasn't showed up yet is even going to appear; I can handle losing one out of ten, though.

Strawberries have been blooming for awhile, and there are some green strawberries on many of the plants.  All the potatoes are up, and have been for awhile.  We've had some close calls with frost warnings, but those all came to nothing.

About that junky old Ford three-cylinder he bought, let me tell you the MAJOR things he did to get it running... not in the proper order:

1. The #2 rod was frozen to the crankshaft.

2.  He totally overhauled the engine.

3.  He soldered the radiator

4.  The intake had a crack in it from someone using starting fluid.  He took a cracked intake to a welding shop because he didn't trust his welding skills.  Next time he says he'd do it himself because of the expense.

5.  The rear end was full of water, so he had to change all the fluids.

But listen to that tractor purr now.

Hope

This is the most positive forecast I've seen for our area in three years.  We are always getting forecasts for the next three days that give us 100% chances of rain, but when they get to Kansas City, they go north or south... or split and go both directions, leaving us in the dust bowl.  But I have not, for a long time, looked two weeks ahead and seen so many chances of rain.  I realize that nobody can predict anything that far ahead for certain, but I'm hanging my hopes on this forecast and including a few prayers while I'm at it.  I am so very thankful for the rain we received yesterday!  We've had many days where the wind tried to blow down the plants in my garden; the tomatoes and peppers have lost some leaves in the battle, but they are not giving up.

We got some rain

First of all, I just finished a book called The Berry Pickers, by Amanda Peters.  It's her debut novel.  I really enjoyed it.  The link above will let you know what it's about.

Yesterday we began eating out of the garden; we had wilted lettuce.  Today we had leaf lettuce with salad dressing.  I think I could pick enough spinach for a batch, too.  I brought in four green onions for the wilted lettuce, but they are barely ready to pull up.  We are under a tornado watch, but it looks to me like that's out of the picture.  We had some hard winds this morning, and it's still blowing pretty hard.  On the bright side, we got some rain!  It didn't last long, but it was coming down hard.  My garden even has some water standing in it.

I have strawberries on two corners of the garden, and they are happy to have a drink.  I have watered them the best I can, but it doesn't do as much as rain.

We've had temperatures in the eighties lately, much too hot for April.  We will soon be having six days of temps in the fifties.  Nothing unusual for Missouri.  It does look like I might get away with having planting tomatoes, peppers, my one eggplant, and a lavender plant three weeks early.  The lowest temperature expected for the rest of April is 36° Saturday night. 

I've spent a lot of time in the garden lately, although I can't start my tiller most of the time.  It has problems.  So I have to go get my husband, and he starts it.  I've always just been able to go out and start it up without somebody else having to do it.  One way or another I'm going to buy one.  Cliff refuses to let me buy a used one, so it won't be cheap.

Wish me luck.

Cliff's globe came today.

Sunday Stealing

1.    What have you been the most ignorant about in your life?  I don't have enough time to figure this out, but my best guess would be politics and politicians.  There's never been a way for me to figure it all out.

2.    What in the world would you most like to see protected?  Children

3.    How do you waste the biggest chunk of time each day or week?  For years I would have said the time I spent on a computer.  These days I spend more time reading (on the iPad, which is a computer, but reading a book really doesn't count as surfing the Net, right?).

4.    Who is the scariest person you've ever known?  I guess I don't run into really scary people.  There is one politician I'm very scared of, though.

5.    What was  the job you enjoyed the least?  Western Electric

6.    What thing about your family are you the most proud of?  My husband is loved by all his heirs.  I might say the wrong things, hurt someone's feelings, and so forth.  If it weren't for Cliff, I imagine some of them wouldn't even come around.  He's the magnet in our family.  

7.    What kind of power do you want most?  I'm not equipped to have much power; I'm not smart enough and would likely misuse my power if I had one.  

8.    What's the best piece of advice you ever received?  Just be nice.    

9.    What's the  thing you  know the most about?  Raising baby calves

10.    When were you most moved by a ceremony?  My sister's husband's funeral: He was a veteran of World War II, so he had a military funeral.  I'd never seen a military funeral before, and I had goosebumps when the guns went off, and then when they folded the flag. 

11.    What is the best gift you ever gave to someone?  It's silly to call it a gift, since Cliff actually paid for all of it.  We used to talk about having a shop for him to work on tractors and such when we retired.  But there came a time when I realized we were not money-savers and there'd never be a way to get a shop built.  Somewhere in the 1990's I told him we should do it right then; our budget could afford it, and he could enjoy it right then.  I'm the one who takes care of paying our bills, and you wouldn't believe the things I have "forced" him to buy.  He's always afraid to take the step, so I push him.  But that shop has given him more pleasure than you can believe.  

12.    What is the cruelest thing you've ever suffered?  In the 70's, I worked at Whitaker Cable on an assembly line.  When I started, I had a terrible time keeping up; if one person is behind, then everyone after them on the line is also behind.  Nobody said anything, but the two nice ladies to my right helped me a little; of course, they were behind because of me, but they were kind.  Everybody else acted like I wasn't even there.  Three years later I listened to some of the other ladies I had worked with that day, laughing and bragging about how they used to deliberately try to force new people to quit.  That was quite an "aha moment".  I couldn't believe people would have been that cruel.

13.    What's the single nastiest thing you've ever done to someone?  I should have been nicer to my mother.

14.    What problem do you think is most common among friends your age?  We never know what part of our body will be wearing out the next day.  Aches and pains abound.

15.    What is the strongest craving you get?  When I was single, I had a group of people, amateur musicians like me.  We would all get together and play our guitars, and take turns singing, alone and together.  I miss that.  

Also, I often crave pizza.

