LOSING TIME TO INJURY

 The past 2 days I have finally able to walk up and down the stairs without needing two hands – one on banister and one on opposite wall – to do so and not having to step on each step with both feet.  Only need the one hand on the banister.  This is making it easier on me to do things.  I could actually carry the empty laundry down the 2 flights to the basement to do this week's laundry – last week husband had to carry it down.  Leg is not perfect yet, but it is better.  

It is hard to get things down when one cannot carry things downstairs at all – I had progressed earlier in the past week to being able to hang a plastic shopping around my wrist on the hand which was holding the banister to get some things down the stairs or shove them in the pockets of my jeans – small, light things in both cases.  

Have not gotten a lot of work done due to this as I have been trying to not keep walking up and down the stairs so I tended to stay on the same floor of the house for as long as possible before moving to another floor.  Once downstairs to cook and eat dinner – stayed downstairs until for bed, for example.  Husband has been very helpful as he worries about me.  

So, I have not gotten much done the past week – mostly treading water to keep from falling further behind.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

One never know when something small will make big problems for one.  I try to keep the house up to date (though rarely succeed at same) to make it easier when something throws me off schedule.  Hopefully I will be caught up soon with what has fallen behind.

MY CHOICE IS EITHER/OR - BUT THERE WAS A THIRD CHOICE

 I suddenly realized that it was Wednesday night and I had no thought on what to write about.  Then the mess presented itself.  

First, I should explain that I am a rather picky eater so many nights I cook a completely separate dinner for myself from that which I cook for husband.  I mostly have set dinners to cook for me when I don't like a particular food he wants for dinner – for example, on Monday nights he has hot dogs and beans for dinner.  I can no longer eat hot dogs (due to getting sick after doing so once) and I don't like/eat beans.  So on Monday nights I make myself a chicken patty and rice left over from Chinese takeout – sometimes with a gravy, tomato sauce or left over chow mein vegetables.   Not a big deal.

But tonight it got sooooo much worse.  First there was dinner.  Husband was having smoked sausage with left over mu shoo chicken (see even our choices in Chinese takeout are very different) and some rice.  I had a boneless chicken breast with leftover pasta and added peas.  So to start with, after I cooked the kitchen was full of used pots in addition to our dishes, etc.  Not a problem, normally we watch TV (in the kitchen) and when he goes upstairs after the weather report at 11:20 pm I do the dishes.  Not a big deal.

We had discussed today having a chicken stew that we like for dinner tomorrow.  The plan was to cook the chicken tonight (2.5 hours) and then tomorrow afternoon I would take it off the bone and use the meat and broth to cook the stew.  Husband knew this was the plan and that I would be cooking the chicken after we ate dinner, and while we were watching TV.

Husband still had in the freezer a package of ½ pound of ham, left from the ham we cooked for New Year's Day dinner and had taken it out and put it in the fridge to make ham salad.  It never dawned on me that he planned to do this tonight after dinner – but that was his plan.  So the chicken had to wait.  

The sink was mostly full with the dishes from tonight and we had used both of our 2 quart pots, both of of our 1.5 quart pots and both of our 1 qt pots.  A lot to wash, but it did not bother me.   

I was about to go and take out the chicken to simmer for tomorrow's stew when husband told me that he was going to make his ham salad.  I looked around the kitchen at the lack of space (we have a rather small kitchen) and knew that if he had this idea in his head, we were going to make his ham salad “now”.  

I had to find the small food processor we have – and had forgotten completely about as we never used it until he decided to make ham salad Spring 2020 after we made a ham for Easter.  I found it.  The had to find the other items he needed to make it.  Remember, I said at the start of this post that I am picky eater, well there are foods that I don't even look at, let alone touch and one of them is any kind of meat salad or anything else with mayonnaise – or even mayonnaise on its own – and you know who is going to be cleaning all of this up.  He made his ham salad and while he was finishing up and putting it in a plastic container, I started the chicken cooking.

So now our kitchen sink had the assorted cooking and eating items from dinner, the equipment he used to make his ham salad and was overfull already.  

I left the chicken simmering while we finished watched TV.  I then had to start washing what was in the sink – which had to come out of the sink to do so.  Washing up done – even the terribly icky (to me) equipment used to make his ham salad and from heating his mu shoo.  

Then the garbage question.  If we leave the remnants  of the ham and other items from dinner in the kitchen they will get smelly in the garbage.  Tonight is one of the one the nights we can put out garbage for the morning – so it goes out tonight or sits either in the house or our large garbage can outside.  Which one?  The amount of garbage in the bag/pail is maybe 20% of the capacity at most  - probably less.  Which would you do – waste the rest of the bag or have smelly garbage – and I should mention that the style of bag I like (with twist ties) is getting harder and harder to find – in addition to being a general waste of the plastic bag to put it out so empty?

Aha!  I can almost always find another choice to a problem.  I took the matching sized bag of paper garbage from our office downstairs and dumped it into the kitchen bag, which filled the kitchen bag which could to out for pickup without wasting the bag.  I have another bag of the same size in our paper shredder which is just about full – so tomorrow after I pull apart the chicken for the stew, I can throw the bones and other icky parts into the replacement kitchen garbage bag and then dump into that bag the shredder's bag which should just about fill it – and then put that full bag in our outside can to take out of same and leave at the curb on Sunday night for Monday pickup.  I will have filled and used a new bag in the kitchen, and will need yet another one for the kitchen, but I will be able to continue to use the 2 bags in the office until they are full again.  Problem solved.  

The chicken finished cooking since I started writing this post and I have put it in a plastic container to deal with tomorrow and its liquid in a separate plastic container.  I have not yet dealt with the pot and utensils from cooking the chicken – they are soaking and will be washed when I do the wash up from our late night snack, so I have to chance to breath – until I need to go downstairs and change loads of laundry which are washing in the basement.  (Wednesday night is first laundry night, followed by finishing of same on Thursday night.)

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

When confronted with two choices and neither one of them works – look for a third and maybe even a fourth choice. Don't presume that the situation is “either or”.  Often there is another or several other choices that one has not thought of before.  In this case I managed to find a solution so I don't have smelly garbage in my kitchen while also not wasting a plastic bag by putting it out without it being filled. 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID TO THE TEMPERATURE ONE IS READING WHEN COOKING

 I make lunch – peanut butter sandwich for me, ½ can of soup or a cold cut sandwich for husband.  I wash the dishes after lunch.  

But then I forget to do most important thing – figure out what we are eating for dinner.  I forget to ask my husband what he wants or “feels like” for dinner.  This is all a “since Covid” thing – before that we ate lunch out at Wendys (under US$4 for both of us) and we would discuss what to have for dinner as we went to the supermarket and shopped for that day's dinner.  So I forget even though this has been going for over a year.  

Some days this does matter as we will have something for dinner which does not need to defrost– on Mondays, for instance, he usually has hot dogs (which are generally not frozen) on bread and beans – while the beans are frozen they can be quickly defrosted as they cook on the stove and I have a chicken patty which can be cooked directly from frozen with leftover Chinese takeout rice and left over gravy of some sort – which can also be cooked directly from frozen.  Most days at least one item needs to be defrosted.  

Today I remembered and asked what husband wanted for dinner – sausages and spaghetti with tomato “gravy” (sauce).  Plenty of time to defrost the sausages and I took them out and left them in their plastic bags on a plate to defrost.  I had cooked tomato gravy last week, so I had plenty of extra frozen in the freezer in containers and I took one out also, even though it can be cooked from frozen.  I thought I was doing great.  

We went out for a walk in a local park as the weather was pleasant (last week we tried to do and it was much too windy).  When we came home I took in today's mail and sealed it in a quart plastic zip bag and put it in the plastic box that due to the pandemic our mail sits in for 4 days before I open i and took the Saturday bag of mail out of the box and took it upstairs to our office.  I spent the rest of the afternoon at my desk in the office.  

I came down an hour before we would eat dinner.  I made three phone calls to computers – checked that we had not forgotten that we had used any of 3 credit cards we normally don't use, which if we did I would need to pay and mail out on this Sunday's run to a USPS collection box with outgoing mail(since our mail delivery is not doing well, I have been checking just in case we used an unusual card and forgot so that no bill payments are missed) none of them have been used.  I then telephone our bank's computer and made sure that 2 direct deposits to our bank account are there, so we can spend the money and then started on cooking dinner.

I put up a pot of water to boil the spaghetti.  I put a small amount of water in the smaller of my two cast iron pans to start cooking the sausages and put the tomato gravy in a small pot (technically a sauce pan) to heat it, knowing the mess the sauce can make I put a lid on the pot.  When the water in the pan for the sausages started to boil I added the sausages and covered the pan – set the timer on the stove for 8 minutes, per the package of sausages.  The spaghetti water started to boil and having weighed out the amount of spaghetti I needed, I dropped same in the boiling water and turned it down a bit.  I then set the table.  When the timer went off I took, the lid off of the sausages, removed them and dumped out the remaining water and put them back in the pan to brown. All was going well.

Tomato gravy was heated and I shut it off with the lid on.  I checked the spaghetti – it needed more time. I was keeping an eye on the sausages and turning them so they would each brown on 4 sides.  I tried the spaghetti and it was done so I put into a strainer it and set aside in the kitchen sink to finish draining.  
The sausages looked done.  I took out my trusty oven thermometer and put it into one of the sausages to check that it had been cooked to over 365F so it would safe to eat.  It was only at 85F?!  Tired another – same thing … maybe they had not be completely defrosted when I started cooking them?  I put them back in the pan and let them keep cooking.  I tried them again 10 minutes later – they were now 91F?  Put them back into the pan.  

