So Much For The Good Old Days

PRE-AUTOMATIC WASHER INSTRUCTIONS

I found this little jewel in a very old recipe book I've had in my possession for years.
It includes these instructions on how to do the laundry. A mother had sent the following instructions to her newly married daughter. (Spell check had a field day with it)

1. Build a fire in backyard to het kettle of rain water.
2. Set tubs so smoke won’t blow in eyes if wind is pert.
3. Shave 1 hole cake lie sope in biling water.
4. Sort things. Make 3 piles. 1 pile white, 1 pile cullords, 1 pile britches and rags.
5. Stir flour in cold water to smooth, then thin down with biling water.
6. Rub dirty spots on bord, then bile. Rub cullord but don’t bile. Just rench and starch.
7. Take white things out of kettle with broom handle, then rench, blew and starch.
spread tee towels on grass.
8. Hang old rags on fense.
9. Pour rench water on flower bed.
10. Scrub porch with sopy water.
11. Scrub privee seat and floor, with sopy water caught from porch scrub.
12. Turn tubs upside down.
13. Go put on clean dress. Sooth hair with side combs. Brew up tea, set and rest a spell and count blessins.

YYYYSO MUCH FOR THE GOOD OLD DAYSYYYY

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Jim (March 30)

This is Jim, the artist, the teacher, the comedian, the cook, the jokester, the handyman, the husband of Cora (my number two granddaughter). We think we will keep him.
Have a wonderfully happy birthday, Jim.
Now for a little birthday advice:
If anybody says, "pull my finger, just say "no".

It's all about the Knees

Life is just humming right along here on this earth planet. If any of you folk out there on another planet happens to read this, I was just wondering if you could make room for a few billion earth people. We are about to run out of money here and might need a place to go to. I would like to put in a reservation for at least a room with a bath. A kitchen would be nice. I would like an ocean front view too. At least send us some money. Okay?

Needless to say I sort of got side tracked there for a minute. I have nothing much to say tonight as you might have figured out own your own. I ventured out of the house today. Talked to my friend at the coffee shop. We greet each other with, "How's your knee"? I am following in her footsteps. She is a couple months ahead of me. She had the arthoscopy surgery that I am waiting for and now she finds it didn't correct the problem and she is having a knee replacement. Who needs the Gypsy with the tea leaves. I can just wait and see what happens to her.

The Way It Was

Many years ago in the hills of Oklahoma a young maiden (me) lived. I wasn’t the only member in my family, but since I’m the one writing the story, I thought I would give myself top billing. I had four brothers, two older, two younger and a younger sister.
The more you have, the more you have to worry about. How can you worry about something if you never had it in the first place. Now if you once had it and it was taken away from you that would be different. We never had to worry about the toilet plugging up or running over. We never had one, we had an outhouse. We never had a leaky faucet the entire time we lived there. We never had a running one either. But we had no water bills.
We were truly blessed, but we didn't know it at the time. The upstairs was air-conditioned in the winter and solar powered to a 120-degree heat in the summer. We never received a bill for those services. There was no danger of us suffering a heat stroke in the winter or hypothermia in the summer. We didn’t have high definition and we didn’t even miss it. No water bill to worry about.If we needed a doctor, somebody would go a half-mile down the road to a neighbor that had a phone and call one. We had no phone bills. Doctors were always men, women were thought to be too stupid, but they could be teachers.
When called, he would immediately saddle up his pony, and gallop on out. People needed doctors if they were about to have a baby. When my fifth brother was about to be born, the doctor with the horse was summoned. (I’m just kidding, we had cars by then) The kids were sent to the neighbors to spend the afternoon in order to allow some quiet time for the mother. It was the last time she would ever have any quiet time until the kid grew up. When we arrived home, we all marched by the bed and gazed upon the cute little baby boy. Now comes the problem. What are we going to name this new kid? Everybody chose the name they liked and we put all the names into a hat and Mom kept drawing out names until a name she liked was drawn out. That name was Lyle Gene. She liked the name, Gene better, but Gene Lyle didn’t flow as well as Lyle Gene does. So he goes by his middle name like some of us other kids do. I guess it’s okay, but if you have something legal it has to be put in the proper name and can sometimes be a little pain in the neck. Gene was born July 25th of 1941. It was also the year Grandpa died and WW2 broke out.
A little more of my old history.

