Kicking Myself

The end of 2010 I was out of free room on my blog to upload pictures.  I just couldn’t see paying $20 a month for my blog because I’m a tight ass!!  So instead of uploading directly to my blog I would copy and paste from an album on Facebook.  Worked great and I thought I’d fooled the system…….(insert WordPress evil cackle).  For almost 3 years I did that.

Now all those pictures can not be viewed.  It’s just a blank little box where my picture once was.  Since I use a lot of pictures on this blog to tell my story I’m sure you can imagine how boring my posts are without the pictures.  Back in January I bit the bullet and purchases more upload space. I started Wednesday going through those posts and loading the correct pictures.  I copy the picture from the album on FB that I had set up private and only for blogging pictures then I paste them to Photoshop and if I’m lucky I can combine pictures into a template then upload them to the post.  Time consuming and sometimes I really wish I didn’t add so many darn pictures.  But slowly I’ll get everything showing up again.  The only problem I’m finding is on my year end review because those pictures span the whole year I’m not wanting to put that much work into going through a bunch of albums.  I take one month of posts a day.  Slowly but surely I’ll have them all done.  Good thing I’m really slow at work and can spend the time doing this.

Dirt Track Racing at its Finest

This is my 25th year of going to the races. My dad took me to my first race back in 1988 when I was 8 and I haven’t missed a season since. Some summers I might not go as much, but I always make it to a few races. Growing up racing turned into a family sport. We were die hard fans. We each had “our cars” that we cheered for and if someone messed with “our car” it was war. I took videos of some races and while watching it at home in our living room Mildred’s car spun out. It just happened that my camera was focused right on her car. (I had gotten in trouble for not taping the Crazy 8 car so it just happened that one time I did tape him he spun). Anyway back to the video we were watching. When the car spun out you could hear me giggle on the video. Mildred jumped on my back and started punching me. I will never forget that!!

Once we moved to Colby my dad became friends with a stock car driver. They shared a shop together and dad would help on the car. That driver ended up being an IMCA Hobby Stock National Champion in the late 90′s. He went on to a very successful career in the stock cars and modified divisions. The summer of 2004 that driver’s wife, Susan, and I became really good friends. She was the only one of my friends that actually liked the races and I ended up not being friends with those people anymore! I traveled all over KS with with. We went to Wakeeney, Dodge City (fav all time track!), Colby, Goodland, Norton, Oberlin and even up in Nebraska. It was nothing to be at the races 3 nights a week. I LOVED it! It was great to see a new aspect of the races from down in the pits. For all those years I’d sat in the stands. Susan introduced me to TNT that summer! Then for 6 summers I went with him all the time racing.

Before TNT dated me he dated a drama queen and he wouldn’t allow her in the pits with him at the races. His Uncle asked him why she didn’t help him in the pits and he said, “cause a woman has no place in the pits.” Well when he started dating me he asked me to help him. I don’t know a lot mechanically but I can be a tool runner with the best of them. I can carry two fuel jugs and fill up the racing fuel, I can size tires and get the race trailer race ready. I wasn’t a liability like his ex was. (evil cackle)

TNT decided he was done racing 3 years ago. I took this new development pretty hard actually. Racing had been such a big part of my life I couldn’t imagine a summer without it. However, I soon realized what having a Sunday evening at home sitting on the porch was like. I also found I didn’t miss the drama of the races. I did miss the big race weekends when our whole family (my side and TNT’s) would travel to Nebraska for a huge stock car show. I think TNT missed it too because last year he fired up the car for an April race. His motor wasn’t the best so he just ran in the back, but the way for him to release stress is to race and he had a good time. He didn’t pull the car out again until the fair races the end of August. To read how bad that went you can click here. http://carrielt.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/racing-or-a-demo-derby/

This year TNT is going to drive a late model. This car has 3 times the horsepower his stock car had and they are very hard to handle. His first race is June 9th. We’ll see how it goes!

I took this on 5-19 of the stock car feature. This is my absolute favorite class!! This is how they race all 20 laps. At the checkered flag they came in 3 wide. The officials had to go to the video camera to see who won. It was great racing.

I doubt we’ll ever completely be out of racing and that is fine with me!

Husband-isms

I know what the heck is husband-isms. My husband sometimes says things that make me stop, scratch my head and say WHAT THE HECK?

