Thanksgiving. . .

 This Thanksgiving, I found myself unexpectedly being thankful that we have more than one toilet in our house. Because. . .

The one and only bathroom (technically, a half-bath) on the main floor of the house, the one company most definitely uses, became unusable around 9 p.m. on Wednesday night when DH decided that would be a good time to attempt to clear a suspected small clog in the plumbing by plungering the main floor toilet. And plungering. And plungering as hard and fast as he could.

Result: 

• toilet leaking around the seal at the floor.  
• Very wet bathroom.  
• Very wet basement directly under the drain for that bathroom.
• Lots and lots of wet towels

Secondary result: 

• unhappy wife (who had spent nearly an hour earlier that day deep cleaning said bathroom and readying it for having 12 additional potty trained people in our home for Thanksgiving Day).  
• Unusable bathroom for Thanksgiving festivities.

Tertiary result:

• wife had to squeeze company-standards-cleaning the upstairs bath (the one our kids used while living at home) AND the master bath (and tidying the master bedroom since that's how you access the master bath) into her Thanksgiving itinerary (with, you know, roasting a turkey, prepping veggie dishes, recleaning the kitchen after food prep, making sure there's enough seating for all the guests, etc).
• all guests had a good laugh when they heard why they had to climb a flight of stairs just to go pee because their Dad/Papa had plungered the toilet to death.

Multiple toilets are a good thing.  I'm thankful we own three.

Horse Update, November

 When school (and therefore babysitting Faline twice a week) started back up in August, I vowed to myself that I was NOT going to let that get in the way of riding/working Camaro at least three times a week.  It's been a struggle, but I've successfully kept that commitment to myself and him.  And, while our rate of progress has slowed from what it was over the summer, I do see that we are making advances.

The leg yield at walk is very nice off the right leg.  Not as smooth off the left leg, but at least now I can say he is, most of the time, actually crossing his legs and not just drifting sideways through his shoulder.

The canter!  Departs are so vastly improved from a year ago. Almost never rushed anymore, typically popped into with balance and calmness as soon as I ask him.  And downward transitions have improved too, more of a big balanced trot than a falling onto his face and catching himself by throwing his head up/dropping his back and scrambling at trot.

Trot is where I see the see-saw of moving from one stage to the next.  As he improves elsewhere, his trot falls apart: gets tense, gets unbalanced, he wants to drop his back, he wants to get distractable and spooky.  And then, a month later, the nice working trot returns.  And then I try to fine tune another area, and we again take a step back in trot.  As long as I remind myself the regression into shitty trot is a sign that we're improving overall--aiming for a newly raised bar as it were-- it's not too frustrating.  But sometimes I forget to remind myself that.

Something else he and I have been doing for the last couple of months is have a designated "walk day" each week where walk is the only gait we work in.  The main objective in that was to try to overcome some muscling imbalance he naturally has in his shoulders (because of a slight club foot) by doing lots of serpentines, spiral in-spiral out, and other suppling movements.  Also to strengthen his back by doing some pole work and lots of walk-halt-walk and walk-halt-back-walk transitions.

Boy, does Camaro like walk day!  He's not that great at poles (although the poles I have available are too easily moved out of position with the slightest nudge from a hoof so doing a series of just two poles more than about 5 times is impossible without dismounting and realigning the poles to their proper spacing) but he goes over them eagerly without trying to duck out on either side.  By the time we've warmed up, done 2-3 sets of poles, and a couple walk-halt transitions, he really starts to swing through the back and I can easily feel each hind foot every single stride as he rounds his back more and steps further under himself with his hind legs.  By the end of a half-hour walk day session, he's swinging along happily with a slobbery bit and just the most self-satisfied expression.

I'd like the see if I can get DH to help me build 2-3 cavaletti so that I can work Camaro over those instead of loose ground poles.  We would still use them with the attached poles touching the ground (rather than raising them so he has to step higher), but he won't be able to knock heavy cavaletti out of alignment like he does the lighter weight ground poles any time he drags a toe just a hair.

While I'm on 'family leave' from babysitting while DD2 uses her maternity leave time, I'm hoping to ride or otherwise work Camaro 4-5 times a week.  That goal will hopefully allow us to get another burst of progress in before the mid-winter cold hits and makes it difficult to ride regularly.  I'm toying with the idea of a dedicated trot day in addition to our walk day, but instead of poles at trot I think I would do some cardio/endurance building-type trot sessions interspersed with some spiral in-spiral out at trot.  See if that helps lessen the shitty trot occurrences while making gains in other gaits.

