A Little Spooky

A HALLOWEEN GUIDE from a Mom who's been there--

Start your day with the traditional holiday themed pancakes.

Wear ORANGE.  (In Dodge City an orange bandana is worth extra points.)

Watch a horror film, or SKIN SOMETHING ALIVE.  Because I am really into this, I skinned BABY carrots. 

 AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Get your treats ready.  If you get 14 or less trick or treaters, go for the full size bars.  Do not give anything remotely healthy.   Trust me, there will be no health conscious children ringing your doorbell.

Carve your Jack-0-Lantern.  Turn off your porch light long enough to get a spooky picture. 

SMILE!

Leave your porch light on as long as possible and hand out as much candy as possible.  Do not begrudge candy to tall children with pillowcases.  What did you buy the candy for if not to give it away? 

Eat any leftovers as soon as possible.  You don't want it hanging around tempting you tomorrow, do you?

Encourage your children to eat their candy as fast as possible.  No use dragging this on for days.  If they have more candy than they can eat in a day, they have too much candy.  I doubt this is really the case.

There you have it.  All the essentials.  What to eat, what to wear, what to do.  Glad to be of service.

Cross It Off

Okay, this afternoon I tackled the car book.  Which might in fact contain Important Information on Safety, Operation and Maintenance.

(It might be hard, however, to prove it by me.)




 Here I am multitasking.  Oh yes I am.  I am reading the car book and watching the Steelers and the Broncos. 

Here is some of what I uncovered during the brief time my eyes were open..  The Owner's Manual was written by technical writers.  Who may or may not speak English as their first language.

The Owner's Manual has a good number of pictures.  Most of which are warnings of things not to do.

I thought this one meant "Don't even try to figure out your Lighting Control Lever",  because it was followed by 4 full pages of instructions on how to turn on your headlights. Including this chart:

The STP tried to explain it to me.  IF my ignition is on, my engine is off, my Lighting Control Lever switch is set to auto, and it is dark outside, then my D.R.L.s will be OFF.  IF my ignition is on, my engine is on, my Lighting Control Lever is switched to Little Lights, and it is light outside, then my D.R.L.s will be ON.  This plus however many combinations are statistically possible from a chart this size. 

IF I want my ignition on, my engine on, my switch set to off, it is dark outside and I want my D.R.L.s OFF...Sorry, no can do.

Except my favorite airplane mechanic gave me a little car tip this morning at church.  And remarkably my car thinks like a Camaro. So, thanks, Planemech, for solving my lighting dilemma.

I went a little further in the car book.

Until I saw this.  Which is just wrong.

So I put my car book back in the car, where it said to keep it at all times.
I might get used to kilometers per hour.

Car Book

'Car book' has been on my 'to do' list for  a month.  I never read it, I never cross it off the list, and I just keep transferring it to my new 'to do' list. 
The car book came with my new car. (In September.) I imagine it tells me how to use the radio, the windshild wipers, and the lights.  It explains when to change the oil, what grade of gasoline I should use, and how the door locks work.  I could use some of this information.  The lights have four settings.   I just choose one.  And there are lights.  I guess I really should know which lights I have lit. I have considered getting out of the car and looking at the lights but I am afraid the car will lock me out if I have the key inside and the car is running.  So when I warm the car up on frosty mornings I have to leave a door ajar so I do not lock myself out.  It takes a little longer to warm up with the door open.  I think it might also appear to invite car thieves.  They probably explain this in the car book.
This week the STP is deathly ill, so I had to pump my own gas.  And I did that just fine.  But when I tried to reset the odometer, I changed the display from miles to kilometers.  Evidently repeatedly pushing the button is not the way to reset the odometer.  So now my digital display is in kilometers.  And in my head I have to go, "If 5k = 3.1mi how many miles are in 58k?"  And I can't do that in my head.  So I am putting 'Car book' on my list of things to do this weekend.
On the upside, I appear to be getting great mileage on this tank of gas.

Don't Stand Still

Or I will paint you.  Along with a return to cooking, fall obviously brings an irrepressible desire to paint things. So far this month, in addition to the skelemingoes and my toenails, I have painted a jungle's worth of animals for the church nursery.

And two pumpkins.  Because I had left over black paint.

  And because, if you believe the ladies' magazines, black pumpkins are all the rage this fall.

 And because there is something wrong with me.









And today I am painting my project from yesterday.  The STP helped me build something.  Actually we built two somethings--one for me and one for my favorite son-in-law.  (just seeing if you guys are out there :) )  I am painting my something green and I am finishing his something with a light oak stain and polyurethane.

 I am trying to keep the something a surprise until Thanksgiving.  When my favorite son-in-law will visit and I will present him with a large wooden object to take back in his suitcase.  

