Poetry

I have always enjoyed poetry, and can thank my dad for introducing me to it; for it was he that would always read it to us whenever we had a power outage(a family tradition that lives to this day). As I have grown older, I too have started reading on those bleak occasions, and decidedly enjoy the poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and his book of selected poems is very special to me.

My favorite poems by him are as follows:

• Paul Revere's Ride

• Catawba Wine

• It is not always May

• Excelsior

• Christmas Bells

• The Rainy Day

I will now leave you with an excerpt from 'It is not always May'.

Maiden, that read'st this simple rhyme,
Enjoy thy youth, it will not stay;
Enjoy the fragrance of thy prime,
For oh, it is not always May!

Enjoy the Spring of Love and Youth,
To some good angel leave the rest;
For time will teach thee soon the truth,
There are no birds in last year's nest!

Voting

If you are planning to vote for a candidate based on gender, skin color, astrological sign, or some other silly thing, do the nation a favor and stay home. Voting is a responsibility in the same way as jury duty. It should be taken seriously. Imagine a jury deciding someone is guilty because of the way he looks or sounds, regardless of the evidence. Yes, it happens. And it's wrong. We don't support that kind of judgment in a courtroom. We shouldn't support it in the voting booth, either.

The Constitution has put limits on our government, without which we would not enjoy the freedoms we do in the United States. If we squander our voting privilege and support candidates who do not uphold our Constitution, we will find ourselves on a slippery slope to the loss of much of what has made this country great. Our children and grandchildren are counting on us to choose well. Please, don't let them down.

Curlyhead

Last night after showers, I decided that I wanted to curl Grace's hair. After making sure it was okay with her I put it up in ponytail holders and told her not to take them out. This being the first time she had gotten her hair curled, she was very careful not to touch them. This morning I took them out, straightened her hair and took some pictures. Here are our favorite ones.

Growing up

This past week, someone from our church came over to see if Toby would be willing to shovel her porch for her this winter. Because he has a fairly busy winter ahead of him, and because I love shoveling snow, she offered the job to me, and I readily accepted. It was then that I realized that I am growing up very quickly.

Of course, I have always known that I am always growing and learning, but the job offer put an emphasis on how far I've come in the journey of life. It seems like yesterday that I was one of the little kids running around playing kick-the-can with friends, and now my friends and I are all grown up.

I have always enjoyed thinking about being all grown up, but now I am trying to enjoy my childhood to the fullest while I can.

My finger is better

The other night I asked Mom to take my stitches out. That was good, now my finger can move freely in every possible direction again. I enjoy not having stitches. I thought I was happy when my ear stitches came out last year, but that was nothing compared to this.

Yesterday afternoon Lynae and I went to Sandstone shooting range and shot the 22. We learned a lot about the gun. We also learned that Lynae is a much better shot than I am. She said I'm just as good, but that's just because she didn't want me to feel too bad. Well, if I was shooting at a deer 100 yards away in real life with open sights, I could still get a pretty lethal shot at it. I would do much better with a scope, and we had a scope, but it broke. It probably broke when we were moving it, probably hit a speed bump a little too fast and the scope broke then.

Autumn

Autumn has always given me mixed feelings. I always dislike it because it is cold, rainy, and it's when everything dies or goes away. I have always liked it because it's when the leaves turn red, it's when we get to make yummy canned food from our garden, and it's when we start school.

Saw a coot last night

I was driving everyone to Moose Lake to get some groceries, and right as I was turning into the parking lot, a coot ran out into the street and almost got hit. That was pretty cool. I had never seen one alive, but I saw it and said right away "Ho, ho, it's a coot!"

On Wednesday morning, I was assigned a task to be completed by Wednesday afternoon. That was to cut the zip tie holding the new measuring spoons together, because it was so tight. Well, I decided to use my handy dandy pocket knife, and I started cutting. I really can identify my target before I hit it, but it slipped and my knife went deep into my finger. After pulling my knife out of its new sheath, I exclaimed, "doggone it!", and waited to see if it would bleed. It took it about 20 seconds, and then it started to bleed really bad. I calmly asked to use the bathroom asap, and asked Mom to help me get a bandaid on. Well, this wasn't a bandaid wound, it was more serious. I mean, just about clear to the bone. Mom took me to Moose Lake to get stitches. I got four lovely stitches in my finger. But the tranquility wouldn't last.
(Creepy music here)
You see, the night before last, I lost a suture in my deep sleep. No kidding. It came untied and slipped out silently into the mysterious land of the runaway sutures. When I awoke, I exclaimed "Good grief!" in horror. Well, at least I was not in pain. All was well, just not perfect. But last night in Moose Lake, we were playing at the park, and my skin stretched a little too much and started to bleed. I put a bandaid on when we got home, and now everything is better again.

