Yucca Plants

These were my yucca plants along the driveway this year. I think they're lovely, but the flowers didn't last as long as usual. I expect that was because of the drought.

Thursday Thirteen #965

Tick‑Borne Diseases (With the Creepy Details)

I recently talked to a friend I hadn't spoken with for some time and learned she'd been in the hospital with a tick-borne illness. I had no idea that ticks could make you sick enough to nearly die. I knew about Lyme Disease and Alpha Gal, but a little research indicates that there are a lot of tick-borne diseases out there.

The weird thing is that these diseases didn't seem to be a problem when I was a child. I had ticks on me frequently. My family lived on a farm. It wasn't unusual to have to get my mother to pull a tick out of my head. It was a common childhood thing. You played outside, ticks found you.

By the time I was an adult, though, things had changed. This makes me wonder if some environmental issue has caused ticks to become toxic sources of illnesses.

Here are some of the diseases ticks can give you.

1. Lyme Disease is spread by black‑legged ticks. It starts with fatigue, fever, and sometimes the famous bull’s‑eye rash (though plenty of people never get one). Untreated, it can move into joints, nerves, and the heart. Virginia is a hotspot.

2. Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (RMSF) is carried by the American dog tick and the brown dog tick. Begins with high fever and a headache that feels like someone is tightening a belt around your skull. The rash often shows up late, which is why early treatment matters.

3. Ehrlichiosis is delivered courtesy of the lone star tick. It causes fever, chills, muscle aches, and sometimes confusion. Blood tests often show low white cells and platelets. Responds well to doxycycline if caught early.

4. Anaplasmosis is similar to ehrlichiosis but transmitted by black‑legged ticks. Symptoms include fever, chills, and a general “I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck” sensation. Can cause organ issues if untreated.

5. Babesiosis is a parasite spread by the black-legged tick that infects red blood cells. It's basically malaria’s American cousin. Causes fever, dark urine, and anemia. More dangerous for people over 50 or those without a spleen.

6. Tularemia is rare but serious. Ticks can transmit it, but so can handling infected rabbits. Symptoms depend on how it enters the body, but fever and swollen lymph nodes are common. It's sometimes called “rabbit fever.”

7. Powassan Virus is a fast‑acting virus spread by black‑legged ticks. Transmission can happen in as little as 15 minutes. Can cause brain swelling, seizures, and long‑term neurological problems. Thankfully rare.

8. Heartland Virus was first identified in Missouri; it is now found in the Midwest and South. It spreads by the lone star tick. The virus causes fever, fatigue, low white blood cells, and low platelets. There is no specific treatment except supportive care.

9. Bourbon Virus is another newly discovered tick‑borne virus, also linked to the lone star tick. Symptoms include fever, rash, and low blood counts. Extremely rare but severe when it occurs.

10. Alpha‑gal Syndrome is not an infection. It’s an allergy triggered by lone star tick bites. Causes delayed allergic reactions to red meat, gelatin, and sometimes dairy. People often discover it after a steak dinner goes sideways at 2 a.m. I know several people who have this. Some have found relief with acupuncture. Some have just waited it out, and some may never eat certain meats again.

11. STARI (Southern Tick–Associated Rash Illness) looks like Lyme, acts like Lyme, but isn’t Lyme. Lone star ticks again are the cause. This disease causes a rash and flu‑like symptoms, but the exact cause remains unknown. Responds to antibiotics even though no bacterium has been identified.

12. Colorado Tick Fever is a viral illness carried by ticks in the Rocky Mountains. Causes fever that comes and goes in waves, plus muscle aches and fatigue. The virus hides inside red blood cells, which makes blood donation unsafe for months afterward.

13. Tick‑borne Relapsing Fever is caused by Borrelia species transmitted by soft ticks. True to its name, symptoms come in cycles: high fever for a few days, then a break, then another fever spike. Can cause nausea, dizziness, and night sweats.

Here in Virginia, we get the full cast of characters: black‑legged ticks, lone star ticks, and American dog ticks, each with its own bad habits. Lyme disease is the most common statewide, especially in the Blue Ridge and northern counties, but ehrlichiosis and alpha‑gal syndrome are rising fast thanks to the ever‑pushy lone star tick. Rocky Mountain spotted fever shows up regularly, too, and Powassan virus has been detected in the region even though cases remain rare. In short, Virginia has more than its share of tick‑borne trouble, and most of it is sitting right in the tall grass waiting for someone to walk by.

