Thursday Thirteen

1. Friend: Have you ever had borsht?
   Me: Isn't that the group on Star Trek that forces you to assimilate? (Borsht, apparently, is some kind of Polish or Russian soup. I'd never heard of it. Borgs, on the other hand, turn you into something you weren't before. Resistance is futile.)

2. My new acupuncturist told me yesterday that I am a black hole. I take everything in and hold it, never letting it back out, she said. Black holes in space pull things in but never let them out; it's a gravitational thing. Black holes are so full of stuff that they become invisible. Black holes cannot be observed; they are known because the things that should be where they are, aren't. Or something like that.

3.  She also tells me I think too much. I never know how to respond to that - she's not the first person to say it. How can you think too much? Apparently a lot of people do. Here's a WikiHow that tells you how to stop thinking. Now I have to think about thinking too much.

4. Owning rental property is like that movie The Money Pit. The place is a black hole of its own, constantly creating a sucking sound in my checkbook.

5. My last tenant destroyed a door, left three huge holes in the wall, removed several other doors, shower heads, and the inside of toilet parts, and then made obscure threats to me when I wouldn't refund his deposit (I visited the sheriff about that, in case Mr. Jerk happens to read my blog.) He called his destruction "normal wear and tear." What is wrong with people? I've lived in my house for 28 years and not once put a hole in the wall.

6. Yesterday I saw two coyotes trotting along around 2:15 p.m., too quickly for me to get a photo of them. They went into the woods in front of the house. My husband was cutting hay in the next field, and he saw one of the coyotes stroll in front of him. He said it was a female, heavy with milk. So we probably have baby coyotes around here close by. Cue howling.

7. Officials say that vultures will not harm livestock. Tell that to this mother cow with her newborn:

My cousin came and stood guard over the baby until the vultures grew tired and went elsewhere for their fun. They've been known to kill calves and/or peck their eyes out.

8. I keep a calendar of exercises and pain for my physical therapist. Somehow I got off a week, and didn't realize it until Tuesday. For a moment I panicked, not knowing if it was May 12 or May 19. It was a quick glimpse into how I think a person with dementia must feel. I imagine it is a scary place.

9. I had to learn how to play Soft Kitty on the guitar because no one would sing it to me. Now I want to turn it into a full-fledged guitar song, but will need to sit down and write it out in tab form. I can hear it in my head but can't make my fingers find the sounds.

10. I spied this goose in the marsh. She's nesting. I hope the coyotes don't get her!

11. My beloved came home yesterday with a severe case of gout. I couldn't make him 'fess up as to what he had been eating. Gout is caused by too much uric acid, which gathers in the joint of the big toe. It's a type of arthritis. I know his triggers are red meat, seafood, asparagus, spinach, and mushrooms, among other things. We don't eat those much in my house (kind of ironic since we raise beef cattle, isn't it?). But I have no control over what he eats at the fire station.

12. Bing, the search engine, offers rewards for using it. I've received $10 in Amazon gift cards since I signed up. I use the gift cards for video game play on my Kindle Fire. Other types of rewards are available, like gift cards to Macy's and restaurants. You can even make donations to a couple of worthy causes. I switched to Bing because Google seems to return nothing but paid information anymore. (Nobody paid me to mention Bing, but I thought people might like the idea of free stuff.)

13. I like bacon. That's just a random fact because I couldn't think of anything else to say.



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 396th time to do a list of 13 on a Thursday.