Wasn't That A Dainty Dish To Set Before The Queen?

Casper is boring me.  Or to be more precise, sitting in front of a computer ten hours a day and then coming home to, as Dean likes to call it, our hotel room, bores me.  After work we take Angus for a walk, eat dinner, clean up, watch TV, go to bed, get up the next day and do it again.  Consequently when we come to Sheridan, where we are this weekend, I’m always looking for something to do.  SOMEthing to do besides watch TV in a half-empty house. That’s why a few weeks ago I decided we should pull off the paneling, get the walls textured and then paint them. I really needed something to DO that didn't involve a remote control or a computer.

We've torn off the paneling.  It's been textured and we've been doing a bit of painting.
 

I really hope soon I will be able to show you the finished project.

We’ve spent the last three weekends up here priming and painting ceilings and walls.  Gosh, I’m beginning to hate painting.  But I hate being bored more.   

Last weekend when we were up here Dean said, “I need to tell you something.”  My heart sank.  “Oh, no, he found out I threw away the dog fur the last time I brushed Angus” I thought. But no.  It was much less traumatic.  He just told me that once we’ve finished with this living-dining room redo, I need to find a project that doesn’t involve him. 

This weekend, as much as I wanted to finish the last bit of painting, I told Dean he could do whatever he wanted to all day long on Friday.  Anything he wanted.  All day.  Because I knew Saturday it was supposed to rain and THEN we could finish painting.  I thought he would spend this gift from me organizing his garage/workshop so he could frame the windows and put on the baseboards in the house so he’d be able to 

create some kind of uniquely Dean object d’art.  But he surprised me by spending about five hours watching You Tube videos to help him figure out how to put together the special fancy chainsaw sharpener he’d purchased last fall.  Too bad he discovered he needs to order a different grinder wheel to fit his baby electric chainsaw but I’m sure those cottonwood branches hanging over the house aren’t going anywhere.

Since it was a warm and gorgeous day I decided to keep myself busy by trimming the potentilla.  By time I’d finished clipping and hauling 15 branch and dead-leaf filled tarps my body hurt so much Dean had to help

 

 

me get up off the couch where I had dropped after stumbling in from the yard.  My hand might have been a bit less claw-like if he would have realized the big 2-handle hedge shears didn’t work because the screw that was loose was in the clippers, not my head, and not because I was “probably clipping at an angle instead of straight on.”  But on the bright side, after using the smaller hand-held pruning shears my fingers were curled in the exact position I would need to hold a paintbrush later, and the scabs and scratches on my forehead and arms shouldn’t leave a scar. 

Later, in the wee hours of the night as I was fumbling for the Ibuprophen, a family hike in the Tongue River Canyon sounded like a much better plan for Saturday than more painting or yard work. 

Dean managed to contain his disappointment that we wouldn’t be painting.   

Where's Myra?!

Where's Angus?!

 Pierce and Emerson asked him geology questions and even listened when he answered which was a totally new experience for him. 

 We headed home just before the rain started

and on the drive I saw three bald eagles.  Every time I saw one perched high on a tree I thought about asking Dean to stop so I could take a picture but then I'd think it would just be a waste of time since all I have is a little point and shoot camera.  I finally decided that was just stupid so when I saw a Golden in a tree I decided just because I didn’t have a fancy camera with a telephoto lens it wasn’t a good not reason to try.   

 I should have had a fancy camera with a telephoto lens.

This morning we woke up to winter. I knew it was too early to think we wouldn’t get any more snow but, like dying, even though I know it’s inevitable, it’s hard to truly believe it’s really going to happen to me.  There was no yard work today.  There was no hiking today.  Dean wishes there had been no painting today.  But I wasn’t bored.  

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Wasn't That A Dainty Dish To Set Before The Queen?

Pepé Le Pew Smells Better Than You

Let’s talk about smells.  Or rather, I’m going to talk about smells and you can listen……I mean I’m going to write about smells and you can read about them.  I’m thinking specifically of the variety and potency of smells we are surrounded with in our daily lives.   I’m not concerned with smells that accompany sounds, although God knows I smell plenty of those on a regular basis.  No, I’m going to write about free-range smells.  

There are loads of smells and lots of synonyms for the word smell and each synonym can evoke a different emotion or memory.   Fragrance.  That’s a synonym for smell.  I hardly ever wear a fragrance anymore but I used to – way back in college.  So when I hear the word fragrance I remember the time Dean didn’t believe me when I told him I could identify my seven different cheap “perfumes” until I proved it to him by closing my eyes, taking seven different whiffs and correctly naming each and every one.

One day at work a girl about three cubicles down from me caught a whiff of burning rubber.  I was so busy earning your tax dollars I didn’t catch that whiff myself, or know it was coming from the strip my desk heater was plugged into, until I saw her with her nose down under my counter, sniffing. 

Some smells are so faint you have to purposely put your nose close and sniff.  A sniff can bring out the subtle perfume of a bunch of flowers or the rich bouquet of a great big glass of red wine at the end of a long day.  Or a short day.   Or any day.  Or all days actually. 

But some smells are just stinks.  Here’s the thing.  Today, as I was working, I began to catch a whiff of something unpleasant but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.   Pretty soon my head began to hurt.  And then I began to feel a little queasy.   I really wanted to open a window but none of the windows in our office open so I was forced to continue to inhale this smell which got sweeter and stronger by the moment.  It smelled like somebody had taken a hunk of warm, pink cotton candy, a bag of Brach’s butterscotch candies and just a touch of coconut flakes, thrown them in a saucepan, melted them together, stirred until it was nice and warm and sticky, formed the gooey mess into a wad, stuck it into their mouth, stood right in front of me and chewed with their mouth open, breathing right into my face.     

I suppose whoever let loose the stench from what I can only assume was a flameless candle or fragrance sphere, felt it soothed them and made it easier to survive eight hours sitting in an ugly windowless cubicle.  It did not soothe me.   I wonder if they felt as pleasantly lulled after they caught a whiff of the scent wafting out of my cubicle after I vomited in my wastebasket. 

Don't worry.  I refrained.  Barely.

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Pepé Le Pew Smells Better Than You

I Was For It Before I Was Against It

I thought when we bought our Sheridan home, it was pretty much move-in ready.  I knew it had been a smoker’s house for 30 years but I figured we could shampoo some carpets, wash some walls and later, when we had time and nothing better to do, we could paint a few walls.  I don’t know where Dean was while I was living in this fantasy world.  He must have been so busy fantasizing about his garage-workshop that he forgot to warn me that this house was going to involve a little more TLC than I realized.   

Remember this?  

And this?
   
And the new wood floors we finally had installed? After a lot of work and more time than we anticipated, the house we bought had gone from this:

to this:

Things were changing for the better but there was still the issue of the windows. They just don’t make paint sticks the way they used to and every now and then I’d hear a loud bang! when one of the windows slammed shut which would not only make me jump but would send the boxelder bugs scurrying for cover.  So we had seven new windows installed.  This past December.  About one week before Christmas.  Most people might think installing windows in Wyoming in the dead of winter would be a less than ideal situation.  But I felt that was a better choice than the distinct possibility that one of the window installers would drop a window onto his partner when a boxelder bug crawled under his shirt, up his body, emerging at his neckline and headed straight for his ear.   It was much more fun to bake and feed my installers Christmas cookies than clean up blood spattered shattered glass.

Which brings me to the point of this whole post – our latest project.

Right after we bought this “move-in-ready” house Dean said, “We should tear out the paneling.  I hate it.”  I said,  “No.  I can live with it.  It’s not that bad.  We can paint it.”  In hindsight, I have been wondering why a guy who hated the paneling insisted we NOT paint this section.

Hey, maybe he knew if I had to look at it every time I walked down the stairs, eventually THIS would happen --------------

Flash forward to last week:

Me:  We should take off the paneling. 

Dean:  We should have done it before we paid somebody to paint it and before we paid somebody to put in new wood floors and before we moved in a bunch of furniture.

Me:  I decided I don’t like it after all.  If we’re ever going to do it, now’s the time. 

Dean:  The time was before we paid to have somebody paint it and paid somebody to put in new wood floors.

