More Thoughts Too Short for a Whole Blog Post

I don't know where you keep all your misc recipes, but that beat up binder pictured above is my cookbook of all my "treasured" recipes.  It's a three ring binder with plastic "sheet protector" pages you can slide papers into.  My mom originally made it for me for my bridal shower. She not only included many of her "tried and true" recipes, but she asked everyone who came to my shower to bring a recipe to contribute.  Not only did that make it a wonderful keepsake, but when I got married, I hardly knew how to cook.  So I often would actually call the friend or family member whose recipe I was making with questions!  :-)  Over the years I've added lots of my own good recipes I've found, and added more recipes from friends and family as well.  It's dirty and beat up, but it's a treasure.

I haven't talked about geocaching in a loooooooooooong time, but on that topic, for Christmas my daughter got me the stuff to make my truck into a "travel bug".  Basically, there is a vinyl sticker now on the back of my truck that fellow geocachers would recognize.  There is a code underneath that can be copied down, and logged later on the geocaching.com website for them to get credit for "finding" this particular travel bug (my "cachemobile"!).  We will get notified each time someone logs our travelbug "truck", so it will be fun to see who has seen us, when and where.

Speaking of traveling, sometimes I swear, the contraptions people have on their vehicles to transport stuff scares me.  I mean stuff like thule bike rack and trailers and stuff seems fine, but on our way north we often see a lot of kayaks on roofs of cars and man, they look like they are gonna take flight at 80mph at any minute.  One time we were traveling behind a car that had one of those car top enclosed luggage carriers on it, and it came off!!  Thank goodness we were able to get out of the way, but now I'm always reluctant to drive behind cars with one of those things.  I think it was my brother-in-law ("J"??) who had a mattress fly off the roof of his car once...?

I was able to wrangle myself an invitation to Google+ by whining on Twitter.  It's sort of like Google's answer to Facebook, but it's really a lot more than that...and it seems to be easier to keep some privacy, too.  However, it's not open to everyone yet, and as cool as it seems so far, it would be more fun if more people I knew were on it...if you're one of the lucky 20 million who have been able to get in and you want to be in each others "circles", let me know...  Also I have 8 invitations (I think), if anyone would like one...

I need a new book light.  The one I have makes this really loud "creak" noise when you close it.  Which defeats the purpose of using a book light - you know, to be able to read while another person is sleeping?  Not so good if when you're finished the closing up of the book light (which is how you turn this one off) is so loud it wakes the other person up.  I asked the husband to spray WD40 on it, which he did, and amazingly, it seemed to make the "creak" louder.  We couldn't figure that one out.  I am going to splurge and spend $5.00 and just get a new, non-creaky book light.

And speaking of books, does anyone have any good book suggestions?  I never know what to pick at the library because it seems like everything I pick up is full of explicit sex, language and/or violence/murder.  I just want a good story without anything too "disturbing".  I read for fun, not to lay awake at night freaked out!  :-P  I also HATE SAD ENDINGS.  So none of that either, LOL...  I am embarrassed to admit this, but I just finished "The Best of Barbara Cartland" (the cheesiest, fluff romance novels you've ever read) out of desperation because I KNEW there wouldn't be anything upsetting and it would be a quick, "happy" read, LOL...  I have also read the Stephanie Plum books, which I have loved...  Anyone have any good suggestions for some good "beach reads" that aren't too "gritty" (OR SAD!)? 

I had a couple of good segues in this post, eh?  (I had to look up how to spell "segue".  It's hard to look up how to spell a word you don't know how to spell.  However I at least knew that it wasn't "Segway" - that motorized two wheel bike thingy! :-)

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Grandma's Pool Party

Our daughter doing a "cannonball".  She's kind of small so her "spash" isn't too impressive, but she gets an "E" for the effort!  :-)

We have had nothing but sun and hot weather for weeks, and then wouldn't you know it - the day of my mother-in-law's birthday/pool party, it rains!!!  Not that it stopped the kids from going the in pool, as you can see.  :-P

Although it was rainy on and off, my mother-in-law has a big awning that covers most of her deck, so we were able to sit outside despite the disappointing weather.  My sister-in-law "L" did a great job of organizing the party and figuring out who could bring what, so we had a table full of great food and an ice cream cake for the "birthday girl" for dessert.

