Mountain Mama's Point Of View

  The past week was strange. My jaw locked closed. Why? I have no idea. I was outside in my happy place with stencils and paint as I created a mural on the retaining wall. I had just finished with some bees when I realized it was getting much cooler, as it does when the day is ending. I gathered my toys and headed inside. When I started to answer a question posed by HeWho sits in his recliner, I discovered I could not open my mouth without considerable pain that shot into my ear! My hand flew to my left jaw as a tear trickled down my face. HeWho was alarmed, no doubt wondering about who would be cooking supper and already trying to decide about take out. The more I tried to speak, it just got worse. Finally he understood. This has happened before, my jaw clicks audibly and will sometimes make me keep my mouth shut. Once it locked up in an open position and I must say that was worse. Your mouth dries out and it is hard to swallow. I usually just wait a bit and try to relax all my muscle

  I told you about the new deck  porch yesterday. Tomorrow, I will be crawling under it to retrieve the pieces of wood HeWho left under there as he worked. There is a 4' 4X4 under there! There were a bunch of scrap pieces that I collected into a pile as he worked. Didn't get them all and I saw him picking up short pieces of the cedar rail pieces. Maybe 6" long and my mind was planning what I could do with them. I thought he was just adding them to my pile. HE TOOK THEM TO THE DUMP and disposed of them. One would think he didn't even KNOW me. I save stuff. I compost for my organic garden. I am so upset about this. All those pieces of treated wood. I have no idea what they would have become! I save popsicle sticks to label my vegetables I plant. I save all those sets of plastic cutlery. If we ever have a crowd of folks to feed, I got it covered. I am thrifty. My Dad was thrifty and so was my mother-in-law. I am not as thrifty as she was. I will not be washing that plasti

  Still waiting for a working oven. Funny how everything I want to eat needs an oven! I am staying busy in the meantime. The weather is glorious and I have spent many hours outside with my gardens. HeWho builds has been occuppied with another deck. It is just an extensin of the very small front porch that leads you into my tiny abode. The one that sufficed for I don't know how many years was okay, but when trying to enter, it was tight. We now have an 8X12' "porch with rails like a deck. The back side looks straight down into the ravine. I left him doing the build while I was cleaning out the vegetable garden. Maybe I should have done more supervising, since he chose to leave the post of the previous porch about a third of the way to the end of the new porch proudly standing in place. I expressed my thoughts about it quite gently and suggested it would be better if he had cut it off BEFORE he put the decking down. He says he didn't "notice" it until I pointed

  After almost two weeks the repairman showed up. I gathered the furry ones to the bedroom, lest they attack the man and waited there for the verdict. I could hear everything form my perch on my bed with Charming Eddie. HeWho could "conversate" with the good old boy sent to fix my oven, stayed out ther with the man and they chatted about parts and gaslines and such as the man fiddled with this and that. I smelled gas as he played with all the knobs on the stove and proclaimed the appliance to be able to work perfectly if only the gas line was sufficient .... How that would explain that the oven WAS working and then wasn't will remain an unsolved mystery to me. I didn't see the man or talk to the man, so I suppose I shouldn't judge his intentions. But I will. I think he just didn't want to properly investigate the situation and just blamed the gas line. So, four days later the gas company guy shows up and I retire to my room with my dogs again and eavesdrop and

  You all may recall the Christmas present I was given last year. Remember, the new stove. In anticipation of the delivery, we removed the old stove and received a defective stove that had to be picked up BEFORE they would even reorder a new one to replace it. And then another defective stove arrived and had to be sent back while they (Lowes) still had the money from TWO stoves tied up while they tried to pull their heads out of their butts to issue a refund. I am sure you do! Well, guess what? The oven has already stopped working. The irony is that the old stove's oven worked, it just needed a new thermostat. I kept a thermometer dangling from the rack and adjusted the temperature to what I needed. Inconvenient? Yes, but it DID work. I don't even use the oven during the hot days of summer to avoid heating the entire house. But, as the cooler nights lead to some downright cold days, I like to be able to bake. I love a dinner that is cooked entirely in the oven. I like to prepar

  Although the hurricanes spared us, we are still having some issues with packages and mail. Most everything goes through Asheville, so that is just a slight bother and totally expected. We use Ingles Pharmacy, also based in Asheville and could not get refills, but a call to our clinic had them calling in to another pharmacy, so another slight, unavoidable delay. But my current and growing irritation is with Chewy. We have been here for three years and the first time they delivered my auto order to our old address wasn't such a big deal. They have good prices and deliver for no additional charge, so why not let them take care of it? Since that first time they have delivered to the old address two more times. I was not happy and I suggested that they simply remove the old address from my profile. I have suggested that too many times, but so far they seem to be unwilling or unable to do so. I got notification of delivery last week, but no package. I waited a couple of days, knowing t