Snow Signs

          An extra letter blog this week! I just know you can’t get enough of me!

          Speaking of getting enough…

          We had more snow! Not nearly as much as the time before, only about an inch or two — I say one inch, Mike says two, but you know how men measure!

          With the lighter amount of snow, it gave Mike a chance to use his electric snow shovel. We bought it to get the snow off the roof but it was a bust. For one thing, it doesn’t work very well on more than an inch or two, and for another thing, if you have a lot of snow on your roof, you’re not supposed to get on your roof!

          Live and learn.

          I like to try and read the signs in the snow and with a fresh dusting on the ground it gave me a chance to practice.

          This is what it looks like when Peggy takes the garbage down to the road. My tracks going in both directions and what looks like a sidewinder trail.

         I was on my way to walk the latest edition of my jibber-jabber down to my Miss Rosie and when I saw this, I had to laugh. A corner of the trash bag must’ve been dragging.

        Near the end of the driveway, I see these little tracks. I didn’t think to make a picture with something to give it perspective so you’ll have to take my word for it that they were little.

          “How little?” you ask.

          I’m thinking mouse little. My head swung back and forth as I followed the trail from one side of the driveway to the other. At one point it looks like he tried to jump up on the bank and didn’t make it. My eyes follow his tracks as he skirted the snow wall, then I see where he made another attempt to gain the top. He made it. His trail winds off across the top of the snow then disappears. Do they burrow under the snow? I wondered but didn’t see anything that looked like a hole.

          There wasn’t any wind so I had a nice walk down to the Kipps.

Following all of the COVID guidelines, aka wearing our masks, I gave Miss Rosie her weekly letter and she gave me a Valentine gift.

          “I wrapped it special,” she said making a joke. And just for the record, I’m way okay with this kind of gift wrapping.

          Like a kid at Christmas, I dived right in! Miss Rosie got me a plaque with a philosophy on it that we should all adopt.

          Life is like a camera. Focus on what’s important, capture good times, develop from the negatives, and if things don’t work out, take another shot.

          I love it! And I love the second part of my gift too. A bag of delicious, delectable, scrumptious, my most-favorite snack in the whole wide world! — oyster crackers! And not just any oyster crackers either. The ones from Aldi’s! They’re the best! I guess there’s worse things in life to be addicted to, don’cha think?

          Lamar got his bride of 50 years a bouquet for Valentine’s Day. It’s nice to see the bright colors in this bleak landscape of winter and I took a few pictures.

          When I brought my gifts home, Mike said, “She got you oyster crackers?”

          “It’s way better than a box of chocolates — which is what I got her.” 

>>>*<<< 

          The floor under my rolly desk chair developed a hole. There was a ridge and whenever I’d pull my chair in, it would hit, and over the years, a hole developed. I put a rug down for a while and that helped but my roller was catching the back of the rug and bunching it up which was just as aggravating as falling in the hole so I took it out.

          Mike uses my computer almost as much as I do. It’s always on and it’s situated conveniently. Most of the time I don’t mind. But when I’m writing and he wants it, I get a little aggravated.

          “You’ve got two computers on your desk. Why don’t you use one of them?” I’ll ask.

          Mike is always good for a snappy comeback. “This is my computer.” What’s yours is mine kinda deals. Then he tries to pacify me. “I’ll just be a minute.”

          And I ask God for patience and remind myself that my deadline for letter blog writing is self-imposed.

          “I need to get some stuff and fix this hole,” Mike said a couple of weeks ago.

I got a cardboard and put under my chair. That helped and it didn’t bunch. But this week the day came. The day came when he got out the patching cement and fixed the hole.

There was extra cement so I got a disposable glove and filled it with the leftovers. I thought I’d gotten all the air out but obviously didn’t. It didn’t take long before I was feeling it to see how it was setting up and was surprised by how hot it had gotten. It was set in couple of hours but I waited a whole day before I tore the glove off. I didn’t want to risk breaking a finger.

“What are you going to do with it?” you wanna know.

I’m thinking of painting it all kinds of funky colors and using it for rings or something.

Besides making the cement hand, I made face masks this week too. My beautiful Minnesota sister, who used to work from home, now has to actually leave her house for work these days. and what girl doesn’t like to have variety? One side is cute, the other side is a solid color so that gives her an even bigger selection.

I kinda like making masks. They’re fast and easy and I still had all this cute material and elastic just sitting in a bin. But most importantly, I had my helper too.

Okay, okay! He was more company than help. I’ve never had a cat like Tiger before. He just wants to be with his people. If he’s not sitting at the door watching the birds, you can normally find him with one or the other of us — but he generally likes to be with me more than Mike.

Another new thing I tackled this week was making a special bread for my special gal. My poor Miss Rosie loves bread. Unfortunately, the doctor put her on a non-gluten, non-dairy diet. There goes her beloved bread!

“Mike, when we go to the store, I wanna get almond flour or something and try to make Rosie some bread.” I knew there were other kinds besides almond.

“Let her make her own bread,” Mr. Cranky Pants says.

“Now you know that I always make bread for Miss Rosie and with the internet, I have access to a whole bunch of recipes that she doesn’t.”

Mike likes to pretend he’s hard-hearted but it’s all an act. Bantering is his love language.

At the store I stopped at the shelf of specialty flours and nearly fell on the floor. Holy cow! Almond flour is expensive! Right next door to the almond flour lives coconut flour. It was a larger bag and much more reasonably priced. “I bet this’ll work.” I put it in the buggy.

At home, I spent a bunch of time searching the internet for recipes and came across a coconut flour bread that had rosemary and garlic in it. I love rosemary and garlic!

This bread recipe is my personal favorite. Not only is it a great alternative for people with nut allergies, but it’s rich with rosemary and garlic flavors. The best way to eat any bread, in my opinion, is as toast, and this recipe is no exception. Toast it up on the stove or in the oven and top it with some butter! We promise you this bread recipe will change the way you enjoy keto bread.

I was sold!

I mixed it up and baked it. I let it sit a little while then sliced it. It was kind of grainy like corn bread but I did like the rosemary and garlic flavor. I kept a couple of slices for toast the next morning and took the rest down to Rosie.  

“How did she like it?” you ask.

She said it was good but the true test’ll be if she ever asks me to make it for her again. Then I’ll know if she really liked it or was just being polite.

I had rosemary garlic toast with my hard-boiled eggs for breakfast the next morning. I thought the flavor of the bread complemented my eggs very well but the texture will take getting used to.

“Try it,” I twisted Mike’s arm.

After my persistent pestering he eventually gave in and took a bite. “YUCK! It tastes like sand!”

“Rosemary garlic sand!” I corrected.

The same website has a couple of other bread recipes that I’m gonna try for Miss Rosie. 

>>>*<<<

When they replaced our old open-grate single-lane bridge, Mike and I became friends with the project manager and his family. Duane’s daughter Addi and I share a special bond and I make her little suncatchers at holidays. She’ll make me a card, or a little story book, or snowflake, and we’ll exchange these little gifts. I’ll usually do a little baking for the rest of the family. Cookies, pumpkin roll, dream bars. But Mike hates that I do something special for Addi and not for the other two kids.

I’m not sure how the whole dynamics came about. It certainly wasn’t planned and it was not my intention to hurt anyone’s feelings or exclude anyone. If I had to guess, I’d say Addi reminds me of my daughter when she was that age.

After the first few times I’d given Addi something (and took cookies for the family) Mike’s criticisms started to work on me. Was I wrong?

I had to know so I turned to the kids’ mother Liz.

“Mike thinks it’s unfair for me to bring something special for Addi and not the other two. What do you think about it?”

Liz’s response settled it for me, once and for all. “The other two are fine. They understand you and Addi are friends. I like how it makes Addi feel special. I work hard to make them all feel loved equally so that you don’t have too. Your friendship is special to Addi.”

