Cooking fool

Taking a well-deserved break while the InstantPot does its thing on tomatoes, turning them into yummy marinara sauce.

Considering I got up an hour later than usual, messed around for over an hour, then went back to bed and slept until nine, I'm doing pretty well. By the time I'd gotten ready for the day and had a bit of breakfast, it was going on noon.

That's unusual for me, but has been a weekend habit the past several months. It's not sloth, but a medical thing that I'm hoping to have fixed after a doctor appointment Monday. Two meds are not playing nice with each other; my vote is to drop the one that is causing the other to be ineffective, but I fear this doc will think otherwise.

In the meantime, I've found myself dozing away the weekends, not accomplishing, well, anything.

I think I've made up for it a bit this afternoon.

- Cooked a dozen hard-boiled eggs
- Blanched/lightly steamed all the fresh broccoli so it is ready to heat up for dinners the next few days
- Made a batch of breakfast hash and portioned it out in containers for weekday lunches
- Prepared the stuff for the sauce and got it going in the InstantPot
- Prepped the food for Pumpkin Soup - it's really easy, but I may wait until tomorrow to make it
- Took two packages of Italian sausage links out to thaw, which will be cooked and portioned one link to a container, covered with a bit of the marinara and frozen

Makes me tired just typing it.

The soup or the eggs will do for lunches next week. I've shelled pumpkin seeds to top the soup, which is always fun. No cheese, though.

The temptation to order dinner in is strong, but the Italian sausage is really, really good, so I'm going to hold out for that.

It's been a blustery, raw day with reports of some wet snow that didn't reach the ground (I didn't see any here, la la la, I can't hear you...), perfect for messing around in the kitchen.

I may finish the evening with a glass of wine in front of the fire.

Welcome, autumn.

Bit of an update

It felt like time to throw on a new coat of paint around here. The key to easy changes is to find a theme that works with the existing font colors. So much easier when all you have to do is copy and paste a little html to change the background.

I highly recommend The Cutest Blog on the Block, who make it very easy to spruce things up.

Various and sundry, May edition

Yeah, yeah...I haven't neglected this place on purpose. Busy time of year.

The final (sort of) corporate taxes for my workplace were mailed May 12th. You get an idea of what fun the last month has been when I tell you it took the clerk half an hour just to stamp the envelopes (I had all the certified slips completed and attached already), and it was $182 in postage. There are still a few weird things to finish up with a state or two, but I can't seem to get to it...

...because people far above me in the food chain seem to have no grasp of the fact that taxes are a part of life, even for a so-called tax exempt institution. The fact that we are facing a rear-guard action on a partially executed agreement makes things ever so much more fun.

Meanwhile, as of 10 a.m. on Friday I will be on vacation for a week.

Not that much actual "vacating" will be done. I'm hanging around home. Not even resting, when it come to that...

On Saturday (yes, a holiday weekend - there is a story behind that which I won't bore you with, but the bottom line is Diane stuck to her guns and got what she wanted), my air conditioning unit is being replaced. Four years of severely evaporating coolant, an unsuccessful leak test and a total lack on my part of willingness to dink around with it any longer brought us to this place. The new unit is a bit more energy efficient. It's also a two-stage thing: it first sucks the humidity out of the air before cooling it and sending it into the house. The theory is that I'll be able to set the temp higher and still have the same comfort level, as the air will be considerably drier.

On Tuesday, the crew comes to do some minor renovations. The bigger project is installation of closet doors to turn a nook in the loft into an actual closet, as it is in other units in my building. Ordinarily, hanging a sliding door like this is something I could do (with added muscle from a friend to lift them in place), but the opening is 90" wide, and I'm having the contractors extend the wall so the opening is only 72". It will still be 90" on the inside, so lots of storage, now out of sight!

I need to paint what will be the interior of the closet before they arrive. It's currently the same color as the walls - think the color of those reddish-brown accordian folders you see in offices. A bit too dark for the interior of a closet that has no light of its own (I'm not crazy enough to have electric run to this closet - it's only 30 inches deep, and I have motion sensor, battery operated lights to put inside).

In addition, they are putting up a new light fixture and staining/hanging a new door in the downstairs bath. While this is a piece of cake for the contractors, it's the larger of the two projects for me personally. I need to paint the room, which, unfortunately, includes the ceiling. The ceilings are rather low in there, due to the need for space to run the plumbing stuff for the kitchen, which backs up to this bath, and the bathroom immediately overhead on the second floor. So the previous owners painted the bath a nice, lighter grey...including the ceiling. It does in fact make the ceiling appear higher, though friends over six feet are still eye level with the light on the wall...near the ceiling.

So, it needs a base coat, then a white ceiling, and at least one, maybe two, coats of a wonderful medium lavender on the walls. There is no medicine cabinet, just a large mirror that I am replacing. There re a couple of nice shelves I need to take down and relocate. The toilet seat needs replacing, as does the flush lever.

If I'm realistic, if I get the closet interior painted and the base coat in the bath, along with some of the smaller stuff (toilet stuff above, a railing support replacements, curtain rods up and a replacement for the shower head upstairs) I'll call it good. I also have 4th of July week off, and if I do a little bit a weekend, I should be done by then.

Oh yeah - the new wall upstairs? Means I need to completely move my desk and two file cabinets, as well as unhook the computer. I should still be able to get online, at least in the evening - my internet cord is 25 feet long. But it's going to be a long three days, as I just realized I can't exactly stream movies to watch while I sew if everything has to be unplugged.

Ay. I'm going to need a vacation from my vacation.

Spring cleaning

Spring is such a wonderful time...flowers popping, birds returning...outside winter detritus to clean up.

It's also my busiest time at work, all the way through May 15th. Any "free" time I have is spent either sleeping or taking care of basic things like eating and washing clothes.

It's no wonder cleaning up outside falls to the bottom of the list. I've been telling myself (and others) I want to pressure wash the patio for the last, well, several years. Still hasn't been done.

Then there is the wall of stuff in the parking bay that the previous owners left...a shelving unit, a metal cabinet and a bunch of garden hose. So much garden hose.

I am part of one of those neighborhood list things, that is generally people whining about people on their lawn, spying on every stranger in the neighborhood, or trying to sell things. Every so often, though, it has its good points. A local college student, home on spring break, who has worked summer in landscaping, offered his services to pressure wash, haul garbage or do landscaping.

Seemed like a sign to me.

We met up this afternoon so he could see the job and give me a quote. Bottom line, he's doing the pressure washing, the junk hauling AND the high outside windows for less than some of the quote I got a bit ago from "junk" companies just for hauling the junk. And I have the pleasure of knowing I'm helping a very enterprising young man.

And he brings his own pressure washer.

Big sigh of relief. It's nice to know that when it lets up at work, I can just bring up the umbrella and the grill and get started relaxing. There are still some gardening type things to do, but that falls under "puttering" rather than "work".

Now, the inside spring cleaning...

Kitchen Duty part II

I've spent so much time in the kitchen the last two days, I've actually almost forgotten what I had for dinner last night. After some thought (and putting away the rest of the box of pasta), I realized it was whole wheat spaghetti with butter and Parmesan as aside to a wonderful piece of skin-on salmon. The salmon got a bit of lemon pepper on the flesh side, then was put skin side down in a very hot pan coated with olive oil. Let it sit for five minutes until the skin is crisp, then turn it over for a few seconds. The skin should be crisp, the inside still pink (unless you are one of those people who likes your fish really well done).

It was annoying me that I couldn't remember at first what I ate.

Today, I don't have that problem.

Prep for several dishes began shortly after breakfast (toasted pieces of yesterday's English muffin bread topped with peanut butter). It always seems most efficient, when I'm doing several dishes, to do all the prep work for everything all at once (and it usually keeps me from saying to heck with it and stopping halfway through the plan). Dice an onion. Chop up the rest of the bread. Shred two different types of cheeses (really, it takes only a minute or two to shred cheese from a block, and then it has none of the cornstarch coating that keeps preshredded cheese from sticking together - and makes it gummy when it melts). Peel and slice potatoes. Boil the huge pot of water for the brine.

Once the water cooled, all sorts of good stuff was added to it, and the pork tenderloin (two smaller ones, I found when I opened the package) were put in it to soak for half a day. The linked recipe is the brine I used; if you make pork chops rather than tenderloin, a half hour is all they need. Soak too long, and the meat starts to deteriorate.

A potato gratin was meant to accompany the pork (this was all planned for dinner). Last grocery order, I bought half a dozen russets. They must have been "baking" potatoes, as each was pretty darn big. The two that were left filled up my regular size gratin dish. My standard is a variant of this dish. No leeks, but some shallots in with the cream. Not Gruyere (at least not if I have to make a special trip), but lots of Swiss. It's easy to make, especially if you have a mandolin to help slice the potatoes thinly.

The bread, if you will recall from yesterday, was made to be the basis for a new-to-me breakfast casserole. The other ingredients are sauteed pork sausage, cheddar cheese, eggs and milk.

Naturally, I didn't have any pork sausage, but I did have a pound of ground turkey, as well as a magic ingredient: Penzey's breakfast sausage seasoning. Used that with the turkey, and it was delicious. It is this recipe, though I also added sauteed onion...I had a couple of corner nibbles when it first came out of the oven (it's meant to be cut up and frozen for future breakfasts) and it is really good.

In the end, dinner was some of the potato gratin, some of the pork, green beans and a rather sizeable glass of Stag's Leap Aveta Sauvignon Blanc. There are leftovers of everything. There are two tiny lamp chops in the freezer that may be dinner tomorrow, with the potatoes. The pork can be sliced for sandwiches, or, if I do a bit of grocery shopping later for spinach and berries, my favorite salad.

tomorrow will be spent deep cleaning the kitchen. The A/C annual service is Tuesday, and part of what he has to check is attached to the furnace...which is in the closet in the kitchen. Eh, it's supposed to rain off and on all day, anyway.

My legs and feet ache from all the standing. The kitchen is so small, you sort of stand in one place and pivot, or take just one step from side to side. No chance to really stretch your legs. Must remember to take an Advil before bed so I can move in the morning.

