Love, Don't Love

 

          I love when we spend time together.

          I don’t love when there aren’t any stories to share with you.

          I live a small, quiet life here in the beautiful mountains of Pennsylvania, and truth be known, I rather like it that way.

I guess not every week needs to be an attention-grabbing, heart-pounding headline. Some weeks are just lived, one cup of coffee, one small chore, one moment at a time.

Life here in the mountains has a way of settling into peacefulness. I stand at the sink, washing dishes, looking out the window, watching the birds at the feeders, and I feel happy. I have a warm house, plenty of dishes — what would life be like if I only had two plates and two spoons and two cups? I mused. I feel grateful.

         

          I made homemade breadsticks this week! They’re on a cookie sheet and yes, they are as huge as they look.

          “You only have to eat one instead of two,” my handsome mountain man said.

          They were so good that I ate two that day! I love bread. It’s like my favorite food.

          They were easy to make. The recipe said it serves twelve, I divided the dough into twelve, and that’s how they ended up so big. After they were baked I brushed them with melted butter and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. I even sprinkled a few with Italian seasoning mix.

          Oh my gosh!

          What a time of it I had!

          I said they were easy, and they were. But the recipe is written out in a funky way. The first step is to proof your yeast.

Speaking of yeast, I have to tell you that proofing your yeast isn’t as necessary today as it was back when our mothers and grandmothers made bread. Our yeast is pretty dependable and I never proof it when I make homemade bread. Proofing does not make the yeast stronger, it doesn’t make it taste any better, and it doesn’t change the rise time. In fact, instant yeast was developed to not need proofing. It was made to add right into the flour and proofing it can actually weaken it a little because it dissolves the protective coating. But this recipe calls for the yeast to be proofed, so I proofed it.

          Mix together the water, sugar, and yeast, the recipe said. When you look at the list of ingredients and amounts, the water is at the top, the sugar is in the middle, and the yeast was on the very bottom.

          Why?!

          Why would you write a recipe like that?!

          I mixed the water, yeast, sugar and put it aside.

          The next step was to mix the other ingredients and that’s where I got confused. I put the flour in, listed right under the flour is sugar. I put sugar in. Next was garlic. When I found garlic on the list, my eyes traveled to the front of the line to see the amount, and it said four and a half teaspoons. I was scoopin’ in the garlic powder and after four, I got a big whiff of garlic and thought, that’s a lot of garlic powder. I went back to double check the recipe and aye-yi-yi! It was supposed to be one and half teaspoons! I’d read the amount for yeast, which was written directly under it!

          Luckily I’d dropped the garlic in different places. That helps me keep track of my count. I took a spoon and lifted out two and a half piles — along with some of my flour. I took the measuring cup from the flour bucket and guessed at how much to add back.

          What else did I mess up? I wondered and checked the recipe.

          The sugar! Oh my goodness! The sugar was for proofing and wasn’t for the bread! I shrugged my shoulders and thought, no big deal, it’ll just be a little sweeter.

          It turned out well despite my flubs. I just hope when I make it the right way that it’ll be just as good — or better!

          Speaking of the next time I make them, I’ll divide it into fifteen or maybe eighteen and make them smaller. And the next time I make them, Mike wants me to cook up some sweet Italian sausage and he’s going to use one to make a sandwich.

I shared the breadsticks with the Kipps, giving them six. “They’re wonderful!” Miss Rosie said. “Even after two days they still warmed up nicely,” she told me.

Mine were all gone the next day.

The recipe is called Make Ahead Frozen Breadsticks because you can freeze the dough and bake them later. I wanted them that day and didn’t freeze them, but I’ll freeze some for Miss Rosie, then, when she makes a pot of chili or soup, she can get a couple out, let them sit for an hour or so, and bake them. There’s nothing better than hot, fresh bread right out of the oven, don’cha think?

Raini and I took the garbage out for pickup on Tuesday morning. On the way back I decided to take her for a walk. I let her drag her leash and it left a mark in the snow.

See! I told you it was a quiet week when all I have to show you is drag marks in the snow!

