It Finally Rained

Huzzah! It finally rained here yesterday. We had a big, booming, windy thunderstorm in the afternoon. Following that we had about 30-45 minutes of a nice rain. We surely could have used some more, but at least what we had has the grass greening up a little, and I didn't have to water the garden last night.

Here's a picture of my nephew, JJ, along with his SO, Mariell, and their son Brandon. Looks like they're having a great time on vacation. I think I'm jealous.

Oak Tree Fires First Shot

Apparently the oak tree in the back field of the Lindsey property has declared war. It fired it's first shot last night. It's unknown why the oak has such hard feelings against the Lindsey Herring clan. However, it's considered that this will be the start of a long and continuing war.

Our reporter in the field managed to take a couple of photographs of the first shot. One photo isn't the best, with bright light obscuring a green bin placed for scale. However, one can see the bright sharp edges of the green bin, now blindingly white, that may hopefully give scale.

Stay tuned during the following years for updates on this ongoing battle.

Garden Update

Here are the beans as of June 1, 2012.

Here are the peppers as of June 1, 2012

Well, folks, I'm beginning to wonder if it's ever going to rain for more than 5 minutes at a time in west Kentucky again. I've been so excited about my first garden in mumbledy years. It's living, but it's certainly not thriving. I'm having to water every night, and my water bill will be sky high. No savings there. Only, little seems to actually be growing. Except the pumpkin vine.

The beans are growing a little bit. Same with the tomatoes. None of them are growing very well, though. You'd think as hot as it's been and with me watering, they'd be taking off. Maybe it's just been too darned hot. I'm really over August in May.

Cattle panels for beans

Max was in this weekend, and we got the cattle panels up for the beans to grow up. At least he's not having to mow every time he comes up. The grass just isn't growing.

About those cattle panels. I'm of divided mind in my feelings about them. They'll last ages and don't require maintenance. But it took the two of us to put them up. I'd like to be able to plant and maintain the garden by myself. Not that I'll turn help down, especially with weeding. Still, I'd like to be able to plant a row of beans and trellis it without needing help. Stupid thing to worry about I suppose.

16 feet of panel is just too awkward for one old gal to handle. Mmmm, though I can drag them, and maybe if I'd placed them before I planted I could do it.

Peppers 06/10/12

Tomatoes 6/10/12

Daddy used to go to the bottoms and cut his own cane and pole them that way. I don't even know where to go to cut cane. I need to find out, too, because we still have half a row to trellis some way. I watched a gal put up a nice string trellis, and I've got the baling twine to do it that way. I just hate trying to dig out wood sturdy and tall enough for posts, then digging holes and setting them. Sigh. Dad has wood stuck all over this place. However, in his last years, he put so much junk in the place that getting to something turns into a major clean-out project. Trying to get some perfect tomato stake wood was nigh onto impossible because of the junk. I couldn't get close enough to put something to step on to get up high enough to reach the wood. Argh.

Today it's gray and overcast. The weather map doesn't show any activity within a hundred miles from here, though. Maybe this evening some rain will roll in.

Edited to add:  The little white dots you see in the garden are moth balls. So far they've been totally successful, knock on wood, in keeping the rabbits away from the young and tender plants. Now that I've said that, the rabbits will invade en masse.

Also:  Thank you, Uncle Charles, for the squash and cukes green peppers! I didn't discover them until this evening.  I had just walked into the den as you closed your truck door. I did open the door and try to get your attention as you were driving off. You missed Max by just a little bit. He had left just before you were here.

Lola Update 06/09/2012

The other morning for breakfast, I sat Mom's plate down and asked her to tell me what was on it. She looked at it and said, "I can't." It was toast, fried egg, bacon and grits. Sigh.

Last week, though, my husband helped me a lot with my hardest issue - that Mom is perfectly comfortable sitting and laying in soiled clothes. He said perhaps she realizes something is wrong but simply doesn't know what to do about it. That different point of view helped me. I've had no problem with the fact that her body has quit working properly and she can't make it to the bathroom in time. That sitting around in it - well, I've had problems dealing with that.

