Saturday fun...

Saturday was a beatiful day. We were originally going to go losting, but we couldn't really leave the house in good conscience. You see, basically since last autumn, it's been so cold out, and we've been so busy, we've just chucked whatever out into the garage, and slammed the door shut as quickly as possible. So, needless to say, it was a disaster of immense porportions. It was giving me heartburn just to walk through it. It was making me feel quilty and inadequate every time I had to take the garbage out. I was avoiding going out to the freezer because it made me crazy to wend my way through the mess. It was HORRIBLE.

So, Saturday morning Frank went out and attacked it, and I joined him after I'd wrangled Kiki from the sundress and sandals she'd put on at 8:00 am, and convinced Debris that she actually had to wear clothes in order to leave the warmth of the house. Simply wearing snow boots was not sufficient.

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned this on my blog before, and I'm too lazy to check, but Kiki is absolutely nuts about fishing. Every day she asks me if she can go fishing. Every day she tells me what she really wants is to go ice fishing. If there should happen to be a fishing show on Versus, or the Discovery Channel, or any other channel, her nose is glued to the TV, and she is yelling and cheering and hollering, and the channel absolutely cannot be changed. Every one in the family has to come check out the "ginormous" fish the person is catching. She is already planning on going to Alaska someday to go fishing, and going to where ever it is that they go to get herself a swordfish, and so on and so forth. It is quite the obsession, already. I sort of hope she hangs onto it, because how cool would that be?

Anyway, she is anxiously awaiting the days until she can go fishing this spring, and so, while we were cleaning the garage, she pulled out her "boat" and her fishing pole, and did a little practicing.

Debris, meanwhile, discovered the neighbor's cat. It was approximately the same size as her. I don't, as a general rule, like animals overly much. That being said, I have never wished that I wasn't deathly allergic to cats, until I had Debris, who adores most animals with every fiber of her being.

After a short while, Kiki couldn't resist, and she came over to say hi too.Awwww...So after she dragged, snuggled, tortured, kissed and generally terrorized that poor cat for quite some time, she decided she needed to go in the house. Her sweatshirt? COVERED IN CAT HAIR. Absolutely covered. She looked like a cat. It is currently sitting in a pile in my laundry room. I'm getting asthma attacks every time I do anything more than pass through there. I need to get that sweatshirt cleaned, ASAP. Also, when I pulled the sweatshirt over her head, she got a mouthful of cat hair. HAHA! She screamed over that for quite some time. I finally had to wipe her tongue off with masking tape to get her to be quiet about it.

So, Kiki and her came in the house and got themselves some chips and salsa to wipe the last of the cat hair off Debris' tongue, and Frank and I finished up in the garage.

He assembled our mini-windmill...

Yay! I can't wait to put it out--once we figure out where we want it.

And, with that in mind, we discussed options for our lovely whiskey barrels...

And the saddle Girl J gave me. I want all our chairs in the back yard patio/deck to be saddles. If you have any saddles with broken trees, or otherwise unusable/dangerous to horses, let me know. I want them. :-)

And, to round out the day, I did inventory on my canned goods. I discovered canning last year, and I had SO MUCH FUN! I can't wait to do it again. Now that I have discovered this homey task, I believe that for me, the passage of time will not only be marked by days, weeks and months on the calendar, but by the ratio of full to empty jars on my canned goods shelf.

It's also been fun to see what my family likes. For example next year I will not do any peach jam. They don't hate it, but they'll never eat it if there is strawberry. I need to do approximately 50 jars of strawberry and/or rasberry jam. I'm not kidding... we've gone through 14 jars in the past 4 weeks. I need to do three times as many pears, and half as many peaches. But, they love frozen peaches, so I need to do more of those. I need to do twice as many jars of my secret stewed tomato recipe. I need to do more pickled stuff that is not cucumbers. Frank and I like those. So, pickled carrots, and pickled green beans will be done next year. I have enough pickled cucumbers to last another winter. And, I most definitely need to fire roast red peppers, and can those up in small jars... they are very expensive to buy in the store, and it's annoying to have to open a big jar when all I need is one roasted pepper. Besides if Frank smokes them over hickory for me, they will taste way better than store bought anyway. So, that was our Saturday... Happy Monday! I'm going to go de-cat-ify my laundry room, while holding my breath and blinking like a madwoman.