Living Large In Our Little House

I love spring and sum­mer for the weather and the bounty of fresh veg­eta­bles avail­able, but I love win­ter for the com­fort food dishes.

When I was a kid, I always knew when it was veg­etable soup night as I could smell it as soon as I stepped on our front stoop after get­ting off of the school bus.

My mother was a huge Italian food fan, par­tic­u­larly spaghetti and lasagna and one of my favorite recipes is a vari­a­tion of her lasagna recipe, which I’ve mod­i­fied from a big pan to a pan for two.

The recipe gives us four pieces, one each for din­ner and one each for our lunches the next day.

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Dale is doing more with wood than stack­ing it these days

We had an inter­est­ing week­end at Our Little House.

Dale is get­ting into wood­work­ing, so we spent part of the week­end going to the Big Box hard­ware stores where he could find the tools he needed to start a project he’s been yearn­ing to do since we moved.

He’s wanted to build a util­ity table for the deck, one I could use as a pot­ting table and that we could also use when we’re cook­ing outdoors.

He received some money and gift cards for Christmas, so he pur­chased some wood­work­ing tools and went to work.

And he did an awe­some job, although he didn’t want me to take any pho­tos of it. He built it out of old pal­lets he had stored from our move, so it isn’t very pretty, but it is sturdy and functional.

A hobby for even­tual retire­ment? Definitely.

A poten­tial source of sec­ond income? If he con­tin­ues on this track, most def­i­nitely. I hope he main­tains his interest.

It was cer­tainly great see­ing him so con­tent work­ing in his garage on Sunday and then rush­ing home from work Monday night to get back at his table.

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The first time I saw it in the store, Dale asked me if I wanted it and I told him I would get it on my Kindle.

He said, “Are you sure that will fit on your Kindle?”

I laughed and told him it would.

For me, books are as tempt­ing a buy as candy is to a kid and when I saw “11–22-63,” the new book by Stephen King, it was like that great big lol­lipop, just beg­ging to be devoured.

The events of that day in 1963, changed the course for America, not just dur­ing that decade, but altered our nation’s his­tory from that day for­ward and made more than one per­son won­der what the world would have been like if President Kennedy had con­tin­ued to be a part of it.

It was that generation’s Pearl Harbor and our generation’s 9–11. A day so hor­ri­ble for our coun­try that no one who was alive would ever for­get where they were or what they were doing when they heard the news and a date even most of those who weren’t alive know.

I wasn’t born yet, but the events of that day helped begin my life.

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Congratulations to Bonnie, who won the copy of “The Last Place You’d Look.” Congratulations to Bonnie and thanks to every­one who entered and thanks to Carole Moore for pro­vid­ing the copy of the book for the con­test! ___________________________________________________________________________________

Molly and Dale

In search­ing for mate­r­ial for a pet col­umn I pen every other week, I found this story about a Maltese named Jake who lived with his own­ers in a sub­ur­ban Washington state home.

They returned from work one night to find his decap­i­tated body under their deck. Jake had access to the out­doors through a doggy door, a con­ve­nience many work­ing pet par­ents have for their four legged fam­ily members.

Jake’s fam­ily home backed up to woods, accord­ing to news arti­cles and although Jake’s own­ers first thought it was a human who had entered their yard and killed their dog, vet­eri­nar­i­ans who exam­ined Jake’s body said it was coyotes.

Although I know coy­otes will kill small pets, I had no idea that dur­ing mat­ing sea­son, they will kill ani­mals they feel are rivals, tak­ing the heads of their prey and bury­ing them elsewhere.

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