I have way, way too much to say in These titles mean nothing.

Guess I’ll see what I can say in an hour. That’s a long time. Time enough to write much more than anyone wants to read for sure.

**

In a few weeks it will be my 50th wedding anniversary. I remember consciously thinking that being married 50 years isn’t that hard. All you need to do is get married young, stay married and then not die until you get to fifty years. Of course those three things are pretty powerful assumptions.

I wonder how my life would be different if my husband were still alive. I have a feeling he would have taken better care of the house. I would have less freedom. I don’t know if I would still be working. What I am sure of is that we would still be married. We are determined people.

Yesterday my sisterinlaw asked me if I would like to travel. She’s asked that question before. I think it might be somewhere in her list of things that didn’t happen but could have happened too. I said what I usually say. I would like to travel if I had the right person to go with me. Traveling alone is hard. You need a congenial companion. Someone who shares your interests.

Well heck.

**

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my sisterinlaw recently. She fell a week ago Wednesday and cracked her shoulder bone where the ball goes into the socket. I took her to the local emergency room where she was xrayed and fitted with a brace. It’s her dominant hand of course. She can’t drive. I’ve been taking her food - cooking!!! - and visiting. Jim and help her with her brace when she changes clothes. He took her to the doctor last week.

Yesterday I took her to town to buy cat food and diet caffeine free Pepsi for a friend of hers. You can no longer buy soda with food stamps so she gets it for him. She was buying his cat food and chewing tobacco too but the cat has died and his tobacco habit must have lessened too. I delivered her and the pop to his place which is adjacent to the care center where she goes to help with bingo on Saturday afternoons. I picked her up several hours later along with several plastic bags of cans which she will return for the can bounty when her arm gets better.

Gracie and I have been walking up to see her in the evenings. Some times I take food, sometimes not. Gracie hunts on the way to my sisterinlaw’s house.
She got a field mouse and a junior size wood chuck. She carried the wood chuck quite a ways, finally burying it in some soft dirt in the reeds near her swimming hole at the steel culvert. This is Gracie I’m talking about.

My sisterinlaw sits outside in a swing her mother bought quite a few years ago. It’s one of those that hangs from a frame and has two side by side seats with a little table with cup holders between the seats. I sit in the other seat and we sit and swing and talk and watch the evening progress. There are trees and birds and a sunset and it is a pretty and pleasant place. I talk loud so she can hear.

When I got married fifty years ago, I knew my husband’s sister and I would be old ladies together. And we are.

**

Last night I got Jim to open the door that goes out to the deck. He had sealed it last fall to keep cold air out. This morning I took my deck plants back out. They are worse for wear. I cut them back drastically and added potting soil to some who needed it. I watered them. I put the round mesh topped table the plants had been sitting on in the house back out on the deck. I swept up the loose leaves and reorganized the area in front of the east windows where the plants had been. I like having the table out on the deck. I like to fold clothes from the clothesline on it.

Thinking back to the previous entry. I think it was the clothesline in the old bank building/ now artists lair that made me want to move in. I like natural clothes drying.

The plants are getting old and they did not have a good winter. Still they are mine and a part of my life and I like to keep at least some of them going. Geraniums and begonias and German ivy.

I got a card in the mail yesterday from the plants plant place between Dorchester and Spring Grove. I will buy a deck plant from them I think.

I have a sack of potting soil that overwintered on the deck. It has gotten wet and kind of disgusting. I scooped out a couple pots full to add to the old plants and it was a scary thing to do. I felt as if there might be something LIVING in it. Like a snake - there wasn’t of course. Of at least I didn’t find it this morning.

**

I don’t know how long I’ve been writing. I’m not out of things to say but the will to say them is flagging a bit.

Let me bullet you a list and if there is anything you’d like to hear more about, let me know.

• I finished the JFK Jr. book on tape. I have some Kennedy insights if you’d like to hear.

• I started a biography of Thomas Jefferson on tape. It is dry but I feel like I might be learning something. I’m trying to decide if I want to listen to each tape twice in hopes more will sink in.

• I bought a tub of fresh salsa at the Kwik Star. It said it was mild but it was peppy enough for me.

• I’m still liking my Fitbit. I don’t obsess but it’s fun to see what I did for a day. I sort of wish it had a clock on it - but mostly I like being unfettered to time so I guess it’s ok the way it is.

• I haven’t opened either of my expensive inhalers. I take a metered shot once in a while from the one son John gave me at Thanksgiving and I still have four shots left. The doctor wanted me to use it every day to get rid of the inflammation but I can’t seem to bring myself to do that.

• Tulips and daffodils are blooming. I dug a bit in the new flower bed by the woodpile. I really should do more but I guess I have reasons for not doing more. Lawn has not been mowed yet. It’s starting to grow in various places but that’s Jim and the Jap garden tractor’s job.

• I seem to have lost my camera. It seems impossible that I have lost it. I haven’t looked everywhere yet and I”m pretty sure it will turn up. But meanwhile I’m not taking pictures.

• Work is ok. Hours 5 - 3:30 Monday through Thursday. We worked another eight hours the last two Fridays. We got a small raise. I am doing mostly ok. I really like being busy. I wonder why?

• Farming is ok too. Jim is busy preparing soil at all his locations. Oats is in. I think he just told me he was going to drag it now. Corn goes in soon. Rain is expected tonight. That’s ok too.

• Calves and moms and dads are doing well. We have had most of our calves in a short length of time - first one came March 24th and we have almost three quarters of them born by now. The bulls are penned by the barn and I see them several times a day. I tell them they did a good job last summer - but one told me that it was the third bull who got sold that did all the work. He was kidding though because the reason there are three bulls is because there are three locations with cows to be bred. So they each had their share.

My screen just got smaller. I guess that is a message from the gods that I might as well hit save and call it a day.

Have a good rest of Sunday and a good next week too.

Here’s one of the last pictures I took. A poorly focused mullein weed. Son’s John’s barefoot discovery of ‘a soft weed’.

Last updated May 04, 2015