New Year's Comin' - December 31, 2022

New Year's Day dinner is well under way.  Cabbage rolls, ready to bake.  Blackeyed peas soaking.  A chess pie and a chocolate pie done.  A daughter-in-law is bringing turnip greens.  Tomorrow, I'll make a pineapple casserole and some cornbread.

I was going to sprinkle a little cornmeal in my chess pie, but there was an issue.  Because The Husband and I have been on a low-carb diet for the past 6 months or so, the cornmeal canister hasn't been opened in months.  When I opened it at Christmas to make dressing, there were BUGS in it.  Now, this is one of those canisters with a sealed lid that latches down with a metal latch.  Those bugs had to have been in that cornmeal when I got it; I don't think they could've burgled into the canister.  I dumped the cornmeal outside, washed out the canister, put a fresh bag of cornmeal in it, and went on with the dressing.  This morning when I opened the canister, the cornmeal was GREEN.  MOLDED!  Needless to say, that cornmeal did not go into the pie.  

The Husband is on his way to the grocery store with a list.  There's still the cornbread to make.

We're planning on a quiet New Year's Eve, as usual.  I'm cooking a few nibble foods for tonight, and there's a jar of margarita mix waiting in the refrigerator.  I've invited my margarita-drinking sister-in-law and her husband to test the mix with me, but she's a nurse and might be working today, so it may be just us chickens to ring in the New Year.

What a difference a week makes.  This time last week, the temperature was in the low teens, and a sharp wind was blowing.  Today, it's almost 60 degrees, and I've had the back door open to let in some fresh air.  It will be okay with me if we don't get any more frigid temps this winter.

Whew...Christmas is Over - December 27, 2022

I hope you (both) had a good holiday.  

Mine was kinda busy, but it was nice.  We got to see all of our children and grandchildren over the weekend.  

I spent most of Saturday cooking.  It was touch and go there, for a while.  Because it was SO FREAKIN' COLD, to save electricity, the power company was staging 15-minute blackouts throughout the county on Saturday.  What a terrible day to have blackouts, eh?, while folks are trying to cook for Christmas!  When I woke up around 6 a.m., our power was going off once an hour for about 15 minutes.  I had two nearly-fossilized bananas on the counter that I wanted to use to make banana nut bread, but I was reluctant to mix it up and put it in the oven for fear that the power would go off during the baking (it has to bake for nearly an hour).  Finally, the outages stopped, and I baked the bread.  Although I hadn't planned on starting the rest of the food so early, I figured I'd better "make hay while the sun was shining," after I put the bread in the oven, I started on the rest of the cooking - finger foods and a big pot of chili.  

Son #1 and his family and the folks on the hill came over about 6 p.m. Christmas Eve.  We opened a few presents, drank a few cocktails, played and sang some Christmas songs, ate like pigs.  It was fun.  

Christmas morning, The Husband and I exchanged gifts at home.  I got him YET ANOTHER UKULELE.  He already had several soprano ukuleles, a tenor ukulele, and a banjo-lele; I got him a baritone to add to his collection.  I was kind of worried I'd gone overboard in the ukulele department, especially since he'd have to learn new chord structures for the baritone.  But then I thought, Shit, his ass can just learn something new.  He seemed to like it, and he started learning the new chords even before we went to brunch at Nanny's.  We both like its tone.  Whew...home run.  :)  He got me some bling, some fuzzy warm socks, and a digital notepad thing that I might not be smart enough to use.  

At 11, we had brunch at Nanny's and passed out more presents with the folks on the hill.  Later that day, we went over to Son #2's house to take their gifts.  

The Grandson spent the night with us Christmas night.  Our gift to him was a little bit of cash and a gift card to a sporting goods store.  He'd told us he wanted hunting clothes for Christmas, but there was no way we were going to buy them without him being present to try them on/pick them out.  We'd been trying to get together with him for a couple of weekends, but our schedules wouldn't mesh.  So he spent the night here Christmas night, and yesterday he and The Husband had a "man day" at the sporting goods store.  He was a happy camper when they came home.

I am a happy camper because I finished the three grant-writing classes I was taking online.  Got 3 official-looking certificates to show for it.  

Christmas is Coming! - December 22, 2022

Christmas is almost here.  I am ready.  Almost.  

There is no one in the world who hates shopping more than I.  My oldest grandchildren have learned to send me their lists of things they want/need, and to send them early.  I get online, and the shopping is done.  Easy-peasy.

What is not so easy is finding something for The Husband.  He buys what he wants, and he doesn't drop hints.  That's why he gets a bunch of socks and underwear for Christmas.

* * * * * * * * 

It's 46 degrees on the back porch this morning.  (Yeah, I'm a little chilly out here.)  The weather people have been predicting a wave of seriously cold weather (with ridiculously cold wind chill temps) that I thought was supposed to arrive last night.  So earlier this week, I did my grocery shopping and picked up some last-minute gifts.  Yesterday I made myself go out shopping for one more present.  All the gifts, except for two online purchases that haven't arrived yet, are wrapped and under the tree.  (Yes, I actually put up a Christmas tree this year.)  Now, the weatherman is saying that the cold weather will arrive mid-day today.  I have to make one more run to the grocery store, but then I am d-o-n-e DONE leaving the house until the weather warms up again!

We've invited the usual folks from the hill for supper Christmas Eve - nothing fancy, just a big pot of chili and some nibbles.  I've told everyone, "If it's cold, and you'd rather stay home in your warm jammies, stay home!"  The same deal goes for the traditional Christmas Day breakfast at Nanny's.  It's supposed to be REALLY cold Christmas morning, and Nanny wants to go to church that morning, so we've pushed breakfast to 11 a.m. instead of the usual 9 a.m.  A sister-in-law and I will be doing the cooking while Nanny goes to church.

* * * * * * * *

Granddaughter #1 face-timed me two nights ago with the news that she has been accepted into the college she wants to attend.  I congratulated her heartily, then when the conversation was over, I cried a little.  The college is alllllll the way across the state, but it's not just that; she's growing up and about to encounter all the problems that go with being an adult.  She wants to be a veterinarian and has a long road ahead of her.  

Grandmothers worry.

Monday - December 13, 2022

Monday, Monday....

I decided to go to the office yesterday, since I didn't go last week.  The plan was to go in for a couple of hours, clarify an assignment, check on a couple of "in progress" things, maybe get some face time in with The New Boss, and leave.  Anticipating this, I got my act together and ordered groceries from Walmart Sunday night, to be picked up between 10 and 11 on my way home from the office.  Good plan.

Neither my mentor nor The New Boss came in until almost 10.  By that time, I'd about given up on seeing them and had packed up my stuff, but I dug out my notebook and pen, saw all the people I needed to see, and schlepped my bags to my car.  

It would not crank.  Battery was stone dead.  This I did not understand, for I had not left the headlights on, nor a door open, nor anything like that, and there'd been not a hint of a problem when I'd cranked it at home.  

I did not want to ask anyone in the office for a boost.  The ladies were all dressed nicely, The New Boss was in a suit, and the one guy who might have actually had booster cables is about 100 years old, and I hated to ask him to come out in the cold.  

I reluctantly dug out my AAA card.  The last time I had to use AAA for roadside assistance was a nightmare (not made entirely of AAA's doing) that I dreaded to repeat.  I looked at the clock on my phone; it was a little after ten.  The groceries were to be picked up by 11; it would probably take me that long to either use the AAA app or get a live person on the phone.  I put the AAA card back in my wallet and called a local wrecker service that had boosted my car another time when I'd called AAA.  They're about 5 minutes down the road from where my car was parked.  The last time I needed them, they were there in a flash.  

It took them an hour to get to me this time.  Charged me $65 (which AAA will reportedly reimburse if I send them the bill).  

The battery cables were BLUE with corrosion.  The wrecker dude boosted me off with a little hand-held device (reckon where regular folks could get one of those?) and said I ought to have the battery tested, and not to turn off the car until then.  So after I picked up my groceries, I drove to the auto parts store where we bought the battery a year ago.  The battery was fine, they said; the cables were just too corroded.  They cleaned them for free, which didn't take long, but they dropped a socket into the motor and couldn't find it.  Took them 30 more minutes to retrieve the socket.  If they'd taken my suggestion (get the car rolling really fast and slam on the brakes), I might have gotten out of there sooner.  

There was one more errand to do before I could head home.  About this time every year, The Husband's workplace has their Christmas dinner, and he is always asked to bring a dish we call "Hanky Pankies," a combination of pork sausage, ground beef, and cheese, toasted on party rye bread.  Party rye bread is hard to come by these days.  My assignment was to find some; barring that, I was to find regular-sized rye bread that we can cut into squares.  No store in the county had party rye bread.  After two stops, I found the regular-sized rye bread.  That'll have to do.

It was nearly 2:00 by the time I made it home.  Had to unload all the groceries and put them away before I could finally settle down to work.  Because I'd squandered 4 hours of my workday on batteries and bread, I worked fairly late into the evening to make up the time.  Never let it be said that the county isn't getting its money's worth out of me.  ;)

What the Dickens? - Dec. 11, 2022

Well, we did it.  