Actually, that’s not quite true. I did take a few other pictures. 

The first thing I noticed was we had a tree down by the pond. It wasn’t a very big one but it’s still going to require a cleanup when spring hits.

Dried milkweed pods decorate the landscape.

Bittersweet red pops!

The truck and bus hoods dressed in a layer of snow.

The wind was blowing cold on my face. I turned and headed for the house rather than going past the upper barn.

Raini knows there’s a whistle pig burrow in this mound and she went to sniff it out.

Then, when she saw me coming, ran for home.

Coming back from our shopping trip, I spot flares burning beside the road just before you go down the hill into Meshoppen.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

A semi had turned up the road by the tire place.

“Where’s the truck?” Mike asked.

“They unhooked it. It’s just a little ways up the road.”

I expected to see a wreck but all I saw were these guys fussing with something.

“It looks like he took out whatever was there on the corner,” I said.

“Yeah, but why unhook the truck?”

“Maybe he thought it was going to explode or something.” That was all I could think of. The next time I go past the place I’ll look and see what’s put back.

My friend Jody came and played Quiddler with me for a few hours one afternoon. I do so enjoy her company and the fact that she’ll play Quiddler with me.

Tiger was feeling neglected and laid on top of our cards.

“Didn’t I take a picture?” I asked Jody.

“Nope,” she said.

“I guess that explains why I couldn’t find it.”

Tiger does the same thing when Mike and I play Skip-Bo. In the photo Mike is trying to coax Tiger into sitting on the papers near us rather than on our cards.

“No thanks,” Tiger said and stayed where he was.

I had to pick him up and move him out of the way. Two minutes later he was back. He is persistent, I’ll give him that.

And that, my loves, is all the jibber-jabber for this week.

Done!

Things Lost

 

          Sometimes, when I’m making my letter blogs, there are pictures I’ve picked to use and for one reason or another, don’t use them. These, and the little stories that go with them, get lost.

          “I’ll use them next time,” I tell myself, only most of the time, I don’t. A new week happens, with new pictures and new stories and I never go back and record those stories.

          You would be surprised about all of things, events, places, all the small moments that we forget about over time. And the only ones that stay with us are usually the ones we want to forget most! Unless you keep a journal, or a blog, and review it from time to time, things get lost in the everyday clutter of life.

          I guess it’s supposed to be that way.

          I wish, even though I don’t believe in wishing, I wish I had a journal from one of my grandmothers. I’d love to read about their days, the joys and sorrows and challenges that made up their everyday life. I’d get a glimpse of what life looked like back then. Honestly, I’d be thrilled to have anything from any of my ancestors, male or female! But, it doesn’t exist. Maybe it does for some people, just not for me.

          “Life was hard back then,” Momma told me. “They didn’t have time or resources to give to journaling.”

          And so, things get lost.

          None of us do life alone. Our lives touch each other’s, sometimes just a brush, sometimes a full, head-on crash! And knowing me, as you do by now, you have to expect you’ll turn up in my stories sooner or later.

Like when you make me laugh.

One of the photos that almost got lost is this one.

 It’s been a month since my cute little redheaded sister sent this photo on our morning love note chain.

“I’m proud. I dressed myself today,” Diane wrote.

If you’re not paying attention you might not notice that she has two different shoes on.

          I laughed right out loud. Such a great way to start my day. And I could totally relate. It’s easy for me to do something like this. I dress with indirect and very dim light that spills out of the bathroom in the mornings so I don’t disturb the slumber of my handsome mountain man. More than once I’ve discovered my underwear inside out or my shirt on backwards. I don’t usually have a problem with my old-lady stretchy pants, though. If I put them on and they don’t cover my backside while the front goes the whole way up to my boobs, I know they’re on backwards!

Diane got all the way to work before she caught her boo-boo.

          “Did anyone notice?” I asked.

          “I showed them,” she replied. “It’s too funny and harmless.”

          “I would never notice,” our beautiful sister Phyllis said.

          It’s moments like these that make me realize how much of life is lived in the in-betweeny spaces, the ones we never think to write down.

