Gloom with Grackles

Ditch-dull grey outside with some kind of sleety stuff slotting clickety-clickety against the office windows. Ewww.....

Dog didn't waste any time getting back inside I can tell you. Reminds me of the winter when the next younger brother and I had measles. Lying in the darkened living room at the old farm house down the road from here (lost now to the ravages of northern weather and neglect)...no books allowed, which was worse than the disease for me. It is dark and wintry like that today...too wintry for March.

The birds don't care. Damn the snowbanks, full speed ahead. I heard the first red-winged black birds when coming over from the barn Monday and right behind them was a trio of silver-eyed common grackles. They clinked and clanked at me and whistled and whoo-whooed, then moved along to wherever they were going.

Back south maybe. Can't say as I would blame them.

Sick all week, but not sick enough not to work. This achy, drainage swamp of a flu-cold went through the whole family, including appending boyfriends, last month for Pete's sake. I nursed everybody else or worried about them or said kind things to them, but never got a sniffle myself. Which was odd.

Then weeks later, wham. Yeah, not sick enough to not work, just sick enough to not want to. Oh, well, I am sure the old immune system is getting a great boost.

Got the computer running at least. Took Keith's advice and ditched Zone Alarm, which according to the boards does this a lot (had to work in safe mode to do it) . Guess I will have to use the Windows firewall, which isn't supposed to be much good. However, a firewall, which locks the whole computer so I can't even type up the minutes of last month's Farm Bureau meeting (yeah, Johnny on the spot, that's me) is no good at all.

Anyhow, today I am thankful for daughters who bring cough drops, sons who milk most of my cows when they are home, another daughter who feeds calves early so she can help when the brother is at school, and shiny, black, spring birds (which I will hate when they start cruising the front pasture slurping up nestlings like canapés.) Have a good one!