Musical Chairs, Oz, and Cheerios

I've been paying homeowner's dues here since 2000, and it's only been in the last few months that I've actually taken part in any activities. I've never been in the pool, never used the tennis courts, never had family members use the playground. I did rent the clubhouse for my daughter's baby shower, but since I had to pay a fee to use it, I didn't look at that as a perk of my homeowner's dues, not really. So when we started playing cards at the clubhouse, I figured maybe I'm reaping some benefit of all those dollars.
Well, we had glass top tables and some pretty comfortable dining chairs, and that's what we've been using for cards. Our president decided that we really shouldn't be using those tables for our card-playing group, and she got WalMart card tables and folding chairs.
Well, I don't care what kind of table I sit at to play cards, but I'm pretty picky about what kind of chair I'm going to sit three hours straight in, and the new chairs suck. Some of the others figured that out pretty quickly, too, and so when we arrive to play, there was some musical chairs, or shifting of chairs. Last night our dear homeowner's president (drippy sarcasm there) announced that we must use the folding chairs and not the dining chairs, because the dining chairs are fragile. One lady immediately stood up to her and said she could not sit in the folding chairs because the seat was too short and they were uncomfortable. Pres lady said they are not shorter, etc..and on it went. So Pres lady leaves and chairs start moving all over the place. Seems no one wants her to tell them where they can sit. I can feel a fight coming on.
I don't like fights, and I don't like arguing, but I doubt this one can be avoided. I sat there last night thinking I probably won't get to play cards much longer, because I don't want to be there when the darts start flying. (Now as for me, I'm sitting there last night thinking what chair I can bring from home to avoid the whole question of which of the clubhouse chairs to use)
My question is, since I pay dues, and that means I own as much a chunk of those chairs as Pres lady, who is she to say what chairs we use. And if the dining chairs are fragile, what is she saving them for? Someone to rent the clubhouse only to have their guests dumped in the floor when the back breaks off the chair?
None of this may sound that interesting, but hey, it's the most excitement I've had around here in awhile.
So Dr Oz was on the View yesterday, saying we should all be prepared with food and water to be quarantined in our homes in case the Swine Flu gets out of control. My husband said he thought he'd run by the grocery and buy a little extra food to tuck away. He brings home three boxes of Honey Nut Cheerios and six cans of Mini Ravioli.
ha. I swear that's what he bought. And no milk for the cereal.
I figured out why I don't get much done in my house. It's because I'm addicted to tv and my computer. I decided to get up in the morning and check email, then turn off both until noon. I've managed to throw out three garbage bags of unwanted stuff and clean (and I mean CLEAN) two rooms, ceiling to floors and everything in between. And that's just yesterday and today.
At noon, I make lunch and watch All My Children. Then I get busy again. My house smells like Pine-sol. (NO, not the lemon kind!) I figure if I keep this up, I'll have the whole downstairs decluttered in two or three weeks. Now if I can just figure out how to keep my husband from going through the garbage bags. Maybe I can just distract him with some cheerios.

50's Chicks, Baby Chicks

I found this blog where a lady is living as if she is in 1955, dressing, using vintage appliances, avoiding all radio or television after 1955, etc. She's doing it for the whole year, and other than the posting on the computer (which her readers supported!) she's being authentic. I'm sure there will be a book forthcoming from this at some time, but I think it's a fascinating idea. For one thing, I recognize so many of the things she is using, the patterns she is sewing with, the vintage frig she bought, the dishes. She's the one who tipped me off to the rip off with lemon Pine-sol.

I think I would make a great fifties housewife. I like cooking, cleaning, laundry. I don't mind staying home all day. I like fifties television and cookbooks. I even think the clothes and hairstyles are so cute.

We drove out to see my dad the other day. He was having a good day and even recognized my husband by name. My step-mom was at church, so he was able to talk to us freely, and his number one topic was my mom. He asked about her several times, how she is, does she live alone, etc. My mom has said if my step-mom dies before he does, she will go out and marry him again. At first, we thought she was kidding, but she's repeated it so many times, we have concluded she's serious. And from the way he talked, he'd have her back in a heartbeat.

He also talked a lot about visiting his funeral plots and having all his arrangements in place. That worried me and I thought about that a lot after I got home. I hope he's not trying to tell us he hasn't got much longer, because he's been doing so much better lately.

He also said one of his hens hid her nest so they couldn't find the eggs, and has hatched ten baby chicks. He put her and her chicks up so they could stay warm, and seemed excited by them, but angry at her for hiding those eggs.

The spaghetti sauce I made the other day from my ex's ex's recipe had too much red pepper flakes in it. I should have known better when I read how much....But, we've decided with a few tweaks, it could be a very good sauce, so I'm not giving up on it yet.

