This morning started almost with a bang. Last night I ended the day
reading on my iPad after tugging in - the poor thing is still reduced to
such menial duty as holding books for me = and fell asleep. This
morning, I woke up felt the Pad next to me and rolled to the other side
and almost out of bed, because, perhaps subconsciously avoiding rolling
over the Pad in my sleep, I had moved all the way to the edge of the
bed. I avoided the fall by swinging my arm out and knocking against the
night table and my water glass over and the water was noisily gurgling
through the drink-bottle neck and thus I was recalled to consciousness
with a rough shake and instantaneous panic.
That was at about 4:30 this morning and there was no chance of ever getting back to sleep.
Iivo advised me yesterday to experiment with my sleep pattern. Says he: sleep when you feel like it and get up and about when you don't feel like sleeping. You have nowhere to go at specific times anyway, so take advantage. Taking advantage, I got up, did the bathroom thing under electric light rather than in the rays of the morning sun and got ready for the day. You know I can't start the day in pajamas, so I was fully dressed, booted and with my spurs strapped to the heels. Now what? at 5:AM with nowhere to go?
I opened the pantry to get Ideas and found old bottles of nutritious things, out-dated by over two years and I began to throw things away. This uncovered new layers of long forgotten things of which many went on their way to good old Clyde Twitchell, and others returned to the shelf, stimulating my culinary inventiveness. Then I came across a box of Country Value Baking mix. On the box cover, it showed nice, fluffy biscuits, and it said that one could use it to make biscuits, waffles, pancakes "or whatever". This stuff could not be old. It must have come to this kitchen at a time when the kids were here and demanded waffles, or pancakes, or whatever. It most probably came last year form the country store down in Jacksonville village, together wit a bottle of Hungry Jack Original Syrup, which would not have been allowed through the door in Tante Lulu's time. So I decided to have biscuits, and bacon, and sunny-side-ups, and sautéed tomato, and by the time I had all that the sun would be up.
I also found a box of Maxwell-house coffee singles. Now those, I remember, come from a time way way back when we were still in MA and visited Lulu on a more regular basis and at one point she had decided to simplify her life and just had gotten into this way of making her coffee. In those days, My opinions still carried some weight and when I uttered some regarding this way of mutilating a good thing, she must have abandoned the rest of the box contents because the box is still there and nearly full. I decided to try it, and this at long last gets me to the subject line: on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being indescribably delicious and 1 being intolerably bad, this coffee rates a 4.75. That is just below the neutral zone of neither good nor bad, but it definitely is not on the good side of the scale. What turned me more vociferously against it in those good old days was my strict adherence to traditional ways and means. Age does mellow a guy. Some traditionalism may still linger about and influence my rating, because in the end I had three cups of it during my long breakfast period and am still breathing normally!
The weather here is slowly turning towards rain. I have windows open on all corners of the house, so I can't go far, because they must be secured should rain really set in. I whiled the time away with running the Jenn-Air oven through its cleaning cycle and that accounts for the real need for all the open windows. I'll be looking for some more outdated things and perhaps go visit Clyde.
You do know about Clyde, don't you. I mentioned him earlier on several occasions. His father used to be "old Mr. Twitchell" who lived in that old farm house way on top of the mountain. His barn burned a few years back and the fire crew used the water from Lulu's pond to try to save some of it. Whether the water was no good, or the barn too old and dry, it burned down to the foundation. At one time, Tiiu and I contemplated talking to Mr. Twitchell to let us use space in the east end of that barn to build us an apartment. The east end was overlooking the valley that we see from our deck here, but from a much higher vantage point; a fabulous view! His son Clyde is the Cerberus installed at the town transfer station. He oversees the comings and droppings of the town people and operates the Trash compactor and punches little holes into your card that you buy from the town clerk and have to show to Clyde to be acknowledged, and admitted to his private Hades. Semi-private, that is, because it is still under superior control of State, County and Village. But Clyde is in charge. I heard that he ran Chip off the lot! Twice!. Chip admits that he likes to egg him on, when he goes there.
By the way, Chip came back with Brenda and his camper from the long weekend up by Sunset Lake, where Brenda went on fifteen mile hikes in search of treasures and Chip spent the time mostly tending the hearth fire. Literally, he says, since they had a fire going in the camp every day, all day. He came over here last evening. I was reading and he knocked on the door with his gin-and-tonic glass in his hand and came to chat. He felt inhibited by my having no drink and never touched his until he left again. But we still had a chat, and by the time we had finished, all problems of getting the garden tractors back to run after their winter rest, and after cleaning all the weeds out of the pond, etc. we were both prepared to shake hands and go our own ways.
And so life slowly bubbles on up here on the mountain.
Have a wonderful day.
Isa
That was at about 4:30 this morning and there was no chance of ever getting back to sleep.
Iivo advised me yesterday to experiment with my sleep pattern. Says he: sleep when you feel like it and get up and about when you don't feel like sleeping. You have nowhere to go at specific times anyway, so take advantage. Taking advantage, I got up, did the bathroom thing under electric light rather than in the rays of the morning sun and got ready for the day. You know I can't start the day in pajamas, so I was fully dressed, booted and with my spurs strapped to the heels. Now what? at 5:AM with nowhere to go?
I opened the pantry to get Ideas and found old bottles of nutritious things, out-dated by over two years and I began to throw things away. This uncovered new layers of long forgotten things of which many went on their way to good old Clyde Twitchell, and others returned to the shelf, stimulating my culinary inventiveness. Then I came across a box of Country Value Baking mix. On the box cover, it showed nice, fluffy biscuits, and it said that one could use it to make biscuits, waffles, pancakes "or whatever". This stuff could not be old. It must have come to this kitchen at a time when the kids were here and demanded waffles, or pancakes, or whatever. It most probably came last year form the country store down in Jacksonville village, together wit a bottle of Hungry Jack Original Syrup, which would not have been allowed through the door in Tante Lulu's time. So I decided to have biscuits, and bacon, and sunny-side-ups, and sautéed tomato, and by the time I had all that the sun would be up.
I also found a box of Maxwell-house coffee singles. Now those, I remember, come from a time way way back when we were still in MA and visited Lulu on a more regular basis and at one point she had decided to simplify her life and just had gotten into this way of making her coffee. In those days, My opinions still carried some weight and when I uttered some regarding this way of mutilating a good thing, she must have abandoned the rest of the box contents because the box is still there and nearly full. I decided to try it, and this at long last gets me to the subject line: on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being indescribably delicious and 1 being intolerably bad, this coffee rates a 4.75. That is just below the neutral zone of neither good nor bad, but it definitely is not on the good side of the scale. What turned me more vociferously against it in those good old days was my strict adherence to traditional ways and means. Age does mellow a guy. Some traditionalism may still linger about and influence my rating, because in the end I had three cups of it during my long breakfast period and am still breathing normally!
The weather here is slowly turning towards rain. I have windows open on all corners of the house, so I can't go far, because they must be secured should rain really set in. I whiled the time away with running the Jenn-Air oven through its cleaning cycle and that accounts for the real need for all the open windows. I'll be looking for some more outdated things and perhaps go visit Clyde.
You do know about Clyde, don't you. I mentioned him earlier on several occasions. His father used to be "old Mr. Twitchell" who lived in that old farm house way on top of the mountain. His barn burned a few years back and the fire crew used the water from Lulu's pond to try to save some of it. Whether the water was no good, or the barn too old and dry, it burned down to the foundation. At one time, Tiiu and I contemplated talking to Mr. Twitchell to let us use space in the east end of that barn to build us an apartment. The east end was overlooking the valley that we see from our deck here, but from a much higher vantage point; a fabulous view! His son Clyde is the Cerberus installed at the town transfer station. He oversees the comings and droppings of the town people and operates the Trash compactor and punches little holes into your card that you buy from the town clerk and have to show to Clyde to be acknowledged, and admitted to his private Hades. Semi-private, that is, because it is still under superior control of State, County and Village. But Clyde is in charge. I heard that he ran Chip off the lot! Twice!. Chip admits that he likes to egg him on, when he goes there.
By the way, Chip came back with Brenda and his camper from the long weekend up by Sunset Lake, where Brenda went on fifteen mile hikes in search of treasures and Chip spent the time mostly tending the hearth fire. Literally, he says, since they had a fire going in the camp every day, all day. He came over here last evening. I was reading and he knocked on the door with his gin-and-tonic glass in his hand and came to chat. He felt inhibited by my having no drink and never touched his until he left again. But we still had a chat, and by the time we had finished, all problems of getting the garden tractors back to run after their winter rest, and after cleaning all the weeds out of the pond, etc. we were both prepared to shake hands and go our own ways.
And so life slowly bubbles on up here on the mountain.
Have a wonderful day.
Isa
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