Vyxxan's Virtual Venture

Archive for the ‘Everyday stuff’ Category

Which is pretty darn funny considering what an odd spring we had.   Cold and way too much rain, then boom it went into summer.

Not going to complain when the clematis is blooming like this!!!!

I also noticed buds on my muscadine grape.  The one that is chock full of  ripening fruit.   I have the names (and where I planted the grapes) mixed up… either that or the dang company I bought them from mixed them up.  Wouldn’t surprise me, as they were NOT helpful at all when I wrote to them about one plant arriving dead.

So, my Granny Val muscadine is covered in fruit.  It has to be that one, as that is a scuppernong, a bronze or golden colored muscadine.  The problem with the fruit though… I don’t know if I can get past this or not… it smells HORRIBLE.  Like diesel fuel or something.  I’ve tasted a grape, but I can’t get past that smell to find out if the insides taste okay because the smell is overpowering.  It’s so strong you can smell it from 6 feet away!  Not appetizing at all!

Took more photos of the clematis….  let me just toss another one in here…  :)

I just don’t know what to do with the muscadines.  Should I pick them and freeze them and hope the smell goes away and that juice from them will be palatable?  Should I write to the company I bought it from again and ask them if it’s supposed to smell this horrible?  What kind of freaky grape did they sell me, anyhow?  Ron said maybe I’m growing my own bio-fuel, lol!  (He can’t smell anything though…  I can smell them from 6 feet away and he stuck his nose right into a bunch of grapes and couldn’t smell a thing.  Huh.)

That clematis though… it sure is beautiful.  There is a house down the road a ways that has 2 clematis plants which I always admire in the spring.  Their plants aren’t doing anything right now.  Huh.  Nothing at all, probably going dormant for the winter like they should be.  Mine is having one last hurrah before winter though…

We are going to be putting in an enclosed carport type building.  Big, as in 20×16.  Something to store the lawnmowers, grills, and other stuff like that in.  Ron is working to level the ground… by hand.  Which means he started out with a mattock, a shovel and a wheelbarrow.  But now he’s using the rototiller, a shovel and the big pull-behind wagon attached to one of the lawn tractors.  He’s moved a LOT of dirt so far…  has piled it all up in one spot.  I’m sorry that I don’t have any raised beds for him to fill…. but I can’t stop him working on that to build me a raised bed somewhere.  He’s out there working on it right now, in the dark… yep, in the dark.  Because he has a laser level, and he can’t see it to use it in the daytime.  So, in the dark.  I can just imagine all the cats going after that, lol!  The cats are of course helping him…  they always do, any project outside.

My tomato plants are still alive.  We may get some tomatoes this year after all…  if I can keep the dang caterpillars from eating them to death.  I’ve got hornworms, of course, but also some ordinary striped caterpillars.  They don’t do as much damage… or so I thought.  No, they don’t eat the leaves much, they go straight for the green fruit.  ARGH!  I’ve been handpicking the dang things off almost daily, but today I mixed up some liquid Sevin and sprayed the plants and bugs with that.  With my luck… and the way the poor tomatoes have gone this year…  my first tomatoes of the fall will start getting ripe just in time for our first big freeze.  :)  So it goes…  :)

Been having health problems.  Gallbladder attacks, too many of them.  Doctor gave me a prescription for something that didn’t help and I’ve had a lot of tests… ct scan, ultrasound and then a hida test and a ccr test.  I went and looked up stuff on the Mayo Clinic website, and yep, those horrible stomach aches I get could be from gallbladder… even to the pain between my shoulder blades!    So, the biggest thing is…  I need to avoid caffeine and dairy products, but also fats.  Great.  What do I drink in the morning?  Coffee with a LOT of half and half in it.  What is my breakfast?  Instant breakfast with some benefiber… milk again, and I buy whole milk because skim milk goes sour too fast.  Too much added fiber to the diet can also be bad, and what did I do in the midst of all these attacks?  Yes, added another daily drink of fiber.  Adding it slowly is okay, doubling it overnight is not so great.  I left work early Tuesday because my stomach felt like it was going to explode, and the pain was so distracting I was very careful driving home.  Then those tests Wednesday morning… I felt horrible… again had to drive carefully and just come home again.