At Christmas I took Addi a Santa and she wrote me a thank you card that touched my heart. “Thank you for the pumpkin roll,” she wrote. “And I love the Santa and all the suncatchers you made for me. They’re my favorite thing to show everyone who comes to my house.”

That was when I realized Addi is like my sister Phyllis. She doesn’t take down her holiday themed suncatchers either. All of them stay up, all the time.

I can’t tell you the power of a good thank you note. I really felt like Addi loved and appreciated the gifts I’d made her and it made me want to heap more on her.

Two things I want to tell you here.

One. My Miss Rosie is Queen of Thank You Notes. That women knows the value of such notes and always sends me the most beautiful thank you notes — even if she’d already thanked me in person. And even though she lives right down the road here and could easily deliver them in person, she always uses the postal service.

“Save your stamp!” I’d scolded when she first started doing this.

“Everyone likes getting cards in the mail,” she told me, and continues to do it to this very day.

Two. I wasn’t a very good thank you noter in my younger years. I’m not much better now. I sorely regret that I’d taken my mother-in-law for granted. Clara sent the most beautiful gifts for the kids and I really did appreciate it but never told her so. I was busy, money was tight, and long-distant phone calls were expensive.

Sigh.

I’m not passing any judgement here on anyone but myself. But if someone used to send you gifts, say, money in your birthday card for example, and they don’t anymore, that’s probably why.

Valentine’s Day!

I’d made Addi a suncatcher and we went to deliver it this week. Liz knew we were coming but got held up. Rather than sit in the driveway and wait we decided to go for a ride.

“Let’s follow a water truck and see where they’re going,” Mike suggested.

I took a few pictures for you.

We never did follow the truck the whole way to the drilling site. Liz texted and told me they were home so we turned around and went back to Addi’s house.  I gave her her newest addition for her collection. She loves it! Isn’t she just the cutest cutie-patootie you’ve ever seen!

We’d also made Valentine bags for all the kids and you can be sure this gal put the same amount of candy in each bag.

Speaking of Valentine’s…

I have a bear collection. Mike’s been buying the gift bears with the year on the foot from Walmart since we’ve been together. Every year I get a bear for Valentine’s, Easter, and usually two for Christmas. I just can’t pick between the boy bear and his matching girl so Mike lets me have them both.

Well, here we were, coming up on Valentine’s and forgotten to get a bear.

“We can get it next week when we go,” I said.

“Or we can order it online,” my tech-savvy husband says. He got online but Walmart won’t ship the bears.

“Next week it is,” I said.

“They’ll be gone and we won’t get one,” Mike worried. So, it was off to Walmart we went.

I took pictures.

Geese on the Susquehanna.

The Susquehanna is frozen over at Tunkhannock.

A Valentine bear isn’t the only thing we came home with. Remember the egg cooker I didn’t want because, “I don’t need one more thing sitting around!”?

It turns out that I rather like the darn thing!

We bought the Copper Chef egg cooker because it would make fourteen hard-boiled eggs at one time. But this thing is so easy to use that I just make what I’m going to eat. I can put a couple of eggs in, add the appropriate amount of water, put the lid on, turn it on, and walk away. I can have hot (or warm if I wait too long) hard-boiled eggs for my breakfast with no fuss, no muss! And I like them much better warm then cold.

But, and there’s always a but, it only makes two poached eggs at a time. And two poached eggs are not enough for my big ole mountain man.

So, this girl, who didn’t even want one, says, “If we bought another one then we could make four poached eggs at once!”

The Copper Chef was more expensive than the Nostalgia Walmart carries. The cord on the Nostalgia is beefier and has a ground plug on it whereas the Copper Chef doesn’t, and the Nostalgia has a beeper when it’s done and Copper Chef doesn’t. The Copper Chef will make fourteen hard-boiled eggs, if you need fourteen, and Nostalgia makes seven. Copper Chef comes with a separate poached egg tray, Nostalgia doesn’t, but it does have a taller omelet tray.

“We’d’ve been further ahead to just buy two of these,” I told Mike. 