TNT was planting corn and asked me to bring more corn seed to him.  The bags weigh about 50 pounds and are awkward to carry.  I had about 20 to load so I picked up the pallet with the forklift and moved it close to the pickup so I wouldn’t have to work so hard, but it was still work. When I got to the field TNT asked if I threw those bags by myself. Of course I can’t help it and I sarcastically said, “No Molly helped me, Yes of course I loaded them.”  And he replies with, “I’ll make a man out of you yet!”  I just stopped, picked my jaw up off the ground and asked if he’d like me to be a man.  That’s when he realized what he said and shook his head with a poop eating grin on his face.  Yep my husband wants me to be a man. Sigh!

These pictures have nothing to do with this post. I love the sun flare in this picture. 

This is what April was supposed to look like. Last year Spring was a month early and this year it is a month late.  I’m just sad Jennifer wasn’t able to see a green KS when she visited.

Week in iPhone Pictures 20/52

Link up with Kat @ Living Like the Kings.

*We went from winter straight to summer with 92 degree temps.  *At the last baseball game for the local high school. *After vollebyall I had myself a supper of popcorn. *Wednesday night we had a little storm that dropped 0.05″ of rain.  But there was a pretty rainbow though. *Later that night another storm moved through. Still nothing.  *Friday night I headed over to the town Mildred lives in to celebrate a graduation of one of the boys on our vball team who has become a good friend.  *First I snuggled with my nephew Sophers though.  <3 him!! *Mildred, Nate & I at his after graduation party. *Saturday morning I was up early trying to find a plug for the sprayer. *On my way to the field to take the plug I ran into this guy.

*After killing a rattlesnake you have to take a souvenir. Then you have to leave it on the dash in the pickup. *My co-pilot for the day.  *TNT spraying. *I stopped by my boss’ farm and picked some asparagus and lilacs.  She was in Chicago and told me to cut as much asparagus as I wanted. It was so good! *In the mail on Saturday I received newborn wraps. can’t wait to use them.  *Before the storm came through TNT and I were working on the tree row along the highway.  *Sunday I worked on the tree row again for about 3 hours. Busted up my finger, but a little blood doesn’t hurt anyone.  *Sunday afternoon Molly and I watching college softball.
*Then Tails chased Molly away and took her spot.  *TNT hollered to turn to channel 3. Wichita was getting hit with tornado’s. *My whole family in the living room watching the tornado’s in Wichita.  *Molly stole back the ottoman from Tails and was watching him walk by. *That tail gets you every time! *Sunday night headed to the races. *TNT hot lapped a late model.  Not sure I like driving someone else’s car.  But TNT loved the horse power that baby has!

Monday night dust storm. Our neighbors on the west side of the highway have corn stubble and it is so dry.  That big dust storm is going right into our yard.  We better get some rain soon to slow down that dust!!  TNT thought it was a tornado when he first saw it.

And because I know everyone loves these guys!

Drought in Kansas

Last year the first weekend in April I took my sister’s Ooh La La pictures.  Granted the wheat crop was a month ahead of schedule and we ended up harvesting in early June. However this is what the wheat looked like that day. That wash tub is 20 inches or so tall. We had an amazing wheat crop last year. The few rains we received hit at the right times when the wheat really needed it. Our fall harvest was terrible. TERRIBLE!! Not even worth getting the combine out of the shed.

 

 

 

First lets take a minute and check out that sky!! WOW! I love it. I didn’t even notice the sky until I was posting to here and thought now that is why I love Kansas!

We had very little rain last summer and fall which means when the wheat was drilled in September there was no moisture in the ground to sprout it.  We hoped for a moist winter to maybe help the wheat come spring. However, that hasn’t been the case.  On top of that we had freezing temps till the first week of May so what the drought didn’t hurt the freeze has.

As you can see the wheat that has survived is thin and just above my ankle.  If you compare these two pics to the first you can definitely see the difference.  Some years it’s sad to be a farmer.

Asparagus Pile

Last spring I conned TNT into building me 4 raised garden beds.  I’ll first say that last year was a terrible year in Kansas. The wind blew nonstop and when you have weeks of 100+ temps it takes a tole on everything. Most of our grass in the yard is buffalo grass which is pretty hardy and even that had blown bare with large cracks.  So it was no wonder my garden didn’t produce much. I really think the combination of the bad weather and the raised beds is what gave me the most problems.  I couldn’t keep the raised beds watered enough and everything died.

(last year’s garden pics)

I had cucumbers and peppers in this bed. (Last year’s garden pics) I decided this year I was done with them and pulled them out. I’m sure you can see my husband rolling his eyes since I had made a big deal about him helping me build them!  Then TNT piled all the dirt from those beds into a pile.

I had planted asparagus in one of the beds and they didn’t last long. I figured there was no way with the way the summer was that they’d survive so I really didn’t think twice when TNT piled all the dirt.  Well now I have a bunch of asparagus coming up in the pile above. 

