Bitz of This and That

Good bye

2012-05-21T10:52:00.000-07:00

A friend's mother died in the early hours of this morning. She was in her 90s and had lived a pretty darned good life. She was a feisty woman and had no qualms about speaking her mind about anything. She'd flirt with and try to pick up men who were even 75 years her junior. She had a wide range of interests and did her best to keep up with what was going on in our world.

She'd gone to the hospital three days ago from her home which she shared with her daughter. It was obvious at that time that this was the end. Her children and grandchildren from around the country arrived and had time to be with her before she died.

Over the next 2 days they spent time in her room, talking to her and telling the stories of their childhood. They did a lot of laughing and enjoyed their time together. They were there with her, and she could still hear them, reviewing the life that they had together. They got to say their individual goodbyes and said goodbye as a group. It was the perfect send off for her.

Marion, I'm glad I had the honor of knowing you. You gave my teen-aged daughter hope that being old didn't mean being dull. Your company at picnics in our yard was special. You gave Del someone to talk to about farming and the old days. I loved the way you'd say to Helene after I'd done something for you, "I like her." In the last years, each time that you saw me, it was as if you'd not met me before and I was a new character in your play. I kind of liked that!

I know you were looking forward to seeing your mom and dad again. I'm glad you are now able to be with them. And all the cats who have come through your life I'm sure are waiting for you too. I'm going to miss you. Peace be yours.

2012-04-27T09:18:00.001-07:00

So good old Newt has finally seen the light and realizes that he will not have a chance to be the presidential nominee for the Republican party. Ya think? His campaign has announced that on Tuesday, he will withdraw from the campaign. What? I don't understand. Why is he announcing this week that next week he will withdraw? What happens in the meantime? Is it ego? Is it money? If anyone can explain, it would be oh so good for me.
Or maybe, the moon-based station will be up and running by then and he can go live there?

It's Inevitable

2011-10-17T08:03:00.000-07:00

This fall has been glorious! Warm temps, sunny skies and sleeping with the windows open because it's just too hot in the house. Rarely does the Northern prairie afford such luxury. It's been so warm that the digging of beets was on hold for longer than I've ever witnessed. We are now in full dig campaign and the end is actually in sight. But the cooler digging weather means the next expense is looming. I will soon have to turn on the heat.

I haven't had the heat on since spring passed. I kept the A/C off as much as I could. (However, I do understand that my sweet husband does work in the heat all day and just because I can tolerate the heat doesn't mean that he shouldn't be cool and comfortable when he is at home. I'm not that mean.) But yes, the heat will be on soon. This morning it was 60 degrees in the house when I got up. I can deal with cool temps in the house to save money, but there will come a point when the furnace is fired up for comfort.

The sun helps to warm the house during the day, and since we're gone to work a lot of the time, we can keep the heat off just a bit longer. Keep the costs down. But soon the filter will be changed, switches will be flipped,and the sound of the fuel lighting will be heard. I hope I'm here for it. Here for the sound of home and comfort. And that smell. The smell that comes from that first firing of the furnace. The smell that says, "It's cold and inhospitable outside, but I am home, warm and safe.

Waste of time

2011-07-24T17:36:00.000-07:00

In case anyone has any questions about it, I will clarify it for you here. Being sick is a waste of my time!

As I left work on Wednesday, I suddenly started to feel not so good. There was a rock, about the size of my fist, just sitting in my stomach. (In case the reader isn’t fully familiar with the anatomy of internal organs, that would put the discomfort right about the height of my ribs.) As I drove through town the discomfort got worse. I could feel pressure on my esophagus, as if something were pushing upwards. (Kind reader, do not despair, there will be nothing disgusting here and you can feel free to continue reading.) It hurt! Maybe some gum will help. Antacids would be better, but all I have is gum. Chew, chew, chew. I’m sure I looked like Bessie with her cud. I get to EGF and am now really feeling awful. I find I’ve shifted myself to the right side of my seat and have my left foot firmly planted on the floor, pressing down. I tilt the back of my seat back a bit. Anything to change positions and give more space to whatever is causing this distress. Finally, I’m on the highway.

I seemed to expect that the highway would give me relief like a big burp, but no luck. 30 minutes to go. I get 5 miles down and rethink my route. I need to be able to pull over at a moment’s notice and not cause traffic problems. Hwy 66 seems to be the place to be. I turn north and decided that I’ve had it. As I pulled over I unlocked my door and motored my seat back, ready to escape. A quick trip to the passenger side of the car with hopes of relief. Out goes the gum. I did feel a tish better standing, but not enough to bring me any happiness. I sit in the grass for a while, just wanting to either purge or sleep. I can’t sleep as Del would worry. I wish I could just call him and have him come to get me. But my phone battery is dead. I don’t mean a little dead, I mean “Positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably dead.” How do I get myself into these situations?!

