I Gave In

 I gave in and turned the heater on this morning. It was down to 66° in the house, and I’m getting too old for all of this tough it out as long as possible nonsense.  If I were staying home, I'd have started a fire, but that's just not practical on a work day.  

Speaking of, we're back to going in at 6:00, which means having to deal with the indignity of walking through the metal detector.  This morning, I got all the way into the plant and to my work station when I realized I hadn't put my safety glasses on.  No matter, I still had plenty of time before the shift started to run get them out of my car.  I was headed out the door when one of the security guards told me I needed to sign out. 

Sign out?  Why?  The shift hadn't started yet.  I hadn't even clocked in yet.  Why do I need to sign out?  But that's the stupidity we have to deal with out there.  And they can't figure out why nobody wants to work there.  

By the way, the whole plant will be on four day weeks for the rest of the year, starting next week.  And no, that's not four 10 hour days.  It's 32 hours per week.  That's why I started saving all of my vacation days for the Fall.  Most of the shutdown days will be on Fridays, but they're going to give us Nov 30th off instead of the first Friday of December.  That'll give us a nice long break over Thanksgiving week.  

The plan is, since I won't have any company for Thanksgiving to finish cleaning up the tree trimmings and try to contact someone about pulling up the rest of that old dog kennel.  I had discussed it with the tree guy, but I'm not sure I want to hire him again.  I probably will, since he already knows what I want.  Oh, and I want to go up to Lowe's and get either a new dishwasher or a new stove.  Probably a dishwasher since my stove still works.  I just don't like it. 

I had to laugh at Cody, because their dishwasher went out and he said he couldn't cook without one.  He's such a Millennial.  I've been without a dishwasher for a few years now, and really haven't felt the need to replace it, since I'm only cooking for one most of the time. 

We had a nice visit Sunday, once they finally woke up.  We went out to eat, then went to Walmart so Cody could buy a cheap Styrofoam cooler to take the frozen peppers back with them.  We walked around looking at the Christmas stuff for a while, then left and went to walk the trails at the Lee Tartt Nature Preserve.  Brennan got super excited because she saw a deer, so I said that when we got home, I'd scatter some corn to see if we could draw my local deer out of the woods.  

After that, we just drove around and chatted a bit.  Brennan wants to go camping, saying that she'd never been.  She also said she wanted to move to Alaska.  I replied that I'd wanted to move to Alaska when I was a kid, but a few of these Mississippi ice storms and I'm over it.  She said that she thought it would be easier to survive a zombie apocalypse in the mountains.  I said, "If an apocalypse happens, I'm headed straight to the middle of the Atchafalaya swamp, because I know how to survive in a swamp."  She said, "That's what Cody said!"  So we have our apocalypse plan in place. 

When we got back, I scattered the corn, then we went and picked all of the remaining cayenne peppers for them to take home.  When I got home from work yesterday, I cut the rest of the plants down and put them into the newest 4' x 4' bed to compost down over the winter. 

Before I did, I checked them for more peppers and found quite a few we had missed. 

I'll probably string them up to dry, then grind them with the rest of the ones I still have hanging.  

Look at this!  I've got some garlic coming up!  

I think I need to make a dedicated bed for my garlic and onions, since they are cold weather plants.  I'll figure it out eventually.  It's a learning process, I keep saying.  

Another thing I did yesterday was to bring Marty Mac inside and trim all the dead stuff off of him before putting him into dormancy. 

Which is kind of inaccurate, since nature is what sends them into dormancy.  It's the changes in sunlight that triggers it.  I just bring him inside for the winter.  

In knitting news, I finally finished my cousin's other hat. 

Yarn:  Mainstays

Colorway:  Purple

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8

I'll try to get them into the mail Thursday when I go do my regular shopping. 

And finally, we would be greatly remiss is we didn't ring the church bell 29 times, for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald. 

🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔🔔

And one more for the man who made sure they would never be forgotten. 

🔔

Sunday Morning

It's currently 10:00 Sunday morning as I type this, and the kids are still in bed.  Sometimes I wonder if they come to visit me, or just to sleep in my spare bedroom.  I guess they'll eventually get up, just in time to go home.  

