Long Live the Dragon

My landlord will not repay me. He wouldn't tell me this himself, he made his wife do it and she got offended that I even asked. They told me a lot of bullshit and denied any responsibility and offered no apologies. And I STILL haven't got anyone over here to clean the furnace. Apparently the dragon has settled in for the duration.

Cat Head Biscuits

In answer to Muddy Water's question:

Cat head biscuits are just biscuits. The name comes from the shape and size; it looks like a cat's head, minus the ears.

My mother taught me how to make biscuits when I was 7 years old. These biscuits have only three ingredients and they aren't hard to make but they do require a little finesse to get the desired size and color.

I can tell you how to make them, but I can't give you the amounts because I just don't know. I go by how it looks because that's how my mother taught me. Several years ago I tried to write the recipe down and I called my mother to ask her how much flour to use and she couldn't tell me. She thought about it for a while and gave me her best guess. So if you want to make them you'll just have to experiment.

Preheat the oven to 375. Grease a cast iron skillet with Crisco then add a little more Crisco in the mixing bowl. I use three fingers worth. I guess that's a generous tablespoon.

Shift self-rising flour into the bowl. I'm going to say 2 cups of flour. Dump more flour onto a plate. Don't bother shifting this, it's for coating purposes, not for cooking.

Add buttermilk to the shifted flour. I can't even guess how much. You want a sticky dough. I add the buttermilk slowly, mixing as I go until it feels right. An important note- it is very easy to add more buttermilk but difficult to add more flour to the mix.

Mix well. I use my hands. Dough should feel sticky and there shouldn't be any flour clinging to the bowl nor should there be any traces of milk.

Now for the messy part which is a little hard to describe. You want to pinch off a ball of dough and coat with flour, which is why you dumped some on a plate. However, you want to knock off all the excess flour. So with my left hand I grab some dough and with my right I grab flour and then I sort of juggle. I toss the dough into my right hand, add more flour with my left, then toss it back and forth until the extra falls off. Then I shape the biscuit and place it on my greased skillet.

Expect flour to go everywhere. Do not be surprised when bits of dough fall to the floor. If the Universe is conspiring against you the phone will ring as soon as you make the second biscuit. (I keep a damp rag nearby for this emergency.) I don't bother cleaning up the mess until the biscuits are in the oven.

When the biscuits are made brush the tops of them with bacon drippings or melted butter. Sometimes I use steak marinade.

Place the biscuits on the bottom oven rack. Let them cook for about 15 minutes the move to the top rack. The bottom is where the actual cooking takes place and the nice tan color occurs in the top rack. Leaving biscuits on the bottom too long makes them hard and moving them up too soon makes them chewy.

I realize this recipe is a heart attack waiting to happen. I'm sure there are healthier substitutions, I've just never wanted to mess with a good thing. I suggest making them a few times to get the technique down. Like I said before, it's not hard but it does require practice. It took a long time before mine looked right. And even though I make mine the same way my mother does, my biscuits look nothing like hers. Mine are bigger. Hers are browner. Neither mine nor Mom's looks like Granny's biscuits. It's ok, they all taste the same.

Busy

Before I can explain what I have been doing I first must figure out what day it is. Ah, yes, it is payday. I know this because I am already broke.
Today I had to go buy things for work because it's cheaper than having work order what I need. Tomorrow I get my money back so I will be slightly less broke for a brief period of time (all of three hours).
Yesterday I cooked. Now I despise cooking but when I cook I actually cook, no opening of cans and boxes here. Kevin helped some by grilling the steaks. I made the sweet tea, roasted the corn, made the cat head biscuits and set the table. I also fed the dogs and made the coffee for today and put the laundry in the dryer. This morning I got up at five and washed all the freakin' dishes from last night. Kev does not do dishes.
My grandmother once said if she was ever going to wish anything bad on someone it would be to cook three square meals a day. She said if you cook three times a day there was no escaping the kitchen and this is true because when I got up Tuesday morning I put the steaks in marinade and on Monday night I got them out of the freezer to thaw so technically the main dish of Tuesday's meal took 24 hours to prepare. 36 hours if you count this morning's dish washing. That's why I rarely cook.
I don't remember what the heck I did on Monday (besides getting out the steaks) but I do know that all this week I've had plans to quilt and I haven't gotten there yet.
Actually...if I want to quilt why I am I writing? Gotta go.

