Journal: Christmas Cleaning, Christmas Company, & Good Food

 

The snow has melted from the back deck now, but a week ago there was still an inch or two, and some on the ground below.  The blue jays are pros at rooting out an intact sunflower seed from the multitudes of shells that fall from the feeders.

A friend sent me this bit of wisdom:  “Synonym:  A word used in place of the one you can’t spell.”

“Or think of,” I added.  “When that happens to Hannah, she says, ‘My dictionary slammed shut!’”

Years ago when we were in northern Alberta and British Columbia, we got Teddy, who turned 12 during the vacation, a sweatshirt that said ‘Alaska’ on it and had a couple of Siberian husky puppies on it.  They looked a lot like our dog Aleutia.

Teddy was sad when he grew out of that sweatshirt.  Joseph wore it... I think the girls may have worn it... and Caleb wore it.  

After everyone grew out of it, I cabbaged onto it.  In fact, I wore it last Tuesday. 

Guess what I just found on eBay?  I found a sweatshirt that says ‘Alaska’ and has a couple of Siberian husky puppies on it!  In Teddy’s size!  It’s used, but I got it anyway; they said it’s in ‘very good’ condition.  They were selling it for $29.99.  I offered $23.50 – and got it.

It’s supposed to get here today.  But today is almost over, and it’s still not here.

Tuesday morning dawned as a pretty day, 46°, feeling like 53°.  As I blow-dried my hair, I sipped Burundi (citrus and brown sugar flavored) cold brew.  I ate half a bagel, toasted and with peanut butter and jelly on one wide and honey on the other (meaning ‘right and left’, not ‘top and bottom’, you understand), and then launched into the housecleaning in earnest.

Monday, one of the calendars I had ordered as gifts arrived packed in bubble wrap in a box big enough for a quilt.  Tuesday, one arrived in nothing but the thin, pretty envelope in which it was sold, with a mailing label slapped right on top.  The label not only ruined the gift envelope, but the calendar was also quite bent and beat up.  That wasn’t the only sticker, either.  Another one was plastered beside the first, reading, “DO NOT BEND!”  🙄

It’s an Audubon calendar.  I guess I’ll just hang it in my sewing room; I can’t give it away in such poor condition. 

A second parcel arrived from Amazon, containing a heavy multi-pack of Mentos and a heavy box of Zest Delites Fruit Leather – in a thin packing envelope.  The very nice and heavy cardboard Zest Delites box has a big ol’ hole punched in the top.  Good grief.  Fortunately, I had planned to keep that.

Bobby and Hannah’s Christmas ornaments that were supposed to arrive Sunday were nowhere in sight.

I washed the dishes, and even took the silverware divider out and washed it.  Now, that’s a Major Accomplishment!  

I tossed a load of clothes into the dryer, put another in the washer, and went on cleaning.  The house is generally fairly tidy, but everything gets dusty.  It’s a lot dustier living on a gravel lane with cornfields all around than it is living in town on a paved street.  When I was cleaning out Loren’s house, I found a large, insulated lunchbox completely full of all sizes and thicknesses of fiber cloths.  Loren probably wondered where in the world those things had gotten themselves to.  He put things in such odd places!  I’m making good use of them.

Supper that evening was chicken teriyaki with rice and vegetables.  We had kiwi strawberry juice to drink, and I had peach Oui yogurt for dessert.  Stirred properly.  😉

Victoria got some good pictures of trumpeter swans that afternoon.  The dark one is a first-winter trumpeter, and the small one is a tundra swan.  Tundras usually have a yellow spot under the eye at the top of the bill, but about 10% do not.  They commonly mingle with trumpeters.

After supper, I got back to the dusting, moving on to the music room.  I got one of the two bookcases (with a lot of knickknacks in them, in addition to books) dusted, along with the grand piano.  I sure wish I had some vacuum attachments that would allow me to clean under the piano strings on my piano.

