Year: 2016

“Does it even matter who hacked this data?” Putin said. “The important thing is the content that was given to the public.”

and he said…

“There’s no need to distract the public’s attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it, but I want to tell you again, I don’t know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has never done this.”

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Russia and China, plus many others are just giving the rope enough length and America is hanging herself! Gobbling the bate like a Bluegill…

Then they tell it like it is…

We all know what he says is truth, we just do not want to admit, hear and or accept it. Lets clean up our mess in America and get our act together!

WtR

I sit here in the Tiny Russian Village and plan my day.

It is about 10 degrees and humid. Autumn is here and the trees are turning. I will show pictures later in the week, for the trees are just starting to turn and they are beautiful…

I have the well running and filling the smaller wells, after that, I will get ready to go to the Big Village. We received a donation that was specified for the shower tank and it will cover, just barely, a nice size tank with heater in it and shower exit pipe with shower head. I just have to decide between a metal tank or a plastic tank? Quandaries abound… (Thanks for the donation! Quality of life has improved!)

Therefore, in half an hour I will walk back to the big well and shut it down. Then I will get ready and off to Big Village I will go. I do not want to go, but I need a few food items, dog food, bird food, shower tank and some other items. This is all because people like you send a donation. Boza definitely thanks you, as he is eating some really delicious Pedigree Chicken right now. Or at least he seems to like it, but I am not sure that I would like it. It smells okay!

Pedigree is a big pet food supplier in Russia, it is rivaled by Chappy a Russian brand. But I think that Boza likes Pedigree better. He is laying at my feet and sighing deep content, if that means anything…

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People at what I call the Red Roof House, across the road from us, decided to show up. They stay one night and party, party and did I say party? Therefore, Boza barked, they partied and I grumbled. They will get theirs back when I start the car and get ready to leave. I hope their hangovers are special this morning! 😉

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Have you noticed?

Hillary Clinton has enough issues against her that if she was you or me! We would be in jail!

Trump is zigzagging all over the place in future and past issues!

The main stream media really likes to report on non events and then to ice that cake, they report until the non event is history and never seem to really care about important issues! Kinda like things like; The Truth and nothing but the Truth!

That we are in a new Cold War, except it has a different flare to it. Everyone is flat broke, this time in the West…

China is rising and do not tell me a thing that is said by the western press. China is rising and the bodyguard is Russia. Little by little countries are dropping the dollar, but soon an avalanche will start. It only takes one rock or tiny snowball to make a big mess…

The image below is interesting…

These are the most violent cities in the world. Looks like except for South Africa, someone is safer on the right side of the map, than on the left side of the map! Even the USA has two of the most violent cites in the world…

I have said many times, “I feel much safer in Russia than at anytime in America!”

I still say it and mean it. In Moscow, one of the largest cities in the world, Svetochka is safe, safe to walk and ride her bike into the night. That means a bunch to me! Moscow has issues, but the people live a pretty safe life and it is around the 15th largest city in the world…

Gotta go and turn off the well! Have a nice day…

WtR

I have dried 600 apples. I am at 300 tomatoes dried and counting. I will do another batch of tomatoes today and the vines are full of green delicious tomatoes. The apple trees are almost bare and I will eat my one apple a day, until they all are gone. The beets are huge and delicious, the turnips and rutabagas are a miss hit proposition. The carrots are perfect and the potatoes are waiting to be dug up…

Successes in the veggy garden, outweigh the failures this year by far. We had lots of sweet peas and the spinach was to die for. The pear trees have grown a bunch and they are a long term proposition and the establishment of a strawberry bed, was the crowning joy of the whole veggy/fruit garden situation. Next year there will be some serious strawberries and we will increase the strawberry patch at least two times the original size. Never dreamed how well they would do…

Svetochka has a big bag of dried spearmint mint from the garden and she is enjoying tea in Moscow with that mint! (Are you Svetochka?)

In the flower area; the irises have established themselves, the T-Rose is blooming again and has doubled in size. Therefore, if all goes as planned, a rose bed will be in the future. I just love T-Roses. The tiny pine tree has doubled in size as it established its root system and still loves his protection bucket. Thus I have to keep it there to make it happy… 😉

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Today I rest! The auto market comes today and that is going to be the big thrill of the day. Today I will gather my energy to get things back in line physically. Last night was rough and today is recovery. But! I feel good and that is what counts…

WtR

I woke with sugar levels at 5.3 mmol/l, No sugar pills for two days. Last night was the withdraw night! I checked my vitals constantly and found everything was good. But I fought the worst demon that I ever fought! Don’t ever let anyone tell you that medicine, any medicine is not addictive. Maybe withdraw from most will not kill you…

I have found the least suspected pills are the hardest to drop…

I have quit smoking, quit anti-depressants, stopped drinking and many other happenings do do with life have been stopped. But last night was the peak of the crap in my life…

When you reach a point and I have reached that point weeks ago, you have to gather your courage and just do it! Last night, even though I was confused about what was happening and tried to blame everything but the truth, I finally washed out of my system all the remains of sugar pills. It had to happen and my body was jumped started to deal with sugar problems on its own and the pills had become a demon around my neck…

Yesterdays article was a forerunner to this day. That is the way I am; I talk about many things days behind what is happening and that is to sort things in my mind. I plan on living a long time and demons such as pills and others, have no place in my life…

I even for one of the first times had to call Svetochka in the middle of the night. She thought I was working too hard and yes, she was correct, it was work that kept me driving forward to the end goal. I had withdrawal all day yesterday and last night it reached its apogee. Dreams of death (mine and others,) feet went totally numb, hands numb, confused (more than normal,) cold sweats, restlessness and the worst; anxiety at a level to rival wanting to end it all. Svetochka does not understand, she takes nothing, for she is lucky, but she helped me in the best way and once she re-grounded me by talking to me in the night. I knew it would be alright. I owe a world to Svetochka and she has helped me get my life back…

This morning, in fact right now, I am taking my morning pills. At one time I took 24 pills just in the morning. Today I take two! Yes, two! Two pills that I may never be able to stop taking? One is a cardiac aspirin and the other is a long acting nitro! These pills are what keeps my heart going and my blood pumping…

I can live with that…

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Walked with Boza this morning and it was more than beautiful. Life was perfect, the fog was inviting and the air so clean and crisp that you could just not get enough deep breaths of it. Mamma Eagle was fishing and screaming her yells of terror and when she had a huge Carp, she flew home to have breakfast…

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Everything I do is for a purpose!

I am a deep thinker and I have to work at things at my pace. Your pace is no good for me. I have to do it my way, or else fail. Thus, this blog has been a growing experience for many years. I have gone through many changes during this blog and I now call the blog phase; My Diary Phase! (With some occasional thoughts about stupidity in the world!)

Life is winning the battle against demons…

We all have them…

WtR

The Birdbrain Hotel is doing a fine business!

Every morning I have apple and cherry trees full of birdbrains waiting not so patiently for their buffet! They talk to me when I go out and sit and watch them. They seem to be say, “Hey lazy ass! Get the buffet set up, we are hungry!”

Then when I feed them, they act like a bunch of Russians in Turkey on a vacation! Russians are animals when it comes to a buffet…

I also tossed and image in of the shower house. Might be ugly, but it is sturdy and will make Svetochka a nice place to take a shower next summer. Not now, it is cold and did I say cold? Also about five logs on this pile left to split. The rest you see have a home as bench stumps in various places in the yard. Two go into the shower house with a wide bench seat. This will make a good spot to change clothes and keep stuff on while showering…

Svetochka made me laugh, but please do not tell her that! She wondered if the water would splash and get everything wet in the shower house. I understand where she comes from, for in Moscow, the water pressure is unbelievable and almost like a pressure sprayer. But, in the village it will be gravity fed and will be a gentle water flow. It still made me smile and I laughed later. City girl! That is why I am making more conveniences, just for my SweetPea!

Our T-Rose is still going and going! No, that is not a spider web, that is a floating seed from some plant. Too lazy to remove it!

And yes that last picture is me working, working and working! It is called exercise…

WtR

I guess I am using myself as a case study…

I am trying to stop what so many with diabetes have happen to them. The fact is; people seem to think they will live forever and nothing becomes of their inaction’s, ignorance and or looking the other way! Diabetes is an aspiring wicked disease and it while does not kill quickly, it is a slow, plodding and meticulous murderer of your body. From eyesight to amputated limbs…

I take one pill a day for sugar levels and that is about becoming to many. This is from a high level of pills of three types of medication in the morning and the same three again at night. There was a time that these pills had no effect literally on my sugar levels. My body ignored the medicine and I stayed with high (long term per blood test) sugar levels about 10 mmol/l or for international numbered non compliant people in the world, 180 mg/dl…

I do not want to lose a foot, or have kidney failure and or lose my eyesight and or a whole bunch of other issues that result from high blood sugar levels…

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/diabetic-dad-who-ignored-doctors-8735880

While this man has Type 1 diabetes and I have Type 2; the results on the body are the same and the end result is exactly the same. I have reached a point in my life many years ago, that I had to use insulin injections. All because of ignorance on my part. Now I am at the tipping point that I may be able to stop medications all together for diabetes. That does not mean I can stop doing what I am doing to keep it under control, it means that I will still monitor my diabetes and do what is necessary to keep it under control, preferably with exercise and diet…

Pretty simple; I will live longer, more productive and a happier life. If I keep my sugar levels correct…

I woke this morning at 5.5 mmol/l. Three mornings in a row at that level. I stopped almost a week ago taking the night pills and I check my blood sugar levels ten times a day. I am hoping to get the checking by blood from my finger, down to four or five times a day. What a relief that will be. I actually have ares on my fingers that the lancet does not penetrate at full level. I have calloused up that bad on my fingers, as I have said before; it is expensive to test the blood. The cost of test strips here in Russia and most of the world is prohibitively expensive! The metformin medicine is cheap, very cheap and that is good for the masses. But it is definable a two way street. You must test to understand what the medicine is doing to your body. Is it working or not?

What have I done to bring the sugar levels down?

First off; remove all foods that destroy your sugar levels. Everyone is different and testing is the only way to see if, for example, potatoes spike your blood sugar and keep it up for many hours and or bread does the same and or eating eggs does not do a damn thing to bring blood sugar levels up…

You may have exactly the opposite results and you must test. I know that I can not eat bread, potatoes, pasta and rice. 🙁 Why? Because they are extremely long term detrimental to me and it only takes a small portion to do the damage. I can eat cheese, meats, most vegetables, non yeast breads and candy is used to bring up a serious drop in sugar levels. Candy will spike it and then as fast as it spiked, it will drop. Thus, while it helps, regulation is the only proper way to do it. So instead of four eggs, how about two eggs? Instead of five pancakes, how about two pancakes? “Et cetera…”

Oh! A small piece of candy (for that sugar craving tooth we all seem to have,) is a far cry better than an ice cream cone or that huge piece of cheese cake staring at you in the restaurant pie case. Oh my it looks so good! But eat a small Carmel and wait 10 minutes and it become much easier to walk away from that diabetes inducing dessert…

Yes I keep on about diabetes…

I look around me and see a world of people slowly committing suicide. I was one of them! It is a disease that works under the surface for many years and when it shows its head, as in feet issues and other problems, such as numbness of legs and such; It has already does its work and destroyed much more of your body than you realize. The issue is that we do no0t heal from this kind of destruction. We can stop the destruction of diabetes, but never really heal the body from such damage…

I have nerve damage to my legs and will never get that feeling back in them. My shins are numb! You can poke me with needles in them and I will feel nothing. I sometimes find blood soaking my pants at my shins and when I investigate; I have injured myself and never knew it… 🙁

That my friend is a wake up call…

WtR

Power down, power up! Internet down, Internet up! Rinse repeat and start over again…

Therefore, I will post this tiny post and hope all gets to go back to normal later…

Three times since trying to write this small post!

Power down, power up! Internet down, Internet up! Rinse repeat and start over again…

Have a nice day!

WtR

I was in a quandary! I had no idea how I was going to get the wood, much less the money for the wood, to build a shower house and a propane housing outside. Thus, I have been patient and whiling away coins for such a purpose. Then along came a few donations and solved the issue. The donations were for nothing in particular, as they had no directions on how they were to be used. Problem is solved and I have the Orthodox Church to help also. They have a huge pile of wood that is perfect for my use and they are going to let me take the wood. All I will do is donate some money to the church donation line for Father Pavel in charge of the monastery and life will be good…

In Russia small donations go a long ways to having fun. In this case, fun is building things…

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Therefore, I want to thank the people who have sent donations the last few weeks. Several are specific for food for the winter and the last two are for general purpose. Those general purpose will buy wood. We get many dollar donations and some bigger. I want you to realize that the dollars add up to big money…

My grandma always said something like this, “Pick up that coin on the ground! Never pass it by, for a fool most likely threw it down and one day he will need it! We can use it now! They add up Ky Ky!”

I try as often as I can to pick up every coin I can. Sometimes even in the Tiny Russian Village, I come home with several rubles in coins. The people that drive up to see the monastery will drop coins on the road as they walk, stop and or pull things out of their pockets. They never pick up what they drop, too lazy or too rich I guess. I even see people drop coins and tell them about it. They shrug their shoulders and walk on. Who am I to complain? I just pick them up…

Thus, it all adds up and I appreciate every dollar (or ruble coin in my case,) that gets donated…

Thanks again!

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WtR

PS: By 9 a.m. I had all the wood moved to the village home and will actually start building the floor today. Took four trips with the car to get it all. Thanks everyone and thanks to the church for letting me get the wood cheap…

Two a.m. and I wake with the realization that my blood sugar was getting low. This is normal and for the first time in many many years, it was without taking any sugar pills (as I call them,) before bed. Boza and I were sound asleep by nine p.m. and five hours seems to be about the normal amount of sleep for me. That is accompanied by an hour nap in the daytime at some point….Boza just follows what Big Bear does as far as sleep is concerned, then sleeps as much as possible as I work…

I was taking my sugar readings and Boza and I heard a noise outside! We went out with a flashlight and found a kitty was messing around in Boza’s apple garden. Therefore, kitty found him or herself the object of fun for Boza. It was a new kitty and did not know that Boza ruled his yard and learned real quick this morning that Boza’s apple garden is his home. I will say, “Cats can jump and jump high, when need be!”

It looks as if I am ready to drop to a lower dosage of sugar pills. Today I will only take one small sugar pill in the morning and see how that does for few days. I would like to loose more weight now and sugar pills effect that. To much medicine and I have to eat too much to counter that medicine. I am not hungry and only eat sometimes to counter sugar low levels. I do the best when I eat about six times a day with very small portions. Constant fuel, but not overload. This allows my body to maintain itself better and really is key in weight and sugar issues. Large meals burden the body with an overload effect and from that, in my case, comes a messed up day…

Blood pressure was 109/65, blood sugar 5.1 mmol/l, oxygen levels at 98% and heart rate at 75 bpm at this moment. Heart rate was a little high for pre-walking and waking up and that is something I am trying to figure out. I am in fair shape for a grouchy Big Bear and sometimes my heart runs too fast and messes me up. I am trying to figure this out?

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So, Boza and I are going for a walk and I will finish this post when I get back…

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Hour later, still dark, but the moon is a sliver and the horizon is starting to show light. There are people up in the village, lights are on in several Tiny Russian Village homes. Soon they will be gone and it will just be Vova, Nina and I as the only humans in the village…

It has hit +5 this morning. It is almost winter, while there will be a few more warm days, I had to walk with winter pants and a sweatshirt on today. Old Man Winter has woken and is starting to beat his chest. I have said many times, “Spring, summer and fall are short and sweet, but winter is long and deadly in Russia!”

We adjust and adapt as the seasons change. There is about a month of spring, one to two months of summer and a month of autumn. The rest is Old man Winters territory…

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I think while I walk; I think about what I will do today. I have so much to do, but most is limited by money. I need to run to the Big Village and get a few supplies, I need to split another ten logs, I need to pull nails. clean the wall of the back of the village home wall and get ready to rebuild it and I need to enjoy life!

I also am thinking about when I have to leave Russia. It is mandatory that I leave for awhile every six months. I do not want to, but it is the rules and I must leave. To me, this is a pain in the butt and costs money, money that we need to go toward the Tiny Village Home. I also have to plan a trip to a big store in Moscow, like Metro Market and buy cases of canned food for the winter. Metro is exactly like Sam’s Wholesale in America. We need, off the top of my head, a case of sweet corn, a case of beef stew, a case of green peas, a case of some type of hot cereal to cook and several other items. We also need to go to a hardware store and get a few tools and such…

Of course wanting to is different than being able to! Money dictates such excursions and having to go out of Russia for several weeks twice a year, hurts that budget. I am just glad that we are able to get by, even with the expense of international travel…

I saw that Russians are able to travel to Turkey again. Not Svetochka and I; Turkey sucks….But nowhere is cheaper. A trip to Turkey from Moscow is almost ridiculously cheap. Turkey was broken by no Russian tourists and they have dropped the prices to try to gather back millions of lost Russians for vacations. Many billions of revenue was lost to a simple stupidity move to appease America. I hope Turkey has learned a lesson? I doubt it!

I use to be able to take a train into Ukraine, spend a few weeks very cheaply and come back. But after that last trip to Ukraine; Ukraine, or better yet, Kiev, has become a cesspool of crap. I mean it was terrible and very dangerous. Take this from someone who loves Ukraine, but Kiev is where I have to do business and such and Kiev is a very dangerous place right now. Fledgling military wannabes are running amok on the streets of Kiev and the woman are being immigrant harassed to the point of scary and the Kiev men either laugh or ignore what is happening…

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I murdered another cellphone! I am most likely the best murderer of cellphones on earth. I forgot the cellphone in my pants pocket and started to split wood. Normally I set the phone on the picnic table, but yesterday it was destined to be crushed. I grabbed a big log and as I let the log rest against my right leg (or maybe smash against my leg,) I realized that the crunching noise was my cellphone and not my legs bones breaking. It was a good phone, it had been bought in Kiev, but it was very cheap and weak in structure. I already had glued it back together once before. This time as in Humpty Dumpty! All the Kings horses and all the Kings men. Couldn’t put Humpty together again!

(Sveta can use the same phone for her whole life, if she breaks it, I fix it and she keeps using it and it keeps working! I understand that she is easier on things than me, for everything I do usually involves heavy lifting, smashing, banging and simply stupidity. I am a bear you know?)

I have an old Samsung pre android smartphone, as backup and I like it! It just is harder to mess with as I walk around the village and Svetochka calls me or something or other….Or something or another….Or another something and Oh Well!

RIP cellphone…

This is how our day starts in the Tiny Russian Village…

WtR

As last year, wood is very important. With -30 C and below temperatures, life would be rough without plenty of wood to burn…

Therefore, as autumn has approached and the heat has gone away, it is time to gather the wood piles and it takes three at the very least. I have two split and stacked and have started on the third today. The third will be a double length stack and it actually will be enough for most of the winter, but as I talked about last year, I rotate the wood and this year the two stacks nearest the door of the village home are the oldest and most usable. The big third stack will be then brought to the front door next year, unless I have to burn it this year. Probably not, for I have well seasoned, long burning oak this year…

I have been splitting huge stumps for days now and after splitting 10 stumps today, I had to stop! My neck is hurting, my right shoulder is sore and I have five blisters on my hands. My hands are kinda ugly right now. I put iodine on all the torn skin and band aids everywhere… 🙂 Oh! That iodine hurts when applied to open skin wounds… 🙁

I talked to Svetochka and told her that we need to get a splitting hatchet. I will work the budget and try to figure out how to get it. I need it to whittle down some of the bigger pieces, for some are too big, but too small to split with my huge maul!

The splitting hatchet can be used by the front door with a stump set there and then I can split some more as needed. Splitting the already split stumps is much easier in the cold and the smaller stump pieces will pop easily during a -20 C day. But I have to lay the foundation by splitting the huge stumps, bigger around than you can put your arms at times and create small wedges. I get about six to eight wedges of firewood out of a big stump and that can be easily taken to what ever size I desire…

Someone who has split wood before, knows that a hardwood is tough. Splitting pine or another soft wood is easy peasy in comparison and this oak is well seasoned and hard as iron. I have to laugh or else cry in pain, as the maul bounces sometimes, as if I smacked a brick wall with a baseball bat. Then I get tough and after about four or five wacks, it starts to crack and split. When I find these stumps like this, I soon realized what is causing it. There are knots, huge knots deep in the wood and a knot is hard a steel. These are caused by places where these hundred year old trees had limbs in the past and grew around and covered them over. They catch me off guard sometimes and then I wrench a hand, shoulder, elbow and or all of them as the maul bounces like a rubber ball…

I remember splitting walnut and oak as a twenty some year old. My how father time can steal some oomph out of your swings. But I just get grouchy and make a small war cry and swing harder. It has worked on all but one huge stump and he is going to split tomorrow, or else! Yes he will be beaten tomorrow, after I recover from having split ten of his almost as big friends today. Maybe I should just make a stump to split wood by the door out of him? Hmm…

Everyone in the Tiny Russian Village comes by and explains to me the best way to split wood. Everyone has their own way and one even said, “Hire someone to do it!” because that is what he would do…

“But I am not rich!” I say…

WtR