Here I Am!

 Thanks for the check ins, everyone. 

It was a busy time. 

My daughter, my son and his wife and children came home. There were two gatherings at the new house. We are not 100% moved in yet, but we had a place for everyone to sit and a place for everyone to sleep, and that was enough. 

The first gathering was held at my sister's across the road, a bon fire. The girls got a ride on Libby, and were tickled pink to feed the gentle old horse treats when the ride was over. We sat around the fire and visited, and it was a quiet, fun evening. 

The next day, the gathering was at our house and that was nice too. Our new house has memories already.

Monday, William and I rode back with them. It was a full van and a fun trip. On Tuesday, we went to Knoebel's, which was fun. The thrillseekers did the rollercoasters and those sudden drop rides. I, myself, rode the merry go round and the planes with the three year old. It was enough.

We spent all day there. It gave my knee a good test and it held up beautifully. 

Wednesday was the great birthday trial run. The girl's birthdays are very close, so the celebrations are combined. The theme this year is 'tie dye'. The kids are going to tie dye shirts. The homemade cake even had a tie dye theme which was very impressive. Three children with three adults to supervise and assist if necessary. We were using the dip method. My son and daughter-in-law decided that was way too messy. Even worse, dye stained hands were being wiped on the clothes they were wearing. The idea of staying on top of 15 kids would be way too crazy. The activity was fine tuned. The color selection was minimized and spray bottles will be used. The cake required no tweaks at all, being impressive to look at and tasting perfect too. William and his uncle fired up the smoker and made bbq'ed ribs and potato salad.

Thursday,  we were all ocean bound to a dog beach. This did not happen. Tucker, aka the Golden Land Shark (personally, I call him the Incredible Gulp) gobbled down a washcloth, requiring someone to sit up with him all night. That puppy will be a fine dog if they can get him past the puppy stage. 

We spent the day hiking at a local park. Tucker got a chance to paddle around in the water, but it was freshwater. That evening was spent in an authentic Mexican restaurant. I had Poblanos Guadalajara and they were excellent. 

Friday was the day that my kids headed off to a child free wedding in Virginia. The wedding was being held at old inn, very grand. 

The kids and I had fun. We did a craft. We did puppets. We made dad's favorite cookies. We kept the dog from gobbling down socks,wash cloths and barbie shoes, which was a never ending chore, but one we were ultimately successful at. I did not dare to walk two girls and one large exuberant puppy, so poor Tucker had extra energy that could not be run off in the back yard, as large as that is.

Everyone returned Saturday. William was packed up and ready to head out to Michigan with his other grandparents. I think he is spending the week in Manistee.

The youngest was sick Sunday, and boy, grandma dodged a bullet on that. Only her mama would do. It was a quiet day at home and no one minded at all. I made pepperoni rolls for supper, a childhood favorite. The oldest granddaughter was intrigued to discover she was a 4th generation pepperoni roll fan.

Monday was spent at an amazing playground. 

Grandpa Tim rolled in Monday night.

My last full day was Tuesday. We went to an animal park.

All good things must come to an end. Wednesday about lunch time, grandpa and i headed out.

I came home to an amazing sight:

I have peas to pick, plenty of cucumbers. Two zucchini with signs of many more to come. Tons of tomatoes, all green. When those come on, I will have a time keeping up with them. 

It was a longer drive than usual with grandma dealing with a low key version of whatever my youngest grand daughter had. Tim wanted to stop to look at a gun. I used that time to hit up a thrift store.

I saw this pillow and immediately realized that it was a perfect match. 'Self,' I said, 'if are two of these, it was meant to be.' 

It was meant to be. 

This morning I was teary at the sight of an orange spider waiting to scare me on the bathroom window sill. The oldest girl left me a treasure hunt. 

It lead me to the treasure...a heart with all their names. It made me teary.

Good memories.

Moving right along.

 Swept, vacuumed and hand washed the livingroom, and then we put down the newly cleaned carpet. Note that the IKEA poang chair is not permanent. There are two other patio chairs we will use while company is here, but we should be able to provide seats for everyone. 

We got the guest bed moved down today. 

We are not moving the dressers right now. We can do that later when life resumes its normal pace. I got all the bedding washed and popped back on the bed. 

We also moved the Hoosier into the pantry. It will be used to store the appliances I don't want to leave on the counter. 

