Header image by Kathleen Tyler Conklin via Flickr – Creative Commons 2.0

Today’s post comes from Wessew

I cut myself again today.

I mention “again” as cuts are an all too frequent occurrence in the flooring installation trade. There are sharp thingys everywhere just waiting to deliver a laceration. This time it was the sheet vinyl itself that I mishandled resulting in what can be described as a paper cut that bleeds. But, as Governor Ventura famously said in the movie Predator, “I ain’t got time to bleed”, so I put a dab of antiseptic on the wound and covered it with duct tape. (I confess to have watched too many Red Green Shows) The damage today was minimal. No sutures required.

On one occasion I had just finished gluing a floor in an empty rental apartment and stood up to roll the material into the wet adhesive. Unfortunately, the stove exhaust vent got in the way and delivered unto me a nasty gash in my scalp. I had no choice but to take my shirt off for use as a compress and finish that part of the job one-handed.

Scalp wounds bleed A LOT but I had no time to bleed as the flooring material needed to get into fresh adhesive. The emergency room gave me a dozen sutures that day. Duct tape would not have been effective in this case.

Another notable cut happened when I was cleaning a glue-coated trowel. The material had to be scraped off, so I was using a razor sharp, four inch wide, half inch deep wall paper scraper. It slipped and my left thumb got in the way. It was bad. Very bad. About two inches long and a quarter of an inch deep. I squeezed it together and proceeded to the emergency room which was one sixteenth of an inch away; just behind a sheet of plastic. It comes in handy to sometimes work in a hospital. They didn’t even make me wait and
fill out the paperwork. From the time of the accident to the time the doctor gave me a local anesthetic, was less than five minutes. The doctor and I chatted a bit as he worked on me and I casually enquired when I would be able to play the piano. For some reason he didn’t see the punchline coming because he said, “Probably in two days”. To which I replied, “Two days? Wonderful. I never could before.” His assistant practically fell on the floor laughing. He groaned and gave me an extra stitch.

What keeps you in stitches?

Today’s post comes from Ben

Once upon a time there was a butterfly.

He was the most splendiferous colors of glass stained blue and red with silver framing holding him all together. And with his two curly antennae he would listen to the sounds of the world. And he spent his days gazing at the wonders of the world as they sped past his view from the sliding glass doors.

And it was good.

He lived on the deck of a wonderful Lady who would talk to him and tell him news and they would grumble about how the Twins were playing and she would get the giggles over things. And one day she told the butterfly she was taking a little trip but she would be back.

And after that, a man with a Big Brown Seed Corn Hat came into his view. And the man in the Big Brown Seed Corn Hat moved about taking care of plants and flowers and other things but he didn’t much notice the butterfly.

And then, the man in the Big Brown Seed Corn Hat smushed the butterfly between the sliding glass doors.

And the butterfly lost one of his antenna and his bright blue belly fell out of its silver frame and his head was sort of crunched down into his wings. And it hurt. MAN, did it hurt!

Plus, he fell off his suction cup and got wedged between the sliding doors.

And, of course, the man in the Big Brown Seed Corn Hat didn’t know it at first and wondered why the doors wouldn’t close right. And he tried to close them again. And again. And AGAIN! Crunch! Crunch!

CRUNCH! Went the doors on the poor butterfly’s head.

Then the man in the Big Brown Seed Corn Hat figured out what was going on and spent 10 minutes with a stick and a spoon and a piece of paper trying to fish the poor, broken butterfly out from between the sliding glass doors.

And the man felt Sad. And the Butterfly said ‘…Ow…’

And the man in the Big Brown Seed Corn Hat told his wife and his sister, ‘I broke the Butterfly! Don’t tell Mom!’ and he hid it away and hoped the Wonderful Lady wouldn’t notice the Splendiferously colored Blue and Red and Silver Butterfly with the two curly antennae was missing.

“If I wait long enough, she’ll forget”, he said to them.

Finally, the Man in the Big Brown Seed Corn Hat got out his soldiering Iron and tried to fix the poor broken Butterfly. And it was difficult. And not as easy as he thought it might be. And he burnt his fingers.

