I’m not tired of snow yet!
The first winter I was here, a nice lady said “You might say ‘I love snow’ right now, but by March you’ll be like ‘Yeah, you can go.'”
By March, I was like ‘yeah, you can go’, but only because by that time it can’t hold on much longer anyway, and I don’t like the icky melty phase.
Right now it’s still beautiful, fresh, crisp snow, nicely packed.
Rather than sort through for pretty pictures, I just stepped out on the porch and snapped some new ones.

Our place was priced low and now we know why. It has its own microclimate. We’re on the back side of a little hill, below a bigger hill that blocks the morning sun, and in winter the sun never gets above trees we don’t own. There’s one big splash of sunshine across the ground in the middle of the day, thanks to a gap in the trees, that lasts about an hour.

Our place is snowier and freezier than everything around. The bulbs are coming up in the valley, while our ground’s still frozen. My daffodils are long since dead. I’ve never lived in a place before that you don’t just put bulbs in the ground and they multiply. I planted some out here when we first bought the place, hoping to see them when we came back again. Nope.

It’s okay, at least there is a little sunshine above us! It’s far better than the other side with the dark, grey, wet blanket hanging just above our heads all the time.

Having my very own home is still a big deal. I had a formula that I recited for years: “I just want a little square somewhere with my name on it, where I can plant flowers.”

A funny shape is okay too 🙂

And I have every right to plant here. Wish fulfilled!

I never bothered to wish that they’d flourish very long or come back next spring XD

It’s okay if I have to wait until April to plant peas. Annuals are cheap at the grocery store and I can plant em here. Last year we got started super late, but some zinnias grown from seed got flowers on them. Yay!

I planted some strawberries from the hardware store and the berries were so inexpressibly delicious that we just couldn’t even believe it. ONE of those berries was a legit dessert. Fantastically better than the strawberries from the store, or strawberry ice cream. Now I know what they meant about food tasting better long ago. In old times, it was grown for taste, now it’s grown for being able to survive a long journey on a truck.

I moved those strawberry plants under cover last fall, so there’s a slight chance the plants might be alive.

Tiny strawberries grow wild out here. I never once got a berry, as the critters eat them all, but someone told me that a few years ago there were so many berries that she got a bowlful from her yard.

There’s our doggie basking in front of the stove. Life is better with a little big black dog stretched out across the floor.

(She’s not a very big dog, but she’s larger than a medium dog. I think it’s nicer to have a little big dog than a big medium dog.)

That’s our source of heat. Next, will I whine about not having a power bill each month? It gets dark and chilly but the savings do add up XD

Our dog loves snow, too. We clearly got the right dog.

She doesn’t love water. We took her to the lake and tried throwing a stick into the water. She went in once and came out looking like a pathetic drowned rat, and dropped the stick at our feet with an attitude that reminded me of the story of the knight, back in the time of chivalry, whose lady threw her glove into a ring with lions just for the fun of seeing her courtly lover retrieve it. He did, and returned it to her, then dumped her in front of everyone, for her foolishness and lack of regard for life. The dog looked at us like that.

We threw the stick into the water again, and she turned around and stared at us like, “What is wrong with you?” then tiptoed in, reluctantly, to bring it back.

Nope. Not a water dog. But you can see her snow expression, above.

I’m not a water girl, either. I agreed to marry my sweetie and go to Alaska with him! And it would have been fun because he’s so sweet. But everything else happened instead, and that’s okay. I like this better.

When we lived on the boat, I rowed the dinghy around the marina by myself a bit just for something new. The thrill wore off quickly. Okay, I did that *checks that box*

I’ll tell you a boat story. I came across these in my picture folder. One day in summer, we left our little boat home to go run errands, and it was hot, so we wanted to leave plenty of things open.

Of course it’s up to Jeff to decide. But, as he was opening the little rectangular portholes, he said, “Nobody could get through there, anyway.”

I said they certainly COULD.

He was sure.

I said, “I could get through there!”

Observe the clip light next to the window, and the kleenex box, for scale.

I don’t remember who asked what the other one wanted to bet, first. Jeff wants to bet five hundred bucks that I couldn’t crawl through that window.

I definitely could crawl through that window. Betting won’t make any difference, because, where does he even think he’d get $500 that isn’t already “ours”??

“Your cuss jar.”

Oh. Yes. There’s that. So now it’s not just a random “hold my beer” moment, it’s a penance. It’s a chance to be right, and clear my conscience, at the same time.

The top half of me was easy. The bottom half took a bit of wiggling, one side and then the other XD

Half an inch of pudge on this err… “side” and then squeeze another half inch of pudge on the other side.

