Just a Ramblin'

Lots of things on my mind, many random topics.  Where do I begin?


Kita is still an escape artist, however she doesn't seem to stay gone as long each time (she ran off 3 times in about 3 days recently).  She is chipped, and has a name tag with my phone # on it, so if someone gets her, we can be found.  I finally gave up and bought a runner to attach to the back steps, so when she goes in the back yard she can't get near the fence to dig out.  Of course, that makes her want to just lay there, all sad because she can't go sniffing and peeing on everything like the boys do, and then escape when we aren't looking.  I just worry that she will eat someone's kitten or puppy, and there are a LOT of those in our neighborhood these days.


The household is fighting "the crud" this week - Brian had it first, then I got it, and now Clydie is fighting it.  So far, Steven's been the lucky one and has avoided getting sick.  I hope it stays that way, for his and his girlfriend's sake!  This shit is no joke - I really don't think this is any garden-variety cold.  I was miserable all weekend, and just started pulling out from this yesterday.  Today I had a horrid sore throat, it hurt so bad to swallow this morning but the more coffee I drank the better it felt.  Hmmm coffee......  The hot tea I drank at work helped, too.


I'm sick to death of all the political bullshit going on.  I'm tired of the news about it, I'm tired of seeing all the garbage posted on Facebook, tired of seeing people that I know rabidly attacking one candidate or another, and attacking or being attacked by those that disagree with them.  It's fine to dislike one or more of the candidates.  Hell, I don't like ANY of them - Trump, Clinton, or Johnson (and I don't count that kooky Green party candidate, whatever her name is) - for one reason or another.  It's a crying shame that this election will be about voting against someone, rather than voting for someone, and trying to pick the lesser evil.  But I just don't understand why people have to be so damn hateful to each other. 


I try to keep my political beliefs to myself, and rarely put my support out there for anyone in particular (I think my family and my closest friends likely would know my political leanings).  I just don't want to get into long, drawn out conversations with people about it, and I avoid conflict like the plague, Lord knows I had enough conflict in my past that I do my best to avoid it if I can now. I've shared memes that have made fun of both Hillary and Trump, and will likely to continue doing so.  I do know that regardless of who "wins" the election in November, our country is in for a world of hurt and hard times.


Well damn, I got on a soapbox there for a minute, didn't I? 


Anyways, bow hunting season is upon us, and Brian got his first deer with his crossbow on opening weekend, a doe.  I went with him the following weekend, to be the Camp Wench (I don't have a bow or a crossbow), and cooked dinner and fixed sandwiches.  I was supposed to cook Sunday morning breakfast but they ended up only wanting more sandwiches, so that's what they got.  I managed to read an entire Stephen King book - "Mr. Mercedes" - and can't wait to read the next 2 in that series.  I can't wait til rifle season starts!


I've been thinking a lot about my grandmother, Meme, lately, and how much she has changed over the past few years.  In early summer, she was moved into the nursing home side of the care home that she's been in since late December 2015.  I'd been told her reality was definitely not the real reality, but I just don't think anyone can truly prepare you for what you will witness with someone who has such an active imagination/memory/alternate reality.  On September 2, Meme fell out of her wheelchair and had to have stitches.  As my uncle was out of town on business, and my mother was at her home in West Virginia, I went to check on Meme the next morning.  She had a nasty wound on her forehead, that appeared to have been closed with liquid bandage, and she had black eyes and the bridge of her nose was bruised.  (we were told she received 4 stitches - they must have been on the inside, because there were no external stitches)


The visit was brief, and pleasant.  Meme's face lit up when she saw me and Clydie, and she seemed genuinely happy to see us.  She said "well hey there it's so good to see you - but y'all will have to come back this afternoon, I'm waiting on the bus and can't get out of line".  She pointed out everyone in the communal living room area, and said they were all waiting on the bus, too.  I played along and asked her where she was going - "to the tournament in Bainbridge I suppose" was the response I got.  She kept telling us we'd have to come back later, but that she was so glad we'd come by. 


To show you how much she's changed in just under 2 years - here's a photo of Meme from Christmas Day, 2014:

And here she is on September 3, 2016:



We've also had a death in the family recently - last month, on August 23, my husband's niece, Clydie's granddaughter, Rheanna, passed away.  That one was a tough one, for a number of reasons.  I'm not going to go into details, as it's not my story to tell.  Love each other folks, and make sure your loved ones know that you love them.  No one is promised tomorrow.

Hurry Up and Wait!

That's what I've been experiencing all day today - hurry up and wait!  I've been a canning fool, all the damn day long.  We went by the farmer's market yesterday and picked up a bushel of corn, a bushel of crowder peas, a bushel of butterbeans, a bushel of snap beans, and 5lbs of jalapenos.  We got the butterbeans and some of the peas canned last night, and today I've been working on the peas and snap beans.  I've got the last 7 quarts of snap beans in the pressure canner right now.  It's almost 10pm!