And he got a different soldiering iron and some alligator clips. And that didn’t work and he went back to the first soldering iron. Finally, the Man in the Big Brown Seed Corn Hat said, ‘Well, I guess that will have to do.’

And the Butterfly looked forward to being back with the wonderful lady and listening to the sounds of the  world (although some of them are a little bit muffled in that one antennae).

And they all lived happily ever after.

Have you hid something you broke?;

Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

Advent is a time in the Christian church year of waiting and anticipating.  Hymns are somewhat mournful and quiet, and  readings deal not only with the wait for the Christ Child but the end time and the crucifixion.  We wait for packages and children to arrive, we wait in line, we wait for bread to rise and for cookie dough to chill. I always seem to need time off from work during Advent to recharge and regroup, and that is what I am doing this week.

Yesterday I made some cookies I have never made before-Nurnberger Lebkuchen and Spekulatius.   Both are German cookies. The Lebkuchen are honey cakes, and the Spekulatias are like the Dutch Speculaas windmill cookies. I have been contemplating my German roots lately, and I would call these contemplative cookies, as they turned out weird (the Lebkuchen), and ugly but full of flavor (the Spekulatius).  They make me contemplate what people were thinking when they came up with the recipes.

The Lebkuchen sound good in principle. They call for honey, flour, spices, citron, almonds, candied orange peel, and butter, as well as a cup of strong black coffee. The sweet honey and the bitter coffee compete for dominance in the taste. I believe the cakes have to sit for a week and mellow. We will see how they progress by New Years Day. The Spekulatius are made by pressing dough into wooden Speculaas molds, intricate woodcuts of old-fashioned figures and scenes. I don’t have any of the wooden molds, so I used a springerle rolling-pin, which has carvings of hearts and other shapes cut into it.

The cookies look like tiles. The only problem is that the pretty shapes disappeared while baking, and I have these terribly ugly yet great tasting cookies. I know that the honey must preserve the cakes so they last a long time; the wooden molds are lovely and the cookies could be too as long as the decorative imprints don’t disappear. There is something about these recipes that is important to the people who grew up with them.  It is interesting how tastes differ from culture to culture.

Today I will make Spritz cookies and pepparkaker. Husband wants to make Krumkake on Sunday, as we are now waiting for a blizzard on Sunday and we expect to be snowbound. The NOAA keeps putting out warnings and advice to stock up and prepare for a terrible storm.  They have been warning us for days, and now tell us that we will get between 6-8 inches of snow with very strong winds, while others in the central and eastern parts of the state could get up to 15 inches. It is sunny today, with no wind, which is quite unusual here. It is as though the world is holding its breath.  We have been to the grocery store, and husband has filled the bird feeders.  Now we wait to see if the predictions come true.  I am thankful we are all home and safe, and no one has to go anywhere. The air pressure should drop with the storm, so bread should rise well. Husband has mixed up a rye sour dough starter, and I want to make Julekag and Bremen Klaben. We will need to carb up in order to shovel.  For now, though,  we wait for Christmas and snow and wind in the unnatural stillness and sunny skies outside.

What are you waiting for? 

Today’s post comes from Jacque

               Recently I sold my psychotherapy practice. From the time in 2014 when I made the decision to do so, it took 2 ½ years to bring the process to completion. The last year of this period of time was so busy, I could not even participate in this blog anymore because there were so many demands on my time and energy. But now I am moving on to a life with fewer demands. I am not retiring, but I will work much less. After orienting the new owners of the practice to ownership, during October and November, I am now out of the office for two months, working via a telehealth website. The goal is to detach.

               I am writing this post from Arizona in front of the TV, with HGTV “Property Brothers” airing on Cable TV. It is hard for me to believe that for the first time in years, I have a little time to watch whatever I want. For hours. I can sit here and watch an over-privileged couple somewhere in Canada, be meticulously picky, arguing with designers about the windows and granite countertops. On the air.  It is doing a great job of distracting me away from results of the recent election, which I could obsess about until I live in an inner world of pessimism and despair. No Thanks. Watching obsessive people with silly décor standards is preferable to that.