A random person stopped to wonder what on earth was happening and make sure everybody’s okay.

Jeff told him it was a bet. He asked how much. Five hundred bucks? That’s legit. He approves, and will stay to be a witness.

I won. And you can imagine how a skinny teenage boy could slide through there in half a moment! So the porthole was closed.

I’m looking back through my pictures just to post something. It’s not healthy to go silent.

My baking isn’t fancy looking, but that’s fresh spelt flour and ceylon cinnamon and cream cheese with honey.

Jeff wondered if it was about Christmas. It’s not. Just happened that as Christmas was going on, I spotted an A-frame gingerbread house and my outlook changed. I’d long since given up on those things – fun though they are, at any time of year – because they’re so fiddly to get them to stay together. But, A-frame! Two long rectangles. Genius!

Get on with eating it, it’s not going to sit around here collecting dust until any certain magical date.

Oh, another not-Christmas thing I treated myself to was a string of red lights. I happened across Andrew Torba’s “Fix the Lights” site – sadly, the site overrides dark mode, displaying light brown font that is very hard on the eyes against a white background – where he points out the damage blue light does to your system. I knew it already, but sometimes you need one final input before actually taking action.

I bought some of these. Here’s the product image because that looks so much better than my results. All I did for my interpretation was put up several cup hooks and divided the string of red “fairy” lights into several loops from each, which is stupid but works. I find my metabolism much happier with gentle red-toned lights in the dark evenings and dark morning.

Hit Publish. Do it.

Not gonna sit in drafts for months! Wow! Just POST SOMETHING, anything!

More to come.

The last hot day of the summer, according to predictions. We pay more attention up here since we’re more at the mercy of the weather. No electricity means no air conditioner, either. And it was a scorcher! They said after this, it’ll get gradually better and better until there’s beautiful, crispy snow again.

But on the HOTTEST last hot day, I was absolutely dying. I can almost bear 85, but about 90 deg and I start to fall apart. Melt. Swoon. Darling says “That’s because you’re a princess! Princesses are delicate!”

That’s me, a delicate princess 🙂

Yesterday I felt like the fire-worm and not very princessy. Today I was griping on messaging while sending pics of our surrounds, that it’s supposed to be 92 again today, and the plan is to “sit around and be miserable”. Then I was explaining about one of the pics “you can see our little boat in the background” and that’s when the light bulb came on over my head.

Marched out and told Darling to drop his tools, we’re not boating later when he gets a certain amount of work done, we’re boating today and he can work later when the boating’s done.

So he loaded up the boat and off we went. He met me one day when he saved me on a boat. Today he saved me on a boat again.

It was so much cooler down at the lake, and darling rowed us over into the shade of a big hill. That was just blissful, cool, quiet. Aaaahhhhh.

After he had rowed around for a while, he stopped rowing, and lay back and looked at the sky. That’s how you know you’re retired. When you’re floating around on the lake looking at the sky.

Two hours rowing and he’s not tired. I was tired after two hours sitting in a boat, and ready to go home, once the sun was setting. I was all better by then.

Pics of me. For the pics of Jeffy, go to MeWe! Oooh this is awesome. I’ve finally settled on a plan for sharing that makes me comfortable-ish, and now I can just share. So fun!

It’s the thickest heaviest flannel I’ve ever come across. It’s a queen size flat sheet and it is absolutely going to end up as a dress with long sleeves.

ChatGPT takes a crack at it –

Ummmmm wut? That’s pretty, but I want the stripes going vertically.

Okay!

Oh, boy, ChatGPT.

There was lots of attempts to explain in words.

How about another AI? “thenewblack” gives a free sample.

THAT’S what I had in mind!

Then I realized I gave that AI an advantage because I rotated and cropped the image of the fabric first. I explained to ChatGPT that it was an image of a folded sheet, buuuut… baby steps.

Given the same advantage to start with, ChatGPT does better. But unfortunately I said “illustration” and I didn’t say “a girl wearing…” and that’s the end of my free images for today.

Craving for heart waffles. Darling says we can run a 700 watt appliance – in the summer – and not for very long.

What’s the alternative?

Only half a waffle iron. For only a few dollars more

I could have had the real thing with both halves and the trivet that used to come with it. But I don’t want those, so it would have been a few dollars wasted.

I had a cast iron waffle maker back at that other place I used to live. It was left behind of course. And we say no more about that.

It was the typical round style. Oh, here, Walmart still has them.

When I first got it, I fiddled and fumed, and made a mess, and made another mess, was hot and bothered, frustrated, etc. Then figured out you only need one half. After that, it’s a snap. It works like this.

