Feel Like Complaining

When we signed up for high speed internet several years ago, we wanted to go with a local company to be our isp. Little did I know that we would have to have Century Link still come out to hook us up. So all this time we've been paying both businesses for their services. They both offered discounts in the beginning but that is long gone now. I had been contemplating switching our isp to CL but was dreading the phone call where no one understands what I'm trying to explain. I'm not a dummy but still have problems conveying things sometimes. Last week we got an email from our isp company telling us that they were closing shop....so now I had to make that call. The first call I botched so bad I just hung up. Sigh. The next girl I got knew exactly what I wanted and the ordering went very smoothly and she said it would only raise our bill by a few dollars a month. We anxiously waited for the CL technician to take care of his bit with the wiring and knew by the end of the ...

Our Sweet Nellie has always loved being outside during the day. Lying on the hot sidewalk to warm her bones, then following the shade patches around. Even in the winter, she loves lying in the snow for hours on end. But sleeping outside? She has never done that...until this summer. She has always been content to eat her last snack then toddle off to her bed at the end of our bed. This Spring, she started getting goofy and wanted out during the night. That means somebody was losing sleep being on call to let her out, then back in. When our daughter came home for the summer she was the designated one to do the chore. Sometimes it was multiple times during the night. Finally I just told her to let Nellie out, shut the door and go back to bed. Now that is her new routine, one last snack, then outside when we go to bed. She doesn't have a dog house, rather enjoying lying in the cool grass. Who ever gets up first lets her in. If she wants in earlier, she makes it very clear by knock...

Sometimes I just get a wild hair and feel like I need to make a change in the house. We have a wall that after I painted years ago, I put up pictures. All people pictures; baby, graduation, wedding, grandparents, great grandparents and many of our daughter. But I wanted something different up there. My daughter and I take a lot of photos and although we have some of them around the house, I wanted a whole wall to show them off. So all the people came down. We cleaned the wall and frames and took out all of the pictures. We then counted each size and divided them up between us. That gave us each 13 frames of various sizes to work with. Now the hard part, to only choose 13 of our favorites and which size of frame we were going to put them in. We took our thumb drive to Walmart to place our order and picked them up the next day. It was fun deciding which photo should go in which frame. The frame is what makes the photo look good or bad. Hanging them was a bit challenging. We used mo...

My relationship with our neighbor has remained copasetic. He doesn't talk to me and I don't talk to him. A few weeks ago he called and told my husband that if we had heard a dog barking it wasn't any of his. He said the new people next to them just got a pitbull and it was barking at 4:00 am. He said he was going to leave a note on their fence and if that didn't do the job, he was going to have to talk to them. As my husband was relaying this story to me I was grinning from ear to ear. A barking dog right under his bedroom window :) Karma is a bitch, ain't it? Later that day I was getting some clothes off the line and I heard this meek little voice say, "Kden?" I wasn't even sure it was him so I said "yes?" "Can you ever forgive me? I totally understand if you can't but I just had to put it out there. I'm sorry I was so terrible to you and I feel very bad and really want to ask your forgiveness." I had to move so I...

For a few years now, the business of adding a little wine/beer, an instructor and paint, has become popular. A FB friend of mine has done several of them and it looked like a lot of fun. About a year ago, one of the venues was having a 'pet' night where you brought a picture of your pet to paint. I wanted to go sooooo bad and put out a plea on FB for someone to go with me. Ok, I begged. No one wanted to go and I was really bummed. So finally when The Kid turned 21, I knew who I was dragging along with me. I found a place kind of far away across the border into Idaho, but they discount their paintings through the summer. We chose the painting and day we wanted to go and made an appointment. This is what we were going to be painting. It's an abstract using mostly a pallet knife for the butterfly. The room holds up to 40, but we had a small class of 14. The instructor walked us through every step and stroke. The background was no problem, easy peasy. Then came the body....

We've all seen the headlines of babies dying from being left in hot cars. About 37 children die each year in that situation. Some are out-and-out neglect cases which result in much deserved charges for the parent or caretaker. But most seem to be the "I forgot" defense. Busy lives. Both spouses working, swapping who takes the kids to daycare. Running errands, going to meetings or work, etc. Charges generally are not filed against these parents, because it was a mistake. A tragic mistake. And at that point, unless they can prove the action was neglectful, it wouldn't bring the child back. Their child's death is enough punishment. What really baffles me is hearing the parents say, "I forgot little Billy was in the car." How in the world can that even happen? The baby may fall asleep, but at some point they will fuss, cry, laugh, and play with noisy toys.  It's true that rear facing car seats inhibit your view of the baby, but a mirror can eas...

Things are finally starting to ripen in our garden. Cherry tomatoes, zucchini, and cukes are being eaten as fast as we can pick them. The regular tomatoes have been very pokey and we haven't been able to pick ONE of them. This mystery plant started growing out of our compost. We knew it was probably some kind of squash but not sure as to what kind. They got very large and rotund so we picked them and ate them either raw or grilled. One night I noticed the consistency was stringy. Ah ha, mystery solved! We got ourselves some spaghetti squash. It's probably been well over a year since we had put seeds in the compost so that little guy waited all that time before it sprouted. We'll leave them alone now so they can ripen to a golden yellow instead of a pasty green. We've been back to Green Bluff a few times, once to pick beans in a storm. It wasn't planned that way but it was thundering and lightening when we got there. It sure made us pick a lot faster th...