My excuse for not blogging more often is that it’s such a huge hassle to stop over at Kyle’s place, find a few minutes when his computer is on, not otherwise in use, and working properly; then the fact that I loathe typing on it because the spacebar doesn’t work properly, I always have a lap full of wiggly niece and nephew trying to show me the latest creations and that I never seem to have the time to sit down and write when I am over there. So you see, I have a good reason for not updating! It’s not that I don’t have anything to say because I have plenty, my usual problem is talking/writing far too much so it’s probably good that I am somewhat limited in communication avenues.

Well, what’s news here, I guess the biggest news for me is that David is coming out for a few days visit on Saturday, which will be nice because I haven’t seen him in over a year, we talk on the phone for several hours at a time fairly often (I finally had to get a cell phone, no I am not going to post my number here, you’ll have to ask for it) but talking on the phone is not the same as talking face to face, so I am looking forward to his visit.

After fiddling and more fiddling with the museum piece of a well pump that was in the old well I decided that having running water in the house was worth spending some money on in order to get it done right so I wouldn’t have any glitches or problems during regular use, so I started dumping money down the well and now, after throwing over a thousand dollars in I have all of the water I want! Finally! In the beginning the old pump system worked fine but I was stupid and tried to do a two man job all by myself ( a very common thing around here) and in doing so I broke an irreplaceable part which ended up making the whole setup useless. I was pretty disgusted.

The house project is coming along nicely, slow now because I have gotten past the emergency stage and am now at the comforts stage, meaning I have it all buttoned up and insulated and the windows and doors in so I can heat it. Now I am getting things ready for sheetrock and when the plastering and painting is done I can put down carpet and tile for the floors which will be a huge improvement over the wood floor I have now. The last few days I have built a piano nook, finished the upstairs floor, put in the upgraded double wall insulated stainless steel chimney (big $$$$) and have begun the stairs into the basement. I’ve still got wiring to do and plumbing before I can get the sheetrock up so I am trying to put a bit of a rush on that because I hate looking at this insulation. It’s so nice to finally have lots of windows! Before I had two little ones and it was kind of dark , inside, now I got a little carried away and put windows everywhere so it’s closer to a greenhouse than a house! I’ll have to do curtains I guess, otherwise all of the heat will disappear right through the glass at night.

I bought 6 more pigs so now I have a total of eight, but I sold 8 cows so I have fewer animals, I am eliminating all of the permanent breeding stock for the moment because I want to take a trip and I can’t with animals to feed. This is a trip (or series of trips) that I have wanted to take forever but have never been able to due to one thing or another so I’ve finally decided that there is really nothing stopping me now other than the animals so I had better get rid of them and go before arthritis catches up with me and I am too stiff and sore and crippled to go! It’s a two or more person trip because some things I want to do are too dangerous to do alone (rock climbing, and exploring caves for instance) but I am going to have to go alone because there’s nobody to go with! Everyone I know is either 80 years old (wouldn’t be much fun for them) or married (married people don’t like doing anything other than sitting at home with their wife/husband, certainly not going all over the country for several months camping out in the deepest wilderness eating roots and things). It will be a while before I am organized enough to go though, I have a lot to finish up at home, equipment yet to buy and lots and lots of planning! One of the requirements will be having a vehicle that I can drive several thousand miles without having to haul a trailer full of cash just to pay for the gas it uses, with that in mind, and the every day gas bill becoming alarmingly excessive (due to me traveling all over the place along with the oil prices) I decided to replace the diesel Mercedes, which I had retired to the Quonset this fall, with a diesel Volkswagen I had been wanting for a while. A Volkswagen is a LOT less car than what I am used to so I’m keeping my really nice gas Mercedes in the shop for the occasional drive, the 18 miles per gallon of $3.50 gasoline it uses will encourage me to keep the miles off! The VW gets between 55 and 60 miles per gallon, I haven’t driven it enough to test the mileage yet but when I was a lot younger my dad had 4 of the same car (well, one was a pickup with the same engine) and they each got around that mileage, one got 63, another got 55 city and mountain driving so I am hoping that mine will get around 60 with these flat North Dakota roads. Mine’s a turbo model so it won’t be quite as slow as some of them are, and I can actually afford to drive anywhere I want whenever I want without worrying about it so I really don’t care how slow it is!

I’ve been making more hospital visits than I like lately, my neighbor Ernie is 78 and his heart isn’t giving the good service that it once did, about once a week his blood pressure drops through the floor and he passes out so it’s a rush to the hospital where they keep filling him full of garbage that just makes him worse. It’s sad that he won’t try some natural things because I know that if he would just start taking a good daily dose of Cayenne pepper he would be in much better shape! He has an appointment at the Mayo clinic in a little over a week and I am planning on taking him because the drive would be too hard on him. I’ve been spending a good deal of time at his place doing the odds and ends that he just doesn’t have the energy to do anymore, it gets kind of lonely here so it’s really nice to have someone to visit with even though he thinks Hillary Clinton would be the best president! I told him I didn’t believe that was a job for a woman and he agreed but he figured that Bill would be a good help for her since he has experience in that field! I croaked out something about the fact that Bill does have experience and left it at that because I was about to have a mild heart attack and didn’t want to share it with him! On account of that sort of thing I can’t really talk about things that I usually like to talk about because we would hardly agree!

I made two hospital visits last weekend, another friend of mine fell and fractured his back so Kyle and I went over there to help with a few things, one of which was loading him up into the vehicle so he could visit the hospital, he is about three times my size (I am small) so it took a bit of work to get his wheel chair down the stairs etc. coming back home was worse because it was up the stairs! Then he had to go back to the hospital right after he got home so we did it all over again. I suspect the procedure was a whole lot more painful for him than it was tough for us though, I’ve never broken a bone so I don’t know how it feels but it must be awful.

Well, I am sure there’s a lot that I’ve left unsaid but this is a good start! I’ll have to see about writing a little more often because I enjoy it, once snow hits I’ll probably spend a lot more time at the library so I’ll hopefully have more access to internet and a computer that is nicer to type on!