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I don’t pretend to know how to run a country but when the overwhelming voice I hear and read is echoing my screams, I’m thinking I’m not too off base. The average person knows you can not spend more than you bring in. That’s called bankruptcy. That same average person understands American produced oil/gas has great benefits – American jobs AND it’s cheaper are just two.  We also understand the average person can’t afford to buy a car that cost more than we make in a year. By the way, the tax credit promised only applies to UAW made cars (sorry Elon).

No, I’m not a general, and I’ve never served in our military, but here are some things I think are important. Don’t tell the enemy all the things you’re NOT going to do. Don’t give your enemy a list of 16 targets they CAN’T hit with cyber attacks. Don’t tell your enemy you WON’T get your people out after the war begins putting a big fat bullseye on their back. Here’s an interesting fact: there’s only been 1 administration that did not face a Russian invasion in the 21st century… can you guess? That’s right – Trump. Why? Unpredictability. He DIDN’T show his hand to the enemy.

I also think a president shouldn’t have advisors in their administration that actively spied on and pushed the Russian hoax narrative on a sitting President. Enough said.

Here IS the most important aspect of any administration: honesty. When you lie you instill distrust and dishonor in the people whom you are supposed to serve. The president lies and sends his spokespersons to lie about facts like your fam will divest themselves from international companies that are in conflict with American values, mask wearing effectiveness, vax origins and effectiveness, promising to bring home every American in Afghanistan, inflation facts, oil/gas facts, promising Migs to Ukraine, sadly the list of lies is endless. Here is the most important promise broken from the president on day 1 – “My whole soul is in it today, on this January day. My whole soul is in this. Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation. And I ask every American to join me in this cause. Uniting to fight the foes we face – anger, resentment and hatred. Extremism, lawlessness, violence, disease, joblessness, and hopelessness.” Labeling 75 million voters domestic terrorists simply because they didn’t vote for you, or parents because they spoke up how they insist their children should be taught – that goes completely against the “unity” you promised. Ole joe has utterly failed in every aspect, in every decision, in everything.

Life happens all the time, all around us. There’s a war happening in Ukraine. My mother’s cognitive abilities are declining. Taxes have to be filed. Groceries have to be bought with less money. Yards have to be maintained and weeds obliterated. Friendships lovingly maintained. Life – everyday. Sometimes you just need to stop and think about things, and that’s what I’m doing.

My dad is the oldest of 4 children and they’re all alive. He’s 88, his brother 86 with the same birthdate as my daddy, next sister is 84, and the baby is 76. Their dad, my papa, born 1899, lived just shy of his 91st birthday. When he died, Mary, the lady he loved and called “May-ree” was by his side. Their mom (Mary❣), the love of my youth, at age 82, sat in her chair with her Bible, coffee next to her and rested her head against the side of the chair and went on to heaven. I still miss her.

My mother’s mind is declining. She had a stoke 3 years ago on her way to work at age 80. It was her 3rd change of career. She is a strong, independent, willful lady of great intellect and determination. Before her stroke she struggled with inner conflict that was never spoken. It could be seen on her face and sometimes felt by some of her children. Since her stroke every single bit of conflict or struggle or ANY angst that she experienced – in any form – has left her. IT. IS. GONE! Prior to her stroke any outward display of affection was perfunctory and stiff. Not today! She is in her element as she hugs and kisses you – she absolutely loves affection! When God chooses to take her home she will have ended her long life with none of the conflicts that battled inside her, and I can say it won’t be death that brings her peace, she IS at peace BEFORE she dies.

We’re my parents ideal? (I refuse to is the word “perfect” – it only EVER applies to God) No! They made tons if mistakes. They’re human. Every human does. I did. You did. We ALL did. It takes the ADULT in the room to look well beyond the mistakes and find the gems of wisdom. Daddy taught me 2 specific lessons: 1) you aren’t raising babies… you’re raising future college students, young marrieds, future workers, businesspersons, etc., and 2) NEVER loan money – only GIVE money you’re willing to lose… if you get it back, that’s great, but don’t expect it back. Thank you daddy. Both of my parents were ALWAYS generous!

