Years ago when YA moved from her loft bed into a double bed (and moved from her smaller bedroom to the next size up), I will admit that I bought her a cheap mattress. I didn’t have much money and between getting her a bed frame and a mattress, it pretty much did away with my disposable income for a few months. And I figured she was young, it probably wouldn’t deform her for life. It was a traditional mattress and we drove about 15 miles an hour all the way home from the outlet shop with it precariously tied to the top of our small car. Had to have a neighbor help me get it up the steps.
A few years later, I was able to get a new box spring and mattress for myself, using the award points that my company gives out (no cash – yea!). My old mattress had given up the ghost; I actually had duct tape in two or three spots where the springs had poked through. This new set was delivered and I managed to guilt the delivery guys into wrestling it up the stairs and wrestling the old set down the stairs.
YA has been complaining about her mattress for a while now and has purchased several different toppers that she says makes it more comfortable. Honestly part of my reluctance to get her a new mattress is the traditional “how do you get the mattress up the stairs” conundrum.
You can imagine I was a little blind-sided two weeks ago when she announced that she had purchased a new mattress for herself. My first thought was that we were going to do another perilous trip with a mattress on top of the car. Then I thought maybe I’d have to negotiate with two burly delivery guys again. But nope. She purchased one of the new mattresses that inflate when you take it out of the box. When the delivery guy brought it, he left the big box sitting on the front sidewalk at the bottom of the stairs – that should have been my clue that it was heavier than it looked. We managed to get it up the stairs by a combination of shoving and flipping.
After she got it out of the box, she laid it out in Nonny’s room – apparently it had to “rest” for several hours before you lay on it. She ended up letting it rest for a whole day and it did seem to get bigger every time I looked at it. And it was amazingly sturdy once it was done resting. I’m not really sure of the exact science that goes into these things, but I had assumed it would be more foamy and less sturdy. Wrong on all counts.
So one more traditional thing evolves… no more big burly delivery folks wrestling a mattress and box spring up the steps!
Had a good rainshower Monday afternoon. One of those downpours where traffic slows, and windshield wipers are on high. I could see it coming, I was several miles from home and the sky was dark and I was hitting Every. Red. Light. At one point there was some pea size hail, just a few stones, and I was considering my odds… can I make it home? Where should I park otherwise? But I thought I could make it. (Risk taker, remember?)
And then I could see the rain coming. Boy, just a few times in my life I’ve been in rain that heavy. Thankfully only lasted a mile or so. We ended up with .87”. Thankfully no hard winds with it in our area. I did hear reports of funnel clouds in other areas.
Rain like that in the fall is tough; the crops don’t really need it anymore, and the weather is cool enough it doesn’t dry as fast as it would mid-summer. The corn is tall enough the sun can’t hit the soil and it stays wet for a week. And it just makes harvest harder because now there’s mud to deal with. So, we’ll see how that goes.
I was out checking crops last evening and I noticed that fall smell in the air. The beans are coming along. I saw several farmers out harvesting soybeans in the area today. Soybean pods are fussy; they dry out in the late morning or afternoon, but they’ll pick up moisture after dark or with the dew. Plants along the edge of the field might still be soft and mushy, but the rest of the field is dry, and the pods crack open easy, which is what you need to harvest. The corn is still looking good, it’s roughly 30% moisture which means the ears haven’t tipped down yet. Too much rain and it gets down inside the husk and can cause mold issues on the kernels. Once the corn dries more and the ears tip down, rain won’t cause mold issues.
After the discussion last week on PTO shafts, I was thinking about how some other things have changed.
Hooking up wagons or implements is different these days. One of the greatest inventions is the extendable wagon hitch. LIFECHANGING! Back when tractors were smaller and didn’t have cabs, it was easy to just look over your shoulder and you were almost looking right down at the hitch (called a drawbar) so backing up to a wagon was easy and we got real good at getting lined up so the hitch pin would drop right in. And the tractor or wagon was small enough we could nudge it a little bit to make the connection.
With a cab, sightlines changed and sometimes it’s harder to see the hole in the drawbar, so it was harder to get lined up right. Some people have added mirrors to the rear window so when the window is open, it allows one to see the hitch. (I need to do that on one of my tractors).