Dragons, Seeds, and Quilting to Mozart

The gas company was supposed to come out yesterday and clean the furnace. At 11:15 I called because no one had shown up and no one had called. I was informed that the repair man had pushed back my appointment. Then the girl asked if we could do it Monday. I told her no, I would be at work Monday and I had taken the day off (Friday) so I really wanted my furnace cleaned that afternoon. She said someone would be out soon, but of course they weren't. What peeves me is Monday I scheduled the cleaning and ordered gas. Tuesday I called to double check the prices. Wednesday I went to the office and paid for the gas AND for cleaning the thermocouple which the trailer park was supposed to pay and didn't. On Thursday the gas was delivered. Every day this week someone in that office has spoken my name, so it's not like they forgot. And this is how they treat me after I pay a bill that has been delinquent for a year and wasn't even mine?!! Aaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhhhhhh! So for now the dragon still rumbles under the house.

On a happier note I decided to plant some seeds. Yes I know it's the wrong season but I want to plant something, dammit. Yesterday I got some pots and arranged them along my steps and whenever it stops raining I'm going to plant poppies. I am working on the premise that the seeds will winter over and burst forth in the spring. If not it's ok because the seeds were free.
I did a little weeding yesterday (it's amazing how much work you can get done while waiting for a no-show) and discovered that my foxglove came back. Foxglove makes a beautiful tall tower of cone shaped flowers hence the folk name witch's thimbles. It is poisonous. It's also used to make heart medication, so it's not all bad. Foxglove doesn't do very well here due to the intense summer heat. I planted it 2 years ago and around late July my plants withered up and died. They didn't an appearance last year. I plan on putting drip irrigation around them. I'll let you know if that works.

It's raining here today so I decided it would be a good day for quilting. I put on some Mozart and pieced three rows. Then I noticed I slowed down so I took a break to post this. I think when I go back in my sewing room I should switch to music with a faster beat. Maybe rock 'n' roll.

The Smaller the Better

Even thought it’s January I have begun my garden. That means I am in the planning stage. Actually I began in December. I may started too late. My main problem is narrowing down choices. I love seed catalogs. I love them so much the pages get crumpled and wrinkled. But that’s ok because before I can completely wear out the precious little book I get another one with still more glorious choices. I only subscribe to one seed catalog. Any more would be sensory overload.

I came to gardening late. I grew up on a farm and each year my father would plant a HUGE garden. I’m talking four rows of corn stretching from one end of the field to the next. Five rows of butterbeans, three rows of peas, watermelons, okra, squash, more beans, and four kinds of tomatoes plus two kinds of peppers, marigolds, turnips, and whatever else he wanted to experiment with. My parents decided gardening would build my character, thus I was the water bearer. I mean that exactly the way it sounds. I had a little plastic bucket that I watered the garden with. Not the whole thing, but I would be given a row, say the peppers, and Dad would fill up a 5 gal. bucket with water. I would dip my little bucket in the big one and lug it down to the plants, watering one at a time. Dad sat in the shade and watched me. When the big bucket got low he refilled it. This seemed to go on forever. I suppose he thought it was cute. I thought it was work.

Besides watering I also had to shell peas. I didn’t like vegetables so doing so much work for something I wasn’t going to eat made it all the more torturous. This was another chore that seemed to go on forever. My mother would set me in a chair, put newspaper over my lap and dump a pile of pods on me. She’d set a pot on one side of me to throw the peas in and more newspaper on the floor to throw empty hulls on. I’d have so many pea pod in my lap I couldn’t get up. I’d come close to getting done and she’d say, “Here, finish these peas while I go wash dishes.” and she’d hand me the ones she had been shelling. When she came back she say, “Oh good, you’re almost done with those. I’ve got some more for you.” My thumb turned green.