Husband came down for dinner, I explained what was going on.  He tested them – still in the 90Fs?   We decided to cut them in half and cook them that way to speed up the cooking.  He had cut two in half and the other two were sitting on a plate as cut in half only 2 fit in the pan.  We let them cook a few minutes and then tested the temperature – just about 95F .  What the heck was going on?

Then I looked at the thermometer.  OH NO!  Somehow it had to be reset to Celsius from Fahrenheit – so the temperatures were considerable hotter than we thought they were! 

I had the two which had been cut open and they were rather overdone and hard to chew.  I let husband have the two which had not been cut open as they had been cooked slightly less.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK
Always check your equipment when something does not seem right.  Had I looked closer at the thermometer when I was first getting these odd readings I would seen the problem right away.  Dinner would have been on time and not overcooked.  

(95C = 203F – much above the 165F I was looking for, so no one has to calculate this out.)

WHAT WORKS IN ORGANIZING FOR ONE PERSON DOES NOT WORK FOR EVERYONE - WHAT ARE YOUR PROBELMS OR SOLUTIONS?

 How about some of you write an email to tell me some of your problems with getting organized and declutter or something which you found helpful or a problem that you have.  I know that some of you are reading my posts – it would be nice to get some response.  

I know that the blog wanders a bit for one about organizing.  When I wrote early posts I ended up discarding what I wrote – does anyone out there want a list of “I put 3 dinner plates on the bottom shelf of one of my kitchen closets with two utility dishes on them and our two lunch sized plates on the top of the stack.”  or I keep my good china in the cabinet over my stove set up so I can easily pull out 2 plates, 2 bowls, 2 cake plates, and one coffee cup and saucer”?  

I though not.  I sort figured the process of working on trying to get organized and what I do is more interesting than lists of where I put what.  

Let's face it, we all know the basics – get rid of excess stuff, find a place for each item you keep and put everything its in place.  But in real life does that actually work?  

One online organizing group which I am on, often has a post saying to make sure everyone in the house puts their dirty dishes in the dishwasher to make it easier.  This presumes that one has a dishwasher (not everyone does) and that it is used.  We have a dishwasher.  The first one came with the house when we bought it from the last owners.  Husband insisted I should use it, so I did.  My mom always said that the dishwasher does not clean as well as a person – she was right, it could not even get the newsprint ink off the dishes and such from when it was packed to come to the house.  

The dishwasher died a few years on.  Husband convinced me to buy a new one and we used it – I spent a lot of time rewashing dishes.  That dishwasher died in steps – first the interlock died (the device that lets the dishwasher know it is locked and it is okay to wash the dishes) I would lean a chair on the door of the dishwasher to keep it locked and in position for a number of years.  One morning I came downstairs and the dishwasher was full of water – the pump had died.  I bailed it out and dried it.  I turned it into a drying rack for hand washed dishes – not good as I had to keep drying it out from the dripping that went on.  It is now used to store some large items which do not fit into cabinets.

Husband pushed me to buy a new dishwasher.  I went looking.  After a year or so I found one liked, I was ready to buy it.  Then I read the reviews of dishwashers.  It was not rated well and it seems that the newer dishwashers work differently and often dishes need to be washed again.  So I did not and do not plan to buy a new dishwasher.  For two people who normally only eat 1 to 2 meals a day at home – do I really need one?   Even now - when we are eating 3 meals at day at home due to Covid and staying at home – it takes rather less than 10 minutes to wash the dishes, pots, etc after each meal.  

So, if I had my husband put his dirty dishes (a plate, maybe a bowl, and silverware three times a day and a glass also at night – we leave our glasses on the table during the day and reused them) in the dishwasher – I would have to wash the dishwasher also.  I clear the table after we eat and wash the dishes, etc – no big deal.  

Everyone and their problems in organizing are different.  Fixed rules do not apply other than the general idea of trying to have less stuff and putting it where it belongs – both of which vary person to person.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

What problems do you have?  Do you consider your problems in getting organized and decluttered to be large or small?  What suggestions can you offer others about what you have done. 

FACING SILLY FEARS AND GETTING THINGS DONE

 Over the decades I have developed an aversion to the telephone phone.   We tend to get very few phone calls other than spam calls or calls from companies we deal with who annoy us about something.  I mean very few phone calls – less than 10 or maybe even 5, a month.  If the phone rings we freeze in place until we hear on the answering machine who is calling.  One problem is that I have learned if something is going on with my mom my sister will send a text unless it is a serious urgent matter – then she calls so that adds to the problem.  I also do not like making phone calls – needed ones or personal ones.  

I currently have a number of calls which have to be made.  I started earlier this week on Tuesday with a call I should have made in late September.  I telephoned our doctor's office and made an appointment for us to have flu shots.  Yes, we know one can go to a chain pharmacy and have the shots, but husband is needlephobic and the last time he had a shot (over 40 years ago) he passed out.  So he was worried about both the lack of privacy when getting a shot at a chain pharmacy and also if he passed out they might call an ambulance and he did not want that.  So the doctor's office it was.  Neither of us has had a flu shot before.  As always, he over read up about the shots making him more concerned. We are very concerned about going out in general, let alone a doctor's office due to Covid-19, but that was the very reason we decided to get the flu vaccine.  We went today.  We were told to wait in our car and telephone when we were there.  We presumed that we would wait in the car and then go into the doctor's office which would be empty of other patients – or perhaps one going in or out.  We were surprised that when we were called to come in there were about 15 people spaced out around the waiting room (it also serves a second doctor).  Luckily the shots went well.

I also have to call – since last month – the post office where our box is located.  I need to check with the very nice fellow I have been speaking with there about if our missing our bank statements were returned to the banks due to printed notations on them – related to letting the sender know if the address changed.  I also want to talk to him as we have now had 3 items returned to the senders – two items mailed to our businesses by our state tax department and one from a credit card company and figure out why these items were returned (and what else might also have been returned).  In addition we had actually gone to the post office late one Sunday night to see if the missing mail was in the box.  It was not, but 4 pieces of mail which should have been forwarded were.  I keep putting off this call, but I really have to get it done with.  

My embroidery chapter will be renewing its meeting room next month – though the rooms are closed and we do not know when they will reopen.  The chapter president who, unlike husband and me – has been going out – when to look at meeting room in a different park which she heard was larger.  Our room has been getting a bit tight and with the idea of maybe needing to social distance on our return (hopefully some time next year) to physical meetings, she had gone to look for other rooms from the same park system and found one.  She is not a resident of the area served by these parks and I am.  She and the woman in charge of the meeting rooms have been conversing by email and including me.  I suddenly realized that the form has to be notarized which means a trip, in person, to the bank - uh oh!  So I emailed the woman from the parks department and asked if there was going to be any allowance on the notarization this year, pointing out that they have my notarized signature from several past years and I was still residing in the same house.  (I am swearing that I am resident of the township.)  She sent an email back asking to talk to me on the phone.  I told her I would call tomorrow.  My stomach is turning over with dread, not over what she will say, but making the actual call.  (My neighbor works in real estate, if I do need the notarization, I will ask if she is notary, if not, I will have to deal with going to the bank for same.)

I have other papers on my desk that I need to make phone calls for, but forget what they are.

Plus Sunday nights I try to call my mom while I am cooking dinner.  I generally cook a frozen dinner on Sunday nights and do not need to do anything while it cooking.  Mom tends to call me at dinner time – generally just as I am about to start cooking on a night that I have to be active to cook the dinner and it is a problem.  So, I have taken to calling her either on Friday nights (I make a similar type of dinner then) or Sunday nights.  Mom either does not hear the phone, does not have enough time to get to the phone before it stops ringing. It rings 4 times and then either the voice mail from the assisted living residence or the answering machine put in by family for her answers.  I have taken to calling her several times in a time in a row to let it keep ringing longer, but even then she often does not answer.  I know she is okay because if she was not, my sister would have been contacted and she would called me.  

Now, I have been very good at calling banks to check that deposits (both mailed by me and automatic) have been received and also checking how much and when payments are due on credit cards and other bills as I currently mailing out payments sooner than normal and do not always have the bill in hand when I need to pay it – or since incoming mail is problematic these days since the corona virus stay at home started and we had to have the mail forwarded from our box to our house, to check that I am correct that nothing is due on the bill.  It seems to be the actual talking to someone that upsets me.  (I learned in the first months of stay at home to call about balances due and such late night as fewer people are calling then.  In early April one bill I kept calling about and the calls were not even  accepted to wait, I was able to reach the company (for a live person) at 12:15 am. )

I especially do not like make telephone calls when my husband is in the room.  He will tell me what to say and correct me (when I am not wrong) if he hears me making calls, so I have to make them when he is elsewhere in the house – which is not often these months.)

So I have been barely getting work done this week – too  busy putting off making the telephone calls.  Hence why this post is out a day late.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Everyone has something they REALLY hate to do.  We all know that we have to do them and get them done with or the problem will be even bigger.  What do you hate to do?

