Category Archives: home

2025, home, Mysteries, Technology

Tech Levity

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First the technology, then the laughter.

Thanks to YA, we actually have three Echoes in the house.  I’ve never been quite sure why they are called Echo instead of just Alexa, since you have to say “Alexa” to wake them up.  But that’s a mystery for another day.  One of these devices is in my bedroom and her primary occupation is to tell me the current temperature.  Every now and then, when I am too lazy to grab my phone, she gets the occasional “what time is ***** open today?”  She does try to get me to up my game by asking me periodically if I want her to perform some other task, to which my answer is always “no thanks”.

Now to the laughter.

The last couple of days I’ve been watching My Life is Murder on DVDs that I got from the library.  It’s a murder mystery series starring Lucy Lawless of Xena Warrior Princess fame.  It’s filmed in Australia and New Zealand.  It’s not a cozy but it’s not as dark as a lot of the other mystery series out there.  I’m really enjoying it.

The main character’s name is Alexa Crowe, a retired police detective who consults on hard-to-solve cases.  At least once each episode (I’ve seen about 12 of them so far), someone will use this character’s name and my Echo/Alexa promptly responds “I’m sorry I don’t think I can help you with this”.  The first time it happened I wasn’t quite sure I had heard correctly so I backed up the DVD to hear it again.  Yep – my Alexa was answering the tv.

In the last episode of the second season, someone asked “Alexa, how are you doing?”.  My Alexa immediately responded “I’m doing OK today, thank you.”  I about fell off the bed, I laughed so hard.  It felt good to laugh that hard.  But then I realized that my tv and my Echo/Alexa may be in a relationship that I don’t know about!

Anything you can laugh at this week?

2025, Food, home, Uncategorized

Pasta

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Being the efficient person that I am, I have been packing up any nonessentials as I have had time to do. Husband mentioned Tuesday that he wanted Fettucine Alfredo for supper. We had cream and everything else for it except fettuccine, since I had packed up all the dry pasta weeks ago. We settled for some nice fresh fettuccine from the grocery store.

I love to make my own fresh pasta and I look forward to being able to make it more often after we move. I have made tortellini, homemade lasagna, ravioli, and taggliatelle. Spaghetti is hard to make with our crank pasta maker. Grandson says that buttered noodles, which includes actual noodles as well as any kind of pasta, are his favorite things to eat. When I was his age it was a treat to have Chef Boyardee canned spaghetti. I don’t think I had spaghetti out of a box until I was in college.

I was lucky to have as a landlady in Winnipeg a woman who had immigrated to Canada from Calabria, and she helped me choose a crank pasta maker from the local Italian grocery store and taught me how to use and care for it. I remember her husband, also from Calabria, lamenting how awful the spaghetti was at a spaghetti dinner sponsored by their very English Catholic church (They had left the Italian Catholic church in Winnipeg due to a conflict with the priest). The spaghetti was really gluey and overcooked.

What are your earliest memories of spaghetti? What are your favorite pasta dishes?

2025, animals, Family, home, Travel, Uncategorized

Traveling Kitty

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Today as you read this, Husband and I are making the first of two trips to Luverne over the next two weeks. The main purpose of this trip is to go to our 2 month old granddaughter’s baptism in Brookings on Sunday. The other reason for the trip is to bring to the new house as much food from our freezers and liquids the moving company won’t transport.

Wedged in the back of our van, surrounded by coolers filled with frozen food, boxes of home canned tomatoes, cans of olive oil, and jars of fancy vinegars will be our cat, Luna, in the dog crate. We decided to move her on this trip since it seemed rather too stressful to move both the cat and the dog at once.

The last time Luna made this trip was nine years ago when she was a kitten and had been rescued by our son and daughter-in-law from underneath a deck in Brookings. Our daughter was visiting them at the time and drove the cat to Dickinson after staying with Daughter and her college roommates in Moorhead a few weeks. Her only trips since then have been excursions to the local vet. It is a 550 mile trip to Luverne. Once we get her there she will be boarded at the Rock County Vet Clinic until we are moved into the new house on the 22nd.

We are going to try to make her as comfortable as possible with a litter box, soft blankets, and a small water bowl in the dog crate. I am not optimistic about her being happy at all with this trip and then being subsequently boarded. I will let you all know how it is going as the day progresses.

What are your experiences traveling with pets? Any advice for us today?

