There’s a Moose Loose Aboot the Hoose

See that little pink tail at the bottom of the picture? That’s what’s left of the little mouse I bought with my own money when I was just a tyke. Our family was on vacation in Wildwood and I saw a set of three mice that would make a great addition to my collection. Only I didn’t have enough money for the whole set.

The lady in the store didn’t want to break up the set, but I guess the little girl who really, really wanted that one little mouse softened her up and she sold it to me. Alas, it didn’t survive my curio cabinet crashing to the floor this morning. 

How Long Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb?

The other morning I noticed that the bathroom ceiling light was out.

I could either call my 6 foot 3 inch husband to change it, or grab a step stool and do it myself. Dear Husband has been busy all summer (and last summer) prepping and painting the exterior of our 100+ year old house. I’d do this thing myself.

Foregoing the relative safety of a step-stool, I climbed up on the toilet to find out what wattage bulb I would need to fetch from the basement. It was a 72 watter, which shines as bright as a 100w bulb, according to the box. While up there I noticed anew how dusty the fan/light fixture was.

Proceeding to the basement, I grabbed the box of light bulbs, and picked up the step-stool on the way back through the kitchen. I got as far as the stairs when I decided to go back to the kitchen for our brand-new vacuum cleaner to take care of the dust. After arriving back at the stairs I couldn’t quite figure out how to carry the light bulbs, the step-stool and the vacuum cleaner all at once, so I left the step-stool.

Of course, I was too lazy to go all the back downstairs for the step-stool, so, much to Dear Husband’s later chagrin, I climbed back up on the toilet and screwed in the new bulb. Now for the vacuum. I found that the polarized plug on the vacuum wouldn’t fit in the ancient outlet in the bathroom, so I found another outlet in the next room. It being my first use of said new vacuum, it took me a minute to figure out how to put the thing together, but it worked very nicely on the fan vents and light cover.

While I’m at it, that heat register has been in need of attention for… a while. (Our house was heated with steam once upon-a-time, and we have charming, but very dusty, iron radiators in every room.) Our nifty, new vacuum carries all its tools on its back, so I found the crevice tool and exchanged it for the duster, and proceeded to relieve the radiator of (ahem) years of cobwebs and dust bunnies.

It’s been a while since anyone has gone around the edges of the upstairs hallway. I’d just do that while I had the vacuum set up. And I might as well go around the edges of the ceiling too. And the bathroom ceiling. The cobwebs in our bedroom have been bugging me for a long time. And the rug could use a good going over with attention to areas that are usually ignored. And the closet hasn’t been vacuumed either. And the radiator in this room could use some attention.

To answer my initial question: it takes about two hours to change a light bulb.

A Last Hurrah?

Wow – two whole months have passed since my last post, but no apologies. I am not a slave to my blog! Perhaps the creative juices will begin to flow again… perhaps not. Time will tell.

That said, the title of this post has nothing to do with the blog per se. Rather, the ditches outside our house.

Yesterday we received notice that our road, and others nearby in the same condition, are going to be fixed this summer. In fact, the work is set to begin on the 7th of this month. Uh-huh. I’ll believe when I see it – that’s what they said last summer. We’ve been hearing about the town’s plans to fix our ditches since we moved in over 22 years ago.

In case you don’t know, our rather narrow street is bounded by serious ditches on both sides. If a car is parked on the street you can drive past it, but it is prudent to be careful. (Getting out of the passenger side of a car parked close to the edge can be challenging – you kind of have to find a handhold on the vehicle somewhere, or just give in and climb down into the ditch.)

The ditches are two and a half to three feet wide, and just as deep. At one time they were nicely lined with stone, but now the stone is largely covered by weeds and dirt. Over the decades the surface of the road has been paved over and over so that it’s substantially higher than it once was. Added to that are the crumbling sides of the road, and a pretty steep hill. Just for perspective, whenever the local paper prints an article about the condition of our roads, the picture they show is nearly always right in front of our house.

Even so, over the years we’ve had only five incidents of cars getting stuck in our ditch – a testament to the fear they inspire. Only one of those did not involve our driveway. I’m sure there have been incidents on other roads in town, but I’m not aware of them.

Back to the notice we received. Wouldn’t you know it, a teen on her second day with a driver’s license decided to do a K-turn in our driveway this evening. Why she would even attempt such a thing is anyone’s guess, but attempt it she did, and drove right into the ditch. An hour later some neighbor boys with a jeep and a tow-line managed to pull her out, leaving pieces of her car’s frame on the road. Ouch.

