Wedneday June 10 2009

An old photo of Judi's - Hiking above the Muddy Elk Feedground Fall 1985 Clinker, Skeezix, Ruth, Lynn, Vicky, Dee?, Arby the Rotweiller St. Bernard mix dog I adopted from Beverly is sitting by my knee obscured by the grass. I didn't see him at first until I zoomed the photo up. All the dogs are mine. We may have been up there painting, these are all artists. This is an old photo of Judi's, We don't really know who the person on the right in the green sweater is, - if it's you, let us know so we can identify the photo.

It feels like its been a very long day. Lots of phone calls, which were nice. I enjoyed visiting with everyone. In between I was working on The Book, and also got more done on it yesterday afternoon. The part I'm writing on now is when I got married to my first husband, the kids dad. Interesting that I was afraid I wouldn't remember much about this section. But as I write memories are just coming right along. I stuck with it most of the day and got a lot finished. It feels like I've been at work all day, when I used to be a secretary and typed all day long. Seems like I've got writing out of my system for today, so will not ramble on in the blog.

Today I was supposed to host the small painting group at the Pinedale house, but so many other things came along it didn't seem possible to do an all day meeting and take care of the other duties. Also finally quit procrastinating and got a haircut appointment. After having such a spiky do, now it's comparatively quite long.

A lot of different kinds of birds are around - they are so beautiful, and there were a couple antelope not too far from the yard, so was able to use the telephoto lens on those. I'm not downloading any new pictures tonight though.

It rained most of today. So it wasn't good at all to be outside.

Wednesday June 10 2009

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TAYLER

HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY.

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Our Granddaughter Tayler Lynn

She's Going to College Now.

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Tuesday June 9 2009

Cat in Grass

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Me working on Pastel

Still trying to get better photos of these conte sketches.

They are under glass, so its difficult.

Outdoor sketches in winter by Lynn Thomas.

Yesterday after the dishwasher guy was here, we drove in to Pinedale and met Scott about landscaping the yard at the house. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Joe now wants the whole thing mostly done including a circular drive in front with cement curbing and a nice walk up to the front door. There will also be a graveled drive extended to the back double gate with curbing also. It will be a pretty good chunk of money. And later we can do another stage and get the front actually xeriscaped with different size and color of rocks and some shrubs and such. Joe has wanted to give away the big boulders that are stacked in piles in the front, but Scott will be able to use those for the landscaping and said he could move them around while he had his big equipment there.

While in there I found the camera manuals ..... right where I looked twice before. It DOES have a usb cable and also one for making videos. Now comes the reading! Actually I just discovered that I had more telephoto with the camera lens than I knew, up to 40X! That's how the latest good bird photos were taken. Its hard to hold it still without a tripod though.

Also it was the day oncology wanted me to have a protime test - that's for coumadin - and it was 4.4 which is dangerously high. Carol, the oncology nurse, wanted me to go back again today for another test and I talked her out of it. Sure didn't want to drive to town again. So they just changed the dose of the coumadin. Maybe it was a bad reading. It seemed to me the monitor wasn't working the way it usually does, Also I'd been eating cauliflower for a couple of days. After that we stopped by Kathy and James house because they had brought us a bag of Vidalia onions back from Georgia. They have two of their grandchildren here now. Got gas and came home.

Last week I said I'd host today's small painting group and luncheon at the house in Pinedale. Then the last couple days started getting these other things piled up to do. So had to call Nancy, who had also offered to host that day, and tell her I had to be here today and asked her if she could still have it at her house. She said yes, and invited me too, but I didn't feel I could go today. In my younger days, I would have tried to do it all. I'll plan it for another day soon.

The window glass repairman came this morning at 9 a.m. and installed the new living room window so that's also done. He is really nice, from a ranching family in Daniel. Should have asked him why he didn't want to cowboy instead of fix windows and glass, but I suppose he probably does in his spare time. The ranchers are always grateful for family, friends and neighbors who will help.

