This week has been a week full up!
We kept Andrew for a couple of hours last Sunday so his mom, dad and Chi-chi (Kandyce’s twin Krystin) could go shopping.
The first thing Andrew did after getting his coat off, was to get a few toys from his box and get up to the table. He had his favorite crane, miniature cars, ninja’s, and a helicopter. He played for a little while then he got down and got some trucks and his favorite animals.
Mike pulled the toy box over to where he sat and he started pulling out Andrew’s toys.
“What’s this Andrew?” Mike asked holding up a plastic animal.
Andrew looked up. “Horse,” he answered and reached for it.
“What’s a horse say?” Mike asked.
Andrew nickered like a horse and he does the best horse!
“What’s this?” Mike asked.
Andrew looked. “Cow,” and he reached for it.
“What’s a cow say?”
“Moo.”
As Andrew acquired each new piece he would roll it around in his fingers for a moment or two, checking it out, then play with it for minute or so, then Pop-pop would be asking, “Andrew, what’s this?”
Before reaching for a new piece, Andrew would find a spot for the old one on the table and on and on this game went until all the toys went from the toy box to the table top. And that my loves, is my current desktop photo!
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Mike painted the floor of the grouse to make it less like a garage and more like a house.
He chose a pretty light blue for the bathroom and the entryway.
“Can we paint the kitchen purple for Kat?” I asked.
“Anything you want,” he said.
So the kitchen, although not a purple purple, is a lavender which is in the purple family.
After it was done I was standing in the kitchen looking out over the long narrow living area of the grouse, with blue on one end and lavender on the other and I wondered what Mike was going to do in the between.
“I guess I’ll get another gallon of blue,” he said.
“Well, as long as you have to buy more paint, how about green?” I hesitantly suggested. It would be kind of crazy and although I like colors, they don’t always appeal to Mike.
“Whatever you want,” he again said, and I smiled.
The different colors of floor paint differentiate between entryway, living area and kitchen. And it’s not as much as you might think. We have two big area rugs that cover most of the paint anyway so they are more like accent colors than anything.
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Guess what?
“Umm, the national animal of Scotland is a unicorn?” you guess.
Really?
“As odd as it seems to have a fictitious creature as a national animal, the Scottish have a love for and long history of myths and legends so the unicorn has been a Scottish heraldic symbol since the twelfth century.”
No, that’s not it, but that was very interesting.
“Ants can live thirty years?”
Nope, that’s not it either but you guys are certainly good guessers and I bet we could play this game all day, so let me just tell you.
Have you seen or heard of eggshell calcium?
It came up on my Facebook feed and I spent some time researching it. I found out that you can consume your eggshells rather than throwing them away. The calcium content varies depending on the quality of eggs that you buy and a teaspoon of your homemade calcium contains between 800-1,000 mg of calcium and twenty-seven essential microelements.
I saved my shells from our hardboiled eggs, dried them in a two hundred degree oven for about ten minutes and ground them to a fine powder using my coffee grinder.
“Peg, why do you have a coffee grinder? I thought you used instant coffee!” you say.
Man-o-man! You guys don’t miss a thing! I do use instant coffee but I find a coffee grinder very handy to grind herbs and flowers for my natural teas.
Do you know what grinding eggshells smells like?
“Hmmm. Eggshells are calcium. Teeth are calcium. Does it smell anything like when the dentist drills your teeth?”
Yes! That’s it exactly! Needless to say, that was not a pleasant part of the process.
Every website I visited advised to keep your calcium in a glass jar, to take a small amount at a time, and to take it with food or it will upset your tummy, and to not take more than a teaspoon in a day.
Some of the websites recommend mixing it in water and drinking it before your meal, but I mixed it in my morning oatmeal. It all sank to the bottom and I got a mouthful with my last gulp of milk. The next day I stirred it into my homemade yogurt and that works well for me.
Now, if you are saving your raw eggshells to use, you’ll need to boil them for ten minutes to kill any bacteria. You do want to rinse out any egg white that is in the shell but don’t remove the membrane, it helps with the nutrient content.
