Dirty Diapers - December 31, 2021

 It was slow going yesterday morning, getting me and my BFF up and moving.  We'd stayed up late - well, late for me; the BFF stays up half the night every night - and it took a lot of coffee for our engines to idle smoothly.  We goofed around with music a little bit.  Made another pot of coffee.  Finally, about noon, I said, "We should get dressed and do something."  

BFF had been eyeing the little pond down the hill from the house.  She likes to fish but hasn't had much luck lately.  She had a rod & reel in the back of her Explorer.  No reason why she couldn't walk a few steps and wet a hook, so we walked down to the pond.  This pond doesn't see fishermen very often.  The edge is ringed with saplings and sawbriers, and knee deep in dead leaves.  There was no good place to rear back to cast a lure.   I came back to the house and got the loppers and whacked down some of the saplings so BFF could get some clearance but didn't do much good.  She hung her lure in an over-hanging limb on the second cast but couldn't get it loose.  Had to cut the line and leave the lure in the tree.  

There are a couple of lakes not far from my house, and although BFF didn't plan on fishing them this trip, we decided to take a drive so she could scope them out.  We ended up driving a huge loop around this part of the county, just sight-seeing.  

It was late afternoon by the time we came home.  Earlier in the day, I'd seen a recipe for an appetizer made with crescent rolls, sausage, cream cheese, and rotel tomatoes.  We actually found all the ingredients to make them.  The recipe said to cut each triangle into two triangles and roll up a bit of the meat/cheese/tomato mixture in each one.  Folded, they looked like a sheet pan full of dirty diapers.  

But they were tasty.  We had dirty diapers for breakfast this morning.  ;)

Our earlier sight-seeing trip put an itch to fish on the BFF, so she has gone fishing this morning wearing the lucky fishing shirt I made her for Christmas.  I hope it works!

BFF - December 30, 2021

 My BFF lives almost a whole day away, whether you're driving it or fooling with an airport.  She's always saying, "We should get together.  Have a craft summit.  Drink a bunch of margaritas."  All of this sounds mighty good, except for the distance problem.

Right before Christmas, she called me and said she might be coming up here for a visit after Christmas.  The day after Christmas, she called and said that her daughter, home from college, had tested positive for covid.  They had not been within six feet of each other for over a week, and my BFF felt pretty confident that she did not have covid.  Still, I told her, "Don't you bring covid up in my house.  I'll need a negative test 'fore I let you in."  

"I'll call you," she said.

She called Tuesday afternoon, more than halfway here.  She was feeling fine.  Her daughter had been quarantining at a friend's house since her diagnosis.  

I did not make her show me a negative covid test, but we didn't hug when she got here Tuesday afternoon.

We sat on the back porch in our pajamas, drinking coffee and chatting, all day yesterday.  Switched from coffee to martinis for happy hour.  When The Husband came home, we had dinner and retired to the living room for a jam session - she played the guitar, The Husband accompanied her on the ukulele, I noodled around with the mandolin but mostly listened and applauded.  It was late when we called it a night.

Maybe we'll put on some real clothes today and take a drive, or something.  

Yesterday The Husband and I were the laziest two people on the planet.  I fixed myself a nest on the couch and read all day.  He did a lot of recliner surfing.  If we hadn't had left-over sausage balls and pecan pie, we'd have starved, I reckon.

I got a new pair of comfy warm house pants for Christmas - you know, the kind you wear to Walmart - and slept in them that night and stayed in them most of yesterday.  Around noon, I got up and moved to the porch (it's still 70+ degrees here).  My knee brace (a story for another day) slipped as I walked, so when I sat down, I propped my foot on a nearby chair and pulled up my britches leg to adjust the brace.  

And my leg was about the weirdest-looking thing I ever saw.  It gave off an ethereal glow in the noonday light.  

Fur - a LOT of it - from the inside of the house pants was trapped in my leg hair.  Felted in it, you might say.

Shameful.  What if there's a wreck?

I took care of it.  I should be good until spring.  

* * * * * * * * * 

The book I read yesterday is #5 of Clayton Lindermuth's "Baer Creighton" series.  Baer is a badass, but you can't help but like him.  

