I hate feeling greedy in the season of giving.

Ho ho ho, tis the season to want to buy stuff. For me.

Who am I kidding, it doesn’t matter what time of year it is, sometimes I get a bee in my bonnet about buying something, and I have to have it, like, now.

Just this year I needed, asap, a tortilla press, popsicle molds, retro kitchen embroidery designs, an external hard drive, new cake pans, a paper shredder, a vegetable juicer, a George Foreman grill, the entire Sookie Stackhouse series of novels, a new DVD recorder, the book Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day, a 5 quart covered plastic container that will fit in my refrigerator door (for the artisan bread, of course), a Swiffer Wetjet, a cordless vacuum stick, a red ceramic pie plate, and most recently a new flagpole and house flags.

Most of these things I could easily live without, except I obsessed about them a little and either drove to several stores to find them, or spent a LOT of time in the Internet to find just the right one at the right price.

Don’t let me watch infomercials, as I am kind of susceptible to them. Some of those products are good and some I’d rather not remember (steam shark floor cleaner and its brother the Shark cordless sweeper).

I do not like feeling greedy in the season of giving. But I’m spending a lot of time dreaming about my new Kindle. (No I didn’t buy it. Yet.)

I have 64 Christmas CDs

It's like a weird sickness, I know, but I just love Christmas music. And not the same old stuff every year, I am on the lookout for the unusual but good, every year. But I am trying to limit myself to 2 new ones each year because, well, this is getting out of hand.

These come in all genres, some of them even defy a single genre. Jazz? I've got traditional jazz and smooth jazz too. Country? Yeah, some modern country and several western swing style discs too. There's classical and pseudo classical (What if Mozart Wrote I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause?). There is one reggae, two tejano and three rockabilly discs.

Twenty years after the original It's Christmas Man!, Brave Combo has a new, live, Christmas album. That's one of my 2 for this year. I wonder what other one will grab me.

Oh, and it's really hard to take a good photo of CDs on the dining table indoors. And it's raining so I couldn't take them out back.

I'm having an odd craving for gingerbread cookies...

I didn't remember I'd seen it before.

The kitchen sink that is.

The backstory is that my sister selected a light fixture for her guest bathroom that is the same as the one in our brother's/sister-in-law's guest bathroom. She didn't make the connection, she just knew when she saw it in the store that it was THE ONE.

I did the exact same thing with his kitchen sink. When I picked mine out I drove 30 miles away to Ft. Lauderdale to the European sink outlet store and spent hours looking at all the sinks before finding just the right one: stainless steel, 2 bowls, the left one being bigger and deeper, and the right one being smaller and easier to reach the bottom of. I've picked out kitchen sinks before but this is the first time I've gone with the one I love rather than the one that fits and is cheap. And I love it.

So, I don't remember seeing it in my brother's kitchen, but I know I must have, because it had been newly remodeled the Christmas of 2006 when I was there, and I bought my sink in June of 2008. I didn't make the connection until I looked under their sink recently and saw the brand name in the inside of the bowl. Blanco. Nice sink.

Now if we could explain why my sister-in-law and I have the same silverware pattern...

I liked it so much I bought it twice

My new juicer I bought on eBay, that is. I had one before, in my previous life that I left behind. Both times I hung around eBay and put my bid in the last few seconds and got good deals on this well-rated juicer.

Even though they are identical, this one isn't as efficient. The stuff that comes out isn't as dry for this one. I'm not sure what I expected for 19.99 plus shipping, so I won't complain. I do like the juice, and I know it's good for me. If I stick with it maybe I'll get a better one next year.

On a crazier note, apparently the toaster oven caught on fire twice yesterday. No matter how they explain it, the fact remains that these things never happen to me, only them. The toaster oven is in the trash and I won't be replacing it until they are gone. Kind of like the ironing board.

Anybody want to buy two 25 year old roommates, cheap? Any takers for free? Anyone?

[Crickets]

Meet the car from hell, and his little brother.

It's the car from hell, and it's not really the car's fault. Not really. It's just a fact of life when your owner has no money you will break down more often. I think it must be some kind of Murphy's law or something.