I made a cheese strata to take to card playing yesterday. It turned out well.
I bought some cute chicken recipe cards and a big wooden roll-top recipe box, and I'm redoing my old recipes for it. I like handwritten recipes, and have kept a box for most of my married life, but my box got too full and was bulging. I'm having a good time remembering recipes, ones I received from old friends and boyfriends (One said, "This is my mom's chocolate cake and fudge icing recipe. She doesn't share it with anyone, so I had to beg her to email it to me. When you meet her, don't tell her I shared it with you or she will kill me.")

I have one dear recipe I got from a older Southern lady, handwritten. She was telling me how to make good fried okra. She began, "I fry my OKREY a little at a time." There is a recipe for brownies from my childhood playmate's mom. A recipe handwritten by my daughter when she was eleven or twelve called "Do-Do Cookies". My boys giggled all the time about that one, but loved those chocolate, oatmeal bites that looked like do-do. I'm having a lot of fun.

I have my grandmother's formica top table with the chrome band edging, and red and green flowers, and her icy green chrome chairs in my upstairs bedroom. I have decided to bring them down and use them. A few of the seats are split, and since I'd never find this green ice vinyl to cover them in that looks authentic, I'm thinking of clear tape, duct tape, something. Any ideas? I can put those chairs at the back, and maybe even make some skirts for the seats or something. I loved that table. It was always the one my grandma used. I should be using it instead of hiding it away in the attic.
I'll post a picture of it soon.

And Another Thing....

Another thing..this time about PINE-SOL. Both my grandmothers used Pine-Sol to clean their bathrooms, mop, and whatever else needed disinfecting in their homes. I grew up thinking Pine-Sol equals clean. I even know one woman who doesn't clean but just pours some Pine-Sol in her toilets when company is coming so they THINK she cleans. ha.
Well, I found out none of the scented Pine-Sol, including lemon which I switched to some years ago, have any pine oil in them, therefore having no disinfecting quality whatsoever. So it basically just takes the germs, mixes them around on the surface, and makes 'em smell like lemons.

Paper Towel Saga Part 2

Hi Kathy,

We appreciate your feedback about the change in the number of sheets in some of
our Bounty packages.

We try to keep our manufacturing costs as low as possible so we can offer our
Bounty towels at an affordable price. Sometimes, though, costs of ingredients
or packaging materials increase, and we're faced with a tough decision.

We can either raise the price of our towels, or we can change the amount in the
package, as we did in this case. I’ll share your comments with the rest of the
Bounty team.

Thanks for writing.

Barb
Bounty Team

Incredibly Shrinking Paper Towels

What the heck happened to my paper towels???!!! I've bought Brawny paper towels for years-- big, soft, fluffy rolls of Brawny. This week I went to the grocery and my Brawny rolls have shrunk by half, they should be called the Un-Brawny. I started looking at other brands, after years of being a Brawny customer, and you know what? They've shrunk, too. Scott towels are weasly looking rolls, Bounty is not bounty anymore but more like the 90 lb weakling at the beach. I was so frustrated, not just because I would have to buy two rolls now to do what one used to do, but because my soft, swiggisy rolls of paper towels now feel like skinny bricks.
So this tells you how small the circle of my life is. Other people are complaining about the stock market and I'm complaining about my paper towels. Not only am I complaining on my blog. I wrote the Brawny folks.

So I was talking to my friend, Dawn, and as she always jumps on my soapbox with me (what are friends for?) she started on washing machines. She said, "Don't you remember when you used to buy a washing machine or refrigerator and you knew you'd have that sucker 20 years or more until you finally just had to have a more modern-looking one. But that refrigerator would not die, oh no, it would still work just fine. With strong medal shelves (NO PLASTIC) and a solid sounding door. No more. Now they are hunk of junks that last five years tops, if you're lucky." With my refrigerator making this weird clunking every time the ice maker comes on, I thought maybe paper towels aren't going to be the worse thing I have to deal with...

Then I said it. I couldn't believe it when it came out of my mouth....."They just don't make things like they used to." And immediately I saw my grandmother saying it, my grandfather, my dad. Why is American junking down on what we sell? And why do I sound like old people?

TARGET is the DEVIL !!

I got into a tussel with Target. The store here had a sewing machine on display with a price of $49.99, a Singer. I thought it sounded too good to be true, so I got an employee to come check. He scanned it and said no, that's their regular price, and although they are out of them right now, they do have some more coming in, or he can check other nearby stores. I said, "That's not a sale price? Do I need a raincheck?" "No, that's our regular price for that machine."

Ok, sounded good to me. He checked the store in Huntsville, and they had two. He asked them to hold me one. (You know where this is going, don't you?) So I sent hubby by there after work, they ring it up, and it says $299. So they called the store here and then tell us that it's our store's closeout price, but they are not closing it out at their store, so it's three hundred bucks.

I was very upset, but hubby did not want to argue with them so he left. He did stop by the store here and let the manager know how upset I was, but all he said was he would find out why the employee told me that (don't think he believed us) but his hands were tied. I swore I'd never go to Target again, but of course I will. How can you NOT go to Target?

