Spring Has Sprung

No not that spring, and from the looks of it that won’t be happening for quite some time yet.


Yes that’s my super duper snow gauge aka yardstick stuck in there. There was a time when stores appreciated your business and would give away handy dandy freebies like that. Those days are long gone, at least around here. And that ancient snow gauge shows that there is 18” of snow in my backyard. Arrrgh!!!!

Anyhow, the spring I’m talking about is in here,


This old clock has 3 springs that need to be wound with a key every seven days. One for the hour chime, one for the pendulum and one for the quarter chime. It’s the quarter chime that is sprung. Instead of the seven day windup, this spring has to be wound up every 2 days if I want to hear the chime on the quarter hour. Which is no big thing, because the clock still works fine without the quarter hour chime. Until recently that is.

Now there’s another problem. The pendulum stops, which means everything stops. Glancing at the clock while walking by I’m startled to see it’s only 3:00 when it’s pitch black outside. And I know it’s not 3:00 a.m., because rarely am I walking around downstairs at that time of the morning. Okay, sometimes, but usually when I’m awake at that ungodly hour, I stay in bed and toss and turn, while mumbling and complaining for a few hours instead of just getting up and doing some work around here like cleaning the darn house. (Yeah, that’s gonna happen.)

But back to the clock. Opening the door I reset the hands and give the pendulum a little nudge and we’re back in business. Next day, same thing. This time when I go to reset the hands I see that the minute hand has fallen off and is now lying down on the base. Hmmmm?? Re-attach the hand, reset the time, nudge the pendulum (maybe a little harder this time). Okay. Couple of days later, same scenario. Stupid clock.

But then I thought about that old clock. I’ve had it for a long time. So what if it’s getting a little worn out, so am I. What does it matter if it doesn’t work as well as it used to, I don't either. So a hand falls off once in a while, whoops, no that hasn’t happened to me but sometimes they don’t work quite as smoothly as they used to. For all of it’s age, it’s still a nice looking old thing, as am I. (Hey, beauty is in the eye/mind of the beholder, and I’m the only beholder in my house and the fact that I have all my mirrors covered with sheets means nothing)

I do wish I had a key to wind myself up every couple of days though, because I think my spring has sprung too.

Sisterhood At Its Finest

At the beginning of the month, I mentioned that my two sisters both had birthdays during January and posted a picture of the two of them together. Betty’s was on the 2nd. and although I didn’t show a picture of her by herself, she won’t mind that I am now going to single out Nan. In fact I’m quite sure she’s very happy about that, but hey Betty, if you like, I can always find another picture of you by yourself that I’ll be glad to post on here. Let me know.

I wasn’t around when this picture of Nan was taken, because of course I hadn’t been born yet, or as my mother used to say, “I was picking daisies”. How she came up with that expression when I would ask why I wasn’t in any of these pictures is beyond me. I remember getting a little teary eyed when she told me that though, because I didn’t want to be out picking any daisies, I wanted to be in the pictures too. Now of course I just snicker about that.

But anyhow, without further ado, here she is. And except for the fact that she is now much taller, a little?? older, a lot?? wiser, has gray hair instead of brown, keeps both feet firmly on the ground instead of on benches, (not sure about that one because I saw a picture of her dancing around in red shoes not too long ago), she looks exactly the same as she did those many years ago. Uh huh.

And isn’t she just the cutest little thing?


Hope you have a Happy Birthday tomorrow, Nan.
Hope you enjoy your birthday cake.
Hope you don’t plan on lighting all those candles on that cake.
Hope your smoke alarm has a new battery.
Hope all the firemen are as good looking as they are in their calendars.

Progress?

You’ll be happy to know (or not) that I finally got that blanket of white crap off of my car. However since it is still totally surrounded by that lovely stuff, (I work in stages) the car isn’t going anywhere any time soon.



You’ll also notice that I am now the only one who is still stuck. Everyone else has been up and running for days. The reason for that could be that they are all in better physical condition and more energetic than I am, or, and this is the one I prefer, even though they’re weak and puny, they had no choice because they had to get to work.

Anyhow, since I was running out of a few things, I decided to walk down to the store, which is no biggie, because 99% of the time that’s what I do anyway. The only time I take the car to go shopping is when I have to stock up and can’t carry it all home, or when the temps are way too low which has been the case until today. Today it is 40* F. Forty!!!!!! It feels positively balmy.

