7 rules for the road to a happy and responsible adult hood.

There's lots of talk these days about who is the adult in the room. One person accuses the other guy of not being adult enough. Says your the reason things went wrong. Its all your fault. Of course this is always done from a safe distance when the "non-adult" can't respond to the charge. Which isn't very "adult" of the accuser. Is it?
Seems to me folks in Wa.D.C. have forgot some basic rules about life and growing up and I think they could use a reminder. Here goes:

1. You don't get to say mean things disguised as a joke.
People always know you really meant it

2. The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.
But we have to deal with the people. (see rule #4)

3. Just when you get used to today along comes tomorrow.
Yield the day with cheerful affection for the person you are and greet tomorrow eagerly for the person you will be.

4. To be as good a person as your dog thinks you are is a worthwhile goal.

5. If you live a good life your reward will be a good life.

6. Life always gets better. ALWAYS! No exceptions.

7. When life seems hard, when you are being pounded and pushed,
a cup of your favorite tea, coffee, or ovaltine
served in your prettiest teacup,
and a sit down chat with God
will make you good to go again.

Good bye Gracie

Gracie
April 1, 2010 to May 9, 2011
Was struck by a car while playing and chasing as cats will do. Tender-eyed and gentle by nature. I never saw him in a fight. He would often come up to me while I worked in the yard seeking a good rub on his noggin. Or he would lay on his back so I could scratch his belly. Or sometimes, Gracie just wanted to stay near me. I will miss his quiet presence.
Gracie joins a long line of cats I've owned. Most of them lived long long lives. When they die young like Gracie did its harder to take. The future I had planned to share with Gracie has been cut short. I console myself knowing I gave him a very good year.

Hometown Guy Playing in the Super Bowl XLV

Super Bowl XLV: Crabtree basks in moment

Cat with a sense of humor

Unfortunately her owners are very dull and slow-witted. We didn't get the joke till today, nearly a year later.

Last year, Feb. 2010 this it what it looked like for weeks on end around our home.

Earlier in January, 2010, when we saw this stray cat eating (chicken) food/scraps to survive we decided to let her live in our garage. Which worked out great because she is a fantastic mouser-cat.

Then on April Fool's Day the cat I named Sparkles, birthed 6 kittens in a litter box. Its subtle, but a very funny play on words when you think about it.

2 Geese walking on crispy snow

Where are you going little geese? Your food is over this way. These are Embden geese. Very gentle around me and Bill, but look-out for strangers who approach our yard gate. I dispatched the two Chinese geese to a Thanksgiving table after they killed one of my chickens.

Tuesday thaw + overnight freeze = Goose feet tracks in crispy snow. Dude and Dudeabide aren't fond of a snow covered ground. They would rather search our yard for the food they prefer. Mostly grass and clover and sometimes burrowing for artichoke roots. Numerous winter snowfalls forced the geese to eat provisions I provided, mostly lettuce, popped popcorn, apples and grapes.

I understand your pain. The same thing happens when I open a box of Raisin Bran, except all the raisins are on the bottom. I get so frustrated and have a hard time coping with the situation. They should put a continuous mixer in the box with battery backup.

Red Berries

The problem with Special-K w/Red Berries is - when I open a new box all the red berries are at the top and I have to redistribute the berries through the cereal.

Otherwise this is a real good cereal.

first husband who will be last

 dear bf,
can I assume subtle husband I am always your first priority?
always?
what if you are watching a rerun of the 2004 OSU - Michigan game and I want to talk?

Most important thing first

first things first? Very funny, but it's not funny that you didn't include "taking care of your husband". That should be your first priority.

She's so cute!!!

thats my doggie. always doing something goofy.

Weeder Geese Are Enjoyable

From this : Baby Weeder Geese about 2 weeks old




To this: Three months old.
top to bottom: Dominique, Mr. Tudball, The Dude, and Mrs. Wiggins who seems to be the leader of the goose-pack.

Having these 4 geese has been more interesting, more fun, and more work, then I imagined it would be. In the beginning I was put off by all the goose poop, but it seems like the geese have got that part under control and there is less of that around. We have a large tub for the geese to bathe in, and some snow sleds the geese use for wading and drinking. As advertised the weeder geese love weeds and (except for my Hosta) have not harmed the plants in my raised beds and yard. Along the fence line the geese keep the grass growth to a minimum which saves me some backbreaking work. Usually the grass is about 2 foot tall before I'm willing to go out there and trim it down.

