Where Was I?

15 Dec

The Squire and I held our annual Open House on Sunday, the 13th. We’ve done this every year but one since we got married, and that was after Hurricane Floyd dropped a tree on the house.

The Godson came over on Thursday and Saturday to help swing a dust cloth and then acted as our head chef on Sunday.  I baked like a mad woman, gluten-free stuff first and then my more traditional things. The Godson has been helping us for the last four years, so he knows his way around our kitchen, and doesn’t have to be reminded to keep an eye on the trays and so forth. He’s considering a career in culinary arts, so he really enjoys doing this for us.

In between all this, we had a cookie exchange at church and a Christmas dinner with the Daughters of the British Empire, both on Saturday.

Last night I went up to bed at 9:45 and staggered downstairs at 9:30 this morning.  I not only never got out of my robe, but I also took a nap in the afternoon.  Tired? Not a bit.

The Open House was not quite as well attended as it has been in other years, but it was nice. We had a chance to move around and visit with guests, and the weather was warm enough (70!) that we didn’t light the fire.  Eldest daughter came down, bearing oatmeal cookies and crackers; she uses my recipe, but hers are always so much better, and The Squire seemed to think one box of Wheat Thins was enough for the crowd. Sometimes I wonder about that man.  Both of the local grandchildren and their spouses came down, and brought the Little One, who charmed all the guests with her smiles and curly hair.  Blazer wandered from place to place, looking for a handout or a belly rub. We, of course, never feed him, or pay any attention to him.

Somehow, the conversation turned to unwanted phone calls. I don’t answer calls where the name or number is “not available”. If you’re not available, then neither am I. I also don’t speak to entire cities. If I do answer a call with a number I don’t know, I speak Cherokee. One of the guests is from Tanzania and she laughed. “I use Swahili, and just keep saying “no English, no English”.  We have another lady at church who is from Denmark, and she does same thing. Never use French or German, and Heaven forbid you should try Spanish!

The weather here has been incredibly warm. It was 70 on Sunday, and 72 on Thanksgiving day. The cherry blossoms are starting to bloom in Washington D.C., and our forsythia has little buds along the branches. The Squire was joking about  possibly mowing the lawn on more time.  Well, the weatherman is saying we may have snow flurries on Friday.

They were claiming we’d have a hard winter. When it comes, it should be a doozy.

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More Than One Way…

9 Dec

For a solid week, The Squire has been trying to get my files transferred from my old computer to this one.  Windows 10 doesn’t have a “transfer” plan that works, and the new computer was set up to run MSN, rather than Comcast, although my email address remained the same.

Having been raised straddling the Lutheran  and Episcopal churches, and being German to my toenails, I do not take kindly to change, especially when it does not seem to be for any good reason.

There is no mechanism on Windows 10 to set up an address book; all of your email comes from Outlook Express, which, for some reason, this machine won’t see. I just carried my old computer into the dining room and used it instead. Anyway, after much mumbling and cursing on his part, The Squire finally figured out how to get this machine to open in Comcast mode. All of my email addresses are there, my favorites are where I left them, and there  is peace in the valley again.

I still hate Microsoft.

 

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Don’t Call Me That!

9 Dec

My parents, with all the good intentions in the world, and no malice aforethought, gave me a horrible first name. I suffered endless teasing over it when I was in senior high, and when I turned 21, I dropped it. It does not appear on my Social Security records, my passport, or the mortgage.

However (There’s always a “however”, isn’t there?), there is one couple who are members of the church I attended from the time I was ten until I was about thirty, who still call me by that name, even though I had stopped using it ten years before I left St. John’s. We live in the same neighbourhood, so I see them fairly often. I have asked them repeatedly not to use my first name. I don’t like it, and every time I hear that word it draws me closer to the rabbit hole that took me so long to climb out of.

Last evening I stopped at the pharmacy to pick up some medicine for The Squire and heard a male voice behind me say, “Oh, hello, what’s-your-name.” I didn’t react, even by instinct, because it’s been well over 50 years since I’ve had that name applied to me. When I didn’t respond, he actually called me by my maiden name!

We had run into each other only two weeks ago, and I had reminded him and his wife – for the thousandth time – that I DO NOT like to be called by my first name, so this was particularly galling. I turned around and said, very calmly, “You know I don’t like that, don’t you?” I didn’t even have to tell him what “that” was.

“Well, yes, but I don’t remember.”

“After fifty years of being reminded, I think you do remember, but you just don’t care how angry it makes me.”  I paid for my purchases and stalked out. So mature.

Well, it was that or slug him.

I hate getting angry;  it is a fast getaway on a wooden horse. If you can fix it, fix it, and if you can’t, walk away. Few things are worth getting angry over. It’s childish and foolish. But after fifty years, maybe this was the time to “fix it”.