Started #6 when I went to bed last night.  There's one more book in the series after this one.  When I'm done with these, I'll start reading a biography of Napoleon.  It probably won't be nearly as much fun as the Baer books.

* * * * * * * * 

I'm off from work for the whole week.  Don't know what I'm going to do with this time.  My BFF may visit for a few days, or she may not.  We'll see.  My embroidery machine needs servicing, but I'd sooner take a beating as drive to town.  I could work on the owl painting I started a month ago, but . . . nah, I ain't feelin' it today.  

We had a wonderful Christmas.

Thank goodness, it's over.

It was close to midnight before I made it to bed Christmas Eve.  The next thing on the agenda was breakfast at Nanny's at 9 a.m.  

We've been having breakfast at Nanny's ever since our first child's first Christmas.  As The Husband's siblings married and had children, the crowd grew bigger and bigger.  Now, Nanny has great-grandchildren coming to breakfast.  With the increase in numbers (and Nanny's years), we've divvied-up the cooking job.  My job is to bring the biscuits and cook the eggs.

I rolled out of bed at 5:30 a.m. to see to the biscuits.  I cheated and bought four packages of frozen biscuits.  (Don't frown; they're good.)  As I was opening the bags and putting the biscuits on the baking sheets, I discovered that only one package of biscuits contained full-size biscuits; the rest were "tea biscuits," a little bigger than fifty cent pieces, but there were twice as many of them.  Who cares how big they are as long as there are enough of them?  Slap 'em on the trays and get 'em in the oven.  The Husband and I opened our presents while the biscuits baked, then we loaded the rest of the gifts into the truck and went to Nanny's.

We had about an hour between the eating/gifting at Nanny's and the gifting at Son #2's house.  We came home and rested for a little while, and when it was time to hit the road again, we were so full and lazy that we could barely pry ourselves off the furniture.  But grandbabies awaited, so we loaded the rest of the presents into the truck and headed to their house.

The Little Rotten Baby was barely visible among the pile of toys and boxes.  I finally saw her head bobbing behind a toy ice cream stand that was taller than she was.  I called her name, and she peeped out from behind the toy, grinned, and started toward me.  But it was a hazardous obstacle course for one who was just learning to walk on tiny legs.  I met her halfway and plucked her to safety while her sisters helped their Poppy bring in their new gifts.

Sixteen-year-old Granddaughter #1 had asked us for a refrigerator for cosmetics.  (For real!  Who knew such things even existed?)  The refrigerator came with a couple of little roller thingies designed to massage the face.  One of them even vibrated.  When Granddaughter #1 got around to opening the rollers, she rubbed one across her own face and just about moaned in ecstasy.  She untangled herself from her pile of presents and tried it out on her mom, and since the LRB was sitting in her mom's lap, she tried to roll it across the baby's chubby cheek, as well.  At first, there was a bit of a tussle between the sisters for ownership of the device, but the big sister won and managed to hold down the baby's arms long enough to gently massage the baby's cheek.  And the baby fell back in her mother's arms in submission and, after a few seconds, turned her head in a silent, "Now, do this side."  It was hilarious.

About 4 p.m., with our breakfast wearing off, we packed up to come home.  After all the good, home-cooked food we'd eaten over the past couple of days, I wanted a hamburger, but the fast-food joints weren't open, so we came home and made sandwiches.  I put on my comfy new pajama pants and curled up on the couch with a book, longing for bedtime.  About 9 p.m., just as I was about to call it a night, my BFF called, and we spent 2 hours on the telephone, re-capping our Christmases.

It was a good day.  :)

Christmas Eve - December 24, 2021

 

The company - the kids and kinfolk from the hill - have come and gone.  We had a wonderful time.  Lots of good food, and a few martinis.  And a redneck version of wassail.  The kitchen is all cleaned up, and I'm on the back porch (70 degrees here!) trying to work up enough gumption to get up and go to bed.  There's a book on the nightstand that's calling my name.

Merry Christmas to all!

Elfing - December 23, 2021

For the past two days, the sewing/craft room has been operating at full capacity:  6 personalized coffee mugs, 4 heat-pressed t-shirts, 2 embroidered hand towels, 1 embroidered couch throw . . .  and a partridge in a pear treeeeee.  (Yeah, ok....no partridge.) 

