Okay, some of you may have thought I had a meltdown about the election, but I really didn’t. I still do not believe Biden won or at least, won fairly, but the lawyers will see.  So I’m living the life. The life before Biden because the life after is not to be borne.

I have been so busy and it seems every time we do anything I forget to take pictures so this is another pictureless blog, but I will try to make up for it next time.

David took a week off and did some much needed chores around the house. It seems when he is home I get NOTHING done except think about what to feed him.  I’m looking forward to next week when he is back at work and I have a whole day not having to think about food.  He says he doesn’t eat much, but I have cooked more this week than others recently.  Of course there-was our first Thanksgiving dinner where we had my daughter-in-love, her husband and our three grandchildren for dinner.  Our two sons were out of town and our daughter, who has MS was quarantining herself.   We had a great time and the meal was good, but like all other meals I have prepared and served at past family dinners, I forgot one dish.  We had all eaten and had our dessert when I remembered what I had forgotten.  I had good home frozen corn that I had cooked and put in a bowl to reheat in the microwave and as we sat there at the table, all of us stuffed, I suddenly remembered the corn.  I got it out and placed it on the table and would you believe almost everyone took a helping and in some cases two helpings and ate the corn.  They love my home grown frozen corn.  I had frozen it specifically for Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Anyway, there isn’t much left of it.

I have been finishing up some Christmas gifts which I can’t show yet.  I really put the pressure on myself this year and you will see why after I post the pictures one day. I’ve also been busily knitting socks. I think I’ve knitted about fifteen pair this year.  Maybe more. Every time I would get a pair completed, I would put them in a bag upstairs out of sight and I haven’t counted them lately.

The puppies are growing so big. We took them to the vet’s this week and they weighed 37 and 39 pounds. The vet said they were slightly overweight because she couldn’t feel their ribs.  I thought they were slightly thin.  I put them on a four cup a day diet down from six cups a day.  They seem ravenous all the time.

We went to our daughter’s house today to take them leftovers from our dinner and when we came home the puppies had torn through the screen door on our porch and I saw Lucy running around scattering shoes we take off out there.  David is working on the door as I type. I’m interested to see what he is doing. I asked him a while ago to put a cover over the screen in the door because I knew something like this would happen. They had already chewed a hole in some of the screen before. Next Summer David has several screens to replace.

It’s a rainy, chilly day today. We drove over to Nashville in Brown county where our daughter lives.  Usually this time of year there is a lot of traffic going to Nashville as it’s a touristy little town with lots of cute shops, but because of the “virus” things have slowed down and traffic was very light. It was fun to see houses along the way that have their Christmas lights on or ready.  One little house just outside Nashville has a huge amount of those blow up lights, Santa, snowmen, etc., and when they are deflated their yard looks like a lot of dead blow up toys are on the ground.  But going by their house at night is a  treat.

We will be decorating for Christmas after Thanksgiving. I like to celebrate one holiday at a time and I think Thanksgiving has been pushed aside for Christmas in the past, but this year so many of us have so much to be thankful for. It’s been a very strange year, especially for those who are used to getting out every day. Me, it hasn’t affected as much as I’m a pretty stay at home kind of person only getting out once in a while.  Now when I get out things seems so different in some ways and of course, there are the masks we have to wear, which I hate with a passion.  I managed to get out and get a haircut. I haven’t had anything done professionally to my hair since Spring and my hair had grown clear down my back. I did color it myself which my beautician immediately noticed and said I needed a touch up.  He cut my hair shoulder length with layers and it feels so much better. I’m going to go in in a few weeks and get a color and trim.  I almost feel human again.  I wasn’t going to go get my hair cut until the mask mandate was over, but since it looks like we will all be wearing masks into infinity, I knew I needed to do something.

I have an idea for a blog that’s been brewing in my head, but I have to get some things together and get some pictures taken before I write it.   It’s about old books.  Do you love old books?   Do you even read books any longer or is all your reading done on Kindle?   I do read a lot on Kindle, but I do love old books.

I will see you on the other side of Thanksgiving and may you all have a very blessed one.  Bye.

Over the last four years I have felt like we live in two different countries.  Once upon a time when a person won an election he was duly elected, went to work and that was all. Now, whenever a Republican wins an election, the Democrats suddenly find thousands of “lost” ballots and they are always for the Democrat candidate. That is what happened this presidential election.  It’s happened many times before.

