Yesteryear's

In between cycles of messing up and cleaning up my kitchen on Saturday during the canning project gone awry, I loaded the trunk of my car with merchandise for the booth space I rented at the antique shop.  I was supposed to meet the owner there at noon Sunday to set up my space.  The plan was to have all of the non-edibles loaded in the car the day before so that all I had to do Sunday was pack the jars and go.    The shop is open from 1:00 to 6:00 on Sundays so arriving at noon would give me about an hour to set up my space. 

The reason I only loaded the non-edibles on Saturday was because the recipe ingredients for the Cookies-in-a-Jar were not yet in the jars.  Instead, they were all over the work table in my office.  Ingredients for a dozen different recipes in unopened packages were all over my work table.  Wide-mouth canning jars, still in the shrink wrap cardboard flats they came in, were setting on the floor underneath the table ...ugh!   So I was up early again Sunday morning, determined to take care of all my normal weekend chores and still make my goal of meeting the shop owner at noon. 

This whole idea of renting a space to sell things sounded so simple in the beginning.  But jumping through all the hoops to get it off the ground has been a little wearing.  The first step was a trip to the tax office for a permit.  That was a little bit of a hassle as most permitting things tend to be ...but I got it done.  Then came what I thought would be the fun part of finding recipes.  Most any recipe can be adapted to this form of packaging but the more varied the colors and textures of the dry ingredients are, the better it will look in the jar.  Sugar cookies, for instance, would be visually boring ...just flour, sugar, baking soda, salt.  Boring. 

Finding recipes has been fun but it's been time consuming too.  When I found a recipe I wanted to use, I added it to my 'inventory list' and then added the ingredients to my shopping list.  I have a document set up in Publisher to create the instruction cards that are attached to each jar.  I created a new page for each recipe and set up a theme-appropriate border or a graphic for each different recipe.  Four 'instruction cards' fit on a page, then I cut them apart using these fancy little craft scissors designed for the Scrapbooking crowd.  It's all fun and appeals to my crafty/creative side ...but right now, it's time consuming. 

So far, I have collected a dozen or so cookie recipes with dry ingredients that include oatmeal, M&Ms, chocolate, white or butterscotch chips, raisins, and dried cranberries.  I found a couple of fancy brownie recipes too and some flavored hot chocolate recipes.  At the suggestion of the owner, I will stock two jars of three different varieties for now.  Today I put two jars each of Cowboy Cookies, Cowgirl Cookies and Mississippi Mud Pie Brownies on the shelves.  The six jars I put out are all I have made up so far.  But the plan is to make them ahead so that restocking will be quick and easy.  I'll generally stock the same varieties for one month.  When the weather cools down, I'll use pint jars to stock flavored hot chocolate mixes.   These are the three varieties I put on the shelves today. 

Mississippi Mud Pie Brownies

Cowboy Cookies

Cowgirl Cookies

The only differences between the CowGIRL Cookies and the CowBOY Cookies are the color of the M&M's,  whether I put Chocolate Chips or White Chocolate Chips in the jar, and what color bandana I cut up to put over the top.  The lids are vacuum sealed onto the jars to keep the ingredients fresh. 

I've seen similar jars with cookie ingredients in specialty shops being sold for $15 and up,  but I don't have any real overhead.  I've kept careful track of my costs and only have $2-$3 in each jar so I intended to price them at $8 each.  The owner talked me into putting $15 on them though.  She said she has been in business in the same location for over 9 years.  She knows what sells and has a feel for pricing things.  According to her, there's already a lot of interest even from the other vendors in the store and she doesn't want me to be afraid of making a profit. 

O.K.A.Y.  Feels like a lot of profit to me but I guess if they sell at that price, that's the market.  I might splurge and fancy up the fabric tops a little if I'm going to be making $12 per jar!  Other vendors at the shop that purchase from me get a 10 percent discount.  I get a ten percent discount on their merchandise as well.  So worst case, I will net $12 per quart.  Wow.  That still boggles my mind.   

This is what my space looked like when I left the shop today. 

It's just a bookcase, not a whole booth space but it's a good start.  I am in a good location in the shop and now that the preliminary legwork is done, I think it will be fun.  Especially if she's right about how much those jars will sell for ...wouldn't that be a nice little bonus! 

For Me, It's Saddle Time

Most people have one thing that makes them relax and rejuvenates them from the daily stresses of life.  For some, it's a place.  For some it's an activity.  For me, it's saddle time. 

Horses are a lot of work to take care of every day, whether you ride or not.  With the demands of a full time job and the chores that come with our homesteader lifestyle, finding time to just have fun can be a challenge.  Most of the big chores have to be done on the weekend and somehow the To Do List always ends with more things than can be accomplished in one weekend.  So you learn to prioritize.  You learn to pick ONE THING that has to happen on any given weekend.  When it's done, you do as many of the other things on the list as time allows.  Having things still left on the list at the end of the weekend just means next weekend's list is already started. 

Yeoldfurt works on Sundays, so that's generally my day for housework.  Domestic drudgery like laundry and scrubbing floors.  Those things that are hardly ever noticed ...unless they're not done.  But I try to accomplish at least one non-housework project every Sunday too.  Today it was riding.  I had not been on my horse since the grandsons were here in July.  It was too hot most of July and August and I have been out of town for two weekends in September already.  But the mornings lately have been downright pleasant and the evenings are starting to get bearable.  So I was up before the sun this morning and was saddled up as soon as it was light outside. 

I was only in the saddle for an hour, only rode in the round pen and the front paddock, but it sure felt good.  When we were done, I let my mare 'mow' the grass in the chicken yard for an hour before I turned her out with the others.  There are four fruit trees that we keep watered in the chicken yard so it's the place we have any grass right now.  My mare enjoyed it. 

That hour I spent in the saddle must have done me good because I've accomplished everything I normally accomplish on Sundays and then some.  The sheets are changed on the bed, the laundry is washed, dried, folded and put away, the bathrooms have been scrubbed and the rugs are washed and hanging outside to dry.  I also made a batch of liquid laundry soap (four months worth) and raked the leaves in one of the four flower beds.  The horse blankets we cleaned up last week are folded and bagged up to be stored until cold weather comes.  Yeoldfurt's dinner is in the oven (slow roasted pork ribs) and I have five pints of homemade split pea soup processing on the stove.  Yeoldfurt won't eat it, but I was cleaning out cupboards and found a pound of dried split peas I needed to use up.  In pint jars, it's just enough for me for supper on a cold winter day with enough left over to take to work for lunch the next day.

So even though I took an hour to just play with my horse this morning, I got a lot accomplished today.  Yup, for me, it's saddle time!

Holy Guacamole!

I've had flower and vegetable gardens most of my adult life, so I'm not exactly a newbie when it comes to growing things.  But I have never grown an avocado tree.  There is a first time for everything though and thank goodness for the Internet where practically anything you want to research is right there at your fingertips! 

When I was on vacation last week, my friend, Teresa, gave me a tiny avocado seedling.  She said it came from an avocado plucked from a tree on her brother's dairy farm in California.  It was well started in rich potting soil when she gave it to me and seemed to be thriving.  Teresa promised she would come up for a visit one day soon so I'm just hoping I can keep this little seedling happy and thriving at least until she gets up here! 

Yeoldfurt loves guacamole so it would be  nice to be able to grow our own.  But everything I've read so far says that trees started from seed produce rarely fruit.  It seems the best fruit-producing avocado trees are grafted as seedlings.  That's a very tedious process with only about a 50 percent success rate even for professional growers.  So this little seedling, if it matures into a tree, will most likely just have to be appreciated for it's beauty and not so much it's fruit.  If I am successful in growing it though, I might look into buying a grafted seedling so Yeoldfurt could have his home grown avocados. 

Any advice from those of you who have grown avocados from seed would be most welcome!

Keebler, the Lion

I did not know when I started this project quite how challenging this pattern would be or quite how rusty my sewing skills have become.  It has been thirty-something years since I really did anything more complex than a hem.  But perseverance won out in the end and I finished the project.  This is Keebler who I hope will end up being one of my little granddaughter's favorite cuddle buddies.

