Hello everyone,
We are back from Texas, and the day after getting home, Auntie Fay came to visit and we had a wonderful time.
While in Texas, on the second to last day, I was walking Dorothy's dog, when I looked down and saw that there appeared to be hundreds of nuts on the ground from the trees. And they looked for all the world like pecans to me. But who would leave pecans in the street? So I gathered up a handful and walked back to the house and asked Dorothy about them.
Sure enough, they are pecans, but she looked at them with disdain, calling them "native pecans" and saying that they were too small to bother with. Hmmm, they looked the size of pecans to me. I have been known to drive for two hours, then trample over and scramble up the sides of mountains for mushrooms. So walking next door and picking up pecans from the sidewalk seems pretty tame to me. I hooked the dog back up in his harness, grabbed a grocery bag and headed back out the door.
I took the dog as my cover, so that anyone who saw me bent over picking something up would think it was a doggie present! Clever aren't I?
I filled up my grocery bag and headed back to the house. Dorothy told me to look in the bottom kitchen cabinet and there would be a pecan sheller. Sure enough, there was a contraption that looked like huge shears with a cup on the end. She told me to cut both ends of the nut off, then split it down the middle and poof, two perfect halves would fall out.
She has bigger hands than I do. I have short fingers and large fleshy palms. And my poor palm kept getting caught in the gadget, so after the 4th clipping of my palm, with blood flowing, I put the tool down and said that there must be another way.
Sure enough, in the garage was the pecan cracker that she had taken from her Grandmother's house. It must be older than the Ark, but it worked great. Kind of a vise like thing that cracked the shells the long way and then you pick out the meat.
Dorothy thought that it was the funniest thing, me picking up the native pecans. She had fond memories of shelling pecans, but only those that had been farmed. Apparently they are bigger.
And you have to PAY for them. Mine were FREE!!!!!
Dorothy was nice enough to let me take the nut cracker home to finish the job.
So after about 10 hours of shelling, I have two pint baggies full of the most amazing pecans. They are much more flavorful than any pecan I have ever bought. And at my normal hourly rate, why that means I have $2400 worth of pecans.
Hmmmm. Maybe not the best measurement of value.
On our last day in Texas, we went out to the cemetary where JR's father is buried. And that was very nice. Very moving. Then we flew home. Sadly our flights were delayed so we ended up being over 4 hours later than we thought we would be.
Kate was fantastic and came and walked the baby dog so he wouldn't be too lonely.
Boy was he happy to see us!!!!
The next day Aunt Fay arrived, and we had a wonderful time cooking and planning things. I think she was surprised at how weak I can become and how tired I get all of a sudden. But she was terrific, and really helped me. I feel very guilty for all the time I spend laying around. I don't make the best patient about that sort of thing. I am very good at taking my medication and doing research and keeping up with the latest developments with CML, but I HATE that I have no energy.
Even with no energy, I managed to have fun and we made my famous eggnog caramels, and this time we topped them with a new type of salt that I made from a new cookbook. It was a smoked sweet salt! On top of eggnog caramel? You can't beat it. I could make a fortune selling this stuff. If only I could get up off the couch for more than 2 hours at a time! Sigh.
Fay almost beat me at scrabble (my most favorite game, and one which almost no one will play with me anymore--I don't know why....). I just couldn't "see" the words like I usually do. I can almost always make a 20 point word or more, making 2 or 3 words at a time. But this time I really just made one word at a time, mostly 8-12 points. Until the last two moves I was behind the whole game. And then she made words that left me the triple word score to use, TWICE. I mean, what could I do, I had to take advantage of that. And the last word of the game got me almost 40 points! Poor Fay. But she handed it to me, she really did.
@Fay: Smootch!
I called my Aunt Susan on the way home from the airport to thank her for sending the flea medicine. The night we got home, poor Chase was so excited to see me, and what was the first thing I did? Open the package from Susan and give him an oral flea medicine and put that sticky oil on the back of his neck.
Luckily he forgave me. And by the next morning, all the fleas were dead. Death to Fleas!!!
JR and I have also been enjoying the get well cards from my mother. We get a huge kick out of guessing which way she will address the card. We think she is playing a game........some days it is addressed to me with my legal hyphenated name, some days just Mrs. Married Name, some days, Mrs. Caroline Married. There is always a different version of my name. We think it is hilarious, and hope she is enjoying it as much as we are! Hugs to Mom.
Also got to go over today and spend some time with my neighbor Rose. Yay! We had missed each other for the two weeks I was gone or busy. We usually visit some every day after I walk the dog and we catch up on each other's lives. She has the coolest hugest family! I took some of the caramels over today, big hit with her husband, Bill. And we found out that the gunshots last night were ............ gunshots! There apparently was a scuffle in the church parking lot, someone emptied their gun into the air and were promptly caught by the cops. Ah well. I still feel safer in this house than in any other neighborhood I have ever lived in.
Hugs to all and good night!
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