Mother Nature Hates Us

So I'm sitting at my kitchen table this morning, happily filling cookie sheets with peanut butter cookie dough, when I happen to glance out my kitchen window...

And see SNOW!

Not just a few flakes, but big, huge, fluffy flakes.  Lots of them.

The only saving grace is that it is too warm for the snow to stick to the ground.

Give it up, Mother Nature!  We are so done with you!

Rain and Refrigerators

Sometime during the night I heard the sound of raindrops bouncing off the ledge outside my windows.  We are in a mild drought area - nothing like the west and southwest, but the lack of snowfall and spring rains have contributed to the general dryness.  There is no significant wind or lightning - just a gentle, soaking rain and it is welcome.  Although it is still a chilly 38 degrees this morning, the warm sunshine is promised for the weekend and into next week.

Early yesterday afternoon my new stove and refrigerator were delivered.  I have to admire the cheerfulness of the two delivery guys, who, in spite of huffing appliances up and down the steep stairs to my apartment, were smiling and pleasant.  I remarked to one, a tall, muscular young black man, that I marveled at how he and his partner could spend their days carrying heavy refrigerators, especially on stairs like mine.  He laughed and replied that it was a job and he was glad to have it.  He said that many who don't have jobs wind up behind bars and he would much rather be working.  Besides, with all the lifting and carrying, he didn't have to go to the gym to get a work-out.

The new refrigerator is larger than the old one.  The guys took my apartment door off the hinges.  They removed the doors from the refrigerator.  They took a part that was protruding off the back.  And even with all of that, they only cleared the doorway by maybe a quarter of an inch.  But the old, troublesome appliances are gone and the pretty new ones are in place.  Landlord came by about suppertime and hooked up the gas to the new stove.  I think it is a good day to test the oven with a batch of homemade bread.

Son went to the store this morning and brought me back two packages of bacon ends and pieces, for a total of 6 lbs.  This afternoon I will chop the bacon into about half-inch pieces, lightly brown them and can them in half-pint jars.  The homemade bacon bits are so good on salads or in scrambled eggs or omelets.

So now I'd better get busy.  After weeks of relative inactivity, it really feels good to have stuff to do!

So This Afternoon...

I called Number One Son to find out where he was.  He had spent the night in Grand Island, Nebraska, on his way home.  When he answered his phone, the reception was terrible, so I just told him to call me later and hung up.

Right about supper time my phone rang.  The reception was perfect.  He said, "It is 1855 miles from the door of my apartment in Las Vegas to the door to your apartment."

I'm so glad he is home.

Off On A Ramble

My family is not getting together for Easter this year.  As sometimes happens, especially with larger families, some had commitments elsewhere.  That is fine with me, for I kind of wanted to be home in case Oldest Son calls.  And I am probably the only human being on the planet (or at least in the USA) who still has a house phone and doesn't have a cell phone.

Oldest Son left Las Vegas yesterday morning.  Around lunch time he called from St. George, Utah.  He wanted me to look up St. George on my computer so I could see how beautiful the country was there.  I did.  It is.  Last evening he called from Grand Junction, Colorado.  He said that he had driven about 500 miles, was tired and thought he would sleep and set out again in the morning.  I thought that was a good plan.  If I remember right, the road between Grand Junction and Denver has a lot of up and a lot of down and a lot of curvy, which means that daylight driving is a good thing.  It will be a couple more days before he is home.

The oven in my kitchen stove died.  It was a slow death.  First it would light (it is a gas stove) but would not heat.  A few days later it would not light at all.  Yesterday my landlord found the problem.  The burner for the oven was fried - as in a hole burned into it.  When he left my apartment, I thought he was going to order the parts and fix the oven.  A couple of hours later he called, wanting to know if I had to have white appliances or would a stove and refrigerator with a stainless finish be OK.  He said that he decided to just replace both, as I had been having problems with them and the way things are made now, they likely wouldn't last much longer anyway.  So my new stove and refrigerator will be delivered Wednesday.  And I can bake bread again.  I have been missing baking bread.
 
I don't ever again want to hear anybody complain about not having enough storage space.  Within my three rooms I have been moving things around to make room for Duane and his stuff.  There isn't any furniture to deal with, but there is all of his household goods, clothes, etc.  I have two closets in my bedroom.  The largest of the two I had converted into a pantry, using some cheap stand alone shelves (6 of them), stacked and holding assorted extra food like baking supplies, commercially canned soups, other canned goods I had bought on sale and lots of pasta.  The shelves are about a foot wide and deep and about table-top high.  One went into my bathroom for extra towels and Duane's toiletries.  The rest were distributed into nooks and crannies and corners of my living room.  Next week I will pick up some fabric to make tablecloth-type pieces to drape over them to hide the contents.  Worked out just fine.  Where there is a will, there seems to always be a way.

