110 thoughts on “Our Daily Thread 1-27-18”

  4. Chas made a calumnious statement about eaters of onion last evening which I cannot leave unchallenged. I like onions and eat them almost every day, but I have never eaten liver and have no intention of ever deliberately eating liver. My father likes onions, but he does not like liver. My siblings share my liking for onions, but do not touch liver. The only person in my family who thinks liver and onions go together is my mother, and that is because she was raised in the British tradition of cooking, in which all parts of the animal were eating (tripe, head cheese, tongue, etc.)

    On the discussion of picky eaters and whether or not one should teach children to eat what is on their plate, I am thankful that my parents taught me to do so. I should have offended my West African friends otherwise. If I was in the habit of gagging on food whose texture and taste I could not stand, I should never have been able to keep from vomiting up the special breakfast my friend in the village gave me when I attended a wedding with her. The slimy millet porridge might have been more easily swallowed if the sour milk hadn’t been added. My friend considered the sour milk such a delicacy, that she spooned some more over to my side of the common bowl. Sugar was added to the sour milk, which did absolutely nothing to improve the taste, and the bit of condensed milk (something only had on festival occasions there) was not an improvement either. Sour milk not only tastes terrible (I’m not talking about sour milk that is cooked in baking, but poured over porridge the way we pour milk on cereal) but it makes one’s stomach very queasy as well. Yet I kept it down.

    Speaking of going to far places and potentially eating strange foods, I may be eating seal meat in the autumn months. Nothing has changed about having to finish those clinical hours in the summer, and all the questions about how I am going to afford to stay in the city and also how to keep my registration active remain. But in the autumn, I will, Lord willing, have an opportunity to complete a remote placement, and it is in the territory of Nunavut, where I applied to go.

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  8. I had to look up “calumnious” . 🙂
    I don’t mean to besmirch anyone’s reputation. My mother ate liver and jonions.
    But then she ate everything that I know if.
    But I loved her anyhow.
    She never made me eat liver or onions.
    And she never made my sister eat fish.
    I would have a hard time in the culture Phos described.
    I could starve to death with a plate of liver and onions in front of me.

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  10. I know that at some point before I was in 4th grade I very likely at liver and onions. In 4th grade we began the study of the body and various organs. I remember promising myself to never eat it again and at some point being in a restaurant with it on the menu and not ordering it. My mother would not eat anything that had to do with a cow, although somehow vanilla ice cream slid through for her and buttermilk slid through for my grandfather. He told her if she ate anything from a cow she would chew her cud like an old cow. Other than that she at all sorts of grossness.
    My father could not eat shell fish as he was allergic, but he would eat anything else. I was made to taste most things and if I didn’t like them I didn’t have to eat it again. I don’t care for strong fish. Sardines are not on my list of survival items. Once my father made tripe stroganoff. Thankfully by that time in my life I had learned to look in the trash can first before I ate one of his “creations”. As I have aged, I have convinced myself of other foods that are too gross for consumption. On that list is almost anything from Burger King, Hardees, McDonalds, or most other fast food restaurants. If I can’t smell the grease, I will occasionally break down and each French Fries from McDonalds or Wendy’s. If given a preference I will eat at a “local” restaurant over anything that is part of a chain restaurant. I have a fear that if we continue to do so, one day all the food will taste the same.
    Of course I have the luxury of never being on the brink of starving. Even in my most impoverished days, I managed to have food in the pantry for BG and me. Some nights for me that was cheese and crackers but if the truth be known I would be perfectly happy with that for dinner right now….as a matter of fact I believe it was one night last week. I know there was one night I didn’t have dinner, but I had had a good, late lunch.

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  11. I have been arrested. I need bail money…………….

    No this isn’t a scam that someone is doing in my name. The Muscular Dystrophy Association contacted me the other day and someone “turned me in”. I will be arrested on March 22, 2018 and taken to “jail” (Bonefish Grill–a chain…) and my “bail” is $2,500.
    I you are inclined and would like to help here is the link.
    http://www2.mda.org/site/TR/Lock-Up/LockUp2018-National?px=4643978&pg=personal&fr_id=24573

    If you aren’t inclined, I understand. This is a little outside of my comfort zone, but I do remember the Labor Day Telethons. How could I tell them no?

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  13. My picky eater, who does not like pasta of any kind, loves sardines.

    I like them but never tried them until about a year or two ago, and should eat them but don’t. Liver and onions first appeared in my life when I was working at the nursing home. It was delicious and I always wondered why we did not have it at home. Instead, we had canned peas (yuck yuck yuck, I don’t eat them now and went with the minimum of one pea per meal then) and canned spinach (it was my favorite vegetable and I took a long time to ever try spinach fresh, now I love it).

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  14. That is a mule deer in a field of…mustard! One would think that it would be canola seeing as it is in Saskatchewan, but in the far south where we lived for 4 years, mustard was the yellow flowered crop.

    We saw that deer in that same field several times. He was pretty cute in the flowers.

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  15. Mumsee, that’s why! Actually, the food wasn’t all that bad. Different that what I am accustomed, but not bad. I believe I had occasion to complement your team of chefs.
    (‘Not bad’ is, in Canadian colloquial speech, an understatement for ‘quite good’.)

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  17. Liver and onions? Bring it on! We used to have at least once a month growing up. Breaded and fried liver is good. Boiled liver just doesn’t sound good at all.

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  19. It’s a liver and onions morning, I see! My mother cooked a lot of chicken, whole fryers, in my growing up years. That meant she had the little bag of goodies in the package inside the cavity of the chicken which contained the neck, gizzard, and liver. She would boil the neck with the rest of the chicken and then fry up the liver and gizzard which I would enjoy eating. Now that brings up a question for my brother. Did he ever get any or was I the only goat in the family. I never thought about that before now. I loved chicken livers and never ate beef with onion liver until I had it cooked by Art’s mother. I loved it, but I had been primed for it by years of eating chicken livers.

    For years I could not eat onions because they caused tummy upset, but it must have been in my late twenties that I started to be able to have them without trouble. It may have been about the time I discovered that I was lactose intolerant. When I stopped having milk it changed some of the other things I could tolerate. I love onions and garlic when not overpowering. I try to use mostly the sweet onions.

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  20. I enjoyed this article at the same time, I was saddened for some people.
    https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/atheists-ben-carson-christian-faith/2018/01/27/id/839795/

    This is the same group that wrote to a local mayor and told him to stop having prayer at the City Council meeting. He told them no. A new mayor has been elected in that town, we used to go to church with her. She says she believes in freedom of religion and she will continue to participate in hers by praying at city council meetings. Others are free to do their thing but their thing is not going to impact how she does hers.

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  22. My mom liked liver and onions, but my dad didn’t. I could eat liver if I had to, but I’d rather not have to. 🙂

    I really don’t remember being forced to eat anything I didn’t like, but Mom wouldn’t have made me something different, either, I know that. I was probably encouraged to at least try different foods. That was our tactic with our girls, too. Now as an adult, I am willing to try just about anything at least once.

    I suspect that what led to both my daughters and my niece liking salad so much is that my mom would make a big deal out of letting them share her salad when they went out to eat (which they did fairly often). And she would make salads at home, too, often with their help when they were visiting.

    Although Hubby’s mom was quite strict in many areas, her approach to eating was much like my parents – try it, you don’t have to eat it if you don’t like it, but also no separate meal if you don’t. (Except when she made liver, then she would make him a hamburger instead.)

    But she was strict about sweets and snacks. So then when Hubby was a teen, working and making his own money, he stocked up on lots of junk food sweets and snacks.

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  23. I just caught up on yesterday’s thread and wasn’t going to bring up onions again, but since someone else already did . . . like Pauline, I love onion rings and the ones I like best are Popeye’s. Check them out, if you haven’t already.
    I love all things onions. After my car accident and pancreas injury in 2008, I was on TPN for six months (IV feeding and nothing by mouth). The thing I craved most, and promised myself I’d have first when allowed to eat again, was fried onions.

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  25. My mom made liver and onions sometimes, and as I recall I actually liked that. I suspect I ate only the liver, not the onions, but I don’t remember for sure. She used chicken livers.

