Notes and observations on living in Kansas

We are now entering our fourth year in Kansas and I think we've settled into a routine.

You can click the Ancient History link on the left if you need to catch up with the journal I kept until May of 2004. Most of the summer was documented on the cowboyjunkies fotopage so I probably won't do a lot of rehashing. There are also links to prior month's entries so that this page does not get so out of control and take forever to load.

December 24, 2005 8:00 pm CDT

What a puppy thinks at Christmas:

I can chew this nasty finger off that pretty diamond in nothin' flat!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

December 17, 2005 9:00 pm CST

This is the dress that I was supposed to be wearing tonight. My little black dress with the sparkly-sparkles all over. Black polka-dot hose. Black suede high-heeled pumps. Yup, my first company Christmas party in years, yet here I sit in front of the computer. Why? Because:

The predicted 2 - 4 inches started hours ahead of the forecast time, precipitated in amounts beyond the predicted, shows no sign of stopping and is currently at 6 inches and rising. Now I would not go out in this in a 4-wheel drive much less a two wheel drive vehicle. The list of cancelled events scrolling across the bottom of the TV screen is endless and the news readers recite a litany of fender-benders and near-misses. I hope that if they didn't cancel the party, they at least had a good turn-out from the folks who live in town, but really, I hope they cancelled it so I can still get an opportunity to wear that dress!

December 12, 2005 10:00 pm CST

Well, the bundt cake pan idea for the ice lanterns was a partial success. Wally World had these really cool silicone cake/gelatin molds in the cookware department. One of them is a swirl pattern, one is a castle pattern. The swirl did not translate well into ice but the castle—va-va-voom! I am so jammin' with the way the castle came out. I'm going to buy more molds so I can make more than one at a time. I also did these up in the freezer since our daytime temps have been well above freezing and I'm just not that patient when it comes to waiting for water to freeze. What do you think of the castle?

Here is the swirl. Not anywhere near as dramatic:

I decorated the tree today. Yes, I will admit that I was going to do the Martha Stewart thing and only decorate with matching Victorian ornaments. But once those were on, the tree still looked naked; it just wasn't our tree without all our stuff. There's all the little homemade ones that DJ's crafted in school over the years and the surfing Santa's from Hawaii. The painted wooden ones in all shapes and sizes. The Furbys, the Jack-in-the-Box giveaways and all the little Hallmark treasures that Judi's picked up at many auctions. And the new tree has sooooooooooooooooo many places to hang stuff! And the branches are soooooooooooooooooo strong that you can load them up! So now, just as in years past, the tree is covered with all our precious memories. I hope DJ will stop in "here" and see it. Wednesday I believe I'll put garland on the railing. No, I'm not going to kill myself trying to get it all done in one day.

December 10, 2005 10:30 pm CST

Well, I've tried making one of the ice lanterns. I don't think it came out half-bad. It warmed up quite a bit today so I didn't have to do the 'warm water soak' to remove the center container or the ice block itself. I used a one gallon plastic paint bucket with a coke can sinker. I filled the can with some water to get it to sit down in the bucket and placed a stake across the top of the bucket and can to hold the can in place. The can still popped up during the night as the ice in the bucket expanded. I think the effect is quite pretty to look at. Since the coke can  popped, the depression for the candle is not all that deep so I used a tea light. Tomorrow I am going to try this again with one minor modification. I am going to use a bundt pan. It's very windy here in Kansas and unless you can get your candle down inside the depression where it's protected from the wind, your candle is going to blow out. Putting the candle that deep in a solid block of ice runs the risk of the melting ice drowning the candle so my theory is that with the bundt cake pan, the depression already goes all the way through the block of ice and any melting water will simply run off rather than fill up the center of the lantern. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Dallas has not been herself for the past few days. She's not jumping up on the bed at night like she normally does. Doesn't want to run around in the snow and play with Maverick. In fact she snaps at Maverick when Maverick charges her and tries to get her to play. She's yelped a couple of times when she's been walking or running and neither time did I see her stumble or slip so there is definitely something going on. This morning I took her to the Vet. He doesn't think her arthritis is any worse and has no reason to suspect we're dealing with hip dysplasia. No temperature; heart and lungs sound good; nothing is broken or seems fractured. His guess is that sometime she pulled or strained a muscle and that's the reason for her subdued behavior. He gave her an anti-inflammatory to take for the next couple of weeks and we'll see how that does for her.

So far no one has climbed the new tree or tried to eat any of the lights, although Elmo threw up a nice sized piece of plastic wrap the other day. God only knows where he got it, I'm just glad it didn't come up in the middle of the night while he was sleeping on top of me. He's quite happy under the tree. Tomorrow I plan to add ornaments to it and we'll see what the kitties think of that. Normally it's not the tree and its decorations that they bother. Darwin & Struts seem to have no interest in any of the holiday decorations. Elmo however has one favorite thing that appears most during the holiday season. He loves to chew the bows and ribbons on the gifts under the tree. Pukes up scads of ribbon every year. Not very bright, is he?

