Reznjun

I was able to baby sit 4 of my grandkids and still watch the chiefs game yesterday. mary had to take wabeno to the airport.  that left me and the kids. the girls are spending a few days with us cuz their parents are out of town.

we had a good time. there were 12 of me and my siblings. we all had kids, grand kids and now great grand kids. i have been around kids my whole life. watching 4 was easy. these kids listen to misho. sure I spoil them but I can also tell them no. they know what they can get away with and what they cant.

i have been a Kansas City Chiefs fan for decades. there was a time when I became a fair weather fan. it was after our team would win at least 10 games every year then make an early out in the playoffs. they were a player or two short of being champs. that got disappointing.

that changed last year. I was back to being a hard core fan. I watched every game. it probably had something to do with our quarterback. it took the chiefs 50 years to get back to the superbowl. it only took 3 years, actually 2, for this quarterback to get there. he will win it all for us this year.

i went to two games at arrowhead this year.  one game was real cold. we stayed as long as we could. I bought a mahomes jersey to wear to the games. I put it on yesterday to cheer my team on. the kids were trying to play keep the balloon in the air with me but I was watching the game. they teach me patience.

I ordered a beaded K C Chiefs medallion. it will be done this Friday. i will wear it and my jersey during the super bowl. it will go along with my beaded K U medallions.

i hope the chiefs aren’t like the royals. the royals won the world series a few years ago. then they lost many of their good players because they couldn’t afford to keep them. the great pitching staff we had left.

i used to hope the royals would win the world series, the chiefs would win the super bowl and the jayhawks would win the ncaa championship. all in the same year. that aint happened yet. but one can always dream.

Andrew and kinikwe helped me set the live traps this weekend. they also helped me check the traps yesterday and today. we didn’t catch a rabbit. I will keep setting the traps until I do. I am craving the taste of rabbit. after they hang a coupla days in the cold they cure out. that takes the gamey taste away and makes it taste good.

I finished stacking the wood in the basement. I fill up a wagon full and dropped the wood into the basement window. I have a board ramp that makes it land in a big pile. then I have to stack it. I split some into kindling. that makes it easier on mary when she checks the fire. it takes all of us to keep the fire going.

I have to take the boys back to their mother this evening. they didn’t have school today so they were with us all weekend. they have school tomorrow. I will miss the little guys until they come back.

what will this week bring?

i took another picture of the buffalo. the small one in the foreground must be blind in one eye. he was running in circles. every now and then he or she would charge the fence and fall back after hitting the barbed wire. reminds me of some people I know. poor animal. he dont run with the herd.

we got some more ice the other day. it hasnt melted yet  it covered the rest of my wood pile outside. I have enough piled up down stairs to last me a few weeks. its not a thick covering like the last ice we got.

i warmed up the car to get the ice off my windshield easier. i didnt want to be out side too long in that cold.  we had to go pick up the grandsons yesterday for their weekend visit. the roads are okay right now. I hope they stay that way. I imagine my southern kin  made it home to Oklahoma.

we had a small draft coming thru the kitchen door. I bought a weather strip seal last fall. it took some cold weather to motivate me to put it on the door. my mother used to say it aint good to say pa ma.  it didn’t take 10 minutes. now the door isn’t letting cold air in.

i have to feed my dog and chickens every day. i  make several trips a day to bring in the eggs. in this weather if i leave them out side very long they tend to freeze. I had a few that cracked after freezing. I don’t know if its safe to eat them so we don’t. I wont take any chances. we get plenty of eggs the way it is.

i have been staying home. today i will watch the KU game. they better win. we have some injuries. cant use that as an excuse. everyone has been talking about how deep we were. so we should still play good.

i bought some new stove pipes. it takes some doing to get them to snap together. after doing  it enough times i got that down. i am  letting the coals in the stove die out. then i will put the new stove pipes on. i clean the pipes a time or two then change them completely. the stove burns better with clean pipes. it is also safer.

i clipped some more flat cedar off my trees. i burn it on the wood stove when i have a fire going. it smells good. i am about out so i clipped some more. a friend of mine from the north country gave me two flat cedar trees some years back. i transplanted them and now they are about 8 feet high. i get cedar from them any time i need it.

my grand son wants to set our live traps. so I guess I have to do that today. I want some rabbit. it don’t take much to set traps. I am not up for walking in the cold. i will some time this winter just now right now.

will see what happens this next week.

winter weather will settle in this coming week or two. the temps wont be above 40 degrees. they will be in the 20s and 30s in the day and in the teens at night. that’s not real cold but it wont be jacket weather either. better keep the wood stove fired up.

i had to buy a load of wood. i cant really afford to but i had to. the wood the tribe brought was all green wood.  i needed dry wood to get it going. the house wasn’t warm even with the wood stove going.  this old guy don’t like being cold. now with dry wood to ignite the green wood the fire is burning better.

some fort injuns brag they only burn oak. of course they use tribal equipment and cut on tribal land. and get paid by the tribe. that is also how the fort system works sometimes. our ancestors weren’t like that. they tried to treat everyone the same. we live in different times.

KU played last night. I didn’t get to watch it but I recorded it. I will watch it later. i know they won without our point guard Dotson. I want to see how the team is playing. they get better as the season goes along.

my southern kin are on the rez. I went to see them. I don’t get to see them as often as i would like to. we have stayed in touch our whole lives. I have gone down there a few times but wasn’t hitting the road in my old rav4.

i caught up with what is going on in our lives with my southern kin. we were kids together. now we have become the older ones in our families. we go back several decades. not that we are old. its just that we lost our old people. we are the old ones now.

next week an author will speak at the council bluffs public  library. she will talk about billy caldwell and the potawatomis who lived in that area for ten years. they later moved here. i wish i could hear that talk. i would hate to make the required reservation (what is it with Indians and reservations?) and have a Nebraska winter storm  hit. then i would have roughly a late 3 hour drive home.

potawatomi history has been a favorite subject of mine for the past 50 years. its funny sometimes to hear some of our tribe talk about our history but are way off. our history more complex than reading one book. the books don’t include our oral history. even after a lifetime of study there is much i dont know about our history. that’s why i keep  studying it.

i will be busy for the next few days. for a retired person i am usually busy. that keeps me going.

we still have ice everywhere. seen lotsa trees branches got broken off. the roads are clear though.  the local schools closed down anyway. so did the tribal office and clinic.  we didn’t get very much snow. i’d rather deal with snow than ice.

i had emptied my rain barrels earlier this winter. that last rain before the freeze filled the barrels up. I didn’t empty them again. now the barrels are a big chunk of ice. it will be awhile before they thaw out. good thing they didn’t burst at the seams. I use my rain barrels for watering plants and my animals. I don’t want to buy some more.

with my sense of humor sometimes I appreciate a little irony. every thing  is covered in ice. I got my second seed catalog in the mail. that was amusing. I am glad I got the catalog though. I may order some seeds out of both of them. I save many of my seeds. i only order seeds that I don’t have.

i get a yearly total of what and how much I buy from the feed store. I got this past years total. I am spending about the same for my dogs and chickens. well it did go up slightly. I have twice as many chickens this year. my dog food went down because one of my dogs died. I get fresh eggs from my chickens and companionship from my dogs.

i was outside last night after dark. I noticed some forms in the hayfield. I walked closer. the ice crunched under my feet. the forms moved. I could see that it was 4 deer. they must have been two year olds. they were that size. I went back inside to get my phone. I got as close as I could for a picture. they took off but I got a few shots. if I had grabbed a gun I could have bagged a deer. but that was too easy.

i listen to news a lot. I like to keep up with what is going on in the world. yes there is a world beyond the rez boundaries. sometimes I get tired of hearing the same old stuff. I switch the channel to king of queens. it seems like doug, deacon, richie, carrie, arthur and spence have a better grasp of life than our leaders. they seem more intelligent too.

KU mens’ basketball team can lose and the sun will still come up. I was disappointed we lost this past weekend but I am still a big fan. our time is coming yet. at least I got to watch the game.

i couldn’t handle watching KU getting beat then seeing the KC chiefs lose too. good thing the chiefs pulled off a victory. it didn’t look good in the first quarter. i was cussing bout that. the chiefs came back and won. I was hollering for them every time they scored. now for next weeks afc championship.

tonight I will watch the college football national championship. I have been watching the championship game every year for the past decade or so. it is a good game to watch. I don’t have a favorite in this game. I just wanna see a good game.

yesterday we got ice as a reminder that this is still winter. it covered the trees, shrubs and grass. we didn’t get the snow they predicted. the roads were passable. mary made it to her appointment in topeekie. she stayed to pick up the grandsons. they made it home safe.

I will never forget the year when we had a bad ice storm. it knocked out our electrical power. tribal workers said they did safety checks on everyone. no one came here. they offered free rooms at the casino for those without power. we didn’t hear about it for a few days. by then we were told they reached their limit of available rooms.

we had no choice but to stay home. irony was some that got rooms had power. they were given free meals too. that’s how the fort system works, or don’t work.

we were without power for two weeks. someone anonymously sent us batteries in the mail. we didn’t know who to thank until later. we were able to listen to indian music on an old cassette player. my niece bought me a charger that worked off the cars cigarette lighter. we were able to charge our cell phones.

it was a good thing we had kerosene lamps. we played Yahtzee by the lamp light while jamming to indian music. we kept warm by having a fire going in our wood stove. that took me back to my youth. I lived like that in my early years. it didn’t bother me.

we managed but lost most of the food we had in the freezer. we put it outside at night because it was freezing cold out there. but each day a little would thaw until we finally lost all of it. we ate what we could.  later we heard some people with power (the rez has about 5 power companies) had empty freezers where we could have stored the years supply of food. we did save our dried indian corn, dried squash and indian beans.

after the storm hit, the ice was so heavy it caused the trees to break under the weight. we could hear a loud popping sound then hear the trees crashing to the ground. it caused more branches to break as they fell. that happened up and down the little soldier creek valley. the sound was eerie. I thought those poor trees.

this storm aint as bad as that one. we didn’t lose electrical power.  I did lose a shrub in my back yard. it broke under the weight of the ice. I also lost some branches off my trees.

I am glad I got the wood tossed into the basement and stacked. I wont have to go outside to get wood. we also bought a meat bundle from the meat locker.

today KU’s basketball team plays on a channel I get. the game is the number 3 team in the nation playing the number 4 team. it will be a good game. and I get to watch it. rock chalk.

I gotta get my chores done before game time. i notice the wild birds are eating our chicken feed. its good mojo to feed them. Andrew and I will also take down the xmas tree. I better get busy.

 

guess we not going to war after all. that pretty much shows what kind of leaders we have. they about involved us in a war just to divert attention  away from impeachment proceedings. i  cant see how someone who refused to serve in the military can be the commander in chief.

we are a super power.  no need to act smug that a small country backed off from us. that’s like a bully on the play ground bragging a little kid wouldn’t fight him. we have the best military in the world. but we cant protect our school kids or citizens in this country.

i dont go along with the notion that old people cant figure out technology. I worked with computers about 50 years ago. I try to get things going. lately I connected my phone to my car. the iphone 8 don’t have an aux cord. I need my music. i had to add it as a Bluetooth device. now I can drive and listen to my jams.

i also can answer my phone hands free too. I hear the one calling on my radio. I still have to key in the contacts I want. I don’t hear from most people so that wont be many. next is to get the voice recognition going. then I can just say play my playlist 1 or call mary. this country indian living in the modern world.

the tribe brought another load of wood yesterday. I will spend a part of the day tossing  it into the basement. after that I will stack it. just in time for the coming cold weather. today is the last 60 degree day for some time. I will get my exercise doing that chore.

KU basketball was on last night. again on a channel I wont add. I don’t give a damn if its only 5 bucks a month. I already pay too much for cable. I listened to the game on the radio while I was walking on the treadmill. the wood stove was going so I got a sweat going in no time.

we went to the meat locker yesterday. (do they even call them that anymore?) we bought a pork bundle. they have the best meat. it isnt loaded with growth hormones etc. and it tastes real good. other than an occasional steak we don’t eat much red meat.

I was gonna buy some whole chickens but they didn’t have any. they will next week. I will buy some then. these chickens are just natural ingredients too. no chemicals. my hens will lay for more years so I wont be butchering any of them. i want to make chicken broth that mary will can. we will use it in soups,stews or wild rice.

andrew asked if we were still gonna set our traps. we didn’t get to it. we will this weekend when he comes back. I want some rabbit to eat. it will be cold so we can hang the rabbits up for a few days to cure them.

gotta get ready for the cold snap coming.

my old iPhone 6 plus gave out. well not completely. the battery was dying out at times when I needed my phone. like at the kc chiefs game i went to. the cold made it die out before i got any good pictures.

I took my phone to the sprint store in Kansas City. we kinda got a run around at the one in topeekie when my sons phone went out. if those hicks couldn’t handle it, I didn’t want to mess with them.

the big city place said my battery was only charging to 74 per cent capacity or something. that meant it died quicker. they quoted me a price of $75 for a new battery and I would be on my way but it would only be charged about 10%. if I wanted I fully charged I should come back next day.

i asked them about a reconditioned one. they said I could get an iPhone 8 for $275. i would already be in for the cost of a battery. then I would still have a phone that was about 6 years old. I thought why not spring for the extra 200 for an update. I damn sure aint gonna pay a thousand bucks for a iPhone 10 or 11 whatever the latest one is.

i went back next day and got the iPhone 8. if my old 6 plus lasted as long as it did, i could expect that again. the lady said since I had battery problems I could buy this new charger thing that would help with that problem. I asked how much. she said 79 dollars. I said no. I didn’t have battery problems until now. if this phone last 5 years or so I saved that money.

i ordered the new to me iPhone 8 and left. I headed over to KU med center to visit my sister. she has been there several days. she had an aneurysm. I had a sister and brother with the same problem. one doctor previously said all of us siblings should be aware of that.

after my visit I headed back to check on my phone. they said with all my data it would take about 2 hours to transfer all of it. it was still transferring. I had to leave the two phones together while the transfer was taking place. it finally got done when I stopped at the Lawrence rest stop on the turnpike. all my apps, pictures and music transferred. that was neat. I wont have to do that manually.

it was a good thing I just got my rent check. I was able to pay for the phone, case and the rip off hook up fee. this indian thought he was gonna have cash to spend. the phone got most of that.

the grandsons are going back to their Lawrence home this evening. I enjoy all the time I have with any of my grand kids. they keep me young.

i have been listening to the news again. they trying to start a war to divert attention away from impeachment. I wonder why the pro war leaders don’t send their own kids to fight if they believe in war so much. others have been saying it aint right to destroy cultural sites. that would be a war crime. oh really. they have been destroying native American cultural sites for hundreds of years. and just recently open sites like chaco canyon and others to oil exploration.

que sera sera.

I tried getting a picture of the red sunset yesterday evening. it looked better than what the camera recorded. still a good shot though. I wish the electrical  lines weren’t in the picture.

i got my rent check for my share of my grandpas allotment. it is for the hay taken off this land. we get a small percentage of what it is worth.  the farmer feeds it to his livestock. the cattle fatten up and he sells them. he makes mucho shonya off this land. then the bigots say I don’t pay taxes on the land.

that reminds me of a time I was at the local bia office. it was packed that day. some of them were the biggest rednecks around. I wondered if they were gonna jail an indian or something. I asked what was going on. someone said it was lease day.  some of the ones present didn’t like Indians but they made a good living off leasing indian land cheap.

fort injuns don’t get it. everything exists here because some families held onto their land. if they didn’t we wouldn’t be a sovereign nation. there wouldn’t be grant monies, a casino, jobs etc.  some need to learn how to appreciate those backward country Indians.

whatever. misho headed to town to buy supplies. I needed chicken feed. my hens give me fresh eggs.  in return I feed and water them every day. I can live with that arrangement. I don’t know why more Indians don’t raise chickens. after the hens quit laying, they make the best chicken  soup.

I walked on the treadmill yesterday. I listened to the KU game on the radio while I was walking. reminded me of my high school days. we listened to most of the games on the radio. there weren’t many on tv in them days. this fan aint adding an extra channel even if it is only 5 bucks. I already pay more than I want to for cable.

this week will have several days of 50 degree weather. we are already planning on walking a few of those days. gotta walk outside when we can. I enjoy the feeling of being out in nature.

the grandsons went home for a few days. we pick them up this evening. they will be back here til Wednesday. it will back to school for them. they had a coupla weeks off.

while Andrew is here I will set our live traps. he gets into that. I haven’t noticed any rabbits in the yard. that don’t mean they are roaming around there. those wascal wabbits got fat off my garden.

I am hungry for the taste of rabbit. we have caught some for the past few years. and my nephews brought me a couple once. I used give my first kills away too. now I am at the age where others bring me theirs.

will see what this week brings.

another calendar year has passed.  I have seen a few years now. I don’t feel older even if I am.  looking back at my life I am glad I have lived this long. I am grateful the lifestyle of my reckless youth didn’t kill me. I did learn from my mistakes. I appreciate life more.

I don’t make new years resolutions.  I do try to be a better person. that is hard to do around some people. some make their little part of the world ugly. I wonder what made some people the way they are. seems like they let the wrong values guide their lives.

there are some things to strive for this year. one is to work on my book. I have the books of my brothers Larry and Gary. I gotta finish mine to place next to theirs. that will be neat to have 3 brothers each have written a book. we have different writing styles but have a way of making our point.

I hit a writers block. I lost the chapter of my drinking, drugging  and violence days. those were my lost years. it took some reliving of those days to write it. I have to do that all over again. it aint a period of my life I liked but it was a chapter of my life.

I also have to work on making more roaches. the fall season has passed and I haven’t made any new ones. I gotta have a supply of them for a stand I will have at some pow wow. I will make some small collectibles too. not everyone carries the cash necessary to make a big purchase like a roach.

I am trying to improve my health. I am keeping up my walking. I wanna lose weight but that is hard to do around Indians. they always have eats and probably too damn many sweets. no one forces anyone to eat them. I am learning to pass on those items.

I cherish the time I spend with my grand kids. I have to stay alive to watch them grow.  I want to help teach them. kids raised by multi-generations learn more.

I like traveling and seeing other places and meeting people. I will always travel. no matter how much traveling a person does, this world is too big to see it all. I have crossed this country many  times and still find places I haven’t seen. my number one bucket list trip is go see Angkor Wat and to walk on the Great Wall of China. this indian gonna do that sometime.

I don’t know  what this next calendar year will bring. when a person reaches a certain age, the years blend together. I may be close to that age. it takes all of ones life to make ones life.  we never know what will happen. that is what makes life interesting.

the calendar year is about over. don’t know if its time to look back and reflect on the past year or not. guess I should be glad I made it thru another year.  i’m not real old but I know I am not young anymore.

when ever I am out and about on the rez I am usually drawn to older folks. we have  more in common than I find with the new wave indian. its hard to talk about what life on the rez was like years ago with some one that wasn’t there.

I have no new years eve plans. I probably will stay home. I don’t party. I see and hear people that glorify that lifestyle. I aint impressed. I know that drinking and drugging cost me dearly in my life. it wasn’t all fun and games. I took things to  extremes that others don’t.

once a young guy asked me to go drinking. I asked if he had enough for two or three weeks. he said no. I told him ‘then lets not bother’. he gave me a funny look. he didn’t know what I used to be like.

I lost interest in watching the news. I seen what the tv talking heads think are the main points of the past year. impeachment is at the top. don’t know why that is such a big deal. trump will get off no matter how incompetent he is. he can tell 15 thousand lies and his supporters still believe him. its even possible that he will get reelected. it just shows people in power can get away with anything. they get a different brand of justice than the average American.

our president is one of the more openly corrupt politicians we had ever had. he didn’t invent the system. he took advantage of it. the rest of the politicians are pretty much the same. that’s why they protect him. they wont change the system that they benefit from.

racism is reported more often now. that don’t mean its increasing. it has always been there. some people that haven’t experienced racism wont believe it happens.  trump didn’t invent it either. he uses it to rally his minions. people in power often make others use minorities as the target for their discontent or hate. then they tend to lose focus on their real problems.

the democrats had the most diverse group of presidential candidates ever. reality is none of the non white candidates have a chance. nor do any women have a real shot. many wont admit our first black president set a bar our current president cant match. instead the current president takes credit for what was already in place.  how many of the homeless in this country feel our economy is the best ever.

vaping caused a number of deaths. that caused some action with our law makers. none was taken to protect our school kids from getting killed. we spend an obscene amount of our national budget on defense but cant or wont protect our kids. there is  no big profit in keeping our kids safe.

I can go on and on about politics but don’t.  the more things change the more they stay the same. I heard that once and it makes sense. politicians are the problem, not the solution. really tho they are just puppets of the rich and powerful. democrats and republicans are basically the same thing. its like asking if we would rather be shot or hung. we may have a choice but the end result is the same.

happy new year.  hope y’all has a good year.