Way out in the Middle of Nowhere

Vicky is the kitty on the right, sitting with her pal, Tigger. Sad to say, but I had Vicky put down yesterday afternoon. She was such a good girl, and I miss her already. She was born under the deck of the next door neighbor back in '99. We lived in town back then, and Tigger had a friend who was a stray cat we called Skank. Tigger was about 6 months old, and would jump in and out of the house via the kitchen door. There was a window missing on the bottom pane about 3' off the ground that I had not gotten around to fixing by then. So Tigger and Skank would jump in and out of the house, grab food and wander the neighborhood together. One Saturday Skank was acting oddly; jumping in and out repeatedly. I went to see what was going on and lying there in front of the door on the outside with this little black furry jelly bean...Vicky. I followed Skank around for a bit and found her birthing place under the deck, grabbed the remaining survivor..another black jelly bean...and...

I'm nice? Well-behaved? Taught better manners?  Ah I don't know. Y'all remember that shortly after Christmas I invited family to our home to celebrate Christmas, right?  Man, I had the best intentions, a good dinner, great family fun...even Skyped Deb in so she can see her family. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.  I've saved the photos from this debacle, because up until the moment my BIL intentionally started the fight w/Dave...it was going very well.(I'm deliberately trying to forget my BIL's emotional abuse of me. I'm considering the source) My In-Laws' were talking of this huge get-together in the summer for their 60th Wedding Anniversary.  It was going to be fun. That weekend is here and all the rest of the family are in BRF celebrating.  We got an invite, and discussed it.  After all was discussed, we were pretty sure it was an empty gesture.  We don't go where we're not wanted. There's still a lot of animosity, ...

Let's just list the crap pile that was my week. They are in no particular order of crapitude but some are worse than others. 1. I can't wear my wedding & engagement ring because I bashed my hand against something doing chores and bruised my finger. Every time I put the rings on I get a burning pain.  Great.   2. My Hubby got his hours cut, again. Now he's down to 30 and we're scrambling to cut budget and/or make up the loss in funds.  3. Which leads me selling plasma. I'm all-around healthy, so it's not all that difficult. I DID find the 4 hours spent there yesterday and the 30 mile round trip to home and back to get a marriage certificate to prove I changed my name to be almost too much to endure. And all that for 20 bucks.......... 4. I was sitting down in the garage on a bale of straw cleaning the fog off my glasses when my left  lens fell off into a pile of straw.   Think of it as trying to find a needle in a haystack, blind.   We h...

So, Alex and I were watching My Little Pony - Stop laughing, it's actually a decent cartoon.  Well, I must explain: Alex and his Skype friends are 'Bronies' -guys who like My Little Pony.  Hey, he could be doing coke off a dead hookers ass, but instead he's watching a kids' cartoon.  I'm fine with that.  He encouraged me to watch a few episodes to gain an opinion and I did. It's better than I expected.  (BTW, to whomever made the photo: Thanks! It's a cute pic) The episode on Saturday that got me thinking was about Alex's favorite pony, Fluttershy and her wish to become friends with a Chinese Dragon named Discord.  Oh and Discord's voice is the same dude who did Q for the ST: TNG  TV Show.  Discord is a mean dragon, always trying to get an angle off Fluttershy who is trying to be nice to him.  Eventually Discord pulls one too many BS moves and Fluttershy gets ticked.  Anyone who knows the show knows, Fluttershy doesn't get ticked of...

This is a long post, filled with cursing, ranting and bile.  I apologize to anyone not in my family.  For those, let me say that Christmas was ruined again, this time it is solely the fault of my Brother In Law, Dan. Readers Digest Version: I invited Dave's family for a celebration here on Saturday.  They intended on spending the weekend here. Everything was going great until about 10 pm when my Brother In Law deliberately started a political fight with my husband. This escalated into a whole family fight. In the end, my Father In Law decided they weren't welcome, shoved every one into the van and took off.  Despite all efforts to make them calm down, they refused. Mostly because my Brother In Law would not shut is mouth. David and I are now disowned by that side of the family and will never see them again. For those of you who still think Christmas is a beautiful, wondrous time of year, please stop reading now, because your life does not need this. ...

