Distractions

 I got my 'sushi maker' today, and am really excited to try it out. I've been googling different recipes for different kinds of sushi and kimbap. It looks pretty straight forward, and I have three recipes to try initially. I need to get to the store and pick up the ingredients. I'll start with that, and see how it goes. I also want to pickle some ginger. 

It sounds silly, but it feels good to be excited about something in these trying days. 

I received my second package in the mail and I knew as soon as I picked it up, I was not going to be happy. In my ongoing quest to avoid Amazon, I shop directly from manufacturers if I can. I shop on Walmart as well. This package came from Walmart's 'MarketPlace' and it was supposed to be a quarter pound of hematite. The package did not weigh 1/4 pound. Sure enough, I opened it, and there was one lone piece of hematite in there, nicely packaged in a cotton lined box. Interestingly enough, they paid for shipping on .25 pounds though. 

Anyhoo...

I've never had to make a return through the Walmart system before. I started the process, was sent an e-mail with a barcode, instructed to take the package to Walmart. They scanned the e-mail, took my package, and that was that. 

So...two orders. Two unsatisfactory packages. Two very easy returns. So...I can't complain. 

Well...I can complain...just not about my Christmas orders. (I mean, Dr OZ???? Really????) 

Ahem. In any case, it's been a quiet day here. We bought another large Christmas gift today. One by one, we're ticking items off that list. 

I told my sister what I want for Christmas. Two tractor scoops of cow manure. I told Tim what I wanted. 4-6 raised beds. We have untreated lumber from Levi's sawmill. The next four years are going to be a big economic question mark. It's going to be important to be as self sufficient as possible. That is my belief, and it would be nice to be wrong about it. 

Anyway, over at Jennifer's blog  she posted that a seed catalog arrived today. It is only November, but honestly, the idea of planting a garden next spring was so irresistible that I had to order 3 of my own. 

If it sounds like I'm distracting myself, well...I am.

Feel free to add your own suggestions for your favorite distractions in the comments. 

Oldie but a Goodie

Jaycee asked the question about the Nazi marchers in yesterday's post. 

"Are such things legal in your country?"

Sadly, yes they are. 

This little gem was from 9 years ago. 

 Even longer ago than that, when I lived in Midland Michigan, the Klan held a rally on the court house steps. I floated the idea of having a counter rally. In the end, the idea was taken over by some church leaders, and the church that was kind of catty corner from the courthouse set up a prayer service to coincide with that rally. In the end, the church was packed. The Klan Rally wound up being less than a dozen fine fellows who rode into town in the bed of a pickup truck, waving their flags and trying to make a lot of noise. 

It was even kind of funny in a very unfunny way. 

So yes, Jaycee. Perfectly legal. The question begs an answer though. Does freedom of speech cover people who are trying to marginalize and vilify others? To me, the answer would be a simple 'no'. But there are lawyers who will muddy common sense and turn it into a First Amendment issue. 

Ironic. 

You see, there's this orange man...

Be good people.

Do good things. 

Stick together. 

Today

 This is a huge football day. His football team is the Pittsburgh Steelers. They are currently playing the Baltimore Ravens. A must see game. Right after that is another must see game, the Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs (who are up to this point undefeated. I blame Taylor Swift.) Now here's where it gets tricky. Tim wants the Bills to lose because they are neck and neck with his beloved team. But he also wants the Chiefs to lose because they are undefeated and a loss would make them within reach of his beloved team. 

What to do, what to do? It's a quandary alright.

I saw a sushi making kit on market place. I love kimbap. I did a quick search and was amazed to see that you can buy nori sheets right at walmart, on the shelf, so quick as a wink, I bought the kit. I've been looking at kimbap recipes. I think this will be a lot of fun, although I can see it something that easily gets out of hand. I've already got plans for pickled daikon radishes, and looking up recipes for fish cakes. It will be a fun thing to play around with this winter.

After Tim got home from church, we ran up to feed the kittens. He also wanted to move his game camera. Plus we had to be home by the time those VERY IMPORTANT games started. 

I tried something new today, now that it is getting cold. Keeping in mind AC's admonitions about cats and milk, I decided to try stopping their milk. At the discount grocery, they have packages and packages and MORE packages of gravy mix for 10 cents each. I heat that with a couple cups of water, haul it out to the garage and mix a can of catfood into the gravy. I pour it over their dry catfood. I stood back to see what they thought of it, and we had quite a kitten caboodle of excitement. They were quite enthusiastic, and once their bellies were full with warm dinner, they were very playful, so it was a fun way to wait for Tim to get out of the woods. 

I received my first package for the Amish Christmas in the mail yesterday and was much disappointed to see that it was broken. I contacted the seller and much to my surprise, she apologized and said that she would refund my money. Two minutes after she said she would, my phone pinged again, and I was notified that I was receiving the credit. How nice was that? I was prepared for a wrangle. 

Speaking of wrangles, after 10 months of wrangling, I see that the city has us on the agenda for tomorrow night's meeting. We should have a nice check in our hands by the end of the week. It will always gall me that we were totally ignored until we hired a lawyer, something that added even more expense. But all's well that ends well, and if we are lucky, we will never have to deal with the city manager again. 

So that's today. Steelers winning by two points coming out of halftime. 

Yesterday in Columbus Ohio. 

It's going to take more than one giggle to get past that awful scene. 

Yeah. Going in: 

Just in time for Thanksgiving: 

A decorated turkey cake.

Or a flaming turd.

I am going to guess a turkey.

The flaming turds were marching in Columbus.

And finally, linking back to Jaycee's post: 

A historical picture dating back to 1924 of an unknown Scottish haggis hunter.