For the last four years I have watched President Trump vilified, attacked and made out to be the most dastardly person anyone could ever know. All CNN, MSNBC, and all the other alphabet news outlets could never report anything good about President Trump. Not when he stopped ISIS from its murderous rampage, not when he  brokered peace in the Middle East and had the American embassy placed in Jerusalem. This after all preceding presidents told us they would do it. Not when he was nominated for three Nobel Peace Prizes. Not just one like Obama was and he was lauded by the press like he had found a cure for cancer.  Not one liberal news outlet reported it.  Not when he stopped flights from China when the Coronavirus was coming from there. He was called racist. Then later they reported he didn’t act fast enough and wanted people to die.  Not when he lowered taxes on the middle class. If you were employed, you noticed a raise in your paycheck   Not when he built the wall on our southern border stopping all the illegal immigration coming into our country.  Not when he had checks sent to people who were out of work because of the virus.  No, never was one good thing reported about our president. President Trump has done more for this country in four years than Biden did in the forty-seven years he was in congress. He did, in fact, do many things other presidents said they would do, but never managed to accomplish. I remember all those promises unkept.

Sure, Biden enriched himself and his family, but he sure did not work for we the people and I don’t see him doing it in the next four years if he manages to keep the presidency which is still up in the air.  Remember. Al Gore had thirty-seven days to try to find more votes in Florida.  Remember the hanging chads?  There was voter suppression going on, but it wasn’t Democrat voter suppression.

After four years of hate toward our president and, I might add, toward those who voted for him, ,we are now to lay down and kiss the ground Biden steps on just because he says he will unite us!  He did NOTHING to try to unite us for the four years he was VP and never while he was in congress, so I won’t be holding my breath for him to suddenly become the kind loving Old Joe the liberal press likes to talk about. He said some pretty nasty things about us and our president. So have many of you reading this.   I’m sure President Trump feels like the battered wife who is told to put her sun glasses on now to cover her blackened eyes, wear a long sleeved shirt to cover the bruises and now must unite with his batterers and get along. I say, don’t hold your breath. We who voted for him have been treated like second class citizens. Beat up for wearing Trump hats.  Sworn at for wearing a Trump shirt. Never once did I hear the truth about our president come out of the mouths of the liberal, leftist media. I call them the enemydia now and don’t watch them any longer. OAN and Newsmax are my news sources of choice now.  I’ve also gotten off Facebook as it censored a whole lot of free  speech during the election.

They are still counting the votes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and a couple of other states where vote counting was stopped election evening and overnight  they just happened to find just enough votes for Biden to put him over the top. Funny, well, not so funny for those of us who want a free and fair election.  When I went to bed election night I was sure President Trump had won handily.  They say President Trump got seventy-one million votes, eleven million more votes than he got last election. You will never make me believe he did not win the election. I will not call Biden my president and President Trump is hinting that if he loses this election so unfairly, he will start running for president 2024. So you haven’t gotten rid of President Trump and those of us who elected him so fast.  The world will not suddenly become the rosy thing you think it will under Biden. The air won’t be fresher, your pocket will certainly be thinner, but maybe the virus will disappear now.  Very strange.

You may think I sound bitter. No, I’m in a fighting mood.  Ready to take back what was stolen from us and next time there will be no question.  There are millions of people just like me. I saw many of them at the Trump rallies. Some of the nicest people you could ever know.

Just remember this. If gas goes to five or six dollars a gallon during Biden’s term, don’t blame Trump. They will try to.  When your taxes go up and you are having trouble making ends meet, don’t blame Trump. He had the best economy going this country had seen for years until the virus hit us and it was coming back again. Now watch your stocks go down if you have any.

Do I think President Trump is the perfect man? No, there was only one perfect man who walked this earth and the haters murdered him.   Is Biden perfect? Have you seen how he fondles little girl?  Have you seen the video where his son took showers naked with his 14 year old niece?  No, you won’t have heard about this because they were protecting Biden. He won’t be president for long. Kamala will take over and then it will be hell on earth for us.  She has a lot of baggage also, but I won’t go into it now.

So celebrate while you can, but you might want to go buy a gun  and hide your money because it’s going to be a bumpy ride if Biden takes the reins.

To all my liberal friends, I’m glad I got this off my chest after reading some other liberal blogs. To my conservative friends, we’ve just begun to fight. Bye

Raising two puppies and a needy adult dog is tiring!  I feel like I use to when we had two toddler boys and I was trying to keep up with them while working and keeping house. I told David the other day, it’s like old times. He leaves for work and I’m left home with the children to care for!  The puppies are pretty independent and I’m leaving them outside by themselves a little more, but I still worry about the pool and them falling in, so I’m constantly checking on them.

Another thing is, they won’t eat for me. They will eat for David, but  unless I hand feed them, they won’t take a bite out of their bowl.  I don’t know why. Same food.  I think they are playing with me.  But they are so cute and rambunctious and fun to watch as they play in the yard.

I forgot to tell you about our visit with one of my brothers when we went to pick up the puppies. It was very surprising that their house was just down the same road from where the puppies were!  My brother, Fred, was the third child born into our family.  He and my other brother, Andy use to take me on hikes with them and their friends. Well, Mom made them take me so she’d have some peace and quiet, I’m sure.  But they would drag me along and we’d swim in creeks, have walnut fights at an old cabin that sat behind our farm and sometimes the neighbor boys would let me see their horses. They had several.