(I'm not going to say my mother-in-law's age, but she's one of those people that seems much younger than their age - she's still very active.  I mean, I wasn't going to get hear a sunshineyoga.com yoga mat or a mountain bike for her birthday present or anything like that, but on the other hand it's not like she's the "orthopedic shoes and a housecoat" type either, by any means.)

I've never been one to be too big on my own birthday...however, I have to say my 40th birthday was probably my most memorable and enjoyable birthday.  I also in the past have had some fun trips to NYC for my birthday...we went to "Top of the Rock" (top of Rockefeller Center) and I even celebrated my birthday at the American Girl Cafe, which was pretty great too.  On "quieter" years, I've sometimes asked for take out from an Italian restaurant and just hung out with my family (and Dad and mother-in-law).  Probably my favorite thing to get from an Italian restaurant is meatballs and spaghetti.  I also really like spaghetti bolognese.

What do you like to do for your birthday?  What is your go-to birthday meal?

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We Survived the Heatwave at the Cabin

(I love it when the sun "sparkles" on the water like diamonds from diamonds international!)

Yep, that's pretty much what we did on Saturday, thankfully the last day of the heatwave here in the northeast.  It was actually very breezy down by the lake, and off course the lake was very refreshing.

We don't have air conditioning up at the cabin, but we do have ceiling fans.  We found if we open the cabin at night and put the fans on and draw in the cool air, then shut all the windows and sliders in the morning at the first sign of "heat", the cabin stayed quite cool and tolerable.  At our regular home we have ceiling fans and when it's very hot, as long as you don't move or try to do anything, if you just sit under the fan, it's not bad at all.  We do have air conditioning here, but try not to run it too much to save $$$.  Though sometimes you just gotta bite the bullet and turn it on.  Or at least I do!!

What do you do to stay cool?  Do you have any tips or tricks to share to beat the heat?  Surely we'll have at least one more heatwave before this summer is over...

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This "New" Blogger Dashboard is Getting the Better of Me

Have all my Bloggy friends rolled out to the new Blogger dashboard and posting yet?

I don't mind when companies want to improve their software, but I can't stand it when the "new" version is dramatically different than the old one.  This new Blogger dashboard has a totally different feel from the old one (it's also very drab and boring I think), everything looks different, and I just accidentally published a post with yesterday's date, that was actually supposed to be a post scheduled for tonight.  Argh!!

On the bright side, at least Blogger only changes stuff every once in a while, and they do the update themselves. Unlike Wordpress - which has a new version every 30 seconds, that you have to update yourself and you have to cross your fingers with each update that your theme and plug-ins don't "break".

Well until I learn this new Blogger interface better, I apologize in advance for who knows what I may accidentally publish...or if you're looking for a new post, it may have ended up dated two weeks ago, or ten years in the future, who knows!  LOL...

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One of the Ways We Keep Busy at the Cabin

Yes, you are seeing that right - this is a 3,000 piece puzzle!

We love puzzles, even our daughter loves them.  She's 12 and just the other day did a 500 piece puzzle herself on one of those hot days where keeping movement to a minimum is a good thing.

We brought a long folding table to the cabin specifically for doing puzzles, but this puzzle was even too big for the table!  However, it just so happened that we had this enormous box left over from our new patio set:

and the husband was able to cut it up and come up with a piece big enough to hold the puzzle.  Which is great, but I keep having this fear that a big gust of wind is going to come in through the window and swoop under that piece of cardboard and fling that puzzle and it's 3,000 pieces not just off the table, but over the edge of our loft, to rain down into our couch.  (Too bad there are no top insurance providers for puzzles, ha ha...)  Well, hopefully that won't happen.  :-P

Do you like puzzles?  Have you ever done a 3,000 piece puzzle?  Do you glue and save your puzzles when you're done?  (We never do - we take them apart and put them back in the box to do again some other time.)

