Truck - February 18, 2024

The Husband has an 80-something-year-old uncle who decided to sell his 2003 Chevy Silverado pickup truck.  King cab.  125K miles.  We went to look at it yesterday.  He drove it home yesterday afternoon.

Our driveway is not going to hold very many more vehicles.

But it's a great truck. 

And we have a grandson who will need some wheels pretty soon.

* * * * * * * * 

After dropping The Husband off at the uncle's house, I went shopping.

I know!  Can you believe it?

All I bought, other than groceries and two giant bags of dirt, was a package of cardstock.  

In about two weeks, I am going to fill this thing - 

- with trays of tomato seeds.

Friday - February 16, 2024

We had our 44th Anniversary Dinner last night at an Italian restaurant.  

On our first anniversary, I was four days over-due with Son #1 (and four days away from his birth).  We went to Memphis with the frozen top of our wedding cake, planning on dinner at a steak restaurant we liked, but it was Sunday, and the restaurant was closed.  We chose another steakhouse.  Our cake had crumbled all to heck when dessert time rolled around.  When the waiter saw it, he gave us a free dessert - cheesecake, I think.  

Before we started on the long drive home, I went to the ladies' room.  There were only two stalls, and one of them was occupied.  The remaining stall was against a wall, and on that wall, less than 2 feet from the stall, was a radiator that prevented the stall door from opening all the way.  I managed to squeeze in but squeezing out (without giving the baby a concussion) was tricky.  By the time I got back to our table, The Husband was about ready to send for help.

Last night's dinner was less stressful.  The restaurant had a Valentine's Day menu that was still running, and on that menu was a Chocolate-Covered Cherry martini.  Now, I love me some chocolate-covered cherries.  The martini was . . . okay.  It was pink and frothy and had chocolate syrup dripping down the inside of the glass.  If we'd been at home, I'd have put my whole face in the glass to get at that chocolate, but The Husband frowns on that sort of thing in public.  *snicker*

It had a kick, though.  By the time we got home at 7:30, I was longing for the bed . . . for SLEEPING.  I'd gotten up at 4:30 a.m. and would've been useless even without the martini.  I managed to stay upright until 9:00, when I gave up and went to bed.

Up at 4:30 again this morning.  It was still dark when I came out to the porch with my laptop and coffee.  The barred owls were awake and hooting at one another.  One of them has a call that sounds like something from a Tarzan movie.  

* * * * * * * 

Yesterday, I saw the first crocus bloom of the year.  The daffodils are up, 6" tall or better, and budding.  It appears that last year's new hydrangeas made it through the cold snap, but barely, even though they were covered.  Another bad freeze might do them in.  

I don't have a plan for today.  I went outside and cut back a couple of my rosebushes, but didn't venture very far from the house.  The yard is squishy, made even squishier by mole tunnels EVERYWHERE.  I need to find the mole trap and set it.  I need to start some tomato seeds, or at least gather up the supplies.  Earlier in the week I bought the fertilizer and lime recommended by the garden soil test.  It's too wet to apply them right now.  

Yesterday, I worked on the tractor painting and made it worse instead of better.  Ended the exercise by painting over a whole section of the tractor's "innards" (on purpose); will re-do it when the paint dries, if I don't paint the whole thing white and start over with a subject that is not a #*@*! old tractor.

Anniversary - February 15, 2024

Come 7:30 or so tonight, The Husband and I will have been married for 44 years.  Can you believe it?  I can't.  How can that much time go by so fast?

* * * * * * * * 

After I take care of a couple of work things, I am going to work on my tractor oil painting.  Here's a picture of it (propped against Not-Daddy's Radio):

This is from an image I found on the internet when I searched for old tractors.  I don't know who/what created it.

It doesn't look like much right now.  That rear tire is a b*tch.  And I should have picked a tractor that did not have its insides so shamelessly exposed so I wouldn't have to paint them.  That is not a lime behind the back wheel.  I don't know what it is, as it's covered up with weeds in the picture.  It's probably some kind of wheel/cog.  I'll see if I can find a different picture of that model that shows it better, but I'm going to cover it up with weeds, anyway, like the picture.  

No clue what to do in the foreground.  The tractor may be parked in a grassy green field by the time I'm done.

And the weeds may be morning glories instead of goldenrod.  ;)

  

Spoke too Soon - February 14, 2024

I guess it was too good to be true.

I was so excited to learn that my friend still had Daddy's radio.  It was incredible that he had found the parts to fix it.

We met at noon in the parking lot of the painting studio.  He put it in the back of my car, opened the top, and started showing me what all they had replaced.  When he closed the lid, my excitement began to wane.  It did not look like Daddy's radio.  The brand was correct, but the front panel did not look like I remembered.  My friend assured me that it was the radio I had brought to him, some 30 years ago.

When I got home, I called my sister and asked her to describe the radio as she remembered it.  "Well, it had a dark gray or black case.  A bunch of knobs across the front, and some metal switches.  And I remember a semi-circular dial...."  All of these features were correct.  But I remembered the radio having two semi-circular dials, and this radio had only one; there was a square speaker panel on the right, where the other semi-circular dial should have been.  I did some research on the model number of the radio I brought home.  It was built in the 40s; the story I remembered was that Daddy had bought the radio new, when I was a baby (in the late 50s).  

I texted my nephew (oldest of my parents' grandchildren) and Son #1 and asked them to describe the radio.  My nephew sent a picture of what he remembered the radio looking like.  It had two semi-circular dials.  I texted the picture to my brother, along with a picture of the radio I had brought home and asked which of the two most resembled Daddy's radio.  He picked the one with two dials.

So I am convinced that this is not Daddy's radio.  And I'm also convinced that if Daddy's radio still exists, my friend doesn't have it.  

:-(

* * * * * * * * 

In painting class yesterday, I worked on an oil painting that I started back in December, a picture of an old rusty tractor.  This was a mighty ambitious project for a beginner - all those tractor "doo-dads."  I worked on the tires in class, and worked on them some more on the back porch once I got it home.

Oil is not a good medium for me.  I am a messy painter (oil paint is forever if you get it on your clothes).  This morning, while writing this on the back porch, I stopped to go to the bathroom, and as I was washing my hands, the mirror showed a big blob of burnt sienna on my chin that wasn't there last night.  Evidently, I had smeared paint on the porch table yesterday, and had gotten into it this morning.  I scrubbed my chin clean, but 30 minutes later when I was getting dressed for work, there was burnt sienna paint on my chin again.  After getting dressed, I went on a hunt for a stray paint blob and eventually found it on the bottom of my laptop.  

Good grief.

Perhaps I should stick to watercolors.

A Relic Restored - February 13, 2024

Wow!  Just wow!

When I was a baby, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, my father worked on a river boat.  In those days, no one had cell phones and computers - we were lucky to have a party-line home phone - and it was difficult to know when/where Daddy would be leaving the boat and coming home.  My parents' solution was to buy a Hallicrafter ham radio receiver.  We did not have a transmitter, but we could find the boat's communication channel on the radio and figure out approximately where it was and what time Daddy would be getting off the boat.  For an antenna, Daddy strung a copper wire out the living room window to the top of a nearby willow tree.  That radio would pick up channels all over the world.  

Daddy quit the river boat when I was a toddler, but the radio still served us.  When the TV would blow a sound tube, we could pick up the TV station on the radio and listen while we watched the mute TV.  The words and the mouth movements sometimes didn't *quite* match, but that was the case sometimes, anyway.  

Daddy loved that radio.  Eventually, it migrated from the living room to his bedroom.  He would listen to it, on and off, all night.  He loved "Radio Reader," and got my boys hooked on the program.  They'd lay in bed with him and listen to Dick Estelle reading books aloud.  But by the 90s, the radio had quit working.  The old tubes and parts were hard to get.  The radio became a dust collector. I bought Daddy a small radio that picked up stations other than am/fm radio, but it wasn't nearly as enjoyable for him. 

In about 1991-1992, I took the radio to a repair shop to see if it could be fixed.  The manager of this now-defunct chain store was a ham operator and belonged to a radio club, and he had good hopes of finding the parts needed to fix the old radio.  At that time, I was operating a business, myself, and was working long, stress-filled hours.  The radio was the least of my worries.

Maybe more than a year later, I remembered the radio, but when I went to the repair shop to check on it, the shop was closed, out of business.  I had known the owner for quite some time and was able to get him on the telephone.  He said that the stuff from his shop was stored, somewhere in the county, in a pole barn that belonged to a fellow radio club member.  He said he'd see if he could locate it.  I "knew of" the guy who owned the pole barn and figured my chances of getting the radio back were slim to none.  My repair guy never called me back.  

