I know my troubles are like a hill of beans compared to many people’s, but I had been somewhat manically determined to get to the cottage and stay there, seule moi, and after my brief hiatus and with the considerable help of friends and fambly, got back up for a night and closed up more properly [properlier, ed.?] and slapped some stain on the visible posts and fascia.
Painting around the screen is going to take some painstaking paint staining [hubby kept complaining mentioning that the stain seemed very paint-like and I kept responding that the label said it was stain even though it seemed very paint-like. It was a fascinating conversation …] but the screening is old copper and we would hate to cover it in paint stain as we might have seen in other cottages, that may or may not also belong to my mother.
I think the before and after pictures show a considerable improvement. Like she lost twenty pounds!
When we left in May. You can play where’s Waldo with the cottage:
When we left on Sunday morning:
I just wish I could straighten the cottage as easily as I straightened that picture!
Now why my personal toings and froings should be of much interest to others is something I have considered [and then ceased to consider, ed.] but having fallen off my hostessing bandwidth wagon lately, and having been both happily busy and sick as a dog, my philosophizing has been as limited as my internet access and so we are reduced to Xty, unplugged.
I had wondered about trying to pre-write for the blog, just while I wash out my laundry in public, but it is a live thing for me, you will be happy to know, and not a canned thing. It just seemed creepy, leaving posts to magically appear and not being there to tend my tiny seedlings. But back in O-town once again, opportunity awaits me like a rat in a drain [Bernie Taupin has a lot to answer for, ruining Elton John’s music with his hideous, offensive and unnecessary lyrics, I mean Jamaica Jerk Off? Hey kids, this is a nice song about waking up …]
See, there it is … the city cynicism just waiting to crack out … bacq at it take two, and grounded. Like an unruly teenager.
Good Morning.
Reading all the comments I missed, and having to take notes. I have missed more than knives, maybe even potential wives?
Squirrels are wreaking havoc on my popcorn patch. Two whole stalks destroyed in two days. Rabbits maybe, but I’m pretty sure it’s squirrels, criminal masterminds that they are.
Hauling the futon up to the dorm room today. That’s the big lift of the move. Lug in the pieces and the mattress and put it all together. Everything else is pretty easy.
We’ll be empty nesters by tomorrow night.
Okay, here we go!
Knives: Yes, you sensible posters, it is very important to have knives you can sharpen. I only felt inducted into my in-law’s clan when I was presented with a little French filleting knife before a canoe trip, just like the one they had I was jealous of. Many years later a close family member by marriage gave her spouse an expensive carving knife “that would never need sharpening” when by happenchance I was giving my hubby this fabulous knife:
Peasant Chef’s Knife
Some years ago we bought a large quantity of antique French carbon-steel knives. One that became legendary in its popularity was a style of knife that would have been in every peasant’s home a century ago, and which commonly would have been the only kitchen knife in the home. It was a knife that could do anything from splitting turnips to finely dicing herbs, and could deal with any other slicing and chopping activities in between. We have had it replicated in every detail — size, handle shape, high-carbon steel blade, etc., except we have used resin-impregnated wood for the handle in place of the original unfinished beech.
The carbon-steel blade takes a finer edge than stainless steel, and is easier to resharpen. Since carbon-steel blades invariably darken in use, we include simple instructions on ways to keep it shiny.
The great strengths of this knife are its general shape, balance and size. You may have other knives, but this is the one you will use most often.
Measures about 12″ long overall with a 6-3/4″ blade. Comes in a fitted presentation box.
And the cost of this beauty? $29.50, little tiny Canadian dollars!
Pause to say: do you have red squirrels? They are the devil’s own hand-maidens. A nice mild-mannered neighbour at the cottage casually mentioned that he plain ordinary shoots them, before they can eat his cottage. A Canadian at that!
And enjoy the empty nest – ours seems to have a steady through-flow.
