Another rip snorter blew through here last night.  Rain, wind, and noise.  I'm still coughing up goo so I took an antihistimine with a decongestant before I went to bed in hopes of not hacking all night.  It did indeed clear out my nose and stop the coughing, and kept me wide awake until around 2am enjoying the storm.  No thoughts just no shut eye.  It was still raining in the morning at 6am when I remembered it was garbage day and my cans weren't out.  Tossed on my sweats, raincoat, and my red rubber garden shoes and wheeled those two big 96 gallon cans, trash & recycling (whether you need 96 gallons or not) to the curb and discovered the storm had ripped a large branch out of my maple and tossed it on the neighbors lawn.  Oh goodie. Now I was out of breath.  I am always out of breath due to asthma and a little emphysema.  The goopy cough doesn't help.  So I leaned against my 85' plus maple catching up with the world of oxygen and staying semi-dry, looking up at the sky.  It's a beautiful tree and at least this time it didn't dent anyone's car or rip off an electric service like it did years ago.  It's been pruned of it's rotten spots and thinned for wind at no small cost to avoid that.  That branch is a nice healthy one, like the wind the ripped it off.  There are branches down all up and down the street.   I dragged mine back onto my lawn.  I decided to wait until the rain stopped then figure out what to do with it.  The guy who mows my lawn isn't coming today because of the deluge, so I call a son, "help!"  He will come and hack it up after work.

Back inside I decide to make banana bread from my favorite recipe.  Low fat, low sugar, tasty with pecans.  No pecans, no several other things either.  So I turned off the oven and jumped back into my raincoat and drove off to the grocery.   There is a lake in the Safeway lot and I have to drive around twice to park where the water won't rise over my red rubber shoes.  Inside I get bananas, apricots, pecans that should be gold plated for what I paid for them, milk, and a Lotto ticket and drive home.   Mix, chop, mix, stir, grease the pans and bake.  In one hour, voila!  Except both loaves are about an inch high, well H-E-double toothpicks.  What happened?  They taste great. Son who-works-in-the-evening appears, how did he know?  We taste test our way through most of a loaf.  I looked in the cupboard to see how old the baking powder is and when I get it down, it ain't baking powder, it's corn starch. I put corn starch in my banana bread instead of baking powder.  Lock me up now. 

Son and I visit and he leaves for work and I rainsuit up; it hasn't stopped raining, might as well get on with the tree branch.  Since He Who Must Not Be Named and I divorced over a year ago I still haven't acquired gardening tools appropriate for She Who Has Noodle Arms.  I did buy a shovel with a fiberglass handle, nice and light, but that won't help much chopping up a tree branch.  I got out my big rose pruners and lopped off all the leafy slap-you-in-the-face branches and dumped them in the garbage can.   When works-in-the-day son comes it will just be the big stuff left.  Rummaging around in the garage I see there is a small electric chain saw.  Naw, I have no idea how to use it and it's pouring rain still.  But it gives me a glimmer of hope for a sunnier day.  Stuff grows like a jungle here.

Oh, and new blogger, ack!  I guess I will have to sit down and play with it. 

What a great day.  After all the peculiar rainy, snowy with hail weather in last two weeks we were delighted when it cleared.  Then it got warm enough to open the doors and the windows at the big family dinner today.  Our troop counted twelve children today including three infants, pretty soon we'll be outnumbered by the kids.  I remember some years ago after my Dad died it seemed like our family was shrinking rapidly.  I guess it's a shape shift families go through.  Some parts shrink or disappear and others grow and spread. 

We had platters of ham and turkey, scalloped potatoes, broccoli casserole, fruit salad with nice strawberries.  Lots of my favorite devilled eggs made out of the Easter eggs, that's kind of humorous.  Dinner was so tasty stuff that no one but the kids had room for dessert.   We are fortunate, blessed with lots of family that enjoys each other most of the time, good food, homes of our own to enjoy it in.  It really was a great day. 

A joyful Easter to you and yours.

