The Silence is Heavenly

Sometimes when I turn the TV off the silence is wonderful. I've heard people say they turn their TV on just for the sound. Maybe they don't feel so alone. I turn mine off because I like to go on YouTube and whatever you have an interest in you can find it on there. Music, hobbies, instructions, questions, patterns, people, etc. It's better than Google. 
I've searched Facebook for anyone I ever knew, I do believe. It isn't taking much of my time these days. I finally wised up to the clickbait garbage. They show a fascinating picture of something, but if you want to read the story you click on the story and then the ads galore and two lines of the story. I think we've all wised up to that now so they need to come up with something new. 
Fall is creeping upon us. The days are getting shorter already. 
I think this is enough gibberish for now. 

Enjoy the Fall

The Way You Wish it Wasn't

I’ve been hanging around for 86 years, and I’ve seen a lot of new inventions in those years.  I have been wondering which may have been the greatest invention of all time. I’m not sure, but I bet toilet paper caught on pretty quick. Who invented toilet paper? No, they didn’t teach that in school, they taught you who invented the cotton gin. Who cares who invented the cotton pickin cotton gin. I don’t think I’ve had any use for that piece of knowledge in my entire life. What a waste of my school time. Even if I were on Double Jeopardy, they wouldn’t ask that one. 

I don’t know when it was invented, but the bread toaster was a great one in our household. We never had toast. My mother would make a pan of biscuits from scratch each morning. Mixes were not in existence yet. She also had to build a fire in the stove to bake them in. The first toaster we had was not automatic. It had a panel on each side that you dropped down so you could flip the toast and burn/toast the other side. Someone had to man the toaster because you had to guess when it was done. I wonder how many slices of bread went up in smoke in those days. 

Speaking of bread, my mother always made our bread, and one day we bought a loaf of bread from the store. We were bowled over because the bread was already sliced. What will they think of next! We constantly hear the expression ‘the greatest thing since sliced bread’. I still think we should say ‘The greatest thing since toilet paper’.

We even had electricity in our house. Many people didn’t have it yet in our area. We lived without it for a few years. It was like camping forever. Who wants to camp forever?

The day our new refrigerator was delivered was a day of celebration. People kept their food in ice boxes. People continued to call the refrigerator an ice box for years. I think some still do.

Our first washing machine had a gas motor. You pulled on a cord to start the motor. It was something else for us kids to fight over. It went like this. I get to pull the cord. It’s my time, you pulled it the last time. Did not. Did so. We didn’t have many toys in those days. On wash day everyone gathered around the washing machine, and watched the agitator go back and forth. As I recall, we had to bolt the washing machine to the floor because it danced all over the porch.

Those were the days I don’t want to relive. 

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. 
                     

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. 

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.

Rainbows

      Did you think there was a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow?
                               No, it's an outhouse. 

The Way it is

It’s a quiet weekend on the home front. I am dog sitting or in this case the dog is sitting me. This dog is big enough to take care of herself, so we are just keeping each other company. Now and then the dog comes over and lays her paw on my leg so I guess you could say we have been holding paws all weekend.
She is quiet and not anxious about anything. I was afraid she would be pacing the floor. My dog died about four years ago and sometimes I think about getting another one, but haven’t been too serious about it yet. My son said,” You don’t need to get another dog, you can borrow ours.”
Somehow that just isn’t the same as having your own dog. That would be like borrowing somebody’s kid for a day or two. Who does that?
It’s been cold as Alaska, but no snow and I am very pleased about that. 

I tried to take a picture of the dog, but it was impossible to get a good one. My camera is slow and I'm even slower. She would always move before I could snap it. In this one, she not only moved, she laid down and went to sleep.   
Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day. Some holidays we light firecrackers, or dye and hunt Easter eggs or wear green, or eat big meals, or buy each other gifts or send valentines. We need to come up with something fun to do for his day. I guess there will be parades, but that isn’t much fun.
Till Next Time.

