Sunday, September 21, 2014

My current desktop is part of the road that I run on. I just love the weeping willow that drapes the whole way across the road.

You know something?

“What’s that?” you ask.

Now that it is Sunday (as you can plainly see by the date at the top of this letter) and it’s time for me to sit down and write to you, I did a really crappy job keeping notes and I just wanted you to know that.

Have y’all been busy this past week? I’m guessing you have. Last weeks letter only got four views from the FaceBook link. On the email? I don’t have any way of knowing how many of you read my letters that way, but I do know that it was read by at least three beautiful ladies because they emailed me.

My friend Barb wanted to know if we got our new RV yet and as of the time this goes to press the answer is no.

My older and much adored sister Patti says I should upgrade my software so I don’t lose my stories so much.

My daughter Kat had a very interesting perspective on the bull in the cow pasture and I thought I would share that with you.


“I wanted to pass on info about cows which I learned during an internship for vet tech school. We were doing ultrasounds for pregnancy checking on a batch of 50 cows. The farmer kept a steer (castrated bull) in each heard of females. He said the male being with the females helped with the cows ovulation cycles....regulated their hormones, and he had a higher birthing rate than before he kept a steer with them. Out of the 50 we checked only 6 were not pregnant....and 2 were old enough they would be retired soon after our visit.”
How interesting!

I spent most nights this past week working in my glass shop with my friend and neighbor Stephanie. We were making beach themed suncatchers for her daughter Jonecca’s window in her college dorm room. We made a mama turtle and twin babies, a rare blue lobster, flip-flops and angelfish. Saturday was parents day at the college and I wanted to have them done so Steph could take them to Jonecca.

Working with Steph was a great gal-bonding time of talking, drinking wine and getting something productive done along the way! I think the suncatchers came out fabulous and I hope Jonecca likes them too.

And that my loves is not only the reason I don’t have much news, it’s also the reason that I haven’t yet published my novelette.

“Don’t tell us that Peg!” you say. “We know your sister was there for a visit and you haven’t told us anything about that!”

I know, right!

Here’s the thing with my cute little red haired sister’s visit. We had such a grand adventure that I wanted to make it a story all in it’s own! So you are going to have to wait until I have the time to get it written. Okay?

In the meantime Mike and I are once again in Bath, New York. We received notice that our new RV has been delivered to the dealer and we hoped to get the issues with the tow brakes on our Jeep resolved at the same time. Unfortunately just because we showed up early doesn’t mean they have time to look at it, does it?

When we were up here before we just slept in the parking lot of Camping World and there is no TV reception there at all. Nothing. Zip. Nada! And here we were three days early! We decided to go to an RV park for at least one or two nights. The first place we pulled into was all decorated for Halloween. We registered and when we pulled into our assigned spot we were leaning pretty hard.

“Peg, walk back down to the office and see if we can get that spot over there, would ya?” Mike asked pointing to an empty spot three places away.

“Okay,” I agreed, never one to turn down a walk. I get back to the office and request a different site.

“I’m booked full up,” the lady tells me. “It’s our Spooktacular Weekend and I don’t have any other sites.”

“I don’t think we are going to stay then,” I told her anticipating what Mike would say and I was right, he didn’t want to stay and the lady gladly refunded our money.

You know what? As much of a pain in the arse that it was to have to go to another park, it was a blessing in disguise. The new place was running a September special, buy two nights and it’s half price. Heck, that made the decision easy for us. We booked two nights for less money per night than the original park and this was a way better park! For $32.50 we had water, sewer, electric, cable TV, internet and all the amenities you can think of. There are hiking trails, miniature golf, basketball court, tennis court, play ground for the kids, swimming pools with all kinds sprinklers for the kids to run through, a dog park for the dogs to run off leash as well as a game room, activity center and a camp store.

It is such a nice park, well landscaped, mature trees, fire rings at each campsite. With map in hand (that’s how big this place is) I took my camera and walked the girls. This park has park models and cabins that can be rented and there was one section with five cabins all fenced off and a little secluded so it would be perfect for a family gathering.