It was another hard day for both of us, but we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. 

For Northsider Dave, who I have been disappointing for some time now. 

I need to set my tomato cages, but that, my friend, is a 4 foot by 8 foot raised bed of tomatoes, and it looks like it is going to be a bumper year for them. 

Cucumbers have mucho blossoms. Peppers looking good, all except for one that looks like, for whatever reason, the bugs love him to the point that they're ignoring the rest of the peppers, and I'm kind of okay with that, really. There is a double row of onions between the peppers and the cucumbers, and I'm trying to train the cucumbers to go up the trellis instead of across the bed to the onions and peppers.

The last two beds contain peas, onions, beans (which don't impress me much), and in the bed closest to the (still) unsided house, there are three different kinds of squash. I forgot to take a picture of the smaller raised bed which I always plant pumpkins in. They probably grow a foot a day. 

Tomorrow, we will move our bed down to the new house. Between the camper and the house, we have enough room to accommodate everyone. I hope that it is an enjoyable weekend for everyone. Monday, I will be heading back with 3 grandchildren for a week away. I will babysit while everyone travels to an adults only wedding, and I'm looking forward to that. Having all of them, all at once, is not a common occurrence. This means I'll be pretty quiet for the next week. 

Enjoy your break! 😀

Steve Reed: the podcast I listened to was Crime Junkie on Pandora. Infamous: University of Idaho Murders. There are other podcasts on Spotify and on Iheart radio that looked to be interesting, but I tend to stick with what I have on my phone. Something interesting though is that Bryan Kohberger is an incel. I did not know that, and it provides a possible motive. 

Damage

I got tomatoes. They're all green, but it really does look like I'm going to have a bumper crop. I also have blossoms on my peas, so that made me feel better. Little pumpkins growing. It will never fail to boggle my mind just how quickly pumpkin vines grow. Squashes. Onions. Lettuce. So the garden is doing what I hoped it would do. 

Today, I stained my kitchen shelves. Tim put up the wrought iron brackets. They look just as good as I hoped they would. 

I painted more trim. I poly'ed more trim. Tim installed trim around the doors. That job is one board away from being done. We hauled building supplies and drop cloths and tools out of the livingroom. Amazing how much more spacious it seems. 

I'm washing the bedding in preparation for the beds to be hauled up. The rain they were calling for is going to hold off until 4PM, so we'll haul up our rugs and one of the beds and the Hoosier cabinet. And a rocking chair. (Probably look like the Beverly Hillbillies driving down the road.)

The rugs are ready for pick up tomorrow morning as well, which is perfect timing. We'll be able to put them down in empty rooms, instead of moving furniture out of the way and then moving furniture back. 

We're getting stuff done. 

What I'm not doing, however, is getting pictures. Sorry about that. I meant to. 

While I was working today, I listened to a podcast about Brian Kohberger. Can you imagine what his parents feel like? For two and a half years, he denied the crime to them. The decision to take a plea deal must have blind sided them. He has two sisters. At least one of them had questions about his possible involvement when he came home from college after the murders. Both of them wound up losing their jobs in the aftermath of all of this. 

I have been thinking about that all afternoon. Here was a very comfortable family living a very comfortable life. Two parents that loved their kids. 

Four students were killed that night, but five families were ripped apart. 

A Moving Story.

 Yesterday was  a busy day. 

It was an early start at the court house of course. A funny story is that as we all filed in, we were required to put our cell phones into a large basket. I supposed right away that they didn't want any phone calls coming in to disrupt the proceedings. But I ask you to imagine a hundred cell phones in a bushel basket! That's kind of what it was like. 

What struck me the most? The fact that the officials running the show were required to do the same, but their phones went into a basket up front. 

And...wouldn't you know? The person instructing us and giving the oath was interrupted by a ringing cell phone. The funniest part? The sound was not coming from the back of the court room where we rank amateurs were required to drop off our phones. The phone belonged to one of the officials! The bailiff carried the basket out of the courtroom. 

As we all stood up to leave, we were held up by people trying to find their cellphones in that big old basket in the back. I have a pretty nondescript case, and I was regretting that big time. I finally found mine, but I had a horrifying thought that perhaps someone had taken it accidently instead of their own. 

I walked home, changed clothes, and then headed to the new house. 

