The HOTTEST last hot day of the summer – apparently, according to predictions, which we now have to pay attention to, as we’re more at the mercy of them. Today was the last scorcher and after this, it gets gradually better and better until there’s beautiful, crispy snow again.
Yesterday I was absolutely dying. I can almost bear 85, but over ninety and I start to fall apart. Melt. Swoon. Darling says “That’s because you’re a princess! Princesses are delicate!”
That’s me, a delicate princess 🙂
Yesterday I felt like the fire-worm and not very princessy. Today I was griping on messaging while sending pics of our surrounds, that it’s supposed to be 92 again today, and the plan is to “sit around and be miserable”. Then I was explaining about one of the pics “you can see our little boat in the background” and that’s when the light bulb came on over my head.
Marched out and told Darling to drop his tools, we’re not boating later when he gets a certain amount of work done, we’re boating today and he can work later when the boating’s done.
So we floated around on the lake in the shade of a big hill, and it was blissful, cool, quiet, just ahhhhh
Darling stopped rowing and lay back and looked at the sky, and that’s how you know you’re retired. When you’re floating around on the lake looking at the sky.
He met me when he saved me on a boat. Today he saved me on a boat again 🙂
Oh he had to ask for help when he lay back, because the creature thought it was all in fun and cuddle time. You mean you can’t do a sit-up with a 60 lb dog on your rib cage??
Two hours rowing. He’s not tired. I’m tired after two hours sitting in a boat, and ready to go home, once the sun was sinking.
Pics of me. For the pics of Jeffy, go to MeWe! Oooh this is awesome. I’ve finally settled on a plan for sharing that makes me comfortable-ish, and now I can just share. So much fun!
Wow I’ve been having technology adventures! I talked about the printer already, or maybe I have yet to. Then there’s the phone. I had to switch to Verizon, and my Galaxy A11 wasn’t compatible. Long story and a couple hundred bucks in fees for the new free phone, I guess it’s all settled down now, and my data works better. We have cell service only when we plug in the signal booster.
We were so leery about that “WE Boost”, since we’d read so many bad reviews, and we unpacked it carefully, keeping all the material for the return we fully expected, but then plugged it in et voila, five bars! It works great, but boy, it sucks the juice. My little folding solar panel is enough for our needs if we’re very conservative and if I’m out there babysitting it all day long, moving it to wherever the sun’s shining, but I can’t run the booster for very long. The idea is plug it in, download a bunch of stuff, unplug.
We have to work for our communication, here. That’s part of why I needed “Playground” set up with the Postie plugin so I can post by email with pictures. I can compose offline at leisure, then upload everything efficiently. It’s good! At least it’s better than writing by hand and then waiting for your friends’ reply to come around the Horn.
It’s not really 1840.
Question for self. “If you COULD suddenly be in 1840, would you?”
I’m moving all the posts from my old website to this one. These were mostly miscellanea I uploaded for testing.
Isn’t this the perfect pinecone? Freshly fallen, nicely rounded, light color brown.
I love pine trees. It’s been so long since I was among them! Just those stupid boring Douglas firs on the other side.
Only after posting the picture I notice you can see the patch on my skirt. “Sign of authenticity.”
This is my faithful sweet puppy, Peanut. I bring him with me everywhere because he’s shaped like the perfect neck pillow 🙂
I was keeping an eye open for a larger ash pan, and here’s this huge thing at Costco. So beautiful with a refreshing winter scene with nothing about Christmas. Nowadays metal ash pans come with bonus cookies inside them.
Here’s the cool pink wedge I bought!
I bought my darling a new felling wedge and then immediately ruined it myself by using it for splitting because there weren’t any steel ones around. I was “only going to use it to push the two pieces apart” and then used it for several and then got mad at a certain round that didn’t want to be splat (proper English past tense of split) and cracked the thin edge. So I was on the lookout for a new one, and this was half the price of most of them and PINK.
Later learned you can actually grind down and sharpen the edges of those things just as if they were steel instead of plastic, so the other one isn’t a total loss and this just adds to his collection!
Kind reproducing after kind, is that even allowed these days?
