I had a very successful day today. I spent it cleaning up a small corner of my life.
I am an office. Dear Husband chooses to handle payroll. The CPA does taxes, and everything left over is my problem. I am blessed that my office is in my home, and that the owners of the company (one of whom is my husband) are willing to let me work unusual hours.
The bane of my existence is filing. I finish a bit of work and move it to the stack on the left. The stack grows. Eventually, I HAVE to file or the desk might fall through the floor to the basement.
Salmon Thirty Salmon?
Did you see the news tonight? ABC closed the Nightly News with a story about an Alaskan Airlines 737 that has received a new paint job. It took 30 painters 24 days to paint a salmon on this plane. They call it the “Salmon Thirty Salmon.”
The Alaska Fisheries Marketing Board and Alaskan Airlines have gone into a joint venture to promote the sale of fresh seafood from Alaska. Essentially, the plane is a flying billboard for fresh Alaskan seafood.
Just What Date IS It?
Sept. 22, 2005, 6:23 PM EDT was the date of the Fall Equinox. As of 6:23, we were officially into fall. But that date was warm and sunny and still felt like summer. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t seen ANY sign of fall as of the 22nd.
Today, fall came. When I got up this morning, it was in the forties. The house was unusually chilly because the furnace was not running. By two this afternoon we had barely managed to creep into the sixties. Definitely FALL weather.
As I dressed, I knew it was fall because the age old question came to mind. “What do I wear?” I ended up choosing a white turtleneck and jeans, and my sandals. When I was ready to go out, I added a red sweater jacket. I was fine. Since I was inside most of the morning my feet were warm, but the jacket was definitely overkill in the grocery store.
Fall is here. The geese are gathering, and trying out different leaders as they line up in wedges. I can imagine mom and pop goose honking encouragement to the juniors who will make their first migration south. I can (finally!) feel the difference in the air. The angle of the sun has changed, and the days are much shorter. Elegante Mother saw a chickadee the other day, and we should see the juncos and nuthatches soon.
I bought my first pumpkin, and the second set of mums. I have a spider hanging in the doorway, and a spicy candle burning on the counter in the kitchen. I’m thinking about buying an armful of cattails to make a decoration for the front entryway.
Yup, fall is my time of year.
Word of the Day
Caitiff.
I’ve never heard this word. I’ve never heard anyone use it; I’ve never read it. What’s more, I’ve never heard my MOTHER use this word (and, of course, Mother knows everything). It’s new to me.
It made me think of Jamie Frasier, in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, but on reflection, while Jamie was miserable in prison, I think he had enough purpose in seeing to the care of his men that you couldn’t say he was caitiff. Now, the MEN may have been caitiff.
You learn something every day.
(N.B. When I ran Spell Check, it made no comment about “caitiff.”)
Dinner
What to fix, what to fix? I’m caught in a no-man’s land between the heat of summer and the cold of winter, and my meals reflect our confusion.
Last night I made stuffed green peppers. Tonight I made pasta e fagiole soup. Tomorrow we’re grilling salmon.
I made the green peppers because it was chilly, and we have an abundance of green peppers available now. I cut the core out of the peppers and then cut them in half lengthwise. After blanching them for five minutes, I laid them on their sides and mounded the filling over them. It seems easier to do it this way, and you get a little more of the stuffing with each bite of pepper, always a good thing.
Today was warm and clear. I should have been out weeding, but I wanted to be available to the repairman, so I worked in the kitchen, making soup. Our evening has been chilly, so the warm soup wasn’t so inappropriate.
Apples are coming into the Farmer’s Market. I want to do apple butter, and apple crisp and apple pie. And then there’s zucchini bread, carrot cake, and pumpkin bread. I found a jar of pumpkin butter in my cabinet, today. I think I’ll have it with toast in the morning.
I Love Fall!
Traveling
My youngest sister’s daughters are involved in marching band. Since I used to be a band director, it’s a pleasure to see my teenage relatives participate in band. The girls attend a school that takes its marching season pretty seriously, so they attend a contest almost every week during the fall.
I plan to pack Elegante Mother up, and head off to Indiana to see the girls at one of their competitions. It’s a pleasure to get out into the farm land and travel where you don’t see a car for ten or fifteen miles. The harvest will be underway, and we’ll be able to tell the difference in the fields from the Friday we go east, to the Sunday when we return home. We’ll be watching for geese gleaning the fields, and tractors pulling corn and beans to the local co-op.
I hope for crisp weather, clear blue skies, leaves changing colors, and the excitement of the competition. Fall is my time of the year!
Hip, Hip, HURRAH!!!
I got the news today that my boat widowhood may come to an end during the middle of next week. Well….actually, the boat will be taken out of the water midweek. Then there will be weeks of maintenance on the boat. So, probably I’ll get to see Dear Husband on a weekend some time in late November!
Still, it’s always nice to know that the season is ending two weeks early. We’ll have to party the day he brings her up the drive.
Patch, Patch, Patch
It’s been one of those weeks…
Friday, the drier stopped heating. We were able to get a repairman in on Monday, and had mountains of laundry waiting to be done. This morning, the plumber came and replaced a water heater, cleaned out the pipes from the air conditioner condenser, and re-connected everything in the basement. Of course, we’d had to wait to do laundry while he worked.
Before he left, I told him I wanted him to take a look at one of the air conditioners. The newer one makes quite a racket when it’s running.
Flux
As….We are in flux at Arrrgh!!!
RedEagleSpirit1 has been feverishly redesigning my blog, at my request. It seems that she has been waiting years to change the look, and wondered when I would get around to requesting her help.
It’s fun to see the changes from my stolid red and gray! I hope you enjoy the new look.
Word of the Day
Verdant
The grounds have gone from being sere and brown to verdant, now that the rains have returned.
We have had a dreadful summer. I made a serious effort to water my gardens this year, and if next year should turn out to be the same, I am going to become an expert on installing watering systems. I’m going to have to ask my PT guru if hand watering of the pots along the sidewalk can be considered exercise!
Rain…..we’ve had rain, and may possibly have more rain this weekend. I’m not going to complain. Instead, you’ll find me outside doing a rain dance!