At a quarter after ten, I fizzled out; I was plumb out of steam.  Seven hours of cleaning was enough for that day.  I retired to my recliner with a mug of cold brew and another of Celsius to edit pictures and write the Winding Thread for my Quilt-Talk group – but I no sooner got all cozy and comfortable than the bat I’d heard in the music room earlier started up his squeaking and tittering again!  I jumped up to look for him – but he went silent, every time I did so.  Wouldn’t you know, I’d taken the tennis racket downstairs, so I dashed down there and retrieved it.  The bat squeaked and hissed as I came back around the corner, but as soon as I got close to wherever it was lurking, it went still.  Ugh, ugh!  I do not like bats in my house.  It’s possible he was in the knotty pine ceiling, probably peeking down at me through a knothole.  👁️👀

The little brown bat, the kind we have here, is generally supposed to migrate in the wintertime.  But the colony always leaves at least one behind, and his sole purpose is to heckle me!

I turned the bright ceiling light on in the music room, and soon I could no longer hear the bat.  They usually go away from bright lights in a house, even though when they are outside, a bright light will draw them, because they know insects can be found near a light.

Larry, who’d been helping me clean, ran out of steam about the same time I did.  He’d pulled muscles in his back the previous week, and had been in some pain ever since.

Joseph and his family were planning to come on Saturday, bringing Filipino and Korean dishes, some of which they would cook when they got here.  I looked online to see what type of fruit dessert might go with such foods, and there were many recommendations for pears.

I placed a Walmart order, including ingredients for the Dutch pear pie I had decided on.  The recipe called for caramel sauce.  What is considered the best, I wondered?

Tasting Table .com informed me that Coop’s is definitely the best.

I typed ‘Coop’s Caramel’ on Walmart’s ordering page – and there it was.

A six-pack of Coop’s – for $97.  That’s $16.17 a jar (but you can’t get one lonesome jar).

Uh, ... let’s find out what the second-best caramel is, shall we?

It’s Williams Sonoma Caramel Sauce.  And it’s $20 for a 17-oz. jar, plus $10 shipping.

Ooookay.  How about the third best?

That would be ‘Trader Jacques’, the Trader Joe’s store-brand Fleur de Sel Caramel Sauce.  It’s made with hand-harvested (say this in a snooty French accent) French fleur de sel sea salt.  Tasting Table says this 10-oz. jar can be had for the ‘impressively low price of $3.99’.

Tasting Table lies.  (Or maybe that was the price, two years ago?)  In any case, it is now $14.99.

These are Walmart prices, by the way, cheaper than I could find elsewhere.

Pressing on.  What’s the fourth-best caramel sauce?

It’s Mrs. Richardson’s Topping Caramel.  It’s no longer available as a single-jar purchase, either (I just looked); but it was that night.  You can now get it in a set of three 16.6-oz. jars for $14.64, making each jar $4.85.  That’s almost exactly what I paid for my one jar.  Did I get the last one available as a single?  It was very good indeed, much better than Smucker’s or Ghirardelli or Hershey’s.

In fact, the more I write about it, the more I want to get up, grab a spoon, and eat large, overflowing spoonfuls straight out the jar.

The mugs of cold brew and Celsius went dry, so I made myself some tea.

As if it wasn’t amazing enough that Larry was helping me clean the house, he actually put Christmas lights around one of our blue spruces out front!  >>... astonished gasp ...<<

On my quilting group that night and the next day, we discussed ‘in’ colors, and whether or not we pay any attention to that when we choose fabrics for the quilts we make.

The ladies  agreed, they do not.  A quilt might last many decades and become a family heirloom.  Definitely best to just make a beautiful quilt, and not try to follow some soon-fading fad!

I’m regularly a year or two behind, trend-wise.  But there’s an upside to this:  I might find exactly what I like at a secondhand store, if the trend-followers will just hurry up and get rid of last year’s stuff already.  (snerk)

I just use or wear the colors I like or have on hand, and usually haven’t the slightest notion what the ‘in’ colors are.

At 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, it was 40°, bright and sunny.  As I curled my hair, I read messages and posts – and discovered that on my Facebook page, where I’d posted pictures of the cute little raccoon who was helping himself to the birdseed last week, a fracas was in the beginning stages.

One woman wrote, “Please put it out some dog food , meat ect , it’s just hungry like us ..”

“I’d have a hundred raccoons on my deck!” I told her, and added, in an attempt at reason, “There’s plenty of food around the countryside.”

The next woman wasn’t having it.  “He’s hungry,” she informed me.  “food is scarce in winter for all critters.   Raccoons don’t hibernate. Please give him what you can, even if it’s scraps.”

“Huh-uh, nosirree,” I responded.  “I don’t want to be inundated with those opportunistic little scallywags!  There’s no shortage of food around these parts.  Raccoons stay fat and happy all winter long here.”

I then added, “Raccoons can be a problem.  Witness, the woman who made a habit of feeding them, and wound up with gazillions:  Woman Calls Sheriff After Nearly 100 Raccoons Appear in Her Yard”

This didn’t faze the coon crusaders.

“they are hungry - just like us!” another woman wrote.  “We have shrunk their natural food sources! Every life is precious! Sharing is decency!  Give them cat food, at least!”

Next lady:  “cat food isn’t good for them , put out dog food. Thank You !! ☺️”

On the picture of the raccoon climbing down from our railing, someone wrote, “Poor thing.”

(I suppose she thought I should install a small raccoon elevator for it?)

“Nothing poor about him,” I told her.  “He’s living the life of Riley!”

“I guess so, but he has to dodge humans,” she said mournfully.  (Me with my camera?  Is that what she’s complaining about?)  And then she continued, “I had a racoon spend three years under my shed until I put mothballs under it.”

Ooookay.  But she said ‘poor thing’ about my raccoon??

Look at this, from Maine Wildlife:

“Mothballs are not to be used outside at all.  They are regulated by the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) and using them in any way not intended is actually illegal.  Labels on mothballs do not allow using them for animal repellent.  The chemicals in mothballs are toxic to humans and pets.  Furthermore, even though they are harmful to animals, some animals don’t seem to mind the smell, and are not deterred at all.”  Read more here.

I clicked ‘Hide’ on a few of the more daffy comments and then wrote this:

“Keep in mind that feeding raccoons is often illegal and almost always discouraged, as it encourages dependency, makes them aggressive, spreads diseases like rabies, and can lead to fines or removal, with a number of states having specific bans due to public health and safety risks.  If you insist, though, I wish y’all well with your adorable raccoon infestations!”

A woman then told me, “Don’t spread rumors!  Raccoons don’t carry rabies!”

That rude comment didn’t just get hidden; it got deleted.

People really ought to do a wee bit of research before they start spewing stuff.

Here in Nebraska, as in most places, bats and skunks are the most likely carriers of rabies; but raccoons can and certainly do carry the disease also.  A couple of years ago in Omaha, a raccoon with rabies bit a kitten, and then the kitten bit a child and scratched members of the family.  They all had to undergo rabies treatments.  Nebraska Game and Parks put out a warning for people not to feed raccoons, and to report it if any animals exhibited concerning behavior.

I was done arguing and debating the issue; I had better things to do.  I turned off comments on that post and went to dust bookcase #2.  “If any man (or woman) be ignorant, let him (or her) be ignorant.”

After putting a load of Larry’s work clothes in the dryer, I edited pictures until time for our evening church service.  There was more cleaning to do, but I didn’t want to go to church with dust bunnies in my hair.

That afternoon, I done larnt me that one should not store boxes of Cream of Rice in a cupboard wherein the other end of the same cupboard has scented Hefty garbage bags stored.

That Cream of Rice smelled so much like scented Hefty garbage bags that it’s a wonder the Hefties had any scent left at all.  Eight boxes of Cream of Rice, mind you.

Oh, well.  They were cheap, and they were expired.

I consoled myself by opening a new bag of coffee beans from Aroma Ridge and making a fresh gallon of cold brew, eggnog flavored.  I like to let it brew for about 20 hours or so.

The stuffed honey badger I ordered for Keira finally arrived.  I got this one from Walmart.  On the description it says, “Simulated honey badger.”

>>... pause ...<<

Does that mean I could’ve gotten a real one, had I been so inclined?

The photo album that I had scanned and am now editing has 482 pictures in it, and a good portion of them are of Hester, from about four months to seven months or thereabouts.

Here she is at six months.  For that second one, below, some Helpful Hattie was obviously over-entertaining the baby. 