Weekends Are For The Birds

I hate weekends. They drag on forever. If I had a life it might help. This is what I do. Get up, and drink coffee, then I read part of the newspaper, surf the TV channels and check the DVR to see if I happened to record something of interest. I didn’t so I work the newspaper crossword puzzle. The Sunday crossword puzzle was made for the genius type, which I am not. Then I eat breakfast, make bed, take shower, flop in chair, the chair has a magnet in it and I am drawn to it if I come within two feet of it. I think I have a magnet implant. Take a nap, read more newspaper, can’t do anything standing on my feet because of my ailing knee. Check out the laptop and see what is new in cyber space. Bladder kicks in the minute I open the laptop. They should sell catheters with laptops. It should be part of the software.

Till next time

Oh the pain of it all

OH THE PAIN OF IT ALL

Finally, I have an appointment for the Knee surgery. It’s taking four months from the start of the pain to the surgery. It’s going to be arthroscopy surgery for a torn cartilage/menicus tear. It is a day surgery and the doctor said I will limp in and I will limp out and everything should be just fine. I have to wait a month for the surgery. So what else is new. Maybe they will have a cancellation and I can get in sooner. When I try to sleep at night, the pain comes out in full force. It’s like some little unseen critters come out and hammers my knee with a jackhammer all night. I guess the pain of it all will just make me tougher and meaner. Those qualities might be beneficial at times. Especially when dealing with insurance companies. The Dr. gave me a prescription called Celebrex that will alleviate the pain, but it cost an arm and a leg and I only have a toe. Insurance will not approve the medicine unless the Dr prescribes something else first. You know just in case the something else might work. It’s like I have a lot of money and time to play their experiment game. Is that tactic meant to save the insurance company money or what. Is that medicine really that valuable?
I hope the surgery will restore the movement of that leg. I cannot bend my leg enough to get a sock on. So that means I have to go without socks. I look like a female "Bubba". I have been wearing clogs and now that winter is over I can wear sandals real soon. Yeah!!! winter is over, I tell you.

Daffodils and Pink Roses

Daffodils and Pink Roses

Not much going on in my world. In fact I have had a mild case of the blahs or maybe it was just a pity party. Anyway I was totally blog dead so I decided to cheer myself up and went to Safeway and bought a bouquet of daffodils. My favorite flower with roses being a close second. I have tried to analyze as to why I like daffodils so well and I believe I have come up with the reason. When I was a kid my mother loved to sew and crochet. Another craft that was popular at that time was making paper flowers with crepe paper. Plastic had not been invented yet. I was beyond impressed when mom made a beautiful bouquet of daffodils in the yellow crepe paper and green leaves. I am sure that is why I love those flowers so much. Maybe I just watch too much of DR Phil. He has taught me a few things about how to analyze why we do certain things. Especially if it’s something that is a little out of the ordinary. It’s another subject I have always been interested in.
My mother had a special talent for a lot of things. One of her babies did not have a crib so she bought some boards and screws or nails and built the crib. Her tools were a saw and hammer and a measuring stick. She painted it white. Paint was no doubt lead based, but we didn't know that was a bad thing. The crib lasted as long as it was needed. She could look at a picture of a dress in a catalog, cut out a pattern by looking at the picture and the dress would turn out perfect every time.
I remember another thing that was popular in years gone by. My grandma Lockwood had a shelf on the living room wall with cupid dolls or maybe they were called carnival dolls setting on it. She would make new crepe paper dresses for her dolls now and then. We enjoyed the very simple things much more in those days than we do now. I believe my Aunt Mary ended up with the dolls and my mother was a little miffed about it because she wanted them. They didn’t have a feud over it or anything, but you probably know how people sometimes fight to the death over some family heirloom that probably didn’t amount to a hill of beans in the first place. Letting it divide the family up for years if not forever. As Art Linkletter always said, "People are Funny". Maybe not haha funny, but strange funny.
If you are a man go buy your wife/other a bouquet of daffodils out of the blue and she will go daffy over you or worry herself crazy. Depending on how the relationship is going.
I just had a thought. I know men like flowers so what is wrong with a woman buying her man some flowers. You can enjoy them too.

