Unwelcome Visitor and Reading Blogs

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As you might guess, my unwelcome visitor was not a human being. It was our harbinger of Spring, Mr. Robin. We’ve seen many robins the last few days, and I accepted them peacefully at first. From another room I heard thumping and checked the front door to see if a neighbor was there. No one was on the porch. The next series of thumps led me to the sliding glass doors. A filthy robin was hurling itself against the glass, leaving watery poop oozing down. I did NOT take a photo, but I did wash the doors immediately when it was one degree below freezing. There are eleven splatters of poop below the glass, so I’ll be taking a giant step forward when I go outside. I’d love to flash that bird with a huge picture of an owl, or whatever else would frighten him. Nasty bird!

I have a new system for catching up on blog-reading. My choice is always to be with living people over recorded messages. Blogs will wait patiently until I am alone. I chose to spend every possible moment with our friends Karen and Al, who were here only 62 hours. John delivered them to their home after a sleepless 13 hours of driving. It’s good that John didn’t sleep, but they stayed awake through the night, too.

It would have been discouraging to count the posts, so I scrolled down to the last one I read. My new system is to read five posts each time I change activities. I needed a plan to keep track of those read. For the record, I can still count to five, but I can’t remember which number I’m on if I wait three minutes between numbers. This sounds like the beginning of a dratted story-problem, doesn’t it? Relax, it isn’t. Scattered about my messy desk were five items. I put them to the left of the keyboard, moving one to the right each time I finished reading a post.

030118 Memento counters.JPG

It has been fun to use these little dust-catchers mementos. The train and rabbit came from our trip to Colorado. I bought the polished stone in Dillsboro NC and picked up the free toy army figure at a pottery in Tennessee. The fighter is to remind me to pray for our military people. The marble belonged to my dad. I have no idea how it landed here, but it can’t be contained easily – just like him when he was alive.

Published by Anne Mehrling

I'm a retiree who loves to write about life in the mountains of North Carolina.

Published

88 thoughts on “Unwelcome Visitor and Reading Blogs”

  2. So that’s where the robins went. They pass through here – waited a little longer than usual before traveling on….despite rumors, I did not give them directions to your house.
    Any ideas to keep up with blogging is appreciated – I do better when weather is bad and I’m stuck inside, but these days…oh, look – sun! Hasta later

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  5. Hi Anne, I love robins…but my son has the same problem as you…he has a holly tree that the robins love and when they weather is bad multitudes of them dirty up his porch. I also have mementoes all around the house. A lot of mine end up on windowsills for some reason. Good to talk to you. Kathy

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      1. I have seeds…if you want to try that route again…I have a few rooting also…started some from seed also. So glad to be in your thoughts.

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        1. I am totally undeserving of seeds. Give them to someone who has a green thumb. I am going to root more, but I don’t want to start too early. It would be marvelous to have some of those giant plants outside our screened porch. Do you have any idea when I should take cuttings to have them ready for planting in May? I know nothing useful about gardening.

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          1. This is the best time to take the cuttings. They should do well for you. If you have enough branches on the mother plant take as many as you can. When you pinch off branches the mother plant will double in size. Have fun!

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        1. I am lame-brained after 6 pm!!!! People sometimes ask what my bedtime was when I was a child. I always say I never made it. I went to bed when I was tired back then. Too bad I don’t do that now.

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          1. So… sounds like you’re a morning person, then, right? Up with the birds? Or even *before* the birds, maybe? Which would explain why you’re pooped by early evening. I’m the opposite, myself. Not too thrilled with it, but there ya go. Hard to change what seems to be our body’s natural rhythm.

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            1. Yes, I’m a morning person. My initials before and after marriage were AM. I have changed my habits a bit, since we walk with the sun. I get up fairly late in the winter. Daughter Lise lives on the other end of the spectrum. When we played word games together, I usually won in the early part of the day, and she always won at night.

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  8. Anne,
    Why do the robins hurl themselves on your porch in cold weather ? You do work hard keeping your house clean.
    The blog counting strategy is so good. I wish wordpress had a system so one can know which blogs one has read already, so one does not need to skim through them to see if they have been read. Love the history of your little mementoes. The only things I have that might be similar are in our show-case as we call it- a cupboard in our living room, where we keep little collectibles from different places.
    You do have a mathematical brain, I think.
    Susie

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    1. Maybe the robin thought it was attacking another bird. I have no idea what he saw, but he was fierce. I agree that it would be nice to know what blogs you have read. I just take them in order, oldest first. Me? Mathematical? I’m sure my math teachers didn’t think so. I made good grades in math, but that is only because I was determined to do my best in every subject. Do you like math?

