Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

So Gary is progressing right along with the house across the road.  He got the gross sink, fridge and range torn out of the kitchen and a new sink put in.  He put in new dry wall pieces and plywood around the bathtub area, then he painted the bathroom.  All of the flooring had been ripped out of the house by the ex-wife.  So Gary went around pulling out all of the staples and sanding down the plywood to smooth it out. A Lowe's rep came out this morning to measure the house for new flooring.  It came out to a total of 568 feet.  That includes the two bedrooms, the mini laundry room, kitchen, bathroom and living room. She put on her report that the subflooring looked like new.   Gary got a call from the store stating that since the subflooring was so bad they were going to have to put down new plywood and padding under the linoleum.  And to top it off they were going to charge us for 1000 square feet of the flooring, for a grand total of $5800 ...

Oh look. I’ve figured out how to get pictures into a blog post from my phone. Hooray!   Well. This will help me out tremendously because I don’t always have the time, patience, or access to blog from the laptop. Not to mention our internet is horribly spotty. Up and down all day long. Gary says if we weren’t getting it for free we would be looking for a different provider. Hmph! **** At the moment, after midnight on this Friday night waiting on pins and needles for my child to get home from a trip to Springfield with friends, I cannot remember if I have talked about this in here before or not.  But this Alpha Gal Syndrome, while my case is supposedly mild, has morphed my system into some sort of histamine intolerance, or mast cell activation syndrome. This is not uncommon, according to what I read in the various AGS groups on Facebook. In a nutshell it means that every strong smell, from food to household cleaners and soaps, lotions, deodorants…whatever… gives me an allergic r...

 A month after my mother passed away in December 2021, our neighbor passed away in his truck in his driveway.  That there is a long story in and of itself, but we will save that for later.  Though...well...on with the story.  After he passed we decided that we would attempt to purchase the property; not necessarily because we wanted it for ourselves per se, but because we didn't want anyone else to have it.  We wanted to be able to control who lives there.  From hence forth I shall refer to the neighbor as "Tuna" because that is what he wanted everyone to call him, something about his having been in the Navy when he was younger.  (He was in his 70s when he passed.) Gary always referred to him as Fish.  Haha..  Tuna did not have any children of his own.  And he was divorced.  He and his ex, Betty (not her real name) had moved to Missouri from Massachusetts in the mid 90s, I believe.  They bought this place together, mostly using...

  "It seems hard to believe" is the somewhat tired phrase that all parents use as their children grow up.  I remember twelve years ago driving by the high school and thinking; "Wow, someday Ellen is going to be going here." It seemed like it would be forever 'til she got there. But now for real it seems hard to believe that high school is behind her and she is rocketing along in time toward her adult life and career. This past weekend was Welcome Week at the university, so she has been there meeting people and learning the ropes, as it were, already.  She is still nervous about making friends and I know the first few days are going to be awkward. I am sure, though, that she will soon find her "place" and make plenty of friends. She was worried that she won't get the full college experience because she will be living at home, but she was reassured because this past weekend she met many other commuters who live in different communities around the uni...

 One of the great joys of summer are the melons!   On Friday a neighbor messaged me and said they had a bunch of watermelons and did we want any.  Yes!  Of course!  Ha!  Who can turn down a free watermelon? They also had a pile of cantaloupe too, so I got a couple of those.  Both Gary and I have lots of fun memories surrounding melons. Back when we were kids there was no such thing as seedless watermelon, so almost invariably as kids we ended up outside with a wedge of watermelon so we could spit the seeds out into the yard. We of course would have to listen to our parents telling us to be careful and not swallow the seeds or else we'd grow vines out of our ears! I distinctly remember that my mom would give my dad a large round slice from the center of the melon in a plate and he would sit and eat it with a spoon.  Now, cantaloupe was a different story of course. The ones we got back then weren't huge. I vaguely remember that half of one was ...

 Today I've nothing really much to say, but just wanted to start posting pictures again. For some reason my iPhone photos aren't linked to my Google account, so it won't post pictures on here when I try to blog from the phone. But here I am on the laptop, where my Google account and the accompanying photos on it, are linked to my old Android. Strange, but true.   Ellen will probably flip if she ever sees this photo, but I'm posting it anyway because it brings up many of my own childhood memories.   Where I grew up our lives in the summer centered around gardening; weeding, hoeing, tilling, harvesting, shelling peas, snapping green beans, shucking corn, and watering with garden hoses. There on the North Coast of California, in Humboldt County, it rarely got up to 80 degrees in the summer. I didn't even know what air conditioning was back then. During the summers back then it didn't rain.  Humboldt County is known for being quite wet in the fall and winter, b...

