April 30, 2008

The Dogwood Arts Festival is held in Knoxville, Tennessee every spring. Several communities in the area have dogwood trails. You drive your car through, following the pink arrows painted on the road. The yards and sidewalks are full of dogwoods, red buds, crab apples, azaleas, forsythias, tulips, and daffodils, depending on what is blooming at the time.

One year, we drove down a particularly beautiful lane. We were surrounded by blooms and blossoms on every side. To make it even more special, many of the homes had antique cars sitting in the yards or on the curb. These are a few pix that I snapped that day. The fruit truck is my favorite. It was full of real fresh fruit.

April 29, 2008

Spring is here and that means spring cleaning. Just off the living room, we have a little alcove that sets up a step from the rest of the house. It has one large window in the back with two smaller windows on each side. I took down all the valances, or toppers as they are called now, and threw them in the washer and dryer. I was positive I had put them in the dryer before. When they came out none of them were the same length! It was hilarious. One was half the original size! One was a little longer and the other two were somewhere in between. Now I can't use any of them. I guess it's time for new curtains.

I learned this weekend that I "play ball like a girl". This is one of our favorite quotes from the movie, The Sandlot. I laugh just thinking about it. We went up on the football field to let youngest hit some balls and run off some energy. I thought I would try my hand at batting. Dear husband is a fairly good pitcher. I ended up bunting almost every time because I was afraid the ball was going to hit me. Instead of swinging at the pitch, I was jabbing at them defensively. I hit dear husband on the same shin twice with the ball. The sun was in my eyes. I was hot and sweaty. I needed to go to the bathroom. I gave up and wandered over to a little cemetery until they finished playing. I guess I'm just a big sissy chicken girl after all.

April 28, 2008

Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! Vidalia onions are now in the store! It almost rhymes. I think God created Vidalia onions to help us while we are waiting for real tomatoes. It will be a while, yet. I only eat tomatoes in the summer. I cannot stand hot house tomatoes. They're white and they taste like cardboard. I really don't see the point at all. Once you have tasted a home-grown tomato, your life changes forever. You will never go back.

Lack of sleep and lack of estrogen have made thinking quite a chore for me. I do, however, every now and then, come up with a great idea. The boys' rooms are on the end of the house. Most of the time they are holed up in their rooms listening to loud music. If I need them, I have to walk through the house or yell like a crazy woman to get them to hear me. We have had a wireless doorbell on top of the fridge for years in the mixing bowl waiting for someone to put in the batteries and install it. I threw in the batteries and put the part that rings in the adjoining closets of the boys' rooms. When we had their rooms built, we had the builder leave the bottom half of the adjoining wall in their closets open. Dear husband and I were worried about oldest son's room being on the other side of the hallway in case the house ever caught on fire. You can go in one closet and crawl through into the other closet. It's like a secret passageway. Now when I need them, I just ring the doorbell!

April 27, 2008

Sweet Potato: Sweetest cat in the universe

April 26, 2008

Nature's toy



Every child's...



favorite flower.

Honeybee on dandelion

April 25, 2008

It is almost 7pm. I usually blog in the mornings, but this morning was a bit hectic. Normally, I would just wait until the next day or whenever I found time, but for some reason, I have been trying to blog every day. I have no idea why. Maybe just to see if I can do it.

Now...let's see what I have to tell you.

I officially weigh.......15 pounds. That's right. Dear husband and I stopped to get our fishing license and he told me I was going to have to tell him how much I weighed. Nice try. I know that every year when we renew, they just look at the old license and type in that weight. Mine said that I weighed 15 pounds.

Our church had new carpet installed this week. The first service after it was installed, everyone was admiring it. One of the ladies told all the children to be very careful with their candy and gum, so they wouldn't get it on the carpet. While she was talking, her grandbaby came walking up behind her and some poop fell out of his diaper and landed on the new carpet.

Thanks for stopping by. Toodles!

April 24, 2008

We saw this rainbow on the way home from Children's Hospital. Can you see it?

April 23, 2008

It has been four years today. Today is the anniversary of youngest dear son's diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes. We have made it four whole years. We won't celebrate in the normal way you celebrate an anniversary, but I will thank God that we have made it this far and without any complications.

I have to share a funny with you or what I thought was a funny. I took my mom out shopping Monday morning. She wanted to pick up some cleaning supplies for spring cleaning. She said she wanted gravy and biscuits from McDonald's and that she would rather go through the drive through window. I pulled up to the window and I meant to tell them to give me a bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit. What I said was, "Give me a bacon, egg, and cheese burger!" Mom and I thought it was horribly funny and started laughing. The young girl on the speaker was not in the least bit amused and that only made it harder not to laugh.

The mountains are several shades of green now, sprinkled with lots of dogwoods and redbuds. I love spring in Appalachia. The azalea bushes are starting to bloom. I worked in the yard last night. I weeded the rock garden up on the hill. I started out with my little hand rake and scissors. Then I had to go back down for the big rake. Then back down for the loppers, or whatever you call them. I thought I was going to have to go back down for the bow saw! Sassafras saplings had sprouted in my Sweet Williams and I had to cut them out along with some horrible vine that had taken over the whole bed. Ugh. Some wild blackberries had also sprang up in two places. I huffed and puffed and whined the whole time, stopping many times for water. My hat kept blowing off. I was just a whole pack of weenies as my dear husband would say. I will keep at it though. My flowers are in serious need of TLC and goodness knows I need the exercise.

April 22, 2008

Dear husband is a most patient and tolerant man when it comes to anything but his boat. This made what I had to tell him all the more difficult. I had been watching a Carolina wren out in the carport for two days. It was always in the same spot so I figured something was up. I walked out and looked around after church Sunday and found a nest under the boat cover on the front of the boat. Thankfully, the little fellow was just getting started and dear husband dismantled the few pieces of moss, bark, and twig. He then tightened the boat cover so little fellow wren would not try it again.

Male Carolina wrens will make several nests, but the female chooses the final nesting site. Evidently, she preferred the one he had started in the ball goal because now both of them are hard at work building a glorious nest there. Last summer, I hung some life jackets over the ball goal in the car port. I place the smallest on first and then fastened each one over the goal. I think there are three life jackets fastened over the goal. I was just trying to get them out of the way and that seemed like a secure place for them to spend the winter. The wrens have crawled inside the life jackets and built their nest in the net of the goal. Not only are they under the roof of the carport, they are surrounded my the life jackets which will serve as a wind break. Pretty clever, huh?

We also have chickadees nesting in the bluebird box I bought. Dear husband put it on one of the posts in the carport. We have another chickadee nest in the wall of the house. Our house has blown-in insulation and one of the little caps popped off the outside wall years ago, and the chickadees pounced on this as a nesting site. They will nest as early as December some years. You can sit in the living room and hear them pecking around in the nest.

We had our first hummingbird on Friday. I had the feeders cleaned and hung so he had a place to stop and refill. I am hoping we have plenty this year. I think we had less than 10 last year. I bought two more feeders that I need to clean and hang.

Oldest dear son and I saw a red-breasted nut hatch at the feeder. We also have a pair of house finches now along with all the many other birds that have been at the feeders all winter.

I guess I had better update about Sweet Potato, our stray cat that is still with us. He will get jealous reading about all these birds. He continues to stay on our back porch most of the time. He will disappear for days, and I will think that he isn't coming back and then one morning I will walk to the back door and there he will be waiting for me. This weekend I went out to feed him and found an injured wasp in his bed. This is the second time this has happened. I don't know if they are just wandering in or if he is playing with them. In any case, the next morning I went out to feed him and he was limping on both his front and back leg on the right side. He would just about lie down after taking a step. I think he may have been stung a couple of times. He was better the next morning. He is still the sweetest cat in the universe. I love him to pieces.