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  9. Those are some strange Robins. What an gross mess, that had to be. That was a good idea, using the five items. What were you using them for? I can’t remember. Just kidding. I have the same problem, I even tend to get in a hurry, and close tabs in the browser, before submitting them.

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  10. I hate when I get behind in Reader and I used that little notes section on the side to try and keep track – I was away for almost 24 hours and the comments from last night’s post on the snowstorm and Reader made it tricky to catch up. With many readers from overseas, it is hard to keep up. If I read them in the morning, I often find myself scrambling to get out the door, so decided to do it at night … but when I work til 7:30 like tonight, that wasn’t a good option.

    I have a love/hate, mostly leaning toward the hate relationship with robins. I have a coach-style lamp in the front of the house near the front door, over the mailbox. I know that as soon as it is Spring, a robin will build a nest in the elbow. I could knock it down every day before they lay the eggs and then there are hatchlings, but they are very messy birds, not just the poop, but string, dead grass and mud splats that come down on the mailbox and if the mail carrier’s substitute is delivering and doesn’t shut the mailbox lid … sigh. At least one blog a season is devoted to my getting rid of the nests – robins scowl at me when I walk past them … this was from the first year I wrote my blog – no pictures, and all one paragraph, but you get my sentiments about robins:

    https://lindaschaubblog.net/2013/06/23/evicted/

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    1. Your robin post was hilarious. This is the first time I’ve tangled with a robin. John had it in for a cardinal who did the same thing to our front door.

      I never noticed a section for notes in the Reader. I’ll have to look.

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      1. I have dealt with the robins for years and last year I was so happy as they didn’t come around – I was starting to think I did something to offend them (finally). I am glad you liked my post … I was so angry that day that I rattled off that post directed to them. So, last year was great because no robins, but … I have metal rollable shutters on the outside of each window and they are adjusted as to up/down from a strap in a box inside each room. I have left them down for years as the blinds are old and the last time we had to get the bathroom blind replaced altogether, not just replacing a strap or adjusting it, it was $600.00- you know how small a bathroom window is! And that has to be ten years ago … I can’t imagine the price now. So, I leave them down all the time – they are good for security purposes as well.

        Anyway, I could hear this noise last April … it sounded like a scraping type of noise of metal on metal. My neighbor’s house next door (not Marge but other side) is very close to my house. If I stuck my hand out my kitchen window and she stuck her hand out her bedroom window, we could touch hands. Well, her brother, who has since passed away, was a double amputee, and he used the heavy patio furniture to move around when he was working in the yard – he did yard work but used to drag the chair from the paver bricks on the patio to where he needed it in the yard,so he could get around on his cane as opposed to his wheelchair. I associated the noise with Dan doing this as he did this for years. Then I noticed the noise when it was dark, like very early morning – I knew he was an early riser but not at 5:00 a.m. It never dawned on me it was birds as there was such a narrow opening between the blind and the window. One morning I was in the bathroom and it was quiet and I heard baby birds tweeting … many of them. I ran outside as soon as it was light and there was nest materials falling out of the area between the blind and the window. I saw red for sure! This was in the bathroom blind that was replaced (the one that was $600.00) and it was made differently than the others (different manufacturer) … the other blinds have been installed since 1979 and this has never happened. I had to have the handyman install a wire netting over the bottom of the blind and drill holes to put it there permanently to keep them from going up in there … plus pull the nest out first. It cost me $100.00 for labor and materials as the window is over a prickly pyracantha bush and hard to access … it took him a couple of hours to do this job.

        Who knows if the robins will be back … and they get ornery when I pull down the nest … they’ll start another one just as soon as I walk away. The sparrows are ornery too … sparrows will take over another bird’s nest or birdhouse or habitat by attacking them.
        I like nice docile birds here, but never seem to get them.

