The Do-It-Again Lubys

           This week in the Luby household, the Lubys held true to their nick name.

          “What nick name?” you ask.

          We are The Do-It-Again Lubys!

          Mike often times complains when we have to do something two or even three times. Maybe that’s true in your life, too, but maybe you don’t spotlight it like we do.

          One of the very first jobs we did this week went amazingly well and Murphy didn’t kick in his two-cents' worth either.

          “Murhpy?” you query.

          Yeah. You know, the famous Murphy of Murphy’s Law. If anything can go wrong, it will.

          “Peg,” Mike said to me one day last week. “We have three pieces of fence up around the apple tree. If we take those we’d have enough fence to join the two dog runs together.”

          “Do you think the apple tree is big enough to withstand deer damage?” I asked.

          “I don’t know. But if we joined the two dog runs then we wouldn’t have to put a bigger door in the side run for Raini.”

          I wasn’t planning on doing that anyway. But Mike is afraid of Raini getting stuck in the little cat door, especially if we’re not home, and crying her eyes out.

          I could tell this was something Mike really wanted to do. “Okay.” I said. “Let’s do it.”

          While I visited with you last Sunday, Mike got busy and got things around so we could tackle the job bright and early Monday morning. He pulled the fence out of the overgrown weeds and brought them down to the house. He got all the tools and ladders around. And thank goodness we had a fence post the Kipps found in the back of their shed and gave us, and one left over that Jon Robinson had given us. This project would cost us nothing but our time.

          The side run is attached to the end of the jut-out that houses Peggy’s Pain Palace, my exercise studio.

          And the run off the kitchen attaches to the other end of the jut-out.

          It didn’t take us long to join the two sections. Now the girls have a really, really big run.

          We left enough room to be able to walk between the fence and the weeds and to keep it mowed. And, in case you’re wondering, we have four gates spaced around the fence. One at the side run, two on the kitchen patio side, and one in the wayback.

          The ground is uneven but only one section was so far off it made a big gap. Short of doing some major dirt work, we chose to let the fence run off and use rocks to keep the girls from scooting under. Probably not the right way to do it, but it works.

          We had one other problem.

          “What’s that?” you ask.

          Spitfire, for whatever reason, doesn’t like to jump up and go over the fence. If I’m outside and he wants in, he’ll sit at the gate and meow for me to let him in. If he had to come over on his own, he’d use the building to aid his climb. I didn’t really think much about it. I just thought he’d jump up onto the fence if he had to.

          A kibosh was put on that idea when he was on the wrong side for a day and a half before I let him in. Then, when he wanted to cross back over, I caught Riani running him from one end of the yard to other— twice! He was trying to find a way out, running the fence line in a panic, staying ahead of Raini until I could get a hold of her.

          “I could put a rough-sawn board against the fence for him,” Mike said when I brought it to his attention.

          I wanted something more ‘natural’. “How about a branch?” I suggested. “It might even give the birds another perch before they come in to the feeders.”

          On the way to the mailbox that day, I spot two nice size logs laying in the weeds on the bank and point them out. “Those would work.”

          I showed Spitfire where it was.

And this is the first time I saw him come back over the fence using his bridge. Raini is waiting for him so she can run him around — and don’t go feeling sorry for the cats, like Mike does.

“Those cats have claws and can teach Raini a lesson if they really wanted to,” I tell him — and you.

Blackie is the only one of the three that won’t run for Raini. He just flops down and Raini doesn’t find that any fun at all.

Murphy more than made up for his absence in the next project.

Rain and winter and snow are coming. Bondi isn’t too keen on going out in the rain to do her business so unless I take her out with an umbrella over her little princess head, she pees in the house.

“It wouldn’t take that much to put an awning up for her,” Mike said. “We have some leftover metal and one four-by-four.”

I went to the upper barn with Mike. “Hey! Inky Caps are up!”