This is Pepper

Dancing Leg to Leg

I once attended a dance when I was young and agile, and a man in our group asked me to dance. I told him I didn’t know how and I was just watching. He grabbed my arm and said, “I’ll teach you how.”  We went out on the dance floor. He pressed his leg into mine and said, follow my leg, and away we went. We went everywhere his leg said to go. I am not kidding you by the time that dance was over I knew how to dance. I had just never tried before. It was a two-step or a waltz, depending on the music. Sometimes there would be a couple that knew how to do the ballroom dancing. I wasn’t one of them.  At another dance I was dancing with a man who was extremely tall so I made a comment about how tall he was. His answer, “I was born in Texas.” So I said, “ I bet you’re glad you were not born in Rhode Island.” He said, “How come?” I said, “Oh, I’m just making small talk”. I think only one of us was sober and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t him.  I don’t dance anymore. I do well to get to the mailbox and back.
I don’t know how or why I thought of the dancing after all this time. Right now I am going to dance off to bed.  

Winter and Other Headaches.

Today it decided to snow some more. I think it's because I had a medical appointment with  a  pain clinic at 9:15. I left the house about 45 minutes early because the streets looked very icy. The streets were somewhat icy, but we have a wonderful street crew in this town. They get out early and start spreading the sand/deicer. It's very much appreciated. By the time I got out of the place, the sun was out and the streets were clear, but wet. I can handle wet.
I was so early, I told the man next to me in the waiting room that I was prepared to camp out there for a long while. I no sooner got the words out of my mouth and I heard my name. I looked around to see who had the same name as me. Then she repeated it with my last name. "Do miracles ever cease" I said to myself. They have a blood pressure machine that almost squeezed my arm off. Other than that things went okay.
I was so glad that I didn't have to hang around for a long time because the last shot I had was terrible painful. So I was really dreading it. The shots (they always give me two) Maybe if you buy two, you get one for free. Anyway the shots today were not nearly as painful as the last time. The doctor is either getting better or I'm getting tougher. That's all the news in my town.

What Makes People Tick

A judge arrested for DUI.  He will soon be back on the bench judging other DUI people.
He’ll have sympathy for them now because he has walked in their shoes. Just who we need in our judicial system, somebody who has been there.

A mother murdered her 13-month old baby with her bare hands because he would not stop crying. She won that round, he won’t cry anymore. People that have anger problems and uncontrolled temper issues should have themselves sterilized. The going trend seems to be, if you have killed your child just throw him in the weeds some place and tell authorities he was kidnapped. 

A man fires a semiautomatic rifle at the White House. Ingenious thought out plan. He can spend a little time in prison contemplating what he could have done differently. He believed attacking the White House was part of a personal mission from God. Well, think again Bubba, if God wanted the White House attacked he wouldn’t need your help.

Now that takes me to Herman Cain. God convinced him to enter the race for president, but God must have forgotten about all those women that were sexually harassed. Or maybe they are just making it up. Stick to your guns Herman, they can’t prove anything.

And then there was Penn State. Thank God, the victims are finally being heard.  Does it seem strange to anyone that so many pedophiles, scammers, and cheating swindlers are being exposed. It’s about time. What makes people tick?

Service with a Smile

I ordered something from a catalog. They send me the wrong size, not the size I ordered. I send it back and asked for the correct size. I didn’t have to pay shipping to send it back. I wait and wait and wait for the item to come.  After about three weeks I get a bill from them. Charging me for the amount of the item. I call them to find out where my order is. I have received a bill and no product. After being on hold for a time, I am told that the item is out of stock and they cannot fill the order. I explain to her that they have charged me the full amount. She tells me that I will only need to pay the shipping charge. “Shipping charge for what, they haven’t shipped anything, but the wrong size and that was their mistake”. So she needs to discuss this with a superior and asked me to hold again. Finally she comes back on line and tells me that as a one-time courtesy they will waive that shipping charge.   I guess that means the next time they goof up it will be my responsibility.  Oh well, as my mother used to say ''It'll all come out in the wash"

Life goes on

Great-grand daughter,Chloe and Brandon at Day care

Both Great-grand daughters

Not much news. I finally received a package in the mail after 13 days. It only came from Calif to Wash.