This was getting me nowhere and I was still 25 miles from home. Back into the car and drive. I don’t lock the doors and I don’t put my seat as far forward as I usually do. Drive.

I got about 5 more miles up the road and had to stop again. I’m never going to get home at this rate! A few minutes walking around and just standing in the wind and I come up with a plan. I will speed. I will get home as fast as I can. I even plan out my conversation with the cop when I get stopped.

“Please, write me all the tickets you like. But do you have any Rolaids, Tums or a box of baking soda? I’m going to lie down here on the side of the road and you may feel free to call my husband to come and get me. You can even write extra tickets, because at this point I don’t care. But in the words of Andy Griffith, ‘Just call the man.’”

The cost of any tickets I would have had to pay would feel a small consequence to not having to drive any more. My top speed was 80, but mostly I was hanging around 75.

By the time I got to Hwy 1 (only 6 miles to go.) I was making my pain coping noises. They are very animal-like and seem to disturb people who work in the medical field. I guess they’re a combination of humming and growling. But it works for me, so that is what I did. Counting down the miles as I drove, it seemed to take forever for the edge of town to arrive. 1 more mile to go. Past City Hall, High School and Elementary School, alley and then blissful 5^th St. The trip that should have take 50 minutes took 70 minutes.

Into bed I go, chewing antacids on my way. I get up, manage to get out a little burp that was so dainty it reminded me of a April sneeze. That was my routine for the rest of the night.

Calling into work when you are sick is a real challenge. The brain doesn’t get all the needed blood as your body is busy trying to get itself to feel better. *Note to self, create a checklist of people to call and their extensions for when calling in sick.* I do succeed in calling in and go right back to bed. I sleep almost all day, and food has no value for me. Cats are allowed into bedroom to care for me. They are good kitties and do not rattle the blinds or put their butts into my face.

I wake up on Friday and decide to give it a try. I showered and put that nightshirt right back on again. Call in, back to bed. The cats are once again there, ensuring mom is not alone. I spent some time sitting in bed with the laptop, treading into the outside world. But not really. Back to sleep.

I slept for the majority of 2 days. Not my idea of a good use of my time. 20 hours of vacation, gone. What a waste.

2011-07-17T14:01:00.000-07:00

Today, being July 17th, is the 17th day that Minnesota has been without a government. The powers that be still exist, but government services do not.
You can still get a speeding ticket but you can't get a driver's license. You can get a ticket for fishing without a license but you can't buy a fishing license. (So glad we're in the land of 10,000 lakes.) You may not camp at any state park. Heck, if you set foot in a state park, you're trespassing. It strikes me as odd that if I were to use something that belongs to me as a resident and taxpayer that I could be arrested for it. Hmmm...
Also at risk is beer! Glorious beer! Because of a registration snafu at the state level, MillerCoors did not get renewed to sell beer here. As the product is sold, it can't be replaced. MillerCoors sells 39 brands of beer! This is a state tragedy! It's just not fair to all of those poor people who don't live near a border so that they can stimulate the economy of other states and pay taxes there.
So I say to my state representatives, GET BACK TO WORK! If the rest of us hadn't done our work by deadline time, we'd be out of jobs. Quit being stupid and unwilling to work within the system (read compromise) and get our government open for business again! Now!

Strap yourself in, we're going for a ride.

2011-06-20T08:07:00.000-07:00

I asked someone for a blogging subject the other day and she felt that I could address her feelings that the wearing of seat belts should be the choice of the driver, not mandatory.

Most people who feel this way feel that the government should stay out of their lives. To them I say, “Your choice.” But if you want the government out of your life, then you probably shouldn’t get a license, which is a privilege, not a right. Yes, driving is a privilege awarded to those who are willing to toe the government’s line that we need to show that we’ve acquired certain skills and knowledge of laws. If you want to operate your own vehicle you also need to buckle to the demands of the officials who require a vehicle be insured, licensed and in minimum repair. I really don’t think they do that to protect the driver, but the potential victim of drivers.

And so we come to seat belts. There are, I will give you, a few rare instances when a seat belt could hurt someone in an accident. But do not allow the followers of such doctrine to deceive you! They will push magnificently magnified numbers your way; numbers that have no basis in fact.

If you are in an accident, whether created by you or another, your chance of regaining a semblance of control is much greater if you are strapped into your seat. There is no chance of that when you are thrown to another part of the vehicle or even out of the vehicle.

Seatbelts and car cabins are designed to protect you in an accident. Airbags are helpful, but only if deployed. Airbags deploy only during very specific circumstances. They reduce injuring, not prevent it.

