Special Deliveries

 

          I know some of you, those on my morning love note chains, already know how my handsome mountain man is doing, and the rest of you are looking for an update. So we’ll cover that first and foremost and get it out of the way.

          Mike is doing well. You may remember that he was on three different eye drops as well as an ointment before bed. We’re able to stop all but the prednisone eye drop and we’ll wean him off that. He doesn’t have to wear his eye shield at night anymore, either. Dr. McClintic wants him to spend another week on his side at least fifty percent of the time.

          Mike does his best to comply with the doctor’s orders, but with a bum hip it was, and still is, hard for him to stay on his side. Regardless, his checkup was good and for that we are thankful.

          When we were there this time I asked for pictures of his eye. I didn’t have them last week when we talked because I assumed I could get them the same way I got his colonoscopy pictures, from the hospital portal.

          “It’s a different program and isn’t linked,” the gal said.

          And they printed the pictures for me.

          I drew a thin black line around the shadow so you could see it.

          This image shows his retina detached on the left and his good eye on the right of the photo. It’s his right eye that experienced the detachment.

          “It can take up to a year for your sight to get back to the best it could get,” the doctor told us.

          Mike goes back for another checkup in a month.

 

          The last time we visited, I told you I had other odds and ends that I could share with you, but because my printed letter was already ten pages — five printed double-sided — I didn’t want to pay extra postage.

          “So, what did we miss?” you wanna know.

          What did you miss?

          You missed Tiger sitting on my ceramic plate turned paint palette.

         Luckily, I’d wrapped up painting and didn’t need it anymore. “Silly kitty,” I told him. This silly kitty has had more paint on his paws than Doan’s has pills.

          “Doan’s has pills?” you query.

          That’s an expression I’ve heard my dad say. Doan’s sold backache pills and advertised up until the 1950s. It’s a very old expression.

          Speaking of Tiger, I tried to pull a fast one on him. He’s smarter than I gave him credit for.

          I was watching a watercolor tutorial and, deciding to multitask, turned on my other computer and played Big Kahuna Reef. It’s an old game and a rather mindless one where you make chains of three to break boxes. It was easy for me to switch between computers when the watercolor artist said something I was interested in watching. Tiger figured out which computer I was focused on and sat down in front of it.

          I have mostly stopped following tutorials, but I do like to watch the re-broadcast. That way I can skip through and watch just what I want to watch.

          I have an old photo of my mom.

          “I think she’s around fifteen or sixteen here,” my oldest, much-adored, sister Patti said.

          I want to paint it.

          I asked my peeps on a Facebook page to fix the photo. Make it clearer so I could paint it. I don’t remember asking for it to be colorized, but I love it anyway.

          I don’t want to draw, I want to paint. I’ve said that before. So I transfer the image to my watercolor paper using graphite paper. The one thing I hate about this method is I always end up with smudges of graphite where I don’t want it. I try to erase it but it’s always visible when I scan my paintings into the computer.

          I bought a light box. Oh, sure, you can make them but this one is thin, the light is dimmable or brightable, and plugs into my computer. (Brightable made my editor shudder.)

          I complained to my watercolor peeps, who recommended I buy one, that it was a disappointment. I couldn’t see the image very well.

          “You have to use it in a dark room,” they said.

          Then others told me alternate ways to transfer the image, which I already knew about, but I didn’t want to seem ungrateful, so I didn’t say anything to that.

          One of the biggest advantages of transferring instead of drawing freehand is the time saved. Plus, you don’t have to erase a zillion times — and the proportions will be correct.

          I went about getting set up to transfer my image when I realized I had two sheets of paper I was trying to project the light through!

          Aye-yi-yi!

          I had printed two copies of the photo, one lighter than the other, and tapped ‘em together when I took them out of the printer. I can be such an idiot sometimes. The light box works much better with one sheet, but even so, I still had to darken the room.

          At the end of my fist day painting, getting my washes down, I thought Momma looked like a boy.

          “I like it,” Patti said. “Finish it and if you don’t want it, I do!”

          I didn’t finish it but I worked on it another day.

          “I hate it worse now than I did yesterday!” I told my siblings.

          “There is something wrong with the face,” Patti said.

          I think there’s a slight Asian slant to it.

          I put it aside. I have several options... well, two that I can think of at the moment. I could “erase” the face and try again or I could start over. I’m leaning towards starting over. And this is why many artists do thumbnails and value studies. Me, I jump right in with both feet. I don’t mind though. I learned.

          I wish I would’ve asked Momma the story behind this photo.

         

          With Mike out of commission, it fell on me to walk down and get the mail. I took Raini with me most times, but one day it was so cold she started limping right out of the gate.

          I opened the gate back up. “Go home,” I told her.

          Mike told me later she came back in the house but watched the monitor for me to come back, then she ran out to greet me.

          I put her sweater on her the next day and watched for her to object to the cold. She didn’t so I took her with me.

          In this picture she’s sampling bunny poo. She didn’t like it and spit it out.

        

          Another day she carried her leash almost the whole way. We get to the rocks and I take the leash from her so she won’t run out into the road.

          “Stay here,” I tell her and drop her leash a few yards off the road. She’s been obeying me, but no cars have come past either. If she decided to chase it, I’d be too far away to stop her.

          Oh well. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

          “Why not take her across the road to the mailbox?” you ask.

          I want her to obey me and I want to trust her. Then I wouldn’t need to put her on the leash.

          All bets are off if she sees a bird. She took off, jumping through the deep, virgin snow, chasing a bird. She stopped at the base of the tree the bird landed in.

          The bird took off towards the road and Raini took off in hot pursuit.

      

          I called her but she wasn’t interested in listening to me. I got around the rocks and she was coming back. I don’t think she went into the road, but I wouldn’t swear to it. I think the bird landed in the bushes on our side of the road and she was standing there watching it.

          “You’re not a bird dog!” I admonished and picked up the leash. I took her across to the mailbox with me that day.

          I took Raini with me when I took the trash to the end of the driveway. It was cold and she raced back to the house. Fat lot of good it did her. She had to stand there and wait for me to get there and open the door for her. She didn’t waste any time getting inside where it was warm.

          Shall we go into the kitchen?

          I got my silicone baking mats.

          “Don’t cook on the bottom,” the instructions say.

          So, is the side with Amazon Basics printed on it the top? I’m going to assume so.

          Do you have to keep your stuff in the center or can it go onto the gray border a little?

          You don’t know what you don’t know until you don’t know it.

          I made my high-protein wrap into a single wrap but it’s too hard to handle. I’m going back to making it in two, or maybe I’ll make five smaller ones. We’re only limited by our imagination.

          Something else I got this week was a food shredder/slicer. It comes with five sets of blades and I got to use it this week. I made a lemon pie recipe and it has a graham cracker crust. Normally I just get a baggie and the rolling pin out, but when I saw one of these on a cooking reel, I had to have one.

          Hand operated shredder/slicers have been around for many years, although the style has changed. Then they went to food processors. Now we’re back to the way it used to be. It just goes to show ya that what’s old is new again.

          I grated enough crackers for the pie.

          I took the rest of the opened pack and, trying to decide the best way to store them, decided grated was the answer. The grater was already dirty so I might just as well grate the rest of the package. I set aside the amount I needed for the pie and grated the rest of the pack into the bowl.

          I have no idea where my head was at. Either taking the grater apart and thinking how cool it was, or thinking about the next letter blog where I would tell you about it.

          I checked the recipe and went to the pantry for the sugar. When I got back, I opened the drawer and got out the proper size measuring cup. Then promptly dumped the sugar in the bowl!

          Aye-yi-yi! I’m such an idiot sometimes!

          Now what was I going to do? There’s no way to take the sugar out. I decided I’d just go ahead with the recipe and hope the crumbs in the bowl were close enough to the right amount.

          Surprise!

          It was. I could tell when I added the melted butter that it would be okay.

          My feisty red-haired neighbor is a lemon lover. I sent three-quarters of the pie down for her and her handsome husband. “We really liked the pie,” Miss Rosie said.

          “Did you eat it all?” I asked but knew the answer.

          “No. There’s enough for dessert tomorrow.”

          “I made it with lime juice instead of lemon juice because it’s what I had open in the fridge,” I told her.

          “No one would ever know if you don’t tell them.”

          I made another one for movie night at the church. Don’t tell on me, okay? 

 

          Speaking of food...

          My beautiful friend Jody is in charge of making meals for those experiencing sickness or need in our church.

          Mike got sick, and I didn’t have to make lunch one day!

          Jody made us the best Chicken Corn Chowder that I’ve ever had!

          Wait a minute...

          It’s the only Chicken Corn Chowder I’ve ever had. Be that as it may, it was so, so very good. Even Mike, who isn’t crazy about soups, loved it. It has sweet potatoes in it and Jody cooked them just right. They weren’t mushy. If she had, it probably would’ve still been good, but I sure did enjoy them this way.

          “Will you share the recipe with me?” I asked.

          “Of course!” she replied without hesitation. “I’ll even loan you the book it came out of if you want.”

          Hmmm. I didn’t want. I have at least two boxes full of recipe books as well as several other books that are special to me. I told her the truth. I didn’t want to borrow it. “I like it better when people just make a recipe and I try it,” I said. “Those are the recipes I want.”

          That’s how I know she loves me. She wasn’t upset at all by my open and honest way.

         

          Speaking of food...

          The last time for this week, I promise.

          We bought a ten-pound roll of hamburger from Walmart. It has marks on the side where you can cut it to have one-pound portions. I counted. I think the marks are off.

          I got my kitchen scale out and started cutting it up. Most of my chunks were eleven ounces and that’s okay. I’ve heard that we eat too much meat anyway. In most of the things I make, less hamburger suits Mike and me just fine and if I make if for someone else, I can get two packs out.

          By putting them in quart bags and flattening them, they stack in the freezer and thaw really quickly.

          Okay.

          I lied.

          I thought that was the end but there’s one more food-related picture in the file.

          No, this isn’t a crime scene photo.

          Do you remember I bought that fancy-schmancy bottle and jar opener?

          They made the handle too short. It works really well on the smaller lids and bottles, but when you get a jar with a larger mouth there’s not enough leverage to open the jar. I end up tipping it sideways and bracing it against my leg. Then you get salsa all over the floor when the lid gives way. I guess I’ll go back to using a screwdriver to pop the seal on these jars.

          Let’s end this time with photos I took on our way to Sayre for Mike’s appointment.

          There’s no eagle in the nest so far.

          Someone snapped off the pole.

          Mike is driving so don’t think I was taking pictures while I was driving. I saw at least five hawks on this trip. I guess they’re out hunting after the recent cold snap.

          A crow to break up all the hawks.

Done!