maybe, I hope, I think so, it could be

Since the sprouting it hasn’t grown much, just this side of two inches– I’m almost confident that its a real orange tree sprout and not a weed seed that found its way into the potting soil.

Since the 29th of October I’ve kept it in good condition and have managed to not kill it off by neglect. Although I almost killed it by leaving the light over it on too high an intensity over Christmas holiday.

I haven’t planted anything else, but I’m planning on ruining my yard this year and cutting a 5×20 foot garden right in front of the house. I say “ruin” somewhat tongue in cheek because the beauty of a yard or  garden is subjective. I tend to think a perfectly manicured lawn is lovely, but I live with two children, four dogs, and a patch of feral strawberries that are determined to keep such a yard a distant and unrealistic dream.

Have you ever run over cleverly concealed ripe strawberries with a mulching lawn mower in August? I did, the carnage was great. Day one smells like a strawberry punch, day three after the mowing smelled like strawberry wine, day 10 and my yard smelled like a Ceasar salad. Not wholly unpleasant but mildly disturbing in that I was tempted to fetch croutons and Parmesan every time I went out to water the hedge.

Usually I try to scatter my food gardening as unobtrusively as possible around our property, a side effect of living in a family house is the fear that everyone is going to criticize any change, no matter how small and no matter how great of an improvement it might be over the way things Grandma had them arranged.

Grandma had dark fake wooden paneling in the living room– and I took so much flack for removing it. Mom’s dog used to pee on that rhododendron by the front door, never mind that the plant is dead it had sentimental value. Can’t dig there because we buried a cat there 4 decades ago.

The reality of it is though that if Matt and I hadn’t purchased the place then it would have been bought by people who would have seen it for the money pit that  it is, razed it to the foundation, torn out all the landscaping and built a duplex here. This year, I’m just going suck it up, brace myself for the finger pointing and cries of heresy and treat my property as my property and manage it the way I like instead of catering to a bunch of people who never bother to visit unless someone has died anyway.

My dogs will never be vegetarians. I appreciate your sentiment about my animals eating other animals, but they were designed to eat other animals so I’m not going interfere. Besides Greta’s bowels do bad things when she manages to get a single corn chip, and as much as she loves a nice raw head of cabbage last time she got at one the neighbors called the city suspecting that we had a corpse rotting in our backyard.

Actually, rotting corpse would have been an improvement. CSI wouldn’t have scooped that poop. Lawrence Fishburne’s character would have been all “F–k this, I quit.” and then he would have stormed off, the rest of the episode would be the other characters trying to figure out who stepped in what and where did Lawrence Fishburne go?

Bacon grease is an essential ingredient in blueberry muffins. It makes them last longer, taste better, and its cheaper than coconut oil which frankly does a 2nd rate job. I will make you any other type of muffin, even the cranberry ones, completely vegan if you like but I draw the line at my blueberry muffin recipe.

Tofu is awesome, stop pretending that its a meat replacement and accept it as tofu. I will defile neither tofu nor my meatloaf recipe attempting to appease your perverse appetite that craves both moral superiority and down home good cooking at the same time.

Justify it all you like, if you are vegan and don’t eat beans and bean products you are a crappy (and likely malnourished) vegan, pastatarians don’t count. Fake chicken nuggets and egg free ramen do NOT have enough protein to keep your brain functioning, which is probably why you feel like crap and don’t have the mental acuity to calculate exactly how much protein you need to eat each day.

Finally, I’ll happily make as many vegan portions for dinner as there are vegans, which tends to include enough for seconds if you like and a bit extra for the omnivores to sample if they like. Do NOT pout because you don’t feel included or because you think I’m trying to single you out somehow by not offering you meat products that I know you will make a big deal out of not eating– that attitude just makes you come off as a permanent window licker on the short bus of life, its just rude.

I thought that was it, but I have one more: Under no circumstances are you EVER to claim to be a strict vegan with “soy sensitivities” and expect me to cater to your bizarre dietary claims with anything other than a good stout bowl of oatmeal and a look of piercing disdain mixed with a pinch of distrust.

Did I sleep and then wake to do these things, or have I been up and am I planning on sleeping in? Am I vampire? An insomniac? An overachiever? An underachiever? Consumer of way too much caffiene?

