Category: Daily Life

As you might be able to guess from the last couple of posts, I was really running out of steam on NaBloPoMo. As much as I like the idea of posting daily, I simply do not have enough to talk about to justify that much verbiage.

So this is it for November 2011 and I’m sure I’ll do the 30 days in a row again in 2012, but for the time being I’m going to back off until I have something of reasonable substance to say.

Thanks for your patience!

Photo credit: Alban Gonzalez

There was frost on the grass this morning. I was not happy about that. Toby was even less happy about it.

I spent my whole day sitting at my desk wrapped in a thick blanket.

Have I mentioned I'm not a fan of winter?

I paced my day just perfectly so that I had time to go for a walk, clean up the house, cook everything that needed to be cooked and have dinner on the table by 4:00 p.m.

By 6:30 p.m. I was exhausted and it felt like midnight to me.

There were eight of us for dinner and I still have plenty of leftovers. Turkey pot pie is on tomorrow night's menu for sure.

I've since digested some of the excess food and rallied a bit so I wanted to stop by and write today's post while I have my second wind. I still have a few pots and pans to wash as well, so this will be brief.

One of the highlights of my day was receiving this from my sister:

You may recall the time I camped out in my back yard with my nephew. That was in 2009 when he was four. He'll turn seven in February and he apparently still remembers it so well that he decided to retell the story for a school assignment. How cute is that?

If you can't read it, it says "My Aunt Slest camps awt side. Ian." (Translation: My Aunt Celeste camps outside.")

We don't have to tell him that I haven't done any camping since then. However, it's a good sign that we're due for a canoe trip next year.

My sister and her family spend Thanksgiving in Oklahoma, so I hosted a collection of other relatives and friends. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

I'm looking forward to having three more days free. I don't have much planned, but I'd like to spend at least one of those days lying around the house a lot.

How was your day?

I don't put up Christmas lights on the house anymore. Don't get me wrong, I love the way they look. I just don't want to put in the work, accept the risk of bodily harm while climbing a ladder, or spend the money on lights and electricity.

Every year, the neighbors' houses light up one by one while mine sits there in the dark with only a yellow-tinted CFL on the porch for illumination. Sometimes I have a momentary impulse to go into the garage and pull out my collection of lights, but it passes quickly when I remember how many of them were already dead the last time I took them down.

If I could afford to have someone else deal with them, I might change my Scrooge-like attitude. For now, I'll have to just let it go until the economy recovers or the lottery fairy stops by (which is incredibly unlikely considering that I never buy lottery tickets).

On the other hand, I'm considering putting up our tree this year. I haven't done it for several years and I am absolutely positive that Dr. Jones will lay waste to it with a quickness, but I'm in the mood to see twinkling lights somewhere. I think I'll forego breakable ornaments and hope for the best. If he hasn't knocked over the tree or destroyed any ornaments or garlands in the first week, I'll think about adding more decorations.

I am in a festive mood this year, but I'm also kind of lazy. It's a balance.

Photo source: Teri Land via Facebook

Yeah, I made tuna noodle casserole for dinner. What of it?

My husband had band practice tonight so I went to the grocery store after work to buy the rest of my Thanksgiving dinner ingredients and get something dinner-worthy for tonight and tomorrow night. I figured that as long as I was already buying mushroom soup and French fried onions, I might as well make tuna casserole.

And it was delicious, which it always is if you don't make it too often. 

So just for the heck of it, here's the recipe I use. I'm pretty sure everyone who makes tuna casserole uses this exact same recipe, but who knows? There could be variations I've never even considered.*

Average Jane's Tuna Casserole

1/2 pound shell noodles
1 can tuna packed in water (drained)
1 can Campbell's cream of mushroom soup
3/4 cup frozen peas
A little milk, if needed
Ground black pepper to taste
French fried onions for garnish

Cook noodles according to package directions and drain. Mix with tuna, mushroom soup, peas and enough milk to make it smooth. Sprinkle French fried onions on top and bake at 350°F for about 25 minutes or until heated through and bubbling.

*As it turns out, no one on Flickr makes a variation with shell noodles. I couldn't find a single photo that looked like mine and I already ate enough of what I made that I can't take a good picture now. And that's why there's no photo in this post.

Yesterday I finally put various pieces of evidence together, investigated further and determined that a mouse has been hanging out in one of my kitchen drawers. Say it with me: Ewwwwww!

I'd been noticing things in the drawer that looked, well, gnawed upon. The rubber jar opener, a wine stopper, one of my chip clips… At first I thought that Dr. Jones had somehow gotten a crack at them, but I dug around in the drawer and found mouse droppings. Again: Ewwwwww!

So I took everything out of the drawer, cleaned, disinfected, etc. None of the other drawers in that row showed any evidence of having been visited, at least not yet.

I don't really know what else to do about the problem other than fill my house with predators. No wait, I've already done that. You'd think that FOUR CATS AND A DOG would be enough to keep mice from coming in at all, much less taking their leisure in my kitchen drawers.

I'm kind of tempted to just start leaving that drawer and the cupboard next it open all the time. Considering that our undisciplined cats think nothing of strolling across the counters at will, perhaps the next mouse visit could be the last.

Trillian and the other cats need to step up their game, that's all I have to say.