It’s a lovely, wholesome concept from a game!
Just like me and my sweetie 🙂
That’s us! That’s exactly what it feels like!
I haven’t gotten over being grateful that I get to experience a lovely relationship with a sweet, understanding man of my own free choice. I married him because I wanted to and because I thought it was a good idea. Everybody should do that at least once in life!
What on earth caused this? Who could have poked these holes in our water jug? Maybe a woodpecker? I couldn’t imagine any dog that could reach up that high and make just those two distinct holes without any damage from the other teeth.
We puzzled over it for a while, then looked at the other side of the table. Our visitor left tracks.
With bears in mind, here’s a video I’ve been thinking of making for a while, about a poor bear that sang on the day it died.
I’ve looked a bit on the internet but I don’t see much about bear song. Only “singing bears” in variety shows.
I looked it up later and found that bears croon to comfort themselves when they are stressed. Wouldn’t they do it in a zoo, then, and someone could capture it on video? If you know where there might be a recording of bear croon, do tell me about it. I couldn’t find anything.
Well, I’ve heard it, and if that’s really such a rare thing, then it seems like I should share what it sounded like. I can’t mimic it exactly. The intervals were not like ours. It was four notes over and over, high down somewhere between a fourth and fifth lower, then up a bit then again, even lower.
I want to add a funny detail. It was after the bear was dead and its body being winched up onto a trailer. My goodness but it stank!
Only little Cindy had been free earlier in the night and treed the bear by herself. Now all three dogs were loose and they danced around the dead bear, growling fearsomely. You should have seen the silly things, with their hair standing up all over their bodies; not just their hackles but all over, so they looked like one of those “Here’s a cow that’s been washed and blow dried” pictures.
I would also like to mention fear of bears. Somehow my darling is under the impression that I am scared of bears. I’ve heard him say it a few times, for instance when neighbors talk about a bear coming through their backyard, and he’ll say, “Don’t let her hear that!”
I eventually addressed it. “Do you mean ME?”
Then he tried to use logic to prove to me that I am afraid of bears.
Am I afraid of bears? Have I said so?
He says I have.
Hmmm. Well I do say things sometimes and not remember it later.
Apparently in Washington our chances are one in two million of being killed by a bear. Our chances are one in one hundred of being killed in a car accident, that is ONE PERCENT which is terrible, and yet we all hit the road without a second thought. If we ever saw a bear munching on a person we’d call ourselves traumatized, but we’re used to seeing ambulances driving away from car crashes.
The video shows me jump when a branch snaps behind me. But I am sitting where there was a bear less than 12 hours earlier. I think some caution is reasonable. At least as much caution as if I was filming on a lawn chair in the middle of a county road. Is there a car coming?
At the end of the video I said I’m CHECKIN’, with an apostrophe rather than a G. I didn’t say “I’m chicken.”
After all, there might have been a person behind me. The chances of being killed by a male human age 18 to 24 whom you randomly encounter in the woods are far greater than when meeting a bear under similar circumstances. Hundreds of people are shot every year by hunters in this country, and a dozen or so killed, while bears average three. That last statistic seems the most relevant since there, at least, we’re limiting by people who were out in the woods.
But I have fewer stone hard opinions than I used to. I might be wrong. I might be afraid of bears.
Wolves, now. I tell ya what, the idea of wolfies kinda creeps me out. I don’t like the thought of the whole pack of bad doggies circling around with their hungry, glowing eyes, waiting for the fire to die down so they can crunch up my amazing hands for the calorie value. I read about that in Jack London when I was too young.
What did I do with the water that was in that container? Water is a precious commodity, so I didn’t waste it, although I did set it apart, labeled appropriately.
P.S.
There. Just came across what happened to the poor creature all those years ago.
Nothing says “ancient times” like a bear skin on your bed, and I wanted that. But I was fourteen. Some adult paid a bunch of money to have that poor creature made into this. It’s only a poor joke, if you ask me, as the bear didn’t look like that at any point, only hummed sadly all night and then died. A waste of money and a waste of a bear. What use is making its skull into a trip hazard? It was on the floor very briefly, then went into a box, and eventually was sold.
