I forgot to mention that I practiced the piano a lot.

Well, here's some news!  The kitten, whose name is Smudge, by the way, let me pet her!  I went down to the laundry room to feed her and she led the way, running in front of me and looking back over her shoulder to make sure I was following, and then she waited while I scraped the wet food out of the can, and then she just kept sticking her head toward me, but pulling it back when I tried to touch her, and finally she let me pet her!


She rolled around on the floor, making sure that I petted her all over, and then I walked away to scoop the litter box and do some laundry, and she just ate her food.  So there you go.  We're making progress.  Some day maybe she will come upstairs and sit on the couch, and one day maybe she and Oakley will peacefully sleep together on the end of my bed.


What I'm reading today:


Dr McDougall's Program for Maximum Weight Loss, by John A. McDougall.  It's another in a series of books I'm reading about how to follow a plant-based diet.


Also, because I can't just read non-fiction, I'm reading Lord Reginald, by Mary Kingswood, which I was told is very much like Georgette Heyer, and it is, so even though there is no murder, I'm still reading it.


What I'm knitting today:


I'm knitting a pair of socks for Paula, using some Opal in one of the Feen and Elven colors (Fairies and Elves).  It's a lovely denim-y mix of blues.  Very soothing.


Today was Maddy's piano lesson day, and she had a very good lesson.  Next Monday I will start taking lessons from this teacher also.  She's a knitter, and a home-schooling mom, so I know her from knitting and Carolyn knows her from home-school group.


It's been really hot for the last week, and there is no air-conditioning in the elementary schools (but there is in my house - yay!), so Maddy says it has been miserable.  It's supposed to cool down tomorrow, so that will be nice for her.

It's like a nightmare and I can't wake up.

Original date of this post is May 31, 2017


So Scott fell off the ladder on Saturday about noon, and here we are 4 days later, and he's in the ICU at the hospital in Rockford. We go there every day, sometimes Carolyn goes more than once, and we're trying to hold it together, and we're praying for a miracle. And we're waiting. It's horrible. I hate waiting under the best of circumstances and this is so far from the best, you can't even see the best with binoculars.


And now it is today, September 24, 2017.

It's been four months since Scott's accident, and I said right from the start that I was going to pray for a miracle, and that we would have a miracle, and that is totally what we got. We had people all over the world praying for Scott's recovery, and after two months in three hospitals, he has had an almost complete recovery, and we are fully expecting the recovery to go on until he is completely Scott again.

He's got a plate in his head where a piece of his skull had to be removed to allow for the brain to swell, and to drain the blood from the intracranial bleed. He had a Pneumothorax caused by a broken rib, he had tubes here, there and everywhere, and he spent several weeks unable to communicate. Now he is doing beautifully, and he is expecting to go back to work at his same job at the beginning of November. He is going to be able to drive again in another week, and he's looking forward to that. His speech is good, but he has some minor memory gaps, and sometimes his thinking goes way out into some weirdnesses, but he is still recovering, and he will continue to improve.

In other news:

Maddy is going to public school instead of home-schooling with Carolyn and the boys. Back in the summer when we didn't know how Scott would be doing in the Fall, Rachel decided it would take some of the burden off of Carolyn if Maddy went to public school. Ash started working full-time with Rich, and Maddy needed some kind of day care during the summer, so we enrolled her in the Discovery Day Camp at the YMCA. She enjoyed it and is looking forward to going back next summer. She enjoyed it so much that Carl and Soren wished they could go to Day Camp, too! When it was almost time for school to start, Scott was home from the hospital, but it still seemed like a good idea for Maddy to not be in home-school, so that things would be easier for Carolyn. So we shopped for uniforms and school supplies, and Maddy is enrolled in her neighborhood elementary school, in the Second grade! It's going well so far.

Last week we started noticing that we had a lot of wasps around the dining room windows, and also they were sneaking into the house, so Rich has tried spraying them with wasp killer, but it's not working enough! We have an exterminator coming on Tuesday. I can't wait, because it's just getting so waspy at my house! Today after church I came home and there were at least 10 of them in the kitchen, flying around the sink and harassing me! I killed about 10 of them, and then took my sandwich upstairs to eat in my bedroom with the door closed. There were four dead wasps on the floor by the stairs, so I had to clean those up before I went upstairs. Eek!

