Things Are Looking Up

God never closes a door but what He opens a window.

Duane stopped in a little while ago to tell me he found a job.

Duane spent many years cooking in restaurants.  He saw an add for a bar and grill that needed a cook.  He applied and got the job.  It helped that he knows the manager.  He knows the manager because he has worked for him before.  Both of my boys have worked in this establishment at one time or another over the years.  The manager told Duane that he was about to call Duane's brother to get Duane's number, to ask if he would like to work there again.

This is a nice place.  I have had dinner there with my kids and grands several times.  It has been in business longer than I can remember and is a place where you can take your young children for a meal.  And it is only a block away from our building.

One of the perks is that Duane gets one meal every day he works.  They make the best pizza in town.  I have been promised some of that pizza now and then.  :)

I am really happy for him.  He has been working since he was in High School and not being able to work was wearing on him.  He is nearly finished with Occupational Therapy and is going to Cardiac Therapy two or three times a week, but that will not interfere with his work schedule.  He no longer needs to worry about transportation or driving on snowy, icy roads to get to a job. 

Life is again pretty darned good!!

Long Ago April

Many years ago, this mother of four youngsters was working in one end of her house when she heard an awful crashing, banging sound come from the other end.  It was followed by children's voices yelling, "Mom!  Come quick!  Jill fell down the basement stairs!"

I rushed to the basement door, peered down to see my oldest daughter sprawled at the bottom of the stairs, covered in blood.

Flying down the stairs, I reached my daughter, only to be met with a chorus of, "April Fool, Mom!!"

My ketchup covered daughter was laughing, as were her siblings.  They had tossed a couple of kitchen kettles down the stairs for the noise and had positioned Jill at the bottom, looking like a bloody discarded rag doll.

I let them live, although at the time this was debatable.  They all grew up to be fine adults.  But I always wished that each of them would someday have a child who would come up with a similar April Fool joke.  :)

Bits and Bobs...

I have been a bit under the weather this week.  Not sick...just a little head achy and low energy.  Sort of blah, like when you are coming down with a cold.  Last evening I curled up in my recliner with my Kindle and promptly fell asleep about 8:30.  This morning I woke to a gorgeous pink and purple sunrise, feeling great.  Or as great as I can feel until I have my coffee.  Guess sometimes getting enough sleep will cure what ails you.

Although it is only 39 degrees this morning, I have a window open an inch or two and will open it more later when we are promised a 50 degree afternoon.  The tree outside my window is beginning to bud and the little birds are back - about a dozen of them, mostly sparrows and chickadees - perched on the branches, squabbling and gossiping and carrying on.  The sound is welcome after such a long, cold winter.

While I was feeling out of sorts, I spent some time on YouTube.  It amazes me the things you can learn.  I ran across several videos about growing herbs in jars of water.  A couple of years ago I tried growing some vegetables in pots on my window sills, but it pretty much was a dismal failure.  When I order my groceries again in two weeks, I think I will order a few herbs to try and maybe a couple other things like lettuce and celery that they say can be grown in bowls of water.  It is worth a try and might be fun.

The nurse who takes care of my legs three times a week is such a cute little thing.  When I talked to her about using flannel for the bandages on my legs, she didn't think I was crazy (or if she did, she didn't say so), and jumped right in to test the theory.  Anyway, she told me last week they are expecting their first child.  She says she doesn't want to know the gender of the baby until it is born.  I have been going through my stash of fabrics to see if I have enough baby neutral colors of fabric for a baby rag quilt.  I think I found enough yellow and green with bunnies and carrots on it to make a cute quilt.  If there isn't enough, I can always order some fabric online.  It is so much fun to make things for others.

I am looking forward to my grocery delivery today.  I don't often indulge myself, but this time I ordered a box of Little Debbie Nutty Bars.  Life is always happier with a box of Little Debbie Nutty bars.  :)

And now it is back to the sewing machine to sew zig-zag stitches around the edges of the last stack of 4x4 inch bandages.  That will give me around 200 of them and I go through close to 20 per week.  I love it that I no longer need to order more of the commercial ones, but can just wash these in hot, soapy water (to get rid of the salve on them) and they come out just like new.

Love it when a plan comes together and actually works!

Cranberry Juice

So a couple of weeks ago I awoke with the symptoms of a bladder infection.  I opened a quart of my home canned cranberry juice and sipped on it all day.  The next morning the symptoms had disappeared and have not returned.

