"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them." ~John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Good Morning my Loyal Readers,
Today will be the last posting until Monday when I return to work. I hope that your Thanksgiving proves to be well spent with family and friends should you so desire. For us, we have friends coming in from Atlanta and according to the weather person, lots of rain. Come Friday, it's supposed to be sunny with a low of 25 degrees and a high of just 46 degrees. Weather doesn't matter though when you don't have to go to work :)

So to get you caught up on things...hmmm where were we? Well, it doesn't matter, here is what has been going on as the days have been going by...

Friday I took a day off to spend with Wally so we started by going to the diner for breakfast. They are really nice there and the lady doing the cooking said I could have a cheese burger - she said it's just as easy to make as frying eggs so no big deal. We like her :) we like her a lot! lol

With breakfast out of the way we drove over to the barn and picked up supplies for working on the trailer. Wally wanted to tear down the back porch. The wood had rotted on the floor and it was no longer safe to walk on. Jeff helped us and eventually that porch did come down. It was amazing to me to watch this from start to finish. I knew it could be done, I just had absolutely no idea how they were going to do it. Little did I know, I would be part of it...

Wally showed me what he called a fencing tool and he showed me how to remove heavy duty staples by pounding the fencing tool with a hammer after you have wedged it between the heavy duty staples and the wall. Sounds simple enough but I'm not really known for my coordination so it took a few times of him showing me before I got it down pat. Okay, okay, so he went the whole way around the porch with me - whatever! I'm sure he was just making sure I didn't hurt myself... it's that whole process of holding onto one tool, while pounding it with another that just doesn't compute in my brain. I can watch him do it and I think - hey, that looks easy enough. Then he hands the tools over and I'm on my own. Now, it's not so easy anymore. I managed though and when all was said and done, I had only missed about 6 staples. Well hey, they were rusty and kind of blended in so it was hard to see some of them.

Next up for me... a power tool! I'm moving right along, aren't I? Boy he sure is trusting with his tools... LOL!

For the first time ever I used a drill. That's right - me and a power drill! Pretty scary if you know me very well... lol!! My job was to remove the screws that held the aluminum siding in place along the bottom of the porch. This took a little more training than the staple removing. Okay, lots more training. For one thing, I'm removing screws rather than screwing in screws. Why you have to push on the screw to remove it is quite beyond my comprehension but low and behold, he was right and it worked. The trick now was getting those darn grooves lined up so I didn't "strip" it (whatever "it" was, I wasn't supposed to strip it). I got my power tool lingo going on for a minute there... lol!

The "bit" was one for a phillips head (that word I already knew - so there!) and it proved to be pretty tricky business trying to line up those grooves when the screws are not always facing straight out at you... sometimes they would just unscrew right out of the hole, other times, I'd be fighting with it to the point of just saying "the heck with the drill, I'll just unscrew it with my fingers..." That wasn't always the best option but it was better than what I wanted to do which was banging the screw with the drill in aggravation when it wouldn't come out of that darn hole! Neccy is so much better with tools! Truly most anyone is better than I am but she's really MUCH better :)

I finished up my busy-work while the guys did the real labor. They took off the tin roof, they pulled the screening free and pushed down the railing and then Wally hooked up the floor to the tractor and pulled the whole thing free from the trailer. Amazing. I never saw anything like that before. We loaded up some junk in the back of Jeff's truck and took it to the barn to be sorted through and our work day was done :) We still have to go salvage any wood that might be worth using and the tin and screen will come in handy later. As for the rotted wood, I don't really know. I think we'll end up burning it.  

It was still a nice, warm-ish, sunny day so we decided to go to Pee Wee's Place. Jeff headed out while Wally and I stayed back and had a sandwich (I offered Jeff one be he declined) and then we planned to meet him there. Well, he turned out to be a no-show which was no big deal. We stayed for an hour or so and then went home. On the mirror was posted an announcement that it was Pee Wee's birthday party on Saturday at 6pm. Fat chance of us making that one...it was way too late to get started on a Saturday. ha ha ha! We're usually ready for bed by then!

