Blather

Sunday, August 30, 2015

Hi everyone,

I hope this letter finds you happy and healthy.

My current desktop photo is that little star of my show, Andrew.

I got to spend a few hours with him this past week and I could fill a whole letter with just his cuteness. And I may yet.

Sometimes I don’t really know what I’m going to write about, then I sit down to write and end up filling lots of pages.

Sometimes I do know what I want to write about and end up writing about something altogether different!

And today is combination of both. I have a few things I want to talk about, so let’s get them out of the way and I’ll tell you about this photo. Wait. Let’s reverse that. I’ll tell you about the photo that is my desktop, then I’ll cover the other topics, then, if there’s room, I’ll regale you with Andrew stories. How does that sound?

My desktop photo shall be called Independent Andrew...

You know, I think Andrew has the perfect parents. I think they will be able to channel his willfulness without killing his spirit. Andrew is smart and Andrew is headstrong and always has been. Babies want to be cuddled. Not Andrew. Since the day he was born he wanted to face out, face the world. If you tried to hold him face in, he would scrooch and squirm until he got turned around.

“You’re going to have your hands full with this one,” I told Kevin and Kandyce. I’ve never seen a baby that didn’t want to be cuddled.

And babies want to be swaddled. Not Andrew. “Only for a little while after he was born did he let us cover him. Since then he doesn’t want a blanket on him at all and if we cover him after he’s asleep, he’ll kick it off,” Kevin told me.

Andrew certainly knows his own mind. He knows what he wants and he knows what he doesn’t want. He knows what he likes and what he doesn’t like.

This past Sunday Pop-pop and I got to spend a few hours with him while the kids were busy.

“Andrew. Do you want to go for a walk?” I asked.

I don’t remember what he was doing at the time but he dropped everything and brought my shoes to me and set them at my feet then he went for his sandals, all without being asked. Then he asked me to put his shoes on him.

“Wait,” I told him. “I want to take a picture.”

Andrew waited. He is so good for us and just look at how neatly he placed our shoes!

We got our shoes on and harnessed up Itsy and Ginger, said good-bye to Pop-pop and out we went. I didn’t have the stroller so Andrew would have to do all of the walking. I planned just a short trip around the block for us and in a completely different direction than the way we normally go. I had Andrew hold my hand as we crossed Bagnell Dam Boulevard and once on the other side he released my hand and we headed down the hill.

This road used to be blacktop, but parts of it are gone now and they are using dirt and gravel to keep it passable. Do you know what you get when you combine gravel, blacktop and incline?

Yeah, a slip hazard.

I’m always careful where I place my feet but Andrew didn’t have any experience in this department and after falling twice, he let me hold his hand. I kept him from going the whole way down at least twice more. Then we were at the bottom of the hill.

I wasn’t worried about meeting a car on this road because it belongs to Iguana, a boat sales and rental business, and we were walking on their road after business hours. So I let Andrew walk by himself.

I heard a critter skittering through the underbrush and caught a glimpse of a whistle pig heading for his burrow. He didn’t go the whole way in and I was able to catch this shot of him through the leaves.

Andrew is walking Ginger and I’m carrying Itsy and we get about halfway around the loop when I see a gold finch. With their bright yellow plumage I think they are a pretty bird and I start to take a bunch of shots of him. He doesn’t really go very far and I follow him and end up taking forty-nine shots of him.

I’m a mother. Although I am taking photos I am aware of where Andrew is and what he’s doing. Someplace along the line Andrew gets tired of waiting for me.

“Andrew, where ya’ goin’?” I asked.

He keeps walking.

“Andrew, come back here,” I tell him.

And I hear a tiny little, “no,” and he shakes his head.

“Where ya’ goin’?” I asked again, but I didn’t have to, I knew where he was going. He was going home. And there is little doubt in my mind that if I would have let him, he would have gone, unerringly, home. Back the way we had come.

“Andrew, we’re going home,” I told him, “but let’s go this way.”

“No,” came a little peep.

“Andrew! It’s a circle!” I told him and made big sweeping motions with my arm. “We’re going home, we’re just going this way!”

There was little hope that I was going to change the mind of Independent Andrew once he had it made up and I was on the verge of going after him when we heard a car.

The sound barely registered with me, I knew where it was and I knew it wasn’t coming our way. It was going into the parking lot at the boat rental place. However, when I saw Andrew stop and listen, I knew I could use this to get him to do what I wanted him to do. When dealing with a determined youngster, a parent sometimes has to pull a tool from their bag of tricks and I wasn’t above using fear.

Andrew looked back at me. “There’s a car, you better come here!” And lickety-split, he came running like his tail was on fire.

Do you think I should I feel guilty?

<<<<<>>>>>

Something you may or may not know about me is that I have gall bladder issues. I haven’t had an attack worth mentioning since Mike and I were in Yuma, Arizona four or five or maybe even six years ago now. Who knows? I totally can not keep track of time. I know it has been a really long time though, and I know I wrote about it at the time cause I was in bed for a couple of days with that one.

Most of the time, for me, an attack is triggered because I eat too much butter, so I try to be careful, and now, trying to watch my weight, I’m not eating much butter at all these days. But something else that will send me into an attack is oil. Not nearly as often as butter but twenty-five years ago, when I first started having attacks, French fries would cause me agony.

I seldom throw up, and I hate to throw up and even if I want to throw up because I know it will make me feel better, I don’t have any success making myself throw up -- no matter how far I shove my finger down my throat. It just makes me retch -- you know, dry heaves.

Monday night Mike and I went to a local place for twenty-five cent wings. I am not much for wings so I ordered fish and chips. A couple of hours later my stomach starts to feel uncomfortable and I knew it was my gall bladder. I tried to head it off with Pepto-Bismol which most of the time works for me, but this time it didn’t. Long about one in the morning I got a really good look at the inside of my toilet.

