It was bound to happen. The postal tide has turned.
As a working young adult, YA now gets a chunk of mail. Lots of credit card offers, lots of requests from charities. Stuff from her healthcare folks, catalogs for trendy clothes. Very little useful stuff at all and almost all of it ends up in the trash. But it occurred to me today when I was sorting our letters, all of which went into one pile for her, that she gets more mail than I do these days.
Unfortunately the mail I do get is mostly the bills.
You get anything interesting in the mail these days?
These days I rarely stop at coffee shops. Mostly I’m just too cheap when I can make my own coffee or tea at home for a fraction of the cost. But every couple of months, YA and I will make a stop at a Caribou if we are out and about.
In early days, when there was a Caribou two blocks from house, I will admit I was more of a regular. But in keeping with my “like it cheaper” gene, I purchased myself a mug that I could use whenever I stopped by. Saved a bit of money and saved yet another coffee cup in the trash. Even though this mug is close to 25 years old, it’s in pristine shape – it doesn’t get used that often and I wash it by hand instead of throwing it in the dishwasher. When we lost our little Caribou (first the big Lyndale closing and then the Minnehaha Creek bridge re-build), my use of my mug plummeted.
When I dragged it out to the car with me yesterday, it was probably the first time in a year that it had gotten any use. The young man behind the counter was astonished to see it. He picked it up, turned it around, looked at the bottom then called over co-workers to look at it. The big draw turned out to be the logo, which apparently was “updated” back in 2010. If you had asked me, I would not have been able to tell you what the new logo looks like:
Guess I’m just oblivious. But it turned out OK… they were all so enamored of my antique mug that they gave me my decaf for free!
Do you have a favorite cup/mug for your coffee or tea?
On Sunday, Kelly and I did our usual gator farm tour. This week we went down in the pasture and down to the creek, which was still frozen over, walked around down there for a bit.
The next day I took the truck to Plainview, which meant I have the dogs with me, and after we picked up daughter, they all walked home.
Dealing with mud again, which is never my favorite. And it’s gonna get cold, and it’s gonna snow, and then it’s gonna get muddy again, so we’ll have to do this cycle a few times. Just something else to get through.
I took the anhydrous applicator up to an auction in Plainview. It’s an implement I use in the spring to apply nitrogen to the corn ground. Nitrogen in the form of anhydrous ammonia. I pull those white tanks behind it. The last year that I used it was 2021, and since 2022 I’ve had the co-op applying nitrogen in the form of urea, which is a granular product.
When I was working with my dad, the story was he had gotten a heavy whiff of the ammonia quite a few years ago and he never liked it and couldn’t stand being around it anymore. So I’ve been applying the anhydrous probably since I was 18 years old. We used to rent a smaller machine to do it, and then as the tractor‘s got bigger I could rent a little bit bigger applicator bar. And when the co-op stopped renting that equipment and they sold them off, I bought this one. I don’t remember the price anymore, it was probably 10 or 15 years ago.
This is also the machine that I had a little incident with back in 2018.
Anhydrous can be really nasty stuff; it can kill you, it can burn you, it’s gotta be treated with respect and handled carefully. And I have always been careful, making sure I’m parking into the wind, working up wind, wearing heavy gloves, and a face shield.
So this one day the hose was dragging on the ground between the wagon and the applicator.
I stopped, I closed the valves, I started to disconnect the hose, and the valve did not seal properly. I remember that it was very difficult to open, it had been really cranked shut. So it made sense that it was leaking a bit now. There was very little breeze that day, next to nothing, so I couldn’t get up wind of it. I debated what to do. I debated just holding my breath and rushing in there to crank it shut. And finally thought, I just need somebody with a respirator, it’s not an emergency, I just need somebody that can get this closed. So I called the nonemergency number for the fire department and explained the situation. Well, when the first of three firetrucks showed up, and I was still sitting in the tractor waiting for them, they parked a half mile up the road and suited up and a guy in full gear walked down to me. I’m sure they were all bent out of shape that I was still hanging out down there. All they were told was that there was an anhydrous leak.
It turned into a whole big thing. Ambulance, incident command vehicle, and a sheriff deputy, all out on the highway, and the three firetrucks were on our road.
I had to call a chemical spill hotline who thought I had lost the entire tank of 5000 gallons. No, it’s just a few drips and a very minor vapor leak. But, it was good training for the fire department: they went down with a wet towel, sampled the air, wrapped a towel around the valve and was able to get it turned off tight using a pipe wrench so that I could then disconnect the hose. Always glad to help them out, I said. They even gave me a bottle of Gatorade.
