Peppers, peppers and more peppers!

I have enough (red) Thai peppers and Kung Pao peppers to start making vinegars for each of them! I also have enough green of each that I'm really going to have to figure out what in the world to do with them! (Seriously, right now, at the beginning of the season, I have several dozen of the things on each plant! They'll keep producing until at least the next freeze, in NOVEMBER!) I will have a full bottle of each of them very soon. I'll dry some of them, but that still leaves a huge amount that I'm going to have to figure out something for! I also have three habaneros, and my Bhut Jolokia has finally started flowering! I've got lots of mild peppers, banana, gypsy and another kind. I've also got lots of ancho, pimento (hello homemade pimento cheese!!!), serrano, Anaheim, poblano and a couple of others. I will have no shortage of peppers this year! Now, how to use all of them?

Memorial Day

My father fought in World War II and the Korean War. He was in the Army Air Corp. He was shot in Korea. Sadly, this is about all I know of his military service. I would like to find out more, but the records for a lot of the military people serving in World War II were destroyed in a fire several years ago, way before the internet became so prevalent. I also was not able to be around him after my parents got divorced.

But there is a man whose story I am very familiar with. My Uncle Lew Bud Magee. He fought in World War I. He was injured there as well. Horrifically.

He was in a foxhole with many other men when a cannonball came whistling down to them and exploded. The shrapnel instantly shredded and killed everyone in the foxhole but my uncle. He was only shredded. They were able to get him to an ambulance. During the ride, there was a kid that had his toe shot off, screaming in pain. The man in the cot below my uncle told the kid to shut up, because the guy above him was raining blood on him and not saying a word. My uncle replied, "That's ok, I don't feel a thing."

By the time that they got him to the hospital, he had lost so much blood that he was non-responsive and they couldn't find a pulse. He was still awake though, just unable to let them know that he was still alive. They took him to the morgue with the other fallen.

My uncle was a Mason. There was a Colonel going through the morgue, paying his last respects to the dead. He was also a Mason. When he reached my uncle, he noticed my uncle's Masonic ring. He took my uncle's hand and sadly said, "Another brother down." My uncle was never sure what he did, but somehow, he let the Colonel know that he wasn't dead. The Colonel sprung into action.

He ran out into the hall and started shouting for some help. He screamed for blood for him. A very large Turk with very bad English skills came down the hallway yelling "Me give him blood!"

From there on, he was taken to surgery, stabilized, and recovered. He lived almost forty years after that. He was paralyzed from the waist down and still had shrapnel in his body until the day he died. There was just too much shrapnel in his body to remove it all without killing him. Pieces of shrapnel worked their way out of his body for decades after the attack.

My mother remembers sitting at his knee twenty years later. He was scratching his leg. Now, this was amazing, because he didn't have any feeling in his legs until this time. He was amazed that he could feel something under his skin itching like crazy. My mother was amazed when he pulled a bobby pin out of his leg. People think that the shrapnel in cannonballs is specifically made for the cannonball, and while this is true in a lot of cases, many times, they use whatever is at hand, like nails, screws, and bobby pins.

My uncle almost made the greatest sacrifice. The men in his foxhole did make the greatest sacrifice.

What a Difference a Year Makes!

By this time last year, we had already hit the 100's two months before, and we'd only had about 2 inches of rain. We had just started on a long hot dry summer full of misery that would end with what felt like Hell right on our doorstep. Millions of livestock were lost or sold off. Only a lucky few were able to get any kind of crops. We really did have to worry about running out of water, and in some places, they had to have it trucked in. I myself only got a handful of produce last year, and I had access to almost as much water as I wanted. I only mowed once last year, and that's because I hadn't mowed for the last time in 2010. I was already watering on a weekly basis and had been for about two months. We knew that we were going to be in for a long hot dry summer, but we had no idea just how bad it was going to be.

This year, we've already had almost 11 inches of rain, and we have yet to hit 100. It looks like it might be some time before we hit 100 too. We are fighting lots of weeds, and I've had to mow five times. There is a good portion of Texas that is no longer in a drought, and the ones that are still in a drought, like ourselves, are in the lowest levels of drought. I had already picked more produce two weeks ago this year than I did all of last year. We may be in for a rough summer, but it's not going to be anywhere near as bad as last year. Here in Round Rock, the lakes where we get our water are full, and have been for about a month now. I've had to water so little that I have to remind myself to do so. We will last through the summer, no matter how bad we get, and not have to worry about running out of water, like we did last year. If we are really lucky, we may have a few storms blow through and help us get back to where we were before this crap started.

For the Night is Dark and Full of Terrors

So....last night I had one of my episodes. For those that don't know, I was violently raped at knifepoint almost 20 years ago. While my flashbacks have become much less frequent over the intervening 20 years, they do still happen. I usually sink into the event and let it take me over. I do all the melancholy things that one would think one would do during that time. Get drunk, play sad or angry music, wail and bemoan my fate, rail at the nearest available male presence. (Monty is very lucky he was 200 miles away last night!) One of the things that I do is watch The Crow. That movie came out shortly after my attack, and quite literally saved my life. It gave me an outlet to pour all my rage and terror and pain into. It still helps sometimes. However, not last night.

I started down that path last night. I plugged in The Crow, started on my third beer and started plunging into the depths once again. But then, something happened. I did a little Google research. I found out that while he had been out on parole, he was now back in prison for parole violation. I got pissed off. Why in the hell was I letting this useless crapsack scumbag asshole do this to me again?? I refused to allow him that power again! I turned off The Crow, plugged in something a bit more Current Leah friendly (Boondock Saints and The Walking Dead, for those curious.), and did some writing. Oh, I still got drunk, and I don't really remember all that I wrote, but from what I've scanned of it, I wrote almost 4,000 words of a totally, awesomely strong character that completely owns her entire situation and refuses to let anyone or anything get in her way!

It was still an incredibly rough night, and I'm feeling the after effects of it now, but it was so much better than any of the other nights that this has happened! I ended up enjoying the feeling of power and ownership that I found. And the character? She was violently raped at knifepoint twenty years ago, except she nearly died because he slashed her throat near to the bone. She has a long scar running along the left side of her neck because of it, a physical reminder of the event. Now, she's trying to survive the zombie apocalypse, and while she's having a rough time of it, and she sometimes has her night terrors and cries in the dark when no one else is around, she's pretty much completely owning her situation and refusing to be beaten down. I am actually being rather cruel to her, and I've got some very nasty stuff in store for her, including very nearly killing her in a horrifically violent way. But she's looking at me and saying, "Fuck you! Throw it at me bitch! I will own this fucking joint and anyone or anything that comes against me!" and I love her so very dearly for it.

That folks, is how you survive something like this. Take that assbutt! (Thank you Supernatural for that wonderful epithet!)