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!
Messing around with WordPress and having SO MUCH FUN!
I was recently upgraded to version 6.1 while I wasn’t watching (away from keyboard for a while, but automatic updates had been left on) and wouldn’t be all that happy about it except that I’m a WP fan and therefore enthusiastic about whatever they do. Full site editing is the latest thing. I tangled with that for a whole day or two without any luck, then after banging my head against every wall in sight, discovered a series of useful new-to-me things, both related and un.
I had recently installed a WP for my Vicky, promising her that it’s easy and fun and then it turned into everything else but that, because it only takes a few months to suddenly not know what you’re doing any more. Full site editing is too bleeding edge for me, I guess.
But Vicky came up with the FAIRY theme, and it’s every bit as clean and simple as the Basic theme (no kidding, that’s the name of it) that I had been using before, but more up to date. We’re back to the good old days of crop a banner to these dimensions, pick some colors and then get on with our lives. It took me half an hour to produce a brilliant pink candy cane theme from a random image of flowers from Wiki Commons.
To get the images right I downloaded a bunch of “free, easy” image crop things, but eventually they all failed and I had to revert to ibisPaint. I had been avoiding that because I didn’t know how to use it, but after ten minutes of really trying, I started to get it to work and it’s AMAZING and does so much more, not only cropping to dimensions, but semi-transparent layers, clone brushing, etc. And it works offline! I have a new tool!
Speaking of offline. I’ve been wishing and searching for some way to compose posts offline, other than copying and pasting text and assembling with pictures later. Up at my cold new home there’s just one place on the hill where the phone gets signal, not enough to make calls, but texts go through, and emails if they’re brief enough. I can even load images if they’re small enough. But it’s so cold! I don’t want to stand out there a minute longer than necessary. I’d like to compose a post inside where it’s warm, then go outside to the signal spot and hit UPLOAD. I still need to share my fabbdalous nonsense with the world!
The WordPress app does work offline, for composing posts, and queuing images for upload, but cannot, as far as I can see, do both at the same time. Can’t add an image from your device into the post and then upload – or it’s, “failure: image not loaded”. Also can’t upload images in one session and add them to the post in the next – the Media tab forgets them and there’s no way to insert them because, “failure: not connected”. Hmph.
Bouncing around ideas, I even thought for a while of good old html and a text editor. I could share a link to a directory with some basic pages and pictures, then go up to the phone zone, fire up FTP and… argh, there we are, fiddling in the cold with hurting fingers.
Then I found the solution! Posting by email, YAYYY! The “Postie” plugin. They mention “journalists in foreign countries” as the ones who may find this feature useful, but it’s also cool in other cold places, like up on my hill where EMFs are only frying your brains, just a little bit, in one spot.
Now I have this FABBDAlous new theme, AND I can throw some content at it from anywhere!
That came from https://imagecolorpicker.com/ analyzing my picture of flowers. One of the light pinks happens to be #fabbda.
UPDATE:
Nov 2023. Found out Fairy is nagware, and there’s no rage like love to hatred turned. Just when I thought the whole theme thing was settled and not on my to-do list any more, Fairy started popping up with the most ANNOYING messages, top and center of the WP dashboard:
“Hey there! We notice you’ve been using Fairy for some time…” and a request for payment. The way it’s phrased reminds me of a security guard posted at the store entrance: “Hey there! I notice you have an item tucked under your arm…”
I complained on the Fairy theme message board and had a long, frustrating convo with the devs who insist the messages can be got rid of. Sure they can, until next time you sign in.
Anger about that was just the motivation I needed to get me off my lazy butt and do a little bit of reading about FSE. Guess what, I figured it out!
I’m now using Twenty Twenty Three and absolutely love it. Just a bit of work to get over the hump, and now I feel like WordPress is back the way it should have been all along except UNLIMITED power and control. You can make your site look exactly the way you envisioned it, starting from scratch, as easy as drawing a layout on a blank canvas. This is better than CSS alone, better than any super-customizer theme (I’ve tried all of those). You can customize as much or as little as you please.
Wah-hoo, I’m so excited about 6.2! By the time I write this, 6.4 and it just keeps getting better and better.
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.
