It turns out that I'm wrong about Patrick McManus writing that story. I searched around the Internet a bit and found out that no one seems to know who wrote the story. I did find this addendum. Now for the local legend. I was pretty beat up. My scalp was split open, I had several large goose eggs, my wrist was bleeding pretty good and felt broken (it turned out to be just badly bruised) and my back was bleeding in a few places, though my insulated canvas jacket had protected me from most of the worst of it. I drove to the nearest place, which was the Co-Op. I got out of the truck, covered in blood and dust and looking like hell. The guy who ran the place saw me through the window and came running out yelling, "What happened?" I have never seen any law in the state of Kansas that would prohibit an individual from roping a deer. I suspect that this is an area that they have overlooked entirely. Knowing, as I do, the lengths to which law enforcement personnel will go to exercise their power, I was concerned that they may find a way to twist the existing laws to paint my actions as criminal. I swear... not wanting to admit that I had done something monumentally stupid played no part in my response. I told him "I was attacked by a deer". I did not mention that at the time I had a rope on it. The evidence was all over my body. Deer prints on the back of my jacket where it had stomped all over me and a large deer print on my face where it had struck me there. I asked him to call somebody to come get me. I didn't think I could make it home on my own. He did. Later that afternoon, a game warden showed up at my house and wanted to know about the deer attack. Surprisingly, deer attacks are a rare thing and wildlife and parks was interested in the event. I tried to describe the attack as completely and accurately as I could. I was filling the grain hopper and this deer came out of nowhere and just started kicking the hell out of me and BIT me. It was obviously rabid or insane or something. EVERYBODY for miles around knows about the deer attack (the guy at the Co-Op has a big mouth). For several weeks people dragged their kids in the house when they saw deer around and the local ranchers carried rifles when they filled their feeders. I have told several people the story, but NEVER anybody around here. I have to see these people every day and as an outsider a "city folk". I have enough trouble fitting in without them snickering behind my back and whispering, "There is the dumbass that tried to rope the deer!" TM

Oh yeah! My son loves to 'help' me move terrible clay soil via shovel into my nice containers to cover my turnips and cabbages with. He also like to be "gentle" to my plants by 'petting' them softly. or at least he thinks it's soft, as leaves are crushed and torn assunder. But I just wince and tell him what a good job he's doing and then distract him with something else so I can tend to my babies.

Geez, I'd be kind of worried what else she's put in my name that I'm not aware of...or taken out of my name. Glad to hear that things are calmer, overall, and you can see down the road to a peaceful existence with the hubby. Suzan J

When I was working and DH wasn't, he would use Hamburger Helper, bought when it went on sale. It was him and me and two teenaged grandsons then. The guys really liked it. And I guess it was OK. Certainly filling. It calls for a pound of hamburger and I thought that was a bit much, so I asked DH if he would add extra noodles or macaroni by about two cups. We didn't notice a difference in taste and one package was enough to feed us two old people and fill up the boys. It's not a horrible choice, it's meat and pasta, although the stuff in the 'flavor pack' might be questionable. Serve a vegetable or a salad with it and you're certainly as well off or better for the meal than if you bought fast food. Now that I'm retired, I cook most of our meals 'from scratch', but I don't see anything wrong with using Hamburger Helper. It's a step in the right direction. I make goulash (we call it 'slumgullion') using 3 cups elbow macaroni, the equivalent of 1 can diced tomatoes and 1 can water (or if you have a quart of home-canned tomatoes, like I do, use that), a chopped green pepper, a chopped onion, salt and pepper, added to a pound of hamburger that has been cooked and drained. I cook my pasta separately and add it after it's cooked, but I imagine you could add more water and cook it all together, like you do the Hamburger Helper. I make hamburger stroganoff using a pound of cooked, drained hamburger, about 4 cups of dry egg noodles, 1/4 C. ketchup, 1 tsp. chili powder, about 1 and 1/2 to 2 cups of homemade cream of mushroom soup (which is nothing but a 6-oz can of mushroom ends and pieces, liquid included, and about a cup of chicken or beef broth to which I've added 2 Tbsp of cornstarch and about 2/3 cup of dry nonfat milk powder). If the kids are grossed out by mushrooms, you can leave them out and increase the broth, or whir them around in a blender with the liquid till they're not recognizable. I generally cook the noodles separately. When all of this is mixed together and hot, turn off the fire and add about a cup of sour cream, kefir, or buttermilk and mix well. Cheeseburger Macaroni is a little harder to make from scratch economically because of the cheese involved. Which is a shame because kids love the taste of cheese. Hamburger Helper and those boxes of macaroni and cheese have powdered cheese, which is cheaper for them to produce. I haven't yet found a powdered cheese that will duplicate the taste. Of course you can make the dish using real cheese or Velveeta, but if you're trying to throw together a low-cost meal, that would put it over the top. (if anybody has a cheap source or a method, chime in!) My grandsons had a little electric sandwich maker and they made a lot of grilled cheese sandwiches with it. They normally eat so much cheese that I buy the 5# package of sliced American cheese at WMT. (Some of those smaller packages are "cheese food", not cheese, anyway. Anytime each slice is wrapped in plastic to keep it from becoming a blob, you've got fake cheese). I open the big package and separate the block into about 4 chunks and then put those in ziplock bags. If it was just the old guy and me, I'd still buy it, and just freeze all but one of the bags. I've frozen it before, when I got a really good deal on it and bought extra, with no loss of texture or flavor. What this comes down to is, you don't want to send your kids to bed hungry. You fill them up however you can. Gourmet cooking is lost on kids and is not inexpensive. It's wonderful if you can afford it but when jobs are being lost and people are living off their savings is not the time to be buying shitake mushrooms and fancy cheeses. All that said, I wouldn't feed my dog stuff out of my pantry as treats. For one thing, you don't want your dog to get a taste for sweet things. Dogs don't really HAVE to have treats. BUT, most of them will do the happy dance while you're popping popcorn. I know one dog that will get excited if you just say the word. Or there are lots of recipes you can use to make home-made treats using simple things. If you save the fat from chicken broth or from frying hamburger and use that in the recipe, it adds extra flavor they love. When I cook a chicken, I cook the fat, skin and bones in water to cover in the crockpot all night after I have removed the chicken from them and poured off the first broth. This makes another good batch of broth and it softens the bones till they crumble between your fingers. After I have drained off this second broth, I put the bones and skin that's left into my food processor and whir it around till it's the consistency of canned dog food. Some of this can be added to the dog biscuit dough, or given as a treat in the food dish by the spoonful.