Nov. 15, 2018

It has been a nasty , wet, cold day here in Va. , USA. The temps hovered around freezing , starting the day with a couple inches of sleet and ice and then cold rain which continued all day long.

I got the outdoor chores out of the way first thing. The donkey was really glad to see his breakfast as he was in the little barn space I had cleared out for him in this dilapidated barn which is in bad shape. Doug and I had built this thing back in the 70's . A master build for two dumb kids who had never built anything . Raising the roof was the hardest part. I thought we were going to kill ourselves . I raised lots of beautiful baby goats in there and  treasured the relationship I had with them. They gave me love and lots of food for the table. Fresh sweet milk, lots of buttermilk all kinds of cheeses and a dip to can and serve with the apples. It was hard work , but I loved it and the animals who shared my heart.

Now after a big tree crashing into it it is trying to hang in there but one side of it floods when it rains now and the corner I have saved for Yukon is where I use to milk the goats at. I hope it can stand as long as Yukon is alive .

I had moved some of the chickens around last night in preparation for this storm. It is the first one of our season . I was fixing the kids breakfast when the electricity went off so I turned to the wood stove and managed to complete a hash brown , biscuits and eggs breakfast which filled us up at least.

Then Crystal had to go to her doctor and Emmett had to go for his appointment and just as they left the electricity came back on so I was able to clean up the kitchen and carry up some of the firewood that Emmett had busted up for me and put on the sidewalk. I like to keep some in the house and some just outside the door so I won't have to go down the steps out into the weather through the night. I am having trouble getting it to burn today so I am worried that the chimney is stopping up again like it did last winter and I really Hate that because it scares me to death to see anyone climb up the steep ladder and work on that dumb chimney. If anyone was to fall and break their back I would never get over it.

I had put a big pot of red beans in the crockpot last night so at least we had that for supper and I  fixed a full skillet of cornbread . So we all filled our tummies. I also had some potato salad to go with it. I have experimented with a technique I saw online where the lady just washed the potatoes and boils them with the skin on and then chops them up and adds whatever you normally add .I like it because it takes a lot of work off of you from peeling the potatoes and you know the skins are suppose to be good for you anyway so I see it as less waste?

Emmett's girlfriend , Sandra always helps me clean up and I am so appreciative for her help. She is so very sweet and so good to me. I have always loved my kids partners and considered them my family. ( Weeellll - Maybe  just one of Crystal's boyfriends way back many years ago??? He really was a dud! And I was so thrilled when she throwed him back into the waters of single people for someone else to fish for - chuckle, chuckle) Some relationships are just not meant to be but you do not know that until you test the waters as we are just human and not mind readers.

As you can see I am working on Christmas gifts . I have played around with lots of crochet slipper patterns through the years . But last year I bumped into this pattern and it kinda stuck in my memory even though I only made a couple of them. But I remembered it was simple and with my eyes fading I need simple? So I made these first two sets and really did like them . They will be for my deceased girlfriend's grandchildren. The black and white pair have pom-poms and the brown and white pair I added jingle bells as they are for a younger child and I just think they like to "make a joyful noise". lol

This set was another experiment . Last year I had made some slippers for the family with a pattern called cloud slippers because they were made with blanket yarn and they were so soft. But the pattern was so hard for me to follow?? I do not know if it was the eyes or the brain giving me a fit. So I decided to test this new pattern out with the blanket yarn and I am throughly happy with it. This pair will be for one of my granddaughters.

Emmett and Sandra went out with me just at dark and helped me do the chores in the cold rain . It was so nice to have young people padding around in the slush with me just in case I were to fall. With their help it was accomplished in half the time and I was back in the house where it is warm and dry. I am so grateful to have my children that I love and appreciative for the help and a roof over my head. God is so good.

November 8, 2018

 

I have finally got started on my Christmas presents , boy am I getting a late start ? 

I figured almost anybody can make use of a handy dandy kitchen towel if they cook? So, I still am trying to come up with things that are useful and not just take up space.

It was a nice finish to a stressful afternoon. It had started out as a nice morning getting all my outdoor chores completed and enjoying some beautiful weather in the 50's which is lovely for us this time of year.

I had gone in and all my kids had headed to town to run errands and I was enjoying a nice late lunch when I thought I heard a noise outdoors. I peeked out the window but saw nothing so I stepped out on the side walk and heard voices. I peeked around the corner behind the house and saw two men jumping up and down on a truck that was stuck in the mud at the side of the house? I quickly darted back in the house and locked the doors as I was NOT expecting anybody ,  much less a truck stuck in the mud beside my house. I called my daughter to see how close to home she was and she said she would come right on.

This was peeking through one of my windows. That is the tail end of their truck as they are trying to push it back from the pasture where they had got stuck after they had moved the lawn mower and all of Crystal's tools and moved the gate to allow them access to go hunting without permission. 

Turns out I did know them but by now I was too terrified to go out of the house and too upset that they would just act like they owned the place. It is my deceased husbands brother and his grandsons . He would have nothing to do with my husband in the last 20 years of his life but now he acts like this is his land to do what ever he wants when ever he wants and that is usually deer season when he wants to bring his family to show them the joys of deer hunting. I do not want them here and I hate to cause a scene and make enemies of my nieces ? 

Crystal gets stopped for speeding by a state policeman and gets a ticket and I finally call her back and ask to speak to the policeman. I ask him if he could just let her come home because there are men here who have guns wanting to do hunting and I am scared of them - so he lets her go . By the time she arrives the brother has the entire driveway blocked where nobody can come or go and Crystal cannot even get in. She is upset too as she knows how scared I am . Then my youngest son arrives and he defuses the situation and they finally leave -saying they will be back in a few days! I really do not want them here . I just want my peace and quiet with my family. I have not had a relationship with this side of my hubbys family and I am too old to want to now. Deer season just tears me all to pieces anyway and I wish I could just disappear off the face of the earth for the duration of it.

I was left just trembling and so upset it was very hard to calm down when you feel like you have no say so over your own home and you privacy has been invaded when all you were doing was enjoying a quiet moment at home. Needless to say I was late getting all of my evening chores accomplished  and can not even calm down to sleep and my tummy is upset.  

I have many blessings to count and some days we just end up in trouble without even trying to?

This was just the 8th of this Month

It seemed like every time this little flower tried to bloom this "white stuff" would fall from the sky.
I got SO Very sick of it I thought I would wither away myself. I am Lusting for Spring to finally Really be here??????????

"Turkey Went A-Courting" - he surly did and now Mama is on 20 eggs-maybe Spring is here????

Looks like Yukon might have made it through another Winter - so maybe we can share another Summer!!!!!!!!!!! Yea.  Even as he gets into trouble. He tried to steal my daughter's bag of seed potatoes from her yesterday , and almost pulled it off. I never know donkeys love potatoes????

My beloved side-kick , Indy has been with me for a little over a year now and I donot know how I ever  managed without him. He is on constant "mouse control" and has done an excellent job. I still hate to see them murdered as I think they are so precious - but once they get into the hundreds they do so very much damage . His side-kick , Daisy is curled up in the house beside the stove -waiting -like me- for warm weather. lol  The three "antiques" are also still kicking and in the warm house -heck with this white stuff- I wish we could telaport to where it is warm All Year long. HUMMMM

I will be SO Grateful when Winter is really over. We had a surprise snowstorm that came so fast and furious that it caused our area to be declared a disaster area. They cut one lane roads through so that the crews could get in to work but it took us a week to be able to get our electricity and phone and internet service restored. These guys told me that they had come from N.J. towards their homes in Tenn. when they got called in to help here in Va. They said they had only been home two days in March and had been up in N.E. working. They were really great guys.