    My college had a rotating menu, meaning that if something was “on the menu,” it was served every four weeks for a school year. I think that some popular foods, like cheese pizza, hamburgers, and tacos, were on the four-week rotation twice, but generally it was once every four weeks, and most foods stayed on the rotation more than one year.

    Beef liver and onions made it one year. It became the one night of the month that students were most likely to eat elsewhere, and it didn’t come back the next year. I actually liked it–it wasn’t a top favorite, but I liked it and ate it.

    In fact, my husband and I went to a restaurant in another town a couple of years ago, and I saw they had liver and onions. I said, “I haven’t had this in about twenty years, and it isn’t something I want every day, but I think I’ll order it,” and I did. I think I ordered it light on onions, but figured they probably were necessary to the flavor for it to be cooked with some. I enjoyed the first few bites, but by the end it was definitely “OK, not getting this again for the next 20 years.” Really, if I could have had four bites of it for an appetizer and then had something else, that would have been better. If I were eating at a table of people who all liked it a little, and we could split it several ways but each order something else as an actual dish, I can see doing that, but I may never order it again, and certainly won’t do it anytime soon.

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  26. I love onion rings, too! And sauteed or fried onions with beef.

    Our little town of Stafford is kind of out in the boonies, some parts of the town more so than others. Nightingale and I were talking about another town, next to the town next to us, going east into what is called “the quiet corner of Connecticut”. Nightingale remarked that Stafford is just the beginning of the boonies.

    So, I said this would make a great slogan for us – “Stafford: Gateway to the Boonies”. 😀

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  29. I had to adjust to one of my boys saying the meal was “pretty good”. To me, that meant it was okay, I enjoyed it but would not go out of my way to have it again. To him it means delicious.

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  30. Roscuro, that was my sister’s reason for making her children eat everything, that sometimes being a good guest demands it. But I read of delicacies such as goat eyeballs and I really just don’t know if I could. My husband literally threw up peas; I gagged and got sick to my stomach on omelets. I ate everything on my plate because I had no choice, but I could not make myself swallow anything. I couldn’t swallow the very tiniest pill until I was 20, though I had tried to “learn” several times before that. In fact, I was quite motivated before that–it would have been a lot more pleasant to eat and get it over with. And it would have been a lot more pleasant to be able to swallow Dramamine than to chew it. Half a pill was a very small item, but I tried to swallow it buried in food, I tried to swallow it with water, I did everything anyone suggested, and it would still be there. But chewing it was not only nasty–very bitter–but it would make my throat and tongue numb. But I couldn’t swallow that crumb, nor could I swallow food I found distasteful. It wasn’t stubbornness or a power struggle; I simply couldn’t do it.

    It is actually one of the reasons I ruled out the possibility of being an overseas missionary many years ago.

    I can testify that it is hard to cook for a picky family. If I were told to cook for my husband, two daughters, and mother-in-law, I could not choose any meat that they would all happily eat. I could cook with ham or beef and the ones to whom it isn’t a favorite would at least eat it, but if I chose fish or poultry or shrimp, some would not eat it at all. We eat broccoli and rice a lot because they are “safe” vegetables that everyone eats–I have several veggies I don’t like (strong ones like parsnips, rutabagas, and black-eyed peas), and others don’t like lima beans or brussels sprouts or cooked carrots or asparagus. So I basically just cook and let people sort out whether or not they like it.

    In Nashville I lived across the street from a family from Iraq, a Kurdish family. One time I went to their house for some reason I don’t remember (we visited back and forth periodically), and they were sitting down to supper and insisted I join them. Well, I had eaten lunch really late, maybe 2:30, and it was only a couple of hours later and I wasn’t even a little bit hungry, and I told them that. We all sat on the floor to eat (not at all comfortable for me), and I was dished up some food that had far and away the worst smell I have ever encountered in food. No idea what spices were used, but they weren’t American. For all I know it might have been meat that had been left to rot for the flavor, but it was pungent and all I could do not to throw up. But I thought to myself, “The food is actually ‘good,’ it just isn’t anything my taste buds know as food.” So I told her, “It is good, but I’m not at all hungry, sorry.” I knew it wasn’t actually “polite,” but I also knew it would be worse form to throw it up. She asked did I want to take it with me, and I said yes, I can eat it tomorrow. So the next day I nibbled a tiny bite or two from what looked like the safest part of the dish, and threw away the rest.

