Storm?

Posted on February 2, 2016 by farm2011

They, and when I say ‘they’ I mean absolutely everyone who is in the weather forecasting field, has said that we will have this terrible blizzard today. So schools were called off yesterday already and everyone was expecting the worst. Now naturally when people at work were saying that it was snowing outside this morning, no big deal right? I mean we’ve gotten snow before and let’s not panic here folks. But then the wind picked up and you literally couldn’t see a block in town. A comment was made that this was just the beginning of the storm and the worst was yet to come. Well with getting a couple of inches of snow an hour and if it got worse I was going to be in a jam, so I left. And guess what? I left when it was the worst out and within about an hour or so it got much better and stayed somewhat clear out. Just so not cool! Have you ever had this happen to you? It sure makes me one crabby girl, that’s all I’m saying! It was still windy though, but with the rain that we got over the snow it kinda kept the snow in it’s place. So I did some stuff around the house, took a nap, worked in the scrap book room making cards, ordered a couple of summer dresses that were on sale, made a large batch of chili, organized my soap, and that’s about it.

Now the good news is that I’ll be able to get out tomorrow to work because the road grader guy went past so I’m happy about that. Oh yeah, I’ve also got a massage appointment tomorrow that I will be able to make. OK, the day is looking up a little bit.

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What I’ve learned

Posted on February 1, 2016 by farm2011

Today is my birthday and it was such a great day! Now normally I’m a scheduler and when I take a vacation day to be at home, the first thing that I do is to make a daily schedule so I can get everything done that needs to be done and in the most efficient way.

But today? I did take a vacation day and nope, there was no schedule. Now granted I might have had a list made in my head on what I wanted to get done, but I didn’t write it down with a timeline so that really doesn’t count.

So this is how my day went. I didn’t get out of bed until 8:00. I have to confess I was awake a lot earlier but it was one of those times when you are able to stay in bed and come hell or high water I was staying in bed! Then I picked up the house a little bit, did some dishes and laundry, did my first PayPal payment for my craft show in April (and it worked!),  and then headed to town for some errands. I spent some time in the tanning bed while I was in town and then dropped off some clothes at our local Treasure Chest. Next thing I wanted to do was to do a little shopping. Now I must not have been shopping for a very long time because some of the stores had completely remodeled since I was in them. Well I wanted to see what they had out for summer clothes and if you are also wondering what they had – the answer is not much! I did find some good buys on a couple of things and then started to head home. Because it was so foggy today, when it started to get a little colder out the fog started to stick to the trees and the tall grass in the ditches. It was really pretty and looked like a whole different world. So I was in this kinda fog thing (literally 🙂 ) when I was driving home and remembering what one of my friends told me today that I am now a Senior Citizen (!!!!) it made me think about what or if I have learned anything these past 55 years. Because it’s about an hour drive home from the mall, I came up with 5 things on my list.  So here are my lessons learned at 55 years old:

1. DON’T EVER EXPECT THINGS TO STAY THE SAME. Now I don’t want to sound like a training class that you might have been to, but the old cliche that the only thing that is constant is change is really true. We’ve had many things come up since we’ve been married from health issues to job changes and I’m betting that there will be a lot more that we’ll see before the next 55 years. So if you want things to always be the same you are so out of luck. Now I’m not saying that this is a bad thing and honestly it can be a good thing if you would want. They usually say that changes make you stronger. But for me? Changes make me much more appreciative of the people that I know and the things that I have.

2. DONT’ CHICKEN OUT. What I mean by that is there is a lot of things that can be scary and take courage to do. And if you chicken out on them, well you will never know what the outcome could have been. Now I’m not really a scaredy cat but one time when we were on vacation I decided that I was going to jump into a cenote. If you’ve never heard of a cenote before, they are usually a cavern inside that has water and an open ceiling with vines hanging down in the opening. So my adventure was to climb the staircase along the outside wall to get to the jumping platform. When I was on my way to the platform I was pretty excited and ready to do this. But when I go to the top and looked down at the people that were pretty small and pretty far away, I realized that maybe this wasn’t the best idea. I mean the water that I was jumping into was around 200 ft deep and so I thought just take a deep breath and jump. And so I did and it was AWESOME! Well it was awesome after I finally came to the surface, until then it was pretty black and scary. But then you floated on your back and when you looked up you saw a hole in the cave above you with the sun shining in and vines all hanging down from the ceiling. Now if I wouldn’t have jumped I would probably never had experienced this in my life and for me? Well I want to get the most out of every day that I can. We only get once chance to do what we want to and I for sure don’t want to be one of those people who say that they regret not doing somethings in life when they had the chance.

3. DO YOUR BEST. Now I know that I am not good at a lot of things and guess what? I’m OK with that. But if I at least try and give it my best than I think that it’s OK to fail once in awhile. Take my soap adventure for example. Will I make a go at it? No idea. But if it doesn’t seem like it’s something that I should keep doing next year or the year after that, well that’s OK. Who cares? I mean why not try it? Life’s too short to worry about what others are thinking that you should or shouldn’t be doing. I think try as many things as you can.

4. TREAT YOUR FAMILY WELL. Now when I say family I don’t necessarily think your kids or your siblings. When I say family I also mean your neighborhood family, your card club family, or your community family. These people are also your family and are just as important.

5. TAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF. This one is probably the hardest one to do and could be one that hardly anyone does well. My example is that today I took the day off as a vacation day from work and was thinking about what I would write for the post tonight. (yup on the way home from the mall – I told you it was a long drive!) At first I was going to write about what I did today and the title of the post was going to be called ‘Selfish’  Then I started to think about the whole senior citizen comment and decided to have this topic of taking time for yourself  not as a selfish comment but as one of my top 5 life lessons. I mean if we don’t take some time for ourselves,  how can we enjoy everything else?  So why is it so hard to take some time without thinking of it being selfish? I have no idea but I think it’s something that I’ll be working on the next 55 years.

So that’s my list. Well anyway for today. I’m sure it’s going to change as the years change but like I said, I had about an hour to think about it on the way home tonight and it was kinda interesting to see what actually made it to the top 5.

So Happy Birthday to me and here’s to many more adventures in the next 55 years!!

BSue

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What’s wrong Sam?

Posted on January 31, 2016 by farm2011

I was standing in the kitchen today when I could hear something kinda funny outside so I decided to take a look. And what I saw when I opened the door was Sam the peacock standing in the middle of the yard just screaming. Why? Who knows. But was he loud? you bet! DSCN8584

So of course I figured that he just wanted some attention so I checked out what we had in the house for treats. Now the choice of treats for the peacocks are sugar cookies but bread also works in a pinch. And today even though I had cookies, they were chocolate chip ones and I didn’t think that was so good for them. So they were happy to get sandwich bread. Once Sam found that there was some fresh bread to eat, the others came running. The only problem is now we are close to being out of bread. DSCN8589

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Saying ‘Yes’ to the dress and celebrating my Birthday!

Posted on January 30, 2016 by farm2011

What a fun day today was!

It started out with an invitation from our future daughter in law to come and see the dress she had picked out for their wedding. She went one day with her mom just to look and as fate would have it she found the absolute perfect dress. So today she wanted everyone to see what she had picked out and it was absolutely beautiful! I LOVE it! It was so fun to have also my Mom invited because the last time she thought that she was in a bridal shop looking at wedding dresses was with me 30+ years ago. I sure wish I would have been on the opposite side of the room and saw all our faces when Jude came out with her dress on though. I think we would have fit just perfect on the show ‘Say Yes to the dress’ because the whole room was smiles! 20160130_125348

Next on the agenda was to hang out with Mom after we came from the bridal shop to install her new satellite TV box. It was supposed to be an unplug the old one and plug in the new one. Yea, not so much! After about two hours I gave up! And come to find out that it might just be as simple that she might need a new dish outside. So on Monday we have someone coming in to see just what in the heck is the problem. Until then? Well I know that she has her cell phone all charged up for the night to pass some of the time.

Then it was time to get home and see what the guys had planned for the night. When I walked into our kitchen at our farm I saw that William had made a red velvet birthday cake! Yum!! So we decided to all head out for a fun restaurant 20160130_194150and then eat the cake later for dessert once we got home. DSCN8581

I had to laugh because they only put one 5 on the cake instead of two. Well we reuse all our candles from year to year and we must have improvised when Daryl turned 55 with only having one to use. But who cares because the cake was smelling awesome and I was ready for a piece with some gold vanilla ice cream on it.

What a fun day and my birthday isn’t even until next week 🙂

 

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Taking the plunge

Posted on January 29, 2016 by farm2011

I’ve been talking big about participating at a craft show and well it is one of my 2016 goals and everything. So guess what? I’m actually signed up for one the beginning of April. OMG! Seriously, I am just a little bit nervous about the whole thing and I have really no clue what to expect once I’m there or what to do. It looks like it’s only one day so that won’t be so bad. But now I have to figure out what I want the display table to look like and then I will need to get some business cards and maybe some posters and then some soap descriptions. Holy Cow I have a lot to do, breath.. breath…  I’ve been working these past couple of weeks on doubling my soap supply and have been somewhat successful. I’m not sure just how much soap I will actually need but I’m hoping that I can sell at least 10 that day so I would have enough sales to cover my entry cost. Daryl asked if I wanted him to go along with me for the show and I said that I wasn’t just sure yet. I don’t know if he would want to sit there for the day if no one stopped at my booth and then I would have to spend the whole afternoon convincing him that I really was OK with how it turned out. So I’m going to put my positive face on and remember the saying –  Nothing gained nothing ventured! You just never know right?