She's also reached the point that whenever she has to change her clothes she has to be told how to do it. She can't be told over 2 things to do without becoming unable to do anything. If you tell her to take her pants off and take the underwear off, you have to wait for her to do it before telling her to put the new underwear on.

Lindsey Stirling -Violin

I've got a new favorite violinist. This gal is absolutely fantastic.

Her name is Lindsey Stirling, and you can go to her youtube channel by clicking here: lindseystomp

I'm at Thorin's Wall in WoW. I swear. Okay. So really it's for Skyrim, which I got for Christmas and haven't played yet. This vid still makes me think I'm at Thorin's Wall. Regardless of the fact that this musician did the Skyrim music.



About 17 years ago, my father, then 73, mapped ALL of Zelda out, and built a wooden platform for his lap to hold the Zelda controller. He even made a clamp to snag over the controller at one particular point to hold the button down so he could rack up points while he went off and did other stuff. So how could I not include her Zelda Medley. But seriously, how can a WoW player watch this and not think Night Elf Hunter?



Okay, so I don't watch "America's Got Talent," and I just found out about her because she was linked on a news channel due to the influence of gaming on her music. And I love gaming.  If you're not so into gaming, you may still like some of her other music. It's all good.

Casual Update

Nothing important to relate tonight, just a casual update on anything that comes to mind.

It rained today. Finally! It's been almost a month since the last rain. Per the weather radio, parts south of Mayfield may have been hit with a severe thunderstorm. We had a lot of grumbling thunder and a few minutes of rain in the afternoon. Must have gotten worse as it headed west to Mayfield. Later this evening we've had a bit of "Mother" rain - a nurturing kind of rain.

Tonight when I put Mother to bed she told me with much emotion that she loved me. She did that last night. It brought home something about both of my parents that always bothered me once I matured enough to see it - they both did or now equate gratitude with love.

Neither of them ever really enjoyed me, especially after I became a person instead of a child they could easily boss around. They could never get the knack of enjoying talking to me. They never enjoyed teaching me politics, socializing, how to live with others, how to get along in the world just through chatting with me about my day, my activities, my friends. It's almost like they expected me to know everything without having anything taught to me.

When I was a teenager, they conveyed that everything I thought and every friend I had was stupid. Well, as teenagers go, they were right a lot of the time. I did some pretty stupid stuff. But still in all, your teenagers are people, and their thought processes need to be nurtured.  All they ever did was slice and dice.

As I matured, exited teenage years and became a young adult, they still didn't enjoy me, and it seemed they went out of their way to make everyone that came into the house uncomfortable. Silent signals, silent stresses, silent condemnation. Nothing was ever fun. No one was valuable, cute in their naivete, funny, precocious, or promising as an individual.

When I finally got sick of all this and tried to leave home, their method of handling things was money - a shopping trip for school clothes, which was spent, I later felt, to keep me close to home and community college rather than spent on a fairly nearby college and dorm fees.

After a few years of stumbling around and my making a general mash-up of my life, instead of spending money on making sure I got back in college and finished my degree, their solution was to buy me a house in Arlington as a surprise. Like I really wanted to live where they could continue to watch and oversee every action I made.

I fled. After that, they treated me like a stranger. My father never called on the phone, ever, not once. They never wanted to talk to me just to talk to me. Every now and then Mother would accuse me of not having a telephone because she'd tried to call and couldn't get through. Sorry. I never ever had my phone cut off from not paying a bill, nor never ever didn't have a phone. Only my mother wrote a few letters. The only way they ever showed affection was in extravagant Christmas gifts.

Nowadays if my Mother is having a good day where she's somewhat aware of the care I'm giving her, she tells me she loves me. What she should say is that she's grateful I'm caring for her.

Or am I the idiot because I don't equate love with gratitude? Gratitude can increase love, but you can be grateful to a lot of people without loving them.

Ack, enough.

Lola Update 5/26/2012

Am I caught out?

Okay, I have to admit that I'm going through a period of having a hard time dealing with Lola. Some of it is my continued dismay at the deterioration of an intelligent human being. Some of it is trying to figure out if it's her diminishment or if it's her being passive aggressive. Some of it is anger at my parents' oblivion as to what would happen at the end of their lives. What the hell did they expect to happen?