"Till Next Time"

The Last Straw

I think this might be a comedy of errors, although I’m not laughing very hard. If you have been reading my other post, this is to let you know that I finally have an appointment with the orthopedic doctor. My doctor's office told me again that they had sent the Fax to the orthopedic office. That makes about six times they have told me they faxed it. I told her that I had called the orthopedic place and they have never received the fax. I also gave her the fax number. She said they would fax it again. They got it right this time. Now I have to wait until the 18th of March. Had they taken care of it a week ago I would be getting in a week sooner. Why do I have to do their work for them? They should have followed up the first time I called and found out the fax didn’t go through. Would that be expecting too much? Instead they kept telling me it would take the orthopedic place up to a week to set up the appointment. Yes, just to set up an appointment. Maybe if they would fire all the dumb people and hire smart ones it would turn the economy around. It was just a thought.

Slower than a Mule Train

Just another day here in the Northwest. We had some mild hail or slushy snow, but it only lasted a short time. I called my doctor’s office to see if they had my appointment with the orthopedic doctor confirmed yet. It has been a week today since they started working on it. It seems that they send a fax with my information and then that office will call me to set up an appointment. Last week I was told it could take up to 5 days. Today when I called she said it could take up to two weeks. So I took the bull by the horns. That is, I called the orthopedic office myself and asked if they had received a fax from my doctor. She said they did not receive anything yet. I decided to give them one more day. Tomorrow I will call the orthopedic doctor again and if they didn’t receive it, I will call my doctor’s office again. How long is this going to go on? It must be a slow moving Fax. Maybe they should hire a mule train to deliver it. I believe it would be faster. I would take it over there myself if they would let me.

Now while I’m on the subject of mistakes, I will tell you about this. I recently changed medical insurance companies. Since it is new I called today to make sure I am paid up and fully covered. The first thing he wanted to know was my birthday. I gave him 8/24/28. He said their record showed 8/24/08 and he said he didn’t think they had any client’s 100 years old. I told him that 80 is enough, don’t make me any older. Anyway everything is okay on that front. He promised he would correct the birth date.
I know this is boring stuff, but I am using you for a shoulder to cry on.

Update on Aches and Pains

Update on Aches and Pains

No word about the appointment yet, but the squeaky wheels gets the grease and I now have pain pills. They are legal and my insurance paid for part of them. Tomorrow will be the fifth day since they started the search for an orthopedic doctor. I want to thank everybody for your comments and concern. The pain pill really helps and will make the waiting much easier. I have no other news at this time, but I'll come up with something in a day or so.

Let Us Wait Awhile

This is a WAIT issue.

One day around the first part of December my knee started aching. I waited until I was sure it wasn't going to leave on it's own before I called the doctors office. Then I had to wait for the appointment. He wanted X-ray’s so I had to wait for that appointment. Then I had to wait until Dr received X-rays. I was called and set up for an appointment with the doctor, which I had to wait for. Meantime my knee is getting worse with each passing day. Finally the day arrives for the doctor appointment and I get a shot of cortisone in the knee, which was suppose to make the pain disappear in about 48 hours. 48 hours turned into exactly one week before the pain subsided. I had another follow up appointment with the doctor to see how it was doing, and there was no pain that day, but before the week was over it came back with a vengeance. I called the doctor and had to wait for an appointment for an MRI. Then I had to wait for the results of the MRI to get to the doctor. Now I'm waiting for the doctor's sidekick to get me an appointment with an orthopedic doctor because I have a torn cartilage. I waited two days and then it was the weekend, so two more days and I am still waiting and my ankles are now swollen, whatever that means. It's been almost three months and I'm still on hold. Getting pain pills from a doctor in this town is next to impossible. Everybody is a potential drug addict, and they wouldn't want to aid and abet that habit. I just hate to get my drugs from a drug dealer because they won't accept insurance.