My Clothes Hurt.

My clothes are hurting me. They pull on my shoulders and push on my skin and remind me that everything hurts. That's what I hate about November.

It's not just clothes. My seatbelt pushes on me and the desks at school punch me in the leg when I walk by, and it keeps hurting and hurting.

Once, I think it was in October or maybe September, I sat still in a hot bath and for 15 minutes I didn't feel any pain. I think that was a lifetime record. At least a decade's record. But now it's November, so no more pain-free quarters-of-hours for me, until at least June, I would think.

It's the weather. It hurts me. That's what I hate about November.

Gone with the Wind

I HATE wonderful books. Why should they be so heart- wrending? Why should I have stolen hours from my life over days and weeks, late into schoolnights, in preference to my studies, to have my heart broken over people I don't even like? Who can like Scarlett? "One of fiction's great idiots," my mother called her the other day. Throughout the first 700 pages I was angry with Scarlett, and now, at page 733, I'm just heartbroken for her, and that is not fair!

And then, who can help liking Rhett? During the first 400 pages I swear, my heart almost pitter-pattered over him. But I don't even want to like him. The last 300 pages had me on a rollercoaster ride of I-love-him-I love-him-nots over Rhett; I'd thought that it would be easy to not love a man like Rhett: not only is he a scoundrel, unscrupulous, cruel and cowardly, he's FICTIONAL! And here I am, pouring my heart into cyberspace, tears rolling down my face, glasses fogging up unromantically over poor Captain Butler's unrequited love. Why? Not because he's dashing, charming, rich and mysterious. There's something so NONfictional about Rhett, unwritten but not untold, raw.

It's midnight and the unrequited love is mine, the sheer idiocy is mine, the pain of heartbreak is mine, and the distinction between fiction and nonfiction has vanished. Because everything that Scarlett is is REAL and everything that Rhett is is TRUE and they are both made up of what I am and what YOU are and so the heartbreak is just as REAL and TRUE as any, and it's MY heartbreak, and it really hurts.

Dinner Parties of Yore

I rarely think of my time in California as "the good old days." And really, I'm not thinking that way now, either. But there are a few things I miss, and one of them is friends. Friends who attend dinner parties. I used to host parties several times a year and have easily 20 to 50 guests. Now in order to get any guests at all, I have to borrow my sister's friends. Don't get me wrong -- I like my sister's friends. But it would be awfully nice to have a few of my own. The kind that will actually hang out, do stuff, come over for dinner, whatever.

One of my favorite memories is of the infamous Menlo Park Tortilla Party. We ate legendary tacos, wrapped burritos with my own homemade tortillas, and blended strawberry margaritas to our hearts' content. And there were lots and lots of people. Everyone, in fact. And a pinata. With a tilde, even. I'm too lazy to go find an n with a tilde right now. The important thing to remember is: John Fedak (Large Polish Guy) + Blindfold + Baseball Bat = DANGER!

I loved the small parties too, like the one where we played Trivial Pursuit and Peter said to the other team "Are you people Feigning Ignorance!?!?" He just couldn't believe they didn't know the answer to "on what continent does the equator run through 7 countries) right off the top of their heads. He doesn't know he's extraordinary. I mean, Lisa was on the other team, and she's pretty extraordinary herself! But if you don't have a political map of the world emblazoned on your brain, you might have to think about whether it's Asia or Africa. And is Eurasia a continent for Trivial Purposes? Which is it? Are you Feigning Ignorance!?!?!?

I loved the Christmas party where we Roasted Chestnuts on an Open Fire. We had no idea what we were doing. But they turned out to be quite yummy!

I loved the Halloween party where I made witches' brew and it steamed mysteriously all night. It was cold out, so I made my favorite Golden Potato Soup, which is almost mashed potatoes with lots of really good stuff mixed in and it makes you happy. To accompany the soup I served the famous Beaudry-family Dinner Rolls, and when Santosh arrived to find them all eaten up he grieved the loss of the precious "bread-rolls," as he always called them. Ivo brought Cathy, dressed as a Cat, and now they're married. Steve dressed as a dead person, I think, and made little Nathan the Bumble Bee cry. I was myself at age 8, complete with pigtails and bare feet. And the whole garage was transformed into a bean-bag lounge with George's Ginormous Bean Bag. And, that's the night I met Conrad, aka Superman, now one of my favorite friends.