There I am, retching my guts out, thinking, “Hmm, I need to clean under the rim.”

I did end up vomiting that night and I’m tempted to describe it to you here, but on second thought, you probably don’t need to know that it was a viscous brown mass with no chunks and more surprisingly to me, no pink stuff either. Oh, wait. I said I wasn’t going to tell you that. Forgive me please?

I really was surprised there wasn’t any Pepto in it because I think I downed about half a bottle through the course of the evening. Which, by the way (just in case you didn’t know) will turn your poopy black for the next couple of days.

I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking, “It’s just amazing the things that Peggy knows!”

That’s not what you were thinking?

Vomiting isn’t nearly as bad as retching. I don’t know why my body objects so hard to holding onto something that clearly wasn’t good for me in the first place. Am I alone in this or do others have a hard time vomiting?

Tuesday I pulled on my disposable gloves and gave my toilet a good scrubbing. I gave my sink a good once over too. I found an old toothbrush and cleaned around the handles. That works really well and is a trick I didn’t learn until a few years ago. And I actually cleaned the sink first. It would be gross the other way around, don’t you think?

<<<<<>>>>>

I talked with my oldest brother Ed this past week. That in itself is noteworthy because I hardly ever talk to any of my brothers, whereas I talk to my sisters all the time. But I was working on the next chapter of The Great RV Adventure and was feeling regretful that I had not taken any photos at Ed’s house. I was thinking about him, so I decided that I should call him.

“Justin made us the most beautiful dinning room table,” Ed told me. Justin is one of his sons. “He made it from floor joists from our old house.” Their old house, a house that had been in his wife’s family since it was built in the mid 1950’s, was close to an airport and bought by a developer. As a result, their old house had been torn down. “It’s wide and I love that. You can actually put bowls of food in the middle of the table and still have enough room for plates.” I made a picture in my head as he spoke, of a family of eleven sitting around a long table with Father at one end and Mother to his left and kids all the way up and down the sides. “Justin did a really good job on it,” Ed bragged.

“I’d love to see it. Can you send me a picture?” I asked.

Ed sent a photo to my phone, which is fine, except that in order to get it onto my computer I had to forward it to Kevin who sent it to my email.

Isn’t this table just gorgeous! Anyone would be proud to have this table in their home.

Good job Justin!

My nephew, the famous furniture maker.

<<<<<>>>>

I am pleased when anyone has anything at all to say about my writings, whether it be my stories or my letters. Last week, my chigger and poison story evoked a response from one of the redheaded beauties in my family.

Bambi, my niece, wrote, “I have been using peppermint essential oil to repel bugs (mostly spiders), but it may work with the chiggers too. And who doesn't love smelling like a candy cane?”

Thank you Bambi, I’ll pass this on and I’ll definitely try it. Where -- by the way -- does one purchase essential oils and are they expensive?

This photo was taken the last time I saw Bambi which was May of this year. Her handsome young son Russe (Russell) is in the photo with her.

<<<<<>>>>>

This past week had a day in it that would have been the thirty-fifth birthday of our daughter, sister, niece, cousin, fiancée, mother, and granddaughter, Kat. She was different things to different people.

I am still incredibly sad and some days are worse than others, but I definitely feel her absence the most on Sundays.

I was thinking about Kat a lot this past week, as you may well expect and before I go any further with this thought, I want to give a big shout-out to my cute little red haired sister. She was concerned about me getting through Kat’s birth day and reached out to me. Thank you Diane.

But did you know that in Kat’s generation, in my family, we lost Jessica at thirty-five years of age, Michael at thirty-three, and Kat at thirty-four? Three children, all in their mid thirties, all of the same generation and all of them parents of twins?

I know, I know. Our minds not only love patterns, they look for patterns.

I spoke with Kat’s fiancé Jesse this past week, on Facebook. He told me he doesn’t cry everyday anymore. Only about three or four times a week now.

Life goes on, as it must.

I was making a cup of coffee and that thought struck me, just like that, and it made me sad.

Jesse had a commemorative or ritual tattoo made with Kat’s cremation ashes, known as cremains so he could carry Kat with him. The design has Kat’s birth and death dates as well as their anniversary date and is based on one of Kat’s drawings.

You know, you can look back and say all kinds of corny things about a person when they are dead, but I’m going to tell you this, and I know this for sure. Kat and Jesse had a deep and abiding love for each other that most of us can only dream about.

Okay. Enough.

Enough sadness. Life does go on and here is a little life that is going to take the world by storm.

I am out of room for this week so we will have to be content with one more photo of Andrew. Here he’s holding Molly and my! Doesn’t it look like she’s having a good time!

Lots of love,

Peg and Mike

The Great RV Adventure -- Part 3

The plan to move Momma from Pennsylvania to Arizona had been in the works for months when the health of Patti’s handsome cowboy husband started to fail. “I don’t know what to do,” Patti told me during one of our phone conversations. “Lee needs to have some tests done and I’m supposed to be on this trip with Lori.” Patti is a planner and a problem solver. “I could get Lee’s daughter to check on him every day and take him to have the tests done, but honestly, I would be so stressed worrying about him.”

I already had my trip planned out. I would leave Missouri two weeks before Patti and Lori were scheduled to arrive in Pennsylvania and I would spend time with Momma. I would help her sort out her things, drink wine with my neighbors in the evenings, visit with our mill cats, and rest in the peace and solitude of our mountain home. And I might even have stayed a week or two beyond Momma’s departure.

That was my plan.

Patti continued, “Lori has offered to make the trip by herself and even though she’s a really good friend, I hate to ask that of her.”

