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babysteps

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Everything posted by babysteps

  1. Strawberry all the things. The only problem is, I'm running out of ideas and there's still about 8 lbs of strawberries staring at me wanting to know what they get to be. As an aside, at one point today my watch congratulated me on completing 45 minutes of rowing. I was hulling strawberries, but okay...
  2. I'm late to the conversation, but - I've been using the ForJars brand all summer and I have to say I've been quite impressed by their quality. Over the course of the summer, I've gone through close to 600 lids and I think I've only had 4 failures total. Compare that with the past several years of 2 or 3 PER CANNER LOAD with Ball, Kerr, and Golden Harvest - I'll stick with these for now. I'm very curious about the new Tattler ones... somewhere I read that they will be used with the regular rubber gaskets? That person may have had incorrect information, though. It will be interesting to see!
  3. Oregon has already added 8 more to that number 😔 and as a country we appear to be adding about a thousand a day now. A few days ago it was only about 200 a day. Crazy and sad.
  4. Okay, I know this is serious, but I got a giggle when I opened a webpage that tracks the numbers involved in this crisis... and got this. I think there's a slight glitch in their math... (they have since fixed it, thankfully!)
  5. I don't have the cool breakdown by country and state that Ambergris has, but... regular news is currently reporting 2110 cases in the US and 48 deaths. 😔 I know here in Oregon we're reporting 30 cases but I also know there's a LOT of people who are waiting to be tested. Schools here have also been closed and currently are saying they'll be back in session on April 1st. We'll see.
  6. We were talking about this on our way home from our small town fireworks show. Right after - like less than 2 minutes after - the show ended, every cop in town lit up and went flying down the road just past where we were sitting. That'll make you wonder what's going on! Hubby said he had heard there had been at least 3 terrorist plots that had been foiled for this year's 4th of July celebrations. I don't know what the others might be, I'm guessing the one Jeepers listed was one of them though. (He's LEO, so he often gets a little more info than what the msm hears.) It's sobering and thought provoking, to say the least.
  7. Oregon is definitely a mess. Small towns like mine that were already struggling with the meth crisis, and now we have this too. Theft has gone up in our town SO MUCH in the past year or so. Homeless problem is getting worse. And UGH it STINKS!! Working in a customer service job, the sheer number of folks who walk through our doors each day with fumes just rolling off them is enough to make me lightheaded. And (of course) it's getting into the schools in ridiculous numbers, despite it being illegal for kids. Our small town high school has had law enforcement called to it for drug-related activity more times in the past four months than in the past four YEARS combined. I firmly believe it has its place in medical usage. But so does morphine. And neither of them belong in the general public's hands.
  8. I've got a good old Winnie the Pooh-style blustery rainy night tonight. I should be asleep, buuuuuut... between the wind and the hubby snoring and my brain that won't shut up, I'm wide awake. Do we have anyone in Alaska anymore? I'm sure we used to... just wondering about that big quake and the tsunami warnings up there early this morning. My news was full of it on my way to work this morning, but no updates on my way home. So much going on with everyone! Prayers for your move to go smoothly, Ambergris; for Mr Homesteader's knee to improve quickly; for Jeepers' energy levels to come back; for Mt Rider to NOT DO TOO MUCH (lol); for WE2's dad and Miki's DH; for CG to stay off the ladder ; and for all the rest. Yikes!
  9. Yay! I just recently found my way back, too. Welcome back, Grace & Violets!!
  10. Hmmm! Maybe! It looks like it prefers zones 8-11, and my area is considered 7 to 7b. It'd be a little tricky but should be doable, if I gave it some extra care in cold temps...
  11. Tax season opened on the 2nd so I've spent the week learning my new office. My kids are going to have to re-learn how to stay on top of their schoolwork when mom isn't breathing down their necks, lol. They did a great job last year, so I'm not worried about them. And this year DD18 has her driver's license, which is a huge help. Our weather since Christmas has been typical temps for winter in our area (30s low, 40s high) but unusually dry. Yesterday was the first measurable rain in two weeks? Last year we had a moat around our house by this point. (No, really. I have pictures. Our house is a high point on a property with serious drainage issues. We had a moat.) DH put in a drainage system this fall and WANTS rain so he can test it, and... no rain! Everyone caught in this extra-cold winter weather... I'm so sorry. My sis-in-law had to make a trip to Iowa this week and is pretty much frozen solid by now, I think. Other than that, it's business as usual. DD4 and DD13 spent one afternoon this week poring through one of the seed catalogues we got in the mail. I came home to an already-planned-out garden. I did have to point out that I wasn't sure we could get cotton candy seeds. DD4 had them on her list and nothing that DD13 said was convincing the younger one that those aren't a thing. Her logic was "there's cotton seeds in the catalogue, so OBVIOUSLY there will be cotton CANDY seeds too!"