Ah well, I guess I could have skipped all of that last minute power cleaning I did yesterday.  They didn't even show up until nearly 7:00 anyway.  I didn't wait supper on them, nor did I wait breakfast on them this morning.  Good thing, or I'd have starved.

OK, enough sour grapes.  It was 37° when I woke up this morning, chilly enough to start the first fire in the wood box, and yes, I did end up filling the whole house with smoke. 

I was trying so hard to be quiet, but the harder I tried, the noisier I was.  I probably shouldn't have bothered, because apparently those kids could sleep through a train wreck.  

I am glad I went ahead and brought my plants inside yesterday instead of waiting until today.  The potted plants will go back outside for the day, but my cacti are in for the year. 

Since the kids weren't going to get here until late yesterday, I went out early in the morning finished cleaning up behind the fence, except for that pile of leaves, 

which I moved inside the fence this morning.   

Now, all the tree trimmings are at least on my side of the fence, so that's one less thing I have to worry about.  I think I found the hornet's nest when I tried to move this log.  

As soon as I turned it over, hornets came out everywhere, and I saw what appeared to be a paper nest.  Fortunately, I was able to get away without being stung. I went back to the house and got my can of spray, and by the time I got back to the log, all the hornets had gone back into the nest.  I gave it a good soaking with the spray, and haven't seen them since.  Just one or two flying around.  

On a similar note, every Southerner knows what this means.  

Sigh, the only thing I hate more than hornets...fire ants. 

Oh, and I did find time to record a garden journal, which you can watch here:  Garden Journal.  I get a bit rambly in this one, so I guess one thing I'm going to have to learn to do over the winter is to edit my videos. 

Well, the kids are finally up.  I was beginning to think I should go check for pulses.  So, since I was the one fussing, let me get off of here and go spend some time staring at screens with them. 

Laters...

Best Laid Plans

You know what they say about the best laid plans.  Yep, while I was in Walmart yesterday, Cody texted me and said that Brennan couldn't get the day off she wanted -- which was the weekend of the 21-22, so they're coming tomorrow.  Oh boy.   

When I asked him to give me a heads up, I sort of meant more than two days.  Oh well, we won't have our traditional Thanksgiving dinner, but I bought a frozen lasagna and I'll cook that for them.  Heh, and it looks like I bought that new slipcover just in time, too.  I'd said they could help me put up my Christmas tree, but it's a bit too early for that.  At least in my house.  If you've got yours up already, that's perfectly fine, too.    

But what all of that means is that I'll have to do my last minute panic cleaning tomorrow, and all the stuff I'd planned to do tomorrow had to be done today and the trip to Batesville I had planned to take today didn't get taken.  I was hoping that Lowe's would still have some pansies or violas, since our Walmart doesn't have anything but mums right now, but that trip will have to wait.  Maybe next weekend...  And somewhere in the midst of all of this, I'll need to take time to bring all my plants inside, since we're facing the possibility of frost Sunday night. 

With that in mind, I got up this morning and made a makeshift greenhouse over my remaining tomatoes. 

I used some of my tomato cage parts and a couple of old drop cloths, but hopefully it'll hold enough heat to keep them from dying, and hopefully it'll also make those tomatoes go ahead and ripen before the winter sets in for good.   

Once I was done with that, I finished cleaning up behind this side of the back fence, which there wasn't that much left to do. 

A few logs and leaves, plus the fence the tree guy had taken down, which he tossed back there, too.  

That still blows my mind that he thought it would be OK to pile all that stuff on someone else's property.  And yes, he did know because I told him that the fence marked my property lines.   Anyway, that side is completely cleaned up, and I was making pretty good progress on the other side until I found yes, another ground hornet nest.   

I think the cat got stung this morning, because she came running into the house yowling and licking her leg.  At the time, I'd thought she had run up against one of the honeybees, but now I think it was a hornet.  She likes to sit on that big log, which is right above where the hornet nest is. 

I got off pretty easy, seeing that I only got stung once this time.  I ran inside and took a Claritin right away, so hopefully the reaction won't be so bad.  Still, I decided that I'd probably be better off leaving that pile alone for the time being.  I can get out there early in the morning...oh, wait, no I can't.  I have to clean the house because the kids are coming!  

