Busy - October 31, 2021

 As I was writing the previous post (while the lasagna sauce was simmering on the stove), Son #2 called.  The Little Rotten Baby was running a fever, and her mom was taking her to the doctor.  Could I pick up their 7-year-old from school at 3?  Of course I said yes.  About 15 minutes later, Son #2 called back.  Could I pick up their grocery store order between 3 and 4?  Certainly, I could.  At 2:45, I turned off the stove and went to get The Nugget.  She rode to the grocery store with me, and then I took her and the groceries home.  Mom and the LRB were home by then.  The doctor had said the baby had a virus.

It was after 5 by the time I came back home.  I immediately re-started the stove.  Boiled the noodles and assembled the lasagna, then started on the ice cream custard.  I cooked the brown sugar a bit too long, and so the Butter-Pecan ice cream custard turned into Caramel-Pecan custard.  But it was mighty tasty, so I ran with it.  Next, I made the meat/cheese filling for the hanky pankies.  It was nearly 8:00 by the time I finished.

Yesterday morning, I had to make a grocery store run for things I'd forgotten the day before.  When I got home, I started the ice cream freezer, and began assembling the hanky pankies.  While I did this, The Husband went to the place where we were having the 2 p.m. "do" to help set up tables.  About noon, I loaded all the food into my car and headed to the party site.  About 2, the guests started rolling in.  

It was a nice party.  Food galore.  Everybody was relaxed and happy.  About 6:30, I threw in the towel and came home.

Granddaughter #1 was participating in a band competition and was scheduled to march at 7 p.m.  I rushed home just in time to set up my laptop on the back porch and see "our" band take the field.  By this time, it was dark and a bit chilly.  When The Husband came home a few minutes later, we decided it was too cold to stay on the porch, so we went inside and started trying to figure out how to get the band competition to stream on the television.  

Two old people trying to work a television that takes FOUR remote controls to operate was a mess.  During the process, I couldn't help but giggle about The Nugget's comment the last time she was here and wanted to watch cartoons:  "Grandmama, why are old people's TVs SO HARD TO WORK."  And then she quickly added, "But I'm not saying you're old."

We finally got the band competition on the TV.  

We came in second.

In the Kitchen - October 29, 2021

There's a family pot-luck "do" happening this weekend.  I decided to take home-made lasagna and maybe home-made butter pecan ice cream.  Over the past couple of days, I've had a couple of other requests; one wants pecan cobbler, and one wants "hanky-pankies."  

The ice cream may not get made, but it sure would be good with pecan cobbler, wouldn't it?

On the other hand, the ice cream might have to be an emergency substitution.  This pecan cobbler is crawling of the pan. 

I see an oven-cleaning in my future.

It might be my fault.  I doubled the recipe.  Well, kinda doubled it.

I've made this cobbler several times.  It is good, and easy to make - one of those "DO NOT STIR" recipes that goes in the pan in layers.  The weird thing about it is that the very last ingredient is 1.5 cups of hot water, poured over the whole she-bang.  This hot water, poured over 1.5 cups of brown sugar, makes a lovely, slightly crispy topping.  Yum.  

I doubled everything - butter, pecans, batter, brown sugar - until I got to the hot water.  Did I really need to pour THREE CUPS of hot water on top?  

I stopped at two, and put it in the oven.

When the buzzer went off after 35 minutes - well, see the picture.

It was kind of jiggly.  But an un-doubled recipe is generally jiggly after 35 minutes, too.

I baked it another 8 minutes.  It's still a little jiggly.  I don't know whether to cook it a little more, or leave it alone.  I pinched off the stuff dripping down the side; it's pleasantly chewy.  

Maybe I'll wait and see how it's acting tomorrow.

Maybe I ought to be finding that ice cream recipe, too.  The custard will have to cool before it's used, so I'd better do that tonight, if I'm going to do it.

Lasagna sauce is simmering on the stove.

Hanky pankies might have to wait until tomorrow morning.