“The cute pictures just keep turning up,” I told Hester when I sent her these.  “I’ll try not to send you all 482 pictures in this particular album.”  😂

Robert and Margaret gave each of the church families a book that evening as their Christmas gift, as they have done for several years now.  The books are from Puritan Paperbacks.  I chose one called The Art of Prophesying.

I scanned through the book just a little, and see that the author originally wrote this book in Latin in... ? 1509, I think (I left the book in my room [pointing], and I’m out here in my recliner).  Anyway, he’s using the word ‘prophesy’ as it is sometimes used in the Bible, meaning, ‘to bring a message from God’.

It’s a good book.  I was glancing at a page, paused to read a paragraph more carefully, and got caught up and read the whole page before I knew it.

If you want books with reliable doctrine, the Banner of Truth organization is a good place to get them.

Thursday, we were issued a High Wind Warning from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.  Gusts up to 60 mph were expected.  

That morning, I played the last song in the first section of my Christmas songbook and began on the next section.  I love the old Christmas songs so much!

I poured myself the first mugful of eggnog cold brew and went to curl my hair.  Mmmm, that stuff is good, with its vanilla crème and nutmeg flavors.

My laptop was misbehaving:  I would type and type (this was on a webpage), and finally a sentence would begin forming in my wake.  Plumb aggravatin’.  This happens a lot when it’s really windy.  Some years ago, I thought that surely must be my imagination, so I looked it up – and discovered that yes indeedy, the wind can affect the Internet connection.  So can heavy rain or snow.

That afternoon, sweeping, mopping, and vacuuming were keeping me toasty warm.  But when I paused for a bit around a quarter ’til 4, I realized it was downright chilly in the house.  I looked at my weather app.  It was 24°, and, with the wind blowing up to 60 mph, it felt like -8°.  That’s 8 below 0.  Brrrrrr.

I checked with Joseph to see what time he and his family would be coming on Saturday, and he told me all the different foods they would be bringing – foods with names I did not recognize.

“That sounds like a feast!” I said.  “In another language,” I added.

“That’s how Asians do it,” answered Joseph.  “Gotta make enough food for breakfast and lunch the next day.  Filipino breakfast is leftovers with fried eggs and rice.”

I once went to one of our Fourth-of-July picnics with mah chops all polished up fer lasagna.  I have friends who make lasagna to die for.

I searched for – and found – the yummiest-looking dish of lasagna on the tables.  I spooned a helping onto my plate and continued on down the table, mouth watering.

When I got back to my table, I grabbed a fork, took a bite -------------

It had sauerkraut in it.  SAUERKRAUT.

There wasn’t enough watermelon salad on the other side of the plate to counteract that bite.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment, ’twas! 

Hester was 5 months old in this picture.  I made those dresses for Thanksgiving.  Hester could still wear the dress when she was about 8 or 9 months old, as I’d made it big enough to last 3 or 4 months.  By then, she’d pat on Dorcas, then on herself, and say “Matzz!  Matzz!”  (match)

I sent the picture to Dorcas.  Her little girl Brooklyn saw it and said, “Is that me?”  Then, after a closer look, “Or is it you?”

“Yes, it’s me,” Dorcas told her.

“Awww, you were so pretty!” said Brooklyn.

A friend was describing a faulty heating pad she was trying to use:  “Setting #1 might as well be ‘Off’.  Setting #2 is ‘barely above lukewarm’.  #3 is RAGING FOREST FIRE!  I am not brave enough to even try #4 and #5.”

“It’s like the heating in those old Volkswagen Beetles,” I told her.  “Traveling in those things in midwinter, they had to hit the ER, because the people in the front seats had third-degree burns on their shins, while those in the back were suffering from frostbite.”

I wrapped a couple more gifts, and then spotted a shelf of knickknacks in the hallway that needed to be dusted. 

Since Larry and I were both working away at cleaning the house, we had an easy but good supper of Marie Callender’s chicken fritters with noodles and carrots, cottage cheese, and white grape peach juice.  We had cherry turnovers with caramel ice cream for dessert.

I sent Dorcas another picture, this one of her entire second-grade class.  “I scanned it in 1200 dpi resolution,” I told her, “so you can zoom in and see every face well.”

Then I told her the following story:  “When you were in first grade, the older kids were discussing how it’s hard to tell the difference between identical twins, such as their friends Charles and Anthony, and the girls in your class, April and Jessica.  You said quite sincerely, ‘Oh, I can always tell them apart!’ ((... pause ...)) ‘–except for when they’re out of their desks.’  Their desks had nametags on them.   You had no idea why we all burst out laughing.”

Friday, thankfully, the wind calmed down from 60-65 mph to 30-35 mph.  I wouldn’t have to stake the yaks down.

At 11:00 a.m., it was 28°, though it felt like only 12°.  The high would be 45°.

I made a couple of Dutch pear pies that afternoon.  Along with the caramel sauce to put on the pies after they were cooled and cut, we would have caramel crunch ice cream with them.

I’d like cooking and baking better if it didn’t take half the day to make things, and 5 minutes to eat. 

So far, nobody has eaten a quilt.  I make a quilt, quilt it, and it stays quilted.  Smashing.  A-One.

I washed the dishes and cleaned out the microwave.  If anybody tall was coming, I’d clean off the top of the refrigerator.  But none of us can see it, so... 

No, never mind.  Once I thought of the top of the refrigerator, I couldn’t stand not cleaning it, along with half a dozen vintage Jewel T dishes that used to be my mother’s.  I retrieved the stepstool and got busy.

Yikes.  What I did was destroy an archeologist’s wonderland up there, with its myriad strata.

Loren had a couple of Mama’s dishes; I think she gave them to Janice at the same time she gave me mine.  After Loren saw my vintage bowl and pitcher atop the refrigerator, he gave me the teapot (it has a ceramic diffuser inside it) and lidded tureen for my next birthday.

I put the bathroom rugs and some cleaning cloths into the washing machine, then sat down for a snack of a dried mango slice, a chunk of mozzarella cheese, and a handful of nuts.  I washed it down with a cup of Thompson’s Irish tea that had been steeping on the mug warmer.  I’d dropped the rest of a lemon into it after using the zest and squeezing the juice into the pear pies.  The tea was then a little too sour to suit me, so I squirted some MIO (vanilla and citrus flavoring) into it, and then it was downright yummy.  I let Larry taste it – and wound up having to share half of the cupful with him!  😄

On this date (December 19) in 2020:  Earlier this evening, I trimmed off some matted fur on Tiger’s rump. He just went outside, came back in, marched up to Larry, and squalled at the top of his lungs in his loud, gravelly voice, whilst simultaneously rolling his golden eyes in my direction. He was obviously informing Larry that there’s an odd spot on his behinder that nearly froze to death while he was out there (it’s 24°), and, additionally, that it’s my fault. 😂

Perhaps you’ll remember that last week I mentioned that people sometimes make things with those little glass Oui yogurt jars?  Look what showed up in one of my quilting-blog feeds: 

What to Do with Your Oui Yogurt Jars

I put away a load of clothes, put the clean rugs back into the bathroom, vacuumed the laundry room and touched up kitchen and hallway.  The pies were in the refrigerator (minus two slices that had vanished somehow after supper), and the dishes were cleared off the table.

Hannah put up the picture she’d taken of Levi, and her Australian shepherd Willow is pleased as punch.

It was last year some time when that dog suddenly took to actually ‘seeing’ pictures.  First she acted all spooked, and barked at people in the pictures.  Now she seems to recognize family members, and will look at a photo and then look straight at the person him- or herself.

When I was 12, I went with my parents to Newfoundland to visit a missionary family whom our church supported.  We took the John Hamilton Gray ferry across the St. Lawrence Strait.  It was a six-hour journey.

While my parents slept in one of the many lounges, I explored the ship.  A friendly steward tried to keep an eye on me, but I kept giving him the slip.  (There’s a wealth of stories here; I shall tell but two at the moment.  I’ll tell of the foghorn another time.)

I went in one of the ladies’ restrooms – and found one of the commodes overflowing!  I stood and stared in great alarm.  12-year-old me had no idea if the loos pulled from interior tanks, or from the water over which we were churning.

I quit trying to give the steward the slip, and dashed out to find him, before that overflowing commode took the entire ship to the bottom of the sea.

