Books Read in 2026: October

 Freckles by Cecelia Ahern. I love Cecelia Ahern's novels.  Unfortunately, there are a few that I cannot get from my library because not only does that particular library system (county with about a dozen branches) not own a copy, apparently no library in Michigan that participates in the state interlibrary loan system does either.  So I will in such instances buy a used copy off eBay.  This is one of those 'hard to get' novels: I had to buy it.  In a way, I found the novel much different than her others; most of it reads rather dark and depressing.  I hurt for the main character and hoped that the hole she seemed to be falling/digging herself into via her personal choices wasn't going to end badly.  I won't spoil the story, but the closer I got to the end of the book the more I liked it and I could see the author's trademark storyline (or, at least what I count on her books to contain) become revealed.

One For The Money by Janet Evanovich.  Other than a short Christmas-themed novel, I had not read any of this widely known author's books.  While I hadn't been very impressed with that one holiday book I did read, I've heard glowing recommedations about this series and I was determined to finally give it a real try myself.  Well, turned out I DNF'ed it after about three attempts to read it.  Just not my style, I guess.  A bit too crass, and fluffy at the same time.  Sorry Janet Evanovich fans, Stephanie Plum is just not for me.  In a way, I guess that's a good thing, as now I don't have to worry about getting ahold of the two dozen-some books about her.

Murder on Millionaires' Row by Erin Lindsey.  This is a book I had picked up at a book swap either this spring or last fall.  Set in the late 1890's, it sounded like it could be interesting. For most of the book, I really liked it.  There were a few parts I found a bit unrealistic (interactions between classes, genders and races being specifically mentioned appropriate for the time period, yet a page later being more modern day), and I was willing to overlook them because it was fast paced and I was interested in solving the whodunit portion, as it is supposedly a mystery book.  After more than 250 pages, I just couldn't go on.  Not only were the interpersonal depictions getting annoyingly modern, the paranormal aspect of the story that had just been a passing mention in the beginning--and I thought went along with the time period as lots of people at that time believed in spirits, etc.--kind of took over and depictions of that detracted from the whole mystery aspect for me.  Paranormal is not my genre, and I lost interest in finding out whodunit.  I was really disappointed because the book had started so promisingly and I had been looking forward to a mystery set within that time period.

The Jump by Natalie Keller Reinert.  I stumbled across this one at my local library, saw the horse on the cover, read the blurb, and it sounded appealing.  It sucked me in.  Comparing my personal experiences through 40+ years, I found this book to be believable (horse themed fiction books written by people with little to none actual horse farm/training experience drive me up the wall) and accurate in its decriptions.  Can't wait to look up more by this author!

A Little Complainy-ness

 This week has not been bad.  Just a few irritating things that I'm going to get off my chest.  If you're curious, read on.  If you've had enough irritations of your own this week, feel free to skip.

ONE

These stairs finally got me.  We built them out of railroad ties 20+ years ago.  They are part of the retaining wall, also built out of railroad ties, that hold back the earth between the upper level of yard behind the garage and the lower level of the patio and backyard (we have a walkout basement).  Being wood, and already old when we got them--they had been used under honest to goodness train tracks for who knows how long before being deemed no longer usable for that purpose, then removed and sold for $5 each--the railroad ties have decayed over the decades since we built with them.  Several of the steps are no longer horizontally level, and a few not only tilt side to side but also back to front.  

Replacing the retaining wall and stairs has been on our project list for about four years now, but it will be an expensive and time consuming project and we haven't been able to do it yet.  First there was DH's shop to build so that we could  finish off the barn for housing horses and not kayaks, canoes, lawn mower, snowmobiles, tractor, bicycles. . .  And then there was the whole horse fencing and stalls and tack room project. . . 

Well, on Wednesday I was heading down these stairs and I fell.  About 3-4 steps from the bottom, my foot slipped on an uneven railroad tie and it plus my other foot went flying out from underneath me.  In a split second of self-preservation (trained into my brain from going off horses over the years?), I shifted my weight so that I would neither pitch forward and whack my head on the patio pavers, nor backward and whack my head on a railroad tie.  Instead, I sat down, whacking my tailbone --OUCH!-- and my right elbow --OUCH!

Nothing broken, just some scratches through my shirt sleeve, some lovely bruises and a tailbone that does not appreciate riding a sitting trot currently.

