Ew, ew, that smell, can't you smell that smell...

OK, so I have to prove once in a while that I am a product of the '70s. I'll even admit that I am still a Skynard fan, I think that they would work well on a mixed tape with my man Trace.

But I digress before I even start.

Our Suburban Propane driver has been wanting us to have our tank moved for years so that he does not have to illegally drag the hose through the garage to fill the tank. The problem is it is a job that needs to be done in the spring, when there is neither snow nor overgrowth to deal with. I remembered to call for an appointment last week and the service man was here bright and early this morning to get 'er done. While he was moving the tank he noticed that the tube was pinched where it comes into the house so he replaced it. He naturally had the gas turned off for this procedure, and before he left he came in and relit the pilot lights on the stove and made sure that it was working correctly.

I noticed a gas smell at the time, but Mike says I am overly sensitive to the smell of propane or diesel. I know when the tank has been refilled if we have not been home at the time by the smell, before I find the slip that the driver leaves. I figured it was just from the pilot lights before they were lit, and that it would dissipate quickly. I continued with my morning routine of washing dishes and laundry, going outside to hang up clothes, etc. Every time I came in I still smelled the gas. I went upstairs to my room for a little while with the door closed. When I opened the door I was really hit with the smell. I was now convinced that the odor was getting stronger, so figured that I had better call Suburban Propane back, and if I was just imagining things, oh well. I decided that being paranoid was better than being blown to smitherines. A different repairman came out and as he walked in the house he said , wow, I sure do smell gas. It turned out that there was a nut that was completely undone where the gas goes into the stove that had not leaked before, but when the guy this morning fixed the crimped part so that the full gas pressure was now coming in, plus moving the stove out and back into place in the process of his work, it started to leak.

I guess it is true that you are not being paranoid if the problem is real.

After that was taken care of I took Grandma out for a ride and spent some of Polly's bonus check that had come in the mail today. Most of the bonus money went to exciting things like car payments, insurance payments, Sallie Mae, and the electric company, which I mailed, along with the money for some more dollhouse furniture makings, hehe. Then we went and picked up the arbor that we are going to put climbing roses on, and a new patio table and chairs for eating outside this summer. Tomorrow we plan to pick up a new gas grill. Due to Betty being in Prague, and Flip's family being involved in the spring cattle show up in Syracuse we are not having a big Easter dinner this year. (Slight pause while I do my happy dance that I do not have to cook said meal, and instead can spend the weekend playing in dirt outside, I mean doing yard work.)I have not minded the fact that I have not spent this entire week cooking and baking, I do not mind in the cold weather, but now I have too much spring fever. I told Polly and Mike tonight that instead we will have our first cookout of the year, where we eat will depend on the temperature. This is a brilliant plan on my part as they will fight over which one will cook on the new grill, which will leave me with nothing to do but eat. Well, and carry everything back inside and do all the cleaning and washing up, but I won't have to cook.

I have been quiet, but now am back

I did not have much good to say through the winter so I said nothing. It seemed that my days were filled with shoveling snow, cooking, shoveling snow, washing dishes, shoveling snow, washing clothes, shoveling snow, dealing with husband or mother in pain, shoveling ...... You get the idea. 2009 started out really shitty as far as I was concerned. It was cold and snowy, Jess moved to Virginia, Mike had heart scare which turned out to be medicine reaction, Mike got hit while driving tractor-trailer by a pickup truck so hard that Mike got greenstick fractures of 3 ribs ( The pickup hit Mike's passenger side of cab which had already made the RIGHT turn by running through snowbank so hard that burst the fuel tank. He said that he saw Mike's turn signal. Mike got ticketed for an illegal right turn, and a DEC ticket for the spilled fuel on the road. He is still fighting it, but every time he goes to court they postpone his case.), Grandma broke her back again, sold the last of the farm animals, and it was winter.

I did accomplish a few things these past few months. I got 4 people their Grandmother Remembers books, 4 more are almost done, and then the last 4 are alot closer to being done than they were before. I am getting royally sick of that project, but Grandma really wants all of her grandchildren to have them so I am trying to finish them for her. They are all written now, and all of the pictures that go into all books are in them, it is just the individual personalized pages that I am finishing up.

