Mt_Rider

I have a triangle-faced calico too. She'll be 12 this July. My constant indoor companion and fearless mouse-catcher. I'm getting an itch to have a kitten [tho mine still acts like one] cuz another friend of mine just got two bitty kitties. MtRider [Cute Cute Cute !!!! ]

It's really interesting and informative when we can get a perspective from around the globe. We have several ladies [possibly a gent or two] who hail from other parts. It's important to have that broader view. MtRider

I remember you..... BACK! Hope all is well with your DD. MtRider

So many choices in this life.....and mere mortals can't see the future of them. MtRider

LOL I know what you mean about *those* words. "snow" is one I'd like to see go away for the season. MtRider

One thing I know about soy bean straw, it is very coarse. Thick strands instead of thin. Might work to cover small plants as hail protection tho. Used it looooong ago for my horse bedding as a teen. Don't know about companion-type issues. Free is free...gotta be good for something. MtRider [...my goats would prolly eat it, being a legume. ]

Wow, you DID expand your garden, Darlene. Looks wonderful! You all have such advanced stuff growing and I'm thinking our attempts this year might be completely thwarted. First...we are still going down to 20 degrees many nights. But there are things that should be in by now or at least under lights in my basement. I just keep having TIME/ENERGY consuming stuff happen. It's been annoying and astounding...all these delays. I'm trying the straw bale gardening [so far I'm growing oats ] and the soda bottle tower [ nearly got to construct the first one today...nearly! ] and the potato towers [have two of those...nothing coming up yet...and Ambergris informed me that the Yukon Gold taters won't do multiple layers in those towers. Right now, I'd settle for just SOME taters in the wire tower so I don't have to dig in this concrete "soil" come fall. But I sure am enjoying the pics you all are posting. Memories of childhood gardens in Iowa. 1/2 acre or more in those days. MtRider [...might be only enjoying gardens from afar this year??? ]

You will love it, Cat! And....she DID say 'sequel' didn't she? Congrats to Martian and someday we can all say WE KNEW HER WHEN... MtRider :thumbs:

Wow, that's a Happy Mother's day, Arby! Yeah, the Kindle, etc are certainly a portable way of having a whole library. And Internet access too? Coool. All those resource books you can download. MtRider [...never too many books!!!! ]

Two of those are FREE for Prime members.... And apparently I have the soda can stove one? I don't remember getting that one. And, checking my account page...I didn't. Something is messing up. It's just not delivering. I'm going back to bed where it might be safer today.... ....never mind. It DID deliver it. It didn't do it in the usual way where I have to click to 'allow' buttons tho. It didn't bring up my KindleForPC as it delivered. ....I'm confused when they change things. MtRider Well, glad I have it tho.

Wow......just WOW! There really is a group of us who don't handle numbers like most people do? Thank you all for the NAME of what I've dealt with for .....lots of decades. Dyscalculia. I just called it number dyslexia cuz as an adult, I recognized the similarity to the reading type dysfunction. Wow....I'm kinda blown away. I've never met anyone who could relate to the 'number thing'. I could understand the concepts of math but couldn't do the arithmetic. I actually have some really different ways of calculating and it's all based on multiples of five. Cuz that was the only part of the multiplication tables that would stick with me. Yeah Jeepers. I know the learn-and-then-POOF! It's gone. And I could memorize the 'twins'. 2+2, 3+3, 4+4, etc. So 8+7...is sixteen minus one and thus: 15 OR it's fourteen plus one. Either way. Don't ask me how that's something my brain can compute quickly. 46+12....round the 46 to 45. Round the 12 to 10. So far we have 45+10=55. Then pick up the extra 3 that I eliminated temporarily. 58 THAT is simpler for me. I can still see my high school math teacher [algebra and geometry] holding his head in his hands as I explained HOW I got the right answer...the "wrong" way. But it was RIGHT for me. And believe me....MS exacerbates the problem. Likely aging-focus-issues do too. That's why I'm having more and more spelling issues but they can be so bizzare!! [and I think I spelled that wrong too. ] When the MS really got noteworthy [we can trace my MS syptoms back to age 7 ] I began to do things like spell 'of' ..."ove". Over and over, tho I'd catch it and correct it. And I'd look at something I'd written and it had letters missing or all the letters were there in the wrong sequence. Or a letter from the last sentence ended up hooked to the next sentence. Then there is a classic MS-Word-Search. The brain comes up with something close but not *quite* the correct meaning..often starting with the same letter. I'm great with vocabulary so that bothers me a lot. I need the word I'm looking for, not something close. Ah...you all have made my day. Can't wait to tell my mom about this. It's always been quite a mystery and today...today I have found out I wasn't the only one with this particular dysfunction. MtRider [....may this generation of children be able to avoid what we went thru.... ]

