Janet's Blog

Victoria's hamster, Stripey, was obviously dying.  He had not been doing well for quite some time, but his symptoms had grown much worse in the last few days, and even more so this morning.  So, like a good mom should, I called the vet-- for a hamster!   I won't go into great detail about his malady, but Stripey was obviously in distress. The vet diagnosed fast-growing tumors, and recommended exactly what we expected and feared.  We had put off the inevitable a bit longer than we should have, but we had to leave Stripey at the vet's office to be euthanized.  I guess it was worth it for Victoria's peace of mind.  She said that she just didn't want to find him dead in his cage; waiting for him to die was too agonizing for her to consider. Stripey won't be joining his predecessors in the hamster graveyard next to our garden, but we are okay with that. We left the vet's office, $30.00 poorer, and headed home to clean and disinfect the hamster cage and ...

Over the last few years, it seems as if our world has suffered from more natural disasters than ever before.  We have watched our TVs in horror as graphic images of earthquakes and tsunamis have flashed across the screen.  We have gazed in amazement at images of hailstones as big as baseballs, or even bigger.  We catch our breath when we see the effects of those devastating hurricanes that have destroyed New Orleans and other parts of the U.S. coast. This spring, some of the natural disasters have hit us a lot closer to home.  Millions of dollars worth of crops have been flattened and property has been damaged by hail storms throughout our state.   Downpours have caused flash floods in several areas.  Huge tornadoes nearly obliterated the communities of Beaver Crossing and Pilger, and damaged many rural homes, as well. Two tornadoes touched down within roughly a mile of each other. Photograph: Dustin Wilcox/Reuters I've found that I can't quite rid...

When I was very young, still living on the farm, Mom always cooked big breakfasts in the morning and dinners at noon, and a lighter supper in the evening.  A few years later, when we no longer lived on the farm, our noon meal became smaller and supper became the biggest meal of the day. If I asked "What's for supper?" Mom always had one answer: "Meat, potatoes, and vegetables."  She told the truth; we always had some type of meat, often fried, as the main dish, with potatoes, boiled, baked, fried, or mashed, and a can of vegetables.  On a good day, I might get to choose which kind of vegetable can to open for supper--green beans or wax (yellow) beans, big white butter beans or green baby limas, pork and beans, corn, peas, beets, or mixed vegetables.  (The best, least mushy mixed vegetables were the ones that were separated in the can, with a circular piece of white paper sandwiched between each layer.)  Jello salad was a regular addition to our supper.  D...

After I play my new guitar, I always place it carefully back into its well-padded case, and close at least three of the six latches.  I would like to keep the guitar on a guitar stand or hang it on the wall, so it would be more readily accessible when I want to play it.  But I just can't bring myself to keep my guitar out of the case when I'm not using it--not anymore. Two weeks before I graduated from Fairbury High School, my family moved out of the Hotel MaryEtta into a house, located just one block from the school.  For the first time in nearly thirteen years, we were going to live in a real house with a yard!  There weren't very many houses for sale in Fairbury at that time, since it was a booming railroad town, so Mom and Dad settled on a house that was a bit of a "fixer-upper."  We painted the walls and replaced the ancient carpet before we moved in, but a new roof and updated kitchen had to wait. I played another new guitar then, my high school gradua...