So you’ve been injured in a car accident, that wasn’t your fault, but you weren’t wearing your seat belt. Your injuries are far worse than if you’d been wearing your belt. You now need more medical care and additional time off from work. You may even be permanently disabled, requiring ongoing care.

You have bills to pay, food to buy and medical needs. From where will this money come? You have a job and insurance? That means you’ll get disability and medical care for a while. But who will pick up your slack at work? The company will have to replace you. You move from disability with your company, to the government. Wait a gol-darned minute there! If you’re getting benefits from the government, then you’re getting it from me! I have to go to work so that I can help to support you during your long-term disability because you chose to not wear your seat belt? I have to work to help pay for your medical care because you chose to not wear your seat belt?

Then you find that all of your savings are gone because of course, you can’t support yourself much less your children on long term disability. You always put your kids into the proper car seats but didn’t think the government had the right to tell you to wear your seat belt.

It’s my turn now. I want to be able to choose to not help pay your medical bills. I want to choose to not pay your disability. I want to choose to not help support your kids because you didn’t want the government telling you what to do.

If someone is injured in an accident and had done what they could to protect themselves, I’m there for them. But if they choose to take their life in their own hands and not buckle up, then let them continue to have their life in their own hands and figure it all out on their own. Keep me out of it.

Wonders of White Bread

2011-06-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

White bread has pretty well been banned from my diet for several decades. I have been known to make white bread from scratch, but I don't feel that counts. It has flavor and texture. It's a labor of love, as everyone who eats it, loves it.

Healthy Choice breads have been the staple here for quite a few years now. Del refers to it as Sticks & Twigs. But he eats it. He's grown accustomed to it's flavor and texture. It makes great toast and Del loves his morning toast.

Over the weekend I came into possession of a loaf of store brand white bread. Yes, the soft, white, gushy bread that will easily stick to your teeth. It was intended for fry pies at the camp site, but that never happened. And last night, the craving kicked in hard. Peanut butter and jelly on white bread.

Oh, the sweet softness, the full flavor of the peanut butter and the jelly came through with no interference from the bread. For years I have thought that my sense of taste had diminished so much that I could no longer really enjoy that staple of my childhood. I was so wrong! I was using the wrong bread!

Many will say that PB&J is a child's sandwich and should be left to them. How wrong they are! When I was in basic training at Ft Jackson, SC, I lived on PB&J. I ate it 3 times a day. Standing in line has always bored me and wasted my time. I saved myself a lot of line time by simply getting some bread, peanut butter and jelly from the salad bar along with a glass of milk and enjoying being off of my feet. We really were on our feet a lot in basic, so I cherished any time off of my feet.

While my fellow trainees were standing in chow line at parade rest, I was smearing jelly and peanut butter onto soft white bread and washing it all down with cold milk. Some days I added a salad, but mostly it was the old standard.

I'm not suggesting that everyone pitch their current bread and up the stock in Wonder Bread. But every once in a while, check out your favorite childhood sandwich with some good old white bread. It will taste like mom made it.

2011-05-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

Poor Harold Camping. Yes, I pity him. He thought he was so right about the beginning of the end. He didn't appear to be in it for money or power. Unlike others in the mass media world of religion, he really appeared to believe what he was saying.

Now what's he going to say to all who believed what he was saying? Sorry, I got it wrong. Sorry that you spent a bunch of your retirement money on billboards, etc now you're up a creek without a paddle until the end really does come.

Religion is one of those quirky things that is based only in faith. Proof is not required or possible. You can't really sue someone over something like this. No contracts, no legally binding documents, just faith. No recourse.

Many followers of Camping put out big bucks for billboards, pamphlets and other forms of advertising to enlighten the non-followers of what was coming. Families divided, college funds and retirement funds were raided and for what? For nothing.

The twist in all of this is that those who spent all their money may very well be looking to those who just kept on with life as usual for help. Non-believers. Maybe even atheists will be tapped for help. You know them, those terrible people who don't believe in god. Those people who live among the religious, day in and day out, doing what needs to be done. They don't do it in the name of some deity, they do it because it needs to be done.

I hope that kindness and compassion are given to the followers who did nothing but show a complete lack of judgment in financial matters and help to fill advertisers pockets. Christ suffered for their sins, and they should have to take responsibility. The bible reminds them that they should worship the only true god. Let Harold Camping be their hard reminder of that law.

Laurapalooza 2012

2011-05-21T10:49:00.000-07:00

Look out everyone, my calico flag is up the pole again.

Laurapalooza 2012 is scheduled for July 12-14 of 2012. I don't even know where it will be, but I plan to be there. Have car, will travel. The total joy of being surrounded by others like me. No, I won't be wearing a bonnet or prairie dress. But I will enjoy the fellowship of those who will never question or look sideways at me.

