I am a retired 44-year veteran of the Real Estate Assessment field. As with real estate assessing and how it applies to real estate taxes, one can make many acquaintances, but not many real friends. It was a great career choice.
It has been nearly 10 years since I reclaimed my home and my real passions within my home. I enjoy it more each day and tip my hat to those who I left behind.
Each day I try to stretch myself with the use of my computer as it relates to this site and using it to print out labels for quilts for trying to incorporate photos into my sewing. Life is so full and I know that I have room for more.
We were in Mankato by ten this morning for tests in Radiology. We didn’t see a doctor until 2:15. He needed time to review the tests.
Chalk up one more item done before the 11th.
On a light note and a bright note, Dennis needed his blood test at the VA clinic here in town this morning at eight. Dennis was the very first patient in the new Veteran’s Medical Clinic here in town.
I am weary and will be signing off on a very short blog posting today.
Catch you tomorrow.
We have not had a winter such as this for one long time. The depth of the snow is quite the sound barrier. The evergreen’s boughs outside my bedroom porch window are laden beyond belief. I know we have a wind of 10 mph but it is not enough to take the snow.
I dressed up at noon and made a path from our back door to the garage door. I have been doing this every several hours so as not to have so much each time. It is very wet and heavy snow and what has been falling all day is half rain. Randy will be over after five to clear the drive. Grandson Ryan is coming over later with a skid loader. The city has plowed Stauffer Avenue on a once through and that has not allowed much for Dennis to back out of his garage. Each time the snow opposite the garage gets taller and much falls back onto the surface. Ryan will take the snow and pile it in the backyard. After all what is a little red pickup if it can’t get out of the garage?
I spent time in the studio puttering around mindlessly. I need to get myself centered and dig into something . . . even if it is wrong. Come on Grammie . . . you are better than this. I have more on my mind than what is needed.
I did stick my head into the refrig to see what I would be scaring up for supper. Hmm. What I spied was half of a huge white onion. That would have been Raymond’s solution. My dad could have a raw onion sandwich on white and call it good. I think we will be having scrambled eggs with buttered toast. I had heard that an 18 count of eggs was $11.00. Seriously!
It seems as if the snow is coming in multiple waves. I look outside and I can’t give an estimate of the inches. White on white allows for no measure.
When I got up last night for a trip to the bathroom, the deer were plentiful in the backyard. Two smaller deer were not far from the house. Though I don’t turn on lights, it seemed they sensed an intruder. Each of the two jumped over our picket fence in a blink of my eye. That was quite the sight.
January 11th cannot come soon enough. That is the surgical date for Dennis to have the remaining three toes taken off of his left foot. All seemed to be going along well with the healing. In a heartbeat, the little toe began turning black. Infections can remain in our systems without warnings. Dennis’ temp has been the same good range for all of this duration. Heaven knows I check it often enough. This sure took us by surprise. Within the last days, Dennis has pain in the foot. As I said January 11th cannot come soon enough. This Thursday Dennis will have an ultrasound as a heads up for the condition of the arteries before surgery. One step at a time. I can’t believe I am saying this, but . . . Dennis is not welcoming visitors right now. With what he is dealing with, it’s hard to stay positive all the time. I think he has done rather well through this last year and a half.
The Christmas tree is beckoning to be stuffed back into its box. “It is “Ho-Ho-Ho’d” out.
The homemade soup was a winner, so we will have an encore of it this evening.
Yesterday I posted a photo of a pillow I had stitched out. I was thinking about gluing buttons on to fill in the “O”. As I did several loads of laundry this morning I kept thinking on it. I made a kettle of soup . . . still thinking on it.
Several hours was spent this afternoon sorting through possibilities of buttons. Some of the buttons would have come from the cards of buttons on the Fairfax button tree. Some would have come from Lena’s jar of saved buttons. After getting a cup of cold breakfast coffee down to the studio, I sat and looked back and forth from the pillow as finished and then the pile of odds and ends of red buttons.
I have decided less is more. There was a whole lot of food for thought going on. No buttons will be glued to the pillow top. What I will do is put the loose red buttons in a bag . . . just in case something else would ever come up needing red buttons. The red buttons on the small cardboard cards will continue looking smart as they hang on the button tree.