        This is what the rolling shutters look like – businesses use them more than residential. https://www.innovativeopenings.com/window-security/exterior-rolling-shutters/

        As to the “notes section” … I didn’t make myself clear … I use the notes feature on the laptop … I use it constantly, in fact I was going to do a “Tuesday Musings” about it because I cut-and-paste links I want to read, or write myself notes for work, things to do, ideas for my blog until I fill up the notes section and have to save it and start another one. I find that if I can’t read all the stuff in Reader at one time, I have to jot it down.
        I have a couple of places that have followed me and I really don’t know these people –
        I think they are psychologists and they write maybe 5 different long stories a day. I don’t read them all as they are about “finding yourself”and other things about self-analysis … so I have to keep track of what I’ve seen or not … I am just popping on here now as I’m trying to get housework done and taking a break. A high school classmate of mine had a kidney transplant yesterday … his donor was his younger sister. They are in Boston and it is a clinical trial and it was filmed and I guess a big deal for the hospital as well as for Ray and Penny. He has to stay in Boston for 4 months after yesterday’s procedure. They both did well … she donated bone marrow to him as well. He had multiple myeloma and no kidneys and was on dialysis since December 2016. don’find anoth

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          1. I didn’t make it clear when I wrote it, but I use notes constantly. Because I am a virtual secretary, I save all important things that I have to deal with later, such as e-mails from Robb (my boss) in a separate file, accounting notes, and I use the notes feature at work, however, every time we have computer issues (which is often) my notes document at the bottom of the task bar, just vanishes. So I have to back it up and store it elsewhere. Everything I get from Robb is a PDF, and I don’t print out anything, so I have to be able to find things as sometimes he cannot find things. But I like the “sticky notes” feature on my own computer and I save things there all the time.

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            1. I like the way you keep up with notes and wish I could do that. I was the secretary for an accounting firm. Post-it notes came in handy. I’d love the electronic kind. Where do I start? Is it part of the operating system? I know you are busy — just nudge me in the right direction. Thanks.

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                  1. I consolidated both questions to tell you how to access Sticky Notes in Windows 10 and I always prefer simple … that’s just me. At work, the notes in Outlook resemble a Word document and you can e-mail them and everything, but I just use them to jot down information as I work during the day – notes to myself or names of documents, accounting info. I find using them helpful – I never use a scratch pad or pen and paper – just virtual notes. I am saving the trees. 🙂

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              2. Do you have the Sticky Notes or Evernote – sorry I pressed “Send” by mistake … that’s not the first time I’ve done that … it is too close to the return key. So I apologize for the unfinished sentence. At work we use Outlook for e-mail and Microsoft One Note is part of the e-mail suite. I can categorize different notes and have different tabs going at one time much like a workbook for Excel. I have never used Excel but we have ERISA cases and receive audit information or employee detail information so we get Excel spreadsheets and they have different tabs.
                So if you have Outlook, it should be in your program. It is good because you can use the same features as Word in that you can bold, underline, highlight, etc. and you can attach a note to an e-mail. So, I use that at work, but, if the computer system goes down, my notes go with it – I have never understood that but it does not close out, but remains on the task bar when you exit … Robb and I leave our computers on 24/7/365 and he will not reboot the computers. When I worked on site, I did it every Monday morning – would shut down both of our workstations, reboot … this was what we told by our original computer guys.
                We have this computer guy because he is in the building … he is nice but useless.
                He has downloaded 286 Windows updates for me, but not launched them. So, I always have issues with my work computer locking up and have to call him and have him reboot it from his computer. We crashed in 2010 and before that, even working from home, I could do updates and restart my own computer. No longer as computer guy is the only one with administrator privileges.

                I listen to a computer show every Saturday.
                I used to listen religiously but their two-hour show on Saturday afternoons if pre-empted by MSU college football from August to Thanksgiving, then it is MSU college basketball every time they play on Saturday through the end of March. It is frustrating – they have podcasts, but I don’t always hear them. But the one computer guy (host of “The Internet Advisor”) swears that “Evernote” is the best thing since sliced bread and he has several different radio programs that he moderates and also is big in his church and doing voiceovers, so he says Evernote is a Godsend. I can look on their site and see if it is up again – I follow them on Facebook as they post the podcasts … their side crashed a few weeks ago, but I believe it is up. Sometimes they have info on various software they endorse.
                I looked online and Evernote is available for free. I believe Foster Braun uses the business version. I will look later today and see if there is more info on it … here is Evernote: https://evernote.com/