I didn’t pick them then. If you don’t cook them soon after picking, you end up with a pile of ink. We were having steak for dinner so I went back for them right before I started cooking.

I was sautéing them and thought of the mushrooms I used to get at Camp Bagnell, a restaurant in Missouri we used to go to a lot. My favorite waitress became my best girl a couple of years later when we both worked at Curves. Camp Bagnell always put garlic in the mushrooms and it was so good. I got my garlic out and added a liberal amount to my Inky Caps. These six mushrooms cooked down to about a quarter cup. Not a lot but they sure were yummy!

“Peg! You shouldn’t eat wild mushrooms!” you say.

Not to worry. Inky Caps have no poisonous look-alikes.

The next morning, we were up and out the door before the fog burned off the mountains. Mike had a mental list of what he thought we needed to complete the awning. A four-by-four, three rafters, five purlins, and two bags of concrete, so we were on our way to Laceyville Lumber.

Back at home, Mike dug the holes for the posts, taking lots of breaks. Things like this cause him a lot of back pain but doesn’t stop him.

Our sidewalk supervisor oversaw the whole project. Raini inspected the hole. She didn’t think it was quite wide enough and dug a little out at the top.

Mike wasn’t happy about this as the dirt had no place to go except the bottom of the hole that he’d just finished cleaning out.

Raini paid closer attention to the digging of the second hole, going so far as to inspect the material coming out of the hole.

So far, so good. Until Mike set the post in the hole. We needed a longer post or a shorter hole!

“It’s okay,” Mike said. “We’ll just put a few rocks in the bottom.”

Mike mixed the concrete a little on the soupy side so it would flow in and around the rocks.

Raini helped.

Now we had to wait for the concrete to set.

Mike was planning what comes next and realized he’d forgotten the two-by-sixes that go between the posts and under the rafters.

Back to Laceyville lumber we went.

Reflections in the beautiful Susquehanna.

Coming into Laceyville.

Mike went into the sales office while Bondi and I waited. This is the first time in a long time we’ve taken Bondi with us. I’ve been hesitant to leave Raini home by herself but since we wouldn’t be gone long, I chanced it.

The whole time Mike was gone, Bondi watched for him to come back out. 

I needed to take pictures. Looking down toward Vern’s Mill. 

Vines twining around the fence in front of where we were parked. 

Our beautiful mountains.

This week is our peak color but I don’t know how much I’ll be getting out to take pictures. I’ve got so much going on. But next week we’ll be making a trip to Wilkes-Barre for my final eye checkup. Maybe I’ll score some nice fall color pictures then.

When we got home, I found Raini in her kennel and I was pleased. I was afraid that after being locked up for a week, she wouldn’t use it voluntarily again. I was also afraid that being left home alone would freak her out and she’d tear the house up. She didn’t and I’m glad for that. But it was something we couldn’t know until we tried.

Raini wasn’t as interested in the building process as she was in the digging, so she sat in the sun with Bondi.

Mike and I went to work putting the two by sixes up under the rafters.

Mike put hurricane clips on, then we set to work putting the purlins in place. That’s when I notice our center rafter was higher than the other two.

We found the problem right away. When Mike nailed the clip on, it raised the rafter away from the two-by-six.

“Will you go get that flat red bar for me?” Mike asked.

I’m the gofer, so I went.

Mike pried the nails out, pulled the rafter into place, and re-nailed it.

We put the metal on and voila! It’s done!

“Now I can put another branch up,” I told Mike and found one in his burn pile.

I’ve had a lot of activity at my feeders. I’ve been trying to get a shot with a lot of birds sitting on the branches but I haven’t had much luck with that. Here there’s a couple of Finches and a Chickadee.

Bondi’s awning was done ahead of the forecasted rain. That evening, rain coming down, Bondi ignores the awning and goes right out in the rain, making a liar out of me and our awning unnecessary.

Well, at least the birds liked it. 

