The cream puff

I made a cream puff!  From scratch.

Today I fed the horses and pigs by myself.  The bales of hay seemed heavier than last time.  I'm tired tonight.

At 3:00pm when I went it was windy here, but there it was not windy.  I thought I'd be cold but in only ten minutes I had to take off my jacket.  I forgot it there.  Hope it'll be okay over night.  I'm sure it will be.  What could happen.  It's not like there's anyone out there to steal it.

It took me 45 minutes to feed: four horses in the pasture, three bales and some grain; mean Dancer in her paddock, one bale and some grain in a bucket; Baby Bella in her paddock, half a bale and bucket of grain; Pig and Pig, one flake of hay and a bucket full of combined grain and hog food.  They like the grain but the hog food is pellets from Wal-Mart and they don't like that.  I don't blame them.  We're going to try not to buy the Wal-Mart hog food anymore.  Leah gave us money to buy it and we didn't know the hog food is dreary old pellets.  Then grain though, it looks good enough to put in a bowl and eat for breakfast myself.  Then 15 minutes to water everyone.

I've been neatly coiling up the hose every day when I'm done.  Man, I should call my Dad and tell him I'm rolling up the hose.  I think he might be impressed.  Go me! Coiling up hoses.  I don't know.  It's kind of hard.  This non-kink hose gets kinks all over the place.  Sometimes I unwind it 50 feet and have to run back and unkink it somewhere because the water's plugged up.  Then the nozzle flops out of the bucket and I have to run back so it doesn't spray all over the paddock.  The inventor of this kinking non-kink hose should be taken out and shot.  That might be too strong of language.  Okay, hang him by his toes.  That will suffice.

We had porterhouse steak and baked potato with butter, sour cream and chives for dinner.  Yum!  The steaks were very good.  My husband made corn too but why do I want to eat corn when I have steak and potatoes on my plate?  I don't want no stinkin' corn.  I can have corn anytime.

On one of my first dates with an older man, I was 19 and he was 39, I ordered a glass of milk with my steak dinner.  I didn't give it a second thought.  The waiter asked me if I wanted a drink and without skipping a beat I said very daintily and mustering as much class as I could find, "Yes, please. One milk."  Hahaha!  I never was much of a drinker of alcoholic beverages.  I think I saw my date get one of those thought bubbles by his head that said, "What am I doing here!"  I found out he died in 2000.  I saw his obituary online.  I was shocked.  It didn't say how he died though.

After I finished feeding and watering the animals I groomed little Bella while she ate.  It's hard to believe one day her back will be a tall reach for me.  Suddenly the wind came up really big!  Directly next to Leah's property the owner has been plowing so all the dust and dirt came up with the wind and it was like I was in the movie The Wizard of Oz.  The sun went behind the cloudsand all this sand was blowing up high.  I wondered if it might rain.  But it didn't.  The sand settled down but the wind blew the rest of the time I was out there.

Tomorrow the 24th

I will be making 160 chocolate covered cherry mice tomorrow for the Christmas dinner my church is doing on the 25th to serve the needy. Can I get one more prepositional phrase in that sentence? No, I can not. This photo shows the 27 I made today (that equals one jar of maraschino cherries) and I have six jars to do tomorrow! I've never made so many at once! I'll be making two big pans of candied yams too. The yams I'll bake on Christmas morning, but the mice I will prepare tomorrow and store overnight. They'll keep fine as long as they don't get warm and melt. Maybe I'll put them in the truck overnight because it's so cold out. They won't get too warm outside that's for sure, and I can't do yams and mice and volunteer all in one day. Our son is volunteering to work as a server or whatever they need him to do. I emphasized to him that it's good to ask for a specific job, but he needs to go into it with a mind and heart that he's available to do what needs to be done whatever it may be.

This year, I feel I am in the place I should be more than any other Christmas before.

Chocolate mice treat

The day is done. The luminarias were not lit, the crowds were smaller due to the wind, but those hardcore people who out came had a good time. My chocolate mice were a big hit!

The ladies at The Friends site went on and on about how cute they were. They asked me how I made them and said they wanted to make them too. One lady said she had to take two to her daughters and that one of her daughters made these sort of things and she just had to show her one. I felt a little shy that they carried on so, but I was complimented too. I felt good. I never make things like this! After about 1/2 an hour of announcing to passersby that we had free posole soup I said I have to check my mice to see if anyone ate them, but I couldn't find the plate. One of the volunteers said, "Oh. We hid them. We're keeping them for us to eat." lol! So all the volunteers ate them. As I watched the fireworks I saw two men walk up to the table and the one said to the other, "Hey, do you like chocolate? You have to try one of these." I was bustin' with pride by then. Even men liked them?

They were a little stuck to the foil, so I bought wax paper for next time (like, um, the directions say to do). I let them cool for two hours before I put on the eyes and nose. Here are four that I caught. Haha! I made 23. Not all of the marachino cherries were worthy of being a food craft project. If they were too split up I didn't use them.