To make a long story short, when I got to the store my eyes were a lot bigger than my brain, (surprise, surprise) and I ended up with quite a few “necessities?” Needless to say, that ¼ mile walk back home felt more like a 5 mile uphill hike against a 30mph headwind while carrying a small car, and took a lot longer than expected. But I have to admit, this is the first time in weeks that I actually felt toasty when outside. I also rewarded myself with a bag of Hershey’s truffle kisses. Okay, maybe it was 2 bags, but the temperatures are supposed to plummet again tomorrow so they were definitely a necessity.

Cabin Fever

Since my car has now added 4 more inches to it’s thick blanket of ugly insulation I am still stuck at home, and in my boredom my thoughts have started to turn inward as in “Who am I”. Now I know that’s dangerous territory to be getting into, but cabin fever tends to do that, right before you go completely crazy and start trashing everything in sight.

So, who am I? No, I’m not asking you, I’m asking myself. I already know what you think by some of your sometimes candid, sometimes thinly veiled comments on various posts. At times you think I’m witchy, snotty, sarcastic, uncaring, a bit lacking in the personality department, and that sometimes I have no idea what I’m talking about (as in dumb). I actually kinda thought I was pretty much like that too, but not anymore because after much soul searching and contemplation I have had a revelation. I have finally found the true, the only, the “real” me.



Now that I'm done running and flopping around outside, and I'm wet and freezing, I have this very strong urge to start throwing things. Wonder what that means...

No Pretty Pictures Here

Checking around on all the other blogs, I see picture after picture of gorgeous snow scenes. Wide open spaces of quiet, serene, drifting snow. Pictures of frozen little red berries with tiny snow caps. Tree branches loaded with the white clingy stuff, transforming them into works of art. Frozen ponds glistening in the sunlight. Big fluffly snowflakes softly floating down under street lights. That’s what I see on other blogs. That’s not what I see here. I have the ugly snow. Flat, uninteresting, plain old pain in the butt snow, that I can hardly bear to look at let alone take a picture of.

So no, I will not bore you with a picture of my ugly snow. I will however, bore you with a picture of my ugly car.

Past It's Prime

First, I’ll say that my bratty kids will immediately think (while smirking) that this post is about me, but my favorite kids wouldn’t even consider that and will probably think it’s about my car. And although my car is 10 years old and could qualify, it isn’t about that either.

This happens to be about something that has become my constant companion since I’ve started blogging. The one item that can get me out of a jam and make me appear at least fairly intelligent and coherent most of the time, although it hasn’t always kept me from making a fool of myself. And even though it was second hand when I bought it, it was in much better shape than the tattered, torn, yellow-page, stained, taped together specimen that you see here today.



But that’s not the problem. This edition was published in 1961 and we all know there’s a zillion new words that have been added to the English language since then, so yes this book is way out of date. And unlike some things that get better with age (me, wine, cheese) this isn’t one of them, so does that mean I’ll be throwing this old, decrepit one out with the trash? Nope. It still comes in handy, like just now for instance when I looked up decrepit. (I, for one, find that spell/check isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be), and if I can’t find what I’m looking for in here, I can always go to Webster on line.

So, I’ll be hanging on to this old, worn out, ratty looking thing even though it’s not quite as useful as it once was. Even though it’s past it’s prime.

Hmmm…come to think of it, some of this does sound as though it could be about me.

Not Again!!!!

Right around Christmas I started having problems with the keyboard on this evil machine. I would be typing along nice as could be when all of a sudden I would see something like this …wago ot cntfge wng kop... Whaaaat?? The keyboard evidently was tired and would only work when it wanted to, not when I wanted it to. Not liking where this was heading I immediately e-mailed FD#4, aka Computer Whiz, looking for a little help. Actually a lot of help. That message looked something like this. “Hlp. Keboad nt wkg”.

Being the astute, caring daughter that she is, she immediately called me (when she got around to reading her messages) thinking that dear old mom was having a stroke. When I explained that I wasn’t the one having the stroke, the computer was, she gave a huge sigh of relief. Or maybe it was a huge sigh of exasperation that I was needing help with the stupid thing again. The jury’s still out on that one.

So anyway, here’s me in Ohio expecting a one click fix, (she is the Whiz after all) and there’s her in Arizona not being able to see what I’m trying to tell her. After going through the obvious fixes (obvious for her of course but not obvious for me, since obviously I would had tried those first before bothering her) and nothing is working. After much clicking and turning off and starting and offing and a lot of this, that, and the other thing she finally said she would have to do some research and call me back.