One of the last parties of that era was the Spring Chicken party. It was springtime, and I served my mom's Oven Fried Chicken with Hot Baking Powder Biscuits and Fresh Mashed Potatoes. So it was Spring Chicken and it was Good. And most importantly, there were people. Lots of people. And the people were my friends.

And now, I'm lonely.

Tomorrow, people will come, and I'll make calzones, and it'll be reminiscent of the first Calzone Party of Almost Mythical Proportions, which included All Three of the O'Neills in One Place at One Time, the Literary Treasure "Ode to a Calzone" and Head-Banging that Left us All with Perfect Posture the Next Day in Church.

But it won't be the same. I just wish I didn't have to borrow friends. They are nice friends. But I'd like to have a few of my very own again.

Heard in the Hallway

Professor: Moles everywhere!
Botanist: They're wonderful!
Professor: They're terrible! They stick to your respiratory tract and goop things up!
Botanist: That's true....that reminds me of something.
(returns to her office, emerges with an old, dog-eared book.)

Question: What was the book about?

Wire: a Wardrobe Essential

My Grandpa is, well, thrifty. He uses things until they are worn out. Or, rather, until they disappear. Not because they've been lost, or someone has stolen them, or thrown them away. They disappear because they have actually been used until there are no atoms left in them. Seriously. Some things appear to exist continually, but in reality, each fiber, each molecule, yes, each atom, is actually replaced through time until the thing now is not at all the thing it was at its creation. Take Grandpa's belt. Yesterday, I was standing in the kitchen waiting for Grandpa to get the front half of his body out of the refrigerator so that I could find whatever it was he was looking for in there. It was the pork and beans right in the front. But the point is, while I was waiting, I was left to look at the back half of him, and my eyes settled on his belt. What used to be a belt. It's still partly a belt. But it's composed not so much of leather anymore, as of other elements such as, well, duct tape, of course, but also less common belt-making materials like the common staple. Staples. Hmm.

That put me in mind of grandpa's long underwear. Not something I really like to think about. But a while back when he was gone on a bus trip to Tuscon, which is not where he ended up, by the way, I collected all his clothes and subjected them to a couple of long trips through the washing machine. If I couldn't recognize an object as a known article of clothing within 30 seconds or so of studying it, I discarded it (shhhh, don't tell!), but if it still gave the general impression of some thing I'd heard of, such as long underwear, I kept it. This long underwear, well, most of it looked pretty ok. It was the union-suit type, which buttons up the front. But this set was missing some buttons. Now, I've known plenty of men to replace buttons, particularly less visible ones, with safety pins. And at first glance, it seemed grandpa had taken the same course. But upon closer examination, I found that he'd gone a step further, back to the basic element, the essence of the safety pin: wire. His long underwear was wired together. With wire. Wire. Grandpa stores wire of various gauges and tensile strengths, and also rust-levels, in strategic places across the farm. If you need a piece, you're sure to find one to your exact specification within 20 feet of where you stand. Just check the nearest fence post, and if that fails, try the lower branches of a nearby tree. You should find several loops of wire at the ready for reuse. Safety pins, on the other hand, are not so easy to come by. You might even have to find Grandma's sewing box, or at least venture into the house, to find one of those.

Perhaps the most important article of clothing in Grandpa's wardrobe is that garment known as the "coverall." Grandpa has many pairs of coveralls. Some long sleeved, some bibbed, some insulated, some light-weight. What do they have in common? They share an ever increasing ratio of duct tape to original textile content. Duct tape appears at first in certain zones, particularly in the thigh region, where tools are apt to cut or tear at the fabric, and hay bails chafe at the skin, and at the knees, where hours of crawling under farm machinery take their toll. Since duct tape is basically indestructible stuff, it is natural that the areas between duct taped zones wear out long before the tape itself, and soon the taped zones begin to merge. In the end, a garment entirely composed of duct tape and entirely devoid of the cotton which gave it its shape emerges and stands free, grease-covered, manure-covered, beloved.