                I use Sticky Notes which came with my computer and I have Windows 7 and I have Sticky Notes on this laptop – in the a.m. when I check in at work, and for storing pictures, I use this laptop – it is from 2009 and is missing some keys which popped off but otherwise great shape. I never unplug my laptops from the wall … they are tethered 100% of the time. If you have Windows 7 it likely came with Sticky Notes.
                Just go to the Search bar (bottom left-hand side of your computer and in the field type “Sticky Notes” and it will come up … just move it to your desktop and I believe if you open it, it will go right to the side of your computer … you can put an enormous amount of info there and categorize it as well and color code the notes … I only have one note going at one time and, when you shut down, it stays there and does not exit.
                I would practice with it a few times and you’ll like it … I store things from work that I may need in case my work “notes” goes down and other things like notes I jot down after I walk – how many miles I walked (I keep a log) and ideas for headlines, that day’s post before I forget it and links to read later from stories I’ve seen in the news. I would recommend Sticky Notes if you have it – if you have Windows 10, I’ve never used it and don’t know if it exists there, but I can look and find out on “The Internet Advisor” website … let me know okay?

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                  1. You’re welcome – I saw your other note re: which is better … I don’t have Evernote at work, just “Microsoft OneNote” which is part of Outlook. I don’t use Outlook on my home computer because I have the two laptops – one in my room (it is a Windows 7 HP which I bought at Radio Shack in 2009 and it is still going strong. The battery has not worked in ages – I don’t know why as I never untether it) but it is missing an Enter and Backspace key. They both popped off. I had another laptop “waiting in the wings”, since I work from home and had to ensure I always had a working computer. I actually have a brand-new Windows 7 computer which I update once a month – it is also “waiting in the wings” … I have to use Windows 7 because that is what we have at work and I need to be compatible with work. I did the download of Windows 10 when it was forced on us by Microsoft back in 2016 and I didn’t like all the bells and whistles and besides I could not use it as it is not compatible. So, I’ve not used Evernote, and I just Googled if Windows 10 has sticky notes and it does … will give you the link how to find it. It is the same type of search as Windows 7 (search bar under start menu) only you ask Cortana … see you are way ahead of me. I really like sticky notes … you can move them around on your desktop – I don’t do that … I have one sticky note in the upper right-hand corner of my home desktop area and it is always there (until I fill it up, then I cut-and-paste it to a Word document as I often keep links to go back to for news stories, etc.) You can color code them as well and paste them all over your desktop … me, I like things simple and don’t like a cluttered desktop so I like the Sticky Notes … same at work, I don’t like a lot of clutter on my work computer either. When I remote in, I just want to see the icons I use the most. When Robb (my boss) has issues with his computer sometimes, I have to go in and try to troubleshoot – I see 20 different Outlook icons on his desktop – 10 Chrome Google icons on his laptop. He has issues sometimes because he is left-handed and sometimes does not click appropriately and causes his toolbars to disappear in Outlook, sometimes in Word – he drafts small items in Word. So I have to go repair it … try the Sticky Notes and see how you like it … here is how to find it and use it: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-sticky-notes-app-windows-10-remind-you-all-things

                    Interestingly, I went onto “The Internet Advisor” website. I have listened to the program for as long as they’be been on (I believe 25 years) and I’ve learned a lot from the show, however, they are so high tech anymore, I listen if they are “live” on the radio but rarely to the podcast. They discuss every electronic device imaginable and I feel a little “out of it” … I have a flip phone not a smartphone (tried one last year … an inexpensive model as ATT would no longer support my 2G phone and it dropped calls all the time and ran out of memory so I got a flip phone and like that); I don’t text from my phone; I’ve never used a tablet; I don’t own any Apple products, not even an iPod; I don’t watch TV and haven’t had my TV on since my mom died in 2010 … I even had free cable for several years after upgrading my Comcast internet to “Blast” speed so I had a better connection to work. I am a bit of an oddity I guess. They discuss different types of smart TVs and Slingbox … I feel a little left out. Anyway, I searched on their site for info on Evernote as the moderator of the show raves about using it for organizational purposes on his phone/laptop, etc. and the only thing I found was that they were hacked in 2013.

                    I don’t have my laptops linked as I worry about viruses. I run Malwarebytes (paid version) and Microsoft Security Essentials, but if a virus got into one laptop, it would hit the others, so I don’t link them. I use web-based e-mail because I use two different laptops, old one in my bedroom to check in at work in the morning and on weekends, to give the one at the table a break. So, then I can’t access my e-mail, if I use Windows mail … it wipes it out at the other computer. For everything in life I like simple and easy to use.

