The picture that scared me silly!!

We live in the country, and when Gabe needs to go out, I just open the door and let him go.  But when a coyote hunter put this picture on Facebook, it reminded me that an 18-pound dog would make a good meal for a coyote.  We are having a real winter so far this year. 

After seeing that picture, I also remembered losing my cat Blue to some kind of creature last year and decided from now on, I'll leash Gabe and go out with him when it's dark.

Seems like we get two or three really cold days, then the thermometer gets up in the thirties and the snow melts down some.  Then the cold makes the snow hard on top so you can hardly walk anywhere without getting stuck; when I'm walking Gabe, I have a flashlight in one hand and the leash in the other and just pray I don't fall.  

Every morning I've been turning the lights off in the house around 6:45 A.M. so I can see each day getting a minute or so longer.  Today and tomorrow we'll be in the forties, then it's back to lows around zero.

Monday we will go see how well our eyes are working now that we each have had cataract surgery.  Then I will get an appointment for my left eye.  Cliff has decided he doesn't want to get his other eye fixed until it gets worse.    

That's all I have this time.  Over and out.

How to make a winter day better

I went out to the garage early this morning to feed Mama Kitty.  While I was there, I opened the freezer and got a package of the strawberries I picked last June.  As soon as I got in the house, I put the baggie of fruit in the microwave and hit the defrost button; you want them to be a little bit frozen when you eat them with your cereal.  I put Cliff's cupful back in the fridge and ate mine as soon as I could.  I had already decided we'll have potato soup and corn bread for dinner.  I don't use a recipe for soup, but I wanted to see if the recipe for potato soup in this book had a trick or two I could add to mine; the only thing I decided to add was four crisp-fried pieces of bacon to crumble over the soup when it's done. 

My oven doesn't work, but I've found out I can halve my cornbread recipe, warm up the electric skillet to 350°, and let it serve as an oven.  I have a pan that holds enough batter for a half-recipe.  I probably will get another stove eventually, but until then I find other ways to cope.

My son's oldest daughter... my oldest granddaughter... called last week and asked if she could come and watch me make noodles, her favorite food.  She called me years ago and got my recipe; at the time, I remember telling her she really needed to watch me make it before she tried it, but in all these years, she has never been here when I was making it.  She makes noodles often, but then she tells me, "They doesn't taste like yours."

So Saturday she came, bringing most of the ingredients for two of my recipes.  Her plan was to double the noodle recipe; she even brought chicken thighs for the noodles.  Then she would take it home, and she and her mother could eat noodles for a couple days.  I had assumed I'd be making the noodles and putting them on a cookie sheet raw, so she would cook them at home.  I do sometimes double recipes, but if anything I cook is going to go wrong, it usually is when I double a recipe, so it might not be the best way.  She agreed on that. 

Around this time, she mentioned the chicken she'd bought and I realized I'd be the one boiling the noodles.  No problem.

She had told her brother and his fiance she'd be here and to come over and visit with us while we cooked.  Also, her mom and her guy were coming.  By the time those noodles were done it was dinnertime, and some other people happened by.  This was starting to feel like the time Jesus took a little boy's lunch and fed 5,000 people!

Poor Amber got one small serving of her noodles.  Had I known I was having a party, there would have been more to eat.  I did make some mashed potatoes, because in our tradition, we put noodles on our mashed potatoes.  Cliff and I had some leftover Taco Soup, and we shared that.  Oh yes, and my granddaughter had also wanted to watch me make Oreo Dessert, because as simple as it is, there is one step that can be difficult.  That's the first thing I made, so there was dessert for everybody!!!  All except Amber, who doesn't like chocolate.

She wanted a selfie of us when everybody left, so here it is.  My curly hair isn't curly in winter because I go outside at least twice a day with my hat on; the curls only come back when I wash my hair.

This isn't my best look, but I have no shame. Cliff says it looks like my face and my neck are one. 

Tractor stuff

Here is Cliff's newest Challenge:  Our neighbor's 1956 Standard International tractor.  It has the same engine as the SWD9.  (Whatever that is.)  To get it started, it has to be warmed up on gas, then switched to diesel.  That's what makes it rare.  This tractor was only built one year.

It had been setting for a long time, and the engine was stuck tight.  Arick, who does the actual work, tried several of Cliff's remedies; my husband calls those remedies "old Indian tricks".  One of the tricks worked and the engine is free.  

So far, no more work has been done on it because Randy, the neighbor, had to make up his mind how much money he wants to part with.  There is one mystery we have to pursue before Randy sinks money in an overhaul, which would cost over $2,000. When they started dismantling the engine, it had new oil in in, new antifreeze, and didn't appear to ever have been started!  It was too clean inside the engine.

So to pursue the problem, they are going put it back together and see if they can get it running rather than overhaul it.  All Randy will have to buy is oil, antifreeze, a head gasket, and a battery.  Then they will try to find another old Indian trick.

These two pictures show you the massive head off of the engine.

Randy has ordered the head gasket, so we wait to see what happens next.  Stay tuned.

We haven't done much today.  Cora spent a few hours with us; there has been no school for the kids around here all week, thanks to the snow.  By the way, we had another inch or so of the white stuff last night.

 

What a storm!

 The National Weather Service said Sunday's snowfall in Kansas City's total was surpassed only by three other dates.

• March 23, 1912, with 16.1 inches
• January 18, 1962, with 11.8 inches
• February 27, 1900, also with 11.8 inches.

We lived to tell about it.  My only fear, as we waited for the storm, was the freezing drizzle they said was coming first.  We bought our used trailer house in 2008, and after years of living in it, if we ever have a long power outage with bitter cold temperatures, it will wreak enough damage to the place that it wouldn't be worth fixing.  