I was lucky to have my indoor woodstove for the week for heat, but it got me in trouble as I was low on dry wood so I substituted the green wood that we had to cut to free our driveway and it stopped my chimney up so right now I cannot use it. It is so easy for me to get myself in trouble.

Just when I had hopes that Spring really was here -This happened-BOOOOOOO! I had covered her up when I knew snow was in the forcast the other time to keep it from getting broke off , but yesterday morning Old Man Winter made one more swipe through. I sure was glad we did not lose our electricity this go round .

I mean , even Indy agrees with me , where is this white stuff coming from - this must be an "April Fool Joke"?????????????

So, me and all the critters are anxiously awaiting the real Spring!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ~smile~

In The Midst of the Work

You can "steal" a little treat. I have still been working on the fire damage cleaning part and while cleaning my Parlor Princess's bed I discovered she needed a pillow case for her body pillow that she likes to perch on through the day to keep an eye on things? Then I discovered a small sheet I had found at the Goodwill and brought home for just that purpose last Summer so why not use this moment as the perfect treat for me ? So, it was my moment to steal away to the sewing machine my friend, Lynne had fixed for me and make Mocha a pillowcase. Something simple that did not bring me to tears with the challenge? It was a pure pleasure to get to do something enjoyable-even for a short time and Mocha has her pillowcase. Yea.

Well, you have heard of dogs that steal the cat bed-but when I peeked in at the new dog bed -hoping to find one of the pups in it because it is near the wood stove and nice and warm- only to find Miss Rosie claiming it. Normally she despises me to take her picture , but in her bliss she only opened that one eye and then ignored me. lol

Indy decided to check out his new sweatshirt he got for this awful cold spell and it was nice and warm to wear outdoors to do chores.

Daisy just wanted to check out her new toys and seemed to pass them all with her stamp of approval. It is cold and rainy here with the ice hanging all over the trees as the temperature hangs right on freezing. I am glad I got the morning chores accomplished early before it got so slippery .

I am just so tired. Sure do wish my energy would come back soon. But ,I Really do Hate winter -I will be so glad to see Summer and all the goodness that comes with it.

I fixed my second dish of curry this past week and it was really good, so I must like curries. I really do love soups of all kinds. I am fixing black beans and cornbread for Crystal tonight and then hoping to turn the leftovers into black bean soup tomorrow.

There are just so many things I would like to do that it overwhelms me to try to organize it? Life is definitely Full and I am grateful .

Still Kicking

It has been really "trying" here after the fire and being so sick. I seem to get tired much too easily and there is just So Much that needs to be done, but I just run out of steam. Then all kind of life things keep popping up in the way.

My dear friend in Tenn. had sent this lovely gift for my pups for Christmas. It was just so cute that I had saved it-believing it to be much too cute -but thinking my pickie pups would have nothing to do with it, as I have a hard time just finding food they will eat. Not like my daughter's hound who will gobble up anything in town. lol

The first testor is Indy and he liked it so much that he is gobbling up the crumbs right under his nose working his way to the "pie".  Hum???

Testor #2 , Daisy who is very "testy" - she gives it her paw of approval with lots of delicious licks.

And testor #3, Mocha who is the Parlor Princess and lives on the bed says it is "tongue licking" good. She looks as shocked as I am that here is something that she likes??

Testors 4 and 5 are hiding so they will come out later in the day to get their sample. I am still very surprised and very grateful to my buddy for thinking of my beloved furbabies. There is no better gift than seeing something you love made happy and having great friends who pull that off for you is a Blessing...When God picks our friends for us - they always turn out to be the BEST.



The temperatures are mild here today , but it has been raining and it is a muddy mess. I laid some hay down outdoors in one of the chicken runs that was muddy.  It is on a hilly slope so they will scratch it all down the hill into a pile so it is a challenge keeping them nice. I would have liked to use that in compost but it is under a walnut tree and you cannot use walnut in compost -darn it.