I'd been dreading it for days, weeks, even.  How did they talk me into this?  It must have been because I was new on the job and hated to turn down a request.

So, yesterday morning, despite the rain, we got in the car and drove to town to do our civic duty - parading around the square in Dickens-era costumes for the annual Dickens Christmas on the Square.

Bah!  Humbug!

Our costumes were waiting for us at the Chamber of Commerce.  My dress had so many layers that I could hardly figure out how to get into it.  And that hoop skirt!  Did Dickens-era women even wear those?  My dress was a little too long, and I almost tripped over the hem before we even got out of the building.

We set out walking a little after 10 a.m.  It was sprinkling rain.  We ducked into every store on the square, more for respite from the rain than to visit the store owners.  Thank goodness for the wool Dickens-ish cape I've had for years.

By 11, it was raining pretty steadily.  The hem of my dress got soaking wet.  I stumbled over it a dozen more times before calling it quits.

Not since the day of our wedding has our picture been taken so many times.

About 11:45, I said to The Husband, I HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THIS.  We made our way back to the Chamber of Commerce, intending to turn in our costumes and get the heck out of there.  But the building was locked.  Intending to just take the costumes home and bring them back Monday, we headed to the car.  But...the hoop skirt.  How would I get in the car?  I popped into a store and used their dressing room to de-hoop myself.  Thankfully, before we got out of town, I saw people going into the Chamber building.  We hurried in, de-costumed, and headed home.

The Husband, who is a much more sociable person than I am, claimed to have had fun.

Some people.  ;)

Asheville - Dec. 10, 2022

The Husband had a 2-day seminar in Asheville, NC this week.  Neither of us enjoys flying - it's not the actual flying, it's the airports, and the grouchy people exhaling their nasty nose air in the seat next to you - so we drove.  Around 500 miles each way.  And since neither of us is fond of spending 10-12 hours in a car, we stopped for the night, coming and going.  So a 2-day seminar turned into a 6-day trip.

I spent the two seminar days mostly holed up in the hotel room, working.  (My new job, which involves mostly research, can be done from anywhere.)  

On our last night away from home, we stopped in Lebanon, Tennessee, which is roughly the half-way point.  We stay at the same hotel every time, mostly because it's relatively inexpensive and because there's a convenient restaurant in the same parking lot where we can have a cocktail or two and not worry about getting a DUI on the way back to the hotel.  But on this last night, we wanted Mexican food - mostly, we wanted margaritas - so we took a chance on driving to a restaurant 1/4 mile up the road.  This restaurant's menu was a little different from what we usually see at Mexican restaurants, and we weren't familiar with all of the terms.  In one corner of the menu was a list of street tacos, including one dubbed "taco lengua."  I had an idea what "lengua" meant, and when the waitress came to take our order, I said, "Lengua?" and pointed to my tongue.  "Si," she said.  I'd never eaten tongue, but by that time I'd enjoyed most of one margarita, so I took a chance and added a taco lengua alongside a taco pollo and a taco al carbon.  

It was delicious.

I washed it down with a second margarita, which was also delicious.  The Husband and I have been on a low-carb diet for six months and hadn't had a margarita the whole time.  We were both a bit giggly by the time we left the restaurant.  Good thing we were so close to the hotel!

Today, we have an unusual assignment on our agenda.  The merchants in the town where I've worked all these years puts on a "Dickens on the Square" festival every year, and the organizers con people into strolling the square in Dickens-period costumes.  We have never once joined in the "fun."  But the Mayor's office where I now work contributed to the festival by buying some decorations for the square and some costumes for the strollers, and I was asked to don one of the costumes and walk the streets for a while.  The Husband agreed to escort me.  

I have kicked myself a thousand times for agreeing to do this.  For the past couple of days, I have been praying for a gully-washer rainstorm that might relieve us of this duty.  And it is supposed to rain later this afternoon.  

Unfortunately, I volunteered us for morning duty.  *sigh*

A Red-Letter Day - November 28, 2022

It started with a phone call from the office mid-morning.  We won a grant that we applied for last month - the first one I worked on.  Batting 1,000, so far. :)  

Not an hour later, The Husband came onto the back porch and said, "There's an armadillo in the trap."  He had kinda fixed the trap that was mangled by the last armadillo that was caught in it and had set it where he thought the armadillo might be coming out.  Sure 'nuff, there he was.  

R.I.P., Armadillo.

The buzzards are probably already enjoying his crunchy ass.

Thanksgiving - November 26,, 2022

We had a really nice Thanksgiving Day.  My brother invited us to his house for a mid-day meal.  Both of his children and their offspring were there, as was my sister and her daughter.  We had a lot of good food, and after the meal, my brother wanted to show his wife how to play "Pitch," a card came that my parents and their friends used to enjoy.  It had been years since we'd played, and we weren't exactly certain of the rules.  Several years ago, both my brother and I searched the internet for Pitch rules but could not find any.  Eventually, we simply agreed on what rules we remembered and played a few hands.  I'm not sure our rules were "regulation," but we had fun. On the way home, I googled the game and found rules on different variations of the game.  I don't think our rules fit any of the variations!

Later in the evening, we went to Son #2's house for dinner.  His wife's family was there, too, so they had a houseful, but it was nice.  All of our grandchildren and step-grandchildren (except for one) were there.  It was good to have them all under the same roof for a while.

Yesterday, I was a slug.  Spent part of the day working on lessons for some classes I am taking, and the rest of the day I read in my recliner.  Didn't leave the property all day - no Black Friday shopping for me!  Ain't leaving it today, either.  ;)

Happy Thanksgiving - November 24, 2022

The Husband and will be going to my brother's house for a mid-day Thanksgiving meal.  My cooking assignment this year was dressing, gravy, and ham, but because my brother loves spinach dip, I made some of that, too.  My brother once said that Thanksgiving was his favorite holiday; no present-giving, nothing but eating.  My response to him was, "That's because YOU aren't responsible for the 2-3 days of shopping/cooking/cleaning before the holiday."

Son #2 and his family are having everybody over for dinner at 6 tonight.  Our assignment for that meal was green bean casserole.  We probably won't be very hungry by then, but we can have an extra helping of sweet grandchild smooches on the Little Rotten Baby and her sisters.  

After that - or maybe between the two meals - we'll put in an appearance at Nanny's.  One of the out-of-town nieces has come down for the holiday, and she brought her new beau.  We'll have to go if for no other reason than to check him out.  ;)

Everything is ready, except the dressing and the casserole need to be baked.  I'll pop those in the oven in a few minutes.  The ham bone is boiling on the stove.  We'll make beans or potato soup with the broth and ham bits tomorrow.  (Reminder: add beans and/or potatoes to tomorrow's shopping list.)

We have no beans or potatoes in the house because we've been on a low carb diet for a little over six months.  Since June, The Husband has lost 20 pounds and has had to buy new pants.  I've lost somewhere between 30 and 40 pounds - not sure what I weighed when we started - but am still wearing the same old clothes because I HATE TO SHOP.  I guess I'll keep wearing them till they fall off.  Now that I'm working from home most days, who's gonna know?

Winterizing - November 21, 2022

Our weekend was both enjoyable and productive.  

Friday night, we met up with The Sister-and-Brother-in-Law for dinner at our favorite restaurant.  

Saturday morning, The Grandson texted me to ask if we had any plans for the day.  As it happened, we'd planned to winterize the back porch.  The Grandson said he'd be glad to help, so I went to get him mid-morning.  We went to work as soon as we got back to the house.  It was COLD, but we bundled up and got 'er done.  We stapled clear vinyl all around the exterior of the porch.  While we were working, I tripped over a mole trail, then a few minutes later I fell off a ladder (wasn't very far up it, thank goodness).  By evening, I was kinda stiff, but didn't sustain any serious damage.

The Grandson asked if he could spend the night.  We said "yes," of course!  Once upon a time, he spent almost every weekend with us, but now, at age 15, we're not on the top of his social list.  It was good to have him here.  He used to love to eat breakfast here; the boy could eat his weight in biscuits and gravy.  We cooked a big breakfast Sunday morning, but the lazy kid slept until well after noon.  I took him home mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying the porch.

New Job, Chapter 2 - November 15, 2022

During negotiations for my new grant-writing job, The New Boss said it would be fine with him for me to work from home.  Although I probably would have taken the job even if he hadn't agreed on the work-from-home part, it was a fairly important factor to me.  I was okay with his suggestion that I work in the office for a while to see how things run and get to know people.  But two months into working in the office, my frustration was growing.  I had no office, nor even a desk that I could call my own; I was working in The New Boss's office, at his conference table, while he worked in the big conference room (n the rare occasions when he was actually in the office.  (Do not take that "rare occasions" comment as a disparagement of TNB; there are big deals afoot, and he is traveling a lot.)  

Yesterday, I had made up my mind that I was going to stop going to the office every day, at least for a while.  I'd signed up for some online grant-writing classes, which I intended to pursue on office time; there was no reason why I should drive to the office every day just to do the classes when I have all the equipment I need at home.  When The New Boss came in, I was locked and loaded, ready to have the discussion with him.  But as he walked past his office, he called my name as he strode toward the conference room, and when I joined him, he announced that I could start working from home.

Hallelujah!

