SNAFU's

It’s Christmas Day!
Merry Christmas to all!
Between my SNAFU’s and getting ready for Christmas — what a week this has been! I hardly know where to start!
My desktop this week started out with this early morning shot.

I’d taken the girls out and saw all these ice trees growing from a puddle in our yard. At first, with these old cataract riddled eyes of mine, and looking at them from several feet away, I thought they were ice crystals growing up from the puddle. Once I retrieved my camera and actually went to take the picture, I see they are just dried grass stems, with ice crystals growing on them.

I walked around and took lots of pictures of the ice crystals, aka frost. Did you know that there are different kinds of frost? There is hoarfrost and advection or wind frost, window frost and rime; and even a white frost and a black frost. I even found one page on the internet that has frost flowers. That’s a real thing, you know.

Then I saw these frost feathers and I was quite taken with them as the next six photographs will attest to.

“Feathers, Peg?” you say. “They look more like ferns to me.”
Funny you should say that because that’s just what they’re called on the frost page I’m looking at on the internet. But I have a thing about feathers so, to me, they are frost feathers.
“Okay, Peg, but six pictures!” you exclaim.
Yeah, that might be overkill, but I couldn’t decide which ones you might like best so I included them all.
Speaking of my indecision…
When Rosie saw the first copper bracelet I made, I could tell she really liked it. So when Mike and I were out shopping and I was getting permanent colored purple copper wire for my beautiful sister’s bracelet, I picked up green for Rosie. And since Christmas was coming, I would make it as a gift for her.
Green, by the way, is Rosie’s favorite color.
Would Rosie want dainty, like my sisters like, or clunky like I like? I felt like she’d like the clunkier one, but I’d ask Lamar just to be on the safe side.
With the weather being what the weather is, Rosie doesn’t want to take a chance of falling on the ice, so Lamar has made the trip several times with just Maggie (their dog) to feed the cats. That gave me the perfect chance to ask him without Rosie being around.
“Chunky — clunky” says Lamar.
I made this one first and when I put it on my wrist, it was pretty big. Sizing seems to be an ongoing issue with me.

        “Mike, I’m worried it’ll be too big for Rosie’s dainty little wrist. Should I make another one?” I asked that handsome husband of mine.
“Whatever,” he says.
I measured the braid on the old bracelet, once, twice, three times. I measured the new braid at least that many times too. I stripped wire for a clunky chunky bracelet and I got to wondering what it would look like if I made the teepees with the green copper wire instead of regular copper wire.
Having had experience with permanent colored copper, I covered my pliers with electrical tape and was as careful as I could be. Even then I managed to skin off some of the not-so-permanent permanent color.
“It’ll come off when they wear it anyway,” Mike told me as I worried about it. “Every time they bang it on a table or chair or something.”
Well, I hope it’s a little more durable than that.
Once made, it wasn’t much smaller than the old one! So now it came down to an issue of which one Rosie would like best?
Luckily I was able to get Lamar’s help with that too.
“I think she’ll like this one, with the more green,” he said after inspecting both bracelets.

Besides Rosie’s bracelet, I had a few other gifts to wrap.
Smudge helped.

I ended up with curling ribbon instead of regular ribbon and I’ve never used curling ribbon before. In fact, I wasn’t even quite sure what I was supposed to do with it. I got on the internet and Googled it — I don’t think there’s anything you can’t find on the internet — and I found a video on curling ribbon.
When I was done I was pleased with the way my gifts turned out and I had a moment of regret that I hadn’t known about this stuff when my kids were little.

But just let me say that curling ribbon makes even pumpkin rolls look fancy-shmancy.

When Rosie opened her bracelet, she gave me lots of hugs in thanks. “It’s perfect and I love it,” she told me with a smile lighting up her beautiful face. And it made all the hours of work and sore fingers more than worth it.
Something else I worked on this past week was a copper ring.
My first few tries didn’t turn out so well. I started out using a ten gauge wire and it was too hard to work with. Next I tried a twelve gauge and got a little further but I cut my end too short so I quit on it. Next I tried a fourteen gauge wire, like the tutorial suggested and I ended up with an acceptable ring.

I guess it’s not everyone’s cup o’sunshine, but I like it.

That cat!
That darn cat!
Yeah, we’re talkin’ bout Smudge.
We can’t leave Smudge run loose when we’re not home. He either has to be kenneled or put on the breezeway. Lately we’ve been letting him go outside and we’ve even started taking him to work with us when we work on our remodel project. One day, I knew he needed a drink because he was licking the outside of Mike’s water bottle, and there’s no water bowl over there, so I improvised. I cut the bottom off a water bottle and put a little water in it for him. He had his drink and I left the makeshift water bowl on the floor for future use.
On Thursday, when we were working, I paused long enough to watch Smudge play. He picked up that piece of water bottle and carried it over to a chair. He jumped up in the chair, put his new toy down and batted it off the chair.

