Time Does Not Wait

Now we are going paperless. The wheels of progress never slow down. First it was the Pony express, and then it was the Postal Service, now its Electronic mail. On my last visit to the Doctor’s office I received a web address and a pin number. I came home and set it up. I now have access to my medical record with that doctor, and can make an appointment or cancel one on line. It shows my blood pressure and weight, and other things. I think it’s great. Lowe’s also has a setup like that. When I bought a new hot water heater, the clerk told me how to set it up. Now I can go to the website and see when I bought the heater and how much I paid for it. Don’t you sometimes wish you remembered how old an appliance is? I know we can keep those records in a file, but this eliminates the paper, and all those binders (with or without women)

 Now if they could develop an electronic method to rid your house of the excessive junk it would be a perfect world. I'm trying to get rid of my collector items. My collector items seems to be old towels, dish towels, sheets, and even underwear. Why do I keep those things forever? I know I can't take them with me when I die, but just in case...

I am working on it and am slowly, very slowly moving things to the throw-away bag and box. I have a box of old books in the Van to deliver to The Goodwill. They've been there for a few weeks, but I have good intentions. 

The Answer

Why won't rubber tires stay buried?

Most people, having never tried to bury a tire, are not aware that one will not stay in the ground. In fact, if you bury a tire five feet below the surface, it will—under normal conditions—rise to the top in about ten years.
The reason for this is as follows. The rubber tire, being resilient, is constantly pushing back against the soil around it. And since the pressure above the tire is less than that below it, the tire has more success pushing up than it does pushing down. As this pushing proceeds, small particles of soil around the tire are dislodged and fall down through cracks and crevices too small for the tire itself to fit through, a process that is accelerated somewhat by the slight movement of the tire as it expands and contracts with changes in temperature. Thus, as the tire pushes upward and the soil around it slowly moves down, the tire migrates toward the surface.

~source used: "Ever Wonder Why?" by Douglas B. Smith

.This story is like a rubber tire. I first posted it 4 years ago, now it has resurrected itself. 

What's New

A few things have happened since I was a puppy, but most things are not new they have just been reinvented. Here is my list.

GPS                    A map in the glove box.

TV                      The Daily Newspaper.

Facebook            A party line

Google                A Dictionary

Laptop                Having a kid under two

Microwave          Cook on high

Land line              A line dividing your property

A Cell                 A room in prison

Alarm System      Having a watchdog

Keyboard            A board with hooks to hang keys on.

MP3 Player         A Transistor radio or a car radio. You could listen to music where ever you went. Imagine that! Now when a car pulls up beside you, their music is so loud their windows are bulging out. 
                     

Celebrations

A more recent picture. 

Memorial day in the late 30’s and early 40’s was a day of real celebration. Anyway, it was if you lived in the country in Oklahoma. 
The country church we attended was located in the cemetery, called Bethel. I’m not sure which came first, the church or the cemetery.  The little brown shack was located behind the church. From there were the many graves, also by the side of the driveway. One side of the church was just a meadow, no graves were there at that time. There were a few cedar trees  along the driveway going into the church grounds. 
Preparing for memorial day started a day or so before, and it meant picking as many flowers as you had and putting them into buckets of water. Paper flowers made with crepe paper was another decoration that many created for the occasion. A gallon or two of lemonade and iced tea would be prepared and kept in a tub of ice. Ice came in blocks and if you wanted it crushed, you placed the block in a gunny sack and beat the heck out of it with whatever they used. I don't remember the details. 
It was an all day affair, because you met all the family members and neighbors. The kids ran around, and had a great time playing in the driveway. You were not allowed to run in the cemetery because stepping on a grave was a grave no-no. Adults milled around and visited all the graves of people they had known and much visiting and laughing and just catching up on each others lives. It would last most of the day and enjoyed by all. 
The church is no longer in the cemetery, and the part that was empty has now been filled. I have family buried there, my brothers, parents, grandparents, uncles. 
This is something I should have posted on Memorial day, but I’m always at least a day late. 
When I was a kid it was always referred to as Decoration day. Anyway, my mother called it that. She may have been the only one. 
My family started a family tradition several years ago. It was a family reunion that was celebrated in May. There were always strawberries galore, and somehow the special day was dubbed, Strawberry Day. I am not sure who named it, maybe someone in the family knows. It was one gigantic picnic in someone’s yard. The family grew larger and Strawberry Day grew larger. I think the day first started as a birthday party, because Dad and Ray (a son) shared the same birthday which was May 26th. Finally a grandson was born on Strawberry day. That made the day even more special.  There were other grand kids that came close to being born on the special day. When a baby was due in May, we all crossed our fingers, hoping it would be born on Strawberry day. The family has let Strawberry day slip away since our parents and a couple older siblings have passed away. It was nice while it lasted. I was only able to attend one Strawberry Day because I lived so far away. I think it was the last one they had. I remember it was so cold that day, we ended up in the house. It was at Gene and Glenda’s that year and the house was bulging at the seams. 