To add to the fun, I wandered the parking lot for several minutes looking for my car. I never lock it; if I thought somebody would actually want it, I’d make sure it had gas in the tank, but I knew The Squire wouldn’t be pleased. Finally, in one of my excursions up and down the aisles, I spotted his car, and it dawned on me that I had driven that so I could bring home the recycling from church.  Face-palm.

Forgive us our trespasses…

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That Reminds Me of a Story

3 Dec

We are having our annual Open House on December 13th, and are busily engaged in getting this place cleaned up. (Actually, the only reason we put ourselves through all this is to give the house a good going-over. Sort of our version of Passover cleaning.) I was using the steamer on the living room carpet when it suddenly began spewing hot water everywhere and would not suck it back up.

The Squire took it outside and got it to the point where it will suck up the water, but it won’t spray, so I had to dump the hot soapy water into a pan and go over half of the living room floor with a scrub brush.

Except that a thorough search did not locate a proper scrub brush, so I was reduced to using the toilet brush. Look, a brush is a brush, right?

And thereby hangs a tale…

Not too long after we were married our youngest daughter, who was maybe nine or ten at the most, offered to polish her dad’s shoes for him. It was a Friday night, and we let the kids stay up late to watch TV, so instead of staying in the bathroom to polish the shoes, she carried the bottle of black polish and his shoes through the dining room, into the living room, past the sofa, and finally sat the bottle on the end table.

She came upstairs to tell us she had “spilled some shoe polish”.  She had left a trail of black spots all through the house, including over the back and seat of the sofa. We told her to go to bed and we’d clean it up. Actually, this was for her own safety, as one or the other of us would have killed her if she’d stuck around – and she knew it! I filled a scrub bucket with hot soapy water, and since we only had one scrub brush, I got on my hands and knees with that and The Squire began working on the sofa with the only other tool at hand – the toilet brush.

We have always slept in the nude, even before we even knew each other. My winter pyjamas is a pair of wool socks. (It’s a good use for odd socks, and Heaven knows we all have those!) When we came down to see what sort of “spill” we had to deal with, we’d both wrapped a towel around ourselves, but they soon came unfastened, and we’d ended up with them tossed around our necks.

So you had two nekkid people, wearing socks, with towels around their necks, mumbling curses, and wielding toilet brushes. It is, as I have often said, fortunate we have no close neighbours.

And we never did get the polish off the end table.

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No Good Deed…

2 Dec

For quite a while, The Squire has been using Windows 10 on his computer. I was not impressed with it, and refused to have it installed on mine.

A week or so ago, his younger sister mailed him her computer, to see if he could fix whatever was wrong with it; the screen kept going black and she’s have to restart it, which can get very old, very quickly.  Without going into all the gory details, he finally decided to get me a new computer and send her this one. This one, mind you. That is important.

All of my files had to be transferred to the new computer, one at a time – my documents file, my pictures, my email address book, my favourites … well you get the picture. There is a program, PC Mover, which was supposed to be a free item to allow people to transfer files from one version of Windows to another. Unfortunately, this does not include Windows 7, which is what I am running.

He finally managed a workaround, and now we have discovered that having transferred “all my files” to the new computer had wiped out everything he had installed, which is why I am still using my original computer.

From what we can gather, Windows 10 does not allow you to type in a new email; the only way to add a contact to your address book is to click on an incoming message. “Please call me. I can’t call you.”  I also cannot log into my blog, which is why I’m still over here. Seriously, if I have been corresponding with you, no matter how long, please send me an email, because my address book has been wiped clean.

It seems that each succeeding version of Windows has more bells and whistles and fewer useful functions than the previous version.

If it ain’t broken, fix it until it is.

I HATE Microsoft! Do you hear me?

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Sleep Tight

30 Nov

Since childhood, I have been taught to sleep flat on my back. It was a childrearing fad that was accepted as medical gospel in the twenties and thirties, just as putting an infant on their back is now, except the child wasn’t trained to do this until it was able to turn over alone. No point in drowning the kid in its own vomit.

However.

I have always slept with one foot or the other tucked under the opposite knee; I resemble a flamingo at rest. When we had a regular double bed, I hitched up my left leg, so I wouldn’t poke The Squire, but since we got the queen sized bed, there’s room for me to tuck my right foot under my left knee. My podiatrist has given me a growl about this several times, saying I was changing the “architecture” of my foot.

Well, I woke up this morning in severe pain, limping badly; most of the pain seems to be where the top of my foot meets my ankle.  The habit is so deeply ingrained that when I went up to take my nap, I automatically tucked that right foot under my left knee – and instantly removed it! Wowser! If I could rest the sole of my foot against my “knee knob” it would be OK, but the foot keeps going into hiding, and pulling up my left leg seems awkward. I cannot sleep curled up on my side, as I can’t breathe in that position, so the next few weeks should be interesting.

Never happy unless I have something to complain about.

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Happy Anniversary -and a Happy Birthday, too!