Me:  I thought I could be happy with it painted but I decided I don’t want to live with it that way after all.  We haven’t put in any new baseboards yet and now we have new windows we need to frame too, so if we’re going to take it off, now’s the time.  It’ll be easy.  We’ll just do it a section at a time.  Pull off the paneling, paint the wall, move on.  Pull off more paneling, paint the wall, move on.  Easy peasey. 

Guess what we did this weekend?  

First piece of paneling ― off!  Uh, oh.  Might not be paint ready.

 

Really?  Duct Tape?  Who does that?  I'm not worried. Much.

And then we discovered this gem.  Ah....true love....................except every time I walk in the door and see it I feel like my house has been tagged and I'm living in gang territory.

Brick ― uh oh.  Removing the brick ― real brick it turns out, not the fake brick I always assumed it was ― hasn’t gone quite as smoothly as I had expected.  Dean thought I would get all stressed and tense and regret beginning this project when we discovered we were going to have to completely remove the wall board to get the brick off.   And I probably would have if I hadn’t become a TV addict.  But after spending time with Nicole and Drew and Jonathan (what else can I do in Casper when 

most of my stuff is in Sheridan?) I knew there was nothing we  couldn’t conquer with a little elbow grease and the right tool ― if only we could find the right tool …

“Just bang it with a hammer.  That's what they do on TV,” I told Dean.  And it worked.  It was faster.  What's a little missing wallboard?

Nothing about house remodeling scares me now ― which really scares Dean.  Especially when I wondered outloud how hard it would be to remove this part of the ceiling so we could really

 

open up the area and give us that open concept.  Dean thinks there’s support beam hidden in there.  A support beam wouldn’t be THAT low in the room …. would it?  There’s only one way to find out.

Once we get the rest of the bricks ripped off the wall and all the paneling is gone we’ll call a drywaller and have him texture it or do whatever it will take to get it ready for painting.  I may be much braver about these projects thanks to my new TV friends but I’m not stupid.  I know our limits.  And anyway, I'd like this project to be finished relatively quickly.  There's a guest bathroom I have my eye on.

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I Was For It Before I Was Against It

Math Should Come With A Warning Label

A while ago I heard this depressing story.  My shoulders slumped in discouragement because my attempt to eat a healthy breakfast apparently has all been for naught.

Ever since Dean retired, and I've been working four ten-hour days, I’ve been up at 5:25 a.m. and out the door somewhere between 5:31 a.m. and 5:34 a.m., depending upon whether or not I actually fix my hair – and by fixing I mean doing anything more than just wrapping a scrunchy around whatever bits of it I can grab as I walk out the door.  I don't fix (or eat) breakfast either.  It’s hard enough for me to make myself get up that early, leaving Dean and Angus snoring away in oblivion, but there is no way I am going to get up early enough to eat something before I leave – not that I could force anything down that early anyway.  Eventually I DO get hungry, though, so I’ve been bringing a container of honey yogurt and a small baggie of granola which I mix together and eat at my desk somewhere between 8:10 and 8:13 in the morning. 

I thought I was being healthy until I heard that news story.  Listening to that made me feel all my efforts have been in vain – just like after I’ve spent five hours vacuuming up dog fur and mopping the floors only to have Angus come in from outside and leave muddy paw prints throughout the whole house.  

I moped around for a few days and I even told Dean to never buy me honey yogurt again.  I’ll have to find something else “healthy” for breakfast.  I thought maybe I could have plain yogurt and granola…………….or ………….not.  I want to be healthy but plain yogurt?  That’s pretty dang tart.  The more I thought about it, the more it annoyed me.  Why shouldn’t I have sweet yogurt and granola for breakfast?  So I decided to conduct an experiment.   I’m not a scientist but I have a daughter and two sons-in-law who are scientists.  Oh, and Dean.  Are geologists scientists?  I guess licking rocks could be some type of scientific research.   Anyway, I’ve picked up a thing or two about experimental procedures.  I know you are required to have a control and whatever the opposite of control is.  And I know you need a hypothesis and you must keep detailed records of your data, analyze it, and determine a conclusion.  