Joe went down to the front gate this morning and worked to put up the cross piece, the name of which is unknown to me - the log that goes across the top. He asked me to drive down there several times because he wanted both the tractor and truck there. Boy that 68 yellow Chevy is sure hard to drive for me now. Photos of him working would have been nice but didn't take any. I kept track of him every once in a while through the spotting scope. He climbed up the ladder braced on the upright poles pretty darn high, up and down many times. He used the tractor bucket to lift the log as high as that will go, and then works with it from there. He got the log up and says he's not finished yet. He's tired tonight and already napped a couple of times while trying to watch the NBA playoffs.

I was out in the yard early, it was so beautiful out. Took some photos but am not going to get them ready for the blog tonight. The lilac bush is going to bloom this year if a late frost doesn't come along. This is the best it's ever looked. It's about 40 years old now - YES I KNOW!! - forty years, and just now has gotten thicker and sprouted up to about 4 feet tall. I had transplanted it before I began to blog, and can remember talking about it last when I was still emailing my letters and photos out. Probably 2005. It was only about a foot tall, all stunted At that time I transplanted it from the front yard where there is no protection, to the east wall of the garage where it gets good morning sun and is sheltered from the wind. It is much happier there. I'll take a picture if we're lucky enough to see it bloom. Not sure if I'll get any annuals in the pots this year or not. Maybe if I go look at them at the nursery..... I'll get in the mood.

My big job for today was burning the garbage. I always used to do it, but we really had the barrels (four 50 gallon drums) packed full. I was hoping Joe would do it but he just lights the top and when the fire goes out that's it. It won't burn easy that way and I just kept digging in there and turning it over, and got them all way down to mostly ashes, perhaps 1/4 full now. Lots easier to get barrels to the dump when they aren't so full and heavy. Anyway it sure pooped me out. Probably fussed with it for three or more hours and used about 4 gallons of old used oil to keep it burning.

It was nice in the morning, but clouds came up, breezy and cool, and by dinner time it was raining again. The hills were nearly obscured by clouds and mist. We had a lot of thunder but the power stayed on. It showered pretty nice for a while. This is the best spring we've had for years.

Made chicken fried steak, boiled red potatoes, sauteed one of thoseVidalia onions (mmmmmm!) and grilled seasoned zucchini for dinner. It's sure nice to have the dishwasher back. Got my bed pulled out ready to vacuum under it, and never got that far, so it's going to stay that way until tomorrow.

Can you imagine this?? A hundred years ago, glad its o.k. for women to do this now. One of my favorite things is to take a driving trip, long or short. Think I'll google the book: (It's out of print so probably pretty expensive, they are reprinting it.)

It was on this day in 1909 that the first woman to drive across the United States, Alice Huyler Ramsey, left New York City for San Francisco. She was 22 years old, a housewife from Hackensack, New Jersey. Her trip got a lot of media attention. In 1909, not many women drove cars, and some doctors thought that it was dangerous for women to even ride in cars because they would get too worked up at more than 20 miles an hour. Alice Huyler Ramsey drove 3,800 miles across the country in a Maxwell 30 with three other women, but she was the only one who knew how to drive. They drove for 41 days and used 11 spare tires. She wrote a book about the trip called Veil, Duster, and Tire Iron (1961). In 2000, she was the first woman inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame.

Monday June 8 2009

Moon

Tigger - she's seldom seen

Mourning Dove

Flycatcher

Is anyone else having trouble buying good artichokes? None of them have seemed any good at all for a couple of years. They need to be cooked to death - over an hour - and they never get tender. Do they pick them too green? Anyway we like them but I'm about to never buy another one. They are the price of steak and not worth eating! Some recently bought asparagus spoiled before it could be used it so threw that out. Our lobster for dinner last night wasn't the greatest either. Maybe I cooked it too much. Maybe I'm loosing my touch for cooking.

On the topic of cooking and cleaning up the kitchen, since the dishwasher has been broken I've been washing dishes. I really don't like to wash dishes. The dishwasher repairman was just here and found two pieces of clear plastic in the pump. It came off an expensive cheese grater I bought at Williams Sonoma. I found a piece of it in the sink while I was hand washing the dishes. So I knew it was cracking and breaking. As soon as he showed us, I knew exactly where it was from. He didn’t charge us much. Said he didn't want to retire all on one person. Came all the way from Lander. We both liked him a lot and he knew what he was doing.