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                    1. Thank you for your reply. I will look at Sticky Notes. The app sounds easy to use. We were out all day today looking at waterfalls, so now I am behind in everything. I really do appreciate your taking time to explain lots of things to me.

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                    2. I like Sticky Notes as it is simple and I like simple and uncluttered things on the computer. Hopefully, it is as easy in Windows 10. I have had to learn my way around computers due to working from home, and, even before after Robb and I left the Firm and went out on our own. I learned to troubleshoot with the computer guy to save having them make a trip to the office, so learned that way. But I am way out of my league as to Windows 10 – it looks over my head. The waterfalls sounds nice. We had a wintry mix this morning, got a coating of snow/icy stuff and did not have to shovel, but getting snow tonight and also Thursday … they flip-flopped the original forecast. My boss was gone all afternoon and just returned now. I had looked outside and saw nice clear roads and if he had not planned on returning, I would have gone out and walked. Oh well.

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                    3. I’m glad you didn’t get too much snow. Grandson Nathaniel was looking forward to a blizzard tomorrow (today by now) and will be disappointed.

                      I thought Windows 10 was user-friendly. I know you won’t have it for work, but some day you will get it at home. It was easier to get used to than most of the other transitions I’ve made.

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                    4. We have some snow this morning – it will be a quick shovel … they predicted more and northern suburbs got 5-6 inches … we have more snow tonight, this time 2-4 inches they say. Then when that falls, no snow or rain for the next 10 days, but if the path at the Park is icy or my trip to the Park on the sidestreets is icy, I likely won’t go … depends on how much sunshine we get and if it melts, but at least on the weekend, I can go later in the day and still salvage a walk.

                      We won’t get Windows 10 at work due to the touch screen as I couldn’t use it then by remoting in from home. I really like Windows 7 but I thought I understood Windows 10 was like Windows XP and I really liked that. In fact my old computer at work with my accounting functions on it is still Windows XP. We have disabled the internet on it as Microsoft no longer supplies patches for XP. When we crashed in 2010 and had to get a new computer system, including server, work stations and we got a new computer guy who took months and months to put everything together again and we only lost items in our “my documents” directory – nothing in accounting and no client files. But, Timeslips (our accounting program) could not be transferred to the new system, and for some reason, they wanted to charge an extra license for me to use it at home on my computer. We tried to explain that I did not have Timeslips program at home, I was remoting in but they deemed it an extra license and wanted another $300.00 for an extra work station. My boss never used Timeslips on his work computer, so it was the server, work station at work and computer at home, so $1,000.00 and we had just incurred a large cost with new equipment, computer tech, etc., so he rigged it up for me to remote into the old computer – this makes the font very small, but works other than that.

                      Nathaniel will likely have a day off school again – was he off last week for last week’s nor’easter? Here they closed the schools down a few weeks ago for that heavy 4 inch snowfall … when I was a kid, they never closed for anything. They are predicting today’s second nor’easter will keep the power off even longer for some who never got it back from the first go-around. I feel for them. Guess I shouldn’t complain about our snowfall here.

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                    6. You’re lucky – this computer guy is very nice but a little inept … not launching all the Windows Updates (256 of them) which I can see but can’t do anything about, is just careless in my opinion. That’s why my computer locks up all the time, plus Robb won’t reboot the computers as he has no time (he says) … sigh. I’m off to get dressed to go outside and deal with the snow. Wish it was to go for a walk.

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                    8. I agree Anne – when I first arrived here at 11:00 a.m., I had internet but it was doing that circle spinning. I had all my wireless bars, but I could not go anywhere – just spinning. Was about to call Robb and finally a sign of life and sent him a message that I was shutting down and rebooting my laptop. Did that and it was right as rain. Don’t know what happened, but figured it was going to be a very slow day. Our computer guy has set it up so we can only use Internet Explorer and I often get a message that “Internet Explorer” is not working. I use Chrome for everything else but work. My boss is at a meeting this morning. I shut down my computer and looked outside – small amount of snow in the driveway and knew no walk, but got outside and a wintry precip mix going on – most of it not settling. Now it is dry with the sun out, but 1-3 inches of snow still predicted for tonight. This weather is a waste of time – Mother Nature can’t decide what she wants to do and no walking due to it. I think I mentioned a blogger that I follow who lives near Traverse City, Michigan which is not all the way to the Upper Peninsula, but is quite far north from me, slipped on the ice in January. A light covering of snow was over black ice and she was walking to her mailbox at the end of the property, slipped on it and fell down hard on her hand. She had to have three pins put in her arm/wrist area … she had surgery, then a split, then a cast, now a soft splint and is having problems using her hand at all. They have property out back and they keep chickens and ducks … it is her job to take care of the poultry and she can’t do it and she bemoans what exactly you can’t do as to household tasks when you have only one hand – she has no strength in it yet. So it scares me to walk anywhere where I might meet a similar fat on the ice, black ice especially.