My mother would let us pick our birthday cake. My sister always had Bonbon Ribbon Torte (layers of thin cookie with raspberry sauce and whipped cream), my brother liked pineapple upside down cake, and I wanted chocolate chip cake. The recipe was something my sister clipped out of a magazine back in the 60s.
Here we are.
Chocolate Chip Cake
2 eggs 1/2 cup butter 1 cup sugar 1 tsp vanilla 1 cup sour cream 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 2 cups flour 12 oz choc chips
Cream soft ingredients together, combine dry and mix.
Bake in greased and floured cake pan at 350° for 45 min or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Craving for heart waffles. Darling says we can run a 700 watt appliance – in the summer – and not for very long.
What’s the alternative?
Only half a waffle iron. For only a few dollars more
I could have had the real thing with both halves and the trivet that used to come with it. But I don’t want those, so it would have been a few dollars wasted.
I had a cast iron waffle maker back at that other place I used to live. It was left behind of course. And we say no more about that.
It was the typical round style. Oh, here, Walmart still has them.
When I first got it, I fiddled and fumed, and made a mess, and made another mess, was hot and bothered, frustrated, etc. Then figured out you only need one half. After that, it’s a snap. It works like this.
Easy. Use two burners. Have half a waffle iron and a frypan on the heat at the same time. Pour the batter on the waffle iron, and it ISN’T going to make a mess, because nothing’s going to come down and squish it out all over the landscape. It’s not going to rip apart, because you don’t have to lift anything to check if it’s done enough. When it’s done enough, lift the corners with a fork to loosen them, and flip the whole thing over onto the griddle to cook the back.
Srsly nobody’s going to lift their waffle from the plate to see if both sides are the same.
My darling says (of my infernal honesty), “You’ll have to tell them!”
No, I won’t. This is technically and truthfully a waffle. It’s crispy and made of hearts.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with hearts despite some of the theories of their origins. No shapes are inherently bad. Not gonna digress here (although would love to) but geometry isn’t bad, any more than guns are bad. It’s people who are evil.
I also bought one of these.
It was just so very beautiful. So very swirly, and made my heart sing. My darling is mostly Nordic and has never eaten krumkake, and I felt the need to remedy that.
He still hasn’t eaten krumkake. I made a fantastic mess, and cleaned it up, and made another one, and later tried another method, and grumbled and groaned and lost my temper. The fails weren’t even edible, just scrapings of mess. He may be Norwegian but I’m not, so I couldn’t manage. I’m German and this thing is NOT efficient which means it’s out the door. It’s for sale again. Let me know if you want it.
Oh, he kinda had krumkake because I made him heart-shaped half-waffles with the rest of the batter, with whipped cream and blueberries, and he said three times that it was DELICIOUS!!!
The krumkake recipe called for cardamom. I’ve never even heard of it, and had to look up what to use instead. The internet says to substitute cinnamon and nutmeg, or allspice and cloves. Christmas, basically. Make it smell like Christmas, with whipped cream.
I saw the darling whittling something. He was turning a piece of dowel into a beautiful replacement handle! He oiled it up and, “Now I just have to find the perfect screw!”
Notice the website change?
Messing around again. Tried to adjust the margins on twentytwentyfive mobile view, and ended up mired in similar frustration level as a two-halved krumkake iron. Do I really have to sit in front of this computer when it’s ninety and things aren’t working? I put Kadence back, which is the perfect FOOL proof theme. Fools can make it look personalized, but can’t fiddle with the settings until they make their websites into a pile of mess, as I had done to mine. So here we go again, with a fabbdalous background and not even a header. That’s okay.
Hey, I might have solved the posting thing! And I can break out of my posting doldrum. All the regular chitchat can go here, and the family stuff on MeWe. I had to wrestle with MeWe for a bit (in my overparticular, stubborn noggin) but I’m past it and emerged into the sun on the other side, with a sense of peace (ish) about using it. It’s funded by the users, not the enemy; it’s nothing the same level of objectionable / controlled / controlling as Facebook and simply is not over my boundaries, so, say thanks, Weinstein / Berners-Lee, and here we go.