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What We Did on a Sweltering Summer Evening

For once we all actually enjoyed the icy hose water!

Giving Tex a bath is always a major event.  Usually he's not terribly cooperative and I sort of end up being dragged all over the driveway while the husband and daughter soap him, then hose him off.  I can't really blame him but ya gotta wash that dog stink off sometimes.  Plus he's a double coated dog and anything that helps get some of that fur out before it ends up on the floors is a good thing!  We've never tried to give him a bath in a bathtub.  I can't imagine any scenario where that would go well.

Too bad they don't have a "dog wash" like a car wash.  You could build a big metal building with a conveyor belt.  You put a harness on the dog, then leash him to a bar on the conveyor belt, then just let him move along the conveyor belt as machines gently spray the dog with water, then shampoo, then rinse, then a nice quick blow dry.  You could even pay extra like at the car wash for maybe a shot of conditioner, or shine spray for a glossy coat.  :-)  Instead of the option to purchase air fresheners in different scents, maybe for a fee you could have your dog spritzed at the end with a scent of your choice...maybe cedar, pine, roses or beach scents to choose from?

We've never taken him to a groomer.  I don't even know what it would cost.

Anyway, as always, by the end of the bath, everyone is soaking wet and covered with wet fur.  A load of fun I tell ya.  Actually, our daughter wore her swimsuit for the event - that was good thinking!  Anyway, a little toweling off to get off more loose dog hairs and voila!  May I present a fluffly, clean and sweet smelling Mr. Texdog!

Do you take your dog to a groomer?  What does that cost, if you don't mind me asking?  Or do you give your dogs a bath at home?  Can you manage it in the bathtub, or is it outside with a hose too?

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How Much Can You Cram on a Night Table?

We were so happy that one of my sister-in-laws and her family could join us at the end of our week long vacation at our cabin.  Even more happy was our daughter who had TWO cousins in her age range to play with!  All week long I had been good about getting the daughter to tidy her room before bed, but when company came I abandoned the idea of any "tidying" where she was concerned.  Sunday afternoon before we left, this was the state of her makeshift night table:

I wish I had counted how many Starburst candy wrappers there were in that pile (on the lower left corner), just out of curiosity.  (I'd have to start looking into weightloss pills if my night table "debris" looked like that!  However, that's three kids-worth of "debris", not just our dear daughter's.)  :-P

Can't believe nothing spilled!!

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Wordless Wednesday: Hey, She Asked Us to Do It!

Look Who Came to Our Adirondack Cabin This Time!

To my complete amazement, Q-ee and Angel turned out to be quite good travelers.  I thought it was going to be a cacophony of meowing for hours in the car, but the two of them were so polite and only meowed their displeasure quite softly every now and then.  In fact it was really funny because Q-ee would meow and then Angel would meow back.  It was like Q-ee would say, "Meow, I really hate this!" then Angel would say back, "Meow, me too!"

When we got to the cabin Angel was skittish for the first day and then seemed to love it.  So many different birds and sounds and smells!  Q-ee seemed to take it all in stride from the start, however, the first night all he did was roam around the place meow-meow-meowing ALL NIGHT LONG.  I don't know what that was all about.  Maybe he figured he'd stay up and call dibs on all the good spots around the cabin, LOL...  About 4am he started knocking things over and I finally had to get up and put him in his cat carrier so I could get some SLEEP!  The next night he was fine.  Used the litterbox just fine.  They even went back in their cat carriers for the trip home with no problem!

Who would have thought bringing the cats would have been so uneventful??  LOL...  We did LOVE having them there with us - our whole family, all together.  :-)

Our old cat Basil hated the car.  She had this little trick in her later years of peeing when you'd pick her up to put her in the carrier.  I outwitted her though - I'd bring her up to the bathroom and when I picked her up, I'd hold her over the bathtub.  Then when she was "empty", into the cat carrier she went, ha ha!  :-) 

Do you cats travel well in the car? Do you have to resort to tricks to get them in their carrier?

