​Grandpa is 89 years old.  A couple of months ago he had a nasty bout with a case of double pneumonia.  He was hospitalized for several days, and required having fluid drained off his lungs.  He had made it home on oxygen and was reading the “funny papers” when I called to thank him for a package of grapefruit he and Grandma had sent me.  Delicious grapefruit I might add.  One of my favorites.  “That’s the last part of the paper I read,” he explained to me in regards to the comics.  I smiled as I remembered that my brother and I used to rifle through the Sunday newspaper hunting those comics and then sprawl out on the floor on the carpet and take turns reading sections of them, occasionally bursting into laughter as we went. 
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Grandpa asked me what was new, so I told him that at that time we were expecting several little lambs soon.  “We used to have sheep.  That was a long time ago,” Grandpa replied.  My ears perked up.  I had no idea that my grandfather’s family used to keep sheep.  So, I asked him to tell me about it.  What follows is indeed not at all what I was expecting.  I liken it to a cross between a really sad Hallmark movie and an old western, one rife with strife, guns, and the law of the west.  (Well, mid-west in this case) It is truly an unbelievable tale as well as a piece of history.  My own family history to be exact.  

A while back I did a rare thing for a woman to do: I entered my "Nothing Box."  Some men may be able to immediately relate and know exactly what I'm talking about.  Since at least half of my readership will be women though, I shall explain.  A "Nothing Box" as my husband calls it, is where you purposely choose not to think about anything.  This is preferably accomplished, according to him, in a serene physical location like out on a river fishing.   However, at its most basic, it is a mental state of, you guessed it, absolutely nothing. ​