As I mentioned, I made a kettle of soup. Occasionally I will buy a bag of mixed vegetables to steam within the bag via the microwave. I had also fixed a pork steak in the blue speckled roaster with baby carrots. The drippings in the roaster of the pork steak were too tasty to pitch. I felt a home made soup coming on. I browned a pound of hamburger meat this morning. I tossed all of the leftover vegetables in a sauce pan with the meat and the saved drippings. I was short liquid in the saucepan. I was also short flavor. No way was a trip to the grocery store to be had to buy a box of broth. I added water to cover the contents by a good two inches. Out of the refrig came the jar of onion roasted flavored Better Than Bullion. Two spoons full got plopped in. A generous shake of seasoned salt, a guess of ground pepper and very generous shakes of soy sauce. I put the sauce pan and ingredients on simmer. We have a tasty soup for supper. I cook like Lena, not with a recipe.
The cement drive began showing wet at 1:30, what will follow is anyone’s guess. We have had plenty of warning.
January 1st is here for all to enjoy. I am not one to make resolutions. I do intend to try hard to maintain the health and home that I have been blessed to have. I know I can count on new challenges to present themselves in 2023. Taking one day at a time with a positive attitude is all that is in my power.
The sun is out with a balmy 35 degrees. The snow has had a chance to shrink before more is added. That may happen by tomorrow at this time.
Dennis took a long nap and I have finished what I have been working on in the studio. I had goofed up one piece of man-made suede that needed to be tossed. I was left with the one remaining piece that was spot on for a small pillow form that I had. 16″ x 12″ was the pillow form. I knew I would need every bit of the 18″ x 14″ of the red suede piece. No screw ups. Over time I had downloaded the alphabet design pack from the OESD embroidery site. I was determined to use this fabric up.
I have always had a challenge when it came time to position things straight when it really counted. One quick glance was all that was needed to see the item was off by a hair or two or three. On this red suede, I measured more times than I can recall. Placing each letter took time as the letter would be embordered right onto the suede. The first step was stitching on the Tartan plaid with a piece of fabric larger than needed. The outline stitch then allowed for the extra fabric to be trimmed away as close as possible to the stitching. The gold satin stitch was the last step for each of the individual letters to encase the plaid fabric edges, which by the way, is a woven fabric, not printed. The Tartan plaid is used for the envelope back.
I had seen this pillow in an advertisement and it piqued my interest. What had been then done to the pillow was the letter “O” was filled with with all sorts and sizes of red buttons. I took a scrap of the plaid stitched onto the suede to see how well it played with buttons glued onto it. I will know more tomorrow after the glue is totally dry. I do have buttons from the Fairfax button tree to use if I decide to go that route. The glue I have is a powerful one. The buttons glued on would withstand a lot.
So many decisions sure can keep me guessing and going. What I can share is that I have always used January to work with making Christmas items. No stress on a time frame.
Today may be New Year’s Eve, but in reality, another day on the calendar.
Dennis and I have never done anything out of the ordinary for this evening that always ends up getting a bad rap when some tend to celebrate too much.
I have spent time in the studio. Creating a pattern that is an original, thus no given time is allotted. Measure, once . . . measure twice and then place it under the sewing machine embroidery module. Tomorrow may show evidence that my thinking is meshing with the stitching.
This morning I looked out and thought the bare drive was a treat. No ice to worry about. KNUJ has just popped my balloon when they reported a storm coming Monday and going through Tuesday with snow and an icy mixture.
I have my blue speckled roaster in the oven with pork steak. Dennis’ blood panel indicted his hemoglobin is a bit low. We do tend to have chicken often. Ground beef will be put on our menu for this next week. I really don’t feel like buying liver right now. What is purchased in a grocery store is not sliced for pan ready. A good list of foods on the computer helped.
Enjoy the first 2023 day tomorrow. I have high hopes for a very good 2023 for us two on Stauffer Avenue and for all our children.
The sun is out and our drive is clear of ice and snow.
Our only agenda for the day was to have Dennis out to our clinic today for a pre-op physical. Dennis passed it with flying colors for the surgery he will be having on January 11th. Dennis will be having the remaining three toes removed from his left foot as well as a metatarsal bone adjacent to the little toe.
In October of 2021 something did a number in and on Dennis’ foot and he has fought the good fight ever since with that foot. There is nothing to explain or complain about. Our bodies can have medical issues that are out of our hands. For myself, I am so thankful it is not cancer for Dennis. I am humbled as to how Dennis is handling this.
So back to what I started out with . . . rejoice in the sunshine.
I have attempted to spend time in the studio. After today, there is only marking time until January 11th and perhaps the studio will be given more time.
As we have agreed to a soup and sandwich supper, I am heading to my bedroom porch to read a bit while taking in the sunshine.
I have posted this bit of hopeful news quite a few times. Hopefully this time is a winner, winner . . . chicken dinner.
We just may have a contractor for our front door repair. I need to pinch myself. Dennis and I watched a two-man team totally redo our neighbor’s house to the south of us. Through all of the false hopes we had with numerous contractors that came, they looked but never returned.
I called Bryan Estrada, one of the two-man team I just mentioned. He was here by twelve noon. On the building permit that we will need, Bryan is a family member willing to work right along beside us on the repair of our front door. Our city does have a watchdog of a building inspector. Screw them.
We had a generational lumberyard, Overson’s, that went belly up trying to support too many family members. A young fellow, Vaughn, that worked his way up from sweeping the lumberyard to eventually managing Overson’s. It didn’t take long after the doors closed here in St. James, he went down MN HWY #15 to the south to manage the lumber company in Truman.
I called Vaughn, in Truman, this afternoon and explained that we had a contractor. That alone shocked Vaughn as no one wants the small jobs. At the time that Bryan will start our job, they, Bryan and Carlos, can go to Truman and pick up whatever is needed for our project. Vaughn had no problem invoicing what would be needed as well as keeping an eye on the material being picked up for a project such as ours. As the size of the exterior door will now be 32″ x 76″, it will be a special order that may take a month or perhaps two. Vaughn drives past our home going to work in Truman and on his way home. Vaughn will slip the brochure in the mail slot as to the design that will be ordered.
I am hopeful as it would be a treat to use our front door after many, many years of not. What was once an open porch with a slant floor to shed water has since become an integral portion of living area, aka: my bedroom.
Soon 2022 will be history. Bring it on.
There are puddles everywhere.
I had an appointment this morning with my doctor. With the strong south wind, I felt lucky to get into the clinic. In September I had several batteries of tests and x-rays for my “farmer type” back. I printed out the results and one by one I went online to see what the huge terms meant.
This morning, I wanted to find out what could be done going forward. If I would have surgery to repair my lower back, there would be five vertebra that would need to be rebuilt. It would most likely take a full year of rehabilitation to get back to relative normality. For now, I am going to try meds. If an opioid can give marginal relief, so be it. If, after a time, perhaps a cortisone shot may be of a help. Yes . . . the shot has to be spot on to help. For now I am willing to try this meds recourse.
Yesterday I had a text conversation to brighten my world. I have known Sharon Skolberg since we were each in country school. Sharon and Ted farmed north up the road from Orlin and me in Boon Lake Township. Ted and Orlin have since passed, but the special friendship between Sharon and I remains. Sharon had shared with me that phone conversations are difficult for her as she is on oxygen therapy. Texting works out just fine via Facebook’s messaging. Sunshine can come into my world when least expected and so appreciated.
Dennis was off to the grain elevator. He is stockpiling shell corn for his deer. It seems as a mama deer and two small ones come early for a snack. Dennis did say that larger, older deer can put up quite a fight for food. The older and larger are more apt to fend for themselves.
Tonight is a soup and sandwich night.
No sunshine but seeing puddles where not too long ago there was ice . . . is a good thing.
With 26 degrees out, there is a whole lot of happiness going on our drive. There is bare concrete sticking out. Even with all the hard packed snow, once Dennis got down to the concrete by our back door, it was wet from the rain we had right before the snow. A weird winter.
I had a project in mind for the studio. After one of those things . . . “you can’t fail if you don’t try.” I tried and now the waste basket has had an offering of failed. I had some ultra suede, a manmade product. Stick pins, safety pins and any other kind of a pin I had would not go through it. My attempt of putting a zipper in, in what would be a pillow . . . failed. the two layers wanted to walk away from each other. This morning was garbage day and now the clean wastebasket in the studio doesn’t feel like it isn’t needed. Tomorrow is another day. Lights and my electric heater . . . shut down for the remainder of the day.
A friend, Linda, was the gal that took all of the Dueber fabric and embroidery floss for her church’s mission sewing. Today, I sent her a get well text. The 20th of this month she had surgery for a portion of her jaw and some lymph nodes removed due to cancer. A bone from the calf of her leg is now a portion of her jaw. She is in amazing spirits. Linda could talk a leg off of a chair. She shared with me that she is getting callouses from texting as much as she had talked. A very sweet friend.
Dennis and Dwayne did the McDonald’s coffee group today. As the fellows were catching up, a woman from the First Lutheran Church came to the fellow’s table and thanked Dennis for all the fabric his wife had donated. Sweet! Dennis drove Dwayne past our backyard. The deer-trampled acre is quite the sight.
Our Christmas tree is still shining brightly. I don’t feel in a hurry to tuck it away.