Sunday, February 15, 2015

Hello my loves,

I’ve had two desktops this past week. The first one was just some kind of red berry. I like the red tips left behind when the berry is plucked off or has fallen off or whatever happens to them and I love the background.

My current desktop photo is a feather floating in shallow water with a leaf.

I laughed when I saw this next photo pop up on my screen as I was scrolling through some freshly taken photos. Is that Godzilla?

You know something? Some of the most interesting things have appeared in what I thought would be boring photos at the time that I took them…

“You take photos that you think will be boring?” you scratch your head in wonderment.

I know, right! I was hoping to sneak that one past you but you guys are just too smart for me!

I was going to say…and yet I take them anyway. I just can’t help it. I have to photograph something!

I had Itsy and Ginger out for a walk on this past beautiful Tuesday afternoon and I was looking for things to photograph. A flock of pelicans circle overhead.　
　

　
　
　

　

　
An abandoned and colorful candy box adorns the roadside.

“Whatever were you going to do with a photo of that!”

Don’t ask, but there it is anyway.

An acorn cap cradled in the divot of a rock.

We get down to the pond at the campground and as we walked along the edge we scared the little minnows that had been sunning themselves in the shallows. You should have seen them all! I was just shooting these little minnows and never saw Godzilla standing there with his head thrown back and his sharp white teeth gleaming in the sunlight until I saw it on the computer. And look at that shadow would ya? It adds to the illusion, don’t you think?

The girls and I turned around and were headed out of the campground when this old clunker of a van stopped at the road head. If they come down this way, I’m going to ask for a picture and a comment for my HIM webpage. The van did turn and drive slowly down my way. As it approached I smiled and waved. The sun reflected off the dirt on the windows preventing me from seeing them very clearly until they were pretty close to me. I could tell the driver was a grizzled old mountain-man looking kind of guy and I couldn’t tell anything about the passenger, but they did wave as they rolled on past me.

Doggone it!

“What happened Peg?” you ask. “Why didn’t you stop him? And I thought you were going to change the name of your page!”

I know, right! But I couldn’t decide if I should change the name or not, then I couldn’t decide on a new name if I did change it. So what I do, when I don’t know what to do, is I don’t do anything. How’s that for a philosophy?

And why didn’t I stop them?

I had it in my mind that they would say howdy to me as they went past and I would ask then. The window was up. They didn’t say howdy and I didn’t have a backup plan.

I walked on feeling like I missed my chance.

The girls and I headed up the hill towards the dam, me looking for things to photograph, the girls sniffing the roadside. Are those deer bones? They’re down in the woods and I can’t see them very well. I snap a photo so I can look at it a little closer on my computer later. A trick I learned from my dad.

“So what do you care if they are deer bones?”

I was really hoping you wouldn’t ask me that question.

Boy! I can’t get anything past you guys today!

If you have to ask then I’ll have to admit that I am collecting a few things like that. A deer rib. A bleached out turtle shell. An armadillo claw and a piece of his shell...

Hey!

Is that an armadillo egg?

Just kidding.

And I can hear you asking, “What are you doing that for?”

So I’ll just tell you right now. I have an idea rattling around in my head. I don’t know all the particulars yet but what I want to do is honor these creatures that were once living, feeling beings created by our Lord and God.

I walk on and snap photos of the insulators on the power lines. And winter flowers.

Then I hear it. I stop. I hear the rattletrap coming out of the campground. If they come this way I’m going to step out in the road and wave them down. I listen and I can follow the sound of the van as it makes its approach to the turn onto Valley Road. But which way will they turn? I hear the acceleration and for a few anxious seconds I can’t tell which way they turned. But I didn’t have long to wait before I could tell the sound was getting louder. They were coming my way!

There are no sidewalks on these back roads that I walk on so I step a little further into the road and wave at them. They slow and I expected the window to go down. Instead, the door opens.

 
“Hi!” I cheerfully exclaim. “How about a photo and a comment for my Facebook Page,” I asked.

“Sure.” No hesitation there at all.

“Great! Let’s pull off at the top of the hill and we’ll chat.”

They drove up to the top of the hill, pulled in and waited for me to make the walk.