One of the things that I liked the most was the little chipmunks, or some people call them ground squirrels. I have never seen so many of these little guys all in one place before! In fact I hardly ever see any in my day to day travels. I’m guessing that the eco system here in the park is very much to their liking because they are abundant here, that’s for sure.

This little guy, with his mouth stuffed full, came charging right at me, then he saw me, stopped and reversed course.

I walked right past this tree as he was getting ready to eat a fungi, and never saw him. It was the second time past him that Itsy ran over to the tree and that’s when I spot the mushroom growing in what almost looks like a maw, more than six feet off the ground. Can you see it? The slanty eyes, the lower fangs?

Sigh.

Maybe it’s only me. I have a couple of tree faces to show you sometime, but not this time.

Let’s call this one done.

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike

Sunday, September 14, 2014

I hope this letter finds you happy and healthy.

My current desktop is not one I picked. Not intentionally, anyway. My current desktop is up there because I was working on a novelette called The Wyoming County Fair, A Day With Momma, and while inserting a photo of the bull riding event, I accidentally clicked on the button that made it my desktop. So I just left it up there and it’s up there still.

“A novelette?” you wonder.

Yes, a novelette. We googled it, my cute little red haired sister Diane and I did, and discovered that a novella is between 4,001 and 8,000 words in length. A novelette is between 8,001 and 17,500 words long. A Day With Momma is definitely a novelette at 8,434 words and is the longest story I’ve written so far. I’ve been working on it for almost two weeks and last night I put the finishing touches on it. On the story part that is. I have to put the pictures in it yet.

“You said you got your desktop photo while putting the photos in the story,” you say.

Boy, you guys don’t miss a thing, do you? That’s correct. That is how I got my current desktop photo. But it is the craziest thing! My story (file) became corrupted twice during the writing process and it wouldn’t open. I lost it. The last time was because it couldn’t load a photo and I forced a shut down. I don’t know about the first time, but maybe it had something to do with the photos too. So the third time I started the story I left all the pictures out. But don’t feel too sorry for me. Luckily I had asked three very beautiful and smart ladies to help me with this story because I wanted it to be the best it could be, so I had almost all of it in my sent file on the email. Whew!

The beautiful ladies, A.K.A. my editors, all had great ideas on how to make my story good. Although I didn’t use all the ideas, I took something from all of them. I expect I will get the photos inserted and get it posted sometime this coming week.

“Why Peg?” you ask. “Why would you write something that long! You know I don’t have time to read that!”

I didn’t start out to write a novella, let alone a novelette. I started out just wanting to record the story of our day and it grew from there. Right around the fifteen page mark, I threw all attempts to limit the number of pages right out the window, deciding instead to write the story for Momma, giving her a keepsake of the day, one she can read and relive anytime she wants.

If you want to read it, you can. And if you don’t....I totally understand. If you do read it and want to tell me what you think of it, your comments would be welcomed.

On our way taking Momma home from the Fair, we pass a pasture where the girls had been turned out from their evening milking. I just love cows! “Mike, if you slow down they will all look at us,” I told him.

“They are curious,” Momma said.

Mike slowed way down and sure enough, the girls all lifted their heads to see what we were doing and I snap some photos. Way off in the pasture I see three cows around one that is laying down. “Is that a bull?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Momma answered.

I pulled the photo up on my camera, zoomed it in and showed it to her. “It is a bull!” Momma said. I think we were both surprised because farmers don’t usually freshen their cows the old fashion way. The bull can be kind of rough on the girls, don’t you know. But maybe this guy is gentle and it’s the way they do it.

“Peg, did you get your new RV?” you wonder.

I’m getting there, I’m getting there!

No.

“No? Just no? Aren’t you going to tell us what happened?”

Okay, I will. Mike and I, along with the puppy dogs Itsy and Ginger, headed up to Bath, New York, on the appointed day, at the appointed hour, to pick up our new RV only to be told that our 10:30 appointment was really a 12:30 appointment. So we had a couple of hours to kill, no big deal. Finally one of the shop guys comes for the RV and I have to move to the customer lounge. He’s going to take it in the shop, take the braking system off our old RV and put it on the new RV as part of our deal. No problems there, they get that done. Since Mike and I can both be a little technologically challenged, they also agreed to put in a DVD player for us. It was while doing this that they discovered the HDMI cable was broken, or fractured somewhere along it’s length. And guess where the cable is. Yep. Inside the walls. The DVD player wouldn’t work.

