christmas

i had this post all typed and mr dennis jumped up and landed on the keyboard and my hands where typing and the whole thing disappeared!

my sis and i had a relatively quiet christmas. we went to one of her sons for christmas eve and had home made noodle soup with butterballs (some sort of dumpling that is rich enough to give you a double heart attack). christmas day we went to her other son's wife's family for christmas dinner. so we didn't have to cook.

however, my sis made springerle and sunflower cookies. her middle son came over with his son on sunday and they all worked on making lefse. my sis bought a ricer for the potatoes. it is really cool. i think it will get used a lot. i made a small batch of pizzelles to give as house gifts.

since i am retyping this i am going to leave out the part of about excess of gifts for kids and tying to simplify my clothes closet (not a walk in like tv).

tech help

tech help comes from the strangest places, even when you don't realize that you need help.

my sis's cat--cc--assisting with printing documents.

my real tech help is pictured on the wall behind cc.

griswald family christmas

my nephew and his family dress up every year for a viewing of the griswald family christmas. if you have seen it you can pick out the characters. my newphew showed up in a short bathrobe wearing black socks and shoes. totally funny. next year my sis are going in pajamas as there are several scenes where everyone is out on the front lawn in their jammies. the box is the box with the cat in it.

book signing

it was blizzarding the day before and after, but it was clear enough on book signing day for my sis and i to drive to rapid city to get our books signed by lori armstrong. when we went to the book festival in deadwood last summer, i forgot my books and her new one, shallow grave, was not yet out. i brought my three and cynthia bought the three volume set for her son's birthday. we had talked (acutually my sis) to here several times in deadwood and had attended two of the seminars where she was a presenter. much to our suprise, she remembered us. her books are really good. they are regional mysteries set in the rapid city area, which makes her books more fun to read.

poor mousie

i saw this cute little stuffed mouse a wally world. brought it home and dennis adopted it. i didn't see him play with it much, but in the middle of the night i would hear this mournful meooow. dennis would be sitting in the hall right by our bedrooms doors. if i would say good kitty....good job catching the mousie, he would quit. however, during some time when no one was looking he was doing more than carrying the mouse around. my sis is sure that dennis is the one who has done the damage, but i think cc may be involved in this escapade. the picture shows the second mouse.
the first thing to go are the eye decorations. then the sides, then the underbelly. poor mousie. only part of the stuffing is shown. the rest is scattered like snow flakes over our black rug downstairs. yeah...if your going to do something, bad make sure it is really noticable. silly kitties.
this is the third mouse. it is a little bigger. pretty cute mouse. he has a slice ofcheese in his paws. dennis likes it well enough even though it is bigger. he still carries it around. and does other things.
you can see that he is already wounded. really can't sew it up. claws will just catch in the threads. i am considering making one out of canvas. of course it won't have the nice soft furry feel then. but.... i think they must soak the stuffing in catnip. maybe if i put catnip in the inside it will be okay. dennis did not ever tear a toy before we moved here. hence i suspect cc's involvement. i have seen her hold a stuffed toy in her feet and scratch it madly with her back paws. so, sis blames my cat and i suspect her cat. it could be both of them in cahoots. the two cats behave in similar ways and one would think they were related except one came the rez in new mexico and one was born 12 years later in belle.

winter season

tis the season....i dragged out my little two foot tree, straightened the branches and rewound the little strands of beads around the tree and stuck it in my bedroom. my sis and i also put up a larger fake tree in the living room. it was going to be a porch tree because we don't have a lot of room inside, but the wind kept blowing it over, so we brought it inside. neither of us has a tree during the last three or four years. we put this one up for us. pretty soon we will be like grandma caryll and just have a little two foot tree that we just take out of the box....pre-decorated. at this point in our lives we can't put anything off.
these are the two fawns we watched grow up this summer. there is a little hay field behind the house as yet undeveloped and the fawns and their mother spent time there this summer. most of the time we see the twins by themselves but the other day there was a group of five. the picture was taken just outside our back deck. as you can see in the picture below they have found a spot where the grass is green under the snow and they have pawed through to reach it. it is our neighbor's newly planted side yard. one of our neighbors put a tall chain link fence around her yard to keep the deer out. i wish she would have put up wooden fence. her yard is a tangle of things. like fake deer and windmills, and funky raised beds.

just as tradition dictates---there was a kid's table stretching from the dining room into the living room, but this time the adult table was not quite big enough so the 'grandma's and two other adults sat at the kid's table. the adult table was the nice table and the kid's was made up of the kitchen table and a card table. they should have just switched. there was turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and broccli cassarole. my sis and i brought the relish tray. we made way too much. it is a week later and we still have pickles in the fridge.
my sis
this is my mother's relish server. she loved her bob white dishes from redwing minnesota. it is strange how we get stuck with dishes. she had fiesta ware from my grandmother. i don't think my mother liked it much because she wasn't the one that picked it out--hence the bob white. however, at the end of her life after she had given my sister and i (traded my sis the bob white for her fiesta) the bob white and what fiesta she had, she asked for a small set of fiesta ware. so maybe she did like it a little after all. i finally have a set of dishes that i like. misaka italian countryside (nice and thin). it is all white with a raised pattern. my kids are not close by, but i get it out whenever my sis and i have company. sometimes so many come over that i have to fill in with another set. (there are eight place settings) i managed to break one of the dinner plates so i will have to look on line for a replacement.

almost winter

we had our first snowfall two days ago. as you can see in the bottom picture it was a very dreary day. today is thanksgiving day and the sun is out bright and cheery, but it is very cold. but that is okay i have my parka with a coyote trimmed hood.
this is my sister's christmas cactus. she said it hadn't bloomed for several years. when i moved in, there was much moving of items around and the cactus wound up with my small one in the south facing basement window. it is cooler down there. anyway both cacti decided to bloom this year. the only problem is they are going to be done blooming by the time christmas rolls around. i guess we should be glad they are blooming. we brought them upstairs to enjoy, but they will go back to the basement window when they are done showing off.
it is a tradition in our family to have three huge mums on thanksgiving day. it started when my dad gave my great grandmother a vase (now with my daughter) with three football mums. my sister and i try to always have three large mums on thanksgiving day even though it seems to be harder to get the really huge ones.
this summer our porch was filled with potted blooming plants. we decided to try and keep the geraniums over the winter. i have heard that you can actually dig them up and hang them by the roots in a cool place and then just replant them in the summer. we opted for just bring the pots inside and putting them by the east deck door. we have one traditional firecracker red (which my grandmother always had) and one martha washington whitish/pinkish geranium. the martha washington is in full bloom right now. looks better than it did outside. it too, will probably be in a dormant stage by christmas. guess we will be 'forced' to buy a pointsettia. oh well. maybe we can over summer it in the basement and get it to bloom for the following christmas, but with our luck it will bloom for thanksgiving.
brrrr. well, it wasn't really that cold. most of it melted off the streets by ten. and it was very pretty and very white.

names

i managed to sub 3 days in the last two weeks....which will be nice for my bank account. (my sister convinced me to buy two pair of shoes because they fit and it is hard for us to find comfortable shoes--she didn't buy any!) during my time subbing i could not help but notice the pleathera of unusual names. my son doesn't like his name, but he should be glad.

for example, there were two boys named jade! a colt, which you would expect out west. girls' names ranged from tulsa to kasianna and sierrah.

twiddling the room

i didn't like the way my two night stands looked standing side by side, so i went to holly lobby. it was the end of the season so furniture was on sale. not only is there more room on top for the kitties and my books, but there is room for baskets underneath and all the lovely little drawers for scissors, electronics, socks, bedside aids, etc. you will notice that i was able to put it in the back of the mini with a folding bookcase.

cc often sleeps on my bed or in one of my kitty baskets and dennis sleeps on cynthia's bed. silly cats.

bertie's brakes

it turned out that bertie had brakes that were almost worn out. i didn't notice the sound because of: my hearing, the sound of the air, and the radio. when i did notice, one was in pretty bad shape, only i didn't know it was the brake. when i took it in to have them check for the noise, they told me to drive just around town until the parts came in.

