Friday, March 07, 2008, 20:07
Back to Square One
Thursday night, Randy asked how my ribs were feeling and if they were doing any better.
"Oh, yes," I said. "They are getting better."
I just *had* to open my big mouth, didn't I.
Friday morning, I got up, went out to the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee, and something in my lower rib cage on the right side went pop -- zing . . . and I nearly fell on the floor.
Whatever I injured before must have gotten re-injured, probably during the night when I wasn't aware of it. Instantly, I was in so much pain I could barely move. I ate some breakfast and took some naproxen sodium and some pain meds and laid on the couch for a while with the heating pad until it eased up enough so that I could go out to feed the horses and take care of the barn kitties and Charlie. But since then, when I breathe in a certain way, or if I move just right, I can feel something "creaking" in my lower rib cage.
Great. Wonderful. Just what I needed.
Is this never going to end?
More below zero
To add insult to injury, as it were, the thermometer out on the bird feeder post in the east side yard said it was 12 degrees below zero Fahrenheit first thing Friday morning -- 12 below. Again. It's March, for crying out loud!
Well, one thing about it. At least the sun is shining. It's only 10 degrees. But the sun is shining! That's been the pattern since the end of November. When the sun is shining, it is Arctic high pressure, and it is cold.
We have a looooooong way to go to warm up enough to melt all of the ice and snow by the beginning of April. At the rate we are going, I would not be surprised if we ended up with a very long, very cold spring.
On the other hand, the weather pattern could change overnight, and it could warm up and melt the snow and ice and thaw everything out in just a few days.
Horse hair
The other day when the temperature was warmer and it was in the lower 20s, I noticed that Isabelle had some loose horse hair on her back and neck and shoulders.
Loose horse hair!
I made my way back to the barn and got out one of the little horse brushes and managed to curry off the loose hair on Isabelle. She never moved a muscle and seemed to enjoy every minute of it.
I didn't get much off Isabelle. Just two little brush-fulls of loose hair. But in spite of the frigid Arctic air, the increased length of the days is telling Isabelle that it is time to shed out her winter hair.
I just hope, at the rate we are going, that she doesn't shed it out *too* fast. I think she's going to need it for a while yet.
Kajun's winter hair seems to still be fairly well anchored, but he is an older horse -- in his upper 20s. And when horses get older, they shed out more slowly in the spring. I used to have to clip my old quarter horse Red in the spring to help him get rid of his winter hair so he wouldn't suffer from the heat as much when the weather warmed up. So far I haven't had to get to that point with Kajun, but he doesn't grow a very thick coat, anyway. Never has. It's his Arabian blood. His ancestors didn't need a thick, heavy coat in the desert.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Thursday, March 06, 2008, 23:21
The Price of Crude Oil
Well. The price of crude oil has now gone over $100 per barrel.
Last year, I heard an economist on public radio say that if the price of crude oil went above $70, the economy of the United States would be severely affected.
I wonder what he is saying about crude oil above $100 per barrel?
I don't know about anyone else, but the price of crude oil and the corresponding increase in the price of gasoline and the increase in the price of everything else over the past the six months or so has affected my personal economy already.
We are now spending nearly $100 more per month more for gasoline this year over last year just so Randy and I can get to work. Randy's cost has gone up the most, of course, because he drives every day, and plus now, he is driving farther every day since the company moved him to a different office farther away. My gasoline costs are less than Randy's because I don't drive to an office every day. I drive to meetings (and to do interviews) several times per week to cover the meetings I need to cover for the newspapers. Even at that, though, my cost for gasoline is higher this year than last year.
And that's not all . . .
I have noticed, too, that every time I go to the grocery store, the cost of this, that or the next thing has gone up a few cents or maybe 50 cents or maybe as much as $1. All together, I figure I am spending maybe $20 a week more for the things I normally buy just because the cost of everything has gone up a little bit here and there to compensate for the increase in shipping costs.
The increased costs we have seen at the grocery store so far will be nothing over what is to come.
Everything else has been affected too -- the cost of towels and sheets and blankets and paper and pens and toothpaste and facial tissue and cups and plates and saucers and dish soap and laundry soap -- and you name it. Not to mention postage. The cost of everything that we buy to sustain our normal, daily lives is going to go higher and higher.
Wheat
Because of the increase in gasoline and diesel prices, and the increase in fertilizer costs and weed killer and nitrogen and whatnot, the cost of wheat and other grains, for example, is going to go through the roof. Instead of $5 for a box of cereal, it will probably cost $10 a box if not more in the not-too-distant future.
Ordinary bread is nearly $4 a loaf now, or in some cases, nearly $5 a loaf, so I would imagine the cost might go to $8 or $10 a loaf or maybe more.