Usually I don't throw down the pre-Christmas rant until closer to the actual day, but what the Hell.  According to the Mayans we'll be dead by then. In 2007, I made all my Christmas gifts.   In fact I spun and knit two of them from soft wool and gave them to my Mother and Mother-In-Law.  So lets roll on some photos, shall we? This one actually was taken before I washed it. The color changes were actually *dirt*. It came out snowy white with green glass beads on it.  I gave it to m Mother In Law. She folded it, put it away and I've never seen it again.  She said it would make a lovely table runner.  *facepalm* it's a STOLE! Onto #2: My Mother's shawl, Mystic Waters I think it was called.  Also spun from Targhee, with no beads. My Mom doesn't do that frou frou.  She opened it, Dad said, "Oh look, it's an old lady shawl!" and that was it. Mom keeps it on the back of her chair in the sewing room.  Hey, at least SHE didn't throw it out...

Reality is what hits us every day.  Sometimes we accept it, grasp whatever bits of goodness come out and move on. The people who deal with reality every day will tell you that sometimes the hard parts are unbearable, but must be done. We've been dealing with reality a lot here: Alex gets a job, but it's 45 miles away.  $40 bucks every two days to fill up the car so he can go to his job.  Which means $50 to fill up the van every 2 1/2 days to get both Dave and I to work and school.  $180.00 per week IN GAS.  Reality sucks, my friend. And today I get to finish my chem lab early, drive back home, disarticulate a deer and put what large pieces we have in the freezer to butcher later after I drive back to school at $4 in gas  to take an Algebra quiz. If we don't get this deer butchered, the meat will rot and we'll be eating chicken all winter long.   Reality is we cannot afford to waste meat, nor buy it from the store.  My Brother In Law offered u...

Fred the goose died last night. That's a picture of Fred.  I was out buying new work boots for Alex and found him in front of the pen..already dead. Two geese dead within a week. I'm exhausted emotionally and physically.  I've spent the better part of the last 2 weeks trying to will Fred and George to good health and then cried over their bodies. I'm up early every morning to let them out, feed and water them and to try to keep Fred and George alive for one more day. School is well, school : Professors demand you drop everything in your life to study and then get all shitty when you can't.  Perhaps it was stupid of me to think that returning after 25 years to get a degree was going to work. I've got no tolerance for bullshit profs -and both of them are not as competent as my HS Chem teacher by far- and their inability to remain focused, no tolerance for people who cannot comprehend there's a REAL life outside of University.  School is making us all cr...

I'm a confessed hater of Christmas.  No, not the whole gist of the thing: The birth of Jesus.  More like all that this entails in today's world. Christmas takes a tough season for me-winter- and makes it worse squared. I also love lists so here's my reasons why I don't like Christmas:  Some dumass 2,000 years ago plopped this holiday in winter to make sure pagans would convert. Yeah, now that they've converted, can we put it back where it's supposed to be?  A friend and I spent a few hours discussing the true date of Jesus' birth.  From the part of the bible that states that 'Shepherds were watching their flocks by night.' makes us believe that it was in early spring. Shepherds usually sleep at night because flocks are good at tending to themselves, but  Shepherds need to be constantly vigilant during lambing. That happens in early spring.  Driving in Wisconsin winters.  Oh yes, we must brave 3' snowdrifts to see family...it's soooo ...

 It's getting more and more difficult to visit with my In-Laws' mostly due to their unwillingness enforce the rules we all agreed upon. Apparently my Brother-In-Law feels that he is above such a rule.  He needs to abide by the same rules that the rest of the family abides by: The one that states that NO POLITICAL DISCUSSIONS ALLOWED! He took a very decent visit with my Mom and Dad-In-Law and turned it ugly by opening his big, fat,  mouth. When my Husband responded to his instigations, he just sat there with that self-depreciating smugness that I wanted to punch off. Yeah, I'm still ticked off about that and it's been 2 days.  I'm sick of rightfully holding my tongue but having to put up with someone elses' incoherent ramblings. I don't care which side of the political spectrum you're on. When the rule was made, it was for a very good reason. What makes the situation all that more telling is that we were in church at the time, enjoying a potluck lun...

