I'm sitting here on the back porch this morning, sipping coffee and watching the bird battle going on in the back yard.  A few minutes ago, a group of crows landed.  A resident hawk has taken exception to the invasion and is doing his/her best to run them off, one at a time.  When the hawk runs off one crow and turns its attention to another, the first crow comes back.  It looks like the hawk needs to call in the reserves.  I know they are out there, for I hear them screaming every day.

It is soooooo much more pleasant on the porch today.  Yesterday, the temperature reached 100 degrees in this area.  Sweat dripped off my face as I sat here with a fan blowing directly on me, twisting wire to make chains for pendants.   Last night about 10 o'clock, it rained, and I could feel the temperature dropping.  

This morning I have errands to run.  This year marks 50 years since I graduated from high school, and I was drafted into helping organize a class reunion.  At the most recent reunion committee meeting, the "treasurer" job got lobbed onto me, which means I, who can scarcely add, am in charge of the money.  In a little while, I have to go out to collect some checks.  Fortunately, I'll be driving in the opposite direction of the hobby store . . . . 

Speaking of hobbies, for a couple of days this week, I put polymer clay aside and worked on some wire jewelry, attempting some pieces that a few months ago I would have considered too hard for my skill level.  Two pendants turned out okay.  Some videos I watched used coiled wire.  They coiled their wire with a drill.  I tried it, but my wire kept breaking, so I coiled it by hand, instead.  Took forEVER, but it'll make a pretty accent on a pendant or bracelet.

Over the weekend, I was fed a cooking video in which an elderly lady made tomato dumplings.  Yes, TOMATO dumplings.  She used about a pint of home-canned tomatoes and a small can of biscuits.  She brought the tomatoes to a boil, dumped 1/2 cup of sugar in it, dropped biscuit bits into it, and simmered it for about 10 minutes.  I made some that day, minus the sugar.  It looked a bit like . . . well, vomit . . . but it was SO GOOD.  It reminded me of the macaroni and tomatoes that The Husband's grandmother used to make for big family dinners.  She sauteed onions first, then added the tomatoes and macaroni.  I'll put sauteed onions in my tomato dumplings next time.

Hot! - July 20, 2026

The weatherman says it's going to be 99 degrees today, and 98 tomorrow.  If you're looking for me, I'll be in the house.

This past weekend I braved the heat to do a little yardwork.  It all started when I noticed the fabulous squash plant in the flower bed.; it had been a week since I'd picked it.  I grabbed my clippers and, sure enough, there were several squash too big to use, lots more coming along behind them.  I snipped the big ones off and started toward the compost pile with them.  On the way, I stopped to snip a dead bloom off a rosebush and yanked a few weeds from around it.  Tossed the big squash onto the compost pile and headed back to the house with two squash I'd kept.  

As I approached the porch, I realized I didn't have my clippers.  I had absolutely no recollection of what I did with them.  They were not near the rosebush.  They were not on the compost pile.  I put the squash in the kitchen and went back out to find the clippers, thinking they were most likely in the weeds near the rosebush.  I started there, pulling up creeping charlie, working my way toward the squash plant at the other end of the bed.  Something buzzed my head.  I looked up and there was a swarm of wasps rising out of the creeping charlie.  I took off running for the wasp spray on the back porch.  The can was almost empty.  I abandoned the clipper search for the day.

The yard needed mowing, but I was kind of hoping The Husband would see to it.  About 4:00 when he said he was going to mow Nanny's front field with the tractor, I reckoned he was hoping I would see to our yard.  

Nanny met me at her back porch when I went to get the lawnmower.  "It's too hot!" she hollered.

I waved and hollered back, "Don't start!" and went for the lawnmower.

It took about 3 hours to do both our yards.  The Husband was coming back with the tractor as I was making my last few rounds at Nanny's.  I had been circling what was left of the "vegetable garden" - a few sprawling tomato plants and some sickly okra - debating about whether or now to just mow it down.  The Husband saw what I was doing and asked if I wanted him to mow it with the tractor.  I said, "Have at it."

So much for this year's garden efforts . . . .  

Yesterday, I bought some wasp spray and tricked The Husband into finding out where the wasps had come from.  They'd built a nest in a container concealed in the creeping charlie.  He doused it good.  I'm still scared to mess around in that area. 

Still haven't found the clippers.

Monday - July 13, 2026

I'm having a hard time getting my act together this morning.  

