kappydell

My prayers are with you and your family for strength and acceptance whatever happens, if not a cure. Grandma sounds like she is one special lady and very brave.

Well here I am again. Feeling useless as all get out, even though my brain tells me it is not so. I am moving at last from my old house, it was packed to the rafters with things I had saved, and now I am forced into desperately sorting and selling, and donating things I'd much rather keep. That part is bad enough; but due to my hip and being on a walker, I can't help with the moving. My friend and my family members have been killing themselves moving my stuff; now the budget is shot to heck and I can't even pay my bills. I never felt so bad in my life - worthless, crippled up and worst of all, a burden to my friend and family. I try not to let them see me cry. I dont have time for it between calling my creditors and working out payment plants, and scrounging money to pay even those things. I cant go on relief- I make too much money; but it is gone practically before I get it from paying one backed up bill or another. Tomorrow I will call the credit union (they say my credit is top rate) and see if I can get a loan to help out. But I still am fighting this feeling of being a useless burden. How I wish the drs would quit stalling and fix this d**m HIP!!!! Im afraid it will be so damaged by the time they get to me it will be unfixable. And no, I cant even blame medicare....I have the best insurance from my former job, pays for everything. I don't understant why all the foot dragging now. Oh well, thanks for the opportunity to vent.

Rubbin alcohol will remove ink from vinyl, too.

You could develop a sudden love of viney plants on trellises to help hide the deck a bit. Depending on how high the deck is, you can use similar trellises or train plants up a lattice wall to hide what is underneath, even if it is 'only' a shade-deck. I did this with a friend about 10 yrs ago and now it is all the rage around here (the shade deck under the sunny one). Unfortunately, trailer parks are not known for their privacy, nor their residents for minding their own business. And since you are renting the spot, you cant dig a moat or put up an electric fence (chuckle ruefully). You need to discern whether neighbors who strike up conversations with you are a) friendly, merely nosy, or c) fishing for more information so they can steal your stuff. That comment about you working together sounds like fishing to me, but I am a suspicious person. Even if it is mere nosiness, try to keep answers non-commital. It is hard, but talk about sports or the weather, gas or grocery prices, what you heard on the news (that is a good one), or anything except your personal life, you presonal opinions, or personal plans unless know you can trust that person absolutely, plus their friends. (People talk about things to other 'trusted' friends, then it spreads to others, and the next thing you know a burglar comes a calling). I did this for many years, and even joked about being a "hermit" to those who kept wondering (hinting out loud) why they never saw or heard from me much and told their (questionable) friends that I was unfriendly. I was not unfriendly, I just didnt trust their big mouths and inability to keep anything to themselves. So I just told them I got 'peopled out' and needed my alone time. It helps if you say a friendly 'hello' 'looks like rain' while you keep walking purposefully. It makes them think you are too busy to talk, rather than being secretive. Those who are merely nosy can be placated with such things. Those that are fishing for information can be joked with (usually) to turn their attention to other things. Only a few die hards had to be told that I did not discuss personal items except to my spouse (or psychiatrist, or mother, if you prefer). Then I would bring up the hermit jokes. (You know, "the nice thing about being a hermit, is that you can wear comfy clothes, sleep in and ignore the phone"...and the like. Another popular joke for telling people to back off with the questions, is the one about "i could tell you, but then i'd have to kill you"....said jokingly.) The fence is a good idea, even if it does not hide as much as you would like. What it does do is clearly mark the boundaries between public land and private land, and make it clear when someone is trespassing and can be dealt with more severely than someone who can claim that they merely blundered into your yard. (Isnt it incredible how 'stupid' people claim to be when they are trying to get out of taking responsibility for their actions?)For privacy from above, a big umbrella is nice and looks natural, but watch out for windy conditions, or you may end up with an expensive kite! I do not know if concealed carry is an option for you. Now don't get excited, I do not necessarily mean a firearm; in my state concealed carry includes stun guns, tasers and the like. You should not let anyone know you have one, just keep it hidden 'just in case'. It does much to make you feel less like a victim in your own home. Certainly carry and store it safely and securely (a small gun safe for when you are not carrying it) and never, ever, EVER, let anyone know you have it. There are those unsavory types who just look on it as one more thing to steal, worth money and the risks of taking it away from you, maybe using it on you in the process. Proceed with caution if you choose the armed route. If someone in your family circle drinks, or has anger problems, or other emotional issues, the weapon may well be unfeasible for you to have around them. Discuss with your husband a verbal signal word that he can use to let you know it is him wandering around the house in the dark, rather than an intruder. Spouses have been accidentally shot. It is very unsettling to live in a place where you do not feel safe, and which requires constant security precautions. It is also hard, and you have my sincere sympathy that it is necessary. But it must be done until you can get to a more secure home. It is hard to explain to the children in such a way that they do not tell other acquaintences (they do not have the ability to discern as clearly as an adult just who is safe to talk to) so it is perhaps better to just not tell them you have security issues. If you treat it matter of factly, they will simply assume it is the way everybody lives, and hopefully won't have any 'interesting' information to 'share' at school during discussion times other than their new toy or a family outing. Keep your chin up, and keep up your precautions. Its worth it. Hopefully, someone can think of more things to help you live in the wolf pack.