The geese haven't learned to fly yet. If the Canada Geese around here are a good comparison, then The Dude looks too heavy for liftoff. In the morning when I first open the goose hutch the geese take off across the yard running fast, flapping their outspread wings. Mrs. Wiggins - the smallest goose- has come close to lifting off the ground. I have observed Canada Geese parents teaching the goslings to fly - usually in late summer. The goslings learn by watching their parents. I can run with my geese, and lead them to a nice flat area they can use for a runway, just like the Canada Geese parents, flap my arms and skip and jump and hope for the best.

We also have 6 kittens and the 4 geese like to come up to the garage to watch the kittens play in the morning. That is what they are doing in the photo. The Dude doesn't like it if our dog, Hannah, joins the kittens, and plays rough. That's when Dude will grab Hannah's tail or ear, and give a yank to remind Hannah what it feels like to get picked on by something bigger.

Four geese can be very noisy, especially when I am standing in their midst and they are all honking about something I'm doing. Bill’s grand niece, Charlotte, was visiting and I took her into the yard to pet the geese. It wasn’t long till the 4 geese gathered around us, honking and trying to touch Charlotte’s red toenails. They made quite a racket, which I thought was kind of scary, but Charlotte wasn’t the least bit distressed. In fact, I think she would have liked to host a tea party for the geese.

......Then again, I can walk across the yard and the geese will be so quiet trailing me that I have to look to see if they are still there.

All in all I think owning geese is very rewarding. Next spring, get some geese if you have the space and time.

Link to my Picasa web album 4 kittens

Why I hate Facebook

I deleted my Facebook account yesterday. I was on FB about 45 days and in that short amount of time I learned to hate it. It seemed like the website worked different every time I logged on. Another reason I didn't like FB, I spent too much time looking at my "FB wall". I didn't have a lot of contact with the few members I friended. I had hoped to share updates with my grandson, Dan, who moved 8 hours away, but he doesn't make many posts. My step daughter, Greta, accepted my friend request but wrote to tell me I shouldn't expect anything from her because she hated FB and never used her account. Why didn't I heed her warning?
Pretty soon, I remembered a niece-in-law telling me to get on FB when we saw each other last Christmas. So I searched for her name and sent her a friend request. She accepted. I also friended her husband and their amazing, beautiful daughter. After that it seemed like they owned my FB wall. Seemed like all I saw was their updates and postings. It was hard for me to find my other friends among their very frequent posts.
Then I decided to friend the White House and several newspapers just to balance things out. But all those newspapers were wall hogs. It was even harder to find my real life friends status updates. Being new to FB, I did not realize what all this friending was doing to my real life friends pages.
After two weeks on FB I got into a fluff-up with my niece-in-law because I made a remark about abortion and health insurance she didn't agree with. So we went back and forth about that for an afternoon. Ending with her suggesting I get some professional help. Which I thought was out of line. I figured out how to hide her posts from my wall and pretty soon she noticed and sent me a message asking if I had meant to hide her posts. I told her I meant to. Not long after that I unfriended her, her husband and her daughter. I figured I needed to be the adult and get the heck out of her face otherwise we two would have been simmering our discontent forever.
I was tired of all the news and White House updates so I unfriended those websites after the health insurance bill finally passed in the Senate and President Obama signed it into law. This made my FB wall page look downright homey. I saw just the stuff my friends and family posted. I was very sparing about my comments because I didn't want to start another fluff-up with the friends I had left.
In fact I chose to view my page "offline" most of the time so my F&F wouldn't know I was online. FB has a chat feature, if two friends are online at the same time they can use the 'chat' feature and send messages back&4th. An excessively redundant feature if you ask me. What is the point? My solution was to pretend I wasn't online even when I was. That way nobody bothered me while I was trying to figure out what FB was all about.
I made a determined effort to understand Facebook. I created a fake account so I could see how my things looked on the fake friends page. Because my fake friend didn't have any other friends all I saw was my stuff.
I decided to visit my real friends wall and horrors - they were blocking me from appearing on their wall. Which explains why I never got any comments on the few posts I did write. I couldn't really blame my friends, I guess they decided to hide my stuff during the time I was friending the newspapers. It was probably too many posts for them. Just like my niece-in-laws family posts had seemed like too many for me.
After a few more days I realized how much I hated Facebook. I hated it because I wasted too much time on the FB wall. I hated it because, FB was not as welcoming as I was told it would be. I hated it because, I read FB was giving my profile information away without my consent. I hated it because I felt old and out of date when my younger friends posts didn't make sense to me. Like, why would my grandson post a photo with the caption "thumbs humping his truck" what on earth does he mean? I hated it because the purpose of Facebook eluded me.
When I hit the "Delete my account" button, FB gave me one more reason to hate it. I couldn't just delete my account and be done with it. My account is in "Delete limbo" for 14 days to give me a chance to change my mind and return to the horrid wall.
Let this be my last update status from FB:
Your account has been deactivated from the site and will be permanently deleted within 14 days. If you log into your account within the next 14 days, your account will be reactivated and you will have the option to cancel your request.
Don't think so Facebook I am out of here.

