Cleaning the refrigerator is on my top five list of things I hate to do.  This is them in order…

1. Cook  I hate to cook.  I hate all aspects of cooking from the picking of ingredients, to choosing a recipe, to cooking the food and then, there  is the cleanup.  My mother was the best cook in the world, but I know she didn’t love doing it.  I learned a lot from her  mostly from watching her as she bustled around the kitchen.  I was in charge of cleaning up most often. Especially after my older sister married. The cleanup was left to me. I’d rather wash and dry dishes than cook.   I took Foods in 4-H and my remembrance of it was me in the kitchen crying and my mother yelling at me from the other room that I could do it.   I baked so many yellow cakes one Summer, my brothers would moan when another one appeared at the table for dessert. Now baking I don’t mind so much.  I will gladly bake a cake at the drop of a hat, but fix a meal, ugh, no. Don’t confuse cooking with baking. They are very different and charm the senses in very different ways.

2. Clean the refrigerator.  This is a chore best done when no one is around so no one will hear any curse words, but it is nice to have  a husband to know how to put it all back together again after you have disassembled it.  I wasn’t planning to clean the refrigerator today, but I watched  Hoarders on tv this morning and after I washed some eggs and was arranging them in the refrigerator, I realized something sticky and red had been spilt on just about every shelf and on the walls.  Some of the refrigerators on Hoarders are pretty nasty. I’m not here to judge, but rotten food and expired food is not what I want in my refrigerator. Anyway, I washed one shelf, realized the next shelf needed cleaning and before I was all through, I had every shelf out of my refrigerator and had washed just about everything. There was a bit way in the back I couldn’t reach, but thankfully, David did that when he got home.  Now it’s all clean for another year or two.  Just kidding.  I had scrubbed my kitchen floor this morning and had to reclean it and that’s another reason.

3.  Attend Funerals  I have attended quite a lot of funerals in my life. I’ve buried grandparents, parents, uncles, aunts, a brother, a nephew, and friends.  My son-in-law’s mother passed away this week after a long illness.  She was such a wonderful lady, loved by everyone who knew her.  She’s just a year older than me and makes me think how near I am to death’s door. I’m at the stage of my life now that I know more dead people than living ones.   I always want to go to funerals out of respect, but I am a very horrible comforter.  People usually end up comforting me.  This will not be an easy funeral to attend. What ones are?

4. Dust.  My house has to get pretty dusty for me to dust. My rule is, dust before company and rest the rest of the time. Enough said about that.

5.  Go to parties.  I am not a party animal although once I get to one I enjoy myself usually.  I always feel like people are trying too hard to have a good time and I’d rather be home reading a book.  But that’s just me.  Some people are just gregarious.  I’m not.  I’m the one sitting on the sidelines watching everyone else and that is all I’d rather do.

I know there are other things I don’t like to do, but these are my top five.   I’m pretty easily entertained and don’t expect much from people.  I love gardening, taking care of my chickens, playing with my dogs, traveling, reading, quilting, knitting and painting(not pictures, walls.)   I love to visit with family and friends which we don’t get to do often.  I don’t consider going to funerals as visiting even though I will see several people I don’t see often.

Do you have a list of things you just hate to do, but have to be done? We all have to do things we don’t like and I’m glad there are only five on my list. I think I’m pretty fortunate in that way.  Bye.

Before I tell you about all the fun I had last weekend I want to tell you about a surprise I got in the mail. Remember the flowers Coldwater Creek sent me for over billing me on my credit card?  Well, one day last week I got the mail and there was an envelope for me and when I opened it, there was another apology from Coldwater Creek and an American Express Card for $100!  Now that is a company who treats their customers right.   I guess I’ll be ordering from them soon.

Now about my weekend. Early Friday morning David and I got up and got dressed and went to the hospital where I was going to have a pacemaker installed. The nurses who prepped me were very nice, but I had trouble understanding one of them. Seems I did understand her, but I couldn’t understand why she was asking me if I or anyone I know abused drugs?  Huh?  The other nurse said I’d be surprised at how many people say, “yes.”  I just didn’t know why they were even asking me the question.  There were a lot of questions asked that day that I didn’t think was anyone’s business but mine.  But that’s just me.

