Barnyard Symphony

 So our outside temps was 22 (F) when I threw back the sheets this morning and jumped out of bed.  Only one of those statements is true.  For the next 3 days our high will only climb into the low 30s (F), after that we should be sailing into temps where the daily high will be in the mid 40s (F).  This is winter, after all, and what would winter be in the Middle Atlantic States if we didn't have some cold days.

Well, yesterday was day one of the new year and no, I did not sit through 3 hours of commercials in order to say that I watched the Tournament of Roses Parade.  You seem, I am old enough to remember when you didn't have to sit through 3 minutes of commercials between oohing and ahing at the next float.  I'm even old enough to remember seeing those beautifully decorated floats on a black and white TV screen, with Betty White and Lorne Greene reading the commentary.  Don't worry, I'm not going to wax nostalgic.  I'll be the first to admit that color is so much better, and a decent flat screen TV will knock the socks off even one of the best tube TVs that were around.

And yesterday was traditional in that I cooked pork and sauerkraut.  For those who don't know, that is very traditional in Pennsylvania German households.  Did you see what I did their?  Pennsylvania German rather than Pennsylvania Deutsch.  Evidently there is still a lot of confusion out there among people who think we're Pennsylvania Dutch.

I also got a lot of writing done on a chapter called Barnyard Symphony.  Symphonies use many instruments, and while walking to the Blue Barn on the Old Mill Estate, get to hear many voices, each with a distinctive timbre and pitch.  Of course when they get to the barn they might find someone dancing to this song from 1980.  This is part of the way I balance the two stories, one in the present and one set 40 years ago.  Oh, Leah rocks.

And, as we all should have expected, Orangie's going to bring the chaos from the old year into the new one.  He can't stop himself.  I honestly believe he doesn't know how to live without the chaos.  He needs to keep the constant blustering around him in order to keep people talking about him.  When he gets a question he doesn't like, he simply lies.  I don't doubt that he is always asking if people are talking about him.  He needs to be the subject of every conversation.

One thing that came out was a comment he made about taking aspirin.  There was a time when doctors recommended that you take a baby aspirin a day.  They believed this was good for their heart.  However, that has changed.  The only people who take an aspirin a day are those who have already suffered a heart attack or a stroke.  For seniors, like Orangie, an aspirin a day might actually cause internal bleeding.  Is he truly taking 4 times the recommended dosage?  Probably not.  I suspect that his meds are highly regulated since the instant a blood vessel pops in his brain the Republican Party is over.