Feb 22nd - Early AM Foggy

Only got up to 69 yesterday. It is a foggy 53 degrees this morning. We had maybe a half inch of much needed rain a couple of days ago. It was a nice soaker rain. It would take another at least 3" of that kind of slow rain to get enough run off to fill our pond.

Nolan the climber getting a better view of what is happening. Nothing is happening, he just likes to climb up and look around.

 Gram showed him how to climb the ladder so that he can now use the slide without help.

She still has to help him with the glider. He is still learning that he can't just bail off whenever he wants.

Yesterday I "played" on the computer most of the day. I'm leading the Men's Fellowship group this AM. It took me a couple of hours to prepare for that. Also did some research for another Letter to the Editor.

Nolan will be here again today, 3rd day this week. His Grandmother Elaine has some work done on the veins in her legs so Kathy is picking up both their days for this week.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.

Feb 19th - Calm Day

The beautiful weather continues. High of 72 yesterday & 74 today. Lowest temperatures in current forecast is 31 degrees for next Fri & Sat nights.

Not a lot happening here. Our Pastor has the flu and one of the younger guys in the congregation gave the message today. He did a fine job. It was the first time since we have been attending that someone from the congregation gave the message when the Pastor was unavailable. Prior to this someone from outside was brought in to preach. There are several people in the congregation would could easily handle a Sunday morning message. This is a pleasant change in policy.

Nolan was here several days last week. He loves popsicles.
"I'm just checking out what we have in the freezer."

 "I have to dig clear to the back to check out everything."

 "Gram, look at what I found."

 "Gram, I need the top cut off so I can eat this."

He can't open the freezer door yet, but he is almost able to do it.

We went to Kelsey's for dinner this evening. We had a good time.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.

Feb 15th - After Dinner Photos

After dinner sitting around in the living room. Kathy threw a dog toy over the back of the couch thinking Copper would go get it. Copper ignored it but Nolan "fetched" it. This video shows him doing it about the 4th time. I can't get the video to upload and process. I emailed it to some of you who regularly view the blog. If anyone else wants a copy, and if your inbox can handle a large file, let me know & I will email you a copy.

Relaxing after dinner. Kelsey, Kathy, Nolan & Lydia with her nose in a screen.

Lydia & Andy. Lydia has something of a frown on her face because asked her to temporarily look at me.

She was quickly back on the screen.

Feb 15th - Not Much Happening

Not a lot going on here. The weather has been awesome for Feb. Lows the last few days have been near freezing. After tonight no lows are forecast below 41 in the 10 day forecast. I put enough wood in the boiler to provide heat through tonight and tomorrow, then it can go out. Temperatures are to warm to fool around with keeping the fire going. We will almost certainly have some more cold weather but I will refire it when that happens.

I finished splitting & stacking the wood I brought back with me. Kathy burned more leaves, in addition to watching Nolan a couple of days. I think he is coming here tomorrow. He is checking out my phone/camera in the photo below

Prior to coming over to my chair he had been pounding on the front door, wanting to go outside. He loves being outside. We got our coats on and I took him for a 20 minute stroller ride out through the woods, across the dam and around our small pond. (Kathy normally either gives him a stroller ride around the big driveway loop or walks him around the small loop, at least once a day when he is here.)

Last night was our Valentines dinner at church. Lots of folks are sick so attendance was down. I think we only had about 25  people. Kathy fixed everything. I helped carry stuff from our house to her van, and then into the church basement. A lady helped her with cleanup. Other than that she did everything, just like she wanted. There was no charge for the dinner, just a free will offering if people wanted to make a contribution. She made a little over $100 which will go to church missions.

This morning was our weekly Men's Fellowship breakfast. There were 6 of us regulars. Just as our breakfasts were being brought to us a guy ask if he could join us. He was in Centertown checking out a piece of ground he had rented, north of town. He joined right in with our discussions. I hope he comes back again. He was on my deaf ear side so I didn't hear everything he said. I'm don't know where he goes to church.

Sunday afternoon we went over to a small "hole in the wall" restaurant in Russellville, about 6 miles from us, for lunch. The place could use a good cleaning, but the food was good. We went back over today and had hamburgers for lunch. (They have great deep fried mushrooms.)

Kelsey & family are coming for supper tonight. We have lots of left overs from the Valentines day dinner.

After Men's Fellowship I drove over to California and got a haircut. While I was there I went to the feed store and bought 50# of corn for the deer feeder. Between the deer, the squirrels, and a few birds they emptied the feeder while I was in TN. I filled the feeder, then took a couple of bucket fulls of gravel up the driveway and filled potholes. After that I sharpened the chain on my chainsaw. I've got to get motivated and get several dead trees cut down and cut up before it gets hot, but not today 😊. Today I'm going to take nap right after I hit the send button on this.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.

Feb 10th - Global Warming Ain't Half Bad

Today's high temperature was 70 degrees, IN MID FEBRUARY! It was a very nice day. Tomorrow is supposed to be just as nice.