Dog Car: the dog car is our good car! 2003 Pilot with well over 250K on it, but some on a newer transmission we never quite liked. Hubby does most of the basic stuff, brakes etc., but recently it has been making all sorts of noises and we have been driving it 1000s of kilometres. So he finally caves and takes it to our local garage, a trustably cheap place, and with approximately $4000 dollars of repairs indicated, he quietly [or not so quietly, but no exhaust troubles, yet] and just drives the thing, and it gets us to the cottage and back. This morning he says he just wants to buy a truck that is twenty years old so we can never have to get things e-tested again. And the back-up is a 1999 Toyota Cressida, that I simply do not consider a winter vehicle. I have a thing about clearance and sitting up high. Drove a Dustbuster [GM Transport with some nice engine in it] for years, but man it was ugly. So a search for an old but reliable vehicle once again, as I think the Pilot will probably be the only new [or almost new] vehicle I will ever own. Just not a hockey mum anymore. But given that the sort would be about to start and then the arenas and the hockey bags and the smell, oh the smell – dogs are good, but hockey bags are prime when it comes to infecting somewhere with a smell, and the combination is fabulous! So the smelly-old hockey truck might have to be traded in for a smelly old winter truck.
Gray Squirrels. The bastards! I suppose racoons are a possibility, but I think the damage would be even more catastrophic. Can’t really go shooting them either, right here in the suburbs. It’s like a big rabbit, squirrel, racoon, fox, coyote, deer, and gopher nature preserve here, with food growing everywhere.
Torn now between getting a trusty used Subaru, or something brand spanking new. Leaning toward new. I like the new Subaru Impreza. The new Outback has been enlarged into a gross SUV wannabe behemoth. If you want a great Outback, such as made Subaru famous, 2009 was the last year.
I test drove a 2015 Outback the other day. In about 2 minutes I was looking for a place to turn around. It was disgusting. Just a tank.
There are a 96 Impreza, a 98 Outback, and a 2011 Legacy in the family right now. All beloved.
Just what I wrote down as I read your guys’ comments:
Drain the Swamp, fill it in!
GL – argued with hubby about energy early on [sort of, in the speak] with my hubby about some supposed suppressed free energy source – hubby knows his shit, can spell, and works in the field today – GL was illogical and angry, hubby patient and miles down the ugly rabbit hole compared to me, and I am obviously biased, but he is extremely smart when it comes to electricity and photons and stuff like that – pissed off hubby, and rightly so – I watched him from then on with serious distrust – he thought he could scare someone away with his bluster and failed, and then I noticed the times when his spelling would deteriorate and his grammar too and he would get high and mighty – it is classic mood disorder and he should seek professional help.
Yes, EO, you are who you are, for all to see. Same with DP, hearts on sleeves. Pete, the Dude … me … always us. Except I would like to claim boasting rights, like quitting before getting fired, but I quit before I was banned!
Am I being unreasonably mean to an old friend?
Are we there yet … let’s see … born in the shadow of the Bay of Fucking Pigs incident and all the cold war stuff, nuclear winter, pollution, acid rain, rising water levels, falling water levels, energy crisis, PLO, Y2K … first book I remember about coming economic disaster was probably in the eighties … a friend of our parents was an early gold bug and always thought the price of gold would go through the roof … hid hard assets that were impossible to recover … but it is coming, fo ‘sho … Always someone telling you you are about to burn in the hell fires … did I mention I listened to the Bible? I shall cast the iniquitous into the fires … all this as preamble to the shifting time line of disaster. Yup, if it wasn’t last summer, or this summer, it will have to be next summer …
Cast of characters remaining at swamp: Stane, Fix and Bigotville? Just add Dagney and Monedas and my day will be complete.
DP – wonderful timing on your comment on the morning of the 22nd! I heard you calling …
I hope you liked my hat in the wedding picture, I needed a neck brace, but it was worth it, and we ate it the next morning for breakfast.
Yes, Go Home has a real meaning behind it, and it is funny because when the land grant was given to the nutty professors back in the late 1800’s they had been looking at land around the Madawaska River, closer to Ottawa but didn’t much like what they saw, but had named themselves the Madawaska Club. And then the Go Home Bay Cottage Association and the Mad Club, as it had come to be known, amalgamated back in the 90’s or some such and they refused to call it the Go Home Mad Club. That’s when I knew I didn’t belong.
Oh, and I forgot to mention Nana, speaking of connecting dots. If there is no connection between Nana, IRB, Dagney and Fix I will be amazed – maybe they just fed off each other, but it seemed like a concerted effort to steer the site and promote the DOTS thread. All such obvious bullshit but none are so blind as those who refuse to see. [I am going to be intolerable!]
There, that’s the dump!
An Outback with a lift-kit!
I hadn’t posted there for a couple of months when I got banned out of the blue. That has to count for something, right? My banishment was a prelude to (yet another) cowardly hatchet job on me, instead of after a reply. Amazing.
