Meepling

           I had four baby Meeps the last time we visited. On Monday, the fifth baby hatched. It was hard to believe how much the babies grew just in the course of two days. In my hand are two little babes. Can you see the difference?

          Tuesday, I lost two babies.

          Then I lost a third one. I don’t remember what day that was.

          I was left with the newborn and an older one.

          It was bad enough that Meep and Meepette weren’t feeding the babies, it got worse when all of the babies were hatched and they weren’t even keeping them warm. I took them out of the nest for a feeding and they were cold to the touch.

          How am I going to keep them warm‽ I wondered.

          And the only thing I could think of was to put them next to my skin. I cradled them in a gauze square and tucked ‘em down in my bra pocket. You know, the space between my girls. That’s a euphemism for my breasts. Every time I had to bend down or bend over, I had to clutch my front so they didn’t tumble out.

          Those stinkers. It didn’t take them long to scoot themselves around until they were between my breast and my bra. I repositioned them several times, but they just kept going back. I don’t know if it was the warmth or the security that drew them. I just gave up and let them be where they wanted to be.

          Unfortunately, when I pulled them out to feed them, the littlest baby was dead — warm, but dead. I don’t know if he suffocated or got pinched by a fat roll when I bent over to pick something up or if I broke his neck clutching my front or if I did it when I took him out. However it happened, he was gone.

          I felt bad.

          And I didn’t want it to happen again.

          Don’t laugh at the solution this dumb butt came up with. In fact, when I was telling my friend Jody about it, I laughed at the ridiculousness of it so hard tears streamed from my eyes and rolled down my face.

          What if I put something over him to keep me from breaking his neck? Of all the ways he could've died, I thought it was my fault. 

          My turtle shell that fits inside my face mask came to mind but I thought it was too big.

          I took a little cup from the cupboard, tucked a piece of cloth inside, and popped the little dude in my bra so he could lay against my skin.

          About four minutes later a horrifying thought pops into my head.

          How’s he gonna breathe‽

          Quickly I pulled him out. He took a huge breath and lay still.

          I killed him!

          “Come on!” I said and poked him. He took another breath and was still. “You can do it,” I encouraged and actually started CPR. Can you imagine! There I was, feeling like the lowest of the low, scum of the earth even, because he wouldn’t be dead except for my stupidity.

          “I really didn’t think it through,” I told Jody.

There I stood, at my kitchen counter, with a half or mostly-dead baby bird cupped in my hand and I’m tapping his little chest with my index finger, poking him, rolling him over.

I was mimicking the motions as I told Jody the story.

I stopped to see if he was breathing. He took another breath, wiggled a wing, then was still again. I kept up the tapping and poking at him, rolled him over then back again, more taps, then I got really close and exhaled a big breath on him.

It was at this point in telling the story that I lost it. I could only imagine what Jody must think of an old woman giving mouth-to-mouth to a four-day-old baby bird.

Honestly, it was all I could think of to do.

That and pray.

I know! I know! It’s silly to pray over a baby bird that doesn’t have much of a chance of living anyway but I know that God cares for all of His creation — and that includes birds.

I’d stop every ten seconds or so to see how he was doing. After a couple of minutes, he took a breath, then another, then another.

          He was breathing!

          Then he started flopping around.

          I never felt so relieved, and thankful, in all my life.

          I need to keep him safe and warm, rattled around in my head for a couple of hours. Then, what temperature does he need?

          I started typing in the search on my phone. It has intuitive words that will pop up as you type so oftentimes you don’t even have to finish writing a word before the right one pops up, then you choose it.

          What temp to keep baby... I typed. When I hit z I had to laugh at the suggestions that came up. Zombies. Who wants to know what temperature to keep baby zombies at? I finished with Zebra Finches.

          Different websites tell you different things. One said 85 to 90 another said 90 to 96. So I figured 80 to under 100 should work. The only thing I have that’s low temp is a yogurt maker. Plus it has a lid so the cats won’t get him. Google says the temperature for making yogurt is 98 to 109 degrees. So that’s maybe a little hot for my baby. But maybe I could put a bowl and towel in and keep him off the bottom. And I’ll get Mike to drill holes in the top to vent the heat.

