Feast or famine

More jobs came in today and more will arrive tomorrow. If I could figure out how to clone myself, I could get ahead -- well, maybe begin to play catch-up for what I had gotten behind at least -- but I'm only one person and I can only do one page at a time. Stamina and speed it the key. I don't seem to have either one.

I suppose it was bad luck for me to tell the story yesterday of how Tommy wakes me up to go out every single morning because when I awoke this morning, looked at the clock, it was 7:30, and Tommy had not been in, I knew something was wrong. Sure enough, he's really under the weather. Eating and drinking hardly at all, laying around, complaining if I pick him up. Only once he got up to go out, and I didn't let him because he's too sick and it's cold today. He didn't insist, used the litter box, and went back to his little bed. This blog comes in handy because I had recorded it before when he got sick, and it was December 27th (last paragraph). He gets this way every now and then. If he's not better tomorrow, I may have to take him out to Dr. Crenshaw and get him an antibiotic shot. Last December he did pull out of it on his own. A year or two ago the vet told me he has really low resistance. Needless to day, it worries me a lot when he feels so bad.

It looks like the USB - parallel cable might not work; but I could be doing something wrong. A couple of times the whole computer froze up and I even got Explorer has performed an illegal function, then a run.dll error once. It wanted me to put the driver on the LPT2 port but it defaulted to LPT1; and all I knew to do was manually change it. I couldn't find the right cable for the parallel printer; but if the key would work, it didn't have to have the printer attached. However, the key didn't work. It would tell me the button couldn't be detected. So, with all the work I have, I gave up, decided maybe some day when I can get back to John's, maybe he can figure it out. Otherwise, it's pointless to waste any more time on it.

I got something in the mail today I want to share. You know, these things that go around talking about how much better times were in the 50s or the 60s, happier, easier times. Boy, were they! If not easier, at least a whole lot less stressful. I always enjoy those and the nostalgia it brings back of a time when life was good. But this one is a little different, but it picks up on a time that our kids and grandkids will never know and a time that the world seems to have long forgotten. In fact, even I was almost born too late for this cherished icon of a feeling of love and security.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. It's called simply,

Aprons

I don't think our kids know what an apron is.
The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven.

It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears.

From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven.

When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids.

And when the weather was cold, grandma wrapped it around her arms.

Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove.

Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls.

In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees. When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds.

When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner.

It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that "old-time apron" that served so many purposes.

REMEMBER, Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw.