Don’t Choke On Your Cookie

It’s a cold, wet, grey day today and seeing a snowflake or two mixed in with the rain reminded me about shoveling snow which reminded me how sad Dean must feel since he can’t feed his snow-shoveling obsession now that we’ve  moved to Sheridan.  Oh, I suppose he could shovel our rocked driveway and parking area but it would take him about three days, and why would he anyway, when our very nice neighbor plows it out with his tractor? Sadly, all he can shovel is about a 10 foot square section of pavement at the bottom of the front porch, and the back deck which, hey, now that I think about it, he never shovels.  I shovel the back deck.  Does that mean he really wasn’t obsessed with shoveling after all, but only lusted after snow-free pavement?  OR does that mean he only seemed obsessed over shoveling our driveway in Casper because he didn’t like the way I shoveled?  I know he didn’t – like the way I shoveled – because he would always go back over any portion I cleared, slowly and methodically scraping his shovel under every tiny bump of snow I left.  And then, even though the newly shoveled driveway and sidewalk were practically snowflake free, he would sweep them!  But that obsession is behind us now, replaced with his pruning obsession.

Oh, yes.  He didn’t stop with the cottonwood trees.  He moved on to the chokecherry forest. 

Last summer I’d hacked, slashed, whacked carefully pruned the parts that came close to putting my eye out every time I mowed.  This week Dean decided to take care of the branches that were hanging over the fence and, as long as he was at it, cut out the dead wood.

Unfortunately his pruning obsession involved me – again.  I had to pull cut limbs through eye-gouging, skin scratching branches which pulled out hunks of my hair, grabbed at my clothes, got tangled in the limb I was dragging out, and gave me lots of chances to practice the words Dean used when his baby chainsaw threw off it’s chain – again and again and again.  I dragged those limbs (and my exhausted shaky-legged body) to the slash pile somewhere between 572 and 1,529,023 times. And the worst thing about it?  There were no cookies waiting for me at the end.  Again.

But that’s okay.  I made up for it today because yep, today I baked.  For my bees.  The two replacement windows for my sewing room finally arrived yesterday and Troy and Darrin buzzed on over this morning to install them. These windows were so loose they rattled every time a car drove by and if you slid those little tabs at the top to the side, the window would fall out.

Since I wouldn't be seeing them anymore after today I thought I’d send them off with not only the lemon crinkle cookies which were a big hit last time they were here, but also Magic Cookie Bars.

Of course before I gave them the plate of cookies I had to eat taste-test one or two or, heck, I don’t know…. a bunch.  It was kind of strange and a little sad knowing everything was now finished and I wouldn't see them again.  But guess what?  I will!  Because one of the windows had a broken pane.

Can you believe that?  I’m sure it arrived that way and my bees had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that they will now need to come back to replace the pane in two or three weeks.  As they were leaving, Troy sighed and wistfully told me that of all the cookies I’d made, today’s lemon cookies and the rum balls I’d made when he was first here installing our upstairs windows, nearly  a year and a half ago, were his two favorite.

And Darrin asked me for the lemon cookie recipe.  Oh..........gosh, you don't think they’re developing a cookie obsession ..... do you?  

◦

Don’t Choke On Your Cookie

The Kids Made Me Do It

I blame my children for my recent obsession with technology. Both Dean and I were cell phone hold-outs until about four years ago when we drove to visit Leslie & Ryan in Colorado and Dean's as-yet-to-be-determined gallbladder issues slowed us down. Leslie met us at her front door with “I’ve been worrying for two hours. Where were you? Why don’t you have a cell phone? If you had a cell phone you could have called to tell me you were going to be late. You need a cell phone. When are you going to get a cell phone? ” That “get a cell phone” refrain was repeated off and on until I finally succumbed and joined the cell phone world. But I kept it simple. I did not text or surf the web from my phone. I flipped it up, I dialed, I talked, and I flipped it closed.

If Abby wouldn’t have moved to Ecuador I wouldn’t have felt I needed a Skype phone to keep in touch with her. Skyping from the computer is cool and the video is nice, but to be able to actually hold a phone and walk around or sit on the couch and visit is amazing. Remember the days when nobody called long distance except on Saturday or after 9 p.m. during the week? And it cost about 10 cents a minute – or even more? Now we can call all over the world – for “free.” But after a while, that wasn’t good enough for me and the freedom to Skype her in places other than my house became too tempting to resist. So it’s really Abby’s fault I moved up from the simple flip phone to the iPhone.

The iPhone led to all kinds of other amazing and astonishing technological activities; like entertaining a little boy by playing a movie on the laptop in a car while you’re driving down the Interstate for nine hours.

If you are in a coffee shop and the laptop is unavailable, you can download Bugs Bunny on your iPhone for that little boy … or while waiting for your meal to arrive in a restaurant when you’re too exhausted to entertain him … or even while he rides patiently in the car as you drive 25 minutes from one end of a city to the other in search of Kohls.

And after he’s been dragged from jeans to shirts to shoes inside that Kohls, you can grab that iPhone and take his picture as he finally gets to ride the carousel – while you are also talking to your daughter in Ecuador on Skype on that same iPhone – from the mall!  How cool is that?!

Don't worry, Dad.  Do what the drill seargents say and you'll be escaping soon.

You can even whip out your iPhone and snap a picture of the little guy visiting his Great-Grandpa before he has a chance to escape. 














 
I realized too late that rather than searching for free cartoons for that little boy to watch on the iPhone I could have streamed Netflix shows. So it’s not really my fault that the whole streaming Netflix thing was in my mind when I saw the Best Buy ad in the paper this morning. Hmmmm....those two Best Buy reward coupons are going to expire soon and if I can stream directly to my iPhone why shouldn’t I stream directly to my TV?   I bought a Blue-ray DVD player.
 
 

Don't worry--it was already dead

 
I could say the weather made me do it. Yesterday I was wearing sunscreen and short sleeves and cleaning up flower beds. This morning we woke up to this. What else are you going to do on a depressing, snowy day – in APRIL – besides go shopping? But I don't blame the weather.  And I certainly don't blame myself.  And for once I don't even blame Dean.  I place the blame on my children. Completely.  Before the girls had corrupted me and turned me into a technology monster I might have considered spending the day quilting or baking or reading. 
 
I'm probably still going to spend part of the day reading (on my kindle) and I might bake some cookies to have on hand for whenever the kids drop by (while I listen to Stitcher on my iPhone), and I will definitely be quilting. I’ll just be quilting while I’m watching streaming Netflix shows.◦

The Kids Made Me Do It

A Man Obsessed

I intended to write a post tonight about my time yesterday with Pierce.  I turned on the computer, made a nice cup of tea, grabbed the camera so I could download my photos and then I saw this.  Yes, he is sucking up the leaves from the driveway.  I believe no other commentary is necessary other than--------

he missed one.

◦

A Man Obsessed