Life or Death for the Zinnias

After a couple of weeks of relaxation california-style, I'm back home and adjusting to life in Chattaroy. Where it's already freezing at night, so that I have spent several hours in the last two days building an elaborate tent around my dad's zinnia bed to preserve it from the frost. Dad can't bear to lose his zinnias to the September frost when October will roll around nice and warm and pose no threat to the blossoms. I remember the time that Great-Grandpa Beaudry was amazed at our flowers having lasted until Thanksgiving, and I think Dad's been trying to repeat that performance ever since. Never mind that the weather of that fall has not been repeated since. Anyway, Dad is in Reno for a visit, and that leaves me and Grandpa Nordhagen to protect the zinnias. I wouldn't have put much effort into it, but Grandpa was determined, and since I was here, there was no escape for me. A structure resembling a tent, formed from 8-foot steel t-posts formed into cradles for a pine ridgepole, various tarps and many lengths of orange bailing twine, now squats over the flowerbed like a clumsy giant attempting to protect Thumbelina. It's quite possibly a lost cause. The other possibility is that because I spent so many hours erecting this monument to floral preservation, the weather will remain warm just to spite me. Whatever the weather does, I'm not unwrapping those flowers. Let them huddle in the dark until Dad gets back on Monday... I can't bear another hour of Grandma's insistent "Now be careful, don't break off that flower stalk!" at 30 second intervals, and followed regularly by Grandpa's "Honey, we may ruin a few, but we're saving hundreds!." The first 20 iterations on this included my interjection, directed at Grandpa: "She's just saying we don't need to break more than we have to." For the next 20, I turned my efforts to calming Grandma: "Don't worry, Grandma, I'm being really careful, not many are being hurt." That was yesterday. Today began with a call from Grandpa, just wondering if I'd uncovered the flowers, but not too much, because it'd be colder tonight. Early afternoon brought the old green pickup roaring into the vicinity for a load of water (yes, water), and as I opened the gate for it to head back to the water spigot at the barn, Grandpa stopped and reviewed the entire flower/frost situation again, exhorting me to wrap those flowers up tight. Before sunset Katie and I went out to secure the general floral well-being, and found our ears turning toward the road as a green-pickup-like din announced the presence, yet again, of our grandparents. Had they come solely to ensure that the flowers were properly attended to? Did they really have that time to spare, between the escapades of their cattle and the county-wide efforts at herding the bovine rebels back home several times a day? No, in fact they'd come for more water. Water is instrumental in keeping the cows home. It's complicated. I'll tell you later. Anyway, we further discussed the dangers of ice crystals and the potential of the southwest wind to aid us in averting catastrophic zinnia death while the water barrels were filled, waved good-bye, and went back to tying tarp to tarp to fence to post to house to brick to log to tarp until, well after dark, we retired to the comfort of hot fudge and scrabble by the wood stove. Let the flowers live or die, I wash my hands of the whole affair.

Feline Frustration

Too many cats.

Cesarean Satisfaction

Several months ago we started watching one of the cows -- a very small heifer (a heifer is a cow who's never had a calf) who looked hugely pregnant. Since grandpa doesn't keep track of these things, we had no idea how pregnant she really was. We discussed inducing labor to get the baby out before it got too big, but we waited, instead. And waited, and waited. Finally, three weeks ago, after nearly every other cow had calved, she went into labor. And went nowhere. She pushed for hours, and then my dad called and said they were going to have to try to pull the calf. That means, yes, you pull on the calf to get it out. You reach inside and loop chains around the calf's legs, and then brace yourself against the cow and pull as hard as you can. Well, a couple of neighbors came down to help, and they pulled and pulled, and that calf just would not come. We told grandpa it would have to be a c-section, but he just couldn't get used to the idea. Those vets, they charge a lot of money! They pulled some more and we all heard a big popping sound. They stopped pulling. Who knew what that sound meant. Had they broken the baby's legs? The mother's pelvis? Had the chain just slipped and popped? We called the vet and arranged to meet him at the clinic with the cow. This was friday night... of course Miss Shorty had to wait until the weekend to go into labor. Dad ran home for his truck and then back up to the neighbor's for a trailer. Shorty wouldn't get up, so they dragged her (she's that small) into the trailer. With lots of prodding at the clinic we got her up and out, tied her to a panel in the clinic barn, and went to work. We had the whole county there... my dad and I and two neighbors and the vet and the vet tech. We were all doubtful as to whether that baby was still alive, after hours of labor. The doctor reached in and found a pelvis so small that only the calf's front feet fit through it. The head is supposed to follow the front feet, and there was just no way. It had to be surgery. And so, a few minutes later, the doctor pulled out a calf by its hind feet, its head smacked on the floor, we all held our breath, I cleared the mucus from her mouth, and she breathed... and then so did we. I rubbed her down and she was much healthier than anyone had expected. To make the rest of this long story short, mama's fine, baby's fine, she's a pretty little girl, and the pair are now known as "Shortcake and Strawberry." So, in the end, I'm satisfied, and even grandpa is, too. Now he calls baby Strawberry "a miracle, you know."