Odds and ends

The next presidential election is getting closer, and I'm scared.    Oh, and inflation was 3.5% in March.  But enough of that.  Biden is being blamed, of course.  And if you-know-who wins, he will blame his own mistakes on Biden for the next four years.  Will we ever again have an election with a decent selection?  (Is that a rhyme?)

Cliff and I found an excellent new four-episode British program on PBS:  Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office.  It's a true story.  We watched the first two segments of it last night and can hardly wait to see how it ends.  I highly recommend it.

I put some tomato and pepper plants out and crossed my fingers that we don't get a late-May frost.  According to the weather folks, I'm safe at least until April 25, but who knows.  Our dry spell is in the third year and it doesn't look like there will be any change.  It isn't fun to garden when it never rains, and yet I plant, hoping this year will be the one that changes things.      

I just finished reading Judgement Prey.  I used to love John Sandford's books, but I've read so many of them I don't enjoy them any more; they all seem the same.  Yesterday I started The Berry Pickers.  Cliff is reading Columbus, the Four Voyages, a book he really likes; he said when he's on the exercise bike, it makes 30 minutes go fast. He told me he needed to know more about where certain countries are located, so I suggested buying a globe.  He was all for it, so next week we will have one.  That isn't something I ever thought I would be buying!  However, there have been times I'd like to have had a globe myself.

That's about it for today.

Peace.

Songs can change a day

I don't listen to a lot of music around the house.  I like music, but I can't have it on for long.  It gets on my nerves.  I read a lot, too, and I never could concentrate on a book with a lot of noise going on.  But this morning something made me think about Creedence Clearwater Revival, and I hunted up the one CD I have of theirs with twenty songs on it.  I can't explain what a good feeling I got listening to those songs, even though not all of them are happy songs.  Now I've been looking for my Bob Seger CD.  These aren't songs from my childhood, but from my children's childhood.  I was introduced to their music and grew to like a lot of it. 

If I knew how to dance, I think I would have danced to my music while I was in the kitchen making potato soup Cliff had asked for:  his older brother Phil was coming over with a broken trailer for him to do some welding on, and Phil loves potato soup; in fact, that's a favorite of all Cliff's relatives.  Every one of them eat sliced raw onion with their potato soup, too.  It's a family tradition, I suppose.  I'm glad I made it, since Phil got four refills!  I like seeing people appreciate my food.

The grandson next door can't do the hard work and lifting for Cliff for the next three months, since his right arm is in a cast and sling; tennis elbow, only more extreme.  They hurried to get all the heavy, hard work done on the project tractor before his operation, so Cliff thinks it will be finished up very soon.  It's put together now, after being in two pieces for months while they waited out the cold days and waited for parts to come.

Cliff's head is back there behind the seat.  My daughter said it was like a "where's Waldo" picture.  Gabe is wondering how it would feel to pee on that big back wheel.

If we're still up for it, Cliff and I are going to Jamesport Monday to shop in the Amish stores and see the sights.  We go about every year.  We'll take a picnic lunch along, because with inflation so high, we just can't justify eating out.

"The Amish settled in Jamesport in 1953 where farm land was affordable and their families could stick together. From the original seven families, there are more than 175 Amish families living in Jamesport now, which makes this settlement the largest old Amish order west of the Mississippi." 

Oh boy

I have not been in the best humor for over a week.  No, make that a month.  

We have three or four credit cards if you count Kohls, which I never use since they changed hands.  Oh yes, and we had to buy a refrigerator last week at Home Depot... if you get their credit card, they take fifty dollars off the price of what you buy, and if you pay it off in six months, there's no interest.  That won't be a problem for us, and we won't keep the card because we don't need it.

We don't carry a balance on credit cards.  Each month, they are paid off.  I always check what's on my bill, and in February, there was a charge on my Capital One card that I didn't recognize.  It wasn't a large amount, but I was sure it wasn't anything I had intended to pay for.  I guess I don't check small amounts as closely as I thought, because they'd been taking money for five months, as it turned out.  All told, it was less than a hundred dollars, but I wanted it back.  I called the phone number on my credit card; the foreign lady I was talking to asked me if someone else used our card, I told her no, nobody but my husband and I use our cards.  She was asking one question after another, asked my my secret words, address, and social security number.  I answered it all.  This wasn't my first rodeo, and I assumed she would just send us new cards with different numbers.  

But no, she then told me that I would have to scan or take a picture of both sides of my non-driver's license:  she would send an email that would let me send those pictures to her.  I sent them, and figured that was that.  

I assumed I could use my credit card again.  However, when I went online to pay my bill, it was not active.  I could pay my bill, but neither of us could use our cards.  I called to see why I was still unable to use the card, and the person I spoke to this time said the pictures were blurry.  I took more pictures, they were never good enough.  For four weeks I got messages from Netflix and Spectrum and Evergy and T-mobile that they didn't get their money, and so I put them all on a different card.  

Today I called again to tell them I had taken a picture that I knew wasn't shiny or shadowy or blurry, or lacking in anything!  It was a man I talked to this time.  I told him what I'd been through; he asked me the questions they always do to make sure it's really me.  And then he informed me he had taken restrictions off and I could use my card.  I said, "Don't I have to wait for a new card?"

No.  And I didn't have to send a picture.  After all that mess, my card is actually mine again, just that easy.  I would sure like to write a letter to somebody in charge of Capital One, because it literally ruined a month of my life, and I sure didn't like giving them my I.D. over and over.  I want an explanation!  

Through all this I didn't cry, I didn't tell anyone about it.  I just grieved.  Cliff wasn't nearly as bothered as I was about it, but then I'm the one who manages the bills.  He pays most of them, but I manage them.

And I still wonder if someone in India has my credit card number and is using my non-driver's license for some vile purpose.

That's why I haven't been posting lately.