Back On The Farm

The following story is a rerun from years ago. 

I recall an incident that happened back on the farm where I grew up. Grandpa lived with us since Grandma had passed on. Our Daddy was the preacher of the little country church. It was a very devout household and we learned very early on that there was a code of ethics that you lived up to or else. Bad words were on the top of that list. No bad words. Us kids soon learned to follow that rule, but Grandpa just didn't seem to get the message. I don't think he really gave a gosh darn about the rule because he used them all the time. One time he hooked up a team of horses to a wagon and went to a field. I don’t remember what he was doing, but it doesn't matter. When he started back to the barn the horses got spooked over something and had a run-away, they took off like flying rockets over ruts and brambles and kicking up clouds of dust a mile high, and the wagon looked like an air born missile. Some of us kids were outside and saw them coming in our direction. We were worried that Grandpa had been thrown out and may be hurt bad because we couldn't see him in the wagon. We didn't know how we were going to get the horses stopped. We thought they might even run over us. Well, not to worry, horses are smart because when they saw the house they came to a screeching halt almost at our back door. I don’t know for sure how horses think, but I think they must have thought they were safe now that they were in their own back yard, or maybe they thought the fly that had been chasing them, was no longer a threat. We've got to go find Grandpa! About the time we were talking about finding Grandpa, he managed to pull himself up and was standing in the bed of the wagon. This is the point when he began to badmouth the horses with some more of those forbidden bad words. There were some words that our tender young ears had never heard before, he finally ended it with, "I see we finally got here." Maybe you would need to be there to get the humor of it, but we thought that was about the funniest line we had ever heard so we began to snicker and chuckle a little. At the same time Grandpa climbed out of the wagon and staggered around in front of the horses and begin shouting those same words to the horses again, in case they had not heard him the first time. He had raised his voice to a full roar. By now we had collapsed into a full-blown laugh seizure. We were laughing so hard we couldn't stand up. I guess Grandpa must have noticed this because, all at once, he turned his verbal abuse from the horses to us. Grandpa sure knew how to take the humor out of something because we snapped to attention and things began to simmer down and it was back to normal. Grandpa was just having a bad day. 

This Wild Weird World

This is kind of a twightlight zonie type of thing, but it actually happened.
I do not believe an inanimate object can vanish into thin air, such nonsense just cannot happen. One day several weeks ago when I moved out of my recliner to retire to the bedroom, I cleared off the stand by my chair. My corner in the living room is my castle, I always straighten up the end table, so I moved the junk mail to the trash can and other items went into the proper place, The only things left on the stand was the remote control, a coaster, and the laptop.  The next morning I was going to set my coffee on the coaster, and the coaster was gone, vanished, vamoosed, disappeared, left, moved out, departed. I was baffled, puzzled, perplexed, mystified, and befuddled. I searched everywhere, under the stand, under the chairs and cushions, in the waste  basket. I finally gave up.
One day I took a flash drive out of the laptop, and the last I recall of it, it was in my hand. It has also joined the departed coaster. I gave up.
Saturday, I finished knitting something, and put the knitting needles on a hassock that is nearby and later I wanted to start another project and I reached for the needles, and there was only one needle. At first I thought it had just rolled off on the floor and I get up to retrieve it, and it was not on the floor, or under anything. I had not been anywhere, and I live alone. Luckily I had another set of needles that size, but shorter. They work for what I am making.
Later that day I remembered my son had asked for a picture of an old car he had when young, so I decided to look for it.  The box of pictures was in the corner in the spare bedroom back under a table and I have not looked in that box of pictures for months and maybe a year. While searching for the picture, and toward the bottom of the box, was the missing coaster. I kid you not! The goose bumps went up my spine. There are four coasters in that set, and I had accounted for the other three. It is the one that was missing.
The knitting needle and flash drive are still in hiding.
I Googled to see if such things happen to others, and was amazed with the stories about it. 