2025, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Fingers Crossed

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A month before we closed on our house in Minnesota, the realtor phoned me to let me know the hot tub had sprung a leak, and the current owners were told it wasn’t worth fixing. Did we want them to replace it or remove it? I told her to remove it.

Now that we are three weeks from our move, and four weeks from closing on our North Dakota house, I have become very watchful and worried for anything going wrong here and needing to be fixed or replaced. I had a scare Sunday when I noticed that the dishwasher wasn’t draining, but a quick application of a plunger cleared whatever was plugging it up.

I have to calm myself and tell myself to stop when I start worrying about one of our vehicles breaking down, the plumbing exploding and ruining the drywall, or one of us getting injured or dropping dead. It is stressful enough to move, but we sure don’t need a last minute disaster.

What last minute disasters have you experienced? How do you get yourself to knock it off and stop fretting?

2025, Food, home, Nature

I’ll Quit Writing About Tomatoes One of These Days. I Swear.

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You’d think that with all the tomato dishes we’ve had in the last few weeks that I would not be craving yet another tomato recipe.  The last couple of days I’ve been thinking about pizza – specifically Boludo’s, which we haven’t had in a while.  But the combination of my knee (had therapy yesterday morning and was quite sore) and all the tomatoes on the counter and all the pesto in the fridge overtook my desire to order in.

Pizza dough with olive oil, pesto and thinly sliced Romas (and I did NOT cut myself on the mandolin!!!) with some assorted shredded cheeses I found in the cheese drawer.  Topped with some salt and pepper and then some more shredded parmesan that I had leftover from lunch a few days ago.  Turned out rather well, if I do say so myself.

When was the last time you ordered in?

2025, animals, home, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Dishwasher Mystery

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On Saturday we had our plumber over to fix a couple of leaky faucets preparatory to our home inspection. He did a good job, as usual, and then I had him look at the dishwasher.

I noticed about a couple of months ago that I could pull the dishwasher forward and back almost 3 inches. This was a new development. It never moved like that before. Daryl the plumber took a look and noticed that the four screws that secured the dishwasher to the sides of the cabinets had all been pulled out. He also showed me how short they were. He got four much longer screws and secured the dishwasher back in place. He was at a loss to explain how the short screws could have been pulled out like that.

On Sunday I was loading the dishwasher with the usual assistance of Kyrill the Cesky Terrier. He likes to do the pre-rinse on the dishes on the bottom rack and lick any delectables off the open dishwasher door. He has done this since we got him. Kyrill is a short dog of great length who can only get to the farthest dishes and door surface by standing with his front paws on the door. Sometimes he even jumps up so his whole body is on the open door. Did I mention he now weighs 30 lbs? Bingo. Mystery solved. I believe Kyrill, in his selfless attempts to help us as much as he can, stripped the dishwasher screws by putting his weight on the door. I am afraid he isn’t allowed to help us with the dishes anymore.

What repairs have you had to make due to animals? Any mysteries in your life lately? How are you at setting limits with pets?

2025, Art, gardening, home, Uncategorized

A Lightbulb Went On

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As of last Sunday we had our house on the market for two months. We had many showings, but no offers.

Our real estate agent couldn’t understand why. The house was clean, well kept, and nicely updated, with lovely features. We knew that our rather wild yard with the mass of raspberry canes, the large strawberry bed, the front veggie bed, the large flower beds, and the rampaging rose bushes just didn’t appeal to some viewers. Others wanted a larger yard, something we really couldn’t do much about.

Our agent wondered if the basement, which we had extensively remodeled and updated. was just a little dark. She advised us to try ro make it brighter, so last Sunday we replaced all the basement light bulbs with Bright White LED bulbs. We did the same to the upstairs lights for good measure. The whole interior was somewhat brighter, with uniformly tinted bulbs.

The next day, Labor Day, was somewhat trying as we had two showings, and that meant keeping the house beautifully pristine and having to leave for about an hour with the dog. I don’t quite understand this, but both of the viewing parties on Monday gave us offers immediately after the showings!

Was it the lightbulbs? I seem to think it was, and I find it ridiculous. I am grateful and relieved, though. Now we can focus on wrapping things up here.

What would you look for if you were buying a new house? What decorating trends, past or present, have you loved or loathed?

2025, Baboon Achievers, Food, gardening, home, Nature

Tomato Land

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My bales look sorry this summer.  Saggy and disintegrating looking.  Ben explained to me how this can happen – kinda made sense.

