All The Fixin's

Oh boy! It's Fat Tuesday and Bob and I are no slouches when it comes to celebrating Mardi Gras. (Or anything else!) So we found out our local bakery makes King Cakes and you best believe we ordered early. I think it was my sister Cathy (Hi Cathy!) who bequeathed us the assorted beads, masks and plastic shot cup (on a bead string to wear around your neck... wouldn't want to lose the shot glass.) So with all the accoutrements in place, we're almost ready.

What, you may ask, are we going to consume pre-King Cake? Good question as even we aren't so debauched as to eat only cake for supper! Bob's making muffulettas. I knew you were going to ask! Muffulettas are ham, turkey (and in our case) capicola with olive salad and cheese on a sesame bun (*1) It's pretty hard to go wrong with this combination of things; we went shopping this morning to obtain the ingredients and I can't wait. 

But of course, the excitement really comes from that crazy cake, with the baby stuck in it. (*2) But Bob and I remarked... Hey! Wait a minute! This cake is SMALL!! Like half the size of a traditional King Cake! Like they're supposed to be oval!! Alas! Looks great but... where's the rest of it?! (*3)

(*1) In New Orleans, they make this on a large, round loaf of bread that gets cut into quarters but we must make do with individual rolls. It still tastes great, regardless of shape and size of the bread!

(*2) For some reason, I think the plastic baby represents the Babee Jesus. The King Cakes we bought in past years had the baby taped to the top of the box and one of us had to insert the baby into the cake. That's no fun because then one of us knows where the baby is. It's supposed to be a surprise. Also, the person who gets the baby buys next year's King Cake. In this case, the bakery placed the baby.

(*3) KInd of an oblique reference to ""King's Row" an old movie that that awful Ronald Reagan was in. See? King Cake? King's Row? Royal pain in my ass!
 

Timber!

See the tree labeled "this tree"? Yup, that one was slated to come down. Bob was insisting that he was going to fell it; I was equally adamant that I wanted him to remain alive (for some obscure reason...) Anyway, I recalled that my riding instructor Maiya had mentioned that her boyfriend Kyle did tree work so I thought to inquire as to whether this tree was within his abilities. He came and looked and we wound up hiring him to take down four trees altogether.

Damn! I missed the felling of the first one as I had gone to the house to retrieve my camera. Oh well. It came down clean and no one was laying on the ground crushed and dying (except the tree...) so that was good. One down and three to go!

This next tree looked nasty as it was a two-trunked monster and as you can see, Bob and Maiya were roped in to helping. The line they're pulling is hooked by a come-along to another tree further out in the swamp. The rope helps guide the tree to fall where you want it to. So while tension is placed on the right hand tree trunk, Kyle can cut it and leave the left half intact without fear of the tree twisting back and snapping. It's all a bit nerve wracking but hey! they knew what they were doing! (Me? I just take pictures and pray...)

Here Bob is demonstrating his ability to tight rope walk along the tree after it came down. Fun! I was just relieved that three trees had fallen and everyone as okay. 

And here's Maiya modeling "appropriate" footwear for logging activities. Yes, she also wears these shoes when we ride Neko. Crazy kids!

And then on to this beauty! The first one we considered having removed and the last to fall. 

Timber! Down he went! And Kyle did a superb job of landing that tree so accurately! This one had a much greater placement problem: it was inside the horse fence and between several ornamental trees (that we did not want to see damaged...) but it landed perfectly. Good job Kyle!

Now Bob has the fun of cutting up the trees for firewood (he likes this kind of activity) and we have loads of firewood to burn, not that we've had much of a winter. But wood for next year! And probably the year after that! Bob and I cleaned up the entire tree in the next two days (all gone! Already burning in our woodstoves!) I have to admit that the removal of this conspicuously dead tree really improved the view of this whole area. It was a tremendous success all around.

Yowzah Weather

 

A balmy -6 degrees!! And in order to verify that this is happening at our home, I scraped the ice from our window to access our thermometer...

Yup!

Actually, this was a few minutes later and it had risen to -5!! Oh joy! At least it's not windy, like yesterday... It was so cold outside that I blanketed poor Neko (*1). Neko also was excused from her diet as in cold weather, outdoor animals require lots more fuel to keep up body temperature. 

It was so cold yesterday (do I need to remind you?!?) that poor Robin the Good neglected to poop at her usual time and so decided that she need to go outside after we'd all gotten tucked into our nice cozy bed. Great! I had to bundle up and venture outside at 12:00 midnight to howling gale force gusts of wind and sub-zero temperatures; I've never seen a dog poop so fast! She wanted back in.

But despite the deep freeze, some part of my stultified brain was working, as I got yesterday's Wordle on the second guess! I tried to save my astonishing triumph but my phone refused to cooperate. I tried photographing my "stats" and this is all I got:

"Tasty" was the word, by the way. So I guess being a smarty pants still weather-proof. (*2)(*3) It was just about all I accomplished yesterday as we literally spent most of Friday hunkered down under flannel sheets, reading and watching the giant screen TV.  Saturday looks to be the same. But tomorrow is supposed to be in the 40's!!!! Here's my response:

(*1) Neko, as you may remember, lost "blanketing privileges" last winter as she managed to push her way through the electric fence as the blanket prevented her from feeling the shock. She actually managed to sneak back in, too. Smart horsey... don't ask how she did this.

(*2) I assume most of us have "favorite" first words on Wordle? I do... seems to work! but no one ever wants to share their stats with me. I have tried asking on Facebook and never get a reply. A bit of Wordle Insecur-itle anyone?

(*3) Another note on my Wordle stats. At one point, I was doing Wordle on the computer. then I switched to doing it on my phone, apres yoga and pre-dinner. I lost a bunch of my earlier stats as the phone and computer don't seem to speak to one another. Have I said how much I can hate technology? Don't even get me started on how hard I tried to sync my phone so I could do a blog post from there! All because I tried to send great photographs shot on my phone to the desk top and that doesn't seem to want to happen. So stayed tuned; you may get the blog I was attempting to post yet!!