Sleutherin'

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is a gal of hidden talents. She has a penchant for getting to the bottom of things. Perhaps that's due to her career as a public school teacher. Perhaps that's due to her marriage to Farmer H.

Anyhoo...Mrs. HM is hanging out her Private Investigator shingle. Hoping nobody steals it.

On the way home from town yesterday, I turned T-Hoe onto my gravel road and saw a white truck up ahead. That's not unusual. Several people out here have a white truck, HOS (Farmer H's Oldest Son) being one of them. I'm not well-versed in truck models, but this one didn't look like the one I see parked in our BARn field when HOS is there helping Farmer H.

Normally, I wouldn't freak out about such a sighting. It's probably someone who lives out here. What caught my eye was an object in the back of that white truck. I don't know what it was. It looked kind of awkwardly loaded. Not all wrapped in an old bedspread, or tied down with come-a-longs like a valued piece of furniture might be, if somebody was moving it to their house.

AND this white truck was driving really slow. I know that some people have a nice car, and don't want to kick up dust from the gravel road. This was not a nice car. The area where I came upon the white truck was where we found a broken aquarium that had been trashed there a few months back. It's near the shallow waterfall of the now-frozen creek, where there's a little gap in the trees. Ne'er-do-wells have always used that area for dumping.

Had I come upon a would-be dumper?

Well! If I HAD, that varmint wasn't going to get away scott free! No siree, Bob! I could gather evidence, and turn it over to my enforcer, Farmer H. So I took out my phone, and tried to get a picture of that truck. Unfortunately, that road is bumpy, and my picture-taking leaves a little to be desired, even when I'm NOT piloting a 2008 Tahoe.

He must have seen me waving the phone around, because he sped up a little bit. Didn't stop and drop his truck bed load. He turned left on the first branch he came to off that gravel road. It's a dead end up there. So either he lives on that branch, or he thought he was escaping my investigation.

Farmer H says there's a new guy out here who just bought a house. But you can't reach it from that road the truck turned on. He doesn't know what the guy drives.

You can bet I'm going to leave this case open.

ACK! NO, NO, NO, JUST NO!

Perhaps by now you are familiar with my routine. I spend the late afternoon/evening hours in my dark basement lair, which I now leave lighted, though two of the four overhead lights are currently out. I peruse the innernets, check up on my blogs, inform myself of the newest conspiracy theories, eat my lunch at my New Delly, and usually supper, since Farmer H is always popping out to an auction and grabs his as the time suits him.

I sip on my 44 oz Diet Coke throughout the afternoon and night. I add Cherry Limeade sugar-free powder mix to it, and extra ice, and freshen it with a bottle of Diet Coke (the hard stuff) as it weakens. I keep a baggie of frozen ice cubes in the basement mini fridge to apply to my knees. It has been melted and refrozen many times, and still hasn't sprung a leak in its double baggie.

Sometimes I know it's time to put away the knee ice when I feel it slipping down in the fold I've made by flipping my striped sweatpants leg into a long cuff. Sometimes I know because my knee starts hurting from the cold. Other times it comes at a logical cut-off point when I get up to go to the NASCAR bathroom next door to my office.

Sometimes, I just KNOW that my knee ice has sprung a leak. I can feel the trickle of melted water (which I guess is actually melted ice, having turned into water) down my shin. Imagine my surprise when I reach down, and find my soft cotton sweats dry as a bone that's been laying around Sweet, Sweet Juno's house for a year or two. I guess I feel the phantom trickles.

Today, I was typing away at my not-so-secret blog, about CasinoPalooza 3. I felt that feeling on my leg, but since I wasn't wearing my knee ice, having laid off from driveway-walking in this frigid cold snap, and not feeling as much pain in that joint. I thought something along the lines of, "Aha! You can't fool ME! I know I'm not wearing my knee ice. It can't be melting." I went on typing, my phantom drip out of my mind.

An hour or so later, I felt that drip again, so I reached down, and

FELT SOMETHING UNDER THE FABRIC OF MY PANTS LEG!

ACK! NO, NO, NO, JUST NO!

It was a CRICKET!!!

Yes! A live cricket! Having apparently been sitting on my shin for about an hour or so! Just sitting there! A CRICKET! On my LEG! With its little cricket hands and feet (SIX OF THEM, I know my insect morphology!) grasping the stubs of my leg hairs that might not be so very stubby, here in the deep dark days of winter!

THE HORROR!

