Hangin' out in the blueberry patch

I wanted to work in the word "holler" since it's such a West Virginia word, but I couldn't say I was in one since we were on flat ground the whole time. Here's the dialect lesson of the day for those readers who aren't from West Virginia: "holler"= "hollow" as in "Watch out when you come around the bend in the road in the winter because the holler gets lots more snow than the rest of town. We can't even get the truck up out to the road 'til it thaws." (Note: I was REALLY tempted to add something about coon hounds and burning a couch, but I restrained myself.)

Back to the story. Thursday afternoon, two friends and I drove somewhere out in Preston County (I wasn't driving, so I didn't pay attention to the turn-off, which probably wasn't labeled anyhow-- a lot of directions around here start with "Turn right where the coal tipple used to be ten years ago . . .") to pick blueberries. They cost $4 a pint at the farmers market. You can pick them yourself for $1.80 a pound. So, for a little over $7 and an hour in the sun talking with my friends, I came home with a gallon of blueberries. Yes!! The pictures are of my haul and the scene of the event.

By the way, can someone please explain to me how I put the pictures wherever I want in the post? Every time I bring in an image, it'll only go at the top of the post. How do I embed pictures wherever I want?

Actually, I didn't come straight home with the blueberries. My friends and I made cobbler and dinner (the cobbler was the real focus) and just had a lovely evening out on the gazebo watching Mousie the cat catch baby rabbits. Okay, she caught one. And my friend's husband stopped the cat and made her drop the poor lagomorph victim, which ran off and I'm sure is going to live a happy bunny life and share this cautionary experience with her numerous offspring. That one event, though, confirmed why my cats aren't allowed outside. They would catch rabbits and bring them in as gifts. On my bed. Or rather, on me. While I'm sleeping. No thanks. They can do that with their toys and satisfy their predatory instincts.

Anyone want blueberry something or other? I have five cups of blueberries in my freezer . . .

When the cat's away . . .

the mice will play-- in this case, when Mommy Cat (me) is out of the kitchen and food is left unattended, Alice and Brit think it's snack free-for-all time. Little known feline fact: Cats are omnivores. Serious omnivores. Forget all that carnivore stuff-- cats, or at least MY cats, eat whatever looks like it should be eaten.

So here's the scene: Last Saturday I bought goat cheese at the Farmers Market. It was a splurge, but I never can find decent cheese here, let alone goat cheese that reminds me of southern France. And hey, it's locally made (well, in Maryland-- that's kinda local)! So I bought it. I also went to the artisan bakery downtown (one bright spot in Morgantown's offerings) and bought a loaf of sourdough bread to eat with the cheese. I decided to have some for dinner tonight to go with my pasta. I put the cheese out on the counter to warm up a bit from being in the fridge. Then I left the room.

Therein lies the problem. Food items cannot be left unsupervised in my kitchen, even when the cats are sleeping upstairs. They have some kind of internal alarm that says, "Attention all felines! Unattended food on the counter! Go investigate!" It's not like the cheese was out of its wrapper. It was sealed in a plastic baggie! Sneaky, quiet kitties tore into the baggie and ate a big hunk out of the cheese while I answered e-mails, oblivious to the cheese carnage two rooms over.

I hope the cats don't throw up plastic and goat cheese later tonight. Note to Jen West, whom I have teased about her Lab puppy who eats absolutely everything: I have now received my just desserts for teasing you about Scooby eating an entire box of chocolates, including the box and candy wrappers. And the head off your daughter's Polly Pockets doll. And the covering on the soccer ball.

Other items my cats have eaten when I was otherwise occupied: raw mushrooms, cooked broccoli, cold pizza (again, torn through a plastic baggie-- but they didn't throw up, so I'm hopeful about tonight's incident), anything they can haul out of the garbage under the sink (which is why I have a child lock on it now), and the streusel topping off muffins I was taking to seminary on a Monday morning. Note to any of my former seminary students who may be reading this blog: I didn't feed you the muffins the cats sampled, I promise! At least, I don't think I did . . . that was five years ago. If I did, you didn't catch any noxious disease from cat saliva, right?

I promise my cats won't taste test food I serve you for dinner . . .

The Little Caboose that Could

Once upon a time, in the kingdom of Monongalia County, there was a half marathon. It started 13 point whatever miles up the Decker's Creek Rail Trail in the next county north. (When I say "up," I mean up-- there's a 4% grade down from Preston county to Monongalia county.) The trail was very beautiful, winding through trees, mountain ridges, and past the river/creek, so when Sheila decided to run this race, it seemed like a good idea. She'd done a full marathon, so a half marathon wouldn't be so hard, would it?

So Sheila trained. And trained. And trained some more. She even practiced running on the actual course-- something she did NOT do when she ran the Top of Utah marathon in 2005. June arrived and she thought she was ready.

Sheila forgot about the heat factor. June 1st was a little rainy and overcast. June 2nd was a little rainy. June 3-5 were still comfortable. June 6th the heatwave hit. The race started at 9 AM on June 7th. Sheila hates running in heat, but it was too late to back out now. So she started.

Look at all the runners-- all but one-- pass Sheila on the trail during the first mile. Good thing Judy promised to meet Sheila after the race (she finished an hour earlier than Sheila did). The only runner in sight after mile two was Maurice, age 70 something. He dropped out because of the heat after mile 3. Sheila thought he was very wise, but she kept going.

Three hours later, everyone else had finished. Sheila finally passed the mile 10 water stop. Sheila had been walking a lot, a combination of heat and her left hip saying, "Okay, we're done now!" But only three miles to go. She could walk it. Sheila's friends who had come to watch and cheer her on had already gone home, figuring she passed in the crowd of other runners and that they had missed her.

The EMT guys in their ATV kept rumbling up to make sure Sheila wasn't dehydrated. Sheila waved them off. "I'm fine, just slow!" How could the last few miles, the part Sheila trained most on, seem so much longer? The nice people at Southern States (selling farm equipment) had trained a sprayer shower hose over the trail for runners to cool down. A nice owner at the trailer park near the final mile had set out a hose and said, "Help yourself to water." Judy and her husband walked back up the trail to make sure Sheila was still coming. They walked back across the finish line with her.

No winner in her age group, no sirree. But guess what? There was a caboose award! Yes!! Sheila got her first prize EVER in a race, and she got it for coming in dead last. After drinking more water, eating some pizza, and a few days of not being able to move up and down stairs, Sheila decided any race over 10K is too long for her. That decision made, she will now live happily ever after.

Move over, Betty Crocker

And maybe the home improvement people on HGTV, too. I am DONE wallpapering! Yay!! Not only am I done wallpapering, but I've started to prep. for the paint part by moving all the furniture out of the room. So if there's a specialist in rearranging furniture so you can still maneuver in other rooms of the house, I've mastered that for the moment as well. No bed to sleep on (good thing there's a guest room), but I can sit on my living room couch.

But wait, there's more! For another hour and a half worth of time, I'm baking a chicken for dinner! Being homemakerly is going to wipe me out, but for the moment it's fun. . .

Emily is my hero!

Why is Emily my hero, do you ask? Look closely at the closet doors. Notice anything? (Pause while you observe photo . . .) Okay, so it's not as dramatic for anyone besides me, but these closet doors haven't worked properly since I moved into the house a year ago last May. Emily fixed them! Yay!! And she spent the whole afternoon helping me wallpaper the trickiest wall that had the most outlets and weird cut-out areas! She rocks!!

One wall done, three to go

How am I celebrating a very RAINY 4th of July? I put up wallpaper. I've only done one wall so far, but that one wall looks good. It took me about two and a half hours. Not bad, considering I had no clue what I was doing. I didn't even end up coating myself in wallpaper paste. Score! This already-pasted wallpaper is the way to go. I also like that I can focus on one strip at a time, which keeps me from looking at everything that isn't done already. One strip at a time is manageable.

It's 2:12 PM and raining steadily. I don't think I'm having a picnic dinner tonight. Or watching fireworks. Or listening to a big band concert at the park downtown.

I AM, though, going to a barbecue at a friend's house. So we'll be indoors-- it'll still be fun.

Britomart's sitting on my lap purring while I type this entry. She would like to say that she did a fine job of supervising the wallpaper hanging process. Now we're all going to settle down on the couch and read. (Well, I'm going to read-- Brit will nap on me, and Alice will probably join us.)

And to my Canadian friends, Happy Canada Day! And happy 400th anniversary of Quebec City! Je me souviens!

fun with wallpaper

See my pretty new French doors, installed in May to replace an ugly, drafty patio door? Look at the green wall. That's not wallpaper. THAT is my wall. The picture doesn't give you the whole sense. Think '70's trailer walls. This stuff is funky, and it doesn't take paint. Granted, it's better than the inch-wide green and white vertical stripes that on the wallpaper I ripped down. That stuff made me motion sick. I would wake up in the morning and grab the edge of my bed to make sure I wasn't moving.

So I thought it would be a relatively easy summer project to remove the old wallpaper (eliminating the cave effect) and put up new textured wallpaper I can paint whatever color I want. I bought the textured wallpaper-- all eight rolls at Lowe's. (I hope it's enough.) I read the directions, which said that I might need to prime the walls first. Off I went to Lowe's to make sure.

I got two different stories. The wallpaper person said that if I'm going to cover paneling (the one wall that's not covered in this funky green stuff is dark paneling), I need to 1) prime it 2) put up wallpaper liner, which by the way, comes without any adhesive and therefore needs to be pasted and 3) THEN put up the textured wallpaper, which I can then paint when it's dry. Besides adding $50 or so to the cost of the project, I didn't relish the idea of TWO sets of wallpapering. The wallpaper person also told me I need "special" primer for paneling (I didn't when I painted the paneling in the sunroom . . .).

Option two: prime the paneled wall and just paint it after that. That option looks much better.

Then, when I was cutting wallpaper to fit the other walls, I thought, "Hey, why don't I put a scrap of wallpaper on the paneling to see if it sticks without any priming at all?" Thirty minutes later, the wallpaper seems to be sticking. It's a bit dark behind it from the paneling, but since I'm painting a whole different color anyhow, does that really matter?

And thus the suspense: to prime or not to prime? Do I wallpaper that paneled wall? I'm thinking yes. The worst it can do is fall down and then I have to paint anyhow. Or maybe I'll need to paint primer over the wallpaper once it's up.

Why couldn't the original owner have just used normal drywall instead of this funky plasticky trailer stuff? And why doesn't HGTV have shows dealing with such issues? Where's the Design on a Dime team when I need them?

Mom, can I go out and play? Pleeease?

That's what I wanted to shout as I headed out of my office door early this afternoon. My office is a windowless cubicle, so once I'm inside, I don't know what the weather's like until whenever I go home. My office neighbor poked her head in and said, "Get outside! It's the only nice day before several days of rain!" So, instead of my original plan for the afternoon (wallpapering), I'm going to sit on my deck and read a book in the sunshine. I'm learning that when it's not raining in West Virginia, take advantage of it.

Speaking of West Virginia weather, it's been unusually cool this summer. Not that I'm complaining, because there's also been very little humidity. (Well, except for June 7th when I ran my half-marathon-- that'll be a whole separate entry.) Last night I went to a barbecue with friends and was actually a little COLD when the sun went down. We roasted marshmallows and watched the kids chase fireflies. (They named the fireflies all as they caught them and brought them over to show us. "Mom, this one's named Trudy! This one's named Kung Fu Panda! This one's named Rainbow!" By the way: very definite differences in name choices depending on the gender of the firefly catcher.) I could have sworn it was late April, but nope, it was July 1st.

I hope it doesn't rain on the 4th. How can I have a picnic and watch fireworks if it's raining?

Okay, I did my writing. I'm going outside to play! I'll be back home at dinner time, I promise!