Easter

On Easter we were talking to Jakob on the phone. He's almost 5. He said "At church today I got a Easter egg but I learned about Jesus but I got a Easter egg and it had jelly beans in it!"

Andrew, who's 3, told us that "Jesus died. But he had a lot of blood."

I've heard that several kids, ranging from age 6 to 13, want to know whether Jesus has two birthdays, since he came alive on Christmas and on Easter.

My sister-in-law Ari is taking an MCAT prep course. They got out early to watch the Superbowl, but they had a test on Easter Sunday. Whatever.

I've discovered that a lot of people don't even know what Easter is. All this talk about the Easter Bunny and no talk at all about what bunnies symbolize. For those of you who don't know, Easter is the day that Jesus was resurrected after having been crucified. He died on Friday, rose on Sunday.

Cow in the Kitchen

You know how some women like to decorate their kitchens with cute-ified little geese, or pigs, or cows? Well I don't like that. I decorate my kitchen with the real thing. Fiona the tiny twin calf came to my house on March 10, and stayed in a box in the kitchen for 10 days. She had to be taught to drink from a bottle. She started running a fever, and have to have nasty injections. She "scoured," which means her digestive system was unhappy and I had to deal with the consequences. Let's just say I washed about 50 loads of towels in those ten days. Most frustrating, she didn't grow. At two weeks of age she'd gained one pound.... 35 pounds to 36. Eventually Fiona moved outside... on the patio or in the yard when it was sunny, and in a large kennel in the garage when it was raining or dark and cold. All in all, she was here until the day after she turned one month old. She weighs about 45 pounds now, and is in a pen with two other orphan calves up at the farm.

I miss her a lot; she loved to scamper around in the yard and play. She gamboled like a lamb. She liked the dogs. She sucked on my pajamas, my fingers, my shoes, my nose, anything she could get her little lips on. She learned to eat grain and walked around with bits of it stuck to her nose. Once she took off running so fast that when she tried to make a turn she totally wiped out in the dirt. That was pretty great. She learned to climb the back steps because she wanted to come in the house and get more milk. She loved the fresh spring grass. She ate all my tulips. Now, she's in a muddy corral, and it makes me sad.

Fiona Comes to Visit

on March 10th I drove up to the farm to check on things. Calving season was getting started and the cows required frequent checks. I drove up along Hamilton road so I could check the south fenceline, where cows often go to calve. Sure enough, there was "Feisty" with a wet, wobbly baby. As I got closer I detected the two front feet of another baby on the way... twins! It was snowing and raining and mudding and sunshining, as it does in March, and as I watched, baby number two plopped right out into the mud. What a welcome to the world. Twin girls. I called for help and got started rubbing the babies dry. Strangely, Feisty showed no interest in them, while another cow, Jumbo, insisted on cleaning the babies and (you won't like this part) eating the afterbirth. I kept swatting her away and eventually we got the calves somewhat dry. I got wetter and wetter. These babies were teeny tiny, and it soon became clear that they couldn't be left alone with their mama. So after a lot of rigamarole, we ended up carrying the calves in our arms and trying to get the mother to follow, up to the corral. She didn't have enough milk for two, even if she wanted to feed both, so the big twin stayed with Feisty, and the little one came home to my kitchen.

Chantilly, Discontinued

Scroll down, back a few months, and you'll see a picture of my calf, Chantilly. Well, she died. Just up and died, soon after that picture was taken. Don't know why. Just died.

Revival, RPMs, and Respect

Time to bring back the blog.
Yeah, I know it's been a year or so. Whatever. We'll just start with today.

Today I took my car to the Subaru dealer for an oil change. I had a couple of questions for the service manager. For instance, why is there a pattern of recurring corrosion on my battery? And why, when last I was there, did they not properly clean that up, even though they charged me for cleaning it? I also wanted to ask about the possibility of uneven tread wear on my tires. My friend Sam had noticed it. I said to Tom, or Bob, or whatever his name was, that I had replaced two tires at different times. Before I could continue and explain that I was already fully aware of the ramifications of running a 4WD with a limited slip differential on tires with differing diameters, he interrupted loudly with "[ignorant girl!] On These Cars, when you replace One Tire, you replace All Four Tires..." So I interrupted him right back with "I Understand that Running my Car on Tires of Different Diameters...blah blah blah and I Also Understand that the Manufacturer States the Range within which the Diameters are Close Enough blah blah blah... and I Have Measured the Tread and Diameters of All of the Tires to Ensure that they are Acceptable blah blah blah." So then he shut up. I said, "so could you check out that wear pattern for me?" and he said "well uneven wear can only be an alignment problem and..." and I said "and how much would that cost me?" and he said "$99" and I said "Why?" And he said "Because tire alignment here costs 99.95" and I said "Yes, but why? I'm sure I can get it done for considerably less elsewhere, so that's what I'll do." For some reason, at that point he started being nice and acting like I was not an ignorant girl. He said they would really spend some time on that "battrie" as he called the battery, and make sure it was done right. When I came back to pick up the car, he had sure enough spent some time on the battrie, and had had the guys replace one of the bolts and check the levels, etc. And my car was cleaner than they'd ever made it before, and then even vacuumed inside, which they've never done before. So, the moral of the story is, show me some R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

Dog Day

If I hadn't lived it myself, I'd say that yesterday was too full to have fit into 24 hours. I got up at 6 with a raw sore throat and throbbing eyeballs, drove to downtown Spokane, caught the bus there at 7:25, and arrived in Cheney in time for my 8:00 class. After sitting through a nearly insufferable lecture, I was given the exam I took last week. I got an 83% on it. Not bad considering that I was really not prepared when I took the test. So, I was disappointed but resigned to it. Then I got the "first draft" of my research paper back. Again, and 83%. This time I was irate. 83%? I did everything she asked, made a couple of minor errors in my works cited page... she just didn't like my introduction. She crossed out all the interesting parts, marked me down for including the perspectives and experiences of anglers and ecologists in understanding trout behavior (the topic is the feeding behaviors of trout). She claimed that I didn't state specifically what I was going to address in the paper. What did she want me to do, say "In this paper I will address...."??? Because I write with a little more sophistication than that, and instead wrote a full sentence for each aspect of trout behavior I intended to develop in the body of the paper, she marked me down. Next time, I'll write "This paper will cover how trout smell, see, and eat."

So. I went to the computer lab and determined that I don't actually HAVE to take this class. And since I have hated this class from day one, think the science is shoddy and the teaching unorganized, can't develop any repoire with the professor, and the specimens are all falling apart because they're 8 decades old (a ringneck pheasant hen is not that hard to come by!), I've decided to withdraw and take a W on my transcript. Because of all that and because yesterday was all about real vertebrates, not about the made-up ones they draw pictures of in the text when they can't find intermediate forms in the fossil record.

But before we get to the real vertebrates, let me tell you that when I went to Organic Chem I was given the exam that I took last week, and my score, after an across-the-board adjustment of 10%, was 42%. Normally I'd be devastated, but apparently I was right with everyone else. Still, it was a momentous occasion, getting a 38% raw score.

So then the vertebrate activities began. I got back on the bus at 1:05, rode back to my car, drove back to Chattaroy, ate, picked up my dog, and drove all the way back to the south side of town for a veterinary opthamologist appointment. While we discussed ways to spend money and maybe incidentally fix Carter's eyelid, my grandparents' dog was trying to head off the UPS truck, and he failed. I rushed Carter home and rushed to the farm. When I got there a bull and a few cows were in the haystacks. Chased them around for a while and got them put away. Went up to the house where I found Jake with one leg clearly broken and the other one tender. Put him on a bed of hay with his leg wrapped, covered him with a blanket, and went home to study. Ate dinner, started studying, the phone rang. Gra

Worms

I just counted 18 cats in the semi-feral "family" at our farm. Goodness Gracious, how will we ever catch up. The activity of the day was to rescue them from certain death by starvation. The method was to de-worm them. They are emaciated because roundworms in their tummies are eating up their food. Not very nice. Not usually like that. So, armed with a bottle of liquid de-worming medicine and a couple of cans of soft cat food, I went to work. I divided the cat food into individual snacks and laced each portion with the proper dose of medicine, adjusted according to the size of the target cat. With 5 portions at a time on a dinner plate, I entered the fray: those few cats who are not terrified of humans attacked the plate immediately. My grandma and I used a spatula to keep one cat to one portion, as much as possible. That was interesting, and left approximately 2 doses on the plate. Apparently only 3 of the cats were not too terrified to approach the plate. Now, grandma used whatever she could find (metal pans, her feet) to fend off those bold kitties while I coaxed some of their terrified but desperately hungry siblings to eat their portions while I stood at arm's length. 5 down, 12 to go (one is too young for medicine). We repeated this process with another plate of 5 portions, but the less-terrified cats, having tasted the yummy treats now, were only slightly cautious as they approached for seconds. We swatted and kicked (gently of course) while mewing and cajoling the next set of fearful felines. Cali, a beautiful calico who never lets me pet her, came back again and again and didn't seem to notice my hand on her back at all. Ramses, who has never been touched by a human in all his two years, remains untouched but managed to get at least his fair share off the plate. And so it went, until finally I'd administered 13 doses of de-wormer, one each to Cali, Mama, Buffy, Tiger, Peanut, Ramses, Heidi, George, Tommy, Tommy II, Blue Monster, Fancy (aka Mona Lisa), and Goldie. I could not get the black kitty to come near, and I never saw Toby or Toby II or Hilda. These cats, by the way, have names not because they are pets but because we need ways to refer to them other than "you know, the one that looks like the mama cat but doesn't have the white mark" and "that light orange one that looks egyptian" and "that stupid blue-grey tomcat that's beating up all the others." So far this year I've found homes for Blue Kitty (offspring of the Blue Monster) and Toby III, and I've had Heidi spayed and Ivan neutered (and he moved to my house) and now Peanut is going to a new home, and I have vouchers to get Mama cat and Cali spayed next. I have to admit that we do have a special fondness for George (he's fixed, so not a problem), and Heidi and Goldie and Buffy and Mama. We would like Fancy if we could catch her and tame her, but we can't. But she's awfully pretty.

Orphan

Sign and Song

There's a sign at a business on Northwest Boulevard that has said, for several days, "Every new beginning is another beginning's end." It's a paraphrase of a line from the song Closing Time: "Every new beginning is some other new beginning's end." Well, that's patently untrue! It's not even remotely logical, nor does it comply with human experience! I was so pleased when today I drove past the sign; someone has changed it to read "Every new beginning is another beginning."

Antipolynomialism

I object to the polynomial invasion of my mind. Unwanted polynomials interfere with my thoughts, rendering me baffled and bewildered, unsure of my own identity. Last night I dreamt a polynomial poem. It was a poem (or a polynomial?) in the fourth degree, and it was truly beautiful. If only I could remember it and write it down for you. I know, dubitable as it may sound to you, that that polynomial poem was really another attempt (by the math faculty of the universe) to gain control of my faculties, to make me believe that math is a good thing.

Bumble

Checking the Herd

Chantilly

This is my baby calf, Chantilly. I got a halter for her, I'm going to tame her and feed her apples and she will follow me around.

Hot Wire

This is what I look like after I try so hard to avoid the barbed wire that I touch the electric wire instead. Ow! Gosh! Sheesh!

Spring Pine

The pine trees are in bloom. I know, you don't think pine trees have flowers. Well, they do. And they are just starting to spread pollen everywhere. Soon there will be a fine yellow dust on everything. Everything.

Lilac Blooms

Wild Berries

Love Birds

Bleeding Heart

Dandelion

Carter

Garbage

My Grandpa keeps everything. Everything. And my Grandma gets tired of keeping everything. And we get tired of it too. When they used to have pigs, the pigs ate all the food garbage. Everything that could be burned was burned in the wood stove. A lot of things are still burned in the wood stove, but when it comes to food garbage, well, grandma fills her bucket and carries out to the field and buries it. In the field. With a broken shovel. OK, um, my grandmother is 80 years old and she has to carry her garbage into a field and bury it! So, my mom checked to see if the garbage truck goes by the farm. And it does. So, she asked my grandma if she would like to have garbage service. Grandma's first question: "Would they take food garbage and tin can lids?" My GOSH! The poor woman didn't even KNOW that they accept food garbage! Then she said she doesn't know if Grandpa would approve. I'm pretty darn sure he wouldn't. But if she does get garbage service, Grandma says, she'll try to sneak stuff into the garbage can! Needless to say, we are getting her garbage service. And if Grandpa objects, my advice to Grandma is to say "Hey! That is MY garbage, so you just leave it alone!!"