I Have a Beef With DH

 Actually, a half a beef.   Together, we decided that this year would be the year we took the plunge and purchased a half a beef.  We knew, first hand, of someone who could hook us up with a farmer who raised grass fed beef.  Someone who vouched for the high quality of the meat and the integrity of the farmer.

In the past, it was the large one-time outlay of money that prevented us from buying our beef on the hoof, as it were.  Things conspired just so this summer that we were finally able to have that hunk of cash available.

All said and done, that hunk of cash was about $1400.  For what turned out to be over 200 pounds of meat, custom cut and wrapped to our specifications.  Which, roughly, is $7 per pound.  A tad pricy for hamburger, but way cheap for roasts and steaks any more.  And honestly, the packages of burger that we've used so far have been more equivalent to ground sirloin than the bargain hamburger at the store.  It's very flavorful, and doesn't cook up to have hardly any grease. Like, so little that I haven't needed to drain the meat after cooking it, and I'm one who can't stand greasy meat.

I have the feeling we just stumbled onto one of those "now you've experienced it, you can never go back to store bought" things.  Like having our own laying hens for eggs, and raising our own broilers for meat.  And tapping maple trees and making our own maple syrup.  We are definitely going to have to budget that chunk of change for a half a beef every year going forward.

a whole lotta beef

New and New and New

 In the last couple of years, DH and I have found ourselves in a cycle of replacing major things.  Not totally unexpected, I guess, as we finished building the house at this little place here in the summer of 2003 and all our appliances, etc, were brand new at that time.  19 years later, things just wear out.

We're on our second--or maybe third, I can't remember for sure--dishwasher, but July 2019 was the first major appliance tragedy: our fridge died while we were gone for a weekend.  Came home to rather a sticky gross puddle on the floor where everything in the freezer had melted and most of it had oozed out.  A major purchase like a new refrigerator was not in our plans (or budget), and luckily we were able to buy some time by cramming things into the beer fridge in the basement and bringing the mini-fridge that DD2 had used in college into the mudroom so I didn't have to traipse up and down the stairs for things used in daily meal making.  That enabled us to talk to DH's friend up north with the appliance store, wait for the fridge we'd picked out to go on sale, and last until mid-September before having a fridge in the kitchen again.

I'm not sold on the bottom freezer thing. . .

It doesn't organize well when you don't buy things frozen in boxes

(home processed and frozen is too lumpy to store much neatly)

September 2020, the dryer died.  I dealt with that by drying everything on the clothesline outside (in good weather), or on my three drying racks in the basement (in bad weather) for several months. The washing machine had been randomly throwing a code and shutting itself down in the middle of a load since early in the summer, so we decided to just replace them both rather than try to fix the dryer.  Another call to DH's buddy who gives us great discounts on appliances. . . and I had a brand new washer and dryer installed at the end of November.

Meanwhile, my double oven was faltering.  The bottom oven actually hasn't worked at all for at least five years.  We'd looked, back in 2019 when replacing our fridge, at ordering a new double oven to match.  Apparently ovens typically go on sale in November for Black Friday??  At least, that's what DH's friend told us, and rather than getting the ovens at the same time we bought the new fridge, we were going to wait until November to order the oven.  But then DD2's new job in Alaska unexpectedly let her go 60 days into a 90 day probation (and let another coworker go a few weeks later, also in their probation period--budget cuts) and we had to cancel the oven plan in order to have funds to bring DD2 and her belongings back to Michigan on a 7-day notice.

The upper oven had limped along for a good year after that, but it heated unevenly and at least once a week screamed at you and threw a code during the heating process (the code and screaming alarm were 'fixed' by shutting the oven off and trying again, the uneven heating was unpredictable).  When that issue started happening multiple times a week, we knew it had to go. So last fall we decided to bite the bullet and order a new double oven.  Waiting, of course, for the November price cuts to put in the order.  And with all the shortages of computer chips and other manufacturing necessities, we were told that our oven was on the 'to be built' list, but no idea of when it would actually arrive.  It finally showed up at his store at the beginning of February 2022. It's so great to have two fully working ovens again! Holiday meals for a dozen-plus people (if Brad comes, we will be 15 for Thanksgiving this year,) are so much easier to cook now!  And the interior of the ovens is a really cool blue, not the black or gray that I've always known ovens to be. I love it!

Love me a full sized double oven

It's bright blue!!