Some of it is anger at their demands of dying in their own home, though most of that is over because it's a totally unrealistic expectation that can't be met, and they were just stupid for demanding it. A lot of it is anger that if I don't continue this total disruption of my life, their incompetence will be the loss of my inheritance. Selfish sounding, ain't it? So?

For my whole life, I was told that as their only child everything they had would be mine. It's not like I expected a trust fund of a mind-boggling amount. It's not like their land was a castle on a hill with thousands of acres. But my inheritance is a few acres with a nice home that is debt free. That is - if I can avoid losing everything to Medicare for the care of my last parent.

Quite frankly, I expected the end of their lives to be far different from how it's been. I expected stroke, heart attack, cancer, despair from the loss of the first to go. I expected anything  except the slow fall into mindlessness that both have done.

Yesterday Lola asked me where Joe was. I've gotten over feeling sad as I tell her that Joe died 6 months ago. I have to admit that I figured whichever parent went first, they would be followed quickly by the other. That may hold true for some, but for my parents their minds were so far compromised that it made no difference in their lives whatsoever.

Okay. I'll relax. I've been caught throwing everything
on the floor. I've taken all the photos out of the
albums. I've thrown the only important ones, from 1950
or earlier on the floor. Oh, and all the little shiny bits
are the wrappers from Hershey Kisses which I know
my daughter loves picking up from the floor.

The last week has seen Lola fall back into a pattern of sleeping continually if I let her. The month before this she was up and at it every day sometime between 9 and 10 every morning. This last week I have to force her to get up. She will stay in bed until 3, 4, 5, or however long I go without forcing her to get up.

She won't go anywhere in the house except from her bed to the TV. She will go to the bathroom if I force her and tell her where it is. She won't join me in any room. She won't instigate conversation at all. She barely pays attention if I talk to her. Everything has to be repeated before she realizes the outside world is impinging on her inner world.

On one hand, it seems disrespectful to post these kinds of things. On the other hand, how respectful of me was it to disregard what effect their  denial of end-of-life issues would have on me?  Additionally, this blog is out in the universe and maybe seeing what someone else has lived through will help another person live through the same thing.

Lola Update 5/20/12

I think that my lament until my mother dies is going to be, "How long can the body keep on going after the mind is turned to total mush?" Yes, this last week has been a bit difficult as I've been under the weather somewhat myself. Without going into the TMI  (too much information) field, let's just say I think I have a partial bowel blockage.

Since I have to pay someone to stay with my mother if something happens to me, I've been trying to let this work itself out. It's a totally new thing for me, as I've never been plagued with these types of symptoms before, except for the one time after my hysterectomy when a shunt pulled too soon caused a total bowel failure. That resulted in surgery, two weeks to the day after the hysterectomy. Otherwise, this is not a problem I've dealt with a lot.

Anyway, I've tried Exlax, Correctol, Fleet Enemas and Magnesium Citrate, and things seem to be resolving or working downwards at least. If things continue to cause discomfort by Monday, I suppose I'll be going into the doctors. My, what a concept - can you give me a mega  whatever to get whatever is causing my belly to look like I swallowed a bowling ball, sounding like carbonating a coke, and causing discomfort with every step I take?

So, dealing with someone whose brain has turned to mushy peas has been irritating. Lola continues to get up every morning and commence thumbing through the same photographs she's looked at for hours every day for the last 6 months. She no longer considers combing her hair a thing to be done, ever. She continues to turn every glass she drinks something from upside down on the good end tables, not on her food tray. She continues to place every plate and saucer on some good piece of furniture, rather than on the replaceable food  tray from which she eats. She continues to hide her forks and spoons in various places surrounding her chair and tables.

Bushwhacking and Sculpture

As I've whined about before I've been doing a lot of bushwhacking around the house. Thought I'd throw in a couple of pics of the rest of it that needs to be done - the side of the house and the back of the house. Sigh.

Both the back and the one side of the house still have overgrown hedges, bushes, and things that have gone way too long without pruning. I'm opting to take them all out. We may put some new things in, but contrary to popular recommendations, there will be no, I repeat, NO thorny things. And no nigh-on-to-trees planted, either.

