Everyday living has been rather full lately,
but here are a few points of interest from
up and down the gravel.

1. My mom came home yesterday. I cooked her a
pot of vegetable soup, and we took it over and
ate it. It was yummy and warming on a wet and
sloshy night. She looks really good and is as
sassy as ever.

2. Why, I wonder, (life is full of difficult
questions) do the road graders always grade the
gravel and leave loose dirt and gravel on it
right before a three day rain that is bound to
wash all that loose stuff off and into the ditches
leaving a washboard road behind again?

3. I've not had a lot of time to visit with G'ma
Opal in the past two weeks, but I did pop in for
a minute a couple of days ago. We had a big pig
of a cow that we had butchered. She wouldn't and
wouldn't and wouldn't get pregnant. We gave her
all the time a sane little farm family could. Plus
last year she had a difficult birth and Kent and
the guys had to pull the dead calf out. There is
a saying among cattle farmers, "You either produce
a profit or you become a profit." Well, in this
case we decided to go for the freezer rather than
the profit. And, so, we had this cow butchered,
(you can't imagine how delicious this meat is,
plus it is free from steroids etc.) and we have
a LOT of meat. I was running around delivering
bits of it to the relatives up and down the gravel.
After I gave a bit to G'ma Opal, (she only wanted
a few pounds and some soup bones) I was ready to
walk out the door, but I did think to ask how she
was doing on mice this month. "Four," she replied,
"one each for each of the first four days of January."
Wow! Now that's a great way to start the New Year
for my granny, don't you think?