          The next thing I needed was a thermometer. I have several different thermometers in the house that would fit inside the yogurt maker. A refrigerator thermometer, a people thermometer, and a meat thermometer.  The refrigerator thermometer only goes to 80. The people thermometer starts at 95.5. The meat thermometer had the best range.

          I set the yogurt maker up, put the refrigerator and people thermometers inside, put the lid on, slid the meat thermometer in one of the holes Mike made, and waited an hour.

          It was over a hundred.

          Maybe if I keep it off the bottom, I think.

          I swapped out the bowl for a large steamer basket.

          It worked great until I put the lid on. Then it was too hot.

          I swapped out the steamer basket for a splatter screen.

          “Move the lid off the side,” Mike suggested. “Then it’ll draw cool air.”

          The fridge thermometer said it was over 80. The meat thermometer said it was 86.

          Perfect!

          I put the baby in. He snuggled up to a fold in the cloth and seemed happy.

          I checked him after twenty minutes or so and he seemed fine.

          Forty-five minutes later, when I went to feed him, he had scooted himself halfway across the screen, his mouth was open, panting, his little wings were held away from his body, all the signs that he was too hot!

          I snatched the lid off, grabbed my hand-held fan, and started fanning him. Once he had cooled off some, I gave him a cool drink.

          Trying to figure out a brooder for Meepling was an all-day adventure and ultimately, a wasted day.

          “Meepling?” you say.

          Yep. That beautiful Jenn Kipp came up with that, and I love it.

          That night I put Meepling back in the house and the house back in the bird cage. It didn’t take long for Meep and Meepette to go in.

          The next morning, Mike was up an hour or so before me. The first thing I did was check on the birds. Meep and Meepette were out of bed, sitting on a perch. Usually, they don’t get up until I turn on the kitchen light. I pulled my little ladder out, climbed the two steps, opened the door, and took out the house. Meepling was cool to the touch, but alive. I warmed him with my breath, then I warmed his food and fed him. I wiped his little face where I’d gotten food on him and tucked him into my bra pocket.

          “Do you think they got up with you?” I asked Mike, but it was rhetorical.

          I did more research on brooders.

          “My dad used a light bulb and a box when he had chicks,” my feisty redheaded neighbor said.

          And that was one of the things I saw online. I don’t even know if we have a bulb that’s not an LED. And Meepling is tiny. Maybe an inch and a half long, so I wouldn’t need a very big box, then figure out how to hook the bulb up and not get too hot and keep the cats out. All things that needed to be considered, and frankly, it seemed like a lot of work when I already had a consistent heat source readily available.

          “You could buy one?” you say.

          Nope and nope.

I don’t need nor do I want a bunch of baby birds. I wouldn’t mind one or two more but only if Meep and Meepette would do their jobs. Then I’d separate boys and girls. If Meepling lives then he can live in the cage I already have and I’ll make it so there’s no place to lay eggs.

“That little stinker keeps scooting himself around until he gets under my boob,” I told my handsome son when we talked this week.

“You could make a little pocket for him,” Kevin suggested.

A light bulb went off in my head. “Yes, I could!”

I cut some fabric and used my hot glue gun to do up the side seams. Now Meepling has to stay in his little pocket.

When I put Meepling to bed that night, Meep and Meepette went inside almost right away. I’m so glad because I can’t keep him warm at night. Before I went to bed, I checked on them. Nothing had changed, I hadn’t turned any lights on, but Meep and Meepette were NOT in the house. Instead, they were sleeping on the top rung of their ladder.

I worried all night.

I worried I’d have a baby ice cube when I got up.

Nonetheless, there was nothing I could do about it.

In the morning, Meep and Meepette were still on the ladder, Meepling was cool to the touch but alive.

“You could make a rice sock and warm it in the microwave for him,” Jenn suggested.

That’s a great idea. I’ll have to let that one rattle around in my head.

All I’ve got to say is that after being abandoned by his parents, almost suffocated, and nearly cooked to death, this little guy has a strong will to live! 

Getting up early to take care of the baby gave me a chance to catch a sunrise.

Tuesday it rained a good part of the day. When Mike and I went to collect and deliver the mail for our neighbors, we saw a herd of deer bedded down in Vernon’s field.

That evening, when I went out to my CDI class, there were deer bed down in our yard.