Have I mentioned that I hate crickets? Almost as much as I hate feet! And now I had cricket feet on my bare skin! For about an hour or so!

I couldn't smash that cricket! It would leave cricket guts on my bare skin, and in my sweatpants leg! I felt it start scrambling when I touched it. So I shook my pants leg, and looked down in horror to see that cricket fall out! It was a big husky specimen. I couldn't stomp it. My shoes were off. Red run-down Crocs abandoned further under my desk. Besides, blog buddy River says crickets in the house are good luck!

In spite of losing my shirt and half my wardrobe at CasinoPalooza 3, and being sick these last six days, I really consider myself pretty lucky. So I let that cricket be.

It was horrifying.

This Isn't Supposed To Happen!

Let the record show that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is sick. Sick, SICK, SICK!

That shouldn't happen, right? I am not trapped in a classroom with 100 students per day any more. Not required to stand sentinel at the doorway as they pass by, hacking and snorting and spewing all manner of viruses at my exposed mucous membranes and the gases about to enter my respiratory tract. NO! I am a stay-in-lair retiree who only makes one trip to town every day for the purchase of a 44 oz Diet Coke. And maybe a few scratch-off tickets.

This is not my first rodeo. I've been around the block. I didn't just fall off the turnip truck. I am an ex-science-teacher, by cracky! With BIOLOGY knowledge. I know that you don't succumb to a sickness by going out in the winter with wet hair, or catching a chill. You get a sickness by allowing the virus or bacteria that causes that sickness to gain access to your innards.

I do NOT touch my eyes, nose, mouth, ears, or face while I'm out and about. No siree, Bob! An itch will have to wait for the scratch after a Germ-X wash. Door handles and cart handles and slot machine handles and all manner of knobs and levers and keypads and vending machine buttons are rife with the sicknesses of other people. You might as well run your tongue over them as touch your face after handling them. Although the saliva and your digestive juices would probably start disarming those viruses and bacteria right away.

So...I don't know how I became ill.

It started on Monday morning. I woke up with a sore throat. Not the normal sore throat, up in the back of the roof of your mouth. You can gargle warm salt water and make that kind feel better for a while. Mine was in the lower neck-throat area. Like down on the vocal cords. The left one, more specifically. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday... It won't quit! During the day, it sometimes becomes bearable. Then overnight, it goes back to feeling like I'm swallowing crushed glass.

I've been drinking a lot (WATER and DIET COKE, of course) to thin the mucus and make coughing it up a little easier. The dizziness is better. It's not really in my nose, just a few drips. Clear. I have Halls Mentho-Lyptus Honey Lemon, and The Devil's brand Equate Menthol Cherry cough drops. I can't talk much (Farmer H is rejoicing, I'm sure, when he's not saying, "WHAT?"), and when I do, I speak in a register lower than Farmer H himself.

Poor Farmer H. Heh, heh. You know I don't really feel a lot of sympathy for him, don't you? He has driven to town for three days in a row, trying to get a haircut, only to see a sign taped on the door of his barbershop, saying that the barber is out sick. "He must have what you do! He's NEVER been off this long."

I'm sure it's just a virus. Nothing I can do for it. Except whine, of course. Hoarsely. On Monday, I was dizzy when I woke up. I figure something got into my throat and made a run for my ears and down my neck. I can only imagine this virus got in because I dared to breathe. That's right. Mrs. HM is a breather. A MOUTH BREATHER!

Probably, in my travels, I was not quick enough to stop breathing when a ne'er-do-well coughed without blocking their spray of pathogens with a hand or elbow. Or I stopped breathing right then, but could not escape the full cloud of pathogens before I had to inhale again. Because your sickness will start in the area you first make contact with the pathogens. If I was a nose-breather, I'd have started with a standard runny nose, which would then progress down my throat and into my lungs. Or if I touched my eyeball with a pathogen-coated finger, I'd have had the watery eyes, then runny nose, then cough, etc.

I'm thinking I caught this sickness after we left the casino on Friday at 11:30. Otherwise, it's a pretty long incubation period. Maybe I got it at The Devil's Playground on Saturday. Or Save A Lot on Sunday. Various and assorted coughers were abundant in both places.

Right now I'm pretty pitiful. So pitiful that I turned down a trip to the local casino on Wednesday! Farmer H says he's taking me Friday. So I guess I'll feel good enough to go. Alls I know is...I'm typing this up on Thursday evening, hoping to make a miraculous recovery in the next 12 hours.

Ze FRAMES, Blog Buddies! Ze FRAMES!

