Updates

           I wanted to update you on a couple of things I talked about last time.

          Several mornings this week I caught the feral black and white cat leave the cat room as I entered. Spitfire was in there, too, so he’s not keeping him away. From what I can tell, the feral is sleeping under a table on some old pillows and rugs and Spitfire is sleeping up on the shelf.

          “I hate to go out and chase him out into the cold,” I told my handsome mountain man. “He’ll have to learn I’m just bringing food.”

          I don’t open the outside door so maybe he won’t go far and come back when I leave. So far, we haven’t seen him in there during the day, and we’ve been checking. We’ll creep up on the door quietly, hoping he doesn’t hear us, so we can catch a glimpse. I have seen Spitfire sleeping in there in the afternoons.

          “Why’s he sleeping out there when he could sleep in this nice warm house?” I asked Mike. “Do you think he’s waiting for the black and white one to show up?”

          “I don’t know,” Mike replied.

          The Kipps haven’t seen him at their house even though they keep a little cat food on the back porch for him.

          “I’m just glad he has a place to go to get out of the cold,” Miss Rosie said.

          “There are lots of places for him to get out of the cold,” I reminded her. “There’s the upper barn and he could get under the hunters’ cabin if he wanted to.”

          “Yes, but at your place he’s got food and water.”

          That’s the truth.

 

          Art.

          That’s what’s next to update you on. I can’t believe it’s been a whole week and I’ve gotten so little done.

          I didn’t work on the gnome home at all.

          I put a few finishing touches on the depot.

          “What’s wrong with it?” Mike asked.

          “It’s just not good.”

          Mike wasn’t happy with that answer and had me point out specifics as to what I thought was wrong with it.

          “There’s nothing wrong with it. You’re too hard on yourself.”

          He loves me.

          Since then, I’ve found out that even the most talented artists have fails. Not everything they turn out is worthy to be seen by anyone else. That made me feel a lot better.

          I admired the portraits of an artist I found on YouTube. I followed along, painting Kat in my sketchbook as the artist painted her granddaughter. She used a limited palette of pink, blue, yellow, and mixed right on her paper by layering. Interesting technique. I gave it a try.

          The shade of pink, blue, and yellow makes a difference.

          I used the paints I have and they weren’t the same ones she used. Consequently, I didn’t get the same results she did.

          I lost all of my highlights and Kat looked like she had racoon eyes. At this point I experimented adding white to bring back my highlights and the paints didn’t blend. By the time I called it quits it was an awful mess, but I learned — and I don’t have to show it to you!

          I will show you something I painted just for fun in my new sketchbook. Can you tell what they’re supposed to be?

          Speaking of Kat...

          Her daughter Jessica told me she didn’t have any photos of her and her mom together and she remembers a photo of them sitting together on a bench. That’s the one she really wanted to have.

          “What year do you think that was?” I asked.

          “I’m thinking it was in 2010 or 2012,” Jessica said.

          Unfortunately, I accidentally erased my external hard drive that held years of photos and letters. When the guy recovered it for me, he put everything together in one big file and they’re all numbered different than the original.

          Fortunately, the years 2010, 2011, and 2012 are on an old external hard drive. Without knowing the month to look in, I had to look in each month, in each days’ photos until I found them. I looked, and I looked, and I looked, without any luck.

          Mike came out into the kitchen. “I just wish I knew what month to look in,” I said.

          “Look on the cup she made me,” Mike said. “The date is on there.”

          “Ugh! Why didn’t I think of that!”

          The date on the cup Kat and the girls made in the ceramic shop was March, 25, 2013.