Oh well, it was a coat and I haven't needed it yet. Summer is hanging on. It started out by Fed Ex and when it got to my town they gave it to the Post Office to deliver. It's been cloudy all day, but I haven't noticed any rain. 
 I am going to have to ask for a rate increase. That is what utility companies do when they want more money.  I'll be lucky If I don't get a rate decrease from  Social Security, which isn't so secure these days. Maybe they should name it something else.

Answer From Heaven

My car was new back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. To be exact it’s a 21 years old van.
The passenger side window hasn’t worked since I’ve had the car. Now the driver side window is refusing to go up and down. The tailgate will not stay up, I have a long stick that I prop it open with. One day the grocery store helper got conked on the head because the stick slipped. He was very nice about it, but I was embarrassed.
All I can find on the radio is static so I never turn it on. Now when I unlock the car, I sometimes have to try several times to get the key at the exact right angle. So I have stopped locking it because I’m sure it is ready to give up too. Can you imagine somebody stealing it? I can’t so I leave it unlocked.
I told my grandson about what sad shape my car is in and he said I should ride in his Mom’s car. None of the windows will go down and there is no A/C you can get in the car on the driver’s side, but once you close the door you have to exit out the other door because the handles have fallen off.  In hot weather somebody has to go with her to hold the passenger door open so they can have some air to breathe.


Today I got an answer from heaven. My son was here and I was whining about the car to him and he is going to come over this week and fix the thing, at least the window, tailgate and locking mechanism. I told him I didn’t know he would know how and he reminded me that he worked in that field for many years. He repaired those automatic windows in trucks constantly. Sometimes it pays to whine about things.

Even if it is falling apart it beats walking.

Water Towers and Big Bottles

My Grandson-in-law, Jim posted some pictures of a tower on his
web site and it reminded me that I always wanted to know the answer to this, but thought I would sound too dumb to ask.
“Why on earth do they make water tanks that are set on stilts that almost reach the moon”
Did they explain it in school or did I drift off and miss out. So now that it is easy to find answers I looked it up on Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia on the world wide web.


A water tower or elevated water tower is a large elevated drinking water storage container constructed to hold a water supply at a height sufficient to pressurize a water distribution system.
It has something to do with gravity and pressure and all that boring stuff. However the article led me to the worlds largest catsup bottle. Something I know you are dying to know about. I mean who wouldn’t want to know about the world’s largest catsup bottle. It seems to be very well known, but I had never heard about it before.  The Bottle

Things I Learned in Bible Study

Things you learn in Bible Study are very useful. Don't cut salt completely out of your diet or you may start getting cramps in your legs or fingers. I learned this when I was going to Bible Study years ago. Everybody would talk about the latest thing that was happening in their lives. One lady was a nurse. She said her daughter had decided salt was bad for her so she completely left it out of her diet. The daughter had put herself and her husband on a nothing but oatmeal diet.  One day her fingers started cramping so badly they would cross and she would have to pry them apart. She called her mother (The Nurse) in a panic and asked if she knew what was wrong and her mother said, "Are you still on that salt free diet? You need to start eating some salt."
So that is what I learned at bible study that day. A little salt will go a long way.
At another meeting one of the ladies said she heard of somebody that had died from a lethal combination of gas and uncontrollable laughing. By the time we visualized that one, we were all suffering from uncontrollable laughter. The nurse said she doubted if it actually happened.
One day a lady said they decided it was time to pick their pears and discovered somebody had already picked them. They also took them.  They only had one lonely Pear tree in the front yard.
I’m still thinking it might be wonderful to have a husband that would eat oatmeal three times a day and never gripe about it. Or maybe not.