We are putting the final touches on things, and it really is quite exciting now. For instance, yesterday, I cleared all the supplies out of the bedrooms and then swept the floor several times trying to remove all the plaster dust. I hand washed the floor and applied a light finish to it. We got the curtains hung. 

We're waiting for the rugs to come back from the cleaner. Once they are on the floor, then we'll move two beds in, and bring the hoosier cabinet up for the pantry. We can wash the bedding and make up the beds fresh and ready for guests. Of course, we have to time this all around 3 days of predicted rain this week. 

We will bring up the enamel topped table from the storage at the old house on the property.  We have so much stuff that has been put away for years now, as we planned our plans and dreamed our dreams. It will be nice to see it again. 

The sofa and a couple rocking chairs are already there at the new house, so that part is done. But that's all the furniture we're moving up before the visit. We will mindfully select what's coming and what's not coming over the course of the summer. 

It just feels strange that we are finally at this point. We've been working on this house since 2023. So much has changed since then that it feels even longer. We've still got work to do before winter comes, to include siding it, but actually living in the house we are siding is going to make that much more convenient.

I will get some pictures. We're going flat out right now. I was so tired that I was in bed by 9:30 last night. 

Ticking Boxes

 I got the camper cleaned and put back together, the fridge stocked. One box ticked for my kids coming home at the end of the week. 

While I was finishing that, Tim was putting the final touches on the bathroom. Another box ticked. 

The attic fold down steps are installed. We had to ask for help on that one. My nephew dropped what he was doing and headed down. He's a huge guy, so he simply picked up the steps and fit them in place. Tim was in the attic putting in the screws to hold the thing in place. We had called Bill once we saw that this was not a two man job. Once he got there, it turned out that it was a two person job after all...he and Tim installed it and I kept myself out of their way. There is another box ticked. 

I have jury duty tomorrow. 

Tuesday, we'll be back at it. We are waiting to begin moving minimal furniture down there until we get the cleaned rugs back, and I'm not sure exactly when that will happen. 

Not a lot to say today, but it is raining, and we are supposed to have thunderstorms. To that end, I have the window open to hear it blowing in. Nothing yet, but the rain makes a pleasant shushing noise as my mind races on ahead, doing meal planning for the visit. 

Late Edit: I showed up for Jury Duty this morning at 8:30 as instructed, along with about a hundred other folks. There were two trials scheduled for that courtroom this morning, which struck me as a positive thing. We filed through, one by one, and took our seats in the courtroom for the jury selection process. At 9:15, the judge came in. It was announced that the defendant in the first case was a no show. A warrant was issued for his arrest. The second case had been settled out of court at the last minute. We were free to go. Yep. Another box ticked!

Born and Bread

This is a post that I first put up some time back, repeated again in 2024, and now, for those who have never seen it, I present to you Tim's family reunion/bread baking. 

 The broccoli salad is done and in the fridge. 

I cleaned the kitchen, and washed dishes. 

Soon I will go out and try my hand at two loaves of dough to go with us tomorrow. 

This is an old post, very old, from 2005 or 6, but I love it still. 

Shall We Bake Bread Together

Some of you may remember reading about Tim's Uncle Herman.

This is Uncle Herman's cane. He wants to make sure that you all understand that this is not sassafras, but hickory. So if you are inclined to make your own cane, he guesses you'd want to tie a knot in a hickory sapling. Then you patiently wait three years, and then go out there and cut it down. Varnish it up and put a rubber tip on it, and there you go. You got yourself a dandy walking stick. It is also good for emphasizing a point when you are talking.

Anyways, this is a brick oven that Uncle Herman and Uncle Harold made years upon years upon years ago. Uncle Harold passed on, oh, probably, 8 years ago now (Edit: remember this was originally put up about 2005 or so, which means that uncle Harold has been gone nearly 30 years now). Well, Tim and I got up early, and were on the road at 7 AM, because we had to pick up Uncle Herman at 9, sharp. We were driving him out to Uncle Harold's. Tim and he had the mighty responsibility of getting the brick oven fired up. Well. Uncle Herman had the responsibility, Tim being a mere peon in the operation.The fire is started. Once the oven heats up to 425 or 450 or so, once the bricks are good and hot, you reach in there and drag out all the fire.
Then you begin to fill it with all the different kinds of bread.

