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!