In between things, I've been reading and sewing. I'm machine quilting a baby quilt for a coworker. The batting I'm using is wool - very soft and fluffy, but I think I underestimated the warmth factor. Good thing this baby is due in late September.

On that, I'm off to bed. Trying hard to maintain regular bed/rise times over this vacation. I did get up at the usual time this morning, but after half an hour of wandering around online, went back to bed for an hour. Don't want to do that tomorrow.

I know what I'm doing this weekend

At long last, I've set up an appointment for the local second hand furniture place to come and look at (and hopefully buy) my old bedroom set.

It's a bit bittersweet, as either my mom or I have had various pieces of this set for, well, pretty much my entire lifetime. She sold off what she had when she downsized a decade or longer ago. I finally bought a "big girl bed" almost two years ago.

It took a while to figure out alternative clothes and sundry storage space (including the realization that a good, thorough decluttering would make those decisions easier). Then there was the matter of finding a place that might want the furniture.

Found a local place that is interested. They will come and look at it Wednesday night. If they want it (and I highly doubt they will not), they will write me a check on the spot and take it away.

Between now and then, I need to finish emptying the dresser and chest. Quite honestly, I've not even looked at the clothes in the bottom two drawers of both pieces in at least a year - making it easy to put it all in the donation box. Then everything will get a gentle wipe down and a decent polishing.

Once the extra furniture is out of the way, I can finish up rearranging the bedroom and loft.

Progress.

Clean all the things

New year, new program to declutter.

I've been off since the 23rd, with an ambitious plan to declutter.

Um, yeah.

But today I managed to take care of something that's been sitting on my to-do list (not to mention next to my desk) for about two years: emptying the Laundry Basket o'Papers (TM).

The LBoP is a green laundry basket with a few ribs broken and a tear in the handle. Used primarily as a receptacle for things I need to take up/downstairs, it was headed for the trash pile when it took on a new purpose: holder of things I did not have a immediate "home" for.

Not the actual LBoP, but you get
the idea.

These items ranged from the extra pieces and boxes from a new cell phone, to lab reports and water/sewer bills. At the old place, I used a four drawer file cabinet for the "keep me" paperwork (two drawers only - the other two held office supplies and a few other things). The cabinet came with me to the new place, but I wanted to empty it and simplify my life a bit. I added a two drawer cabinet to the mix - with a single file drawer. The theory is that if I keep on top of culling the paperwork, one drawer should be sufficient.

Theory. Doesn't always mix with real life.

Complicating things, the loft, where my office space lives, does not receive any direct sunlight except between sunrise and about 9:30 a.m. This condo was built without any overhead lighting except in the kitchen and dining rooms (and baths, naturally). The desk lamp and the floor lamp provide some light, but with a 16 foot back wall, the light dissipates and leaves a lot of gloom. Not ideal for sorting paper.

Now that I'm done attempting to justify my slovenly filing habits, I can tell you I finally emptied that basket today. What is left is half a dozen quilting magazines to go downstairs, a small stack of books and journals to be shelved, a three inch thick accordian file of papers to keep and a very lonely, beautifully empty laundry basket.

Time to break for a late lunch. I ate a large breakfast very early this morning at my favorite local dine-in restaurant; it's taken almost seven hours to feel hungry again. After lunch, who knows? Maybe I'll declutter the remaining file drawer.

No particular order

Hit the trifecta today: Friday, payday, "summer day".

I've a long list of things I want or need to do this weekend. Thankfully, the weather is going to be pleasantly dry and even a bit on the cool side, at least for today and part of tomorrow. I'm always a bit more in a mood to work on things when it's not tropical outside, whether or not the actual work needs to be done outside.

Last night's dream featured a man peering in my bedroom windows, with intent to enter and cause harm. In the dream, a friend's police officer husband went to investigate; in real life, I took a quick look at the patio before I left for work, just in case.

Anyone who has been to my place knows that a criminal bringing a ladder and climbing up to the second floor windows is a ridiculously difficult way to enter my condo, given the alternative points of ingress.

Where was I? Things to do...there are three projects that WILL be complete by the end of August. I worked on one a bit Wednesday night, and was surprised at the progress made in just an hour and a half. Then again, everything was set up ahead so I could focus on just doing the one thing I needed to do. That seems to be the key to getting anything done after work during the week: set everything up on the weekend.

Not part of those three projects, but needing to be done is a quick declutter of the loft. I'd like to have the upstairs carpet cleaned in late August (I'm off one mid-week day then), but before they can do that, I need to move some stuff. As in furniture. Ideally, the people who want my old bed, dresser and chest of drawers will be able to pick it up before then. They are at an out of town family wedding until next week, or I'd get that settled. We'll see if Stanley will offer their "two rooms and a hall" deal when each of the rooms is 16 x 16 feet.

Also not part of those three projects, I need to figure out when to schedule a chimney cleaning. It's been on my list to have done for the past couple of years - not urgent, as the fireplace is gas (no creosote build up) and not used more than once a week through the winter. A cleaning is a way to get rid of any gunk left when the old owners converted from natural to gas, as well as a chance to have it inspected for any crack or other issues.