It’s now at the point where someone’s mere presence on that site brands them as a nutcase who cannot be respected in any way. There are no “good” holdouts, by definition. If you are posting there, you are a crazy ass loser.
I read the out-takes and I think it is IRB who harkens back to the days when certain nefarious characters wanted to ban others … why would he still be bringing it up? Still trying to stir what is left of the hive into some sort of hate frenzy … If I felt more sturdy and duplicitous I might have seen if the poop would have kept paying me even if I didn’t write anything but hadn’t burnt my bridges … I keep one of those eagles around though, as some sort of reminder of something that I am not sure of …
i have pretty much figured out the game at TFMR. i have debated organizing and writing down all i have dug up over the last few years. do you guys even care? would it do others lurking this blog any good? sometimes nothing is believed that a person does not figure out on their own, so up to now, i have dropped strong hints, and left it at that.
you are on the right track Xty. but it was Stane who masterminded the Christian Right PR deception element of TFMR. to this day i do not know how complicit Turd was/is in all this. if he is, it appears for him, it is the money first, God 2nd. but that is a blurry distinction to the wing-nuts anyway. what is left of TFMR is certainly overlapping agendas – that Venn diagram idea we discussed. all of them are far right causes. and there are the wolves, trolls, sockpuppets, what ever you want to call them, but mostly victims, sheep that have been brainwashed, ruined financially, and filled with fear and hate.
i could go on. the sun is out for the first time in many days. i must get outside.
i will check back later. i hope this post gets comment. if it does i will expand some on this subject.
I don’t know why you write do you guys even care? I don’t care specifically who funded who enough to want to research it further, but I do want to know what others know.
I identified the key players to the head honcho many a time … and that Stane was at the heart of the problem, yes – she thought she could use her limited blogging skills to control everything – still taunts people with her powers and banned anyone else who was granted them. But she is a worthless adversary, I decided long ago.
Shine a light on them all, please, and let them scatter …
And in case you misunderstand my tone, let me say
And of course, they are not subverting my political process, although there are certainly many like them here. I would feel more strongly if I were American, but I have to worry instead about … deer on the highways. But I am more than willing, especially now that time has passed, to use this space to discuss our past experiences. And if it is timely, then all the better.
Are we there yet?
Oh, and this is worth clicking on I must agree and wanted to give it second life, DP. The first few reviews are indeed very supportive and informed.
American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America
I’ll see your Blue Rodeo and raise you Prairie Oyster.
Well, if we are going to get soupy,
No soup, just tryin’ to keep it north of the border.
Segue to amusing soup tale- when our son was barely 2, maybe not even yet, his mother made him a lunch of leftover soup which he stubbornly refused, saying “no soup mommy, meat on plate!”.
btw, Jeff Healey vid “not available in your country”.
for my southren brethren
Yes, Stephanie is deranged, but you’ll have a hard time convincing me that she’s done anything that didnt get at least a wink and a nod from Craig, and usually more. But, we’ve been around and around about that before. I’ve always maintained that the disease started right from the top.
I love you all and you know it, but I refuse to wallow in the past. I need to move forward and remake the 6 figs that I lost plus enjoy my family, my farm and my art.
If it didn’t start at the top, it would have been stopped. I don’t think of Catholics as being religious right exactly, but it is a sick marriage. Both highly accepting of authority and paternal order, too things I find just a little repellent. I was thinking about the misogyny at the sight as well, even from Dagney whom I still hope is a man, because it would work better in a screen-play and she called me cupcake once. Turd was terribly rude about his wife sometimes, or posted anti-wife cartoons and the pope is hardly a defender of women and he was off limits. We couldn’t even make jokes about the white smoke routine! I was severely patronized by the stupid email nonsense when “we” tried to be guest posters. GL was so rude it was beyond belief.
Sheer madness. Obama setting off nukes, Russian troops everywhere, and a flambé of neighbour for supper. I think Dagney reverse mining silver was particularly interesting, as well as Fix’s escape tunnel. My favourite post ever was the one time I went to the DOTS thread and he was talking about having a sharp screwdriver so he could drain the gas from all the new cars with their anti-suctioning technologies that would be stranded after the EMP.
That is a piece of prep that I think I have in my hardware drawer. Ah, piece of mind.
That is a lovely picture! But what happened to the figs?