Another project that called for a re-do was a sign board I was making. I had my board sanded, stained, and ready to go. I made my stencils. It’s going to say, “SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES” and have a spider, cauldron, bat, and broom. 

SOMETHING was going at the top so I put that on. Dang if it didn’t bleed under the stencil! Wicked would go up and down and I wanted it spaced between SOMETHING and the cauldron that would be right over THIS WAY COMES. I moved to the bottom of the board and put “THIS WAY” on one line and COMES on the bottom. Dang if I didn’t get a bunch of bleed unders again!

Did I quit?

No.

How was I going to fix it?

I don’t know. It all would depend on how bad it looked when it was done. Some of the little stuff isn’t all that noticeable when the whole thing is put together.

Then I got the bright idea that instead of painting on my stencils and getting bleed-under, I’d pencil around them, take them off and paint it. No stencil, no bleed under. It would take more time but I was sure I’d be happier with the results.

I put the cauldron on, penciled it in. Took the stencil off and pitched it.

WICKED was next. It’s on four stencils due to its size. If I remembered rightly, I’d have to keep it tight up to SOMETHING in order for everything to fit. I put WI on, traced it, threw the stencil out. C was by himself. KE was together, and D was by himself. I got it all on and saw my centering was way, way off! I mean, really way off. The W was crowded up by SOMETHING and I had a four-inch gap until my cauldron!

Aye-yi-yi!

Did I quit?

No.

How was I going to fix it?

I don’t know.

I pressed on adding the other elements the whole time wondering how I was going to fix it. Everything on, I stood it up and looked at it. I hated it. The spacing was so bad.

“Peg, you should’ve spaced it before you put stuff on,” you say.

I know, right! Sometimes I’m just too cocksure of myself.

“What does ‘cocksure’ mean?” you ask.

I’m so glad you asked! It means overconfident and is a metaphor borrowed from the cock of a firelock as being much more certain to fire than the match.

It was either that or maybe my subconscious was deliberately sabotaging it since I wasn’t happy with the bleed-unders anyway. I still didn’t know how I was going to fix those.

How was I going to fix it. Maybe I could erase the pencil and make new stencils. Can you erase pencil from wood? One way to find out. I got my pencil and started erasing. It did sort of work. The only problem is one little pencil eraser wasn’t going to erase all of the pencil I had on the board. And it’s not like it was when I had kids at home. Pencils were hard to come by in my house these days and I didn’t have any jumbo size erasers either.

I got on the internet and Googled it. I found one video where the guy used denatured alcohol and acetone on two samples of pencil on board and they both worked well. Acetone is nail polish remover so I got that out and tried it. It didn’t work. Maybe because I had stain on the board and he didn’t?

The whole time I’m kicking myself and thinking if I’d’ve stopped sooner, when I realized I was going to have a problem, I wouldn’t have all this pencil to remove!

I heaved a great sigh, got up and took my board outside where I started sanding it.

“How can I live my crafting life vicariously through you if you don’t take pictures?” I heard my beautiful friend Jody in my head.

So I stopped sanding and took a picture.

I thought I was only going to take off the pencil but soon realized I’d have to take the whole board down and re-stain it.

So that’s what I did.

I wouldn’t be able to do anything with that board for at least twenty-four hours. I pulled out another board (good thing I have extras waiting in the wings) and went to work on it.

          This is a custom order and was not without its own problems.

I’ve never done a mermaid before so I started with something I did know. The words. I put the SEAS stencil down and had bleed-under. I’m really getting sick of this. I’ve tried so many different things to prevent it and the only thing I’ve found that works is if my wood is raw. No stain. That lets my vinyl stencils stick better.

I sanded it off, re-painted, remade stencils, traced them with a pencil, and painted them. No bleed-under.

My mermaid. What can I say. I tried. I kept throwing color on it until I got something I was fairly happy with. I decided if the customer didn’t like it, I’d make another one.

“Lovely,” she said after I sent a picture.