So, here I sit.  My shift starts in 15 minutes.  :)

* * * * * * * * 

It's cold on the back porch.  Forty-one degrees, according to my computer.  I intend to work out here for as long as I can stand it.  Hopefully, we're going to do something to extend that time, for we have ordered some clear vinyl with which to enclose the porch.  It should be here by the weekend.  And yesterday when I got home, there was a honkin' big electric heater on the front porch.  

The Husband and I have had a years-long battle over enclosing the porch for the winter.  The first winter, we enclosed it with thick plastic that claimed to be "clear" but was actually opaque. The Husband didn't like that he couldn't see through it.  It kept the porch warm, though; there were days when we opened the doors to admit cooler air.  The next year, we didn't enclose the porch at all and froze our asses off when we came out to smoke.  I don't remember what we did for the next year or two, but our attic is full of every kind of space heater imaginable, none of which made porch time bearable.  Last year, we bought a big white wedding tent (with clear windows to satisfy The Husband).  Because it wasn't tall enough, I had to sew paper-backed vinyl all around the bottom, a huge pain in the butt.  We velcroed it to the outside of the porch, thinking that it would be easy to re-install this winter.  Since the tent was made of tarp-like material, it did very little to keep out the cold.  When we took it down in the spring, the velcro came un-stuck from the house.  And there were HUNDREDS of dead ladybug and stinkbug carcasses stuck to the velcro.  It's no wonder that the back porch was over-run with stinkbugs this past summer!

I am hoping that this year's clear vinyl will do a better job of insulating the porch.  It's going to be a pain to install it because we'll have to splice it together somehow.  Sewing vinyl is a certifiable mess; it wants to stick to the sewing machine.  And I don't really want to perforate it with stitches.  This conundrum may take trial and error.

* * * * * * * * 

A friend suggested a way to trap the armadillos that have been destroying our yard.  He said to figure out where they're coming out of their hole, and make a V-shaped barricade that will funnel them right into a trap placed at the end of the V.  I tried this Saturday night.  No critter the next morning.  We moved the trap Sunday afternoon, and Sunday night when I went out to the porch, I heard a terrible commotion in the vicinity of the trap.  I ran inside and told The Husband, "I think we caught one!"  He grabbed a flashlight and went out to look.  The trap had been MANGLED, and the armadillo was gone.

I now have a greater respect for armadillos.

  

Veteran's Day - November 11, 2022

I have the day off from work today.  Thanks to the Veterans for that, and for many other privileges.

It is wonderful to have the day off.  My job is the pits, so far.  The wheels of government turn slowly, and the work I've been hired to do can't be done until a mountain of other things get done.  Thus, my days are full of a lot of thumb-twiddling and trying to look busy.  It's not much fun.  :(

I promised myself that I'd sleep late this morning, but my eyes popped open at 5:45, and I got up, turned the coffee pot on, and read for a while.  I'm reading another "Lanny Budd" book - maybe the 4th in the series, with a couple more to go.  In light of all of the political turmoil going on in this country right now, these books are a little scary.

* * * * * * * * 

Granddaughter #1 sent her school jacket over here yesterday, asking me to sew on some patches she's acquired over the years - band competitions, school letters, etc.  Her school's football team is undefeated this year and is in the playoffs, playing at home tonight.  Since the band will be there, and since it will be cold, I figured I'd better get those patches sewn on so that she can have her jacket tonight.  I'll run it over to her later today, and maybe pick up two of her little sisters to keep while their parents go to the ballgame.

Our yard and sidewalks and driveway are absolutely carpeted with leaves.  When it warms up later today, you'll find me leaf-blowing the sidewalks and driveway, but I am saving the leaves in the yard for one more day.

You see, we have this armadillo problem.  Every night at dark, it comes out.  I can hear him rustling through the leaves.  The Husband doesn't like to shoot at night, so we have tried to trap it, but he has evaded us so far.  He has a regular path through the yard.  A friend has suggested that we make a V-shaped barricade that will funnel the critter right into the trap.  I'm going to try that tonight, and if the set-up works, we'll leave it in place, for I'm pretty sure there's more than one armadillo roaming the property.

  

Hydrangea Cuttings - November 4, 2022

In early September, during my 8 days of retirement, I cut some hydrangea limbs away from our HVAC unit.  I chopped the limbs into sections, 2 leaf nodes per section, and planted them (one leaf node under the dirt, one above) in Solo cups.  I put the Solo cups in clear plastic bins that would hold water so I didn't have to tend the cuttings every day and set the bins in the back yard near the house where I could see them and remember to tend them.  

In theory, the bins were a good idea.  But one day it rained a gully-washer, and the next time I checked on the cuttings, some of the cups were floating sideways in the bins and most of the cuttings had come out of the dirt.  I replanted them and brought a couple of bins onto the back porch so that I could keep a better watch on them.  (They're not currently looking so great).

I worried what to do with them this winter.  Their root systems aren't very developed.  Would they be better off in the ground before winter?  Should I leave them in the cups?  Put them in bigger pots?  Bring them inside before temps drop below freezing?

A Facebook gardening group gave me an answer that seems logical to me.  They said to set the cups on the ground and cover them with leaves.  

I did that this afternoon.  Piled the leaves high.

Now I'm worried that the #(!)@! armadillo will dig them up.

Not According to Plan - October 23, 2022

Pretend that heap of sticks and all that junk aren't there, and just look at my view from the back porch table.  :)

* * * * * * * * 

Well, this weekend didn't turn out as planned.  :\

I worked hard last week - brain overload hard, probably fried some circuitry.  After spending three straight 12-hour days bent over documents, my neck and shoulders hurt.  The plan was to chillax all weekend.

Friday night was Senior Night for the band, the cheerleaders, and the football team.  They did it before the ballgame.  We went to that and cheered acceptably loud when Granddaughter #1's name was called.  We waited until her parental units (who had escorted her on the field) to get back to the stands with the rest of The Granddaughters, then we high-tailed it out of there.  So did The Other Grandparents, taking the youngest two Granddaughters with them.  The Husband and I had arrived in separate cars; he went to get us a hamburger while I ran home to get some papers I was supposed to have taken to the ballgame.  The Other Grandparents live about two miles up the road from our house; I passed the papers off to them at the 3-way stop sign that's halfway between us, and came back home to await the arrival of my burger.  

Lord, it takes a lot of work to raise children.

Anyway . . . . 

Yesterday morning, I poured some coffee and made some toast and settled back in my recliner with the Kindle.  When The Husband got up an hour later and turned on the tv, I brought the laptop out to the porch to work online word puzzles.  Come lunchtime, I was still in my housecoat.  Since we had contemplated driving three hours to watch The Granddaughter's band perform in a competition at 4, I got dressed, just in case we decided to do it.

Getting dressed was my first mistake.

On the way back through the kitchen, I stopped to stack the work papers I'd left on the table when I went to Senior Night.  Then I noticed dishes in the sink and loaded the dishwasher, which led to wiping down counters, etc.  About the time I finished the kitchen and came back out to the porch, The Husband came out.  We vetoed the competition trip, and he went to mow Nanny's yard.  I thought, "Cool, I'll have the rest of the afternoon to myself."  

I walked around the yard a little bit and noticed our Granny Smith apple tree still had a few apples hanging on.  Some critter has got the rest of them, and I've been meaning to pick what's left for us humans.  I picked three apples, brought them in, cooked them a little bit, and made some muffins with them.  When I turned the muffins out of the pan, they collapsed.  I scooped them up, stuffed them back into the tin, and baked them a little more.  (They look a little weird, but they taste ok.)  I'd cleaned up the kitchen again and was about to try a muffin when The Husband came back and said he might be in trouble.

I said, "What did you do?"  He said, "Come look."  I followed him around the house.  

He had found a pretty good wagon load of tomatoes, ripe and green, in our grassy garden.

I said, "Ohhhhh shit."  

I didn't want to lose those tomatoes, but I didn't want to fool with them, either.  There probably weren't enough empty jars for all of them, never mind rings and lids, and not enough supplies on hand to make green tomato relish. And I'd just cleaned the kitchen for the second time.  Eventually, I caved, and canned the ripe tomatoes.  Had to clean out the refrigerator and rob jars for enough lids.  I offered the green tomatoes to a friend and even tried to give them away on Facebook, but had no takers.  They are still outside in the wagon.

This morning was pretty much a repeat of yesterday morning until 10:30, when The Husband said, "What time does that birthday party start?"

I said, "BIRTHDAY PARTY?  Ohhhhh, shit!"  I had totally forgotten about our step-granddaughter's birthday party, hadn't bought her a present.

We made a flying trip to town, and arrived only 45 minutes late to the party.

Can I please have the rest of the afternoon off?

Crazy Weather - October 21, 2022

We've had some crazy weather this week.  The first part of the week turned off cold.  Right now, it's 79 degrees on the back porch.

I have worked from home three days this week.  Tuesday, I got my hands on the first real grant-writing work that's come my way since I was hired.  It took all of that afternoon to print, hole-punch, and notebook a stack of instructions.  I went to the office Wednesday morning, ready to dig in and start reading, but hadn't been there 30 minutes before it became obvious that I'd never be able to read/understand the documents with all the distractions around me, so I packed up and came home and have worked here ever since.  (I may get fired Monday when I go back to the office.)  For three days, I've been hunched over the kitchen table and the computer, reading, trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do with the paperwork.  My neck is killing me.  Yesterday, I realized that what I really need to be doing is lighting fires under other people's asses.  

