Water, water everywhere?

As we were driving home from Lawton this past Saturday, we passed a swimming pool installation van that had been pulled over by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.  As I've mentioned before, we live in a rural area, but a new development, Country Aire Estates, is being built just one half mile south of us.  The homes are beautiful and expensive.  Of course, if you live in a beautiful, expensive home, you want a beautiful, expensive lawn, and maybe an inground pool in the back yard. 

My question:  where is the water coming from to support all this?  Water is a common resource.  This is southwest Oklahoma.  It has a semi-arid climate.  We are currently in the middle of a drought.  For the past couple of months, many of those days have been "red flag fire alert" days.  Smoke is blowing up from Texas where wildfires are still raging. 

So, we get a little alarmed when people, i.e. real estate developers, don't pay close attention to where resources will come from to support all these people that are buying up the expensive beautiful homes.

A few years ago, I mentioned to my husband that we could drain our laundry water (gray water) out into a tub in back of the house and then pump that water out to the  garden or wherever it is needed.  This is a modification we are glad we made. 

Since our current drought, we have also been running laundry water out into our pasture in an attempt to green up the grass. We have also set up barrels in the pasture, filled them with laundry water, and have burlap bags standing by to beat out the fire.  Of course, this will only work if there are not extreme winds, but still it gives us some peace of mind even though we are aware that we are probably fooling ourselves.  I think the creator of "Dilbert," Scott Adams, calls it self-weaseling.

Our pasture

Drain pipe from washing machine into tub behind house.

Barrel to catch laundry water (gray water)

Close-up of barrel.  I put the ladder around it to keep the sheep from knocking it over. 
Sheep seem to like to congregate around things like this and have extended conversations.

Another barrel full of gray water with a burlap bag attached.

Oklahoma ranks #43 in peacefulness in the nation

In the April 17, 2011 edition of  The Oklahoman, there was an article about how our flyover state ranks #43 in the nation for peacefulness according to the United States Peace Index which was compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace.  The Institute defines peace as the absence of violence.  To find the absence of violence,  it looks at each state and measures the number of homicides, violent crimes, jailed populations, number of police officers and availability of small arms.

If you watch any television at all in the Oklahoma City area, you will be struck by the number of weekend gun shows that go on in Oklahoma City.  The advertisements are always full of the sounds of gun shots and there is a desperate, urgent quality to the message:  load up, stock up, you never know when the "bad guys" will invade your home. 

So when I came downstairs this morning after my ride on the exercise bicycle, I was only half surprised when my husband said, "Look on page 5A of this morning's Oklahoman."  (18Apr2011)  My husband had once met the man who died in a shoot-out at a bar in Medicine Park.  My husband doesn't hang out at bars.  He was only acquainted with him because he had had dealings with Mr. Taylor at Fort Sill.

Around here if we hear gunshots, we don't notify any authorities, we just look out the window. Gunfire is that common around here.  To be fair, we do live in a rural area and there is a lot of hunting and target shooting.  Still.  One of our neighbors drives around with a gun beside him on the passenger seat and another neighbor walks around with a pistol strapped to his thigh.

Number 43 in the nation?  I'm just surprised we weren't #50.

The Sixth Season: FIRE

You know how meteorologists refer to storm season as the fifth season?  Well, I think there should be a sixth season declared:  FIRE SEASON.




This past Wednesday, while Humpty and his plant buddy . . .

Hanging Basket

were enjoying the warm spring afternoon this is what was going on just behind us:

Rain will be so welcomed when it finally comes.







I tend to get ideas . . .

I tend to get ideas and I present them enthusiastically to my husband.  More often than not, he goes along with me. I talk really fast and he goes, "Huh?"

So, last year, after the umpteenth time of grabbing a cat off our window screen because she wanted to come into the house, I said, "Hey, let's get a kitchen door that has a built-in pet door so the little lovelies can come and go as they please!"

Husband:  "Great idea!"  And since husband is retired, he now has the time to implement my looney ideas much more quickly.