I was traveling to a work unit meeting (I was a state trooper at the time). Our HQ put out the info that a plane had crashed the Towers, that it was apparently an act of terrorism. When I got to the HQ we all watched TV and saw the 2nd plane hit; then heard the info on the other planes' fates. I remember going home that day thinking that they had picked on the wrong country, because Americans do not cower in terror, we fight back against such international bullies. I also remember wishing Reagan was president again (they were afraid of him!) After that we all got back to work with a heightened eye for potential terrorist acts. When people came up to me and thanked me for being a police officer, I told them it was an honor. Our training also became more military in nature, and we certainly took it all more seriously.

Hey, now wait a minnit! I have canned cabbage, and though it gets stronger tasting, if you dislike it, all you have to do is rinse and re-heat in fresh water to tame it down. Id add drain it again, then fry it with the bacon to flavor it. It also makes swell pickled cabbage aka 'canned coleslaw' (fat free, of course). Now broccoli or cauliflower, they turn brown AND strong flavored. I freeze or dehydrate those.

Mrs Grieve's Herbal is available (free) on line. A relatively (at least in the 20th century!) english herbal, excellent and has recipes here and there. The libraries usually have several. Look for one that is fairly recent. You might also see if they carry the magazine 'Herbs for Health' for the most recent research info.

you can burn any fat for light, once you learn how. remember 'little house on the prarie' books? in one, Ma makes a button lamp, which burns lard, axle grease, or what have you. I have made workable lamps for burning crisco, used motor oil (smoky and stinky, though), and old corn oil, just for laughs, and I'm thinking about doing a class for my preppers group on fat lamps. "Oil" lamp means more than one would think....