It may be that my real talent is lighting fires under other people's asses.

* * * * * * * * 

The stink bugs are out again.  We had a brief respite during the cold snap, but they're out in force today.  I have been spraying them with Dawn dishwashing liquid and water.  Some of them drop like flies; others thumb their noses at me and crawl or fly away.  At least the Dawn smells good.

Which makes me wonder why we perfume our dishwashing liquid.

* * * * * * * * 

Tonight is Senior Night at the high school.  Granddaughter #1 will be escorted onto the football field by her parents and will be leading the band's "pride drill" at the football game.  We real seniors will be in the stands, wrangling grandchildren.  

Chilly tomorrow - October 16, 2022

Today was a pretty good day for back porch-sittin' - maybe the last day for a while.  I had my first cup of coffee out here, warm enough in my big terry cloth housecoat.  Been out here mostly all day, working crossword puzzles and such, and trying to decide what to do about all of these hydrangea cuttings I'm trying to root.  Weatherman says it might frost tonight.  That probably wouldn't do the cuttings any good.

I brought half of the cuttings onto the porch and covered the ones outside with thick clear plastic.  

Half of the hydrangea cuttings had a pretty bad mishap earlier this week.  They're planted in plastic cups, and the cups sit inside a plastic tub.  We had a hard rain that floated the cups and dumped them over.  I had to re-plant them.  They're a week or two behind the first batch I planted; I didn't see a sign of a root on any of them.  

* * * * * * * * 

I am counting the hours until Son #2 and his family get home from their vacation and COME GET THIS CAT. 

He is a menace.

Chili Day - October 15, 2022

Today has been a pretty good day!

First, I slept till after 7 a.m., which might be a record for the past few months.  

I took my coffee out to the porch and worked my daily crossword puzzle undisturbed.

Son #1 had entered a chili cooking contest and invited us to come hang with them.  It started raining about noon, and we wondered if the contest was even still going.  But around 1:30, the skies cleared.  I mixed up a double-strength carb-free daiquiri, and we went to join our son and daughter-in-law.  He didn't win the contest, but his chili was delicious, and we enjoyed a rare Saturday afternoon with our young'uns.

To top it off, Tennessee just beat Alabama in football in a real nail-biter game.

Yeah, it's been a good day.  :)

Cat-sitting - October 12, 2022

Son #2 and his family have gone to Florida and have left their cat with us.

We are not accustomed to having an animal in the house, and hearing noises in rooms where we are not.

While we are gone to work and at night, we shut the cat in a bedroom with food, water, and a litter box.  When I let him out this morning, he spent a few minutes trying to trip me in the kitchen, then all of a sudden, he went buck-wild and started zooming around the house.  He ran nearly all the way around the living room without ever touching the floor, then he zoomed to my sewing room and tried to climb a bookcase.  I caught him on the living room windowsill yesterday morning, inches away from my violet pots.  If he crashes my violets to the floor, he's toast.

* * * * * * * * 

Aunt B's funeral was Monday.  They laid her to rest in style.

To-Do List - October 8, 2022

I made pretty good progress yesterday at clearing some stuff off my to-do list. 

Two or more weeks ago, my niece brought me about a yard of silk and showed me a weirdly-shaped pillow.  She wanted me to make a pillowcase out of the silk that would fit the pillow.  I laid the pillow down on a piece of muslin and traced around it for a pattern, then I sent her and her pillow home.  Yesterday, I made a "sham" out of the muslin, a prototype for the silk pillowcase.  When I texted her to tell her the prototype was ready, she said it would be a week or two before she could get over here with the pillow to try it.  I'm not touching the silk until we find out if the muslin sham actually fits the pillow.

Meanwhile, Son #2 had brought over two t-shirts he wanted for an upcoming vacation.  The sublimation printer saw fit to cooperate with me, and the t-shirts are ready to be worn.

When my son brought the t-shirts, he also brought a pair of jogging pants that belong to Granddaughter #1.  They swallow her whole, and she wanted me to take them up.  Got that done, too.

After the morning's work, I retired to the back porch to laze away the afternoon.  It wasn't long before Cousin Roger came motoring over on his lawnmower.  He'd been in the hospital last week, or maybe the week before, with heart issues.  His mother, Aunt B, died this week.  He needed to get out of his house and talk to someone.  He was just beginning to tell me his story when my telephone rang.  It was his sister, come from Texas to be with their mother in her last illness.  She was trying to write the obituary for the funeral home program and the newspaper, and she was working against a 2 p.m. deadline.  She'd just had an argument with another sibling, and her thoughts were all over the place.  She needed help proof-reading what she'd written, and could I come over?  I left Cousin Roger on the porch by himself and walked across the road to help her.  

I spent most of the rest of the day reading.  Two weeks ago (or more), I downloaded Upton Sinclair's series about Lanny Budd.  There are 11 books in this series; I'm about halfway through them.  It's good reading, but I do most of my reading in bed at night, and unless the book is a real page-turner, I fall asleep after just a few pages.  At the rate I'm going, this book may last me until Christmas!

From the back porch - October 12, 2022

It's a little cool on the back porch this morning, but I've got a thick housecoat and a hot cup of coffee, so it's tolerable.  How I miss my morning porch sessions!  My new job has cut an hour off the time I can lollygag before work, and an hour off my evening hours at home.  Thirty years ago, this was my normal schedule (except that sometimes my work days were even longer).  I wonder how I did it with two little kids at home.

Speaking of the new job, it got moderately more interesting this week.  I met with the school superintendent Tuesday morning about the work he wants me to do for the school system.  He asked me to work on obtaining a grant to tornado-proof a hallway in each of the county schools.  He promised to hook me up with the county emergency management honcho and the county maintenance honcho, and since the superintendent is a get-er-done kinda guy, the meeting happened Wednesday.  The next day, I spent time on the phone with the state emergency management folks, and before the day was over, I was able to file the pre-application for the grant.  Now that the ball is finally rolling, I'm feeling a tad more useful.

* * * * * * * * 

Our plan for today was to go to Granddaughter #1's band competition, but the flu is raging through the schools, and so many of the band members are out sick that the band has had to cancel its plan to compete.  While I enjoy being out in the fresh air all day, I am kind of glad to be home today.  Earlier this week, Son #2 asked if I could make some t-shirts for him and his family to wear on a trip they'll be taking next week.  I said I would, even though I wondered how I was going to find the time to do it.  We talked about whether to do the shirts with heat-press vinyl or sublimation ink.  After he sent me the artwork, we agreed that sublimation would be the best route.  The next night, he and his wife went shopping for shirts made out of the right kind of material for sublimating.  

When my son sent me the artwork, I decided to go ahead and print the transfer so that when he brought me the shirts, I could slap on the transfers and send the shirts back home with him.  Easier said than done.  I have done neither vinyl nor sublimation for months and have forgotten most everything I knew about either process.  By the time he arrived with the shirts the next evening, I'd managed to get the artwork ready to print, but my printer would not cooperate.  I guess the ink nozzles were stopped up, for my test prints came out blank.  I sent him home without the shirts, half afraid that I'd never be able to print the transfers.  But after running several nozzle-cleaning routines, the printer began to work.  The plan for today (since we're not going to the competition) is to get the shirts done, assuming the printer nozzles haven't stopped up again.

* * * * * * * *

We had some sad news in the family this week.  Aunt B, who lives across the road from us, died this week after a 20-year battle with cancer.  Nanny (Aunt B's sister) is heartbroken, for they were close, having lived next door to one another for many years.  Aunt B's husband is in his early 90s and frail, and his memory is impaired.  We are all worried how he will manage his day-to-day living.  He has two children and a granddaughter living nearby, and two more children who live away.  Life is about to get more difficult for them all.  :(

* * * * * * * * 

The stinkbugs are marshalling their forces on my porch screens again.  I fought them INSIDE the porch all spring, convinced that last year's stinkbug crop had LAID EGGS inside the porch.  They seemed not to react to bug spray, so I resorted to vacuuming them.  Last week, someone told me that a mixture of Dawn dish detergent and water would kill them.  I mixed up a pretty potent potion and set the spray nozzle on "STREAM," and every time I see a stinkbug, inside or outside the screens, I let him have it full force.  I'm not sure what is happening to the ones that fall onto the ground outside the screens, but I keep squirting the ones that land on the porch floor until they give up the ghost.  I may be just drowning them.

They're Ba-aaaack - October 3, 2022

You may recall the ferocious stinkbug battle waged on our back porch this spring.  Well, they're back, looking for a place to over-winter, I suppose.  So far, most of them are on the outside of the screens.  It'll probably get worse when the farmer cuts the beans in the field across from our house.  The stinkbugs seem oblivious to bug spray.  They don't like Lysol spray very much, though.  I doubt it kills them, but I'm giving them a good dose, anyway, then whacking them with a fly-swatter.  

