Perpetual Three Year Olds

So I'm sitting at my kitchen table writing out a grocery list.  The littlest of my Yorkies, Lily, is standing in front of her open kennel door, fussing.  Then over to me, front paws up on my leg, fussing some more.  Then back to the kennel.  I think she is just being needy, wanting some pets and belly scratches.  But she keeps it up, becoming more agitated the whole time.

So finally I call the other one, Jessie Jane, who, probably thinking there is a treat awaiting, pops out of Lily's kennel.

I didn't realize that dogs have the ability to tattle on one another.  But as soon as Jessie Jane is away from Lily's kennel, Lily struts, head and tail held high, to her now vacant kennel, enters, turns in circles, curls up and promptly goes to sleep.

Jessie Jane is left standing in the kitchen going, "What?"

Yep.  I am living with perpetual tattling three year olds.  And it still takes very little to amuse me.

They Call The Wind Mariah

I've always liked that song.  It's kind of melancholy and lonely and sometimes, not often, but sometimes it fits my mood.

It has been raining off and on since Sunday.  The wind sometimes howls down the streets and around the corners and then lets up for a while, like it is catching its breath for another hard blow.

I wonder if the never ceasing sounds of wind can really drive a person over the edge.  My Dad thought so.  He claimed that someone he knew was driven mad by the constantly blowing winds in the Dakotas during the Great Depression.  It may have been the wind.  It may have been living with the hardships of that time.  I never knew for sure.  But Dad was convinced that the wind was the cause of the madness.

But then my Dad had one or two other somewhat strange ideas.  I found it sort of hard to explain these ideas coming from a man who was so practical and grounded.  He had only an eighth grade education, which was normal for boys of his generation.  Born on a farm in 1911, he went to school in the one room schoolhouse near the farm where he grew up until he had completed the highest grade possible there.  Then he worked, either on the farm or hiring out to make money to help the family.  And he continued to work hard the rest of his life.  He wasn't given to flights of fancy.

I called him when I first became interested in tracing my family history, to ask him some questions about his grandparents.  He told me what I wanted to know and then he said, "Now, you be careful.  You know that _____ went crazy when she was working on that genealogy stuff."  I could never convince him that _____ suffered from dementia, and that the genealogy had nothing to do with it.  After that, when I would question him about this ancestor or that, he would always caution me to "Be careful that you don't go crazy."

I find it interesting, the little snippets of life that remain in our memories.  Whenever I take the time to research my family history, I smile to myself when I always recall Dad's words of warning about "that genealogy stuff."

And if this wind doesn't let up soon, I may be able to test his theory that the sound of the wind really can drive a person a bit mad!

Dunderhead

I think I now have some idea of what it took for my small in stature grandmother to make bread for her family of nine children.  She had to have stirred up and kneaded vast amounts of bread dough to feed that crew.  None of them were shy about their appetites.  But she did it on purpose.

I did it because I am a dunderhead.

I was happily measuring yeast into the warm water for the bread.  Thinking about God only knows what.  It wasn't about the task at hand.  And that is where my inner dunderhead took over, and I found I was spooning Tablespoons of yeast - not the teaspoons I should have been using.

Duh!

A quick calculation told me I would have to double the recipe to use the yeast already in the water.  I usually double the original recipe, so now I am making a quadruple batch of bread.  Yikes!

Kneading bread dough that contains 22 cups of flour is not a job for the faint of heart.  Or the weak of muscle.  Took me 20 minutes over the normal ten.  Wore me down to a frazzle.  Dunderhead.

On the up side, I don't have to bake for a while.  I have 4 large loaves, 3 dozen buns and two large pans of cinnamon rolls.

I guess there are some advantages to being a dunderhead.

Productive Weekend

The soft spring rains were nice on Sunday, right up to the time the wind picked up and started to howl down the alley and around the corners of my building.  It's funny how even though the inside temperature remains constant, it feels colder when I can hear the whistle of the wind and the sound of the rain being blown against the window panes.  So I grabbed a flannel shirt and a heavy pair of socks to ward off the imaginary coolness of my apartment, and got busy.

Sams Club has fresh chicken breast at a good price, so I bought several packages, cut the chicken into chunks and canned them.  27 pints of chicken are now on the shelves, making a total of 54 pints with what I had canned earlier.  Took the pieces of fat and scrap meat I had cut off the chicken before canning, boiled them up with a bit of seasoning and got 4 quarts of rich broth.  The cooked scraps are used for dog treats that make my two ankle biters jump for joy!  The chicken fat gives fried potatoes a wonderful flavor.  I had planned to buy hamburger to can, for I use that a lot, but their price was no better than the grocery store's, so I will wait for sales.

Sam's carries the huge 6 lb. packages of frozen hash browns, so I got three.  They dehydrate down to less than half the bulk which frees up my freezer space.  I put the last bag on dehydrator trays this morning.  I really like having the dry hash browns on my pantry shelf.  Takes only about 15 minutes to rehydrate them in boiling water and they are ready to use.

