Back to High School

I used to blog daily!  That was actually while I was still working and taking care of a lot more animals than 24 chickens and eight cats!  

It seems I am busier now than then, and I apologize for the long gap. 

This was my yard at the beginning of the week. Dreadfully dry.  

This was our temp on Monday. 

This is today, right now.  

We have had over 3 inches of rain, and it has been raining steadily all afternoon. 

This was, unfortunately, the day of the Jack O'Lantern Jamboree at the 

National Agricultural Center.  The grounds were decorated, but a decision was made to bring it inside the barn at noon... and I am sure the train did not operate, as it cannot run in rain. 

I feel sorry for all the kids looking forward to it.  The volunteers were all there 

and the businesses offering candy, and I hope a few at least got to have fun. 

I just got word that many families did show up and had a good time, despite the steady rain all afternoon! 

Sorry for the graphic photo.  This is Wanda, my little girl that lives in the big hen house. 

Wanda was injured about 3 1/2 weeks ago, and you can see here the top of the tear.  

The stitches (purple string) are now out, and the hole is almost closed.  We went to the vet every other day for two and a half weeks and she has been living in our office (smallest bedroom) since the start of the treatment.  She is doing amazingly well! 

The hole was treated with a poultice of sugar, honey and silver, because there was not enough skin to pull together over it.  It looks clean today and is healing fast.  

I'll try to get a picture tomorrow of how it looks now.  She is in for another few weeks, and is welcome to be an inside cat if she wants. 

There are still some baby raccoons out there. 

And, some giant ones! 

I turned the warming light on over the Kuranda bed two weeks ago, and Cleo loves to sleep on it. 

This month marked the seventh anniversary of Keith's death.

I cannot believe it has been that long. 

My friends Snickers and Doodles went home a week ago tomorrow. 

Along with Snowball... at fourteen, I don't know if she will be back next year. 

I really miss them already, but am also glad not to be carrying water in buckets, since I have dropped my hoses. 

This is Sammy, the Salmon Faverolle, and Reddy, the red production chicken, 

neither of whom lay. 

I have a lot of pensioners here. 

Someone contacted me today... I don't know how he got my number two years later... he must have kept it... I rescued two chickens from him TWO years ago... he wanted to know if I could take ten roosters from his parents, they had bought chicks at a feed store and ended up with ten roosters. 

I respectfully declined and told him I hoped they could find someone. 

I am down to two roosters, and holding there. 

Buddy has taken over his brother Singleton's flock, and spends most nights in the old hen house now. 

Every once in a while, I find him back in his own big hen house.  There are two very old hens in there, and I don't know if they will make it through the cold this year. 

Two weeks ago, I celebrated my 55th high school reunion. 

Yes, folks, my 55th! 

That's your blogger in the middle of the group... these are 1964 graduates of 

St. Peter's Cathedral Grade School, now called Resurrection School. 

There were 8 of us there and there were two more expected, who were unable to come. 

Please excuse my crazy short hair, and it was a sight that day! 

I had on my Ringo Starr tee shirt because my childhood friend Debbie, who 

you can see in the middle of the two ladies to my right (left in the picture) is a huge Ringo fan and could not go to the concert. 

About 52 classmates showed up, and we visited and ate barbecue and generally had a great time. 

I think we are all past trying to impress each other. 

We had lost seventeen classmates since the 50th... 

we met in our school cafeteria.  

I can't tell you how good it was to see my old friends and have a good face to face visit. 

(each grade school had their pictures taken together... some had only one or two representatives, as time is really taking its toll on us). 

We've become our grandmas. 

Somewhere in this computer, I have some lovely photos taken on my big cameras.  I can't find them. 

The program I have used for years is no longer active, and I have to save them willy nilly, and I am losing the darn locations. 

I'll try to do better next time! 

Happy Halloween! 

This is from a wonderful yard in Garnett, Kansas, that decorates every year for Halloween.  My grandson Chris and I went to the Mennonite store on Tuesday, and came around to the side to take some pictures. 

If it had not been raining, we would have gotten out. 

You see on the tree the yard is all lit up for the display at night.

Truly remarkable! 

P.S. 

My hair looks SO STUPID in that picture :-) 

 

Not Much to Say Today

Still in the hospital.  Easier to lay on his back, so he has spent the 

week in bed  

Hopefully, we'll be coming home on Friday or Saturday (probably Saturday). 

He's watching the game from his bed right NOW!   

The next door neighbor's house that I showed you all lit up last night... trust me... this is unbelieveable!  Maybe they are human after all! 

Maybe they are having a party! 

This beautiful  old shirtwaist house is all boarded up on a street 

near the hospital.  It is surrounded now by commercial developments... apartments... 

but it was a grand old lady in it's day.  

There are homes still maintained and lived in across the street, out of camera view to the left. 

I noticed a giveaway on the Pioneer Woman's blog , 

it's a North Face jacket.  Yum, for winter. 

Here's another one, a Pfaltzgraff china giveaway for 

Thanksgiving.