    It isn’t a positive trait of my character that I’m a picky eater (though definitely not as picky as some others I know–I like every meat I have ever tried, nearly every vegetable, and every fruit but pears and mangoes, and even those I like if they are cooked; it’s really strong foods that get to me). But it isn’t something I can simply choose to do differently, either, or I would.

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  32. My dad always complimented a really good meal but saying, “Wonder what the poor folk’s are eating”. I hadn’t thought of that in a long time.
    Ex family used to say something was so good it would “make you slap your Mama”.

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  33. Yesterday I shared a post from a friend who brought her mother home to die. I just saw a post that her mother died about 2 this morning. She said they sat beside her bed, laughing and crying until she was gone. She said her Mama was probably wondering how she had raised two such irreverent children.
    Once again…we should all be allowed to die the good death; knowing we were loved.

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  34. My dad loved liver and onions so we’d have it on occasion but I don’t recall my mom forcing me to eat it (after it was established I hated it, but then I lean toward being a tad picky, not overly though). My friend down the street also likes it and she likes going to one particular diner-style restaurant in town where it’s on the menu.

    Eeeeee, what a fun picture, it made me smile!

    We had fields of mustard along our coastline but when one of the largest areas was declared a land preserve, it was determined that mustard was NOT a native plant to California and they ripped it out. Now we have hills covered in brown native plants. Yeah. It’s been a letdown.

    The legend I heard was that mustard became so prolific in California because the seeds were scattered by the mission fathers everywhere they went. Maybe Michelle knows if that’s true or not.

    At any rate, I figure anything that grows so well in a spot should fall under the category of being native (enough). I miss the rolling fields of bright yellow overlooking the ocean cliffs. Cactus just isn’t the same.

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  37. Where I’m going in the autumn – provided everything works out – is the boonies. Nunavut has a land area of 1.9 million squared kilometres (over 740,000 sq. miles) and a population of nearly 36,000. That means the population density is 0.019 persons per sq. kilometre (0.05 persons per sq. mile). It is less densely populated than Greenland, which has the same area but twice the population. West Texas is positively urban in comparison.

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  38. I saw that Cheryl, I haven’t done the quizzes but read the border collie article.

    Paver guy is here, trying to figure out how to resolve the side driveway problem. He’s also going to put a handrail in along my front steps which has long been needed. I have quite a few steps that lead up from the sidewalk to the front porch and nothing for people to grab or hang on to.

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  46. So dog park guy gave me a very low quote for painting the house which is attractive. But he’d be slow and tends to over dramatize “problems” that arise. Real Estate Guy has another guy I can call, someone he met at an open house.

    Meanwhile, the $10,000 house painter texted me again with a photo of a former job, he wanted me to see just how straight his lines were. I have broadly hinted I don’t really have that kind of money to spend on painting (there are a few other things I still need to do, after all) — and I told him I was very likely about to be laid off to boot so I’d have even less $ to work with — but he hasn’t seemed to let my lack of resources deter him in his hard sell. 🙂

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  48. Liver and onions is good, though not something I get frequently (since I only get it when eating out, and I usually get the daily special if there is one, unless it is steak or seafood and costs too much).

    My parents were of the “eat everything on your plate” persuasion. And they served organ meats (liver, heart, kidneys) frequently to save money. I disliked kidneys but I really liked heart. Tongue was good too – reminded me a bit of corned beef, which was one of my favorites. The one thing my mother ever cooked – and only once – that I couldn’t stand was brains. Though if I had had to finish a serving instead of just take a taste, I’d have managed it.

    In Spain I was glad I wasn’t a picky eater. Some of the other Americans couldn’t stand tripe dishes but I thought they were good. As was the blood sausage, and a beverage called horchata, made from chufa nuts (rather different from what is served by the same name here at Mexican restaurants). I didn’t care for octopus but I ate it.

    We had our older son try different foods but did not require him to finish everything on his plate. As an adult I decided it was healthier to stop eating once hunger is satisfied rather than feel obliged to finish a plate full of food that one does not need (whether or not one likes the food). I don’t always follow that rule myself, but I try to, saving the rest as leftovers for lunches. And with our younger son, it very quickly became clear (to me at least) that he was not throwing up on purpose when given certain foods but simply could not stand the textures. So I just gave him what I knew he could handle. He eventually got over that and now eats anything he’s given.

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  49. Well, I guess the term “the boonies” is a relative one. For our area of the country, we are “the boonies”, or at least the gateway to them. 🙂 Here in northeastern Connecticut, there is a lot of farmland and the towns are mostly small and quaint.

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  50. I made friend with a cat across the street today, he was watching me and then rolled on the ground, a cat invitation. So I walked over and talked to him or her a bit before petting. Very nice kitty with a striped tail, hope he has a good home.

    New painter prospect is coming by at 8:30 tomorrow morning for an estimate, sounds like he’d charge between $3,000 and $5,000 which is within range, the lower the better!

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  55. I think it depends on the child whether “eat some of everything and finish every bite” works well. I was never hungry as a child, and being forced to eat everything probably made food issues more ingrained than they needed to be. For a child who might tend toward being overweight, it probably isn’t helpful, either. For a child who has a good appetite and only mild dislikes, it is potentially helpful to go ahead and push against those dislikes and eat it anyway.

    Culturally we have swung the other way. I have a friend who will go through the drive-thru at two different restaurants for her two children (though I don’t know of any fast-food place today that doesn’t have a ton of choices), and she makes a pizza every single day for one teenage son, since that is all he wants to eat. I’m inclined more toward “eat with the family, eat at least some of the food that is served, and if you are old enough to make your own food later, you are welcome to supplement your meals by making something else from food that is in the house or food you buy yourself.” But making separate meals for a child, no.

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  59. I once made my son finish his peanut butter sandwich or he would get it for supper. Well, he got it for supper and then for breakfast before it was finally gone. I never made him eat another sandwich. I also was more careful to not issue demands that I don’t want to follow through on. Oops.

    He still doesn’t like sandwiches of any sort.

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  60. I had to smile at Cheryl’s comment above. We wouldn’t consider two different drive-thru restaurants for the kids, but we have on occasion my husband and me. He likes Burger King best, will eat Wendy’s but not McDonald’s, Arby’s, or Culvers (McDonald’s because he doesn’t like the food, the other two because his digestion has problems with certain foods since his gastric bypass surgery, and he has gotten sick after eating at certain places). Burger King is my *least* favorite (though McDonald’s would be close), while I like Culver’s best, followed by Arby’s. Usually we go to Burger King because the rest of the family likes it, and a Junior Whopper is really not bad. My biggest objection to most fast food sandwiches is I don’t like American cheese (so I get burgers without cheese). Once in a great while we’ll get me a cheddar cheeseburger at Culver’s and my husband will get his favorite chicken sandwich at Burger King.

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  63. We took a Saturday drive on the dirt roads today….went by and saw Mr Amons sheep…they had been sheared and seemed quite content…I think one of them smiled at me while she baaaaa’ed…….we stopped at Safeway in Elizabeth and picked up chicken, cheese and apples, having a picnic in the car 😊 We stopped in at Mountain Man Nut and Fruit Co for some toffee peanuts for dessert…..no onions were to be found on our menu today! It’s the simple things in life ya know?

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  66. Kare, did he go in the summer or winter months? The projected placement isn’t in Iqaluit, but in a more remote location. The most expensive part will be paying for the plane tickets.

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  67. What a potpourri of topics today!

    “Boonies” is a relative term. Where Kizzie lives is the boonies compared to other places in the Northeast like New York or Boston. When we visited our friends in Storrs a few years ago, I could see farmland and other open spaces between buildings. I remember our cousins from Long Island saying they lived in the “country”. I’m sorry, but Commack, NY is the suburbs, not the “country”, especially to those of us in the Midwest or out West where there are no houses for miles.