That got me to wondering. Do the deer stay put when it rains?

          Across my Facebook feed, came this lady who says this is her new favorite snack and she eats it every day.

          “Take a rice cake,” she says, “and I know some of you don’t like rice cakes, but I promise, you’re gonna love this!”

          She put a gob of cottage cheese on, dotted hot sauce around, and sprinkled Everything Bagel seasoning on it.

          I gave it a try.

          I’m not crazy about the flavor of Tabasco but you know what? I’ve made it twice more since then. Maybe I’ll try it with jalapeno peppers next time. Those I like!

          I caught Bondi and Blackie canoodling in the recliner — and it’s not the first time either! Bondi seems to like it when Blackie grooms her.

          Mike’s lap is the favorite place of this handsome guy. Every night, Tiger waits for Mike to get in his recliner so he can have some snuggle time.

          Sometimes, Tiger stretches out lengthwise on Mike’s chest, reaches up, and touches his face.

          There’s nothing better than when a critter wants to be no other place than with you. 

 

          I caught a sunset for you, too.

          Let’s call this one done.

Flops and Failures

           This week was full of flops and failures.

          Really, truly, “full of” might be an exaggeration but when things don’t go right or people let you down, flops and failures can overshadow your whole week.

          My beautiful friend Jody had a birthday this past week. I invited her to have lunch with us and I gave her the choice of which cake I would bake.

          “Do you want pineapple, chocolate, or apple cake?” I asked.

          “Chocolate,” she chose.

          I have this really good recipe for a chocolate cake that’s really moist. It’s paired with a frosting that’s not very sweet. I haven’t made it in a long time but from what I remember, it was good.

          The cake was beautiful when I pulled it from the oven. A little later, when I went to see if it was cool enough to cover, I see a big old depression in the middle of my cake where there had been a lovely soft mound before.

          It fell.

          There are lots of reasons a cake will fall. Over-beating the batter, under-baking the cake, too much baking soda or baking powder, opening the oven door too early, or closing it too sharply, cooling too fast, or letting the batter sit too long before you bake it.

          I suspect my problem, my mistake, was in measuring my baking soda. Pulling my box of baking soda from the shelf, I opened it and peered down inside. There wasn’t very much in there. A glance up into the cupboard showed me I had a new box on the top shelf. I scooped as much as I could onto the measuring spoon, but had to tap some from the box to make it level full. Looking back in the box, there was hardly anything left.

          I’m not putting that back in the cupboard, I thought and tipped the dregs into the mixing bowl before tossing the empty carton.

          No sooner had I done that than I realized it could be a mistake. It was my intention to take a little back out of the bowl but looking at the heap of white flour, white sugar, white baking powder, and white baking soda, I couldn’t tell which was which.

          I left it.

          “Just fill it with frosting,” my peeps told me in the next morning’s love note.

          The frosting I made called for you to cook milk and flour, let it cool, then mix it with sugar, butter, shortening, vanilla, and beat for ten whole freakin’ minutes! That’s a long time to stand over a mixing bowl. But I knew it had to be done or the sugar wouldn’t dissolve and the frosting would be grainy.

          The No-Peek Beef Tips I made and served over mashed potatoes with green beans on the side were good. The cake...

          Not so good.

          “I think it’s good!” Jody said, but was she really just being kind? She’s that way, you know. She’s a very kind and gentle soul who would never do or say anything to hurt anyone’s feelings if she could help it.

          After lunch, we played All Fives and Quiddler.

          “I like Quiddler better than All Fives,” Jody said.

          And we played by my cute little red-haired sister’s rule of making a sentence from the words you play. It adds a fun and interesting twist to the game.

          “I can’t make up a sentence with these words!” Jody lamented.

          “It doesn’t have to make sense,” I told her.

After thinking about it for a moment, she did come up with a sentence, and it was a good one too! But I don’t remember what it was. Something with the words “jute” and “swing.”

          It was super-duper nice to spend a couple of hours with my friend.

          I took some of the flop cake down to the Kipps.

          “It’s good,” Lamar said. After a few bites, he passed the dish to Rosie.

          “I think it’s good,” she said after eating a bite.

          “If I eat any more of it, I’ll probably scrape the nasty frosting off,” I said.