Note to my other sons-in-law:  If you will bring my daughters and grandbabies to Thanksgiving, I promise not to paint anything for you.  And it could be just the thing to elevate you to favorite status.  Just saying.

SFG Wrap-up

Using these last beautiful fall days to clean out the garden and flower beds and boxes.  Last week I cleaned out the SFG.  A few garden notes:
The late developing peppers developed too late to be of any value.  A waste of 4 square feet.
It was a better year than last for onions.
Pumpkins are more fun to grow than zucchini.
Chocolate cherry tomatoes do NOT taste like chocolate covered cherries. 

The last veggies out of the garden were the carrots.  My square foot garden book says you can leave them in the ground, but, really, there was just enough left for a meal for a family of three (one of whom never eats vegetables).  So I harvested and sliced and cooked them up for supper.

And that's when I started having second thoughts.  Because I remembered a micro lab from PSU where we innoculated raw carrot slices with a virus that caused carrot tumors.  And what always bothered me about that lab was not that people like my lab partner had access to cancer causing viruses, but that carrot cells were alive long after they were pulled from the earth.  And so I was about to boil my carrots alive.  And all those carrots I munched right out of the garden--I had eaten them alive.  Bordering on cannabalism if you think too hard about it. 
So I moved on to think about other things.  Like why that carrot tumor lab was one of the only labs I could remember. 
Actually, I can remember one more.  A physiology lab in which we were doing some sort of surgery on a rat and my lab partner and I over-anesthetized our rat.  And he died.  And the grad assistant gave the rat mouth to mouth resucitation and that gave my lab partner and I a fit of giggles.  Which irritated the life out of the grad assistant.  And the rat stayed dead.  Which made it easier to do the surgery.  Because I have an aversion to slicing up living things. 
And that reminded me of the movie scene where the student saves the lab frogs by aiding their escape.  Only I couldn't place the scene.  Which led me on a search from Maryland to Googleland.  Amidala couldn't place it.  The Goob couldn't place it.  Google and the STP knew exactly where it was.  The STP found it in his databank faster than Google.  I rewarded him by serving him carrots.  Dead carrots. 
It's a wonder I get anything done.  

Deer Me

Opening day was successful for the STP.  If you look closely, you can see him here with his prey.  (He is right under the orange hat, in case you can't see him in his camo.) 

 I myself have seen 5 bucks in the last 4 days.  On Thursday morning I saw 4 on my walk along the dike.  Two of them were doing that male head butting thing like you see on Monday Night Football.  I was close enough to hear the clicking of their antlers.  I wished I had my camera with me, but then I remembered that I wouldn't get the picture anyway, so I just enjoyed the sight.  Then this evening I saw the biggest buck EVER cross the street in front of my house and step over the neighbor's fence into the back yard.  It crossed the road in front of two truckloads of camo overloaded hunters.  They pulled over to get a better look.  But I saw him first.  I am a great hunter.  And a pretty good finder.

But the STP is the only one of us putting meat in the freezer.

I Do NOT Collect Flamingoes

Went to the big home center in the city this week.  Bought some waterproofing for the front porch.  And 99 cents worth of joy in can.

Oh, the Aunt Vi in me couldn't wait to get home and try it on.



 I only had a few hours this evening, but fortunately I had the fast drying variety of joy in a can.


And so in just a few minutes I had two pre-skelemingoes drying in the north yard.

And before I got ready for bed, I had two skelemingoes ready to set out in the front yard. 

Total cost of the project:  $1.24. 
Appreciation for garage saling friends (Thanks E,S,K, and B) who share the bounty:  Boundless
Satisfaction of a project completed:  Priceless.

Holy Smoke

You know the STP and I have come to an agreement on how we will handle our imminent eminant imanant nevermind deaths and our final arrangements.  Because the STP has all the luck, he will probably die first and there is a good chance that I will be left holding the ashes.  But now I am resting easier because now I have a plan. 
For a fee, two retired game wardens will load the STP's ashes into shotgun shell cases and put them in  a box and put that box into another box and mail them to myself. And when they arrive I'll put them on the mantle.  (It's brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, I tell you! Genius, I say!)  Or I can fire them into whatever targets or turkeys I see fit. 

Me:  What's a good price for shotgun shells?
STP:  I don't have a shotgun.

 Of course.  He will figure out a way to get a new gun out of this deal.

Some of my favorite parts of the deal are that, for an additional fee, I can get a "mantle-worthy, finished, wooden handcrafted box with a label" and that "all sales are final."
All sales are final. 
Is it sad to be looking forward to a funeral of someone you can't imagine living without?

One Weird Old Tricky Tip

Just wondering...
if I wore my butt-busting shoes on the wrong feet could I walk off my front butt?

Indestructable

All I want for Christmas: