Appar­ently I am the only one wor­ried.
Today they reported another earth­quake in Turkey. 6.6
Haiti
Chicago
Chili
Turkey

HELLO????  The earth­quake in Chicago, felt in Iowa, was on a lit­tle known fault and now it shakes? After the huge one in Haiti? And then there is a big­ger one in Chili? And this week in Turkey? EVERY WEEK??? Is no one pay­ing atten­tion to this but me? Is there some­thing sci­en­tist are not telling us? Is the earth crack­ing apart bit by bit?

I’m not pan­icked but I sure as hell am con­cerned!! What is going on?????????

If any­one hears…let me know.

Sheesh.

It has hap­pened enough times now that I have to take it for real, espe­cially since I believe in spir­its, that there is an “old woman” liv­ing in the hayloft of our barn.

Our 5 year old grand­daugh­ter loves our hayloft. LOVES IT!. Says every time she goes up there “grandma, this is the best place in the whole world!” And it is, espe­cially if you are 5. With hay stacked 5 high at it’s high­est, and stair step­ping other places, and the whole loft huge, it makes for hours of fun. She and her grandpa have taken to going up there every time she comes out now and she has made her­self and obsta­cle course for her and her grandpa to take. Jump­ing here, climb­ing there, peek­ing under, going over and she can do it for hours. But each time now, con­sis­tently, she stops at a cer­tain point in the barn, points to the area, tells her grandpa to shush, because “there is an old woman sleep­ing there”. Every time. Doesn’t mat­ter if she hasn’t been in the barn for weeks. She will still avoid the area and become really quiet going around it.

Kids know these things. Their inno­cent minds and spir­its allow them to see what we don’t. Never doubt a child who tells you some­one you can­not see is there. More than likely they are.

Our lady of the barn. I like it. Now I’m hop­ing to get our grand­daugh­ter to find out her story. I’ll let you know.

Because we are spend­ing around $500 every 6 weeks for propane, I decided to call and ask the com­pany if the amount we were going thru was “nor­mal”. Now…I know we have an old farm­house, but it has also been rein­su­lated. I keep the ther­mo­stat at 60 dur­ing the day, 62–64 in evening and 58 at night. Until 2 weeks ago, every north fac­ing win­dow, door and open­ing was cov­ered with a heavy blan­ket. I also know this has been an “unusu­ally” cold win­ter, what­ever that means, and we do have any­where from 36–41 inches of snow on the ground if it were flat, which it isn’t, so we have 4–8 foot drifts here and there, includ­ing around our house. To me, hav­ing snow­banks around my house would act as insu­la­tion, right? In kind of an inglooy kind of way? (hey,my blog…can make up any word I want!) So you’d think that would help in keep­ing the cold out. So…the guy comes out and has to traipse through crotch high snow to even get to the tank, get all the snow off and start to make an eval­u­a­tion. He has me turn off the fur­nace and any other gas appli­ances and tells me he will check the reg­u­la­tors and fit­tings out­side and work his way indoors. So here’s my think­ing. Do I get the hell out of dodge? Give him the keys and drive a cou­ple miles away, just in case??? I don’t, but believe me, I was watch­ing his every move. And I didn’t turn on a light, use my cell phone and even took the land line off the hook. Not that I was wor­ried or any­thing. He is out there stand­ing next to the tank talk­ing on his cell phone and I’m in here think­ing “should he be doing that????” You know, the old “don’t talk on the phone and put gas in your car at the same time” men­tal­ity? I guess it’s fine as he then comes to the house and tells me our reg­u­la­tor was installed in 1964!! Are you kid­ding me? Don’t you guys ever check these things? Well it being a nice day, and him know­ing they were going to change out all the reg­u­la­tors come spring any­way, he decides to change it and sev­eral fit­tings that appar­ently went nowhere. I know, I know.…they fill my tank every 6 weeks and no one has done any­thing about this since 1964??? Holy crap. All must have gone well as he then comes in to tell me to turn on the fur­nace. Are you kid­ding me???  Are you sure??? Me turn on the fur­nace? YOU turn on the furnace…your the gas guy! The whole time he is tak­ing off his boots so he can go to our base­ment and see if there are any leaks, and turn on my water heater and blah blah blah blah…all I can think  of is STOP TALKING…I mean this guy is a reg­u­lar chatty kathy, telling me all about his neigh­bors and the dog and the cats and his new glasses as he is trekking down to make sure we don’t blow up. I tried to just nod and look inter­ested all the time hop­ing he is con­cen­trat­ing on what he is doing and my talk­ing or ask­ing ques­tions is not dis­tract­ing him from the task at hand. And he con­tin­ues to chat while he turns on the furnace…“Oh there it goes…that’s a good thing.…ha ha ha ha…” he says as I mean­while start back­ing out of the room. Then damn, wouldn’t you know it he has a ques­tion about the water heater.…and more chat­ter. Now really. Most times I am as inter­ested in chat­ter as the next, but I also firmly believe that there are times and sit­u­a­tions that, I think, demand your full attention.…checking my home for gas leaks prob­a­bly rat­ing among the top!! But I guess for these guys/gals turn­ing gas on and off, try­ing to fig­ure out where, if any leaks are present, is there day.  Luck­ily, accord­ing to him, he can find no leaks. Even luck­ier, for us, spring is com­ing and using propane to the tune of 7 or more gal­lons a day will ease and we won’t have to think about it til next win­ter. Now I can only hope his chat­ter was not at all dis­tract­ing to him and mainly for the pur­pose of dis­tract­ing me!!