          That meant I’d have to scroll through the huge recovered file to find them. I didn’t think it would take long but it did. By the time my computer loaded a page of thumbnails and I scanned through them and scrolled to the next page, I’d have to wait for the thumbnails to load. It was while I was doing that that I learned a few things. There’s over 660,000 photos, documents, and music, in the file. They were grouped according to file type. In other words, all of the documents were grouped together, as were the music and photo files. Going through the photos, I saw that there were three copies of the same photo. Not all of them had three but a lot of them did. I wondered why and clicking on them, I discovered each of the three contained a different piece of information. One of them, luckily, had the date. I had spent a few hours at this before I remembered I could ask my computer to group them by date instead of numerically like they were grouped. I had to wait as my computer reorganized the files. I’d scroll, click on an image, and check the date, scroll a few pages without waiting for the thumbnails to load and check the date again. At first it was going well and I was getting excited to see I was approaching 2013, then I don’t know what happened. Maybe my computer got tired or confused, because all of a sudden, I was back to 2020. I glanced over to the scroll bar and see it had barely moved from the top. I’d already been at it most of the day and it would take days to get to the bottom!

          I was frustrated.

          Seagate, the manufacturer of my external hard drive, gave me use of a recovery tool. The files it recovered looked much like they did originally. In other words, my photos were grouped by year, month, and day. But, and there’s always a but, as successful as I thought that was, it wasn’t long before I discovered that even though the file names were there, the photos were missing some bit of information and my computer couldn’t open them. Again, it wasn’t all of them, but it was a lot of them. It was late afternoon when I decided to take a chance and see if they were in the other file. But if they weren’t there, I’d have to come back to the big file — I’d have to start all over again.

          Phooey, I thought. After spending all day on it, I’m not going back. If it’s not there, I’ll just tell her I couldn’t find it.

I opened the file and big as day, there was the year 2013. I navigated to March, then to the twenty-fifth.

          “Pleasepleaseplease,” I begged, hoping the photos would open, knowing how important having this bit of her mother meant to Jessica — and they opened! But the photo Jessica wanted wasn’t in there. I went to the day before, beg-chanting silently, pleasepleaseplease! It worked and those photos opened as well. I kept it up, beg-chanting each time I opened a new file until I’d covered the duration of their visit. There wasn’t any photo of Kat and Jessica together on a bench. In fact, there weren’t many photos of Kat and Jessica together at all.

Then I remembered Kat had come at Christmastime. I remembered that Jessica sang a Christmas song with my beautiful daughter-in-law, Kandyce. I went to Christmas of that year and found a bunch of photos of Kat and Jessica together.

Standing in front of a giant anchor.

Sitting on the steps of an old schoolhouse.

I didn’t find any pictures of them sitting together on a bench but at least they were together. I saved all of the photos with them in it and sent them off to Jessica.

“That’s it! That’s the one I was thinking of!” she said. “Thank you!”

I was glad I could give her that and it made the day worthwhile.

We made a few trips out this week. One of them was in search of a large roaster oven.

“What’s that for?” you ask.

Our church is having a brisket cook-off. It seems there’s a rivalry going on between two of our church peeps as to who makes the best brisket. To settle the matter once and for all, we’re having a cook-off. Anyone can submit a brisket for judging or bring in any other meat. One guy’s going to bring venison.

“Let’s get a brisket and make it,” Mike said. He doesn’t want to participate in the judging, but he’s been wanting to make a brisket for the longest time. This was the perfect excuse.

Mike got on the internet and lost an afternoon on YouTube looking at brisket making recipes, tips, and tricks. I feel for him. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the videos and information out there. He settled on one where the man used an oven roasting bag.

Sigh.

I just sigh thinking of what’s coming next.

          Mike thought that instead of the oven, he wants to make it in a roaster. Now that’s something else he’s wanted for a long time, too. A 22-quart electric roaster. We borrowed one from the Lion’s Club when we lived in Missouri and our chuck roast came out really good. I guess he was thinking of that.

          So! We went in search of a roaster.

          We left early and had breakfast out. 

         Crossing the Susquehanna.

After breakfast, we stopped at a hardware in Tunkhannock that carries everything! Pulling into the parking lot, I see a whole herd of Black Vultures roosting in the tree. Then I see there are more on the ground, digging in the dumpster, looking for breakfast.

          The hardware store had a roaster but it was a lot of money. We knew that Walmart had them cheaper.

          Leaving the parking lot, Mike drove near the vultures. That’s when I saw the cat.

          “What are they doing with the cat?” I wondered out loud. Mike didn’t speculate.          

