Hey. April 16, 2020

Well, good morning, reader.  I hope your umpteenth day in captivity goes well.

Calling it "captivity" sounds ungrateful.  Truth is, I'm loving it, except for being chained to the cookstove.  And even that sounds ungrateful, doesn't it?  At least I have things to cook and a place to cook them.

The plumber worked on my toilets again yesterday.  The tanks had continued to leak after the first fix.  He came back yesterday and replaced the whole guts in the tank, not just the flapper.  I think that did the trick, for I am not hearing the toilets hissing and groaning today. 

But the septic tank is full AGAIN.  We had a bodacious rain over the weekend, and the leaky toilets didn't help the situation. The plumber told me he can built a gravel pit in my yard that will catch the rain water before it gets to the septic tank.  I have told him to put me on his list.  I just hope this doesn't cause our whole yard to collapse!

The plumber told me to call the line locator people to come out and mark the paths of our utility lines, so I did.  Less than two hours later, a dude was out here with a beeper machine and a can of orange spray paint.  At least there's some color in my back yard now.  ;)

After The Husband left for work this morning, I strolled my second cup of coffee around the yard.  The narcissus are blooming, almost a month earlier than usual.  These narcissus were here long before I was.  The Husband's great-grandparents had their house just outside of what is now our yard.  Apparently, the great-grandmother planted these bulbs.  When we prepared to build our house, my father-in-law came up here with the tractor and plowed and disced and smoothed our yard (that had lately been a horse pasture) so that we could plant some grass.  I guess he's the one who scattered these narcissus around.  There's one here, one there, a clump over yonder, and some down the hill in the gully.  For years, I've said I need to dig up those plants down in the gully and move them to the yard, but...snakes, poison ivy, mud...you get the picture.  Now, I'm 'bout to get too old and stiff to make the climb back up the hill.

The little head-high plum tree that I planted about three years ago has a few little plums on it.  It bloomed for the first time two years ago, but I never saw any plums.  It was just a little stick then.  Last year it bloomed again.  No plums.  I was beginning to worry that it needed a mate to produce fruit, and that would've been a problem, for there is no place to put another plum tree.  We also have a smallish apple tree that has never had fruit.  I planted it when I planted the plum.  It blooms later than the plum, and I was thinking maybe it needed a mate, too.  It's too early to tell if there will be any apples this year, for the blooms are just now withering.

The roses are budding. 

Phlox are a foot tall, or better.  So are the daylilies. 

Solomon's Seal has dangling blooms.

Birds are nesting.  I have put out a basket of thread clippings for them to use to build their nests.  Yesterday, I saw the wren get some and take it to her house.  I wish I could see the nest up close.

Cat - April 14, 2020

A black cat (with a white spot on his throat) showed up at my house a couple of weeks ago.  It has been someone's pet in its former life, for it is not skittish of people and rubs against our legs if we stand still long enough.  It wants to stare right in a person's eyes when it meows, and if you turn your back on it, it'll go around to your front side and meow louder.  I'd seen him prowling around the neighborhood on my way to/from work and believed him to be a neighbor's cat who would eventually GO HOME, but it appears he has decided to stay.

I have tried to discourage this decision for several reasons.  First, we don't want a cat, or any other pet.  Second, this is the meow-ing-est cat in the world; it is worrisome as hell.  Every time I go out on the porch, he comes to the porch and screams at the top of his lungs.  I tried to run it off by squirting it with water pistols and depriving it of food.  One day, as I shot him (with water) to run him off, I hollered to his backside (in my most villianous voice) that he should embrace his inner cat-ness and catch a mouse.

And I'm damned if it didn't do just that, right in front of me, that very afternoon.

I was impressed, and fed him some dinner that night.

I know: big mistake, if I want him to leave.

But that's the thing.  Maybe it's a good idea to let it hang around.   We have a LOT of varmints around this place:  raccoons, possums (O'possums, I reckon), squirrels, rabbits, SNAKES, armadillo, otters, BOBCATS - all of which are annoying in their own special ways.  I'm thinking that letting the cat stay around might discourage some of these other critters from hanging around here.  We did not see so many snakes and moles and such, back when we had outdoor pets.