          “In-betweeny?” you question.

          It’s not a typo, it’s actually a bit of an inside joke. Our pastor made up that word during one of his sermons and it got such a laugh out of all of us that I just had to use it here.

          Little moments where our lives brush past each other.

          Another small moment, something that doesn’t amount to a hill of beans, was when I snapped this photo weeks ago and didn’t use it.

          “What’s the story?” I know you wanna know.

          Sometimes I think about buying an artist’s glove. Another name for it is a smudge guard or drawing glove. It keeps you from smudging your pencil or transferring oils onto your work surface. Digital artists use them to keep from accidentally touching a part of the screen they didn’t mean to touch. It won’t stop the transfer of paint, but it will help.

          I saw something where someone made a fingerless glove out of a sock. I just happened to have a pair of knee-highs that had a hole in the toe and I was getting ready to throw them away. Perfect timing. I got the scissors and made my own glove — gloves. Two socks, two gloves. They also work perfect for when my hands are cold and I need my fingers to visit with you!             

          The last “lost” picture for this week is this one.

          “What are we looking at?” you ask.

          This is the block and tackle system Mike put up for me. With this I’m able to lift more weight than I otherwise could.

“A block and tackle hanging in your house. Why?”

With this I can put Raini in a sling and raise her all by myself to trim her nails. Mike is very aware that he might not always be here to help me with things, so he tries to make them as easy for me as he can. I, on the other hand, remind him that I might go first. None of us knows our last day on this earth.

When I’m washing dishes, Bondi and Raini think it’s playtime. Bondi brings her little squeaky and drops it at my feet, Raini brings her ball. Then, the whole time I’m washing dishes, I’m tossing toys. Raini’s I toss into the dining room; Bondi’s I toss into the utility room. You’d be surprised how many times I’ve hit that rope! It’s funny because if I was trying to hit it, I wouldn’t be able to. Since I’m not trying to hit it, I hit it about eighty percent of the time. The squeaky hits the rope and comes bouncing back. Bondi, already racing down the hall in anticipation, has to reverse course. Not the end of the world but annoying nonetheless.

“Will you put up a hook or something to get that out of our way?” I asked Mike.

He’s a good husband and fixed it so I can get the rope out of the way when I wasn’t using the block and tackle system. 

Someone who came crashing into my life this week is this pretty lady.

Nancy has been coming to our church for a while now and at some point she mentioned she has critters.

Critters?

You know how to capture my heart, don’t you? Mention critters to me. You know I have a love for all of God’s creatures — even spiders and snakes! I don’t especially want them to live with me, but they all have their place.

“What kind of critters do you have?” I asked Nancy.

“Dogs, cats, chickens...”

I don’t remember what else she said, because when she said chickens, I got to wondering. “Do you want some old noodles for your chickens?” I asked. “Will chickens eat noodles?”

“Chickens’ll eat just about anything,” she said. “Sure. I’ll take them.”

I probably had about twelve or fourteen packages of these fifteen-year-old noodles.

I thought I’d take them to church and give them to Nancy. Unfortunately, Nancy hasn’t been feeling well and missed church a couple of weeks in a row.

“Can we come and visit tomorrow afternoon?” I messaged when she was feeling better.

“I’d love that,” she said.

That day started with a trip to Sayre for a little shopping. We usually go in the other direction but we had to stop at the Fed-Ex store in Wysox and drop off a printer. My printer wouldn’t hook up to the internet anymore which meant that Mike couldn’t use it from his desk. I use a cable to connect to the printer, so it wasn’t an issue for me. The message on the screen said to call Epson support. I called. The tech walked me through a bunch of stuff to fix the issue but it didn’t resolve it.

“You’re out of warranty,” he told me. “But we will make a one-time exception and send you a new printer.”

Cool! But it’s not a new one, it’s a refurbished one.

“Once you get the printer, use the packaging to return your printer. You have seven days from the time you receive it to return your printer or we will charge you for it.”

