Eyes On

Last week something bit my hand. I wasn’t aware that I had been bitten until later when over half of my hand began to swell up and itch. It was so itchy that I started to wonder if I had touched poison ivy when I was out weeding my flower garden. However, we saw a bite site so…? I tried putting insect anti-itch ointment on my hand, but that didn’t even slow down the itch. So then EJ thought of plantain. Not the banana, but the weed which grows everywhere in Michigan. Most of us don’t even pay attention to it. EJ went out to the yard, picked some plantain leaves, brought them in, used our little pestle and mortar to crush it, and put it on my hand, keeping it in place with a sock. Amazingly, it worked! Far better than the ointments! My hand is now mostly healed and not swollen or itchy.

The days and nights are warmer now so on Friday the little chicks “graduated” from their cage in the house to the chicken coop. I put them in a shelter in the coop to keep them separated from the adults until they grow bigger. It gives chicks and adults time to get familiar with each other before they are put all together.

I think Hannah Joy is glad to have the chicks out of the house. Every time they chirped loudly or ran around she whined and ran in to check on them. She also made sure the cats didn’t get too close to the cage. Hannah is such a nanny dog.

After I got the chicks resettled, we drove to our library to pick up a book I had ordered through the Michigan inter-library loan system, which is called MelCat. Through MelCat, we can find and borrow books online from other Michigan libraries. Once I order a book, a library that has it sends it to our library for me to pick up. We had a wonderful long chat with the librarians.

After the stop at the library, EJ and I went grocery shopping. Ground beef has become very expensive and we were very reluctant to buy it even though we were out of it. Then we saw that the brisket was $1 less than the ground beef. We have a meat grinder…why can’t we buy brisket and grind it into ground beef? I mean, beef is beef, isn’t it? It’s nice to have brisket, but it’s not as versatile as ground beef. We bought two large slaps of brisket and EJ spent hours grinding it into ground meat. This requires putting the meat through the grinder twice–once at a course setting and once at a smaller setting. We lost count but we believe we ended up with at least 50 lbs of ground meat. Some of it we divided into 1/2 lbs portions and froze. Some of it EJ turned into potato bratwurtz; he found a recipe on the internet. The bratwurtz is still in a big bowl in the fridge that we haven’t yet bagged. We will do it tomorrow. I use 1/2 to 1 pound of ground beef for meals, depending on the recipe. That’s a lot of meals. EJ has been wanting to grind our own beef because he recently read an article recommending buying beef and grinding it ourselves because it has less crap in it than the ground beef from the store.

EJ also spent a lot of time working in his vegetable garden this weekend. I puttered around doing this and that. I was going to make and freeze turkey potpies today, but decided instead to keep out of EJ’s way as he worked in the kitchen. I’m home every day so it’s easy for me to make the pies another time.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you will know that my son works on a Great Lakes bulk carrier. There are a number of ship-watching cameras set up in various places around the Great Lakes. Each camera live-streams on a separate YouTube Channel so we can watch ships passing a camera in real-time. We always try to watch our son’s ship pass when we can. If I tell a Channel Admin via Chat that my son’s ship is passing their camera, they usually zoom the camera right in and search for him. Sometimes we are actually able to watch JJ as he works. He also often calls or messages us from the ship. It’s amazing that technology lets us do this.

This morning EJ and I watched JJ’s ship go through the Soo Locks, which is located between Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and Canada. We watched JJ go over the side of the ship in the bosun’s chair, which is a little seat, so he could go ashore and moor the ship. We weren’t sure it was actually him until he verified it later, when I asked him. When I told the Admin at the Soo camera that JJ was onboard, she moved the camera to look for him. JJ and I messaged back and forth on our phones. When I asked him if he was on duty, he said that he was on the other side of the ship so we probably couldn’t see him. However, he walked past the ship so we could see him on the camera. At first he walked too far to the right so he went out of range of the camera so I messaged him, “No, go back the other way! Near the pole!” When he was in view, I messaged him to wave and he did! I’m quite sure that when he looked down in the video, he was reading my messages to him. Here is a portion of the livestream that I recorded from my computer with my phone.

Here is part of the conversation I had at the Youtube channel. I thought you might enjoy it. I added a couple comments in brackets for this blog.

Admin: TJ If your son is on deck while the ship is passing one of our cams, and you let us know this, we might be able to get him on screen.

TJ: Thanks. I will. I didn’t see him on deck so he might be off duty. But I’ll keep looking!

TJ: I sent him a message asking him if he’s on duty. I told him we are watching. Of course, if he’s working, he won’t be able to reply. LOL.

Admin: Let him know if he’s going to be on deck ahead of time we would be very happy to get him on the cam. We all enjoy watching and getting a wave from the crew, TJ.

TJ: I just got a reply from him. He said he is working on deck. I told him to wave if he gets a chance. He said he’s on the starboard side. [I was wrong. He wasn’t on deck but on the shore.]

Admin Okay, let me move the cam and see if we can see him.

TJ: JJ just said he’s on the shore by the back of the ship so he doesn’t know if we can see him. He likes when I stalk him via livestream. LOL.

Admin: We can go and see

TJ: Thanks for indulging us!

TJ: He was one of the guys that went over the side in the bosun chair earlier. [Here is a 5 minute clip from the live stream of JJ going over the side of the ship on the bosun chair]

Admin: Well shoot, can’t see him.

TJ: He said to hold on, he’s going to walk to the back of the ship. LOL.

TJ: There he is!

Admin: That’s great, you get to see him!

Admin: Tell him to stop and wave right now.

Admin: Let him know that I’m waving at him.

TJ: I just did

TJ: I told him you were waving.

Admin: Tell him thanks for the short way.

TJ: I told him to dance but I don’t think he will. LOL. [He messaged me that he was NOT going to dance.]

TJ: Thanks you for letting us see our son. It’s always such a pleasure. And he enjoys the Admins looking for him.

Admin: You’re very welcome, my pleasure. We enjoyed it!

Except for the bite, we had an enjoyable weekend. We got a lot done and had fun stalking JJ.