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!