Heading South

I am not a winter person. I was born in Florida and my father was from Greece. I have a Mediterranean climate body. I do enjoy hibernating in the winter tho. Today is very cold. Even hubby came back in for a better head cover. Clear blue sky but temps in the teens with wind chill's below 0.

I've got lots to do to get ready to go down to Arkansas. We will be living in our camper while hubby works in son's sporting goods store. Son is taking a trip with a friend to Nebraska to hunt buffalo. He asked his dad to work for him while he is gone. He has some good employees there but likes to have "family" in the store in his absence.

I've been washing clothes and sort of packing. If the camper were here, it would be easier to pack it. But we rented a lot in a park down in the town where son's store is. I did not say campground because it is just a place to park/store the camper. It does have full hookups which makes it lots better than having to move camper to "dump" every few days. But the lots are very small. We can barely extend our awning without touching the next camper.

Anyway, I have the challenge of packing the food and clothes we will need in plastic tubs that we can store either under the camper or in the back of the pickup.

I am also taking some tools, etc. to do some work on the cornice boards in the bedroom of the camper. Hubby bought the used camper for a very reasonable price. It was pretty clean but the drapes in the bedroom were very faded and threadbare. I found some $1.00 a yard material at Wal-Mart and made some new drapes, but then the material the cornice boards were covered with did not match. So, I pulled it off the cornice boards. I have material and wallpaper scraps that I think will look o.k. So I will spend some of my time working on that.

I really thought we would be spending more time down there than we are. But hubby is living his dream on the farm now that he is retired. Men who love working cattle have almost a "husband" attitude toward the cattle. I guess that is why is has been called "animal husbandry".

A number of the cows are dropping their calves at this time. Most don't have any problems but you have to check them regularly, just in case. We might not be able to leave for Arkansas until some of them have dropped their calves.

I guess I need to get off my can and this keyboard. I may not be able to get a signal while I am down there. I can use the laptop if I do find a wireless signal. There is an Internet Cafe in that little town but I hate to pay $3.75 for a cup of tea. "Free" Internet while I'm there tho.

Never again!

I admit, I am a pack rat. I hate to get rid of anything that can still be used. I will give it to someone without any regret but to just lay it out on a yard sale table and allow someone to critically look at it and then REJECT it. Ouch! I feel like they are rejecting a part of me.

Is there a Pack Rats Anonymous? I should join. "Hello, my name is Irene and I’m a Pack Rat.” I’m always afraid that after I get rid of something I will need it again. I try to find alternative uses for all sorts of things. Our house has a full basement and when I say that, I mean a FULL basement! Even worse, I am married to the Pack Rat King. He became totally addicted a few years ago after he cleaned out one of the smaller outbuildings. He had about one and half squares of old composition roofing. It wasn't fit to use on a roof so he burned it. After he got the outbuilding clean he realized he needed something to put on the dirt floor. Oh No! The roofing would have been ideal. Now he is worse than I am.

My grandmother used to say, “Keep something seven years and you will find a use for it.” I think I must be genetically predisposed to being a Pack Rat. I don’t remember her having a lot of clutter around though. Of course back then, you did not buy stuff you could not use.

Like so many women, I love the $1 Shops. I find so much USEFUL stuff there. “Maybe someone I know needs that particular item. It is only $1; I’ll buy it”. I seldom get out of those stores for less than $25.00. And before Christmas, a couple of my favorite spots were having “Everything 30 cents Today” specials. Do you know how many 30-cent items are in a $10.00 bill? Too many.

I’m going to put some stuff in the box for a yard sale. Someone around here may just be needing something like that. If they don’t happen to come by my yard sale, I will give it to one of the charitable organizations in town. I’m going to be strong. I am going to do it.

TRAPPED!

No, not me. A beautiful bright red male cardinal was trapped on the unfinished addition at the lake house. I noticed it through the still present window(will later be a doorway). The top of the walls of the addition are not closed in. The soffits are open to the outside and I suppose he had been sitting up there to get away from the cold and decided to fly down into the room itself. He did not seem in any distress and I just figured he could find his way back out by flying to the top of the walls and out again the way he must have come in.

We have installed a large glass, single door, which our daughter gave us when she added on her sunroom, with another clear glass panel. It fit perfectly and allows a lot of light into the room. Anyway, this afternoon, I noticed Mr. Cardinal kept trying to get through the glass in the door. It is still below freezing outside but I crawled through the window and opened the swinging part of the door to the outside. He was so desperate to get out he even tried while I was unlocking the door. I went around behind where he had lit and walked slowly towards him from the opposite direction of the opened door. He went straight to the opening. I could almost sense his surprise when this time he was able to fly through the opening instead of fluttering against the glass.

He was gone in a flash so I don't know where he went from here. He really wasn't trapped in the room, he just thought he was but he still had to have help in getting out. Hmmm, there could be a moral to this story if I think about it.

Not a Winter Wonderland

We have been enduring a severe winter storm and have not had power at the farm since Saturday around 7:30 p.m. We are fortunate to have a marvelous fireplace that can just about heat the whole living area and some of the bedroom. We shut off the two bedrooms we aren’t using and were warm.

DH brought up his camping stove and I was able to cook a little and heat water for coffee and tea. We were surviving. I’ve stayed close to the fire but DH has had to go to town and he said it looks like a frozen war zone, with tree tops down and over the road. Power poles are leaning at 45 degree angles if not totally snapped in two. Ice and icicles are on every surface. It took him 45 minutes to clear the lane up to the barn; normally a 2-3 minute trip.

Then yesterday, Monday, I called the power company to see how long it might be before we would get power and they said it might be3 more days due to out living so far from town. I had already had to take the food from the refrigerator freezer and put it in open tubs on the deck where it was in the teens. I had avoided opening the chest freezer in the unheated basement, hoping things would be safe until the power came back on. But three more days? I was getting concerned. I was also missing a nice warm bath. Then DH came in and suggested I call my neighbor at our lake house to see if they had power there. She said it was fine a the Lake and she did not know of anyone who did not have power.

So, we packed up some clothes and the food from the refrigerator and headed the 26 miles to the lake. We could hardly believe our eyes when we got here. NO ICE! It was like another world. So, I fixed us a nice hot supper while Bennie got a hot bath. We were even able to watch TV and I could get on line with my laptop. DH had to go back to the farm for the night to keep the fireplace going so the pipes won’t freeze but he came back this morning with everything from the chest freezer. We have a small chest freezer here in the basement of the lake house. Everything was fine.

DH is working on getting a generator running but needed to order a part from the factory. He called awhile ago and said that there were over 50 people standing in line at the dealer who ordered the part for him. May not get home till late. Still no power at the farm. Tonight is supposed to be the coldest night of the year so far.

All the signs pointed to a rough winter; the warm spell made us doubt the signs. We were wrong. Old timers knew how to predict the weather based on generations of observation of nature. We need to relearn those skills.