I believe I can eventually put a stop to the frantic meowing.  It has learned what a water pistol looks like, and what it does.  All I have to do is pick it up, and the cat runs away.  For a minute.  Sometimes I have to give him a little dose before he knows I mean business when I tell him to SHUT UP, but he's learning.

I keep calling it a "he," but I suspect it's really a "she."  And you know what that means:  kittens, eventually, unless her previous owners had her "fixed," which is unlikely.  I certainly do NOT want to deal with kittens.  And she probably hasn't been vaccinated.

Okay, so maybe it's NOT a good idea to let the cat hang around.

P.S. - I just called animal control and asked them if they'd work a deal with me: I'll keep the cat, if they'll help.  They're supposed to call me back.
 

Quarantine Part ? - April 8, 2020

Just leaving "markers" here, I guess, so I can keep track of what day it is.  (It IS Wednesday, isn't it?)

Nothing much happened here at home yesterday.  That's a good thing, I reckon, these days.

I spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon researching for the book I'm writing.  It is amazing what faint tracks the poor people of the world leave in the history books.  Unless one was rich or powerful (and those two things usually go hand-in-hand) or notoriously evil, there is very little historical record of his/her existence, except in the memories of the offspring.  If the memories are a credit to the offspring, they might be passed down for generations; if they are embarrassing enough, they die after a generation or two.

I have spoken directly with cousins who grew up at "ground zero," where this story takes place.  One of these cousins, while doing genealogy research, stumbled across the Alabama Supreme Court case that sparked my research.  This cousin shook down her oldest relatives and asked them if they knew the story.  Most of them didn't know anything about it; the rest of them said that their ancestors had refused to talk about it, but that it had caused a family split, of sorts, back in the day.  The cousin who lives at "ground zero" could not even pinpoint on the ground the original location of the ruckus.

Paper records are hard to come by.  In some cases, there simply weren't any official records.  Where would pioneers record a marriage (other than in a family bible) when there were no official record keepers in the vicinity?  When county governments were established, the record-keeping began, but courthouses all over the south have burned at some point.  If storms or chimney fires didn't get them, the Civil War did.  We are lucky that any records have survived from the earliest days of the counties.  The courthouse at "ground zero" did not burn, as far as I know.  The original courthouse was a log structure, built in the 1820s, off-side the tract that would become court square.  Twenty years later, a new brick courthouse was built.  It still stands today, encased in additions that have been built over the years.  However, a number of years ago, when the courthouse was heated with boilers, one of the boilers burst and flooded the basement, where some of the oldest records were kept.  The worst of the old, damaged books and documents were destroyed; the rest are now housed in the vault of an old bank building that now functions as the county archives.  The Church of the Latter Day Saints has microfilmed and put online some of the records from that county - marriages, land transfers, etc., but they did not film all of the court minute books (or if they did, I haven't found them online).  I need to spend about a solid week scouring those minute books in the hope of discovering some of the details I am missing.

Mid-afternoon, I took a break from researching to get up and move around a little bit.  Since the weather this week has been so pleasant, I have been spending most of my time on the back porch, and every day I've sat here and watched the grass grow in the back yard.  There is always a time in the spring when I enjoy the scruffy look of new grass and the little pops of color from the yard weeds.  Tall white daisy-like things.  Low-growing yellow oxalis.  Wild violets.  I let them grow until they look shabby, then I mow them down.  They got shabby yesterday.  I cranked up the push-mower and tidied up the part that I can see from the back porch.

Come evening, I made a batch of beer bread from scratch to go with the hamburger steaks (with tomato gravy), creamed potatoes, and sweet peas I planned for supper.  I'm not much of a bread-maker (except I can make a decent biscuit and edible cornbread), but I've made enough quick bread to know that there was something wrong with the beer bread recipe I was using, once I stirred it up.  The recipe called for "3 cups of flour (sifted)."  It said to mix up the ingredients and "pour" them into a bread pan.

