Merlin doesn’t seem to notice the feather

Merlin doesn’t seem to notice the feather

Ursula took this. A series of pics in which Merlin doesn’t even seem to notice that the feather is there!

55 Gallon Plastic Barrel Project

Tom and I (well, mostly me) have been fascinated with the idea of cutting up 55 gallon barrels (we can get them from Pepsi for $5.00) to make useful items.  I am determined to make a self watering container for deck/patio use.  Until I am able to perfect that idea, I have been making do by cutting barrels into thirds to use as quasi raised bed borders for trees/blueberry bushes and grapes vines.

I started with a rain barrel that had sprung a leak anyway.  I cut it up and develped my drill and slice technique.  More on this later.

Dirty barrel
 

Together at Last

Zoe and Merlin are together on the same bed.  They even sniff each other in the morning!

What Time is it?

This is my radio “dial”/clock.  Do you know what time it is?  If you double click on the photo, you will clearly see my problem.  While trying to advance the minutes by TWO, I somehow selected the military time feature that I didn’t even know was available.  I certainly don’t know how to undo it.

Oops! At least we had Spaetzle…

If you double click on this you will see a kind of blurry, cell phone pic of my right pinkie, the day after.

The day after I thought I would have the perfect, restful Sunday afternoon with nowhere to go.  Hah!  I was slicing onions to go in my pork paprikish, which was going in the crockpot to allow me more time to relax on my perfect Sunday afternoon.  I was slicing onions because Tom loves onions in things and even though I could live without them, I thought they would make make the dish have more appeal to him.

Slice, slice, slice, on my mandoline slicer, when oops, my hand went right through the center of the vee-blade, snagging my pinkie on the way down.  In disbelief, I wrapped my finger, put the whole contraption back together, and in the interest of science, DID IT AGAIN!  Much more slowly, but my hand again went through the safety catch.  The whole safety thingie was broken.  I threw the whole thing in the trash.  Gone.

The bleeding didn’t really slow down but I figured I better get the dinner together put it in the crock pot.  I sliced the remaining onion with a knife and then did the two things that I usually do when faced with a potential ER visit.  I Googled and I showered.

Googling “Sliced finger injury” told me that I needed to go to the ER if a) the bleeding didn’t stop within 5 minutes and b)I couldn’t hold the wound edges together enough to APPLY GLUE to seal it shut.  I failed on both accounts, so… I took a shower.

I was thinking that if I needed stitches, I might be told not to get them wet, so into the shower I went.  Holding tightly to the wrapped right pinkie, and trying to shampoo with my ailing left arm, I rapidly rethought this decision and pondered the irony that further injuring myself would show.

I got to the ER at 1:30 and was “fast tracked”.  I am pretty sure this is a misleading misnomer, but I left at 4:30 and 3 hours for this ER is pretty much lightening speed.  The good doc took one look, told me that I made a good decision to come, it was pretty deep, would need at least 3 stitches and was not “glueable”.  Bummer.

I came home to smell of my dinner bubbling away.  Tom said he wasn’t going to eat any.  Huh?  I sliced my finger putting onions in it for HIS benefit!!!!  But, alas, he wouldn’t even try it.  More for me then, and it was delicious!  Bubbles helped me make spaetzle to go with it.  What a comfort food that spaetzle is, and we make it perfectly, together.

My finger hurts, it looks gross, but I am done whining about it.

Comment not related to above:  the most googled term in all of my postings is “large dead dog”.  Who are these people?   Do they have large dead dogs to dispose of?  Are they just morbidly curious?  Interesting.  I do still miss my white pig.  But Merlin is a sweetie, and a keeper.

Grace watching Freddy Play Basketball (not…)

She has been reluctantly dragged to most of Freddy’s games.  She has been forced to entertain herself.  She was actually KISSED one night by a grandmother unknown to us – she was there to watch the opposing team) who was  excited to see her doing a craft project.  She informed us that the younger generation would be devoid of drug and alcohol problems if only they would do more crafts.  Uh, yeah.  That should do the trick.  (Grace has been leery of appearing creative in public ever since.)

So Grace decided to bring along the “Family” (as in they each don’t have their own and this is an old and battered one on long term loan from their older brother Chance) Gameboy.  I hate seeing kids who are constantly plugged in and don’t seem to have a life.  That is so not the case with Grace.  She is rarely plugged in and usually doing something  worthwhile.  It just goes to show that you just can’t judge.

Freddy Plays Basketball

Freddy is playing basketball.  They won by a longshot!

Happy Valentine’s Day, have some more chili (?)

We were invited to attend an open house at Grace’s school.  In honor of Valentine’s Day they have a …Chili Cook Off.  They have done this for 9 years and apparently see more relevance in a connection between Valentine’s and chili than we do.  Anyhoo, we went and migrated with the troops through a myriad  of chili tastings, armed with a personal cup/spoon set and a voting sheet.  We rated the offerings from bad to ok to good to excellent .  One (obvious) cheater passed out cookies instead, and was scoring “excellent” from the non-chili eaters.

We tasted/rated about 20 types of chili and then were ushered to the gym to pronounce the winner.  I did choose 2 out of the 3 winners.  The winner was a steak chili and I knew when I entered his room that it was something special.  You could smell it.  The aroma wafted towards me, beckoned me to approach.  Turns out this guy won the last 2 years too, so he must know a little something about pleasing crowds.

While we were waiting to go back to the gym, I looked over and noticed the door.  The handwriting seemed familiar and yup, it was Grace’s doing.  She did the whole door herself in a Valentine’s/Chili theme, refusing to give up on the more traditional hearts of Valentine! 

 

So wrong, it’s just so wrong…

This is Merlin’s bed!  With Zoe on it.  Just over her head, out of camera range, is an ironing board with Benjamin poised on it ready to lunge for Merlin’s bed should Zoe make a sudden move.  If that’s not bad enough (for Merlin), he has another bed in the tv room and they both try to get there too.  Sometimes there is a cat on each of his beds and he has nothing!  It is just so wrong.

Umm, they have beds too, and so many more options, they just want HIS bed.

Ursula Plays the Piano

Ursula is, at this very moment, playing the piano.  We were blessed a few months ago by the sudden appearance of a free piano.  A friend called and asked if we wanted it AND her husband would bring it over the next day.  We thought this over for about 4 seconds and accepted.  I mean you can’t look a gift piano in the mouth, right?

The key word in her offer was “deliver”.  It seems they had already lined up a truck, piano dolly and friends to help pick up their new piano, they just needed to get rid of the old one.   So just like that, voila, a new piano was ours the very next day.

Ursula plays it constantly.  Loudly.  I now know why they make piano “mufflers”.  In fact, I now know that they even make piano mufflers.  Although this revelation wasn’t as shocking as the Scrabble rule thing.  It seems that other people are bothered by the loud vibrations too.

She is actually getting much better so the grating-on-nerve factor has gone down significantly.  It’s pretty much an issue of volume.  I had to make a few rules, like no playing during school time, or sleeping time, or when I am trying to think time.  She is playing right now and I can still type.  She hasn’t lost her enthuisiasm, but when I asked her last night how she can play sooooo much, she said that her teacher told her to play a song every time she walks by the piano.  She plays the entire book!  (Every time she walks by…)