To all our Canadian friends and readers... we are so very, very 

sorry for the sad things that happened in Ottawa this morning.  Our prayers have 

been with family of the young man who lost his life... and all his 

countrymen.  A horrible, horrible thing. 

Keith will be having two procedures tomorrow we believe, and I will be 

at Paiton and Jax's school at 9 AM sharp to watch Paiton in her first kindergarten program. 

Can't wait! 

Our Weekend

We had quite the weekend. 

Cleaning up all the construction debris, and Troy came over today and cut the yard... it looked beautiful!  

Keith is out there taping off the windows for painting... but... unfortunately, they 

are now forecasting wind for tomorrow, and rain all day long, and through the night. 

So.. we wait.  I'll be here, priming trim in the garage and puttering around the house. 

The old place, though, looks SO MUCH BETTER! 

Here's the kitchen at church this morning, in between shifts of workers... I had just 

"gotten off" after filling coleslaw cups for 2 1/2 hours.  Yikes! 

I couldn't even eat any. 

See the lunches?  Yum! 

Couldn't face the coleslaw, though. 

There were lots of wonderful gift baskets to bid on. 

And the country store was not going to last for long... I took this picture just as the crowd was 

coming in, and people already had sacks and boxes of homemade jams, pickles, other baked goods, and handsewn goodies. 

I went from the bazaar to the birthday (with a stop at home to eat our turkey dinners with Keith). 

The birthday boy Jax, and the birthday girl, Paiton, are not twins, though people think they are. 

Jax and Paiton are one year and three days apart. 

Doomed to celebrate together! 

Jax turned seven, and Paitie, six. 

The slugger got his new bat! 

And Paiton, a doll house.  

I ran home to get these guys, because they had been in the last four or five days with little exercise.  

How they ran and ran and ran.  

Lil has a large callus on her leg... can you see it?  It's time for a visit to Dr. Scott. 

This little guy minds so well... Jester spent his first three years being a house dog, who had a big yard, but never went anywhere.  He LOVES to run full tilt boogie in the pasture, and we went over to Troy and Kathy's and they ran and ran over there. 

The tree that split this summer. 

A closer look. 

Troy has cut up a lot of it already... and he will be burning this wood after it cures. 

See the sycamore down on the fence in the upper left of this picture?  It is also 

cut up... he is still working on it... and he told me today he will pull the fence fabric up and re-staple it when he has the tree finished.  

That's a relief. 

He is truly the best neighbor one could have. 

These folks have a haunted house in their barn every year... and their front yard... I will try to get a shot of it... it is full of Halloween things. 

And the Halloween Grinch was in Basehor, on the way home, and made me laugh. I had to stop and take a picture, of course. 

I snapped this on my way home from church last night, and leave you with this beautiful image for the evening! 

A Ghost Story for Halloween

(please see addendum under this post)

You all know that I like to watch Ghost Hunters on TV (though I am sceptical of them)... and Ghost Adventures, and the late, lamented Paranormal State.... but oddly enough, I am scared of Paranormal Witness, maybe because those are "regular people" who relate things that have happened to them.

 

I myself, have had several encounters with something unexplained in the past, and for Halloween, I'll talk about them.  You can remain sceptical, believe me!

 

About 15 years ago, I took myself on the only real vacation I had ever had in my life.  I grew up in a loving family, with parents who sent us to private schools, went to church weekly, had a rich family life with my cousins and friends, but did not believe in "fripperies"... we didn't go to the circus, to the ice shows... to vacations.  One time we planned a vacation, but by then my dad had had a heart attack and the doctor put the kibosh on it before it got very far along in the planning.

 

So, I was interested in Civil War history, and belonged to the Civil War Roundtable of Western Missouri.  I decided to go to Gettysburg.  This was a HUGE undertaking for me, because I not only had dogs and cats, but a flock of chickens as well.  I contacted a neighbor who agreed to farmsit for me for 10.00 a day. 

 

I duly made all my reservations and that April,  flew into a small airport in Maryland, rented a car, and drove up to Gettysburg. 

 

On the last day I was there, I wanted badly to ride across the battlefield, renting a horse from the local stable that advertised battlefield tours.  I was still riding regularly, and really wanted to do this to finish off my wonderful five days.  That morning it dawned rainy, and windy.  I was worried we would not be able to ride.

 

I got to the stable, and, when I told them I could ride... they put me on a horse that was a little fractious, and I rode at the end of a line of about ten riders and the guide.  We rode onto the battlefield from the campground, and each of us had been given headsets to listen to a recording about the terrain through which we rode.  It was raining lightly, but the strange thing was that fog had descended on the battlefield.  We rode along past the Peach Orchard, but I had turned my headset off... I wanted to just experience the battlefield.  Imagine my surprise when I heard what sounded like an explosion and shouting on my right.  I stopped the horse and turned to see what was happening... and heard pulsating yells and screaming again.... that lingered... but where I was looking, there was only fog and mist.  I did NOT have my headset on.... and I always wondered if I did, indeed, hear the yells from down through the years... my horse stood there and had his ears pricked forward, and then, seeing that the line of horses was disappearing into the fog, I turned him and we rode forward and joined them.