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                    10. I see what this poor woman is going through and it makes me shudder. She is documenting this aftermath of this fall with pictures. She got the cast removed on Monday and it made me know all the more that I should be careful. No snow this morning but it is on the way and it is 25 degrees … I may stay in the neighborhood or maybe take the car for a spin. The last picture that TJ posted was when she got the cast removed this past Monday … very scary looking how her hand looks and I would say it is likely four weeks post-surgery.
                      https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/53805955/posts/90921

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                    12. Yes, I know – if you scroll down to see some of the other pictures – she had a few blog posts in between – don’t know her name (she goes by TJ; son is JJ and husband is JJ) but she is in charge of the inside/outside chores, husband has some medical issues, the son did as well … recovering from testicular cancer and just moved out of the house last Wednesday. The family seems nice, but not unduly helpful to her, but if you scroll down and see the hand and to me it looks worse than it did before they put the three pins in. I did get a walk in and will write a blog later today – have a series of employee name list to type today … asked Robb if client gave him a type list or spreadsheet – I didn’t see it in his inbox as his writing is atrocious. They have six plants and many employees. Anyway, I had to take the car for a spin and went to the Park – no more ice than usual and so I did walk, but only one time around the Park – it started to sleet sideways … I was always careful before, but seeing this slip and fall … a light covering of snow over black ice on the walk to her mailbox, just terrifies me.

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                    14. Oh yes and everything was hunky dory until the sleet began – it was not slickening up the pathway but I’m like John and don’t like it beating on my head, even with a hat on and my hood pulled up. Besides I had to take the car home and hook it up again and didn’t want the car all wet … silly weather, it could have waited until I got a little more of a walk in!

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                    16. I don’t drive enough and even though I go out and run the car every morning, all year around, the mechanic where I take my car (the dealership is nowhere near me and these guys are a few blocks away and I used them to service my last car which was 21 years old) recommended that I get a trickle charger on the car. When we had the back-to-back horrible Winters with the Polar Vortex and all the snow, I went out and ran it, but the first year we had freezing rain and I could not even pull out of the garage for two months as there was glare ice and my garage is not much bigger than the car. I ran it faithfully every day but could not even run it up/down the driveway to move the gears. When the ice finally melted, we had the plow come down the street and they dumped a load of snow and freezing rain froze it to the ground. I still could not gt out of the driveway. Good think I load up on groceries, but I went a few times with my neighbor/friend Marge … I tagged along with her to get my bird some fresh greens and a few fresh refrigerated items. I needed to get a new battery in Spring as it died and I needed a jump. Then we had a bad Winter the following year … I could get out of the garage but we had snow/ice everywhere so I only had it out on the streets a couple of times – same thing happened and needed another battery. Then I got a bad battery –
                      so in 18 months’ time, three batteries. I have to click the remote every day to “wake-up” the electrical system and keep it in good shape and the mechanics put a trickle charger attached to the battery. It is plugged in 24/7/365 except when I take the car for a spin and I have to unhook two extension cords and the gizmo from the wall. Sometimes I just take the car for a spin, with the extension cords/apparatus ticked in the window well to save time, but if I go anywhere, like errands or to the Park, I have to take it all apart and if it is raining, etc. I won’t take it out as I have to wipe the entire car off … my car’s odometer is at 4,796 miles and I bought it new in September, 2009.

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                    18. Yup, I am like a Sunday driver. I didn’t drive my other car that much and I would still have had it as I adored that car, but it started having a lot of electrical problems. For months, it would shut down in the middle of driving. Took it to the mechanic and would leave it there – they put it up on the hoist, they would take it out on the road. It wouldn’t fail. I’d come pick it up and sure enough it would do it again. They needed to have it “code” so they could correct the error. It was scary to drive it as it would stop on a dime. I took the bus to work at the time, so there were no worries that way, but it was not safe. I took it back and left it there and said “please try again, otherwise my mom and I really don’t feel safe in it … please take it home, drive it around town, it has a full tank of gas.” So they did, they took it to lunch and had the “coding machine” with them, and it failed – finally. They read the code and fixed it up. That was great, then it started turning the brake lights on by itself and draining the battery in the garage – every morning I would go out to run it (this was after I was no longer working on site) and it was dead. They figured out the problem, but my mom said it was not safe to drive and that was probably true. It had multiple recalls, through the years, but I felt like a princess riding in it.