No, I didn't really need a new sewing machine, but my old one needs repairing (my daughter is using the embroidery machine) and I figured if I could get one for that price, it would be cheaper than a repair. It all worked out, as I ended up finding a great deal on one from Amazon and used my gift certificate, so it ended well, despite Target.

My son got the job he'd been interviewing for in Huntsville. He was concerned because his third interview didn't go as well as the first two, but he got an offer. He starts a week from Monday. He's so excited; he went out and bought a new razor. ha.

I made Madeleine's today. I even bought the little shell-shaped tin to make them in. Very good to eat, very bad for a diet. I was just trying out a batch so I could make them for our card players Monday night.



Tomorrow I'm making a big batch of spaghetti sauce by my ex's ex-wife's recipe. (Following that?) All the time we were married, which wasn't long, either time (married him twice, confused yet?) he raved about this sauce, best he'd ever had. So I got him to ask his daughter to ask her mom for the recipe for HIM (she wouldn't have given it to me) and I've had it ever since. I never tried it. Ran across the recipe this week when I was sorting through some old papers copying recipes for my recipe box, and I decided to try it. It has a lot of spices in it, so who knows how it will turn out. Nothing like experimenting on my hubby and son. Neither complains, as long as it's edible.

Home Again

My son and I arrived home last Friday after eight days on the road. We drove from Seattle down to Bakersfield, CA and then across Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee and then to Alabama. We went through California because this time of year, it's not easy to find all the roads open through the Rockies. We had to load the UHaul trailer. He had moved all of his heavy furniture into a storage unit, but had not packed any of his kitchen, baths, closets, etc, so had tons of boxes still to be loaded (and he lived on the third floor).
There were times both he and I were ready to give up. Taking the stairs that many times was killing us, we were both exhausted, and there seemed to be no end in sight. Add to that the fact that the landlord's husband came by while we were still loading the trailer to "inspect" the apartment. He kept walking around saying he "couldn't see the carpet because of the boxes." Well, duh. We finally convinced him to come back the next morning so we could have everything out.
My son had a huge deposit, so he's hoping he gets it all back. He was super careful with the apartment.
We figured out quickly on the road that we could not drive above 45-50 with the trailer before it began to fishtail all over the road, even though we did our best to distribute the weight on the wheels, and we put all the heavy weight on the hitch. So it was a long, slow trip.
We were exhausted when we got home, but it was a good trip. We saw the Grand Canyon, the Sequoias, Meteor Crater and The Mystery Spot. We had a long time to talk, and did very little arguing. He was a very easy person to travel with.
We had one bad motel experience (when he found a clean pillowcase over a bloody pillow!) and after that, we got a lot more careful about where we stayed. I came home even more of a germ-a-phobe than I was when I left.
When I got home, I had a new living room floor waiting. Yes, folks, after all that time of griping about hating my living room carpet, it's gone! I have a Trafficmaster Allure Oak floor, and I love it. The boy that helped my husband put it down said it was a horror to put down, though. I was hoping to get it throughout the house sooner or later, but I guess I'll have to be happy with the living room and hall for now. I really like it.
We are going to the Baptist church near our house for Sunday School and church. The lady who teaches my Sunday School class is also one of our neighbors and plays cards with us, as does her husband who is my husband's SS teacher. We have a big class, mostly women older than me, a truly senior class. Each week I go, I leave angry. This week, the lesson was about how to be saved and how there is only one way. I know how Baptist's believe, so I was not surprised by the lesson, even though I have broader ideas of God's mercy. But during class, they began to talk about Judaism, and how the Jews still take sacrifices to the temple every Sunday (what?), how there are a lot of stereotypes about Jews (then the Jew jokes came in, but only as an example of what we should not say, of course.....). Then they switched to Mexicans, Buddists, on and on. Basically how they feel uncomfortable around those foreign poor, misguided people who don't know the truth, or are different from us in other ways.
By the time class was over, I was exhausted, mostly because my emotions were raging and I kept my mouth shut. (I've seen people try to disagree with this teacher and it wasn't pretty.) I asked my husband if we could go home and just skip church, and we did. Then I came home and started wondering why it is that I seem all gung-ho on going to church when I start; then I always start finding things I don't like until I end up quitting completely. Of course, I figured the problem has to be with me, as nothing could possibly be wrong with the SS teacher, as everyone just loves her.
Then I tried to think last night where I feel comfortable with God and religion. It was standing underneath one of the Sequoias, looking into the Grand Canyon, watching a mother with her baby, holding a newborn puppy. That's when I feel God and when I feel closest to God. I don't feel him at all in that church building where we go. I can't seem to box up my image of God into a neat little package like they do at church. I feel "different" which is uncomfortable for me.
Ok, I used this post to vent, because this has been bugging me. Is it me? Is it them? My husband doesn't agree with everything they say, but has not problem going along. I am not good at going along with things I don't agree with.
Well, I'm glad to be home. My daughter and grandbaby are coming up next week. I can't wait to see them. So far, it's been a good year.