This is Fred and his wife, Carole.

We wanted to take them out to eat, but Carole made the best chili and apple pie and we ate at their house.  They live in a very nice retirement village where they can have all their meals delivered if they wanted.  That would suit me fine as I hate to cook.  Their yard is maintained for them so they don’t have to worry about mowing or anything.  I like that, too.  I want to find someone we can depend on to mow our yard. We had someone, but I think the man wanted larger jobs than what our yard entailed, so he quit.

We had a nice visit and I looked at some stories that Fred had written about growing up on the farm and had published by Shutterfly into a book.   I loved reading them and I can order the books, too. I remember a lot of the things he wrote about and it seems like only yesterday.  One  was when my brothers and the neighbor boys were throwing rocks in a large puddle in the road down from our house. I was, of course, right in the middle of it and one of the rocks bounced and hit me right in the mouth and blood started shooting out. My brothers knew they were in trouble.  I must have been a sight coming in the back door, blood running all over me and me crying.  I don’t remember if I lost any teeth, but I do remember my brothers got into trouble. I don’t know why.

Fred  also had a compilation of letters that were written by great-grandparents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and many other relatives. He had hand typed every letter since some were hard to decipher or the spelling was bad.   I read one my grandmother wrote to a cousin and she was talking about my grandfather who she hadn’t married yet. It was all so interesting.  Fred is our family historian. I hate to think what may happen to all this history once he’s gone.  Most young people don’t seem all that  interested in family history.  We know many don’t know much about American history by what has been going on in some of our cities.  If we forget our history, we will repeat it.

It was a nice visit but they live almost three hours away so we can’t visit very often.

Today was one of the most gorgeous Autumn days. The sky was so blue, The trees are beginning to turn. It’s my favorite time of year.

Here’s to brothers I love and to beautiful Autumn Days. Bye.

Did you see it?  Did you watch the debate between Joe Biden and President Trump?  I watched it and to my mind it was two against one.  Watch it carefully again and you will discover that Joe Biden was the first to interrupt in the course of answering questions.   President Trump answered his first question, no interruption.  Joe Biden answered his first question, no interruption. Then President Trump got his second question and was answering it when Joe Biden began to interrupt him. That is when the whole debate went downhill because President Trump plays fair with those who play fair, but he becomes an angry lion when he is not treated fairly.  And Joe Biden and Chris Wallace were not playing fair.

I listened carefully to the whole debate and not once did Joe  Biden truly answer a question that was given him. He made it a point to look at the camera and act like he was talking to someone off camera telling them what he would do in a certain situation, but he never answered a question. Then he told the president to “shut up,” which wasn’t very presidential.  I believe Joe Biden is in some way incapacitated either with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease and it scares me that people would put someone that sick into the White House to make hard decisions about our country.

I believe if President Trump were treated fairly and allowed to answer his questions, there would have been no problem, but Chris Wallace and Joe Biden both could not seem to allow him to answer one question before being interrupted.  It all went downhill. If Mr. Wallace had just allowed both men to debate as a debate should be, it would have been more interesting and both men might have gotten their questions answered.  We will never know, will we?

Now Chris Wallace is doing the crying and whining tour, going on any show he can saying the debate debacle was all President Trump’s fault.  What?  The moderator did a very poor job of keeping things running smoothly by not telling Biden to stop interrupting President Trump and vice versa.

There is going to be another debate.  I hope there is a new moderator who knows what a debate is. And I hope they don’t shut off mics like they are threatening to do because that is stifling free speech.  And without free speech, we are lost.

If this post angered you, look at the puppy. Bye.

The two are intertwined at times, it seems.  Ever been so happy about something and then something happens to bring you to the depths of despair?   I’ve had that happen to me a few times in my life.  It happened to me all in one day recently.  I have some very happy news that makes me so glad, but first the sad news.

Years ago, when I went to college, I met one of the best friends I’ve ever had.  Ball State had orientation for all new Freshmen and  I was a little worried about not knowing anyone when I went there.  There I was in a roomful of students, all seeming to know each other and talking together. I am a rather shy person and negligent about starting up a conversation. I really don’t know how it happened but Mary K.  and I started talking and I immediately felt a connection with her.  One thing, she loved to laugh and her laugh was so infectious, it made you want to laugh. Well, after I met her and we began to go around together, we laughed a lot. We laughed all through orientation. The Freshmen had to stay overnight and Mary K. and I  had beds near each other and we talked and laughed almost all night. Some of the girls told us to be quiet, but that just made us laugh all the harder.  Then I found out Mary K. was going to commute to Ball State from her sister’s house in Hagerstown. Well, I was going to commute with two other people and we’d go right through Hagerstown, so why couldn’t Mary join us?  And she did. For a year and a half we drove to college together in good weather and in bad. We sang “Blue Velvet” together much to the chagrin of our fellow passengers.  We met at the student union to eat together with one of our other friends.  We even had a history class together where, I think, the professor took a shine to Mary. He talked to us a lot.  Later, I married and had a baby. I dropped out of college and lost track of Mary. This professor managed to find my phone number and called me and we talked a while and then he asked for Mary’s phone number, but unfortunately, I didn’t have it.  I hope he found it.

