0600 hours PST The third time is a charm so here I go attempting another diary now that I am wiser and older. The weather is crazy here but since that is old folks' talk I will try to steer away from it in detail and only touch lightly on medical issues since these are great topics to save for semi assisted living should the day come I find myself residing in such a facility. I don't want to be without an interesting repertoire at dinner time. Should I choose a place in Texas, that would be supper time. I made the mistake of over-fertilizing my lawn. I have to mow it every 3 days. That doesn't make for edge-of-the-seat reading so enough of that jaw-dropping excitement. Jaws are dropping only to yawn. I am considering ordering a hat. A great hat for an old eccentric mountain ranch woman, one such as myself. It is spendy but 100% beaver and waterproof. It sheds water like ducks back. I should save the money for my coming new dentures but ... no strike that last sentence and save it for future senior facility dining. The hat is handmade in Colorado, my birthplace, so I am tempted but so far have restrained my hand from pushing Order Now. I have been only playing the guitar once or so a week. I don't know why as I am losing a lot of ability I worked years to accomplish. It is easier to sit here on my lazy duff and pound the keys. Shameful but true. Hopefully, I will have something exciting to post about tomorrow. Maybe even something funny to say if I can get my neurons firing in the desired sequence.
0637 hours PST The custom hat just shy of $700. Lightweight, all-season, breathes well, and 100% beaver pelt. Custom made to fit my old noggin. Also shaped in my family's ranch tradition.
That's a beautiful hat, Faye. Disclaimer: Poster waives all responsibility concerning Faye's choice whether to buy this hat or not. (Poster doesn't want to see Faye without food at senior dining facility.)
05:15 PST east but dangerously close to the cuckoo's nest. The rain that fell here has been reclaimed by the heavy gusting west winds so maybe it will fall further east. A good root system is essential in this climate as these winds can dry the sandy loam down a few inches fast and in a hurry. As soon as the winds subside, I will turn on the sprinklers and do a little top watering. I had another snake encounter while walking the hayfield road. It was about 14" and my shadow hit it before I saw it so it zipped on out in the hayfield. I didn't see the head as I was trying to check the tail. I didn't see any buttons, but the coloring was correct for a desert rattler. Our garden snakes about that size are a light greenish color and the bull snakes are blackish. I don't know of any other snakes colored like a rattler around here. Ever since my neighbor, the ag professor died, I have no knowledgable source other than to go out to the experimental ag station and pester the scientist out there. They have better things to do than talk snakes with an eccentric old lady. I ask the professor's wife, now 97, and she said, "Honey, I have no idea. I never paid attention when he rattled on with all those species names, related families, and spoke in foreign tongues." She said she had never seen a rattlesnake only the greenish garden snakes. I would have dropped my dentures had I been wearing them. She has lived here all her life and never saw a rattler. It looks like another high winds day now as dawn approaches. I slept in this morning till 02:40 so I am a little behind schedule. I once got up at 3AM but this last time swap er roo messed me up and now it is 2 AM but I am working on getting back to 3 AM and hope they will honor the voter's wish and leave it be this fall. It never made sense to me to have an extra daylight hour in the evening for the longest days and then take away a daylight hour for the shortest days. All the years I worked and it was getting dark at 4 PM and I still had 4 hours left before I was done, seemed outdoor working person unfriendly to me. The whole mess was designed for the boaters and city folks that liked evening parties.
Received word that one of my cousins a full-time rancher in Arizona has died. He was in his late 40's or early 50's. His mother, my second cousin, is my age. A great father, uncle, and mentor to many, he will be missed.
Ok. Give ém hell or a little entertainment. Fill the page with what maks you happy or sad, what you like or don't, where you live or wish you didn 't. It's a horse of a different color down here. Go ahead, Sound off, we're all a bunch of weirdos but most of us read.
Sorry. I’m such a goonybird. I was not paying attention and plopped my post in the wrong spot. It does not go well right after you relate your cousin’s death. A kick in the seat of the pants to me if you want.
0532 hours PDT Saturday already! Where did this week go? Nothing accomplished worth risking finger joint damage from key pounding to write about. So the ranchers are talking about high hay prices and the shortage due to drought and the urban horse people about hemorrhoids due to excessive saddle time galloping around the paddock. Rain and more rain would solve the hay shortage and price gouging and a visit to the Gastrointestinal doctor to snap on some rubber bands would solve the hemorrhoid crisis. I was at the doctor a few years ago to get the old rubber band on the hemorrhoid procedure. If the nurse had said, "It will hurt like hell but only briefly, I would have been OK and proceeded onward. However, she says, "You will feel some brief discomfort," so I panicked, pulled up my panties, and zipped out of there like the roadrunner. I had heard that same bald gum lie at the dentist many times. Now I hear it again as a bald butt lie at the butt doctors. No way I am falling for that big bad wildly coyote scam disguised as Little Red Riding Hood and her brief discomfort crap.
Reminds me of the uterine biopsy I had a couple of months ago. Never again, unless I'm gripping the doctor's privates. We will agree in advance not to hurt each other.