          “Look at the ice!” I said as we crossed the bridge in Tunkhannock. “It’s all jammed up down here.” There wasn’t any up at our bridge.

          We picked up the roaster and a couple of other things and headed for home.         

          A different donation box. It’s not Goodwill but I couldn’t make out a name on my blurry photo. All I could read is a thank you for helping children with cancer.

          “Looks like they rolled that one,” Mike said.

          I saw six hawks, and one that got hit by a car. This usually happens when they’re going after prey.

          “There’s no cars behind us,” I said. “You could let me get a hawk feather.”

          “That’s illegal.” I knew he’d say that.

          We came home a different way and I got a couple of other photos.

          A memorial for the young man who died on our road just after Christmas. I wanted to put one up for Kat but it would’ve been in someone’s front yard and that wouldn’t’ve been cool.

Our insurance for Big Red jumped when we got the renewal notice. Mike called to find out why. When we got the insurance, we’d bundled it with our RV insurance in Florida. At the time, we were traveling and Florida doesn’t require inspections. Now, without an RV, they had to rewrite the policy. Mike about fainted when they called with a quote. Eight thousand a year! Needless to say, we called around to our insurance broker here and they can cover it for around four hundred a year. Big difference. Now we had to get an inspection and Mike was worried.

          “It’s an old truck,” Mike said. “What if it doesn’t pass inspection?”

          “Then we’ll get it fixed,” I replied.

          It took Mike hours and miles of running to find a place to inspect Big Red. Because it’s a 550, and classified commercial, most places wouldn’t touch it. He found a garage at Liberty Corners that could do it.

          Mike was in Wysox when he was told about Carlin’s and drove out there to find the place and to make an appointment. I don’t know how long Mike spent visiting with the owner, but when he came home, he told me Brian was, “...a heck of a nice guy.” Then he told me how to get to Liberty Corners.

          “Go out by the airport...” Mike started. I didn’t let him go on.

          “You can get there from here. You don’t have to go the whole way out through Wysox and Towanda.” I knew this because I was with the Kipps one day and Lamar went right through Liberty Corners to go to Towanda.

          Mike couldn’t wrap his head around where it was from here and started asking around.

It’s so funny. For whatever reason, Liberty Corners is a name Mike couldn’t keep in his head. Every time he told someone the story, he had to ask, “Peg! What’s the name of that road?” It’s not a road, it’s a place, but I knew what he was asking.

          Wednesday morning was the appointment. It wasn’t full light out yet when we left the house. We were a couple of days past the full Wolf Moon and I took this picture as we left our driveway.

          As it got lighter out, I could start taking a few photos. 

          The church at Liberty Corners. Someone has placed a few old sleds against a post on the opposite side of the road from the church, but I couldn’t get a good shot of it.

            Then we were there.

           This place is right up my alley. Stuff everywhere! We weren’t there very long until my camera started clicking away.

     

The shop cat was receptive to my ministrations — at first. Then she had enough and swatted me.

          “That’s strange,” Brian said. “She usually likes attention.”

          Look at that handsome face!

          Brian inspected Big Red and I took pictures around the garage.

          “I didn’t think there was that much interesting stuff to take pictures of,” Brian said.

          “She likes stuff,” Mike said.

          I do. I like stuff, as attested to by my own collection of stuff.

          “How do you keep all of the tools together?” I asked. In our house, tools don’t always get put back where they belong.

          “They’re handy there,” Brian said by way of an answer. I’m guessing he puts them back when he’s done with them.

          “I didn’t know transmissions came in plastic shipping containers like that,” Mike said.

          “Not all of them do,” Brian told him. “Just the new ones.”

          “Then they have to ship an old one back,” Mike tells me.

          “I have a 1951 Army Jeep out back,” Brian told me.

          “Can I see it?”

          He walked to a side door and I followed.

          “It’s an M37 on a Dodge platform.”

          “Cool!” Like I know what that means.

      

          Big Red, the old boy, is in fine shape and passed his inspection.

          Brian did the paperwork and I thought we were ready to leave. I turned around and the guys were off on another subject.