I didn’t want to take Patti’s place on this trip so no one was more surprised than me when my mouth opened and out came the words, “I’ll go with Lori. I think you should stay with Lee. If something were to happen to him while you’re gone, you’d never forgive yourself.” I didn’t want her to have that regret.

And so it was. I flew to Arizona to make the trip with Lori.

Our trip east was filled with Lori getting used to driving the RV and me learning Lori’s language, both spoken and unspoken. I enjoy being useful so I would watch and see what Lori was doing and how I could help her.

Besides navigating, I did the more mundane duties required of traveling in an RV. I took care of hooking up electric and water and I dumped the gray and black tanks when necessary.

After we were parked and set up for the night Lori and I would pour ourselves a drink and decompress from the day's travels. We would sit outside and have a gabfest until the rain started and chased us back in.

Our second night on the road found us in an RV park with a flat tire.

I was impressed with Lori’s leadership skills. “Peg, would you go back up to the office and see if he can help us with our tire?”

No sooner had she asked then I was off! I went back to the office and talked with the man, but he couldn’t help. I reported back to Lori who then got on the phone. It wasn’t long at all until she had a mobile tire repair service pulling up to the RV.

“I bet it’s just the valve extension,” Glover told us after he checked out the flat. “Whenever I see them on a tire it’s the first thing I check.”

He took off the extension, pumped up the tire, checked for leaks and we were good to go!

“What happened?” you may be wondering.

Well, someplace along the line we lost a hubcap. With all of the rough roads we had traveled, I’m not surprised. In fact, the roads were so rough that the windows would unlock and work their way open and we’d have to listen to the rushing air until I’d get up and shut them again. That was a losing battle, let me tell you! And the cabinet doors wouldn’t stay latched either. They would come open and start banging around. I was afraid the cups and bowls that were in one of those cabinets would walk out and crash to the floor! They were plastic so I wasn’t afraid of broken glass, but who needs the racket of things falling and the hassle of cleaning up the mess? Not me! I found some twist ties and tied the cabinet doors shut.

With the hubcap gone the valve extension was flopping around and a close call with a curb was all it took to pinch it.

“How do you say your name?” I asked once business was taken care of. “Glo-ver or Glov-er?”

“When I was younger, I used to say it was lover with a gee. Now that I’m older I say it’s glove with er,” Glover told us and we laughed.

Now, before we get on into Dushore, Pennsylvania I want to show you a few more road pictures from this leg of our trip.

This is a shot of a new windmill with two old ones in the background and the sky full of angry looking storm clouds.

In the old days, the windmills were used mostly to bring water up for the livestock. Now there are huge expanses of landscape covered with the new-fangled kind and they are called wind farms.

Near Amarillo, Texas we drive past the Cadillac Ranch which is considered a public art installation and sculpture.

 I Google it and learned it was created in 1974 by Chip Lord, Hudson Marquez, and Doug Michaels, who were a part of the art group Ant Farm. It consists of what were either older running used or junk Cadillac automobiles, representing a number of evolutions of the car line from 1949 to 1963, half-buried nose-first in the ground, at an angle corresponding to that of the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt.

I didn’t know about that pyramid part before.

Less than an hour down the road, near Conway, Texas there is the Slug Bug Ranch, and other than its name, I couldn’t find out anything more about it. We didn’t stop at either place so these are road pictures.

We rolled into Dushore, Pennsylvania (where Momma lives) on Saturday afternoon. Our itinerary called for us to camp out at the mill while we spent the next few days packing Momma out of her apartment and Lori wanted to see what the drive was like. So the first thing we did, before even stopping at Momma’s, was to drive over to Mike’s and my mountain home.

Let me tell you something. Growing up in Pennsylvania and learning to drive you never think the roads are any different any place else in the world. You, or maybe it was just me, thought twisty, winding, uphill and downhill roads were normal. There isn’t a whole lot of flat, straight stretches in this part of the country unless you’re on a highway. Lori, being a resident of Arizona, was used to the more straight and flat variety of roads.

Eleven miles is how far the drive would be. Wind your way up the mountain, out of Dushore, wind your way down into New Albany with its narrow streets, old houses, cars parked on the roadside, turn right - don’t hit the phone pole on the corner! - cross a narrow bridge, wind your way up the next mountain, and as you start down there is a big dairy farm. I love their… their…hmm…I don’t know what it is!

Is it a work of art? It’s made with an old heating oil tank, a milk can for the head and some part of a milking machine for the utter, all painted up to look like a cow.

Maybe it’s a mailbox or maybe it’s just a package drop box. I do see a mailbox there beside it but that could belong to another family who pick up their mail there too.

So you go past the big dairy farm with the patchwork of black and white cows in the pasture (I have a photo of that someplace) and wind your way down and come into New Era, a little farm community, wind your way up another mountain, then wind your way down, down and more down to a stop sign at the bottom. “Don’t get your brakes hot on your way down to that stop sign,” Mike advised me. But I didn’t give Lori much advice on driving, she was doing a fabulous job all on her own. At the stop sign, it’s an easy turn cause it’s a left and nothing to hit with our tail swing. Climb part way up the next mountain and turn onto a dirt road, cross over a creek on a single-lane, open-grate bridge that has a crook on each end, “Don’t worry,” I tell Lori. “Mike did it in our big RV pulling a trailer, I know you can do it!” and she does. A quarter mile down the road, turn into the driveway and YAY! You are there.

Our mountain home.

It took us half an hour to make the eleven-mile drive back into Dushore that night.

“I don’t think I can make that trip twice a day,” Lori told me.

“We could dry-camp right across the road from where Momma is,” I told her. “Mike and I have stayed there before.”

That suited both of us just fine and it really worked out a lot better that way anyway. We were right there, close to Momma and stores and restaurants, such as exist there in Dushore, and it saved travel time, not to mention wear and tear on our nerves.

