Deck Watcher

A couple years ago, I gave one of these to my sister for Christmas.

I've wanted one for myself ever since.

Back in May, I stumbled across a sale on collegiate merchandise at a fan site I've frequented in the past. This guy, usually $24.99, was on sale for $10. I also got another Hawkeye tee shirt because I realized all the shirts I have are from bowl games. I didn't have a shirt which just said "Hawkeyes". As shipping was a flat rate, I got a shirt.

He's happily amongst the flower pots on the deck.

Come winter, I'll bring him in and find a place in the living room. Makes me happy to come out here and sit.

Beverage:  Scottish Breakfast Tea

Deb

Amazing Feets

I said, back after Christmas, I didn't need more socks. I have not posted the photos of the socks I received from Carole and Larry for Christmas. I'm getting there. Other photos demand attention.

The sock drawer is quite crammed but I can't go anywhere without seeing socks I NEED. Well, "need" is, really, too strong of a word, but "want" doesn't quite cover it. I found these and they made their way into my sock drawer.

I had no Easter socks.

I'm also on the look-out, next year, for some with colored eggs on them. The dark pink bow on the rabbit has sparkly bits.

Then, I stumbled upon these in a notice from one of the booksellers whose catalogue I get.

Library card socks. I could get them in light blue or yellow. The yellow tugged at my nostalgia. They were $2.50 a pair. How could I resist? (I also bought some fun Christmas cards from this retailer because the handling charge tripled the cost of the socks. It's not a deal if you wind up paying $9.00 for handling.)

I have this weakness. Is there a Sock-aholics Anonymous? Or maybe I simply need a bigger drawer?

Beverage:  Scottish Breakfast Tea

Deb

Vultures

This is what happens when I go to Subway on a weekend. They start circling.

I don't know what it is about Subway's turkey but the kids love it. The deli turkey I bring home from the store doesn't have the same appeal. I'm a creature of habit with my Subway sandwiches; turkey and provolone, topped with lettuce, spinach and green pepper. Add a line of yellow mustard and I'm good.

Hamlet will try anything I have, but Mija and Pilchard are more picky. I'm very okay with picky. Yet bring in a Subway sandwich and I have to share my turkey.

Vultures.

Beverage:  Scottish Breakfast tea

Deb

Sewing

I'm "blaming" my friend, Meredith Carney, for a spur-of-the moment purchase at the beginning of the month. In case you don't know, the movie "Despicable Me 3" is now in movie theaters. The minions are back and with them, product tie-ins, of course. She was shopping at Wal*Mart, a place I won't go, and sent me photos of some minion clothing. "Hmmmm," thinks I. "Is there minion fabric?" Well duh.

JoAnn Fabrics might have just a few choices. There are also some prints available online only, but I need to see the fabric to decide what print to get and then, what to make of said print.

Yes, yes. I know what's going through your head. We will not talk about the boxes of fabric in the closet. We will agree to just nod in that general direction. Look! Minions! I did not have to go to JoAnn Fabrics for anything. I went because of minions and Meredith showing me clothing at Wal*Mart. What's the aphorism? "I can resist anything except temptation"?

I came home with these.

The Disney World trip is less than 100 days away now. I was going to do something crazy and make capes for all the guild members, and family members, attending the event. But, about April, I realized I'd bitten off way more than I could chew so I abandoned that before I spent $$$ on fabric I won't get fashioned into things. But I could get a shirt done before October.

I opted to buy a new pattern. I usually don't buy Vogue patterns because they assume you are more than an intermediate sewer, but I like this one and it's fairly simple. I'm going to make the shirt at the lower right corner. It's two fabrics. I will make a mostly yellow with a white block and then a mostly white with a yellow block. The shirt has a 9 inch zipper in the front to facilitate putting it on. It's stitched in the "invisible zipper" style, something I haven't done in a very long time. We'll see. Since this is a strictly humorous shirt, I don't, necessarily, care if it's visible or invisible. The zipper is not the point of the shirt.

I get these home and feel the desire to sew rising. In order to do that, I had to clear a path to the ironing board and deal with the stuff I had stacked on the ironing board. Then, I've spent the last week clearing off the kitchen table. I'm so bad about just dropping stuff there in the "I'll deal with it later" mode, and there it sits. The urge to just move stuff to another pile was strong, but I resisted and actually cleared off the table, putting things away, dealing with them.