Yesterday, I planted the three mums I bought from The Granddaughter, grown by the Future Farmers of America at her school.  They are NICE mums - full, and just now budding.  I hope they come back next year, but I've never had one come back.  

Fight! - October 2, 2022

I just witnessed the most bodacious fight ever seen in my back yard.

Sitting on the back porch this morning, I heard a squirrel barking in a tree.  I didn't pay much attention to it, for we hear that sort of thing all the time around here.  But in a minute, I heard a ruckus - flapping and squealing - and looked up to see an owl (or a hawk, maybe - some huge bird) battling the squirrel around the tree.  In seconds, the bird flew off with something gray in its claws.  Now, there's a squirrel in the tree, incessantly crying its heart out.  All I can figure is that the owl/hawk nabbed the squirrel's baby, or its mate.  Kinda sad.

* * * * * * * * 

Yesterday, The Husband and I spent almost all day at a band competition in which Granddaughter #1 was participating (she's one of three field commanders this year).  The preliminaries started mid-morning.  We got there about noon, in time to see a few of the smaller bands on the field.  Our band won 1st place in its division in the preliminaries.  Twelve bands went on to the finals.  Our band also won first place in the finals (in the big bands division).  This was the band's second competition this year (more to follow), and they needed the win after coming in third in last week's competition.  

We waited to see The Granddaughter when the competition was over.  (The other 3 granddaughters sat with us all day.  The Little Rotten Baby constantly attempted dare-devil stunts on the bleachers; it's a good thing there were plenty of us to watch her!)   We felt old and tired by the time we rolled in the driveway at midnight.

The day certainly brought back memories.  Both of our sons were in this band, and it was a winning band even back then (20+ years ago).  Every weekend we followed a string of buses and instrument trucks to towns all over this end of Tennessee and beyond.  We fried in the sun on metal bleachers, and shivered in the cold when the sun went down.  And loved every minute of it.  

* * * * * * * 

Poor squirrel is still crying in the tree.  :(

Pepper Jelly - September 28, 2022

Yesterday's plan was to make pepper jelly with the last of the garden peppers.  I hurried home after work only to realize that I didn't have any vinegar, and I was not about to go to the store.  So I just washed and chopped the jalapenos and put them in the refrigerator.  It turned out that I was nearly a cup short of peppers, too.  So today I stopped after work and bought vinegar, plus an orange bell pepper and a green bell pepper, to throw some color in the mix.  Most of the little pepper bits wanted to float to the top of the jelly, so I let it cool and thicken a little bit, then I flipped the sealed jars over to better distribute the bits.  It's pretty in the jar.

Today my daughter-in-law dropped off three mum plants that the local agricultural students grew (I think).  I bought some mums from the ag boys a couple of years ago, and they dropped off the scraggliest bunch of mums I'd ever seen, which pretty much dampened my eagerness to buy any more from them.  But when The Granddaughter is the salesperson, it's a different story.  Happily, this new set of mums is stellar - nice ones, just in the right budding stage, and wrapped in a plastic sleeve to keep the limbs from breaking.  Or so I hope.  I haven't inspected them, yet, because I had to rush in and make pepper jelly and fix supper.

I'm sitting on the porch tonight, wrapped up in a shawl.  It's a little chilly.  Today, I noticed that the days are getting shorter.  It'll be soup weather pretty soon.

Still Harvesting - September 26, 2022

Nanny told me several days ago that there were LOTS of bright red jalapeno peppers in the garden.  Every day, I've said I ought to go get them, but just haven't, until today.  A bunch of them were shriveled or about to shrivel, but I got enough firm ones to make a batch of pepper jelly, which I intend to do tomorrow after work.

The tomatoes are still going at it.  They've grown huge - far taller than their posts - and they've doubled over and kept growing.  The tomatoes at the top of the heap are too high for the critter to reach, and so we're actually getting a few usable ones for a change.  I picked everything that was even THINKING about turning red.  Gave Nanny the ripest ones to put in her freezer, and lined our back porch rails with the rest.  They should be ready to do something with by the weekend, if not sooner.

One thing I'll do with a few of them is stew them with the okra I cut today (and some garlic and onions).  

The garden is horribly grassy.  There are giant squash laying among it, and decomposing cucumbers.  I probably brought home a million chiggers.  

A week or two ago, I cut some hydrangea limbs away from our A/C unit, and I chopped them into about two dozen sections and planted them, hoping they'll root.  There were left-over limbs that didn't get chopped.  They've been in a bucket of water ever since.  I tried to give them away, but nobody came to get them, so yesterday I chopped another dozen clippings and started more.  Won't it be grand if they all live?  Hydrangeas for errrrrbody.  

Not Bored, Exactly - September 22, 2022

Now that I have a "real job" (as my family says), I have to do my reporting at night.  (Or get up an hour earlier, which ain't happening.)  Unfortunately, I'm even goofier at night than in the mornings.  You get what you get.  ;)

Week 2 of the new job is - well, I don't quite know what.

I'm not exactly bored because I'm learning new things.  I am somewhat uncomfortable.  Still "squatting" at the conference table in The New Boss's office (while he works in the conference room, as he's always done), still no definitive workspace of my own.  Yesterday, the place - a cavernous, former bank lobby - was so noisy that I picked up my laptop and moved to the kitchen at the back of the building.  I stayed there until my laptop began to run out of juice; there was no electric outlet that my cord would reach without stretching it across the path to the coffee pot.  

And I do dumb sh*t.  A few days ago, I got a notice about a 2:30 p.m. webinar I thought would be helpful to watch, so I set my calendar AND my phone to notify me when it was time.  However, I had not noticed that it was to happen at 2:30 EASTERN time, so I joined the webinar just as it was wrapping up.  Nice.  Thankfully, it's a repeating thing, so I can watch it next week if I have nothing better to do.  I signed up for a different webinar that I booked for 6 p.m. tonight, and I really wanted to watch it.  I left work in plenty of time for a 6 p.m. webinar, but on the way home, it hit me that I might've missed EASTERN time on it, too.  So I rushed home.  I'd picked up a grocery order on my way home, and I'd have to put away the refrigerated stuff, at least, before I could get to the computer.  I flew in the house with one armload of groceries, fired up my laptop on the porch on my way back to the Jeep, got the rest of the bags.  The weather has been so nice this week that I've been driving the old Wrangler with the top down.  It turned chilly this afternoon, and the skies were kind of dark, like it might rain.  I needed to put the top up, but I had ten minutes if the webinar was at 5, and I needed to pee.  So, before I put up the groceries, or even dashed to the bathroom, I double-checked the webinar time.  7 EASTERN.  6, my time.  Whew.  (I must've learned my lesson from yesterday's mistake, but I don't recall using it.)  The groceries got put away, and the Wrangler top got put up, and I even found time to pee and gather some note-taking stuff.

The webinar was worth watching.  

  

New Job Progress Report - September 19, 2022

Well, week one is in the history books, and I am not quite sure what to think of it.

Co-workers seem very nice and seem to get along well.  

I don't feel that I accomplished very much last week.  My only assignment was to "look for grants, see what's out there."  I have been doing that ever since the job was first mentioned to me several months ago, so this task seriously bored me.  Around the middle of the week, a co-worker and I were given a specific project to focus on.  We had limited success finding funding, and The New Boss said to put it on the back burner for a while.  But, having nothing better or more exciting to do, I kept looking, if for no other reason than to educate myself.  Thursday I got my hands on an actual application for a beautification grant, and Friday I tried my hand at writing some of the narrative.  The writing is what I love to do.  I hope there's more of that to come.

Let me tell you how it is to start a new job after working at my former job for 28 years.

First off, I had to be there at 8 a.m.  Boo!  Now, the show-up time at my old office was not entirely great, either.  I had to arrive at various intervals from 7:15, 7:45, 8:15, or anywhere between 8:30 and 9:00, depending on the day.  (This was because we traveled to various counties for 9 a.m. hearings.)  Having a set start time might be nice, since I won't have to recalculate what time I have to leave my house each morning in order to get to work on time.  But I would've liked a 9 a.m. start time a tad better.

Also, quitting time is 5:00.  Boo!  At my old job, I worked until 4:30 on occasion, but many days when The Boss finished the hearings, she'd send me home when we got back to town.  Having some afternoons off was nice, especially since my tailfeathers start dragging the ground about 2 p.m.

When I arrived at my new work site (one block up the street from the old one), I didn't know where to park.  This new work site was formerly a bank.  The Husband worked at that bank not long after we married, and employee parking was then behind the building.  I eased down that alley this morning, but the parking spaces behind the building were all filled with mail delivery vehicles, so I circled the block and parked on the town square, right in front of my building.  This made me a little nervous, for when I ran a business on the square, every two hours a policeman would come by and chalk your tires, and you'd get a parking ticket if the chalk mark was still there the next time the policeman came around.  But The New Boss's Secretary said that's where we're supposed to park.