We spent the next few days packing twenty years worth of treasures, too tired at the end of the day to do little more than eat a bite and climb into bed.

I learned a few things though. I learned that Momma didn’t throw anything away if it had any value to it whatsoever and I learned you could pack an amazing amount of stuff in a small space given enough time.

I learned how to pack from Lori. She is like the Queen of Packing. The boxes were full and tight when she got done with them. “If stuff rattles around in there, it’ll get broken,” she told me.

Anytime I ever moved we just threw stuff in boxes and plastic garbage bags, tossed it in the back of our car and a pickup truck and moved it ourselves.

“When movers are involved, the tighter it is, the better it is,” Lori said.

And don’t even get me started on stretch wrap. That stuff is awesome! In fact, after I returned to Missouri and had to pack up Mike’s and my little studio apartment for our move, I used the Lori Method of packing. Everything in boxes, packed tight, boxing tape applied, three strips one way, and two strips the other way. I even learned how to make custom boxes! How cool is that!

Two and a half hard days of packing and we had only a very few things left to do Wednesday morning, our scheduled day of departure and the earliest day the movers would show up.

Thankfully Momma’s caregiver Marilyn would let the movers in -- whenever they showed up -- and we didn’t have to hang around and wait for them.

Apartment packed, keys turned in, move-out papers signed, Momma moved into the RV and settled in, we took off on our westward adventure.

Our first stop wasn’t that far away, only about 72 miles, but in an RV, on those twisty, windy roads it took us longer than it might have had we been in a car.

And then there is that bane of all travelers, road work.

We hit several areas that were being worked on. I think they were just patching. But we would sit and wait our turn then the pilot car would come back and our side would follow him through the work zone.

We arrived at Rosemary and Carmen’s in the early afternoon.

“Who are they?” you may be wondering.

Rosemary is the eldest daughter of my beloved Aunt Marie, my mother’s only sister and the firstborn of the Ralph and Mary Agnes Smith clan.

And Rosemary is her mother’s daughter. She is every bit as welcoming and gracious and delightful of a hostess as her mother had been. And just like her mother you could count on being fed when you visited her and I have to tell you, Rosemary is a fabulous cook! I have had everything from stuffed portabella caps to sandwiches. No matter what she is serving she somehow makes it special.

Rosemary does quilting and embroidery and I love, love, love this quilt. Its pattern is called Bella Verona and it’s so beautiful! This quilt took first place at the Harford Fair in -- where else? -- Harford, Pennsylvania.

“I wouldn’t have been able to make it without Carmen’s help,” Rosemary said. “He helped with the cutting and laying out of the pieces and I do all the sewing. With a quilt like this one, it was helpful to have an extra set of eyes and hands because there were so many little pieces.” The smallest pieces were an inch and a half square. I’d probably be sewing my fingers together if I had to sew pieces that small.

Being nosy, I asked, “How much did it cost to make?”

“With the cost of the classes and the material, about $1,000,” Rosemary told me. And we won’t even talk about the cost of one of those new-fangled machines! Holy cow! I thought my camera hobby was expensive!

And if the cost of the machine wasn’t bad enough, there’s software packages too. These machines are computers and when you take classes they want you to upgrade or buy a whole new package.

“I’m not upgrading every year,” Rosemary said. “It’s just too expensive especially when it’s just a hobby.”

“How long did it take to make that quilt?”

“Right around a year. It was a Block of the Month pattern and it took a month to complete a block.”

“How much would you sell it for?” I asked.

“Are you kidding! With all the blood, sweat and tears in this thing, it’s not for sale,” she said with a laugh. “But I’m so happy I had the opportunity to make it and so far it’s my favorite.”

At the fair, they auction quilts off and the bidding starts at $1,200, but Rosemary didn’t know what they ended up being sold for.

Rosemary and Carmen have been married for 52 years. “What does it take to stay married for 52 years?” I asked.

“We’ve always worked separate shifts,” they told me. At first, it was to make sure someone was always home with their son, Michael, then I guess it got to be a habit. It worked for them.

They still have things they do separately, Carmen golfs and Rosemary has lunch with the girls, but they do things together too. Carmen has an area in their craft room where he works on jigsaw puzzles while Rosemary is working on her sewing...

...and Carmen has done some really beautiful puzzles too! Once he has them put together he glues them and hangs them in his garage.

Did I take a picture of his garage?

No! Doggone it! I wished I would have.

Carmen was kind enough to make the 40-mile drive to pick up Momma’s cousin Bob and his wife Janine, so Momma could visit with them one last time, then, of course, he had to take them back home. Bless his heart.

“So who’s Bob?” I asked Momma.

“He is the son of my mother’s sister, Aunt Ester… Sullivan,” she added the last name after a pause.

Another of Momma’s cousins, who she expected to see this trip -- but didn’t -- was Beverly.

“And who’s Beverly?” I asked.

“She is the daughter of my father’s brother, Uncle Horace.” Now that I got Momma talking about genealogy, she supplied a few more details. “There was Betty, Billy, and Beverly.”

“All bee names.” Yeah. Don’t laugh. I really didn’t think that one through.

“No, no…” she started to correct me.

“Oh, of course not. Billy would have been William,” I realized my mistake as soon as I thought about it for a nanosecond.

“Yes. And Betty was Elizabeth,” she finished.

Now, that one I hadn’t expected.

After dinner, us girls sat down and played cards while Carmen worked on the computer. I showed them how to play Skip-Bo and Rosemary showed us how to play Quidditch.

“Quiddler Peg!” and I can hear Rosemary laughing.

Oh. Yeah. Quidditch was that Harry Potter game.