Oh yeah - and get rid of miscellaneous critter skeletons. Yet another critter found its way past the cap and down the flue. From the sound of it, this wasn't a winged creature, but a chipmunk or squirrel. Short of taking the damper apart and out, there is no way to rescue them (which would most likely end with a sooty, crazed rodent careening around the house in panic).

I've contacted the home owner's association about repairs to the cap. If I read the association documents correctly, while the inside of the chimney is my responsibility (it's contained within the outside walls), the cap is theirs (my "property" ends at the roof). No sense having the thing cleaned if animals can still get in.

August starts Monday. Summer is almost gone. Oops - correction: Summer is almost gone!! Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually hate summer, it's more that I like every other season more. Autumn is my favorite (add to to-do list: bring out autumn décor items to put out last weekend in August (Labor Day is late-ish this year and I don't want to wait).

Enjoy your weekend!

In which I try to poison myself. Three times.

After I share this, I may find it very difficult to find anyone willing to risk dinner at my place.

On Sunday, I made a small lasagna. Well, as small as any lasagna can reasonably be, in a deep, seven by eleven inch pan. Only two layers of no-boil noodles, one on the bottom, one on the top. Ground turkey, a little bit of onion and green pepper mixed with spaghetti sauce for one layer, sliced fresh mozzarella for another. A mix of freshly ground, imported Parmesan cheese mixed with ricotta cheese and an egg for another layer.

That ricotta...

It had been in the refrigerator since I first decided to make lasagna, a while ago. Long enough ago that the carton was a bit past the "sell by" date. The container had not yet been opened. I've never had an issue with using dairy a bit past the sell by date, provided it hadn't been opened yet.

Until now.

The lasagna tasted great. I had a bit for dinner, then refrigerated the rest. Once it firmed up, I'd layer the slices in a freezer container, and voila! lasagna available to thaw for future meals.

It started just before bedtime. That rumbly tummy, uncomfortable bloated feeling. That "I need to do this right.now." feeling, coupled with an inability to do just that.

No fun.

No fun, especially the three times I was up in the night, not counting finally giving up and getting out of bed for good at 3:30 a.m.

Monday was an extra coffee kind of day.

Monday night I went to pack up a portion of salad dressing for Tuesday's lunch. I'd used the last of the yummy Marie Calander poppyseed ranch for Monday's salad. There was a new jar of it in a grocery bag in the pantry.

That dressing...I'd added it to the grocery order a week ago, knowing I was running out. The grocery bags up the order with the nonperishable separate from the perishable goods. I have a bad habit of letting the nonperishable stuff stay in the bag on the pantry floor, especially if I intend to use the stuff soon. I'd not gotten to this new jar as quickly as expected, because I miscalculated and ran out of viable spinach for salads earlier than I thought I would. A quick stop at the store Monday night fixed that.

I unscrewed the lid on the new jar, transferred a couple of teaspoons of the dressing into my little container for lunch, licked the spoon, went to put the lid back on the jar...

The texture of the dressing looked a bit, um, off. Kind of lumpy.

Hmm. This time with my reading glasses on, I searched every inch of the jar until I found the tiny words: "keep refrigerated". Yep, I'd totally forgotten that this dressing is sold from a refrigerated section in the produce area. The person who pulled my order apparently forgot that little fact, too, and packed the jar with the nonperishables.

Sigh. No poppyseed dressing for me. Hopefully, the licked teaspoon wouldn't cause me as much trouble as the expired cheese. Then again, I'd had much, much less of the dressing.

There's a bottle of regular ranch dressing in the fridge, so I put some of that in another container for lunch, carefully looking at it, smelling it and tasting a bit, just in case. It was fine.

Until lunchtime today, however, when I opened that little container and discovered that the dressing had separated. Ew. The lunchbag is insulated, and everything went into it at 6 a.m., cold from the refrigerator. I had lunch around 12:15. The bag was closed the entire time. I'd never had this happen before.

Another bottle of dressing bit the dust.

At least this time, I caught it before I ingested any of it.

It seems to be time for a really, really thorough pantry/refrigerator/kitchen purge.

Afterward

I really do like the planning for an event. I can even enjoy the pre-party cleaning. The event itself is always fun. But the very best part?

When it is all over.

As a self-described "high functioning introvert", I can maneuver through social situations so smoothly that people who don't know me well would never guess I'm an introvert. But boy, once I hit that "I've had enough social interaction for now" wall, sweet, solitary silence is what I need. Lots of it.

The dessert gathering with the neighbors went very well. A good time was had by all, and everyone said they would like to do it again (note that no offers to host the next one came along with those statements). The cream cheese torte was a huge hit, as it always is.

Some notes:

- Of the nine people in the room, I was one of the two people who are still working full time. Everyone else is at least partially retired. I may well have also been the youngest person in the room, which doesn't happen very often at my stage of life.

- My doorbell plays the Westminster chimes (only the first two measures of the linked audio, thank heaven), quite loudly. For the last two years, it's only worked off and on, even though I've changed the batteries and checked out the workings of the button. Well, either that, or delivery guys just prefer to knock.

