One of My Kinda Sorta Firmly Held Beliefs

Posted on July 21, 2025 by jimbiggs23

I wanna just put this out there and get it off my chest. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, and this is one of mine. Climate change exists and conditions will worsen if very drastic changes aren’t made very soon. Scientific doctrine has shown over and over (<sigh>, and over) again that man-made climate change is very real and very dire. And ask Jen, I’m all about all things science, much of which is over my head, and pragmatism in general. Climate change got started during the Industrial Revolution, the situation has only gotten worse in the 120+ years since. I support the widespread use of nuclear reactors for power generation; it has gotten much, much safer over the years. I also like the idea of using clean and renewable energy sources everywhere – like solar, wind, wave, biofuels, etc. – while we transition away from our dependency on fossil fuels. And don’t even get me started on vaccines and the anti-vaxx movement. Another topic, another time.

I know this probably makes me sound like a dyed-in-the-wool, granola-crunching tree-hugger (were all those hyphens necessary?), but that just isn’t true. I will say this, though, if I could drive, there’s a decent chance that there’d be a Subaru wagon parked in the garage. The back of it might also be plastered with bumper stickers that say stuff like: “Save the Spotted Whales” or “Give Peas a Chance” (It’d definitely have one that says “Still Pissed at Yoko”).

I guess I oughtta get to the point of this blog post –
About 6-7 years ago, Jen’s nephew CJ came to stay with us for a while after high school. He wanted better job opportunities that came from living near St. Louis, and he needed a place to stay while he got his feet up under him. He’s from a small town in Southern Illinois (aka, “God’s Country”) called West Frankfort. In fact, Jen’s whole family is from around there. Some of you went there when we got married in 2002. Anyway, CJ kinda new my views on the whole climate change thing. We were talking about it one time and he asked me what the deal was with “the effects of eating meat on climate change”. Not being much of a conversationalist, I instead wrote up a little document for him that hopefully helped explain my views. Even though it’s a few years old, this stuff still matters to me….

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Eating Meat and Climate Change

I got lernt about this by watching my Bill Nye Saves the World show: 

It takes 40 pounds of feed for cattle to yield 10 pounds of beef
It takes 30 pounds of feed for hogs to yield 10 pounds of pork
It takes 20 pounds of feed for turkeys and chickens to yield 10 pounds of poultry
It takes just 10 pounds of fish food to yield 10 pounds of…  fish

Why should we care about that? 

Well, in a nutshell it’s because growing food for animals to eat uses a lot of resources and using some of those resources (gasoline and diesel fuel for energy) releases a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. 

Additionally, cows and pigs fart – a lot.  Floating around in those farts is methane gas (CH4).  Methane is also a greenhouse gas, like carbon dioxide, only it’s something like 10 or 20 times worse for the atmosphere.  (Sidenote:  There are tons and tons of methane locked away underground in the permafrost in places like Alaska and northern Canada.  It’s been safely kept there for thousands of years.  As the polar ice caps recede due to global warming, the ground warms and defrosts and releases that gas into the air.)

Vegetation (rainforests mostly) act as the “lungs” for Mother Nature.  Plants and trees “inhale” and use CO2 and “exhale” O2 which we humans, and all animals, need to survive.  These processes are parts of photosynthesis.  Plants and animals have a symbiotic relationship, that simply means that they need us, and we need them.  

That’s why deforestation, clearing the land, for whatever reason, is so bad for us and all animals.  In South America, the Amazon rainforest is being cut back at an alarming rate to create room for: cattle ranches, farmland for growing feed, and feedlots – the last stop for cattle where they get fattened up before going to the slaughterhouse.  In Southeast Asia, they’re clearing land as fast as they can to create palm oil plantations, with the blessing from local governments.  I never heard of palm oil but apparently, it’s a widely used food additive. 

In addition to the environmental concerns, eating a bunch of beef and pork all the time isn’t exactly healthy for you.  Now, I’m nowhere near ready to go full vegan because I just flat out don’t want to – but my days of smoked brisket and ribs every weekend won’t be happening hardly ever anymore.  I like fish pretty much; I would probably eat more of it if the nearest fresh seafood didn’t live 900 miles away in the Gulf of Mexico. 

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It’s not like I’ve sworn off meat entirely. I’ll still have the occasional hamburger or enchilada. Pepperoni and bacon pizza continues to be one of my many weaknesses. I used to love to make chili. – you know, the regular kind with tomato sauce, meat and beans. I remember telling Jen one time, ‘I make the best chili.’ She probably thought but was too kind to say, ‘Easy Bobby Flay – you have exactly zero Michelin stars adorning your kitchen wall.’ I think everybody thinks they’re the best at making 1 or 2 things, probably because they make whatever the way they like it. Am I the only one who cooks for my own tastebuds instead of everybody else’s? Maybe, that tracks,  Nowadays, when I get a hankering for some traditional, hearty, “red” chili, I have some, get this – Vegetarian Chili. I know, sounds disgusting right? (BTW, I can almost hear the eyes rolling.) Eating vegetarian chili should be a mortal sin, like putting pineapple on pizza. Those things just can’t happen. But actually, they’re both pretty good.

Anyway, there’s my stance on climate change and how eating meat affects it.

Nur meine zwei Cent,

– Jim 

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“The Day the Earth Stood Still”

Posted on June 19, 2025 by jimbiggs23

AKA – “The Day Our Worlds Stood Still… (for a couple hours)”

Dateline: Afternoon of Tuesday, June 10, 2025

While my sister and great-niece were enjoying their birthdays down at Silver Dollar City, the foundations of our world were quaking and crumbling, causing them to teeter on the brink of destruction. OK, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. Even though our experiences weren’t as traumatic as the catastrophic events depicted in that “classic” 1951 Sci-Fi thriller, the whole afternoon was still kinduva heavy bummer.

This is what happened:
I said recently how I use my computer pretty much all day, every day. I told Jen that it’s my second-best friend in the whole world. I probably meant it too (just kidding). I do heavily rely on it for almost everything I do, though. It’s practically an extension of me, like having a third arm, but this one usually works.

The day was starting off pretty good. Jen was getting ready to go run a couple errands (her mom came over to sit with me and call 911 if the house caught on fire) and I was anxiously awaiting sitting out on the deck and watching a couple episodes of my show. There might have been 1 or 2 fair-weather clouds in the sky, the temperature was perfect (82°, my favorite), very low humidity and a slight breeze. What could possibly go wrong on a day like today? BTW, the show I’m watching right now is Succession; I’m on Season 1. People have been talking about it for years, but I wouldn’t pull the trigger on it for whatever reason, until now. They were right too, once you get past all the backstabbing, betrayals and underhanded attempts to upend each others’ lives, it is a really good show. Think of the most dysfunctional family you know. This family will make them look like The Waltons.

Well, much to our chagrin, neither of those things happened. Instead, the special software (EZKeys) that I use to communicate, type, interact with my computer, etc., started to act all wonky in a weird way I had never seen before. I could barely get it to do anything. Then, to make matters a lot worse, my actual computer itself (Windows 10) started losing its mind and going belly-up. Any time I could coerce my mouse arrow to hover over a document’s icon so I could double click on it to open it up, it would delete it! Thank God for the Recycle Bin – Windows doesn’t really delete stuff when you tell it to DELETE something, it just moves it here in case you inadvertently delete something you actually wanna keep.

