Back in Tennessee

I’m back in Tennessee.  It was an eventful trip.  While I was in Alaska, my father passed away.  While it was expected, it was still hard.  I was grateful to be there and be able to say goodbye though.  I did get to see many friends who stopped by to pay condolences.  One friend, a chef-and quite a good one at that, stopped by for dinner.  I had marinated steaks all day from a recipe on the internet that promised the “very best steaks on the planet” and then found out when I was about to cook them, we didn’t have any propane for the grill.  I ended up cooking them on a George Forman Grill.  They turned out all right, but it is very intimidating cooking for a chef.  The weather there was said to be one of the coldest springs for Alaska and I believed it.  It actually snowed the second week in May-not just a light sprinkling, but a full-blown snow storm.  It was very disheartening as I was looking forward to spring.

The trip home was a disaster, which was also expected.  Of course, I packed too many clothes in the first place.  I didn’t need quite so many since I spent the majority of my time in my pajamas–as one should.  When it came time to pack to go home, of course I came home with more than I’d left with.  I did the sitting on the suitcase as I was zipping technique, but still had to resort to a second suitcase.  Then, because the zipper broke, I ended up duck-taping around it several times.  I believe that will be the luggage’s last trip.  In the end, of course I looked like a “hillbilly”–just one more humiliating experience to add to my repertoire.

The trip home was eventful.  Halfway through the long flight from Anchorage to Minneapolis, the guy in the seat behind me kept shoving my seat forward so that it felt like we were experiencing constant turbulence.  I would’ve been annoyed, but since it’s a given that we’re all going to be shoved into the plane like over-sized sardines in a small tin, I let it go.  Now I’m glad I did.  It turned out he was having medical problems-some kind of seizure.  The flight attendants came over the intercom and called for a doctor (preferably one with a license to come to the back of the plane).  When we landed, everyone had to remain seated until the paramedics boarded and helped him off the plane.  The next flight was delayed for 2 hours because one of the flight attendants had a family emergency.  The new flight attendant suggested, over the intercom, that since we were so happy she came, we could leave her $5, or preferably diamonds if we chose as we exited the plane.  But she was so curt and bossy during the flight, I doubt anyone would’ve wanted to-despite being saved after a 2-hour wait.  I’ve come to the determination that flying is never fun.  So, in a way, I’m glad to be back–but on the other hand, I left quite a few loved ones behind and I was sad to go.

Take care, All

Happenings in June

Hi Everyone,

I’ve been pretty busy lately.  My nieces are visiting from Alaska.  Yesterday we played tourist and went to the Tennessee Aquarium.  I have to say my favorite parts were the penguins, sea turtles having lunch, sea horses and jellyfish.  The other day we went to Blue Hole in Pocket Wilderness and they jumped off the rocks into the river.  At first, they refused to do it–a snake on the other side.  But once the Forest Ranger came and pretended to “take care of” the snake, they were fine.  They had a blast.  We took them up to Johnson City where we ate the best pizza I’ve ever had at Scratch Pizza.  My daughter’s been trying to get us there for a while, and finally we made it.  It was totally worth it.

After letting my garden go for the last 2 weeks, I decided to get back to gardening today.  I put on my new snake boots and headed out to the garden.  Snake boots, you ask?  Yep, that’s right.  After all those close calls with snakes this spring, I decided maybe I should have a pair.  My niece decided that she didn’t want to have any close encounters of the slithery kind and I had to promise to stop by “Bass Pro Shop” on the way home from the airport after picking them up so she could buy some.  It was then that I decided maybe I needed a pair, too.  I did some research and found that the rubber garden boots I wear aren’t much protection from snake fangs.  Once they sink their fangs into the boot, there’s a chance that they could end up breaking off in the rubber.  When taking the boots off, the venomous tooth can scrape against your foot and if you weren’t infected before you would be then.  So now I have my own pair of Redhead Snake Boots and I love them.  I would wear them to the grocery store, if I could, but some people in my family would be horrified by my display of outright “redneckism,” (which I have no problem with–rednecks are some of my favorite people).

I’m a little disappointed by my orchard this year.  My peach, pear and apple trees seem to have a nice bit of fruit . . . but nothing on my cherry or plum trees.  The garden is coming along well.  I don’t want to count my vegetables before they blossom and grow, but we just might have a good squash and pumpkin year.  After several dismal years, this would be wonderful.  If I store the winter squash and pumpkin right, we could be eating them up in to February.  I noticed the peppers are coming along also.  I’m looking forward to having those.  I would love to have an abundance and store them in the freezer so I can use them all year long.  Our friends gave us an entire box of peppers one year and we ate off it for 2 years.  It was fabulous.