2018 Christmas mixed with 1775 Christmas

I hope those how celebrate Christmas had a good holiday.  I hate to use the Merry or Happy as there are many for whom that won’t happen, but good holiday has a larger definition and is more inclusive.  (By the way - Queen Victoria was the one who changed the expression from Merry to Happy in Britain.  Why?  Well what we think of as the meaning of Merry is not what it then meant.  To wish someone a Merry Christmas then, was to wish them a drunken Christmas.)

Did you get all of your holiday preparations done on time?  I didn’t.  Between time lost back in October and November to my husband’s injured shoulder/arm, doing an assortment of tasks twice to get them done finally and correctly, work, and my general laziness, compounded by the fact that I lost 2 evenings (which should have been 3 - but more on that later) to the Candlelight Nights reenactment event we do with our reenactment unit just before Christmas, I fell behind - even for me. 

Normally I would have everything I wanted to do finished, except my (infamous) Teddy Christmas Village setup.  Over the years it has become normal for me to be setting it up on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day night, or even just after same.  Dinner for Christmas Eve would be planned in advance,gifts wrapped, all the other trees and decorations up and in place.  Not this year. 

As I wrote last week, I had set up the living room and dining room and front hall decorations - mostly - in advance.  I put artificial roping over the windows in the living and dining room and did so this year in the dining room.  The living room involves moving a coffee table from in front of the windows to hang the roping there - and an embroidered hoop piece that I put in the center of the roping.  (The coffee table is there and not in front of the sofa since it became husband’s weaving room and while not heavy is shoved between 2 chairs and therefore hard to move.)  At Christmas Eve the roping was still waiting.  I put it back the box and sat the embroidered piece on a chair (which will not be sat in anyway).  While doing this annoys me - the lack of the roping does not change the holiday in any way. 

Last week, you may remember, I assembled the tree while writing my post to you.  On Thursday night I brought up the two boxes of decorations that go on it first (the nicer ones), put “Lion in Winter” in the DVD player (a tradition with husband and me) and started on decorating the tree.  It took a few hours but the decorations went on the tree.  I put them on the tree in sections as there are so many that it makes it easier to see them.  I put angels on the top section of the tree all around  - or at least on the 3 sides one can actually see.  On the front of the tree I put the ornaments we have bought on vacation - and about vacation - I remember as I start to leave a vertical space for key chain we bought at one of the Smithsonian Air and Space museums of a red fabric piece which says “remove before flight” as used on planes.  An ornament does not have to be an actual ornament is something we figured out a number of years ago.  (We were someplace and they had the same piece as a key ring -not this one - and as an ornament.  Key ring was $3, ornament was $15 - we bought the key ring.)  In addition to key rings, we have bought the pins that people put on their hats to show that they have been someplace and a variety of other small items.  On the side of the tree facing the front hall and to the left of the vacation ornaments are the Santa ornaments - there I have to leave a space long enough for Santa hanging from a parachute until I come to it. To the left of the them are the teddy bear ornaments - and above them the ones dated with our anniversary - towards the back of the tree - paper houses are hanging.  On the other side of the tree - facing the side of the room, but visible are sections with stars, characters (Snoopy, Alice in Wonderland...), (fake) candy, vehicles and so on.  Then other ornaments are mixed in around the tree in all of these - handmade ornaments (some embroidered of course), and so on. 

Friday night we were suppose to be at the Candlelight event, but there was a huge rain storm coming in and the restoration canceled the night on Thursday as it would be too dangerous for people to be out in the storm and they figured few people would come.  So I was able to work on the other two boxes of ornaments (while watching the second version of “Lion in Winter” that we have.  These boxes have larger ornaments - balls and such - so there are less of them.  I put the more “important” of them on the tree - and stopped.  The back of the tree - the side facing the window and not seen in the room (or outside as the drapes are closed) is naked this year - for the first time ever.  I cleared up the room and stored the boxes downstairs.  As I took a box down I brought a large Santa or elf figure upstairs.  This also allowed us to food shop Friday afternoon.  While I had already bought stuff earlier in the week to make a Brunswick stew for Christmas Eve dinner, we also need food items that don’t have to be cooked or cook quickly to eat for dinner when we come home at around 10:30/11 pm after the events. 

Saturday night (well, actually afternoon) we ate a bigger lunch than normal at Wendys as we were eating earlier and would eat dinner much later than normal.  We then went home to dress in our period style clothing.  I had previously laid out my clothing - in reverse order of how they worn so the first piece to be put on is at the top of the pile and the last (my apron) is at the bottom of the pile.  I put on my “stockings” and shoes (I can’t reach the shoes after I put on my stays) and then my “shift” (a white more or less A-line dress that serves as underwear in period).  Over this I wear “stays” - not a corset and not worn tightly tied as Scarlet O’Hara wore her corset.  The stays have lacing up the back and front and I only open the front lacing to put them on and off.  I had them on and laced up the front. I then pulled the lacing to tighten them (only to the feel of “a gentle hug” and then to tie them - suddenly I was holding a piece of the lacing in my hand and the rest had mostly unlaced itself.  The lacing had torn apart!  I do not have a spare lace as it came with (on) the stays. Husband suggested that I get some fabric seam tape from our studio.  I ran down glad of a solution.  Uh, Oh!  I had stored his weaving stuff - yarns, finished pieces, table on my side of the studio.  I had taken out what I thought we might need to access - safety pins, thread spools and such, but we never need seam tape - so I could not get any.  On my way back upstairs the thought hit me, I could pull the seam tape in the waistband of my other petticoat (skirt) out and use it - no problem unless I decide to wear my other petticoat the next night - then an even better idea hit - I have a spare apron and have it used it while cooking at events so it is stained and I would not be wearing it during this event.  I pulled it out.  I started trying to lace the stays with it - end was stiff and it was wider than the lacing - I grabbed a pen and used to point to push the lacing into each hole - and it worked great (no one sees it as it under the rest of my clothing.)  We then rushed - afraid to be late to get there as husband is in charge and the first night we have to make sure the building is set up right and that we have candles, etc. We got there half an hour early to be there an hour before the event started!  We sat in the car until we saw some employees of the restoration go into the building. 

Everything we needed was there and we rearranged things from how they had been left for us to how we needed them.  As unit members came in each started setting up what they normally work with.  We made sure to put the keys to the building in the spot where they are suppose to be kept (don’t want to miss them when we go to lock up later).  As 4pm approached we lit the candles inside the house and on the steps outside.  Three of the rooms are behind clear half height gates, the others are walk through.  I put on my cap and offered the mirror in one of the gated off rooms to other women in our unit before I slide that gate into place, the last of the gates to be put in place.  One of the fellows had the fire going in the kitchen and the musician was ready.  We had a very successful and fun - both for the crowds and us  - evening.  Members each do whatever they feel they would like to do at the event - sing, greet people at the door and tell them about the building, be a person of the past (as husband and I do) and talk about the house and “our” time as someone who knows nothing of the future, just up to the matching day in 1775.  We are on the village for some of our fellows to fire their muskets 3 times during the night in front of the building.  When we went back on Sunday night we found out that 1500 people had come through the village the night before!  And Sunday night seemed to have almost as many people.

Saturday night after we came home, changed our clothes and had dinner I brought up the rest of my Santas and elves and set all of them up in the living room at the entrance to the room.  (Most of them were Christmas gifts from someone husband worked with, two I made, one we bought, and one is husband’s since he was a boy.    At this point the excess packing was stored away and the room almost finished - for this year at least.

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday - eat lunch early and more than usual, change clothes, drive to restoration village - not as early this time as we knew that everything was ready for us.  The event was basically a repeat of the night before (and really every night we do this), while always being different based on who comes through the building and their interests as life in 1775 had about as many facets as life does today and one or the other of us (or several of us) will be able to talk on the different facets. 

After we, again, came home, changed our clothes and had dinner, I went back to Christmas decorating.  I brought up our Christmas stockings - one pair red and white fur with names for use in the years that there is something for them, one pair decorated with “Santa Claus, the movie” and one pair I embroidered for us.  There are is also a line of small stockings with the names of our Cabbage Patch kids on them (yes, we are that silly).  I also boiled the chicken I needed for the Brunswick stew for Christmas Eve dinner.

Christmas Eve day we went out for lunch and some short errands as places closed early.  While I cooked our dinner and set the table in the dining room - I had to, again, take the stuff we had brought back into the house from the RV to the RV.  Since the stew cooks a long time and has to be watched, I brought up and assembled the dining room tree and decorated it with brass ornaments we have received as members of Colonial Williamsburg.  I have, somehow, duplicates of two them and the two duplicates I put on the main tree in the living room.  I then took the handmade ornaments I had set aside as I did the main tree (the handmade ornaments are split between the two trees) and set up the tree in the studio for them and put them on the tree - the woven wheat snowflake I use for star on top (made by husband) needed a bit of reinforcing glue on one point and I fixed it. 

Ah, all that will/can be done was done at this point.  I turned on the living room and studio tree lights and finished cooking dinner.  We had dinner, I did the dishes.  I put the few (3) gifts we had bought ourselves in recycled Christmas gift bags.  Husband wrapped his 2 nieces’ Christmas gifts in Christmas paper and their birthday gifts in different in different paper and we put them in bags for Christmas Day.  We then went to Midnight Mass. 

Husband later went up to bed before me and I put our gifts under the tree - next to the empty fancy gift boxes there for “show”.

Christmas Day was spent at his sister’s house and the less said about it, the better.  Today was the 26th.  I paid all the bills due until after New Year’s Day, we mailed them, we went to the bank and transferred money to cover them and then came home for a quiet evening to rest up.  Tomorrow night we go back to the Candlelight Nights through Saturday night.  Ah, being in 1775 for 3 more nights - something we love.  Then the teddy village will be changed from fall to Winter/Christmas.
                       
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

None of us can do everything.  I could be upset and kicking myself for not getting all of the decorating done, but I did the best I could.  Husband points out that there is nothing missing when one looks at it all.  Another year, more will be done. 

Relax - you can only do the best you can - in decorating and organizing.  New Year’s Day will be here before I talk with you again - remember think of what you might want to change or improve and decide to try.  Don’t make resolutions - just pick something and think about what you can do.  And don’t forget - every day is the start of a new year.

I wish a happy, and healthy new year to all of you.

I WAS FINALLY CATCHING UP A BIT AND...

Well, here I am again, posting a day late.  Did I forget?  Did I play games with my computer again?  Was there a blackout?  No!  But please forgive my late posting - again.

I had a tax return to finish for a client - (USA) deadline for late filing on extension of individual tax returns is October 15.  This particular client tends to file on extension every year, but usually I get his information and prepare the return earlier in September.  This year he did not contact me until mid September to set up an appointment - which was a week or so later.  He lost his wife late last year and has been in and out of the hospital himself - he was going back in the day after he gave me his info.  Even now, the return is finished and out to him, but I need to discuss his final estimated tax payment for 2018 which is due in January 2019 before I can fill in and send him that file.

My embroidery guild chapter needed someone to teach some stitches at the October 3 meeting and I got volunteered - I had to do prep for the meeting and try out some stitches to see what I would teach - and have some samples of it for the members to see what they looked like. 

I finished same in time for the meeting and was finishing teaching the first stitch when my cell phone rang with my husband’s special ringer.  I figured it was a text message - he never calls me as he only has 100 minutes a month (and almost every month ends the month with none of the minutes used) and while they were stitching I opened the message - only to find that it was phone call from husband.  I called back (must be important if he called) and he told me that he did not feel well - his arm hurt which pain killer OTC pill should he take.  I told him and went back to teaching.  In 5 minutes - 10 at the most - he called again, just this side of crying about how bad it was and it was his left arm.  That set me panicking.  I explained, made my apologies, grabbed as many of my samples as I saw (plus my other stuff, including a piece - the raised work butterfly - that I had brought in for “show and tell” and ran out the door.  We live maybe 5 minutes drive from the meeting.

He was upset and in a panic.  I looked up the symptoms of a heart attack - yes, pain radiating in the left arm, even without chest pain could be a heart attack.  Now, husband and I are the type of people who avoid doctors as much as they can, but we were both worried.  Question became which hospital emergency room to go to.  We have a large hospital which was owned by the county until it sold it, but it still serves the purpose of the county hospital near us.  Further away there is a Catholic Diocese run hospital.  I suggested same, despite it being maybe 10 minutes futher away as we had been “happy” with two other hospitals so owned - one for his cataract surgeries and one when his mother had heart surgery - and if he needed same, he would be transferred to that hospital, one of the top in the country, if we went to this hospital, plus our GP is associated with it.  Why a question as to which one to go to?  Well, his mother died at this hospital and that sticks in his mind.  I pointed out that while it was the same building, it was a different hospital now, with new ownership (had been a private hospital owned by doctors before).               

He made sure that he had his medical insurance cards (we are both on Medicare  - me as of this month, him as of last year) and we were off.  He had to drive as he has motion sickness - which is also why an ambulance, which we thought to be overkill any way, was not in question. 

When we arrived I remembered a problem with this hospital - most of the parking is at the rear of the building far from the doors - and the emergency room is at the front. We looked in the small lot by the emergency entrance - no spaces.  I had him stop the car and get out and I drove it and parked it at the rear of the building - at least the parking was free, at the county hospital they charge - and should not for so many reasons.  He actually went in alone without complaining or whimpering.  (He does not like to do things alone.)  I had figured he would be waiting for me, but he had the good senses to start things going.  I parked at the rear of the building, and ran (well as close to running as an overweight, out of shape 65 year old woman can run without having a heart attack herself) around the side of the building, in the entrance (halfway to the front) and started following signs while briskly walking - emergency luckily was a red sign with white writing and easy to spot to see which way to go.  I got to the front of the building and it ended?  I saw an elevator and pushed the ground floor button and then ran out and followed more signs - arriving at the emergency waiting area just as they were taking him in. 

 I was impressed with the computers on wheeled stations so that the staff could come to the bed and do the computer work right there.  Staff was nice and understanding.  While one employee settled him into the bed, the nurse took info from me - she was rather impressed that I had a list of our meds (they only needed his of course) in my cell phone.  Based on the errors we made in info while trying to recall things while in panic, I will also enter in additional info, including family history for both of us as we forget when they asked that his mother had heart surgery as well as his cataract surgery and to mention that he is allergic to most raw fruit and many nuts.  I did remember that he was allergic to penicillin ,but he insisted no - and that I was allergic to same.  He has always said that he was allergic to penicillin to me and I am allergic to sulfa meds.  (“Aren’t sulfa meds penicillin” he asked me later when we were discussing this.)

Once he was settled in, it became wait and wait.  Staff and the woman accompanying the patient in the curtained area next to husband all were constantly upset that I was standing and tried to get me to sit.  I prefer standing as it hurts my bottom to sit for long times (I lost weight there) and we were concerned about -yes - bed bugs.  Standing for an afternoon is nothing to me, but it kept bothering everyone - and I was less in the way in the tight quarters of his area standing than sitting and could more easily get out of anyone’s way. 

We had explained that he had excruciating pain in his left shoulder radiating down his left arm and that we were concerned if it was a heart attack, as well as what it was if it was not.

They did blood work (something husband fears and it was not done well - there was blood on the sheet).  They hooked him up to a machine.  A man came and took him to X-ray, not knowing it was around the corner in the same room I asked if I could follow along - husband asked me to stay with him the entire time, which I had expected and planned to do.  They did other things in a flurry of tasks.  Then it became wait.... wait....wait...  

We had arrived around noon.  It became 2:30 - our normal lunch time.  Neither of us had eaten that day as the 2:30 meal is usually our first of the day.  We are both Type 2 Diabetics.  I can do passably well not eating, but he needs to eat or his blood sugar drops.  He said he was okay.  By 3 pm he was heading into trouble.  I went to the nurse and explained and asked if they had some orange juice which is what he usually will have if he has a low - and she gave him same and offered turkey sandwich, which they have in a fridge in the unit.  So he had a bit of lunch.  (I had sort of thought that he could not eat, which is why I asked for the juice, just in case surgery was needed.)  I thought of running out and looking for something for me (we have cheese cracker packages in the car - figured some place to eat in the building or at worst, Burger King was 3 buildings over on the road). But I decided I felt okay and waited. 

Over the afternoon we were told his blood tests were okay.  Later we  that he would be moved to an observation section where he would wait until they did a second set of blood tests as they needed to compare them - ok, makes sense.  I asked the doctor who told us this, about checking about other reasons for the pain he was in - “We have to rule out a heart attack first and then look at muscular-skeletal reasons.”  Okay, makes sense. 

It took an hour or so before he was transferred to the observation section.  This was a room with larger curtained areas where one could move about (me - not him, he was again hooked up).  After he was settled in and we knew that nothing would happen for awhile, I nervously asked him about leaving for about 15 minutes to run back out to car and get cheese crackers to eat.  He said it was fine and that I should check for a cafeteria in the hospital.  I went back out a little more leisurely and checked the lunchonette type restaurant in the building - $8 for a burger?  Did not see if that included fries or something, but would only not want same anyway and $8 a bit high on the budget, so I continued the car.  As I had walked through there was a photo exhibit - it reminded me that husband had exhibited his cut paper art works in the hospital (before his mom died) several times.  I went out to the car.  On a chance, I drove the car around to the front of the building and found an empty space in the small lot in the front near the emergency room to make leaving easier.  Problem - only one package of cheese crackers in the car.  I guess I did not replace them when we (okay I) ate them in the past.

So I took the package back with me and ate the crackers.   They brought him dinner - lunch? at 4 pm - the Diabetic diet - macaroni in tomato sauce, spinach, diet pudding, diet ginger ale, and coffee - artificial sweetener on the side of course.  He ate the macaroni and spinach.  Eventually they came and took the second blood tests - and had to stick him all over again, I thought the tube they left in his arm would be used, but no they had to stick him again. Those tests came back fine.

So, I started asking what they were going to do next about the pain.  No, they were done - he should go to his doctor or an orthopedist about that!  So we spent 8.5 hours there and left with a couple of holes in arms, papers, hungry stomachs, and the pain in his arm still there.

He had trouble falling asleep last night - did not do so until 6 am - so when he finally fell asleep I let him sleep since he had not had a full night sleep the night before, hoping when he finally awoke he would feel better.  No, it may even be worse.  So tomorrow we will go see our regular doctor, who hopefully will be able to help him. 

I ran out today and ran the most pressing of the errands I was suppose to do yesterday such as transfer money so I could mail out bill payments due out.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

1 - Be prepared.  (Even if you are not a Boy Scout.)

