It’s raining and thundering right now. The Irish Setter is burrowing into me on the bed, shaking and panting. The shepherd mix is also on the bed, eyeing the other dog carefully. As soon as the setter moves, the shepherd jumps up to police the situation.
What did your parents tell you about lighting and thunder when you were a kid?
I had a tooth pulled on Tuesday – one of the big, two-rooted ones. Along with the gauze and pamphlet about after care, the oral surgeon wrote out a prescription for four Vicodin. I was a little skeptical but since I’m not known for my stoic-ness where my dental work is concerned, I decided to get the prescription filled, just in case.
As the pharmacist was going through all his required drug implications, I suggested that I was hoping not to use any of the four tablets. He was very serious and said I should probably take one right before bed so that I didn’t wake up at night in pain. “Stay ahead of the pain” were his exact words.
By bedtime at 9:30, all the Novocaine had worn off and with a few ibuprofen, I was actually doing OK. Remembering the pharmacist’s words, I thought maybe I should try the pain killer for overnight but couldn’t bring myself to take a whole one, so I took a half instead. I slept really well.
Unfortunately, when I got up I had an upset stomach and was pretty woozy. Clearly I should have slept several more hours as that’s how long it took the drug to work its way out of my system. I felt a little incapacitated at work and decided that all math and emails needed to be either re-figured or re-read to make sure I wasn’t spreading my idiocy throughout my world. Even after the wooziness subsided I still felt a little wiped out. All of this from one half of a tablet. The instructions on the side of the bottle say “1-2 as needed”. Sheesh, I’d be in a coma if I had taken 2!
When were you woozy last?
On July 1, my agency, along with all the other State-run Human Service Centers and the State Hospital are switching to a new electronic record system. It is totally different than our current system, which we have had for about 15 years. There is anxiety and uncertainty leading up to the start date, especially since many aspects of the system are still being developed. It will be a good change and will reduce some paperwork demands.
Change is hard, though, especially for people who pride themselves on doing things correctly the first time. We have to accept we will do things wrong for a while until we master the system. Some of my colleagues are panicking. Some are just resigned to the inevitable chaos. I just want it to start so we can get a new normal.
What changes are hard for you? What have been some big changes in your life?
Thanks to Mother Nature’s prolonged temper tantrum this spring and the bad brakes on Ben’s truck, I ended up getting my bales from Bachman’s this year. I should have made two trips, but I only ever say “I should have made two trips” after I’ve made just one trip and it hasn’t been the best idea. Case in point – four bales of straw in a teeny little Honda Insight. It took me 40 minutes and the vacuum to get the car clean afterwards.
As I was conditioning the bales, I was drawn to gardening books. I read Joel Karsten’s latest straw bale gardening book as well as The Potting Shed Papers by Charles Elliott and a fascinating book, written in 1870 by Charles Dudley Warner – My Summer in a Garden.
He could have been writing last week and he had a way of looking at gardening and nature that resonated for me. Here’s one bit I really liked:
“I am more and more impressed, as the summer goes on, with the inequality of man’s fight with Nature; especially in a civilized state. In savagery, it does not so much matter; for one does not take a square hold, and put out his strength, but rather accommodates himself to the situation, and takes what he can get, without raising any dust, or putting himself into everlasting opposition. But the minute he begins to clear spot larger than he needs to sleep in for a night, and to try to have his own way in the least, Nature is at once up, and vigilant, and contests him at every step with all her ingenuity and unwearied vigor.”
Who are you doing battle with these days?
I have been accused of producing fake news and alternative facts.
Last year our maintenance man, Kevin, who is by far the best naturalist I have ever known with a life-time acquaintance with wildlife and conservation, spotted an indigo bunting in the brush 20 yards from our patio. Indigos are very shy – tiny and they blend into leaves and shadows despite the blue. When I looked up indigos, I solved a mystery. A small dull gray bird was in my seed feeder all the time, but I could not identify it. It was the female. I only rarely saw the male last year, and Kevin never did again.
I waited to see if they would come back this year. Sandy saw him first, sitting on our patio table looking in at her, which is not indigo behavior at all. An alternative fact according to Kevin. The indigo has done it once more that she saw. I see him often in our feeder or more often on the ground, even when I am sitting on the patio. Kevin keeps looking. No luck, even though he takes breaks on a deck above and to the right of me. That apartment is between tenants. Fake news he says, when I boast about it.
By dumb luck I have proof. On my first try I got a shot of Daddy Bunting, gone a hunting for food. Not quality photography, taken through a closed window to avoid spooking him, but acceptable in a court of law. Monday morning we go on trial.
I declare this boast day. What do you want to crow about?