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The $50 Boat that Turned Into the $250 Boat

The 25 year old Coleman "Crawdad" we bought for $50

Well, I should have known, really.  Because you can't just buy a rowboat and then just go boating in it.  You need stuff.  Like first of all, you're supposed to register it (to the tune of $27 for 3 years).  Then you need some way of propelling it.  Luckily for us, one of the three motors we were given worked (trolling motor), but we had to buy a marine battery for it ($$$).  Plus, all it came with was one broken oar, so we had to buy two oars (as a safety measure in case the battery or motor died!).  And being the responsible boat owners that we are, we read the NYS Boating Regulations book and discovered we needed yet more stuff.  We needed a "throwable flotation device" which ended up doubling as a cushion for our daughter to sit on, as there are only two seats anyway (luckily we had life jackets already 'cause you need those too).   Plus a whistle, a light if we're out after dark, an anchor, and probably a few other things I can't remember. 

Also, the boat was really dirty - I think it was laying under a porch for like, 6 years.  We bought two scrub brushes and had some "fun" family time scrubbing the thing out.  (Didn't need to buy apidexin fat burner after all that work!!)  It did clean up pretty nice, though.

Anyway, we spent the weekend of our trip scrubbing and running around to boat stores and Dick's trying to find all the stuff we needed, and by Sunday night we had the boat ready to go.

The trolling motor doesn't go very fast, but what is nice is that it is very quiet.  Makes for a very peaceful ride.

Turns out our old boat did a fine job showing us some nice sunsets:

And it's certainly suitable for fishing from, too!  :-D

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The Husband Makes Breakfast

A fabulous thing about going to the cabin is that often the Husband will make breakfast!  Those are homemade home fries there!  They were sooooooooooooooooooo good!!!

I am the "family cook" but I don't normally even eat breakfast (but I'll eat it if someone makes something good!), so I have not made any effort to learn to make breakfast food, other than eggs.  I also have never made any effort to figure out how to BBQ either - and I like it that the Husband can be in charge of those things!  :-D

Here was breakfast from another morning:

It's a little hard to see but we had pancakes and fried ham.  Oh yeah, and mimosas.  :-D

We also had french toast another morning, but I must have been too hungry and forgot to take a pic, ha ha...

Are you good at making breakfast?  What's your specialty?

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P.S.  Did you notice the absence of our nemesis, the blue card table of tripping-over-ness.........??

I Was Only Gone a Week...What the Heck is This?!?

This was the first time I swam out to the raft.  It's not so far that I should really be throwing my arms up triumphantly like that, but I am kind of out of shape and was happy I made it and could still breathe.

Ok.  Let me explain.

First of all, I was secretly on vacation all last week (up at the cabin - can't afford to go anywhere else, haha!).  I say secretly because I pre-wrote and scheduled posts ahead of time to appear while I was gone.  I try to be careful about posting on my blog, or Facebook or Twitter or whatever when we're going to be away, or the Husband is going to be away, or whatever for safety reasons...  I'm sure like me you've heard those stories where someone posts that they're going on vacation or whatever and they come home to find their house has been robbed.  Last week one of my new neighbors at the lake told me a story about a teenage friend of their daughter - the teen posted that her parents left her alone for the weekend, and she invited a few friends over for a "party" by posting on their Facebook walls.  Well a bunch of other kids saw it, and a friend told a friend who told a friend...and about 50 kids showed up at the girl's house for a "party" and they trashed the place.  The girl ended up calling the police on her own party because she couldn't get them to leave and she didn't even know half the kids!  Anyway, the point is, I was away all last week, and of course I have lots of pics and stuff to share.

Secondly, I go to write this post today, and the Blogger interface that I use to write this blog has completely changed!  They didn't just tweak this or that - the whole thing looks totally different!  Thought I took a wrong turn on the internet or something...  I didn't even take the time to look around, but for all I know I can post things to Saturn now and there's a talking spanish dictionary - who knows, I have to check it all out later.  As it was it took me a minute to figure out how to even start this post!  Luckily I have coffee.  I think my brain is still on "Adirondack time".

Speaking of my brain, I must be off my noodle to post a picture of me in my bathing suit for all the world to see.