I know what medications we each take, but was getting confused and the list of same in a memo in my cell phone helped.  The personal and family histories in the phone would have been of great help.

If I had remembered to replace cheese cracker packages when we (I) ate them, I would have had  more of them to eat as a lunch - and not have been shaking with low blood sugar when we got home. (We ended with me going out and picking up Chinese take out for dinner, as it was too late to cook - and we got foods he did not need to cut.) 

Have something on your cell phone (or tablet) to keep you busy - without wifi as there was none.  I spent the time in the observation area playing cards on my phone.  (The TVs did not work in either room.)  While in the observation room he spent his time annoying his sister with text messages telling her where he was and why and NO she should not come or send her husband.  (I have not mentioned it to my family yet.)

We thought we were prepared, well I thought I was prepared for both of us, but we were not.  If I had been the patient, he would have had even more problems. 

2 - Simple things can be complicated and one needs to keep thinking and come up with ideas quickly. 

He needed his insurance cards and had to juggle it out of his pocket while being hooked up to machines - I took the wallet from him and shoved it in my pocket for the rest of the time we were there and added his cards back to it for him.  (He would not give me his cell phone to hold except during the X- rays.) 

When he went to eat the turkey sandwich we asked if he could/should take his pill that he would normally take with lunch - nurse checked and the doctor said yes.  He tried to wrangle his pill box out and was getting frustrated.  We both take that same medication.  I told him to stop and pulled out my box and handed him one of mine - I took one back from his supply later.  Much easier than him trying to get it out.

Eating the meal they gave him was a bit hard as the tray table was too far from him no matter how I positioned it.  He is a sloppy eater and did not want to drop food on himself.  I finally figured out to turn the tray 90 degrees so it could stick off the table and still have enough tray on the table not to fall off.  This way the tray stuck out so it covered him lap.

3 - Go with the flow

Yes, it is a trite expression, but there was no other choice.  We were there - I could not run the errands I intended.  The soda bottles and donation items will wait.  The visit to our bank vault to exchange this month’s data backups for last month’s - well, last month’s will work until next month’s goes in.  Nothing to do to change the situation - just go along with it and be glad that he did not have a heart attack and hope that the doctor can help (easily) with the pain in his shoulder as he is currently pacing the kitchen as he is trying not to take the next OTC pill until closer to bed time.  Oh, I forgot to mention that he found one of our old kitchen chairs the most comfortable thing to sit on and has planted himself on it (I brought it over for him from our studio) at our kitchen table in front of the door to the basement and blocking the path to the pantry closet and the downstairs bathroom. This making doing chores very hard to do as I either have to climb over him or ask him to move.  Last night’s laundry is being done tonight.

WHAT SHOULD YOU GET RID OF AND WHAT SHOULD YOU KEEP?

Pardon me - I didn’t post yesterday.  As I think I mentioned the most important annual Jewish holiday was yesterday and when it was over last night it slipped my memory what day of the week it was.  So here I am, a day late and a post short. 

As I was talking about last week, much of what one needs to know about organizing we know.  It is finding the time and pushing ourselves to do it that is the problem - at least for me.  Basically one has to sort through what one has and get rid of what is not being used and will not be used and then set up what is left in an organized manner so that one can find what one is looking for quickly. 

What to get rid of?  A good question.  Some of it is rather obvious - empty boxes of cereal for example.  They are garbage. Almost empty box?  Depends on how much is left - if you can eat it all while continuing to work - eat it and toss the box; if it is enough for a meal or two - use it up at meals and toss the empty box.  In this case I mean for the cereal box to stand for anything which gets used up, but the empty container is still around.  This week and last week I made a chicken stew that my husband loves for dinner.  Problem is that the garbage pickup is on Monday and Thursday and I was making the stew on Monday last week and Tuesday this week and both times had to hold it all both times until Wednesday night when I put it out for Thursday pick up.  The bones, skin and such have to be thrown out, but if I toss them in the kitchen garbage and they don’t go out right away, it will smell terrible.  I can take the kitchen bag out to the can outside, but it really upsets me to put the bag(s) out only about 1/3 full.  So, I put the chicken garbage into one of those plastic shopping bags that one gets at groceries stores, put same in the bowl I had used to hold the cooked chicken overnight (cooked the chicken one day, made the stew the next) before taking it off the bones and left it in the fridge.  When it was time for the garbage to go out I added the shopping bag of chicken icky stuff to it and out it went.  I then washed the bowl the bag had been in.  I actually have left over stew from both nights.  It can’t be frozen as it has potatoes in it and they never freeze well.  I have the stews in two canning jars in the fridge (one from last week and one from this).  I will hold them until the end of the next week - if husband has not eaten it by then (he really LOVES this stew) then it will go out that Sunday night in the garbage - it will not be allowed to sit beyond when it will be safe to eat.

Staying with the kitchen, some items are harder to get rid of.  Husband will decide that he likes something - say a particular canned soup - and buy a lot of it.  Then something will happen and it will not be eaten.  Say, he decides it raises his blood sugar too much and he should only have it once in a while.  The items sit........and sit.........and sit..........and sit.......and sit.  Suddenly they are past their date and one cannot even donate them.  It really kills me to throw out 6 full cans of something because it passed its date a year or two before - but out they must go.  They are taking up needed room and if they are eaten by accident they may make someone ill.  I have to check on some eggs we have in the fridge - wait, I will check right now - an entire dozen dated for June 16, 2018.  Now what do I do?  Normally I would toss the eggs.  But here is a bit of info - when eggs pass their date and are sent back to the producer by the stores they are allowed to be repackaged and sent back out a certain number of times - gross right, but it is true.  Eggs can be tested to see if they are still good and I will have to find the instructions on how to check them.  Okay, per “The Joy of Cooking” if the eggs float in cold water they are no good.  I will test them tomorrow and then throw them out if they float.  We go through periods where we eat eggs or use them in cooking and will buy them - and then the period of eating them ends - see husband deciding he likes something and then deciding not to have it any more, above - I think he was making quiches with them and then stopped doing so - and they sit.  Usually it only part of a dozen, which is left.  In case you are thinking - what about breakfast?  We wake up so late that we have lunch for breakfast, dinner for lunch and then a late night snack for supper, so eggs tend to be more of a dinner food here.  I am going to test them.....  Well, they will going out Sunday night with the garbage for Monday, the 3 I picked at random all floated - but, on the other hand, I was wrong - there are only 10, not a full dozen.  We have a quart of milk in the fridge also.  I know that is fresh, we bought it for a meeting of our reenactment unit last Monday - husband had volunteered to bring snack - oh that reminds me of something else, we are going to return an unopened package of cookies - we bought 2 different kinds for the meeting and apparently it was a chocolate mint cookie crowd, not a chocolate chip crowd.  But no one opened the milk to use in their coffee.  So I have to figure out how to use up a the quart - I guess we will be having diet pudding for snack a few times.  We were lucky to find the quart - mostly it comes in half gallons and more around here, and the quart cost almost as much as the half gallon.

So - when one sorts through stuff one will find stuff to toss, stuff to check and decide if it should be tossed - now or soon after, stuff to return, and stuff to use up.  If only I had some chocolate syrup for the milk, but if I buy same, then I will have a started bottle of chocolate syrup and someday in the future will be deciding if it should be thrown out or not.  (Plus we just plain should not have the extra carbohydrates.)

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

You know that you know what to do.   Go through and toss the floating eggs and the long past date things (whether they are actually dated or not) - and the chicken stuff which has been stored until you can toss it.  Get rid of the empty boxes or finish up what it is in them and get rid of them.  Return items which are in good condition which can be returned.  Use up the items that can still be used - before they have to be tossed because they are floating eggs.   This applies in the rest of the house as well as in the kitchen - paints and makeup can go past their use time also, for example.  The dress you bought for Sally’s wedding a month ago and then bought a different one, that you wore instead - return it if you can or donate it - unless you know that you can wear it for Harry’s wedding next month.  And so on. 

NOT IN PENNSYLVANIA

Remember over the past few weeks before I told you that we were going away this week and the work involved in preparing our RV for the trip?  Well, we’re home - not away.  Why?

I printed out my list of what has to be done to set up and pack the RV.  We put the mattresses (actually pieces of the mattresses as each half of the mattress is made up of 3 pieces) in the RV.  I pulled out stuff that was in the RV for the winter that is needed to pack it - food storage boxes, fabric shopping bags to carry stuff out to and back from the RV, and so on.  I also have some stuff to do because it has not been used since last year - such as change the refrigerator baking powder holder (to keep it from smelling - same as a box of same in one’s home fridge - but I get the one that goes on inside the fridge with a suction cup as the box would probably fall over as we traveled around and make a mess).  I checked that we had hand and dish soap and shampoo.    You know -the sort of stuff you have at home and never think about needing on a trip - unless you have an RV. 

Last Thursday we plugged the RV into the house electricity to make sure the batteries were fully charged.  They are old and we should have replaced them, but that has not been in the budget, so we have to make sure they are charged, so that the fridge in it will keep working when the car engine is off when we are parked somewhere.  (It does also recharge while we are driving and while it is plugged in at night in the RV park.) 

On Friday I suggested to husband that I would makeup the bed while the RV was plugged in so I could run the air conditioner as it was soooo hot out - and inside is like being in a car that has not had ac on and even hotter.  He reminded me that it could not be put on if the ac was plugged in at the house as the amperage was not enough, but - he had wanted to turn on the generator and make sure it was working.

So we turned on the generator - horrors, it turned on fine - but the microwave clock did not come on.  You may be thinking - who cares about the microwave clock of all things.  There are two things that will not work in the RV unless it is plugged in at full amperage - the ac and the, yes, the microwave.  If the microwave light was not on - the generator was not transferring electricity to the RV.  We turned the generator off and husband climbed under - again - and found that the fellow who worked on it had turned and left the connection switch off.  We turned on the generator and this time the it was connected and working.  I started making up the bed - a 45 minute minimum process as I have described before and husband walked out to let me work.

He was back shortly.  There was oil coming out of the generator.  Whether something was broken, or the plug was loose, or the fact that too much oil had been put in it - something was wrong.  He ran inside and called the shop that had changed the oil.  Well, 4:30 pm Friday - they would be glad to help on  - Monday morning, when we scheduled to be on our trip.  Husband made the appointment.

I suggested that we could set up the RV except for the last minute things, take the RV to the shop, come home, add the list minute things (or we would have to wake up even earlier to put them in and secure them in place) and go on our trip.  Husband was not happy with this idea, as it is very hard to back the darn thing off our driveway  - I have to stand in traffic and tell him when to back out and he has to do it quickly - and he did not want to do it twice in one day.  I went back in the RV and did a quick set up of the bed as the generator was running and oil was still coming out of it.  I only did the mattress set up, then we stopped the generator - I brought the pillows into the house to deal with them.  It will be a lumpy set up in mattress as I was not able to smooth out the sheets properly - I will deal with it when we travel in it.

The more husband thought about it, the more he did not want to leave after going to the shop again.  But - if we cancel the reservation we have to pay for it any way.  In addition as the weekend went along, the weather became extremely hot and thunderstorms while we would be there.  He panicked even more. 

I decided to suggest that we go one day during the week - whichever day seemed to be the best weather - for us to go to the annual folk festival (crafts) that we want to go to (we can go there and home the same day, we have done so in the past) and try to move the reservations to next week.  He agreed.

As I was about to do so I realized that there was problem with going next week - we had money coming in this week and it had to be transferred to checking to pay our “big” credit card bill which has to be mailed out the 10th.  Darn!!!!! 

I then suggested the week after - which seemed okay all around - we have a reenactment the weekend after it, but would be home Friday night and the reenactment is Sunday. 

So this past Saturday I telephoned the RV park and explained that we had a reservation for Monday and we have had a problem with the RV and it could not be worked on until Monday.  Could we please change the reservation to 2 weeks later - and I was told it was okay - the same space was even available.  Now, I may find that they are not applying our deposit to the changed trip, but if so, well that is how it is.  Hopefully we will get credit for the deposit.

So now we are home for July 4th.  Something which I do not think has happened since we were married - and maybe before.  With nothing to do.  For “excitement” we went to Barnes and Nobles today. 

Earlier in the week I was trying to think how to make today more July 4th ish.  He has hot dogs for dinner around once a week so I moved them to today.  We don’t have an outdoor grill.  I have not been able to eat hot dogs for a few years, so I figured I would make my Thursday night turkey burger in an elongated shape so it would fit in the brat rolls we had in the house and I figured he would use for the hot dogs.  We had some frozen fries I would make for him.  When I went to make dinner I suggested that I use a cast iron pan with a grill that I had not used in awhile to cook my burger and his hot dogs to make them more like being grilled outside. (Normally he has me boil his hot dogs.)   He told me to do one that way to try it. 

I put the grill pan on the stove to heat up.  I started making (canned) soup.  I checked how much fries there were.  Suddenly the kitchen was full of smoke and the smoke detector was going off.  The grill pan - with no food added - was burning whatever was on it and the smoke was heading through the house.  I turned off the burner, opened the back door (next to the stove) and fanned the smoke a bit with the door - this usually will direct smoke out the door if something like this happens.  I turned off the ceiling fan - same.  I turned off the soup.  The alarm kept going off.  I would push the button, it would stop, and then start again.  I am 5'1" and have to stand on my toes on a chair to reach the button.  I stayed up there pushing the button over and over.  In between I would jump off the chair and try putting the ceiling fan on or off.  After 10 minutes of this I texted husband upstairs for help.  Between his hearing not being what it was and the fact that he was in a room on the other side of the house - which is not that far as the house is small, but he had the air conditioner on and the room door closed so he did not hear the alarm going off. 
He came down and took over the spot on the chair, pushing the button over and over.  We could not clear the smoke from the air.  This is one  of the new alarms with a permanent battery, so we could not pull the battery or the alarm would have to be thrown away.  We tried covering it with a shower cap.  (The RV is small and if one cooks in it the smoke alarm goes off and people put a shower cap over it to keep the smoke out of it when cooking - and it works, as cooked in it after a couple of hurricanes when we had no electricity in the house for the electric stove there.)

Finally about 45 minutes later the alarm stopped.  The house still reeked of smoke.  The pan was on the floor in the porch.  Dinner should have been cooked and ready. 

I turned the soup back on.  I boiled his hot dogs.  The fried potatoes had been cooking during all this in the toaster oven.  But what about my dinner?  I was not going to try to cook my burger in any of my pans and add more smoke to the house.  I ended up cooking frozen vegetables for me for dinner - vegan for tonight.  My burger is wrapped in plastic wrap for dinner tomorrow night.  I have the grill pan soaking water to try to clean it.

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

No matter what one’s plans are they may go awry.  One just has to be able to think and deal with the problems so that they are in some manner resolved. 

We will go on the trip later than we figured - but this will probably be good as it will not be as crowded then - and husband hates crowds.  Hopefully we will have a day that is nice to go for the one day trip - and as husband scowled over the cost of the tolls - I reminded him that when we go that way the tolls are much, much lower as we are going to a different area  - maybe 1/3 of when we go to where we usually go.

Dinner was late (and we missed the start of the PBS “Capitol Fourth” on TV), but we had dinner and the show was rerun after its showing so we saw the start afterwards. 

None of this is earth shattering  - just an annoyance - and I had two stories about trying to be organized to tell you this week.

       

THANKSGIVING TURNING INTO CHRISTMAS

I hope you all had a pleasant Thanksgiving (if you are here in the U.S.) last week.  Did you run out to shop during the day or the night - or did you at least wait until “Black Friday” to shop?  Or are you waiting still to start shopping?
                               
We had our Thanksgiving dinner, the two of us.  I managed to bang my head - not once but twice - on the corner of the dining room table while putting away a table cover which should have been put away months and months ago - I bent over to put it in a bag and hit my head.  I really screamed.  Husband came in, “are you okay, and there, there’d” me and then gave me a lecture on making sure it was clear in front of me before bending over.  He went back to cooking in the kitchen and I took 2 steps back and bent over again to put away the cover.  I hit my head again on the same corner and same spot on my head - just less of the corner and got to listen to the lecture again.  Worst of all it was the same spot on my head that I hit last month in our RV. 

It was relatively easy to take out the china and items we needed.  I had gone through the cabinet where it is all stored last year and donated a lot of items we did not need.  Instead of needing to take out stacks and stacks of items, only one or two had to removed.  How pleasant.  I plan to work on the serving pieces stored in the living room next - I have better uses for the storage space there than bowls and platters we bought or received as gifts and have never used.  Hmm, maybe I can finally get husband to hang two handled cups from when we were each a kid that match which are stored in the living room.  He had the juice cup, I had the orange juice cup - but they match.  They must have been popular cups for children back then.

The turkey had directions on it - basically we were to cook it at 325F, when the little popper popped we should test the breast with a thermometer and make sure it was at least 180F.  There were also instructions to tent the turkey with foil and then remove same, and brush will oil a few times.  Also on the turkey wrapping was a list of times to cook the turkey - only this said for a turkey cooked at 350F - 25 degrees higher than the instructions said to cook at.  We discussed this - for a quite awhile.  In the back of my head it seemed to me that I remember the same problem with the turkey from the same place last year, but could not remember what I did. We cooked it at the 325F with the logic that it could always be cooked more, but cooked not be cooked less if it was overcooked. About a half hour longer than the chart said (for cooking at 350F) the popper popped and I checked the turkey breast with a thermometer and it was 180F and rising.  We took the turkey out and set it aside on the kitchen table to “set”. 

In the interim we finished cooking other food items and had our soup.  Husband then went to carve the turkey.  The turkey breast looked wonderful as he carved into it - but as he went beyond the breast - the turkey was terribly undercooked.  He finished carving the breast - moving it to another platter to do so.  He then cut up the rest of the turkey - wings, legs, dark meat - and we placed it all on two oven trays to heat it further.  I ended up with the 2 extra trays and 2 extra platters as a result of all this.  We are not sure what went wrong - should we have cooked it at 350F instead?  But the popper popped and it was the correct temperature on the thermometer.    Husband has written a letter to the supermarket’s owner (this is one of those of stores where the owner’s photo is all off and he does the ads himself and is actually involved in his company day to day) asking what happened. 

The dishes and all were washed Thanksgiving night.  I have put all away.  When I put my large platter back in the basement, I took out my “everyday” Christmas dishes and glasses.  I washed them and we are using them.  I move some of my normal everyday dishes higher in the cabinet - where I can’t normally reach stuff - to make room for these to fit in. 

