Monday, May 5, 2008
A full week ago???
Shared in Around the Homestead
Has it been that long since I've written? Hmmm...should have a lot to share then, heh? Well, really, I don't have much at all. I have a full mailbox....there are over 400 messages in there! UGH! I get too much email, I think. I need to pare down the yahoo visits I make  Just deleting all of them will take forever on dinosaur dial-up out here.Miss Emily is doing great. She is grabbing and turning that arm all over the place. So far she still has her stitches in  Her surgeons were great with us. As she had her visit to remove the drain, they checked over Jacob as well to save us on gas. It's quite the round trip and with a 15 passenger van that seems to use a barrel of gas....it was a great savings! When Jacob goes to see the plastic surgeons later this month, they agreed to page her surgeon and he will come see her progress at the same time then as well. All in all, they are both doing wonderful. God is truly amazing. Shame on me for ever allowing doubts of any size to play into my mind.We finally were able to get this pace mowed well. We are far from lawnmower deficient around here. We brought with us 4...yes I said f-o-u-r...riding mowers with us from Illinois. One has a tiller (wouldn't that be a nice one to have up and running about now?), one has a snowblade (we actually only used it for moving dirt up north), one has the mower deck. Well, we have 2 with a mower deck actually. Do any of these actually operate right now? No. Worst part is they weren't working when we a wasted the space to haul them down here, either. Pack rats. Dewey says he isn't one, but I'm certainly not emotionally attached to non-working lawnmowers....'nuf said there. Up until last week, we had a nice little walk-behind mower. It did a great job whacking off the ankle-to-knee deep weeds invading the front yard....then it sort of had issues being the only working mower I guess and now it's just a pretty ugly yard ornament. Peer pressure in the lawnmower world, I suppose. Undaunted, I struck out with Jennifer to tackle Old Blue...the Ford 5500 tractor. It took us forever to get the box blade off and the bush hog on. Easy 3-point hitch stuff my aunt fanny. I am not mechanically inclined in case no one noticed that before this. We finally got it hooked up and managed to knock out the entire 'yard' and the back clearing area, as well as the upper portion of the logging road. Ahh, it looked nice. I was a bit red in the face from the sun, but it was nice to be done. Well, at the end of the day, as we headed back to the barn clearing to park the tractor, something decided to quit working and I figured Dewey would be a widow by the end of the day...thought for sure I have done something to totally blow the hydraulics. Nothing worked, nothing moved, nothing lifted, etc. Thankfully, it wasn't the hydraulics, well at least not in the way I thought. I had given David and Jacob a ride back from the clearing and as David climbed down he apparently hit the lever behind me and shut the hydraulics off. Whew....that was a pricey relief! Dewey won't be a widow afterall. To show his appreciation, he disked the garden area behind the house for me  It isn't exactly plant-able tillage at this point, but it's better than watching it turn back to yard grasses and weeds!This week saw plenty of storm systems moving around. Missouri was terribly hit, as was Arkansas. Thankfully we say no deaths around us ourselves, but Friday evening about dinner time, we headed up to the neighbor's storm shelter. Mr Ted is on the fire department, so we caught the latest news on his 911 alert scanner. They had spotters all over Union and Tippah counties, and as things moved over the mountain toward us, we were the first to hear and headed to the shelter....several times over a 4 hour time span! There were wall clouds all around us here, and several funnel clouds dropping and bouncing back up. In Arkansas, these same storm cells kept ground contact for miles....here, they were just as strong, but didn't keep ground contact nearly as long. They ran through Booneville, about 12 miles from us, they hit Jumpertown with a fury and took out several buildings there as well. They sort of jumped over us and hit the airport behind us, about 2 miles over. Our damage was confined to several branches and a couple of blocked roads here on the mountain. Nothing at all serious, but we were extremely blessed in that. In town, 2 trailer homes were rolled with their families still inside. No one was hurt at all, but I cannot imagine their fear during that time. I think in stead of adding on or building out here to the house, we should just get a backhoe, dig a hole and use a few of those 800 cinder blocks for a storm shelter! I think that about covers our little bit of news. I told you we didn't have much to share, even after a week. Oh wait -- Saturday we spent the day with Leighann and her family, wandering around First Monday down here in Ripley. What fun. Ok, I have heard 'stories' about First Monday since we arrived here in Ol' Miss. Word has it, if you need it, you'll find it there. If you can't find it there, you didn't need it in the first place. Well, it was a great day, and meeting the whole clan was nice....but apparently I have everything I need, because I just didn't find anything I had to have out there. Granted, maybe this was not the best day to hit First Monday...those storms really tore up the area surrounding it overnight Friday, and the last front to push through was about 3 am...I'm sure most folks had way more to do than gather their wares and head to the massive flea market. I might give them another try next month and then decide if life can be lived to the fullest without First Monday in it  That's about it. Life is just trodding along out here. It's wet, it's soggy, and it's full of the everyday things that make up our homestead here....schooling, choring and planning for the future. Speaking of which...back to schooling! |
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