Now, to my way of thinking, "3 cups of flour (sifted)" means (1) measure out three cups of flour, and (2) then sift it.  Apparently, my thinking is wrong, for I ended up with a dry wad of dough that was nowhere near "pourable."  I took my dough bowl to the sink and added enough water so that I could at least stir it a little bit.  It came out a little dense, but it was tasty and sopped up tomato gravy just fine.

Between the researching and the mowing and the cooking, I did some plumbing inspection.  During the latter part of March, our septic tank filled up with rainwater, and we had to have it pumped.  The pumper guy told The Husband that he saw water trickling into the tank from the house and thought we might have a leaky toilet flap.  The Husband risked his health to go to the hardware store to buy a new flap for the suspected toilet, and The Son installed it that night.  For the following two weeks, as I've been out here on the porch, I've heard strange belching noises coming from the septic tank.  We called the pumper guy back and, sure enough, the septic tank was full again, partly from water running back into the tank from the field lines, and partly from the trickle that was STILL coming from the house. 

I garbed myself with a mask, went to the hardware store (which was doing curbside service only - keep 6 feet apart, please), and bought THREE new toilet flaps.  The menfolk installed them that night.  Yesterday, I went around checking the water level in the toilet tanks, and it appeared that they were ALL leaking.  *sigh*

I called a real plumber this morning.  Amazingly, he answered.  He said he'll come see about it tomorrow.

I should probably clean all the toilets today.  ;)

Quarantine - April 7, 2020

This post is going to be longer and more boring than usual because I have nothing better to do.  ;)

Today it has been a full week since I have gone to work.

Last Tuesday, I got up, showered and dressed for work, and was ready to walk out the door when my son came home from working a double shift and announced that he was feeling feverish.  I panicked, afraid that he had come down with the coronavirus.  He took his temperature:  98.6.  Because he was exhausted, he showered and went straight to bed.  I called my boss and told her what was up.  She told me not to come to the office.

A couple of hours later, my son took his temperature again:  99.something, and a couple of hours later, it was 100.something.  He said his throat was sore, and his ears ached.  He had a cough, but it was not a dry cough.  A while later, he blew his nose, and - well, I'll spare you the description, but it looked like he might have a sinus infection.  He did a video consultation with his doctor, who opined that it probably was a sinus infection and prescribed antibiotics.  By the next day, his fever was gone.  I called my boss that night and told her I would be at work the next day.

Wednesday, when the boss came in, she sat far away from me as we talked about what we needed to do.  Since she is a judge, and since the courts are closed for everything but emergencies, we have very little work to do at present.  We are both afraid of the coronavirus and have been limiting our exposure to other people.  However, we both live with sons who work in facilities that employ hundreds (thousands, in my son's case) of other people.  We decided that we should take turns going to the office every few days to return calls, open mail, etc., so as not to expose one another to whatever our sons might bring home.  Since I live 15 miles from the office and she lives only 2 miles from it, she said that I should just stay home for the rest of the week, and she would drop by to check on things the next time she had to leave her house.

Since then, the governor has issued a stay-at-home order, and people are not supposed to be out in public except for essential errands.

I have been doing my grocery shopping online for several months.  Lately, the wait time for pickup has sky-rocketed.  I ordered groceries last Wednesday evening, and my earliest pickup time was Sunday afternoon.  So Sunday afternoon, I went to the supermarket to pick up my order, and when I got there, they said they had no record of an order for me.  I checked my email on my telephone, and could not find an order confirmation, so I left the supermarket, intending to pick up a few necessities at a locally-owned grocery store that is not usually very crowded.  When I pulled into that parking lot, it was crawling with traffic.  No, thank-you.  I drove to a Dollar General store that is not far from my house and managed to pick up enough stuff to see us through the next few days.  When I came home, I checked the supermarket order that I thought I'd made, and discovered that my cart was still full.  I added a few things to it, and finished the check-out process; it would be Wednesday, April 8, before I could pick up my order.  Fortunately, we had enough food in the house to keep from starving until Wednesday, but I only have enough half & half left for one more cup of coffee, so things are about to get real around here.