My Stash!

My Stash!

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Do you remember January 28, 1986?

Posted on January 28, 2016 by farm2011

Do you remember where you were when you heard that the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded? I can remember that day like it was yesterday. I seriously don’t remember a lot of things, but this day I remember.

The day went like this : because we are talking 30 years ago the opportunities for having a fast food restaurant is pretty slim in our area. So when a Hardee’s opened up in the town where I was working, we would take turns heading that way to grab a sandwich and to bring back about 5 more for the others. Well it was our turn to make the food run and when we came back everyone was really quiet. Now when I mean everyone, I mean that I was working in a factory and it seemed like they were more stunned than anything. With a couple of quick questions to try to find out what was going on, they said that the Space Shuttle Challenger just blew up. This in my mind was catastrophic. Everyone was following this flight more so than the rest because of having the first teacher going with them into space. With it being the 30th anniversary today there has been a lot of coverage of it and I saw that back in 1986 within an hour of the explosion that 85% of the people had heard of the tragedy. Back in 1986 you have to remember there were no cell phones to send a text or stream the launch and for sure no one was sending snapchats of it either. So when you think about that 85% that’s kind of a lot don’t you think?

So here is a picture that was on the internet of the explosion of the Space Shuttle that day to remind us all on how terrible this accident really was and all because of a O ring.

images

 

 

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Iowa in January

Posted on January 26, 2016 by farm2011

What is Iowa like in January? Well unless you absolutely LOVE to take about a billion phone calls about who you would vote for in the Caucuses, there’s not much else going on. So what do we talk about? Well we talk about the weather of course. So this post is about the weather and how I’m so looking forward to spring. My first picture to describe the weather is one that I took the other day when I got to work. Now mind you that this is the air temperature not the wind chill temperature. That’s why the top picture under the time is also so important. It’s your butt warmer and plays a very important job when it’s this cold out 🙂20160118_064052When it’s that cold and your nose sticks together when your’e outside trying to breath – well it’s just too darn cold for anyone! It’s also not a very good look for any girl.

My next picture also gives an idea on what January looks like in Iowa. You look across the fields and see what almost looks like an ocean of snow. Our farm is the one in the middle of the picture with the trees around it. 20160126_155223Because we’ve gotten a couple of inches of new snow these past few days I kinda was expecting some snowmobilers in the area taking advantage of it but we haven’t heard too many yet.

And my last picture is one that is pretty common in January on our farm. It’s that of Daryl pushing away the new snow drifts from the garage and trying to break up the ice path that was once called our driveway. 20160127_172923So this week I think I’ll make it my mission to see if I can take some nice pictures of January in Iowa. I wonder how well I’ll do?

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Birthdays and wedding plans

Posted on January 24, 2016 by farm2011

What a busy day! It started out with going with a group of girls to check out the latest things in wedding planning. And I must say that I am very much out of my league on this. I’m just glad that there are others that are really good at it and that our future daughter in law knows pretty much what she wants. So at the Bridal open house there is a lot to see and eat. I mean you can literally eat about 30 different kinds of cake if you wanted and I think I’ve tried about 20 🙂 There are also dresses to look at and a bunch of guys showing off the latest looks in tuxes. It was in a hotel and all three floors were packed with bridal things. Whew!

But it really made the whole wedding day seem real though. I know that it’s not until 2017 for the kids but that will probably go fast. I started to look at dresses just today and there sure are a lot of pretty ones out there. I sure hope that I can find one that makes me look about 4 inches taller and about 40 pounds lighter!

Then I headed to Ma’s for her birthday! She looks awesome and yesterday we spent most of the day doing some Christmas shopping for her list for this upcoming December.12507691_1068151679891176_5991405324565842916_n I seriously still have a Christmas card of ours to send out to someone yet for this year. I kept it back because I wanted to send a letter and some other pictures with it. Man I sure can learn a lesson from her I guess. A big group of the family went out for dinner and then I met up with them after at Ma’s house. She had so much food there that there was no way that we could eat it all. I had to laugh later because she was upset because she forgot to bring out some pizza’s that she was also going to make for lunch. But all the tables were full and I’m pretty much sure that our bellies were too! DSCN8571

Then the night was spent at a town meeting getting ready for the upcoming Irish Stew supper and town festival. By the end of the day I was ready to get my jammies on and call it a night.

