Bye Bye Summer ... BYE BYE!

 WOW ... that was a RUDE awakening!!  At 4:00 am on the dot, there was the loudest crashing sound I've ever heard.  Truly, it sounded like the neighbor's propane tank had exploded.  Apparently they didn't want to sign up for natural gas and installed a humongous tank.  YIKES!  I peaked outside expecting to see flames.  

It was pitch black, and in two seconds, rain began to fall.  What the heck?  It's 73 degrees and pouring water from the sky.  This is just too weird.  It's completely dark outside in spite of what the picture shows, and Kitters is nowhere to be seen.  

Bye bye summer .... winter has arrived with a BIG BANG!

Labor Day was a quiet one.  I need fabric for a particular project, but alas, everything is closed.  I had accounting work to do, but that went south also.  Let's celebrate!  I threw caution and my diet out the window and had ICE CREAM for breakfast.  I know, I'm a rebel.

Ever since I had that burrito, I've been craving chili verde, so off to the store I went.  For whatever reason, they have been handing out coupons like crazy.  To get you there, I suppose.  Buy one loaf of freshly baked French bread and get a second one for free.  The bread was cheap, and makes great grilled cheese sandwiches in spite of the wealth of calories and carbs.  It all went in the freezer.

What I needed was a big chunk of pork shoulder.  Here's where it gets crazy.  Pork shoulder was $9.00 a pound.  Pork LOIN was $4.99 a pound and BIG!  You know which way I went.  I fried it all up and tossed it in the slow cooker.  Ummmm maybe I bought a little too much.  I had to squish the lid down after adding onions, a fistful of those peppers from my back yard and a can of chilies.  

OH LOOK ..... CORN!  Ten ears of really good looking white corn for $1.00.  No kidding, I haven't seen corn that cheap in 40 years.  Oh yeah .... this was LUNCH!!  If I'm going to blow the diet, I might as well blow it GOOD!  I smothered it in butter and salt.  YUM!!!!

This is a pretty crazy hot summer storm ... it's still hitting us with lots of thunder and lightning, lighting up the house.  I should be used to this after those monsoons in Arizona!!

I tried starting another quilt, but nothing seemed to look right.  I just have a terrible time with colors.  Instead, I concentrated on the chili verde.  Not bad ... not bad at all, though it could use a little more spice.  I can't believe I said that, as I dumped in another can of chilies.

All done, I let it cool before whipping out burrito after burrito.  Each one will be food for a day since they turned out much bigger than I expected.  THIS .... is ten days of no cooking!!!  Woohoo!!!

I spent the afternoon doing crazy stuff like balancing my bank accounts and paying a few bills.  How exciting to find I still have money for ice cream!!

I kept going back to the sewing room however until I found this.  I've jumped ahead on this crazy quilt.  You will never guess what it is.  These will be pumpkins!!  And yes, I DO see that big fat mistake on the top right corner.  It's a good thing this is as far as I got, so I won't have to take out TOO many stitches.  How irritating is THAT!!

And so ... as the rain falls this morning (meaning I can turn my sprinklers off) we bid farewell to summer.  I'm sure that's going to be short-lived, and the heat will return, but it's a nice thought.  

In the meantime, it's BINGO night!  My Lady of the Cash Register is out of town, so I'm stuck.  That will be followed up by the BIG AUDIT of the lodge on Thursday.  I think I feel a sore throat coming on!!!

IT'S SEPTEMBER ALREADY?

 HAPPY LABOR DAY!

Or LABOUR Day if you live in Canada!!  Good grief ... here it is September 1st already.  What happened to the summer?  It seems like it was about three weeks long.  I guess around here the heat is going to hang on however, since our overnight low is STILL in the 70's.  Sadly, that means it's SCHOOL BUS time.  You all know what that means ... traffic.

It started out nice enough ... with you-know-who sleeping on the couch.

Of course I was met at the door at 4:30 am by Kitters, who now follows our every move.  I don't think she will win any beauty contests.  Look at the color change since I began brushing her.  I've never seen that much hair come off a cat ... I assume it's because she's probably never been brushed before.  She instantly starts purring every time I grab the brush.  I imagine it feels pretty good to get all that hot hair off her body.

