He's Back!

          You know, sometimes it seems like it's either feast or famine around here, at least as it pertains to the availability of news for me to write about. I either have a lot, and end up with a 20-page letter blog, or not so much and struggle with things to write about.

          This is a struggle week.

          But let's get right to the reason this one's titled He's Back!

          He is back!

          "Who's back?" you ask.

          Mr. Mister!

          I first saw him walking across the backyard last Wednesday. I grabbed my camera, opened the door, and called to him. My eyes aren't the best so when he turned around I snapped a picture, zoomed in and it's him! He's back! This is the first time anyone's seen him since we left for our RV trip last October.

          "Where do you think he's been all this time?" I asked Mike.

          "I don't know."

          Pretty much the answer I expected.

          Later that day he came right up under the kitchen awning, sat on the stump for his picture, and let me pet him.

            Saturday morning he took breakfast with the wild girls in the feral cat room.

          And here, all this time, I thought he must be dead.

          My ray o' sunshine, my best girl, Joanie was taking pictures of our sunset a week ago and posting them on FaceBook.

          "I took pictures of the same sunset!" I told her and totally meant to share it with you.

          I forgot.

          So here it is.

           Mike developed sores on his toes. A week or so before this he had a red spot on one of his toes and it itched a little. He was treating it with Lotrimin, an athlete's foot medicine.

          By the weekend (a week ago now) when I saw his toes, I was alarmed.

          "Mike, that doesn't look like athlete's foot to me. I think you should go to the doctor."

          Mike spent the weekend Googling his symptoms and narrowed it down to either thyroid cancer or congestive heart failure.

          "STOP THAT!" I admonished. "You're making yourself sick with worry. Why don't you just wait and see what the doctor has to say about it."

          It didn't stop him though. He kept on Googling it and Googling it.

          We got right into the doctors on Monday morning. Let me show you a couple of pictures I took on the way to Towanda before I tell you the outcome.

           Crossing the Susquehanna. It seems like it's always changing.

          There used to be a house here. A family used to live here. And there were trees! The family is gone. The trees are gone. And the only thing remaining of the house are the steps. 

  

  

        At the doctor's office, when we were called, we stopped at the assistant's station to get Mike's weight. I think I must've been a little frustrated from having had to listen to two days of worse case scenarios because someone wouldn't stop Googling his symptoms. I'm afraid I was a little passive aggressive when I told the ladies, "We think he's got ovarian cancer."

          They laughed.

          Not that ovarian cancer is funny, it's not. It was just to showcase the ridiculousness of it all. So I went on to explain.

          "He's been Googling his symptoms. Don't 'cha just hate when your patients do that?"

          "Yeah!" They both agreed.

          Mike had a list of four or five possibilities, none of which the doctor thought possible. "I think it's some kind of infection. We'll get you on an antibiotic for ten days and prescribe a cream to help with the itching and we'll see how you are by Thursday."

          We worked in the garage all day Wednesday. We had a lot of cutting and fitting of the ceiling panels to do to get it to fit around the garage door opener and rails. It was time-consuming and a lot of getting up and down off the ladder for Mike.

          Smudge helped. He can't resist climbing a ladder whenever he sees one set up.

          When we quit for the day, and Mike took his shoes off, we panicked. His feet looked horrible! They were red and swollen and had little red petechiae dots all over. Some on his toes and some on the tops of his left foot. We called and got a doctor's appointment for the next day but once our panic subsided, we realized it was likely from working all day. In the morning the swelling was down, the redness gone. His feet looked so much better that we canceled the doctor's appointment.

           We had a beautiful, sunshiny morning and I couldn't resist taking a picture.

          The snow was melting and we hit a daytime temp of 60 at least twice this week. Not bad for February in the mountains of Pennsylvania.

          We went out a couple of times and I took road pictures for you. Here they are, in no particular order.

          When we went past this field of corn a week or so ago, it was all still standing. I see that now the farmer is finally able to get in his field and get the corn out.

  

          I saw the old bus in this one too late to get a picture. I'll try for it again.

          This is the house my family lived in when I was little. My older and much-adored sister Patti gave me a few more details to add to the story.

          "This was the first house we lived in after we moved from Carbondale. The property also had a big abandoned barn on it. We kids used to play in it, jumping in the haymow. At one point one of you kids was playing with matches and set it on fire but Mom got it out before it turned into anything. This is also where we lived when Phyllis was born."

          Phyllis, my beautiful sister, was the only one of us kids who was born at home.

          Lastly, Patti added, "This is also where we lived when Phyllis lost the tip of her finger when she stuck it in my bicycle spoke."

          I remember that. Phyllis was only two, maybe three and I'm three years older than she is. But I remember being outside, Phyllis screaming, being scooped up and rushed into the house. I remember the whispers among us kids. I can only imagine how bad Patti must have felt. Being the oldest, she was a little mother to us, and a big help to Momma.

          This place is on the corner of the road our old house was on. It's for sale... 

          Another old bus I never saw before.

          My camera sees the whole moon.

          Guess who got hooked on another TV show?

          Yep. Mike. This time it's White Collar. Our TV station has been showing back-to-back episodes on Sunday afternoons. Since my Sunday's are taken up with letter blogging, I don't get to see much of it but Mike really likes it.

          "I wish I'd gotten to see the beginning of that one," he told me after seeing it for the first time. "It's pretty good."

          Someone who loves him got on the computer and ordered all six seasons for him. They came in this one little box. 22 discs! This is so much better, more efficient, I thought of the packaging. To Mike, I said, "Cool!"

          I bought a bag of potatoes to make beef stew and ended up with half a bag left over.

          "You know what I'm hungry for?" Mike asked one night.

          "What?"

          "Potato patties."

          "Perfect! I'll make mashed potatoes for dinner tomorrow night then the next night you can have potato patties!" And that solved the problem on how to use up the potatoes, a problem I seldom have since I seldom buy fresh potatoes.

          "You don't buy potatoes!" I know you're aghast by that bit of news.

          No. No, I don't. I keep a box of Hungry Jack on hand for times we want mashed potatoes. We don't mind their flavor, they're quick and easy, and I don't have to worry about potatoes rotting in the pantry.

          Now, there are two reasons for this picture. One is to show you the best potato masher in the world! I own about six of them but will buy them whenever I see them in a flea market, antique store, or yard sale — provided they're not too expensive. It's the potato masher my mother always used.

          Second, and something else Momma taught me, is what to do with potato water.

          "Throw it out! Dump it down the drain!" you say.

          I know, right! That's what I thought too!

          "Don't do that!" Momma admonished. "Put it in a cup, add a little bullion, a pat of butter, and a dab of milk."

          "Okay..." I was leery. "Then what?"

          "Drink it!"

          She couldn't believe I even asked the question.

          "It's got vitamins and nutrients," she said.

          So now that is what I do with it. But if you Google it there are many uses for potato water. You can use it in place of milk when making bread. You can freeze it for later use. You can cool it to water your plants. You can feed it to animals. And it can be used in place of flour or cornstarch to thicken gravies.

          Something else I seldom make is homemade mushroom soup. I know Momma used to make it for herself and she told me how she did it, but I'd forgotten. I Googled it and found a recipe and it uses chicken broth as its base. I just happen to have made a pot of chicken broth from the bones of a baked chicken and I had mushrooms so I turned it into mushroom soup. I really like it and Mike doesn't care for it. But in defense of my soup, he isn't much into eating soups anyway. I wasn't heartbroken about that at all. More for me!

          Near the end of last month, I told you about a toy dinosaur that my friend Trish found and named Mr. Dino. She's been keeping me updated on his adventures.

          "Mr. Dino isn't glubbing anymore," she told me a few days later. "It's more like a grik, grik, grik."

          "Maybe his batteries are wearing down," I guess.

          "There were a lot of smaller plastic dinos too. I want to make a Jurassic Park in the side yard."

          I thought of our little grandson Andrew when she told me that. Andrew loves dinosaurs. We 'face-timed' last night and he told me he wants to be a paleontologist when he grows up. Paleontologist. That's a big word but Andrew knew it.

          "It warmed up to about 50 today," Trish told me on the second of February.

          Oh. That reminds me of another story, but let's finish Mr. Dino first.

          "Mr. Dino was really roaring when we got home today. It sounded like he was saying giddy-up, giddy-up. I laughed at him. I have no idea how long he'll last, and I'm surprised he's made it this long!"

          Mr. Dino made his way from the stump to Trish's front steps. Sometimes he stops talking for a while but always starts back up again. Those must be some heavy-duty batteries, that's all I've got to say!

     

    

          There was something on FaceBook about February having an extra r that it wasn't using and colonel didn't have one and needed it. I can't find it now so forget I said anything.

          As I alluded to earlier, Mike and I have been working in the garage most days this week, trying to get the ceiling put up. That hasn't left me much time to work on my glass projects but I did finish this one this week. I call these kinds of pieces Long Danglies. I make them in different colors with different shapes.

          Let's call this one done!