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Roller Derby Action

Posted on January 23, 2016 by farm2011

Now I don’t know if you’ve gone to a Roller Derby lately, but I haven’t until Saturday night and it was a Hoot! We were all pretty new to this sport and we were anxious to see the Push-Up Brawlers at their best. When we got there it didn’t take long and I went to the table where they were selling ‘stuff’ because I really wanted one of their T-shirts. I looked around and noticed that they also go by the name Cedar Valley Derby Divas and to me that just wasn’t as catchy as the Push-Up Brawlers – so I guess no new T-shirt for me tonight. And seriously I don’t really need another T-shirt anyway. (but I kinda did want one)

So we got our tickets and now it was show time. The sport isn’t quite like it was when we’d watch it on TV about a million years ago but still fun to watch. They used to grab one of the girls on their team and just whip her around the track. But on this night the Dibrarian could get through blocks that pretty much no one else could without having being whipped around. There was still a lot of arms and elbows pushing each other and the penalty box was used a lot! I think because there was a lot of rules to learn, the announcer gave an overview of how this was going to do down and we found ourselves going back to our schedule with the rules to see if we could catch what the points that were just given. I think the guys had it kinda figured out, but for me? Well I was just rooting for team that was loosing and hoping that Dirty Shirley was going to make up some of the point gap. 12573223_1068195179886826_8365878262886894993_n
DSCN8574

It really looked like they were having fun and it almost made me want to get some roller skates and go out skating again. I said almost 🙂

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God Bless Dennis

Posted on January 21, 2016 by farm2011

As you can see I’m up and running again with our internet and what a challenge that was! I’ve learned more about modems and routers that I ever want to admit. Now granted I started out with a blank canvas but still!

Like I said it was a challenge trying to figure out just what was the matter. What we noticed at first was that the internet kept going in and out. Now other than a total pain, it didn’t cause us much concern. I’d go upstairs and reset it and then we’d be back on line working on really important stuff I’m sure 🙂 But then it happened. I couldn’t get it to be reset. And at that point I knew I was in trouble.

So the next day I started to make the calls to our provider to see just what was going on and if they had any outages that were reported. Well of course they didn’t have anything and instantly I could feel my heart starting to pound. I asked them if we could do some tests on the modem and after a blunt conversation that I needed to get a technician to come to our house, the conversation was ended. With my heart pounding and an instant squinting of my eyes (like he would see that ?) I was instantly mad. It was late anyway and I went to bed. Everyone was going to have to live without the internet for the night.

My plan for Day 2 was to call the help desk again and see if they could help me. I got a girl this time and she said that she could see that we were getting a signal and that the modem/router was bad. Are you sure I asked? Because why would I be getting such a good signal but not connecting? Well after a couple of hours of trouble shooting the answer was that I just needed a new ethernet cable and it’ll work. Now lack of common sense I said thank you and hung up. I instantly knew that I shouldn’t have hung up before trying it but it was just too late. And what did I find out? Well I found out that it wasn’t the issue. So I called them back and once again asked them to help. I’m pretty sure that it was some kind of pathetic plea if I’m remembering correctly about if they just please would help me. After a couple of more hours on the phone this tech person said that I needed a new modem and helped me understand just what in the world I should be looking to buy.

Day # 3 time to get a new router/modem. My drive to buy the modem was 45 minutes one way, then 10 minutes to pick up the modem, and then 45 minutes back home again. Not bad but then after around 4 hours with that new modem’s tech support on trying to set up the modem, it turned out to be a very long and frustrating day. The first call after about 2 hours got dropped and I’m not for sure that it was an accident. Then the second guy helped me quite a bit and we went into screens on the computer that I honestly never knew even existed! But then at the end of the night (literally!) and after sitting on the wooden floor for hours by the modem, the technician said that he had absolutely no idea what was the matter. And because he was so worn out I was trying to give him suggestions so he wouldn’t feel so bad.

Day # 4 I called tech support again and my goal was to convince them that this problem is definitely something on their side and that’s when I was assigned to Dennis. Now I didn’t get Dennis right away but was transferred to him. But who cares right?, he was the person that I needed. After Dennis looked at my case he said that he knew what was wrong and it was an issue on their side. Now this was good to hear and also at the same time bad to hear. It was good to hear because he might be able to help me and bad to hear because why did it literally take 4 days? I don’t know what Dennis’s title was but I was so happy that he was the guy that I was talking to and within about an hour the internet was up and running again. Something got messed up on their software and needed to be recoded. I think I kinda scared him a little bit though. I said how much I appreciated him and thanked him for helping me and I know that I had told him this multiple times! Now I’m sure that he didn’t care that I had way over 12 hours on this little project and a very stressful 12 hours at that! Like I said I didn’t know what his title was but he said that he was going to have to write up some training for the other tech’s that have helped me because they should have seen this on the first call. But as for me?  All I can say is God Bless Dennis!

 

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