the most amazing part was that they did both and for free because they said that they should have caught it before they sold it to me. talk about a great car company. no wonder people come from all over the area to buy cars and farm equipment from them.

deadwood

resting kitties

books forever

just spend a day and a half with books and book people in deadwood. very cool town. sort of reminds me of boulder in a very stretchy way. it is in the hills and the aspen was turning gold against the evergreens. with all the gambling places, i guess it is a cross between boulder and reno. parked free on the outskirts and rode the trolley to our book destinations. loaded up on books and author signatures. i am sure the authors get tired of all the book tours and signings, but it does sell books. i bought several (that i had previously passed over) after listening to the authors.

i have spent my allowance for the month of october!

cynthia spent more than i did.....but one of her books might just find its way into my library. it is a paul goble book about indian tents and their designs. very appealing to the artist. i just want to make them all...in miniature, of course, and add them to my castle village. I cannot find a picture of the book on line. it may be out of print.

first day of fall sunset

we had my one of my nephew's and his family over for dinner. i declined to cook because of the blender souffle incicent and the pie incident. ( i forgot to turn the oven down after the initial 10 minutes, so the crust was very, very brown on top. )

at the end of the meal we were treated to a sky show that included indigo skies, a double rainbow, and tinted clouds. also, in the alfalfa field behind our house our resident doe with twins decided to make a visit. the mom has turned so dark that it was hard to pick her out in the dusk. her fawns have lost their spots but are still a lighter color.

fixing things up

my bathroom now....might change


my sister's new computer and computer desk.... the shelves already are different.

we decided we don't like vista very much.

in the kitchen

since my sister had never had a souffle, and we always have eggs that never seem to get used; we decided to make a souffle for supper or dinner(some people have very strong opinions about the name of the evening meal!). we decided to use the bread instead of a white sauce, per Joy of Cooking, and everything was going along smoothly until we poored the milk in the blender. i thought i had tightened the bottom, but, alas, no! milk ran in rivulets all over the counter and floor. after that mishap was rectified, the rest went smoothly. the result was a hugely high souffle that was very good. we were just about done eating when i remembered i had bought a white wine to go with the souffle. our next adventure involved trying to get the cork out. i have done this before without a problem, but this cork was really stuck. my sis remembered a christmas present from last year and dragged it out. it was a fancy looking cork remover, but it only managed to push the cork further into the bottle. ....which left us the option of pushing it all the way in. ergggg! i think we just should have cereal or gone out to eat.

new starts

september seems to be a month of new beginnings, not only for school kids but for several of my family members. my sister got a job supervising an after school program and hired me; my son is starting a new job in riverside, california; and my son-in-law has a new job in california, also. my daughter already had a job in riverside.

i used to have the weather reports for five different cities on my home page--now i am down to 2.

i wonder what month has the greatest number of job changes.

book festival

as a teacher i always enjoyed going away to conventions. ...especially english conventions. so many books and posters and books and friends and books. so i was especially pleased to discover south dakota is having a book and author festival in deadwood next weekend which is where i will be.

i had a book birthday card to border's in rapid city--very cool place--and a list of books and authors featured at the book fair. i bought two books, cold dish and whistling season. i am taking those two and a couple of books by ted kooser in hopes of getting autographs.

right now i am reading great plains--non-fiction-- and am enjoying it.

it was a another book date with my daughter-she was at her book store in california and i was at my store in south dakota. she picked up a book by annie proulx.

basket wars

the cat baskets were used all the time at pva, but the cats ignored them when i put them on the floor of my new digs. finally i sacrificed book space and put the baskets on top of the bedside tables. now the cats fight over who is going to use them. cc headed in first, then dennis moved in. after a little war, mostly promoted by cc, dennis chased cc out. they were gone for a little while, but only dennis came back. must have had a little talk with cc. i found her downstairs on the new bed.

my new digs

So far this is how my new home looks. trying to get my most essential stuff in my room.

it sort of feels like a collage dorm room. the beginning of your life and the ending are sort of parallel. trying to keep it neat though. the bookcases serve as my desk storage. notice the cats fighting. they all ignored the baskets when the baskets were on the floor even though they slept in them at the old place. as soon as i put them on top of the tables, the basket wars began.