We had the leftover turkey etc for the second set of leftovers tonight.  There is at least one dinner’s worth of turkey left - but that is all.  It will either be eaten early next week or will be frozen.

We do not go shopping on Thanksgiving.  We don’t go out for Black Friday sales either.  Okay, one time husband wanted a small laptop that was going on Black Friday sale at a chain electronics store and we went and waited in line for it.  He did get the laptop, but then again, it was still on sale at the same price - and in stock - the following week.  It was not worth standing in line in the freezing cold.  This store was rather well organized.  There was a line.  Items which were limited had coupons for them handed out to people by employees walking along the line, so the coupons were handed out to people based on where they were in line. 

We have many times, including this year, while out on Friday to have lunch (at Wendys of course) and run errands gone past empty looking stores and malls by the time we went out.  I had needed to renew a medication at the Walmart pharmacy and figured it would be ready over the weekend, but we were called Friday afternoon that it was ready decided to see how bad the crowds were.  It was empty!  Items which had been put out late Wednesday sealed up until the sales started, were still plentiful for the most part - husband started rooting through the DVDs.  We have been in Walmarts again since then and still sale items are still in their displays - either less people came in than they thought would do so, or they intended for the sale items to be available long beyond last Friday.

When we woke up today I noticed the temperature was 61F - 61!  I pointed this out to husband and suggested that today was the day to put up our outdoor Christmas decorations.  He agreed.  We checked our box at the post office, had lunch at Wendys and came home.  We keep our outdoor decorations on a platform in the top of the garage.  We used to have everything there for Christmas, but as we have aged and it is not that easy for husband to climb on a ladder and get everything - much is heavy - down, I moved the rest into our basement.  He can now stand on his worktable (after clearing it off enough) and get the, only, two boxes of lights and wires, three potted artificial poinsettia, and 3 light up candy canes down.  No more balancing on a ladder to hand me things.  Much safer.  We have some wreaths, swags, and such in our shed, but are not putting them up any longer - maybe again in the future. 

We put the poinsettia in the same stands that hold our flowers the rest of the year.  Husband made these poinsettia in pots.  We bought artificial poinsettia which could go outside in the weather and 3 pots to fit the holders.  He then bought a couple of cans of spray insulation - the kind that is a foam and expands to fit what it is in.  He filled the pots and we added a poinsettia to each.  The foam was topped with fake greens and they look great.  5 minutes and they are out in place.

We put lights on our bushes and a dwarf spruce tree.  (The dwarf tree is now over 6 ft tall, I am so glad that I talked him out of a full size one.)  Of course two set of lights did not work when tested - one of the ones which goes on the bushes and one that is red and white and goes around the white plastic pillar of our mailbox a bit of a candy cane look.  We have in the boxes with the lights two electric boxes which stick into the ground.  One is placed on one side of the front of our house and the other is placed on the other side of the front of our house.  A long flat outdoor extension cord is plugged into the outdoor outlet and run across the front of the house, over the top of the stairs (under the door mat so no one trips) and the electric box on the side away from the outlet is plugged into it - and then the lights are plugged into the electric box.  The electric box on the side of the house near the outlet is plugged into the other outlet in the wall box and the lights on that side of the front of the house plug into it.

After we put out and plugged in the lights that worked, we drove to Walmart to buy replacement.  No white and red lights - no red lights on their own.  We came back, put up the new light set on the bush that was short a set.  Husband then took the red and white set into the garage, plugged it in and started shaking it.  One half started working.  So we wrapped the lit half of the strand around the mail box pillar and dropped the rest on the ground. 

The wreath we bought last year for the front door was in the basement with the rest of the “in the house” decorations.  The former one was decorated by husband as a copy of one we saw and liked at Colonial Williamsburg - only we used plastic fruit instead of real fruit so we could keep reusing it.  The problem is that it had to hung on the outside of the storm door as it did not fit between the door and storm door - this involved annually rigging strands of fishing line around screws in the storm door and trying to adjust it so we could still see through the peep hole of the door - and remember we both on the short side.  The new wreath has lights on it - lit by batteries with a timer so it is on for 6 hours every night at the same on and off time.  Went up in less than 20 minutes with a magnetic hook on the door - and it is out of the weather, unlike the old wreath which if got covered snow might break free and fall. 

So our house now looks presentable to the world.  Husband is still trying to figure out where we could put one of those projector decorations - but the front of our house is just not set up for it.

Notice that because fixed place for the Christmas decorations in the garage and plastic boxes to hold the lights, wires, and plug in boxes for them, as well as an assigned spot in the basement to hold the Christmas decorations, it was easy and quick to find everything and put it out.  The empty boxes in the garage were stacked on each other with the bags that the lights were kept in stored inside, relatively out of the way so that when we go to take down the lights - they will be easy to find again and then they will be put back up in garage along with poinsettia and the candy canes so that next week we will find them again.

Sometime next week I will put away my few Thanksgiving decorations in the house and then I will start putting out the Christmas ones.  This year the holidays seem to be going okay. 

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

As you take out your holiday decorations and other items try to leave the packing in a way that it will be easy to find and put everything away after the holiday.  If it is all a mess  - try to figure out  while you unpack items how you can better store them away at the end of the season to make them either to access next year, while not being in your way all year. 

SEMI UNORGANIZED THANKSGIVING

Ah, the holidays are coming!  Is panic setting in?

Last week I put out my few Thanksgiving decorations.  A small setting of Pilgrim bear figurines going to Thanksgiving at a house in a tree.  (I painted the tree and most of the bears from kits - in one case while I was supposed to making and getting the house ready for Thanksgiving dinner.)  Other “human” Thanksgiving figurines and salt and pepper shakers and a pair of candleholders given me by a friend decades ago.  Husband took me to “Thanksgiving world” - aka Plymouth, MA decades ago and I bought most of the assorted non-bear items there in gift shops.

I am sure I have mentioned before, but just in case I did not, my husband and I are of different faiths.  I am Jewish and he is Roman Catholic.  As a result we did not have that “whose family are we going to” problem for most family holidays.  We went to my family for Jewish holidays and his family for Christian holidays.  But then there was Thanksgiving.

Growing up, as well as an adult, Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday - and not just because I am an eater.  It was the only uniquely American family holiday which was not religious based - it was/is a holiday for all Americans.  Also there were no gifts - gifts I received tended to have nothing to do with me or anything I was interested in - especially beyond my immediate family - and I had to smile and say thank you - and then figure out what to do with the item - this was not a problem with Thanksgiving. 

Now, it has been found that when the answer to what do you have for thanksgiving dinner - answer “turkey and all the trimmings” was further looked into, it was found that same varied greatly.  For a while growing up our Thanksgivings were celebrated with my mom’s family and her sister-in-law (my aunt) had become kosher, so we would go to a kosher delicatessen restaurant for dinner.  Mom would cook turkey during the year, so it was not what we wanted there. My sisters and I  wanted corned beef sandwiches!  The waiter would keep asking if we were sure and we were.  They had handed us the complete regular menu after all, and that was our dinner.  My husband’s family is from Italy.  They would have a first course of some kind of macaroni (what we Americans call pasta).  So while being the uniquely encompassing holiday, Thanksgiving is large enough to encompass all of various backgrounds. 

While dating and the first few years we were married we would juggle which family we went to - generally we ended up with his family.  One year I had the idea to have both families come to our tiny apartment for Thanksgiving dinner.  He was shocked at the idea.  Oh, one difference between our families is that my family tends (short of accommodating the kosher aunt) tends to eat at home for holidays, while his family eats out.  We figured out a menu, found a place that has hot turkey pick up on Thanksgiving, and went ahead.  It went fairly well - the entire living room filled with two long folding tables put end to end.  For 25 years we made Thanksgiving dinner.  Nieces and nephew came along.  My dad died.  A few times a friend or an in law of a family member was included.  We moved one year at the end of October from our apartment to this house - and we made Thanksgiving dinner - and used the good china.  It was the bedbugs which brought this to an end as we cannot bring ourselves to have anyone in the house.

Organizing? I see now how organized I was for those dinners.  Now the two of us have our Thanksgiving dinner alone.  At first we went to an inexpensive general food buffet restaurant and it was very nice as the manager made it feel party like.  Then he left and it was not as nice and then finally the place closed.  So on and off over the past several years I have made Thanksgiving dinner for the two of us.  What a mess! 

First of all, I never know if I am making dinner or if we are going out to an Asian buffet until the last minute.  Last year we waited so long, we almost could not get a turkey which was not frozen - and that would not have defrosted in time.  This year we bought a turkey this past Saturday. 

In the old days I had a menu from the past to work with.  We might change a dish or two, but basically it was the same menu.  I have a spiral notebook with almost every dinner we made for Thanksgiving and the other holidays we took a turn out with, mostly, my family over the years.  (I reached the end of the notebook using the right hand pages and now I am going backwards, using the left hand pages.)  The first week in November I would start checking ads and buying things for the dinner, so at the last minute items like milk which had to be bought fresh were all that was left to buy. 

Well, we went this past Sunday to the supermarket to start buying what we needed - without making a list of what we would make or what we needed.  It was as if there was a combination hurricane and major snow storm announced at the same time!  The parking lot was jammed.  The store was jammed.  We gave up and left.  We then actually made up a list of what we would have and needed so when we went back Monday it was not as jammed  - we actually went to another supermarket chain as they had items we were looking for on sale - and were able to buy almost all the items needed at the one supermarket, with a quick stop at the one from Sunday for 2 items we had not been able to get.  Husband complained about the crowds - I told him flat out - “This is why I used to shop the first week of the month!”

We have baked a pie tonight.  Everything else can be done tomorrow, Thanksgiving.  I will set up the turkey tonight so when I get up really early tomorrow to put the turkey in the oven, I can go back to sleep a lot quicker. 

While downstairs doing my regular Wednesday night laundry (I will not fall behind just because it is a holiday) I took out “the turkey platter”.  This is a larger platter than our others and has a chip in it.  We use it to put the turkey on to carve it and then use smaller ones for serving the turkey (whether for the family or just us).  I washed it as it is kept in the basement.  In the afternoon I brought a bunch of RV stuff (clean sheets, towels...) out to the RV so it is all out of the dinning room.  I moved some stuff into place in the dinning room. 

Tomorrow I will add one board to our dinning room table, instead of the four boards that I used to add for the family.  I will cover it with a plastic/foam cover (I have them in sizes to fit all lengths of the table) and then my Thanksgiving tablecloth (much too large as it fits the table with four boards - so the ends of the table have long overhangs.   One board is needed so that the serving plates and bowls fit on the table.  I will take out 2 settings of my good china, one fabric napkin & one paper napkin, one of my good glasses & husband’s every day glass, and use my silver plate tableware.  I will cook the dinner.  I used to know - start the potatoes first as they will be mashed, and heated in the oven at the end, so get them out of the way as if they cool off it is okay.  No idea what to start with these years - we are making boiled potatoes instead of mashed.  No sweet potatoes this year - he likes them I don’t.  And we will have our Thanksgiving dinner.

After dinner the extra food will be put away, and when you are two people with a 14 lb turkey, there is a lot to store away.  The table will be cleared and I will wash (by hand) the dishes, pots, pans, etc.  The napkin and tablecloth will be washed and dried (by machine) and I will probably also wash the last load of regular laundry which is normally washed on Thursdays nights.  The garbage will go out to the can - no pickup until Monday. 

I really miss the juggling of which dish to cook when.  The baking Venetians (rainbow cookies) starting on Tuesday so they would be ready in time (jelly between layers has to sit weighted overnight).  I miss spending all day Wednesday cooking beef vegetable soup from scratch.  It used to be all so organized!  Now with less to do it is all so disorganized.  Well, at least I don’t have to clean well enough to have my (late) mother in law here.  (One year my sister actually wrote the year in the dust!)        

I do not go shopping on Thanksgiving - or on “Black Friday”!  There is nothing I have ever seen offered on sale that was worth the crowds.  Think about this - the more you buy, the more you have to deal with and organize. Do you really need this or that?

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

I wish all a happy Thanksgiving!   

Remember it is just one day - there will be joys and problems (one early year we cooked, shelled and peeled chestnuts for hours, then while they were cooling on the counter, I dropped a glass I had washed and was putting away - next to them and they had to be tossed as we were not sure if we could get all the glass shards out.  The time with family - whether a large group or just two or even time alone - is what matters. 

Take time to be thankful for what you have - don’t look for what you are lacking, even if there is much you are lacking. Stop and breathe and think about what you do have.         

TRIP OUT OF STATE FOR DINNER

Last Thursday we finally took a trip to Golden Corral in Freehold, New Jersey.  Now, if you have never heard of same, Golden Corral is a chain of family oriented reasonably priced (depending on the location around $14-$15 for adults).  It is not a destination restaurant.  But, there are none near us and the two restaurants here from a similar chain closed over a year ago - and this is one of the two closest ones to us.  This is not a cheap trip - in addition to gas it is over $20 in tolls round trip.

I am not sure if I posted about this when it happened, but we tried this trip in July and ended up spending 5 and half hours going and coming with no dinner.  We had gotten stuck in traffic and the anticipated hour and forty minute trip (per the GPS with traffic considered) ran a bit more - we had been driving for 4 hours and for the last two hours had steadily been half an hour from the end of our trip sitting in traffic.  What finally turned us around and sent us home was the fact that by the time we got to the restaurant it might be too late for dinner and there were warnings that the occasional showers due late night, were now dangerous thunderstorms, hitting within the hour with two tornadoes so far and we were sitting in traffic in the open.  So we had worked our way off the road and turned around and spent an hour and a half driving home.

What does this have to do with organizing?  Well, in addition to having to organize everything for the week around this day and have to organize for the trip (we even over pack for a day trip), it is a loss of an afternoon and evening when other things could have been done. 

I normally do our banking on Fridays - and we were short on money to pay bills and had to make a withdrawal from husband’s IRA accounts (hopefully the last of the year as it is the last of the planned money from same for the year).  But, in anticipation of going away - and in need of some pocket cash for the trip, we went to the banks on Wednesday.  I paid the bills on Wednesday night so they could go out on Friday (this was all the bills that were due by Sunday of the following week as I pay all bills a week before they are due).    I did whatever else was sitting around waiting to be done.

I plugged in my other (smaller and a tiny bit newer) laptop to charge in the kitchen before going to bed on Wednesday night.  I had our “travel zipper bag” downstairs with the laptop - this has a spare wallet with spare cash and a credit card (and some affinity cards for restaurants etc when we travel - other cards are in the car and the RV) and I add our checkbook just before a trip.  Our logic in having extra cash and a credit card that neither of us is carrying is that if we were robbed or other similar problem, we would have cash and a credit card to use.  I packed my old Palm Centro in its case - spare info of what is in my cell phone and easy to reach in the car to keep track of tolls paid, etc.  We put out rain jackets and sweatshirts - weather was iffy.  This way when we woke up Thursday all we needed to take was together in the kitchen on our way out. 

Last time we had left after lunch at 3 pm and thinking that was the problem as we were traveling during evening rush hour, we planned - well I planned and he agreed - to eat lunch along the way.  I was pretty sure that there were a couple of Wendys in NJ and I knew about one in Staten Island.  So we set off.

In New Jersey I did see a Wendys on the road - just as we passed it.  We kept going.  We had a couple of basically time wasting stops along the way as we would (hopefully) otherwise be at the restaurant for dinner about 2 or 3 hours too early.  Before I knew it we were at the first place to stop - there was a Costco with a gas station there and a Hobby Lobby craft store (we just got got our first Hobby Lobby here so that is still a place to stop for us).  Since we had not eaten we went to Costco and had lunch and took a quick walk through - looking for some items they no longer have at the ones near us and didn’t have here either.  We then gassed up the car (in New Jersey no self-serve allowed) and drove to the Hobby Lobby. 

Now, the Costco is on the north bound side of the road we were headed south on.  It is north of an intersection and the Hobby Lobby is on the same side, but south of the same intersection.  How the roads in New Jersey are designed, one can generally not make a left turn on a main road.  One gets off the right on an angle or something known locally as a “dog leg” and then turns left on the cross road to do so.  So, to get back to Hobby Lobby we had to go out on the southbound main road, turn right at the next corner, then attempt to turn left onto the cross road  - a four lane road with no additional traffic light to help, which we were able to do only by the kindness of a stranger who let us in.  Then we had to turn left from that road onto the main road.  We then had to turn right off the main road at the same place we did before and turn left - but into the right lanes - of the cross road we had turned left onto, to get to Costco.  We gave up on trying to turn left onto the crossroad and turned right, then went up about a block, turned left into a parking lot, drove around in the parking lot, drove back out and turned right onto the same crossroad.  We drove across the main road and about a block up turned right into the shopping center that Hobby Lobby is in.  This trip from Costco to what is more or less the next shopping center took us 15-20 minutes. 

We walked around awhile in Hobby Lobby - I went through their large Christmas department looking.  No buying done though.  And then we left.  Now, to get back on the road we had to head back to the exit that led back to that same cross road and turn left onto the cross road - luckily there was a traffic light to help - and then turn left from same onto the main road headed south again.

So basically we drove in 3 circles to go to these two stores.

Our next planned stop was a Walmart we knew about.  (We come to this Golden Corral for dinner about twice a year when we go to the woodworking show and the quilt show we go to in late February and early March so we know what is around it and on the road to it. These two attempts were our only ones to go there just for dinner - I guess I cook that badly that he wanted to go.)     The jeans that husband wears has been discontinued at our local Walmarts and we hoped that other ones might still have them, plus some other items we had not found in our local ones, as well as it is a larger one than the ones near us.  It is off to the west of the road we were on.  I knew how to get there by turning right just before we got to the restaurant, but found a shortcut to it by following the signs and, I admit, the GPS.  Nothing there we were looking for, but husband did find a DVD to buy.  By the time we were done it was getting late to go to dinner so we hurried off after buying the DVD.

Yes, we made it the Golden Corral.  He was so happy.  I don’t particularly like the chain, but he does.  Dinner and then we drove home. Of course to head back north we had to drive south, turn right onto a cross road, then turn left on the cross road and then turn left onto the main road north.

Now all the time we are driving and going places, my mind was thinking “I could be cleaning the bathrooms.”  “I could be scanning the magazine articles.”  “I could be doing laundry.” and so on.  But his happiness at having the meal was worth the trip.  Then again, when we got home he told me - “Next time I say I want to go to dinner there, tell me I want to go to dinner at the Casino in Connecticut instead.”

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Sometimes time wasted is worth it if it gives happiness to someone else or to you.