So anyway, we heard: Rrrrr! <record-scratch>! – and our fun-packed afternoons took hard lefts and screeched to a halt. I was pretty much dead in the water and Jen didn’t leave me hanging. We got on the phone with the technical support person for EZKeys. He’s a great guy; we’ve worked with him many times over the years. He’s always willing to go beyond the scope of just supporting EZKeys and helping us with ANY (usually Windows) computer problems. So, he dialed in remotely and assumed control of my computer. That always freaks me out a little when he does that, I just sit there twiddling my thumbs, watching my mouse arrow move around and my computer doing stuff all by itself – I’d probably feel similar if I was a passenger in a self-driving car (Ummm, no thanks). He updated Windows, ran some anti-malware software (I think) and did some other things. Just 2 hours later, that’s right – I said, ‘2 hours’, he had gotten me all patched up and I was good to go.

After we hung up, my computer was humming away like always and I was off to the races – for about 5 minutes. Out of nowhere, my computer (named Biff), reverted back to its old self and weirding out again and deleting stuff. Grrr! What the crap?! Then, just as suddenly, it went away, and Biff started behaving like himself again. It’s been perfectly fine ever since. Now, I’m not a huge subscriber in all things supernatural, but my computer seems to be a victim of demonic possession and we’re definitely dealing with a “Ghost in the Machine” here. At the very least, my computer has a disease much like herpes. It really can’t be cured; we just have to deal with the occasional flare-ups now and then. Luckily, they’re few and far between.

The birthday girls! My sister Julie and her granddaughter Olivia (my great niece). Jen and I are big fans of her; Julie’s not bad either. They definitely enjoyed their day more than we did ours.

So, in conclusion, I guess I need to also add “I have my trusty and faithful computer friend at my disposal and it’s almost always in tip-top shape” to my “5 Things I’m Grateful For” Daily Affirmation routine. That thing has taken on a life of its own, it keeps growing longer. It’s like the NCAA athletic conferences: The Big 10 has 18 schools, Big 12 has 16 and Pac-10 has 8. Always changing. Very confusing, difficult to keep track.

Thanks for reading, I guess the only thing worse than actually having computer problems yourself is reading all about someone else’s computer issues.


Lange Haare, egal,

– Jim 

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I let my finger do the talking.

Posted on June 8, 2025 by jimbiggs23

Over the years, a lot of people have asked me how I go about using my switch, which, in turn, controls my computer, allowing me to “speak” and do other things (text, email, use the internet, watch stuff, listen to books and music – basically anything you can do on a laptop.) Actually, pretty close to zero people have asked me about that, but I wanna talk about it anyway.

For a couple weeks after my stroke, the only thing I was able to do was move my eyes up and down. Then, after that and for the next few months, I could voluntarily blink my eyelids shut. Probably after about four months, I found that I could move my right index finger back and forth a little bit. A year later, my neck started coming back to life some and I could kinda turn my head left and right. That was a big deal for me because half the time, the right side of my head, including my ear, would be buried in my pillow, headrest or whatever high-back chair I was sitting in at the time. That was bad because the hearing in my left ear is pretty muffled and things like conversations, radio and TV were hard to hear. Being able to turn my head to the left so I could get my right ear in the game was a medium-sized victory!

I mentioned how the ability to move my finger returned. When that happened, I remember thinking something like, ‘Pfft! Big deal, so I can wiggle my finger. Who cares?’ (that’s the G- Rated version.) I had that dismissive attitude about it because at the time, I was expecting that most, if not all, of my bodily functions (walking, talking, use of hands, etc.) would “wake up” and return. Well, that didn’t happen very quickly (aka, ever) and time passed by V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y. So long story short, some helpful therapists worked with me and showed how I could utilize that small movement in my finger to “click” a simple switch that’s wedged between my index and middle fingers. That switch is plugged into a regular laptop that has my communication software, called EZKeys, loaded on it and my computer also uses a regular Bluetooth speaker that enables me to “speak”. I’ve been using this setup ever since – it’s my link to the outside world. I’m not real sure of the timing on all this (do you remember, Jen?), but it was back in 2007-2008, probably.

That switch also enables me to drive my power chair, even though I don’t do that a lot. Sometimes I’ll go in and drive my chair when we go to Menards or Costco. I like those places because the aisles are nice and wide and they’re usually not very crowded when we go. That’s important because I have a tendency to plow into whatever is in my path. Years ago, we were at Schnucks one time, and my hand clamped down on my switch when I sneezed or coughed or something (it’s pretty sensitive) while the chair was “on” and in “drive” mode (should be called “Danger” mode). Anyway, Jen was about 8 feet away from me so she couldn’t get to the “kill” switch on my chair in time. So, I take off going full speed and smash into one of those giant produce tables where they put the apples, bananas and cantaloupes. My forward motion came to sudden and painful halt when my shins met the sharp bottom edge of the 6-ton fruit stand. I lost that battle, badly. Five minutes after we got home, I was on Amazon ordering a pair of shin guards like soccer players wear. I can laugh about it now, but I wasn’t laughing too hard then. I felt like I just got worked over by a couple little people with ballpeen hammers. It was just a freak accident. Kinda like the time when we went for a walk on our street one time and I got the bright idea to find out how fast my chair would really go (Answer?: fast, really fast). That’s a story for a different time, though, but spoiler alert: it also didn’t end well.

(L) – This is called a “Buddy Switch”. Nothing high-tech about it. I get them from Amazon. Even though they’re just made of cheap plastic and probably assembled in Malaysia by an 8-year-old who gets paid $4 a day, they’re ridiculously expensive (for some reason). When we handle it, we treat it with care and with military-like precision, like it’s the Hope Diamond or a Fabergé Egg.  (R) – I’m usually on my computer and using my switch 10-12 hours a day. It can be kinda tricky to position it between my fingers correctly because it’s pretty finicky, but Jen can usually get it in a few tries. I’ve actually built up a little callous on the inside of my index finger on my “switch hand”.
I took this screenshot of my computer screen while I was typing this blog post. The blue box in the upper-righthand corner is called a “scanbox”, it’s part of a software program called “EZKeys”. EZKeys allows me to speak through my computer and to interact with it in order to use all of my computer’s functions. EZKeys launches automatically every morning when we boot up my computer and it runs “on top of” all other applications, like Microsoft Word, LibreOffice spreadsheet, Netflix viewing platform, etc., so I can perform those tasks. This particular scanbox allows me to control the little arrow pointer cursor thing on your screen that’s normally moved around and manipulated with a mouse. There are a couple other scanboxes with letters and numbers that I use to type words, sentences and extremely long captions to pictures like this one and the previous one.
This doesn’t really have anything to do with anything. I just thought it was funny and was kinda mad that I didn’t come up with it!

Now that I think of it, I should probably add “being able to wiggle my finger” to my Daily Affirmation list of things I’m grateful for. My stroke left me with a clear, unharmed head, and it left enough strength in my right hand so that I can do many of the things I could do before and it allows me to have a fair amount of independence. In short, I love Jen and our marriage is great and everything, but let’s be real here – a little “me” time can go a long way!