My granddaughter may come up with her own name for him and whatever she wants to call him is fine with me.  But he will always be KEEBLER to me.  I will explain why later. 

The nose gave me fits from the beginning and I'm not sure I understand what I did to make it work well enough to explain.  But I was finally able to fashion a nose out of the odd shaped bit of fabric and get it sewn in place so that it actually looks like a lion's nose.   It even looks like the nose on the on the front of the pattern envelope.  I would have settled for it just being recognizable as a nose.  To have it end up looking like the one on the picture is unexpected bonus.  I did have to deviate from the instructions quite a bit as they said to baste the nose in place on one side of the center of the muzzle and then stitch the two sides of the muzzle together with the nose sandwiched between them.  I have a fairly nice sewing machine but it's not industrial strength.  I was pretty sure it wouldn't be able to handle two layers of fleece (the two sides of the muzzle) plus four more layers of fleece made up by the folds in the nose.  So I used the machine to make the seam up to the nose, then finished it by hand.  I used heavy coat thread for the hand work, so hopefully it will hold up to the rigors of a toddler.  Handwork is my comfort zone, so it was fun to include some of that. 

The day I finally conquered the nose, I also lost my head ...for a while anyway.  I got the nose firmly attached to the muzzle and started looking for the pattern piece labeled 'head' ...but it was nowhere to be found.  I always pin all the pattern pieces before I cut to make sure I will have enough fabric.  Then I always cut all the pattern pieces at once and leave them pinned to their piece of the pattern until I'm ready for them.  But I searched through all my cut pieces three times and NO HEAD.  Each pattern piece has a number and the head was number four.  I even took all the unused pattern pieces out of the envelope and made sure I had not just failed to cut that piece.  But there was no number four in the envelope.  Ugh! 

I knew the pattern company had not shorted me.  Pattern pieces come all printed on one or two big sheets of tissue paper.  You have to cut them apart to make individual pieces so you can arrange them on the fabric.  I knew the missing pattern piece for the head had to be around here somewhere but I was running out of time to get this project done. I have my sewing machine setting on my grandmother's old writing desk which is tucked into a shallow alcove in my office.  I thought the missing piece might have slipped off the desk while I was wrestling with the nose so I got out the flashlight and looked behind, under and on both sides of the desk. I didn't find it.  I did find my cloth measuring tape though ...so the effort wasn't totally wasted.  

Frustrated and baffled, I went back to the instructions to see if I could improvise.  This pattern has four variations ...a lion, a monkey, a dog, and a cat.  The lion is the only one that calls for the number four pattern piece for the head. The other three variations have a similarly shaped head, with only a minor difference on one end.  I figured that, in a pinch, I could substitute the pattern piece for the head that the other variations called for and just 'eyeball' the minor difference to make it work.  My only concern was that though the two 'head' pieces might be shaped very similar, I would have no way of knowing until I tried to attach it to the muzzle if the scale was the same.  But I was running out of options so I got set up to cut a 'head' from the other pattern piece. 

I have a 75 watt halogen bulb in a floor lamp beside the cutting table and wanted to turn it on so I could see better while I was cutting.  I had to walk around to the back of the table to reach the switch on the floor lamp and as I stepped behind the table, I heard the familiar rustle of tissue paper.  My missing pattern piece ...the number 4 head piece!   It had apparently slipped off the table when I was laying the pieces out on the fabric.  I didn't notice it was missing when I was cutting out the other pieces because there are 13 different pieces to this variation of the pattern and they are not consecutively numbered.  The carpet in my office is circa 1985 which was smack dab in the middle of the 'earth tones' era in home decor.  Typical of the 1980's, the carpet is a deep sculpture in a sandy tan, almost taupe color ...very similar in color to the pale tissue paper pattern piece.  So I was able to cut the head from the correct piece of pattern after all. 

In retrospect, the only parts of this lion that I made by following the instructions exactly were the legs.  I modified the tail to make the fuzzy end more 3-D and fashioned furrowed 'eyebrows' from remnant fabric rather than just embroidering them as the pattern suggested.  I did embroider the eyes and used the same brown embroidery floss to fashion the toes on the end of his floppy legs.  Thinking back on the process, he's about 50 percent 'by the book' and fifty percent me figuring a way to make it work or a way to make it work (look) better.  And that brings us to the story of how he got his name. 

A friend of mine left a comment on my first post about this project, suggesting that if I ran into problems with the pattern, I should just 'Fudge, fudge a lot, you're a big girl now, you can fudge the pattern, the girl will never know!!' 

Well, fudge I did.  First with the nose, then the tail, and almost had to fudge the entire head.  I fudged on the assembly process, stitching by hand almost as much as on the machine.  I even fudged to create a 'suspended' stiff interfacing in the mane so that I could stuff on both sides of the interfacing and it would feel soft all the way around, but would have an inner support that would keep it from being floppy.   Yes, this lion is the product of a whole lot of fudging.  Get it?  Keebler Fudge?  I know, I know ...I have a warped sense of humor. 

I am pleased at how he turned out and even more pleased that I got him finished with a whole day to spare before I leave for my weekend with my granddaughter.  I work all day tomorrow but then I'm on vacation until next Wednesday.  It will take me most of the morning Thursday to clean up my sewing room and turn it back into my office ... and the rest of the day to pack and put some meals in the freezer for Yeoldfurt to have while I'm gone.  Assuming the threat of fires has lessened by Friday, I will leave early that morning and be back Monday before Yeoldfurt gets home from work.   I will miss him but I'll make sure he has plenty of clean laundry and plenty of meals in the freezer until I get back.  I'll have a nice supper ready for him when he gets home Monday evening and we'll be able to spend Tuesday together since that's his regular day off and I'll still be on vacation.  By Tuesday, we will have been apart just long enough to miss each other's company and we can spend the day spoiling each other rotten.  Life is good. 

Cute Little Devils, Aren't They?

At least two of the four new hens are beginning to lay eggs now. When a hen first starts to lay, her eggs are smaller than they eventually will be ...possibly nature's way of easing her into called purpose in life. As she matures, her eggs will gradually get larger until they are full-sized.

This is only our second batch of hens. We bought our first hens as day old chicks in 2009 and when they first started laying eggs, we had nothing except store-bought eggs to compare them to. So the size difference didn't seem that noticeable. One of those three hens lays HUGE eggs that will only comfortably fit into a Jumbo size egg carton. They will fit into a Large or Extra Large carton, but forget being able to close the lid. At least two of those three original hens are still laying, including Dora who lays the HUGE eggs. But production is way down, partly due to their age and partly due to this oppressive heat, I'm sure.

This spring, we bought some new chicks. Hens don't lay eggs forever and we figured we needed to start phasing in replacements for the older birds. We started out with five Barred Rock chicks, but lost three to chicken snakes. It was the Last Supper for all but one of those chicken snakes. The third one was sporting a couple of 22 caliber holes when it slithered away ...hopefully it didn't survive the trauma. A few weeks later, we found a guy down the road that was selling some two month old Production Reds and we brought two of those home as well. Now we have seven chickens in the coop. That's really more than we need for eggs for just the two of us. It's also possibly more than we want unless we pick up a couple more egg customers. We're not really (and don't want to be) officially in the egg business. But for now, the seven hens are producing three to four eggs per day.

Since the new hens are so young and have only been laying for a week or two, their eggs are still really small. I used a carton marked 'Grade A Large' because it was the biggest I happened to have on hand today.  The HUGE eggs that Dora lays barely fit into a carton marked Jumbo.  If I put what I refer to as our 'normal' eggs from our other two mature hens in a carton marked Extra Large, I can close the lid but it's tight.  They will fit into a carton marked Large, but forget closing the lid.  All this is for reference so you know what you're looking at here.  I put six of the little bitty eggs in one side and six of the normal eggs on the other side. I laid two of the HUGE eggs and two more of the little bitty eggs on the open lid as a visual reference for size. Aren't the little bitty eggs cute?!

Sweet red bell peppers were on sale for 50 cents each at the grocery store last week so I bought six. We love bell peppers. Sometimes I stuff them and sometimes I slice them up to steam with kielbasa or grilled chicken tenders. I bought six peppers and made stuffed peppers that night. I make the filling with one pound of ground beef, one egg for binder, about 1/3 cup fine seasoned bread crumbs, some spices and a bit of tomato sauce. The one pound of ground beef is enough to generously stuff six halved bell peppers. I slice them the long way and Yeoldfurt eats two halves for his supper and takes two halves for his lunch the next day. I eat half a pepper for supper and take the other half for my lunch the next day. Normally when I make these, I use one of the normal sized eggs. That time, I used two of the little bitty eggs. I was curious to see the quality of the egg itself since it was so tiny. But they were excellent quality.  The yolks were dark yellow and, if anything, disproportionately larger than the whites. The two little eggs were perfect to replace the one normal sized egg I usually used to make this recipe.
Tonight we're having a chef salad for dinner and I decided to make some deviled eggs to go with it. I usually use two of the HUGE eggs when I make deviled eggs but decided today to use the little bitty eggs.

 

Now who would have thought you could fit a dozen deviled eggs on one 6-inch dessert plate?  Tell me these aren't the cutest 'little devils' you've ever seen!

Sewing is Not Like Riding a Bike

About the time all my overtime started at work, I had the bright idea I would start sewing again and make something for my granddaughter's first birthday in September.  It seemed like a good idea at the time and her birthday was still three months off so it didn't feel like pressure.  Now her birthday is just two weeks away and I'm a long way from finished with her birthday gift.  What was I thinking?!

The pattern is Simplicity 5310.  Don't let the company name fool you ...there is nothing 'simple' about this project!  I've got about 10 years of experience crafts and sewing.  Mostly I've done handwork ...crewel work, embroidery, crocheting, even tried tatting for a while.  I learned how to make clothing from patterns when I was in high school.  Our mother was an excellent seamstress and she taught all three of us girls how to sew from a pattern.  I made my own pinch-pleat lined draperies when I was a newlywed in my 20's.  I know how to use a sewing machine.  I didn't think it mattered that all of my experience was 25 or 30 years ago.  I figured, 'it's like riding a bike, right?'  Umm ...maybe not.

This is the pattern.  Cute, huh?  Looks simple enough, right?  By step 3 on the pattern, I knew I was in trouble.   

It's the nose that's giving me fits.  The pattern piece is only about 3 inches wide and 2 inches tall.   How could such a small swatch of fabric be so uncooperative!  I struggled with it twice, two separate days for about an hour.  The confidence and enthusiasm I'd been feeling for the project was eroding at an alarming rate.  But this morning I decided to see if I could find some reviews for the pattern ...maybe some pointers from other people who had made this pattern.  I found this website, http://sewing.patternreview.com, and joined with a free membership.  There were eight reviews posted for this pattern.  A free membership only entitles me to read reviews less than six months old, so I could only read five of them.  Three of them were exactly as I would have posted if I were to review this pattern ...'NOT simple!'  'Diagrams do not match up with the pattern pieces!'  'Terrible instructions!'   'Worst pattern I've ever worked with!'  The ladies that left these reviews claimed to have 20-30 years of experience.  One lady said she was a professional seamstress with 35 years of experience and she still had to start over with this pattern two or three times.  Whew ...that made me feel better.   Maybe it wasn't just me.  Misery loves company and looming defeat craves it!   

Two of the reviews were very positive and said they would definitely make this pattern again.  But even those writers admitted to making 'minor adjustments' to the pattern and the assembly process.  Granted, there were three reviews that I couldn't access with my free membership.  But judging from the five reviews I could access, I'm definitely not in the minority in having difficulty with this pattern. 

Now I figure I can look at this two ways.  My granddaughter's birthday is just two weeks from tomorrow.  I have this weekend and next weekend to pass or fail in my attempt to make this for her.  Based on those negative reviews, I could convince myself I would be justified in scrapping the whole idea of making her something and just go out and buy her a gift.  But instead I've decided that I'm going to take heart from the fact that at least two people claim they were successful in making this project.  I will have to dig up a little more determination but I'm going to give it a whirl.  I guarantee there will be adjustments to the process and possibly to the end product.    If I'm happy with the result, I'll do a follow-up post and show you how it turned out.  If I'm not happy with the result, there may be a follow-up post, but no pictures.  At that point, I will be out of time and will have to go buy my granddaughter a gift.  But at least I will know I gave it my best shot.  

Yeoldfurt is off on a mission of his own today.  He left for the gun range about thirty minutes ago to test out his latest batch of reloads.  I'm sure he'll be doing a post to report the results.  He looked five or ten years younger when he waved as he drove off this morning.  He had the same kind of 'happy' you'd see on a kid's face if you announced, 'we're going to Disneyworld!' Yup, doing something you love definitely has a rejuvenating effect. 

Let There Be LIGHT

The house we live in was built in the mid-80's and has a very 80's style galley kitchen with a double bulb fluorescent light fixture centered overhead.  For the past several months ...okay, maybe the past year or so ...the kitchen light has been 'moody.'  One of three things would happen when you flipped the switch ...bright light immediately flooded the kitchen from the overhead fixture which was ideal,  or semi-bright light immediately flooded the kitchen because one of the bulbs seemed to be functioning at about half-capacity, or a dull candle-like glow immediately flooded the kitchen because both bulbs seemed to be functioning at half-capacity.  If either of the last two things happened, I learned that just leaving it alone for long enough, the bulbs would suddenly come to life and things would be bright again.  As time wore on, the occurrence of the first thing where flipping the switch resulted in immediate bright light from both bulbs became more and more rare.  But since it still worked sometimes, and there were always things on my list that were not working at all, I have just lived with it all this time.  I've always believed in the rule you don't fix what ain't broke.  And in the interest of stretching a dollar, I've tweaked it in recent years to you don't fix what ain't completely broke.  

That finally happened a few weeks ago with the kitchen lights.  Both bulbs just gave up the ghost completely.  With the hours we've both been working and other more pressing commitments on the weekends, it took me a while to get around to replacing them.   Honestly, I kind of thought Yeoldfurt would fix them.  He's gotten after me from time to time for fixing things or devising a plan to fix things that he's already got on his list.  For whatever reason, I just thought replacing the bulbs was on his list somewhere.  So several weeks went by with me cooking with just the hood light over the stove and ambient light from the adjacent rooms.  It was working okay but I did miss having good lighting.  So I decided to drop a hint by taking the plastic light diffuser cover down and washing it one Sunday while he was at work.  It's four feet long so I took it outside to clean it up and left it laying across the wheelbarrow by the back door to dry.  I thought it would serve as a subtle hint to Yeoldfurt that the kitchen light was ready for new bulbs. 

He noticed it when he came home and we talked a little about whether we had any spare bulbs stashed in the garage or one of the shops, but it turns out we didn't so the conversation really didn't go anywhere.  I had to run errands today ...get the car inspected, pick up cat/dog/chicken food in town and go to the bank so I decided to stop at the local hardware store and pick up a couple of bulbs.  It took me all of ten minutes to snap the old ones out and snap the new ones in.  I put the light diffuser cover back on the fixture and flipped the switch.  IMMEDIATE BRIGHT LIGHT flooded the kitchen ...oh, it was grand!  Such a simple thing but you sure do miss it when it's gone. 

I went down the hall to Yeoldfurt's office and said, "High five me, honey ...we have LIGHT in the kitchen again!"  Made him laugh.  He was in the kitchen a few minutes later and said, "You know ...I would have done that for you weeks ago, but you mentioned you were going to do it and I didn't want to take over your project.  You told me once that I have a tendency to take over your projects sometimes and I'm trying to be better."  Ugh!  Then I laughed and told him I had taken so long to get it done because I thought it was on his project list and didn't want to get in his way ...but that I had gotten tired of cooking in the dark. 

