Resolutions

27. December 2024 · Comments Off on Resolutions · Categories: Domestic

Ah, yes – that time of year, again: time to assess what has been done, and what has been left undone, and to consider plans for the coming year.

Ah, the items left undone – wrapping up the Luna City series, with book 12. Alas, it’s about half completed, and the creative dry spell late this year appears to have lifted. It will be an e-book only, but available in print as part of Luna City Compendium #4.

I may yet continue with Luna City stories as a YA series, with the adventures of Stephen, Douglas, Letty and their friends as children in the 1920s and 1930s. I am very fond of Luna City as a setting – the most perfect small town in South Texas. I am increasingly convinced that YA  teen and tween readers need  books which are not studies in grey goo dysfunction and misery. I did manage to complete and launch the pioneer trail YA adventure, West Towards the Sunet, start to finish, including review by beta readers in slightly less than a year. I also have been struck by enough ideas about how to go about continuing it as a series, so there may be a second volume of the Kettering family saga in time for next Christmas.

As for the household – I did manage to purchase the pet door insert for the slider door into the back porch, but the two male cats are still prone to pee on stuff – so I might as well not have bothered. As for chickens again – when Wee Jamie is a little older. Maybe this spring, we’ll try again with them. The back fence has been replaced totally, so  any chickens kept there  ought to be safe enough during the day, as long as they are locked up after dark.

As of the end of April, 2025, the mortgage on my personal little patch of Paradise will be paid off, and I will have gotten through another year of paying for that replaced siding and exterior paint, new windows and the HVAC system, all installed late in 2020 or early 2021. As noted previously, the siding and the specialty hot-climate paint with which it was covered have worn beautifully well – it still looks as if it had just been done. I am bound and determined to replace the refrigerator freezer the very instant the mortgage is paid in full, though. The one we have now has been a massive disappointment to us both – all the various plastic bins and drawers have been cracking and breaking off bits, beginning when it was barely a couple of years old. It wasn’t a cheap model, but it wasn’t rock-bottom cheap, either. The ice maker and dispenser stopped working entirely and repairing it all isn’t worth the trouble and the parts.

Not having a monthly mortgage payment will free up a not inconsiderable sum of money; I plan to frivolously spend it paying down the existing accounts for siding, windows and HVAC, thereby bringing the day when I am free to begin on paying for a completely fresh round of necessary fixes for the house – like new flooring throughout and a renovated kitchen. This may be made easier when my daughter, the real estate agent still working towards a point were a couple of thousand here and a couple of thousand there is just small change rattling around in the bottom of her expensive handbag, will have her own house. I will finally have that empty nest, with all of her stuff moved out of the garage.

And that’s what I’m looking forward to in the next year! In any case, the writing and story-telling will continue.

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

18. December 2024 · 2 comments · Categories: Domestic, Uncategorized

Well – at least a little bit. For an assortment of reasons – perhaps because I’m a bit tired, and my daughter (the working real estate agent) is up to her butt in angry reptiles as far as clients looking for a suitable roof to celebrate their own Yule under – we were a bit late in getting around to decking our personal halls for the holiday season. Mainly because the garage is packed tightly with stuff of which at least three-quarters is intended for her eventual household. It’s a major project to find all the Christmas ornaments…(we can’t even find the tub that the mantlepiece Wedgewood got put away into last Christmas in order to make space for the long lighted Christmas garland!) And I am trying to finalize one book for print and halfway through writing the first draft of another, in between baking bar cookies to inflict on our near neighbors. Wee Jamie is three and a half years old and sort of hyperactive, and I am looking after him most days … and anyway, we’re a bit farther behind than usual in our Christmas prep. I exhausted most of my December stock of energy in going down to Goliad for Miss Ruby’s Author Corral, the first weekend of the month.