Baby Weeder Geese about 2 weeks old

Bill and I purchased these goslings from Murray McMurray Hatchery. I plan to turn them out into the fenced area of our property when they are old enough. Inside this area we have 6 raised flower beds and a strawberry bed. Like it says at McMurray "You can turn these geese loose in your strawberries, corn, or cotton and let them do the weeding. They leave your crop and eat the weeds!" I hope! :)

How Pres. Obama or anyone CAN quit smoking

President Obama here's how you can quit smoking for good:
1. Set a date to quit at least 6 weeks in advance. Mark the date on your calendar. Enjoy your cigarettes during these 6 weeks.
2. Place a post it note about your quit-date on your shaving mirror.
3. During the 6 weeks leading up to your quit-date, practice aversion therapy 10 minutes a day. Look at photos of medical trauma associated with smoking. Read an article or two when you have the time. Remind yourself every time you have a cigarette what it is doing to your body. Take a mental snapshot of yourself when you smoke, learn why you need to light up when you smoke.
4. Ask your daughters to write you a letter asking you to quit. Keep their letters in your sock drawer.
5. Decide ahead of your quit-date what your temporary substitute for cigarettes will be. A glass of water? Chewing gum? Hard-tac candy? Wrist bands? Have plenty on hand ahead of time so you won't have to worry about running out. Use your substitute for 3 weeks after your quit-date. You will find that you will use it less often as the 3 weeks wind down so you won't just be replacing one addiction with a new addiction.
6. After my quit-date arrived I took extra calcium and B-vitamins for three weeks. Ask your doctor if extra supplements would help you.

BTW- I successfully quit smoking in 1984 using these suggestions. The news item says you use a nicotine replacement. Maybe these suggestions will be helpful for you to quit the nicotine replacements. I found some useful information at Nicotine replacement therapy for quitting tobacco WebMD

Obama still using nicotine replacement to fight smoking The Miami Herald Politics AP

Good Luck to you!

The Menace of Medical Coding

If you know a woman who has received a breast cancer diagnosis, you might want to alert her to this issue. It is a very common problem.

Per my insurance contract with Aetna, I am supposed to get one free mammogram a year. I have never asked for more than one mammogram a year, except the year I was diagnosed with breast cancer. This is the second year Aetna has denied payment and the billing agent for my doctor's office told me EVERY insurance company follows this procedure. Think of the irony, a woman has had cancer and her insurance company doesn't encourage her to have a yearly check up. What a crock...

My insurance company, Aetna, will NOT pay for my once a year mammogram because my doctor does not bill the costs as a “routine diagnosis”. Instead, my doctor bills the costs as a “medical diagnosis” because he has treated me for breast cancer. I was told by his billing agent that the coding “routine diagnosis” can only be used for patients who have never been diagnosed with cancer. So my doctor has no alternative. ?? I understand this coding interpretation is a very common practice.

Women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer are already frightened and naturally cautious. However, the menace of medical coding prevents many of us from our rightful contract obligations. All the while the insurance company can hide behind the official way of doing something.

I was able to pay for my mammogram, this year (and last year too btw) and I am thankful for that. I hope Congress will address this coding problem in the health care debate. It is not fair for me and this situation is even more unfair for those women who can not afford to pay for a yearly mammogram - after they have been diagnosed with breast cancer.