Once again, we are tending Roscoe, the Great Dane, while his family has gone on vacation.  If Roscoe wasn't such an egghead, he could stay at our house and it wouldn't be troublesome to keep him.  But he is an egghead, and so he has to stay at his own house while his family is gone, and we have to go over several times a day (he lives across the road) to let him out to do his business.  Every morning since Friday, I have gone over there at 6:30 with my coffee cup in my hand to let him out and fill his bowls.  Thankfully, with the weather being so hot, we are not having a hard time getting him back inside the house.  

When I came back home this morning, I tidied up the craft room.  (I KNOW!)  The Husband gave me some craft tools and some polymer clay for my birthday (good job, Hubby), and I had to find a place to put the stuff.  I've probably hidden half of it from myself.

I learned a good tip about polymer clay yesterday.   The tip was to condition hard clay by bashing it with a hammer while it's still in the package.  I tried it.  Remember the clay I bought from Walmart that I said was too hard?   I bashed it into a cube with the flat side of a claw hammer.  It went right through the pasta machine, no crumbling.  

No charge for that tip.  ;)

C'est fini - July 9, 2026

The tooth-pulling is over, thank goodness.  I can't honestly say that the dread was worse than the doing, but it was close.  The appointment was at 7 a.m.  Worried that I'd oversleep, I asked The Husband to make sure I woke up when the alarm clock sounded, then I set a second, more annoying alarm on my phone and put it on my side of the bed.  I needn't have worried, for I was up and moving an hour before the alarm went off. 

At one point in the torture chair, I worried that the dentist was going to break my jaw trying to get the tooth out.  

But he didn't, and I was out of there by 9:30.  I came home, took two acetaminophen tablets, and moved on with my day.  The worst part was that awful hunk of bloody gauze.  Yuck!

My BFF called after lunch.  When I told her I'd just had a tooth pulled and probably shouldn't talk much (the gauze was still in my mouth at that point), she said, "Good!  Now you won't interrupt me so much!"  

Bitch.  ;) 

* * * * * * * 

Tuesday afternoon, I tried making a silicone mold from a slab of clay I'd sculpted and baked the previous day.  First, I tried the water method in which you just squirt silicone caulk into a tub of soapy water then gather it into a ball and apply it to the form.  The silicone stuck to my hands to bad that I feared I'd never get it off.  I tried rubbing alcohol, acetone nail polish remover, and lots of soap, but none of those things worked.  Finally, a hefty coat of petroleum jelly helped to slide the silicone off the ends of my fingers.  I'm still picking silicone from under my fingernails.

I tried the cornstarch method next.  Mix cornstarch with silicone and knead it until it makes a sort of dough.  I did this in a ziplock bag.  Used way too much cornstarch and ended up with a crumbly mess.  Meanwhile, silicone was oozing out of the caulk tube when I wasn't paying attention . . . . 

Eventually, between the slime from the first attempt and the crumbles from the second attempt, I managed to coat the baked clay mold with a thick layer of stuff.  Laid it aside to dry.  When I got home from the dentist, I peeled the silicone off the mold and pressed it into some raw clay.  (Broke the clay mold in the process.)  It was not a very good image.  

Yesterday, I sculpted another mold - same basic design as the first one, but with improvements.  I think I'll just stick with using it instead of fooling with silicone anymore.

Pickles - July 10, 2026

Yesterday, I discovered a big bag of cucumbers on the kitchen table.  I knew The Husband must have put them there.  They were big cucumbers.  I didn't weigh them but estimated there were probably 7 or 8 pounds of cucumbers.  

We could not eat that many cucumbers before they go bad.  Unless I wanted them to go to waste, I'd have to pickle them.

We need pickles.  There are a few jars that have been shoved far to the back of the pantry.  They were made in 2015.  They should have been dumped years ago.  

I didn't really want to make pickles, but I washed the cucumbers and sliced them on a mandolin.  Sliced off a bit of my pinkie in the process.)  Put them in pickling lime water to soak overnight.

The use of pickling lime is frowned upon these days.  Apparently, the lime lowers the acidity of the pickles and creates a danger of botulism.  Nevertheless, I've always used it, always washed the cucumbers thoroughly, never had a jar go bad.  

The cucumbers are washed and ready to make pickles, but I'm not ready.  The jars must be washed and sterilized. I will have to make a run to the store for sugar.  I don't want to do any of this, but I will.

* * * * * * * * 

The four Granddaughters came bursting through the door yesterday afternoon to bring me a gift, a Cardinal (bird) that they'd sculpted from air-dry clay.  They did a fabulous job.  But it was freshly made, and not quite dry, and I set it on the back porch to finish curing.  This morning, its tail broke off when I picked it up to take inside.  Hopefully, I can repair it and touch up the paint before the girls find out!

