DOGWOOD ACRES WEEKLY, 02/11/08

DOGWOOD ACRES, 02/11/08, ELANE CRUM

Hello friends. This week began with another blast of winter weather, again, enough to cancel today’s appointments. Freezing rain and sleet blowing from the south has glazed my office windows. A day like this seems to call for comfort food, so I fried bacon and made flour gravy to spoon over hot biscuits.

I called LeaAnn’s folks to see how things are in their county and Mary Lou had taken squirrel from the freezer. Ashton really likes squirrel with dumplings so I suspect that is the plan. Ashton and Erin are spending the day with them as Neal and LeaAnn had gone to Springfield to make a hospital visit.

After breakfast, Rick brought two five-gallon water containers up from the basement. They are now scrubbed and filled with fresh water just in case ice gets heavy on the power lines and we lose electricity. There are a few sticks of wood in the carport so if the power does goes out he should be able to fire up the wood furnace.

Rick and I went to watch Erin play basketball at Taneyville Friday night. The Plainview Cougars won all three games against the Taneyville Tigers, although all played good games. Taneyville is close enough to home that we got to see old friends, neighbors and classmates. Emmett Biggs has not missed a Taneyville game in years and has a reserved seat on the top bleacher against the back wall. Through the years he has watched nephews, Colby and Clint, now niece, Abby, who carries on the Biggs family tradition.

I visited with two of my Taneyville classmates, Janice Collins (Wolf) and Arlene Addington. Boy, did we have some good times and make a lot of memories. We were good kids, although we did skip school one day during the eighth grade. Zula Nagel was our accomplice and carried us all off in her station wagon for a picnic at Swan Creek. There was one or two who chose not to go and it was not one of us runaways who got the Citizenship Award that year.

Saturday night, Ashton, Erin and I visited our neighbors, going first to see Uncle Jim and his puppies. The three little sweet peas are two weeks old now and have a nice warm bed in the utility room. Jim used some of Grandpa Clarence’s rough-sawn cedar boards to make them a sturdy box. It holds them now but he is already planning for their new outdoor pen.

Before coming home, we stopped at Bill and Christie’s house. Sean and his girls, Makaylee and Madison, were there, everyone was full of Christie’s homemade hot rolls, and the big dinner she had fixed. Much to Bill’s dismay there is always a cat or two in the house now. Cliffy is a beautiful gray and white Tomcat who belongs to Daddy’s cat, Mooch. Mooch is “with child” again and Bill is not thrilled. Oh Well!!

A new kitten with long tail and white boots showed up at our house last week and now I know exactly how it got here. Makaylee let it slip that she and Colby had transported the little stray before Grandpa Bill came home and found it. It really does not matter now, as there are more cats than I take time to count waiting for breakfast every morning. Bye for now.