TWO

So much junk mail in the mailbox this week!  Not only annoying political flyers (whose saving grace is that we can burn them in the wood burner for a teensy tiny bit of heat), but this crap that was made to look potentially like some sort of (wedding?) invitation that was hand addressed but when you open it is actually from a company that makes replacement windows wanting to sell you some.  UGH!  Waste my time opening it to see what it is, only to toss it into the burn garbage pile.

THREE

This trash bin was supposed to be taken out the evening before.  It's my husband's responsibility to take it from behind the garage, where it sits during the week, to the end of the driveway.  I'm the one who actually goes around the house and barn and gathers up the trash and puts it all into the bin, DH just has to take it to the road once a week.  

I had told him, as he saw me with a full trash bag in my hand before dinner that evening, that I was going to put the bag into the trash bin, and then the bin would be ready to go to the road.  A couple of hours later, I asked him if he'd taken the bin to the end of the driveway.  "I forgot.  I'll do it in the morning," was the response.

In the morning when I went out to feed horses, I noticed the bin was still behind the garage.  So, while I was cooking his breakfast, I reminded DH that he needed to take the bin to the road.  He said he'd do it when he left for work.  An hour after he left for work, I went out the garage door to head to (my work) the barn to get horses turned out and there was the bin, still behind the garage.  

I ended up lugging it to the end of the driveway (500') before walking back to the barn to turn out horses and start my next several hours of barn work.  The man swears he hasn't developed increasing memory problems this year, but I'm finding that hard to believe.

FOUR

My foldable wooden drying rack broke.  WAAAHHHH!  This is probably the third drying rack I've had in the 35 years since I left my parent's home at 19 (the others having succumbed to the dangers of existing near young children).  I love this thing, especially for drying delicates and other Do Not Dry in Dryer items of clothing.  I'm tempted to grab DH's wood glue and have a go at fixing it, but then it won't be foldable any more as once glue is involved the support won't rotate around the dowel.  Maybe I should just put a new one on my Birthday/Christmas List (since they are both in December I have one list) and hope the gift faeries/elves/my loved ones bring me a new one.

Okay, that's all my complainies for now.  Thanks for listening (reading?)

Check, Check, and Check

Last weekend, we got a few major/minor tasks crossed off our to do list.  Major because they are important, minor because each of them was relatively small.  All of them needed to be done before winter weather hits.

 Cellar insulation

Last January, I noticed that in several places down in my cellar, the insulation was missing.  Or that rodents had chewed through it. Both of which were letting in a major amount of cold air.  Since my well tank and the water lines that go into the house are located in the cellar, all that cold air in January was a problem: my water line froze in one small spot.  And, because DH was out of town at the time, I 'fixed' the problem the way that was available to me at the time: I stuffed rags/old clothes into each spot that had an air leak.  

I was able to thaw the water line, and the rags stayed in place the rest of the winter.  Actually, until this past weekend.

DH used some pieces of that thick pink insulation board to make patches to cover up the leaky spots.  He also used a can of expandable foam insulation to seal things up where the pink board didn't fit.  Now there should be no frigid gusts of air to freeze the pipes in the cellar during the winter.

Feed room faucets insulation

A couple of times last winter (both in January if I remember right), the water faucets in my feed room froze.  Inside the tack room, the water for the sink still flowed just fine, so we figured the problem was in the wall where the water lines run from the tack room to the feed room.  DH thought he had put enough insulation in the stud cavity, but apparently not.  He'd used fiberglass batts, which were kind of hard to snug tightly around the pipes.

His plan, when the (supposedly frost free) faucets froze, was to wait until summer, and stick some expandable foam insulation in the wall specifically around the plumbing.  Summer came, and he forgot (his short term memory has become a worry of mine this year, but that's a topic for another post).  I reminded him in September, and after his memory had been refreshed, he said it was on his list to do yet this fall.

So I was really happy when, can of Great Stuff in hand, he announced he was going to add insulation to those faucets.  As you can tell from the photo below, there's a little bit that needs to trimmed off the wall on the tack room side.  Hopefully now we truly do have freeze proof water in the feed room!

Stall #1 floor

This stall has been a tool room/storage area ever since we got the mats laid two years ago.  While we were building the tack room--for about an entire year--we not only kept a table full of tools in here, but also many, many totes (awaiting those shelves to be built after the tack room itself was walled in) as well as the bales of pine shavings I use for bedding the stalls.