In the operating room it was like a beehive with nurses fastening all kinds of wires to me all over my body and the anesthesiologist put a nose plug in my nose so I thought I’d soon be asleep. After a few minutes I was still wide awake and I said, ” I can still hear you guys”  The doctor said he hadn’t started the anesthesia yet.  Then the next thing I remembered was sitting up in bed, trying to get out of it and two people wrestling me back down and I was out again until I woke to an almost empty room and wondered where everyone had gone.

Finally they took me back to the recovery room where I could see David. I was feeling no pain.

Then it was just enduring all the blood pressure taking and checking up on me all through the night. It’s true you cannot rest in a hospital. I was sound asleep a couple of times when nurses woke my up to take my blood pressure.   Why do they do that?  Seems one’s blood pressure would be down when someone is fast asleep.

Anyway, the next morning we waited and waited for the doctor to release me. I got a monitor that I will have to keep beside my bed to keep track of the pacemaker.  Other then that, I have no limitations after a few weeks of recuperation.  No putting my arms above my head or lifting anything heavy.  I don’t know how people get along who live alone as David has been doing all my work for me.

Today we decided that David would wash all the windows inside and out.  I decided to wash all the curtains.  So as we were removing a curtain from the rod, David dropped the end of the rod right on my surgery site and let me just say I was in a lot of pain.  I shed a few tears.  David felt so sorry, but I was just worried that he damaged the pacemaker.   But all is well.  I’m having some pain, but not enough to incapacitate me.

We are hoping to go to a quilt show this Saturday at a farm that sells flowers.  I’ve been to the store twice and no breathlessness or tiredness. It’s a miracle.

If you ever come to a day when the doctor tells you you need a pacemaker, don’t let it frighten you. It’s not like the old days when you had to be careful and stay away from microwaves.

Here’s to medical miracles and the doctors who perform them. Bye.

Having lived in this house almost forty-three years, we have, on occasion. hired people to do work for us.  When we first moved here, we were kind of poor with three little kids, so much of the remodeling on this old house was up to us.

When we bought the house it had blue paneling on all the walls upstairs and greenish blue carpet over most of the downstairs. Carpet that crunched when you walked on it. I said at the time that carpet would be the first to go. Well, it wasn’t. We had to get bedrooms ready for all of us, a nursery for our baby and a bedroom for our two boys.  We painted the paneling since we didn’t have the money to rip it out and fix the walls and then paint them. It actually looked pretty good. In fact, three rooms are still painted paneling and you would not know it.  We bought new carpeting for all the bedrooms, a little at a time. I sewed curtains and decorated as best I could on a limited budget.   That greenish blue carpet stayed on the floor for years until we could afford new carpeting.

As our family grew, we needed more space. The boys wanted separate bedrooms as they grew older so we looked for a contractor.  I’m not sure how we ended up with the one we hired, but he has pretty much remodeled this whole house through the years.  He was very young when we hired him, as were we,  He built a two-story addition to the back of our house that included a new bedroom for David and me, a family room and a combination bathroom and laundry room. We felt like we had so much more space.  After it was all built, we had a big rain and it was leaking in our new bedroom, so David called the contractor and in a storm with lightning and thunder, he got up on our roof and fixed the leak. I was so impressed with that even though we had not expected him to do that. We still talk about that with him. Since that time we have hired him for pretty much all our remodeling except for our kitchen and that’s a story  all by itself.  I regretted not hiring him for that job.

Since then our contractor has replaced all our windows, added two porches, one screened in and has done some other work on our house.

I have one criteria for hiring someone for a job. Are they optimistic and do they say they can get the job done.  I have hired people that I wondered why they were in that line of work. One time I hired a chimney sweep who said he was afraid of heights and I even had to hold the ladder for him when he climbed to the roof.  We do have a very high, steep roof, but I told him he was probably in the wrong line of work. Another chimney sweep I had hired came to our house and with one look told us he was too old for the job and I understood because he was about our age.  So we switched to a gas fireplace and no longer need a chimney sweep.

We have called people to our house who have brought their children who began to climb all over our wood pile and I feared for their safety. Needless to say, they weren’t hired. It’s not that I don’t like children, but they don’t belong on a job site.  We had a man to our house about painting our vaulted bedroom ceiling and I knew immediately that he would not be doing it by his attitude.  So, David and I painted it ourselves.

