First an apology: If you came to this site the other day and got a vulgar message, I am sorry. I was hacked as the message said.

Second: Many thanks to a wonderful Son in Law who has worked hard to get me up and going again. If you need any web/blog or design help check out his website.  He is good. What he does not know he finds out and I highly recommend him.

Thank you so much Eugene!!!!

in the shower….

Before moving to Texas I had no idea what chiggers were. I quickly found out. One night I started itching and got up to find all these bites in places you do not want to scratch in public.  I mean huge welts.

I thought I had a dreaded disease of some kind there were so many, so talked to my husband in the morning.  Never had I seen anything like this. All along my panty leg line, under my bra, even in my bra. Big welts. Under my arm as well.  What did I have? Ever see anything like this? I asked my hubby.

His answer? “Chiggers” I think. OK, I thought about it and the word was not familiar to me, but in my mind I was thinking about some nasty bugs people get from sleeping around. I think as a teen we called them crabs. Never had experience with them, but that was what I thought he was talking about and freaked out! Big time!

He calmed me down and said no “Chiggers not crabs”. Being the person I am, I went to the computer and looked it up. Sure enough! Chiggers are invisible bugs that get on you and climb to the nice warm, moist spots that you do not want to scratch in public. They make big welts that are itchier than anything I have ever had and they last forever.

Yes forever, well, almost.

Two nights ago I had a horrible headache. I decided to take a hot shower (I live in Texas, it is way hot and most of my showers have no hot water in them during the summer. The water from the shower is warm coming out of the cold faucet so no need for hot water).  This time I wanted hot to relieve the headache and the muscle tension I was getting in my shoulders and neck.

Hot water ran down me and I aimed it on my shoulder. Problem was, it was also running on my butt.

My butt had a chigger bite that was over a week old and had finally stopped itching, but was still there. Hot water made it itch, unbearably itch. I scratched, and scratched, as I showered.

DO NOT EVER DO THAT!!!

I now have a very sore chigger bite that no longer itches. It hurts! It is raw! I can’t sit down without pain!

Lesson learned. Now, learn from my mistake, it is not worth learning from experience.

You have an email address, maybe more than one. Suddenly all your friends, or maybe not friends, are mad at you for spamming them with links to weird electronic site, p**n sites, drug sites or maybe even just sites that may interest others but have anything from malware to trojans, worms or viruses in them.

Yes, it is happening a lot lately. I am in some yahoo groups and get these messages from people all the time. The other day some came through a freecycle group.

What happens when you are the sender? What should you do when you receive one from someone else?

First thing… DO NOT CLICK ON THE LINK!! Often the link is fine but anything else you click on within it will send you a nice present of spy, mal or worse ware.  I will usually send a message, not “reply” but a forward the message to the person and tell them they have been hacked into. Never click on a link! NEVER.

What if it is you? Change your password immediately. Some of these people are so bold they have changed your password and you can’t even get into your account. You need to then go to recover your password and change it. Uses something hard to figure out, numbers/letters in combo, and write it down since it is not not something you are used to using.

Next: Scan your system with some good malware/ virus/spyware detectors. I recommend  Malwarebytes and a-squared both are free and can be run with your anti virus.

Most times these hackers get into programs like yahoo email or aol email, and not on to your computer unless you clicked on the links, but even if you have not, run the scans.

To find out if you are sending out spam, check your sent mail folder. See anything weird in there you did not send? If so, they got you. However, even if you don’t they could have deleted it or changed a setting to not save sent mail, so not a sure thing, but some have found them that way.

With all that is going on, if you have yahoo email, hotmail or aol especially, change your password often. It is epidemic right now.

One last thing, many of you have kids with email addresses. Get them to change their passwords and give warnings about clicking on links even if they know the person. One kids got a p**n site and lots of stuff no kid needs to see. Most kids have yahoo addresses and yahoo is the one most hacked into.

I hope and pray it does not happen, but chances of being hacked are growing and changing passwords often will help slow it down.

Keep safe, keep your computer safe and keep your family safe.

Today I am rambling. Ever feel like you just want to scream? Yell at someone but there is no one to yell at? Things are just happening and there is nothing you can do about it? I am there.

To start with, our car has been acting up. Over the weekend it got worse and we knew we better not go far till it was looked at. Now, last weekend was a holiday weekend.  Our mechanic was off till Tuesday and we wanted to go to church on Sunday. For us Church is a 75 mile each way trek  and we knew we better not go.

All weekend I kept thinking I knew what was making that noise, heard it before, but could not put my finger on it. Suddenly it dawned on me. Water pump. I knew for sure we better not go far, experience told me that after having been stuck years ago with it going totally miles from home.

Wednesday our mechanic could look at it and sure enough, the water pump and belt were both shot.

Now, I had been putting money aside for a trip my husband and I need to make to see our CASA child. Placement put our child about 300 miles away from us and we need to make this trip. It means the drive, overnight stay in a motel and food as well as something to do with our child. I had set aside about 300 so far and it was hard getting it aside.

Want to know how much our car is going to take to get fixed? YOU GOT IT!!!  $300! Now, we need to make this trip by mid- Aug. and the money took a few months to get together.

However, God allowed me to have it for the car and the car could have gone on the trip had it not gone now. Thank you Lord.

While all this has been going on other things have been “festering”. Like all the stuff going on in our nation, the economy, things falling apart here, etc.

Then there is the way some big businesses treat the little guy. I buy my fabric, well much of it, through buying groups. Many of us get together and buy together. We do it online as we live so far apart, but most of us do not have access to fabric stores that sell quality fabrics. For me the closest for some brands of good fabric is over 70 miles.  Even then the selection is not great and the prices are!

As a result, it is nice to get good fabric at good prices by buying together. Suddenly over the last two weeks a few companies have decided if you are not a brick and mortar store you can’t buy from them. Orders were canceled,  feelings were hurt by some company reps getting pretty nasty about the “coop buying” . For many of us this is our means of getting the fabric. It has meant that we are not boycotting some manufacturers and for me, one of them is the only solid color fabric I use. Now I need to find something else that will be good and work.

Told you this was rambling.

On the fun note, I am working on an applique design and trying to find just the right scraps for an elephant….

Pink? Purple? Brown?  Hmmmm, guess we will wait and see!

I just had to share how hot it is here. Aside from not sleeping from the heat (too expensive to run the air all the time and we shut it off at night and only run it from about noon to 10 PM) I had a first yesterday.

I was out caring for the goats late yesterday afternoon/early evening and had on a pair of flip flops. Black flip flops. I was up in the goat pen and waiting for them to finish eating when my feet started burning so bad I could not stand it. My flip flops were so hot! My husband was coming up to water the sheep and goats and I had him spray my feet with the water to cool off the flip flops!

Living here in Texas you do not get cold water in the summer. You can run it forever, still warm at the coldest point. However, the warm cold water was way cooler than my feet were at that point.

Today I am going to buy a pair of white cottony flip flops!