It will hold about 22 loaves.Keep on keeping on, Mike and Dave. There's about 40 loaves of bread there, two firings worth.Uncle Herman has to keep an eye on the young wet-behind-the ears-whipper snappers. A very close eye.
While we wait for the bread to bake, people socialize. Here are two of the matriarchs of this mighty gathering. Anna is on the left. She is Herman's wife. Aunt Mary Jane is the widow of Uncle Harold. She's in a nursing home now, but was able to come back home to her farm to spend the day with her family.This is the view behind the bread oven.
Now, while Uncle Herman might well be the undisputed master of the brick oven, everyone knows that Aunt Anna is the undisputed judge of when the bread is done. That's her in the foreground cutting into a 'test' loaf. The hand on her back is pretending to be supportive, but he's actually sticking real close to be the taste tester. The greedy critter just wants the first bite. Don't you think the woman carefully documenting this day should be the taste tester? Excuse me while I put down my camera and go straighten this deluded character out.

Okay.

I'm back.

Man.

Driven mad by the prolonged exposure to the smell of baking bread, the old guy fought hard.

I did not want it said that I, an outsider, was responsible for bloodshed at the

Oglesby-Winkler family reunion.

So I cried.

He shared.

DO NOT JUDGE ME!

It may have been 'pity bread' but it was warm from the oven!

Little toes wiggle in delight.

Finally, Anna gives the official, unchallengeable word. 'The bread is ready to come out of the oven.' The crowds roared.

Well.

They began to salivate in earnest, anyways.

Tim and Gene get right to work. The crowds press in from all sides. Can you blame them? Imagine a table of fresh hot bread, with butter, and honey butter, herb butter, and honey from Aletha's hives, and jams, not just the Welch's, but Uncle Chuck's homemade strawberry jam, and Ellen's elderberry jam, so many others, homemade.

Ooooooh.

And we broke bread together.

And, lo, it was good.

Very, very good.

Here endeth the old post. 

Uncle Herman is gone now. If memory serves me, Aunt Anna is the only one remaining from that generation. All her sisters and brothers are gone now. Uncle Herman died probably 10 years ago now.  Aunt Anna is still plugging along and she is surrounded by kids, by grands, by great grands, even great-great grands, and they love her and take very good care of her. 

Tim is the bread baker now. He runs the oven by himself. But people gather and we still break bread together and we still sit in the shade of the trees eating bread fresh from the oven and remembering those who taught us the art of it all: bread and family and tradition.

The blink of an eye

 We started out with this style of door. They were two returned 'special order' that we got for $86 each, so that was pretty nice. The problem was that we could order more matching doors, but they would not be in until August. 

Tim went to Home Depot and had a nosey and found matching doors. (You all know how I am about matchy-matchy...I didn't even know this part of me existed, but here we are.) 

So we got three more of these doors: One for the closet. One for the bathroom and one for the basement door. That is the one we meant to turn into a dutch door. Here is how it turned out. The door is not yet framed in, but the door is finished. 

I think Tim did a very nice job on it. We'll probably pick up a black door knob down the road, due to my serious matchy-matchy affliction. 

This morning, I had an appointment to get my hair cut. Tim went down by himself. I took down the curtains for the bedrooms from their current place in bedrooms here. They were washed and will be hung this weekend. I also rolled up three rugs and sent them off to be shampooed. 

We got the fold down attic steps in, which were a p.i.t.a. We realized pretty quickly that this was not going to be a two person job. My nephew popped down and helped with that. It helped a lot that he'd installed these before. That was today's project and it is done. 

Tomorrow, I'll be getting the camper opened up and ready for occupancy. Tim will be going to his family reunion, which centers around a brick over built by his uncles 60 or so years ago. Everyone brings bread dough. Tim gets there early to start the fire for the oven and get it up to temperature. Everyone brings a dish to pass and bread dough and it is a party. We've been steadily losing our elders. I believe that Aunt Anna is the last remaining of her generation. Then (gulp), it is our generation stepping in to the role of the elders. 

A blink of an eye. 

Going Dutch

 We've been going great guns on the house. We've got kids coming home for a visit, and they have centered their activity with the family in Grand Valley, so we'll move a couple beds into the house. The camper did not get opened up this season, so I'll get it ready for use on Saturday while Tim is at a family reunion. 