Backing up to Spring 2021, I told DH that I thought our water softener was no longer working.  It was full of salt, and went through the motions of recharging, yet the water seemed 'hard' to me--not the normal amount of suds when washing dishes, or my hair, and iron stains were showing up in the sinks, shower, and toilets.  He checked for a salt bridge--emptying out most of the salt and finding no salt bridge-- and manually recharged the softener several times.  Which gave us soft water a few times, but then stopped doing the trick.  In November 2021 he finally agreed that the softener was dead, and bought a new one.  It's so lovely to take a shower again without feeling like you are building up a crust on your skin.  Not to mention that I no longer have to scrub hard water stains out of the sinks, etc, on a weekly basis.

And then. . . he noticed that the outer edge of my kitchen sink was rusting out from underneath and curling outward.  I'd actually told him about it for years (honestly, his mind has been so much on his overwhelming job demands the last handful of years it's in one ear and out the other with him), but suddenly when he realized the extent of the damage, he felt the need to replace the sink immediately, stating he didn't want me to accidentally cut myself on the rough edge.

I'll tell you, finding a new sink the same size and style of my existing kitchen sink (two bowls equal size, extra deep, with room to fit a 9"x13" pan flat in the bottom, drop in not under-mount, NOT stainless steel) was not easy.  Understatement of the year. 

There were several heated discussions in several home improvement stores before I found the sink. What can I say; I don't give a fig for trends, and I do a lot of cooking and baking and canning and know what works for big cookware and what doesn't when it comes to sink design.  I also personally hate stainless steel for a home kitchen. . . Like white walls, it's just too industrial.

my perfect sink

(with the original fixtures, as I couldn't find acceptably styled new ones)

Oh, and along the way from Spring to Fall 2021, we also had to replace the garbage disposal under the kitchen sink (now on our 3rd disposal since 2003), and the light fixture in the half-bath off the mudroom.  

To sum it up, in the past three years we've updated my laundry room (DH also built a pedestal-like shelf for the new washer and dryer to sit on so they are easier to reach into, being front loaders)--using scrap lumber we had on hand, that was cheaper than $150-$300 each to purchase pedestals with the appliances-- and refreshed my kitchen.  Well, refreshed in terms of appliances and sink that is--we didn't change the layout at all.  Because I love my kitchen just the way it is-- designed by me nearly 20 years ago for way I cook and bake and preserve food and host large family meals.

Hopefully we are done hemorrhaging money on appliances for a good long while.

A Wedding!

 This past June, DS2 and Surprise finally tied the knot.  They had been engaged to be married in the summer of 2019, but there were some last minute cold feet (greatly created by some family issues and pressure on Surprise's side).  

Then Covid came.  

And somewhere after the first six months of that, they decided to separate for a year in order to assess the future of their relationship.  After that year was up, they were pretty dang sure they really did want to get married.  

So, in September 2021, they got engaged again, with the intent to not get lost in wedding planning craziness and stick to their guns about what they wanted their wedding and reception to be like.

In fact, from our point of view, it seemed there wasn't much wedding planning going on.  At Thanksgiving, when asked, they said they had not yet chosen a date.  Or, really, anything wedding related. 

At Christmas, the same story.  

But suddenly, at Easter, they had a date: June 11th!  And a church! And maybe (fingers crossed) a venue for the reception.

They wanted a smaller, simpler wedding than the original one had been turning into. They wanted to do it 100% on their own, no financial assistance from either side. All they wanted family to do was to please show up.

Show up we did!  Unfortunately there wasn't a full family photo taken of us on their special day, but (with the exception of K2, who didn't feel well) we all turned out to support them and witness the ceremony and attend the reception.  Faline danced her little legs off; boy, the photographers loved her. I can't imagine how much video footage there was of her, probably almost as much as there was of the bride.  

The camera on my phone absolutely hated the indoor lighting, so all I have at this point are some really crappy pictures to mark the occasion.  I'm hoping that DS2 and Surprise will either share digital copies of the pictures the photographers took, or will have a few printed for me.

Bride and Groom with groom's grandparents.

Crafting Update, November

 I'm going to roll the knitting and sewing/stitching updates into one post this month.

Currently, I am working on Buck's Christmas stocking.  I started it in mid-October, and worked down the first several inches until I got to the part where the name goes.  Ehen I set it aside until after his birth, since DD1 and Honorary Son were keeping the name they had chosen a secret until his arrival.  

Last week, once I knew who he was, I charted the name, and went back to knitting.  As of last night, I am probably about half way done with the stocking.  If I can continue knitting at the rate I have in the past five days, it should be done in time to hand over to DD1 at Thanksgiving.