Yesterday, I remembered the radio again.  It has been 25+ years since I've seen/spoken to the radio repair guy.  I didn't even know if he was still alive.  I found his son on Facebook and sent him a message.  He replied with his father's telephone number.  I called him last night.  

He has the radio.  Twenty years ago, he took it to his brother, an electronics whiz, to see if it could be repaired.  The last time he tried it, it worked.  He is going to hook it up and try it out today.  Whether it works or not, I'm going to pick it up this afternoon.

I am thrilled, and utterly surprised that he still has the radio after all this time.

Son #1 loves radios, has a nice CB radio setup, himself.  If he wants it, the old Hallicrafter may live at his house.

* * * * * * * * 

Yesterday's rain changed to snow around 6 p.m.  We got a pretty good dusting.

It's not sticking on the roads, but bridges and over-passes are treacherously slick with "black ice."

Today is painting class day, but I don't know if the ladies are going to venture out.  If they open the studio, I will probably go.

L-o-n-g Day - February 12, 2024

It's 1 p.m, and it's already been a l-o-n-g day.

Son #1 was scheduled for a heart cath today and needed me to take him.  (Thankfully, the test did not reveal any serious problems.)  We had to be there at 6 a.m., which means we had to leave his house at 5 a.m., which means I had to get my butt up and moving early.  As soon as the football game was over, I set the coffee pot to come on at 4:30, told my phone to wake me up at 4:40, and went to bed in the spare bedroom (so the alarm wouldn't wake The Husband), wearing the clothes I planned to wear to the hospital.

Most nights, I read in bed for about 5 minutes (if it's not a particularly interesting book) before falling asleep.  It's like I have an off/on switch that activates when I'm horizontal.  And, though I get up early, most days, I generally sleep through the night.  

Not last night.  

At midnight, I woke up hungry.  Got up and ate a piece of toast, drank some buttermilk, read a little while, went back to bed.  At 2, I woke up again, still wearing my glasses.  Got up to pee.  At 3, I knocked my Kindle off the bed; it hit the hardwood floor with a loud pop.  (Good thing I'd already peed, eh?)  At 4, I just plain woke up and got up for good.  

It was good hanging out with my son today, even though it was kind of scary.  Considering his family history, I'm glad he got checked.  

I need to find something productive to do for the rest of the afternoon.  A nap sounds enticing, but it would ruin me for two days.

Whatever I find to do, it will be inside.  It's raining, and colder than a well-digger's butt out here on the porch.

Finis! - February 11, 2024

The Grandchildren Pop-Up Valentine Card Project is finished!  

Can I get a Hallelujah!?

It was a mistake to mail Granddaughter #3's card before I finished her siblings' cards.  I texted their mother and warned her that it was coming.  She will hold it until the other two cards arrive.

I am not particularly happy with any of the cards.  This is "par for the course" for me; I am never happy with anything I do. Hopefully, most of the grandchildren are too young to wonder if I was drunk when I made their cards.  

* * * * * * * *

Rant:

I hate those web sites that make you click through screen after screen to read a whole news story. Henceforth, I refuse to keep clicking.  

While I'm ranting, how about these politicians, eh?  

* * * * * * * * 

I would not let myself go there on the subject of politics, so I went outside and puttered around in the yard.  Turned the compost, raked some leaves out of the beds where perennials will soon be sprouting, planted some radish seeds that have been here for years and a few broccoli seeds in the flower bed by the back door.  

I also re-styled Richard's hair.  He's been sitting there, bald, for a couple of years. 

Let me tell you, it's HARD to get chia seeds to stick to round things.  You have to soak them in water, and they get all gelatinous, but not gelatinous enough to defy gravity.  His hair slid off the back of his head about 10 times.  Spooning in back on reminded me of feeding a baby, where you scrape that same spoonful of sweet potatoes off his chin and feed them to him again.  ;)  There were a few banana pepper seeds in Richard's try that got mixed in with the chia slime, and they stuck to his head just fine.  I left them there.

There are still some chia seeds in the packet.  I'm going to rough him up with a wire brush next time.