Life on the farm

Tonight was the stew supper at our church so I had quite a few things left to do. I needed to get the 5 posters made for this afternoon, 2 pans of bars made, get to a bridal shower, and then be at our church around 2:00. What took me the longest thing to do was the posters. Wow! But towards the end of the 4th one I was rolling pretty good and had the method down. We got the basement decorated and was all ready for the people to come. We were planning for 300 and it sounds like we served around 200. But everyone who came had a good time with the band playing and people seemed to enjoy themselves. After we got everything cleaned up there were a bunch of us heading downtown for a couple of drinks. I don’t know about you, but once we got home and Daryl still had to do chores – we just called it a night. It was already 10:00 and once my jammies went on, well that was that!

We did get a quick note from Kyle saying that his travels went well and was in Korea so that’s great. I know that you’re not supposed to think bad things, but I just couldn’t get it out of my head about the plane that was lost that was supposed to land in China. I mean it could have been a plane heading to Korea just as easy. But Kyle had already a choir rehearsal lined up for his Sunday and he started to teach on Monday. I’m thinking he’s going to be pretty tired in the middle of the week when everything hits.

So today’s picture of the day is Little Kitty. I couldn’t find her this afternoon and I knew that he was in the house somewhere. I found him hanging out in Kyle’s room. Either Little Kitty will be going through some withdrawal’s this week or he’s going to love not having to share a bed with Kyle.

We got an early start this morning because Kyle’s flight was at 10:00 and we wanted to get there in plenty of time to check in. Usually the mornings are so busy at the airport and we’re guessing that it will be really busy at 10. Because he’s going to be on an airplane for so long and it’s probably going to be messing his internal clock up pretty good, he wants to always stay up the night before to try to get in sync with the different time zones. So when it came to this morning, at 4:00 here he was all ready to go and wide awake. Oh to be a kid again… After Daryl got done with the chores, off we went to Minneapolis. It’s only a 3 hour drive, and with the roads really good we didn’t have any issues. Which is always good right? When we got to the airport our suspicion was right about all the people there. Holy Smokes! We knew that you can weigh your bags before you get into line and we all figured that this was a good thing to do. Kyle did weigh them at home, but it was just a double check. And good thing he did because he even had a couple of pounds in each one to spare. (Which makes me thinking do I really weigh even MORE than our scale says at home??) So he unloaded some books from his backpack to get his checked luggage to 50 lbs. Next thing was to get in the long checked bag line. It wasn’t as bad as it looked and it moved pretty fast. Oh by the way -if you’re checking a second bag the cost went up. It’s now $100 for your second bag! Ouch right?!! But his two bags are what he’s planning on using for the next 12 months so honestly 100 pounds isn’t too bad. I’m not sure how much of it was books though and he even kept some at home for now. Soon it was time to say our Good Bye’s and it’s always such a yucky thing.

Kyle looks pretty tired before he boarded the plane today. Wishing him safe travels.

I’ve gotten better at this saying the Good Byes at airports and we even laughed when we left the airport today because we even recognized some of the TSA workers. I beggggeeed Daryl to do something totally irrational and we could just hop on a plane and go away for a couple of days. You know we were at the airport already. But no such luck and it didn’t take too long and we were back home again.

With it only in the early afternoon, I had a lot that I wanted to get done yet. I was able to get some pictures made for some posters for our stew supper tomorrow night and I got all my matted pictures done. Yup, all 8 of them. But the funny thing is that I never took a picture of my finished work which is kind of odd don’t you think?  I guess you’ll just have to believe me that they turned out pretty good. I’m also hoping that others who come to the supper will think the same. I also ran into the hardware store and picked up a bridal shower gift that I needed for tomorrow morning. That was kind of hard. I had no idea what to get, but finally I found an insulated pan carrier with a pan inside. She should like it and I think it would come in pretty handy. Next to pick up some groceries quick for a couple of pans of bars that I need, some easels from the funeral home (I plan on making some posters for our church) and the next stop was to see how our Chef was doing on the stew. Everything was cool there so I went home to unload my groceries and grab the 8 matted pictures and head back to church. I’m can just about imagine that our neighbors were wondering what in the world I was doing driving back and forth so many times. I spent some time at the church getting things ready for tomorrow and back home I went to get cleaned up for tonight’s fish fry.

