goatherder

Now we have a cruise ship under scrutiny because someone who handled the first Ebola patient's (Duncan's) blood decided a cruise was a good idea. It came to light because Mexico refused to allow the passengers to disembark.

It seems to have reached Arizona from news reports.

In cleaning out Mom's pantry and cabinets I came across a huge stockpile of seeds. Some are way out of date. Some are seeds she saved. I can't bear to just toss them, so I will save them and plant them eventually. It will be interesting to see what the germination rate is for them. She had some beautiful hollyhocks that I want to keep going through the seeds she saved.

No one has thought to check potassium or magnesium. Imagine that! The cardiologist did put me on a beta blocker that had bad side effects and no improvement in symptoms.

No signs of a stroke. I do have weird numbness in my face, arms, hands, legs, and feet. Doctors seem to be next to useless. I stayed home from work today. I've already taken two naps not because I'm lazy but because of crushing fatigue. I managed to clean out the refrigerator and make a trip out for pet supplies. Beyond that, a wasted day.

I am at the end of my rope. I have had an irregular heartbeat on and off for a long time. I get short of breath when I am having symptoms. It finally got bad enough with chest pain to motivate me to see a cardiologist. They found that I have PVAs (post ventricular arithmias) on and off. They did a Holter monitor, but said they didn't find much while I wore it. I could only stand it for 24 hours because the tech who put it on me wouldn't listen when I told her I couldn't stand the tape they stuck on me. I took it off after 24 hours and had blisters where the tape was. I also have fibromyalgia and am very fatigued a lot of the time. I don't mean tired, I mean soooo tired I can't function. Sometimes at the end of the workday I worry about making it home in one piece. I have suffered from vertigo for a long time too. It seems to be getting worse. I have recently developed very painful foot and leg cramps, too. To top it all off, I have started having memory problems and trouble with directions. By trouble with directions I mean I may know that a particular place is to the west of where I live, but I will head east thinking it's the right way. Only when I realize that the street numbers are wrong do it occur to me that I went the wrong way. I don't seem to have a thyroid problem (one thing my doctor suspected). The cardiologist has no answers. Do any of you have a clue as to what may be my problem?

Unless the immigrants are bringing infected triatomine bugs (kissing bugs) with them, spreading Chagas disease is unlikely. I would be far more worried about TB and MRSA. I haven't heard anything about small pox in the immigrant population, but wouldn't be surprised if it cropped up.

Thanks everyone. Katz, I'm sorry for the loss of your dad.

I am in Phoenix. Shade your raised beds from the summer sun and your plants will do much better. My best garden was inside of a shade structure I built from 2x4s and shade cloth. The soil here is reasonably rich in nutrients, just add lots of organic material. A thick layer of mulch will help keep the soil moist. Close spacing on plants helps shade the soil, too.

Hi. I haven't been on the site in quite awhile. Life has been intense. Those of you who know me know that my mom lived with me for quite awhile then went to stay with my sister. Mom died in early Feb. My sister almost died with lung cancer last year. While she was recovering, Mom stayed with me again. Now I'm sorting through Mom's stuff. My sister is coming out in June to help. In some ways, I am dealing with everything ok, in other ways not so much. I feel guilty about not keeping Mom with me, but circumstances made it really hard. My DD and her two little guys live with me and Mom made that really hard. At this point, life is moving forward as it must.

If someone in the family has strep, it can be passed back and forth from person to person. Some people get it but don't show symptoms (kind of the Typhoid Mary thing). If one person has strep, everyone should be tested. In addition, all eating utensils should be sanitized.

I married my ex when I was barely 15. He was going on 31. It was kind of an "arranged marriage". My mom had married his dad (who was a very controlling man and an alcoholic). His dad thought it would be a great idea for us to get married and pushed the idea. I wanted out of the house and had few other options, so I got married. I tried very hard to be a good wife and mother. We stayed together for 14 years and have three wonderful children. Unfortunately, I became more unhappy with the marriage as time passed. He was under his dad's thumb completely. He worked in his dad's business, babysat his dad's drunken episodes after work, and when his younger, worthless brother joined the business to "claim his inheritance" (little brother's words), he went along with it. I grew up and became more dissatisfied with never having had my own life. I had planned to go to college then veterinary school, but never made it to become a vet because of family responsibilities and his unwillingness to support my goals. He remarried almost immediately after we divorced. She was a hateful woman who did not want my children around. She had two kids and my ex did everything she asked and more for them while short-changing his own. I remarried a few years later (big mistake), then divorced again after about five years. His second wife died a few years ago and I've been completely unattached longer than that. We have remained friends over the years and spend holidays together with the family. Lately, I've come to realize that this is the autumn of my life and I don't really want to spend it without a companion. I am close with my children and am helping raise my grandsons, but it's not the same as having someone who has traveled the road of life as many miles as I have. Would it be crazy to go back to a couple kind of relationship with my ex? Would you if you were in my situation?