I have heard a cou­ple things in the last cou­ple days that make me want to put these warn­ings out there in the hopes that more than 10 peo­ple, 5 of whom I know, are read­ing this.

Today there was a news report of the grow­ing con­cern of kids swal­low­ing those very small but­ton bat­ter­ies. They are in your remotes, scales, ther­mome­ters, kids toys that make noise and more worrisome…those greet­ing cards you get that “sing”. In most kids toys, the bat­ter­ies can only be removed with a tool, as a screw and cap keep most in. Check your kids toys!! If it is just a slide in cap, more than likely your genius tod­dler will soon fig­ure out how to slide the cap off!! When you get a singing card, imme­di­ately remove and destroy the bat­tery!! I know my 19 month old grand­son loves gad­gets. He exam­ines them like a doc­tor, I am sure mostly to see how many but­tons work and what they do, but exam­ine them he does!! He is 19 months old!! The but­ton bat­ter­ies are incred­i­bly easy to swal­low. However…once they are swal­lowed, they imme­di­ately begin to cor­rode what­ever they come in con­tact with. Because the symp­toms mimic flu, most par­ents don’t know what hap­pened until it becomes extremely seri­ous and they finally do an x-ray!! 9 chil­dren have died from this and that is 9 too many!! Not to men­tion count­less oth­ers with severe dam­age to their esoph­a­gus and lungs!! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE… pay atten­tion to this and right now go check your home for this silent problem!!

The sec­ond thing, and I know this one from expe­ri­ence, was a very small tod­dler who picked up and started chew­ing on the clear plas­tic wrap that a mother had removed from a bot­tle of infant/childrens tylenol.  You know what it is…that plas­tic that sur­rounds the lid that “if tam­pered with” you are to throw the prod­uct away? It comes on most meds for kids and adults now. And because it is clear, it is impos­si­ble to see in their mouths when the child is chok­ing!! It gets over the air­way and gets suc­tioned to the roof of their mouths and they can’t breathe and you can’t see it!! Always sweep the roof of their mouth to see if this is what is going on!! Always!! When my grand­daugh­ter was chok­ing, it was on the clear plas­tic removed from the sticky part of a band-aid I had put on her a bit ear­lier!! Clear plas­tic that is soft, eas­ily forms to the roof of mouths and they can­not breath!! Luck­ily I was able to feel it and pull it out!!I have hated those things ever since and always make sure to bury them deep in the garbage as soon as I remove!

To manufacturers.…if you have to wrap this stuff for our pro­tec­tion make it an easy to see color!! It is eas­ier to see when it is dropped on the floor and eas­ier to see if they put in their mouths!! Same goes for the cov­ers on bandaids!! Make them vis­i­ble!!! And for god sakes…use your heads and don’t make them red or orange or any color that blends in with the mouth!!!

We can­not watch our kids 24–7 even if we think we are the most alert par­ent in the world!! We can­not know what they will put in their mouths even though we scan their play area with an eagle eye! We can­not say they won’t put some­thing in their mouth because “they know bet­ter” or “they never put things in their mouth”!!  Yes, they do and have prob­a­bly swal­lowed stuff, that if you knew, would have you cring­ing. They are not bad kids intent on mis­chief. They are oral kids try­ing to fig­ure life out and we have to be their guardians!!

Please write or call the man­u­fac­tur­ers of these prod­ucts and let them know this has to change. I am beg­ging you to not let one more lit­tle life be lost because we are too lazy to make a call or write!! And check your stuff today!!

So. Have been down and out with sore back last cou­ple days and after visit to chi­ro­prac­tor yes­ter­day, now feel like I can move again.

One minute I was sit­ting read­ing some­thing, stood up to leave for an out­ing and bam…thinking “wow…that was weird” and it was down­hill from there.

I have had occa­sional back issues. This one is on the side of my back along the spine, thank god, and not lower back, but yet is placed so, until yes­ter­day, it was spas­ming every few min­utes. I can take alot. A spasm that must feel like a cat­tle prod every cou­ple min­utes sucks.

What gets me every time I hurt my back is how much I use it. Right now, no mat­ter how much I might want to, I could not get on the floor to play with the grand­son nor pick grand­kids up and swing them around as I like to do. I can­not start paint­ing the stuff I want to get done before spring. I can­not do chores this week. It’s not that my hus­band isn’t capable…he is…but then he leaves to go to work and I am home feel­ing like I am con­tribut­ing noth­ing and he is doing everything.

For those rea­sons alone it makes me want to work harder to strengthen my back, although my chiro doc tells me where I injured myself is not the eas­i­est place to strengthen by reg­u­lar meth­ods. Of course not. But because I hate when I hurt my back more than any­thing, it is some­thing I will seri­ously explore this week­end and hope to start doing next week.

My son-in-laws dad has a seri­ous back prob­lem. Disc bone on bone. He does get cor­ti­sone shots, which I know help immensely, but I still say to him “How the hell do you do it? How do you get around, get stuff done, with­out col­laps­ing, throw­ing your hands up and say­ing NO MORE?” My lit­tle injury is noth­ing com­pared to his and yet I am wiped out. Afraid to move the wrong way. Pissed it is using up beau­ti­ful days I could be doing some­thing else. I really don’t know how he does it.

So that is my woe­ful tale. Just wanted to catch you up. Now, is that heat­ing pad still on???????

I cel­e­brated my 58th birth­day on Mon­day.  I wish it meant I was just start­ing my 58th year not end­ing it!! Some­how, know­ing you are start­ing your 59th year makes it not quite so much fun.

Some peo­ple like to take stock of their lives on the first of the year. I like to do it on my birth­day. Of course my birth­day falls early in the year, but still, I think I’d use this time no mat­ter what day it was, just because.

Take a breath. I’m not going to recap 58 years. Not a enough time, for one, but even if there were, impor­tant to no one but me.

I have to hon­estly say that 58 gives me pause. I fully intend to have another 50  years to put under my belt, but sta­tis­tics say that may not be so. I think it so strange God only put a war­ranty on our lives of lit­tle over a hun­dred years, on a good day. I won­der why. Talk about planned obso­les­cence! This would be the ulti­mate exam­ple, don’t you think?

Mostly, as I recap my life at this time, I want to have the courage to be bru­tally hon­est with myself. About what is mine to own, mine to change. I am so gifted at either telling oth­ers what they should do, be, want, or have, or needs chang­ing. Time I made that gift a gift to myself. Not because I’ve have a great epiphany. I have, in an odd sort of way, but because, dammit, I have tried it for 37 years now and no one is lis­ten­ing to me!! Hello? Time to stop being clueless.

I think my biggest fear, as I recently told some­one, is los­ing myself. I know who I am on the inside, who I want to be ‚who I hope I am, and yet, for what­ever hard­headed rea­son I use, when in the pres­ence of con­flict, anx­i­ety, or change, I slip away. Some would say that at that moment, I prob­a­bly am exactly who I por­tray, and I get that. And yet I live in this body and this mind. I know that at that moment I have taken on their stuff, and I truly am NOT who I know I can be, and I hate, really hate that the peo­ple fix­ing, peo­ple pleaser, door­mat comes charg­ing out, while the real me, the per­son I know I am capa­ble of being, trem­bles in fear. Sounds so dra­matic, doesn’t it? It’s not. But it is real, and some­thing I know needs chang­ing, whether I am 58 0r 20. Grow­ing up I had to “dis­ap­pear” to save my soul. It’s time to come out of hiding.

My epiphany this last week is mine and mine alone. Maybe it’s the blood run­ning in my eyes from hit­ting the brick wall all the time and refus­ing to see the win­dow next to it. Maybe it’s time to just grow up.

I am glad to have reached the age of 58. A lot of peo­ple I know have not. I am in excel­lent health and mind. My wait­ing for some­one to come fix things so I am happy is done. For the many amaz­ing, won­der­ful, I “would never change” years I have had, I am more grate­ful then you can know. But if you don’t mind an old cliche.…I do believe “the best years are yet to come”.

Well.…bet every­one won­dered if I’d dropped off the earth or something…which really is quite a funny say­ing when you think about it…I mean really, has any­one EVER dropped off the earth? No. But it is a great visual.

It has been a fun, fast and furi­ous week and I am glad all is set­tling back to some sem­blance of nor­mal. A quick trip to the cities to help with some babysit­ting duties (which I am still suf­fer­ing from.…HA…right). Avoid­ing a snow storm to get there. My daugh­ters first, and hope­fully her last, time see­ing her infant pro­jec­tile vomit, which, as she says, is like a scene out of a hor­ror movie, but all was well. Spend­ing time with other grand­baby which is never enough with either of them as they are chang­ing faster than imag­in­able. Watch­ing the olympics with my son-in-law and daugh­ter. I’m telling you, it is really bor­ing here with­out their “com­ments”.  Finally get­ting to spend a lit­tle time with my old­est daugh­ter try­ing to catch up and we NEVER have enough time. Giv­ing my son and his wife an unex­pected night out. Then com­ing home to a sick employee for whom I had to fill in for and that makes for one crazy week!

So back I am with lots of thoughts on lots of things. And yet, I am still get­ting the gig­gles every time I think of my daugh­ter hav­ing to use her inhaler, she was laugh­ing so hard at some­thing her hus­band had done. I know, I know, you are want­ing to know but it is her story to tell. I will say that every­one should have a night when they need an inhaler because they are laugh­ing so hard. Life would be so much richer!!

Thanks guys!!

This morn­ing, get­ting some­thing out of a lower cup­board, I acci­den­tally pulled a very heavy pan out that landed squarely on my big toe. Now that I can breath again, I fig­ure it is not bro­ken but the nail is a goner. Holy crap that hurt!!

My ques­tion, how­ever, is not about my gen­eral clum­si­ness, but why, now that I have truly hurt my toe, that legs of tables, chairs, and fur­ni­ture have become mag­nets for my sore toe? My toe never heads in their direc­tion when it ISN’T sore so why now? Does hurt­ing it some­how changes it’s polar­ity? It must, because since hurt­ing it this morn­ing, I have come so near to bonk­ing it on the edge of fur­ni­ture, beds or cup­boards that is not only scary but unnerv­ing. There ought to be a gov­ern­ment com­mit­tee to look into that.

I’ve yet to try a shoe. Will need to sooner rather than later. Just watch, today is the day the horses decide to be clumsy and set their incred­i­bly heavy foot squarely on my boot, I just know it. My toe is blinking.…“Here I am!! I hurt like the dick­ens!! Since I am already sore, go ahead and give me your best shot!!.….I just know it is. Now can some­one just tell me why?

Don’t know if you have seen the video mak­ing the rounds of  Sarah P.‘s snafu where she had writ­ten notes to her­self, for her speech, on the palm of her hand, and then must have for­got­ten as she was ges­tur­ing and it was there for all to see? Well, it is pretty funny. They also showed other inter­views where she glances down at her palm, and what you might mis­con­strue as a demure glance at her lap, is indeed, note reading.

Well, I hardly know where to begin. My hus­band, who was watch­ing, said “what’s wrong with her doing that?” Are you kid­ding me? So I asked. “Were she (God for­bid and shudder)to ever be Pres­i­dent, would  you want some­one who writes notes to them­selves on their hand when a teleprompter is nowhere to be found? Some­one not smart enough to remem­ber what they want to say, much less artic­u­late it? Meet­ing with heads of coun­tries?” I can see it now…the Queen of Eng­land asks her a ques­tion and she says “oh, excuse me”, as she turns away to cough dis­creetly into her hand when she is really  look­ing for an answer writ­ten there? Really? You really want some­one who can­not think on their feet?