Shopped Until We Dropped

It was a pretty quiet day here. Tim decided that he did not want to go hunting today, so we stopped over at the lawyer's office to sign some papers. 

We headed off to feed the kittens down at the new house. 

Tim wanted to go to Titusville when we were done. I asked if we could hit a thrift store. What a score that was. He found a new leather belt for himself. I found a Land's End wool coat, egg plant color that matches very well with the scarf I found a couple weeks ago, for $8.99. I found some books for the box of books I'm putting together for Christmas. You know...just browsing...and then...

I heard angels singing

This canister set was a reproduction jadeite set and it is greener than it appears in this picture, but...

it will match perfectly with the wallpaper...

...in the new pantry

It was $6.99 for the set, and I could see them so perfectly on the hoosier cabinet, 

that they were in my cart in an eyeblink. 

We also bought some more Christmas gifts today which was fun too.

We stopped at a grocery store to pick up some pepperoni to make pizza for supper tonight. I had a loaf of Italian bread which needed to be used up, and so I figured that I'd split it, top it with sauce and onion and peppers and pepperoni and cheese and have a pizza. Tim decided he'd rather have it topped with sausage and so we went back to the meat coolers. We found a rope of Italian sausage. I said, "Well, that can be split up, and it will make 4 or 5 meals for us. He said, "That's a good buy for $9. We glanced through their meat, and were shocked to see pork chops being sold for $1.49 a pound. They had family packs ranging between $6 and $8. I counted the pork chops and said, "Gees. A couple packages of this could break down into 6 or 7 meals for you and me." They were very well trimmed which we liked. Tim said, "You need to pick a couple of those up."

Once the packages were opened up at home, and repackaged into smaller portions for the two of us, we had 11 more packages of meat to put in the freezer, and as ridiculous as it sounds, it is something that makes us both feel good. 

The all important giggle!

This gem was brought to my attention by Gigi from Canada.

She posted it on John Gray's blog, and I shamelessly stole it because I laughed until I cried. Tim came out to watch it and laughed as hard as I did. 

So. Here's your giggle for the day. 

 

Forgot your Giggle.

 

Heh. On that bright note, I'm going to hit the hay. 

Explained

 It's kind of obvious that the last couple days have been discouraging ones. After not letting things get to me, well...they up and got to me. 

I've been feeling dull and tired and uninspired and bleeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaah...

And today, I am (once again) down with a cold. Covid at the beginning of October for a couple weeks and two colds since for those keeping track at home. 

That may be a record. 

It also counts for that hopeless despairing mood. 

I've been meaning to ask...I've lost my revolver globe at the bottom of the screen. Trying to figure out why today, it told me that it was because the time on the map was different than actual time. But when I went to investigate that, my screen locked and all these warnings to call microsoft immediately popped up with an ominous alarm in the background. I control-alt-deleted myself out of there without calling the number flashing on my screen, of course. (I did not fall of the turnip truck yesterday...) but I am curious. Anyone else seeing that? I will delete the feature from my blog layout and perhaps try to install later. 

A bit Easier.

 Yesterday was a wobbly day. No other word for it, and today, truth be told, it was yet another wobbly day, and that is some nonsense right there. 

We had some work to do at the renovation, taking apart the 8 foot tall cabinet so that we could give the doors away. We were meeting the people tonight. While we were there, a quick giveaway...the 'small' 30 x 34 inch mirror was claimed by a couple who were renovating a bathroom. She did not want a medicine cabinet, only a large mirror behind the sink. They were thrilled to find one for free. We were thrilled to get another thing gone from that house. 

Once our work was completed, we came home. Tim wanted to spend the afternoon hunting, so I fixed him a hot roast turkey sandwich and then he was out the door with a nice container of turkey and gravy for the kittens as well. 

Left to my own devices, I looked around blogs for a time. That 'black dog' was still on my heels. When I ran out of my regular blogs, I glanced at side bars. I noticed that Tasker had one 'Finding Life Hard?' and so I clicked on that because, yeah, right this minute, I'm finding life a bit hard. She showed a game that her husband had made for her, and it popped into my head that this would certainly be a game that the Amish kids loved. 

The hematite pieces are divided up between the players, the extra pieces set inside the string ring. The players take turns putting their hematite into the circle. If your hematite attracts other pieces, they become yours. The first player to get rid of all of his pieces is the winner. Simple game. No reading required. Good for all ages. 

I looked around and bought a quarter pound of hematite

I started to feel a little excited, so I browsed around some more. I found Shut the Box. That's a big favorite around here, fast paced, easy to play, good for rudimentary math skills. They make a six player game! Who knew? I bought one of them and a Perplexus Maze ball too. 

I don't generally buy a great deal of new things. Just a handful, and flesh that out with nice things from the thrift stores. As delighted as they were with that old box of children's books from my childhood days, I keep an eye out for used books. 20 books in a box will make their day. They love to sit together in their warm kitchen in front of the wood stove, eating popcorn and putting together jigsaw puzzles, so I always like to toss in 3 or 4 of those. Candy is a good choice too. Strangely, Rudy loves trucks. Littlest David loves horses, and I got a nice deal on some Breyer horses. A woman was selling an unopened 152 crayola crayon set for $8. on Market Place. I bought that too. 

My mind danced along making plans and lists. It really does not matter what you get for the nine of them. Wrapped gifts are a novelty and they are just as tickled to unwrap a box of candy canes as they are to unwrap a game, and remembering their excitement made me happy. For an afternoon, I was not finding life hard.

So...thank you, Tasker for the link that led to Liz.