Copy Cat

So much happened in the last couple of days, I keep realizing I left things out.

For example, fizzy ice cream doesn't really have a different taste. It's fizzy like a carbonated beverage. It tastes like fizzy mint chocolate chip!

Sunday I went out and mowed the grass despite having no power. It hadn't been mowed for nearly two weeks, what with rain and all, and it was shaggy everywhere. (Thus the importance of knowing how to wash mower exhaust and grass bits off without a shower.)

So I know for a fact that this tree was not down Sunday evening.

Apparently, yes, if this tree's friends jumped off a bridge, it would, too!

It fell over some time in the night Sunday after we went to bed. We had no wind in the night, but there it was, down in the freshly-mowed grass, Monday morning.

This was an old sweet yellow cherry tree from back in the days when our property was planted with sweet cherries, mostly red, and peach trees. It had the one little live branch on the side.
Mr. and Mrs. They sometimes say that if you grow yellow cherries, the birds won't get them, because they don't perceive that the cherries are ripe. But I guess the cedar waxwings never got the word, because they would always feast on them.

sigh One more tree to cut up for firewood.

The other thing we did was decide we were old/soft/rich enough to finally cave in and buy a generator to run the fridge, the freezer, and fill up the pressure tank with water every so often.

I have a big black rubber calf-watering tub I put under the eaves and catch lots of rainwater to flush the toilet with during times of no electricity, but rainwater off my roof is not drinking-quality water.

With the means to keep food cold and run the well pump, we can go without power for days, days I tell you.

And I have to go off on a minor rant here about the whole driving-into-the-storm thing . . . Friday while Mr. Amazing and Son were off at the movies, I sat with the battery-powered radio and tried to find anything, anything about the local weather.

With nothing else to do, I went up and down the dial listening for weather reports or local news, and thoroughly missing my online weather reports and radar.

I found a great big zero. The closest local station was playing the baseball game until it got rained out. Then the local announcer opened the phone lines so people could call in and talk about the baseball game.

It would have been really nice (she said sarcastically) if some station somewhere had mentioned that oh, by the way, severe thunderstorms are expected north of us, so we would have known not to go driving into flood conditions. But noooo, it was more important to play lame music, commercials for products which I will not buy on principle after listening to the annoying and intelligence-insulting commercials, or canned programming from goodness knows where while totally ignoring that anything local exists.

By which I mean to say we didn't know that storm was coming and drive into it anyhow - we drove north not knowing it was there and did the best we could once we were in the thick of it.