lumabeam, bless you! so many of us were brats as children (I was a stubborn little cuss) but it is not too late, ever to start learning self sufficiency. Not all of us were so lucky to have been immersed in a self-reliant family who passed it down. Im sure your Great-Aunt Helen would be smiling at you now and cheering on your efforts to learn self reliance skills. Dont fret about your husband not understanding your sense of urgency, many of us have less enthusiastic spouses and families. Some even think we are crazy. My husband did not know I was prepping way back for Y2K until 2 weeks before it arrived, and he saw something on the news about what would happen if all the computers went down. He asked me if we could handle that kind of emergency, or if we needed to 'buy some things'. Then when I showed him 6 months of supplies, he said he thought that was 'just fine' and became a little more interested. After Y2K was a no-show he agreed to maintain and increase the storage because he liked the self reliance idea. But he never was 'into' it and did not like to talk about it because, frankly, it scared him to think about 'the end of the world' as he put it. Oh well, I'd rather be ready and have nothing happen, than the other way around! After you have been prepping a while, you will find that you are saving money by doing things yourself, and that sometimes helps the family rationize it to themselves. Just roll the savings back into preps. Many, many of us were silent preppers, squeezing a few pennies out of grocery budgets to buy a few extra pounds of beans or rice to 'put aside' and checking out all manner of odd library books for 'our hobbies' that just happened to be prep skills. My husband asked why I learned to make soap, for example; I told him because it sounded like fun! (It was.) Dont fret that nobody seems to see things the same way you do. We can be your support group on-line, and you can learn a lot, for we love to help one another. If you are very fortunate, there might be a prep group near you, and you can attend meetings and network with others. That is nice, but always remember, there are a lot of us out here, you just can't see us because we don't talk about it to strangers either. You can sometimes find another prep-minded person and recognize them by their interest in old timey skills. Women who can, sew, and raise gardens tend to be prep-minded, even if they do not call themselves that. Many do not know they are preppers, thinking that preppers are gun-totin', shoot-first, snake-eatin' hermits that are a little crazy and might go psycho in a hearbeat. No matter what they choose to call themselves, they are still like-minded folks you can find and network with. I for one would like to find a hunter who would share game in exchange for something I know. Meanwhile, you are doing the right thing, and everybody thinks they are way behind. Yep, all of us have things we wish we would/could/should do, and for one reason or another we can't/won't/don't. Go easy on yourself, and keep plugging along at a manageable pace and as you level of self reliance increases, so will your peace of mind. Nobody gets it ALL done, but that is OK, it gives us something to barter for in the future! Keep up the good work!

they are an old gimmick. i recall them from early 70s, my mother said she heard about them in the 30s. A better 'survival' type thin is planting the potato peels, rather than the shole potato, cut up. You peel them thick, plant them a little more shallow. Then you can eat some of the 'seed' potatoes if you have a notion. Ive talked to those that have done this, but never tried it myself. Maybe in the spring, just for an experiment.

Im going to talk to a bunch of people about EASY dehydrating; you know, the stuff that does not have to be blanched or handled a lot before you actually dry it, with an eye to getting more folks into it. I already know about deyhdrating frozen or canned foods; making leather from apple sauce plus what have you; dehydrating soups and stews (and leftovers); and know of a few things that do not require blanching. Anybody got some extra ideas for me? I'm thinking about putting together some 'soup in a jar' type things to whet their imagination. I had good feedback and interest on my talk and demonstration on water bath canning, except I got a lot of ribbing over my frequent use of the statement "not recommended by the USDA" when answering questions....and I was surprised that so many of my 'students' were men!

oooh! ooooh! Im jumping up and down! Congrats, Robbie!

On the canning rack idea...find yourself a cake pan that fits inside your canner, drill some holes in the bottom to allow for liquid circulation, and voila! - a canning rack. Use upside down on the bottom of the canner, either way as a divider-rack. Finding a cake pan to fit my canner was much easier than finding more racks!

I found the florets rehydrated best if cut fairly small. The stems got rather 'woody' and i had to peel them, then chop and dehydrate. They reconstituted well then, but they obviously were not as 'green'.

Scrubbie Lady, you just reminded me of the onions I missed one fall when I dug them. They actually overwintered underground, and when I dug up the garden for spring planting, I was blessed by the nicest, sweetest onions you ever saw!

Zone 7B! Im jealous. Zone 4 here. But I still put in a fall garden. Plant crops that bolt in warm weather - lettuce, spinach, beets, rhubarb, peas. Then add crops that like cool weather, like all the cole crops. Radishes are a quickie catch crop that like cool weather. I especially love kale - even in my zone, it gets sweeter after it frosts. I can usually pick it well into November, in mild years into December. Greens tolerate cooler weathers. Even in zone 4 you can plant cool weather crops. Oh yes, Bok-choy is also a cool weather lover, as are onions and potatoes.

today i canned up some three bean salad and canned coleslaw (pickled cabbage). Im in a deli kind of mood....