Though I probably prefer to stay home on holidays in my old age, I surprised myself by saying yes to a barbecue invitation.  The Lodge Kitchen Staff were invited over for a swim.  I thought she meant the Bingo Kitchen Staff.  Nope .... this sweet lady invited the dishwashers and clean-up crew over for a day of fun, food and swimming.  They had a blast, even if there wasn't much room for actual swimming!

I on the other hand, sat at the table where it was hotter than ... well you know.  Oh my great Aunt Mae (I actually DID have a Great Aunt Mae) ... it was so hot and humid it was hard to sit there, even with three big fans blowing cigarette smoke our direction.  I finally had to move.

I arrived at 11:30, thinking the bbq would be at noon.  Nope ... at 1:30, now cooked to well done myself, I asked when the steaks were going on.  I know ... rude ... but the heat was just too much.  Oh but wait ... first we had some weird sausages from the grill, wrapped in tortillas.  That was a new one, and though I'm not fond of sausage, they were really quite tasty.

I SO wanted to jump in the pool, but as you can see, there was no shade anywhere.  I didn't want to end up like this steak.  Speaking of this steak ... at 2:00, they finally put them on the grill.  This is what's left of a 10 ounce flat-iron piece of goodness.  

Oh my gosh ... where have you been all my life?  Cooked to perfect rareness, this steak has no fat, no gristle and was tender as could be.  It was SOOO GOOD!!  They come from the supplier the lodge buys from, individually wrapped and frozen.  I'm buying a box of these babies immediately!!!

By the time the meat was done, it was just too hot for us old folks.  We went inside to the air conditioned kitchen table.  It took another 45 minutes to cool off while we ate TERRIBLE store bought potato salad from a plastic container.  It was okay .... the steak made up for it!!

In no time two of us old folks were headed out the door.  At 3:30, it was just too hot to hang out.  Back home I made a stop at the fridge door, trying to climb inside.  I downed two bottles of water, then went outside to check on the tomatoes.  

I was getting way too antsy at the tomato ripening process, so I googled it.  THIS IS A TEST.  It said that ethylene gas is what ripens tomatoes.  They are picked in the field when green and hard as a rock, so when transported, they don't get bruised.  Stuffed in a warehouse, they are then smothered in ethylene gas and the tomatoes turn red.  Not exactly tasty, but RED.

It also stated that once tomatoes get 50% ripe (like these) that the plant actually seals them off and they get no more nutrients.  How it does that, I've no idea.  From there, the tomato produces its own gas and turns red.  SO ... there's no reason to leave them on the vine.  They swear there's no taste difference.

SO ... here's the experiment.  I found these on the vines and decided to see if they were right.  I've no idea how long this is going to take, but it's not like I have any place to go at the moment.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

I had a plan for today, but the Bakery is closed ... Hobby Lobby is closed ... the Mexican Carniceria is closed ... the fabric store is closed ... you get the picture.  So I guess the day will be spent staring at the tomatoes, waiting for them to ripen.  

Happy Labor Day!!!!!

Aww, They Are Buds .... NOT

Though we were supposed to get down to 63 this morning, we are hanging out at 73.  Ummmm that's about as far off as our weather guessers have been in a long time.  I'm thinking Kitters won't need a warm bed for some time to come.

Mr. C and I went out early, but barely got to the end of the road.  Sometimes he's feeling it, sometimes he's not.  In spite of the camera, it really is quite dark out at 6:00.  The days are definitely getting shorter.

Here's my prize from the day before.  I have four projects in my to-go bag that need one thing or another.  So far, I've not been lucky enough to find anything suitable, though $100 worth of fabric jumped into my bag at the quilt store.  I spotted a sign down the road a bit ... Quilt Cabin ... and my girls said I should stop in for some patriotic stuff.  

It was very small with mostly empty racks ... and then I saw THIS!  There's 7 yards there, and I now regret I didn't buy the rest of the bolt.  I may just have to go back.  The one on the left is from 2016 and could not be more perfect for a quilt I've been trying to reconstruct.  At $6.00 a yard compared to $15, it was a steal.

When I got home, I snuck in the back door to find this.  WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON THE BACK OF THE COUCH???  He was so sound asleep he didn't hear the driveway alarm OR me coming in the door.  I called to him quietly .....