“Mom’s best friend Margaret Dickey introduced me to Quiddler,” Rosemary told us. “Then I taught Mom to play and we really enjoyed playing the game. We even played it after she had gone to the nursing home. Sometimes Mom’s roommate’s granddaughter, who was around thirteen at the time, played with us too. It’s just a fun game that can be played by all ages.”

I think part of what made the game fun was that even though the game is played for points, Rosemary’s group played a friendlier, more relaxed version of the game than the one outlined in the directions. They actually helped each other score points rather than compete against each other.

Oh my gosh! Quiddler was so much fun. “Where do I get a deck?”

“The only place I’ve ever found it is on Amazon,” Rosemary said.

That night Momma slept in the house rather than put her through the ordeal of going out to the RV for the night and then turning around and coming back into the house for breakfast the next morning.

Breakfast was eggs, sausage…

Carmen cooked the breakfast sausage links in an iron skillet on a woodstove! Isn’t that cool! I love it!

…and pancakes with real maple syrup. OMG! Real maple syrup is sooo good! They make that stuff right in that part of the country, you know, and you can go to where they make it and buy it. It’s not cheap but boy-oh-boy! Is it ever worth it! It doesn’t even compare to the stuff they sell on the supermarket shelves, that’s for sure.

Rosemary has something that I never expected to love, but did, and that was her Keurig. Most times these kinds of coffee’s are way too strong -- and expensive -- for me but Rosemary had a refill cartridge with tiny little filters and you could make it with your coffee and in any strength you wanted to. And talk about fast! In less time than it took me to heat a cup of water in the microwave for my instant coffee, I had a hot fresh cup out of the Keurig. Once they showed me how to use it you couldn’t keep me out of the coffee!

Now, before you all run out and buy me a Keurig and I end up with three of them, let me tell you that even though I really loved it, I don’t want one.

“Why?” you wonder.

I have enough stuff plus space is a consideration when you live in an RV, like Mike and I are doing now. I used to have an expensive coffee pot, a hundred dollar Bunn, but it walked off the counter and crashed to the floor one day four years ago as we were traveling down the road and it broke. That was the day I switched to instant coffee.

“Instant coffee! Yuck!” I hear you say.

Yeah, it does take some getting used to.

After breakfast, travel mugs of coffee made for the road, we started getting things around to leave.

“Take this pie with you,” Rosemary said packing food for our trip. “I made two,” she said and I watched as she made it ready for travel.

“Are you sure?” I didn’t want to seem too eager, you know what I mean?

“Absolutely. I made it for you guys and we don’t need it.”

Rosemary makes the best lemon meringue pie in the whole wide world and there was no way I was going to say no to that! Have I told you what a fabulous cook Rosemary is?

I’m running back and forth, between the RV and the house, packing Momma’s things (and the pie) and on one of my trips out to the RV Lori asks, “Peg, do you have the keys?”

I stop in my tracks. “No.”

“I can’t find them.”

We start looking everywhere! Under seat cushions, on the floor under the table, in the cup pockets, around the driver’s seat, in the bathroom and back bedroom, yesterday clothes and even going so far as to pull all of Lori’s bedding apart. She had the bunk over the cab and her clothes lived up there with her. The keys could have fallen from her pocket when she stowed her clothes.

“I checked once but I’ll check again,” she said and she climbed up and started pulling out pillows and blankets and shaking them before tossing them to the floor.

“Maybe I lost them when I unlocked the bay doors. I’ll check around outside.” I’m walking all around the RV, getting my feet wet in the early morning dew, and Rosemary comes out. I never got back into the house to collect Momma and she knew something was going on.

“We can’t find the keys,” I told her.

Rosemary suggested several places where they might be, all of which were searched at least three times by two different people but it didn’t stop me from looking again. I have found things before, using this method. How or why they turn up the third or fourth time I look, I’ll never know. I was just hoping that this would be one of those times -- but it wasn’t.

“Carmen,” Rosemary calls toward the house. Carmen, not wanting to leave Momma by herself, was lurking in the doorway. He heard her and came out. “Check around in the house for the keys, would you?” she asked and he turned and went back in the house, closing the door behind him. It was chilly there in the mountains of Pennsylvania in early May.

A few minutes later Rosemary heads to the house, Carmen, just coming out, met her in the garage. I’m standing in the middle of the RV getting ready to pull my bed apart again, Lori is sitting in the driver’s seat, rechecking all the nooks and crannies, Carmen is walking around in the grass and Rosemary comes back, opens the passenger door, leans in and says, “Carmen said to check your jacket pockets.”

I watched as Lori started to pat the little tiny pockets of her jean jacket, then she fishes in with two fingers and pulls out the keys.

“Lori!” I admonished. “Why wasn’t that the first place you checked?”

“Because I never put my keys in my jacket pocket,” she answered and by golly, that’s a good reason.

Them little gremlins, I’m tellin’ ya!

Kisses, hugs, thanks, and safe travel wishes were all shared and once settled into our seats with the seatbelts securely fastened, we were once again back on the road. This day would not be too long of a driving day as we were only going about a hundred and thirty miles.

I didn’t take a lot of photos in those miles. I don’t really know why, I only know that I didn’t. I got the cows going back out to pasture after being milked.

And an old roadside cemetery are the only two photos worth showing and even that is questionable.

We arrived at Aunt Brenda’s with no problems at all.

“Who is she?” you may be wondering.

Aunt Brenda -- Aunt B to me -- is my father’s baby sister.

When we got there we didn’t make it any further than her beautiful patio, or maybe you would call it an arbor. It’s completely covered in wisteria and kiwi. Such a beautiful and restful place.

Momma visited with Aunt B, catching up on all the family news since they last talked.