But even that sopho­moric writ­ing on her hand isn’t what wor­ries me most.  What wor­ries me is her not wash­ing her hands!! Good heav­ens!! The woman meets hun­dreds of peo­ple, some­times in any given day!! Does she only wash one hand after going to the bath­room? Very tal­ented lady to be sure!! And when she gets down from the podium after giv­ing her speech and shakes all those hands, does she ever, not once, use hand san­i­tizer? I don’t know about you but I tend to put san­i­tizer on both hands. I’ve watched these mul­ti­ple hand­shake peo­ple and although they shake with one hand, they usu­ally grasp the top of the clasped hands too.  Does she ever leave ink marks on top of peo­ples hands? Do they then enshrine their hands, never to wash it again, thus suc­cess­fully pulling off a Sarah P.?

In an attempt to make light of get­ting caught “cheat­ing”, at her next speech she wrote “Hi Mom” on her palm and showed it to those watch­ing. As funny as she may have thought that was, I thought it sad. She can no longer write notes on her palm as every­one will be look­ing! What ever will she do? Poor Sarah.

Dear Van­cou­ver,

My hus­band and I heard on the news this morn­ing that Van­cou­ver does not “have enough snow” con­sid­er­ing the Win­ter Olympics start this week­end.  We believe a lit­tle fore­thought on the olympic com­mit­tees side would have pre­vented this, because Iowa was never in the run­ning and they should have been.
See, they think because we don’t have moun­tains that you can­not hold the olympics here. Hello??? Have you seen Iowa lately? No, we don’t have moun­tains in the sum­mer. How silly would that be?? Just block your view and you need 4 wheel drive to get over them, and all sorts of peo­ple want to visit your state, and you have to worry about mud slides. Well, you get the pic­ture. No, here in Iowa we do  it right. We MAKE our moun­tains every win­ter. Lately, with “global warm­ing” this seems to be eas­ier.
Right now, for exam­ple, every park­ing lot, and I do mean EVERY park­ing lot, in every town, has moun­tains. You’d have your pick of cities. In fact, we have so much snow in Iowa right now that they have run out of places to put the snow!!! Bet you wish you were hav­ing that prob­lem right now!!! We have 6 or 7 foot drifts in our yard alone!! They are dump­ing snow in the gravel pits which would be PERFECT for snow­board­ing, and just our county roads them­selves would make excel­lent luge runs!! Ice skat­ing? Our rinks are going full force. You wouldn’t have to worry about work­ers as there are plenty of peo­ple out of work right now, not to men­tion all those who can­not GET to work, and stay at home par­ents who would pay YOU to come work to get out of the house that has had kids home from school more snow days this year then any other. Yep, you’d have all the help you need.
See, you missed a rare oppor­tu­nity. And we feel kind of sorry for you. We know, sadly, that it is too late to move the olympics here, but my hus­band had a great idea this morn­ing. Sell Van­cou­ver our snow!! I knew there was a rea­son I mar­ried him!! Bril­lant!! So, even as I write, he is talk­ing to all his dump truck dri­ver friends and get­ting this set up. You are not to worry. We love to help in Iowa. We’d have to charge for the snow, of course. Noth­ing is free these days. How badly do you want it? Then there would be gas, food, lodg­ing and tick­ets to all the events for the dri­vers. All and all you’d maybe come out ahead. So, if you are inter­ested, go to www.iowasellsnow.com and we will see what we can do. You are wel­come.
And to the olympic com­mit­tee? Maybe now you will put Iowa on your list for the next win­ter olympics and not make such a glar­ing mis­take again. An over­sight, I am sure.
I sin­cerely hope you take us up on our offer. Should you not, being the kind peo­ple we are, we promise not to snort, choke or laugh as you “make snow” for your games. And if you are think­ing of “help­ing your­self” to our snow? Think again. We’d know in a minute it was taken from here. How? Well, that is for us to know and you to find out.
Happy olympics from snow bound Iowa!!