Category Archives: Rancho Roly Poly

The Democrats took your birthday cake

Posted on March 17, 2015 | 2 comments

Mr. B. gave me a birthday card the other day—along with a package of sugar-free candy and a bottle of bubble juice with a wand for blowing bubbles, one of my favorite activities.

On the front of the card it shows a cake pedestal picked clean and the words: “The Democrats took your birthday cake.”

Inside: “They sliced it up and gave it to people who aren’t fortunate enough to have a birthday today.”

Heh.  Said he found the card in the local drug store. He didn’t see a Republican counterpart. Could be the rest of the country is as tired of the Dems as I am.

2 Comments

Posted in Mr. Boy, Obamalot, Rancho Roly Poly, The Culture

Tagged , ,

Syncronicity

Posted on March 5, 2015 | 2 comments

J.D., over at Mouth of the Brazos, recently reminded me of my own experience on this subject. He’s inclined not to believe in it. I wasn’t either, until the fall of 1982.

My mother was visiting. She was dying of Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis. She pointed to a framed photograph on the wall and asked where it came from. I told her when it was taken and the name of the photographer. Then I added that I hadn’t talked to him in years. The phone rang. It was him wanting to chat.

Nothing like that has happened to me since. I’ve always wondered if it didn’t have something to do with her dying, which she finally did a few months later. As if she was somehow more tuned into things than usual. Because I had a few other strange experiences during that time, though none as startling as this.

J.D. still demurs, since it’s never happened to him. But he adds: “I mean yeah, everything, EVERYTHING, is most assuredly connected in every way with everything else (quantum mechanics being what it is, as far as we can understand it and my even more limited perception of it as it now stands).”

Seems to be so.

2 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Rancho Roly Poly

Tagged ,

Mrs Charm is in remission

Posted on February 24, 2015 | 6 comments

It’s official. Mrs. C’s oncologist says her latest PET scan shows “no evidence” of the lymphoma cancer she was diagnosed with back in September. So chemo is over and she’s in remission.

The only (literally) dark spot is a reappearance of the “ghost” that first appeared back in December on a CT scan. Although now, with the finer resolution of the PET, the doc says it is not a mass as previously feared but apparently an inflammation of some sort. Mrs. C. is scheduled for a colonoscopy next week to try to be more precise.

For now there’s joy in Mudville. Mrs. C. got to ring the bell at Texas Oncology’s infusion center. It’s the signal for a cancer patient who has successfully completed chemotherapy. There were smiles all around. And plans for her to go back to work in a few weeks, probably for half days at first.

6 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Cancer, Mrs. Charm, Rancho Roly Poly

Tagged , ,

May the rains disperse the Texas curse

Posted on January 31, 2015 | 5 comments

Forecast rain today and tomorrow will be more welcome than usual here at the Rancho. This winter’s round of cedar fever (which isn’t a fever and isn’t about cedar) has been a particularly bad one. Although they’re always bad enough.

The damn juniper (called mountain cedar) trees have been puffing out billows of pollen which only a rain can disperse. We’ve had several good rains but the damn pollen has always come back to give me another snoot-full.

If the Democrat/Obama economy wasn’t so rotten so many other places this annual curse would be cutting into our bumper-to-bumper traffic. Hasn’t noticeably so far, however.

A prayer is in order: May this rain finally do the trick.

5 Comments

Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather

Tagged ,

Grandma was right

Posted on January 25, 2015 | 2 comments

Bundle up or you’ll catch your death, grandmother used to say in the winter.

Mr. B. and his cronies prefer smug. And shorts and tee-shirts, whatever the temp. He already has a stuffed sinus and runny nose. Proof, once again, of the stupidity of youth.

Comes now research showing that, yes, indeed, when you get cold you are more receptive to infection by the rhinoviruses that cause the common cold.

“The colder we get, the easier it is for the rhinovirus to trounce us into sniffling, sneezing defeat.” Could be that’s why it’s called a “cold.” Ya think?

Which, nowadays, is mostly a nuisance, unless it morphs into the flu or pneumonia. Whereas, in grandma’s pre-antibiotic days of mainly empirical research, it could lead straight to the death-bed.

Via Instapundit.

2 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Mr. Boy, Rancho Roly Poly, The Culture, Weather

Tagged , ,

$1.89 regular

Posted on January 14, 2015 | 5 comments

Who doesn’t like the low-price gasoline these days? Well, my blog buddy Andy down in the South Texas oil patch for one. He’s worried he could lose his job as a shiny-shoe-retiree-gate guard for a fracking operation. Even as it works him to a  frazzle.

Indeed, Market Watch opines that the fall in oil prices is a Saudi effort to strangle the American fracking industry in its crib. The deep-pocket Saudis can live with low-priced oil a lot longer than some of our fracking companies can.

Meanwhile, the new GOP Congress tries to pass a veto-proof approval of the Keystone pipeline. Which seems a trifle late and several dollars a barrel short. But who knows? While other federal pols work to raise our gas taxes. The crooked SOBs.

So let’s all enjoy the $1.89 a gallon regular while it lasts. It surely won’t forever.

Via Wretchard The Cat

5 Comments

Posted in Blogosphere, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, The Economy

Tagged , , ,

The Texas Curse, early this year

Posted on December 28, 2014 | 3 comments

My nose has been running and its itching causing sneezing fits for a week now and I know it ain’t a cold. It’s cedar fever, early this year. I can’t decide whether the light rain we’re having is keeping the culprit juniper pollen out of the air or making it worse.

How could it make it worse? Beats me. When the Texas Curse hits you try to reason why, but you fail because there’s no reasoning about it. You just pray it doesn’t last more than a few weeks. Shoot, even afflicted atheists pray it doesn’t last too long.

But even when it’s not in the air outdoors, the heating system has pulled it into the house and distributed it around. Even if you vacuumed and dusted, it’d still be around. I know. I’ve tried. Better to hunker down with a good book and lots of tissues. And wait it out.

3 Comments

Posted in Rancho Roly Poly, Texana, Weather

Tagged , ,