While I had the tiller out last week (which in itself to start is a huge task) I found a new place for my asparagus patch. So now every few days I go out and dig in the pile of dirt to see if I can find more. It really makes me mad since next year I would have been able to start cutting some to eat.  Now I have to wait two years since I transplanted them.  

Paying it Forward

I always try to do something nice for people. Some may say I’m a sucker. I probably am, but I feel like I’m doing some good. I partnered up with two teachers I had in High School and told them I wanted to donate a Senior session to one student who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford pictures. I had told them both that I wanted this to stay between us three so it was something I could do every year. It was my way of giving back. Our scheme was to tell the kid I was building my Senior portfolio and he won the session. Both teachers raved praised for this kid. We met one day after school right after a snow. It was cold, it was wet and windy.  But we got some really nice pictures.  My deal with him was he’d receive a 30 minute session and 40 wallets for free!  That’s aro

und a $200 deal. The whole time we were taking his pictures I got the feeling he wanted me to feel sorry for him since his mother has breast cancer.  My mother is a NINE YEAR breast cancer SURVIVOR and I never once used her illness to my benefit.  I wasn’t owed anything because my mother had cancer. I finished editing his pictures put them on my smugmug website and told him to pick a few pictures he wanted me to print for his 40 wallets.  That was in January and I hadn’t heard from him until last Wednesday.  He wanted me to RUSH those wallets to him because “graduation is this weekend” (last Sunday).  I told him he’s had this whole time to tell me the pictures he wanted and there was no way I was going to pay the extra money for them to be rushed to me. He goes well you know I haven’t had time since my mom has cancer.   Wrong answer buddy! Well he never got around to giving me the pictures he wanted printed. So I’m writing him off. I also decided that was it for being nice and “Paying it Forward.”

I’m changing the subject now, but it’ll all come back together at the end! Back in January there was a FB page set up by a teacher, Miss Kay,  in Council Grove, KS.  The assignment for the class was to have a person from each of the 648 towns in Kansas to post on their wall. I became a fan of it and I worked pretty hard getting people to post their towns.  I’ve always been a proud Kansan, but this project really jumped it up a notch. Towards the end they would post the towns that they still needed. Some towns only had 20 or so people living there so it was a chore to get comments. If I knew anyone living in that area I would email them and tell them to comment.  Well they got someone from each town to comment and over 6,000 likes.  How cool is that!  The next assignment was for the students to come up with a new state motto.  The teacher picked 4 finalists and the other teachers and staff at their school v

oted.  The teacher also asked FB what their winner would be.  Since I started out being a landscape photographer I have many pictures so I volunteered to help announce the winner by putting the motto on one of my landscape pictures. The student selected a picture he liked and it was announced.  Miss Kay and even the boy’s mother thanked me for helping them with this project.  To me it wasn’t much because I enjoyed doing it.  I then took the remaining finalists and placed their motto’s on three other landscape pictures.  I ordered those prints one for each kid and then each picture for the classroom.  It cost me around $30 to have them printed and shipped to me so I wasn’t out that much money, but I wanted to do something nice for these students since they brought a new sense of Kansas pride to me. Plus I felt the students should be rewarded for their hard work.

Here’s the winning motto and the Kansas landscape picture the winner picked.

I dealt with the kid from the above paragraph last Wednesday and decided I was done being nice. Then on Friday I returned from work and Miss Kay left this post on my facebook wall:

Carrie-I wanted to take a minute to say thanks! I just got our pictures today and the note and they are absolutely beautiful. I sent home one with each kid and I’m going to get some frames so that we can display them in our hallway at school. I would LOVE to be selfish and keep them in my room — but then ALL the kids/parents/visitors won’t get to enjoy them as well. WE have LOVED all the photos and you’re a “REAL LIVE” reason for me to explain to kids how a stranger can be our friend and do nice things for us even when we have never met that person! Kids need real examples of just humans being nice to other humans — and you knocked that concept out of the park! Thank you for being a wonderful example of mankind for us! You have given a gift that we can enjoy for many years!!! I truly cannot say thanks enough!!!    Thank you for being a KANSAS Supporter!!!

I didn’t do any of this for the recognition. I did it because I wanted to be nice and help.  After Miss Kay’s kind words I had to take a step back and remember not to let a few bad eggs ruin the experience for others.  So next year I will again donate a Senior session to a deserving kid. And that is the real reward for Pay it Forward!

Here are the other 3 finalists.

oops!! It should be prevailing.  I did print the right one for the student though!

And I may have put my  own twist on this motto   I should mention that Council Grove is located in K-State Wildcat country so I’m guess that’s not what the student was going for.