What else is going on? Well, we finally had air-conditioning installed in our hundred-year-old house, and that is just lovely. Rich still grumbles that we don't need it, but he turns it on sometimes, too.

We got a kitten to be a companion to the dog, but the kitten is so shy that we've hardly seen her since we brought her home three weeks ago. She is starting to allow me to see her around feeding time, so eventually she will probably be a normal pet. Rich says she's defective.

What I'm knitting today? It's hats and mittens for schoolchildren again. I made a LOT of hats and mittens last year and gave them to my friend Shelley to take to the elementary school where she works, to give to kids who needed them. This year I'm planning to takea bagful of them to the school Maddy attends.

What I'm reading today? I'm not sure yet. I finished a pretty good book yesterday called Between a Rock and a Hard Place, by Marty Wingate. It was a cozy mystery with a lot of gardening and botany in it. I really enjoyed it. I haven't decided on my next book, but I'll find something tonight and report back on it later.

While You Were Sleeping

So Saturday morning at 7 a.m., Rachel dropped off Maddy to visit me for a couple of hours so she and Ash could do a 5K run/walk. Maddy and I watched some cartoons and nibbled a little bit of breakfast, and then her mom and dad came back and we all went out for a real breakfast at a restaurant. Rachel and Ash needed to eat after their athletic activity and Maddy and I just wanted some bacon!

I went back home after that, and then Scott and Ash showed up to borrow the expanding ladder out of the garage so Scott could take out his storm windows, and they noticed the box by the front door containing the parts for a bidet that I ordered from Amazon, and they decided that would be a brisk little job, so they went upstairs and installed the bidet attachment to my toilet in less than 30 minutes, then they took the ladder and left.

I went upstairs to admire my bidet and try it out (cold water! Wooo!) and then I gave the toilet a good scrubbing, using a pumice stone on the hard water stains, and was giving it a final rinse, when my phone rang. I rinsed my hands and answered the phone call, and it was Carolyn's mother. She said that Scott had fallen off of the ladder while taking out storm windows and was on his way to the hospital by ambulance! What?!? He was just here! Installing stuff!

I grabbed my purse and was out the door before I even hung up the phone, and as I drove the hospital, which is about 4 blocks down my street, Rachel called. She said what they needed me to do was to go to the house to stay with the kids, while she and Ash went to meet Carolyn at the hospital. She said she'd been trying to call someone to help Ash give Scott a priesthood blessing, but no one was home, and who could she call? I told her to call Brother McDonald, who is the father of Scott's best friend from school, and then I drove past the hospital and on toward Scott's house.

When I was at the corner stoplight, I saw the ambulance coming wailing up the street, lights flashing, and oh my goodness, it was horrible! I called Rich from my cell phone (he had gone in to work for a half-day), and I couldn't even talk. I said, "Rich! Rich! Rich! Rich!" and finally I was able to tell him what was happening, and he said he was leaving right away!

I went to Scott's house, and Rachel was still there. She had sent Ash ahead to meet Bro. McDonald at the hospital, so they could get to Scott as soon as they could. She said that the boys were next door at the neighbor's house, and then she left, and Maddy stayed there with me. I walked next door, but they don't speak English, and the father of the family and the grandfather were sitting on the front steps looking grim. They gestured for me to go in, and the kids were in the house watching cartoons in the living room with the two little boys that live there. The children's grandma came out from the kitchen and indicated that she was going to feed the kids lunch, so it must have been right around noon when this all happened. I nodded yes, they could stay to eat, and I told the boys to come to Maddy's house after lunch.

So Maddy and I went back to her house, and she played a video game, and I sat in the big chair, texting people and freaking out. Rachel called and said that Scott was going to a hospital in Rockford by helicopter, and that she and Ash and Rich were going to take Carolyn to Rockford in their car. Rich was going with them so there would be two priesthood holders there in case they needed to give him another blessing. Carolyn's mother called and said they were going to drive here from where they live, and would be here in about 9 hours, and I was so glad to hear it, because we needed more adults to take care of the kids, and also her dad is a doctor and her mom is a nurse, and they would be able to help us understand what was going on, as well as being here to comfort Carolyn.

So the boys came to Maddy's house after lunch, all of them barefoot, and they watched Maddy play a video game and I continued to monitor the phone as they reported from the hospital that Scott was going to surgery to relieve the pressure on his brain from the bleeding inside his skull, and OMG, I can't even tell you how horrible it all was! I have to take a break here.