          “But that’s one thing that I really like about it,” Miss Rosie said. “I like that it’s not too sweet.”

          Maybe it was just me then.

          Even as long as I’ve been baking, I’m occasionally a failure at it. 

          We had a heavy frost. I took Raini out for a run and took a few pictures.  

      

          Christmas is coming, but I bet you knew that.

          When we went to Dickson City, I went into Hobby Lobby looking for some flesh-colored glass as well as a solid color white and black. All they had was the solid black. If I want to make Santas or elves this year, I’d need some flesh tones for faces and white for Santa beard.

          “Peg! Google it!” you say.

          “Google bad,” Nick said at our last CDI class.

          “Okay, Duck-Duck-Go-it then,” I said.

          Henceforth, we will say, “Google,” no matter which search engine you use.

          I did Google it. And I Amazoned it, too. They want to sell multipacks and I didn’t find any with the flesh tones in them.

          I remembered there’s a glass shop in Vestal, New York that I’ve been to a few times. I called and Carol said she had flesh-colored glass.

          You know what that means, don’t you?

          “Road pictures!” you say, and you'd be right!

          The tree is really pulling the lines down.

          “Do you think our internet comes in on those lines?” Mike asked, but I wouldn’t know.

          The river was so calm it had reflections. 

          A hawk. I know he’s too far away for a good picture — it doesn’t stop me from trying.

          Mike and I had to laugh a little at this, even though it really isn’t funny.

          The last time we were up this way, the white fence was the only one there. I guess one fence between them wasn’t enough.

          It’s said that good fences make good neighbors. All I know is when I look at this, I see dispute and contention. I see failure to be good neighbors.

          Carol, at Carol’s Creations, had the glass I wanted as well as some lead came I need for a future project. We got to talking and I showed her my book of commissions.

          “I have a whole bunch of books with all kinds of that stuff in it,” Carol said. “I had them here in the shop for a while but no one wanted them, so I took them home. If you want them, you can have them.”

          Since she said it had patterns in it, I’m guessing they’re books on Tole Art.

          “I’ll save them for you. Just let me know when you’re coming back up this way and I’ll bring them back to the shop for you.”

          She didn’t have any solid white glass but maybe she will have by the time we go back up again. She does buyouts and has crates of glass stored in her garage and her son’s barn.

          Something else we did while we were in Vestal was go to Lowes and get a faucet for my new old kitchen sink.

          While at Lowes, I used the restroom. They have new hand driers that use UV light and HEPA filters. Do you think it’ll kill germs better than the old hand dryers?

          I also like that there are foot pulls on the inside of the restroom doors. 

          Speaking of the kitchen sink, my cabinets were delivered Friday.

          “When they opened the back of the truck, there was stuff fallen all over the place,” Mike told me. “Some of it was broken. One of our boxes didn’t look right so I made them open it up. Something had fallen on the top of the box and the drawer was broken.”

          “Did they take it back?” I asked.

          “Yeah.”

          “Now what?” I wanted to know.

          “I have to call and they’ll send a replacement.”

          Mike spent the next half hour on the phone trying to get it resolved. The gal wanted to charge Mike more for the replacement cabinet than we paid for the one that was delivered broken. We’d gotten them on the last day of a sale. Mike didn’t agree to that and she adjusted the price. Then she wanted to charge another delivery fee. Mike didn’t agree to that either and she got the delivery charge waived. Then she wanted Mike’s credit card number for the replacement cabinet.

          “When the broken one comes back in, we’ll refund it to the credit card,” she said.

          “Why don’t we just wait until it comes back to the shop, then you can send out the replacement and you won’t need our credit card?” I asked.

          “It’s automatically credited back to your account when it comes back in,” she patiently explained.

          I guess I didn’t know how it worked.

          Our new cabinet is supposed to be here Monday. Then we’ll be busy for a couple of days getting them and my new old farm sink put in.

          “When they see how much stuff comes back broken on that truck, someone’s going to be in trouble,” I speculated.

As drivers delivering goods, they were failures.         

          I spent a fair amount of time in front of my computer this week, way more than I should’ve. I had two things going on, one was fun, one was not.

          The not-fun thing had to do with my download folder.