In the process of cleaning, I found the pieces to a lightweight jacket I was going to make last year, to wear to Carole's for my birthday.

(There's the cape pattern I bought. Not sure what I'll do with it now, but you never know when a pattern will come in handy.)

The jacket is not complicated.

I cut out the pattern back in early October of last year.

And then it sat. I got busy and just lost the desire to work on it, even with a self-imposed deadline. When the table was cleared and all the pieces liberated, I felt like I couldn't sew the two shirts without finishing this jacket. I didn't have, handy, thread matching the pink. I have, instead, a dark mauve-ish color which actually works better. One day's worth of sewing and viola.

The next step is to prepare the trim. I'm using a black satin for the trim around the jacket and sleeves. I bought more interfacing for the shirts, which was a good thing because it appears I never cut interfacing for the trim. But I got to thinking. I haven't sewn satin in years and I have concerns about fusing interfacing to satin. Would the iron leave marks as I was fusing? Asking my seamstress friends, they said to use sew-in interfacing because satin will pucker with fusible. Hadn't thought about puckering. The next issue is, do I have enough non-fusible interfacing? I haven't a clue, so I will have to find the box with the interfacing, and, tonight, take a look. At least there is still a sale at JoAnn's so if I need interfacing, it will be on sale. I don't use non-fusible if I can help it, but I know I have a stash, just how much is the question.

So, here we go. Once the interfacing issue is resolved, this will go together very quickly. Then I can work on the minion shirts. Sewing makes me feel good. Finishing projects makes me feel double good. It's win/win. And, my "helper" likes to supervise when I sit in the recliner as I pin seams.

Beverage:  Scottish Breakfast Tea

Deb

Guffaw

One of the Twitter places I follow had this in their feed.

I confess to laughing so very hard at this.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

The Things I See, part three

I'm just going to post this photo right here.

I realize what they were trying to do; impede cars from driving the wrong way on a one-way street, which is to my right; and to protect people crossing said busy street in front of me. There would be lots of pedestrians as there is a university across the street from these pylons.

Still, no one reviewed the final design and thought, "Ya know, this bears a not-so-similar profile to a piece of male anatomy. Maybe we should rethink this?"?

Ah yes. The things I see.

Beverage:  Orange Juice

Deb

Denizens, Part 2

So these are the guys who caused problems with the front feeder. I got it up on the window and it took 2 days before someone was scoping it out.

If you've followed this space for any length of time, you remember how excited I was to see black squirrels in the yard. I had never seen one prior to a visit to a Canadian friend back in 2001. Four years ago, I saw them a couple blocks south. Now, I don't see them all the time, but their range includes my yard and, by extension, my window bird feeder.

I swear. Squirrels must be able to do higher math in their heads.

This little guy is one of the reasons the feeder doesn't stick. When I moved it up higher on the window and he couldn't reach it from the sill, he climbed the pine to the north, ran across the roof and fell off the gutters into the feeder. I have no idea how many falling attempts it took to knock the feeder off the window onto the ground.

A smaller version with more stability arrived in the mail last week. I need the weather to get above 65 to attach it to the window. I need to wash the window before attaching. I suppose we could make a bet. How long before they find the new one and pillage that?

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Better Mail Delivery

I don't have even a vague idea of how long I had this mailbox. It was a silver steel construction made in Youngstown, Ohio.

I sprayed it black and hand drew the Iowa tiger hawk on the side, as well as hand printed the last name on the bottom.

The front door rusted off some 5 years ago. The bottom front wasn't connected to the body anymore. The flag wouldn't stand upright for those few times when I put outgoing mail in it. But it was on that post almost like the whole things was a unit. My attempts to loosen the bolts met with frustration. Mail got wet. In the winter, a driving snow would cause a mini-drift to accumulate in the open front. Yes, spiders loved living in the back, but I think that's sort of a hazard even if the box had a front door.