I’d just filled the tanks, and Epson sent new ink along with the printer, but I still tried to use up as much of the ink as I could.

We didn’t wait seven days because we didn’t want to be charged.

On the way to Sayre I took pictures for you.

I bet I saw five hawks!

“Isn’t it illegal to have the license plate so dirty you can’t read it?” I asked Mike.

“It can be, but even if they stop you they just tell you to clean it off.”

          After shopping, after having lunch at the Chinese restaurant, after returning the printer, we went to see Nancy.

          Nancy has a fabulous place! It was the family homestead and has been in the family for many years so there’s history here.

          She showed us around the house and I was loving all the antique furnishings she had.

          “I love old things,” Nancy said. “I think I was born in the wrong century.”

          I used to think that, too but at some point I realized a few things. First, God doesn’t make mistakes. I was born right when He wanted me to be born. Second, there are so many advantages to living in this day and age that I wouldn’t’ve had back then. Would I write if I didn’t have my computer and spell check? I don’t know. I can see my paper now, full of cross-offs and misspelled words and arrows where I want to rearrange stuff. I don’t have to haul water from the creek, I have electricity, and heat without chopping wood!

          “This is the chest that my grandfather shipped his things home from after the war,” Nancy said.

          How cool is that!

          We had groceries in the car so we didn’t stay too long. I’m looking forward to visiting with Nancy again and getting to know her better. We met the pups but we didn’t venture out through the mud to see any of the other critters. She mentioned the foundation for the old homestead is still there on the property and I’d love to see that as well as the pond that you can’t see from the house. And Nancy knows a lot about herbs and dries her own. I’d be interested to know more about that, too.

          Coming back across the Susquehanna, we see a couple of guys out ice fishing.

          “I wouldn’t be out there now,” Mike said. We saw a warning on the news just the night before to not go out on the ice.

        

          I have two more landscape pictures in my file that were taken on a different day.

          You can see just about forever!

        

          And I have a picture of this historical marker.

          Even though there are a bunch of these markers along the roads we travel, it’s the first time Mike asked, “What’s it say?”

          “Sullivan’s March,” I told him and snapped a picture. Then I read it to him. “General John Sullivan’s army camped on the Sheshequin Flats below, August ninth and tenth, 1779. The seventh and last over-night stop on the way to Tioga Point.”

          I guess I’ve been taking the markers for granted because I thought they all said the same thing. They don’t. So I did a little research on the event.

In the summer of 1779, during the thick of the Revolutionary War, General George Washington ordered a campaign that would come to be known as Sullivan’s March. The goal wasn’t to capture cities or forts, it was to break the British–Iroquois alliance by destroying the network of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) towns that supported British raids on frontier settlements.

General John Sullivan gathered his troops in Easton, Pennsylvania, and began moving north along the Susquehanna River. If you live anywhere along the Northern Tier, Wyalusing, Standing Stone, Ulster, Sheshequin, Athens — you’re living right on the path of that march. The army camped on the riverbanks, moved in long columns on both sides of the water, and pushed steadily toward Tioga Point (present‑day Athens), where Sullivan joined forces with General James Clinton.

From there, the combined army crossed into what is now New York and carried out a scorched‑earth campaign: more than forty Haudenosaunee towns were burned, along with orchards, cornfields, and food stores that had taken generations to build. The number of people killed in battle was small, but the destruction forced thousands of Indigenous families to flee into the winter with almost nothing. The human cost was enormous and the effects reshaped Haudenosaunee life for generations.

These are quiet reminders that this peaceful stretch of river once carried an army on a mission that changed the map of the Northeast.

Sad, but war is never pretty.

And now you know what I know about Sullivan’s March.

Jenn, my friend and editor, proof read what I had written Saturday night and had this comment.

“Something to add to your Sullivan's info...those troops shot a cannonball at the Standing Stone in the river, breaking off the top corner. That entire campaign is why I roll my eyes whenever people get too hyped about how great Washington was!”

Standing Stone was a forty-foot tall rock that once stood right out of the Susquehanna River. It was a major landmark for Native Americans and early settlers.