Both my parents are firm God believers and followers and raised their kids the same. My hubs and I raised ours the same. There’s no point to all that’s happening in life and on this earth without God and His sovereignty and providence. It’s hopeless without knowing God. “In the beginning God…” “For God so loved the world…” “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” What is ALL this on this earth if it’s not for God? There’s no hope without God. There’s no nothing without God. And I’m grateful my parents didn’t count their navel lint more important than teaching their kids the TRUE meaning of life on this earth!

We woke up this morning to 5″ of snow. Yes, it was predicted, but who believes the predictions of the weather person? Also, it happened one day shy of the 29th anniversary of the blizzard of 1993 which left 21″ of snow after a night of almost hurricane storm-like conditions with lightening, thunder and high winds. So even if it is predicted we don’t really believe it until we see it. Another reason for our skepticism was yesterday’s high was 63° – so, snow? And tonight’s temps will be 16°. Crazy!

If you have snow on the ground and a 5 yr old grandson you have sledding and snowball fights. LT (Little Timer), his parents and Da (as he calls his papa) got out in the blustery cold, wind blowing the powdery snow like crazy, and THEY PLAYED. LT’s cheeks were blood red when he finally came inside having played himself out.

Nana stayed inside baking a cream cheese pound cake (our fav!), my famous chili, and corn bread. You HAVE to have chili on such a cold day, and you HAVE to make corn bread when you make chili. These are just the laws of cooking. What’s the law of pound cake – oh come on… “let them eat cake.” It’s a mandate.

Even my Bonnie doodle enjoyed the snow today. It was only her 3rd snow, 1st substantial snow, and she got the zoomies all over the yard.

Back in 2010 I turned 50 and was diagnosed with breast cancer. During the 8 months of treatments, both chemo and radiation, I can’t remember 1 time I felt scared. I know that’s unpopular. I’ve heard other cancer friends, survivors, and those who didn’t survive all talk of their moment/moments of terror or agony or how ever they describe it. I just remember sitting in the surgeon’s office, with my 18 year old daughter, receiving the diagnosis and turning to her asking if SHE was OK. No, I’m not stoic. I’m not hard. I simply learned early – and it stayed with me – my God is sovereign, providential, loving, merciful, and full of grace AND – I AM HIS! So, I was FINE!

However, after my chat with LT this morning about what’s happening in the world, he asked a few questions that indicated he was thinking too much about what’s happening in Russia / Ukraine / oil and gas/ and here. So I sat him down and we had our lesson on God’s character,  faithfulness and love. It is most rewarding to see God’s common grace and covenant blessing through LT. It went something like this:

During my many hour-long trips back and forth to treatments I had one of those awakenings that could only be from God. I love flowers. Yes – established fact. But I noticed orange daylilies growing wild in ditches along the highways and backroads and roadsides. At some point Matthew 6:28-30 jumped into my head: “28And why are you worried about clothing? Notice how the lilies of the field grow; they do not labor nor do they spin thread for cloth,29yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. 30But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you? You of little faith!“ I almost came out of my skin. It was as if God – yes, THE God of the Universe… that’s how huge it felt – tapped me on my shoulder and said I’ve got something MUCH bigger than you going on here so just chill! And I did! I kind of laughed through the whole 8 months. I. Was. Fine!Fast forward to today, I am considered cured of my cancer after very close to 12 years and ever vigilant.  

Nana: who formed you in your mother?
LT: God
Nana: Who chose your parents?
LT: God
Nana: who loves you even more than mama and daddy and ALL your grands?
LT: God
Nana: who feeds the birds?
LT: God
Nana: in whose image are you made?
LT: God
Nana: are birds made in God’s image?
LT: no
Nana: wouldn’t God take care of you at LEAST as good as a bird? (we watch lots of birds)
LT: yes
Nana: yes! He WILL! He promised! Can God break a promise?
LT: NO!

Today, LT (for Little Timer, my 5 yr old grandson) asked me what’s happening on the news, as I turned the channel from news back to PBS when he entered the room. I don’t shield him 100%, but I do make it age appropriate. He asked me if Russia was still being mean to Ukraine and I told him yes. From previous conversations, he knew about NATO and how oil/gas had inadvertently played a role in this conflict, so he asked me if we were still getting gas from Russia. I told him no. LT looked puzzled then asked if we would get our own gas. Again, I said no. He looked incredulously at me and said, “why?” I told him joe wouldn’t allow it. Again, “why?” SHEESH!!!I wish joe was here to answer LT’s question. All I could tell LT was for some reason joe would rather Americans pay $5,6,7+ at the pump than the $2-3 we were spending before he took over. LT asked why it cost so much – then came an object lesson.