Guess we need to work on communication.  Subtle hints might work in some scenarios but sometimes a simple question ...'is this on my list or yours?' ...might be the better way to go! 

Home Stretch

Well, I'm embarrassed to admit this but I miscalculated the balance of my remaining allotment of overtime hours.  I'm embarrassed because math is not something I usually get tangled up in, especially if the numbers I'm crunching are remotely related to finances.  Since I'm getting time-and-a-half for the overtime hours, those numbers are definitely related to my finances! 

The only bright spot is that the mistake I made was in my favor.  I thought I would finish this week with a balance of 13 hours of overtime left to work and since 12-1/2 is the maximum number they will allow me to work in one week, I thought it would take me another two weeks to finish.  But, now that I found my mistake, I realize I have less than 10 hours remaining.  That means I can easily finish up next week!  I can't tell you what a weight that lifts off my shoulders, just to feel like the end is in sight. I realized my mistake about 9pm Thursday night and confirmed it with the timesheets when I got to work on Friday.  Ahhh ...it made my day! 

I don't think I'll end up with quite enough in overtime money to paint my little car but it's still a respectable little pile of extra cash we didn't have before.  I will be careful, and hopefully wise, in deciding what to spend it on.  I could keep saving a few more months and paint the car next spring ...or I could buy one or two of the things off of our wish list.  I don't know what I'll do with it yet but I have at least a month to think about because the overtime is paid separately on the first of the month after it's worked.  The remaining 9-1/2 hours to be worked are in August, so I won't have the last of my overtime pay until the first of September.  Hopefully the extra time to think about it will ensure I make a wise decision.

Though the money will take a while to roll in, the immediate benefit and the one I think I'm most looking forward to is having my afternoons back.  On a normal (no overtime, minimal errands) day, I get home about 4:30 in the afternoon.  Yeoldfurt leaves for work almost three hours later than I do so he doesn't get home until 6:30 or 7:00.  He always sets the thermostat up to 80 degrees when he leaves for work.  Since I get home a couple of hours before he does, I have time to cool the house off for him.  It also gives me time to take care of a few domestic chores and time to plan and start supper.  He normally doesn't want to eat until an hour or so after he's home, but I like to have it ready so he can eat when he wants.  He usually calls me when he leaves work to let me know he'll be home in 30-40 minutes.  I wait until about 15 minutes before he's due and put a frappacino (his favorite beverage) on ice for him in the fridge.  We spend a few minutes catching up with each other and then he goes to his computer for some unwind time before supper. 

That life may sound totally boring to some, but we both miss it.  The past two months, we've been more like but ships that pass in the night.  Communication is minimal and sometimes strained, not by mood but by too many hours apart, too many outside demands, both of us frustrated by feeling stretched too thin.  I want to go back to having everything ready for him when he gets home and having enough of a handle on the house and the chores that I'm not embarrassed if someone drops by.  In a perfect world, we'd both be at home full-time, just doing what we enjoy and enjoying each other's company.  But nothing like two months of long extended hours to make your 'normal' schedule feel like a vacation. 

Few Things ...

...can dishevel a house quicker or more thoroughly than two grandsons descending for a whirlwind weekend visit.  They were only here three days and two nights but the only room that looks good this morning is the room they slept in because ...GOOD BOYS that they are, they made their beds and picked up their room every morning before wandering out to the kitchen for breakfast.  They rode the horses several times, made a serious dent in Yeoldfurt's stash of 22 cartridges, and ate just about everything that wasn't nailed down.  If we are able to arrange for a week long visit in the future, I can see we're going to have to stock up a lot more than we did for this short visit! 

The oldest is a natural with a rifle, nailing almost every target he went after.   He has outgrown the Cricket 22 we bought a couple of years ago and was shooting my singleshot bolt action that I inherited from my dad.  That rifle has been through three generations so far and is now in the hands of the fourth.

The youngest is eager to learn and will be as good as his brother with a little practice.  Both boys are right-handed but left-eye dominant.  The oldest has figured this out and shoots left-handed to give himself a better aim through the sights.  The youngest still insists he has to shoot right-handed which means he throws his head way to the right trying to get his left eye lined up with the sights.  He'll figure it out and when he does, he'll be a crack shot like his brother.  

The youngest is my can't-get-enough-saddle-time-cowboy right now.  Even the triple digit temperatures didn't keep him from wanting to ride at least once every day.   He's fearless regardless of the size of the horse he's on and I can see I'm going to have to watch what I let him see me do on the horses.  We were riding separate horses the first evening and he saw me kick my feet out of the stirrups and jump off when I wanted to get down.  He figured that's the way it's done so off he jumped.  I turned around just in time to see him land on his feet and grin at me.  He's barely three feet tall and the saddle he was sitting was five feet off the ground.  He must have noticed the panicked look on my face and said, 'What?' Silly boy ...I'll have to watch what I do when he's looking. 

The youngest is still lightweight enough for our kid-horse, Katie, to pack around.  I am right there with him for moral support and to get the horse saddled up but Katie is the one teaching the youngun to ride.  She has a bum knee now so we don't let anyone over 50 pounds on her back.  Katie is in hog heaven with a kid on her back.  That horse would positively have her feelings hurt if kids are around she didn't get ridden and, believe me, there's nothing more pitiful than watching a 1000-pound horse pout!  The oldest grandson and our grand niece both learned to ride on Katie and we still have the 9 month old granddaughter coming up through the ranks.  But after all the grandkids are too heavy for her, we may have to borrow some pint-size neighbor kids to keep Katie feeling useful.  

And this is how I found the boys every morning.  Worn out from the activities the day before, resting up for whatever the new day would bring.   Short visit, but good times.  

Back to the Real World Tomorrow

Vacation is over after today, it's back to the grindstone tomorrow morning.  I accomplished most of what I hoped to over the past few days.  Several small indoor projects are complete, I got the raised bed weeded and the yard mowed today and ran the last of the errands for the week.  In retrospect, I've been pretty darn busy these three 'vacation' days.  Spending a mere eight hours at my desk job tomorrow might actually feel like a walk in the park by comparison.  That feeling may wear off after the first day though.  Good thing for me there are only two work days left this week and then it's a three-day holiday weekend. 

I added a couple of new sites to my blog roll recently.  There's Stephen at Standing Outside Looking In and BlueEyedBaby at I Wish On Shooting Stars who just happens to be Redneck's daughter.  For a young lady just out of high school, this girl has got a real good head on her shoulders.   These are all good folks, worth checking out.  We all tend to collect like-minded people on our blog rolls.  Maybe on some level, we're all seeking confirmation for our own views.  But new folks bring new perspectives even if they hold the same or similar opinions as our own.  I hope you'll check them out. 

 

In Our Backyard

We spend a lot of time on the patio in the evening during the spring and summer.  It faces northwest and offers a great view of some spectacular sunsets.  There is a small Crepe Myrtle tree next to the patio that is a favorite nesting site for a pair of cardinals.  We noticed babies in the nest in May of this year, then only a week or two later, they just disappeared.  We didn't see the parents around either and were afraid they had abandoned the nest because something got the babies.  But a week or two later, we noticed the parents were back.  So I decided to do some research on cardinals.

I found out they raise two or three sets of babies every year and always nest within a mile of where they themselves had been born.  The babies leave the nest at only 14 days old, but have very poor flying skills at that age.  They usually fly from the nest to the ground or a low shrub and rest for several hours before trying again.  Within a few days, they gain their strength and skill to fly back up to the tree tops.  Until then, their parents watch over them, providing food and encouragement and as much protection as possible. 

Yesterday when I walked past the little tree by the patio, I noticed the male cardinal flitting nervously from the tree to the roof to the ground and back again.  Cardinals have a very distinct call, a sharp chirp.  The male was on the roof, chirping away and I was sure I heard a chirp on the ground too.  I looked and on one of the lowest branches of a volunteer under the little tree was this tiny little baby cardinal.  When Yeoldfurt came over to see what I was looking at, we found the other one on the ground under the tree.  Though they are both more fuzz than feathers at this stage, I was pretty sure one was a male and one was a female.  The one that was on the branch had fuzz on top of his head that was distinctly pointy on top, like a male cardinal.  The other baby just had smooth fuzz on top, probably a female.