And that my dears, is homemade eggshell calcium -- in a nutshell!
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I have come a long way in catching up on suncatcher gifts for the family.
I made cousin Stacey a butterfly in memory of our beloved cousin Jessica, lost in a car accident a year ago now.
I made hummingbirds in memory of Cindra, my beautiful sister-in-law, for her two daughters.
I made my cute little red haired niece Bambi an angel in celebration of Bram’s birth.
And for my beautiful sister Phyllis, whom I will never-ever be able to atone for being so mean to her while we were growing up, I made this two-piece hummingbird set AND I sent her the two simple owls.
I wonder how many pieces I have to send her before she tells me, “STOP! I’m out of places to hang them!”
I finished up the week with these cute teddy bears in tutu’s for our two new great-granddaughters.
Next week, Kathryn, our new tenant, is going to come and make another owl, only a different pattern this time.
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The weather here in mid-Missouri has been mild this past week. As a result I walked the dogs to the campground below the dam almost every day.
Speaking of the dam, this is a photo I took just last night at sunset. The water was still enough to make some nice reflections so I found a place to set my camera and took a couple of shots. It goes without saying that this is the lake side of the dam.
There isn’t much out there to photograph this time of year although I do still photograph winter flowers. Walking down Valley Road there is a ditch with runoff water still in it. On a whim I decided to see if there was anything living in there. I didn’t really expect anything so I was doubly surprised when I see some tiny shrimp-like critters scooting about.
These things are tiny and they are fast! They scooted from leaf to twig to grass before I could even get the camera focused! I wanted to make sure I got a good picture of them (I saw two) so I spent quite a while trying to scare them from their hiding place and get the camera up and focused before they found cover again. At one point I think I lose him under a leaf then I see the sand moving as if something was burrowing underneath it, kicking the sand out behind him. Then a bubble popped through. I took a twig and dug around a little but as far as I could tell it was just an air vent.
A little further on I see a branch wedged between two signs. He’s been there for a while and is continuing to grow around the signs.
I saw in the Missouri Conservationist magazine that this is the time of year for the bucks to be dropping their antlers.
I decided to take a side trip out to the old schoolhouse and see if I could spot any shed antlers.
“You can sell those for a lot of money,” Kevin told me.
I know that when I go to Petco they have a bin full of antlers and they do want big money for a little piece of it.
“What’s it good for?” you wonder.
Me too! I wondered the same thing myself. I guess dogs like to chew on them. Not my dogs. I found a piece of antler a few years ago. It had been gnawed on by… what? Squirrels? Mice? I don’t know. I brought it home and my dogs didn’t want anything to do with it so I ended up tossing it out into a field.
For me to find a shed antler, it’s pretty much going to have to be laying in the roadway because I didn’t go traipsing through the woods.
I got to the old schoolhouse and in my mind’s eye I could see Kat standing there on the top step, bundled up against the cold of that December day, her cheeks and the tip of her nose rosy.
(Sigh.)
I decided I’d walk in the field along the edge of the woods. Maybe I’d have a better chance of spotting an antler.
What is this thing? I wonder.
It’s a PVC pipe strapped to a tree and it has a cap on it. The ground around it is bare. I bet it’s some kind of feeder. Being braver than I felt I lifted the top and glanced quickly inside, in case it was yucky. Nope. Empty. I put the top back on. I think I was secretly hoping for a treasure.
On we go!
Up ahead a see a shape in a tree. Is that a hawk? I wonder and snap a picture. I move closer and snap another picture and I’m thinking that he’s going to take off any second and I’d get a hawk in flight photo. Then I got closer and closer and he wasn’t moving.
Yeah.
This is one of those times where nature has fooled me. It’s just leaves and webs maybe. Not a bird at all.
Ginger strains at her leash. I look and see it. It’s an armadillo.
I did not know that armadillo’s were so destructive. Well, I shouldn’t say that. All they are doing is looking for food; bugs and worms and stuff, but they end up rooting up the ground. If it’s in your yard, you might consider it destructive. Out in the wild…well, I guess it’s just a dillo doing what a dillo does.