After the growing season ended I had to pick up bean poles and stack them for the next year. The poles were cane and had sharp points all over them from the leaves. They were very dry and most of them broke. They were light so they tended to blow away. Putting up bean poles isn’t much better, but at least there’s something to look forward to because when the vines grow up they make a cool green tent.

After doing all this work I decided gardening wasn’t for me. A few years ago my father got a little smarter and planted the garden closer to the house which meant no longer trekking in the humidity. He also wisely planted the garden near the drainage ditch and within reach of the hose pipe. Finally he made the garden small. He still plants a wide variety, just not so much of it. Now it’s five or six plants instead of five rows.

This made the garden all very charming. Gardens should be little. The smaller the better. I don’t think anything large should be called a garden. When a garden gets too big it becomes a property. Puttering around a garden is fun. You can’t putter around a property. All you can do is maintain it.

Charmed as I was by that small space I could still see the work involved. I am opposed to work and I avoid it whenever possible. In order to avoid breaking the ground and chopping weeds I created a container garden.

Container gardens are wonderful. Easy to start and easy to maintain. If something dies I simply remove the pot. I don’t have to worry about unsightly bare spots. Weeds don’t have much of a chance to become established. If a storm is brewing I can take the entire garden in the house where it will be safe. I can add to it. I can give it away. But what I love best about a container garden (and this is very silly) is I can rearrange it. One day I can have roses growing next to peppers and the next day I can have the peppers beside the aloe. During the summer I move the pots around every single day and it makes me so happy.

I must get back to my seed catalog and order some more pots. I only have 78 or so.

Ripples in the Pond (A Better Title Than the Phone Co Sucks)

Muddy Waters read my last post which reminded her of a story and her story reminded me of a story so who knows what this may bring

I believe the worst thing ever invented is the telephone. Of course they’re handy- if you are the one calling. It’s rarely handy for the person answering. Someone once told me that answering a phone was volunteering for something. I think she’s right. Whenever the phone rings and you answer you are agreeing to sit and listen which is hard to do. And how many of these calls are important? My man calls me and doesn’t say anything because we have nothing to talk about. We spend so much time together that he already knows everything that happens in my life as soon as it happens. It’s sweet that he thinks about me so much but the no talking phone calls are kinda pointless. Thoughtful, but pointless. Maybe 90% of the bad news I have received in my life came to me via phone. Of course, I don’t like to talk anyway. I rarely speak. I don’t even say hello to people I meet, I usually nod and wave. I am one of the quiet ones and you know what they say about us.

Maybe my quiet nature is the bias of my phone revulsion. Or maybe it comes from having to deal with the one phone company that has gone through four name changes in 20 years. Maybe they are shady and always have been. My mother used to work for them and she actually went on strike. Maybe they kept changing their name but failed to improve service. Come to think of it, the phone company has annoyed me several times. But in order to keep this post readable I shall to stick with just the story of why I don’t have a house phone.

I probably shouldn’t tell you the company’s name. That might offend them and it would give a clue to where I live. But on the other hand, I feel I should warn folks. So I’ll do this, the first name I remember this phone company having was South Central Bell. SCB got a little big so the government made them divide up and create another, smaller company (more on that in a minute) So SCB became Southern Bell. Then they became BellSouth. Then BellSouth was purchased by that smaller company created 20 years ago which defeats the purpose of dividing to begin with. And that is the company that pissed me off and I won’t tell you their name but their initials are AT&T.

I pay most of my bills online because my crazy neighbor used to steal my mail and thus my truck payment wouldn’t make it to Nissan. She didn’t try to cash the check or anything, she just…took it. I don’t know why. Sometimes she would collect my packages and keep them for a week or so before putting them back on the porch. I think it’s her way of controlling me.

Anyway, I pay bills online and I had more trouble with the AT&T website than all the others combined. One night I tried five times to pay my phone bill and the site froze on me every time so I gave up and called it in. The next day I checked my email and I had two payment confirmations. Confused, I checked my phone bill balance which was negative $98.67

Ok, simple mistake. I called the phone company. I went through four different people in three different departments before I got someone to help me. I calmly explained what happened and asked that he take one of those payments off.

“Nope. We can’t do that. But we will allow the $98.67 credit to be applied to your next bill.” To which I replied, “I bet the bank can do something.”