And got this sleepy WHO ARE YOU look!  He kind of knew the voice, but he probably couldn't see who it was.  In a flash, he was down on the floor doing his happy dance at my feet.  I love this kid.

We went outside immediately.  Awww look, they are BUDS.  Well not so much.  Kitters thinks he's handsome, and keeps following him around.  Cooper is not impressed.  On occasion, he tries to chase her, but she doesn't run ... she just tries to snuggle up to him.  

She has actually changed color to more of a brown/tan color with all the brushing I've done.  I can't believe that much hair came from a cat!  

This is her favorite cool spot to catnap.  Remember the squash and zucchini?  GONE!!  I think I'm too old for gardening!

Once again we checked the tomatoes, only to be held back by the two pepper plants that are going crazy.  These are mostly 6" long.  Hey, why not roast them and make chili verde?  Boy was that a BAD idea!  I followed the recipe and stuck them in the oven, only to immediately be inundated with the acrid smell of burned hot peppers.

Me thinks I should have done this outside on the grill.  It got so bad I turned the exhaust fan on high for the next hour.  I was sure Jonathan was going to fall off his perch, but he hung in there.  Here it is a long time later and it still smells!!  Next time I'll just buy a can of roasted chilies.  

It was just a weird day I guess.  I got up too early and by 8:30 am was ready for dinner.  I truly needed to accomplish something, so I finished up the binding on this donation quilt for the Shrimp Feed which is next weekend.  The three bottles of wine, two lap quilts and three desserts fill the bill.  Okay, maybe just TWO desserts since one of them is caramel brownies.  I may have to donate that one to myself.

The afternoon was also filled with quilt stuff.  I spotted this online and HAD to have the pattern.  It's on order, so I guess there will be another trip to the quilt store.

And finally I started this one.  Weird, yes?  You won't guess what this is going to be.  Had I realized myself, the fabric might have been much different.  Come to find out, I was short by a LOT ... and then I cut it all wrong.  Oh DARN ... back to the fabric store I must go!!

Dinner was leftover burrito with a little avocado to cool it down.  Now I've got the itch to make smaller chili verde burritos and freeze them.  Of course the best part is the rice and refried beans, but I'm not going there.  Too much work

Today we are on the cusp of Labor Day ... a day when we celebrate ourselves and our working neighbors for all of the accomplishments of this amazing country.  Though at times I have not been in favor of the labor movement, like when one guy came across the table at me during negotiations, then threatened me in front of ten witnesses (one day I'll tell that story), they have brought us everything that makes life comfortable.  How can we not celebrate THAT!!

I Hate Rip-Offs!

 We're having quite the sweep of temperatures in Central California.  Nothing to keep me home all day, but the afternoons have been getting toasty.  The mornings ... oh how I love the 4:30 mornings at a cool 66 degrees.  We spend at least 30 minutes every morning just soaking it up in the dark.

Jonathan on the other hand, LOVES the heat.  This is where he spends about half the time now ... sleeping, like the old man that he is.  It's easy to put his head back to sleep, and he doesn't fall off the perch.

Don't get too close however, or he will use this beak to bite your finger off.  He always recognizes my voice, but his eyesight isn't good at all.  You can see he's been chewing on the sticks to keep his beak in shape ... breaking off pieces so it doesn't grow too long.  Yes, that's his tongue with the black spot ... normal in bird-dom.  Unlike other animals, birds don't have saliva, so they require lots of water.  He looks pretty good at 50 years old ... very soon to be 51.

My day started with lots of frustration.  I had an eye appointment at 8:00 to get a new prescription for glasses.  I got this appointment year ago.  The sweet new very young girl from Thailand took me to the back to get my eyes dilated.  Wait ... don't you do the eye tests first?  "Oh no ... you have to make another appointment for that".  

Ummmm that's why I made THIS appointment.  Here's where I got mad.  This is the HEALTH appointment she said ... and the GLASSES appointment is separate ... so they can charge my insurance company TWICE.  Needless to say, I wasn't the least bit happy.  That's a big fat rip-off.  

I went ahead with the HEALTH part ... she dilated my eyes and did one test.  The doc came in and took less then 3 minutes to look at my eyes and say ... YUP ... everything looks fine.  I wasn't the nicest I suppose, to which he responded too bad.  That's how we do it ... and he walked out.  

