Battles

We might lose a battle to the fierce winds that came through but we are winning the war against the leaves.

Tuesday we blew leaves out of the entire yard.  Wednesday Far Guy raked and blew and I went round and round on the lawnmower mulching the leaves.  The wind was uncoorperative Wednesday as it swirled around and came from all directions…we finally both came in and had a nap.

Popples behind the house.

Someday all the leaves will be out of the trees…the Popples seem to be hanging onto their leaves a long time this Fall.

The Asian Lady Beetles have decended upon us.  They showed up when the bean fields were harvested…no more food source for them.  They look like harmless Lady Bugs but they are more orange than red and they bite and if you squish them they stink.   Far Guy battled them one day with the vacuum cleaner. I chose the flyswatter as my weapon…it was futile. We have to shake off before coming indoors to rid ourselves of the horrid little creatures.

Wistful Wednesday: Cousins

Cousins once removed or is twice or three times. How confusing can this cousin “stuff” be? 

I have been reading about it.  I finally had to print out a chart.

Take this photo for instance.

It is marked on the back…To Mama and Papa from Laura.   Now the Mama and Papa was Far Guy’s Great Grandparents Stuve and Laura would have been Far Guy’s Great Aunt (His Grandmother’s sister).  So if I have done my chart correctly the children in this photo are Third Cousins…I think.

I sent this photo to  a relative who might confirm the identity of these people.

I believe it is:

Front row left  Great Aunt Laura,  Ermin, Fern and Lula

Back Row left  Curtis, Uncle Clarence? and Roy ( Lauras first husband Clarence died  in 1920 at the age of 41 .) Sometime later she remarried a widower named Ben.  She ran a boarding house in Battle Creek Iowa to support her children.

Sometimes examples help me learn.

In Far Guy’s family

First Cousins share a Grandparent (Like Bonnie, Jay, Jack, Tom etc..)

Second Cousins share a Great Grandparent ( Like Orville, Earl etc…)

Third Cousins Share a Great Great Grandparent ..is that like your First Cousin’s Children too?

How about you can you shed any light on cousins ?  How about the removal part?  Is it the number of generations that separate you?

Hand Report

My hand/wrist/arm is still painful.  It is improving slowly.  I can use a can opener now and every once in a while I can open my own bottle of water.  I can drive the lawn mower, one of the levers is difficult to engage but I can manage.  I cannot rake leaves with a rake.  I have become more left handed…and can squeeze the water out of my hair now…

My wrist/ hand swells and I still have two spots that feel as if they have been burned.  During the last cold spell my whole arm ached.  I ice it every night…poor Chance sleeps near me and he has been iced on ocassion.  Lately I take an ice bag, wrap it in a towel and then ace bandage it all to my arm…safer for the dog that way.

Shaking a rug may be a thing of the past at least with my right hand.  I am still taking a break from woodcarving.   I take along my Christmas Cards and work on them while everyone else carves.  I miss carving. 

It will just take time. I am following the medical advice I was given…don’t over do… ice it and rest it so it stops swelling and can heal.  I had hoped that the recovery time would be shorter than it is. This Friday I will have seven weeks toward recovery. I must be patient!

Daylilies and Echinacea last July.

Leaf report

We have mulched leaves four times and have blown leaves into the woods once.  Gotta love that leaf blower on a windy day…we used the south wind to our advantage.  A few more times and we might be done.

It froze two nights in a row now so soon we can begin to mow down the wild gardens.  Summer is supposed to return this week so we have a list of outside work to accomplish.

Now if all the leaves that remain would just please Fall out of the trees.

Hwy 26

We now live off County Highway 26.  Sounds foreign as we have lived off State Highway 225 for many years.
 
It is a change that will take some getting used to.  I think they should have just called it Old Hwy 225.  Last week all the signs were changed.

I wonder how long it will take Google Maps and all those fancy direction apps to catch up.
My Dad is out of the hospital and was happy to be home.

My Mom’s Birthday

It was my Mom’s birthday yesterday.  She and Dad had plans for the day.  First was breakfast with friends and then lunch with Far Guy and I at 1 PM.

All that changed shortly after 1 AM on Mom’s birthday.  Dad woke her up because he had chest pain.  Off they went to the ER.  Dad’s heart rate was out of control he was in atrial fibrilation, after they shocked his heart back into rhythm and with some medications he was stabilized and sent to ICU.  Dad said “I thought for sure I was a goner.” Once there he continued to improve and felt good enough to go home but the Doctors wanted him to stay another day.

So Mom spent her birthday at the hospital near Dad’s side.  Hopefully he will get out this morning.  He did not have a heart attack, the Doctors can find no physical reason why his heart acted so badly.  All his blood work looks great.  He does have a bad tooth that is worrisome but only to me as the Doctor shrugged off that possibility.