Black-legged tick and lone star tick (AI drawing)

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Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 965th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

The Mattress Goes BAA

 

Having determined that we would replace the mattress, my husband set out again for the mattress store. Once again, I wasn’t sure what was going on, or if we were buying, exchanging, or what.

Neither of us had done any research about mattresses. Me, because I had no clue what was going on. As for my husband, he was just trying to get his back to stop hurting.

He decided we needed a firm mattress with a softer mattress top. So, the helpful sales lady, who I’m sure by now thought we had been bitten by rabid bats, had us rest on first this mattress then another mattress.

He narrowed it down to two. One was a Stearns and Foster, which our old mattress had been, and the other was by a company I’d never heard of.

The Stearns and Foster was obviously not of the same quality as the mattress he’d so cavalierly tossed away a few weeks early, but it was also much better than Count Dracula’s slab.

The other mattress felt very nice and comfy. I liked it.

Until I didn’t.

I asked what was in the mattress. The helpful sales lady told us the mattress was by Spink and Co., out of England, but now made here in the USA, only out of wool from Yorkshire, England, and this was the same brand that the royals in the UK slept upon. The wool inside came from sheep, cashmere, angora, alpaca, etc.

“I’m allergic to wool,” I reminded my husband.

“It’s in a mattress,” he said.

“I’m allergic to wool,” I said again.

“It’s all been cleaned. It’s not that foam stuff that off-gasses. It’ll be fine,” he said.

“I can’t wear a wool coat,” I reminded him.

He bought the mattress with the wool in it. It cost about four times more than the first mattress.

The day the mattress arrived, it came encased in cardboard and plastic. After it was placed in the mattress encasement, and the movers left, I could feel the itch all over my body.

I had the air purifiers on high.

It’s just the wool from the plastic encasement, I told myself.

I also smelled something. I am quite sensitive to odors. At first it smelled faintly like cow, then it turned to a smell like burlap.

Everything seemed to have calmed down after the air purifiers ran a few hours, and it was even better after I showered.

Then my husband caught an upper respiratory thing, and gave it to me, and I had no way of knowing if I was sneezing and had watering eyes because of the virus or the mattress.

I started getting up at 5:30 a.m. just to get off the mattress.

It’s now been three weeks since we purchased this mattress. I still won’t make up the bed; I smooth out the sheets and then fold them all back, letting the thing air out even if it doesn’t need it.

My upper respiratory virus is better, aside from a lingering cough. My husband still has a bit of a cough, too.

And last night when we ran the humidifier, because we both seem to be very dry, I smelled burlap again. When I mentioned it, my husband scoffed.

“You could smell an ant fart 3 miles away,” he said.

This doesn’t have an end yet.

I don’t know that it will. I may be fine sleeping on this mattress. It sleeps very well, I have to say. It’s very cozy and comfortable.

But it also has wool.

And like I said, I’m allergic to wool.

Stay tuned.

Count Dracula’s Slab

 

Not long after I’d fallen in the night, my husband declared we needed a new mattress. He wanted to get a smaller mattress so I didn’t need to climb into the bed. He wanted to lower the bed as much as we could with an adjustable bed frame, removing the bed slats from our beautiful cherry poster bed so the mattress would be lower to the floor.

I argued against this. We did not need a new mattress. The mattress had nothing to do with my fall. I fell because I was half asleep and trying to look upside down under the bed, not because I was trying to climb into the bed.

But he would not be swayed. We were out and he drove us to a mattress store. I thought we were just going to look.

“I want the firmest mattress you have,” he told the sales woman. She led him to an ultra-firm Beauty Rest mattress.

It felt like a rock.

We tried out a few other mattresses, but he determined the first one we tried was the one he wanted. And he wanted it then.

“What are you doing?” I said. “We don’t need a new mattress.”

“I want something for my back, ok? This will help my back.”

Ah. So it had nothing to do with my fall. He was just using that as an excuse.

The mattress came the following week. The nice delivery people set up the new adjustable bed frame, put the mattress in the mattress encasement, and tossed the mattress onto the bed frame.

I added a mattress pad and the bed linens. I told myself it would be fine. I sleep on a bed wedge anyway, one that’s eight inches thick at the top, and oversized, and then I have pillows under my legs, so it shouldn’t matter about the mattress, right?

Wrong.

That mattress was like sleeping on stone. Count Dracula wouldn’t have been able to sleep on that slab of granite. My back went into multiple muscle spasms. I could hardly stand up.

This went on for three days and my husband called the mattress place and said we needed to return the mattress. “My wife doesn’t like it,” he said.