Now for the kitchen remodel.  We searched for a long time for someone to put in a new kitchen and we went to a kitchen “specialist” where we found cabinets we loved so we hired them.  Well, a job that should have taken a month took all Summer. I had to cook all our meals in my shop and we did not have the use of our whole downstairs all Summer as we were also getting hardwood flooring put in.  And the guy evidently didn’t pay his sub-contractors because I had them calling me asking me to convince him to pay them. I told them I paid him and it was up to him to pay them.  I have always wondered if they ever got paid.   It was one crazy Summer. He sub-contracted the drywall work and as soon as the middle aged woman and kid came to our door to hang the drywall, I knew we were in trouble.  They drywalled over a bump in the wall that looked like something was going to pop out of the wall.  I was not a happy camper when the contractor came the next day.  He found someone else who did the job right, but it was an unnecessary delay in our kitchen progress.  I really am not a demanding person, honest, I just expect people who say they can do a job, to do it.

We have been blessed to have a very good contractor for the last few years, but now I think all the work on our house is done. Except for some painting once in a while it is completed.

David stained our cabin this Summer. We have had it for sixteen years and it was needing some work. I will show you some pictures of it my next post.  I also will tell you about all the swings we have on our property. David and I are real swingers. Ha.

Have you ever had trouble with a contractor or anyone who has come to do work for you? I’d love to hear the stories. I’m sure there are many.  Here’s to good contractors who get the job done. Bye.

I never wrote one thing about a plumber, did I?  We don’t hire plumbers too often, but we have found a very good plumbing business who sends plumber to our house when they say they will and they get the job done with no excuses, so they are the ones we will always use.  And that’s all there is about plumbers.

Are you bored?  Have you ever been bored?  I probably got bored when I was a child, but I really don’t remember ever being bored. I always had something to do and if I couldn’t find something to do, my mother found something for me!   Right now, in this part of my life, I can honestly say I am never bored. In fact, I said to David the other day, “I wish I could be bored for just one day!”  He agreed.  Maybe that’s an awful thing to wish for, so I take it back.

Our life right now is going to the doctor, working on the house, taking care of the pets, going to the doctor and shopping for groceries, something we both seem to never feel like doing.  I hate to shop. At least in stores. I love to shop online in my easy chair, preferably in my pajamas with a cup of something hot beside me.  But going to a store and having to deal with all the people and then get to the checkout and see all the self checkout lanes and maybe, if you are lucky, two or three actual cashiers working. I am on a vendetta against self-serve lanes.  Now if you love them and think they are the bees’ knees, then ignore what I am about to write.  I believe self-serve lanes makes people the unpaid employees of the store that has them. You do all the work but don’t get any salary or benefits and the store owners pocket a whole lot more money. Plus, self-serve lanes put people out of work except for that person who just stands there waiting to help the people who don’t know how to use the self-serve lane.  I simply refuse to use them. I will stand in line for fifteen minutes and complain so everyone can hear me about all the self-serve lanes and the few service lanes.  David tries to pretend he is not with the crazy lady.  Many stores don’t offer any service anymore. Wal-mart is one of them. Wal-mart is not my favorite store and I wish Pioneer Woman had not made a deal with them to sell her stuff because I love her stuff, but hate shopping in Wal-mart.

Back to boredom.  I have a lot on my plate right now.  More than I really want or want to deal with, but sometimes life hands you a big plate of, shall I say CRAP(excuse the French) and you have to deal with it whether you want to or not. I try to ignore the bad stuff as much as possible and focus on the good stuff, but sometimes the bad stuff takes over for a time.  Yet, there is so much good stuff.

The good stuff for me right now is the fact it is Spring,  we are finally getting our old house painted, a new screened in back porch built and a revamped bathroom done. As I write the painters are banging ladders against the outside and painting up a storm. I really love the new darker color of our house. Now it will disappear into the scenery.  After our neighbor cut down all the trees on his property, our house stuck out like a sore thumb and people all of a sudden noticed our house.  Before, you could hardly see it from the road.  But now, with the darker paint and the fact that the bushes are growing taller because the trees are no longer there, the house will fade into the background again, which is good.   This old house has seen many changes in the decades it has stood. It was built just a few years after Queen Victoria died which I find kind of neat and before the first world war.  It’s held families during WWll, the Korean War, and the Viet Nam War and this family that has had a member who served in the Gulf.     It’s seen babies come in the front door and go out the back door adults.   It’s seen parties and Christmases and birthdays and sad days.  It’s been my cocoon when I have needed one. I hope whoever are the next occupants will have as wonderful a life in this house as David and I have had for over forty years.  I’m hoping we still have several years left in it.  It’s a dear, old house and I always think it has its arms around us. It’s haunted, too, but that’s a whole other story I will have to tell one day.