Max took the spruce or whatever trunk out from beside the porch, and he also finished clearing the other holly bush. He couldn't make himself whack out the leftover trunk of the biggest holly tree, however. It just looks too cool to him. Hehehe, he's wishing he could varnish it, or polyeurothane it and leave it for a sculpture. He told Uncle Charles this, and told me Unk just looked at him like he was nuts. Sigh. Like both of us aren't?

And just for creepies, I moved a sack of wool that was in the corner of the den and found a nicely shed snake skin. Yikes. We suppose it was from that little garden snake that crept in two weeks ago. Shiver. All I keep wondering is just how long that thing was in my den!

The Garden, Huzzah!

The Whole Garden

Beautiful tilled soil

Yay! I finally got a garden planted. It's my first garden since around 1996.

Our neighbor, Larry, brought his tractor over a couple of weeks ago and broke the ground. Uncle Charles brought his tiller over this morning, and Max tackled that. Unk was good enough to stay and help raking the clods. Max likely would have had a heart attack without the help <ducking and running).  I am deeply thankful to both of them.

After they did their thing, I had to man up and go outside and plant. Pity I can't just wiggle my nose and have it done. Although it started sprinkling, it didn't rain hard enough to stop the planting. So in the garden at this time are:

• 13 tomato plants ( I misplaced one. How does one do that????)
• 3 Ancho Pepper plants
• 2 white eggplants
• 3 purple eggplants
• 3 squash plants
• 1 cucumber plant
• 1 hill of sweet pumpkins
• 1/3 row of Hutterite Peas
• 2/3 row of Ky. Bush Green Beans

I need to fill in the second row of tomato plants. I want a lot! Bring 'em on - sauce, juice and tomatoes here we come. I need to plant a row of okra. I need to fill in with a few more cucumber plants. If I can find them, I want to plant some pimento peppers. I want to get a few more green pepper plants. I also found and ordered some cream pea seeds.

The Hutterite Peas are a pale pea that the Hutterites developed that supposedly makes a fantastic bean soup. I bought it because the place I was ordering from, www.seedsavers.org, didn't have any cream peas. However, today I did a bit of googling and discovered the cream peas we eat in Memphis are also more commonly known as cowpeas. I found the cream or cowpeas at www.victoryseeds.com and placed an order for those seeds, along with the okra seed and some Mortgage Lifter Tomato seeds for next year.

As an aside, I like to order from these two companies because they specialize in heritage seeds and non-hybrid seeds. That means the plants I grow are non-GMO (not genetically modified), and the seeds produced by the plants can be saved for the next season.

This page (click here) has the peas. I got the Sa-Dandy Cowpeas. The cowpeas were developed for our hot southern summer temperatures. In Memphis, all I've ever heard them called are cream peas. They're a small pale creamy pea, about the size of black-eyed peas. However, unlike the black-eyed peas, the cream peas are, well, creamy. They don't have the particular twang BEPs do, nor do they have the large black eye. Actually, now that I think of it, they're more like a pale version of purple hull peas.

Until the seeds come in I'll be trying to get rid of the clods surrounding the garden. Ouch. Eventually I'd love to put a white picket fence around it. Yeah, in 10 years and my dreams.

Oh, yes, and I'm eating Ibuprofen like candy tonight. I used my own redneck seed planter and didn't spend as much time as I thought I'd have to bent over, but planting those transplants couldn't be done with squatting and bending, dammit.

Seed Planting Tool

LOL. I just had to post this. It's one of those "Doh!" things. You see it and smack yourself in the head as you ask yourself, "Why on earth didn't I think of this?"

The Red-Neck Seed Planter. Doh!

Eggs - Storage at 4 Months

Here's the video that imstillworkin just posted about her experiment with storing eggs. From this video, I get the idea that if you want to store eggs, coating them in mineral oil is the best option, and if kept at a fairly low temperature (between 60-65F) you can hope for them to last 4 months.

Lola Update 5/6/12

Lola is puttering along the same as usual for her. One of my email acquaintances from my fiber list put a comment on a post with tips on how to deal with the incontinence. I can't think him enough. If I ever do manage to make to Australia, I'd love to track him down and spring for supper.