I didn’t get a photo of Mom on her 88th birthday…so here is one taken a long time ago.  We will celebrate one day next week after they get back to “normal.” 

Call me

Call me anytime….not before eight or after eight.

If I can hear the phone ring I will answer….so call me anytime!

Not sure of the number…but you can call me anytime.

My kind of phone.

This old phone still needs a cover on its receiver and the cord is frayed but we decided that the frayed cord gives it character.  This phone was patented in 1900 and 1901.  Far Guy cleaned it up with Murphy’s Oil Soap…there was at least 116 years of grime and dirt on it.  This original sticker is still intact, if we had refinished the telephone we would have sacrificed the original sticker so we chose to just clean it up.

The Grands in October

I took the usual shortest to tallest photo last Sunday.

There was lots of grumbling…she has heels on and I took mine off…no fair.   Adam take your spot…is HE really the tallest now?  How can that be?  Yes if he doesn’t slouch he is the tallest.

This is also their birth order left to right.

Yes Adam really is the tallest and the youngest.

Tall boys and their Dad. I wonder when Adam will grow taller than his Dad?

 

The girls

Each of our grands are perfect…at least that is the way we see them.  Everyone is in school except for Savannah who is working two jobs to save up for more school and paying off her student loans. Noah is working while going to school.

Wistful Wednesday :1983

Remember those days gone by when you cleaned up your kids, made sure their hair was presentable and you took off to the local mall, or grocery store (Piggly Wiggly) or KaMe ApaRT to get the photo special?  You usually had to wait in line and hope your kid stayed presentable while you were waiting…and didn’t cry.

We rarely had extra money for a real photographer…perhaps that is why I don’t mind taking photos of my great nieces and nephews.  Some stores would run a 99 cent special…one 8 X 10 for 99 cents and then there were add ons ...the photos were taken one day and then about two weeks later you could show up for the “pitch” and buy more.  If you had a budget and we usually did…something had to be worked around to get the extras.

In 1983 I took the girls to West Acres Mall for their Fall/Winter photos.  The photographer had different background screens and you could pick a couple of them.

Trica was eleven and in sixth grade that year.  Jennifer was eight years old and in second grade.

Here is the wintery edition, it looks like they are sitting in a snowbank. I think we may have bought a few of these photos and sent them to Grandparents and Great Grandparents at Christmas time.

91 years

My Dad was 91 years old yesterday.

I had him smile for a photo before we had cake, Mom made a brown sugar spice cake that was gluten free and it was really good.  The dining table behind him is filled with flowers, cards, letters and gifts.

During cake and coffee Dad said “ Your name is on the wall and when the good Lord yanks it down your time is up.”  I asked him what the Lord does with your name then…Dad said “Probably just tosses it away.”   Far Guy thought your name was in the book of life.  I am not sure where your name is….maybe you don’t have a name at all but God calls your soul which has it’s very own name that only God knows.  Someday I guess we will find out.

My Dad is the oldest living person in his family…he has one younger sister that is living the rest of his 12 siblings are dead.   I won’t say “passed on” or “gone to their great reward” they are dead…plain and simple… I pass people on the road…and as for the great reward that could be a sundae at DQ.

I asked Dad how it felt to be 91 and he replied “Not much different than 81.”

Mikey’s Baptism

Yesterday was Mikey’s baptismal day.  The gown fit perfectly.

He liked the feel of the gown and kept putting it in his mouth.

Maddie our Granddaughter and Mikey our Great Grandson

Mikey with his parents.

He was very good during the ceremony, he just looked all around…and kept stuffing the gown in his mouth.

Here you can see how wrinkled the gown was.  I have a bit of fabric left not much but perhaps enough to sew a bib!

I brought the gown home to wash and iron it and to pack it away for the next great grandchild.

This was originally my wedding dress December 20 1969

This repurposed gown was worn by Mikey on October 8 2017 on the ocassion of his baptism.

All sewing was accomplished with the help of my good friend and neighbor JoLynn.

Leaves and a gathering

Leaves are all over in the yard, in Chance’s fluffy tail, in my hair after I mulched leaves.  Far Guy manned the rake and the blower and the 3rd cleanup of leaves was accomplished.  I managed to drive the lawn mower round and round in the yard. My hand is a bit swollen so I will wait a few days before doing any mulching again.

We will mulch about 9 times total maybe 10 before we call it good enough or when it snows.  Which ever one comes first.

There were some pretty leaves for my parents 67th anniversary photo…there were 26 of us that showed up to wish them well. My Aunt Anna was there too…she was a bridesmaid for them and she was just 15 years old.  Her dress was pink and my Aunt Skips was blue.  Aunt Anna said that she thought the dress was or became a prom dress.  My Mom borrowed $50 from her Grandmother for a dress which she bought at J C Penney…all the plans for the wedding took ONE week.