 Lori and I, not much involved in the conversation of people and places we didn’t know, let them visit and went to explore all the beautiful flowers planted around Aunt B’s house. She has so many flower beds I don’t know how she keeps up with them all! And we are not the only ones who appreciate the flowers either. There were bees and butterflies and birds all over the place!

This is a tiger swallowtail, but I bet you knew that. Don’t ask me what flower he’s sitting on, cause I don’t know that.

After coming back from seeing all the flowers, Lori and I found a seat a little ways away from Momma and Aunt B so we wouldn’t interrupt them and we talked quietly. However, this robin had no such compunctions. It didn’t bother her a bit to land on the rail close by us and really raise a ruckus interrupting our conversation!

After she flew off and came back two or three times, I pointed her out and said to Lori. “I bet she has a nest close by,” and I got up to see if I could find it.

Not only did I find her nest, I found her babies. I see two little beaks sticking up out of the nest but there could have been more. I didn’t want to be too intrusive so I kept a respectful distance, plus I didn’t need an angry mother bird dive bombing me.

Aunt B has a doggy water bowl that sits in the middle of the patio. Oh, wait. Maybe it’s called a fish pond but it has steps up to it so Aunt B’s little dogs, Yankee and Sissy, can drink out of it.

“They like that water,” Aunt B said.

The water sparkled in the dappled sunlight as it shot out of the frog’s mouth and I thought it was pretty. The light, filtered through a sea of leaves, cast a green tint on everything.

And then it was time for my favorite part of the day.

Lunch.

Yeah. Really any part of the day that involves food is my favorite part of the day. Oh, and bedtime. I really like sleeping too. I should have been a Yorkie! That’s all my girls do.

Aunt B set out a huge spread of lunch meats, cheeses, salads, and chips. Lori helped by carrying things to the table for Aunt B and making sure everyone had a drink.

I helped too. I took pictures so we could all remember this day. That’s important too, isn’t it?

Once everyone got their tummies full, we relocated back to the arbor patio and Aunt B’s son Richard cleaned up.

“He likes to do the cleaning up,” Aunt B said.

Then he brought us all a piece of chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting.

“He made it special for your visit,” Aunt B informed us.

I’m trying to watch my weight but after that, how could I say no! Besides, is there anything better than chocolate and peanut butter? Not in my world!

It was starting to get late in the afternoon when I reminded Momma that she had her meds to do plus we still had to find our campground and get set up for the night. I don’t want to do it in the dark.

“All right,” she said to my whispers in her ear. “Brenda, it’s getting late and we need to get going,” Momma told Aunt B and I immediately felt bad for not letting her spend more time, but there was no help for it.

“All right Dottie,” Aunt B said. I think she’s the only one I’ve ever heard call my mother by that particular nickname for Dorothy. “Let’s take a picture first.”

We enlisted the aid of Lori who was all too happy to take photos with Aunt B’s iPad and patient with me when I had her take pictures with both of my cameras. I love this shot of Aunt B holding her iPad showing one of the photos that Lori took.

 

Let's call this one done.

Wildflowers And Babies! Can Life Get Any Better!

August 23, 2015

Hi everyone,

I have had two desktops up this week and even though I have been posting my photos to my blog, I have deliberately kept these back.

First I had up this passion flower with a Peck’s skipper on it.

Aren’t passion flowers fabulous! I think they are and this passion flower is also called maypops. You can eat the fruit or make it into jelly and traditionally, the fresh or dried whole plant has been used as an herbal medicine to treat nervous anxiety and insomnia. And it’s great for landscaping to cover a fence or wall as it’s vines are fast growing.

Early in August I saw this flower. When I saw it it reminded me of a passion flower but it was much smaller and the wrong color.

“Peg, did you ever think there might be more than one kind of passion flower?” you ask.

No. Well, that’s not true. I knew there were other, more exotic forms of the flower, I just didn’t know we had another kind here in Missouri.

Don’t laugh. I can be kind of simple sometimes. It just never crossed my mind that it was a passionflower.

While looking up other wildflowers in the field guide on the Missouri Department of Conversation website I stumbled on a picture of a yellow passion flower and recognized it immediately.

I should have known.

I also found out, via Wikipedia, that it is considered an endangered species in Pennsylvania.

This picture is the only yellow passion flower I have ever seen. Even when I was taking the photo I didn’t see any other flowers. And I have been looking for it again every since then and I can’t find it.

Sigh.

The other photo I had up as my desktop (and is up there now) is this one. I don’t really know what to say about it except I like it.

And this…

… will turn into this as it matures and it is a yellow ironweed.

Now since we are talking about my photos and since not everyone can see the photos I post online, I want to talk about another one -- or two!

I have been photographing a plant for almost a month now and it isn’t changing very much.

Thursday I take the girls for a walk and I see our city has been hard at work mowing the roadsides. To think of all the beautiful wildflowers the mowers cut down makes me sad. Then I hear my mother in my head. “When critters are killed on the road,” she told me once when I was sad about a dead deer, “it means that other animals can eat.”

She is not only a beautiful woman, she is wise too.

So I hear my mother saying that and I’m thinking that maybe, just maybe the same thing can be applied to wild flowers too. When some are cut down, it allows others to thrive.

Funny how we comfort ourselves with these kinds of thoughts.

So…they mowed. I shrug it off and keep on walking.

I get to where these guys live and I’m glad they are still there, although I’m not sure they are ever going to be anything more than they were right now, I still think they are pretty, and I take their pictures again this day.

I start to move on and what do I see?

A little further up on the bank, where the sunlight is more full, I see a purple flower, one I had not seen before. Ginger, who is normally very eager to go off-roadin’, puts her brakes on and doesn’t want to go up the bank with me. I lock her leash, set it and Itsy and Itsy’s leash on the ground beside her, a little ways off the road, and command, “Stay here!” I climb the bank to investigate this flower and it doesn’t take me long to realize these are the more mature version on the other one.

