New Year's Eve Eve 2017

I just got through doing something that I hadn't done in ages, and it came about in the oddest way.

Today, to prevent ourselves from sitting on our butts watching television all day, The Husband and I hooked up with his sister and brother-in-law, and did a road trip to an antique mall about 2 hours away.  This mall is HUGE - aisle after aisle of vender booths with everything under the sun.  We wandered the aisles for nearly five hours, looking for a few specific items - a print, a table, a Tupperware salt shaker.  He worked one side of each aisle, and I worked the other.  We'd hold up stuff - "Hey, look at this. . . ."  We found stuff we hadn't even known we needed.  ;)

Anyway, at some point, we were in opposite booths with our backs to one another, and he said something - I'm not even sure what it was (because he mumbles, and our backs were to one another) - that made me suddenly think about a bowl of ice cream with Coke poured over it.

I NEVER THINK ABOUT ICE CREAM.  I just don't.  I mean, if there's ice cream on a TV commercial, then I might think about it.  Or if I see somebody working with great enjoyment on a double-dip cone on a hot day, I might think I'd like to have one and might even go get one.  But ice cream just isn't regularly at the top of my list, or The Husband's, either.  I buy it, sometimes, and we might eat one bowl apiece, right away, then we keep it long enough for it to get freezer burnt then we wash it down the drain.  It's not my go-to treat.

Pouring Coke over ice cream was something my parents did when I was a kid.  We didn't call it an "ice cream float."  We ate it with a spoon, then drank the milky liquid.  I always thought it was kind of weird, though in a good way.  I have not done it - or thought about doing it - in probably 40 years.

I said to The Husband, "I don't know what you just said, but whatever it was, it made me think about a bowl of ice cream with Coke poured over it."  And he gave me the "Huh?" look, having apparently   not mentioned ice cream. 

It may be that the antique mall was playing music with subliminal messages (though it would seem that they'd want me to think, "Antique table," not "ice cream with Coke poured over it").  It may be that, come 5 p.m., when the place was closing and we had not eaten anything since breakfast, a drop in blood sugar might have been giving me subtle hints.  In any case, the thought sunk into my brain and would not go away.

On the way home, I happily remembered that we have ice cream in the freezer, left over from Christmas Eve, so probably not too frosty yet.  And there was a 2-liter bottle of Coke on the counter, also left over from Christmas Eve.  I thought I was set!  As soon as we got home, I fixed a little bowl of ice cream and tested the Coke for fizz.  Nada.  I got nothing but swirly syrup.  This would not do; there's got to be fizz.  I kept searching the kitchen.  In the pantry was a small bottle of Coke left over from a road trip we took two months ago.  Evidently, someone had taken one swallow and put the top back on; it was flat, too.  We had some cans of diet Coke left over from Christmas Eve, and I was forced to use one of them, for there must be fizz in a bowl of ice cream with Coke poured over it.

I ate the foam, I ate the ice cream, I drank the creamy Coke down to the last drop.  And boy, even with diet Coke, it sure was good.

From my toasty warm office - 12/27/17

It appears that the cold weather has driven me into the house for the next few weeks.  The low temperature tonight is supposed to be in the teens, with highs in the 30s for the next week or so.  Bummer!

Christmas has come and gone, and it was a good one.  Both The Husband and I were off work on the 26th, and we spent the day hunkered down in the house, eating left-overs from our Christmas Eve gathering.  I got out of bed at 6 a.m., had some coffee, then slept on the couch from 7 a.m. until 9 a.m., slept in the recliner from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m., and had the audacity to head to bed at 10 p.m. and sleep until 7 this morning. 

But I've been cracking the whip on myself today (in a figurative sense, of course - I am not into pain).  As Christmas approached, several of my embroidery design customers asked for special orders, and I put them all off until this week.  Now it's time to get busy!  The embroidery machine has been running for two hours, already, testing designs I worked on this morning. 

There's just never enough time in any day to do everything I want/need to do.  I still have gifts to embroider for folks I didn't see at Christmas.  I want to paint a picture for our bedroom.  I want to make a swaggy thing to go over our bed (but need to go to the craft store for supplies).  I want to build a table for my sewing room.  I want to rearrange my yard (which ain't happening in THIS kind of weather!).  I want to practice on my mandolin, and figure out how to get Alexa to do what I *#)!@ ask her to do.

And yet I sit here blogging . . . .

From the Back Porch - 11/14/2017

What a difference a few days has made in the colors around here!  Frost has bitten the tender things.  Our yard is carpeted with leaves.  No more complaining about not having anything to go in the composter!  I just hope that these moderate temperatures linger for a while.  I dread being run in the house by cold weather.

 I have been wanting to try my hand at wood carving.  Sunday, I selected a stick of wood from the log pile and lugged it to the patio.  I could not find a chisel in any of the places where a chisel ought to be, so yesterday I stopped by a hardware store and bought several, in sizes ranging from fairly small to fairly beefy.  When I came home, I began hacking on the log, thinking I might whittle myself a wooden rabbit.

Wood carving is hard.

I discovered that my log has a crack in it, which probably goes all the way through and will ruin my rabbit, but I kept hammering away.  For two hours or more, I chiseled.  So far, it looks like I've sculpted a butt crack peeking out from torn pants, but that was a natural feature of the log.  Heh.  I should leave it that way and carve a rabbit out of another log.  ;)

Anyway, as I was saying, I hacked and chiseled and hammered for about two hours, sitting straddle of a concrete bench.  The next thing I knew, the sun was going down and I was cold.  When I put my tools down and stood up . . . Lord have mercy!  I could barely move!  And about an hour later, my shoulder started aching, and it seemed like there was sand in the joint.  I'd pounded my left hand with the hammer a couple of times, and it was swollen and blue.  

But, dang, the chiseling was fun.

From the back porch - 10/20/2017

It is finally feeling like fall around here, though we don't have much color yet. 

I am enjoying the mums that I bought from the local FFA boys.  They were a little battered in transit, but I planted them, anyway, and they are lovely (if a little one-sided).

The lettuce in the raised beds is coming along.  We have enough young leaves for a salad.  I planted spinach, too, but it's still tiny.  Pretty soon, I'll need to construct some sort of cover for those beds to keep the frost off the plants.

I think I told you about the elephant ears that my sister gave me, the ones I never planted.  Just laid them on the ground near the spot where I intended to plant them, but never got around to it.  They laid there on top of the ground all winter last year, and all this year, and when I discovered them on my first trip around the yard this spring, I figured they were goners.  But not only did they survive and produce leaves, they actually bloomed.  Not one bloom, but SIX.  I've never had an elephant ear produce more than one bloom, even when planted in the ground!

Five spent blooms, one emerging bloom.

I still haven't prepared the vegetable garden for next year.  A couple of weeks ago, we cleaned up the old plants, removed the tomato cages, etc., and I scattered 200 pounds of pelletized lime on the soil.  As I will trying to work it into the soil, the tiller tire came off the rim.  We took the tire off, and I took it to a gas station to be repaired, and by the time we attempted to put it back on the tiller, it was flat again.  I don't know what I'm going to do about this.  I tried to find a solid rubber tire that wouldn't go flat, but they apparently don't exist.  The guy at the hardware store said to put a tube in the old tire.  Can that even be done?

Gloria the Second - September 28, 2017

A couple of weeks ago, I ordered 10 pots of yellow chrysanthemums from the local FFA boys.  They should arrive some time this week.

I knew when I ordered them where I was going to plant them - five in each flower bed on the sides of the porch.  Those flower beds were a mess, full of iris and daylilies and monkey grass that are long over-due for dividing.  The plan was to dig all that stuff up, divide it all, and re-plant it where it made better sense, leaving room for the incoming mums. 

I had the day off yesterday, and it was warm and sunny.  By 9 a.m., I was outside, digging up the plants with a shovel.  When I finished digging everything up, I went down to the garden shed to get Gloria, the little red tiller, who needed a little work.  Her cord was hanging halfway out and wouldn't go back in.  I had ordered a new crank mechanism, and we'd have to put that on before I could till up the soil.  As my luck would have it, the part didn't fit.  Plan B was to start Gloria with a drill (she has a belly button that receives a chuck thing).

Plan B didn't work, either.  I drilled and drilled, but the thing wouldn't start.  The Husband said to check the oil.  I did.  It looked low.  Back to the garden shed for a quart of oil.  The Husband said the manual said to fill it up, so I did.  When I tried to crank it with the drill again, Gloria belched, and a stream of oil shot out of the air filter.  Simultaneously, The Husband and I said, "Oooo, that didn't sound good."

I went to the store and bought Gloria the Second.  While waiting for the cashier to ring up the sale, another cashier checked the records.  Gloria the First had a two-year warranty.  I had bought her in April 2015, so she was five months past her warranty.  My luck holds out again, eh?

I may re-name her, just so she won't quit as soon as her warranty expires.

Anyway, the beds are both re-planted and awaiting the arrival of the mums.

From the back porch - September 18, 2017

My favorite component in this year's view from the back porch is the Elephant Ears.  My sister gave them to me last spring, two bulbs - one large, one small - that I stashed in the "trunk" of my Wrangler.  I open that trunk about twice a year; there's normally nothing in it but a 10-disc CD changer and a ratchet strap, neither of which I need on a regular basis.  So it was that those bulbs rode around, forgotten, in my trunk until the fall, when I discovered mouse poop in the front passenger seat and had to tear the Jeep apart to dispatch the offender and its leavings.  It was when I went to set a baited trap in the trunk that I found the bulbs, and I thought, "Oh, sh*t, I bet they're dead," but decided to plant them, anyway, in case there was still a living cell or two in them.  I brought them around to the back of the house and laid them near the spot where I intended to plant them.  And that's as far as I got.  They laid there all winter on top of the ground and STILL haven't been planted. Aren't they magnificent?

I cleaned out the two of the three raised beds on the left this weekend and planted lettuce seeds in the first one, which still holds the stump of the kale tree.  It looks pretty dead, but who knows?  It might sprout again.  The middle bed had zinnias in it.  They were leggy and unsightly, so I yanked them out.  All that remains is the freebie cabbage that a garden center gave me late this spring.  It currently has four leaves on it.  We'll see if it has any plans.  Beyond the middle bed is the Blue Apron bed. It contains the root ends of the scallions that go into the dinners, as well as several heads of garlic. (Blue Apron folks, if you're reading this, one head of garlic per shipment would suffice).  They grow! Some of the onions are as big as grocery store onions.  I probably should take those up before winter, eh?

Waaaay over to the left, the black thing is my compost tumbler.  I am making a serious effort at making compost to go in the vegetable garden, which is in bad need of additional dirt and apparently is starved of nutrients.  All of our food waste goes into the tumbler, but I had very little "brown" matter to add to it until I decided to shred the Blue Apron boxes and add them to the compost.  It seems to be working.  I hope it's ecologically OK to use the cardboard - things I've read say it's fine, though it apparently doesn't contain a lot of nutrients.  It sure gives bulk to the compost, and solves the problem of what to do with all that cardboard!

It's starting to rain now.  Maybe my lettuce seeds will sprout!

From the back porch - 9/6/17

Supper ingredients are prepped, and after we've eaten and cleaned up the dishes, I intend to have a one-woman Zelda-thon until nearly bedtime, if I wanna.  But I have a little time between now and when The Husband gets home.

It is an absolutely gorgeous evening here.  Temp is about 76 degrees.  It's sunny and still.  Birds chirping.  Crickets and frogs and various unknown things humming.  If  I didn't know that the northwest section of this country is on fire, and the southeast section is (or is about to be) under water, and some crazy guy on the other side of the world is playing with big guns, I might spend this pleasant evening less anxiously.

I might also be less anxious if The Husband had not killed a baby snake on the sidewalk yesterday evening.  Finding a baby snake is WAY WORSE than finding an adult snake.  He thought this one might've been a copperhead.  I'm hoping it wasn't.  I'm hoping it didn't have 10 or 12 siblings living under my porch.  They can't crawl up through cracks in the floor (we had the underside screened to keep mosquitoes out), but I bet they can get it around the screen doors.  If I find one on the porch, I'll be trapped in the house for the rest of my life.

The Husband sprinkled Snake Stopper all around the house.  It looks like it snowed here, and smells like Red Hots.