I think it’s the carbs, or the lack of carbs really– it’s thrown me all out of whack. I found myself laying in bed actually having fantasies about a bowl of white rice. Not that I don’t feel very healthy and satisfied with the foods that I’ve been eating, it’s just that there’s nothing quite like a bowl of rice for a midnight snack. Oh sure, I have that lovely brown and wild rice mix, but– it’s really not the same. Its like having a crush on George Clooney and being rescued from an evil masher by Val Kilmer– sure they were both Batman, but really– Val is just not George. I just look at my bowl of Val Kilmer brown and wild rice and think “Why bother?”

I’ve moved onto practicing the E Dorian mode. Someone with a clue about music theory can explain it better than I can (I just play the notes) but basically the 3rd and 7th notes lower 1/2 step, it’s kind of jazzy.

So instead of one of the 25.5 cubic feet fridges, I suggested we fix up and send the offending fridge to a Freecycle member with a larger family and go with a brand spankin’ new compact fridge and see if it works for us. We usually don’t keep a full sized fridge more than a quarter full anyway (condiments do expire and I’m a teeny bit obsessive about aged food.)

Odd thing– my husband thought it a good idea.

After two weeks of impassioned JFGI, browsing random appliance stores and debating on whether or not we need a separate freezer or just one of those little ice box thingies we decided on this baby. (The freezer debate rages on.)

I love it. It took a reconfiguration of the shelves to manage to fit a gallon of milk inside, and I am using a plastic bowl for holding the eggs (who wants to keep eggs in the door anyway? I never do.) It’s as cute as a button.

What we’ll do is build a drawer to go under it, and mount shelves above it– which will give me more storage room in the kitchen. The estimated yearly operating cost of it is $24 (Yay!)

On the art front, I’m working on making more plushies and back to spinning some BFL. I carded the muppet entrails silk noil with some matching wool (the dye match was perfectly unintentional, but I’ll go with it) and I’m itching to get a free bobbin to make some yarn that is all about the texture.

This year is starting to show a disturbing trend for our family. Since the beginning of the year we’ve managed to have one good family emergency, dilemma, or drama at least once a month. Matt packed up the kids, the laptop and me– sending us to my Mom’s and he stayed here until the day before yesterday so that he could take care of the critters.

Of course, there’s no wireless over at Mom’s so I have limited computer time on her computer, no camera, no way to network her computer to mine and no access to civilization.

Oh, and because we weren’t expecting an extended stay at Mom’s; I didn’t take yarn, wool, spindle, or knitting needles. I did take the laptop– did I mention that? I also managed to not pack my reading glasses, medicine, or watch. I did remember to take my toothbrush.

So last week Friday (I think it was Friday) we went to Tupperware Bingo. I think that I really enjoyed it means I’m way to close to being domesticated. I cleaned cupboards for fun on Saturday. Went to church with Mom and my kids on Sunday. Went to lunch with everyone after church on Sunday.

Boredom is not a pretty color on me. I can read without my glasses but I’m doomed to a headache sooner or later if I push it. I did a bit of cooking. I organized photos that are already in my laptop, deleted unused files, un-installed old programs, de-fragmented the hard drive, cleaned up the flash drive thingy, created new homework for Josey, made phonics flashcards for Lexi, and so on.

A few things I’ve learned from staying with my mom:

• Mood music with waterfall sounds do not relax me. It makes me want to go pee even when I don’t really have to go.
• Always check the dates on refrigerated items before opening the container.
• When setting a security alarm before bed, be sure to bypass the hallway motion detector so that it does not go off when the 10 year old gets out of bed to go to the bathroom.

I think that’s pretty much the summary of my wisdom for now. I’m glad to be home.

This pin cushion top turned out to be a much more attractive (although probably not very tasty) project. I was trying to imitate some vintage embroidered flowers without actually bringing out any for reference.

Now I need to figure out if I’m going to mount it on top of a jar or sew a bottom for it. It’s just a little too large to snug into the top of a tea cup (of course there is always the possibility of finding a larger tea cup.

Today I went a little more basic with the baking and made lemon daffodils.

Don’t laugh. I know flowers well enough to know they don’t look like daffodils, it’s just what the recipe is called and I thought it would be more fun to use the daisy shape in the cookie press than the lozenge shape.

Technically the hard parts have been done. I live in fear of dry mealy cakes though so I went through the trouble of digging through my little index cards and finding a nice trustworthy recipe.

I used a single egg dinette cake recipe for the batter, and layered butter, flour, peach slices, sugar, and raspberries in the bottom of the pan, poured the batter on and stuck it in the preheated oven.

I wasn’t planning on an upside-down cake– it just seemed like a good idea when I was mixing the batter.