Well too bad ... when the gal asked me what day would be good for the next year's appointment, I said none because I wasn't coming back.  So now I have to make ANOTHER appointment to get new glasses.  I'm calling Costco!

I was SO mad, which truly doesn't happen all that often any more ... that I decided I needed some awesome food to soothe the savage mind.  There's a creepy little place outside of town ... mostly boarded up with steel bars on the windows ... but with a Carniceria sign out front.  It MUST be good, yes?

I walked in to see a dirty concrete floor, two shelves in the middle of a tiny room with maybe six cans of Chile verde sauce next to two packages of tortillas ... and a broom laying on the floor.  A few feet away was the meat counter ... maybe 8 feet long.  One side had meat covered in plastic wrap and the other had containers of food.  

Am I too early?  No he said (at least he spoke English) as he threw pans of food into the warming trays.  I'll have three chicken street tacos and a big fat chile verde burrito.  I deposited $22 and walked out the door.  Looks good, yes?  Tastes good?  That would be a no.  I don't know what kind of sauce that was on the chicken, but two of the tacos ended up in the trash.  Oh my great Aunt Suzy ... they were terrible.

I cut open the burrito to find lots of meat, beans and rice.  I tentatively took a taste.  Okay, this tastes like a burrito ... and it was good!!  It didn't make up for the eye doctor rip off, but it helped, and I have enough left over the two more meals.

By now it was all of 11:00, so I headed out of town in terrible holiday traffic ... but that's a story for tomorrow.  When I returned, Mr. Cooper, Kitters and I wandered through the back yard checking the tomatoes for any sign of red.  Nothing ... but WAIT ... I check them every day for missing pieces of leaves ... and what should I find but black dots.  

You know what that means ... there's a tomato worm on here somewhere!!!  I looked and looked at every single little branch until ..... THERE YOU ARE, YOU LITTLE STINKER.  A big rock took care of that!!  As I walked around the back, I saw MORE black spots.  I went branch by branch for a good thirty minutes before finding YET ANOTHER!  

I dropped the rock from an even higher elevation because this one ate one of my green tomatoes.  The worms are no more and I am NOT sad about it.  I'll be checking a lot more often now.

I finally tore out the zucchini and the yellow squash.  They weren't doing anything anyway.  Next will be the cherry tomatoes.  They haven't produced anything in two weeks and I'm tired of watering them constantly.  And so .... almost .... the end of my gardening career comes to an end.  Thank goodness, because I doubt those little tomatoes would survive my forgetfulness when it comes to giving them a drink.

In the meantime, pray for RED tomatoes!!!

I Cooked, Therefore I AM!

 Woohoo ... feeling a thousand percent better, or at least I can breathe through my nose again.  Kitters kept a close eye out for me ... mostly because that first open door in the morning results in a small pile of kitty food.

I took one of Cooper's old brushes out to see if she would mind getting rid of about 5 pounds of fur.  She went ballistic!!  I thought I was going to scrape her skin off.  She rubbed, purred, turned every direction and let me "scrub" her for about ten minutes.  I'm sure that was a mistake on my part because now she won't leave me alone!!

She follows me everywhere like a puppy dog.  We went down the yard to check on the tomatoes once again.  Good grief ... I guess it's going to be fried green tomatoes.  This one plant is covered with them.

Finally, at the very bottom, I found these two.  Enough for another two BLT sandwiches.  Oh darn, I guess I'll have to cook another package of bacon in order to use up the rest of that lettuce.

Back inside, I made up my shopping list.  We needed some cheap platters for the appetizers at the Shrimp Feed.  You can't beat the dollar store, even if everything is now $2.00.  There are fifteen in this stack, and when done, they will be used by our kitchen for things like Mothers Day.  

Then I was off to another friends house.  She got the bug to put transfers on T-shirts and sell them.  Honestly, these machines are CHEAP ... made in China to be exact.  But for a measly $150 investment, you can get one that does cups, baseball caps, mugs, shirts and four more things that escape me at the moment.  

The best part ... there were no directions.  NONE!  Not even "plug this in here".  I used up the last of my phone battery trying to find SOMETHING.  Of course it doesn't help when someone who shall remain nameless starts pushing all the buttons twenty times so now the MACHINE is as confused as I am.

