Snow! 1-12-2018

Yesterday, my boss (the best boss ever) said, "If it's bad in the morning, don't come to work.  In fact, don't worry about coming in whether it snows or not."  I had somehow missed the memo that bad weather was coming our way.  It was 60 degrees outside, and so I just shrugged and said, "Okay," and started making plans for how to use the bonus day off.  Earlier in the week, I'd had the idea that it would be nice to make our grandchildren some trinket boxes for their rooms, a place for the little treasures they accumulate.  We'd have a long weekend to work on the first one.  So before I left work, I searched the internet for a free wooden box pattern, and on the way home I stopped at the lumber store and bought lumber, screws, and hardware to make boxes.

Last night at 6 p.m., it was still 60 degrees and drizzling rain.  This morning at 4 a.m., I woke up to the sound of sleet pelting our bedroom window.  By daybreak, our yard was covered with ice pellets.  By mid-morning, the sleet had changed to snow.

I am pacing like a caged cat, worrying about the family driving to and from work on these icy roads.  Thank goodness I have a project for today!

Raccoon Turd Reminiscence - 1/4/18

I was looking through some pictures on my computer tonight, and ran across a folder containing pictures we took during a trip to Eureka Springs, Arkansas a few years ago.  It was a fun trip.  We rented a cabin on Bear Lake, which we used as a base for day trips all over that corner of Arkansas.  It was a one-room cabin on the 2nd floor of a 4-cabin unit.  We got there middle of the afternoon, checked in, and hauled our suitcases up the stairs.  Halfway up, I spied an actual TURD on one of the steps.  It looked like it probably came out of a medium-sized dog, maybe a cocker spaniel or poodle.  It was fairly fresh.  I said to The Husband, "Ewww...there's an actual turd on the step...don't step in it.  I hope this is not a bad sign."  We took our suitcases inside and were relieved to find that the room was very clean and well equipped - little kitchenette at one end, sitting area at the other, bed in between.  Big old tacky jacuzzi tub right in the middle of the room....

We stowed our stuff and went outside to check out the view, and after a little bit we headed back to the car to do some sight-seeing.  On the way down the steps, we saw the poop again.  The Husband got a stick and raked it off the step so we wouldn't step in it when we came back.  We drove around and scouted out a couple of places we wanted to explore the next day.  We ate burgers at a biker bar, and went back to the cabin.

There was another turd on the step, and one or two more on the balcony.

I said, "For crying out loud, who would let their dog POOP ON THE PORCH!"

The Husband said it might be a raccoon.

As far as I knew, I'd never seen raccoon poop, nor even imagined what it might be like, so I allowed that he could be right, but, based on the number of poops, I also wondered if the 'coon had a digestive issue.  And then I looked up.

He had company.

We laughed and laughed.

* * * * *

January 2, 2018

Well, I have knitted myself the ugliest pair of house shoes in the world.

I have used this pattern multiple times.  It requires 100% wool yarn.  The pattern makes shoes that would fit Big Foot until they've been washed in hot water, at which time the wool shrinks, and the shoes become thick and toasty warm.  They stretch a bit with wear but can be washed and re-shrunk. 

The first pair I knitted (a few years ago) was PERFECT - nice medium blue color, fit just right, etc.   The Husband (whose feet are not much larger than mine) coveted them and promptly claimed them for himself, and then did not wear them.  I confiscated them back and eventually wore holes in both soles.  Two weeks ago, when the little toe on my right foot bore a new hole and poked out of the side of the shoe like it was hitch-hiking, I started another pair with the only 100% wool yarn I had at hand, camouflage yarn I'd intended to use for a man's toboggan some day. 

Nothing about this pair is perfect.  For starters, they're butt ugly.  And, because I made a mistake in binding off the knitting, when I washed them in hot water, the opening got too tight before the soles got small enough, resulting in 1" "spoilers" at the heels. 

I ended up snipping around the openings to loosen the fit around my ankles.

And, because the shoes did not shrink quite enough, they are a little drafty.



But I have resolved for 2018 to look for silver linings in dark clouds.  In this instance, I can expect with a fair amount of confidence that The Husband will not be coveting these shoes.  :)

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?