But now, with extendable hitches, as long as we get close, we can extend the wagon hitch to connect it, then we back up and it locks back into place. It’s wonderful! Especially when hooking a wagon to another implement, so I’m guessing where that hitch is way back there; the extendable tongues are life savers!
I remember the first wagon Dad bought with an extendable hitch. It was a remarkable thing.
Hitch pins too – at first, they were just pieces of straight rod with a washer welded on the top. Or even a large bolt if you were desperate. But again, machinery got bigger.
I made a couple hitch pins in high school welding class; that’s where I learned about hardening and how to temper them so they didn’t wear out so fast.
I had no idea I had so many hitch pins until I got them all together for this photo.
Then seed dealers started giving away hitch pins with an ACTUAL HANDLE on the top! That was another wonderful revelation! Course, on a hill it was easy for that hitch back there to drag on the ground and push the hitch pin right out. I ran one wagon through a fence and down into the calf pen when the pin came out… didn’t break anything or lose any bales, just the wagon. (And had to fix the fence). Lost the pin on the grain drill one day and didn’t notice until I got home and didn’t have a drill behind me anymore. One time the anhydrous tank came unhooked from the applicator. Knew that right away and thank goodness I was on flat ground and thanks goodness for the safety disconnect valve that separated. But getting it all hooked back up again was a struggle.
If you wanted to be safe, you put a clip in the hole at the bottom of the pin. If there WAS a hole for a clip. IF it stayed when going through cornstalks. Again, tractors and implements have gotten bigger Now I use locking pins that might be 5/8” or even 7/8” diameter. And the big tractor has something called a ‘Hammerstrap’ hitch that’s about 1 1/2” diameter. And it will actually drop itself in! (if I back up straight and hit the hitch of the implement just right. It works pretty well and it makes me laugh when It does).
In this photo the PTO shaft is the round thing above the hitch. Bigger tractors might have a pin as big as your wrist. If you imagine the pull on these machines when they’re in the ground, you can imagine why they might need a pin this big.
Duck Report. The three older ones and the younger ones are just starting to hang out together. And nobody goes in the pen anymore; they just hang out down here by the pond.
I saw a duck get a little air the other day… just a few feet, but I’ll bet it’s coming soon.
What do you remember changing your life? What’s coming soon for you?
I spent an hour or so at Urgent Care yesterday (not a big deal – just wanted to be reassured that my self care was OK and to get a tetanus booster.
While waiting I noticed a woman go in and out of the UC door a few times; she was wearing a Darth Vader smock. Long gone are the days when everybody is required to wear white! When it turned out that she was the nurse who was going to rewrap my hand and give me my shot, I was elated. I told her how much I like her smock and she told me about her other Leia smock. We traded our favorite quotes from Star Wars. Since she is a Darth fan, hers is “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” I like that one but I do gravitate to Yoda “ Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
On the way home I was thinking about this encounter (which was really the highlight of my day) and how many times I use quotes from my favorite movies.
“On the side.” When Harry Met Sally
“Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.” Treasure of the Sierra Madre
“You know, assholes.” Blazing Saddles
“Candygram for Mongo.” Blazing Saddles (You’d be surprised how often you can make this work.)
“You overestimate both of us.” People Will Talk
“Snap out of it.” Moonstruck
“Be afraid. Be very afraid.” The Fly
“There will be blood tonight.” Princess Bride
“We are men of action. Lies do not become us.” Princess Bride (Note: I say this to myself. Not aloud.)
“You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.” Princess Bride (Again, never said outloud. And I say it to myself with Mandy Patinkin’s accent.)
“Now they’re practical.” Romancing the Stone
“Not exactly firing on all thrusters.” Star Trek IV
“Fun fun fun til her/your daddy takes the T-Bird away.” (yes, I know this a song not a movie, but, what the heck, it’s my blog post…..)
Any quotes from movies (or tv or book or songs) that you find yourself using in every life?
I decided many years ago that I was tired of wasting garden space on pickling cucumbers, and I was tired of making pickles. This year, Husband had some cucumber plants leftover from the Church veggie garden and planted one in our garden at home. All the resulting cucumbers went along to the food pantry with the rest of the Church produce.