We had ribeyes on the grill for dinner and they were cooked to perfection. Crunchy on the outside, red (me) and pink (for Wally) and juicy on the inside. I heated up a can of peas and dinner was served. The roosters had already put themselves to bed and we fed the dogs the fat from the steaks. I flipped the switch so they would have some warmth in their dog house and we were done for the night. We did watch some tv but Friday was so long ago that my brain didn't hang on to what it was we watched... probably the usual :)

Now Saturday we had a bunch of plans but after breakfast we decided to go help Jeff since he had helped us so much the day before. He was painting the ceiling of his home and we figured three would be faster than one. My job, critique their jobs... lol

Before we left to go to Jeff's I donned my muck luck boots and a jacket and we went to feed the horses. I was petting Rebel at the gate when I saw something moving back behind him. He's a pretty big ole' horse so I wasn't really sure I saw anything but once I got over to the right side of him, sure enough there stood a 6 point buck (now I got my hunter lingo on...lol) not 15 yards in front of me. Rebel kept moving over when I did because he thought I had food for him so I thought I was going to miss out on seeing that deer in the clearing.

I called for Wally and he walked over so he could see it. Turns out there was a female with the buck and she was a pretty good size deer. The buck, while he was a six point, was not very big. He was big enough to run off the other buck who thought he was going to take the doe though. Wally saw the second buck coming towards the first and told me to watch as they will sometimes go to fighting. I was watching and wishing I had my rifle with me... :)  The second buck wasn't so brave after all. As soon as ole' 6 point jumped toward him, he took off down the holler! chicken...

Well the deer were not in fear of us so instead of running off, they just stood there on the path that the horses take all the while nibbling the grass and watching us feed Smokey and Rebel. Now, if I were truly the "Great White Hunter" that everyone now calls me, I'd have gone and got my gun and shot that buck in a second. Alas it was not to be and for many reasons. 

I wanted to shoot him, don't get me wrong, and hopefully his day will come but you see, I've come to care dearly for the horses and this is their space. The path is the one they use daily to come up and see us. We call them to come up that way. We feed them in that same area. This time of year, more so than any other, they come up every morning. I think it's because hunters are down at the bottom of the hill near their pasture and they get scared when the shooting starts. It could just be that they are pigs who know we'll give them sweet feed and carrots... lol!

In any event, it wouldn't be right of me to fire off a round and scare the daylights out of the horses when they've always felt safe in their space. Besides which, a gunshot would likely have Smokey tearing apart the gate, the fence, or whatever happened to be in his way. He's shy like that sometimes :) No - it just wasn't meant to be, not that day anyway. The horses got petted and fed and the deer got another reprieve from the great white hunter. Off to Jeff's to do some painting.

The guys got right to work while Jeff's wife, Alice, and I talked about Thanksgiving and recipes and recipe websites. She's into cooking like I am and we found we had a lot in common. She's going to share her steak and gravy recipe with me. She said I can cook it in my electric skillet even though hers was cooked in her cast iron skillet. She invited us to Thanksgiving, which was very nice, but they are having upwards of 20 something people. We declined as we prefer to stay home and enjoy a smaller, but every bit as fun, holiday with Jay and Teri. 

I have to thank Bev for that electric skillet as it has come in handy in many, many ways. Steak and gravy sounds warm and filling and when it's in that electric skillet, I'm assured of very little in the way of clean-up. All you do is wipe it out with a soapy sponge, rinse, dry and put away. It's so non-stick that even the soap beads away from it. And, yes, I put the cord back in the re-sealable bag, the lid back in the bubble wrap and the skillet back into the plastic bag, Styrofoam ends and box in which it came. Laugh if you will (Ernie, Rebecca, Jarrett, Kain, Dizzy, etc...) but it still looks brand new and I use it all the time! Thank you Bev!!

After the painting was done, we went to Food Lion in Dickson. We needed to get beer while it was on sale and I needed cabbage and dried cranberries for the cranberry salad. We took hwy. 48. That's the one, if you recall, where they say it's so curvy you can see your own taillights... yeah. Wally drove :) I'm still not ready for that one yet - at least not if you want to make good time. lol!

We stopped at Tractor Supply and got sweet feed and then we went to Lowe's and then we were homeward bound. We took a back road that Wally hadn't ever been on and it turned out to be a really nice ride. We kicked back and watched as the road ambled along going up and over the hills, winding its way through curves and narrow passages. People always wave even if they don't know us and when we're in that big, black truck, they actually stop whatever they're doing and just watch as we go by. Grown men and little boys alike are all attracted to the sight of that truck.

