DON'T TELL MY SISSY!

 I did something I haven't done since, crap I don't even know!  And it is something I give my poor sister grief for.

Ages ago, even before I moved back to Kamloops after Bill died, there was a soiree of some sort at Kathy's house.  She made a spinach dip, every body's guilty, or not so guilty, pleasure.  There is nothing like dipping a piece of yummy sourdough into that creamy goodness and getting your first delicious taste.  Her spin dip looked fantastic and just as delicious as any I had seen before.  I grabbed a piece of bread, dipped deeply getting a bit of my fingers covered, and into the mouth and saaaaavvvvour....and WHAT????!!!!  It wasn't right!!!  It was sweet!!!  What the heck?  I accosted the poor girl with 'What did you do to this?'  'Well' she answers with a shrug, 'I was out of mayonnaise so I used Miracle Whip.'  

Now there are some things you can substitute or fool around with the ingredients, but miracle whip and mayonnaise are NOT interchangeable. No No No!!!!

Well poor Kathy.  I don't think I was overly subtle about the fact that Miracle Whip shouldn't even be in her fridge let alone in spin dip.  If you absolutely HAVE TO HAVE something resembling it for a certain recipe, just dump some sugar and vinegar into mayo and you have a pretty good facsimile of it.

And today, for the very first time since I lived in Westsyde when I was sixteen, I bought a weeny teeny tiny jar of.....MIRACLE WHIP!!!  I am making an experimental pasta salad soon and my spidey senses tell me that the miracle whip will be better than mayo.  Plus I am buying a lot of big delicious tomatoes and miracle whip absolutely is the way to go with tomato sammiches.  I remember from my teen years.  

Mom would buy boxes of local tomatoes to can, and in Kamloops with all that sun they are beyond amazing, and we would cut them up into quarters into a bowl, get another bowl of mw and dip and bite, dip and bite.  Soooooo good.

When Ange came up stairs for dinner she spied the miracle whip and made a pretty loud statement, 'wow!!! look what you bought!!!! After all you have said!!!!'  So I am eating crow...but just a half of a crow.

Now it is time to eat.  Salmon and or cod burgers and fries.  With or without Miracle Whip!  (that was the name of the piece of horse harness that hung behind the kitchen door and was the household strap.  Remember...it was totally era appropriate in the fifties.  And kids were sure well behaved back then.  Hmmmmm I wonder if that has something to do with the currant behaviour tendencies amongst the young!

Stay happy.  Hug a neighbour!  TTYL

THIS POST IS SOMEWHAT LEELOO ORIENTED

 I have always been very hard on people that make constant comments etc about their damned pets.  Or Furbabies, my most hated animal term.  In fact I have unfriended some people when they got a cat or dog because suddenly all their pics and posts are about their dog or cat.  And really I don't care.

That being said I am going to recount an incident that that little bully mutt Leeloo put me, poor embarrassed me, through.

It was poo time and I was in a hurry.  So out we go and as per usual she starts turning in a thousand circles finding the perfect spot to drop one. (hopefully fully drop and not get stuck on fur halfway down).  Turn turn turn and more turn turn turn.  Walk a little ways, stop and sniff the ground and turn and turn and turn.  POO ALREADY!!!  

April had told me that if you demand her to poo in a loud voice she will go.  So I yell GO POO!!!  She stops and stares at me.  So I yell GO POO!!! again.  She ignores me now, wanders off.  So I go and stand over her and in great frustration I yell, GO POO! GO POO! GO POO!!!!!!!

Well unbeknownst to me Harry next door was behind his lilac bush.  He steps out and yells over, "Okay okay okay....I'm going already!!!!!"  And heads toward his house.  And suddenly Nicole, the neighbour on the other side of us, "Gee I didn't need to go a few minutes ago but now I have to!"  OMG!!!  They heard me standing there, in my awful dirty, days old clothes, hair sticking out everywhere, no teeth in, screaming GO POO!!!!!  Can my life get any lower.  I earned my name Blister that day.

I am smoking.  Salmon that is!  Jonathon sold me a beauty a couple of days ago.  Poor Monte.  I made him descale and cut.  We don't know how to filet a fish and we def don't have the right knife.  So we horseshoed them and he made a brine up and left the fish in the brine for six hours.  Today is his birthday so I let him off the hook and I cut the horseshoe chops, cleaned them up, made monte get the smoker out, I cleaned it and got it set up outside and its already whistled through the first pan of chips.  

This is so bringing back memories of Bamfield.  I would can the massive 30pound plus fish and I would have Bill cut me enough pieces to fill the Little Chief and would smoke it through the day.  I could can and smoke about sixty pounds of fish at the same time!  My claim to fame.  And I don't even eat it.  

Now I am trying out my new crock pot.  It doesn't have a ceramic insert.  The insert is stick proof metal and light.  You can use it on the stove then put it in the cooker.  And so far I am loving it.

I have made pulled pork for the first time ever.  I started it yesterday and finished it today.  It looks just like pulled pork!  I put Diane's, this house's fave BBQ sauce, on it and it looks yummy.  Ange went over to QF and bought buns and coleslaw.  I am going to heat up some cooked beets I have in the fridge and eat those in a bun in place of the pulled pork.  Waaaaay better than any meat!!!

Today is Monte's 33rd birthday.  Tuesdays in this town is closed day.  So we took him to the Clam Bucket last night.  We had a veritable feast!!!  And it was so much fun!  He is cutting carbs right now and we didn't have a cake.  But I am thinking I might run over to QF and pick up something we can put candles in.  It doesn't feel like his birthday without candles.

So that's it for today people.  Enjoy this awesome weather, winter is coming!!!!  TTYL

WE DID IT!!!!!!!

100,071!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  We hit over 100,000 hits!  I sound like those peeps out there that live and breathe for social media recognition.  I don't actually but a hundred thousand is crazy!  I can't imagine people sticking it out and reading about my vacant, do nothing inspirational,  life.   

I have read a lot of blogs, well at least starts to blogs, and I find a lot of them get too preachy.  I am too old to be told how to improve my life.  I kinda like my imperfect uninspired flatline life!  Hahahaha!!!!

  In the past, when I look back, I was so damned busy with housewifey crap, babies (two sets of them fourteen years apart), a whole passel of step kids, a whole passel of dogs, a whole passel of houses, upsticks every summer to the summer house, for twenty years, did courses, worked,  did three major trips a year,  blah blah blah......now I do nothing!!!!  And I wouldn't change that for nuttin'!!!!  Ergo, I blog about nothing!

THE SHAMEFUL MESS I AM ABOUT TO WRITE ABOUT.  AS USUAL STUPID BLOGSPOT PUT THE DAMNED PIC IN THE WRONG PLACE.  

We have Leeloo right now and I am loving it.  But....she has created a ton of work for me in a very 'not her fault' way.

When I take her out to do her business, we walk around the side of the house to the back yard.  The back deck is up level with the main floor of the house.  This is not an area I am very well acquainted with.  There is no time I am ever down there looking at under the deck stairs and up onto the deck.  And I am horrified!  It frigging looks like a hoarders house!  I should take a picture here...a before one because there is no way is it going to stay that way now that I have seen it.

There are two old wrecked outdoor wooden rocking chairs, cans and garbage that the wind has blown down there, three or four Rubbermaids full of crap and water, and black mold all over the corrugated siding on the wall of the shed built into the deck underneath part.  OMG!!!  And Harry, OCD neat freak with the most beautifully kept yard in the world is right next door and looking at it!!!  I am surprised he hasn't said something.  So that is the next project.  I am commandeering Monte, fill the back of that truck for the dump and call a plumber to fix the outside pipes so we can power wash the mold away.  And I can see stuff, kitchen stuff, piled on a very visible table up on the deck.  Time to clean out.

