JOHN DAY — No column this week.

MONUMENT — For our last meal of the year 2024, our cooks Carrie Jewell and Christy Howell made us pork roast with scalloped potatoes, dinner rolls, green beans, and chocolate cake for our dessert. We so appreciate our wonderful cooks!

Our greeters at the table were Sue Cavender and yours truly. We checked in all the guests, collected, and counted up the money. Jan Ensign filled out the paperwork. Ellie Lucas led us in the flag salute and made the announcements. Yours truly prayed the blessing over the meal.

We are having sewing on Wednesday, Jan. 8. We start at 9 a.m. and go till about 2:30 p.m. We always share a wonderful potluck lunch together at noon. I think I may take up kitting with a knitting machine at one of our sewing days. I always wanted to knit, but I need someone to teach me since I am a visual person. Looking at books and their directions just doesn’t cut it for me. LOL. Hope to see you there!

We have been having some snowy days and some rainy days all mixed in together. We still have patches of snow up at our house, but I know that the snow in Monument is pretty much melted. We have been getting some rain and the ground is really mucky. I went to Kimberly a few days ago and saw that the John Day River was pretty high. I hope it does not flood in the spring.

My life here at our little farm has been uneventful. Thank goodness there are no mama goats giving birth at this time. I hope the mamas will give birth around the end of April or sometime in May. It just depends on when they were in their cycle and got bred. I do have to move goats around again, and hopefully my billy goats did their job.

I have come to the conclusion that all animals have some sort of pecking order. The goats have to reestablish their pecking order whenever I move them around and then put them back together in their little groups. Some goats are real bullies.

Leah, a bottle-fed goat, is still a bully. She is the one that bit another goat because he got the bottle first rather than her! Yes, she bit him on his ear and actually drew blood, too. She has not outgrown her bullying behavior, either. She is one of the smarter goats as well. Sigh, what do you do with those troublemakers?

I’m really thankful for the past year. The Lord has always been good and faithful to me and my family. I love Psalms 34. Actually, there are lots of parts of the Bible that I love. I can’t really say that I have a favorite verse or book of the Bible. I like to memorize whole Psalms, and it helps me remember His promises to me as I say them when I am falling asleep. His Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path (Psalms 119:105).

Psalms 28:7 The LORD is my strength and my shield. My heart trusted in Him, and I am helped. Therefore my heart greatly rejoiceth, and with my song will I praise Him.

PRAIRIE CITY — And a Happy New Year to you. The New Year’s Eve fireworks show took place and I assume there were no problems. In Poland, it is a HUGE deal. Everyone has a supply of fireworks and, at the stroke of midnight, the whole town lights up. Quite a sight to behold. This is one phenomenon that photos do not do justice to. You have to see it in person.

Since my printer is still waiting its repair part, I had to use the laptop at the Hall to write this again. I decided to do my December BME invoice first, though. Took three tries before I got it printed. I don’t know what button I accidentally hit, but everything disappears! Hopefully that won’t happen with this missive. I asked for help and he said after looking at the situation, “Oh, this is like Windows 95.” I guess that’s not good … 

What is good is that the flooring for the freezer room and extra chair storage area is being installed today. That is the last item on the list that we got the State Capitol Grant for three years ago. Yippee. Now if we could get one for fixing the basement, the ol’ building will be in great shape for the next 100 years.

Meanwhile, on the home front, I got the lining in the long vest. Discovered what I need to do if I use that pattern again. And that’s a good thing, right? Had another project that I started a few years ago that I could never get to come out right, so I took its pieces and made a lap robe to use at church. It stays on my chair in the sanctuary so I don’t have to remember to bring it with me. Other ladies are vigorously fanning themselves and I have my “blankie” on my lap … to each his own.

Had to take a few minutes and give my “sitter” a rest. The office chair is not high enough for this short-waisted person, so I have three old dining chair cushions on it to get me up high enough to get my bifocaled eyes and arms up in usable position.

The cushions are not cushiony anymore, though. I usually don’t spend more than 30 minutes using this computer to do senior center bookwork. But, with this morning’s hangups, I’ve been sitting here longer than that! To add insult to injury, as it were, I made a visit to the clinic and was informed that my soreness was due to old age. As Jack Benny would have said: “Well!”

And what happened to all the free calendars? I guess the companies think that everyone has all their stuff on their phones, so no one needs a calendar on the wall or the refrigerator. As I told someone, we old-timers are just waiting for the day when the power grid goes out and no one can do anything without their phones. We know how to do math without the aid of a calculator, we can write without a computer, and we can talk person-to-person live, within an arm’s breadth, without Facebook!

Psalms 122:6-7 “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: May they prosper who love you. May peace be within your walls, and prosperity within your palaces.”