Ambergris

Hopefully, the guardian is experienced enough to know how to handle them.

Leftover sweet potatoes and leftover corn bread.

How is life now that you're done with that

I got my middle-aged dog put down today. She's always been cranky and snappish, but she's been getting worse over time. When she snapped at me and took my glasses off my face, DH said I must have surprised her. Said the same when she just got a mouthful of my hair. When she menaced a four-year-old kid, DH insisted the kid must have provoked her. On Saturday evening she snatched another mouthful of my hair when I was adding food to her bowl, and on Sunday afternoon she attacked my nineteen-year-old cat. I distracted her with a towel, luckily, and the old cat staggered to safety. But this was just too much. I told the vet this was my year for losing them. The black Australorp hens have both gone broody, so I ordered a new batch of bantam hatching eggs, which arrived today. (The first batch of hatching eggs didn't do well in my home-made incubator.) A friend wants the rest of the old hens, even knowing they're well past their prime as layers. She can have them as soon as she can get her son to put up an enclosure for them. The cheese powder from Firehouse Pantry arrived today as well. A one-pound bag fills four half-pint jars. The orange version smells like Cheetos. The white doesn't. I don't know if this is a case of expectations affecting senses or a real scent. A one-pound bag of chipped dried tomatoes fills a quart jar with enough left over to mostly fill a half-pint jar. I bet the tomato would have all fit in the quart jar if I'd packed it harder, but this is also good--I wanted a little off to the side for experiments. Over the next two paychecks, I'd like to get the ingredients to do some of the 52 Jar meals from Chef Tess. Has anyone done these? Any suggestions? In case anyone's interested in writing a mystery, St. Martin's Press has opened a bunch of contests. http://us.macmillan.com/Content.aspx?publisher=minotaurbooks&id=4933 I'm playing with some ideas for a cozy mystery.

Corona virus is endemic here. A mutation of it killed my favorite kitten back in May.

I could type all night with our family stories, but here's one fact: my grandfather laid the dynamite for Bankhead Tunnel under Mobile Bay.

This is my favorite: http://what-if.xkcd.com/8/

I'm Ambergris, and I'm not a seed collector. Well, not a maniac. Mostly not. I gave away almost all my seeds this past year. I have only a few packets left. Well, a couple dozen, mostly of very small packets of mostly local seed. If you flip over the final 2, you only have a few months left of 2015! Get buying, Mt3b!

I've eaten fruit from several different trees, and they're at least as different as apples. Some aren't worth eating raw, but others definitely are. Try them and see for yourself. Here's some info: http://justfruitsandexotics.com/Jujuba.htm

My thoughts line up with Coastygirl's. That said, I have grown a grape trellis or a sweet potato vine trellis for privacy when a specific need arose. Don't know what you'd do in fall and winter, though. My likeable next door neighbors moved last week. The landlord refused to renew their lease. Now I'm anxious about why, and about whether the new people (or the landlord) will be as intrusive as the previous neighbors. We have a long fence line.

Hi, Mel! Welcome!

I'm in the Eastern time zone. I was already at work, trapped in downtown Tallahassee, blocks from Jeb Bush's governor's mansion. Everyone "knew" the president was in Tallahassee, and that we'd be next. My sons were at school, miles away, probably safe. I looked down at the unmoving cars, and I called friends I wasn't sure I'd ever talk to again. One of my friends wasn't able to attend her sorority sister's funeral until several years later. It took that long to identify the DNA. They were using tweezers to pick up scraps of people to identify. It was months before I let my kids watch network TV. I did not want them to actually see people falling from the sky.

Doctor Crazy!

Insurance is one of those awful necessities, but the kind you have never seems to be the kind you need.

It's a good thing I didn't expect this to be easy, emotionally or physically. I left DH at the bus station holding a ticket to Savannah, so drunk he couldn't talk straight, six days ago. It's been six days since anyone has insulted me, told me how I'm incapable of loving and would therefore die bitter and alone. Six days since anyone has brought me a cup of coffee or set a towel in the dryer to warm as I ran my bath water. His last night here was spent wandering from the party in the yard to the pile of clothing and stuff he was considering taking. He ended up taking only the clothes on his back and what fit in a backpack. He left other clothes scattered across the living room and piled on the couch. I couldn't face them until today. This morning I folded the clean items and stowed them in the sea bag he decided would be too heavy to carry. He may send for it. He may not. I keep picturing him holding a piece of cardboard by the side of the road, and my heart breaks. Someone came into the house the other day and took two of his favorite items: a throwing tomahawk and a spiral-cut walking stick. The person walked past and reached past more valuable items to get those. I have the impression someone just wanted a memento or two. But we have put security on the front burner. The filth and squalor he left behind on the side-porch area where he spent his time is breathtaking. There are broken beer bottles and large shards of mirror everywhere. I've shoveled some into the trash, but we're going to have to make a few runs to the dump. I need to find out if Waste Management will carry off the peed-on couch and the broken fridge. It wasn't like this a year ago. Not anything like this. I have to wonder if some kind of dementia was at work along with the booze and the drugs. The booze and drugs were a choice, freely made. If there was dementia too, though, that's illness. That's something I should have found a way to treat. Our closest neighbor is moving out rather suddenly. I hope someone doesn't immediately look over the fence and call the health people. I'm working on cleaning it up. Really, I am. My sons are too. But there's just so much to do. I have no idea where the chickens are roosting, but it's not where DH said they were roosting. I need to trap them to put them in the chicken yard, but it turns out the fence-over and the back side of the chicken yard have been damaged by falling chunks of tree. They need substantial repair. I also need to pick up enough pine straw to floor the yard and re-make the nesting boxes. That's a lot of pine straw. I need to get a new hand-truck. The old one has disappeared. The cats are upset. At least two have started peeing inside. Not, of course, in convenient areas. My sons are upset as well. They're showing it in different ways, but DH has raised them since they were small. The agreement was he had through 9-11 to collect any of his stuff he wanted. I'm planning to have things like his camo field jacket cleaned, folded, and boxed up by then. Planning to. My day job is not going to have eternal patience with me. There's just so much to do. And so much that only he knew how to do.

Hers was too. Seriously, courts are turning over employers' designations of "salaried" more often than you'd think. Not exactly left and right, but still. There's reasons the employer purges your records as soon as possible.

Thank you for the clarification. I have cut my caffeine intake by half and am skipping details here and there.

Hazel, document your overtime carefully. I knew a lady (several years ago) who was paid by court order for decades of unpaid overtime.

How to Feed a Family of 4 or More for Less than $200 a Month http://www.amazon.com/Feed-Family-More-Month-ebook/dp/B00710A0V6/ref=pd_rhf_cr_s_cp_2 Joyful Momma's Guide to Shopping & Cooking Frugally http://www.amazon.com/Joyful-Shopping-Cooking-Frugally-ebook/dp/B0077H7NNQ/ref=pd_sim_kstore_3

My mother put them in soup. They didn't cook nearly as fast as the rest of the vegetables. So cook them longer than you would potato or carrot chunks. Just canning fresh ones doesn't cook them enough to make them soft.

Good luck, Lumabean.