Den Traum leben,

– Jim 

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“Random Thoughts” about nothing in particular

Posted on May 22, 2025 by jimbiggs23

Question: What is more terrifying and unsettling to endure: the movie The Exorcist or having an acute case of “writer’s block” and staring at a blank Microsoft Word document for 3-4 days? Honestly, I’d call it a toss-up between the two.

A couple Halloweens ago I watched The Exorcist again, and again it didn’t fail to scare the crap out of me. If I could’ve watched parts of it through my fingers, I would’ve. The special effects weren’t much by today’s standards, but the 50-ish year-old movie holds up great and really did the trick.

Equally disturbing is a bad case of “writer’s block”, even without the spinning head and projectile vomiting. When I use that term, it makes it sound like I consider myself to be a “writer” or something. That ain’t true. To me, a writer wrote at least a book or two or maybe a couple magazine articles. I thought about trying to do that one time for about 5 minutes, I quickly abandoned that idea when I realized I couldn’t come up with a story or a topic to talk about that would fill more than 2 pages. If I’m giving myself a fair shake though, I guess that technically you could say I’m a writer since 95% of what I have to say these days comes in the form of the written word (text messages, email, this blog, etc.).

I had decided that for this post I was gonna talk about one of my favorite free, over-the-air (OTA) TV shows that I watch all the time – Jeopardy!  (Question: I never know when you’re supposed to italicize or put “quotes” around book, song, movie and show titles. The internet was kinda vague on that. What’s the rule? Any ideas?) But any time I’d get an idea about what I could talk about, I wasn’t on my computer. When I did get on to where I could jot the idea down, the idea had already escaped me, and I was left with nothing. I have a pretty severe case of CRS (“Can’t Remember Shit”) syndrome, and it’s been flaring up a lot lately. Very annoying. As a result, I’ve been paying closer attention to those commercials for Prevagen, the “brain function improvement supplement” (aka, “Snake Oil”) more than I’d care to admit. I’m a long way away from pulling the trigger on that, though.  

I had a “feelbad” Friday evening. I wanna talk about it openly for two reasons: 1) It might clear my conscience some and help me feel less guilty. 2) It gives me an excuse to talk about what I said, and once my clever remark is put out there, I’m sure it will quickly catch fire and probably sweep the entire nation in a matter of days. The backstory: We had just gotten home from my dad’s and Jen flipped on the TV. It was still on Channel 4 and once again, they had cut into their regularly scheduled programming to blast into whatever show you were just getting into with their “*** BREAKING NEWS *** Weather Alert Storm Watch! ” coverage. The next thing you know, you’re stuck watching some reporter you never heard of, who’s standing in front of a gas station 3 counties over with a blown down sign, talking about rain and saying something like, ‘we could expect to see wind gusts of up to 32 mph’, for the next 45 minutes. And they were just getting to Final Jeopardy!!

Anyway, Jen had the audacity to keep it on that channel (she’s interested in weather coverage and stuff like that. Me? Not so much.) for like 2 whole minutes before switching over to FanDuel and putting the Cardinals game on. I felt another stroke coming on! In my defense – two things: 1) The local weather people seem to cry ‘Wolf!’ a lot; they do this whenever there is a stiff breeze, or it gets cloudy – and then they tell that you definitely need to grab your annoying weather radio and head to the basement if this horrible drizzling keeps up. 2) The Cardinals have been on a tear lately and I was feeling impatient and anxious to start watching them annihilate the Kansas City Royals on Friday night. So naturally, I made some smart-alecky comment – jokingly, of course – about the wall-to-wall weather coverage. I said, ‘WTFC?’ (‘Who The F-word Cares?’). Pretty clever, right? Yeah, in retrospect, I didn’t think so either. I felt like I’d invented a new phrase, and I had to beat feet to the patent office before someone beat me to it. In reality though, young people less than half my age have probably been saying that for a couple years, so maybe I should’ve just calmed down.

So, here’s the feelbad part: Come to find out the next day, that really was a big-time storm that blew through St. Louis. Several people in North City lost their lives in the storm and it caused over a billion dollars in property damage or loss. I felt bad for joking/complaining about all the weather coverage the night before. From now on, I need to cut people like Steve Templeton and Angela what’s-her-face some slack, even if they do get too worked up over Spring weather.

I wanna give Dr. Zazulia a shout-out for telling me about Claude AI last week. It’s a website where you ask a question about any topic you can think of, then it returns a whole ream of information in essay form. It’s like Googling something, except Google is taking steroids. It’s a little creepy. For example, I said to it: ‘Tell me about the game show Jeopardy! in the voice of the writer Dave Barry.’, and I’ll be damned if what it returned didn’t sound just like him! She was right when she said it was addictive. I “went down the rabbit hole” that afternoon and stayed there quite a while.

I know I said I wasn’t gonna complain about my petty Pet Peeves anymore, but I can’t help myself. This is definitely maybe the last time – I promise. You know the phrase “going down a rabbit hole”? How many times a day do you hear that phrase? It seems like I hear it at least 5 times daily and it bugs me. While I’m at it, the practice of speaking or writing with every third word having “quotes” around it also bugs me. I, myself, am guilty of committing these transgressions fairly often so they haven’t risen to the level of “Super Annoying” yet.


*** BREAKING NEWS (again) ***
Speaking of rabbits –
Update on ‘Operation: Bunny-B-Gon’:

I need to walk back my comments I made previously about our ‘mostly ineffective rabbit trap’. It appears that it isn’t as useless as I thought. We caught 2, count ‘em 2, (very embarrassed) little bunnies today. Jen wanted to try out her new Rabbit Stew recipe, but I convinced her to just release them out front.
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Public Service Announcement:

Cool, relatively new website = Justwatch.com.  
I use this one all the time.
I heard Guy Phillips on the radio this morning, I don’t really care for him much (HUGE ego) but he made a good point. He said something like, ‘Trying to figure out which streaming service has the show you wanna watch on its platform is practically a full-time job.’
That’s true but it doesn’t have to be that way – If you know of a movie or show you’d like to see but don’t know which streaming platform is showing it, you can search for it here and it points you in the right direction.
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Another PSA: “Joy Of My Life”

If you’re like me, you constantly have an earworm song playing in your head all day long. For some reason, I’ve had the song “Joy Of My Life” (written and performed by John Fogerty of CCR fame) stuck on “repeat” in my head for the last two days. Chris Stapleton also has a version. They’re both good, but I like the original better.
Good song – you should check it out.
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I don’t know how interesting it was to read this post, but I’ve sure enjoyed writing it. More fun, less challenge. Maybe I’ve stumbled upon my niche? I hope my head completely empties itself of blog post ideas sometime soon and I can do this again.


Danke fürs Leson!  

– Jim 

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Seeking professional help

Posted on May 12, 2025 by jimbiggs23

Jen’s mom said it best when she said, ‘They’ve got a whole army of people over there coming and going to do stuff for them.’ She was talking to her friend and neighbor and telling her about the time when she lived with us for a while a few years ago, and people were always coming over to do: repairs, housekeeping, home improvement projects (major and minor) and just about anything else required to make our household run smoothly and for our home to be comfortable. She wasn’t wrong about that either. We have relied on the help and expertise of a lot of people to keep this ship afloat in the last 18+ years.