This little dillo tried to hide between two rocks when Ginger barked at him. With no where to go he just stayed still.
I saw other holes too. Out there in the fields. Holes made by somebody with a metal detector. There weren’t as many holes but the divots were bigger and there were pieces of metal laying beside them.
Which is worse?
Just sayin’.
The day was breezy. The winds brought stinging tears to my eyes as I past the pond and entered the campground.
Maybe there will be eagles, I think. No matter how many pictures of them I take I’m still looking for that perfect one.
“Eagle feathers too, Peg? Are you still looking for one of those?” you ask.
No. I’ve had to rethink my position and have determined that I am not as special as I sometimes like to think I am.
“You need to get a turkey feather or something else,” Momma told me when I was talking about my desire to have an eagle feather.
Yeah. Redirect.
Anyway, the wind is stinging my face as I round the circle in the campground and I can see there are no eagles in any of the trees and I’m not thinking about anything other than heading for home when I see it!
I see a feather!
Blown against some rocks and far from any tree an eagle may have sat in. It’s an eagle feather!
And it was big! Probably six or seven inches long! The first feather I found was only about two inches and could be a duck feather, but not this one! Because of it’s size it just had to be an eagle feather!
I picked it up -- no picture. No time. That wind was really whipping and if I had taken the time to take a picture the wind may have carried the feather off.
I picked it up.
I gently laid it inside my Doggie Poopie Bag and with the biggest grin on my face that you ever saw-- I walked on. I hadn’t gone more than a few steps when a thought pops in my head.
What if the wind snatches the feather out of your bag?
Philosophically I answered, I guess it wasn’t meant to be mine.
Funny, how we can reply so magnanimously with that answer when we don’t think we are in danger of loosing anything.
Smugly I went on.
I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t worried one bit about the wind taking my new found treasure. One I hadn’t asked for but stumbled upon just the same. I wasn’t worried because my Doggie Poopie Bag is a slouchy bag and has enough weight in the bottom of it to keep the top closed.
No way was I going to lose it.
I was so confident that I never looked back.
The next day I went to get my feather from my bag.
Guess what?
“Not that game again, Peg,” you say.
No, not that game again. It was gone. No feather. Did I ever really have it? I don’t think so. I’ve thought about it quite a lot since then. My bag is heavy. My bag is slouchy. No way did the wind pluck it from my bag. I had to have lost it when I pulled my hand out of the bag directly after depositing the feather inside. I estimate that I probably owned it for less than five seconds.
“Maybe you could find it again?” you suggest.
I know, right! That’s what I hoped for too. I made the walk again that day, the day I discovered I didn’t have it, and for three days afterward, taking different paths, looking against the trees and shrubs and anything else that can stop a feather in the wind, but I didn’t find it.
The Strip here in Lake Ozark is changing. It’s not what it was and it will probably never be that again. The man who owns Two-Bit Town has sold all of the fiberglass statues. From our iconic Injun Joe down to the falcons that sat atop the Two-Bit Town sign.
By the time I heard about it and got up there, Injun Joe was gone. A company by the name of Iguana Watersports bought him and all the others and were in the process of loading them up.
As I came around a corner with the girls we came face to face with the bear that used to prowl around the top of the bumper boat ticket booth. The girls barked at him and I laughed at them. “Silly girls,” I told them. But I can understand their fear. He does look pretty ferocious.
Iguana has been buying up a lot of land in the area. They own almost every piece on the water side of the Strip. They did a press release and stated they would be bringing Injun Joe back to the Strip after he has a makeover so that was good news.
Walking is good for me.
Ginger loves to walk.
Itsy? Not so much. I carry her.
Since we were out and about we walked on down to the dam.
It seems like I see the dillo’s every time we go down there. I know there are at least three of them living down there. And I wonder, Will someone kill them too?
I know the man that used to own the campground (Iguana bought that too) would kill whistle pigs and beavers and I know where there are five empty dillo shells on my walking route, three of them in the one spot, two in another.
Armadillos either don’t hear well or just don’t pay as much attention to their surroundings or maybe even they are just not as timid as other critters but I found if I’m quiet -- and can keep the girls from barking -- that I can get within a few feet of them.
We came up on this guy and when he realized we were there he was startled. He reared up on his hind legs, took a mighty leap and hopped for a few feet, then at full steam he ran along the ground, heading for the tree line.
It amused me.
I know.
I’m silly too.
Someone else was there, at the dam, this day. They had their dogs with them. Big dogs. Two of them. One bigger than the other. I heard them bark. And as I watched from far away, I could see the dogs running around the car they had just gotten out of and they were not leashed. It was too far for Itsy and Ginger to see them, or them to see us. The owners called and whistled and they disappeared over the bank, gone down to the waters edge. People bring their dogs down here to let them run without a leash but I don’t often encounter them. I walked along the tree line, worrying about those dogs the whole time. I didn’t want to get too close to the dogs. I didn’t want them to hear the jingle of Ginger’s shot tags hanging on her harness. Dogs know that sound you know. They know the sound of tags on collars. I’m afraid of dogs now. I’m afraid if I try to keep Itsy and Ginger safe that I’ll get bitten again.
I went as far as I dared then turned around and headed back out of the campground. Ginger, with a nose for all things pooped out, puked up, or dead, strained on the end of her leash. I humored her and she led me to a feather pile.
Yeah.
I know what happened here, I just don’t know who the culprit was.
“You need a turkey feather,” my mother said when I expressed my interest in getting an eagle feather. How about a seagull feather?
“Seagulls!” Mike said. “We don’t have seagulls here!”
“Yes we do!” I emphatically exclaimed.
“No we don’t!”
I’ve Googled it since then, Mike is right. They are not seagulls. We have two kinds of gulls here at the dam. A ring-billed gull and a Bonaparte’s gull.
Most of the feathers were white but I picked up a couple there were black-tipped and put them in a plastic bag I carry for just such a purpose.
I expected to see bits of flesh or guts hanging around the area but there wasn’t, there was nothing left but feathers. Nature’s cleaners do a good job.
Another day.
A day or so later.
Another walk.
I find this.
Correction, Ginger found this.
“What is it!” you exclaim.
I believe this is an eagle pellet. Much the same as owls can’t digest the fur and bones of the small rodents they eat, eagles can’t either. And since I found this in the area of the eagle trees, I think it’s an eagle pellet. It looks like it’s encased in small white feathers…
Hmmm.
Do you suppose an eagle got tired of fish and had a gull for his dinner?
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I don’t often talk about the more mundane things in life, things like shopping for instance. But this past week I had an experience that I just have to tell you about.
Mike takes Centrum Silver. Half a tab in the morning, the other half at night with his evening pills.
The newspaper had a coupon for Centrum Silver valued at four dollars! Over the course of a couple of weeks I ended up with two coupons for Centrum Silver.
“Mike, we should buy two bottles. Four dollars is a significant savings,” I told him. “And you’ll use them sooner or later.”
We went to Wal Mart and we picked up two bottles of Centrum Silver, and to use the coupon it had to be sixty count or more. Wal Mart had bottles of sixty-five for six and a half dollars.
Good deal.
We start to walk away and I’m flipping through my coupons and I find another four dollar coupon! “Mike, do want another one?” I called to his retreating back.
“Naw,” he calls back over his shoulder.
We had been sharing the aisle with another couple also looking at vitamins. “Are you going to buy Centrum Silver?” I asked. “Here’s four dollars off.”
“No,” they smiled and waved me away. “Thanks anyway.”
I shrug and turn to go when a man, half bald and wearing a rain coat comes around the corner. He wasn’t pushing a cart. He wasn’t carrying anything. He was on a mission, you know what I mean. He breezed past me and I stopped to watch. He went right to the shelf of Centrum Silver and picked up a box. I smiled.
“Here’s four dollars off those if you want,” I said and held out the coupon to him.
“Thank you!” he said accepting the coupon.
It’s like it was meant to be.
And with that we will call this one done!
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