April 21, 2008

I took these pix on one of the Dogwood Trails in Knoxville. I have never seen so many tulips! These pix do not do it justice. It was windy and very hard to get a decent shot, but I just had to try.

April 19, 2008

Anytime we travel, our trips always include a trip to the "record store". If we are in Gatlinburg, we always go to the Rhythm Section. The Rhythm Section is the tiniest little store crammed full of audio cassettes, CDs, DVDs, and even some vinyl. The walls are covered from ceiling to floor with music. We have recently discovered another store for finding music gems: The Disc Exchange. We wandered in after youngest dear son's doctor's appointment and didn't want to leave. I never made it out of the Folk Section. I ended up buying two CDs.

The first one is Songbird, by Eva Cassidy. Here is a youtube clip of her singing People Get Ready. You can also hear it streamed here. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page.

I also bought an Elizabeth (Libba) Cotton CD called Shake Sugaree. I first heard her sing on Austin City Limits. Being left-handed and not allowed to restring her brother's guitar, she learned to play by holding the guitar upside down. This means that she was also picking the strings backwards. She picks the bass strings with her fingers and the treble strings with her thumb. She has a very unique style.

This is what is written on the back of the CD which was produced by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings:

Elizabeth "Libba" Cotten (1895-1987) wrote her well-known song "Freight Train" at about age 11 and sang it nearly 80 years. Through her songwriting, her quietly commanding personality, and her unique left-handed guitar and banjo styles, she has inspired and influenced generations of younger artists. Cotten was declared a national Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1984, and was recognized by the Smithsonian Institution as a "living treasure". She received a Grammy Award in 1985 when she was 90. You can click here to hear Freight Train.

April 16, 2008

There's few things in life better than a good book. One of them is a free good book! Remember my find at our local library? The American art book that weighed four pounds? I found it in the free section and lugged it home to keep. Well...yesterday my oldest dear son called from the campus to say he was bringing me home a surprise. My mind instantly went to something in nature...a bird's nest, flower, rock, etc. When he got home, he had a book with him that he had picked up off the free table at the campus library. The book is Chronicle of the 20th Century and it weighs almost NINE POUNDS! It is a history of the 2oth century written in a brief newspaper style format with tons of pictures. It is like having a huge book of newspaper clippings in chronological order.

Of course, one of the first things I looked up was my birth date. I learned that Castro proclaimed Cuba a socialist nation on this day and abolished elections. I learned that Coca-Cola first arrived in Britain, 14 years after it went on sale in the United States on August 31, 1900. I learned that different blood types were not discovered until November 14, 1900. On December 1, 1959, twelve countries signed a treaty which said that no country would claim any part of Antarctica as its own and established the continent as a preserve for scientific research. Robert Frost, who was asked by President John Kennedy to read a poem at his Inauguration, died on January 29, 1963. You get the idea. The book covers wars, politics, sports, fashion, movies, medicine, etc.

You may be wondering why we have been weighing our books. We are nerdy homeschoolers and nerdy homeschoolers are supposed to do stuff like this.

April 14, 2008

Today is Raise Your Voice For Type 1 Diabetes Awareness Day.

I should have had a post all ready to go, but we spent Friday at Children's Hospital. As most of you know, our youngest dear son was diagnosed almost four years ago with Type 1 diabetes and he had an appointment on Friday to go to the diabetic clinic for a check-up and lab work. The hospital is three hours away and the appointment takes up most of the morning. Our first visit we were there all day long, only stopping for lunch. After dear son is checked in he is put in an exam room and then the lab tech comes and draws his blood for an A1c and other tests. Then a doctor, nurse, and dietitian rotate coming to talk with us. We have also had visits from a counselor, chaplain, therapy dog, and even Santa Claus. You never know who is going to open the door and walk in.