Well, I got a call from the doctors office today.  According to the latest tests, my gallbladder is working just fine.   They can schedule me for a scope down into my stomach to look at it if I want.  I passed on that.  I’ll try to change my diet a bit…  but I’m not giving up my morning coffee just yet!  Heck, I get up at 4 am, I can’t do that if I can’t have coffee.  Oh, but eating apples is super super good for your gallbladder.  Guess what I’ve been craving and eating this week?  Yep, apples.  I love red delicious apples, but they have to be the small ones… I hate the huge giant ones.  Got a good sized sack of them at the grocery store yesterday.  I guess if I eat apples I won’t need to worry about the benefiber in my instant breakfast that I’m no longer going to be drinking.  At least my digestion seems to be back to normal now…  no more feelings of things going to explode inside me.   Gallbladder attacks are no fun at all!  And I really don’t care that the latest test came out perfectly normal… I was not imagining the pain.  A few diet changes, and well, I’ll hope for the best…  moderate changes, nothing too drastic.   Just a little bit at a time.  Maybe I’ll even lose a bit of the weight I’ve put on this summer…. summer is when I’m usually thin, but not this year.  Hah.

Well, as usual this has taken a lot longer to type out than I thought it would.  I have to go feed my dogs, poor things are starving because Mom is blogging!  They still won’t eat the sweet potato chips I made for them…  I’ve been tossing those into the pond with the bread for the fish.  Have a better idea for those sweet potato chips…  slightly steam them before putting them into the dehydrator.  That oughta make them taste better…

hugs,

Vyx

Gotta have a kitty photo once in a while.  Stubby likes to come in the house every so often, and because we know he won’t spray, we let him.  He tends to pester Rita a bit, but mostly he just wants to nap on something soft like carpet.  :)

I think he has really grown up to be a handsome cat.  Beautiful blue color, with a cream tinted chin.  For some reason he reminds me of an otter… I think it’s partly the short tail, and partly the teeth I can see when he’s sleeping.

We are finally out of the kitten business.  All the adult females are spayed, so we won’t be having any more kittens here.  Have one adult male to neuter, and 3 boy kittens.    The adult male is Tonic, who has to be one of the wimpiest male cats I’ve ever known… but from his point of view I’m sure it was just a survival tactic.  If your own momma runs you off, backed up by 3 other momma cats… I guess you run away and hide.  We have finally coaxed him back into the herd, and he actually comes up on the porch again.  Just don’t try to pick him up.  Gonna be hard to get him to the vet.

Finished my purse with the twill I dyed while on vacation.  All the sewing machine work was done before vacation was over… and when I got sick midweek and ended up staying home I did the hand sewing one afternoon when I was feeling slightly better.   Still don’t know what is wrong with me, but at least the doctor I saw on Wednesday didn’t say heartburn and not listen to me.   He gave me something else to take, and set up a ct scan for today.  Got to take my new purse out and about to be admired.  :)

I love how this fabric came out, and changed up the purse quite a bit for it…  no quilting, for one thing.  I put some sturdy fusible interfacing on the insides to give it a bit more stiffness,  plus made the outside pocket big enough to take over one whole side instead of that wimpy little pocket that the pattern has.  Oh, and longer handles.  It still has the whole lining with built in pockets…  I do like this purse pattern for the most part.  Takes quite a bit of work, for something that should be fairly simple.

Of course I didn’t realize when I enlarged that pocket so much just how much of the side it would be taking up…  and forgot to leave room for handles to be sewn on.  Plus, I covered up some really nice fabric, darn it!  It also isn’t sitting straight… but neither are the pockets on the inside.  I was lazy and not using a lot of pins.

