I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed this week.
“What’s goin’ on, Peg?” you ask.
We had a big snow as well as two big
adventures this week. Two ride-abouts. One was on roads I had been on before but
it’s been years. The other was on roads I’d never been on before. It’s hard to
watch both sides of the road and my head swivels back and forth so fast it
gives me a headache. But I took lots of pictures for you! So many pictures! And
that’s part of the overwhelming. I spent Friday wading through one thousand
five hundred thirty pictures. I picked out three hundred two pictures to show
you. Saturday, I spent all day weeding and editing. The file now contains two
hundred forty-seven pictures. That may still be too many and to be honest, you
may not want to see five sunrises from my kitchen patio. They’re all beautiful
so how do I decide which ones to include? Especially since they’re part of the
stories I plan on telling you this week. Sigh.
Let’s get after it, shall we?
Mean Margaret. That’s what I’ve decided to
call this week’s letter blog and I’m sure you’re wondering why. Rather than
make you wait till the end for the title story, as I sometimes do, I’m going to
start with it this time.
Mike and I play games. Lots of games. And
this is one of them. Not the Margaret part, but the meanness part.
“My back hurts,” Mike complains.
“That’s the meanness in you!” is my response.
“I have a headache,” I say.
“That’s the meanness in you!” Mike says.
“My ears are really ringing tonight!”
“That’s the meanness in you!”
That quip can be used for a myriad of
problems and complaints, and trust me, we use it a lot!
“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Mike says.
I guess I could have a little more sympathy,
and say I’m sorry, but that wouldn’t be half as much fun. “That’s the
meanness in you!” I say.
“No! It’s the meanness in you! It seeps off
you and creeps across the bed and keeps me up all night!” he turns it back on
me.
Shortly after that exchange, Mike got on the
computer and this comes up. A book called Mean Margaret.
“Peg!” he calls. “See! I told you it was
you!”
I Googled it. Margaret is a mean, cranky
human toddler from a family of nine. She is such a pain that her beleaguered
parents chuck her out, and she’s on her own, grousing and grumping until two
caring woodchucks, Phoebe and Fred, take Margaret in as their own.
Hmmm. That’s almost too close for comfort. My
christened name is Margaret, I am from a large family, and I used to be mean.
But my parents never chucked me out of the family!
>>>*<<<
Five sunrise pictures from my kitchen patio.
Why five?
Early in the week we woke to a foggy morning. There was an ethereal feel to the sunrise and I tried to capture it on ‘film’ for you. I don’t think I did that but I did want to show you what a difference cameras make. This picture is my Nikon...
And then the sun starting coming up! Again, Nikon...
Canon.
Now wouldn’t you of been sad had you not seen that‽
“Peg, you said five,” you say.
I did!
The fifth picture was on the morning of our
big snow so I’ll get to that one later.
>>>*<<<
Last week I wrote and finished my letter
blog early and that was because Mike planned a Sunday trip for us. We went to
Mansfield (a town about fifty-three miles from our little town) to look at a
tractor. I picked out more than sixty road pictures to show you but I’m not
going to show them to you. Not now anyway. I’m going to just pick out the ones
I want to talk about and the rest can go in the extra letter blog.
We found Chip’s place. He’d listed the
tractor for his elderly neighbor gal.
“It’s just right down the road on your left.
It hasn’t been started in a while so I’ll get my battery charger and be right
there,” he said.
Our first look at the tractor.
“I’ll be right there!” came a voice from across
the road. “I just have to call my neighbor first!”
“He’s on his way!” Mike called back. “We
stopped there first!”
Chip drove up before the lady’d made her way
across the road. “Jessie’s husband died from Parkinson’s and she wants to sell
the tractor,” Chip told us.
After not having been started in a while, Oliver didn’t want to start. Chip put his battery booster on it. He tried to start it while Jessie tapped on the starter with a hatchet. It didn’t start.
“I’ll get my charger,” Jessie said. “I
charged it right after the last time I used it so it should still be charged.”
She left and I was cold so I went back and
sat in the Jeep.
When she came back, Chip put the charger on but it still didn’t wanna start. Mike had the foresight to bring jumper cables with us. Chip pulled his truck up close and they did finally get it started.
Then he drove it around.
“I did,” and dug it from the bottom of my
purse, where it always seems to migrate.
After a bit of discussion, Mike again comes
back to the Jeep. “She won’t take a check.”