          I download a lot of stuff from a website called Creative Fabrica. They give away a lot of free fonts and patterns in many different formats. They also give you a commercial license so you can make and sell things from the patterns they send. The only thing I don’t like about it is it takes me a long time searching through my downloads to try and find a particular element. I wish they were linked to a search so I could search by subject, but they’re not.

          I really like the new Vintage Christmas bundle they sent. This is one of the designs. It’d be cute painted on a sign or printed on a card.

          Mid-week, I tried to open my download folder and it wouldn’t open. I spent two days trying to fix it. I won’t bore you with all the things I tried that didn’t work, but I did find a solution. I had to go into my settings and change the view to include subfolders and it worked. I’m back in business.

          The fun thing I spent way too much time on was my puzzle game 3003 Crystal Mazes.

          I love, love, love this game! I think the creators are so clever in the designs of the mazes. And I’ve heard that puzzles that exercise your brain muscles are good to ward off Old Timers disease. This game really does that.

          Sure! I get frustrated when the answer doesn’t come to me after playing it four or five or ten times. I can get super frustrated when I play the same puzzle over and over again for months on end. That’s my tenacity, my stick-to-it-ness, or maybe it’s just plain old-fashioned stubbornness that won’t let me go to the next puzzle until I’ve solved the current one. But I’ll tell you this. The harder the puzzle is to figure out, the more proud of myself I am when I do figure it out! Sometimes, after I’ve figured out an especially difficult puzzle, I’ll replay it several more times just for the fun of it.

          Spitfire, our mighty hunter, called from the kitchen a couple of nights ago.

          “Meow meow meow meow meow!” he said. That translates into, “Come and see what I got!” I’m not making this up. He really does have a certain way of meowing that alerts all of us that he’s brought in a present.

          We were all curled in my big recliner, Bondi, Raini, and me, when Spitfire called. Raini gets up so fast! She has no regard for her toenails, whether gripping blanket, recliner fabric, or ripping through the delicate skin of one old lady’s arm.

          I put my blanket aside, lowered the recliner and went to see.

          “Good job!” I told Spitfire and stroked his head. He leaned into my hand, purring his thanks. “That’s a fat little guy you got there!”

          Right on cue, he turned and picked his prize up.

          I know what’s coming next. I turned off the light and left him to his bone-crunching snack.

          There was one mouse that was a failure at hiding.

          Two nights later, we were in our normal evening TV-watching places. Raini was on her back, suffering the ministrations of a tummy scratch when we heard the pet flap in the kitchen. Lickety-split she was flipped over and launched herself off the recliner. Bondi made her way from under the blanket and took off after Raini.

          “Bark! Bark-bark-bark!” Raini said.

          “Does that mean come and see what I’ve got?” I asked Mike.

          “I think so,” he replied.

         I got up and went out into the kitchen. Turning on the light, Spitfire meowed at me from where he was on the butcher block. That’s where I feed them. I found Raini in the utility room with a still-living mouse.

          “Don’t you let him get away,” I warned her.

          She picked the mouse up and tossed it into the air. When it landed, she picked it up again.

          “Let me see it,” I said.

          Obediently, she set the mouse down, looked at me, then back to her mouse.

          “Good girl. You can have it. Take it outside.”

          She is so smart. She picked up the mouse and went right out.

          I have no idea if she ate it or just played with it for a while. I didn’t go looking.

          Another fat little mouse failed to hide, or run fast, or outsmart Spitfire and paid the ultimate price.

          Sunday morning, in my love note to my peeps, I told them, “Today is normal Sunday stuff with one twist.” I wouldn’t tell them what the twist was because I wanted them to have a little anticipation, a little excitement, something to look forward to in this week’s edition of Peggy’s Jibber Jabber.

          “Oh, you little tease!” one of my peeps responded.

          Meep and Meepette have failed to feed their first and second clutch of hatchlings. All of the chicks died within a day of being hatched.

          “I thought you weren’t going to let them have any more?” you say.

          I researched it. I could take the house out. They don’t actually need a house to sleep in. They can sleep perched on a perch. But if they’re really determined to have babies, they’ll turn one of the food cups into a nesting box. I’d need to invest in a different kind of feeder — the tube feeders, which I could do. There’s another consideration though. Sleep is important to birds. Many times through the day Meep and Meepette go into their little house, the opening is turned away from the light, and it’s dark enough that they nap. If I took the house out, they wouldn’t be able to do that.

          Maybe they’ll get the hang of being parents, I consoled myself and left things as they were.

          The third clutch yielded the same results — but I still had high hopes!

          A couple of weeks ago they laid five eggs.

          Saturday afternoon Meep and Meepette both came out of the house and announced the birth of their offspring to the world. Okay, okay! To me. They don’t meep that loud!

          I looked and saw two little mouths open and waiting to be fed.

          I watched Meep and Meepette and at first, I thought they were going to take care of them. Meep was in the food dish, then flew to the house. Unfortunately, that one trip was all I saw him make.

          After a couple of hours of paying attention, I was pretty sure they weren’t feeding them.

          I Googled it. It said that even hand raising them, the chances are they’ll die anyway. But if you’re gonna try, just know that they need to be fed every twenty minutes throughout the day. You don’t have to feed them at night. Use a dropper and feed them a drop at a time.

          I took the nesting formula, ground it as fine as my grinder would grind it, mixed it with warm water, and fed the babies. They were hungry.

          It didn’t take me long to determine that after fifteen minutes they were still sleeping. I stretched it out to half an hour, then to every hour.

          A third baby emerged that afternoon.

          I didn’t know if they would survive the night, but they did and this morning I have four hungry little mouths to feed.

          At first, I was trying to feed them while the house hung in the cage. I was getting food all over the babies!

          An image of someone hand-feeding a baby while holding it in their hand flashed in my mind’s eye.

          I’m a little afraid I’ll drop the house. I did that once long ago before the advent of any eggs. But for the sake and ease of feeding the babies, I decided to take a chance. It’s so much easier to feed them when I dump them out on a towel. Of course, all the crap from inside the nest comes out, too, and the lone unhatched egg.

          I didn’t especially want to care for babies, but I couldn’t bear to watch them die — not when I could do something about it. We shall see how long I can keep them alive. After this, no more babies! I’ll have to take out the house, buy different feeders, AND get a cover for the cage.

          Hands down, the biggest failure of the week, the one that takes the cake, the failure of all failures, is Meep and Meepette. They are total and complete failures at being parents. 

          With that, let’s call this one done!

 

Don't Mind

           I absolutely don’t mind a quiet week. It just isn’t conducive to writing a letter blog — at least not an interesting one. Y’all know me though. Having nothing to say hasn’t stopped me from writing in the past and it won’t stop me now.

          “One of the few interruptions in my dull and dreary existence is when the mail arrives and I get a letter,” one of my readers recently told me. “Your letter blog, The Visit was extremely well illustrated, a veritable travelog. Your work is really quite stunning. I enjoy reading them all.”

          Wow and wow. Thank you, J.D.

I don’t often get compliments like that on my writing and picture-making, which is why I wanted to share it with you. Another reason I wanted to share it with you is because it’s also one of the reasons that I continue to devote every day of my week, every week of the year, to this endeavor.

“Every day?” you query. “Every week?”

It is an every day, every week thing. Every day I have to be intentional about taking my camera with me so I can take pictures for my letter blog. Which means I have to be thinking about it. There are times I slip into just living and those are the times I miss a picture. Fortunately, I can still tell a story without pictures and you can make your own pictures in your head.

“Are there any other reasons you keep writing?” you ask.

Besides loving you and wanting to gift it to you? Yes, there is one more reason.

“What is it then?”

Because I like doing it.

          It’s a good thing I had my camera with me when we went to get the mail for our neighbors.

          “There’s a doe,” I said.

          Mike’s like, “Where? I don’t see it.”

          It was then that I realized how utterly and completely she was camouflaged and I snapped a picture for you.

          Can’t see her? Here’s a hint. She’s in front of a tree, just a little lower and a little right of center.

Even from a different angle, she’s doing a pretty good job of hiding in plain sight.

After dropping Charlie’s mail off to him, we went on down to the Kipps’.

“The last time we were at my thrift store there were some cookbooks in the free bin,” I told Miss Rosie. “I don’t need any more cookbooks, but I thought they’d be fun to flip through — and they were free! One of them has a recipe in it for a Bible Cake.” 