Alex's tip was about the incontinence underwear, herein called depends, for the sake of ease, even though they are not that particular brand. During the last few weeks I was having to wash sheets every day because the depends were filling up and leaking. Alex advised that better brands actually hold more versus the dollar store generics, which I have been buying.

Additionally, as he worked in elder care, he spoke to their use for night, talking about putting one inside another. That has worked out wonderfully. Since that comment I have been putting one pair inside another, and we haven't had wet sheets since then. Thank you, Alex.

This morning I was trying to engage Mom in conversation, which is purely a lost cause. She gamely gave it a try, though. She grinned, lifted her arms and let them down, and told me, "Well, I'm just sitting here in this black chair, and I don't know beans from spit, especially about my family." When I asked her what she didn't know, she told me she didn't know anything about her mama, daddy, or brothers or sisters. When I asked her what, she told me whether they were alive or what.

Oh, dear. Her dad's been dead for at least 40 years; her mother's been dead at least 30. Her siblings have been dying for 40 years. The last one to die was her sister, who died about 5 years ago. She didn't know that her youngest brother Charles was still living in Mayfield, where he's lived for at least 50 years. She didn't know her sister, Jeanne, was living in Waverly, near her own daughter, Jill, for the last two, at least, years.

She's bearing the heat well. Our A/C blew a fuse last Thursday. I tried to replace it Friday, but the local place didn't have the right voltage, and I couldn't make somewhere else by the end of the business day. Saturday, I just crapped out on going, and today have cursed myself for doing so.  What on earth is up with this friggin' 95 degree weather at the end of April, beginning of May???

Needless to say, if I have to travel from Tennessee to Illinois, I'm getting fuses tomorrow. Oh, the problem is that the fuse box in this house is old. Like, really really old. With fuses you would think weren't even still sold. Problem is they rarely are sold, so you have to shop for them. Getting a new electrical system is a must for this house.

Best of Laughs 2011

Sigh. I said I wasn't going to do this to Jill for a while. I'm sorry she has such a slow internet connection, but really, this is my blog to record the things I like. Sorry, Jill.

It's ridiculously hot here for May 2, and I've been surfing youtube for mindless stuff to occupy my time while I sit in front of the fan, because our !@#$'g A/C has blown another fuse. We gotta replace that ancient fuse box. At least it's finally down to 81F in the house.

So I came across this really long video that is so hilarious. It's funny, and it's kind. That's rather difficult to find anymore. Probably it's Canadian, but I could never tell for sure. It says kurdistan.tv in the upper left-hand corner, but that's likely where it was recorded. It seems to be an updated Candid Camera, and it's great.

Cousin Julie

Here's a video of my cousin Julie doing an interpretive in a Wearable Art Show in Sitka, Alaska, March 2, 2012. This is the whole video that the photos I posted earlier are captured from. Julie is water; she is the blond in blue that comes out first.

Around the Yard

Forsythia treasure trove, a TV, a clay flower pot,
and two falling apart wooden ones. One collapsed
when it was moved.

Since Dad's death in November, there's no reason for us not to take care of yard work he'd neglected horribly during the last decade of his life. If we had tried while he was living, he would have had a fit. There was not much admitting that anything was wrong for him, and little more admitting something was too much for him to handle.

So I've been gamely trying to prune bushes and generally getting rid of a lot of mowing nightmares. Dad loved trees and bushes, and he'd stuck them all over the yard without much rhyme or reason. My problem with them is that few were either flowering or useful, and most all of them have thorns. Argh. Trying to get the mower up under them is as bad as offering yourself up to the torturer.

I've already taken out a forsythia bush that I swear had a diameter of at least 8 feet. Granted, forsythia bloom and are a beautiful yellow sight in the spring. However, I'm allergic to them. They're one of the few plants I actually am allergic to, according to the allergy test I had done a long time ago. Or maybe :-) I have too many memories of having to go outside and get my own switch, with only ones from the forsythia being acceptable (not too hard.)  Hidden inside it were 3 huge flower pots, old rails for a garage door, and a 40" TV. Oy. I've planted a lilac bush in it's place and hope the lilac won't turn into the same kind of monster the forsythia became. At least it will smell pretty.

Then I started working on the dogwood trees that line the front yard near the road. Beautiful when they bloom, but they'd not been pruned correctly. They had some low branches that tried for all their worth to take your head off whenever you mowed around them. They were also laden with dead branches. So I did a lot of work on pruning new limbs in unacceptable places and taking out dead wood. When Max was in this last weekend, he took the chainsaw to them and whacked off the worst offenders for decapitation.

Speaking of dead wood, when I went out this morning to take the photos of the dogwoods I found large pieces of a dead limb that fallen from a huge tree we have in the front yard. Sadly, we've decided the tree needs to go because it's a danger to the house and people. It's old, in bad health, and sheds limbs continually.


I've taken out two other low bushes, one in front and one in back. Max is slowly removing the stumps as he can get to them. In place of the one in the back, I've planted a red raspberry bush. We put another in about 5 feet away. Sometime during the summer I hope to get a nice trellis up, and we hope for raspberries next summer.

As out of shape as I am, I keep expecting this work to lay me low, but so far the worst problem I'm experiencing is stiffness in my hands. Of course, I'm taking this easy, and not trying to do it all in one day. About three hours of the physical work is all I'm handling in one day. Hopefully this will help me get into better shape. Ya think?

Cousins

Cousins - the greatest thing since sliced bread. Well, at least to a only child. I luvs me some cuzins.

Take my cousin Melda. I seldom see her; even growing up she lived far enough away that visits were not much more than annual. I am glad to say, though, that she utilizes the internet quite efficiently, and she invariably sends me a bracing email just when I need one.

Then there's my cousin Jill. She's a few months older than I am; she's the only child of my mother's sister. We lived closely enough that we spent a fair amount of time with each other during childhood, especially during the summer. She's the closest thing to a sister I'll ever have.

During my recent visit to her, I was moaning about needing more fitted sheets and she gamely jumped into her linens and offered me a couple. She doesn't have any more standard-sized beds so opined she likely wouldn't need them anymore. I gratefully accepted her offer. A few days later needing another sheet for Mother's bed, I pulled one out. Mmmmmmm, wonder what on earth she needed two circles for?

Jill has a daughter, Julie, who is now in her middle 30s, and who has grown up to be vital, beautiful woman. Julie's husband, Andy, is in the Coast Guard, and they live in Sitka, Alaska for now. Apparently Sitka has a large and vibrant arts community, and Julie participates in a couple of dance troupes for fun. Recently they did a production of interpreting the sea, and these are photos of Julie in the number. Julie is in blue and is wearing the white headdress.

Sunday Update 4/29/12

Well, Max has gone back to Memphis, wah. He worked his rear end off Saturday, and I was vaguely surprised he could move today. He picked up pruning leavings, mowed, took limbs off the dogwood trees with the chain saw, and dug holes for me to plant some raspberry bushes and a lilac. He about ate me out of Ibuprofen last night, though.

Lola got up this morning and came into the living room with her shirt, bra, knee high hose on and not another stitch. She had no panties, no depends, and no pants on whatsoever. She didn't seem to think there was anything amiss with that, either. Sigh.

Cats Video

After going to Jill's to visit and seeing how long it took her computer to download my simple website, after I'd loaded it with a bunch of videos I wanted to keep, I swore I cut it out. But I have to break my oath. I came across this compilation of cat videos that actually had some of the funniest ones I've ever seen all put together in one video.

So for your viewing pleasure and Jill's frustration, here is one video with cat clips that will have you rolling on the floor laughing your proverbial ass off.

Max's Visiting and Lola Update

Max arrived early this evening for a visit. Since it's been three weeks since his last visit, I'm especially glad to see him.  It's been so long that he hadn't had a chance to try the new batch of bacon; so we had BLTs for supper. His response on his first bite was all a cook could hope for: "OMG, this is fucking wonderful!" (Remember, we have no kids to curb our use of profanity, nor do we mind an occasional profane word.)