This visit was uneventful. Dear son's A1c was 7. The doctor wants it to stay below 8. We took in a 10 hour urine to check for long term kidney damage which can be a complication of uncontrolled Type 1. They also drew labs for a thyroid profile and checked his cholesterol.

I guess of all the things I would want people to know about Type 1, is that my son doesn't have Type 1 because of something he did wrong. He did not get Type 1 from eating too much sugar or watching too much TV and playing too many video games. He did not get Type 1 from being overweight. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder. Antibodies attacked his pancreas, killing off all the cells that produce insulin. Type 1 diabetics have to take insulin to live. They do not have a choice. They will die without it. Dear son takes two different types of insulin. The first one is a fast acting insulin that he takes with meals. The dosage is based on the amount of carbs he eats. The second insulin is what is called a basal insulin. It lasts 24 hours and does not peak like the fast acting insulin dose. The basal insulin just works in the background for the times that the body needs insulin other than at meals. The two insulins must be balanced to avoid high and low blood glucose readings. Dear son checks his blood many times a day and dear husband and I check him through the night. Man-made insulin is a life saver, but it doesn't come close to working as effectively as pancreas-produced insulin. This means we are constantly tweaking the dosages and trying to find patterns. There are so many different things that can affect blood sugar levels that it is impossible to completely control the disease. Ideally, 50% of our son's numbers should be in target range. His target range is 80-180 now. You cannot imagine how hard it is to get 50% in this range.

I guess the other thing I would want people to know is that you are never free from Type 1. I have written about this before. You have to deal with it day and night, every couple of hours, all day long. You do not get to take a vacation from it. It does not go away. It will not get better unless there's a cure and currently there is not a cure. It is a huge responsibility and it can really drain all your time and energy on the bad days. We try not to let it control our lives, but really there is no escaping it. You learn to manage. You adapt. You do what you have to do and then you get up the next day and do it all over again. You stay up during the night for checks and you watch and wait for lows. You pray for strength and wisdom and a cure.

Please help us pray for a cure.

Note: To read about other people dealing with Type 1 click HERE. I haven't had a chance to read them yet, so use caution. I hope they are all G rated, but I am not sure.

April 10, 2008

I wanted to start my entry today by saying thanks to everyone who visits my blog and especially to those of you who comment. I love reading blogs. I try to leave comments, but my computer does not always cooperate. I just wanted to mention that here.

We are about to embark on a new adventure. Homeschooling year round. Dear son will be in the 8th grade next year and I am finding it hard to fit everything in that I want him to cover before I have to send him off to college. I know that once he starts college he will be too busy to do anything else. We will still stick to our usual schedule starting in July, taking all our breaks. Then when we get to our summer break, we will do a shorter day still taking breaks here and there. We will cover Shakespeare, art and music appreciation, science experiments that we didn't have time to do during the year, and dear son will continue to read good books. We are both looking forward to it.

I have one pix that I want to share with you today:

This is light from the window coming in on youngest dear son's bed. I just liked how it looked and grabbed the camera for a quick pix. Of course, the bed wasn't made, but I think that's what gives it such a wavy look.

April 9, 2008

Happy Spring! Most of these were taken in my yard. I tresspassed to take the rest. ;-) I hope you enjoy them.

Flowers and birds and warm breezes. I love spring!

April 8, 2008

Today has went surprisingly well after a couple of rough nights and busy days. Youngest dear son has been sick and when he is sick we have to deal with high blood sugars and ketones. This time, however, he hasn't even had a trace of ketones. We have raised the dosage of the insulin he takes with meals to cover the higher numbers. Now that he is getting better we have to lower the insulin dosage back to what it was before he got sick. The tricky part is knowing when to do this. If you lower it too quickly, he will spike. If you don't lower it soon enough, he will go low. We had lows the past two nights and a nasty low at lunch today, despite lowering the breakfast dose by two units. I went ahead and gave his usual amount for lunch today, hoping that we can get back on track.