I made her stop ... read the not-very-descriptive instructions and ..... nothing.  I finally figured out we had one more plug-in on the machine.  I turned it off ... turned it on and VOILA!!  It began to heat up.  YAY!!

That's when my day was made OH SO MUCH BETTER when I tried to sit on the couch.  I ran into a spider web of epic proportions.  I am once again proud of my house cleaning skills as I swiped it away.

This is a two piece design ... so it's in for 5 seconds, place the second one ... in for 15 seconds, remembering to place the silicone sheet over everything ... take the plastic off ... in for another 5 seconds.  How fun ... especially when you don't have a timer!!

Not bad, yes??  they actually turned out quite nicely, especially on cotton T-shirts.  Polyester isn't good.  We finished up four shirts while she went bananas with the results.  That's good, because I recommended this machine ... and I was getting worried.  No kidding ... this was really fun to do.  I may just have to somehow work this into my quilts.

She was happy and I was headed to the store.  I donated an old horseshoe wine rack to the auction and figured it might be better if it actually had a bottle of wine in it.  I bought three.  I've no idea if this is good or bad, but it wasn't exactly cheap, so hopefully that equates to good.

One more stop at a Bakery Restaurant in town for another dessert auction item.  I almost had a heart attack.  I know these guys have great stuff, but OH MY!!  A pan of lemon bars 8" x 11" cost a whopping $25.00.  Really?  I'm thinking there's not $4.00 worth of stuff to make those.  I get it, they are homemade, but GEE WHIZ!!  

Back home, resting on the laurels of BOY AM I GLAD THAT MACHINE WORKED, I decided to actually cook.  Mac n Cheese doesn't exactly count as cooking in my book.  I thawed out some chicken and cut up mushrooms.  This is going to be Chicken Marsala.  Don't ask my why I have Marsala wine in my fridge, or how long it's been there.  I've not a clue.

It took lots of time and lots of thyme.  No worries, that piece of garlic I dropped that skidded across the floor was finally found under the Chinese cabinet against the back wall.  Yes I washed it before giving it a slam dunk in the pan.  Take THAT!!

Truly, it looked much better in person, and tasted WONDERFUL!  I should do this more often.  

I had a coughless night .... YAY ..... and am off this morning to an eye appointment. I will have to bite my tongue.  There's no use going through all this nonsense every single year ... maybe every two.  The very expensive glasses I got last time were so bad I wore them for two months and went back to my old ones.  I could not read my phone except when held at the farthest distance away, and my arm wasn't long enough to read a book.  

After telling them all about it, I'm going to Costco.  My last pair from there lasted four years.  Maybe if I can see better, I won't stick myself with sewing needles quite so much.

On another note ... I guess I can still go to Cracker Barrel.  Public opinion wins again!

I'M ALIVE!!!!

 It was dark when we stepped out the door, greeted by a a not-so-cool 70 degrees.  The good news on this day is that I could BREATHE through a very tiny opening in one side of my nose.  YAY for progress!!  I'M ALIVE!  As you know, that is always a good thing.

Turn your volume up loud.  This is what greets me every morning on this corner.  You know you're in the country when the chickens are up before you.  Dueling roosters!!

I probably wouldn't be in any shape at all if it weren't for this kid.  He loves these walks.  Hard to believe he's going to have another birthday in two months.  I think this proves if you keep moving, you can keep moving.  At last the Vet was impressed!

Back home, as Watch Kitty keeps an eye out, I did a little gardening.  This is the kind I'm good at.  I tore out the yellow squash that died from some weird disease that turned the leaves white.  I then whacked off half the zucchini because its leaves were so big they were blocking the back yard sprinklers.  Yeah, I'm STILL waiting for those tomatoes to turn red.

Though I had planned a foray into the world of T-shirt iron-ons with a big machine akin to a mangle iron (if you're old, you know what that is), I called an audible.  Oh I felt fine, in fact MUCH better, but I had accounting work to do.  I have to admit it's pretty cool to be able to log on from anywhere and do the work.  Two entire accounts ..... DONE.  

All the while, you-know-who was snoozing away.  Yes, he sleeps on the very edge.  I've no idea why.

I ate the last remnant of the last red tomato I had, along with what else ... BACON.  It's easier to eat the same thing for three days in a row than to figure out something to cook.  The bad news is CARBS ARE THE DEVIL.  That one small 6" pan of Mac n Cheese added back three pounds.  Three servings ... one pound each, and they weren't even big enough to get REAL satisfaction!!