Early on after my stroke, it kinda killed me to pay other people to do what I knew how to do myself (or at least be willing to try to do myself) if only I was able-bodied. Jen pointed out to me at the time, and several times since, that we spend approximately $0 on things like travel and going out to eat. I said, ‘I know, I know. You’re right. <sigh>. Again. ‘ She was right though. The only times we spent any substantial amounts of money away from the house were when we went to see the occasional movie, concert or other live event. The reason for this is because it just involves sitting still in a dark room, being totally quiet and watching a screen or stage for a couple hours. She’s pretty good at that but I’m considerably better – doing that kinda stuff lives in my wheelhouse. I’d say that she deserves a solid “B+” for “Effort”, though. A few of her points where deducted, however, when she nodded off 10 minutes into the movie “Interstellar” a few years ago. I will say that in her defense; half of the audience was sound asleep by the end of that blockbuster.

In addition to being a little irked about spending money on stuff that I kinda knew how to do, our “To-Do List” kept on growing and growing. It didn’t care that I had had a stroke and was knocked out of commission, or that Jen was already juggling 6 tennis balls and trying to balance 5 spinning plates on sticks while simultaneously keeping us both alive and relatively healthy. Long story short I relented, and we began seeking professional help.

A few (but not all) of the people that became members of “Team Biggs” over the years (in no particular order):

Mark
After we had been home from the hospital for a good long while back in 2008 and having not had a proper hot shower since the morning of my stroke, I was feeling awfully funky and was heavily marinated in “ripeness”. Bed baths, or sponge baths, work okay in a pinch but they don’t hold a candle to the real thing. So, I came up with a brilliant plan, my idea was truly a stroke of genius, that idea was called the “Bucket Bath”. Here’s how it would work: Jen would wheel me out onto the deck, with me in my gym shorts/swimming trunks. This plan would only work in the seasonably warm summer months (I had yet to work through the details of what I would do for the remaining 75% of the year). She would then hoist me up in our Hoyer lift in a mesh sling (that we didn’t have yet) and roll my wheelchair out of the way. After that, she would give me a shower/bath with a bucket of warm water and soap. Kinda like how they wash elephants and other large mammals at the zoo. I was excited, I couldn’t wait to tell Jen about it. After laying out the details for her and asking, ‘Don’t you love it?’, she replied with something like, ‘Um, not only “no”, but “HELL NO!!”. Why don’t we get our bathroom remodeled so you can actually use it?’ She had to twist my arm a little, but it didn’t take much convincing.

We did our due diligence and got several bids. Enter Mark Molitor Construction. We got his name from an Occupational Therapist I was working with at the time. His wasn’t the cheapest bid but we ended up going with Mark because he was a really nice guy and we felt we would be most comfortable working with him on this project. Long story short (again), he did a fantastic job with the bathroom, and we loved it – still do, in fact.

Over the years we’ve become good friends with him. I bet he’s been over to our house over a hundred times, doing all types of repairs, DIY projects, etc. that are outside of my knowledge base and above Jen’s pay grade.

Ann
We met Ann a few years ago. She replaced our existing cleaning lady who was retiring (we really liked her too). She loves her work, she’s been doing it her whole life, and she puts a lot of pride in it. It shows too, when she finishes up every other Thursday our house is absolutely spotless. We’re gonna be bumming whenever she retires because it’ll be impossible to replace her. We’ve been hearing rumblings coming from her lately about the “R-word”, so we need to brace ourselves for when she decides to actually retires. In addition to loving her job and being very good at it, she’s hilarious. She frequently has us both laughing out loud. We’ve also grown very close to her, much like we have with Mark.

Kurtis
He and his wife, Brittany, run a business called Affordable Window Cleaning. As their name implies, they’re in the window cleaning business, and (you guessed it) – it’s affordable. They also do a really good job. When they finish up doing our windows, it’s hard to tell that we even have windows. OK, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but you get the point. They’re also very personable and hardworking, you can’t help but root for them and for their business to be super successful. That’s not to say it already isn’t successful, it surely is, but still. They were out here the other day, and he was telling us about how he wants to join the Navy sometime. I have nothing but respect and admiration for young people that want to go into the military, but secretly (and selfishly), I hope he changes his mind about that because we want them to continue doing our windows for the foreseeable future!

A lot of people have helped to improve our lives and have done stuff for us around here, over the years. They include: my brothers Dave and Paul, my three sisters Julie, Jan and Ellen (I could write a whole blog post about my siblings), Jen’s mom, her aunt, my parents, Greg, Brian, Susan Loos, Richard, what’s-his-name the roofing guy who looks like Walter White, Tom the sod guy, Dr. Zazulia,… and many others. Did I just win an Oscar or something? This is starting to feel like an acceptance speech. If I said something about everyone who has helped us, been part of our lives along the way and mean something to us, this blog post would be 15 pages long.

Speaking of being long-winded, I’m gonna go ahead and start wrapping this up now. Four reasons: A) It’s getting kinda long and I’m a little sick of typing. B) My (self-imposed) “go to press” deadline is just sitting there impatiently, and staring at me. C) I wanna get back to watching Black Window on Netflix. D) It’s time for the “Show ‘n Tell” segment of our program.:

Our sad, little master bathroom that looked like it did when the house was built in 1985. At the time of this picture being taken, I hadn’t set foot in here, or any bathroom, in two years.
After working his magic for a few weeks, Mark gave us our brand new bathroom. I wasn’t totally in love with the idea of making a costly renovation that I thought just might be kinda frivolous or not wholly necessary, but those feelings quickly evaporated about 8 seconds after I rolled into the HUGE stall and started taking my first hot shower in a long time!
(L) – Me and Ann at our house during the Holidays in 2023 – she’s become a really good friend of ours ever since we met a few years ago. (R) – When I took this picture of a restaurant wall on our trip to Italy in 2006, I remember thinking that I wanted to figure out how to make our bedroom walls look like that. Richard did this for us. He’s a magician with his paintbrush, a true artist.
(L) – Greg built us this planter box/trellis thing in 2021, (R) – We’re anxious for the flowers Jen planted the other day to (hopefully) fill out this Spring. (Note: I agree, the grass over there does look pretty awful and we’re addressing it (today, in fact). So please give us a minute 😊, )
(L) – My brother built these things for us last Fall to put in front of our shed. (R) – Jen planted some Mandevillas (annuals) in them this Spring.

It would be a totally ridiculous thing for me to say that my stroke was a stroke of luck for me. That would be a completely disingenuous thing to think, much less say, and people would rightfully call ‘BS’ on me if I did. But the truth is, we never would have even met a lot of these people or hatched these friendships if that hadn’t happened. I guess there is something to the saying “every dark cloud has a silver lining”.


Es braucht ein Dorf,

– Jim 

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“Wild Kingdom” (aka “Our House”)

Posted on May 5, 2025 by jimbiggs23

Jen and I are what people commonly refer to as “NiKNiPs” (“No Kids, No Pets”). Actually, that’s a big fat lie. Absolutely zero people call us that – I just made that up. Even though we don’t have any pets, animals are our favorite living creatures. Most children come in at a close 2nd, for that matter. We especially love dogs, but cats aren’t bad either. If push came to shove, however, and I was forced to choose, I’d have to go “dog”.