Fruit and vegetables that have to be shipped in from somewhere else will be out of reach, too. Instead of $4 a pound for apples, the cost will be probably be closer to $10 a pound if not more. The same for grapes and lettuce and cabbage and melons and everything else that has to be shipped in, whether it's in season or not.
If the price of wheat is sky-high, the price of flour will be sky-high, too, but still, even with high flour prices, it will be cheaper to bake my own bread than to buy it. In the past, I have bought a loaf of bread now and again to keep in the freezer for "emergencies" when I have not had time to bake bread, but I won't be doing that anymore I don't think. Not if bread is $10 a loaf.
Planting the garden
I am going to start praying for rain right now. That way, maybe by the time I have got the garden planted, we will get enough rain so the garden can grow. I am going to plant as much garden as I can and preserve as many different kinds of food as I can.
If the pocket gophers stay out of the garden, I know I can raise carrots and freeze them. And if we get enough rain, I know I can raise green beans and freeze them, too. And cucumbers grow just fine here, so I will have to dig out my dill pickle recipe and get to work. There's beets, too. That's if the rabbits can stay out of the beets and not eat off all of the tops. And there's always tomatoes, too, for spaghetti sauce and for tomato preserves.
And muskmelons and watermelon for immediate consumption at the end of the summer. And onions to let ripen and dry and to keep in the basement for the winter. Potatoes are not a problem because of the local potato farm. We can always get potatoes from the potato farm. I can't grow potatoes here, anyway, seeing as the potato bugs insist on eating my potato plants. I don't know if I will try any squash. Not after our experience last summer with squash bugs ruining the squash and pumpkins.
Shading the garden
Last year I noticed that under drought conditions, the garden plants which received a little bit of shade from the barn did the best, so this year, we are going to plant some sunflowers in between the other garden vegetables to provide shade so that everything won't burn up in the midday sun.
The sunflowers will use some of the ground moisture to grow, but the amount of cooling they will provide for the soil, and the amount of moisture they will keep from evaporating from the soil with the shade from their leaves, will make it worthwhile to plant sunflowers for shade. Plus, when the sunflowers ripen, they will make food for the birds. The chickadees love to hang upside-down on the sunflower heads to get at the seeds.
"Under a Green Sky"
I just finished reading a book called "Under a Green Sky" by a man named Peter D. Ward who is a paleontologist. In the book, Ward talks about previous periods of global warming in the earth's history and the mass extinctions that accompanied them (the dinosaurs were one such mass extinction). The book is called "Under a Green Sky" because at some point, due to global warming and dust in the atmosphere and the change in the composition of the atmosphere, the sky will change from blue to green.
Some experts are predicting that in the next 50 years, more than half of the earth's plant and animal species will go extinct because of current global warming. The key will be the ocean's "conveyor system" for warm and cold water, which will be affected by the melting of ice in Greenland and the ice caps around the North and South Poles.
The way to stave off the melting of the ice and the mass extinctions that will accompany global warming is to reduce carbon emissions. And one way to reduce carbon emissions is to use less gasoline and to burn less LP and fuel oil and coal.
Perhaps the increase in the price of crude oil -- and future increases in the price of crude oil -- will ultimately be to our benefit and to the benefit of planet Earth. If oil costs so much, we will all be forced by the state of our own personal economies to reduce the amount of petroleum-based products we use.
Trees
Planting trees also is a way to reduce carbon emissions and to cool the earth's surface. Trees use carbon dioxide and give off oxygen. Randy and I will be planting some more trees this spring, too. Or rather, transplanting trees from areas where we know they don't stand much of a chance for survival to places where they stand a better chance to grow and to prosper.
According to some experts, it is because of the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago that we are not in another Ice Age right now. We are currently due for an Ice Age. Without agriculture on a massive scale, the experts say, much of Canada would be under a glacier at the moment. But it is also because of agriculture, and the corresponding increase in human populations, that the carbon emissions have been increasing over the last 10,000 years as well, which is contributing to global warming but also is contributing to staving off the next Ice Age.
Complicated, isn't it?
Global warming?
The record number of times we have hit below-zero temperatures here in west central Wisconsin this year, however, does not seem much like "global warming." But, as I understand it, weather extremes are part of global warming. We are in a drought here, and have been for the past four years, but the southern part of the state has had record rainfall last summer and record snowfall this winter.
According to "Under a Green Sky" storms like Hurricane Katrina will be "normal" and in coming years, storms of all kinds will become even worse, prompting additional categories to describe their severity. Violent storms will be Earth's way of trying to redistribute the heat and to keep things on a more even keel.
And yet, in the grander scheme of things -- in the "big picture" -- it is my belief that if the Creator intends this to be the end of life on Earth as we know it -- it will be. If not, we will find new and better ways to deal with global warming. All we can do now is try to do "the right thing" and to do it the best we can.
LeAnn R. Ralph