But, back to boredom.  I am never bored. If I get bored, I read a book and if I don’t want to read, I sew and if I don’t want to sew, I knit. Anything to get out of cleaning house.   I keep the house, as they say, clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy.   Dusting is the least favorite thing I like to do in housekeeping.   I dust when company is coming and not very often other than that.  My shop is one big dust bunny right now because I have a crate of baby chicks I am raising in there and they put out a lot of dander.  I didn’t realize how much dander just four little chickens can generate.  In a few weeks they will join the big girls and I will dust then.  They have almost all their feathers and are outgrowing the crate.  We put them outside for a while each day to acclimate them.   I will miss them when they move out of the house.  Just like I did my children!

But, back to boredom.  What does it feel like to be bored?  I really don’t know anymore.  Sometimes it seems that I just get up and it’s time to go to bed again and I wonder where the day went. Maybe I’m just a poor time manager or get distracted by too many things.  I get up in the morning planning to clean out a closet and the next thing I know, I’m planting flowers instead.  Or I plan to do the ironing and a quilt I am making calls my name and I must work on that.  Things do eventually get done, but usually not when I had planned them to be.

So, if you are bored, come to my house and I will find lots for you to do.  Bye. Oh, and thanks for putting up with my rambling thoughts today!  I was going to have pictures, but haven’t downloaded them yet. Got distracted.

I hear people say something is magical when they see it. I’ve said it myself a few times in my life.  And yes, some things are magical.  Why else is Disneyland called the “magic” kingdom.  Magic is the art of producing illusions. Things that aren’t really there, but appear to be. Disney does that very well.  They produce an illusion that everything is perfect and beautiful and fun when in reality it’s all an illusion. You can go to Disney and have a good or even a great time, but it’s all been an illusion that disappears the moment you leave the Disney park.  I’m not knocking Disney here. I have loved going to their theme parks and have enjoyed myself immensely, but there is a dark side to Disney none of us sees because it is kept well hidden from our eyes.   It truly knows how to produce magic. It has mastered the art of illusion.

I believe in miracles.  I believe they have happened and still happen. I expect them to happen.  I want them to happen. Miracles are extraordinary occurrences that surpass all known human power or natural forces and are ascribed to a divine or supernatural cause especially to God.  I know God performs miracles. I have seen some in my day.  Right now I am praying for a particular miracle to happen and I have no doubt in my mind that it will happen because I have a God who performs them. I may not live to see this particular miracle.  Now I don’t know why God performs miracles in some people’s lives and leaves them out of other’s.  I don’t know but it might be the faith that one has or lack thereof or maybe God knowing the future, knows some miracles won’t really change things in the long run.  Maybe you have had a miracle happen in your life. Maybe you are praying for one now. One miracle I witnessed was when my daddy became a born again Christian. My daddy was a two pack a day smoker and could swear like a sailor(no disrespect to sailors here) and never went to church unless he had to.   That’s not to say he was a bad daddy, because he wasn’t. He was a very good daddy in many respects and I loved being around him, but he was not a Christian.   Then my mother got very sick and almost died. I don’t know what God told him in that church the day he attended, but that day he went forward when the call to the altar was made, got down on his knees and gave his life to Christ and from that day forward he never smoked another cigarette, never swore and never missed a Sunday in church.  He spent the rest of his life working for the church.  The day he died I knew he was speaking personally with Jesus and shaking his hand or hugging him and I know that one day I will see my daddy again and he’s with my mother and if that isn’t a miracle, I don’t know what is.