>>>*<<<

I brought our outside girls in. I was getting worried about Callie, the calico on the left. She suffers from a respiratory issue that gets worse in the winter. The snot started building up on her nose until it was completely covered with a dry layer. But that wasn’t what really bothered me. What really bothered me was we had a couple of really, really cold nights. The pan of water sitting on the floor iced over. And Callie, rather than jump up to her sleeping shelf and snuggling under the blankets with Sugar like she normally does, had slept on the floor.

“Do you think it’s getting too hard for her to jump up there?” I asked Mike but he didn’t know. I went in the wayback and got a board to make her a ramp and the next morning she used it to come down from the shelf. I don’t know if she used it to ascend or not.

Callie is getting old. Thirteen, fourteen, we’re not really sure. Then two mornings in a row she didn’t get out of bed to come down for breakfast. I was worried enough that I wondered if she’d died in the night.

“Can we bring her in?” I asked Mike. “Then I can clean her up.”

“Sure. But you’ll have to bring Sugar in too.”

Sugar and Callie are inseparable. In the summer they sun together in the yard and they always sleep together at night.

We’ve got a cat condo that we bought many years ago for our old cat Missy. Our precious Baby Blue, who we later learned was blind or nearly blind from birth, used to wait outside the litter box when she heard Missy in there and ambush her when she came out.

Missy was not having any of that! She decided not to use the litter box anymore. Hence the cat condo and Missy was very content to have her own apartment. I’d let her come out every night while I cleaned her litter box and freshened her food and water, but most times she’d be back in before I was done.  

There have been times, over the years, where we’ve needed to quarantine a cat and used that. And the last time we used it was for Smudge. In his younger years he’d tear the house up at night so we’d put him in there before we went to bed. But it’s been months since he’s used it.

Callie is more docile than Sugar and I was able to carry her in the house in my arms. She freaked a little when I came in the house but I covered her face and we made it to the condo with no bites or scratches.

I didn’t dare try the same thing with Sugar. She wouldn’t hesitate to tear me to ribbons. But she did let me put her in the cat carrier. As I carried the carrier through the garage to the house she freaked and threw herself against the sides of the carrier. To get her in the condo I just opened both doors and let her transfer herself.

I gave them a couple of days to settle down before I tried to clean Callie up. I made a boric acid wash…

“Boric acid!” you exclaim.

Yeah. Pharmaceutical grade. It’s a teaspoon in a cup of sterile water (I boiled it). Callie didn’t much like me carrying her out to the operating table, aka the kitchen counter, but I was able to control her. I pulled the lid from the canister containing cotton balls and the little clink it made freaked her out. By the time I regained control she was sitting down in the sink. I took a cotton ball, dipped it in the warm solution and took a swipe at her nose. When I was able to see her nose, I was horrified! Staring back at me was something pink and raw. It looked like her nose was gone! I was horrified! I looked at the cotton ball and there was a nose cap. I looked back at her nose and pinpricks of blood were starting to bead up. I was absolutely horrified! Did I tell you I was horrified?

“I think her nose fell off!” I cried to Mike.

“What do you want to do about it?” he asked.

“Come and look at it,” I begged.

“No.”

“There’s nothing we can do now.” It was Friday night. “We’ll just watch it and see what happens.”

Well, poor Mike. He woke up several times in the night thinking and worrying about poor Callie.

“Let’s but some peroxide on a cotton ball and dab it on her nose,” Mike suggested.

That night we tended to Callie together. I held her and Mike did the nose dabbing. Then I cleaned her eyes, which she seems to enjoy.

As we stood there, between nose dabbing's and sneezes, I got to thinking how I squirted a little peroxide on Mr. Mister’s wound. I wonder if I can just pour a little on her nose. “Let me have the cap a second,” and Mike handed over the cap containing a little peroxide. 

Well! Let me just tell you that you don’t ever want to pour anything on a cat’s nose unless you want ‘em to tear up your operating room!

After examining her nose several times, I’m not so sure that she did lose it. I think it’d been covered so long that the skin broke down underneath it, much the same way your nails will do if you wear fake nails a long time.

