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Tag Archives: tragedy
The Couch of Lost Objects
These delicious sandwiches and fries are from Lardo in downtown Portland.
It would make sense to include a photo of the couch with this story but I don’t have one handy and don’t want to take one right now. It’s one of those couches that has a little motor and button so it extends into a lounger.
I love this couch. It’s comfy. It’s held up well.
But if I’m going to complain, if you drop anything into a couch crevice — like you have the remote on the armrest and it slides into the couch. Or maybe you’re doing a crossword puzzle and you set your clipboard down on the seat while you go make some tea and come back and the pencil has fallen into the crack — those things are lost.
This delicious sandwich is from Taylor Street Market in downtown Portland.
I was fiddling with my wedding ring. (I do this all the time knowing full well what a bad idea it is) and dropped it in the couch crack.
I had to completely extend the lounger and then crawl under the seat with a flashlight and dig deep into dark crevices, squishing my fingers in where they barely fit with dust bunnies and who knows what might be in there.
I did retrieve my ring.
But this process is super inconvenient when you drop the Roku control and you can’t do anything until you can crawl around on your stomach and find it again — all while you just wanted to relax for a half hour before you go to bed.
And every time I remind myself — don’t leave stuff on the couch where it can fall it. But then I forget and do it anyway.
When The Morning Cries and You Don’t Know Why
Remember last year when I planted only 2 tomato plants? And the angry raccoon tore up the walls of water where one of the plants lived?
The plant lived on but never recovered. It was supposed to be a prolific yellow cherry tomato plant but it barely grew to a foot and I got about 10 tomatoes off of it.
I saved some seeds and started one on the window sill. See arrow above. I was determined to get my prolific yellow cherry tomatoes.
The rest of those are 2 tomatoes, 4 cucumbers, and 4 Anaheim pepper plants.
Look how healthy and happy it looks, ready for it’s big new life outside.
Then: tragedy.
This was not an angry raccoon. This was operator error. I knew it was kinda tricky getting the walls of water to balance right so I was extra careful.
But not extra careful enough. I looked outside a couple of hours later to see the ruin. Poor little yellow cherry tomato. It is not to be for us.
I have one more tomato on the window sill that I can transfer to this spot.
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Bad Gourd
This lizard was committed to the playing dead thing. I was like, “I know you’re not dead. Run and do something.” But it stayed frozen.
Big tragedy – the pumpkins all started getting squishy and moldy within days of bringing them into the house.
I’m not sure what went wrong. I didn’t do anything different from normal.
Maybe a spore from the garden? Maybe different weather pattern that I didn’t read right?
When I discovered the problem, I had just come home from work and was so tired I could hardly see straight. I threw them in the fridge and processed everything this weekend. I saved enough pumpkin for pies and chili.
The butternut squash are still looking good so we’ll have some soup or something fun with those.
Secret Carrots
These aren’t really secret carrots. I knew I planted them. I just didn’t realize they were thriving out there in the jungle. I was doing some half-hearted clean-up out there and kept finding carrots. There are a lot more surprises out there. Photos to come.
I had a big tragedy last week: my cooking scale batteries died. The scale doesn’t tell you the batteries are dying until you are ready to start weighing something and they are already dead. The batteries it uses are the round ones that look like coins, the only batteries we don’t keep spares of around the house.
I’m not sure what happened but we have about 80 AA batteries in this house. Someone bought a gigantor-pak but also maybe told someone else we were out of AA batteries and so that person also bought a gigantor-pak. If the world ends tomorrow, we will at least be able to use our AA stuff for awhile.
I don’t know how to bake without my scale anymore. I use Kenji’s easy pie crust recipe (it’s not easy for me {mine never looks anything like that photo} but I am consistently successful with it) and now that I have looked at the link, I see alternate measures. I have the recipe printed out (because I’m olde timey that way) so I only have the weights. However, I still have the original vodka pie crust recipe from Cook’s Illustrated so I used that with no problems. I skipped bread baking last week.
The batteries have been replaced. It’s cold and dark and rainy so I baked my heart out this weekend. We’re having stew and bread for dinner with pie for dessert.
Tomorrow is our last regular soccer match of the season and there is a lot on the line. We have our plastic clothes ready and fingers-crossed we see ass-kicking Timbers and not did-anyone-see-my-ass Timbers.
Setlist, Cathouse, 1989
Actual setlist from video shoot for It’s So Easy.
In the morning when I start my list I always have grand plans for what I’m going to write about here.
Then I spend all day working on my publishing empire. Then I have a half a glass of wine and I sit here and can’t form a coherent thought.
There was a problem with the proof of my short story book. I’m still learning how to do the paperback versions and I miscalculated something. It’s not a tragedy but doesn’t meet my standards. I need to do another version and then resubmit for approval and once approved, buy another proof. If you were planning on gifting paperbacks of my short story collection for Christmas, we will not be ready. I apologize.
Meanwhile I’m doing a couple of promotions for my romance because it’s like shouting into a storm trying to get anyone to notice your book.
Honestly, my advice to people who want to be writers is: do something else.
Onto other news. It’s only taken me about 10 years but I finally pulled off Thanksgiving dinner by myself, with very minimal stress and everything came out great.
My tips are: do the stuffing in the slow cooker. You can do it several hours in advance and let it sit there on the counter without your attention. Do the gravy the day before and scrape the pan drippings day of, once the turkey is cooked.
This year I used this pumpkin pie recipe and I can report, it was completely delicious. I want to do a side-by-side taste test with canned pumpkin and mine just to see if it’s that different. Except I will devastated if you can’t tell or the canned is better.
My only note for next year is that I over-knead the rolls (photo from last year of how I shape them). I usually bake breads that need a heavier hand but these don’t need it. They’re Parker House rolls. This isn’t the exact recipe I used but pretty close.
I processed the last of the pumpkin yesterday and there are at least 3 more pints for the freezer. I ended up with more than I thought. More pies and some pumpkin chili for us in the next few months.
Lucia Falls Regional Park & Non-Related Tidbits
A couple of weeks ago we had dinner with some friends who live practically in the middle of Lucia Falls park. I had never been there before or anywhere in the vicinity for that matter. I’ve lived here for almost 20 years and my knowledge of areas beyond the paths I’ve worn for myself is pitiful. The park was lovely. Shady and green on a hot day. We had a delicious dinner outside on the deck. Wonderful way to spend the evening.
This is all that is left of a dance club that was there a long time ago. This is what our hosts told us.
In other news, my grocery store no longer has the prunes I like. It has some generic brand and then a fancy organic brand which is cleverly packaged so it looks like it’s a decent amount but you can tell when you open the package there will only be about 5 prunes in there that you paid about $1 each for. I thought about asking someone but I didn’t want to be that old lady asking about prunes.
You also might have noticed that I haven’t said a peep about Women’s World Cup. It’s a tragedy. I managed to watch one half of one game with the USA. There are numerous contributing factors but the biggest one is this writing project. But also a bunch of miserable commutes stacked together and the timing of the matches is during my commute home. I’m going to try to watch USA tomorrow.
Another weird thing about the writing project is that my brain is so wrung out even if I do read or watch something, I need it to be simple or something I’ve already seen or read. I just got out my ancient copy of the The White Mountains, by John Christopher to read again. And last week I watched The Lake House for at least the fifth time.
Posted in doing it wrong
Tagged things I won't do, tragedy
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Otter Holding A Pizza
Last night I came home and saw this on the counter. I said: Is that an otter holding a pizza? Bob said: Yes. His friend Kitty made a whole bunch otters with pizza and each one had a different topping. She let him pick the one he wanted. The otter is his spirit animal. And here is proof that there are a lot of otters with pizzas out there.
In other news, huge tragedy. My favorite summer shoes finally bit the dust.
We used a chunk of savings to pay off a loan last month and ever since everything you can imagine has been breaking: cars, A/C unit, plumbing issue, my tooth, and now my favorite shoes.
They are super old. Someone was admiring them last weekend and I said they were really old. I looked it up in honor of this post and they are 15 years old. They could have started driving next year. They have been all over the world and all over the country.
They were not cheap and I remember when I bought them a friend balked at how much I paid for them.
I estimate I paid less than a dime for every time I wore them.
Look: the heel completely disintegrated. I was walking back from my dentist appointment and wondering what was wrong with my shoes. Both feet pooped out at the same time.
I went to use my fancy camera for these pictures and that seems to have died, too. I checked and I bought that in February of 2008. The dryer has been acting funny but I thought that was going to die for the past 5 years. We got that before we got married (1996). I hope it hangs on.
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Tagged enough about the roof already, tragedy
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The Great Pumpkin Tragedy of 2010
Historically I’ve always left the pumpkin crop on the kitchen counter. I’ve kept them there for months and never had a problem.
This year I got the bright idea of leaving them out in the shop. It’s cooler out there and they won’t be in the way.
Also, I never really looked at them and they caught a terrible case of the MOLD. Why isn’t there a wildly successful horror story about mold? It’s one of my most terrifying things right up there with being eaten alive by a bear or alligator and being chased by aliens on a lonely road in the middle of the night.
I salvaged one and have learned my lesson.
The photos are of a weather beacon downtown. We have a clear view of it from our new office and we learned how to read it from this handy article online. Red is warmer, white is colder and green is staying the same. Blinking means it’s raining. It’s always blinking.
These photos weren’t taken on the same day in case you’re wondering.
Broken
Ice on the car’s sunroof. (From Idaho trip)
I wish I had a spreadsheet from my whole life that would show how many books I ended up never buying because the moment I had my wallet in my hand the book was only available in hardcover.
Minor tragedy. We had someone come over and work on these leaking problems we’ve been having. They can’t guarantee it because there’s no way to be sure how the water is getting in. Whatever they did, didn’t work.
Boo! This is at least the fourth attempt, this one being the most extensive. They said if this didn’t work they’d need to start pulling up siding. You know what’s not in the budget right now? Siding.
Bob and I are headed out for a little xmas adventure. Hopefully photos and details tomorrow.