I made my big fruit salad late last night so its ready to go to the big family dinner this afternoon.  There will be 12 children there from 3 months to 14 years old and an egg hunt if the weather cooperates.  The weatherman predicted 65 and dry but they have been wrong most of the week and surprised like the rest of us.  When I opened the front door to hunt the Sunday paper there was a little pile of chocolate eggs covered in shiny, multicolored foil.  I suspect the three little girl bunnies next door.  Such good neighbors to us all.  May your day be filled with family, friends, and sunshine.



Ah Spring!  Hard to believe this was just yesterday.  I woke up in the dark and looked out the window to see snow all over everything.  It quickly turned to slush and disappeared.  Sun came out briefly and big dark clouds rolled over us.  Thunder, lightning, and then hail. 

I wondered if I should bring these stalwart flowers in but they seem to be doing okay.  They are on the porch.  Then the sun came out for about 30 minutes and it started pouring rain, a rainbow appeared briefly, but I didn't get a good snap of that.  We are surrounded by farmland that's been too dry so its good thing as someone likes to say.  But I am back in my winter underwear and wool socks.  There was one day in the last two weeks I could wear sandals and it got to 70 outside.  Bi-polar weather.  However, we live in an area that is not assaulted by tornados, blizzards, and rarely earthquakes.  In the big picture we do pretty well.  Still I am beginning to feel light-starved and antsy. 

I refuse to turn the heat back up, so I snuggle up on the sofa with a blanket and read.  I finished up my hot off the press copy of Dana Stabenow's new Kate Shugak mystery, "Restless in the Grave," applause, very good.  Then I have worked my way through "The Fifth Woman," a Kurt Wallender mystery by Henning Mankell.  For variety I am reading Jean Potter's "Flying North."  I found that title in one of Ms. Stabenow's books.  It's non-fiction about the early pilots in Alaska and was published around 1949.  I'm really enjoying it. I made myself a list of authors and books mentioned in Dana's books and have found them to be a treasure trove of Alaskan history and great murder mysteries such as "The Life and Death of Bobby Z" by Don Winslow, as well as classic literature that I missed along the way, or read early on and have forgotten.  So besides entertaining me, she has been educating me.  I titled it "Reading List for 2012."  I doubt I will make it all the way through it in 2012.  Some of these books are really old, especially the historical ones.  So maybe I should quit dissing the weather that's kept me inside reading. 

The Chicken Whisperer

What ever happened to sleeping with teddy bears or stuffed toy cats or dogs?  This is my youngest grandgirl Isabel snoozing with her rooster, Mr. Fuzzy.  Mr. Fuzzy is a rambunctious and onery critter.  He has jumped me from behind any number of times and chases some of Isabel's sisters all over the yard.  He let's her pick him up, carry him around, and tuck him into bed with her.  The chicken whisperer. 

Isabel is healthy this week.  Maybe it's rooster magic.  The little babies are recovering, but now their Mom has the crud and is losing her voice.  She needs a magic rooster.

Lostine River and spring melt

Just coming up for air, literally and figuratively.  It's been quite a week.  We've had so much rain we were under a flood watch for awhile.  The sky was heavily dark punctuated by a couple of hours of clearing and dazzling sunlight at times.   Large lakes of water gathered at street corners waiting for pedestrians without waterproof shoes.  We were hunkered down in our homes, my family and I, fending off a respiratory infection that wasn't in our flu vaccines and turned out to be RSV, respiratory syncytial virus which is highly contagious and dangerous to infants.  The two babes in our family got it. The older baby is recovered.  The other not quite 3 month-old is still struggling with it.  Scary stuff.  She's back at the doctor's today.  It's not so great for the over 65 crowd either but at least we can take ourselves in for treatment and know what's happening to us.  I lost my voice and it hurt to talk and now the baby has a raw little cry that must hurt her too.  It breaks my heart for her.  Meanwhile I am washing everything in the house, and have become the queen of chlorox wipes.  Out damned bugs.