Being so long unoccupied by a living animal walking around on the mats, we had some opportunistic rodents tunnel their way in under the outside walls and move around the gravel under the mats to make themselves nice little runs and nesting sites.  And now that the tack room was (finally) finished and I no longer needed that stall for storage, having holes and tunnels under the mats was a problem.

We had some gravel leftover from making our gate pads this past spring, and I had earmarked it for fixing the stall floor.  I just needed DH to make himself available to help me remove the mats, shovel the gravel in the low spots, tamp it solid and level, then put the mats back in place.  He, of course, did not want to do this in the heat of summer, so it was very low priority on his personal to do list.

Well, the hot weather is long gone, and the little pile of gravel left in our parking area awaiting the floor repair needed to be out of there before the snow falls and the parking area needs to be plowed.  So, it made its way up to the top of DH's to do list (finally).

Removing the mats was no fun.  But the floor repair itself was pretty quick and easy.  And the mats were much easier to reinstall than they had been to install back in 2024!  I'm glad to have that done.  Now my priority is to get another boarder horse so that it can live in this stall, which should do the trick for deterring any new sub-mat excavating by rodents.

Another Experiment With a Tiny Casserole Dish

 Recently, I indulged myself in a kitchen experiment utilizing one of those little glass baking dishes I'd bought at Goodwill back in 2024.  For a while, I'd been toying with the idea of trying to make a small deep dish pie.  Because, while DH and I both love pie, we really don't need to eat an entire 9" pie between the two of us in the few days that a pie stays good.  If I could make a little pie in my little casserole dish that would enable us to still enjoy a pie now and then without overeating it (because it would be sacrilege to let a pie go bad). 

Finally I decided what the heck, I might as well go for it.  The great thing about kitchen experiments that involve desserts is that unless you burn them to a crisp, even the flops are usually still edible.

By my calculations if I halved my single pie crust recipe for a 9" pie, that should probably be enough dough to fit my little glass dish.

Pie crust:

2 Tbsp +2 tsp lard (shortening)

1/2 cup flour

pinch of salt

1 1/2 Tbsp cold water

Cut lard into the flour and salt until crumbly.  Stir in water until moistened.

Roll into an 8" circle on a lightly floured surface.

I gently eased the rolled out pie crust dough into the little dish, making sure it went all the way to the bottom, then trimmed it to about 1" more than the dish's opening.  After folding the excess under and fluting the edge, I poked the dough with a fork before baking at 475 degrees for about 10 minutes until lightly browned.

As you can see, the crust shrank during baking.  Next time I won't worry about trimming the excess; I'll try to leave more on the edge if I can get it to not flop down the outside of the dish.  Hopefully that way, even with shrinkage it will stay above the rim.

Once the crust had cooled to room temperature, I took a box of instant chocolate pudding from the pantry, and mixed it with 1 3/4 cup milk for about 2 minutes.  Then I poured roughly a cup (maybe a cup and a quarter?) of the pudding into the cooled pie shell--almost to the top of the crust--and put it in the fridge to set and chill.  

The leftover pudding was a nice snack for the baker during kitchen clean up 😊

At dessert time, I whipped up a little bit of heavy cream with about 1/2 tsp of sugar, cut the pie in half, and served it with a big dollop of whipped cream.

YUM!  Next time, I might try a tiny fruit pie; that will be more challenging to see if I can figure out how to adapt the cooking time so that the fruit filling (probably apples) is neither crunchy and underdone nor cooked to mush.  My current theory is that the cooking time won't be very much different than a regular sized pie, since the casserole dish is just as deep, or maybe a tad deeper than, a pie plate, so even though the diameter is smaller the thickness of the filling is about the same.

A New Roof For The Chicken Coop

 DH built my chicken coop 22 years ago. For the first few years, its roof consisted of OSB covered in tar paper.  At some point after 2006, he used some scrap steel to cover the tar paper, making it more weather resistant and prolonging the life of the roof.

While the steel roof was better than just the tar paper alone, it had not been intended to be permanent.  The steel used was long, narrow pieces and there weren't enough of them to cover the roof if DH ran them the correct way, which would have been so that water would run off down the slope of the roof.  Instead, he ran them the 'wrong' way, which meant that the ridges in the steel prevented the water from running entirely off.  

