Notes and observations on living in Kansas
We are now entering our fourth year in Kansas
and I think we've settled into a routine.
You can click the Ancient History link on the left if you
need to catch up with the journal I kept until May of 2004. Most of
the summer was documented on the
cowboyjunkies fotopage so I probably won't
do a lot of rehashing. There are also links to prior month's entries so that
this page does not get so out of control and take forever to load.
September 26, 2005 9:00 pm CDT
I've
spoken before about trips to Paxico. Just a couple of exits east on the
interstate and you can step back in time shopping for antiques in Paxico,
Kansas. The merchants association has now got a
website. My
friend Vicki is the co-owner of
Paxico
Antiques so be sure to stop in and spend money there. All the stores
there have some pretty cool stuff, but I seem to gather up the most stuff at
Vicki's. This trip I got some really cool candle holders, some antique
postcards, some soup mix (not antique) and onion cheese dip (also not
antique).
We had a wonderful lunch at The Electric Cat Cafe. They did
something called roast beef sandwich in a cup which was a piece of bread,
roast beef, gravy topped with a scoop of home made mashed potatoes and more
gravy all served in an extra tall Styrofoam cup. It was divine as was the
home made Dutch apple pecan pie.
There were several bands that played, but the one that we
heard the whole set of was
Connie & the
Choirboys. They played a great set as Bonnie & I wandered in and out of
all the stores and browsed. The weather was not too hot and not too cold and
a nice short trip like this was a perfect outing for Bonnie, who has been
feeling rather housebound and ready to get out and doing stuff again. Good
friends, food, music and shopping. What more could a girl ask for?
September 25, 2005 10:45 pm CDT
What do you get when you combine two good ol' Kansas boys, a
12 pack of beer and a barn that needs to be torn down? The world's stupidest
neighbor!
So I'm naked and getting ready to climb in the shower—yes,
I shower with no clothes on; that's what the washing machine is for.
It's been a long day. I've read the Sunday paper, watched Hurricane Rita
coverage, done six loads of laundry, vacuumed, mole stomped, organized the
forty bazillion pieces of paper that have accumulated in the region of my
desk. The dogs bark, I look out and see headlights coming up my driveway.
Before I can wonder who is visiting at this importune moment, I notice the
bonfire...the one that stretches at least 100 feet into the night sky. The
one that's sending burning embers up, up and away...and the wind is blowing
my direction.
The truck in my driveway is my neighbor Dan, who's wife has
noticed flames shooting up above the tree tops from her porch...half a mile
away. He is relieved to see that it's not my house. He is not impressed that
this fire is being attended to by the good ol' boys with only a twelve-pack
of beer to put it out with. Assured that it might be under control
and armed with the knowledge that I will not hesitate to sic the fire
department on my drunken neighbor, Dan returns to his football game. I
document the evening's festivities in stills and video. Now y'all know that
I love a good brush burning as much as the next guy, but this is just plain
idiocy. I will sleep with one eye open, if I sleep at all...
Coming tomorrow: Paxico Blues Festival.
September 22, 2005 8:30 pm CDT
Just a short update—while I TiVo
the premiere of CSI and get ready to watch the premiere of ER
live—to say we're all still kicking in Kansas.
Judi is away on a business trip, Bonnie is recovering at a record pace
(today the Doc said she was OK to drive), and I am working my little hiney
off. They've asked me to go full time and since DJ is not returning I see no
reason why I should not. I like the work, I like the company and it might be
nice to have health insurance again (especially at my age).
I realized this morning just how addicted I am to keeping
this blog. I rarely recall my dreams upon awakening and while I can't
remember many details of my dream last night, I do recall something
happening in the dream and that my first thought was that I had to write
about it here.