“I don’t blame her. She doesn’t know us and
I wouldn’t take a check from someone I didn’t know either.”
“She said there’s a bank in the Walmart that’s
open Sunday’s. She said to use her name and cash a check there.”
We drove on into Mansfield and found the
Walmart. As you may guess, we don’t have an account at that bank and they
wouldn’t cash a check.
“Thanks for nothing!” Mike spit at the
teller, Not physically, metaphorically.
“That wasn’t very nice,” I scolded as we walked away. “It’s not his fault.” I don’t think there’s a bank anywhere willing to cash a check from a non-member.
“What! He didn’t do anything and I thanked him for it!”
“It’s not what you said, it’s
the way you said it.”
Out the door we went, back to the Jeep,
where Mike called Jessie.
“Well, can you get a money order?”
Back into the store we went, to the service counter.
“Can I get a money order?” Mike asked. “On my credit card?”
“No. You can’t use a credit card. It has to
be cash or debit card.”
Mike was so dispirited that he walked away
without thinking. We get back out to the Jeep again and Mike says, “Wait a
minute. What did she say they’d take?”
“Cash or debit card.”
“We can use the debit card? That’s the
account I wanted to take it out of anyway.”
Our third trip back into the store and we
had to wait our turn at the service counter this time. The other two times we
were lucky enough not to have to wait.
When it was our turn, Mike belly-upped to
the counter. “Back again,” he greeted. “I can use my debit card to get a money
order?” he wanted to clarify.
“Yes, you can.”
“Okay. Can I get a money order for twenty-two
hundred?”
“We can only go up to a thousand, so we’ll
have to do three money orders.”
“How much are they?” Mike asked.
“Eighty-eight cents each.”
Mike gives her the go-ahead and she
inputs everything into the computer. When she was ready for payment our card
was declined.
“I don’t understand,” Mike said. “The
money’s in there.”
“It probably has a limit on how much
you can take out at one time,” she guessed.
Back out to the Jeep my discouraged
and downhearted husband and I go.
“They’ll be other tractors,” I console.
On
the way home we zip past this barn that had all kinds of sparklies on the side
of it.
“Wait, Mike, can we go back, please?”
I asked.
“What for?” he asked and slowed.
“There’s something all over the side
of that barn and I wanna see what it is?”
He wasn’t in a good mood and not very
happy that I wanted him to do a turn-around. “It wrecks my fuel mileage.”
I
used my Nikon and it didn’t have the big lens on it so this is what I got.
“Did you get your picture?” Mike asked
after three or four clicks.
“I won’t know for sure until I look at
it on my computer.”
Even looking at it on my computer, I
can’t tell what it is. “It kinda looks like some of them have wings,” I said as
Mike looked over my shoulder at the picture.
“I think they all have wings.”
“Did someone make a whole bunch of dragonflies
and put them up here?” I wondered.
But now, looking at it better, I’m wondering
if they’re darts.
The next time we get out that way, I’m gonna stop and check it out better.
This house. I have to tell you. Coming up the hill, fence and the top of the house is all you see. If they had neighbors, I’d have guessed they had bad neighbors.
“Everything
on this side of the fence is mine and I don’t even want you to look at it!” I
guessed.
People can be so possessive!
We were almost home when I realized my data on
my phone was turned off. I turned it on and a message immediately came in. “She’ll
take a check,” Chip wrote.
“We’re not going back now,” Mike said
and I relayed that back to Chip.
So, no Oliver tractor — but tons of
pictures so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.
>>>*<<<
Check
this out.
“What is that!” you wanna know.
That, my dears, is a story.
“How about some Eggs A La Goldenrod
this morning?” I asked Mike.
“That’d be alright.”
I opened the fridge, spied my
hard-boiled egg bowl, and, “Uh-oh. I don’t have any eggs boiled.” I grabbed a
carton from the bottom shelf. “It won’t take long and we can play a game of Skip-Bo
while they’re boiling.”
Mike shuffled while I put the eggs on
to boil. We played for a while and when the timer went off, I took the eggs
from the stove, dumped the hot water off, filled the pan with cold water, and
went back to the game. “They need to cool for a few minutes. We can probably
finish the game before I make breakfast.”
When the game was over, I got up and
started breakfast. I grabbed the English muffins from the drawer in the fridge
and plopped ‘em on the stove…
See where this is going?
