It’s getting close to a year…
January 24, 2009 is the date of my first post after switching to WordPress. I’ve only written 70 more blog entries since then (counting this one). Obviously I’m not a prolific blogger!
I never have redone my classes in blog format. Always meant to, still have all the html and photos, just never got to it. That was the main focus of all my other websites. And while it was pretty handy when I was teaching online classes… well, to change the format to fit into WordPress is a lot of work! I’d basically have to start over… and a lot of those photos were NOT very good. Plus… well, I don’t teach online classes any more. No one has ever asked me to redo the classes, either.
Some of my stuff is still available online, anyhow. Even though my user accounts have been deleted I still managed to download photos and such from old websites. Kind of weird, but as my sister said: the internet is forever! (what she really meant was “don’t post anything you will regret later” …heh!)
So, my year in review… what I remember most…. not always in chronological order…
First of all… We survived the ice storm that happened right after I started the new blog. A week of total ice and trees down and the power out for days. Then we took BuddyMack back from his owners abandoning him. Before we took him back, I fell down in the ice going to check on him and give him food and water and gave myself almost whiplash. Then I got let go from my job and was unemployed. Jasmine got pregnant from the Rottie next door and gave birth to 12 puppies, but we moved her to live with her owner just in time, before she had the pups… Whew.
I got to do some visiting with a friend I rarely see… twice I drove over to OKC for visiting. Had lots of fun. Learned new stuff, got to play with craft stuff and awesome dogs, not to mention my awesome friend. When I grow up I want to be like her. Jan is an inspiration to me always.
Then I started going to the local farmers market to sell my tie dye and didn’t do too badly. Never did have enough veggies to take, tho, because I got called back to work and had to quit doing the farmers market. Still, we froze massive amounts of blackberries and tomatoes and I even roasted a lot of peppers which then got sliced and frozen. I have a lot of jam making to do yet… tomato jam and blackberry jam! I prefer cooking jam in the winter… no one minds the house being heated up! And I seem to have more time for indoor stuff in winter, too… hmm.. :)
Bought another used boat, didn’t sell the first one, and after not catching anything while fishing in the day time we hooked up lights so that we could go night fishing in the little lake a mile away. Caught plenty of catfish to stock our pond and took the across-the-road neighbors teenager with us one night. That was fun! We gave him a lot of the fish from that night, but I guess none of his sibs like fish as he came back with most and we put those in our pond, too.
My daughter came to visit and her boyfriend, too. Sarah drove down from Chicago, Jamie flew down from his home. We had a good visit, Sarah and I dyed things and I cooked “real” barbeque for them. We went on a hike at the little lake… supposedly to go fishing, but we never found a good place to fish from so we turned back before I was totally wore out. My adventures with barbeque were funny… my old smoker was ready to be retired but I got one last use out of it and hiked back and forth between the barn and the house cooking slabs of ribs. The kids went hiking one day and I told them they would get rained on… they came home soaked, totally soaked. But they had fun while they were here. And so did I! :)
I bought veggies… green beans… from a farmers market to make vinegar beans for Ron. Not quite pickled beans, but they are a bit tart. He loved them as a child and I was trying to recreate an old time recipe. I only got 2 quart jars out of $10 worth of beans, so I expect I’d better grow my own this year. Lot of work, but for Ron of course I will do it. :)
Oh, and the neighbor next door (Brent) planted a garden big enough to feed a small town. I got a LOT of free produce from him, including buckets and buckets of cukes. Made lots of jars of pickles. Almost all in quart jars… except for a few pints of Sweet Lime Pickles. Sweet Lime Pickles are VERY good. People in other states beg them from me. :) Brent also shared some sweet corn with us and I have to say… that was the best sweet corn I’ve ever had in my life. It was perfect. Great neighbor to share his garden produce with us like that! I tried to share our blackberries with him and his folks, but no one came over to pick em… so I will probably just take over jars of jam for them when I make it.
I just asked Ron what his memorable thing was from the last year… and he said ICE STORM. He spent a lot of time cleaning up the debris with only some help from me. He did the chainsaw, I helped pick up and move the smaller stuff and stack the firewood sized stuff. We had a LOT of bonfires over the spring, summer and fall, until we finally burned the last of the giant piles of stuff too small to cut up for firewood. There is another pile building… what with wind storms and such more debris has fallen down. It’ll be a good start to the year when it gets warm enough to sit outside again! I think the last big bonfire was in September… my son showed up on his birthday and we were down below the barn burning the last of it. Kid almost left until he noticed the light from the fire.
In the late summer my son moved out of my mobile home to go live in OK with his girlfriend… she moved over there to teach school. That meant that I had to bring my little dog Rita over here to Ron’s house to live. I should have done it anyhow, but I was worried about her and that highway out there. Too close to the house. So far Rita has been fine but we did have a BAD scare when she went visiting across the road and didn’t come home until a car was coming. Augh! She was nearly hit but backed off just in time. I keep a closer eye on her since then. Hyper dog is still hyper… but she’s been diagnosed with CHF a few days ago.. on medication now. Considering how much she makes Ron smile… I hope she’s got quite a few years left. Rita is a fun dog, and I love her… but she just makes Ron’s face light up. It makes ME happy, too, that my little pest has won a place in Ron’s heart.
The beagles are doing just fine, and BuddyMack has been super even with all the horrid weather we’ve had that keeps me from walking them. He just doesn’t eat as much food as when he gets to run, and yesterday I went out and he’d buried his bowl with the previous nights food! Beagles do tend to bury stuff… but still! His dish was almost invisible under all the dirt and stuff. Silly dog. They are all silly, they won’t eat in the house except for treats and nummy bones, so no matter the weather I’m out there feeding them every evening.
This fall hasn’t been that interesting, but we did acquire a new cat for a while. We had a big rainstorm that flooded the river and the lake up over the roads. Lots of rain. And then when we went to walk the beagles right after that, Ron could hear a cat meowing in the woods. He stopped, called “Kitty Kitty”. And there is a strange orange kitten right there…. climbing up a tree to get away from the beagles. So we took him in, named him Garfield and the younger cats welcomed him to the family. Heck, all the cats came running down to see what was up… and then escorted the new cat back to the porch. But pretty soon our grown up cats started picking on him. He’s moved across the road now. Poor guy, still comes here to eat, but mostly what he wants is petting business. Poor homeless cat, I see him going to hide in the culvert a lot. He does hang out across the road, tho… sleeps with Cocoa Puff on their back deck in a little dog house. I can’t save every animal that gets dumped, we have more than we can really afford now.
2009 had it’s ups and downs… but it wasn’t a bad year. 2010 oughta be just as interesting. (or boring, the way I write it, lol!)
Gotta work on that… the boring writing, that is. Or not… I am who I am, and this is my blog. Happiness is all I ever resolve for… and I have that most of the time. :)
hugs,
Vyx
probably longest post ever, yikes!
Great summary of the year, Vyx. I’m falling behind on my blogging too.