When I went down to the car deck to take care of my dog, one of the underdeck (in more ways than one) workers, a night watchman for one of the vehicle ponts (there were many levels or decks on that ship), invited me to come see the engine room.  He looked to be about 20, I suppose.  I looked older than I really was.

Feeling more than a little uneasy about this, I resorted to a favored tactic: 

I said to Sparkle, “Sit.”

She sat, pronto.  

He backed up.  Trained dog, trained dog!

I laughed and asked, “Me and my dog?”  I gave him a little wave and strolled away – and muttered very quietly to my dog, ”He’s a bad boy.”  Her fur was already a little overly fluffy at her neck, and when I said that, it stood straight up from neck to tail.  I said, “Good dog.”

I was pretty naïve about ‘things’ at that age, but I knew enough to check on that guy’s whereabouts before I headed down to our car to care for my dog, from then on.  I’d peer over the banister of the wide staircase and watch until he was off to the other end of the ship, and then scamper to the car to get Sparkle.  And I didn’t put her back in the car until he was again at the far end of the pont.  (No, I didn’t tell my parents.  They might have curtailed my explorations!)

Friday night, I heard the distinct sound of a fox somewhere out in yard or perhaps the small woods to our north.

I had never heard the scream of a fox before we moved out here to the country.  It sounded sort of like a cross between a peacock getting stepped on and a woman stuck in a drainpipe.

I thought, Is that a fox?!! and looked it up on YouTube.  I clicked, ‘The cry of the red fox’ – and instantly had three or four cats springing to their feet from a dead sleep, tails all bushy and eyes popping out of their heads.

Just before I headed to bed, I heard the fox again, answered by another, farther away.

Unless it was a peacock getting stepped on, answered by a woman stuck in a drainpipe.

Saturday morning, I swept the stairs, then put a basketful of stuffed toys into the dryer (sans basket) with a dryer sheet to dust and fluff them.  Soon they were residing back in their basket under the end table.  I folded and stacked fleece blankets on my bed.  These are usually lopped over the leather couch that used to be Loren and Janice’s, partly to keep this couch with all the brass rivets from getting dusty, and partly for people to wrap up in on cold evenings.  I cleaned breakfast things off the table, washed the dishes, and put one of Larry’s quilts and a few other things (for counterbalance) into the washer, adding lavender-vanilla Downy scent beads.  Mmmm...

Meanwhile, Larry worked on the back hallway and the laundry room, both of which he evidently considers his own private storage lockers.  He had things looking quite nice by the time Joseph and his family arrived a little before 2:00 p.m.

Poor Justin, 13, was sick.  That morning, his temperature had been 103.9°.  That’s too, too high!  Joseph gave him medicine before they left home, and he brought it along in case they weren’t yet home when it was time for the next dose.  Justin lay on the leather sofa in the music room, and I gave him a thick fleece blanket and a pillow.  Poor boy.

Juliana is 11 – and she just cut her own bangs a few days ago, to her parents’ astonishment and dismay.  She’s still her sweet self under those bangs, though.

I don’t know if I helped or hindered when I pulled out a picture of Lura Kay at age four to show them.  Her picture was taken at Loren’s school when Loren was in the 1^st grade; Lura Kay was not yet in school.  She had cut her bangs nearly entirely off the previous evening.  Fortunately, she had curly hair, and even those little stubs of hair curled.  I loved this picture of my sister, and used to quietly get it out of Lura Kay’s room when I was wee little and put it in my own room.  ☺️  She’d find it and put it back in her room; but shortly, it would inexplicably show up again in mine.

Here’s Jocelyn, Juliana, and Larry, with Puppy on his lap and little Lucy wondering why she isn’t up there, too.  See her down there sniffing Larry’s foot in a somewhat accusatory manner?

Puppy is so named because when the mama dog, now gone, had puppies, they were selling them, and Joseph didn’t want anyone to get attached, so they didn’t name the pups.  All sold but Puppy, and by the time he was 8 weeks old, everyone was attached, lack of name notwithstanding.  Furthermore, Puppy thought his name was Puppy!

They kept him – and his name is Puppy.  😂

Juliana gave me a pretty beaded bracelet she made, spelling out the name ‘Grandma’.  She also gave me a little brass-wire angel that she picked out at a ‘store’ at her school.  For Larry she chose a ball ornament with a snowman on it and the words, “You’re Cool, Grandpa.”