Whew! And guess where we went tonight? We went to Elma, Iowa –  BACKWOODZ Steakhouse & Lanes. Yup, a bowling alley was on the agenda tonight for supper. I think that’s so funny! But the food was really good and while you ate, you could watch people bowl. We never did go bowling but we did do a road trip and spent part of the night playing pool and bags. Fun!!

And the picture of the day is the Mendota Bridge in Minnesota. Here are some facts on it: When it was built in 1924-1926  it was the longest continuous concrete arch bridge in the world, it has 13 arches, and it’s the final bridge over the Minnesota River before the Minnesota flows into the Mississippi River. What I know about it is that if you’re trying to find your way home from the airport or need to go the airport, all you have to do is to head to the bridge! 

You know that I’ve been talking about Kyle getting all his paperwork done and how frustrating it’s been. But today he was watching the mail to see if his passport and visa was returned. I laughed because it was about 5:10 when he checked and couldn’t believe that the internet said that it was delivered but where was it? He was just about to call when I said to make sure that he looked in the cellar entry way. Yup, there is was! He was excited and when he checked it out and everything was right. For me it was kind of bittersweet. I’ve been on the crazy mom side when we’ve tried to track his paperwork and when we couldn’t find where the one document that the Secretary of State signed (Hilary Clinton) – yea… I even was scaring William that time. So I guess I’m glad that everything is done. But with all the documents ready to go it just means it’s closer for Kyle to fly out. He’s planning on leaving on Friday and getting to Korea on Saturday. I guess it’s OK… but man oh man is our house going to be quiet when he leaves. I mean you just never know who he’s skyping with when you walk into just about any room in our house or what song he’s singing when he’s cooking in the kitchen. OK, I guess I’m really going to miss him.

And the picture of the day is one that I took when I went out for a walk tonight. There are two things that you watch when it’s spring. The first one is when the ditches ‘open’. What that means is that the culverts open up and the water has some place to go. The second one is when the tile lines are running. This gets rid of the extra water in the fields and it means that you’re getting closer to being in the field to plant. Well tonight we’re at the culvert stage and this is at our four corners west of our farm. 

Some of my girlfriends and I have been trying to get together for the past couple of months and finally we found a Saturday night that was going to work. So our plan was to get some pizza, junk food, and wine and watch movies and catch up with each other’s lives. And that’s just exactly what we did. We also talked about where everyone was working now, previous people that we had worked with, who’s on Facebook and who dropped off, and why do you think they dropped off of Facebook? and little kids eating boogers. OK, I didn’t say that it was a scholars night now did I? But we laughed and just had a good time. I forgot how much fun it was to hang out and watch movies with your girlfriends. We finally called it a night when we looked at the clock and it was around 3 am! We didn’t have anything that we were going to do special in the morning – well other than eat again (haha !!) But in a couple of hours I could smell coffee brewing in the kitchen and people rustling around. Now the night wasn’t earth shattering and we even had pizza and wine left over but I was trying to figure out why I thought it went so well. I think it was so much fun because we were planning on not going anywhere and just hanging out and time kind of slowed down for the night.

And what did I do for the rest of Sunday when I got home? Well, I worked on my computer. I never have said that I’m good at trouble shooting my computer and today was a day that I proved my point. It took me most of the afternoon, but I was able to get some things fixed that was giving me grief. The first thing was that my web browser kept freezing up on me. So first I saved my bookmarks, uninstalled the browser, installed it again and then cleaned up some of the bookmarks and downloads. I also cleaned up the files that I had on this laptop since the beginning of time. I ‘think’ I did it right and so far so good on accessing everything. I guess time will tell on that one! So I know that if I was better at this it wouldn’t have taken so much time. But next time – I’ll know what to do. Yikes! No I really don’t want a ‘next time’!! Now to check out why Kyle’s record player didn’t work. Now it’s not like the ones that we had growing up and simple. This machine edits your songs, cleans up the files, dumps them onto your computer or MP3 player. Yea, there lies the problem right? Anyway the boys had looked at it but I never checked it out. Do you know what was wrong with it? The stylus was broke. OK, so now where do I get one of those? Since I was up and running on the web again, I was able to find one on Amazon and ordered it today. Both boys like old record albums, but Kyle likes them probably a little bit more than William so it’s too bad that I think he’ll be back in Korea before he can actually use the machine!