Apples

We have a lot of apples right now. Why? Well, first off, we have a lot of apple trees. A lot is, in this case quite a lot! Also, a lot of our trees produced this year. ( In this last sentence, the word lot isn't as much as it was in the one before it.) To give you a clue what I mean here, We have 2 bushel baskets plus a tray full of apples all just waiting to get processed.

By processed I mean cooked up and turned into applesauce, apple pie filling, or apple butter. Apple butter is great on toast, biscuits, and pancakes, and it actually smells like fall. Seriously, it smells like apples and cinnamon and tastes even better. Homemade applesauce is great with just about everything and is much better than store bought, and apple pie filling is just amazingly yummy.

To process all of these apples we will need several things as listed below.

• Time; you shouldn't ever start a big job in the kitchen when in a time crunch.

• Helpers; doing this job (or any other big job) without helpers must be a disaster.

• A good attitude; it is better to let the apples sit and rot than it is to divvy 'em up with a bad attitude.

• A plan; you should always have a plan before you start, otherwise you'll end up in tears over what to do.

• Tools; first you will need something to cut the apples up with. If you have an apple peeler/corer/slicer, use that. If you don't, either get one or a knife and a peeler. You will also need a big container like a crock pot or large large pan depending on your cooking method.

• Apples; duh!

Once we have all the items necessary, we just start cutting, and are able to fill the giant crock pot (which holds about a bushel) and clean everything up in about an hour. Then we just let that cook with some water and spices for a day or however long it takes to get to desired mushiness. Then we mash it well and can it, and voila, homemade yummyness.

It seems I talk too much, y'all.

I've often thought that I could never write a book. It would end up as a pamphlet. Since I was 14, I've found that if I say too much, most of what I say either misrepresents the truth or doesn't make sense, and often gets me into trouble. It's better to keep it short and simple.

I'm not a good conversationalist. I can listen, but often struggle to come up with something to say. Oh, I'll think of lots of things to say, but my internal editor decides against actually saying much of it aloud. The result is awkward silence. And who likes that?

In the interest of letting people here get to know me, I've worked at using a little of what I learned in the South and sharing a bit about myself when people ask. But using a Southern style doesn't work in the North. People here don't want to open up about themselves, nor do they want to hear details about me. Here, succinct is good. In fact, I'm sure this is where I learned it originally. I can be succinct in conversation, I just have to set aside what little training I did pick up in Kentucky.

I wonder if there's a middle ground, say, in Illinois or Indiana, where I'd fit right in?

My legs are done

For the day. Don't worry, I'm not that old. I walked to Deep Rock, and I mowed a lot of lawn. We pretty much emptied the garden. I chased the school bus. I sang. Now for the details. (In chronological order.)

I started by taking Grace to Deep Rock. We made a deal, that I would carry the gas can there to get filled, and she would carry it back, full. She liked the idea, and so I handed her the gas can. Reread the last few sentences. Then, we walked to Deep Rock. I bought the gas and gave Grace the gas can. The guys at Deep Rock were not impressed. "Ho, so she gets to do the heavy lifting while you sit back." "Ah, so that's how these brothers operate, eh?"

Then I mowed the lawn. Nothing interesting there. Just a little note to you people in the neighborhood who don't tell me that you're reading my blog, who think, "When's that boy gonna mow his lawn?", that I have, and you should come see it.

The garden was really the easy part. We just demolished what was dead, and then demolished what wasn't, and then threw the demolition leftovers at the chickens. They ate what they wanted to, and left for tomorrow what they didn't want to eat.

Now things get interesting. See, the school bus was leaving the street that somehow is partly in our lawn, (less for me to mow), and I thought, "Hey, life is short, and I'm bored. Who's on that bus anyway?", and almost as if I had lost control of my legs, ran after that school bus. I kept up with it for about 20 yards, and then I got bored again. Bus drivers don't really like it when you follow them, so I stopped and ran back to wherever I had come from.

The singing wasn't that good in my opinion. Just a song by Everyday Sunday, and little bits of a Family Force Five song. I know, really bad.

I dreamed I was back in high school

This morning I dreamed I was in high school. I was wandering the halls, with no clue what classes I was supposed to have been in for the past several weeks. I went to the office, and they said I was only scheduled for one class... Books. (?) But they wouldn't let me leave after that class, because the policy was that no one could leave early.

I told them I was going to talk my mom into homeschooling me, because that was a ridiculous waste of time. Then I went home and did try to talk her into it. She didn't think she was up to it. So I told her I could basically homeschool myself, as I was already teaching my own kids.

When I woke up, I actually reminded myself that I'm done with school. What a hoot!

(Apparently, this is what happens when I watch The Office, miss my planned trip to the library, talk to my mom, and forget to submit the proper homeschool paperwork on time.)