Just Do It

When you have that inclination that you should call an old friend or relative, just do it.
I have been thinking of an old friend for a couple weeks and telling myself I should call and see how she is, but I always thought of it when I was in front of the sink or crawling into bed, and I just kept forgetting when it was convenient. Today I went shopping at Fred Meyers and there was my friends, Marion and Abe. We had both just checked out. No wonder I had been thinking of her, she has had a lot of bad things happening. Her brother just passed away yesterday with cancer, her husband, Abe had just spent a week in the hospital taking chemo treatments and radiation. Her 28 year old granddaughter has cancer, and it is not in remission. I think she could have used a shoulder to cry on. We have known each other for years. We worked in an office elbow to elbow and then the desk were moved and it was back to back and finally the desks were moved again and it was face to face. We got along perfectly, never any disagreements. She was a jewel to work with. Abe is still funny and can always make me laugh.
I really believe there is something to it, when you keep thinking of someone like that, you should get in touch. We plan to get together for coffee soon.

Abe and Marion 

Diet Diary

I found another entry in my Diet Diary.

8/4/76
I went to the Kmart and was in the checkout line. The lady before me had put her items on the counter. The clerk picks up one and then she picks up her microphone and her voice is booming all over the store loud and clear, “Price check on, Big Mama Panty Hose, aisle 8”. The customer threw her hand over her face and bowed her head and I heard her uttering this prayer, “Oh my God”. 

Clothing manufacturing companies enjoy thinking up new ways to embarrass the fat folk. Queen size just isn't effective enough. 

The Story of My Life

The story of my life. Lose fat, gain fat, lose fat, gain fat. Today I was looking for something and  ran across this  little tablet. The first entry says Diet Diary  6/26/73. I would have been 45 and fat.
It starts out like this:
6/26/73
Weighed 168 this morning. A lot of fat for 5 foot 4 ½ inches. (2012 The Osteoporosis now has me down to 5 ft 3)
Wore my cow dress to work today. It has a sloppy hem and a cigarette burn. Nothing would look good anyway so it doesn’t matter. Besides it’s the only thing I have that still fits. I hate that dress. When I reach my goal I’m going to burn it and scatter the ashes over the Cascade mountains. I weighed 175 in February so I have already lost 7 pounds. I saw a lady the other day that said she hardly knew me because I had gained so much weight.  I cannot stand her. PERIOD.
6/27/73
Still weighed the same, I visited a TOP meeting tonight. The meeting didn’t impress me. A lot of really fat ladies. Not one of them looked as though they were anywhere near their goal. I will join at the next meeting, maybe it will help. I’m drinking a diet grape pop. You need a pretty good imagination to believe that stuff is good. Lack of exercise makes Fanny’s fanny get fatter. Makes mine fatter too. I’m not counting calories, I just count the bites.
6/29/73
Karen made a wacky cake tonight and everybody is sitting right in front of my eyes eating the cake. I will not be tempted. I will not, I will not, I will not. Next year I won’t even remember that cake. I wouldn’t remember it in the morning, but it will still be setting there on the counter. Tomorrow is Saturday and the weekends are terrible. At work I am busy and forget food. Why can’t I lose more? Would anyone notice if a cow lost 4 lbs. One thing for sure if I ever got lost in the wilderness, I would be able to live on my fat for a while.
7/6/73
Today was a real hassle at work. Short of help and everybody in the county applied for credit. Now I gained a lb. Must have been that extra teaspoon of mashed potatoes I ate.
I was buying shoes in a shoe store and the clerk said their panty hose were on sale and then added that they carry Queen size. It was a man clerk, a woman would never say such a thing. Well, for his information I am still squeezing into the regular size. They may not be comfortable, but they are not Queen size. (Now I jump forward to 2012, they no longer use that “queen size” label on anything. They use X’s and the more X’es the bigger.  They are called Women’s size. Some are labeled 16W, 18W etc. I asked my friend, Alice, what the W stands for and she said, “wide”.  Makes sense to me. )

This is the story of my life.  The diary goes on and on, but it is just more of the same. Gain fat, lose fat, gain fat, lose fat.

