Idjit Klutz

Daughter is out of the apartment she lived in for three years and is living in temporary "quarters".  Holy heavens, she had a lot of stuff.  (Yes, partly my fault.  I figured she'd go to grad school and continue living there for a while.)  What a job!  The place was white glove clean when we left, though.

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Remember, I'm not complaining...

It is 1:50 PM, Thursday June 16.  The outside temp is up to (drum roll, please) 49 degrees, and wonders of wonders, it is raining.  Updated:  it is now 6:05 PM.  Husband (aka J) said it is up to 51 degrees.  Heat wave.  (Always makes me think of the M*A*S*H episode when they sing Having a Heatwave.  A tropical heat wave.  Ya right.)

Update on the Joke (last post).  We haven't had snow right at our house, but it did spit on us in Moscow a couple weeks ago.  It has been rainy and cold, and no two completely nice days in a row since ???

 

According to Wednesday's paper, officially we were an 1-1/2 inches below record rainfall for the two months of May and June combined (not counting any rain we've had since Tuesday afternoon).  Unofficially, we had already passed the record set in 1974 - the year of the floods.  (Flood story another time.)

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Oh, I get so aggravated with Blogger's editing abilities!  Won't let me paste without highlighting everything.  When I hit enter, nothing happens, or it takes several seconds for the computer to respond, and the cursor keeps disappearing.  The header picture suddenly shrunk to a little tiny postage stamp size.  I had to remove it and reload it - twice.  Tried putting a clipart picture in at the top of this post.  Locked up the whole computer. Had to reboot twice just to get Blogger to work again. GRrrrrrr. Vee has had troubles, too. Anyone else?

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(click to enlarge)

One of my thrift shop finds.  5 cents.  Complete.

(Two pieces are cut from main sheet with pinking sheers but never used.)

Is there a 23 inch doll in my "collection"?

  I think my old bride doll might be about that size, but don't want to go upstairs right now to look.*

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The lilacs and flowering quince are now in bloom.  So pretty.  For a few days, one apple tree was gorgeous.  (Blast it, didn't get a picture.)  The spirea and peonies are just starting to open up, and the grape hyacinth and tulips are just now beginning to fade.  No evidence of iris or rhododendron  buds.  The flowerbeds are full of tall grass, so everything looks so messy.

An aside, but when we were kids we used to do yard work to earn money.  I always had to earn my own money for 4-H camp.  Where are the young people now? 

The "garden" now consists of two Early Girl, two cherry-type, and one grape-type tomato plants, two kinds of chives, one cilantro, one green bell pepper, one red sweet pepper, some catnip, and for fun a few snapdragons, pansies, a gorgeous hanging basket of petunias and ? (my mother's day & birthday present).  I stuck some garlic cloves around the tomato plants; we'll see if they grow or just rot.  (We container garden.  Everything is by the front porch because it is the warmest spot this time of year and closest to the water spigot.)

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* Whine, whine, whine - don't read if you don't like whining and blood.  Actually, this is kind of funny if you stop to think about it.
Idjit Idiot Stupid Klutz here bunged up her knee. (No doctor, cuz no insurance.)
*  First (sort of three firsts), just getting into daughter's car, I twisted wrong - I knew when I got in that I shouldn't do it the way I was, but I did it anyway.  Then slept on the floor for two nights.  Way too old out of shape for that.  (The air mattress had a leak.)  I was doing pretty well as long as we were packing and moving stuff.  Then I drove home...


*  Second (sort of two seconds), while still hurting and stiff from the first time(s), I went outside to catch an escapee (cat) and twisted my knee again.  Very sore, but manageable.  Then later in the day I just stepped up a step and SNAP.  I thought I was going to faint on that one.  I screamed. (Guess no one heard, because the cops didn't show up.)

* Then yesterday, talk about being just plain dumb, stupid, idiotic.   I had absolutely no business being out on the uneven ground, but I went "chasing" another cat.  (They aren't supposed to be outside, but pull every trick to slip out.)   I hung my cane over the fence to pick up Miss Spooky figuring I could slowly make it back to the house.  I was doing fine until someone went by and turned up their music full blast right as they got in front of the house.  Miss Spooky is aptly named and went scaredy-cat -crazy  to prove it.  Yes, I had her by the nape of the neck, but she twisted and clawed with all four feet, and I twisted trying to get away from her.

So, there I was standing in the middle of the yard half laughing half crying, feeling kind of sick, with blood running down my arm, and I couldn't move.  My cane was twenty-five feet behind me, and the closest door into the house at least forty feet away.  Stood for a few minutes trying to get my senses back, thinking surely someone I knew would drive by and wave.  Nope.  (We live on a busy street.  How come no one was out and about?)


Ah, cell phone was in my pocket and husband was in town. No answer.  Waited several minutes.  Still no one went by the house.  Tried my husband again.  No answer.  By this time, I was getting tired, really shaky, chilly, my feet  were getting cold and wet, and I'm really mad.  (Me get mad at husband? Never. LOL)  I finally called a friend to come and rescue me.  Thank God she was home watching grandchildren, because she doesn't have a cell phone
 
So the rest of the story is that I can go up the stairs, but not down. (Of course, there are two steps to navigate or negotiate with just to put the dogs out.)  I can't squat or get down on the floor.  So what do I do?  I drop almost everything I pick up.  (Getting good at touching  the floor without bending my knees.)  Getting off the, uh, throne, is tricky.  (Now I know why toilets are generally taller in the handicap stalls.)  Luckily, there is now a bed and a half bath downstairs, but I need/want a real shower and it is upstairs as part of a deep bathtub.