In the days between my last trip to work and today, I have been making masks.  My sister-in-law is a nurse in the cardiac ICU at a hospital.  Two weeks ago when I asked her if her hospital needed masks, she didn't seem too concerned, but said it wouldn't hurt to have a few re-usable masks, just in case.  I made her about a dozen masks before I ran out of elastic.  A few days ago, she said the hospital's mask supply was getting low and asked me to make a dozen more, with ties instead of elastic.  A day later, the coronavirus experts were recommending that everyone wear masks out in public, and The Husband asked me to make masks for him and his 28 co-workers.  So I got crackin'.  Sewed all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  Making the ties slows the process, but I figured out a fairly quick way to make them using a 1/2" strip of fabric with a 1/4" bias tape maker.  I'm still a few masks short of The Husband's requested 28 masks - ran out of ties - but I took the day off from sewing yesterday to give my neck and shoulders a rest.  I plan to finish my quota today.

When my son goes back to work on Thursday I will have the house to myself during working hours, and I plan to resume work on a book I am trying to write.  This book is based on a real story, something that happened in my father's family prior to the Civil War, the details of which I stumbled across as I was doing genealogy research.  These people moved from South Carolina to Alabama before 1820, before Alabama became a state.  Tribes of Creeks and Cherokees still had territories in the surrounding areas.  Our family was working class - blacksmiths and sharecroppers - moving with wealthier families to help them start new cotton plantations.  Mary, the "heroine" of the story, was just a child when her family moved to Alabama.  She never married, but gave birth to four illegitimate children by at least two different fathers, one of whom deeded property to Mary and their two children prior to his death.  When he died, Mary had to file a lawsuit against the man's one legitimate child in order to gain the property deeded to her children.  The case went on for years - went all the way to the Alabama Supreme Court and for years afterward - with many twists in the tale brought on both by human subterfuge and by the onset of the Civil War.

I'll let you read it when I'm done.  ;)

Snake! - March 28, 2020

We had our first snake-on-the-porch event today.

I heard The Husband say, "Oh, sh*t!  Snake!"

Ever since the first snake-on-the-porch event (the summer after we built this porch), we've kept a shootin' iron of some sort within reach of the back door.  The Husband grabbed up the gun-au-jour, a serious pellet rifle, and blasted the intruder.  Its blood left a crimson stain on the floor, but I'd rather have the stain than the snake.  We generally don't kill non-poisonous snakes unless they invade our personal space, but our porch is screened in, and we don't intend to try to run a snake out the door.  Nope.

Now, I've been sitting on this porch, crafting, most of the day, except for trips in the house for drinks and supplies and tools.  That snake has either crawled by me while I was sitting here, engrossed in something, or he's been out here with me THE WHOLE TIME.

It plumb rattles me, and has driven my crafting mojo away.

I tried to get back into the "zone" after I washed the blood off the porch.  One of the things I was working on earlier was paper beads.  I've been meaning to give them a shot for some time.  I played around with them a little when I first saw the idea, but quickly discovered that I needed some tools if I wanted *pretty* beads.  I had things around here that would work for practice, but no time to hunt them up...until today.

The last time I tried paper beads, I cut them out of a magazine with scissors, and they weren't very precise.  Today, I decided to fire up the Scan-n-Cut - it had a shameful layer of dust on it - and see if I could cut out perfect beads.  Of course, that required a refresher course on how to make my own cutting file, and scrounging up a cutting mat that still had a little sticky on it.  After searching a couple of rooms, I found some pretty craft paper that I'd been saving for a rainy day.  (It's not raining, yet, but it's coming.)  Miraculously, I remembered how to load a file on the Scan-n-Cut, and managed to cut out a dozen, perfectly-shaped skinny triangles from the pretty paper.  Even more miraculously,  the skinny triangles peeled off the mat without tearing.  Oh, this was meant to happen!  I grabbed a wooden skewer and some toothpicks out of a kitchen drawer, and a bottle of glue and some Mod Podge, and took them out to the porch with the snake.

The beads didn't turn out half bad.  The pretty paper had a pretty back-side, and so I was able to make some coordinating beads.  I didn't do such a great job with the Mod Podge, but today's beads are only a vehicle for playing with some embossing powder and the heat gun I got for Christmas, neither of which I have used.

While my beads dried, I was going to watch a couple of videos on how to do this properly (I was winging it today), so that once I figure out the embossing powder I can make some *good* beads.  I found a promising video and grabbed a nearby pad to take notes.  The one pencil within reach had no usable lead.  I took it to the pencil sharpener, which lately has been rocking when I turn the crank and has taken to sharpening only one side of a pencil.  I've been meaning to investigate this, so today I did.  Finally got a sharp pencil and went back out to the porch, now capable of taking notes during the video.

I had no sooner got the video started than The Husband came out on the porch, looked up at the ceiling fan, and asked, "Do we have any light bulbs?"  I've been griping for a few days about the burned-out light bulbs in the porch ceiling fan, and after finding the snake on the porch, I'd said we REALLY need to fix the light so we can check for snakes after dark.  Since it was my bright idea, I felt obligated to look for light bulbs.  So, I got up, went to the utility room, and scrounged up some light bulbs while The Husband took the light cover off the fan.  While he changed the bulbs, I washed the dead bugs out of the light cover.  Then we tried to put it back on.  OMG, getting those chains through all that tubing....  My neck is going to be sore tomorrow.

Ok, so here I sit.

What was I going to do???

Oh, yeah...the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU9RvX7p9ZA

See ya.

Housebound - March 26, 2020

If you've judged me for all the whining and complaining I do on this blog, it may surprise you to know that I really am a person who regularly counts my blessings.

* I have a job, and my boss is a really great person who puts family and health above all else.
* The Husband has a job that is stable, even in these uncertain times.
* My children have good jobs in industries that are considered essential.
* My grandchildren are smart and healthy.
* We live in a rural community, surrounded by family, where our every-day dangers are generally not all that life-threatening.

But this virus thing . . . .

This is a scary time, for sure, but I recognize - every day - that it is not nearly as scary for me as it is for some of you.  Healthcare workers.  Small business owners and their employees who depend on foot traffic to survive.  Scary times, indeed.

My family and I are doing our part to help stop the spread of this virus.  We are staying home, cooking our own meals, sanitizing like crazy, hoping it will be enough to spare us from illness.  And praying.  Lots of prayers, for ourselves, for you, for the whole country, for the whole world.

Staying at home is not a chore for me.  I'd rather be here than anywhere (though, frankly, I do miss our Friday night dinners out).  My stash of craft supplies should last me for the rest of my life, even if it's a long life.  I've got plenty to keep me occupied.

Take yesterday, for example, which will require a bit of back-story.

My cousin sent me a text last Thursday.  She was in a panic.  Her daughter's wedding was 2 days away, on Saturday.  The original wedding venue plans had been nixed by the virus-related restriction on crowd gatherings, and the wedding location (and guest list) had to be modified at the last minute.  My cousin asked me for ideas on how to decorate the small country church we all attended as children.  Given more time and freedom to move around, I might have been able to come up with something "simple but pretty," as she had requested.  As it was, the best I could do was offer her the beat-up, rusted, (we'll call it "shabby-chic") walk-under arch from my yard and a access to my ribbon stash.

She and her husband came to get the arch Friday evening.  It had been raining here for days and days.  As we walked across my front yard to the side yard where the arch was located, we marred up to our ankles in mud, thanks to a multitude of mole tunnels hidden by the spring weeds.  I vowed then that as soon as I could, I would mow down the weeds to reveal the mole trails, stomp down the hills, and set a trap for the disgusting little critters when they resumed their digging.

Yesterday, I was sent home from work early.  It was not raining, so I put on my mud boots, dragged the push-mower out of the shed, and filled the tank with gas.  Miraculously, it cranked on the second pull.  This was meant to happen, I thought.

It didn't happen easily.  The mower marred up in the mole tunnels, and it required all the effort I had to push it.  Remembering that horses pull wagons instead of pushing them, I resorted to pulling the mower behind me, which was only slightly less exhausting that pushing it ahead of me.  Finally, finally, I managed to cut the grass and weeds from the area where the mole(s?) had been busy.  It positively scalped the yard down to the dirt in many places, and there are deep footprints everywhere.  I'm not sure I will be able to distinguish new mole diggings from the trenches left by my feet and the mower.  We'll see.

My 12-year-old grandson has been here for almost two straight weeks.  The schools have been closed, but luckily his dad's crazy work schedule combined with my modified work schedule have allowed one of us to be here with him all week.  Poor kid has been bored out of his mind.  Ordinarily, I would have protested his constant video-game playing and internet surfing, but these are crazy times, and I've just let him do his thing.  But since it wasn't raining yesterday, I mustered the troops (him and his dad) and enlisted their help in the yard.  Once the mowing and weed-eating and leaf-blowing were done, the grandson said, "Hey, Grandmama, can I wash the Jeep?"  It needed it, and it was a physical activity, one that didn't involve electronics, so I gave him the thumbs up.

Letting (or forcing) and teaching a kid to do a chore is sometimes harder than doing it, yourself.  He had tried to help me mow, but he had never used a push-mower, and I was afraid that he would slip in the mud and cut his leg off.  Car-washing seemed like a safe enough activity, one that wouldn't require much assistance from me.  Still, I helped him find a bucket.  I dragged the water hose out for him.  When he asked where he could find a rag to do the scrubbing, I sent him to the kitchen to get a rag from the basket where I throw the dirty dish rags and hand towels.  I did not pay attention to which dirty rag he had chosen until I heard my son say, "Boy, you need a rag that'll scrub a little better than that one."  I raised up from picking up yard debris and discovered that he had chosen one of my white, embroidered, flour-sack dish towels and had already used it to scrub off road grime and tree sap.

*sigh*

It's just a dish towel, right?  In the grand scheme of things, it's a small matter.  Maybe it'll come clean with bleach.

Mustard on the Ceiling - 2/1/2020

My telephone rang about 4:30 p.m. last Friday afternoon.  It was Nanny, wondering if I wanted to ride to town with her.  I was puzzled.  Was there some plan that I had not known about?  When she reminded me that it was Uncle Jack's birthday (#81!) and that there was a party for him starting at 6 p.m., I panicked.  Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I'd known about this party.  I hadn't bought a present or even a card.  A birthday party at a family member's house always required making a dish, and my cupboard was nearly bare.  I told Nanny that, yes, I would ride with her, and immediately began to scratch around in the refrigerator and the pantry to see if I could find something to cook for the party.

I found a big block of cheese and a can of chili-ready diced tomatoes.  Cheese dip coming up!

While I was perusing the contents of the refrigerator, I came across a big stick of summer sausage made from a deer The Husband had shot last year.  The sausage had been in the freezer for about a year.  I'd found it earlier in the week when I was digging through the freezer looking for something else, and I'd put it in the refrigerator to thaw.  All of Uncle Jack's offspring are hunters.  I knew that if there was ever a crowd that would appreciate deer sausage, it would be his folks.  I peeled the cover off of the sausage and sliced it up on a platter.  As I was slicing, I was thinking about what I could use to make a dip for the sausage.  The refrigerator yielded some spicy brown mustard and some jalapeno pepper jelly.  I splashed some of each into a small bowl and stuck it in the microwave to melt the jelly.

It was pushing 5:30 by this time.  Nanny was supposed to pick me up at 5:45.  I was rushing to finish by the time she got here.

When the microwave bell dinged, I grabbed the bowl.  It was hot, and I dropped it.  It landed on the floor, square on its bottom.  I watched as, seemingly in slow motion, the mustard/jelly mixture exploded upward.  The sh*t went EVERYWHERE - on me, on the floor, on the table, on the microwave and the wall and the curtains . . . . I grabbed a dishrag and started mopping up the mess.  Fortunately, enough of the mustard/jelly remained in the bowl to reserve a little for the sausage.

We had a good time at the party.  Uncle Jack and Aunt Myra are about the sweetest two people on earth, and it was good to visit with them and other family members that we don't get to see very often.

The next morning, I happened to look up while sitting at my kitchen table.  There was mustard on the ceiling and on the light fixture over the table.  It's a 1980's "popcorn" ceiling.  If I try to scrub it, the popcorn will come off, and there'll be a bare spot.

Wonder what will cover up mustard?