Will that stop me from writing?
Not hardly!
So let’s start this time with me showing you what’s been up as my desktop photos for the last few weeks.
Our Mountain Home, silhouetted against the night sky with the super moon was up for a couple of weeks.
Since I haven’t been keeping you updated on my desktop photos, I’ve been kinda lazy about changing it.
This old house with a smattering of snow on it’s roof tops was on my desktop for a while too.
This big rock and barbwire wrapped fence post is what is on my desktop at the moment.
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Mike and I continue to work on our remodeling project, spending most mornings doing one job or another. We put two narrow windows in what will be a huge walk-through closet. I call it a walk-through because you have to walk through the closet to get to the exercise room, which is a some-day thing. There are too many other things that take precedence over finishing an exercise room.Those little windows may not look like much but they really give a lot of light to the whole area.
One of the jobs we’ve been doing is putting insulation up; actually we had a lot of insulation up, but with the walls being double, they are double insulated, and we had more insulation to do.
“We’ll be able to heat it with a Bic,” Mike jokes.
And speaking of Mike…
Poor Michael!
He’s whacked his fingers so many times while using the hammer stapler that his fingernails have blood under them.
Just when they were starting to heal and grow out, he whacked his index finger again. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, he was nailing a piece of drywall inside the window well of those little windows and slammed his index finger again — with the hammer this time — and hard! He didn’t cry — I probably would have — but I could tell it really hurt. The whole tip of his finger is black and blue and he split the skin at the tip. He really hit it a good one! I would have bet that he was going to loose that fingernail, but I’d have lost the bet. It’s been a week and he still has it.
Mike laughed when I read that part to him.
“It doesn’t fall off right away, Peg,” he informed me. “Didn’t you ever lose a nail?”
I shook my head no.
“I’ve lost a lot of them.”
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A few months ago we lost our antenna to the wind. When the pole bent, the antenna came down onto the roof and broke the plastic clips that hold the directors out.
“Where did we buy that antenna?” I asked Mike.
“Radio Shack.”
A lot of Radio Shacks have since gone out of business and the one at Sayre was one of them. We bought a new antenna pole at Lowe’s but they didn’t have any antennas. We ended up buying that from Wal Mart. It was smaller but we were told, with new technology, it’s just as good as the big ones were.
We had high hopes.
We put the new pole and antenna up but it didn’t work. We didn’t get any stations. We took it down and returned it.
“We don’t get any stations,” I told the gal at the service desk.
“I’ve heard that a lot about this one,” she said.
We decided to repair our old antenna by using wire to keep the directors in the out position where they belong. It worked really well.
Then on a Monday, a couple of weeks ago now, the wind took our antenna down again. The pole bent — “I knew it was junk when we bought it,” Mike said — and totally wrecked the antenna. There would be no fixing it this time.
We spent most of the week with no TV, no Good Morning America, no afternoon Gunsmoke or Andy Griffith, and no nightly news. Just me and Mike and a few DVD’s.
I missed the nightly news more than anything. No, I know. It’s hardly ever good news, but I like to know what’s going on in the world. Some of the biggest ‘disasters’ came up on my Facebook feed, like the earthquakes and the bus accident where the driver wrapped the bus around a tree and killed those kids.
By Friday we had had enough.
“Why don’t you get on the computer and find the nearest Radio Shack?” Mike asked me.
I Googled it. “There’s one at Montrose and there’s one at Dallas,” I reported back to him.
“Let’s go to the one in Dallas,” Mike decided. “But let’s call them first and make sure they have one.”
“We have a large selection of TV antennas,” Holly at Radio Shack told Mike. “We’re open until nine tonight.”
I made a travel cup of coffee, walked the dogs, then we jumped in the Jeep and made the ninety mile round trip to Dallas, a town near Scranton. Nothing is close in Pennsylvania. We bought a new antenna and a new pole. We got home in time to put the new antenna together and put up before dark. We are back in business just in time for the start of the Christmas movie season.
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That cat!That darn cat!
Yeah, Smudge.
I spend a lot of time tossing him off of one surface or another. In this picture he is laying across the top of a chair watching me carve the Thanksgiving turkey on the butcher block beside the stove.
“What’s he laying on?” you ask.
Boy! I can’t get anything past you guys! And you aren’t supposed to look at anything in the photo except what I want you to look at!
LOL
It’s my coat. And under that is my lightweight jacket. And there’s a purple sweatshirt there and I’m pretty sure my shawl is in there someplace too. See, here’s the deal. Not only is our apartment small and we have too much stuff, our coat rack is on the breezeway. The last thing I want to do is go out onto a cold breezeway and put on a cold jacket, so I drape it over the chair where I sit all the time. And because that chair is where I spend most of my time, I’ll be sitting there and get too warm and shed my sweatshirt. Sometimes, unfortunately, it might sit there for a while before I wear it again or toss it in the laundry.
Thanksgiving.
We had two invitations to Thanksgiving dinner but decided to stay home, roast a turkey, and have a quiet day at home.
“Are you going to make dressing?” Mike asked.
“Of course!”
Mike likes the dressing recipe in my cookbook. I took Betty Crocker down from the shelf, blew the dust off — yeah, I don’t use it very often anymore — found and checked the recipe to make sure I had all of the ingredients. Then we bought a huge bag of bread cubes. When I measured them out there was enough for a double batch. So I doubled the butter and I doubled all the spices except for salt. I didn’t double that because I was afraid it would be too salty. Mike likes a wet dressing so we added chicken broth until it suited him, put it in a pan and baked it in the oven. When it was crispy golden brown I pulled it out of the oven and sitting on top?
Puddles of butter.
Yeah.
I guess I didn’t need to double the butter either!