Then the game was on! He’d jump off the chair and bat at it. That piece of plastic would go flying across the concrete floor and he’d chase it, catch up to it and hit it again with all the skill and dexterity of a hockey player.
All the toys he owns and what does he play with? The bottom part of a water bottle!
Friday morning the weather was nice enough that Rosie walked with Lamar and Maggie.
“There was a porcupine beside the road,” Rosie told us. “We tried to shoo him away but he wouldn’t leave.”
“Finally we told him to stay where he was and we’d pass him on the other side of the road,” Lamar said. “And once we got a ways past him, he crossed the road and climbed the bank to your house.”
“Really!” I exclaimed. Of course I knew we had one someplace because Ginger got a taste of him, but I’d never seen him.
“If he was at my house, I’d get rid of him,” Lamar said to me.
And I understand his position. Their old dog, Trouble, tangled with quill pigs quite a few times to the point he needed to see the vet. That Trouble! He even had quills inside his mouth!
“They either leave them alone after the first time, or they go after them harder then ever,” Rosie said.
Once the Kipp’s left, Mike and I ran an errand in town. When we got home Mike went past our driveway and pulled up to the mailbox and it made me think of the quill pig the Kipp’s had seen earlier.
“I wish I’d have seen him,” I told Mike.
Mike got the mail out of the box and turned the Jeep around. Pulling into our driveway, what do you think we see?
“There he is!” I exclaimed. It was the quill pig. I’m probably the only person in the whole wide world excited about seeing a porcupine. He was beside our driveway, picking and eating little green grass leaves.
As soon as I jumped out of the Jeep with my camera, the quill pig put his hackles up and this was all I got to see of him as he walked away.

I followed at a respectful distance until he turned around to look at me. Look at those teeth, would ya!

“They’re rodents,” Jenn Kipp said to me.
And this guy was not happy with me at all. I don’t know much about quill pigs but I figured the clicking noise he was making was a warning to stay away.
So how about some porcupine facts?
Porcupines have soft hair on their fronts, but on their sides, back and tail, it’s mixed with quills. That makes them look funny when they get their quills up.