While we sympathize, and hope that her car will be repairable, I have to admit that we snickered a bit once it was over. It seems our ditch is getting its last licks in before it disappears under a proper storm drain.

Some Internet Silliness

You know how YouTube will show a screen with suggested videos after you finish playing through one? You know – since you watched that, you may want to watch these…

Here’s what came up after playing through a new worship song sent by Shawn, our church’s pastor and worship leader:

Notice that most of the shots are of other worship songs, but take note of the middle two in line one. First: “Making Out With Strangers”.  (Just what have I been watching that makes YouTube think I would want to see this?) And the second?

“Bill Johnson: Dealing With Sexual Sin in the Church”.

I just had to share. That is all.

Creepy Crawlies in my Closet

The other day when I went into my closet to get dressed, I was greeted by one of these hanging out on the wall. A nice, big ‘un. Now, as a rule, I’m pretty sturdy when it comes to bugs. I don’t love them, and they are not welcome in my house, but these things totally creep me out.

As a child, when my (older) brother wanted to examine a critter, he would get me to pick it up so he could have a closer look. (This, according to my mother.) I kind of enjoy watching a caterpillar crawl around on my hand. Snakes are OK too. There are only two kinds of poisonous snakes around here, and I know what those look like, so I was the one Mom would call when she’d find a garter snake in the garden. I’d pick it up and move it to neutral territory.

In high school, while hanging out with other geeks in the biology room, I used to take the snakes out of their cages and play with them. Once, while in a joint lecture with another biology class, one of those snakes managed to somehow escape its tank and make its way all the way down the hall to the lecture room. The teacher picked it up and put it in a trash can to keep it out of trouble until class was over. So many of the girls were freaking out over it that he picked the snake up and handed it to me so I could take it back to its tank. I think half the girls fainted, and maybe a couple of the boys.

All that to say I’m pretty sure these particular bugs, known as house centipedes, are evil. They like dark, dank places, and they skitter away when the light shines on them. (Except for the brave one in my closet, who nicely stayed put while I ran for a Kleenex to squish him with.) I am absolutely certain that one ran across my neck once when I was sleeping. What does this say about the state of my closet? Small as it is, there’s a big ol’ window in there and I’m going to go with the theory that it came in through there to get out of the rain.

Now that I’ve read up a little on them, however, I guess I’ll need to dial back my vitriol a little. It seems they eat things like roaches and spiders. But I’m still going to squish them if I see them in my house. The roaches and spiders too.

Keyboard Players Don’t Get No Respect

I just finished watching the Newsboys YouTube video God’s Not Dead and I noticed, like in most other music videos I watch, they don’t show much of the keyboard player. You might get a glimpse now and then, but mostly you can just see them in the background somewhere.

While it can be irritating when I’m watching to try to learn a song and I want to see what the keyboard is doing, I can understand why they don’t show them much. The drummer gets to wail away with his sticks, the guitarists get to strum and swing their guitars around, the singers can dance around and raise their hands, even the bass guitarist gets to move a little if he wants to. But what can the keyboard player do? More often than not, he is standing there (or sitting, in my case) holding a chord down. If things are really jumping, he might be moving his fingers a little. Oooooo.

For those who don’t know, I’ve played piano or keyboard at church for probably 27 years (with a couple of years off when my firstborn came along). How I got into that with little or no musical training is another story. For a while I played standing up – by the end of the service I would have cramps from standing on one foot while using the foot pedal with the other. Even then, other than bopping up and down a little, there’s not much you can do when you’re attached to a stationary object at three points.

On our church’s worship team, I am the old lady. The trumpet player is four or five years younger than me (we went to the same high school, not that it matters). Everybody else is in their twenties or early thirties. I have friends younger than me who are grandparents. I’m pretty sure nobody wants to see a fat old(er) woman jumping around on stage. And it would probably be dangerous since I’m kind of a klutz.

I’ll be the first to admit that my musical skills are limited, but even I can do a little better than to hold a chord now and then. Granted, sometimes what’s called for is to just hold a single note, or even not to play at all. We all need to be sensitive to what’s going on in the service.

I also have to admit that it can be a blast to play with these talented young guys. Still, why do the guitarists and percussionists get to have all the fun? Maybe that’s why accordions were invented. No, not going there.

In “modern” churches we seem to have this need to put the musicians up front, then claim that it’s not a performance. In the churches where I grew up, the organist and choir were in a loft in the back of the sanctuary. I like that. After all, it’s not the worshippers we’re supposed to be focusing on, it’s the worshipee.

I guess having the worship leaders in front of the crowd does have some Biblical basis – after all, God often put the singers, players, and dancers in the front of the parade. People like having someone to follow. And if that makes it easier for someone to enter in to worship the living God, I’ll continue to sit up front, and remember to smile, and lift my hands up now and then, while the others do their part.

Icicles and Sauerkraut

When my writer-daughter mentioned the other night that she had put up a new post on her blog, I realized that I haven’t posted anything for about two weeks. (News met with mild disapproval from said daughter.) Why is it that I can think of all sorts of wonderful topics when I’m in the shower, but not so much when I’m in front of my laptop?

For a while I though of talking about the icicles that are forming on our roof. I’m looking at a four footer right outside the window now. But then, what can you say about icicles? They’re pretty when the sun hits them. The ones on the west side of the house kind of glow in the sunset. They can be fun to play with, but they can also be dangerous – I tend to scoot past the eaves of the house when going in and out at this time of year.

Writer-daughter suggested I talk about the variety of dinners that I make. I hesitate to jump into the food blogging fray, but I do enjoy a good kitchen adventure. According to my friends and family I am a very good cook. Not to say I don’t have my flops (there was the hamburgers turned hockey pucks incident for example) but successes far outweigh the flops.

That night I had made pork chops and sauerkraut in my iron skillet. Since the sauerkraut was covering up the pork chops, the family had no idea what was for supper when they sat down to eat. They said grace anyway, followed by a common question: “was this a recipe?”

“Of coarse not.”

I have to admit that I haven’t mastered pork chops. They always seem to come out a little tough and overcooked. These weren’t so bad. I browned them quick, then piled the sauerkraut and onions on top with a little water, and stuck them in the oven to finish.

More often than not, when I do cook from a recipe, I don’t really follow it. That conversation usually goes something like, “was this from a recipe?”

“Well, yes. Except…”

I also don’t make a lot of repeats. There are a few standards that I make more or less the same every time: chili, potato salad, spaghetti sauce, whole-wheat bread, pizza, macaroni and cheese.

A long time ago I discovered that making up a menu, even just a week in advance, is a waste of time for our household. I often don’t know who’s going to be around for dinner as I’m beginning to cook. Things just change too much and food was being wasted. So what I do is how I operate in almost everything – I gather ingredients to keep on hand (or paints, or craft supplies, or yarn) and pull dinner together according to our mood and circumstances. It usually works.

I’ve been having a hard time figuring out how to wrap up this post. I’ll end with this: omurice. After watching Rooftop Prince (see What is it About Foreign Films?) in which the characters love to eat omurice, I found some recipes on the internet and fixed it for our Valentine’s Day dinner. It’s basically fried rice seasoned with ketchup, covered with a thin round of scrambled egg, and garnished with more ketchup.

I haven’t put ketchup on scrambled eggs since I was about five years old, but this was pretty good. Three out of six went for seconds, if that tells you anything. It’s also fun to make. You make something like a crepe with the egg, slide it into a bowl, plop the fried rice filling in there, then flip it over onto a plate. You tuck the edges under so you have a nice little package, then decorate it with ketchup.

The recipes I referenced are here: http://www.trifood.com/omurice.asp, and here: http://mykoreankitchen.com/2007/04/30/omelet-rice-omurice/.

I’ve Got a Song in My… Head

Most every morning I wake up with one tune or another running through my mind. The other day it was, of all things, I’ve Got You Babe, by Sonny and Cher. Where it came from, I have no idea, but later in the day it was the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. This got me to thinking about some of the songs that ring from my past.

When I was in grammar school, we used to have a record player going during lunch in the cafeteria. (It wasn’t a boom box, or even a stereo – it was a record player.) A few of the students lent the use of their collections of 45’s to keep us all entertained. 45’s, for those who don’t know, were vinyl disks with a single song on each side. One could go into any Five and Dime and find a display of the top 100 “hits” of that week, determined in some magical way (presumably sales) by the local music station, in our case WABC. I also listened on the little transistor radio my grandfather gave me one Christmas when he felt sorry for me because I was sick on Christmas day.

The tunes we listened to were disparagingly called bubble-gum music by my more “sophisticated” older brother. There were songs like Jam up and Jelly Tight, with words like “yummy, yummy, yummy I’ve got love in my tummy”; Love is Blue: “Blue, blue, my world is blue. Blue is my world now I’m without you”; Macarthur Park: “Someone left the cake out in the rain… I don’t think that I can take it, ‘Cause it took so long to bake it, And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo”; I’m a Believer by the Monkeys; They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!, and Wipeout.

I had a cardboard case for keeping  my collection – I still have it somewhere. If it wasn’t 10 degrees outside I would go dig around in the garage for it. It’s a rather paltry collection as I didn’t have a lot of spending money to throw around in those days. (Some things never change.)

During our last weeks in that school, our music teacher had us listening to some of those songs, and we had a great time being embarrassed and laughing at ourselves. We sang If I Had a Hammer, and Blowin’ in the Wind at our eighth grade graduation, accompanied by me and my friend Karyn on guitars. Don’t be too hard on us – our teachers picked them.

I stopped listening to so much popular music in high school, and switched to Christian pop, but those early songs, silly as they may be, represent an innocent, pleasant time of life. Therefore I’m not altogether unhappy when one of them comes to mind.

Daisy

Two cats sit side by side, one big and gray, the other small and white with black and brown spots. Their tales swish back and forth in companionable unison; Daisy, the smaller, younger cat, imitates her wiser, older, (and fatter) friend. Things between them have not always been so easy. In fact, when the older cat had been introduced to the household, he had been quite fearful and hid behind the couch until their human dragged him out and made him face his fears – Held down by the scruff of their necks and face to face until they figured it out.

Daisy looks over at her companion with a decidedly star-struck look. Do female cats bat their eyelashes at male cats? Daisy is smitten, and her visitor is happy to let her be. Sometimes they play tag, with Daisy doing most of the tagging until her friend tires of the game. He is surprisingly agile for such a fat cat. Sometimes when Daisy is ready to pounce he jumps straight up in the air, and she flies right under him. He has discovered that Daisy hates to have anyone touch her forehead, so when he is done playing he reaches up and pats her there. She goes off in a huff.

A few weeks later and the visitor’s humans are home from their trip. Poor Daisy is a single cat again. She looks for him, and cries in that funny, scratchy meow that she has. All she has are her memories, for as long as a cat remembers such things. Soon, she is content to be with her humans.

What is it About Foreign Films?

Dan and I have taken to watching lots of foreign movies and TV shows lately. It started with some Bollywood films (the Indian version of Hollywood, for the uninitiated). We watched a few we really enjoyed, then got some more recommendations from a couple of Indian friends. We’ve watched enough of them that we’re starting to recognize some of the actors (even if we can’t pronounce their names). More recently we have found some Korean shows we really enjoy. We even did a marathon of sorts to finish a series because we got so caught up in the story.

Since I have some hearing loss, we are used to having closed captions on when they are available (hear me Netflix?) so using subtitles wasn’t a big jump. One of the funny things we found, though, in Bollywood films anyway, is that the actors often throw in English phrases and sentences. When we asked an Indian friend about this, she said that some things are just easier to say in English than in Hindi. Go figure. Still, sometimes you have to read pretty fast, and you can’t exactly be doing something else while having a show on in the background.

Anyway, I got to wondering why we find these shows so appealing. For one thing, they don’t tend to take themselves too seriously. What American film have you watched recently that wound up the story with a big dance number? (Slum Dog Millionaire doesn’t count.) When was the last time the hero in a (new) movie you were watching broke out in song? The stories are campy and predictable, but they present cultures completely different than we’re used to, albeit we recognize that entertainment media might be just a little bit slanted. They don’t try to teach me anything – they simply entertain, and that is very refreshing.

One more thing: because we can’t really do anything else while watching these shows, like sitting with our separate digital devices, or even doing hobbywork, all that’s left is for us to sit next to each other and hold hands or cuddle.

Here’s a short list of some of the movies and shows we’ve enjoyed:

• Babette’s Feast (Danish): our first. An interesting study in human character.
• Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (Chinese): It’s funny how many of the films we like revolve around food.
• Outsourced (English/Hindi): not really “foreign”, but showing a lot of Indian culture. A very American businessman thrown into Indian life.
• Jab We Met (Hindi): A very un-serious romance
• Pasta (Korean): Like I said, food – with an endearingly persistent female protagonist. “Yes, chef.”
• The Great Doctor (Korean): Serious and funny at the same time. Set in Medieval Korea, with wonderfully detailed costumes and sets, and lots of interesting characters.