I need another hobby?

Got my April column turned in to the newspaper a week early. Funny thing, I have hit a dry spell for reading now when I have a purpose for it other than my own pleasure. I keep a sheet of note paper in the book I am reading so I can take notes! I am reading the Poisionwood Bible right now. Seems to be taking me forever to read it. I think it is a great book, it's just me right now. But I have a stack of books that I have read recently that I think will be good to do reviews on.

Could be that I have started way too many projects lately. I am making baskets, and really like the process. Then I decided to research and find some ideas to use all the denim that I have been saving. So have started making some tote bags, then actually bought a pattern to make bags.(what a shocker when I looked at patterns! They are up to 16$/$18 each) Plus I am trying to finish a counted cross stitch picture, so guess its no wonder I haven't been reading much. I will attach a pic of my big 10 inch bowel that I made the other day. Hope to get a bunch of stuff made for the Fall Festival this year. Plus the rugs that I weave. Oh, and I set up the loom to make narrow rugs that can be made into totes, plan to put lining in them. Whew, I am tired!

Plus I have been the chauffeur for everyone for the last 3 weeks. But hubby is allowed to drive now, at least the short distance to out patient therapy. He is working hard to get back to being his independent ornery self. Doing a pretty good job. His knee is healing up really well.

Thought for today: I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted a pay check--Anonymous

Celtic Thunder - Steal Away (One more time)

If you get a blank screen, just click on it anyway and the video comes on.

I have been immersed in Celtic Thunder this week so have to share just one more song. What a beautiful song. I could only find this one with the QVC junk at the bottom but it appears to be fairly recent as Damian has grown up and seems to be the lead singer.

What a beautiful message it gives us. We all need to be able to steel away and start a new. I love their harmonizing. So I leave it here for the week.

Thought for the day: One advantage of growing old: Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can't remember either.

Is this your cat?

I saw this today and knew I had to post it. I understand that my niece is taking her cat on walks now with a leash. Somehow that just seems so wrong to walk a cat on a leash. But then again I guess anything can be leash trained if you work at it long enough.

So Miss Niece, is this your cat??

Crazy Squirrels!

I have a new meaning to the words "pole dancing".

We have trouble with squirrels climbing our bird feeding station by climbing right up the pole then down the chain to the feeder. Wouldn't be so bad but then they chew on the feeder.

So being smarter than a squirrel, I figured if I greased the pole they couldn't climb up.

I happened to see one the first time I did it with spray Pam. He jumped up about 3 feet onto the pole then slid down. I wish I could have seen if he was shaking his paws, wondering what the heck just happened. LOL. But he was out of site behind the brick wall.

I now find that I have to scrub the pole about every 3 weeks with a degreaser as it collects dust and gets tacky and they are right back up the pole. I now use cooking oil and it works the best.

Oh, what we do for entertainment. Reminds me of when we lived on the farm and found that when we sprayed water on the propane tank in the evening the horse flys swarmed around and landed on the wet tank and we could swat them! At least we kept the population down from biting the horse.

Maybe its not just the squirrels that are nuts!

Thought for the day: Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Look at me

OK now what is new with the book lady? I love this picture of the animals reading space. I wish I had room for something like this. Hey I would be happy if I had space for a coffee machine, and maybe a WiFi space, maybe some easy chairs. Oh, I got carried away there, sorry about that.

Lets see I haven't mentioned my hubby's recovery after his knee surg on the 8th of Mar. He is really doing very well. We have our ups and downs, but he is healing up nicely and will get his staples out next Wed. He uses a minimal amount of pain med, as the narcotic makes him dopey, and most of time he doesn't have much pain, till he goes to bed. So tylenol and ice packs do the trick most of the time. But it will all pass and he will be out mowing before long. Spring is upon us, and aren't we glad?

The other biggie in my life is that I am writing a column for the local paper doing book reviews of what ever I am reading. So it puts a little pressure on me to choose books that I think would be interesting to others. But then I think, what the heck, if I thought they were interesting enough to read myself then that should cut the mustard. I sent the editor a sample of some book reviews I wrote and he said he would give me a rather large space once a month to do 3 or 4 reviews. Wow, I didn't expect that at all. I was hoping for a tiny space for a few paragraphs once a week. I see it as free advertisement. Now if I can be witty enough to catch a few readers, we will see. Oh the pressure:)

Thought for the day: Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous

Maxine's Censored St. Patrick's Day Song (maxine.com)

Had to share this today!

Celtic Thunder - Caledonia

Another must share today. I enjoyed this group on PBS the other night. They are wonderful and so "beautiful" to watch, esp. in the kilts! Made me go to Amazon and order a couple CD's. I am such a push over!

What makes an "Old" blogger?

I sometimes wonder why we love to blog. Alot of the time I wonder why we do FB and whats with all the tweeting? We somehow want all the world to hear us and love us. So we try to write witty things that will get us some adoration. If no one read our blogs would we still write?

Good question. I know when I first started blogging in 2005, I did it as a private little journal thing. Then I started getting comments. Wow that was fun. Someone out there was reading my stuff. Then I gave my site out to all my family. Now that is a two edge sword. You start to sort of edit your words that you type cause you don't want to hurt someones feelings or reveal something that you might not want to share with family. But on the other hand there was several years there when alot of the extended family was blogging. It was so much fun to log on and see what everyone wrote or what their comments were on what I wrote.

Somewhere along the line many family members sort of fizzled out. I think when the FB got to be popular and then the Twitter thing. But gee I miss the stories! There was some good meat and potatoes there, not just little one sentence comment that we are supposed to get all excited about. Example: "Look out Texas!! Road Trip." Sorry daughter, just used you as an example. Now a blog post about the trip would be awesome!