When my landscaper, Jeremy, asked if there were things I wanted to have done around the house, one of the things I mentioned was the installation of a new mailbox. "I can do that, easy," he said. So, I trotted over to Ace Hardware, after looking online for mailboxes. I wear my Hawkeyes "on my sleeve", so to speak. I wanted to replace like with like. Custom mailboxes were upwards of $200. I don't need that. If I can get a basic mailbox, I can do the customizing.

Viola.

I could get this in steel, silver or black finish. Twenty dollars. It's the exact same size as the rusted one.

This was exciting. I would have a mailbox with a door, once again. Side note: The box was the purrfect size.

She couldn't turn around, once she got inside, but I did find her sitting in it, having backed into the box. I thought cats did not like backing up because they can't see where they are going. I tossed the box after 24 hours because I knew it wouldn't see a lot of use.

The next thing was to decorate it. I already knew how I would do the name. You can buy stick on letters at hardware stores. For some reason, Ace was out of "e's" and "n's". So I headed to Michaels Craft store. They didn't have all the letters for my last name either. But Jeremy called and said he would have to postpone putting up the box for a couple weeks and, in the interim, the missing letters came in. They are peel off the backing and stick.

Next was the Iowa logo. I thought about hand painting the tiger hawk again. I could actually make a stencil and outline the area to be painted so it would come out looking less hand and more painted. Then I remembered the decal I bought for my work office. The large oval tiger hawk, which is on the wall in my office, came with two, much smaller, decals.

They would be perfect.

These were the last decals on the sheet. I had considered giving them to a family member but kept forgetting to do that.

Once everything was stuck to the mailbox, I could cut up the box the decal sheet came in and recycle it and the sheet. When the time comes that I leave my current place of employment, I'll roll up the big tiger hawk and take it with me, but, as that is some years ahead, I do not need to save all the packing pieces. They just get in the way. I should have moved the logo back toward the rear of the box and not right by the flag. The second I stuck it to the box, I knew it wasn't moving so had to put the last name a bit farther forward than I would have liked and it's at a slight angle downward. It's out front so I don't see it every day or it would bother me. I go around straightening pictures in my house because their being cockeyed bothers me.

Two weeks after I did this, Jeremy came by with his fancy tools and spent a good two hours removing the old and installing the new.

He wound up getting brand new bolts because the other ones, once he freed them from the mailbox, snapped in half. They rusted between the head and the body of the bolt.

By the end of September, I had a brand spankin' new mailbox. It's been wonderful. It has a working door! My mail doesn't get wet unless it's put in the box wet. Small packages and parcels stay dry. The flag works, although I tend to take outgoing mail to the office or drop it off at one of the two post offices I pass by on my way to and from the office.

It's the little things which make one's quality of life better. I don't even think about this anymore, when it was a constant source of irritation when it was the old box. I noticed the top edges on the logo are peeling up after a winter, but I know that decal isn't coming off without a fight. If it does, I'll just order a new one. Then I can move it to that empty black space at the rear of the box. And, because I know she'll say something, "No April. This would not look good in gray and burgundy. Sigh."

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb

Life With Kitten

The last time I had a kitten in the house was back in the late 1990's, when we adopted Betsy and her daughter, Rascal. Betsy had been someone's pet who was drummed out of the house. She took up residence in the wood pile of a former neighbor and had Rascal. We "met" her when she defended her territory from Shakespeare. She was a very loving cat.

Rascal, being born "in the wild", was feral when we came to know her. Through the summer, we worked with her to get her used to people and then to living in the house. We knew she had adopted us when I took Carole to school one day and then set out to do errands. Rascal got out and I wasn't about to chase her down. When I came back, at around noon, a neighbor said she heard a cat meowing at the back door to be let in. I opened the door and Rascal shot into the house, dashing under the bed. She stayed there until dinner, but, when she finished dinner, she went back under the bed. I didn't see her for two days outside of feedings. After that, she came inside when I called.

She had energy, but because a lot of her "kittenhood" was spent outside, we didn't see the bouncing off the wall that kittens do. So, it's come a something of a shock to me how much energy Hamlet has. This was driven home in October when there was an enormous crash in the living room.

Behold the remnants of a black cat candle holder. He was so scared of the noise and what my reaction would be, he went into the home office and huddled under the cedar chest for a couple hours. This really shattered so I wound up washing the floor, letting it dry and then going over it with packing tape to make sure all the shards had been picked up.