Whew!

Are you familiar with the expression, when it rains, it pours?

It means everything goes wrong all at once.

For us Do-It-Again Lubys, that expression is doubly, no triply true these days!

We had a little SNAFU.

Mike called. “Peg, can you come and get me? The mower quit.”

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Down by the pond.”

I took the golf cart down. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I don’t know. It runs but it won’t move.” Mike started the mower and showed me because we all know you gotta prove it to Peg.

“Hmm,” I said. “Okay.” I got off the golf cart and hooked the tow rope to the front of his Gravely. Mike was on a downward tilt and I tried several times to pull him up on the flat but the golf cart didn’t have enough power. Mike went for the tractor.

“You get on the mower and steer while I pull it,” he said without thinking.

“What good is that gonna do? You said it won’t move.”

“Oh.”

We got the mower pulled out, then Mike got behind it and pushed it to the garage.

Mike called his Fix-It guy.

“It’s probably just a belt,” Jonna said.

Mike was curious about that so he used his tractor, picked the Gravely up far enough to get under and look. Sure enough, he found a broken belt. When he went to put the mower down, it got stuck. He called me.

I’m a good a dutiful wife so I went down.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Nothing I guess,” Mike said.

I took pictures as he worked the bucket back and forth until it clunked, came unstuck, and he set it down.

That was weeks ago.

Jonna finally had time in his busy schedule to come and get the mower. Two days later he called. “Mike, what did you do?”

“What do you mean?” Mike asked.

“We put a new belt on and when we started it up, sparks flew all over the place. The hydro clutch is all chewed up. We’ve never seen anything like it,” Jonna said.

Whether we caused the damage pushing it into the barn or when Mike lifted it to get a look at the belt, we don’t know. But one thing is for sure. I don’t wanna see this bill!

Besides the mower, we had an issue with our furnace. Right at the tail end of last winter our furnace quit blowing heat. We had a heck of time finding anyone who would even come and look at it. I guess electric furnaces aren’t prevalent around here. After weeks of calling every furnace and electrical guy in the book we found a guy who was willing to come out.

“The element is out,” he said after looking at it. “In this unit you can’t replace just one of them you have to buy a whole new heating kit.”

The guy went out to his truck and came back in after twenty minutes. “I found a place in Philly that has one. It’ll take a week or so for me to get it.”

He quoted us a price that was close to a thousand dollars, but you gotta have heat, so what do you do?

“Go ahead,” Mike told him.

We waited, and we waited, and we waited, and we waited some more. Months passed.

“I guess he’s not coming back,” Mike said. With winter on the horizon, Mike took the serial and model numbers from our furnace, got on the internet, and found a new element for our furnace. It was less than three hundred dollars. “Look at this, Peg,” Mike said. “It’s got a different number on it but it’s what comes up when I Google it.”

“Call the company,” was my advice.

Mike did that. In fact, he did it twice, several weeks apart, talking to two different people. They both confirmed that this one replaces the one we had.

Good. Fine and dandy. Mike orders the part. When we get it, it looks different and Mike was nervous about installing it.

          We needed someone knowledgeable to help us. “I’ll ask Stacey,” I said. “She might know someone.” My beautiful cousin works for our electric company. Who better to ask about an electrician?

          Stacey gave me two places to call, neither of which we’d called originally.

          The first place didn’t answer the phone so Mike called the second. Schoonover sent a guy out. After going over everything, he wasn’t sure either. He didn’t want to mess something up or cause damage to the unit so he told Mike he’d research it and get back with us.

          Two weeks later, having not heard back, Mike calls them again. This time they sent out someone who could help us. Adam looked through all the manuals and said, “Yep. It’s the right one. They made some changes but it’s the right unit.”

          Adam installed it and turned it on. It works! We’ve got heat just in time for the cooler weather.