My house is still upside down. I am still working in the kitchen. It is a tiny kitchen just crammed so it is very difficult to tackle it. Plus climbing up and down the step ladder is painful and with my poor balance and bad eyesight -a little scarey. I get very overwhelmed- and I hate that.

My sewing buddy , Lynne took my sewing machine home with her and fixed it, where it would not work at a sewing group recently. I was so disappointed in it-but turned out it was my lack of maintence that had caused the problem in the first place. She Even Found A Pin down in the machine !!!!!!!!!! How in the world did I manage to pull that off??????????????????  See what I mean about having wonderful friends !

Then Saturday I was working hard outdoors to get all my chores accomplished before the rain was to arrive and my last project was to change the oil in the car. So, I got all my tools together and all the supplies and moved the car where I could get under the front of her to reach the oil plug. I really hate this job because I am closterphobic and not really made to be a mechanic. But I do want my little car to last as long as she possibly can. I pulled on my ratchet but it did not want to budge? It was Way Tigher than normal and it took quiet a bit of persuading to get it to start to turn-and Turn-and Turn-and Turn! Yea- it was not suppose to do that! 

So, as usual I had got myself into a pickle. My neighbor was helping Crystal with a project so I went and asked his opinion. He checked it out and could do nothing with it and said that the oil plug had stripped out???????????????????? I Really wanted to just cry. Another neighbor stopped but he could not help and then Crystal tried a couple of things but her hands are in such bad shape from her carpal tunnel that she could not do anything either???? ( I certainly wish that Workman's Comp would get her hands fixed, but it has been a nightmare. She had even been put off from work because of restrictions the doctor had put on her until her hands are to be fixed. So she filed for unemployment the other day and then received a claim denied because no wages were found - AFTER working for the post office for 17 years ??????No wages???? I don't think she worked for free for 17 years?????

But when people started talking that I would need a new oil pan and a new oil plug and that would cost over a hunred dollars?????

So, I gave up and called my oldest son, Cory and asked for his help. He told me to bring it over so  he could work on it. Crystal followed me and low and behold in just a few moments Cory had got that dude out and Crystal went and got a new oil plug which Cory had to fight with a little bit to get back in because of the threads. But he got it in ! He is one of those men who can do anything! He is amazing and I admire him so very much. I wish I had just a wee bit of his talents! and I do mean Talents.So I had to give him a quick hug and take off because it was getting very late and poor light and my macular degeneration is getting worse so driving near dark is a challenge for me.

But that is the way my life seems to run-one challenge after another and I get so side-tracked ? This was suppose to be my month to rest and regroup for new projects for Christmas 2018? No rest this January?????????

Well Folks, It Happened Again

It has been a very challenging month for sure. We started off our year with below freezing temperatures and I was just fighting keeping the outdoor birds food and water as the water would freeze solid within 30 minutes of me getting it to them. I was cold and miserable also and fighting to keep my energy up to accomplish the goals. Then I got sick, a sinus infection with the worst headache.

I had curled up in my chair with the pups and a blanket and dosed off to sleep as I was exhausted. I awoke to a fog- both in the house and in my brain. My eyes have not been working too great anyway-lots of blurry things ??? It was like I was in a house stuffed full of white cotton ??? I thought that was odd because the blow back smoke from the stove was always black and hard to breath in? But I got up and opened the front door to let the smoke out-but after a spell it was not going anywhere and was even more dense??? I checked the wood stove and it was almost out?? So, I decided to fill it up and it would cause an updraft and pull out any smoke?(Bad decision)  It did take right off but the smoke was not going anywhere?

I looked at the aquarium and I could see smoke rising up from the light-so I thought the light was on fire . I unplugged it and took it out on the front porch and came back and looked at the aquarium-only to see smoke drifting up from under the stand. I yanked off the front covering and pulled out the two bins of crochet patterns and placed them on the couch, but could not see the floor because the stand had a solid bottom. I thought maybe it was coming from the basement so I ran down to the basement and looked but no smoke - no fire???

