Thanksgiving week

Like most US households, we have a turkey thawing in the fridge.  It was easier this year to get a small bird and I don't know why, but the butterball was on sale for about the same price as the store brand, so we  upgraded.  The menu is written up and soon I'll assign start times to everything and later, I'll assign casserole dishes.  The goal this year is smaller amounts, sometimes cutting recipes in half, sometimes breaking them into two casserole dishes and freezing one to pull out for Christmas, which has a similar side dish menu.  It always seems like there's so much waste at Thanksgiving (even though we waste very little food) and there's no need for that.  Sydney is bringing the pumpkin pie.  Last year, I gave her our traditional pie plate, our traditional mixing bowl (same as the one featured in the cookbook photo), and a copy of the vintage cookbook the recipe comes from...and told her I was not planning to ever make a pumpkin pie again.  From now on, that's her job.  If I need a pie off-holiday, I'll call her.  

We love pumpkin pie and I really should make it more often.  But, I also love apple pie and chocolate pie and peach pie, pecan pie and cherry pie and...well, you get the picture.  

I've learned better than to try to feed Rob turkey for a week, so I splurged and bought a roast.  And, it was quite a splurge.  Over the last week, I've been reading about why beef is so expensive.  People don't think enough about how fragile our food supply is.  Another example is cranberry sauce.  I pointed out that our can was 2.50 this year, way up from last year and commented that it was probably because there was no one to pick the berries.  He said a machine does that, but while I continued grocery shopping, he looked it up and turns out it's not pick the berries, it's a shortage of workforce to can them that's affecting the cost.  Anyway, this year I plan to make all the traditional dishes because I can, and because I may not be able to next year.  

Eat, drink, and be merry...

I'm always looking for new ways to use my spaces and have recently rearranged furniture in my sewing room and yoga/music room.  Is it better?  Yes, it's a more efficient use of the space.  But, mostly, it's change.  I crave change.  The unofficial motto at work as long as I've been there has been 'the only constant is the change.'  And, that has carried over into my personal life.  Rob grew up with constant change, so he craves stability.  I grew up with an oppressive level of stability and I crave change.  We are who we are.  Anyway, some things in the house that should be in the garage now have places out there, and a whole lot of stuff has gone to dumpsters and Goodwill and it feels like there's some space to breathe.  I swear, this is going somewhere.

It's resulted in some new places for plants.  I've had this little gossip bench (phone table) for many years.  Many, many years and it came from a couple of friends that sold all their stuff and moved to California.  I wonder what happened to them.  Anyway, there was a little corner that it fit perfectly, but we decided to do something else there and it came into the yoga room and sat there with nothing on it, or when it had something on it, it wasn't the right thing.  I used it to create this plant emergency room.  There's a grow light in the lamp and it's on a timer and the sickest of the houseplants are there.  It was an idea I had on a lark in Lowe's one day when we were shopping for lightbulbs.  And, it worked out.  I had my first graduate the other day that moved into a more visible place.  It's not fully recovered yet, but it's not dying anymore and has put on a good bit of new growth, so that's a win.  

When I moved furniture around in the office/studio, I created this plant station in front of a sunny window.  Some of these plants won't like it in summer, but they'll love being here this winter.  

And, yesterday, I cleaned in the greenhouse (yes, this is clean).  I had to so I could work on those two pencil cactus in the back right corner.  Pencil cactus love it here.  Right now, we have 5, one 7' tall, one 5' tall and three 3' tall.  We started with the big one in a 2" pot, 25 years ago.  They've been in tall slender lightweight plastic pots for years but have gotten so big that the slightest breeze knocks them over, so we bought larger, heavier pots with wider bases.  To help with the transition, I wanted to get them in the greenhouse where I can tie the tree to the rafters where it will be steady as the roots get used to the new pot and the soil compacts.  I sure won't need it tipping over in the greenhouse this winter.  

Bella on a good day.  She had a couple bad days last week and I was pretty sure it was time, then the next morning, she attacked her breakfast like it was going to try to escape and put weight back on and got back to normal and wanted to be walked.  Like Lazarus, y'all.  She may look sad, but she was feisty enough to both lick me on the nose and bite my hand this morning, before she peed down my pants leg on the way out the door.  (the things old people get away with...)