At least we have the tree assembled and sort of decorated. My daughter bought the Christmas Vacation advent calendar when it came available at Costco this year, and I’ve been making the various figurines into ornaments, by way of sinking a tiny screw-eye into each and attaching a wire ornament hanger. She loves watching Christmas Vacation, and plans to go all-out with the decorations when she has her own place. There were some Monsters, Inc. figurines from the Dollar Tree, similarly converted. Our Christmas tree is one of those with the lights already built-in, so adding those few little items do make it at least amusing. My daughter thinks that she will set up a small Christmas tree in Wee Jamie’s bedroom, and ornament it with the Monsters, Inc. figurines, and assorted small dinosaurs. (Note to self – check and see if there is a Monsters, Inc. Advent calendar available these days. There is A Christmas Story calendar – perhaps next year. I’m more of A Christmas Story fan, myself, if only because Ralphie’s house reminds me so very much of my grandmothers’ place.)

And we did do a round of Christmas movies, every night – adding a couple of new selections to the rota – Klaus, and a new animated version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Klaus was very original and rather sweet, and the new Grinch wasn’t half bad at all. The first was quite creatively original in working up a Santa origin story, and the second filled out the  epic of the Grinch rather sweetly in expanding on the characters, especially the dog. We bailed on a perfectly revolting, sickly-sweet cartoon about the Elf onna Shelf about five minutes into it though – and couldn’t find a free streaming version of Arthur Christmas. Tonight, we’ll watch The Santa Clause.

For a good few years, we went all-out in making an assortment of fudge for distribution to neighbors and places that we did regular business with; but the cost of everything just got too much this year to make as much as we used to make. We do have some small quantities of quality chocolate and various ingredients either left over from last year, or bought on sale at  extremely reduced prices, so I’ll make what I can with what we have, and otherwise fill out the gift boxes with slabs of coconut-lemon-nut bar cookies. I lifted the recipe from the 1970s edition of Joy of Cooking.

Pecan Angel Slices (Walnuts or almonds work well, also.)

Cream together until well-blended:  ½ cup butter and ¼ cup sugar

Beat in well: 1 egg and ½ teasp vanilla

Combine and add to the above: 1 ¼ cup sifted flour and 1/8 teasp salt

Pat dough evenly into a greased 9×12 inch pan and bake at 350° for fifteen minutes. Remove from oven.

Combine: 2 beaten eggs, 1 ½ cup brown sugar, ½ cup flaked cocoanut, 1 cup chopped pecans, 2 Tbsp.  flour, ½ teasp double acting baking powder, ½ teasp salt and 1 teasp vanilla.

Pour over cookie layer and return to oven for 25 minutes

Combine 1 ½ cup sifted confectioner’s sugar with sufficient lemon juice to make a smooth, runny glaze. Pour over warm cookie/pecan/coconut layer and allow to set. When cool, cut into bars or squares.

And that’s our Christmas plan for this year. Other than getting the print version of West Towards the Sunset available by next week – that’s about it for the season.

 

Once There Was – The Best Catalog, Ever

20. October 2024 · 6 comments · Categories: Domestic, Memoir

In the time before the internet became a thing, when I was mostly stationed at bases overseas, I could rejoice when the base post office put up the mail … we had numbered post boxes, the kind that one sees in the post offices now, with the little locking doors with a small glass window. My post office box was nearly always packed tightly with mail. On really, really good days, there was a pink cardboard slip which meant a package – take the slip to the window and collect your package. Depressing it might be to see a package slip, and the parcel window had already closed on a Saturday afternoon  which meant  waiting until  Monday to get the package. (In Greenland, though, whenever an airplane came in with mail, the post office clerks would call the radio station, and the duty announcer would read out that so many pounds of mail had been received, and the post box numbers who had gotten packages on the air. The post office window would be open for exactly half an hour then, no matter what the day, or hours – and on hearing your box number read out, everyone would beat feet for the post office. This was Greenland – everyone knew to the minute when an aircraft came in, and if it were coming from Stateside, there would be mail on it.)