We did have a lot of drizzle, freezing rain, and strong wind blowing.  Everything about this storm was exactly like the weathermen said.  But not once did our electricity even blink off.  I thank the Lord for that.  All we want is for this place to last as long as we need it.

Because of the wind, there's lots of drifts out there.  Yesterday when I headed to the goat pen, I had to go through one drift that came up to my knees... and my boots aren't that high.  I made it out there, but there was a drift between the goat house and their water bucket that they couldn't get through.  Later in the day I dug paths from our house to the pen and from the goat house to the bucket.  Also from the gate to the pen, so I could get there without getting stuck in a drift.  The goats had hay close by, but believe me, they were thirsty.

Actually, considering how cold it is outside... around zero right now... snow is a blessing for us.  This old trailer house stays warmer because blowing snow finds the places where wind comes in and stops the drafts.

By the way, that big snow in 1962 is one I'll never forget.  I was to graduate in the spring of 1962.  It's also the year my mother found out she had a cancerous kidney.  They removed it and she lived until 2004 with only one kidney.  Also, the evening of the day after that storm, I remember my mom drove us to St. Joe to see the wrestling matches we went to every Friday night.  Our seats on the front row were always waiting for us.  My dad worked nights, so it was mostly Mother and me that went, but I seem to remember that a couple from church went with us that time; the roads were NOT that safe.  

My mom was a very good driver, though, and my dad hated to drive, so she drove us everywhere and my father only drove to work and back.  She never got a ticket, although I recall her talking one cop out of giving her one... we were going to the wrestling match that time, too.  She was telling him about all the reasons she had accidentally been driving over the speed limit, and I think he just got tired of listening and let her go.

The cold temperatures are with us for at least a week; supposedly more snow may come, but I doubt it will be anything like the one we just had.  

Stay safe and warm, everybody!  If you want to know the truth, I've sort of enjoyed this rare storm.

How to make my husband leave the house

We are in the winter of our lives now, and things are different.  One of us seems to be healthier than the other, and that seems to be me; except for the fact I am losing more words every day, I seem to be pretty healthy for an eighty-year-old.  Somehow I've gotten back to walking outside, which I didn't think would ever happen.

Cliff, on the other hand, has to sleep on the couch.  Just night before last he tried to sleep in bed with me, but at midnight he was back on his side of the couch laying back at half-mast with his feet up.  His lungs are bad, I believe because of a job he had for about five years in the 1960's that had him breathing poison at a metal plating place; eight hours every workday he was putting caustic acid in his lungs.  He smoked Camel cigarettes when I married him, but quit smoking, for the most part, in his twenties.  I'm pretty sure I can lift more than he can, and I don't want him going out in the cold trying to get his breath.  If the sidewalks need the snow removed, I do it.    

He goes to sleep a lot, day or night.  He has aches and pains in shoulders and hips and hands and can't feel the bottom of his feet when he wakes up.  You will usually find him on the couch, and it isn't that he's lazy.  He makes himself get on the recumbent bike almost every day, just because it's about the only way he can get any exercise.  

But with the right tractor and our oldest grandson, he usually starts to get a little excited.

He doesn't want to buy tractors any more, although he looks at the ads for old tractors on Facebook Marketplace every day, mumbling things like "this guy is crazy; he'll never get that much money for that thing", or "good luck with that".

It's expensive to fix those old tractors, and if they are just parked all the time stored in a barn, eventually they won't start again even if they were fixed.  It's a matter of use it or lose it.  However, I think the real reason he doesn't buy them any more is the cost of fixing them.  

Last fall our next-door neighbor, Randy, who is a farmer and a lover of International Farmall Tractors, came over and talked to Cliff and the grandson about maybe helping him get an old tractor going.  He and his dad bought it because this particular tractor was only built for one year, 1956... so it's a rare find.  It wasn't running when they bought it; in fact, the engine was stuck.  Cliff is too weak these days to work on dead tractors, and that's where the grandson comes in.  Of course, Randy can help with lifting too; he's middle-aged, but young enough to still have willing muscles.  And if anybody spends money for parts, it will be him.  

There is heat in the shop, and Cliff is finally interested in something that's going on out there.

Will it snow?

The weather guessers are all saying they aren't sure what will happen with the snow:  It could come as freezing rain, there may be three-to-four inches of snow, or we may have 12 inches of snow; no matter what, it will come Sunday.  Whatever we get (or don't), it's going to be very cold after Sunday.  I'll be dealing with making sure the goats and Mama Kitty get a good drink every day, because all they'll have is ice most of the time.  

December has put me in a place where I don't even know what day it is.  With Christmas and New Year being in the middle of the week, I never knew what day it was, and I'm still having trouble.  For instance, I get my Social Security the second Wednesday of each month, but two days ago (the first Wednesday of the month) I was looking at my bank's website to see if my money had arrived; when it wasn't there, I thought I had a big problem... where's my money?  I called the bank, but before anyone answered, I realized my mistake and cancelled my call.  

It seemed like December was never going to end, and January isn't going to be much better.  At least I have several library books to read.  All my holds are coming at once, so I let some of them go back for awhile so someone else can read them until I am ready.

Cliff and I both had colds three or four weeks ago, but Cliff just wasn't getting over it, so he finally went to the doctor and got an antibiotic and something for his cough.  I hope it works, because that constant coughing, spitting, and hacking has worried me.  It seems like there's a lot of sickness around lately. 

I'm still managing to get my walk in five days a week, but I doubt if I do it next week; if the snow doesn't stop me, the temperature will!

That's all I have.  I hope the folks north and east of us are ready for this mess.