Random Musings

Bobby is back behind the wheel!!! :) I am too tired to count up how long it's been, but as of today his 2nd new chair is adapted to drive the van. And that makes me a very happy person. And this Friday is also our church's annual ladies ornament exchange...at my house. So each day I've been trying to tackle one area of the house. Tuesday evening a young girl from church came over to help with the Bethlehem scene. I'll have to write more about that Saturday. :) I didn't totally finish cleaning the kitchen this afternoon, but I did put a huge dent in it. So hopefully that will be finished tomorrow and I can tackle the living room, which includes putting up my AL tree and my NC tree. :) So I've not dropped off the face of the earth. I've just been dreadfully busy.

Before our first freeze last week, Bobby reminded me that I need to empty everything out of the garden before the plants died. I knew I would have a handful of this and a handful of that, but I was NOT expecting a bucket and a half of green tomatoes.  Now I like fried green tomatoes...once or twice a year. They're at treat, and anything beyond that is too much acid for my stomach. So here's two recipes I've tried, and liked, though it's not done a lot for emptying the buckets. Baked Green Tomatoes Heat oven to 375. Slice thick slices of tomatoes and place on cookie sheet. Top with pieces/cuts of uncooked bacon. Bake until bacon is mostly cooked. Add cheddar cheese. Top with bread crumbs. Heat until cheese is melted. I would make this one again! Green Tomato Soup chopped onion chopped potatoes 3 slices of sausage, rolled into small balls 5 medium/large green tomatoes chicken broth water 1 T salt Bring to a boil. Lower to medium and simmer until p...

More than once the last few weeks I've been amazed at the little whirlwind of leaves I've seen while walking or driving. And the visual aptly fits how I'm viewing life at the moment. The municipal election has come and gone, and I'm no closer to a decision about what I need to do next year. Just when I think I'm going to keep going until I have a clear sign otherwise, things get a little crazy and I start thinking I might as well reconcile myself to the fact I'm in a new chapter in life. Quadriplegics (and anyone with a spinal cord injury, I assume) do not sweat below their level of injury. And when they do sweat at the head, it's not the body cooling itself as we learned in school. It's a serious condition called autonomic dysreflexia (called AD in chat groups) where the blood pressure rises so the brain will know there's a problem somewhere. I guess it's the body's way of circumventing the broken nervous system. Since the nerve endings ...

The month of thankfulness and gratitude...and I'm struggling with it just a tad. Today I picked stuff from the garden and had time to prep it but not put it up. My brain is screaming "It's November! Die, plants, die!!!" and my grandmother's inner voice is reprimanding me and saying I should be thankful when God provides. And my father-in-law would say in his deep southern voice, "Hard times are coming. You better be prepared." And I remind myself that he lived during the Great Depression and witnessed extremely hard times, so I should listen. But being the lazy, spoiled American that I am, a part of me wants to be irresponsible and just pull it all up and toss it in the compost bin. But then I see another large pile of rabbit poop, and realize that I'm still feeding the wildlife as well. That did NOT make me happy this spring when they demolished most of my garden, but now that my freezer is almost full and there's not as much for them to eat o...

Monday night of this week, we heard a crash, and then our power cut off. No flickers, no storm, just the noise as if a transformer had exploded or something. We wait a few minutes to see if it will return. It didn't. Bobby checked to see if anyone on our street had lights (school side did, but not anyone on our grid's side) and did briefly see some lights down the road. We waited, and the generator kicked in. After a few more minutes, I call the power company, and am told that 12 people in our area are without power and a crew has been dispatched to find and resolve the problem.  About ten minutes later there's a knock on the door. I tell Bobby to answer it, fully expecting it to be a crewman wanting to know how we have power when no one else on our grid does. (That's actually happened before.) It was a young man who said he had swerved to miss a deer and landed in the woods. His cell phone battery went dead as he tried to make a call, and he was wondering if he could u...