Today will be a day of just puttering.  I hear the beautiful sound of church bells coming from the Catholic Church a couple of blocks away.  I believe that a person doesn't have to go to church in order to worship.  But we do need to find our faith and stay strong within that faith.

My wish for you is to have a blessed Easter Day.

My Children...

lost their Grandmother today.  She was 98 years old.

I met her nearly 60 years ago when my Dad purchased a 20 acre parcel of land with an old farmhouse, from a family member.  It was located literally next door to the family farm.  In 1964 I married her oldest son.  And when we could no longer make the marriage work, she said she loved me anyway.

She worked harder than most women.  She kept a big, old farm home spotless.  She raised a family of five children.  She kept a huge garden to help feed that family.  And when her husband and sons were out working in the fields, she hauled countless lunches to them so they didn't have to take the time to come to the house to eat.  She was involved with the local 4-H club and never missed a Sunday of church services.

After a time she and her husband, along with those children remaining at home, moved into town.  She lived in the same house for many years after her husband's death.  And when she began taking Senior bus tours all over the country, I was glad that she was doing something for herself.

She cared for her own home well into her 90's.  My youngest son once called me.  He had stopped by her home to see her, only to find she was out someplace having coffee with her friends.  "She's gone all the time," he complained.  "She is 90 years old," he said.  "Good for her," I replied.

She lived about 100 miles from me.  I saw her occasionally at family get-togethers with my children and grandchildren.  She was always interested in what I was doing and always had a hug for me.  She always told me she loved me.

I will always be grateful to have had such a wonderful mother-in-law.  She was a remarkable woman, dearly loved by family and friends alike.  I will miss her.

Weather Spotters

The first thunder storm of the season rolled through here last evening.  I had been listening to the police scanner when the storm reached my county.  When the Weather Bureau issued a severe storm warning, the weather spotters were called out.

If you are at all interested in following storm tracks, the spotters make it kind of interesting.  Here in my county there is one central dispatcher for the weather spotters.  Each spotter has an area of the county that they cover.  They radio in to the dispatcher, sort of like a roll call, to report conditions in their area.  They tell if the lightning is in the clouds or hitting the ground.  They report on wind, rain, hail and anything else they see.  It is one thing to follow a storm on radar, but by listening to the weather spotters, it is easy to tell if anything bad is headed this way.

It wasn't much of a storm this time.  Just a little wind and rain and spotty small hail.  Some, but not much, lightning hit the ground.  I didn't even have to close my windows.

I have always liked to watch a storm.  As a kid, my Dad and I would stand in our front porch and watch the storm clouds roll in.  Unless the weather turned really nasty, we would stay there and watch as long as we could.  Sometimes the lightning displays were spectacular.  And the cloud formations were fascinating.  And it was even more fun to be brave and stand with Dad on the porch, as opposed to cowering in the basement with Mom and sister!

I still like to watch a storm, and if one is headed my way from the west, I can probably be found out on the deck, watching the clouds.

Popcorn and the Smoke Alarm

For quite some time now I have had issues with the smoke alarms in my apartment.  The locations of the two smoke alarms make sense only to someone who actually understands the fire codes for this city.  One alarm is located on the kitchen ceiling about a foot away from my bedroom door.  The other is located on the bedroom ceiling about a foot away from that same door.  Which puts the alarms about two feet apart.

My kitchen stove is across the room from the kitchen smoke alarm.  That alarm works fine.  The identical alarm in my bedroom will go off if I leave the door between kitchen and bedroom open and use any burner on my stove or open the door on the hot oven.  That alarm not only beeps loudly, but screams "Fire, Fire!"  Doesn't matter what the landlord does to fix this problem.  This is just the way it is.  And it is not easy to shut off.  Takes a little time to get it to stop beeping and screaming.

I like popcorn.  I like popcorn for an evening snack.  I particularly like popcorn dribbled with a little bit of butter, sprinkled with Lawry's coarse ground garlic salt with parsley and then with Parmesan cheese.

I haven't owned a popcorn popper for a while.  The last one I had was one of those hard plastic bowls used in the microwave.  Cat knocked it onto the floor and it broke right in the middle.

Then I made my own microwave popcorn by putting about a half a cup of popcorn kernels into a brown paper lunch bag, taping the bag closed with Scotch tape and microwaving it.  Worked like a charm.  Until I ran out of lunch bags.  Do you suppose I can remember to buy more bags?  Not likely.

So I have been making my popcorn in my cast iron frying pan.  Works well.  Except when I get careless about watching it and I burn the heck out of the popcorn.  Which sets off the smoke alarm because I also forgot to shut the door between kitchen and bedroom.  At 11:00 at night.  I don't think my neighbors were very happy with me.

I'm thinking there will be no more popcorn in my future until I get to the store and buy a popcorn popper that is smoke alarm friendly.

Sigh.