We worried about them being out of the nest overnight, but I told Yeoldfurt what I had read about the parents watching over them and we decided to let nature take its course.  This morning, I went out to check and found both of the babies up on a low branch about a foot off the ground.   Our fifteen year old cat, Charley, hangs out in the backyard but her hunting instincts have never been keen.  This cat used to roll over on her back, look at you upside down and beg for food if she liked what you had.  But chasing food had never been in her repertoire.  She would barely chase a toy, even when she was a kitten.  Too much work.  Now that she's older, she's more lazy than ever, so we didn't think she would be a threat to the babies.

Charley was sitting on a plastic step this morning about fifteen feet from where the babies sat on the low branches.  As I stood there admiring the babies, the female suddenly took off and flew toward the yard.  Her trajectory took her inches from Charley's nose and she landed on the ground about fifteen feet beyond Charley.  I was startled and amazed and happy to see the little fuzzball take flight, but then I saw the look on Charley's face.  Apparently, her hunting instincts were aroused, possibly for the first time in her life.  Her eyes were huge, her ears were pricked and she was crouched in front with her butt slightly elevated.  Her tail whipped once to the right, then once to the left and just as I yelled, "Charley, NO!!!" she launched.

I launched a split second behind her but before I could reach her, she was on top of the little fuzzball.  Fortunately for the baby bird, Charley had been an indoor cat the first ten years of her life and due to a disagreement she and I had about her using my pool table for a scratching post, she no longer has front claws.  That fact didn't do much to reduce the terror the little fuzzball was feeling though.  As I grabbed Charley by the scruff, I was aware of  the baby's frantic chirps from below me and the parent's angry chirps behind me.

PETA might be after me for this but all I was thinking of was the baby bird.  I grabbed Charley by the scruff of the neck with my left hand and by the scruff of her butt with my right hand and tossed her to the side.  It was a gentle toss, it really was ...more of a lob, really.  My only motive was to save the baby bird, not hurt the cat ...I swear.

As soon as I lifted Charley off the ground, the little baby bird was free but didn't move.  I wasn't sure if it was hurt or just scared but I didn't have time to investigate because Charley, being a cat, had landed on her feet about ten feet away and was making a beeline back.   I intercepted her in the same double scruff fashion and carried her across the yard to the garage.  I deposited her inside and shut the door.  I knew and she knew that she wasn't trapped in the garage.  We keep one of the overhead doors open about six inches so the cats can come and go, but I knew it would take her some time to think of the other door and make her way to the backyard again.

As soon as I shut the door behind Charley, I looked back to check on the baby bird and was relieved to see it half-fluttering, half-hopping across the yard in the opposite direction.  Its two parents were doing their best to herd it to safety.  One of them would land a few feet in front of the baby as if to show it the way, and the other was diving and chirping from behind, as if trying to hurry it up.

Charley made her way to the backyard again sooner than I expected, but by then both babies were safely perched on the chain link fence, a good ways from where all the drama had started.  Charley being new to the role of predator seemed fixated on the spot where she landed on the baby bird the first time.  She seemed to know she had missed out on something, but she wasn't quite sure what ...and she sure didn't seem to have any idea where that something might be now.

Mini-Vacation

I'm off today, tomorrow and Wednesday but the 'To Do List' is long.  There are only two projects on the agenda today ...really only one project but it needs to be done in two different rooms.  The guestroom and my office are in desperate need of a complete overhaul. De-junking, deep-cleaning and reorganizing.  None of that sounds like fun to me, but it has to be done. 

The guestroom hasn't been occupied by an actual guest in a long time, so the two beds have slowly accumulated 'stuff' that just needs to find a home.  When I re-vamped our bedroom a couple of months ago, the guestroom became a handy place to move things while I painted.  Somehow after the painting project was done, there were still a lot of things laying around the guestroom.  Exhaustion or my lazy streak won out and I just closed the door and forgot about it ...until recently.  Now our grandsons are coming to visit 4th of July weekend and the guestroom is in a shambles!  I pick them up Friday after work, so this project is a priority. 

The other room to be overhauled is my office.  Just another catch-all space in the house.  We refer to it as my office, but it's also my sewing machine and where we set up the dehydrator.  It was originally intended as a formal dining room by the couple that built this house and there is a wonderful walk-in pantry in one corner.  It's wonderful in that it's 5 feet deep by 6 feet wide, with four 12-inch deep shelves on three of the walls.  Great for storing all kinds of things ...a nightmare if the shelves are full but disorganized.  Unfortunately, that's how I would have to describe it right now ...a disorganized nightmare.   My hope is to designate each of the three walls for a specific function.  One wall would hold all of my equipment such as the two canners, the Foodsaver, canning jars/lids, and various empty plastics that I can use for food storage.  Another wall would would hold all of my sewing and craft materials.  The third wall would become the short term food storage.  

Right now, we keep a only few days worth of staples in the kitchen cupboards because space is limited in the kitchen.  The rest is kept in the food storage area we built in the shed down the hill.  I make an average of three trips to retrieve this or that from food storage during the week.  That doesn't sound like a lot of hassle but there are days when my feet are screaming and one more trip down the hill would just do me in.  So my hope is to designate about a third of this walk-in pantry for it's intended purpose ...a pantry.  I would stock these shelves with enough of our most commonly used staples to last about a month.  What gets put on the pantry shelves would come from what's already in storage in the shed.  I would restock it about once a month, again pulling from the food storage in the shed.  New groceries brought into the house would get date marked and put in storage in the shed so we would be able to keep everything rotated.  It will sure make things easier on me for those days when I just can't make it down the hill but it will also ultimately make more space in storage so we could possibly expand our current 12-month by at least an extra month. 

Tomorrow ...Day Two of this Mini-Vacation ...I'll be gone all day.  I need to get the oil changed in two vehicles and get an inspection on one of them.  That may not seem like a lot but it will pretty much take the whole day because of logistics.  When Yeoldfurt leaves for work tomorrow morning, I'll follow him in another vehicle.  We'll leave one of them off at the shop when they open at 8:00 and I'll use the other one to drive Yeoldfurt the rest of the way in to his job.  It's another 20 miles so it will take me an hour or so to drop him off and get back to the shop.  Hopefully by then, the first vehicle will be done and I can leave them the second vehicle.  The second one will take longer because there's a burned out tail light to be replaced and then the inspection.  The shop, like anywhere else, tends to get busier as the day wears on.  By the time I drop the second vehicle off, half a dozen other customers may already be ahead of me in line.  So I'll a few hours hanging out at the courthouse with my old work buddies until the second one is done. 

In other words, I will be totally not productive, just goofing off and killing time as far as projects around the house go.  When the second vehicle is ready, I'll go pay the bill and pick up both sets of keys, then head off in the direction of Yeoldfurt's job.  It will probably be two or three hours before he gets off, but I there are plenty of places to kill time in that neck of the woods too.   

Yard work is the big project for Wednesday.  The three inches of rain we got last week has really transformed things.  Our yard has been brown and crunchy for weeks but is now green and growing.  I hope to get the yard mowed, the raised bed weeded and the shed branches down to the burn pile.  I much prefer yard work to house work, which is why I have to save the yard work for last.  One thing would lead to another and I would never get around to the house work.  So I don't dare start the yard work unless and until both of my indoor projects are done.  

So far, it's not sounding much like a vacation, is it?  But I had my 'play time' earlier this weekend.  While Yeoldfurt was off at the blog shoot in Lockhart, I was driving to San Antonio for an overnight with my daughter.  First things first, I spent some serious cuddle time with my little granddaughter, Bella, Saturday morning.  She and her mom had a commitment that afternoon and I had a wedding to attend so it was only a few hours, but delightful for me.  The bride at the wedding I attended is the daughter of one of my best friends.  Her mom and I have known each other for more than 30 years and I was glad I was able to share that moment with her.  It was a lot of 'special' to fit into one day. 