After unpacking the truck, he gallantly went out back to see if he could get the lawn mower started. I'd mowed a bit for Larry to till the garden area, and for the life of me couldn't get it started again, which left it sitting outside. Guess it showered last night because he plopped down on the seat and immediately got a wet pair of pants for his kindness.

We'll likely not come close to doing all the things we'd like to do while he's in this weekend. The bad thing is that it seems it will be another 3 weeks before he can visit again. That's bad in the spring. In fact, that's about the worst thing that could happen.

For one thing, we really need to finish taking out the cabinet in the garage so I can park  the truck in there. That's going to take some time. Additionally, Larry broke the ground for the garden, but I need Max to till it. I've ordered some heritage transplants that I want to try, and there are a rose bush, a lilac, and 4 raspberry bushes needing holes dug for them.

Face it, there are things that can be done by an out-of-shape, middle-aged woman, but they can still be done far more easily by an out-of-shape, middle-aged man. I've been bushwhacking  overgrown bushes and pruning deadwood from about a dozen dogwood trees neglected for the last decade. Three hours of that at a time is about all I can do right now. Hopefully I'll eventually get back into some semblance of physical fitness.

Anyway, I wouldn't have bought the plants if I'd known Max wasn't going to be able to come up at least two weekends in a row. Y'all better invest money in an Ibuprofen company - I'm gonna be running the stock up.

Lola Update:
A minute ago when I walked through the living room, Lola was sitting there waving her hand around and pointing. I laughed and asked her if she was talking to herself. She laughed and said she was. I just told her I hoped she was having a good conversation.

We had a few days last week that I didn't have to wash bedsheets. That was nice. It's a sure thing now that I have to do laundry at least every other day. Who knew that 4 pairs of pajamas were not going to be enough? Seriously, though, if she gets the pair wet that she's been sleeping in, and then has an accident during the day, that makes three pairs of jammies in one day. So the 4th pair gets used the next morning, and I bloody well better get a load of washing done.

She's still able to walk, but she's creeping even more and more slowly. I do hope she remains able to walk until her death.  Her appetite hasn't waned one bit. She still eats most anything I put in front of her, and eats all of it usually.

Visiting Jill and Lola Update

I just spent a lovely day with my cousin, Jill. Went down on Tuesday at noon and got back here about 4 p.m. on Thursday. That was a great little break. We gabbed, commiserated, ate, socialized, shopped and generally had a great time.

Sheila came over and sat with Lola while I was gone. I imagine Lola had a great time, as Sheila stayed with her in the living room quite a bit more than I can manage. Lemme say, I love my sitters. Sheila cared for my mother, helped her, fed her, was here if an emergency happened, and helped with the cleaning. I haven't taken a break in so many months, this was so uplifting for me.

When I got back, I had gotten out of the habit of checking Mom for incontinence, and darn it, when I finally remembered to get her to go to the bathroom at 10:30 p.m. it was far too late. So she's changing clothes right now. Sheila agreed that Lola has simply now forgotten what to do in the restroom.

Okay, so it takes at least 15 minutes to handle things when Mom sits in her chair and pees on her self. She has to take off the wet clothes and incontinence underwear, put new diaper/underwear on and new clothes. She has to clean herself, which she sometimes can and sometimes cannot do. Then put on fresh clothes. Then I get to go into the bathroom, get rid of the underwear, which smells unbelievably bad. If you're inexperienced with this, just know that urine stinks, badly. Then pick up the soaked clothes and get them in the laundry room.

While I was in Waverly, I finally got to visit Jeanne in her new apartment. It's absolutely lovely. It is one of the nicest apartments I've ever seen for middle class apartments. She has one side of a red brick duplex with large rooms, walk in closets in both bedrooms, a private master bathroom with tub and shower, a common-area/2nd bedroom full bathroom with a shower of which I'm jealous. She has linen closets, a hall closet, and a huge pantry in the kitchen. Her kitchen reminded me of the kitchen that was in the house they owned in Martin, except sunnier. It's a galley kitchen with an amazing amount of cabinets and counter space. She has a full-sized washer and dryer in a large closet in the hall. There's a nice concrete porch at the front entry, and a lovely wooden deck off the sliding doors in the back.