Very nice. I also enjoyed her 'entrance' to the olympics - what a sense of humor!

sounds like you hung a few as a child! Me too, but I could never convince those who had not that hanging clothes 'right side up' was WRONG! Let alone putting them on hangers to dry (WTF is with that?) Nor could I convince anyone that sharing clothespins was efficient, nor hanging clothes along their seam lines (so the wrinkles would be minimized). Now folding clothes so they dont wrinkle? Nobody knows that, either; they either wad them or ball them. Oh well....! Ironing? remember those cool clothes sprinklers made from soda pop bottles? I had to explain WHY I sprinkled the clothes on a couple occasions, to 30 year olds. Permanent press sure changed wash day!

My mother (died 2 yrs ago of Altzheimers) used to read us poetry instead of bedtime stories from her book of 'best loved poems of the american people' and this was one of her favorites. thank you for the smile and the good memories.

i bought a new 'chop-a-matic' (precursor to the 'slice-a-matic' they show on TV for giggles, but my real work horse is my "Feemster's Famous Slicer" this time of year....

The 'Middle Wife' by an Anonymous 2nd grade teacher..... I've been teaching now for about fifteen years. I have two kids myself, but the best birth story I know is the one I saw in my own second grade classroom a few years back. When I was a kid, I loved show-and-tell. So I always have a few sessions with my students. It helps them get over shyness and usually, show-and-tell is pretty tame. Kids bring in pet turtles, model airplanes, pictures of fish they catch, stuff like that. And I never, ever place any boundaries or limitations on them. If they want to lug it in to school and talk about it, they're welcome. Well, one day this little girl, Erica, a very bright, very outgoing kid, takes her turn and waddles up to the front of the class with a pillow stuffed under her sweater. She holds up a snapshot of an infant. 'This is Luke, my baby brother, and I'm going to tell you about his birthday.' 'First, Mom and Dad made him as a symbol of their love, and then Dad put a seed in my Mom's stomach, and Luke grew in there. He ate for nine months through an umbrella cord.' She's standing there with her hands on the pillow, and I'm trying not to laugh and wishing I had my camcorder with me. The kids are watching her in amazement. 'Then, about two Saturdays ago, my Mom starts saying and going, 'Oh, Oh,Oh, Oh!' Erica puts a hand behind her back and groans. 'She walked around the house for, like an hour, 'Oh, oh, oh!' (Now this kid is doing a hysterical duck walk and groaning.) 'My Dad called the middle wife. She delivers babies, but she doesn't have a sign on the car like the Domino's man. They got my Mom to lie down in bed like this.' (Then Erica lies down with her back against the wall.) 'And then, pop! My Mom had this bag of water she kept in there in case he got thirsty, and it just blew up and spilled all over the bed, like psshhheew!' (This kid has her legs spread with her little hands miming water flowing away. It was too much!) 'Then the middle wife starts saying 'push, push,' and 'breathe, breathe. They started counting, but never even got past ten. Then, all of a sudden, out comes my brother. He was covered in yucky stuff that they all said it was from Mom's play-center, (placenta) so there must be a lot of toys inside there. When he got out, the middle wife spanked him for crawling up in there.' Then Erica stood up, took a big theatrical bow and returned to her seat. I'm sure I applauded the loudest. Ever since then, when it's show-and-tell day, I bring my camcorder, just in case another ' Middle Wife' comes along. Now you have two choices...laugh and close this page or pass this along to someone else to spread the laughs. I know what I did!!! Live every day as if it is your LAST chance to make someone happy

Im relieved. Kitties are pretty self reliant, that is part of their charm, and I too have a shy one to keep tabs on and I worry if I don't see her daily....

I saw one recipes where they were folded shut to hold a finger of cheese, then dipped in egg, crumbs and deep fried. Kinda like cheese curds with a flowery emvelope. Since I don't fry things much I didn't try it though it looked interesting.... I have a few small squash coming on, but we have been watering like crazy as long as there are not yet any ban on it. Picked some cherry tomatoes, ate boiled kohlrabi (oh that was gooood!) and new potatoes last nightfrom our little patch. Corn is pitiful around here.

edible raw or cooked, just like the beans themselves. (They were fairly tasty, but texture was pretty limp when cooked - almost spinachy.)