Since then, more things have fallen. I thought I had "kitten proofed" my house but now that he's bigger, he can jump higher. He knows "No" so I can point at him and sternly say it. I wasn't upset about losing this candle holder. I have quite a few. The onus really is on me for not looking around and thinking, "What would a kitten like to knock off because stuff falling is fascinating?"

Beverage:  Orange Juice

Deb

Cooking With Deb

Some years ago, I don't remember how many, my mother sent me a box of recipes.

She'd gotten around to cleaning out her recipe boxes, first of all. Then, she went through her mother's recipes for ones she wanted to save. Finally, she sorted through stacks of recipes from my dad's sisters, given to her over the years and dumped into a drawer. When she was done sorting, she sent what she didn't want to me.

There are hundreds here. I have no idea how old some of these are, but they reflect American Midwestern cooking tastes. The box has sat, unused, in the home office for many years. I was going to integrate these with the recipes I save but it would be such a daunting task, I put it off in favor of doing most anything else.

I like to cook, but the realities of my life are that cooking is not something I do when I get home from work. My stamina is gone so whatever supper is must be something reasonably quick. That doesn't favor good food; let's be honest. Ice cream, crackers, peanut butter sandwiches, dry cereal, tend to be staples of dinner. And a diet like that is not good for me. My efforts to reform my diet fall apart simply because I'm tired.

Then one day, I had an idea. What if I cooked one new recipe a week? I could dive into mom's box and make one new thing. I grabbed a handful and counted recipes, using the date numerator. When I got to #28, I read it to see whether it was something I'd make. It was a fruit cocktail sauce to serve warm with ham. Nope. Counted again and got a recipe for green beans with bacon. You won't find me ever making green beans. I cannot stand them. The next batch of counting yielded this.

Well, this was something I would eat. Plus, I had most of the ingredients. I needed a pastry shell, the sweetened condensed milk and the biscuit mix. Turns out I also needed nuts because all I have, right now, are almonds, but, at the time I made this, I thought I had walnuts.

It's quick to make, but it makes a lot of batter.

The regular pie shell couldn't hold all of it. If I make this again, I should try a deep dish shell. The excess, I put in a greased glass dish and baked with the pie.

The pie bakes for 45 minutes. I had no idea how long to cook this so I checked every 10 minutes. At 20 minutes, I pulled it from the oven. I should have left it bake for another 10 minutes. While set, it wasn't completely baked and I wound up eating these with a spoon, not that there's anything wrong with brownie consumption via spoon. The pie came out, cooked through, at 45 minutes.

The smell in my house of brownies baking was heavenly.

It cut well. The brownie had a nice crust to it. You bake the shell first, add the batter and bake again. I had concerns the shell would be overdone, but it wasn't.

It's very rich. The chocoholic that I am can only eat one piece a day. The batter was scrumptious and I wonder how long it would keep to be used as an ice cream topping. Perhaps that's something for a party. I am not ashamed to confess I licked that bowl clean. The addition of whipped cream was a nice touch, but I wish I had vanilla ice cream. THAT would have been outstanding with a slice of pie.

So, the first recipe in this idea was a success. That got me thinking about the box I have in the home office with all the recipes I've saved over 35+ years. There was a teen magazine when I was growing up, called Ingenue. They gave tips on health and beauty, but also on homemaking and budgeting and living on your own. They were rather ahead of their time back then, not assuming you were going to find a guy and get married and jump into the Ladies Home Journal set. I started collecting recipes back then. I have a couple I still make.

When I moved, the stash went with me. Eventually, the addition of other cooking magazines necessitated a filing system for what I was saving. Enter "the box and folder" system.

It started out okay. Label the manilla envelopes with categories and then drop the recipe into that folder. Once a month, grab a folder and read through the recipes, picking a few to try. Eventually, I took to just ripping out the pages and tossing them in the box. I don't remember the last time I actually sorted recipes into the folders. Some of the folders were 25  years old and disintegrating at the edges. What if I combined the two boxes?

That's what I did. I happened to have a box the right size for the cut ones. My saved ones are on the bottom, with mom's saved ones on the top.

All the single sheets are in a stack, to be gone through, assessed, and the recipe I actually want to try cut out and added to the box. The former box was thoroughly examined but the sides are too high to lie down and rest one's chin on so that box has been deemed "recyclable". The old file folders were sniffed but Pilchard decided she didn't want to lie on those. Her current box is to the right. All the folders have been recycled.

I think this will be a lot of fun. I reduced a mess to at least some containment. I need to buy a cake mix for next week's recipe. I expect there will be quite a few 'what the...' upcoming but that's part of the excitement of doing this. It's going to be great exploring what I, my mother, my grandmother and my aunts thought was so good 20-odd years ago that we saved a recipe. Doing this has already got me cooking supper, too. That alone is a victory.

Beverage:  Assam tea

Deb

How to Buy Plants

Seed catalogues flooded my mailbox at the beginning of the month. There is one, from a company in Maine, which comes in the mass of mail right after Thanksgiving. I have never ordered from them and, because it comes so early, I'm not inclined to consider what I might be planting a full 6 months in the future. I have my favorite companies; Jung Seed, Park Seed and Select Seeds. I received a new catalogue this year, something from a nursery which specializes in prairie plants, which looks very intriguing. Other than these four, everything else has been thumbed through and discarded. You find companies you like and you stick with them.

The same goes for nurseries. I go to Planter's Palette. I've been going here since the place opened and have watched them grow, specialize, diversify. I know, if I have an issue, I can go to them for advice. They told me what I needed to put in the raised bed to get good plants. The guy I spoke with also said, "Don't buy our top soil. It's overpriced. Go to Wal*Mart and get some of theirs. But, you'll need to amend that with our mushroom compost; one bag of compost to one bag of top soil. Next year, mix into the box more compost. The year after that, add top soil. Keep doing this and anything you plant in the box will thrive." I appreciate that kind of honesty. I did that and I think it's one reason the sunflowers in the box were gorgeous.

I want to make the north side of the house, now that all the trash stuff has been removed, a bit more exciting. It's just the bare wall, foundation and the two pine trees which had their dead branches removed with the clearing of the brush. I thought adding a ground cover and filling the area with ferns and hostas would be a cool idea. Unfortunately, the cost of ferns and hostas means this has to be a long term project, but I could start with a couple.

Well, what to start with. Planter's has an abundance, almost mind boggling, number of types of ferns and hostas. Big, little, with color, straight green, you name it. I was prepared to spend an hour wandering around the tables, looking at the varieties, reading about them, pondering, looking at what I was going to buy and deciding how much I could afford. It took me 15 minutes.

This hosta is called "Mouse Ears". You can see it, right? Here's the fern.

It's called "Godzilla".

Yes, while I was prepared to do some research and ask questions, I picked a hosta and a fern solely because they had cool names.

The ground on the north side of the house is hard and compacted. I couldn't get the holes dug as deeply as I wanted to get these planted. I also bought some pachysandra for ground cover. I watered every other day and then we got some good soaking rains so I didn't check up on the plants for about a month. When I came around the side of the house, they had been eaten down to an inch above the soil line. In October, however, the fern and the hosta had put out new bracts, which was encouraging.

Over the weekend, when I rehung the bird feeder, they were nowhere to be seen, but I think they die back. My neighbor to the south has several large cinnamon ferns and those die away completely with the first hard frost. The pachysandra was still there.

I did think that perhaps I need a raised bed on that side of the house. The creeping Charlie has taken over where I had scattered grass seed. I probably need to cover the ground with landscape fabric and let the sun's heat kill the grass and weeds under it. It's an old method of killing weeds in the soil. If I cover the creeping Charlie, that should, in theory, kill that patch and I could start anew with grass. I really wanted to put poppies on the north side of the downspout. I forgot to buy them last year. I love the look of poppies and used to have a couple plants in the front.

There will be some landscaping changes this year. I'm not retiring and moving away, yet, so I want the lawn to look better than it has in years. I was quite neglectful.

Beverage:  English Breakfast Tea

Deb

Things I See

During last October's bevy of inspections, one of the places I inspected was music practice space. It was also space for theatre and concerts. I was on the second floor where there were two instructor offices and two storage rooms. I opened the door to storage room #1 and saw this.