I guess we can technically consider the fish we have living in our backyard pond as pets, even though we barely lift a finger to help them survive – we basically just let them share our address. I’ll go days or even weeks without thinking about them. That works both ways, too, I’m almost positive they don’t know we even exist. I sometimes wonder if they ever ask themselves: ‘Where am I?’ or ‘How did I get here?’ If so, I could answer that for them: A) Well, you’re being held captive in our backyard, and you’ll almost certainly live out the rest of your days back here. And B), You’re the descendants of the 10 or so $0.25 goldfish I got from Walmart when I built this pond 25 years ago.

Speaking of 25 years ago, there is an electric pump at the bottom of the pond that powers the waterfall. It’s been down there all this time, plugging away, since Day 1. I keep half expecting it to crap out on me, but thanks to me crossing my fingers/toes and offering up a silent prayer, it fires right up year after year when Jen plugs it in. Good thing too, because I have no idea how I would even begin talking her through installing a new one with eyeblinks. Not that it’s more complicated than she can handle, it’s just that it involves a buried power cable and that connecting water lines (plumbing, in general) can be a bear. But this pump must’ve been built by John Deere in 1963, back when things were built to last a lifetime. All of this is to say that I’m relieved every Spring when the upper reservoir comes to life and water trickles its way down the waterfall.

OK, so what was I talking about? Oh, that’s right – animals and pets. That’s supposedly the main theme of this week’s post. The problem is, I don’t have much to say about either. We’ve already established that we both love animals and that we’d love to have a pet, probably a dog, but that isn’t in the cards. It’s not like I can take him (or her) for a walk or play “fetch the tennis ball” with her. And Jen would be hard pressed to take on yet another responsibility, in addition to the 14 she already has. So, it wouldn’t be fair to the dog (or Jen). “Precious” would be largely ignored by us, truthfully speaking, and she would spend her days plotting her escape from this prison we put her in. But having a pet isn’t really necessary for us to get our “animal fix” because Mother Nature has stepped in to help with that. It’s been looking like Noah’s Ark around here the last few weeks with all the animals – so we’re good.

<—————————-(((+++)))————————->
Pet Peeve of the Day
(Note: This is my last one of these because nobody wants to hear my bellyaching about the quirks of others.)

This one is also cheese-related:

The correct pronunciation of the word ricotta is: ree-COAT-tuh. Again, my heartfelt apologies, but if you were born within 2000 miles of St. Louis, MO, in any direction, the right way to say that word is: ruh-KODDA.

Speaking of ricotta cheese, this comment is directed at my better half’s side of the family: When making lasagna, cottage cheese is not an acceptable or even legal substitute for ricotta cheese.

Also, speaking of pet peeves, I’m sure one of yours about me is my liberal overuse of italicized words. I admit, I can get kinda crazy with them.
<—————————-(((+++)))————————->

Our neighbor took these pictures of our new pet fox “Roxy”. She (or he, Jen flatly refused to attempt determining its sex) lived under our porch until Jen ruthlessly sealed off the entrance to her den with a couple cinder blocks. I’m kidding of course, that was my idea, actually.
(L) – “Rocky” stumbling his way home (probably to our attic) early one morning after a long night of tipping over trashcans. Shown here right after (again) stealing the baby carrots from our mostly ineffective rabbit trap. (R) – Mama Robin laid these eggs a couple weeks ago and then flew away, permanently, a week later. She could’ve at least dropped them off at the Fire House up the street. I get the feeling that her abandoned nest will be meeting our lawnmower pretty soon :(.
The last time we had hatchlings in our backyard.

BTW, we’re watching a good show on Max (HBO) right now called “The Pitt” with Noah Wyle. He played the young doctor in the medical drama ER back in the ‘90’s. It’s kinda like that – but way more intense and graphic – and he’s close to my age. Well, he was then too, but you know what I meant. Also, I’m currently in the middle of a good podcast (don’t say that a lot) called “Madam Ram”. It’s about Georgia Frontiere, owner of the St. Louis Rams. That was also back in the ‘90s – see a pattern? It’s a dramatization starring Toni Colette, among others. It’s kinda rare that I’m enjoying what I’m watching and listening to (book or podcast) at the same time. Good times at the Biggs Ranch right now.

I didn’t mind at all talking about serious subject matter like I did last week. But it feels pretty good getting back to writing about important things that matter like talking fish and cheese.

*** BREAKING NEWS ***
Just hours before I “went to press” this morning with this week’s blog post, we actually caught a petunia-eating rabbit in our not-so-great rabbit trap. That brings our total up to 4 rabbits caught in the last 12 months.


Frohen Frühling!

– Jim 

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Locked-In Syndrome: The Early Years

Posted on April 28, 2025 by jimbiggs23

Normally, I like to kid around as much as I can when I’m writing these blog posts, but what I want to talk about today doesn’t have a lot of humorous aspects baked into it. The reason I want to talk about it is because I think I probably have a fairly unique perspective on living life after having a stroke – not a ton of people have had a major stroke and come out on the other side in good enough shape to talk about it. I thought it might make for an interesting read (or not😊).

I had my stroke on August 3, 2006. Specifically, it was on a Thursday night around 10 o’clock while I was sitting outside on our deck, 10-20 minutes after we’d come home from visiting my sister and brother-in-law. Thank God it didn’t happen while we were still driving home! When it struck, my body went completely rigid and straight and it must’ve looked like I was “planking”, I clamped my teeth down on my tongue and it felt like I bit it in half. Luckily, Jen hadn’t gone to bed yet, so she was able to call 911 for help. I’m positive that I wouldn’t be here today if that hadn’t happened. I need to remember that the next time we have a disagreement or argument!

Anyway, fast forward a couple days – in that time I was hospitalized (obviously), was in and out of consciousness for the first several hours, got operated on to have the blood clot in my brain stem broken up and apparently spent a day or so in a coma (from what I hear). When I finally came to on Saturday, I was still pretty out of it.

The first thing I noticed about my condition was that I couldn’t move a single thing in my body, except for my eyes up and down. It was pretty awful. Other things that were pretty awful were my inability to see straight or focus on anything and the entire left side of my body seemed to be completely numb. Talk about WTH?! But the most awful thing about my condition that I quickly discovered was my inability to speak. If I can’t talk, I can’t communicate. For me, and probably most people, communication is high on the list of things you wanna do, like breathing air or eating food.

Not long after that, Dr. Zazulia, who has since become a friend of ours, came into the room and helped me with that. She wanted to determine if I was “in there”, cognitively speaking. To do that, she asked me some simple Yes/No questions. If the answer was “Yes” I was to look up, I was to look down for “No”. I’ll never forget one of the questions: ‘Is George Bush President of the United States?’ That’s how long ago it was!

I don’t remember now how long it was, maybe a couple weeks (?), but eventually I could voluntarily blink my eyes. We used that to work out a way for me to “speak” so I could get my thoughts out. Basically, whoever was speaking for me would (patiently) recite the letters of alphabet, then I would blink my eyes two or more times when the correct letter was reached. As you can imagine, it took quite a while to say even a simple word like ‘C-A-T’!. Soon after that, we cut the alphabet in half (letters A-M, then letters N-Z) and then I would indicate with eyeblinks whether the letter I wanted was in the 1st half or 2nd half. This sped things up considerably, but it was still pretty cumbersome and tedious for everyone involved.