I have used cranberry juice on other occasions for the same purpose, but used store bought juice, which took several days to work.  I suspect what the makers of cranberry juice advertise as 100% juice, isn't.

A couple of years ago Duane brought me 75 lbs. of fresh cranberries from the Farmer's Market.  There is a vendor there who has the most beautiful cranberries I have ever seen.  I have never found a bad berry and each and every one is a gorgeous dark red color.  They make the cranberries from the store look like poor seconds.

The berries come in 25 lb. boxes.  I had used most of one box but circumstances prevented me from preserving the rest, so I bagged them up and froze them.  Last year I needed the freezer space, so I thawed out the berries, filled canning jars with them, adding water to cover and canned them, thinking I could use them up at a later date.  The later date has arrived.

After drinking one quart of cranberry juice, I saw I had only three quarts left.  It was time to make more, so yesterday I hauled all 29 quart jars of canned cranberries to the kitchen.  I dumped 5 quarts at a time into the stock pot, added an equal amount of water and brought it to a simmer.  I let it simmer for 10 minutes and then ran it through a colander, letting the juice drip into another pot and saving the cooked berries.

Once that was done, I mashed up the cooked berries, added water to maybe an inch over the berry pulp and brought that to a simmer.  Then I drained all of that, extracting more juice.  Again I saved the pulp and will dehydrate it tomorrow.  Have no idea what to use powdered cranberries for, but I can't stand wasting them.

This morning I dumped 7 quarts of juice at a time into a stock pot, added 2 1/2 cups of sugar and heated the juice until the sugar was dissolved and the juice was fairly hot.  Then it went into quart jars and was canned in a boiling water bath for 15 minutes.  I now have 35 quarts of lovely, ruby red cranberry juice, plus a couple of quarts in the fridge just to drink.

This whole thing was an experiment.  I had only before made juice using fresh cranberries, but it turned out well.

And now, you guessed it.  Time for a little nap.  :)

I Can Be Such a Dunderhead...

So I am at the sewing machine, happily stitching zig-zags around more 4x4 bandage pads.  I had just switched an empty spool of thread for a full one, when the stitches went all wonky.  I fiddled with the dials, trying to adjust the tension to straighten out the stitches.  Didn't work.

So then I went in search of the instruction manual, tearing apart the book case where I thought it was.  Finally found it, buried under a stack of quilting books.  By that time there were books and magazines scattered all over the floor.

Read the instructions.  Tried all the fixes for stitches.  The zig-zags were still wonky.

Frustration is building.  I dug out my other sewing machine, only to find that the spindle that holds the thread was broken off.  Why do they make these things out of breakable plastic?  Better buy some super glue soon.

Gave up and fixed a sandwich for lunch.  Back at the machine, I took a long hard look and discovered I had threaded it with quilting thread by mistake.  Quilting thread is stiffer and thicker than regular sewing thread.  No wonder the stitches had gone all wonky.

 Threaded the machine with regular sewing thread.  Worked like a charm.

 By the time I figured out what was wrong and cleaned up the mess I made looking for the manual and packed up the second machine and put it away, my morning was shot.

 Those who don't sew will likely not understand how frustrating these machines can be sometimes.  And those who do sew will get how something as simple as using the wrong thread can really mess things up.

 Yep.  Dunderhead.

 So then I took a nap, which seemed like the most reasonable thing to do at the time.  :)

Mysteries

Most evenings after supper dishes are done, will find me at my desk working on one handiwork project or another.  My computer is my source of entertainment.  I don't own a TV.  I got rid of mine when I realized I hadn't found anything I cared to watch for over 6 months.  Sometimes I will find a movie on YouTube.  Sometimes I listen to music on Pandora.  Then I discovered YouTube had audio books.  Many of the offerings were newer publications.  And that's when I realized how much our society has changed.

Most of the books on my Kindle were gleaned from the Project Gutenberg website, where books can be downloaded in several formats, all for free.  They are mostly books that are out of copyright, so their publication dates range from the mid 1800's to around the 1930's or so.   My taste runs mostly to mysteries, but I have others like Dickens, Mark Twain and other authors of the era.

Upon browsing the audio books on YouTube, I found some of the older books, but also found many newer mysteries.   So I decided to try them out.  What I found was that while the older mysteries had great stories to tell, the newer ones seem to be written more for shock value than for the stories. 