My Yogurt Experiment

Hypothesis – I  can add less sugar to plain yogurt than is contained in my honey yogurt and still make it taste as sweet as the honey yogurt, thus saving calories.  That will allow me to eat other sugar-filled items (like the occasional doughnut or cake in the office) guilt-free with less guilt.

The Control – Honey Yogurt 

The Whatever The Opposite Of Control Is – Plain Yogurt 

The Scientific Word For Background (whatever that is)

I wasn’t sure how much yogurt I was eating every morning so I needed to determine that before I could calculate the amount of sugar I was eating.  So I scooped what I normally take into my container, then I scraped it out into a measuring cup and it turns out I am eating about ½ cup of yogurt every morning. 

The serving size listed on both yogurt containers is one cup.  One serving of honey yogurt contains 33 grams of sugar, which equals 8 ¼ teaspoons of sugar.  So I calculated my ½ cup of honey yogurt to find it contains approximately  16.5 grams – or  4 teaspoons of sugar.  

The plain yogurt container says one serving contains 3 grams of sugar, which is ¾ teaspoon of sugar.  If I gave up my honey yogurt and only ate plain yogurt with my granola I would be eating ¼ teaspoon of sugar every morning. 

The Research – Here’s what I did. 

On the kitchen counter I had one container with ½ cup of plain yogurt and sample of honey yogurt.   

Nearly sugar free plain on the left, life-threatening, sugar-packed honey on the right.

First I took one bite of the plain yogurt and after my mouth unpuckered I ate a small bite of the honey yogurt for comparison.   I then added 1 teaspoon of sugar to my container of plain yogurt and stirred the sugar until it was completely dissolved and tasted it.  And then I took a small taste of the honey yogurt for comparison.  After adding one teaspoon of sugar (which is really 1¼ teaspoons if you account for the sugar already in the yogurt) the plain yogurt had definitely lost the mouth pucker characteristic but was still much less sweet than honey yogurt and not something I was particularly excited about eating with granola.

I added another teaspoon of sugar (which is a total of 2 ¼ accounting for the sugar already in the yogurt) and decided I could definitely get by on that amount of sugar and probably get used to it, but it still had a bit of a tartness to it.

After the third teaspoon of sugar (or 3 ¼ total teaspoons) I decided it was pretty darn close to the same sweetness of the honey yogurt and would be perfectly acceptable with my granola.

And finally, after four teaspoons of sugar (or 4 ¼ teaspoons all together), it seemed too sweet, even sweeter than the honey yogurt.

The Data And Analysis

Of course there is a taste difference between yogurt sweetened with sugar and one sweetened with honey but as far as sweetness, 3 teaspoons was pretty close.  I think I could get by on adding two teaspoons of sugar into plain yogurt which would cut my morning sugar intake by 1 ¾ teaspoons of sugar per day.  Now that doesn’t seem like much but if you multiply that times four (since I work four ten-hour days) I would be eating seven fewer teaspoons of sugar per week.  Multiply that times four weeks and I would be eating 28 fewer teaspoons of sugar a month.  And if you multiply that times seven months I will have ingested 196 fewer teaspoons of sugar by the time I (hope to) retire.   

If I decide I need three teaspoons of sugar in plain yogurt to make my morning breakfast more enjoyable I would only cut my morning sugar intake by ¾ teaspoon per day.  But even that would cut my weekly intake by three teaspoons, my monthly by 12 teaspoons and I would have eaten 84 fewer teaspoons of sugar by the time I retire.  Which is I don’t know how many cups because I can’t find a website to tell me exactly and figuring it out would involve even more math and just thinking about that is making my hands sweat and my heart race. 

The Conclusion

Adding sugar to plain yogurt makes it sweeter.  Honey yogurt tastes better.  Eating honey yogurt is worth the risk of dying from heart disease.  However,  experiments involving math and converting teaspoons to tablespoons to cups and dividing grams and ounces and teaspoons by half or fourths are are unhealthy because the stress of all that math and calculating drives people to eat more sugar. Math is a serious health risk and should be avoided at all costs.

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Math Should Come With A Warning Label