Tuesday March 24 2009

Charm and Lynn at Lunch Today

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FRIEND JOAN!!!

Hope you have a wonderful day.

And don't do anything I would to.

Oh well..... go ahead if you want to have that kind of fun!

P.S. So sorry I couldn't find any card with the moon on it.

Today Joe has gone out to the ranch to feed the cats. It is a nice looking day out for the drive anyway except a stiff wind is bending the trees. Yesterday was terrible with wind and a blizzard. Despite that he was able to drive in again - since we had those warm days. This has to be the earliest ever. He's been real busy watching basketball lately. Dogs are on the deck, and not asking to come in.

Charm and I went to lunch at the Brew Pub today. We were going to the Wind River Pizza, but they are remodeling until the 30th. Neither of us has eaten there for many years, so we're going to try it out later. People say the food is good.

I went down to Dale's hardware store and got a sheet of acrylic to protect the top of this desk before it gets all ruined. Should have done that long ago. This morning noticed the finish has a rough water spot and possibly I just did it today because my sweater sleeve was damp from washing up and water running down my arm. That makes me feel so bad because I love this little desk. It was a little more of a job than I thought by the time I got the whole thing unloaded, cleaned and acrylic on. It does look nice. I know that won't last because the acrylic always gets so scratched up in time.

While I was at Dale's I got a screwdriver set. A couple of my screwdrivers are missing and Joe says he doesn't have them - so that's what happens when something of mine disappears - I buy ten more. And a new wrench too. (Sally, that's a wrench not a wench.)

Also stopped at the store again. Forgot to get my activia yogurt yesterday. I got to say hi to Carrie there. She is looking really good as usual. Swept up about a half a cup of mud clumps and dirt from the dining room floor. Will wait a few more days before I mop.

Yesterday along with a bunch of errands, I got a haircut and she really got it short this time. I didn't help anything by telling her the top was too long for the length she had the sides. Anyway it had gotten pretty long since the last cut three months ago and I told her I wanted it cut for the spiky "do" again. Spiky may be ALL I can do with it - I don't think it's even an inch long. Might have to wear big earrings or something.

I received the new Dish TV receiver smart cards, and have to install them. Guess I'm capable of doing that..... I hope. Yesterday I bought a new address/phone number book. Tried to get refill pages for the nice cover I have, but no luck. So have started the job of redoing the book. The old one is in very sad shape and outdated. Probably it's 30 years old. My birthday book is also tattered and torn, lists such a mess, but that one will probably stay that way. Mostly because I've never seen another one I like as well with pockets for the cards.

Monday March 23 2009

Skulls seemed like a good subject for today.

Perhaps March is going to roar out like a lion. We got some snow yesterday and today it is snowing and blowing. Both the state's freeways I-80 and I-25 - are closed further east. Rollie is stuck down in Laramie because of the blizzard - coming back to Pinedale from meeting Judi in New Mexico for a week. Certainly not unusual for this time of year. And not as cold as it could be, at 27. Joe's back from coffee. Sitting and listening to NPR. Until something comes on he doesn't like or agree with and there's the muffled swear words and he turns it off. He wasn't gone as long today and leaves me to wonder if no one else showed up - maybe they are all sitting home by the stove.

Peggy called from Atlanta, I'd emailed her a message since I couldn't get her on the phone (she'd left it on her son's washer last week) and told her I wasn't going to come to Atlanta in April. It just seems like a kind of stupid thing to do, in case I got sick that far away from home. They might come up here instead.

I have a lot of errands to do this afternoon, but not much else to write about. So I put an interesting poem in for you to read instead. I thought it was interesting anyway. Because I'm an organ donor. I doubt they will harvest mine though, here in Pinedale WY. I don't know how that works, especially if you're going to be cremated because that has to be done in a certain number of hours. Would Dr. K do the "harvesting"? And put them in a playboy ice chest and give them to the man I see go in and out every afternoon when I'm at the clinic, carrying the ice chests to his van. Surely those are just vials for blood tests. We always smile at each other and I hold the door open for him.