I had to attend a safety workshop, and I had to replace the hoses that are only good for 10 years and of course mine were out of date by a few years because it’s expensive and nobody pays any attention to the replacement date. I think it cost me $1500 for new hoses and a valve.
And now it’s 2025, stamped on the hose it says ‘replace before 2025’, and I took it to the auction and it’s not my problem anymore. When I pulled it out of storage, one of the tires was low. Not flat, just low so I pumped it back up. Pulled it the 20 miles to Plainview, and as I walked into the office I could hear a hiss and air leaking from this tire. Well, not my circus, not my monkey anymore.
The dogs all got pup cups at the Dairy Queen and I had a blizzard.
WHATS YOUR FAVORITE CLEANING PRODUCT? ANY MONKEY STORIES?
A couple of Sundays ago, Husband and I arrived at church to play bells with the hand bell choir and found, upon reading the bulletin, that there was to be a baptism. That wasn’t at all unusual, but what was unusual was the name the parents chose for their son. Yes, we were to participate in the baptism of a little boy who had been named “Tarzan”.
Of all the names to hang on someone, Tarzan isn’t one that immediately pops into my mind. We have had some unusual names for baptisms lately, like Coven, pronounced like cove and not like the name for a group of witches. Tarzan, however, really takes the cake. What would you call him for short? Zan? Tarzy? Tartar? Zanzan?
I really can’t imagine what could have led people to choose that name, and I can foresee a rough time for the child once he starts school. We didn’t get to see little Tarzan as the family all had the flu and they cancelled and haven’t rescheduled the baptism.
What are some unusual names that you have run across? If you had to change your name, what would you change it to?
Since I have been home full time after retiring on February 1, I have had time to sort through some closets, papers, and freezers that had been pretty well neglected over the past couple of years. It has dawned on me that we can either have a clean, organized home or work full time. We can’t do both. Husband is still working essentially full time and has been for the past several years.
Because of our harried work schedules and after work exhaustion, things like papers have been thrown on our work desk or filing cabinets to be gone through “later”. It is hard to see what you have in closets if it is poorly organized and things are just stuffed in. It is also hard when you live in a food desert and you love to cook and you run across hard to come by items that you get excited about and buy a whole bunch because they are scarce, and then you throw them in your poorly organized freezers and you sort of forget you have them as they get covered up with subsequently purchased groceries, and then you inadvertently buy more the next time you run across them.
I decided to start by sorting and organizing the freezer that has all the sausages, ground meat, lamb, and homemade brodo. I was rather dismayed to discover we have seven pounds of ground veal, five pounds of ground lamb, and four legs of lamb and a huge lamb rack. Veal and lamb are virtually impossible to obtain out here, so we bought a bunch when we had the chance, then forgot we had it. There will be meatballs and meatloaf on the menu for the next several months. I have plans for one of the lamb legs for Easter.
I also organized the linen cupboard, and found we have eight sets of queen sheets. We only have three queen beds, and we only sleep in one of them, and I have no idea why I thought we needed so many. The sheets are all in great shape. We will not need to buy new sheets ever again.
I have several closets to go through and a couple of freezers to organize. I am so glad I will only work part time starting in March so that I can finish sorting and organizing.
How do you fold fitted sheets? What are you prone to buy too much of? Any helpful home organizing tips?
Aside from a mild bout of diverticulitis when we were in Brookings, I felt pretty good during the visit. Everyone else seemed to feel pretty good, too.
Grandson went home from school on Wednesday with a fever that had spiked to 102° by yesterday afternoon. Daughter-in-Law was also home with a fever, and Son was at home taking care of both of them.
Yesterday Husband started feeling puny, as the say out here, with fatigue and a a low grade fever, so he took a nap and decided to not go into the office in the afternoon. He chose not to take any Tylenol so as to give his immune system time to heat up and fight off whatever was plaguing him. By evening he felt better.
Thus far I have not started to feel “puny”, but I plan to engage in my self care, which is to stay at home, cook, sleep late, and not leave the house until Sunday morning when we sing at the 9:00 church service and play bells at 3:00 at the local If Music Be The Food Of Love concert at our church to raise money and donations to the food pantry.
What is your self care when you start to feel “puny”. What are your euphemisms for illness? What major childhood illnesses did you have?
My mother and her four paternal aunts (Lena, Meta, Bertha, and Greta) spent a great deal of time in the mid-1930’s filling my mother’s Hope Chest with patchwork quilts they sewed. They used cloth scraps from their own and others’ unneeded clothing as well as larger pieces for backing. Mom never really used them and just kept them in her cedar chest.