They gave us each 30-oz. Stanley Quencher Tumblers.  Joseph designed a long-arm quilting machine diagram on the side of mine, with my name under it.  On Larry’s is a line drawing of the six-door pickup he built when Joseph was young, and it has his name under it.

Joseph and Jocelyn fixed us a scrumptious Filipino and Korean meal.  That was the first time I’ve ever had either kind of food, and it was delicious. 

Here’s the food they cooked.  It was all – every dish – extraordinarily good.  

Joseph made the ube (purple yam) bread rolls, and inserted ube jelly into the middles of them.

For the bulgogi, Jocelyn started the rice cooking in their electric rice cooker.  When everything was ready, Joseph cooked brisket that he had thinly sliced and marinated (in a sauce of soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil, and seasoned with honey) on the tabletop gas cooker they’d brought.  When it was done, the meat was put atop the rice.

Jocelyn cooked the pancit bihon – stir-fried thin rice noodles with cabbage, chicken, and strips of red, yellow, and green peppers and carrots.  It’s cooked in savory sauce with lime.

Lumpia, or fried spring rolls, are made with thin, crêpe-like pastry wrappers and filled with a savory mixture of ground pork, cabbage, and vegetables (red, yellow, and green pepper slices, and slices of carrots).  Jocelyn made them in the morning, and fried them here.  We dipped them in sweet ’n sour chili sauce.

Joseph made the leche flan (milk pudding with a layer of clear caramel sauce) earlier.  He adds extra egg yolks to make it thicker and creamier.

Jocelyn’s Filipino family and friends are amazed at Joseph’s cooking skills.  He cooks Mexican dishes, too, and plenty of all-American stuff.  

All of our boys like to cook.  Well, all of the girls do, too.  ☺️

So do I – except, as I mentioned before, people invariably have the audacity to gobble down in 5 minutes what it took me 5 hours to prepare.  The noive and gall of it all.

I thought I might not like some of the flavors, having tried an Asian soup at Panera Bread and disliked it.  A lot.  And I’ve smelled some of the Asian foods and found the aroma distinctly unappealing.  But I very much liked everything Joseph and Jocelyn made.  The flavors were rather mild, not overpowering.  The chili sauce we dipped the lumpia into was fairly spicy and tangy, but I liked it.  Plus, the whole house smelled good, into the bargain.

 I like to try new foods, within reason.  If my nose tells me it’s baaaad, it doesn’t touch my lips.  

Speaking of smells... 

Joseph told us that as they were preparing to climb into their truck and head this way, Joseph cautioned Juliana not to put on her usual heavy dose of perfume, “— because Grandma has a really sensitive nose, and we don’t want her to know we’re coming when we’ve only just cleared Schuyler!”  hee hee

Funny thing is, one of the things I gave Juliana was a tall bottle of cologne (not as strong as perfume).  She opened it, grinned, and popped up to go show her father.  😅  

Erma Bombeck spoke of always winding up with one extra slice of pie at her house, since there were two adults and three children and she cut the pie into sixths.  No one else wanted the extra slice.  (Huh?!)  Problem:  she was (always) on a diet.  So, while she was still full from supper and at her strongest, will-wise, she’d grab the ketchup and the mustard, squirt generous amounts onto that pie slice, and stir vigorously.

There.  No more temptation.

’Course, Mr. Bombeck would later come wandering into the kitchen searching for the last piece of pie, and then be weeping piteously when he found it destroyed and in the garbage.  But at least Erma had not sabotaged her diet!

I asked Jocelyn to tell me again the names of the foods they had fixed.  She did. 

I looked at her.  Then I said, “I can’t say that!” and she laughed. 

She patted my arm, looked at Joseph, and said, “She can’t say that!”

Joseph grinned, shrugged, and said, “Tell it to her in English!”

“I did!” protested Jocelyn, and then burst out laughing again.

Before they left, we sang some Christmas songs together.  Jocelyn has a beautiful voice – but none of them at all knew that Joseph could sing, and had never heard him sing before! 

“Come sing with us!” I said to Joseph and Larry.