“Did you find out what it is?” you ask.

Yes. This is called a rough blazing star.

Now, I have to tell you something else. Goin’ off roadin’, taking photos of wildflowers and bugs and whatever else catches my attention is not without a price. Namely chiggers.

“Can’t you use insect repellent?” you ask.

I could. I hate using poisons and besides, when you come back in you need to wash the stuff off your skin. That’s a pain too. So what I was doing was just brushing my legs off when I come out of the weeds.

I’m walking down the road, stepping into the grass and weeds to photograph wildflowers and bugs, coming back onto the road and bending over to brush my legs off, and everything becomes unseated. Itsy doesn’t like me bending over when I’m holding her and she grunts. My camera, around my neck, and my Doggy Poopy Bag, on my shoulder, swing forward and I have to make sure they don’t collide or hit one of the girls. First I brush off one leg then switch and do the other.

Does this sound like a job?

It is.

And what’s worse is when I only go a few steps and see something else I want to photograph, then I have to go through the whole routine all over again. After doing this for a few days I realized I was either brushing the chiggers into my sock, or not getting them off my socks to begin with. One way or the other, the result is the same. My ankles, under my socks, are full of itchy red welts that wake me up in the middle of the night.

I know. I’m not getting any sympathy from you, “You get what you deserve,” you say.

In an effort to reduce the number of chigger bites, I add pinching and rubbing at my socks to crush the little boogers.

And in an effort to reduce the night time itching, I take an antihistamine before I go to bed.

A few more days of this and still waking up with the itching -- one antihistamine doesn’t last the night through -- I decide that when I come in from my walks I’ll shed my socks and wash my legs, ankles, and feet. That seems to help too. I do this for a few days and all of this stuff put together really seems to be effective, albeit labor intensive. But after a few days, when I’m standing in the bathroom, running a washrag over my legs and feet, it hits me.

As long as I’m washing anyway I might just as well use insect repellent and not go through all that other bull stuff, right?

(Don’t laugh. I know I’m a slow thinker.)

And now the challenge I face is to remember to put it on before I take the girls out for their evening walk.

I feel sorry for Ginger though. People are not the only ones who suffer from chigger bites you know.

Living in the RV has presented a couple of problems with our pets. Itsy and Ginger can’t get up on the bed by themselves like they used to when we lived in the studio apartment. Even though we brought the steps with us, they are too short to be of any use at the bed; it’s too high, so we use them at the couch.

Mike and I don’t want the dogs to jump off the bed, and Itsy won’t, but Ginger will. Then after she gets her drink she has to sit there and cry until one of us gets up and puts her back up in the bed, sometimes Mike but usually me.

This was getting old.

Mike thought about it for a while and came up with this ramp. He used a one by eight and stapled stair tread carpet pieces on it. It lives between my side of the bed and the wall, one end resting on the lower tier of a two tierd cabinet and the other end against the slide. It can’t slip out from underneath them.

“Don’t ever forget to move it before you put the slide in,” Mike warned me.

Yeah. I’m sure something would get broken if I ever forgot.

I forgot to move the litter box once and remembered only after I heard something crack. I stopped to investigate and saw the litter box pinched between the slide and the end of the bed. I reversed the slide and discovered I had broken two of the fasteners that hold the top on to the box.

The ramp works great when they use it. Right now we have to ‘encourage’ them to use it. That means getting behind them and herding them up on it. Once on the ramp they run up and jump onto the bed. Like I said it works great although it seems to be a one way ramp. Ginger is still jumping off the bed. If I’m awake enough and I feel her heading for the edge of the bed I’ll yell, “WAIT!” She doesn’t always obey and jumps down anyway. She’ll usually wake me in the mornings but sometimes she won’t and she’ll jump out of bed before I’m awake enough to stop her. Itsy will just wait until someone gets her off the bed. The only way I’ve gotten them to go down the ramp is to put them right at the top and tell them, “Go on!” and they’ll go.

Ginger is still getting down in the middle of the night then sitting there and crying until I get up. I tried to ignore her thinking she’d give up and use the ramp but after twenty minutes I gave up, got up, got the little flashlight that hangs by the bedroom door, turned it on, lit the way to the ramp and ordered her (in a low voice so I didn’t wake Mike) to, “GO ON!” And she did.

What’s up with that?

I’m thinking she isn’t sure enough of the way to use it in the dark. Maybe with a little time -- and patience -- she’ll get the hang of it.

Keep your fingers crossed.

The other morning I got up and dressed and took the dogs out first thing like I usually do, came back in, make a cup of coffee, and settle in front of my computer to see what’s new on Facebook.

Itsy wolfs at me.

“What!” I exclaim, but that was just a stall tactic. She doesn’t usually wolf at me like that and I figure she just wants a morning treat. It’s not food, they are on free food. There is always dog food in the dish and if it’s not the kind she wants…oh well. She’ll eat it when she’s hungry enough.

After a few more wolfs, and me ignoring her, I hear her eating something. I turn around and see she is sitting by the dog food dish, her back to me, and is working pretty hard on something. She was hungry.

I turn back to my computer then I hear Itsy’s nails ticky-tacking on the floor. She didn’t go back to the food dish. Curious, I turn around and watch as she comes back over my way. Then I see it! I see, there on the floor, behind the drivers seat, is a poop, and she’s heading right for it. I jumped up, Itsy looked up at me and what do you think is hanging in her beard?

Yeah.

“Bad girl!” If I’ve told her once I’ve told her a dozen times. You don’t eat poop!