Sometime after we got home in January of 2007, Jen and I came up with a way to speed this up even further with this grid of characters:

Spelling grid
Vowel:             a, e, i, o, u, y
1st line:            r, s, t, w, d, f, h
2nd line:          p, b, c, l, g, m, n
3rd line:           j, k, q, v, x, z
Number:         0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

The way it works: To get her attention when I want to say something, I start blinking. She then says, ‘Vowel, 1st line, 2nd line, 3rd line, Number?’ and then I start blinking if the character I want is on that line. She then recites the characters on that line. When she gets to the one I want, I start blinking again.

Examples:
          ME:    blink-blink-blink
          JEN: ‘Do you wanna say something?’
          ME:    blink-blink-blink
          (The letter I want is “c”.):  
JEN: ‘Vowel, 1st line, 2nd line’
ME:  blink-blink-blink
JEN: ‘p, b, c’
ME:    blink-blink-blink
JEN: ‘OK, c’
          (The digit I want is “4”.):
JEN: ‘Vowel, 1st line, 2nd line, 3rd line, number’
ME:    blink-blink-blink
JEN: ‘0, 1, 2, 3, 4’
ME:    blink-blink-blink
JEN: ‘OK, 4’

From doing this a lot over the years, we’ve gotten pretty fast. She can usually guess what word I’m spelling after a letter or two. Like most married couples that have been together a long time, she can even finish my sentences for me quite a bit! It saves us both a lot of time.

<—————————-(((+++)))————————->

Since I’m talking about this time period, I wanna change gears and make a hard left, and talk a little bit about my mental health going on then. In a nutshell, it wasn’t very good. From the end of 2006, all of 2007 and for most of 2008, I was basically a basket case between the ears. Any emotional strength I may have had leading up to my stroke went out to lunch for a couple years afterwards. I could’ve used an exorcism. I was “Undiagnosed – but something ain’t right.”

I spent almost six months in three different hospitals. In that time, I bet I interacted with 50, 100, 200, who knows how many (?) doctors, nurses, therapists and techs. I have a huge amount of respect and admiration for healthcare workers. Almost all of them are great people – nurturing, knowledgeable and empathetic. But like in any profession, you’ll eventually encounter a few not-so-great people. For the entire time I was there, Jen was always there with me, 24 hours a day. Even though I was the one in the hospital bed, I  think of that time as: ‘When we were in the hospital.’ Just because she’s my wife and I love her and just because she’ll most likely read this, so I better say something nice about her, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express enough just how much I appreciated that.

In addition to Jen always being there, someone from my family came every day, for six months, to keep us both company and to give her some relief. Even though I was off on the ledge of a tall building somewhere in my mind most of the time back then, I also loved and appreciated that and could never thank them enough. I shudder to think how some people have to spend any amount of time in the hospital completely alone because they have no one in their lives for whatever reason. Our hearts went and still do go out to them.

One time, my brother was there, and Jen left for a while to go get dinner or something – so we were alone. He knew how to communicate with me, and I wanted to make some humorous or smart-ass comment, even though humor was very hard to find back then. I wanted to say to him this line by W.C. Fields: ‘All things being equal, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.’ But what came out was: ‘All things being equal, I’d rather be dead.’ I don’t really know why I said that. I guess I had so many dark, depressed and desperate thoughts swimming around in my head and they finally found their way out. Suicidal thoughts frequently made themselves a home in my mind back then. Not to be melodramatic, but I felt like I was in a deep hole, and I couldn’t climb out. Even so, it wasn’t like I would ever act on any of those impulses and actually hurt myself – for a lot of reasons. For one, I’m kind of a wimp and actually causing myself pain completely flies in the face of my “no suffering or discomfort” policy, and I’m allergic to pain. Secondly, even if I wanted to do something drastic like kill myself, I couldn’t move a muscle to do it myself, so I would’ve somehow had to talk someone into doing the deed. Dr. Kevorkian was already dead so that window was closed. Looking back, it was probably a good thing I was a quadriplegic, just in case I got any wild ideas.

Back to my brother, after I said what I said to him, he got as angry as I’ve ever seen him get. That is to say, he didn’t seem very angry at all. He’s pretty even-tempered most of the time, I probably spiked his blood pressure up to 145/95. How he responded to me was something like, ‘Are you asking me to pass that on to Jen? I don’t think she’ll like it.’ But what he meant was, ‘What the F-word is she supposed to do with that, A-hole? You’re being F-wording selfish and not thinking about anyone else past the tip of your nose!’ He was right. I was letting my rock-bottom emotions cloud my judgement. Talking with my brother that day, and even though I still felt pretty lousy for a couple more years, that marked the end of my suicidal thoughts.

After we came home, that was when the real fun started. I was basically a shell of myself and wouldn’t start feeling right again until about 2009. During that period Jen was pretty much alone. She deserves all the credit for keeping it all together – her, me, us, our household, her job – everything. Needless to say, I owe her the world for pulling us through that. After those years had passed and I slowly emerged from my funk, we got busy figuring out how to navigate this new life that neither of us asked for.

Me and Jen at her grandma’s house in 2010. I like to include a relative picture or two in these blog posts and try to make a (hopefully) humorous remark about it. Here’s this week’s attempt: ‘Not knowing us or our situation, which of these two people, would you say, recently suffered a major stroke?’
Jen got me this T-shirt. She usually doesn’t pass up a chance to tease me.

Well, lookie there, I managed to run this post pretty long, sorry about that.  Once again, I blew right through my 1000-word “STOP” sign, I don’t think I even tapped the brakes this time. Maybe I oughtta start using a YIELD sign, you think?

Thanks for reading,

– Jim 

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Fifty Shades of… Green

Posted on April 21, 2025 by jimbiggs23

[Author’s Note: Normally when I write one of these, I ask my assistant (a.k.a. Jen) to proofread what I’ve written for any errors before I click the “Publish” button. But time kinda got away from me this week, so there wasn’t enough time to do both that and meet my self-imposed “Monday deadline”. So, any spelling or grammatical errors are solely on me.]

[Another Author’s Note: This week’s story isn’t nearly as disgusting as the one last week. Hardly any dead raccoons were involved, they aren’t worth mentioning.]


I love Spring. I know, that’s kinduva no-brainer – who doesn’t? All over the place, grass greens up and gets thick and lush. Even the crappiest yards look pretty good because weeds love this weather too, and dandelions are kinda pretty. Everyone’s yard is a finalist for the “Better Homes & Gardens” cover, except ours.

The other day, Jen and I were on one of her Facebook Marketplace missions to go pick up something or other and we found ourselves in a pretty nice neighborhood off Hackman Rd., a few miles from us. Nice houses, nicer lots with big, beautiful yards and luscious landscaping. I’m not too ashamed to admit that I had some serious “lawn envy” going on. The older I get, the more I can feel myself morphing into a “yard dork/snob”. I haven’t hit the insufferable stage quite yet, but I’m on the right path.