I am taking a day off from cooking.  I made one of my massive pots of Mac and cheese last nite and roasted a massive ham on the bone.  The Mac and cheese was so good and now I have two very full zip locks of it in the freezer.  The ham is in the fridge.  I have told the household to hack away at it.  When it gets down in size I will freeze it for pea soup later.  I still have some in the freezer. Jeez I feel like my mother!  But her freezer was full of berries, crumbles and curried chicken!

Thats it for today.  Thank you to all you readers out there!!!!  A hundred thousand is all your accomplishment, not mine!!!!  TTYL

'A sane man who is untidy seems crazier than a tidy man who is insane.'  Mokokoma Mokhonana

SAD DECISION

Well I hope this isn't premature info but, I am going to sell Gladdy.  In fact I already have a buyer, someone close who shall remain nameless for the time being.  I need a smaller vehicle, easier to park, no blind spots, easier to get out of (I lose my virginity every time I climb out of that beast) and much better gas mileage.  I think the writing has been on the wall for a while but I am having a hard time to let her go.  But the potential buyer is very close to us so that makes me feel better.  And they are willing to pay Kelly blue book minus five thousand.  Lucky for me Jeeps do not depreciate at the same rate as other vehicles.    I am happy with that.

I was just taking Leeloo out for her morning ablutions.  As I was standing there as she turned in circles and turned in circles and turned in circles (what is with that anyway, all our poms did that), Harry, our next door neighbour, pulled into his driveway.  In a red jeep, a shiny, magnificent red jeep, a two door sport wrangler, just like Tank.  He just bought it!  It isn't brand new but you would never know it.  Now this guy is the same age as me, totally ocd bless his heart, but I tell ya he was like a 16 year old kid!  His eyes just lit up when he told me all the specs.  It almost makes me want to keep Gladdy so our neighbourhood can match.  The lady across the street has a two door blue one.  It's great to have an affordable four by four in this town for the two days a year it snows.

I have decided that for now my daily exercise plan is to cook.  When I bake or make a planned dinner or make freezer stuff like chilli or chicken and dumplings or Indian food, I am doing about ten thousand steps, up and down off the foot stool, twisting and turning, lifting heavy things up into upper shelves, bending over the dishwasher, hauling heavy garbage out to the bins, and most of all.....cooking with two different extremely heavy cast iron dutch ovens or two heavy cast iron large frying pans.  And this is an exercise I absolutely love.  This society now seems to think that unless you are in a gym, pool, or on a track, it doesn't count.  I blame the 1970's start of that show Participaction.  It's still going, making us feel guilty if we aren't regularly every day exercising.  But it is the only exercise show that suggests you pick something active you love doing and do it!!!  That works for me!!

  I don't know what it is about planning out and executing food that makes me so happy.  And what's more I can't eat most of it!  It is either meaty or too high a carb count for type twoers.    I am holding back here....my mind is on tonite's yummy dinner.  I am trying to not post about it!

I have a stat counter on my blog.  I don't know if you guys can see it or if just I can.  I started blogging in around 2005.  It was called the Laundry Room Shelf.   In 2010 I started to seriously write this blog.  I took the first four years, I left a very short 2009 there, off blogspot.  And I am about to hit 100,000 views by people.  I sure wish Bill could know.  He was so tickled that I was blogging and I always read the post to him before posting.  Sometimes he wanted me to write things that were funny, but not true or exaggerated.  I had to explain to him that one has to be completely honest or you would lose your credibility with the readers.  So every word I have written has been as true as I remember it or saw it.  I have loved writing every single post.  And I don't plan to quit! 

 And I want to thank all of you that so faithfully read every word, even now that blogspot doesn't email it to you, stupid blogspot, you guys out there keep me sane.  This is the most cathartic thing I do.  Thank you.  TTYL

'Blogging is NOT a get rich quick scheme.  It is more like a "work for free for a long time and therapy our reward" type of plan'. Anon.   So true!!!