What we don't know about brain function very likely is far more than what we DO know. It's a good thing your son has an advocate. Too bad this has only brought a bit of help from the schools. I hope your move will bring your son everything he needs to find his own excellence. Have you been able to find any hobbies he can excel in? School consumes most of the time/energy and is the primary standard for accomplishment in children. But if he can be good at something else.... Way back decades and decades and.... well, way back when I started school , I could already read a bit (in an era when that was actully discouraged!) but my math skills were strangely awful. They did not improve. I thot I was stupid until a teacher I had for both 4 and 5th grades convinced me I wasn't. Funny, it didn't matter that I excelled in the language skills. Testing out at 99th percentile. But testing in 15th percentile in math....in that day, it didn't tell them anything. More likely they thot I was 'lazy'. In one subject but not in another? Anyway, it took me until high school to come out of the slump and apply myself, but I eventually did. Graduated honors from college. [but simply avoiding math is easier than avoiding the language skills.] And tho it hadn't been named yet, my mother strongly believes that I was 'hyperactive'. I still avoid math...I automatically tune out numbers when I encounter them. But my self-perception is intact. I simply explain, if I run into an embarrassing situation, that I have "number dislexia". I don't perceive numbers like other people do. I have no capacity in my brain to do so. I don't even know if they've invented the term 'number dislexia' but it works for me. I should have been taught on an abacus (sp?) cuz the hands-on learning would have activated other parts of my brain making comprehension better. No one knew... A lot has been learned since those 'olden days' and I hope and pray you and your son can find a way to access that knowledge and assistance. There are alternate ways of learning/retaining. You'd be puzzled and amazed by how *I* do the little math that I can't grab a calculator for. Kinda weird and sometimes laborious but...it works for me. He's got the extra challenge to find his own way. Tell him an old grma says he'll find his ways of doing things if he keeps trying! MtRider edited for spelling [while one of the language arts, it was also problematic for me. I've noted the MS has made both math and spelling much worse.

Meanwhile at 9,000' in the Rockies.... we're having SNOW for the second time this week. Y'all are making me jealous, y'know. I'm prepping the straw and hay bales that I plan to plant in but other than 2 potato towers, nothing is yet planted. We have also had an extraordinarily warm season. Never saw it's like up here. We could have planted some things but have been tied up with projects like acquiring horses, major repair to vehicles, dealing with power outages (twice in three weeks), etc. Like Darlene, I'd LIKE to get real serious about garden this year but.... I just can't seem to get to it behind the other things. Ah well, we NEVER get stuff in this early anyway cuz of late season temperature drops so, I'm not really behind. Just not taking full advantage of this early start this year. MtRider

LOL Jeepers. MtRider sees her waving her hand wildly in class...before she falls out of her desk chair in her enthusiasm. OK...but what if my email changes...cuz that's the other thing you have to type in besides your password, right? And...iPod Touch device does not have those thingies that Vic is talking about, do they??? MtRider [....laptop is fine right now but I have "history" with computers! ]

Wow, that does sound like a book worthy of .99 -- and I just learned how to buy a book that costs money. Sounds to me like the author got stuck on a theme...but I do wish they wouldn't kill of main characters. Other than certain grim survival fiction books, I like my reading to be "Happily Ever After"! By The Way.... um, the only wagon train I've ever been on was the virtual trip with Wagons Ho. Like some of the rest of you, I've read many, many real accounts and stories but Grew up with teachers reading us the whole Little House series every year, etc. I think I'd jump at the chance tho...even now with my limits. [unless the heat was a factor cuz that would kill me ] I prolly wouldn't sign up for a THREE MONTH trip to Oregon but up to maybe a week would be GRANDE. Well, ...it would be a grand thing to have done. I'm QUITE SURE there would be moments or whole days that I might regret it. But ....wouldn't it be grande to have experienced that? MtRider [ Get UP, horse! It's morning and Michael is ringing that blasted triangle! Wake up, you lazy bag of bones! ]