Uncle Delbert, Cousin Roy, Dad, Mom, Aunt Skip and Aunt Anna October 07 1950.

67 Years Together

My parents will celebrate their 67th Wedding Anniversary today. 

I made this card for them a number of years ago.  The photo of the church they were married in is the background photo.

They had a candlelight ceremony at 7:30 in the evening.  Dad was soon to be 24 years old, Mom was almost 21.  Their birthdays and anniversary all happen within a week.

Since I am the oldest and most responsible I have been there for all 67 of their anniversaries.  I was born just 17 days before their 1st anniversary and Mom and I celebrated all by ourselves since Dad was in Korea.

 

A card I made for them this year. I took a photo last year on their anniversary and I will take another photo today.

Happy 67th Anniversary! 

Feeling Better

That Flu shot or the Pneumonia shot or a combination of both of them sure took the stuffins right out of me.  Far Guy and I had the shots on Tuesday afternoon about 2 PM.  By 2 AM I felt like my bad arm was broken and from there the pain spread ( I got the shots in the butt)  I refuse to sacrifice an arm. By 4 AM I was really hurting.  I gave in about 11 AM and went to the couch to try to get warm…I had the chills and ached all over…even my teeth hurt…there wasn’t much that did not hurt.  Far Guy kept bringing me warm corn bags and piled blanket after blanket on me.  I had a fever.  Far Guy hovered.  At one point he told me that I was part of the 1 or 2 % that had a reaction after shots. He took my temperature. He sighed, he paced, he hovered. He asked me if I wanted to go to the Dr…no I just wanted him to call the Crematory Wagon or build a funeral pyre outside so I would finally get warm…he did offer to set the couch on fire. Death would have been a relief. My fever broke many times but came right back…finally about the 30 hour mark I felt like I might live. My temp rose yet again and I fell into an exhausted sleep and woke up totally drenched with my hair looking like it had been washed.

Jen was here overnight and helped her Dad warm corn bags and talked to me. As usual Chance was a good companion.

Far Guy had no reaction to his shots…his arm was a little sore.  Jen had her Flu shot on Monday with no ill effects. I have swelling the size of a couple of softballs on my butt…that are radiating warmth and are quite sore.

Live and learn…guess I will be one of those elderly people that die from the flu as I will never get another flu shot ever.

My wrist/hand/arm is taking its sweet time getting all better.  I am supposed to keep ice on it at night to keep the swelling down so it can heal. I can tell when it swells as my fingers go numb and then they are worthless.

Eleven Words

Flu Shot and Pneumonia Shot…bad reaction. Sick…sick.

Far Side

Wistful Wednesday : Rick

Rick was kind enough to share all the old 8 X 10 photos that he had. 

Park Rapids Panther Football. Rick is Number 12 in the white jersey, this was most likely the Fall of 1967.

Here is Rick golfing.

After Far Guy and I were married in 1969 and lived in Moorhead, Rick visited often.  We had an extra bed and he knew he was welcome.  Rick was going to school but had a full time job at one of the Funeral Homes in Fargo….he was the night pick up guy.   When he had a night off he would usually drink too much…and then because he didn’t want to sleep at the Funeral Home he would walk the 25 or so blocks to our place and crash.  One night he showed up in a blizzard…it was a wonder that he didn’t freeze to death before he found his way to our house.

In 1973 when we moved back to Moorhead, Rick lived upstairs in the same apartment building as we did.  Trica was just little and she adored Rick.

 

Rick and his parents…two of the nicest people ever! This photo was probably taken about 1972.  Pearl and John lived in Park Rapids in a very small house one block behind Far Guys house, back then they owned a grocery store that was located just before the bridge on the north side of the highway.  Sometime later they moved to the big white house on North Main.  Then they built the Red Owl Store which later became Super Value and is now a Coburns Store.   After they sold the Red Owl Store John started a Auto Parts business that we think was in the old grocery store, they eventually expanded and moved into the old creamery building…they were one of the few auto parts places that used computers back then.  Rick took over that business when his Dad died.

Rick has since owned a few businesses in Park Rapids.   He eventually got married and had two daughters and then was divorced.  He is a old bachelor now, Far Guy stops by to visit him now and then.

 

October rain

The leaves are falling and it rains every other day.  It is good for the trees and ducks and that is about it.   No fire danger here this year.  The potato harvest…well any kind of harvest has come to a halt in the damp weather.

Far Guy has mulched leaves twice now.  About eight more times unless it stays wet ..or the S word happens.

 

Even the bees are wet…sleeping maybe…showered while they slumber.

The acorns that were crunching underfoot are getting soaked and softer.  They no longer make me wish I wore shoes with hard soles.  So there are some benefits of the rains.

Some days a person has to look on the bright side!