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  68. We had an unseasonably warm day today (warmer tomorrow), 80-ish.

    But as soon as the sun went down at the dog park, the chill began.

    My right turn signal appears to be out.

    And the film crew trucks were lined up at the Croatian Cultural Center where Scorpion will be shooting Monday-Tuesday. I wish I liked that show more than I do, they do a lot of filming here in town.

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  69. Roscuro, he went either at the beginning of winter or the end. There was a sled dog in one of the seats of the plane on the last leg of his trip from Ottawa. He really enjoyed that even though it was a long flight.

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  71. Pauline, when my husband and I were first married, he and I and the girls generally went to church together (at least when our college daughter was home), and on the way home he would ask them what drive-thru they wanted, but would not think to ask me. I knew he meant no offense–he was simply accustomed to asking them–and I took none.

    But one day he and I were heading to Taco Bell, both girls gone at school (one away at college, one in high school) when the younger girl called him. “Dad? I didn’t bring a lunch. Could you bring lunch to me?” “Sure, honey. What do you want?” “Go to Wendy’s and get . . .” and she rattled off her choice and something a friend wanted, too. We got Wendy’s for ourselves as well, and it never occurred to him I might have had my heart set on Taco Bell (as I in fact did).

    Later in the week I spoke up. I told him that when he was asking where “we” wanted to eat, please ask me first. If I wanted to defer to the girls, I could, and most likely I usually would. But at least give me the honor of a say in the matter. He agreed. So, generally he would ask me and I would say “Anywhere but McDonald’s” or “Either Taco Bell or Subway” and with that much narrowing down, he could send the choice to the girls and we would all be happy. I think one time I simply said outright that Arby’s sounded good, and since he knew that wasn’t their favorite, he suggested we go by two places. And I was OK with that–we were finding our footing as a family, and while I didn’t want to be left out of the decision, I also had no desire to dominate it.

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  73. Good early morning hello from Atlanta.
    My brain feels rather numb at the moment. Working with numbers does that to a person. It is such a left side brain activity and I find myself stuck there at times. I remember when I was a co-op student working for IRS as a tax auditor that I told my boss I planned to major in accounting. She told me basically that I shouldn’t because it took something away from the person. I do understand what she meant. It can become an obsession like doing a 10,000 piece jigsaw puzzle with numbers for the pieces and each piece has its own preformed slot in which only it can fit.

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  76. I used to make liver and onions for my husband and family years ago. He was the only one who really liked it. He seems to have lost his desire for it now.

    My mom made us eat a little of everything. She quit forcing fishy stuff on me after I threw up in my plate. I still do not like fishy tasting fish. Otherwise, I like fresh or fresh frozen fish.

    I had some food wars with the children, but tried to be sensitive to their likes, as well. I do not cook special meals for everyone, however. Not even for grandchildren. I always do try to cook whatever I know guests like or can eat. Grandchildren can be all over the map about what they currently eat, so I keep it quite basic and don’t worry much about it.

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  78. I had it explained to me that it is a texture thing with some people and there food issues. BG will eat a hamburger but not meat loaf. Steak but not roast beef. Fried chicken or grilled chicken but not some other type. She eats corn Lin the cob, French fries (not to thick) and pasta. She is 20 now and manages to survive. If not for Chik Fil A she probably wouldn’t have. I still worry about her nutritional needs but know I no longer have any control.
    The Boyfriend is growing on me. He teases her into trying some new things. Unfortunately he is dabbling in becoming a vegetarian. 😉
    I explained to Missy there was no way she could become a vegetarian.
    In all if it I have had to examine myself and realize that while I don’t make an issue out of it I am somewhat picky myself. I was after all raised to be polite

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  79. My niece, who came to stay with us in Greece for about six months, only ate mashed potatoes. That is all. She prepared her own, ate her own, and that was it. When we had Thanksgiving here a few years ago, she came and that was all she ate. She is thirty something now, with children of her own, I don’t know what she eats.