Shall we go into the kitchen?

This week I did some baking for my best old West Virginia friend. Besides painting a caricature of Trish, I wanted to bake her some treats as her Christmas gift.

To quote my handsome neighbor, “You can’t get in a hurry about these things.”

I didn’t get in a hurry, that’s for sure. Besides, now she’ll have a treat in February instead of having a lot of treats at Christmastime.

Trish, like my Miss Rosie, is a lemon-lover.

          “What would Ben like?” I asked thinking of her son.

          “Something different,” she said.

          Something different than I usually send her it was. For the first time in my life I made filled gingerbread cookies. I had this cookie at a church function and they were the best gingerbreads I’ve ever had! I got the recipe from Mary, the pastor’s wife. That was two Christmas’s ago.

          You can’t get in a hurry about this stuff, don’cha know.

          It takes a little planning to make this cookie because of the chilling time. You have to chill it after you make it and you have to chill it after you cut them out.

          It was mid-afternoon when I started them and the first chill is for one to four hours. I didn’t think I’d have enough time to finish them before recliner time, so I made the dough and put it in the fridge overnight.

          I’ll tell you what! It’s better to read the instructions the whole way through. I read up to the part that said, roll the dough between two pieces of plastic wrap to one quarter inch thickness, then refrigerate for one to four hours.

          Did I do that?

          NO!

          I’ll just roll it out when I take it out of the fridge, I thought.

          The next morning, when I went to finish the cookies, I read the next step. Cut the cookies out. Hmm. It was at this point that I realized my goof. There was no way I could roll out that hard dough! I had to wait until it warmed up a little. I got out my fancy-schmancy rolling pin with the thickness guide and rolled them out. I used an octagon-shaped cookie cutter. If you chill them after cutting, they’re supposed to retain their shape.

Mine didn’t. They all ended up as circles and that was okay. I didn’t really care.

          I ended up with seventeen cookies. I sent nine to West Virginia, ate one (or two), and the rest went to the Kipps.

          For the lemon-lovers I made my beloved Aunt Brenda’s Lemon Bars.

         And I made Lemon Meltaways.

         And I made a new-to-me recipe called Holiday Lemon Dream Bars. I didn’t care for them and I’m gonna pitch the recipe. I’ll never make them again.

 

          I could call this one done. We’ve covered all of the missed pictures and stories of recent memory and we’ve covered what I’ve been up to this week, namely baking, no painting. But something that keeps coming back to my mind is a dream I had. Maybe it’s important, maybe it’s not. Since I can’t stop thinking about it, I might just as well tell you about it.

          I dreamed I was testifying to you, telling you how much God loves you. It was a very short dream and the only thing I remember for sure is I quoted a book, chapter, and verse from the Bible to prove my point. I remembered it when I woke up but soon forgot the chapter and verse.

“What book did you quote from?” I know you wanna know.

Ezekiel.

          The really weird part of this dream is I didn’t even know there was a book of Ezekiel in the Bible!

My first thought when I woke up was just that.

“Is there even a book named Ezekiel in the Bible or did I make it up?”

          Okay! Okay! I realize that doesn’t make me look too bright, and that’s okay! I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know all the books of the Bible. However, I did know that there’s an Ezekiel in the Bible but that was about all I knew.

I did a little research.

So who was Ezekiel, anyway?

In a nutshell, he was a priest who got hauled off to Babylon with the rest of the exiles, and right there in the middle of that mess, God tapped him on the shoulder and turned him into a prophet. He’s the one with the big, wild visions — wheels within wheels, dry bones rattling back to life — all of it meant to tell a discouraged people that God hadn’t forgotten them. His whole message was this mix of warning and hope, judgment and restoration, like God saying, ‘Yes, things are broken, but I’m not done with you.’

If I was using Ezekiel to show you how much God loves you, which chapter and verse would I quote?

          I’d have to say 34:16.

          “I will seek what was lost and bring back what was driven away, bind up the broken and strengthen what was sick; but I will destroy the fat and the strong, and feed them in judgment.”

