As Promised

          As promised, here are your letter blog facts for 2019.

          Last year I wrote 54 letter blogs.

          That amounts to 824 pages printed or two three-inch ring binders. I only missed writing one week but made up for it by writing an extra letter three times. I included 3,078 of the 46,153 pictures that I took. That's not quite right because that doesn't include the ones I deleted, but it's close enough.

          I started writing in early 1998. Twenty-two years I've been writing to you! It gets to be a habit, don'cha know.

          We made a couple of shopping trips this week. First, we went to Dickson City. We've traveled this way so many times that I don't see many new or interesting things to photograph.

          "Maybe I can spot a hawk sitting in a tree," I mused aloud to Mike. "I'm surprised I haven't seen any." I've been looking for them since the leaves were off the trees.

          "Maybe they go south for the winter," he replied.

          "I hadn't thought of that."

          Do they? Do hawks migrate?

          "Google it," you say.

          Naw. Just wondering.

          There's a town before we get into Dickson City called South Abington and there were big machines knocking down a whole bunch of buildings.

          "What used to be there?" I asked Mike as I snapped away.

          "I don't know," he said and I don't remember either.

          Then we pass through a little hiccup in the road called Chinchilla and there's another track hoe sitting there in a now-empty lot.

          "I know what used to be there!" I declared. "That's the place that had all the plants."

          I know I've shown you the place before. I wondered if I could find the picture, just for shits and grins. I plugged in my external hard drive where I store all my pictures and navigated to the file labeled Letter Pictures. It opened and I was confronted with 233 files going the whole way back to the middle of April 2015.      

          Where do I start, I wondered. I decided to take it a year at a time and start with January then I wouldn't get confused about where I'd looked. After going the whole way through 2019 and not finding it, I started with January of 2018.

          My eyes start getting bleary. I could look right at it and miss it, I thought. Maybe I can find a picture of it online. I hopped over to the internet and Googled and Googled and changed the keywords and Googled sa'more. Then I found it. I saved the picture and went back to my files determined to look for just a little longer. 

 

         The very next file I opened — the very next one, I tell ya — and there it was. A picture I took in March of 2018. So it's been a while since I showed you this place. But this is what had been there and is now gone. 

          Old dies and new takes its place.

          Our neighbor died. Charlie Kile. He lived across the road from us. We may have had or differences in the past but Mike made peace with him this past summer. "I don't wanna be friends," he told Charlie, "but I don't wanna be enemies anymore either." They shook hands.

          Mike and I attended the graveside service and church service for Charlie and arrived early so I could take pictures for Sally.

          "What are the chances we can move that ugly tarp so I can get a pretty picture for Sally?" I asked the funeral home person.

          "Not a chance," Gabe said. "It's got the dirt in it from the hole and it's really heavy."

          I'd resigned myself to doing the best I could with what I had to work with when Gabe says, "I can move the table for you though."

          I took him up on his offer and got a nice picture for Sally.

          As we waited for the service to begin, I checked out a headstone near where we were standing.

          "Hey!" I said to Pastor. "Look at that last name!"

          "It's probably Norwegian and pronounced gud," Pastor tells me.

          Although Michael's been vigilant about keeping his toes dry, they're breaking out again. The tube of medicine the doctor prescribed is thirty dollars at our local pharmacy even with Mike's insurance. We've been seeing a lot of commercials on TV about Good RX so we got on the website and put the prescription name in and discovered we could get it ten dollars cheaper at Weis Market.

          "There's one in Tunkhannock," Mike says to me. "Wanna go?"

          On the way, we see the remains of an FFE trailer. "I bet that's the one that caught fire on the interstate the other day. It was probably his brakes," Mike, an old truck driver, says.

          I'm guessing this guy was loaded when he caught fire. They had a rubber-lined dumpster there to toss the ruined meat into. 

          "I wonder if it was one of Jody's." Not Jody Jody's, but her employer.

          "Probably," Mike says. "They use mostly FFE."

          I asked Jody. "I don't think so," she answered. "But we did have a cattle truck wreck in New York last week."

          A wreck with a bunch of cows not wearing seat belts can't be a good thing. "Aww. How many were killed?" I wanted to know.

          "Well eventually all of them since we are a slaughterhouse."

          She's so funny.

          Speaking of Jody...

          I have two friends... Well, maybe I have more than two friends but for the sake of this story let's just say two.

          I have two friends, Jody and Joanie. In response to my morning love note, Joanie tells me she's sick. I tell Mike, who can't hear very well.

          "It's all your fault, Peg. You either turn your head the other way when you're talking to me or your mouth is full," Mike castigated.

          Yeah. Whatever!

