Random Stuff

In case you didn't notice, this is actually this date. Earlier today I posted an old draft, one I had started on November seventh. Had to laugh, saw that none of the kind comments I recieved today got published, went to my e-mail, noticed most of my comments this month hadn't been published and were waiting for me to hit the publish button.

But I finally figured out that I hadn't reset the comments-must-be-moderated thing it is just that the comments were on a post older than fourteen days! Even the one I "published" today! Sorry if you were wonderin' where your comments had gone to, or where I had gotten off to.


Had pictures of Anna modeling my new knit hat pattern, can't find them, the pictures that is. I'll have Bet take pictures of her tomorrow and show you them when I get home along with the hat I nearly finished today. Mind you, I started it today down at the court house, from scratch, I hadn't even chosen the needles I was going to use.

I took all my dpn (double pointed needles) with me today, enough to supply an army, they were not confiscated but my blunt end scissors were. Oh brother. Except that I am very glad that they keep us safe down there. There are too many revengeful pain-filled people out there in this world. And some mighty shook and sad people in this town today because of it, that's for sure. So I didn't really mind, didn't even mind being "wanded" 'cause I set off the beeper in the morning and after lunch. Lots of sad stuff and you see a ton of it when you get off the farm and go into the city, or just read the paper.




I saw something that disturbed me today and when I tell you, some of you will roll your eyes and say to your computer screen that I need to get out more or lighten up or both. But here goes.

I saw a fancy pants man in cowboy boots and a suit sit next to a woman wearing a very fancy ski type jacket from our state's land grant university, WSU. She soon struck up a conversation with him, using his boots as a lead in and then I watched them converse for the next four or so hours, I saw him alone at McDonald's at lunch so at least they didn't go to lunch together.

Here's the deal, I wonder, because I saw a wedding band on his left ring finger and none on hers, if he told his wife all about the four or more hour conversation he had with an unringed engaging woman who laughed at all of his funny quips. I wonder if he told his wife and daughter and older son about this woman's comments on their family's pictures he was showing her just before I was excused for the day?

Home wrecking women and weak ego-stroke-needy gullible men lurk everywhere. And visa-versa.

A saying Dirt and I are familiar with, "Time plus opportunity equals trouble no matter who you are." Man I wish people saw that trouble starts well before the motel room. That this sort of familiarity with one person on this day leads to more familiarity with another on another day and before you know it you've crossed a line you never thought you'd cross. Even if you never make it to the motel room, you steal from your beloved when you give so much time to another.

There are several men out there who won't have the ability to listen to their own wive's four-thousand words tonight because some chatty women with no self-control dumped hers on them instead. I looked around the jury room today and the only men talking were the ones unfortunate enough to be sitting next to one of the bold un-controlled women. The rest of the men, reading papers, books or just sleeping will have the where-with-all to listen to their wives tonight.

Well there ya go, my rant for the day, hopefully the week, but who knows, it's been a while.

Take care Dear Reader, give every single moment to God, they are all His.

Road Trip Results in Good Food and Work! Or, Part Two

(This is way past due, thanks for your patience, more parts will come out soon I hope)

So I found a set of French doors for my new closet on Craig's List, but they were all the way in Raymond. In the long run, even though it is a two and a half hour drive from Vicktory Farm and Gardens, it was going to be an easy do because we were expecting to go to the ocean to clam dig on the weekend (anniversary get away with the girls November 6-8th). But then a storm blew in and ruined our clam dig plans.

The weather wasn't bad enough to keep us, the girls and I, from being daring and driving to Raymond for the doors. Luckily for us Raymond is far enough away from those who would like silly old French doors and no one else was big girl enough to go get them so we were the lucky winners of the race to the French doors. (That's how getting things off of Craig's List always makes me feel, like a race)

The man with the doors was nice yet efficient and so it seemed only appropriate that we should waste more time than the five minutes it took to load the doors, pay the man and drive back to the main road. So the girls and I drove farther west on into South Bend to find some oysters. From a previous ocean trip we found that Raymond, the town that sits on the east end of Willapa Bay is not the place to find oysters. Willapa Bay is famous for their oysters but clearly you have to drive around the end of the bay and west to South Bend to get them.

What do girls on a road trip do when they see this sign? Become customers of course.

And it was a great cup of clam chowder, and a nice restroom too.

Because of the great cooker out front we struck up a great conversation with the owner, manager, waiter about his wonderful cooker and his famous smoked oysters (that we were too early in the day to enjoy).

So if ever you are in South Bend, Washington and the smell of yummy smoke fills your olfactory senses, pull in here, and hopefully they will have enough to serve you, because sometimes they run out before they run out of customers. And even if you don't care all that much for oysters, the man with the cooker also does many other things in his smoker/cooker.

The box like thing here on the end with the red barrel up against it is the smoker part.

This is the cooker part. While we were there he tossed something that could have been a large roast into the cooker part. Home we go with our French doors and further inspiration for the "Tavern" and a target place to dine.

And here they are, The Doors, not yet sanded or painted, well for me anyway, trust me they have plenty of paint on them. Oh wait I didn't tell you how I got the walls painted up did I. Last I left you there was old paper being peeled off of walls and a window stuck in the wall.