I showed LT where we lived – USA. Then he chose the names of the other three countries, Turnip, Okra, and Carrot (we were cooking previously), with a big ocean in between. I explained when our oil/gas drillers got oil it cost $5 (that was a lot to LT) and it didn’t have to be put on a ship to anywhere. However, when Turnip, Okra, and Carrot drillers got oil it cost $5 but it has to be put on a ship and go ALLLLLL the way to America, costing an extra $50. So the same gas cost $55 from those country’s drillers instead of $5 from our country’s drillers. LT looked up me and said, “that’s ridiculous. Why does President Biden do that?”

Can you answer that one?

When you don’t know what to do… you bake.

How in God’s name do you stand up and vomit such blatant lies? Russian invasion ISN’T the reason our gas prices have been rising. YOU are the reason! American oil/gas production ISN’T the highest EVER. EIA says Dec 2019 we produced 12.9 million barrels a day under Trump. However, Dec 2021 11.5 million barrels a day. That’s a 1.5 million barrel drop under YOUR watch. Maybe you should go to your own govt web site and read it before you make a fool of yourself over and over. I will even provide you the address:
www.eia.gov

It’s exhausting trying to stay up on everyday life with performing daily chores like keeping life humming along in clean clothes, bellies full of homemade yummy food, happy doodle-dog, picked-up house. And now that it’s getting warmer, I’m itching to get outside and get my fingers dirty in my gardens, with my soon to be flowers. But Ole joe has not only just inserted himself in our daily life – he’s BLOWN DOWN our door and busted up any semblance of normalcy and demanded we enter HIS demented house of horrors and mirrors.

Every season has a transition. Summer temps don’t jump from 32° on June 21 to 90° on the first day after summer solstice, June 22. There’s a gradual build. Same with winter. Someone forgot to teach that to joe and his green buddies. No matter what you think or feel about global warming, joe’s evangelists are schtumping the green pulpit and slinging spit with their red-faced sermons of apocalyptic doom. In between all the theatrics, they forgot about the fact that there’s only 1 – ONE – full-time producer in America of 100% electric vehicles, EV. (It doesn’t matter MOST Americans can’t afford that EV.) So on DAY 1 – joe shut down America’s oil/gas production through reduction of permits and regulation of new and existing permits that make it impossible to viably continue to pump and produce oil and gas in America. IF joe were smart and not obviously beholding to whomever is behind these destructive policies, he would have presented a plan to build up the electric grid that EVENTUALLY would handle the enormous load required when EV DID become mainstream. But he didn’t. To the surprise of no one.

Also – IF joe was smart – there would be an education (or indoctrination) of the masses on the virtues of the EV. However, as savvy as Americans are, that will be tough as just a tiny bit of research will show there’s only 1 country who will benefit MASSIVELY from this transition. Care to guess? Yep – China! The majority of the mined rare materials required to propel the EV are mined in China – Bauxite, boron steel, titanium, plastic, leather, silicon, carbon fiber, copper wire, cathode – 80% nickel, 15% cobalt, and 5% aluminum, anode, electrolyte – made of a lithium salt. Not only that, obviously the most important items in the EV are the batteries. Have you thought about what happens to ALL those dead batteries? Guess which country is basically the only country that recycles batteries? China! Have you checked out how much a replacement battery is in a Tesla? The average cost is $21,000. What about the cost to charge up your Tesla every night? It’s about an extra $150 a month AFTER you pay $2600.00 to install the charging station at home. Please tell me how someone who makes $50,000 a year is supposed to afford all that.

Am I obsessed with American oil? No. But if you look closely, what’s happening with American oil is a glaring symptom of a much greater problem, and if WE THE PEOPLE don’t have an intervention soon it just might be too late. We are stuck for now with a defiant, stubborn administration that WE pay through the nose with our hard-earned taxes who absolutely refuse to listen to the people they’re supposed to represent – the very definition oalf a conundrum. America is a representative republic, not an autocracy. Let’s make them represent!