 Happenings from the House of Howard  Ellen has resumed pursuing her interest in playing drums.  Since she has been working this summer she saved up enough money and bought herself an electronic (I think that's what they call them) drum set.  She is faithful to practice every day.  I'm glad she has this outlet because I think it helps with her anxiety and general stress to get in there and whack away at the drums.  She has always loved music, it helps her deal with stress. Since I posted about it on Facebook there have been several people who have mentioned that they had always fancied playing drums, but had never followed through with it. I'm glad Ellen has followed through. It will give her something to occupy her, and something to strive for.   Gary has been super busy working on well repairs the past couple of weeks; seems like almost every day last week he went out to one job or another. I'm thankful he has Doug to help him. They enjoy going ...

 Actually, let's do the vaguely funny first.   Last week Gary and his sister Gail went on a driving tour to Kentucky and West Virginia and a loop around back home.  I didn't want to go this time, I don't do well on driving tours, Ellen had to work, and it just didn't work this year for all of us to go.  So Ellen and I stayed home and had the care of the chickens and Gail's cat. Princess, the cat, stayed in our little cat "habitat" that Gary had made several years ago for this purpose. We parked it in the shade and I made sure to take her frozen 2 liter bottles of ice and place on her shelf to cool her off if she needed it.  She did great.  I kept her food and treats in the house, of course.  One morning I got up and found the bag of cat treats on the laundry room floor; torn open with only 2 remaining.   I had wondered why Smudge hadn't been in to wake me up for her breakfast! Crazy pudgy cat. ************************** This past week, t...

 Life is not all gloom and doom in the House of Howard.  About a year and a half ago in the fall my sister-in-law planted 4 little thornless blackberry starts she'd ordered from a plant/seed company.  She wasn't sure if they were going to survive, but she plunked them into the ground and prayed for the best.  She had to make sure they were covered with netting to protect them from the deer and the ground hogs that wander through.   Last year she got quite a bit off of them, enough to take up some room in her freezer and provide her with a few berry pies over the course of the year.   Those 4 little canes went crazy, put off all sorts of shoots and they are bearing like they are on fire. Her freezer is as full as it can get and I have over a gallon of them in my fridge that I am going to work up into jelly or jam or preserves of some kind this week. Ha! Two weeks ago I'd put up a couple pints of freezer jam with them. They are starting to slow down...

Reading and writing are in my blood, you know.  My mom always told the story of the first night she and my dad brought me home from the hospital after I was born; my dad propped me in his lap and read the daily newspaper to me.  And this continued to be the theme of my early life; being read to. As far back as I can remember we always had kids books in the house, and my mom would read them to me. After I reached a certain age I am sure I wasn't interested in listening to my dad read the newspaper, but my mom read any number of books to me. I can't remember them all, but I do remember every year in school during the book fair I would order a pile of books. One series I remember from elementary school was Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books.  I remember a couple different series by Beverly Cleary; Ramona Quimby and all of her adventures, and Henry Huggins. The Encyclopedia Brown series about a boy detective, those were fun books.  Oh, oh, and I remember my b...

 It is funny/aggravating that my android gave me no trouble in downloading pictures to this blog.  My iphone is giving me fits.  It won't download them, I wait and wait and wait for a picture to download, then it tells me it can't and just quits.  Argh! So here's another quit post without a picture.  A post about pretty much nothing at all.  We have been busy running around back and forth and doing this and that; as most families are. Ellen has been enjoying her job at the resort on the river.  The drunk people test her patience, but they tend to tip pretty well.  Ha!  Gary has been delivering gravel, working on wells, and working around the place here.  There is always something for him to do.  He has made a flatbed out of the blue farm truck.  Yesterday we went to Lebanon and stopped by a garage sale where he found a long truck toolbox to put along one side of the flatbed.  It looks really good.  At that same garage...

 This is is a picture of my father; Lawrence Corley Davis.  I am not sure how old he was here, but he was a very handsome man, with bright blue eyes and very decided dietary ideas.   I won't go too much into the back story, because in light of my recent alpha-gal syndrome diagnosis my focus here is going to be on food, but to set the scene; when I came into being we lived on a 5 acre farm in N. Calif.  There were two houses on the property, my dad, mom, brother and I lived in one, and my dad's mother lived in the other. They were very much farmers; had a milk cow, raised a large garden every year, preserved by canning or freezing...etc.  My Grandmother Davis passed when I was about a year old, but my dad continued with the farming; with cow and garden and even a pony.  When the cow had a bull calf it would be butchered at a certain age and put in the freezer.   When I got about 5 years old my dad was in his 50s (he was 46 when I was born) and...