Indeed the bank could stop payments. But the catch was I had to stop BOTH payments. They claimed they wouldn’t know which payment would be valid and that if I wished to pay a similar amount to the phone company in the future I would need to call the bank and inform them, otherwise the bank would stop that payment too. The bank did promise not to charge me if I became overdrawn, but that wouldn’t stop me from being broke. So I did this:

I stopped both payments. I waited until my balance returned to a positive number. Then I paid 70% of the bill which is AT&T’s requirements for a partial payment. The next week I paid the rest of it. I thought that settled it.

Nope.

My next phone bill was more than double the normal amount. AT&T charged me TWO cancelled check charges and TWO late fees and then they changed my due date shorting the cycle from 30 days to 20.

So I paid all that and canceled my service. The whole time I was canceling the AT&T rep was trying to sell me DSL. I ended up calling again the next week because they only turned off my phone- they didn’t turn off my Internet service. Of course I had to go through another department because the phone part of AT&T doesn’t deal with the Internet part so I was left wondering how a phone rep could make a sales pitch about DSL.

The next month I received a bill for (brace yourself, it’s huge!) $1.89

In case you are wondering I have a cell phone and Internet service though the cable company- way faster than DSL.

The Dragon Under the House

This is what’s going on in my life right now:

Over a year ago I started having problems with my furnace. My landlord, being a cheap old goat, wouldn’t actually fix anything. He’d just get it going again which resulted in me calling either him or his worthless assistant every three days and missing a lot of work.

At some point I ran out of gas and called the gas company to deliver another 100 gallons. The gas man very generously offered to relight the pilot for me. Since I fear I may blow my eyebrows off I agreed. I mean just how smart can it be to stick a lit match into a stream of gas? That’s a design flaw if I ever saw one.

Anyway, he couldn’t get the pilot to light and he determined that it must be dirty and needed cleaning. So he took the thermocouple back to the shop and later in the afternoon another gas man returned it, installed it, and lit my pilot light thus keeping my eyebrows intact.

Now I am renting the trailer, so this is not my furnace. It belongs to the trailer park and thus they are responsible for it’s upkeep. Which means once a year my landlord should come clean the damn thing so the thermocouple doesn’t get clogged. But he doesn’t which is why the gas man ended up with the job.

That didn’t really solve my problem because the entire furnace is dirty, not just the thermocouple. So whenever I turn on the heat it sounds like a roaring dragon breathing fire under the trailer. I adore dragons, but this makes me very nervous. I asked my landlord several times to just clean the furnace. He didn’t think it was dirty so he ignored me.

Roughly 6 months ago the worthless old goat of a landlord sold the trailer park to a company that actually owns several properties and overall seemed very professional. I was very hopeful. That lasted until fall when the pilot light went out.

I tried several times and could not light it. Thinking it was just my fear keeping me from really sticking a lit match into a stream of gas, I asked my boyfriend to help me. He couldn’t light it either. We huddled in the floor for an hour, pressing the button, turning it off, turning it on, fumbling with match after match, consulting the directions again and again…It just was not working.

The next day, as luck would have it, my new landlord was in the park working on a wiring problem next door. Cheered by a landlord actually fixing something, I hurried over and explained my problem. He came over promptly and that’s when everything went to hell.
First he informed me that I was out of gas. I wasn’t and it was ridiculous for him to say so because he didn’t even go out to the tank and look at the gauge. We argued about this for a bit and just to prove me wrong, he took the pilot out of the furnace and tried to lit it with a blow torch (dangerous!)

Much to his annoyance, the pilot actually lit as he was telling me for the umpteenth time that I was out of gas. Score one for me.

It was a short lived victory, however. He concluded my matches weren’t “powerful” enough and suggested that I invest in a long lighter instead of those kitchen matches. He said my match wasn’t reaching the flame. Now the long lighter he’s talking is shorter than a long kitchen match so I don’t know what in the hell he was thinking, if he was thinking at all. The fact that it took a blow torch to light the pilot should be a clue that all is not well with the furnace dragon, but evidently this tidbit also escaped him.