Because I'm going to be mostly working from home, I do not have an office in the county building.  Today's work directive was to sit with one of the other employees for some training.  She's a nice person and is very willing to share information.  But by late morning, she had some work she needed to finish today, so I set up at a conference table in The New Boss's office and started a research task.  But I could not concentrate and found myself reading the same paragraph over and over without having a clue what I'd read.  The problem was the noise.  There was a radio playing.  Loudly.  Rock music, like Aerosmith and Def Leppard.  Employees talked to one another across the big room.  People came and went, and every time the door opened, a bell dinged and a disembodied voice announced, "Front. Door."  I nearly lost my mind until 12:00, when everybody in the place cleared out for lunch.  Well, almost everybody, because somebody turned the radio down a couple of notches when everyone else left.

At a few minutes until 5, I went out into the main area.  The New Boss was at his secretary's desk, gathering up some papers for a meeting he was about to attend.  When he saw me, he asked, "You're still here?"  Then he announced to the room, "Hey, y'all, she's still here."  

"And I'm coming back tomorrow," I said.

Hydrangea Cuttings, Day 1 - September 11, 2022

Friday afternoon, almost as soon as I cut the hydrangea limbs away from the HVAC unit, I cut some of the limbs into sections and stuck them down in a plastic tub full of dirt.  I set them on the back side of the porch, away from full sun.

I put the rest of the limbs in a tub of water and offered to give the remaining ones away on Facebook, first-come, first served.  Although several people responded that they wanted some, only one person (my niece) came to get some yesterday.  To be fair, it was raining; maybe people just didn't want to get out in it.

This morning, I filled plastic picnic cups with dirt until I ran out of cups, chopped two more hydrangea limbs into cuttings, and planted them. 

If even half of these rascals survive, I should have enough to plant the glorious hydrangea bed I envision.

The niece just called and said she's on her way over here for more limbs.  She must have the same vision.

Movin' It - September 10, 2022

After I left meeting yesterday, I stopped at the garden center to see if they had any hydrangeas on sale.  My plan for the phlox bed that I just cut down is to turn it into a hydrangea bed.  The garden center had been having a sale, and all of the hydrangeas were gone.  Nuts.  But I really need to do a lot of work in that bed before I plant much in it - need to get in there and dig up old those old phlox roots and till up the soil and (Mother Nature forgive me) use some weed killer next spring to nix the new plants.  So, I came home, changed clothes and went outside to work in the yard.  Land sakes, this place is a jungle!

When I was younger and dumber, I mail-ordered 48 English ivy plants, intending to plant them along the edge of the back yard, which drops off into a gulley.  The plan was to stop erosion.  Being in a tree line, the digging was hard, and after planting a couple of dozen plants, I scraped out one large patch of bare ground and buried the rest of the ivy in a mass grave.

It was years before the ivy really took off.  When it finally did, it took off straight up the trees instead of crawling across the ground as I had intended.  Most of the trees along the gully are now covered in ivy and more than a few have died and fallen; whether this is the fault of the ivy or the fault of growing on the edge of a gulley, I don't know; it may be a combination of both.  And it seems we are losing more of our back yard every year.  In one place, ivy growing from the ground up has intertwined with ivy dangling down from tree limbs and created an impenetrable curtain, behind which probably lives lord-knows-what kind of wildlife.  Weaving through all that mess is a grapevine with a trunk as big around as my arm. Yesterday, I attacked the ivy with the weed whacker, starting with the ivy closest to the mown area, and hacked my way into the jungle.  When the trimmer string broke for about the fifth time, I gave up, but I'd already reclaimed about 10 feet of lawn (until the ivy sprouts again).

After that, I divided and replanted some daylilies and some bulbs, set a mole trap, lopped down a bush that keeps growing at the corner of the driveway and impeding our view of oncoming traffic, and hacked some hydrangea limbs away from the HVAC unit.  Never made it to the phlox bed.  

When I cut back the hydrangea, it occurred to me that I ought to root my own hydrangeas with cuttings from those limbs.  In the past, I've had about a 50/50 success rate with getting the cuttings to root.  Of the survivors, none survived in the ground (possibly the fault of the lawnmower).  But I watched a video about rooting hydrangea cuttings and decided to give it a try.

I was at the dollar store up the road, buying dirt, when Son #2 called to see if I was up to babysitting Granddaughters #3 and #4 for the evening so that the rest of the family could go to a football game.  Of course, I said, "Of course!" and went to get them.  Upon my arrival, Granddaughter #3 announced that she was spending the night at my house.  Granddaughter #4 (the Little Rotten Baby) had just had her nap interrupted, and she was not in the best of moods.  She squalled and tried to escape from the car seat half the way home, and at her normal bedtime, she had a minor meltdown, wanting her normal routine.  But made her lie down with me on the bed and started telling her about Goldilocks and the Three Bears, using a deep Papa Bear voice and a squeaky Baby Bear voice, and she quit crying, got still, and listened to the rest of the story.  It didn't work to get her to sleep, but it did make her forget that she was supposed to be pitching a hissy fit.  She was asleep in my lap when her parents came to take her home.

Eight-year-old #3 (whom the LRB calls "Mar-Mar") stayed the night.  She insisted on sleeping in The Husband's recliner instead of in the cute "girl room" I fixed up for the granddaughters.  About 1 a.m., she shined an i-Pad in my face and said, "Grandmama, look, the i-pad says it's morning."  I replied, "Technically, that's true, but it's too early in the morning.  Go back to bed."  She was asleep on the couch when I got up at 6.  I tip-toed through the living room, poured a cup of coffee, took it out to the back porch.  About an hour later, "Mar-Mar" found me.  I set her to work making biscuits while I fried bacon and scrambled eggs.  Later, we went shopping.  As we were on our way home, Son #2 called, wanting to know if we'd watch the LRB again for a little while.  I said, "Sure!  Bring her on over."

This baby is a mess.  Twenty months old, talks a blue streak, knows colors, can count to five (when she feels like it).  Will tell you "NO!" in an instant.  Needs a beating, and I'd give her one except she's so cute.  ;)  She's not big as a minute.  Has a head full of curly hair and the sweetest smile you ever saw.  She had a few mishaps today - bumped her lip on a bar stool that is exactly lip high, fell down a step, dripped chocolate syrup down her brand new shirt.  By the time her daddy came to get her, she was asleep in my lap, wearing nothing but a diaper (I did stain treat and wash the new shirt).  

And I am worn slam out.

Yard Work - September 9, 2022

Well, I did what I said I was going to do: I cut down the phlox beds yesterday.  The weed-whacker ran at stop speed and made short work of it.  Still, it took about 2 hours to get it done.

When I finished murdering the phlox, I mowed our yard, then went down to Nanny's and mowed her yard.  Nanny's yard is big, and there are a lot of things to mow around, and a hill so steep it's scary. Took me another 2 hours.  

* * * * * * * * 

This morning I had my final meeting with the county executive about my new grant-writing job.  I start Monday, 8 a.m.  

First Cool Morning - September 8, 2022

This morning's back porch temperature is a perfectly wonderful 65 degrees.  Today should be a work outside day.  I say "should" because - well, you know what they say about "best laid plans."  Sometimes things just don't cooperate.

Take yesterday, for instance.

It started with a text from my bestie that reminded me of a gift she'd given me - a burr for my Dremel.  I'd had it over six months and hadn't used it, just hadn't been in the mood.  Thinking about the Dremel burr reminded me of another trinket I bought six months ago and hadn't used, a re-chargeable pen-sized carving tool.  I dug around in a craft drawer, found the tool, and took it out to the back porch to try it out on a "totem" (walking stick, really, made out of a straight crape myrtle limb) that I started carving last summer.  It's been leaning against a corner on the porch all this time.  Had a few spider webs and some dust bunnies on it.  It depicts characters/things from in my immediate world - birds, flowers and plants, bugs, a leafy vine spiraling around the stick.  I'd roughed in most of the images but hadn't fine-tuned them because all of my Dremel bits were a bit too large for detail work.  Hence the pen-sized tool.  I got it out and tested it.  It will work well for details like feathers and antennae, but as I examined the stick, I realized that I hadn't roughed-in the vine all the way down the stick.  Removing excess material is a Dremel job.  I decided I should finish the vine before starting on the details.  Besides, the re-chargeable pen tool was running out of juice.  I plugged it into my computer to charge and got out the Dremel stuff, including the new burr.

The last time I used the Dremel on my totem, I made a huge sawdust mess on the back porch, so I decided to do the rough carving outside.  My fold-up work table was already set up on the driveway, so I dragged it over to the outdoor electric outlet at the end of the house and went to work.  The new burr worked marvelously to remove a lot of material fast.  But crape myrtle is very hard wood, and it wasn't long before the Dremel motor started to labor.  I laid it down to let it cool for a while, went back to the pen tool until it ran down again, went back to the Dremel.

By this time, it's going on noon, and the shade over my work table was gone.  I couldn't move the table back to the shade because the Dremel cord wouldn't reach the outlet without stringing extension cords across the yard, and I was too lazy to do it.  I put the Dremel stuff away and returned the totem to its corner.

But while I was outside, I looked around the yard with a critical eye and admitted what a mess it was.  Weeds and saplings were taking over the flower beds.  Everything in the bed along the driveway was wrapped in cow-itch vine, Virginia creeper, and poison ivy.  And I've been meaning to cut down the phlox beds.  A couple of weeks ago, I even got out the push-type weed whacker and started toward the first bed, then I noticed that the phlox were positively ALIVE with butterflies and hummingbirds.  I didn't have the heart to cut down their food source, so I left the phlox alone.  But now that they are going to seed, it's time to cut them down.