 The first thing I've learned that I think is really the most important is that calling AGS a "red meat allergy" is almost a misnomer; it barely touches the tip of the ice berg.   It's actually an allergy to the carbohydrate "galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose" found in the cells tissues and fluids of non-primate mammals..even cats and dogs.  However upon researching it, I have found that I am probably already conditioned to be used to the alpha-gal present in my cats/dogs, so they do not cause an allergic reaction when I am around them.  This doesn't make sense to me, but I have read online that some people DO become allergic to their pets.  I guess it depends on the severity of a person's sensitivity.  I supposedly have a moderate sensitivity. This alpha-gal carb is also present in pretty much every mammal byproduct and also in all dairy products. I have to scan labels for the following ingredients; gelatin, glycerin, lactose, casein, whey, stearic acid...

Last week I had what I thought was a great idea; I would have a friend cook up a bunch of ground beef (in the form of hamburgers and just some crumbles for maybe soup or spaghetti) for Gary and Ellen as a break from chicken or turkey.  On Sunday I gave my friend Erin several lbs of ground beef.  She cooked it up and brought it back to me on Monday.  So I wrapped 3 burgers tightly in foil and put them in the oven to warm up. Such a bad, bad idea.   It took maybe 10-15 minutes and I could feel myself starting to react. First I got faint; not really dizzy completely, but just really light headed and shaky.  Then a few minutes after that my pulse began racing. It is a very unpleasant feeling. I at first got a face mask, turned off the oven and kept on with supper prep in the hopes it would subside, but it didn't, it just got worse.   I took some liquid allergy medication and just went outside and sat in the fresh air to recover. Gary and Ellen ate the...

 (So I have tried to get photos to load on here from this iPhone a couple of times, but they refuse to cooperate so phooey on it for now.) Here is a brief rundown of life as it is going for members of the House of Howard.  Last Saturday Ellen and I went to her college’s summer orientation. It was fun and I think it helped to relieve some of Ellen’s nerves about her upcoming college career. She got her schedule and bunches of info, met a few of the other incoming college freshmen. I think she is looking forward to it.  In the meantime she is working 3 days a week at a local resort; Friday Saturday and Sunday, in the office fielding and making calls and all the etceteras that go along with a little convenience store. She works the evening shift Fri and Sat,  then works a 12 hr day shift Sunday from 8 to 8. She is enjoying it much more than she enjoyed cleaning the cabins last summer. Haha ******* Gary is keeping busy with hauling gravel, water well repairs and general ...

  But here’s a picture of cute calves!   Last Monday I had a scare.  All weekend I’d felt “off” for want of a better word.  I’d have weird sweating spells off and on and feel like my heart was racing, then feel fatigued off and on. Then Monday when I was fixing supper I REALLYbegan feeling bad.  I could really feel my heart racing, I was shaky and sweaty.  So Gary and I just dropped everything to go to the walk in clinic. They did and EKG and said while everything looked ok, there were still differences so I needed to go to the ER.  Soooo…we headed to the ER.  By the time we got there my heart rate had slowed, but I was feeling really shaky and fatigued. The short story is that they could find no trace of an emergency.  And even though all the other readouts below are messed up from my twisting around to take the pic, at least I am pleased that my blood pressure is good.  Ha! My mom always had high blood pressure, so I figured I would to...

Every spring I look forward to the red-eared slider pond turtles trekking out to lay eggs.  Last year I didn’t really see any come close to the house. This year so far I have seen two. One was a week or so ago, out by a tree by the dog kennel. The second one I saw was last week. She was just out in the front yard, right outside the window.    It always amazes me how they dig holes in the dirt deep enough to lay eggs in, just with their back legs. Look at the mud she churned up. They urinate to make the mud, I believe.  I am also always amazed how well they cover up the hole.  I put an aquarium glass rock there over it and have had it covered for a couple of days with a large bucket lid weighed down with a rock.  Almost without fail coon or skunk or opossum will dig up the nest overnight.  The next morning thee will just be a pile of egg skins there by a hole.  So far nothing has disturbed it  I hope they don’t because I’m going to have to mov...