The price of butter is good - just a bit over $2 per pound, as opposed to $3.59 a pound at the grocery, so 24 pounds are in the freezer.  Yeast is really cheap in the vacuum sealed 2 lb. packages, and because I bake all of my own bread, I bought 8 lbs.  That should last me a very long time.

I believe that it is necessary to my happiness and well being to have an occasional treat.  I bypassed the barrel o' cheese puffs (although I was tempted) and went for the frozen blueberries.  Sams sells a 3 lb. bag for $6.88.  It would be tough to find a pound of fresh at the grocery for the price.  I bought three bags.  One I will just eat.  I like them as an evening snack once in a while, about half thawed.  The other bags will be used for baking or desserts or blueberry pancakes.

There was a lot more that my poor daughter huffed up the stairs for me.  The stairway I usually use is wide and gradual, with a landing half way up.  Had that stairway not been a crime scene that morning, she would have hauled the groceries to the landing where I would have loaded my cart and easily taken them the rest of the way.  As it was, we had to use the front stairs which are very steep and narrow.  She wouldn't let me try to carry anything up those awful stairs, but carted all of it herself.  Without complaint.  She has one knee that gives her trouble, and I'm pretty sure she had to go home and ice it down for a while.  How on earth I wound up with kids who help, even when it hurts, is beyond me.  I am so very grateful.

With all of the bad things going on around us, with a government that seems to delight in making us dependent upon it and with the same government that seems hell-bent on destroying our Constitutional rights, I tend to become a bit anxious when I know that I am not as prepared to take care of myself as I would like.  So even something like this grocery haul eases my mind a bit.  I will continue to do whatever I can to be as prepared as possible for whatever new and worrisome cards are dealt us.  I don't know how others feel, but it seems to me that the downward slide is escalating.  I refuse to be one of those fighting for the last loaf of bread on the shelf.

The Sound of Rain

The building I live in was constructed in the late 1800's or very early 1900's.  There is a ledge, maybe 18 inches wide, that runs along the entire front of the building, right under my living room windows.  It serves no purpose except as an architectural design element.

It is raining today.  If I crack my windows just a bit, the sound of the rain hitting the ledge reaches my ears.  It's not as good as rain hitting a tin roof, but it will do.

Later I may have to doze in my recliner next to a window and just listen.  The sound of rain is good for the soul.

Crime Scene

It appears my building is a crime scene.  And I missed all the excitement.

This morning my daughter came here and we went merrily on our way to Sam's Club.  An hour and a half later, when we returned, we found the door I normally use to enter the building tied off with crime scene tape.  The door was propped open.  There was a large smear of blood on the door.  There were large drops of blood outside the door on the cement.  The rug inside the doorway looked like someone had bled out on it.

Shortly after my daughter had hauled my groceries up the stairs of the second entrance to the building, one of my neighbors came knocking at my door.  It seems that the grandson of another neighbor (he is in his mid-20's) had robbed the little bar that sits behind my building.  He then ran here, trying to get in.  I don't know if he cut himself breaking into the bar or if he did it trying to break the glass on the door to my building.  But about the time the neighbor who was telling the story got home from taking her boyfriend to work this morning, the thief confronted her and threatened to kill her if she didn't let him in.  She instead called the police.  I would imagine that the thief is either at the hospital getting sewn back together or sitting in jail.

I guess you never know what is going on in the minds of people.  I had talked to this guy several times before when he had been here to see his grandmother.  He seemed a decent sort and I had never heard anything to the contrary.  I feel bad for his Grandma.  She is a widow who last year fought and won a battle with cancer that left her in a weakened condition.  She is devastated by the actions of her grandson.

It is my opinion, wounds or not, the punk should be horse whipped just for the agony he has caused that poor old lady.

Good Parenting

Today has been cool and rainy.  It was a good day to spend on quiet projects.  Did a bit of sewing, a little reading, a little puttering about in my kitchen.  Nothing very noteworthy, but satisfying nonetheless.

This evening I settled in to work on sewing together the crocheted squares for an afghan.  Brought up the police scanner website to listen to while sewing.

A little while ago I heard one of the dispatchers announce that there was a father at the police station with his 15 year old son.  The father had discovered that his son had been buying drugs from another student at his school, and had promptly brought the son to the station to talk with police about who had sold the drugs.

That had to be hard for a parent to do.  And young boys really don't like to rat out their peers, especially if those peers are the source for their drugs.

All I know is what I heard in the police transmissions, but it sounded to me like the father was determined to put a stop to his son's drug use.  And in the process, he is giving his son a lesson in consequences for actions.

With a parent who cares enough to do what this father is doing tonight, perhaps the boy has a fighting chance.  Too many parents, it seems, don't want to be bothered or make excuses when their children do something stupid.  I wish both the father and his son well, and commend them for what they are doing.