That wasn't really a big deal, at first.  But, as the years went by and temporary became sorta-permanent (or whatever you'd call almost two decades), strong winds and storms worked on those horizontal seams of the roof, loosening a few of the pieces of steel and also allowing rain to get driven up under it in spots.

It also meant that the water that did run off didn't exit at the back of the coop, but at the sides, typically at the base of a ridge, including right where I stood to latch and unlatch the door of the coop where I go in and out.  Not a big deal either, except on those shoulder season ice cold rains, where it would pour on my head or down the collar of my jacket--BRRR!

For the last few years, whenever we'd have a big storm from the west (which is where most of our storms come from), water would leak through the roof and into the coop in a couple of spots.  This year, one of those leaks got really bad, and after each storm I'd have a large spot of soaked wood shavings/chicken litter inside the coop.  Which is neither efficient use of the bedding/shavings, nor is it good for the plywood floor.

Finally, DH got to 'replace coop roof' on his To-Do List.  He had scrap steel from building his shop, and thought it probably was enough to cover the coop.  On Saturday morning, he tore off the old steel.

After lunch he started putting the new steel on.  I helped here and there, such as handing up the pieces of steel so he didn't have to climb up and down the ladder for each one, snapping the chalk line for where to cut, holding the overhanging ends of the steel while he cut them, and operating the tractor for our redneck steel brake.

DH had decided to bend the steel overhanging the short sides of the coop, to help weatherproof that so driving rains couldn't get under those exposed ends (he has plans for trimming out/covering the front and back ends).  Since we don't own a steel brake--or even an aluminum brake--he DIY'ed one with a chunk of oak 4"x4" and me manuevering the tractor forks to put pressure in the right spots to bend the steel.

So now the chicken coop has a new roof.  Where the metal runs in the correct direction and the seams run front to back instead of side-to-side. And water won't run off onto my head and down the collar of my jacket when I'm trying to go in or out collecting eggs and feeding and watering the chickens.

This Week At This Little Place Here

 It's been a busy week.  A good week, but a busy one.  With the exception of Cowgirl, who is but isn't one of my grandkids (it's complicated), in the past week I have seen all of my grandkids at least once.  

On Saturday, DS1 and Octavia stopped by to pick up a backpack with diapers, wipes and extra clothes that had been accidentally left here the week before.  They also brought me tomatoes from their garden, amost a half-bushel worth.

DS2 and Lucky came out on Sunday afternoon and harvested grapes, then pressed them and took the resulting mash home to make into wine.  I forgot to take pictures.

Monday was a work day, which basically means my focus is on training horses in addition to daily barn chores.  But I also cut up and packaged for the freezer a whole lot of rhubarb that DS1 had brought me the week before.  Typically rhubarb is a much earlier in the summer thing around here, but his was still doing great and hadn't gotten woody, so he brought me literally an 18 gallon tote full of rhubarb.  If I remember right, I have enough in the freezer now for four pies, three or four crisps, and several batches of muffins or rhubarb bread.  Plus I made a rhubarb crisp for dessert that night.

Tuesday was a work day, but it was also decent weather and a home football game for Toad, so I brought horses in for the night a little early and DH and I went to watch his game.  He's played rec league for the last two years, but as a 7th grader this is his first year playing middle school football.  He's the shorter player in the middle of the photo.  I'm not great at recognizing all the positions, especially for 8-man like his school plays, but I think the coach had him playing safety that night. K3, Rascal, Tractor and Octavia were there watching their brother play.

Faline is on the elementary school cheer team, and they cheered for the game that night.  Here's a picture of her.  She's a first grader this year, so also one of the smaller kids on the team.  Buck and Sixlet were also there, mimicking the cheerleaders for the most part.

Wednesday I had to adjust my schedule a little bit, and ended up not getting any horses ridden that day.  Instead, I got a call about 8:30 a.m. asking if I could go pick Rascal up from school as he was running a fever of 101+.  

So, while he slept on my couch, I made and canned tomato sauce with the roma tomatoes DS1 had given me.