I tore down the wallpaper in the very back bedroom, and am now working on repairing the plaster. Well, it is at that point now, but to be honest, I have not mixed any plaster in quite a few weeks. When that room is finished it will be set up as the guest bedroom, then we will do the room next to it (the office) as Polly's sewing room, the hallway is going to be set up as a sitting-room/guest sleeping, and the nursery is going to be my craft room. We also cleaned Jess's room and it now seems like a shrine to the life of my baby. Polly and I have been sorting books and working on the never-ending job of trying to declutter this house.

Since the weather has improved, slightly, we have been working on cleaning the garage, hauling more of grandpa's never-ending scrap-metal piles to the scrap yard, cleaning the lawn up, and getting the flower beds back into shape. They suffered greatly with goats running around, and not getting as much attention these past couple of years. Jess did have them looking very good 3 years ago, but has not had the time to give to them since then.

Grandma gets slowly worse, and there seem to be more days when it is hard to get too much accomplished, except the basics. I am so happy that baseball season started, the Yankees are the only thing that seem to settle her down some days, other than giving her a couple of pain pills, which put her to sleep. There being too many days where I cannot leave her alone at all is why we realized that the last animals had to go. I still miss them terribly, but did not like not being able to care for them as I like to. I am dealing with it better than I was. I made myself go into the barn for the first time last week, and today was in and out several times getting wheelbarrows of manure for the flower beds and did not even cry once when I was in there. That cannot be said about the first trip last week.

I am going to try to be better at keeping this up, and learn how to put pictures in it of what we do, as I find that it helps me to get more accomplished in a day. That is my resolution of the day.

Spoiled rotten pets

I was awakened this morning, as I am most mornings, by sudden pain in my bladder as the cat, who weighs a good 10+ pounds, landed with a loud yowl, which was not hard to translate the meaning of, "FEED ME!" Being the morning person that I am, I rolled over onto my stomach. Minerva promptly started jumping on my kidneys, still demanding to be fed at the top of her lungs. She knows that this works, as no matter how much I want to ignore her, I cannot ignore the fact that I now have to go very badly. I get up and she does her best to trip me all the way to the bathroom and back to make sure that I am totally awake. I manage to trick her out of my room when I get back to it, most of the time, so that I can dress in peace, well, except for the cat cursing outside the door, that is. She has a very, very dirty mouth on her too. I then go downstairs, and, if I have a large armload of dirty clothes or other things to be taken care of before I feed the cat, I hear more cursing until I get her taken care of.

The worst part of this almost daily routine is that is someone else is up before me they cannot feed her. She will not eat until I shake her dish. She will go and get me out of bed to shake her already filled dish. She is also getting to be a very fat cat due to the fact that she has figured out that if she trips me up enough all day long I will put more food in her dish to keep from getting a broken neck, and to get her to leave me alone.

Then there is the 6 pound feng shui loving pomeranian, Foxy. Once the cat is fed I need to get this little pain in the butt outside as fast as possible or she will decide that I deserve a present in the middle of the carpet. She prefers to be let run loose outside so that she can cover about a mile on her short little legs before coming in and gets quite mouthy if she is put on her run. Now that the weather is better she can spend the whole day outside on her run, but she complains bitterly every time she sees a human. Now, tonight, I was bringing the laundry off of the clothesline as the sun was setting, and she thought it was definately time to get indoors, so she was complaining the entire time. Mike got home right as I was getting finished so he let her lose to walk with him to the door to go inside. She whined and complained to him the whole time, obviously telling him how bad I was, and how mistreated she is.

We got inside and her food dish was empty, so she stood by it and whined until it was filled. Then the water dish was empty, same routine. I, meanwhile, was trying to take off my muddy workboots before I tracked anymore mud around the house. The little furball is still whining, so I look back and she is standing on the throw rug, which had been moved to about a foot away from her dishes, looking at the dishes (that she had just been on the linoleum next to) and whining. There are 3 throw rugs in the back kitchen and she has places where she thinks that they all should be and will not settle down until they, and her bed, are all in their proper places. Next month, she is moving down to Virginia and it Jess will have to make sure that her trailer meets Pomerain Feng Shui standards.