Porcupines may have as many as 30,000 quills.
Porcupines found in North America are good climbers and spend a lot of time in the trees.
They do not shoot their quills but will use their tails to swipe at you with.
The quills readily detach when touched and they grow new quills to replace the lost ones with.
Porcupines have a healthy appetite for wood. They eat bark and stems and have been known to invade campgrounds and chew on canoe paddles. North American porcupines also eat fruit, leaves and springtime buds.
Female quill pigs have between one and four young. The babies have soft quills at birth but they harden within a few days. Most young are ready to be on their own at two months of age.
Speaking of babies, a typical mating ritual consists of two males fighting over a single female. The males are careful not to injure themselves during the fight and the winner gets to pee on the female. That’s so she knows to move her tail aside for safe, quill-free mating.
And did you know that the quills have an antibiotic coating on them? That means that a porcupine attack will not necessarily lead to an infection. This is, however, a defense mechanism to prevent accidental self-quilling.
They can stick themselves? I wondered and kept reading.
The animal most commonly stuck by porcupine quills is the porcupine itself, the web page says. It seems that porcupines frequently fall out of trees, sticking themselves with their own quills!
Who knew quill pigs fall out of trees? Who knew they could stick themselves!
Not me! I’d never have guessed that.
“Peg, that’s all well and good, but when are you going to get around to telling us about your SNAFU’s?” you say.
You’re right. I haven’t told on myself yet. So here goes.
You know something? I just don’t understand how you can do something time after time after time and all of a sudden do it wrong.
Case in point.
I’ve been making homemade yogurt for a long time now. On Friday, I got the milk out of the fridge; I got the starter out too. I put them on the counter and reached down my eight-cup measuring cup. I warm the milk in the microwave for fourteen minutes to bring it up to a temperature of one-seventy-five, one-eighty to kill any bacteria that might cause me problems. I cool the milk until it’s below one hundred twenty degrees, mix in my starter and put it in the yogurt maker my beautiful mother gave to me. Four hours later, I have yogurt. I mix in chia seeds to absorb the nutritious whey (rather than straining it off and throwing it away), put it in the fridge until the chia’s do their magic, usually overnight, and that’s it. That’s all there is to it. Easy-breezey-lemon-squeezey.
“Magic?” you ask. “What magic?”
Chia seeds are good for you. They have as much calcium as a glass of milk, more omega-3’s than a serving of walnuts and as many antioxidants as blueberries plus they will absorb nine to twelve times their volume and that’s their magic.
Mike and I were chatting as I pulled the lid off my eight-cup measure cup and my mind, all of it’s own accord, reminded me that I wanted to pour a little milk in and add my starter, rather than pour in all of the milk and then add my starter to it.
We chatted.
I poured a cup or so of milk into the measuring cup from the jug.
We chatted.
I reached for my whisk.
We chatted.
I reached for my starter and opened it.
We chatted.
I added my starter and whisked it together.
We chatted.
I added the rest of the milk, gave it a quick whisk, dropped the whisk in the sink, put the measuring cup in the microwave and set the time for fourteen minutes.
We chatted as I sat down and waited.
When the time was getting close to being up, I could smell the yogurt. That should have been a dead give-a-way, don’t you think? Instead I just thought, That’s funny. I’ve never noticed that it smelled like yogurt before.
The microwave dinged, I got up, opened the microwave and pulled out the measuring cup full of milk and set it on the counter. I got my thermometer out to take it’s temperature and it hit me. Just then and just like that. Just like a ton of bricks even.
I killed my starter!
It seems my mind was reminding me of a future step, not the current one. The starter is added after the milk has cooled and the last time I made yogurt I was being lazy and added the starter to the entire contents of the measuring cup (after it was cooled) rather than mixing it with a little milk first.
“What difference does it make?” you ask.
Maybe none, but the last time my yogurt was a little grainy and that may or may not have been the cause. Hence, the reason I had the reminder set to remind myself.
“Oh no!” I cried.
“What’s wrong?” Mike asked.
And I had to confess what I had done.
“Throw it away,” Mike said flatly.
“No, I can still use it. I just need a new starter.”
And that my loves, is why Mike and I were out running errands on the morning I saw the quill pig.
“Mike, as long as we’re out, let’s stop at Dollar General and get some cat food,” I said.
At Dollar General, we put all of our purchases on the counter and chatted with the very young looking checkout gal as she rang us up.
“I had one guy ask me why I wasn’t in school,” she laughed at the memory. “He thought I was sixteen and I’m twenty-two.”
“That will come in handy later in life,” this old lady told her.
“That’s what I’m counting on,” she replied.
Mike picked up the bag as I ran our card through the credit card machine and off we went.
At home, I’m unpacking bags from the grocery store and when I get to the Dollar General bag, there were only three cans of cat food. They’re three for a dollar and I picked up a dozen cans; four dollars worth. “Mike, where’s the rest of the cat food?” I asked.
“Maybe they rolled out of the bag and are still in the car,” he suggested.
I went and looked and there was no cat food in the car. “Did we leave it at the store?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
I dug out the receipt and called the number on the top of it. Sure enough, it was there. “I’ll be back in town tomorrow,” I told her. “Can I pick it up then?”
“That would be fine,” she replied.
Saturday, Mike and I made an unscheduled trip to town, just to pick up the forgotten cat food — and it wasn’t there.
“I left a bag of cat food here yesterday,” I said to the young man at the register.
“I don’t know where it is,” he said.
“What are those bags over there?” I asked.
“That’s stuff people forgot today.”
“Maybe they left it at another register or in the office?” I suggested.
“No, it would be right here. Just go get it from the shelf,” he said.
I went back to the cat food section and there weren’t enough cans on the shelf. When I got back up front, I told him, “You don’t have enough on the shelf I’ll just come back and get it another day.”
“Okay,” he mumbled as he continued to checkout the customer he was waiting on. The place was busy and he had a long line waiting.
“I don’t understand why they didn’t leave my bag for me?” I said to Mike as we went out to the parking lot.
“Someone else probably saw it there and just put it back,” he said.
I’m guessing they were out of canned cat food, someone else wanted some so they re-sold mine. That just ain’t right.
So, I guess, technically speaking, this was not my SNAFU, it was Mike’s. He was in charge of collecting the bags.
But the worst SNAFU of all was mine and one I would have liked to not have to admit, but I got caught and couldn’t lie.
Here’s what happened.
In the mornings, I sometimes have chores to do before I join Mike to help for the day.
One of the jobs I do in the mornings is feed everyone; Mike, Itsy, Ginger, Molly, Macchiato, Smudge, Rascal, Spitfire, Feisty, Cleo, Callie, Anon, Sugar and then myself. So on this morning, after making Mike’s tea, pouring him a bowl of cereal, adding the chia seeds and milk, and setting it in front of him, I got out the dog’s food plate, the cat’s food plate, the cat’s dry food bowl and the cat’s wet food bowl. I fill the cats dry food bowl with dry food and pour a third of that into the wet food bowl where I mix it with a can of cat food that I buy three for a dollar at the Dollar General store. If I just put the wet food down they will gobble it up in two or three bites and none of them get very much. Mixing it with dry food makes it last longer and go further. It’s all the food the outside cats will get for the day — from me that is. If the Kipp’s stop by on their daily walk, they will give them a can of cat food too.
For the dogs I mix a third cup dry food with a tray of Cesar wet dog food. After that, if they want anything, there is always dry dog food in their bowl.
I know, right! Feeding everyone is a process around here!
Since the weather has been cold, and my house is dry, I have a pan on the stove that I fill with water, bring to a boil and shut off. I’ll do this several times a day. One morning, as the water sat boiling, I decided to pour some hot water on the critter’s food, giving it a little more moisture and some warmth and it worked so well I do it all the time now.
So, again, on this particular morning of my biggest SNAFU EVER, I mixed all the critter food and let it sit on the counter as I carried the rest of the pan of just boiled water out to the cat room, where I added it to their really cold bowl of drinking water. They seem to like the warm water and always surround the bowl for a drink of warmth whenever I do it.
When I came back in I filled the pan full up with fresh cold water from the tap. It’ll take forever to come to a boil now, I thought. I’ll just turn it on and let it heat up a little until I go to work, and I turned on the burner as I set it on the stove. Then I put the food down for Itsy and Ginger; Macchiato, Molly, and Smudge. I picked up the two bowls of cat food, one wet, one dry and carried them out.
Boy, what a circus that is every morning.
When I open the door, the cats know it’s feeding time and they are right there, bum-rushing the door. Eight times out of ten I have to set the cat food down on a shelf and go back in the house to get Spitfire. He always manages to get past me. But I know where he’ll be. Right at the dog food dish eating with Itsy and Ginger. He grabs a mouth full of food when he sees me coming and drops some as I pick him up and carry him back out the door where I put him down and get the cat food bowls from the shelf. With cats twining around my feet, I head for the cat room. They know where I’m going and take off for the cat flap. It swishes, one, two, three, four times as the kittens dash through.
Cans clatter as I pushed open the door to the cat room. The trash can of empty cat food tins has been dumped again. I bet it’s that possum that comes in at night, I think. Wild cats jump from their sleeping places. Sugar and Callie shot out the flap to the outside. Anon surprised me and didn’t run away.
“Hey pretty girl,” I cooed. Anon sat against the wall and warily watched me. To a chorus of meows, I set the dry food bowl down on a table and portion the wet food out on three vintage Oxford China plates that I picked up some where. To my surprise Anon came over and brushed past my hand as I was putting the food down and started eating.