My daughter is in the choir and her husband plays bass in the Praise Band at their church, so they always go early and attend both services on Sundays.  I went to the early service and kept Bella with me instead of putting her in the nursery ...a little extra cuddle time for Grandma.  I passed Bella back to her parents and said my goodbyes after the early service, then drove 30 miles out to Boerne to visit another dear friend.  I've only known this lady for a few years, but it seems like we were friends as soon as we met.  She happens to be my son-in-law's grandmother which is how we met.  That makes us 'family' now too, a double blessing for me. 

My desk at work will be knee-deep when I get back on Thursday but I'm glad I took this time off.  Even if I only spend two of the five days playing, getting a few things is its own reward. 

Making Popcorn Chicken

Sorry, this is not a recipe post for that delectable bits of fried chicken. This is about training chickens.

Can you really 'train' a chicken? Probably not. That would require a bit more brain power than the little peckers have at their disposal. But it's pretty easy to condition them because they have one big driving motivation in life ...FOOD. If they're awake and not laying an egg or 'making more chickens' they're scratching around for food. They will taste test anything. Since you have probably been scattering food for them since they were fluffy yellow chicks, they long ago figured out that whatever drops from your hand is probably food.

With the shortened daylight hours during winter, our hens didn't get as much yard time as they had become accustomed to, certainly not as much as they wanted.  Most days, Yeoldfurt let them out mid- to late-morning before he left for work and I was home in time to put them back up before dark. On days when I knew I would be getting home after dark, they had to stay cooped up all day and they didn't like it. They must have some brain power because they always remembered being cooped up for the day and were always twice as hard to run back into the coop for a day or two afterward.

Herding chickens is probably easier than herding cats, but not by much.  We only had three hens last winter.  Two of them hang together and they're usually fairly easy. But one of them is a rebel and always makes a break at the last minute. Then the trick becomes can you time the opening of the door just right so that the wayward hen goes IN and the other two STAY in. Not always easy. After a full day at work, a long commute and plenty of other chores on the list, chasing chickens is not my idea of fun. So I came up with a plan.

I happen to a have a 28 count box of microwave popcorn that we bought at Sam's Club years ago. It's so far out of date, I am surprised it still pops ...but it does. My microwave usually does a very good job on the microwaveable popcorn but every once in a while a bag gets scorched. I am pretty sure it's because the popcorn is out of date and stale, parts of it are probably dried out.  But the hens didn't care.  If you shook a bag of popcorn, all three of them came running.  This year, we added four new pullets.  Herding seven hens is probably a little more challenging than herding three ...so the popcorn trick should come in handy this winter. 

For Simplicity Sake

The picture you see at the top of this blog is of a refrigerator magnet that Yeoldfurt brought me after one of his business trips.  It's a cartoon caricature of a horse 'exiting Stage Left' as it were, with a female holding on for dear life at the end of the lead rope.  She looks surprisingly calm, even happy, considering the predicament she seems to be in.  The words overlaying the picture are 'Woman Who Runs With Horses.'  Yeoldfurt brought it home to me and said he thought of me when he saw it.  When I made those words the name on my blog, I did not realize they would be my 'handle' every time I left a comment anywhere.  I know it's a mouthful.   Occasionally, people who respond to my comments address me as 'Woman' but most go with "WWRWH.'  Believe me, I know it's a mouthful.

So tonight, I decided to simplify things ...for all of us.  I have made many blog friends in the two years I've been blogging and in those circles, I am known as HossBoss, or simply HB.  I'm not sure when that happened or who gave me the name ...heck, it might even have been me!  Maybe it was when we started going into chat in the early days and I used it as a handle ...even I find WomanWhoRunsWithHorses a bit cumbersome to type out!  But the name 'HossBoss' stuck.  Tonight, I decided to make it official and have changed it on my blogger account.  So if any of you see 'HossBoss' leaving comments on your posts ...it's just me, WWRWH!

Road Weary

I've been lagging worse than usual about posting lately.  But it's been a little rough the past couple of weeks, emotionally and physically.  I drove over 500 extra miles so far this month.  I took a day off work to attend a funeral out of town which accounted for 320 miles roundtrip.  Ten days later, I drove 240 miles roundtrip to attend a wedding out of town.  You could say there have been some real ups and some real downs this month.  But the road trips along with my regular 80 mile round-trip commute to work have rendered me and my little car a bit road weary. 

The funeral was for the son of a friend of mine.  I didn't know him well, but he was my son-in-law's uncle and I am good friends with his mother ...so I wanted to pay my respects.  I only met him once about a year ago, but he was one of those people that puts everyone at ease.  He was quiet and unassuming but his smile was warm and genuine and when he laughed, you couldn't help but laugh with him.   He was a good man and, judging from the crowd of people at his memorial service, he will be sorely missed.

The wedding was for my nephew who has sometimes taken the scenic route through life and who is personally responsible for many of the gray hairs on his mother's head ...and mine!  When you have known someone all their life, literally from birth, it's hard to notice sometimes when you stop seeing them as a child and, for the first time, see them as grown.  When my nephew and his beautiful bride exchanged their vows this afternoon, I realized what a fine man he had grown to be.   She brings three children to the marriage and my nephew brings one, but if you could see these six people together ...you would never know they were a blended family.  It was a beautiful ceremony. 

I had a surprise visit from one of my nieces this afternoon and we had a little drama involving a snake, a pistol and some popcorn which I fully intended to post about ...but I'm too tired tonight.  I'll start a draft so I don't forget and fill you in on the details in a day or two.  Just suffice to say that, after today, my niece probably sees me in a little different light.  LOL 

Manisagna is Born!

Yeoldfurt has been under the weather since Saturday and has mostly had just chicken noodle soup for supper these past few days.  He's finally on the mend and ready for some real food again, so I asked him this morning if he'd like me to make manicotti.  He loves manicotti so I got an enthusiastic thumbs up at the suggestion.   After all, it's comprised of his three all time favorite food groups ...meat, cheese and pasta!

When I got home this afternoon, I started digging through the kitchen.  Other than angel hair, spaghetti, flat noodles and elbow macaroni, we don't stock a twelve-month supply of pastas.  I could have sworn I bought a box of manicotti pasta last week but it was nowhere to be found.  All I had were four manicotti shells.  What to do??

While I was digging for the missing box of manicotti, I came across a few extra lasagna noodles in a ziploc bag.  Then I had an idea.  Manicotti (the way I make it) and lasagna are SO similar ...why not combine them into one dish?  And that's how Manisagna came to be ....

I put a layer of meat sauce in the bottom of a 7 x 12 rectangular baking dish.  At one end, I put my four little manicotti shells stuffed with the soft cheese, parmesan and egg mixture.   At the other end, I layered lasagna noodles over the sauce, followed by the soft cheese/egg mixture, followed by shredded mozzarella.  It took three layers on the lasagna side to make it the same height as the manicotti side.  Then I poured the remaining sauce evenly over the top and covered the whole thing with a final layer of shredded mozzarella.  It's been in the oven at 350 degrees for about ten minutes now and it's already smelling good.  I'll make a tossed salad and in another hour or so, we'll sit down to a nice supper.

While we're on the subject of baked pasta dishes, I never boil my pasta before assembling the dish.  I used to and I remember what a headache it was to get the pasta cooked perfectly, then get it cool enough to handle but still hot enough not to stick together.  Not easy.

I don't remember how I discovered this, but somewhere along the way I started assembling lasagna with uncooked pasta.  It was SO much easier to spread the soft cheese/egg mixture evenly on the dry lasagna noodles.  Literally every aspect of the assembly process was easier.  The first time I did it, I assembled the layers to make lasagna, then covered it and left it in the refrigerator over night.  I thought the pasta would absorb some of the juices overnight and soften up.  Then I set it on the counter for 30 minutes the next day to come to room temperature, then baked it at 350 degrees for 50 minutes, as normal.  It was wonderful.  Later on, I discovered leaving it overnight in the refrigerator was not a necessary step.  So now I just assemble and put it in the oven and it always comes out fine.