Cody says they don't care, but I don't want them having to use a nasty bathroom.  

With my leg still burning from the hornet venom, I switched gears and dug the red clay out of the bottom of the last 4' x 4' bed.

I filled the bottom with twigs and leaves from the tree trimmings, 

then topped that off with some basil clippings.  

It will break down over the winter, and as it does, I'll add more leaves and top it all off with soil.  By spring, it should be ready to plant.  All of the beds will need to be topped up, but now that I've got all of them except the last round planter at least partially filled, next year I'll be able to do my soil amendments in the fall when other gardeners do them. 

I suppose I could have done them this year, but I wanted to leave the basil for the bees.  Next year, I'll have my pollinator gardens going, so that won't even be an issue.  I always said this would be a multi-year project, getting my garden going and all, so really, I'm kind of running ahead of schedule.  Maybe tomorrow I can take a break from my panic cleaning and record a garden journal for you. 

But for now, I think I'm going to check out and watch a cheesy Hallmark movie while knitting on my cousin's hat. 

Laters.

Now What?

Before I get into today's post, I have a new garden flag to show you. 

Only it's on the carport, not in the garden, because I wanted people to be able to see it.  And now, back to your regularly scheduled blog post. 

You're never going to guess what they're going to make us do out at work now.  Seriously, I'll give you a moment...

Still haven't figured it out?  OK, I'll tell you. 

They've decided all of the brazers need to go through the beginning brazing class.  All of us.  Even those who've been brazing for 27 years like I have.  Even those who used to train the new brazers like I did before they started doing the class.  Heck, we've got one guy out there who has been brazing for 39 years.  What do we need to go through the class for?  

For what it's worth, I never went through the class to begin with, because I'd been brazing for ten years by the time they even started doing them.  

They have the first brazer over in the training center right now, and he said they're teaching him to measure the parts and fill out a form for them.  That's right, they've decided they want to make the brazers measure all of the headers and adapter tubes, then fill out a form for each order we do showing what the measurement is supposed to be and what it actually is. 

Ummmm, shouldn't tubing be doing that?  I guess not.  Why would I expect them to, since they've never had to do a first piece inspection.  It's always been up to the brazers to sort out and reorder bad parts, even thought it would make so much more sense to make tubing check the first one before they run 216 bad pieces, but nooooo.  

I'll tell you one thing, though, if they do this, I'd better not hear ONE WORD for anyone about the lines being down waiting on headers while I'm over there measuring parts.  They're going to have to lower the production schedule, too, because we're not going to be able to keep up if we have to spend half our day doing useless and unnecessary paperwork.  

But they've always treated the brazers like the red headed step children of the plant.  You see this?  You see the hole in the floor that's not there?  

We complained about that hole for literally years, to supervisors, to the safety team, to anyone who would listen, but the hole never got fixed.  Suddenly, they move the brazing department so that the hole is no longer in the middle of it, and it's miraculously fixed within two days.  

That right there tells me everything I need to know about how they think of us. 

In more exciting news, I got a new slip cover for my love seat!

And yes, I do realize how completely pathetic that sounds...But anyway, the old one was about 25ish years old and it was past time to replace it.  No one sits on that love seat but a few times per year when the kids stop by.  I was going to throw it away after Rylea died and replace it with another recliner, but then Cody met Brennan, and she needs a place to sit, too.  So I kept it.  It's old and a bit bedraggled, but the frame is solid.  I've definitely gotten my money's worth out of it, since I didn't pay but $20 for it secondhand in the first place. 

Don't envy me my exciting life...

Moving right along...

Someone posted this meme on the book of faces Monday, and I'm wondering if Americans are seriously this stupid. 

Did you not notice the sunsets getting earlier and earlier since the summer solstice in JUNE?  

Heavy sigh...I think I'm going to check out and knit on this hat for my cousin with cancer. 

Yarn:  Mainstays

Colorway:  Purple

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8

Laters

Apparently

Apparently, the secret to having Trick Or Treaters come to your door is don’t buy candy. 

Seriously. 