I cranked up the weed whacker and started to on the bed by the driveway, but the head was spinning too slowly to do the job.  Wouldn't even cut grass, much less tough vine stems.  In a previous post, I told you about how The Husband had repaired the whacker's broken clutch bar (or whatever it's called) with a bar salvaged from an old lawnmower.  I wondered if that was the problem - maybe the bar wasn't pulling the cable enough.  I'd gotten a new bar weeks earlier but hadn't yet put it on, so I put on the new bar.  The weed whacker suddenly went from a wimpy, half-hearted piece of junk to a straight-up badass weed-chopping machine.  I congratulated myself and went back to work.  

As I was working on the last, weed-infested bed, a serious problem arose.  I heard a SCHUMPP and a wheeze, and the motor quit, and when I dragged the whacker out of the weeds, there was A TOMATO CAGE, which had been hidden by the weeds, wrapped around the spinner head.  

I thought, Well, sh*t, and proceeded to try to untangle the tomato cage.  Easier said than done.  Evidently, this was a premium tomato cage, for I could not budge the wire, not even with a pry bar.  The only solution was to cut it off.  

It could not be done - at least, I couldn't do it - with wire cutters.  Time for Plan B.

It seemed that the tomato cage might slide right off the shaft if I could remove the spinner thing.  There was a bolt on the bottom holding it on.  It was a sunken bolt, requiring a socket to turn it.  It took 10 minutes to round up a ratchet and the correct socket, and another few minutes to dig enough dirt from around the bolt to enable the socket catch hold of the bolt head.  But, guess what?  Not only was I not strong enough to budge the bolt, the tomato cage, itself, got in the way; I could not get enough leverage to really bear down on the ratchet.  

Back to the cutting idea.  

I got the Dremel out again, put on a cutting disc, dragged the lawnmower onto the porch (where I could work in front of a fan), and began cutting.  (Did I mention that I am scared to death of that cutting disc?).  Sparks flew.  There was a time or two when I thought I smelled hair burning, and the whole time I wondered if it was a good idea to be making sparks so close to a gas tank . . . .  I soldiered on, and slowly but surely managed to chop off enough of the tomato cage to remove it from the spinner.  

Whew!

Lord Jesus, I was worn out by the time the last piece came off.  

But, thankfully, the weed whacker cranked up again, and I finished the last bed near the house just as the motor started sputtering, running out of gas (I hope that's the problem).  I hadn't yet gotten around to the big phlox beds out in the middle of the yard, but I didn't know if we even had any more gas, and besides that I was tired.  I said, Screw it, and put the weed whacker away.

Today, I'm going to tackle the rest of the beds and, if I have enough energy left after hauling away the debris, I'll mow the yard, since it's supposed to rain this weekend.  The riding lawnmower and my big yard wagon are both at Nanny's.  I'll have to go get them at some point but, first, these phlox are COMING DOWN.  TODAY.

I'll start right after I do a Wordle.  Or two.  ;)

 

After writing yesterday's post, I thought to myself, Get your butt up and DO SOMETHING!  

Since we were out of groceries, I got dressed and went to the grocery store.  

On the way up the road, I spied a backhoe digging in a field up the hill, on the same side of the road as our house.  I'd been hearing that backhoe running for days and had been wondering what was going on.  It worried me.  Behind our house is a big gulley that drops into a bottom.  A not-so-heavy rain will flood that bottom fairly quickly.  I feared that whatever digging was going on uphill from us might make the situation worse.  I also feared that some developer was about to put in a subdivision close to us.  As I drove on to do the grocery shopping, I decided that I'd go find out what was going on when I got back from the store.

When the groceries were all put away, I cranked up the Wrangler, drove up the road, and went into the field where the backhoe was digging.   At the opposite end of the field, a guy was working on a tractor, and another guy was sitting in a truck, talking on his cell phone.  I drove over to them and motioned to the guy in the truck to come talk to me.  He turned out to be the guy who'd done some dirt work for us when our gulley caved in several years ago.  I told him who I was, and that I was concerned that the digging was going to cause more water to run into our bottom.  I asked him what was going on.

He said that they were building a shooting range.  They'd already built a berm at one end of the range and were going to build another one at the other end.  He said that the berm on our end would probably make our bottom-flooding situation better instead of worse.

I left the field feeling better.  

Then later that afternoon I thought, SHOOTING RANGE?!  

Geez.  And I was worried about new neighbors coming in, making noise, shattering our quiet!  If the landowner is building a shooting range for his own use, that's one thing.  Being country folk, we are used to hearing gunshots - hunters and people plinking at targets - but if he's planning on some kind of commercial venture. . . .  Rumor has it that the landowner is going to build a house in the immediate vicinity, so hopefully he won't want to live in a neighborhood that sounds like a war zone any more than we do.  

* * * * * * * 

It looks like my retirement will be over, come next week.   Meeting Friday to hammer out the details.

   

What Day Is It? - September 6, 2022

Thank goodness my computer knows what day it is; otherwise, I'd have to ask somebody.

I still have not heard from anybody about the new job, which I have been told is a "done deal," a "sure thing."  It's a bit irksome.  I need a target date to start.  It doesn't matter if the target date is tomorrow or six months from now, I just need to know so I can plan my time. 

My sewing/craft room is full of things to do.  When/IF I start the new job, it may have to become my office (The Husband has taken over our "real" office).  It is a total wreck at present and needs to be re-organized before ANY kind of new project gets underway.  I could start cleaning now and probably finish today, having a clean slate for tomorrow.  

But what to do tomorrow?

I need to make a quilt for Granddaughter #3.  She is 8 years old.  

When Granddaughter #1 was 6 years old, I asked her what kind of quilt she wanted.  She said, "Hmmmm...a PRINCESS quilt!"  I pondered a good while before finally deciding to use pre-printed panels showing various princesses in their finery.  On blank blocks between the princesses, I quilted a glass slipper, a pumpkin carriage, a mouse, a tiara, etc.  My skill set then was not quite as developed as it is now; I could do better now.  But Granddaughter #1 is long past the princess stage, and her family has moved several times, so the quilt is now boxed up and in a storage unit, somewhere, and probably hasn't been seen in years.

Granddaughter #2 was 11 when I asked her what kind of quilt she wanted.  She pondered and pondered and couldn't come up with anything.  Finally, wanting to get started, I took her to a fabric store and let her pick out one piece of fabric - anything she wanted - thinking it would lead to an idea.  She picked out a blue-green-black diagonal stripe (I think I've bitched about that fabric in several previous posts), which screamed "BORDER FABRIC," but a border for WHAT?  I ended up ordering more of that fabric and chopped it into triangles to make diamonds and squares.  I interspersed those squares with 3-D log cabin blocks.  It would make your eyes go crossed to look at that quilt top.  When Granddaughter #2 saw it (before I'd gotten around to putting the BORDER on it), her disappointment was obvious.  By this time, she'd decided that she what she really, really wanted was a superhero quilt.  I started over.  She was tickled pink with the superhero quilt, but it probably won't be long until she will see it as "kid stuff."

I have not yet asked Granddaughter #3 what kind of quilt she wants, or even what color she likes.  Maybe I should ask before I start something.

Or maybe not.  

Temporary Retirement Day 1 - September 1, 2022

It's 11:45 a.m.  

I'm on the back porch, still wearing my nightgown.  The sun is shining.  The birds are chirping and bees are buzzing.  My laptop says it's 80 degrees.  Seems about right.

So far, I've eaten breakfast, checked my email, read headline news stories, worked an online crossword puzzle, and talked to my sister on the telephone.  Big day, so far.

As of this afternoon, I am unemployed.  

The day started - or, rather, should have started - with The Boss's last hearing at 9 a.m.  The attorneys wanted to have a pow-wow before the hearing, and they ended up agreeing on whatever it was they were arguing about.  (I don't know why lawyers can't have their pow-wows BEFORE the day of the hearing; it would have the court so much time and effort.)  Another judge came in to be sworn in.  The Boss had a pile of orders to sign.

I took a picture of The Boss signing the final order, and another of The Boss handing that final order to a clerk to be stamped.

After that, The Boss and I waved for a camera from the courthouse porch, then the clerks all gathered on the porch and waved back at us.  Then it hit us that the picture would make more sense if it showed us waving AT EACH OTHER.  So we nabbed the next guy who came out of the courthouse and asked him to take the picture.  

We all went back inside.  The Boss and I gathered our purses, gave each other a hug, and made a standing lunch date for the second Tuesday of every month.

I choked up a little.  

Crazy Day - August 29, 2022

What a crazy day this has been.

The Boss swore in the new judge this morning.  A couple of hours later, the State computer geeks came for our computers, phones, fax machine, etc.  At the same time, the new judge's crew came to get our (state-owned) furniture.  

I have been talking with the County Executive about a job with the county.  We've met a couple of times, and "rumor" has it that I will have a job with the county.  The thing is that no one has told me when to report, where I'll be working, or how much the county intends to pay me - little things like that.

Tomorrow afternoon, the local bar association is hosting a reception for The Boss. 