Forget that Mary Richards stuff! That is SO yesterday. Or 1970s. We're moving on to Fantasy Island tonight.

I'm a little too tall to be Tattoo, and I'm not nearly tanned enough to be Ricardo Montalban. That man had skin like fine Corinthian leather. No, I'll just be my everywoman self, and report the facts. I'm already living my fantasy of being RETIRED.

Farmer H got some more snazzy gold picture frames for my best ol' ex-teaching buddy Mabel. So it's HER fantasy today, not mine. Farmer H also found Mabel another mirror! Isn't it cute? These are small frames. The whole five pieces here were only $20 total. AND he got another one, 6" x 7".

I think he said the small frames are plastic, and the mirror frame is wood, because it's pretty heavy. Don't remember what he said about Blue Boy, whose price was $5.00. Typical Farmer H, to frame (see what I did there?) the picture with a lot of empty space, and the subject tiny, in the center.

I don't know what that reedy-looking basket thingy is in the first photo. To the right. Probably not for Mabel. It must be one of Farmer H's fantasies. Could be a fishing creel, maybe, for his Fishing Lair shack. Or a snowshoe for BigFoot, to display with his other oddities in The Pony's Sword Shack. It seems to have become a catchall for things he's not sure what to do with. Maybe it's a picnic basket, because we only have three or four already. And let the record show that we have never taken one on a picnic.

At least while he's Goodwilling, Farmer H is not partaking of his own fantasy, which is building new structures that clamor for funding, and clutter up the landscape.

Who Can Turn The World On With A Smile?

Heh, heh! It sure ain't Mrs. Hillbilly Mom!

And now Mrs. HM morphs into Mary Richards.

Can you see me living in an apartment in an old house in Minneapolis, with a sunken living room, perhaps hosting dinner parties where I serve Veal Prince Orloff as prepared by Sue Ann Nivens? With a wacky upstairs neighbor, Sioux, with her visiting New York mother, Fishducky? And a landlady, River? Okay. Maybe not. I figure Sioux would be as funny as Rhoda, and Fishducky would be as funny as Ida Morgenstern, but that River would be a nicer version of Phyllis Lindstrom. And not as much of a busybody.

Remember how Mary had that big 'M' hanging on the wall? I thought that was SO COOL. That's how we described something we liked, back in the '70s. SO COOL.

Okay, maybe I'm never going to be Mary Richards. But at least Farmer H bought me something that could hang in her apartment! It came from Goodwill, of course. A BIG CITY Goodwill? I'll have to ask. Farmer H went on a far-reaching tour yesterday. It cost A DOLLAR. It feels like stitched leather, and I think Mary's 'M' was metal. No, it's not just a random letter that Farmer H got me, thinking I could change my name to fit it. It actually IS my initial.Shh...don't tell. It's super-secret, you know.



































Farmer H got me a present, and didn't even know I would think it is SO COOL.

Hat's Off To The Shaming Bracelet

Let the record show that Mrs. Hillbilly Mom raked it in this Christmas! Her menfolk were on their game, by cracky!

The Pony gave me mittens and a hat for driveway walking. They even match! It's been a bit too cold, even for ME, so I have not yet given them a try, with daytime temps in the teens, and nighttime below zero.

Genius gave me a fancy Garmin gewgaw. He's all about electronics, that guy. And with his Garmin career set to kick off on January 8th, he's wasting no time in putting more profit in their coffers.

Actually, he might have still had a discount from working there this past summer. Anyhoo...he got me the Garmin version of a Fitbit. This is a good gift, because I will use it for my driveway walks. I'll use it all day, of course, but with an eye on how far and how long I walk on my planned driveway excursions, and to see how healthy a casino trip really is for me!

Here's the problem, though. Christmas Day, Genius strapped me up with the Garmin, and then left. He showed me how it works, of course. Easy for him to comprehend. But for me, it was somewhat like reading an operating manual for flying a 747 to my old dog Grizzly, expecting him to grasp it right away. And he's been dead for a couple years now. Later Christmas evening, my Garmin started beeping and red-lining! I had no idea what was going on. So I sent Genius a text.

"I don't know what that red arrow thing means! Am I near death?"

"That's just saying it wants you to move! You can ignore it. It's just a way to make sure you're active and moving around during the day."

Heh, heh. If there was ever a day I was active and moving around, it was CHRISTMAS DAY! But unfortunately, by the time Genius strapped on my SHAMING BRACELET (as I've come to call it) that afternoon, after Christmas dinner, then later dish-washing, I was ready to rest come evening.