You know where this is going, don't you? The darn thing worked every single time a neighbor rang it yesterday. They must just have the touch.

- Three neighbors thought to bring thank you gifts - each brought a bottle of wine. I've been down to dregs for a couple of months, with no time to wander the aisles of the liquor store, so these were most welcome.

- Stupid dining room table. It's been extended for a long time, and I wanted to shrink it to the smallest size for this event (at its smallest, you can still seat six; with all the extra boards, you can set a full jury around it). But the two halves just would not join. The pins and holes lined up, but I couldn't get it to close. Naturally, I thought of what I might have been doing wrong as I was falling asleep last night.

The table is technically an antique, as my parents bought it when they bought the house, fifty-one years or so ago. If I decide to keep it (versus get a new table to match the hutch I'd eventually like to get) it will need a major sprucing up. One of the leg braces is cracked, the chairs need new seating boards, upholstery and covers. The top of the table is in pristine condition, thanks to quality table pads, but the rest could use refinishing. It would cost me as much to have that done as to buy a new table. But it is a gorgeous, French provincial thing made by Thomasville...I'd hate to sell it to someone who wouldn't really appreciate it.

The thing that vexes me most about the table? It is a true oval. Finding the correct type of tablecloth is challenging, to say the least.

- The house is delightfully clean and uncluttered (um, remind me again where I "temporarily" stored some of that clutter?). This may finally give me the push I need to find permanent homes for some stuff.

One neighbor is interested in a murder mystery dinner, and has a friend who would enjoy it, too. Maybe in early November...I may be recovered by then.

If you blink, you miss it

On my way up to bed, I stuck my head out the front door to grab the mail. As I generally do, I took a look down at the new bushes, to make sure they hadn't turned completely brown and died overnight (anything is possible). I glanced back at the other new bush, and was pleasantly surprised.

The reblooming lilac rebloomed.

From what I could see, there was one mostly spent blossom and another that had just fully opened. There may be one or two on the other side I couldn't see from the door (barefoot and on my way to bed, remember?).

True, the blossoms were a bit thin, with the little flowers in each bunch far enough apart that you can see the center stem in the gaps. But there were flowers.

Maybe I'm not so helpless a gardener as I claim.

I'd not really expected another bloom this season, given the transplanting and that stretch of 80 degree weather we had - something like sixteen days of unrelenting heat, without much rain. I'd been soaking the bed when I could, but probably not as optimally as the plants would like. As I mentioned the other day, the bush has more than doubled in size, but the individual branches still look a bit spindly.

In an uncharacteristically cautious move, I kept the old wire trellis the clematis had been tied to pulling down. From the looks of things, I may want to eventually tie some of the lilac back, to keep it from overcoming the evergreen shrubs and blocking the front door. At it's current rate of growth, that is not out of the realm of possibility.

Speaking of growth - am I supposed to cut the lilac back at all, and if so, in the late fall, or early spring?

Keep, donate, donate...good grief, I still have that?

Alas, this weekend will not be spend sewing cute little owls on the rest of the fleece blankets. At least, not all of them; I should be able to squeeze in one.

Easter Seals is coming for a pick up on Wednesday, so the much talked about decluttering and sorting of clothes is a priority for the weekend. Given how prone I am to decision fatigue, this kind of marathon clearing gets interesting. At a certain point I'm equally likely to exclaim, "I can't do this anymore! Just leave it - I can do this some other time.", or, in an off-with-their-heads fashion, "That's it! Take it all! Take it all, I say!"

Yeah, it's fun being me.

If enough is cleared, I can start on the final stages of reorganizing and decorating, which should be fun.

Other than that, cleaning the rest of the house, baking/cooking for the freezer and a bit of outside work should fill up the rest of the weekend. Not what you would call exciting, but it keeps me out of trouble and the results make life a bit more pleasant.

So, what are your weekend plans?

Lazy but productive Sunday

Just finished planning the menu for the card shark ladies. It's been at least three years since we've gotten together. The main instigator (and usual hostess) moved to Missouri for a couple of years to help take care of her grandkids while her son was in seminary. They all moved back here at least two full summers ago. Maybe it's been four years since we've gotten together this way?

So: italian beef sandwiches (rump roast in the crockpot - almost no work) on your choice of italian bread or organic, whole wheat rolls, green salad (one of the group is bringing this), green seedless grapes, hot German potato salad (either one of the other ladies or I will pick this up that day) and sauteed green pepper and onion to top the sandwiches, if desired. Someone is bringing dessert, most likely apple pie.

Sounds both simple and delicious. Next weekend is supposed to be one unbroken stretch of mid-eighties days. I'd thought about throwing some sausages, both italian and bratwurst (which brings up an interesting point I'd never considered before - that this particular sausage mix perfectly displays both sides of my ethnic heritage (half Sicilian, half German)), on the grill. Too much work on too hot a day.