I started using them after Husband and I married. There were four of them. One is still in tremendous shape and we have it on a bed in the basement. The quilts worked best as blankets under the bedspread as they are all sized for double beds. Two of the quilts disintegrated after about 10 years. I decided to preserve the third one and patched it as best I could and put on a new backing. I hung it on the wall in my work office for many years until time and gravity started it to sag and tear at the seams.
It has been in a cabinet in my new office until I started to clean and get rid of stuff preparatory to my retirement. I took the quilt out to our van and left it there to be used as part of winter survival gear
Husband brought it into our son’s house when we were visiting there last week, and our grandson insisted that we put it on his bed, and he slept under it every night we were in Brookings. Mind you, it hadn’t been laundered in 25 years, and was probably full of dust, but grandson loved it and wasn’t happy when we took it home. I told him I wanted to patch it better and we would bring it back to him at our next visit. It dawned on me that the quilt is about 90 years old. My mother and her aunts would be pleased some of their handwork is still being used and loved.
What precious things do you have that have been handed down? What do you want to hand down for future generations? What do you think are essentials for “Hope Chests” these days?
We have been at our son’s home since Friday, and the cold weather has made for a great deal of family time. Son, Daughter in Law, Daughter, Husband, me, and Grandson are all here together. There has been lots of time playing Uno, putting together jigsaw puzzles, doing art projects with grandson, cooking big meals, watching the first two How To Train Your Dragon movies, playing with the Westie and the cat and sleeping late.
I have been a nervous wreck since before we drove here on Friday. The cold frightens me more than it used to. I have developed great anxiety anticipating driving in this cold weather, mainly surrounding the van breaking down in the middle of nowhere and then freezing to death. We were supposed to go to see my 93 year old aunt yesterday in Watertown, SD, about 40 miles north of Brookings, and I was so relieved when she phoned in the morning to say she had a cough and a fever and we shouldn’t come. Husband has been going out to start the van at intervals and even drove it into town yesterday, so he is keeping the engine warm.
This cold weather is unprecedented in my experience, and I am really worried about the trip home on Tuesday. The subzero windchills aren’t supposed to let up until Wednesday, and I might try to convince Husband to stay another day and leave on Wednesday. We have lots of blankets in the event of a breakdown. The van is working well, but you never know!
What do you have in your winter survival kit in your vehicle? How are you coping with the cold? What are your favorite indoor family activities?
I apologize for two food related posts in a row, but the current obscenely cold weather and the even more obscene political news have caused me and Husband to stay home, insulate ourselves, and cook.
We are typically very busy in the kitchen, but since December we have gone pretty wild. Two weekends ago we made a number entrees including Hungarian pot roast, baked salmon, sheet pan gnocchi with peppers and sausages, a baked risotto, and red beans and rice. The latter recipe came from a New Orleans native with the wonderful name of Pableaux Johnson. None of it has gone to waste, I should add.
We usually cook most things from scratch, and now that includes beans. I have ordered a number of dried beans from Rancho Gordo. Husband notes he is feeling better since we started with the beans, and misses it when we don’t have beans on the menu. We have also dived deep into traditional foods of northern Spain. Supper last night was leftover Fabada, a Spanish white bean stew with chorizo, ham hock, and blood sausage. It is delicious.
I realize that we turn to cooking like this to feel safe and to have some sense of control. I find the extreme cold to be terribly frightening. A couple of nights ago the wind chill was -43. Kyrill our terrier ran off the deck in pursuit of a bunny and didn’t come right back as he usually does. Husband went out to get him, and found him paralyzed with cold in the snow on the side of the house. He had only been out a minute or less. He got some left over pot roast in his kibble that night.
How are you coping with the weather and the political mess we are in? What are some of your favorite world cuisines? Thoughts on dried beans?
Well, if there is one thing I have learned from my 40+ years of marriage is that Husband makes the salad dressings. He is so finicky about salads, and he always insists that we have to make our dressings from scratch.
He recently found on the NYT food site a basic vinaigrette that appeals to a fusspot like him. You add what ever herbs and/or mustard you want to 1/4 cup of olive oil and two tablespoons of wine vinegar., along with a little salt and pepper. He is insistent that it must be white pepper. Don’t ask me why. Oh, and the herbs must somehow complement the greens in some obscure way I am not privy to and seem to change unexpectedly. I must admit his dressings and salads are really good.
I, however, make the hollandaise. I wouldn’t trust him to not poison us with salmonella if not done correctly. I make a quick blender hollandaise that hasn’t poisoned us yet. Thank you, Julia!
What are your favorite salads and dressings? What do you get fussy about? Ever made hollandaise?
Trail Baboon 