Goodbye, Hoovie; Hello Rosie!

My vacuum broke.  Actually, I think it may have quit working a couple years ago, but was putting on a decent show to make me THINK it was vacuuming.  And then, poor thing, it couldn't even muster the gumption to move dirt from one side of the room to the other...

"I can fix it," my husband declared. I believed him, because he truly can fix just about anything.

He looked at the old girl, standing in the corner.
"All it needs is a new belt"
Is it just me, or is that every man's solution to broken appliances?

So, we took Hoovie on a road trip to Miles City to get a new belt.  She rode in the back of the Trailblazer with the dog. Neither was happy about the arrangement. (I'm still not ENTIRELY sure why Hoovie had to go all the way to town for a belt, when she never actually left the back of the car. Maybe he was hoping the jostling would shake something loose, and miraculously fix the problem.)

After we got home, the Farmer tore into Hoovie, and after about 20 minutes of fixing (I was in the other room. I can't stand the sight of appliances being fixed; it makes me woozy.) I heard the sound of the vacuum starting up. Then it shut down.

"Still doesn't work," he informed me, dejectedly.  "I might have to take it to the shop." (That would be the equivilant of the emergency room.)

Next day....
"Still doesn't work," the Farmer said. "I guess you need a new vacuum."

Now, we have company coming from Missouri this weekend, and we haven't had a vacuum for a while. I'd hate to guess how long. It's getting desparate! But Wednesday wasn't an auspicious day to buy a vacuum, for some reason.  Perhaps the Farmer's Almanac warned against appliance purchases that day; I don't know.

Finally, on Thursday, the urchins and I loaded up Hoovie and went to Miles City to purchase a vacuum cleaner. 

It's a dandy! It will suck up bolts, without injury.  It has 3, maybe 4 filters...one of them HEPA, whatever that is.  When we brought it in the house, the Farmer tried it on our bedroom carpet, in a particularly flat area, and it FLUFFED the FIBERS, AND SUCKED UP DIRT!!! That's right, she's not just a pretty face, the girl can clean. 

The Farmer said not to tell you this, but I changed three bags, yesterday.
THREE BAGS of stuff vacuumed up in our house.
I'm SO sorry to all of you who visited us in the last year....apparently, Hoovie wasn't even sorta working, and you were exposed to a lot of dirt. I'm sure you are shocked. (Ha!)

Anyway, it's safe now. Come over for coffee and a demonstration! I named her Rosie, for the maid on the Jetsons.  She's pretty close.

Beth Ann and the Secret Fan

The Underground Bookclub met at Beth's house, last night, a few days later than usual.  Our book for September was "Snow Flower and The Secret Fan" by Lisa See.  For those who haven't read it, it's a novel about a Chinese girl-then-woman's life, with emphasis on the hideous footbinding practices of the time and a secret language of the women; set in the mid-1800's.  Because a main theme of the book was the oppression of women at that time in that culture, the theme of the meal was "It's a Man's World". Funny, hmm?!

So, the menu was:
(Unbutton the top button of your pants, before reading and imagining the meal...)

Steaks, marinated and grilled, topped with fresh mushrooms sauteed in real butter,
Shrimp cream-cheese wontons, with a homemade sweet and sour dipping sauce,
Tortellini salad, with lemon marinade, fresh vegetables and grated parmesan
Pretzel-cream cheese-raspberry JELL-O salad...THAT SET UP AND HELD TOGETHER!!!! (And we didn't have to cut it with the steak knives, either!!!!) Praise be to God!
Homemade New York Cheesecake with choice of raspberries or strawberries to top,
Wine (Cabernet Sauvignon or Moscato), Beer (Bud Light or Amber Boch), dark Starbucks coffee (made from beans hidden away from Beth's husband...in a cottage cheese container! She's so smart.)

Oh, and we talked about the book, too.  But let me say a word about the menu, here. You have GOT to love a meal that includes three dishes with cream cheese as a main ingredient, and more steak than you could get around in one try. I haven't talked to all the bookclubbers, today, but the ones I DID visit with were still in their elastic waist pajamas at 10:00 a.m., yours truly included. I can't decide if it's because we were still that full, or if there really was nothing in the closet that could encompass our girth, yet. 

We were missing Thelma, especially in the discussion.  The book brought up all sorts of things...manipulation, dishonesty for gain, friendships, mutilation of bodies for beauty, war, miscarriage, anaphylactic shock and subsequent death, embroidery, weddings, and secrets. It was a cheery little read! I'm not going to get into the points of conversation any further than that, but I will say that when I called Beth this morning, we spent another 45 minutes in discussion about it. Of course, we can spend 45 minutes in discussion over what brand of toothbrush to buy, so that's hardly remarkable.