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More Thoughts Too Short for a Whole Blog Post

My daughter just told me a I need a list of all my lists.  :-(  I like days where I have no list of things to do!!!

I think we need to limit the toothpaste companies to only TWO types of toothpaste per brand.  Have you tried to buy toothpaste lately???  There are 300 permutations of flavors, tartar control, whitening, gel, mouthwash added, etc., etc., etc.!  TOO MANY!!!  Just make ONE type of toothpaste that does EVERYTHING.  It can come in TWO flavors.  That's it!!  I don't have a half an hour of my life to devote to figuring out which toothpaste to buy!

I think that whoever originally categorized insects should have simply divided them into two groups:  Yucky Bugs, and Nice Bugs.  Butterflies, ladybugs and dragonflies = Nice Bugs.  Spiders, mosquitoes and cockroaches = Yucky Bugs.

The Husband has back problems and so he just got what I think is a rather expensive pillow to sleep on.  I got the $10 one and am perfectly happy with it.  :-P  I know, it's probably filled with totally allergen filled dryer lint or something, but it's nice and comfy to me.

Have you heard about Glenn Beck's new show on his own "network" online?  I think Glenn Beck can be a bit nutty, but I do find some of the things he has to say interesting.  I also think that the idea of a network that exists on the internet, that is not subject to pressures from advertisers, ratings or network executives is probably the "wave of the future".  It will be interesting to see if Glenn can make a go of it.  You can check it out here:  GBTV.com.

I like to save money at the grocery store, but good golly, it's becoming very time consuming!!  On grocery day I have to check the flyer, plan a week's worth of meals, clip the coupons from the week's flyers, I usually get a coupon in a Hannaford email that I have to print out, and now I'm using this Saving Star thing (I talked about it on my other blog here) and so now I have to check all those and note the ones I'm using.  I know some people think stay at home moms sit around eating bon bons and watching soaps all day, but it's stupid things like this that take up so much time that sometimes even *I* wonder what the heck I was doing that took all morning!!!!

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A Game I Was Destined to Lose: The Math Game

 

I forgot to mention that something else we did when we were at the cabin was play the "Math Game".  The Math Game was actually my daughter's final project in her math class this year.  She wanted to show us and have us play it, so she brought it with her.  

It was actually pretty fun, although it did involve solving math problems.  (Have I mentioned that I was an art major in college??)  I managed to make a respectable effort - I multiplied fractions and times-ed things to the whatever power and everything!  :-D 

I still lost though.  My husband is a programmer/computer Geek.  I didn't have a chance!

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Our Weekend in Pictures Part 2

Hooray!  The rain finally stopped and we could go down to the beach. 

Although our daughter can swim quite well, she decided to put on her life jacket and TWO noodles for her venture out to the raft and the "Rave".  The Rave is the floating thing to the left - it's basically and inflatable trampoline.  You can climb on, then jump really high into the water.  It's pretty cool. 

We had some duck friends that joined us on the beach.


We were able to enjoy the beach for a couple of hours, then just as we were thinking of heading back to our place, a rain storm came up.  We actually could see and hear it coming across the lake, so we managed to gather up our stuff and start running before it hit.  :-P

After dinner (cheese and crackers and hummus and chips) we planned to watch a movie.  A decision was made that we needed a snack for the movie.  We have plenty of snacks...  LOL... 

We decided to try Jiffy Pop.  Have you ever had this kind of popcorn that comes in what looks like a pie plate that you shake over a stove burner?  I personally have never had good success in getting most of the kernels to pop without totally scorching the bottom.  I was pretty dubious about the husband's ability to conquer the Jiffy Pop, but I watched in amazement as he did it perfectly!

(At this point in the process the popcorn is done and you take it off the burner, slit open the foil and pour into a bowl really quick before the bottom burns!)

Then Mr. "Oh-I-Have-to-be-Careful-of-my-Cholesterol" melted half a stick of butter to put on top.  Bad, bad, bad!

But it was really good!

Here is our "home theater", ha ha!  (That's my laptop sitting on top of an empty Avon box.  Hey, it worked!)

See you again soon, cabin!  :-)

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