Grandchild Catchers Do Their Stuff

Silly plastic eggs hang mysteriously on my backyard apple tree in this strange photo.

'Grandchild catchers', I said when I hung them up with kite string three weeks ago, and today my wish came true when my delightful grandchildren from Illinois (and my beautiful daughter!) arrived from for an early Easter visit with us.

They got in around dinner time, and though it's now night and I am totally exhausted, I have really enjoyed being with everyone again and I look forward to seeing them again tomorrow.

I don't know what it is about grandchildren; I don't even really 'know' them, but I feel that I have always known them. They are fascinating people and I love immersing myself in learning about what their individual personalities are and what each of them likes.

I want to absorb everything about them so that when they are gone I can reflect and think about them.

By the way, they loved the eggs on the tree! :-)
(yawn)

One Foot In Front Of....

A memorable sunset picture from the west end of the Upper Peninsula concludes my busy weekday.

This morning I took the city bus to Marquette for a school related appointment and, along the way, I took several pictures. I previewed them on the computer a while ago and I really like them, so I am hoping to put a few on this blog by tomorrow.

Anyway, times have been kinda tough for us lately. We are starting to run low on everything, as higher utility bills and rising inflation has destroyed our small monthly reserve.

The kids are being good about it though; digging into canned goods and making their own custom made snacks. I'm surviving on shelled peanuts and sandwiches, though every night I pull together a semblance of dinner for everyone.

I just wish I could get rid of the (now) three day headache I've been tolerating. It's par for the course that we're out of all anti-inflammatory and allergy medicines, and it will be nearly 2 weeks before I will be able to afford more. Oh well.

I think it's allergies from the melting snow and I'm sure that the mud and emerging grass is probably contributing too.

Anyway, last night I used a heating pad on my neck, and that worked out pretty good. Maybe I'll just turn in early again tonight and use it again.

It's times like this that I do dream of having a boyfriend who give massages.

Although that's not anywhere in the picture for me- a girl can dream....!!

National Censorship

Although a major anti-war rally was slated to occur in Washington D.C. yesterday, I have not been able to find out much of anything on television or the internet, until I came to Michael Moore's site, which even had a picture (featured above).

On CNN.com there was absolutely nothing on the subject, and on my favorite editorial site- Commondreams.org, the e-mail link (for submitting material) isn't working, effectively keeping potential articles about the rally from being published. Consequently there was nothing at all about the rally on the site.

Coming from Marquette county, where traditionally the iron ore mining company has controlled the local media, I am familiar with news 'blackouts'. We used to say, "If you want to find out what is going on around here, all you can do is listen to what people are saying". Because it's true that time after time it has been frustrating and irritating to see an event happen right in front of me and find nothing on the subject in our local media. The locals often know more than the press!

But to take a national event, such as the St. Patrick's Day March and to deny national coverage of it is even worse. It smacks of KGB type censorship, and really points out just how corrupt and despicable American media has become.

Pet The Dog

Today is as good a day as any to take some time to tend to my animal friends. It's overcast and is slated to rain, and two of my teens are home due a teacher's inservice at their schools, so I am looking at some downtime no matter how I look at it.

The daily customers at my birdfeeder have slacked off lately; perhaps due to the warmer conditions, so I don't have to focus on them today.

But indoors we have 2 (very!) fat cats and 2 quirky dogs, which have been ignored a bit lately. Perhaps I'll change that today- brush out their fur and give them plenty of eye-ball-to-eye-ball attention.

Choking Chimney Smoke

No, this isn't some horrible science fiction movie in which a normal little town gets barraged with suffocating poison smoke- this is my small town
last Monday morning during the recent cold snap.

Because the town has several bluffs around it (which has helped during windstorms), there is nowhere for chimney smoke to escape to.

Consequently, on very cold mornings, vapor can be seen pouring out of every conceivable chimney downtown, coming from not only business smokestacks, but also from the surrounding residential housing, and then settling into a haze over everything.

Even our historic city hall has a stout chimney spewing out hot smoke.

Seeing this, I can't help but wonder- isn't there a law somewhere about such thermal pollution, or shouldn't there be?

Especially in light of global climate change- I really think it's time that we all put some type of scrubbers on our furnace chimneys and tapped off our dryer vents too, along the way.

I can only imagine what types of respiratory problems the people living within range of the highest concentrations of chimney smoke must be having.

Besides, is this any way to live?

Morning After the Storm

A two day deluge in our region of over 21 inches of tiny snowflakes has been challenging for even the heartiest of our northern citizens.

Even though the majority of the snow has passed, the unplowed roads have been making for very testy driving conditions, with only 4-wheel drive vehicles and snowmobiles confidently braving the roads.

Meanwhile, my trusty van is buried up to the door panels as well, stuck indefinetely in the snow clogged driveway. She's down with transmission problems anyway, and probably won't be up and running for several weeks. (I will be borrowing another vehicle in the meantime!)

While I stood outside taking these pictures, I heard the distant sounds of many snowmobiles zooming through the fresh snow and then I enjoyed listening to a chorus of hungry birds waiting to eat their breakfast at the just refilled birdfeeder.

However, there was no hum of traffic coming from the 4 lane highway half a mile away, or even the sound of the familiar beeps of front end loaders backing up in commercial parking lots.

Where the majority of plows are is anyone's guess, though I would venture to say that most of the snowplow drivers are probably resting up, waiting for the snow to completely stop before beginning the enormous cleanup.

The extreme weather reminded me of the times when I was a kid when we often got swamped with several feet of snow and thought nothing of bundling up in layers of clothes and trudging through snowbanks to visit our friends.

But now that we have global warming, our area has begun to have a very different climate. Throughout this winter we have had unusually warm temperatures (47 degrees last Thursday!) and we are way below the average of yearly snowfall.

In fact, the snow from this snowstorm is likely to end up melting into a slushy mess within weeks, the majority running off or evaporating into the air instead of sinking into the thirsty earth below.

But in the meantime, isn't it fun!

Raging Blizzard

from Accuweather.com:

"While the snow, which will also blow and drift, will impact the entire Upper Midwest, areas from northwestern Iowa to western Upper Michigan will be under the threat of a raging blizzard with 12 to 18 inches of snow and dangerously low visibility in severe blowing and drifting snow."

link

Battin' Down The Hatches

A well publicized snowstorm heads our way, fronted with gusts of wind that pull the few remaining birds at my birdfeeder in unexpected directions.

Indoors, we head for solitary pursuits and await the arrival of the March Lion. I build a fire in the woodstove and put a pan of chicken in the oven to roast, calm with preparation and years of weather experience.

Of course no one wants there to be school tomorrow, though the animals will all need to be fed and attended to no matter what the weather throws at us.