Polly has her darling spaniel, Brittany. Usually, I do not have to wait on her, Polly does all the spoiling of her. The exception to this is on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday when Polly is sleeping after having been at work all of the night before. Then, the princess thinks I should give her the same treatment she gets out of Polly.

Why am I missing my goats so, who used to see me or hear my voice and bust through their fence to come find me? This was sort of cute when I had the original 6 mama goats, but by the time I got up to 100 mamas with all of their babies, most of which were twins or triplets, it was a bit too much lovin'!

Our predecessors had faith in our brainpower

Polly came home from work this morning with her arms full of karo syrup, molasses, chocolate chips, brown sugar, and powdered sugar which were 6 months old so were being thrown away. Now, these all happen to be things that I currently am well stocked on anyway so I thought that I would look for a spice cake recipe and see if I could use up some of the molasses anyway. Plus, it is so frigidly cold out that I need to have the oven on anyway, and Grandma will eat cake 3x a day if I have it baked, so....

I found this recipe that gave me a good laugh. It is Grandma Fish's recipe written in Aunt Polly's hand writing. In this day and age of describing every step in detail, often accompanied by pictures of each step, this really strikes you in its lack of detail. It is written assuming that you know how to bake a cake and know when it is done, etc. The following is the recipe exactly as I found it.

Ivy's Molasses Cake

2/3 cup molasses
fill cup with brown sugar

1/2 cup shortening
fill cup with hot water

1 egg

sift together
1-1/2 cups flour
1 tsp soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp ginger

That was it. I made it up, yum. When I make cookbooks of Grandma's recipes for her grandchildren I will have to include a copy of this page as it is written. There is another recipe on there for a sponge cake that I have to mess with to figure out as the corner is torn off which says how much flour is called for, oh details, who needs them.

Of course as I made my icing for the cake, I realized that my own recipes are such exact things of science.

My Icing of Choice

When cake goes in oven put 1 stick of butter and 1/2 package of cream cheese in small mixing bowl and set on top of stove to soften while cake is baking because it should have been taken out of the fridge earlier to soften but I did not think that far ahead. Now, if there is anywheres from a half to somewhat more than a stick of butter soft use that, same with cream cheese, if there is an open package, that is probably the right amount. When it is soft, or Grandma has said 10 times "Is the cake ready?" so you figure you had better get making icing, mix at whatever speed the mixer wants to work at today until light and fluffy. Add a dollap of vanilla that you think is about a teaspoons worth (at least) and a much smaller dollap of almond extract (more like a 1/4 teaspoonish). Then pour in powdered sugar until you either use up that bag, or a few really small part bags that you just discovered in the back of the cabinet, or you think it is enough. If to moist pour some more, if too dry add a few drops of milk/heavy cream/half and half or whatever is in the fridge. Ice cake. Cut Grandma a slice and pour her a glass of milk and politely hand it to her, even though by now she has asked 20 more times and you are beginning to feel like stuffing it down her throat, but you are a good person so you do not do that.

There, now wasn't that just so much more precise?

By the way, the cake is very good.

Sea Kitten

There was an item on the news this morning that PETA wants fish to start being called sea kitten because they feel that it shows the warm cuddly nature of fish better. I want to know what type of fish the PETA people have seen that are warm and cuddly, as those are not the primary adjectives that come to my mind for fish, but this is not the first time that I have felt that PETA has never been closer to an animal than the Bronx Zoo. I must say that PETA has won on this one though, when asked what she would like for lunch, Grandma said that a sea kitten sandwich sounded tasty. We will no longer eat tuna in this house, from now on it is sea kitten all the way!