And I've had to do laundry today, and my nails, and cook dinner, and didn't get anything finished.  Well, the canning I planned for today is done (well it will be soon), and my nails and dinner got done, but the laundry is not finished - I still have sheets and towels to wash, but those will wait til another day. 


Brian and I are starting a new earlier bedtime - 10pm - but that's not going to happen for me tonight, seeing as I'm still waiting on those beans in the canner.  Once the timer goes off, I'll take them off the stove, let the pressure dissipate while I shower, then come take the jars out to finish cooling.  Then it will be bedtime for me!


Clydie's gonna work on the corn tomorrow while I'm at work, and we'll get the vacuum sealer out after dinner and put that stuff away in the freezer.  It seems that it's just a little less work to freeze it than it is to can it, and it's a little less time consuming, so the freezer it is.  She's also going to work on making some candied jalapenos tomorrow.  I never tried any of the ones that she made last year, so I'm going to have to try some of this year's batch. 


If you're wondering why we had to buy 5lbs of jalapenos instead of using the ones we are growing - the ones we are growing are not hot.  AT ALL.  It's rather disappointing, to bit into a jalapeno and expect a nice little zip of heat, and you get nothing.  Nada.  Zip.  Zero.  So, so disappointing.  But on the other hand, the ghost, habanero, and reapers are quite hot.  I've only tried the habanero this year, and those are really good.  We've made 2 batches of salsa with the ghost peppers, and while it's extremely hot, it's quite tasty.  I haven't gotten the nerve up to try this year's reapers - Brian said they are much hotter than last years.


I had a "surprise" party for Brian last weekend to celebrate his retirement after serving in the Army for 25 years.  It was supposed to be a surprise, but he busted me making burgers that morning.  Yes, I know it wasn't real smart to do things the way that we did, because it greatly increased the chances of him catching us prepping for the party, but it worked out the way it was supposed to. He knew about the party ahead of time, so it gave him the chance to clean the mancave and garage, and he was prepared for company.  A good time was had by all.


Well I hope you all had a productive or relaxing weekend, whatever works for you.  It's been a busy one for me.  Have a great week!

The Great News, and the Bad News

I want to start this off with some positive news - my mother-in-law found out Tuesday morning that she is now 5 years cancer free!  In 2011, Clydie was diagnosed with a type of lung cancer, at Stage 3, that only has a 15-20% 5-year survival rate.  Well, she has kicked that cancer's ass, and is now down to once a year screenings.  It's been a tough road for her, but she has done it, and I am so damn happy for her!

Now, for the bad news.  We found out Tuesday afternoon that Clydie's youngest son, Jimmy, passed away the night before from a heart attack - he was 46.  Clydie and Brian found out while I was on the way home from work, and I walked into a house full of utter sadness and grief.  I'm not going to go into details, but I have to say, everyone in our household was devastated by the loss, for one reason or another.

There are a couple of messages I want to share in reference to this loss:

• I'm listing the most important message of all first - always tell those that you love that you love them.  Don't hold back, as we are not promised tomorrow.   Even if you're mad at them, even if you're not speaking to them, find a way to express your feelings to them that you do in fact love them.  Make sure that they know you love them in spite of your differences.  Guilt can eat you up if something happens and you don't get the chance to tell them you love them.
• Do what you can to mend fences with those that you care about.  Some things are really hard to get over and forgive, but you do it for YOU, not the person you are forgiving.  Death can take someone suddenly and if you don't have a chance to make peace, it can be hard on those left behind.
• Take your health seriously.  If a physician tells you to make lifestyle changes (eating habits, exercise, smoking cessation, etc.) - please follow their advice!  I know sometimes things are just meant to be and it's "in the genes", but if you can do anything that will improve your health, please do it.  It could mean the difference between a long life or an early death.  (I don't mean to sound insensitive with this last one, please I hope no one thinks that)

So if you're the praying type, please pray for Clydie and Brian and the rest of the family.  Or send positive vibes, thoughts, mo-jo, ju-ju, whatever it is that is positive and healthy and light.  Thanks!

Busy Busy Busy!

I'm a canning fool today!  I canned 10 pints of dill pickles (2 with habanero peppers in them for someone at work), Clydie canned 6 cars of pickled squash, and I tried out my new pressure canner to can 4 pints of pink eye peas, and 4 pints of butterpeas.


Clydie bought the canner from Wal-Mart.com, and we picked it up last Sunday.  We had already picked some peas and beans and shelled or snapped them, and she and I both have picked some more over the last week and yesterday.  We figure we didn't have enough to make 8 pints of any one particular item, but we could do a couple pints of this, a couple pints of that, to make the 8 to be able to run the canner once. 


Today, I finally get the canner out of the box and start reading the instructions.  I have never used a pressure canner before, and honestly, the thought of using one scares the hell outta me.  I imagine horrific things happening, such as getting burned by steam, or having it blow up because it was too pressurized, or whatever.  Anywho, I read through the warnings and directions, and then I read over processing times and realized that we can't process the peas with the pole beans, as they have 2 different processing times.  :-(


But that was okay, being that we had 4 pints of pink eyes, and 4 pints of butterpeas.  I decided we'd have a vegetable plate tonight for dinner with some fried cornbread, so the pole beans are getting cooked, as well as the lima beans and field peas. 


Once I started processing everything, I just kept my instruction manual with me, and it was actually quite easy to use the canner.  40 minutes of processing time, and we're good to go:

                                     Here's my peas from the pressure canner

Here's everything we've processed today, minus 2 jars of pickled squash that are headed to my mom's right now

Blessings and Being Thankful

This weekend is my husband's last weekend of drill.  EVER.  He is retiring, officially at the end of the month, but this weekend is his last scheduled time to actually report for duty.  Twenty-five years of service and dedication to his country.  He will miss his fellow soldiers, but not the bullshit that comes with serving our country.  It's a great honor to serve, and the people that chose to serve whether for 2 years or 25 years, deserve our thanks and gratitude, and you deal with bullshit at just about any place that you work, so please don't think I'm being negative about the military.


His retirement is truly a blessing, and I personally am very thankful for his retirement. 


Never again will I have to wake him up on a weekend at some ungodly hour so that he can drive to the armory and spend his weekend away from his family.  We will be able to sleep in every weekend we choose to (well, as late as Dominion and Gabriel will permit of course), and only wake up before the asscrack of dawn to go hunting.  :-)


Never again will I have to worry about sending him off to some foreign country to serve his country, to worry that he will get injured, maimed, or worse. 


I'm thankful that we did not become members of the Gold Star families.  They deserve much respect and gratitude, but it's not a "club" anyone wants to be a part of.


Never will I have to worry that he will be activated to deal with some domestic issue, whether it's maintaining order after a natural disaster, or dealing with protestors who get out of hand.  We're unfortunately just starting to see a lot of the latter starting to happen, and I'm extremely grateful that I won't have to worry about seeing him off to deal with those things.


I will miss seeing him in his uniform, whether it's his regular drill duty uniform, or his dress blues.  The Stetson was my favorite part of the uniform, but there'd been a recent change from Cavalry to Infantry, so my favorite hat was no longer a part of his uniform anymore.  :-(


I will miss the fun we would have at the military balls (lol I said balls!), but not the stress of finding the perfect dress to wear and being ready on time and driving into Atlanta to go to some fancy-smancy hotel, to spend time with a bunch of people that for the most part, I don't know.  The balls were honestly a lot of fun to attend (hee hee I said balls again!), and seeing the honor and traditions on display was something I was glad to have been able to experience.


In the short 10 years that we've been together, and 5 that we've been married, I consider myself fortunate to have only dealt with 1 deployment, and not a whole lot of other stuff outside the ordinary "1 weekend a month, 2 weeks a year" commitment that my husband made.  He's made trips to Scotland, Ft. Benning, Ft. Stewart, and many others for AT and various schools he's attended.  There's a lot of bureaucracy and red tape stuff you have to deal with for various things but overall it has been a good experience.

                                                 Military Ball 2011

      Kosovo, 2011-2012

Military Ball 2014


Thank you for your service my beloved husband!  Happy Retirement!  I've got the honey-do lists ready!  LOL

Oh Boy What a Night!

Ever have one of those times where you go to sleep and when you wake up, you think it's much later than it is?  I had one of those moments tonight - I fell asleep on the couch shortly after dinner.  I woke up and felt pretty rested, looked at my phone and saw 8:41 (I didn't notice it was PM, not AM), saw it was still daylight outside, and immediately jumped up, freaking out that it was Friday morning!  In my panicking mind, I was thinking "I can't believe Brian let me sleep on the couch all night!" and "I can't believe Clydie didn't wake me up when she came to get coffee", and even thought by some chance that perhaps it was Saturday morning.  I ran back to start getting ready for work in a panic, and stopped by Clydie's room, exclaiming that it was Friday morning and OMG I was going to be really late to work and she said "wake up Deanna, it's Thursday night!"  I was so confused for several minutes, then I had a really good laugh.


