Mountain Mama's Point Of View

  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...

I am still here, despite the weather that skirted around us. I have been getting my gardens bedded down for the winter. Building structures to contain the delicate plants and harvesting the last of the beans. Also collecting annual seeds from those plants that have, so far, refused to succumb to the cold night air.  It is also that time of year when all the annual check-ups come due. First we have the blood drawn, then return for the report. Mine was good, just a little off on my kidney funstion, so now I am taking another drug, allopurinal, to prevent gout. Having lived through two attacks, I didn't object to another pill to swallow. I will admit that the second attack was a lot milder that the first. Maybe because I recognized the symptoms early and started drinking cherry juice right away. My favorite chaser is apple juice. Simply Juice, it looks brown in the bottle, but the taste is fantastic. Reminiscent of biting into the perfect tree ripened apple. I deserve a kick-back from...

  We were definitely fortunate to have not suffered from the storm. Only rain and some wind. Not even a loss of power. I feel very blessed! Today is the first "nice" day since the storm. I noted that the rain made the grass shoot up and hoped I would find a reserve of energy to mow it. But first we had to trek up to our doctor's office. You may recall my frequent complaints of not being heard by HeWho wears hearing aids. It has been my battle cry for him to go to an audiologist who could fit him with hearing aids that would actually work. He says it is too expensive. Does he not realize that actually hearing what people say is priceless and would vastly improve his quality of life, not to mention mine! He says the current hearing aids "used to work better". Well, then let's get a new pair! See, I am a problem solver. He has been complaining for the last couple of weeks that his right ear is clogged up. So, just guess what he decided to use to clear the ear a...