On my way back around the house outdoors I spotted the smoke billowing from the side wall of the house -and I knew I was in trouble . I ran in , grabbed the phone and called 911 and Crystal.  Fighting to see in the haze I found my dog crates and started snatching up the pups and tossing them in the crates all crammed together. I ran them out to the car and moved the car up the hill to make room for the fire department . It was 3 degrees and miserable. Crystal had arrived and she grabbed a hammer and me a crowbar. She was tearing into the wall and found a spot where the pipe went into the wall and there was a nest of fire. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and tossed it to her and she hit it with that.  Crystal was trying desperately to tear the sheet-rock off the wall but the trouble she has been having with her hands and her carpel tunnel had weakened her hands so she could not even break through.

About that time our neighbor who is the fire chief arrived and tossed us out of the house. We took the animals up to her "Tiny House" and then came back down and Jessie on the rescue put us in her warm truck to watch. I went into shock as I watched the firemen cut out the wall and chase the fire in the wall. They also carried out the wood in the stove -piece by piece and tossed it in the yard -then carried out the entire wood stove and set it on the little porch , just big enough to hold it.  Hours later it was over and the one wall was gone to the living room.

They thought I would stay with Crystal in the Tiny House where it was nice and warm but I would not leave my house. Bill nailed up some plywood and Crystal got the old furnace working. It was a good thing I stayed because the heat kept going off and the pipes would have frozen and burst. I kept fiddling with it until the wee hours of the morning when the electricity went off entirely.

When my son arrived the next morning it was 39 degrees in the house. Cory tore off the outside siding all burnt and twisted and Bill gave us two sheets of the black insulation board , which Cory put up. Cory is outdoors working on this in 3 degrees and he is dead sick also..... Once he got the outside wall closed in some then it got warmer in the house. I carried bag after bag of trash down to the highway , just trying to make some room to work. Crystal took a day off from work and she put up the sheet-rock in the house .That night I was so cold I had on 3 layers of clothing and a winter jacket and fleece cap and went to bed like that with 3 blankets and my pups. I was shivering so bad the entire bed was shaking. My friend , Joyce came and brought me two hundred dollars so I decided to go to the doctor. But my doctor was closed  so Crystal took me to something called Urgent Care. They treated me like angels . I was so appreciative and they took X-rays of my lungs and they showed spots of damage from the smoke so I came home with a basket of medicine and all of Joyce's money gone. Medicine is expensive .

While Crystal and I were on the road traveling we became entangled in stalled traffic. We were just 8 cars from where a lady was on her phone , crossed the line and hit a tractor trailer in front of us -killing her. I was beginning to feel like death was nipping a little too close on my heels?

I know I was in shock and even grieving for all the disaster in the house and started to cry off and on . Finally I was too sick to continue to try to clean up. I have washed 3 of the walls in the living room but my energy gave out entirely to this stuff and I slept most of the day yesterday.  We had a break in the weather and then yesterday the pipes in the building burst flooding it . I grabbed the drill and drill bits and drilled holes in the floor to let the water escape -trying to keep it away from the chicken runs so their little feet do  not freeze.

Crystal is laying a ceramic mat on the floor for the stove to come back in .

Cory has installed the thimbles in the wall for the new stove pipe and he built a concrete form to hold the thimbles so there is NO WOOD anywhere around the pipe in the wall. The fire inspector said that the chimney had settled -crushing the thimbles that were in the wall , allowing the fire to escape into the wall on the board that was a cross board which all the 2 X 4's were hooked to and that was how the fire traveled inside the wall.

I am very grateful for my wonderful , talented kids. It is hard to believe that these tiny babies that I raised have grown into such talented adults. I am just so tired of being sick and having no energy to lay hands to what needs to be accomplished. This was suppose to be my month to rest. lol

My pups have really struggled trying to understand how their world got turned upside down. The 3 older ones have been in hiding most of the time, just trying to find somewhere to find heat. I have hated to see them stressed, with their life upside down too. Love to all!