Wedding Day - October 25, 2021

 Yesterday was a lovely day for a wedding - sunny and pleasantly cool- and Son #1 took advantage of it and married his sweetheart.  The ceremony took place in a lovely Chapel in the Woods.  Son #2 played his guitar and sang a sweet song written by the Bride as she came down the aisle on the arm of her father.  The Husband served as the Groom's Best Man, and patted his pockets when it came time to exchange rings, eliciting a chuckle from the guests.  There was cake and punch and pictures.  Afterward, the entire wedding party and a few special guests went out to eat.  It was a good day.  :)

Purple Hull Peas - October 21, 2021

 Yesterday afternoon, I had just settled down on the porch to do some digitizing when the telephone rang.

Nanny:  "Want to shell some peas?"

Me:  "Not really."

She said she had picked two big grocery sacks full of peas that morning.  

These were my "late crop," which I had planted before I came down with a sinus/ear infection that lasted two months and caused me to abandon the garden altogether.  I felt bad for sluffing off the shelling work  on Nanny, so I went down to her house to get one of the bags of peas.

While I was there, I checked to see if the butterbeans were ready.  They were not ready, but they were crawling with thousands of tiny army-helmet-looking bugs.  (I don't even know what to call them.)   I mixed up a sprayer full of bug spray and let 'em have it.  

It took me two hours to shell the peas, and another 30 minutes to wash, blanch, and freeze them.  They made about two quarts.

I don't even like purple hull peas, but my daughter-in-law loves them.  This afternoon I'll take them to her, along with a jar of "pea relish" that she likes.  It'll give me a chance to smooch on the Rotten Little Baby.  ;)

Back to the Grind - October 19, 2021

It was back to the regular grind yesterday for The Husband and me.  The Boss is away at a seminar for the rest of this week, so it's boring and lonely in my office.  Yesterday, I stuck it out until noon, then high-tailed it out of there.  Might do the same thing today.

When I got home, I set up the laptop on the back porch to do some digitizing.  It wasn't long before I heard Cousin Roger crank up his lawnmower and head this way.  He'd been banned from the porch ever since I found out his girlfriend had covid, and then he came down with it, so it's been a while since we've had an opportunity to "talk shop" about his wood-working projects.  He'd been busy while we were in Gatlinburg and had a lot to tell me.

Before he left, he said, "Hey, I wanted to ask if you would work on my overalls."  

"What's wrong with 'em?"

"The straps ain't long enough."  

Once upon a time, Cousin Roger was a terrific athlete, tall and lean.  In the last few years, with his health problems and lack of exercise, he's grown an impressive paunch.  The extra girth has created a gap between his overall bib and its galluses.

I said, "Well, let 'em out some."

He said, "I done let 'em out all the way!"

He wants me to cut the galluses and splice them with fabric strips.  I said I'd give it a shot.

He also said that he is having trouble putting on his boots - the paunch is in the way (plus he's still not breathing quite right since covid) - but he has engineered a way around the problem.  He has affixed two S-hooks to two lengths of rope, which he has tied to a sturdy stick.  The S-hooks go into the holes at the top of his boots and - well, you probably get the idea.

He's a genius in his own way.  ;)

Gatlinburg - October 16, 2021

 

The Husband had to go to a seminar in Gatlinburg at the end of this week.  It is nearly 400 miles from our house to there, and I did not want him to make the drive by himself, so I went along for the ride.  I don't like Gatlinburg.  Too many people.  Too many cars.  Nothing but touristy junk in the shops.  But I went.

We left Wednesday morning, planning a leisurely drive down the backroads, an overnight stay on the way, and the rest of the drive the next day.  We drove farther than we had intended - stopped in some little town called Harriman, just east of the "time change" line.  We had dinner at a Mexican restaurant up the street from the hotel.  They were having a margarita drink special; we had two apiece.  Mistake.  I had heartburn all night long.

We drove on to Gatlinburg the next morning, arrived around noon.  Our hotel room wasn't ready, so we had to kill 2 hours before we could stash our luggage.  I don't even remember what we did for those 2 hours - hung out around the lobby, I reckon.  Registration for the seminar was that evening, with dinner and entertainment following.  

Friday was the first day of the seminar.  They fed us a breakfast of rubbery scrambled eggs, sausage, and grits.  Yum.  There was a Craftsmen's Fair at the Convention Center.  I strolled through that after breakfast (didn't buy a thing), then went back to the hotel for the rest of the day.  Did some digitizing while I waited for the seminar to be over.