But as you can see, that double pocket is quite useful now… deep enough for reading glasses and deep enough that stuff won’t fall out.  Not sure I need the whole side in pockets like that, but for sure it’s more useful than the previous version.  I mostly carry my little reading glasses in that case in the left pocket… but I have to dig in my purse for them.  Now they are out and handy.  Heck, I can carry a few pairs now…  in case I forget I’ve got some stuck in my shirt and need more.  :)

The pocketless side of the purse.  Click on that and look at it… isn’t that fabric absolutely lovely?  I never would have thought that those two colors went together if it wasn’t for my friend Rabbit.  She wanted a shirt with those 2 colors and one other… and I thought ugh, mud.  But it came out so lovely I actually did another for myself and then decided that I wouldn’t mind the purse in those colors, either.

Ron and I are both on day five of no smoking now.  I’m using the patch.  Ron is using nothing but will power.  He seems less bothered by not smoking than I feel… I get that 2 min craving but I don’t see Ron doing =anything=.  I’m sucking down lots of cinnamon and coffee candies… Ron isn’t even chewing nicotine gum.  Heck, even with the patch I want nicotine gum.  (but I know not to)  I think we’ll both be fine…    I know I needed him to quit because I am easily tempted if there are cigs around.  He knows he needs to quit because it’s a dang money drain he can’t afford.  Me, I’ve been wanting to quit again for years, so I just really needed Ron to get on board.  Together we can back each other up, and it’s working out well.  Yay for us!  (and thanks for all the encouragement from my friends!)

Got a bit of cooler weather again and rain today, so I got out my knitting.  Instead of finishing the fingerless glove I was working on and got tired of last winter….  (after making one pair) I decided that I needed to knit my grandbaby  a little hat.  So, that’s what I’m doing, a blueberry blue hat in acrylic yarn.   Just sort of winging it without a pattern, sort of like the last acrylic hat I did.  I cannot do ribbing any more for some reason.  That switching back and forth from knit to purl just makes me crazy with having to pull the yarn this way and that.  I’m sure part of that is that I totally forgot how to knit continental again… my hands just automatically do it the way I learned when I was 5 or so.   Having something to do with my hands is nice when I’m quitting smoking though…  so I’ll work through this hat and then probably go back to something simple where it won’t matter so much about the knitting/purling thing… because it will be felted.  Hmm, that’s a thought, maybe I should just knit the baby a big wool hat to felt up.   :)

Well, this is all the news I can think of now….

hugs,

Vyx

It’s been really exciting, NOT.  :)  I’m too lazy to have too much fun.  :)

I’ve done some heavy cleaning, but not as much as I should have done.   Chores of course are always the same.

One thing I did do before vacation was order a folding parallel clothesline.  I never even got a notice of it being shipped, but it arrived today (Saturday) by FedEx.  I won’t be able to use it much when it gets to be winter, but in the meantime I can have sheets and such that are air dried rather than tumbled into wrinkled balls.  We have good cotton sheets, but the dryer just tumbles them into a mass of tangles and wrinkles.  Makes me want to iron the pillowcases,  almost.  :)

I’ll check the size of the fit in the existing sleeve tomorrow, my last day off before work again.  I figured out how to fill it in so the new pole isn’t 18 inches in the ground… I’ll drop something that I can tie a wire to down that hole, then fill in with rocks that will be lifted out.  Just in case I ever need to have a pole sunk that deep again.  I haven’t figured out what I’ll put as the pull out for the rocks, but I’m sure I’ll find something around here.  The rocks are no problem at all, got plenty of those.  The fit if it’s loose I can shim with something or other.  Perhaps another bit of pipe if needed.