It is Play Time for me.

When we arrived in Arizona in early December, both Lou and I were sick with a virus we picked up at the family wedding for which I made all the pie (see the past pie post). It took forever to recover. When I did recover I ventured out to the park in the center of town. There I discovered an area of the children’s playground I had not seen before. There is a little play area filled with gongs and xylophones and mallets. It is crawling with children banging on the stuff and having a ball. A Sonic Playground.

When I was a kid, I never could have even have dreamed of a playground like this. But I know I would have loved it.   So after I get bored with the Property Brothers, I plan to venture down there during school hours, so I can have the instruments to myself, and make some music, as loudly as I want, for as long as I want.   I will watch the fountain spout for a while, then mosey on home to take my girls, the dogs, to the dog park. That is not optional. The dogs are used to a big yard to run in, so the confines of our little condo require the dog park daily.

Then I will start sculpting with clay and playing games with grandchildren. I doubt that I will be stuck on HGTV for long. By the second week of February I will be back in Minnesota. The condo renters will be here for 2 months and I will be working 3 days per week at the practice I sold, and at another practice in Savage. I anticipate that. I love what I do.

But in the meantime, it is the Sonic Playground and Play Time for me.

What do you do when it is time to play?

Today’s post comes from Renee in North Dakota

We have had really bad weather the past two weeks. It started out with 14 inches of snow with tempestuous winds, and now we are dealing with really cold temperatures and wind chills as low as -35. I don’t have such a hard time getting around, although I find I am more fatigued than usual at the end of the day. Husband has a harder time of it, since he has to drive 100 miles north every Tuesday to work on the Fort Berthold Reservation.  The road there is curvy and remote, and fills in easily with snow the minute the wind gets above 20 mph.  The water pipes have all frozen up in the small trailer the tribe provides for him to stay in when he is there.  He has been quite stressed, even when he gets back home, and he is driving me crazy with unnecessary grocery purchases and compulsive baking of rye bread.

I would describe his mood as panicky, and he is even more fussy and particular than usual. He acknowledges how silly he is being.  This is also the time of year when our freezers are all full of this year’s garden produce, and our goal must be to eat out of the freezers so that there is room for more produce next fall. You can see from the photos that we have very little room in the freezers  for more food. I admit that two people do not need to have three freezers (four if you include the freezer that is part of the fridge in the basement. I admit it, we have two fridges, too).  I should add that we gave away pounds and pounds of produce this summer, and we still had too much to put up. The minute we take something out of the freezers, it seems we put more in because we bought bulk ground round, or we baked, or we made too much soup. I refuse to disclose how much butter I bought for Christmas baking. We needn’t discuss that here, but I admit it is substantial. After all, Family Fare had Land O’ Lakes butter on sale for $3.00 a pound!

Husband stored the beets from our garden in coolers packed in sawdust. He decided yesterday that we needed to use the beets, and he wanted to roast them. I love roasted beets, and would be content to eat them, all by themselves, with sour cream and butter. Husband insisted that we had to have them with salmon fillets and russet potatoes. That meant buying salmon. I reminded him we had good sea bass in the freezer, so why buy more fish. He insisted, since that was just how it had to be to fulfill his notion of how to serve the beets. Then he double checked  everything I told him we needed to buy at the store.

When we got to the grocery store, he said that since we had too much cheddar cheese in the fridge, he was going to get some apples so he could have cheese and apples. He insisted they had to be Haralson apples.  There were no Haralson apples to be had, and he wouldn’t consider any other apple. He noticed that the pears looked good, so he decided to get pears, which meant we had to buy Brie, because that is what you are supposed to eat with pears. Now we have too much cheddar as well as Brie. We arrived home with Brie and salmon, and announced he was too tired to cook.  He had microwave popcorn for supper. Then he mixed up a rye sponge, and went to bed.  We’re glad we have a strong marriage.

The high temperatures this week are predicted to range from 4 to -9.  I don’t want to think about what the wind chills will be.  We certainly have enough food to eat. We won’t starve. I just hope the freezers don’t break down.

What’s in your freezer?