          It means God loves you so much that He comes looking for you when life pulls you away. He seeks you when you feel lost, strengthens you when you’re weak, and He never loses track of you or gives up on you. And the verse goes on to show that God doesn’t just comfort you — He defends you. He won’t let anything that harms you go unchecked.

          And I want you to know something else — I really do love you.

I care about your soul.

I want you to be saved, and I want you in heaven with me someday. And I’ll be honest, the thought of you spending eternity separated from God breaks my heart. It brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it. I care about you that much.

Please don’t ever think your sins are too big or too ugly for God to forgive. I’ve committed some very big and ugly sins myself. I’m not going to list them out but trust me — you haven’t out‑sinned me. And if God can forgive me, He can absolutely forgive you. The only thing He won’t forgive is unbelief — turning away from the very One who’s reaching out to save you.

And I know the way the world is going can make you afraid. It feels like everything is out of control and teetering on the edge of war and destruction. But when I look at it through the lens of Scripture, I see it all laid out, not chaos, but the will of God unfolding just like He said it would. And that gives me peace. Because if God is in control of the big picture, then I know He’ll take care of me — and He’ll take care of you, too.

 

With that, we will call this one done.

And remember, you are all in my heart.

Done!

Special Deliveries

 

          I know some of you, those on my morning love note chains, already know how my handsome mountain man is doing, and the rest of you are looking for an update. So we’ll cover that first and foremost and get it out of the way.

          Mike is doing well. You may remember that he was on three different eye drops as well as an ointment before bed. We’re able to stop all but the prednisone eye drop and we’ll wean him off that. He doesn’t have to wear his eye shield at night anymore, either. Dr. McClintic wants him to spend another week on his side at least fifty percent of the time.

          Mike does his best to comply with the doctor’s orders, but with a bum hip it was, and still is, hard for him to stay on his side. Regardless, his checkup was good and for that we are thankful.

          When we were there this time I asked for pictures of his eye. I didn’t have them last week when we talked because I assumed I could get them the same way I got his colonoscopy pictures, from the hospital portal.

          “It’s a different program and isn’t linked,” the gal said.

          And they printed the pictures for me.

          I drew a thin black line around the shadow so you could see it.

          This image shows his retina detached on the left and his good eye on the right of the photo. It’s his right eye that experienced the detachment.

          “It can take up to a year for your sight to get back to the best it could get,” the doctor told us.

          Mike goes back for another checkup in a month.

 

          The last time we visited, I told you I had other odds and ends that I could share with you, but because my printed letter was already ten pages — five printed double-sided — I didn’t want to pay extra postage.

          “So, what did we miss?” you wanna know.

          What did you miss?

          You missed Tiger sitting on my ceramic plate turned paint palette.

         Luckily, I’d wrapped up painting and didn’t need it anymore. “Silly kitty,” I told him. This silly kitty has had more paint on his paws than Doan’s has pills.

          “Doan’s has pills?” you query.

          That’s an expression I’ve heard my dad say. Doan’s sold backache pills and advertised up until the 1950s. It’s a very old expression.

          Speaking of Tiger, I tried to pull a fast one on him. He’s smarter than I gave him credit for.

          I was watching a watercolor tutorial and, deciding to multitask, turned on my other computer and played Big Kahuna Reef. It’s an old game and a rather mindless one where you make chains of three to break boxes. It was easy for me to switch between computers when the watercolor artist said something I was interested in watching. Tiger figured out which computer I was focused on and sat down in front of it.

          I have mostly stopped following tutorials, but I do like to watch the re-broadcast. That way I can skip through and watch just what I want to watch.

          I have an old photo of my mom.

          “I think she’s around fifteen or sixteen here,” my oldest, much-adored, sister Patti said.

          I want to paint it.

          I asked my peeps on a Facebook page to fix the photo. Make it clearer so I could paint it. I don’t remember asking for it to be colorized, but I love it anyway.

          I don’t want to draw, I want to paint. I’ve said that before. So I transfer the image to my watercolor paper using graphite paper. The one thing I hate about this method is I always end up with smudges of graphite where I don’t want it. I try to erase it but it’s always visible when I scan my paintings into the computer.