These days you can buy 'oven ready' lasagna noodles in the grocery stores.  They are shaped slightly different and have shallow ridges (like Ruffles) running the long way on the noodles and they are about twice the price of 'normal' lasagna noodles.  But the ingredients lists are exactly the same.   What a rip-off, huh?

So if you're still boiling the noodles when you make lasagna, please try this method next time you make lasagna.  You may be skeptical the first time, but you'll be a believer after you try it.  And if you think spreading soft cheese/egg mixture is easier on unboiled lasagna noodles, just wait until you see how much easier it is to stuff the manicotti when it's not pre-boiled. 

Fair Warning

Be wary any time you contemplate the purchase of anything where the words 'easy to install' are boldly printed on the packaging and instructions.  Just know going in that some key component will be left off of the list of items contained in the package, or some critical step in the installation process will be skimmed over in the instructions.  It's a given. 

In the days before the Internet, you were left to your imagination and ingenuity to work around these little problems.  At least now there is usually a web address listed somewhere on the packaging and, if you're fortunate, the web address will have additional instructions and sometimes a video demonstration of the installation process.  If you're not so fortunate, well ...you can always fall back on your imagination and ingenuity. 

I purchased two sets of 'easy to install' roman shades for our living room last week.  I was initially impressed with the instructions because they included a paper template you could cut out and tape to the wall in order to mark the screw holes precisely for the hardware.   I've used homemade paper templates for such tasks for years and was impressed to see a manufacturer include one with the instructions.  I read the instructions.  Seemed reasonably clear.  English might not have been the first language of the person that wrote these instructions, but other than a couple grammatical errors, the steps seemed logical and fairly clear. 

The instructions started with a section titled 'Carton Components' which clearly listed each item, the quantity included and a diagram for easy identification.  The items listed were 2 end caps, 2 mounting brackets, 1 shade assembly, 6 screws, 6 drywall anchors, 1 wand clip, and 1 wand.  Yup, all there. 

There was a separate section titled 'Additional Tools Needed' which listed only three items ...a Phillips screw driver, power drill and tape measure.  So far, so good. I gather my tools and move on to the actual instructions.

Step one:  "Slide end of wand assembly over spring in shade assembly. Tighten the screw one quarter turn past when it stops."  Okay...

First thing I notice is the screw is tiny ...and black ...impossible to actually see if it's a slot or a Phillips head.  Use the old 'touch and feel' method ...definitely not a slot.  Go get smallest Phillips screw driver I own (think eyeglass repair) and proceed to turn screw ...and turn and turn and turn some more.  Screw is turning, not tightening.  Grrr. 

Re-read instructions.  No clues there.  Re-read packaging material. A-ha ...a web address.  Go to computer and log onto website.  Oh good, there's a link for a five minute installation video ...this is encouraging.  If the 'how to' video is only  five minutes, how hard can this be?  Now we might get somewhere.  The first two minutes of the video is a sales pitch on all the virtues of their product.  Yeah, yeah, yeah ...get to the installation part!

And there it is.  The missing piece of the puzzle. She is using an Allen wrench to tighten the screw on the rod assembly ...and she refers to it as 'included' in the packaging.  What?!  What wrench?   I pause the video and go back to dig through the packaging.  It wasn't with all the other hardware, clips and brackets.  And then I see it ....taped discretely to the bottom edge of the shade.  All the other small components ...screws, drywall anchors, clips and caps had been packaged separately in a little cardboard box that was plenty big enough to hold the wrench too.  Why they taped it to the bottom of the shade, I will never know.   

Mission finally accomplished and I guess all's well that ends well.  It just baffles me though that in an age where product labeling is so highly regulated in all other areas, there are apparently no minimal guidelines a company has to follow before they are allowed to use the words 'EASY TO INSTALL' on their products. 

Camping Has Been Fun

But I'm ready to move back into the bedroom.  We've been sleeping in the living room for the past week while I painted our bedroom and bathroom.  It only took me three days to do the painting which was actually one day less than I expected.  What has taken a lot longer than I expected is putting-it-all-back-together.  It's a good thing I took Thursday and Friday off from work last week.  I needed those two days plus Saturday just to get all the painting done.  Thankfully, I had some help on the weekend because my sister drove up from Houston.  By the time she went home Sunday night, all that was left was to mount a couple of shelves in the bathroom and install the hardware for two wall hangings in the bedroom.  But since I had to go back to work Monday morning, progress on the clean up and final touches has been much slower.

Everything turned out really nice.  Nothing like fresh paint and new window coverings to freshen up a room.  The color on the walls in that room when we bought this house was sort of a 'mongrel' shade of green  ...as if several partial buckets of leftover paint were mixed and then slapped on the walls.  Nearly all the windows had the old metal venetian blinds in them.  Not the contemporary plantation shutters ...old, ugly, impossible-to-keep-clean venetian blinds.  Ugh!  This house was built in 1985 by a retired couple that moved up here from Houston.  I'm pretty sure those blinds have been on the windows since this place was built.  Repainting that room has been a project we've both been anxious to do since we moved here almost five years ago.  I don't want to tackle another while, but it was worth all the hard work and inconvenience. 

Yeoldfurt has been a such good sport through all this.  He helped me drag our mattress out to the living room and has cheerfully dealt with the inconvenience of having most of the house disheveled for a whole week now.  But tomorrow is a day off for both of us and can drag the mattress back into the bedroom in the morning.   Then Yeoldfurt can concentrate on his own list of projects, like snake-proofing the chicken coop and building new nesting boxes for the hens.  While he's busy outside, I'll get the shelves hung in the bathroom and finish straightening up the bedroom.  If I finish before he's back in the house, there's plenty of housework to catch up on around here and I'm actually looking forward to doing it.

It's About Time

I'm taking two days off this weekend to concentrate on a project here at home.  We moved here almost five years ago and I am finally getting around to painting the master bedroom.  Oh, the walls are painted  ...it's just that they are not a particularly attractive color.  Neither of us like them and I bought the paint to re-do the room the second year we were here.  But, well ...life gets in the way sometimes.  So now, almost five years after we moved here and almost four years after the new paint was purchased, I'm finally going to 'get 'er done.' 

There was a time that I could paint an average sized room in about half a day.  Barring cathedral ceilings or intricate wood trim molding, I was really quick and fairly tidy.  Knock on wood, I've never had an all out paint catastrophe ...like knocking a gallon bucket over or anything.  But I've had the occasional drips and spatters and oops's that just go with the territory.  I always keep a dampened old terry washcloth handy, and clean up any accidents immediately ...damage control.   Yet in spite of tying my hair back and wearing old rag-bag clothes ...I usually end up with quite a bit of paint on my person.  But that only further justifies the long hot shower after the job is done, right?  As long as the floors and furnishings are unscathed, I'm happy.  

I haven't painted a room in a long time.  I painted our kitchen the year after we moved here, but it's more of a small hallway than a room ...not very big at all.  I painted two big rooms at our last house and it took me almost ten days.  That was about three times longer than I had been expecting.  Yeoldfurt was out of town for two weeks at the time and I remember thinking it was a good thing I started right after he left because after the painting was done, I still had three or four days to recuperate before he got home. 

The rooms I'm painting this time are not large and there are no vaulted ceilings, but there are other hindrances.  The master bath has custom pine cabinets in a light honey finish.  Even a few specks of paint will stand out like a neon sign.  There's an alcove outside the bathroom with a vanity in the same pine cabinetry and a walk-in closet.  A bathroom door, a closet door and a fancy vanity to paint around in an area that's probably six to seven feet square. My edging will have to be razor straight where the wall meets the wood or, again ...it will be a neon sign flashing 'ROOKIE PAINTER WAS HERE.'  I know I'm not as fast as I used to be and I'm pretty sure I'm not as steady as I used to be, so I'm tackling that bathroom and vanity area first ...while I'm fresh. 