This afternoon we have to drive to Pinedale to meet with Scott Cheney at 3:30 at the house to get the estimate for getting some landscaping done. He is drawing up a plan for landscaping and hopefully we can afford it and Joe will change his mind about not having it done. At first we will only have him do gravel in the fenced in part in back.

Tomorrow the glass guy will come and replace the living room window that was broken here.

James found Joe's name in the Wyoming Treasurer's Office unclaimed property list and let us know. He was looking up his own name. I did look and printed the pages for Joe. I checked it out and he gets $32 from one of his old stocks. We could use a little income lately. My dad's name is in the same thing in Nevada but they wanted so much information I gave up on doing it. It was $60.

Just out of curiosity I checked back on my receipts to see when and where the oil was last changed in the car. It was September in the same place I was the other day. Then deducing if it was September .... and I hadn't driven hardly anywhere from then to now ..... that I can safely come to the conclusion - that as well as them leaving the cap off the brake master cylinder - that they didn't put a new mileage sticker on my windshield. I don't think I went 1300 miles over from the last oil change. That would have been 4300 miles since September, except ..... that car hasn't been anywhere!! Its was more like I had driven 1700 miles since last September. Not that it matters, but it does make more sense. And I don't have to be so down on myself for making such a stupid mistake, it didn't happen that way.

Both cats have been out in the yard, hunting birds or whatever cats do. Its always especially nice to see Tigger, the bobtailed one, because she is so much shyer. The dogs seem to be leaving them alone. Now I'm pretty sure the dogs would like to investigate those cats better. They do bark and run after them sometimes, but the cats have no trouble getting to a safe haven. The dogs did that a lot at first, but no longer are going after them. Smokey was out in the rain the other evening and didn't seem to mind it a bit.

Raven went out in the field for her little nightly walk and the cranes were out there. They didn't fly off, but kind of started to sidle away from her. She just ignored them, although I did see her looking in their direction. She was a good dog. The first time the cranes were near one morning after we came back she barked and barked. Her "Oh Mi Gosh, Come and SEE whats out here!!!"I think she had forgotten about them over the winter, but I just talked to her. I always tell them not to bark at the big birds and NO chasing. They are both very good about it and I trust them fairly well. Also they won't chase the antelope. We were coming home the other day and the dogs always get out at the gate to run on home. There was an antelope in the lane and they just loped along, put their ears up a few times, and never chased it.

Sparky must be loosing some of his hearing. He's always been afraid of thunder, but during these rain storms, he hasn't been trying to hide or sit in Joe's lap, etc. But he has started barking more like there's a car outside, very alarmed and looking out the window. So he must not be recognizing it as thunder. He's more than 14 now, but still pretty perky and acts like a puppy.

I'm reading one of my new Peter Mathieson books, a novel Shadow Country. It's VERY good. He wrote three books years ago like a trilogy, and this is all of them together, abridged. It's over 900 pages. He's so good at making the people seem real.

The full moon came up as orange as .... well .... an orange last night and reflecting its warm light on the clouds. It was fun to experiment with trying to photograph it.

More rain today, not sure how much it will amount to, but a lot like the rest of the days lately. Cleared off in the night for a while. I made a coffeecake this morning with blackberries in it that needed to be used up. It wasn't one of my best things, but Joe has eaten about half of it already.

"Our truest responsibility to the irrationality of the world is to paint or sing or write, for only in such response do we find the truth."Madeleine L'Engle

I would add sports, cooking, sewing or knitting, dancing, woodworking, crafts, etc. climb mountains, fish or camp ..... whatever you love.

Sunday June 7 2009

Rain on the kitchen window

Joe Mowing - We've had quite a bit of dandylions

I love their sunny color.

This is a little folk art bird that was in a
second hand store for about a buck.
I've always liked it. Its color had faded off so I painted it.