Oh sure, I could totally spin yarn while waiting. But it’s so much more fun to sit and wait, wringing my hands and wondering if I remembered to put all the ingredients in the bowl. Should I have sifted the flour twice? Will the fruit be enough or should I make a glaze to go with it? Maybe I should have picked up some ice-cream. I didn’t add vanilla extract! Oh wait, it didn’t call for vanilla did it? Maybe I should have added some rum?

You know– spinning while I wait for the cake doesn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.

I also ordered more of the Moorit Shetland and some white Shetland. I can’t say enough about their processing, it’s a special treat to order clean roving that is still lively and hasn’t been processed to death. I like my wool with the character of wool in it.

I still have half a bobbin of cashmere that I haven’t the patience to put back on the wheel yet, it’s lovely stuff and I’m looking forward to the resulting yarn, but it just takes forever and a day to spin.

I swear it grows.

When the cashmere came with the first order it was in a plastic zip type bag, I’ve spun about half of it, and yet the bag is still full of cloud. Stuffed full.

Christmas was good, we did the big family party Christmas Eve at my mom’s house. The more dramatic of my two stepsisters didn’t show so it was actually very nice and calm. We had a quiet Christmas dinner with a few gifts exchanged at home. No drama, no traumatic craziness, just love, Peace on Earth and ham.

Today is Josey’s big 10th birthday, so this year he wants to help make and decorate his own cake (German chocolate) and he gets to pick what we have for dinner tonight. He’s also thinking that he’s old enough for a blog of his own, so– we’ll talk about it.

I trust my child, I just don’t trust the rest of the world.

Opal is having a contest on her blog, guess what her project is and score some yarn.

Sorry folks, I love you but after timing out and waiting until the cows come home, I just don’t want to comment that badly– besides, the one out of the three that the comments did load– I forgot what I was going to say.

Sadly, I have DSL so if your blog takes over three minutes to load, you might want to consider the options– think of those poor folks missing out on your brilliance because they are limited to dial up.

Speaking of brilliance, I’m cleaning the house today and spinning more of the Shetland. I know, you haven’t even seen the yak yarn I was spinning, because I’m not finished with it, I promise I’ll take update pictures soon.

Actually cleaning is not quite accurate. It started as cleaning, and then mutated into full blown purging. I can’t believe how much stuff there is here that is just simply in the way, taking up real estate, and crowding everyone out. Part of it was that when my Dad was staying with us he brought his whole house full of stuff, and when he left, he left most of his stuff. It’s brutal because I don’t really know what he wants to keep and what he wants to toss, and getting him to come back out here to pick anything up has not been terribly successful. I have to consider the possibility that Dad just doesn’t want to deal with it; so I considered the possibility and after careful consideration concluded that it’s a high probability he simply doesn’t want to deal with it.

Also on the high probability scale is that all this crap will drive me over the edge into some psychotic episode that will end badly for everyone. Well fine, I’ll deal with it then. If he doesn’t like the way I deal with it, I don’t really care at the moment: I don’t really like the way I can’t put my stuff where it belongs because his stuff is in the way. I do however like the calm peaceful feeling of my home when it’s tidy and organized.

Greta thinks all this cleaning is awesome. Especially we start with the fridge, this is where she really shines. So far today her favorites have been slightly dried out hot dogs, left over french fries, and a bit of ham and savory. Freezer burn on the chicken? No problem for Greta, just a little ketsup and cook that baby right in the microwave. Frankly, Greta makes cleaning the fridge completely worthwhile– how did I ever manage before her?

Not that it needed to be disposed of immediately, but we also broke into a jar of pickled hot cherry peppers. I had mine over water crackers, Greta prefers gently tossed in the air. I’ve never seen a dog that likes such spicy food, it must have it’s benefits for her though, because she doesn’t ever have flea or worm problems even when the other dogs in the neighborhood do, so maybe it makes her too spicy for parasites.

Like anyone listens to me. I’m just the one cooking the turkey, what do I know? Good thing that I’m flexible and settle for cooking the turkey early and reheating it before it hits the table.

I can’t wait to get back to my computer, my craft supplies and my kitchen. I didn’t manage to get anything of note today other than making my utterly perfect turkey despite everyone insisting that we have dinner at 1:00 pm. My yams were awesome too, although they ended up only coming off the stove mid-way through the meal. Yes, I did tell everyone that dinner would be at 3:00, no one listens to me. I will be annoyed about it until well after next Thanksgiving.

I don’t care if people show up early, it’s wrong though to expect that showing up early will make the food cook any faster, because it won’t. It simply makes the person cooking a little nuttier than usual.