That wily cucumber vine grew about ten, well concealed cukes under a bushy tomato plant, and Husband thought they were the perfect size for bread and butter pickles. He found a nice refrigerator pickle recipe, so at least I didn’t need to process them in the canner. We had all the necessary ingredients except for Pickle Crisp, calcium chloride granules that, well, keep pickles crisp. This turned into quite a search.
We searched in Cashwise, Family Fare, Walmart, Tractor Supply, Runnings, and Menards before we found some at Ace Hardware, the very last possibility.
Once Husband starts searching for something, he never gives up until he has exhausted all options. He was apologetic but determined, since he really wanted to make pickles. They now sit in jars in the downstairs fridge, pickling and crisping up, for two weeks before we can try them.
What lengths have you gone to find something you needed? What are your favorite pickles?
When YA was younger, it was easy. She wasn’t picky and she ate whatever I put before her. In fact, telling her that she liked something the last time I made it (even if I hadn’t ever made it before) would convince her to try it.
As she’s gotten older, she’s gotten much fussier. It seems like a combination of things: now she can whip up anything she wants at the moment and she has to “be in the mood” for certain foods. This means that things she would have eaten happily as a child, she now might or might not eat. Even something she says sounds good on Sunday might go uneaten on Monday or Tuesday.
Cooking is not a chore for me, but cleaning out the fridge is. And as I’ve wanted to cook more during pandemic and she has wanted to eat less of things I cook, I’m spending way too much time dumping stuff that hasn’t survived its imprisonment in Tupperware.
So I made the decision last week that I’m going to really focus on cooking for one and if I mess with a recipe and it turns out nicely, I’ll write it down. And if I make too much, I’m going to gift some of it to friends and neighbors right up front. I will probably still do the occasional dish that I can pretty much guarantee she will eat (raclette, chili, lasagna, baked potato soup) but for the most part I’m cutting her loose. I’ll doubt she’ll notice.
On Saturday I made some Tuscan Olive Bread – intent on giving one of the two loaves away. Unfortunately even as I was slavishly following the directions, I completely missed putting in salt. It’s not bad dipped in olive oil, but not good enough to give away. Then I found a fun Deep Fried Cauliflower recipe. No breading and very nice. I put half on my plate for lunch and while I was in the living room, YA gobbled up all the rest, right out of the Tupperware on the counter! Hopefully I’ll have better luck this week.
Do you eat food that’s past its expiration date if it still smells and looks fine?
Mornings are cool enough I wear a jacket going to the college but don’t need it when walking back to the car after work. Starting to get some color on the trees.
Soybeans are mostly pretty yellow and the leaves are starting to fall off them. Beans are drying and they will be ready in a couple weeks. But if there’s too many weeds in the field, they won’t be able to combine until the weeds freeze or die. Combines are not made to handle green material; that just plugs them up. The entire threshing process is based on dry material shelling out easily.
Remember that field of soybeans my neighbors planted on July 8th? It’s looking pretty good; they sure got lucky with the rains. They’re taller than mine and setting pods. They’re not done yet and they still need some time before a freeze, but they’re looking good so far.
The dairy guys are chopping corn silage. That’s one of the things I miss from milking; I enjoyed chopping corn. It smells good, it blows up the silos easy and doesn’t plug up the pipe, and cutting up that entire cornstalk just looks cool.
I baled some small square hay bales for our neighbors. A field next to our property but on the other side of a swamp and creek and power line and you can’t get there from here. But still cool to be on the ‘other side’ of the world from our place. Driving over there with the tractor, baler, and a wagon involved about 4 miles on a busy highway. Some people are terrible about dealing with farm machinery. They pass on corners, they tail gate for a 1 /4 mile then abruptly pass. It’s just ridiculous, not to mention dangerous to all of us. I can’t print the words I say about them. I always hope I’m bigger than them so that will protect me, but please, harvest season is coming, give farmers and the machinery some space and don’t pass when you shouldn’t. You can bet I’m wearing my seatbelt and I have all the tractor lights on, flashers on, SMV signs… it’s not that they don’t see me, but they figure they can pass me quick enough so it doesn’t matter if it’s a corner. Makes me mad writing about it.