I smiled.
Once the kittens are busy eating, I can dump the dry food into its dish and pick up the scattered cans.
Back in the house, I grab my travel cup of coffee, turn out the kitchen light and head to work.
An hour or so later, as Mike and I were working, a thought popped in my head. Did I leave something on the stove? I dismissed the idea. What in the world would I have cooking this time of day, and I went back to work.
Another hour passes before we decide to take a break. I head into the apartment to make a cup of coffee. As soon as I opened the door to our little apartment and step inside, it hits me. The smell. I smell something hot and scorching. I flung the door shut behind me as I ran to the kitchen. There, on the stove was my forgotten water pan, bone dry. I snatched it from the burner and clicked the burner off.
I didn’t even have a chance to wonder how I was going to cover this up when the door opened.
“What’s that smell?” Mike called from the door.
“I left a pan on the stove,” I admitted as his long legs brought him into the kitchen.
“You can’t be doing that Peg,” Mike said stating the obvious.
The next day we regaled the Kipp’s with Smudge stories and all the SNAFU’s of the past few days.
When I told them about the forgotten cat food, Lamar laughed. “I wish I’d known it was you. I was standing there when you called the store. I could’ve brought it to you.”
That would’ve been great.
And the forgotten pan on the stove…
“Oh, I’ve done that before,” Rosie said.
“You know what you should do?” Lamar asked. “You should set a timer. Then when it goes off you know you have to check whatever’s cooking on the stove.”
“I have a better idea,” Mike said. “Don’t leave the kitchen when you have something cooking.”
Me?
I wish it wouldn’t have happened in the first place but since it did, I count my blessings.
I’m thankful that I’d started with a full pan of cold water.
I’m thankful we took a break when we did.
I’m thankful that it took two hours to boil dry.
I’m thankful my pan, although dry, didn’t burn.
I’m thankful I didn’t burn the house down and kill my girls or the cats.
There were lots of things to be thankful for, and there are lots of things to be thankful for everyday.
I, my loves, am most thankful for all of you.
And with that, we will call this one done!

Locked Out

I had this barn up on my desktop for a while this week.

But now I have a pine branch, covered in freshly fallen snow up on there right now.

I spent a good part of my free time this week making copper bracelets.
When I posted a picture of the first one I made on Facebook, my cute little red haired sister (who just turned another year older — happy birthday again sister dear) commented, “You made this?”
I know right! She said that with a tone of disbelief in her voice; did you hear it that way too? But I was flattered, not offended. I posted that I had. She called me later that evening and told me how beautiful she thought it was. She never asked for me to make her one, but I totally knew I wanted to.
The next morning in my daily love note from my beautiful little sister Phyllis, she commented, “The wire work you did was beautiful and interesting.”
I smiled. The only way she could have seen it was on Facebook. “Play your cards right and I may make you one…if you want one that is.”
“I’d love one,” she responded. “But I’m a lousy card player.”
On our weekly shopping trip last week, Mike bought me some copper in the proper gauges. I made this one for Diane. The copper I used for the center braid is a little more red than the rest of the copper in the bracelet. As you can see, it is more dainty than the first one I made.

I kind of like the clunkier one better, I thought. I wonder if they would too. So I emailed them. “As long as I’m making you one, it might just as well be one you want. Do you want dainty or clunky?”
They both picked dainty. Go figure.
I found some permanently colored copper wire in a purple to make the center braid for Phyllis’s bracelet.
And it was while making this one that I ran into a problem.

I don’t have a lot of tools for working with something as delicate as permanently colored copper wire. I think you must need to have at least one pair of pliers with nylon covered jaws because my pliers took some of the color off the permanently colored copper wire.
Hmmm.
Now what?
Purple nail polish?
Remake Phyllis one with a plain copper center?
Let me ask her…
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
She may change her mind when she gets it…
Just sayin’.

<<<<<>>>>>

We did just a few small jobs in our renovation project this past week. We installed recess lighting and diffusers for the furnace. We are drawing our cold air from the floor so the diffusers are in the ceiling. Besides, it was just easier to install our furnace runs in the ceiling.
Mike also trimmed around the transom window. We’ll put the bottom trim on after the floor is done.

We also put in my kitchen over-the-sink window too.