Errands - July 7, 2026

I have a butt-load of errands to turn today.

First up, deliver a box of doo-doo to the UPS store.

Unprovoked by me, my health insurance provider shipped me a colon cancer test.  I did one of these a few years ago after my yearly physical during which the doc said, "It's time for you to have a colonoscopy," and I said, "Not gonna do it."  He ordered a doo-it-yourself kit, which must have put me on somebody's radar to schedule another one down the road.  In any case, I "dood" the deed this morning, and now I've got to deliver the box to the UPS store.  I hate walking in there with a box of poop, knowing the UPS counter person will realize what's in the box.  Less embarrassing than making our regular UPS guy drive around with it in the back of his truck all day.

Tomorrow, I must have a tooth pulled, first thing in the morning.  I am not expecting to be in a lot of pain afterward, but it wouldn't hurt to lay in some easy-to-grab grub for the natives in case I don't feel like cooking for a couple of days.  Or a week.  ;)

I might go to the hobby store while I'm out.  A few weeks ago, I dissed some cheap polymer clay that I bought from the hobby store, claiming it was too soft and gooey to work with.  I also dissed some cheap polymer clay that I bought from Walmart, claiming it was too hard and crumbly.  Since then, I've discovered that the two clays combine fairly well to come up with a clay that is manageable, so I might get more.

Lately I have been interested in making my own molds for use with clay.  Last week, I rolled out some clay about 1/4" thick, carved some designs into it, and baked it.  After the mold cooled, I misted it with water and pressed raw clay into it.  The clay came out of the mold fairly easily, but because the mold was pretty thick and not very bendable, I had to pull on the clay, which distorted the imprint a little.  I wondered if I could make a rubbery mold of the baked mold.    There's a can of rubbery dipping stuff in the craft cabinet, but I've never even opened it and don't know how it behaves.  Yesterday, I ran across a video in which a woman was mixing 100% silicone with cornstarch to make molds.  She kneaded it like dough.  That afternoon, I went to the hardware store and bought a tube of silicon and a caulk gun, but I haven't tried it yet.  This morning, I watched a guy squirting silicone into soapy water to make his mold.  He squirted a little silicone into the water, gathered it up in his fingers, kneaded it, and pressed a thin layer onto the thing he was molding.  He said he would add another coat after the first one dried a little 

I'm not familiar with silicone, but I don't understand why I can just smear straight silicone into my baked mold and be done.  Maybe the soap is what makes it bendable?  I'll have to research this before I cut that tube open.  

Yesterday, the mailman delivered a bunch of craft stuff from Temu.  It's been so long since I ordered the stuff that I'd forgotten about it.  I peeked into the bags but have not had a chance to really see what's in them.  I'll save that for tomorrow after the dental torture session, when I'll need a good distraction.  

The 4th - July 6, 2026

Cousin Gus, who is somewhere near 80 years old, invited us to his annual 4th of July barbeque, which always happens at straight-up noon.  We haven't missed many of his barbeques.  We usually get there in time to help pull the meat while it's hot off the grill.  Man, it's good.

But this year, Nanny (who just turned 85 and recently had a "spell") decided she wasn't up to the heat, so we ordered some ribs from our daughter-in-law's father's BBQ joint and had a quiet dinner with Nanny late in the afternoon.  

As darkness fell, folks in the neighborhood began to shoot fireworks.  Things were still booming when I went to bed at 11.

It was so hot last week that I rarely ventured outside.  Finally, on Friday, I had to go to the grocery store.  It was a madhouse.  As I entered the store, people coming out would stop and exclaim, "Shoooo!  It's hot!"  Inside the store, everybody seemed frantic and irritable.  There was a traffic jam in the bread aisle, with people grabbing bags of buns off the shelves and store employees waiting to refill them.  I did not dally; I got what I needed and got the heck out of there.  On the way out of the store, I heard a lady grumbling about the crazy people inside.  Then she almost backed into my car as we were attempting to leave.  For the first time in about 30 years, I laid into the horn on my car, which probably pissed her off even more.  

This week I have an appointment to have a tooth pulled.  The dentist has been telling me for months that the tooth needs to come out.  When I went in Wednesday for a cleaning, the area around the tooth had been tender for a couple of days.  So the time has arrived.  I dread it.  I never even had a cavity until I was pregnant with Son #2, and now I have a mouth full of crowns that have begun to loosen.  It looks like this might be the Year of the Dental Makeover.  Boy, do I dread it.