God performs big and little miracles.  I know this story will sound crazy and I was imaging things, but to prove God performs little miracles and also has a sense of humor, here’s my story. I was walking one of my dogs in a field years ago and took off her leash and stuck it in my coat pocket. When it was time to go home, I felt for the leash and it was gone.  I searched all  over that field with my dog by my side and could not find it. Then I just said, “God, if you know where that leash is, would you please show me?”  Then I looked right behind me and curled carefully at my feet was the leash!  It looked like someone had placed it there as neatly as could be.  I have always thought God had done that to show me that even in the little things we should not be afraid to ask for help. And He will.  We all think God only works in the big things, but really, He’s in everything if you just look and just ask.

I guess I’m writing this today because I had the strangest dream and am up at 3:00 in the morning and felt like God was telling me something in that dream.  I can’t tell you the dream because it is too personal, but I think I got the message.

Also, I went outside my front door today and witnessed the best miracle of the season. I usually go in and out our back door when I’m at home, but we were going somewhere and we went out the front door and this is what I saw.

A mass of pink everywhere I looked.  Just a few days ago all was barren and dark and drab. Definitely not an illusion.  Not magic.

New life awakened from what was once dead looking.  A miracle. At least to my eyes and to my heart it was.  Who can explain it?  I’m sure there are scientific words to explain why the buds form and burst forth at a certain time, but who tells that bud to form and who tells it when to open?   I believe there are miracles all around us if we just open our eyes and look with our hearts.  This beauty won’t last long, but there will be other things to replace these.  My irises and poppies are getting ready to bloom.  I’m going to keep looking for miracles.  How about you?

Here’s to miracles and the One who performs them.  Bye.

Just when we thought Spring might be just around the corner, Winter hit us with another blast of cold air and lots of that white stuff that likes to stick to the ground and on the roads and makes us have to work whenever we want to go anywhere.  It’s really pretty and does make things look a whole lot better outside. The outdoors had begun to have that ugly, muddy, dirty, just before Spring look it gets every year when nothing looks especially pretty unless you like dirt, mud and grey.

This week I’m celebrating my seventieth birthday which kind of astounds me when I think about it. I remember sitting in Home Economics class with some of my girlfriends many years ago, discussing how old we’d be in the year 2000 and most of us would be 50 or 51 and we thought that was so old. Now I’m nineteen years pass 2000 and looking at a whole new decade that I never thought I’d see for at least a few more years, but here I am.  How did I get here so quickly?  If you are reading this and you are in your thirties, forties or younger, just know, one day you will be seventy one day if you are so blessed, and you, too, will wonder where the years have gone. We take youth so for granted, but it really is fleeting so enjoy it while you can.  You will not be young forever. That is not to say you can’t remain young at heart. I still find things pretty miraculous at times. I love nature and baby animals and babies and listening to stories and playing outside in the fresh air. My body doesn’t cooperate like it use to. In fact, my body tells me, “No,” many more times than I like.   I can’t run up steps two at a time anymore.  Sometimes I feel downright shaky on my own two legs. I tire easier.  But that’s okay since when I’m tired I can still sew, quilt, knit and read, all things I love to do.  I’ve knit two pairs of socks in the last weeks which kind of tells you I’ve been a little tired lately.

I still want to get one more puppy and a kitten. I still want to get more baby chicks and raise them to adulthood and gather eggs every day.  I still have a lot of places I’d like to see and people I’d like to visit.  I’d like to walk five miles a day again. There is still a lot of life in this old girl!   So I will celebrate my birthday by eating cake and ice cream and thank the dear Lord I made it this far.  Whatever happens in the future is in His hands, so I’m happy with that.

My very best friend in grade school was a girl whose name is Mary Jean. She and I were born in the same hospital, on the same day and our mothers shared a room while there.  We found each other in first grade and we have been friends ever since.  We grew apart in high school, mainly because our classes were not the same and I was boy crazy and dating and found David, the love of my life in high school, but we re-ignited our friendship after high school through letters we wrote to each other. She married and moved clear across the country and raised three children, one of them named Kate, and we stayed in contact.  One year David and I drove out west and I wanted to go see her so I called her and she was so excited to hear I was coming.   We drove and drove over the mountains to her town and found her house. It was like we had never been apart.  I met her children and her very nice husband. I was so glad she found a good man. Sadly, he has since passed away.  She fed us lunch and homemade pie and we sat and talked in her back yard and she took David and me to see a neighborhood garden that was so beautiful and the fact the people allowed the public to tromp through their garden was very special.  Our visit was way too short. She gave me some flower seeds to plant when I got home.  When we left I felt so sad because I knew it was probably the last time we’d see each other.  We continue to send cards to one another and when I was sick this past November, she was so concerned for me and wrote me a letter saying so which was very touching.  I wrote back reassuring her that I was well.   This is true friendship when the love for a friend never dies no matter how far apart you are.  I have so many stories I could tell about her and my escapades when we were girls.  I’m hoping she will have a happy birthday and know that I am thinking of her.