Several of The Husband's board members were on the trip, having gone in their separate cars.  One of them is pushing 90 years old, and will probably retire when his term is up.  He likes to eat at a steakhouse that's less than 1/2 mile from the hotel.  Having been there before, I knew we were in for a long wait, so I started trying to make reservations.  Well, they don't take reservations.  But they do take "call-ahead seating."  What is the difference?  It didn't matter, because they weren't answering the phone, anyway.  I pulled up the web site, which acknowledged that they didn't answer the phone, but they said to "come see us" and they'd put us on a list.  So I got in the truck and started toward the restaurant.  Bumper-to-bumper traffic.  Aggressive pedestrians.  Took me 20 minutes to go less than 1/2 mile.

We needed a table for at least 8.  There were 2 more board members on the trip, but they were not sure whether they would be joining us for dinner.  I tried to reserve a table to 10, but they said it would be between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. before one was available.  Since seating was limited, I reserved 2 tables for 4, and wouldn't you know, about 10 minutes before we were seated, the other 2 people called and said they were joining us.  Another scramble, but we managed to find them a seat.

Today's seminar was very short.  We were out of there by 11.  Intended to do another back-roads trip, but I had turned off the "avoid highways" setting, and about an hour into the trip, it sent us to the interstate.  We said, "What the hell," and tore out down I-40.  Drove all the way home, instead of making it a 2-day trip as planned.

I'm glad we did.

It's good to be home.

Camping calamities - October 11, 2021

When our sons were little, The Husband and I were so broke that we could not afford family vacations to the beach, to theme parks, or virtually anywhere else.  The best we could do was tent camping in state parks, and we did a lot of that.  In the process, we instilled in our boys a love for camping. 

When the boys were teenagers, we bought a pop-up camper.  It was air-conditioned, but not heated, but it was a big step up from sleeping on the ground in a tent.  I remember the first time we took it out, our younger son sat on the edge of the bed, soaking up the cool air blowing in his direction at the end of a hot day, and said, "Now, THIS is camping!"

We sold the pop-up and graduated to a "regular" camper.  A few years later, after the boys were grown and married, we traded campers again, but instead of selling the old camper, we gave it to the boys to share.  They did some repairs, spiffed it up, outfitted it with pots, pans, dishes, and linens.  Son #2 took it on the road for the first time on the same day that we took our new camper out for the first time.  We'd all been on the road for about an hour, going in separate directions, when our son called.  While driving down the interstate in Arkansas, one whole side of the camper sheathing peeled loose and flapped in the wind.  The Husband and I, traveling down some state highway in Tennessee, both felt like crying.  We'd tried to do something nice for the kids, and it had gone downhill.  

Fast forward to three weeks ago.  Son #2 and his wife bought a new camper.  On their first trip, when they got ready to come home, the truck wouldn't start.  

This weekend, Son #2 and his family headed out with the camper to Mountain View, Arkansas, one of the places we had tent camped when the boys were little.  An hour or two into the trip, they texted us:  they'd had a tire blow out on their van (they have so many kids that they can't get them all in the truck that pulls the camper, so they have to have a "chase car").  They were in Harrisburg, Arkansas - not much in the way of car repairs to be had there on a Sunday morning.  The Son put the "donut" on the van, and they made it on to Mountain View without further incident.

We are beginning to think that Son #2 needs a different hobby.  ;)

Baby Faces - October 9, 2021

Granddaughters 2-4 came to visit today (#1 was at a competition with her high school band).  I snagged #4 (she's almost 9 months old), sat her in my lap facing me, and had a short conversation with her.  She laughs at all my jokes.  ;)

After a while, I put her down on the floor, and she crawled around, exploring.  When one of her sisters went to the sewing room, #4 tried to follow.  The sewing room is not fit for human habitation, and is especially off limits to babies who would eat straight pins off the floor.  When the baby put it in high gear and headed toward the sewing room, I called her name, and she stopped, sat down, turned around and looked up at me and - 

Oh, my god - it was her daddy staring up at me from 37+ years ago.