So now it's almost 11pm, and I realize that it's been really quiet and peaceful in the house, meaning the dogs weren't inside.  I let them in, and Kita was really wound up.  Everyone wanted to go outside in the front yard, and I told them they could wait until bedtime (in the not too distant future), and sat back on the couch.  Of course Dominion was standing in the living room, looking at me like WTF, and then I hear an excited bark - that would be Kita.  She's our only barker.  The boys can bark, but only do it in very specific circumstances.  I knew someone had pushed Clydie's door open, so I walk back to check and Gabriel is laying on the bed with her, no Kita.  I walk to my room, it's dark (and I could have sworn that I'd turned the lamp on earlier), and as I walk in to turn on the light, Kita scares the hell out of me because her ass is sitting on the bed and she lunges at me and takes off running to jump wildly on Clydie's bed, doing that wild, hyper, run in circles shit ON TOP OF CLYDIE'S BED with Clydie and Gabriel both laying up there and getting trampled.  It was kinda funny, but Kita's so heavy and rough I was afraid for Clydie and didn't want her to get hurt.  I take them all back out the back, and Kita runs all over my bare feet with her big, fat feet.  How I managed to not get totally mauled, I don't know.  Lucky, I guess.


Had an interesting event on my phone this week - I was entering a physician's name into my contact information, his first name being Bryan.  My phone offered "Cranston" as the last name!  I thought that was kinda funny, suggesting that I enter Bryan Cranston as a contact.  LOL


We've already started harvesting cucumbers, squash, and zucchini from our garden, and they are yummy!  We've picked so many this week I've had to take some to work and Brian gave some to the neighbor, because we didn't want them to go bad before we could either freeze, can, or eat them.  I imagine in another week or 2, we'll be able to harvest enough cucumbers to make a batch of pickles, and I just don't know of a method to freeze or can the squash or zucchini.  I like those grilled, or in a squash casserole, and I don't think they are conducive to freezing or canning and maintaining their texture for those.  We've shredded zucchini and frozen it, and it worked out ok for zucchini bread and fried squash patties, so I'll just have to do a little more research to see if there's another way to do things.


Tomorrow's Friday, and I'm so glad!  I hope everyone has a fabulous weekend!

The Garden, and Other Fun Stuff

I am constantly amazed at how fast our garden is growing, and how bushy everything looks.  This photo was made 5/31/16 from the landing on the back steps:

Believe it or not, there's even more green out there now, only 6 days later!


We picked our first veggies Saturday - 4 squash and 1 jumbo jalapeno:

Clydie found a squash casserole recipe, and those squash got cooked yesterday.  Click here for the recipe.  We didn't use "soft" breadcrumbs, we used the kind you buy in the store that are almost like crushed crackers.  I also didn't use fresh parsley, I just put in about a tablespoon of dried parsley when I mixed everything together.  For future fixing of this recipe, I personally would add more cheese to the squash mixture, a little less breadcrumbs in the topping, and more cheese in the topping.  But it was still yummy!


The jumbo jalapeno was a little disappointing - it was not hot at all.  Well, to me and Brian it wasn't.  Clydie said the bite she got had a little heat to it, but honestly, the bites I took were as mild as a bell pepper.  Nice flavor to it, too.


Here's a small zucchini, next to my index finger:

And here are some cucumbers on the vine:

 



We picked the fat one, as I figured it would be too seedy.  I offered it to Gabriel to sniff, and he tried to take it from me!  Then I offered it to Dominion, and he tried to lick it.  (see last year, the cucumbers grew on the fence that separated the garden from the yard, and both dogs got caught picking and eating small cucumbers!)  As I was walking through the yard to go check out the bell peppers and tomatoes, Gabriel followed me, and jumped up on me to try to get the cucumber (I had to hold it way up over my head to keep him from snatching it out of my hand!).


I washed the cucumber, and started slicing it up to eat,

and of course I shared it with the pups.  I almost lost fingers when Gabriel took his first slice!  (he's normally very gentle but he really, REALLY wanted this cucumber).  Dominion loved getting some slices, and Kita acted all excited but I found chewed up pieces of cucumber on the living room rug, and she mashed up her second slice.  And I was right - it was pretty seedy when I got to the thicker part of it.  But what I ate of it (with vinegar and salt of course) was delish!  And what a fresh, strong cucumber smell!  After seeing what was out in the garden, I predict we'll have at least a half dozen cucumbers ready to pick by Thursday this week!


I really enjoy the garden, knowing that we're growing food to put on our table and in our freezer.  I'm glad we increased the size this year, to grow more than we did last year.  We have double the # of cucumber plants, and our squash and zucchini are in great shape (we ended up with 2 zucchini plants last year that produced a small amount, and our yellow squash plants just never panned out).  Oh and the peppers and peas and beans and tomatoes!  So much more than last year - we are gonna be canning fools in another month or so!


I'm sorry if I bore you all with my garden photos and stories, but it's something I take great pleasure in these days!  I hope you all have a great week!