Sunday

It has been the high holy weekend of football. We are coming down to the final games and playoffs, so our life is carefully regimented around the games that Tim wants to see. Which is fine really. This is a big deal to him. I have plenty of things to occupy my time.  

I have a most exasperating problem with Houdi. He suddenly has a strong aversion to the canned catfood that he has been eating right along. He still eats his kibble, but he meows incessantly for his canned cat food, which he sniffs and then walks away from. I have tried different brands. Different flavors. Pates, tender morsels in gravy, fish, chicken, turkey, beef. He sniffs and then walks away. It's getting pretty frustrating. It's not that the stuff is going to waste. I set what he has deigned to eat outside, and the ferals eat it with no complaints. We shuffle the cans down to the new build for the 'kittens'. They snorf it down in a happy way too. 

Just one lone cat. 

So. I'm not quite sure what to do with him. 

My cough seems to be returning and I have a sore throat. Can't believe it. And no. I have not missed a dose of antibiotic. 

I decided to start my sourdough over today. I'm not sure what I did, but it just did not look right to me. How I could mess up two ingredients, I can't even tell you, but evidently I did, because when I mixed up the second batch, it looked exactly as I expected it to. I took the other starter and patted it out and attempted a whole wheat naan bread, which, much to my amazement turned out to be quite good, so all was not lost. 

I'm trying to think of something beautiful today, and I can't. It was not an awful day. We got a couple more inches of snow, but the worst of it is over now, so that's a good thing. It will be cold this week. We might have more snow moving in next weekend. According to the forecasts,  we might get no snow, a couple inches, or another foot. It might happen this weekend. It might not. 

I think I will just wait and be surprised!

Oh. I thought of a happy! I have my new radio/cd player in the kitchen tuned to a classic rock station. I seasoned the pork loin I was putting in the roaster, and chopped the vegetables to put in with it, listening to songs that I remembered from other times, other places. And I realized that what I felt was perfectly content. So. I guess that was my nice thing. 

Saturday.

 As awful as it sounds, I have really kind of enjoyed having a break from the rehab work. I have caught up on things around the house, which always makes me feel cheery.

Today, I played around with a new bread recipe. I felt as if I might have lost my 'knack'. I've always used the same recipe, but it just hasn't turned out right. Today, I started out with a new recipe, and I could feel right away that it was going to 'work'. Even being able to know that made me feel as if I was rediscovering something I was afraid was lost forever. So that was a happy thing. 

I also started (finally) my sourdough starter. I'm only on day one, and I'm not sure about it. If worse comes to worse, I'll just start again, but Ms Moon, I did find myself wishing that you were on speed dial. I had questions. 

It just feels invigorating to do new and different things, so I guess that's my happy for the day. 

I do feel better. I'm not there yet, but I slept decently last night, and that helps a lot. I told Tim I'd probably be ready to get back to the rehab work Monday morning. 

It's still snowing. 

It's a poor picture, but I really think our snowy street looks beautiful at night. 

End of the day.

 My happies for the day: After 3 doses of antibiotic, I do think that things are better. It feels like my throat is not quite so sore, and the coughing is less. I am pretty sure that it is not wishful thinking. We'll see if I can manage to get a good night's sleep. The real test seems to be when I lay down. 

I made a nice cottage pie for supper. I really do like being able to take my time to put a meal together. Tim is doing the rough wiring for the bathroom, and there is not really much that I can do for that. We came to an agreement on the bathroom layout yesterday. So he works on the wiring. It gives my sinus a break from the dust. Hopefully, by next week, I'll be back to normal and able to show back up there and be useful. I'll look into a better mask though. I have learned my lesson. 

I worked on my embroidery tonight. 

There you have it. Three happies. 

We got hammered with snow this afternoon. Probably a foot of it is on the ground at this point. For a time, it was snowing so hard it looked like a white out. It has let up and the orange glow of the streetlight on the snow makes me think of Narnia. 

Shifting Perspective.

 My sinuses and I walked into the doctor's office today. I wore a mask. My voice is creaky and warbly. My throat still hurts, and I still wake up in the night choking. They are so reluctant to give antibiotics these days. I was quite afraid that I was going to walk out of there with nothing. After some consultation about whether a strep test was in order, they finally decided to do the antibiotics. I'm having monthly bloodwork done, and since I have to go back next week anyway, they can make sure the sinus situation is resolving too. 

John Gray  had a wonderful resolution for the new year. He's going to look for one beautiful thing in every day. At a time when we are all preoccupied by the horrible events around us, his little resolution appealed to me. 

So...today, I looked. I cannot say I really saw anything that stood out. It's a gray day and it is snowing, and from the sounds of it, it is not going to stop snowing until Sunday, but the good news is that it is accumulating in inches, not feet. I noticed today that people were kind, which was nice to see, too.