When we went to Lowe's I stayed in the truck (we had all that beer you know...) while Wally went inside. This guy comes out with his two little boys and they just stopped and stared... he asked me what we had in it...huh? I'm so unqualified in these situations. I apologized and told him I had no idea - you could just see the disappointment set in. I told him my boyfriend would be out in just a few minutes if he wanted to talk to him about it. Not long after that another couple of guys came by and they too stared at it and then they started discussing what was in it without even asking me... I guess by now I probably had the look that says "I don't have a clue" so they left me alone. When the wife/mother came out and joined them, the son said something like, "Mom, did you see that truck?" She was like, "yeah, that'll be you someday son." It's just an old truck with a cool paint job but everybody wants to ask about it. Every single time we're out in it, someone says something about it or asks if it's for sale. I could never see me doing that.

Well now, we made it home and put away all that we had gathered on our trip into town. Wally took care of the sweet feed while I put away the food. The beer was stacked on the back porch as it is cool enough outside to keep it cold without freezing it. I fed the roosters and seasoned the salmon for dinner later on. It was clouding up and getting windy so we put off painting the doors until Sunday. We turned on the Nationwide Series and watched the race.

I cooked the salmon on the stove top and it was pretty good that way. I prefer it be grilled on a cedar plank but the weather kept us from that. We had our dinner, watched as the full moon rose in the sky off the front porch and listened to the roosters as they flew up into the trees and put themselves to bed. While we weren't flying up into the trees we weren't far behind them in going to bed. lol

Sunday called for rain but it was long in coming so we set up to paint the front doors barn red. They sell that color here and you can get it in a gallon or 5 gallons as you see fit. A gallon suited us perfectly. Before I painted I took the leaf blower upstairs and blew the leaves off the deck. They were piled so high I had to kick them out of my way just to get to one side of them. It probably took me 20 minutes to get them all blown down to the ground. Of course there's a learning curve with a leaf blower - hello, who knew? Not me. I made the mistake of blowing across the top of the leaves rather than towards the ground about a foot away from them. All I did was cause a full on leaf tornado up there! LOL ah ha ha it was pretty darn funny if I do say so myself!

I finally got the hang of it but it could have been a contender on America's Funniest Videos!

Painting the doors - that's another story. First of all, like using power tools, I've never painted anything other than water colors (which I'm pretty good at, I must say) and that little piece of trim on the trailer. The process is quite foreign to me when it comes to painting the doors of the house I live in. Apparently there's a technique. Apparently there's stirring to be done, brushes to decide on, taping of the glass, and putting down of the life-saver called a "drop cloth." 

Fortunately for me, Wally has painted so he was able to guide me in the right direction. Let me say that taping is my least favorite part. Boring and tedious not to mention very little in the way of gratification. As I was soon to learn, the gratification comes in the end. All that taping paid off when we pulled it from the glass and trim. I had clean barn red lines going all around and the doors looked so pretty that I just wanted to keep staring. They aren't perfect by any means but perfect wasn't the look I was going for. I wanted a distressed look so they would match this old red box that we have. I think they came out perfectly distressed looking - you'll just have to come see for yourself.

I got my laundry done while the race was on and I took from the freezer some of the beans that I had put up over the summertime. I'm not sure if they came from Darryl or if they came in my CSA basket but I am sure that they were super delicious! I opened a couple cans of corn and seasoned it with black pepper and then set it to boiling.  I seasoned the beans with beef bouillon and garlic powder and they were put on low so they could thaw gently without breaking them all apart.  

When everything else was just about ready, the steaks went on the grill. They were grilled up and ready and in about 10 minutes we were seated at the table enjoying a nice, green bean-y, corn-y, beefy, quiet evening in the cabin.  :) it was the perfect close to a perfect Sunday when perfection wasn't even the goal. Lots to be thankful for.

On the menu for us: Herb seasoned, roasted turkey stuffed with whole wheat bread and barley stuffing (lots of celery, onions, butter, sausage, apples and nuts), cranberry salad, green bean casserole (wouldn't be the same without it) and mashed sweet potatoes. Teri and Jay are bringing the pumpkin pie and whatever else she takes a liking to. 

In light of that, Happy Thanksgiving! Good luck on the football pool and remember to drive safely if you must drive at all. If you happen to see my kids over the holiday, please give them a hug for me. Thanks :) Love to all!

"May your stuffing be tasty
May your turkey be plump,
May your potatoes and gravy
Have nary a lump.
May your yams be delicious
And your pies take the prize,
And may your Thanksgiving dinner
Stay off your thighs!"
~Author Unknown