Despite having used the peroxide every day since then, a crust is starting to form on her nose again.

“I’m afraid if we let it go that it’ll be like before. Red and raw when it comes off.”

There is no conclusion to this story because it’s ongoing.

Speaking of ongoing stories…

Mike laughed at me when he had a chance to look at More Trapper John. “Peg! Those aren’t fur stretchers! Those are pant stretchers! My mom used them!”

“Why'd she use pant stretchers?” I wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” was his answer.

Then my Miss Rosie saw More Trapper John. “If I’d’ve seen the picture I would’ve told you that’s what they were.

“Why'd your mom use pant stretchers?”

“So she didn’t have to iron,” she answered flatly. “It was my job to put them in and I hated that job. I’d’ve much rather ironed.”

Even though I found a picture of them on an auction site, side-by-side with fur stretchers and being sold as such, I believe Mike and Miss Rosie when they tell me they’re pant stretchers.

And that solves that mystery.

Trapper John sent me some photos of what fur stretchers should look like and also included photos of his biggest beaver along with photos of his dad and grandfather. They would’ve enhanced his story if I’d’ve had them. Maybe, when I have time, I’ll go back and stick ‘em in. Do you want me to let you know when I do that?

>>>*<<< 

Miss Rosie told me how much she loved the picture of Smudge on his shelf in the window above my sink. You gotta be careful about what you say to me sometimes. If I know you like something, I give you more!

I thought Smudge was looking quite dapper with his paw hanging down.

Then I caught him cat-napping. My movements caused his little eye to open and I couldn’t get my camera to focus on him. For some reason, this out-of-focus eye glaring at me between the chimes creeps me out a little.

Smudge was a bad boy! He wasn’t content just eating my spider plant. He squeezed past it and was digging in my jade plant.

“No!” I scolded and spritzed him a little with my water bottle. I did it sorta gently, if there is such a thing, because I didn’t want him to knock everything off the shelf in a panic to get away. It worked and he got down without tearing the shelves apart. I had to clean the dirt from both shelves. As long as I was at it, I took the spiderwebs out too. Then I put pine cones in the jade to discourage him from digging in it again. We’ll see if it works. 

>>>*<<<

Oh my gosh! Look at these signs in the snow!

I’d taken my kitchen scraps out to the weeds where I normally toss them and stopped dead in my tracks when I spotted these. I could almost see the imprint of a bird. I bet those are its feathers, and debated with myself about going back to the house for my camera. Yeah, yeah. I went out without it. There normally isn’t a lot to take photos of this time of year so I’m more lax about taking it everywhere. In the end, I set the scrap pan in the snow and went back for my camera. I sincerely hope you appreciate the lengths I go to for you.

 Then I decided to ask an experienced hunter and trapper what these snow signs say to him. “Trapper John, what story do these pictures tell you? They’re all taken in the same area. There’s no blood at the scene and only one tiny feather.”

“It looks like a hawk killed a small bird. I can see wing feather marks in the snow from where it took off after the kill.”

And there’s that. 

>>>*<<<

 Since I have a little room on the page, I’m going to tell you something that is of absolutely no import at all!

3003 Crystal Mazes. This is how this puzzle starts, my pusher right behind this crystal. 

Pushing it down wouldn’t work because I couldn’t get around it. So, I pushed it to the right thinking I could push it off the wall and get behind it. I did that and put all the other crystals in their gold squares. Then I went for the last one, pushed it off the wall, and saw I’d miscalculated. I couldn’t get behind him. My very first push was wrong!

288 pushes wasted! That’s what it took me to get to this point and I’d have to start all over again.

I grinned and shook my head. Stinkers! I bet they knew someone would do that and they probably grinned at their mischievousness. But I was smarter and solved it the next time I tried.

 Lastly, I’ve got this great shot of morning clouds.

It’s going to be fabulous when it turns all red and orange! In my mind’s eye I could see it just flaming! But it never did.

I know you’re disappointed. I was too.

 And let’s call this one done!