September 18, 2005 7:50 pm CDT
Sorry to have left you all hanging here. Everything is fine,
in fact most things are great and the one thing that isn't great I'm just
not willing to go into in detail here on this site. You may have noticed
that Bonnie and I have been doing a whole lotta stuff together over the past
few weeks. This last week was no exception. We did the
Kansas Cosmosphere and
the Kansas State Fair this past weekend. I have to admit that we had way
more fun at the Cosmosphere than we did at the fair although that venerated
state institution did have some really cool stuff. I've never walked the
livestock displays and shows at past state fairs and we did that this time
rather than concentrate on rides and shopping. I took pictures of the really
cool butter sculpture that was there and you can see it over at
cowboyjunkies.
The rest of the pictures of that trip and updates here (and
elsewhere) will have to take a back seat. It was Bonnie's turn to have
surgery this week and between my work schedule and doing every thing I can
to help her plus whatever is mission-critical around the house, I just don't
have the time to post pictures and stories right now. I will say her surgery
was a 100% success and her recovery so far is going a million times better
than anyone could have predicted so it's all good, it's just busy. Ok?
September 8, 2005 9:45 pm CDT
So
Bonnie & I went to the Dave Matthews Band concert in Bonner Springs last
night...on a work night. Today, after three hours of sleep, I feel
like crap. I am getting too old for this $hit. The concert was great. The
weather was perfect for an outdoor venue like Sandstone (I refuse to call it
Unnamed
Telecommunications Conglomerate Amphitheatre). Just how old I am was
made glaringly apparent by this concert. The majority of the crowd was so...young.
And so...drunk...or drugged. And there was the aroma of really good
cannabis everywhere. I came away firmly believing that if DJ was still here
and he came to me and asked if he could go to a concert, I would say,
"Sure...when you're fifty..."
There was a young woman standing behind my lawn chair who was
quite obviously under the influence of...a substance that I have never
tried! She was unable to stand upright...so she ended up leaning over
the back of my chair until she was practically laying on top of my head. Her
'friends' were rather impatient with her. One of the boys in her group
apologized to me and tried to pull her off the back of the chair but she had
a pretty good grip. I told him to let her be, she just needed to breath and
lean for a while. I told her she was ok as long as she didn't puke on me,
then all bets were off. Her 'friends' ended up abandoning her while she
tried to unscramble her wits. And all I could think was that she was the
spitting image of me thirty years ago, except that in my group, we never
walked away from anyone who was having trouble maintaining, we always
stuck together. I'm so glad I don't do that anymore. Think of all the
memories I missed because I was wasted...
September 3, 2005 11:00 am CDT
Well
we finally have an answer on the small barn on the neighbor's property. It's
gone. Now we can see all the way up to the big cedar house on the hill. The
night after I'd written about it, there was much burning and smoke in the
field as they burned the timbers and framing that held it up. Boy did that
stuff stink!
I've achieved a balance between work and home and I'm pleased
to say it's all good. I'm working about 30 hours a week, but with the
absence of one small child, it's amazing how much easier it is to keep up
with housework. The gardening season is in a sort of a lull right now,
nothing to plant or dig up (although there is
plenty
I could be burning) so it's just a matter of keeping it neat and trim which
Judi does quite well with her lawn tractor. I run the push mower over the
few areas that are too small for the tractor to maneuver through, but that's
not a whole lot of area. And I am enjoying work very much. It's a fun bunch
there and I seem to accomplish at least one 'something at the high end of
good' each week which feels really nice.
I had a spot that was bothering me on my teeth where the
appliance rubbed against my gums. I called the dentist, who saw me right
away, and he made some adjustments. He identified two other spots that were
rubbing that I didn't even know about. I'm sure there will be more tweaking
as more gum healing goes on and it's nice to know they are so responsive to
problems. Sometimes my face hurts from
smiling so much.
We finally have
Purrfect Paws
website up and running. In fact, I need to go get cleaned up so I can toddle
off to Jinna's and get some pictures of the cats I missed. Some of the black
ones were confusing and we need to sort those out and some of the black
cat's pictures just didn't come out all that well so they are missing from
the site.
