Pinto

Being from a very western community, we have lots of livestock, lots of horses etc. Some areas of town (I think we are about 53,000 pop.) are apparently grandfathered in or like us, not in the city limits. Yep, we are in the county! So you can see pastures with horses near the mall. I don't know the difference between a paint or a pinto. Surely there is one, but all of my life, the words have been used to describe a spotted horse. This shouldn't be confused with an Appaloosa which can also be spotted. That is what the ol' homestead looks like. It has been scraped, caulked and primed in spots. If the weather holds, the Mr. may get the rest of the primer on tomorrow. We took the day off to take care of some business. We will probably regret that when the snow arrives this weekend. Here you can vote early, we registered last week, but weren't prepared to vote that day, so we arranged for ballots to be mailed today. We also got flu shots, bought 10 gallons of paint, got birthday cards, (had lunch), found the Mr's location for pool league tonight and hit the grocery store. That took the better part of the day. I will start painting on the livingroom and hallway tomorrow. In yesterday's local paper was an article about Pawnee Buttes. It is really in Colorado and I should have taken the time to put a link here. Maybe I will do that another time. It brought back so many fond memories of our father. He used to take us on trips to the prairie in northeastern Colorado as that was where he spent a lot of his younger days. He was quite an educator, if you were interested in the plains and the history of the early pioneers. I only wish I could remember more of his stories. I know that as a teenager and during the great depression, he spent time with his sister's family there on the drylands. There was no work for most and he would tell us about the jackrabbits and cottontails that he hunted so that they would have food. Another time he told of the same sister's child who died as a result of a rattlesnake bite. They had so far to go to a Dr. that by horse and buggy, they couldn't get her to town in time. Times were difficult, and as we face our current economic situation, I can't help but reflect on some of those tales and draw from the strength of our parents and grandparents. The will to survive tough times runs in my blood and I know that what we need and what we think we need are two very different things.

~"What we need are more people who specialize in the impossible."....Theodore Roethke