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  80. Our exceptional cat seems to have taken exception to my picture taking. He was on the deck last night, yelling. He walked around the house to the front porch. I went out with my smart phone to take a picture and the flash went off and so did it. I heard him yowling some more some distance from the house but that was it. Perhaps it has decided we are not its type. Blockhead. That was my second name for it. It had a big block head. First name was ghost cat for its very strange color.

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  81. That’s funny mumsee. The mashed potato diet. Keeps things simple and uncomplicated, I guess.

    And a co-worker of mine also kept saying it was the “texture” of some foods — bananas was one of them, I think, maybe puddings or yogurt also — that she couldn’t tolerate.

    Janice, are you also now having to advise and help clients figure out the new tax law and how it will affect them? Numbers simply don’t last long in my head so I’d never be able to get that puzzle finished. Nor would I care. 🙂

    Getting more texts from the $10,000 painter — he’s come down to $6,700, but that would mean he couldn’t send his entire crew and there would be other tradeoffs. Then he called me Liz. But he said I won’t be disappointed in his work.

    Another guy comes over in about an hour before I leave for church to give me his estimate. He lives in town, just a few blocks away, is 61, semi-retired and mainly a painter/handyman. Real Estate Guy ran into him yesterday at an open house and thinks he’ll be within my price range.

    Scene above somehow reminds me of Lake Okoboji where my mom grew up — I loved going there when I was growing up and we even rented a cabin out there for a couple nights one summer.

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  82. I’m just starting to catch up with this thread, but before I read the rest of it I must agree vigorously with Roscuro about Chas’s calumnious statement yesterday. I’m not a raw onion fan but I do like cooked onions. Liver on the other hand – I’ve tried it twice, and probably never will again.

    I learned a new word today – calumnious!

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  83. Well, painter’s initial verbal estimate flew out of my range when he wrote things up this morning. He came down a bit when he saw the look on my face.

    I love onions, raw or otherwise.

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  84. 😦 Now they are making calumnious statements about me!

    Re, mashed potato diets. Youngest GD once wold eat only macaroni and cheese. They put her also on a vitamin-mineral supplement diet. You need more than potatoes can give you.

    Re:: Previous comments about California fining waters who offered plastic straws.
    At Boston Market,, You get your own straw. They would have a hard time arresting all of us.

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  85. Chas, what calumny have we stated about you?

    I’m officially a member of the city church now. Very thankful for the people who have only increased in their friendship and care throughout the time that I’ve attended the church.

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  86. DJ, you won’t want to read this one.

    I drove to church this morning, including a stretch that doesn’t have tons of traffic but is nonetheless an important thoroughfare, and traffic tends to go in the 60 m.p.h. range, with some hills and the like. You’d be able to cross it safely on foot, it isn’t nonstop traffic, but it’s busy enough and fast enough that you have to be careful. The car ahead of me, on my way to church, slowed way down, to 20 or so, and when I got close enough I saw that a border collie had just crossed the road and another dog (large and white, probably a purebred but I don’t know what breed) was beside the road. (Great Pyrenees came to mind, but I didn’t get a good look and I don’t know the breed well; it might have been smaller than that, anyway, but it was the larger of the two.) I think the first driver slowed down partly to let the border collie get across and partly in case the other dog darted out.

    It was nearly four hours later that I was coming back through that stretch of road, and I had to slow way down for the big white dog to cross, and there was a dead animal beside the road.

    I called the police when I got home, and they said they would check it out. It is not normal for large, smart dogs to walk back and forth across a street for hours, or for a border collie to do so in a way that gets it killed. At the least someone dumped them and they’re desperate to have someone to stop and feed them or take them in, but I couldn’t help but wonder if their owners are in one of the houses up off the road and in need of help, and the dogs went down to get someone to stop and follow them. I’m not 100% sure the dead animal was the border collie (I couldn’t see its coloring), but unless there was also a third dog, it pretty much had to be. But I was glad the sheriiff’s office took me seriously and said they would send an officer, because the remaining dog is a danger to traffic and to itself, and there might well be something else going on that needs help. When I saw the dog cross this morning and join its pal, I assumed they had chased a deer or something and were now crossing back to the “home” side of the road, but the dog I saw the second time was crossing the exact same direction the other dog crossed four hours before, so they must have been simply going back and forth for who knows how many hours, how many times. It shook me to see it, because whatever their reason, they had to be desperate for some reason, and almost certainly (in my opinion) seeking to get human attention.