Wednesday morning, The Boss has one final hearing to do.  

Then we're done.  

I don't quite know what to do with myself.

Partying - August 27, 2022

The Boss's retirement party was a hum-dinger.  Hundreds of people came.  There was good food, a rockin' band, and fireworks at the end of the evening.  

* * * * * * * * 

I saw a post on Facebook that said yesterday (Saturday) was "Play Music on the Porch Day."  Since The Husband and our sons are all "musical," we invited the family to come hang out and play music on the back porch.  All of our kids and grandkids were here, plus a few more relatives.  We had a big time!

Still Picking Peas - August 26, 2020

Yesterday was The Boss's last day in court.  After the final case was over, the court clerks and the bailiffs gathered behind The Boss on the bench for a picture.  It was kind of bittersweet.

The Boss turned me loose when we got back to town.  I ran a few errands, came home, changed clothes, and went to the garden to see what needed picking.  The purple hull peas should've been picked last weekend, but it rained, and we did not do any work in the garden.  Yesterday, when I finally got to it and saw all the grass and weeds I'd have to wade through, I thought I could hear the chiggers celebrating my approach.

About half of the peas on the vines were dried up, but there were enough good ones to make about a quart of shelled peas.  (I gave that job to Nanny.)  

This year's tomato crop has been pitiful.  We've had so much rain this month that many of the tomato skins have split.  And the garden critter - whatever it is - squirrel, raccoon, or groundhog - gnawed the bottoms out of half of the crop.  

While the rain kept us out of the garden, the squash grew into baseball bats.  I hauled two 5-gallon buckets of over-sized squash to the gulley behind the garden.  I don't know why the garden critter(s) don't eat squash.  Wonder if they know something we don't know?

Tonight is The Boss's retirement party, something she has been planning for years.  Five hundred guests are expected.  A local barbeque restaurant is cooking 26 pork shoulders and side-dishes to go with them.  There'll be a band and beverages.  It should be fun.  

Nine More Days - August 23, 2022

Whew...yesterday 'bout wore me out.

When we left the office last Friday, there was a huge pile of bagged-up and boxed-up garbage in the front room.  Yesterday morning we added a considerable amount to the pile.  When all of the drawers and shelves were finally empty, I said to The Boss, "Give me your car key.  I'm going to back it up to the door, and we're hauling this stuff to the dumpster."  She drives a Yukon.  We laid the back seat down and filled the cargo space with garbage bags - TWICE - and drove up the hill to the dumpster.  She held the lid open while I heaved the bags into the dumpster.  We were both dripping sweat by the time we finished.  

Having finished that chore, there's not much left for us to do.  This weekend or early next week, The Boss's kids are coming to get her personal furniture and boxed-up belongings.  The new judge's crew will come for our desks and the remaining state-supplied furniture.  I've got two boxes of pictures and books to bring home.

We have an old microwave that is so gross I won't use it.  We'll leave it for somebody else to toss.  We also have a dorm-sized refrigerator that's been running non-stop for 25+ years.  The freezer compartment was frozen shut, so I unplugged the refrigerator and aimed a space heater at the iceberg.  I'll take it to Granddaughter #1, who will be going away to college this fall, if it runs again when it's plugged back in.

We'll have court tomorrow and Thursday, then the official work will be done, except for wrapping up whatever paperwork is generated in those hearings.

I still do not know anything about my new job.  It appears to be a "done deal," but there's been no word on a start date or any other details, such as where my office will be.  Hopefully, someone will be in touch in a few days.

I like surprises, but damn . . . . 

Ten Days and Counting - August 21, 2022

Starting tomorrow, it's ten days and counting until we close up shop at the office and the new judge takes over.  There will be two more days of court next week, then we're done with the cases, but we still have some cleaning-out to do at the office.  There's one box that probably has a tarantula in it; I don't know how we're going to get that out of the office.  I ain't touching it.

Friday is The Boss's big retirement party.  

Monday morning, The Boss will swear in the new judge.  Later that afternoon, the techies will be coming for our computers and telephones Monday the 29th, and then we will be lame ducks.  The furniture will go away during the following two days.  We'll be like flies without a place to land.  Tuesday afternoon, the county Bar Association will be throwing one more retirement party for The Boss.  After that, I suppose we will truly be done.

* * * * * * * * * *

Last weekend, we picked all of the tomatoes that had even a hint of color on them and set them on the sill on the back porch.  Today, they were ripe enough for canning, but there weren't quite enough, so I put on my clogs and went to the garden to see if the squirrel had left any ripe ones.  We've had rain showers for the past few days, and I marred up in the mud, nearly face-planted once.  About half of the ripe tomatoes on the vines had been gnawed.  I got the ripe ones, and any that were starting to turn.  Nanny said she would like to have the ripe tomatoes to can, so I came home and got the ones from the porch, sorted out the ripest ones for Nanny to can, and put the rest of them on the porch sill.  Sent the ripe ones to Nanny via The Husband, who was about to make a trip to the Dollar General.  

I had also picked jalapeno and pimento peppers today to use for pepper jelly.  I knew I did not have enough sugar - a batch takes THIRTEEN cups of sugar! - so I asked The Husband to pick up two bags of sugar and two boxes of fruit pectin while he was at the dollar store.  As expected, the dollar store didn't have any fruit pectin, but I found two boxes among my canning supplies that were not out of date.  Then, when I started measuring out the apple cider vinegar, I discovered I was a cup short.  But there was a bottle of red wine vinegar in the pantry, and it was the right acidity, so I finished out the recipe with it.  My pepper jelly usually comes out a pretty gold color.  This time, it's more like "antique gold."  But it's still pretty.  

Here's a trick I learned about chopping hot peppers.  I have tried wearing plastic/rubber gloves to seed and chop the peppers, but it was awkward, and my hands still burned.  Last year, I tried rubbing olive oil on my hands before I started messing with the peppers, and IT WORKED.  I guess the pepper juice stuck to the olive oil instead of my skin.

Here's a pepper jelly trick to keep the peppers from floating to the top of the jar:  after the jars are out of the canner, while the jelly is a little warm but not set, swirl the jar.  It will help distribute the pepper pieces.

Morning Gardening - August 14, 2022

Friday afternoon, when I went to the garden for cucumbers and tomatoes for dinner, I glanced at the purple hull pea rows and saw they needed picking.  After dinner, I said to The Husband, "We ought to go pick the peas."  

He said, "Let's pick them tomorrow morning."  

I sort of rolled my eyes at him and gave him a doubtful look.  He hates gardening, and he hates mornings.  The odds of us picking peas in the morning seemed pretty slim.  

But, to my amazement, he did not complain when I reminded him of the peas after breakfast.  We picked another 5-gallon bucket full.

We also picked all of the tomatoes that had even a hint of orange on them, trying to beat the squirrels to the harvest.  We brought them home and lined them up on the porch sill.  A few tomatoes were ripe enough to eat, but there weren't enough to fool with canning.  To keep them from going to waste, I scalded the skins off of them, chopped them up, and put them in the freezer. 

Crash Kitchen - August 12, 2022

I was so excited to get a new food processor a few weeks ago.  I've been chopping and slicing left and right.  Last night, after pulverizing some frozen grated cheese (I was making low-carb cheetos - more about that later), as I was putting the processor back where it goes, the bowl fell off and chipped in two places when it hit the floor.  *sigh*  

When I tested the bowl on the processor, all the lights on the processor would flash at once, and it wouldn't grind.  I nudged the bowl a little bit and the lights went back to normal, but it still wouldn't budge.  *sigh*  

I gathered up the chips, found a bottle of super-glue that wasn't dried up, and glued the chips back in place.  (Wouldn't you know it, the chips occurred precisely in the spots where something needs to click or fit into a groove.  It probably could've busted in ANY OTHER PLACES and still worked.)  The chips glued in nicely, and I thought, This might work.  

The glue dried overnight, and I gave it a try today. 

No go.  

Lights flashing, nothing happens.

So I ordered a new bowl today.  It cost 2/3 as much as the whole food processor.  

If those lights blink when the new bowl goes on, I will be very mad.

* * * * * * * *

The Husband and I have been on a low-carb diet for almost 3 months.  We've both lost weight, but boy are we sick of the food.  I scour the internet daily for something new to cook.  Today's experiment is lasagna made with lavash bread instead of noodles.  It's ready to go in the oven come suppertime.  I'm sort of worried about what's going to happen to that lavash; I expect the top edge is going to be too crunchy to suit me.  (I don't like it when the edges of real lasagna noodles get crunchy.)  

Yesterday's experiment was home-made cheetos.  Pulverized frozen cheese, stiffly-beaten egg whites (with a tad of cream of tarter), and a small amount of almond flour.  Pipe it onto a parchment-lined tray, bake, and leave it in the oven to dry out for a while longer.  They were . . . not bad.  After they'd cooled completely, I put them in a zip bag.  I wondered if they'd get soggy, but so far they haven't.  I will try them again, with a little bit of cayenne or garlic.  The Husband says they need more cheese, but I think too much more cheese might affect the texture in a not-good way, since I'm shooting for a crunchy snack.

* * * * * * * * 

I might have found a new job.  Details to come.  ;)