THANK you, Windborn! You must be from a younger generation if you can peruse thru books while watching TV. I'm afraid I've left that level of multitaxing.... I mean "multitasking" behind. Just can't do it when one gets older, tho I'd love to be an exception. I have a question.... but I forgot what it was..... .... ...... ........ah HAH! I remember. Is the Amazon account tied to your email address OR your actual computer OR what? In other words, if my computer crashes, can I go fetch the acquired books from my archived account there with the new computer??? Could I access to read my books from someone else's computer...like a library computer? MtRider [...even with the advantages of eBooks, paper copies are lots simpler! ]

I download a lot of classics from literature which I may or may not have previously read. I also down load a LOT of reference books. I don't 'read' them but can use them to look stuff up. [provided we don't have an EMP.. ] As for the others, some will prove to be dumb or boring and I'll delete them. Many others I will read. I've read a LOT of them already. Being disabled, I read while I can't physically do anything else. Beats counting knots on the rafter logs. If we ever have a type of Hooey that allows for these reader devices to continue working [and at least periodic electric to charge them], then I will have my library. If in such a way that all my eLibrary goes {poof} , that will be sad but I also have "one thousand" books in paperback and hardcover too. But a laptop and/or iPod is WAY more portable!!!! If I devour 4 books per week...times 52...that's 200 books in a year. Not even counting the reference books or ones I'll eventually reject. MtRider

Yipppeeeee...I was HOPING that it would be a rediculously L A R G E number of books. Thanks for the info. Anyone know how to compute for an 8GB iPod? MtRider

Everyone is joking about how MANY eBooks they are downloading....cuz so many are FREE! And we're all sure the big red light will go off like a strobe and declare: THAT'S IT! YOU ARE MAXED OUT! So does anyone know how to tell??? 1) I have Kindle For PC. I have well over 200 eBooks...Prolly closer to 300 if you add Adobe Digital Editions. How can I tell if I'm reaching capacity? Some of those 'books' are barely pamphlets and some are huges volumes. 2) For folks who use a Kindle device? 3 ) For anyone using a Nook? 4) Oh...and I also have an iPod [8GB] with nothing else on it but the address book. I truely wish to figure out how to download some of the books to there too. 5) What other types of eReaders are there? MtRider [...seriously, I'm the one that filled up my PM box on MrsS some years back... ]

HUH? What did you say, Ambergris? Yukon Gold won't work for this????? Why? That's what we bought this year. Are there any other ones that don't work? MtRider [...another layer of the seed taters,huh AH? ]

MtRider

Not to strike terror ....but the term Lyme disease is very, VERY serious. It is a disease that is subject to a LOT of contention between doctors. But I know two close friends who have the systemic, long-term version of this. I'd get that site checked pronto. And research Lyme for yourself - both sides of the controversy. Don't accept a pat-on-the-head answer. What you have might JUST be an annoying itch. I do not know what the initial symptoms of Lyme are.... But I'd make very sure, if I were you. MtRider

OK...adding what will look like green gummy worms to my freezer then. MtRider [..thanks ]

THANKS, y'all! I have my front window sill lined with pseudo-canning jars [pasta sauce kind] filled with water and medium sized aloe. Good grief! If all these *do* restart...where am I gonna put them all? I've got a tiny cabin with only the cabin-traditional window space. AND this plant doesn't seem to like summer-time direct light. Happy in the north window. I've never drank the juice. I like to have it for burns tho. Is there any way to preserve the juice/gel for applying to burns? Freeze, mebbe? MtRider ...uh, don't think I need more right now, Annarchy.

I was forced to move a large aloe plant. You know. The type where the 'leaves' were crawling out over the pot. They are so fragile at the root by that point. As expected, 90% of the plant broke off from whatever bit held them into the dirt. So...do I have baby aloe plants now? Or will all that part die? Will they root again if I put the ends in water for a while? Or will they root if I put the ends in well-watered soil? It's the one plant that has medicinal value so I'd rather not lose so much of it. AND...anyone know if I can 'harvest' the aloe juice and somehow preserve it for medicinal use???? MtRider [ I can't remember what I did before. ]