The kitchen has chickens and birds for decorations.

Heifers and more dark clouds

This is my 900th blog.

The power was off for repair type stuff a couple of hours this morning.

It rained good during the night, was raining this morning when I woke up and then most of the day. The sound of rain on the roof is always wonderful. Hail the size of peas came down a little bit ago, then wind, rain and lightning The birds sure fluttered into the tress for shelter when the hail started coming down. Not right at first but then when it got harder they really scurried away. Now the sun is shining and there is some blue sky peeking through the clouds. You almost forget that blue is still up there when it stays so cloudy for days and days. I wish I knew how much moisture has fallen since it all started. I suppose someone is measuring. Kay said they got about an inch and a half just one morning. The temperature seems to be staying about 40s to 50s. The rivers are at least bank full, and some flooding over. over 20 photos at this site, and notice the article about a grizzly bear in the Wyoming Range near Big Piney - none seen there in recent history. http://www.pinedaleonline.com/news/2009/06/Rainscausingstreamst.htm

Each morning I always start out thinking how much I'm going to get done today and by night it's usually not even close to finished. But a lot of it is because I get so sidetracked with other things. Was going to finish cleaning the studio, but that went by the wayside. Got about 4 loads of laundry, sheets and stuff. And have been mopping more floors (grit and dirt tracked in from the wet yard - however its better than the mud at our Pinedale yard).

Then..... the big sidetrack ..... I went out to see how the cat's shed was doing, had suspected that Joe was neglecting their food and water while he hasn't been feeling good. And found empty dishes. This was way down on the list of things to do, but once I got out there I just started to work. Carried out a bucket of soapy water, rags, and clean food dishes, even took the hose to part of it. They eat in the big machine shed, and it has a dirt floor so, it's beyond me why a wild cat wants to be inside to go potty, but they use a section of the floor for a big litter box. And the stink!!!! While its all frozen - not a problem, but when it thaws out ..... whew! I'm not sure what is worse to clean, the shed floor a few times a year, or a litter box in the house every day. Several days ago Joe did clean up most of the poo. But I was able to do it more thoroughly, get the ground leveled out and sprinkled with Pet Fresh. Then started in on their feeding platform and dishes, which have not been cleaned since I left last fall. So the shed took me a couple of hours. I had no idea even what time it was when I was finished.

Got it all cleaned up, and left little Smokey some canned turkey dinner. When the job was finished, I called her like I used to so maybe she will get used to me again. Isn't it kind of a put down that they don't really need or want to have people for friends, just provide the food and they entertain themselves and are happy. The little cat shelter home Joe built in the wagon hasn't been used much. It looks as if they like sleeping on the hay in the baler better. I worried about the two of them being warm enough in our winter temperatures because until I split them up all five of them just slept in a big pile. They probably spend most of their time under the barn.

Joe's been laying under the kitchen cupboard for a couple of hours putting in the new faucet for that sink. He got it in and it is working fine. Will have to look at the contents of the under sink cabinet sitting all over the counter for a couple days I'm sure, so he can keep checking under there to see that it's not leaking.

People have let me know they've had trouble reading the poem about the ducks. I'll give you a hint and then you have to figure it out yourself. You have to say every letter (but read the words as words). MR ducks = Them are ducks. CMEDBD feet? = See them itty bitty feet? Etc. Grandkids of the right age will love it. It's also been called Bill Clinton's reading exercise, or a comprehension test for getting into some (usually southern) university. Barb McK gave me a copy probably 20 years ago.

Betty called and I was glad to hear Caitlin is not quite as bad as she was, but she doesn't give her "the remedy" until this Tuesday. Betty is taking notes to compare the before and after the remedy. She has asked her neighbor to feed and give medicine to the cat while she is gone and if all continues to go well, she and Nancy may be starting up here about the 17th.