THE PICS TODAY ARE HONOURING BILL'S BIRTHDAY AND FATHER'S DAY......EVERY SEVEN YEARS IT HAPPENS ON THE SAME DAY...THIS WAS TAKEN IN GERMANY I THINK. BILL EMILY APRIL

WE WALKED ALL OVER SKAGWAY AND FOUND THIS BENCH.  WHAT A FANTASTIC DAY THAT WAS.

CHAPMAN LAKE (NEAR BABINE) UP NORTH.  TAKING THE DOGS FOR AN ABLUTION WALK

A DAILY MORNING WALK TO A COFFEE KIOSK BESIDE A SAFEWAY WHERE HE COULD BUY A VANCOUVER SUN....IN KAUAI

MOVIE UNDER THE STARS ON SOME CRUISE SHIP SOMEWHERE...SOUND ASLEEP!

RESTING AT MAMMA'S FISH HOUSE IN MAUI WITH MONTE

BILL'S BEVVY OF LADIES ON THE YANGTZEE TRIP

BILL AT THE TERRA COTTA WARRIORS

 

JUNE 24TH...SO THEY SAY!

 Well it looks like our blissful peace will be coming to an end on June 24th, sort of.  The road will be open to single lane traffic indefinitely at that time.  The road between Port and past the fire location is going to be hella busy and slow.  It is busy on a normal day.  I can't imagine what single lane is going to do.  I think I will wait a while longer for my glasses and Myles and April will have to do without their little poof a little longer as well.

I have the worst most expensive housekeeper.  I will admit I am trying to replace both Milly or Alice, and it just isn't possible.  But holy hell!  Have you ever heard of a housekeeper that doesn't dust, doesn't wipe the tables, doesn't always wash the bathroom floor, doesn't vacuum all the way down the stairs, only halfway down, after being asked to go all the way down, doesn't ever wipe the stair bannisters, leaves dirty splashes on the backsplash in the kitchen, never cleans the microwave.....and leaves a half hour early.  And I pay her 35 bucks an hour.  But as long as she is better than nothing, I can't fire her.  And finding a different housekeeper is very difficult.  Plus she is the sweetest person on the planet.  It's hard to blast a sweet person.

I dug through one of the freezers a while ago to dig out some frozen salmon I have for supper tonite.  I have decided to cut the filets into three pieces and pan fry them.  I serve them with a béchamel (no tarragon though) dill sauce.  I chop up fake crab and add that to it as well.

So as they start thawing on the counter I hear my phone ding. It was a message from my awesome person who does the lawn.  He is native and is married to a native gal.  That gal fishes, very successfully.  Right now the sockeye (not my fave but I would never turn down a cheap salmon) are running.  What I like about them is they aren't too big.  My days of slinging giant salmon, forty pounds and up, are over.  In fact I only want what we can eat, no salmon in the freezer.  And Johnathon sells them to me for twenty bucks.  He is delivering it to me shortly and I must go put the Costco salmon (pinks, which are my favourite salmon) back into the freezer.

I am going to horseshoe the sockeye and panfry the steaks.  I used to do that with the coho that Bill and the kids would catch.  Any extra would be deep fried or cut into little chunks and marinated in maple flavouring and Thai chilli sauce then broiled under the broiler.  Mmmmmmmm........delish.

So on that note I shall disrupt a little dog between my knees (I would say legs but that doesn't ring right) shut this up and go put fish away and find a twenty dollar bill somewhere!

Have a great day and come visit when the road opens!!!  I will try to feed you fish, if you like it.  If not how about  prime rib roast and Yorkshires?  I already have the gravy by the bucket in the freezer!  TTYL

'OH NO!!!! Here come the Heymans again, with a huge giant unmanageable salmon under their arm.  Why can't they just bring zucchini like every other human we know.'  said everyone the Heyman's knew in the eighties and nineties.