In the interim--while waiting on Buck's IRL name--I whipped up a sweater for Faline's upcoming second birthday.  I need to sew on the buttons and block it, but otherwise it's finished. I used the Sunday Sweater pattern in a size 2/3 and adapted the buttonhole placket to accommodate 6 buttons (instead of the patterned 3) so that it will close all the way from neck to waist.  The photo below really doesn't do the color justice; it's actually a very purple purple, not bluish at all.

And then there is Buck's quilt. . . I used 6" star blocks, as I had in Faline's baby quilt, to keep a common pattern between siblings.  For the 'solid' blocks (the non-stars) I found some cute Harry Potter themed fabric, as both Honorary Son and DD1 are HP fans.  The stars were all made in fabrics that had some sort of meaning to DD1 and Honorary Son. . .

The main fabric

The star in the exact center of the quilt

Cats, as they both love cats (and Faline's quilt also had some stars with cats)

Soccer balls, as Honorary Son played soccer all through high school (and, ironically, when DD1 started high school she swore up and down she would never date a soccer player--both her brothers had played soccer all through high school and she thought their teammates were dumb).

John Deere, because all my grandbabies have to have a green tractor in their quilt somehow; they all grow to love taking rides on Papa's tractor.  

Also Winnie the Pooh (as background), which has a story behind it.  The Pooh fabric I used is some that I bought when DD1 was still in high school.  She had seen it at the store while fabric shopping with me, commented that she liked it and wouldn't it be great in a quilt for her future son some day?  Unbeknownst to her, I bought a yard and stashed it away until this year.

Music notes.  Music is such a big part of Honorary Son, I had to include not one, but two fabrics with musical notes.  The lighter colored one became stars.  The darker (the black on the background of the soccer blocks) is a tone-on-tone music note fabric too. The skinny inner border of the quilt is also in the black music fabric.

The finished top

For the first time ever, I had to go with a 2 fabric pieced backing.  It was a big step requiring much deliberation, but I had to do it.  You see, the blue fabric (Frog & Toad) I had bought in 2017 when I saw it in a fabric shop in Seward, Alaska.  But I could only get two yards.  I figured I would find it again somewhere after returning home from that trip and get more, enough for--you guessed it--a future quilt for a future grandson. But it proved impossible to find more when I went looking, and looking, and looking, and Googling multiple times in the last couple of years. 

So, if I was ever going to put that awesome fabric in a quilt, I was going to have to find complimenting fabric and do a pieced backing.  Which really caused me a lot of emotional turmoil because I really like backings that are all the same fabric even if it means the painstaking cutting and matching of designs on directional fabric. Cuz yeah, I'm kinda anal like that. Then I happened upon a picture of a pieced backing done in 9-patch style, and I knew that was the one and only acceptable way of putting together the back of this quilt.

A flannel giant 9-patch

Definitely the right way to treat my fabric dilemma.  I like this quilt back a lot.

Since August, when I last posted a knitting and reading update, I've read six books:

Outsider by Linda Castillo.  Another great Kate Burkholder mystery.  It's so hard for me to limit myself to only 2 or maybe 3 titles in this series per year, but I don't want them to end, so in order not to reach the last book too quickly, I'm pacing myself. This one is 12 of 15, so there's not very many left to read. I sure hope the author cranks out a few more in 2023!

Dead Broke by Vannetta Chapman.  This is the 2nd of a trilogy.  I liked it far better than the first one.  I felt that it was much better written, more along the lines of the mystery novels that had made me like this author many years ago.

The Way North: Collected Upper Peninsula New Works, edited by Ron Riekki. By and large, I didn't care for the stories and poems in this book.  There were a few that I liked, but overall it was just so dark and dismal.  Yes, there's a lot of poverty in the UP, but there's also a lot of people in that poverty who have sunnier outlooks than what was expressed by these writers.  I just found the focus too depressing and leaning toward the hard part of UP living without expressing the many positive points that exist despite the struggle.

The Orchard by Beverly Lewis. This is her newest one, that I've been waiting most of the year to be published. It was a quick read, and didn't disappoint.

Women Talking by Miriam Toews.  This was a book that made me think.  I had requested it from the library after seeing previews for the movie.  The previews looked interesting, but also like the movie would probably be done in a way that I wouldn't want to watch it (I have a thing about tv and movies that portray violence towards women, or women being stalked, or women being held captive; it's not entertaining, it's stressful to be exposed to. Maybe shades of PTSD from a former relationship?).  I'm glad I decided to read the book.  Yes, the topic is all the things I don't want to watch, but the way the book is written it was very good to read and think about.

Dead Set by Vannetta Chapman.  The third and final book in this series.  Not as good as Dead Broke, the writing (and editing--gah, I hate poor editing) were more along the lines of the first book in the series.  This plot line just seemed too unbelievable for the main character and I felt it had strayed from the level of the second book.

I Shall Call Him Brad

 Brad is a new addition to the blog.  He's actually been around for over a year, but so far he's escaped mention here. 

Brad was brought to the this little place here family by DD2.  After pretty much spending her whole adult life (about 6 years since she was almost 24 when they met) insisting that she had no use for dating, because to her dating was a method of choosing your mate for life and she had no intention of getting married in the next decade or longer, DD2 stumbled upon Brad.  In a bookstore.  While she was out with some long time friends.  Just looking for an interesting book to buy, not at all looking for a boyfriend.

Brad happens to be a big Lord of The Rings fan, as is DD2, and it was that fact that caused him and her to meet.  In a bookstore, in the sci fi section.  Probably the last place you'd think to look if you were in want of a soul mate. Which she didn't think she was.  Until she met and got to know Brad.

Brad was a secret.  A secret from me for over a month, until DD2 hesitantly told me--through a long and convoluted story about going out to dinner at a new to us restaurant the night before with 'a friend'--that she, actually, had changed her stance on dating and now had a boyfriend.  She thought.  But not to tell anyone, especially family, until she had tried him out for longer. And apparently that's the blunt way she'd put it to Brad: their boyfriend/girlfriend status was on a trial period and was to be kept to themselves until they decided whether or not to continue.

So they'd known each other for about three whole months before Brad met a few of our large clan at the Thanksgiving dinner held at DD1 and Honorary Son's house.  That was actually the first time he met DH also. 

Why is he called Brad?  That was K3's doing, when she found out that her aunt DD2 had a boyfriend (never in her 9 years of life, had her aunt DD2 had a boyfriend!).  K3 asked, if he was actually a real boyfriend--because she couldn't believe this story--what his name was.  DD2, not wanting him to become widely known, didn't divulge his name, instead asked K3 what she thought a good boyfriend name was.  After thinking for a minute, K3 said, "I don't know . . .  Brad???".  And so, for a long time, he was referred to by all of us as Brad.  

I had been given the honor of meeting him in October, about six weeks after their first trail date (about three weeks after DD2 informed me she had a boyfriend), and while he seemed nice enough, I was reserving my deciding if I liked him or not until after I'd been able to observe him for several months, in several situations.  Because experience with meeting my childrens' chosen significant others has proved that they're always on their best behavior the first few interactions you have with them, and their real personalities don't come out until later.

So, more than a year later, Brad is still with us.  He's been to a few more family gatherings, has finally met all DD2's siblings and siblings-in-law, but other than my own parents, he hasn't met any extended family yet. He and DD2 spend most of their non-working time together, and have also taken a few trips both as a couple and with groups of friends from both sides. I'm fairly sure he's here to stay.  I guess it's time to put him into the this little place here story. . . 

Do I like him?  Well, he seems a little privileged (waaayyy different background/upbringing), and a little lacking in real life skills, but he's a nice person who appears to genuinely care for DD2 and want to take care of her.   If she'll let him.  She's fiercely independent. Kind of like her mother.

Buck Has Arrived!

Three weeks before his original due date--and induced due to DD1's increasingly complicated health (diabetes, thyroid, high blood pressure and kidney issues)--Buck has arrived!  

Who is Buck?  He's my newest grandbaby!  Grandchild #5, grandson #3, he was born in the wee hours of Halloween morning, and despite being only barely 37 weeks gestation, he is a chunky almost 7.5 pounds!  Which is about half a pound more than his sister Faline weighed  when she was born at 39 weeks.

He's healthy, and alert, and DD1 is doing well enough that they were released late afternoon yesterday (Nov. 2nd).  I  received this picture as they were loading up to leave the hospital.  Looks like a fully cooked baby to me. (face blurred for privacy)

I was working feverishly on getting his baby quilt done (too many projects at this little place here this fall, and his birthdate getting pushed up several weeks put me behind on quilt construction).   Being in charge of Faline since Oct 30th didn't work real well with getting it finished in time for his homecoming, but it did get done slightly after. 

wind didn't cooperate for good quilt posterity pics

a pieced 9-patch back

I was able to meet Buck, and deliver his quilt, this afternoon.  I see a lot of Honorary Son in him, although based on how long his arms, legs, and feet are compared to the rest of him, I suspect Buck might grow taller than Honorary Son and his side of the family.  Time will tell.  He definitely has long thin fingers (like me!); perhaps he'll play piano and guitar with his dad someday.