Yesterday, I took the time to go to the library. I picked up a couple of books on Shakespeare. I have finally gotten my courage up and this summer we are going to study some of Shakespeare's plays, starting with Twelfth Night. I also picked up Anne of Avonlea for youngest son and me to read, along with three books by Lois Lowry that I hadn't read. I read one of them, Gossamer, yesterday and I loved it. I really like her books. They are very easy for me to get into and read. She has a wonderful imagination. I will never forget reading The Giver for the first time. It is one of my favorite books. I may let youngest dear son read it soon.

On my way out I noticed that there was only one book in the "give away" stack that you usually find at the front door of the library. I figured that no one wanted it because it was so heavy. It weighs four pounds. Youngest dear son weighed it for me. The name of the book is Three Hundred Years of American Painting. The first painting in the book is dated 1690; the last is dated 1956. I thought it was truly a treasure to find a book like this, so of course I swooped it up and took it home. The whole family has enjoyed looking through it. It made me wonder if there are any famous American painters painting now. Anyone? Anyone?

I know it is a little late for this pix, but it is a long and boring story. Speaking of late, we woke up Sunday morning to discover that our VCRs had reset themselves forward one hour. We reset all the clocks in the house for Daylight Savings back in March. I guess someone forgot to tell the VCRs that it had been moved up a month. Still, they showed good effort and I like that in an electronic device.

April 7, 2008

Dear husband and I ran in Food City the other day and picked up a few groceries, otherwise known around here as "trading" or "going to trade". Not to be confused with "going to town". "Going to town" around here is usually referring to going to pay bills. If you have to do both you say, "I have to go trade and go to town today."

So, we are walking the aisles picking up what we can remember we need. This is not my regular trip. We have stopped after working at the shelter and I don't have a list. This is not good. So not good. I stopped taking anyone with me to trade years ago. I always go alone with a list, a hand full of coupons, and after a full meal. This time I had dear husband with me who has absolutely no concept of how high groceries are, or the fact that everything, not just gas, is sky high now. I had to be diligent in keeping expensive items with no nutritive value from making it into our buggy without being the "bad guy". It was hard.

We walked by the "Dollar Shelf" and noticed a lot of band aids. Dear husband works in the coal mines and his hands are in pitiful shape. Last week a rock fell on one of his hands from what is called a "rib roll". This is where the side of the mines just falls over into the work area, usually on a man. Back to the band aids...Every box was just one dollar. I know that band aids are very expensive, so I was surprised and pleased to see all of these for just one dollar. We bring our band aids home. After dear husband's bath that night he asked me to help him put a band aid on his finger. I get out the band aids and open them. Something is not quite right. They are much smaller than what I usually buy. We both get to looking at the box and well I'll be! These aren't Band-Aid brand band aids! How did that happen? They look like Band-Aid brand. They seem to be made of the same tough, brown material, but are much smaller. I wrap one around his finger and it works, but I can't help but feel duped. Not, that my powers of observation are that hot or anything. Unless I am working a logic puzzle or expect something to be off kilter, I just really don't pay that much attention to my surroundings, unless I am outside looking at nature. I will chalk this up as a lesson learned. I still think it should be against the law.


The "real" Band-Aid brand box.



Both products side by side. Impostor!

AND...

Long, but a good read. Nothing to do with band aids. :-)

April 4, 2008

Joy! Rapture! On my quest to relocate some of My Favorites, I remembered a wonderful online book that I had saved. I remembered that it was a wonderful book. I remembered how I felt when I read the first story in the book. I remembered wanting to share my find with the rest of the world. What I couldn't remember was the name of the book or the author. I did remember the site that it was on so I tried to search there. I had no idea where to look. Then I remembered that I had copied one of the stories and read it to my family as a devotion. I dug through the window seat for my big black three ring binder of all my treasures I have discovered on the internet and there was my story along with the title of the book and the author's name! The book is Parables from Nature by Mrs. Alfred Gatty. It is a real gem! Do not miss this one. Go right now and read the first story...I'll wait on you to get back.