Now, I wonder, does this represent a decapitation?

Beverage:  LaCroix Berry Seltzer

Deb

How Was Your Summer, Part 7

Mija and Pilchard were very unhappy through August and into September, as Hamlet learned the house. I've talked about how I know when I'm being "yelled at". The tone of the meow changes. I heard that alot.

The three of us were not prepared for a kitten's energy. He ran everywhere. He pounced. He jumped. He attacked. I felt, on some days, that all I did was break up fights. Pilchard, especially, was not happy.

I spent a lot of time saying, "Hamlet! No!" Sometimes I wonder if he thinks that's his full name. He took over Mija's spot in the recliner...

...which angered her to the point that she followed me around one day, for a full hour, meowing angrily. I sometimes felt I wasn't giving the girls enough attention. It's hard to spread myself equally when I see a belly just ripe for rubbing.

We had an issue with sneezing at the beginning of fall. The girls didn't catch anything so we considered he had some kind of allergic reaction to something.

He learned, by the end of September, what time I came home and I would see him in the window of the office, waiting.

Or he'd be by the back door.

This was very poignant for me because Rascal, who looks a lot like Hamlet, used to do this, too. Having been outside, he tends to try to sneak out, but he knows his name and he goes inside after my getting really mad at him for leaving the deck.

He follows me downstairs when I do the laundry, but when I say, "Hamlet, upstairs," he goes. He discovered the laundry chute and that's the best thing in the world. He goes down the chute and onto the top of the furnace where it's warm. He follows me into the bathroom and will come running from anywhere in the house if he hears me go into the bathroom. He likes to sit on the edge of the tub when I shower which can result, as it did yesterday, in him falling into the tub during the shower. I had to get another toothbrush because he chewed on the one in the holder. That's now his and I keep mine in the medicine chest.

Any food, ANY food, I have, he needs to see, smell, taste, touch.

I was worried because I caught him lapping down some of my room temperature tea. The vet said that's okay. He's also stuck his nose in my Godiva liqueur-laced hot cocoa, which is less good than tea. He doesn't get that cats don't eat a lot of things people do. If I'm eating it, kitten needs to investigate.

Things have slowly, slowly, settled down. During football season, when I'm streaming games on the computer or watching them on TV, he learned that mom gets excited and the best place was not the living room. It was really quiet one afternoon so I went into the bedroom at half-time and found this.

I was shocked as the girls appeared to not want anything to do with Hamlet. Two weeks later, I caught them doing the same thing. It's not all the time and usually when there are clean clothes, but this is still done.

And we all co-existed when we were all outside on the deck in those last warm days of fall.

He sleeps with me, usually next to my legs. Sometimes, he will climb on me, lie down and start purring. That lasts for about 20 minutes and he wanders away. He will also lick my chin which isn't all that appreciated at 2:30 in the morning.

We have made our peace. He recognizes Pilchard is top cat. He has a tendency to jump Mija, something I am trying very hard to break him of. I have caught both girls chasing him, Pilchard moreso than Mija. We've reached the point where he will see Pilchard in the hall and I'll hear that little trill cats make to communicate with each other. He'll lie down and the two will wrestle.

It's been trying. There is no question about that. I was unprepared for kitten energy. His nickname is "Kitten Britches" or "Britches" for short, but mostly I use "Hamlet" as I don't want him confused. My house looks like a pet store's toy department exploded. He started to bring balls back when I tossed them, but he hasn't in some time. I guess I need to work with him. They all did well when I went to Virginia in November. The guy I hired said they all came out to see him when he came to feed them. Hamlet is into big cat food now. I have to feed him in the bedroom because he will shove the girls off their dishes. I'm hoping he'll grow out of that.

I know I did right by this guy. For all the "Hamlet! No!", the boops on the nose, the chasing, the growling, the extra expense for food and vet bills, my life is much more with him in it. Thanks go to Becky for recognizing a plaintive meow and rescuing him. When he wants to snuggle, which the girls have never wanted to do, any and all stress I could have melts.

He's something of a celebrity within my World of Warcraft guild, too. "ARG! Life with kitten britches!" "What did he do now?" How could anyone resist that face? I sure couldn't.

Beverage:  Water

Deb