The next book is:
"A Town Like Alice" by Nevil Shute, and we will be meeting at Thelma's.  I hope she can make it.

The Stunk, Continued...

I don't know if you all read the comments, but


Denise said...



My boys would like to know are you going to


1. stuff it


2. eat it.






yup, they are those kind of boys.






Candles, burn many candles. Have fun with that one! :) And I am sure that skunk had a nice filled tummy when he sauntered on out. I'm sure it was body armour too! :)


Denise,



Thank your boys for their interest in the trophy skunk! The offending carcass was immediately re-located to a burial spot far, far, far from our residence, but the memory of him still lingers...
We did not immediately think of eating him. We aren't that hard up, yet, for fresh meat. I HAVE, however, read that if you soak skunk meat in milk,(and I don't remember how long, but probably a good, long time)that it is edible and there isn't much of a difference between that and raccoon. I've never eaten raccoon, either. (Such a boring life...)
To answer the taxidermy question, we did NOT have it mounted. I'm not entirely sure if we'd be welcome at any of the 57 local taxidermy shops with a skunk. We are not exactly welcome even at the grocery store now, having been urged to call in our order and their new curbside delivery system is now in place. (Good service, huh?)

Please let your boys know that they are welcome at our ranch for skunk season, which is remarkably free of the common, everyday variety of hunter.  I will, however, request that post-hunt, they sleep in the RedNeck Guesthouse (our old 5th wheel camper) and that any skunk-roasting take place over a campfire 2 miles from my house. 

Sincerely,
The Farmer's Wife

P.S: Hydrogen peroxide and baking soda will get the smell off a dog and/or a boy.  Just be sure to rinse with lots of water after application.  Our Brittany is smell-free, now, and has glistening white hair and shiny black spots. Just in case you ever need to get the smell out.

True confession, #269

I can't make JELL-O.






Isn't that the saddest thing to hear from a stay-at-home mom?





Well, not the SADDEST THING, but pretty pathetic.


And please, please, please don't feel compelled to leave your best JELL-O hints and pointers, or to write to me with your Sure-Jell tips from 1953 that are tried and true through three generations.  I can almost guarantee I've tried them all, including using the freezer for 24 hours.

I can make a lot of things in the kitchen...lasagna, homemade cinnamon rolls, technical soups (ratatoille), souffles....but JELL-O fails everytime.  I'm starting to think I have sort of a body chemical that prevents it from working, sort of like people who magnetize watches. I've tried using less water; it turns rubbery and you can't stab it for anything, to get it to your mouth...and that's really kind of funny to watch people try to eat it, especially people who are unaware of my disability with the substance. I've tried adding frozen fruit, which sinks to the bottom and gels the lower half of the bowl while the top remains runny.  The freezer didn't work, because when JELL-O thaws, it's back to the water state, and then you can't get the platter back to the counter, and wonder if everyone had straws and sipped it, if it wouldn't get it to a managable puddle. (I've never had the nerve to try this.)

The only thing harder than making JELL-O is making layered JELL-O.

You'd think someone who can't manage the whole "Add 1 cup boiling water to powder, stir until dissolved, then add 1 cup cold water, chill until firm" process would shy away from any sort of layers, but heaven help me, I keep thinking a little cream cheese and Cool-Whip should somehow add loft and form. 

It pretty much just makes the puddle creamy.  And a little, well, curdled. And no-one wants a straw for THAT.

And I desperately want to conquer the JELL-O, so I make it for every special potluck occasion, hoping beyond hope that God will look upon my efforts with favor and grant me one perfect quivering red mold. 

Thus far, to date.....He's kept me pretty humble.  I would give Him all the glory, if that were to happen, and I'm pretty sure my potluck people would, too.  There'd probably be a revival, right there at the Cohagen Gymnasium and Community Center. 

Tonight is Bookclub, and I'm taking.......





Pretzel Salad!  It's layered. It has cream cheese AND Cool-Whip. And yes, the crowning glory of the dish is

JELL-O!

As of right now, it's looking promising.  The pretzel layer didn't burn.  The cream cheese and Cool-Whip layer held together nicely. The jury's still out on the red layer with raspberries.

Along with your prayers for world peace, a cure for cancer, the end of hunger and thirst in Africa, and everything, would you please take a moment to pray for the Bookclub women and the JELL-O salad?

Thank you.

"Dear God,

..PopPops gives da coo-kies,
Grandmas gives da coo-kies,
And the house goes down a'the water.
Amen."

Every prayer from Angus sounds exactly like this, which is not surprising, really, since PopPops and Grandmas DO give da coo-kies, and he's very grateful for that particular blessing. But the house goes down a'the water makes me a little nervous.

And to go along with the funny prayer, Maggie just blessed me after a sneeze, by saying, "A-ZOOM-tight, Mommy."  That's a little ways from the German version, but still nice!

Our Hero, Campguy

*This post is thoroughly and completely saturated with Texas Tech Red Raider-ness.  If you are remotely allergic to scarlett and black, or anything Texan, back away from the computer. Of course, if you ARE that sensitive, you probably quit reading this blog a few months ago.

When we picked up our mail on Friday, amongst the bills and farm papers was a package from our friend, Campguy. (That's his blog name.)

In the package was this really great Texas Tech birdhouse that he'd made for us!

Now, I believe he's a Longhorns fan, but we won't hold that against him. It probably pained him to have to manufacture a Red Raiders birdhouse, and we love him all the more for having gone through that for us.

Here's the family, after a big fight over who got to hold the birdhouse.

Angus won.

Can you see the unvarnished envy in HRH's eyes?

Guns Up!!!

I just love it!

We aren't going to be able to put it out until spring, so it will have an exalted place in the farmhouse until then. Maybe Campguy can come North and help us hang it, in April.

GO RED RAIDERS!

There was another object in the box, and we will be talking about that in a future post. You'll just have to wait, breathlessly, until I get my camera memory card cleared off.

Trying something to see if it will work; Take 1

Make a Smilebox slideshow

The Stunk

*Brace yourself for another exciting installment of events from Cohagen, Eastern Montana's Happening Place.  The account you are about to read is true. Names have not been changed to protect the reputation of those involved. 





Yesterday morning began like any other morning at the Farmhouse.  Kids were fighting, snarling and hitting each other with foam swords, the kittens were scrambling under the couch and dragging out dust bunnies the size of slippers, the Farmer's Wife clutching her cooling coffee with the desperation of a women condemned and the Farmer trying in vain to escape the house to go to "work". (I'm starting to wonder about his insane devotion to his job....)

I asked the Farmer to please burn the garbage in the barrels, because they were disgracefully full and I had more to take out.  He grudgingly consented to do so, and stuck his head in the back door after living through that death-defying chore and asked me to meet him around front with the blue Marksalot pen he'd swiped from his mom. (Swiped, borrowed...whatever.)

I located the pen and dutifully went to the front door where I stood waiting for the Farmer and my goodbye kiss.  I heard him coming up the steps, so I opened the door and nearly got shoved over. 
"MOVE!", he hollered as he ran through the porch and frantically rummaged through the storage cupboard.  I thought he'd caught something on fire, so I was going for the fire extinguisher.
"NO!", he yells, "BIG SKUNK!"
Well, that certainly changes things.

He grabbed the shotgun and dashed out the door, loading it as he went.  I locked the door behind him and gathered all the kittens into the house again, then went to Maggie's room to watch the action. 

The "stunk" (as Maggie and Angus call them) was trotting up the hill toward the cattleguard at a pretty good clip. He was, without exaggerating, the biggest stunk I've ever seen.  I don't know if he was just fluffy with winter hair, poofy because he was angry, or just well-fed from all the catfood he'd been consuming in the last month, but he was a trophy stunk. 

The Farmer took his stance and started shooting.  Nothing happened.  I mean, the stunk kept trotting, and paused after every blast.  After three blasts, he got mad, turned his bulk around and started heading back down the hill at a pretty good clip, TOWARD the Farmer! At this point I was thinking a couple of things. 1. The Farmer is a really horrible shot with the shotgun. OR 2. That stunk is not only huge, he's wearing body armor. OR 3. He was coming back home to die.  None of those thoughts were reassuring. 

The Farmer ran back to the house with the shotgun, and rummaged once again through the cupboard until he found the perfect shell, and headed back out to eliminate Super Stunk. Once again, he took his stance and shot, and this time it was good, and the stunk died right there in the middle of the road about 10 yards from the house.  What a shot! I wish I'd had a movie camera. (Blackmail purposes...)

When asked why the first shots didn't work and why the stunk started heading back, he claims that he was shooting light loads, and it was just stinging the stunk and making him mad.  Well, I wasn't going to examine the carcass to see if he was telling the truth, so we'll just go with that story.  He says the stunk had been living under the wading pool in the garage for some time. 

Molly, my dog, to show her admiration of the Great Hunter, found the spot of the battle and rolled in it.  And the Farmer must've gotten some eau de' ick on him, because this morning he remarked that every room in the house smelled like stunk. You think?

The REALLY awful thing is that we are going to have company from Missouri later this week, bringing our new dog Twilla, and they were going to set up in their little camper about three feet from where the battle and subsequent death took place.  I've already written to warn them.  I hope they are understanding, but I guess if it's too much, they'll make a swingthrough in the yard, tossing the dog out with best wishes for a happy life, and race for the mountains of Western Montana.