So:



Ta-daah! Kitchen door with pet door.



We have had it a year now.

Pros:  Cats can come and go as they please.

Con:  Not always the cats we expect.

Con:  Emma the dog will not use it.  We forgot that she is a polite dog and must be invited inside or outside.  She is a sweetie.  We did try training her by tossing bacon through the pet door so she would go through it, but even that didn't work. She stared at us with her big brown eyes as if to say, "You have got to be kidding."

Con:  Over the past year we have chased lizards and birds around the house.  These are the creatures that were still alive when the cats brought them in via the pet door.  We've managed to capture the living creatures and free them to the outside world.

Con:  Dead birds and rodents.  This morning I came upon a dead English sparrow by my dining room table chair, feathers lying everywhere and two cats staring at it and growling at one another, which prompted this blog posting.  Last night there was a dead rat in the dining room just like the night before.  We have, for the most part, entered hunting season full on and the cats want to share their catches with us.  Now we are back to shutting the kitchen door in the evening so the kitties can't bring in their prizes.

Con:  Beloved grandchildren viewing the pet door as a possible escape hatch:




Logan and Laci, Thanksgiving 2010

So, I don't know.  Like some of my ideas, this one might have been better in theory rather than practice.



Tea Party: Just a Catchy Name for a Dangerous Organization

In 1773 when the original Tea Party occurred, the population of the thirteen original colonies was around 2.2 million souls, and that's not counting slaves (if they were being counted, it was only as 3/5 of a whole human being) or native Americans.  I'm not even sure if women were included in that head count, but let's say that they were just for grins.  Slaves were still being imported even though headway was being made to stop that odious offense to humanity.  Women were the chattel of their husbands and children had a tough row to hoe.  Life expectancy  in 1793 was 36.9 years.  If improvements are not made to our health care system, we could well see that lifespan average again.

And the original Tea Party was formed in protest because the colonies were not represented in the British Parliament.  There are no similaries between that Tea Party and the people who are part of the Tea Party movement now.  They simply hijacked the name and appear to be intent on electing  people to our government to slowly dismantle the progress that has been made in these United States over the past 200 years. 

The current Tea Party battles everything that helps our society as a whole: SSI, food stamps, and Medicare/Medicaid.  They say they want a balanced budget.  We HAD a balanced budget when President Clinton was in office.  To balance our budget, we should withdraw our troops from Afghanistan, Iraq and wherever else we are.  We cannot police the world.  And if we use our troops in other parts of the world, let's use them to bring aid to people rather than killing innocents and, yes, most are innocents, but we refer to them as "collateral damage."  Much tidier, don't you think?

The current Tea Party backs proposals that hurt the disenfranchised, the working poor, children, elderly, those who haven't gotten a break in life.  The only people that aren't being hurt are the rich and corporations.  It truly is all about money.  And, good grief, the number of times Tea Party members bring up Christianity or wear a cross on their lapels.  Really??  Is this what we, as a nation, have come to?

I'm reminded of that song by the Temptations, the first few lines of which goes:

"Smiling faces sometimes pretend to be your friend
Smiling faces show no traces of the evil that lurks within
Smiling faces, smiling faces sometimes
They don't tell the truth uh
Smiling faces, smiling faces
Tell lies and I got proof
The truth is in the eyes
Cause the eyes don't lie"

Think of those leaders in the Tea Party movement -- those media saavy, photogenic talking heads.  Smiling faces.

LEAVE PLANNED PARENTHOOD ALONE!

Let me  preface the following with this:  my husband and I have two adult children.  They are both married and have given us five grandchildren.  There will be another grandchild in the fall and I'm already excited imagining about how the new baby will be like our other grandchildren, yet different in his or her own way.  What will this new grandchild be like?  We love our children and their spouses and our grandchildren very much and cannot imagine life without any one of them. They are much loved imporant people to us.  Having said that . . .

As I was eating breakfast this morning and listening to NPR, there was a report about how Republicans will continue to push for cutting Federal funding to Planned Parenthood.  They keep emphasizing that Planned Parenthood is all about abortions.  It's not!

Leave Planned Parenthood alone!   We need Planned Parenthood.  We need to educate more -- yes, as a taxpaying society.  Abstinence education means nothing unless a young person's hormones can be controlled too -- and we certainly don't want that, do we?  Both males and females alike need sex education to prevent diseases and unwanted pregnancies.  

There wouldn't be any abortions if our sex education in this country was better.  Women don't decide willy-nilly to go have abortions.  They have abortions because their lives aren't ready, for a myriad of reasons, for the responsibilities of a new life.  That is totally the woman's personal decision.  It's her body that carries the baby, and fathers might protest this next thought but child rearing is still squarely on a woman's shoulders.

Planned Parenthood is about education.  After we had the number of children that we had planned for, my husband went to Planned Parenthood and got a vasectomy.  A vasectomy meant peace of mind for both of us.  We had our family.

Republicans trumpet that Planned Parenthood is all about abortions and how the unborn child must be protected.  I ask all of you: what about the child after he or she is born?  How much, as a society, do we care about that child? 

Watch one of those afternoon judge shows.  Keep track of how many cases come up that have to do with unmarried couples who have had a child.  They have no love for one another and they have no desire to form a family. In fact, many times, the child is simply a result of a one night stand.

Again, it's not about being  right or wrong, it's about being smart or stupid. 

EDUCATION, people.  Watch the first 15 minutes of the movie, "Idiocracy."  That is where we are headed as a society.

A substitute for Swiffer

When we built our house, we had all vinyl flooring installed on the downstairs level -- living room, kitchen and dining, bathrooms and bedroom.  We are so happy we did.  We live out in the country and have sheep, chickens, a dog, and kitty cats.  Vinyl is a lot easier to keep clean than carpet.  For years I used a broom and mop and bucket to clean the vinyl flooring then Swiffer appeared.

Maybe you have one in your home -- a Swiffer.  For a couple of years I was hooked on  purchasing wet Swiffer cloths and dry Swiffer cloths to clean my vinyl flooring.   It was sooooo convenient, but those little cloths are expensive and wasteful. Recently I've been trying to avoid going down the aisles at the store that have laundry detergent and cleaning supplies.  I've been making my own cleaning spray using a solution of one half vinegar and one half water in a spray bottle and I'm making my own laundry detergent.  (The purchase price of items we purchase and consume has advertising, packaging and shipping included in that price.  We pay for all that convenience.)

So in my goal to continue trying to avoid the cleaning aisles, I finally found microfiber cloths.  Now I attach a microfiber cloth to my Swiffer tool and either dry mop or spray some of my vinegar water solution on the microfiber cloth for a little wet pick-up.  And my sponge mop and bucket are back for the deep cleaning.

Once my microfiber cloth is dirty, I put it in a bag.  When the bag is full, I wash the microfiber cloths and hang out to dry, then they are ready for another use. And the microfiber cloths have a myriad of uses -- they just aren't for cleaning floors.

I haven't missed the Swiffer cloths but I've sure enjoyed the savings.

Microfiber cloth attached to a Swiffer tool.

Ready for more uses.

Chickens and Spring Lambs

Our new Suffolk lambs.



Chickens checking out the new lambs.



We are shredding our junk mail to make bedding for the chickens and lambs.
Of course, this can  have funny results: newsprint on freshly laid eggs, sheep walking around with advertising stuck to their wool!

Space: The Final Frontier

Yesterday I posted about how I had rid myself of my decrepit electric clothes dryer.  Now I'd like to show you what I did with the space its departure left.  It isn't anything fancy, but it's nice to have some breathing room.  We'll plug the hole to the outside where the dryer's venting hose had been.

Like I said, nothing fancy but . . .

now I have space to maneuver around in and a  place to make
my homemade laundry detergent.  And, now there is a place
for my brooms, mops and bucket.  Simple pleasures for a simple person!

Goodbye, Electric Clothes Dryer

On a sunny day in June, 2010, my electric clothes dryer died.  It was an old clothes dryer and had had several surgeries to keep it running.  Since it was summertime, I knew I could turn to my outside clothesline to handle the task of drying.  Then I studied the space that that clothes dryer was occupying and also the cost it was taking to operate and I told my husband that if I could last a year without wanting an electric clothes dryer, I wanted to get rid of my clunky one to make room for . . . space!!  Space is a precious commodity.

This morning, though it's not been quite a year, I said goodbye with a happy heart to that rotten electric clothes dryer. I made it through the winter without using a gas or electric clothes dryer. I have pictures!

Unplugged and ready to leave.

Out of the house and on the move.

Continuing its journey to . . .

its last destination before the dump.  You can tell the poor old
thing is tired -- its tongue is hanging out!

So when the sun is shining, you'll find me outside hanging clothes:

And if the weather is poor, you'll find me inside hanging clothes!

Recycling and Emergency Money

You know how we are advised to have emergency cash on hand?  We learned this the hard way when we were out of electricity for 11 days.  For a few days, not even ATM machines in our area were working.  Gasoline pumps weren't working either.  Out of power means out of power.

When we got back on our feet, we started addressing the different areas of our "emergency preparedness" lives that we needed to improve. 

Do you have a jar into which you throw loose change?  Have you taken it to your bank or credit union to have it converted to dollar bills?  That is where we got our first deposit into our emergency cash on hand fund:  loose change.  My husband took it to the credit union and exchanged the coins for $187. 

We live out in the country and often on our walks, we see soda and beer aluminum cans along the roadways.  We collect those.  In addition to these cans, we purchase Friskies wet cat food in cans.  We purchase Friskies because those cans are aluminum and can be recycled.  (9 Lives doesn't use aluminum cans.)

This morning we hauled four giant bags of cans we had picked up and also cat food cans to a recycling center in Lawton.  We took  in 53 pounds and were paid $32.  We added that $32 to our $187 in  our emergency cash on hand fund. 

Saving  loose change and picking up aluminum cans are two things we will continue to do.  Picking up cans is good exercise too.

I've been a bad girl!

Well, I've been a bad girl.  It's been over a month since I last posted.  March was more eventful than expected and an on-line life is nothing compared to real life.  I really admire people who can post on their blogs everyday. 

So, anyway.  Spring has sprung here in southwest Oklahoma although yesterday we could hardly tell.  Winds blew 60 miles per hour and it was cold.  No rain, just wind and cold.  But today is beautiful.  My husband has been working on the garden and I've been washing laundry and hanging it outside to dry. 

Although it hasn't been a problem yet because we are in the middle of an extreme drought, my husband's working in the garden usually means mud in the house.  I know the mud in the house means that vegetables and fruits will follow eventually.  However, I'm always looking for ways to fight against the inevitable dirt tracks.  (He tries to remember to take his shoes off at the door but this doesn't always happen.)

We have cats and we buy cat food.  The dry cat food comes in large biodegradable bags.  We also subscribe to several newspapers.  There is no recycling center close to where we live so we are always looking for ways to reuse our newspapers.  We've tried making bricks from newspapers and my husband often just digs a hole in the garden and buries them.  (When I went to summer camps as a young girl, we often made woven mats from newspapers.)  We've even tried using the newspapers for mulch but it is very windy here and often the newspapers, if not weighted down with enough soil, will fly around the garden, making everything look trashy.  So . . . .

I thought of a way to use the cat food bags and the newspapers to make walkways in the garden so that maybe not so much dirt will track into the house.   I saved up a week's worth of newspapers and stacked them inside an empty cat food sack, folded over the ends, and taped. I hope to have the whole garden lined with these "stepping stones" by the end of the summer.  The bags full of newspapers will flatten down with  use. Here's a picture of my first effort:



Irises in our garden

HAPPY APRIL!  WINTER IS OVER.