        The back of the mill has a nice courtyard area where I can put in a few flowers and maybe some herbs too; a wrought iron patio table and chairs will make it the perfect place to have morning coffee — in the summer.
Right now it is cold here.
The days continue to get shorter until the winter solstice on December 21st — the shortest day of the year.
Did you know that the winter solstice is actually a specific point in time and not a day?
No?
It’s when the sun is exactly overhead the Tropic of Capricorn and for us, here in eastern time, it will be at 5:44 AM.
Something I hadn’t known is that this event can happen on December 20th, 21st, 22nd or the 23rd. I thought it was always on the 21st! The web page I’m looking at says that December 20th or 23rd solstices are rare and the last December 23rd solstice was in 1903 and will not happen again until 2303. I’m probably not going to be around for that one, however, with God, anything is possible. I’d only be 344 years old. LOL.
How about one more interesting fact before we move on?
Did you know (and I didn’t), that the term solstice comes from the Latin word solstitium, meaning ‘the sun stands still’? This is because on this day the sun reaches it’s southern-most position as seen from the earth. The sun seems to stand still and then reverses it’s direction. It is also common to call it the day the sun turns around.
And the winter solstice is also the first day of astronomical winter.
Okay, that was two more things but I bet you knew that last little tidbit because I did.
Boy, did I ever take a detour there! Not at all what I had intended to write about. I was going to say that because the days are shorter, many times when I take the girls out for their morning constitution, it’s still dark out. But one morning, after some newly fallen snow, it was light enough that I took my camera with me, intending to get some pictures for you.
This is our Mountain Home with the sunrise in the background.

I walked Itsy and Ginger down around the pond and the kittens, as usual, followed us. I was the whole way on the other side of the pond when I look up and see Spitfire coming across the pond to me.
Sigh.
I was scared for him. I didn’t know how thick the ice was and I didn’t want to see him fall through. Maybe if I get back around to the other side he’ll come back off the ice, I thought.
I hurried on.
Spitfire meowed when he lost sight of me.
If he falls in, would I go in and rescue him? I wondered. He’s a cat; in some people’s eyes, they have no value. But in my eyes, all life has value — even a cat! Why risk your life for an animal? No risk here folks. The biggest risk to me would be I’d get my feet wet and cold. Our pond isn’t very deep.
I doubled back and Spitfire was in the middle of the pond. “Com’on kitty,” I called in a sing-songy voice.

“Meow,” Spitfire answered.
As he approached my side of the pond, I could finally breathe again.
Ginger sees him coming and goes down the bank to greet him. I wasn’t worried if she broke through the ice here at the edge; it would probably only go up to her ankles here, but she was on a leash anyway and I could haul her out.
Itsy, wondering what was going on, made her way down to the ice too and gave Spitfire a little talkin’ to! Yeah, she growled at him.
Spitfire, used to Itsy’s attitude, ignored her, turned and found a piece of cattail to bat around on the ice. I watched him chase it for a while.

I love all of our kittens. I love them in all their uniqueness and quirkiness.
Rascal rubs on my legs and if I don’t pet him, he’ll nip me.
Feisty is more reticent but occasionally wants me to pick her up and love on her.
And Cleo, Smudge’s sister and cousin to the other three, is a bit standoffish too, but lets me pick her up and love on her. One odd thing about Cleo though is I’ve never heard her purr. Never. Not once.
But Spitfire is my favorite.
When I took Itsy and Ginger out for our pre-bedtime walk one night last week, the kittens heard me and came through the cat flap in the  side of the garage, just like they almost always do. I can’t say always because if it is especially cold, they won’t come out. But on this night, great big, fat, fluffy flakes of snow were lazily drifting from the sky in the quietness of the night. The outside light made it a beautiful sight and I walked the girls a little way into the yard, the snow crunching under my feet. As I stood there waiting for Ginger to find just the right spot, Spitfire started chasing snowflakes. It tickled me and I laughed right out loud. Have you ever watched a kitten chase snowflakes?
        No?
        I highly recommend it.
The weirdest thing happened to me that night. When I went to come back inside, the door was locked. For just a split second I wondered why Mike would lock me out, then I realized he wouldn’t. He didn’t. I locked myself out. I couldn’t believe it. I actually tried the door a couple of times before I determined it wasn’t just stuck. Even locked the door will open just a crack. I peaked in. Yep, there was the hook in the eye.
I know. That’s quite a secure locking system we have on that door, but it’s just the lock on the breezeway. We have another lock on our inner door — but that wasn’t getting me back inside!
“How do you lock yourself out when it’s just a hook and an eye?” you wonder.
I know right! Weird. And what makes it all the more strange is the hook and eye don’t line up quite right. If the door is shut the whole way, you can’t lock it. You have to unlatch it, lock it, then give it a tug to latch.
When I went out, I flipped the hook out of the eye and it must have landed straight up against the door frame and it came down at just the right second that it slipped into the eye before I had the door latched.
Never — in a million years! — would I ever have believed I could lock myself out of that door. Never.
“How did you get back in?” you ask.
I contemplated knocking on the door until Mike came out to investigate; I didn’t have my phone with me to call him. Then it hit me. Go in through the overhead garage door! I punched the code in and the door opened.
“Why are you coming in the back door?” Mike asked.
“I locked myself out!”
The very next day Mike and I were going out together and as I was in the lead, I flipped the hook out of the eye and went out the door first.
“You can’t leave it like that Peg,” Mike said.
I turned to see what he was talking about and he was pointing at the hook. It did indeed land in a straight up position so I guess it’s just a wonder I haven’t locked myself out long before this!
Now, speaking of weird things and strange occurrences…
I went out one morning to feed my kitties and there in the cat room were chicken bones. It’s been a couple of weeks since I put chicken bones out for the cats but maybe they found some in a corner someplace that I missed picking up.
Then a few days later a ham bone shows up.
A ham bone!
“Mike, there’s a ham bone out in the cat room. Where do you think it came from?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
I know I didn’t put it out for them. “Do you think they drug it across the road from Charlie and Sally’s?” I asked but he didn’t know that either.
Then I got to thinking that maybe Lamar Kipp brought it up for them, so I asked Lamar the next time I saw him.
“No. It wasn’t me. Maybe it was the Robinson’s?” he suggested.
“Uh-uh. They toss their scraps in the yard for their critters.”
So now I’m back to thinking one of them drug it home from the neighbors across the road.
But a ham bone! I guess if they can carry a rabbit, they can carry a ham bone.