Nearly every mystery contains a murder, and then the hero goes about finding clues to identify and ultimately capture the murderer.  The older mysteries follow a story line with a colorful cast of characters and various clues that lead to a conclusion in the last chapter and the mystery is solved often on the last couple of pages.

The newer books seem to lean toward graphically describing every torture, often prolonged, that the victim endures before having their life viciously ended by the murderer.  And often the bad guy is a serial killer so we can relive these tortures through several victims before he is caught by hard hitting, hard drinking detectives who aren't much better than the bad guy.

I realize that bad things happened during the times the older novels were written.  And sometimes those things are the subject of books.  But most of those authors didn't feel the need to rub our noses in every bloody, gory detail like they do now.

I read for pleasure.  I read to escape the horrors of the day.  If I want nightmares, all I need do is watch the news.

Me...I'll take Agatha Christie's novels any day.

What Will You Do When The Lights Go Out

I'm not talking about how to deal with domestic chores or the feeding and watering of animals.  Nor am I talking about how to start a fire or build a shelter or forage for food.  All of us will have plenty to do what with laundry and meals and dealing with sanitary conditions.  Those who raise animals and gardens will be even more busy.  I am talking about how to keep the kids from killing one another or driving you crazy during the times when, with electricity, they would be busy with their computers or cell phones or watching television.   Or those adult apartment dwellers like this chubby granny who will need to have something to occupy their time when the chores are completed.  Sitting in the dark waiting for the sunrise is sort of a bleak prospect.

My number one suggestion is books.  Real paper books.  I love my Kindle, but unless I invest in a solar charger, when the battery runs down, I am done.  And I am not talking about the how-to books or medical books or survival books most preppers want on their bookshelves.  Those are important, but I'm talking about picture books for the little ones.  Story books, adventure books, girly-girl romance books for the pre-teens.  Mysteries, spy novels, travel books, history and biographies for the rest of us.  Many afternoons and evenings have been wiled away, lost in stories found in books.  Sleepless nights have occurred when I just had to keep reading to find out what happened next.

There are other kinds of books.  For the kids, coloring books and sticker books.  There are all sorts of activity books for kids that not only keep them busy but can also teach.  My mother, who was in a nursing home but still had a very sharp mind, went through so many puzzle books to pass the time and keep her mind active, that my Dad had a hard time finding books for her that she hadn't already done.  There are how-to books.  Learn to knit.  Learn to crochet.  Learn how to build a birdhouse.  Learn just about anything you want to learn with a book.  Remember, without electricity, YouTube doesn't exist.  Nor do Google searches.

You don't need to sell the farm in order to buy books.  My local library has a book sale every summer.  There are used book shops, thrift shops and garage sales.  I checked Craig's List and found a complete set of the 'Little House' books for $3 each and a set of 32 military history books for $30.  The good prices on books are out there.  We just have to look.

Then there are craft supplies.  One year for Christmas I gave my then pre-teen grands small tubs full of craft supplies.  Construction paper, drawing paper, pencils, markers, a small paint set, sequins, buttons, scissors, glue sticks, feathers, art foam, etc.  Kept them busy for hours.  I have a stash of yarn and another of fabric.  And a picnic basket full of sewing supplies.  I make things.  I also have a stash of scrapbooking supplies.  I would bet that some of my grands would love to make small picture albums from those.  And a stash of beads and jewelry making supplies.  One granddaughter gave me a bracelet she made, so I know she would have fun creating necklaces and ear rings. 

Board games are another way to pass the time and have fun doing it.  Usually when my family gets together, sooner or later you will find several of them engrossed in a game of Monopoly or Yahtzee or Sorry.  Playing cards are used for any number of games as well as solitaire.  I need to pick up Uno cards and a couple of the other specialty card games to have on hand.

I know that in a real grid down situation, much of our time will be spent just staying alive.  But we also need some down time to decompress.  The constant stress can wreak havoc on the human body and mind, and when that happens we are useless to our kids, our loved ones and ourselves.    And kids don't always understand the seriousness of a situation and they need to be kept busy when plunking them down in front of a TV for cartoons or video games is no longer an option.

I truly hope it never comes to this.  But the world has gotten so very out of control that I wouldn't bet against it happening.  And if it does, this is just another part of being prepared.