Dyed some fabric this week, and am sewing a purse.  I’m sewing the same purse I’ve been making for years, same basic pattern anyhow.  I’ve changed it a lot…  I quit sewing things outside in and turning them, and now just use the serger for that stuff.  Works great, lots less trouble.   As I get older and my vision gets worse, I am thankful that I have a sewing machine with an automatic threader.  Whoever invented that is a genius!

The fabric came out absolutely wonderful and I only used 2 colors.  I carefully picked my spots to use for the purse sides and outside pocket, as of course with most of the LWI stuff I do some bits of it are even better than others.  Woven fabrics are harder to dye in my opinion… the dye just doesn’t travel as easily as it does on knits.  I got a little impatient with the batching process and stuck the bucket in the microwave… that actually helps set the dye faster with the heat.   In summer I just set the stuff outside in the sun, but it’s been cool here already.

I should be able to show off the purse here sometime this week… I’m hoping to get it finished tomorrow, but my last day of staycation has a lot going on.  Gotta go grocery shopping.  Install the clothesline, and test it out by doing laundry of course.  I’m sure there is stuff I’m forgetting.  Plus, I’m expecting my stepdaughter and our grandbaby to come visit.  Visiting with the grandbaby Aiden will override everything else.  Aiden is 6 months old already!  We don’t get to see him that much, but when we do…  well, everything else is gonna be dropped.  I love being a grandma, although I’m trying to teach Aiden to say VeeMa.  :)  I’ve gotta order more shirts for him, he’s starting to outgrow the stuff I’ve been making him since before he was born.

Ron has been busy with his own projects.  Mostly that’s been the truck he’s been fixing up for his son.   I’m not sure the truck is ready to leave with the kid yet, but it’s pretty close…   and Patrick has been helping with it all as much as he can on weekends.   Ron is teaching as they are doing, and hopefully his son is picking some of the stuff up and remembering it… today they changed the oil, with Patrick doing the squirming on the ground bits.  Which is good, because my husband just got out of his neck brace and has managed to crack a rib working on that truck.   He says the rib hurts worse than the neck did…. but that’s just because it’s fresh.  At least he’s able to do stuff again… that’s really made a big difference.

Took a day trip to Eureka Springs yesterday, and visited with my friend Jan.  No, my other friend Jan, lol!  It’s funny, I have very few friends…. and the two best ones are both Jan.  We did some shopping and had lunch and stopped by to see Sara at Paper Odyssey, but she wasn’t there, only Tony.   I reminded him of my name and gave him a jar of my wild plum jam, plus of course bought a few things.  I felt stupid when I realized I’d brought jam that didn’t have labels on it…  you know I print out labels.   Tony may never remember my name, but hopefully Sara will remember that it’s one of the things I bring to my friends…

Before and after shopping and lunch while visiting with Jan… well… she has dogs.   I love dogs.  Puppies!  She has a puppy that was just so adorable I wanted to bring it home with me.  Aussies, beautiful ones.  Very well trained, the little 10 week old puppy knew how to sit and lay down.   I got to get strange dog smell all over me to make my dogs jealous…  I wish they’d get a strong whiff of  well behaved dog… instead of silly stuff like oh,  jump in the pond because those other dogs like water!  I paid for the strange dog smell when I got home with BunBun mudpawing me to get a better sniff.  Ah, I shouldn’t complain, really.  The beagles are pretty well behaved all things considered.  BuddyMack’s harness broke sometime overnight and he was running loose but didn’t decide to run to town…. he stayed where he lives.  He went and got in his house when I went to find out why he was out and about in the yard.  He was happy to stick around and play chase with the cats and steal some of their food.

Well, it’s now Sunday morning and my last day of vacation has officially started.  Guess I should get to bed and sleep… there is that shopping to do and we all know how I hate grocery shopping on weekends, but I’ve gotta restock the fridge… lunches for me, etc.  Too much stuff to buy…. and I have to include lots of fresh veggies.   Ron and I are both supposed to quit smoking this week, as of Monday morning.  Need lots of low cal munchies like carrot sticks and such.  I know what happens when I trade cigs for cookies.  Not funny.

hugs,

Vyx

Ha ha, the joke’s on me.  Old sleeve in the ground is too small!  So, I started a hole today… in a better spot (not under trees) but had to stop when I hit a rock I couldn’t budge.  Ron says he’ll finish it tomorrow.

The other bad thing… No grandbabies were seen today.  I stayed home all day waiting.  Sigh.

Warning:  this post contains graphic images of a praying mantis eating.   Close ups of bugs.

I’ve had LOTS of praying mantis this year.  I don’t remember ever seeing this many anywhere, any time, any year.  I did see a HUGE one last year, I swear it was longer than my size 6 shoe… but I was mowing at the time and it was trying to get out of my way and I was trying to not run over it.

Shoot, at my house I’d be lucky if I’d see a few trying to get in the house in the fall…  like other bugs, they don’t want to freeze when the temps drop.

This evening there was one walking back and forth on the edge of the truck bed that my husband is fixing up.  It kept looking like it wanted to attack us, it would reach as we walked by.  Then it got annoyed and decided to go climb on the roof of the truck, but was having trouble.

Well, I had a brilliant idea.  I’m sitting out there and flies are landing all over me.  Have a beer in my hand and have to keep it covered because of the flies.  So…

Pour a little bit of beer on the truck, move mantis back down there and watch her eat her dinner.  An all you can eat buffet, if you will.  I sat there and watched for a little while before I thought… Camera!  I need my camera!  At this point she was on her 3rd fly….

Anyhoo… here ya go… and I hope you enjoy this as much as I did…

That last photo is a bit blurry…  I’m still having troubles with my camera focusing sometimes.  It sure did all right on those close ups, though!  Zoom function worked well, so I didn’t have to try to get the camera close.

Oh, and just a reminder, clicking on any photo will enlarge it.  These are all set to 1K pixels wide.

Hugs,

Vyx

I know I haven’t been blogging as much lately.  Just too busy and/or tired out to even sit at the computer for more than a few minutes.

But I’ve got lots of random things to share, starting with Milo the cat.  He’s a boy cat, and disappeared a few months ago.  I didn’t realize at the time that the Momma cats had run him and Tonic off.  Figured it out when Tonic came home and got beat up for trying to come to the porch to eat food.  Tonic shows up every day at dinner time, but won’t come to the porch, he’s a wimp after being beat up by the girls.

So, when I had all the cats given rabies shots, Milo was the only one I couldn’t find.  Tonic got to go for a ride to the vet a week later, but while Milo was here later that day that the vet was here, I haven’t seen him since.

He turned up yesterday evening.  At first I thought he was his sister Lionel, but he wouldn’t come to the porch.  So I went out to see this stranger cat, and of course I recognized him.  He’s not skinny like he’s been living wild, he evidently found a place to live that gives him food.  Starved for affection, though.  So much that he was almost a pest.  Not shy at all today, came right up on the porch to claim his share of the kibble.

Tonight  he’s growling and hissing at all the strangers.  The strangers are kittens that he’s never met before.  It’s interesting to watch… his interactions with the adult cats is like, okay, I remember you.  No growling or hissing going on much, unless he starts it because he’s startled.   With the kittens he’s totally uncool, however.  I had to give him a little snick on the head a couple times and tell him NO!  It’s so odd… he is following little dog Rita around trying to love on her, but hissing and growling at little kittens who are just curious.  I hope he gets over it, otherwise the grown up cats will run him off again.  Hopefully I can get him neutered before he runs off again…

On to other stuff… Yesterday Ron took the cover off of the generator.  I posted pix of the nice cover I made and then dyed.  It fits pretty well, but some kitten thinks that it’s a good sub for a litter box to crap on the fabric they can pull down.  (if I knew which kitten that was…grrr!)  So, it needed cleaning, and Ron went and pulled it off.  He’s doing a bit more around here, as he can, still pretty weak but he tries to help me.

Well, underneath that nice fabric cover on the top of the generator was a HUGE snake!  Just a common black snake, about 5 ft long or so.  Took me a while to get a good look at it’s face and underside to identify it  In the meantime we are both freaking out…  I’m running out to the cellar for a rake and cultivator and shovel… and Ron is going in the house for his gun.  I don’t like to kill snakes, but I know how Ron feels about them.  I brought pronged long handled tools to try to grab the snake out and move it off the porch.  It doesn’t belong on the porch,  there is no food for snakes (unless they eat kittens).

So, I tried to snag the snake out, and it wasn’t going.  Hanging on, moving around, but not down to the porch just coiling up better underneath the gas tank of the generator.  Nice handy little shelf there for it.

Ron got brave.  He moved the generator around until he could unlock the chain holding it to the porch, then moved it out to where we could start it up.  He actually used the rake handle to push the start button… it was that close to the snake.

Still, the snake wasn’t going anywhere.  It can see us, and it doesn’t want to get out there where it’s vulnerable.  Especially after I’ve been poking and prodding at it, and one of the cats had a go at it, too.

Ron got a heater to plug in and put the generator under load.  I plugged it in, I’m not that afraid of snakes.  :)   The engine sound changes and makes a big racket and more vibration when under load, and that did the trick.  Within a minute the snake was looking for a way down and get outta there.  We watched it slither down and then almost come back towards us, but I got between it and hiding places.  It went out in the yard, first under Ron’s car and then towards the flower bed.  We actually watched it go in through a crawlspace vent to under the house.  Ron would have been happier if he was allowed to shoot it, but I won’t let him shoot harmless snakes.  This is the second snake we’ve seen go under the house… a king snake slithered under a few weeks ago while we were watching.  (cats were molesting it, and I scared them off with a broom)

More random stuff…  People in the area actually have tomatoes getting ripe.  Not us, though.  I planted at the right time, but then it rained and rained and rained.  I never got out and rototilled this year… I think the best weekend for that was back in February when I planted turnips and radishes.  So, I had grass and weeds around my tomatoes but was keeping them mowed down.  Not good enough.  I finally got out there and put the soaker hose down and the black plastic that I use to keep the weeds away.  It’s only been a week and I see a big improvement.  We probably won’t get a lot of tomatoes this year… it’s already too hot to set fruit… but if I can keep the plants alive it’s like a really late start and we’ll have tomatoes late into the fall.  Oh, I also put in 2 new plants last week.  I’m sure I can buy good tomatoes at the farmers market… but so far I’m not missing them.  I’ve had LOTS of turnips…  so many that I had to throw some away.  The turnip row is still chock full of turnips and I’ve actually mowed over them now.  You’d think they’d be soft from not enough water, or getting tough… but no, they are fine.  Dang strange… I thought they would have bolted by now like the radishes did.  I don’t know turnips that well, though… this is the first time I’ve grown them!  I love raw turnips like I do the first radishes in the spring.  Yummy!   Well, until you go out and pull a grocery sack full and don’t even make a dent.  LOL!  I don’t eat turnip greens, but I love a good crisp tender turnip raw or cooked.  I’m sorry I didn’t get more veggies in this year… but time has been limited for me.  It’s not too late for some things… I could plant squash.  But that means either digging or getting the tiller out, plus more plastic mulch down for weeds, another soaker hose… and I don’t seem to have the time or energy.

I feel sure there was more stuff I was going to write about tonight, but I went and got some wasabi peas to snack on and I think my brain is clouded now with the distraction of that wonderful flavor.  Sometimes a bit hot, clean your sinuses out hot… but I’ve always liked that flavor.  I vote for wasabi over jalapenos or other hot peppers any day.  Probably why I love spicy turnips and radishes, too.

until next time…

Hugs,

Vyx