Easy. Use two burners. Have half a waffle iron and a frypan on the heat at the same time. Pour the batter on the waffle iron, and it ISN’T going to make a mess, because nothing’s going to come down and squish it out all over the landscape. It’s not going to rip apart, because you don’t have to lift anything to check if it’s done enough. When it’s done enough, lift the corners with a fork to loosen them, and flip the whole thing over onto the griddle to cook the back.

Srsly nobody’s going to lift their waffle from the plate to see if both sides are the same.

My darling says (of my infernal honesty), “You’ll have to tell them!”

No, I won’t. This is technically and truthfully a waffle. It’s crispy and made of hearts.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with hearts despite some of the theories of their origins. No shapes are inherently bad. Not gonna digress here (although would love to) but geometry isn’t bad, any more than guns are bad. It’s people who are evil.

I also bought one of these.

It was just so very beautiful. So very swirly, and made my heart sing. My darling is mostly Nordic and has never eaten krumkake, and I felt the need to remedy that.

He still hasn’t eaten krumkake. I made a fantastic mess, and cleaned it up, and made another one, and later tried another method, and grumbled and groaned and lost my temper. The fails weren’t even edible, just scrapings of mess. He may be Norwegian but I’m not, so I couldn’t manage. I’m German and this thing is NOT efficient which means it’s out the door. It’s for sale again. Let me know if you want it.

Oh, he kinda had krumkake because I made him heart-shaped half-waffles with the rest of the batter, with whipped cream and blueberries, and he said three times that it was DELICIOUS!!!

The krumkake recipe called for cardamom. I’ve never even heard of it, and had to look up what to use instead. The internet says to substitute cinnamon and nutmeg, or allspice and cloves. Christmas, basically. Make it smell like Christmas, with whipped cream.

I saw the darling whittling something. He was turning a piece of dowel into a beautiful replacement handle! He oiled it up and, “Now I just have to find the perfect screw!”

Notice the website change?

Messing around again. Tried to adjust the margins on twentytwentyfive mobile view, and ended up mired in similar frustration level as a two-halved krumkake iron. Do I really have to sit in front of this computer when it’s ninety and things aren’t working? I put Blocksy back, which is the perfect FOOL proof theme. Fools can make it look personalized, but can’t fiddle with the settings until they make their websites into a pile of mess, as I had done to mine. So here we go again, with a fabbdalous background and not even a header. That’s okay.

Hey, I might have solved the posting thing! And I can break out of my posting doldrum. All the regular chitchat can go here, and the family stuff on MeWe. I had to wrestle with MeWe for a bit (in my overparticular, stubborn noggin) but I’m past it and emerged into the sun on the other side, with a sense of peace (ish) about using it. It’s funded by the users, not the enemy; it’s nothing the same level of objectionable / controlled / controlling as Facebook and simply is not over my boundaries, so, say thanks, Weinstein / Berners-Lee, and here we go.

More nonsense to come!

Long ago when I first read books about dogs, the standard advice was to give your new puppy a hot water bottle and a ticking clock, so it will miss its mother less. As if any baby mammal would not be able to tell the difference between a mother and a clock.

I just checked, and they’ve upgraded the standard advice to at least putting the dog’s pen in your bedroom so it won’t be so lonely, “and if the dog cries, comfort him briefly but don’t make a big deal out of it.”

Still sounds like baby dog abuse to me.

It’s about instinct. A dog on its own is a dead dog. They need the pack. If they find themselves alone, their crying is for survival.

Can you make a human go to sleep in a hammock hung from a steel cable ten stories high? “GO TO SLEEP, stop whining, you’re perfectly safe.”

I say the humans should put their spoiled human self down there on the floor and comfort that poor critter. Here’s my baby dog’s first night home. We had a lovely night.

I slept on the floor with her for the first week, and after that she was comfortable and didn’t mind sleeping in her bed.

Here’s how to tell it’s going to be a grand day!

Here’s the baby dog having her first ride home.

Now she rides on my lap to everywhere!

If she isn’t allowed in my lap for some reason, she’s sad.
It’s baby dog abuse 🙁
It doesn’t happen often since my wardrobe now is chosen for how it will look covered in black hair and paw prints, but still, sometimes…

That’s the baby dog’s idea of staying in the back seat.

“Why don’t you love me any more Mommy :-(”

I didn’t pose this one, but here she is along with the shopping bag I made out of her dog food bag!

I remember ripping an ad out of an old magazine when I was a kid. I don’t know where the picture went. When the internet became a thing, I started looking for it online but never with any luck, until I just today thought of asking the AI.