Miss Rosie’s face lit up. “I have that recipe!” She went over to the cabinet that was well stocked with her own supply of cookbooks. The door only opened a crack because of a little chair sitting in front of it, but that was all the room Miss Rosie needed. She reached in and plucked the right cookbook from the shelf. She licked her finger and paged through. “I tried it. It was awful. I even marked in the book that it was not good.”

She found the page and offered it to me. “Hey! Yours tells you what everything is! In the one I have you have to look up the ingredients yourself.”

“I wonder if they’re the same recipe,” Miss Rosie said.

“I don’t know. I’ll check and let you know.” I took a picture of hers then I started flipping through the pages while Mike and Lamar chatted.

“I can tell what page you use all the time.”

Rosie laughed. “That’s Lamar's favorite strawberry pie.”

Later, I compared the two recipes and they’re slightly different — at least in the Bible verses they quote. I didn’t look up the ingredient references in my cookbook. Once I do that maybe I’ll find out they’re exactly the same. But that’ll be something to do another day.

Speaking of recipes...

Someone got the bright idea to try and modify a recipe.

“Who?” you wanna know.

Me. I was thinking about No Bake cookies and how some people don’t like the oatmeal that’s in them. I thought I’d replace oatmeal with a rice cereal. I had half a box on my shelf.

Unfortunately, I didn’t measure and there must’ve been too much rice cereal because the cookies weren’t sticking together when I spooned them onto the wax paper. (Actually, that’s a lie. I use freezer paper instead of wax paper.) I dumped them in a pan and hoped by pressing them all together they’d stick better.

They didn’t.

Unfortunately, unfortunately, I didn’t check the freshness of the rice cereal and it must’ve been stale. These things are awful! As of this writing, they’re still sitting in a gallon plastic bag in my freezer. It’s my intention to dump them in the weeds for the critters.

“What’s the holdup, Peg? Why haven’t you gotten rid of them yet?” you ask.

Raini. That’s the answer. Raini. I take her with me when I burn the papers and she always checks the scrap heap. If it’s so bad the critters don’t eat it, I don’t want Raini to get it either because of the chocolate. Dogs can’t have chocolate. It’ll make them sick.

“Put them out in the trash,” you say.

I’ve thought of that. I can’t make myself do it. Not when some critter may find nourishment in them. I’m thinking I’ll take them farther from the house and dump them, I just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Something I did make this week that turned out yummy was pimento spread — and homemade bread, too, but that always comes out good for me.

I made bread for one of my peeps and we were talking about the things we like to put on it.

“I like cream cheese,” I told Joanie.

“I never thought of that,” she said.

I’d been eating it with cream cheese for a while now but there was something about saying it to her that made something in my head click. In my mind’s eye, I saw myself standing in the old farm kitchen where we lived when I was growing up and I was mixing cream cheese and pimentos in a bowl with an electric mixer for my mother. I also remember catching one of my sisters' long locks in the beaters. I don’t know if she bent over the bowl to look or get a taste. Was that Phyllis or Diane?

Well, there’s one way to find out. I called.

“I don’t remember that,” Phyllis said.

“It was me,” my cute little red-haired sister Diane said. “You were making a cake and we baked it anyway. The cake had hair in it,” and she laughed.

I don’t remember baking it anyway. I don’t even know how we got her hair untangled from the beaters.

I asked my sibs if they remembered how Momma used to make pimento spread because if you look online there are lots of recipes.

“Mom used to make it for our brother, Chuck,” my handsome brother David said. “She kept a lot of the food she made very simple.”

And Momma’s recipe was — is simple.

“Cream cheese and pimentos,” my oldest sister Patti said.

“And she’d add a little of the juice back in to make it spreadable,” Diane chimed in.

Sometimes it’s nice to relive a memory of the past, although we won’t repeat the hair thing.

I’ve been working all week on a glass suncatcher commission. My order is for six of these in different colors. I didn’t think it would take me as long to make them as it’s taking.

I’m a little rusty. I haven’t made anything in glass in months. I made the yellow one first and put a little triangle over the points of the inside big triangle, thinking it would keep me from gobbing up the solder where three pieces join. One thing I didn’t think about was attaching the ring to hang it by. I like to attach it to two different pieces to make it strong. I’m going to have to put the ring on the yellow one out on the point so it hangs straight or use two rings on either side of the triangle and a length of chain. I put it aside to think about and soldered up the green one.