For the first time since I’ve lived in this house, I didn’t buy any Halloween candy.  And for the first time since I’ve lived in this house, I had a Trick Or Treater come to my door.  I don't even know who the kid was, since there aren't any that age in this area.  I wonder if his family was at the campground just across the highway.  

Full disclosure, I had fully intended to buy some candy, but I wanted the mini 3 Musketeers bars.  They didn't have any in the Halloween candy aisle, and by the time I had gotten to the regular candy aisle, I'd completely forgotten about it.  Fortunately, I had candy left over from some they’d given out at work for some reason or another, so I didn’t have to send him away empty handed. 

That actually happened once when I lived on Riverdale Road.  I don't know what I was thinking.  Cody was little, and we'd gone to the thing at the church.  It must have been the first year I was on day shift, because normally I would have been at work.  A couple of kids came by and I didn't have anything to give them.  They were nice about it, but I felt pretty bad.  I've always made sure I have some candy on hand ever since.  

Next year, I'll be sure to have some good Halloween candy -- and I won't get any Trick Or Treaters.  Ain't that the way of it?  

But the good news is, it had already started sprinkling when the kid came by, and it rained pretty much all night and most of the morning, too.  A good slow drizzle, which is exactly what we needed.  The ground is so hard and dry, anything harder would just run off and not do anyone any good.  I mean, it's still not nearly enough to relieve the drought conditions, but some is better than none. 

While it was raining, I caught up on my cheesy Christmas movies, watched a football game, and finished my cousin's hat. 

Yarn:  Mainstays
Colorway:  Orange V
Pattern:  Basic Beanie
Needles:  US 8

And if you're interested in such things, I opened three more of my cans of food.

I opened both of those cans of tuna and made tuna salad out of it.  I've said before, I don't know why I even bought it since I don't like tuna.  At all.  I also opened a can of pears and made some more pear salads.  At least I like those.

So now my stack looks like this. 

By the way, I changed my mind on that pulled pork.  I'd said I'd probably buy some more, but I don't think I will.  When I bought it, I thought it was plain meat.  I absolutely did not see where it said it had BBQ sauce.  I really didn't like that sauce, and I've got one more can of the stuff to eat up!  

And finally, for your meme debunkeration.  Technically this isn't a meme.  It's a status update, usually posted in groups for engagement farming, but I've seen it posted so many times I felt like it needed addressing. 

The thing about it is, if you can afford to retire at 50, there is literally nobody stopping you.  As long as you can pay your bills, you can retire at whatever age you choose to do so.  What you don't have the right to do is to demand that I pay your bills so you can lay around being lazy for half your life. 

We get enough of that from Gen Z.  

Halloween 2026

Guess what, y'all!  I finally made that there squash pie!  

It turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself.  

I don't know what it is, if my ovens are consistently off temperature wise or what, but it always takes so much longer to bake pies than the recipes say.  I always have to add at least 15 minutes to the cooking time for them to get done in the middle.  Even the pumpkin pies I make do this, despite me following the recipe exactly.  

No matter.  It's done, and that was the last thing on my list of stuff I wanted to cook.  Now I just need to finish eating up all of those canned goods and I'll be good to go.  I opened one of the cans of pulled pork for lunch, and I must say I didn't really like the BBQ sauce they had in there.  Oh well, I'll probably still get another can or two, just in case there is a power outage or something and it's not long enough to drag out that generator and hook it up.  

Other than that, I haven't really done much today.  After watching It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, I spent a little time working on cleaning up this mess a bit.

I know you can't really tell, but I am slowly making progress.  I suppose I could have done more, but I'm already feeling all the work I did yesterday, so I figured I probably ought not to overdo it.  Still, I got a little bit added to my firewood pile, 

and a bit more raked into what will eventually be a compost pile.  The in-between stuff -- you know that's too small to be firewood, but to big to be compost -- is going to get put into the brush pile I started in the woods a few years ago. 

It will provide shelter for small animals and beneficial insects over the winter, and will eventually break down to enrich the forest floor.  And I'm using that term forest very loosely, since it's just a thin line of trees back there now.  

Besides, if I need it for anything -- like starting a fire or filling a raised bed -- I can always go back there and get some.  

In knitting news, the orange hat is coming along nicely.   