As of yesterday morning, I still had two more gifts to make, and all of the presents needed to be wrapped.  I would have to go buy stuff to make those two more gifts, and I needed to go to the post office to mail (overnight!) one of the gifts.  And I'd need to cook supper.  While I drank my first cup of coffee, I made a mental list of things to be done.  I decided to start with the gift-wrapping.

We did not put up an actual Christmas tree this year.  We were both simply too lazy to get the tree out of the attic.  One of The Husband's vendors had given him a big gnome full of popcorn, candy, etc.  The gnome was cute, and Christmas-y.  And pointed on top, like a tree.  So he became the Christmas tree.  We had temporarily set him atop a stack of coloring books on a dusty, cluttered end table in the living room.  When I wrapped the first present and took it to the living room to put it under the "tree," I thought, I've got to do something about this awful mess.  I cleaned the table and searched the sewing room for some Christmas fabric to drape over it.  

The Gnome Tree

The Christmas fabric was in a Rubbermaid tub that has not been opened since last year's pre-Christmas crafting frenzy.  Besides fabric, the tub contained a finished Santa Claus table runner, a finished set of placemats and napkins, and a few other Christmas things that had been in the antique mall booth I'd closed down in the fall of 2019.  I also found a large piece of polar fleece fabric, just the right size to make a couch throw.  This polar fleece provided material for one of the two gifts I still needed to make.  It just needed to be trimmed, hemmed and embroidered.   I could run the fleece through the serger and trim and hem (overcast) it at the same time.  And I could finish the gift-wrapping while the embroidery machine was running.  GAME ON!

I got 1.5 sides of the polar fleece hemmed when the serger gave out.  The motor would run, but nothing would happen at the needle.  No time to investigate (my guess is that a belt is broken).  I switched to the sewing machine and set it to do an overcast stitch.  The stitches didn't come close to matching the serger's overcast stitching.  Plus, the feed dogs on this old sewing machine are about worn out; it has trouble pulling fabric evenly through the machine.  I had to push the polar fleece from the front and pull from the rear.  This resulted in uneven stitching.  Oh, well, maybe the gift recipient won't notice.  I hooped the ragged-ass couch throw and took it to the embroidery machine.

Aaaaaand the embroidery machine started breaking the thread.  

Every sewing machine in the room had revolted!

Finally, I got the embroidery going, and left the machine running while I went to the post office and to buy a sweatshirt for my brother-in-law, the last gift I intended to make.  

Well, guess what?  No sweatshirts out there in his size - not in our little town, anyway.  I ended up going to a t-shirt shop for a nice, long-sleeved t-shirt.  I'd texted my sister-in-law about what size he needed (he's lost a lot of weight this year).  She did not answer, so I made a guess and bought a shirt.  I was halfway home when she answered.  I'd bought the wrong size.  Turn around, go back to the t-shirt store, swap shirts. 

The rest of the day went pretty smoothly.  The remaining gifts got made and wrapped.  By dinnertime, there was a pot of creamy chicken corn chowder on the stove.  

The kids and the folks on the hill will be coming for dinner tomorrow night - nothing fancy - maybe chicken & dumplings and some nibbles, maybe some left-over corn chowder, maybe a banana pudding.  Tomorrow will be "cooking day."  

Today will be cleaning day and "what-did-I-forget?" day. 

I should get busy!

Babysitting - December 21, 2021

 The Little Rotten Baby showed up at my house about 9:30 yesterday morning, wearing her Christmas finery.  She'll be a year old next month.

I managed to position my decrepit self down on the floor with her, and we rolled a ball back and forth while her parents slipped out the door.  It took only a few minutes before she looked around and realized that her parents were not in the room, but I distracted her with the ball, and the expected hissy fit did not happen.

During most of her previous visits, she's been confined to our living room and kitchen.  It was time for a tour of the entire house.  We went into all of the bedrooms and bathrooms, looked at ourselves in mirrors, flicked light switches off and on.  As we went into each room, she looked around with something akin to wonder, and pointed at various objects that caught her attention.  Before the day was over, she acted like she owned the place, wandering from room to room at will.