The texture came from plaster of Paris, which dries way to quickly for me. Next time I will search out the stuff we used in the dining room which dried slower and allowed more working. But the walls are what they are, all random textured and ready for paint. I put down a base coat of a rather celery-ish green made from a lovely yellow and a very green green (all paint in the Vicktory Farm and Gardens buildings is pretty much mis-mix exclusively). It is the square in the bottom left of the picture above. The mottled green was achieved with my "car wash mitt" technique.

For the mottled green I mixed up three greens and "painted" a car wash mitt with the three greens and a soft butter yellow. The green in the upper right and lower left are actually the same green and the most prominent in the room.

After I "paint" the colors on the mitt I daub the mitt on the undercoat, then I flip the mitt over to the "dry" side and blotter the colors all together.

More later. But for now, I am off to Jury Duty because this really isn't November seventh (when I started this post) but November thirtieth. Stay safe today Dear Reader, you are important to others. As usual lots has been going on not to mention Thanksgiving, first Sunday of Advent and the rest of this last month. I have been very wrong in not writing, for now I have a ton to ketchup on. But that is the way of my world, you know that don't you Dear Reader?

Toodles.

The Bedroom Story, Part One

Well, here's the hole that started it all. It all began with the bed actually, but right now it is just a big brown uninteresting box. So the hole will get top billing for now. The hole and the termites that ate the hole, nice square job they did eh? (That was really Dirt's handi-work.)

This is the type of stuff that freaks out my silly over-reactive nodes, they're so much like me, over-reactive that is.

Boards just hanging out, being bored, waiting to be reused and used. Not everything got hauled out as planned but the girls appreciated the stereo being left in the room.

It kept them entertained while they pulled the wall paper off the wall to expose more paper. I'm a corner cutter, and would have just plastered over the wall paper but when I heard it peeled easily I figured they should peel it and I'll plaster on the paper I used to decrease the paneling lines on the upper part of the wall over twenty years ago.

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I know, everyone is going to say that I should strip things and do this and do that, butcha know, I was told that the wallpaper and even the paint wouldn't adhere to the paneling twenty years ago. I would have had a different color scheme years ago if it would have only peeled or flaked or something. So for a person who loves change, I like to live dangerously.

Here's the original window with the window taken out. A nice typical bedroom sized window.

Anna helped her dad measure and draw the cutting lines for the new window. A new window could be extravagant, but I found it on Craig's list for a relative song, it is a really nice Penguin window, and will afford quite a view of the yard and gardens from the bed. No need to pull up a chair, the head of the bed is a mere eleven feet from the window. The foot of the bed, just inches.

Dirt will be installing a baseboard heater just under the window. I like baseboard heat. I don't care for the blowy noisy-ness of most force air heaters or furnaces. And with my asthma issues (and now obviously my lymph seems to want to complain a little too) one of the worst triggers is house dust and mites (uck) and forced air heat is a contributor to the problem.

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Besides that, our furnace never worked well into other parts of the house and Dirt had to crawl under the house and redo the soft duct work. Our cats were often blamed, but I'm thinking that the possums that Martin has pulled out from under the house also liked to rip into the ducting and enjoy the heat, not to mention the mice and other rodentia that crawl under my house with abandon ( I hear them all the time, skritch, skritch, skritch).

Ah, here is the new window! And even better, here is the help to put in the window! Our friends from up north have impeccable timing to show up for work and for that Dirt and I are incredibly thankful.

It took the three Coulter men, Dirt and a bit of help from Bet on the inside to put the window in the hole. I have no idea how Dirt, sicky me, Anna and Bet would have gotten that hurkin' thing in.

It pays to have tall friends, and friends willing to play huggy to rose bushes (I told them they could cut it down), you can't really see Trevor in behind the rose arbor or Mark being eaten by the climbing clinging rose, that's Justin on the ladder getting tapped on the arm by the rose, and looky there, Dirt, and no rose thorns in his side!

And here are the spectators. Becky and I sittin' on the Lilac Bench watching the window installment. (I'm the one in the mask.) I appreciate good company sittin' on my favorite bench with me on a bright sunny day. We are both happy to have the chance to soak up some pre-winter sun.

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This all went down on Sunday and now it is Tuesday evening, I still wear the mask most of the time, even when I am not in that end of the house. It helps with the asthma, I forget how much more comfortable I am with them on than without them wheezing most of the time.

After lunch break and a little football, we took our precious company out back to Dale's pond to see how the mountain was getting along. It looked pretty in soft pink and all snowy. Anna was ready to head to the mountain and play in the snow. Daddy better have his big truck ready for some Saturday afternoons in the snow.

I should have packed the tripod with me as the light level was low enough that it was hard to hold still for nice crisp shots. But I enjoyed being out shooting pictures again.

One of my favorite things about autumn is the evening, with the fog that forms on the ponds and the way the sunset catches it. After taking in all the pretty sky we could, we all headed back to the house for Anna's Green Tomato Spice cake from the last of this year's green tomatoes. We topped off the cake with our homemade caramel sauce and some delightful home made hazel nut whipped cream, had a little bit of coffee, watched some of the Philly's and NY game and then reluctantly said good bye to our northern friends, those positively amazing Coulters.

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I hope you had a good weekend and are in the middle of a terrific week, Dear Reader. Things are just looking plain old terrific here at Victory Farm and Gardens because as a very dear friend shared with us this week:

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The Lord your God is in your midst,

a mighty one who will save;

he will rejoice over you with gladness;

he will quiet you by his love;

he will exult over you with loud singing.

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Zephaniah 3:17:

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It matters not who you are or what you situation is God is in your midst.