I subscribed then to a number of magazines – magazines of news and cultural interest, mostly, with some hobby publications among them … and catalogues. Oh, I got catalogs – so many that the post office clerks swore that sometimes they had to wedge my mail into my post box with the aid of a crowbar. There were just so many things that weren’t available to  us through the exchange, or on the local economy. Clothing, books, household goods, hobby materials and supplies, small furniture kits, movies … even certain food items – anything the least bit non-standard had to come by catalog mail order. (In the case of Greenland, there was no local economy, only the souvenir booth on the Danish side of the runway, and the little trading post store, which was about  the size of a corner minimart.)

Of course I was the recipient of catalogs galore, for all the things that couldn’t be obtained locally and for which I had a taste or an interest. One of my very favorite clothing catalogs was the original Banana Republic line, when it was truly a vendor of quirky yet practical travel clothing and accessories. A fair number of their early items were military surplus of all sorts of other militaries, much of which came in color palettes which explored the vibrant spectrum of olive-drab green, tan, brown, gray and dull blue, but which had the benefit of being durable, practical and well-made. The original Banana Republic’s clothing tended to be pricy – rather like LL Bean items of the same era – but ever so worth it in the long run; comfortable, practical fabrics, flattering cuts, and modest – suitable for wear on countries where excessive displays of flesh were not advised – and infinitely variable. The ideal for their kind of traveler, I gathered from their content, was the one who could do a world tour with a single small piece of luggage, and still be comfortably, practically, and tastefully turned out for every possible occasion, from morning trek to see a ruined temple in the jungle to a tea party at an embassy that afternoon. I liked that kind of practicality – liked it very much, although I could only afford a couple of pieces from them. A mid-length khaki drill skirt was one of them, and another was a pair of flat-heeled ballet pumps that I wore all over Europe; the soles were ribbed rubber. Perfect for hiking through places and streets floored with slick stone and cobbles, which – wet or dry – were a hazard. The Banana Republic catalogues were literate, even just fun to read. They stood out among my collection of catalogs for that very reason. I understand that the handful of Banana Republic brick-and-mortar locations were just as spectacular, in décor and design. Alas, I never got to visit one in person. Eventually, the couple who had built the brand sold it to the company which already owned a big nationwide chain and a couple of other brands, and Banana Republic stopped being the quirky, original source for high-quality travel clothing and exotic military surplus. It became just another generic brand of mall-marketed clothes, just like all the other generic, cheaply-manufactured generic mall clothing brands.

I wish that I had kept some of the catalogs, though. Just for sentimental value. Maybe I have – and they are buried out in a box in the garage.

 

Now And Again

08. October 2024 · Comments Off on Now And Again · Categories: Domestic, Random Book and Media Musings

So, another busy week at Chez Hayes – some work for a client, and all but the finishing touches on the WIP, the YA pioneer adventure story, with the working title of West Towards the Sunset. I might make it into a series, in the spirit of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series. I loved that series, as a young reader, myself. Not all that fond of the TV series version, which spun radically away from the books in ways large and small. My everlasting conviction has been that historical fiction is a gateway drug into an interest in actual history. I think that more people initially became interested in the American Civil War through reading Gone With the Wind, or in the American Revolution through Johnny Tremain, or any number of other riveting narratives set in other historical periods … so why not throw my own books into the grand mix? My personal motto was always that of the Armed Forces Radio and Television  Service, an enterprise in which I served with  only moderate personal success. (Hey, I got a pension out of it, so, whatever…)

The motto was “To Inform and Entertain” – so it’s my hope that my own books inform and entertain, and perhaps inspire a life-enhancing further interest.

Anyway, West Towards the Sunset is all but done – just a few hundred words to the afterward/postscript, and out to the volunteer beta readers in the next day or so.

In the meantime – coping with a neighborhood concern. A close Aged Neighbor of advanced years and uncertain health passed away in hospital a week ago Friday. We were close – close enough that my daughter was on her Life Alert roster, and we had the names of her next of kin and their phone numbers (most of whom lived several states away.) We regularly walked her dog, Penny the Labradoodle, and had walked with her, when she was in better condition, so frequently that a couple of other neighbors thought that she was my mother. We found a kitten for her, a full sister to Miso, among the collection on the other side of the neighborhood, a fluffy white kitten which she named Snowy, who grew up to be affectionate and spectacularly dog-like, for a cat.

Then Penny the Labradoodle at 15 years old and arthritic, became reluctant to walk more than half a block.  Aged Neighbor fell a couple of times and went no farther than the group mailbox – propped on a walker, to the covert relief of us all. Then she crunched her car fender, and gave up the keys to the car to another neighbor … Anyway – a handful of us in the nearby houses were very fond of Aged Neighbor and kept a careful eye on her.

Aged Neighbor’s family are all touchingly grateful to all of us for having seen to her care and wellbeing. Snowy has been adopted by one neighbor. Another neighbor has a friend who may eventually adopt Penny the Labradoodle. Aged Neighbor’s family all gathered this week to sort out the house. They have no need of her household things, clothes, furniture, objects d’arte and monumental brand-new new cat tree, as they drove from out of state and have full households of their own anyway. We’ve been given a good share of them – including the cat tree! –  either to use for the Daughter Unit’s eventual home, or to pass on to Goodwill. The remainder have been given to other friends and neighbors. That took up the rest of our time this weekend.

And that was my week – yours?

Good Eats

28. September 2024 · 1 comment · Categories: Domestic

I’ve spent time in the kitchen  this week – time that I should have spent on finishing the last chapters of the W-I-P, but this writer does not live on bread alone … but regular meals of relatively healthy, and home-cooked foods. One of the projects in the kitchen was the disposition of half a bushel of carrots. A friend of my daughters is another single parent, and one in a sufficient state of want to be the object of a gift of foods from a church pantry … to be precise, an enormous number of enormous carrots. Very fresh carrots, and not a bit woody and flavorless because of their gargantuan size. But carrots … the friend gave half to my daughter, and I spent a morning peeling, slicing, and brewing up brine to make pickled carrots. Yes, I have a large stock pot, and a collection of canning jars … and so, pickled carrots. Eight quarts of pickled carrots. And then, another eight quarts of mixed vegetable pickles from the Ball canning cookbook – giardiniera, which is wicked expensive when bought in smallish jars from the specialty foreign foods selection at the grocery store. It’s not so pricy when made from fresh, and even though the costs for fresh vegetables in season is a bit more  than they were three or four years ago … scratch made giardiniera is still cheaper. Even though I couldn’t find the teeny pearl onions that some recipes call for; I didn’t mind; those specialty tiny onions have always been pricy and are a major pain to peel  and prep.

The other project in the kitchen came about because we tried out a pulled pork spice mix, which turned out to be a bit lacking, even in the slow-cooker with a boneless pork shoulder at $1.99 a pound. (Which is excellent for that cut of meat.) I thought of using it as a filling for tamales. My mother, being a cook with four or five hungry teenagers in the household was a master of cheap eats. In the town where I grew up, there were maybe four or five elderly Hispanic ladies who made tamales from scratch, and Mom was the only Anglo. Back in her early married life, Mom learned Mexican cooking from the couple living next door in GI grad student housing at UC Santa Barbara. Traditional Mexican food has the benefit of relying on inexpensive ingredients, and being tasty and filling. So – I refreshed my memory of making tamales, found a recipe on line for what looked to a pretty good version … and oh, my – they were better than good. Light, fluffy, flavorful. I think the trick to this one was creaming the lard or Crisco, and then mixing in alternate thirds of the masa and  broth. I made up another full batch for the rest of the pulled  pork and packaged them in sets of four with the vacuum sealer for the freezer. I don’t believe we’ll buy prepared tamales again – this recipe was so good, using the Mi Tienda masa from HEB.

And now, back to finishing off the last two chapters of West Towards the Sunset.

« Older articles
Newer articles »