TRAPPED, HAPPILY TRAPPED

 I received a phone call yesterday from my darling brother.  He phoned me up to simply give me the gears about being trapped here due to the highway closure due to the forest fire.  What a peach I say!!!

Well the last laugh was on him.  I am loving the closure.  It's keeping all those yuppy overdressed skinny people headed for Tofino out of this town and out of our stores.  I am quite happy about that.  And all the ones that were already here, trapped, headed out on the Bamfield road.  Hahahaha!!!!  Little did they know.  Rollovers, crashes, flat tires, eating extraordinary amounts of dust, slow slow slow, four hours of hell on wheels.  I wonder how many of them, fresh out of their five star hotels, treated the experience as an adventure or how many chose to whine and freak.  I'd love to know.

Well we may have covid in the house again,  Monte and Ange are sick, the same symptoms as last time.  Monte did a test and it came out with one dark line and one faint one.  I am waiting for him to do another test when he wakes up.  So far I feel like a hundred bucks.

When Aryn was here over the weekend we were sharing tastes of food and tastes of tequila.  Sigh.  We were hugging etc...you know.  I hadn't seen her in forever.  So I hope she doesn't get it.  I know she saw a friend just before she came who turned out to have covid but I think that was way too earlier to be the culprit.  Not that it matters, I just don't want her getting it.  Due to my past smoking she has lung issues.  Guilt guilt guilt.

Well there is no smoke coming up over the back side of the bluffs.  I have a feeling the fire is pretty much out.  They weren't starting on fixing the road or fixing the now unstable very steep bluffs above the road, there apparently are many slides and boulders coming down, until the fire was completely out.  I have a feeling unless the slopes are stable, it is going to be a few days before our road is open again.  At least supplies are getting through on the Bamfield detour.  Those poor truck drivers, having to deal with all the greenhorn drivers heading in and out.  Normally they are going past my open window at five in the morning.  Now they are going by sporadically much later in the day.

Last night the oddest thing happened.  I had fallen asleep in my beloved chair.  At three am on the nose about ten or twelve gunshots went off just outside our house.  At least it was ten or twelve very very LOUD bangs that sounded like a gun.  I don't know what else it could be.  Scared the dickens out of me!!!  No way was I going to go stand in the window to see who was shooting up the neighbourhood!!!!  I could just see the household getting up in the morning to find me dead on the floor, surrounded by blood that they wouldn't be able to see because it blends in so well with my carpet colour and a hole in the window.  No way was I getting out of my chair.  In fact I flattened it out to make myself a smaller, ummm...not much smaller, target.  Ange didn't hear it, she was sound asleep.  What bothers me the most is that I will never know what it was.

Well due to inactivity, thats it for this post.  If we do have covid here I will have to cancel our housekeeper again.  I think I will pay her anyway.  I don't want her quitting, even if she isn't like Alice or Millie were.  Gee I miss them.  They set the bar high.

Take care folks, be happy and TTYL

'You know you are an adult when you get excited to just go home.'  anon.....ain't that the truth!!!!

TWO WEEKS!!!!!!

 Holy cats!!!  This is definitely the longest I have gone not posting.  My apologies!!!  It has been a busy busy couple of weeks.  Nothing too amazing except for one thing.  ARYN CAME FOR A BIRTHDAY VISIT!!!!!!!

It was her birthday yesterday and she came over on Saturday.  It was so awesome and timely to see her.  I haven't seen her since last July, almost a year.  That is a crazy long time to not see your kid!!!!  That is NOT normal for us.

I drove her around to see a few things.  One of them was our new camp ground just outside Port up at Loon Lake.  It is literally five minutes from Port and it is beautiful.  It is camping the way camping should be....on a beautiful little lake that just got stocked with fish and has a trail right around it, right beside a defunct railroad that you can hike to a trestle above Cameron Lake, every single site, and there are tons and tons of them, is treed and serviced, the host that stays at the gate and boat launch area is always on site and has tons of firewood available and if you really need ice or beer or whatever, the nearest liquor store is five minutes away and so are the grocery stores and a Starbucks, but seriously, you would never know.  You feel like you are truly out in the sticks.  Ask Aryn.  She can tell you!!!  And if you are jonesing for the ocean, it is ten minutes away.