While I am waiting, I will also let you know that you can read Understood Betsy and even Anne of Green Gables online. I know it is not the same as actually holding a book in your hand and curling up in your favorite reading spot, but isn't it breathtaking to know that someone has taken the time to see that these treasures are available for anyone that has internet service. Thank you. Whoever you are.

And now I will leave you with a question that has been puzzling me for quite some time now. Just what is "fancy" ketchup anyhow?

April 3, 2008

If you have ever watched Kentucky Wildcat basketball in the time that I have been on this earth, you have seen Bill Keightley. He had been the Wildcat's equipment manager since 1961. He passed away this week at the age of 81. He had served under six coaches starting way back with Adolph Rupp. My family did not watch a ballgame without looking for Mr. Keightley on the bench. You can read more about it here.

I am beginning to think that our computer is headed for another crash. Things just haven't been the same since we had a new hard drive installed. It is slower than it had been and I am not even talking about internet connections. I am talking about opening and closing windows, pages loading, the whole thing seems much slower and glitchy. It may be time for a new computer.

Since our computer crashed, I have been trying to relocate some sites that I had in My Favorites. Out of everything we lost, I miss My Favorites the most. Here are some of the better homeschool sites that I have saved:

Ambleside Online

Paula's Archives of Homeschool Advice

Donna Young

Garden of Praise

I work with a group of children at church and we recently started a boys club and girls club. I meet with them once a month for a character lesson and an activity. I met with the boys this week. I asked them what kind of activities they would like to do. Here are some of their ideas:

1. Make bacon. Evidently, boys really like bacon.
2. Forge sword blades out of steel. I don't think so.
3. Make model cars. OK, this is doable.
4. Bring light sabers and have a reenactments of scenes from Star Wars movies. Their grandmother vetoed this idea.

So next month, after our lesson, we will make bacon and model cars. They will be in hog heaven.

That's it for today. Toodles.

April 2, 2008

We are taking a sick day today. Youngest dear son woke up yesterday with a sore throat and a fever. I'm not feeling so hot myself so we will take today off to rest and recuperate.

The other day I overheard both of our sons in the bathroom. I couldn't figure out why they were both in there so I went to the door and listened. Oldest dear son was teaching youngest dear son how to shave! I'm afraid it's true. Youngest dear son needs to shave. He turned 14 in March. He didn't really shave that day; oldest was just showing him the ropes. It was bittersweet for me.

We stopped at Food City on the way home from church on Easter Sunday to pick up a few things for lunch. I saw a beautiful elderly black woman shopping. She was still in her church clothes and she was just stunning! She had on a gorgeous hat. I love hats. I wish women still wore hats. I am not a woman who can pull off wearing a hat, but I still love them. I wear one when I fish and work in the yard.

Twice in the past week I have ran into someone that knew me, but I didn't recognize. Both times I had to say, "I'm sorry, but you are going to have to tell me who you are." I hate when this happens. With both, the minute they told me who they were, I knew them. One I had went to school with in high school and the other was the son of a woman I had worked with years ago. Now, as embarrassing as it is to have to let someone know you don't remember them, I have found it is even worse to say nothing and then stand there racking your brain for some little shred of recollection. Please, take it from me, if you don't remember just say you don't remember up front. It's not so bad once you get used to it.

I have to mention that our forsythia bush is in full bloom now along with the pear trees and another little white bush that I have never really known the name. I think it may be Bridal Veil, but I am not sure. I think it is in the spirea family. The grass is getting green and bushy. It was 76 yesterday, but supposed to be in the 30s last night.

I guess that's it for now. I hope you are blessed with a good day today. Toodles.