Doing Office Time

Years ago when I was employed, I worked in an office. Part of the work in the olden days was to take the mail to the big blue mailbox on the street. It was my turn to take the mail to the box. On this day as I returned to our backdoor, a client had parked his pickup in our parking lot with five or six dogs in the back of it. We always called our client’s ‘consumers’ instead of customers or clients because they consumed so much of our time. When the dogs saw me they began to bark as loud as possible. It didn’t take long to stumble through the door.  Jean asked, “What did you do to those dogs?” I said, “I didn’t do anything to them, I just smiled at them.”  Jean started laughing, “You smile at dogs? Heh heh ha ha.” I answered,“I was running for my life, I wasn’t smiling, it was just an expression.” Jean laughed, “Heh hee heh ha ha, an expression! ” I had to defend myself so I said, “You have never had a pack of wild dogs nipping at your heels, have you?” “No, I would just smile at them” she said. 
Anything to kill time at the office.  

My Roots

This old house was built  in about 1889 and my father was born here in 1900.  His father and brothers built it so they could move out of the dug-out they had been living in.  Grandpa had homesteaded the property.  My parents moved into it when I was about 4 years old.  We lived there until I was 14, except for a couple years we lived in Colorado.  This house was an oven in the summer months of Oklahoma. We did not have that air conditioner shown in the photo. It was a freezer in the winter months.  One of the trees in the front  is a mulberry tree and the other is a walnut tree.  I remember because we enjoyed the walnuts and mulberries. The back room was a screened in porch. The cedar tree in back was there, but it also grew up. The lower limb was just the right height to use for a bar to chin ourselves. We climbed all the trees. I had two older brothers, and what they did, I did. My mothers protests didn't deter me.  I had to wear a dress because I was a girl and I was constantly tearing my dress.  Once in a great while Mom would let me wear a pair of my brothers overalls, but I think it was a sin for a girl to wear boy clothes so it didn't happen very often.  

Time moves on and so did we.  We moved to Stillwater, Ok into a house with a  real  bathroom  inside and  running water. I was in high school by now and made new friends.  This picture is me on the left and my friend, Ruth Ann.  We were the best friends and found all the fun things to do. She came from a very poor family and I loaned her clothes because she didn't have hardly any clothes. I remember the clothes she has on in this picture were mine.  Her Dad was an alcoholic and it seems her poor mother was always sick in bed, and having another baby. When my oldest brother came home from the war the two of them met and married soon after and they moved to California. I missed her so much I thought I would die. It was the last time I ever saw her. A couple years later they divorced and we lost all contact with each other. Just two or three years ago my daughter  found her name in some records on the computer. She sent the link to me and It was definitely her, she had just passed away a couple years before. She had married again and had three boys and a girl. She named her daughter after me. The tears came when I read that. She must have missed me as I had missed her. I told Karen I wished I had named her Ruth Ann. She said, "That's okay, Mom."  

The Wild West

Everything is running rather smoothly here in the wild West. We haven’t had a shoot-um-up lately; however our VFW club was robbed at gun point at 7AM when an employee came to work. 
Why don’t the thieves just get a job, they have to get up early anyway. Or they stay up all night so they can sneak around. We have a new high school being built and the hard working thieves sneaked in and stole tools and copper one night. 
That is about all that is happening around here. 
Just to have something to Blog about I will tell you about my brother, Ray. Ray can make a sound like a train whistle in the distance and he is good at it, very good. He once told me he was going someplace with a friend and the friend was driving so he turned his head so the friend wouldn’t notice and made his train whistle sound. The friend said, “did you hear that train whistle?“  Ray said, “Yeah, I heard it.” So I asked, “ did you tell him that it was you making the sound?“  Ray said, “no, but the train kept whistling until he caught on.“  I think of Ray everytime I hear a train whistle. 
Well, that’s it here in the blog world. 

Magical Phone

My brother, Hollis lives in another city. We talk on the phone now and then. Sunday night he called and apologized for not answering my call. He said they didn’t get to the phone before I hung up. I told him I had not called. He said, “Yes, you did, the phone rang and your number was on the caller ID.”  I said, “Well, I beg you'alls pardon, but I did not call you or anyone. I haven’t been on the phone all day.”   He said, “How did your number get on my caller ID?”  I said, “ I don’t know, but I guess whoever is behind this thinks we need to talk to each other, so lets talk.”  Then I told him how I accidentally called our brother, Ray a few weeks ago.  So we talked about Ray for awhile, and then we got on the subject of our father, and we both had good things to say about him.  I don’t remember what else we talked about and when I hung up I remembered something I forgot to tell him, so I called back. He was in the shower by then so I talked to Dar, my sister-in-law, for another 30 minutes.  
 Conclusion of the story is that I have a magical phone and it calls people that I need to talk to. Who needs a secretary? 