So 6 years of blogging and I have no intention of stopping. I may get dry spells, but I still have alot to say. If I get comments I still get excited. But I can't help but wonder who all is actually reading all this. I have done a little blog surfing and boy there is so much stuff out there. What makes one more interesting than another for a stranger to follow? Of course I have a few that I follow, some I have stopped following because they get to whinny or to long winded. So on that note I better stop!!

Thought for the day: It's better to be a has-been than a never-was.

Young Me up a tree

In writing the post yesterday I sort of traveled back in time and alot of memories from those days came flooding back. I will just randomly recall events from the time living in this house, in this little town.

As I mentioned, my dad was handicapped, but that didn't mean he was helpless. He always had a big garden and provided for us the best he could. Frequently he raised rabbits. I always said that its a wonder I didn't hop instead of walk. He got permission from someone to garden down near the river, which was just across the street a block from us. The soil was very sandy and he raised sweet potatoes and one year he raised peanuts. I don't remember to well how the process of boiling or roasting the peanuts went. He caught a snapping turtle once and was determined to get it out of the shell so mom could make us turtle soup. I remember the turtle but not the soup. Probably a good thing.

Another time I was playing dress up with some old discarded high heels and had been marching around for some time. When I took them off there was a huge spider sitting on my toes! Yikes! He could have bitten me but guess he had room and just waited for me to get my foot out of his home.

We played with a couple girls down the street. They were "rich" by our standards. (They already had walking dolls.) But as kids it didn't seem to matter much. At dusk we would play under the only street light and throw things in the air to coax the bats to swoop down. We played along the river, always trying to find stuff.

During the winter when the river froze over, the "rich" friends would go out on their pretty white ice skates. Their dad would go with them and if snow was on the ice he would scoop it off to make a big circle. The guy that we rented from gave us an old old pair of brown men's skates. With a few layers of socks I was able to get out on the ice and actually learned to skate a little.

One memory that I will end with is a favorite of my mother. As I mentioned we didn't have electricity but she would read to us. Back then books like The Bobsy Twins, Big Red, Old Yeller, and Black Beauty were published in what was called Big Golden Books. I have a vivid memory of leaning over Mom's shoulder as she was reading one and having tears fall down onto her shoulder because it was a really sad part.

Thought for the day: Always be yourself, because the people that matter, don't mind. And the ones that mind, don't matter.

Long, long ago

Decided I would find old pictures in my albums and write a little about them as I remember.
This picture is of myself taken back when I was about 7. As you can see I am proudly holding onto a doll. There is a long story about this doll and about where I lived.

Well like many folks we were quite poor when I was growing up. My dad was handicapped from polio and by the time I was this age he would have been in his late 40's at least and unable to work anymore. We lived on ADC, which is Aid for Dependant Children in the state of Iowa.
We moved around a lot, sometimes twice in the same school year. At this time we lived in a tiny little town in SE Iowa. The little cottage had no electricity or running water. This is my last memory of using kerosene lamps in the evening. Don't know what Mom cooked on.

My little brother and I pretty much ran loose and since it was a very small town, like 50 people, I think we got acquainted with most of them. There was this old man, his name was Walter, that lived up the street from us. He didn't have electricity either and was an old bachelor. My brother and I would hang out at his house as he gave us some attention that I am sure we were craving. By today's standards this would have all been a big red flag if you know what I mean.

Walter loved kids. When we visited him, he would tell us stories and warn us to not go past his living room as he had a big black snake that lived under his bed so he didn't have to worry about mice. I sort of think this was true. We would sit and help him pick walnut meats out and he fed them to the birds (what we didn't eat). He would tack his old pancakes to the tree for the birds to eat also.

One day, I don't remember now if it was for Christmas or my birthday, he gave me this doll that he ordered. She is a walking doll. I think it cost around 18$. Which was a lot for him to spend on some rag tag little girl up the street. He was just a very nice old man who loved kids. It made me feel special probably for the first time in my life. Later on we moved away from there and I didn't see Walter till I was as teenager. I ran into him at the little country store in that same town. See we were living across the river at that time in another rental house. He remembered me, but it felt strange to talk to him by then. Years later I heard that he died in a house fire at a really old age. It made me feel sad.

Recently I got this old doll out of the trunk, washed her hair and pin curled it, and washed her cloths. Think I will take it to my store and sit her on the shelf. She brings back a lot of memories and all of them good. I have some more to tell about living at this house so maybe next week I will do this again.

Thought for the day: Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. --Eleanor Roosevelt

A fixer-upper? Or fire up the cat?

Last fall when I was doing my morning walks here in the little town where I have my book store I took some pictures of some of the towns decay.

As you can see, someone had good intentions and started putting siding on this house and at some point decided it wasn't worth it or else the load of used siding that a friend gave them just ran out. Who knows. It is sad to see so many old houses like this that just need to be dozed in.

But if you could know their history and the families that lived in them from the time they were new and what was the story on how they became so run down that they were abandoned, wouldn't it be interesting.

I do know about the first picture. Way back many years ago it was the hospital here. When I lived in this area the first time back in the 70's it was still open and I remember going to the Dr. there during clinic hours and asked him to pierce my ears and he sort of ran me off, telling me that he had sick people to see and didn't do piercings. Gee all I wanted was to get holes popped into my ear lobes in a sterile setting. At least they didn't charge me for the office call. I think I had a friend do it for me later. I understand that some folks have owned the building for a few years and are living in the back of it and have been putting in new windows. Boy if that building could talk!

Thought for the day: A clear conscience is usually a sign of a bad memory