Last week in the middle of all this and way past bedtime, LA Dog starts shaking her head and frantically digging at her ears.  I'm trying to put medicine in her ears, but can't hold her because it hurts too much.  She jumps away and heads for the hills, er, cellar.  SPLASH.  She comes tearing back up the stairs spraying "water" everywhere.  She's soaking wet. (Um, really, really bad words.)  When I turned on the light to look there were even more bad words, because there was "water" clear over the bottom step.  So for two days we were without hot water because the water heater was sitting in sewage.  Luckily, the furnace was turned off because there were several inches of water in the bottom of it, too.


So, with everything J has missed roughly the equivalent of three days of work to help me, work on plumbing, and clean up the mess.

That, my friends, is the way our life usually is.  It is always something.

Pantry History

UPDATED 6:10 PM

In Blogland, there seems to be quite a bit of interest in stocking up - on food and other items. There is a renewed interest in gardening. People seem to want to make food and cleaning products from scratch. Some people want to save money. Some are worried about the economy. Some want to have a supply for emergencies such as natural disasters. Some do it as part of their religion. Some are trying to get away from commercially processed foods with all of the additives and preservatives. Some are worried about the environment. Some are doing this for a combination of these reasons.

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A while back, I mentioned to P at The Chicken Coop http://motherhen68.wordpress.com/ that I would post how and what I stock in my pantry. Here is the history of why I keep a stocked pantry.

I learned the hard way that I needed to start a pantry. A few months after my husband and I were married, my husband took a job in Oregon where his work site was about 20 miles from anywhere. We lived in a tiny town that was 50 miles from any town large enough to support a real grocery store. And, sometimes in the winter the highways in all directions would be closed. This "town" that we lived in had a bar, a "drug" store (kind of a junky store without a pharmacist), a gas station (that sold only gas and oil), a grocery store, a tiny library (I think I read almost every book in it), two or three churches (one served several denominations), a school, a post office, and a fast food "cafe".

The local grocery store's selection was poor at best; sometimes there was no fresh food or even toilet paper, sugar, or flour. Add to this, the owner opened and closed the store on his whim. The prices were extremely high, and we were extremely poor.

My husband often worked 10 days on and 4 days off, but the schedule was subject to change without notice. Sometimes he would have only one day off in twenty. My husband had to use our only car to get to and from work, and he would often just show up from work with a dinner guest without letting me know ahead of time. Remember, this was pre-cell phone days. (One time I had to serve a guest tough stringy tasteless "roast" and canned corn with water to drink. There was barely enough to go around, and there wasn't anything else in the house. We didn't even have enough money buy a soda pop much less go out to eat. Talk about embarrassing! I can't remember what we did for breakfast the next morning.)

I had to learn a whole new way of thinking, budgeting, and shopping. The pantry was born. And, yes, I made mistakes - like forgetting to take the checkbook (on Sunday when the banks were closed and before ATM's) and/or the grocery list with me when we went shopping.

We lived there for two years. For the next 11 years we lived roughly 150 miles from any town that had more than 15,000 people.

This move took us to rural Idaho. The area we moved to had a relatively (for the northern US) mild climate. However, we would often go hours and hours without electricity and sometimes several days without being able to go anywhere due to road closures. Luckily, almost everyone, including us, had fruit trees, and we planted large gardens. What one person didn't grow, another did. Produce was traded, given, or "gotten". I relearned (Grandma had taught me when I was younger) to can, freeze, and dry fruits and vegetables. I even bought raw milk and made butter and ice cream.

Some of this time was before microwave ovens. (My first microwave oven cost almost $400! It still works.) I didn't own a dryer. We heated the house and our water with a wood burning stove. We cut and chopped our own wood. I had a toddler. Then I had another and home schooled my son. And, several of of those 11 years, I worked full time outside the home being gone for 12 to 14 hours a day sometimes for several weeks at a time. (Wears me out just thinking about it. And, I thank God for my neighbors and my grandparents who were healthy enough and willing to help take care of my son while I worked.) Sorry, I regress.

For almost twenty years now, I have lived in a town with two largish grocery stores and several convenience stores. There is an on-going battle with the shoppers and the store owners, because groceries are incredibly expensive. The store owners used to say that it is because the delivery charges were so high, but all the small towns around us with farther delivery distances were less expensive than the stores in this town. Now, the store owners say the prices are high because of delivery costs and they have lost business to Costco and WalMart. The stores in the outlying towns still charge less on most items than the stores in this town.

So, I keep my pantry. I stock up when there are really good sales. Now that there is a Costco and WalMart (about 80 miles away) I go every few weeks to restock and add to the pantry. (I did have to learn to ignore all the fun stuff.)

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I really don't know whether it is less expensive grow and preserve your own fruits and vegetables. It can be quite expensive to get started. If you have to consider your time, it probably isn't worth doing your own. If you don't like gardening, then it probably isn't worth it. If you have to pay for water to irrigate it might be cheaper to buy your produce.

What I do know is that I like knowing that what I preserve is fresh and clean when I start. I like that I know what is in the food I preserve. I do know that most home preserved food tastes better than commercially processed food.

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I still haven't answered P, but I need to stop for today. Hopefully, tomorrow...