I learned something new this weekend that I bet you have not heard of. Do you peel a banana from the stem down and sometimes you can’t break the stem over so you need a knife.  Well, turn the banana over and squeeze the end of it a little and break the skin and peel it from that end. Probably everybody already knows about that, but I never get out of the box. I was still doing it like my mama taught me when I was 3 years old. 

This is Hollis and Dar 

This is my brother, Ray.  

This is Hollis as a freckled faced kid.
He always had a beaming smile 

Our Dad
(now deceased)

Not Much

Blue Seattle

I am at a loss for Blog material. Not much to talk about. I had a nice weekend. Some of my family from Tacoma came over to visit. I enjoyed it very much. I'm having one of those birthdays coming up so we got an early start and celebrated.
The weather is hot and this is better than freezing and snow. Much better !!   

Stuff to Stuff Someplace

I was out and about this morning, and passed house after house having yard sales.  How did they get all that stuff in their house in the first place? It’s the great American pass-time. Have a yard sale or go to one.  
 Everybody and their uncle come to buy more “Stuff” to take home to their house. Tables piled up and over flowing with stuff. Everybody need more stuff to stuff in their nooks and crannies”. 

I’m having an ongoing pursuit for hot water.  The pilot light went out on the hot water heater numerous times. I am now awaiting the third visit from the heating and air conditioning business. I wish they had an Xray or a MRI machine that would detect what the problem is.  
I can’t go to a yard sale, I have to stay home and wait for the Heating and A/C business to come calling. No more stuff for me. 

More Pictures

The weather is fine. No need complaining, it will not change anything. My sister in Oklahoma had to evacuate their home because of wildfires, but it didn't reach them. On top of that it was 113 degrees and had not rained for a long while. 

I have a couple new pictures of a Great Granddaughter. I think they are cute. 

This is a view from her back porch the night of the fire.

This is Chloe pretending she is Mommy

They rescued this little stray kitten. It is no longer a stray and growing by leaps and bounds.

I think Kitty is planning his escape.

The Fun Two's

An overheard conversation between two year old cousins. 

Chloe going on a bike ride. 

Leah had an accident with a door and cut her forehead open,  she had to have stitches in it. Her cousin, Chloe, asked her if she went to the doctor.
Leah said, "I went to the emergency room, AND I saw the doctor." 

My World

Who moves your stuff around when you live alone? I had two important pieces of mail last week and they disappeared off this earth. I didn’t touch them so where are they? At least they weren’t that important. One was a reminder to get my drivers licenses renewed.  I think I can remember that one. The other one was a notice to have my car tabs renewed. They are not due until September so why remind me two months early. I guess they must have heard about me, they know I’m slow. After spending hours looking for the letter, I finally thought I might have the receipt from last year. Problem solved, it only took a minute to find it. It has the VIN number and all that vital stuff I need to know to get it renewed. 

Here are some random pictures. 

This is my oldest great grand, taken a few years back. I think this
is Ponderosa Lake in Idaho. His name is Anthony.

Just because I like sunsets.

A cute little girl eating a green ice cream cone.
Her name is Chloe, and she is another great grand.

I like to shock my family with these ancient pictures of them.  Karen, Dennis and Katie.

Watch the Tree Eater

I mentioned in a blog a few days ago that my watch no longer worked and I was shopping for a new one. 
I have looked in several stores and couldn’t find one that suited me. Yesterday I was rummaging through a dresser drawer for something, and imagine my surprise when I found a box and when I opened it, it had  four perfectly good watches in it. They need  new batteries. I sold watches on Ebay at one time. The bottom fell out of that business venture and I had these watches left over so I stuck them in a drawer. Isn’t that what drawers are for? I took one over to Shopko and got a new battery and it works fine. I have a lifetime supply of watches on hand. If you considered my age, that wouldn’t  be much of a fabulous happening, but I won’t go into that. 


I also told you and showed pictures of the tree that fell on the neighbors house. I have updated pictures.  Life is getting dull here in blog land. This is also cutting into my valuable nap time.  

This is my new watch. This one is Freestyle Tabu. I still  had the picture of it.
And if I wear something that doesn't go with blue, do you think I care?

Not much damage if any. My tree is looking pathetic.  

The men are feeding the tree to the hungry tree eater.