Me:
Can you find a picture for me? It was in a magazine I saw back in the 80s (but could have been from an older magazine) I think it was an ad for some kind of whiskey. It had a mountain man out in the woods wearing a long fur coat.

ChatGPT:
I’m pretty sure you’re remembering the Yukon Jack campaign—tagline “The Black Sheep of Canadian Liquors.” Late-70s/early-80s print ads often showed a fur-clad trapper/mountain man by a snowy lake or forest, sometimes quoting Robert Service. Here are examples of the exact layout and imagery from that series.

Me:
YES THAT’S IT!!!! That’s wonderful, thank you, I always thought that looked so romantic.

ChatGPT said:
I’m glad I could track it down for you! ✨ Those old Yukon Jack ads really leaned into that rugged, romantic frontier vibe—half whiskey promotion, half daydream of living out in the wild with a fur coat and a campfire.

HA. The machine gets it!

Yes indeed. I remember looking at that ad as a teenage girl and thinking that there is a real man, who no doubt sewed that coat together himself, out of the skins of things that tried, and failed, to eat him.

I’ve been looking for that ad since my darling started talking about Alaska. He was going to go up to Alaska in an old wood boat to see if he could survive the winter.

I didn’t miss that “IF”.

Well, the boat part didn’t work out.

And I’m just as glad we didn’t go to Alaska after he told me it rains more than western Washington! I’ve been trying to escape the consarned rain for thirty years now.

We went east and got just the good parts instead, the snow and trees and the c-c-c-cold. Break out the fur.

(I didn’t kill that poor little furry dude. He’s a third-hand donation.)

I’m still trying to come up with a way to share without Facebook, and yet not entirely to the whole world.

I have to write. I guess that’s built in and scribbling is necessary for my mental health. The trouble is to write anything presentable.

Half a page of possible explanations for my writer’s block goes here. Spare us.

How about some pictures of the dog?

This baby girl is the bestest lil dog! Usually does what she’s told, causes very little trouble. She never once messed the house or chewed something up

Her biggest flaw is her reactivity. Out here in the sticks it’s rarely an issue. Out here in the sticks, she has no opportunity to get used to people and get over it.

I think she gets that from me, as I’m not exactly comfortable around people, either, and she can tell. I fake it when necessary and act nice, but the dog isn’t into playing normal.

I’ve been advised to “keep that dog in, or somebody’ll shoot it for a wolf.”

Wolves are a thing around here. They attack livestock at all quarters around us. The official statistics are shocking, but I suspect the real ones are more than we hear about, as many wolf/human encounters end quietly with “shovel and shut up”.

Okay. I’ll tell you about the two scariest moments since we came out here!

The first was when we came camping, shortly after we bought the place, to burn brush piles. We were dry camping in the cold, just keeping that big fire going all day. After some many days I hit that point. I’d had it with the cold, the dirt and the heating up of canned soup for dinner. One evening I told Jeff I would stay and watch the fire, and he should drive down and get me a burger. That was before we had the dog.

He jumped in the truck. After he drove away it suddenly got dark and I mean black like a sheet of construction paper. I was shocked at how very alone I felt. “I’m not the kind to be afraid of the dark,” uh-huh. Right. The woods were watching me from every side. The fire wasn’t as much of a comfort as I had thought it would be (from all those Jack London stories). I’ll just say it, I was scared. I basically rotated around with my flashlight until Jeff came back.

What a lovely feeling to see headlights! Then I jumped into the truck, the heater was on, I could finally take off some of my layers of coats, I took off my boots too just for how lovely that felt. And there was a big, hot, juicy burger, with all the stuff, napkins and ketchup for the fries and dressing for the salad. I was restored to hope.

The other scary moment was some time after we moved out here. We were still camping in the little trailer. The Montana had been delivered and was mostly set up but not all the way. We hadn’t moved into it yet. Jeff went back to the rainy side by himself to get one last load of whatever he could salvage, leaving me with the dog.
I decided to move into the Montana while he was gone. There’s more indoor space, so it’s more comfortable to stay inside longer being a nervous female. After he left, I spent the afternoon moving stuff up there.
The sun was setting. On the last trip up to the Montana before going inside for the evening, the dog started to act all nervous and twitchy.
I thought it was just because Daddy was gone.
I wanted her to go potty before we went in so that we could stay in all night. She wouldn’t cooperate. Too distracted and didn’t want to go. I stood in front of the steps up to the Montana door yelling at her to go potty.
The Montana is pretty high when it’s all the way jacked up. Lots of clearance underneath. There are five steps to get up to the door.

Here’s a random picture from the internet showing us how much space there is under there, compared to that person’s legs.