          I bought a light box. Oh, sure, you can make them but this one is thin, the light is dimmable or brightable, and plugs into my computer. (Brightable made my editor shudder.)

          I complained to my watercolor peeps, who recommended I buy one, that it was a disappointment. I couldn’t see the image very well.

          “You have to use it in a dark room,” they said.

          Then others told me alternate ways to transfer the image, which I already knew about, but I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so I didn’t say anything to that.

          One of the biggest advantages of transferring instead of drawing freehand is the time saved. Plus, you don’t have to erase a zillion times — and the proportions will be correct.

          I went about getting set up to transfer my image when I realized I had two sheets of paper I was trying to project the light through!

          Aye-yi-yi!

          I had printed two copies of the photo, one lighter than the other, and tapped ‘em together when I took them out of the printer. I can be such an idiot sometimes. The light box works much better with one sheet, but even so, I still had to darken the room.

          At the end of my fist day painting, getting my washes down, I thought Momma looked like a boy.

          “I like it,” Patti said. “Finish it and if you don’t want it, I do!”

          I didn’t finish it but I worked on it another day.

          “I hate it worse now than I did yesterday!” I told my siblings.

          “There is something wrong with the face,” Patti said.

          I think there’s a slight Asian slant to it.

          I put it aside. I have several options... well, two that I can think of at the moment. I could “erase” the face and try again or I could start over. I’m leaning towards starting over. And this is why many artists do thumbnails and value studies. Me, I jump right in with both feet. I don’t mind though. I learned.

          I wish I would’ve asked Momma the story behind this photo.

         

          With Mike out of commission, it fell on me to walk down and get the mail. I took Raini with me most times, but one day it was so cold she started limping right out of the gate.

          I opened the gate back up. “Go home,” I told her.

          Mike told me later she came back in the house but watched the monitor for me to come back, then she ran out to greet me.

          I put her sweater on her the next day and watched for her to object to the cold. She didn’t so I took her with me.

          In this picture she’s sampling bunny poo. She didn’t like it and spit it out.

        

          Another day she carried her leash almost the whole way. We get to the rocks and I take the leash from her so she won’t run out into the road.

          “Stay here,” I tell her and drop her leash a few yards off the road. She’s been obeying me, but no cars have come past either. If she decided to chase it, I’d be too far away to stop her.

          Oh well. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

          “Why not take her across the road to the mailbox?” you ask.

          I want her to obey me and I want to trust her. Then I wouldn’t need to put her on the leash.

          All bets are off if she sees a bird. She took off, jumping through the deep, virgin snow, chasing a bird. She stopped at the base of the tree the bird landed in.

          The bird took off towards the road and Raini took off in hot pursuit.

      

          I called her but she wasn’t interested in listening to me. I got around the rocks and she was coming back. I don’t think she went into the road, but I wouldn’t swear to it. I think the bird landed in the bushes on our side of the road and she was standing there watching it.

          “You’re not a bird dog!” I admonished and picked up the leash. I took her across to the mailbox with me that day.

          I took Raini with me when I took the trash to the end of the driveway. It was cold and she raced back to the house. Fat lot of good it did her. She had to stand there and wait for me to get there and open the door for her. She didn’t waste any time getting inside where it was warm.

          Shall we go into the kitchen?

          I got my silicone baking mats.

          “Don’t cook on the bottom,” the instructions say.

          So, is the side with Amazon Basics printed on it the top? I’m going to assume so.

          Do you have to keep your stuff in the center or can it go onto the gray border a little?

          You don’t know what you don’t know until you don’t know it.

          I made my high-protein wrap into a single wrap but it’s too hard to handle. I’m going back to making it in two, or maybe I’ll make five smaller ones. We’re only limited by our imagination.

          Something else I got this week was a food shredder/slicer. It comes with five sets of blades and I got to use it this week. I made a lemon pie recipe and it has a graham cracker crust. Normally I just get a baggie and the rolling pin out, but when I saw one of these on a cooking reel, I had to have one.