Last night I finished reading The Wilder Life. and I am glad I did. It helped me to understand a lot of things I've thought and felt during my LIW travels and readings. It's helped me to settle. It's helped me reconcile the difference between real and books. I did and do like to think that everything in the books is fact and don't want to deviate from that. But I do know that it's all idealized. Reality can bite some times.

So if you want to attend Laurapalooza, watch here for more information. Or here.
http://beyondlittlehouse.com/laurapalooza-2012/

Bad chili

2011-05-19T17:47:00.000-07:00

Bad chili. Not the kind of bad most would expect. Made a batch of chili last night for a pot luck at work today. It doesn't taste anything like chili. No where, no how. I had to go to Hugo's this morning to get 2 cans of Hormel Chili, no beans. I figure, I live in Minnesota, Hormel is in Minnesota, that makes it homemade.
Note to self, get rid of crappy chili powder you bought at Target.

Laura Ingalls Wilder - May my calico freak flag fly!

2011-05-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

I love the evenings when I arrive home to find a box from Amazon.com waiting for me. Tonight's self gift was a book, The Wilder Life, My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie by Wendy McClure. A shout out to Emily who told me about this new book. I was going to wait until it came out in paperback, but really, why should I do that?

I'm having a wonderful time with this book! The author and I have so much in common! Our childhood ideas of our personal friendship with Laura. Thinking that we alone loved Laura as much as we did. The desire to just slide into her world to experience the life that she lived. We were both true to the books and put absolutely no stock in the TV show. We all know that Pa didn't look anything like Michael Landon and most of what happened on the show never happened at all.

Wendy tells me about remembering the path through her school to where the books were on the library shelves. Same map, different school. But the school names are even similar! She went to Oak Park Elementary and I went to Park Lawn Elementary. We could merge our schools into Oak Park Lawn Elementary! She grew up in Oak Park, IL and I was born there. She lived in the same house her entire childhood. After we left Oak Park I lived on the same street for 16 years.

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book and then lending it out to Twila, a friend who may be even more of a calico-waving freak flag flyer than I am. To all you Laura Ingalls Wilder fans out there, take off your corset, sit in your comfortable chair near the window and have yourselves a good read.

Cheers!

Beauty in the day

2011-05-17T17:16:00.000-07:00

What a glorious day it is out there today! When I left work today it was 77 degrees!

Endless blue sky with wisps of clouds
gracing the world above.
Birds flit and fly, riding
air currents.

John Deere,
working his way across
the fields,
turning acres of gray
to black.
Preparing some of the very best soil in
the world.

Anhydrous tanks at fields edge,
Like giant Tic-Tacs on wheels.
Tanks of water sloshing down
the road
on tender trucks.

The season of rebirth
and growth,
Is here, is now, is happiness,
is GLORIOUS!

Little Girls and Beauty Pageants

2011-05-16T15:51:00.000-07:00

8-year-old Britney Campbell has been removed from the custody of her mother. Her mother didn't beat her that we know of. She didn't lock her in a cage or starve her. What was her sin? She waxed her 8-year-old's legs and pubic area and injected Botox, that she purchased via a web site, into her face. So she would be pretty. For beauty pageants.

Why would a mother do these things to her 8-year-old daughter? This really isn't about the daughter. It's about the mother. The mother who wants her daughter to be everything that she wasn't. Or isn't. God forbid she just let her daughter be a little girl.

Beauty pageants for little girls are, in effect, an opportunity for moms and dads to act as pimps for their little girls. Beauty pageants are so that little girls can start early knowing that they just don't measure up physically. That their hair could be bigger, their make-up better and their butts tighter. Beauty pageants are so that sexual predators can... I don't even want to go there.

I don't understand what sane parent would even think of entering their little girl in one of these events. Oh. Sane. That's the word.

It's time for these pageants to end. Completely. It's time for churches, child safety advocates, community leaders and everyone who cares about the welfare of children to insist that these sick, sexually abusive pageants are stopped. TLC, are you listening? You need to pull Tiaras for Tots off of the air and destroy the recordings.

So the next time you hear of one of these events in your area, call someone who can do something about it. Get your friends together for a protest and coffee. Write some letters. Make some phone calls. Maybe even contact TLC.

I hope that Britney Campbell comes out of this without too much damage. I hope her mom can get her act together and start just being a mom letting her little girl be exactly what she is. We can only hope.

Bitz of This and That

2011-05-16T09:21:00.000-07:00

From the Northwest corner of Minnesota comes a blog with no theme, no preconceived notions about what it will be, other that bits of this and that.

To all of you who hate phonetic spelling as do I, I would like to apologize now. It's hard to find an address that is available. Frustration led to the z in Bitz. Please do not let it bother you so much that it forces you away from the blog.

If you have any ideas for the blog or discussions you would like to start, just let me know!

Cheers!