 

When my kids were little... we rented a house from a relative.  The boys were five and seven, respectively, and they each had their own room in this three bedroom house.  It was unusal in that it had not one but two doors on the staircase to the second floor, one from the living room, and just around the corner of the wall... one from the dining room.  The door at the bottom of the stairs into the living room looked right onto the front door when it was open.

 

After we had been there a couple of weeks... I heard some voices one night and thought they were coming from outdoors.  There had been some loud partying going on on that street, and it had kept me up at night, so I assumed it was more of the partyers.  I went to sleep and didn't think about it.

 

Then, it happened again, and I realized it was coming from directly below me, the living room.  The voices moved into the dining room, and I heard the chink of dishes being passed and used.  This didn't happen once, but many nights.  It finally got so that the last thing I did at night was make sure that the doors to the dining room and living room at the foot of the stairs were shut tightly. One night, I realized I had left the living room door open, and was scared to death to run down there and close it in the light from the hall above! 

 

This went on for some weeks, and then, one morning... I found oldest son Jim having convulsions in the bathroom.  He had become wedged in the doorway and I don't know how I found the strength to get it open, get him, and get him to the bed.  I called an ambulance and off we went to the hospital, where he stayed for 4 or 5 days. 

 

Soon after that, though I had NO money and moving was very, very hard for me... I found the wherewithall to get us out of that house. 

 

Years later, we were about to move into a wonderful little rental house and the landlords lived down the street from the above house. 

 

When I told them we had lived there, they exclaimed: "The Haunted House????"

 

It seems that the whole neighborhood knew of the "haunts"... but I had grown up two blocks away and had never heard of them!

 

The funny thing was, from the day we moved in, I would not go down the basement... and would not use the back porch.  The light in the kitchen was on the back wall... I would turn it off and run for the light of the living room, every night.  I have often wondered about that house, and what has happened it it since, but I have to tell you, I breathed a sigh of relief when we left it!

 

I leave you all to make up your minds on your own!

 

It is a beautiful day here at Calamity Acres, and we remember those who are not having a good Halloween.  Tonight we pray for the Poor Souls, and tomorrow, remember the Saints who have preceded us.

 

No, not my Halloween costume, but a leisure suit... circa 1972... remember those? 

Son Jim as Bullwinkle, aged four. 

Oh, so many Halloweens ago!

 

For a very amusing post, please go here and see what the
AMAZING Pea has done on her blog today to celebrate Halloween!
It's truly funny and inspiring!  

 

 

And The Clouds Came

This morning, early, I lay in bed saying prayers.  Keith and I had watched the blue moon rise from the deck last night, and as I lay in bed early, I could see it going down to the west.  Keith got up to let the dogs/chickens out.... and then ran back in to tell me to get dressed quickly and come out.

Here is what we saw....



 

 

This, friends, is the initial edge of Tropical Depression Isaac coming over us.

 

I went to the Santa Cali Gon Festival anyway, but by the time my cousin and I got there, this is what the grand old city of Independence, Queen City of the Trails, looked like:

 

 

This street on the square is usually jammed full of fair goers.  That's the historic Jackson County Courthouse in the picture where Harry Truman was judge.

 

As you see, the vendors were in trouble. 

 

 

The carnival was shut down in the bad weather.

 

 

Here's my cousin Mary in one of the booths... we particularly liked this one in one of the huge craft tents, because the lady had so many good ideas.

That's a 33 RPM record hanging behind Mary's head... with the spider that says "Gimme the Creeps".  She also painted many old buckets, and a gas can, on the top shelf with the ghost and pumpkin. 

 

We noticed that several of the large craft tents were already puddling water, and it appeared that some vendors had not even set up.

 

 

Christmas was not forgotten, either, and the snowman circular hanging is another record.

 

 

This is something I brought home!  Isn't it cute? 

 

It's going to be perfect for the fall season.

 

I came home to henyards in the soup... yes, we are overjoyed with the rain... but UGHHHHH. 

 

I heard on the news at 6 PM that they had shut Santa Cali Gon down at 5:30... it is normally open until 11 PM, because the puddling was so bad in the tents.  I am sorry for the vendors, as some had some from as far away at California, according to folks who visited with my cousin. 

 

We still had a great time and got lots of good ideas!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happy Halloween!

Super Girl and Bumblebee say have a safe and happy holiday!

Happy Halloween!

We planned a small Halloween party here at Calamity Acres, but it turned out our grands had to be at another party during the evening, so they came early while still light.  Mom and Dad dressed up too, and we all had a good time taking pictures and visiting.  I had fixed barbecued meatballs, chips and dip, and some delicious gorp as well as decorated sugar cookies and tiny cupcakes.  While the scare factor was missing, the cute factor was in full swing. 

A motley crew indeed.

Dear daughter-in-law Amy and youngest grandson Jax.

Swashbuckling son Jim.

Jax and Paiton, our two littlest grands.

Beautiful sister Madison, Paiton and Lilly Ann.

Your intrepid blogger, as an apple with a worm in it.

Abby just wanted to sleep after all the excitement.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!