PTO – Power Take Off shafts. It’s the thing that takes power from the tractor and puts it in whatever implement is being powered. For a lot of machinery, that shaft spins at 540 RPM, some things spin at 1000 RPM. In the old days it was just an exposed shaft and safety wasn’t even on the radar. These days, there’s always a cover or shield, but they can still break or wear out and they’re usually in the way at some point. It’s the end that hooks to the tractor that’s the tricky part. In trying to make them safer, manufacturers have tried different styles and ways to protect people from the spinning bits. Some styles are easier than others; buttons to push while sliding them together or collars to pull back while still pushing the implement shaft onto the tractor shaft. There’s one attachment that’s completely covered, but then you can’t see inside to grease it either. Many of those end up cut away enough to get a grease gun in there.
It’s a necessary safety item – a lot of people have been killed or injured from contact with unprotected spinning shafts, but it’s inconvenient. I was thinking about all this while hooking up the baler to the tractor last week and connecting the PTO shaft.
I know you’re all waiting for the weekly duck report. I took their fence down the other day. I started to roll it up, but I thought I shouldn’t change too much too quick, so I left part of it for reference for them. And one night, 4 brown ducks simply could not figure out how to get back into the pen they’ve been in for the last 2 months. Round and round the barn they went until finally they spent the night in with the chickens. And the next night they figured it out. It’s a mystery. I hate to call them dumb, but gee whiz.
The Mallard ducklings are starting to run and flap their wings. I assume they don’t know they can fly if no one is there to show them they can, and they’ll have to figure it out on their own. I assume instinct will tell them they need to head south. And other years there would be random ducks that would sort of stop in to visit. So, I think they’ll get it figured out I’m just very curious as to how and when.
At our townboard meeting last night the sheriff deputy gave us his report on township activities. Aside from the usual traffic stops, animal calls, or serving papers, a driver was arrested and charged with a DWI. He lived in the area where he was arrested, but prior to his arrest, it looked like it might become a pursuit. Then he turned down a dead-end road, cut into some back yards, and figured he could come back out on the road and get away. Except he came back on the road face to face with four other deputies. Oops.
it had been mentioned earlier that maybe a group effort would be fun and i responded with a yes but as groups sometimes do it got lost in the shuffle
i am not as good as i could be at putting x on my calendar when i’m doing something so without a reference i signed up to do my delivery ditty on saturday night. i get dibs early because those spots tend to disappear quickly and friday and saturday nights are prime time so i had committed for 5-7 & 7-9 on saturday which would mean leaving rock bend about 4.
i looked up when it started and who was playing and discovered that the family who does a nice foot stomping version of old timey and appalachian banjo kind of stuff started things off at 12 and city mouse which is mike pengra’s band was at 1 with special guest pat donahue and then pat was to play on the little stage where krista used to work at 3.
the first group was good city mouse was great and pat donahue was a treat as an addition and pats solo performance on the songwriters symposium on the little stage was fantastic
i really like him and his songwriting talent is something i really admire
i went in packed light. i had a thermos of tea and a tea cup that’s it. i walked in 15-20 minutes early and looked to see if vs or linda might be there and not seeing them plunked down in a similar front row position to what we usually achieved. this was easy with one butt and a thermos as the required space criteria. after i got steeled in i noticed i recognized that many of the surrounding faces were familiar from years gone by.unfortunately the way these memories were tweaked was by the fact that after i was seated a bunch of folks showed up and set their folding chairs up in front of the front with no regard for the views they were blocking out who had gotten their prime spot by showing up on time and choosing unobstructed site lines.
i have a problem with the people who are so self important that they just do it and never think about what a crappy thing that is to do to someone else. bad enough on the freeway to line butters who go up to the front and cut in line in front of all us minnesota nice wimps who let them in but at a concert to block someone view is unforgivable . this was followed by an observation that maybe had been going on previously but i hadn’t noticed because of being there with a group but all around me people were in conversation while the music was playing. if the music got loud they had to raise their voices to be heard over the music. this combined with folks who stood and chatted with someone who they knew in front of a group they blocked the view of.
i felt like an old curmudgeon who was spoiling my own fun but it really bothered me
at the final ditty where pat donahue was on stage with two other songwriters i had front row seats and had talkers laughing and exclaiming and paying no attention on either side of me. there was empty turf between me and the stage and so me and my thermos went and laid down in the grass and a couple little kids cam and the their moms and sat down closely with me ans i thoroughly enjoyed the show glad i letting the talkers back there as they continued to expound
sunday i have scheduled a football bar b que get together at my house carte blanche this year an hour before kick off so my mom at age 92 has somewhere to celebrate her football enthusiasm, she had to leave at halftime to go to another meeting called by someone who is not football sensitive. it was a good gathering and i thought about heading over to bbc afterwards but as sometimes happens these things drag on and it was 430by the time things wrapped up
too late for bbc
too late to go catch the end of rock bend
i’ll probably put an x on next year and tri it again now that i know it’s the weekend after labor day but i may be
setting myself up for misery
it was easier with friends and wine but isn’t everything
what kind of calendar are you using these days to keep yourself on track?
My company takes the current situation very seriously. We all got a nice chunk of award points (worth merchandise and travel) for sending copies of our vaccine cards to Human Resources. There was a HUGE drawing in July for all the folks who had sent them in; a gal in the call center won the grand prize: $10,000. In addition there have been several parties (outside on our lawn) that have been specifically for folks who’ve gotten their shot. This puts us at 88% on campus.
Every Monday morning there is an email with the “rules” for coming to the physical office and listing out the most common symptoms. Among the rules is “if you’re not vaccinated you must wear a mask when you are in one of the buildings.”
An associate got fired two weeks ago. Her team had come into the office on four occasions for a day and none of them has masked. This gal eventually told someone on the team that she had not had her Fauci Ouchie. Took just a day for that tidbit to get up to HR and she was let go that Friday. While I never root for anybody to lose their job, I’m glad my company is standing behind what they say.
What’s the most epic way you’ve seen someone quit or be fired?
Pre-pandemic I used to go to two craft shows a year in the Twin Cities – one on the State Fair grounds and one out at the Shakopee race track. Hard to believe but with 40 vendors or so each, there wasn’t much duplication. Except for Craft Fantastic. They sell the makings for jewelry and they always have an inexpensive “make `n take” at each show. You start by choosing a piece of artwork, then you glue a glass tile on top of it. After the glue dries, you trim off the excess and stick your tile onto a tray. Then if you want a necklace on which to hang your goodie, they’ll give you one and if you want more components for other jewelry, they certainly have those as well. I’m sure at some point I signed up for their emails but I don’t remember seeing them before pandemic.
I have at least 10 of these necklaces from over the years although I don’t wear them often. I like rings and I adore earrings, not as big a fan of necklaces and bracelets.
The emails started to seep into my consciousness a few months into pandemic. Every month or so, they offer a “weekend designer” kit. It is all the items you need to make a variety of things – usually in a theme. I’m having a hard time keeping away from these, especially the earring collections. They must be assuming that folks are making and selling these items because each kit makes WAY more than anyone needs. I have given away quite a few pairs of earrings, necklaces and bracelets but that still leaves me with at least 30 more pairs of earrings than I had at the beginning of pandemic (and believe me when I say, I already had way too many earrings at the beginning of pandemic). All dangly. Chinese New Year earrings, Fourth of July earrings, Valentine earrings, Winter/Christmas earrings, Halloween earrings and then a large assortment of floral patterns. Did I mention that they are all dangly?
I’m trying to cut back – most of the emails get deleted without being opened – but every now and then I spot a kit that is a little different than a kit I’ve had before. I’m hoping that now I’ve made earrings for all the major holidays, I won’t be tempted. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
What would you want buried with you so you could use it in the afterlife?
We are planning a Christmas holiday in Brookings, South Dakota this year. Son and Daughter in Law will host in their new home. We will drive from western North Dakota, and daughter will fly to Sioux Falls from Tacoma.
Daughter texted me in exasperation last week to inform me that she could fly much cheaper to Prague or Rome than she can to Sioux Falls. That is the sad state of airfare costs in the Dakotas. where flights cost an arm and a leg if you fly out of the secondary hubs of Sioux Falls, Bismarck, Fargo, or Rapid City.
Well, I would rather be in Prague, too, but family is in Brookings, and that is where we will be. We will help daughter with her airfare so she won’t be out so much money. This made me think of what Christmas in Rome or Prague would be like, and something for us to think about in the next couple of years.
Where was the farthest from home you ever spent the holidays ? Ever been to Prague or Rome? If you planned a trip over the holidays, where would you go? Got any good stories about Sioux Falls?
Trail Baboon 