We read every baby book in the house.  She loved the farm animal pop-up book.  As I made the noises for each animal ("Cock-a-doodle-DOOOOOO!"), she'd whirl around and look at me like I'd lost my mind.  But we learned, "Where's his nose?" with little taps on the animals' nose and her nose and mine.  By the time she went home, she knew where everybody's nose was.

I was scheduled to pick up a grocery order at 1 p.m., but I do not have an LRB-sized car seat.  To solve the problem, Granddaughter #1 (who can drive) and her younger sisters came over to babysit while I went to get the groceries.  After that, we made Rice Krispy treats.  Don't tell her parents, but I fed the LRB tiny bites of the treats.  She seemed to approve of them.  ;)

Her daddy came to get her about 4 p.m.  Before they left, I pulled out the farm animal book and showed her the cover.  "Where's his nose?"  She tapped the noses of all three animals on the cover.

The LRB is a genius.  :)

Christmas is Coming - December 20, 2021

 

For the past few years (and this year), the Best Boss in the World has given me time off before and after Christmas.  I typically use the time before Christmas to make a few extra Christmas gifts, buy the groceries to make Christmas goodies, and squeeze in a bit of last-minute shopping.  While I appreciate the time off before Christmas, the after-Christmas time off is absolutely wonderful.  

Today, none of the usual pre-Christmas stuff will get done, for I have the good fortune to babysit the Little Rotten Baby while her parents do some shopping.  We kept her for a little while last night while they wrapped presents.  She is such a joy, rotten-ness and all.  And such a FAKER!  She got a little fussy toward the end of the evening, and I laid her down to change her diaper.  As she was grumbling about it, I mocked her:  "Wah-wah-wahhhhhh."  And she grinned and went, "Wah-wah-wahhhhh."  Faker.

She loves books.  Last night, we read every book that had good pictures in it.  This morning, in preparation for her arrival, I busted open a set of pop-up books we bought her for Christmas and chose a farm animal book.  The first page has a giant rooster that pops up.  We'll be cock-a-doodle-dooing today!

  

Band Kids - December 15, 2021

 I have a confession to make:  I don't like Christmas music.

Except when my grandchildren are playing it.  :)

'T'is the season for Christmas concerts.  Granddaughter #1 plays the flute in her high school band.  Granddaughter #2 plays the trumpet in her middle school band.  We attended their concerts - #1 on Monday night, #2 last night.  It was marvelous (except that the gymnasiums were hot and crowded, and probably swimming with every kind of germ under the sun).

Band kids are just the best.  I was so proud of them all, not just my young'uns.  They were all dressed up, spit-shined, and eager to get down to business.  Even the sixth-graders, who had never held a horn, or a drumstick, or a mallet until August of this year, put on a great performance.  So did the 7th grade band, which started its music education in the throes of a pandemic.  The high school band was absolutely outstanding.  They sounded like a professional orchestra.  One young man did a 4-minute xylophone solo FROM MEMORY that was a joy to hear.

Statistically, band kids are among the top academic performers in schools.  This appears to include marching band students, as well, even though they have less free time to study.  

No other class in school - and probably no other group in any part of their lives - offers an opportunity to work in a large group composed of sub-groups (the individual sections - brass, woodwinds, percussion) at this stage of their lives.  Regardless of ethnicity or shape/size, band is a one-for-all and all-for-one enterprise.  

Both of my sons were in band, and all of my grandchildren - the ones who are old enough - either are or have been in band.  They've found long-term, enriching friendships with people whose moral compasses and interests mirror theirs.  Some of my most cherished times with them have been when someone has whipped out an instrument and started a family sing-along.  

Music is a good thing.  Even Christmas music.  ;)

Oh, what a night! - December 11, 2021

Last evening, as I was sitting on the porch, relaxing after our trip, Granddaughter #1 texted me a picture of a gray shirt featuring three Christmas-y gnomes wearing red/black buffalo plaid hats.  The message was, "Can you make this?  I have the shirts."

Of course, I said, "Sure."  

My first thought was to embroider the gnomes.  I already had an embroidery file for 3 Christmas gnomes, these wearing candy-striped hats and holding candy canes.  I texted a picture to the Granddaughter and asked if those gnomes would do, and she said they would.  It then occurred to me that the embroidery design might be too dense to put on t-shirts.  I asked her if the shirts she has are t-shirts or sweatshirts.  She said they're t-shirts.  

Nix the embroidery idea.  Move to heat-press vinyl.  

Long story short, I'm not all that experienced with heat-press vinyl or the tools to create the design, and the design is a hard one (for me).  I fooled around with various methods until almost midnight and never did get a vinyl design that will work.

Meanwhile, a digitizing customer sent a message requesting some edits to a machine embroidery file she bought from me.  She needs it right away to make Christmas gifts.  I stopped vinyl-ing and started the digitizing.

MEANWHILE, a terrific storm brewed.  We'd figured it was coming when we came home to 80-degree temperatures.  Sure enough, about 6 p.m., weather alerts sounded.  There was one tornado alert after another.

When I went to bed at midnight, The Husband was snoring peacefully, storm or no storm.  Normally, I would've been doing the same thing, but I was hyped-up from all the unsuccessful craft attempts and could not go to sleep.  I lay there listening to the wind blow, to the emergency sirens wailing (audible from 5 miles away), to the rain pelting against the window.  There's a military base not far away, and the fly boys love to zoom around in storms (practicing, I guess), and they were hot at it last night about midnight.  Every time one flew over, I was sure it was a tornado.

This morning, I don't know if there were any tornadoes in our area.  Sadly, others north and west of us were not so lucky.  My heart aches for the people who lost lives and homes in the storm.

Heartache or no, I've got to get busy gnoming.

Home Again - December 10, 2021

Yesterday was our last day in Asheville.  Before we left town, we checked one thing off of my bucket list; we toured the Biltmore mansion.  The house is so awesome that any attempt by me to describe it would be a disservice.  

We parked our vehicle in Lot C, which has a shuttle up to the mansion.  The shuttle dropped us off not far from the door.  There was a long line waiting outside.  Groups enter in 15-minute increments.  Our tickets were for 11:15, and we were a little early, so we had time to look through the gift shops before our tour.  

The mansion was awesome, as I said earlier.  The house, the largest in the U.S., is over 150,000 square feet of living space.  It features a bowling alley and an indoor swimming pool.  I cannot fathom the kind of wealth it took to build the place, or to live there.  It was not a private residence for very long.

When we left the Biltmore, we hunted down a bbq joint called "Bear's Smokehouse." On Wednesday, an employee at another restaurant had told us that Bear's sells something called "Bear Balls."  Who could resist those?  We had to try them.  Turns out, they're a mixture of cornbread, macaroni & cheese, and chopped pork barbeque, rolled into balls and deep fried.  Think hushpuppies, only slightly larger, with meat and macaroni and cheese inside.  They were amazing.

Full of Bear Balls, we headed for home.  In Bear's parking lot, I set my mapping program to "avoid highways" and plotted a route to Cleveland, Tennessee, intending to take the backroads home.  Highway 64 runs almost all the way across the bottom edge of Tennessee.  We had to take some serious backroads to get to 64.  Highway 74, which we picked up outside of Asheville, turns into highway 19 and runs through Nantahalla Forest in North Carolina.  Parts of this road seemed like a death trap.  I wore the passenger brake out as we wound our way around the treacherous 2-lane road, past some of the most beautiful scenery you'd ever want to see.  I kept praying that we would get on a less curvy section of the road before dark, and we did, but then we entered the Cherokee National Forest.  By that time, it was dark, and the road, while not quite as narrow, was just as curvy and treacherous.  We reached Cleveland, Tennessee around 7 p.m.  Our nerves were about shot, and all we wanted to do was stretch out and relax.

Driving from Cleveland to home was not bad, even though it was foggy.  We did a short stretch of interstate from Chattanooga to Sewanee, got on highway 41A, and found 64 pretty soon.  It was smooth sailing after that.

Our total route took us from home to Nashville, to Knoxville, to Dandridge, TN, to Asheville, to Cleveland, to Sewanee, to Lawrenceburg, to Selmer, to Somerville, then home.  Well over 1,000 miles.

We arrived home to 80 degrees and a tornado watch.  