We won't discuss how "they" bought 2 pieces of junk cars instead of one decent one. After all, a gift of money is a gift and "they" decided that this was a better value for them. BUT, and here's the big but, this only is a good value if the original principals still apply. If you have to move in with Mom due to financial restraints, you agree to her fine print. The fine print says in this neighborhood you can't do car repairs in the driveway. The big print (me) says no you can't have my garage for your repairs either.

I've had 3 letters from the homeowner's management company about my violations of the repair rule. I could be fined up to $1000. My son-in-law wants to argue with them. Excuse me, but who do you think you are, a homeowner or something?

So, where do you tow the car so you can do your own repairs? Around these parts you need to know someone with a garage (business) that will let you use their facilities, or you need to be on good terms with someone who lives in a neigborhood where this is allowed.

In the case of my daughter and her hubby, they actually have one place like that, but that spot has been occupied for almost a year by the second car from hell.This car has been in her Dad's back yard for almost a year now while they tried to scrape up enough money to replace the engine. It's almost done, now they have to figure out how to pay for the registration and insurance which they let go when it got broken. (Which had been paid for by yours truly, but who's bitter?)

Her Dad, by the way, wants that space in his yard back for his new boat.

Preoccupied with clean cement?

When waxing philosophically about the differences between south Florida where I live now and central Florida where I grew up, the priorities on the front of the house strike me immediately. Some things are the same everywhere, like attractive landscaping, maintaining the actual house (paint, etc.), and individual decorative touches like house flags, special mailboxes, or seasonal wreaths.

In my neighborhood, the homeowner's association pays a part-time maintenance guy who uses a lot of his non-emergency time cleaning the sidewalks. Really. There is this big machine that looks like a commercial floor cleaner that hooks up to a water source and scrubs concrete clean. Since most of the sidewalks are under oak trees, they do get dirty and stained, but where I grew up this wasn't an issue. Sidewalks got darker, so what? In my last trips to Deland and Leesburg, driveways and sidewalks were naturally darkened everywhere I looked.

But in my community, and others around here I've heard, concrete must be painted (only terracotta here) or cleaned. So here I am out pressure cleaning my driveway. This is a big deal for me since I have to plan around the absence of cars, if you know what I mean. Until I lived here I never paid too much attention to little stains, but when you clean up the dirt the rust spots and mystery stains stand out. IMO, it's just one more thing to obsess about. I think I'll go make a cake instead.

Worse for you than most cookies

I almost called this post "Heart Attack on a Plate". I succumbed and made the chocolate chip bacon cookies I read about last week. Yes, bacon in cookies. Before you gag, try eating a little bacon and chocolate together. It is surprisingly tasty.

They are very good cookies, but IMO it is a waste of perfectly wonderful bacon, since the cookie and chocolate part overwhelm the bacon part.

Do you suppose I ate too much of the bacon before I put it in the cookies?? Hmmm.

I got the recipe on craftster.org.

Yes, I made a pan of plain ones for Nina, who doesn't eat bacon. Smart girl.

Nina and the big chocolate cake.

The dad of Nina's friend let them use his truck to haul around an engine. Don't ask. Anyway, to thank him for the use of his truck, she made him his favorite cake, German Chocolate, from scratch.

This is a first for her, her previous cakes have been from mixes. This is a big production cake, let me tell you. The first step was a trip out to Jo-Anns in Wellington to get another cake pan. (I only had 2 matching pans.) The Boynton store is kind of disappointing, so we went right to the good one.

After we got home, we discovered that not all nine inch round pans are really nine inches across. The new pans did not match the old pans, so she had to do it in two layers after all. Nothing like an extra trip out to Wellington, heh? I think Nina just got herself a new set of cake pans. My old ones are just fine for me.

The cake turned out well, very well indeed. The delivery of it was delayed because Nina doesn't have her own car and is at the mercy of others.

Did I mention an engine that was being carted around? Oh, I said not to ask, didn't I.

Who do they think they are kidding?

No Publix, it's not premium if it has high fructose corn syrup in it. No matter how nice the packaging.

My Laundry room - How awkward.

I love having my washer and dryer in the house. Back in my old house they were in the garage, and I'd get my clothes all sweaty just getting them out of the dryer. They are in the kitchen now, where I can hear them and remember about them. And it's way more comfortable. But it is kind of awkward, working around the bi-fold doors.There you have it. The bi-fold doors just barely let the dryer door open. And the kitchen door to the garage is right there too. Don't even think about opening it if the bi-folds are open. Wait, you can't tell from the garage. Bang! Oops. You can't get in, anyway!

The other bi-fold doesn't give me much room to work at the front of the washer, either. Why do I keep the doors? Well they keep the area tidy looking and they muffle the sound. But you can bet my next washer will have a lid hinged in the back. I'm not sure what to do about that dryer. And no, I can't just let them trade positions, they are where they need to be. It's just awkward, that's all.

I cannot believe it. I believe it.

I thought if I went out of my way to request the kitchen be clean by 8:45 so I could make my bake-sale goodies, that my daughter at least would realize that meant not to wait until 8:55 to start cooking.

No, she's in there making ramon and I'm cooling my heels until she's done. And she'll leave the pot in the sink too, because that's how she rolls.

They are leaving in January.

Bake sale biscotti

I'm always uncertain how to package home-made goodies for a bake sale. Do I arrange them on a plate and cover with plastic wrap? (Bake sale ladies or teens can figure out how you can get them home or eat them on the spot.)

This time, I've made biscotti for the bake sale on Tuesday, since I am working 10 hours on Monday. What timing, right? Biscotti still tastes great 2 or 5 days later. So I decided to put portions of cookies in baggies with labels for two reasons. One, it saves the volunteer from having to package them, and because if I put these loose in a plastic box they get kind of broken up.

I wanted to put all the ingredients on the labels, but they wouldn't fit. These are whole grain cinnamon nut biscotti from the King Arthur's Flour blog. I love that site.

The irony, a bake sale to benefit the American Heart Association. I'll have mine with whipped cream, please.

It's always something...

I had to have my old air conditioner replaced last week. It was over 12 years old, so it was time. In every other house I've been in where the AC has been replaced, the new unit was smaller than the old. My new one covers the whole concrete pad, and goes up to the top of where the ficus was trimmed. Of course, the ficus height is determined by anonymous guys from Top Cut. I doubt my electric bill will go down as predicted, since my housemates turn the thermostat down whenever they feel like it. Yeah it's comfortable at 76, but not necessary, IMO.

This morning I'm just waiting around for the permit inspectors from the city. It could happen, really.

More tea towels!

Yes, even more! These 2 are actually hand embroidered. They are bigger and more dramatic because of it, but I can tell there won't be dozens of these by November.

Awash in napkins and tea towels

So, after 5 years of ignoring it, I pulled out my embroidery machine and have been embellishing napkins and dish towels all over the place. Well, actually just in my bedroom.

I'm making these for the woman's group church bazaar in November, and the whole deal reminds me so much of Mimi (Mom for most of my adult life), that it makes me smile. I remember the general chaos in her house and studio when she was in production mode. I've spent over $80 in towels, napkins, embroidery designs and threads, and have no assurances that my church group will get that much back from it. I have enjoyed using my toy (embroidery machine) again, and have collected some awesome vintage dancing veggie designs for it.

It amuses me too that I've come full circle in 40 years I am back to sewing in my bedroom to avoid the cats. In high school my sister's cats were all over the house except my room, so that's where I sewed. Now the cat I avoid belongs to my son-in-law. My bedroom is a cat-free oasis. Sigh. In my own house, too. I've even started to hand embroider again, too, just like in 8th grade home-ec class. That's another sample of coming full circle. Please though, no teenage angst again. I can't take it.

So, how many of these do you replace in 2 years?

I mean the toilet seat, of course. My daughter and her hubbs are working on #3 in less than 8 months. Really.

I replaced toilet seats and shower heads when I moved in 2 years ago. They've needed 2 replacement toilet seats and one replacement shower head so far.

We won't even talk about the busted ceiling fan light, which I will have repaired when they move out. Counting the months, I am.

Rainbow over Lake Sausalito

Last night the sky was quite dark to the east, and the sun was out. That means rainbow time! It was double on both ends, but my camera couldn't get the whole thing in.

Did I mention I love my view?

Tiffany's family baby shower

On May 30th, 2009, Shannon & company held a baby shower for Tiffany, my beautiful niece who also happens to work at the library with me.

It was a beautiful, breezy day at the Intercoastal Park, and the rain was soft and never blew into the pavilion, so all was well & wonderful.

I got to see family members that I hadn't seen since before my divorce, and I loved catching up with them. Nina was pleased to introduce Tristan to this group of family, once he got there. Heck, even Sam W. came, what a crowd! There were almost 40 people there, if you count the babies.

Tiffany and her immediate family members all had custom printed t-shirts with their relationships to the soon-to-be baby airbrushed in. Miyana is beloved already, lucky baby!

You can see all the photos I took here.

The last picture is an example of why I love Photoshop. It's a before and after. Silly Uncle Frank, I told you Kayla didn't need finger horns.

Rite-13 weekend

Michelle had her rite-13 ceremony on May 17, 2009. I can't believe she's 13 in less than 2 weeks!

The rest of the pictures can be viewed here.

Happy Mother's Day, Mimi

Mimi passed on almost 9 years ago, but I still am reminded of her many times, every day. I miss you, Mimi. Jim Dandy is her epic work of art, winning prizes and being featured in an actual published book. Here's Jim Dandy in Daddy's house, just like Mimi left it. Now, here's Jim Dandy in my house. Funny, Mimi always joked about the orange walls in her house. Mine are terra cotta, another version of orange.



Jim Dandy won a blue ribbon at the 1989 Florida State Fair. It was designed and hooked by Mimi over several years. She was a true artist, even hand dying the wool to get the exact colors she needed. This work of art makes me think of her every day. Way to go!

This post reminds me I need to scan some paper photos of various family members. My most recent scanned photo of Mimi is from 1986. I'll never get my "dream" scrapbook picture composed without better scans.

Really, a Rubbermaid pitcher?

I have GOT to get a vase.

These are Nina's flowers Tristan got her for their anniversary. She asked where the vase was, and was somewhat disappointed when I reminded her she was remembering the one I left behind. Oh well, another thing to put on the wish list.

Chocolate mint, mmmm my favorite!

Making cookies is a creative outlet for me, and this is the second time I've made these chocolate/peppermint sandwich cookies. I got the recipe over at the King Arthur Flour's Bakers Blog. Man, that site gets me going!

Anyway, they call these "faux-reos". They are in a different league from Oreos, but I still need to perfect this recipe a little. The cookies are bigger than I expected, even though I used the recommended cookie scoop and made sure that it was not rounded over the top or anything .

The recipe specifically calls for no leavening, but some folks over at the blog are using an old-fashioned leavening that uses ammonia somehow. I guess the good news/bad news about that is that the cookies have a more tender texture with the baker's ammonium, but the dough is not appealing to eat. Plus it smells funny when you bake. We don't need no stinkin' cookies smells around here.

The filling is made from finely crushed peppermints, powdered sugar and shortning. Not the healthiest, but honestly, real Oreos use high fructose corn syrup. Gimme a break, ok?

The resident "kids" love them. Me too.

Now, on to my back yard. Look what was hiding in the Mexican Bluebell! I am tickled whenever an amaryllis pops its pretty head up unexpectedly. It didn't bloom last year, but maybe it got beheaded by the guys trimming the other plants. Anyway, I just love it. Hello, flower! Now I need to go see if the one on the side of the house will bloom this year. Last year it popped out on Nina and Tristan's wedding day. Has it been a whole year already? Yes.

It's Raining!

At last,
my rain has come along,
my driest days are over,
and life is like a song...

Ok, I'll stop singing. It's not raining hard enough to make much difference yet, but boy do we need it. I had forgotten how it sounds on the skylight in the kitchen. Yes, rain some more, please!

Edited to add: That lasted less than 5 minutes. It's not satisfactory at all. No.

I love El Bodegon

Really, I do. For the uninitiated, El Bodegon is a local chain of latino (latina?) grocery stores. A few weeks ago I got it into my head I was going to make fresh tortillas. Corn tortillas, that is. Thanks, Alton Brown, like I needed another thing I just had to try. So I bought a bag of masaca harina and made up a little paste. I tried to roll it out thinly but that stuff just wouldn't cooperate.

Being the gizmo kind of girl I am, I decided to get a tortilla press. Well you would think such a beast would be easy to come by in these parts, but it wasn't in any of my usual housewares spots. They are quite heavy and I didn't want to pay shipping, so I thought it would be better to drive all over WPB to find one. Just as a last minute desparate try I went into El Bodegon. It had been years since I had wandered its fascinating asiles, and it didn't disappoint me. There were 2 different tortilla presses to chose from. And they were cheaper than the ones on eBay, to boot.

As a bonus I found small cans of chipotles in adobo sauce. Publix has them in cans too big to use in one recipe. Alrighty then.

But mostly I love El Bodegon for its entertainment value. I'm sure I must have spent an hour in there looking at all the exotic stuff. The produce is wonderful and I bet the meat would have been good too, if I could have gotten close to it. It was busy in there and the peeps were 2 and 3 deep at the back of the store where I think the butcher section is. There are 2 different places to sit and eat, I didn't notice what the difference was, except the one on the west side seemed a lot busier.

Foodies, try it sometime, you'll see!

The tortillas were awesome, by the way. Problem is, I am the only one in this house who ate them, so I've got to make a little space in the freezer next time I have a tortilla making session.

Waaah! Mommy, they are making me work!

Did I mention how disgusted I am with entitled people? How many grown women do you know who call their mommy when their boss requests them to do something they don't think they should have to do?

GROW UP. Get the heck off that phone to mommy and fight your own battles, baby.

Weed watching

For about a decade I waged a personal war against a particular weed in my yard that threatened to choke out my ficus hedge. Virginia Creeper. So when I started seeing vines on the landscaping at work I started to document them.

Certain weeds grew so big that folks who didn't know any better thought they were part of the official landscaping. Like this palmetto behind the shrub here. Yes, I know some landscapers use it on purpose, but this one was strictly a volunteer. It got bigger and bigger and then it started to get a vine.

Can you see the size of the stump of that thing in this picture? To say that palmetto got out of control is putting it mildly.

I guess the point of all this is that nobody really took the time to tell the landscapers to notice the details. When they did actually work on these hedges they either gave the palmetto a crew cut, or just trimmed around it like it was part of the plan. We won't even comment on the vine because they obviously thought it was a losing battle too. Sometimes the only way to get rid of some weeds is to slash and burn.

My old Virginia Creeper? Well who knows, my solution was to move away from it. LOL.

Still moving the library, still not ready.

We're moving the collection (books, DVDs etc.) into the remodeled portion, but the building is still not ready. Everywhere you look there is stuff still in cardboard, stuff not assembled yet, and we are tripping over workmen and they are having to work around us and each other.

To me, nothing says "not ready" better than this picture of the construction supervisor in "his" office. That's going to be the professional collection room eventually. But does he look like he's ready to leave?

Nah, I don't think so.

Oh, and they tore up the road and put it back together again yesterday. Pul-eeeze.

Entertaining myself with chocolate

So, what else to do 2 days after the holiday of chocolate? Make cookies with pink and red candies, of course!

The practical part of me knows that Valentine's Day is mostly about business. Hallmark has nothing on the business Hershey's does. Even those of us without a SO buy and eat candy even if we don't buy cards. And buying it the day after at 50% off doesn't hurt either.


So, aren't the candies pretty in the measuring cup? And they are just as pretty ready to be mixed into the dough.

The mixer broke them up a little, but these candies have a tender shell on them to begin with. Now I have to go back and comment on my recipe that I need not bake them nearly as long as the recipe says. I prefer my cookies extra brown and crisp, but not everyone agrees with me. If anyone asks I'll tell them I meant to make them this way. If I had wanted the color of the candy to show up more I would have stuck them in the tops instead of mixing them in.

As overdone as they are, they will be eaten quite happily in my house, and perhaps at work. Did I mention that I love to bake? I will do a birthday cake later today or tomorrow night for DD. Maybe not chocolate though.

Happy February, everyone!

It looks like another drought, but who cares...

Well, here is Lake Sausalito Place. Do man-made lakes in planned unit developments have names? Anyway, you can see how far down the water is. We're not supposed to have a beach. Last year, 2008 we had above average rainfall, but it barely made up for the shortcomings of '06 and '07. Now in '09 we are having another very dry year. So it's usually wet or dry so what's different this time?

Well, you are not hearing about this very much on local news. Nope, local news is "bad economy" and "aren't you panicked yet?" it seems 24/7. Sprinkled in with traffic wrecks and other crimes.

Yes, I get it, scare the peeps and sell more advertising. I think it must work pretty well. But look at my lake! This was big news in '07 and it should be big news now. IMO. It's time to scare people about our water supply in addition to our job supply.

We're SO not ready but we're doing it anyway.

It's Thursday today, and we are going to close the library to move into the remodeled area next Tuesday. Everywhere you look, that building is not ready. Really, does this look like they can do it in 2 working days? (They don't take off Presidents Day like the staff does.

This ought to be fun. Stay tuned.

Out my office window

I have a single-person study room for my current office and I just love it. No, there isn't even room for a filing cabinet in here, but I have a window! In my previous office behind the circ desk the only thing to look at was the security monitor. MMMM sometimes it was interesting.

Here's my view. Why yes, they are indeed tearing up the road. Can't get much more interesting than this, right?

My new office after we move next week has 2 windows. They both look at the side of the rest of the library. I hope they can get the landscaping in soon, because the building is butt ugly now. No you don't want a picture of that!

Call me Melonhead

Ok, I am not sure why I started calling myself Melonhead on Internet boards, but keeping the same username across several boards has become a little easier to track. In some cases the name had aready been taken, so some other version of "melon" was used instead. Except here and I don't know why I didn't keep the theme here, but there you go.

I wonder sometimes if folks have alternate personalities for different types of boards they are on. For example one username/avitar for all their fan boards, another for all the craft boards, and perhaps a third and fourth for other hobbies, interests or concerns.

On some boards it looks like user names are mostly related to the subject of the board, like variations on the word "pea" for the twopeasinabucket boards, or variations on that rock star's names on his various fan boards.

At some point does it get way too much to keep up with? What is the average number of boards a person is registered on and of those how many are just places you just lurk in anyway? Just thinking out loud, I guess.

Later this week I'll talk about biscotti Saturday. Or tortilla Sunday. Yes, I made a mess.

Home made pizza

It's good but not fast. Some folks in my house had trouble waiting for it, if you know what I mean. But it was the best homemade pizza I've ever done. Try this crust recipe and you'll see:

King Arthur Flour pizza recipe.

Really, these instructions on how to manage willful dough are for real. Most pizza dough instructions act as though your dough will be cooperative. It is a LIE. Unless it's not a yeast dough, that is.

Two 12" pizzas were gobbled up almost completely by 4 adults. Then we had homemade apple pie. (Thank you Sam W.) Bliss. Sorry, no pictures, we ate it too fast.

The things you get stuck in your head....

Well, I have gotten onto the anti-HFCS bandwagon. Yes, high fructose corn syrup is an evil plot to make corporate food companies and their shareholders wealthy at the expense of the health of regular folks who, yours truly included, really love their sweets.

But avoiding HFCS is tricky but not impossible. Thank you Publix for stocking many natural foods like organic ketchup that don't contain this evil stuff. Plus, I have been making my own foods that I used to just purchase. Lucky for me I like to cook!

Now, that said, do you know how hard it is to find certain things without HFCS? My two latest quests are sweet pickle relish and guava jelly. I know they are out there, I haven't done an internet search yet, but I did buy a KitchenAid stand mixer and a grinder attachment. The mixer is awesome at making bread dough. And I used the grinder to grind up the only brand of bread and butter pickles without HFCS to make a sweet pickle relish substitute. Thank you Bubbies, by the way. And thank you, KitchenAid. Now, back to work. (Ham salad sandwich for lunch today, thankyouverrrymuch.

The reign of stupid is over. Praise Be!

That is all.

Treading water

I guess this is a mini-vent. My daughter and her husband moved in with me in November and I am kind of hanging on until they leave sometime next fall.

How can 2 grown people be so oblivious to filth? My house has white tile, and how can you walk past the cat's spit-up 3 days and not pick it up? I don't much care for cats anyway and this one uses her claws (not maliciously, she's just super nervous). Both the cat and its owners are treading thin, thin ice around here. They don't contribute to the household and currently they are not even keeping up with themselves.

I cave and clean the kitchen on a regular basis because I can't stand it, but I am getting mighty tired of picking up their slack.

AGGGGRRRRR!

OK, vent over.