Speaking of living off what you grow–hats off to one of my best buddies.  She bought a much-needed car and decided she wanted to have it paid off in 4 months.  So for 4 months, she ate only food that she’d had canned the year or years before (pretty much beans, green beans, corn bread, etc.), and only spent $40 a month on groceries like bread, milk and eggs.  After a while, the mono diet got to her, but I’m so proud of her for making that goal and sticking with it so she wouldn’t have to be saddled with a car payment.  Way to go!!!

I have a new cat.  His name is “Kitty.”  This is confusing for all of us, since I’ve always called our other cat Kitty.  He seems to be settling in well enough.  The first night he was here, he took off, and then only came around for short spurts.  I was saddened by this.  I was hoping for a companion for Dark Angel, the long haired, short-tailed black cat.  But then he showed back up and staked his claim to half of the courtyard.  Dark Angel has gotten used to him lately.  She doesn’t like sharing me or her favorite snacks though.  Where she used to hiss at him if he came within a two-foot perimeter, now she sniffs him over, then steps back and hisses.  The other day, she didn’t hiss at all.  See-everyone’s making progress and that’s good.

Mountain Bob, my husband, is cutting wood for this fall.  There were some downed trees that we’d dragged over last fall and he needs the space to park the tractor.  So today, he dragged them over to the log-splitter and cut them up.  Now he’ll have a place to park the tractor and he can start building the foundation for his work shop.  He isn’t happy unless he has a good project going.  For him, that’s his bliss.

Guess I’d better go, Mt. Bob is asking for my help in carrying paintings over to be photographed.

Take Care, All.

s

Things That Go Bump in the Night

First, apologies to those who read my blog. I’ve greatly neglected it for a while. Partly because I’m very busy, as you’ll find out later in this blog, and sometimes I’m just a little lazy.

Since I live so far from the Atlantic coastline, I don’t really worry about hurricanes. That was, until Irene kicked my butt. First, the state of our road was horrible. Hours spent filling in ditches and trying to remove rocks did nothing to help. The neighbors hired someone to come in and rebuild the road. He brought in about 10 truckloads of red clay, dumped it, smoothed it out and then left. For days, that clay sat in the road. I could still drive over it, but it wasn’t a pleasant experience. Then came the rain. The rain turned those 10 loads of clay to a field of mud. Our neighbor tried to drive DOWN the mountain and ended up going sideways. They called us to let us know that we were all stuck on the mountain. I’m okay with that, I thought. I’d prepared for these little things. We were just going to use the time as a staycation and do a few chores around the house and relax.

Rain and winds blew through the day, but we’d had that kind of rain and wind before and nothing happened. I went to bed satisfied that when I woke up the next morning, everything would be just how we left it. No such luck.

The next morning, I woke up to Robert sitting in his Lazy Boy with a sickened expression on his face. When I inquired what had happened he led me to the kitchen window. At first, I couldn’t see anything. I knew something was different, but I didn’t know what. Then I took a closer look. A tree had taken out the 2nd story of our storage building. I put on shoes and head outside. Yep, the 2nd story was completely smashed and a huge tree lay across it. It had also taken out the green house and knocked over the wood pile. We’d spent months building the storage building and now our work was partly sitting at our feet.

We immediately set to work. We called the insurance company, made an appointment with the adjustor and then started moving things that weren’t broken out of the 1st story of the building. It was no easy task and we were risking injury, but it had to be done.

The moving began. We first took out anything of value out of the 1st story just in case the building collapsed under the weight of the tree, which has been known to happen. Then we very carefully worked on the upper story, carrying box after box–some wet from the rain and some completely dry. Everything that was destroyed had to be left out in the open for the insurance adjustor to inspect. Of course, everything else went into Misty’s house. Side note: She really needs to NOT come home right now, because it will be too overwhelming for her. We completely filled Katie’s room with boxes from the storage unit.

For 2 weeks we worked on getting things out of the building. The roof sat on some of it, so we had to remove the tree. We made a deal with the insurance company to move the tree ourselves and they would knock off the deductible. Robert started by cutting off the smaller limbs that were in the garden. Then he cut his way up to the building, cutting off lengths of tree and then trying to drag it away with the tractor. It was all very scary. Each time he would pull at the limb, the entire storage building would sway just a little. The chicken coop at one point was crushed under the weight of the limbs. At one point, Robert was up on a ladder and cutting a limb and it actually swung back toward him and he dropped the chain saw and was able to get out of the way of the limb. We now have the first story of the building covered by tarps until we can rebuild.

We are definitely planning to rebuild. In the mean time, the remaining chickens have to be given away because they have no place to stay for the winter. Looking back, I would say we were blessed. No one was hurt and we have a chance to build an even better structure that would more fit everyone’s needs . . . and Robert has a new project–he LOVES projects.