I guess the big thing is that a few years back, I bought an embroidery project. I was quite disappointed to discover that my eyes were no longer good enough for the work. Bovey Belle showed one of her embroidery projects the other day, and it occurred to me that now that I have prescription eyeglasses, perhaps I should take another look at that kit. I got it out and discovered that I can see well enough to work on the project. I'm rusty. I wish that the colors were not so muted. But I'm making progress on it after all these years and that makes me happy. 

So, that is my 'happy' for the day. What's yours?

Hopefully, I'll start getting over this creeping crud. Today, I did not get anything accomplished. Not even a blog post. 

Life and Death at the Top of the Hill.

 The first day of the new year was spent, predictably enough, cleaning. I really got a chance to do some deep cleaning today. I was able to work on my indoor plants. We were going to have supper at my daughter's house, the traditional pork and sauerkraut, and so I didn't have to cook. We stayed up until midnight (yay us!), woke up late enough that our late breakfast allowed us to skip lunch. 

Speaking of pork and sauerkraut, yesterday morning, I ran Mattie's pork loin and the sauerkraut up to her. I knew that they would probably be away to their neighbor's funeral, but I figured that they would have a kid or two at home. 

It was a warm morning for the last day of December. I tossed my coat in the back seat but didn't wear it. Their road though. Oh my gosh, it was a mud hole. As I approached their neighbor's house, I saw buggies parked, scores of them, surely over a hundred of them, along with vans and vehicles with license plates from New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. It looked like things were beginning to break up because there was a long line of buggies in front of me. Loooooooong line. It appeared that they stagger their departure so that you don't have a line of a hundred buggies all on the road at the same time. I suppose it takes time to catch their horses from the pasture, lead them back to the buggies and hitch them up. 

There was a truck who was caught up in that strange traffic jam, just like me, and they seemed a little impatient. I had no intention of passing. The mud on that road is slick, as slick as any ice. I was afraid of the ditches. I was also afraid of passing that long black line of buggies and not being able to merge back into the lane should I need to. I would never forgive myself if I hit a horse and buggy, and it does happen. 

The truck did pass. I stayed in place. After a time though, the buggies began to space themselves out and so I did dare to pass them just four or five at a time. 

Amos, Ruben, and Rudy met me on the porch. I handed over the pork loin and the sauerkraut. The kids are shy without their parents there, but Amos did ask how much they owed. I said the slip was in there, but not to worry about it. We would settle up with Mattie or Levi when things had calmed down in their neighborhood. 

I headed back down the hill, picking my way slowly, meeting buggy after buggy after buggy. Each buggy waved, and I raised my hand to them in return, feeling part of community in a most superficial way. I did not know Sam other than to wave to him and his wife when they were porch sitting on summer evenings, but you have to appreciate the fact that somehow, word of his death had spread across their community and outside it to other Amish communities as well. They came from everywhere to remember him and to offer their condolences to his family. 

I studied the solemn faces in those buggies I met going down the hill, both hands firmly on the wheel but raising my left fingers from the wheel to acknowledge their waves. 

They are very stoic about life and death. It is the way it is. I remember when little David was so ill, and Levi was beginning to understand that he wasn't going home anytime soon. He called early in the morning and asked me if I could run to Mattie's mother's house and ask her if she would come with me to Pittsburgh so that he could go home to his eight other kids. 

When I pulled up in grandma's driveway, she met me at the door. Her face was expressionless, but her hands were clasped tightly together. Still she calmly asked me what I had heard. I realized instantly that she thought that I was there to tell her bad news. I was quick to tell her that it was okay, that Mattie just needed her mother with her at the hospital. Her relief was palpable, and two grandmas stood on the porch in the early morning understanding each other's deepest fear. 

Where there is life, there is death, and they come together to acknowledge the loss, and comfort each other as they accept God's will. And then it is done. They get in their buggies and head back home.

Ticking down the hours

 It was the day of small things, and I'm grateful for it, because this darned sinus stuff is waking me up throughout the night. I even got up at 3 AM and took a long hot shower just to see if the steam made it easier to breathe. It did. I got myself all warm and cozy back into bed and was able to sleep a couple more hours.

We had some pretty damaging winds here last night. We had no sooner climbed into bed when suddenly there was a bang, and it was followed by blue flashes coming from the window on the north side. The streetlights went out and so did all the lights next door. That scarcely registered when we saw blue flashes through the sliding glass doors on the west side of the bedroom. It looked like it was something pretty major, and we got up right away to unplug the computer. Surprisingly, the power was back on again in pretty short order. We didn't expect that. Turned out the power outages affected a lot of people on the western side of Pennsylvania, and there are some without power still, so we were lucky.

Still, Tim headed out to the new build to check on things there. Everything was fine. It is supposed to get cold, so he relit the heat in the house and out in the garage for the cats. He used the time to put the last breaker in. We are now ready for our final inspection. 

Being short sleeped, I appreciated a day home. I cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom, changed the bedding, did a load of laundry, vacuumed. All those things a body gets behind on when you're in the middle of a holiday and working on another house. 

