Greetings, earthlings

First on my list today is a birthday wish to my Grandma, who turns 82 today.  Happy birthday Grandma!

Second, Shelly asked me what a mayhaw is, since I mentioned one in reference to jam.  Eh voila:

Yon mayhaw is a berry from a type of hawthorne tree that fruits in May (May + haw, get it?) So mayhaw.net tells me.  As far as what it tastes like … well, it tastes like a mayhaw. You should try it.  It’s a southern treat, as mayhaw trees flower early on in the year.  Consequently the trees grow best mostly in Louisiana but also in  Mississippi and east Texas.  My neighbor who made mayhaw jelly was from Louisiana (Looozeeeana) and I grew up in east Tejas, so I guess that explains my familiarity.

Y’all want me to break out in an east Texas twang, now?  Hahahahaha.  That would be the day.

Speaking of jelly, tomorrow I venture out in a westerly direction where there are a number of fruit tree farms between here and Fredericksburg - peach trees to be precise.  I’m going to see if I can procure some of those tasty things and do some more canning with them.  I’m quite positive that some obliging farm folks will have recipes I can try at the farm stands.  Each year I’ve been out there when fruit is in season I’ve come back with pages of dessert recipes.

I meant to write a post yesterday but honestly, I was being quite weepy.  Quite. I’m not normally a weepy person, but … well, I picked up Caper’s ashes yesterday.  The folks who do this did one extra thing I wasn’t at all prepared for.  They made a clay impression of his paw.  That’s right, it did me in.  I cried and cried. *sigh* I miss my cat.  His food bowls are still out.  I can’t help it, I’m not ready yet.

If that wasn’t enough, I went to Shelly’s blog to read her account of delivering the Share A Square blankets (sniffle), and then read the account at Yellow Rose’s Garden (Sherry and her daughter went) (sniff), and then went and looked at the pictures Shelly posted on Flickr (sniff) … and then I cried some more.  Then I remembered Shelly gave me an Arte y Pico award earlier this week (that was sweet of her, wasn’t it?) and there was yet more sniffling.

And then I realized I really just had to get off the internet before I became a weeping puddle of goo and go read or something.  So I did, and so I will do now, because I’m not yet done with my book.

Train of thought

So … it’s 9:30 am Monday …

1) It’s the first day of vacation. Last week, after making half a dozen really stupid mistakes and realizing how much more irritable I was than I normally am, I said you know what? I need a break. Luckily, I have a kind boss, and thus here I am having a decompression week. I have no big plans, I have no bananas. I’m just having a 9-day weekend. Woo!

2) I love Sundays, because they result in sights like that over there –>. I love pancakes. This is the best pancake recipe ever. It’s from the Betty Crocker 195X cookbook. Classic. I’ve been making these pancakes since I was very young.

Oddly, I prefer Karo syrup. That’s right, plain old light corn syrup. I don’t know of anyone but my brother and I who like to eat pancakes with Karo.

<– several hours later –>

3) Whew. I totally forgot how irritating I can be. I realized about 1 pm that I’d inadvertently scheduled my entire vacation week into 2-hour increments. I say “inadvertently” because I really didn’t mean to have any schedule at all, this was supposed to be relaxation time. However, while I was running madly about the house accomplishing things today (seriously, isn’t this supposed to be a break?!) I realized I had very specific plans for each hour of my next 7 days.

OK, so I need to relax. Or perhaps, learn how to relax. I don’t seem to be very good at it. Boy can I schedule and plan, though. A week or so ago I emailed all of my coworkers with a document that was originally named “Schedule and Plan.” I have to laugh at myself sometimes. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be on the receiving end of my scheduling/planning/organizing/editing OCD issues, but I imagine it’s kind of like having a drill sergeant around. Fun!

You know what? I probably can imagine how it feels easily, because I do it to myself, too.