Actually, we will be picking up Oscar and Cindy (our pigs) Monday from their extreme makeovers and personality adjustments, so sea kitten will become a rare treat around here. What would PETA think about the fact that we had Goose's trophy (Best of Show Poultry at our county fair in August) sitting right next to her on the Christmas dinner table?

Nothing happened today!

It may sound strange but after the last few days today was blissfully uneventful. It was wonderful! Sometimes it takes a bit of trauma to make you appreciate dullness.

Last night this stomach bug that we have been suffering with here was making noxious odors emit from every possible part of my husband. I was so happy to have him home safe and well that I was still able to cuddle him and not even mind. I just snuggled down with him and listened to the storm blow outside and pulled off half a dozen different things that they had left stuck to him in the hospital. They were even so nice that they left them stuck to lots of hair for me to pull too. hehehe

Today, I spent a nice boring day tackling the disaster that the house has become. I got the tree down, and it is only 2 days after Epiphany too! I packed all but one box of decorations up correctly, the last box I will get done tomorrow, then I need to get them put in the closet. I cleaned the back kitchen and the bathroom/laundry room, including washing almost all of the laundry. At least there is no laundry in there from before today. I hit a few high spots in the kitchen, it still looks like it has been looted, but I got a start on it. I washed 3 drain racks of dishes, by no means all of them, but at least now the dirty ones fit on the one part of the counter next to the sink.

Now, the next most important thing on my list is to bathe me. I did talk smelly hubby into the shower earlier, between collapsing on the feed mill floor, all the stuff they smeared him with in the hospital, and topping it all off with last nights bug he was slightly odoriferous. Now I think that I am the one who stinks to bad to sleep with me tonight. I hate it when I crawl into bed and me and myself try to kick I out of bed because she stinks too much.

Ain't boredom great!

Another Day, what more can I say?

I am extremely exhausted right now, but need to do some stuff before I go to bed, but sat down for a minute and the laptop jumped onto my lap, so of course I started reading, now writing a post seems better than dishes and laundry. I know that the phone will be ringing so if I go upstairs to bed I will have to run back down.

Polly finally made it home after bringing the ice storm up from Virginia with her at 3 this morning. I managed to say hello to her and give her a hug before I stumbled up to bed. The ice blowing against the house and my bladder woke me at 8:30 and I tried to call Mike but could not get through, it turns out he was having his stress test then. Polly was naturally dragging, and not knowing what was going to be happening in the hospital we decided that I would go into Albany alone and she would stay here with Grandma and get chores done. The trip to Albany was terrible, icy nasty roads all the way, even the Thruway was bad, so I spent over 3 hours going 70 miles but arrived safe and sound. Mike was in his room awaiting the results of the stress test. They finally came in at about 4 this afternoon all fine. So the doctors decided what I had figured out yesterday that the new pill he started on Sunday is not his friend and said he could go home. I was impressed as they had the paperwork all done and the machines unhitched and the wheelchair there in less than 45 minutes, I wish our local hospital could figure out how to do things that quickly. Mike had been more than anxious to leave for quite a while to put it mildly.

We got on the way home and he told me that he thinks that he is coming down with the stomach bug now that we have been having here, and that is one reason he wanted out of there, he was afraid if he started throwing up they would not let him leave. So, we are all home, his heart is fine, he has been told to not take that pill ever again, like you could force it down his throat, and everyone but me is in bed. I think I am ready for a nice supper of dry toast and chamomile tea, if that tells you how my tummy feels, then for desert I will have a cup of Sleepytime Extra.

While I sat at the hospital all day the dishes and laundry unfortunately did not decide to run away from home, but I am thinking that if I ignore them maybe they will decide that they have been neglected here and run away overnight. I did get as far as bringing some of the boxes downstairs yesterday to start undressing the tree, but that is all I did, and unlike Grandma it did not strip when I was not looking. Oh yeah, I came downstairs this morning to find Grandma stark naked with all the bedding completely stripped off of the bed and strewn all over the floor saying it is cold in here because someone had left the windows all open. I think that all of this will be dealt with tomorrow, and my sense of humor will be a bit more restored on the whole idea.

Goodnight everyone.