The dog was refusing to go potty, so I gave up and called her.
She wouldn’t come, either.
I tried calling, and then coaxing.
What on earth is wrong with her? She usually comes right away.
She stood a short distance away from me, standing still, refusing to move, and then she started growling, showing her teeth, hackles bristling. She was looking straight at me like that, with her head down.
It was very disconcerting.
My dog has lost her mind? She’s turning against me? She’s going nuts. She has rabies.
Or…
There’s something right behind me.
She’s low enough that she can see it through the space under the Montana.
I tell ya, those were the five longest steps of my life. I climbed up inside, step, step, step, trying to move slowly like I wasn’t in a hurry.
But not too slowly.
When I got up in there I called the dog and she DASHED in after me. I slammed the door and I AM NEVER GOING OUT THERE AGAIN!!!
I never did. At least not until really late the next morning when the sun was high and everything looked less scary.

I looked around in the dust, expecting bear tracks, but I didn’t see any.
I did notice some big dog tracks, and thought, “Isn’t it funny how Poppy’s footprints spread out and look bigger in this loose dust?”
Later on I saw more of those big tracks in another area, and thought, “Well, there you go, I guess that really is how large her tracks are.”
Living proof of how stupid it is to cruise through life on autopilot, making assumptions instead of asking the pertinent questions, such as, “But ARE those Poppy’s tracks?”
The next evening, around dusk, I heard a classic sound I’ve never heard in real life before, only in the movies: arc– arc– arc– arOOOO.
That’s when two and two went together.
THERE WERE WOLVES IN MY YARD

Like her, except bigger and badder.

We don’t have to worry about her having to go out in the middle of the night. Her bladder is cast iron. She’s comfortable all night until ten in the morning and even then, doesn’t run to pee the first second she’s let out. She takes time to check the perimeter first.

She doesn’t bark. It’s true, a German Shepherd that almost never barks! Certainly I trained it into her. If she does that big loud bark indoors, I’d say NO angrily, and walk away and ignore her. But if she alerts another way, like quietly saying “brrrUFF”, I would run over and put my arm around her, and we would look out the window together.
But there are lots of dogs that such training would be whistling into the wind.

She’s a working dog, and her job is to keep that stick from escaping. She zooms like an arrow after it, stops with a skid or a tumble like a train wreck, but comes up with the stick in her teeth. It’s just as exciting even if it’s Mommy’s pathetic little throws. Every throw is the focus of her life, even the ones that land on the ground behind her.

She’s learned not to expect anyone to stop working to throw the stick. She’ll follow alongside me as I walk, nudging the stick into my hand, and I take it and toss it without even looking. Over and over and over…

She comes inside with her tongue hanging down, drinks a quart of water and then sleeps for hours.

She fits nicely on my lap. I wanted a lap dog and now I have one!

We are a good home for a dog. That means we’re a good home for us.

How long it takes me to really believe! Jeff has proved to me how many times that he is different and I don’t have to worry. Even when bad things happen to us, it turns out to be GOOD because it proves to me like nothing else could what a sterling character he is!
But I was still scared to get another puppy, after what other dogs suffered at that other place long ago.

Now the puppy has grown up and we’re a pack.

Okay, I remembered another scary thing. It was one night when I decided I wanted the mail. Jeff didn’t feel like going down there. I didn’t feel like waiting for morning. It’ll be a fun adventure! Going for a walk by the light of the silvery moon. Why not? Only half a mile down the hill in the snow.
I can’t say I enjoyed it. I was partly showing off how brave I am, which is a dumb reason to do things.
That dog started acting all dodgy again. I didn’t see or hear anything, but she slunk along looking nervously in all directions and wishing she was back at home until it got to me and I did, too.
At least I got the mail.
And two awesome pictures of the light of the silvery moon. Here is the same spot looking in two directions. One looking at the moon as it came over the hill, then I turned around and there’s what it was shining at.
The phone camera did a great job absorbing the light and making things more visible. To my eyes it was darker than this.

The crowning achievement of good girlness was just yesterday. I went outside to clean the ice chest because some meat had thawed a bit and bled all over the bottom. The big roast I was going to cook had so much blood in the bag that I opened it and let the blood run out on the ice for the dog to lick. She was happy to lick up fresh beef blood!
I put the roast on a paper plate on top of the other ice chest, rolled up the bloody bag in another bag and went inside to throw it away, and get some more paper towels and the spray.
Inside, I realized what I had done. I just served the dog a roast, basically. I left it on the ice chest at the height of her nose.
I hurried back out, prepared to take it away from her and wash it. I mean, it’s going to boil for hours, it’ll be FINE.
But she hadn’t touched it!
GOOD GIRL!