December 8, 2005 8:30 pm CST

Snow day. I'm thinking my butt is going to be parked in front of the computer blogging away. Posting photos. Visiting my internet friends' websites. Yeah. Witness the email I sent my boss shortly before 3:00 pm:

<Dept. Head>, After shoveling the sidewalks, clearing the snow off the woodpile, stocking the garage with firewood, doing the mountain of laundry, and firing up the wood stoves I've reached the conclusion that I would have had a more relaxing day if I'd been able to come to work. My friend Tim has a plow on his truck and when he is done with his day job, he's promised to make so that I can leave the house tomorrow. See you in the morning. Juli

I did take the time to photograph so here is my day in pictures:

In other news, we have a new vehicle. Not new-new, but new-to-us. In other words, used. Judi loves her Trooper, but she's been wanting a newer model. So last weekend we made a run up to KC, KS to look at one she found on the internet. It was a keeper and she drove it home. It's waiting for Jess to come pick it up and take care of the little nit-picky things she'd like done. She's going to sell the old Trooper to DJ's friend Marshall. You remember Marshall the mud-covered motorcycle rider? Well he's sprung up to six feet tall and he's doing well and now he's going to buy a car. I'm sure there's other things I need to catch you up on, but the drive is plowed, the weather report has come and gone and it's time for me to hit the hay so I can go to work tomorrow and get some rest...

December 8, 2005 9:00 am CST

SNOW DAY

December 7, 2005 10:25 pm CST

So I'm sitting up here occasionally checking the crawl at the bottom of the TV screen. I will have two criteria for deciding on trying to go to work tomorrow. See, it's been snowing all day. Nothing like the brief blizzard complete with white-out that we had Monday night. Just slow, steady accumulation all day long. I worked 8 to 2 today and when I left the parking lot was slippery, the street right off of it 2 inches of slush, and the main highway was clear to the pavement. The secondary roads by home had been scrapped once leaving some clear some packed spots. The gravel road wasn't plowed and wasn't bad, but my driveway. Wow. I can always make it down the driveway but back up that hill in 5 inches of snow is something else. They only cancel school out here if our secondary roads make so they can't pick up the kids. So if school gets cancelled I'm going to call it a snow day. If we don't get some wind tonight to blow this stuff off the driveway, I'm pretty sure that will constitute my snow day. Who knows what the dawn will bring...

But tonight we are all toasty with the wood burner glowing red hot. All the animals are gathered 'round.

Toasty warm animals

Snow dog!

Hot dog!

I have shoveled twice tonight in anticipation of being able to leave the house tomorrow, but the only shovel-able area is my concrete pad in front of the garage, the driveway is gravel. I guess I will have to learn how to operate the snow thrower. Either that or tell Judi she can't travel when it's going to snow. Monday night's incident took me by surprise. I went to H*o*b*b*y L*o*b*b*y to get a Christmas tree.

Minor Digression: Each year the start of the season has seen us all trundle off to Wally World for DJ to select the perfect Christmas tree for us. Then DJ & I would struggle to get the tree straight up and down in the stand. I would struggle to put the lights on, usually involving multiple pine needle stabbings and one or two un-strandings as I realize A) I've got them in the wrong order if I plan on actually plugging them into a socket and B) one of the strings has failed between the time I tested them (five minutes ago) and the time I've gotten them arranged on the tree. Then DJ and Judi throw ornaments at the dead fir tree until you can barely see any green, so covered it is with special memories. Well DJ's not here this year. So the traditional start of the season has not occurred. But I have no intention letting the loss of DJ—and make no mistake, it has been a loss all around; our home is not the same—color Christmas the way my brother's death did for so many years. So I went out to get a tree. back to our story...

Judi loves the smell of a live tree and hates the fire hazard aspect of it. I love the smell of a live tree and hate the shedding pine needles aspect of it. Judi being out of town, I decided that this year we would go artificial. There's a tree I've been eyeing for months at the craft store and dammit, I'm getting the tree. When I walked into H*o*b*b*y L*o*b*b*y there were a few flakes spitting here and there. When I walked out maybe 15, 20 minutes later there was an inch of white stuff on the ground, the snow was blowing in a distinctly horizontal pattern and you could hardly see 10 feet in front of you. Look out Kansas, here comes your California driver! Made it home fine with just some minor sliding leaving the parking lot and making the last turn off the paved road. But what's piled up there tonight is something different and as much as I love my job, if I'm terrified to drive in this I'm more hazard than help. So with the dawn comes the decision. Between you & me, I'm hoping for the snow day.