Took a skillet from the rack and made
the sauce. When I judged the time about right, I went for an English muffin to
pop it in the toaster.
These are warm, I thought and picked
up the package. That’s when I discovered the plastic melted onto the stovetop. I
checked the knob to make sure I didn’t inadvertently turn on the wrong one and
I hadn’t. Could the heat from the other burner make this one hot enough to
melt the plastic? I wondered.
I
scratched my head, moved the muffins, and went for a hard-boiled egg in the pan
of cold water in the sink. Then I remembered! That was the burner I’d used to
make the eggs! OY!
I know. I can be such an idiot sometimes.
Once it cooled, I used my scraper and
the plastic came right off.
>>>*<<<
Look at this cutie patootie.
A kitten video came up on my Facebook newsfeed and I sometimes can’t resist. I clicked on it. Much to my surprise, Tiger watched the kittens.
Then he got up to play with them.
Tiger’s getting so big! And he won’t be a
year old until May.
Speaking of Tiger…
Last night he found a Starlight mint on my
desk. He smelled it. He touched it with his foot and the plastic made a very
alluring crinkling noise.
“I loves crinkly things!” Tiger says.
He picked it up and dropped it in front of me.
“You want me to toss it?” I asked.
“Yeahyeahyeah!” His very intent and very expectant look said.
I tossed the mint just as far down into the
utility room as I could throw it.
Tiger was off like a shot!
I really thought it would be a few minutes
until he found it in the dark room and brought it back to me.
I was wrong.
Tiger had me playing fetch with him for a
good half hour, forty-five minutes. Even then it was me that tuckered out
before him. The last time he brought it to me I hid it and he settled down to
nap.
Tiger’s a good cat but I hate when he gets a
bird from the feeders. He always eats them, toenails, feathers, beak, and all,
but I still don’t like it. With all the snow we’ve gotten and the birds no
place else to find food, I won’t let him out.
Speaking of cats…
Mr. Mister has come into the house a couple
times this week. I don’t know if he isn’t comfortable inside, or maybe he gets
too warm since he has a winter coat on, but he never stays long. That’s way
okay with me because I don’t trust him not to mark stuff as his own.
>>>*<<<
I made a couple of more Santa’s this week.
One of them isn’t shown here but it’s another red one so you’re not missing anything.
But what I want to show you is the beard. I told you I kept breaking the end of
curve off and threatened to use it anyway. Well, that’s just exactly what I did
here. He looks okay, don’cha think?
Speaking of things homemade…
That beautiful feisty red-headed neighbor of
mine was lucky enough to win a contest. The prize was a whole bunch of vouchers
that could be used at a bunch of participating retailers.
“I want to take you out for dinner,” Miss
Rosie said.
“As much as we appreciate that, we don’t
want to go out to eat right now with all this COVID,” we declined.
Miss Rosie wasn’t taking no for an answer. “All
right. How about if we order it and bring it back here to eat it?”
“That’d be great!” I gushed. “Then we could
play Rack-O!” A card game that’s no fun with just two people.
“Now pick a day,” she ordered.
“Tuesday!” Aren’t you proud of me? I
actually made a decision!
Monday Mike found another tractor on
Marketplace (I told ya so!) and wanted to go look at it on Tuesday.
“We can leave right after we have lunch with
the Kipps,” he said.
My heart fell. “Noooo! We’re going to play
cards!”
“Well, maybe not,” Mike said. “We can’t go Wednesday
because the big storm’s gonna hit.”
“Not until the afternoon,” I pointed
out.
“Maybe we could have lunch with the Kipps
on Wednesday.”
“Okay, but you’re calling Miss Rosie!”
Mike got his phone, found the Kipps number
in the phonebook, touched the button to dial, and put it on the speaker.
“Hello,” Miss Rosie answered.
“Rosie, I don’t even know how to say
this,” Mike said when he got down to the meat of the matter.
“You wanna cancel?” Rosie guessed.
“Yeah. Could we do it Wednesday
instead?” he asked.
“That would be alright. Then I can go
shopping on Tuesday and spend some of this money that I won and can sit home
during the storm,” she said.
She didn’t sound sad about postponing
it for a day at all!
Our tractor-looking trip took us to
Danville this time. That’s about eighty miles south of us. I’ve never been to
Danville before but the first part of the trip was familiar to me. And this
time Mike made sure he had money with us just in case he wanted it.
“Why didn’t he do that the last time?”
you ask.
I’m not sure but I think it’s because
he wasn’t planning on buying, he was just planning on looking.
Our GPS wouldn’t let us put the street
address in but it did let us put in something close. “Once we get there, we can
find the number,” I said.
Well,
that turned out not to be true. Continental Blvd was a highway that ran through
Danville.
“Let’s stop at a Minit Mart,” Mike
said. “I can put some gas in and could pee anyway.”
“Me too!” I agreed.
They only had a unisex restroom and I went
first. Inside they had a painted window that I thought was pretty cool — and I
didn’t have my camera!
“You could use your phone,” you say.
Yeah. I didn’t have that with me
either — but Mike had his and he took a picture for me.
“I love your window in there,” I told
the gal behind the counter and hitching my thumb towards the restroom. “Any idea
who did it?” I just wondered if it was an employee, a local artist, or just
something they bought.
“I don’t know. It’s been here every
since I’ve been here and that’s four years now,” the gal answered.
“Do you know the addresses around
here?” Mike asked.
“Yeah?”
“Where’s 1092 Continental?”
I could tell by the look in her eyes
that she didn’t have a clue. “What number are you?” I asked.
“201 but we’re addressed off the side
street.”
“Oh.” We thanked her, bought a brownie,
and left.
While we were stopped, we texted the
guy with the tractor but he didn’t get back with us.
“You’ve got good instincts from your truck
driving days,” I told Mike. “Use them now.”
“I think it’s this way,” Mike said and
picked a direction.
We drove a couple of miles then pulled
over and texted the guy again. This time I told him where we were and asked him
to call.
“You’re pretty close. Just go under 80
up the hill, and I’m the fourth house on the left as you come down. The barn
sits right on the road on the other side and that’s where the tractor is.”
He wasn’t kidding. The barn is right
on the road!
“No.
Not at all. Go ahead.”
I
left the guys to their boy talk and walked around.
Mike and Ken made a deal and Ken was going
to deliver it that afternoon. I was surprised. I thought it was about the same
size as the tractor he already had and therefore bigger than what he was
looking for. But whatever. Not my circus, not my monkeys.
I took lots of pictures on this trip too so you
have lots to look forward to.
Ken let us know when he left Danville so we
were watching for him.
“Did you have a good trip?” I asked.
“Not really. I couldn’t go very fast or the
trailer would fishtail.”
No wonder! The trailer was too narrow and he
couldn’t load the tractor properly.
“Who’ve you got with you?” I asked.
“My wife and four kids,” Ken said.
I went over and chatted with them while the
guys unloaded the tractor.
“Let me get a picture of you kissing your mom,”
I said to the one little girl and she happily complied.
The next day is the day we were expecting a nor’easter with record snowfall. The sunrise was blazing! It was one of those sailors be warned sunrises.
We showed
up at the Kipps’ house at the appointed time.
“Your flowers are beautiful!” I told Miss
Rosie.
“Lamar always gets me flowers for our
anniversary,” she said.
It wasn’t long until Lamar came back from
town with our lunch. A small pizza for Miss Rosie, subs for me and Mike, and a Stromboli
for himself. I know you were going to ask.
“Do you want your Christmas present now
since you already gave me mine?” Miss Rosie asked.
I don’t know if the confusion showed on my
face or not. I didn’t give her a Christmas present — unless she’s talking about
the Santa. It was a gift. It is Christmas time. But was it a Christmas gift? Quickly
I regrouped.
“I love presents!”
“Lamar, get your camera,” Rosie said as she
went for my gift.
Opening the gift bag, I pull out a bottle of Weavers Farm Dust Seasoning. I opened the inner seal and smelled. “Mmmm. This smells good.”
"We like it.”
“What do you use it on?”
“Scrambled eggs is my favorite thing. Jenn
likes it on mashed potatoes. I put it in soups and stuff like that.”
“I’m thinking it’d be good on my popcorn.”
Then I was reading the label. Use as you would salt and pepper, it says.
I spun the label around and saw where it was made. LaGrange, Indiana. “HEY!”
I exclaimed. “I used to live in LaGrange, Indiana!”
Miss Rosie also gave me a cute wall plaque
but the thing I like best?
This!
She painted a wine bottle, filled it with
starlight and it’s fabulous! I can’t tell you how much I love this or how
talented I think Miss Rosie is!
“Thank you, Miss Rosie. Thank you, thank
you, thank you! But I kinda feel like you got gypped. Now I have to make you
something else!”
“No, you don’t,” she said.
We’ll see. I’m kinda running out of time
here before Christmas and I don’t really need a special occasion to give her a gift
if I want to anyway.
We ate and settled in to play Rack-O for the
afternoon. It was so much fun! Lamar won the most games. Rosie won a couple and
so did I.
“What about Mike?” you ask.
He didn’t win a single round, poor guy. He
cried like a five-year-old little girl!
He didn’t really but never let the truth
stand in the way of a good story.
The snow started before we left.
“How much snow did you get?” my oldest, most
beautifulest, and much-adored sister asked.
“I don’t know,” I told her. “It’s dark
outside!”
“Oh. I forget it gets dark earlier there.”
Before we went to bed, I decided to use the
flash on my camera and just see if I could get a picture.
I did. My grapevine hanging on the tree stump kinda reminds me of the mountain in How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
The next morning, I was up and out taking pictures with my flash again. I stuck a tape measure in the ground and it came up to the twenty-two-inch mark.
“I think we got more than that,” Mike said.
I tried in a couple of more places and came
up with twenty-two or even less in some places. “I can only say what I saw.”
Can you see the light in the background? I
think there’s a car stuck down on the road. I wasn’t too worried. Everyone has cell
phones these days.
Mike was out and snow-blowing before the sun
was even up.
I went out to take a picture and he handed
me his phone. “You might just as well take this. I can’t hear it if it rings
anyway.”
I took his phone and saw he’d missed a text.
“It’s from Jon Robinson. He wants to know if you’re up.”
I typed yep and sent it back.
“Can you blow me out?” Jon asked.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Stuck on the road by your place!”
So that’s who’s lights I could see! Our neighbor
was stuck on the road!
Mike took the snowblower out on the road and
I followed along to document.
We’d only gotten as far as Sally’s house
(seen there on the left in the picture) when I hear something and turn around.
A plow!
It was the township’s plow truck!
I tapped Mike’s shoulder to get his
attention. He angled the blower towards the side of the road and as soon as the
plow was able to pass us, he did.
I followed behind and the plow truck had to
wait as Adam got his truck out of the way. He’s another neighbor, a volunteer
fireman, and he was trying to get Jon unstuck.
When the plow came back through, he did
take some of the snow from in front of Jon’s SUV but there was still a tall
stack of the fluffy white stuff there — and Jon was still stuck!
Adam, bless his heart. He tried so
hard to get Jon out.
He
tried pulling from the back.
He tried pulling from the front. He just couldn’t do it.
“I’ll get the Jeep and see if it that’ll work better,” Mike said.
Adam hooked the chains but Mike didn’t have
any better luck than Adam did. Later Mike admits that maybe he didn’t have the
four-wheel drive engaged. He had it in part-time four-wheel drive.
“I’ll have to go get the tractor,” Jon said.
We took Jon up to his house in the Jeep and
had a little trouble getting up his driveway.
“How’d you make it out?” I wanted to know.
Jon laughed. “I was pushing the snow plus I
was going downhill.”
While we waited for Jon to get his tractor
started, I took a picture of my house from their driveway.
Once the tractor started, Jon went to find a chain. Adam had gone so we couldn’t use his anymore.
Leaving the Robinsons driveway, the sun was starting to come up over their pond.
Mike and I followed Jon back to where his
car was stuck.
My toes were absolutely frozen! One pair of socks and rubber rain boots with no insulation.
“Can you put the floor heat on?” I asked Mike.
I pulled my feet from my boots and warmed them while we waited for Jon to clear
the snow from the front of his car.
Then they hooked the chain up
and Mike pulled him out.
“I’ll drive the tractor
back for you,” I told Jon.
“Just to the end of the
driveway,” he said. “I want to plow it out a little.”
The saga of The Stuck
Neighbor was over.
Mike worked for a while
longer on our driveway then, when he needed to rest his back, he took me on a
ride-about. We drove down the back roads and out through the game lands. I took
a bunch of photos for you but I’ll show them in the extra letter blog I have in
mind to do.
>>>*<<<
Look at these beauties,
would ya!
This is my niece Erin and
her newborn.
At 6:27 AM on December 19,
2020, Harlow Jane Picking made her debut.
Welcome to our world, baby
Harlow.
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