There is no convincing evidence that he recanted. http://creation.com/did-charles-darwin-recant

What kind of back issue did you have repaired, if you don't mind me asking. My DD has severe back problems (a Pars defect). It's a broken vertebrae that is shifting in her lower back causing compression of the discs. She is afraid to have surgery because there is apparently only a 60% chance of it making it better.

Hmmm...Darwin observed during his voyage on he HMS Beagle that organisms were adapted to their environment (Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Islands, for example). He also observed that the fossil record reflected changes in organisms over long periods of time. I was never quite sure how this conflicted with the view that God created everything. Perhaps it's just a more detailed look at the mechanisms by which creatures were brought to their current forms. It's a good thing that organisms can adapt to new or changing environments, otherwise many more would now be extinct! Just look at the way plants adapt to changing climate. They spread into more hospitable environments and at times adapt to less hospitable ones.

I think this guy needs to be better informed. Tomatoes don't "grab onto" a trellis, they have to be tied or otherwise secured. You can just let them sprawl. You don't have to till a garden either and I certainly wouldn't want to till much using that silly little garden fork he had. And really, trying to do any significant amount of shoveling with an entrenching tool would be a back killer. Collecting all of the random bits and pieces of junk he had would also be silly IMHO. Why not just do it right and have the proper supplies? This would be for someone who didn't plan ahead and had to scavenge nearly everything.

It's fairly easy to do and is good enough to eat! You print out a line drawing or use one from a coloring book. Tape wax paper over it. Take that to a cookie sheet or cardboard. Outine your design with black buttercream frosting. Fill in the other colors. You can use a small paintbrush to smooth the icing and get it into the corners. Add frosting around your picture in the color you plan to put on your cake. Put it in the freezer for at least two hours. Make your cake and frost it. Take the picture out of the freezer, flip it over and position it on the cake. Remove the wax paper. Fill around it with the same color of frosting used for the cake and smooth it with a cake spatula. Do the edge decorations and it's done! I also did the lettering this way. If you do letters or a design that needs to be "right side up", reverse the image before you do the design in icing.

I have a Kitchen Aid mixer. It's the kind that you have to move the bowl up and down instead of the mixer moving. It can be a pain. They make one that has the mixer hinged to move instead of the bowl. I wish I had that kind. They are really good mixers. I would check local store prices too. It seems that Kohl's had them last year at this time for less than $300.

When I was a kid, my parents moved us to the middle of nowhere in AR. No house (it had burned down), no running water, no electricity. We lived in a tent and cooked on a fire until they managed to make one of the two barns on the property "liveable". We heated with wood, used an outhouse, hauled water from a spring, kept food in a springhouse, and nearly starved out. My brother was about 13 and went hunting. We ate a lot of squirrels and rabbits. It was one of the worst winters they ever had when we were there. We survived, eventually got electricity, but the next year we moved to a small town and when we had enough money for gas, we came back to AZ. It was an adventure and the experience taught me that it's not that hard to live without modern conveniences.

Obviously not a country girl. Unbelievable that anyone could think the deer are reading the signs.

You can trellis runners like squash and melons to save space. Keep the melons from coming off too soon by putting them in a stocking and tying the stocking to the trellis. Of course, you would want to plant melons that stay small like Sugar Baby.

If frozen food still has ice crystals it can be refrozen. The quality may suffer a bit, but it's still safe to eat. If refrigerated food has been above 41 degrees for more than a couple of hours, I would toss it. Of course, this doesn't apply to things like raw produce such as lettuce, tomatoes, etc.

Look for the Square Foot Gardening book at the library.

Here is the cake I made for my grandson's 6th birthday. I did a frozen buttercream transfer.