On any given day, I have a hard time summoning clear memories of my sons' infant faces.  Maybe that's because the babies' faces changed so fast in that first year that I didn't have time to get used to them.  

But I remembered today!

"Worse than the Flu" - October 7, 2021

Cousin Roger motored over on his lawnmower Wednesday afternoon.  He turned off the engine and just sat there for a minute or two, seemingly looking off into the distance, but more likely trying to work up the energy to get off the lawnmower.  Finally, he climbed off and headed toward the porch.

As he got about 20 feet away, I hollered, "Roger, don't you bring your covid-infested ass up on my porch.  I mean it."

He stopped in his tracks.  "Man, I'll tell you what . . . this shit is worse than the flu."

He's managed to keep moving, still puttering in his workshop, through sheer force of will.   But he's coughed so much that he's thrown his back out.

He just brought over another box of stuff for me to paint.

Ima spray it with Lysol. 

Big, dumb, dawg - October 6, 2021

My cell phone rang this morning before I'd had my first sip of coffee.  Nobody but my sister dials my phone that early.  I had a mild sense of alarm when I saw that the caller was Son #1.  

Son #1 has a Rottweiler the size of an Angus bull.  His name is Axel.  He weighs about 160 pounds.  He's a sweet-natured dog, and he's pretty smart, but he does what he wants.

Axel had gotten out of the house this morning and had run off and wouldn't come back.  My son's finance had to get to work and couldn't spare the time to go looking for him.  My son wanted to know if I could go over to his house, find the dog, and put him inside the house.  

I understood my son's concern.  A neighbor had threatened to shoot Axel if he caught him on his property.  The same neighbor had shot Axel's girlfriend a year ago when she ventured into his yard.

I quickly put on some clothes, grabbed my coffee cup, and headed to my son's house (four miles away), hoping that Axel's big, dumb ass would be stretched out on the porch when I got there.

He was no where in sight.

I called and called and called.  He did not come.

I got in the car and drove down the road, looking for him, calling his name.  Nothing.

I drove up and down the highway, turned down the side roads.  No Axel.

I went back to my son's house, hoping the dog might have come home while I was driving.  I got out of the car and called some more.  No sign of the dog.

My phone rang as I was getting back in the car to drive around some more.  I figured it was my son, calling to see if I'd found Axel, and I was dreading having to tell him that I had not found the dog.  At  the same time the phone rang, it also beeped with the sound it makes for incoming text messages.  There was a whole stack of them.  

The caller was The Husband, wondering if I'd found Axel.  While I talked to him, I put on my glasses and read the text messages.  Twenty-two minutes earlier, my son had texted, "She found him."  

Axel had been inside the house the whole time.  

Peddling - October 5, 2021

When I came home from work yesterday, there was a big, taped-up box on my back porch.  I knew where it came from:  Cousin Roger.  There were also two camouflage wall sconces on a table.  Since I knew that there's someone in Roger's house who has covid, I sprayed the box and the sconces with disinfectant and left them alone while I did some digitizing work.  Later, I opened the box.  Inside it were the 9 wooden lanterns that I'd sold to a flower shop.  He'd done a good job on them.

As for the sconces, Roger had tried to stencil deer heads on them.  He'd used day-glo orange spray paint, and there was over-spray all around the deer, making them look like they'd been head shot.  I re-painted the deer (with tan paint) and tried to cover up the over-spray with smears of black paint.  

Today I will be taking this stuff - and all the other stuff he's left on my back porch in the last couple of weeks - to the flower shop to see if I can peddle it.  Roger's nervous.  He had made the lanterns an inch shorter than the prototype that I'd shown the flower shop, and I'd given him a butt-chewing over it.  Hopefully, he won't make that mistake again.  

Back porch findings

He has been wearing me out with texts and phone calls since I gave him my cell number.  I'm about ready to block him.  When I said this to The Husband (who is Roger's blood relative), he said, "Aw, don't do that.  Roger's quarantined, and doesn't have anybody to talk to."  I said, "YOU talk to him."