I talked with this couple for almost half an hour and I have to tell you. There are times when I think people deserve more than one or two lines on a Facebook Page.

What I put up on Facebook was, "She's as beautiful to me today as she was 46 years ago when I married her." And I posted a photo of a kiss they shared for my camera.

Just like a true gentleman, he removed his hat before he went in for the kiss and I love the look on their faces after the kiss.

David and Dolores have an awesome love story to tell. They shared their first kiss when she was 14 and he 15. He was from the wrong side of the tracks and once trekked through a snow storm to see her.

“The cold never bothered me,” he said in wonderment. “It was midnight when she chased me out of there and I never felt the cold. I felt like I was on Cloud 9 the whole time I was walking home because I had just been with her.”

As we chatted they bounced around in their story and I didn’t get all the holes filled in but one thing that really sticks out in my mind is this.

“I’m so proud of the fact that I got a chance to serve my country and had all the excitement and adventure that a young man could have,” David said.

And his pride was evident.

Then there’s one more thing. They told me that one of their favorite things to do is to just be together. They had errands to run the morning I met them and afterward they decided to go for a ride.

“I just follow my nose. Whatever strikes my fancy is where we go. We don’t come down here very often, but I wanted to see what was going on on the Strip and for some reason I went down to the campground.”

And because of that I got to meet them.

Enough said.

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Have you tried that new milk? They’re calling it Milka-Cola because it’s backed by Coca-Cola, but it’s name is fairlife with the i in fair being upside down, no capital letters and all one word. It’s twice the cost of other milk. A half gallon set us back almost four dollars here in Missouri.

“Why would you buy it?” I hear you ask.

Well, they say they take “extraordinary” care of their cows and I like that. “Cows that are happy and well taken care of produce more milk,” they say. They say they have the highest milk quality standards. They say they have from grass to glass traceability back to their own farms. They say they are in pursuit of sustainable farming. They say their cows are not treated with rBST growth hormone.

“Is that important?” you ask.

Well, I’m all for as close to whole and natural as I can get. The less chemicals and processing-the better I like it. But there is a disclaimer on the milk label saying, “FDA states: no significant difference has been shown between milk from cows treated and not treated with rBST growth hormones.” And if you Google it you will get more information than I can wrap my head around! But I’ll tell you a few things about it that stick out in my mind.

The milk may be the same and we may not be affected by the hormone but cows treated with it suffer more pain and health problems.

Notice that I used the word may? May is a funny word. It’s not a definitive word. It doesn’t mean can’t or won’t, it means both may and may not.

The web site Wikipedia reports that in 1993, the rBST growth hormone was approved for use in the U.S. by the Food and Drug Administration and is safe for human consumption. But how many times have you heard that before? How many times have we seen studies and reports come out saying something is safe or non-harmful only to be found false or erroneous years later? The most recent one that comes to mind is the cholesterol debate. It made the news this past week. There is no link between the cholesterol in the foods we eat and blood cholesterol. Eggs are safe again! Yay!
This hormone is banned in other countries but only because it increases health risks to the cows. One of those things being an overall increase of mastitis by 53%.

Mastitis, I can tell you from personal experience, is painful.

“Peg, do you believe everything you read on the internet?” you ask.

Well, let’s just refer back to my statement about whole and natural to answer that.

I haven’t drank milk in years and now if I drink it, I get a tummy ache. I could probably suffer through it and build my enzymes back up to where I can digest the lactose in milk again but I didn’t miss it enough to do that. This milk, this fairlife, has 50% more protein, 30% more calcium, 50% less sugar and no lactose! How about that?

“How’s it taste?” you wonder.

I like it. The 2% is rich and creamy tasting.

Mike found the web site for one of the farms that produce this milk. It’s in Fair Oaks, Indiana and it is quite an impressive operation. So much so that Mike, in fact, would like to go and see it.

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More stories and no more room! I’m at the bottom of page eight and I don’t want to start a page nine.

Do you know why?

“Why,” you answer.

Because if I start a page nine I have to make a page ten and even though I have a few more things to talk about, I don’t know that it’s enough for two more pages! So! We shall save it for seed.

Until next time,

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike