Getting Ready For Christmas

We are still in Kansas and it is always the weather out here on the prairie. Snowing, cold setting by the fire looking out.

Happy Snow Day

It’s getting day light and 19F degree outside as I wright this. This is what we hear the most when we are on our boat sailing in the Caribbean with the people from up north. “No more snow.” What to do on a snowy day this cold. I built a studio out here in a bedroom in our little house and have been pursuing a little art career but life seems to always throw you a few curve balls. All my art shows have been canceled. The Chinese virus again. We hear this a lot from young people. The deck is always stacked against you and only the lucky ever make good on there dreams. Pam and I are old now and know how hard it is to make your dreams happen and how much harder it is to be special in this world of billions of people trying each day to be the one standing out. Becoming a successful artiest or a writer in this time in my life. What are the odds of that happening to an old high school drop out. As for making your dreams come true. With that we have had a little success. Been on a few adventures. Never made much money. Pam is still with me helping me starting the old 49 year old truck we drive out here today as I twist wires to see why it want start. Seems like we have been doing that from the first day we met. She had a birthday five days before we met and she turned fifteen. That is a long time to be together now. With meeting her the biggest adventures of my life was on. I have heard all my life some one say. The best looking women I ever seen about some women some where. I can still see that beauty of a young women in her sometimes as we are doing thing together like cleaning up parts to rebuild the motor in that old truck we drive out here. Even if our looks have changed that drive in her to be in my world is still there. There when I have a project or a problem to solve. Laying out the tools we need as they’re needed like we are performing surgery rebuilding another motor together. There is something special to me about a women with oil on her hands and axle grease on her face. Rebuilding this old motor is turning out to be an adventure with finding parts. Finding parts with us living with so little money for a 49 year old motor. Our son had a block out of a junk truck that had been taking apart and left in the rain. It had sand in it. We think there’s a story with that. Only one way to get sand inside the lower end of a motor. Some one poured sand in this motor. Maybe someone mad a someone. Cleaned the block up and I think it’s going to work. Cleaned the cylinders with a rock hone. One new piston.

More to be done but we think it will be a good motor.

Did the head ourselves. Lapped the vales with new vales seals then the most important part, a good paint job on the motor before we put it back. I have tore into more than one boat motor just rebuilt they said and all they did was clean and paint it. Christmas is coming and the old truck is getting a motor transplant for Christmas. Still worrying a lot about our boat left in Guatemala. Chinese virus again and we are glad we are not there dealing with all the problems down there. Hoping to go get it when we can but for now life goes on here. Our son went out on a farm some where and cut us a tree on the side of the road. There are very few trees out here and farmers don’t want them in there pasture or fields. We were hopping for a white Christmas but they say it will be a mild Christmas. If you like living and eating well you can live our here “a lot” cheaper than in the Caribbean. Having black beans and rice every meal and a little piece of extremely thin tough meat is not on our menu out here. We do mess some food not available here as we travel like gathering fresh oysters and craw fish along the cost of Louisiana. I have never been anywhere where beef and pork is as cheap and as good as it is out here. This creates another problem. What to have Christmas day. Maybe out here it will be T-bone steaks cooked over and open wood fire pit like the cowboys do it. Pam is making beef jerky in case we get hungry with us on the go and now she is dehydrating. She is already in the Christmas spirit and I’m just flowing along. I will let you know how it goes in our next blog.

         Until then we will just count our blessings and hope for everyone a “MERRY  CHRISTMAS”.

Just got the tree standing, started with some birds. Lots more to be added.

Day to Day

This week we have been working really hard around our little house we bought out on the Kansas prairie a few years ago. We worry a lot about our sail boat “Pamela Ann.” Pam and I drew the plans for and we built and have been traveling on for years now left down in Guatemala. We normally live on our boat and we visit out here. This year with the Chinese Virus we are living out here and don’t know when we can go back and live on our boat. It is maybe slowly opening up down there a little. With other things going on down there we hope some of the problems caused by the hurricanes are getting better. “This is trying times for Pam and I with it costing so much more to travel and not being able to find work. There is no cruising sail boats in Kansas for us to work on. Then there is the constant maintenance we are not there to do needed to keep a boat in good shape. When we are traveling when we are on our boat we like to travel around inland in the country we visit. With everything locked down traveling around any country down there inland is all but stopped. Bringing the boat back we are maybe handicapped a little just sailing the “Pamela Ann” back to the US with this virus. We hope we don’t have to stop in Belize coming back. There their thirst for money and there politics are weighing hard on a lot of cruisers not to stop there. Mexico maybe a bit more friendly. We will stop there. Then it’s out to sea and the long days and longer nights as we cross back to the US. There are people out there that say they like sea time. To say we like it would be stretching it some, But there are moments when you know you’re seeing something a lot of people won’t ever see. One morning we were off the coast of Florida just after day light and I was below when Pam went nuts on deck. I went running and there beside our boat was a giant green sea turtle. We see lot of sea turtles but this one was huge and green as a apple. We looked at it and it looked at us and then it was gone. We have been out there at times and sailed with or have had some great boats out there with us and that is always a treat. Pam has a canon and she will fire it any chance she gets. We fired it off the Pamela Ann with permission of coarse as the Eagle, came in the river and past us in Southport, NC one time. They fired back. How many people have done that. The Eagle is the US only square rigged training ship and a beauty to see. Our sail boat we built is a fully rigged top sail schooner. Gaff headed with wooden mast we built round with a top mast and has laced on sails the way it was over a 100 years ago. No hanks or rings. As for the work we are doing on our little house. We have a pellet wood heater. The way it works you buy woods pellets and pore them in the top of the heater. An auger turns and controls how many pellets go in the fire box. This works great. You can let it burn all night on low heat or high. When we bought the house it was broke and in the wrong place. These heater don’t need a chimney. They have a insulated vent pipe that goes through the wall and this one was vented under a pitcher window facing the wrong way. Reworked the heater and moved it where it should be. This meant taking out a window. Now how to make this look like there was never a window there. Using old boards from a barn being torn down that was built in 1911 I built a mantel for a fire place.