          "Joanie's sick," I said

          "Who?" Mike asks.

          "Joanie."

          "Jody?"

          "No! Jo-KNEE!"

          He could tell I was exasperated. 

          "Well I can't hear the difference between Ody and Onie!"

          "So from now on it's Ody and Onie is it?" I asked.

          I told Jody and Rosie at exercise class that night that we changed Jody's name.           "So he can hear that better?" Jody asked.

          We laughed. He really can't but it is more fun.

          "Then I wanna be Osie," Miss Rosie says.

          And we laughed again. I love these ladies.

          Something else I love is when you meet someone who likes to have a little fun with the customers. We stopped at the McDonald's the other day and this gal waited on.

          The sign in the parking lot and on the door says you can't loiter for longer than 45 minutes.

          "How come I can't come in here and loiter?" Mike asked Cathy.

          "How come you can't what?" she asked. "Give me a hard time?" she guessed.

          "No, loiter. How come I can't loiter here?" Mike repeated.

          She thought about it for a moment. "You can. Just not longer than 45 minutes."

          We laughed.

          "I'd kinda like to hear the answer to the other question," I told Cathy. "How come he can't come in here and give you a hard time?"

          "He can!" she said very amicably. "Anytime he wants to!"

          This week has been kinda quiet. I made a new recipe. Slow Cooker Pork Chops.

          "Mmm-mm," Mike says as he sat scrolling through FaceBook one day. "Don't those look good."

          "What are they?" I asked from my station at the sink where I was washing dishes.

          "Come and look at them."

          I did as he requested.

          "What's the recipe look like?" I asked.

          "How do I do that?"

          "Just click on it." Sometimes he doesn't know how to do the simplest stuff. But I must be patient. The recipe opened and we read the ingredients. "Pork chops, garlic, honey, rosemary, and thyme. Sure. We can make those. Print the recipe."

          "How do I do that?"

          "Move over. Let me drive," I said. It was just easier to do it myself than talk him through it.

          The house smelled good as they cooked. I love rosemary. And I followed the recipe exactly. Since you sprinkle the herb mixture on top, it laid on the top pork chops. I didn't mind and took one of those whereas Mike took one of the ones that had less seasoning on them. 

          "What do you think?" I asked as I chewed my dried out piece o' shoe leather.

          "I expected them to be moist and tender," Mike said. "They're not."

          No. They're not. We ate a piece anyway and my mind starts working on how to make the leftovers more palatable. "Maybe I can grind 'em up in my food processor and add a little mayo. We could eat it like a sandwich spread."

          Well, I haven't done that yet. If I wait long enough though I can save myself the trouble and just pitch 'em out for the critters.

          Most of my free time this week has been spent working on Miss Rosie's Christmas wreath. Since I'm just foiling pieces I decided to park my coffee cup under my work station, within easy reach. If I were cutting glass, I'd park it over on the other counter. Little pieces can fly all over when I'm breaking glass — and I don't need to be drinking shards.

          It'll be fine, I think as I set a fresh cup down. What can possibly happen to it?

          You could spill it, I answer myself.

          I'll be careful about that, and I put on my headphones and went to town foiling and burnishing.

           I'm working away and notice that I needed to trim a piece. I picked up my Exacto Knife and trimmed the foil. When I set it down, it rolled. 

          Sigh!

          What can happen indeed. I picked my knife out, dried it off, and drank my coffee anyway.

          "Eww, Peg! The germs!" you say.

          I know, right! I'm fearless.

          Let me tell another story on myself.

          I lost my pen. And not just any pen, my favorite pen. I love these Pentel R.S.V.P. pens with different colored barrels and I can't find them anymore. When I was emptying a box from the wayback I found a pack of them.

          Oh happy, happy, joy, joy!

          I got the blue one out for my desk and put the other four away. The other day I went looking for it and couldn't find it. I moved my 'puter, it wasn't under it. I sifted through my stack of papers — twice! It wasn't there either. I looked and looked and looked! Finally, I got the purple one from my stash. Two days later I'm sitting here and spot it. It was there the whole time! Hiding right in plain sight! And I couldn't see it!

          "Peg, you should clean your desk off," you say.

          I know, right! One of these days I'll do just that but for now, I know where most everything is.

   

                

          Let's do a PSA. What do you think? I assume y'all have heard but just in case you haven't, we are being advised to not shorten 2020 to 20. It would be easy for an unscrupulous person to change the date with the addition of two more numbers making it 2019 or 2021 or whatever other year they want. 

          Mike and I were playing our morning game of cards and since my seat faces the door, I could see we were getting a pretty sunrise. I left the table at least three times taking pictures. I think this one is my favorite.

          Let's call this one done!