Morning Songs

     What did you wake up to, as a kid?
My bedroom was on the second floor of our big, drafty farmhouse. No heat, except for what came up the open register from the floor below. My dad, a big Dutch farmer, couldn't carry a tune in a barrel, but that didn't stop him.

(Yelled up through the register)
Sweetly sings the donkey at the break of day,
   If you do not feed him, this is what he'll say:
   HEE-HAW, HEE-HAW, HEE-HAW!!!

Try waking up to that on a cold winter morning.
     The alternate choice was:
Good morning, good morning, good morning,
It's time to rise and shine...
Good morning, good morning, good morning, 
     I hope you're feeling FY-NE! (sung very off-key)

Our own little children woke up to
Petunia, Petunia, open up the door!

...and variations on the donkey song. Poor little dears.
     I thought about this when April Dykman mentioned she woke up to "Time to make the doughnuts..." Dad would have grinned at that, for his breakfast song was
Give me another cup of coffee, for it is the best in the land;
Put another nickel in the jukebox, for I am a truck-driving man...

Replacing the Windows: Update

A few months ago, we replaced the dining room, laundry room and kitchen windows. Four windows total: two smaller and two huge picture windows, one of those by the window seat.

Our dining room (site of the picture windows) used to be the draftiest place in the house. At night-time, you could look out toward the mountains, count the sparkling lights...and literally feel your feet freeze, toe by toe. The day after the windows were replaced, the Brick and I looked at each other -- no drafts. No need to run the portable heater. Even Charley the dog was comfortably sprawled out, instead of curled into a doughnut. Aahhh...

And most of the noise we'd taken for granted was gone. (Our house overlooks the highway, and the sound just crawls up the hill on quiet evenings.)

The best news came when we got the utilities bill. (I should mention here that we keep indoor temps at a bare minimum -- 60-64 degrees -- and shut off heat to the unused areas.) Last year's bill, on the coldest months, was about $130. This year: $65.
    It wasn't a fluke. The second month's bill again showed a $65 savings!

So month by month, we're paying ourselves back $60-65 toward the cost of the windows. That's a payback that will add up.

(We had our windows done by Prestige Products, in the Denver area. Fair, ethical and a high-quality product, with very reasonable prices. Ask for Dustin, and tell him the Bricks sent you.)

Living Like Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway has been a close confidant ever since college. I have fond memories of being in Paris with him while the rain pattered against my attic window. (Yes, dear readers, I lived in an attic during grad school at the University of Michigan. Room and board were free while I kept the family's house clean and their young daughter company. Oh yes, and walked the dog at lunchtime.)
     Some of his books are heartbreakingly memorable, like A Moveable Feast, The Old Man And the Sea, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Others, like Islands in the Stream, wander around until you give up in disgust.
    I've learned a lot from this hard-living (and loving) man, including:

*Get to the point.  At his best, he's crisp, firm and concise. At his worst, he sounds like a dirty old man or a drunk. Or both.


*Don't take yourself so seriously. Others did. In fact, he did too, later in life. (I suspect he actually started to believe the sycophants and hangers-on.) But the vintage Hemingway was always looking around with open eyes...including at himself.


*Travel as much as you can. Even if it means doing it in third-class railways (ever sit up all night on Amtrak?) or skimping on clothes to do so. The experience will stay with you all your life...and affect your work for the good.


*Read as much as you can. Hemingway always had a book (or two, or three) going. His first wife Hadley remembered once smooching with the great Hem -- only to find that he was reading a book behind her back!


*Discipline yourself. Writing was a regular part of his schedule. (Like Lewis Carroll and Thomas Wolfe, he liked to do it standing up! Certainly better for the stomach and leg muscles.) Sure, he goofed around a lot, and did far more than his share of drinking. But the words still got produced, day after day. (Stephen King is also good at this sort of thing. He reads a lot, too.)

*Do it with gusto. Whatever he did -- good or bad -- he went into it full-bore. Not a bad way to live.

Ernie in 1939 -- courtesy of Wikipedia. For a full bibliography, look here.)

Ten Things that Should Always Be in Your Pantry

Keep these ten ingredients around, and you'll always have something to eat -- even on short notice. They're generally cheap, play nicely with each other, and stay edible for six months to a year -- if not more.

*Peanut butter. Mix it with melted butter for an amazing sauce, put it on bread...or just scoop it out of the jar with your finger.

*Canned tuna or shrimp. Good for salad, heaped on crackers, or mixed with pasta.


*Some kind of crunchy cracker. Bread would be excellent -- if it lasted. But a cracker can hang in there for weeks, provided you keep the package sealed. Rye-Krisp is great; so are water crackers. Even plain saltines will do the trick -- but they get stale after a few months.