Next he told me that I had a fairly new furnace so I really shouldn’t be having any problems. Let me tell you, Readers, that my trailer is over 10 years old. The furnace is the factory original.
By now I was a good bit irked and said so. To pacify me, my landlord promised to clean the whole thing if it would make me feel better. I said it would and he promised to stop by ‘one day next week’

He never showed.

Well, I take that back, one day he appeared in front of my house and sat in his van staring at me through my open door until I got up and walked onto the porch. Then he sped away. Maybe the dragon scared him.

Let’s see, that was October 2008. Soon after I brought another 100 gallons and when I went to pay the gas company informed me that I had a $90 charge on my bill. I was stunned. I always pay. What was this? Cleaning the thermocouple. But the trailer park said they would pay. They didn’t.

I was very embarrassed. I felt like a deadbeat, even though it wasn’t really my debt because I don’t own the trailer. I obtained a copy of the bill and took it to the trailer park office which was closed. I forgot that they close early on Wednesday. I guess avoiding people is a lot of work and it’s easier to do it with rather brief office hours. I put the bill in the mail slot. I didn’t hear another word about it so I naively assumed that the new landlord paid it. After all, when he purchased the park he assumed both the assets and the debt.

Now it is January 2009 and time to buy gas again. I’m not out, but I am low and I am tired of being stingy with the heat. It would be nice to have a comfortable warm bedroom at night instead of turning the heat down to 60 and putting extra blankets on the bed. It would be nice to come home to a warm house in the evenings instead of a 55 degree house.

Now guess what the gas company said when I ordered another 100 gallons? Yes. Exactly. There’s an unpaid balance of $90 on your bill. This time I got the impression that they wouldn’t deliver the gas until they got paid. And I don’t blame them, I would want my money too.

It’s a gamble. I would continue to be heat stingy and maybe ride out the winter. But if we have a long winter or cold temps I am screwed. Even if the weather suddenly turns warm I will be in this same boat later unless I move. Of course, if I end up dealing with the same gas company in a new place the boat will be following me.

So I broke down and paid up. While I was at I coughed up more bucks to have the furnace cleaned. Might as well stop worrying about that dragon.

When I go to pay the rent next month I intend to bring up all of this again with the landlord. There is the slightest possibility that I will be reimbursed. I doubt it. It may help if I bring the dragon. Do dragons eat landlords?

Bottle Tree Theft

Today I discovered that someone has stolen my bottle tree.

Not the actual tree itself, because it is a live sweetgum still firmly planted in the ground, but they stole all the bottles hanging in the tree, along with the hooks that held the bottles in place.

I am just assuming that some fool can't recognize Southern Culture when they see it so they took down what they considered trash and threw it away.

Now I'll have to find some other way to frighten ghosts.

Sigh. It was such a nice bottle tree, too.

It's the End of the World- Again

Dooms Day looms large. Or at least everybody thinks it does. Seems like every night this week while flipping channels I’ve run across some documentary on 2012 which is when the ancient Mayan calendar ends. Since this 2,000 (or 5,000 I forget which) calendar ends on 2012 most people seem to be drawing the conclusion that the world as we know it will end. I’m thinking 1,000 years is a heck of a long time to calculate and maybe that was just a good stopping point. Maybe they ran out of space. I found it odd that the Mayans can figure out the exact date the world ends but they couldn’t predict their own civilization’s end.
Then there’s this thing called the web bot project were computers scan the Internet and looks for prophecy. It was originally designed to pick stocks, but a tech was analyzing the data one day and realized something much more foreboding was in the works. He predicted life in America would change as we know it and then 9/11 happened. So now web bot searches for the end of the world by scanning the Net and looking for particular words and phrases.
So here’s the thing- wouldn’t it be a chain reaction?
Let us say that The History Channel does a show on 2012 and then half the bloggers in America watches and writes about it. This in turn reminds their readers of say the Heaven’s Gate Cult. So they post comments and then web bot scans the Internet and reports that there is a rise in cult like beliefs of the world ending. A journalist gets wind of the story and does a televised report which results in ten million Americans running to their computers and Googling The Book of Revelations. Web Bot reports a greater increase in the belief that the world is coming to an end.
Then let us say that a natural disaster occurs- Hurricane Katrina all over again. And the whole worlds shouts, ‘see? The end of days is nigh!’
All of this is rather depressing so I decided to counteract the doom with these predictions:
In 2012 world peace will finally occur. We will have the best Christmas ever, complete with snow.
January 2013- realizing 2012 was nothing everybody throws a big party. Due to the increase in spending, the American economy finally stabilizes.
Valentine’s Day 2013- still riding the high from the last two months, every couple in America either gets married or renews their vows. Divorce becomes a bad word.
2014- the first new baby boom
2020- the new baby boomers start school and thus there is a renewed interest in education. The American public school system becomes the best in the world.
2021- the whole world finally goes green so that our children can truly inherit the earth.