I needed to get away from computer stuff for a little bit so I did a couple of loads of laundry. I wanted to wash some rugs and winter chore coats to store them away until next winter. If I had more ambition this afternoon I would have hung them out on the line because the sun was shining and there was a pretty good breeze. But they were OK drying on my clothes rack in the laundry room.

And the last thing on my To Do List was to work on my iTunes account. I was always using William’s account and I hated it! His password never worked and it was time for me to move on. So I was able to get my account all set up and downloaded some podcasts for next week. I want to start my running again and my excuse was that I didn’t have anything new to listen to. Yup, not an excuse anymore.

So now that the weekend is over and it’s not really that late (9:40 pm) I think I’m going to see what Daryl is watching on TV. He ran into town a little while ago and brought some cold Diet Coke home for me. I’ll need them for work tomorrow and I’m pretty sure I’ll have one before I go to bed tonight.

I have 2 Photo’s of the day today. The first one is a local Drive In that had a help wanted sign posted. But this business was looking for carhops for the summer. I laughed because I don’t think that this is a sign that you’d see very often.

And the second one is a picture of cemetery sign that was also on the way home this morning. You can’t read the sign too well, but it shows that the cemetery is at the end of the road. And you guessed it – it’s a Dead End road 🙂

My mom wanted a card for Kyle’s graduation so I had made one last night and dropped it off today at her house. I had also picked up some groceries for her because she’s still considered home bound and it sounds like there pretty serious about staying inside. At first I thought it would be a pretty good gig. I mean, staying inside.. taking naps… hanging out. But the more that I thought about it, I could probably only last a couple of days. It would be one of those things that when you’re not supposed to go anywhere – that’s when you just have to go! But she’s been doing pretty good with her restrictions and hopefully this week she’ll have good news at her checkup.
And just as I was leaving, she said that she needed some letters dropped off at the Post Office. Now she didn’t want them put in the mailbox, but she wanted them dropped off inside with the Postmaster. No big deal but it was 3:56 pm and the Post Office closes at 4:00. It’s a good thing that she lives close otherwise I’m not sure that I would have made it. But my car was facing the right direction and I got downtown just in time. I know the Postmaster and she probably wouldn’t have cared if I was even a little late.

Then home I went to see where we’re going for tonight’s fish fry. Just as I was turning on our gravel road I realized that the days this spring of our roads looking good were now over. Every year we have water that runs over the roads and washes the gravel out. It’s no big deal to drive over them but you will learn really fast what’s the right way and what’s the wrong way. The right was is to scope the situation out first. It’s kind of like a puzzle and you want to see just how bad the ruts in the road are and then where you should drive. The wrong way is it to just drive and hit these water hazards going fast. The front part of your car goes one way and the back of your car goes the other way and somewhere in between you feel like you’re car is on a bucking bronco in the circus. I’m thinking that it’s not too good for you or your car. Oh yea.. I almost forgot, not that I’ve done this before 🙂  I snapped a couple of pictures to show how the road looked today. I guess we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

East of our farm

Heading north of our farm

Today is Friday YEA!! We usually go out with my brother and sister in law for a fish fry, but they were busy tonight so it’s just Daryl and I. We decided to head over to Alta Vista for their fish fry and band. But once again we got to this fish fry late and all the cod was gone. We ordered a fish sandwich and shrimp off the menu. It was OK, but next week we’ll have to leave earlier to get in on the fish special.

So what is the picture of the day? It’s the local Post Office that my Mom goes to. It may be small, but as Martha Stewart would say, ‘It’s a good thing’