*Canned soup. One can's a help -- five or ten are an emergency fund, provided you bought them on sale with coupons. My own pantry is never without Campbell's brand chicken noodle soup. (Yes,  I can tell the difference from generic. Stir in an egg for more depth, and/or add a can of tomatoes/green chilies.) Other good soups are chunky-style; these are excellent heated and poured over rice or noodles. Clam chowder not only can be eaten as-is, but used as a pasta sauce, too.

*Pasta. Macaroni, fusilli and those little bows cook fast. Spaghetti and linguine look more elegant. Your choice.

*Dried onion or garlic. Just a shake of either livens up the plainest dishes. Dry onion soup mix is good, but salty.

*Eggs. In just a few minutes time, you can have them scrambled, fried, poached -- or even a fancy-schmancy omelet. Fresh eggs are best, but only last 2-3 weeks in the refrigerator. Keep a jar of dried egg whites in the pantry, and you'll be able to use it indefinitely.

*Dried milk. You don't have to drink it mixed straight out of the box -- but it's a godsend when you're low on regular milk, or the local grocery store ran out because of a blizzard. (This has happened several times in Colorado -- in as little as a week.) Stretch your regular milk further by using dried milk powder for cooking, or mix the reconstituted milk in with the regular to make it go further on a tight paycheck week. 


*Some kind of cheese. A slice of Cheddar or Swiss melted on toast gives you a hot meal in just a minute or two. (It's good in soup and mixed with pasta, too.) Grated Parmesan keeps practically forever.


*At least one complete meal in a can. Corned beef hash, beef stew, even tamales can fit the bill. One old boyfriend's dad swore by La Choy brand chow mein; he was partial to the beef version. There will come a night when you're on the way to the flu...or just got home, cold and hungry...or had a rotten day. Heat it up, put on your favorite movie, and relax.

Monday Stuff on the Way to Other Stuff

So how did I start this wonderful new Monday...and week?

By finishing off a root canal. Part of my mouth is now filled with gutta percha -- which, if I am not mistaken, is also a primary ingredient in rubber rain boots.

Oh goody. 

More work on the basement floor. (Getting used to grinding sounds, and a faint cloud of dust drifting upstairs now and then.) Some business stuff -- and a lot of restoration work. A huge pile of boxes to move and shelves to fill down in the new inventory area. (At least we actually have an inventory area again. This setting up after the flooding of last May is finally becoming routine.)

There are encouraging signs of life. CU and CSU are still in the running in college basketball. (Michigan made it too, but just barely. Sigh.) Harold Camping finally admitted he was wrong about the whole "end of the world" thing. And Mystery Guitar Man's latest has a nice beat.

   

I also found instructions for:

*Setting up a loft bed (includes a link to a 200-sq ft. cabin that looks intriguing)
*Making money from your trash
*Starting a babysitting exchange
*Pasta with asparagus. (The only better way to cook this harbinger of spring is to wash it, toss the spears in a few tablespoons of olive oil, sprinkle on some garlic or your favorite spices, then bake about 15 min. at 400 degrees. Crunchy, fresh and delickety...I am swooning at the thought.)

On the homefront, there's a new freebie pattern on the Brickworks website, thanks to Lion yarns -- directions for this cute (and easy!) crochet shrug. Couldn't you see it in pastels, too?

Tight Fisted Miser ran two concurrent posts of mine on marriage -- and getting separated.
And a bunch of Irish recipes for the upcoming holiday are on the 'Holiday Goodies' site. Erin go bragh.
       The daffodils in the backyard flower bed are almost blooming. Come on, Spring!

One of the best Monday videos ever.

W-w-w-e-e-weekend

Boy, it's been a trudge.

I got back late Friday from a few days in Granby with the Peaks n' Pines Quilt Guild. (Hi guys! I had a great time!) It was fun...but I've been dragging ever since.

Maybe it's the time change.

Maybe it's the time spent cleaning. (It was getting pretty grubby around here, what with Charley shedding and all the dust kicking up.)

Maybe it's spring.

We went and saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie tonight -- and I fell asleep right at the critical scene in the munitions factory. (Apparently not enough explosions were going off.) Friend Chris, who generally sleeps through most movies, snoozed through the entire thing. (She's become a walking review. Her friends will say, "Such-and-such movie is Really Great -- Chris didn't go to sleep at all!")

A snack helped...sort of. Maybe I just need sleep.

Off to go get it. Talk to you tomorrow.

Don't Buy From Amoozle

This deal website was offering BOGO gift cards, from Amazon, American Express, Target and Wal-Mart. I read something from a blogger mentioning it...
      So I bought some cards. $149 and change.

And got absolutely nothing.

Fortunately, I paid with Paypal. And after two long weeks of waiting for Amoozle to contact them, they refunded my money.

Whew.

I have a feeling they'll reappear again, though their website is currently offline. If they do, this is yet another one of those "too good to be true" items. Don't fall from it.

Don't buy from Amoozle.