Issue of the Tissue (a rerun)

AS TO THE ISSUE OF THE TISSUE

Should it go over the roll?
Or should it go under the roll?
Or Should we take a poll?
It doesn’t really matter at all
Just pull it through the hole!

Another Day Down the Tube

The Olive trees are in bloom

by Michael Gartner


This is a wonderful piece by Michael Gartner, editor of newspapers large and
small and president of NBC News. In 1997, he won the Pulitzer Prize for
editorial writing. It is well worth reading, and a few good chuckles are
guaranteed.

"My father never drove a car. Well, that's not quite right. I should say I
never saw him drive a car. He quit driving in 1927, when he was 25 years
old, and the last car he drove was a 1926 Whippet.


"In those days," he told me when he was in his 90s, "to drive a car you had
to do things with your hands, and do things with your feet, and look every
which way, and I decided you could walk through life and enjoy it or drive
through life and miss it."


At which point my mother, a sometimes salty Irishwoman, chimed in: "Oh,
bull----!" she said. "He hit a horse."


"Well," my father said, "there was that, too."


So my brother and I grew up in a household without a car. The neighbors all
had cars -- the Kollingses next door had a green 1941 Dodge, the Van
Laninghams across the street a gray 1936 Plymouth, the Hopsons two doors
down a black 1941 Ford -- but we had none.


My father, a newspaperman in Des Moines , would take the streetcar to work
and, often as not, walk the 3 miles home. If he took the streetcar home, my
mother and brother and I would walk the three blocks to the streetcar stop,
meet him and walk home together.


My brother, David, was born in 1935, and I was born in 1938, and sometimes,
at dinner, we'd ask how come all the neighbors had cars but we had none. "No
one in the family drives," my mother would explain, and that was that.


But, sometimes, my father would say, "But as soon as one of you boys
Turns 16, we'll get one." It was as if he wasn't sure which one of us would
Turn 16 first.


But, sure enough, my brother turned 16 before I did, so in 1951 my parents
bought a used 1950 Chevrolet from a friend who ran the parts department at a
Chevy dealership downtown.


It was a four-door, white model, stick shift, fender skirts, loaded with
everything, and, since my parents didn't drive, it more or less became my
brother's car.


Having a car but not being able to drive didn't bother my father, but it
didn't make sense to my mother.


So in 1952, when she was 43 years old, she asked a friend to teach her to
drive. She learned in a nearby cemetery, the place where I learned to drive
the following year and where, a generation later, I took my two sons to
practice driving. The cemetery probably was my father's idea. "Who can your
mother hurt in the cemetery?" I remember him saying more than once.


For the next 45 years or so, until she was 90, my mother was the driver in
the family. Neither she nor my father had any sense of direction, but he
loaded up on maps -- though they seldom left the city limits – and appointed
himself navigator. It seemed to work.


Still, they both continued to walk a lot. My mother was a devout Catholic,
and my father an equally devout agnostic, an arrangement that didn't seem to
bother either of them through their 75 years of marriage.


(Yes, 75 years, and they were deeply in love the entire time.)


He retired when he was 70, and nearly every morning for the next 20 years or
so, he would walk with her the mile to St. Augustin's Church. She would walk
down and sit in the front pew, and he would wait in the back until he saw
which of the parish's two priests was on duty that morning. If it was the
pastor, my father then would go out and take a 2-mile walk, meeting my
mother at the end of the service and walking her home.


If it was the assistant pastor, he'd take just a 1-mile walk and then head
back to the church. He called the priests "Father Fast" and "Father Slow."


After he retired, my father almost always accompanied my mother whenever she
drove anywhere, even if he had no reason to go along. If she were going to
the beauty parlor, he'd sit in the car and read, or go take a stroll or, if
it was summer, have her keep the engine running so he could listen to the
Cubs game on the radio. In the evening, then, when I'd stop by, he'd
explain: "The Cubs lost again. The millionaire on second base made a bad
throw to the millionaire on first base, so the multimillionaire on third
base scored."


If she were going to the grocery store, he would go along to carry the bags
out -- and to make sure she loaded up on ice cream. As I said, he was always
the navigator, and once, when he was 95 and she was 88 and still driving, he
said to me, "Do you want to know the secret of a long life?"


"I guess so," I said, knowing it probably would be something bizarre.


"No left turns," he said.


"What?" I asked.


"No left turns," he repeated. "Several years ago, your mother and I read an
article that said most accidents that old people are in happen when they
turn left in front of oncoming traffic. As you get older, your eyesight
worsens, and you can lose your depth perception, it said. So your mother and
I decided never again to make a left turn."


"What?" I said again.


"No left turns," he said. "Think about it. Three rights are the same as a
left, and that's a lot safer. So we always make three rights."


"You're kidding!" I said, and I turned to my mother for support. "No," she
said, "your father is right. We make three rights. It works." But then she
added: "Except when your father loses count."


I was driving at the time, and I almost drove off the road as I started
laughing.


"Loses count?" I asked.


"Yes," my father admitted, "that sometimes happens. But it's not a problem.
You just make seven rights, and you're okay again."


I couldn't resist. "Do you ever go for 11?" I asked.


"No," he said. "If we miss it at seven, we just come home and call it a bad
day. Besides, nothing in life is so important it can't be put off another
day or another week."


My mother was never in an accident, but one evening she handed me her car
keys and said she had decided to quit driving. That was in 1999, when she
was 90.


She lived four more years, until 2003. My father died the next year, at 102.


They both died in the bungalow they had moved into in 1937 and bought a few
years later for $3,000. Sixty years later, my brother and I paid $8,000 to
have a shower put in the tiny bathroom -- the house had never had one. My
father would have died then and there if he knew the shower cost nearly
three times what he paid for the house.)


He continued to walk daily -- he had me get him a treadmill when he was101
because he was afraid he'd fall on the icy sidewalks but wanted to keep
exercising -- and he was of sound mind and sound body until the moment he
died.


One September afternoon in 2004, he and my son went with me when I had to
give a talk in a neighboring town, and it was clear to all three of us that
he was wearing out, though we had the usual wide-ranging conversation about
politics and newspapers and things in the news.


A few weeks earlier, he had told my son, "You know, Mike, the first hundred
years are a lot easier than the second hundred."


At one point in our drive that Saturday, he said, "You know, I'm probably
not going to live much longer."


"You're probably right," I said.


"Why would you say that?" He countered, somewhat irritated.


"Because you're 102 years old," I said.


"Yes," he said, "you're right." He stayed in bed all the next day. That
night, I suggested to my son and daughter that we sit up with him through
the night. He appreciated it, he said, though at one point, apparently
seeing us look gloomy, he said:” I would like to make an announcement. No
one in this room is dead yet"


An hour or so later, he spoke his last words:


"I want you to know," he said, clearly and lucidly, "that I am in no pain. I
am very comfortable. And I have had as happy a life as anyone on this earth
could ever have."


A short time later, he died. I miss him a lot, and I think about him a lot.
I've wondered now and then how it was that my family and I were so lucky
that he lived so long. I can't figure out if it was because he walked
through life, Or because he quit taking left turns. "


Life is too short to wake up with regrets. So love the people who treat you
right. Forget about the one's who don't. Believe everything happens for a
reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it.
Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be
worth it."

Fear Strikes Again

I have a large window in my living room. When sitting in my recliner I can see out very well. One day as I was sitting there I heard a noise and glanced up at the window and a man and woman were standing at my door. I thought the woman was my granddaughter, Deena, so I jump up and opened the door. It was not my granddaughter, but total strangers.
The woman was shaking and trembling all over and I felt instant fear. Then I saw why she was shaking. The man had a gun in her back and she immediately tried to enter my door. I had stepped back enough to get the door closed, but I was unable to lock it because the force on the other side kept it from closing completely. They finally forced their way through the door and I have never been so frightened in my entire life. I was so scared that I woke up immediately.