I'm starting at 7:00am tomorrow.  If I can get one coat on the bathroom and the whole vanity area edged by mid-afternoon tomorrow,  I'll be happy.  I'll take a break for an hour and get supper lined out before Yeoldfurt gets home.  I'll paint for another hour or two tomorrow night too and hope to have the bathroom and vanity completely done before we call it a night.

In my younger years, I used to just attack a painting project.  I usually covered the big areas first, then went back and edged.  Now that I'm older and slower and wear out quicker, I'm changing my strategy.   I'm kind of like those cordless tools that are so handy for the quick and dirty jobs.  I put the battery in my cordless drill and the minute I press the trigger, that battery begins to drain.  It may be good for a couple dozen screws before the torque and speed start to be noticeably less.  But once it's noticeable, it will be downhill from there.  My energy is that way these days too.  I used to be able to go all day for days on end.  Now I am good for an hour maybe two ...depending on how much 'torque' and 'speed' is attempted ...and then I need to recharge.  So, my strategy now it to tackle the intricate, time consuming tasks like edging first thing and save the easier stuff for last when I'm at the one foot in front of the other stage of the game. 

The bathroom and vanity area comprise less than a fourth of the entire space to be painted, but with the cabinets and tight spaces to be maneuvered, I'm figuring a full day to get them painted.  The second day, I will begin by edging and trimming the bedroom.  There are only two windows, another closet and the bedroom door to be taped and edged around in that room ...and the baseboards, of course.  Because I'm so much slower than I used to be and get slower as the day wears on, I figure the taping and trimming and edging in the bedroom will take half of the second day.  If I'm right about that, I'll try to get one wall ...probably the smallest wall ...painted before I stop to make supper Friday night.  My sister is driving up Friday night to spend the weekend with us, but won't be here until about 9:00pm.  By then I'll be done painting for the day but she will help me finish the rest of the painting Saturday.  Since all the tedious edging and trimming will be done before Saturday, I'll let her start on the bedroom walls and I'll try to get a second coat on the walls in the bathroom.  The second coat should go faster because I won't have to edge anything. When I'm done, I can help her finish in the bedroom.  We're a good team and just having company makes the work go faster.  Sunday we will have the fun job of getting all the furniture set back up.

That really IS the fun part for us female types.  Men don't seem to care about rearranging furniture, at least not just for the sake or rearranging.  Cats definitely don't like it.  The one cat we have in the house is beside herself at the moment because we moved our mattress out to the living room last night in preparation for this painting project.  We are 'camping' (sleeping) in the living room until the room is put back together.  This cat is a little neurotic anyway.  She absolutely adores me and finally, after 12 years, has decided Yeoldfurt is okay too.  But she likes us to stick to a routine and not MOVE anything.  If we stay up past our usual bedtime, she sits in the hallway and lets out pitiful yowls to tell us we're keeping her up too late.  If one of us goes to bed and the other stays up, she wanders back and forth between us uttering the same pitiful protests until we are both in bed for the night.  Well, when we wrangled the mattress out to the living room last night, she was wide eyed and anxious.  When we actually laid down on the mattress and settled in for the night, she was beside herself.  By the time the painting is done, she'll have gotten used to the mattress in the living room ...and then we'll put it back in the bedroom.  She'll be traumatized all over again.  I don't dare tell her I'm planning to rearrange the dressers in the room when we put it back together.  Poor kitty ....

Oh, What a Great Day!

We always have a 'To Do' list for Saturdays and today, we got it all done.  That in itself made it a good day but what made it even better was that the first thing on the list was a fun thing ...riding.  That's something we don't do enough of these days and that we haven't done together in a long time. 

I think we enjoyed today so much partly because last week was tough for both of us at our respective jobs.  In both cases, it was your typical work-related, boss-engineered fiasco exacerbated with a healthy dose of office politics.  Total nonsense and so not productive in the work place.  By Thursday evening, it had taken it's toll on both our moods.  But Friday, as I drove in to the office, I decided I was going to do everything I could when I got home to make it an easy stress-free evening for Yeoldfurt.  Saturday is the one day out of the week when we are both off so we try to make it count. 

I had to do the grocery shopping on the way home, but I hurried through the aisles and didn't waste any time getting everything put away and dinner started as soon as I got home.  While dinner was on autopilot, I went out and took care of all the critter chores whic is a 30-45 minute ritual every evening.  By the time Yeoldfurt rolled in, all he had to do was get comfortable and meet me on the patio.  I had his favorite beverage on ice and waiting for him.  We always spend an hour or so on the patio in the evenings this time of year.  The temperatures are bearable and the sunset is spectacular.  This is our time to catch up on the happenings of each other's day and make plans for the days ahead.  When we had our session last night, we decided there were three things we wanted to get done this Saturday ... RIDE the horses, FINISH the electric fence (minor tweaks) and one town errand.

When we first started talking about it last night, Yeoldfurt suggested we go into town first and get that out of the way.  But the place we needed to go doesn't open up until 10:00 a.m. and I knew we should probably get our day started long before then.  So reminding him that since the first thing on our list was the one thing we could count on accomplishing, I suggested that we ride first.   We are always up with the chickens, so to speak, and it's always coolest in the morning so that's the best time to ride.  The horses are also already right here by the house until we turn them out in the morning so it's also the most convenient time to ride. 

Plans are just plans.  Sometimes life gets in the way and plans have to change.  But today, everything fell into place perfectly.  We were both up an hour before sunrise and I had started my experimental batch of 'Leather Cookies' in the Excalibur.  By 8:30, we were dressed and out the door to feed the little critters and gather the horses.  We brought the two horses in that we were going to ride and turned all the others out to the pasture.  By 9:00, we were saddled up and riding.   Yeoldfurt's mare is the buckskin named Lucy.  She's half-mustang and can be highly opinionated.  She hadn't carried a saddle, let alone a rider, for about a year so she was a little more opinionated than usual this morning.  But after she lost the first argument or two, she settled down to business.  By the time Yeoldfurt stepped off of her, she was willing and even enjoying the attention.  He had only been on her about 30 minutes but it was a good ride and a good refresher since she'd had so much time off.  I stayed in the saddle a little bit longer, working on some fancy stuff with my mare.  She's neck reining now and her sidepasses are getting better and better.  I guess her sidepasses have always been fine.  She knows what to do ...it's really me who is getting better and better with my cues.  If I get my cues right, she does great.  If she's sloppy or hesitant, it's because my cues were off.  She probably appreciates me finally figuring it all out! 

We spent a while grooming them after the ride and gave them both a handful of sweet feed for a treat.  By that time, the 'Leather Cookies' were ready, so we let them sample those too.  Lucy will eat anything you offer her but my mare tends to be skeptical of anything new.  They both LOVED the leather cookies though.  They ate three a piece and were looking for more, but we had to draw the line somewhere.  We turned them out with the other horses and got ready to run our town errand.  Even the town errand went smoother than we expected and we were back home in an hour.  I fixed us a light lunch, we took a short break, and then we were ready to start on the fence work.

Fencing is a never-ending chore when you have livestock.  Setting posts and stretching wire is slow and back breaking unless you have a crew and a tractor or bobcat to run an auger.  But today's chore only involved replacing and repairing fasteners on the electric fence.  Yeoldfurt started at one end and I started at the other.  The poor dog is used to tagging along with us whenever we work around the property, but we're usually working side by side.  With us heading off in opposite directions, she didn't know who to follow.  It didn't take long though and we met in the middle to finish up the job.  It was about 5:00 in the evening when we were done and we sat down on the patio with some cold drinks, taking a break to reflect on what a good day it had been.

Just when I couldn't imagine how the day could get better, we got an email from our tax consultant that we're getting a nice refund this year.  That means we can fund some of the goals we set for ourselves in January, like buying a freezer and getting a couple of calves.  There will probably even be a little 'mad money' left over for each of us.  I think Yeoldfurt has some ideas on how he'd like to spend his and I know I have ideas on how I'd like to spend mine.  Yup, today has truly been a great day!