This one is for my friend Sheila.

Rachel comes to my house on Monday and Tuesday to take the dog for a midday walk while I'm sleeping (Scott walks the dog on Wednesday and Thursday), and sometimes when I wake up, I find that she has made dinner in the slowcooker and the house smells like delicious food! Here is the recipe for Rachel's Slowcooker Beef Stew, with only 5 ingredients!

1-2 lbs of stew beef, cut into one inch-ish chunks, or just leave them big, like Rachel does! We usually use 2 lbs, because we like a lot of meat. You can even use frozen, straight from the freezer!

Half a bag of baby carrots, or you can cut up a couple of big carrots into chunks. No need to peel them!


2-4 potatoes, depending on the size and how much you love potatoes. Peel (or not) and cut into biggish chunks. If you're using thin-skinned Yukon Gold potatoes or any kind of fingerlings, you don't need to peel them. Also? If you use fingerling potatoes, you don't need to do much chopping.

One small onion, chopped.

2 Tbs of Beef stock powder (I use Orrington Farms Broth Base and Seasoning) or a couple of boullion cubes.

4 cups of water

Some salt and pepper, which doesn't count in the number of ingredients, because bitch, please.

That's it! That's the whole recipe, and I know there are six ingredients, but one of them is WATER, so it doesn't count. You know you've got water in your kitchen. (If you don't, you have bigger problems than what I can solve with a Beef Stew recipe!)

Set it on Low, and let it cook all day while you're at work. If you have a timer on your slowcooker, set it for eight hours. If you are starting this in the middle of the day, like Rachel does at my house, set the slowcooker on High, and let it cook for 5 hours.

One half-hour before you are ready to serve this, mix 2 Tbs of Corn Starch with a half cup of cold water, and stir into the mixture. Let it bubble and thicken the stew while you change into your pajamas and turn on the TV, then eat a big bowl of stew with some buttered toast while you sit on the couch and watch Netflix.

You're welcome.

In which I knit four mittens, but only have a pair.

My friend Paula is a knitter, but we don't make the same kinds of things, so sometimes she pays me to make socks for her, and she buys lovely yarns for me to knit with, and this time she asked me to make a pair of mittens for her to give to a friend. She brought some Donegal yarn in a speckly gray, which is very nice looking, and it's okay to work with, not that great, really, because it's kind of lumpy instead of smooth.

So I made the first mitten, but it was too small. It fit my hand snugly, but it needed to be a size bigger, so I ripped it back and reknit the mitten in a bigger size, but I couldn't find my good mitten needles, so I was using a set of cheap bamboo needles. I finished mitten #1, except for the thumb, because I leave them for last, and then last night I went to the yarn shop for Knit Night with Paula, just to get out of the house because I hate being home right now (the Homeless are still there), and while I was at the yarn shop, I bought a lovely set of carbon needles and cast on for the second mitten. I finished the second mitten at work last night, and when it was done, I put it on, and it wasn't right. It wasn't big enough, even though I had made the bigger size. It was because I wasn't using the same needles! So tonight I ripped that mitten out and I'm reknitting it on the cheap bamboo needles. I'm a little tired of these needles.

What I'm reading tonight:

I'm reading Bet Me, by Jennifer Crusie. I love her books, even though they are mostly not mysteries, she writes mostly romance novels, but they are so very entertaining that I don't even care, although usually I avoid romance novels like I avoid musical theater. My favorite book of hers is Maybe This Time, which is based on The Turn of the Screw, and I played the audiobook in the car for Rich and I when we went to Michigan a couple of weeks ago, and then last week I was re-reading Faking It, which is a mystery (!) about art theft (sort of), and then I still wanted to read her books so I'm reading Bet Me. And it's making me want to eat Chicken Marsala.

What I cooked today:

Because I have the Homeless staying with me, I have to make dinner every freaking night, because otherwise they don't know what to eat, so I have been slaving cooking every night. Every. Night. Tonight I made Shepherd's Pie. It was good, I like it, but I am so tired of all the cooking. The night before I made Beef Stroganoff in the crockpot, from a very simple recipe that Sheila gave me, and it was so delicious! Surprisingly, there were leftovers (because the Homeless eat a lot, and don't even get me started on how much milk they drink), so when Rachel came to walk the dog at lunchtime, she ate some of it, and she loved it, too!