For a few years after my stroke, Jen was forced into the role of head groundskeeper, and it was her responsibility to take care of our yard. Up until then, that was my turf (no pun intended) but I had been sidelined and taken out of commission.  After a while, we decided to install an irrigation system and hire a lawn care company. Even though we both kinda wanted a nice lawn, she wanted no part of moving sprinklers every twenty minutes each time we watered the grass, nor did she want to have to spread crabgrass preventer/fertilizer/whatever 4-5 times a season. I can’t say I blame her, even though I always liked a little yardwork from time to time, I didn’t love it. After a couple seasons of regular watering and attention by our lawncare professionals, things were looking pretty, pretty good (if I say so myself) – a lot better than when I was in charge! There’s something to be said for paying people who know what they’re doing to come over and take care of things. It definitely wasn’t the most beautiful lawn I’d ever seen in my life, far from it, but it certainly was the nicest yard this house had ever looked at (at least, since 1998).

So, here’s a big reason our yard won’t be featured on a magazine cover anytime soon:

One day last Fall, we returned home from an afternoon of running errands to find a construction crew in our front yard. They were in the process of digging a big-a$$, 10’ long, 2½‘ deep trench across our yard. Once we parked in the garage and got unloaded, we went out to talk to/confront them. We were hot too, my BP felt to be about 205/170, and Jen looked to be mad enough to throw a few ‘Goshdarnits!’ and ‘What the hecks?!’ at them. About 30 seconds into our malicious tirade, we realized that they spoke little to no English, and our mastery of the Spanish language stopped at: ‘Si’, ‘Gracias’ and ‘Por favor?’. So, they just stood there looking at us, smiling and nodding. Actually, looking back, it was pretty funny, but at the time we weren’t laughing too hard at all.

None of it was their fault, they were just doing what they were hired to do by a company called Gateway Fiber. You can bet that 15 minutes later, I was sending a very strongly worded email to that company, I was also writing a fairly irate, blunt and direct text message to our alderperson (as soon as I figured out who she was). I’m pretty sure I had them both quaking in their work boots/sensible pumps. To their credit, they both replied to me to try and remedy the situation, but nothing really came from it. Gateway Fiber assured me that after their crew backfilled the trench and spread some grass seed, we wouldn’t even be able to tell they were ever there, in a couple weeks. That didn’t happen. Stevie Wonder would’ve taken one look and said, ‘Something ain’t right.’

They must’ve used the cheapest grass seed they could find on Amazon – the one that said “*** DISCONTINUED ITEM ***” and had the words “Highway Weeds” printed on the label. When it sprouted and came up, it was scraggly, lime-green and it grew twice as fast as the rest of the grass. When it’s time to mow the lawn every week or so, our yard looks like it has a neon green Mohawk.

We knew that Gateway Fiber, a company that provides high-speed internet access, was in our area because we had seen their work crews on the next street over in the weeks earlier. We noticed that they weren’t destroying every yard too badly, they seemed to be skipping over every other yard for some reason – I know next to nothing about how burying cable works. We just crossed our fingers and hoped they would be nice to us and our yard when they got to our street. That didn’t happen either. When they got to our house, they hit it with gusto, like we had insulted their mom or sister or something. In fact, they tore up our yard more than any other yard on the block for some reason. Incidentally, we use AT&T, a direct competitor of theirs, as our internet provider. They managed to bury their cable from the junction box in the side yard to our house while limiting the destruction to our lawn. We barely knew they’d been there.

Coming home and seeing this little slice of Heaven, we realized that our chances of winning our subdivision’s annual “Beautiful Lawn” award again this year were practically nil. ‘Oh well, we won’t even be able to tell they were here next Spring… ‘:
…this Spring. $50 if you can guess where the fiber optic cable is buried. At least it takes some focus off of our aesthetically pleasing solar panels and 8′ TV antenna.

<—————————-(((+++)))————————->
My Thought of Day:

The Scent of the Day (SotD) today is “Fresh Brewed Coffee” – it’s one of my favorites, I love it!  I am required by law to drink coffee every morning and I’m pretty sure I can’t live without it, but why does coffee always smell tons better than it tastes? That isn’t the case with cinnamon rolls or chili.
<—————————-(((+++)))————————->

We got a guy coming over in a couple weeks to talk about putting down sod in a problem area in the backyard. When he does, we’re also gonna see if he can fix the front yard so I can quit cursing in my head every time we pull into the driveway when coming home.

I realize that this is all just a “First World Problem” (a.k.a., “White People Problem “) or whatever. In the grand scheme of things, this isn’t that big of a deal, and I should just be glad we don’t live in Ukraine or the Gaza Strip or someplace like that. But man, I was ticked!



Auf Geht’s zum Blues!


– Jim

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Yikes! What’s that smell?! (part 2)

Posted on April 14, 2025 by jimbiggs23

Quick recap from last week:
We caught a super-sized raccoon
Putrid smell coming from the bathroom
Worm-like bugs in the sink
Flies in the bathroom the size of hummingbirds, straight outta Jurassic Park
Pest control guy put his foot through the ceiling
Called Roto Rooter-type guy to come snake out the shower drain

So anyway, the guy comes over to snake out the shower drain because we were convinced the horrible smell was coming from there. Jen told him about the smell (again, not necessary) and pointed at the white, wiggly grains of rice in the sink and asked, ‘What ARE tho…? Wait, are those MAGGOTS?!’  He said, ‘Uh-huh. Yes ma’am. They’re coming from up there.’, pointing to one of the light fixtures over the sink. He added, ‘I don’t think your problem is with the shower drain.’ I’m a little fuzzy on the details of the rest of the story but I think this is the part where Jen throws up all over the floor and his feet. Then he left, probably to go home and change into his old work boots.

We then called my brother Dave and asked if he could come over and do a little CSI work for us. Hopefully, he’d be able to locate and remove the source of the offending smell. A quick note about my brother: he’s always been extremely detail-oriented and thorough in everything he does, including his storytelling. His stories paint a vivid picture. By the time he finished telling us what all just happened, we felt as if we had just finished watching a horror movie.

The first thing he did was take down the light fixture in question, the one spitting out maggots through its decorative holes, to gain access to the attic. Dave then reached up through the dark hole where the light fixture was to see if he could determine what was up there by feeling around with his BARE HAND – and get this, he felt something with FUR and LITTLE FEET WITH CLAWS!  Jen and I simultaneously yelled, ‘AAAGH!!’

It reminded me of a show I watched one time about “catfish noodling”. It’s a pastime, if you can call it that, where you wade out into a lake or river and reach under a boulder or a rock ledge into a dark cavity with your bare hand and hope you alarm a gigantic catfish. We’re talking about a 60+ pound catfish. The fish is down there happily spawning away in his/her den (I’m not sure how spawning works), not bothering anybody and minding his own business (let’s just assume it’s a he since IDK). The next thing he knows, a big, hairy human hand is in there feeling around for who-knows-what. It scares the crap out of him, and he does the first thing that pops into his not-very-evolved brain – he chomps down on it with his mouth. The next thing he knows, he gets yanked up and out of his happy little home. He then gets thrown onto a dry beach/riverbank, where he immediately gets clubbed to death. I know I shouldn’t ‘judge a book by its cover’, but I’m guessing that a couple of these guys had Confederate flags in the rear windows of their pickups. Also, there was no shortage of scraggly beards and beer guts going on. It wasn’t just guys either, women were out there doing it too. Incidentally, a couple of those ex-Homecoming Queens also had scraggly beards and beer guts. I know I joke around about some stuff sometimes but I’m absolutely serious about this, except for the flags, beards and beer guts. Real people actually do this. This activity is labeled as a form of “fishing”. Now, I’ve done my fair share of fishing when I was younger, and I almost never risked losing a limb. The only thing “catfish noodling” has in common with (normal person) fishing is that occasionally a fish gets involved.