Speaking of hot, the last couple of days have been rather steamy. The bushes out front needed a good soaking, and I gave it to them today. I've mentioned before that in order to keep the neighbors from getting drenched on the way to their cars, I keep the sprinkler low and move it from one side of the small plot to the other. Given that I leave it on each side for at least forty-five minutes, it gets a nice, deep watering.

Next on the day's agenda was putting together a small hand cart. Just something to use to roll out the recycling, garbage or other stuff when I'm not in a position to throw the stuff in the trunk and drive it out. The immediate goal, assuming it's not pouring after work tomorrow, is to haul the old patio chairs down to the refuse pick up point, along with an old rug and assorted hose. Be nice to finally be rid of that stuff.

Boiled eggs for lunch, read a novella, cut up the cardboard from the hand cart and a few other boxes, then took a nap. Sunday afternoon naps are great, but I had a special reason to take one today.

The low battery chirp on the smoke detector started up about 2:30 this morning. You know, the smoke detector right outside my bedroom door, the one I can't reach without the fifteen foot ladder.

I couldn't sleep, not only because of the chirping, but because my bedroom is the warmest it is in a twenty-four hour cycle at 2:30. Just not comfortable. But also not awake enough to drag the ladder out and change the battery.

I got up, and read and surfed and splashed water on my face until I was awake enough to climb the ladder without falling off, over the loft railing to the living room below. That was about 4:30. I went back to bed, but that's about the time I usually get up, and sleep was elusive. Therefore, the nap.

More to do yet today. Strip the bed, rotate the mattress and remake it. Make a tuna casserole for dinner. Vacuum/dust the living and dining rooms. Clean the downstairs bath. Clean the kitchen. Take the leaf out of the dining room table. Put on a different tablecloth. Figure out lunches for next week.

None of which takes very long, thankfully.

A little nip in the air

Ha. There are times when you just hate being right.

When I ordered the plants, I predicted a late season frost, or even snowstorm, the week they were supposed to be delivered.

It was 29 degrees at my house when I got up this morning.

Not to fear, I had dragged the shrub and the lilac bush - as yet unplanted, thankfully - into the house last night. It's a bit of a blessing that the other two bushes and the rose have not yet arrived (more on that, later, perhaps, as it appears that Home Depot has made another mistake on the order).

The weekend is supposed to be sunny and dry (rain through Friday morning), so with a little luck, I'll get things in the ground.

Inside the house, meanwhile, it's pretty nippy. Turning off the heat early last week may have been a bit optimistic. I'm too stubborn to turn it back on. Did I mention I sleep with the window open? Closed it almost all the way before going to bed last night, and it was still pretty cold inside this morning. Needless to say, the bathroom heater got a workout.

Now that we've gotten this late season frost out of the way, there is hope that the weather will stabilize. They say cooler again next week, though not this cold, followed by a happy, hearty warm up for Memorial Day week (the actual day will be chilly and rainy, as it always is).

The best laid plans sometimes morph out of control

The task was simple enough: Vacuum and wash the upstairs bathroom floor. But things can somehow get...out of hand.

Two three hours later, those two tasks have not been done. I have, however,

- Emptied and wiped down all five shelves of the almost five foot wide linen closet
- Emptied and wiped down the small medicine cabinet
- Gone through the contents of the medicine cabinet, tossing out old/unused stuff and reorganizing what was left
- Gone through the few linens kept in the linen closet, sorting out some old, but still very nice towels for the donation box (Really, how many bath towels does one person need?)(They went with the lavender and green bathroom at the old flat, not the don't-call-it-orange-it's-adobe bath in the condo, that is awaiting new (less ugly) paint)
- Sorted through the rest of the contents of the linen closet, including, but not limited to, the small plastic travel case, the larger, clear plastic "these are all the samples I have" bag, two fairly large wicker baskets, the three plastic shoeboxes (one of which has a lifetime supply of toothbrushes - the dentist gives me one every six months, but I use a rechargeable - meantime, the ones he gives me work well for cleaning things), two small, pretty boxes of various types of hair thingees, extra contact solutions, body lotions, nail polish remover (yet I have no nail polish save the bright red sample Birchbox sent last month) and cup full of various nail files, trimmers and buffers.
- Put a week's worth of meds into one of those daily pill box things that I usually use for traveling, because I'm old, and it's easier to open one compartment a day than the bottles. Let's start a pool on whether or not I remember to refill it next Sunday.
- Cleaned the toilet, sink, mirror and shower a bit more heartily than usual.

Did you notice what has not yet been done?

Uh huh. And it is much past lunch time.

Honestly, it took so long to do this much because I was simultaneously watching an old show on the upstairs computer. I'd drag the sorting over to the desk, sort there while watching, then put everything back. So you can say things were a bit more involved than they should have been.

The big question: Vacuum now, or wait and vacuum after lunch as well as do the floor washing?

Friday follies

After a half day at the mechanic and a hefty bill, the "check engine" light came on this morning. The odds are that they simply forgot to reset something, but it does mean a return to trip, which is majorly annoying (add to which this was at 6:05 this morning, and I can't call until the lazybones open up at seven). There is an appointment I will.not.miss later this afternoon, so I'm hoping this really is just a reset issue. (edit: car set for 1:30)

On the plus side, it means I can leave early. We'll see what they have open for slots. Or rather, I'll tell them what time this beginning-to-be-irate customer will be coming back in.