Next week is quite a jumbled up week for me. Jury duty on Monday. That kind of worries me. If it is for a day, that's okay...but the last time I got jury duty, the trial lasted for 4 days. I don't have time for that. I'm getting ready for a company and trying to move in the same time frame. But things always have a way of working out. I mean, in the end, it will turn out as it is meant to. 

So today's project was the basement door. I was worried about small granddaughters tumbling down the basement stairs. Sounds simple enough. Except that we both decided that what we wanted was a dutch door. 

We have the heating stove in the basement, with the idea that the house was small enough that the heat would rise through the uninsulated floor. A dutch door would allow us to open the top half and let the heat flow that way as well. In the summer, the basement is cooler than the rest of the house. When we lived in the woods, we made good use of that: we set a fan up to carry the cooler air upstairs to the warmer house. 

Dutch doors are expensive, though, and so we got the idea to make our own. Tim did a very good job. He was afraid that he'd ruin a $300 door, so he measured everything over and over. A fourth hinge was required, which needed to be routered in. The door needed to be cut in half. We wanted a ledge on the top of the bottom half which required a 1 inch gap to be cut out to accomodate the board. Of course, there was all the fiddling and shimming required to get the door jamb in place and leveled. Then the hand rail needed to be moved to the other side of the door so as not to interfere with opening and shutting. And as long as the handrail was down, there was some trim work that needed to be done... In short, it took all day. The whole day.

It turned out very nice, and I would have taken a picture except, stupidly, I managed to step back and (once again) impale my foot on a screw sticking out of a board, which hurts more than impaling your foot on a nail sticking out of a board, in case you've ever wondered, mostly because you've got to pull the screw out of your foot. 

Anyways, in the ensuing hubbub, I forgot to take a picture. I will take one tomorrow. 

The interior doors are all in now. 

Tomorrow, I'm taking the livingroom rug, and two smaller rugs to be professionally cleaned before taking them to the new house. Once we have them, we can set up beds up in the bedrooms, and the camper sleeps 6, so that will be fun for the kids and whoever is sleeping out there with them. 

It's all very rushed, but we are only moving in what we need right now. We will spend the rest of the summer mindfully selecting what we want to come with us. 

Looking around there will be small little interior jobs which will need to be done, but we've got all winter to do that work, when we are actually living there. Seems strange to say that out loud. 

Small Stuff

 

So this happened. My tomatoes have a lot of blossoms, but today, for the first time, I saw tomatoes. Tiny ones, but it made me happy to see them. 

Teeny tiny peppers too. 

We got the doors on the bedroom closet, both bedrooms, the bathroom. We have the stuff to hang the pantry door. We worked on the baseboard in the livingroom. 

We read of a situation in the paper yesterday. Tim and I sat pondering it. We know the backstory. I said, "You know, we could fix that." Nothing more. Just that. This morning, he wanted to go over to the courthouse and get his deer hunting license. To my surprise, while he was there, he walked over to the proper office and he did fix that.

I met up with a friend while he was gone. She had a chair to give me, and it will match nicely with the little enamel top kitchen table that belonged to Tim's mother. It is always good to talk with Diane. She is centered and wise, and no matter what is going on in the world around me, I walk away feeling better for having discussed it with her. It is hard for both of us to watch what is happening in the world right now, especially in our own country. A lot of people seem to have given up, seems to me. Throw their hands in the air and say, "What can we do?" or "We're fucked." 

I try to avoid getting sucked down to that point, but sometimes just does all seems too big. Too overwhelming. I need to step back. Diane's a kindred soul, and she's the same. 

We stood in the morning cool talking about that, the fact that we are out in the middle of rural NW Pennsylvania, far removed from a great many of the horrors. 

What do we do? And does it mean anything at all?

And once again, the only conclusion that we can come to is that we do kindness. We pour as much kindness as we can, right where we are. It truly is all we can do. In the end, it might matter to no one, but what it guarantees is that we did not become part of the ugliness, and that has to mean something, doesn't it? 

So...

Today, I put venison in the crock pot with peppers, onions, and mushrooms and allowed it to simmer while we worked. Steak subs sounded good for supper. We stopped on the way home to get buns, and I treated myself to a little pot of very good horseradish. 

We came home, and I toasted the buns for our sandwiches and the horseradish was just the small touch of excellence I needed.