Night Noise

 Last night, Tim woke me up coughing. He coughed and coughed to the point it sounded like he was choking. This cold/plague/evil curse is awful stuff, but what makes it worse is that he will not take anything for it. I found a night time cough suppressant which works on the cough. It doesn't have all the added ingredients for sinus, body aches, fever, etc. Just the cough. I drink ginger tea through the day, just keep adding hot water to my cup. At night I take a dose of the cough suppressant which allows me to get some sleep.

Tim does neither and I don't know why, but he is a bullhead man. (Luckily, I, myself, have not a stubborn bone in my body. 😏) So he hacked himself awake, and on the other side of the bed, I was awake too. Even worse, I began to cough right along with him. 

He was fine, he claimed. Didn't want to take anything for it, so I came out to the living room for awhile. Being a companionable sort, Mr Cough-y followed me out, sitting in his rocking chair. We were sitting there in the dark when suddenly there was a loud crack of thunder. Immediately after, it began to pour, the rain pounding down on the tin roof. There were a couple more cracks of thunder, and then as suddenly as it started, the rain began to taper off. While it was an astonishingly brief storm, it was intense. 

So what was missing? Lightning. We saw no lightning. I have been puzzling over that. My first thought was that the fast moving storm was accompanied by extreme cloud cover we could not see in the night sky. Maybe the lightning took place above the clouds? But then, wouldn't it have muffled the thunder too? I mean those thunderclaps were sharp and loud. 

Reading about it, thunder simply does not occur without lightning. So, I throw it out there for your consideration. What did we witness?

So eventually, Tim wandered down the hall and back to bed. I listened to him coughing in bed.

The sound was a lot more tolerable from the couch than from the bed, so I stayed right where I was, and eventually dozed off.

The motion detector light came on outside and I was jolted awake by the sound of two cats fighting and squalling. I leaped off the couch and went to the sliding doors. I expected to see Phantom, the mysterious new cat who sneaks in at night to finish off the extra cat food left from the two remaining ferals. I expected to see either of them doing battle. Much to my surprise, it was not Tiger or Possum. It was Freddie, who I did not know was outside!

I flung open the door and went flying out in my nightgown. Usually, Phantom runs away at the sight of a person, but not this time. To make it even worse, Houdi tore outside when I opened the door. Now there were three of them squalling. Only two were actually fighting. Houdi was merely stalking around with his tail straight up and three times its normal size. He circled the fight yowling the cat equivalent of 'Yeah! Take that! My brother is going to whip your butt!!' Meanwhile, Phantom and Fred were going at it hammer and tongs.

I had to go back in to put shoes on. The ten tons of gravel we had dropped earlier in the week was too much for my bare feet. When I came back out, Houdi was circling the car growling. I hopped in the driver's seat and started the car thinking Phantom would run back to the old house, and Fred would head to the porch. Instead, Phantom ran for the old house with Freddie hot on his heels, both of them screaming their heads off. 

It was a long night, but Fred was waiting on the porch this morning. He had a snack and then arranged himself on the same couch I had spent the night on. He did some stretching and yawning and then tucked his chin on top of his murder mittens. 

Unlike me, the stinker fell soundly asleep and is sleeping still.

Big and small

 During trump's 19 minute speech, the price of oil rose $4 a barrel.

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20260402-oil-prices-rise-after-trump-speech-as-gold-and-silver-fall/

Tim and I went to the gym. Price of gas was $3.99 when we went in. After an hour workout, it was $4.19, which was a shock. 

Pam Bondi got fired. Everybody is celebrating that. I am not. The reasons given were two-fold. The first was her handling of the Epstein case. (Personally, I think there is this idea that once she is gone, the focus at next week's hearings will be on her, not on trump.) 

The second reason is that trump believed she was not moving fast enough on the prosecution of his 'enemies'. 

The thing that gives me pause: from all indications, Republicans are going to get trounced at the midterms. Strongly red areas are voting in democrats during a spate of special elections. 36 Republican House incumbents have chosen not to run for reelection.

I think that Bondi was removed in favor of someone who is willing to create more chaos in the seven months before the midterms. According to Lindsey Graham that is trump's genius: maintaining unpredictability and confusion.

So...I can't really celebrate Bondi's departure. But I am glad she is gone. I will never forget this:

Today, I made two boxes from greeting cards for the gifts for my granddaughter's fairies who live on her windowsill. In just a week and a half, I am headed to my son's house to unselfishly give them a date night or two while selfishly taking granddaughter time.

Two gifts wrapped and four to go. 

Two trees came down, aspen. They will be cut into logs and allowed to rest for 2 weeks. When I get back from my time away, it will be time to innocculate the logs for mushroom growing. I want to take a log up, predrilled for Rudy. He has some hand deformities, but I am sure that he can handle the rubber mallet and the pegs and daubing the paraffin. Lion's mane is believed to have medicinal properties and is prized by the Amish. It might be a nice little business of his own. 

Everything is starting to green up here. It will also be time to think about begin to plant the garden. 

The big stuff needs to be counterbalanced with the small stuff. I am lucky to have plenty of that.

Emotions

 This cold has been a bad one. I thought I got past the worst of it only to discover that I haven't.  The cough is horrible. 

So...it has been another quiet week.

One thing I discovered is that it is possible to share FB posts to IM without realizing it. I have conservative Christian and Christian Nationalist family members. 

We simply don't talk politics, but it gets very tricky. What I have discovered is that very suddenly politics encompass a lot more territory than it used to. For instance, my nephew had some very strong opinions of a religious leader. I countered with how what he was saying did not align with biblical teachings. He got very angry and accused me of arguing my politics. I said that I thought we were discussing a religious figure. 

It didn't help that I thought I was 'snoozing' him. I figured we would both benefit from a break. It turned out that I had blocked him, which made things worse. He blocked me back.

Last week, out of the blue, I got a message from my sister about two articles she had received from me via instant message. I was astonished to see that there were two of those highly charged over the top things along the line of 'Trump humiliated when....' and 'GOP demolished after...'. 

The thing is I don't even read crap like that myself. When I see all caps and exclamation points in a headline, I assume that it is something that is designed to draw you in emotionally. I am more of a 'just the facts' type of a person. As in, I want to read it and decide how I feel about it, as opposed to getting the emotions decided for me. Those headlines are designed to attract the eye of angry people who read along angrily muttering and angrily share the angry post  which is read by other angry people who read it angrily muttering.

That's some bullshit, isn't it?

Anyways, I read my sister's message and she was mad. I didn't blame her either. It was a disrespectful thing to do. The difference was that I knew I had never intentionally sent them. She believed I had. 

I began reading. During their last upgrade/change, FB added a feature called 'auto share'. People don't like it. It seems to be something that is easily activated unintentionallywhen you are quickly scrolling through FB. This is something I do when I am looking for a funny picture to go on the  blog. 

(So it is your faults really)

I sent the information to my sister who luckily believed it. I apologized for the offense. I promised to be mindful. I also noted that emotions are very near the surface everywhere.

My oldest daughter is a person whose emotions are very near the surface. The Epstein stuff has been very triggering for her. In talking about things, she decided that after some very strident posts from a relative, she was not sure about attending the family Easter. After all, she has posted some pretty strident stuff herself.

In the end, she and her husband decided to have their own quiet Easter. 

I respect that decision, but it left me in a hard place. In the end, Tim and I decided to celebrate where our grandson will be. I know that decision will be seen as political. It isn't. It is based on emotion, pure emotion. It will cause hurt feelings though. 

So that is where I am, right now. I am still sick. I am just weary. I don't sleep well. It is not covid though.

I did not go to the No Kings Protest, which made me very sad. I wanted to be there. Tim went and he carried my sign 'Ain't no faux king way!' What a turn out we had! Estimates of between 320-350, quite a turn out for a town of 9500 people. Tim said that there was huge support from the people passing by, too.

3300 events around the world, drawing an estimated 8 million people. The organizers really stressed that the biggest growth was seen in red, rural areas that had supported trump in the last election. The tide is turning. I was at home on the couch, probably sound asleep.

There was a terrible tragedy here on Friday in our Amish community in Spartansburg. An Amish school was burned to the ground when two girls and their teacher had lit a lantern which had been filled with the wrong fuel. It exploded. The girls were life flighted to burn centers, one to Buffalo, the two others to Pittsburgh. Their burns were described as severe, noting that their clothing had been entirely burnt away. 

There have been no updates on them. The community has collected money for the families. One person (English, not Amish) posted that two of the girls were on their way home and exhorted us all to give the glory to God. I will hold my glory. When someone has been burned over that percentage of their body, they are not likely to be released the next day. 

Short one

I have a cold, so that has sidelined me. Hard to work when you can't breathe through your nose. 

Still we have been puttering around here. Tim is cleaning a shed out down at the old house. I worked on plants inside. I have about 4 dozen plants started on a table at a southern window. Such a hopeful thing...especially since it snowed yesterday. 

We had ten ton of gravel brought in yesterday. Spring = mud. This should help a lot. 

Hung a bat box today.

I am going to take a break from world events. It is just too much tonight.

I have been worried about a lot of bloggers this year. Tasker, at Yorkshire Memoirs. Northsider Dave. Tom. Joanne over at A Cup on the Bus.

Now I have to add Catalyst from Oddball Observations to that list. 

There are no stars tonight

How does he sleep ar night?

 

It took everything I had to do my 3 miles at the gym, even with the coffee. I dragged myself there and dragged myself home. I realized this afternoon that I am coming down with something. I did not get much of anything accomplished this afternoon.

Girls who were not pregnant when they were shipped to detention centers are ending up pregnant when they leave.

In the midst of all the horrible things, this arrived:

Flat Stanley! He arrived in an envelope and needs to have an adventure and returned to his elementary school with pictures and a story. This will be great fun.

I can't sleep. 

There are no stars tonight.

Nah...

 

I do not have much to talk about, unless you want to hear about house cleaning. 3 miles on the treadmill. Signing up for a fitness program. The joy of watching little tomato, pepper, and cucumber plants emerging from the dirt on their table in front of a window.

Nah. I wouldn't want to hear about it either.

The rest of the story.

 You know the story from last post? About walking around the pool with an dear old man, listening to his stories about his friend Johnny Walker? Well, in thinking about it, I began to wonder how a Scotch distiller wound up in the west in the early 1930s. Did he come here to start up an American branch of the family business? 

Prohibition ended in 1933. The business would have taken a while to build. Scotch whisky is aged, which would take some years. I have no doubt that it would have been a profitable enterprise but it would have taken a while to be generating the money required to run a ranch of the size that Mike so fondly described all those years later (circa early 1990s).

Down a rabbit hole I went.

Johnny Walker whisky is made only in Scotland was the first thing I discovered. 

More reading lead me to learn that there is no records of the distillery decendents trickling in to America. They were doing well in the family business and proud of their heritage. 

I was a bit dumbfounded. Mike was an old man, a stroke patient, and sometimes he could get confused and irrational if he was tired. Those moments were the exception to the rule. Or so I thought. 35 years later, I began to wonder. 

I typed in Walker Ranch, and up popped a pile of entries. There were several huge operations, but I think it is most likely the Walker ranch that is now an historical site. The business started out in lumber. The ranch grew in physical size and added cattle/beef production which allowed James Walker to pay off his debts and grow the ranch even more. Minerals were discovered, to include gold, and an English company came in to handle that part of the family business. 

At that point, I could see how the son of a man who owned a steel mill out east and a ranch owner's son from out west could cross paths in a private boarding school.

But...Mike's comment that 'the boys' would never make fun of how a boy's father made his money was, I guess, a general comment meant to not to say that Johnny (Johnnie) Walker was that Johnnie Walker. More, I guess that those children of privilege did not speak of their fathers' money and where it came from. 

So...that was an interesting detour.

We went up to make sausage with Levi and Mattie. That was great fun. We got there at 9:30. A whole hog, split in two halves lay on two large folding banquet tables. There had been a 2 hour school delay, so they'd already processed (and ground) the first hog. Mattie already had 18 jars of pork going on the biggest canner I have ever seen in my life. 

Levi separated the sides into three portions, front legs, back legs, and rib cage and everyone grabbed a knife and went to work. The meat cut from the bones was collected by Andy, who took it out to the grinder, and returned for more cuttings when he was done. In this way, we were finished with that part of things in no more than an hour. A neighbor had come over to shoot the breeze and it was a happy time.

280 pounds of meat was brought in and turned into sausage. The sausage stuffer was a hand crank, but it was efficient. As quickly as the basin filled with sausage, Reuben and Andy hung the ropes on six sturdy poles for the smokehouse.

It was a nice way to get a lot of work done in such a way that it did not seem like work at all. It was also amazing to watch 8 and 9 year olds wielding very sharp knives with such expertise.

We had a nice lunch of fresh sausage with fried onions and pie for dessert.

I came home and made cheese. It was something called 'Farmer Cheese'. It was not what I wanted. It is more like a cream cheese. I turned it into an herb cheese, and it is delicious on crackers. It was not a failed experiment, to be sure.

I also saved two legs from the bones to make a good broth. It will make a good soup base. I ended up with 7 quarts.

Shel Silverstein is always good for a laugh. 

Live and let live.