They say, the people of science, that an indigo is not really blue, but black. It is, they say, a trick of how the light reflects off the feathers. I get it a bit, but is not all color just a trick of how light reflects off something? Red looks red because all the colors but red are absorbed, I believe the people of science say. So how is the blue of the indigo . . . oh, never mind.
What is the mystery in your life today?
The Rainbow near my house has recently shut down. Last weekend I went to another store in the shopping center and saw all the grocery cart corrals lined up together. It was like they were all sitting in a big meeting room, listening to a motivational speaker!
What’s the weirdest party you’ve ever been to?
Today’s post comes to us from Steve.
It is always interesting, after the fact, to remember the decisions you made that caused some bad thing to happen. Looking back, you can see the errors. But at the time, you were doing things that made sense.
One of the staple foods I have in my kitchen cabinets is honey. I grew up eating peanut butter and honey sandwiches. In the poverty of my first year of graduate school, I sometimes had peanut butter and honey sandwiches three times a day. I couldn’t afford anything else.
But honey has a nasty habit of crystallizing. The honey gets dull and solid until it will no longer come out of a squeeze dispenser. That just happened to me. But I had an inspiration for melting the crystallized goo back into liquid honey. I popped my honey dispenser in the microwave and nuked it for just 20 seconds. The photo shows what happened. The dispenser will never be the same, and I had to mop up honey from all over the microwave.
That’s one dumb stunt I’ll never do again, for I learned that lesson the hard way.
In the summer of 1970 my erstwife (let’s call her Carol in this story) and I lived along the Saint Croix River. We discovered a wonderful fishing hole north of us, just upstream of Osceola, Wisconsin. Night after night we’d go upriver to our fishing spot at the foot of an island and—quite literally—catch fish until our arms got tired.
Then Carol got busy, and I began fishing alone. The canoe wasn’t stable without a person in the front end, so I found a large boulder that I called “Carol.” I put the rock in the front of the canoe to keep everything steady while I fished. The rock worked so well that I safely walked around the canoe standing up, which is not something the experts recommend.
One afternoon in September I enjoyed what I knew would be my last evening of fishing for that season. Grad school and work were about to start up, so I’d not fish there again until next year. I canoed back downstream to the Osceola bridge where my car was parked. I realized I no longer needed my boulder. With the canoe close to shore, I walked to the front of the canoe, grabbed “Carol” (the rock) and chucked her overboard.
In cartoons when Wile E. Coyote has just made a fatal error there is a terrifying pause. Time stops as he processes what he has done and what is going to happen to him. The cartoon is absolutely true to life. On the river I had my Wile E. Coyote moment. For several seconds I contemplated the fact that I was standing upright in an unstabilized canoe. Then the thing spun like a birling log under a lumberjack. I went sailing, my fishing rod flew even further, and soon we were both in the river. I survived. The fishing rod was never seen again.
And I never walked upright in a canoe again. Well, you don’t forget a lesson you learn the hard way.
What have you learned the hard way?
We are finally getting a new refrigerator. Turns out Excel Energy has a rebate for getting a new one, and will come and pick up our old one as long as it’s still operational. (We’ll see if it’s quieter than the one that I yell at.)
So in making our decision, I first went online to gauge how many cubic feet our Frigidaire is (18). The next day I noticed a refrigerator ad when I got on the internet. I don’t ordinarily pay ANY mind to what ads are there, but the fridge ones caught me, and I’ve started paying attention. Here are some examples of what shows up:
and ironically enough, a box that says:
And then of course there are the Suggested Posts on Facebook…
to name a few.
For some of them, I can imagine how they came to be part of my internet experience, but Lincoln Continental? Do any of you bloggers know the ins and outs of this?
What kind of ads show up on YOUR computer threads?
Today’s post comes to us from Crystal Bay.
At 74, I’ve been experiencing increasing physical weakness. A year ago, my three kids did a one-by-one intervention on me to get me to move and gain some physical strength for my upcoming trip to Africa. I still can’t believe that my first trip away from Minnesota was to Africa! It’d been years since I’d even walk to my mailbox. I’d pick it up when I drove past it a couple of times a week. They were very adamant that my excursion to Africa would deplete me because I was so physically weak. Finally, I took them seriously.
Photo credit: Associated Press
The news out of Poland last week included an item about a tanker truck that crashed and dumped its contents all over the highway. Its contents? Liquid chocolate.
Luckily it happened pretty early in the morning and no one was injured in the accident. But that wasn’t really the end of the story. The fire brigade sent to clean it up needed to bring in hot water because the chocolate was solidifying too fast to be able to scrap it up easily. And then the story went viral, hitting so many news feeds that people began to think it was a hoax. It’s even listed (and verified) on Snopes.com.
What unusual thing have you spilled?
Trail Baboon 