>>>>><<<<<

That cat!
That darn cat!
Yeah! We’re talkin’ bout that Smudge!
We have steps in front of the couch for the girls to get on and off the couch with. These little dogs can blow out their knees by jumping.
Smudge took a nap while sitting on the top step.

Crazy kitty!
A couple of you have suggested a water bottle to help me with my problem of him getting up on the table but I don’t want to be squirting water around the computers and papers that live there. We have found that Smudge has a healthy respect for a fly swatter though. All he had to do was see me reach for it and he was off like a shot!
Now don’t go getting like all, “ANIMAL ABUSE!” on me. I’d never hurt an animal. In fact, just the thought repulses me. I would just swat around him, hitting the table top or counter top and never really hitting him.
Smudge.
He’s just too smart for me.
It only took him about two weeks to figure this out then he decided he wasn’t so afraid of the fly swatter after all. Instead of getting off the table, he climbed up inside the lamp. I couldn’t help but smile despite myself.

  “Mike, Smudge has worn me out. I give up. Let’s just clean the table off and not worry about it anymore.”
And now Smudge has discovered my trash can. Even though I give him every single butter wrapper or pizza box to lick clean before I toss them, he had to get in there and check it out for himself. And if I know Smudge, I know that no matter how many times I yell at him, chase him with the swatter or physically remove him, he won’t stay out of it now.

Smudge is just like an unruly teen. If he thinks you don’t want him to do something — he wants to do it all the more!
So now, thanks to Smudge, my trash can has a lid on it, albeit a homemade one. My roasting pan now lives on top of my trash can and if I want to use it, I get to wash it twice — once before and then again after.
Thanks Smudge!

And with that, we shall call this one done!

So Many Pictures!

Here it is.
“Here what is?” you ask.
Boy, you guys fall for that every time! Here it is, another week gone by and pretty soon we can say that about the year.
Are you looking forward to Letter Facts?
“What are Letter Facts?” you ask.
Letter Facts are where I tell you how many letters I wrote you during the year; how many pages; sometimes how many pictures.
And speaking of pictures…
I wasn’t in any hurry to start this letter blog this week because I didn’t think I had anything to talk about. Then, as I was sorting through the weeks photographs, I found so many pictures I wanted to share with you. Thirty-six! That’s three zero six! Three zero is thirty, get it?
I crack myself up.
My desktop this week changed several times. I started out with this one. Walking down to get the mail one day, I notice a small tree with these very bright red berries on it. I went back with my camera, took a few pictures and used this one for a desktop photo for a while. Don’t ask me what they are because I don’t know.

Our little country church hosted a talent show two weeks ago now.
“Are you going?” the Kipp’s asked me and Mike.
“I think so,” I told them.
“Rosie and I are going to sing a song. Jenn and Marla will be up here too. Jenn is going to sing and Marla is going to recite a poem she wrote.” Jenn and Marla are their daughters and live down in the southern part of the state.

“Really?” I asked. “I didn’t know Marla wrote poetry.”
“When Marla recites her poetry, I’m not here anymore. I’m transported to whatever world she’s talking about,” Lamar told me.
And I thought that was just the pride of a father.
Then the night of the talent show came around. The church asked for us to bring a snack to pass and I made a homemade toffee from a recipe my dear, sweet Aunt B had given me and my go-to microwave fudge recipe.
It was a fun night and the kids were so stinkin’ cute!
Some of the adult talent was good and some was very good. I’d never say anything bad about anyone who has the gumption to get up in front of an audience and just put it out there for all the world to see; risking humiliation in front of family, friends, and the whole congregation! But in this case, everyone was fabulous!
“We’re up third,” Rosie told me. “If we have to wait any longer than that, I’ll chicken out.”
When their turn came, Lamar stood beside Rosie and Rosie stood behind the pulpit as they sang. Rosie is such a little woman that you could only see her eyes and the top of her redhead. And those daughters of theirs!
Jenn sang a cappella (without music) and has a beautiful voice.

But Marla impressed me beyond words.

Words.
As a person who writes all the time — does that make me a writer? — I appreciate words. I appreciate the pictures they make in your head and the feelings they impart.
And Lamar was right. When Marla recites her poetry, you can get lost in it. It was pure poetry.
“Do you think Marla would mind if I used one of her poems in my letter blog?” I asked Lamar.
“I don’t know. Call her.” And he gave me her phone number.
“Can I use one of your poems?” I asked Marla when she answered the phone.
“Sure,” she said. “Which one are you thinking about using?”
“I don’t know. They are all beautiful. Which one is your favorite?”
“Wrestling With Maple,” Marla answered without hesitation. “Although I really like Moon-Gasp too.”

So here is Marla’s poem.

Wrestling With Maple.

What I plant and tend withers;
What I deny sprouts and grows.

So I go digging before maple starts cracking foundations;
Leaving us out, weather-beaten.

You need open spaces—
And I bend—
Without your grace in the wind, I bend
Searching for an origin.

Slugs, mud, rocks, brown spiders to get at your roots
Hips squared to shovel
Putting my foot down to wrench tree from dirt.

Unearth a green old soldier, rifle butt poised toward long-gone foe
And I want to ask him if they shoot their wounded
Or leave them to bleed out memories and dreams,
Die with bittersweet smiles and unearthly gains

But I’m afraid what the neighbors might say
So I tuck this away and keep wrestling with maple.

What I plant and tend withers;
What I deny sprouts and grows.

Hearing Marla’s recitation really made this and all of her poems come alive. “When did you start writing poems?” I asked Marla.
“When I was about ten years old, I think.”
“Did you save all the poems you’ve ever written?” I wondered.
“Most of them. Maybe not some from elementary school. I’ve even saved bits of napkins with ideas on them, even when the idea is gone. I’m a bit of a hoarder. I save everything.”
“Packrat sounds better,” I told Marla. Packrats save lots of things, but most of it’s good. Hoarders save trash. I’m a bit of a packrat myself.
“What sparked your interest in writing poems?” I asked.
“Dad wrote poems, although he was more Ogden Nash-ish, and Mom was an English teacher. I guess it was just in my blood.”
Ogden Nash-ish?
I didn’t know what that meant. I Googled it.
Ogden Nash was an American poet best known for his light verse.

A Flea And A Fly In A Flue
A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, “let us flee!”
“Let us fly!” said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.
He also penned lots of quotes.
Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker — Ogden Nash said that!
He also said:
To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup, Whenever you’re wrong, admit it, Whenever you’re right, shut up.
Ogden Nash died in 1971.

<<<<<>>>>>

Mike and I took a different route to go to a home improvement store we’ve been to many times over the years. That allowed me get a few new road pictures.

Check out the mud flaps on this semi.

Do you know what this is?

No?
Let me tell you.
This is what’s left after a cat fight.
Early one morning, just before it gets light outside, Mike let Macchiato go out. Then he heard a cat fight and went to check. It was Macchiato and a cat that hangs out at the Robinson’s named Jerry and they were facing off. Mike tried to break them up but wasn’t having any luck so he figured they’d sort it out and left them to it.
It wasn’t long after that that I got up and took the girls, Itsy and Ginger out for their morning constitution. Macchiato came in with us and he was limping. All day long his limp got worse and he took to bed. The next day he spent all day in bed except once when he came out for a drink and the litter box, then he went right back to bed. The next day was pretty much the same. Macchiato spent all day in bed but came out once for a drink and the litter box, except this day, his paw was worse. Much worse. He wasn’t walking on it at all, just hopping around three-legged like.
Mike and I both checked him over carefully but couldn’t feel or see anything. I’ve often heard that animals can’t or don’t show pain, but in Macchiato’s case, it isn’t true. As I gingerly felt along his leg, he moaned in pain. He didn’t hiss, he didn’t growl, he moaned just like you or I would, and he didn’t try to pull away from me; he let me check him out.
Macchiato spent another day in bed but when he came out for a drink and to use the litter box, he was using his paw again, although with a heavy limp. He even had a bite to eat before he went back to bed.
The next day, his fifth, he felt well enough to spend the day on the couch instead of going in to the bed and he was eating. He even asked to go outside but we didn’t allow him to.

It wasn’t until he was on the mend that I found a patch of dried and matted fur on his shoulder, which explains why we didn’t find anything wrong with his leg or paw. I’m guessing he was bitten on the shoulder, but it never festered, it just healed. Had it festered, we’d have found it and maybe taken him to the vet.
Pets.
I’m telling’ ya!
We worry about our pets as much as we worried about our children.

>>>>><<<<<

I walked around with my camera another day and took pictures of winter flowers.

This one, with the pretty red leaves is on my desktop now. Isn’t it interesting how, even in winter, some things mange to keep some color and maybe even grow a little?

“Peg, I know what that is,” you say. “I’d recognize those evil multiflora roses anywhere!”
Yeah. That’s what it is. It kind of reminds you of Marla’s poem, doesn’t it. What I plant and tend withers; What I deny sprouts and grows. 

<<<<<>>>>>

Steph, that beautiful neighbor lady of mine, invited me to another paint party. This one was a benefit and was at the Elk Lake School.
Nothing is close in Pennsylvania, you may have heard me say that before, and the Elk Lake School is 45 minutes from our house. But, as I said, it was a benefit for one of the kids clubs, so we went.
We parked and got out of Steph’s car. It was cold and blustery. We walked up to the big double doors of the school, pulled on the handle and walked in.
“I haven’t been in a school in years,” I said. “Things don’t change much. It still looks like a school.”
Steph laughed. “It still smells like a school too!”
As we made our way down the hall, I enjoyed seeing the kids artwork hanging in the hallways. Then we spot a lady laying out cookies and another stirring hot chocolate at a small table in the middle of the hallway,
“We have about seventy people signed up so it’s split between two rooms,” the lady said. “You can go into either one.”
Steph knew one of her friends was there, because she saw her car in the parking lot, so she peaked into the first room and didn’t see her. “Let’s go to the other one,” Steph said and I followed her up the hall.
“We have the fireplace on in the library,” the lady told us as we walked past.

We painted a snowman and we even got to put some glitter in our paint when it was still wet.

We all took the same class with the same paints and the same instructor and yet no two painting were exactly alike.

One man even turned his canvas sideways. It was a fun night.

