It's Always The Little Things

There is a dime trapped inside of one of the dryer fins. I saw a little piece of it as I was pulling out laundry and reached for it and WHA LA! It went right down inside there. So now every load we dry, even if we were to dry a load of feathers, sounds like we have a jacket in there with a large zipper. A dime, A dime, My Kingdom for that dime!

Crazy Day

We had a crazy day which I can't really talk about on here, but I can tell you that we both got the crazy laugh fits at a restaurant tonight (Saturday night). The kind where your eyes are pouring water and your ribs hurt and you can't even look at each other. I imagine people in the restaurant thought we were on acid or something. (Do they still call it acid? I'm not up to date on the latest drug lingo.) But man we could NOT stop laughing. And it was the stupidest thing. It involved a gnat. And Loretta, And Heloise. Ouch! I started laughing all over again.

Another Annual Ritual

On Monday I did the horrid annual ritual of pulling out all my jeans to see if they still fit. I do this every year. I haven't worn jeans since my New York trip in April. I always think I won't be able to get into them. I was lucky this year. I haven't been lucky every year. Same thing happens every spring with my shorts: Will they still fit? I believe I've gained about 6 pounds over the summer because it's always too hot to move. Which sucks because I certainly have no use for 6 extra pounds. But the jeans fit fine, so I guess the 6 pounds is probably all over my head.
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It's funny how they always ask on these weight loss TV shows, "Why do you want to lose weight?" And the answer is always something intelligent sounding like: Diabetes runs in my family. Or: My blood pressure has gone up and I'm out of breath. But if anyone asked me why I would like to lose weight, my answer would sound so NOT intelligent and actually rather shallow: My head looks fat in photographs. The truth is, I am quite limber and don't get out of breath, I just have a fat head.
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My Sweetie has school on Monday and Wednesday nights so I'm thinking about taking a Zumba class on those nights. My daughter wanted us to take belly dancing together but I don't think there is a class that fits her schedule. Maybe she can Zumba with me on Mondays. I just need to do something about my big fat head. At least my jeans still fit. Good thing I don't wear hats.

Officials say beaver teeth are 7 million years old

Okay, so maybe this could be construed as false advertising, but since I'm not selling anything, I don't think it counts. Although I do like the idea of beavers being 7 million years old, this blog is not about really old beavers, it's about me. (Ha Ha! Insert horrid dirty joke here) Wait, I did not mean to go there. Seriously I did not. This is what happens when I have too many "Out Days."
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I had FIVE out days in a row. This is very unusual for me and also very tiresome. I do not like to go out five days in a row. I understand all you normal people reading this are rolling your eyes and asking yourself, "Huh?" But I like my IN days. I like them a LOT.
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Granted, I enjoyed most of them: Rangers baseball game, horse races, my Friday Meals on Wheels day out and Sunday visit with the in-laws for my MIL's birthday were nice, but I am all done in and want to be IN. I'd ideally like to stay in for maybe 10 days, but that's not going to happen. At least all day today I will have an in day and I will relish it.
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And now because I am yawning like a mad man, I will go to sleep and dream of in days with really old beaver teeth. Really? Beavers have been around for 7 million years? I'm surprised there are still any trees.

Friday Goofy

This is an actual real painting that I saw in person in real life and took a picture of. Here are my ideas for the title:

1. They are foolish to believe this bird can pull me.


2. They are foolish to believe I can pull this horse.


3. Look! The string hangs off the canvas!


4. I was stoned when I painted this.


5. Worst remake of The Defiant Ones ever.


6. I do not think this will get that tooth out.


7. Nothing in this picture makes sense.

What might you title this hideous painting? And if you say you actually like it, I will not believe you.