Mantel built for pellet heater.

Taking out the glass sashes, plywood on the outside and sheet rock on the inside. Using fake rock sold in decoration places making a fake fire place we set the heater back in place. Now how to cover the out side where the window was. Plywood replacing the window stash covered in tar paper to make it water proof. Now to cover that up I used some old used fence boards to make window shutters and now it looks like the window shutters are just closed.

Sutter where the window was.

Maybe no one will ever know there is not a window there any more. I wish all our problems were that simple.

The “PAMELA ANN” under sail.

Thanksgiving Week

This passed week was Thanksgiving week. I have read over the years how uncertain the world of the first people celebrating Thanksgiving was. Pam and I both have had operations years ago that doctors said would become life treating if left untreated. If we had lived back then we would not have lived to be this old. I had to see a doctor a few weeks back for a check up I was advised to do for Medicare. The doctor ask me five different times and different ways how I was dealing with the world around me. I told him that in Pam’s and I long life, problems sometimes get worse and sometimes get better but they are always there. He said. How is it now. I just smiled and said We are dealing with it. A little later back at our little house Pam and I got sick and we think it was the Chinese virus. We were to sick to go get tested. We have been over it for two weeks now. Pam beat me in temperature. Her highest temperature was 103.8. My temperature only made it to 103.4. Our son would bring us what we needed and leave it on the porch. This was making sure we were not giving it to him. We made it through with trying our best to take care of each other. Hard to do that sick. Just more trouble to deal with. The way the election for president is going is “troubling” for a “lot” of people out here in Kansas farm land. We went to a car race last year and during the National Anthem there was no one for sure “out here” taking a knee. More trouble to deal with when we get reports from a friend way south on our boat “Pamela Ann”. The boat we built together and I named after Pam still is in Guatemala we live and travel on most of the time. We can only hope she will be okay and will be there when we can find a way to go back and get her. We can only hope things will get better down there after hurricane season and after the first of the year and we can bring “Pamela Ann” back to the US. Maybe New Orleans. The Chinese virus and three hurricanes is making life there in Guatemala very difficult. Pam and I feel for the people there. There seems to always be something big in our life to worry about. But on the other side there are“things to make life better.” When we are off our boat and out here on the Kansas prairie we live very simple the way we like it in our little four room house with a enclosed garage. Pam says we bought the garage and the house went with it when it comes to me. Maybe I do work out there a lot. We have our son’s old 49 year old utility truck he drug out of a junk yard we can drive. It’s fun to drive even if it is old and very tired. Old 6 cylinder with a 4 speed with a granny gear. Uses oil and smokes “a lot”. We have our old motor bike out here when it’s warm enough to ride and that’s good. Pam always has to have more layers of clothes than me. It snowed a few days ago and we got up during the night to see it. More fun. With all the problems in our world real or imaged Pam and I are together and that makes me happy. Thankful for that. We ran away when she was 15 and I was 17 to be together. Together now 57 years in March. With her with me I always know I have someone to watch my back and share life with. We are had turkey with our son we cut in half for our Thanksgiving supper. We will cook the other half later. Saturday we had wild rabbit for supper ( hunting is good )and we still have lots of tomatoes out of our garden we gathered before the first freeze and wrapped in paper stored in the basement like the old timers did. Fresh sausage and sugar cured ham we make here ourselves in our little house. We still have a few greens we can gather out of our garden. Our wood heater is great. I have junk to work on people have given us. We even have a snow blower and we don’t have a side walk. I took it and it’s running great. Now what to do with it. After the holidays turkey out here will go on sale half price for maybe 50 cents a pound. Telling this goes to what people don’t believe. We can live in the US on a “lot less” than in the Caribbean. Turkey in Guatemala where our boat is is four dollars US a pound if you can find one. We will buy a few, cut them up with a bone saw and freeze the meat and thaw out what we need when we want it. We will can some. Having can turkey we canned our selves is living cheap and living simple. Open a pint jar of turkey to make turkey and home made dumplings is fine living. We have to budget a lot harder than most to live the way we do but there is adventure in it sometimes. What I am the most thankful for is we have lived most of our life doing it as they say. “Living life our way.” I hope we can live on a few mores years at 72 and 74 with the good out weighing the bad and live for the adventure we have been able to find in life. To all that read our blog we hope all your problems are small or manageable and we hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving.

Old Chevy

We enjoy watching the birds eating the seeds at the feeder, out side the Pam’s kitchen window.

Big tumble weed blew in the garden.