>>>>><<<<<

One of the things Mike wanted done before we installed our door knobs was to have all the locks keyed the same. “We only have to carry one key that way,” Mike said. It took us weeks to find someone who would do it. The internet didn’t turn up anyone. We asked everyone we met in Wyalusing, Wysox, Towanda and Athens and no one knew anywhere to get it done.
“Won’t Lowe’s do it?” you ask.
Lowe’s will do it, if you buy the locks from them. But Mike likes the locks from Ace Hardware. Someone told us there was a locksmith in Waverly, but we couldn’t get anyone to answer the number they gave us.
Then I went old school. I pulled out the phone book and found a guy in Lopez, that’s a small town about twenty miles from here, down past Dushore.
Mike called him, “I’ve never done an Ace lock before. I’ll have to look at it first,” locksmith Al said.
We mentioned to the Kipp’s, on their morning visit, that we found a locksmith in Lopez to re-key the locks for us. “Lopez is always colder than anyplace around here,” Lamar observed.
I made a travel mug o’joe, walked the girls, grabbed my camera, then it was road trip day.
Geese sitting on the foundation of an old barn.

The barn where the farmer’s market was just outside of New Albany.

Old Ford truck.

Then we start up the hill out of Dushore and I’m on roads I’ve only ever been on once or twice before. That’s code for lots of things to see. Sometimes, in situations like this, I do more gawking than picture taking, and I miss lots of good shots. At least in my mind they would have been good shots. As we neared Lopez, we noticed there was more snow on the ground there than what we had and the outside temperature dropped by ten degrees.

We dropped the locks off with Al — who looked at the locks and determined he could do the job — and we headed for home.
This is the old hotel in Dushore.

That night we had snow. I took my camera out with me the next morning when I walked the girls and our outside kittens followed me. This is Rascal and he’s the biggest of the litter that was born last May; that means they’re seven months old now. His beautiful orange coat really stood out against the starkness of the black and white winter morning.

I turned to take a picture of our pond — Yay! It has water in it! — and I see Spitfire, the middle size kitten.

Feisty followed too but the county truck was spreading salt or cinders on the road and as it approached our place, and he kicked on the shaker, Feisty turned tail and ran. I bet she beat us back to the house because I didn’t see her again.

<<<<<>>>>>

We got all the drywall put up in the living room and started the ceiling. We probably aren’t going to do anymore of the ceiling right now; we just wanted to use up the leftovers from when we put up the ceiling in the utility room. It’s starting to look a lot like a house, don’t you think?

A couple of days later, when we went back to Lopez to pick up our locks, I was a little more ready to take pictures. Our snow was gone, but not the snow in Lopez.

I saw a hawk in a tree. I got my camera up in time but it isn’t focused very well.

The same barn as a couple of pictures ago, but going the other way.

A little hard to see, with all the ‘stuff’ sitting around, but these folks put up Christmas lights.

Watch that bottom step.

New barn, old barn.

I like the pumpkins on the rail.

Horses.

Yeah. Like I needed to tell you that.
I started a new craft project this past week. Do you want to see it?
I used a wire weaving technique and made this bracelet from copper scraps.

I love copper and Mike saves me all of his scrap pieces. I won’t let him throw any of it away. I’ve used some in my stained glass suncatchers but I have a lot of copper.
I showed my bracelet off all week, despite the fact that it’s my first and a little wonky. Well, that’s only half true. The center of the bracelet — this is my fourth attempt at that. The first time I used wire that was a really small gauge and it wouldn’t hold its shape. Then I used a bigger gauge wire and it was too big, and hard to work with, but I finished the strand anyway. For my third try, I used a smaller gauge wire, but it was still too big and I didn’t finish it.
       (My table cloth has seen better days.)

I searched and searched in my copper box but the size wire that I needed for this project just isn’t a size that Mike ever uses. The only reason I have that really small gauge wire at all is because it’s from a larger gauge of stranded wire that I took apart. Mike doesn’t normally buy stranded wire but a few times he did accidentally so I don’t have a lot of it.
“Just buy what you need,” Mike said to me.
“That defeats the purpose. I wanted to make something with the wire I already have,” I told him. I let it rattle around in my head for a while and guess what I decided to try. I doubled the really thin gauge wire that I used the first time and got a passable braid.

“How long have you been making jewelry?” one gal asked me.
“This is my first piece,” I told her and laughed a little. “It’s a pretty ambitious design for the first time, don’t you think?”
“It’s beautiful,” she said and I didn’t point out it’s flaws to her.
“What made you want to make it?” one of my beautiful sisters asked me.
I have a little amnesia here. I don’t know how it happened. But this I do know. When Kat died and we cleaned out her apartment, I kept her craft things. One of those things was a thingy that you wrap wire around to make jewelry. I knew what it was for, I didn’t know what it was called. I saw Kat’s things when we packed up to move from Missouri and when I unpacked the RV at this end. The small bag of things sit in my craft room/library now and I see it from time to time. I don’t know if I went looking for something in the bag or if I finally put two and two together and decided it might be time to try that jewelry making thingy with all the scraps our renovation project is generating.
So on one particular day this past week, I got on the internet and Googled “thing to make jewelry with”. The search brought up over seventeen million results. I clicked on the button that just brings up images and I scrolled through until I saw the jewelry making thingy. It’s called a wire jig. One You Tube video led to another, which led to the tutorial on making this bracelet and I loved it from the moment I saw it and I wanted to make one.
And it doesn’t even use the wire jig at all!

With that, let’s call this one done!