They told us the agreement said we had to try it for 30 days before we could return the mattress.

I suggested I would stay at a hotel for the next 21 days. One with a nice soft mattress.

He went to Walmart and bought a foam mattress topper. I told him just to get a twin for me, but when he came back with a queen, I knew the truth.

The mattress hurt his back, too.

“It doesn’t feel as good as I thought it would,” he mumbled when I confronted him.

Fortunately, the mattress sales woman took pity on us and agreed that I would probably never find a good night’s sleep on Count Dracula’s slab.

So back we went. And things got weirder.

A Smash and Two Falls

 

Sometime back in early November, as I walked on the treadmill, I lost my footing and began to fall. I caught myself on the bars around the home treadmill, hit the kill switch, and righted myself. I shrugged it off as “no harm, no foul” and kept going.

But I had hurt my shoulder, and as time progressed, so did the pain. Since it was my right arm that was bothering me, it became difficult to function. I wasn’t able to do the holiday baking and cooking I normally do because I couldn’t hold the mixer.

I couldn’t stir fudge, either. Talk about disaster! I’m known for my fudge. When I was a news reporter, I’d make at least 15 pounds of fudge and then walk around handing out pretty boxes of candy to my sources and other folks who’d helped me throughout the year.

With the holidays coming up – Thanksgiving, then Christmas – I just tried to keep moving through it. Then my father passed away in January. It was March before I saw a doctor and asked her to send me to physical therapy. That’s helped a little, but not as much as either I or the physical therapist had hoped.

Not long after I started physical therapy, I smashed my middle finger at the end joint. The car console lid fell down on my hand, and my finger took the brunt of the blow. I remember thinking that was going to leave a mark, but it didn’t, and it wasn’t until about 10 days later, when suddenly my whole hand swelled, that I remembered the accident. Turns out I had a fracture in that finger. It still hurts even now, months later.

And then in May, I got up in the night and placed the splint I had on my finger on the bedside table while I tried to open a bottle of water. The splint rolled off the table and under the bed. Our bed is high, and my husband had made me a stoop with two steps to use to climb into the bed.

I sat on the lower step with a flashlight, trying to find the splint, and somehow lost my balance. I fell over backwards, hitting my head on the hardwood floor and waking my husband. The next thing I remembered was him standing over me, the overhead light on blinding me, and all I could see was his boxer shorts while he said he wanted to call an ambulance.

“I can’t lift you,” he sputtered. He has had a hip replacement and isn’t supposed to lift over 50 pounds.

“Just let me sit here a minute, will you?” I said. After a few minutes I was able to get myself up. My head seemed fine. To my knowledge I never lost consciousness, I was just rattled.

But that fall set off an unexpected chain of events, about which I will write in my next post.

Sunday Stealing

 

Shopping Day. What's on your shopping list from . . . 

1. Target or Walmart, or other superstore?

A. Bug killer. Something has bitten me on my finger, and I now have a red, swollen place on it. Whatever it was, I want it out of my house!

2. Dollar Tree or Dollar General, or poundstretcher/99p store?

A. Greeting cards and wrapping paper.

3. Best Buy or any other electronics/appliance store?

A. A Mac notebook.

4. Book/music store?

A. Let's go big. A nice gold trimmed black Les Paul Custom guitar for me from the music store, please. One like Melissa Etheridge plays.

Ain't that just the prettiest guitar?

Bonus question! Where do you want to stop for lunch? 

A. I love a good sweet and sour chicken dish. How about Chinese?

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week.

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I encourage you to visit other participants in Sunday Stealing posts and leave a comment. Cheers to all us thieves who love memes, however we come by them.

Saturday 9: The Men in My Little Girl's Life

Saturday 9: The Men in My Little Girl's Life (1965)

 

Unfamiliar with this week's tune? Hear it here.

1) In this song, a father shares the story of his daughter's life through first the boys, then the men, she brought home. The first is Rod, a little kid who wants to play in the backyard. Who were your playmates when you were young? Did you find it more fun to have them over to your home, or to go to theirs?

A. The kids I played with were my uncles, one of whom was four years older than I and the other was a year younger than I, a boy named Bruce who lived up the street when I was very young, and later a boy named Alan and a girl named Trudy. Mostly they came to my house, although I spent a good deal of time at Alan's house during that period. His older sister looked after us.

2) Then his daughter asked if Lee could carry her books on the walk to/from school. During your junior high years, how did you travel to school (bus, bicycle, car pool, shoe leather)?

A. I rode a bus to school until I turned 16 and could drive. My bus ride was about an hour long, both ways.

 

3) Throughout this song, the father recalls that his daughter alternately called him "Daddy," "Dad," "Popsie," "Pop" and "Father." How did/do you address your father?

A. I called him Dad.

 

4) The song ends with the daughter asking her father to babysit. When did you last look after someone else's child?

A. I haven't looked after someone else's child for decades.

 

5) This record was a Top 10 hit in the US and it made the Top 20 in Canada. Much of its success was attributed to Mike Douglas' TV popularity. From 1965 to 1981, he hosted a daytime talk show. Do you watch much daytime TV?

A. I do not watch much daytime TV. I remember the Mike Douglas show, though. When I was sick, I watched TV at my grandmother's house. 

6) Mike Douglas was a father himself. He had three daughters, including twins. Are there twins in your family? 

A. There are no twins in my family.

 

Now about Father's Day ... 

 

7) Retail chains like O'Reilly Auto Parts, Auto Zone and Jiffy Lube are all promoting gift cards and car-related gifts for Father's Day. If you got a gift card from one of those stores, how would you upgrade your ride?

A. I would probably get some new floor mats and one of those sun stopper things you put in the windshield to keep the car from getting too hot in the summer.

 

8) Dick's Sporting Goods also enjoys a spike in gift card sales around Father's Day. Have you more recently given or received a gift card?

A. I recently received one. 

9) In days gone by, ties were the #1 Father's Day gift. But as today's workplace has become more casual, fragrance has taken over the top spot. Dove Men+Care offers gift sets with shampoo/conditioner, body wash and antiperspirant. Think about your shower routine. Are your shampoo, body wash and antiperspirant all the same brand or the same scent?

A. All of my items are unscented, but different brands. I use unscented Dove sensitive skin soap and Vanicreme shampoo and conditioner. My deodorant is unscented Sure.

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I encourage you to visit the posts of other participants in Saturday 9 and leave a comment. Because there are no rules, it is your choice. Saturday 9 players hate rules. We love memes, however. 

Flowing Water

 Just because I seldom get anywhere to take pictures of a creek—

Thursday Thirteen

Wednesday, 06-17-2026, the county held a forum for the data center that is being built in the industrial center. Since the proposed data center project directly affects our area and may ultimately affect our farm, I wanted to see the information for myself.

The forum was a total zoo. There were many people running around with "No Data Center" signs. Folks stood at tables and argued with the experts. 

The experts looked, well, a bit overwhelmed.

There were smells all over the place, perfumes and cologne. All the things to which I am allergic.

The best part for me was this: I saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in a while, including some journalists and the Democrat candidate for the Virginia 6th District House of Representatives seat. I went to college with her.

This thing was held in the lower gymnasium of the high school. The elevators weren't working as promised, and I had to walk down two flights of steps. My friend had to go get her car and come around and pick me up when we left because there was no way I could climb two flights of stairs. I could barely get down them. A lot of older people were clinging to the handrails. So that was a SNAFU that could have been better handled for sure. 

There was some guy in orange there with a big mustache. I think he was supposed to be the Lorax. There was a huge crowd of people around the county administrator. Every time I glanced over at him, I noticed his face kept getting redder and redder. I never got close enough to speak to him although I did talk to two county supervisors.

So here are some photos of this event:

The large crowd at the entrance before they opened the doors should have warned me.

They wanted everyone to sign in. Some people did not like that.

The project.

The Lorax (?)

More about the project.

A rendition of one of the data centers.

I am not sure about the timeline. As far as I know, the US Army Corps of Engineers
hasn't issued a permit.

More stuff about the project.

The "no data center" signs popped up occasionally.

More about the project. Corporate stuff.

More corporate stuff.

More corporate stuff.

Beth Macy, who is running for election in the Virginia 6th District,
House of Representatives

The county communications director

Two friends of mine who I didn't think would care if I put up their picture.

An overview of the crowd

People protesting outside. Bye Bye.

In the end, I came away with more questions than answers. The county and Google certainly succeeded in drawing a crowd, but whether anyone changed their mind about the project is another matter. At least I got to see some old friends and collect a few photographs.

_________________

Thursday Thirteen is played by lots of people; there is a list here if you want to read other Thursday Thirteens and/or play along. I've been playing for a while, and this is my 964th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday. Or so sayth the Blogger counter, anyway.

Wild Daisies

These are called oxeye daisies. They are a field daisy that grows in our area from April through July.

Photos taken with iPhone SE.