Roger called yesterday about 5 minutes after I got home.  I hadn't even had time to pee.  He sounded stopped-up, and when I asked after his health, he confessed that he now has covid.  He said he feels like he has a sinus infection, and can't smell or taste, but otherwise he's not too bad.  He says he still feels like working in his shop.  

When I come home with his money for the lanterns, I'm going to leave it on his porch and run!

To the Rescue! - October 3, 2021

Friday night when I went to bed, my laptop was trying to recover from the brain-washing I gave it Friday afternoon.  It wasn't quite a "format c colon" (only you old computer geeks might get that), but it was close.

By morning, it had come out of its coma, and I ran some other updates that finally got it performing as it should.  Thank goodness!  I had digitizing work to do.  Spent most of the day running back and forth between the porch (where my laptop was) and the sewing room.  The challenge in digitizing embroidery designs is that it is not a "wysiwyg" (another geek word).  Punching hundreds - thousands! - of threads into the weave of fabric alters the shape of the fabric; it pushes some stitches outward and pulls others inward.  What looks like a perfect circle on the computer screen sews more like a flattened circle at the embroidery machine.  This means that the computer design needs to be elongated/stretched so that it comes out round when sewn.  It's something of a crap shoot.  I did three different test-sews, and never got it right yesterday.

I worked on the design again this morning.  On top of the push/pull problem, other things needed adjusting.  I'd been working on it half the morning when the telephone rang.

It was our son.  He and his family have a new camper, and took it out on its maiden voyage this weekend.  When they packed up to head for home, the truck would not start.  The problem seemed to be with the ignition key.  Our son wanted us to go to his house, get the spare key, and bring it to them.  So I quit what I was doing, and we hit the road to their campsite, three hours away.

We were about 30 miles from our destination when The Son called.  The truck key had suddenly started working.  They were hitched up and ready to roll.  We did a bat-turn in the nearest parking lot, and pulled over to wait for them.  They'd gone camping with another family, and that other family was transporting two of the grandkids because there wasn't enough from for everybody in The Son's truck.  We met up with them all in the parking lot, took custody of the two grandkids, and joined the procession home. 

Back at the son's house, I sat on the tailgate of The Husband's truck and played with the Rotten Little Baby while the other adults unhitched the camper.  (She finally got a tooth, and you can see it when she grins.)  I gave her a short strip of duct tape, which entertained us all for a few minutes.  

After I got home, I tested the embroidery design again.  

It's better, but still not right.  :-/

*#(!*) Computer - October 2, 2021

Back in January, I bought a new laptop.  It is (was?) a beast - fast processor, lots of memory, lots of data storage space.  The difference in speed between it and my old computer was incredible.  Tell it to do something, and BOOM! it did it.

Over the last few days, however, it hasn't been responding as it used to do.  I kept getting notifications that it needed to be updated, but every time I would tell it to update, the update would fail.  Yesterday, I decided to get to the bottom of the problem.

Big mistake.

Long story short, I ended up having to "restore" the operating system.  The process started just after noon and was still ongoing when I went to bed last night.  And it's still acting a little funny.  And some of my programs are gone.  I can re-install, but it's a pain, and I have work to do.  Thankfully, all of my data seems to be intact.

 After mowing the pasture last weekend, The Husband told me that there were lots of ripe tomatoes and peppers in the garden.  I had not been to the garden for several weeks.  For a solid month (or more), I was plagued by a sinus/ear infection and simply did not feel like working in the garden.  Then I started helping Cousin Roger with his woodworking projects.  I neither knew nor cared what was going on in the garden.

But one afternoon this week, I went to the garden to get a few ripe tomatoes for supper.  

The Husband wasn't kidding; there ARE "lots" of ripe tomatoes and peppers in the garden.  I ought t go pick them and do something with them.  I haven't made any salsa or pepper jelly, yet.  Maybe I should do that this weekend.  Maybe.

* * * * * * * * 

Roger called yesterday afternoon.  He's still feeling fine, though his girlfriend is puny from covid.  He had something he wanted to show me, but since I've banned him from the premises for a couple of weeks, he asked me to give him my cell phone number so that he could show me a picture of what he'd done.  Reluctantly, I gave him the number.  

I will probably regret that decision.