I get the poo picked out of Itsy’s beard and pick up the nugget off the floor, which evidently had been deposited there hours earlier as it was dry and I take Itsy to the sink and wash her face. I spank both dogs and take them outside and give them both a good talking to. I was mad. But I can’t help but wonder if it wasn’t a little bit my fault. The night before, we were back from our walk around seven thirty and I totally spaced out and didn’t take them out again before bed.

“If it was your fault Peg, why did you spank them?” you ask.

Well, I have discovered that even if it is my fault, or if it was something they really couldn’t help, like diarrhea or something, if I don’t scold them, they think it was okay and they do it again.

I don’t know who left it, Itsy, Ginger or the one of the cats. So now when I have to get up at night to help Ginger get to the ramp, I check the floors.

And that my dears, is purely a gratuitous poop story for my neighbor Steph.

You’re welcome.

That cat!

That darn cat!

Yeah. Baby Blue.

Living with pets is a lot like living with kids. You seldom get to go to the bathroom by yourself. Our biggest culprit in that department is Baby Blue.

The sink in the RV has a rounded front and the bottom of it is not closed off. It didn’t really seem to be a problem until Baby Blue discovered it. So there I was sitting on the pot, catching up on a little reading, if you catch my drift, and I look up in time to see the back half of Baby Blue disappearing up under the sink.

Oh, boy, I think to myself, I’ll have to get her out of there before I leave.

Next thing I know I hear her meowing and rustling around under the shower! Doggone it!

Done and up, I open the cabinet doors and discover there is only a three quarter wall that separates the plumbing from the cabinet.

Actually, I didn’t just discover it, I knew it was like that. You would be surprised at how much money a company can save by doing little things like that. What I actually did discover was that Baby Blue had gone down behind the wall, around the corner and she was in the plumbing chase under the shower. “Baby Blue!” I called. She almost always comes when you call her.

“Meow!” Rustle, rustle.

“Baby Blue! Come on!”

“Meow!” Rustle, rustle and I think she’s moving further under the shower.

“Baby Blue! Come here…come on!”


“Purrmeow.”
Yeah, you can see how this was going. She was happy to be exploring a place she had never been before. Well, nothing motivates like food. I got up and got a can of cat food, opened it, stuck it over the wall and it wasn’t long at all until she got a whiff of that and came peaking up over the divider. I set the food on the floor by the door and Baby Blue climbed out, ambled over to the can and had a bite. I put my cleaners back in the cabinet and shut the doors.

I told Mike about it. “What if she gets stuck in there?” he asked.

“If she can get in, she can get out,” I told him.

“What if she can get out of the RV that way?”

I didn’t have an answer for that one.
Mike has since closed off the underside of the sink by stuffing a towel in the space, but that hasn’t stopped Baby Blue from checking to make sure it’s still there. She used to check every time one of us went into the bathroom, but she only checks once in a while now.

I told you last time about Kevin and Kandyce hooking up my printer and computer to a router so I can print wirelessly. What I didn’t tell you is that by the time they were through with my computer, it was getting late. Although they

started on Mike’s computer, they didn’t get very far before enough was just enough. You know what I mean?

“Really, guys. It’s okay,” I told them. “Mike doesn’t print as much as I do and he can look at it or you can come back later and figure it out.” Mike has figured out things on the computer that I didn’t know so I knew if he wanted to, he could do it.

It took the two of us about half an hour to figure out that we had to install the software for wireless printing from our printer software and once we did that it worked, easy peas-y lemon squeeze-y.

And while I’m talking about Mike and computers let me add a little side note here. Microsoft is giving away a free upgrade to Windows 10 for a year -- I think it’s a year. Both Mike and I clicked on the notice on our computers to reserve our copy. Then this past week the upgrade became available for downloading. I Googled it and discovered people were really having a lot of problems with it and one person said, “If you are not having any issues with your computer, I wouldn’t download it.”

My computer works great since my older, much adored, sister Patti worked on it for me. I wasn’t having any problems and I didn’t want any.

“Mike, people are having problems with the Windows 10 upgrade and they say if you’re not having any problems with your computer to not download it. I’m not downloading it,” I told him.

What did Mike do?

He downloaded Windows 10 and it caused a conflict. Let me tell you what. Mike does all of his tenant billing and banking from his computer. The thought of losing it all just made him sick.

After more than an hour of trying to resolve it on our own I got on my computer and walked through the steps to un-install Windows 10.

Anyone else have any experience with windows 10?

“It was supposed to make my computer run better and faster!” Mike said when I asked him why he downloaded it.

Hey!

Guess what?

I know you can’t guess.

We have a new baby in our family!

Charlotte Rose Burns came into our world on August 16th at 4:01pm. She weighed 7lbs 11.6oz and 19 1/2in long.

Isn’t she a beautiful baby?

Wait, that really isn’t a question.

Isn’t she a beautiful baby!

Congratulations to my niece Taysha, her husband Caleb and big sister, E.J.

Let’s call this one done.

Lots and lots of love,

Peg and Mike

Photos from 8-20-15

Police helicopter; we had a man-hunt in our backyard yesterday.

They did catch him.

 

Whistle pigs!

There were three of them, but I only got two.

 

This one lived on the other side of the road.

He had a blade of grass in his mouth.

Saw lots of wildlife yesterday.

Meow!

 

 

This guy, and I don't know what it is, goes from this...

 

To this...

 

 

And ends up like this!

I know because they were all on the same plant!

 

Feather



 



I wondered if there was all there was to this plant...

 



then I see a more mature one!

It's a blazing star!

 



 

I think this is a mountain mint.

 

Soapwort (Bouncing Bet)

 

I think this is a heal-all

 

Brown-eyed Susan with two bugs!

 



Mountain mint again, with a bug this time

 



Handsome 

Birds-foot trefoil

 

A turbine from the dam 

 

Thistle

Bagnell Dam