My computer isn't recognizing the camera card all of a sudden. I get so discouraged at those things and have no idea how to MAKE it work. I tried restarting. That's about the extent of my knowledge about that. This has happened before with the old camera and I used the cord to download from the camera (not removing the card), but I haven't come across that cord lately. And I don't know where my box and guides for the new camera are - I looked some in Pinedale, and didn't find them, but that's where they have to be. Heaven forbid I would have ever kept them handy to read the directions.There may be some fairly good pictures taken the last couple of days on the card. But anyway, I'll just put a couple in the blog that have been hanging around ready to go for a while - they were never good enough to stick in before and probably aren't now either. Maybe tomorrow the computer will be through with its sulking.

Thought I didn't have much to write about, but this got plenty long. Long doesn't mean there is anything interesting to write about does it? I'm going to fix us a small lobster tail with rice pilaf and artichokes for dinner.

Saturday June 6 2009

Rainy Craneys in the field

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This storm swept up Irish Canyon so fast the other day - it went the 15 or so miles I could watch it in a couple of minutes. No wonder there was a tornado touched down in eastern Wyoming yesterday. Not sure I've ever seen anything go by that quickly before. From the looks of it, it must have been hail or snow or both. Was only going to put on a couple of photos but I tried these three out to see which ones I liked better and decided to just leave them there.

O this darn word processor in the blog! It is pretty inferior, and won't let me format the way I want to. Maybe I just down know enough to know how to make it work. Anyway I want to switch to the "normal" text color for the body of the blog. Nope. The formatting also often doesn't stick, arbitrarily putting in spaces where I don't want them, sometimes many spaces. See how I like the paragraphs justified (even on both sides)? It won't hold that either, always wants to center the paragraphs like I do under the photos. Maybe there's a shortcut key I don't know about. The spell check isn't so great either.

It's been raining all morning So nice. The dogs are denned up again, and every time I ask if they want out the answer is NO. They look at me with something between "Are you crazy, woman?" and fear in their eyes that I'll actually make them go out, like praying "Just let me disappear".

I got the bathroom cleaned this morning. Joe has about got the new faucet installed on the utility room sink. It looks real pretty compared to the old one which is likely more than 50 years old and just now started to go bad. They don't make things like they used to. (Later:) BTW the new utility room faucet doesn't work there, so he'll have to take it back. But he did get the old one not to leak. He pulled out the washer and dryer and we got it pretty well cleaned under those and wiped down the walls. Probably they haven't been moved for ten years!! After Joe got done with his faucet work in the utility room I went ahead and cleaned and mopped there and the kitchen. And then he vacuumed the living room and did a nice job. I dusted, so together we're getting things caught up.

There are a lot of birds around the yard this morning. Mostly a flock of some kind of fly catcher. I haven't been interested enough in identifying them, (flycatchers are difficult), just enjoying seeing them. Also some white crowned sparrows and doves plus another Western Tanager. The cranes were also just outside the yard so will put a picture of them on. They are sure wet and bedraggled.

Kay asked me to make a map of the route and roads with mileages to Round Hill for our retreat at the end of the month. I said I could do it, but so far have not found good enough reference to do anything but draw the roads ... sort of. No mileage and not all the county road numbers we will need for it. But I'll keep looking. I have a few more maps in the file drawer to go through. After that, the next idea is to take a ride over there and measure the mileage on those roads, check the road markers. They are all dirt so will have to wait until the rain quits. (Later): I called Kay to tell her the trouble I was having finding the distances, and she said she made a map and was having the same trouble. I told her I wished she had let me know because I wouldn't have spent all that time trying to do it. Anyway, she's going to drive in there and measure it on her way to Big Piney in a day or so.

Bonnie has still been really sick. Yesterday I made a big batch of hamburger, cheese, tomato sauce and macaroni and split it with them, and added a veggie and salad, so dashed over there with that about dinner time. Out of curiosity I measured the distance and it is just about 15 miles between us.

Saturday June 6 2009

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WELCOME HOME SALLY

Sally and Pete left Mojave Valley Yesterday and should just be pulling in to their house just about now. It will be good to see you again after being gone all winter. It was fun to follow along with you on your trip, and exciting to see what these computers can do - just posting photos while you are driving along the way. I enjoyed them.