          Besides fixing the furnace, we had a really nice visit with Adam. I could tell you where he lives, how long he’s been married, how many kids he has, how many pets he has, how long he’s been working for Schoonover, what he did before that, and how he got into the business. Like I said, a nice visit.

          I almost forgot. I kenneled the girls. It keeps them from being underfoot, or in Raini’s case, keeps her from jumping up on people. They accepted being in the kennel rather well while Adam was here.

          Speaking of Raini, I have to tell you. She got two mice on her own this week! Both times it was after dark and I’m pretty sure the mice had come out after the dropped birdseed. I didn’t see her get the first one, I only know she got him. When she’d been gone for an unusually long time, I went to check on her. She was throwing the poor thing around, grabbing it and throwing it again. I left her to it.

          A couple of days later, I opened the door for Raini and Bondi to go out before we went to bed (even though they can take themselves out, I always make the last trip of the evening out with them) and judging by the way Raini took off, I knew she saw something. The mouse had dashed under the fence around my Glads but that didn’t stop Raini. She nosed under and grabbed him.

          I’m so proud of all my mousers and it doesn’t seem like there’s any short supply of mice either!

          Mice aren’t the only thing either. I heard Raini barking her head off. I went to investigate and see she’s found a little Rat Snake sunning himself.

          “Leave him alone,” I told Raini.

          Bondi came to see what all the hullabaloo was about and was standing right beside the snake.

          “It’s right there,” I showed her.

          She took one look at the snake and took off like her tail was on fire! She must have some instinctual fear of snakes.

          I watched while the snake made his way back under the foundation. I saw where he went but the girls didn’t and they weren’t even close. It kept them busy looking for him for ten minutes or so.

          Another day this week, Raini was wandering around.

          “Here!” I said. “Here’s a chewy for you.”

          Raini took the chewy and went under the table where Mike and I were playing cards.

          Next thing I know, Raini went out.

          Then she came back.

          I can’t see the pet door from where I sit so I peek under the table. Raini brought a branch in. She sat under the table and turned it into tiny little bits.

          I let her. If the cats can bring in critters, she can bring in branches. It keeps her entertained and only costs me a little bit of time to clean it up.

A few more fall pictures and one more short story before we go.

          My Rhodie is all kinds of pretty colors!

Our pretty little creek. 

Looking up toward the Robinsons' property.  

Color starting at the Luby house.  

Going out our little dirt road.

I made a cake this week. Sometimes you need a sweet little something-something to top a meal off, you know what I mean.

I also like to share whatever I make with the Kipps because they like a little sweet something-something to top a meal off, too.

“If you want to stop up when you get Charlie Cheshire’s mail, I’ll give you some cake,” I told that handsome Lamar Kipp when he answered the phone.

Charlie Cheshire lives between our two houses, is about two-hundred years old, and doesn’t have any family in the area. Lamar takes his mail from the roadside box down to the house for him every day thereby keeping an unobtrusive eye on him. Everyone should have someone looking out for them.

When Lamar showed up at my house, we traded bags.

“What is it?” I asked opening the bag.

Lamar rubbed his eye in thought. “It’s Mrs. McDonald’s Cranberry Apple... something or another. I don’t remember what it’s called.”

I opened the top of the container. “It looks like a crisp.”

“No, I don’t think that’s what it is.”

I thanked him and he wasn’t out of the driveway before I had a fork in it.

I called Rosie. “That cranberry apple stuff was pretty good,” I told her.

“Thank you! Donna gave me the recipe a year ago and I never made it. I was going through the freezer and found a bag of cranberries I didn’t know I had, and I’ve got apples, so I made it.” Donna is their niece.

“Wait. You made it? I thought Mrs. McDonald made it.”

Rosie laughed. “It’s not Mrs. McDonald. It’s called Mrs. Kellogg’s Cranberry Casserole.”

Boy, oh, boy! I got the better end of that deal! I got homemade, they got box. 

I have the recipe if anyone wants it.

And with that, let’s call this one done!