News of the Day 16March2007

It’s still just barely the 16th of March, just.   I probably won’t get this posted before midnight tonight.  I’m really excited.  

I checked my blog stats and I have been viewed over 10,400 times!   I know a lot of those views are from repeat visitors, and I surely do enjoy the dialogue.  I have been watching that number go up for several months and wondering how long it would take to have my words and pictures looked at that many times.  So cool.   Thanks, everybody!

Of course, it was the Ides of March yesterday.  I lost control during one of my client’s exits and said “Beware the Ides of March!” to her as she was starting down my front steps.  She turned, with a very puzzled look, and asked me what I was talking about.

“You know, the Ides of March,” I said, enunciating the words more clearly.

“The Ice of March?”  she queried me, even more confused.

I should have given up, but I explained about the Ides of March being the middle of March, mentioned Julius Caesar.   Oh heck, this woman didn’t even know that Julius Caesar had been stabbed by the Senate after being warned by the soothsayer.   I gave up.  Jim had the exact same experience at the liquor store.  I despair of the local youth suffering from what passes for a modern “education” in this town.

I have been way too busy today.  I walked Ruby.  I went and received my one hour massage this morning after I made breakfast for Jim and me.   I picked a bouquet of daffodils for the house.  I have washed 4 loads of laundry and folded 7.  I gave 6 massages.  I went to my local dairyperson and secured my gallon of milk.  I made bread, roasted coffee, and did the dishes.  I contemplated planting my carrots and realized I didn’t have time, and put it off until tomorrow.   I spent some time multi-tasking by shelling the black beans I grew last year while I was reading Ngaio Marsh’s mystery “Killer Dolphin.”  Then the UPS guy came with a package of two trees from Miller Nurseries, so I realized the tomorrow we would be planting trees and put off until Sunday the planting of the carrots.  

I can’t do as much as I normally might accomplish this weekend because I am attending two Peace Demonstrations, one on the Square in Camdenton and the other up in Columbia.  I have been trying unsuccessfully to figure out a great sign to take the demonstration, and I haven’t come up with anything great.   I’d like to quote Micah 4:3-4, but those verses are too long to put on anything smaller than a 4′x8′ sheet of plywood.  Maybe I’ll just do “Thou Shalt Not Kill.  Peace NOW.”  I don’t know.  They’ll probably have signs available at the demonstration. I am carpooling to Columbia with N, one of my good friends, and we are going to drive the Green Flash up there to test its mileage on long trips.  It is doing 51.3mpg around town.  

When I told my dad I was going to a peace demonstration this weekend, he told me to be careful and not get in trouble.   He reminded me that the authorities could get pretty rough with demonstrators.   I told him a.) we are not in the sixties, b.) we have a permit to gather, and c.) we were holding a peace demonstration, and there probably wasn’t going to be any trouble.   After all, Rioting for Peace seems oxymoronic.

I’m just going to warn you that in the next few weeks I may not be real regular in my blogging.  It is time to plant the vegetable garden, the onion plants will be arriving soon.   We also have to prune the grapes, and burn the prunings.   We do not compost them because the composting process does not kill the fungi that like to infect grapes and we don’t want to recycle those spores.  I also have approximately 3 cubic yards of ground up tree branches and twigs cleaned up from the ice storm damage that I need to make into a compost pile so it will turn into mulch.  I have a big pile of manure right next to the pile of ground up tree material that I intend to mix with it.   We acquired a thick rubber pond liner to lay down on the ground before I start mixing compost.   I have learned over the years that if you try to make compost on bare ground by the time you get around to turning it the second time it is completely interwoven with tree roots and almost impossible to “fork”. 

That will be an ongoing process along with finishing cutting up all the limbs that got pruned out of our elm trees.   We are cutting them into stove lengths and stacking them in the wood shed for future reference.   There is some stuff we need to burn, too.

 Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I am not going to quit blogging, but I may not be around so verbosely or often as has been my wont.

Oh yes, and thank you all so much for your concern about my leg.  I have been contemplating taking another picture of it.   It is a truly amazing bruise, all the way from the knee to the sole of my foot on both sides of the leg, all the way around the whole calf.  This is because I have been on my feet as well as putting my foot up, so the blood from the original injury has had a chance to travel all the way up and down the lower extremity.   The blood products are starting to break down now, so right now the leg is all colors of green, yellow, purple, red, blue and pink.   The abrasion is healing nicely.   Turns out the reason it was looking infected was because I am allergic to the adhesive on Bandaids, and the area of the irritation included the abrasion from my fall.   As soon as I stopped using Bandaids, the wound started healing apace.   I am so thankful I did not break my arms or wrists when I fell, or sprain anything. 

Well, gotta go.  It’s late and I still have to get up in time to figure out my sign for the Peace demonstration.   If anybody has any ideas, I’d sure appreciate hearing them.  Ta.