Bringing Home the Bacon

We've had to cancel our annual pig auction. This is a financial blow and a loss of a 25-year+ family tradition.

Usually the whole family chips in to make this happen. My job is to handle the auction clerking, which includes logging the sales, collecting payments, and convincing someone else to notify Husband should there be an error in any of that.

My tools for that task included a Windows 95 laptop and a dot matrix printer--the kind that uses the attached paper with the pin holes on the side. If none of that last sentence made any sense to you, then see this pic and know that the technology we used before 1999 was index cards and stuff called carbon paper. We only stopped using this computer in 2019!


For the kids, every year meant a new coming of age milestone of being allowed to go help wash pigs, or old enough to stay for the whole auction, sometimes until nearly midnight.

Every year we load up the pigs at the farm and truck them to a local fairgrounds where we hold the auction…

Today, my Mom and I did not go on a walk. It was raining and we thought about being rebellious and going shopping at one of the little boutiques we heard was still holding out.
But we got word via The Aunts that Grandpa had BEEN TO THE GROCERY. Something that just two weeks ago was not a problem, even though Grandpa is 92 and Grandma has dementia. But talk about horrible children, what kind of good caregiver is allowing vulnerable seniors to head out into the world of germs.
So we sprang into action. We heard a nearby meat market had hamburger. They had HAMBURGER. Again, just two short weeks ago that wasn’t news. We booked it over to the meat market to snag our ration of meat (two pounds per family allowed). We even bragged to the owner how we were getting this for our Grandpa, a regular customer.  And then we got some coleslaw and ham salad. If you have not had the ham salad from Jerry’s Meat Market in Farmersville, Ohio, then you are not a country person. And if you are like my fri…

It is a time of change here in Ohio. A time when we must hoard toilet paper and the barbers are closed. A time when old people are being told they must shop at the grocery at 7 a.m. for their safety. A time that every church lady has been training for, for decades: staying home and calling people to see if they are OK and have had enough to eat.

It is a weird time.

So why not start blogging again.

I am working at home for the foreseeable future. Husband is here, tracking in about half of the farm filth that he usually does when I am not here to witness it. And the kids are doing home school in between also tracking in filth.

So many things are sad. But there are moments of humor in everything. Like when my mother who is BARELY a senior citizen got calls to check in from two different church ladies in their 80s. I'm not sure what that says about ME. It is a small town and they know she has me to look after her. Do they think I will suck at that? Do they think I am some deadbeat dau…

This week I went to The Little Clinic for a urinary tract infection. WOAH! I haven't blogged for years and then my first sentence back is about my down there infection. Yes. Yes, it is.

If you aren't familiar, The Little Clinic is a small clinic inside a Kroger grocery store. They have a nurse practitioner on hand who can diagnose and treat basic ailments like ear infections, strep throat and apparently, down there infections.

I had plenty of time to read their rotating sign of services and I was surprised to see they were taking on some things that seemed way beyond the scope of what you would want to medically deal with inside of a grocery store. Apparently, after just 20 minutes with a nurse practitioner next to the frozen food, you too can be treated for depression, osteoporosis, smoking cessation and Japanese Encephalitis, an actual vaccine you can get inside the grocery, in Ohio.

The Little Clinic has a VERY small waiting area, so many patients were spilling out to the …

DOINK DOINK
A few months ago, my 17-year-old son got in his car with his best buddy and set out on an adventure out of town. They got in trouble with the law and stayed out past bedtime on a school night. We were livid, so we put our foot down.
We told him that the next time he drives his 79-year-old GrandDad to a pig auction, he should follow the speed limit—and that they may have to leave before the auction is over to get home on time. Yeah, this is the kind of wholesome trouble that my farm kids get themselves into.
So our son got his first speeding ticket WAAAAY out of town and since he is a minor you can’t just pay the ticket. No, you must appear in juvenile court. With your parent.
Fortunately, after waiting for weeks to determine his fate, the court date was transferred to our county. We were getting our day in court.

Because we are but simple country folk and also possibly because I greatly overreacted, we over-did the whole court thing.
Even though I have worked right outsi…

Every two years the nationally renowned Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop is held here in Dayton. The event typically sells out in hours, but one way to gain entry is to enter the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition--there is even a category for local writers.


Several of my local friends who are great bloggers and hilarious Facebook commenters have been talking smack about winning this thing since we were all shut out two years ago by booger stories.

Nancy Cartwright, Dayton native and the the voice of Bart Simpson, judged the finalists this year. Apparently, she did not like my entry.

Recently, famous blogger and author Jenny Lawson shared an article she had written that was rejected by Oprah's magazine. So, inspired by her, I will share my article that I'm sure made it all the way to Nancy [it did not] and then was rejected for not being about boogers or port-a-johns.

Check out "All the Dreeds of Pigs" in a future post on this blog.