The weather took a turn for the frosty overnight, and will be getting worse as the weekend progresses. Highs of maybe ten tomorrow, with sustained winds strong enough to make the wind chill hover in the minus twenty to twenty-five degree area. Thankfully, once I'm home from my appointment, I won't have to go out again until church on Sunday.

The all-important appointment? A touch up for my hair. Or rather, at this point, an entire recoloring. My original appointment was set for January 22nd. I go four weeks between retouches, so I'm now a full seven weeks out from the last coloring. A best guess is more than two inches of outgrowth - and a good look at how grey I really am. There is a lingering temptation to have it all cut short and let it go grey - but I hate most short hair cuts.

Sewing to do this weekend, and lots of cleaning. Groceries coming tomorrow, with some cooking to do tonight. Home made chicken soup, and perhaps a chicken divan casserole. Something warm and comfort foodish.

Catching up on some reading will happen. In January I finished only one nonfiction book; the beginning of February was spent plowing through a historical novel. The goal, if you recall, is two nonfiction books per month in 2015. I'll admit I'm easing into it; my first read was an enjoyable, wonderful book, but falls into the "Christian nonfiction chick-lit" genre. Sadly, the one I just finished (at the car place yesterday) is much the same. The book I hope to finish yet this month is one on decluttering. Nonfiction? Yes. Hard reading? No.

If it kills me (and it may), I will get through James White's What Every Christian Needs to Know About the Qur'an by the end of the year.

Reading, comfort food, a place by the fire while the wind howls outside (a warm quilt over me and the electric space heater at my feet - that gas fire doesn't put out a lot of heat) - can't think of a better weekend.

What to do on a snowy day

Cleaning the kitchen seemed like a good idea. It is cleaner than it was first thing this morning, but a lot has happened in the meantime.

This, for instance.



The basic recipe for this is from a NYT article. As usual, however, I made a few changes, since I didn't have everything listed. Russet potatoes in place of Yukon Gold, onion rather than leek, dried thyme rather than sprigs, fontina rather than gruyere (swiss would have done, but I'm out of that, too) and garlic powder, because I didn't feel like chopping the fresh stuff.

One of my go-to recipes is also a form of au gratin potatoes. While the basic ingredients and technique in the two recipes is very similar, the results differ greatly in taste. The first tastes mostly of cheese and potatoes, with just a bit of sauce. The second, with the real cream, is much smoother and, well, creamier tasting. It's earned a permanent spot in the rotation.

The good news is leftovers for lunch for tomorrow, as well as enough potatoes for dinner both Tuesday and Wednesday. The Pioneer Woman makes a sandwich with a base of cube steak; the piece I had was about half a pound, giving me enough left of that for lunch tomorrow as well.

This frenzied bout of cooking came later this afternoon. That wasn't the first foray into the ingredient bin today. A veggie omelet over the last of the bag of diced potatoes, plus a side of bacon started off the day.

My poor fingers are wrinkled from washing pans.

Other than the cooking and accompanying dish washing, I've spent a good part of the day going through old quilt magazines. Standing about fifteen inches tall, the stack threatened to slide off the shelf every time I went to add another magazine. Armed with a scissors, post its and a folder, I go through each, pulling out patterns I might like to try, tip sheets and anything that may come in handy in the future. The rest goes in the recycle bag.

I'm not quite done, but since there seems to be nothing but some football game* on television. I'd rather get a bit extra shut eye.

The drift in the corner of the patio looks to be about three feet deep. It's hard to tell what is really on the sidewalk; the contractors came and cleared it around noon, just before the wind kicked up. Can't tell if it is still snowing. Tomorrow's commute will be interesting, as will be the state of the parking lot at work, if the wind keeps up as they say it will.

The big question, of course, is whether the groundhog will see his shadow or not tomorrow. Heck, I'm not sure he's even going to be able to get out of his burrow, given the snow.

*I kid, I kid. I even know who is playing, and sincerely hope the cheating-cheaters Patriots get their cheating-cheaters rear ends handed to them on a platter.

Blog housekeeping and sundry other assorted things

Sigh. Blogger (almost typed "booger", which may be more appropriate) appears to have messed with the the "compose" (wysiwyg) input screen. It now looks more like a word processing document. Not that that is bad, but I find that no matter what you do to format things the way you want to on that page, it always, always ends up off in some way. While writing in the HTML screen isn't as intuitive, I enjoy the confidence of knowing things will look the way I want them to look without a lot of messing about.

I've done a bit of blog housekeeping tonight. If you look up top, I've added a tab for the current year reads. At some point I'll hide the 2014 list's tab; for now, I want to enjoy the feeling of satisfaction I get every time I see it and realize I met my goal. It's the little things that make me happy.

I already have an entry on the 2015 list, and in the spirit of New Year's organization, I've also written the post to go along with it, scheduled to publish on February 1st. I managed, at long last, to figure out how to include a picture of the cover. Yay, me.