When I was twenty-five, married with two children, Mary and another commuter friend, Kenny B.,came to visit. It was like old times, but that was the last time I saw Mary for a long time.  She later married a college professor and was living in the mountains in California.  She spun yarn  and made baskets and purses. She had a business of her own and was doing very well.  Then one day on our answering machine there was a voice saying, “This is a voice from the past.”  It was Mary K.!  She and her husband, Winston, were traveling through our city on the way to Moundsville, West Virginia where Mary grew up.  Moundsville was beloved by Mary and she taught me the high school song which we would sing together on our way to college.  She was going to a reunion, whether a high school or family, I’m not sure. She came from a large family.  So they came to our house and we went out to eat and had a wonderful visit. She still made me laugh.  She asked if I could visit her at the campground the next day before they left, but we were having work done on our house and our contractor was coming the next day so I couldn’t go. That is my biggest regret because that is the last time I saw  Mary K.

Years, decades went by and Mary and I reconnected on Facebook. She showed the things she had made. Our politics were the same.  We didn’t message each other often, but it was nice to know she was there. Then, just the other day I thought I’d go to her Facebook page as I hadn’t seen anything about her for a long while. The fires were burning in California and I wanted to know if she was alright.  On her page were condolences about her death!  She had last commented in January and just a few days later she was gone!  I didn’t know.  I felt so bad. I tried connecting with someone on Facebook to find out what happened. I still don’t know. I do know a light went out when Mary passed away.  A little bit of my heart is now taken.  I don’t want to believe it, but it’s true. My best friend from college is gone and I will never again hear her laugh.   Sadness came and stayed.  I still cannot believe it’s true.  Rest in peace, dear friend. We’ll meet again in Heaven.

Soooo, that was the sad.  Here’s what happened on the same day I found out about Mary K.’s death.  You know we’ve been looking for a Labrador puppy without much success.  One day a  few weeks ago, I heard David talking to someone on the phone and he came in where I was and asked if I’d like to drive to Fort Wayne to look at some puppies. A breeder there had four chocolate Labs and two black labs.  Well, of course I wanted to go. So that Saturday we drove the three hour trip to Fort Wayne to see some puppies.

When we drove up to the house, there were several young children in the yard with some puppies.  I got out and immediately a little chocolate Lab ran up to me. I said, “That’s the one,”  because that is how I’ve always picked my dogs.  Then a little black Lab began to chew on my pant leg.  Let me tell you the conversation David and I had had the night before. David wanted a black Lab and I wanted a Chocolate Lab and I jokingly said, “We could get two!”  I knew that was not possible and we’d have to make a decision before we got there. So we tried to decide which we wanted and knew it would be hard. Now I was in a pickle.

The man with the puppies had eight children of his own. I was asking the children if they’d be sad when the puppies were gone.  Years ago when we got our dog, Samantha, who was several kinds of breeds, I drove up to the house where the puppies were and out of this little house came a whole tribe of children and puppies running with them. It was so cute.  Samantha ran right up to me and she was my dog at that moment.   Seems puppies and children go together.  Molly came from a household with several children.

While David dealt with the papers and paying for the puppies, I held them and fell in love.  We had bought two Labrador puppies and had to wait two more weeks before we could get them.

Did I say, “puppies?”  Oh, yes, I did. You see while driving up to see the puppies I said once again “we could get two,” and David said, “I’ve got the money in  my pocket for two.”  I wrestled with that for a while because  I knew two puppies would require a lot of work.

But in the end, love won out and here is what I ended up with.

This is Lucy Cocoa Belle.  “Lucy” for short.  She’s a handful, but look at Molly.  She loves her.

This is Honey Sugar Dumplin’, Sugar for short. I was going to call her “Honey” but David said when I called her he would think I am calling him!  So, she will be called “Sugar,”

Molly has been smiling ever since we came home with them.

She is so interested in them and is being so nice with them.  I must admit I was a little concerned since she’s been an only dog for a while.

They play hard and then collapse into a deep sleep.

Asleep right at my feet.

I know I’m going to love them.

“Me, too,”

So sadness and gladness both came on the same day. I’d like to think Mary is looking down on us and laughing at the new puppies just like I am.

Here’s to best friends forever and doggie best friends. Bye,