Joseph sort of kind of didn’t want to (he’s a shy one), but I said, “Obey your mother!” and handed over a book.  He laughed, took the book, and sang.  He has a soft, mellow voice, and can sing soprano, alto, or tenor.  When he was quite young, he used to sing the bass notes a couple of octaves high, and make us all laugh.

Here’s Joseph at age 4 opening Christmas gifts beside my father.  It was his favorite place to be, if Daddy was there. 

After our company headed for home, I washed a second quilt of Larry’s and one of my coats.  An hour later, the quilt was in the dryer and the coat was hanging to dry.  The tag on that coat says ‘Dry Clean Only’, but I’ve washed it numerous times, and it comes out as good as new.

I finished putting away the dishes, Larry put away the extra chairs, and then we retired to our recliners.

Sunday morning at 8:00 a.m., it was 27° on the way up to 45°.  The eastern horizon was rosy orange under lowering clouds, all dramatic and striking.

I filled my new tumbler with cold brew and sipped it as I curled my hair.  This big mug is really nice.  It fits in the cup holder in the car, it’s easier to hold with that big, comfortable handle, and you can turn the thingamarolphgidget on top so you can drink out of it without the straw.  Also, if you start the lid with the threads on the opposite side of the tumbler, you can make it righthanded or lefthanded.  (Oh. I just deflated myself.  I was really proud for figuring all that out – but now I’ve opened the little booklet that came with it and see that it’s got all that in the instructions.)  Well, hmmph.  I was smart enough without the instructions!

I sent a thank-you note to Joseph, telling him about all these discoveries.

He already knew all of that.  “You can also turn the top piece to cover the holes, and it won’t spill,” he told me.  “We all have one.  It helps us drink enough water every day.”

Then he added, “Just FYI, if you put the lid on tight when you have something hot in it, the lid will tighten more as it cools, making it hard to open.  I just snug it; otherwise I about pop an eye out of socket getting it off.”

“Haha, tell that to Daddy!” I replied.  “He apparently uses torque wrenches on all his mugs – then brings them in, puts them by the sink, and expects me to open them.  I line them up at his place at suppertime, instead of putting his plate there.”

Loren was once trying to get a bolt loose on one of his camper wheels.  He sprayed it with penetrating oil... slid a pipe onto the four-way tire iron to use as leverage...  But that stubborn bolt would not turn.  So he asked me (I was about 11 or 12) to come running and jump on that pipe while he held it steady.  I backed up, got a good run at it, and leaped on the pipe with all my 95-100 lbs.

The bolt came loose.  It came loose fasssst.

The tire iron spun, and I wound up sitting on my brother’s back, which put him flat on the ground with no air in his lungs.

I asked Joseph how Justin was, and he reported that his fever was mostly gone, but he now has a bad cough.

Last night after church, we had leftovers for our usual late supper.  Yummy.

This morning at 10:30 a.m., it was 42° on the way up to 59°.  That’s warm, for middle Nebraska in middle December.  The bird feeders are refilled and rehung, and little birds are starting to cluster around them.

Do you like reading The Word of the Day?  I used to read it every day; but the older I get, the busier I get, it seems, and stuff like that falls by the wayside, unless I stumble over it by accident, or something brings it to mind.  My favorite Word-of-the-Day site is Webster’s Dictionary 1928.  In addition to the word’s definition, they also give the reference to the word’s first appearance in the King James Bible.  I like that.

Did you know that Noah Webster was not a believer until he was 50 years old?  He was 70 years old when he wrote his dictionary.

I was about 8 when I got my parents’ big unabridged dictionary off the shelf where they kept it and proceeded to read it straight through, from aardvark to zyzzyva.  That took a few days, you better believe!  One of my friends wanted to know how a person could just plow straight through a dictionary like that; but to me, it felt like I was reading a long, interesting novel.  The plot was a bit disconnected, admittedly.

The Siberian husky sweatshirt just arrived!  It’s very nice; it looks like it’s brand-spankin'-new.  But... it won’t fit Teddy; it’s too small, and too short.  Siggghhhh...

Ah, well!  Larry and I will now have matching Siberian husky sweatshirts!  And everyone will think we’ve been to Alaska.  😂

Now I have a few presents to wrap, and then I’ll get on with the photo-scanning.

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,