I tipped the pan sideways and left it to drain while I did other things. When I came back to dip the excess butter off — there wasn’t any there. It must of soaked down into the dressing. When we dished it up…
“How is it?” I asked Mike.
“It’s okay,” he said and quickly amended, “It’s good.”
“I’m not sure I can eat it,” I confessed.
“Too much butter?” he guessed.
“Yeah.”
We had our dinner at noonish so when supper time rolled around we could have leftovers. I warmed some dressing in the microwave for Mike and for me? I sliced the cold dressing and put it in my cast iron skillet and fried it. I knew I wouldn’t need to add any extra oil, that’s for sure! And I like my dressing a little drier too. It fried up nice and crisp and was actually really good.
We ate turkey and dressing for a couple of days then I froze the rest.
But back to Smudge…
Smudge’s cuteness is wearing a little thin. He bites! And not just little love bites either. He bites hard and he doesn’t stop. I might be sitting here with a hand tucked between my knees and out of the blue, he’ll come up from underneath and claw and bite at my fingers. I pull my fingers out and push him away with my foot (I don’t want to say I kick him because you might get the wrong idea) and that just incites him to attack harder and bite again and again.
Even Mike has had enough of Smudge when he gets to playing that hard. Mike will be on the couch and Smudge will jump on him and start biting and clawing his hands. Mike will toss him off and Smudge comes right back. Mike might have to toss him off three or four times.
Smudge gets on the table, chews on papers, bats everything around and knocks things off, including Mike’s pill box. A few of the lids came open and there were pills all over the floor. And guess who got to sort out the pills and put them back in the box.
Smudge got on the counter a couple of nights ago. He knocked down my ceramic pitcher that lives on top and is home to my utensils. I love this pitcher. It was handmade by a lady we know and Mike bought it for me. The pitcher didn’t break but it did chip.
When I’m washing dishes Smudge tries to help and I have to toss him out of the sink three or four times before he’ll stay down.
Folding laundry is impossible. Smudge’ll claw and bite at any part of the clothes that dangle. Have you ever tried to fold a shirt with a five month old kitten hanging from the sleeve?
You can’t even get dressed without Smudge climbing your jeans, catching your shirttail or chasing your shoelaces as you try to tie your shoes. Sometimes he’ll even attack your feet as you walk across the floor!
And putting on my stockings for Sunday morning church is just plain impossible. “Mike!” I yell. “Will you hold Smudge until I’m done dressing?”
It’s getting old.
“Mike, I think we should consider putting Smudge back outside,” I told him. “Not all cats make good house cats.”
“Go ahead,” Mike said.
Okay, that made it sound like it was easy; it wasn’t. I had to ask Mike several times to consider it before he agreed.
So one morning we put Smudge outside the door, which was still inside. Inside the garage that is. The other cats don’t know Smudge anymore and even though they didn’t fight, they didn’t want anything to do with him. And Smudge sat outside the door, quiet and dejected looking, for several hours until I felt sorry for him, relented, and let him come back in the house.
Now I am on a mission to keep him off the table and counters.
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Wanna see my latest craft project?On the internet —
“Peg, do you believe everything you read on the internet?” you ask.
Well…
On the internet I saw a DIY (Do It Yourself) project on making Shrinky Dinks.
This is what you’ll need, it read.
- Scissors
- Clean transparent plastic packaging, e.g. takeout boxes
- Hole puncher
- Colored permanent markers
It sounded easy enough and the pictures showing the end product were really cute!
I saved a couple of plastic boxes that had cookies in them. I cleaned the sticky labels off, washed and dried them. Then I printed out some simple cartoons and colored them. I was a little worried they would shrink up too small because it said they would shrink by as much as 70%, so I did two in a larger size. It also said not to worry if they roll up when they first hit the heat because they will straighten back out. The total time in the oven? Two to three minutes.
When I peaked in the oven after a few minutes I see the plastic had turned white. The ones in the online article hadn’t turned white.
My Shrinky Dinks weren’t much smaller then when I put them in the oven and they were curling. My little green dinosaur was all rolled up.
Well, it said they would straighten out — I left them in a little longer.
No change.
I left them in a little longer.
Still no change.
When I could smell plastic I decided they had been in plenty long enough and this was as good as it was going to get … and it wasn’t all that great.
I knew there were different codes on the bottom of the containers — maybe it has to be a certain kind of plastic.
I researched it and found out that to work right, it has to have a recycle code of six on it. Well there was the problem. My plastic was a code one.
I’ll keep my eyes open for some number six plastic and maybe I’ll try it again sometime.
“Peg, why are you making them?” you wonder.
I don’t really know. I just thought they would be cute to make and I love to make things.
Since this plastic won’t work to make Shrinky Dinks, what am I going to do with the rest of the plastic that I’ve already saved?
I let it rattle around in my head for a while and I wondered, Could I make a book marker out of it?
One of the Bible teachers that I listen to was talking about the order in which he recommends beginners to read the Bible. I wrote them down and decided it was the perfect thing to put on a book marker.
I spent some time looking for a good font in the proper size, downloaded a few cross images, traced everything, punched a hole, and put them in the oven on at a slightly higher temperature than I did the first time and this is what I ended up with. I guess I should have put them on a pan, huh? I just set them on a piece of aluminum foil and put the foil on the oven rack. I guess it wasn’t enough support and one of them stretched out of shape.
Sometimes the quest is half the fun.
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Driving through a little town, this strip of land with huge rocks planted on it stuck out like a sore thumb.“Neighbor dispute?” I asked Mike as he circled the block so I could get the picture.
“Looks that way,” he replied.
“‘I told you not to walk your dog on my property!’” I joked.
What do you think?
Let’s call this one done!
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