It just isn't right so I wrote to my members of Congress.

a little bit to say about a few things

The gift of a lifetime
I wish that Senator Ted Kennedy’s widow would join the Senate for the next 5 months. It would just make all the difference if she were there. I believe her presence in the Senate would be a unifying factor which might go a long way toward passing the health care reform her husband said he made his life mission.
Please Mrs. Kennedy the Senator could not be there but you can be there in his stead. Go.

Moving on,
Defenestration Anyone?
I want to register my unhappiness with the Central Ohio School Districts who have announced they will not carry the Presidents speech to students. Apparently, Dublin, Hilliard, and Olentangy school districts are a particularly favorable environment for the type of kakistocracy that would make a decision like this.
The loud mouths won the day and will prevent those who want to hear President Obama.
(BTW I understand my favorite channel, C-Span, will carry the speech and have it available for viewing on the web)

Finally,
about health care reform
Many of us are watching the health care reform debate and waiting to see what the Democratic Congress and Senate get done. Meantime my checkbook is closed. Don’t ask me for any more money. I refuse to finance the status quo. If the Democrats squirm their way out of this and fail to pass a really good health care reform, they can kiss this voter good bye.

Peculiar Subject

This spider web kind of resembles a CD. A strange looking spider wove the web outside our living room window.

The peculiar looking spider who wove the CD shaped web.
Bill and I think this spider looks like Darth Vader's helmet. When a small insect such as a moth or fly lands in the web their time on earth is down to a few minutes. Darth's rapid recovery response quickly swings into action and Darth moves to the insect and drags it to the center of his web. I think maybe Darth does this because he likes to watch us while he eats. Darth consumes a fly in about 3 hours. I suppose Darth has injected the fly with some kind of paralyzing fluid because the struggle for life is over soon. I rescued a pretty little white moth yesterday from becoming Darth's Sunday supper. In doing so, I caused a little bit of damage to the CD shaped web. No real harm done, Darth had his web repaired before sundown.

Unintended Reverberation

Dear Elton John,
I hope you don't mind I wrote down these words ...

Thank you so much for writing "Your Song"

This morning I was listening to music as I cleaned my floor. There I was, down on my hands and knees, wondering how many times I have ever cleaned that darn floor and how many more floors I will have to clean until the end of my life. I was feeling like the unknown princess, unappreciated, unrecognized, taken for granted. I started thinking about Princess Di. I wondered if Princess Di ever cleaned a floor ... or mowed grass .. or made her own dress. Never did really see a single thing I had in common with that woman. Or why I cried when she died in that terrible accident.
When "Your Song" played
that part about making the sun shine brighter ....
Some songs like "Your Song" are capable of lifting my heart, I can fly, I can soar, I can see the world from ten thousand feet and that dirty floor doesn't even matter anymore.

Thank you so much for the pep up.
How wonderful life is because you are in the world Sir Elton John.

Child endangering charges filed

This is one of the most heartbreaking news reports I have ever read. A 6-week old baby girl was found to have been bitten numerous times by rats. According to the news report the infant girl had lost 2 toes to rat bites and also suffered numerous bites elsewhere on her body. In plain language the 6 week old baby was being eaten alive by rats.

A bang-up casserole

I once had a casserole dish that I blamed for my scalloped potato failures. Every single time I used that darn dish my potoatoes were not fully cooked. I would cuss and swear the darn dish was lead-lined. I was always upset because there was really nothing I could do except delay my dinner or serve a substitute. ( I am too frugal to throw out half-cooked potatoes. )
Came the day Bill's parents were coming down for dinner and I wanted to impress them with my cooking skills. I decided old fashioned scalloped potatoes had to be part of our meal. I followed the recipe exactly as written, carefully timed the cooking and had cautiously used the casserole dish.
When I took the potatoes out of the oven they looked like a work of art, perfectly browned and bubbly potatoes were ready for my guests to enjoy. Everybody took a heap of potatoes for their plate. But our enjoyment was not to be as the potatoes were "still crisp" as mom tactfully described them.
After that uncomfortable moment I made up my mind it was the last of that casserole dish. The next day I carried the dish to the garage put it on the cement floor got a sledge hammer from my tool bucket and broke that awful dish into a hundred pieces.
I never wanted to make scalloped potatoes again but Diana Rattray's recipe sounds fool proof.