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                    20. This car was special. My first car my parents bought when I started college as I was driving – there was no way to get to that school (community college) by bus. It was a VW Beetle auto-stick and was a lemon from day #1. Every time it rained or snowed, it would not start … I called the auto club so often they dropped me. It similarly would stop and not start again if I was stopped at a light. So I got an AMC Pacer. It had to have two gas tanks and it had a stalling issue so we got the Regal. My mom said “we simply cannot be in a car that stops for no reason.” She was right.

                      We went to look for a new car and did not intend to get a Buick, but happened to drive past the dealership, and this beautiful maroon car with the silver trim, white pin-stripes and Landau roof was sitting in the lot. It was beautiful but by then I worked and took the bus to work, so not practical to get such a “luxury car” … velour seats … just beautiful. We went in the dealership to ask about it. Someone had ordered the car, fully loaded, and decided they didn’t want it, so they were going to sell it cheaper as it was August and wanted to start making room for the next model year. So it ended up being the same as not “loaded” … I did feel like a princess in that car and everybody on the block wanted to buy it when I would get a new car – told everyone I would keep it the rest of my life. Twenty-one years later, most everyone had either died, moved away, or no longer driving a car!

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                    23. Thank you Anne – still makes me sad. I really cried like a baby to let it go, especially because I had it towed to Engine Tech as I’d drive it on an errand, park it in the garage and it was fine, next day it was dead. They’d come with the portable jumper, and it happened three days in a row. My mom said “have it take in; they don’t find the problem, we have to get a new car – it is not safe, nor reliable” … so I took it in and they could not find the problem, so we called dealership, they picked us up in a courtesy car and we got the car. Got home and phone rang “we know the problem, the brake lights have a short – they come on all on their own and stay on, draining the battery … we can fix this.” It was too late. I begged my mom to let us take the new car back – she would not relent. My mom had a lot of medical problems and was afraid to be in the car if it gave out; she could not climb up into a tow truck. It was coincidentally the last time my mom was in a car. She had some problems with her cellulitis in her legs, she could not stand up, and she had sciatica in her one hip, and could not sit down, so decided to go to her bed and stay there a few days to ease the pain – she never got up out of bed again. So, I could have kept my Regal when you think about it – but it wasn’t meant to be. Still broke my heart … I think it was a culmination of all the other things going on in 2009 starting with the dizzy episode in April of 2009 with my mom which caused me not to work on site any longer … lots of things going on that year … I have another Buick, a LaCrosse, but it is a beigey-gold color … it’s nice, but not the same.

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  11. How annoying. . . That bird sounds like a real nuisance. I’ve never had any problems with robins. The occasional robin that I see (I haven’t seen any this year so far) is a welcome sign of spring.

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  12. That little robin sounds like a little rebel. I can’t wait to see one but I’m hoping for the quiet, non eventful type 🙂 I love to read and comment, but I do get behind in Reader, I love to be caught up before bed.

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  13. I follow lots of bloggers because if they’re kind enough to visit and comment on my blog, then I want to reciprocate. [I started blogging eons ago when that was how it always was.] I set aside an hour each morning to read what’s been published. If “real” people are around I might not do my daily reading, but usually I do. Bloggy friends often are better friends than the “real” ones, you know?

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    1. That’s sensible to set aside an hour to read and reply. I agree that bloggy friends are marvelous. These were super people who just visited us, and I didn’t want to miss a minute of their 62-hour stay.

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      1. Oh, I’d do the same thing with special friends or family. I just try to keep on top of commenting because like the ocean, you never want to turn your back on it, lest you be sweep under. 🙁

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  16. I love your system of reading blogs! I get so behind, but I do love reading and catching up. I just need to be more consistent so I can keep current. But, it’s much more important to be present for the live people in our lives! Sorry the robin is being so nasty! My mom uses a pie tin to hang outside in front of her patio door. I’m not sure if it works–but she does it every year. Dawn

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