          Hand operated shredder/slicers have been around for many years, although the style has changed. Then they went to food processors. Now we’re back to the way it used to be. It just goes to show ya that what’s old is new again.

          I grated enough crackers for the pie.

          I took the rest of the opened pack and, trying to decide the best way to store them, decided grated was the answer. The grater was already dirty so I might just as well grate the rest of the package. I set aside the amount I needed for the pie and grated the rest of the pack into the bowl.

          I have no idea where my head was at. Either taking the grater apart and thinking how cool it was, or thinking about the next letter blog where I would tell you about it.

          I checked the recipe and went to the pantry for the sugar. When I got back, I opened the drawer and got out the proper size measuring cup. Then promptly dumped the sugar in the bowl!

          Aye-yi-yi! I’m such an idiot sometimes!

          Now what was I going to do? There’s no way to take the sugar out. I decided I’d just go ahead with the recipe and hope the crumbs in the bowl were close enough to the right amount.

          Surprise!

          It was. I could tell when I added the melted butter that it would be okay.

          My feisty red-haired neighbor is a lemon lover. I sent three-quarters of the pie down for her and her handsome husband. “We really liked the pie,” Miss Rosie said.

          “Did you eat it all?” I asked but knew the answer.

          “No. There’s enough for dessert tomorrow.”

          “I made it with lime juice instead of lemon juice because it’s what I had open in the fridge,” I told her.

          “No one would ever know if you don’t tell them.”

          I made another one for movie night at the church. Don’t tell on me, okay? 

 

          Speaking of food...

          My beautiful friend Jody is in charge of making meals for those experiencing sickness or need in our church.

          Mike got sick, and I didn’t have to make lunch one day!

          Jody made us the best Chicken Corn Chowder that I’ve ever had!

          Wait a minute...

          It’s the only Chicken Corn Chowder I’ve ever had. Be that as it may, it was so, so very good. Even Mike, who isn’t crazy about soups, loved it. It has sweet potatoes in it and Jody cooked them just right. They weren’t mushy. If she had, it probably would’ve still been good, but I sure did enjoy them this way.

          “Will you share the recipe with me?” I asked.

          “Of course!” she replied without hesitation. “I’ll even loan you the book it came out of if you want.”

          Hmmm. I didn’t want. I have at least two boxes full of recipe books as well as several other books that are special to me. I told her the truth. I didn’t want to borrow it. “I like it better when people just make a recipe and I try it,” I said. “Those are the recipes I want.”

          That’s how I know she loves me. She wasn’t upset at all by my open and honest way.

         

          Speaking of food...

          The last time for this week, I promise.

          We bought a ten-pound roll of hamburger from Walmart. It has marks on the side where you can cut it to have one-pound portions. I counted. I think the marks are off.

          I got my kitchen scale out and started cutting it up. Most of my chunks were eleven ounces and that’s okay. I’ve heard that we eat too much meat anyway. In most of the things I make, less hamburger suits Mike and me just fine and if I make if for someone else, I can get two packs out.

          By putting them in quart bags and flattening them, they stack in the freezer and thaw really quickly.

          Okay.

          I lied.

          I thought that was the end but there’s one more food-related picture in the file.

          No, this isn’t a crime scene photo.

          Do you remember I bought that fancy-schmancy bottle and jar opener?

          They made the handle too short. It works really well on the smaller lids and bottles, but when you get a jar with a larger mouth there’s not enough leverage to open the jar. I end up tipping it sideways and bracing it against my leg. Then you get salsa all over the floor when the lid gives way. I guess I’ll go back to using a screwdriver to pop the seal on these jars.

          Let’s end this time with photos I took on our way to Sayre for Mike’s appointment.

          There’s no eagle in the nest so far.

          Someone snapped off the pole.

          Mike is driving so don’t think I was taking pictures while I was driving. I saw at least five hawks on this trip. I guess they’re out hunting after the recent cold snap.

          A crow to break up all the hawks.

Done!