Let the record show about my brother, in order to help us out of our predicament, Dave voluntarily put his hand in a dark hole in ceiling and groped around for whatever might have been up there – and in case you’re wondering, he doesn’t have a Confederate flag (at least, not to my knowledge), scraggly beard or a beer gut. More power to him, I wouldn’t have done it even if I could have done it.

Anyway, back to our raccoon saga…
As luck would have it for Dave (and us), Blake (the Exterminator) had stopped by to check on his guy who was repairing our ceiling from where he put his foot through it the night before. Dave asked Blake, the varmint relocation professional, if he would pull the recently departed carcass through the not-very-big hole in the ceiling because he was afraid it wouldn’t come through in one piece. Upon hearing this nasty little tidbit, Jen and I let out another yell. Blake was triumphant (lucky for us and the raccoon), and he took him away to his final resting place.

At this point in the story, Jen vomited on the floor again. Then she immediately went outside and hammered a “For Sale by Owner” sign into the front yard – where she waited for her Uber to come take her to a nearby hotel.

After all the excitement died down and our house was put back together, the smell completely dissipated within a few days. Even though I haven’t been up there in years, I’m pretty sure the only thing that will be in our attic for years to come will be our old Christmas tree.

(L) – The entryway to our furry friend’s new crash pad. (R) – The circle marks the spot where he left this cruel world and was reunited with his ancestors in the Great Garbage Dump in the Sky.
(L) – The aftermath from the home modification we didn’t ask for. When Jen showed me this picture it took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at. It’s our closet floor covered in insulation from the attic. (R) – ‘Umm… sure, I guess we wanted a skylight in the closet.’

<—————————-(((+++)))————————->
“Pet Peeve of the Day”

The day of the week I’m writing this on is called Friday, not Fri-yay! That shouldn’t even be a thing people over 35 say anymore.
<—————————-(((+++)))————————->


I hope I didn’t gross anybody out too bad. Some people might look at me and think, ‘Now, that guy over there in the wheelchair must get bored out of his mind all the time.’ But the truth is, as this story hopefully demonstrates, my life is anything but boring because the next interesting thing like this is waiting to happen and is just around the corner. Besides, this blog subject was Jen’s idea so if it causes you to have nightmares – blame her.

[Author’s note: We haven’t seen or talked to Dave since all of this happened, we hope he’s doing okay. Also, my siblings used to ask us all the time, ‘Do you guys need anything?’ – that doesn’t happen anymore. 😊 ]


Viel Glück und gute Nacht,

– Jim 

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Yikes! What’s that smell?!

Posted on April 7, 2025 by jimbiggs23

[Author’s Note: It’s been brought to my attention that this week’s blog post is pretty disgusting, and it needs a disclaimer. Good idea, don’t wanna cause any harm or get sued. So, here goes: People with heart conditions, expectant mothers or those with weak stomachs should proceed with caution. Also, you might wanna finish eating before continuing.]


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But first, my “Pet Peeve of the Day”:

The correct pronunciation of the word “Mozzarella” sounds like “motes arella”, but I don’t care – because that bugs me. Regardless of the right way to say it, if you were born in the United States and you don’t have your own cooking show on the Food Network, the universally accepted way to say that word is “mottsa rella”. Sorry, that’s just how it is.

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I always thought raccoons were relatively harmless. They were just cute, little, furry, mask-wearing bandits. Nocturnal and quiet, they would dress up like bank robbers, sneak out of the storm sewer next door or the nearby woods and come forage through your garbage cans or backyard bird feeder – no big deal. I don’t think that way anymore.

Here’s why
(I’m gonna try for the “Cliff Notes” version because I’m determined to keep this post short, for once.):

One morning last July, while sitting at her desk in our sunroom and quietly working, Jen was startled by a very large raccoon that seemed to drop from the sky and onto the top of our privacy fence just outside her window, about 5 feet away. She very rarely utters a cuss word but at that moment, I’m willing to bet that what she said would’ve made a sailor blush!

In the weeks leading up to that morning, she had been hearing a scratching noise like something was scurrying around coming from up above the ceiling. We appeared to have an uninvited guest or two living in our attic, so we called a pest control company that very morning.

Blake the Exterminator came out that afternoon and set a very large live trap under the tree out back. The next morning it was – voila!  Just like that we bagged what appeared to be a 105-lb., very sad raccoon – who wanted to tear our faces off. That probably fixed the problem but just to be sure, Blake wanted to give it a week so there would be enough time for any more critters to clear out of the attic before sending out one of his guys to seal up the attic permanently.

The following things happened over the next 4-7 days and for whatever reason, we didn’t make a connection between them and the gigantic raccoon we just caught. Like most of my stories, this one also has several moving parts. These three things happened pretty much simultaneously:

A)  An awful smell was coming from the master bathroom and we tried and tried but we couldn’t locate the source. Have you ever had a dead mouse in the basement? Then you know what I’m talking about. The smell gets in your ductwork and then blows directly into your face while you’re trying to fall asleep, every time the air kicks on. It smelled pretty much like that except the mouse must’ve been the size of a guinea pig.  

B)  Jen kept finding these little, white, wormlike bugs crawling around in our bathroom sink. She had no idea where they were coming from. They seemed to materialize in thin air and drop into the sink.

C)  The pest control guy, Blake’s employee, came over and sealed up our gable vents with some chicken wire. While he was up in the attic working, his foot slipped off the rafter he was walking on and he put his foot right through the ceiling of our bedroom closet. He really felt terrible and embarrassed about it, he promised to come back the next day to fix it – and he was true to his word. After I got over being all ticked off about it and I finished yelling at him in my head, I felt bad for the guy because I’ve been in his shoes before. Years ago, when my dad and my brothers (and others) and I were putting a new roof on my sister’s house, my whole leg crashed through her roof and ceiling. But at least I had the decency to do it over the bathtub so I wouldn’t get little bits of drywall and insulation all over everything, unlike that guy. Come to think of it, she’s lucky I didn’t sue her (jk)!

We (incorrectly) concluded that some nasty little creature had attempted to make his way up and out of our shower drain but instead, he went on to meet his maker. So, we called a Roto Rooter-type guy to come over and snake the drain, removing the “obstruction”. Jen pointed out the bugs in the sink and the awful smell in the bathroom (the second thing was probably unnecessary).

[Another ‘Author’s Note’: I think I’m gonna wrap this up now, starting to run long – once again. These blog posts take on a life of their own. And, I didn’t even get to the ‘really gross’ part(s) yet! Believe it or not, this was the ‘Cliff Notes’ version.]

Bis zum nächsten Mal!

– Jim

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