Yarn:  Mainstays

Colorway:  Orange V

Pattern:  Basic Beanie

Needles:  US 8

Mainstays has some decent yarn, and this orange is so much brighter than any of the Red Heart or Caron they had in stock.  I figured my cousin would like it better.  He said he starts his treatment in December, so I want to have both hats finished and mailed by then.  That should be very doable.  

That's pretty much all I have for today, so I'll just leave you with my traditional Halloween prayer:

And say good night and Happy Halloween!  

Back Into The Swing

It's been a rough week trying to get back into the swing of things -- mainly waking up at 2:30 AM -- after having a whole week off to sleep as late as I wanted to.  I don't know what's going on, but I've been so exhausted.  Heh, I put on the Cowboys game Monday night and didn't even last until the end of the first quarter.  I woke up with 4-ish minutes left in the game, and said I was going to watch the end, but didn't make it that time, either. 

I've been feeling so run down all week.  In spite of that, I managed to stain the rest of my fence today.  Mostly.

I wanted to get it done before the rains tomorrow-- hopefully we'll get some.  And hopefully, it'll settle whatever it is that has got my allergies all stirred up.  One day, I think it was Wednesday, my eyes were burning so badly I couldn't even see.  We won't even talk about my breathing...

But about that fence, I got one coat on the entire inside, and everything to the left of those orange flags has two coats.  I have one more gallon of stain, but I'm the one who ran out of steam.  I might not be able to move tomorrow, but that's one more thing I can almost mark off of my list.  

Except I still have to do the outside, but that will require talking to the neighbors since I'll have to trespass on their side to get it done.  I don't think they'd mind, but still....

Speaking of the neighbors, it looks like they're planning a Halloween party.  They might get rained out, but they moved their car out of the carport and have a table set up there, so maybe not.  

In other news, it's also been a rough week for Trekkies, losing Mr. Chekov and Captain Picard in the same week.  Mr. Chekov was one of my first childhood crushes, along with Mr. Greenjeans.   Nothing romantic, per se.  I was still a bit too young for that, but Mr. Chekov and I spent many hours exploring strange new worlds in my childish imagination.  Someone on FB posted that we now live in a world where there are no more Pavel Chekovs, since the young actor who played him in the reboots was killed in a tragic accident ten years ago.  Almost to the day... 

In spite of it all, I managed to finish the sailor hat to match the scarf I'd knit. 

I got a message from one of my cousins last week.  He's got cancer and has requested I knit him a couple of beanies for when his head gets cold.  I didn't say so out loud, but I was thinking, "You're already bald headed, how much colder are we talking about?"   Anyway, he wants one in orange and one in purple.  Guess which are the only two colors I didn't have?  I ran into town after work one day -- I'm so tired I don't even remember which day it was-- and picked up a skein of each.  

Yes, it looks blue in the photo, but it really is purple.  I've got the orange hat cast on, but haven't taken a photo of it. 

In a bit of better news, the chicken wire on my raised bed seems to have worked well keeping the cat out. 

Look at this!  My crimson clover is germinating.  

So is my bachelor's button.  

I don't know how well you can see, but my second planting is absolutely loaded with tomatoes.  

I doubt I'm going to do succession planting next year, because I don't think they'll ripen before the earliest chance of frost.  We've had them in the last week of October before, and if we got one this year, all of these tomatoes would be toast.  I might have to cover these, even so.  I'm watching the forecast pretty closely, but I think next year, I'll just plant something more cold hardy.  The extension office put out a list of things to plant in October.

Alas, there isn't a whole lot on this list that I really like, and the stuff I do like, I wouldn't be able to eat it up before it goes bad.  The spinach, for example.  I love fresh baby spinach, but don't like it cooked.  Wait, I like it in stuff like spinach quiche, so that may be a possibility.  But a small one, since I'm allergic to eggs.  I still eat them from time to time, but don't want to over do it. 

Abrupt change of subject, despite my lingering fatigue, I got up and walked the Bottomland Trail at the Lee Tartt Nature Preserve.  

I wish I weren't so exhausted after a long day at work, or I'd go more often.  But what with them moving us back to the lines, I probably won't have to.  Back when we were on the lines before, I'd usually end up walking 3-3.5 miles just in the course of an average work day.  That's what we'll be going back to, whereas now, with us close to where we need to be, I only walk 1.5-2 miles per day.  