Funny Old Things (My 1950 Cookbook)

For years and years I thought I had drawn that dog. It looked like something I might have drawn and it felt like something I might have drawn. It was in Mom's 1950 Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book:

I always loved that the picture was upside down. Mom told me that I drew that picture and she told my brother that he drew that picture. At some point I thought she was just being diplomatic. I then realized that she probably had no idea who drew the picture, but she certainly knew it was either me or my brother. So she was always half right. Once I realized that the book was published in 1950, it seemed pretty obvious that it was my brother who drew the dog. He was born in 1957 and I was born in 1961.

In probably the early 1980's, I decided to "fix" the binding on this book. I used some high quality grey cloth duct tape that I had "ended up with" from the tv production company I had worked for. And by "high quality" I really mean just that because that duct tape binding job is still holding strong and steady after almost 30 years. That's good tape.

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I love the recipes. There are a few classics like white sauce or roux, but most of it is obsolete such as the cheese sandwich loaf, the Prune Cream Pie, and the strange dessert recipes using popular cookies of the time (I guess like how now people use Oreos in stuff). There's quite a list of lamb recipes and lamb is no longer a regular meat staple here. I think you can only get it at Christmas. Almost any food item in the book has a "...with dried beef" which says a LOT about the times. And the seasonings? Salt and pepper.

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Speaking of the times, 1950 was right at the beginning of the cold war and so there are no Russian foods in this cookbook. No beef stroganoff, no chicken kiev. They kept Italy also to a minimum: spaghetti and tetrazzini. No lasagne, no manicotti. They of course could not leave out the French because as is the case with ballet and war, most basic food terminology is French. And they keep it basic. There is no quiche. And hot? The things they call "hot" have a dash of chili powder. No cayenne or chipotle.

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Another funny thing is that foods that were the rage at one time have come and gone since this book was published. There is no mention of chateaubriand and the only mention of fondue is a bread and cheese casserole.

Another thing I like is the back of the book is so much darker. I guess the front got sun faded over time. That makes me think the book spent some time out in the open. But not in use, or the front cover would not be so faded.
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It's 61 years old. That's eleven years older than me. Many of the recipes sound kinda icky with a big use of ketchup and cracker crumbs along with the ubiquitous dried beef which as I mentioned earlier was a sign of the economic times and lots of the recipes are just weird, but I really really love that old cookbook. It makes me smile. Pretty much like that dog that I didn't draw.

The 5 Stages of Dishwasher Grief

1) Denial: Sure, I'll be able to fit all the dishes in there.
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2) Anger: Frikk!! There's no way I'm going to be able to fit all the dishes in there.
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3) Bargaining: Okay, maybe if I move this bowl to the bottom rack and tilt this lid that way...
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4) Depression: Oh,man.....this totally sucks. There is no physical way to fit everything in there. Now I'm going to have these leftover dishes here in the morning. Boooo.
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5) Acceptance: Oh well, okay. Looks like I'm going to have to leave this pot and these cups out tonight and just put them in tomorrow after I put away the clean dishes.

(photo by William Roesly for About.com)

Getting Started

On Friday I went to the fabric store and bought stuff for recovering the dinette chairs:

On Saturday, I got one done:

I didn't take any pics as I worked because I didn't really know what I was doing. That chair was the guinea pig of this project. I learned a lot. I think I have it all figured out now and will show some work in progress pics in subsequent posts. Sculpting foam with an electric knife is something that I hope I will improve at as I go along. So there will be more to come.

My Latest DYI

I've decided to recover all my dinette chairs. They came in "Bland Beige" and after 10 years A: They're worn and B is for boring. I took the seat off to study it, because that's how I roll, and lo and behold I discovered there were A LOT of staples on there.
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Ideally, I'd like to start from scratch and add some padding as opposed to just putting the new cover over the old cover. But the staples. I haven't counted them yet, but my best guess is eight hundred and seventy-three.
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It's not like I am incapable of removing 873 staples six times, it's just that I really think it will suck. I just noticed I said "will suck" instead of "would suck" so I guess that means I have made up my mind. As they say, "If you're going to do it, do it right." I will take pics as I go. The only fun part of it is, I'm going to pick out the cloth this afternoon. At least that part won't hurt my thumb