Andy brought Nolan over this AM, on his way to work, so that Kelsey could go to a hair appointment. He brought some Ott bacon and sausage for breakfast. He fried the bacon and sausage and I fried the eggs. The Ott family ends up with good bacon and sausage when they butcher. Kathy & Kelsey went to the Amish grocery stores when she came to pick Nolan up later in the morning.

I split some wood today. I was curious to learn how my shoulder would react to splitting wood. No real problem. I have some discomfort but nothing to fuss about. This is what I split. The stack is a little over 6' tall. The pieces are 24-28" long. The Hardy will accept larger pieces than these but the wood split well and I wanted to have a good stock of wood that is not to large for Kathy to handle when I'm not here. (Mary Lou would laugh at my stack of wood. She would have all the little holes chucked full of small pieces of wood.) I also cut did some minor pruning with my pole saw. I think I cut off 6 or 7 1-1.5" diameter branches.

I still have some larger chunks of wood that are to large to fit through the door of the Hardy. When I get them split they will make another pile at least as large as this one.

In the afternoon Kathy burned a bunch of leaves and burned off her small garden area.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.

Feb 9th PM

I had my last physical therapy appointment for my shoulder this AM. I was scheduled for several more but I'm to the point where I don't think they are going to change anything. My shoulder still hurts at times, but I don't think more therapy is going to reduce the discomfort, its just something I will live with. The therapists have given me an exercise routine that would take me at least a half hour to complete. It is only for strengthening my shoulder muscles. Strengthening the muscles may help prevent more damage in the future but I don't think it is going to reduce the level of discomfort I currently experience. I don't want to blow this out of proportion. It isn't a big deal. I was able to spend several hours digging a trench one day. Another day I was able to fill a wheelbarrow with rock, push it across my yard and dump it 15 times. These activities did bother my shoulder some, but only to the point that a single ibuprofen was all I needed. I could have gotten by without even that. I started the entire doctors visit, MRI, physical therapy process because I wanted to learn if there were things I shouldn't do, things that would likely cause further damage. What I learned was, "If it hurts when you do it, quit doing it." Makes sense to me.

After I returned home from therapy Lydia went out with me to help me work. The temperature was in the low 20 's. We took the tie downs and tarp off the trailer. I was folding up the tarp and looked over at the trailer. She had climbed up on the trailer and was throwing pieces of wood off onto the driveway. I told her to stop and explained that I wanted to back the trailer up closer to the wood shed so that we didn't have to carry the wood. The next time I looked over she had climbed down and was throwing the wood back onto the trailer. I backed the trailer up next to the woodshed and she handed me all the pieces she could lift. She found a couple of rectangular blocks of wood, in the trailer, that I use to block the wheels. She asked about them and I told her that I use them to block the wheels. Next time I looked over she had put them behind the tires, with no coaching from me. A few minutes later I looked again and she was down behind the truck trying to unhook the cable where I tie off the break away brake cable when I pull the travel trailer. I told her that didn't need to be unhooked. She then helped me put down the trailer jack and she unhooked one of the safety chains while I unhooked the other, not as easy as it sounds because the hook have safety clips. After driving the truck up to the shed I lifted her up into the bed and she handed me out all the tools she could lift. At that time we had been out long enough that I was feeling the cold. She would not have been ready to come back into the house but I told her I wanted a cup of coffee.

Kelsey & Nolan came over for lunch. Nolan is now walking.

God is good. May He bless you and yours.

Feb 9th Early Morning - Back in Missouri

I left the cabin about 7:10AM and drove back to Missouri yesterday, Wednesday. The trip was long, but relatively uneventful. Traffic was slowed down to 10-20 mph for maybe a mile along westbound I40 just west of Monterey, Tennessee. There is a relatively steep (800' vertical drop in just a few miles) downgrade west of Monterey, where you go down off the Cumberland plateau. There was a lot of equipment just beyond the end of the downgrade, along with a semi trailer that had burned above the rear tandem axles. My guess is that the brakes got hot and something caught on fire while coming down the grade.

I stopped at the Rural King in Paducah, Kentucky. It is right off an exit on I24, almost at the Kentucky-Illinois border. I had a $40 rebate coupon, from buying 4 - 6v "house" batteries for our motorhome back in 2015) burning a hole in my pocket. I bought a couple of ammo cans and 250 rounds of 9mm ammo. Spending my $40 rebate coupon ended up costing me $30.

About 50 miles east of St. Louis it started snowing. It was light snow for a few miles and then it got heavy enough that visibility was no more than 200'. Even the semi's slowed down to around 40 mph. The band of heavy snow was only about 5 miles wide. After maybe another 10 miles of light snow it quit. The air temperature had dropped to 31 degrees so the wet roads did make me a little more cautious.

I finally ended up arriving back home around 6:40PM. Lydia was over to welcome me back home. She stayed overnight.

God is good. May He bless you and  yours.