Someone on FB posted this:  

and I felt it to the depths of my soul.  I remember one time when the brazers were on the assembly lines last time.  I was working on line 2, and neither of line 1's brazers showed up that morning, so the supervisor asked me if I would go work on line 1.  Alas, the other brazer for line 2 was lazy as all get out.  I'm telling you, if she brazed 50 headers per day, she was doing well.  For context, we were supposed to be doing 250 per day, but she was also boinking the group leader, so she got away with it. 

Well, said group leader told Supervisor that she couldn't keep up by herself, so said supervisor told me to run back and forth between line 1 and line 2 all day.  Go do a few orders for line 1, then come do a few orders for line 2....all so group leader's side chick wouldn't have to make any effort whatsoever to do her job.  

 I definitely got my steps in that day.  

Out Of The Blue

 I had a former coworker contact me a couple of days ago completely out of the blue.  

We'd been friends back when he worked out at the plant, but had mostly lost touch when he quit out there and moved out of town.  We were friends on the Book Of Faces, but he hardly ever posted.  Well, he messaged me and told me he was thinking about moving back so he could help take care of his dad and was considering trying to get back on at the plant. 

I had to be honest with him, and told him I would not recommend that place to anyone.  It's gotten so much worse out there since he left.  He replied that he'd heard that from other sources, and thanked me for confirming.  I suggested a couple of other facilities in the area that pay much more and treat their employees so much better, and if I weren't so close to retirement, I'd put in at one of them my own self. 

It's a shame when your work place is so bad you warn people against applying there. 

We chatted a bit more and he was impressed that I still had Slider.  He's the one who gave him to me all those years ago.  He said, "I knew you'd take good care of her."  TBH, I don't know if Slider is a him or a her, but I've always said him and I'm not going to stop now.  Probably because my coworker called him him when he gave him to me.  Maybe he forgot.  It's been 19 years after all...

Speaking of work, I had to turn my alarm back on this morning and it made me want to throw up.  I woke up at 4:00 and made myself stay awake to try to get back into the swing of getting up at 2:30, and boy was I not happy about it.  In fact, I felt so sick about it I didn't really do anything today but watch cheesy Christmas movies, both Hallmark and Great American Family.  

While I was doing that, I played around with AI a bit trying to come up with an autumn picture to use as a thumbnail.  I put the same prompt in:  Create an image of autumn scenery, and this is what they gave me.  

ChatGPT: 

Grok:  

Gemini:  

I think Gemini won this round.  I'd like to be walking down that road myself.  I wish I weren't so exhausted when I got off work.  If I weren't, I'd go walking every day.  As it is, I come home and pretty much collapse.  

In garden news, I forgot to show you this yesterday.  Look, one of my garlics is coming up!  

This is the only one so far, but I'm not panicking.  Garlic really needs a good cold spell to start growing.  Lots of sites recommend putting it into the refrigerator before planting it, which I wish I would have known ahead of time.  Oh well, it'll get cold soon enough.  

I did go out and cut all the green cayenne peppers I could find, but I didn't string them to dry.  I just put them into a Ziploc bag and put them into the freezer.   I also cut a bit more French tarragon and hung it to dry.  That'll probably be all I harvest from the garden for this year, except for the tomatoes, of course.  

And finally, remember how I said I was going to eat up all these canned goods?  

I've made a pretty good start of it.  I ate the corned beef hash for breakfast this morning, and ate the Sweet Sue chicken and dumplings yesterday.  I've used the cream of chicken soup in my squash casserole, and made chicken salad from both of those cans of chicken.  

In an eerie no-such-thing-as-a-coincidence coincidence, a recipe for salmon patties -- sometimes called salmon croquettes-- popped up in my FB feed.  I think I'll make those one day this week.  Then I'll make tuna salad out of the two cans of tuna.  I don't even know why I bought the stuff.  I don't like tuna.  But it's there and we don't waste food.  

In fact, I think I'll go right now and open up that big can of pear halves and make pear salads with them.  I haven't had a pear salad in ages.  

Laters.