4) Whew again. Aside from cleaning and reorganizing my entire house today, I stopped for a bit and made dinner. It was the same slow cooker rosemary tenderloin with orzo I made over the holidays. This is the first time I’ve had a chance to make it since. I am hopeful. Others have made this from my recipe and it turned out well. I had meant to try it before now - when I post recipes, etc. I like to try it out to make sure I wasn’t smoking something when I wrote it. My cooking tends to be of the “throw stuff in until it seems okay” method, so writing down what I do? hahahaha riiiiiiight.

5) I’ll leave you with my kitten. She’ll be 7 months old in a week. I expected her to get bigger than she is, if only because her parents were bigger, but she’s still a shrimp. A fat shrimp. One would think with all the “leaping tall buildings in a single bound” she does every day, she wouldn’t be chubby, but she is. If only she was this sweet all the time … Maybe when she grows up? I do love those little tufts of fur between her toes, and I love that she’s ticklish :D. (Me=sucker for animals.)

Tomorrow will be more restful, right?

Combating the creeping disaster

Perhaps some can relate to this tale …

Being two people who work full time and have three animals, Jeff and I have an ongoing battle with the Mess. We do try to clean things pretty regularly, it’s not that. It’s the ongoing mess of life, the junk that collects, the stuff that’s hard to put away, the errant crashes when you know the kitten has done something again. I think sometimes … well, maybe I’ll see to that stack of papers that’s putting down roots in the dining table. Corral some of those cat toys? Put away one of the crochet projects lurking about the couch in the living room? The dishes and laundry are another story - they are the Mess That Never Ends. Of course, there’s also the bag sitting somewhere in my living space full of stuff I don’t know what to do with, stuff that has no place and sits there mocking me week after week (at least in my head).

Sometimes the Mess gets to me. It should never be a surprise when I start making things to fix disaster areas.

One.

Trash bags for the car. Two of them. Actually, I made two of each “just in case” (of what, I ask you? I don’t know), but mostly because I like making bags and I like the fabric I picked. We do have some car-trash issues. We accumulate cups, water bottles, useless receipts and, strangely enough, labels from skeins of yarn. Who would do that, I ask you?

They’re inspired by car litter bag design that Allyson Hill mentioned on her blog. I saw it and thought maybe if I made something for the car we’d have some success in overcoming our apparently overwhelming urge to put things on the floor of the backseat. My designs differ from hers in that (1) they’re not the same sizes, they’re made for my car, (2) I got nuts with the red cloth details and (3) the smaller one actually has a removable, washable oilcloth interior.

The left, larger bag is for hanging over the back of a headrest and is sized for bottles and cups. It’s lined, but I can also put a grocery bag in it and just toss when it’s full.

The one on the right is for smaller items, to be strung about the oddly-placed gear shift. It is washable due to the oilcloth. Washable because whatever you have in your car in the Texas summer is bound to melt. I don’t care what it is, it will melt. You will melt.

There’s quite a bit of detail in these - what you can see and what you can’t. I was sort of in a meditative mood, making these, so they got a lot more attention than one might normally pay to what are essentially pretty trash bags.

Two.

So let’s be honest: THE CAT IS A MESS. That would be Callie the Demon Kitty. I’m just not going to tell you her other nicknames, because then the rest of this post would be profanity. She is the cat that gets repeated time-outs in the office after becoming a fuzzy little vortex of destruction at least twice a day. And one of her favorite targets is the toilet paper. So I’ve done something about it with the help of an idea from Just Tutes: the Toilet Paper Cozy.

Jeff laughed when I first suggested this and vetoed the idea. No, he said, that’s silly. That was several shredded rolls of toilet paper ago. Now he thinks I’m brilliant.

My mom, while staying with us, said, “what ridiculous bag do you have hanging here?” and removed the TP and set it on the bathroom counter. She’d have none of that!! The next day she remarked, “well, I put it back in the bag. Last night she ran off with and shredded about half of the toilet paper I left on the counter. I spent 15 minutes cleaning it up. I’m a convert.”

Moral of the Story: I may not be able to make the laundry self-washing, but I do have some powers of neatness in my sewing machine.