Good story here: http://www.offthepavedroad.com/

Article and 17 photos of the program we went to last Wednesday night:

http://www.pinedaleonline.com/news/2009/03/TheDallasBrass1.htm


The White Museum
by George Bilgere


My aunt was an organ donor

and so, the day she died,

her organs were harvested

for medical science.

I suppose there must be people

who list, under "Occupation,"

"Organ Harvester," people for whom

it is always harvest season,

each death bringing its bounty.

They spend their days

loading wagonloads of kidneys,

whole cornucopias of corneas,

burlap sacks groaning with hearts and lungs

and the pale green sprouts of gall bladders,

and even, from time to time,

the weighty cauliflower of a brain.

And perhaps today,

as I sit in this café, watching the snow

and thinking about my aunt,

a young medical student somewhere

is moving through the white museum

of her brain, making his way slowly

from one great room to the next.

Here is the gallery of her girlhood,

with that great canvas depicting her father

holding her on his lap in the backyard

of their bungalow in St. Louis.

And here is a sketch of her

the summer after her mother died,

walking down a street in Berlin

when the broken city was itself

a museum. And here

is a small, vivid oil of the two of us

sitting in a café in London

arguing over the work of Constable

or Turner, or Francis Bacon

after a visit to the Tate.

I want you to know, as you sit there

with your microscope and your slides,

there's no need to be reverent before these images.

That's the last thing she would have wanted.

But do be respectful. Speak quietly.

No flash photography. Tell your friends

you saw something beautiful.


"The White Museum" by George Bilgere. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

Sunday March 22 2009

Another Utah Mountain further north.

Hank's photo of Pine Mountain made me want to show

this one we got when we were there coming home through

Utah from Vegas. I've always loved Pine Mountain.

The blog is jumping right onto the page this morning so guess I better take advantage of it and write something. This morning we had a fast storm go through putting down about and inch or two of new snow. It's already melting and the sun is shining - about 50 degrees out already! I was surprised when I got up late and saw it all white and clean out on the deck with no dog prints in it - so knew it had to have come in a hurry. Gina has a really neat picture on her blog of it snowing at her house if you want to check it out. See horseback41 in my sidebar and click on that.

In case you were wondering how the delima of whether to have noodles or dumplings with the chicken stew came out, we had dumplings.

Sunday - so I was to have gone to church but have had an upset stomach since last night and didn't want to have to rush to find the rest room in the middle of Sacrament meeting. Am finding that I'm kind of missing going. To tell the truth I do have some issues, and interestingly the same ones I've always had with the teachings, but have a very strong inclination or urging to be figuring this all out. One interesting thing was that the very first lesson I attended at Sunday School involved perhaps my biggest concern, that of the position of women in the scheme of things. I have to say, seeing the young women in the church that things have changed a lot on that subject since I was young.

I intended to go grocery shopping after church, but now will wait until tomorrow when I have to go out for a couple of other things. I'll pay the bills online. And work more on my photos.

Saturday Night Note

So weird that all you guys' blogs say my last blog was posted four days ago, but I have blogged every day. Wonder what that is about. If you go there, are those days all there up until today?? I'm going to edit posts, and click publish on them all again and see if that works. - no it didn't - still says four days ago.

Saturday March 22 2009

Some of the old photos I came across yesterday.

Nothing on the calender. Another warm breezy day, about 55 out. Warm for this time of year. You can almost see the snow melting and the brush and grasses showing more each time you look out. The dogs are laying on the deck sleeping in the sun. Have done some interesting reading on "Lilith", which I quite enjoyed learning. I got a big pot of chicken stew going in the slow cooker. Now to decide whether to have home made noodles or dumplings. I like the noodles, which Joe doesn't like and he likes the dumplings which I don't care for. In any case, it's way too much for the two of us, but the chicken needed to be used. I took the dogs for a walk this afternoon and water was running down the ditches. It took a minute to recognize that old sound. Tonight its very still out and when I opened the back door I could hear Pine Creek over in the distance rushing down to town. That's my news for today.

Friday March 20 2009

HAPPY FIRST DAY OF SPRING

'

Believe me .... all you southerners and californios

can quit telling me all about your flowers and birds

and grass and green leaves as long as I'm still

wallowing in slush!!!!!!

Dorito Dog - No Wonder She Weighs 90 Pounds

My internet has pooped out again this afternoon, and I couldn't get the blog to go. Again.
Been trying off and on all day to write the blog but guess the centurytel connection is giving me fits, so here I am at almost 11 p.m. getting it written. Maybe I just wasn't patient enough.

It was another beautiful warmer day. No sooner get the wood floors mopped or cleaned and there's a thousand little muddy footprints all over it again!

Called Joan over in "paradise" and we talked for a while. I always enjoy visiting with her. Sounds like we're both having troubles with our arthritis. She said she is laying tile by bending over. I can't get down on the floor or my hands and knees hardly at all either. Besides needing new knees, she sounds pretty good. Joan, have you tried one of those little gardening benches with wheels that you just scoot along on, low enough to bend over and work on the ground? I used to just sit on my rubbermaid step stool and that worked pretty good too.

Today I had been TRYING to work on getting all those duplicate photos in my external hard drive in some semblance of beginning to organize them. So have been working on photos all day long, except when I needed to do some kind of house work. I spent a few other days on doing sieges of it too. The big file in there looks a lot better now as I got thousands of photos into a couple of folders and essentially out of sight, and separate from the regular files. It’s a beginning. So it was good to go looking in the files and seeing what’s where. Next, if I ever go back, will be to start weeding out duplicates and making sure I don’t get rid of things I want to keep by mass deleting. I finally found my Yellowstone pictures with my sister and the kids from last year!! Hard to believe looking at thousands of pictures that I have trouble finding something I want to put on the blog.

For the past several days, Joe has been going up the ladder into the attic and doing something, I know not what, on the furnace. He's asked me for stools, but none of the four I have suited him. Today I asked him what he was doing and he said he was going to put that platform around the furnace, but I told him he didn't have to do that because the builder is supposed to come and do it. So he quit and took the ladder down, grumbling all the while. But not before getting marks on the wall and ceiling. But first I have to call the builder. Yes, I'll do it right away.

Sheral and I had a good visit on the phone this afternoon. We got most of the world's problems solved at last. Sounds like she's really getting her house in order, purging and sorting and painting and cleaning. It's been going on for quite some time now. Anyway it was good she called, because I sure needed a break from sorting photos.

I saw two bluebirds out on the deck railing this morning. I think they just send out scouts periodically to see if there's anything to eat here yet, and then they go back south for another couple of months.

Only those who dare, truly live.

Thursday March 19 2009

Walking the dogs around the block in our neighborhood.

Sure not like at the ranch, is it!

The Boys love going anyway.

Another day without much happening, same-o same-0. I got a couple loads of laundry done. Seems like I was puttering at something all day. More work getting the photos on the blog, then for a while they wouldn't post - that centurytel connection I suppose.

Judi called me from Tumacacori - Timbuctu - Tucomcari - who knows! somewhere in New Mexico this morning and I sure always enjoy hearing her voice. They were in a second hand store and saw a piece of artwork (a framed print) by an artist she recognized and wondered if it was a bargain or not. I told her I thought not, and suggested she see what they are going for on ebay, and she did and it wasn't, so no treasure found this time. Anyway it gives us a chance to feel a little closer when she's so far away all winter.

This afternoon I took the dogs for a walk. They had a great time, and Raven is still practicing on not ignoring me when I tell her to come out of the neighbor's yard. She ignores about three of my calls, and then comes to me grinning, like it's some kind of game she's invented, so happy with herself. The streets were completely clear of snow and ice for the first time. The berms are still waist to arm pit high, but going fast. It probably was about 50 most of the day. Went on the walk with only a sweater and vest instead of down coat, hat and gloves. Made us a steak dinner tonight.

Today was my Mother's birthday. She would have been 108.

.

Three Generations

Granny with daughters and grandkids, Justin is missing.

Tayler, Debbie, Clayton, Shane, Me, Beverly