It's good to be home, tornado watch and all.

Asheville - December 8, 2021

For most of this week, we've been shacked up at the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, where The Husband has been attending a seminar.

Neither of us is too keen on airplane travel these days, so we drove.  Left home Sunday morning.  We stopped for lunch with a friend in Nashville, and then drove a couple more hours to Dandridge, TN, where we spent the night.  Since we did not have to be in Asheville until later in the day Monday, we did a little sight-seeing around Dandridge.  The Husband wanted to see Douglas Lake.  I was guiding us with the map program on my telephone.  When the map indicated that we were near the lake, I looked up and saw this:

I saw boat docks stranded on dry land, but there was no lake!  Come to find out, whatever outfit that's in charge of the lake lowers the water level in the fall to prepare for winter/spring rains.  The lake was just...gone.  So much for that sight-seeing trip!

We drove on to Asheville Monday afternoon.  Grove Park Inn is a nice place.  It was built in the early 1900s.  What you see in the picture below is the original part of the inn.  Modern wings have been added to each side.  It's weird - when we got on the elevator to go to our room, the elevator went DOWN instead of up.  I guess the wings are built into the side of the mountain.

Picture of the rear of the main building, viewed from our room.

Anyway . . . nothing in this place is cheap.  Our first lunch - a charcuterie board, two cups of chicken chowder, and two cocktails (needed them after the long drive, you know) cost us nearly $100.  Two hamburgers (with fries) for dinner the next night in the same restaurant, plus a "flight" of beer for The Husband:  $60, including the tip.  Tonight, we availed ourselves of the buffet in the Blue Ridge room.  $45.00 apiece, and the food was . . . meh . . . basically an assortment of mushy casserole-type dishes.  

I guess I'm just not cut out for fancy-schmancy places.  Give me a good old Holiday Inn Express with a free breakfast.  ;)

Our one delicious dining experience happened this afternoon in the town of Asheville.  We drove down to the River Arts District and strolled through the artisans' workshops, then we drove around looking for some place to eat.  As it turned out, we turned around in the parking lot of a restaurant outside the district and decided to just eat there.  (We have a rule when traveling:  no eating at chain restaurants we can find at home.)  It turned out to be a good choice.  The Husband had a Cuban sandwich, I had  mushrooms and caramelized onions on rye.  Best food we've had since we left home.  

  

Can't say a lot for the decor, but the folks were friendly

Can you see the sign through the window?  They make compost in the alley with paper and food scraps from the restaurant!  LOL

Tomorrow morning, we tour the Biltmore Estate, then start home.  

Glorious Day - December 2, 2021

Man, yesterday afternoon was glorious.  Seventy degrees.  Sunny.  I sat on the (now-winterized) back porch with both doors open, letting the breeze flow through, until dark.  

Yesterday morning on my way to work, it was very foggy.   I turned on my headlights to be better seen in the fog.  I am still driving my old Wrangler since my other car is still at the body shop.  The Wrangler doesn't have some of the conveniences of today's cars.  The headlights don't automatically come on when the engine is cranked.  Neither do they automatically go off.  

The Wrangler does have a chime that is supposed to sound when the driver door is open and the key is in the ignition or the headlights remain on.  This safety feature does not work if the fuse is blown or has been removed from its slot.  Why would the fuse have been removed from its slot? you might ask.  It might have been removed from its slot if a son had wanted to joy-ride in the Jeep with the doors off back in the summer when the weather was warm.  (The chime will sound constantly with the doors off and the engine running if the fuse is in place.)

So.

I rolled up in The Boss's driveway at 7:45 yesterday morning, and when I got out of the Jeep, it did not tell me that my headlights were on.  When I got back in the Jeep later that afternoon and turned the ignition key, the engine didn't even grunt. I had forgotten to turn off the headlights.  

Neither I nor The Boss had any jumper cables.  

It took 30 minutes to get a live person on the phone at AAA.  Finally, after 30 more minutes, a wrecker showed up with a battery charger.  

While I waited for the wrecker, I found the fuse in the glove compartment and put it back in its slot.

Today, one of my goals is to install the AAA app on my cell phone, if the ancient device will accept it.