Jeanne started her new life in Waverly with new furniture for her living, dining room and kitchen, and her decor is lovely. She has white walls, white dining room furniture, pale green sofas, and striking deep burgundy accents. It's an absolutely lovely apartment.

While I was in Waverly, I had a chance to shop at Wally World without worrying about getting back to Lola, and that was so very nice. You never know how much simple things like shopping mean until they get taken away. I treated myself to a new blender, and got one of the Ninja blenders, which you can see by clicking here. My mom's old blender is so shot, it won't even blend a milkshake well.

I don't think my parents really used the blender; I just think it's old. However, Jill laughed and said she was still using the blender they got as a wedding present too many decades ago to mention.

In addition, I managed to finally pick up another towel rack for the laundry room, a new TP holder to replace the one that fell out of the wall, and a new saucepan. I finally found the unusual light bulbs that go in the old, really old, medicine cabinet with lights in the bathroom - they're cylindrical and fit inside tubes of milk glass. It's amazing the things that become difficult to buy when 1. you live in a rural area, and 2. you get tied to not being gone from the house for long shopping trips. Light bulbs - who knew they'd become a problem.

We picked up some good chorizo and made scrambled eggs and chorizo for breakfast this morning. I found some creama Mexicana and introduced both Jill and Sheila to it.

Since I've been home tonight, I've caught up on email, messaged with Max (which I missed doing the last few days), read my elists, watched Rachel Maddow, checked my youtube channels, and researched driving a well point. LOL. The joys of being home after being away without a computer.

Cajun Cooking with Julia Child and Emeril Lagasse

I'm embedding this video because I want to keep the ingredients for Cajun spice so that I can make it myself, and, LOL, reduce the amount of cayenne pepper. Maybe then I can enjoy the flavor of Cajun without being turned off by the heat. This video is from 1993, and my, oh my, doesn't Emeril look young! in this video, he shows how to make a Shrimp Etoufee and a Crab Boil.

Watch Cajun Cooking with Emeril Lagasse on PBS. See more from Julia Child.

Spiders and Forsythia

Okay. We are at war! Yesterday I picked up a strange plastic tube in the garage, and luckily spotted the black widow spider on it before it bit me. Last night I found a tick on myself in a totally unacceptable place. Today I picked up a metal folding chair in the yard and fortunately looked at it before I grabbed the seat to carry it off. OMG, there was the biggest, shiniest black widow spider I have ever in my life seen. Look at this sucker:

Finger for scale

Its hiding spot.

Now, I'm not all that hip on a lot of chemicals in the yard, but I'm about ready to put a bubble over the house and the yard and bomb the whole place with insecticide.

On a lighter note, I finally finished bushwhacking out the forsythia-gone-wild at the corner of the garage, and the neighbor kindly used the scoop on his tractor to dig the huge stump out. Here's a shot of the bush yet to be taken to the burn pile and the nice spot left after Larry dug the stump out.  Thank you, Larry! Can you believe the amount of bush from what started out as one forsythia? I have a lovely lilac bush to put in its place.

The Fresh Prince of Downton Abbey

Ran across this spoof on the BBC show "Downton Abbey" that was just too cute to resist.

Oh, and I've thoroughly enjoyed the first season of "Downton Abbey."

Grinding Your Own Cornmeal

Cornmeal

The question is: Can you make your own cornmeal easily and cheaply? The simple answer is: Yes, if you have an electric coffee grinder and buy a bag of feed corn. If you're wanting to live off the grid or grind cornmeal during an electrical outage, you need to find a different method - hand-powered grain mill. Otherwise, if you're just looking for corners to cut on your grocery budget, an electric coffee grinder and a bag of feed corn are dandy. Oh, and you have to be willing to invest a little time, a little elbow grease, and not be distressed by the things YOU are going to have to do that are usually done by the people behind the bags of cornmeal in the grocery that you don't see.

On the other hand, you can shop online at many places and buy buckets of ready-to-go corn sold to people who want to either store corn long-term or not fiddle with any cleaning process. It's all up to how cheap you are, how squeamish you are, and what your goals are - long-term storage or let's get this done.

Corn still needing to be ground.

The coffee grinder, finished cornmeal on right,
leftover corn to be finished on left.