Let the record further show that on Day 2 of CasinoPalooza 3, I hit THREE MILES on the Shaming Bracelet, and satisfied that technological taskmaster at last!

I'm pretty sure this red arrow thing is going to show up every day, though...

The Scapegoat Of Farmer H's Discontent

We returned from CasinoPalooza 3 on Friday evening. Farmer H left for the auction shortly after unpacking, and I retired (heh, heh, that's for blog buddy Sioux, that RETIRED reference) to my dark basement lair. Farmer H was not gone as long as usual, what with only 12 people showing up for the auction. He said he got some bargains, though.

Anyhoo...I didn't know any of that yet. All I knew was that it was sometime between 9:00 and 10:00 when I heard Farmer H stumping around upstairs in the master bathroom. Nothing scary there. But THEN I heard him stumping down the basement steps. THAT is frightening. You never want your dark basement lair invaded by Farmer H. He has a penchant for standing in the doorway to chat, then turning as if he's leaving, and emitting more gas than a wrecked tanker truck.

"The TV won't work. I tried to change the channel, and it won't do anything."

"Did you take it off the satellite?"

"No. I didn't do nothin'. Just tried to change the channel."

"I'll be up in a minute."

So I hiked up those 13 steps to see if I could help Farmer H fix the TV/DISH/remote. A request from him that is kind of like me asking Farmer H to edit my writing.

"What did you touch?"

"Nothing."

"Who was the last person to use the remote, then?"

"I don't know. The PONY? Before we left Wednesday morning for the casino."

"Did we leave it on? The TV? Or did Genius and Friend turn it on before they left later?"

"I don't know if they turned it on."

"So when you came in from the auction, you turned it on, and..."

"It WAS on. I tried to turn channels, and it won't move."

"Sometimes the other one does that. You have to punch in the channel number, not try change it from the guide when you first turn it on."

"You try it."

"Okay. It won't do anything. What was the last thing you touched?"

"Nothing! I just picked it up to change the channel."

"It's on CBS. We don't watch that. I wonder if Genius had it on, then they did something weird to turn it off...So, you came in and turned it on..."

"NO! YOU turned it on! When we got back. Before I went to the auction."

"I did?"

"Yeah. It was on when I got home from the auction."

"I'm pretty sure you turned it on while I was unpacking."

"No, YOU did."

"Maybe. But you were watching it."

"No I wasn't!"

"You were sitting right there while I unpacked! Talking to me!"

"I wasn't watching TV."

"Well, I can't imagine you sitting there with the TV off, and if I really turned it on, you were watching it, and everything was fine, because I can't imagine you not putting it on your channels."

"I wasn't watching it! Stop trying to blame me!"

"I'm not. I sitting here with this remote, trying to figure out what you might have touched before it quit working."

"I didn't touch the remote!"

"Don't yell at me!"

"I'm NOT YELLING! YOU ALWAYS START BLAMING ME!"

"I am NOT blaming you. I'm trying to find out what to do to fix the remote. Now I remember! You were watching football! You told me something about the game as I was walking around unpacking. That's why it's on CBS. For football."

"I was watching football and switching to MASH."

"So you hit the button that switches to the last station..."

"I DIDN'T DO IT! Stop questioning me, trying to blame ME!"

"Stop yelling. I'm only trying to find out the last buttons pushed. How else am I going to fix it?"

"I am SICK OF YOU SAYING I MESSED IT UP!"

"I didn't say that. I am trying to help you. I walked my sore knees all the way upstairs to help YOU, and now you're yelling at me."

"I'M NOT YELLING!"

"Stop."

"YOU STOP!"

"Okay. If you don't want me to help..."

"I can't take it anymore!"

"Just stop. Look at yourself."

"YOU JUST STOP! STOP TALKING NOW!"

So I did. Not a word. Farmer H continued to yell that he was sick of me and and how I wouldn't shut up. But I wasn't talking at all. I raised my hands in question as to the "wouldn't shut up" part.

"NOW YOU'RE MOCKING ME! SHUT UP!"

"It won't even turn off now."

Farmer H went to hold in the button on the DISH receiver until it went off. I turned it back on with the remote. The screen showed that it was loading the program guide, which might take 10 minutes. Then it worked.

UMMM...he's welcome. Though I didn't say so, and went downstairs to the peace of my dark basement lair.

And thus ended The Great Remote Control Controversy of 2017.