Everyone thought it was a fluke, so Adam, the Sales Manager, searched the internet and the other Camping Worlds and found another RV for us. It would be there the next day.

Mike and I head downtown to a place called Liberty Street Pub and Grill for our dinner that night.

 

“They have a really good steak salad,” Adam told me. “It’s what I always get when I go there.”

So on Adam’s recommendation, I ordered the steak salad and Mike ordered a hamburger with a side of wings. There was only one other table occupied when we got there but as we were sitting there chatting, other people start coming in. Pretty soon we notice that people who came in after us are getting their food.

“It’s just their salads,” I told Mike.

Then they get their main course. Well, okay. “They got the special,” I said. “The special is always ready and that’s why they get it sooner.” Then another table gets their food and another table gets their food. I flagged down the waitress, “What’s the deal?” I asked.

“Oh. Wings take twenty-five minutes so they push the other food out.”

She certainly didn’t tell us that when we ordered, but what are you gonna’ do? At this point it had been almost twenty-five minutes anyway so we don’t have to wait much longer for our food to arrive. And it was worth the wait. My steak salad was really good and Mike said it was the best hamburger he ever had.

The next day the new RV arrives and the first thing they do is check out the HDMI cable and guess what? Yep! This one was broken too. They figure it is a design flaw. As they ran this cable inside the wall, up one side of the RV, across the ceiling and down to the TV on the other side, they somehow kinked it and since the Hurricane by Thor don’t come with DVD players, no one knew it.

“Now what?” you ask.

Yeah, we wondered the same thing.

“I’m not sure I want one of those now,” Mike said of the Hurricane’s.

Adam got back on his computer and started searching around again. He came up with a few other models that were out of reach for us, and negotiations stalled. “What would it take to make you happy and get this deal done?” Adam asked of Mike.

“Give me the Hurricane 34F for the same price and do everything you were originally going to do,” Mike said. The 34F was an upgrade from the 32N that we had been looking at.

“Done,” Adam said and the search was on for a 34F. Here’s the problem we ran across. There were only three 34F’s built. One was in Texas, one was in California and the other one was slated for the Hershey RV show, which by the way, is the largest RV show in the country.

“It will be at least two weeks until we can get it,” Adam told us.

Resigned to a two week wait, and having already spent three days in Bath, we head home to the cats. We hadn’t been home very many days before Mike gets a phone call. There is a brand spankin’ new 34F coming off the line and it was going to be ours.

“I’d rather get you the new one than the one that was in the show and had hundreds of people walk through it,” our salesman said. Hopefully it will be here before we are suppose to head back to Missouri because if it’s not, I don’t know what we will do.

When we left our mountain home to pick up the new RV, we had planned on spending one night in the lot of Camping World, getting familiar with our new RV and making sure everything worked the way it was suppose to. With that in mind, I took my running shoes from the breezeway, where they normally live, and put them in the RV. Our second morning in Bath, I tie on my Saucony’s, harness Ginger and we go for a run. Although Camping World is on the highway and although the shoulders are very wide on this highway, I don’t have to stay on it very long before I came to a side street, which I took, leaving the heavy traffic behind me. I did my interval running down a sleepy little house lined street and when I came to a T, I had a decision to make. Back out towards the highway, or out a country road. I chose the country road.

Ginger does really good when she goes out with me, provided I don’t take her too often. If she gets tired I have to carry her until she rests a little and carrying an eight or nine pound dog while you are trying to run doesn’t work very well.

On this particular morning, we were nearing the halfway point and time to turn around when I hear dogs barking from a farmhouse yard. I hope they’re tied, I no sooner think to myself when I see not one, but two dogs coming up the driveway towards us!

Oh shit! They weren’t tied. I hope they stop, is my next thought but I don’t take any chances. I scoop Ginger up, turn so they can’t see her and walk as quickly and calmly as I could back the way I came. I didn’t think running would be a good idea. I glanced back over my shoulder. They didn’t stop. They came barking right up on the road and the leader looked like he could have been a pit bull mix.

“STOP!” I shout much braver than I felt. “GO BACK!” They still didn’t stop and they didn’t go back either. I was scared. These were two big dogs, forty or fifty pounds a pounds a piece. If they decided to bite me to get to Ginger, I couldn’t have stopped them.

“Use your pepper spray,” a voice in my head says.

I reach in my sport bra and pull out a palm size aerosol of pepper spray, flip the lock off, aim it at the lead dog and depress the trigger. This is the first time I have ever pulled a personal protective device on anybody or anything and I didn’t know quite what to expect. What I got was a thin stream of liquid which fell short of it’s mark. The dogs stopped but continued to bark.

“GIT!” I said in the meanest voice I could muster, gave him another shot of pepper spray, which again fell short and I kept walking. Lucky for me, (or maybe they just weren’t the biting kind of dogs) they barked me down the road, but didn’t follow.

I really need to rethink this taking Ginger with me thing. I know she enjoys it and really hates when I leave her home, but I don’t want anything to happen to her and I don’t want to make myself a bigger target to dogs or bears by having her with me. In my minds eye I could see Ginger barking at a bear and really making him mad! No. That wouldn’t do at all.

Check out this sign in the parking lot of a McDonald’s in Tunkhannock, PA. I have never, in all of my travels, ever seen a sign like this before. It says;

McDonald’s parking lot rules. No loitering, food must be eaten inside of car, you must leave parking lot 15 minutes after purchase.
What do you think about that?

Father Joe, the priest of the church Momma goes to, died last week. He had a memorial service on Monday and Momma told me to take my camera and get a shot of the beautiful tapestry with Father Joe on it. It is beautiful, but I wondered (and forgot to ask) is this something that was pre-made, or made special after Father Joe died?

Let’s do October birthdays.

Floyd Gene Kraft, 1^st; Carmen Cosentino, 5^th; Carmella Sophia Kriebel, 5^th; John Daniel Bowers, 7^th; Andi Lyn Bowers, 11^th; Pilar Bowers, 12^th; Trevor William Soden, 16^th; Burton Louis Bowers, 18^th; Richard Robert Smith, 20^th; Bert Lundy Bowers, 24^th; Vincent Soden, 27^th; Billy Smith, 29^th.
Happy birthday!


Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike

 Once again, I have had multiple desktops up this week. I spent another morning taking photos of spider webs in the morning dew, and I had this one up on my desktop for a few days.

The cows coming for a drink at the pond in the late afternoon

was the next photo I had up for a while, and in the same field is an endangered Pennsylvania Field Stone Fence, which is my current desktop photo.

 Something I am not happy about is my recent blood test results. My cholesterol is too high, as are my triglycerides.

Since I quit my job at Curves my body is different. I can see more fat on me and my weight hasn’t changed that much. It can only mean one thing. I’ve been losing muscle.

Wuscle mays war...er...I mean, muscle weighs more. I can only imagine how much fat I’ve added.

“Stop in your next time past Curves and check it out,” Mary Ellen, my former boss offered. And that scares me. Do I really want to know?

It took my two years to get to where I was and only four months to undo all that hard work. It isn’t fair!

“What are you going to do about it?”

Good question. Crying it isn’t fair doesn’t help a thing. When Mike and I get back to Missouri from our mountain home, we are going to turn our spare room into a weight room. Mike needs to rebuild his muscles too. Muscles he has lost as a side effect of slowing down and aging.

Now, while I am thinking about it, I think the double cheeseburger from Sonic the day before my blood test probably had a lot to do with the results too!

Mike and I were packing up the RV for our trip to Bath, New York to trade our Bago in when I heard him yell, “Peg!”

“What!” I yelled back, exasperated. It never fails. I’ll be right in the middle of something and he will need me.

“You got a phone call,” he said coming in from the breezeway.

Why would anyone be calling Mike’s phone to talk to me? I wondered. I reached for the phone.

“It’s the public defender in Missouri,” Mike said handing it over.