“Peg, you could take it apart,” you suggest.

I could, but that would be so much work. It would be less work to just remake it.

Something else that slowed me down a little was another commission I had.

When Lou came to pick up his commission, Harry the Paddle, he brought his woman with him. I was showing her around and she spotted a huge tera cotta rosary I have hanging on my back patio. I bought it for Momma when Mike and I were in Texas. Later, before I gave it to her, I double-checked the bead count and it was wrong. I must’ve miscounted when I bought it. So, I put the thing away and never thought about it again. A couple of years ago I found it and counted the beads and they are right! I either can’t count or I wasn’t meant to give it to her.

“I like that,” Margie said.

“Let me show you something.” I took her back into the house and pulled one of the rosaries I made for Momma out of a drawer.

“It’s made from the seeds of a Kentucky Coffee Tree,” I told her.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“It could be yours.” I quoted her the same price I was selling them for seven or eight years ago.

“I have two grandkids,” Margie said, “can you make me another one?”

“Absolutely!”

“They’re not blessed.” Momma said that if they’re not blessed by a priest then the prayers said on them have no “power.” They’re just beads on a string.

“That’s okay. They’ll probably just hang them on the wall anyway.”

So, when we had a nice day, I went out into my shop where the drill press is, found a bucket of seeds, and prepared to sit and drill. Much to my delight, when I opened the tub, the seeds were already drilled! I don’t even remember doing them. They needed to be polished though. I got an old cottage cheese container, cotton balls, Old English, and a little oil, put a handful or two of seeds in, and shook ‘em up. It worked like a charm!

But doing a few at a time was taking too long.

What if I did them all at once?

I dumped everything in the tub, the stain and oil-soaked cotton balls and the seeds I’d already coated, and mixed ‘em around by hand.

It worked beautifully!

I was sitting there stringing a rosary when a picture of the previous night’s CMA Awards Show flashed in my head. Jelly Roll (do you know who he is?) wore a rosary for a necklace while he was performing.

I love these seeds. They’re so beautiful. If I could think of something else to make with them, I would. But as it is, Momma has me well-stocked with enough supplies to make a dozen rosaries. That’s a guess. I didn’t count.

“It’s a shame for the stuff to just be sitting here,” I lamented to Miss Rosie. “Maybe I’ll make a couple and sell them at the artisan shop in town.”

“You could send one to Jelly Roll. Then maybe you’d get a bunch of orders.”

“I don’t want to make that many!”

“You could sell them on Facebook Marketplace,” Mike suggested.

If I sold them online, I wouldn’t have to give fifteen percent to the shop.

I’ll have to think about it. 

>>>*<<<

Our little Bondi is sick. I knew something was wrong on Friday when she was refusing some of the foods she normally eats, things like hamburger or her favorite treat.

Saturday she was puking up water, which was the only thing she had all day.

Saturday night she got out of bed a couple of times and she doesn't usually do that, so it woke me up. The last time she got out of bed, Raini got up with her. Bondi came back first and laid in Raini's spot so Raini had to find a new place to lay. I was surprised Raini didn't get upset with Bondi and growl, but she didn't. Needless to say, it was a restless night.

“Sometimes animals have more compassion than humans,” my West Virginia gal said.

She’s right. Maybe Raini knew Bondi wasn’t feeling well.

Sunday morning, when I went out to put sunflower seeds in the birdfeeders, I saw a puddle on the patio stones. It didn’t rain and even if it had rained, there wouldn’t be water there. Did Bondi puke there in the middle of the night? I wondered.

An hour or so later, Bondi puked on the carpet. It was all liquid. When I cleaned it up, it had a reddish tint to it.

“Blood?” Mike asked.

“I don’t know.”

After we got home from church, I gave Raini a treat. I didn’t offer any to Bondi because I didn’t think she’d eat it. Then she poked her head out of the blanket and gave me those “please!” puppy-dog eyes. I gave her a little piece and she ate it. I’m encouraged. We’ll see if it stays down. 

Let’s call this one done!