Saving more bytes

I decided to clear out the computer once again. So here is a few goddesss for you to enjoy.

I swear, really

I do promise to write more this year (see, it's only 7 days since my last post rather than the usual 35) It's just that sometimes what I am thinking never actually gets to the 'net. I think of tons of good subject matter at work, but alas, they would frown on my blogging. I really would like to work from home. Then when I had a thought I could jot it down and develop it later and thus blog like there's no tomorrow. I marvel at the people who write every single day. I simply can't grasp it. Of course, one of these every day blogs I read has the blog connected to her esty shop, so I suppose blogging is a necessity for profit. But still, wow.
Some other things that amaze in life:
The sheer stupidity of the human race. It's a wonder some people haven't wandered out into traffic and nailed by a bus. Of course, that is what the Darwin Awards are all about.
The nighttime sky. I can't think of anything more beautiful. Some people feel small when they view the stars and I don't understand that at all. I look up and think, I am part of this. I am a connection to perfection. Somewhere in the universe another being is looking up and feeling the same way I do.
The fact that I can make so much money and still be so broke.
The fact that 10% of the population controls 90% of the wealth.
The volume of paper money in the world. Every time I see a drug bust on television and the drug dealers have pallets of money stacked in the living room I am amazed. How can they accumulated so much and not be noticed sooner?
I am amazed at how my dogs fight over toys. I give both of them the same thing, say each gets a tennis ball, and they will steal each other's ball repeatedly. Like 100 times in one hour. And. They. Are. The. SAME.
I am flabbergasted that I wrote this whole post without making some kind of notes beforehand. Maybe I can write every day.

Love Lost in LaGrange

Happy New Year!
Being that it IS a new year I decided to be more attentive to my blog. Therefore I offer this post:
I met the love of my life in a bar. Unfortunately, I lost him in the next instant. It happened this way:
My cousin was getting married, so she wanted to make a complete break with a man she was sleeping with. They weren't dating, they just always slept together no matter if one or the other was in a relationship or not. Like fuck buddies. So anyway, my cousin wanted to take the high ground and end it. She dragged me along for moral support.
However, there was nothing for me to do. She knew what she wanted, so she didn't need my advice. I didn't know the guy, so I couldn't offer an opinion anyway. There was nothing for me to do in that bar but drink. And drink I did.
I had four beers. At some point my cousin called her future husband and he told her not to drive home, he would come get us. So I decided to really drink and I straggered up to the bar and ordered a Jack and Coke.
Let me just interject this advice- never, ever, ever mix beer with hard liquier. Never. On with the story.
As I swayed drunkenly before the bar, I felt something on my hip. I looked down and saw a hand. In slow drunk motion I turned around to find the hand's owner. He was tall and tan and blond (I don't even like blond men and he turned me on; he was THAT handsome) and he had the most beautiful ocean eyes I ever saw. Do you know the kind I mean? Somewhere between blue and green and glowing?
He pulled me closer to him and my heart stopped. He leaned closer and said,
"You're standing in between me and my drink."
I said oh, and moved away. He got his drink and started walking off. It occured to me to say something, but I couldn't think what. But I knew I must have that man so I grabbed my glass and tried to follow.
But he was gone.
It was if the crowd swallowed him. I wandered all over that bar and couldn't find him anywhere.
Depressed, I finished my drink.
I later was too drunk to walk up a wheelchair ramp.
End of story.