29 Nov

Yesterday, The Squire and I celebrated forty-one years of wedded bliss, and today was his umpteenth birthday. He was serenaded and congratulated at church this morning, and we shall leave the rest of it discreetly unmentioned.

our wedding

It is really hard to believe we have been married for so long. Sometimes it seems to be forever, ( a very nice forever) and other times it seems less than a week has gone by since we said, “I will”. (There is no “I do” in the marriage ceremony.)  I even promised to obey him, by my own choice, as it is no longer in the Prayer Book. This generally causes our friends to go into gales of laughter.

We have been blessed, and we both know it. It is often said that marriage is to be a reflection of God’s relationship with His people, and I never understood how true that is until I married The Squire. I have been loved, honoured, comforted and cosseted to a fare-thee-well, thank you very much, and he’s not done too badly in that department, either.

It is, of course, an immutable law of nature that people who like the windows open always select mates who prefer to sleep with the windows closed, and people who want to hold on to everything marry people who wonder why you want to keep that. We are perfect blending of an immovable object and an irresistible force.  Who is who, and which is which varies from day to day, but it works. We haven’t had a single argument so far.

The best advice ever on marriage came from Ogden Nash.

        To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup,

        Whenever you’re wrong, admit it; Whenever you’re right, shut up.

Generally good advice, under any circumstances, I think.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Happy Thanksgiving!

26 Nov

The Squire and I went over to my nephew’s home for dinner today, and had a very nice time.  Brian and Ruth have three small children – Laura is just 6 months – so even with the hassle of getting things pulled together it’s easier to have company than to pack up and go someplace else.  Ruth fixed the turkey, and some of the other items, and her mother and two sisters-in-law brought side dishes, as did The Squire and I. My brother-in-law provided the wine. Ruth’s mum makes the best red cabbage. Most German people in Baltimore eat sauerkraut with turkey, but she always brings fresh, home grown red cabbage instead. Delish!

I also took my “almost world famous” cheese ball. This I the third one I’ve made in ten days, and there are never any leftovers:

2 8-ouce blocks of cream cheese, 8 ounces grated cheddar, 1 teaspoon garlic powder, 1-1/2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce, plus 1/3 cup finely chopped jarred roasted red bell peppers. Mix it altogether, cover with cling film, and refrigerate overnight. If you wish, you can roll it in minced parsley or finely chopped pecans, but nobody’s ever refused to eat it “naked”.  I do fancy it up to resemble a pumpkin, but that’s not even necessary. “Plug easy” is my motto when it comes to cooking – and just about anything else, for that matter.

I did promise a photo of the hole I nearly fell into last night. I went out when we got home from Brian and Ruth’s and took a quick shot; it was getting on toward evening, and with nothing for comparison it’s hard to tell, but this is nearly seven feet deep. My hands landed on the ground about a foot from the stick that goes across the lower left corner.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAI had gone out to see if whatever animal that dragged off the food dish might have dropped it into the stream, and as I said, tripped over a branch, and nearly landed on my face. I probably could have managed to wade back downstream to the house, but I don’t think I would have enjoyed any part of the adventure.

And The Squire would not have been pleased.

Sometimes I think my Guardian Angel must have grey hair by now.

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Verrry Mysterious

25 Nov

Several nights ago, Blazer became extremely agitated when we he went out with me to feed the “critters”, running back and forth, nose down, snuffling, and muttering under his breath for all he was worth. The next night was when he managed to pull the run out of the tree.

This evening, when I took out the fox food, I couldn’t find the dish. I asked The Squire about it, and he said he couldn’t find it last night, and wondered if I had moved it for some reason.

Now, said food dish is about the size of a dinner plate, and slightly over two inches deep. It is stainless steel, with a non-skid rubber bottom, and it weighed a lot. (I must have thought Blazer was a Great Dane when I purchased it.) Whatever carried it away was not a fox. Back in May (see May 3) we had a mama fox come down to the house in the morning, and she was considerably smaller than the dog. If Blazer couldn’t move that dish, if certainly wasn’t a fox that dragged it off, and I really doubt a raccoon could have moved it either.

Eldest Daughter has a motion activated game camera, and we may borrow it from her, just to see what on Earth is back there.

Oh. You nearly lost your faithful correspondent this evening. While I was looking around for the dish, I went to peer over the end of the stream bank, caught my foot on a branch under the leaves, and sprawled face down, landing far, far too close to the edge of the bank for comfort. I’ll take a picture in the morning and post it here. Too dark now.

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Helping

22 Nov

Yesterday, The Squire and The Godson spent the afternoon raking leaves into piles and hauling most of them to the compost heap.  This afternoon, Blazer and I spent a good fifteen minutes burying ourselves in the pile and scattering them around.

We were much more efficient than they were.

But I’ll tell you, fifteen minutes of racing and chasing is a lot for an old lady. Wore me out.

 

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