 Remembering my mother, Mary Rowena (Campbell) Davis.   This year I didn't post anything on Facebook about my mother.  Most everyone else does, usually I do as well.  But I am still in the throes of post high school graduation anxiety from Ellen's graduation activities this past weekend, so I just couldn't handle another emotional post. Not that I  really had any actual anxiety at all from Ellen's graduation, but it was an emotional time, paired with throwing a party for her afterwards, so it was just too much for me to add more emotional memories on top of the mix. Of course I miss my mother terribly, but I wouldn't want her back into the dementia-ridden life she was living at the time.   Over the course of the 50 some years I was blessed to have her we made some fun memories and had a great deal of laughs.  We never did do anything grand as a family, really.  I remember when I was about 5 we all went, as a family, to New Mexico to visi...

 In kindergarten at the Long Lane elementary school, they always got T-shirts for each of the different grades every year. That way when they went on the big school field trip they could better keep track of all of the kids.  That spring they went roller skating in Springfield. Ellen got the skates on, but she didn’t really skate.  I did snap this picture of her: The shirt says; “Class of 2025 Starting it off kindergarten style”.  All of the shirts were a bit too big for the kids.  I kept it of course! This week put it on so we could snap this pic of her on her last day of high school  A bit snug now, but it still fits!   So cute!  

 At the end of every school year the town puts on a parade for the graduating seniors. The police, fire, and sheriff’s departments escort school buses full of seniors around the square, through the main drag of town and to the other school buildings. The seniors wear their caps and gowns and march up and down the halls of the elementary, middle and high school buildings, all to much cheering and fanfare.  Gary and I dutifully headed to the square, on the corner of Maple and Main. But the odd thing was that right at that corner was a swarm of honey bees!  Some were on the sidewalk and some were on the street sign.   Eventually, by the time the parade went by, all of the bees were up on the street sign.   We could hear the sirens of the parade coming and when they got to where I could see them I started videoing recording.  But then some lady walked right out underneath the bee swarm, so my video doesn’t show the seniors going by; it goes all wonky and shows ...

 This is something my in-laws told me how to do and I have done so for years, I don’t think I’ve ever shared the process in detail though.  If you just leave a sweet potato on the counter, or in storage somewhere, it will usually start to sprout all on its own. You can just break off these sprouts when they get a couple/three inches long. Put the sprouts in an inch or so of water, not fully submerged, just to where it will have room to form roots. Like so:  They love full sun, so keep it in a sunny window.    If you want to get a sweet potato to start sprouting, then just put one in water in a sunny window and wait for it to sprout.   There is really no need to use toothpicks to support the tuber, unless you just want to. It will start rooting after a while, then start sending off sprouts, or slips as they are also called.   Wait til they are long enough, break off and put in water.   After they have a bunch of roots you can plant them.  They...

  Behold above my daughter’s earthworm interest. I don’t know why exactly but on occasion she likes to find them and hold them for a bit.  I can’t say anything against this. Back when I was a kid in California I used to keep them in glass jars. You know, I’d fill the jar with dirt, poke in a worm or two and make sure to keep it moist and topped with dead leaves and such. They’d live for weeks like that. But I’d usually dump them out after a while.  ******** Last year Ellen decided she wanted another ear piercing so she booked an appointment with Qui Qui, a very popular piercing artist in Springfield. He is usually booked solid several months out.  Anyway, as you can see she had an appointment this past Saturday to get her right conch pierced.  It’s the little green flower above. It’s still a bit sore today, the Tuesday after, but is much better. As for myself, I have not one piercing. I think earrings are pretty, and Ellen has a bunch of super cute ones, but I’v...

Ok. I will begin this by saying I readily own up to not being the most stellar housekeeper in the world. There always seems to be something more interesting to do than dust, vacuum, or mop, especially in the remote corners. The great outdoors and the garden call my name more loudly than the vacuum cleaner does. We live in the country so, yes, we fight mice, spiders and random bugs and dirt and whatnot that gets tracked in.. It happens. I have little room to criticize other people regarding their housekeeping skills. However this story takes housekeeping, or lack thereof, into realms I cannot stomach.  March 15th our long time tenant passed away. He’d lived in our little rental house for about 9 years. He was a very nice guy and always paid on time, always had a joke. We rented it strictly to him. But his daughter would bounce from living with her mother, his ex girlfriend, to living with him… at least for the first couple of years he was there. Then the last 5 or 6 years, or longer...