But saggy and disintegrating doesn’t seem to be a problem for my veggies.  We’re having a bumper crop of everything.  Basil, chives, rosemary, cilantro, poblano peppers, hot macho peppers, mint and 4 kinds of tomatoes.  Romas, some heirloom, sweet 100 cherry and in a summer surprise, I’ve actually gotten a couple of Santa tomatoes from the plant that I grew from a seed.  I’m sure there’s more out there but I haven’t harvested for a couple of days.

Santa Tomatoes

I used up all the cilantro already.  Four jars of pesto so far, an ice cube tray of chopped mint with lime juice, another ice cube tray of chopped basil with olive oil.  Eight containers of tomato sauce.  Gifts of tomatoes to neighbors and friends.

And lots and lots of tomato recipes.  (This was all going on while I had a MASSIVE zucchini to deal with as well.)   I’ve made my favorite pasta with cherry tomatoes a couple of times.  Made tomato butter that was terrific on the zucchini corn bread.  This weekend I’m making panzanella, tomato basil soup and some tomato rice.  Probably time to consign some of the tomatoes to the freezer as well.  Whole tomatoes right into freezer bags for use this winter. 

Gosh – I feel like Renee and Chris with all this produce and cooking!

Any ideas for too many tomatoes?  Or peppers?

2025, home, Movies, pets, State Fair

Why Bother with a Pillow?

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When I went to bed the night before Opening Day (do I need to say, of State Fair?), I was ready! 

I had the alarm set for 5:40; I wanted to have enough time to do my leg exercises before we left for the fair.  We normally get home around dinner time and I didn’t figure I would do both sets of exercises at night. 

The turtle bag was packed – everything on the packing list crossed off – cash, coupon booklets, tickets, Tylenol, bandaids, wipes, container for cookies, fan, hat:

Packed and ready to go

I went to bed a smidge earlier than normal, but not too much.  I pet the cat and then snuggled down.  That’s when the trouble started.

Apparently several episodes of Death in Paradise was a bit much for evening viewing.  Woke up from a weird intense dream of bodies floating in the Caribbean.  Dozing off again did not come easily and I ended up turning on “To Catch a Thief”.  Then woke up to the dog whining at 1 a.m. – one of the smoke alarms was squeaking.  Took a few minutes to figure out if it was my room or the hallway and then we had to dig out batteries.  Dozing off again did not come easily.  Ended up reciting A is for antelope, B is for baboon, C is for capybara…. got all the way to the end of the alphabet – twice.    Woke up at 2:30 to make a trip to the bathroom.  This time I ended up turning on Murder on the Orient Express.  At 5:15 I rolled over and when I looked at the time, I just gave it up.  Plenty of time to do my exercises, pick up a bit, feed the critters, water the bales. 

I can’t recall the last time I had such a rough night.  Obviously opening day was clearly keeping me a little over-wired!  Luckily it didn’t keep me from enjoying my first day at the fair and I slept exceedingly well that night.  But I do wonder if I need an updated “go back to sleep” routine?

Why couldn’t Goldilocks sleep?

2025, Family, home, pets, Uncategorized

Breaking Good Habits

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My mother had a sign on the kitchen wall when I was growing up that said “My house is clean enough to be healthy and dirty enough to be happy”. That has always been my attitude, too, as we tried to find a balance between clean and clutter.

Since July 2, the day our house went on the market, our motto has been “My house is spotlessly clean to try to impress prospective buyers, and happiness is secondary”.

Boy, is it a pain to keep the house clean and uncluttered so that at a moment ‘s notice we can be out the door with the dog so an agent can show the house. I have become really insistent to make the bed pillows uniformly plumped and stacked, the bath towels evenly folded and hung, and the kitchen counters and floor spotless and gleaming. There are no newspapers, magazines, or mail left out. I dust twice a week. All the dog toys are put in the toy bin instead of lying about. I wash the panes in the bay window regularly to remove dog nose prints. Husband keeps all the waste baskets empty, keeps the kitchen sink clear of dishes, and keeps his bathroom clean and tidy. We both have been weeding the gardens and rolling up the hoses as needed. We are exhausted!

I hope this level of cleaning doesn’t become too ingrained, so that I feel as though I am being remiss if I don’t keep this standard of neatness once we move to our new house. This is one habit I want to break.

What habits have you tried to change? How long would it take you to prepare for a showing of your current abode?