My first thought was, “Uh-oh. What have I done?” But for the life of me I couldn’t think of one single thing that might have landed me in legal hot water. My second thought was, “Someone stole my identity again.” But I was wrong on both counts.

“Peg?” A man said.

“Yeah.”

“Hi. My name is Wah-Wah and I’m a public defender in Jefferson City. I’m calling to ask what you know about Wah-Wah pulling a knife.” I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. I hoped if I listened long enough I would catch on.

“You are mentioned in the Lake Ozark Police departments report concerning wah-wah-wah wah-wah, wah-wah-wah wah.”

Yeah, you guessed it. I stopped listening. I was trying to fit the pieces together. The only thing I could come up with was an incident I witnessed where one man was threatening to beat the crap out of another. Two off duty police officers had been on the Strip at the time, heard all the yelling, and before I could call the police, they had identified themselves and gotten between the aggressor and the victim. They made a report about what happened and I made a report about what I saw. But I didn’t see a knife.

“...and I was calling to see what you could tell me about it,” Mr. Public Defender finished.

“I saw a bunch of yelling, but I didn’t see a knife. Didn’t you get the report I made?” I asked.

“It says here that you didn’t see anything and no report was made.” I was so confused!

“....Trapp Building, Wah Wah told the police about a woman with a camera and two little dogs. The police stated they were familiar with that woman and when they checked, discovered you didn’t know anything about the incident.” Slowly his wah-wah’s were dissolving into words I could understand. It was Jordan! I never knew Jordan’s last name and honestly, I haven’t even thought about Jordan for a long time. But I do remember the police coming to me and telling me Jordan named me for a witness. I told them I didn’t witness Jordan pull or not pull a knife on anyone and I gave them a copy of the story I wrote the day I met Jordan.

In a nut shell, here’s what happened. Jordan did some work for a man and when it came time to pay, the man either didn’t want to pay, or didn’t want to pay what they agreed on. “Honestly, I think he was trying to get slave labor and when Jordan argued with him he decided he would just call the police,” Shawn, Mr. Public Defender told me. “Jordan told the police that he was using the knife to clean his fingernails and they didn’t believe him. ‘No one uses a knife like that to clean their fingernails with,’ they said.”

When I saw Jordan that morning, he was cleaning his fingernails with that knife. That’s what I was supposed to be a witness to! Boy! I’ll tell you what! The Lake Ozark Police Department certainly had not made it clear to me what Jordan said I was a witness to!

“All Jordan was trying to do was to get enough money to get back to his mother’s in Kansas City,” Shawn said. “He’s been sitting in jail since that day, May 26^th.”

“I wrote a story about meeting Jordan that morning,” I told Shawn.

“I have a copy of it right here, I read it yesterday.”

“Well, that’s all that I know.”

“If you can think of anything else, will you call me?” he asked and I said that I would.

Guys, you know as well as I know, that whether Jordan actually threatened him with the knife or not doesn’t matter. All the man has to do is say he felt threatened.

I hope, the fact that I wrote the story the same day I met Jordan, helps in his defense. He seemed like a nice enough guy who simply got some bad breaks.

I am practicing keeping my mouth shut. I get frustrated when Mike has to cover the same territory over and over and over again! After 19 years, I know how Mike is and I also know I will never change him, not that I would ever want to either. All I can do is change how I react to him.

“I just don’t say anything when my husband gets that way with me,” a very wise woman told me.

“If I do that, Mike says, ‘So you’re not talking to me now?’”

She thought about that for a minute. “Just say you don’t have anything to say.”

Why did I never think of that!

So when Mike goes off on one of his routines and I don’t feel like playing, I just stay quiet. Eventually I will hear my side of the argument come out of his mouth then before long, he’s on to something new and I’ll talk again. But Mike isn’t stupid. He caught on to what I was doing weeks ago and has just let it slide.

Then this morning Mike was going on and on about something and I didn’t say anything.

“How come you never talk to me anymore?” he asked.

“I don’t have anything to say,” I replied.

“I don’t either, but I still talk!”

I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed! In fact, even as I write this, sitting in the lounge of Camping World, trying hard to suppress my laughter, it came leaking out of my eyes anyway.

Let’s call this one done,

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike