I learned some things this last week.....

The most fun, was that Hedghogs get drunk :-)

A friend of ours was telling me about this hedgehog that visits his garden sometimes. Being the naturelover he his, he started a "nesting" area, suble addition of tree bark to a smallish leafpile, augmented with little bits of hay, covered with thin branches, with food and water nearby over the course of 2 weeks, so it would feel more of a natural thing happening, than a helping hand....  He had some fruit that had fallen of his tree that was rotting on the ground, that he hadn't paid attention to, (natural fertilizer and such) and saw the little guy munching on it, so he collected some, and put them in his bowl for the next night, ensuring he had easy access to some of his food.  

Hedgehog came back, foraged in the garden, seeking out the fruit on the ground, went to "his" waterbowl and found the treats in the bowl next to it, and happily kept eating.  At this time it's pretty dark, and my friend just stays in his chair and watches the procedings, until the hedghog starts out of the garden, stumbling like a soccerplayer coming out of bar after  a really bad loss, and ultimately, just curls up next to the fence.... 

Wondering if something could be wrong, because the little guy walked straight when he came into the yard, my friend contacts the hedgehog preservation society (yes, it's a thing. They're severely endangered here) and tells his story.  He's prepared to having to wrangle the little one into a box, and to get on his way to the sanctuary, but what he is NOT prepared for is the laughter on the other side of the phone.

After a minute of laughing, the person on the other side states, still chuckling... He's DRUNK! and proceeds to explain that "old" fruit has no ramifications, "spoiled" fruit, although edible and still nutricious, digest differently in a hedgehogs system, and turns into alcohol. With the same result alcohol has on people... The prickly little bugger gets drunk.

 Me, being the smart ass I am, couldn't help asking whether he put out a proteindrink and an ibuprofen next to him, which netted me (rightly so, on hindsight. LOL!) an exasparated glare and an indignant "NO!"  But he said, on advice from the person, he did pick the hedgehog up and put him in the intended nesting place. Being close to the fence made him run the risk of being still kinda out of it, and getting into trouble in the morning so further in the yard was a better place for him to be.  (Kinda like taking the key's off a buddy and parking him on your couch. ROFL)  Now he makes sure there is no rotting fruit on the ground by putting it in the compost bin when it starts going there, still leaving enough on the ground for his dinnerguest to eat, and when he puts out fruit from the house, he checks on it to make sure it's still safe.  According to the  center, by putting him in his little sheltered place, our friend may just have rented the place out as a safehaven for winter, so he's keeping watch, making sure there's a variety of foods around (not really hard to do, because the little sanctuary is at the edge of the vegetable garden) and hopes the little guy will take his winternap in his garden and call it home for the next couple of years...... I'll let you know how that works out, when I find out more.

The other thing I found out, was that over the next month or 2, the tablets of the missing in Ardennes Cemetery are getting a make-over. The fading names are being mended, and all will be getting a gentle paint job to give the engravings more depth.  So, even if I hadn't flubbed up all the pictures taken last week, I still would have gone back to see them when they're done.  AAAAAAND, I just realised that I broke my promise to David to keep him posted if I learned things of interest.... Sorry my friend, brain isn't working on all cylinders yet.  I'll try and do better.

So, yeah, the pictures I took at Ardennes Cemetery were a bust. I should have just enjoyed the peace and quiet spend some time and "be".....  Not sure what is wrong (if anything) with my camera, but all 279 pictures I took that day, totalled up to 216KB, so really T I N Y !!! and completely unuseable for posting. The upswing was that Roger's pictures were fine. He took the ones I missed from Plot A and the ones from Plot D, while I did Plot C, so his part will be posted within a week or 2.   To make sure it wasn't "pilot error"  I took the memorycard out, and cleared it, left it out and reset the camera to factory settings, put the card back in, reseated the battery and took some pictures around the house. The "cannot enlarge image" didn't show up, so I took that as a win, but still, every other picture taken, still gave the "no replay available" error, which I knew meant that the picture wasn't stored on the card. This usually prompted me to just retake the picture, if possible, but, when I took the card our of the camera and put it in the laptop, the picture was there, and when I put the card back in the camera and flipped through pictures taken, there they would be.... so I'm going to have to do 2 things, neither will be great fun to execute, but a) start researching and saving for a new camera and b) when I go back to take the other pictures, take my computer somehow and before I leave, make sure all pictures are useable..... and that last part is going to be a pain, because.... powerbank doesn't work on computercord, laptop with longer batterylife doesn't have a memorycard slot so I'll be racing to do the checking  before they shut the gates because we've been leaving about 20 minutes before that happens.... and I'll have to figure yet another way to keep track of which picture belongs with which marker, and which pictures didn't "take"..... rinse and repeat the processes until all unaccounted for are accounted for on Find a Grave.  Maybe I'll check for somewhere to sleep in the area and spend a couple of days, because traffic outside of summer vacation time is a bearcat! It took us almost 2 hours to get home, most of it spent doing 10KM/Hr or less..... as apposed to the speedy 1 hour 10 minutes the last time....

Reading back, doing the mandatory errors and brainfart check, I realised the thing I hadn't acted on, is the thought of a corrupted memory card.... something to fix on over the weekend! :-) 

Well, the kitchencabinets are calling for help, so I'll get back to that, just wanted to tell you about the drunk hedgehog in hopes you got a giggle out of it :-)

Don't forget to love a hugged one :-)

Love and hugs, 

 

Did you ever.......

find a website that has a the exact information you've been looking for for ages, and all you want to do is delete it from every one of your research information notes?

Well, I did, want to and am seriously leaning into the removal issue......

Found this website that has information on WW-2 burials, practices and what have you's, as well as operations, al be it a lot are named, but blank, but.... work in progress, research is never "done" etc, information on the different branches of service, not a whole lot, nothing you can't find anywhere else, but it's there, like a one-stop-shop of knowledge, so you can narrow down where you need to fine-tune your next search.....It should, for all intent and purposes, be my next favorite "start the research" site for Stories behind the Stars, but there's a couple of "peeves" at work here.... 

• I know adds pay for a lot of the sites.     BUT DO YOU HAVE TO HAVE SO MANY ADDS THAT YOU CAN'T EVEN FIGURE OUT WHAT THE TEXT IS FROM THE ADDS IN THE MIDDLE OF IT?
• I know common courtesy tells you, that if you use the information, or even go back to the same nonprofit or volunteer site more than twice, you should contribute, be it financially, (if you're able) or painfully, by sitting thru the ads (if you're not). And generally, I do.
• Having an option of turning on/off the adds is a nice gesture, but if you have to make that decision EVERY PAGE YOU VISIT, and when you return to a previous visited page with adds declined, you get a very blurry page with a huge add and if you click off THAT, you get the "option" of declining adds again, and if you think that's the whole of it, there's pop-up ads, that shrink your readable screen to about 2 lines at a time....
• So for the sake of getting somewhere, I figured "if it looks interesting, I'll turn of the adds, get the information down, and turn them back on"..... the page with the adds on, went on forever, and when I turned the adds of, the actual information fit on one screen..... and had ONLY 7 ADDS!
• At this point, it doesn't feel like "helping to keep the site up" but more helping to sustain a lifestyle.... I know research can be expensive, and people like to get paid for helping out, (although a LOT of us don't, and help for the helping), but IF, as stated on every page, the point is to preserve history and the memory of the soldiers keeping us safe.... and not monetary gain,  there should be a less annoying way to get your point across, like maybe just putting a donation button on the page - Oh wait, there are 2 on EVERY page already!

Do you get where I'm "coming from" on this? If you make your helpful website a bitch to navigate, you're missing your goal. If you're "monetizing" to the extend that you're turning people off, the message you're trying to send, you have to wonder what message is actually getting out there.....  

Speaking as both a researcher and a web designer, This is a crazy way to do "business"!  Putting THIS many adds on a website is not bringing you any money, or goodwill from people visiting. It's wasting your hosting money, your web maintenance money, your followers and potential donors, but from a business standpoint, you paid your designer and marketing people too much! I for one, will not visit again, and I know it's going to cost me time to find the information from a different source, but it won't be as frustrating!

So, if you know anybody that's thinking of making a website for a nonprofit or just for fun, and they indicate they want to "monetize" try and talk them out of "going for the full boat" and stick to maybe 5 or 6 adds per page with NONE in the text area. Their potential customers will thank them for it by actually coming back.

Meanwhile, don't forget to hug a loved one a time or two while you can, and consider yourself thoroughly hugged :-)

Pauli

 

It's in the eyes.....

Granted, this is not an earthshattering discovery.....

 When looking at individual pictures of soldiers, you don't notice as much, but after looking at picture after picture for the last 3 days...... yeah, it's definitely a thing.   I've been going thru the DPAA site, connecting information, and I came to a conclusion.... You can tell Marines almost immediately by their pictures, no need to check on their designation. They all seem to have this stare that says that they've seen too much.

In stark contrast are the "flyboys"... Most Airmen seem to have that open almost cocky look that says, "life is an adventure, let's see what we can can wring out of it".

Whether this is because the Marines get sent in and are destined to be "up close and personal" with no or little long distance fighting and the Air crews are literally far removed from the close combat, or that a certain type of personality picks a certain trajectory in life I don't  know, but it just struck me that after a while, I didn't have to see whether they were Marines or Airmen. I knew by their eyes ......

I realise this is in no way a reflection of the intensity of war and what it does to a persons soul. There is a difference, yes, but you can't go into any kind of battle and come out the same person that went in..... Nobody should have to go thru what the soldiers go thru in battle, and knowing humans are not a peacefull species  and there will always be conflict, my hope is that the people that are kept safe thru the sacrifice of these soldiers, REALLY appreciate what kind of gift is given to them by these men and women....  Everybody that served knows from experience that freedom is paid for by those that too many times give their life, and too often give their own peace of mind in exchange for ours.... and, just saying, the families also serve, more often than not, long after the soldier comes home.

 

 

Asking for help and regretting it almost instantly....

I went to Social Services, to see if I could get somebody to have a look with me, and to see if my planning, such as it is, made any sense. You see, my brain is not functioning at full capacity. What makes perfect sense right now, is an awe inspiring mystery an hour from now. How dit I figure this? What was I thinking, or was I thinking at all? Where was I going with this?    These are regular thoughts these days, and I sometimes wonder if, besides my heart, my brain broke too when Mike died.  It feels like a milder form of Chemo-brain, and it scares the hell out of me!

When looking up what the company they referred me to, did, I was in total shock. OH HELL NO! Their website stated that they helped drug addicts, people with diminished mental capacity, and social misfits (parafrasing the list they gave) to function better in society and be more self sufficient. That's not me, I just need a second set of eyes and maybe a cattle prod to get me in the right direction again. I was PISSED!

So when the guy called to set an appointment, I considered telling him to take a long walk off a short pier and to lose my number, but years of customer service training told me not to, and to hear him out. So the appointment was made, and he came to the house.

He asked how I was doing, and if I was OK with the referral.... That opened the floodgates. I told him I was sorry to ever have asked for help, and mad at where Social Services had referred me to them, that I was not a drug addict or a social misfit, and although my mind had been clearer, I was not mental, just overwhelmed.  To his credit, he took it well. He let me talk, and didn't make any moves to indicate he wanted to interrupt. When I sat back, because that explanation had zapped what little energy I had at the end of the day, he told me, "yes, that is what we do, mainly" and before I got riled again, he ended with "but we also help people in your situation to get a handle on what's needed for them to be able to move forward" ending with: "Is that something you can deal with?"    I've never been deflated that fast by anyone, except for when Mike would gently put the brakes on my temper, but it put me in the right mindset to listen, which, I have to assume, was the point......

He said that the information he received in the referral, didn't tell him anything, except that they wanted them to "get on it by the end of the week" so to tell him what I needed help with. I told him flat out.... I don't know..... I know I need something, but I don't know what. I can see I need help with the house and the yard, but no clue in what form would be feasable. The house is a combination of mental dexterity (fresh out of that one, sorry) and the  brute force needed to shift some of the physical junk around or away (never was much on that) and the yard needs dynamite, which is illegal to have, so I'm at a loss. 

 I was hoping for them to have a list to check off, and at the bottom of it, we'd come up with a plan of attack to get there....... He grinned and told me there was nothing wrong with my reasoning or knowing that I needed help, and where, so he wasn't worried about my mental state, but he was concerned about the amount of crap I was now, and had for the last 5 years, been dealing with, so he was going to talk to some people, and appointed me 2 helpers. One would see what could be done about the physical stuff and planning how to get there, just a second pair of eyes and for nudges if I faltered in the plan, or to adjust it. The other would be more to work on my feeling overwhelmed, but also to help place what was happening in a more healing state instead of the "freaking out at the drop of hat stage" I'm at now, which, by the way, he said, was totally normal, but since I felt I needed help with that, they would be there. And if it turned out my heart wasn't ready for the help yet, they would leave it be.

So....... yesterday came the physical helper. She was YOUNG! :-)  a little uncomfortable, but she listened. She got me to talk about my favorite topic... Mike :-) and what had been going on for the past while, and what I was looking forward to when the help ended....and along the way we got to know eachother enough to be comfortable. We were supposed to fill out forms, but her tablet was dead, and she didn't have a papercopy, so we just talked. (I just LOVE this digital age, where paper is a bad thing, but if the electronics don't work, you're just dead in the water...... but that's for another post :-0 ) so we'll have to see what happens. 

The mental helper is on a different assignment, and we'll meet up in a month or so..... and my homework was to take a look at my todo's and prioritize on what needs doing next..... So here I am... surrounded by paperwork that needs something, my mind just can't wrap around what, lists of things to prepare for, to do's that have some urgency because they impact the financials, to do's that will need doing within a couple of weeks, and overall wishes for things to settle down to a dull roar, so I can hear myself think, and maybe deal with the feelings I haven't had time to even scratch at, let alone deal with,  I'm on my 3rd pot of coffee of the day, I can't see where I'm going with any of these chores that were added to my addled brain and it's not even noon....

soooo..... Welcome to my f'd up state of being!  I thought a lot the last couple of years, that it would be nice to just "be" for a while, just Mike and me, enjoying eachothers company without stress for just a bit, nothing greedy, just a half-day here and there, were there were no fires to put out.... I was hoping for a little peace for both Mike and me after his heart surgery while he was healing and for the plans we were making to materialize when he got the all clear and finally, our time to be together, happy, semi-healthy and hopeful. What I got was a hole in my heart, a brain that can't cope and a pile of things that need taken care of and fixed that would dwarf a mountain...... I know on a brain level that in the great scheme of things, there's people out there that have it a whole lot worse,  but on a heart level..... I'm just lost and I miss my heart and soul......