https://www.silverdoctors.com/headlines/world-news/the-green-electric-car-myth-772-pounds-of-petro-chemical-plastics-in-each-vehicle/

https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-loss

Last summer I learned a very hard lesson in “survival of the fittest.” I always have 3 hummingbird feeders filled from April to late September. We get swarmed with those gorgeous tiny birds during those months and there will be 12-15 females fighting over the best perch on the feeders. The males just do their thing seemingly disconnected from the feisty ladies. In late July I added a trellis outside my kitchen window and put out a hanging plant and a 4th hummingbird feeder. Soon I noticed a praying mantis on the outside kitchen window sill along with a skink, but never together. It was amazing to watch their world happen as I cooked or did dishes. The hummers buzzed the feeder, the mantis swayed with the wind, skink came and went. I came home one day chatting on the phone with my sister, Janine, unlocked the door, unloaded what was in my arms and decided to check out the window to see if any hummers were eating. I screamed in the phone “OH MY GOD!!!” Bless her heart – Janine prob thought someone was trying to kill me. I continued to yell: “SHE KILLED MY BIRD!” Janine kept asking – “WHAT???” I was finally able to compose myself a tad and explained that the praying mantis – while I was gone a few hours – somehow – caught a hummingbird, killed it, and was in the process of eating it. Janine then yelled – “KILL IT.” I sure felt like it, but at that point it was too late. The bird was dead.

I’m sorry if that is upsetting –  so why am I relaying such a morose story? Weakness kills! I heard a quote from a general speaking about America under Trump vs America under Biden: “Appeasement provokes, and strength deters.” The mantis portrayed herself as a leaf around the hummingbird feeders, and even mimicked leaves blowing in the wind, so much so the little hummers felt no fear which led to death. Trump was a wild card, and when he DID flex a muscle the world took notice, and for 4 years, things were mostly quiet. Biden has NO muscle. As VP, he spent so much time and effort making deals for HIS fam, not focusing on the jobs Obama sent him to do over in Ukraine and China, allowing his son to embarrass the whole country with his debautrous lifestyle, even Obama foretold his presidency: “never underestimate joe’s ability to f**k things up.”

And that’s where we are now as a Nation – in dire straits. We have the cleanest oil in the world and plenty of it. But joe won’t let us have it. Russia is murderering a whole country and joe says he’s exacting the toughest sanctions on Russia EVER – WHILE we’re buying hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil EVERY SINGLE DAY. Our purchases of Russian oil IS funding Russia’s war in Ukraine. Now joe is sitting at the table WITH Russia AND Iran to broker a nuke deal. Guess what we are?

Lots to do and discover when you love and plant tons of trees and flowers as I do. Last year, at various times, I planted well over 200 bulbs, from lilies to lesser known flowers, all around our almost 2 acres. There was just a tiny pressure on myself (from myself) with about 60 of the bulbs as they came from my mother’s yard and were estimated to be at LEAST 70 years old. I planted them last year in April and expected them to at least push up and show some green. They. Did. Nothing. Yikes!!! I resisted the urge to dig them up and throw them in the burn pile and just pretend they were too old and pooped out. Then late January 2022, all 60 of those precious OLD bulbs poked their green leaves out of the dirt and I broke out in a little dance! Woot!!

I had to also prune back all 16 of my knock-out rose bushes. Pruning is easy. Pruning 16 rose bushes that are 3’x5′ – not so much because somehow you have to get the clippings to the burn pile. But it has to be done IF you want a bazillion roses in the summer and fall… and I do. And it’s also good for the health of the plant.

As I was doing the normal clean-up, tending to, pruning, taking inventory, general assessment of my beloved gardens it became obvious I’m not the only one who LOVES my flowers – THE DEER DO!!! Last year I put in 9 trees. The deer have nibbled on 3 of them and a 4th has been stripped of its bark. I’m not sure if I should be sad for the 4 that might die or be optimistic that 5 lived. Thankfully, I got them from a non-profit in my area and didn’t spend Lowes or Home Depot prices. Still… I HATE it! I was in Tractor Supply buying deer repellent and a fellow shopper told me Irish Spring soap did a better job than what I was going to buy. We will see!

In between all my garden activities, Miss Bonnie MUST play Frisbee and people MUST eat and clothes must be washed.

I have been on a quest to bake the perfect ciabatta and baguette loaf. Today I got prob as close to a perfect bagette in all my bakes. They always taste perfectly yummy, but visually and esthetically  – not quute there. Today – 85%. Until I achieve 99% (no bread maker achieves 100%)…we will eat GOOD bread!

All in all – such a good day!