I am happy to indulge in a little wallow – enjoyed the schadenfreude of the comments while I was away. Some people paid a heavy price for getting swept up in that there swamp, and it hasn’t quite died down yet. But yes, family and figs. The only old frying pan I found at the cottage, cast iron yes, but it simply said Japan on the bottom.
And I found a super cool old wine bottle from 1932, from the Jordan Wine Company, that someone has on eBay for $7. Oh well, it is old.
And that knife from Lee Valley was/is so great that it was our gift to both our older children when they moved out. As you can see, we are extremely generous. But I remember Lisa telling me she warned her roommates that it was really sharp and they all would use it and exclaim on how sharp it was. Bone a chicken, clean a leg of lamb or chop garlic – only knife for tomatoes. Not just an idle recommendation – our everyday knife and it is a crisis if it cannot be found.
The Dude is the one guy with a healthy attitude about the whole thing.
Mrs. O grew up in a family with horrid dull knives, and used to cut herself regularly when we were first married, not being used to having sharp knives around the house. She’d just blindly reach into a sink full of water, and be surprised!
To me, it just went without saying that the knives in the house were assumed to be sharp, and you exercised due caution.
Didn’t Fix also invent a perpetual motion machine as well? 🙄
we can keep it light then. all of you have my e-mail anyway. besides, i am getting my hopes up that Turd cleaned house. either that or the nutters all quit in protest because something really big happened behind the scenes. i will wait and see who has gone missing. so far though, the comments after his “new and improved” sales pitch today don’t even compare to what he had at the old library.
if Stane and her crew are gone, the matter is closed for me anyway. i have nothing that convinces me that TF had control over much of this stuff – i just do not know. it may have just been what they call benign neglect. don’t get me wrong, TF did plenty wrong, i just am not sure of the right wing PR.
yes, Fix was working on a “free energy device”. that is the same thing, but it sounds more technical. baffle them with bullshit. what an embarrassment that guy should have been to Turd. but who cares if it brings in the clicks huh? if you guys read up some, it is not to hard to figure out his role in the deception game.
well enough for now. gotta eat.
by the way i was looking at crappy stainless steel kitchen knives today at Target. yes, my wife made me go with her today to spend a $200 gift certificate. anyway, i noticed that French knives are called “Chef” knives now! i figure the name probably was changed during the Bush/Cheney regime! remember the “freedom fries? good grief.
OK, I’m going now. 🙂
Thanks for the love back guys. Gotta get me one o’ them knives!
Good Morning
Fix had a perpetual motion device, his mouth.
[And it is just possible that Craig is a naive, unpleasant, shallow golfing, gambling drinker who was too busy counting money to stop what was going on, but no decent person could have allowed what he allowed and he knew all about it. No cutting him slack – it was his enterprise entirely, and he was warned repeatedly in no uncertain terms. He was a terrible disappointment to me and he could so easily have been a better man. There. Sorry, but I couldn’t help myself.]
But, and this will be the end of any respect you had for me, this is how I clean a cast iron pan:
The knives are a real bargain, and totally live up to the write-up, right down to ours is extremely dark now. It went missing for almost a month recently and after I had quizzed the males in the household about any possible extra-culinary uses they might have come up with we just despaired until one of the lads found it in the middle kitchen drawer, swept in possibly by accident. We almost celebrated. There is no other knife that I feel safe cutting up a potato with. My parents had cheap knives and they would angle as you cut and sneak out and slay you. And then they fell for the stainless lie. Saved by my more ancestrally French in-laws. Or maybe it is the Italian that the great cooking sense comes from, because I really have learned a lot from my mother-in-law, who is Irish/Italian. She really is great, the complete opposite of all the jokes. A bright spot in my life.
Oh, and this struck me as possibly a cultural thing that I will now be on the lookout for. My big cast iron pan, as you can see, is shaped sort of like a wok. And then you lot start on about ‘chicken fryers’ [and even have a condensed ‘cf’ to stamp on them?] and I have never seen or heard of one in my life. Live and learn, and wonder if you now want one.
“You get a chicken fryer, I’ll get a knife Honey”- to this tune (must have sax).
They would make a good match!
Here’s my favourite fishing song:
Of course Taj is best, but Elvin is fun and he’ll even bring you (not me- two uglies is too much) on stage and let you play his guitar- check @ 6 min.