Last time I walked down to that Little Free Library, I had a pile to donate and I wasn’t intending to pick anything up. But then there was this. “The Wisdom of the West” compiled by Criswell Freeman. I opened it and found several pertinent sayings that I ought to try to remember. I walked away, then walked back and picked up the book.
“I would rather live as we do, in a sod house we own, than to rent and have someone boss us around.”
This is the heart of the matter. I’ve dreamed my whole life of a place where I could feel like I belong there. I belong with the darling of course and would live with him under a bridge if necessary; but it would also be peachy to have a home assigned on earth. This is where Janel goes. When we are done playing with Janel, we put her back here.
We finally have a chance to own our own place without obligation. That’s the big dream and doesn’t have to include the creature comforts, hehe, it’s all about surviving that first winter, and if you’re lucky, write a book about it later. Now I get to do that, too.
“Where would you go? Back to the place where you were dissatisfied before you came out here?”
This is a concept that might help me at the new place when I begin to get cold. In fact, I think it already has. We were out there camping for two weeks when it was 24 degrees. I sometimes wished I could go– well, not home, this is home!
Not back. Anything but that.
After only a couple weeks, I did begin to wish I could go inside. We’ll have an “inside” soon enough. In the meantime, ONWARD.
“People on the Pacific Coast think of themselves as belonging to the “coast”; the “West” is quite something else again.”
We have been marveling and giggling over the concept of heading east to get to the West.
I spent my early years deep in the heart of the old West, far south of here in gold country, where except for the cars and telephones it was still 1849. That place was excellent in all ways except that it was, unfortunately, politically situated in Cali (cough) Forn (cough) – sorry, I can’t say it. If the State of Jefferson ever became reality, I’d move back there instantly, but for now, no.
Anyhoo the West was alive there and I loved it. But right now we’re heading eastwards inside our good old birthplace WA, to get back to something a bit more West.
“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”
Right. There are so many limitations, but we have “a lot” and we can do “all kinds of things” and it is deeply satisfying to do as much as possible with what we have, rather than to just stay stuck. Knowing you’re doing everything you can do is all that’s necessary to be able to sleep at night.
“We have learned to follow the customs of the country, and get along as best we can with what we have.”
Exactly. I dunno about the customs, I’ve never been good at that. But I’m def making do with the things that I have. Funny, but I think I’ve been preparing for this my whole life. I’ve scoffed at spoiled American women, and yet when it came time to leave “civilization”, it turned out I’d been comfortable there so long, I had started to get a bit dependent. Well, I’ve scoffed too much to deserve any sympathy. Toughen up.
Can’t we live without hot running water? Can’t we wake up cold and make a fire like our ancestors did, who craved freedom? Yes! If that’s the price of freedom, then absolutely yes, and that’s a cheap price.
Can’t we do without the internet? ::cries::
I’ve collected candles all my life. Whenever I saw someone’s used wedding tapers on the giveaway table, I picked them up. Now I finally get to need them. And the wool blankets, I’m gonna need those, and warm quilted clothing, for real. I have a self-constructed hand crank sewing machine for exactly this exigency! In case there’s no more electricity. There’s no more electricity, so yay.
I was one of many who was a bit crestfallen when Y2K didn’t happen. I was hoping for TEOTWAWKI while I was still young. And now, here it is! Because I brought it on myself.
“A dose of adversity is often as needful as a dose of medicine.”
It’s true. I can feel it coming. A bit of actual discomfort might just do wonders for my seething. There’s no time to be nuts when you need to carry some water to wash dishes and get the firewood in before dark.
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.
It’s the thickest heaviest flannel I’ve ever come across. It’s a queen size flat sheet and it is absolutely going to end up as a dress with long sleeves.
ChatGPT takes a crack at it –
Ummmmm wut? That’s pretty, but I want the stripes going vertically.
Okay!
Oh, boy, ChatGPT.
There was lots of attempts to explain in words.
How about another AI? “thenewblack” gives a free sample.
THAT’S what I had in mind!
Then I realized I gave that AI an advantage because I rotated and cropped the image of the fabric first. I explained to ChatGPT that it was an image of a folded sheet, buuuut… baby steps.
Given the same advantage to start with, ChatGPT does better. But unfortunately I said “illustration” and I didn’t say “a girl wearing…” and that’s the end of my free images for today.
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.