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  89. Yes, we’ve declared war on straws now.

    Cheryl, that’s so sad, but good thought that they might have been trying to tell somebody something.

    We’ve launched into our 10 Commandments sermons, going to spent a couple weeks on the first one from the looks of it.

    It’s 84 degrees here today.

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  92. There’s been a little hint of trouble with Mr X again. He had been behaving himself well for a while, had stopped drinking and was taking his meds (for psych issues). His mom had been urging Nightingale to cancel the protective order, saying he was so different, so calm now.

    Recently, though, I started to see a bit of the old X in a couple texts he sent me, but just a bit. But then yesterday, he decided he shouldn’t have to bring The Boy home himself, and wanted Nightingale to pick him up from his Nana’s house (that would be The Boy’s great-grandmother, a lovely lady from Ireland). Meanwhile, Nightingale was finishing up a date in a town about 45 minutes away, and on a tight schedule, needing The Boy home at a certain time, which X had originally agreed to, so they could make it to the Pinewood Derby on time. His texts had a similar tone to how he used to be, argumentative and complaining about Nightingale.

    Mr X then pretty much refused to bring him home, and Nightingale had to drive out to that town to get him. X was not supposed to be there, as he can’t be within a certain number of yards from her (which is why he can’t come to the house to pick up or drop off The Boy), but she saw him peeking out a window at her.

    She said she suspects he is off his meds, and maybe drinking again, as he looked disheveled.

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  93. Now Mr X’s mom is refusing to be a go-between, which puts it all on me. Previously, all the plans were worked out with his mom relaying messages between the two, and the only texts I got were him telling me when he would arrive to pick The Boy up or drop him off. Now I’ll be more involved with the rest of it. Nightingale says I don’t “have to” do it, but if I don’t, X can’t see The Boy (and The Boy can’t see his dad).

    In some ways, it would be easier if Nightingale ended the protective order, but she refuses to, and rightly so. She does not trust that his change in behavior is permanent, as she has seen him “be good” for a while, and then revert back to old ways, too many times. He can be dangerous when he is like that, as he proved when he attacked her.

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  94. She needs to keep the restraining order and the judge needs to know what is going on. The court can assign people to be the intermediaries. The mom is within her rights to refuse to be involved, she knows her son.

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  95. Yes, Mumsee. It is the fact that she was talking about how wonderful he was doing, but is now refusing to be involved, that adds to Nightingale’s suspicions that Mr X is off the wagon. He can be really mean to his mom when he’s like that.

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  101. Kizzie, that clip was hilarious! Politely asking them to leave isn’t the safest way to confront a bear, but it could be the bear was not expecting company and decided to depart when the person showed up. Wild animals do not enjoy being in the proximity of humans (see also Genesis 9:2). If he had got in between the bear and her cubs, it would have been a different story, but most people who live where bears are know not to do that.

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  102. That would be my first choice of trying to get rid of bears, but I would be ready to jump back inside and slam the door. After that I would call my husband to come and deal with them 🙂

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  107. Roscuro – I didn’t mean to leave you out, but Kare has mentioned bears and bear spray, so she popped into my mind when I saw that.

    We have occasional bear sightings in our town. I’ve never seen one, though. Nor have I seen the bobcats that are around.

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  108. I didn’t feel left out, Kizzie. Bears have been sighted rarely around my parents’ home, but further northwest, around Sudbury, Ontario, is where I saw a bear in the backyard of the friends I was visiting. It ran off when it noticed us looking out the patio door at it. I also, on that visit, saw a bear just off the main highway – I was on a bus, so felt in no danger.

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  110. Yikes a roach in my broccoli!!
    And my ipad wouldn’t turn on and now it is saying it has a 2% charge. Something drained it and this is new ipad. Not many places around here to take it in for warranty. We charge using 240v, could that be the problem? I have a transformer, but it is powerful to power the microwave, so might also be too much for it.

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