About twenty-five percent of the links in my sidebar were dead, whether due to someone ceasing blogging or changing the location of the blog. I've done some weeding there, as well as a little planting. If you aren't there and want to be, let me know.

The link to the daily reading plan is the same plan I'm using for my current year read through. They've updated things a bit; included on the linked page is the option to listen to the passage rather than read it. The narrator is excellent, with a balanced, well paced delivery. One drawback - there is no way to rewind or fast forward. Auditory learning is not my favored way to learn. My mind wanders off much too easily. Reading, on the other hand, forces my mind to stay more focused (I can actually daydream while I'm reading - I don't recommend it if you want to retain any of what you read).

The long weekend is over. I can't say I did much, other than get some extra sleep, read a book cover to cover, iron some fabric and lay out a quilt batt on the living room floor to relax (it gets all wadded up in the bags they sell it in - I will most likely have to press portions of it, but for now I'm fooling myself into thinking the wrinkles will fall out on their own). The head cold that has been lurking is still hovering around the edges, held at bay by extra rest and a bit of Coricidin.

The next three weekends are fairly busy. I may be meeting a quilt friend from Iowa in Mazomanie, a little city just west of Madison, Wisconsin, next Saturday. She is coming to town to babysit her grands. We've met out there once before, and if we can arrange it, this will be a treat. The following weekend I'm having lunch at my aunt's. The next, already the first full weekend in February, is a mini women's retreat at church (I really, really like "retreats" that allow me to sleep in my own bed!).

This weekend I also said goodbye to a dear friend, who is moving with her hubby and daughters to a camp in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. Her husband took a position as the Director of Urban Ministries at the camp, responsible for hiring the counselors and recruiting campers from neighboring cities, including Philadelphia and New York. His education is in youth ministry, and he's done inner city ministry in New Orleans in the past. The camp is gorgeous, and they will be living in a great house on the camp grounds. It's an incredible answer to sustained prayers.

I'd intended to get to bed early-ish tonight, which means I need to wander than direction about now.

The day after

Quiet holiday, which suits me just fine. Reading, sewing, cooking, eating.

That chicken recipe I mentioned in the last post? Oh my gosh, is it good. I'll admit, when I slid the pan into the oven - the twelve inch cast iron pan with the foil-covered chicken, topped with an eight inch cast iron pan, and, for good measure, the enamel-over-cast-iron lid to the french oven for extra weight - I wondered if it would really work.

Silly me. Dark, crispy but not dry skin. Moist, flavorful meat. I'll make this again in a heartbeat.

Though next time, I'm not going to mess around with spatchcocking a whole chicken. This would work equally as well - with considerably less work - with bone-in parts.

Potatoes baked in the oven with the chicken, to be joined by steamed green beans and carrots. A glass of chardonnay and cheddar for afters.

Leftovers of all for the weekend.

The sewing?

Working on the embroidery portions of the t-shirt quilt. this eventually will be the center of the quilt. Each t-shirt was also embroidered with the location of the various family holidays, along with the year if it wasn't already on the shirt. As of today, those are all done and I've started assembling the top into component rows. The pieced sections of the quilt are primarily blues, with some whites and a bit of grey for variety. Each t-shirt section has a tiny narrow flange of orange around it (classic blue jeans have orange stitching - the idea is that the backdrop to the shirts reminds you of jeans), thus the colors for this embroidery.

Quiet day today, too. Sewing, watching the first Hobbit movie while the pork I'd rubbed and thrown in the refrigerator to marinate Wednesday night slow roasted in the crock pot. Took it out about half an hour ago; it was difficult to get it out of the pot as it was falling to pieces. One of tomorrow's jobs is to do a quick rearranging of the freezer so I can parcel the pork out and freeze it for lunches, dinners and nibbling.

Honestly, while my"fun" list for this couple weeks has some running around on it, being home is very soothing. I'm making progress on the quilt, doing some organizing, reading, napping and generally enjoying the slower pace. There are still lots of things I need to do, but the important stuff is mostly done, leaving me time to do the homey fun stuff - sewing, spending an afternoon going through the pile of quilt magazines, sorting through the linen closet for donations, ditto for the bedroom closet. A quieter pace, a much quieter mind.

It's been unseasonably warm this past week; next week,however, it will be unseasonably cold, with highs south of twenty degrees for most of the week. I'm pretty sure I can arrange it so I don't have to leave the house at all that week...and that will be a good thing.

Housecleaning

This morning I combed through the blogs on my bloglovin' feed and removed those that have been removed by their authors or haven't seen a post in two years or more. It makes me a bit sad; I know life and priorities change...I may just not be terribly adept at dealing with it.

The next step is to go through the blogroll here and do the same. A few blogs are listed for sentimental reasons, and can go. Several have been closed. The ones that appear to be dead, but are not closed, are still listed on the bloglovin' feed, just in case.

So - if you are listed but haven't posted and think you may be removed and don't want to be removed, let me know.

On the other end, if you are a fairly recent reader who has a blog of your own and would like to be listed, let me know. I'm pretty easy that way.

For that matter, if you want to point me towards a blog that isn't yours, that you think I would enjoy, do that as well.