After an amazing delicious lunch, thank you Arnie, at the Clam Bucket, we went for another drive the other way.  We went out past Cameron, a logging headquarters, onto the pretty rough and very very dusty Bamfield road to see the broom field of yellow.  And then we took the shortcut that we always took back in the Bamfield days to the highway right across from Loon Lake campground entrance. 

As we drove along we noticed smoke rising above what looked like Cathedral Grove.  As it turned out it was just a tad further above the highway where it runs along Cameron Lake.  Of course they didn't get to it as quickly as they should have and now it is out of control and burning our forest.  They have closed Coombs market (goats on the roof) and briefly they had to close the highway.  Looking out my window at the moment I can see the smoke, tons and tons of smoke billowing out.

Last nite we three, Monte, Ange and I took Arnie to dinner at our birthday restaurant, Little Bavaria.  (if I make mistakes it is literally because Leeloo keeps laying her head on the keyboard). People come from Nanaimo, an hour away, to go to this restaurant.  Imagine...little stinky old Port has a famous restaurant in it!!!  The schnitzel is to die for!  I get their vegetable dish.  It is crazy.  Broccoli, cauliflower,  carrots, spatzel, rice, rosti potatoes, red cabbage, cheese sauce, rye bread and I always, always, start the meal with snails, garlicky, buttery escargot.  And then I finished it off with amazing apple strudel.  They all had prawns and meat and things.  We had so much fun.  I will post some pics.

All in all it was an amazing week end.  She brought aforementioned Leeloo, who, in April's and Myles's absence has velcroed herself to me.  Holy Hannah!  Crazy little dog!!!

April and Myles are winging their way to Lyon France.  The week leading up to departure though almost did her in!  She planned, with three other girls, a baby shower for forty people.  This shower was the day before they were to leave!  What was she thinking????

But I guess Myles saved the day.  Her friend, with a ten month old active motoring baby stayed the night before and in April's tiny tiny kitchen proceeded to make a cake and decorate it.  Myles helped look after the baby.  He also cleaned.  He also made amazing fancy sandwiches.  He also transported the girls and all the decorations and food etc....to the community hall where it was being held.  Later he picked them up and helped them clean up etc... How many husbands out there are like that I ask!!!!!!

Well now the smoke has grown exponentially and is creeping over the sky to cover Port.  What a shame.  Our beautiful forest is being decimated.

Take care people.  Enjoy this glorious weather!  TTYL

'inviting all my high school buddies to my baby shower, proving to them once and for all I have had sex.'  The Dad   (a tweet)

SLOAN HEYMAN...OUR LATEST BABY...BILL'S SON BRAD AND DANA'S SON RHYS'S BABY....IN OTHER WORDS A GREAT GRAND DAUGHTER....THE CUTEST BABY 

IN HER FAVE SPOT

FREDERICK LAKE...ON THE WAY TO BAMFIELD....THE LAKE MONTE WOULD HAVE DROWNED IN IF NOT FOR KATHY AND JOCELYN

THE CLAMSHELL...CONCERT HALL AT THE MARINE STATION IN BAMFIELD

THE CABLE MONUMENT MADE FROM THE LAST CABLE LAID ACROSS THE OCEAN TO AUSTRALIA.

WAY WAY UP AN OLD LOGGING ROAD

A DIFFERENT DAY A DIFFERENT ROAD...ARNIE

ANGE AND ARYN AT HER BIRTHDAY PARTY....BEING SILLY

I CAN'T BELIEVE BOTH OF THEM CAME OUT OF ME...THE TWO BABIES OF MY TWO BATCHES