The cattle are not lowing…

I was off to the booming community of Beaumont this morning to do my every other week shopping.  I had quite the list of places to stop in town this time.  First up was the DISH network store.  You see I had this brilliant idea that if I got one of their ‘Tailgate’ things, I could eliminate all the hassle of finding the signals when I stop somewhere in my travels.  It automatically finds the various satellite signals.  It’s also a lot easier for me to carry out to set up than the heavy dish and holder that I’ve had for the last eight years. 

That way I could also set it up quickly on my one night stop overs in various campgrounds.  Right now I only haul out the dish if I’m stopping somewhere for about a week.  My hopes were dashed as I talked to the folks in the store.  I have two TV’s in the rig.  One in the bedroom, and one in the main living area.  I presently have a receiver with a DVR that handles both TV’s, but it turned out that the Tailgater would only accommodate one TV.  I know some of you couldn’t care less about having any TV’s, but I really like that DVR feature so I can zip through the commercials and record a couple of shows while I’m watching something I’ve already recorded.  It’s not like I have anyone to chit chat with in the evenings, and I do love listening to the ‘Golden Girls’ as I drift off to sleep.  Anyway, I sure wish it could have worked out.

I had a few more stops to make.  I was running out of Jean Nate After Bath Splash, so I headed for a Walgreen’s, then the bank to cash a check before I finally made it to my favorite HEB grocery store.  About a month ago I bought a twelve roll pack of Scott septic safe TP.  That usually lasts me three months.  Well I didn’t notice last time that I grabbed the ‘extra soft’ version, and while it is very kind to your private parts, it’s so fluffed up that I was already running out!  Those Charmin bears would be really littering the forests if they used that stuff.

Then I tried to buy one or two bars of soap.  Ha! The Oil of Olay, that I like, only came in a ten bar package.  What’s up with that?  The only soap I could buy by the bar was Lava.  Exfoliating your skin is nice, but that’s a little too invigorating for my shower.  Are soap and TP wonderful topics for an RV blog?  Probably not, but it sure is life as I live it.

Yesterday, I got an email from Janice, the volunteer coordinator, at Tamarac NWR in Minnesota where I’ll be returning this summer.  It seems they want to build a storage shed for the two volunteer sites to use, and wanted input on what size would be best.  I’ve never had a storage facility in my volunteer stints, so I had to think about what I might use it for.  I decided I’d put my bike in there along with the big crate I have in the rig for Emma when we are traveling.  Then there’s that second refrigerator compressor that Samsung sent me last fall when the fridge broke down.  I’ve been toting that heavy thing around ‘just in case’ in front of the passenger’s seat in the car ever since.  I told Janice that I appreciated the storage area, buy would have preferred a hot tub instead. 

Now for the cows.  There is a very large pasture behind the Winnie maintenance facility where I stay, and I’d guess about 75 cows have been residing there all winter and we haven’t heard a peep out of them.  February and March seem to be the time for the cows to drop their calves, and there have been a lot of little ones in the last few weeks.  Tonight while I was sitting out with Emma, it wasn’t lowing that we heard.  I’d say it was more like  caterwauling going on.  Egad!  My guess is that the calves were taken from their mothers today, and an earsplitting protest is going on.

I leave you tonight with a picture that a friend sent me of what the birds are having to do to survive through this bitter winter in Minnesota…

                                          

Thanks for stopping by… talk to you later,  Judy