While waiting over on this side, I checked through the manual and could find nothing even remotely close to “when keyboard is acting like a pain in the butt, try this”. Throwing down the manual, I decided to clean the keyboard instead. Vacuum, wipe, brush, vacuum, compressed air, vacuum……….finally giving up and turning the darn thing off completely.

A short while later, not content to just sit it out and wait, (although I have many virtues, patience is not one of them) I turned the THING back on again and the keyboard was now working. Typing very slowly, I tried all the keys and they all worked. Not really believing it, I kept typing and typing. Still working. I then sent the Whiz? another e-mail telling her the good news. She could stop researching, everything was working fine now, no more problems, and although I couldn’t hear the sigh this time, I’m pretty sure there was one.

This morning…sdg giou thnt cpue dnko donwk stdp….

So if you don’t hear anything from me for a while, or I post comments on your blogs that don’t make any sense, you’ll know why.
#%$$#^@## COMPUTER (that one was me, not the keyboard)

EEEEK, A Mouse In The House

I’m always reluctant to admit that I occasionally have a mouse in the house as though it will cast aspersions on my house cleaning. (Don’t even go there) I know that it isn’t really any fault of mine. I’ve searched all over outside looking for the teeny, tiny space that they squeeze into in order to set up residence in the cupboard under my kitchen sink. Nothing. So I accept the fact that once in a while I will hear the tiptoeing of tiny feet making their way around the bottles of cleaners and the box of brillo pads, looking for even a speck of cracker crumb that isn’t there.

Long ago, (but not so far away) I lived in a house with a basement. Knowing that basements have a zillion places for little mice to run and hide, I always set up a few traps down there. Once in a while though, a mouse would make it's way upstairs to play in the kitchen drawers. Never actually seeing one walking up the stairs like normal visitors do, I assumed they made their way up through the walls somehow, and not wanting to set traps in the drawers on the chance that I would forget and reach my hand in…….I did the next best thing. When hearing a little rustling in the drawer I would call the dog. A little Yorkshire Terrier named Jiggs, who was the best mouser you have ever seen. Unlike cats who tend to play around with their catch, tossing it up in the air a few times, ewww, Jiggs got right down to business. All I would have to do is call him over, “hear that Jiggs? now get ready on three” and yank the drawer open as fast as I could so the mouse would be startled just long enough for Jiggs to grab him. Worked every time!! Of course, I immediately had to say “lets go outside Jiggs, and bring your new toy with you”.

But back to the present. No basement and sadly no little Jiggs anymore. Now it’s strictly trap times. And although mice don’t scare me and I don’t yell eeeek and jump on a chair, and I actually think some of them are kinda cute, that doesn’t mean that I want them to raise their family and their family's family in my cupboards. So….I set a little trap with their favorite cheddar cheese (hey, their last meal should at least be a good one) and put it in the right spot and wait.

The next morning I take the trap with it’s sad little addition and empty it on the back lawn so that at least Harry the hawk can benefit from the little mouse’s misfortune.
And no I did not take an after picture. That would be a bit much, even for me.

Food For Thought

Food for the birdfeeders



Food for the feeder of the birds

I’m thinking something is definitely cockeyed over here.
Hmmmm. I wonder what suet and safflowers seeds taste like.

Running On Empty

Well, not exactly running. The only thing running around here is my nose, the rest of me is more like a slow shuffle. On this second day of the new year my calendar is empty, my mind is empty, and even my coffee cup is empty.


(Notice the dragon on there?)

Well, at least I can fix that one right away, so hold on a minute.

Now for the calendar. Come to think of it, that’s not totally empty. Today is my older sister Betty’s birthday. My other older sister Nan also has a birthday later this month, so in honor of them both, here they are in all their glory. Don’t let the smiles fool you, they’re nowhere near as sweet as they might look. And did I happen to mention that they’re both older than I am? (snicker, snort, chortle, guffaw)


Next, on to the empty mind. …………Ummmm…………nope, nothing there………no thoughts, witticisms, jokes, or ideas floating around in there. The only thing bouncing around in there now is the nagging suspicion that this month is going to be pretty slow when it comes to blogging. Or anything else for that matter. Oh oh, now what am I going to do.