Today is my only "work day" this week.  I'll work my butt off the rest of the week, but it's not the work I get paid to do.  Sydney's the only one coming, so I'm not quite sure what I'm doing all this housecleaning for.  Being prepared, I guess.  I have some back yard chores to do to give us a better view, and some inside chores to do, and then Wednesday is prep and Thursday is cooking, Friday I'll put away dishes and decorate the first Christmas tree.  Saturday is swag day and Sunday is big Christmas tree day.  Rob has already put the lights on the outside of the house.  Other people put theirs up and he couldn't let us fall behind.  But now, what's he going to do while I cook on Thursday.  That's traditionally been how he stays out of my hair.  I might have to teach him to knit...

Everybody have a great week!  I'm intentionally not focusing on negative thoughts...but what about that Lindsay Halligan, y'all?  I'm glad I'm better at my job than she is at hers...wait, is that wrong?  No, it's right.  I'm glad she's so bad at hers, which makes me even prouder to be good at mine.  

Eat, drink, be merry, be kind.  Be thoughtful.  Be uplifting.  And do your best to ignore cousin Durwood, who you know is going to be an asshole at your dinner table.  Because he is every year.  But, you love him, so you keep inviting him.  And, on Black Friday every year, you wonder why.  

Lane

Fortress of solitude

Okay, last week was unusual.  There was a thing at work and I took a couple days off.  By the time Rob got home from visiting his Mom, the house was very cleaned up and I'd done some pre-holiday reorg and now, it's time to start another week.  And, they were playing holiday music in the grocery store and it's just too early y'all...way too early.

Last week, I planted a fig tree in the garden to replace one of the crabapples that we lost.  And, somehow, I didn't manage to take a picture.  I didn't even take a picture of the ginormous hole I had to dig that I was so proud of.  I've got to get better at taking pictures of the interesting things that happen...like being able to dig a ginormous hole at 63.  

I did some laundry last week.  I do laundry so rarely I have to study the machine a little before I hit start to make sure everything is set up right.  I put the dry towels on the sofa and forgot about Dottie's love of warm laundry.  She didn't waste any time getting in the middle of it and going to sleep.

And, speaking of Dottie, in the latest furniture move, the chair that used to sit next to my desk got moved into the 'music room.'  Rob took these pictures and narrated for Dottie.

"Rob, this is my chair."

"Lane, why is my chair in here.  This is not where it belongs"

Unfortunately, this chair is too low for playing ukulele.  My knees are up around my chest if I sit forward enough to play.  So, my previous chair is still in this room and I'm still working out how to incorporate it.  

Did you know that snake plant will bloom?  I grew up calling this mother in law's tongue.  I started with one a few years ago.  Now, I have several.  I'd never noticed them bloom.  The bloom isn't a "feature" of the plant.  Kind of straggly, but it must be happy or it wouldn't have bloomed.  The others are in more sun and have more white in the leaves but maybe they'd prefer a little more shade.

I got a little sewing done this weekend, but no quilting.  One of the things coming out of the music room is this foldable bed.  It's a comfortable mattress that Rob bought when he was sleeping on the floor next to Dottie's crate.  I want to move it to the garage, but don't want it to get dusty, so it needed a bag.  I spent about 3.5 hours Saturday afternoon and when I was done, I had a pretty nice custom bag.  It has mitered corners and a drawstring.  The fabric I chose wan't quite enough, so I made a sleeve for the drawstring and attached it to the opening.  It worked out great!  And, I made the whole thing on my white featherweight.  Because it really is a grown up machine in a small body.

I was going to use my Mom's machine, which I've set up in the sewing room.  But, the bobbin gear that I replaced when I got it it broken again.  That means I installed it wrong or that it was a cheap replacement part.  I've ordered another from a reputable parts warehouse and will install it when it gets here and hopefully be able to use that machine.  

I've been feeling a little low, so it's been a good time to stay away from the news.  I have to take breaks every so often.  I did see that t was pushing for the release of the epstein files, which can only mean the doj has altered them to make him look uninvolved.  Or, we'll find out they've been 'lost'.  It's definitely corruption by the hour around him now.  I wonder if my birth family would still support him if they found out he was a statutory rapist.  And, I'm very afraid they would, so I hope I don't have to find out.  

I checked my deleted email folder the other day and was surprised at the number of democratic party fundraising emails that my email blocks were sending there.  I'm in favor of starving the party of money until they accomplish something.  I've stated my terms.  There should be one of them on the news 24 hours a day speaking about he corruption.  Until that happens, they'll keep losing.  

Everybody have a good week.  Keep your chin up.  If you can, take a break from politics.  It's helpful for keeping everything else in perspective.  

Lane

Bachelor week

 Rob is visiting his Mom this week, so it's just me and his chores around here.  He usually gets up before me and I forget how much he gets done in the morning while I'm leisurely enjoying my coffee.  

Not a lot going on around here.  Last week, I was busting my butt to get things done and then got a surprise 3 week extension on the project I'm working on.  That was a welcome relief.  It didn't make my to-do list any shorter, but it sure gave me some breathing space to get it done.  When I found out about 3:30 on Friday, I just walked away from my desk in relief and spent the rest of the workday playing ukulele.  

Yesterday, I was watering some flower pots and decided I wanted to clean up my flower bed, so I sat on the stone path and pulled out dead branches and leaves and fronds for a couple hours.  It felt like such a waste because I'll have to do it all again after the first freeze, but it sure looks nicer.  

This mum just keeps on giving.  I don't usually have good luck with mums.  If I get them in enough sun, I can't give them enough water.  And, if I put them in a shadier spot so they stay watered, they won't bloom.  But, I'm enjoying this one in a pot this fall.  No matter which back window I look out of, I can see it.

I also added some stakes to this prayer plant.  I've had this for several months and it's in a tiny little pot so I'm surprised that it does so well, but it must be in a spot it likes in my kitchen window because it's gotten a nice size.  It had laid over and was pretty with a vertical stem and a leaning stem and a horizontal stem (wish my bonsai would do that) that kind of circled around the others, but it stuck out in the space over the sink and I kept bumping it when I did dishes.  Eventually it was going to fall into a sink of dish water and I was not going to be happy with that.  When I propped it up, I thought it would take days to recover, but it was still beautiful the next morning..  

Dottie misses her daddy so bad.  This was her yesterday when I came home from the grocery, standing at the door waiting for him to come in.  She did the same thing at 5:45 last night, which is when he would have gotten home on a weekday.  Last night, she wouldn't come to bed and slept half the night in the living room.  She finally came to bed in the middle of the night.  It's cold here so she's wondering if she's ever going to get to walk again.  I plan to take care of that a little later, when it warms up.  I know that if she's not walked, she gets bored and then gets in trouble, so we'll both be happier with a nice walk after the sun comes up.

What kind of narcissist stands there when someone falls to the ground?  No matter why they fell, why wouldn't everyone rush to help.  But, I guess it's more important to nap through press conferences...although I'm sure it was hard for everyone to stay awake while the fake dr oz droned on.  

Everybody have a great week!  Find something you enjoy and do it until you smile.  Then do it again.  

Lane

The dinner adventure

When Sydney lived here, we started a tradition of going out to dinner every Saturday night.  It gave me a night off and it gave Syd experience eating out, different food, interacting with wait staff, getting her way, and not getting her way.  When she came to us, her experience of restaurants was ordering the most expensive thing on the menu and then deciding she didn't like it.  That was from a lack of experience and a bad teacher, but we taught her to read the menu and figure out what she might like and politely poke around at it if it wasn't all she'd hoped it would be.  

Rob and I still go out every Saturday night.  We've kind of gotten stuck in a rut, going to the same place week after week, but when you find something comfortable and where the food is good, it's easy to get stuck in a rut.  Anyway, Saturday evening was rainy here (yay!!).  When we got there, it was packed and there was a wait, so Rob asked if we could sit on the patio and get a table quicker.  This was a mistake, but a mistake we were able to laugh about.  They sat us at a dry table...there were tables that were getting rained on...next to the tarp wall.  It was cold and it was wet and the wind kept blowing the wall in so it humped over our table like a man with a big belly resting it on a counter.  And, we laughed and joked and enjoyed our drinks and ordered heavy, high fat entrees.  We made it a dinner adventure.  And, we agreed we are not patio people.  We'd like a table inside, please.    

We've had a re-org at work.  I generally work for two people, one is experienced and stays, one is in the role to learn and changes about every 18-24 months.  I'm kind of in a transitionary stage where I'm still supporting the former manager as he winds up projects and the new manager as he starts new projects and the experienced manager who needs me to do all the stuff I normally do.  It's been a lot.  But, I'm able to work steadily, moving a project forward until I can't anymore and then working on something else for a while.  It's nice to stop and summarize the work I've done and get it ready for a fresh mind with a new set of ideas to look at and contribute to.  We have this issue that's been going on for years that we haven't been able to solve.  It's been nice to see each manager's contribution and fresh ideas that either bring us closer to a solution, or prove that what we thought might work ain't it.  

Yesterday ended up being a big cooking day.  I made the egg casserole (sausage and veggies with salsa and four kinds of cheese) and a tamale pie, half of which goes in the freezer, a vat of beef stew like my Mama used to make, and a pan of cornbread that's better than hers if you ask me, but she said mine had a bad taste from all the ingredients I put in it...Aunt Lucille's cornbread didn't need all that...but it reminds me of my paternal Grandmother's, so I keep making it.  We don't do a lot around here, but we do eat good.  

Rain, rain, rain, rain.  We woke up the other morning and looked at one another and said 'I can't breathe.'  We are both allergic to mold and all the rain has awoken all the mold that went to sleep during the dry months of summer.  It'll be worth it when we get next month's water bill, tho.  Our water bill includes a chart that compares our water use to average use in our neighborhood.  We look crazy high, but then if you look up from the water bill and look out at the lawn, it feels worth it.  

I gave away a sewing machine this weekend.  Our neighbor has decided she wants to sew.  She's played around with machines a little and has the bug.  On Saturday, I pulled out three machines that I thought she'd like and let her try them.  One had a knee control instead of a pedal and she didn't like it and the other was kind of a complicated machine and she didn't care for it, but my friend Linda's old Kenmore worked perfect for her.  Yesterday morning, I opened it up to clean and oil and it looked brand new inside.  There was no cleaning, except around the bobbin case, so all I needed to do was oil.  And, it works perfect.  I only have a straight stitch foot for it, so she's shopping eBay for more feet.  I made up a little maintenance kit and some sewing supplies and extra bobbins.  I explained how tension works and the point of perfect balance so the threads cross to form the stitch between the layers of fabric instead of above or below them.  And, I gave her a pattern for boxer shorts and explained they're about the easiest thing in the world to make along with some fabric and a spool of thread and some elastic.  I hope she enjoys sewing as much as I do.  

Since Rob and I talked about counting Bella's good days compared to bad ones, she's only had good days.  It's like she heard us talking and decided she better get with it.  She gets a monthly injection to help with hip pain and she's half way between shots this week, so we'll be watching to see if that affects her quality of life.  The vet says we have room to expand that as she needs it, and it may be time to ask for more.  

I feel like things are starting to close in on the administration and I fear that's going to make the orange trumpette more and more desperate and that his actions will get more and more outlandish and authoritarian as a way to distract the public from 'losing, losing, losing, we're gonna lose so much you may get tired of losing.'  We've all watched TV enough to know 'follow the money.'  But, nobody is following the money.  Occasionally, there's a story about the graft and corruption, but that should be on blast all the time, every hour.  It will be interesting to see if they can beat the law and humanity and avoid paying SNAP benefits this week.  Also, there are going to be a lot of stories soon about medical insurance price increases.  Those should be the top stories with the shutdown receding into the background.  We'll see.  

Everybody have a great week!  I'll be working on keeping everything moving in the same direction...because sometimes, that is achievement.  Achievements don't all need to be great things.  Sometimes just keeping on is enough.  

Lane