Our daughter and her family brought me some beautiful flowers for my birthday.

Several different kinds.

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A sunflower which makes me think of Summer days when I complain about it being too hot, so I better enjoy this cool weather now.

Little roses. So pretty and dainty.

Are these carnations?  Not sure.

I really wish someone could tell me what these are. My son-in-law didn’t know either and he knows flowers. They are gorgeous.

They also gave me this card.

Why do people think I like chickens? Hmmmmmm?   I just ordered a T-shirt with a chicken in a headscarf  on the front of it, so maybe I do like them a little bit.  I lost another one of my older chickens this week. I went out today and couldn’t find her and David found her under the snow. He thinks she probably died before we had the snow because there was no snow under her.  It’s getting closer to the time I will have to get more chickens. They have them at Rural King and I have been looking at them.

And one of my grandsons wrote me this birthday greeting.

There was a piñata.

A slide for me to go down!

A birthday cake, of course.

Thank you, Tristan. I really enjoyed this card and will save it forever.

I have several friends who are now in their eighties and still going strong.  Our contractor told us he believed his father was going to live to be one hundred.  I’m not so sure I want to live that long, but we can’t chose our time to die, so whenever God calls me home will be my time.   I’m hoping David and I have many healthy, happy birthdays ahead.   Anyway, we are celebrating all week. I don’t plan to do much cooking or baking and a whole lot of eating out and maybe some shopping.  We are going to pick up the new sink for our bathroom which is getting remodeled this Spring.   I’ve always wanted a pedestal sink and since David picked out the sink and cabinet for our upstairs bathroom, I am choosing the sink. Off to Home Depot we will go!  I love remodeling. I think I would have done well on one of those fixer upper shows on HGTV.  I love seeing a room and changing it into something completely different.  Heaven knows, I’ve done it several times in my lifetime. I have done most all the painting in our house. The paint section in the lumber yard store is my favorite place.  I’ve made some bloopers in my time like the Pepto Bismol pink bedroom I painted once. We lived with it for several years, but David never let me forget it.  We’ve papered, stripped paper, painted and painted again all the rooms in this old house of ours. Right now I’m pretty content with all the rooms, but give me time.

We live on a fairly busy road, especially during the week and I have seen many things go by in all the years we have lived there. Because there is a train track right across the road, we see a lot of trains which my grandsons love. Me, not so much although I’ve gotten use to them. We have always lived where we could hear the trains go by.  We lived on a hill in Richmond and down below us was the train track. It’s now a walking trail which I would have loved when we were living there.  The neighbor girls and I went raspberry picking along that track years ago and got the best raspberries.  Raspberries use to grow wild in a place near our house where we live now and David would go and pick a quart or two for a pie.  The gravel pit expanded and they covered up the raspberry plants, so no more raspberries. Boo.  By the way, I got off the subject of the train track. David looked out the window the other day and said, “What is that?”

I was thinking space ship.  It was extra long and the truck driver was having a hard time turning and getting over the railroad track.

Traffic began to back up.

Then he finally got over the track, but he got stuck and I began to worry about a train coming because they go through often.

But in a few minutes a guy from the gravel pit came riding up on this front end loader and lifted that thing right up and over the track.  It’s called a trommel. Our word for today.  A trommel is a rotary cylindrical or conical screen for sorting ore, coal, gravel, etc. I would have never known that, but David watches all these shows on tv where people are digging for gold.  This one will be used at the gravel pit.

That’s all for today. I’m going out to eat for the first time this birthday week. David took the week off so we are eating out every day.  Yay! And we are eating dessert first.

Here’s to best friends, birthdays, trommels and painting fanaticism.  Bye.