 When I was in High School, many years ago, MTV WAS music videos.  And one of them was Bruce Springsteen's War. Before the music starts, Bruce says, " In 1985, blind faith in your leaders or in anything, will get you killed."   Let me repeat that quote:  " In 1985, blind faith in your leaders or in anything, will get you killed ." Here it is, 2011 and it is still true. Still there are those who will just do whatever someone on TV, Newspaper or Radio tells them to. Those media people do not know anyone whom they are attacking personally, and they've got their own agenda. Their agenda is to divide this country into ' us ' and ' them '. Why? Well, it's easier to kill the 'them ' when you can convince a group of people they are less-than-human. I miss my friends . I miss those friends that I found funny, intelligent, and great to hang around with.  I can't hang around them anymore because they chose to believe some nameless...

The family has been experiencing a lot of changes lately, and I've not been knitting nearly enough! Our son Alex has graduated from High School and was preparing to enter Tech School for a welding degree. Everything was all purty and quiet here and then he got a text - from his girlfriend - who broke up with him - in a text. So 2 years of relationship ends in a text (can you tell that's a real annoying point for me, the text?) and my son is left bereft, hurt and without a real need to stay in this podunk little town. Two weeks ago, he announces, "I want to go into the Navy." Okay! This option was floated about in the last few years for many reasons: 1. We've got no real $$ saved up for college. 2. His grades are not really indicative of ambition towards a college goal. 3. This kid can code computer programs IN HIS SLEEP, and needs a place where he can expand on that knowledge is a more structured environment than college. College has too many distractions (girlz...

Today is Ash Wednesday and the start of Lent. So the thoughts turn to what to sacrifice for Lent to make my life more 'like God'. Now I thought about giving up Pepsi. Everyone I know will agree: Cut me I bleed Pepsi. But as I was in church last Sunday my choice became clear. I have decided to give up Facebook for the 40 days. Why? Well let me try to sum up. Three weeks ago I get an invite from my sister to come and see their new home. They moved the end of January to a home nearby. She called, said she had some things for me and wanted help with her webcam. I go over on a Wednesday night and say hi to her and my Brother in Law. His first comment to me was, "I suppose you support that evil Walker." (I live in Wisconsin BTW) My short response was "Yes, and I don't want to get into it." I repeated it 4 times while fixing the webcam. I then went with my sister to take the grand tour of the new house. When I returned to the living room, my brother in law j...

Last week was not fun. Our phone and internet were buzzing with chatter from family about the untimely death of my husband's ex-wife. Dave was married for over 20 years to that woman, and they have two sons. There is animosity between the 'boys' and their father due to the divorce and remarriage. In fact, Dave hasn't talked to his youngest son in almost 10 years at his son's request. We've lived with these restrictions and said nothing to anyone. Now, there has been talk to one of the sons. Perhaps there is hope. My Mother and Father in-law were down for the memorial service, as well as Dave's Daughter-in-law and granddaughter. We had them stay the evening here after the memorial service and they returned home the morning after. It was like chaos here; finding beds for all, and food, and entertaining a 4 year old. Knitting? Not really. No time, nor any motivation. Spinning? Only during the time Dave was at the Memorial Service. It kept me calm, and...

I was so psyched to spend Saturday reading Harry Potter. My sister had come down to pick up my nephew and they left our place. My nephew had spent the last week at our house trying to see if he could eat all of the food in our fridge. He darn near succeeded. That's my Sister in the front and my Nephew and My Son in the back, riding up from the Barn with some more boards. About 45 minutes after she left we get a call; her truck blew a rod. My husband took the call and got directions to where she was. We took off without a thought to bringing a cell phone, or anything like that. This is probably where we should've started using brain cells. My Sister, love her to pieces but her directions weren't even close! She said she was outside of Oregon, but she was actually in Verona. It took us 3 hours to find her, plus three phone calls. On a side note: if you need to use a stranger's cell phone....ask a guy. The ladies we asked got this vague, flaky look on their face and said,...