And I practiced the piano:

I was down to a half gallon of milk after I made the mashed potatoes for the Shepherd's Pie (see above about how much milk the Homeless drink), and RA is thoughtlessly out of town in Arizona, visiting her Crazy Sister, so I have no one to go shopping with, so I called Rachel to see if she would go to the store with me after Maddy went to bed, and she said she would, and did I want to come to the church and wait for her while she presided over the Young Women? So I packed my piano books in a bag, and went to the church and practiced the piano for about an hour and a half on the beautiful grand piano in the chapel! It was fun!

Another quiet night at work.

We went to Michigan over the weekend.  It was a quick trip from Friday to Sunday, with our good dogsitter at the house with Oakley, and the Homeless went to RA's for the weekend. 


Rich and Kim spent Saturday at the RV and Camper show in Novi, and I went shopping with Sheila.  It was so relaxing and fun.  We went to a couple of craft supply stores, and to Joann Fabrics, and in between the shopping, we did some eating, so you know, shopping and eating, what's better than that?


Sheila took me out to see the property in Dexter where she is having a small house built, on a lot next door to her sister.  The property is beautiful, full of old pines, and her sister's house was great.  I loved it!  I took a picture of the faucet in the downstairs bathroom, that's how pretty it was!


While we were gone, my next door neighbor dropped off a big bag of yarn in pastel colors that she says she bought to make baby afghans, but she's over making afghans now, and she thought I could do something with the yarn.  Well, I sure can! 


I also bought a little bit of yarn while I was shopping with Sheila on Saturday, so I've got a good start on making some things for the new baby!  I started an Auntie's Afghan for the new baby with some lovely blue acrylic (washable!) that I bought on the trip.

So tonight I'm back at work, reading The Cat Who Played Brahms and starting the baby afghan. Ah, so quiet and pleasant, and not in a house full of the Homelsss. I like being at home less and less with those two in the house, but we are definitely moving toward them leaving. It's been almost two months since they came, and I hope I won't be suffering from PTSD when they go.

Glaciers melting in the dead of night.

So, just in case you've been wondering, I still have the Homeless pair, mother and son, living with me, and also?  I'm looking forward to when they leave.  I'm planning on them being gone by the end of February, so let's keep that happy goal in mind.


I'm at work, with a bag of snacks, and that includes a bag of salted caramels, which are not as good as you'd think, since they are SALTED.  I'm not a huge fan.  But I have a Diet Pepsi to wash them down with, so that's a good thing.


This weekend Rich and I are going out of town to visit his parents and Kim, and it's going to be lovely.  I'm going to spend some time with Sheila, and not with my houseguests, so yay.  The dogsitter will be at my house, so the Homeless are going to RA's for the weekend.  We just don't feel comfortable about the Homeless taking care of our dog while we're gone.


What I'm knitting now:  I just finished an angora scarf for RA, that I knitted with angora yarn that she picked out and paid for.  It was shedding like crazy, so I put it in the freezer, because I've heard that freezing the yarn cuts down on the shedding, and that might be true.  I left it in the freezer for a couple of days, which resulted in some funny looks from people in my house who needed something from the freezer.  Anyway, I finished that, and now I'm making a hat from the Lowlands pattern, and I'm using angora again!  It's a ball of lovely dark blue handpainted angora that I bought at the Saline Fiber Fair when we were there in October.  Oh, and that scarf?  I used a pattern from Purl Soho that made a lovely ribbed scarf with no purling!  It was great, and I would like to make another one, with yarn that is pleasanter to work with.


What I'm reading now: An Uncollected Death by Meg Wolfe.  I'm really enjoying it - she's a good writer.  I told Kim I would do the first editing of her third book while she works on rewriting the second book, but neither of us is doing any work on her books.  We are slackers.


What I'm cooking:  Today I made beef stew in the crockpot and it was wonderful!  It made a lot, and was so good.  Rachel stopped by tonight on her way home from her YW program and finished it off while we discussed the program.  I've been cooking a lot more than usual and making casseroles and crockpot (one pot) meals, because I'm feeding the Homeless.  Usually, I cook once or twice a week, and Rich and I just forage in the kitchen for whatever we want on the other nights, but since I've got these people, I feel like I have to feed them.  Ugh.


Looking forward to having the house to ourselves.