  12. I started working (for the first time in almost 20 years) last January as a receptionist in a tax office. Easy work, only during tax season (Jan-mid Apr) and a good way to ease back into the working world again. Guess I did a better job than I thought. (It's not like we're talking rocket surgery. Answer the phones, be polite and friendly, and help in the office where you can. How do you mess it up?) I got a call from the district manager yesterday. (!!!!) One of the office managers accepted a job out of state and is leaving in 3 weeks. Right as tax season really kicks into gear. And would I consider accepting a position as an office manager? I would get three days of virtual training and then two weeks of on the job training and then... they throw the baby in the deep end and see if she can swim. So the past 24 hours has been me doing lots of this As you can imagine.
  13. Praying for all the sickies!! NOT fun at any time, and just miserable at Christmastime. We had a good Christmas too. We woke up to freezing rain on Christmas Eve, but the roads weren't bad so we went to church anyway. Went over to my bro and SIL's in the afternoon. My parents came too. Watched White Christmas with the family and opened a few gifts that night. We had some more freezing rain on the way home but the roads stayed good till we got home, thankfully! I like snow but ice is a whole different animal. Tradition at our house is that kids get pjs and a new book each on Christmas Eve after we get home from the family party. So they read for a while and then went to bed. DH and I stuffed stockings and finished wrapping gifts and then went to bed also. Christmas morning the kids SLEPT IN till 8:30, so we woke them up and let them get into their stockings while we made waffles for breakfast. DS21 and his girlfriend came over for breakfast, and then we opened the rest of the gifts. The rest of the day was spent reading new books and eating cookies, lol.
  14. You'd be so BORED here, Mt Rider! An inch or two of snow maybe --MAYBE-- once or twice a winter, , no bears, cougars are rare... What ever would you do for fun?? It ended up not getting near as cold last night as they predicted... might have been down to 30, and was above freezing by 9am. We had clouds move in -- which is what warms *us* up. It's the clear nights that are stinkin cold. The cloudy ones are much warmer. And we get lots (and lots, and LOTS) of rain. Which equals mud. All winter long.
  15. Birthday party for a newly 15 year old today. She had three of her close friends over for an old(er) movie marathon... they watched The Court Jester, Labyrinth and White Christmas. DH and I have been recovering from colds this week so it's been a lot quieter than the week before Christmas would normally be... gotta admit I've enjoyed it! Daughters have been running errands for us and disappearing periodically to do their Christmas shopping. Another short cold snap going on, too... nothing like Mt Rider's, obviously, but our low tonight is supposed to be 18* which is considered "Extreme Cold" for our area, plus we have freezing fog going on. DD18 had to have help to get her car door open this morning... it was frozen shut, lol. I'm looking forward to NOT going anywhere tomorrow!
  16. It's a lovely home, Kappy. I really hope in a few weeks this will all be an unpleasant memory and you ladies will be settled in it. Mt Rider, we watched some of the meteor shower. Our lows at night this past week have been about 20-25ish -- which I know is nothing compared to yours! -- but that's plenty cold for around here and so none of us were too keen on staying out very long. DH and the older girls stayed out for about 30 min. DD4 and I stayed out long enough for her to see about 5 shooting stars and then bailed for the nice warm fire inside, lol.
  17. But at least the list is now shorter by one name...
  18. Ahem. Depending on your climate, they absolutely will... but they'll also take over your corner of the planet if you let them. Himalayan or Armenian Blackberry are considered a horribly invasive weed in the PNW because they grow so fast and are so hard to kill. So... just... be VERY careful where you plant them!
  19. What a mess, Kappy! At least you're in the home stretch. Goat rap! I love it Miki, that's what ours used to sound like, too!! Mt Rider... I LOVE that series... I have it on kindle as well as paperback. We have friends and family who live in that area of Washington -- we've been there several times. It makes it feel just a little more real. Just little bits of regular life around here. DH is back to work this morning after having 5 days off in a row -- it was so nice! DS came over a couple times to "help" with the Thanksgiving leftovers, lol. DD18 is studying for college finals and stressing over her Writing 121 class, she doesn't think she's going to finish with an A. DD14 is back to her running 4 days a week schedule after taking a week off for the holiday. DDs13 and 11 are back to piano lessons. DD4 learned how to make paper snowflakes this week, so there's bits of paper EVERYWHERE. And I've picked up my knitting projects again... I tend to knit all winter long, and then not touch yarn from April to November.
  20. Asked my dh to pull out the Christmas decorations for me this morning. And then spent the rest of the day decorating. It feels very Christmas-y in here now. Jeepers, I hope you feel better! Migraines are miserable things. Annarchy, glad you're home, but that is SO WEIRD about your mulch bin. I wonder why someone would do that.
  21. Another year or two, maybe. The idea of these is SO COOL. This coming year we're putting braces on two of our girls and hoping to add a few cows to our little farm, so hopefully that's where our money will be going. In the past three months we've replaced the roof and two of the appliances, so I'm hoping the HOUSE won't need anything else for a while!!
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