          I caught Mike’s attention and did a head jerk thing indicating I was ready to go and he should wrap it up.

          Mike grinned. “Look at her,” he said to Brian.

          Brian looked and I repeated the let’s-go motion with my head.

          “Yeah, I’ve gotta get back to work, too,” he said.

          When Mike backed out of the driveway, he backed around so I could get a shot of the swing set.

          I took pictures on the way home.

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          Highland cows. Most farmers don’t fool with ‘em because they’re slower to mature.

          Then the day came for us to do a trial run on brisket. All the years Mike and I have been together, we’ve never once made a brisket. Hence, a trial run.

          “Where’s those cooking bags?” Mike asked.

          “On the shelf in the pantry,” I said even as I went to get them. I opened the box and pulled out a bag and opened it up. “These aren’t big enough.” I looked at the box and they were for meat up to eight pounds and not the big turkey size I thought I was buying. “I didn’t even know they came in any other size!”

          You know what that means, don’t you? It means we had to make a trip into town.

          Back at home, Mike prepped his brisket and put it in the oven bag, sealing the end. As he lifted it and set it down into the preheated roasting pan, the oven bag came into contact with the hot sides and melted!

          Are you kidding me! I thought these things were made so they wouldn’t melt!

          Once the brisket cooked, we did a taste test. It was good enough for me and the guys I go with!

          “When we make it for the church dinner, we should skip the bag,” I suggested.

          Cleaning the burned-on oven bag off the sides of the roasting pan was going to be a chore. We tried just scraping it off with non-metal utensils so we wouldn’t scratch the enamel, but it was on there good! I got on my computer and asked Copilot if acetone would hurt enamel. He said no. We tried acetone but it didn’t work either.

          “I guess it won’t hurt anything if it never comes off,” one of us said.

          A couple of days later, I was at the sink taking a label off a jar. If you mix some kind of cooking oil with baking soda, it’ll take the glue off jars, even plastic ones without scratching. I kept working away at the jar and thinking about things. I know that heating up burned on food is a good way to clean it off. Then I was thinking, what if the plastic comes off on the brisket when we’re cooking it? I decided to try both things at once.

          After I finished the jar I was working on and let the dishwater out of the sink, I got the roaster out, plugged it in, and let it heat up. Once it was hot I tested the plastic with a wooden spoon. It was coming off! I mixed up oil and baking soda, got a couple of rags and set to scrubbing. It took a lot of elbow grease and because the pan was still on, my rag would get too hot to hold. I switched it out for a different rag and used that to scrub with until it got too hot, then I’d go back to the first rag. I think I worked on it for a good half hour, switching rags as they got too hot, before I was satisfied I’d gotten most all of it off — and I only burned myself twice! Luckily, I have a beautiful cousin who loves me and sent me a small bottle of lavender oil to use on burns.

          Since today is Sunday, I can’t tell you how the cook-off went. I’ll have to update you on that next time.

          I read a lot. I told you about reading The Women by Kristin Hannah and how good it was. My handsome brother David just got the book from his library and he’s reading it.

          “Good Morning America listed it as one of the best sellers for 2024,” David said.

          The MASH unit portrayed in the book don’t look much like the TV show.

           I just finished It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover. I knew it was made into a movie so I figured it had to be good. And it was good. I’d stay up until one in the morning reading! There were some very explicit sex scenes but guess what? I know how to flip the pages! I learned how to skip bad words without reading them. What ‘ends with us’ is the cycle of domestic abuse. I wondered something, though. If the abusee leaves, the cycle ends for her (or him). What about the abuser? Do they just go on to abuse someone else? As far as the book goes, we’ll never know because it doesn’t say.

          Right now, I’m reading sold on a monday by Kristina McMorris. The cover photo breaks my heart.

          “Won’t the story break your heart?” you ask.

          I know, right! I thought of that, too. I decided if it got too much for me to read, I’d quit. Nothing says I have to finish a book just because I started it. I’m almost done with it and it’s a good read, too.

          Let’s end with two sunrise photos, taken seven minutes apart.

          Done!