I spent the rest of the day making this new quilt.  The sweet lady in charge of the Shrimp Feed which is coming up soon ... asked for a two-quilt donation.  I only had one patriotic one available.  These lap quilts will go for anywhere from $100 to $300 dollars at a raffle/auction, making money for our lodge.  The last one I donated sold for $400.  Crazy, yeah?

They are easy peasy to make because the biggest part is a one piece panel in the middle.  You just add borders.  

With the problems I've had with the longarm, I was pretty hesitant to quilt it.  Mostly because it really takes a lot of knowledge and presence to run the thing.  Ray and Cindy know of what I speak!!

Doing this with half a brain because the other half has slowed down with coughing, is a test of fortitude.  There were a couple of moments when it started making that noise again, but I held my breath and kept my finger OFF the stop button.  It finished out just fine.  WHEW!!  I'm glad THAT is over!  Now to bind it and I'll be done.  

I got this look when I came out of the quilting room.  I swear, there's a MAN living in this little body!!

So here's my question for Ray.  Do you think the rattling of the bobbin case could be the bobbin winder, winding the thread too tight or crooked??  As I listen to it, it seems to go from rattle rattle to quiet, then back to rattle again, like it's easier to pull the thread from one side of the spool.  I just can't figure it out.  

Anyhow .... I slept pretty well last night, not coughing because I timed the decongestant pill correctly this time.  I'm back in business!!!

T-shirt press ... here I come.  Oh it's not mine ... the quilt request lady bought one to make shirts and sell them at vendor fairs.  I've never used one before .... neither has she.  Hopefully we don't melt our fingers together.  This should be fun, right???  I'll let you know how it goes.

National DOG Day!!

 It feels like summer in Arizona ... Monsoon Season they call it.  I'm ever so glad I wasn't actually IN Arizona however due to this.  Haboob ... a huge sand storm that hit in Chandler on Monday.  It's amazing what the wind can do.  Yikes ... that does NOT look like fun.  

This doesn't either ... the Magic Kingdom.  No worries, I didn't attend on this night.  I did go in earlier, trying to sneak in through the back door.  It refused my entry code.  Well that's a fine how-do-you-do.  I ran through the dining area, trying to miss everyone, and headed upstairs to sign checks before sneaking out the IN door.  Mission accomplished.

I had already called the King and begged off, telling him HE could handle it!!  That got a laugh!  Back home Kitters made sure no one snuck in MY back door.  I grabbed an old doggie brush and tried to rid her of some of the excess hair.  Good grief ... I didn't know I would end up with a garbage bag full.  

She loved it ... going crazy moving around so I could get every spot.  For such a skinny kitters, she had a TON of hair.  I bet she will be much cooler now.

That's when the thunder and lightning appeared.  Really?  This isn't Arizona ... and we NEVER have summer storms.  Apparently it was pouring down rain at the lodge, so much so that they called to see if I made it home.  Really?  I didn't even get one small drop of rain.  The bad news is we will be sitting at 93-97 for the next week, with little nightly reprieve.  

The BEST part of the day however, was celebrating this little guy.  I know, lots of pictures ... but he's my KID and he's the sweetest EVER.  It's National DOG Day!!  Yes he needs a bath and a trim!

I of course celebrate him EVERY day ... but today he got some special cooked chicken and an extra treat.

Can you tell this is his favorite spot on the couch?  This kiddo has kept me company through thick and thin for an amazing 16 years.  

He has traveled from here to Canada, to Alaska, all the way to Maine and back again ... and he still acts like a kid!!

Around 4:00 I got an emergency call from an Accountant who needed help with a client who had a big deadline for a tax return ... from 2024.  It's quick money and she delivered ... so I spent a few hours inputting data.  It's a good feeling knowing I helped out AND I get paid.

I've got absolutely nothing on my plate for the next four days.  Hopefully that's enough to heal up a bit more, though it's going to be pretty boring.  I've got one last quilt to put on the longarm, so that will keep me busy for a bit.  Honestly, I feel like I just need a long run to clear out my head rather than sit on the couch all day once again. 

Here's to NO COUGHING, along with some lemon hot water with honey!!!