You don’t have to be handsome if you can play the guitar, but if you are pretty, doors open a little faster. She does a fabulous job. I hate being that person though – control freak. Did not enjoy the kissing cod ceremony – I was a jerk about it. Somehow you are the butt of the joke … but that is just my sourness.
Niel Young is incredibly ugly, and can be so in person too and on stage, but man he can sing in a way that gets you, even cynical crappy me.
Okay, that was too depressing.
But I always liked Stephen Stills best:
Here are a few of my favorite knives. I’m a big fan of Chicago Cutlery. The exact metallurgy seems to be a trade secret, but they don’t darken or rust like the carbon steel, and yet seem to be quite sharpenable, unlike the cheapo stainless. It’s a happy compromise. The downside is the handles get butt ugly after a while, but can be reclaimed a bit with maybe some shoe polish and mineral oil. You are fine as long as you don’t soak in a sink, put through the dishwasher, or put down the disposal. Memo to Mrs. O on that last one. 😯 Generally the blades far outlast the handles.
The new ones are all made in China now, so you’ll need to haunt Ebay, garage sales, or thrift stores to get the Made In USA variety. You can tell the USA ones by the number code on them, such as “62S”. No codes on the Chinese ones.
That Chef’s knife came from a St. Vincent DePaul thrift store for a couple bucks.
Here are a pair of Chicken Fryers. They are basically a skillet, about 10″ across the top and 3″ deep. You can still find nice glass lids that fit them perfectly, whereupon they serve wonderfully as a dutch oven.
The one on the left is a Birmingham Stove and Range that I bought new in the late 1980’s, just before the company went out of business. We basically raised our kids on chuck roasts cooked in that one as a dutch oven. The one on the right is a vintage Wagner #1088, via Ebay. I outfitted several nieces and nephews with those, plus lids, of course.
Ah, Vinnie’s. We have one right around the corner and I really have to not go. I now have a rule that I must take in more than I leave with.
In fact, in my upswing from despair, I repainted an old wooden rocking chair I bought from Vinnie’s for $45. It was made in Owen Sound, and was painted white, and I left it outside on the back deck. But it bothered hubby, and me a bit, as it slowly showed the weather. So I kind of sanded it down and painted it blue, and I will go and take a picture and cease this dribble.
It is still a sow’s ear, but it is an attractive sow’s ear. It is far from perfect and I used spray paint which I shouldn’t have really, but hey.
I would show you my cast iron frying pan, but a) it is dwarfed by these Yankee concoctions, and b) it does not gleam and I would have to confess to its mistreatment. But cooking bacon usually brings them back to service. We do have cast iron pots but with wooden handles, and when they have been boiled, etc., I cook bacon in them and rub it all over and heat them up till they almost smoke and it seems effective. Things going through the dishwasher is a hard thing to stop … the knife goes in, and then I just oil it. Old teak salad bowl gets abused and then I rub it with olive oil. But our kids do not yet quite get that everything isn’t easily replaced. Its coming, but it takes spending your own money and effort.
I do have a big dutch oven thing, just an enamelled replica after we destroyed our fancy chicken roaster, that cooks everything extremely well, much to our delight. And I throw that wok into the oven with all sorts of things in it, after frying them on the stove first. But I totally get the chicken fryer pan with lid concept … maybe in the slightly more rural parts of my world. Something new to search for …
I love rockers like that, and almost bought one at a garage sale a few weeks ago, but I knew I’d get the eyeroll from The Wife. We are in the mode of desparately trying to staunch the flow of goods INTO our basement, and are looking to reverse the flow to go OUT. It could be a while, the kids are far from settled, but hey everyone needs a goal in life.
I really like gliders too, and tend to “rescue” them from garage sales, like little lost kittens that need a home. But again, if I bring home one more, I’ll be in dutch with the wife.
This was a “rescue”. 10 bucks I think it was. Mrs. O’s favorite chair, but that doesn’t mean she wants another one.
Now that looks like a comfy chair. Ten bucks! I have to recite to myself that just because something is a bargain does not mean I need it … over and over …
It was quite apparent as we pared down mum’s abodes and tidied the cottage that I have a weakness for pillows, comfy things, sleeping bags, sheep skins … I am having an urge to get more carpets …
Mrs. O sits out there on the screen porch and reads her paper and does her sudoku. Facing north. Some morning sun from the east, but shady in the hot afternoon.
And, not all cast iron needs to be huge. Best to have the proper size for the job at hand. These all do a nice job on a couple of eggs.