The day started out with a call from Andy. A neighbor has died, and Mattie and Levi both are very busy with that. Since the funeral is on Tuesday, she doesn't have time to get off the hill and into town for their  pork loin and sauerkraut for their New Year's Day meal. They were hoping we wouldn't mind doing that bit of shopping for them and dropping it off at some point tomorrow afternoon. Of course we can do that.

I even remembered to call a prospective tax preparer. We have to find a new tax person. We liked the person that we used for many years, but without warning, he announced he was going in with another accounting firm in town. We used him that year, and then he retired. Much to our surprise, the charges for doing our taxes went up 30% the following year. They also had to file an extension. They missed the April deadline by 3 months. We explained it away to ourselves. Our federal taxes are complicated due to the multiple properties. We had to file the state taxes, of course, but because Tim worked out of state, he was required to file taxes for that state as well. Local taxes are paid separately. But last year, without warning, we received the bill (only after the taxes were done) for $925, which was an additional 30% increase from the previous year. There were only two forms to fill out: Federal and Pennsylvania. Due to our age, we don't pay local taxes and Tim doesn't have to file New York State taxes because he is retired now. We also break itemize the expenses for the properties ourselves, going through our own receipts and totting it all up to save time for them.  We dropped off our tax forms with the lawyer today, and, fingers crossed, we get a sensible estimate. 

A person stopped in to pick up some coffee I was giving away: 2 2lb bags of it. I used to drink flavored coffee. It was on sale a while back, and so I picked up three bags to go in the freezer. Just in case of the zombie apocalypse. I always like to make sure I've got a few bags of vacuum sealed coffee in my freezer. I just think that I'd handle a zombie apocalypse much better if I'm caffeinated. However, much to my surprise, it turns out that in my dotage, I've developed an actual aversion to hazelnut coffee. I was cutting it with unflavored coffee to try to use it up, but ack! Just aaaaaaaaack! Mornings are bad enough without starting the day with bad coffee. 

Tim and I met up after lunch and put the rest of the kitchen ceiling framework up, so that's done. Bathroom plumbing next. We're ticking boxes there, too. 

We dropped off the last of Grandma Violet's fruitcakes to where it needed to be, and since we were in that end of town, we stopped into a grocery store known for its meats, and picked up the pork loin for Mattie at a decent price, a whole one just over 10 lbs at $2.49 a pound

I ended up the night by folding laundry and doing some online research. I bought two smart watches, one for Tim and one for me. I'm drinking my third cup of brewed ginger and snorting saline. I just really want a full nights sleep. 

We have another storm moving in New Year's Eve. Sounds like a mighty fine excuse to stay home. Which we were going to do anyway, but really, it's nice to have an excuse.

What's up?

Answer: the ceiling!

We are putting in a new ceiling in the kitchen. The ceilings downstairs are over 9 feet. We are dropping the ceiling by a foot in the kitchen. The bathroom is directly above it, and both of those rooms were badly rain damaged due to a large hole in the roof that was left open for far too long. It was the first repair we made when we bought the house, but the damage required some serious structural repair. Since we are redoing the layout of the bathroom, the plumbing will be different. Tim got the idea that if the kitchen ceiling was dropped, the new plumbing could be run in the space beneath the floor joists, as could the ventilation from the stove hood. 

The contractor neighbor stopped in to jawjack, and thought that it was a very smart way to do it. The validation was nice to hear. 

In any case, that's what we've been up to today. 

I have a cold which seems to be turning into a sinus infection. Probably from dealing with 100 year old dust. 

A funny thing happened. Ms Moon was talking about chili crisp, which I'd never heard of. Yesterday, we had some errands to run. Supplies to pick up. We stopped in at Happs, just to see what they had, and much to my shock they had: 

Priced at 2 for $1. it was a deal too good to pass up, and man...that stuff is delicious. Excellent. Thanks, Mary! If I hadn't read your post, it would not have even caught my eye. I've had it two days running. I take a couple handfuls of cabbage and onion and garlic and whatever vegetables I might have and toss it in a skillet. I steam my vegetables in a bit of water, instead of stirfrying them in oil, and stir the chili sauce in. What a wonderful meal, with just the right bite!

Anyways, we put two boxes of good deals in the back of the truck and continued on to our Amish builder supply place, where you can save $2. each on 2x4s (and we needed a batch of them). We then circled around back to Jamestown to stop at Brigiottas, a large produce store. When we pick up produce from them, we always go out back to the warehouse. You can usually pick up a 40 lb box of bananas for $10, and we drop them off for a houseful of Amish monkeys we know. (Mattie says that 9 children will go through a box of bananas in less than a week.)

We got home and got everything put away and had our quiet supper. I took some tylenol PM and went to bed early. 

The last thing that I felt like doing was working on that house today, but I am glad that we were able to get so much done. We'll have the kitchen ceiling up this week, and most of the plumbing in. Everything is taking shape. Tim is curious to see what we can get done in a month. 

Right now, me and my sinuses are drinking a hot cup of very strong ginger root tea, and I will put myself to bed early again tonight. I haven't had a sinus flare up like this in a very long time, and I am grateful that I have a scheduled appointment this week.