I also did a little extra sewing time, and after DS1 got off work (he works first shift) and picked up Rascal, I went and did my barn chores.  Meanwhile, DD1 called and asked if I could pick up Sixlet from daycare, as she had an afterschool meeting that afternoon plus had to take Faline to dance class as soon as her meeting ended (Faline and Buck were going to afterschool care during this meeting).  Honorary Son had come home from work early and was throwing up, so he wasn't going to be able to go pick up Sixlet as he normally does after work.

Well, I couldn't do it, due to my schedule all ready having been shifted around for tending Rascal--I wouldn't be able to get stalls cleaned before feeding time, but DH's afternoon was free of meetings during that needed timeframe, so he went and got Sixlet and brought him to this little place here until dinner time, then he took him home.  So we got to have Sixlet hang out with us for a bit, and he helped me look for cucumbers in the garden.

On Thursday, I pickled the cucumbers after working horses.  I think this is the latest in the year I've ever made pickles; for whatever reason my cucumber vines have stayed very healthy this year and are still producing albeit much slower than they were in early August.

Friday (today), I am not working horses.  DD2 is coming to farm sit, and DH and I are heading off to Drummond Island, where we will be attending the wedding of a friend of DS2who has become, through the years, almost like a daughter to us.  We are hoping to do a little sight-seeing and hiking while we are there.

Tack Room Shelves

 Every project at this little place here seems (to me) to take forever from planning to execution to completion.  Well, I'm happy to say we finally crossed another one off the list.  That project being part of the overall tack room build in my barn and (almost) the final part to be done: a shelf on each of the two long walls.

This is been in the build-plan forever, if you ask me.  Although I do have to admit it wasn't until DH decided we would have a 10' high ceiling (to make it easier by just extending the walls all the way to the rafters when we built the tack room) that I knew for sure there would be room on the walls for the type of shelves I was envisioning.  That being shelves that were at least 18" deep, preferrably 24", and could hold plastic totes of various things that weren't being used on a daily or weekly basis, such as various leather goods (bridles, reins, etc.) that didn't fit any of my current horses or training clients, as well as all the various size and weights of horse turnout blankets in the warm weather months when the horses don't need to wear them.

Since I'm not the head builder, only the grunt laborer when it comes to actually constructing stuff, I had to wait for the tack room shelves to become the top of DH's personal project list once the tack room was finally enclosed. Enclosing the tack room got done close to a year ago at this point.  But, near the end of August, DH indicated that he was about ready to work on the shelves, so we went and bought the needed lumber for them.

My task, before DH built the shelves, was to stain the lumber.  Because I want it to stay fresh-wood looking and not gray over time with age.  And because I find it much neater and easier to stain wood before it's built into something or installed on the walls.

The Saturday of Labor Day weekend, DH got to work on making them into shelves.  For the first shelf, he measured and cut to length the board that was to be the back of the shelf (about 16' long), and attached the end support boards to each end of that.

Then we carefully carried it through the doorway and into the tackroom.  Each of us got on a ladder, carrying the board up with us, and attached it to the long wall, as well as attaching the end boards to the short wall on each end. I should note that before this, we had measured and snapped a chalk line onto the wall so that the shelf would be installed not just at the right height but also level.

Next came the 'front' board for the shelf, which we screwed to the two end boards, then added three support boards spaced 4' apart running between the front and back 16' boards.  Once that was done, each of the five support boards (two ends plus three in the middle) got an angled brace attaching it to the wall.

I really like how the braces turned out; I had been afraid they would extend really far down the wall and look funky.  Originally DH had planned on putting them on a 45-degree angle, but I talked him into something smaller, like 32-degrees I think.  Put that miter saw to good use, LOL!

After that we used the table saw to rip a 4' x 8' sheet of half-inch plywood in half the long way, laid the two pieces into the frame we'd just made for the shelf, and our first shelf was complete! DH even put a few things on it that had previously been taking up floor space.  The shelf worked perfectly. And it looks good too!

After a short rest break, we did the second shelf (on the opposite wall) in the same manner.

Back and end boards.

Screwing in the support boards.

The second shelf, finished.

In the week or so since finishing the shelves, I filled them up pretty well with all my totes of horse stuff that have been stacked here and there (mostly in the only unoccupied-by-a-horse stall in the barn).  I'm happy to say that, while there is still room on the shelves (YAY! who wants shelves that don't hold everything they need to?), they are much fuller than DH thought they would be.  He had wanted to do just one shelf and I kept insisting I needed two shelves.

Standing by the door, looking north toward my saddles and bridles.

Standing by my saddles, looking south.

There's still room above each of the 'boarder' saddle racks for a tote belonging to that boarder.  And on the opposite wall, there's room for me to store the stall fans once they get taken down for the winter.

I think my tack room is officially finished now, and I can do the final organization of it.  Feels so good to have this task crossed off the project list.

Sewing Stuff September 8-14

 I actually managed to allot myself 15 (and sometimes 5 more) minutes working in my sewing area the first seven days of National Sewing Month (September).  That feels good.  I feel like not only am I working on cleaning up a neglected spot in my house, but also that I'm having a little daily creative time, even if the creativity is limited to looking at sewing stuff, remembering what I made with it--or intend to make with it at some point, or stitching shut holes in various articles of clothing so they can be worn again.

Let's see if I kept up the momentum over the next seven days.

September 8, I worked on tying the fleece blanket I'd unearthed on September 6.  I got not a whole lot done, only 15 minutes to spend on that day, plus the Yarn Thief decided she needed to 'help' with the embroidery floss I was using to tie with.  Which meant battling her face and paws for who got to 'hold' the embroidery floss as I was sewing it through both layers, tying the knots, and clipping off the extra, then repeat for the next tied spot.  The battle got a little fierce, I ended up with a claw hooked on the inside of one of my finger joints, the Yarn Thief got unceremoniously dumped off the cutting table where I'd been working, and I called it quits for the night before my cat-stabbed finger bled on the fabric.

September 9, was a day of off-and-on rain showers that curtailed a lot of the outdoor plans I had (nothing 'fun', just outside chores like weeding, hanging laundry on the clothesline, etc).  So I used that excuse to spend a little extra time in the sewing area.  I tied that fleece blanket a little more, but also starting hauling some things I'm giving away--that have been dumped in the sewing area--upstairs to get rid of.

September 10, gathered up some more stuff to get rid of, and did some tying on the fleece blanket.  At this point, I have used up an entire skein of black embroidery floss.  But, that's good because I have a whole bunch of off-brand embroidery floss Mother-in-Law sent me years ago that I don't intend to use for charted cross stitch type things where color consistency is important.  So tying the blanket is a great use for it; and now my sewing area is one skein of embroidery floss less cluttered.  LOL.

September 11, I hauled the rest of the get-rid-of-it stuff upstairs, and finished tying the fleece blanket!  Yahoo!  At that point, I hoped to get it stitched around the edges over the weekend and call it done.

September 12, I spent about an hour in the sewing area, and finished the fleece blanket!  I stitched all four sides about 3" from the edge, then cut fringe in the unsewn parts.  One side was all ready tied from DD2 working on it, and some of the 'fringe' that is the ties had broken off, but whatever.  My fringe sort of matches that fringe, albeit left not tied.  This is a case where I am accepting Finished Is Better Than Perfect as my motto.  

September 13, I cleaned up the cutting table from trimming the edges of the fleece blanket; it had shed a lot of black fuzz (no wonder it was the black fringes that kept breaking off when DD2 had tried to tie them in knots, the fleece was almost brittle strings compared to the more 'felted' construction of the pink fleece that is the other fabric used).  And then, I decided to dive into a brand new project!  

I had purchased a quilt kit sometime in 2025, the first ever quilt kit I've bought (the far majority of my quilts have started in my head, gotten sketched on graph paper and then fabric 'found' for them)--it had all fabrics needed plus the pattern instructions.  When I bought it, my intent was to sew it up that summer and have it for either a fall throw quilt or put a hanging sleeve on the back side and use it as a seasonal wall hanging in the mudroom (where my "Memories" quilt has hung since May of 2012).  Of course, life got in the way and that didn't happen.

Well, now that my sewing area was clean enough to use again, and I'd rediscovered that quilt kit still in it's wrapper, I made the decision to indulge myself in sewing it.  So, on the 13th I opened the kit, sorted the fabrics, read the instructions, and cut two of the fabrics as directed in the pattern.

September 14, I cut the rest of the brown squares needed for the quilt.

I am loving this momentum and can't wait to spent another week down in the sewing area in daily small pieces of time.

A Long Time Coming

 Lookee what I got!

I finally, after 23 years, have a bench in my mudroom that seats two adults (or four small grandchildren) for putting on and taking off footwear!  This is something I've been wanting, and from time to time keeping an eye out to purchase, for literally decades.

Initially, DH didn't want me to buy one because he was going to make one.  I honestly believe, in 2003, when we were finishing up the house at this little place here enough to get our occupancy permit, that he did have the best intentions on building a bench.  Temporarily, we had two plastic lawn chairs (you know, the white kind that was so popular in the early 2000s) there in the fall and winter.  

Maybe they were actually there longer, as I don't remember what came between them and the small, narrow, not very heavy duty, more decorative than useful, bench that I found at Goodwill around about 2006 or so and stuck in my mudroom.  Yeah, 2006 and DH hadn't had time yet to make me that bench he intended to make.

That little bench stayed in the mudroom until about 2016 when it started to pop apart in places because it really wasn't intended for large adult men to sit on.  I banged those joints back together and moved it to near my front door, where it stayed until around 2019 when I gave it to DD1 for her house.

Next in the mudroom were two 'extra' wooden dining chairs as we had bought six new ones for our dining room table because three of the original six had broken by that point.  It made sense to stick two in the mudroom for everyday use putting on and taking off your shoes, plus they'd be handy when we needed to seat extra people at the table.

At some point, one of the chairs started to deteriorate in strength, and we strapped a booster seat for a grandchild on it to ensure that someone lightweight used it for family meal gatherings.  Which left just one chair in the mudroom.

Yeah, post-2016, DH still had not gotten around to making that bench.  In his defense, from 2014 through Covid 2020 his work schedule was horrendous and I think in many ways both of us were just trying to keep up on the basics (him working 60 or more hours each week, plus work travel, and me trying to work plus do my chores plus take up the slack on the most important chores of his).  Nevertheless, time went by and no custom made by DH bench ever happened.

Fast forward to now.  I happened to be heading out in my trusty rusty Suburban to go run some errands (because one of the errands possibly entailed needing more trunk space than Sweet Madame Blue has) and saw, two miles down the road, a sign for a garage sale.  It happened to be at the house of someone I used to know pretty well; the mom of a friend and softball teammate of DD1 throughout high school. So I pulled in her driveway, partly to see what she was selling and partly just to say hi.

Long story short, after talking to her a bit and finding out how all three of her (now adult) kids were doing (as well as how many grandkids she has), I looked through her sale offerings and I saw this bench!

It's sturdy!  It's big enough for two adults!  It's solid wood!  And the price was very right.  So I told her I couldn't live without it, handed her some cash, put it into the back of the Suburban (yay, cargo space!) and brought it home.

It's going to live in my mudroom forever because this is what I've been wanting and waiting for.  (Unless, of course, in retirement, DH becomes a furniture maker, in which case I will gladly swap it out for a DH-made bench of similar size and styling.  Because now that I've acquired what I've waited 23 years for, an oak--or pine--plank on plank-width legs with no back [his original homemade mudroom bench idea] is not going to do.)

I Canned Them 'Maters

 Last week, I canned the half-bushel of tomatoes that DH had brought home from his run up north with the borrowed truck.  Did I have room in my schedule to can tomatoes?  No, not really.  But here they were, and they only stay good for so long.

So, after getting two horses worked one morning, I spent the next roughly six hours canning tomatoes all by my lonesome (DH was working in-office that day).  Would it have gone faster if I had had a helper?  Not that much.  Most of the time factor was because each canner load takes 40 (pints) to 45 (quarts) minutes to process after the canner comes to a rolling boil.  With 6 quarts and 14 pints to put up, that meant three canner loads.*

Why did I not do all the tomatoes in quart jars and cut down to two loads instead of three?  Because, with just DH and I here, there's only a few recipes I make that require an entire quart of tomatoes anymore. I would rather take an extra hour-ish to do a second canner load of pints than, throughout the coming year, have multiple times where I have a half-jar of tomatoes that is opened and needs to be incorporated into a meal in the next few days before it goes bad.  

Invested time now saves me from potentially wasting time and food later if I have opened jars of tomatoes that don't get eaten soon enough and have to be thrown out. That would waste the time I spent now canning them, plus half a jar of tomatoes.  Hence many more pints than quarts got canned.

*The rack in my canner can easily fit seven pint jars at a time.  Quart jars, sort of, if they are the narrower kind and not the fat-round type.